They are meaningful by themselves, because they lay a path for those who come after you to have a chance and find meaning for themselves. Including the chance to find and know God.
Its a subpar existence, but its still one of meaning simply because of the fruits of its labor have meaningful value to those who can benefit from it.
I think one can find a form of meaning without God, but that requires your works to be larger than yourself. Raising children of great stock, producing things that enhance the world, simply being a force of inspiration for those around you. Things that might not grant you spiritually fulfillment or actualization, but are still a meaningful life if not 100%.
But, instead its just used as a lazy excuse to do nothing but sad self-pleasure. To give up entirely and be a self-fulfilling worthless, meaningless life.
I did as well, but I have my own versions of it throughout my life. Funnily enough the original Darkest Dungeon became my "do a run before bed to unwind" game and I ended up with hundreds of hours in it.
These games in particular keep baiting people back with battlepasses and other seasonal content, which at least keeps you working towards something to give it reason to come back.
Its a coop game. You have fun memeing and playing with your bros or randos, and "winning" is often a secondary objective to just having a hilarious time.
And at some point playing it becomes so second nature that you don't need to really engage your brain, meaning it becomes a great "after work, relaxer" type game. Where you pop in before bed to settle down with a few quick matches, and then save the really try-hard stuff for the weekend.
As gross as it is to see, the entire "goon cave" phenomenon is already showing a lot of that happening right now. The limiter seems to be right now it requires an extreme level of degeneracy and porn brain to get set up, but tech always lowers its barrier for entry with time.
There is a reason for the old adage of "if nothing you do matters, then all that matters is what you do."
Nihilism is easy, its why its the default place of burnouts and losers. From hippies, to Lefties, to pseudointellectuals. Its a great place to feel better and superior to other people by saying simple worthless platitudes and then putting in zero work.
Having to engage with it, and recognize how it actually changes your position in the world to having more importance than ever before, that you have a very short timeframe to create meaning from meaninglessness, is extremely hard work and puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.
So its easier for childless grifters and man-hoes to talk about it endlessly while living lives of pure hedonism and meaningless money chasing, while trying to sucker you into following to justify their own existence.
A lot of guys in the "anti-hoe" sphere fell for the "men's peak is 35!" line and forget that by peak it means you are probably all downhill from there in a lot of ways.
Sure career might improve, money might be more flowing, and your ability to pull hoes with daddy issues might become simple, but you'll an aged father to any children and miss a large amount of their adulthood, and your grandchildren's childhoods.
You can always tell how truthful someone is being by their choice of photo. And by choosing to pick one where Trump looks like a braindead old man, hair askew and tan looking way worse than it normally does, he has tried to poison the well by positioning Trump as a confused elderly guy who got swindled.
You don't need to read the brainrot poison they are trying to manipulate you with, the picture choice alone tells you to dismiss everything said as propaganda.
These people really put themselves in a bind. Because the winds are absolutely changing and gay/tranny fatigue is setting in hard for a notable portion of the population (too many to continue to ignore), but they have taught the gays that they deserve and will receive full capitulation and worship at all times.
So, unlike most Leftist positions, they can't pull back slightly and proceed quietly for a time to let the heat die down. The gays will notice and scream about it, drawing attention. So they are forced to go down with this ship, and most will soon have to make the choice between fighting their fags to shutup temporarily or sinking.
The 80s was trying to sell you something else, so it needed to be quality enough to get you obsessed with the idea. The 90s was trying to sell itself, so the quality had to be within.
Both produced some top tier stuff for their time, though I think the 80s doesn't hold up well without nostalgia in a lot of cases, and without the principle behind it later stuff became a lot more generic and mass produced with the "linear storyline" often becoming the only common differentiator.
I think one major challenge is that the Left has a strong monopoly on "childish politics." Very simple messages like "be kind!" and "love is magic!" are things that are both appealing to children on a simple level, but also just neutral enough that they don't come across as fully Left wing. Which then slides easily in to all their various propaganda.
Inversely, Right wing is usually the politic of "harsh truths." A lot of beliefs that aren't as easy to swallow but are both necessary and unbeatable. This dichotomy is why its such an age old adage for someone to be Leftwing as a youth and then grow into being Rightwing. If you don't shove your messages too hard at a kid that'll come naturally to them, and if you do you'll end up with rebelliousness often overriding it as a lot of the current generation is showing in regards to things like gays (and 80/90s PSAs did for things like drugs).
Really, I just wish they would put effort into making something good and then the political part be secondary. Because every time its just comically bad on its own before you even factor in the politics, so why would I even bother trying to show my children? I'd have better luck explaining the politics to them in real life, and then just putting on a classic Cartoon Network show.
Dexter and Powerpuff were literally both made in the 90s. Dexter got a bad redesign, as shown there, at the tail end of its life and everyone hated it.
The 90s themselves were the peak, because they were having to "prove" themselves to all the execs that they deserved to exist and be funded as their own thing, instead of just being sponsered by toy companies. This meant you had a wild amount of variety all being created at once to try and find what stuck.
Modern Cartoon creators all use the same digital tools, and outsource companies, that require minimal talent or effort to create. Conservative creators aren't interested in actually making any form of visual medium, they just want a vehicle for their writing and politics to be given to kids. The Left isn't any better in this regard, but they also have enough industry support to make stuff that isn't always that way to let it be more digestible to a wide audience. And are also childish barely mentally above children to begin with.
Right-wing creators seem obsessed with emulating the Left and making shitty cartoons all about their politics for children.
None of them are ever remotely interesting, they will not entertain children whatsoever, and they are too basic for an adult to appreciate the political commentary.
I absolutely would, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
They bring constant drama and trouble to productions, and the ones who don't are always connected at the hip to the ones that do. Its funny that Hollywood actors, normally a source of all sorts of problems, are usually the safer bet to have VA in your product than the actual "professionals" in terms of keeping things simple and quality.
The only way I'd accept that excuse is if we get a dual wielding Link just fucking dominating future combat encounters.
Its not like anyone uses the shield in these games after the first dungeon or so anyway outside mandatory puzzles, the newest games its more used as a fucking sled instead.
I know, my point being is that its an observation that you can make offhandedly, and that the assumption you make for why it is so can say a lot about your implicit biases.
Such as the fact that their struggles are nearly identical to the common black guys (poverty backgrounds, sudden rushes of money, materialistic spending), yet they think extremely lowly of these men while fluffing the nigger.
The flip is minorly annoying, because Link was lowkey famous for being Left Handed and one of the only major characters in any gaming franchise to be so. It was literal actual "minority representation."
And the flip only happened so they didn't have to deal with that little detail, so they lazily made it so Link used his sword in most people's dominant hand.
Do the Dems actually believe that their issue with young men is anything other than a policy issue?
Yes, its why they constantly rally against guys like Joe Rogan. They truly think that if he didn't say wrongthink, then people wouldn't think it either. A huge undercurrent of Leftist thought is that humans are mostly blank slates and are products of their environment (until its a positive thing, then its all natural to blacks/women/gays), so if they can control the world they can make everyone agree with them.
Also thinks that said roughnecks are struggling to make ends meet despite being one of the highest paid jobs in the country.
I mean, if you see most of them you would think they were making peanuts. Its an extreme problem in the industry of the guys taking their absurdly high pay, and then spending it like new lotto winners until they can barely make their bill payments.
Most of my male family members were oilfield for life, and half of them could barely escape the trailer park despite coming home with easy multiple 5 figure monthly incomes. And the toll it takes on your body catches up fast, meaning they go from loaded to broke quickly because aforementioned poor spending habits mean zero savings.
So them saying this shows how little thought they actually put into anything, because while it looks like it at the end result, the life leading up to that is entirely different and filled with far more unique challenges.
They just thought "conservative, low IQ workers must be failing at life because that's how it works!"
I really dislike that they copy pasted their "NPC Negro" so much in the prologue, because that's basically the only major woke element to it. But it stands out a lot with how much they pasted it around and its the first thing people will see in the game.
This is starting to get suspicious. They never give us this much rope.
I'm suspecting that they might be trying to bait Trump into going hard into invalidating a lot of Biden's actions, for legitimate reasons, to set precedent to undo Trump's once he is out of office. Or something similar.
Just a suspicion though, it could be innocuous and them just trying to sell him down the river to protect themselves.
And if you are 40+ as a man, you are almost certainly going to not be able to give them as much of an experience as if you were 10+ years younger. Age limits us all, no matter how much you fight it it will still catch you. Sure you might have more money, but then you are at the gap between "attention versus stuff" on what makes a kid happier.
And its more than just your own kids. Grandparents are an integral part to not only helping newparents be successful through generational knowledge, but as part of a kid's happiness and development.
If you have your kids at 40+, then you will be pushing 60 by the time your kids have their own at the earliest possible chance. Reasonably you'll be closer to 70+, an age with very low capability to play with a child and a near certain death in their childhood that will devastate them.
As you say, its not about you and your experiences. Which also means giving your kids the best, longest and most capable years of your life possible instead of waiting for some "ideal" age just because you, as a man, can technically do so.