My favorite part about Bioshock is how it functions as an innoculation for the virus known as Objectivism. What group is most suspeptible to that disease? Fourteen year old boys. Who's the target audience of most video games? Exactly. So now there will be an entire generation of guys encountering Objectivism for the first time, and they will already have the necessary antibodies. "Oh, Ayn Rand? Right, I remember that, the ruined, drowning city full of junkies and mutants."
Some people never recover.
Never thought of Bioshock as a leftist scam.
Plonk.
Hark! What lulz thru yonder third-party LJ breaks?
It is the East, and elljay Cyrillotrash is the sun.
Arise, fair random-walking Cyrillotrash, and spam the envious commenter,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her troll art far more lulzy than she...
You'll be happy to know that apparently objectivism is becoming quite the trend in India.
Wait, people actually played that? And enjoyed it?
Quite a few, apparently. At least the objectivist, steampunk theming was the best, and most memorable, part. The gameplay was just a watered-down System Shock 2.
Hell, not a bad idea. I was made to watch all those crazy Christian docos about backmasking around that age and now I'm immune to all forms of religion.
How the fuck do you peace-bond that?
So... Exactly what is the problem with Objectivism? As a non-US citizen I have not been exposed to Ayn Rand and the Wikipedia entry on it seems harmless...
The promo whitepaper on most religions also seems harmless: "oh, love your neighbor? that's a nice idea, I guess". It's when you meet the faithful and see their interpretations that you really get to see the fruit borne out.
Objectivism has some good things, some harmless things, but probably it's biggest 'crime' is
all the Rush lyrics inspired by Ayn Rand's writingsthat it's followers are absolute pricks, a good 90-95% of the time.Related: a review on the anniversary of rand's "atlas shrugged", and social commentary on the ideas: it was a trilogy?
Ah ok, that makes more sense, thanks!
I like this sentence in the review:
"Atlas Shrugged should be judged, not as an economic textbook or a sermon, but as what it also clearly is: a 1957 science fiction novel."
I guess someone needs to send that note to the Scientologists still.
Yeah, as opposed to taking things in a reasonable libertarian direction a lot of the hardcore seem to view it as a way to combine libertarianism and neo-conservatism. Which can often be an incredibly scary thing.
I guess someone needs to send that note to the Scientologists still.
Ayn Rand is L. Ron Hubbard in drag.
The best part about the game? The fact that notable Objectivist fanboy Peter Thiel is _actively developing floating colonies_. True Life: Bioshock.
they get eaten first when Cthulhu wakes, yes????
I thought it was teenage girls that became the worst randroids. No joke, at Burning Man I saw one writing dollar signs on any dusty surface.
I suspect a significant number of people will remember Ayn Rand from Bioshock and be intrigued enough to read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. From there, it's likely many will even read her extensive non-fiction corpus. Sure, young people can be very impressionable, but taking your views of a philosophy second-hand -- and from a video game? I mean, that would be pretty stupid.