Objectively Pro-Robot

Note: Understanding this entry requires having seen the video for Heck No! (I'll Never Listen to Techno) by Maldroid. You can come back; I'll wait.

I found this video quite randomly the other day while surfing around on YouTube, which is definitely my visual drug of choice (television is not the drug of the Nation of Interrobangs; I kicked my television habit over ten years ago now). I was intrigued by the title, since I actually like some techno, and I was wondering if it was going to be a TISM-style one-sided pissing match or not. Besides which, the video said it was stop-motion animation done on a Lite Brite, and anyone who's crazy enough to have a music video using stop-motion Lite Brite animation is obviously my kind of maniac. Shades of Lasse Gjertsen.

And here I'd thought subtle Juvenalian satire was dead.

I'm not sure if it was an accidental political statement or not, but the message of the song -- and the video even more so -- basically effectively takes the wind out of those "If the [foo]s win, then we'll have to [bar]" arguments. I'm generalising here, although the most common form of those these days is "If the terrorists win, then [some horrible thing]," although the right wing has been using this basic formulation for years. I remember quite vividly people like Phyllis "Ladies Against Women" Schlafly using this one in the form of "If the ERA passes, then everyone will have to share bathrooms!" (Oh, the howwow! Widdow Intewwobang gonna fwow up now...)

The rhetorical strategies haven't changed in 30 years, just the targets, or, as Mrs. Underwood the algebra teacher (from Stephen King's "Rage") put it, "So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change."

Naturally, half the commenters on YouTube, of the comments I read, missed it entirely. Nevertheless, you, dear intelligent readers, can answer the next wingnut fulmination about beheadings and Shari'a law and whatever else and the "terrorists winning" (whatever the hell "win" means in this context -- as though life is some kind of zero-sum sporting event) by saying, "Yeah, yeah, and if the robots win, we'll have to listen to techno." Be sure to have your digital camera ready to capture the reaction for posterity (and posting to YouTube).