Bond Villains

What about the spray tan eccenric NY city real estate agent that shits on a golden toliet with an army of yall-qaeda terrorists
- Too ludicrous even for a Bond film. Even a Roger Moore Bond film.
  
  God that is so true. It'd be funny if it wasn't so true.
  
  Even an Austin Powers movie?
- Lex Luther would call him a cliche.
- Let’s be honest, even Lloyd Kaufman would’ve dismissed that as too on the nose for even him to direct that movie…
- Biff?
- Basically all billionaires are super villains
  
  Paul McCartney is a billionaire.

True story. After the 2016 election, there was a panel discussion. They had all the creators of the top US political TV dramas; The West Wing: Scandal: Veep: House of Cards and others. Every writer and producer said the same thing. If they'd had a character who said that they 'liked soldiers who didn't get captured' the advertisers and network bosses would have demanded that the character be hated by all Americans.
- South Park And SNL both commented that our 2016 situation was too ridiculous to parody
  
  Back in the 1960s, it was a common joke that ronald reagan would never be President because no one would vote for a guy who co-starred with a monkey.
  Today's GOP would ignore reagan and run the monkey
- So....that story basically confirms all programming (I mean not cooking shows) is propaganda, doesn't it?
  
  By that logic, every single drama since the dawn of time is 'propaganda.'
  
  Propaganda implies that the message being pushed is for the sake of convincing the population of some doctrine. The network is trying to cater to an already held public belief for the sake of dollars.
  
  Some is just entertainment, but yeah, most is trying to sell a message

Dyslexic ass universe we live in . The 2020's were supposed to be 'the future', an advanced post-scarcity world. We got a post-satire world instead
- This is what we get for over indulging on irony starting in the 90s.
  Nothing has meaning anymore.
  But maybe correlation isn’t causation…
  
  I've become more and more aware of "Irony poisoning" in every facet of our culture, from movies to memes to every other human interaction.
  Maybe because of social media influence, we're so scared that holding any kind of sincerity will reveal a vulnerability that will be ruthlessly attacked...
  We must be ready to say "No I don't mean that seriously" and change our projection within a moment's notice when the culture winds change again.
  It's so bad anymore that people now need to add "un-ironically" to explain that they genuinely feel anything at all...
  ... and sometimes that's said ironically.
- If you look at 70s SF you get closer to the real 2020s.
  AI taking over the world: Colossus: The Forbin Project
  An Infectious agent causing problems: The Andromeda Strain
  Human pollution causing massive issues: Soylent Green
  
  Oh shit Forbin mentioned in the wild
  
  in science fiction the AI that takes over the world is sapient. usually as intelligent as a person if not more. reality is dumber. we're just trying to surrender the world to a series of algorithms that can't tell how many fingers there are in a hand or which way they bend, or what a fucking fire hydrant looks like.
  
  We don't even have AI it's a damn chinese room

Have we forgotten about Trump, the Koch brothers, hmm who else.
- The current movie appears to be a bond idiocracy crossover.
  
  Idiocracy is not an accurate depiction of what we have going on, and I'm tired of people saying that it is. Idiocracy was about a dumbing down of everyone because smart people did not breed.
  However, people still had the best of intentions despite their limited brain capacity. They just didn't know how to actually fix the world.
  And real life we have people actively denying climate change despite the obvious effects not out of idiocy, but because they are literally being paid to, and because it makes a decent wedge issue for political gain. There is an obvious motive there that can be explained by malice instead of stupidity, especially since the people trying to get this money in power are likely to die before the effects of climate change come into full circle.
  An idiocracy, they actively want to fix the climate problems, they are just literally too stupid to use water instead of Gatorade for plants. Because everyone is taking a slogan more literally than actual evidence.
  Another great comparison is Donald Trump and Camacho. Donald Trump ignored the existence of covid-19, downplayed the effects of it, and blamed the parts of it that could not be ignored on his predecessor. He also villainized Anthony fauci, the man who was trying to make covid-19 only last a couple of weeks, but because he was villanized so hard it became a global pandemic that lasted over a year.
  Camacho was fully aware there was a problem, acknowledge the people who were suffering and the Direct effects of the problem, and put the smartest man in the world in charge of fixing the problem.
  It is not an app comparison, because Society is not the way it is because it is stupid, but because it is actively being manipulated by malefactors and bad faith agents.
  The planet is not being mismanaged nor is it dying because it's just time. It is being murdered for personal gain by people with names and addresses.
- There's a jewish fascist
  
  Netanyahu, Shapiro, prager, or someone else?
  
  to be fair, what do you expect from a guy who is part of the liberal NATIONALISTS
- Can we start talking about those who told the truth more than those who lie? Here's a short starting list:
  Gary Webb
  Milton William Cooper
  Bill Hicks
  Julian Assange
  Edward Snowden
  Anyone else?
  
  Gary Webb killed himself, Milton Cooper was a quack, and Julian Assange is a far-right wing tool.
  If he had released everything he had rather than just what he had on his enemies I would respect him a bit more.

My gen x friends complained about the villains in Captain Planet, but the we got Trump.
Also, Tomorrow Never Dies was loosely based on Rupert Murdoch.
- Rich Biff in Back to the Future 2 was supposedly based on Trump.
  
  And alternate-1985 Lorraine was based on Ginger Lynn Allen?
- My dad complained that Captain Planet was “libtard environmentalist propaganda” 30 years ago. Some things never change. Now it’s just Trump instead of Limbaugh.
  
  These aren't even people who publicity identify as conservative. Publicly...
  They basically just stood still long enough and became conservatives that watch Daily Show.

Britain is not holding up its end here, producing the mega-shagger we need to save us all.
- Groovy baby.
- Well they tried with Boris Johnson, but he just couldn't quite make the cut.
  
  He was more like that Bond parody with Rowan Atkinson. Bumbling and fumbling while bragging and shagging.

Bezos also seems pretty villain-y.
- Yes, but instead of a Bond villain he's more of an Austin Powers villain
  
  “Tear down that bridge so my yacht can pass”
  
  More like Lex Luthor

Hey, there’s also a New York businessman obsessed with gold and status who has political influence and ties to the ex KGB agent with goals of overturning democracy
- Is he though? More like an incompetent businessman aligns himself with evil baddie to stave off company bankruptcy. In exchange he pawns off state secrets and tries to destabilize the world's largest economy. Eventually incompetent business man either meets his end shanked in a jail shower or evil baddie will conveniently dispose of him out a 10 storey window once he is no longer worth the trouble.
- You see him dancing along with Mr Tesla on a Tesla cruise ship

Especially the part where, he has a bunch of followers who claimed the emerald mine never existed and that it's all a hoax by his detractors. Even though the main man himself has admitted that his fortune came from a God damn Emerald mine.

We still have Murdoch media empire. The secretive media mogul pulling the strings from the shadows at the behest of the rich and powerful

Let me FTFY:
Penchant for poisoning, and having comrades mysteriously fall from very high places
- Let me FTFY:
  mysteriously fall from ~~very high places~~ open windows
  
  Dudes, why miss an opportunity to use the incredible word defenestration? Sorry but I had to downvote both of you!

Real estate baron that desperately wants to be dictator is pretty stupid too.
- Baron is a bit generous no?
  
  I'm using it as a slur.
  
  Probably talking about the son
  
  As in "robber-baron"
  
  Not many peerages lower. Baronet? Knight?

The real fiction is that government agencies would be trying to rein them in. If Musk came up with a ray that turned people into eldrich-style horrors, those agencies would be lined up as buyers.
Austin Powers at least got phallic shaped rockets right though

Putin and Musk or From Russia With Love and Moonraker?

who is the former KGB agent?
- He's the guy currently trying to take over a sovereign European nation.
- I don't know if you are joking and I am whooshing it but: Putin. He was former.. i believe even chief of the KGB. Was stationed in East Germany for a while and made quite the career. And now he instigated himself as a Russian Erdogan who can rule for as long as he wishes.
  
  More like as long as his citizens don't develop a taste for guillotines
  
  Remember Angela Merkel? She was a Stasi member is East Germany at the same time but everyone seems to pretend they weren't former colleagues.

I mean Elon is basically Flintheart Glomgold.

Look I get it's a joke but calling Elon and Putin "our two main antagonists" is mind numbingly stupid and doesn't seem to be the punchline.
The only group who I can think of that would be true for would be college freshman from upper middle class backgrounds that get their news exclusively from social media and do not have any attention span as a result of the Adderall shortage.
Putin has started the largest land war in Europe since WW2. Elon does shit that wouldn't even put him in the top 5 of evil billionaires. He's just super active on social media so anyone who puts in the slightest amount of effort can see what he's up to.
- Elon is a bit worse than that: he also pollutes our night sky with thousands of satellites for a service that is a capitalist initial landgrab of space (he does it quickly too so he can skip regulation), and then based on a whim and his ill informed political views use said satellite service to meddle in global politics because again, no regulation. So of course still nowhere near the ex kgb agent, but yeah, a pretty big dick too.
  
  He also spent a bucket load darkening those satellites (with moderate success) when astronomers complained
  Also he's not the only one wanting a massive satellite data constellation, and he is the only one working hard on making space access cheaper
- Elon is not just super active in social media. He destroyed Twitter for fun. I didn't use Twitter before, but for someone that used Twitter (which is most young people) I see how he can seem a villain. Sure, not at the scale of Putin, but way more than "super active".
  
  For fun? He did it because he thought he could do better. Turns out he couldn't though

Image Transcription: Twitter
mastodon.social/@seva1000 @SevaUT
we criticize hollywood for lazy tropes but our two main antagonists right now is a former kgb agent with a penchant for poisoning and an emerald mine heir who wants to live on mars. if these were bond villains they'd be dismissed as caricature

- I'd say hyperloop was a scam, and scammers are bad people.
  
  Hyperloop was a napkin sketch that he gave to the world, it wasn't a product of any of his companies just an idea he thought might be good, but which he was unwilling to try
- Beats me how you came to this conclusion. Me and my coworkers shit talk this guy all day whilst barely making more than minimum wage- Billionaires shouldn't exist period, much less ones that don't pay taxes and who buy entire social media platforms just to flood them with hate speech and ban critics...
  
  I guess it sucks that he broke one of the more damaging internet services
  On his good side he made electric cars cool, he made space access cheaper and is working on making it cheaper still
- The way he ruined Twitter, the whole Hyperloop scheme, his spreading of conspiracies… what was the last positive he brought to society? Starlink? And he managed to be an ass about that too.
  I could’ve agreed with you maybe 2/3 years ago, but he’s gone full mask off recently. I wouldn’t label him as a “main” antagonist but he definitely is one.
  
  Let's not forget his recent lawsuit against Media Matters for accurately reporting on the hate speech on xitter.
  
  He managed to be an ass about it in a way that helped Russia's invasion and got Ukrainian soldiers killed.
- Virtually all the good things Musk has supposedly done were done by other people. He's just an asshole with enough money to buy a whole lot of name recognition.
- You cant calculate net positive based on actuals, but also include opportunity cost, and regardless, simple utilitarianism is morally reprehensible imho. Someone invents the cure for all cancers, and only commits the occasional rape or murder. Net positive? Hero/villain?
- I'd say 50/50 as much bad as good. But it's turning in to 60/40 fast (in a bad way)
- Agreed, he might be a bit far fetched with his paedophile jokes but for the most part he's just a bit spontaneous and shortsighted

I really don't get the pervasiveness of this emerald mine heir story. His father that owned the mine is still alive, and disowned Elon after divorcing his mother, and then later, marrying Elon's step sister.

You’re forgetting the creepy old guy with a German accent, no hair, and a penchant for dressing up in weird costumes, who runs a quasi-secret society with the intention to infiltrate every world government and bring about global communism that way.
- Forgive my ignorance, but who's this guy?
  
  Klaus Scchwab, and it's not Alex Jones stuff you can ignore, the book his organization published literally states that that is their goal. They don't hide it, mass media ignores it.