Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Zero sum Woke

 There is a common pattern in the hobby takeover, pop culture IP takeovers and political takeovers by the woke/SJW/genderist/minority rights  movements. 

The pattern that I keep noticing is this idea that the existing audience/demographic has to "leave" so the preferred mob can "occupy" the conceptual space. 

Superficially, this seems to be about power.  But that does not hold up to much scrutiny.  Because by pushing out the existing audience, the replacements will only have power over themselves.  Which they already had in their own echo chambers. 

The next is that its about forcing "The Message" down the throats of the existing audience.  Again, same problem.  If the audience is forced out, then they will not consume the message embedded in the media.  And the message morphs and changes constantly.  So its hard to know what the observer should take from it apart from the fact that its "different" and "inserted".

Finally, we get back to spite/revenge/punishment.  They want to take something away from you that you love.  This is the same pattern as the mean, petty sibling stealing a toy just to wound.   This is immature and stunted mindset that is all about the "now" and redressing some score board that they have in their head.  There is no concept of the future, of having to live with the consequences.  Perhaps there is no concept of consequences?  The righteous seeker of "justice" for their imagined slights.   Its all about righting the wrongs of their "past", evening up the scoreboard. 

Anyway, this is the pattern.  The spiteful child who seeks to wound for redress of imagined slights. 

There is a slightly more malicious spin on this mindset that develops once the child sees that their initial action has not had the desired effect, which is to double down.  Take even more.  Or to destroy the toy infront of the powerless other sibling.  This is the pattern being played out where pop culture IP's are being systematically corrupted and "changed" into something that is the antithesis of what they once were.  The systematic despoiling of a loved story or universe just to see someone cry.  And once they get addicted to the thrill of the crying... its going to be hard to stop.  This is the "uglification" movement... taking away nice things... even when that nice thing is their own physical body.  

This is what a bitter angry adult does when they cannot get their way and just want to burn it all down and see the pain in someone else's eyes.  They start looking for more eyes to get the same rush.  



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