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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)WA
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577
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2 yr. ago

  • This broad dynamic isn't new and it isn't unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It's just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.

    People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they're going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.

    And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they're going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don't like whatever it is that they're getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.

    And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, "Fine then - fuck you all. I'm done."

    And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It's just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that's likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that's likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.

  • I expected to be offended and/or astonished by a ridiculously transparent bit of sanewashing here, but you know... I think I actually might agree.

    It does seem to be a valid point - Gaetz is a grotesquely destructive demagogue and Trump sycophant, but he's also a buffoon, and that's undoubtedly better than a grotesquely destructive demagogue and Trump sycophant who's also a smart and devious and highly skilled politician.

    Huh...

  • Permanently Deleted

    Jump
  • This is fascism 101.

    Fascism is at least as much an economic system as a political one, or more precisely, it's more like an economic system hiding behind a political system.

    And the way the economic system works is very simple - private ownership of the means of production combined with an overt and institutionalized revolving door between business and government, so that the end result is plutocratic oligarchy.

    Basically, it's taking the system that already existed in the US, by which the wealthy bought access to political power mostly surreptitiously and nominally illegally unless they followed specific restrictions, and legitimizes and formalizes and institutionalizes it and moves it right out into the open.

    And behind all of the white supremacist and christian nationalist and reactionary conservative rhetoric, this was always the real goal.

  • Mmm... sort of.

    In some very broad sense, yes, it's corruption.

    In a narrower and more precise sense though, it isn't really, since "corruption" implies a violation of higher standards, which is what we've had, to a greater or lesser extent, pretty much throughout our history.

    The difference in the coming era is that there will be no higher standards to corrupt. The things that were previously violations of higher standards will become the new standards. Theft and graft and cronyism will no longer be crimes or even (meaningfully recognized) wrongs - they will be the institutional norms.

    And I don't mean this as mere pedantry - the point is that when what used to be corruption becomes the overt norms, things will get much, much worse than they ever were or could be when they were still corruption.

  • Fascism is, at heart, at least as much an economic system as it is a political one, and broadly, more so.

    Fascism, alongside its political control of the populace, establishes economic control of the populace, and it does it very simply, by organizing the government to serve businesses and the wealthy few who control them, and by establishing a revolving door by which a relative few are allowed to freely move between control of the two.

    This is the underlying point of Project 2025, and specifically the reason for the planned purge of civil servants. They are to be replaced by people who can be counted upon to serve the interests of the wealthy few and to deny the interests of the rest of the populace.

    Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.

    Those in power in those institutions, even if they don't share the political goals of Trump and his coattail-riders, are driven by their own greed to at the very least not stand too much in the way, since they too expect to profit.

  • Very much so (and there's at least one patient gamers community around, because I've posted to one).

    The only advantage I can see to playing a game on release is taking part in that first rush of interest, but I'm antisocial enough that that doesn't appeal to me anyway, so I'm not missing anything there.

    Beyond that, I think playing a game at least a year or so after release has all of the advantages. The initial flurry of absolute love vs. absolute hate has died down so it's easier to get a broad view of the quality, the game is more stable, the price is better, dlc and expansions are out and generally packaged with the game, and best of all, in this current era, I can most likely buy it from GOG and actually have the full game, DRM-free, on my system.

    And there are a bajillion good games out there, just waiting for me to discover them.

  • I hadn't put it together before, but Israel is sort of an international case of affluenza - a spoiled, indulged rich kid who ends up a psychopath because daddy's money has always given them whatever they want and shielded them from ever having to face the consequences of whatever they do.

    It's long past time to cut off their allowance.

  • Identity in general doesn't matter much on forums (as opposed to microblogs, like Twitter or Mastodon). Forums are focused on topics rather than people, and what is said is generally more important than who says it.