I'm actually not behaving poorly at all. I raised a point and tried to have a discussion with a person who seemed primarily interested in shaming me into silence. Then you chimed in with your "asshole" spiel.

And doing so improves on this exchange how, exactly?

So - wait? You're not sneering condescendedly at me?

I notice that you haven't exactly answered the question. I think it's clear you have a belief on the matter - we are, after all, just describing a social media phenomenon - despite your disclaiming your right to form an opinion on that.

I notice that you haven't exactly answered the question. I think it's clear you have a belief on the matter - we are, after all, just describing a social media phenomenon - despite your disclaiming your right to form an opinion on that.

Do you think that the flak Dunham has gotten over her comments has stemmed from the fact that she was too blind to the monetary and logistical challenges of getting an abortion?

I don't view what Dunham said as bad, and I'm saddened that our society has so stigmatized abortion that she felt compelled to "apologize" for making a "bad joke."

The fragility of whiteness is pretty hilarious, actually.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to just see a stupid movie or to make a stupid movie that will do well in the box office. The point I'm trying to make is that there isn't really such a thing as a stupid movie that exists apart from its socio-cultural milieu. Part of what makes it just a "stupid…

For sure. Hence the "scare quotes."

I don't think you can factor out the race dimension no matter what races you chose for the leads. People come to the movies with their racial baggage, and they'll project it onto what they see. It's part of the experience.

My partner and I like to joke that the ambitious scientist's primary contribution in that movie was apparently just: "Ian Walks."

I humbly submit that neither Pratt nor Lawrence is especially (in the Hollywood world) charming, funny, attractive, or talented, and would not be widely understood as such if they weren't as white as they come. I mean, who's the "black Pratt?" The "hispanic Lawrence?" Do such people not exist, or are they just not as…

What are you talking about? I'm white. Whenever I speak, I speak for everyone. That's what you get with your White Card. Didn't you read the boilerplate?

As near as I can gather - and I agree, the review here isn't clear - the criticism is that the movie incorporates this stalker-creepy aspect without acknowledging it's stalker-creepy at all, except in a kind of cutesy way structured to redeem Pratt's character.

It's not bad or shameful to be white, but it's also not particularly threatening for white people, when others unintentionally insinuate that it is.

The initial obfuscatory puzzles pretty clearly require some trial and error, insofar as you have to deduce what the symbols "really" are based on whether a solution works or not. There's the same kind of inferential logic involved as in the rest of the game, but there's no way on the face of those obfuscatory puzzles…

What I enjoyed about the aesthetics and design of The Witness was the way they expressed a kind of compassion for the player.

Reading about the game and thinking about it after my own experience, I have to suspect that Blow specifically designed the game so that it didn't need to be "finished." There's no real narrative to the game to tie off, and the ending sequence is just as enigmatic and open-ended as the rest of the game. I think the…

Yeah, when I got to that section, I just stopped playing. It wasn't fun any more. The shift was from "apply logical rules in sometimes challenging circumstances" to "apply those rules in a trial-and-error fashion until you get it right." Exploration, discovery, and thoughtful contemplation was replaced with a linear…