I dunno, man, she cancelled herself, in the sense that this is a storm I think she would have weathered if she’d have just let it blow over. I’m sure some people give a shit about all that, but I certainly don’t. I think she’s on Nebula now, so she’s still making stuff. I keep wanting to get Nebula every time I’m reminded she’s on it. And Big Joel. And all the cool kids.
But no question: liberals eat their own. It’s not our best quality.
Would you mind giving me a brief rundown of what happened here?
Probably, but isn’t that true of basically every cancellation that doesn’t involve criminal charges?
She could have withheld the shitstorm, but she shouldn’t have had to.
Lindsay Ellis made this tweet:
This was BE (Before Elon), so Twitter being what it was in those days (as opposed to the even bigger mess it is now), the mob decided she must have meant “because they’re Asian” and harassed her to the point she stopped making content for a while, and never came back to YouTube.
No, but I hate it when these idiots get their way, especially at the expense of brilliant, innovative artists like Lindsay Ellis.
I think she also had a kid though, didn’t she? She had a lot going on.
Lindsay, astute pop culture critic that she is, dismissed a recent Asian-originated creation as being derivative of an earlier Asian-originated creation. Oops - one was Japanese and the other SE Asian. Was she making a correct observation, or was she, as the baying hounds at the moral center of the online universe howled, an obtuse racist blind to the distinctions between cultures? In her bye-bye, don’t need this abuse video, she proposed the concept of “bad faith misinterpretations made deliberately for online clout.”
To her credit, unlike Bret Weinstein and others, Lindsay didn’t seek a new career as a victim of woke.
Avatar: the Last Airbender isn’t Japanese, it’s American.
Which was part of the criticism: how dare you imply that authentically southeast Asian Raya is derivative of an American, Colonialist, exploitative work of theft Avatar!
Avatar is a freaking masterpiece. I would assume anything vaguely comparable after that would be compared to it.
I didn’t realize Avatar was being cancelled. Damn.
ETA: Can anyone tell me why Nebula is a safer place than YouTube to make cultural critique videos?
It’s owned by the creators, so their videos aren’t going to get demonetized if YouTube feels they’re too spicy.
The sarcastic way you’re phrasing this makes me think you don’t think there’s anything remotely culturally appropriative about A:TLA, the show where white creators, actors, and producers profited from the aesthetics and stories of Asian and Indigenous cultures without authentic representation or voice.
I mean, I like the show, but I recognize it has that glaring fault, too.
It’s clearly obvious that Avatar: the Last Airbender borrows many aesthetic choices from Asian cultures - both in the way architecture, environments, clothing, etc is drawn as well as in the art style.
The ethnicity of the show’s creators is less obvious, unless one looks into it, but given the discourse around Avatar, I am of course aware that it’s creators aren’t Asian.
I just don’t see that as a glaring fault, though; I think that’s a little ridiculous. It’s a fantasy setting where the inspiration is “popular perception of old timey East Asia (and a little bit of Arctic circle)” rather than yet another “popular perception of old timey Western Europe” rehash. That’s a good thing that should be celebrated, not a “glaring fault”.
Moderator Note
Please remember that this is in ATMB. Keep the discussion relevant to the rules and moderation here.
If you want to have a more general discussion on these issues, please take it to a more appropriate forum.
In other words, it’s ok for example to discuss cultural norms and such with respect to the moderation here, but if we’re going to have a more general discussion about cultural norms, that belongs elsewhere.
Going back on topic — part of the issue to begin with is that yes, something sex-related may be tangentially mentioned in the cpurse of a non-sex-centered thread, but in such a case doing so in a crass or juvenile manner will be even more frowned upon than usual.
Like others said having it put as “but I like to have a chance at dating” instead of “pv$$y” would have not been as sternly noted. Even in the “bad old days” a majority of the board generally tried to maintain what passed for polite form. The big issue was we were too comfortable in how we were enlightened ignorance-fighters by 1973-1999 standards, so we kept on for too long tolerating attitudes that may have been politely worded but failed at truly considering respect and dignity for all. That is something that is not just corrected once and done.