🐱 Why the Idea of Wreck-It Ralph in the Internet in 2018 Terrifies Me. Really.

CatParty
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/wreck-it-ralph-2-enters-the-internet-10085734


Wreck-It Ralph 2 finally got a teaser trailer this month. I’m not going to lie, Wreck-It Ralph is legit my favorite Disney film. I’ve been tapping my feet like a Sonic the Hedgehog idle animation for a sequel since the credits rolled on the first film.

Now that Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 is here in a more solid than hypothetical form, I’m underwhelmed. Via Wikipedia, here’s the premise…

Taking place six years after the events of the first film, the story will center on Ralph's adventures in the Internet data space when a Wi-Fi router gets plugged into the arcade as he must find a replacement part to fix Sugar Rush. Along the way, Ralph and his best friend Vanellope von Schweetz encounter new customs, worlds, and characters, such as the trendy algorithm Yesss and the Disney Princesses.




In addition to Ariel, Merida, and other Disney characters, we’re getting some Star Wars and Marvel cameos, as well as a long-running rumor that Mario might finally make it back onto the big screen. It’s both a who’s-who and a blunt reminder that Disney is in charge of an alarming amount of properties. Memes are clearly the goal, and that just makes me sad.

I’m not going to blame a costly major studio animated feature for not being able to turn on a dime. These films steer like the Titanic with a drunk monkey (dronkey?) at the wheel, and that’s not their fault. I also don’t blame Disney for going the safe route and goosing their brand marketing at every turn. I might not think it’s good art, but it is, theoretically, good business.

Wreck-It Ralph came out in 2012, and that was the year video games, especially video games in the online space, changed forever. Ralph’s commentary on both the ideas of nostalgia in the medium as well as commentary on the evolution of gaming was perfectly-aimed for the moment it came out. If I had to pick one reason this is my favorite Disney film, it’s because so few films can harness the tropes of a culture and yet not rely on them to sand the edges off a bad script. Wreck-It Ralph did that.

But it’s not 2012 anymore. It’s 2018. The idea of Ralph in the internet terrifies me.

We recently got a national news story on the death of a man from SWATing, the practice of making a false report about a hostage situation so that police will raid someone’s home. This happens a lot in the online gaming community. Until now it’s been non-fatal, but some gamers abuse the ability to communicate with others for these dangerous pranks. It was only a matter of time until someone died.

That’s not even addressing the world of online harassment, threats and bullying. Two years after Wreck-It Ralph was released we got GamerGate, a bigoted, sexist and highly-organized wave of game-centric hate targeting women and minorities. I had friends driven from their homes, and my own daughter was a target. Nothing was done, even when people confessed to what is actually a federal crime.

The internet is us, so I don’t think I’m blowing anyone’s minds by telling you that parts of it suck dirty ditch water and are infested with scum. I’m just deeply ambivalent about what part of the gaming internet Ralph is going to “break” exactly. Is it all the Nazis on Steam? Is it the ongoing legal debate about whether loot boxes are turning players into gambling addicts?


Part of the appeal of Wreck-It Ralph is that it was a world out of time just at a moment when the idea of unplugging from Matrix was soothing. Now, it seems they want to take us back into the Matrix and pretend it’s all comforting ad algorithms and crossover fan fic. I can literally think of no worse idea to put into the heads of kids at the age they’re beginning to venture into the online space.

Nothing I’m saying here has even the slightest chance to change Ralph Wreck the Internet. That movie is done. It was supposed to have Wrinkle in Time’s Spring release slot. And, hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Ralph will punch edgelording-harassment dingoes with one enormous hand while choking greedy, shady developers with the other as Vanellope von Schweetz kicks 'em in the noots.

I don’t think I am wrong, though. Disney seems to be laboring under the impression that having Ralph, Judy Hops, C-3PO, and Gamora in one scene will “break” the internet. That’s a weird premise for a video game film released nearly two decades after Super Smash Bros. became a thing. I mean, I know we’re just coming off a year where freakin’ EMOJIS got their own feature, but come on!

Ralph’s not going to break the internet. Ralph’s going to sell tickets and toys and T-shirts. That’s not a bad thing, but it makes me realize that no one at Disney actually cares about video games, the internet or what either does to people who dive into those experiences. Instead of a heartwarming story set in the confines of games, I’m probably going to get a reminder that no one with money and power knows what the heck they’re talking about.


Jef Rouner is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.
 
  • Winner
  • DRINK!
  • Informative
Reactions: Sotha Sil, Spellskite, 76LD910 and 17 others
Click to expand...
upload_2018-1-5_8-11-4.png


Found it.
 
  • Winner
  • DRINK!
  • Agree
Reactions: Ms. Cegination, Creep3r, Sotha Sil and 47 others
There is one tiny nugget of sanity in this mess of autism, it is worrisome that Disney owns so much of the entertainment world.

Unfortunately that was quickly buried under the shit, so I'm guessing that was a "broken clock" moment.
 
  • Agree
  • Feels
  • Like
Reactions: Creep3r, Jungle Princess, Sotha Sil and 44 others
CatParty said:
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/wreck-it-ralph-2-enters-the-internet-10085734
I’m just deeply ambivalent about what part of the gaming internet Ralph is going to “break” exactly. Is it all the Nazis on Steam? Is it the ongoing legal debate about whether loot boxes are turning players into gambling addicts
Click to expand...
It...it's a kid's film... Why would they bring that up? Are people really still bothered about having nazis on Steam? It's Steam.

CatParty said:
Ralph’s not going to break the internet. Ralph’s going to sell tickets and toys and T-shirts. That’s not a bad thing, but it makes me realize that no one at Disney actually cares about video games, the internet or what either does to people who dive into those experiences.
Click to expand...

:late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late::late:
 
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: Y2K Baby, Koby_Fish, Nekromantik and 1 other person
  • Winner
  • Islamic Content
  • Informative
Reactions: Ms. Cegination, dweebkwench, Marvin and 27 others
neverendingmidi said:
There is one tiny nugget of sanity in this mess of autism, it is worrisome that Disney owns so much of the entertainment world.

Unfortunately that was quickly buried under the shit, so I'm guessing that was a "broken clock" moment.
Click to expand...
Why would it be anything else? These guys can't keep focus for more than a minute and the whole "Disney's a monopoly in the film industry" remark seems to be one of those moments where the author lost his train of thought.
 
how about a bonus article from him?
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/profile-pics-that-may-identify-you-as-a-possible-douchebag-9962848


The 6 Profile Pics That Hint You’re a Douchebag


I spend a lot of time on social media. I’m also on medication for alcoholism. Do you think the two are related? My therapist does. She also says writing articles like this are unhealthy. Oh well…

One of the things you learn when tracking social media is your job is how patterns emerge. Contrary to humans’ – and definitely Americans’ – perceptions, most of us are not making our own logical decisions in a vacuum. We’re just jiving along with the tribe. We’re a social species. That’s how this works. Anyone screaming about sheeple is probably behaving like a different species of sheep. I’m a dad so I understand how peer pressure can be pretty awesome, actually, but I get how rabid individualism can be a drug.

Social media is a funny thing. It’s possibly the rawest expression of ourselves because it is the version of ourselves that we send out into the ether from the purest place of our central power. You ain’t yourself like you are at 2 a.m. with no controls but the Facebook terms of service.

So, let’s explore who people are. Let’s David Attenborough the concept of social media profile pics. What does the face you show to strangers say about you?

1. Holding a Gun
I make no apologies for my dislike of guns, but this isn’t about that. I have lots of friends who own guns, and none of them are holding one in a profile pic. The people who make letting you know they’re armed often have a couple of problems. One, they’ve bought into the gun lobby’s propaganda of gun ownership as a simulated oppressed ethnicity, and it makes them rather loudly paranoid. Two, they tend to value force and threatening language over other means of communication. Coupled with the safety of being behind a screen, you get a lot of touchy, angry pricks. On a similar note…

2. Overly Nationalistic Imagery
This one is not always true. Around certain holidays and in the wake of national tragedies lots of perfectly lovely people flag-up their profiles. However, folks who never take down their flags and screaming eagles are usually not so much patriotic as they treat America closer to a fanatical religious denomination. That makes the extremely necessary critiques of the country feel more like insulting someone’s faith, and I guarantee that if you follow any disagreement with them far enough they’ll start screaming about disrespecting the troops. Like the gun folks above you see a lot of unhealthy worship of force.

3. Punisher Logos
I haven’t yet been able to track down the racist sub-reddit where this idea probably originated, but a startling number of Nazis online have started using Marvel’s Punisher as a coded sign of their allegiance. Noted Nazi Christopher Cantwell is wearing a Punisher shirt in the famous video from the Charlottesville white supremacist rally where he cries. So if you see Frank Castle’s famous skull design, proceed with caution.

4. The Kekistan Flag
Like the Punisher logo, the alt-right and other terrible people absolutely live for various memes as secret handshake, thinking that they’re pulling a fast one on the rest of us. It’s also their method of plausible deniability, treating hate speech and other tripe as a joke the rest of us are just too fragile to handle. Pepe the Frog is the most famous of these, but the alt-right has a long and often nonsensical history of dog whistling through the webs. The one that I’ve come to detest the most lately is the flag of Kekistan (seen at the top of this article), a fictional country somehow inhabited by nonfictional bigots. It was popularized by YouTuber Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), and now it’s just bloody everywhere. A friend of mine even spotted an actual Kekistan flag flying in the Texas Renaissance Festival campgrounds. I wouldn’t drink anything that dude offered me if I were any of y’all.

5. Anime
This is mostly a Twitter thing, and one of the many reasons I don’t hardly use my account any more. Twitter is favored by the folks who congregate in deep web forums to plot online raids and misinformation tactics. Twitter lends itself well to swiftly created burner and sock puppet accounts, so it’s easy to make a couple of bored, hateful dillweeds seem like an army. Rope enough patsies in with a good hashtag, and it spreads like freakin’ Dragonscale. It’s how things like GamerGate and Operation Lollipop got so big, and it’s basically the blueprint for a lot of the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Anime, especially pornographic anime (hentai), is very popular on these types of forums. This makes various cartoon girls their preferred quick-grab when they need to find someone to annoy on the web. Not always. Lots of good people like anime. If you see someone using a screengrab from a Miyazaki film they’re probably all right. However, if your first thought is “that looks like someone was drawing child pornography to get around laws against that” then hit the block button.

6. Holding a Big Fish
Going to admit right out, I have zero idea why this is a thing. That said, nearly every random person to drop into my sphere whose profile pic has them holding a big fish ended up screaming at me about libtards and #AllLivesMatter and Hillary Clinton’s emails. I could not explain the correlation if my own life was the prize, but it annoys me. I kind of want to take my daughter fishing, and these people have got me wondering if you catch some weird alt-right disease from the activity.

A profile pic is a first impression, and as Maya Angelou once said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Learning to recognize what people are saying about themselves through their avatars has increased my block list, and made my life a much quieter place.


https://www.facebook.com/jef.withonef.5

upload_2018-1-5_11-42-27.png

upload_2018-1-5_11-46-15.png

19894796_1577203142304600_9040830355396636325_n.jpg 14963242_1320794621278788_6940999603649745194_n.jpg 20729679_1611847272173520_7219678654956827565_n.jpg
 
  • Informative
  • Winner
  • Semper Fidelis
Reactions: Marvin, Ubiquitous, knux and 17 others
  • Optimistic
  • Feels
Reactions: Keystone, Ineedahero, A Cold Potato and 3 others
CatParty said:
how about a bonus article from him?
http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/profile-pics-that-may-identify-you-as-a-possible-douchebag-9962848


The 6 Profile Pics That Hint You’re a Douchebag


I spend a lot of time on social media. I’m also on medication for alcoholism. Do you think the two are related? My therapist does. She also says writing articles like this are unhealthy. Oh well…

One of the things you learn when tracking social media is your job is how patterns emerge. Contrary to humans’ – and definitely Americans’ – perceptions, most of us are not making our own logical decisions in a vacuum. We’re just jiving along with the tribe. We’re a social species. That’s how this works. Anyone screaming about sheeple is probably behaving like a different species of sheep. I’m a dad so I understand how peer pressure can be pretty awesome, actually, but I get how rabid individualism can be a drug.

Social media is a funny thing. It’s possibly the rawest expression of ourselves because it is the version of ourselves that we send out into the ether from the purest place of our central power. You ain’t yourself like you are at 2 a.m. with no controls but the Facebook terms of service.

So, let’s explore who people are. Let’s David Attenborough the concept of social media profile pics. What does the face you show to strangers say about you?

1. Holding a Gun
I make no apologies for my dislike of guns, but this isn’t about that. I have lots of friends who own guns, and none of them are holding one in a profile pic. The people who make letting you know they’re armed often have a couple of problems. One, they’ve bought into the gun lobby’s propaganda of gun ownership as a simulated oppressed ethnicity, and it makes them rather loudly paranoid. Two, they tend to value force and threatening language over other means of communication. Coupled with the safety of being behind a screen, you get a lot of touchy, angry pricks. On a similar note…

2. Overly Nationalistic Imagery
This one is not always true. Around certain holidays and in the wake of national tragedies lots of perfectly lovely people flag-up their profiles. However, folks who never take down their flags and screaming eagles are usually not so much patriotic as they treat America closer to a fanatical religious denomination. That makes the extremely necessary critiques of the country feel more like insulting someone’s faith, and I guarantee that if you follow any disagreement with them far enough they’ll start screaming about disrespecting the troops. Like the gun folks above you see a lot of unhealthy worship of force.

3. Punisher Logos
I haven’t yet been able to track down the racist sub-reddit where this idea probably originated, but a startling number of Nazis online have started using Marvel’s Punisher as a coded sign of their allegiance. Noted Nazi Christopher Cantwell is wearing a Punisher shirt in the famous video from the Charlottesville white supremacist rally where he cries. So if you see Frank Castle’s famous skull design, proceed with caution.

4. The Kekistan Flag
Like the Punisher logo, the alt-right and other terrible people absolutely live for various memes as secret handshake, thinking that they’re pulling a fast one on the rest of us. It’s also their method of plausible deniability, treating hate speech and other tripe as a joke the rest of us are just too fragile to handle. Pepe the Frog is the most famous of these, but the alt-right has a long and often nonsensical history of dog whistling through the webs. The one that I’ve come to detest the most lately is the flag of Kekistan (seen at the top of this article), a fictional country somehow inhabited by nonfictional bigots. It was popularized by YouTuber Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), and now it’s just bloody everywhere. A friend of mine even spotted an actual Kekistan flag flying in the Texas Renaissance Festival campgrounds. I wouldn’t drink anything that dude offered me if I were any of y’all.

5. Anime
This is mostly a Twitter thing, and one of the many reasons I don’t hardly use my account any more. Twitter is favored by the folks who congregate in deep web forums to plot online raids and misinformation tactics. Twitter lends itself well to swiftly created burner and sock puppet accounts, so it’s easy to make a couple of bored, hateful dillweeds seem like an army. Rope enough patsies in with a good hashtag, and it spreads like freakin’ Dragonscale. It’s how things like GamerGate and Operation Lollipop got so big, and it’s basically the blueprint for a lot of the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Anime, especially pornographic anime (hentai), is very popular on these types of forums. This makes various cartoon girls their preferred quick-grab when they need to find someone to annoy on the web. Not always. Lots of good people like anime. If you see someone using a screengrab from a Miyazaki film they’re probably all right. However, if your first thought is “that looks like someone was drawing child pornography to get around laws against that” then hit the block button.

6. Holding a Big Fish
Going to admit right out, I have zero idea why this is a thing. That said, nearly every random person to drop into my sphere whose profile pic has them holding a big fish ended up screaming at me about libtards and #AllLivesMatter and Hillary Clinton’s emails. I could not explain the correlation if my own life was the prize, but it annoys me. I kind of want to take my daughter fishing, and these people have got me wondering if you catch some weird alt-right disease from the activity.

A profile pic is a first impression, and as Maya Angelou once said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Learning to recognize what people are saying about themselves through their avatars has increased my block list, and made my life a much quieter place.


https://www.facebook.com/jef.withonef.5

View attachment 349514
View attachment 349516
View attachment 349517 View attachment 349518 View attachment 349519
Click to expand...
This dude has #metoo written all over him.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: Marvin, Nehelenia, Black Waltz and 20 others
Wasn't the premise of Wreck It Ralph supposed to be something like Toy Story meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Hell the whole first part of the movie was "Hey video game crossover here".

They're probably doing the same thing with the internet, but likely executed better than The Emoji Movie (we can hope). If you're watching a Disney movie to see information about the newest CNN news cycle you're doing it wrong. It's a kids movie.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Nehelenia, Kyria the Great, Ineedahero and 5 others
CIA Nigger said:
Wasn't the premise of Wreck It Ralph supposed to be something like Toy Story meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Hell the whole first part of the movie was "Hey video game crossover here".

They're probably doing the same thing with the internet, but likely executed better than The Emoji Movie (we can hope). If you're watching a Disney movie to see information about the newest CNN news cycle you're doing it wrong. It's a kids movie.
Click to expand...
Exactly. I can see a Club Penguin cameo, but not a Stormfront one.
 
  • Agree
  • Optimistic
Reactions: dweebkwench, Kyria the Great, The Lawgiver and 3 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back