The Geekbox: Episode 45

[Rydog]

Merry Christmas, everyone -- enjoy this week's episode!

[darfox8]

Oh shit, that racism talk was as awkward as I feared. I bitched about geekbox never revisiting topics but now I kinda wish they hadn't. It's like if your mom tells you to pray before going to bed and you do it half-heartedly so she scolds you to make you do it again. It's going to be worse off than the first time you tried. I'm going to move on to bitching about no one posting in the message boards, besides Higgins(and occasionally some others of the group). If they were posting they could just come on here and tell me to shut up and they wouldn't have to pollute the podcast anymore.

As you could probably tell I had a few more issues with the way you guys talked about racism but I wont bring em up since I know, I myself, am fairly ignorant. But that's just my issue, if I have beef with what you guys expressed what would other people feel. Or it's all in my mind. I was playing GTA4 and I had to take Little Jacob to eat some where, so my first choice was to take him to Cluckin' Bell (GTA's version of KFC). He goes, "Aww shit son I love Clucken Bell!" DAMN! Am I racist or is Rockstar racist? Noooo! I just encountered Racism, ask me anything.

Well whatever, there's plenty of frustration to be had outside of Racism. How could Ryan Higgins want more segregation in his appliances? If I had one box that did everything I'd be a happy camper. Especially when it actually works(like in the PS3s case). Also for my Holiday(not positive if you asked us to say what we're going to do but I'll tell you anyways) I'm going to play through Metal Gear Solid 1. And I going to try and beat part 1 through 3 before New Years Eve so I can beat MGS4 on New Years.

I do like the podcast and I look forward to the special guest(I bet on Jeff Green. Bet on, Green. Bet on Green).

[GhaleonQ]

Karen, my generous Christmas mood has helped me keep a level tone, here. The Onion has been a free print publication since the 1980's (Wisconsinites still make up the majority of their staff, even though they moved to New York City a few years ago) and the website followed, helping to spread the phenomenon. So, The A.V. Club- and advertisment-supported free publication preceded the The A.V. Club-, advertisement-, and merchandise-supported website.

Thanks for the episode, all.

[Karen]

Karen, my generous Christmas mood has helped me keep a level tone, here. The Onion has been a free print publication since the 1980's (Wisconsinites still make up the majority of their staff, even though they moved to New York City a few years ago) and the website followed, helping to spread the phenomenon. So, The A.V. Club- and advertisment-supported free publication preceded the The A.V. Club-, advertisement-, and merchandise-supported website.

Thanks for the episode, all.

Sorry, what I meant was The Onion didn't go (and probably couldn't have gone) fully national if it weren't for the online version and then the re-release of print in cities outside of the Midwesst area. I'm not sure if it was that that got you all riled up.

[KindGalaxy]

Best Christmas Podcast episode ever!

My company's general manager gave me some white-covered DVDs (I assume the authentic printing wiped off somehow?) and one was a 2007 Documentary on Nanking, he's Malaysian, my wife is Chinese, and he said "Yeah, better wait until the New Year to watch that, not so close to Christmas." That is my feeling on racial discussion on a podcast.

Still, damn fine Christmas discussion on Episode 45 of the Geekbox!

[achickenchaser]

You guys forgot one in your everything is racist comments towards the end: Lost is racist because of Sayid. I guess we all need to boycott season 6 of Lost in protest

Seriously though, I've no idea why some people get their panties in a knot over some of the things they do.

And the new EGM is gonna fail, I'm afraid to say. What amazing content can they possibly have online that you can't get on other gaming websites for free.

[Callan]

Hopefully the subject of racism won't be breached again, but it was a good episode. You guys could talk about Wilford Brimley's mustache for an hour and I would think it was a good episode.

[GiantAsianMan]

re:Hulu, I believe it was reported that if Hulu goes to a pay service, it would be for additional features and not be a replacement to Hulu's regular free service.

And as for the topic of race, as was posted by someone else in the thread for Episode 44 (I believe), there are things that are racial and things that are racist. Many people (of all races, not just white people) aren't educated enough to tell the difference. I've just learned to live with it and accept that fact that America, as a whole, will never be able to intelligently discuss and debate issues of race (at least not in my lifetime).

[LiQuid]

A. This episode sucked balls. I've never wanted a podcast to be over so bad before. Even Brock the Magnificent couldn't save it.

2. Racism sucks

d. Hulu is fucking awesome. I would pay $9 a month for it, just like I already do for Netflix streaming, but they'd need to make it Xbox 360 compatible first.

[IcarusII]

Let's hope this podcast's downward spiral ends with this one, the last one for the year. Way to cap off a year. Really, none of you are qualified in any official or even unofficial capacity to speak at length about racism. If the talk were a short segment, it would be fine, I would actually welcome it because it would allow the listener into the thought process of each geekbox crew individual, but taking over the entirety of the podcast with erroneous, unresearched information (one of you couldn't even remember the details of The Lion King and still continued to flap your mouth off about it) just flat out sucks.

The long, rambling discourse pertaining to racism could have easily been reduced to one comment made by Brock at the very end: "It's all subjective perception" (I'm paraphrasing). I thought he made the most precise comments because they were few and thoughtful, and I found it unfortunate that while he was talking he was being cajoled to move on by a couple of the other cast members who were done throwing up their many scattershot remarks, which were mostly responsible for the segment lasting as long as it did.

Ryan, you need to learn to keep your cast members in check. Reign them in, podcast HOST.

The severe lack of geek talk makes this the worst episode ever, sorry. Bring back Anthony Gallegos and save yourselves. Now, I realize that this post of mine is of the sort that you'd call a 'negative reaction on the forums', but I think it'd be best not to bring up what the forum's reactions in the next episode.

[Konanda]

This is directed to Karen's confusion about the black people and their proximity to pool's comment.

Now I can't say for sure but I'm 95% sure you were trolled and the person who left the comment was referring to the pool's closed meme that was started with a raid by /b/tards from 4chan on Habbo Hotel on July 12th 2006 this was later repeated in 2007 and 2008*. The purpose of the raid was to try to make an online version of the Million Man March to protest supposedly racist Habbo Hotel mods. This was done by a massive amount of /b/tards all creating the same character (a black man with an afro in a dark suit) and declaring the pool to be closed due to AIDS and surrounding the pools with /b/tards denying access to people wanting to be in the pool blocking entrances and random paths and making virtual swastikas with their avatars was also part of the raid but the main part was to close the pool due to AIDS.
Check here for more details.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Pools_closed
WARNING Encyclopedia Dramatica is NSFW and fairly offensive.

Also in the future if someone is making some weird comment to you via the internet that doesn't seem to make any sense there is a good chance it's from 4chan, 2ch, Nico Nico Douga, Something Awful, YTMD, or some other site full of memes

*Another attempt was made in 2009 but ended up utterly failing because rules 1 and 2 were broken along with a ton of stupidity and lack of organization by a bunch of noobs (referred to as newfags in 4chan land http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/The_Cancer_That_Is_Killing_/b/)

[GiantAsianMan]

Really, none of you are qualified in any official or even unofficial capacity to speak at length about racism.

Interesting. How exactly does one become officially qualified to discuss race? Is there a test you can take? Do you need to apply for a permit from the official governing board of race? Is it a national certification, or does each state have its own set of rules? And if the latter, is there reciprocity between states (very important for those who travel a lot)? All these years I've discussing race because I thought my personal life experience would be enough to understand my views on race; little did I know I could have circumvented all that by simply becoming a qualified official discusser of race!

[lemon-fresh]

And the new EGM is gonna fail, I'm afraid to say. What amazing content can they possibly have online that you can't get on other gaming websites for free.

Yes sadly print(magazine) is dead, but there are still a few who have yet to let go. I'm also not looking forward to this episode given the underwhelming forum response....

[Atomsmasher]

They will buy Andrew Fitch exclusivity and the geeks shall come...

[jinpei05]

Let's hope this podcast's downward spiral ends with this one, the last one for the year. Way to cap off a year. Really, none of you are qualified in any official or even unofficial capacity to speak at length about racism. If the talk were a short segment, it would be fine, I would actually welcome it because it would allow the listener into the thought process of each geekbox crew individual, but taking over the entirety of the podcast with erroneous, unresearched information (one of you couldn't even remember the details of The Lion King and still continued to flap your mouth off about it) just flat out sucks.

The long, rambling discourse pertaining to racism could have easily been reduced to one comment made by Brock at the very end: "It's all subjective perception" (I'm paraphrasing). I thought he made the most precise comments because they were few and thoughtful, and I found it unfortunate that while he was talking he was being cajoled to move on by a couple of the other cast members who were done throwing up their many scattershot remarks, which were mostly responsible for the segment lasting as long as it did.

Ryan, you need to learn to keep your cast members in check. Reign them in, podcast HOST.

The severe lack of geek talk makes this the worst episode ever, sorry. Bring back Anthony Gallegos and save yourselves. Now, I realize that this post of mine is of the sort that you'd call a 'negative reaction on the forums', but I think it'd be best not to bring up what the forum's reactions in the next episode.

IcarusII, you need to stop drinking so much Hatorade. Seriously.

Like GiantAsianMan said, is there some sort of certification that can be obtained to speak about racism? Anyone in this country is qualified, even if you're in the white majority. It's statements of shortsightedness like yours that fan the flames of hot-button issues like racism.

Ryan's running a terrific show, and there's nothing to save here. If they don't bring up forum reactions to shows, how the fuck are they supposed to get any feedback on how the audience feels the show is going? That would make this whole rant of yours even more ineffectual.

And if you want to hear Anthony Gallegos, you can always tune into the GameSpy Debriefings or RebelFM.

[Master Higgins]

Hey guys, thanks for listening to this weeks podcast. A lot of the time, we go in with a number of things to talk about, but then there's weeks like this. Ryan was pretty sick, and we didn't have a lot of topics to cover, but we still wanted to record before the holidays. We had a lot of feedback (both positive and negative) about the racism topic from last week, and decided to talk about it on this weeks podcast. I don't think any of us thought we'd talk about it for as long as we did (evidence in my screaming "NO MORE RACISM TALK!" by the end), and it wasn't our intent to offend anyone, or embarrass ourselves.

As for the Lion King comment, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, and got the context of the comment wrong.

Hopefully you'll all enjoy next weeks episode!

[darfox8]

Hey guys, thanks for listening to this weeks podcast. A lot of the time, we go in with a number of things to talk about, but then there's weeks like this. Ryan was pretty sick, and we didn't have a lot of topics to cover, but we still wanted to record before the holidays. We had a lot of feedback (both positive and negative) about the racism topic from last week, and decided to talk about it on this weeks podcast. I don't think any of us thought we'd talk about it for as long as we did (evidence in my screaming "NO MORE RACISM TALK!" by the end), and it wasn't our intent to offend anyone, or embarrass ourselves.

As for the Lion King comment, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie, and got the context of the comment wrong.

Hopefully you'll all enjoy next weeks episode!

Thank you for listening to the community but I guess Geekbox is best when they're really light hearted. This wasn't the same for GFW Radio. Geekbox really isn't the successor to GFW Radio but no one, expect for Ryan in the first episode, claimed it was. And even then Greg Ford instantly pushed back on that. Most podcast are done for fun(even if your being paid for it) but this one is definitely more about that.

I'm now convinced that the most controversial this podcast should get was when Greg and Higgins were arguing about whether or not Watchmen, in the movie theater, was a "real" film. Higgins was arguing that it wasn't the real film since the DVD version is going to be more complete(and therefore shouldn't be judged so harshly) and Greg was arguing that people were still playing money and watching this film, so it needs to be judged as it appears in the theater. You guys were actually passionately talking about this "controversy" which can't be said about the Racism stuff. Most podcast aren't so authoritative, since they have that "dudes talking in their living room" feel, but Geekbox is practically all about that. Atleast in my mind.

I don't feel that you guys aren't "qualified" to speak about Racism but after listening to you guys speak it sounds like you guys hardly ever encountered any Racism in your lives. Now I definitely need to apologize for just writing that since I don't know you guys. It's extremely presumptuous of me to write that and I hope you guys don't get offended. Karren had already mentioned her grandma before so I know it's not entirely true. And even I admit that I am not some tortured soul who has to live with the weight of Racism on my shoulders.

I'm Hispanic but I look and sound very white. I've always lived in mostly Hispanic neighborhoods and they've always assumed I was a whitey(Gringo). No one ever treated me poorly because of it so it was never more than an annoyance. And when I moved to North Miami Beach I started to go to a mostly Black High School. People here also assumed I was White but it thankfully wasn't an unpleasant experience. I admit I was alittle worried what school would be like for me in a black school. But it thankfully was alot better than the other Hispanic High School I went to for 9th grade. I definitely don't feel like I'm instantly more qualified to talk about Racism since I had Black friends, so I apologize if I come across that way, but even the small things you guys said created a bad reaction in me. Stuff like Black Santa "If Black people are the ones telling the 'Black' jokes then it's ok". Or "If the audience is ignorant to these messages then it's ok". Again, I'm not some expert on how Racism exist in our culture but I know that if it was me being asked about this stuff I wouldn't say "No it's ok. It's post slavery so that means it's ok to have a black man Happily working on a plantation." The concept of that movie doesn't bother you one bit? I've never seen the film and I don't know the objectives in making the movie(so I admit I don't have alot to base this reaction to) but when some one explains to me the concept of the movie it sounds like fucking propaganda. "Y'know slavery wasn't so bad. This dude even decided to stay on afterwards."

I want to express that I like the show and I really appreciate you guys actually reading the boards. And I hope the rest of the community isn't annoyed by the constant Racism talk in this thread. If we have thoughts we should expressed them. But now I do see the other side of the argument. The podcast is thoroughly un-enjoyably when you guys talk about stuff you guys don't want to talk about. I apologize for the wall of text and I look forward to the next podcast(Jeff Green?).

[Roadie Brock]

Is there a dead horse in here or is it just me?

[darfox8]

Is there a dead horse in here or is it just me?

Why you gotta be so Racist against horses?

I don't think there should be a limit to how many times this stuff is brought up in the boards. The podcast is another matter.

[SJSchmidt93]

Ah, yes I distinctly remember that Curt Schilling interview.

Trust me Ryan, if I ever make it to BlizzCon I'll be sure to point you out!