Right now, as I’m typing this, it’s 10:30 PM, Sunday, August 9th. I don’t care if I stay up all night to finish this essay, I’m refusing to let myself go to sleep until it’s done. I want to hold on to how triggered I am right now. I know this sounds like a lot of nerd rage, and because I think a lot of it is nerd rage. I’m getting angry over a the season finale of a TV show. It’s incredibly childish and asinine of me. But I’m an emotionally stunted 21 year old autiste, so bear with me here.
“Death is Nothing Compared to Vindication”- or Why I’m Okay With the Coontown Purge
(Also posted at TheRightStuff.biz)
So /r/Coontown is gone. For those of you not in the loop, it was a subreddit dedicated to discussing how generally unpleasant and problematic blacks are. It’s been in the media ever since Tactical Bowlcut did his thing, with the typical whining, moaning and kvetching that liberals tend to do whenever wrongthink starts to become popular. There were allegations of the sub organizing harassment, and rumors that the board specifically wanted that sub gone. I really don’t care about the reason. Plenty of other cool subs that I use are going unmolested, and this isn’t the first time Reddit tried to shut down anti-black discussion. /r/Coontown will be back under a new name before long. Right now there’ll be a brief power struggle within the rest of the “chimpire”, and eventually a new leader will take the stand. I am proud to say that as a /r/Coontown user, I helped coordinate a charity drive to support a victim of black crime. (http://www.gofundme.com/Jessica_Byrnes) I don’t know how much we raised, but it feels good to know that we actually did mobilize to help someone. I also appreciate the traffic to my blog and my buddies at TheRightStuff.biz that /r/Coontown has given us. You guys have been great, and I love you.
But with all of that emotional nonsense out of the way, let’s get to why this is a good-ish thing. Being the autiste that I am, I borrowed a quote from Warhammer 40k to title this article. More specifically, it’s from the last words of Konrad Curze, before being struck down by an assassin sent by his father the Emperor of Mankind. Curze, a traitor to his father, accepted his death because it proved that his own brutal draconian methods of punishment were good enough for the Emperor to embrace. By striking down /r/Coontown, reddit has finally cast aside it’s classical liberalism in favor of a more fascist-oriented system.
Let me once again return to to the wise words of anarcho-capitalist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, emphasis mine:
In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.
In other words, if you wish to maintain an ideal society, you must remove the malcontents and dissidents who object to your ideals. This is a universal principle. The idea of “free speech” does not exist and never will exist. If you do not remove these deviants, they will sabotage and undermine your society and its values.
So if we are to apply Hoppe’s model, what is the goal for Reddit? Paleoconservative Samuel T. Francis calls it “Anarcho-tyranny”, a phrase brought back into circulation in the alternative right by Mencius Moldbug. Anarcho-tyranny is the state where social order is collapsing, yet any attempt to instill order is suppressed. Baltimore would be the most recent example of anarcho-tyranny, where rioters destroyed the city while any effort to physically suppress and subdue them was openly blocked by the city government. Reddit in this case is endorsing Anarcho-tyranny by allowing libertine subreddits like /r/polyamory, /r/cuckold, /r/adultery, /r/askgaybros, /r/blackladies, /r/TheRedPill, and other subreddits devoted to deconstructing and destroying social order by promoting a promiscuous, libertine lifestyle to exist unmolested. Not a single one of these subs as of this posting have been “quarantined” despite them existing to promote material that is obscene and objectively harmful to society as a whole.
So thus, we can conclude that by banning /r/coontown, the public face of the edgysphere on reddit, Hoppe’s theories are indeed right: Reddit has chosen to create a libertine, “socially permissive” environment. In doing so, they have essentially removed anything that advocated an alternative to that while keeping the rest in second-class citizen status. Reddit has proven that free speech is simply counter-productive to building an ideal society. Whether they like it or not, Reddit has agreed with Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
And why should I be upset about that? Yes, I’m a bit unhappy that /r/coontown had to go. Yes, the smug gloating from leftist race-cucks is a little annoying. I’d be lying if I denied that, and I’ve always believed that honesty is important. But I can’t be too mad, because now there is irrefutable proof that the classical liberalism that Reddit was hailed as being the model for simply doesn’t work. As a reactionary, I’ve been vindicated. Reddit administration has embraced my ideology, even if they’re using it to promote the exact opposite of what it was intended for. They’ve embraced the power of the dark side, even if it was to strike down the Sith.
So I for one, am willing to embrace our new reddit overlords. I’m glad that Spez had the balls to put on his jackboots and get rid of /r/coontown. I enjoy communities with heavy-handed, involved authority figures who get rid of undesirables. Spez is carrying on the work of men like George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson in cleaning up his community. Everything Spez has done is essentially what Coontown wanted to do to blacks- flag them as a problematic element that makes society worse, and remove them. However, Spez seems to have taken the “Remove” part a bit further than Coontown, and rather than segregate them has chosen to totally eradicate them.
So ultimately, I see no reason to be upset. In the end, we were vindicated. We’ve won. In fact…
…We did it, Reddit!
RIP Hulkamania
(originally published at TheRightStuff.biz here)
In June of 2007, WWE held its annual June pay-per-view, Vengance. Vengence is noteworthy because of one match on the card that never happened. The vacant ECW Championship (ECW at the time being a WWE-owned brand) was supposed to be up for grabs between up-and-coming CM Punk and the legendary veteran Chris Benoit. However, Benoit no-showed the PPV, and so instead the undercard high-flyer Johnny Nitro defeated Punk to win the belt. At the time, no one knew why the normally on-point, on-task Benoit no-showed such a huge show. Not long after, the horrifying reason why was discovered.
Over the course of that weekend, Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy (formerly Nancy Sullivan AKA Woman) and his son Daniel before hanging himself. It had started with an arguement between Chris and Nancy that had come to blows again, only this time ending with Nancy dead. Benoit spent the rest of the night in a confused, mentally broken stupor before smothering Daniel to death with a pillow, to spare him the shame of living as the son of a murderer and his victim. Unable to cope with the horror of what he did, he proceeded to place bibles by their corpses before hanging himself in the weight room, texting a suicide note of sorts to his friend Chavo Gurerro (nephew of the late great Eddie Gurerro).
At first, it was treated as an unsolved mystery, and WWE ran the standard tribute for Benoit. However, as more details came out while the live broadcast was going on, it became obvious that WWE was honoring a murderer. In response, WWE essentially removed Chris Benoit from history- his championship wins (including a historic victory over both Triple H and Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 20) and other accomplishments (winning the 2004 Royal Rumble, being a part of “The Radicalz” who left WCW for WWF in what was considered the final part of WWF winning the Monday Night Wars) had all ceased to happen according to WWE record books. For a while, it was even a verb- When someone was “Benoit’d” they were erased from history, a modern version of what the Romans called damnatio memoriae or what George Orwell called making an “unperson” in reference to Stalinst practices. The only real other contemporary people to be subjected to the practice for moral reasons are former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky and British entertainer Jimmy Saville, both avid child rapists.
And now, the immortal Hulk Hogan has joined their ranks.
Supposedly, leaked audio from his sex tape with radio personality/literal cuck (more on that later) Bubba The Love Sponge’s wife has him just calling them niggers when referencing his issues with this daughter. Hogan went on to say that he doesn’t want his daughter dating a black man and said he was “a little bit racist”. That’s it.
That’s all Hulk Hogan did, and WWE is now putting him on the same level as Chris Benoit. He’s been pulled from the ongoing reality show Tough Enough and all the presently existing replays have been pulled from their streaming service. References to Hulk have been removed from WWE’s website. According to insider journalist Dave Meltzer, WWE is explicitly telling everyone in the company never to reference Hulk Hogan or even say his name going forward. Any and all Hulk Hogan merchandise has been pulled from the shop. Hogan’s character has been pulled from an upcoming animated cartoon series. They didn’t just fire Hulk Hogan, they’ve all but wiped him from history.
Now for those of you non-autistes who are unfamiliar with wrestling history, Hulk Hogan essentially built the WWE (formerly WWF). When Vince McMahon decided to make the WWF the first real nation-wide wrestling promotion, he needed a big star to really carry the company on. So he brought in Hulk Hogan (powerword Terry Bollea), a fairly skilled wrestler and bodybuilder, gave him an “All-american Hero” gimmick, and had him defeat the dastardly Iranian Iron Shiek for the WWF title, live in Madison Square Garden. In what was called the “Hulkamania” period from 1984 to 1993 Hulk Hogan was a cultural icon and the greatest force in the WWF. When Hogan jumped ship to rival promotion WCW in 1994, he founded the nWo with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall in 1996 to make WCW the largest wrestling promotion in the world. While the more obsessed fans may dislike his slow, heavily theatric style and his backstage prima donna antics, it’s almost impossible to argue that Hogan is one of, if not the biggest name in wrestling history. But now, in this modern world we live in, it’s entirely possible that a man can be removed from the media empire he helped build for the crime of not approving of interracial relationships.
It gets worse. Arguably, the entire reason this is happening is because Hulk Hogan is suing Gawker media for 100 million dollars. Back in 2009/2010, Hulk Hogan was friends with Radio DJ Bubba the Love Sponge. Bubba, as it turns out, is a literal, no-joke, full-on cuck. He had gone on record as asking people more rich and famous than him, like Hogan and noted degenerate Howard Stern, to fuck his wife Heather. Predictably, she is now his ex-wife. Somehow, surveillance footage leaked of the sexual encounter without Hogan’s permission. It found its way to Gawker, who published the “sexy” part of the security camera footage. Understandably upset, Hogan filed suit.
It’s painfully obvious that Gawker is in dire straits. Thanks to Sam Biddle’s crass behavior on twitter, #GamerGate managed to cost them over seven figures from lost advertisements last year. With the outing of a Conde Nast executive, #GamerGate struck again along with the rest of the world and cost them arguably even more, with the editorial staff resigning in protest of the offending article being pulled. And to make things worse, Chuck C. Johnson is also suing Gawker for a considerable amount over the rumors they published about him. With all the money that they’re bleeding, it’s no surprise that they’re hurting. They’re so desperate that they’re rebooting the entire site. If Hogan wins his suit, Gawker is as good as dead.
So even if the National Enquirer originally ran the story about Hogan refusing to let his daughter have a more vibrant vagina, who do you think really stands to gain from this story taking off? It’s not too far off to imagine Gawker sending the transcript to the Enquirer with the hope that it’ll hurt Hogan. After all, Gawker IS known for being full of some of the most spiteful, bitchy people on the planet. These are the same people who published a man telling the story of how he hooked up with Christine O’Donell and defended it as “public interest”.
So this is more than likely your real story. A media outlet, infuriated that they no longer have the power to destroy anyone they don’t like, decided that they would expose the man who will most likely kill them as a racist in hopes that they’ll take him down to hell with them. This man, despite being a highly successful and influential entertainer and pop culture icon, is now destroyed as well, all for the crime of political wrongthink. No one has won, nothing of value was accomplished, society has not benefited in any way possible. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to clown world.
(But hey, it’s not that bad. At the time of this writing, THE DONALD is still in the WWE Hall of Fame. Plus, Coontown just hit 20,000 subscribers on Reddit and is only growing despite measures to contain it.)
Breaking Down the Tale of Tales Death Rattle
This is a long goddamn post, so bear with me.
HATRED: The TRV Review
When Hatred was announced in October last year, I knew it was going to be something special. In January, I wrote down my thoughts on it. The post blew up, and was the first thing I ever wrote to be linked to on Xenosystems. I even got recognition from outside the reactosphere when the award-winning developer Adrian Chmielarz of The Astronauts linked it. Now that it’s been released, I feel obligated to give a full review of the game. I don’t really have a set review rubric, so I’ll try to break it down into general categories.
First, for my #GamerGate followers and try to disclose as much as I think I need to. I was gifted this game by a friend. I have no ties to Destructive Creations outside of my voting to greenlight the game. I am perfectly conscious of my political and social biases. I’m going to assume that if you read my blog, you more than likely are too. So without further ado, let’s take a good look at Hatred!
THE STORY: SHORT, SWEET, TO THE POINT.
Hatred shows its arcade roots by keeping the story to an absolute bare minimum. The player character, a tall, long and dark-haired man only known as either “the Antagonist”, “the Crusader”, “Hatred Guy”, or “Notim Portant”, commences a mission to kill as many people as possible. The story starts off with the tutorial, where the Antagonist does some final practicing for his rampage: some obstacle course running, shooting and grenade drills, and finally murdering a drugged-up captive just to get the feel for taking life. From there, we’re treated to a brief monologue, the (in)famous one from the very first trailer. The Antagonist steps out of his house, and the first level immediately begins. He starts in rural New York, but after hopping on a train to evade police learns of a nearby nuclear powerplant, which he then sets his sights on.
And that’s it. There’s no twists or turns to his story, no supporting characters, nothing. Hatred is very “old school”. The game, as I’ll elaborate later on, is a throwback to old arcade twin-stick shooters like Smash TV, Mercs, and Robotron 2084. Likewise, so is the story. You learn pretty much everything you need to know about the main character and his goals in the first cutscene. The other cutscenes, barring the ending, only serve to conclude the level you just finished and introduce the next one. The ending caps off the game and provides a solid conclusion to the story.
And really, that’s just fine for a simple game like Hatred. Twin-stick shooters don’t need complex, deep plots. We don’t need to know why the Antagonist wants to kill everyone and why he loves it. In fact, the game would probably be worse off if he did. Nuance in this case would take away from the stark, brutal simplicity of the game’s overall aesthetic. Hatred is a very blunt game that never really strays from the core of the subject matter: the Antagonist’s mission to kill as many people as humanly possible.
THE VISUALS: UP IS DOWN, BLACK IS WHITE
I didn’t like Unreal Engine 3. Everything just looked ugly, both in stills and in motion. Some of the ugliest-looking games of the last generation that I can recall used Unreal 3. So when I saw the Unreal Engine Logo on the first trailer, I rolled my eyes. Hatred certainly does have the characteristic ugliness of an Unreal Engine game. However, like all the other flaws, it works to Hatred‘s advantage.
See, in Hatred, the player sees the world through the eyes of the Antagonist. Not literally, of course, but figuratively. So it makes sense that the world is nothing but a dull, generic grey. How else would a mass-murderer see things? Everything is ugly and dull and you can’t help but love destroying whatever you can. Indeed, the greyscale only makes the actually quite nice fire and explosion effects look even better. Indeed, while the world looks boring by default, it looks fucking incredible when you tear it to pieces with an automatic weapon. Indeed, it almost compelled me to destroy whatever I could in hopes that it would brighten up the screen a bit.
Another issue that works out quite well for Hatred is the limited amount of NPC models. I’d imagine that since this game was made in Poland over the course of 7 months, it didn’t have the largest budget. It certainly shows in the NPCs. For all the talk of the game being a “Neo-nazi murder simulator” I couldn’t make out the race or gender of the people I was gunning down at all. The women all had short hair, more than likely due to the physics of long hair being difficult as shown by the Antagonist’s own raven locks. The greyscale world made it hard to figure out who was black and who was white. And that actually fits with the Antagonist’s views perfectly. To him, everyone looks the same. That’s why killing people is so easy to him. There’s nothing special or remarkable about his targets. There’s not supposed to be.
All of that aside, there are some visual issues I just can’t look past. When you perform an execution near a wall, the camera can get fairly glitchy, and bodies can clip into walls and debris. Hopefully this can get patched, but I’m not sure. There is also the matter of various “clever” advertisements that really take me out of the experience and kill my immersion in the game. I’ll get to them later.
The game’s physics and animations are actually excellent. It’s one of those cases where the game looks infinitely better in motion than it does in screenshots. Bodies respond fairly realistically to being shot, barring the armored enemies who will flail wildly as you continue to pump them full of lead in a darkly hilarious animation. Buildings fall apart perfectly, crumbling into rubble. Destruction hasn’t been this fun in years.
Overall, despite having some glaring flaws, the visuals for Hatred are surprisingly good, especially considering the short time it took and low budget it presumably had. In some portions, it looks just as good, if not better than Firaxis’s isometric strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown. There’s a certain artisianship to Hatred, and a clear theme in the design. That’s something I think a lot of games today are missing.
GAMEPLAY: A BLAST FROM THE PAST
Hatred is a classic isometric twin-stick shooter. Your goal is to either get from point A to point B, or to kill X amount of civilians/law enforcement. Along the way there are bonus objectives, where you have to kill a certain number of people at a certain location or kill a certain person, and you’re rewarded with additional respawn points. You have a limited number of respawn points before you have to start the entire level all over again.
Combat is actually pretty fun- the destructive environment forces you to really think on your feet and keep moving at all times. The difficulty ramps up fast, so get used to ducking and weaving from cover to cover, keeping an eye on the radar to know where enemies and civilians (who you can execute to restore health) are. The firefights are fast-paced and frantic, and a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, the gameplay has a few major issues. First off, the controls can feel clunky and awkward. The Antagonist is not as smooth and easy to control as trailers make it look. The drivable vehicles are even worse, being a major pain in the ass. Thankfully, there’s never any forced driving levels, and the ones where you start in a car you can get out at any time. Aiming is just as problematic at times: it’s nearly impossible to fire from an elevated position down to an enemy on the lower end. There’s also the matter of only being able to carry three guns at a time. For such an old-school game, it’s frustrating to see Hatred use one of my least favorite mechanics in modern shooters. Hatred does have one other flaw that comes from being a twin-stick arcade shooter: it’s repetitive as SHIT. Those objectives I listed earlier? Hope you like them because that’s pretty much all you ever do. I get that it goes with the territory, but at the very least couldn’t we have gotten something new?
Even if the missions are boring, the level design sure isn’t. Each level is either designed to feel like a real area or provide a fun break from ordinary levels. Every building can be entered, meaning that you can spend hours just exploring. The only downside is that there aren’t hidden secrets, so often times the exploring is all for nothing. It is still fun, though. Sometimes looking at the environment is great on its own.
AUDIO: A LOT FROM A LITTLE
There’s not much to say about Hatred audio-wise. The soundtrack is all dark ambient, composed by Adam Skorupa. It’s remarkably good, to the point where Destructive Creations even made a video to showcase his vision. But as good as dark ambient is, it’s still just dark ambient. I was expecting something a little less subtle, maybe a mix of industrial, death, sludge, and black metal. Instead, we only get one song in the credits by a band called Iperyt. It’s not all that great, really. Personally, I’ll hold out for mods introducing a better soundtrack.
The rest of the sound isn’t anything out of the ordinary. The guns and explosions are all nice and loud. The voice acting, done by actors whose other works I can’t find, is fairly inconsistent. Some NPCs beg for their lives convincingly, others don’t. The Antagonist’s gruff, raspy voice sometimes sounds menacing, other times it seems laughable. At one point I was pretty sure I could hear his Polish accent slipping through. It’s nothing particularly great, but hardly awful either.
A TALE OF TWO HATREDS
Ultimately, the game’s biggest issue comes from its identity crisis. There really are two Hatreds. One is a fun twin-stick shooter where you destroy everything in your path all with a flavor of grim comedy. The other is a bleak, nihilist experience designed to disturb you and make you uncomfortable. And Hatred really can’t decide which one it wants to be.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Early on in the first level, I shot a woman. She fell to the ground. I closed in for the execution. She was crying, begging not to die, and The Antagonist just casually shot her a few times, like she was nothing. As the killing continued, I heard him say “Only my weapon understands me,” a direct quote from Postal 2. So I went from a genuinely disturbing scene to a clever shout-out that made me chuckle. There was some serious mood whiplash, to say the least.
Another good example would be the shift in tone between two levels. On one level, you start in a hijacked SWAT truck with the goal of killing 100 people. You have the bonus goals of using a switchboard to trigger a train crash and disrupting an arms deal to kill everyone there. When you kill 100 people, you then have to move on to the train station, where you then need to fight off a certain number of law enforcement and national guard. The entire level feels grounded in reality- it would be quite easy to kill a large number of people at a train station if you really wanted to. There’s a feeling of discomfort.
The next level, though, is the middle of a town. You start the level by disrupting a political rally, and your goal is again to kill a certain number of people. This time, however, the bonus goals are to kill the candidate fleeing the rally, break into a bank and burn all the money in it, go to the release of the latest “aPad” and kill all the hipsters there, kill all the hipsters in the coffee shop, and raid a gun sale where people are selling automatic weapons, flamethrowers, and fucking rocket launchers (It’s pretty obvious this game was made in Poland, because good luck finding a pistol with a ten-round capacity for sale in New York). The town is plastered with ads that in turn are dripping with dry, dark humor. One that really stood out was a tobacco billboard that just said “FUCK YOUR LUNGS!”. Again, I felt like I had went from a serious game to some sort of comedy.
I’m chalking this one up to it being Destructive Creation’s first game. Hatred feels really experimental at times. It’s a very weird feeling, though, because when it isn’t feeling experimental, it feels like an old-school throwback. Had Hatred committed either to one vision or the other, the game would have flowed a lot better. But instead, we’re left with a confusing, disorienting, poorly paced game.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hatred is a flawed, but still solid debut for Destructive Creations. It’s a bold, take-no-prisoners step forward that’s gotten a lot of eyes on the studio. Like it or not, Hatred has made a major impact on gaming. There’s a lot of issues with the game, but not enough to keep it from being an ultimately enjoyable experience. I would almost certainly recommend Hatred to anyone wanting a fun shoot-’em-up or someone looking for a grimdark experience outside of Warhammer 40,000. As of now, it’s 20 bucks on steam, which is a pretty nice price. Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to listen to some old school black metal.
Punishment is Vindication
Some days, I feel like the only neoreactionary who isn’t gifted in tech. I can barely code with HTML or java, god forbid I take on anything more daunting than that. Even bbcode is a hassle. I might be good at assembling computers, but I’m certainly no programmer, nor will I ever pretend to be. So as far as I know, Urbit is just Moldbug’s grandiose tech project that isn’t related to video games. As far as I know, it’s all magic. Despite my periodic insights on the culture and such (which doesn’t require understanding the nuance of code) I really don’t follow tech. For me, “Strangeloop” just makes me think of how I accidentally figured out how to break a computer in high school with infinite dialogue boxes when I just wanted to make a basic arithmetic calculator. Much to my surprise, it’s actually one of the bigger tech conferences in the US. Shows how much I know.
So when Curtis Yarvin, AKA, Mencius Moldbug, commonly recognized grandfather of neoreaction was listed as a speaker at Strangeloop, suddenly I decided I had to pay attention. After all, Moldbug is, in my opinion, the best politicial writer of the 21st century. Maybe he’d offer some new nuggets of wisdom for us. Maybe he’d explain Urbit in a way someone as primitive as me could understand. But beyond that, there was also the political ramification of Moldbug speaking. It’s not easy being a reactionary- all the white cis male privilige in the world doesn’t make up for the unwashed hordes of progressive lunatics who would gladly see you dead if it meant no one would ever think the way you do. That Moldbug could openly present his work at Strangeloop and participate in the tech community as an open reactionary is a glimmer of hope that we can’t be so easily excluded.
Or at least it was. As of now, Moldbug is no longer invited to speak about Urbit at Strangeloop. As always, militant communists and leftists raised quite the stink about a reactionary. In their mind, the most damning post possible was this one, a long defense of Thomas Carlyle where where he makes references to the idea that hey, maybe slavery isn’t that bad all things considered. Moldbug dresses up the point as politely and nicely as he can, and the progs still lost their mind. From the prog responses, you’d think that weev had snuck back in the US to give a talk. People were actually saying that Curtis Yarvin, a thirty-something computer nerd, was somehow a safety threat because of his political unorthodoxy. It’s mindblowing. Of all the figures in the alt-right, Moldbug is probably the least threatening person possible.
So what did Strangeloop’s organizers do? Probably the most morally and ethically deficent option possible. They quietly removed Yarvin’s page on his talk and sent him an e-mail rescinding his invitation due to the sheer number of complaints filed. Presumably, their goal was hoping that this would all go away, and they could have their conference in peace. However, they seem to have been missing what’s been going on for the past nine months with #GamerGate. We live in the era of the Streisand effect. Nothing just “goes away” anymore. Within hours, the story blew up. Prolific neoreactionary figureheads Nick B. Steves and Duck Enlightenment were tweeting up a storm, and AnCap loose cannon Clarkhat was going even further in upping the pressure on Strangeloop. In what has to be a first, Moldbug’s work was noticed outside of the liberal hate brigade, as even Breitbart had picked up the story. This is Web 2.0. Stories don’t just “go away”. And if you want to try to make them go away? I suggest talking to Zoe Quinn to see how well that’s turned out for her.
And now, with everyone demanding answers, Strangeloop organizer Alex Miller finally publishes a brief explanation of what’s going on:
“Curtis Yarvin submitted a talk in the Strange Loop 2015 Call for Presentations. The talk went through the review process and was one of about 60 talks selected for the conference out of about 360. The subject of the talk was urbit (attached below). While we use a multi-stage review process, ultimately all final decisions are made by me.
Earlier this week we published the bulk of the 2015 Strange Loop session list, including Curtis’s talk. I quickly received feedback that Curtis also has an online persona under the name “Mencius Moldbug” where he has posted extensive political writings.
A large number of current and former speakers and attendees contacted me to say that they found Curtis’s writings objectionable.I have not personally read them.
I am trying to create a conference where the focus is on the technology and the topics being presented. Ultimately, I decided that if Curtis was part of the program, his mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk and become the focus. This would not serve the conference, the other speakers, the attendees, or even Curtis.
Thus, I chose to rescind Curtis’s invitation and remove him from the program. The email I sent to Curtis is included below for reference.”
Hilariously enough, said e-mail had already been leaked, so this hardly helps the case. But I want to highlight one particular part of that statement: “Ultimately, I decided that if Curtis was part of the program, his mere inclusion and/or presence would overshadow the content of his talk and become the focus.” So in other words, it’s not that he personally found Moldbug’s words objectionable, or that he’s even taking a side. Rather, he’s simply trying to avoid trouble at his conference. It seems innocent, until you realize what he’s saying: it doesn’t matter who Curtis Yarvin is- the feelings of the angry progressive lynch mob is more important than letting an independent software developer speak. It’s flat-out cowardice. It’s a refusal to take a stand and define your own values.
But all in all, I’m okay with this. Because while I might not understand tech, I DO understand SJW holy wars. And once again, we come back to the broken windows. I’ve blogged about broken windows so much that I’m expecting Paul Krugman will throw a brick through my own window with a note on how it’ll save the economy. But in essence, the SJWs here are working right out of the broken window playbook. In their case, they call it “no platform”, and it’s rooted in British student unions. The idea is that if anyone deemed racist or fascist can be allowed to speak at the university or hold office in a student body, then it means those viewpoints are acceptable. Thus, it is in the interest of the greater good that these individuals are totally excluded from university life, as to prevent the students from thinking that racism or fascism is acceptable. What we’re seeing here is no platform in action. The SJWs know that if Moldbug can present Urbit freely, then it shows that being a reactionary is acceptable. Thus, in order to suppress reaction, Curtis Yarvin must not have a platform to speak on.
And yes, no platform is extended to the rest of the west as well. Why do you think that feminists are up in arms every time Christina Hoff Sommers gets to speak at a university? Why do SJWs of the SF/F community go berserk when they see that Vox Day is on a Hugo ballet? Why are gaming SJWs raining fire down on the Society of Professional Journalists for even trying to host a #GamerGate debate? Because in their mind, anything allowing these people, from the mild-mannered C.H. Sommers to someone as radical as Vox Day to participate grants those people and their views legitimacy. And they know that once a dangerous person gets their foot in the door, they’re VERY hard to get rid of.
The kicker here is that Moldbug knows all of this. It’s all a part of what he calls The Cathedral. (For more on that, I have a handy explanation here) It proves him right- that the progressive powers that be want to make sure that all information on tech and the development of technology is in the hands of progressives. Thus, progressive politics can continue their march to oblivion.Did Mencius Moldbug expect Curtis Yarvin to be shut down? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But either way, by working to exclude Curtis Yarvin from tech, Strangeloop has vindicated the work of Mencius Moldbug. Everything he’s said about progressives needing to control information is validated by them shutting him down.
That’s why, despite condemning the cowardice and moral failings of Alex Miller and Strangeloop, I’m still celebrating this as a victory. Another key component of neoreactionary thought has been proven right in practice. It’s often said that the comments section for any article on feminism proves the need for feminism. I could spend ages debunking that myth, but let me simply pose a theorem of my own- the responses taken to neoreaction only proves neoreaction to be right.
So, what’s going on?
Right now, I’m still working on a number of different projects for The Right Vidya. I figured I’d give my dear readers a heads-up on what I’ve got planned:
- I finally got a copy of Hatred. Since my previous essay on the game is what put me on the map (It appeared on Xenosystems, This Week in Reaction, and even got noticed by an award-winning developer!) I figure I’ll post a full review of the game. My goal is to have that done by Monday, with a post going up that morning.
- Now that I’ve finished building my kickass gaming PC, I’ve been looking into streaming and video recording. While nothing is set in stone, I’ve been thinking about how many different right-wing themes are in Deus Ex, and how many conversation-starters there are in it. I’d be interested in streaming that, with some alt-right/NRx types being there to discuss it.
- I’ve been looking into the idea of a TheRightVidya youtube channel, but I’m not terribly certain what I’d want to put on it. If I had enough booze, I’d love to do a drunken let’s play of Postal 2, one of my favorite edgy games. More realistically though, I’m considering a podcast in the vein of Common Filth’s, where I maybe just talk about the week’s big stories in video games and offer some right-wing commentary.
- In an outburst of frustration upon seeing how much money people will throw at idiots for their stupid shitlib opinions, I’ve sworn that I WILL colonize Patreon, planting the flag of the edgysphere there. When I start producing content, expect that to go up. I don’t even care if you’re all too smart to give money to bloggers. I’ll find a way to make this blog a fiscal success, mark my words!
- I got my digital packet for the Hugos, I still need to get around to filling out my ballot. Hoping for a major Puppy victory!
So yeah, that’s about three hundred words telling you what I’m up to. Hopefully my loyal readers are ready to become loyal watchers and listeners!
Why #GamerGate Should Be Showing Solidarity with #FreeChuck
This Sunday, I asked /r/KotakuInAction what we should do about the Chuck C. Johnson affair. I was expecting a lukewarm response, and the end result was exactly that. A few people discussed how great Johnson was at trolling SJWs and how they loved him for it, a few others said his methods were too extreme, and Nicky Nyberg even graced us with his presence to complain about Johnson’s work in tracking down the mysterious “Jackie” from the UVA hoax. The overwhelming majority, of course, said something along the lines of “it’s not our problem.” Fair enough, I suppose. Except now, it actually has become our problem.
For those of you don’t know, Chuck C. Johnson is a journalist who runs his own site, GotNews.com. Johnson’s work has been, well, provocative to say the least. Most of it is investigative work, blowing the lid off of stories that most of the mainstream media doesn’t want to touch. I had first heard of Johnson when he filed suit in Ferguson to obtain Michael Brown’s arrest records. I had a great laugh when he exposed the two reporters responsible for leaking Darren Wilson’s home address. He made national news during the aforementioned UVA controversy- he was one of the first reporters to reveal that the Rolling Stone story was a hoax, and put a great deal of effort into finding out who this “Jackie” that Rolling Stone cited was. He made a lot of enemies, and Gawker started a vile, scatological smear campaign against him. Having made enemies with Gawker, he reached out to #GamerGate. Of course, since he had nothing of value to offer, #GamerGate obviously refused to be his personal army.
Most recently, Johnson made a tweet asking fans of GotNews to donate to him, promising he’d go after Ferguson/Baltimore agitator Deray McKesson. In particular, Johnson said he was going to “take out” Deray. Hoping to protect one of their own, twitter SJWs immediately rallied to mass-report the post as a “death threat,” with Deray’s encouragement. Caving to mass pressure, Twitter suspended Johnson. That was when I came to KiA, asking what we should do.
Since then, the situation has only gotten worse. Upon discovering his suspension would be permanent, Johnson made an alternate account. That’s standard procedure. I’ve done it plenty of times- I’m on my second account for my blogging and on a second account for personal use (the third actually got perma’d, but I discovered the second was only temporarily suspended). However, twitter banned this alt fairly quickly, much to my surprise. Still, I suppose it was reasonable, given how he admitted it was an alt to ban-evade, and the angry mob was still angry. It wasn’t too feasible to believe that he was targeted for mass-reporting again.
Then things finally got weird. The twitter account for GotNews suddenly vanished. Obviously, Chuck C. Johnson runs the account. But seeing someone’s legitimately professional twitter account gone like that? I can’t ever recall a precedent for it. I’m not alone, either- folks like Milo Yiannopoulos and the Popehat team even noted that this was a bit bizarre and over the line, along with twitter’s steadfast refusal to reinstate Johnson despite the offending tweet being obviously misunderstood.
But that was only the tip of the iceberg: in an interview with Milo yesterday, Johnson claimed that he had been ip-banned from twitter. For those not in the know, an ip ban is the most severe sanction twitter has to offer- normally reserved for dealing with automated spam systems, twitter’s own FAQ makes it a point to say that they don’t ip ban people. On top of that, prolific hacktivist weev, who was supposedly working with Johnson on understanding the AdultFriendFinder leaks, received a mysterious e-mail from twitter support claiming that he was encouraging his followers to harass people. I’ve never seen this sort of e-mail before, and you’d think with roughly 9 months of #GamerGate I would have. All I can think of is that weev was one of the first people to start the #FreeChuck and #GingerRevolution tags, along with twitter user @Jokeocracy, AKA Duck Enlightenment.
More and more, we’re seeing signs that twitter is engaging in blatant censorship*. It doesn’t matter who Johnson is, or what he’s done in the past, this just is flat-out not okay. If we let twitter get away with this, then there’s a good chance that they’ll come for us next. We all know twitter is compromised, or “pozzed” as I like to say. But so far, they’ve done very little to stop us. Rogue is still here, I’m still here, almost everyone from day one who wants to stay is still here. We need to make it clear that twitter can’t expect to do this to anyone without there being blowback of the highest level.
So what is there to be done? Well, most of the organizing is going on in the two twitter hashtags I mentioned earlier: #FreeChuck and #GingerRevolution. #JeSuisChuckJohnson was also tried, but it’s too long. If we could really boost those hashtags, that would be a great start. Hell, getting them trending with #GamerGate support would be a great show of force. Second, you could change your avatar to this picture right here. If we flood twitter in a sea of orange, they’d feel even more pressure. Remember- the more vocal and persistent we are, the more pressure we put on twitter leadership. I’d also encourage you to read GotNews and help share GotNews links, if not just to spite the people who want it to go away.
This isn’t about spiting SJWs, though. This is about standing up against censorship and silencing. If we’ve been receptive to Ian Miles Cheong despite his past, we can do the same with Chuck C. Johnson. We need to keep twitter open and keep the web free for everyone, even the people we don’t like. This is a chance to show the world what we stand for.
*For those of you who are going to say “BUT ONLY THE GOVERNMENT CAN CENSOR PEOPLE, NOT A PRIVATE PLATFORM!” allow me to present you with a three point rebuttal:
- Given that the primary target of weev and Johnson’s collaborative work on the AFF leaks is to find government employees using the service, there is more than enough reason to believe that the government is in on this. We all know that they aren’t too fond of leakers making them look bad.
- Privately-owned services are essentially sovereign entities. While they are legally allowed to silence individual voices in their sphere of influence, it is for all intents and purposes censorship on a much smaller scale. Since the english language doesn’t have a word for this, “censorship” fits my purpose.
- Blow me.
GDC, DiGRA, and the Delusions of Academia
One thing I’m glad #GamerGate has done is helped spread awareness of what’s going on in the gaming industry. Before all of this, I had never even HEARD of DiGRA. Honestly, now I’m starting to wish I hadn’t, because the sheer degeneracy on display makes me physically ill. I’m not even sure why I’m so shocked- when I was in college I witnessed first hand how genuinely awful academia was. But DiGRA manages to take things to a new level, that just astounds me.
To begin with, let’s talk about why academia is so awful. If you want a primer on why I generally disdain higher education, you can start here. The goal of academia can generally be summarized as advancing society through research. Unfortunately, for the most part that’s almost entirely redundant in a capitalist society. The largest innovations in technology and science in recent years have almost always come from the private sector. After all, private sector research inevitably leads to a new commercial product, which leads to more jobs in production, and more goods for sale, which is good for the overall economy of the nation. Of course, not all fields are created equal. If the private sector takes all the hot fields where progress is in high demand, that leaves academia with, well, everything else.
If you’re familiar with the alternative right or even the right at all, you’re well aware of the rest of the picture. If not, let me explain this. Almost all of academia is overwhelmingly liberal and progressive. All the work is run through a liberal filter. For instance, if you were to bring up the transformation of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, it would be dismissed as irrelevant due to the authoritarian, legalistic, anti-egalitarian policies of the government. Somehow, the discomfort of a few natives under apartheid invalidates the miraculous success of colonial states like Rhodesia or South Africa. The era of Manifest Destiny and western expansion is somehow treated as a shameful period in American History rather than an ideal time. It’s a complete degenerate cesspit with the most skewed priorities imaginable. Rather than actually advancing society and civilization, a higher priority is put on the feelings of utterly unimportant individuals.
So obviously, this carries over to DiGRA. Let’s compare DiGRA to the GDC for a moment. For all intents and purposes, the GDC is the private sector equivalent of DiGRA. At GDC, you’ll see talks mostly oriented towards the business side of things. For better or worse, DiGRA are professionals. Everything they do is dictated by the industry and the profit motive. As I’ve noted before, you are going to find periodic worthwhile discussions at GDC where real talk can happen. Even the pozzed portion of GDC is still kept in line by capitalism. The feminist talks are given with the intent of gaining and retaining female customers. Hardly ideal, but there could be worse.
And that worse usually finds itself in DiGRA. I browsed the #DiGRA2015 tag today on twitter and was appalled by the sheer nonsense of what I was reading. Most of it was absolutely meaningless- comparisons of Mario to Nichetze, rambling about tabletop game mechanics, and other pretentious nonsense that has no impact on making games that sell. Because DiGRA isn’t for professionals who make games and rely on those games making money- it’s for academics who need grants to justify whatever asinine research they want. None of this is actually beneficial or important to the games industry- it won’t make anyone any money.
As I mentioned in a twitter rant, as a history student, most of this DiGRA nonsense reminds me of Weimar Germany’s “culture” in the sense that it’s totally vapid. Back in the post-war era, Germany was rife with rampant inflation, socialist/anarchist/communist terrorism, and plenty of other problems. However, the intellectual and cultural “elite” of Germany, the artists, filmmakers, and writers, were all more obsessed with making movies about women and gays and the deconstruction of traditional values than they were actually fixing Germany. For all of Hitler’s faults, at the very least he was initially acting for the good of the nation.
The most irritating thing in all of this is that despite their complete lack of worth, DiGRA still has relevance. As Sargon of Akkad has shown, DiGRA writing still finds its way into the gaming press. So as much as I’d love to ignore this little gathering of utterly worthless people, I have to begrudgingly realize that it is a very real problem that exists. Make no mistake- it is for the good of the industry, perhaps even society as a whole, that DiGRA and their degenerate nonsense about “queer mechanics” and such be removed from gaming. They have nothing of value to offer us as gamers. They have nothing of value to offer developers and publishers. They have nothing of value to offer to us at all. They are nothing but a toxic drain upon the community.
So yeah, vitriol and all aside, it should be the goal of #GamerGate to forcibly remove DiGRA from the industry and the culture around it. There should be no quarter for their utterly useless, irrelevant, and outright degenerate nonsense. We must make it overwhelmingly clear that this is our territory, and that they are not welcome.
Time to take the gloves off, #GamerGate
So if you haven’t noticed, my last two posts have been using more and more increasingly extreme rhetoric. I’ve been encouraging #GamerGate to go on the offensive, and mobilize to, for all intents and purposes, thoroughly exterminate SJWs from geek culture. I get that it sounds caustic, and almost like what an SJW would say. Let me explain why I feel the way I do.
Most of #GamerGate are rational, open-minded individuals who are generally benevolent and good-natured. The average #GamerGate member wouldn’t hurt a fly. While that’s fine and good, that often comes with a crippling flaw: the mistaken belief that everyone is as logical and benevolent as you are. The Much like a freshman discussing foreign policy, they assume all people are rational actors. (Nick B. Steves and I had a conversation on this topic Wednesday.) There remains the foolish notion in #GamerGate that the enemies can be reasoned with and eventually converted to our side. That is blatantly, obviously untrue.
Let me explain recent events to you: SJW complaining prompted Gratipay to order two of my personal idols, weev and Hotwheels, to close their accounts. Likewise, Patreon forcibly removed Encyclopedia Dramatica’s accounts. The aim here is simple: SJWs hope that if they deprive men like weev and Hotwheels of a platform to do business, they will be forced to close up shop and shut down. Their goal is to drive both men out of tech, for the crime of opposing them. They refuse to “coexist”. For them, this is a black-and-white issue: they either most dominate the field, or not participate in it at all.
Likewise, there is the very recent event at the Calgary Expo, where a group of pro-#GamerGate women were forcibly asked to leave, because their booth sold #GamerGate merchandise. It doesn’t matter if they’re a threat or not: the end goal for SJWs is the complete and utter annihilation of #GamerGate and anyone who supports #GamerGate. From there, they can proceed to push their “convert or perish” doctrine onto gaming unopposed.
These are not rational, reasonable human beings. There is no “negotiations” with them. They demand nothing short of total compliance. They do not want peace, they do not want compromise, they do not want coexistence. They want the systemic silencing and marginalization of everyone who is not on their side. Everything is filtered through their worldview: their compassion and empathy is purposefully crippled in order to maximize their effectiveness. Their perception of events is dictated through ideology. Their reactions to events are only based on dogma. They have surrendered their individuality to the greater good.
Thus, #GamerGate needs to realize that SJWs must be removed entirely from gaming and all of nerd culture. We have to stop acting like these are some misguided folks who need to be shown the light. Instead, we have to be more forceful. Don’t even draw the line, just push them back and don’t stop pushing. We must make it very clear that SJWs are not welcome on social media, or in gaming, or in any other environment. We must create an atmosphere where they do not feel invited or welcome. We have to do to them what they want to do to us- anything less will allow them to continue to push their toxic ideology and hurt people.
This isn’t one of my big long thousand-word posts. This is me making things simple: we have to stop humoring the enemy. We need to treat them like enemies. We have to be more aggressive, more brutal, more vicious. Stop yelling at each other over petty stuff like someone calling @srhbutts a dude- he’s the enemy, he doesn’t matter, whatever helps push him out of the picture is good. Leave your perceptions of “right” and “wrong” at the door. This is a culture WAR, not a culture disagreement. War is an ugly, brutal thing, and we must take an ugly, brutal approach in handling our enemy. We cannot stop until we are entirely certain that fandom will be safe from the SJW menace.
That being said, we should still respect neutrals. My theory is that if we put enough pressure on the SJWs, they’ll lash out randomly and wind up attacking neutrals. Suddenly it goes from “both sides are dicks” to “this side is absolute garbage.” Above all else, the neutrals are who we should hold sacred- we’re doing this to protect them from the SJW threat, even if they don’t think it exists. Ultimately, we need to go to the trenches for our hobby. This is going to get ugly, but our goal is a righteous one.
