Chant the Creativity Away

"Totalitarianism is a cliché. Dictatorship is based on clichéd thinking, on very tried-and-tested uniform stuff. They don't mind that they're boring. They don't mind that they're obvious. Their point is made."

Christopher Hitchens - The Axis of Evil Revisited

 

Why do I bother visiting Dork Tower anymore? A mix of nostalgia and momentum, I suppose. For about fifteen years on and off, it successfully poked fun at gamer foibles. Then its author succumbed to the mass insanity of our time, replacing his more entertaining old cast with politically correct stereotypes to the point even the black paladin had to be replaced by a black lesbian. Of course, since (as noted about similar such comics) the new characters are by definition idealized and cannot have any negative traits or enter into conflict with each other for fear of prompting the wrath of the woke inquisition "milquetoast" would be more than can be said about them. Though I haven't dropped by often, I've found none of the comic's older humor or insights in its past five years' SJW revamp.

Checking in yesterday, I found one of these new characters walking past a "pray away the gay" sign and spraypainting it to read "pray away the hate" ... and that's it. That was the joke.

A cursory glance at a rhyming dictionary site brings up 450 rhymes for happiness, so at a conservative estimate maybe you'd find 100 options superior to the imperfect "hayte" and that's ignoring non-rhyming fun you could have with that idiotic slogan, like inserting "from the" or rearranging it into "gay the pray away" or "pray the gay way" or "ray the gay way" with a rainbow spraypainted next to it, or anagrams or fuck, ANYTHING other than trying to out-bland the church ladies!

Never mind that prayer itself will prove nearly as irrelevant in heterosexualizing anyone as it does in curing cancer or turning the score of a basketball game or putting the ace in placebo. In fact if anyone out there's planning an attempt on my life I certainly hope they do it via prayer-bombs. Let's concede there are valid cases to be made that nobody should be subjected to the social censure of being prayed at like a cartoon demon, or that this represents the thin end of the wedge to more gruesome attacks against non-heterosexuals. But even giving Kovalic that undeserved benefit of the doubt, the sheer laziness of his pandering should disqualify any would-be creator. You'll also have to ignore the by now standard SJW hypocrisy of Dork Tower itself running a story about the lesbian turning her female roommate, because curing heterosexuality is of course a noble undersheetstaking. Straight conversion therapy is like totes legit, but anything said against a member of a protected species is a hate crime.

 

If even a nobody like me can talk circles around you, I'd be ashamed to have you represent my viewpoints. In fact, if I thought for a second that homosexuality reduces one to a slogan-chanting dunce incapable of untying a tongue, then I'd be all in favor of awaying the gaylings. Lucky musical theatre isn't relying on Kovalic-quality rhymes or reasons. Hell, I avoid the news cycle on this damn blog partly because too often I found myself regurgitating instead of putting any fresh spin on the subject matter. If you don't have anything to say on a topic that a million tweets haven't belched out in the past 24 hours, avoid that topic.

 

But of course the blandness is the point. It's not about humor or creativity or enlightenment or lightening the realization that some out there hate you for all the wrong reasons. It's about making a show of strength, imposing your position on others. Drowning out all other viewpoints.

Re-tweeting. Mass prayer.

Cleverness might detract from the brutish punch of a demand for conformity, as much for the gayers as for the prayers. The end effect? His PC thuggery isn't affecting my views of homosexual behavior one way or the other, but it's really making me hate John Kovalic.