CuriousCat Archive Page 162 of 202

  1. What is it about American Horror Story that appeals to you a lot?

    you asked Shannon this question

  2. Do you ever get bummed thinking about how governments and politics can never truly be solved and that people will always be struggling against ideas to abuse power

    While I suspect that's true, I have only ever known a society where people are incentivized to compete for power and privilege. I think it's dangerous to assume what our culture asks of us is human nature when we've never experienced any other kind of culture.

  3. Is there a point where capitalism could still exist in the world and you'd be ok with it? What would that look like?

    I'm never going to be "okay" with capitalism, but my attitude about it has always been "it's what I have to work with." Until such time that I know how to replace it, we can at least make it less awful. In the 50's we had a highly regulated market and steep taxes on the wealthy, and it did a lot of good for our country. I would obviously be happier if we had that again. It doesn't solve the problems of capitalism, and it would just be a ticking clock til capital found a way to erode regulation and get taxes lowered, but things would be better for a while. And we'd maybe be in a better place to enact more radical change if we didn't have to hustle every day just to get by.

  4. What is your kongsona (rules: pick an adjective ending in -y or -ie and then follow it up with the word Kong)

    no

  5. Old comment but needs clarity: Why doesn't the left give us a charitable look at the shirt? Your community is full of "yeah we ain't stupid" and similar comments of how Crowder was somehow slipping in a subliminal anti-gay message. Do y'all even know the history of Che Guevara and how he died at La Higuera (or THE F***ING FIG TREE)? I don't need a therapist to know the shirt says figs. I have a brain.

    in response to The shirt says figs. Change my mind.

    Sell this nonsense someplace else. And get two therapists.

  6. So presumably we believe that Iran is entitled to station a powerful surveillance drone right next to *our* border to spy on us? And that if we should shoot it down, they’d be within their rights to consider attacking our military installations?

    Never Play Defense, mate.

  7. So, how would the transition work?

    in response to Hi there. I've rewritten this a few times and it's become too long and emotional so I'm stripping away all of that. Apologies if this is overly clinical. I own my own business: an independent coffee and food store in the heart of a university town. I employ six students who work a variety of hours, depending on university availability. I pay them slightly above living wage (£9.50/hour, often £3 over what I could pay them) because their schedules and seeking education means they can't work as many hours. I also have more employees because of that. I'm told, by my accountant, this is bad business sense. I also have three full-time employees, who open and close the store (often with me, sometimes without), partake in training. Two of them are former students who dropped out; the other is the daughter of a friend. They are currently paid £14.75/hour, WELL over what they could be paid. Significantly so. I take home about £31k a year — less than my wife (a teacher) makes, and with considerably more outgoings (loans for starting the business; rent; faculties; supplies and upkeep). Is the situation you describe only for larger businesses? Because I could not feasibly keep my shop afloat, especially trying to be fair to my workers, if I had to split my own take home more fairly with my full-time employees, never mind the part-time workers. Labour co-ops work for big businesses, but there's no way of me being able to guarantee (at this point) that I can make enough money for me, my kids, at the outset if I buy into that form of association company. Labour co-ops distribute equal income to all owners, and I AM the only owner, and I couldn't afford elevating even my three full-time employees to owners. Additionally, and this is where it becomes kind of emotional regardless of how much I strip it down: I don't really want to. I take care of my workers, but I invested so much worry and stress and exhaustion in building it... So this discussion of Mojang feels retroactive. Of course I feel that companies who can distribute £8mil/year to every employee should do that... but it doesn't work on the smaller scale that most people have. Or is this not about small businesses? Only the larger ones? Sorry for how long this is. The discourse on large, influential, genre-reshaping companies get so much attention, but it feels like such an easy target because of how big the numbers are.

    If you're asking for my airtight plan for a socialist revolution: buddy, if I had one you would've heard about it.

  8. Have you thought about further addressing the Democrats' issues with focusing on process? Have you heard the Defending Liberalism episode of the Chris Hayes' podcast "Why Is This Happening" and, if so, what thoughts do you have about it?

    I haven't heard that podcast. What more on that subject would you like me to say?

  9. why do you answer questions on your curious cat so much more frequently than most other youtubers

    I've noticed that people tend to answer fewer questions the more famous they get. The other YouTubers I know have ten to twenty times as many followers on CC as me. I can just pop in now and again and tick off whatever's new, but bigger channels have to sift through dozens if not hundreds every time they log in, and probably a lot more of them are in bad faith. It just stops being worth it. It'll probably happen to me one of these days.

  10. What are you reading for entertainment? Aside from Samuel R. Delany, what science fiction/fantasy writers do you enjoy?

    in response to what does your every day look like? I don't mean to impose, or feel like I'm trying to see if my money is well spent!! I really love and appreciate your work, and support you on Patreon (only $1/month, I'm sorry, I spread across multiple creators and budget $10/month for it). but I just wonder: what do your days look like professionally? not interested in your personal life (sorry! I'm sure you prefer it that way too), but when do you write, how often do you read, do scripts come together over the course of a period of time? do you write in gDocs, or Word, or on paper? do you storyboard your videos?) Sorry if this is weird. I'd just like to know how the Playbook sausage is made!

    Right now I'm reading The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and I just finished Vurt by Jeff Noon.

    I've spent a really long time reading almost exclusively non-fiction, so it's been good getting back to novels.

  11. what does your every day look like? I don't mean to impose, or feel like I'm trying to see if my money is well spent!! I really love and appreciate your work, and support you on Patreon (only $1/month, I'm sorry, I spread across multiple creators and budget $10/month for it). but I just wonder: what do your days look like professionally? not interested in your personal life (sorry! I'm sure you prefer it that way too), but when do you write, how often do you read, do scripts come together over the course of a period of time? do you write in gDocs, or Word, or on paper? do you storyboard your videos?)

    Sorry if this is weird. I'd just like to know how the Playbook sausage is made!

    in response to were there games you choose to watch a playthrough of over playing?

    I've always said "mine is a life that resists routine," but lately I've been looking into *how much* routine it can sustain. I've been trying to do a *some* work on multiple things every day, instead of hyperfocusing on a single thing until it's done and neglecting everything else in the process. I've also been trying to take weekends for the first time in ages. This means work is going steadily on many things but none of them are going very quickly, which is stressing me out. The system still needs some tinkering, but I do think it's increased my productivity and happiness.

    So, right now the target is to a) get some exercise, b) read one chapter of a research book, c) read one chapter of a recreational book, and d) work on the current video every weekday. Things get shuffled around depending on workload/energy/other obligations, but it most commonly shakes out as exercising in the morning, reading the recreational book while I catch my breath from the workout, putting in some hours on the video in the afternoon, and doing research in the evening.

    if I'm in the writing phase of a video, I might ride my bike to the library and write there and get exercise on the way. When I'm in the editing phase, I have to stay home with my desktop, which means I usually have to find some excuse to leave the house at some point or I get cabin fever. Sometimes weekends are just R & R, but I'm testing the idea of working on fun projects a bit on weekends (doing some writing today, and it's kinda nice).

    Overall, this is still really rocky and inconsistent. I don't think I've fully stuck to the plan for a full week so far, but it's still new, and I've had a lot of Normal Life Shit getting in the way. The way I used to do things was just write until the script was done, then work long editing days til the video was done, usually get crunched trying to finish before the end of the month, then try to squeeze a little reading in before starting the next script. And it just wasn't very good, so I'm trying this other thing now.

  12. Hi there. I've rewritten this a few times and it's become too long and emotional so I'm stripping away all of that. Apologies if this is overly clinical.

    I own my own business: an independent coffee and food store in the heart of a university town. I employ six students who work a variety of hours, depending on university availability. I pay them slightly above living wage (£9.50/hour, often £3 over what I could pay them) because their schedules and seeking education means they can't work as many hours. I also have more employees because of that. I'm told, by my accountant, this is bad business sense.

    I also have three full-time employees, who open and close the store (often with me, sometimes without), partake in training. Two of them are former students who dropped out; the other is the daughter of a friend. They are currently paid £14.75/hour, WELL over what they could be paid. Significantly so.

    I take home about £31k a year — less than my wife (a teacher) makes, and with considerably more outgoings (loans for starting the business; rent; faculties; supplies and upkeep). Is the situation you describe only for larger businesses? Because I could not feasibly keep my shop afloat, especially trying to be fair to my workers, if I had to split my own take home more fairly with my full-time employees, never mind the part-time workers.

    Labour co-ops work for big businesses, but there's no way of me being able to guarantee (at this point) that I can make enough money for me, my kids, at the outset if I buy into that form of association company. Labour co-ops distribute equal income to all owners, and I AM the only owner, and I couldn't afford elevating even my three full-time employees to owners. Additionally, and this is where it becomes kind of emotional regardless of how much I strip it down: I don't really want to. I take care of my workers, but I invested so much worry and stress and exhaustion in building it...

    So this discussion of Mojang feels retroactive. Of course I feel that companies who can distribute £8mil/year to every employee should do that... but it doesn't work on the smaller scale that most people have. Or is this not about small businesses? Only the larger ones?

    Sorry for how long this is. The discourse on large, influential, genre-reshaping companies get so much attention, but it feels like such an easy target because of how big the numbers are.

    in response to In an imaginary world where Notch split the revenue evenly among all employees of Mojang at every point along the way, each of the 25 employees would have still made ~9 million USD in 2013. In that (very fictional) case which ignores Mojang outsourcing the Xbox 360 port, who is being exploited? I'm struggling to figure this out for goods where reproduction requires almost no labor. Perhaps the consumer and producers of other video games? Did Mojang have what amounted to a monopoly?

    This is not about what companies, big or small, should do under capitalism, it's about what's wrong with capitalism. The fact that you literally *cannot afford* to let your workers share equally in the product of their labor is the problem I'm discussing. In my ideal world, we don't ask people individually to restructure their businesses to be more equitable; we restructure our economy to make that the default for every business, and make is safe and affordable.

    Until such time as my ideal world exists, all we can ask of people is to do their best within a flawed system. And you are doing more than most.

  13. Well, I suppose it did raise money, but also a lot of public figures and/or random people looking for attention used it as an excuse to just dump ice on their head. A lot of those people didn't donate, or if they did, they got far more attention for the ice dumping and that didn't inspire many donations. So for a great portion of the internet, it became far more about the ice than about raising awareness for ALS.

    It kinda feels like if that subset of people doing the challenge for the sake of the attention and novelty, rather than because they actually care about the issue, weren't there, it might have raised just about as much money, just without creating as much of an internet buzz. I'm not saying the efforts to raise money were in themselves lacking meaning, more that the memeing of the challenge deprived it of its meaning for much of the audience that witnessed it.

    Thoughts?

    in response to Was there any meaning to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

    The ice bucket challenge was invented to be memeable. Like... the whole point was to get people to do it for attention, but have them unavoidably promote a good cause in the process. And it worked; charities earned twice what they normally earn in the same period. It feels like you're seeing a philosophical downside here that has no material consequence? I tend not to worry about those.

  14. Conventions: Have you been to or thought about going to Arisia?

    Thought, yes. Been to, no.

  15. What if curious cat as a service made you think you were answering questions to several people from across the world but it turned out it was just actually a single cat who just wanted somebody to talk to

    Now and then someone will spam the same question to, like, all the BreadTubers on CC. It happens fairly regularly. Obviously each round of duplicate questions is from the same person, but I often wonder if it's the same person EVERY TIME. Like it's not a think people do, it's just a thing this one person does, multiple times a month.

    Makes you think.

  16. Have you ever ridden a horse if so how large?

    pretty average horse size

  17. In an imaginary world where Notch split the revenue evenly among all employees of Mojang at every point along the way, each of the 25 employees would have still made ~9 million USD in 2013.

    In that (very fictional) case which ignores Mojang outsourcing the Xbox 360 port, who is being exploited? I'm struggling to figure this out for goods where reproduction requires almost no labor.

    Perhaps the consumer and producers of other video games? Did Mojang have what amounted to a monopoly?

    in response to What is your answer to these tho?

    Let's walk it through: if splitting the funds equally between all employees addresses exploitation, what is the exploitation? The benefits of that labor were not equally distributed. So, if equalizing the money helps with that, we can then ask: what other benefits are unequal? In this scenario, Notch still had unequal authority, and his employees only got a fair cut because of his goodwill, and have no guarantee that would happen again in the future. Notch had unequal attention, and got to be the face of the company and get all the speaking fees for lectures. Notch probably had a lot of stock options his employees didn't have.

    If all those things were addressed and divided evenly among the employees, then you have yourself a labor co-op, which is exactly the kind of thing socialists advocate for to prevent exploitation.

  18. So I feel like I've been seeing even more youtubers coming out about their experiences being stalked than usual, and I wanted to ask what your thoughts and experiences as content creator are with this? Also do you have any guidelines on how fans should go about engaging with content creators they like?

    I'm a straight, cis, white man who rarely talks about his private life or appears on camera. So privilege and conscious impediments to parasocial relationships have spared me the worst of what the internet has to offer. I came into this gig with an intense skepticism of fame, and have tried to keep my audience at a a healthy, mutually-appreciative, respectful distance. And before I made Why Are You So Angry I locked down all my accounts with password managers and two-factor authentication. When I started the Alt-Right Playbook, a few people tried to doxx me, which is horrible and nerve-wracking. But so far it's only been to threaten me; it's never crossed into people showing up at my house or fixating on me online.

    I don't want to imply any of this is reasonable. I'm one of the lucky ones, and I still have shit no one should have to deal with. The main reason I haven't had my life ruined is because no one's tried that hard, and, if they did, they would probably succeed eventually. It's really not OK.

  19. Got any ideas for dealing with 13-year-olds that seem like they're headed down an alt-right sort of path? Subscribed to pewdiepie, obsessed with shitposting, into "ironic" bigotry, etc. I don't think these kiddos are a lost cause, but I also don't know how to make sure this is a phase that they grow out of. Some will grow out of it on their own, sure, but some won't. And a lot of alt-right rhetoric is designed to draw people in and keep their minds from being changed, which is especially effective on kids who are new to this whole 'debate' thing and don't have the experience to tell the difference between actual logic and logical fallacy. Got any ideas for how we can prevent today's shitposting tweens from becoming swastika-waving, slur-spitting adults?

    The nice thing about 13-year-olds is they don't have a lot of agency yet. If you're in a position of authority, you can tell them what to do. I'd recommend against appealing to them with rational argument and just compel them to be around people who *aren't* cishet white men. Bring them to events, groups, communities, etc. that are diverse by design, ideally ones where they don't have freedom to mouth off. Kids are very empathetic, and it gets a lot harder to dehumanize people once you've met with them. If they're in an environment where civility is necessary to get by without embarrassing themselves, they learn civility pretty quickly.

    No guarantees, obviously, but I've read these are the techniques groups like Life After Hate use to help teens exit white supremacy.

  20. were there games you choose to watch a playthrough of over playing?

    I have watched Let's Plays of the entire Uncharted series.

    Keep in mind I only have a Mac and a Switch. Anything I think has interesting design, or is culturally significant, or just in some way compelling to me I might watch an LP of. But these days I don't really have the time.

  21. I'm curious about your thoughts re: the new COD game and the way it's marketing the nostalgia for the old single player games

    After my video on Advanced Warfare, I have no more thoughts on Call of Duty. COD was the standard bearer for the modern on-rails content-munching jingoistic military spectacle shooter. That was What Games Were at that moment. Now What Games Are is a Ubisoft open world game. COD was only ever interesting to me as a cultural object, and now that culture has moved on it's just a game series I don't play.

  22. Was there any meaning to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

    It raised a bunch of money and awareness for ALS. What else did you expect it to do?

  23. hey I just wanna say sorry for having a handful of people pressure you to create all the answers like a wizard, your hard work alone is already so substantial and appreciated. sorry that isn't an actual question LOL. does your moniker mean u plan on owning any real studios?

    thanks! provided "studios" includes "sole proprietorship," yes.

  24. I think this question also misses what made PragerU successful: the massive financial resources pumped into its production and advertising, no?

    in response to A suggestion that I've seen thrown around from time to time on reddit is the production of what's often pitched as an "anti-PragerU" channel of sorts, where a collective of leftist individuals all come together to write, record and produce a video series presenting leftist ideas in a manner that mimics the PragerU channel model. Such a channel, it's supposed, might be more consistently effective than a channel of one person (or two people) working to produce content that is longer and of higher quality, but less consistently frequent and therefore less appealing to the algorithm, and in particular to viewers who gravitate more towards shorter, bite-sized content broken up into smaller videos. Do you think that is feasible and would work?

    We can't compete with their advertising budget, but their production is garbage. And BreadTube may generate more impressions collectively than PragerU can buy.

  25. Warren stalling and not willingly supporting M4A is a huge stumbling block for me. I don't understand why she is so willing to address the exploitation in other areas, and not one which is actively harming the greatest number of vulnerable people. Big business causes problems; capitalism causes problems; but health care is utterly ruinous to millions of people. Do you have any idea why she might be unwilling to support M4A?

    Breaking up Facebook has significantly less impact on actual lives than fixing the broken mess that is the US' healthcare system.

    in response to If the nomination and election were to occur tomorrow, is there any candidate you would be actively happy to vote for, or would it be a reluctant "anyone but Trump" situation regardless of the dem candidate?

    Where does this "Warren doesn't support Medicare for All" meme come from?

    https://twitter.com/search?l=&q=medicare%20for%20all%20from%3Aewarren&src=typd

  26. If the nomination and election were to occur tomorrow, is there any candidate you would be actively happy to vote for, or would it be a reluctant "anyone but Trump" situation regardless of the dem candidate?

    I'd be quite happy to vote for Warren. I'd be more mixed on Sanders, but still overall happy.

    In the end, I'm "anyone but Trump" in the election and "anyone but Biden" in the primaries.

  27. A suggestion that I've seen thrown around from time to time on reddit is the production of what's often pitched as an "anti-PragerU" channel of sorts, where a collective of leftist individuals all come together to write, record and produce a video series presenting leftist ideas in a manner that mimics the PragerU channel model. Such a channel, it's supposed, might be more consistently effective than a channel of one person (or two people) working to produce content that is longer and of higher quality, but less consistently frequent and therefore less appealing to the algorithm, and in particular to viewers who gravitate more towards shorter, bite-sized content broken up into smaller videos.

    Do you think that is feasible and would work?

    I've had that idea, sort of a renegade Crash Course on progressive/lefty ideas. I think we could probably get a supergroup of BreadTubers to each contribute a few bite-sized videos from their area of expertise. It's just a matter of finding the time to write and curriculum-build and plan around schedules and vet potential contributors, and I'm not long on free time these days. :-/

  28. Should the left acquire some of that Tribal Enthusiasm? I worry that it would be necessary to win elections in the US, but worry it could get co opted or fail to establish policies the movement desires

    in response to Is there something to be said about endorsements and enthusiasm from interest groups on the left and the right? Like how to evangelical organizations, the NRA, and pro-life groups, Trump is the MOST CHRISTIAN, the MOST PRO GUN, the MOST PRO LIFE, even though it’s clear he doesn’t really care that much about those things (take the guns first then due process later) but orgs associated like labor unions give more tepid and perfunctory endorsements, and never really go to the mat for flawed candidates like Hillary Clinton?

    I dunno. I'm skeptical of tribalism in all its forms, but maybe that's a little kneejerk of me. If someone pitched me on a way to lean into tribalist thinking in an ethical, hard-to-appropriate way, I'd listen intently.

  29. Hey, have you thought about doing another melee video? I'd love to see a follow up considering Wizzrobe's Falcon win and Axe's Pikachu win.

    I ponder miniature videos about Smash from time to time, but I don't have anything that excites me enough to jump in on. I put all my most interesting thoughts into the video I already released.

  30. Do you think a hot-dog counts as a sandwich? Why or why not?

    Wait til the next video.

  31. Should efforts be made to reclaim Pepe from alt-right circles now that they seem to be more interested in Clowns or would the effort be too great for something rather petty and probably just enable alt right folks from entering leftist spaces more easily

    Efforts have already been made. They weren't effective. Maybe there are better ways to go about it, but reactionary politics are like cancer: they mutate faster than healthy cells. They will probably co-opt our efforts faster than we can co-opt theirs. So unless we come in with a good strategy, I don't think anything's going to work, and there may be better places to put that energy.

  32. is Gritty the leftist Pepe

    no

  33. This is an honest question: you support legalizing weed, do you support legalizing other drugs, like cocaine or heroin for example? I feel like people who are addicted to things like that deserve treatment and rehabilitation, but I don't think it'd be a smart idea to let businesses start selling crack to people, but I also recognize drug dealers active currently don't have the same interests in mind as businesses would. How does one balance giving help to people who need it against people who would exploit the market in their favor?

    I am softly in favor of across-the-board decriminalization, though I don't know what the best way to implement it is. I'm no fan of corporations peddling heroin the way they already peddle cigarettes, but a lot fewer people would get shot or imprisoned.

  34. Why not simply redirect the people asking you these questions to the writings of other people who have voiced more substantial opinions on the matter?

    in response to I know you don’t have solutions for talking to the Alt-Right (the closest I’ve come up with is to turn their rhetoric against them, which leftists sometimes do in the case of reclaiming slurs, but rhetoric-reversal is a dangerous rabbit hole) but are there solutions for keeping “centrists” from falling into fashy traps? You briefly mention “talking past the Alt-Right” in your intro video; can this be used to keep centrists from delving right at the first sign of necessary political stance?

    If I knew people with better answers, I'd be sharing them.

    Do you know who has answers? Can you share them with me?

  35. I know you don’t have solutions for talking to the Alt-Right (the closest I’ve come up with is to turn their rhetoric against them, which leftists sometimes do in the case of reclaiming slurs, but rhetoric-reversal is a dangerous rabbit hole) but are there solutions for keeping “centrists” from falling into fashy traps? You briefly mention “talking past the Alt-Right” in your intro video; can this be used to keep centrists from delving right at the first sign of necessary political stance?

    I know you mean well, but I am running out of interesting ways to say "I am giving you all the solutions I know."

    I don't have answers that I'm keeping to myself. I'm not building dramatic tension. I have some stuff I haven't articulated because they're slated for videos, and I need to research and interrogate them further before sharing them with others. They also generally require more space than I can fit on Curious Cat. When I know how to convert a reactionary, or divert a centrist from going down the wrong path, I promise I will tell you.

    I am a guy reading books and articles, and I don't even read that quickly. If you want answers faster than I can come up with them, please, read something I *haven't* read and tell me about it, or make a video, or write an article I can read. Please don't wait on me to give you answers when you could help me find them. I'm not that special.

  37. Do you have any thoughts on how to be offensive against the alt-right? rather than just sit around waiting to make a response video to something they say. Something we can do aggressive to destroy them?

    in response to You've focused a lot on defensive techniques against the alt-right. Those videos have been both very informative and very helpful, but ultimately a leftist movement will need to not just prevent the right from making converts, but to convince people of its own ideas. The best solution to a bad idea is a good idea, but contrary to the liberal fantasy, good ideas will not spread just because they are better. Do you have any techniques or resources on how to do that? Are you planning on making videos about that in the future?

    I am giving you all the solutions I know.

  38. What are people with (((three parenthesis))) around their handles trying to say about themselves?

    The (((echo))) parentheses are an anti-semitic meme on the Far Right. They throw them around any name they think sounds Jewish. So a lot of Jewish people put them around their own names to appropriate and defang the meme, and to signify that they are unashamed of being Jewish. There may be other connotations as well, but you'd have to google it or ask a Jewish person.

  39. Do you think BreadTube is better off with individual channels or is there benefit in joining together in one channel team?

    There is probably a lot of benefit to conscious organization, I just don't know what form it should take. I feel like everybody's nervous to pull the trigger because they don't know who to work with or what to work towards.

  40. You've focused a lot on defensive techniques against the alt-right. Those videos have been both very informative and very helpful, but ultimately a leftist movement will need to not just prevent the right from making converts, but to convince people of its own ideas. The best solution to a bad idea is a good idea, but contrary to the liberal fantasy, good ideas will not spread just because they are better. Do you have any techniques or resources on how to do that? Are you planning on making videos about that in the future?

    I am giving you all the solutions I know.

  41. Do you think you’ll ever do a video about climate change? Or more specifically the rhetoric that climate change deniers use and how it works in conversation?

    The rhetoric to deny climate change isn't *that* unique; it's based on the same rhetoric they use to deny any science that doesn't agree with their worldview. I have some thoughts for a video about climate change, and some thoughts about rhetoric that may use climate denialism as a reference point, but no current plan to do a video just about denialism.

  42. But why be like Keanu? Among all guys in this universe

    in response to why is everyone into keanu reeves? he's just a regular guy

    he's kind, dedicated, passionate about his work, and so far hasn't been a creep

    it's a low bar very few men clear

  43. So what motivated you to produce the alt-right playbook?

    I wanted to understand the problems we're facing and share my conclusions with people as I came to them.

  44. What do you think of banning fossil fuels?

    It depends on how we go about it, but I'm in favor as a long-term goal.

  45. So there's an article going around about the question "Can stories be apolitical", and in response Chris Avellone said that it's wrong to "push an agenda or point of view in your game" because he "view games as entertainment" and "doesn't want game to be a pulpit". This, coming from a guy who wrote Fallout, with the explicit message that war is bad, who's widely known for having a character being the mouthpiece for his rants... Even ignoring the blatant hypocrisy, why does "taking a stance" seem so scary for some author? Is it because they're privilege enough to be so divorced from real life politics that "dictating what's right and wrong" become too radical for them?

    I have seen the push among a lot of high-minded creatives - usually those with a lot of privilege - against taking any specific stances on things, but rather to raise a lot of interesting ideas and let the audience sort out how they feel. It usually equates taking a stance with "telling the audience what to think." I see this a lot in games specifically, where people argue that, because games are systems and the player has agency, they should be avenues to *explore* possibilities, and should be especially open to the player coming to conclusions the author couldn't anticipate. I think Avellone is equating "politics" with "telling the player what conclusion they should draw," which is wrong; his games are obviously political. But, if his criticism is not of politics but of didacticism, then... well, he's still wrong.

    I think I've said this before but don't feel like digging it up: taking a stand is not telling the audience what to think, it's telling the audience what *you* think. If you raise a lot of politically-charged subject matter and never take a position, you don't give the audience the chance to disagree with you. It's not bold, it's cowardly, raising complex issues and letting the audience assume your point is whatever they happen to agree with. The idea that the audience is coerced into agree with explicit opinions is nonsense; its the implicit ones that are most influential. And the implicit ones are the ones you can't take out.

  46. so, I've gone through a lot of Crowder fan replies in Maza's tweet about Crowder's fake apology, and I recognized a pattern, a lot of replies tended to emphasize "it's just a joke", (as if Maza didn't know it was) and I feel like that line of arguing infers that jokes can't exist to make a point, or that jokes can permit any point ever. on top of just being very blatant goalpost shifting. I think dissecting this line of arguing could make a very informative video topic. thoughts?

    I have some scattered thoughts about the general disdain for sincerity you see on the Right, and among "edgy" people in general, and how something being "satirical" or "ironic" or "just a joke" means it is instantly acceptable, whereas any honest opinion is treated with suspicion, to the point where the default is "irony = authenticity."

    But I don't know where this will end up, and I have suspicions it's all been said already about South Park.

  47. do you think the centrist playbook & the "apolitical" playbook largely intersect? or would you say they're uniquely distinct?

    I don't think any playbook is uniquely distinct. A playbook is just a collection of techniques that anyone can use; what distinguishes one playbook from another is not the individual methods but the sum total, the specific arrangement of techniques that differs from everyone else's arrangement, and how these techniques play off each other, and what they're in service of. The main similarities between being "apolitical" and being "centrist" is that they both usually claim to be impartial while clearly favoring one side over the other in practice, and they both insist that neutrality is both possible and desirable (it is neither).

  48. Axe is just won a major. What are your thoughts on that and 2019 Melee as a whole?

    Think Armada retiring has had the biggest effect on the meta I've seen since I started watching Smash, and it makes me wonder how much of Hungrybox's ascent depended on just being able to beat Armada and relying on Armada to thin out the rest of the bracket. A year ago, Axe couldn't have made it to Grand Finals without going up against either Hbox or Armada; now it's possible to avoid both. Similarly, Wizzy would have had to face either Armada or Axe (his personal demon); now he can avoid both.

    Armada was the wall between gods and demigods, and now that wall is gone. Anything can happen.

  49. The only place where gender critical feminists and far right assholes happen to have some similarities is in not blindly accepting trans people unquestioningly. And even then, most of us don't believe in violence or bigotry towards trans individuals like rightwingers. The idea that we are buddy-buddy with fascists is completely ridiculous.

    "Gender critical feminists" take money from the Christian Right: https://www.transadvocate.com/fake-radical-feminist-group-actually-paid-political-front-for-anti-lgbt-james-dobson-organization_n_20207.htm

    "Gender critical feminists" oppose abortion: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXi-szqXUAA05Jh.jpg:large

    "Gender critical feminists" dismiss rape victims and oppose #MeToo: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/02/opinions/germaine-greer-comments-on-rape-thomas/index.html

    "Gender critical feminists" go on Tucker Carlson: https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/02/26/right-wing-media-and-think-tanks-are-aligning-fake-feminists-who-dehumanize-trans-people/222955

    "Gender critical feminists" align with the Far Right Heritage Foundation: https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/01/31/Anti-trans-activists-from-the-Left-joined-right-wing-Heritage-Foundation-to-rail-against-t/222715

    I think you've got a lot in common with the Right, TERF.

  50. The latter. Heads of state don't typically prosecute people themselves.

    in response to Hi there. Kamala Harris has said that, if she becomes president, she would likely pursue criminal obstruction of justice charges against Trump. I'm, like everyone, in the camp that Trump should face criminal prosecution — but is an elected official, not the re-establishment of an independent DoJ, going after a political opponent really the way to go about it? I really don't like this, and prefer Warren's take — attempts by politicians to deal with Trump should be political. Do you have any thoughts?

    So... yeah.

  51. why is everyone into keanu reeves?

    he's just a regular guy

    we wish regular guys were like Keanu

  52. Hi there. Kamala Harris has said that, if she becomes president, she would likely pursue criminal obstruction of justice charges against Trump. I'm, like everyone, in the camp that Trump should face criminal prosecution — but is an elected official, not the re-establishment of an independent DoJ, going after a political opponent really the way to go about it?

    I really don't like this, and prefer Warren's take — attempts by politicians to deal with Trump should be political.

    Do you have any thoughts?

    I mean... is Harris saying she's going to prosecute Trump personally? Or just that she'll make sure prosecution happens?

  53. Am I crazy in thinking that the Nazis in Detroit want us talking bad about the police, want us painting the police in a bad light and on their side? Am I crazy in thinking this is exactly the optics they were going for?

    I'm bisexual. This affects me and people I love who are trans and nonbinary. Ot seems like we need to both take a stand against the Nazis and support each other and rally our allies and we need to take control of the conversation and make it "the police were there to protect the LGBTQA+ people from a group that they could not stop from going." Yes, police have been and still are sometimes violent with us. Yes, they have been infiltrated. But if we can control the optics here and make their presence for us for a change (and we can) then shouldn't we

    We don't want to force the police onto the Nazis side. Or let them stay there when we can bring them over

    I don't have much right to tell people how to manage Pride. It's not my place. But I can say, from what queer history I know, that appealing to the better natures of cops hasn't worked out.

  54. Did you even have an edge lord phase?

    I definitely made edgy jokes with my friends as a teenager, but nothing close to what we consider "edgelord."

  55. Where is the line when someone is too right wing to be your friend and you cut them off?

    when interacting with them ceases to be a net positive

  56. Thank you so much for answering!

    in response to Is there something to be said about endorsements and enthusiasm from interest groups on the left and the right? Like how to evangelical organizations, the NRA, and pro-life groups, Trump is the MOST CHRISTIAN, the MOST PRO GUN, the MOST PRO LIFE, even though it’s clear he doesn’t really care that much about those things (take the guns first then due process later) but orgs associated like labor unions give more tepid and perfunctory endorsements, and never really go to the mat for flawed candidates like Hillary Clinton?

    <3

  57. Am I a downer for thinking the gameplay in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order doesn't really look THAT much more advanced than it was in Jedi Outcast 17 years ago?

    I have no opinion on this.

  58. There's this behavior I've noticed where when you engage with a reactionary, armed with knowledge of their rhetorical tricks and countering all of them, when they are utterly defeated and left with no recourse, they will shrink and appear as small as possible in an attempt to gain sympathy. "Ah jeez guys I'm so heckin' sorry I'm real bad at explaining things" etc, they'll do anything to appear innocent and make *you* out to be the big bully. Is this something you've encountered?

    I've seen variants of this a lot, though I rarely argue with people long enough to experience it firsthand anymore. It recalls the abuse tactic DARVO, which stands for Defend, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender: you try to paint the person telling you you're wrong as a bully when you were the one who transgressed in the first place. It's especially pernicious in conflicts between the Right and Left, because folks on the Left are very concerned with not being the offenders, and will take the claim that they've done something problematic much more seriously than anyone on the Right will. And the Right knows this. The version of this you're describing isn't that far from the "we are being SILENCED by the ALL-POWERFUL LEFTISTS" Steven Crowder and his ilk pull every time they are held even slightly accountable for their actions.

  59. Is it alright to give people a second chance?

    You don't need my permission.

  60. Is there something to be said about endorsements and enthusiasm from interest groups on the left and the right? Like how to evangelical organizations, the NRA, and pro-life groups, Trump is the MOST CHRISTIAN, the MOST PRO GUN, the MOST PRO LIFE, even though it’s clear he doesn’t really care that much about those things (take the guns first then due process later) but orgs associated like labor unions give more tepid and perfunctory endorsements, and never really go to the mat for flawed candidates like Hillary Clinton?

    A lot of organizations went to the mat for Bernie Sanders. I think the issue is that the Democratic Party is divided on whether to run someone *some* folks will go to the mat for, or someone *everyone* will just kind of tolerate. Hyperbole like "MOST PROGRESSIVE" doesn't play as well on the Left because... well, frankly, we're smart enough to know it's not true. The Left doesn't have that tribal cohesion the Right does; we don't just want to win, consequences be damned, we want *results*. Or, at least, enough of us do that we don't all come together under a flawed candidate.

  61. Any hype for an e3 announcement this year?

    Breath of the Wild 2.

    Also I guess I'll finally play Witcher 3 now that it's coming to Switch.

  62. Thoughts on Severus Snape?

    none whatsoever

  63. I've seen some hot takes among (supposed) leftists about how Crowder shouldn't be deplatformed because it will lead to leftist creators being deplatformed too, and that asking for monopolistic corporation like YouTube for help is bad. What's your opinion on all this?

    Demanding YouTube address its harassment problem is a gamble, because YouTube is not your friend. Whatever changes they make will be geared towards covering their asses, nothing more. New policies may make things better, or they may negatively affect innocent people. There's no guarantee things will get better.

    There IS a guarantee that things don't get better if we do nothing. If we can influence YouTube to make one change, we can influence them to make more changes if they fuck up the first one.

  64. Your "you go high, we go low" video goes in depth into why is "values-neutral governance" is so popular with Democrats politicians, but I kept wondering why it is so popular with your average internet randos (assuming they aren't right wing trolls), many of whom hate politicians for being ineffective? Maybe it's an American thing?

    People want to believe that the world is just, that everyone can be reasoned with, and that any problems with our government are the fault of people just not governing properly. It took me many years to accept that the problems we face are huge and deeply ingrained in society.

  65. I think Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad Poor Dad gave a good explanation that the rich refuse to tell their poorer counterparts on how their obtain wealth

    in response to What is your answer to these tho?

  66. Thought you might be interested: There's a Chrome/Reddit addon called Masstagger which allows you to have those who post to hate subreddits be flaired as ye look at the site. Colours and limits are customisable- for example, I made shit like r/PewDiePieSubmissions, which is in there default, from red to orange, as not everyone there is necessarily bad- and I've found it disturbing how many bad folk post and comment to the site.

    Neat.

  67. So let me get this straight. Leftists would call this crime worthy of the death penalty and property confiscation. But drug offenses by minorities means that they shouldn't be punished and should just be ignored to their own devices?

    in response to What is your answer to these tho?

    I don't normally respond to straw man arguments because I don't want to give them air, but there's some stuff here maybe worth unpacking, so we'll give it a go.

    1) While there *are* Leftists who argue that the proper way to fix the world is to put all the billionaire's heads on spikes, no one's really trying to make that happen. There's no organizing around it, there's not even really any vigilantism advocating for it. It's a largely rhetorical argument.

    2) Even as a rhetorical argument - claiming "it would work, and it's defensible" - it's largely in the context of a hypothetical revolution, i.e. a violent overthrow of the government. No one is arguing that, post-revolution, anyone who exploits their workers will be put to death. The expectation is the law will simply make exploitation largely impossible.

    3) Most Leftists are not arguing for violent revolution. In the short-term, it's influencing policy; in the medium-term, it's getting more Leftists in office and mainstreaming Leftist discourse; and long-term plans tend to be things like peaceful revolution through general strikes, occupation, and mass protests. This doesn't typify the entirety of Leftist organizing, but that's the more common stuff you see among organizers.

    4) I find it interesting that you specified "minorities" taking drugs, as though people who favor decriminalization only want drugs legalized for Black people...? Or is it that you think only Black people take drugs? Or that only Black people should be punished for taking drugs? For reference, cocaine usage is roughly the same across Black and white Americans, but crack cocaine - more common in low-income communities that are disproportionately Black - carries much harsher sentences than pure coke, which is more popular among whites.

    5) The fundamental difference between exploitation and drug use is that exploitation is hurting others while drug abuse is hurting only yourself. Not to discount that drug addiction affects one's community, but you can't really compare the literal hundreds of billions of dollars of stolen wages in this country to people getting high, unless you consider any violation of the law as equally wrong, regardless of the impact of the crime, in which case you don't really care about order or civility, you're just into discipline.

  68. Do you have Instagram?

    no

  69. why does it seem like the content creators on twitter are more consistently clever than others?

    Twitter favors the short and pithy, so being good at that gives you some edge on the platform.

  70. what might one example of "collective action against systemic unethical behavior" look like?

    in response to Can you explain (at least in broad terms) what the phrase "there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" means? Because I've only ever seen it used to mock people that want to support brands that don't do things like exploit their employees or use child labour after that brand has been outed as being terrible.

    Democracy.

  71. Is this question historical revisionism? From what I know, the team didn’t agree that Notch “””deserved””” to be a billionaire (despite Notch’s insistence that he “‘made sure everyone was treated well”), that’s why he was later shunned, become anti-social and fell down the alt-right pipeline. Too much wealth just means misery and emptiness.

    in response to Is it exploitation when the team agrees that their boss gets the billion dollar cut?

    I think it was a hypothetical.

  72. Is it exploitation when the team agrees that their boss gets the billion dollar cut?

    in response to What is your answer to these tho?

    ...what exactly do you think would happen if the team didn't agree to it?

  73. What is your answer to these tho?

    in response to Is every billionaire that way because of exploitation? Is an oil baron the same person as an indie game programmer that went viral on the same moral spectrum?

    Yes, all wealth exists because of exploitation. No one has ever just made a small game, put it into the world, and made a billion dollars. Minecraft was a success, but it didn't make Notch a billionaire until he brought in a whole team to handle the servers, keep updating with new content, and handle the general demands put on a game with such an enormous userbase. And, by all accounts, he was a very kind an generous boss. But the value of Minecraft was made by that collective effort, yet only Notch became a billionaire. When a worker creates value for a company but the boss gets the profits, value has been extracted without compensation. If you worked at Mojang, no matter how many hours you poured into your job, when Notch sold the company to Microsoft, you didn't get a cut of the buyout.

    That's exploitation.

  74. The shirt says figs. Change my mind.

    Get a therapist.

  75. Is every billionaire that way because of exploitation? Is an oil baron the same person as an indie game programmer that went viral on the same moral spectrum?

    Hmmmmm, these are two separate questions. We can talk about degrees of exploitative behavior without implying that "X is more exploitative than Y" is the same as "X is exploitative therefore Y is not."

Anon commented:
Ian replied: