Web Curation: An Exchange on Iron Man & Assumptions

One of the many, many wonderful things about Badass Digest is how the site demonstrates how, if properly curated, a comments section can make for as good a read as the article itself.

Case in point: this brilliant exchange between commenters ‘rubi-kun’ & ‘fursa_saida’, on how the Iron Man series expresses a general lack of thought about the portrayal of its Middle Eastern/Central Asian subject matter (EDIT: Afghanistan is not in the Middle East and indeed, the problem here is that those two very different regions have been conflated), and in doing so, reinforces a false (and to certain extent, damaging) Western view of an area of the world long-misunderstood.

Here’s the list of comments

http://badassdigest.com/2014/07/01/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-michael-bay/#comment-1464445527

http://badassdigest.com/2014/07/01/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-michael-bay#comment-1464546984

http://badassdigest.com/2014/07/01/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-michael-bay/#comment-1464558978

http://badassdigest.com/2014/07/01/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs.-michael-bay/#comment-1464602723

Just goes to show – ignorance perpetuates itself, if not corrected.