Category Archives: Pet Peeves

A Flame War With Neon Revolt

For those who don’t know what Q Anon is, you may read my previous post.

I’ve been following Neon Revolt’s Q decodes for a while, and sharing some of them. He’s very detailed, and goes deep, whereas a lot of Q “decodes” on Youtube are little more than somebody reading the Q drops to the camera. I don’t have time to hang around the chans and decode them myself…or even to keep up with all the coverage from the two sources I follow. So I appreciate the painstaking work that Praying Medic and Neon Revolt put into that.

NR also struck me as a decent guy, too. Maybe he is. But anyway, one day I was reading one of his posts and came across this:

He said more than I’m including here on this marathon post, so out of fairness to him, you should probably visit his site and read it all in its entirety before deciding which one of us is on the right side of what follows.

Do take note, though, that the evidence he presents that “America was built on many classically fascist principles” are fasces in historic art and sculpture, and the Latin phrase “E pluribus unum” on Federal Reserve Notes. That will prove relevant in the next screenshots from a following post of his.

So superficial connections via fasces on old artwork, and a Latin phrase, are valid evidence of America being built on many fascist principles. But superficial connections between Nazis, Fascists and Communists just don’t cut it as valid evidence. Remember this logic, because this isn’t the only way or time it is applied.

Again: NR says a lot more on the subject than I’m including here, and it’s more lucid than how the average white nationalist or Nazi apologist normally present it. BTW: I’m not saying he is either one, necessarily (though I have no doubt he’s been influenced by one or more). He even makes some good points.

Secondly, it is true that the USA has been infiltrated by collectivists (called by different labels depending on the times or political winds) and other treacherous individuals throughout our history. Some of them had infiltrated America even by the time of the Revolution–meaning they were here, influencing our government, even before the republic came into being. That’s at least one blog post all by itself, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Thirdly…well, we’ve posted here many times about white tribalism, so I don’t want to rehash that here. But while at one point you could reliably bank on two out of every three members of any white identity group being an informant or plant from a federal agency, that seems to have begun changing during the Obama Occupation. A whole lot of Fake Right trolls probably still are paid agitators, but a lot of non-shill white folks have become tired of all the institutionalized hate against whites, and have begun listening to the white identity messages–regurgitating it everywhere they go, as if it comprises their own thoughts and opinions.

These Fake Right recruits are more and more militant about reacting to standard SJW identity politics…with a big steaming pile of their own identity politics. Together, the shills and the true believers have dedicated their lives to proving left-wing propaganda correct (that everything is about race, and the left’s political opposition subscribe to white supremacy, etc.).  They’re as predictable as their SJW counterparts at introducing race into every topic–including those which have nothing to do with race.

The sad part is that some sincere people are buying into this tribalist thinking. It’s not gonna lead to anything pretty; but at this point it appears to be inevitable.

Anyway, Neon Revolt presents himself as a man who follows the truth wherever it leads. And we’re both on Gab. During a rare compulsive moment, I tagged him with a message. I don’t have a “pro” account (which allows Gabbers to write longer posts), and I’m not used to limiting myself to 300 characters, so I was forced to break some posts into parts. That, plus Gab’s display of complex threads in a visually non-linear fashion, caused me to chop certain things up in an attempt to sort it into chronological sequence here. Also, I didn’t capture all the streams that split off from the main thread (some of the comments are, frankly, incoherent).

This is a pet peeve of mine, as many readers know. There was probably a more diplomatic way to initiate a discussion. Anyway, here’s what happened next:

So at that point, I figured the conversation was over. He probably wasn’t willing to have his beliefs challenged, and that’s his prerogative. He’s got plenty of followers, of whom I was only one, so I wasn’t even banking on him replying at all. He did respond, but was pretty dismissive.

“Whatever,” sez I.

But then he replied again later, and this ensued:

Okay…asking relevant questions is revisionist and “blue pill.” And I didn’t press him on this at the time, but if he admits that both movements were funded by the same people, you’d think that knowledge, by itself, would spark his curiosity, not prompt him to gloss it over as if it’s insignificant. You’d think it would provoke questions. If the two revolutionary movements are “nowhere near the same,” why would certain people fund both of them? Who benefits from a one-two punch (or Plan A & B) like that? Presumably, two movements which are “nowhere near the same” would have radically different goals and results, yet he doesn’t find this information the slightest bit intriguing.

This was a sign that I probably had overestimated NR.

At this point I was disappointed at the knee-jerk reaction, and his lame deflection.

But speaking of “autistic screeching and bad memes,” one of his Gab sycophants decided to jump in and dazzle me with his based intellectual alacrity:

What is he mouthing off about here? What, exactly, am I being told to deal with? Absolutely nothing in this entire thread had anything to do with Q coming to /pol/. You probably think I lifted this from a different thread with a completely different conversation just to make this ankle-biter look like a fool, but I promise I didn’t. After getting no response to his first comment, he tried again later during my back-and-forth with Neon Revolt.

I wonder if guys like this really believe their input is relevant. There’s a wise old maxim that you shouldn’t argue with stupid people, because they’ll drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience. But I must admit: I’m occasionally in the right mood to engage in a battle of wits with an opponent who is unarmed.

The sad part is, looking back over the sub-threads, these ankle-biters probably do believe their petty insults really are devastating comebacks.

I don’t know why that black strip appears in some of my screenshots. Really annoying. But back to the main thread:

Again, Gab’s character limit forced me to cut off my comment, back up and finish the first part a different way. During that annoying interruption, I took a moment to reflect. This was descending into an Internet pissing contest, which was not what I intended. So I posted the following:

Neither Neon Revolt, nor his ankle-biting sycophants. ever replied to, or even acknowledged, this post. Too bad, because I was irritable later when I came back to Gab and read the replies posted while I was out in the real world:

If you’ve paid close attention, you can see that he’s subtly contradicting his earlier admission that both movements were funded by the same people (“the people behind it all”). And now he just falls deeper and deeper into his Dunning-Kruger spiral. Really disappointing. I’ve come to expect these “ready, fire, aim!” rules of engagement from most keyboard warriors on social media, but was hoping he’d be different.

His fans are probably fooled. I’m not: he didn’t answer my questions based on basic socialist principles because he can’t answer them–not without challenging the Narrative he has latched onto and is evidently quite fond of.

So after claiming that the National Socialists and International Socialists are nothing alike, he cherry-picks one of my questions to build a straw man out of, stacking up more assumptions about what I do think and don’t know. Maybe the “#BoomerPosting” hashtag he so adroitly wielded against me means he assumes I’m a baby boomer, too? Add that to the list of names I’ve been called by the Legion of Ignorance, I guess: racist; diversity bot; Nazi; kike; cuck; autist; and, of course: conspiracy nut-job.

Again, I had to split my comment up, and it makes the thread hard to follow in some places. Unlike Neon Revolt, I had kept my comments about the facts in dispute, and avoided attacking him personally in our dialog. These posts were as close as I got:

Anyway, what follows is how it ended.

Since I’m being called a baby boomer, what have I got to lose by referring to Monty Python?

So my questions were “aggressive”? Hmm. Then, after calling me plebian; oblivious to history; revisionist (based on what “concrete evidence,” I wonder?), blue-pilled; more informed by my “vague American dogma than actual research;” calling me ignorant a few more times; and declaring my criticisms are uninformed (Holy Hypocrisy, Batman!), he whines that I acted “indignant.” But wait! He’s got one more parting accusation: that I haven’t behaved like a grown adult (implying that he has, I gather). He then mutes me, suggesting that I unfollow him.

I knew going in that there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to change his mind. I was just hoping for a little less knee-jerk and defensiveness. In fact, I had begun the task of unpacking some books and trying to track down some other misplaced resources so I could, in fact, show him the “concrete evidence” he allegedly would accept. But this is probably for the best. I can see now that he would have just dismissed it out of hand for one excuse or another and all that time and effort would have been wasted.

As it is with 99% of idealogues in the world today.

Here’s another sub-thread initiated by an ankle-biter, coincident with the other pissing contests:

I’m frequently surprised at how so many people  on social media so carelessly sling out these demonstrably false accusations. And when she’s called out, the poor blowhard drops her bombshell–sentence excerpts that even somebody with only First Grade reading skills can see is not the “EXACT SAME WORDING”:

And when these people are proven wrong, there’s no remorse. They never miss a beat–just double down. I hate to acknowledge this, but some of these people on my side of the political divide behave just as irrationally as the SJWs. At least she’s learned not to hoist herself on her own petard anymore. Notice how she covers her retreat by building a (lame) insult around the fact that I typed: “Oh, I see.”

The “soyboy” remark was probably wasted ammo. She likely has already forgotten her own opening shots (because it’s too painful for her to remember how they backfired?).

BTW, her loony, desperate comment above reminds me (as do some of NR’s, to a lesser extent) of a tactic I’ve been noticing a lot on social media lately. I’ve been in quite a few flame wars online. Whether I’m engaging a Fake Right Alt-Retard on Gab, a normalcy-biased coincidence theorist on the Gateway Pundit, or a rabid SJW on Youtube, they ALL wind up accusing me of being enraged by something they said. There’s literally no reason for them to legitimately suspect that I’m frothing into a berserker rage. In fact, it’s often them who appear to be rage-posting–with name-calling tirades and irrational (if not anatomically impossible) accusations, after I’ve directed all my attention to their arguments, and haven’t speculated about them personally. And for whatever reason, their accusation is usually some variation of the rhetorical statement: “Looks like I touched a nerve, didn’t I?”

Is it as simple as just wishful thinking on their part? They’ve unleashed the most powerful insults in their arsenal, so they’re positive it has provoked an emotional reaction from their opponent? Or are they trying to instigate a self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe they believe that provoking a tantrum out of the enemy…or, at least, selling that version of events to onlookers…is equivalent to victory, so they can save face.

Finally, here are a couple comments from one of the subthreads the conversation inspired:

I haven’t read through NR’s comment threads, so I can’t verify the first post. However, after this episode, I’m sad to say I don’t doubt it at all.

The second comment is evidently from one of the Q skeptics who likes to call us “Qtards,” “low IQAnons,” etc. But I thought he made an interesting point about NR’s double standard regarding “concrete evidence.”

Many skeptics like to accuse Q of trying to tell people what to think. I point out that he mainly asks questions and encourages people to think/research for themselves. How ironic, then, that Neon Revolt was so intimidated by my “aggressive questions.”

Movie Fight Scenes

When the audience is young, suspension of disbelief is much easier. I watched some abysmal movies and TV shows up into my teen years that usually didn’t bother me.

Whether the movie is good or bad, though, the fight scenes are almost always laughable. Once you begin paying attention, it’s hard not to notice the cheesy aspects–like Western Union Punches, for instance.

See if anything bothers you about the clip below:

Now, granted, this fight scene is from a comedy. But what’s sad is, films we’re supposed to take seriously are just as bad.

Notice the Adam Sandler character, who has been a brawling goon up to this point…how he just stands around waiting to be hit. It’s in the script for him to lose the fight to Bob Barker, so he just plays crash dummy.

Maybe I’ll post an example of a good one some day, if I can find one…

Military Hand-Arm Signals in Movies

A general pet peeve of mine is when an author or film maker attempts to depict military action, or a military milleu, and obviously lacks the knowledge to do it right.

One specific annoyance in the last decade or more is the hand-arm signals used by actors portraying fighting men.

(Such signals are used by marines and infantry while moving tactically in the field, prior to contact, lest they break noise discipline by talking.)

Now, granted: units down to the platoon level often develop their own S.O.P.s for signaling, but in my experience the basic set of signals (get in the wedge; move out; double-time; cease-fire; rally point; head count; halt; freeze; enemy sighted; etc.) are universal across the combat arms in both the US Army and USMC.

So here’s what I think happened: Some movie was made depicting soldiers or marines on a patrol or some other tactical movement. The point man heard or saw something to make him suspect the enemy was close, so he gave the signal to “freeze.” The grunts stopped in their tracks. Some other film maker watched the scene and decided, “Hey, that’s kinda’ cool. Now I know everything I need to know about tactical movement.”

So that film maker, when it was his turn to display his wealth of military research, had an actor use the gesture when it was his turn to film such a scene. Problem is, he thought it was the symbol for “halt,” (open palm facing the troops: “Come to a stop, you richard-heads.”) which is used in different circumstances than “freeze” (raised fist: “Don’t make a move or you might get all our asses shot off!”)

After that, any time a similar scene was shot in any subsequent military movie, rather than hire an advisor to police basic minutia like this, the director went by how it was done in the last flick. After all, “it looked cool.”

So now, invariably, the “freeze” signal is used to command a halt on the screen (even in non-tactical situations, and even in vehicle convoys).

The fallacy is so ubiquitous that I wouldn’t be surprised if actual soldiers begin jacking up the S.O.P. in a life-imitates-art manner after having grown up on these poorly researched movies.

[End of rant.]

To Retort, Or Not To Retort

…That is the question I’ve been pondering for a while with regards to dishonest, drive-by, one-star reviews at Amazon and Goodreads.

Conventional wisdom is for authors to avoid responding to negative reviews, lest you look defensive, yada yada yada. I’ve done that up until now.

But I’ve been mulling over something I read about Trump: He’s one of those successful guys who fires right back when criticised. First debate with Shrillery notwithstanding (because he did actually come off as defensive), this has worked pretty well for him.

I’ve received negative reviews on all my novels, and some of my shorter books as well. But one of them from about a year ago stands out as the wthoughtcoporst. It’s intentionally insulting, first of all–no doubt a ploy to get an emotional rise out of me (all the more reason for me to not take the bait, I suppose, but c’est le guerre). And it’s also intentionally misleading, by somebody who evidently didn’t read the book. It’s got all the fingerprints of an SJW troll attempting to protect unwashed brains around the world from a counter-narrative.

The point-and-shriek review, and my response are here.

Random Musings on Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Entertainment

CATEGORIES

TEOTWAWKI or “The End Of The World As We Know It” is a brand which has been traditionally applied to post-apocalyptic movies, games, and books. In such narratives, the story begins AFTER some cataclysmic event has forever altered life on Earth.

SHTF or “Shit Hits The Fan” stories are about, or take place DURING the cataclysmic event. (Most “patriot fiction” fits inside this genre.)

It occurred to me we’ve been throwing everything under the TEOTWAWKI umbrella (including my own latest novel). Because I review so much work in the genre, I have now made a SHTF category and moved all (I hope) the relevant posts into it, for ease and accuracy of navigation.

UNFINISHED STORIES

I’ve been consuming a lot of SHTF and TEOTWAWKI entertainment lately. Recently I’ve tossed two books aside before finishing them. That has prompted me to create a new category called “Pet Peeves,” and this is my first post to be categorized that way.

There are a few different tropes that often annoy me enough to quit watching or reading whatever incorporates them. As regular readers of Virtual Pulp can probably guess, left-wing propaganda is one of them (explaining why I rarely go to movies anymore, and never watch TV). Another nauseating trope is the obligatory “strong female character,” which in action/adventure manifests as the obligatory Amazon Superninja.

Another deal-breaker for me is excessive stupidity, in whatever form. Going back to TEOTWAWKI, this is why I didn’t get very far watching the Jericho series on Netflix. It started out with a lot of promise, but smacked me out of my suspension of disbelief too many times to even be engaged by the point where we discover the EMP was caused by the Right Wing Boogeyman (egads! What a surprise!).

I recently picked up a handful of books on free promotion, for my Kindle. One of them featured a rare (for the SHTF genre) protagonist: an extremely naive civilian suburbanite victim of normalcy bias. I know too many people like this guy in real life (throw a rock in North America, and you’ll hit one), and find them a real challenge to engage with on any meaningful level. Yet, for me, it was a unique storytelling perspective (and perhaps overdue), and I guessed he would have to wise up in order to survive.

The character did show signs of maturing over the course of several chapters, and I gritted my teeth through his Pollyana attitude/reactions. I even held my peace, with an eye-roll or two, at how cash was still accepted after the economy, infrastructure, and even government itself were all rendered moot.

Then I came to a scene in which the protag and his companions are waylayed by literal highway robbers. Our hero is armed. The villains are not. He has some supplies he and his pals will require to survive along their journey. The bad guys want to take it.

So he lets them take it, in an alleged compromise (they won’t rape the girl traveling with him).

You have to wonder why some people even have guns, if they’re unwilling to use them even in matters of survival. The sad part is, this character is all too real, and the “compromise” is too perfect a metaphor for how we’ve allowed our freedoms, our government, and our country to be “compromised” away from us. Real life and its stupid people are more than enough, thank-you. This story and character is too much stupidity for something I read voluntarily and sacrifice time for.

OVERHAULING STRAIGHT AMERICA

The population has been so relentlessly conditioned that it’s hard to escape from the malignant sodomiphilic echo chamber even in indie fiction.

Another book in the genre was also from a suburbanite perspective. There were some trace amounts of the “all men are rapists” attitude in this one, but it wasn’t so “in your face” as to make it unreadable. I had finished reading about 90% of the book before the author sucker-punched me by revealing a character as homosexual.

The reaction to this by one of the main characters was how all reasonable, “open-minded” people are supposed to react: immediate support, equal or surpassing what a “straight” individual should get. Just in case there are still some dirty brains still out there, the efforts to wash them are ubiquitous and never-ending.

No thanks. Pass. I have no interest in reading the remaining 10%.

THE ROAD/JOURNEY PLOT

This really should have been pondered long ago, but only lately has it really become a point of fascination to me that 95-99% of post-apocalyptic tales depict a journey of the protagonist. Most often, the journey is taken in order to reunite with family.

On the one hand, this makes a lot of sense. When the SHTF a lot of people will be separated from loved ones by varying distances. They’ll be away on a business trip, or at the office, grocery store, etc., when disaster strikes. So it’s a valid plot.

It’s also a grossly overused plot. So overused that I’m now rethinking a few sequels to False Flag, and a zombie parody I had in mind.

That’s all for now. Happy weekend.