Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/windows-central-tariffs-bite-xbox-fans-even-harder-as-microsoft-again-increases-xbox-series-x-s-prices-in-the-us.1302888/page-4#post-145385940

Banned.

Not slick at all trying to hide that white supremacy symbol there in the gif usage.

Holy crap, I didn't realize that til you pointed it out 

thankfully I'm well educated in white supremacy. 

These racists won't slip past me.

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/

Resetera has learned nothing this past week and are calling it a maga attack.

Could easily be a MAGA person just trying to stir the pot.

I almost guarantee it's some MAGA scumfuck trying to make it look like a liberal did it. They've already shown how deranged and evil they are this past week.

Because of this, for the record, I want to say I was just making a joke not actually claiming this was some ally. (Not that resistance against your oppressors isn't appropriate and ethical.)

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Don't call yourself an "ally" if you won't arm up and fight back.  

On Thursday, a group of protesters gathered outside the building in response to the ABC network suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination.

The station had received numerous complaints.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/

Resetera has learned nothing this past week and are calling it a maga attack.

Could easily be a MAGA person just trying to stir the pot.

I almost guarantee it's some MAGA scumfuck trying to make it look like a liberal did it. They've already shown how deranged and evil they are this past week.

Truth. The left can't even open a pickle jar*, how can you expect them to fire a gun?

* for my trans sisters out there

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/windows-central-tariffs-bite-xbox-fans-even-harder-as-microsoft-again-increases-xbox-series-x-s-prices-in-the-us.1302888/page-4#post-145385940

Go ahead, defend your genocidal corporate overlords

User Banned (2 Weeks): Antagonizing Fellow Member; History of the Same

[Lonewulfeus]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/

Resetera has learned nothing this past week and are calling it a maga attack.

Could easily be a MAGA person just trying to stir the pot.

I almost guarantee it's some MAGA scumfuck trying to make it look like a liberal did it. They've already shown how deranged and evil they are this past week.

Because of this, for the record, I want to say I was just making a joke not actually claiming this was some ally.

It’s gonna be an ally of someone, I’d say it was a smart hedge.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

I hope most people here are smart enough to know that 99% of posts in this thread are shitposts and the other 1% are posts no one reads

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Hopefully you didn’t feel the need to do this over my last 5 pages of posts being careposts

[Jansen]

Happy to see a barrier to entry to that genocide enabling ecosystem.



I hope it craters.

[Boredfrom]

At least now I finally found out where the sentiment that this game was meant to be an entry point for people new to the series came from.
Team Cherry actually did say this, and they also claimed the difficulty would be comparable to the original (LMAO).

Edge interview from four years ago:

“Almost like stuff changes after 4 years.”

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/windows-central-tariffs-bite-xbox-fans-even-harder-as-microsoft-again-increases-xbox-series-x-s-prices-in-the-us.1302888/page-4#post-145385940

Go ahead, defend your genocidal corporate overlords

User Banned (2 Weeks): Antagonizing Fellow Member; History of the Same

Yeah, wouldn't want to antagonizing people defending genocide.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Keep note of every name in that Disney+ cancel thread and cross reference it with the next Disney/Marvel OT. 

Edit: top page wlw

[Boredfrom]

Nepenthe shits on the Silksong git gud thread:

I think this diminishes other mediums and gaming as well, but on two different fronts.

Gamers like to commonly describe, say, books and movies as passive and games as active simply on the fact that games require manual input from the audience to progress through the experience. But I would also say that the implication of passivity- that books, films, visual art, etc.- are just feeding you the context is indicative of how much general audiences' abilities to critically engage with traditional works have degraded within our social media-addled, friction-adverse society. If your mind isn't on, if you are distracted, not thinking, or just too naive or ignorant to understand the greater cultural, political, or artistic subtext of a work, then I'd argue that you're not actually experiencing it within a meaningful way.

Yes, you can sit there and have images or words flash by your eyes, but that means nothing in terms of whether or not you mentally and emotionally engaged in the work (which is the point,) whether you are truly comprehending it. If the light isn't on, if you just consume it and leave so fast you can't even give a basic plot summary or an opinion beyond "it was fine," or, worse, conclude that people who did actually engage are taking it too seriously because "it's not that deep," then what was the point? Reading and watching art are active activities too in a similar way as performing mathematics is.

Subsequently, sometimes this does mean that people are locked out of a traditional work. If a movie or book is too esoteric, too verbose, too abstract, or hell if it's not even translated into a language you understand or a medium you can physically interact with within your given ability, you're screwed. You can't "experience" it even in terms of just basic interaction of understanding the plot. But we're okay with not watching some Russian film from the 50s with no subtitles or okay with the existence of Finnegans Wake, a book most people bail on because its form of English is nigh-on incomprehensible, but games must be accessible to every potential audience member in terms of challenge level? Why?

You touch on the answer with saying that "games are a product," which in turn is diminishing to the medium. Here the argument leaves the artist and their intentions as secondary to the act of commodification wherein games can never actually be art within a cultural sense because they are meant to be consumed by an audience in order to enrich capitalists, not grappled with or experienced as a conversation between artist and audience. One's ability to create what they want is ultimately trivialized by the fact that the audience is just made up of "paying customers" within a society wherein not just our power to change the landscape but our very humanity and sense of self and worth is reduced down to nothing more than purchasing power, and thus our demands for a satisfactory "product," a "commodity" that is "worth our money" should be considered sacrosanct over the artists wishes to create what is in their heart.

It is an attitude I do not jive with because it undergirds not only the innumerable contradictions present from being an artist within a capitalist framework but also the AI push wherein the act of creation has been considered irrelevant to the existence of a product, an act we have been doing since before the existence of large scale agriculture, and it is pitiable to me.

This is not to say that you cannot dislike, be frustrated, or critique Silksong's difficulty level or the ways in which it structures that difficulty. I imagine some level of frustration was a necessary emotion they wanted players to experience. But the fact that you believe that you putting down money for something you cannot finish is, in itself, a flaw the work is fundamentally disagreeable.

Beyond an adherence to safety and respect for labor, artists do not owe anyone anything in terms of how their work is made nor the difficulty in terms of experiencing it for the average person.

Compare her posts with anyone else defending difficulty in that thread.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/dexerto-hollow-knight-silksong-devs-address-difficulty-concerns-“you-have-choices”.1302201/page-12#post-145392744

Holy shit

I don't think there is a more eloquent or compelling argument in this thread than this.. and hell I'm on this forum alone we have raked this topic over the coals many times over where even I felt there was nothing else to do beyond repeating past arguments.

To the point of parody where we have posters copy pasting the same things back and forth as a form of dismissal that now one can even argue their position in a meaningful way anymore.

Then you come along and put into words what has been in my own heart and mind but lacked the... Uhh.. writing talent to express?

Thank you.

[Snoopy]

Ree are hittin the streets. Takin a stand. Givin it to the man

I was one of them, & I NEVER THOUGHT OF CANCELING A SERVICE REGARDLESS OF WHAT THRY DID. but this? This is very important, this is hitler takes Poland type shit. We have to take a stand here & now.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

time to get those good boy points with moderation 

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Ree are hittin the streets. Takin a stand. Givin it to the man

I was one of them, & I NEVER THOUGHT OF CANCELING A SERVICE REGARDLESS OF WHAT THRY DID. but this? This is very important, this is hitler takes Poland type shit. We have to take a stand here & now.

It's time for us to be like CAPTAIN AMERICA in the AVENGERS! Like KATNISS in the HUNGER GAMES! Like the REBELS in STAR WARS: ANDOR!

This is OUR TIME! OUR MOMENT! OUR CHANCE TO SHOW ORANGE HITHER WHO IS BOSS!

*picks up thors hammer and captain americas shield* WHO IS WITH ME!!!!

REDDIT! ASSEMBLE!

[Boredfrom]

Do the legit think that is the best post ever or just being sycophantic with Nep?

[benji]

I was one of them, & I NEVER THOUGHT OF CANCELING A SERVICE REGARDLESS OF WHAT THRY DID. but this? This is very important, this is hitler takes Poland type shit. We have to take a stand here & now.

[HaughtyFrank]

Ree are hittin the streets. Takin a stand. Givin it to the man

I was one of them, & I NEVER THOUGHT OF CANCELING A SERVICE REGARDLESS OF WHAT THRY DID. but this? This is very important, this is hitler takes Poland type shit. We have to take a stand here & now.

No? Trump taking Canada or Mexico would be Hitler taking Poland type of shit.

[benji]

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

where's the polls, I want to see Jeff dab on these folx.

How's the crime rate been? 

[DavidCroquet]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/#post-145395690

jimmy kimmel is, as sad as it is, one of the bigger pushes that could get random middle of the road whites/liberals to turn to things like this

they can be very disconnected as long as he keeps it distant or abstract enough from impacting their lives, but directly and openly taking their tv away? hoo boy

[Boredfrom]

In one hand, if it works it works.  

In another hand…  Jimmy Kimmel.

[Uncle]

It's time for us to be like CAPTAIN AMERICA in the AVENGERS! Like KATNISS in the HUNGER GAMES! Like the REBELS in STAR WARS: ANDOR!

This is OUR TIME! OUR MOMENT! OUR CHANCE TO SHOW ORANGE HITHER WHO IS BOSS!

*picks up thors hammer and captain americas shield* WHO IS WITH ME!!!!

REDDIT! ASSEMBLE!

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/#post-145395690

jimmy kimmel is, as sad as it is, one of the bigger pushes that could get random middle of the road whites/liberals to turn to things like this

they can be very disconnected as long as he keeps it distant or abstract enough from impacting their lives, but directly and openly taking their tv away? hoo boy

In one hand, if it works it works.  

Mistargeted violence against vaguely related businesses? In hopes of keeping a late night show on the air?

[Boredfrom]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/#post-145395690

jimmy kimmel is, as sad as it is, one of the bigger pushes that could get random middle of the road whites/liberals to turn to things like this

they can be very disconnected as long as he keeps it distant or abstract enough from impacting their lives, but directly and openly taking their tv away? hoo boy

In one hand, if it works it works.  

Mistargeted violence against vaguely related businesses? In hopes of keeping a late night show on the air?

Not about the shooting, but that supposedly actives the normies caring about this shit and sidetracking the canonization of Charlie Kirk.

Because the dude in question didn’t directly mention the shooting, I was using as a generalization about all the Kimmel drama.

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/abc-sacramento-affiliate-station-hit-by-gunshots-police-say.1303131/#post-145395690

jimmy kimmel is, as sad as it is, one of the bigger pushes that could get random middle of the road whites/liberals to turn to things like this

they can be very disconnected as long as he keeps it distant or abstract enough from impacting their lives, but directly and openly taking their tv away? hoo boy

Finally libs are getting of their asses, shooting tv stations

[benji]

[benji]

The New York Times is now a banned source on The Bire:

[benji]

Why did nobody post this?

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-are-conservatives-so-fragile.1300128/

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sarah-mcbride-voted-yes-on-resolution-honoring-the-life-and-legacy-of-charlie-kirk.1302900/page-2#post-145391922

Surely you know about Sarah McBride's previous comments that disappointed many in the trans community, right?

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/what-sarah-mcbride-gets-wrong

This reply isn't really directed towards you, Alavard. Here's my filthy institutional liberal take on this — I'm a minority but I'm not part of the LGBTQ community. However, I feel like that doesn't mean dropping a line on these issues makes my take invalid. I've never disregarded the opinion of all the white dudes here that speak up for black folks while on their MacBooks sipping on their double espresso lattes at Starbucks. If you make a good point, you make a good point.

CHANGE is incremental. It's not overnight, it's not straight to 100 mph, it's a step-by-step process over an extended period of time. The fact that an openly trans member of congress exists in this climate is wild. She's not perfect, she doesn't align with every talking point on Erin Reed's substack or whatever, but she exists. With all of the insane issues we have going on right now, seeing a thread trying to specifically bury Sarah McBride of all people for not voting against this Kirk holiday thing is completely missing the point. After everything that's happened over the past year, how have we not learned that this isn't the way? It's not how politics works, it's not how LIFE works.

[Boredfrom]

Why did nobody post this?

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-are-conservatives-so-fragile.1300128/

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Empire_(disambiguation)

Alongside the various Sith Empires, there have been numerous other empires:

Canon

The Infinite Empire, an empire that existed before the Imperial Era
The Ubdurians' empire.
The Chiss Ascendancy, a libertarian empire in the Unknown Regions
The Zygerrian Slave Empire was a slave empire that was set up over a thousand years before the Clone Wars.
Jabba Desilijic Tiure's criminal empire was the crime syndicate of Jabba the Hutt, who based himself in his palace on Tatooine.
The Galactic Empire (later known as the Old Empire) that was reorganized from the Galactic Republic at the end of the Clone Wars.

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-are-conservatives-so-fragile.1300128/page-2#post-145357866

Well. I'm back. I said I could go on a long screed about the intersections of identity and insecurity and hierarchy, and I guess I did. I wasn't going to. The thread seemed like it died after the first day, and then it came back and I was just sort of emotionally wiped and didn't care enough. Something today made me do it.

This was long. I'm going to go play Skyrim for the rest of the night.

_______________________________________

Why are conservatives so fragile?

The lens through which they view the world and the values they hold create a structure in which their entire existence is extremely precarious. Always. It's inevitable because it's baked into how the fundamental scaffolding of their culture and thought patterns intersect with human instinct.

I'll start with a disclaimer that very little of what I'm going to explain here is unique to conservatives. Most of it applies to everyone in some way or other because a lot of what I'm about to go into is psychology and instinct. Where it becomes a bigger problem is where these things intersect with and reinforce each other--that is to say, conservative fragility is an emergent property, which is why conservatives tend to be reactionaries.

It's hard to even know where to start because the intersectionality of the causes is so thick.

I. IDENTITY

Identity is a massive determiner of human action; possibly even the biggest one. Small things like what take-out you get for dinner or how you react to an injury in the moment might be driven by immediate sensory input and circumstance, but the long term patterns, the overall shape of even the small things is influenced if not outright guided by one's sense of identity. Think statistics. The average or sum can reveal patterns that individual data points do not.

Many conservatives in the modern day, especially the more extreme ones, tend to hold simply "being conservative" as an important part of their identity. Often, conservative culture will deliberately raise people this way. It's an easy path--it provides a map for how to be a person, an in-group to which you can belong, an assigned "worth," and a pre-packaged set of "values," or at least what gets sold as values. This isn't to say conservatives don't have morals, it's to say that their self-declared values are deceptive. Sometimes wilfully, sometimes unintentionally. It depends on the individual, and being ignorant to your own motivations is hardly limited to the right wing, though I would hypothesize it's more common among them. We will come back to this later.

How many left-leaning individuals do you know that hold "being liberal/leftist" as a template for their identity? Not many, I'd wager. It may be an important part of who they are, but it's typically not a trait that gets individually listed off.

The difference here is one of assignment. The conservative identity is often assigned. Sometimes people intentionally choose it later in life, but typically it's given to people before they have any idea what it even means. In contrast, the leftist identity is more frequently emergent. It comes as a result of a person's values and interests. Which is why leftists don't use it as a core identity marker as often. It's a result, not a goal.

Note the complete opposites in cause and effect here:

Leftist identity: emergent result of chosen factors (typically, not exclusively)
Conservative identity: assigned identity with prescribed factors (typically, not exclusively)

The problem with a pre-packaged identity is that people do not come pre-packaged. Such an identity will almost never fit exactly perfectly. A mindful individual may reflect on their individual points of friction and choose to be different and think of themselves differently--but an indoctrinated identity gives little leeway to do that. The problem must be themselves not living up to the archetype they "should" be. Which leads to...

II. INSECURITY

Insecurity is an incredible driver of both human suffering and human motivation. If someone's maladaptive or sociopathic behaviour isn't a result of literal resource insecurity (food, etc), and it's not trauma, there's a decent chance insecurity is lurking in there somewhere.

Insecurity arises when one's identity and/or sense of worth does not have a solid foundation. A sense of self assigned or defined by others by definition has not been built from the ground up, and thus it balances precariously over a chasm. Even worse is when that sense of worth is controlled by other people. Can you think of anything so frightening as having no control whatsoever over your entire worth as a person? Not on the social level, which is horrifying in a different way (see: slavery, castes, and so forth), but on an internal level? If you were raised to believe or have otherwise internalized that being white, or male, or whatever-other-source-of-privilege is what makes you valuable and why you have more than others, your entire identity becomes predicated on an external societal structure over which you have zero control. The entire value of your identity becomes held up exclusively by piling "lessers" beneath it--quite literally completely dependent on others. You have no way to produce your own self-esteem and no idea of how to get there, which means the only way you can get it so you can feel worth anything is taking it out of the social esteem of your arbitrarily-prescribed "lessers." Maintaining the social value tiers that give you worth becomes imperative as you scramble for an external source of the control you internally lack. But it never works because it can't work. The only way to feel a sense of control over your life is to control yourself rather than trying to control others. And so the oppression and power struggles continue infinitely.

III. INEQUALITY

Inequality itself inherently does this to people. We are still animals at the end of the day, and we evolved with the kind of extreme sensitivity to status and perception of status that comes with being a highly social species.

By definition, having different levels of "status" means it's possible for your perceived value to change. Which makes it precarious. Rivals and "betters" are threats to your safety and to your access to resources. Likewise, you can destroy the status of others to comparatively raise your own. Energy and attention have to be constantly spent defending your position and keeping watch on those "above" you, because they have the power to destroy your own status with relatively little effort.

This insecurity and constant vigilance can be otherwise referred to as stress. Which is why every metric of societal well-being gets worse as inequality gets more extreme. Illness becomes more pervasive, crime goes up, life expectancy decreases, and so on. Yes, even for the people at the top. They are worse off too.

(Conversely, a narrower range or even lack of variation in power or status means there are no threats to one's status that need to be monitored. Pro-social behaviour becomes incentivized instead, as the only statuses are "other people like me so I get to participate" and getting ostracized for being disruptive).

IV. HIERARCHY

Left-leaning people are constantly misunderstanding how right-wingers work. They constantly point out the hypocrisy of the right as if it grants some sort of victory. It doesn't. Hypocrisy is only a failing to those who value equality. The right wing does not.

The actual, fundamental, underlying difference between left-wing and right-wing politics is valuing equality or equity versus valuing hierarchy.

Hierarchy is the foundational conservative value. The belief that some people are just better and deserve better is the whole, actual, entire point. "Fairness" in their eyes is not being treated equally, it's being treated as your hierarchically-defined worth deserves. However...

V. SOCIAL SIGNALLING

Outright saying "I am intrinsically better than you [by some conveniently unfalsifiable measure] and deserve better than you" just makes you an asshole. So it tends to be couched in other terms. "State's rights" (to do what?), "family values" (that give the father authoritarian control over the mother and children), and so on. The dominator-oriented authoritarians that espouse and lead the conversation around these "values" tend to know they are a smokescreen. They tend to have sociopathic tendencies and their only true goals are power and/or wealth. The follower-oriented authoritarians may actually, naively, believe these are what their politics stand for.

In both cases, proving one's value and deserving-ness to the group is a constant endeavour, lest you be excommunicated as one of those undeserving others. This incentivizes display over truth. Thus people jockey for more and more extreme ideals as a way to prove their "virtue" to the group. "That church thinks gay people should be accepted? Well clearly they don't believe hard enough! We're willing to go the extra mile and say outright that queer people are abominations unto God! We're more virtuous than them!" It becomes a virtue-signalling death spiral of needing to go farther and farther, lest you be accused of not being a "REAL" [demographic], falling out of favour, and becoming a prop for someone else's value--like all those other "lessers." There is no fate more terrifying to someone so thoroughly enmeshed in this authoritarian power struggle as to be deemed undeserving. Empathy for outsiders is vilified via a self-reinforcing loop.

It is telling that one of the quickest and most common about-turns people make upon leaving authoritarian religions is becoming supportive of LGBTQ+ rights.

VI. ABUSE

If you are familiar with the mechanisms of abuse, you may have noticed some patterns here. Controlling others by hamstringing their self-worth. Demanding conformity lest you be deemed one of those undeserving lessers. Incentivizing displays of devotion that determine your societal value. Conflating obedience with virtue. Violence and maladaptive behaviour that spreads out laterally due to being unable to retaliate against those "above."

Conservatives are fragile because the entire ideological structure is a lashing out against a lack of an internal locus of control. It is a maladaptive, abusive societal zeitgeist that incentivizes and perpetuates dehumanization rather than resilience, because it misrepresents strength as the ability to force rather than the ability to withstand. People who are happy and secure in their identity and self-worth do not seek to dominate others, because they most likely reflected, explored their identity, and built that worth themselves. It's internal, thus it cannot be taken away. It's not threatened by someone "lesser" because the entire concept of "lesser" doesn't make sense if you don't need to dominate others.

I have occasionally thought about just how much of human history was utterly suffuse with abuse. Slavery was extremely common throughout much of the world throughout most of history. Rulers doling out extreme and cruel punishments like the rack, crow cages, being broken on the wheel. Parents beating their children as "discipline." Women being dehumanized into "property" and functionally enslaved in all but name in many times and places. Children also being regarded as the "property" of their parents, particularly of the father, granting them less rights even than prisoners in many cases. Blood sports as "entertainment," such as bear-baiting.

Hurt people hurt people. Most of our history is continuous inherited cycles of hurt people hurting the next people. Surviving the wilderness is hard and sometimes horrible decisions have to be made. The next generation tries to invent ways to alleviate the material problems, but the psychological damage is harder to root out. Maybe that's part of why it's taken until now to even start to undo even a fraction of the damage.

Right-wing, hierarchical ways of thinking can only ever perpetuate that damage because abuse is baked into the very psychology of how hierarchy shapes people.

I think every person who comes to this side of the forum and posts in a politics thread should be required to read this post, this is cold hard motherfucking truth. I roll my eyes seeing people constantly misunderstand the right here, but I get it. I grew up with these kinds of people, I once believed the things they did and so the nature of the beast comes easy. I stopped when I was about 18 but only now in my 20s after thinking for many years did I come to these exact same conclusions. For me, it's the hierarchy worship that spooks me the most. Heck if I didn't already pick up on all of this I would shit bricks reading this post.

I like to view it as themselves becoming caricatures, if at least for a bit of levity.

Very illuminating read.

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Truly excellent post! I bookmarked it. I still don't 'get' the hierarchy stuff because it's so foreign to my thinking. It changes all the time so like, why play that game?

This is one of the best posts I've read on this site, just want to let you know. Nothing but truth.

Just wanted to say this was a great write up and appreciate you putting it out there.

Do you have history through job or school studying this?

Also:

Its not unintentional that they are fragile, we're talking about an ideology that was designed to appeal to disenfranchised, poor, uneducated, racist, and rural Americans.

 Conservatism was... designed? And for this?