Not a bar, but plays one on TV

trogdor

03:35

So I thought a little more about future Utopia societies that exclude certain groups of people, and I have some more to say about the subject

Starting with the fact that if we counted all the people ever missing either intentionally or not,... There would not be many people left

And the thing that gets me about that is that I actually don't believe most authors of those fictional societies, or fans of those works necessarily condone the,... Things that would have to happen to create those societies

But I do think that often enough they don't think of the implications at all

And that there is the problem

Tying it back to society as it exists, those of us who lack at least one form of conformity with this,... Idea of normalcy as I'll call it for simplicity's sake

We get thought of mostly when someone wants to feel better about thier own normalcy, or wants to blame a group of people for something, or wants to feel sorry for someone

I personally would be fine with rarely ever being confronted with anyone's thoughts of Autism at all,.... If only the portayals of it I have seen were not mostly,.... This weird Rain Man type deal

Or in certain cases even worse than that

(by this I mean basically Rain Man without the part where he turns out to be a Savant at certain things)

I bring Rain Man up because I actually know there are both plenty of people who watched it and liked it, and that it has also already been cited before for problematic portrayal of a Savant type character

(and autism is known for being one of the diagnosies associated with it)

I say this because it is personal to me

I spent a lot of time earlier in my life learning what makes me different from other people, and specifically which of those things will just straight up offend someone if I were to engage socially with them

From that I have learned actually how to basically act differently especially towards strangers

It's literally mental and emotional energy I burn every day just to do that

And sometimes I just get mad at society as a whole just for teaching people that my kind of difference is,... offensive, or childish, or a littleral disease

So when I see A:.a negative and or stereotyped portrayal of a "diagnosable condition" that manifests in a different way of thinking or acting it makes me pretty upset

When I see a world portrayed in which that literally lacks those traits? I usually don't actually care that much

It's the fact that it's so pervasive that no one bothers to think of those things that gets me

At least personally anyway

The reason I'm perfectly willing to call out Star Trek for it's issues is that it claims a vision of a Utopia

When I watch Star Wars, yes they have issues in thier portrayal of the,... Space past future

But they don't claim a perfect society while having those flaws

They have a literal evil empire that is the power sturcture of the main villain

Where Star Trek does apparently claim we overcame our shortcomings through technology and evolution out of them

While still portraying some things that could be the results of some unsettling practices leading up to that supposed perfect society

The fact that they had a LeVar Burton play a blind character while not being blind is a lot more unsettling when compared with how they treated Me Frakes,...

It isn't just about these two people

It's about the fact that these decisions were made by people who had creative license to showcase an idea about a Utopia

It implies to me that they had certain ideas, or lack of ideas, that could easily be very damaging and personal

Just as I have mentioned earlier about certain portrayals of non-nerotypical behavior can be stigmatized

The problem isn't just stigmatization or Erasure

It's turning away from one only to be confronted by the other

It's a real pickle that

I think that's just about everything that came into my head today about the subject, mashed together into a wall o text

So sorry for that anyway XD

Also once again I find after I can no longer edit it that my phone changed some words

And added a few in places that do not need them

Curse you phone, curse you to Hades

trogdor

04:49

Oh one last thing, just for anyone who read all of that

That is all just some of my take on this issue

There are no doubt many people who would take Erasure a lot more personally than I would, even if it was the only issue left

Maybe I am less,... Worried about it simply because I see too much negative attention directed towards non-nerotypical groups to be quite as worried about simple lack of portrayal

Regardless, the point being it still hurts people to not see representation of people like them ever

(also I still get to look at White Male protagonists and say they look like me, so there is that too)

doppelgreener

07:46

sd 5k

Derpy

@trogdor trivia: one of the comics claimed that the changelings originally didn't look like swiss cheese. Then. there was a battle that involved an invasion, an angry Celestia and some "Macross Magic Beam Missle Massacre" spam...

That would mean that the changeling that look like swiss cheese have actually been hurt in the battle. Since they are fully capable to change shape, it would also mean that they decided to stay that way just to fuel their desire for revenge (yep, even the new ones that weren't even yet born back then).

That said, since continuity between the main show and the comics - or even between the various comic issues - isn't exactly great.... that thing probably isn't even considered canon anymore.

@trogdor Fleur?

@trogdor ye olde deviant art. Also know as "malvertising roulette 101: open the site and hope none of the ads is infected today"

doppelgreener

good reasons to have an ad blocker

Derpy

08:02

@doppelgreener the problem with that logic is that drive-by malvertising attempts sometimes don't really rely on you loading the "ads image" but instead try to weaponize some other bug of the ads providing platform. This mean that potentially a malvertiser could as well manage to drop its evil payload even if the ads blocker thinks to have blocked it.

doppelgreener

i'm unaware of what kind of attack that might be if we're not allowing the platform to load in the first place

but even granted those attacks exist, we're still preventing the other attack cases

which makes it worthwhile

Derpy

08:20

well, I oversimplified it just for sake of exposition.

some cases that come to mind -

RoughTed, which was purposely crafted to avoid blockers detection.

blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2017/05/…

multiple cases of blocker specific bugs being weaponized to bypass them (example - ublock one which should be closed by now - hopefully)

doppelgreener

this isn't a reason not to have an ad blocker though

Derpy

never said so.

Sorry, I probably was a little unclear on my first message then

doppelgreener

probably :P

you said there was a problem with the logic of wanting to have an ad blocker to protect against malware ads

Derpy

When I said "the problem with that logic" I didn't mean one should avoid to have the ads blocker

I meant that one shouldn't assume to be safe from malvertising because of the ads blocker

By which I mean that I don't fell very safe to browse deviantart even with umatrix installed.

doppelgreener

gotcha

trogdor

09:52

@Derpy fair enough, I just really like her design

Derpy

10:23

@trogdor Old relevant xkcd

also, based on your comment on Rain Man, do yourself a favor and never watch how Big Bang Theory gradually "evolved" season by season

trogdor

lol

I already made that decision yeah

I mean, mainly I dislike how Rain Man basically makes Tom Cruise's character the hero for,.... having actually pretty selfish goals

Derpy

I assume the idea was to have a movie with a main character that initially thinks that his "mentally ill" (yep, term used on purpose since I think at the start of the movie he does use that adjective) brother is just a weight to be used to his advantage but by the end of the story actually manages to find some empathy for him.

All with a nice seasoning of stereotypes in the middle.

and that weird weird weird and a lot annoying feeling that will carry you thru all the movie....

Were they trying to do a drama movie or a comedy?

(^ and yep, this one thing annoyed me a lot)

trogdor

10:43

yeah

I mean, it has an ending where they discover they actually care about each other, as I recall

but my problem with that is that they didn't earn that

they don't get to wave a magic wand and make that all better

I do understand though, maybe it's a movie that needed to exist to start moving in the right direction regarding how people see non-neurotypical people, both inside and outside of media

but as I recall it was definitely problematic

I really hardly recall too many details about it though, probably for the best really

doppelgreener

→ 9 messages moved to Trashcan

don't you love that "you've been invited to join the trashcan" message

i feel insulted by it every time

:D

trogdor

huh?

does it actually invite you to go in there?

doppelgreener

oh huh, maybe it only does that because i can see in there

trogdor

oh wow yeah I can't

I could have sworn I looked in there once or twice

maybe it's also because you keep sending stuff in there though right?

in fact,... sending messages with pings to yourself in them

XD

doppelgreener

yeah :P

when someone trashes a conversation i've been in, I get a message saying "[person] has invited you to trashcan" or whatever.

trogdor

10:54

lol

that sounds like an attempt at a sick burn at least

"I invite you to be Oscar the Grouch now, good day sir, ha ha!"

it's a little weird that it would invite you into the,.... room that is only there to throw unwanted chat posts

I guess it was mostly written like a normal room

@Derpy but yeah, just to address this a little, I have heard more than one kind of problematic thing with that show, they supposedly start as a show for "geeks" but morph into a show mocking them, and have at least one character that is pretty heavily coded Autistic apparently

neither of those things strike me as my ideal show for sure

oh and also like two different reviews looking at,... one was the misogyny in the show

I forget the other

ah it's these two

The Adorkable Misogyny of The Big Bang Theory

►

The Complicity of Geek Masculinity on the Big Bang Theory

►

so really, several reasons that I see no reason to,... watch that show XD

the most annoying thing vis a vis the supposedly coded Autistic character,... he is not only played apparently for laughs, but when confronted with the idea that they made a character like that,... the creators of the show apparently said some things that,... at least when I read them at the time actually made me pretty mad

I don't think I can dig the comments up though

they were in some article or something

the gist of it was claiming they didn't make a character like that

I personally don't feel like looking into it myself because that involves,... watching it

and if I were to find that I didn't think that was true, I still have those other reasons to think I wouldn't like it

Derpy

11:23

Said that before.

The show is far from being a good attempt at talking about real world issues or anything similar. It is a comedy, nothing more.

trogdor

yeah

that isn't the issue though,... it's who it makes fun of and how that is the issue

Derpy

Do not expect them to try to real talk about "nerd discrimination". It won't happen.

trogdor

yeah no I do not expect that at all

Derpy

That said, what I was thinking of is a little subtler - and in a way you too said it.

When the show started you had a story about a bunch of "nerds"

they were very stereotypical too.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +6 more: greenlifenutrition.org/regal-keto/ by kakaho on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

Derpy

11:28

Sheldon who is "autistic" (which btw isn't even exactly true. Sheldon has about 0 empaty for others, but that is not autism. He basically had to live a life at young age that made him resort to not consider others worth of any attention. On top of this he has clear OCD problems)

trogdor

it's not,... that he is actually autistic,.. it's supposedly that he is coded that way

as far as I understand it as someone who refuses to subject myself to the show to figure it out

Derpy

@trogdor I mean that I don't think they even scripted him as "autistic" (or to be more specific - Hollywood meaning of "autistic"). He was much more a sort of "you are not worth my time" guy which thanks to never having got anyone "worth" around for most of his live developed 0 empathy and 0 understanding of "social conventions" like he calls them.

trogdor

@Derpy yes but the problem is that those exact traits actually are a certain kind of autistic coding

They didn't have to set out to make an autistic character to stumble into the problem of having coded one that way

Derpy

@trogdor Exactly, a nice case of "yay for not thinking it well enough.". Aka the "cuckolander backfire problem."

trogdor

So on one hand

They have a character I would probably be annoyed to see too much of

On the other, they apparently denied making the mistake of doing that

Which is more annoying

Derpy

11:37

even more annoying - the evident switch the show does at one point.

(actually, it is not a "one point", the switch is gradual but still annoying)

as you too said...

at the start of the show you had a group of nerds VS the world.

The "nerds" were actually "the dreamers" and the rest of the world didn't seem smarter or "normal" or "the correct ones". Actually, in many episodes the opposite almost seemed true - the weird nerds were actually better than the "bowtie" ones

mean that, this doesn't mean the show was magically "good" at social interactions - they basically managed to show that the nerds weren't the "wrong" ones by turning the rest into the wrong ones....

so things weren't exactly good even then.

that said, it was better than now.

It is pretty evident that at some point the focus shifted. It was no more about showing that a group of different people can still be good. Nope, it turned into a "coming of age" thing

So basically now the message is "group of adult-kids slowly growing up and turning into valuable members of society"

trogdor

Mm

Derpy

which in some way I think is the worst message they could give

so, now Sheldon isn't just autistic. Nope, they had to make it so the main characters now basically are all affected by "Peter Pan" syndrome.

So, now autism is their fault because they refuse to grown up.

And that is the same show that also managed to have some "better messages" like Leonard trying for a whole episode to hide he still plays with kites only to decide at the end to go "you know what? I like them and I will continue to play with them. If they find that funny... their loss"

trogdor

12:08

Yeah

None of that sounds too good

Derpy

12:19

I don't even know if you can talk about Flanderization in this case.

any way, the character "Amy" is the one that probably got the shortest straw since she basically has been rewritten in a different character from the one she initially was.

but really, enough Big Bang for now.

Let's talk about some other nice "what were they thinking" cases too.

which, jokes aside, basically amounts at "you may want to skip the 2016 PPG remake"

Seriously, I was talking about it recently in another room and someone just told me how horrible some episodes are

Transcript for

Not a bar, but plays one on TV