rwhitisissle @ rwhitisissle @lemmy.ml

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2 yr. ago

I think the issue here encompasses several factors: 1) you seem to be conflating the kind of moral panic driven legislation which has historically always existed with a silencing tactic aimed at dismissing youth-driven cultural criticism and 2) this meme screams low hanging fruit, appealing to the emotions of young people for whom having their phone taken away is like torture while also engaging in the, at the moment, very popular denigration of older Americans as being out of touch and dismissive of continuously worsening societal issues. Point 1 is understandable, as criticizing new things as being a corrupting influence on young people is as old as dirt, as is the propensity for the powers that be to dismiss cultural and material criticisms of the worsening state of peoples' lives in hard times. And while they may exist as a part of a shared rhetorical and ideological ecosystem, their relationship is too complex to be purely causal, as your meme seems to be suggesting.

Mom: "Honey, try reading a book or something for once. You're almost about to graduate from high school and you've literally never read a book to completion in your entire life. Actually, I'm going to say only 1 hour of cell phone time a night until you finish a book of your choosing."

OP: This post

"Freen Ginks"

Sailor Moon grows up to be the queen of the moon. Possibly also the Earth, although I can't remember. Either way, she's no ally to the proletariat.

does that mean they must not be fun

Whether or not someone finds this or any other game fun is not something I really care about. Nor does it have anything to do with my observation.

I don't know if the "general public," which as a concept sort of conceives society as a monolithic entity, when it very much is not, should necessarily condemn or not condemn any specific artistic theme in a piece of media, but I do think that the art a society produces reflects the ethos of large segments of that society and, to some extent, reinforces that ethos. To borrow from your example, I don't think someone is going to play Call of Duty and become a knife wielding maniac, but I do think they might play a video game where, for example, a bunch of terrorists have taken over a hospital in some unnamed middle-Eastern nation where American forces are engaged in a "peacekeeping operation" and the only way to get through a particular part of the game is to call in an airstrike on the hospital. A younger person playing the game might see this and then later on hear about military strikes against civilian targets (like hospitals) on the news and think "well, maybe there were bad guys in that hospital, like in my game." In other words, it has the potential to shift what a person perceives as a legitimate target of state violence. And I know that specific example itself is overly simplistic, but the point is that there are multiple avenues by which political ideologies and their component beliefs are reinforced and reproduced, and the media you consume is one of them.

I understand my own criticism of video games is unpopular with large segments of the internet. Especially places like Lemmy or Reddit where people reduce criticisms of the content of games to strawmen comparisons to delinquent parents and politicians trying to legislate video games into oblivion because they think they cause school shootings. But I think it's a valid and worthwhile contribution to most discussions of the medium.

That said, how is this worse than the whole slew of games about US soldiers killing people across the world, almost always portrayed as the cool protagonists?

Uh, it's not. Those are fucking terrible, too. Arguably worse. In fact, where did I say those were better?

The idea of a "Prison Architect" series of games is just conceptually wild to me. I wonder if in a hundred years this will have the same ring to it that a game like "Slave Plantation Architect" would have today. Just remarkably crass and tasteless.

This is the only realistic answer. Corporations have effectively decided that the future of the web is closed source proprietary javascript bloatware apps that are all functional skinner boxes. Many people, especially young people, have no clue how to use an actual computer. It's "click the bubble to make it pop and give us your mom's credit card number to unlock super premium bubbles." That's the future of the internet. But probably worse.

One of the litany of incredibly annoying people that make up the cesspool of "political youtube." He is, specifically, a leftist in some capacity. Maybe an anarcho-communist, maybe a syndicalist. Who knows? Probably not even him. Does a lot of debating and reacting to things.

Not gonna lie, I expected you to double down and say that Assange's comments don't actually suggest he was insinuating Seth Rich was killed for leaking information to Wikileaks. So, have an upvote I guess.

From the wikipedia article:

Unbidden, Assange brought up the case of Seth Rich. When asked directly whether Rich was a source, Assange said "we don't comment on who our sources are"

From the interview in question, Assange said (and this is a direct quote): "Wikileaks never sits on material. Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material, and often at very significant risk. There's a 27 year old that works for the DNC who was shot in the back - murdered - just a few weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington."

Then, the interviewer asks Assange: "what are you suggesting?"

Assange replies, "I am suggesting that our sources take risks..."

Like, you don't have to be a fucking Mensa member to draw a logical inference about what Assange is suggesting in regards to Sith Rich. You say "the rumors of it being Sith Rich were propagated by the long list of bad actors." One of those bad actors was Julian Assange.

busting

Very different use of busting from my perspective.

That’s just from people intentionally reading into things that weren’t there and tricking idiots into believing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#WikiLeaks_statements

Every American should go to a Bucees at least once in their lifetime. It's like a distillation of the intersection of what people in Europe think America is and how Americans also perceive their own nation.

I dunno, I guess that depends. Do they actively and publicly fuel a conspiracy theory that Trump had someone murdered like they did with the Clintons and Seth Rich?

Hillary Clinton is a corporate shill, but you have to be fucking born yesterday to think wikileaks doesn't play realpolitik or perform political favors.

The wikileaks thing is highly suspect, though. Like, wikileaks intentionally disclosed a lot of publicly damaging dirt on Clinton and the Dems at a very sensitive time in the election while not releasing ANYTHING on the GOP, even though they supposedly had that information.

"After I leave, this is going to be someone else's problem."

I prefer Stargate on Plex and praising the Lord with TempleOS.