Quick Look: South Park - The Fractured But Whole

@lively: "What exactly are they right about? That people who care about things, regardless of politics, are stupid?"

Their joke is more about mocking leftist extremists and the trend known as "virtue signalling". It's contextual in the current social climate we're in, and isn't simply about mocking people who care about social issues.

So South Park plays to the alt-right now? That sucks.

I guess I fail to see the difference, based on how I've seen the term used in the wild.

I totally get how there are instances where "virtue-signalling" can come across as obnoxious or self-serving, but there are many occasions where failing to say something is much worse. As the saying goes, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".

There are a lot of occasions where there's a gathering / community of people, and someone tells a super racist/sexist/etc. joke, and no one calls them out for it - if they do call the person out, and try to make a case for being less awful, they might very well be accused of virtue signaling by anti-pc types.

It's kind of hard to not come across as obnoxious to people who really don't want to hear it, but awfulness of many types is on the rise in the world right now, and it feels utterly dispiriting how many people just casually seem to think it's no big deal, since it doesn't seem to affect them personally right here and now.

In the end I'm usually very suspicious of the motives of creators who seem to hate "virtue signalling" a lot more than the injustices being highlighted.

I wouldn't go that far, I don't think they've really promoted alt-right / white nationalist stuff (although there is a bit of overlap in the anti-pc crowd). It's more fair to say they don't seem to care that much about the consequences of politics - they repeatedly push their "douche vs. turd sandwich" metaphor for elections and that not voting for anybody is a valid reaction to current politics.

To me that's massively irresponsible, as sometimes the lesser of two evils is a lot less damaging than the greater of two evils, and only people who either are very privileged or very ignorant can afford to put their heads in the sand about the real consequences these things have.

South Park is one of my go-to things to watch when I'm just hanging out at home, and there's always reruns on these days, so I get to watch a good deal of older episodes. The first part of your comment is a huge oversimplification, and it's not really true. The show has always made fun of both conservatives and liberals.

I totally get where you're coming from in regards to the season opening. I see how that is one way to look at it. I actually interpreted it a different way: I thought that the way Randy was berating Darryl was actually meant to show the shitty attitude that educated upper-middle class people often show to lower-income working-class people.

The best kind of art is the art that people can interpret in multiple ways!

@shtinky: The problem with the term "virtue signaling" is that it depends upon knowing what's in another person's heart and mind.

A lot of the people who use the term seem to believe that nobody would go to bat for another person/group of people unless they wanted brownie points for it, as if empathy doesn't exist. I prefer to believe that people are being sincere when they tell you who they are, and what they believe, and going from there.

Of course, trolls and awful people exist, and there have been some high-profile seemingly leftist men who have turned out to be garbage harassment machines, but I'm just so fucking tired of sincere thoughtfulness and concern being treated like it can't possibly be real, that altruism and selflessness are always fake.

You know the old joke about how you can replace every line of a New Yorker comic with "Christ, what an asshole."? South Park is basically the R-rated version of a New Yorker comic.

@lively: A lot of it comes across as disingenuous and patronising to actual minorities like myself, who are working and living perfectly normal lives in first-world countries. It's 2017, not 1957, and for the most part, we really aren't dealing with as much oppression and the "rising hate" that generations before us had to deal with. Certainly not enough that it needs to be constantly talked about ad nauseum by the sort of people that South Park are parodying.

I think another reason why the PC culture is so maligned is the underlying fear of censorship. Taking gaming for example, we want our Japanese developers to feel free to make their games and publish them here in the west. And taking your point about motives, what really is the motive of people who criticise art they find objectionable? Is it really just to have a discussion, or is end goal to flat out censor the product? To put it simply, it all feels very Jack Thomspon'esque is its own way, and that's why the gaming community/ YouTube has become so “anti-SJW” because of these underlying censorship fears.

That's just my take on it, as someone who really only cares about this from the gaming perspective.

Racial justice issues being "not as bad as 1957" is a really low bar; many things have improved, we have so far still to go on others.

See the supreme court overturning the voting rights act, and subsequently you have a bunch of states (mostly in the South) try to make surgically precise attempts to prevent minorities from voting via closing down polling places, implement voter ID and residency proof restrictions, etc.

In other situations you have police brutality getting more attention - not necessarily because it's gotten worse, but because it's become much more visible via social media and cell phone cameras.

Much of the injustices that are still being fought over aren't hard-coded in to law like the Jim Crow era, but are still very real - carried out by judges, politicians, police, employers, schools, and many other institutions that don't have discrimination written down as official policy, but it finds its way in regardless.

These are the trickiest things to fight because the people causing them will usually deny racist intent, and likely don't think they are in the wrong at all. It's often hard to say what is the real case, but I've talked to black folks who say this kind of thing is sort of like "gaslighting", where someone else tells you you're imagining things. To get this treatment constantly whenever trying to speak up about something can't be good for anyone's emotional well-being.

I think one of the most damaging things that public schools taught people my age was that the Civil Rights era succeeded, and things were basically fine afterward, so the common refrain you hear from conservatives and moderates is "nobody is treating you unfairly, just settle down and stop complaining".

I think it's human to hear people complaining and get a bit irritated, especially since we as humans aren't very capable of understanding problems that we ourselves haven't faced. However, I think it's true that silent, well-behaved people rarely brought about any change.

Except in rare cases I don't think people these days are calling for censorship, which strictly speaking is only applicable with government intervention.

There are certain things that should be sufficiently socially unacceptable that people don't buy it and stores don't carry it (for example, something that is straight up promoting ethnic cleansing). Industry groups and stores are usually self-policing in this case, responding to market forces.

For other issues (stuff that some people see as sexist) I think most self-described "SJW's" would say that they don't expect games like that to disappear entirely. Rather, there should be a much greater selection of games that are more inclusive, cater to other groups, etc. There will always be a place for a straight-up juvenile teen boy fantasy version of gender portrayals, but it should be a choice on a much larger menu.

The good news is that this is already happening - I think there is a much greater diversity in tone, representation, characters, etc in games these days than 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. The more alternatives are readily available, the less complaining you will see on the existence of the more juvenile, white male-dominated stuff that used to corner the market entirely.

Think of an analogy to books, or TV: the market is big enough that a lot of different demographics are catered to.

I guess a counter-argument would be that "the market decides what it wants", and that social justice types are trying to get companies to artificially cater to very small alternative audiences. I think part of this argument is that there is a zero-sum total number of game developers and market for games, and creating more games for one audience will take away games from another.

I can't say for certain, but I think there is enough opportunity to grow alternative markets and expand the total number of good games out there for multiple audiences, that the fears of censorship are overblown.

Viewing outright racism as a minor disappointment rather than a disgusting, disqualifying offense is going to be a black mark on Giant Bomb for years to come.

@lively: "I think it's human to hear people complaining and get a bit irritated, especially since we as humans aren't very capable of understanding problems that we ourselves haven't faced."

That's not really the issue; the main issue people have is how certain folk have become so quick to label anyone who disagrees/criticises their ideology as racist, sexist, misogynist, etc. Or the new thing, to call them "alt right" or "trump supporter".

"I can't say for certain, but I think there is enough opportunity to grow alternative markets and expand the total number of good games out there for multiple audiences, that the fears of censorship are overblown."

Yeah, I agree that the fear of censorship is largely overblown, and the western market will decide for itself, etc; but censorship does happen, there's a whole YouTube channel dedicated to instances of it, if you're interested.

And even if it isn't their motive to call for censorship, they are still spreading a message that certain games are offensive, which can have a knock-on effect that could lead to censorship. Which is why it's important for people to provide a counter argument to those viewpoints. For example, we've seen how Anita Sarkeesian has made a series regarding sexism in video games, whose arguments don't hold up under scrutiny.

I think it's important to criticise the viewpoints of people who criticise the art you socially identify with. But I just wish all of us could do this in a civilised way, without sounding so angry and militant; without trying to straight up insult others.

Game audio way too loud in this one for anyone else? I could barely focus on what the guys were saying when the game had dialogue.

I don't agree with everything they say but that doesn't mean I don't like them. They are good dudes with a unique take on things. A lot of people don't like how social/political they are but I happen to align with them on a lot of that stuff so it works for me. I get how it doesn't for the people that are just in it for the games though and that's fair enough.

I can see why Matt and Trey have gotten lot of flack for not "taking sides" over the last few years, but to be fair I can also see how in order in be effective satirists they would feel they need to be impartial.

If anyone is still interested I recently picked up a copy of TFBW from Target for $20. It came with a code for The Stick of Truth that said it was expired but still works (PS4), it also came with a slip saying "thanks for pre-ordering" with a code for the Towlie add-on which worked as well. Pretty good deal for a game that's only 8 months old.