Does anyone else think it is FRIGHTENING how heavy-handed people are getting about "social justice" and "politics"? I just saw this article on NexusMods banning this mod to remove rainbow flags from the new Spider-Man game, and that shit just seems ridiculous to me.

Like... this is a site that hosts mods that add all kinds of nudity, sex, any and all weird shit (along with way more normal content, too), so it just reeks of this pretentious, holier-than-thou mindset.

And the thing is, people are getting SO radical about this shit, I think it's causing people who actively oppose this stuff to grow more radical, as well.

I mean, if you feel like your voice is being silenced -- whether I agree with it or not -- you're going to start promoting those voices that at least stand up for you.

Real talk, I think this shit is exactly why "neo-nazi" bullshit actually is starting to grow. And to be clear; fuck nazis, I am not on board with that shit. But a guy I used to work with (who definitely was a racist POS) had made a good point for why he thought those types of groups might actually be growing; because they're the only groups to seem to give a shit about lower-middle class white folks. The political Left is happy to pin all our current woes on "white people", "men", or "white men", and the political Right is too afraid to even engage in those conversations, for fear of looking bad. So if you're white, male, or a white male, your opinion is at best invalidated, and more often than not, people are actively trying to silence you.

All it does it create a powder-keg of a situation. Same with all this LBGT shit. I really don't care what people want to do. If you're gay, then you're just gay. That's cool, I don't really care, but you be you, man. But now, that's not enough; everything has to be "gay" now. Everything has to be "inclusive". Take comics; that used to be a pretty specific audience back in the day, right? Shit was aimed primarily at nerdy white guys. Some of the stuff is a bit juvenile by today's standards, but really, what does it matter? Comics were a fantasy, the lead characters a cipher that you could put yourself in their shoes. It didn't matter if you felt like a loser, or got picked-on in school; when you were reading Spider-Man, suddenly "being a nerd" wasn't a bad thing, but in fact a strength. Peter Parker could win fights, bang hot girls, all this stuff, at the very least in spite of being a nerd, but more often because of it.

And as the audience grew, it obviously makes sense people would want different characters they could connect with. I think that's great. If you're gay, of course you want a comic-book character who is gay; it might not be my thing, but to each his own, right?

But the solution wasn't "make your own characters". Instead, it was "what if we make Green Lantern gay?" "What if we turn Thor into a woman?" "What if Captain American was black?"

And the thing is, if you call this out, saying "if you want characters that are gay, or black, or women, why don't you just make those characters? Why do you have to take our characters and change them?", you're immediately met with "cancel-culture".

And let's just call it for what it is; it's a bunch of fucking bullies, who defend their bullshit behavior with the pretentious, holier-than-thou justification of "social justice".

And this shit is done -- these existing characters are changed -- because they either don't want to put in any actual work, of building an interesting, compelling story with a character they feel "represents" them, or because they know, those characters might not actually sell. That those characters aren't widely accepted enough to be successful. Either way, the result is the same; they piggyback off of the hard work of others, and then argue to change the context for an easy win.

I'm a big gamer; always have been. I've been moving around constantly since I was a child, so I didn't have a lot of friends, so gaming was always "my thing". I remember gaming back in the 90's, when it was standard practice to shit on anyone that played video games as "a loser", or "not a real man". It's great they perception has mostly changed. And I love than I'm able to share that passion with other folks, even of different backgrounds. But I also think it's kind of shitty that the Gaming space has been co-opted as this hyper-liberal space, and that they all want to recontextualize my life-long hobby as something that I'm not allowed to be a part of anymore, or that every single game HAS to be made "inclusive" to as many people as possible, even people who don't even actually seem to care.

I mean, everyone's heard of World of Warcraft, right? I've played since launch. It first got popular, largely because it WAS kind of juvenile; it was goofy and over-the-top. The men are all fucking macho as shit -- every dude looks like an 80's action hero -- and the women were scantily-clad sex-bombs. Over-the-top, maybe a little cringey, but very much a "fantasy". And to be clear, the game was a hit with women, as well, which kills the notion that it ONLY appealed to men, but whatever, let's just assume that actually was the case.

Well now, all the staff working at Blizzard are all "woke". They've literally started killing off ALL of the male characters, propping up "strong, powerful women" in their place. They recently made a "trans" character, and made that character essentially God in the game. Most (possibly all?) of the characters being introduced are gay, or "non-binary". One of the lead writers on the game celebrated that one of her male characters was "a celebration of non-toxic male masculinity". In a game and series quite literally ABOUT WAR, they've decided to recontextualize everything through the lens of "any form of conflict is bad". They had literal genocide in the game, and had their characters reach the conclusion "we have to spare [the person who ordered said genocide], because "violence is bad, mm-kay?"

THE POINT IS THIS:

It's a big world, and people are going to feel differently about different things. But these people -- "liberals, the political Left, the woke mob", whatever you want to call them -- have become so radical, they have the audacity to try and control the conversations that are allowed, that you're not even allowed to think a certain way. And all it's doing is placing all of these people in a pressure-cooker, and they're increasing this pressure dramatically so, every single day.

All it's going to do is make things worse, because if rationale, moderate voices are being silences and attacked, then it's only a matter of time before we start seeing TRULY radical voices raised in response. And hopefully, that doesn't cause things to escalate into actions.