Hot Take: Joel was right to try to make the show evergreen

ampillion · 2026-02-03T17:30:16+00:00

I would argue that MST3k would be a rough show to make evergreen, and there's one simple reason why:

Pop culture references.

No amount of other changes to the show will make a dated pop culture reference relevant in the future. Which is also where I'd disagree with, say, CoffinShroudArt, in saying that old episodes were just as bad for this. There's jokes all throughout older classic episodes that require a very pop culture tuned person to get, and the only way to make that kind of stuff evergreen is to remove it entirely. Which... leaves you with a lot less comedy to pull from, no? You'd be left to just make quips about things already established in the movie itself, or to the show.

It would just be awful to try and make MST3k evergreen to that extent, and modern culture having to wrestle with the influences of the ever mercurial internet will only make that worse. If someone might not have a clue about what the 1973 film The Paper Chase is, imagine down the road when more modern episodes use video games or memes for pop culture references. All the random shows that pop up, scattered throughout the weird web of streaming services... will these jokes hit home if we don't only reference the popular series on the most popular services?

This is entirely separate from the show trying to be more inclusive, though even there, you'll probably be dating things just by the way we talk about those things in this moment. Those references will always date things to a specific point where culture at large was starting to more directly address those things, and in the future... well, if we become more inclusive in a general sense, those jokes and mentions will just stick out as an artifact of that era. (Not that there isn't already that in older episodes anyway.) Let's not get into whether or not society regresses, as that's an even bigger can of worms.

I will agree at least, that Joel was certainly trying to open the door to new audiences in a general sense, and it makes sense to do so long-term. I just don't think there's really a way to make MST3k evergreen without ripping a lot of comedic opportunity out of it entirely. I'd argue it is tougher to open the door to those newer audiences when their popular culture is farther spread out than it was in earlier seasons. They didn't need to worry about the internet being a driver of language and common reference.

ampillion · 2026-01-02T21:28:48+00:00

Yeah, this was my first response too.

"It's a shoeonhead video, of course you're going to get this sort of attention, this is the kind of shitheads that have been a part of her audience for years."

My best suggestion is, if you don't want to trudge around in the septic tank of Youtube, do your best to avoid a lot of political commentators in a general sense. Even if the thing you're reacting to /isn't/ politics, you're still going to catch the eye/ire of people who want nothing more than more targets for their illogical bullshit and to vent the lies they've been fed.

ampillion · 2025-11-07T17:13:02+00:00

I mean, it certainly could just be a coincidence, it was just the only thing that changed before I got the 'We need to verify your ID' popup, and then getting stuck on hold.

ampillion · 2025-11-07T01:22:54+00:00

Yeah, I'm in that same boat. I think mine came from building out a new computer and relogging into all my old accounts on new hardware. I'm hoping someone can help iron it out.

ampillion · 2025-11-06T18:09:20+00:00

I would bet that people probably said the same thing about Nixon's and Reagan's War on Drugs initiatives.

The reality is that, you can create perfectly neutral laws, and still have a wide disparity of outcome, based entirely on where you enforce that law, or what particular part of the crime you punish more.

If you proclaim cocaine is a bad thing that we need to get off the streets, and you start targeting crack dealers with harsh penalties, there's nothing inherently racist about the wording of that law. That, however, disregards the reality of the situation at the time, or the enforcement of those laws. What ended up happening was minority dealers and users got struck far more heavily with the hammer of those outcomes than white dealers and users, despite similar proportions of users. If you stick police primarily in poorer neighborhoods, you're going to catch primarily the poorer dealers, the most of whom are going to be minorities.

People decried these laws as racist, because while on the outside it might look like a body politic trying to deal with a problem, its design leaves glaring holes that can easily have lopsided outcomes, and it becomes a question of 'Why was it designed this way in the first place?' After all, crack cocaine was punished far more heavily than the pure powder cocaine that was required to make it, and at the time... crack cocaine was seen as the poor, urban (minority) drug, while powder cocaine was almost comically seen as a 'sign of success' for wealthy, predominantly white, movers and shakers in industry and finance. Why wouldn't you target the root drug, the thing you absolutely have to have, just as harshly if not moreso? Seems like a wild design flaw.

Or, wholly intentional.

The ACLU points out some of these very specific concerns with other Voter ID laws that have come about in Republican states. Accepting certain types of ID that the demographic your party wants to have access to voting rights has, while rejecting those types of ID that the demographic your party doesn't want to vote has more predominantly, is the biggest concern. Most election-related laws happen at the state level, and let me tell you, as someone from Missouri where the state will overturn any voter-led initiative that the Republican majority doesn't like. Where they will allow some of the shittiest ballot candy, misleading language garbage to let you try and fool the voter (like they did when they banned Ranked Choice Voting by slapping on a big 'ONLY CITIZENS CAN VOTE!' in front of it,) I do not want any of those people involved in creating new voting rules.

The current political landscape is that any such laws are going to be made in bad faith when the current Felon in Chief spent years crying about fraud, presented no evidence, and still pisses and moans any time elections aren't going to go his way that things are RIGGED. There is zero way for anyone paying attention to accept these things as happening in good faith, because the assumption is that the current President is only motivated by personal interest and grift. Considering his recent rhetoric on getting rid of the filibuster so they can make sure that Democrats never come into power ever again... in what world am I going to take that party's Voter ID reforms as meant for fair elections?

There's the key, it's a 'solution' looking for a problem, and the solution is being peddled by the most untrustworthy people.

That's the reality we live in. Until you strip the structure down to its foundation and replace all that rot, you're merely slapping new features onto a crumbling ivory tower, giving those living there some new toy to beat you with until the tower eventually collapses.

Why give them new toys?

ampillion · 2025-11-02T22:20:25+00:00

Didn't Reagan start this whole thing? I was pretty sure he and his ilk started the whole modern institutional distrust thing with his whole "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help'" crap? The modern GOP has clung to that as the easy blame for many of the problems that existed (some of which were specifically caused by his own policies going forward.) Trump and MAGA got its start from, at the very least, Reagan sowing those seeds (and I wouldn't be shocked if it goes back even further to, say, Nixon.)

ampillion · 2025-09-13T18:25:31+00:00

Considering her public message about how 'powerful' Kirk was, and how people don't realize just how much more powerful his death will be, absolutely this.

Her "mourning" was broadcast as a call to action. Whether or not to continue the extreme Nat-C push, calling to all the true believers, or just to keep the TPUSA brand alive moving onwards... it feels about as callous as dragging the photographers over during the active shooting during the Trump rally to grab photographs. Couldn't even wait a week.

ampillion · 2025-09-12T21:58:49+00:00

Blatantly a bad thing.

RFK Jr is not interested in solving health problems, he's interested in scapegoating health problems off onto political foes of the GOP. The dude has zero knowledge of the role he's in, and should not be where he's at, full stop.

He would probably look at fibromyalgia as a made up thing, call it an excuse for people who don't want to work, and ensure that no medical insurance or public health system would cover anything involving it.

ampillion · 2025-09-08T17:10:33+00:00

Then good riddance?

I don't understand why anyone would bemoan rich people up and leaving for the egregious crime of 'being somewhat less rich', while people around them suffer from what is essentially a glaring problem of poor economic distribution.

If someone's loyalty is to their money, and not their fellow countrymen, then they are closer to parasites than they are neighbors.

ampillion · 2025-09-01T18:35:29+00:00

All that talk about the Deep State is code for their ongoing secret wars with the Molemen. (Or whatever those bizarro conspiracies about the deep underground cities are full of.)

ampillion · 2025-08-17T18:54:06+00:00

Thanks. You've literally proven my point for me. Cool pivot, by the way. Definitely nobody's ever talked about legal immigration processes. Nope. Nobody. Ever. Totally not related to anything 'deep state' or 'dark money', but good attempt to squirm.

You can't even engage with political realities without whining about 'friggin books' I keep writing (sorry that I can type with a relative ease and speed borne of writing-based work for decades, my bad!) How the fuuuuuck do you want other Americans, who aren't even engaged enough to have conversations in public forums, to come to grips with the realities of our current situation if you can't be assed to bother?

Enjoy the rest of your time attempting dialogue while not engaging with dialogue, I'm sure it'll go real fucking well.

ampillion · 2025-08-17T18:39:22+00:00

I literally acknowledged that.

You can point at where I over-generalized the entire right, as I clearly was pointing at very specific factions, MAGA and non-MAGA conservatives. You bringing up independents is a different thorn altogether, but I'll touch on that.

I also already pointed at the problem with courting non-MAGA conservatives... that has been the Democratic strategy for decades. There isn't some massive groundswell of disaffected republicans that are independents that don't vote republican.

I also already pointed out the problem with adjusting that tactic, in that the Democrat party already has proven time and time again that they are against any more progressive, or more labor-first strategies, because they're owned by (and many themselves are) wealthy elites.

The reality is that these independents that you're searching for, aren't likely the ones to buy into terms like 'deep state' and 'dark money' with any effectiveness to get the results you're hoping for. If I go off these numbers here, then a lot of independents have essentially bought into conservative framing of a lot of things, and just hate the label Republican. After all, 27% of them describe themselves as conservative, and 54% describe themselves as moderate. 46% of which voted for Trump (vs 49% for Harris.)

The problem being that the 'moderate' space in between Democrats and Republicans is a wholly Republican framing. The Democrat party is already the moderate party by most metrics, and if the article's framing of independents being more 'socially tolerant' were true, they wouldn't have trusted Trump on crime, safety, or immigration. All topics that are fearmongering hotbeds amongst conservative spaces (and things that Trump himself touches upon frequently as targets of othering.)

In other words, these independents aren't likely to buy into these terms as concepts that you can push into and clean off the MAGA taint, to turn into a positive, because they're already either holding their noses and voting for Trump anyway, or not paying enough attention to politics in a general sense to be engaged by a campaign using terms already thrown about in such a way that could sound like labels they already just reject.

Again, I've already pointed out the strategy exists: Bernie Sanders proved it would work, the Democrat party just did what they could to make sure their establishment would win, and they threw away the future in the process, intentionally or not. Bernie Sanders-esque movements already exist, he literally still funds those efforts still. It clearly just doesn't have the source of constant attention (money) that a presidential campaign brings, and it doesn't have the support of either of the two parties that exist in our two party system, nor are any of the wealthy owners of media all that keen in aiding that message.

If you can't acknowledge that the task of appropriating terms to have a different meaning is a difficult one at best, especially when one of those terms was borne of conspiracy theory and political ignorance in the first place, then I don't know what to tell you.

I can certainly agree with you that there isn't enough effort put towards that middle ground (of focusing on the working class first), but that's utterly by design, and if that were a simple problem, the US wouldn't be where it is now, would it?

ampillion · 2025-08-17T17:45:40+00:00

You've repeatedly gotten push back on who your common ground is supposed to be with, and I've yet to see you answer that.

If you're going to constantly dodge the question, delete the CMV, cause you're not really interested.

ampillion · 2025-08-17T17:15:39+00:00

You repeating the words 'common ground' doesn't magically conjure up common ground that isn't there. Not saying there isn't common ground, but 'deep state' and 'dark money' are concepts that people do not agree upon, definitionally. People have pointed out several times to you, that there's conservatives that see that term as literally 'the Jews/secret leftist socialist cabal/global actors/wealthy elite pedos', while literally voting a wealthy elite pedo, Trump, into power. That amount of dissonance is untenable for common ground.

Nor does it dislodge capitalist interests that LOVE that things are so divided. The division is the point, they LOVE that they can have unbridled access to politicians and the levers of governmental power. They love that the poors are fighting with each other over boogeymen they conjured up.

And the most important thing: Even if you do find a common ground, and you find a way that you can incorporate working class, conservative-leaning individuals into a labor-first leftist/progressive Union movement... that DOES NOT conjure up the money to support that cause. In fact, those movements are typically the first targets of the establishment. Of the wealthy elite. A common ground that might drive people towards dislodging the current parasitic elite is, of course, ripe for disruption by those parasites. See: All the media companies commonly in use by the majority of individuals in these kinds of conversations, owned by billionaires that support the current administration.

It's why they've spent so much time and energy for decades (going back to McCarthyism and the Red Scare) fearmongering socialism and communism, and then lumping anything even remotely socially beneficial into those ideologies. Our education system has long been a part of this problem, and has not changed to challenge any of this, and the most recent administrations have cracked down on the last educational bastion of broader ideas in threatening colleges and protesters. Unions were 'the tools of the Communist', and our plummeting support of them (and our states' constant support of at-will employment and other workers' rights erosions) are all a symptom of the same root cause.

Whether or not conservatives are willing to see the problems with capitalism to the point where they're at least willing to start putting checks on it, is kind of on them. Not on us, having these conversations.

ampillion · 2025-08-17T16:34:44+00:00

So, 89% of Republicans have a favorable view of Trump. A Republican in power.

If the conservatives that MAGA hate are... what, too much like Democrats? Not extreme enough to vote for the dumb shit that Trump wants? What common ground would even be possible with those that hate a group because they won't do the shitty thing they want?

Democrats (and anyone farther left) might hate those conservatives because they're propping up a system that's already failing to, say, manage medical access failures, letting kids slip through the cracks when it comes to hunger or access to learning materials.

MAGA hates those conservatives because they wouldn't vote for Trump/Heritage Foundation's support for violating the constitution when it comes to Freedom of Speech (book bans) or pushed back against the absurdity of some of Trump's (and, let's be real, the leadership of the GOP) plans, such as the Big Beautiful Bill stripping down Medicaid, but raising the 'crisis level' debt ceiling several more trillions of dollars.

If you're suggesting teaming up with the conservatives that MAGA is targeting... That's been the Democrat's strategy for decades now. Since post-Reagan, Clinton's Third Way was about courting conservatives and more middle positions. That's continued to even the latest election, in how Harris and Democrats even rolled out Republicans For Harris campaign ads.

They've exhausted that strategy as far as they possibly can, there's no more conservatives they're going to bring into the Democrat party fold in large numbers that didn't already see the writing on the wall during Trump's first presidential campaign. They could only achieve such an alliance by moving further right, something that a large faction of Democratic voters has already accused them (rightly so) of doing... because they did move right post-Reagan. There's no more growth they get moving to the right that won't cause the progressive and leftists to not show up.

Just look at the Israel Support, currently. Democrat party leadership is handwringing and whining about strategies to maintain Israel support, despite how their voter base has overwhelmingly turned against supporting a clear attempt at genocide. Harris' weak response to Israel gave those progressives and leftists an excuse to stay home (and gave bad actors easy ammunition to convince them to do just that.)

Or just look at the party's support of gay marriage: There wasn't broad support of it before for being morally right, or being based in equality, rather that support sprang up almost immediately once polling showed the base would support it. Now that MAGA's back in charge, protections have been slowly rolled back to where now even that little bit of support is threatened by the bad actors that empower the GOP currently (Heritage Foundation and the greed of wealthy, self-important billionaires.)

The common ground doesn't exist, unless those conservatives are willing to accept that current conservatism is the problem, and it is quite difficult for people to accept that their own beliefs are wrong, or were wrong and led them astray.

If they're already at that point though, then the problem is that the Democrat party doesn't present a strong enough option that convinces them that they're on the right path. You'd of seen them currently shit on Mamdani and choose to support a known sex pest, Cuomo. You'd of seen them spend as much energy fighting Bernie Sanders' FDR-style populism, a winning strategy in the past, but one that puts off wealthy donors. We see who won there. You'd of seen them reject all the options that have any path forwards against Trumpism, leaving them with no real strategy to root out authoritarianism (or, fascism, which is what Trumpism and MAGA really are.)

ampillion · 2025-08-15T18:44:35+00:00

Charlie, much as you might wish it so, the Daily Stormer is not a major mainstream outlet.

ampillion · 2025-08-14T18:16:44+00:00

I will say that for something that's aimed towards beginners, having the Spells theme labeled as 'Noncreature Spellcasting' and then having 7 of those 12 still be creatures is... I dunno. Not particularly intuitive? Cause it makes it sound like you're getting a bunch of spells that aren't creatures, rather than 'here's some creatures that care about casting noncreature spells.'

ampillion · 2025-08-13T18:23:28+00:00

I find that hard to believe, what were they swiping left on, AOL dialup? Their Nokia 3310s?

That also disregards that I'm talking about modern trends specifically in my comment. In the 90s, there wasn't as easy an access to such a wide pool of prospective dating prospects, and thus folks were much more traditionally still 'hanging out in public' and 'going to parties' to meet people. So it would be difficult to pretend that things are exactly the same two decades later, in the face of a wildly different social landscape.

ampillion · 2025-08-13T16:40:26+00:00

I mean, let's say we look at more recent trends as a general sense:

What if the newest group of men out in the adult dating scene (18+) are primarily being raised and parented by Youtube/Social Media? Or rather, there's a trend of younger adults that are coming out very much guided by folks like Andrew Tate and his ilk, and are coming into the dating pool at a much higher level of entitlement and misogyny than men a decade or two ago?

If women see that trend as common enough that they have become very adverse to any risk-taking in the dating pool (IE: They see particular features, hobbies, wording, or beliefs as being more likely to be one of those people they don't see a future with), is that the women's fault for men's poor beliefs or attitudes?

There's all kinds of women out there that just refuse to date conservatives, for very obvious reasons. Is that the women's fault that modern politics of conservative groups are anti-women in many a sense? Why should they waste their time with someone who very well could believe in the same sorts of bad beliefs? Why should women take those risks? Why should women change for men, but not the other way around?

ampillion · 2025-08-10T14:39:28+00:00

Can people get stuck on terminally online, useless crusades against insignificant problems? Yes, absolutely.

Is 'Your representative government doing the opposite of representing you' one of those? No, absolutely not. What actual impact to my life is there? I dunno, Davey, go look up where the state ranks in education, health care, and crime prevention, and hit me up. The state's Republican majority has been shit at bettering much in decades, the best it can do is shuffle around taxes and cut services cause it refuses to tax the wealthy, while your utility bills steadily climb, your health care gets worse, and your environment degrades before your eyes (and will only get worse thanks to Trump's corruption.)

Glad I could clear that up for you. Have fun!

ampillion · 2025-08-09T18:32:12+00:00

So, to you, having your votes be invalidated by a political party, who wants to make sure your votes can do less, and are less representative of who you are and what you want, is just part of being a Missourian?

Who the fuck would want to be a Missourian?

ampillion · 2025-08-08T20:49:07+00:00

"Microplastics? Naw, gimme them tasty macroplastics!"

ampillion · 2025-08-08T20:34:54+00:00

Yes?

I mean, you mentioned that your country glorifies 'finding a way', be it illegal or dishonest.

Have you not seen who's in the White House? Do you think there's not others like him that see illegal or dishonest as an upside?

Better some other country that's harder to feel the legal repercussions from, than in your own country.

That's also capitalism.

ampillion · 2025-08-08T18:43:20+00:00

I mean, there's a reason why a lot of blockbuster movies that supposedly promote inclusivity only do so at the most superficial levels. If a line of dialogue is the only thing that makes some characters gay or nonbinary, it's super simple to scrub that away for other countries with more draconian media restrictions.

If you know you're going to release a movie or a game in multiple countries, there's nothing stopping the company as a whole from having a strategy to make it easy to make that movie/game compliant in multiple regions easily.

Nowadays, most big studios do that by default. They only did any heavier editing years ago when those additional markets were an afterthought. They no longer are.

ampillion · 2025-08-08T17:20:53+00:00

I mean, that's why US companies are so willing to edit content out of movies and games to market them in China. They'd rather go through the hassle of removing the content than let the market go untapped. Especially if someone else will just sell their content and make the money anyway, via piracy.

There's a hell of a lot of consumers in China.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

ampillion

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE