Seth Carter said:
I mostly throw out the idea (in which I specifically noted he'd still be an antagonist, most certainly not a saint) because in its own incredibly heavily handed way, Doom16 was trying to throw down (or at least invoke) the "People are the real monsters" trope for most of the game. If the Doomslayer subverts it (which there brief flickers of like saving VEGA), it makes sense for Hayden to uphold it as a villain or even the final villain by not being demon-affiliated, but just a trashbag of a human-turned-robo-being. The humanist thing also partially becomes because he clearly sees the Doomslayer as a tool to be kept in a box rather then some sort of actual being, and he's outright contemptuous about Pierce's allegiance to the demons, calling her weak for doing so.
(Another perhaps more useful example of the sort of character would be the Illusive Man in Mass Effect, at least before his becoming an absolute caricature in ME3. And if the aliens in Mass Effect were apocalyptically dangerous hostiles and a barely known race whose only surviving member is also an incredibly dangerous and violent individual and not mostly neutral-friendly. Who also funnily enough keeps the hero locked away in a lab until deploying them as a last ditch solution against the threat, and tries to backstab them and acquire the tech at the end)
There is that sort of bent of nihilistc Bethamite utilitarianism. That being said I will point out it's still pretty fucking absurdist. However important Hell Energy is (I forget the exact term they use) somehow it's worth losing
entire Martian colonies and recognizing that events will happen again just like it given the Doom Slayer was ultimately spared, so much as to put the Doom Slayer on ice just for such occasion again...
The thing is that it merely flat out tells you that humanity needs Hell Energy. Despite the fact that clearly humanity was capable of flinging entire cadres of humanity out into space to find it. I mean, sure ... we're never given any concrete background to just how bad things are getting on Earth ... but when it gets to the point that you need energy so bad that you're willing to lose entire armadas of space faring ships and their crew complements to Mars just to syphon off energy you have to assume that the tone is always going to be
absurdist.
Just the sheer volume of automated 'anti-matter factories' you could build on the focal space of Earth's magnetosphere as charged solar wind particulates crash against Earth ... So the idea that you need to go to Mars to get energy is trumped by thefact that our Sun is still there and it's hard to imagine the Sun is going someplace else. So I agree that in such an absurdist world it is quite literally a discussion of humanity's self-destructiveness and basically; "If a capitalist could mine Hell and make a buck, they would."
In the same way groups like Royal Dutch Petroleum willingly prop up a military junta in Nigeria and are willing to poison tens of millions of people who will ultimately likely die in part from complications from their operations in places like the Niger Delta is comparable to what Samuel Hayden does...
So I concede the idea that they might just 'run with that', and it would be sufficient for the plot. But at the same time a part of me feels like it's still even mney they might be going with demonic manipulation... if that makes sense? Why telegraph it otherwise if not the case of making a yet another black and white morality frameworks?
Windknight said:
I've seen it be described as satirising corporate culture co-opting progressive language, and I agree that's probably the intent, but without context, its unclear.
I remember a few 'left wing' folks (and i'll include myself) being uncomfortable with the jokes, and there's absolutely been right wingers taking it straight and salivating over it.
And also about 18 or so videos by 'youtube rationalists' calling out the the 'SJW's' for 'crying rivers of tears' over the jokes.
Hrm, well as I was saying before I tend to occupy an anarcho-syndicalist bent so that might have coloured my perceptions somewhat of id Software making a joke how corporate entities will do just that if they can get away with it. In the same way Gina Rineheart occupies buzzterms like 'personal liberty' all while she and other miners
blows holes in the sandstone bedding of the the Great Artesian Basin that is the lifeblood of the biomass of much of Australia.
I can see how people are a bit annoyed by the jokes or more so how they were handled, and yeah ... I think there were better ways of handling it if you wanted that discussion of corporations manipulating progressive talking pointsfor
all-together conservative reasons ...
But I suppose the real dilemma I have is whether how much literalism are we going to assume id Software actually
meant. Because the truth is I could see corporations doing such a thing in order to downplay how much they've fucked up humanity. I suppose it comes down to an argument of how much of a joke it is when in comparison to how much of it makes sense from a first person perspective of
how corporations act.
hanselthecaretaker said:
Are you saying that the vast majority of refugees in Europe and England have demonstrated a willingness to assimilate and abide by their established customs, laws and culture? I mean, I?d like to think that was the case, but it might be considered a wee bit too wishful given the host of transgressions running contrary that have been plastered all over Youtube the past few years.
But then again, I suppose it?s not real news unless the big agenda-setting corporate media conglomerates are peddling it, which they aren?t.
Huh.
Wow, that hits all the dogwhistles.
You know what? My mother comes from the Philippines, and she came out to Australia in the 70s... and much of one half of my entire family was blacklisted by the Marcos government after my uncle's actions in the EDSA Revolution movement. My uncle didn't do a whole lot ... he helped commandeer radio towers and helped broadcast revolutionary news to people across the country ... broadcasted the movement of government troops and Marcos so that civil demonstrations could choke the streets wherever they went.
Nonetheless, he was eventually captured and tortured, and spared death only because the regime fell shortly after. But much of my family still suffered as a result of him being identified to government branches.
Now my mother left all that, regardless, because her family did not want the inevitable of their actions to fight the Marcos regime coming to light to inflict upon her. So they sent her abroad at the time. She ran into this sort of commentary even while I was a kid.
But then you know what is the funniest (not funniest) part of it all is?
The Marcos government was a U.S. puppet regime. No less a eurocentric construct of ideas concerning imperialism.
Even if the absolute
worst projections of people like my mother were true from alt-right shitstains as you seem to subscribe to, it's
still infinitely better than how 'whitey' 'assimilated' into the global scene wherever they went.
