Fleet foxes. You should check out their album called Shore. They made it during covid and it is one of the chillest and most wholesome albums to come out of lockdown. Can I Believe You is my personal favourite song on that album.

Me when I’m alone with my thoughts

It’s ironic in the sense that they consider themselves to be of superior intellect and are very stubborn in that world view. Text probably doesn’t communicate sarcasm super well, but that was what I was aiming for.

Also, I agree with you hehe.

It’s funny, because someone claimed the character designs looked good in concept and I looked it up so see if they looked better in concept, but no. Sure they are technically well drawn, but their designs still look like shit in my opinion. I don’t get a sense of character at all.

On the other hand, I came across an artist named Kevin Trentin, who had decided to have fun redesigning the characters and they look so much better the way he did them.

He even bothered to give the characters some much needed personality. Amazing.

Man, you dad must have messed up for his own kid to feel this way. O.O I hope you have other people in your life that can give you the stability and love your father couldn’t.

I’ll take your word for it when it comes to people woth moderate success. I don’t really know any myself. Knew a guy once who inherited a lot of money and he became very smug too. Also burned through most of it in no time. Mostly on stupid shit he didn’t need. I think I asked him once if he had plans to invest any of it to secure his future and he just ignored me and decided to show the electric eraser he had bought 🤣 at least he wasn’t anti-vax, but he did start babbling about the Jewish question at one point and called me small minded for telling him he was on his way down the far right pipeline.

Having anti-vax family members who are doing well financially must be next level annoying, though.

I think it’s simpler than that. Covid happened. Some people don’t like being told what to do or to feel powerless against an abstraction, so they start to make “sense” out of a situation that is too hard for them to accept.

There definitely were climate deniers way before covid, but I do think that covid set in motion a trend of contrarianism and apathy that we will have to live woth and gradually overcome for a long time. The fact that our governments and scientists did such a fantastic job at protecting us the world over has allowed these people to live in their fantasy, that covid was a hoax. I have heard all manner of reasons for why they did what they did. Big pharma wanting to get rich, lobbying for that power. Governments wanting to prime us all for fascist regimes and keeping all the power permanently. Forcing us to take the vaccine to control us and poison us. On and on and on the reasons pile on and I know for a fact that if the governments and scientists had done nothing to stop the spread and the death toll being higher than it was, these same people would have found a way to make conspiracies about governments wanting us all to die.

Some vulnerable people cannot handle adversity and will find excuses to deny the reality of their situation because it gives them a false sense of security. And once that ball starts rolling, it’s so easy to branch out to more things.

I’m sorry about your loss. Must have been an emotionally draining experience to put it mildly. :/

I think many of the people who become anti-vaxxers and covid deniers are people who struggle with a feeling of general powerlessness in their lives. Believing in a fantasy where they see the truth and everybody else is blind or stupid can give them a feeling of importance/control.

I don’t think it’s the case for absolutely everyone who belong in that conspiracy group, but those I know personally who fall for this type of shit are people who are not doing great in life already and who are very emotionally vulnerable. I am equally frustrated and sad for them because I see how they cling to their delusions while their personal lives crash around them. Financially, socially, physically. It sucks to witness. Sucks even more to talk to them about anything, really. They will take any conversation and find a way to direct the topic of conversation into their weird conspiracies. I have somewhat learned how to navigate a conversation with them, but man, it is hard sometimes. I can’t help but wonder how terrible it must be to be stuck in a mental prison of your own making. It was supposed to protect them from a reality where something as scary as a mysterious virus could suddenly collapse the world they knew and leave them completely at the mercy of scientists and politicians who are calling the shots for something you barely understand. And instead of the delusion helping you becoming less afraid, it just ends up isolating you from everybody, because nobody gets it like you do, right? They are all just trying to silence you because you are the truth sayer. It must be so fucked to have your own mind betray you and hold you hostage like that. I really hope that especially one person I know, will never start using AI chat bots, but honestly, I fear it is not a matter of if, but when they will get into that shit.

Yeah, it was Italy. It’s was so fucked to follow that shit in real time.

I’m not American either. Anti-vaxxers and covid-deniers sadly exist outside of America too. 😮‍💨

Same shit with covid. People be like “it was a hoax because most people survived” and I just stare at them with no way of knowing how to explain to these geniuses the most basic shit about hygiene and physical distance and how it affects the spread of a potent new virus.

I have a couple of family members who are nurses. One of them being my MiL. She saw the early cases of corona up close and personal and she was very, very, VERY concerned. One of the first patients was a healthy man in his early 50s who was physically active and all that good shit. His lungs were completely destroyed by Delta. Had to get a transplant to survive. Was disabled for life due to other complications caused by the virus.

Every single person I have met who thinks corona was a hoax or doesn’t take the virus seriously, are ironically also some of the least educated people on the matter. They also think they know better than medical professionals. They didn’t see what this virus was capable of because people like my MiL worked themselves to the bone to save their ungrateful asses.

So when I come across these types in the wild, I just stare at them and think my thoughts about their level of intelligence and move on with my life. Must be nice to be this fucking stupid.

I think it’s a very interesting topic in general. Very frustrating too because the important discourse is always shut down by some people who have had too much ideological cool aid. It is a shame because at the end of the day, these companies are predatory toward all of us and should not be defended as fiercely as some people are. I just want entertainment at large to produce worth while art, be it books, movies, games etc. Good stories, great characters, well made art and so on. Stuff that can move people. ❤️

How are my talking points in any way related to incels? Also, are we supposed to give them credit for nicely looking concept art when the final product looks like ass? That’s news to me.

You are confirming my point about using cheap identity politics insults to deflect from the fact that these games are made by companies that don’t give a fuck about their customers. The only area where identity politics is relevant is when these very companies use them as a shield against criticism and people like you falling for their tactic and defending shitty game design because you think only incels could have negative opinions on a game like Concord.

Backwards mindset to say that censorship will never bring good.

You okay with child porn too? How about all the naughty words that we aren’t supposed to say? Or encouragement of violence toward others? That shouldn’t be censored and removed?

And honestly, I find it disturbing to say that if people want to kill themselves, they should just do it. Most suicidal people are stuck in a very dark place mentally that they CAN get put of if they get the right amount of help. Suicide isn’t always the correct solution. In most cases it, in fact, isn’t. It can be a desperate stress induced decision in response to a very difficult period in time for someone. Something where they seek relief in the moment, vut later are grateful they either didn’t go through with it or were saved. Have been in that dark pit myself and I’m so happy I didn’t go through with it even though I wanted it all to end for years.

There indeed are areas where censorship goes overboard and that is something we will have to discuss and adjusted together in society forever as times passes. But censorship isn’t an all bad thing. It is absolutely insane to think that censorship of any kind online is bad. I don’t think you actually agree with your own statement, if you think really deeply about it. Unless of course, you have no morals or care for the safety and wellbeing of others.

Haven’t seen it, but I’ll put it on my watch list! 👍

I think Togo won in the end, because Balto and his sled team basically became freak show animals and later live museum exhibits, chained and starving, like they weren’t living creatures at all. They were later rescued and ended their days as zoo animals. After Balto died he was stuffed and put in a museum.

Meanwhile Togo and his team went on tours, were given gold medals, continuing their lives as sled dogs and Togo got to retire in a nice kennel where he was bred and lived well until he was euthanized at the age of 16 due to health complications.

Don’t feel bad for Togo. He may have been largely forgotten to history, but he sure as shit won the life lottery compared to Balto.

The issue for me is that the character designs in western games are just ugly and bad designs. That doesn’t mean that all the characters have to be hot and sexy. You can have unconventionally attractive or even unattractive characters that are still appealing to look at because they are designed well. There is an art to a well designed character. Not a game reference, but a good example of a well designed and unattractive character in entertainment is Long John Silver in Treasure Planet. Nearly everything about his design is unsexy, but he is still appealing to look at because the character has soul, his design tells a story about him, his ambitions and the humanity he has, but tries to suppress. He has a recognizable silhouette, his color palette is earthy and warm, the contrast between the dark of his pirate hat + coat against the white of his shirt tells us that he is complicated, has both good and bad in him. Often when he hangs out with Jim alone, the dark hat and coat are nowhere to be seen and he’s mostly wearing white. His shape is round and soft, often a shape related to kind ans trustworthy characters. His hat and coat have sharp edges, the hat is literally a triangle, a shape that we subconsciously associate with danger. He is both a father figure, a safe person for Jim to lean on, but he’s also treacherous and dangerous. He is a cyborg, half machine, half doghuman or whatever he’s supposed to be haha. Warm and soft, and cold and mechanical. That is such a brilliant design for a character who is somewhat of an anti-hero.

With some of the shit I have seen coming out of gaming in recent years, it’s not just that the characters are physically unattractive, it’s that the clothes and color palettes they have been settled with is as unappealing as possible as well. To the point where it’s nonsensical to look at. I don’t get a sense of the character’s history or personality when I look at many of these designs. It looks slapped together. Concord was a great example of ugly af designs that felt entirely void of personality and purpose. Colors were clashing, silhouettes were nonsensical and the clothes didn’t fit together at all and communicated nothing about the character to the player. Many of the characters also had the same mid value if you turned on the graycale. No contrast anywhere. So dull to look at.

I know people desperately want to perpetuate the narrative that gamers just hate these types of designs because they are stupid incels who want to wank to the characters in game, but that is and has always been an intellectually lazy argument used to dismiss fair criticism.

You can have ugly characters that are well designed. Most of the ugly designs we see coming out of western gaming are barely designs. It is what happens when you press a randomizer button and purposefully look for the ugliest result as possible.

I heard a theory that they do this on purpose to give players incentives to purchase better looking skins which would not surprise me in the slightest. The games industry has become so predatory and lazy in the past ten years that it honestly deserves to fail. The fact that they get to hide behind political correctness and blame the criticism from their customers on racism, sexism and whatever other ism is out there is nothing more than a pathetic deflection from the real issue. They treat their customers like brain dead consumers who should be shamed for demanding a better product and they use minority groups as a shield against valid criticism.

It is pathetic. Even more pathetic that so many people are falling for this marketing tactic, that permeates almost all of the entertainment industry. It is shameful.

Didn’t they also get exposed for having fake therapists? Like people who just applied for the role of therapist, but weren’t in any way verified? It’s been years, but that was the first controversy I heard about with them and it was all over youtube. The fact that they are still making sponsorship deals with creators and everybosy has just seemed to accept them without a thought is super concerning to me.

Yeah. There seem to be a lot of people like him in politics these days. They will drop their bombs on our lives and we will have to clean up their messes afterwards. I guess this is what happens when humans become too comfortable 😅

I knew (and still know) fuck all about British politics so most of what I know about UKIP came from the lolcow corner of the internet, where we were all just eating our popcorn while watching the shitshow. All I know is that before Sargon joined UKIP it seemed to be talked about as an actual serious political party and after Sargon joined, it became a total clownshow in media.

Glad to hear that to those who are savvy in British politics, farage was seen as a clown already. Still too bad that he succeeded in screwing over the UK and then peaced out when the consequences came his way. I’m sure it’ll be the same with trump, if he lives long enough until next election, lol.

Sounds like I didn’t miss out.

They should have done the Mike Flanagan thing and have a new story, new characters, new scenario that relates to the 80s nostalgia theme and built on that. They could have done something really awesome with old 80s nostalgia and bended the genre like Flanagan did with old horror classics.

He wasn’t even alone. Count Dankula also joined, and later left because he found the party to be unserious and cringe. He made a video about it at one point. I don’t agree with Dankula about every opinion he has, but I do find him to be smarter and more level-headed than most of his peers.

Sargon of Akkad went from being a youtuber who was a bit full of himself, to getting a minor god complex once he joined UKIP and spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to impress the infamous internet troll Mister Metokur, which is a whole saga in its own right. It was fucking hilarious to follow in real time.

Meanwhile, the press did what the press does and dug up all kinds of stupid shit that sargon had been saying over the years and, well, he quickly became a liability.

I had been pretty pissed with Sargon since the Candid scandal that most people seem to have forgotten since, so I was just enjoying the show, watching this dumbass making an utter fool of himself. I think a lot of UKIP’s bad press and failure as a party can be traced back to Sargon because when he joined the party, they were still somewhat seen as a respectable party that you could take seriously even if you disagreed with their politics. After sargon, they were seen as a clown show and I also think Farage left the party shortly after - unless I’m misremembering. It’s been awhile.

I don’t watch reality TV because I have the internet and it’s lolcows. The fact that these politicians allowed sargon of akkad into their party without doing a proper background check is fucking insane 🤣 they allowed him and Dankula in their party to catch the attention and support of their followers and they paid dearly for that, lol. In ignorant theory, it seems like a good idea to try and utilize influencers to further your party’s cause and reach a younger crowd - potentially - but back then, politicians did not understand internet culture nor how fucking insane it is. Overall, politicians seem a tiny bit more aware today, but they are still not getting it. That mixing brain dead entertainers with your cause could possibly backfire. Especially if your party appeals to the more reckless among us in society.

Of course, there could be many more factors as to why Farage decided to leave UKIP and for the party kinda falling apart at the seams other than just Sargon, but it is incredible how fast shit hit the fan after thel let Sargon join their party. Everybody who knew about Sargon knew that this was gonna end badly and we were all there for it. Rightwingers as well as leftwingers. Joined in harmony, laughing at the circus.

Somehow still more entertaining than when Kanye West hired Nick Fuentes and Milo Yiannopoulos as his campaign managers.

At some point you can’t do anything but laugh.

If you’re experiencing that amount of physical pain in your 30s, you need to exercise more, my friend.

I had 2 years of inactivity due to an intense workload and my physical health plummeted. Have been going on regular walks and eating better the past two months and I feel like I de-aged from a senior citizen to my actual age.

Also, stretching helps A LOT when it comes to stiffness and soreness. Don’t underestimate the wonders of stretching.

You don’t have to live in misery like that. Would can work on it, my friend! 🤗