CuriousCat Archive Page 182 of 202

  1. When did you "realize" (for lack of a better term) you were polyamorous? Do you think your relationships in high school/college were affected by that in any interesting ways?

    I can't really answer that without getting into the specifics of my love life, which is not a thing I'm going to do. In broad strokes: I knew a lot of polyamorous people and had a general idea that many of them were happy in their relationships. Then I met someone I wanted to date who was polyamorous, and we made the deal that, if they were going to consider being monogamous with me, I would consider being poly for them. We only dated a few weeks, but I still felt interested in poly, so I explicitly sought out polyamorous relationships after that, and, having done so now for almost a decade, it's suited me very well.

    I want to stress: for me, polyamory is a choice, not a thing I discovered about myself. Some people consider it an orientation, but that's not universal, and I think we'd do well to recognize that *most* people could probably function in either relationship structure.

  2. Hey,

    I think there might be some people here who would like to know how to stop doing things they know are bad, but don't feel able to cease doing right now.

    People for whom stopping is temporary, and hurts.

    Do you have any suggestions for them?

    I don't think I can answer that without more specifics, sorry.

  3. When's the new video getting posted? The anticipation is literally killing me.

    Unless something goes horribly wrong, this weekend.

  4. I notice that in your twitter profile you write "monogamist ally". what does that mean? do you have specific thoughts about monogamy vs other approaches to relationships?

    It came from this exchange with Kat Blaque: https://twitter.com/InnuendoStudios/status/1028844873347223552

    I'm polyamorous. I don't have any strong opinions on relationship structures other than that I know which one I prefer and don't want people to invalidate my relationships. "Monogamist ally" is kind of a tease, implying that monogamists are the one's being invalidated and that they need my support.

    (I don't entirely disagree with Kat's implication that monogamy - or, at least, compulsory monogamy - is inherently controlling, but given how complex poly can be I still don't blame people for preferring monogramy.)

  5. Do you think it's possible for a food item to exist that is simultaneously a sandwich and a hotdog?

    Is this question worth asking?

    What's really gonna cook your noodle is that there's no reason a vegetable can't also be a fruit.

  6. What are your opinions on "Long Egg"?

    I've never been so happy to be vegan.

  7. What's your opinion on the Post Meritocracy Manifesto?

    It's a quick read, let me tell you.

  9. do you think whether a hotdog is a sandwich or not has more to do with the bread than it has to do with most of the other contents?

    A sandwich has many qualia that combine to make a particular experience, and something is or isn't a sandwich based on how closely it approximates that experience. Sometimes it is a similarity of ingredients, e.g. a hoagie. Sometimes it is a similarity of construction, e.g. a cookie sandwich. Sometimes the similarity is the bread, e.g. a french fry po' boy. Sometimes a given quale will so accurately evoke the experience of sandwich-ness that it is sufficient to make the meal a sandwich despite a near-complete lack of other qualia. Each of us holds in our minds a Platonic ideal of Sandwich and recognize various sandwiches by their similarity to that ideal.

    A hot dog resembles a sandwich in ingredients, construction, and bread, but none of them strongly enough to make it FEEL like a sandwich.

  10. Whats your opinion on the Mass Effect games?

    they are not on Mac or Switch

  11. i think whether a hotdog is a sandwich or not has more to do with the bread than it has to do with most of the other contents.

    that is not a question

  12. Would you call the moral truths you adhere to objective?

    I think adhering to your moral truths means choosing to treat them as objective. I don't think anything humans do has objective value. But you can't live in accordance with the belief that murder is wrong if you tolerate murderers and treat murder as a difference of opinion.

    The lack of objectivity doesn't absolve you from picking a side.

  13. is a banana an envelope

    when you take a banana out of its peel it's still a banana, so no. arguably the peel is the envelope.

    same with the freakin' hot dog: you take a hot dog out of it's bun and it's still a hot dog, ergo a hot dog is not a sandwich, it is a meat tube that can be employed in sandwich-like environments.

  14. What's your opinion on movies/music/literature/artists who often utilise "stories-within-stories"/deeply nested fiction narratives?

    For example, Cloud atlas (both book and movie) and most of Paul Auster's works

    Is that a thing I should have a unique opinion on? When they're good, they're good.

  15. I'm having trouble understanding the scene you shared, how do i parse it?

    Probably best to just watch the movie.

  16. Have any digressions from your previous videos on the cutting room floor that you wished you could've shared in some form?

    Yeah. I'm considering compiling some bits and pieces for a Deleted Scenes video. Maybe as a Christmas present. No promises.

  17. "Thinking analytically about trash"

    god this is so me.

    hey don't say that you're not trash

  18. Would you recommend us to watch Thank You for Smoking?

    If nothing else, everyone needs to watch this scene.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjOrOMVFCbs

  19. (KLK anon) if you manage to turn off your brain i highly reccomend it, it's fun in a trashy way, it's "goddamn i wish i knew how to draw and stage my characters like that" cool. Otherwise it can be pretty infuriating, esp if you read people defending it lmao. At least in my experience. Thank you for answering!

    My brain doesn't switch off so easy, but, then, thinking really analytically about trash is my idea of fun, so we'll see what happens!

  20. have you seen kill la kill? I found it fun and super super cool, so much so that i powered through the incredibly distasteful fanservice and how the story is just a vehicle for mostly naked highschoolers fighting, even if usually these things turn me off completely. If you've seen KLK do you instead agree it actually has a very interesting and profound message about female empowerement and coming of age, like i've seen disputed online? cheers ps: not in the sense that a story can't have both fanservice and an interesting message, it's just that people defending KLK for the message usually go "no see there's a reason she's basically naked and it's not to sell action figures!!" and it's like... cmon guys.... it's ok to like trash....

    I haven't watched that.

  21. "Major religions are millennia old. They all have regressive aspects. And they all have modern practitioners critiquing them. There is no regressive aspect of Islam that has not been discussed for decades in the Muslim world. I dunno why Westerners keep needing to weigh in."

    i was raised in Saudi until I was 14, and I wish there was pressure from powerful western countries forcing them to stop murdering people. I think you are off-base on this. they are not going to change by themselves: they will continue to execute and torture people for who they are.

    I was also a minority there: both of my parents are Brits who worked in Saudi Arabia, and I'm white as sin. I feel alienated by westerners telling me to shut up because it isn't my place to worry about people dying in the country I was raised, but my white skin coupled with a "funny voice" means all I felt when I moved to the US was derision.

    I wish more people were willing to demand change in my home, because people are murdered for speaking up against the ulema. every day.

    it isn't even a bad place to live. I was educated well, treated well, homed in a nice place. but I had privileges and benefits that other people don't. and nobody cares because the people who are being executed are a small minority, and everyone else is doing very good.

    not the same person as asked the question but I wish change was faster... I miss my friends

    That is a hard life and I am sensitive to that. But we're conflating Islam with autocracy and conflating critique with intervention.

    When the US intervened in Northern Ireland, it wasn't a "critique" of Catholicism and Protestantism, it was an intervention into terrorism. No statement was being made about Christianity. I don't want to delve into when it is or isn't appropriate to intervene - it's a whole can of worms and I am not well-researched in the area - but there is no reason why intervening to stop violence needs to be a comment on the religion the oppressors subscribe to. People have managed to square oppression with every religion under the sun, from Christianity to Buddhism. The problem is oppressors, not religion.

  22. How unethical is it to continuing playing the final season of The Walking Dead should Telltale somehow find a way to release the remaining episodes without paying their former employees? Or, hell, even if they do? Despite the influx of tweets very reasonably telling me I shouldn’t care about seeing the game to the end, I find myself waffling for a couple of reasons. I paid for the entire game upfront so they already have my money, boycotts apparently don’t work in the first place (something I learned from you and Lindsey Ellis) and I can think of a few avenues in my life where my decisions have an indirect, yet still somewhat harmful effect that could be considered unethical. How many grossly underpaid labourers are making the phones, shoes and clothes that I buy (they’re getting paid, sure, but couldn’t they be getting paid more)? How much fault lies with me for not properly recycling everything I possibly could when global warming eventually turns the planet into Kevin Costner’s most iconic flick? How valid or invalid is my reasoning?

    I’ve seen people insist that anything released after episode 2 wouldn’t be worth it, and that, for example, writing fan fiction, or even something as paltry as “everything worked out fine” on a piece of paper would be equivalent in value to anything a scab team of developers could come up with, so people should be happy with that. I get that imperfection is the nature of similes like that, and that these suggestions were probably just to drive home the point that Telltale’s first priority should be paying people severance, which... yes. But (presuming the finished product is even half-way decent) I’d rather have the actual game that I paid for instead of a piece of paper. What do you think?

    I'm ever the utilitarian ethicist: It adds no material harm to the world for you to play games that, having already paid for them, will be arriving in your Steam list anyway. So, then, what is our concern?

    There's a question of propriety. If we know those games are made by scab labor and the profits may go to the CEOs who fired 250 workers without severance, it can feel disrespectful to play them. We can quibble over the material effects of that disrespect: It could feel like a slap in the face for the original devs to know you you played the game after they were fired; but, then, they won't know; but, then is "what they don't know won't hurt them" really a good system to operate under?

    What I think happens in these conversations is not only that we are ascribing moral weight to what is or isn't "proper," but we are inflating our own importance and impact. Playing the games is a symbolic slap in the face, but, if those games come out, the devs know people are going to play them. There faces are getting slapped. Our abstinence doesn't change that. But, more importantly, abstaining is a symbolic show of solidarity that doesn't actually accomplish anything. It doesn't get those people severance pay or a union or new jobs. We feel as though boycotting the games is the least we can do, and we're right: It is the absolute *least* we can do.

    I would say, if you want to do right by those workers, don't ascribe moral weight to your Steam library and instead do something that actually benefits them. Throw some money at the efforts to unionize. Put public pressure on Telltale and the companies offering to finish the game to include severance pay for the fired employees as part of the contract. Support any of them who start indie companies and/or run Kickstarters. In general, put your effort where it counts.

  23. Can the partial ownership of a corporation or other foreign entity mentioned in "getting my ass paid" be having a partial stake in the money made from a product, and nothing more?

    Has someone already asked you this question?

    It's hard to answer that without a concrete example. But, generally, the less control they have over the final product, the less money they give you.

  24. do you think the necessity to defend Islam against reactionary right-wing racists gets in the way of critiquing the regressive aspects of the religion?

    I find myself totally unwilling to talk about those because the language can so easily be appropriated by people I don't want to be associated with

    Are you Muslim? If not, why is it your place to critique the regressive aspects of Islam?

    Major religions are millennia old. They all have regressive aspects. And they all have modern practitioners critiquing them. There is no regressive aspect of Islam that has not been discussed for decades in the Muslim world. I dunno why Westerners keep needing to weigh in.

  25. Where is the cut off point for watching simpsons? When it's not really worth watching anymore

    Season 8 was the last good season.

  26. I finished watching your LiS video, and i wanted to ask: did you decide if you hate LiS, or if you love it? Will you play the second game?

    I know I loved it, I just can't really argue my love makes any goddamn sense. I want to play both Before the Storm and the sequel, but I'm a bit hampered by only having a Mac and a Switch.

  27. I'm not sure whether or not you have Netflix, but if you do, you may want to watch Devilman Crybaby.

    Each episode is 25 min and there are 10 of them, and I thought it dealt with interpersonal conflict and, maybe morality, in a way. but it's also very violent and gory, so if you can't pallete those, you probably shouldn't watch it.

    I've heard a lot of people say it's both wonderful and horrible.

  28. In the US, therapists are either allowed or required to report all people who come forward as pedophiles to the authorities, leading all of them, even the ones who have committed no offenses, to be put on a sex offender registry, leading the non-offenders who have children they love and care for to be seperated from them after they've come forward, iirc. i think this is bad.

    yes, i've defended some pedophiles, sorry everyone.

    is this a false or unhelpful premise? if not, why should i trust that my words are safe with them, if i have something that is abstractly but not actually threatening, in a similar way?

    Every shrink I've ever had has been explicit that they are not required to report anything I say unless I am planning to commit a crime that will be harmful to others. All the ones I've had have stressed that they never report anything they are not required by law to report. Some shrinks are shitty people who report things they don't have to, and some even lie to you about what level of privacy you're operating on, but every one I've had has promised me the maximum confidentiality they can get away with and every one has made good on their word.

    So find a shrink you trust and ask them explicitly what their policies on confidentiality are.

  29. Why do people watch Haruhi in chronological order? The show is even set up to end on an anticlimax if you do so

    I don't think chronological is a good idea for first viewing, but I will probably watch it chronological one second viewing just to make sure I understand what things happened in what order. It's just a different way of understanding the plot.

  30. How optimistic are you about things right now?

    At this point I'm trying not to have any expectations, optimistic or pessimistic, and just prepare for things that seem possible, deal with the unexpected as it happens, try to prevent what is preventable, and do the work of fixing what's already happened.

  31. Any media that you consider formative influences that you discovered after the age of 22?

    Sure, tons. I first started reading Orwell's essays at 23 or 24, which were my first real leftist rumblings. I read Samuel R. Delany for the first time in my 20s. I didn't actually start attending art school until I was 21, so most of my artistic awakenings happened in my 20s as well. My production classes I took with Caveh Zahedi at 22 and 23 were HUGELY influential for the work I make now. That's also around when i first studied critical theory - all my understanding of semiotics and narratology happened after 22. I saw Brick - still one of my favorite movies - for the first time when I was 22. When I moved to Providence, I was 24 and didn't know anybody, so I'd come home from my day job and just watch movies until I went to bed, and I saw tons of stuff I still love today. That's when I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I think I was 26 when I saw Tokyo Godfathers, and it was around the same time I first watched Cowboy Bebop all the way through. Hell, I never even finished a Zelda game til I was in my 30s!

    I think all of these have really shaped how I think about the world and how I make the art that I make.

  32. Following up on a question from earlier, do you think Sargon could be convinced he can't actually think properly if you—or someone of your choosing—were to sit down with him, off camera, for three hours and you had a chance to pre-prepare?

    It's possible that's me buying into his own narrative of him as a truth-seeker, rather than what he might actually be—which is a reactionary essentialist.

    You can't change a mind like Sargon's with debate. That's what therapy is for.

  33. what do you think the main value of deplatforming people with harmful views is? does "what if people i like are deplatformed" ever worry you?

    this is sort of a slippery slope fallacy—I've never heard of a content creator I actually like being deplatformed or disallowed from speaking—but I'd like to hear what you think.

    The way to combat harmful views is to destroy the bases of power of the people spreading them. Removing platforms is one of the most effective means of doing so without violence. They cannot recruit if they don't have a platform. They cannot appear normal if they don't have a platform. They cannot win elections or influence policy if they don't have a platform.

    Yes, I worry about them deplatforming people I like, because they are already trying. It's one of their prime objectives. Every time they flag a feminist's videos as terrorism to get them taken down, every time they write activists' employers trying to get them fired, every time they harass someone off Twitter, they are trying to remove our platforms.

    So the idea of "don't deplatform people or they might do the same to you" is a non-starter, because they're already doing it to us. I think folks still have a philosophical complaint about this, because, if we do it to them, aren't we saying it was okay for them to do it to us? So let me answer: no. It is not the same. If the rubric is "deplatform people with harmful views," guess what? "Women are equal to men" is not a harmful view. "Black people deserve the same rights and white people" is not a harmful view. "Trans people should be allowed to pee in public restrooms" is not a harmful view.

    Harm is measurable. So deplatform people with harmful views and give platforms to people without. Easy peasy.

  34. someone else called themselves "content-creator anon" or somthing and i didn't entirely understand their post, so i just wanted to say, i've talked about content creation, and i do not remember writing that.

    I believe it was a follow-up to this post: https://curiouscat.me/InnuendoStudios/post/658168745

  35. what do you think about the influence of YouTubers like Sargon of Akaad? I went through a phase where I wasn't exposed to anything else other than him and I feel like I was a significantly worse human being for 5 months. I don't really know how to get through to people who buy into what he's selling...

    Sargon is a garbage human who is a gateway to the Alt-Right, and he's not even interesting enough to be that gateway ON PURPOSE. I don't know how to get through to his audience either, but his influence has been waning since GamerGate and the general animosity towards Anita Sarkeesian crested.

  36. >I hope the people who say choices in Telltale games were meaningless will agree that the theatrical and final cuts of Blade Runner were basically the same movie because the plot didn't change and there's only a few extra minutes of content.

    I'd argue that the meaning of the movie doesn't change all that much, between the two versions, though. It's either a story about androids who ultimately have the same (or higher) level of humanity as the human who hunts them,
    Or a story about an android that is so human that we don't know he's not a human until we're explicitly told he's not.

    a billion thinkpieces deep into "is deckard a replicant" discourse and we've gotten to the "it's the same movie even if he is" phase

    weeee

  37. since your last vid was about a japanese animated film, i'd suppose you've watched some anime?

    Yeah. If you scroll through my CuriousCat you can see me talk about various Ghibli films, my undying love of Tokyo Godfathers, and my preferred viewing order of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

  38. Regis is described multiple times as "old-fashioned" owing to his origin from a war-torn third-world Texas. His superannuated views are deliberately made to contrast with his SF surroundings, and that particular response is only there to initiate the convo about Max's SFnal transition. You could fault it as clumsy writing in the way it sets up infodumps, but the charge that "Technobabylon attempts to be progressive about what being a trans woman in the future might look like and blows it", as you put it on Twitter, is a bit overboard.

    I know what the intent was. But even if Regis is "old-fashioned" - and even if I accept the premise that an old-fashioned guy in 2087 will somehow be more backwards than a political moderate in 2018, which I kind of don't - Max is *not* old-fashioned and responds as if his reaction and subsequent series of questions about her transitions, if a little unexpected, completely harmless and not at all a super inappropriate conversation to have with your coworker. Like, hot tip: calling a trans woman "a male" to her face will rightly get you slapped if not for the fear of getting murdered. At no point do the writers give any indication that they understand this. There's no interest in what *being trans* in the future might be like except to imagine it involves cool tech. This leaves Max a character more than happy to expound on her cyberpunk transition but with no particular feelings about it.

    Also, the fact that you saw some tweet from three weeks ago to ask me why I said a game "blows it" and then argue with me when I explain why implies that you're interested in defending the game to me, which is not my idea of a good time. So, like, this is all I wanna say on the subject, and if you wanna debate further, I recommend you find someone else. I hope some of this makes sense to you. <3

  39. Do you find it difficult to create or adhere to rules centered around feelings, since they're hard to measure, and at least somewhat unpredictable?

    They're not that hard to measure when people tell you how they feel, and they're not that hard to predict when you listen to what people tell you.

    "Unpredictable" is a weird term to use here, since it implies there's no room for error. You don't have to 100% accurately predict people's feelings so long as you work to make things right when you fuck up.

  40. Do any of the moral rules you adhere to center others' feelings?

    Yeah, most of them.

  41. Why do you think modern games tend to hold your hand way more than necessary? I'm not talking about making the game more accessible, I'm talking about 5 hours into the game still giving tutorial on basic game mechanics. Now, I'm not a bright person nor i was a bright child, and I grew up in the 90's with no translations into my language, and i still were able to play most of the games i could get my grabby hands on. My absolute favourite one was Yoshi's island which while giving you tutorials through (optional, may i add) text boxes, still teaches you through gameplay. I know i'm not saying anything new, this is a very common criticism. But i honestly don't know if it's a lacking of skill on the game designers part, or kids these days really need this much hand holding and if this is the case, fair enough, i mean i'm 31 playing a rpg game for 10 year olds lol

    Games today need to sell A LOT more copies than games of your childhood did, which means most barriers to entry need to be sanded off. So games are designed around the weakest players who might still want to buy the product. Game budgets being what they are, they can't afford to turn away people who found Yoshi's Island too hard.

  42. You sure, Rational Disconnect wasn't that big. Yet his video on South Africa still got flagged down. Are you sure that they isn't a video that will hit to a rhetoric or strategy so important to the Alt-Right that they feel the need to abuse the mass Flagging system even if it's not a very viewed video?

    in response to Out of all your ideas for the Alt-right Playbook. How many future videos do you think will not only be Raided but also will be a victim of Mass Flagging?

    No, I'm not sure, but it hasn't happened so far, and some of the videos have 200--300,000 views. I mean, I live in constant fear that one of these days they're going to set their sights on me in earnest, so, yes, I think it's a real concern. But I don't anticipate anything I say in the future being more inflammatory than what I've said already, and so far they've spared me their worst. We'll just have to see.

  43. I'm sorry to say as a cis man I didn't catch anything wrong with Max in Technobabylon. Where did the writers mess up?

    It's a future society in which gender reassignment is so effective that everyone passes for cis and yet Regis' response to finding out his partner is trans is "YOU'RE A MALE?!?!" and for some reason Max finds this completely normal despite being regressive even by today's standards. And her story about transitioning, as though that's something Regis is entitled to know, is just... look, it's well-meaning, but clearly written by cis people.

  44. Out of all your ideas for the Alt-right Playbook. How many future videos do you think will not only be Raided but also will be a victim of Mass Flagging?

    Unless my stuff gets a lot more notorious, probably none?

  45. Okay, so I'm watching this old TV show on JG Ballard, who's one of my favourite authors, and it gets to a segment where he starts talking about his last book 'Kingdom Come', which was about the blurry line between consumerism leading to fascism.
    And seeing as it was written in 2006, his thoughts on where we (at the time) *might* be heading is alarmingly prescient.

    Just wondered your thoughts on this ten minute section?

    https://youtu.be/8LosxrbL3sU?t=36m55s

    I know this is from over a month ago, but this link is to a 50-minute show. Can you give me the timestamp for the part you want me to watch?

  46. (LiS asker) I may have accidentally sent an incomplete response to you, I'm sorry! My phone malfunctioned a bit. Also, you probably wouldn't post it on your curiouscat page, but just in case, I'll ask that you don't (!)

    Basically, I appreciate how you've become more confident in bringing up harmful tropes whilst also staying in your lane, your videos get better and better over time, it's super great to see.

    I feel like it's always good to bring up the harmful things in the subject of your piece if they're especially bad - even if it's off-topic, just a quick aside. I try and do it myself, hope it makes people feel that they're not alone in caring about bad stuff.

    That's all, have a good day! (You can post THIS message if you want, but you don't have to of course.)

    thanx

  47. i just saw peter coffin's new video about the ok sign, and as a non-american not very versed in politics in general it's... such a mess... (i know it's exactly what the alt-right aims to and it's working for me at least, if I didnt have respect for leftist youtubers I would have assumed twitter has become insane over a hand gesture.) Is the bottomline to just ignore ALL dog whistles, or at least the ones we know are deliberately created to invoke confusion? Cus throwing white supremacy signs seem to at least warrant a "wtf dude" towards the person who did so, wheater she knew what she was doing or not. Just a small, inquisitive wtf dude, not a whole ass derail. (the fact that the sign was "costructed" and actually used by white supremacists to give it weight or to troll further is, to me, irrelevant, it's not like some sign are more "natural" than others, like they organically grow on a sign tree and have more merit than others)

    I haven't seen that video so I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, sorry.

  48. (content-creator anon) thank you for your answer. There was also a layer of those accusations not sounding THAT bad: no violence occured, only online misbehaviours by a person who is a friends of CC. Which also makes me feel kinda bad, im taking CC side just because i enjoy their work and I want to feel better about myself not having to think about this stuff lol. Once you realize all of media is made by people you don't know in the slightest and have no idea what to expect from them, everything becomes very complicated. Sorry for rambling, thanks again for answering!

    <3

  49. Were you sad on September 11 2001?

    September 11, 2001, was my senior picture day. My ID photo looked a little bewildered that year.

  50. say a year or so ago there was a callout post going around of one of your favourite content creators, saying they're a rape apologist, with screenshot proofs. You think the accuser tone is a bit too much, and you vaguely remember seeing a response by said content creator and conclude, see, that's my beloved content creator, i'm on their side. Then a year later you come across the same callout post, and now that you've matured more and have been made aware about the whole.. parasocial thing, can see how the creator answer was a bit dodgy maybe? So you go and look for the response but it seems to be deleted. All you can find on the matter are far-right people writing EPIC SMACKDOWNS!! of Content Creator which you suspect are more driven by the desire to see them fail as a left-CC than because of his errors. Would you still support CC, even if all evidence right now point to the fact that they're trying to hide and not even address the accusations?

    In situations with that much ambiguity, I usually follow this pattern:

    -feel ambivalent every time I consume their work until I stop enjoying it
    -eventually withdraw any financial support but maybe keep following them on social media
    -scrutinize their work and behavior in case it confirms the claims against them
    -follow people to have criticized them in case further info comes out

    I'm more or less waiting for them to damn or exonerate themself.

  51. i googled advice columnists, i think i've been called out by that anon, and that's ok.

    I got called out and I'm OK with it, but should I be OK with it? Should I feel worse?

    -Called Out In Norwich

  52. What will learning rhetoric teach me?

    Rhetoric.

  53. Should I learn how to be a therapist if that's what I want to do with my art?

    I think you'd be better off studying rhetoric.

  54. Sorry if it was bad timing. But what studio, struggling or not. Would benefit from hiring the people laid off by Telltale?

    Is they any person or group you would like to start up they own sutdio?

    I don't know enough about studio culture of enough of the names behind my favorite Telltale games to answer that. Mostly I'd like them to start indie companies and make their own stuff.

  55. Do you think art can be a mechanism for performing this therapy?

    Up to a point.

  57. Are you a coffee person and if yes, how do you prefer your coffee?

    I don't drink coffee.

  58. I think sometimes, people reject conclusions that are put right in front of them if they don't validate their worldview, but accept conclusions that they are given the building blocks to form, and if this invalidates their worldview, they're more likely to switch worldviews.

    That's called therapy.

  59. what is an agony aunt?

    I had to look it up, but it appears to be a term for advice columnists.

  61. "Name two of Bill Cosby's 60 accusers from memory."

    I don't understand that response?

    Some accusers become rich notorious celebrities.
    Some just get rich.
    Others choose to not publicize their accusation much at all.

    The point still stands: The saying 'accusers have nothing to gain' is a tired phrase that clearly isn't true.

    Anita Hill's job before and after her testimony has been "professor." She is simply a more prestigious professor now.

    And I'll remind you that Lewinsky was never Clinton's accuser, she confided in a friend who secretly recorded her and leaked the tapes to a prosecutor. And her "reward" was to almost completely disappear from public life for nearly a decade before returning as a public speaker. Prior to the scandal, she was a paid intern with a psychology degree, I don't think "public speaker" was her intended career track.

    Both Hill and Lewinsky are well off. Neither is rich.

    You can point to two people who've had success in the wake of their accusations. Both have been treated like shit by the public at large for their entire lives since. Their successes are not because of their accusations, they are in spite of them, and fuck you for dragging them because they didn't curl up and disappear. They got a spotlight put on them that they didn't ask for, and tried to do something constructive with it. And they got fucking paid for their work.

    Your insinuation was that people come forward to further their careers. You cite two examples, of which the accuser didn't further her career and the one who furthered her career wasn't an accuser (and she spent 8 years having no career).

    People say "accusers have nothing to gain" not to claim no one has ever profited from an accusation, but point out that ALL OF THEM suffer and the few who gain anything from it suffer even greater losses. All the money from Lewinsky's book deals and promotions went to pay legal fees, and her foray into selling handbags ended because she couldn't stand being in the spotlight anymore. She's a public speaker and activist for women's rights now because there's nothing else she can do. She's Monica Lewinsky. She's not going to get a career in psychology now. She can't just go sell handbags when the entire world knows Bill Clinton put a cigar cover in her vagina. Her only viable career is to be Monica Lewinsky professionally, and if she's successful at that, assholes like you say she's a profiteer.

    In short: Being an accuser sucks, and you're a dick.

  62. what are your views on HP Lovecraft?

    Particularly on his viewpoints on fear, race, cosmic horror etc.

    He was a racist fuck. I don't really read horror so that's my only opinion on Lovecraft.

  63. On the way home from a friends last night at 3 AM (I'm from the UK), I asked the taxi driver about the bobbleheads of Jesus and what he thinks is the most recent Pope. He said it was a political statement, and he mentioned that he hated Muslims. All of them. I should've left the car then.

    I'm a bi white guy. I had a chat with him, telling him I didn't much like any religions but that I go to uni, I come into contact with loads of different people and I know good Muslims, a lot of them. He said it was more the principle of disliking all religions, and although he probably believed in "something up there" he admitted that him thinking it might be Christianity is just a product of where he was raised.

    I should have left the car. But I live in a shit area. There are not one, not two, but three heroin dealers on my bottom floor, and they have been issues for other residents in the past. In these cases, should I have just asked to leave the taxi? He seemed surface-level friendly and I dont know what is the correct call there.

    It doesn't sound like whether or not you left the car would have made much difference, so by all means get home safe.

  64. do you ever get the feeling some folks utilise you as a progressive agony aunt?

    yes

  65. How sad are you that Telltales doors are closing down?

    I'm melancholy and frustrated. Last I'd heard they were under new management that was going to allow them to experiment again, stop slavishly adhering to the Walking Dead model, create the kind of environment that produced The Walking Dead in the first place. They'd made two masterpieces and it seemed like the ideal conditions to make a third.

    To find out just a few months later that they're bankrupt, all their projects are canceled except for Walking Dead Season 4, which is keeping only a skeleton crew onboard to finish, and everyone else is laid off? It's... bullshit. I hate it. I'm not mourning the canceled projects - I don't anticipate loving another Walking Dead game and I wasn't exactly itching for a Stranger Things adaptation - but I'm mourning the brilliant games they'll never make now. I feel like their legacy is over a decade of squandered potential, talented people bound by tight schedules, licensed properties, mismanagement, and a horrid crunch culture that, a few times, managed to make something amazing in spite of it all. All I can think is how much more great work they could have produced under better conditions, and how it'll never be made now.

    The wasted potential stings even more than if the company had put out nothing but genre-redefining genius. Then I'd be sad, but ready to say goodbye. But this? I'm not ready. Their best work was still to come.

    It's butts.

  66. I recently read "We Gon' Be Alright" by Jeffrey Chang. I know you have a lot on your reading list, but that book dealt with BLM very well and he has some more comprehensive books that may be helpful. He is liberal but he deals with modern politics well I think and has a relatively distant perspective while still actually engaging with the relevant discourse. Might be worth checking out! Oh wait this isn't a question what are the best socks?

    I'll look into it.

    Argyle.

  67. Do you think people like Coach Red Pill are aware that their incivility and dishonest rhetorical tactics are transparent? When they deny what they're doing I can tell if they're lying to me or themselves.

    Some are lying to you. Some are lying to themselves. With study, maybe we could tell the difference, but I don't think the difference matters that much.

  68. Explain this shit:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr8aRR3Xt4M

    I feel it explains itself.

  69. What's your favourite Western-RPG?

    hey whoa
    I can't say what my favorite game in a genre is until we've defined "genre"

  70. what is genre?

    Is Western-RPG a genre?

  71. KINDA spoiler for bojack s5:

    In s5 they specifically address how the more Bojack was written as a broken and irridimable mess, the more the audience tended to justify and identify with him, so they have Diane say out loud how they cannot carry on writing the protagonist as a bastard if that gives justification for someone to be comfortable with their own shittiness. My q is: do you agree? Is it impossible (or more correctly, i guess immoral) to write a morally grey or even completely amoral character as the protagonist and POV and so lead the audience to identify with him and ultimately justifying his action? Is it the only solution to have in the text someone explicitly say "yo dont take this character as a justification for your shortcoming, i guess him being the literal cause of death of at least one person in his life was too subtle"?

    We can consider a variant of Poe's Law: "Without an explicit condemnation, any immoral protagonist will be idolized by some portion of the audience."

    I don't think this is universally true. I think it's possible to make an immoral protagonist that resists empathy without the creators being explicit about it. But I think doing so is a lot harder than most writers and directors are interested in.

    What are some of the famous deconstructions of immoral characters?

    Breaking Bad
    The Sopranos
    Rick & Morty
    The Wolf of Wall Street

    They're all fronted by men you're expected to empathize with and then, over time, feel kind of sick about that empathy. That is the response favored by the creators. But all of them has a sizable fanbase that adores the protagonists they're supposed to kind of hate themselves for having ever liked.

    All four seem, to me, to be asking the question, "Can you make a monster sympathetic?" which is, at this point, an incredibly boring question. We already know the answer is yes. (In the case of The Wolf of Wall Street, the question was answered the moment they cast Leonardo DiCaprio.) The question is whether the opposite is true: "Can you make a straight white man who's good at something unsympathetic?" Because this seems much harder to do.

    It is not, in fact, difficult to get people to like movie stars.

    I think BoJack benefits from being animated and having a protagonist who's successful but not actually *good* at anything. BoJack's behavior is modeled on white men, but he's a horse. He's symbolically white, and that matters, but the reflexive identification white folks have to other white folks is frustrated. And BoJack's entire career has been failing upward: His sitcom was successful without any acting skills on his part, and he's spent most of his life doing nothing but living off the proceeds. There's nothing aspirational about BoJack's life; his success is not one anyone wants to emulate.

    But, in spite of all that, the creators found that some folks still admired BoJack after season 4. That's how hard it is to get folks NOT to identify with a rich, straight, (metaphorically) white man. So they leaned in harder and interrogated the audience's empathy more explicitly.

    I guess the other question is, "Why NOT be explicit?" Even if it is possible to make one of these character unsympathetic without saying out loud that's what you're doing, how is it better than stating your position outright? There's merit in subtlety, but, more and more, I find people being indirect on political issues is a way of allowing assholes to enjoy the work without realizing it's about people like them. There is a particular art to engaging politics without explicitly stating your position, so that people of all persuasions can think you agree with them. And maybe it's because I'm an essayist, but more and more I prefer thesis statements. The stigma against them is that they're "preachy," but I prefer preachy to spineless.

  72. Is a revival of social market economy as conducted by Germany in the 50s and 60s at all possible in a globalized, digital society, where transnational financial interests hold influence over your country like never before? (I'm asking because SoMa once had been sold to me as the "most democratically controlled, least bad capitalism.")

    what are all the words you just said

  73. Is Western-RPG a genre?

    what is genre?

  74. not a question
    but Armada retiring from singles makes me sad :(

    Yeah, that is sad. End of an era.

    I think there's something to be said for retiring at (or, in this case, ever so slightly past) your peak. Armada has been the brick wall between the Top 20 and godhood for over two years. He has more wins, and more Grand Finals appearances, than anyone since he started playing. We have how many demigods who have taken down every god-level player, except Armada. He went two years never dropping a set to anyone outside the Top 6. Since that streak was broken, it's only happened twice. I don't think we'll ever see someone dominate like that ever again.

    We're not going to see Armada's decline. We're not going to see him place outside of Top 5, we're not going to see Wizzrobe or SFAT or Zain finally take a set off him, we're not going to see new gods outrank him. He's going out as a legend. It's sad, but appropriate.

  75. Is it bad if I get Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Northern English, American, Australian, and New Zealander accents mixed up and can only tell reliably where a native English speaker is from if they're Canadian or Southern English?

    naw, we're basically all the same anyway

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