Colonial legacy

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#58

Actually, AFAIK Achebe’s essay is included in most modern editions of Heart of Darkness anyway, so you kind of have to go out of your way to not read it. It is exactly as dusty and academic as the novel itself. I know that is probably neither here nor there, but if anything the ideas he expresses in that piece are probably a lot easier for people to understand now than when he first wrote them down.

This x100. I absolutely hate it when people try to compose serious, complicated essays in a series of tweets. It is such an abysmal medium for communicating anything of substance, and I find it terrifying that so many otherwise intelligent people still use it that way (1/500000). Just write a blog post and link to it in a tweet for chrissakes.

#59

racism and classism still exists. it’s ’ antiquated ’ only in the sense that we have past evidence which displays that having these views wasn’t frowned upon. i feel like it’s not really the ’ criticism ’ that’s ever the issue, it’s more like ’ i like this thing and i want to overlook how it may have had any negative impact and you’re an asshole for bringing it up because thinking about the media we consume is tedious ’ sort of thing.

this is just my opinion though. things being ’ problematic ’ can be subjective and full of reactive and thirsty people desperate to seem revolutionary but, i wouldn’t be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume that that’s the case for every subject that’s brought forward.

one-dimensional thinking goes both ways.

#60

Internet folks are way less likely to talk about classism.

Its much harder to co-opt class consciousness into neoliberal capitalist ideology

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#61

i really do feel like it’s impossible to have a genuine conversation about political things online most of the time because it’s mostly just people regurgitating popular opinion and being outraged without a full understanding of other points of view.

it’s also really hard to be radical, visible, and not respectable. it’s become a branding of it’s own.

i mean, it’s really easy to tell when people are being shallow about it, but that doesn’t make it any less sickening.

meanwhile, the people ’ on the other side ’ use examples from their chosen opposition as representation for entire movements and trains of thought and purposely focus on the flaws of these self appointed mouth pieces in order to appear more logical and flaunt some false image of intellectual superiority but, really only manage to come off just as hollow, empty and unwilling to change as the people they’re criticizing.


all these squares make a circle

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#62

Class Consciousness in 2016

#63

I said: whether or not some past piece of art should be disregarded, and by whom, ought to be evaluated on a case by case basis, and then gave a basic structure to how that evaluation should proceed.

You said: if that were true, no one would ever study Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will.

I’ve been trying to show you that that’s entirely incompatible what I said ever since.

#64

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#65

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#66

ok yeah, and also what about the older ‘God’ games that precede minecraft? in populous playing the game well initially only means that your village’s land size grows and its populations swells. In the end part of the a game your village literally bumps up against the enemys until you claim that territory as well for lebensraum.

In general most (mainstream at least) god/simulation games have always acknowledged politics and/or ethics in some way.Eg in Simcity 2000 your budget choices would be sagely commented on by city planning experts, rather than having the game just let you see the pure effect on the simulation. Black and white had the moral choice aspect of god games as a core mechanic.

They genre name ‘god game’ stuck because the political and ethical connotations of the form were so obvious.

So saying that minecraft maybe could be ‘read’ from an ethical standpoint doesn’t really seem like that obscure a question, to me.

#67

if God’s perspective on Creation is the same as the one in the original Populous, that would explain a lot about the state of the world and the history of our interactions with Him

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#68

I have for a long time really wanted to read an in depth article about the ethics / politics of city sim games. i feel like there was something pretty smart on Sim City and Will Wright awhile back, don’t know if it was just a post on here or a blog article or something* but i would be really tickled to see like, a fivethirtyeight style statistical analysis of Sim City vs. other city sims vs. actual city planning/historical data. But people don’t take video game writing that seriously I guess, idk.

*aside: How many clicks could certain quality sb posts have mined if they had been posted in a more visible situation? Even our outrage/meltdown threads would probably rack up massive hateclicks if given proper publicity. Total missed opportunity to bring in mad revenue by monetizing our content generation. Speaking of that, does anyone else miss the frontpage?

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#69

How many clicks could certain quality sb posts have mined if they had been posted in a more visible situation? Even our outrage/meltdown threads would probably rack up massive hateclicks if given proper publicity. Total missed opportunity to bring in mad revenue by monetizing our content generation. Speaking of that, does anyone else miss the frontpage?

not exactly sure what you’re getting at here (but still intrigued).

What do you mean by more visible situation or proper publicity?

SB hosted user blogs? or a curated best post of the week thing on a front page? Or articles on a front page inspired by individual posts/entire threads? Or less nobly, sending out SB posts in clickbait form to the larger cyber-world?

#70

oh nothing in particular, just musing about the Quality Posting that occurs on SB from time to time vis a vis the genral boringness of other video games writing that exists.

idr if you were on the old forums or not but it used to be that posts that were deemed Good could be promoted to the front page of the site. tbh i never really looked at it before, but i do sort of miss the outward-facing feel that it gave the community, which has a virtuous and natural tendency towards introspection

btw the second bit wasn’t meant to be targeted directly at you but i am glad you responded

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#71

While obviously not quite the same as the tone of writing on this forum, the podcast does capture some of that outward-facing feel (I get the impression that most new members on this site come here through the podcast now)

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#72

Yeah, I’m not really a podcast person, but I’m super glad it exists, because it’s nice to know that people who put a lot of energy into this forum are also doing something that might help to actually get them some recognition for it.

mind, it’s not really the end of the world if what happens at sb stays at sb, but every now and then something random reminds me that there is some pretty good writing happening here almost all the time that very few people will ever read, and in the click driven economy of the 21st century that’s kind of… charming, i guess?

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#73

Also we’re at least googleable now, just in case someone ever types “the true chinua achebe starts here” into Google

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#74

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#75

anytime i put more than 10 minutes/several paragraphs worth of effort into a post i feel like it’s a waste tbh. should probably just start a blog, at least anything i write will have some kind of posterity there.

on the other hand it’s nice to have some kind of audience and it feels low-pressure in a way that trying to be a Blogger doesn’t. idk im just paralyzed when it comes to personal projects like that but that’s a whole nother thread

#76

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#77

I agree, but the retrospective me is always more appreciative than the now me. I’ve probably done some of my best non-academic writing in axe posts, and at the time I was thankful that it would be gone in a few days, but from the future looking backward I occasionally regret not trying to do more with it.

Then again, everything always looks better in the rear-view, I’m sure if I actually had to live with the things I think are so great I would think they were bad anyway. Tears, in the rain…