mao_dun

Oh have they finally stopped being weird about xinjiang? or at least enough to get vetted or w/e onto the deprogram. like, ive blocked them on socialmedias for being basically a radlib who calls themself progressive (type of sino diaspora whos anti-PRC but still tries to leverage their 'heritage' for clout/career) but its been a few years and people can change but id be surprised

not entirely sure what you mean by "left thoughts" (eg what all that encompasses/excludes) but I'll give it a shot

ngl most of chinese society isn't very political and this is reflected in video games. (I'd say cinema is kind of an exception but also there's established support structures esp. by the party for the film industry; even then it's more common for "left themed" movies to be about specific historical events or important people, than like, Communism In a Fictional/Fantasy/Scifi setting, of which I can't name a single one of those off the top of my head. IMO there's good reasons for this*, even regardless of publications & RFT bureaus.) More popular setting/thematics of CN-based video games are culture or [older, usually not modern] history, or a fantastical mix of both. Additionally many games particularly the smaller ones are Chinese-language only, no English translation available.

When I played Genshin I remember some cleverly crafted writing that was ambiguous enough for western (sinophobic and anticommunist/anti-antiimperialist) audience to interpret differently, particularly the dendro area sumeru. I don't play it myself but I have a friend who plays Honkai: Star Rail and who regularly gets excited about the more overt parallels to revolutionaries/history in the writing but I'm not sure if that's only the Chinese language version/if that gets dulled down in English translation. Also not sure if grinding and slogging thru a gacha game just for some plot here and there is your cuppa tea.

.* alternative history even if overtly fictional is generally discouraged. i think the reasons are obvious (just look at how western media spins 6-4)

Right on. Sorry if I misread what was intended to be voiced from "average centrist" pov, there's been a ton of ai/tech reactionary buzz even among nominally "communist" circles recently, to the point where I'm even irked when people call generative tools "slop machines" in the same way they say "chinese goods" to insinuate cheap/bad product, when it's like, that's what you (or rather, walmart and amazon and they've monopolized and limited what alternative options you have) ordered the cheapest crap (for highest markup). Does nobody remember handmade slop content farms like 5minutecrafts? Same "market forces" (if you wanna call it that) are just ordering the same "slop" just from different sources, it's not like before genai came to wider prominence there was actually that much less "slop" and un-factual/poor quality/misleading content.

um. factories [physical and organizational structures of productive labor] aren't a "means of oppression". Capitalists owning them and workers not having control or ownership of the conditions, operations, product etc of them are the "means of oppression", not the factories themselves. Do we at the 'grad need a rehash of marxism/ML basics...?

0. accelerationism (someone else did mention in their reply)

1. lelouch vi britannica is an anime character and someone the likes of him doesn't exist irl (intended tone:light)(sorry, couldn't resist)

2. "socialist-sympathetic petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie" don't exist in the US at least not in any meaningful or organized capacity, and you more or less described why a hot mess contradiction would mean they self-select for "extinction" under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but they (well, at least the national bourgeoisie) exist in the PRC. Obviously the difference is that the PRC is a dictatorship of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are not the ruling class, however, the national bourgeoisie are permitted and encouraged to cooperate in building the nation and the socialist project. One such guy [who's shown up in english-language media from time to time] is a venture capitalist Eric Li 李世默, who I recall describing his venture capitalist role as "willing to take on more risk than the government normally would [in supporting/funding new businesses new tech new fields]", but he's just one example. I urge those curious to independently research the topic further, but keep in mind that the conditions, particularly historic and social, in the US are vastly different from those in the PRC.

(edit:I must note that all citizens in prc benefit from social goods and relevant conditions such as relatively affordable quality healthcare, with access still expanding to more rural areas, and relatively unprecarious housing. as such, there's less pressure compared to both workers and capitalists in the US to scramble, squeeze, and cutthroat-compete, or blame others of their class or blame workers/immigrants [I can't say non-existent tho. esp re:bigotry towards immigrants in places like hk]； well, for the blame game, there's also some difference in political education [again not perfect... chinese liberals do exist and many are proletariats tho plenty are wannabe-bourgeois])

i've had people drive in from neighboring [US] states and be absolutely terrified of our urban highway interchanges [texas][many of them also sky-high but not quite this high I don't think? - for reference, youtube practical engineering-why are texas highway interchanges so tall], imo it (the concern/fear?) is just something you might just be used or unused to

wanted to draw China and Japan (both of which were hostile towards the USSR) into a costly war with one-another in order to weaken them both

I mean that alone is bullshit for the time period. sino-soviet relations didn't go south before prc was even established..

The tone of the quoted section is just so self-righteous! Clinical language and do-gooder spin for, in other words, "We need to find more people to identify as sick to put through the torture machine* but I prommy this is helping them for their own good"

*I'm not super active in autism community but I've seen ABA particularly for kids regarded as forcefully inducing trauma

I didn't say that "we should agitate people with petit bourgeois aspirations to side with the working class [their real class] via gen ai tools". I guess I got ahead of myself when I said there already have been efforts to convince artists that gen ai or tech in general isn't their enemy, corporate monopolization etc of tech however is because capitalists are;; (eg yes there should be said efforts, maybe better/more efforts in that regard. but anti-ai is very entrenched at this point)

However I did point out that these people are, influenced by a combination of (self-circulated and corporate) propaganda and their own petit bourgeois aspiring class interest (resisting acceptance of proletarian status), pitching their weight with our (and their own) class enemies; with gen ai/ai art as the driving wedge at this present moment but any new tech that reshapes the material landscape would be treated similarly -- my comment isn't about ai in particular, rather it's more about the art community in question.

Or, maybe I wasn't clear enough? Anti-ai art frenzy in the artist community is being funnelled towards support for harsher ip and trademark laws, by companies who would actually still be using gen ai but want to hoard and control (and expand) "their" datasets. Yes more people on the side of the working class is good but class traitors exist and if these people, after explaining that technology itself isn't their enemy but capitalists are, still want to be willing pawns then, well, for on,e I have better uses for my time and energy, and yeah I'd agree with m532 they're "dumbasses"

case in point: this is a project borne of the anti-ai craze: unvale.io ; here's a tumblr post they circulated (since there's a sizeable art/artist community on tumblr who are anti-ai) but digging into the replies, people are fully disambiguating the draconian, PG, family friendly TOS and pointing out that posting to their platform makes an oddly convenient place to harvest virgin (un-touched by gen ai tools) and corporate-friendly data. Not everyone looks through the notes however and plenty of people are still reblogging just the first post and "spreading word about an awesome new no-ai platform!!". Also, lol @ #supportourtroops shit :: no oct 7 or 9/11

*outside of this direct discussion there's also extreme ableism among the artist anti-ai crowds as well.

I remade. I'm back hello hello 同志们

I think the anti- "anti ai artist" sentiment at least online is (or rather should?) be more directed towards the semi-hobbyist to small-business-petit-bourgeois types that pitch their weight with our class enemies, eg will side with stricter intellectual property laws to the point of agreeing that "art style" should be included in trademark/ip law. They also happen to be the loudest crowd when it comes to anti-ai art noise, to the point of also attacking and brigading professional artists who use ai tools. In my observation, the "small business owner" type artists are the most resistant to being proletarianized and act accordingly; in any case, many wage laborer artists also have self-biz hustles like online stores for periodic sketchbook/artbooks/prints (I point this out in a neutral manner not to detract from their primary[assuming] wage income but to color the discussion of petit bourgeois aspirations among the "[digital] artist" community).

I have seen efforts to "convert"/"deprogram" parts of the artist community away from supporting harsher ip laws and explain why Disney or record companies etc benefit the most and supporting harsher ip/etc does not benefit them, and in fact works to empower exploitative schemes of capitalists, but these efforts have a harder time gaining foothold amongst the typical anti-ai/ai art black-and-white views entrenched in the community, especially as call-out and cancellation brigades roll out regularly in those circles.

edit: I dunno if yall were around from deviantart to [idk what platforms certain art communities use anymore][idk artstation?] era but the absolute EASE that online "artists" throw the word "steal/theft" to apply to whatever they didn't like (petit capitalist mindset where "inspiration" becomes "mimickery" becomes "copying" becomes "stealing" eg "actually deprived me of money") has been around for decades at this point. I think there are still circles who treat tracing(for practice) and even referencing as untouchable/sacrilege.