#combox theory

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

Combo Breaker is Boxman Junior 2.0: Revisited

Combo claims to be a cyborg, but doesn’t seem to have organic parts. Even when we get a look at the inside of his head, we see sparks instead of a brain.

If a completely new robot entered the Plaza, folks would probably jump to conclusions and assume they’re a new Boxbot. KO and friends would then be told to go kick their ass. Combox looking like an organic avoids this problem. He’s able to just waltz into the Plaza any time he likes! This allows him to spy on people there, covertly mess with machinery, etc.

He still wrecks the Bodega like the Boxbots do, albeit on a smaller scale and “unintentionally”.

He’s apparently loyal but not great at following orders. Sounds a lot like the Boxbots!

His mission is specifically to mimic, learn from, and antagonize KO. I’m not sure yet if this is a generic “destroy the Plaza” plot or if it has ties to the turbo conspiracy.

Granted, I don’t think his admiration towards KO is fake. “KO’s Health Week” shows that the Boxbots and the Plaza Crew can get along just fine! But Combox has his orders, and Boxman will reboot him if he fails to comply.

He flew off with Neil for a bit because he’s an easily distracted child, and may not have been brainwashed as much as the rest of the Boxbots yet.

One last idea: remember how Combo’s personality was nothing like we expected? We thought we’d get a rowdy boy and instead got a cinnamon roll. Perhaps now that “antagonizing KO” didn’t work, Boxman will tweak his directive to “mimic, learn from, and antagonize TKO”?

Cinnamon roll:

Rowdy boy:

Also KO would feel super betrayed if this cute little guy who admires him so much was actually toying with him the whole time. :)

[apostleshop]

Tech Talk: The Internet and Satan's Game

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Tech Talk: The Internet and Satan's Game

By now the entire country has seen a video of a supposedly racist confrontation, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, between a grinning young high school student and a Native American elder, chanting and beating a drum. The immediate and ferocious judgment of the internet community was that the boy was effectively taunting and belittling the elder, but subsequent videos from wider angles as well as the young man’s own testimony have cast considerable doubt on this original assessment. My purpose in this article is not to adjudicate the situation, which remains, at best, ambiguous, even in regard to the basic facts. It is to comment, rather, on the morally outrageous and deeply troubling nature of the response to this occurrence, one that I would characterize as, quite literally, Satanic.

When the video in question first came to my attention, it already had millions of views on Facebook and had been commented upon over 50,000 times. Eager to find out what this was all about, I began to scroll through the comments. They were practically one hundred percent against the young man, and they were marked, as is customary on social media, by stinging cruelty. As I continued to survey the reactions, I began to come across dozens urging retribution against the boy, and then dozens more that provided the addresses and email contacts of his parents, his school, and his diocese. I remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, do they realize what they’re doing? They’re effectively destroying, even threatening, this kid’s life.”

At this point, my mind turned, as it often does today, to René Girard. The great Franco-American philosopher and social commentator is best known for his speculations on what he called the scapegoating mechanism. Sadly, Girard maintained, most human communities, from the coffee klatch to the nation state, are predicated upon this dysfunctional and deeply destructive instinct. Roughly speaking, it unfolds as follows. When tensions arise in a group (as they inevitably do), people commence to cast about for a scapegoat, for someone or some group to blame. Deeply attractive, even addictive, the scapegoating move rapidly attracts a crowd, which in short order becomes a mob. In their common hatred of the victim, the blamers feel an ersatz sense of togetherness. Filled with the excitement born of self-righteousness, the mob then endeavors to isolate and finally eliminate the scapegoat, convinced that this will restore order to their roiled society. At the risk of succumbing to the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, nowhere is the Girardian more evident than in the Germany of the 1930s. Hitler ingeniously exploited the scapegoating mechanism to bring his country together—obviously in a profoundly wicked way.

Girard’s theory was grounded in his studies of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and other literary figures, but his profoundest influence was the Bible, which not only identified the problem, but showed the way forward. Take a good, long look at the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery in the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel to see what Girard saw regarding both the sin and the solution. It is surely telling that one of the principal names for the devil in the New Testament is ho Satanas, which carries the sense of the accuser. And how significant, thought Girard, that it is precisely ho Satanas who offers all of the kingdoms of the world to Jesus, implying that all forms of human community are tainted, at least to a large degree, by the characteristically Satanic game of accusation, blaming, scapegoating.

All of which brings me back to the incident in Washington and the nasty reaction to it on the internet. I have used the internet to great positive effect in my evangelical work for many years; so I certainly don’t agree with those who denounce it in an unnuanced way. However, there is something about social media comboxes that make them a particularly pernicious breeding-ground for Girardian victimizing. Perhaps it’s the anonymity, or the ease with which comments can be made and published, or the prospect of finding a large audience with little effort—but these forums are, increasingly, fever swamps in which hatred and accusation breed. When looking for evidence of the Satanic in our culture, don’t waste your time on special effects made popular by all of the exorcism movies. Look no further than your computer and the twisted “communities” that it makes possible and the victims that it regularly casts out.

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published a piece on me and my work. The author referred to me as “the Bishop of the Internet,” a title which I find more than a little strange. But for the moment, I’m going to claim it, only so I can make a pastoral pronouncement to all those who use social media. When you’re about to make a comment, ask yourself a very simple question: “Am I doing this out of love, out of a sincere wish for the good of the person or persons I’m addressing?” If not, shut up. If it becomes clear that your comment is simply spleen-venting, scapegoating, or virtue-signalling, shut up. The internet can be a marvelous tool, and it can be a weapon used for Satanic purposes. Applying the test of love can very effectively undermine the scapegoating mechanism and drive the devil out.

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Copyright 2019 Bishop Robert Barron. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of WordonFire.org, where it was originally published.

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[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

Junior 2.0

*steeples fingers* I'm wondering why Combo Breaker's card says he's "the only person who gets on KO's nerves" instead of something like "gets on everyone's nerves, including KO's".

It suggests KO is the only significant character he bothers. What is it about him that antagonizes KO, but nobody else? Why are they rivals?

Now that Venomous is back at Boxmore, could he and Boxman have rebuilt Junior? He is sort of their son. And since a) plaza-destroying antics are likely to continue and b) Venomous brings some common sense to the table, giving Junior a human-passing (organic-passing?) body would be a good strategy, allowing him to snoop around in plain sight. That he resembles Astro Boy, another robot who looks human, could be foreshadowing for this.

Granted, we did see Combo Breaker in “You’re Level 100!”, but given that it was only for a few moments and the shot lent no significance to him whatsoever, I’m open to the possibility that it’s simply a minor continuity error.

I doubt the guy they paid to draw all these background characters squooshed together is expected to keep up-to-date on every plot twist.

In any case, T/KO was the only Plaza member to fight up close and personal with Junior for a significant length of time. Since every robot is powered by a glorb and T/KO has some glorb nonsense about him, it’s not much of a stretch to say KO might be able to learn/suspect Combo Breaker is Junior through some Dragonball-esque “I sensed his aura” kind of thing.

Of course, Venomous has more to bring to the table than common sense. As a bioengineer, he could complicate things by giving Junior organic skin or something. That way, if KO became certain enough of Junior’s identity to outright attack him, he would bruise, “proving” he wasn’t a robot and making KO look bad. Even if KO straight-up yanks his arm off, Junior could easily claim to be a cyborg, since they’re fairly common in this universe.

Anyway, Junior walking around the Plaza unbothered and using any attempt to expose him to make KO look violent and paranoid would definitely put him at “rival” status, and “getting on KO’s nerves” would be putting it lightly.