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People who talk about surviving a zombie apocalypse.
2012-06-28 19:18:47
edited 2012-06-28 19:18:47 in Meatspace
I clench my fists and yell "anime" towards an uncaring, absent God, and swear solemnly to press my thumbs into Chocolate America's eyeballs until he is blinded, to directly emasculate sporting figures, to beat the shit out of tumblr users with baseball bats, and to quietly appreciate what Waylon Smithers being gay means to me.
In my experience, most of them are racists.
Discuss.
Comments
uh huh
can you like
give us an argument
or an anecdote
to back this correlation
I have never seen this.
what.
I've never witnessed this first-hand, but I sort of get the connection.
Survivalism is a series of ideologies which hinge on extremes to justify their position; "there is no other way", or, "there is no other practical way". So it's easy to draw a connection between survivalism and a range of questionable ideological positions, racism among those. Granted, racism isn't the first criticism of zombie survivalists that springs to mind, but it's not like there's absolutely no relationship. No doubt there's plenty of people who have leadership fantasies of such scenarios, wherein they get to impose their own policies.
For instance, I would establish an order of undead-slaying knights. However, only people of South-East Asian or Latino background could join due to a highly complex and totally justified set of rules that must be that way because it's the only way and
alex understands these people because he's secretly a nazi racist survivalist knight from the future
+1 to the "um what" crowd.
also, i'll just be quicker than everyone and say
>secretly
If that ever happens, I'l bring the big round table.
But really, you guys know what I'll do in a zombie apocalypse? Curl up and cry and try to kill myself.
Maybe I should expand it to "any type of person that feels like they need to create a perfect society without any outsiders." Like people who agree with Idiocracy. Or people who think that the bad guys in 28 Days Later are the civilians defending themselves.
e: Maybe I should elaborate, hold on a moment.
e2:
In 28 Days Later, the apocalypse has already happened. It's been 28 days since the Rage virus first manifested, and the danger is not preventing the apocalypse, but rather trying to recreate the society that existed before. The people in the film can't express themselves in any way other than the use of violence.
You know how annoying it is when people on websites such as TVTropes et al. (not accusing any of you guys of doing this, don't worry) use phrases like "Idiot Ball" to describe when people act irrationally in a work of media? The whole air of "Well if I were in that situation I wouldn't have been such a dumbass
" is very common in nerd- and Internet-centered discussion, and to a lesser extent in more mainstream society as well. It completely ignores the fact that people have emotions and don't always act rationally in real life. 28 Days Later is an example of a kid acting "stupidly" and thus causing the zombie apocalypse depicted (I think, it's been a while since I've seen it). The kid wants his dog back because he's a goddamn kid, how does he know that the dog will cause a zombie outbreak?
Well, the point of the desire for zombie apocalypse is to create the circumstances that justify cleansing the world of "undesirables" (ie., minorities, stupids, etc.) in order to preserve some sort of utopia where they reign supreme.
And it's not just nerds; take a look at many gun forums. On a large amount of them, discussions of how to deal with a "zombie apocalypse" are just dog-whistles for how to deal with a Second War of Northern Aggression or what to do when those darned uppity blacks have an uprising. It's subtext for killing people you don't like without consequence.
Not that zombie stuff itself or the people who enjoy it are inherently racist of course, it's just an oft-occurring undercurrent that I've noticed.
But really, you guys know what I'll do in a zombie apocalypse? Curl up and cry and try to kill myself.
High five, buddy.
TALLAHASSEE IS A MASS MURDERER
the future will be run by jews
you have been warned
I see all the zombie media and people talking about zombies, and I never see anything about "perfect society"; I see mostly a power fantasy about the lack of society.
so that explains why you and malk fight so damn much
The implication is that there's no such thing as a lack of society -- as long as you have two people, it exists. Ergo, an "actual" zombie apocalypse (and let's be honest; it's the wussiest kind of apocalypse possible) would result in a collection of independent sects, possibly competing for resources and power. If it lasted long enough, anyway, as I don't see any reason larger organisational power bases couldn't survive it in some cases. Even if fractures were to happen, they'd probably be based around existing boundaries, like states or counties.
In a zombie apocalypse, the apocalypse has already occurred most of the time when the protagonists are fighting. I guess it's just a semantics thing, but in my opinion it's not "happening;" it's already happened.
The most absolutely clear version of this is in Call of Duty: World at War. You can either kill Nazis/Japanese or you can kill zombies. These are two great examples of "bad guys" that it is okay to kill in most videogames; soldiers not on your side (nevermind that they're people too) or zombies with no soul; people who slaver over getting to kill zombies are very often wanting to kill anybody they don't like, and in the places with a stronger gun culture, this is very often a code for minorities.
^ Most zombie fans I can think of are nerds; how much overlap is there between nerds and racist gun culture?
In my experience, most people who talk about surviving zombie apocalypses have too much time on their hands. and not one of them talked about how racist they would be.
I think killing zombies just stands in for general misanthropy. Kill the ignorant, the dirty, the unwashed, brain-eating idiotic mouth-breathing masses of sheeple and all that jazzy goodness.
The overlap between "nerd" and "racist" is pretty obvious. Gun culture? Not so much, but then again, there has to be a reason FPS games sold so well, even before the casual gamebro explosion of the mid 2000s. Games like Counter Strike and the original Call of Duty had to succeed before that kind of market could be exposed to military shooters.
Actually, you know what, I finally realized what struck me as odd, in that, the people who usually talk about surviving zombie apocalypses(from what I've seen) usually don't even mention the whole-sale slaughter of zombies, they usually talk about their secure base of operations.
Well, classism like this and racism often have a way of overlapping.
I think killing zombies just stands in for general misanthropy. Kill the ignorant, the dirty, the unwashed, brain-eating idiotic mouth-breathing masses of sheeple and all that jazzy goodness.
Yes, that.
but then again, there has to be a reason FPS games sold so well, even before the casual gamebro explosion of the mid 2000s.
It's notable that pretty much any and all satire and thoughtful commentary is gone from the genre; nowadays it's just military porn. Remember when Modern Warfare and Resident Evil 5 had clever, insightful things to say? So I guess that says something about "gamers," though I'm not sure what.
Meh. Zombie outbreaks are usually either played for
1) survivalist wank
2) anarchist wank
3) symbolic of
The latter two aren't intrinsically racist, but often pick up a lot of it by circumstantial overlap.
Zombies, I am told, are often used as a convenient way to discuss survivalism without starting a flame war, or alienating the public. As one newspaper that covered the topic put it: disaster preparedness is a good thing, but in America, a guy who lives in the forest and prepares for the end of civilisation is a right-wing nutter, in Europe he's a crazy eco-commie nutter, so apolitical zombies are the only safe way to teach preparedness without the crazy coming in.
I've had a period of fascination with survivalism. Still have some measure of it, in fact, and that fascination left me with handy knowledge. But I couldn't shake the feeling that they all await the fall of civilisation so that they could say that they've showed them. You know the trade. "They laugh at me, but I'll show them!" So they hope they'll be proven right.
Meh. I'm more interested in wilderness survival than inexplicable "suddenly everyone dies except the objectivists" apocalypse survival. No politics necessary, unless you want to declare war on Bear Grylls or something.
(You'd lose.)
This occurs in any piece of media where you have a monolithic enemy with swathes of faceless mooks that get cut down by the heroes, or is defeated because of infighting. Why you'd use of zombie apocalypse if there are many more less farfetched examples is beyond me, but this insight is nothing new(f. ex., the Iron Dream).
Likewise, power fantasies are almost always done on an individual basis(not 'if my country would end up in a zombie apocalypse' but 'if I would end up in a zombie apocalypse'), and thus reduces anyone in it into a simplified device for the escapist to feel good. While there's a lot to be said against that sort of solipsism, it denies all players in the fantasy their experience, not just the minorities.
Nuke if this is outta line, but the nerds-do-x schtick reminds me of the SA thread in a bad way. Trying to reduce those damaging mechanisms(othering, not acknowledging other's experiences) of which most peeps are guilty to a certain group is lazy and reduces critical self-examination(which lead to the tiresome circlejerk of the SA thread).
Oh come on guys, everyone knows that I'll grow some balls, brandish dual pistols Clint Eastwood style despite having no prior training with guns, and kill hordes of zombies because of my high L4D scores.
But seriously? If an actual zombie apocalypse happened, I'd be one of the first victims.
>Well, the point of the desire for zombie apocalypse is to create the circumstances that justify cleansing the world of "undesirables" (ie., minorities, stupids, etc.) in order to preserve some sort of utopia where they reign supreme.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's just so they can feel badass like Bruce Campbell rather than any ethnic cleansing fantasy.
I admit I've been pretty burned out on zombies, but I'm more burned out on people who bitch about the popularity of zombies or try to deconstruct the people who like or talk about zombie fiction, especially sine of the two the latter will never result in something as smart as Night of The Living Dead.
Also, people sell a lot zombie-loving nerds short. There are a good deal of them who have used zombie fiction as a basis to help teach people emergency surviving for much more realistic things like typhoons, earthquakes, and medical emergencies. The zombie pathos has led to a lot of excellent edutainment. (for lack of a better word)
Also, agreed with IA about this 'nerds do this I don't like' bullshit completely.
That said, one day I'm going to write a story about a group of people who were surviving a zombie apocalypse just fine by establishing a farming commune and minding their own shit, then a bunch of macho dick wavers come out and ruin things for them.