I don't like Cracked's Portal article

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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby ShuaiGuy » Sun Mar 08, 2015 4:16 am

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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sun Mar 08, 2015 4:39 am

The more I think about it the more I believe that Cracked should throw in the towel and just sell themselves to Jezebel.
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby EstebanColberto » Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:12 am

I've been thinking about it a bit and I did want to add something to the discussion rather than just a few jokes. One of the things Tess mentioned that really upset her and upset me as well is the fact that they couldn't just let a woman protagonist just be without attaching some kind of agenda to it. Ripley from the Alien franchise is the quintessential woman badass, and while the character can certainly be analyzed from a feminist angle or be regarded as a feminist hero, as far as the story itself is concerned, Ripley's gender is mostly irrelevant. You could've made her a man with only a few lines of dialogue changed.

It reminded me of something I liked from the tv show Friends. In the last season, Ross was briefly dating a black woman, who's apparently the only black woman in New York City in that universe. I'm used to seeing interracial couples on television referring to the fact that they're an interracial couple, especially in comedy shows. It's hard to resist. Culture clash is such an easy comic foil to fall back on. I'm not saying that it's bad to do that. Scrubs did that kind of thing a lot and I loved Scrubs, but I think it's really awesome when an interracial couple is on screen and there is absolutely no mention of them being interracial whatsoever and that's what Friends did. I've watched all of those episodes and there is absolutely no mention of her being black. No jokes about it, no comments about it, no explanation to Ross's conservative Jewish parents ham-fisted preachy BS about it. It was just accepted like it's a normal thing not even worth commenting on until I just commented on it. Right now, The Flash tv series is doing the same thing with Barry's love interest being black, as well as his adopted father who's his love interest's father, and she is currently involved in another interracial relationship and the interracial aspect is simply not commented on in the show. I think we won't be in a post-racist society until people like me no longer feel the need to comment that no one is commenting about this.

Another example of this was a recent episode of Gotham. (Yeah, there's a running theme with the types of shows I watch.) I can't remember which exact episode, but someone at Gotham PD made an offhand comment about his boyfriend. No elaboration, no preachy soapbox BS, no reaction from everyone else. He lives with another dude. Who gives a shit? Ok, apparently, I do, but who else? Certainly not any of the characters on the show. They're just treating it like it's normal.

[That's the end of my point, but I wanted to add something as a side, I realize the first thing I posted in this thread was essentially a rape joke. I, personally, don't have a zero tolerance policy for such things, and I see that some of the likes I got were from women, but I do realize it can be offensive and I'm not sure how this community as a whole feels about it. I haven't been reprimanded by anyone, so I'm assuming this isn't a zero tolerance type of place, but I've read the rules and you're not supposed to target members with these and that one was kinda-sorta-roundaboutish directed at Tess herself even if it wasn't meant maliciously and I was agreeing with her while pretending that I didn't. I was implying that I raped her. If anyone was offended by that, I'm sorry.]
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby CommanderRidley » Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:30 am

Man why do I even still read Cracked. I started reading Cracked because their articles were funny and informative, and now they're neither funny nor informative, and in my opinion they make the internet a worse, rather than better place.

I try to quit visiting the site and then somebody somewhere will link to an article that baits me back in. I know that that's how their articles are designed and I know I'm being an idiot for falling for their fucking tabloid headlines, so why do I still click?
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:45 am

CommanderRidley wrote:I know that that's how their articles are designed and I know I'm being an idiot for falling for their fucking tabloid headlines, so why do I still click?


Sometimes the relationship between the Cracked Staff and their readers seems like an abusive marriage. Why do we keep going back - I guess it's for the times that they're good to us!
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Mar 08, 2015 6:47 am

This article exemplifies what I find so irritating about Cracked's supposedly feminist approach.

They see female characters and a backstory heavily focused around one of them, and rather than praise the story itself for its moral complexities or emotional conflicts, they imagine all of this symbolism and abuse subtext and hold that up as a shining beacon of "feminism." In doing so, they boil said female characters down to the fact that they are women who conflicted with men, ignoring all other facets they possess. The idea that a female character doing important things could just be a character doing important things who happens to be female is inconceivable -- everything is about the gender conflict.

And isn't reducing women down to their genders and applying their own agendas to them based on that just as, if not more sexist than what they are supposedly standing against?
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby Gendry » Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:21 am

It's really sad to think that, had this article been published a few years ago, the whole "the moon exists therefore feminism" section would have been satire :(
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby SilverMaple » Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:27 am

While Tess pretty much covered all of the important points, there is just one more thing that I would add - in my personal opinion, Chell is pretty much the model for what good female video game characters should be. She's not there as eye candy, she's not a rescue object, and her story is in no way centered around any kind of romantic relationship. If she had been a male character instead, the game would be pretty much the same - she doesn't get any kind of special treatment for being female.

On the other end of the spectrum, she's not a super-hardcore Amazon warrior type either - she's just a (mostly) ordinary person who's forced to help a psychotic AI do SCIENCE! She's undeniably independent, and that's what makes her awesome.

...But nope, I guess they just have to shoehorn the opinion that she's "oppressed by men" in there, somehow. Is GLaDOS being stuck in a potato a metaphor for how women's opinions are constantly suppressed by the starchy subjugation of men?

Image
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby Gendry » Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:39 am

Great, now my subconscious has issued a challenge to my brain to work the phrase "starchy subjugation" into everyday conversation
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby EstebanColberto » Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:46 am

The most insulting thing is that Cracked has so little respect for their female audience that they don't understand when they're just pandering. I think women deserve more respect in this regard. Women are smart enough that they recognize when they're being pandered to for cheap, meaningless votes. Am I right women! Upvote me if you think women are super smart and super sexy for recognizing when they are being pandered to. Women are constantly exploited for cheap upvotes. If you don't upvote me, you probably have that misogyny thingie. UPVOTE THIS COMMENT YOU SEXIST BASTARDS!
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Sun Mar 08, 2015 7:54 am

EstebanColberto wrote:I've been thinking about it a bit and I did want to add something to the discussion rather than just a few jokes. One of the things Tess mentioned that really upset her and upset me as well is the fact that they couldn't just let a woman protagonist just be without attaching some kind of agenda to it. Ripley from the Alien franchise is the quintessential woman badass, and while the character can certainly be analyzed from a feminist angle or be regarded as a feminist hero, as far as the story itself is concerned, Ripley's gender is mostly irrelevant. You could've made her a man with only a few lines of dialogue changed.

It reminded me of something I liked from the tv show Friends. In the last season, Ross was briefly dating a black woman, who's apparently the only black woman in New York City in that universe. I'm used to seeing interracial couples on television referring to the fact that they're an interracial couple, especially in comedy shows. It's hard to resist. Culture clash is such an easy comic foil to fall back on. I'm not saying that it's bad to do that. Scrubs did that kind of thing a lot and I loved Scrubs, but I think it's really awesome when an interracial couple is on screen and there is absolutely no mention of them being interracial whatsoever and that's what Friends did. I've watched all of those episodes and there is absolutely no mention of her being black. No jokes about it, no comments about it, no explanation to Ross's conservative Jewish parents ham-fisted preachy BS about it. It was just accepted like it's a normal thing not even worth commenting on until I just commented on it. Right now, The Flash tv series is doing the same thing with Barry's love interest being black, as well as his adopted father who's his love interest's father, and she is currently involved in another interracial relationship and the interracial aspect is simply not commented on in the show. I think we won't be in a post-racist society until people like me no longer feel the need to comment that no one is commenting about this.

Another example of this was a recent episode of Gotham. (Yeah, there's a running theme with the types of shows I watch.) I can't remember which exact episode, but someone at Gotham PD made an offhand comment about his boyfriend. No elaboration, no preachy soapbox BS, no reaction from everyone else. He lives with another dude. Who gives a shit? Ok, apparently, I do, but who else? Certainly not any of the characters on the show. They're just treating it like it's normal.

[That's the end of my point, but I wanted to add something as a side, I realize the first thing I posted in this thread was essentially a rape joke. I, personally, don't have a zero tolerance policy for such things, and I see that some of the likes I got were from women, but I do realize it can be offensive and I'm not sure how this community as a whole feels about it. I haven't been reprimanded by anyone, so I'm assuming this isn't a zero tolerance type of place, but I've read the rules and you're not supposed to target members with these and that one was kinda-sorta-roundaboutish directed at Tess herself even if it wasn't meant maliciously and I was agreeing with her while pretending that I didn't. I was implying that I raped her. If anyone was offended by that, I'm sorry.]

Two things:

1). I pretty much completely agree with your points. I watch both The Flash and Gotham, and noticed those same things. The interracial aspect is just treated as completely normal, as well as the boyfriend comment from the guy (I believe it was a police captain or something). It's nice to see those things treated as just normal, and that's it. I don't watch a whole lot of TV, so I'm not sure how common that is, but either way it was nice to see.

2). TCS doesn't have a zero tolerance policy on rape jokes, but it is something that one needs to be careful about making. That jokes was in, I feel, a bit of a grey area, since it was sorta indirectly directed at another user, but the point of the joke wasn't rape so much as a lampooning of extreme feminism. I found it funny, but it is a bit iffy rule wise. Seeing as you seem to understand the rules in regards to rape jokes (this grey area aside), I don't think it's an issue.
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby SilverMaple » Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:00 am

Gendry wrote:Great, now my subconscious has issued a challenge to my brain to work the phrase "starchy subjugation" into everyday conversation


Don't resist it!

"So yeah, my brother made this huge batch of mashed potatoes, and we've been eating the leftovers for the past 3 days. This starchy subjugation really needs to stop."
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby Australia » Sun Mar 08, 2015 8:29 am

SilverMaple wrote:Image

Oh, sure, you attach a photo of Mr Potato Head's penis, but not Mrs Potato Head's penis? That's outrageously sexist.
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby whattowritehere » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:06 am

I'm finding that Cracked's brand of "feminism" borders on sexism. It's stupid and patronizing. It treats women like overly-sensitive beings who are incapable of taking jokes or criticism and it acts like all men are responsible for sexism just because they're men.
I enjoy articles about women. I enjoy articles that talk about feminism in an intelligent manner (but I don't think these articles belong on comedy sites). I don't enjoy click-bait articles that use women and feminism to get people riled up about non-issues.

Edit: Holy run-on sentences
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Re: I don't like Cracked's Portal article

Postby Ceiling_Squid » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:51 am

Ericthebearjew wrote:This article sort of begs the question, what do tumblrites expect out of video games? What would be their ideal video game? Do they even want video games to be a thing?


Apparently they like Oscar-bait shit like Gone Home. Which barely qualifies as a game so much as an interactive narrative. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but I hesitate to call it a game.

Don't get me wrong, it had it's heart in the right place, but the amount of praise it received is largely in spite of the fact that it had very little going for it in the way of gameplay, and the actual story was not well-written. It felt like they were hamfistedly fishing for "social issue du jour bravery points" without remembering to actually make well-written or interesting characters attached to those underpinnings. Well that, and coasting on a heaping helping of 90s nostalgia.

NOTE: Your Mileage May Vary, but I personally had major problems with Gone Home after all the hype it got. I also had major issues with the developer's choice to boycott PAX, but that's a whole other can of beans. Rather indicative of a typical overblown tumblr response.
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