"Racist Furries," -Rolling Stone, Could Tiktok Music Beat Spotify? Director Claims Canceling Movie Just Cause It's Bad to Be...Racist?! USPS Cheats Environmental Regs, (The Five for 08/12/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
One quick product recommendation before we dive in. After being on every music streaming service, Amanda and I are back on Apple Music. I found out we get it for free through our Verizon Wireless phone plan, and free>paid.
I was on Apple Music previously, when the service launched. At that time, it was pretty half-baked.
A few years later, Apple Music is fantastic, due to a lot of interview content with artist, and a focus on album listening, vs. Spotify’s curated playlists.
I’m much more of an album person than a playlist person, and I’m becoming a fan of new artists more quickly when their albums and interview content are in the same place.
Oh, and Apple is now doing Lossless Audio, the same quality is “studio files” that far exceeds the quality of most streaming services/CD’s, at no extra cost. You have to plug in headphones or speakers to get the benefit (true hi-fi audio doesn’t travel over a Bluetooth signal), but if you’re even a little bit of an audiophile, giving Apple Music another look.
Now, let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Ugh. I hate starting here…but I don’t decide what the culture is.
If you’re not familiar with furries, it’s a subculture of people that dress up like cartoon animals due to being…ummm…aroused. For some reason.
From this week’s lead story on Rolling Stone:
On the surface, the furry community doesn’t seem like a place where extremist contingent would fester. It’s extremely LGBTQ+-friendly, consists largely of neurodivergent kids and adults, and is often characterized by a deep love of feature-length cartoons like Zootopia and The Bad Guys. Participants create “fursonas” — anthropomorphized animals they dream up, name, and bequeath a personality — to draw, share on the internet, or even turn into huge costumes, which can cost hundreds of dollars, to wear to one of dozens of annual conventions held all across the country. For many, this often-maligned subculture gives them great comfort because they are able to interact with the world from the comfort of their fursona.
On this week’s episode of Don’t Let This Flop, Rolling Stone’s podcast about internet culture, we discuss the small but vocal cohort of furries posting anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ+, and often racist content on message boards and social media sites. “In general, furries are not about that sort of fringe far-right,” says Kameron Dunn, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas who studies online subcultures, and who is himself a furry. “Part of what makes it a spectacle is that furries are very, very public, especially if they’re doing stuff that is very controversial.”
This discourse can be traced back to April 2017, when a group called the Furry Raiders — who wore red armbands with black paw prints on top of their fursuits, which some said evoked a Nazi uniform — was planning on attending a convention called Rocky Mountain Fur Con. The group claimed they weren’t nazis (“We have a strong stance about keeping equal rights and personal creativity within the fandom,” one of the group’s members told Rolling Stone at the time), but after other attendees threatened violence against the so-called Nazi Furs, the Denver Police investigated it and deemed the threats credible. When the venue demanded $22,000 in extra security costs, organizers decided to shut it down.
If you’re not familiar with the term “Jump the Shark,” to comes from the waning era of the sitcom Happy Days, when a main character jumped over a shark on water skis in a desperate attempt to get viewers talking about the show and tuning in again.
I’m not sure if Rolling Stone is Jumping the Shark here, or if their derangement around a “vast right wing conspiracy” has become so hysterical that a major publication actually believes that a few dozen weirdos wearing Nazi-like arm bands is a major news story.
I’m pretty much “live and let live,” but if you are sexually aroused by cartoon animal costumes and you can’t engage in social situations without everyone wearing a costtume, you need therapy.
And if a few dozen of those people are racist? Well, 100% of those people are already disturbed, so racism wouldn’t surprise me.
Let me be clear here…I would never want a law preventing Furries from…doing anything that’s not already illegal.
But reporting on a few dozen idiots in an unhealthy subculture, Rolling Stone has told us nothing about the idiots, and normalized a subculture that’s clearly a sign there’s something very wrong in your life.
When our oldest was six months old, my wife and I attempted to do a photo shoot with our daughter on the beach in Wisconsin. Some of the photos were ruined by a pair of Furries grinding on each other in public in the background.
Here’s a list of things that wouldn’t have ruined the photo shoot:
A straight couple
Any LGBT couple. Or group of 15.
Any kind of family
Any person hanging out
Someone sucking down a joint
Just about anything anyone would normally do on a public beach, dressed however they felt like it
Here’s what did ruin the photoshoot: Fake Cartoon Animals having fake sex on a public beach while I'm trying to take pics.
Again, I want the rights of people I disagree with just as much as I want my own rights protected. What these cartoon animal people were doing…was perfectly legal.
But that doesn’t make it OK or acceptable.
The problem with Furries is not a handful of Furry racists.
The problem with Furries is…whatever unhealed wound that makes people run to such a dysfunctional subculture.
By reporting on this non-story, Rolling Stone made the problem worse, by making these people think they’re victims of racism, rather than unhealthy individuals who likely need professional help to move forward in life.
Oh, and Furries are less than 0.000001517% of the population, from some quick Google research, meaning that there are likely less than 50 “racist Furries” in the whole country.
[two]
In a recent ad spot from John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor running for an open U.S. Senate seat, he attacked his rival, Mehmet Oz, as “not one of us” and part of the wealthy entertainment elite.
“Hey, Doc Hollywood, save your money, Pennsylvania is not for sale,” Fetterman said in the spot, as video ran of Oz, the longtime syndicated daytime TV host, kissing his star on the Walk of Fame.
It’s certainly not a novel for a campaign to try to tar a rival for Hollywood ties, but this time it’s a Democrat, Fetterman, trying to tar a Republican, Oz, for his showbiz embrace. It’s a bit of a twist on a common campaign tactic used by the right against their leftward opponents, who have for generations enjoyed dominance in Hollywood fundraising and endorsements.
In a very odd turnabout, a Democrat is accusing a Republican candidate of being too into Hollywood and ignoring middle America.
In my opinion, this is one of the best political ads I’ve ever seen.
If it works, this will reveal more about how much everyday Americans are disgusted with the elitism of Hollywood than it will tell new info about either political candidate.
[three]
Last week, Warner Brothers canceled an upcoming Batgirl movie because WB is currently $43 billion in debt, and the companies execs thought the movie would bomb.
So WB elected to take a $90M tax write off and cancel the movie completely rather than put out a bad product and lose $200M+, plus damage the reputation of the brand.
CEO David Zazlav put it this way on an investor call: “We’re not going to put out a movie unless we believe in it.”
This move prompted a scathing response from indie film director Kevin Smith (who’s not connected to the project in any way):
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina ‘Batgirl’ movie,” Smith said. “I don’t give a sh*t if the movie was absolute f*cking dog sh*t.”
Just to recap Smith’s argument…a company already drowning in debt should intentionally put out a bad movie, lose hundreds of millions of dollars, rob hardworking money of their limited entertainment budgets and do damage to DC films and characters…all to avoid looking un-woke?
I’ve got news for you Mr. Smith…unpopular woke entertainment doesn’t appear to be surviving the recession. Warner Brothers just doesn’t have enough money to put out a money that’s going to flop to avoid being mocked by Smith.
[four]
The United States Postal Service is moving to a vehicle that…appears to be straight out of The Simpsons.
Oh, and it’s horribly designed.
Oshkosh's design would have a fuel efficiency of just 14 miles per gallon, or 8.6 mpg when the air conditioning is on.[11] The combined vehicle weight including payload is 8,501 pounds, just one pound over the EPA's threshold to be considered a heavy-duty truck, allowing it to avoid pollution emissions standards for light trucks.[11] Senators Ed Markey and Martin Heinrich, joined by other members of Congress and environmental organizations, sent a letter criticizing USPS and Oshkosh for the vehicles' inefficiency and the use of incorrect data in their environmental impact statement.[12]
There’s a lot to unpack here, but Vice asimplifies this issue into one brilliant headline:
So, in a world where the Transportation Secretary tells Americans too poor to buy gas to get to work to avoid $4.50/gallon gas by dropping $48,000 on a Tesla, the federal government is putting vehicles on the road that get EIGHT MILES TO THE GALLON.
And those trucks must be filled up with taxpayer dollars.
Sure, they can be converted to electric vehicles at some point, but when? And at what cost to the taxpayer?
Also, I don’t claim to be an expert on many things, I’m a top level expert on driving heavy trucks on gravel and dirt roads…and that monstrosity is too low to the ground to deliver on many routes in rural America.
If the Postal Service was run by an elected official, we could vote that person out. If the Postal Service was a private company…the CEO would be updating his resume and deleting incriminating emails right about now.
But the Postal Service is part of the massive federal bureaucracy…so nobody will take the blame or the hit on this one.
Except for the taxpayers, footing the bill.
Also known as “you and me.”
When you look at what’s coming out of your check on your pay stub, remember…a government cartoon truck aint gonna gas itself up.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, which raked in over a billion dollars at the box office by re-imagining the iconic Batman villain in a 1970’s New York gritty crime drama…is getting a sequel.
Not just any sequel, but a musical, co-starring Lady Gaga (A Star is Born, House of Gucci) that is allegedly close to Gaga’s other singing film, A Star is Born.
Woah, Parks and Rec’s Aubrey Plaza makes a compelling dramatic turn in Emily the Criminal, the story of a woman sucked into the criminal underworld of buying merch with stolen credit cards in order to keep up with her student loan payments.
Alison Brie gave an update on the follow up movie for the NBC cult classic comedy series Community, following the antics of an unlikely group of peers at a jr. college.
The show ended in 2015 after six seasons, but rumors have abounded for over a decade that a movie would follow at some point.
Now Brie, one of the leads, says "There's been some talks. People are talking and certain things — wheels are turning. I said it!"
Sci-Fi novelist Neil Gaiman is one of the most successful content creators in the world, with a bajillion books sold and several TV shows based on his works (Good Omens, American Gods, Lucifer, etc.)
I…don’t get Gaiman at all, and haven’t enjoyed his books I’ve tried to read (aka quit 1/4 of the way through and quit).
But he has a strong fanbase, and his latest show, Sandman, based on a comic Gaimen penned from 1989-1996, is getting a lot of buzz over at Netflix.
UFC megastar Conor McGregor will make his acting debut opposite Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler, Brokeback Mountain) in a remake of the 1980’s Patrick Swayze action flick Road House about a bouncer at a rural rough-and-tumble bar in rural Missouri. Gyllenhall will play an ex-UFC fighter turned bouncer at a watering hole in the Florida Keys. No word on McGregor’s part in the film yet.
MUSIC NEWS:
The app that launched a bajillion viral music clips, TikTok, may be launching it’s own music streaming service to compete with Spotify and Apple Music.
This would allow users to add songs from videos they like to music playlists without switching apps.
Gen Z is deeply embedded in TikTok and slower to adapt more traditional streaming services, so this new platform could be pretty big for the kids.
MUSIC/MY PICK:
In the beginning were the Drive-By Truckers. At least that’s how it felt in 2001, when I checked the alt-country band’s Southern Rock Opera out from the public library (and ripped the double disc to my computer with Winamp). DBT self-financed, printed and mailed the CD out to fans in the era before iTunes and nearly singlehandedly created what was then called “the redneck underground,” that paved the way for today’s alt-country and Americana scenes.
The early days of DBT were defined by the Alabama band crafting tightly constructed narratives about the lives of real-life working class Americans for three incredible albums (SRO, The Dirty South, Decoration Day), before DBT went in a different direction, looking to please NPR staffers more than telling the stories of blue collar workers in their songs.
I say all that to say…the new Lee Bains + Glory Fires album, Old Time Folks, feels like vintage Drive-By Truckers.
If that means anything to you at all, please listen to this record.
Until the next one,
-sth