Discussion Recap / BlackMirrorUSSCallister

Removed from main page, as there is a cleanup effort on GIFT underway and I am not sure what to do with this entry:

• GIFT: When the AIs escape to the main Infinity universe, the first thing they encounter is "Gamer691", a human player who hits on Nanette and threatens to blow the Callister out of the cosmos. As if to drive it home, he's voiced by Aaron Paul in full-on Jesse Pinkman mode.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Under Take That: "Also towards Fan Fiction writers who'd take glee in tormenting fictional characters as some form of a Power Fantasy."

I don't want to delete this but this is unfair; this strikes as a low blow. Fictional characters by definition are not real or sentient, and the best writing comes from making characters suffer. (There's a reason why Game of Thrones is possible.) Also, most fan fiction writers are young people learning the ropes of word crafting. Daly's crime is that his victims are sentient, and he is a middle-aged man who created the ropes. Thoughts?

Hide / Show Replies

Bringing this up for discussion:

• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Daly bears an uncanny resemblance to Pixar co-founder John Lasseter, who also created a legendary company but had to leave due to women accusing him of improper behavior. Of course, Daly's misdeeds are much, much worse.

No Celebrities Were Harmed needs to be an unambiguous expy of an RL person. Judging from the description this seems more coincidental than anything (especially in the wake of all the sexual harassment allegations in Hollywood). Not to mention that the Lasseter scandal broke in late November 2017, which meant this would already have been fairly far in production. Are there any more conclusive sources for this? If not, I'll zap it.

Hide / Show Replies

Is Daly an example of GIFT?

(there's a tl;dr at the bottom)

Gamer691 is an example, but someone then added the sub-bullet here (it has been edited since, this is the version I removed):

It was added both on the character page and the recap page. I edited the entry on the character page to read as: Which I think makes it more relevant, but I'm still not sure that Daly is a G.I.F.T. because of the fact that trope is exclusively internet anonymity creating assholes who wouldn't be assholes in real life, when clearly Daly doesn't care about anonymity (he is being an asshole not to internet strangers, but to clones of his coworkers who have genuine memories of him and are real enough through autonomy), and he's not so much being an asshole as he is just using an effective alternate dimension to become a kidnapper and torturer. He's made his own sci-fi torture dungeon, he's not just cursing at strangers on the internet because it's fun and with anonymity we can satisfy the human argumentative nature without losing friends. I also mentioned in an edit reason that the motivations are different (fun/attention vs self-aggrandising power trip and revenge torture) — it's like Daly sought out the internet in order to be a dick, not the internet allowed him to be one (which is G.I.F.T.), and that though similar their dick-enablers are different (anonymity vs self-granted god-like powers). I also don't think it's 'comparable if not accurate' because the Daly character isn't an analogue of internet jerkasses, but of entitled nerd culture. Also, the G.I.F.T. is a completely otherwise nice and normal person, when Daly is pretty much evidently a sociopath.

In short, no regular person on the internet has the ability to make everyone bend to their will, a G.I.F.T. is more likely to engage in argument, and it is the platform that makes them assholes, not the asshole making the platform. Daly is not even representing the internet jerk, so it can't even qualify as a shoehorn, and doesn't start as a "normal person", he's a sociopath.

Edited by lakingsif OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!! Hide / Show Replies