NERRRRRRRRRRD! vol. 66

Ready Player One (the book) came out in 2011, at the high-water mark of the “nerd as cultural force” phenomenon. At the time, G4 was still going strong and Chris Hardwick had released a self-help book with a cover featuring Hardwick brandishing the word “nerd” written on his knuckles, promising to teach you “how to reach the next level (in real life).” Gamergate hadn’t happened yet, and there was still a widespread assumption that to be a “nerd” was to be sensitive and thoughtful, if obsessive and socially awkward. There were signs that this assumption was wildly misguided even then, especially if you’d spent any time actually hanging out with the obsessive and awkward. Discussing the culture’s failings at the time, a game developer friend of mine said the trouble with these consumer-as-identity folks was that they can “categorize but not synthesize.”

This describes Ready Player One to a T. Its story celebrates the ability to retain pieces of pop culture ephemera, but even in lionizing characters who devote their entire lives to it can’t come up with any plausible explanation of why this might be good. Even when depicting ways that it might be bad it seems blind to its own implications. It’s a movie where the main character delivers a stirring speech about all the friends he’s found in the virtual reality video game world — It’s even helped him find love! — at which his audience stands rapt in the streets, Spielberg-faced in agreement — Yeah! We have lots of virtual friends now too! — seemingly unconscious of the fact that they already had 20 potential real-world friends standing two feet away from them, if they’d only taken off the VR headsets and said hello. The film makes a half-hearted attempt to address the analog world (“The best thing about reality is… it’s real” is an actual line), but it’s so transparently tacked on that it only serves to further expose the creators’ disinterest in the world outside games.

The most damning critique I can give Spielberg is that even while he’s enough of a virtuoso to get me invested in someone else’s video game, he can’t identify the crushing void at the center of this narrative. He comes off a brilliant craftsman and a mediocre thinker.

‘Ready Player One’ Is Both Visually Dazzling And An Unintentional Satire Of Consumer Culture

Negation Aspiration vol. 100

previously on Negation Aspiration 

Children's YouTube is still churning out blood, suicide and cannibalism

Children's search terms on YouTube are still awash with bizarre and sometimes disturbing bootleg content. Can anything be done to stem the tide?

Negation Aspiration vol. 99

Satanism Drama Is Tearing Apart the Murderous Neo-Nazi Group Atomwaffen

‘How do you allow [in] people who explicitly say they are satanic doomsday cultists who infiltrate right-wing groups in order to press their agenda?’ one frustrated neo-Nazi asked.

Negation Aspiration vol. 98

Hikers had been talking — and hearing — for years about this illegally built cabin in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. When a state Department of Natural Resources employee finally located it, he found some disturbing things inside. These photos were included in a warrant obtained by the FBI to search suspect Daniel Wood’s Mill Creek condo. (Courtesy of FBI Seattle Field Office)

Illegal ‘gingerbread house’ in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest stocked with food, bedding — and child porn

Originally published March 19, 2018 at 6:00 am Updated March 20, 2018 at 11:41 am

Awww Yeah vol. 79

Speaking of nonconformity, you practice an extreme form of BDSM. What are some things you enjoy doing to the human body, and what has been the most extreme?I like contorting the female body—making it grotesque. I like being confronted and uncomfortable. I like playing around in filth. I like blood. I like intrusive acts. Both body and mind. I like heavy CT (cunt torture). Doing 4g labia hooks was an amazing shared experience. Breast skewering. Suspensions. We did 4,700 needles in my partner once. I crave Sm that stretches and challenges my brain. The creation of consensual trauma and violence. Things that require unpacking and introspection. The apex of my Sm, though, would be peeling my partner, K. That blew my mind.

The strip of shin flesh Jilf and her partner ate

Meet the Melbourne Artist Pushing S&M to the Bleeding Edge

For "Jilf," blood and trauma is all about empowerment.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 127

How Our Reporter 

Uncovered a Lie 

That Propelled an 

Alt-Right Extremist’s 

Rise

Negation Aspiration vol. 97

I'm the Girl Who Clawed Her Own Eyes Out. This Is My Story.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 127

At this point, such incidents have become so routine that it’s tempting to wave them off. 

We shouldn’t. What happened to Ms. Sommers on Monday is a telling example of a wider phenomenon that reaches well beyond the confines of campus. Call it the moral flattening of the earth. 

We live in a world in which politically fascistic behavior, if not the actual philosophy, is unquestionably on the rise. Italy just gave the plurality of its vote to a party that is highly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. The Philippines is in the grip of a homicidal maniac who is allying himself with Xi Jinping. Mr. Xi just anointed himself president for life and has banned the words “Animal Farm” and “disagree” from Chinese internet searches. Bashar al-Assad is winning in Syria, where half a million people have so far been slaughtered. Dictatorship and starvation have descended on Venezuela. At its annual conference in Washington last month, the Conservative Political Action Committee gave its stage, and its enthusiastic applause, to a member of France’s National Front. That’s just a short list.

Yet these are generally not the extremists that leftists focus on. Instead, they seem to believe that the real cause for concern are the secret authoritarians passing as liberals and conservatives in our midst.

We’re All Fascists Now

By BARI WEISSMARCH 7, 2018

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Negation Aspiration vol. 96 (Dead Man's Oscar Party)

 

 Is this culture content? Is it happy? Are the smiles broadcast by this culture’s media the smiles that reflect the collective mind? Does the self-professed compassion of the media for the unfortunate seem sincere? 

 Is this culture a Judeo-Christian culture? Is forgiveness a quality of Christian ethos? Didn’t Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine high school pose with a caption that stated, “Stay alive, stay different, stay crazy”? Didn’t they target Christians? Weren’t they accused of being “Nazis”? Wasn’t one of them Jewish? Wasn’t one of them an honor student? If these fellows were staying “crazy” and staying “different,” and thinking on their own, were they perhaps manifesting a counter-cultural ideal? 

What else in this culture were the Columbine killers attacking? Aren’t “jocks,” whom they killed, generally considered common “good guys” by our culture? Don’t jocks represent pro-cultural values? Do those who hold values that counter the culture see jocks as boorish, vapid, brute, conceited and condescending, who willfully insult and violate those who refuse to gang with the masses? 

 Were Harris and Klebold reacting to the media itself? Did they give their own lives and take others to make a point about the media at large? Can it be true that the media-at-large is so neurotic that it is unable to truthfully describe the Columbine event? Is it true that a videotape they produced just before the killings is now being withheld so the public can not determine their own thoughts about Harris’ and Klebold’s statements? 

In Civilization and Its Discontents, did Sigmund Freud define a neurotic as an individual holding thoughts that clash with those held by the prevailing culture, an individual who subverts those clashing thoughts to the subconscious that later manifest in the form of anxiety and unnecessary behavior? If this is so, what does one consider a culture whose prevailing ideas express hypocrisy, sham and double-standard? Does this somehow define a neurotic culture? 

 Does Steven Spielberg hold the same values I wish upon myself? Does the mind of this grinning, bespectacled, baseball-capped man entirely reflect this culture? 

 Is it true that in his waning years, Orson Welles asked Steven Spielberg for a small amount of money with which he could make a final film? Is it true Steven Spielberg refused? Is it true that Steven Spielberg bought a sled used in Citizen Kane for an extremely large sum of money? 

 Do Steven Spielberg’s passions burn? Do passions burn in the man now imprisoned who wished to anally rape Steven Spielberg? Do our cultural mouthpieces confidently inform us that the wish to anally rape Steven Spielberg is a bad thought? Could anal rape of Steven Spielberg be simply the manifestation of a cultural mandate? 

 Do you believe Steven Spielberg is an ideal guide and influence for our culture? Do Steven Spielberg’s films question our culture? What do Steven Spielberg’s films question? Does Steven Spielberg focus much of his fantasy life on young people? Did he portray children wallowing in sewers filled with fecal matter in Schindler’s List? Did he use children to finger paint an adult in Hook? Does he collect the illustrations of Norman Rockwell, such as the one showing a young boy in his underwear examined by a doctor? Are the inclinations of Steven Spielberg above suspicion by the media-fed culture? Was Steven Spielberg very friendly with Michael Jackson? Wasn’t Michael Jackson supposed to play Peter Pan in Steven Spielberg’s version of the story? Now that Michael Jackson is no longer held in favor by the mass media, does Spielberg associate with him? Do Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg share similar opinions about the sexuality of young boys?

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 126

Worshippers clutching AR-15 rifles hold commitment ceremony at Pennsylvania church [video]