Jake

Idle Thumbs 185: Beppo's Hole

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I was nine years old when Pokemon was realized in North America, so I was square in the target demographic and got super sucked into it. The best part of that was that because the first two games were so big for Game Boy games, Game Freak had to pull all sorts of weird programming tricks to make them work, meaning that the games were exploitable as hell, with the most famous exploit probably being MissingNo. This combined with playground logic in an awesome way, sometimes adding unnecessary steps to exploits (I'm pretty sure the MissingNo trick I'm familiar with is twice as long as necessary) and creating ones out of whole cloth (like the myth that you could find Mew by using Strength on the truck behind the SS Ann.

 

Even though I don't play a ton of Pokemon anymore, it holds a really special place in my heart as one of the first games that made me realize that video games could be something more than just "complete this stage" or "get the high score." The sense of wonder I felt in the first few minutes of Pokemon Blue as I leveled up my little Bulbasaur is still something that keeps me going in this hobby.

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Very easy! You can just go online and trade for a Meowth.

 

Have they gotten any faster with letting you trade online? The last one I played was SoulSilver, and I remember it taking FOR-EV-ER to get access to that stuff.

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Have they gotten any faster with letting you trade online? The last one I played was SoulSilver, and I remember it taking FOR-EV-ER to get access to that stuff.

 

You can trade more or less immediately in X/Y, so I don't imagine it would be any different in OR/AS.

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At the height of Gamer Gate a lot of the supporters said they were part of a "consumer revolt" implying that they were using their power as consumers to move the production of games towards some kind of ideological purity. I wonder if those reviewing Monument Valley poorly felt the same way.

 

TotalBiscuit still refers to GamerGate as a consumer revolt. And he's right; the consumers are revolting.

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TotalBiscuit still refers to GamerGate as a consumer revolt. And he's right; the consumers are revolting.

I see what you did there.

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the fuck's a beppo?

 

EDIT: As answered on the first page.

 

Those Nintendo noises were so accurate. I think Mario Advance ultimately cracked me up because the Luigi and Toad sounds were so distorted and bad ("dats what I needed') that they went beyond obnoxious to absurd. Like I couldn't stop thinking what possessed Nintendo into feeling that this was suitable? Also Danielle does the best toad I've ever heard. It really made up for the Taylor Swift talk at the end.

 

I strongly disagree with the idea that Taylor Swift doesn't sell sex. Her earlier music (which, I'll admit, I am only passingly familiar with) sells this ridiculous image of a saintly, pure young woman. Even with this more blatantly pop album, Swift is still positioned as the anti-Katy Perry, or the anti-Brittany, or the anti-Miley, because she maintains that virginal, girl next door quality. It's still sex, the Madonna side of the whore/Madonna duality, and it still sends unreasonable messages to young women about how they should relate to their sexuality. The new album is frustrating because she is clearly talking about sex, but it's cloaked in gauzy metaphor that feels calculated to allow her to hold onto the Madonna image, while providing a very measured, clinical titillation. 

Considering the same people who write and produce the songs for those pop stars do so for Taylor Swift should probably say as much. Yeah I realize that she has writing credits, but they don't pay Max Martin the big bucks for just hanging around.

 

I'm so sick of this pop music stuff where it's just someone's name and whoever happens to be doing the production and hiring the session musicians and writers that the record label has budgeted for. I guess that's always been most pop music though, so eh. At least with a band it's easier to know who is shit and why.

 

At least have the same people behind each album if it's going to be a producer backed vehicle where so that you create a group evolution, like Garbage. Shirley Manson is so awesome and a new Garbage album next year.

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Also I take issue with the claim that she is authentic. Whether or not the lyrics in her music contain genuine sentiments, it's still fashioned in a highly contrived way so that songs about New York, or teenage love, or whatever are the products of the pop music machine's idea about these topics. Like I don't even know how you can even discuss authenticity, it's like a totally immaterial concept to the world she operates in.

I've noticed a startling number of otherwise intelligent people buying into Taylor Swift's marketing. It's completely baffling. I can think of few things less authentic than the weird fun-house mirror version of a human being that major label pop acts sell themselves as.

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I haven't reached the Taylor Swift part of the 'cast yet, and I don't really know much about her, but I saw this article and thought I may as well chuck it in here.

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I've noticed a startling number of otherwise intelligent people buying into Taylor Swift's marketing. It's completely baffling. I can think of few things less authentic than the weird fun-house mirror version of a human being that major label pop acts sell themselves as.

In a time where people earnestly worry about their personal brand and how they, as a person, appear as a branding effort, I think it's overly cynical to be completely unforgiving of someone for presenting a version of themselves to the public. It's not inauthentic if you're simplifying your self for consumption. It's just capitalism.

Also, it's a question that is, at this moment, impossible to answer. Either you follow the narrative that Taylor Swift has had control over her image and song writing or you don't. It just happens that she's a more interesting figure if you assume she has agency, so why not let her have that?

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I've noticed a startling number of otherwise intelligent people buying into Taylor Swift's marketing. It's completely baffling. I can think of few things less authentic than the weird fun-house mirror version of a human being that major label pop acts sell themselves as.

 

I am like the baffled friend Sean mentioned: Why are people buying this. Do they think that sounds good? Maybe major labels', A movie studios' and AAA game devs' ad campaigns do work after all. When I first saw the final box art for Far Cry 4 I was reminded of a recent entry to the Guiness book of world records:

 

Akshay-Kumars-Boss-enters-Guinness-Book-

 

Akshay Kumar’s ‘Boss’ has entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest poster after beating Michael Jackson’s. The superstar’s fan club made the largest poster in the world in just four months, The special poster for Boss, of size 58.87m wide and 54.94m high. Earning it’s place on the Guinness World Records website. (source)

 

A part of the Far Cry 4 ad campaign: A Ubisoft podcast hosted by community devs Kim and Ari with guests script writer Liz Albl and co lead writer Li Kuo. Strong female characters. Wise and traditionalist natives.

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In a time where people earnestly worry about their personal brand and how they, as a person, appear as a branding effort, I think it's overly cynical to be completely unforgiving of someone for presenting a version of themselves to the public. It's not inauthentic if you're simplifying your self for consumption. It's just capitalism.

Also, it's a question that is, at this moment, impossible to answer. Either you follow the narrative that Taylor Swift has had control over her image and song writing or you don't. It just happens that she's a more interesting figure if you assume she has agency, so why not let her have that?

 

I wouldn't frame it as her being inauthentic. I think the question of authenticity just doesn't even enter the picture. There isn't some contrast like the music of John Coltrane vs. Kenny G or something where there's questions about how in tune the performer is with the cultural heritage of the music. When we're talking about Top 40 pure as pop can be music there is no historical axis to evaluate it. It's music for literally everyone, and thus it belongs to no one.

 

Also I want to be clear that none of what I'm saying is a criticism of her as an individual or as a musician, or other people enjoying her music.  Her music is in one ear and out the other for me so I just have no opinion about it, and as best I can tell insofar as she is a role model for teenage girls it seems like she is a positive influence, so that seems admirable.

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I don't follow pop music enough to contribute meaningfully to this conversation, although I find it fascinating. (I say that with ignorance, please be assured, not comical haughtiness!)

 

I have been learning more and more about Taylor Swift today due to the latest episode and this thread. I watched both of her 1989 music videos (haha, she was born in 1989, I'm going to shoot myself in my stupid head) and thought Blank Space's message was "Women are nuts!" and then had to shut off Shake It Off halfway through because the cultural appropriation and the image of Taylor crawling through a tunnel of twerking black women with the curiosity of a nineteenth century missionary was just too much. (To note: my first ever exposure to Taylor Swift was finding her MySpace page years ago had a small banner on it saying "Republicans do it better.")

 

I wish I had a clearer picture from either of these of where she stood as a virginal contrast to other female pop stars, but then her Wikipedia page offered me this insight, which you shouldn't read if you don't feel like throwing up right now:

 

In 2010, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush attended the taping of a Swift television special in Kennebunkport, Maine, and later described Swift as "unspoiled" and "very nice."

 

So that's good, I'm always looking for my singers to be described by withered conservative husks as "unspoiled" with "maidenhood intact."

 

Anyway, music is a nightmare, here is a picture:

 

taylor-swift-dancing-with-lorde.gif

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I wouldn't frame it as her being inauthentic. I think the question of authenticity just doesn't even enter the picture. There isn't some contrast like the music of John Coltrane vs. Kenny G or something where there's questions about how in tune the performer is with the cultural heritage of the music. When we're talking about Top 40 pure as pop can be music there is no historical axis to evaluate it. It's music for literally everyone, and thus it belongs to no one.

So, what you're saying is that she isn't a true pop musician, and also pop music is dead. #taylorgate.

 

By which I mean, as I get older, the question of whether music (or anything else) is "authentic" or "real" is spurious to me as whether somebody is "really a gamer".

 

Pretty much everything is manufactured, which is inherently neither good nor bad, and pretty much anything interesting is going to simultaneously be many things, which is also neither inherently good nor bad..

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My biggest exposure to Taylor Swift is when one of her songs got spoofed by the Bad Lip Reading guy https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC67f2Qf7FYhtoUIF4Sf29cA, and then was was taken off his youtube channel for copyright infringement. (With the magic of the internet:

) Taking that into consideration, and comparing that "version" of the song to the actual music in the video tells me everything I need to know about Taylor Swift, which is I am aggressively disinterested in her or her music.

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As someone who spent my teen years consuming media that made me feel like I was subverting (White) culture's expectations of me as a girl (like the hard rock music my parents listened to or the moody pop-punk I listened to on my own, which I realize now was equally trying to market itself to me, and I was playing into exactly the image they wanted to build) and casting scorn on the things that I saw were marketed to girls (pop sung by young women, or  the pretty boy boy bands), because everyone should understand that I'm cool and just like one of the guys, it's hard for me to view criticisms of things like Taylor Swift (and other popular acts targeted at girls like One Direction) as anything other than the scorn I felt toward them at 15.  I had so much internalized misogyny and self-loathing for being a girl that it casts all of the criticism I hear through that lens, and it can be really hard to divorce myself of that to be able to hear it as anything else.

 

So much of it reads as either gatekeeping (this isn't REAL music by REAL musicians, because she has co-writers) or "things that teen girls like are dumb, because teen girls are dumb."

 

I know that pretty much everything said in this thread isn't meant to say either of those things, but I DO think that that lays at the heart of a lot of criticism of her.

I think there are valid criticisms of her, as well as most pop artists, especially white pop artists who co-opt Black culture to transform their image (Lookin' at you Miley & Justin Timberlake) or to create a persona marketable to the masses (Vanilla Ice & Iggy Azaela)

I think 1989 is a really good pop album, and that there is nothing wrong with performing pop music, whether you are sole creator, or just the voice singing the song on the local top 40 radio station.

 

On a completely different note, I was fascinated by the old men & old woman living in a weird parallel world that is super distanced from Pokemon.  I constantly think that I'm about the same age as everyone on the show, but in reality I'm 7-10 year younger than everyone on the cast. Pokemon was such a huge part of my life from the time I started watching the tv show on our local Fox affiliate in the mornings before school, then getting a gameboy pocket & a copy of Red for Christmas when I was 7 (second grade.)  I encounter this actually all the time from my SO who is 3 1/2 years older than me. I will reference things from my childhood, and he won't have any idea what I'm talking about, and I am reminded that 3 1/2 years when you're 6 & 9 is HUGE, so yeah, he's not going to get my Blue's Clues reference, unless I make enough times that he's learned it from me, and he can sing the mail song by himself.

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As someone who spent my teen years consuming media that made me feel like I was subverting (White) culture's expectations of me as a girl (like the hard rock music my parents listened to or the moody pop-punk I listened to on my own, which I realize now was equally trying to market itself to me, and I was playing into exactly the image they wanted to build) and casting scorn on the things that I saw were marketed to girls (pop sung by young women, or  the pretty boy boy bands), because everyone should understand that I'm cool and just like one of the guys, it's hard for me to view criticisms of things like Taylor Swift (and other popular acts targeted at girls like One Direction) as anything other than the scorn I felt toward them at 15.  I had so much internalized misogyny and self-loathing for being a girl that it casts all of the criticism I hear through that lens, and it can be really hard to divorce myself of that to be able to hear it as anything else.

 

So much of it reads as either gatekeeping (this isn't REAL music by REAL musicians, because she has co-writers) or "things that teen girls like are dumb, because teen girls are dumb."

 

I know that pretty much everything said in this thread isn't meant to say either of those things, but I DO think that that lays at the heart of a lot of criticism of her.

I think there are valid criticisms of her, as well as most pop artists, especially white pop artists who co-opt Black culture to transform their image (Lookin' at you Miley & Justin Timberlake) or to create a persona marketable to the masses (Vanilla Ice & Iggy Azaela)

I think 1989 is a really good pop album, and that there is nothing wrong with performing pop music, whether you are sole creator, or just the voice singing the song on the local top 40 radio station.

 

You make a really great point. I too went through an anti-pop star phase in my teens that is embarrassing to think about. It's created a lot of doubt in how I react to this music now, where I never feel fully confident that I dislike pop music because it's just not to my taste or if it's because of the waning influence of my shitty teen years. I tend to avoid pop music all together so I don't have to deal with that conflict. I hate that the cultural nonsense that young women feel they need to go through in order to justify their likes or dislikes.

 

The marketing around Taylor Swift still makes me uncomfortable, but I really hope my discomfort has more to do with the confusing expectations we put on young women and less to do with artificial gatekeeping and attempting to retain this nonexistent I'm A Cool Girl image.

 

(Confession: I really enjoy the We are Never, Ever Getting Back Together song)

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You make a really great point. I too went through an anti-pop star phase in my teens that is embarrassing to think about. It's created a lot of doubt in how I react to this music now, where I never feel fully confident that I dislike pop music because it's just not to my taste or if it's because of the waning influence of my shitty teen years. I tend to avoid pop music all together so I don't have to deal with that conflict. I hate that the cultural nonsense that young women feel they need to go through in order to justify their likes or dislikes.

 

The marketing around Taylor Swift still makes me uncomfortable, but I really hope my discomfort has more to do with the confusing expectations we put on young women and less to do with artificial gatekeeping and attempting to retain this nonexistent I'm A Cool Girl image.

 

(Confession: I really enjoy the We are Never, Ever Getting Back Together song)

 

Oh I totally understand. I don't like a good portion of her music, simply because the more country influenced stuff doesn't appeal to me. I think it's a lack of familiarity with the genre making it impossible to accurately judge what is being done by that section of her catalog.

 

I think the marketing of her to be un-itimidating yet cool and hip is often times really gross, so I totally get that discomfort. I'm really interested in her transitioning from a teen star to an adult, and that so far she isn't using the appropriation of black culture (in her music) to do so, and also not going the X-tina route. (I agree with the poster above that the scene of her crawling through the tunnel of twerking Black Women made me supremely uncomfortable. I wish that they hadn't done that. I think that every white artist should be banned from including twerking Black Women in their music videos.) Not that there's anything wrong with Christina doing the whole X-Tina thing to shed her Mickey Mouse Club heritage if that's what she wanted, but I like that not everyone is forced down that avenue to remain relevant as an adult. Katy Perry did a weird thing of kind of doing both with California Gurls? She shot whipped cream out of her bra, but also used Snoop Dogg in a gummy bear suit to give herself some sort of weird street cred? It's totally bizarre. I guess Miley did that too now that I think about.

 

I think T-Swift is a really delightful because she does have a handful of really really catchy fun pop songs that are designed to never leave your head. It took me a long time to come around to liking pop music, so I completely understand that conflict you're feeling. I often times hit that to this day, especially with acts that came out during my teen years, like the Jonas Brothers.  I still have this weird scorn for them as a byproduct of those years, even though I have no reason to still feel that way.

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As someone who spent my teen years consuming media that made me feel like I was subverting (White) culture's expectations of me as a girl...

I don't know anything about Taylor Swift (or Pokémon), but I know I like this forum post.

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Wasn't sure if I wanted to comment on the Taylor Swift stuff or not, but I gotta say that using words and phrases like "tart it up", "going full Miley" and tawdry left kind of a bad taste in my mouth, at the end of what was an otherwise excellent 'cast.

So far as I know, there's equal evidence that both Cyrus and Swift have a fair amount of agency and control over the decisions they're making about their music and their image. And yet Swift is authentic, while someone like Cyrus, by implication, isn't. Does that make Cyrus calculating? Is Swift's image any less calculated? If they are both being true to who they feel they are, why does one get praise while the other gets scorn? Is there a right kind of authenticity?

I know you guys were speaking off the cuff, and it's not like you prepared to do an in-depth dive about the nature of pop music, femininity and the sexualization of young female celebrities, so I'm not condemning you for using that kind of language. But it makes me uncomfortable, because I feel like it's echoing the kind of sentiments regularly made about being the right kind of girl versus being the wrong kind of girl. And maybe that wasn't intended at all, but the kind of language I cited in the first line set it up to feel that way.

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I loved the bizarre mashup of promo spots at the end of the cast.

 

You guys seem to be part of the same ad network that does Bombcast ads. Does that mean that next week you'll be telling us about Crunchyroll?

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Wasn't sure if I wanted to comment on the Taylor Swift stuff or not, but I gotta say that using words and phrases like "tart it up", "going full Miley" and tawdry left kind of a bad taste in my mouth, at the end of what was an otherwise excellent 'cast.

So far as I know, there's equal evidence that both Cyrus and Swift have a fair amount of agency and control over the decisions they're making about their music and their image. And yet Swift is authentic, while someone like Cyrus, by implication, isn't. Does that make Cyrus calculating? Is Swift's image any less calculated? If they are both being true to who they feel they are, why does one get praise while the other gets scorn? Is there a right kind of authenticity?

I know you guys were speaking off the cuff, and it's not like you prepared to do an in-depth dive about the nature of pop music, femininity and the sexualization of young female celebrities, so I'm not condemning you for using that kind of language. But it makes me uncomfortable, because I feel like it's echoing the kind of sentiments regularly made about being the right kind of girl versus being the wrong kind of girl. And maybe that wasn't intended at all, but the kind of language I cited in the first line set it up to feel that way.

I really don't know anything about either of these people and am not prepared to offer a strongly held opinion about them, but in a very general sense, they are both not just "being a girl", they are broadcasting an image of how to be a girl out to millions of people, including other young girls. So while I don't personally have the knowledge to know if either of them is doing something worth publicly criticizing (which is why I didn't really chime into that discussion on the air) I think that conceptually it is completely within rights to consider whether a performing artist is putting forth a worthwhile message. We consider plenty of male and female artists in that context, certainly (authors, filmmakers, video game designers, and so on). That doesn't mean such evaluation can't be done poorly, or in a misogynistic way, but I do think that when you're a massively successful cultural force you are implicitly open to criticism for what your art tells people, especially if you are disproportionately targeting young people who we all know are a lot more impressionable. (I sure was.) That of course doesn't mandate anyone to listen to said criticism.

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