One of the most persistent problems with political discourse this decade has been the advent of the Social Justice Warrior and their particular tactics; appeals to emotion, denial of reality and refusal to take any responsibility for their actions or attitudes. They’ve been particularly vexatious with the willingness to dox, attack the employment of, and defame the reputations of their political opposition. While it can’t be fully traced back to where it started, we can find the earliest popularized example and go from there. Now, there are the obvious examples brought about by #GamerGate. You could even say Anita Sarkeesian is a Patient Zero of this type of concept. But she only caught real steam post-GG and the initial use of it as a marketing boost was only relegated to the hardcore gamer side of the internet in 2012.
So who am I talking about then? I’m talking about the first mass-media example of this in the current age, shown via Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares: Amy Bouzaglo along with her husband Samy. Now as many people have heard, the original restaurant they ran is out of business and has been for over 3 years now, though via reruns and some apparent continued interest the monstrosity lives on, if only in GAWKER-like status as a defunct property. So now that we know what we are working with, Let’s Hammer This In!
So who are Amy and Samy Bouzaglo? They are citizens of Scottsdale, Arizona who started as a project in 2006 the eponymous “Amy’s Baking Company,” begun because of the wife’s insistence that she is good at baking. As such, her husband spent $1 million dollars of his own money to kickstart her intended profession. Her arrogance led her to believe that her food was world class. To any who have seen the episode of the show most of her stuff is store bought trash. In 2012/2013 when the show was filmed she was certain that her only issues were with her management and not her ‘skills’ as a patisserie. She felt if she just got a few management pointers from Gordon Ramsay she could save her failing business. Her attitude quickly showed this was not the case.
When she refused to listen to what Mr. Ramsay had to say, nor any of the legitimate criticism provided by ‘internet harassment,’ it was obvious that there was no hope for the business or any of those employed in the low-quality bakery. So what does this have to do with the SJW archetype we see today, and how it was popularized? Well, for starters the tactic of calling any negative suggestion about Amy, Samy, or the quality of their products “harassment” comes to mind. In the mind of the arrogant and pig-headed social justice warrior nothing they do can be considered ‘bad’ because they see themselves as the pinnacle of humanity. It’s quite clear to the bulk of us who have come to see this archetype that the opposite is true.
Now for her ‘white knight’ in the form of her husband, Samy, a seemingly cucked man who gives untold amounts of his own money to pay for his spouse’s whims. Granted the contemporary SJW has diversified the source of their income through services like Patreon, Kickstarter, and IndieGogo the approach is typically the same. Have others fund a lavish cosmopolitan lifestyle that they feel entitled to simply due to their upper middle class upbringing, and they don’t have to contribute anything of quality to earn it. This is the epitome of mediocrity, if you will. We’ve seen untold numbers of ‘activists’ born from these tactics to be sure.
So why do they feel that merit, quality, and decency are traits they should refuse to embody? Its because this class of person can’t stand giving anything resembling ‘effort,’ lest it tarnish their looks (which are usually subpar themselves) or waste precious time they can spend being the insufferable arrogant louts that they are. In essence, they can’t be bothered to be hard working people because hard work is beneath them. It is the pure essence of the elitist mindset that has cause so many problems over the past few decades. Honestly I think it’s the core of why so many Europeans so overtly hate Americans. They have been run by elites and oligarchs for so long they can’t imagine anything else. It’s why the EU is failing, and still trying so hard to retain any hold over the continent – its hardwired into their cultural DNA.
America, however, was started primarily by those cast out by Europe. While they were businessmen and philosophers, they would have never been allowed anywhere near a leadership role in Britain, France or Spain. Typically, the United States has been run until somewhat recently by those who started their lives as paupers. As a younger country it took us some time to develop a sort of political bureaucratic elite. That’s why the term ‘elitist’ is such a chiding remark, because it’s not within our traditions to have elite politicians. If you think about it, we still shouldn’t. However, it is within human nature to develop such economic hierarchies.
So why did the contemporary SJW develop from these actions? Well, after seeing it work at least for two more years, there are obviously those who took it as a guide to live by, not to mention that as a trait arrogance knows no bounds. The entitlement culture that embodies what Amy viewed her life to be is a core trait of gynocentrism. Look at all the most prominent and successful of the SJWs, they are all at least identified as women. This takes advantage of several layers of evolutionary development. So why does this tactic work in today’s world and not in her world in 2013? Well, unlike most industries, a restaurant can’t thrive in consistent development alone. Results have to be produced. Video games, movies. and books are known for their difficulty to produce quickly, so excuses are more easily made.
You could say that the way video game culture grew the expectations of development led too many of us to be too forgiving for too long and let this sort of culture fester within the community. The timing just happens to be convenient for when that episode aired. Sadly it’s likely that most of us didn’t pay attention to it because we didn’t care to see more common fare, due to our natures as geeks. Otherwise we could have seen all this shit coming well in advance and cut it out before it festered. However, it is no use to lament over what we can’t change. We only serve to distract ourselves further.
So how does this help us now? It shows us that we just have to not give in. The way we clear geek culture of these would-be usurpers and dividers is through vigilance and persistence. We keep showing that their destructive ideology is not welcome. We don’t ask forgiveness for things we do not do and we don’t accept any of their excuses. We don’t care what they say about us. We just show the people in our own lives how they are flat out wrong. We present our skills and talents to our fellow hobbyists and professional colleagues. We support good work, and refuse to be forced into supporting the insertion of political propaganda into our entertainment media at the expense of quality. We’ve weathered the worst of other forms of evangelism. We can weather this just fine. We have been weathering this just fine. If we must, we use civil action as merited, when they try to attack us financially through legal waters, and show it’s not worth it to keep trying to attack our right to exist in the same world they occupy.
They eventually will go broke if they continue the attacks, and we will overtake them. For example, if we stick with #ComicsGate creators and show that they are what will succeed and the SJWs will keep failing, the shareholders and the financially inclined of the big comics creators will be begging #CG creators to return and revive the classics proper, to restore the Modern era Mythos to its former glory.
To add to this we also have to ask why did geek mythology come under attack by the social justice menace? Well, like I said before, it promotes creative thinking and individuality but more than that as stated in a video I’ve seen recently by the entertainingly named DOOMCOCK, it destroys a common language. The canon of a particular franchise can be used as a unifying language between divergent personalities, all united by what we enjoy instead of something we hate. Authoritarians can’t work with people united by happiness and entertainment because we want to keep in the pleasant situation by nature. A unity of fear and hatred, however, they can direct as they please by claiming their target is the locus of hatred – for example, the common enemy dubbed ‘the alt-right’ which is purposely loosely defined so the outrage can be redirected swiftly.
If you have a large group of people unified by a love of video games or comic books, not only can you not break that group up as easily, but they will never listen to you while the focus of their joy exists. Therefore, SJWs have to take these areas over and destroy them from within. Like I said before – it’s not about being successful. It never was. That’s why our shared mythology has been under attack.
Thing is, they underestimated severely the strength of that mythology and our ability to preserve it. Star Wars is the best example of it. Sure, the Disney canon exists, as does the old EU canon. However, that’s not the true nature of the fandom. The fans are, in the end, the ones who decide what what the overall canon is. This is why I suggest the return to the EU for Star Wars. We use that to see the world we want from the franchise, then add to it ourselves. As time goes on the rest will follow suit.
The battle might be hard right now, but we will win eventually. It just comes down to not only distributing that information but returning to that common language again. We are not those in the Ivory Tower of Babel, They are sitting right in it, particularly in the EU Parliament.
Next week I’m going to try to delve into something a lot less speculative and more objective. Until then Please Remember to Game Freely!
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- Breaking the Narrative Episode 122: You’re Reviewing What Now? The Dissenter Web Browser! - June 10, 2019
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