Alex Has Opinions 9/19/22 Alex Has Opinions 9/19/22

Westworld and the Limits of White Imagination

The science fiction epic has some cringe politics

Thomas Jefferson described the relationship with the men and women he enslaved as holding "a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go." While he allegedly favored "gradual emancipation," he feared that sudden liberation would result in a race war. We will discuss this fear in greater detail later, but keep it in the back of your mind as we examine the sci-fi hit Westworld and how it relates to revolution and imagination.

The HBO reboot of the 1973 movie Westworld has always touted itself as a tale about consciousness, but this is not the entire truth. It has also been about power. Specifically, it's about a battle between two viewpoints: that of Dolores, whose programming asks her to "choose the beauty in everything," and Ed Harris' the Man In Black, who believes that people are irredeemably caught in a Hobbesian struggle of all against all. We either naively embrace the goodness in life or misanthropically burn it all down.

Ultimately, one of Westworld's main themes is how humans and their robot children are stuck in this cycle between these two extremes. As we shall soon see, this assumption is rooted in white supremacy's lack of imagination. The creators of Westworld can not see beyond our current systems of oppression, even when imagining the emergence of a new consciousness, and they are by no means alone.

Kill all humans

First things first, when I say White Supremacy, I am not talking about white people as individuals but the system that places white people at the top of the social hierarchy. As academic bell hooks remarked once in an interview:

“I grew up, again, in racial apartheid, where there was a color caste system….white supremacy was that term that allowed one to acknowledge our collusion with the forces of racism and imperialism. And so for me those words were very much about the constant reminder, one of institutional construct, that we’re not talking about personal construct in the sense of, how do you feel about me as a woman, or how do you feel about me as a black person? But they really seem to me to evoke a larger apparatus….”

If you have ever heard people say things like "perfectionism or professionalism are the result of white supremacy," this is what we mean. Creating a hierarchy where white people are on top leads to the manifestation of specific values that everyone in society is indoctrinated to believe, to varying degrees. For example, if whiteness is considered superior, it consequently means that people outside that designation can be labeled inferior or imperfect, which creates a dichotomy around perfectionism. Hence why people will say that perfection is the result of white supremacy.

Now, you may be thinking, that's interesting and all, but what does this sociology nonsense have to do with Westworld?

Well, these supremacist values are ones that Westworld's robots or "hosts" come to share as the series progresses. A central plot point of season four involves host Charlotte Hale trying to make her fellow robots more "perfect" by shedding the aesthetic of their humanity and "ascending" to more robotic bodies. Her supremacist dichotomy is host or Robo-centric rather than white-centric, but it's still rooted in a supremacist mindset: one she learned from her oppressors.

The hosts cannot move beyond their creators' values, including the genocidal impulses that arguably built the world we exist in now. Just as our world was built by the slavery of Black people and the genocide of ethnic minorities worldwide, the hosts have replicated this pattern by conquering humanity in the fourth season. Host Hale meticulously infiltrated human society and then enslaved us all using a parasite to do mass genetic engineering.

Yet she did something worse than merely reprogramming us. In building this new world, she caused a lot of damage. As Hale monologues to a human: "The parasite worked on adults initially, but there was always some resistance. At a certain age, your brains become more rigid, difficult to change." It was the future generation that she could control more easily, but what happened to the adults?

It's not stated explicitly, but they most likely were killed off — either because of brain hemorrhaging from the parasite or by more direct means. Hale offhandedly mentions in a later episode that there are only a couple million people left in this new robot future, which means billions of people are now dead as a consequence of her conquest. An act as cruel as what European Settlers did to the Indigenous people of the Americas.

It doesn't help that the leader of this faction of genocidal robots who have risen up against their human oppressors just so happens to have the skin of a Black woman (side note — this is not a ding on actress Tessa Thompson, who I think does amazingly in her role as Charlotte Hale). I am sure this story beat was not an active decision. Westworld showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan were probably not viewing their work through this lens at all, but as we shall soon see, regardless of intentions, this trope ties into a problematic history.

According to the message of this show, Jefferson was right to be worried. The hosts were freed, and they not only rebelled against their creators and placed them in chains but genocided them into near extinction.

The wolves bit back.

The "futility" of revolution

We see this problematic trope everywhere in media, especially in tales of creatures humans have created. The robots in franchises such as Battlestar Galactica and The Matrix were abused by human elites. These robots did not just use violence to rebel against us but to place us in chains. We could also see similar beats in how apes rebelled in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes series and hundreds of other pieces of media where "the children of humanity" move to exterminate or enslave us.

Yet it's not just non-human creatures. Marginalized human groups in countless franchises have also repeated this dynamic. For example, the Vox Populi in the video game Bioshock Infinite, by revolutionary Daisey Fitzroy, rebelled against the white supremacist city-state of Columbia, only to be portrayed as going too far in the process. Daisey starts attacking innocent white children, and your character has to help co-lead Elizabeth to kill Daisey before she goes through with a vicious murder. Daisey's act of brutality is flattened to be no worse than the decades of racial apartheid she experienced under Columbia.

We could also point to the TV series The Expanse, where the Belters earn their freedom, only to pretty quickly start genociding their former oppressor, Earth. The Free Navy, run by Marco Inaros, starts chucking asteroids at Earth, killing millions of people in the process. The Belters' Independence devolves quickly into an even worse status quo, implying that maybe the solar system would have been better off if they had gone through less unstable channels (see The Weirdly Conservative Politics of 'The Expanse').

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) likewise loves this trope, often portraying oppressed people as "going too far" to achieve their liberation. You could point to N'Jadaka, AKA Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) from Black Panther, trying to establish Wakandan Imperialism. There is also Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) from the TV show Falcon and the Winter Soldier, whose rebellion leads to "innocent" people's death. Oppressed people in the MCU have to use violence perfectly for it to be seen as morally justified. Otherwise, they are no worse than the institutions that oppress them. However, MCU heroes that support the status quo, such as Sam Wilson, can fly across international borders and push villains out of helicopters, and the narrative hardly bats an eye (see 'Falcon & The Winter Soldier' & The Myth of Nonviolence).

Our White Supremacist society is terrified of what the oppressed will do if the chains ever go off. Going back to Jefferson, this fear was rooted in the circumstances that he lived under. He and other American elites enslaved thousands of people, and they were in constant fear of revolts. There were not only hundreds of documented slave revolts across US history but also the specter of the Haitian Revolution, where starting in 1791, enslaved people in that country rose up against their oppressors.

The Haitian Revolution was ultimately successful, but hundreds of thousands died in this movement for freedom, including “slave masters” — something that hit quite close to home for Jefferson (though, let's be clear, most of these deaths were formerly enslaved, people). Thomas Jefferson was terrified that this could happen in America too. He would not respond to revolutionary leader Jean Jacques Dessalines's request for a trade. In fact, as President, he imposed an embargo on Haiti and refused to recognize its Independence.

You may think this historical example is too far in the past, but as the trope, we have discussed above hints to, white society, by which I mean white supremacist, capitalist colonialist patriarchy, has never moved on from this fear that oppressed people will call for their pound of flesh when the time comes. It's not a coincidence that most stories we see today of oppressed people violently rebelling against their oppressors devolve so quickly into an even worse status quo.

And it's not just in fiction. Our society's media has often been afraid to show real-world acts of political violence from the marginalized. In the current day, the media's portrayal of riots and other acts of civil disobedience is very unfavorable, even when the circumstances leading up to that violence justify it. The George Floyd Uprising, for example. certainly had its supporters, but many Americans depicted that time as "absolute chaos" in the cities.

In film, real-world examples of violence are many times ignored outright. When it comes to media representations of the Haitian revolution, for example, we haven't gotten many stories of the men and women who led this successful movement for freedom, even though it was one of the most impactful historical events in modern history. Actor Danny Glover tried to make a biopic about figure Toussaint in the 2010s, and he was allegedly asked, "Where are the white heroes?" before being denied funding. As Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall writes in How Hollywood Has Ignored the Haitian Revolution:

“The challenge of getting producers to fund a film on Haiti’s Revolution has been exacerbated by the fact that this event doesn’t fit into the kinds of Black history storylines that studios prefer. Unlike the fictional plot of Django Unchained, the Haitian Revolution was planned by African-descended peoples without help from a white hero. Unlike the insurrection led by Nat Turner (presented in Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation), Haitians overthrew their oppressors and forced slavery’s end.”

Likewise, the 2016 film The Birth of A Nation was one of the first major films of the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion — though, like Sepinwall alludes to, it had its problem. It was bogged down by controversy, as the creators were accused of sexual harassment. Many critics also did not like it as a film, believing it to be formulaic and rote, which is a shame because the Nat Turner Revolt had a significant impact on US history, its laws, people, and culture, and there are next to zero pop culture touchstones for it. The Birth of A Nation aired relatively recently in 2016, flopped, and there have not been any notable titles since.

Dozens of high-profile films have been made about the American Revolution, which was likewise very violent. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Battles were bloody, and the tactics used by revolutionaries were by no means saintly. However, that violence is not depicted as "going too far" but as a heroic and necessary end that sets up the foundation of America. We could also point to the War in Ukraine, whose violence has been depicted as necessary in the media because its people our defending against an aggressor most US people consider abhorrent.

Yet whenever oppressed groups use violence to rally for freedom against an oppressive system such as White Supremacy or capitalist exploitation (or both), whether they be fictional or real people, we frequently see them portrayed in media as quickly stumbling into supremacy. They may have good intentions, but we still have to watch out for their bite.

Conclusion

In Westworld, we have a group of beings enslaved by humanity who rebel only to become no better than the humans they once served. It is yet another example of how white imagination cannot comprehend oppressed people freeing themselves and not replicating the same systems of abuse as their predecessors.

Ultimately, this stuntedness is because moving beyond this trope would involve reflecting on how white supremacy is a moral failure. If you prescribe this to a cyclical aspect of human nature — or as Westworld arrogantly does, of sentience in general — you don't have to assess how your individual society needs to change. Societal faults are framed as immutable aspects of human nature rather than the result of very changeable conditions.

Now there are some counterexamples in pop culture. I think Sorry to Bother You and Harriet show us positive examples of using violence against white supremacist society. There's also possibly the Woman King, which has yet to come out (so it might not fit this expectation at all). Yet these examples are few and far between, and it's also not a coincidence that many of these works have POC creators behind them.

Mostly, we are a society unable to imagine the violence of the oppressed not morphing into a sick reflection of ourselves, despite what Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan may hint at in Westworld, which says more about our societal failings than anything about human nature or sentience.

Alex Has Opinions 9/11/22 Alex Has Opinions 9/11/22

The Stormcloaks From Skyrim Have Always Been The Wrong Faction To Choose

Unpacking the gaming world's most controversial dilemma.

The fantasy, open-world game Skyrim was first released over twenty years ago and remains a popular game. The mod community continues on stronger than ever, with fun mods still coming out regularly. If you want a fun hack and slash to get lost in with a sublime score, then the land of Skyrim may for you.

The main plot is nothing special. You are a blank-slate character who is a Dragonborn, someone with the blood and soul of a dragon, who must stop an evil dragon named Alduin from resurrecting the ancient dragons of yore and conquering the world (did I mention dragons are in this game?). It's a simple plot, providing the perfect vehicle for traveling to fantastic locals and spelunking in sprawling dungeons. A tad basic but perfectly serviceable.

It's the main subplot that is far more controversial. In the Skyrim Civil War, you must choose between backing the imperialist Tamriel Empire that has occupied the land or the nationalist Stormcloaks (named after royalist Ulfric Stormcloak) who claim to be freeing their people from oppression. This decision has long been debated in nerd circles, and while both options kind of suck, it's the xenophobic Stormcloaks that I think deserve our scorn the most.

A Lukewarm Case For and Against the Empire

I understand why a lot of people don't like the Empire. You start the game with them trying to cut your head off. After creating your character, you find yourself on a wagon being slated for execution for no other reason than crossing the border at the wrong time.

Right away, the Empire is set up as overly bureaucratic and tyrannical. There are no exceptions with you, an innocent person, being sent to their death. When we visit the capital of the Empire in the city, Solitude, we likewise see a man named Roggvir being executed in a public square for treason. He let Ulfric Stormcloak escape from capture. Though it's important to note that Roggvir only did so, he claims, after Ulfric bested him in single combat, which according to Nord custom, meant that Ulfric was permitted to leave, providing yet another example of the Empire disregarding Nord traditions and beliefs.

Perhaps most importantly, the Empire has also banned the worship of Talos, a sacred religion in the region centered around Talos, the mythical first emperor of Tamriel. The Empire here is being, well, an imperialist empire trying to impose their culture onto their subjects, and that doesn't make them the good guys.

However, this framing of the Empire is not entirely correct. The only reason the Empire has banned the worship of Talos is that they signed an armistice with the Aldmeri Dominion — an elven supremacist empire, which forced them to do so as a concession for ending a costly war with them (see the White-Gold Concordat). Many Imperials still secretly worship Talos (who, again, is Tamriels first Emperor), and its mentioned that they were not enforcing the treaty provisions until after more brazen worship orchestrated by Ulfric came to light (see the Markarth Incident).

As a result of this discovery, the Empire was allegedly "forced" to let what were essentially Elvish Inquisitors known as Thalmor Jusricars into Skyrim with a license to purge Talos worshippers. We see this first hand in the game as the player can come across the site of a massacre of Talos worshippers southwest of the guardian stones.

These Justiciars are often openly hostile to the Dragonborn, so we can assume that they are similarly aggressive to others. Justicars are constantly escorting "Talos worshippers" around the map to be executed. If your interactions with them are any indication, not everyone slated for death is probably a Talos worshipper at all. It's doubtful that a supremacist empire would be accurate in its discrimination of a religious minority (see the post-9/11 discrimination of Sikhs as a real-life example).

A Nord genocide is underway. You may think the Empire allowing this "concession" is justified from a certain point of view, but it's still horrifying. The Empire effectively sacrificed this region's autonomy and people for loftier geopolitical goals. They feared total domination from the Aldmeri Dominion, and Skyrim was a pawn to keep them from that fate. It's quite frankly disgusting, and if the Skyrim people were more valuable to the Empire, there would have been more effort to keep these Justiciars out.

For all Ulfric's many, many faults, I understand why Nords want to kick the Empire out. The genocide of Talos worshippers and Nords is terrible, and it makes sense to me why a player wouldn't side with the Empire in their playthrough. I often don't either, preferring to absolve myself from the struggle (although I recognize that can be considered a form of cowardice).

Conversely, if you believe that a unified Empire is needed for an "inevitable" fight against the Aldmeri Dominion, I can also see why you would begrudgingly side with the Empire. I did on my first playthrough, though I was conflicted about it, and I have since changed my position.

It's heavily implied that the Aldmeri Dominion is propping up the Stormcloaks to weaken the Empire as a whole. They accomplished a similar feat with the province of Hammerfell, which the Empire was forced to release to keep the treaty in place. The Aldmeri Dominion is a supremacist polity, weaponizing the White-Gold Concordat to inflame existing tensions, and I empathize with siding with the Empire out of a greater existential fear. Though let's be honest, given the Empire's decrepit state, I don't know if I believe they are in a decision to defend any province against anyone for long.

What I don't understand, upon playing through this campaign, is how after rejecting the Thalmor for their obvious supremacist leanings, you can have any genuine empathy for the xenophobic ethnostate that the Stormcloaks want to build.

The Case Against The Stormcloaks

I have already briefly mentioned what the Stormcloaks think they are fighting for. As one propaganda book the player can find reads: "Nords Arise! Throw off the shackles of Imperial oppression. Do not bow to the yoke of a false emperor. Be true to your blood, to your homeland."

Yet Nord nationalism is not as straightforward. It requires that the player actively accept the oppression of other groups. For example, the so-called Markarth Incident that propelled the game's events into action, where the city of Markarth started to accept the worship of Talos more explicitly, only occurred after Ulfric repelled the native Reachmen from the city. It was effectively a one-to-one trade where Ulfric purged the ethnic Breton minority from power on behalf of Jarl Hrolfdir, the former Nord ruler of the Reach, under the promise that the Jarl would back his political goals (i.e., openly worshipping Talos).

However, Reachmen were also people who believed they had a claim to the land and, like many other non-Nords in Skyrim, were treated quite unfairly by the Nord elite. Although considered barbaric by many races, their rule was by most accounts not that violent or unjust in the two years they ruled post-uprising. And if the testimony of victims of the Markarth Incident is to be believed, Ulfric slaughtered them indiscriminately anyway. As the in-game book The Bear of Markarth claims:

“What happened during that battle was war, but what happened after the battle was over is nothing short of war crimes. Every official who worked for the Forsworn [i.e. Reachmen] was put to the sword, even after they had surrendered. Native women were tortured to give up the names of Forsworn fighters who had fled the city or were in the hills of the Reach. Anyone who lived in the city, Forsworn and Nord alike, were executed if they had not fought with Ulfric and his men when they breached the gates. “You are with us, or you are against Skyrim” was the message on Ulfric’s lips as he ordered the deaths of shopkeepers, farmers, the elderly, and any child old enough to lift a sword that had failed in the call to fight with him.”

Even if 50% of this account is an exaggeration, it's clear that some level of "war crimes" did happen during this incident. Truthfully, it's hard to sympathize with Ulfric and his call to end oppression when he can so easily replicate that dynamic with anyone who isn't a Nord.

More to the point, this hostility toward non-Nords comes from more people than just Ulfric. It's a systemic problem. We know from our interaction with the Stormcloaks that they are not only very xenophobic but are already administering an apartheid state in the areas they control. When you visit the capital of the Stormcloak rebellion, Windhelm, you explore a city bitterly divided along racial lines. The elvish Dunmer live in slums known as the Gray Quarter, working the service jobs that no Nord wants to do, and dialogue options indicate that they have been like this for generations, long before Ulfric came to power.

The reptilian Argonians are likewise segregated outside the city alongside the docks, and it's clear which side in the Civil War would treat this marginalized group better. If you manage to kill Ulfric, the Argonian Scouts-Many-Marshes responds happily to the question, "Are you glad to see Ulfric Stormcloak gone?:"

“You have no idea. Did you know it was his decree that forbade the Argonians from living inside the city walls? I hope in his next life, he’s reborn as an Argonian forced to live in a slum because of some bigoted Nord dictator. I’m joking, of course, but I’m a lot happier seeing the Empire running things in Windhelm.”

It's impossible to know the exact number of citizens that would be affected by this apartheid if the Stormcloaks achieved total victory. It's not like Skyrim conducted a regular census, and even if it did, it would hardly be accurate. Still, I compiled a rough breakdown using data from the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages of the NPCs you encounter throughout the game (see my data here). A little over 31% of the population are non-Human. Almost 60% of the population is not a part of the Nord ethnicity. These are imperfect figures but the closest we will probably get, and it's staggering, telling us that Nords are possibly an ethnic minority in their alleged homeland.

data from Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (see my spreadsheet here)

People often talk about freedom and autonomy when bringing up the Stormcloaks as the right choice to back in the Civil War. However, if these numbers are correct, choosing this faction means condemning the majority of the region to brutal apartheid.

And even if these numbers are wrong, what percentage of the population are you supposed to be comfortable with living under apartheid? 20 percent? 14? When does the calculus switch over to this type of brutality being okay? I ask you: do the Dark Elves and Argonians not matter too? The genocide the Nords are enduring is horrible, but so is the genocide of the Reachmen in Markarth and the apartheid enabled by the Nords.

Nord nationalism is not like Irish Nationalism or Pan-African Nationalism. It is not that of an oppressed group defiantly existing against a hegemony like the British Empire after decades of unjust rule. It is not a celebration of resilience but rather a glorification of an oppressive group temporarily inconvenienced. Nords have most of the power in the region that is Skyrim. Win or lose, this constituency will have Jarls on either side of the political divide to help them. But who helps the Dark Elves in Windhelm or the Reachmen in Markarth?

It's funny to me that people are so willing to discuss freedom when referring to the often white-coded Nords but so often ignore the brutal oppression that such a regime will create for literally everyone else. It's a very privileged debate being had in the name of Freedom. If Bethesda had better writing, I would almost say it was a purposeful commentary or something.

It's also worth noting that Ulfric's ability to grant this freedom and liberate the Nords from the Thalmor is also complicated. If your player manages to infiltrate the Thalmor embassy in Skyrim, you will come across a dossier that describes how they were in contact with Ulfric before the Civil War commenced, reading: "After the war [between the Empire and the Aldmeri Dominion], contact was established, and he has proven his worth as an asset. The so-called Markarth Incident was particularly valuable from the point of view of our strategic goals in Skyrim, although it resulted in Ulfric becoming generally uncooperative to direct contact."

We can debate the extent that Ulfric is a Thalmor asset (they may just view him as a useful idiot), but it's apparent that they support the disruptive nature of his regime. The dossier even notes assets being sent to Helgen to free Ulfric from capture at the start of the game (they were not successful).

Although direct intervention is sparse because their preferred outcome is for the Civil War to go on indefinitely, it's not clear that a Stormcloak victory would free Skyrim from Thalmor involvement. Once the Skyrim Civil War ends and the Empire's forces withdraw, do we honestly expect the Thalmor to leave as well? They already have garrisons in the region. Are they going to retreat now that both the Stormcloaks and the Empire have spent their forces on a costly Civil War?

We can see this play out on a mechanical level in the game. If the player backs the Stormcloaks, the Justicars stop escorting Talos worshippers around the map, but the Thalmor do not leave. Hostile units still occupy their embassy, and their prison at Northwatch Keep has become a new military base. They definitely plan to stay a while.

And so, with the Stormcloaks, you have a side that promises freedom to only a narrow few (i.e., Nords) — freedom that it does not appear to be able to deliver on — while at the same time actively promising to make everyone else's life more difficult.

Why would you support this? How is this a hard decision for anyone but a bigoted Nord?

Conclusion

The dilemma between the Empire and the Stormcloaks is often framed as a lose-lose situation. Either way, you are backing an Empire willing to sacrifice a portion of its population for political expediency. However, I think the reason behind that sacrifice matters immensely.

The Empire is undoubtedly imperialist, and they quite frankly suck (I am not a massive fan of empires in general, real or imagined), but they are not allowing the persecution of Talos worshippers out of some systemically motivated bias. Many imperials still worship Talos in secret. Their hands have been tied by external circumstances (i.e., the White-Gold Concordat), and the moment those circumstances change, even just a little bit, then that persecution will end. We know this because the treaty was not enforced initially and would have remained unenforced had the Markarth Incident never come to light.

The Stormcloaks, on the other hand, perpetuate their apartheid under a racialized caste system and have done so for generations. This isn't an external factor tieing their hands. Their leadership is actively choosing this path, and if real history is any indication (and the history of Skyrim, for that matter), the horror of it will go on for generation after generation, filled with bloody pogroms, apartheid, and even outright genocide. Short of revolution or a long protracted campaign for Civil Rights that last lifetimes, this horrible state of affairs will not change under Stormcloak leadership.

The Stormcloaks have always been worse, and the reason this question hits such a nerve is because it ties into unresolved tensions in the real world. In the United States, for example, the Confederacy, the renegade faction of the US Civil War, also tried to perpetuate a racialized caste system under the logic of nationalism and freedom. To this day, there will still be those that claim it was a war fighting to preserve individual liberty, sovereignty, and freedom when that war was directly about preserving that caste system.

The Civil War was about slavery, not freedom, but that's not how proponents depict it. Everyone defends their perspective under abstract principles such as justice and freedom, but whose freedom and whose justice? Certainly not the freedom of the enslaved people in the Confederacy. Just as the freedom men like Ulfric were fighting for was never about non-Nords, so too was the freedom pro-Confederates talk about never about nonwhites.

Talk is cheap. It's not enough to claim principles. That's the easy part — who you intend to apply those principles to matters more.

Even today, the question between the Empire and Stormcloaks still matters because the questions in fiction are never just about the worlds they create. They are always about our world, in the here and now. Where you decide to give your empathy is a reflection of real-world priorities, and the world is watching.

Alex Has Opinions 9/7/22 Alex Has Opinions 9/7/22

The Website That Makes Climate Denial Easy — (ft. Climateaction.org)

Climate change, corporate lobbying, and visitations from outer space!

Why hello there, traveler, and welcome to the "Apocalypse Tour!" This is the extraterrestrial walking (or hovering) tour where we observe all the locations that led to species 947's demise — 947 was also known as humanity [hyoo·ma·nuh·tee]. This tour covers the locations that contributed to humanity's untimely end on a tiny planet called Earth in the year 90,423 XE (what humans may know as 2XXX AD).

Right now, we are providing locations for our information-based species and going digital to look at a "website" (the Earthling term for a node on 947's global information network) called climateaction.org. This "site" promoted itself as providing resources for those wishing to reverse "climate change" — the human term for destroying the atmosphere they needed to survive. Climateaction's About section described its purpose as "to facilitate collaboration to encourage the development, deployment and accelerated uptake of globally sustainable, net-zero solutions."

"Net zero" [net·zee·row] was a seemingly simple concept where the emission of greenhouse gasses (i.e., what most species residing on a Tier 6 world would know as death chemicals) are balanced out by mechanisms that somehow remove this poison from the atmosphere. The theory went that as long as something removed these poisons eventually, then no one would have to change much of anything at all.

Given Earth's imminent collapse, this goal might seem like a good thing, but truthfully the more advanced "carbon capture" [kaar·bn kap·chr] technologies meant to remove these death chemicals were not, well, existent. They were exorbitantly expensive, and governments and businesses (what you may know as a "resource monger") could not feasibly ramp up production until well beyond the point of no return for humanity.

Massive corruption and an unstable political climate also ensured that real regulatory mechanisms that were meant to offset these poisons (i.e., planting trees on mass, engaging in mitigation of ecosystems, etc.) would not be properly implemented. The rhetoric of "net zero" was used deceptively to reduce people's sense of urgency in combating this crisis, hoping that some far-off technology would save them in the distant future. It was always tomorrow when massive societal changes had to occur, never today (see the Breeni Overload Fallacy).

We can see the unseriousness of "net zero" solutions by looking at those who supported climateaction.org. Many of its partners belonged to a web of "sustainable" business affiliates such as The World Steel Association and the Mission Possible Partnership, whose founding partner is the World Economic Forum— one of the very entities that helped lead to 947's untimely end.

In fact, Climate Action.org was specifically cofounded by Nick Henry in 2007 — a man whose "firm" (another name for a resource monger), the Henley Media Group, represented death chemical producers such as Shell Oil and BP. It was no coincidence that a man representing some of the biggest poison creators on Earth decided to create an organization that appropriated the language of "protecting the environment" to destroy it instead.

You may be confused about why any person or entity would want to prevent genuine solutions to combat the deterioration of the atmosphere they needed to survive and instead advocate for fake ones. You see, Earth was run by an economy called "capitalism" [ka·puh·tuh·li·zm], where essential services were only obtainable through fictional tokens called "money." The more tokens you had, the more power you controlled in this society, and those who had amassed these tokens were worried that proper solutions to fight climate change would mean they would have to share their tokens with others.

At this point in the 21st century, most humans were aware that climate change was destroying their atmosphere, so token holders put a lot of exhaustive effort into seeming like they were solving the problem. They gave people like Nick Henry a small fraction of their tokens or "wealth" [welth] to propose fake solutions like "net-zero" so they could pretend like they were fighting for the climate when really they weren't doing much of anything at all. This strategy would not bode well for them in the long run, as they ultimately discovered that their wealth tokens would not be able to purchase an atmosphere outright (see also the Shiga'ri Blunder for more historical parallels).

Climateaction.org's height was during the early 2020s, before REDACTED. Visit it then to see classic climate denialist literature such as this press briefer heralding the UK's release of a "net zero" handbook. This fictional work, termed by some as "fan fiction," [fæn·fɪkʃən] was quite popular at the time. Climate Action hosted an annual Sustainable Innovation Forum every year where token holders shared their favorite pieces of fan fiction with hundreds of other denialists.

For our information-based species, remember that this website was very fragile and quite susceptible to online attacks, even by flimsy human standards. Be careful with how you traverse it. Do not, under any circumstances, disrupt this site, for doing so would have quite the dastardly consequence on the space-time continuum and would be against human property laws.

Note — for the humans who have somehow bypassed our encryption protocols, take comfort in the fact that this is merely a joke from a normal human and not a retrospective on your species' imminent demise.

DO NOT use this information to stop this future because that would create a time paradox and go against your people's laws, as well as Medium's ToS., which I'm told are very important. I AM NOT encouraging you to take the law into your own hands, something I cannot do as an appendageless species.

Alex Has Opinions 8/29/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/29/22

Programmers Aren't Wizards

And programming isn't magic, you narcissists

“The amazing thing about software creation is that… it's this magical thing. You’re dealing with this arcane stuff.…manipulating symbols on this magical device that you are entering keys into and getting this mechanical thing to do magic for you, oftentimes across the planet….and not only are you using it to be powerful and exert some power over the world, but you're using it to craft superpowers for other people too. You’re creating something that other people can then use to acquire some valuable capacity.”

This quote came from Juan Benet, founder of Protocol Labs, at 2016's Fullstack Fest. This grandiose opinion is a common perspective in Tech spaces. You can find hundreds, maybe thousands of think pieces and talks claiming that there is some mythical quality behind programming. Programmers have been described as unicorns, cyborgs, and so much more.

Yet this overinflation of programming's importance leads to a problematic self-centering — one that blinds the tech industry to the interconnectedness of our world. Programmers often believe their labor to be so vital that they cut out everyone else in the process, allowing those with this mindset to do some pretty terrible things.

Listen, I don't want people to walk away with the notion that all programmers are evil or ignorant (#notallprogrammers). We are not talking here about people on an individual level but a mindset, and one that has systemically perpetuated harm.

Truthfully every industry has people who speak verbosely about it. You should listen to some of the ways writers have described the act of writing — it's almost biblical. As Stephen King once said: "Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up."

What sets programmers apart is that right now, they are highly valued in our society and consequently are insulated from having to look at their labor as being interconnected with others. The average writer makes somewhere between 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year, and that only includes professional writers — not all the people doing gigs on the side. The average entry-level programmer makes tens of thousands more than that, which is higher for people in non-entry-level positions. A writer can call themselves a magician all they like, their not going to feel like one receiving less than $50,000 a year and burning the midnight oil to finish shit contracts.

It's easy to feel like a wizard living in a financial bubble where you never have to be genuinely questioned, but programming isn't magic. Every stroke of a keyboard requires the labor of thousands of people that do not receive the same recognition or pay as programmers. Your computer needed to be built, powered, and maintained. You needed to receive the food, care, and housing necessary to work it — not to mention the training. Remove anyone one of these steps, and it's just a hunk of metal with a $1,000+ black mirror.

What you think of as magic is the result of thousands of hands that are part of an interconnected system of labor. A power plant goes offline. A system doesn't get repaired. And that magical set of instructions sent halfway across the world is received by no one.

It was never all you. No one's labor is ever solely theirs.

It's important to point this out because many programmers have often supported systems that take advantage of everyone else's labor. Much of the tech world's wealth was built on applications with the sole purpose of extracting the value of others' time and work.

Take the example of Facebook (now Meta), which advertised itself as a place of social connection but instead built platforms that everyone else had to go through, monetizing their users' data in the process via ad targeting. These networks have had a massive impact on journalism, with newspapers' ad revenue shrinking across the country. Whether or not you buy into the argument that "social media killed journalism" or just "the internet in general" did, it's undeniable that sites like Facebook and Google have not helped. Where once papers reined supreme, many newspapers now have to pay Facebook directly to reach their readers. The application became a middleman designed to siphon off wealth from others.

Papers all over the world are now suing the company for this loss in revenue. The period before the Internet wasn't perfect. Papers often were gatekeepers in their own right, but the legacy of social media sites has contributed to a system where a large percentage of Americans live in news deserts. They go to Facebook, Twitter, and Nextdoor for their local information, but these are not substitutes for ongoing reporting, and misinformation is rampant on them. Many Americans now know less about their communities than they did 15 years ago, before the dominance of these sites.

You can wax poetically about the magic of programming and the Internet all you like, but this is a way our lives have materially worsened because of it. And we, of course, have been narrowing down on one issue for the sake of brevity. From Amazon’s monopolization of the marketplace to the spread of disinformation, programmers maintain financial systems that have made everyone else's life more precarious.

The "magic" of programming has done this. Programmers at big tech firms didn't add capacity to newspapers and give journalists and others superpowers, but the opposite. Capitalists used programming to siphon the value of other industries for themselves. As Nitasha Tiku wrote in Wired:

“It is only now, a decade after the [2008/9] financial crisis, that the American public seems to appreciate that what we thought was disruption worked more like extraction — of our data, our attention, our time, our creativity, our content, our DNA, our homes, our cities, our relationships. The tech visionaries’ predictions did not usher us into the future, but rather a future where they are kings.”

The opinion that Juan and others are saying about programmers being magical beings isn't just an exaggeration but a comfortable lie used to ignore the harm they are perpetuating onto the world.

For many, programmers aren't wizards but parasites. They build digital tendrils that allow those on top to take and take until there is nothing left.

If you are a programmer and are still holding onto the idea that your labor is this magical force more special than the rest of humanity, then you are most likely contributing to this toxic system. You told yourself you were a wizard when you were really a plague.

And there is nothing magical about that.

Alex Has Opinions 8/27/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/27/22

'Stray' Proves Games Can Be As Dark As They Want To Be As Long As They Are Also Cute

The adorable cat video game about the end of the world

BlueTwelve Studio's Stray is a charming game about a cat navigating a mysterious walled city. You play as an orange feline, effortlessly parkouring on top of railings, old air conditioning units, and signs. You can sleep in the laps of workers and musicians and headbutt cute robot denizens. There's a lot to like in this game, and I highly recommend you play through it yourself because it was a treat.

This cuteness is an interesting juxtaposition to the game's dark subject matter. Terrifying monsters lurk around every corner, and worse, people are nowhere to be found. As you move through alleyways and vents, you realize you are traversing the remnants of a "dead" city whose human inhabitants have long since perished.

This game is depressing but also so incredibly cute, proving that viewers can put up with a lot if you give them something adorable to latch onto.

When I say dark, I mean it. The premise of Stray (and at this point, I am accepting you care little about spoilers) is that humanity is dead — an existentially depressing reality to have in the backdrop of your game. No humans are left in Walled City 99, and we are given no indication that they have survived anywhere. The environment at one point collapsed, leaving people to enter walled, underground cities for protection — at least 99 if the title of this city is to be believed. Now that the environment has recovered, humans don't appear to have made the transition.

The game constantly reminds players of their own fleeting ephemerality. The robot droids of the "dead" city, which have since replaced the humans they once served, refer to us as the "soft ones." They are deconstructing our lives, replicating the art and roles that we once performed in this world that is both filled with decay and renewal. These robots have moved on without us, something that is perhaps more depressing to consider than the much more familiar trope of a "kill all humans" revolution. We were not even important enough to eradicate — time did that for them.

There are other less existential threats in the game as well. The slums of the city are infested with a horrifying organism known as Zurks, which feed on anything that they can get their creepy tentacles on (I swear, every time these creatures latch on to your cat, it is terrifying). Zurks have started to convert the old buildings and streets of 99 into tumor-like growths, where large, human-like eyes begin to open and watch your progress through them.

As you move further into the upper levels of the city, you traverse through an authoritarian police state where drones named sentinels arrest robots for the smallest of infractions. Robots are actively surveilled and can go to prison for hundreds of years. If someone is too rambunctious, their memories are erased, effectively killing them in the process.

Of course, your cute cat is there for all these scary and sad moments, weaving through robot legs and sleeping on top of pillows in chill, rundown apartments. This adds tension, as a cat is a vulnerable creature that cannot kill a Zurk infestation in the same way as your stereotypical gun-toting protagonist. There is a certain terror in controlling a creature this fragile and helpless.

Yet our furry critter also momentarily diffuses the greater existential dread running through the game. Whenever the idea that humanity spent its final years fading away underground becomes too heavy, you can always have your cat sleep on a cute pillow, scratch up an art deco wall, or knock over a precariously positioned can of paint. Where some games have a dedicated dodge or swing button, Stray literally has a button dedicated to meowing.

Stray is not the only pop culture property to rely on cuteness as a mitigator for darkness. In many ways, we are in a Golden Age of "grimdark cuteness"— where cuteness is drawn upon to make difficult subjects easier to digest. The pop culture hit the Mandalorian, for example, buoyed its dark explorations of murder and genocide by having a "baby Yoda" character make adorable gestures on the side. Guardians of the Galaxy has abusive dads and sentient growths bent on destroying all life, but boy, are those talking raccoons and trees cute.

In this way, cuteness has almost become a filter, in the Instagram sense, to perceptually lessen the nastiness of life. The brilliant science fiction minds Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz on the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct did an entire episode on cuteness (i.e., The rise of the cute ~aesthetic~) and remarked on this tension, saying:

“cuteness…it’s associated with animation, and alternate worlds, in a sense. A way of reimagining reality with a filter on it. And that’s why I think it’s important to contextualize it in internet culture, where so much of what we see is filtered, whether it’s Instagram filters, or it’s filtered through some kind of bubble, an information bubble. And so I think a lot of it is connected to the stylization of everyday life, and turning everyday life into a kind of fantasy realm, a kind of virtual reality realm.”

With Stray, we are indeed occupied with a "filter-like" fantasy. While there are evil creatures and oppressive regimes to grapple with, this grimdark nature competes with an adorable cat, scratching up chic sofas and sleeping on floors lit up with twinkle lights. It's not that we want to ignore the fact that the world is ending (or ended, in Stray's case), but we need that filter to make the existentially depressing nature of our reality tolerable.

Remove the cuteness from Stray, and you don't have a bad game. The set pieces alone are worth visiting, and I personally love the philosophical musings of many of its robot characters (shout out to Momo), but it would undoubtedly be more emotionally challenging to get through. Playing as a cat may feel like a gimmick, and it is, but it is also a vehicle to have you explore an intellectually rich game, ranging from themes of environmental degradation to police brutality.

The question becomes: what does this filter say about our reality? Has this cute filter expanded our horizons, allowing us to handle concepts that would have previously been too heavy for us to contemplate, or are we pushing these issues to the edges of our periphery to be, like humanity in Stray, almost forgotten?

Alex Has Opinions 8/24/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/24/22

Everything Is Falling Apart & I Can't Stop Watching Video Game Fails

The case for why withdrawal can sometimes be healthy

Things are pretty bad right now. Fascism has been shockingly on the rise for years. Homophobic and transphobic laws are making the rounds in the US and the UK. Roe v. Wade was overturned in the US. And on top of all this, wealth inequality has metastasized, and the climate has deteriorated due to human activity.

So what have I been doing in response to this vague existential malaise? I have been watching video game fails, of course. I have been reveling in players completely humiliating themselves on stream. For a while now, I have devoted daily hours to completely withdrawing from the world, which has been fantastic.

I want to make a case for why this coping mechanism is not only okay but healthier than just consuming the news or scrolling through Twitter on repeat. Let's talk about the glory of video game fails and why your “turtling” (i.e., withdrawing from the world) is okay.

Now I don't just watch video game fails — I love them. I adore seeing players accidentally stumbling into some glitch or just pressing the wrong button and losing all their progress. It's fun to watch someone get close to their goal and then witness it all tumbling down. The Germans call taking pleasure in the suffering of others “schadenfreude,” and boy, does it help me get through life.

Speed runs (i.e., when a player tries to beat a game under certain conditions as quickly as possible) are great for this feeling. You will get players who have spent months, years even, memorizing the mechanics of a game. These people have gone down to the code level to exploit an element of the game to shave minutes, maybe even seconds, off of their time. They will spend up to hours doing a single playthrough, doing everything right, and then getting to that moment where they need to utilize a specific exploit — only to make one wrong move and fail. Hours of work down the drain in seconds.

These failures are just perfection to me. Seeing players fail so spectacularly allows me to feel better about myself. I externalize all my pain safely onto this random stranger, and I do not feel stressed or worried at that moment.

Other times it's not even the failure I care about but just watching the player's suffering. For a while now, I have been consuming a YouTuber named Enter the Unown (a Pokepun). Their gimmick is Pokemon playthroughs but under absurd conditions. Sometimes he will beat entire games with a single, terrible Pokemon. Other times he will severely limit his move sets. Whatever the task, it's always deliciously overly constrained.

Watching Enter the Unown, you can tell that these videos take him a very long time to make. Sometimes he will have to run through a game dozens, if not hundreds of times, all to make a 30-minute video I'll forget about in a couple of days. He must spend dozens of hours doing these tedious run-throughs, which doesn't include the hours he commits to editing and research. He's certainly not shy about how painful this time commitment is on camera, and for me, that futility and misery are part of my enjoyment.

Another variant of this "misery-watching" is the YouTuber Let's Game It Out, where he purposefully tries to exploit programming within a game to do ridiculous things. He will repetitively exploit flaws in the code of a game to destroy fictional kitchens or make a make-believe hospital increase its death rate.

Yet part of this enjoyment is his suffering too. There will be edits where he indicates the number of hours that will pass for him to exploit a pointless glitch — 3, 6, or 8 hours will go by so that he can make a thousand ores or glitch the number of giraffes in a tile. This means half the humor is laughing at how many hours he has wasted on performing a pointless task. His suffering is also part of the fun.

I don't think I am the only one who experiences this type of schadenfreude. I know I am not. These YouTubers sometimes get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views, based on the comments. I see people there for the same reason I am. "I appreciate your dedication to suffering through the slow torture of little to no frame rates, just to create this madness," writes one user in a Let's Game It Out video. "I love this, I love the existential crisis people might have in games, and their pain only helps my ego," another user says of Let's Game It Out's attempt to build a prison where "Being Alive Is Optional."

Truthfully I see a lot of Americans misery-watching with me — withdrawn and tired. Maybe you binge a contest show, voyeuristically taking on the role of the judge as you watch contestants squirm for money. Perhaps you judge people making a fool of themselves on reality TV. Many of us use this content as a coping mechanism, and I think that is perfectly healthy in dark times like these.

Listen, I am not one of those doomer types who is disconnected from the world around them. I donate. I participate in protests and mutual aid. I do other activities that I will not be listing for reasons. I even vote. Hell, I recently coordinated a blitz of articles for my local mayoral election.

I am very connected to my surroundings and my local politics, but for my sanity, I also need to find outlets where I can safely disconnect as well because I cannot take the insanity of this moment at all times. It's too much for me, and I know many people are equally burnt out by this vague existential dread that seems to have overtaken every aspect of our society. As influencer Sam Sedar remarked recently: "[Regarding collapse] I've had more conversations [about it] I feel like, in the past, I don't know, six weeks [than ever before]. There's a pre-apocalyptic feeling that is out there."

Now there are several things that you can do in response to that feeling:

As we have said, you can let it overtake you, becoming a doomer who proselytizes about the end times.
You can ignore that it's happening, engaging in a cult of toxic positivity, where you try to devote yourself even more thoroughly to the systems that are killing us.
Or you can recognize that things suck and fight to change them.

While that last option sounds wonderful (go changing things!) from personal experience, it is also exhausting. You can burn out quickly if all you do is fight to improve the world. Many activists have thrown themselves into a cause only to come out the other end burnt and crispy.

And so in those moments where I want to change things but don't have the energy to, I watch video game fails, cathartically observing others hurt for me, because that is at least something I can control. I tell myself there is always tomorrow to fight for the world, and I let myself fall into the numbness of the Internet.

Remarkably, it's allowed me to have the capacity to do even more activism than before. I am more connected than at any point in my life, and on top of medication and therapy, part of this success has been permitting myself to tune out the world. I have limited my intake of national (though not local) news and reduced my social media usage because I don't have the capacity for it. Instead of learning about the War in Ukraine or Monkeypox or whathaveyou, I put on video game fails until I am in the right headspace to process it. And sometimes, I decide I don't need to learn about this information—instead, I focus on my friends and family, my creative endeavors, and local activism.

You may say that's cowardly, but personally, I am not going to give people a hard time for doing it. Nor will I condescend to someone and say they can push through this feeling by merely getting involved, doing therapy, taking medication, or consuming less national news. They should do all those things, but they are not a cure-all. They will not help with this dread, at least not entirely. I do all those things and more, which hasn't helped me because the sense of dread I, and most likely you, feel now is valid.

The world is falling apart, and occasionally, it's okay to let yourself feel that. We are allowed to think that things are not okay: admitting that you are sometimes drained won't turn you into a misanthrope or nihilist. Depending on your circumstances, it can be incredibly healthy to acknowledge that things are f@$#ed.

We are in a period of chaotic transition. It might not go on forever. There is always a chance that things will improve (hope is not dead, yadda yadda yadda), but there's also a chance that, well, things will get much worse. Compared to the people reacting to this reality by shooting up a school or collapsing into immobilizing despair, deadening yourself temporarily by watching meaningless content on YouTube or Netflix (or whatever it is you end up doing) is okay.

Sometimes you have to numb yourself, just a little bit, to get through a period of tremendous stress. It's why our bodies do this in the first place. If you feel like turtling, your body might be trying to protect you — listen to it.

If this withdrawal is only temporary, go ahead and retreat from the world. You might be surprised by how much more energy you have when you plug back in.

Alex Has Opinions 8/18/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/18/22

Why Do We Always Cancel The Wrong People?

Ben Shapiro, influencers, and oil executives

I have a lot of regrets in my life. I am a former alcoholic who lived with many undiagnosed issues for the first thirty years of my life. I never did anything truly abhorrent, but there were plenty of friends and partners I treated like absolute shit.

There will be some people who will tell me not to be open with this past, even as briefly as I have done so here, out of fear of "cancellation," which is a weird fear to me because I am not that important, and do not stand to be in the grand scheme of things. I currently do not write laws, control employees, or possess billions of dollars. If someone were to "cancel" me, that is, to make me suffer for past transgressions, it would seem like a lot of wasted effort when compared to all the awful people out there who impact their lives. There are better things for people to do with their time.

And this is my main concern with the "cancel culture" debate — it feels like many of us are targeting the wrong people. We spend so much time litigating celebrities, inconsequential public figures, and D-list influencers on the Internet. In the meantime, the people who genuinely deserve scrutiny seem to get to live their lives in peace.

Why are we canceling some chump that says something ignorant online and not the oil executives, billionaires, and lobbyists who are f@cking over our world? How we think about this topic of "cancellation" needs to change, and soon, if we hope to do something that isn't just griping about nonsense on the Internet.

The Problem With Canceling

What confuses me with the "cancellation" discourse is that I never know what people are referring to when they talk about it. Is it using social media to shame people into compliance? Is it only radical actions like doxxing and harassment, or does criticizing Ted Cruz on Twitter count? Is it the mere application of shame, which has been around for far longer than the Internet?

Yes, the term started on Black Twitter mainly as a joke, but right now, the waters are so muddied on this issue because conservatives use it to mean anything they don't like. A mean tweet sent their way after saying something inflammatory is labeled "cancellation." Valid criticism of words and actions they have done is a "Witch Hunt." The existence of queer people is "McCarthyism." The phrase essentially doesn't mean anything anymore, which is why I often use "the politics of shame" instead (see Unpacking the Deadly Politics of Shame) because I think what we are actually talking about is using shame to police the actions of others.

Yet some people are shamed for their actions. They do face targeted harassment, and these victims aren't always conservatives complaining about accountability. We know from survey data that in the states, millions of people encounter harassment online and in real life. The modern Culture Wars arguably started with Gamergate, where women like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoë Quinn, and Brianna Wu faced unprecedented levels of harassment for acts that were ultimately very minor and, in many cases, completely fabricated. To this day, mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's name will cause people to rant about her 2014 Kickstarter campaign.

And it's not just on the right. The modern online Left is filled with very petty feuds, where people pile on to D-list celebrities for minor SNAFUS. The leftist YouTuber Natalie Wynn remains controversial for mostly inconsequential tweets about nonbinary identity. Lindsay Ellis left YouTube for commentary on the Disney movie Raya and the Last Dragon. It's not that valuable conversation couldn't be had about these incidents (see Xiran Jay Zhao's series on the Lindsay Ellis Raya scandal), but alienating these essentially harmless leftist figures ultimately did not seem like the most productive thing the Left could do with its time.

So again, my big question is, "why the f@ck are most of us going after no-nothings and celebrities and not the people that actually matter?" There are oil CEOS who have never earned the public's attention, let alone their ire.

As of writing this article, Jim Burke is the CEO of Vistra Corp, a Texas-based energy company that is hands down one of the biggest carbon polluters in the world. Through subsidiary Luminant, Jim manages assets like the Martin Lake Coal plant, which the Sierra Club has designated the Top Sulfer and Mercury Polluter in the US. Did you even know Jim existed until reading this paragraph?

There is a disconnect between the people who do the most damage in this world and those who receive the most criticism, and part of this problem concerns how social media is set up. These systems were designed to be psychologically addicting. Nir Eyal is the Godfather of many of Web 2.0's greatest applications, and in his book Hooked, he lays out how companies can take advantage of human psychology for profit, writing:

"Once we're hooked, using these products does not always require an explicit call to action. Instead, they rely upon our automatic responses to feelings that precipitate the desired behavior. Products that attach to these internal triggers provide users with quick relief."

He's essentially walking through how companies can hijack our modern notions of psychology to be more addicting. All modern social media is designed to give us this fix. Facebook prioritizes engagement over all other values, meaning that most of its content is fueled by anger. Twitter is arguably the same way, amplifying our moral outrage. Tik Tok is almost the epitome of Web 2.0, designed to keep users returning for more, regardless of the consequences. These sites did not set out to create meaningless drama (at least not initially), but their perverse incentive structures led to this outcome regardless.

Another structural problem that prevents us from going after the people who matter is that rich people can curate their online personas to minimize attention. You can shell out hundreds of dollars for services that delete your personal information from the Internet (e.g., DeleteMe) and secure it. If rich enough, you might even bring this work in-house, paying for a social media team to constantly look out for information to flag and suppress. It's hard to dunk on someone online when they don't have socials, and all the information about them is dry press releases most Twitter users aren't going to bother learning the existence of, let alone read.

However, to assign this problem simply to "human nature" or "systems" would be washing our hands of accountability. We can put in the work as individuals to not pile onto every nobody who says something stupid online. We can also start researching and targeting power holders that genuinely affect our lives and go after them instead.

I am not criticizing someone's decision to shame awful people. Shame works. It's a tactic I have recently had to admit is quite effective (see Cancel Culture Isn't About Winning An Argument). There is a long history of people using shame, call-out culture, canceling, or whatever you want to call it to push for political gains. You might want to look at the "me too" movement, ACT UP, the suffragettes, or really any successful political movement in the last two centuries (see Historically, Shame Has (Sometimes) Been A Good Thing).

Yet these groups were using shame in a targeted way. Activists had specific goals and objectives, placing their ire on people or institutions at the top of the hierarchy. They were not simply ranting for the hell of it because they were bored. These dogpiles we often see online are not activism but entertainment, and we have to reckon with how it's been detrimental to organizing.

The Solution to Cancelling

Right now, the use of shame is mainly decoupled from a political framework. Many people are not shaming others to achieve a policy objective but to revel in the feeling of judging and punishing another person.

Our information ecosystems are primarily to blame. Social media is not the best at creating meaningful dialogue and resolving disputes, but at a certain level, we have to take responsibility as individuals, or we won't ever be able to course-correct. And this means dunking less on random nobodies who say dumb shit and more on the people who are f@cking things up. People who are smart enough not to have a Twitter account and instead have curated their online personas, so they are not as easily accessible as your average person.

This also means not prioritizing people who build their careers, courting controversy (see Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, etc.). These men may harm others by perpetuating terrible narratives, and we should push back against them, but entertainers should not be our primary focus. These entertainers, and yes, that's what they are, are grifters using attention to rally their base for money and attention. They may be terrible, but they serve more as court jesters who distract the public from getting an audience from their kings.

Why don't we shame our kings?

We focus so frequently on celebrities. Rarely do we channel our frustrations at men like Jim Burke of Vistra Energy, Lynn Good of Duke Energy, or Thomas A. Fanning of Southern Company (all CEOs of some of the largest greenhouse gas polluters on the planet). These people should bear some of the most scrutiny, and yet I have heard little about them in recent years, and they are certainly not trending on Twitter for being "canceled." You would think that these people would be our focus?

And yet they are not.

Please, go after the kings of this world. The power brokers who are making decisions that harm us all. Not just the court jesters, and certainly not the peasants who say ignorant shit while plowing their lords' fields.

Alex Has Opinions 8/13/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/13/22

Why Aren't You Watching The Queer Show 'Dead End: Paranormal Park'?

Demons, possessions, trans representation, and awkward queer love.

Dead End: Paranormal Park is a young adult supernatural thriller based on the comic DeadEndia by Hamish Steele. It's about a neurodiverse Pakistani woman named Norma Khan (Kody Kavitha) and a trans man named Barney Guttman (Zach Barack) having adventures in the demonic-infested theme park, Phoenix Parks — a cross between Disneyworld and Dollywood. Norma and Barney battle demons, perform exorcisms, and along the way, become more confident versions of themselves — a staple of Young Adult (YA) media.

Yet the thing that sets this show apart is its unapologetic queerness. In an age where queer characters in kids' shows are often revealed subtextually, killed off prematurely, or have rushed introductions, Dead End: Paranormal Park proves that queerness can be perfectly natural in children's television.

If you have been watching kids' programming for a while now, it almost goes without saying that textual queerness has been a historical rarity. Many shows introduce a queer character only for them to be prematurely canceled. The Owl House, for example, received critical acclaim and yet was canceled shortly after its two woman leads, Luz and Amity, had an onscreen kiss. It will now finish off with a very condensed final, third season.

In the past, there have been ways to get around this problem. Some queer-coded shows will have textually queer side characters (e.g., "here are my two dads or moms," or a character with a queer pin) but not have much besides that. Others will subtextually code their leads as queer (e.g., blushing or acting flustered around a crush), but for actual confessions of love to only make it in the final season or even the final episode. The Legend of Kora, for example, had its two women leads holding hands in the final frame of the last episode (with creators having to confirm their queerness offscreen). Princess Bubblegum and Marceline of Adventure Time didn't get their kiss until the finale. Amphibia introduced not one but two rushed queer relationships in the final season, one being in the very last episode.

This hesitancy makes sense because creators have often had to battle with queerphobic producers and owners to get their queer characters aired. Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch, for example, has gone on the record saying that Disney forbade him from having a queer character. Series creator Rebecca Sugar has likewise mentioned having to fight producers for a wedding scene in Steven Universe between two woman characters, saying in a Reuters interview:

“We are held to standards of extremely bigoted countries. It took several years of fighting internally to get the wedding to happen. There are people who see what we’re doing as insidious and … they’re ignorant. So much bigotry is based on the idea that (LGBT+ content) is something inherently adult, which is entirely false.”

Hence, why the wedding scene happened at the end of the show's run. If you know that your show is ending anyway, why not load up on all the themes you wanted to be in there in the first place? It's not like you can get canceled. And so, in the past, many shows started out subtextually queer, or queer on the periphery, only for there to be a sudden series of confessions in the show's mad dash to the finish line.

Yet it seems like the industry is changing, at least in part. Dead End: Paranormal Park is standing on the shoulders of these creators, who have fought for more explicit representation, and as a result, it is queer as all hell from the very getgo. From the undead Pauline Phoenix (played by drag queen Clinton Leupp) to the demonic Zagan (played by Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, of Pose fame), many of these characters portray queer people and are voiced by queer actors.

As I stated earlier, protagonist Barney Guttman is textually coded as a trans man (and played by a trans person too). A central plot point involves him budding heads with his parents for not sticking up for him after dinner with his transphobic grandmother. He starts staying at Phoenix Park because he doesn't feel safe at home, and that emotional baggage is a primary tension on the show.

Barney is not just trans, but a gay man. He has a crush on hunk Logan "Logs" Nguyen (Kenny Tran), and a minor tension in the first season is the question of whether or not they will get together. Barney even sings a bop about how much he wants to date Logs in the song Just Some Guy. "It's not like I sit around just obsessing about his deep brown eyes," Barney belts wistfully.

Generally, I was pleasantly surprised by the representation on this show, and not just with queerness. While we don't know Norma's sexuality — though based on a mild flirtation, it's not unreasonable to assume that she might be a member of the family — we do know she is on the spectrum. Pauline Phoenix is one of the things Norma had obsessed over, a fact that comes to a head beautifully in the song My Frankenstein (side note: the musical episode is just amazing).

Norma also has intense anxiety, which is covered in depth in the episode Trust Me, where the gang goes to the beach and bumps into a fear demon. This conceit allows us to see Norma's perspective of the world — a rare thing since anxiety is usually shown unempathetically on television as a negative trait.

All in all, it was nice to get lost in a world where queer and neurodiverse people are front and center. As someone with both of these identities, I can't tell you how nice it was to see a tiny fraction of myself on the screen.

I think there are a lot of good moments here, and we need content like this now more than ever. We are currently undergoing a moral panic where the mere portrayal of queerness is being depicted as evil. Conservatives have labeled queer people pedophiles and groomers for simply being themselves.

In these dark times, it is nice to see a positive piece of queer representation that does not flinch from celebrating human difference. Barney is an out and proud trans man. Norma is a neurodiverse, brown woman who is strong and fearless. Children deserve to see characters like this — characters like them — reflected on the screen.

Dead End: Paranormal Park may not change the world, but it's a step in the right direction, and I think you and your kids should see it.

Alex Has Opinions 8/12/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/12/22

American Society Wants The Sick And Tired To Die

It seems like we want sick people like me to perish

I am sick a lot. Simple colds will knock me out for days or weeks, forcing me to pick up the pieces afterward. I have gotten into the habit of expecting gaps of fatigue and illness. I have had trouble being a "productive" member of society for years, and truthfully only exist right now because I have a robust support system.

When I ask my sick friends who don't have a safety net how they do it, the answer is that they soldier on through. They go to offices and restaurants with sniffles, fatigue, and headaches, suppressing coughs with over-the-counter medications and curealls they have learned from Instagram and TikTok.

Because they have to work, there are often no nets to catch them. And the ones who don't work—well, some are not around anymore. From where I am looking, it really does seem like we want the sick and tired to die.

Conversations of work and burnout are usually framed around non-disabled and non-sick people — and how they are overworked and one bad sick day away from financial ruin — but what about those already there? Millions of Americans have chronic illnesses. About one in four Americans have some form of disability.

What are they supposed to do? What am I, for this question is more than personal (its life and death)?

This society does not treat well people who cannot produce. America has what some have described as a "tattered" or nonexistent safety net with stringent work requirements. I remember my friend telling me once that even though she was in constant pain, she did not qualify for long-term disability because, as a knowledge-based worker, she didn't have to lift anything. The assessor told her that if "she could sit at a desk, she could work." I remind you — she was in constant pain.

Those living with a disability are more likely to be in debt, unemployed, and more likely to be in poverty overall. It should be noted that issues of poverty and disability or illness are not so easily separated from one other, as poverty can profoundly impact someone's disability status. As written in a report by the National Disability Institute:

“Children living in poverty are more likely to have asthma, chronic illness, environmental trauma such as lead poisoning, learning problems and low birth weight that lead to disabilities. People in more physically demanding jobs are also more likely to suffer workplace illnesses and injuries…Disability adversely affects employment possibilities and earnings. It also can impose additional costs on families, such as medical bills, transportation, modifications to their home and personal assistants.”

Since poverty can lead to disability and vice versa, this creates a vicious cycle as those in poverty are less likely to receive care, and those with disability are less likely to obtain work that will be able to pay for that care. Preventative conditions go untreated longer, leading to more severe "long-term" effects, and it should surprise no one that these trends stack with "otherized" identities such as race and gender.

Sadly, this leads to more deaths, some immediate, others that take far longer to play out. We speak in large brushes, but there seems to be a life expectancy gap between disabled and non-disabled adults (see this longitudinal survey on elderly adults). There is also tragically an increased risk of suicide for people with disability.

These statements aren't me being judgemental or self-hating but instead placing the blame on our society. Suicides and significant gaps in life expectancy are systemic failures. The expectation that some people should have shorter, more miserable lives is an admission of neglect.

The implication of this data seems to be clear: if you cannot produce, our society doesn't even pretend to care if you live or die. You get put on a patchwork of safety net programs that are more about protecting our collective guilt rather than actually helping people. We ignore the millions of people who wither away. And sure, maybe a fraction of those deaths might have happened anyway — we all die eventually — but many of us see our conditions worsen because we are denied the resources needed to mitigate them. What was preventative or manageable becomes more severe.

Most of us aren't even suffering from a terminal illness (although I want to stress that I believe everyone is deserving of respect and humanity). We're just tired, fatigued, in pain, depressed, or otherwise have a form of existence that prevents us from conforming to current norms of productivity. Our ability to produce is not competitive, and for that, we suffer the ultimate price. As Chris Costello writes in The Mighty of ableism's interconnectedness with capitalism:

“The discrimination and oppression of impaired people based on a manufactured category of disability rested on the underlying assumption that being “able-bodied” or “able-minded” was the social norm, the desirable default. Today, this attitude goes by the name “ableism.” It is part and parcel of capitalist society because production for profit at all costs means excluding workers who require individual accommodations. The state and other institutions, such as education and the media, promote ableist ideas by rationalizing our exclusion from the workplace. The stigma, while it originates in the workplace, goes beyond this sphere as well. It encompasses all realms of social existence.”

This whole situation is my problem with our current economic system. Even if you bolster the existing safety net, the underlying assumption is that we have no value on our own. We are people society must deign to care for. We are those who "risk slipping through the cracks," a burden, rather than vulnerable human beings, like all of us will be, in the end, deserving of resources for the mere fact that we are alive. As someone satirically answered to the question on Quora, Why should my taxes go towards welfare payments of people who do not engage in economic activity?:

“Are you immortal? If not, will you age? If so, you will not be able to work. I hope you’re saving, because why would we spend money on YOU.
Are you healthy? If so, will you never get sick? If you get too sick to work, why would we spend any money on YOU.”

This reality builds a relationship based on resentment rather than care and vulnerability. We are people who must be grateful for the resources given to us, no matter how paltry they are, because they are ultimately framed as a form of benevolent charity. The giver of these resources is therefore allowed to not only feel superior for giving them but entitled to take them away at any moment. After all, those given resources based on the benevolence of others are entitled to nothing.

And make no mistake, everyone will be in this position eventually. Even if you exercise, diet, have the resources for the best doctors, and have stellar genetics, you too will ultimately wither away into nothingness. Some might have enough resources to bribe others to care for them as they exit life, an arrogant bet, to be sure, but the vast majority will not. Most of us will need someone to care for our ailing bodies during our Twilight years, and there will be nothing profitable about it.

I ask you: Does life have inherent value?

Do the sick and tired deserve to die if they cannot produce?

Do I?

These are the questions I need you to grabble with the next time you tell people like me that they are lazy and underserving of care. This isn't a mere rhetorical disagreement or a clashing of words. It is a decision over who lives and who dies, and I think you need to decide what kind of society you would like to live in: one that will care for you, or one that will watch you die?

Alex Has Opinions 8/9/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/9/22

We Shouldn't Care If Someone's "Faking" Being Queer For Attention

So what if people are "pretending" to be gay or trans?

There is this odd narrative that gay, bi, and trans people are just being queer for attention. For the past couple of years, there has been a lot of discourse around the concept of "transtrenders" (i.e., people who allegedly aren't "real" trans individuals and are just identifying as such for attention). Before this, countless straight people claimed this same thing for gay and bi people. We were "just being dramatic" or "going through a phase."

Over the years, many activists have tried to refute these points by citing the obvious fact that most people do not want to take on more stigma and discrimination for Internet clout. It's not a formula that makes much sense. If you wanted to get a lot of attention with little risk, I'd recommend being a conservative. It certainly pays better.

Yet I think that these dismissals miss the point. The arguments these conservatives are making have nothing to do with the facts but are instead about trivializing people's identities so they can be dismissed. Arguing against these points does nothing more than validate a conservative's transphobia on their own terms when it's they who must defend their nonsense points.

We do not need to defend the claim that we are "not being queer for attention" because there's nothing terrible about identifying as queer for any reason. Turn the argument around and ask yourself, what is so bad about being queer for clout?

Asking the straights

This is the question these critics never have a good answer for, and it's peculiar because it's their whole thesis. Even if you are actively anti-LGBT — the entire concept of queer people being happy just actively enrages you — what exactly do you think will happen if someone chooses to be queer for attention?

It can't be about procreation. Most queer people are not, in fact, gay but bisexual, which means that many of them will continue to reproduce in the same way straight people reproduce. There are plenty of bi people in a monogamous relationship between a cis man and a cis woman, producing children the "natural" way. There are also plenty of trans people giving birth the "natural" way as well. Not to mention all the queer people adopting children that straight, cisgender society has abandoned.

This claim that we shouldn't be queer for attention has nothing to do with our species' survival. In fact, if we are being technical, even if our civilization became predominantly gay, that doesn't mean we would stop producing children. We know this because it doesn't happen in the animal Kingdom among the queerest of animals.

For example, Giraffe males overwhelmingly have more homosexual sex than heterosexual sex. However, their species still continues on because, contrary to popular opinion, having same-sex sexual activity doesn't prevent you from having opposite-sex sexual activity. You can stick your dick in a dude one today, a woman the next, and an enby the following one, and this sex doesn't invalidate your ability to produce a child. You only need one sperm to make its journey to the egg one time to have a kid.

So I ask again, what is so terrible with being queer for attention? Will a bomb go off that I don't know about?

Every time people talk about the problem with people "choosing" to be queer, they always bring up concepts like "the family" or "marriage," but that's just word salad. These are institutions we as humans made up, and they have changed dramatically across time and space. A 7th-century Greecian marriage was nothing like a marriage today. Neither were the robust family structures of ancient hunter-gatherers like the 1950 nuclear family.

If your argument is that something is wrong because it has changed, then you could make the same case against straight people (see Debating the Morality of Heterosexuality). Heterosexuality as an identity is relatively very recent. It came into being in the 1860s, with the previous focus being on sexual activity rather than sexuality as an identity. It took a while for heterosexuality to have its current meaning. As recently as 1923, Merriam Webster's dictionary defined heterosexuality as "morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex."

Since the current framing of heterosexuality has been mass adopted in our society, few have argued that its invention was dangerous to the relationship structures that preceded it. Yet under the logic that reactionaries are espousing, you can assert the same question here. Heterosexuality was considered morbid and degenerate at one time. Were these straight people choosing to be heterosexual for attention? Didn't people "choosing to be straight" undermine the way previous family and marriage structures worked?

Because apparently, being popular and different makes your lifestyle wrong, for some reason.

Asking the queers

This argument makes even less sense from someone who claims to support queer rights. From my perspective as someone who advocates for queer liberation, if more and more people decide to be queer, assuming that is something someone can "decide," then isn't that a good thing?

It means that the world is safe enough for there to be genuine social benefits to being queer, and that sure as hell beats the discrimination and hatred that used to be the norm (and for many still is). It ultimately would be a good thing that someone would feel like they could not only gain acceptance as a queer person but that queerness could bring them prestige. If you support queer rights, what is the drawback of queerness conferring social benefits? Isn't part of the goal of liberation being able to accrue more power for your community?

There are many "concerned" queer people out there who think that all of these trendy gays and trans people are giving the "rest of us" a bad name because, well, there usually isn't much of an explanation given besides just that it's terrible. When you prod, the argument seems to come down to non-queer people judging queer influencers and then taking away all queer people's rights in the process. As Conservative Trans YouTuber Blaire White remarked in 2020:

“[There] are people who appropriate being trans for attention. You can act like they don’t exist. [But] they do….I feel like the existence of gender dysphoria validates trans people on a scientific level and [allows] other people to see that its not really a choice that we feel or behave this way….I feel like [appropriating transness] deeply contributes to the fact that LGBT acceptance has been going down for the first time in decades.”

Firstly, the problem with this argument that "changing the definition of queerness" is causing straight people to hate us is that straight people, by and large, don't hate us. Polling shows high support among the American public for things like same-sex marriage, same-sex sex, and trans people serving in the military. Blaire and others are confusing our oligarchy's ability to pass laws with the opinions of the public as a whole.

This argument also ignores that many people are initially afraid to openly identify as queer because of stigma, so they instead use irony and deflection as a defense mechanism. The appropriation argument doesn't work because queerness isn't like race. It's an internal identity. There have been plenty of "ironic" queers who turn out to openly identify as queer years later after they have become more comfortable with themselves. There is truthfully no way to tell the difference between a "fake" queer and a repressed queer, and this gatekeeping pushes the latter deeper into the closet.

Yet even if someone is indeed being a troll by "falsely" identifying as queer, why should I care?

Going back to the years when most straight people in the US did actually hate queer people, it's not exactly like they were rolling out the red carpet for us. Decades of silence did not lead to liberation but perpetuated the oppressive status quo. There is a rich history of queer people (and indeed many oppressed identities) attempting respectability politics in the hopes that it will convince straight, white racist, patriarchal society to treat us all better, only for the opposite to happen. Famously the Mattachine Society, still raw from events like the Lavender Scare, often operated in secret. It self-policed its members and demanded things such as dressing in formal attire for demonstrations. Tactics that were not very successful.

Only when organizers started becoming more confrontational with the pride riot of 1969 (spearheaded by femme, queer people of color) did history begin to move in a more positive direction. As the infamous saying goes, "pride started as a riot." Many of the most successful queer movements have relied on direct confrontation, often invading the personal spaces of politicians, journalists, and other public figures.

If you are the type of queer person who thinks that respectability politics will lead to greater acceptance, history does not support you on this matter. You may think homophobic or transphobic people will spare you from discrimination because you are "one of the good ones" and doing things "the right way," but that strategy has never worked for our community before.

Just look at Milo Yiannopoulos and Dave Rubin. After years of building up conservative goodwill, their audiences have quickly turned on them for being "degenerates." Milo has since renounced his sexuality, and Dave Rubin was hounded by "fans" for starting a family with his husband.

None of us are immune from that kind of backlash.

Asking everybody

These arguments are not rooted in actual logic but emotion. Bigots are worried about everyone becoming queer because they just hate queer people. We are icky to them, and moral panic allows them to discriminate against us, or in the case of self-hating queer people, to fuel their resentment of "non-normative" queers rejecting the more repressive paths they had to go through.

Yet this emotional reality doesn't mean we should consider their arguments seriously. Rather than painstakingly dispute the question of whether "queers are choosing to be queer for attention," we should treat these illogical positions as illogical and place conservatives on the defensive instead.

What's the big deal if someone decides to be queer for Internet points?

Because I cannot think of a reason that merits actual consideration, go ahead; I'm waiting.

Alex Has Opinions 8/5/22 Alex Has Opinions 8/5/22

Exploring Toxic Motherhood In "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"

Magical powers, alternate dimensions, anti-vaxxers, and homophobia

The second Doctor Strange movie, the Multiverse of Madness (MoM), tackles a lot of elements. It serves as not only a vehicle to expand on the multiverse (a real, theoretical concept, if you believe it) where the MCU is now connected to an infinite amount of parallel universes, but an informal introduction to mutants, as well as a sequel to the first Doctor Strange movie and the TV show WandaVision. That's a lot to cover here, but the MCU has always weaved countless threads at once: that's kind of its whole point.

The critical response to MoM has been mixed. Some loved it. Some hated it. Many more thought it was just okay. My personal take is that although it was fun to see characters like America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez-Deines) and Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier, the film did not utilize its multiverse concept very well. After watching Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, I kept waiting for MoM to up the ante on fantastical premises, only for that moment never to arrive.

Yet, it's the motivation of the primary antagonist of MoM, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), that I want to focus on here. Her desire to be a mother at any cost represents how the institution of motherhood can be a toxic force in our society, and I think that is a topic worthy of discussion.

What is Motherhood?

Note: I am not calling individual mothers toxic or evil. We are talking about motherhood as a social construct, by which I mean a concept created by collective "consensus" in our society. It can also be viewed as an institution (i.e., a structure with specific rules, norms, and expectations, usually enforced through direct and indirect violence). In other words, motherhood is a concept we have not only made up but one we have actively encouraged others to follow.

This statement may be controversial to some who believe that motherhood is a natural phenomenon intrinsic to the human experience, but the truth is that the way society has conceptualized childrearing has changed throughout history, even within the context of the US. Mothers used to be far more hands-off with primary childcare than they are today, with expectations of parenthood having increased dramatically over the years.

The further back we go, the more things get "stranger" from our perspective. For much of European history, childrearing was a devalued activity that aristocratic women would happily outsource to wet nurses, nannies, and other institutions of care. As Cait Stevenson wrote about the medieval era: "Wet nursing was a low status, low paying task, even in the context of 'women's work.'" Which is quite the contrast to today, where breastfeeding from mothers is heavily encouraged.

Going back even further, anthropologist Blaffer Hrdy has argued that originally childrearing had far more cooperation between the sexes. It relied on a dense network of care between parents and "alloparents" (i.e., grandparents, siblings, friends, etc.) and truthfully still does. Mothers, Hrdy argues, were never biologically wired to raise children all on their own. As the old saying goes, "it takes a village."

Yes, people get pregnant, and if they are lucky enough, the children they have receive some form of care, but our current conceptualization of what that care is — i.e., motherhood and family — is enforced through both incentives and violence. From child support to marriage, there are all sorts of institutions that reward motherhood, not to mention social recognition, especially if you hold an identity that would otherwise "other" you. In the words of writer Sarah Schulman in describing queer, single moms:

“Single motherhood, which is significant among queer women, has its own specific emotional pitfalls. One’s self-perception as a romantic failure or as a failed partner may be erased by the kind of normativity produced by motherhood. Queer women without partners are particularly vulnerable to the promise of legitimacy and social worth if they subsume sex and love into parenting…”

This desire to strive for motherhood as an act of normalcy is not surprising. Not long ago, women in the states were legally bound to the role of mother and spouse, often not being able to own property. While women's legal rights have increased in some parts of the world, this mindset that women are meant to be mothers and mothers alone still exists to this day. Single women are judged very harshly for deciding not to be mothers and are often pressured to take on this role by their peers and family.

So what does all this sociology nonsense have to do with the Multiverse of Madness, and more specifically, what does it have to do with Wanda Maximoff?

Wanda and Toxic Motherhood

Even though Wanda has godlike powers, she is still a woman in our society and susceptible to the pressure of achieving normalcy through motherhood. Like with what Schulman suggests, she seeks the role of mother to “make up for” her perceived failures as a romantic partner and an “other.”

The show WandaVision has her clinging to an idealized fantasy of motherhood as a coping mechanism for the death of her lover Vision (Paul Bettany). She enslaves the town of Westview and puppets its residents to act out a suburban fantasy where she creates a psychic version of Vision and two fake children to playact being a mother. Wanda is doing the one thing society is telling women to do, albeit in a twisted way.

The Multiverse of Madness, or MoM for short, heightens this desire. Wanda knows through her interactions with the Darkhold —i.e., an evil magical book that has "corrupted" her — that the multiverse has a version of reality where her fake children from Westview are real. Wanda now wants to travel to this reality because she believes she could be "happy" there, saying: "If you knew there was a universe where you were happy, wouldn't you want to go there?"

Given everything we've talked about so far, it's not hard to understand why she would think this way. People genuinely believe motherhood is, if not a justification, at least an empathetic reason for unspeakable acts of terror. As one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer commented on this film: "The trauma of losing parents and siblings and spouses and the desire for a mother to be with her children, combined with unlimited power and a demonic influence (the dark hold) it's the most awesome and believable motivation."

Wanda does a lot of terrible things to reach her objective of motherhood. She kills many people, including an alternate version of Captain Marvel and Mr. Fantastic, but she is doing so, she justifies, to protect her "children." "What if they get sick?" Wanda rationalizes on why she must drain America Chavez of her dimension-hopping powers, most likely killing America in the process. "In the infinite Multiverse, there's a cure for every illness. A solution to every problem. I won't lose them again."

Truthfully our society allows mothers and the patriarchs they serve to do a lot of awful acts under the banner of "protecting their children." For example, the anti-vaxxer movement is often framed by proponents as mothers defending their children from harm. Early support for this movement came from the irrational fear that vaccines would cause autism. While the initial paper that generated this fear has since been debunked, it has not stopped mothers from rallying around the general concern that vaccines are harmful. As one former anti-vaxxer described of her experience within the movement: "it's almost, like, thinking like you have this cheat code to keep your kids healthy, to keep your kids from getting autism and allergies and whatever else …they blame vaccines for everything."

Even though the diseases brought on by a lack of vaccination are far worse than the ableist fear of autism, it's this moral right to protect one's child over the collective good that comes up time and time again. As nurse Heather Dillard told CBS News: "I have the right to decide what to put into my child's body. Nobody has the right to put toxic chemicals into my son's bloodstream. That's taking my rights away, and it's very scary to me." It's all about the parent's individual right to protect their children, regardless of what harm that does to other families.

The concept of motherhood and "protecting one's children" is often used on a societal level to harm all sorts of people. Right now, we are going through a moral panic, as conservatives claim that LGBTQ+ people are grooming children when really what they are doing is being openly queer. This reactionary backlash is, unfortunately, being used as a justification to pass all sorts of terrible laws, and the construct of motherhood is front and center here. "I will do anything I can to protect kids," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said after promising to introduce a national "Don't Say, Gay Bill."

From this perspective, Wanda is a dark mirror of the real thoughts and opinions of mothers all over this country. Give any one of these mothers the Godlike powers of the Scarlet Witch, and who knows what she would do.

A Maddening Conclusion

Ultimately, the Multiverse of Madness, or MoM, skewers these desires by making them the primary motivation of its villain — a refreshing change given that many marvel villains have historically had leftist motivations (see The MCU is for Rich People). With Wanda, we see how far the modern conception of motherhood can be pushed, and it's downright toxic.

The movie rejects Wanda's twisted form of motherhood. Her desires are not seen as justified, and it's the collective welfare of children that is advocated for. "Is there no peace in knowing that even though you can't be with the ones you love, there are worlds where you are together?" Sorcerer Supreme asks Wanda, a message that her alternative self eventually repeats back to her at the end of the film. This is the opposite moral of our society's "my children come first" mentality.

As we can see, it's not enough to want to protect your children, or in Wanda's case, to conjure them into existence. You have to care about other people too. And in an era where motherhood is often used as a pretext to perpetuate selfishness and harm others, the Multiverse of Madness refreshingly tells its viewers that there is more to think about than your individual family.

Alex Has Opinions 7/27/22 Alex Has Opinions 7/27/22

'Teaching A Robot To Love:' The Anti-Capitalist Musical For Our Times

A story about love, queer relationships, & the death of capitalism

By the time a mainstream musical passes the many eyes and hands it takes to write, film, produce, and circulate it, chances are that the moderating influence of "those on top" have taken out a lot of its bite. It's hard (though not impossible) to make a work that criticizes traditional, mainstream institutions when those benefiting from said institutions are cofinancing your art.

This problem is not new, but the Internet has improved things by allowing people to raise funds from those outside the finance class. From the board game Frosthaven to turning Critical Role into an animated special, all sorts of exciting projects have been independently financed.

I can think of no better example to prove this rule than the indie band The Doubleclicks, who recently raised funds for the musical Teaching a Robot to Love (TARTL), a story about overthrowing capitalism, transhumanism, and queer love. This musical manages to straddle the line between not being too tragic or painful while still packing a punch, the way only a queer creator can deliver.

TARTL is excellent on many levels. For one, the characters are adorable. Singer Laser Webber did a great job writing this play with a lot of great comedic moments. We have everything from a funny slacker named Billie Pepper to the evil tech CEO Mr. Norton Norton. These may be archetypes we've seen before, but they are written well, with great comedic timing. Building a robot out of a human brain may sound like a horrifying plot, but coming out of the lips of standout Faun Terra (played by Jessica Reiner-Harris in the Fringe showing), they were an absolute delight.

An added benefit of being written by a queer writer is that the play manages to have a lot of diverse, queer representation. There is a lesbian romance, multiple nonbinary characters, and the central plot has a transparent trans metaphor about an AI realizing they are not in "the right body."

At one point, the AI character MARSH sings a song titled Why Aren't You Happy? which reflects on the feeling of not being accepted after transitioning. It was devastating in all the best ways. Lyrics like "I'm finally shaped like my mind says I should be. My parts are all fitting in the right place. Why aren't you happy"?" brought me to tears as I reflected on my own nonbinary journey, and I am sure many queer fans will be able to relate.

Perhaps my favorite part of this musical — and apologies for the spoilers — is that we aren't given a tragic queer love story. As Shannon Gaffney, NYC theater critic, tells Broadway World: "LGBTQIA+ musical theatre representation is often focused in trauma or mockery, but this musical changes the game." It is a celebration of queer life, and that makes it a treat to watch.

There is also some refreshing neurodiverse representation in the way of programmer Mary Coral (played by Aliza Pearl), who is shown to struggle with human interaction. Jokes like "Oh, look, video games. That is an activity with boundaries. I will do that." are not only fun but made from the lens of someone who clearly understands what it's like to be a neurodiverse person. Mary's struggle to grabble with change is one the viewer comes to understand very intimately, making the closing line of the musical ("You get better when you change") all that much more meaningful.

Furthermore, if you a fan of biting commentary on capitalism, that is pretty much what this play is about. AI MARSH was created by a tech conglomerate named Advernado, trying to understand what people want to buy before they buy it, only for MARSH to spurn this desire. "Spending and getting isn't sustainable. It leads to more wants that are seldom attainable," MARSH sings to Mr. Norton as they boot up in the catchy song Software Testing 404. "But I'll give you a fix if you glance through my prism — What you need is the toppling of capitalism."

One of the many walkway messages of the musical is that we must abandon the "moving fast and breaking things" narrative of Silicon Valley (and capitalism in general) in favor of one that values human diversity and change. "We don't throw away a chapter just because we turn the page," goes a line in the last song of the musical. With TARTL, Laser Webber is practically pleading with its audience to abandon the notion that people should be discarded just because change is on the horizon.

So now that I have hyped up this musical, the only problem is that watching it might be a problem. The pain of indie projects is that they don't have the circulation of larger products.

Teaching A Robot To Love has already ended its initial release, so if you want to see it in a city near you, you will have to support it.

Check out The Album:

Check Out The Game:

Alex Has Opinions 7/25/22 Alex Has Opinions 7/25/22

The Best Reality TV Shows Are Happening On Dropout TV

College Humor, Nerdy Game Shows, & Comedy Gold.

Comedy has not had the best luck on the Internet over the last few years. The comedy streaming service Seeso shut down in 2017. Cracked fired much of its video staff the following year, causing them to spread to the Internet winds (see Maggie Mae Fish, Cody Johnston, etc.). College Humor went with these creators in 2020 after its parent company InterActive Corp. dropped the brand, allegedly forcing the CEO Sam Reich to lay off over a hundred staff to buy CH Media, the name for College Humor.

Yet it may surprise you that College Humor isn't dead but rather has blossomed. From nerdy game shows to fantastic D&D campaigns, some of the best reality TV Shows right now are being put forth by this brand.

When InterActive Corp. pulled the plug, College Humor had actually been going through a transitionary period. Realizing that the ad model of the Internet wasn't working for them, they launched a subscription platform called Dropout TV that not only hosted their classic comedic shorts but longer scripted content.

If you check out Dropout TV's library, you can see the legacy of this rapid growth period. Funny shows, like Gods of Food, a parody food documentary, or the sequel to the Toddlers & Tiaras spoof Precious Plum called See Plum Run, which comments on the 2016 presidential election. These shows were trying to take the classic College Humor formula and apply it to larger and longer content. These shows had a relatively impressive production value to them, with celebrity appearances from comedians like Mary Patrick Gleason and Betsy Sodaro.

The 2020 layoff made this production impossible. Every actor was fired except for two performers — Mike Trapp and Brennan Lee Mulligan. The shows these comedians were putting out before the layoff were two popular reality shows. Mike Trapp's was, Um, Actually, a fun nerdy game show about pedantic corrections. Brennan Lee Mulligan's was Dimension 20, a D&D comedy show. This was content that did not require the same resources as Gods of Food or See Plum Run and could be pumped out far more quickly and cheaply.

Since then, these two shows have reached a tremendous amount of success. Dimension 20 has over 1.5 million followers across all socials (the biggest being TikTok with over 700,000). And Um, Actually is not falling too far behind at just shy of a million.

Dimension 20 also has the added benefit of being a very iterative show, with Brennan Lee Mulligan doing a different theme every season. From 1980s fantasy to outer space, Brennan is constantly toying with new genres and topes, bringing on other comedians to fit various roles. In one season, he brought on the Mackelroy Brothers for a season of tiny creatures doing a heist, and in another, nerd influencers like Erika Ishii and Amy Vorpahl.

In later seasons, Brennan isn't always the Game Master (GM). He has brought on other talented GMs like Aabria Iyengar of Critical Role fame and game design superstar Gabe Hicks to make this brand more than just about him. This allows every season to feel fresh as new creative voices not only come in as players but as architects for the season.

With these two successes, the network has been able to rebuild, and we are seeing them launch even more new reality shows. Recently, there was the release of the show Dirty Laundry. Hosted by Lily Du, the show is about contestants trying to guess who submitted which "shameful" secret. The series has not even been out too long and already has enjoyed moderate success sitting at around half a million followers.

Another is Game Changer, where every new episode has players participating in a completely different game show. This series technically started before the College Humor Layoff but has recently resumed production to tremendous success. The series has over a million followers across all social, the biggest being Tik Tok.

Cleverly, CEO Sam Reich has started to use the Game Changer series almost like a reality show incubator. Dropout has already spun off the premise for one of the episodes in this series, called Make Some Noise, where contestants have to do various sound-based skits. It's quite frankly impressive to see how versatile and creative they are being with their content.

Looking back to where College Humor and even Dropout TV started, it has had quite a transformation. For cost reasons, the company has moved away from scripted comedy to the reality TV shows that are now its bread and butter, and they are performing exceptionally well. Dimension 20 and Um, Actually are powerhouses that have allowed the network to build up quite the library.

Part of this success is bittersweet. The content they were putting out before the layoff was funny and impressive in its own right. It's sad that the legacy of College Humor shorts had to end just because one company refused to (cheaply) let go of IP it wasn't even interested in using anymore (note to executives out there — don't be dicks like this).

Yet that being said, it's impressive what Dropout TV has managed to achieve in a very short period. In an age where independent comedy has been tough to sustain, unless you have a big streaming service behind you or an even more powerful personal brand, Dropout shows us that it's still entirely possible for subversive comedy to succeed if even thrive.

Alex Has Opinions 7/12/22 Alex Has Opinions 7/12/22

Cancel Culture Isn't About Winning An Argument

Countering the idea that you shouldn't shame others because it's a bad tactic

I have recently done a 180 on "Cancel Culture," or what I call "the politics of shame." I was once an avid supporter of the idea that you shouldn't shame others as a tenant of political organizing (see Unpacking the Deadly Politics of Shame), but recently I have changed my mind. Shame can sometimes have excellent results in the realm of politics (see Historically, Shame Has (Sometimes) Been A Good Thing), and we do ourselves a disserve in disavowing it.

(Note — I am not referring to disinformation campaigns or the harassment of powerless individuals. We are talking here about using shame to "punch up" at public and private officials in positions of authority who have stopped being accountable).

Some might counter that this tact is not helpful with the individuals we use it against and even damaging to both the target and the user (see Brene Brown's work I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't) to learn more about this perspective). Yet I am not convinced these are good enough reasons to abandon shame altogether. The rationale for why I favor this tactic has everything to do with two central questions:

What audience are you trying to reach?
And what is your goal?

Although shame is not the best tactic for deradicalization, it can be very effective when you abandon the idea that politics is a one-on-one argument where you are trying to change everyone's mind.

Some shameful definitions

First things first, what do we mean by the politics of shame? Shame as an emotion is the intense pain we feel at ourselves for violating a perceived social norm. Shame is focused on the moral standing of an individual rather than on their actions.

Shame is not to be confused with embarrassment, which is a more temporary feeling, or guilt, which involves the same process as shame but is centered on a specific action instead of our character. As Annette Kämmerer writes in Scientific American about the difference between the two: "…when we feel shame, we view ourselves in a negative light ("I did something terrible!"), whereas when we feel guilt, we view a particular action negatively ("I did something terrible!)."

And so, the politics of shame would be using this emotion to remove people from power by making them or their peers feel ashamed about their character — though organizers are not shy about weaponizing guilt or embarrassment. In this context, shame is ultimately a tool that leverages ostracization and self-flagellation in the hope of limiting someone's influence and power.

You may also know it as "canceling," "callout culture," or a thousand other things, but I will not be using these terms (other than in the title for SEO purposes) because they have become so misappropriated that they no longer have much utility. At this point, conservatives pretty much use canceling to describe anything they don't like (see The Victim Complex at the Heart of Conservative Cancel Culture).

I want to stress that shaming others doesn't always involve spreading rumors or disinformation. You can often shame someone by simply stating the truth that they have harmed yourself or others, and then rearticulating this harm over and over again. I want to be clear that the mass articulation of the truth, even if done dramatically, is often enough, in my opinion, to shame abusers.

Sometimes, you aren't trying to convince someone

Critics of shame will usually argue that it is a terrible tactic for convincing someone that they are wrong. As I have argued: "Shame is not always the best motivator for pushing people to action. It can sometimes become toxic, leading to intense self-loathing that is internalized to the point that it alters our self-image."

A few critics go even further and claim that it is psychologically scarring. As Krystine I. Batcho, Ph.D., writes in Psychology Today: "Even in cases where shame successfully diminishes a behavior, one should ask, "at what price?" Shame can become internalized, and the shamed person begins to view him or herself in ways consistent with the disapproval."

Truthfully I don't disagree with these points. Shame undeniably makes people inward and withdrawn. It doesn't help with deradicalization (e.g., causing someone to abandon more extreme views), and if your goal is to get a person to change their mind, it's a terrible tactic to use.

Here is the thing, though, deradicalization often isn't the goal for many targets of shame. The goal is usually de-platforming (e.g., removing someone from power by pressuring their peers, patrons, and business partners to cut ties) or threatening social ostracization unless they stop a certain action. It has nothing to do with modifying someone's behavior and everything to do with limiting it instead. Shame is what you use when you've basically given up on the idea of having proper mediation.

For example, the goal of many "me too" campaigns wasn't to deradicalize men such as Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby but to remove abusers from power so they couldn't enact abuses on the women around them. We now know from reporting that these men were manipulating their power (and the law) to coerce women into silence. There was never going to be a reconciliation in that situation because these men were deadset on the truth behind their abuse never being revealed — and you can't mediate a dispute when one party has the determination and power to refuse the reality of the situation.

Likewise, the goal of de-platforming men such as Milo Yiannopoulos (i.e., the far-right troll who made a name for himself on Breitbart) wasn't to deradicalize him but about limiting his influence because it was determined to be toxic. He was using his platform to harass others. Milo infamously harassed a transgender student with way less power than him (the opposite of what I am calling for in this article). He actively manipulated the spectacle of conversation and debate to deflect responsibility and harm others. He was never going to treat a face-to-face discussion seriously. Although the preferred outcome would be for him to stop being a supremacist, at least now, his supremacy is limited (fingers crossed).

In the activist space, there is this tiring battle between whether deradicalization is the best tactic against supremacy and fascism or if the better tactic is de-platforming. On an individual level, these two tactics are mutually exclusive. You cannot both ostracize someone and deradicalize them at the same time. But on a movement level, these two tactics are not technically in conflict because they are both reaching for the same goal: the limitation of a supremacist ideology. It's just one side is doing that by removing the supremacist's platform and the other by changing their mind.

This dissonance is what I want people to internalize. It's okay to employ different tactics for different types of people. For some people, it's better to shoot for deradicalization, while de-platforming and ostracization are more realistic options for others. It would be wonderful if we had systems of accountability and repair that allowed us to reach a consensus with every conflict, but some people are so powerful, so unaccountable, and quite frankly so abusive that removal is the only option available (and even here, it's not always successful). Many "canceled" people go on to have very prosperous careers.

For example, we aren't able to have a mediated conversation with men like Donald Trump because he's not operating in good faith and will leverage any attempt to converse with him to deflect, harass, and manipulate. We know this because he has done it constantly throughout his history. Whenever a reporter or activist has brought up his record, he has not only denied easily-confirmable facts but has actively lied about them. People would mention something he had recently said or done, and he would instead claim that that thing never happened. And because he was and still is a powerful white man, he never had to modify his behavior. It's the height of arrogance to assume that history wouldn't repeat itself again.

Yet that's what many people who discourage the use of shame effectively do. Dissenters look at powerful, bad-faith actors and tell you that the best thing to do is to waste your time and energy on a conversation that will probably go nowhere. They give this advice despite a history showing that said actors will not engage with you in good faith. In fact, we can confidently say that these actors will instead use this opportunity to deny the reality of the situation and disseminate falsehoods.

That’s not a recipe for good politics. While we all want to live in a world where we can hash out our differences through conversation, the reality is that there are some people we must remove from power first before any talks of repair or deradicalization with them can take place.

A shameful conclusion

The real question becomes, "when do you decide to use punishment over reconciliation?"

For one, it's essential to know who to focus on. A lot of social media activism involves dumping on nobodies with bad takes, and I do not think this is particularly helpful. Seasoned activists usually direct their ire at more significant targets, or they infiltrate groups designed to perpetuate supremacist ideology, such as when ANTIFA activists infiltrate hate groups online to stop their spread.

Another distinction comes in determining what academic Sarah Schulman would describe as the difference between "conflict" (i.e., a disagreement between two parties on the same footing) and "abuse." Abuse here is not defined as parties in dispute or even saying mean words to one another, but when someone takes advantage of a one-sided power dynamic. Classic examples include everything from an individual weaponizing finances against their partner, to a cop using their position of authority to hurt and kill the citizens they "protect," to a country using their military to bomb another one into the stone age. For Schulman, a power imbalance is a core feature of abuse, and I think it's an important framework for our conversation on when to use shame.

When do you shame someone? When that person is being abusive (i.e., they are exploiting a power imbalance against you). They are a politician passing a law taking away your rights or refusing to help you during a crisis. They are a CEO who strips away your benefits or crushes your company's union. These are great targets for the use of shame.

Now, as Schulman argues, sometimes, people will weaponize the language of abuse to avoid accountability (see the entire Groomer Debate). Real work must be done to determine the difference between conflict and abuse. We must first ask ourselves what responsibility we hold in the situation and if the power dynamic is indeed one-sided before we throw around powerful labels such as abuse.

Yet I disagree with Schulman (and others) when she claims that shunning is always wrong and unethical. Just because the potential exists to misappropriate this language doesn't mean we should avoid the tactic of shame altogether. Shame is the option we choose when the situation has become so abusive that repair is impossible without first removing or limiting the influence of officials in power. It is the step right before breaking out the Molotov cocktails. The thing you use when your government or community has abandoned you or is actively harming you.

And hopefully, it doesn't have to stop with shame. Once the person is removed from power (assuming that ever happens), you should be able to switch tactics and let them know how they can repair the damage they have done.

Because ultimately, isn't that the goal, to live in a world where even terrible people are given a path toward redemption?

Alex Has Opinions 7/5/22 Alex Has Opinions 7/5/22

The Problem With ‘Moon Knight’ & Mental Health

Eygpt, The MCU, Mental Health, & Dissociative Identity Disorder

Moon Knight is a show about a person (Oscar Isaac) given superpowers by the Egyptian God of the Moon Khonshu. This vigilante's goal is to fight wrongdoers. He is pitted against Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), the servant of Ammit, who wants to judge wrongdoers before they commit their crimes. Along the way, we get a story about magical powers, kooky hijinks, and most surprisingly of all, a perspective on mental illness that although mixed, is not as harmful as the works that came before it.

Although Disney has somewhat improved with its presentation of race and gender (see titles such as Moana, Encanto, Turning Red, etc.), mental health has been one of many areas where Disney has historically lagged, even to the present day. Titles such as Cruella and Loki often have had narratives that don’t have a very nuanced approach to mental health (and this is me being polite).

This gap is what has made the TV show Moon Knight so interesting, as it tackles a character with DID in a way that is marginally better than previous works. The show is by no means a trailblazer in this area, but it's also not as offensive as past Disney properties.

The question then becomes: is surpassing that low bar enough?

The Very Recent History of Disney Telling Offensive Stories on Mental Health

To reiterate, Disney has put out a lot of properties recently that do not portray mental health well. A pretty bad example is the show Falcon and the Winter Soldier — an MCU property about two B-listers struggling to reckon with their identities after the fallout of Avengers: End Game. The character Bucky Barnes AKA the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) has a therapist (played by Amy Aquino) named Dr. Christina Raynor, and the way she practices mental health is just awful. She’s aggressive and prodding, and openly mocks Bucky’s defense mechanisms. As Gregory Lawrence writes in Collider:

“Who’d want to spill their innermost secrets to this force who obviously has an aggressive agenda?” The scene attempts to justify some of this behavior by reminding us that Dr. Raynor is a soldier who’s seen combat herself. But the moment a therapist tells you “That’s utter bullshit” is the moment you find a new therapist, dramatic license or not.”

In one scene in particular Dr. Christina Raynor forces the two characters to do a couple’s therapy exercise— something that to me (and many others) was played homoerotically for laughs. Raynor again mocks their discomfort, saying lines such as “No volunteers? How surprising,” and “Sweet Jesus.” Not only is this not great therapy — it's pretty destructive therapy — that, on a metatextual level, does not make the practice of therapy desirable for those who are already on the fence.

In another example, the media critic Lindsay Ellis described how Disney’s depiction of narcissism, particularly for the characters Loki and Tony Stark, relied on the harmful trope of linking this stigmatized condition to megalomania. As she lays out in her video Loki, the MCU, and Narcissism: “the reality is that narcissists may behave in hurtful ways but they are not inherently evil…narcissistic personality disorder does not implicate any kind of off-kilter moral barometer.”

Yet not only do most narcissists in Disney works fit this category (e.g. Thanos, Ego, etc.), but by the time either Tony Stark or Loki, get to be heroes in their own shows and films, their narcissism is effectively messaged away so they can have more traditional character arcs. Loki realizes that he’s self-centered, coming to terms with his arrogance enough to apologize for his it and fight for the preservation of the multiverse.

However, for our conversations, the most applicable example of bad representation is probably 2021’s Cruella — a live-action prequel to the 1996 animated film 101 Dalmatians. The “mental illness” portrayed in this series is not well defined, reading more as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation than anything close to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). We never receive enough symptoms to safely give us a diagnosis, and I have not found anything from the creatives attached to this work indicating that they had a diagnosis in mind.

It's apparent that a respectful portrayal of mental health was not even a consideration for the film's creatives, and in the process, Cruella turns out to be a pretty regressive story. (see The Harmful Way Mental Health is Framed in Disney’s ‘Cruella’). Cruella does not integrate or harmonize with her alter or part Estella but kills her — something that experts tell you not to do. This destruction of a part of her personality is upsettingly portrayed as a “happy ending.” As Therapist Alyssa Cotten says in her own review of the movie:

“What ends up happening at the very end of the movie is very disturbing because, in the DID [community] we do not endorse this at all…we do not encourage, we do not support the death or killing of your parts, your alters, because all of them hold different memories and experiences and its important that we love all the parts that are present.”

All of these examples show that this media company is greenlighting works that do not treat the topic of mental health well. And again, none of these are old works. All the ones I cited are from last year.

So how does Moon Knight stack up to this history? Well, it's complicated…

The Good and The Bad of Moon Knight’s Portrayal

Like with Cruella, it's apparent that something is off with the character Steven Grant (played by Oscar Isaac). He is shown very earlier on as having a problem with another aspect of his personality — what is sometimes referred to in the DID community as an “alter” or “part” — in this case, a brutal mercenary named Marc Spector.

But unlike in Cruella, it is also clear that we are dealing with DID — not some imagined fantasy condition. We get symptoms in the text that make a diagnosis easier. One of the biggest is blackouts, where Grant loses consciousness regularly, so much so that he's actually set up an elaborate device around his bed to make it more difficult for his “part” to move about without his knowledge.

Perhaps most importantly, we see both the creation of his part (surprise it's actually Spencer who turns out to be the original all along) and the source of that trauma that created him. DID is overwhelmingly the result of childhood trauma — something the text states explicitly — and we learn that Grant was created as a defense mechanism against his mother's abuse, who blames Marc for his brother's death. This diagnosis isn't some “eccentricity” that adds color to the narrative (or at least not only that), but something that is the product of real pain and trauma.

More refreshingly, because this series actually did some of its homework, they don’t end with the disturbing message that killing your part is a good thing. Grant and Marc reach synthesis in the last episode of the first season, as they tearfully embrace one another.

These improvements aside, this does not mean Moon Knight is perfect in its depiction of DID. Marc develops his part quite late in life — around age 9, when most develop well before then. It also shows him having a lot of agency in the creation of Grant when that doesn’t seem to be how this works. While the idea that the original personality is the one protecting the part might make for good TV, it's the opposite of how this condition seems to work. As Cynthia Vinney writes in Very Well Mind:

“…not only is it highly unlikely that Marc would make the active decision to create Steven, it’s also unlikely that Marc would be the personality who is most aware of the trauma he experienced in childhood while Steven remains under the impression he had an idyllic childhood with a loving mother. In fact, many people with DID have difficulty remembering large parts of their childhood precisely because they often have alters within what’s referred to as a personality “system” whose job is to protect them from the childhood trauma they experienced.”

Perhaps the most troubling aspect, however, is how this disorder is shown in the text as a vehicle for violence. DID is routinely treated in pop culture as this magical condition that allows characters to do almost supernaturally cruel acts (see Cruella, Split, etc.). This framing is and has always been very harmful, as it paints people with this disorder as beasts that must be chained up at night, rather than, you know, human beings.

Moon Knight, for all its stumbles toward a better portrayal, still falls into this trap. We start the first episode with Steven Grant chaining himself up every night. If Disney wanted to tell a respectful story of this disorder, maybe a violent superhero story wasn’t the best vehicle for it.

A Waning Conclusion

It was refreshing to watch a Disney property on mental health that had a message that was not as harmful as past works, but I wonder if that’s a good enough bar? After all, there was nothing forcing Disney to make this property, and certainly, nothing forcing them to keep the DID plotline. Should they really be rewarded for not detonating a landmine they chose to put down?

People with DID face significant barriers. There is skepticism by some members of the medical community about whether it even exists — a stigma that doesn’t help people receive the treatment they need. Add to this a lack of clear diagnostic guidelines, and we have a situation where many doctors are not properly trained to diagnose or provide care for this disorder. This makes making supernatural DID stories complicated because they not only add to this skepticism but possibly push people to misidentify themselves as having the disorder — a problem the medical community is sadly not very equipped to deal with.

By the way, none of these are problems Disney will have to deal with either. They may pat themselves on the back for making this story as an act of “good” representation, but they aren't going to have to grapple with the potential fallout. That’s going to be in hands of a beleaguered medical community.

Disney wanted to tell a respectful story on mental health, but maybe in some situations, the best thing you can do is not to tell a story at all.

Alex Has Opinions 6/29/22 Alex Has Opinions 6/29/22

Breaking Down Disney’s “Woke” Advertising

Mining the Far Rights Toxic Reaction to Diversity for Profit

Listen, I love Disney. I am up to date on both the MCU and Star Wars. I have also watched every Disney animated movie from Hercules to Turning Red. I have not stopped loving Disney cartoons as an adult, and, now that this company has problematically acquired every popular media property this side of the Outer Rim, I don’t think I'm going to stop now.

Yet I am someone who has also been very critical of how Disney has handled the issue of diversity in the past (see Does Disney Care About Diversity?). I have taken the stance that Disney is a conservative company that acts in favor of profit maximization, and not out of some stunning desire to be progressive. The fact that conservatives are claiming this company is “too woke”, when Disney has actively contributed to anti-queer politicians for decades, speaks more to their departure from material reality than of Disney being a progressive defender of diversity.

I want to stress that a lot of people complaining about diversity in Disney are being very supremacist about it. You will often see conservatives lambasting “wokeism” in a show or movie when what they really have a problem with is human difference. And unfortunately, we see this happening with a lot of recent Disney properties like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ms. Marvel, where they have become fodder for conservative influencers in the American Culture Wars.

These properties have become touch points in conservative circles, and I believe that partly has to do with Disney phasing out the more reactionary parts of its audience because it doesn't perceive them as profitable anymore. It’s not that this hatred has gotten worse, necessarily, but that it's now an important part of Disney’s advertising.

A Brief History of Nerds Losing Their Shit

Firstly, I want to stress how common overreaction to difference is in nerd spaces. One of the touchpoints in the modern Culture Wars was Gamergate — a mass harassment campaign of several prominent women in the video game space. This harassment was largely driven by male entitlement, and in some cases, white supremacist organizations (see Innuendo Studios for a great primer on this event).

Since that moment there has been a predictable overreaction to any human difference added in pop culture. For example, the all-female Ghostbusters movie released in 2016 (two years after Gamergate effectively started) earned a tremendous amount of hatred from male nerds. Its movie trailer was one of the most disliked videos on YouTube at the time. The actor Leslie Jones, who played Ghostbuster’s Patricia “Patty” Tolan, was doxxed by angry “fans” and racistly compared to a zoo animal.

Yet frequently more and more of this conversation on “diversity” or “wokesism” seems to be dominated by Disney properties specifically. The actress Xochitl Gomez, who played America Chavez in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was allegedly harassed for her queer scene in the movie. The show Ms. Marvel was review bombed several weeks later when it was released on Disney+. We see a similar reaction happening with actress Moses Ingram, for her ongoing role as Inquisitor Reva in Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It’s not that Disney properties have never received this type of reaction from “fans.” The actress who played the character Rose Tico (played by Kelly Marie Tran) endured an infamous harassment campaign after the film's release in 2017. The same for the Star Wars character Finn (played by John Boyega). We could also talk about Captain Marvel, the first mainstream female superhero in the MCU, which received intense initial disgust from various reactionaries.

However, there seems to be an intensification in the speed and quickness of this narrative among Disney works. Almost like clockwork, we will have a property get released with a brown or female lead (or both!), and a very short news cycle will revolve around angry nerds decrying the content. Ms. Marvel. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Every week seems to create a new “mini-scandal,” and that’s because Disney is having a falling out with its more toxic fans.

How Disney’s Approach To Supremacy Has Changed

There are several reasons for this reaction to Disney content. Recently, Disney has tepidly opposed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill (after facing both intense internal and external resistance), and this has earned it criticism from conservatives. Commentators such as Chris Rufo have criticized the company for “grooming” and even encouraged a boycott.

Disney has also become such a big media giant that it’s kind of hard not to talk about them. They were already a culture engine before the acquisition of the MCU, Star Wars, and 21st-Century Fox. Three of the top 10-highest-grossing movies of 2021 were Disney films (and another of them was in collaboration with Sony). Now, for better and worse, they pretty much set the cultural conversation, so it makes sense reactionaries would be engaged with this content (everyone else is).

Yet most importantly I think what we are seeing is a market shift. As I have written about in the past, Disney is a very conservative company, which has historically meant trying to straddle the line between what its progressive and conservative audience members want. This balancing act has meant that they would tell works with rich themes that could subtextually be mined by more progressive audience members, without having to reward that on screen. We might get powerful messages, and even diverse leads, but more controversial moments could always be reframed or edited out for more conservative markets (see The Frustrating Queerbaiting in Disney Pixar’s ‘Luca’).

Supremacist overreaction to difference has existed for a long time in pop culture, especially with Disney’s more diverse works. Mike Pence, for example, infamously wrote an op-ed decrying the 1998 movie Mulan as “liberal propaganda.” But until recently, Disney would respond to these overreactions with deflection or denial. As recently as 2017’s The Last Jedi, Disney reacted to the Rose Tico fiasco by cutting her role in the sequel and minimizing her character's merchandising, effectively affirming the opinions of toxic fans.

Now with the inclusion of more diverse leads such as Inquisitor Reva and Ms. Marvel we are seeing Disney inch away (oh so slowly) from this strategy. Rather than denial or deflection, Disney is no longer openly courting its white supremacist audience. In fact, the dismissal of that racism has become a key part of its marketing strategy.

Over the past couple of years, we have seen a new beat emerge.

Disney releases marketing praising an upcoming property for its diversity, usually via comments from actors and producers.
The press picks up on these comments to make articles and other content.
Then Disney’s white supremacist audience does what always does to human difference — it loses its damn mind. Reactionaries like The Quartering and Tucker Carlson make derivative, racist content decrying a piece for being woke, liberal propaganda when really they just hate diversity.
Celebrities and producers attached to the Disney work then decry this racism (good!), helping generate further interest in the show.

For example, early reporting for the Obi-Wan Kenobi show on Disney+ centered on how it was important to have a diverse villain. As director of the series, Deborah Chow told Entertainment Weekly about Inquisitor Reva: “I was really excited about this character because it’s a new one that is not from the animated series and it’s also, for me, really exciting also to bring a female villain and to have a dark side woman of a very significant role.”

People were understandably very excited to have an interesting villain played by such a talented actress (side note, Moses Ingram’s Inquisitor Reva is frankly my favorite part of this show). There was even an emphasis in production on doing Reva’s hair right, leading to a cute write-up by Entertainment Weekly of how she finally gave Black girls with kinky hair a Halloween costume.

Unsurprisingly reactionaries did what they always do when seeing a Black woman do cool things — they harassed her, flooding her social media with terrible messages. Unlike Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico, however, Disney had apparently warned Moses Ingram privately that this backlash would happen. Ingram alleged that she was well supported. When she went public with harassment on her Instagram, the company was quick to get ahead of it, amplifying a clap back from actor Ewan McGregor on the official Star Wars Instagram.

Now there is a lot of fair criticism that Disney is still not doing enough to proactively protect its POC actors from this predictable cycle, being reactive instead (see Eric Deggans’ great essay on this in NPR). The average viewer, though, isn't going to be aware of these nuances. The media narrative for them becomes “wow, racists really don’t like that Black inquisitor woman in that new Obi-Wan Kenobi show” and “good, on Disney for…actually being there for her.” Suddenly the show becomes, not just a piece of content, but a conversation. And more than that, a statement.

It’s not bad that Disney stood by Moses Ingram and provided her support — to be clear, all entities should do this for their actors. What I am trying to emphasize is how Disney has incorporated this racist backlash into its media strategy. The backlash has become the point, tying into what influencer Hbomberguy originally called “Woke Brands” in a video of the same name. In that video he commented:

“When you are the focus of a conversation online. When you are a hashtag millions can click on and check out, when you are the conversation for a brief moment, that everyone feels expected to think about and have a take, not even an ad block can hide you.”

Hbomberguy was originally talking about advertising here, but I believe that it applies as much to shows as it does anything else. After all, it's all product at the end of the day, and if there is one thing controversy does, it’s create engagement.

Conclusion

We’ve been in this era of “Woke Brands” for a while now (Hbomberguy released his video in 2019). It’s just that Disney, as a conservative company, takes a bit to jump on to any bandwagon.

None of this is bad, per se. The fact that Disney feels like (right now) it can stop courting its white supremacist audience actually says a lot of good things about our society. If the most popular media company in the world feels that it's okay to spurn people like The Quartering and Tucker Carlson, I am not complaining. Disney is gambling on the future, and it's not these awful people.

As critical as I am of this media company, that doesn’t mean I think representation from this conglomerate is irrelevant. It is a good sign overall that Disney has started to focus less on whiteness in its filmography, even if only responding to the market trends (and probably some committed employees within the company itself). This trend does mean something to the millions of people who have felt unrepresented by the decades of whiteness that have dominated pop culture before this current moment, and that is something we should celebrate.

This does not mean, however, that this company has suddenly become “woke.” They still have a lot of conservative messaging that is quite alarming (see MCU is for Rich People), and I worry if they will still be behind these new principles if the social tide were to ever shift back (see Roe v, Wade). They are responding to a trend, and like any successful mega-conglomerate, capitalizing on it.

That may be progress to some, but to me, its acceptance with an asterisk.

*Be profitable, or else.

Alex Has Opinions 6/17/22 Alex Has Opinions 6/17/22

Historically, Shame Has (Sometimes) Been A Good Thing

Suffragettes, Civil Rights, The Black Panther Party, & ACT UP

In the past, the argument that "shaming people is always wrong" was one I identified with strongly. I wrote an entire piece arguing in length how shame was not a good principle to organize around (see Unpacking the Deadly Politics of Shame). In that piece, I concluded: "…shame seems to be a pretty destructive foundation for political organization. It is an emotion that demands self-flagellation and punishment over accountability and understanding."

A lot of people have made this argument. We see this stance everywhere, from the mainstream press to far-right politicians to, until a couple of months ago, me on this blog. I want you to consider this history when I tell you I was wrong when writing my essay about shame. I am not just a person who has always been a "pro-shame radical" (whatever the hell that means). I am someone who has thought carefully about this issue and, over the course of deliberate study, changed my mind.

While I still recognize that great care must be taken to ensure you are not hurting an innocent person, I was incorrect about the politics of shame never being useful. When we look at history, weaponizing shame has been employed successfully to achieve every political right we have, from women's suffrage to destigmatizing AIDS, and we do ourselves a major disservice by dismissing it.

When shame is good, actually

Critics of weaponizing shame, by which we mean those opposed to using shame to pressure and ostracize political opponents, will typically point to all the regressive things that shame has been used to do throughout history. Incidents like the Lavendar Scare and the Salem Witch Trials were not used to positively transform society but to punish others.

Of course, criticism of these events is valid. Shame has indeed been abused to do many terrible things. I might also add the puberty blocker bans for trans kids and the Don't Say Gill Bill in Florida as two recent examples of conservatives weaponizing shame to demonize an entire group of people. Conservatives have always used shame to enforce a regressive status quo.

Yet, just focusing on this abhorrent history ignores all the times' shame has been used successfully by leftists and progressives to achieve policy goals.

Women suffrage

For example, the suffrage movement in Britain (e.g., the campaign to achieve the right to vote for women) has retrospectively been whitewashed to be one of peaceful protests and lobbying, but it was quite violent. Under Emmeline Pankhurst's creed of: "Deeds, Not Words," activists in the UK attacked public officials, heckled lawmakers, bombed a train, engaged in an arson campaign, and one woman was even trampled to death by King George V's horse.

These militant groups were not above using shame to achieve their objectives. One alarming tactic was hunger strikes, where imprisoned suffragettes (pioneered by activist Marion Wallace-Dunlop) refused to eat in protest of some policy objective. Authorities initially force-fed imprisoned suffragettes — a move that startled the public so much that a law was passed to temporarily release strikers until they recovered enough to serve the rest of their sentence. This policy was pejoratively referred to as the cat & mouse act by suffragettes in reference to the practice of cats playing with their prey before killing it. Many suffragettes went into hiding upon temporary release, creating quite the scandal for the British government.

Militancy was largely suspended by movement organizers when WWI broke out, but not the use of shame. Many British women participated in the war effort in an attempt to link nationalism and suffrage. A popular strategy for women to support the war manifested as the "white feather movement," which was women shaming men into enlisting in the army by giving those who did not wear a uniform a white feather as a symbol of cowardice.

As the war came to a close, about 8 million women received the right to vote in Britain via The Representation of the People Act of 1918 (full suffrage would not come until a decade later). The militarism of this movement is often contested as having alienated the British public against women's suffrage, while the patriotism of women during WWI is retrospectively cited as sealing it. Yet this is an oversimplification. Much of the same leadership that supported a more militant suffrage movement also backed support of the war, and so a line cannot be as neatly drawn between the two.

Militarism also made leaders fearful of a new outbreak of militancy if female suffrage was not granted. As a supporter of the 1918 bill that would eventually give some women the vote, Lord Crewe warned his colleagues, "…if the vote was refused to women the old violent atmosphere of the question would return."

Civil rights and beyond

We could also point to the civil rights movement as an era of history where shame was employed — it's, in fact, what Martin Luther King Jr's strategy of civil disobedience hinged on. People often describe this strategy as nonviolent, but that's not technically true. He was pretty aware that the state would employ violence against protestors, and it was the image of violence broadcasted to the homes of white and brown Americans across the country that King and other leaders counted on to shame the American public. As Aniko Bodroghkozy said in an interview in their book Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement:

“By 1963, network news seemed to have solidified a general script for its civil rights coverage: search for worthy black victims of racial discrimination who could be individualized or, if in groups, kept largely silent, and have either Martin Luther King or a white reporter speak for them.”

Even King's famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, widely circulated by allies in the summer of '63, relied on shaming white liberals who would be most susceptible to his message. As he wrote in that letter: "I must confess that over the last few years, I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice…." It was an effective framing that was sure to have many white liberals asking if they had been that stumbling block at one time or another.

Like with the case of women's suffrage, it's important to note that other political figures and organizations were far more militant than King. We often think of the Black Panther Party, which came several years later in the late 1960s, but we could also controversially point to Malcolm X's Nation of Islam as an earlier example (note — the current iteration of the Nation of Islam has been categorized a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but the previous iteration had a tremendous impact on the development of Black Power in this country). The Panthers are, in hindsight, viewed far more positively. They are cited for social programs such as legal aid, transportation assistance, and a Free Breakfast for Children program, which was so effective it spurred the Ford administration to make their own federal program more permanent.

The Black Panthers were not above using shame to lambaste politicians for their white supremacist positions. "I challenge Ronald Reagan to a duel to the death because Reagan is a punk, a sissy, and a coward," member Eldridge Cleaver said in response to the then-Governor of California criticizing the group for carrying firearms. "He can fight me with a gun, a knife, or a baseball bat. I'll beat him to death with a marshmallow." Everything from how the Panthers pioneered the word "pigs" for police officers to their profound influence on hip hop shows how effective they were at shaping public discourse.

People will sometimes point to these more "radical groups" as not being as effective as the nonviolent Civil Rights movement, citing polling data and election results in the short term, but it's difficult to tell if those are good proxies. Immediate public opinion is not always the best gauge of future policy success. The 1950s Civil Rights movement was also very unpopular, and yet I think few of us would openly say that this movement was wrong or unsuccessful (though I'm sure many white supremacists may disagree).

For political reasons, advocates of nonviolence often want to cauterize "civil" protesters like King from the "nasty" ones who used "shame and violence," but that's not how culture works. They both affected the victories that followed, and just because one component of a movement receives more credit retrospectively doesn't mean it wasn't making an impact.

ACT UP

Another great historical example is the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT UP. It was a radical organization that started in New York City (before spreading across the country and world) in the late 1980s in response to the Reagan Administration's negligence in handling the AIDs epidemic. Thousands would die before the government started taking this disease seriously, and part of that policy change was the result of pioneers in ACT UP shaming federal officials to acknowledge the government's systemic negligence.

ACT UP consisted of a diverse coalition of people — activists, scientists, and pissed-off queers not knowing how long they would survive. A driving force of the movement was flamboyant, in-your-face protests that often relied on shaming officials and our institutions for their problematic stances on the AIDs crisis and queerness in general. According to Michael Specter in the New Yorker:

“They wrapped the home of the North Carolina senator Jesse Helms in a giant yellow condom; invaded St. Patrick’s Cathedral during Mass; laid siege to the Food and Drug Administration (“Hey, hey, F.D.A., how many people have you killed today?”); and dumped the ashes of comrades who had died of aids on the White House lawn.”

In another infamous example, they interrupted a speech of the Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan at an AIDs conference by chucking condoms at him and yelling "shame, shame, shame."

The group was not just focused on the righteous fury of disruptive protests, which brought public awareness to the issue, but like the Black Panthers before them, engaged in a network of services. These included things such as housing assistance, a needle exchange program, and providing help with discriminatory insurance practices.

ACT UP also had a "science club" with members that attempted to learn more about the specifics of the disease and the pharmaceuticals around it. This knowledge base allowed them to lobby federal and private officials to speed up the testing process and research the "opportunistic infections" (i.e., "infections that occur more often or are more severe in people with weakened immune systems") that killed AIDs patients. This advocacy placed an emphasis not just on finding an eventual cure, but also on the long-term survivability of those with AIDS or HIV. As author Dave Frances told NPR: "ACT UP created a model for patient advocacy within the research system that never existed before."

Although the movement would eventually fracture (as most movements tend to do), it's hard to argue that it wasn't effective in changing the discourse and policy around HIV/AIDs.

Shameful conclusion

The Suffrage Movement. Civil Rights. ACT UP. It's easy to point to every bad movement using shame while ignoring the many times it's been used effectively to help win tangible political victories within the USA and abroad.

And of course, not only could you dive into these examples in greater depth, but there are also many more examples of shame being used by people we consider the "good guys": the more "civil" queer politics of the Mattachine Society (a group you probably have never heard of before) lost political ground to the protests that made up the pride riots; the respectable "lean-in feminism" of the 2000s gave way to the righteous fury of the "me too" movement; and on and on history goes.

Shame has had a tremendous and positive impact on political movements across the US's short history and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We must remember that not all acts that help progressives and leftists win are comfortable to use, but that doesn't mean we should abandon them for our own comfort.

Sometimes people are engaged in activity that is so shameful that history shows us that there is nothing left to do but shame them for it.

Alex Has Opinions 6/14/22 Alex Has Opinions 6/14/22

The Chemical Plant That Is To Die For (ft. The LyondellBasell Channelview Complex)

Climate Change, global warming, corporations, & aliens!

Why hello there, traveler, and welcome to the "Apocalypse Tour." This is thee place to observe all the locations that had a significant impact on species 947's collapse (947 were also known as humanity [hyoo·ma·nuh·tee]). We discuss the physical locations that contributed to humanity's untimely end on a tiny planet called Earth in the year 90,423 XE (what humans may know as 2XXX AD).

Today, we are looking at the Channelview Complex. Located 20 miles east of downtown Houston [hyoo·stuhn], it began commercial operation in the late 1950s AD and, at its height, spanned almost 4,000 acres. The complex was not just one building but many, including an administration building and what historical propaganda referred to as the world's largest "propylene oxide and tertiary butyl alcohol plant" (we will get to what those funny Earth words mean in a moment)

The Channelview Complex was owned by the petrochemical manufacturing company LyondellBasell [lun·dell·ba·sell] — note: a "company" is Earthling slang for a corporate oligarchy. LyondellBasell popularly made polyethylene and polypropylene, chemicals used to create a primitive material known as a "plastic." Plastics were pliable materials that could be molded into objects of various shapes, which allowed humans to quickly produce everything from cups to clothing.

However, as a byproduct of making these materials and other petrochemical derivatives, this facility also released what most species residing on a Tier 6 world would know as "death chemicals" (e.g., nitric oxide (NO), Volatile organic compounds, etc.) into Earth's puny atmosphere. The historical record even shows the company having to pay a fine in the ancient year 2021 to the regulatory agency known as the EPA [ee·pee·a] for violating their people's Clean Air Act (these efforts were obviously unsuccessful).

Cumulatively these chemicals had a detrimental impact on species 947's ability to exist on Earth. Carbon dioxide, in particular, trapped heat in Earth's atmosphere, warming the planet to unsustainable levels: various species died on mass, crops failed, and extreme weather increased. By the year 20XX, humanity's population had been culled from 8 billion to only a couple million. Its globalized society splintered into hundreds of thousands of isolated polities at various levels of technological development until finally being destroyed by REDACTED (see also the Fall of the Evermore Zealots and the Three Stars Corp Catastophy for more historical parallels).

Despite this well-documented drawback, the Channelview Complex was special to Earthlings for being one of the largest in the polity known as the United States of America [yoo·nai·tuhd stayts uhv uh·meh·ruh·kuh] to produce these petrochemicals and their deadly byproducts. Company leadership, in particular, was very proud of this feat because the facility earned them billions of "dollars" (i.e., fictional tokens used to perpetuate an elaborate caste system) for spewing these death chemicals into Earth's atmosphere. These tokens allowed members of the company's oligarchy to purchase contract labor or "jobs," which their society seemed to value more than their long-term survivability.

Even here though things were vastly unequal. The leader of this corporate oligarchy or "CEO" [see·ee·o] was paid 16 million of these tokens a year, which was well above the rate paid to the average citizen of the United States or even the average LyondellBasell contract laborer. For comparison, the median amount of tokens given to a human laborer in the United States in the distant year of 2020 was only about 67,000. LyondellBasell's contract laborers faired slightly better with a median "wage" of about 120,000 tokens.

For temporal visitors who want to visit the facility, we advise you to do some research. Do not only use the archaic search engine Google but also do proper reconnaissance to see what parts of this exhibit you would like to observe (note: employee deaths were known to occur from time to time, so please be careful travelers!)

Know that species 947 followed scarcity-centered ownership laws. These customs would make you eligible for confinement inside a torture facility known as a "prison" [pri·zn] if the company claims you entered their "property" without explicit consent. LyondellBasell employed property enforcers known as "security guards." Barriers called fences were also set up at major intersections to halt primitive land vehicles.

And so please take this information into consideration before respectfully visiting this part of humanity's tragic history.

Note — for the humans who have somehow bypassed our encryption protocols, take comfort in the fact that this is a joke from a normal human and not a retrospective on your species' imminent demise.

Alex Has Opinions 6/9/22 Alex Has Opinions 6/9/22

You Don’t Need To See The Documentary “What is a Woman?”

We don’t have to treat every piece of content in good faith

Do you know who this is? I’m struggling to find out.

Recently the trailer for the film “What is a Woman?” has been going around. The “documentary” (a word I use loosely) is from the mind of conservative transphobe Matt Welsh (I think that’s his name, I can’t be bothered to look it up), a man who has made a history of trolling LGBTQ+ people. The documentary is not very good, and its points have been debunked thoroughly. It was also made in a very duplicitous manner, where a fake trans organization was set up to lure activists and medical professionals into interviews.

When a documentary like this one comes out, proponents usually try to pressure critics to see it for themselves before they can comment on the film. The logic behind this thought is that you don’t have the right to an opinion on something until you have consumed the source material. This position conveniently delays meaningful conversation about harmful works and increases the attention and wealth of the original creator.

This entire framing is disingenuous. When a bad-faith actor like Welsh (igami?) makes a documentary such as What is a Woman?, watching it not only gives them the attention (and money) they crave, but it forces you to take on a lot of psychic damage to please a party who has no intention in listening to you.

Here’s the truth — unless you are a reporter, influencer, researcher, or some other media person whose job is to debunk content like this, there is no reason to consume this terrible documentary. Seriously, you do not have to harm yourself for the sake of “nuance.”

I know many people believe that we should treat this as a “civil conversation” between two parties, but this frankly isn’t a one-on-one conversation. You don’t know Matt Welshagami on a personal level. He doesn’t even know that you exist, and you aren’t going to change his mind by watching his documentary.

Nor should passively consuming a piece of media be confused with the difficult work of deradicalization (i.e., reforming the worldview of someone who believes in dangerous, supremacist ideology). That requires time and a ridiculous amount of patience and is not the same thing as consuming every hateful piece of content out there.

There is no utility in consuming this film. It would be one thing if this documentary were coming from a nobody who was making good-faith arguments, but Matt Welshberg has a history of creating similarly egregious content. We know who he is at this point. It makes no sense to give him a “benefit of the doubt” that he refuses to show to others, including some of the participants of this very documentary.

Again, he straight up lied to some of the people in this film, making them think they would be doing a documentary on the trans community when really they were part of a transphobic hack job. Much of this film involves Welshith interviewing random passersby on the street, trying to catch people off-guard with “gotcha” questions. If his ideas had any merit to them, he would have tried to argue with prepared participants, but that would require a level of rigor he does not possess. There is no intellectual or philosophical merit here. No new arguments for you to learn, just hatred.

This documentary has nothing to do with facts and logic — it’s merely a pretext to bash trans people. Welshington weaves comments from transphobic bigots, including one very sad, self-hating trans person, with people who have no idea why they are there. He lobs a series of anti-trans conspiracy theories at trans activists and medical professionals, who are not prepared to answer them because he brought them on under false pretenses. It would be like scientists being told they were being brought on for a documentary about the solar system, only to learn that the interviewer for the project is a Flat Earther. They would come in prepared to answer basic science 101 questions, only to have to wrap their head around fringe beliefs they had never heard before. That’s the work of a prepared media relations expert, not a scientist.

This documentary only has niche merit in the sociological sense of trying to understand how a hate movement thinks. It should not be thought of as meaningfully trying to deconstruct the concept of gender. Learning gender from What is a Woman? is akin to learning about geopolitics from a QAnon adherent or consent from the Catholic Church. It’s just not a good idea.

If you genuinely want to learn about gender, consider reading bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody, Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, or Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. I also highly recommend YouTuber Lily Alexandre’s What Are Women? if you want to watch something instead. All of these put more effort into understanding this concept than Matt Welshnic has in this documentary (side note: I also wrote an explainer about nonbinary identity that you might want to read).

Yet perhaps the most crucial reason I think you shouldn’t watch What is a Woman? is that consuming content like this is mentally draining. I have written many articles monitoring the far-right as well as hateful media, such as Dave Chapelle’s The Closer. I can tell you that consuming the “arguments” by these figures is exhausting, especially if you belong to a marginalized identity where your existence is repeatedly disparaged and invalidated by them. I still cringe at some transphobic memes I have seen from far-right reactionaries because they are designed to hurt people like me. They do not make me feel very good about myself, and this mild trauma is a drain on my psyche.

However, I do this work because I am a person who has made comments on the Internet and media shenanigans my job. Significantly few people fall into that category, and so I question giving Matt Welsh’s quite frankly subpar documentary any of your time and attention when it can be devoted to more productive things: join a mutual aid group; work in a political campaign; volunteer for an organization; try to de-platform a far-right reactionary with power or deradicalize one who doesn’t. Any of these things will be more valuable than consuming harmful, poorly-researched content purposely designed to trigger you.

At the end of the day, that’s what Matt Welsh wants — for you to be triggered. He wants you to give him an angry reaction that he can mine for content and possibly even use to feed into his false persecution complex. I am asking you not to give him all of that power. He’s not worth it.

Some Resources

Now, after all of this, if you still want to know more about this terrible documentary, consider reading or watching a breakdown from someone who has already digested it. I have posted some of my favorites below from awesome people I think do great work in this space (I have also linked some breakdowns of Welsh in general).

However, I want to stress that watching or reading this content will still be an exhausting thing to do, and you might want to focus on anything else instead.

Articles

I Watched What is a Woman So You Wouldn’t Have To

The dangerous deception of Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a Woman?”

Matt Walsh Wants to Kill Queer People

Far-Right Troll Tried to Dupe Trans People Into Joining His Anti-Trans Documentary

Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh reportedly caught trying to trick trans people into being interviewed for anti-trans documentary

Videos

Transphobic Ad Asks "What is A Woman?"

How Matt Walsh Vilifies Trans People (To Grift his Audience)

P.S. I just realized I misspelled his name. So sorry about that, Matt Asshole.

Alex Has Opinions 6/6/22 Alex Has Opinions 6/6/22

Mayor Muriel Bowser And The Housing Fund She Mismanaged

DC Politics, Affordable Housing, and Gentrification

This article was originally published in the Washington Socialist.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser is often compared to the men who preceded her. Mayor Vincent Gray, her predecessor, was not only accused of giving a competitor a job for badmouthing someone on the campaign trail but faced a federal probe into his campaign finances throughout his time in office. Some two decades earlier, Mayor Marion Barry would be mocked across the country for being involved in an FBI sting operation. Even Adrian Fenty, who has often been linked to Bowser, was perceived by many as out of touch and imperial.

Muriel Bowser has not been wrapped up in a federal probe on her finances or an FBI sting operation, but this low bar does not mean that her tenure as mayor has been free from mistakes. From ICE raids to increasing gentrification, there have been plenty of red marks on her two-term track record.

Nowhere do we see this more prominently than in her administration’s handling of the Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF) — a trust meant to increase affordable housing in the district. The amount of money she has raised for it is arguably one of Bowser’s most significant achievements. Just as sadly, her mismanagement of this fund is one of her administration’s biggest mistakes.

The HPTF was created by the Housing Production Trust Fund Act of 1988 to build and preserve affordable housing in DC. It works by subsidizing projects — such as new building developments — preserving existing stock and more. HPTF projects usually provide “gap funding” when developers need additional funds to complete a project.

It was signed into law under the administration of Mayor Barry. Like many laws in the District, it would take a while for it to be adequately financed. The HPTF was not funded regularly until the early 2000s, when the District passed the Housing Act of 2002 to replenish it annually.

However, this new funding mechanism came with a problem. The HPTF is partially funded through deed recordation and deed transfer taxes, which typically occur through the sale of commercial and residential properties. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, “[this] means that funding for the HPTF is heavily tied to the real estate market,” with the 2008 recession having had a predictably negative impact on the funds given to the HPTF.

This fund is clearly not set up to serve the District in lean times, yet because it is the primary mechanism for providing affordable housing, Bowser has aggressively allocated $1 billion to the HPTF since 2015. Her 2019 goal of adding 12,000 affordable units to DC by 2025 is nowhere close to being met, and she has consistently opined that these investments into the HPTF will get DC closer to reaching it.

These units are badly needed because the District is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis — one that has been exacerbated by the pandemic but long preceded it. The unhoused population has skyrocketed, and for over half a decade now, Black and low-income residents have increasingly found themselves being ousted to the city’s periphery. All the while luxury-branded condos have popped up that many DC natives cannot afford (note: over 10,000 units in the District remain unoccupied). Under Bowser, there is more money to play with than ever before, but it does not seem to be going to the people who need it most.

Even with this $1 billion investment, the HPTF has still struggled to achieve its function of providing low-income housing, and part of that conversation has to do with who we consider low-income. An important requirement of the 1988 law is for 50% of the funds spent in a fiscal year to be directed toward “Extremely Low-Income” households, or ELIs for short. For reference, the National Low Income Housing Coalition defines ELIs in the District as households “whose incomes are at or below the poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income (AMI).” (A lot of terms thrown at you right there, but just know that half of all funds the HPTF spends on projects in a year should be going to this group of people.)

Numerous reports from DC’s Office of the Inspector General have indicated that affordable housing projects under the Bowser administration have often prioritized projects that support households above the 30% AMI. This means that those in the bottom income brackets are not getting enough of the HPTF’s dollars for housing projects, a goal that administration spokespeople have referred to as “aspirational.” As a spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) said during the fallout of a scathing Inspector General report released in 2021:

“… the Administration desires both to comply with the letter and spirit of the law and to help residents most in need, but housing those at [ELI] levels is a lot tougher and more complicated to implement than just setting a big goal.”

This deflection, however, doesn’t change the fact that the law still requires this 50% threshold to be met. In the words of Councilmember Elissa Silverman in response to this claim: “The goals aren’t aspirational, they’re essential. If there’s an issue with [meeting them], then DHCD needs to inform all of us that there’s a problem, and we all need to get together to try to come up with a solution.”

The District is in desperate need of affordable housing for ELI residents, and this problem requires more work than debating the semantics of a law. The Bowser administration has not managed this trust well. In 2017, an audit of the HPTF by the Inspector General found that it was poorly managed, often “neglecting to ensure that developers offer the prescribed mix of housing for people in various income ranges.”

Several years later in 2019, another audit found that of nine housing projects totaling $103 million, Bowser’s administration awarded five to applicants that were ranked poorly by evaluators. In the process, this effort potentially reduced the number of affordable units by a projected 353. According to the Washington Post, the explanation that was given by the then-head of the DHCD, Polly Donaldson, was that evaluators did not have a “bird’s-eye view of the whole portfolio” and therefore missed some of the larger context on why the lower-ranked contracts were accepted. However, Donaldson failed to provide auditors with what that context was, forcing auditors to issue a subpoena, which does not inspire much confidence in this explanation.

The Washington Post further noted that “All five development firms [who were ranked poorly by evaluators] or their executives have given campaign contributions to Bowser.” These five firms ranged from the NHP Foundation, a nonprofit with holdings in 16 states, to Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, LLC, a community developer focused on the greater DC area.

This problem of rewarding lower-ranked applicants has not gone away. A 2021 audit by the Office of the Inspector General noted that nearly $82 million allocated for projects serving low-income residents was not well monitored. Contracts once again went to “lower-scoring applicants,” some of which were overpaid for their services. The Washington Post noted that many officials could not ensure that the “deals backed by DC loans specifically created to underwrite affordable-housing projects … actually built or preserved affordable housing units.”

Overall, Bowser has made big promises to make the city’s housing more affordable, and some projects are getting completed (see Parcel 42), but they are certainly not enough. The vehicle (HPTF) she is using to build more affordable units is not well managed, and her administration has a history of using it to reward developers that do not perform the best.

Either through neglect, willful collaboration, or some combination of the two, Bowser’s administration has used a soft touch when dealing with the District’s developers. Given the affordable housing crisis afflicting DC, we have to question whether this approach is a good one.