#conspiracy gif

[thegoodmorningman]

#Iknowwhatcolorthesunis

[cecilysass]

Why I Think The X-Files Isn’t Really As Much About Watergate and Governmental Conspiracy As Everyone Claims, Maybe Including CC

This one’s really nerdy, get ready.

Media covering the X-Files has always emphasized how much the show capitalizes on a post-Watergate worldview, a paranoia about government and belief in high-level conspiracy. I think CC signed on to this interpretation entirely. So much so that he sure kept on feeding those conspiracy plot lines in the mytharc—even when every other plot line was going hungry. 

So much so that in the revival, he really created a problem for himself, which the media picked up on. Government conspiracy nuts in 2016 no longer were hot sensitive 90s guy outcasts like Mulder or quirky cuddly little nerds like the Gunmen. Government conspiracy nuts in 2016 were media savvy right wing commentators manipulating the masses, getting presidents elected through willful misinformation.  The revival series tried to address this head on with Tad O’Malley, a character who represented this new development. But it was definitely a sticky issue: the sociopolitical context of the original show was gone. Was the show relevant any more?

I would argue yes, or at least it could have been. I would argue that the interpretation of the XF as a show primarily about conspiracy at high levels of power and governmental manipulation is a flawed one to begin with. I think this take makes the show way too thematically narrow, limits it, and obscures the show’s more important appeals.

In the 1990s, media coverage of the show almost always mentioned Watergate the historical event. Sometimes coverage discussed how Watergate was directly referenced on the show (Deep Throat, meetings in parking deck, CSM and Diana both living in the actual Watergate), but also Watergate’s specific effect on creator Chris Carter, who specifically cited it as a formative event. Often it was claimed that the show’s popularity with audiences was rooted in post-Watergate suspicion of government.

I think this could have been true generally speaking, although I always thought it somewhat overestimated the impact of Watergate on the XF’s target audience. Consider that in 1997 many in the key 18-49 demographic would not even remember Watergate especially well, or at all. If you were 30 in 1997, you were 6 when the story broke in 1973. I’m sure that could have left a mark on you, but I also think it might have been something that simply left a much bigger impression on Boomers the age of Chris Carter himself.

Me? I was in college in 1997, and I was nonexistent / unborn during Watergate. So I didn’t remember it, and it held no personal significance in my worldview regarding the United States. I don’t think it ever would have occurred to me to trust that the government was telling me the truth all the time, and I wouldn’t ever be shocked to learn I was being intentionally misled. As a late Gen Xer growing up in the Reagan administration with post-Watergate ideas floating in the air, I just assumed the worst from the get-go.

So I admit: sometimes the earnest speeches from Mulder and Scully about the Truth and being lied to from men in power and a government we purport to trust seemed a little repetitive and obvious to me. It’s taken me a while to realize that these speeches are voicing something very specific and historically real, the furious indignation of Boomers that we can’t trust our institutions. I think I felt like, yeah, okay, okay, I get it. I never had the same kind of trust in institutions to lose in this respect, but this was a major betrayal for people my parents’ age.

All of this to say, I don’t think that the conspiracy worldview and the appeal of the paranoia about government was a big part of the draw for me. I’m not saying it wasn’t for many or even most others. But my instinct about storytelling is that that is a little too abstract or bloodless of an appeal to really hook most viewers anyway. Like, you might be interested in conspiracy to get you to watch initially, sure, but that’s probably not going to keep you watching for years. And it’s really not going to be enough to motivate you to tune in to a revival series in the 2010s.

So what was the big hook for viewers? You’re probably expecting me to say MSR, and if so, I’m going to surprise you a little. I do think that was part of it for some percentage of viewers, but I think it is more complex than that.

I think the show tapped into a late 20th century urge for individuals to become part of something greater than ourselves. Something we might think of as numinous or transcendent. Maybe something meaningful and good (like a quest for truth) — or maybe something that will look down and judge us, for good or ill. Something that means that we are not lonely in the universe. This puts X-Files squarely in an overall 1990s angels and aliens otherworldly trend. 

(Personally, and this could be an only me thing, but I can never quite separate out Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and The X-Files in my mind; Angels debuted on Broadway the same year X-Files first aired, and I was exposed to both at about the same time. They’re both about apocalypse and personal crisis and the end of the millennium and the transformative power of authentic relationships with others. I could do a whole thing on this.)

The desire for transcendence is the part of the show that is summed up by Mulder and Scully watching lights together in the sky, by Mulder’s wonder at seeing ships or aliens, by the entire notion of “I Want To Believe,” by the idea expressed in the last episode of the original series that both Mulder and Scully share—that the dead aren’t lost to us, that “they speak to us as part of something greater than us - greater than any alien force.” Mulder says to Scully that if “you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.” There’s definitely a part of the show that is about little lonely human beings finding how they fit in a big, unfeeling universe.

The show's interest in conspiracy figures into this. Because after all, what are conspiracy theories but reassurance that there is some meaning behind everything after all? That there is some powerful system running the show, even if that system might be kind of evil. A grand organized secret an individual can actually uncover, rather than a bunch of random haphazard incompetence and chaos. I think this is part of the show's interest in transcendence, but only one part.

And there’s also part of the show that’s about a hero who is wracked with loneliness and alienation — and then two heroes who are wracked with loneliness and alienation—finding a kind of salvation in Truth, in Justice, in Trust, in Partnership, and, ambiguously, Love. (Sometimes Mulder sounds more like a 19th century Romantic hero than anything else.) This makes it a little allegory about late 20th century individualism and alienation and desire for meaning and authenticity and connection with others. 

I think what appeals to people emotionally in the show is that part of us that wonders: is there a universe that pays attention to me? Is there anyone who listens to me and who really, really knows me? Does anyone besides me care what is true and what is a lie? Will I find those who are lost to me and repair the parts of me that are broken? Is there anyone who would give up their life for mine?

I think that the desire to connect with others is a really basic human drive, and it’s most obviously foregrounded in the show the Mulder-Scully partnership. Even romance aside, we see from the first episode that these are two people with distinct worldviews who want to communicate, who see something in one another, who are hungry to be understood by one another. They ultimately see the other person as someone who reflects and affirms who they are. The partnership is definitely the emotional hook of the show, whether you see that as a romantic ship or not, and it thematically echoes the show’s overall themes of wanting there to be more in the universe. 

When the show was at its most emotionally devastating, it was one or both of its protagonists losing a relationship or connection that was important to them, or it was their frustration that their efforts were not meaningful on a larger scale: grief over a loss, a coverup that meant Justice wasn’t served or Truth was concealed.

When the show’s moments were most emotionally triumphant, they were always moments of overt connection, usually between Mulder and Scully, both more dramatic (“you’re my touchstone”) and subtle (reaching out to take a partner’s hand in Pusher or Field Trip). When there were moments of triumph concerning the government conspiracy, it felt more allegorical, like information (Truth) getting free, not progress made in specific governmental reform or anything. 

(And honestly, the moments of triumph against the conspiracy were pretty few and far between. We left the original run of show with the protagonists on the run, pretty sure there was going to be an alien invasion in coming years that had been facilitated by complicit human conspirators, so this conspiracy thread of the plot apparently didn’t even seem like the most important and emotionally satisfying story to resolve.)     

CC wrote a NY Times piece addressing the changing landscape on conspiracies in 2021, discussing why he was skeptical of a new UFO report. He was perceived as having the authority to write this because he created a show that quintessentially addressed government conspiracies about visitors from space.

But for me, the question of whether the government was hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life was really not the main takeaway from TXF. At least no more than the question of whether there needed to be an investigation into the undue influence of witchcraft in Scotland was my main takeaway of Macbeth.

I do acknowledge that I may have been in the minority. Maybe this is not how most people felt. But I also wonder if sometimes the urge to make the show primarily about political paranoia became a distraction from what it did best—these larger, more universal themes. I wonder if that is partly what was so frustrating about the storytelling of the revival.

[vintage-tigre]

[its-stimsca]

Hello again! Can I request a stim board for Bive from Regretevator? She's my current comfort character :3

WAIT she’s cool….. y’all making me wanna play whatever Regretavator is smh

🧥 🔎 🧥 / 🔎 🧥 🔎 / 🧥 🔎 🧥

[thegreenhalf]

MAJOR DEAD RECKONING PART 1 SPOILERS

My second watch makes me feel much stronger about my theory about the Big Spoiler in this movie, and how Part 2 will follow it up.

At first I bought the movie’s basic reading, but now there’s no doubt in my mind it’s a fakeout: Ilsa Faust is absolutely alive.

I will fully be ready to look like an idiot if she’s not, because I’ve run down everything I’ve thought of that the movie could do to telegraph her death being a fakeout, without actually revealing it:

- establish the idea of IMF people successfully faking people’s deaths in general and Ilsa’s specifically ✅

- Have both plot and character reasons why Ilsa pretending to be dead would be necessary ✅

- Establish that the way she supposedly died wasn’t guaranteed to be fatal ✅

- Have a scene vaguely establishing that the IMF is getting ready to do a con, but not specify what ✅

- No last words or final moments for her character ✅

- Skip past what the IMF does immediately after she supposedly dies ✅

- No one in the IMF literally says “she’s dead” ✅

That last one is big: Christopher McQuarrie has gone on record saying “No one in the audience of a Mission: Impossible movie will accept something is true until Ethan Hunt says it”. He never says she’s dead, and the closest he comes is thinking of her in a montage with Marie (who we also never specifically are told is dead) and Grace (who we know is alive).

Meanwhile, when Grace says “she’s dead”, Luther says “No, you’re alive because of her, and that’s the truth”, which is very specifically calling attention to the beginning and end of that sentence.

People are angry at this decision, but McQuarrie has also gone on record as saying “We want the audience to think we’ve ruined Mission: Impossible”, and if you want ways to make people think you’ve ruined any franchise, randomly and cheaply killing the leading lady is an obvious place to start.

[telamonz]

snorpy fizzlebean ( bugsnax ) stimboard for @maxthewfaperson

📰 - with paws, snacks, and related gifs 📰 - no nsfw interaction please ! 📒 | ⭐️ | 📒 ⭐️ | 📒 | ⭐️ 📒 | ⭐️ | 📒

[smallcloisville]

Clark: Hello.

Lois: You know, since we started seeing each other, we never really ... see each other. Maybe we should stop and smell the roses.

Clark: Well, I know where we can find some. Across the street, romantic café.

Lois: Mm. I see a table for two in our future.

Faora: Clark?

Lois: Who's the femme fatale?

Clark: An assignment that I can't put off.

Lois: Guess we should just hit the pause button on our rosy rendezvous.

Clark: Thanks. I'm sorry.

Lois: It's fine. No problem, Smallville. Go win a Pulitzer.

Clark didn't even hear Faora he was so lost in Lois😍💞🌸✨

Lois cheering Clark to win Pulitzer 😌🙌

[fruitypiestims]

The Red Thread

x

[boredintjqueen]

Conspiracy theory time:

First Twitter. Then Reddit. Now ao3. Meanwhile Instagram and Threads are doing fine. Meta's taking out the competition. They'll come for us next. It's a Zuckerfest. Brace yourselves.

[matthieusand]

I just realised that Tom was talking in this scene. It's so funny: Alex is visibly suffering and Nigel (despite being already dead) can't stop talking about ... What might he be rambling about?

"Could you stop tickling me?"

"Let's grab Happy Meal after work"

[oscarwetnwilde]

James Wilby as Stringer in the film Conspiracy (1989)

[nostalgia-mind-prison1995]

〈•́Ô•̀〉

[poz-patrol]

[propaganda-inc]

Thought I'd post some more propaganda, since people are really getting mad at ONLY /u/Spez for this. For the people in the back that are still using Reddit- this is ultimately the reason why I left Reddit.

TL;DR: Yes, /u/spez is the CEO of Reddit, but now he's beholden to the true owners of Reddit- Literal white supremacists, Chinese businesses looking to subvert American democratic values, and businesses that are desperately looking for new ways to make money after a pandemic has gutted the people dry of all the money it could take.

Let's get a little Pepe Silvia in here, shall we? Setting mood music:

Reddit was originally founded by /u/Spez (real name Steve Huffman), Alexis O'Hanion, and Aaron Swartz (RIP). In 2006, Conde Nast bought Reddit. So, if you read Vogue, Pitchfork, Wired, Vanity Fair, & the New Yorker, you may have gotten some of the same content owned by the same company- just through a magazine rather than Reddit. Also, since June 2020, Conde Nast has claimed that their advertising revenue has gone down 45% have gone down dramatically since the pandemic, alongside the cancellation of major publications by Conde Nast. Buut in 2017, Reddit was made into an independent subsidiary by Advance Publications. Sounds like an innocent enough name, until you look at which companies these lovely people own:

That Charter Communication, is just a fancy name for the lovely ISP known as Spectrum- Better known to some of our older folks as Time Warner Cable. You know, one of the ISPs so hated in the United States that they actively changed their name so that people wouldn't recognize them doing their dirty work again?

Isn't it interesting that one of the main complaints by Huffman is that Reddit isn't getting it's due in advertising revenue? Huh. I wonder where he's getting that from. But that's only one section of the shit sandwich. Let's talk about some of the lovely* investors that Reddit's had on aboard since 2006. The list is.... interesting. 2014: A group of investors, including Marc Andressen (an investor in nearly all of the major social media networks that exist), Peter Thiel (a literal white supremacist), and for some reason, Snoop Dogg and fucking Jared Leto. 2017: Advance Publications buys Conde Nast and subsequently Reddit, raising its valuation to about $1.8 billion. 2019: Tencent (you know, the CHINESE VIDEO GAME COMPANY THAT HAS BANNED PLAYERS FROM THEIR GAMES FOR SUPPORTING HONG KONG DEMOCRACY DEMONSTRATIONS) buys a 5% stake in the company. Did I mention that Tencent is also the largest gaming company in the world? 2021: Fidelity Investments(??? an insurance firm and mutual fund????) decides to add another $700 million to the pot, giving them a whole stake as well too. So, let's tie this all together. Yes, /u/spez is the CEO of Reddit, but now he's beholden to the true owners of Reddit- Literal white supremacists, Chinese businesses looking to subvert American democratic values, and businesses that are desperately looking for new ways to make money after a pandemic has gutted them dry. Of course Huffman is going to stay the course on this one- his job literally depends on it in the first place. All of the people that make this site (what other social media network do you know that doesn't pay it's mods and is valued at $10 billion dollars) ? have been tossed to the side in favor of making money. Remember this:

Reddit and its investors do not give a fuck about their community.

They do not give a fuck about their moderators. They do not give a fuck about disability rights. Most of all? They don't give a fuck about you.

[kenny-alghul]

we're worried about kenny...

[tha-wrecka-stow]