Brianna Wu / John Walker Flynt - "Biggest Victim of Gamergate," Failed Game Developer, Failed Congressional Candidate

[Kosher Dill]

fftopicomedy doesn't have an innovation crisis, it has an anger crisis. You can't be funny when you're seriously angry and out for blood.
And in the Current Year, people are angry all the time.

 

[Dr. Merkwurdichliebe]

I always assumed there was no license issued for Brianna Wu. We know that John Walker Flynt had a license. We all know how great John is with paperwork. If Brianna Wu has a drivers license, it’s because Frank filled out the forms and went to DMV.

And there's no way Frank is going to let John drive a vehicle that Frank owns and on which Frank pays the insurance if John doesn't have a license. One good wreck with John at the wheel -- it's just a matter of time -- would reduce Frank's net worth to zero after the insurance company says, "Read your policy; this one's on you."

 

[Herbert Hoover]

fftopicomedy doesn't have an innovation crisis, it has an anger crisis. You can't be funny when you're seriously angry and out for blood.
And in the Current Year, people are angry all the time.

This is the same reason that liberal talk show host and Comedy Central talking heads aren't even making any jokes anymore, they're just soapboxing and shouting instead. Trump has highhandedly been the death of TV comedy just by his sheer salt-generating powers

 

[Next Task]

Comedy doesn't have an innovation crisis, it has an anger crisis. You can't be funny when you're seriously angry and out for blood.

There are lots of great comedians who aren't angry crude white men. But I don't expect Wu to be bothered thinking that any white male comedian isn't also angry and crude - standard 'if they're white men they're terrible' rhetoric.

The problem is with comedy that isn't about getting laughs, but with self-righteous agreement. They sacrifice comedy for telling audiences what they already know, which eliminates surprise, which is rather important for a lot of comedy. Being smug doesn't usually work for comedians unless they're just as willing to mock themselves, and most of the aggressively political stuff regards their beliefs as off-limits.

And we all know that Wu has absolutely no sense of humour about herself. Which is why when she tries to be self-deprecating it is always, inevitably, a humblebrag.

 

[Optimus Prime]

And there's no way Frank is going to let John drive a vehicle that Frank owns and on which Frank pays the insurance if John doesn't have a license. One good wreck with John at the wheel -- it's just a matter of time -- would reduce Frank's net worth to zero after the insurance company says, "Read your policy; this one's on you."

Aside from the parade Porsche, no images exist of Brianna actually driving. Every image Bribri has taken inside a car has been from the passenger seat.

 

[Ghostse]

Brianna shares her advice and ideas on how to run a large company:

View attachment 505974

Another great success.

I'm on a vaguely off topic sperg roll this morning.

Spoiler: :offtopic: Leverage Buyouts and Toys'r'us

Brianna misses two things:
1) A leveraged buyout has to be approved by shareholders
2) A leveraged buyout is 99% of the time a slow bankruptcy (or a stalling tactic to keep the company out of an official bankruptcy while they try to find a buyer) so it will only be approved when things are in fairly deep shit.

Now, here's something fun about Toys'r'us LBO.
The way things used to be set up, corporate loan interest was 100% deductible. So LBO a company, give it a loan to cover the costs of buying it out, set that loan with a standard interest rate tied to prime, and pay off the the minimum required principal. This gives you a very nice tax loophole.

The company for Toys'r'us made them continue to take out additional loans since the company was profitable, but not under that much debt.

What made shit get real was changes in the tax law that made that loan interest no longer fully deductable. For years Toys'r'us was having trouble remaining profitable even before the crushing debt repayments because of lack of investment. When the tax law changed, the holding company decided to cut their losses; they hadn't bought it as a business opportunity, they'd bought it as a tax shelter.

Now here's where it gets really shitty:
TRU was still valuable. It needed restructuring & reinvestment to become profitable again, but wasn't in as much trouble as some other LBOs. Toy companies, specifically Mattel, Hasbro, and MGA, wanted to save Toys'r'us because while most of their money is made from Target and Walmart, Toys'r'us sales is how they know what to put on the shelves in those stores. There is so much shelf space for toys in a Toys'r'us, that you can easily put out new products you aren't sure will sell. And there are so many toys, you can get a sense of your competition.

The problem was the owners wanted to either completely write off the bankruptcy loss, or get that loan money back*. Most investors were willing to get a little wet to get their hands on Toys'r'us, but were not willing to take that sort of bath. Especially not when you can just wait for the asset sale, and buy everything for pennies when compared to buying the debt.

edit: *If I'm remembeirng right, there was a reason they were handling it this way that was a combination of how they're able to write off the costs of bankruptcy/liquidation vs. a sale, and avoiding potential lawsuits from Fund Investors that would ammount to "Why didn't you sell before everything shit the bed".

Of course John doesn't understand the system has protections built in to stop this exact behavior. He also doesn't understand that if you did take fox news off the air, someone else is going to fill the gap. Its not a supply problem.

 

[Furina]

I always figured it was more meme than actual belief. He's even driving in a CBC interview from 2015;

Can drive is not the same as allowed to drive.

But yeah, I agree that it's unlikely Wu doesn't have at least a driver's license. Do they have separate licenses for Manual and Automatic transmissions in the US? In Australia, if you have an Automatic license you can only drive automatic transmissions. With a Manual license, you can drive both auto and manual.

 

[Herbert Hoover]

Can drive is not the same as allowed to drive.

But yeah, I agree that it's unlikely Wu doesn't have at least a driver's license. Do they have separate licenses for Manual and Automatic transmissions in the US? In Australia, if you have an Automatic license you can only drive automatic transmissions. With a Manual license, you can drive both auto and manual.

Each state in the US is a little different with driving laws, but I think in most places a standard driver's licence is good for both auto and manual, although the diving test is done usually only with auto (there are very few cars in the US that don't have an automatic transmission)

 

[Ghostse]

Each state in the US is a little different with driving laws, but I think in most places a standard driver's licence is good for both auto and manual, although the diving test is done usually only with auto (there are very few cars in the US that don't have an automatic transmission)

Correct. Unlike the European Union (of faggots), there is no differential between Automatic and Manual transmissions, its the same test.

edit: Some BMV/DMVs will give you the option of taking the test in a State-owned vehicle, I believe this now very uncommon. Obviously BYOV it didn't matter as it was whatever you showed up with, but if you used the state-owned vehicle there was usually a choice between Automatic and Manual, but if its still done, they'd all be automatic now.

I believe the issue libertarians take with unions has more to do with public sector unions and less to do with private sector unions. By this I mean unions comprised of government or municipal workers who are using essentially using their position of collective bargain in order to stick it to the tax payers (ultimately themselves included). When unions are working to stake a claim in the value they are producing is one thing, when they are working to suck more off of the teet that's another thing. Understanding this requires an informed viewpoint and an ability to wrap your head around nuance, both of which are beyond John's capabilities.

Libertarians are anti-monopoly because they are pro-choice. A union, by its nature, is a monoply.

Which is why a well read (and not just a SOVEREIGN CITIZEN YOU CANNOT RESTRICT MY TRAVEL) libertarian are against most governement services. Not because of the services, but because they are obligated to pay to a single entity with nothing to compete against. Libertarians aren't anti-insurance, which operates in a similar resource-pooling manner, because you can go to another company if you don't like the one you have; that means the companies have to opperate well or they get eaten by the competition.

 

[Furina]

European Union (of faggots)

Is there a way we can turn this into an auto-filter like we did with milk? I want to see this more often in the Articles & Happenings page.

Which is why a well read (and not just a SOVEREIGN CITIZEN YOU CANNOT RESTRICT MY TRAVEL) libertarian are against most governement services. Not because of the services, but because they are obligated to pay to a single entity with nothing to compete against. Libertarians aren't anti-insurance, which operates in a similar resource-pooling manner, because you can go to another company if you don't like the one you have; that means the companies have to opperate well or they get eaten by the competition.

Brianna doesn't understand libertarians and she doesn't want to. She's seen enough SovCit shenanigans on YouTube to feel very well informed and now feels perfectly entitled to talk down to anyone who would dare defend the ideology or question her interpretation of it. Look forward to more of this kind of talk on her Twitter in the future.

 

[GethN7]

There are lots of great comedians who aren't angry crude white men. But I don't expect Wu to be bothered thinking that any white male comedian isn't also angry and crude - standard 'if they're white men they're terrible' rhetoric.

The problem is with comedy that isn't about getting laughs, but with self-righteous agreement. They sacrifice comedy for telling audiences what they already know, which eliminates surprise, which is rather important for a lot of comedy. Being smug doesn't usually work for comedians unless they're just as willing to mock themselves, and most of the aggressively political stuff regards their beliefs as off-limits.

And we all know that Wu has absolutely no sense of humour about herself. Which is why when she tries to be self-deprecating it is always, inevitably, a humblebrag.

I love that sort of ignorance by fools like Wu.

My favorite late comedian is George Carlin, who played the angry white man bit to the hilt, but managed to be funny because he understood you have to make the anger expressed funny, and he often had good points behind it.

Shit, he got black people laughing their asses off with him because a lot of his rants were amusing deconstructions of dumb racial standards of white people. He got even white people laughing at the same because he made the insults so hilarious it was still worthy of your laughter at the delivery.

He's also the same man whose rants contained eerily prophetic warnings about how people would pervert language in the name of identity politics and their version of social justice.

And look where we are now.

 

[captn_kettle]

Maybe you're just not funny, John. Maybe you're admitting this by trashing "white dude" comedy
( face it, you're a white dude. )

View attachment 506694

Oh yeah, forgot about this zinger. You got him!

View attachment 506695

Dude. Bro.

I can't talk from the US, but the UK is rife with anything but the angry dudebro John is mentioning. Bill bailey, Michael McIntyre and Joe lycett off the top of my head.

But the reason why it's like that is because the persona they take on adds realism to the jokes they tell. Comedians don't just tell jokes, they take on a stage persona to add more weight to it.

John Cleese said he would never perform at a university campus again and put out a big think video about it. The video is this:

His biggest point is that comedy is based on being critical.

How can you add weight to your jokes when the persona you take on is fundamentally non-critical? Would you believe a comedian has any weight to their jokes when they're displaying themselves as Emmet from the lego movie?

This is why many comedians take on the angry or cynical role. It's also why Johns autism meme was really shit and instead garnered ridicule.

 

[Richard Stabone]

I don't see a diversity problem in comedy. Go to Netflix and you'll find stand-up from every possible type of person you can imagine.

There's so much content available that I honestly don't understand the diversity in entertainment stuff anymore.

 

[Dr. Merkwurdichliebe]

There's so much content available that I honestly don't understand the diversity in entertainment stuff anymore.

It's easy to understand. If there is even one white cis male working in an industry, that industry is not diverse.

 

[polonium]

There's so much content available that I honestly don't understand the diversity in entertainment stuff anymore.

It's just a catchphrase to squawk, it doesn't matter if it's true or not.

It's easy to understand. If there is even one white cis male working in an industry, that industry is not diverse.

Also this. An all-female lineup is diverse, but throw a dude in and it's problematic

 

[AnOminous]

My favorite late comedian is George Carlin, who played the angry white man bit to the hilt, but managed to be funny because he understood you have to make the anger expressed funny, and he often had good points behind it.

And now that he's dead and can't kick your ass for it, and such a sacred cow that he's almost beyond criticism, both left and right claim he was one of theirs.

Even though he spat on both of them and if he were still alive they wouldn't be able to quit bitching about how problematic or commie he was.

 

[Peace and Harmony]

"canidates" [sic]
Fucking dumbass.

Hedging your bets from when NYT finds out about your anime porn, John?

 

[Jack Awful]

Maybe you're just not funny, John. Maybe you're admitting this by trashing "white dude" comedy
( face it, you're a white dude. )

View attachment 506694

Oh yeah, forgot about this zinger. You got him!

View attachment 506695

Dude. Bro.

Weird cuz I feel the same way about Trump jokes.
(Or should I say DRUMPF?!?! AM I RIGHT?!?!)

 

[Dimethyl Ketone]

This is the same reason that liberal talk show host and Comedy Central talking heads aren't even making any jokes anymore, they're just soapboxing and shouting instead. Trump has highhandedly been the death of TV comedy just by his sheer salt-generating powers

What? You're saying Samantha Bee isn't funny? What about that routine she did:

Samantha: "Trump..... the devil. *points to vagina* I have a vagina."
Crowd: BAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHA
Samantha: "Vagina. Trump wants to grab me by the pussy. Woahhhh!"
Crowd: BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*ambulance sirens*
*Several members of the crowd are led out of the building, having laughed themselves to death.*

 

[millais]

I'm surprised John consented to new photos being taken by NYT. He's gotten so fat and saggy that I was certain he would demand everyone writing a story on him use the same old 2015 and earlier photos.