StoneToss : Episode 38

Comic Name: Rated ARRR

Description: Let’s be honest, $10 for a ticket and $15 for popcorn isn’t very Marxist.

Mouseover: Fellas, stop funding leftist propaganda and just learn to torrent.

Originally Published: 11/20/2018

What The Comic Is: A man with a blood flow restriction that is so severe it causes his legs to turn an even shade of brown leans back in his chair, perhaps in an attempt to alleviate some of the constant stinging agony his legs experience. As he leans back, he he explains that though he may be a rich Hollywood director, it doesn't mean he also isn't a socialist. The man he's sitting next to loads up the homepage to torrent website The Pirate Bay. The medically handicapped director accuses the man of thievery. 

What StoneToss Actually Thinks: Pirating movies is okay because socialists want "free stuff", anyways. Also, pirating is a moral obligation one should have in order to defund 'leftist propaganda' produced in Hollywood.

Why It's Fucking Stupid: This comic is an attempt to infantilize socialism as being "leftists want to get stuff for free", instead of, ya know, a reorganized system of government and wealth that values the living standard of all in the society. The latter is far too complex a subject for StoneToss to really wrap his head around, so you may find it excusable that he needs to twist it into a more digestible and bitesize concept. This is another instance in the endless procession of StoneToss trying to reveal a hypocrisy that doesn't exist. Like I said before, this time around it's "leftists want socialism, which means they want stuff for free, but (((Hollywood))) socialists get mad when their stuff is taken for free, which means they want to cherry pick socialism".

Socialism isn't a structure in where "everything should be free" or someone should be required to price an entertainment commodity like a movie at certain government-controlled numbers. This goes into a whole separate issue with people's misconception of wealth in countries like the USA; where they get hung up on actors or directors or sports stars who make millions of dollars, instead of the corporations and CEOs that exploit employees and pay less in taxes than retired boomers living off of welfare. A director in Hollywood or a guy playing basketball earning millions of dollars aren't the problems. We, the consumers of that entertainment, willingly pay for them to earn that sort of money. Not to mention that even the richest among them are drops in the bucket compared to the true 1% of America, who are the aforementioned tax-evading corporate elites. 

We can go debate all day about the status of selling art like a movie or a song, what their 'value' is and whether someone has the right to pirate them or not, but StoneToss' stance on the issue is pretty clear. To StoneToss, movies from Hollywood are all leftist brainwashing propaganda and therefore torrenting them isn't just something you do in order to watch a movie you wouldn't have paid for, but rather it's an active attack against Hollywood and the 'leftist agenda'. This is very in-step with comics he's made in the past, lambasting people who pay to see the newest Marvel movie. As we've talked about before, StoneToss doesn't buy anything ever and has never once paid for a video game or a movie or a hotdog. He lives off the land, like a true Libertarian patriot, eating tree sap and pinecones and fashioning makeshift clothing from moss collected off the bottom of rocks. Nah, just kidding. He's a consumer just like every other modern American, he's just a total dumbass about it.

Also, pro-tip: Piracy in entertainment industries is actually starting to be viewed as being either a neutral influence on a product or perhaps also a positive one; the line of thinking being that most people who are pirating a movie or video game are people who wouldn't have ever paid for it in the first place, so by them pirating it you're essentially just getting more exposure than you would've without it. This is under the assumption that it isn't easily accessible for anyone to quickly pirate. This means the strawman director in the comic probably wouldn't even be upset that the guy was on Pirate Bay in the first place.

Also, pro-pro-tip: There's a huge fucking difference between a movie theater jacking up the price of popcorn because most of their profit comes from concessions and a pharmaceutical company artificially inflating the cost of drugs that people depend on to survive; among other similar comparisons. Movie theater popcorn isn't a political issue, StoneToss, you hand-me-down cumrag. 

Comic Name: Transfusion

Description: Yes, really.

Mouseover: You'd think drinkers of wiener blood wouldn't be so picky about what's inside others.

Originally Published: 10/16/2018

What The Comic Is: A man in a blue suit and tie informs a woman that the last step in her immigration application is a DNA test, the woman wonders why such a test is necessary. The man explains that the test is to ensure the country's racial purity. The woman, incited, demands to know what kind of racist country America has become. The man is revealed in the fourth panel to be an immigration officer not of America, but of Israel.

What StoneToss Actually Thinks: That Israel DNA tests immigrants to control racial purity.

Why It's Fucking Stupid: Yes, it's true. Israel wants people to take a DNA test to verify their Jewish heritage, but this isn't for immigration purposes. Chiefly (but not limited to), it's for their "Law of Return", a law that vaguely gives those of Jewish descendancy the right to freely live in Israel, though not necessarily to become a citizen of it, which is a separate and more official immigration process. The Law of Return is fairly unique in the world, and Israel is allegedly the only country that requires a DNA test to confirm heritage for the purpose of living in said country. 

Is that good, bad, racist? Those are really big questions that can be shorthanded as "Yeah, it's wrong of Israel to try to put a hard line on what defines a person as being Jewish, and then granting them a special privilege to freely go to and chill in a country, not to mention their policies were created from their inception in such a way as to limit the number of Arab people in Israel, thereby they seem to fit the definition of racism, no matter how much Israel claims they rarely use the practice or how it's supposed to be just formality". In earlier decades the Law of Return was much, much more lenient to the point that it allowed anyone who said "I AM JEW" to live in Israel. Obviously this policy has become more strict over time, to the point of requiring DNA testing. 

This is a whole convoluted topic that requires hours of research to gain a good grasp over, from its origins and history to its present day usage and ramifications, but suffice to say that StoneToss himself doesn't seem to know anything about it, since the comic suggests Israel wants DNA tests for immigration purposes, which is not true (which makes the comic's smug description especially funny). Israel's policies are still restrictive and backwards, let's not mince words. Israel does not allow the legal marriage (or even recognize the civil union) of someone considered a Jew to someone considered a non-Jew (unless this marriage happened outside of Israel), just as a single example. 

So with this comic StoneToss was incorrect concerning Israel's use of DNA testing and therefore missed a chance to make this a stupid comic about gay marriage in the USA. That's a twofer!