Poll
Question:
Which group out evils the rest?
Option 1: HYDRA
Option 2: COBRA (DC)
Option 3: COBRA (of GI Joe)
Option 4: The Legion of Doom
Option 5: The Guild of Calamitous Intent
Option 6: SPECTRE
Option 7: VENOM
Option 8: BIG FIRE
Option 9: The Black Network of the Zhentarim
Option 10: The Cult of the Dragon
Option 11: Trancers
Option 12: A.I.M.
Option 13:
Today's Special Boxing Day Challenge Question!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:berkut:
I'm going to have to go with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Unitarians
I've not actually heard of any of those, so I'll go with THRUSH. :cool:
I don't even know who half these are.
The great(ironic?) thing about humanity is, that in this case, the evilest, most badass Evil Organization (Nazis), was real.
Quote from: Tonitrus on December 26, 2011, 09:22:53 PM
The great(ironic?) thing about humanity is, that in this case, the evilest, most badass Evil Organization (Nazis), was real.
Add to that list
Chinese Communist Party
Soviet Communist Party
Scientology
Al Qaeda
Khmer Rouge
real true badass... The Decepticons, Skeletor's Minons etc. and the list above don't have believable motivations. It's like the baddies from Power Rangers. The Khmer Rouge was really really scary because they killed you for wearing glasses. Auric Goldfinger tried it with "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you you do die.", but real fucking organizations work you to death in a work camp in Siberia, rape you before they execute you and then send the bill for the bullett to your family. These fictional organisations are not even close to the level of evil you find in reality.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 26, 2011, 08:57:06 PM
Unitarians
I hate these filthy Unitarians. With Lutherans you know where they stand but with Unitarians, who knows? It sickens me. What makes a man turn Unitarian? Lust for gold? Power? Or are they just born with a heart full of Unitarianism?
Quote from: Viking on December 26, 2011, 09:32:22 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on December 26, 2011, 09:22:53 PM
The great(ironic?) thing about humanity is, that in this case, the evilest, most badass Evil Organization (Nazis), was real.
Add to that list
Chinese Communist Party
Soviet Communist Party
Scientology
Al Qaeda
Khmer Rouge
real true badass... The Decepticons, Skeletor's Minons etc. and the list above don't have believable motivations. It's like the baddies from Power Rangers. The Khmer Rouge was really really scary because they killed you for wearing glasses. Auric Goldfinger tried it with "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you you do die.", but real fucking organizations work you to death in a work camp in Siberia, rape you before they execute you and then send the bill for the bullett to your family. These fictional organisations are not even close to the level of evil you find in reality.
People scammed by L. Ron Hubbard don't seem to really fit with mass murderers.
Quote from: Viking on December 26, 2011, 09:32:22 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on December 26, 2011, 09:22:53 PM
The great(ironic?) thing about humanity is, that in this case, the evilest, most badass Evil Organization (Nazis), was real.
Add to that list
Chinese Communist Party
Soviet Communist Party
Scientology
Al Qaeda
Khmer Rouge
real true badass... The Decepticons, Skeletor's Minons etc. and the list above don't have believable motivations. It's like the baddies from Power Rangers. The Khmer Rouge was really really scary because they killed you for wearing glasses. Auric Goldfinger tried it with "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you you do die.", but real fucking organizations work you to death in a work camp in Siberia, rape you before they execute you and then send the bill for the bullett to your family. These fictional organisations are not even close to the level of evil you find in reality.
Well of course not. Escapist fiction is meant to, you know, escape from the evils of regular life for the more ludicrous madness. Dude.
Voted Guild because 1)I understood the question, and 2)because the guy from Labyrinth turned into a bird.
There are fictional bad guys as bad as anything in real life, however they tend to be in novels.
The Empire was the most badass. Hitler couldn't destroy planets or shoot lightning out of his hands.
Not voting the Imperium of Man is heresy.
Quote from: The Brain on December 27, 2011, 03:33:02 AM
Not voting the Imperium of Man is heresy.
But they're one of the least evil organizations in the setting...though I suppose that they and the Tau are the only ones who are really "organized". :hmm:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 27, 2011, 03:36:19 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 27, 2011, 03:33:02 AM
Not voting the Imperium of Man is heresy.
But they're one of the least evil organizations in the setting...though I suppose that they and the Tau are the only ones who are really "organized". :hmm:
The other organizations aren't badass.
Fuck, I said badass. Now I have to watch the unarmed badass Viking Skyrim video again. Thanks, Syt. :)
Write-in vote for Union of the Snake.
Write in vote for public sector employee unions.
Write in vote for the Republican Party.
Write in vote for Languish. :menace:
Nineteen Eighty Four's INGSOC, hands down. And in the end, they still win.
The rest ain't efficient, they are just a bunch of mooks run by slightly more carismatic officers, but ultimately as useless.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 27, 2011, 04:15:44 PM
Write in vote for public sector employee unions.
Write in vote for Yi's parents.
Quote from: Drakken on December 27, 2011, 05:09:05 PM
Nineteen Eighty Four's INGSOC, hands down. And in the end, they still win.
The rest ain't efficient, they are just a bunch of mooks run by slightly more carismatic officers, but ultimately as useless.
That's fine. Ingsoc struck me as about as believable an organization as Cobra.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 05:48:57 PM
Ingsoc struck me as about as believable an organization as Cobra.
How can it not be believable when it's the inevitable result of your authoritarian ideaolgy?
Not mine. That online test with the graph said I was pretty socially liberal.
Granted, that test doesn't care if you literally say you want to confiscate all private property and employ roving death squads, as long as you don't care where someone sticks their dick.
Anyway, Ingsoc wasn't very plausible to me. An authoritarian organization with no internal dissension or competition? A belief that editing words out of newspapers could actually make people unable to espouse oppositionary language? A mid-20th century Western state that enacted trans-7th century Islamic sex laws that still managed to win the acquiescence of young men? A condition of total war that has lasted decades without anyone realizing they've never met anyone that actually served in the African battlegrounds? An international community that didn't give a shit, even to the extent of sending radio signals in, that Britain was even worse off than North Korea? It's pretty goofy.
Plus the chick had full bush in the movie.
Variety is the spice of life.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 06:35:44 PM
Variety is the spice of life.
I don't want to fight through the Amazon ever again.
The movie version of 1984 had nudity? :hmm:
John Hurt in all his skinny pale glory.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 06:45:44 PM
John Hurt in all his skinny pale glory.
The beauty of filming in England was that they didn't have to change much.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 06:29:50 PM
An authoritarian organization with no internal dissension or competition?
Didn't Winston meet an ex-party member while in prison?
What I found odd was that Ingsoc only really focused on the ruling elite. 80% of the population were considered "Proles", who had no political consciousness and the party didn't bother with to much. I suppose this is a relic of Orwell's Leninist outlook, and perhaps a refusal of the Socialist Left to believe the stories of famine and mass murder coming out of the Soviet union during the 1930's. The real Soviet Union slaughtered millions of common people. You could be a peasant and still get thrown in the gulag. The real Soviet Union didn't have shortages of goods because of contrived wars, but because of an inefficient economic system.
Certain elements of 1984 are exaggerated for cautionary and shock effect, but OTOH if you read accounts of life in, say, North Korea, 1984 doesn't seem terribly far-fetched after all...
I think it reflects Trotskiest thought rather then exaggeration. The problem with the Soviet Union wasn't that the ruling party was hijacked by the evil Stalin/Big Brother. It was because the party and the state it created was defective.
True. The underlying problem with the USSR was the notion that a society and economy could be efficiently governed without feedback. Since feedback methods (democracy, the market) were deemed inimical to communism (i.e., the personal power of CPSU members), they did away with them. The result was stagnation and ultimately destruction, and more unfortunately a black mark on socialist ideologies of all stripes, even the ones that don't take it as a matter of faith that democracy and markets can be wholesale abandoned and everything will turn out okay.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 05:48:57 PM
Quote from: Drakken on December 27, 2011, 05:09:05 PM
Nineteen Eighty Four's INGSOC, hands down. And in the end, they still win.
The rest ain't efficient, they are just a bunch of mooks run by slightly more carismatic officers, but ultimately as useless.
That's fine. Ingsoc struck me as about as believable an organization as Cobra.
It's not that out there when you consider how insane North Korea is.
I want you to go over my list of problems with Ingsoc's plausibility and tell me how North Korea answers all those.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 06:29:50 PM
Anyway, Ingsoc wasn't very plausible to me. An authoritarian organization with no internal dissension or competition?
They were executing them.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 27, 2011, 06:34:06 PM
Plus the chick had full bush in the movie.
That shit was so foul, I was expecting Robert Duvall to call in fast movers and blow the treeline back a couple klicks.
Man, you guys sure are into culturally specific standards of beauty and the vagaries of fashion.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 10:19:43 PM
Man, you guys sure are into culturally specific standards of beauty and the vagaries of fashion.
I like hardwood floors. Shag went out in the '70s.
Quote from: mongers on December 26, 2011, 09:09:29 PM
I've not actually heard of any of those, so I'll go with THRUSH. :cool:
That was going to be my vote. :cool:
Quote from: The Brain on December 27, 2011, 03:43:58 AM
Fuck, I said badass. Now I have to watch the unarmed badass Viking Skyrim video again. Thanks, Syt. :)
That guy should see someone about his Tourette's. :)
Quote from: Syt on December 28, 2011, 03:04:56 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 27, 2011, 03:43:58 AM
Fuck, I said badass. Now I have to watch the unarmed badass Viking Skyrim video again. Thanks, Syt. :)
That guy should see someone about his Tourette's. :)
He enchanted his daedric books with Tourette's. That was good shit.
Quote from: Ideologue on December 27, 2011, 10:19:43 PM
Man, you guys sure are into culturally specific standards of beauty and the vagaries of fashion.
Pardon me for having some goddamn standards.
You trim up your own nutsack Boner?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2011, 09:43:12 AM
You trim up your own nutsack Boner?
That is a little personal, Gay fox.
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on December 27, 2011, 07:33:14 PM
Certain elements of 1984 are exaggerated for cautionary and shock effect, but OTOH if you read accounts of life in, say, North Korea, 1984 doesn't seem terribly far-fetched after all...
Christopher Hitchens quipped after visiting North Korea that he thought the locals had read it and thought they might try to implement it.
Quote from: citizen k on December 27, 2011, 06:53:25 PM
Didn't Winston meet an ex-party member while in prison?
IIRC he meets Parsons in MiniLuv but he doesn't count as a dissenter, as he was denounced by his own children who reported him speaking in his sleep against the Party.
Quote from: Drakken on December 28, 2011, 11:46:15 AM
Quote from: citizen k on December 27, 2011, 06:53:25 PM
Didn't Winston meet an ex-party member while in prison?
IIRC he meets Parsons in MiniLuv but he doesn't count as a dissenter, as he was denounced by his own children who reported him speaking in his sleep against the Party.
Correct. He remained loyal to the end.
Quote from: Viking on December 28, 2011, 09:46:49 AM
Christopher Hitchens quipped after visiting North Korea that he thought the locals had read it and thought they might try to implement it.
What was NK thinking when they let Hitchens in?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2011, 11:50:33 AM
Quote from: Viking on December 28, 2011, 09:46:49 AM
Christopher Hitchens quipped after visiting North Korea that he thought the locals had read it and thought they might try to implement it.
What was NK thinking when they let Hitchens in?
Fellow traveler.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2011, 02:17:36 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2011, 11:50:33 AM
What was NK thinking when they let Hitchens in?
Fellow traveler.
He's clearly too much of a contrarian for any autocratic state to be happy with what he has to say about it.
The Cubans didn't complain when he showed up in the 1960's.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2011, 11:50:33 AM
Quote from: Viking on December 28, 2011, 09:46:49 AM
Christopher Hitchens quipped after visiting North Korea that he thought the locals had read it and thought they might try to implement it.
What was NK thinking when they let Hitchens in?
They thought him being a good trotskyist meant that he might be sympathetic. His far left politics let him in.
So back before Hitch traveled the road to Damascus?
Quote from: Viking on December 28, 2011, 03:28:19 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2011, 11:50:33 AM
Quote from: Viking on December 28, 2011, 09:46:49 AM
Christopher Hitchens quipped after visiting North Korea that he thought the locals had read it and thought they might try to implement it.
What was NK thinking when they let Hitchens in?
They thought him being a good trotskyist meant that he might be sympathetic. His far left politics let him in.
And he was! He helped plant crops and shit.