Bent Corner - Social Justice Warriors

Facebook shuts down largest Black Lives Matter group

Facebook has closed the largest Black Lives Matter group because the group was run by a white man in Australia. Even though the group had over 700,000 followers, Facebook deemed it inauthentic.

The group reportedly raised over $100,000 in support of racial-justice causes in the United States.

The group’s founder has been identified as Ian Mackay, an employee of the National Union of Workers in Australia.

Founder of the largest Facebook Black Lives Matter group, Ian Mackay, a white guy.

Why would Facebook even allow a user from Austrailia to create a Black Lives Matter group dedicated to racial-justice causes in the United States? One of the benefits of Facebook is users are usually who they say they are. It’s hard to be a troll on Facebook because of the fact each account is tied to a cell phone number. Did Ian Mackay have a cell phone based in the United States?

I would think that to create a Facebook group dedicated to Black Lives Matter, you would have to live in either Detroit, New York, Baltimore, or Wakanda.

Facebook is stupid. The fact that it’s been able to keep going as long as it has is really a miracle. There’s obviously a market for whatever Facebook is offering. Why a more competent company, run by competent people, hasn’t entered the marketplace and offered consumers an alternative, is a mystery.

The same applies to Twitter.

This isn’t how the marketplace is supposed to work. Companies that fail to satisfy what the market wants are supposed to be replaced by companies that do satisfy consumer demand. It’s 2018 and neither Facebook nor Twitter has any competitors. I find that weird.

And what’s it say about the real Black Lives Matter group when they get outperformed by some random white guy in Austrailia? Nothing good, that’s what.

Joss Whedon compares immigration enforcement agents to the German SS

Joss Whedon, the man behind TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly and the director of the Marvel Comics movies Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron went on Twitter and made a derogatory comment about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. He compared them to President Donald Trump’s SS.

ICE is trump’s SS. They are the shame of our nation (I know, there’s lots, I picked one). How do we stop them? How do we protect our people?

https://t.co/ZYBjzCzakr

— Joss Whedon (@joss) February 15, 2018

The SS were Adolf Hitler’s elite soldiers responsible for the most grotesque and inhuman atrocities of World War Two. For example, the German SS operated the concentration camps located throughout Europe responsible for the extermination of over six million Jewish people.

The German SS were the worst of the worst. They were so despised by Allied soldiers that when captured, their surrender would not be accepted and they would be shot on sight.

Joss Whedon compares immigration enforcement agents to the German SS - Bent Corner — German Waffen SS Recruitment Poster from 1941.

If Joss Whedon truly believes federal ICE agents are anything like the German SS, he’s an idiot.

I have nothing but admiration and sympathy for federal ICE agents. Their job is not an easy one. They’re tasked with enforcing the laws passed by Congress and signed into law by various presidents. ICE agents didn’t create our immigration laws, our elected leaders did.

Joss Whedon knows this, yet he goes on Twitter and says something defamatory and completely untrue about people he doesn’t know. I think the only reason he did something like this was to send a message to his social justice compatriots. He may be a male feminist hypocrite, but he can still talk shit about federal law enforcement with the best of them.

Joss Whedon is dead to me. It pains me to say that. Even though I’ve consumed and enjoyed his work in the past, I can no longer do so in the future. Firefly is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. Every couple of years I binge watch every episode. I don’t ever see myself doing that again.

Wil Wheaton’s TableTop season four

I found this schedule on Reddit for the fourth season of “geek icon” Wil Wheaton’s TableTop. It’s interesting in that each episode has two release dates. Most episodes will premiere on the paid subscription streaming service Alpha. Then, two or three months later, they will publish the episodes on YouTube.

The first two episodes of TableTop season four premiered on YouTube as well as on Alpha.

If you want to watch Wil Wheaton and his crew of wannabe D-listers play the Fate: Core System roleplaying game system today, you’ll have to pay for the privilege. That, or wait almost three months to watch it for free on YouTube.

Alpha is only five bucks a month, but that’s five dollars too much. Watching an episode of TableTop for free on YouTube is too much. If something has social justice warrior Wil Wheaton in it, I will pay money not to watch it.

Wil Wheaton is a talentless dick. He pretends to not only be a nerd, but he promotes himself to be the king of the nerds. If Wil Wheaton was a nerd, he never would have begged to leave Star Trek: The Next Generation. A true nerd would never want to get off a popular Star Trek TV show. A real nerd would fight like a badger to stay on a Star Trek TV show.

From his website:

Here’s the absolute truth why I left Star Trek. I left Star Trek because it was seriously interfering with my career in feature films. I was in a situation where I was constantly having to pass on really good movie roles because I was on the series. I had a film career before Star Trek. People knew me before Star Trek. As a matter of fact, at Comic Con, a lot of people came up to me and said, “I started watching Star Trek because you were on it and I was fan of yours from Stand By Me and I stopped watching it after you left.” I had a lot of people say that to me.

I would bet $100 nobody at Comic-Con ever told Wil Wheaton they starting watching Star Trek: The Next Generation because he was on it. The same goes for someone at Comic-Con saying they stopped watching it because he left. It would be strange for someone to walk up to him at a grocery store and say this. Am I supposed to believe “a lot of people” at Comic-Con did this?

No, I’m not buying it.

After Wil Wheaton left Star Trek: The Next Generation, his movie career went… nowhere. He’s a former child actor who can’t get any type of real acting work as an adult unless he’s playing himself. For example, The Big Bang Theory. Wil Wheaton is a reoccurring character on the show. He plays himself.

Wil Wheaton is an actor who cannot act. He compensates for this personal deficiency by reinventing himself as some sort of geek icon, a king of all nerds. We’re supposed to believe that any sort of nerd, let alone a king of all nerds, would beg, whine, and demand to be released from a TV show with the words Star and Trek in the title.

Thanks, but no thanks.

2015 Hugo Awards nominees announced

The 2015 Hugo Award nominees were announced yesterday, and the list of nominees is reportedly rife with controversy.

I wouldn’t know. I look at the list of finalists for Best Novel, do a quick mental check to see if I’ve read any of them, and then generally move on with my Internet browsing. The list of finalists is controversial supposedly because lists were published encouraging voters who to nominate, not based so much on the merits of the work, but on the political leanings (or lack of political leanings) of the finalists.

Some have criticized the Hugo Awards for being manipulated by so-called Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), people who believe white men have too much clout and power at the cost of non-white, non-men. SJW’s try to even the playing field by promoting, usually on Twitter and Tumblr, less deserving women and minorities over more deserving white men.

Or maybe the women and minorities are more deserving than the white men, but the white men are getting ahead because their whiteness or maleness is just too overpowering, like too much Old Spice slapped on by an octogenarian with a head-cold.

The main list of recommended nominees was Sad Puppies 3, published by writer Brad R. Torgersen. Many of the finalists on the Sad Puppies 3 slate made the final cut and are now in the running to be winners of the 2015 Hugo Award.

The Hugo awards are weird. Though they said to be the most “prestigious” award in the world of science fiction, fantasy, or speculative fiction. The cold hard fact of the matter is anyone willing to fork over $40 for a membership to Worldcon, can nominate finalists and vote for the Hugo Awards.

Anyone means anyone. Technically, you don’t even have to be a fan of the genre. If you have $40, your opinion is just as important as anyone else who is voting for the Hugo Awards.

What this “controversy” really does is illustrate just how meaningless and stupid the Hugo Awards are. If you have an extra forty bucks and you’re willing to spend it for the privilege of voting, your say is just as important as anyone’s.

As I said earlier, I mostly pay attention to the list of Best Novel nominees. With this year, I haven’t read any of the titles nominated. That’s not to say I won’t eventually. I purchased Ancillary Justice, the first book in the same series of Ancillary Sword, I just haven’t read it yet. I also want to read The Goblin Emperor. Although I have never heard of it before, it sounds like an interesting read.

These two books that I want to read, Ancillary Sword and The Goblin Emperor did not appear on the Sad Puppy 3 slate, yet were nominated anyway. They also seem to be the only novels written by women. The other books nominated for Best Novel did appear on the Sad Puppy 3 slate.

If you have a problem with the Redskins' name or mascot, I have some advice for you

The Washington Redskins went to Minnesota to play the Vikings this past Sunday and they did what they do best: they lost. The final score was 29 to 26.

Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III made his triumphant return in the losing effort and played fairly well, considering the amount of rust he has acquired sitting on the bench, eating Subway sandwiches, and recuperating the his various injuries. What was even more remarkable than RGIII playing in an actual NFL game, were the thousands of people protesting outside the stadium against the Washington Redskins.

Some claim the team’s name is a racial slur against Native Americans and should be changed to something else. Many of the protesters on Sunday were reportedly of Native American descent. Some were protesting against the name, while others were protesting against the team’s mascot.

The mascot? What’s wrong with the mascot?

Although I understand how some can argue that the name is a racial slur – I don’t agree with them, but I see how they can come to that conclusion – I don’t understand how anyone can argue the mascot is disrespectful or insulting. The Redskins’ mascot is one of the more nicer looking mascots in the NFL.

The Redskins’ porous defense is insulting, not the mascot.

The ironic thing about the Redskins’ mascot is that it’s very similar to the Vikings’ mascot. The Redskins’s mascot is a man of Native American ancestry. The Vikings mascot is a cartoonish man of white European ancestry with an overgrown 1970’s porn mustache. Of the two mascots, the Redskins’ mascot is much more respectful, mostly because it doesn’t include a stupid looking mustache.

My advice to anyone who doesn’t like the Washington Redskins’ name or mascot, is to pick another team to support. There are 32 teams in the NFL. Chances are, there’s at least one or two other teams in the league with names or mascots that you won’t find offensive or insulting to your delicate sensibilities.

Photo: by Jeff Wheeler / StarTribune