JAMES GUNN FIRED FROM MCU

[OSJ]

3 hours ago, Technico Support said:

To be fair, he'd have offended someone and been fired eventually, so it was best for all involved to just get it over with. 

Can you imagine starting work with a nice office, private secretary with her own office. You go to lunch, tell a joke and come back and all the shit is gone except for a security guard to escort you off the grounds. Disney be some harsh muthafuckas for being a company founded by a Nazi.

[John from Cincinnati]

7 minutes ago, OSJ said:

No, I'm serious as a fucking heart attack. I don't suffer fools gladly and this would reduce my aggravation levels considerably.

A shame the idea of licensing social media access and attaching a competency test to it could never get off the ground. The Freeze Peach crowd would shriek bloody murder. 

[OSJ]

1 minute ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

A shame the idea of licensing social media access and attaching a competency test to it could never get off the ground. The Freeze Peach crowd would shriek bloody murder. 

Social media now is like the Usenet of the 1990s, the idiot ratio is far higher than it should be.

[Raziel]

The Endless September never ended.

[(BP)]

I’m staying in Disneyworld in less than a week. When I’m sipping a drink poolside at Port Orleans and then riding Star Tours I’ll try to feel appropriately bad about it. As it is whenever we go and see any of the Walt tributes all I can think of is 

 

[Niners Fan in CT]

I understand why some are concerned about how this all unfolded but the bottom line for me is that if any of us tweeted that stuff,  dozens of tweets like that,  most of us wouldn't have been hired and/or would have been let go once it was revealed.  Film directors shouldn't be held to a lesser standard.  Unfortunately politicians are only held accountable come election time and even then..  

[Victator]

Can someone tell me where the Walt Disney/Nazi stories started. I have looked it up off and on and can never find anything solid on it. I do know a former animator accused him. 

The most solid thing I found was he attended a meeting of the German American Bund (I believe that was the spelling) in the pre war days with another animator. But that was described as them going to gawk. 

Of terrible things he did, the worst was naming former animators as communists in the fifties witch hunts.  

[J.T.]

17 hours ago, Casey said:

Ted Cruz wants to prosecute Gunn “if these tweets are true”.

You mean there is an investigation he's willing to support rather than hinder?  Do tell!

[(BP)]

46 minutes ago, Victator said:

Can someone tell me where the Walt Disney/Nazi stories started. I have looked it up off and on and can never find anything solid on it. I do know a former animator accused him. 

The most solid thing I found was he attended a meeting of the German American Bund (I believe that was the spelling) in the pre war days with another animator. But that was described as them going to gawk. 

Of terrible things he did, the worst was naming former animators as communists in the fifties witch hunts.  

Here’s an article that lists some of the general accusations leveled at him and weighs the accuracy of each, mostly based on contemporaries’ accounts. The Nazi stuff seems to have been particularly brought on by Walt welcoming Leni Riefenstahl on a tour of his studios shortly after Kristallnacht. 

Edit: I mean here’s the article http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/walt-disney-anti-semitism-racism-sexism-frozen-head.html

[Victator]

3 minutes ago, (BP) said:

Here’s an article that lists some of the general accusations leveled at him and weighs the accuracy of each, mostly based on contemporaries’ accounts. The Nazi stuff seems to have been particularly brought on by Walt welcoming Leni Riefenstahl on a tour of his studios shortly after Kristallnacht. 

You forgot the link. 

[Victator]

32 minutes ago, (BP) said:

Here’s an article that lists some of the general accusations leveled at him and weighs the accuracy of each, mostly based on contemporaries’ accounts. The Nazi stuff seems to have been particularly brought on by Walt welcoming Leni Riefenstahl on a tour of his studios shortly after Kristallnacht. 

Edit: I mean here’s the article http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/walt-disney-anti-semitism-racism-sexism-frozen-head.html

Thank You for posting this. It more or less lines up with research I had already done. Well minus the racism stuff, Jesus even in the late thirties that could not have been cool. 

[evilwaldo]

6 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I understand why some are concerned about how this all unfolded but the bottom line for me is that if any of us tweeted that stuff,  dozens of tweets like that,  most of us wouldn't have been hired and/or would have been let go once it was revealed.  Film directors shouldn't be held to a lesser standard.  Unfortunately politicians are only held accountable come election time and even then..  

There is the Dwight Howard stuff which has been swept under the rug.  Robert Downey Jr. living the character of Tony Stark. 

Yes, there are two standards in place.  Can you pay enough to clean it up or not?

From the links I posted, you can see how easy it is to manipulate stuff like Twitter and other places.  It doesn't even cost that much.  Once you peek behind the curtain, it is a complete mess that is only getting worse.

[Niners Fan in CT]

21 minutes ago, evilwaldo said:

From the links I posted, you can see how easy it is to manipulate stuff like Twitter and other places.  It doesn't even cost that much.  Once you peek behind the curtain, it is a complete mess that is only getting worse.

I don't disagree with you.  My advice for right now and something that I've been doing...  stay the hell off social media. 

[evilwaldo]

1 hour ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I don't disagree with you.  My advice for right now and something that I've been doing...  stay the hell off social media. 

I have been deleting my accounts and happy to have hours of my daily life back.  I keep asking myself, what do I get from this site?  Am I happy being a part of this site?  Does the site increase my stress?  

Right now the only thing keeping me on Twitter is luchablog and NHL news.  OUtside of that, meh.

When you peer behind the curtain enough and realize that 99% of social media is meaningless, you see things in a different light.

[TheVileOne]

Twitter should be erased. It adds nothing of value to society. 

[piranesi]

It seems like every few generations there is a kind of technological advance in media distribution that sneaks up on everyone and, almost overnight, renders everything the current generation in power knows about "how things work" obsolete. It happens too fast for the older generation to be gone and so they are still the ones in charge and they are the "experts" chirping at us what we should expect to happen next...and they have no shred of knowledge from everything they learned in their lifetime that prepares them to not be wrong about it.

Printing did it (Hi, Catholic Church! Yeah, sure literacy is no threat to your dominance!), Radio did it (Hey there, Europe, I'm sure a few strongly-worded and logical pamphlets will outclass anyone with mere rhetorical charisma!)

This is what I saw over and over the last two years as the same (not even very old) people on CNN or MSNBC told me "yes, but the system will do this..." or "yes, but, this poll always tells us that these things mean this..." or "Of course, this will sink him, it flies in the face of everything we know to be true about politics...." And I see them all falling in the same holes again and again and again like the Keystone Kops and I just accept now that every single thing they say is 100% incorrect. Even really smart and youngish ones like Maddow or Chris Hayes.

And they're not stupid. It just happened too fast. They grew up in and learned their trade in a world that is only ten years ago and that is based on the technology of 20 years ago...and even that is just absolutely obsolete. The way information moves now is fundamentally different than it was at any point before, say 2008??? 2009? 2005 at the earliest?.  And no one of the age to be in a position of institutional authority int he press or in political parties understands it at all. There is nothing of political science as learned by these people that still applies. Jesus, do you know how old and out of touch David Remnick suddenly seems?

And it happened so quickly it was like throwing a switch. People have always been susceptible to mass mis-information campaigns. In fact, one of the most interesting and relevant trends in history scholarship right now is to see parallels with "fake news" as fundamental to sudden turns in, for instance, the French Revolution, where unsubstantiated or even just deadass made-up rumors were monetized and weaponized using the techniques of the day suddenly altering the course of massive events because of a turn in mob sentiment.

But no technology has ever existed that is so specifically, efficiently, and perfectly designed to focus that tendency and harness it as social media does once it reaches a certain saturation point of ubiquity in the lives of the population. The Gunn thing is just like a weapons demonstration. It's like blowing up Alderaan. It just shows us that a massively prominent and secure person of any kind at any position of security can be obliterated within hours when the weapon is trained on them. The only "shield" apparently is to "never do or have done anything wrong at any point in your life." Good luck to the younger generation who at least have a fighting chance to keep themselves in line knowing from day one that they are on public display at all times from the moment they are capable of communication and their life will be collected and parsed regularly by an army of whoever is on the other side. Oh, and also, since there is no central power in control any of this (which makes it maybe better maybe worse), what does or does not constitute a mistake worthy of destruction changes from week to wee,k is pretty random, and based on the general mood of the billions around you. It will be a bit of a grind. Oh, and also your words and thoughts from 10 years ago or 20 years ago will be judged based on the mood and standards of today. Hang in there I guess.

There is, thankfully, still the one nice choice, which is not to participate at all. but at some point, that will become a suspect thing. "You don't engage with social media? What kind of creepy fuck are you? What are you hiding? You better get your brand out there or we're certainly not going to hire you!"

You know how Jeff Goldblum was all "genetic power is the last great pandora's box and now that it's unleashed, Welcome to Jurassic World!"  That's basically how I feel about social media. Whatever path the world was on before it is erased. We have to figure out a new one now based on rules that only people who have grown up immersed in it will even begin to understand. The lessons of the Weimar republic don't apply. The lessons of Watergate don't apply. The lessons of the 60s civil rights movement don't apply. The lessons of journalism from the 19th century on don't apply. Hell, even whatever lessons we learned from reality t.v. don't apply.

Basically that means I will spend the last couple of decades of my life, like I suppose most old people in history, living in a world that I don't understand and that resembles nothing I remember as being "the world" and it is unlikely I will ever have anything of value to say again.

Hooray!

[Bustronaut]

I do love all these old timers complaining about Twitter and Social Media on a message board, the ur social media.

[Victator]

I don't think things online are worse than they were a decade ago. Things might be better than they were, because there was a real race to the bottom then. That is why those Gunn tweets did not stand out in 2009 I think? Caring about other people was considered a weakness. Has anyone else been around here long enough to remember the forum wars? Where one admin got pissy at the others and started a new forum? Things were an utter cesspool and there was a pride in it. That was the internet culture at the time. I did not like it then and feel ashamed at the times I played along, 

I think social media gets a bad rap in general. Yes there is a load of bullshit, but it also has its share of good. I know social media has helped me find some of my best friends in this world. I have learned to mostly avoid the bad parts. Just like I avoid bad parts of the city I live in. 

[(BP)]

If social media is worse in any ways now than it was ten years ago, it’s certainly because of an influx of older people joining the platforms and venture capitalists constantly coming up with new ways to monetize it and find new niche ways to make it a commodity.

We also live in a wicked world full of people with drastically different opinions about why that is, and it creates an environment where we’re reminded of that constantly.

[Victator]

One thing that is worse now which goes along with the older people joining, are the people who want to talk about nothing but politics. I am not signaling out one ideology. Left or right, there are accounts that do nothing but talk about politics. Some are bots, but a lot are seemingly normal people. Which ten years ago, talking about politics exclusively was looked at as weird. Now its treated as weird if you want to escape politics. 

[TheVileOne]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-says-james-gunn-starsky-hutch-reboot-off-180531578.html

Was this the show James Gunn was going to announce at Comic-Con? He was set to appear there with Sony TV.

[Niners Fan in CT]

The stupidity of the average American has been underestimated for some time.  I'd love if we could go back to the days of political apathy.  Now too many people are involved,  too many voices and most of them stupid. I don't want low voter turnout but I don't think we need a bunch of morons muddying the waters either. A typical Facebook feed is the blind leading the blind regurgitating fake news and getting caught up in distractions. 

If I was involved with social media now I'd have a lot less friends that's for sure. Kids I knew who had no views on politics at all,  never even contemplated voting before and now you see them on Facebook or Twitter with a MAGA hat and retweeting talking points. I remember growing up and it was possible for my aunt to be a Democrat and my uncle to be a lifelong Republican,  they respected each other's views and they didn't really discuss politics around the dinner table.  

Those days are over.  If you are involved you're forced to pick a side and you wind up hating people around you.  If you don't get involved that's not really ideal either.  

[Raziel]

24 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

 

Those days are over.  If you are involved you're forced to pick a side and you wind up hating people around you.  If you don't get involved that's not really ideal either.  

Not really true.  Everything becoming politically charged is a feature, not a bug.  Social Media, Cable News, Right/Left Wing Talk Radio, all designed to divide and create echo chambers and Idiological purity tests.  The more it divides, the less we can come together and realize how we're getting fucked six ways from Sunday.  

 

However, it's fully possible to navigate and be disconnected from the bad (Social Media, Cable News, Talk Radio), and still be fully involved in the goings on of Current Events.  You can even be idiolgically crossed (I'm what *used* to be consertvitive, but is now centrist, my wife is what used to be Liberal, now very left of center but doesn't resemble what it became) and we get along fine, even going into political conversation.  The key is remaining civil, which is something lost on everyone with internet anominity and that being a troll is more entertaining than being civil.  

 

The Talking Points crew aren't the majority, they're just the ones that are engaged.  You get the middle that's disenfrancised with the entire corrupt system together on the same page, they could biblically bring the whole temple down, but good luck.

[Niners Fan in CT]

23 minutes ago, Raziel said:

However, it's fully possible to navigate and be disconnected from the bad (Social Media, Cable News, Talk Radio), and still be fully involved in the goings on of Current Events.  You can even be idiolgically crossed (I'm what *used* to be consertvitive, but is now centrist, my wife is what used to be Liberal, now very left of center but doesn't resemble what it became) and we get along fine, even going into political conversation.  The key is remaining civil, which is something lost on everyone with internet anominity and that being a troll is more entertaining than being civil. 

Difficult to be civil when it's the underground/Leatherface characters who have been locked away that are now at the forefront of debate.  The people who used to be centrist or moderate have sold out;  I'm sure many deep down realize that this is all awful but they don't have the stones to challenge anyone and they are in fear of losing their positions.  

This is why I gave up on social media a while back,  it's not worth it.  I can't give up on being involved,  I just do so in other ways. 

[evilwaldo]

1 hour ago, Raziel said:

 

However, it's fully possible to navigate and be disconnected from the bad (Social Media, Cable News, Talk Radio), and still be fully involved in the goings on of Current Events.  You can even be idiolgically crossed (I'm what *used* to be consertvitive, but is now centrist, my wife is what used to be Liberal, now very left of center but doesn't resemble what it became) and we get along fine, even going into political conversation.  The key is remaining civil, which is something lost on everyone with internet anominity and that being a troll is more entertaining than being civil.  

 

 

Funny thing, back in the days of the Forum Wars, we were all trolling each other pretty hard and we were civil to each other.  We argued one day in one forum and agreed in a different forum over a separate topic.  We all got along and laughed it off in the end.  

Today, once you disagree with someone there is a rush to label you, put you in a silo, and make up how you stand on various issues.  

We lost civility in daily society.  Politics and the news caused a lot of problems.  We made rock stars of individuals who had no reason to be put on pedestals.