International talk like a pirate day boycott

[Carbonflux]

I want to urge everyone to boycott the international talk like a pirate day.

I realize its easy to get sucked into this when one is living in a safe high-tech warm and dry culture.

Pirate jargon seems fun really.

But lets examine briefly how pirates act.

Imagine for example you are a 20 year old female making your first trip overseas, well romantic pirates capture your ship, they rape you mostly to death and throw your half living body off the ship to get eaten by sharks attracted by the blood coming from your every body orifice.

As you die being ripped about by sharks after a 10 hour rape event remember how cool it is to say arrrr.

Pirates are deeply evil, they are not funny or romantic, the are smelly evil trolls who inflict horror on everyone they encounter.

I say this evil sick day should be boycotted.

[dougal2]

Agreed.

In fact, the stereotypical 'amusing' pirate accent is directly attributable to a single actor (whose name escapes me), so the 'event' is kinda ill-conceived anyway.

[Carbonflux]

Johny Deep in those Disney movies for example, but really in film it goes back to the 1920s.

I really don't understand fully how the pirate became a romantic character without suggesting that aspects of human consciousness feel they deserve to be violated and tortured.

We now have a new form of pirate in terms of the eastern African version, the media seems to suggest these are not the pure Disney pirates, yet they are the same in every way.

I really do respect the way "nerd" culture and pop culture relate, but this admiration of pirates seems really sick and decadent to me.

Out of all the viral nerd holidays I think this one is the sickest.

I guess what annoys me most of all is how this relates to secret societies in the US. Skull and Bones clearly claims the pirate legacy as actual fact, several US president were Skull and Bones, or Scull and Bones, in the UK spelling.

Why do we admire this?

[Khai]

note in the UK Spelling, a Skull is a Skull.

"scull" is to with rowing a boat.

[Carbonflux]

Interesting, I have always wondered what the Scull spelling meant. Maybe some kind of pun.

[filanwizard]

Crime is Cool and Romantic in the eyes of Cinema and Writers. and the fans just eat that stuff up.

Also the whole Pirate thing was assisted by the infamous "Ninjas vs Pirates" meme I think.

[Carbonflux]

Good point, another meme I have noticed like this is Hitmen and Vampires. In fact if I was going to write a video game it would be Hitmen vs Vampires.

[filanwizard]

another common angle is being a spy/secret agent. Most people see 007 globe trotting, getting laid and killing henchman. in reality lots of spy work is crunching data and not a lot of shooting or gadgets.

[Carbonflux]

The agent archetype is really interesting to me, it has elements of the Hitman ideal, ie mastery of death but at the same time there is a strong element of the Adept or the Initiated Master. The Agent has the ability to "read the world" and for him "luck" is really a form of literacy in the language of the world.

But also the Agent is a explorer, for example going back to William S. Burroughs, the "Agent" is the Adept as outsider exploring the culture of the world and reporting on it. Someone who is both dreaming and awake.

I don't mean to channel Joesph Campbell, but it is interesting how our media heroes echo classic archetypes, mastering death, mastering knowledge of the universe as a dream, mastering the language of causality.

Fun stuff, at least to me