Troping Works That Promote Bigotry

Erm, do those work pages attract bigotry though? Last I checked all of them were intensely negative and were very honest about how flawed and bigoted these works were. They've been around for years so if there's no evidence of bigoted edits being added over the years IDK if we can reasonably say they "may" attract bigotry — these works are so over the top and blatant about their ideologies that people can't exactly just play the "it's being misrepresented" card.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 1st 2023 at 2:29:39 PM

To be fair, we do have Mein Kampf and the Turner Diaries, which the same principles apply to if I recall correctly, meaning that these being here is a fair enough point at least in my book. I feel it's at least worth discussing.

I do feel like I debated them being on there back when they were added because the original point of the sandbox was just to keep track of works that objectively had problems. I'm still a little uncomfortable with just adding any works that cover bigoted subjects on the off chance someone out there one day maybe will post bad edits to them.

A part of the judgment call comes in from how many people know of or have been influenced by a given work. A lot of people know Mein Kampf exists, and The Turner Diaries influenced a number of extremists, most notably Timothy McVeigh.

With that said, I've taken a bit of a deeper look. I'm fairly sure VideoGame.Ethnic Cleansing is ultimately forgettable and probably wouldn't draw any problems. All it needs is some page cleanup, and it should be fine to leave be. I'm a little more on the fence about TabletopGame.Racial Holy War, but I don't think it's super likely to draw much in the way of problems either.

Unfortunately however, VideoGame.KZ Manager falls into the category of "above our pay grade", as the game is actually banned in Germany. I think at that level, we just have to accept this one is too volatile not to keep under a careful watch.

And now for the bonus round, as certain people like having these pages' descriptions pointing people to other bigoted works (something we need to work on with the cleanup), I took a look at VideoGame.Member The Alamo. Probably another "clean and leave" alone, although the page isn't all that much more that a stub and will need some work to shape it up.

I mean, it's not actually that odd that the game was banned in Germany, it's a holocaust game and they take that shit very seriously. I don't think that means it's inherently volatile, though; it simply takes the wrong side of an issue Germany does not fuck around with.

I found Crack-Life while cleaning What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? for TRS. The deleted entry read:

• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The entire premise of the mod (especially the Campaign Mode) can be summed up as a group consisting of five guys from the most offensive ethnic group stereotypes assembled together to convert the current hot thing on /pol/ into a Half-Life 1 mod while high on crack, then downing it with beer, and yes, it's as absurd as it sounds.

I felt a bit weird after deleting it because it was the only thing, other than the Main's page image caption, mentioning that the work is an intentionally racist mod made by /pol/.

The pages treat the game in a very neutral way without mentioning those aspects. I feel weird about that. I feel there should be more mentions about that at least, I wanted to know what do you guys think.

Would it count as a Exaggerated Quirky Work?

That's not where I was going with this. The former What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? entry isn't relevant. What I asked was what would be the best way to describe & trope the work so the people who encounter the page will know that this is a racist game mod made by /pol/.

Also "game putting as many racist stereotypes as possible in order to be intentionally offensive" doesn't really make me think "how wacky".

So, you're saying that Laconic dated semi-6 months ago is incorrect? I'd call "being packed with stereotypes" a type of "particularly strange"...

Laconic.Quirky Work:

But going through the index of National Stereotypes and seeing how many apply could help? Most of what I'm seeing on Crack-Life seem to be about the game mechanics, which are easier to find since it doesn't involve finding cutscenes that can't be easily repeated, etc?

Creator.Graham Linehan now exists.

Given that Linehan's mostly in the news for transphobia these days, it may be worth keeping an eye on his page.

Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 22nd 2023 at 1:31:24 PM

Would it be okay to replace the first paragraph of Arkhaven with this:

Arkhaven (aka Arktoons) is a webcomic hosting platform that is part of Arkhaven Comics, created by controversial writer Vox Day with the goal of creating a "100% SJW-free" platform. It includes digital versions of Arkhaven and Dark Legion print comics, contributions from independent creators, and restored Golden Age classics. Due to the site's conservative politics, many of these comics feature alt-right themes such as anti-political correctness, homophobia, and antisemitism. Like Webtoon, the works are formatted as long, vertical scrollable strips.

The current introduction says absolutely nothing about the site's alt-right politics, making it sound like it's just another harmless webcomic host despite hosting Ben Garrison and Stonetoss. I'm not sure if we should even link to it, considering how bad the site is.

Edited by Zuxtron on Oct 2nd 2023 at 5:28:35 AM

I'd be on board with that replacement. I'm also in the 'Not sure if we should even be hosting the pages for this kind of stuff', camp. It's one thing if someone neutral to the work creates a page covering it, well... neutrally, but these all seem to have been made by one big Vox Day fan, and if nobody outside of Vox Day's fans would have ever made a page for the work, then do we even want that page?

If Graham Linehan's creator page had been around for ten years then I wouldn't have any suspicions, but the fact that it's only been created recently, after he completely tanked his career, got suspended from Twitter for harassing trans people, and had an entire section added to his Wikipedia page for 'Anti-Transgender Activism', raises significant alarm bells for me. Like, why now, specifically?

I think having the pages is fine, so long as we make an effort to not let the pages legitimize the author and works.

The Alt★Hero page is shockingly apolitical which comes across as insidious because the comic is incredibly political. I'm going to update the introduction of the page to make things a bit clearer.

I wonder if it might be worth it to just cut the pages and if someone wants to remake them in a genuine way, they can. Right now, it seems like the pages are completely made by people invested in whitewashing the works

Has the person who made these been reported yet?

Yes, but nothing was done at the time because the troper (Helmet Of Salvation) disappeared almost immediately afterward.

That was the sort of thing I was arguing for before with pages like Victoria. I'm cool with the idea of cutting work pages if such a thing is necessary for a fresh start in the re-writing process (and if they stay cut, oh well).

Oh I meant the person making the new pages (are they the same person?)

Yep

Pardon my interruption in this thread, and disclaimer I've never heard of most of these works, but doesn't changing the work summary to be openly condemning on those entries run afoul of Complaining About Shows You Don't Like and Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment? Specifically, Larkman, your edits to Alt★Hero come off as pretty heavy-handed imo. I'd cut the part about the author's worldviews but leave the part about where the name comes from, that should tell people everything they need to know about the comic's content.

As an aside, the comic's art looks horrible.

Crack-Life looks like standard internet Refuge in Audacity to me (especially if the tagline flat-out says it's racist and unfunny), but I guess I'm pretty used to the Newgrounds brand of humour.

Edited by PhiSat on Oct 3rd 2023 at 11:57:48 AM

It's less Complaining About Shows You Dont Like and more "Describing Shows whose Wolrdview You Don't Approve Of."

But... it's still describing the work. The reason I find that an easy add is because the author's worldviews are a key component to the work. The white nationalist views of the author are a major part of the work. Pretending the work isn't political and/or ignoring its politics is frankly irresponsible. No value judgement is being made about whether their worldview in the comics is positive or negative representation. If you're saying that just describing the author's worldview is inherently negative, then... well, that's not a very good thing, and pretending it's not there probably isn't doing us any favors.

Acting like the guy's white nationalist views aren't inspiring the buxom Confederate-clad super heroine or the, uh, sinister Antifa/UN Big Brother Is Watching You state is kinda silly.

Is it incorrect? Is it complaining? Is it irrelevant? Are any rules being broken? Is there any downside to pointing out what you and I may consider obvious, but might help provide context to others? Especially after TVT has basically been hosting free advertising for these works up until now.

Edited by Larkmarn on Oct 3rd 2023 at 2:56:59 PM

I mean, the name alone being based on "alt-right" is a pretty obvious tell that the comic is going to be promoting bigotry. That's what I mean by the rest of the description being heavy-handed and unnecessary. We've already said it's being published by an alt-right publishing house and the name alone is telling. Saying the author's views are extreme in addition to that is just beating a dead horse, at least to me.

Edited by PhiSat on Oct 3rd 2023 at 12:51:17 PM

I think it's fair to say the authors politics if the entire work revolves around it, or if its important to understanding the work (ie if a piece of media has strong feminist messages, it would be fair to claim that the author was a feminist in their entry). Granted the one thing about Alt Hero (and all of the Arkhaven series/comics) is that they have no fandom outside of Vox Day fans/alt righters, so thus the entries end up one sided as people who hate Vox Day aren't even going to pay attention to his comics (not even to mock them). In fact all the Arkhaven work pages were created by a single troper and have little to no edits from others.

They might not even be worth keeping in that case, honestly, if there's not a single vindicating thing about them besides the politics for their niche and unpleasant audience. And sorry if I came across a bit harshly Larkmann, the harshness of the edit just seemed ROCEJ-violating to me.

I mean, as discussed many times, we don't cut works for having politics we dislike; that was even solidified by the mods after a discussion regarding works like Victoria. While I'm otherwise cool with cutting the page if it's determined that it's in too bad a state to stay up without extensive work, that's not the same thing.

I am also hugely in favour of the approach "Hey, if the only people who are making these pages are Vox Day fans troping with an obvious agenda, then just cut the pages and if anyone in the future wants to create the page neutrally and accurately then we can look at it more cautiously and in more detail then," because while it is a bit cut-heavy, there are several extremely positive repercussions; a) we don't have to waste time on cleanup efforts for a work that none of us really want to be hosting in the first place, b) because the solution is so quick and simple then the matter can be sorted very efficiently - there have been cleanup efforts around Victoria for several years now, and they're still not finished - and c) it sends a much more effective message to any potential vandals or tropers with an agenda. Rather than "If you create pages with an agenda, then as soon as we can get around to it (and who knows when that will be,) we will sanitize them until they meet our standards," then just "If you create pages with an agenda, we will cut them."