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Posts
11
Comments
1,205
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • I guess I should add that I'm not speaking to this game specifically since I've never played it. I really enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins but frankly felt like I got everything I needed of the world from it and haven't been interested in any of the sequels. So I won't be playing DA: The Veilguard, but that reason has absolutely fuck all to do with the inclusion of any social politics.

  • I feel like I have a outside the norm third-take opinion on this topic, tbh.

    I think including the hot social topic of the day often time is pandering.

    But I also don't think pandering is a problem. The muscles on the main character is also pandering. When McDonald's does market research and then releases a new product, that is pandering.

    Games are a sales industry; they are going to pander to potential buyers, period.

    So yes, a potentially trans-centric storyline in a game is unnecessary. But so is including a longsword, or a tavern, or a comic relief character. Unnecessary doesn't mean bad; all of those things are likely only adding to the depth and value of the game.

    So all this to say that when crazy right-wingers talk about SJWs and pandering and all that nonsense don't waste your time trying to fight them on the irrelevant bits - go ahead and acknowledge the pandering aspect and fight the real fight by telling them it's not negative pandering and minorities deserve to be pandered to and represented just as much as anyone else. They just don't recognize the market targeting the white male demographic as pandering because it is the sphere of normal under which they operate.

  • For exactly the same reason we enjoy seeing the useless number next to our comments and posts.

    People enjoy engagement; it doesn't necessarily have to have any deeper motivation than that.

  • You know, I'm well aware of their reputations and I've had a small number of encounters with users from those instances that I'll charitably leave at "bad faith," but by and large I don't really bump into communities hosted on their instances or see overtly bad behavior from their users often.

    I'm not trying to defend them or say it doesn't happen (largely because frankly, I just don't care one way or the other), but I can only be honest and speak to my individual experience.

  • Yeah, reason #2937 exactly why I support a nationalized NASA rather than the outsourcing of space travel to corporations and capitalism.

    Space should be ours, all of ours, not just theirs.

  • Call me the fun police, but I don't think we need to raise Lemmy power users to the position of micro celebrities, and I don't find this kind of circle jerking cute.

    And I say this as somebody with positive opinions of many of the people referenced.

    It's just like... Weird and kind of lame, tbh.

  • There's a scene in NCIS where somebody is losing a "hacker fight" so to turn it around a second person joins in and starts typing on the same keyboard.

    I'm not exaggerating.

    Like there's suspension of disbelief, and then there's whatever psychological issue watchers of NCIS suffer from.

  • Meh. Maybe I'm just not in the wrong corners of the Lemmy fediverse, but honestly I'm not really seeing very many of the banned finding their way here. That was a huge problem in the cesspools like Voat, but for whatever reason it seems like Lemmy has mostly been spared, in my limited experience at least.

    That said, yeah there's a fair amount of blunt talking and general mild misanthropy, but frankly I almost welcome that as a change from the overmoderated sterility of corporate spaces like Reddit which have to think in terms of advertiser-friendliness.

  • Sure, whatever. The point is I think the key to Lemmy, at least during this community-building stage, is narrowing in on the right level of specificity of niches which can be supported here. Maybe "NFL" is too niche, so we try "sports." But then maybe "sports" is too broad so "US sports" is the solution. The point is negotiating the level of specificity to find the more zeroed-in on option that can still receive enough engagement to be viable.

  • Like another user said, if Lemmy doesn't have the numbers to support the niche communities you want, maybe you need to move one level up the niche.

    Like maybe there isn't enough NFL activity on Lemmy yet to keep the NFL community active.... But could there be enough sports fans to keep a sports community active? Could you perhaps settle for sharing a space with NHL, MBL, and/or soccer fans in a community that sacrifices a little bit of specificity for broadness to encourage activity?

  • I'm with you, and I'm worried about it because I see this sexual puritanism as both counter to good efforts of the sexual liberation movement and frankly as a trojan horse for future conservatism to take root.

    I'm of the radical acceptance, not abstaining from the topic mindset on this topic, personally.

    I think a huge part of the problem that not enough people are talking about are these kids grew up in heavily corporate controlled spaces and have begun to confuse advertiser-friendliness for social acceptability, and I think that is a huge problem.