Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Man of Doom

“Doom: The Fake Outrage”

Recommended Posts

Sad it is modern culture sunk to such depths someone made a video about people not outraged at something—not just a video, but an explanation.  Outrage so unceasing we're afforded explanation why it didn't happen. 

Share this post


Link to post

My two cents:

 

Shaun is an idiot who consistently makes arguments from giant piles of straw and talks in every video like he just swallowed a couple of Ambien.

 

With that being said, he is mostly correct about this being a fake outrage. It's another instance of one side of the political aisle taking a handful of tweets about a topic and endlessly recycling them in every article/video as proof of some outrage from the other side, when in reality, said tweets are about the only ones that actually exist.

Share this post


Link to post
On 9/20/2018 at 10:02 AM, Caffeine Freak said:

My two cents:

 

Shaun is an idiot who consistently makes arguments from giant piles of straw and talks in every video like he just swallowed a couple of Ambien.

 

He also said a big idiocy, when he said he believed trailers are made by marketers and the designers are unaware of what the marketers put out. Usually there is a process and all market materials need to follow a corporate identity design that is usually approved by exco members and the artistic director. So please don't bullshit around. All marketing materials are strictly following the corporate identity. Second, in the case of doom eternal, the trailers were presented by Hugo and Marty, creative director and executive producer. And you think a creative director and executive producer didn't even take time to look at the thing they're presenting? That a unnamed marketing guy can just slip something so important like the launch trailer at quakecon? I wouldn't even be surprised if they actively decided every second of the trailer. What to show and what not, and approved every second of that. The jokes were there because they wanted them to be there. It's clear they knew what was coming up and discussed that beforehand. 

Again, I heard the joke, made nothing of it and thought: well I think some people would take it seriously but whatever. I would never ever image all the bloody castle of anti immigration joke that was built afterwards. And the melting pot thing? Well I thought, neat, hell, flames, earth becoming hell, so things melt, yeah why not. I didn't think anything else about it, bit again, I don't live in US so the joke could have go well over my head.

Again I'm making nothing of it. The trailer looks awesome, the game looks awesome, I usually don't spend 60-70 USD for a game to buy it at launch but will definitely be mine along the line.

Share this post


Link to post

^Same, I didn't really make anything of the mortally challenged or melting pot quotes either. I'm old enough to remember hearing 'please refer to them as *blank*challenged' jokes 20+ years ago, so it seems weird that they would intend something like that as any more than a throwaway line. The US is referred to as a 'melting pot' because of all the different people that immigrate here, so I guess the melting pot line is a little closer to alluding to some political statement.

 

If they did intend anything by it, they certainly made it subtle enough to cast the spectre of doubt over the whole thing. Most game makers are much more overt when they pack in political messages.

Share this post


Link to post

I remember reading about this the other day, and thinking "huh? for real?", but it looks less like a big deal, and more like very few people trying to act like it's a big deal. 

Share this post


Link to post
On 9/16/2018 at 10:17 PM, Man of Doom said:

(like how Doom 2016 is apparently all about anti-capitalism and pro-environmentalism; I personally didn’t interpret it that way, I saw it as more for what it was trying to be, as a badass romp through Hell)

 

I wouldn't say Doom 2016 is all about anti capitalism, but the UAC is fully committing to greed no matter what damage it causes, with a smile :)

There's some jabs at Silicon Valley culture in there as well, with the UAC announcer talking about how the UAC is being super innovative by inventing the seven day, 12 hour work week. Hell, the game ends with S.Haydan locking you up because you're getting in the way of his lust for power.

Share this post


Link to post

I keep seeing these politically charged videos about DE show up on my YouTube and I absolutely refuse to watch them. I find it very irritating that there are folks trying to shoehorn a fake scandal into a game that has never been political.

 

...That said, all art is political. It may not be the intent of the aritst(s), but in order for art to be apolitical, you have to be a small child, or live in an isolated island amongst a tribe. Otherwise, you have some awareness of the political sphere, even if you have no interest in discussion or participation.

 

Of course, just because all art is political does not mean there is a deep message or ideological agenda behind it. It may merely mean that something political is being referenced—which is the case with the holograms' tongue-and-cheek comments about "proper" use of language. There's also UAC, which is portrayed in the same anti-corporate manner as the Weyland corporation in the "Alien" films or OCP in "RoboCop." It's less a comment on capitalism and more a sci-fi trope, that of the technologically superior and morally ambiguous corporation.

Share this post


Link to post

Anybody who would actually get offended by those jokes aren't exactly in the demographic to buy Doom Eternal in the first place, regardless if those jokes were in there or not.

Share this post


Link to post
On 9/25/2018 at 9:05 AM, GoatLord said:

 

 

 all art is political. It may not be the intent of the aritst(s), but in order for art to be apolitical, you have to be a small child, or live in an isolated island amongst a tribe. Otherwise, you have some awareness of the political sphere, even if you have no interest in discussion or participation.
 

Exactly! It doesn't require you to have an explicit or conscious political agenda. You can make political statements without even realizing you are doing so. Just like you can make racist and sexist remarks without even consciously realizing they are such. More often than not, racism and sexism is unconscious. Politics too is often unconscious.

 

When people say, "keep politics out of my games," what they are really saying is: "I want to remain naive, childlike in my relationship to videogames." Ignorance is bliss, right? The desire is understandable. Games are a form escapism and if you remind people of real social strife you undermine the escapism. But the thing is, as Goatlord said, games can't help but be political. So the only way to maintain the escapism is to become a total hypocrite: screaming about how libs are ruining videogames by imagining them as having made-up politics, and ironically making them right by politicizing games with the very arguments you are making against them.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
On 10/17/2018 at 4:25 PM, TheGamePhilosophe said:

Exactly! It doesn't require you to have an explicit or conscious political agenda. You can make political statements without even realizing you are doing so. Just like you can make racist and sexist remarks without even consciously realizing they are such. More often than not, racism and sexism is unconscious. Politics too is often unconscious.

 

When people say, "keep politics out of my games," what they are really saying is: "I want to remain naive, childlike in my relationship to videogames." Ignorance is bliss, right? The desire is understandable. Games are a form escapism and if you remind people of real social strife you undermine the escapism. But the thing is, as Goatlord said, games can't help but be political. So the only way to maintain the escapism is to become a total hypocrite: screaming about how libs are ruining videogames by imagining them as having made-up politics, and ironically making them right by politicizing games with the very arguments you are making against them.

 

 

Okay so this is the cynic in me but I disagree that all art is "political" in the sense y'all mean it, this is shit that is board-driven, focus tested, etc. the only ideology that guides it is liberal capitalism, is the logic of the market, its broad massive appeal in order to meet the desired returns of equity holders. This is actually more damning for game developers where-in the industry has moved from purely a small packaged product like DooM 1, to games-as-a-service, with high operating costs, just look at the recent controversy with Red Dead Redemption's labor relations, this is the kind of labor intensity that drives the industry, equity wants a return, it can't be too sincere to any artists vision, it can't take its time, there are deadlines, there are quotas, and thus for developers, there are compromises. Whilst I agree with criticizing, lets basically admit it, opportunistic cranks who want to string a narrative of corporations and human resources managers being "cultural marxists", there is a legitimate grievance to be had with the overtly political posturing of a lot of media products now, in that any political posturing a product does now is purely marketing that takes advantage of this bizarre time where people think the culture wars are so important you have to red-pill and proselytize every fandom, create x-gate's out of every scene, etc. Whilst I think DooM is a sincere and authentic expression of the artists will, any attempt to say ohh "its about how corporations will fuck up the planet for profits" or "its about the great replacement (lol)" is silly, id has been in the business for a long time, any anti-PC posturing or middle fingers to large corporations are well calculated moves to appeal to a time when people are sick of big corporations and PC culture.

Share this post


Link to post
On 10/17/2018 at 4:25 PM, TheGamePhilosophe said:

Exactly! It doesn't require you to have an explicit or conscious political agenda. You can make political statements without even realizing you are doing so. Just like you can make racist and sexist remarks without even consciously realizing they are such. More often than not, racism and sexism is unconscious. Politics too is often unconscious.

 

When people say, "keep politics out of my games," what they are really saying is: "I want to remain naive, childlike in my relationship to videogames." Ignorance is bliss, right? The desire is understandable. Games are a form escapism and if you remind people of real social strife you undermine the escapism. But the thing is, as Goatlord said, games can't help but be political. So the only way to maintain the escapism is to become a total hypocrite: screaming about how libs are ruining videogames by imagining them as having made-up politics, and ironically making them right by politicizing games with the very arguments you are making against them.

 

 

On the other hand I fucking hate how people think we shouldn't do media analysis, all media produced in all society's is a reflection of recieved wisdom and values and deconstructing them is quite important. Like the Tom Clancy games are obviously not meant to make a serious political statement, but its a reflection of a Neo-conservative, "end of history" liberal democratic hegemony where force is justified in the pursuit of opening markets, even Tom Clancy himself was profoundly neo-conservative, the enemies in all Tom Clancy games are always either commies or hardcore nationalists. A perfect example of how the logic of the market can compromise an authentic vision is the cancellation of Rainbow Six: Patriots, where-in the "bad guys" were to be populist americans who's ideology was really economic populism, but their methods of course were more like the RAF in West Germany, the reason why that game couldn't be made? People want acceptable enemies, Nazis and Soviets are acceptable enemies in modern day United States. Instead the next Rainbow Six game decides to have no storyline whatsoever, its a multiplayer only game.

Share this post


Link to post

All art is political because all ideas are political, basically. You can't tell a story about good vs evil without drawing a few clarifying lines between what defines good and evil in the first place.

Share this post


Link to post
18 hours ago, CreamCheese said:

Okay so this is the cynic in me but I disagree that all art is "political" in the sense y'all mean it, this is shit that is board-driven, focus tested, etc. the only ideology that guides it is liberal capitalism, is the logic of the market, its broad massive appeal in order to meet the desired returns of equity holders.

 

OK, I didn't say that all art had a self-conscious political agenda. My point was that all art is political, regardless of the intentions of its creators. In fact, ideology is unconscious by definition. That's what makes it ideology.

 

As for the Doom Eternal trailer, I think there is a perfectly rational explanation for why the racist tropes about immigration made their way into the trailer that has nothing to do with some secret political agenda/message. It is hinted at in the end of Shaun's video but I'm not sure he's completely aware of it. The fact is, the whole trope of alien invasion (broadly defined), and even the fight against monsters is a classic racist fantasy that draws on racist tropes of the "other" as an animal/beast (Trump: "they're animals"). That's the underlying structure/tradition (a very old one) of the Doom narrative. It was automatic and almost inevitable that when making the trailer they would be drawn to the most recent incarnations of that racist fantasy of the invasion of foreigners, which has to do with PC language and America being overrun by immigrants. These bits came to the makers of the trailer almost magnetically without any effort, preprogrammed as it were by the very starting point of their task. That's how ideology actually reproduces itself. The only way to prevent it is to become highly aware of its cliches and tropes and be self-conscious of your own ideas/talk with other frequently who can help you spot your blindspots.

 

I don't disagree about the commodification of politics. The recent Nike campaign is a perfect example. But there's a BIG DIFFERENCE btw. critiquing that and just yelling about "politics in mah vidyagames" like all the alt-right youtube edgelords.

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, TheGamePhilosophe said:

 

OK, I didn't say that all art had a self-conscious political agenda. My point was that all art is political, regardless of the intentions of its creators. In fact, ideology is unconscious by definition. That's what makes it ideology.

 

As for the Doom Eternal trailer, I think there is a perfectly rational explanation for why the racist tropes about immigration made their way into the trailer that has nothing to do with some secret political agenda/message. It is hinted at in the end of Shaun's video but I'm not sure he's completely aware of it. The fact is, the whole trope of alien invasion (broadly defined), and even the fight against monsters is a classic racist fantasy that draws on racist tropes of the "other" as an animal/beast (Trump: "they're animals"). That's the underlying structure/tradition (a very old one) of the Doom narrative. It was automatic and almost inevitable that when making the trailer they would be drawn to the most recent incarnations of that racist fantasy of the invasion of foreigners, which has to do with PC language and America being overrun by immigrants. These bits came to the makers of the trailer almost magnetically without any effort, preprogrammed as it were by the very starting point of their task. That's how ideology actually reproduces itself. The only way to prevent it is to become highly aware of its cliches and tropes and be self-conscious of your own ideas/talk with other frequently who can help you spot your blindspots.

 

I don't disagree about the commodification of politics. The recent Nike campaign is a perfect example. But there's a BIG DIFFERENCE btw. critiquing that and just yelling about "politics in mah vidyagames" like all the alt-right youtube edgelords.

I agree, i nfact I basically said that in my prior comment about Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series, there is a "recieved" ideology of American Exceptionalism and Jingoism, that is subconsciously reproduced. 

Share this post


Link to post
16 hours ago, EtherBot said:

All art is political because all ideas are political, basically. You can't tell a story about good vs evil without drawing a few clarifying lines between what defines good and evil in the first place.

 

Not everything is political. Demons are just demons.

Share this post


Link to post
1 minute ago, Poohlyash said:

 

Not everything is political. Demons are just demons.

 

But all 'demon' means is 'evil being'

 

What makes the demons evil, in the doom mythos? OR more interestingly, why was it evil of the UAC to channel them?

Share this post


Link to post
3 minutes ago, EtherBot said:

 

But all 'demon' means is 'evil being'

 

What makes the demons evil, in the doom mythos? OR more interestingly, why was it evil of the UAC to channel them?

 

They are evil because they are the embodiement of evil in almost every culture and religion, like sly foxes and stuff.

Share this post


Link to post
46 minutes ago, EtherBot said:

 

But all 'demon' means is 'evil being'

 

What makes the demons evil, in the doom mythos? OR more interestingly, why was it evil of the UAC to channel them?

They are evil because they invaded Mars and earth and started killing everyone or converting them into demons too. When the UAC made the teleporter that opened up the portal between the mars base and hell (or at least what the humans consider to be hell anyway, I have no idea how a physical teleporter could open a portal to actual religious hell but, oh well whatever) they could have just stayed inside but they decided to come through and start killing people instead. Now if this had happened later in the doom timeline it might be a little more justified for them to do it on account of the UAC taking the argent energy, but it didn't, it happened in (presumably) the first human demon encounter, or at least the first one in modern times

Share this post


Link to post

I think this is one of those "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" moments were the id boys threw a hot button issue into the mix because everything kind of lined up right at that moment and it was a cute (if not quite on the nose) parody of the "hippy" end of politics as it pertains to immigration. We can get into left/right ideological dynamics if we want, but I don't think they were thinking that deeply about it. This kind of jab at politically correct language has been a staple of contemporary humor for decades at this point.

Share this post


Link to post
3 hours ago, DooM_RO said:

I can't think of a game less political than Doom.

 

Ohh, those elitistic far-deep side demon party are pushing their agenda for earth domination. The Doomslayer party must collect more votes to win!

Share this post


Link to post

Yeah, I noticed those wankers pushing their fucking stupid narrative too. Completely ruined my Youtube recommendations for a few weeks and soured my excitement for Doom Eternal for a short while.

Aw yeah, another Doom Eternal vid... oh... oh... oh... it's another fucking wanker wanting views with some fucking made-up bullshit.

 

Share this post


Link to post
2 hours ago, FractalBeast said:

Yeah, I noticed those wankers pushing their fucking stupid narrative too. Completely ruined my Youtube recommendations for a few weeks and soured my excitement for Doom Eternal for a short while.

Aw yeah, another Doom Eternal vid... oh... oh... oh... it's another fucking wanker wanting views with some fucking made-up bullshit.

 

"Wanker" is an offensive term. Please refer to them as anti-SJW snowflakes. :)

Share this post


Link to post

I don’t know why, but I just think it would be hilarious if the guys at id put something in the game that would make these idiot grifters completely flip their shit (like an Easter egg or something). 

 

As an example, that PS4 Spider-Man game has a LGBTQ flag as a landmark, and I remember them throwing a tantrum and declaring “nO pOlItIcZ iN mY gAeM”; the same thing happened when it was announced in Total War: Rome II that there would be female generals or something to that effect. 

Share this post


Link to post

There's a whole subculture of Youtubers that made a career out of complaining about videogames. Whatever happens, they'll always find something to complain about...

Share this post


Link to post

More accurately, they make careers out of complaining about other people complaining about video games- except these "other people" are really just near-nonexistent straw-man "SJW" crowds that consist of exactly eight Tweets and the ~80 combined people who liked them.

Share this post


Link to post
15 hours ago, FractalBeast said:

Whatever happens, they'll always find something to complain about...

 

Sounds like human nature to me. It's always easier to complain or hate something instead of doing something productive.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×