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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • The main issue with YouTube premium is the price, I can’t imagine that they’re making anywhere near $14 a month from showing me ads that I never click on. I’d love to see a breakdown, including how much is subsiding free users, how much is going to creators, and how much is going into the pockets of shareholders.

    I think like most if not all of the people I know would easily pay $5 dollars for premium



  • I don’t understand how so many people are taking “Program with level 0 access shipped faulty code that caused the OS to refuse to boot until a single file is removed” as “Windows bad lmao”. Not that I disagree with Windows bad, just the over liberal application and acting like this is some sort of Linux win.

    Give me kernel level access and I can make anything refuse to boot


  • The original 20 minute video in the article makes it clear he’s talking about job roles, and mentions writers a few times (admittedly not close enough to draw an 100% certain link). I don’t think it’s enough to discredit this just based on the assumption that he’s talking about actors or that there isn’t enough context. Obviously it’s vague enough that we can’t draw any solid conclusions, so I agree with you there.

    The main reason I think this is bullshit is that the guy’s testimony isn’t credible for two main reasons:

    • The guy was recently passed up for promotion, and blames it on being white and male
    • The interviewer is posing as a romantically interested date and asking plenty of leading questions, the guy is at least partially telling her what she wants to hear

    These two points, regardless of how true his story is, give him an ulterior motive for embellishing the story and exaggerating facts, which ultimately means we can’t trust this.

    I’d like to see a full investigation, as with any accusation of discrimination. But we all know that when nothing turns up, it wouldn’t shut the right wingers up




  • Please could you provide some examples? I’ve legitimately never seen someone upset at the devs for not literally being fascists.

    If I have to go out of my way to find this, I’m assuming it falls under the “loud” minority group. I’m sure these people exist, but it’d surprise me if they made up a significant amount of the over 12 million players.

    Edit: Had a further look, there seems to be more people complaining about people taking it literally than people actually taking it literally. I did find like 3 Reddit posts, but all had 0 upvotes and like 30 comments telling them they’re wrong and stupid


  • It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.

    Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.

    FF16 is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world. FF7 is the same but with fossil fuels and much better writing.

    New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.

    Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.

    Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.

    Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think I need to explain how that one is political.

    It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.

    Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.

    The Last of Us Part 2, to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun which just divorced it further.

    TLDR: Gamers People love politics in video games media, they hate hamfisted preaching in video games media. Especially when it doesn’t make sense in the crafted world



  • This is however, a practice that results from the government being effectively corporate controlled. Which is the end result of allowing your free markets to run wild and allowing corporations to acquire that much power, money, and influence.

    A pure capitalist system actively selects for this kind of bullshit. The most ruthless and unethical companies end up winning in the end. And those same companies are buying our politicians.

    People blame capitalism when the system clearly favours the rich over the poor to such a dystopian extent that a man is allowed to be held hostage by a corporation









  • Totally agree, they’ll never go for that. I meant licensed as in that the media is being legally distributed. But they wouldn’t go for it as it would mean that customers might have an amount of ownership.

    The distinction is that the private tracker is legal to run, as you’d be paying the licence holder for the ability to torrent using their private tracker.

    I like the Audible idea of “you have X amount of GB a month that you can download, and you can pay more for more GB”. It gives the customer a reason to keep paying, and therefore allow the business to exist.

    Licence is probably the wrong word as I’m not anywhere near an expert on this