Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Giving up is unforgivable. ~Joe Biden

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

This blog will pay for itself.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

He really is that stupid.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

You are here: Home / QAnon- Also Very Concerned About Ethics in Gaming Journalism

QAnon- Also Very Concerned About Ethics in Gaming Journalism

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Alvin Chang at Vox analyzed the Reddit behavior of QAnon supporters, and to the surprise of exactly NO ONE, they are exactly who you thought they would be:

Wanna see my shocked face? A small percentage of acne-ridden incel lunatics at reddit, 4chan, and 8chan are really having a grand old time fucking up this country’s discourse.

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  2. 2.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    What a shame about Reddit. There’s some great, non-crazy stuff there, really. But they do a piss poor job regulating themselves and crap like r/greatawakening happens.

  4. 4.

    hueyplong

    A “Men’s Rights” dipshit is the very model of a modern major snowflake.

    “Bitchez been holding us back for centuries.”

    Whatever you say, Gomer.

  6. 6.

    Seanly

    I don’t want to sound like an anti-dentite, but every weird white male I’ve known was into martial arts. Maybe I’ve just never met the guys who are super enthused about martial arts and aren’t also very odd.
    My SIL’s 4th husband (another issue all it’s own) would read paperbacks while we were out to dinner. I’m a very introverted engineer and even I can hold a dinner conversation with family. He’d also occasionally just do head-level kicks in the air just coz.

  7. 7.

    Shell

    The Great Awakening? Wasn’t that the big religious revival fervor in the mid-19th century. Or does it just refer to that tired internet exortation: “Wake up, Sheeple!

  9. 9.

    A Ghost To Most

    Drivers in Grand Junction will soon see two billboards comparing the Republican Party to the former Soviet Union after some complaints were raised about a single one.

    The controversial red billboard that replaced the “O” in GOP with a Soviet-era hammer and sickle has been moved from its location on a digital billboard along U.S. Highway 6 to a traditional billboard on Colorado State Highway 340.

    .
    .
    .
    That one will feature President Donald Trump wearing a red tie that swirls around the same GOP image with the words “long red ties” written in all caps. The new image comes from the same place Landman got the first one, a Maryland-based liberal political action group called Mad Dog PAC. The group specializes in placing controversial billboard and banners around the country. Some of its other signs push for Trump’s impeachment and call the NRA a terrorist organization.

    “Anybody who wants this artwork can do anything they want with it,” Mad Dog PAC Chair Claude Taylor said. “They can print it on a T-shirt, lawn sign, coffee mug, whatever.”

    Second MADDOGPAC sign in Grand Junction.

    I have one on a post in my frontage.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    Interest in martial arts? I imagined that most of these goobers have a hard time getting up out of that couch their asses are stuck to.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    “You will be absorbed. Landru, help us!”

    Doubt the entire lot of them would fill the Convention Center in Lilliput.

  13. 13.

    Kay

    @hueyplong:

    They really are bad. There’s a lot of them, too. Trump speaks to them in some profound way that makes me think no Democrat will ever persuade them- they’re a lost cause politically.

  14. 14.

    kindness

    Acne? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Some of these Q anon folk are geezers. I’m saying that as one who was born in the 50’s.

  15. 15.

    Polly Good

    @Shell: The Great Awakening was a religious movement in the mid 18th century. The Second Great Awakening was in the first half of the 19th century. How deep is this conspiracy??

  16. 16.

    Chip Daniels

    That was my reaction as well- these were exactly who I thought they would turn out to be.
    Others speculated it was old red faced white men, but IMO it all pointed to poorly socialized young white men.

    Who will grow up into old red faced white men.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    But I wouldn’t have guessed five years ago that the MRA losers would be so, ah… ascendant I guess.

    I don’t have the link at hand, but basically these guys get heavily recruited online by white supremacist groups. That’s what the whole “red pill/blue pill” thing is code for — they’ve “taken the red pill” and know that the world is secretly run by Jews and minorities. ?

    And, yes, the irony of the whole “pill” thing being invented by two transwomen has not escaped me.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    Saw a good explanation that QAnon falls in the same category as nigerian email scams and the cheap-ass web ads for shady services.

    In short, because the web gives you almost infinite reach, a big problem in how to run a scam is how to efficiently identify those that will remain gullible through the scam, otherwise you waste all of your time trying to hook people that halfway through the process get nervous and back out. This leads to a counter-intuitive concept that you are better off making the outreach look as bad as possible. Typos and weird shit in the nigerian email? That’s helpful. Web ad looks absurdly amateurish? That’s helpful. Conspiracy theory so absurd that people take it as a joke? Also good.

    See, what the scammers are trying to build is effectively a Dunning-Kruger filter. Only attracting the attention of the people that are so thoroughly gullible/clueless that no matter what you ask of them, they’ll never wise up. Once you hook them, they’re just easy money. When you see spam and think ‘who would fall for this’, that’s the bad nature of it doing it’s thing – it waved you off as being sufficiently self-aware. They only expect a certain very small fraction of people to fall for it, but those that do will be all-in. It’ll take almost no work to get them to send you money, sign up, turn over their password, buy your tshirt, shoot up some random pizza place.

  23. 23.

    Cacti

    @Brachiator:

    Interest in martial arts? I imagined that most of these goobers have a hard time getting up out of that couch their asses are stuck to.

    Having “an interest in” does not necessarily = practices them regularly.

  24. 24.

    LAO

    I guess we’ll find out who’s right:

    #BREAKING: Trump's lawyers rejected special counsel Mueller's latest request for an interview, per @nytimes. NYT's Michael Schmidt reports that Trump's legal team believes Mueller won't subpoena Trump, but law enforcement officials believe Mueller will subpoena him if he has to.— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) August 8, 2018

  25. 25.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Brachiator:
    They’re mall ninja-type dorks. Dilettantes, basically. The closest they ever got to practicing “martial arts” was watching Naruto.

  27. 27.

    pat

    @Martin:

    They only expect a certain very small fraction of people to fall for it, but those that do will be all-in.

    I know it’s not the same thing, but I can’t help thinking of the religious crackpots who can look at the Grand Canyon, for example, and say Yup, 6000 years!
    They have been fed a load of crap and accepted it unquestioningly.

  28. 28.

    West of the Rockies

    Conspiracy Theorists usually feel personally powerless IRL and take great comfort in supposing themselves to be in possession of some grand unifying knowledge of how the world works.

    They are a sad, goofy, potentially dangerous lot. Most of them, however, will vent their rage on orcs, GTA roadside bookers, and unsuspecting folks (especially the vaginally-abled) on the net.

  31. 31.

    sukabi

    @LAO: playing chicken with Mueller won’t turn out like his lawyers think it will.

    Get ready for more “deep state*” leaks.

    *Alphabet agencies

  33. 33.

    West of the Rockies

    @Chip Daniels:

    And they will don “Better Russianvthan Democrat” shirts.

    Funny… I can remember when the Republican mantra was Better Dead than Red.

  35. 35.

    nonynony

    @Chip Daniels:

    That was my reaction as well- these were exactly who I thought they would turn out to be.
    Others speculated it was old red faced white men, but IMO it all pointed to poorly socialized young white men.

    I mean, it’s an analysis of reddit. The fraction of reddit users who are old red faced white men is small, so I wouldn’t expect them to show up much. The ones who are there are probably the hardcore conspiracy nuts who were posting their theories about the war between the Pope and the Queen Mother of England back in the Usenet days when they were younger.

    The older ones are on Facebook. I wonder what the analysis of QAnon conspiracy mongers on Facebook would say.

  37. 37.

    WarMunchkin

    A small percentage of acne-ridden incel lunatics at reddit, 4chan, and 8chan are really having a grand old time fucking up this country’s discourse.

    A mild correction, the country’s discourse was already fucked by the polished, sex-having, dermatological care affording members of, lets say, the New York Times editorial page.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @Martin:

    It also plays into people’s assumptions that, since the con artist seems to be dumb, they can easily outsmart them and get the money for themselves. That’s why you can’t cheat an honest man — an honest man isn’t looking for a way to be smarter than the con man.

    And, of course, the fact that dumb people assume that people who appear to be even dumber than they themselves are must be honest, because no one can be that dumb and dishonest. And they’re kind of right.

  40. 40.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    Tangentially related…the kid and I are walking the girls(aka dogs) down the street from The Cave and there’s a box of DVD’s (not in jewel boxes) lying on the grass between the sidewalk and the street. I glance over and see that one says “Sex” as part of the title. On the way back we look at the, eh, collection…all porn DVD’s.

  43. 43.

    Mary G

    The academy has added a new Oscars category – Popular Movie, probably AKA Black Panther because Dog forbid those people get all the prizes.

  44. 44.

    ruemara

    @Seanly: I’m gonna say by the 4th husband, your standards are somewhere below sea level. And a friend of mine is into karate and was doing kata on set in between takes. It was very weird. We weren’t on break or down long. It was just… attention seeking. I still do some kickboxing while I’m recuperating but not at random times.

    @Major Major Major Major: I recall reading a few chapters of “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” back in the early 2000’s. I said this is the beginning of the rise of the neopig male. A bunch of privileged, mostly white, mostly young, men with the worst attitudes towards women, sexuality, tolerance and decency I’d ever seen. First it’s all just lulz but anyone who’s ever seen the hate behind the lulz knows what’s going on. I detest that they’ve turned from an early infection to a giant chancrous wound in the soul of the world.

  50. 50.

    dmsilev

    @Mary G: Oy. I guess the idea is they want to give awards both to “serious” films and “popular” films.

    God forbid that a film be both.

  51. 51.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Does anyone but weird white guys frequent reddit? I’m asking seriously. Every time I’ve looked at the supposedly serious forums, I’m put off. Partly it’s the way they do the threads, which I find incomprehensible. Partly it’s the ingroup jargon, which suggests weird white guys. And we get more serious discussion over here.

  54. 54.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Martin:

    Dude, you’re like walking distance from where all of those DVDs were filmed.

    This is maybe true, there is/was a porn studio a block over from me.

    How is this not routine?

    They usually don’t give them away for free.

  55. 55.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Seanly: I got into Aikido originally because a number of my physics grad school colleagues were taking classes. You could certainly argue we were a bunch of weirdo introverts.

    I never advanced very far, unfortunately. Doubt it would be that much good to me in a serious fight.

    But you spend a LOT of time learning how to fall and how to protect yourself from injury when, for instance, being thrown halfway across the room upside down. That stuff has definitely come in handy.

    Actually now that I’m over 60 and have a lot more free time and can more easily afford the dojo fees, I’ve been thinking about going back to it.

  56. 56.

    Martin

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Does anyone but weird white guys frequent reddit? I’m asking seriously. Every time I’ve looked at the supposedly serious forums, I’m put off. Partly it’s the way they do the threads, which I find incomprehensible. Partly it’s the ingroup jargon, which suggests weird white guys. And we get more serious discussion over here.

    Reddit is really all over the place. We do a fair bit of our student interaction there and it seems to be somewhat representative. There are some pretty good and serious subreddits, but they’re pretty heavily policed by the mods. My daughter frequents a few subs.

    But yeah, the subs that get reported on are the weird white guys ones, so it’s easy to assume they’re representative of the whole, and to some degree they are, but there are some quite good exceptions.

  59. 59.

    ruemara

    @dmsilev: Which Black Panther was but, oh dear, full of those people and it’s a comic book movie. FOH.

    @Cheryl Rofer: My younger female friends like the makeup & fan-based subcultures. Even Ostium has a thread there.

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @Mary G:

    The academy has added a new Oscars category – Popular Movie,

    Wow. Sounds kinda stupid. I immediately thought that this was as dumb as the “people’s choice awards,” then see that the Academy board anticipated this and got all defensive about it.

    Some will complain that adding such a category cheapens the prestige of the Oscars, making it more like the People’s Choice Awards or MTV Movie & TV Awards, but that is old-world thinking.

    I never thought much about the “prestige” of the Oscars. I admit that I often watch the show, then (except for gems such as Moonlight) I immediately forget who won what.

  61. 61.

    Mike in DC

    @LAO: I expect Mueller to proceed with a subpoena before the first week of September ends. The vote in SCOTUS will be 5-4 and Roberts will be the swing vote. Not sure whether which way it will go at this point.

  63. 63.

    Martin

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    because a number of my physics grad school colleagues were taking classes. You could certainly argue we were a bunch of weirdo introverts.

    As a former physics grad schooler, yeah, you’re a bunch of weirdo introverts. The venn diagram for that one is as trivial as it gets.

  64. 64.

    Calouste

    To combine two parts of this thread, do we think BillinGlendaleCA’s movies would be candidates for the new Oscar category? They are certainly popular ;)

  66. 66.

    SIDC

    I think the video games is a generational thing. As someone on the X/millenial border every male regardless of race I know or have ever met in my age group like video games and martial arts. It’s a product of having grown up in the 80’s and 90’s. Things moved that way.

    A greater marker of being some sort of weird conservative whack job is liking stuff like football. Which will either mark you as an out of touch old person, or some racist redneck crazed about making people salute the flag to get you racist on.

    Video games and martial arts is sort of “oh, call of duty and MMA, completely normal 20-30 year old”.

  67. 67.

    Martin

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Well, they are DVDs. Give the porn industry credit for one thing – they are bleeding edge when it comes to distribution. Can’t imagine there’s much market for DVDs any longer – they’re probably worthless given that, well, porn is pretty much free now.

  68. 68.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Categories come and go over the years.

    This one smacks as simply a ploy to boost ratings for the TV extravaganza and up the ad rates as well as ticket and DVD/streaming prices.

    Q.E.D.

  69. 69.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    Reddit is really all over the place.

    I’ve never joined Reddit or seriously used it. But every now and then I’ve entered a google search for a serious topic and found one of the top and useful hits to be a reddit discussion. Odd, but true.

  72. 72.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    This one smacks as simply a ploy to boost ratings for the TV extravaganza

    Well, yeah!

    The last telecast was apparently the lowest rated Oscar telecast on record.

    The kudocast, nearly four hours long, stumbled 19 percent from the previous year to 26.5 million viewers. That’s easily the least-watched Oscars in history, trailing 2008 by more than 5 million.

    About “upping ticket and DVD/streaming prices,” no, too many other market forces are at play here for the Oscar telecast to be of much importance.

  73. 73.

    LAO

    Ah, WTF!

    BREAKING: Court documents say man arrested at New Mexico compound was training children to commit school shootings.— The Associated Press (@AP) August 8, 2018

  75. 75.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Seanly:

    I don’t want to sound like an anti-dentite, but every weird white male I’ve known was into martial arts.

    In the pre-Internet days this was very true too. Everyone I knew who was into martial arts past the age of like 9 was also the kind of person who’d try to acquire nunchuks or throwing stars. I think it was part of the fantasy of being able to catch by surprise, then kick the asses of, all the people who didn’t like them. It was also a pre-Columbine age so no one seemed to fantasize about guns but it seemed to be the closest you could get to that particular disturbed white-boy ideation.

  78. 78.

    Roger Moore

    @sukabi:

    it would be easier to just buy a televangelists’ mailing list.

    I don’t think they’re for sale. Once you’ve found your suckers, the goal is to bleed them dry. You don’t do that by selling your mailing list.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    too many other market forces are at play here for the Oscar telecast to be of much importance

    Won’t stop ’em from trying.

    “Hey, it costs money to reprint the labels and posters to say ‘Winner of [X] Academy Awards!'”

    ;)

  80. 80.

    tobie

    Anyone following this afternoon’s hearings in the Manafort trial? Judge Cranky-Pants is at it again, limiting the government’s ability to present evidence linking bank transfers with purchases in the US, allowing the defense to stipulate against it in the trial rather than before the trial, and saying within earshot of the jury that he was not going to allow the prosecution to read some of Manfort’s emails in the court. I’m aghast at this travesty.

  81. 81.

    Amir Khalid

    @LAO:
    If Mueller does subpoena Trump, Trump’s lawyers will argue that Mueller is trying to entrap Trump by making him refuse to comply. I really believe they would argue that in all seriousness.

  83. 83.

    jimmiraybob

    “…fucking up this country’s discourse.”

    Somewhere an enterprising reporter is building a rock-solid case for “both sides do it” by documenting a Democrat using one or more profanities.

  88. 88.

    J R in WV

    @pat:

    I know it’s not the same thing, but I can’t help thinking of the religious crackpots who can look at the Grand Canyon, for example, and say Yup, 6000 years!

    They have been fed a load of crap and accepted it unquestioningly.

    No, no, it’s exactly the same thing. Those evangelistic asses will donate all they can afford for their entire lives.

    Also, I bump into a slender athletic looking black guy who’s backpack has several hilts sticking up out of it. Once you get close it’s obvious they’re sword hilts, but from a distance they look like the chanters of a bagpipe. I once attempted to chat with him, and it couldn’t be done. He had no ability to do small talk standing in line at the bakery, way too strange. Way odd…

  89. 89.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Seanly:

    I don’t want to sound like an anti-dentite, but every weird white male I’ve known was into martial arts. Maybe I’ve just never met the guys who are super enthused about martial arts and aren’t also very odd.

    You rang?

    Stuff like that makes one odd because it changes one perspective on the world. “Being in focus” is a very curious state of mind,..

    Anyway, I find is hard to believe any guy who practices a martial art seriously is going to have a major concern over some women saying harsh words on to him. Maybe I am just weirder than most but I do find getting hit upside the head at full speed hurts a lot more than some woman telling me she disproves of me. I don’t know about how martial arts effects people who do it’s politics but to be good at you have to have the kind of emotional self control that would tend to shy away from QAnnon kind of sensationalist nonsense.

  90. 90.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    The Academy Awards started out as a recognition of excellence by professional peers, with movie people voting for the best in their particular line of movie work. Along the way some marketing person realised that bragging about Academy Awards won in ad copy was good for ticket (and, later, home video) sales. Sigh. Somebody always figures out a way to commercialise stuff.

  92. 92.

    MisterForkbeard

    @chris: I, uh… spend time on video and board game sections of reddit.

    I’m a white dude, and probably slightly weird. Okay, pretty weird.

  94. 94.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Cheryl Rofer: I used to belong to a reddit group that was explicitly supposed to be about sober political discussion. It was constantly overrun by crazy as Trump people who wouldn’t acknowledge anything you said and broke the rules constantly.

    For example, they do get mad when they were warned after calling someone a cuck… because insults were against the rules.

  95. 95.

    Aleta

    @chris: What a farce. The party that hammered protesters with “America: Love it or Leave it” turned around and sold it off. And for what?

    So, that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money? There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.

  98. 98.

    Ian G.

    Wow, the fact that QAnon loons include some Wilmer supporters is the least fucking surprising thing I’ve read all day.

  99. 99.

    HeleninEire

    @LAO: Jesus. He’s being offered a deal; the opportunity to somewhat determine the questions and he’s turning them down.

    This is making me mad and happy as hell. Mad because I would never ever ever be offered that deal (unless, of course if you were my attorney!!) Happy because he is throwing away a chance to somewhat control the situation. IDIOT.

  100. 100.

    chris

    @MisterForkbeard: I’m may be a little weirder than you. Not a gamer but I get most of my news and a lot of my entertainment from reddit. It’s my portal to the world from the hovel here in the backwoods of Nova Scotia.

  101. 101.

    Elizabelle

    @LAO: Wow. I knew that New Mexico story was gonna turn out to be horrible. I was guessing a cult.

    Interesting that the property owner reported he had stopped hearing gunshots quite some time back. Maybe they ran out of $$$ for ammo. They sure weren’t feeding the kids.

    The Muslim-sounding name is not going to help.

  103. 103.

    Leto

    @Cheryl Rofer: I guess I’m a weird white guy? I frequent the world of warcraft sub pretty regularly. It’s a heavily moderated group in that there’s no politics involved, there’s no harassment allowed, no “shit posting”, and anyone attempting those is met with a swift ban hammer. It’s actually a much more highly regulated forum than here in that they tolerate absolutely no shit and their moderators are not afraid to use the ban hammer to get rid of assholes/trolls.

    Partly it’s the way they do the threads, which I find incomprehensible.

    Maybe one of us can help? What’s the issue, specifically?

    Partly it’s the ingroup jargon, which suggests weird white guys.

    Balloon Juice has it’s own dictionary for all the weird jargon we use. It’s it’s quite large. When I first arrived on the site I had to open a separate tab for the dictionary just so I could follow some conversations. If a new person to the site were to run across Granny Starver, or Yurtle, are they immediately going to know who we’re talking about?

    And we get more serious discussion over here.

    We’re also working with a much, much smaller group of people.

  105. 105.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    The reason they added a Best Animated Feature category was that Academy members were pissed that a lowly Disney film like Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture. And that was back in the old days when there were only 10 nominees.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mnemosyne:

    D’oh! I meant the old days when there were 5 nominees for Best Picture, not 10. I hate not having an edit function. ?

  108. 108.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    That’s why you can’t cheat an honest man — an honest man isn’t looking for a way to be smarter than the con man.

    FWIW, I hate this saying. It’s easy to cheat honest people; you just don’t cheat them the same way you cheat dishonest people. The key is you cheat dishonest people by making them complicit in your dishonesty, which makes them afraid of going to the authorities, which makes them safer to cheat.

  109. 109.

    B.B.A.

    Over the past few years I’ve come to realize I don’t actually believe in liberal democracy and the rule of law, because it means we can’t just shoot all of these dipshits and send each of their families a bill for the bullet, even though that’s the obviously correct way to deal with them.

  111. 111.

    HeleninEire

    @Aleta: I’m a little bit in love with you. That is probably the best movie ever. Just last night my sister told me she’d “fax that to you” in her “best Fargo voice”. We both laughed our asses off and agreed we gotta go watch that movie again.

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    The reason they added a Best Animated Feature category was that Academy members were pissed that a lowly Disney film like Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture.

    Which is really dumb since Beauty and the Beast is a marvelous film, and the Best Picture Winner for that year was Silence of the Lambs, a horror movie (and a great horror movie).

    This decision to create a new category for Popular film is already biting the Academy in the ass.

    “As for a ‘popular film’ award, it is a ghetto and will be perceived that way,” journalist Mark Harris wrote on Twitter. “Imagine if they instituted it this year: ‘Oh, It’s lovely that the rabble went to Black Panther–here’s a special fake Oscar it can win!’ This is just a head-slapper on all counts.”

    The fact the new popular film category was announced ahead of an awards season where “Black Panther” is being viewed as a major contender for best picture is providing extreme blowback to Academy’s decision. “Black Panther” is critically acclaimed and is only the third movie in U.S. box office history to surpass $700 million, which makes it a no-brainer for a popular film award. Journalists are now worried regulating “Black Panther” to a popular film category will hurt its chances of being nominated in the main races, which are inarguably more prestigious.

    The snark is getting unleashed:

    Awarding films for their outstanding popularity?! Congrats to the producers of the Not Good Enough For Best Picture Consideration award, which will get buried in the soft pile of hundreds of millions of box office dollars….

    2018: The Academy announces a new award for “Popular Film”!

    2020: The Academy announces a new award for “Best Cinematic Universe!”

    2022: The Academy announces a new award for “TV Shows that Feel Like 10-Hour Movies!”

    2024: The Academy announces that “gifs are the new cinema!”

  114. 114.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    And the award for Best Explosions goes to…

    :)

    Not that it comes up a lot, but IMHO remakes of earlier films ought to be disqualified from the Best Picture category.

  116. 116.

    Miss Bianca

    @HeleninEire: I know people throw bouquets around about that movie, but I just.can’t. with ever watching it again. Once was quite enough for me. The up-close on such a venal, grotesque and gory subset of the human condition – presented as a comedy, no less – I found frankly stomach-turning, and that’s before you get to the wood chipper. Even Frances McDormand’s character, as the sole specimen of decent humanity on hand, can’t redeem it for me.

    But that’s what makes horse races, as my old ma used to say.

  118. 118.

    Aleta

    @HeleninEire: When she says “And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper” Republicans on trial flash before my eyes.

    And “He’s fleeing the interview! He’s fleeing the interview!”

  119. 119.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    That’s why you can’t cheat an honest man

    Said by many a grifter, just before they cheat an honest man.

    @Roger Moore:

    FWIW, I hate this saying. It’s easy to cheat honest people; you just don’t cheat them the same way you cheat dishonest people.

    Exactly.

  120. 120.

    NotMax

    @B.B.A.

    The silent film is a much better movie than the piece of Charlton Heston dreck. As any of the cinematic Ben-Hurs is based on a pre-existing book (from 1880!) and not an original story for the screen, wouldn’t consider it a remake in the strictest sense anyway.

  122. 122.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Not that it comes up a lot, but IMHO remakes of earlier films ought to be disqualified from the Best Picture category.

    Some of the best films ever made have been remakes. Holiday, His Girl Friday, and the Maltese Falcon easily come to mind.

    As noted, Ben-Hur was a remake. Silence of the Lambs owes a lot to an episode of Miami Vice. Marty was based on a teleplay.

  124. 124.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    A favorite bit of Fields trivia:

    During his stint as a headliner on radio’s Your Hit Parade, sponsored by Lucky Strike, Fields would read letters from his “son,” Chester. Took a fair amount of time before the L.S./M.F.T. folks put two and two together and that part of his appearances was quashed.

  125. 125.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    The Silence of the Lambs is based on the novel by Thomas Harris. Not sure what “Miami Vice” has to do with it, except maybe stylistically.

    Also, too, people need to stop re-making good movies. They need to re-make crappy ones and see if they can come up with something better.

  126. 126.

    The Moar You Know

    Thanks for the radio tips. Got my license, ordered the antenna you recommended. Moar new stuff to learn.

    @A Ghost To Most: Excellent. If you really want to get into this, go to QRZ.com and sign up and take the practice tests for the Tech license. You’ll learn from the questions and answers even if you fail most of them dismally. It goes as deep as electricity and then some.

    Don’t read the comments on the articles. I will say one thing for amateur radio: when I went to get my license, I was the youngest person in the room by at least 20 years and I was 49 years old. It’s a hobby dominated by old, white men whose politics tend to range from Goldwater on the liberal end to Trump. So there’s that. I’m more into the knowledge/experimentation mode (especially the new digital sub-noise floor modes) than talking to people, so it’s pretty acceptable for me. If all I could do is talk to people I would be out of the hobby already.

  128. 128.

    A Ghost To Most

    @The Moar You Know: Thanks. Once I get the radio in, all the war wagon needs is locking diffs and a refrig/freezer.

    Then I start building an off-road teardrop trailer.

  129. 129.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    The Silence of the Lambs is based on the novel by Thomas Harris. Not sure what “Miami Vice” has to do with it, except maybe stylistically.

    A lot of people have noted that Michael Mann’s 1986 “Manhunter” is based on “Red Dragon,” an early novel about Hannibal Lecktor. But Mann had used this material before, in an episode of “Miami Vice” where Crockett is trying to track down a mastermind of a cat burglar by trying to think exactly like he does. Ah, let’s see. Yep. Love the google. Season 3, Episode 6. “Shadow in the Dark”

    Crockett tries to catch a bizarre cat burglar by getting into his mind – a tactic that drove another cop insane.

    This burglar is not a cannibal, but he has odd culinary habits: “He enters by no forcible means, hitting the kitchen first and eating only raw choice cuts while painting his face with flour. ”

    There was also another episode specifically about a serial killer, but I can’t find that one now.

    Also, too, people need to stop re-making good movies. They need to re-make crappy ones and see if they can come up with something better.

    Again, Holiday and The Maltese Falcon are great films which are also remakes of pretty good originals.

  130. 130.

    The Moar You Know

    Thanks. Once I get the radio in, all the war wagon needs is locking diffs and a refrig/freezer.

    Then I start building an off-road teardrop trailer.

    @A Ghost To Most: Kickass. If you’re going out solo and emergency comms are a concern, definitely get the Tech license and then get yourself a nice VHF/UHF radio. Not a lot of folks monitoring GMRS. If you’re going out with a group, you are covered. Lotta folks use those for trail radios.

  132. 132.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon was a bestseller several years before “Miami Vice” went on the air, so I suspect the connection is that Mann is a Harris fan who used some of what he read on the TV show, not that Jonathan Demme’s Silence was influenced by “Miami Vice.”

    I’m so old that I went to the SotL press junket for my college newspaper when I was the arts editor.

  136. 136.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon was a bestseller several years before “Miami Vice” went on the air, so I suspect the connection is that Mann is a Harris fan who used some of what he read on the TV show, not that Jonathan Demme’s Silence was influenced by “Miami Vice.”

    Mann didn’t just use what he read on the tv show, he made his own movie version of “Red Dragon.” It takes nothing away from Demme’s work in “Lambs” to suggest possible influences.

  138. 138.

    Brachiator

    @TenguPhule:

    You want a Sharknado reboot?

    Sharknado Electric Boogaloo!

    Holy shit. There’s a Sharknado 6 headed to the beach…

    SyFy has released a new teaser for The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time and it’s completely insane.

    The producers are promising that this is the last one.

  139. 139.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Yes, I know. I’ve seen Manhunter multiple times. It’s one of my favorite movies. And I wrote a term paper on SotL. That’s why I’m pooh-poohing your “Miami Vice” theory. I think all of those movies and TV shows were primarily influenced by Thomas Harris’s work and that the plot and thematic similarities trace back to him, not to Michael Mann.

  140. 140.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yes, I know. I’ve seen Manhunter multiple times. It’s one of my favorite movies. And I wrote a term paper on SotL.

    Who knows. With this as background, you might revisit and reconsider the possible connections.

    Speaking of remakes, I realize that I never saw Demme’s 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. I’ve seen the 1962 version a boatload of times. Still a classic.

  141. 141.

    J R in WV

    @Major Major Major Major:

    There’s also a subreddit called something like “just rolled into the garage” which specializes in crazed drivers who bring a car into a garage saying, there’s a little squeak when the front end is held on by the brake hoses. Pretty funny pictures too, taken by astonished mechanics…

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