I never understood the appeal. Staring at a CRT monitor close-range for several hours a day was kinda bad, but the pain stopped after a few weeks and never came back. Though admittedly the default color scheme here got on my nerves for other reasons.

Congrats on getting some code stuff done, btw.

Are you really leaving light mode with this color scheme, though? Putting light text on a light background with no other contrast is bad and impossible to read at a distance or at different angles.

I've been watching them and they do seem to be the strongest of the three console-runners. However, they ruined the rpg line of mario games and that's pretty hard to forgive. Double-however, it wasn't ruined due to sjw shit, but pure incompetence at the highest managerial levels.

Two simple answers. One is that the dev had a good reputation as a holdout against poz stuff. The other is that faggots complained about stuff shown of the game. This second answer is the interesting one, to me.

I watched some shill-heavy spaces and saw the "based" idea take off. The anti-sjws were so eager for a victory, that they prematurely claimed one, perhaps. The sjws complained endlessly, as they are wont to do, but it wasn't actually because they were losing a battle. Now, as I mentioned, it was shill-heavy, so I must wonder at how much of the circus was pure modern marketing. I have a nagging suspicion that it was 90% marketing.

We have a dark mode now? I normally don't do dark mode, but I'll go for it if it means not having sticky post titles as white text over a peach background.

I'll consider buying it...after about a year of bug fixes and some reports that poz is diminished (like being able to remove the trans flag from your truck).

Thanks, it can be hard to find decent talk about economic stuff that doesn't make my skin crawl. It's over my level, so I have to stop here and digest. I saw you mention Austrian Economics in another post, so I assume that's the key. Whatever other version is being taught in american schools has a load of junk.

Signal to Noise Ratio. and Fear Uncertainty Doubt.

A tangent, but I have to ask: do the TD lads have a compiled resource for this kind of data? We've been having information-based skirmishes for years now online, and I think it's essential for any online community under attack to develop a widespread understanding of things like shilling, disinformation, and trolling.

I come from /pol/ territory, and while a lot of their ideas are considered unsavory, they had some fantastic resources. Shamefully, I can't share their COINTELPRO guide because I'm a dummy and didn't save it (and google search will never show it). But the point is that that kind of image featuring compiled data was how the /pol/ group passed such essential data to new users.

If TD has no such guide, well...I hope they can make one because they get (and should expect to get) so many newcomers. They know they're a target, but the attitude I always see there is that reports and mods will solve everything, thus making it unessential to understand the vectors of attack that are most likely to occur.

Excellent, I was hoping to have the opportunity to ask a TD user about something. I was never really a member or lurker there, but I do have a fondness for them because they tend to foster a charming sort of sincerity and kindness amongst themselves. Lately, when I pop over to take a look, I haven't been seeing that, so I was a little concerned. Though that can be explained by simply getting a big surge of new users that are very enthusiastic about, erm, productivity.

So, what I really want to ask is about the "energy" and memes. The "energy" of the pro-trump memes was high in 2016. I would describe the current state of their memes as lower energy now. Do you have any insight or guesses for this?

My own theory right now has to do with the partial purpose of TD to act as a perpetual hype train. You can generate hype to spur creativity and motivation (two of the elements that make up "energy"), but over a long period, there are diminishing returns as people experience a form of mild burnout/exhaustion. Now, by design, a hype train picks up new passengers to contribute and revitalize and replace exhausted members. But what if the new passengers get on board without understanding "energy"? Then the memes will naturally become distorted. It could even explain a false call to blame of others being "low energy".

Alright, I think I understand the negative yield thing. It's..a horrible setup to have expected inflation be so high.

Financially, it shouldn't ever be done. For my purposes, I'm only using it to counter the argument against profitability.

I'm curious if you were wanting another motivation to be at play here? As much as I'd personally like it if people were motivated purely by wanting to further their communities and the usefulness of currently inescapable governing bodies, I don't actually expect others to be so motivated.

It's a bit of a blackpill topic, so I don't speak of it much, but what do you consider to be the primary motivators behind this planned inflation thing that seemingly every nation must suffer? I just shorthand the blame to central banking sometimes, but I know I'm missing some data.

Going off of gut instinct, I want to blame the stock market because I get warning signs over that easy-money, no-value, gambling-for-adults racket. I've even managed to get a few friends to agree with me on stocks being untrustworthy or "wrong", but ultimately, they feel they have no choice but to invest because of inflation/devaluation/random economics jargon. I hate that - people feeling forced into a specific action because of pressure from all angles. That's part of why I immediately jumped to financial reasoning for bonds.

I'm not gonna bother asking "How do we delete inflation?", it's enough to just understand why it's being forced everywhere all the time. I imagine the federal reserve and our debt-based currency is part of America's problem here, but I don't think that explains things in other nations. Money stuff and globalized systems tend to make me angry, and so I kind of shut them out of my mind, leaving me lacking on a lot of data.

It's a good point, but I recall there being more personality in general for AC1 villagers. Perhaps we should merely be blaming the scriptwriters, or even the localizers.

It's almost like an accidental commentary on the destruction of communities over time in the real world. Things and features are given in each sequel, but at the same time, the personalities grow shallower. Now you get some nice customization features, but you end up feeling like your neighbors are a nuisance (this realization made me quit playing). What's it all worth? All the comforts and securities, it's nothing without humanity, some inkling of depth, a teasing that maybe you can enjoy your neighbors (even when they act out against you, as your link portrays) in a game even if you can't in reality.

Sorry to hear, I know that feel.

Bonds can be separated into funding departments, programs, agencies, etc.

That's great, I didn't know. If they're seperated in a useful manner, maybe I'd consider it for investing surplus money.

I'm unclear on this 'negative yield' thing, though, it sounds like it demotivates financial investment so what's the benefit to the person paying into it?

Bonds are required to have an endpoint to funding. This incentivizes the government to stay on time. When applied to whole departments, it could force the department to close if the people refuse to fund it.

As awesome as that scenario would be, I'd count that as a strong incentive for parasites to go all out trying to prevent this from being permitted. I actually consider this to be the true motivator for anyone fighting against the idea of tax erasure (politically, I guess it could be called tax reform).

Taxation isn't "having skin in the game". There is never a direct benefit to you. That's why I recommend bonds as a form of funding.

"Taxation is theft" has become a meme, but it's basically true; you, as a taxpaying citizen, have no real say in how your tax money is spent. Sure, you can elect officials that might spend how you like, but that's no guarantee they won't pick this one time to start taking bribes. You'll have a hard time voting in a politician that promises to spend 100% to your liking in the first place. You could run yourself, but not for every position in existence.

Can you explain bonds and how they might solve this problem?

Allowing corporations to own real property probably itself was a mistake, since they have potentially indefinite lifespans.

Truly. I forget what the original legal justification was, but now we have non-entities that receive all the legal protections of citizens yet have none of the responsibilities of citizens. Terrible stuff.

One could even say that our current culture war is revolving around this priest class struggling to break the 'faithless'. But it only looks bleak because the merchant class is allied with the priests right now. If there were a way to sway the merchants somehow, perhaps we wouldn't be eager to ask daddy government to write new laws (example: legislature banning lootboxes).

That's kind of what I'm getting at. I wouldn't be able to pick more than a few category's electors because I would refuse to defer to the decisions of others except in particular cases where I believe that they have better insight than I do (because if I have better insight, why is my decision being outweighed by theirs). And that's assuming the electors are stuck in particular categories - if the electors are general category, I'd just refuse to vote for any electors because I would find too much fault in the possible results and process.

My knee jerk solution is democracy (plus whatever you think is fair for reducing troll weight and bad faith votes), but that alone is boring to say the least. Perhaps only give each participant a number of votes that is less than the number of categories? Then each participant's nominations/votes will be more carefully considered (and hopefully more knowledgeable/accurate). A straight up democratic run could be good in a different way, but I think the goal you want is better served by having most participants less incentivized towards frivolous voting.

Also, I have a nagging dread of rising "ecelebs" in any online group I'm a part of, because it tends to make things gay and dumb (I wish I could describe this properly), so I'm reluctant about any operation that might encourage such ego inflation.

I've got one main problem with this. I'm familiar with several users around here, but only in terms of culture war ideology. Like, if we're nominating an elector for the White Feather category, I'd pick TheImpossible1 because I expect him to have a hyperactive insight into it. But, for a normal category like Best RPG, I have no clue because I rarely see rpgs discussed here and couldn't form a meaningful opinion about who might have even an adequate insight into the genre.

Try not to let the demoralization take root. Spend time with activities and people you love. If your activities get corrupted, find new ones. If your loved ones forget how to love, find new ones.

The major attack vector is demoralization. They don't want to build or create anything, they just want to make others as miserable and empty as them. So of course it won't stop even if they win, because their victory is framed around bringing down their neighbors, something that will never produce more than a fleeting moment of sadistic glee, followed by a righteous bitterness that somewhere someone is having a nice day.

Not to suggest ignoring problems, though. But you have to come to terms with what is inside and outside of your power as an individual - and you're the one that decides those limits.

People feel they need to prepare, but they can't retaliate, and that constant edgy readiness is already wearing people down

Ahh, any person doing this needs to try to find a better way. I spent years in that state in my youth, and I promise you it will fuck you up long-term. I don't want anyone to go through what I did, not even my worst enemies.

The best solution I came up with (after it was too late) was to muster enough vigilance and conviction to be willing to flip the humanity switch and make a sharp gear shift. It's comfortable and civil to slowly shift gears, but you can't just ride that edge. I don't even care if you turn into an edgy shitter out of a misinterpretation, just don't ride the edge for years.

Well, I'm no history buff. If I say "wild west" in reference to an era of the internet, the odds are good that others will understand my meaning. Although what you say about the wild west actually reinforces what I cared about. I think individual sites should be allowed to have awful rulesets if they want, but only as long as it's possible for another site to pop up with a good ruleset and take all the traffic. This modern stuff of payment processor cancellation and host corruption makes me sick.

Do you consider the dangers of an encroaching authority to be your driving motivator or is your position based on principle?

For the free speech thing? Some of both, I think, but it depends on definition of authority. I'll assume the modern definition that means that anyone who is given an authoritative title is an authority, typically for the purpose of being allowed to wield power over other people legally (sometimes even reversed, where, say, a forum moderator can be called an authority just because he can wield power over users). I like to think that I'm mostly driven by the principle of the matter, but I acknowledge that seeing the grip tighten on speech online makes me double down.

I don't want the next generation to be denied the opportunities mine had growing up. I want kids to be able to shout nonsense in their headsets during pvp. I want teenagers to be able to misuse their creativity and time with elaborate troll operations. I want people to be able to find others with opposing ideas and have the chance to debate them in a no-holds-barred smackdown, and then I want the text left online for everyone to bear witness to.

There are some cracks in the principle, like trying to deal with spam (which is woefully simple to accomplish with bots now). No one really gets any use out of it, so it's usually a low resistance issue to widely ban it somehow, like having a moderator oversee all output. I think the better idea is to give each user the ability to mute others so they can have the exact kind of curation they desire - something which isn't really common sense to a lot of people because you can't do it in real life. In real life, if someone's being a nuisance in the movie theater, you can try to tune them out, but that's a big effort and will spoil your leisure. You could confront them, but what if they ignore you? Use force? That only works if they aren't one of the protected classes. Report to employees? What do you do if the employees don't care? Manager won't do anything unless he cares. (I haven't gone to a theatre in over 10 years, can you tell)

I think you have a good attitude for a creator. You sound like you've overcome the common issues that trip up small time creators. I keep an eye on a couple of amateur game dev groups (not the same as writing, but still a creative field) and they can be a real sorry lot. Lecturing doesn't do much, the important stuff like motivation and priorities have to be discovered by the individual. Lot of people with big rockstar dreams that get caught up in promises of easy victory.

I'm only gonna argue for pushing free speech absolutism on the internet because it's way easier to try to create a bunch of sites with wild west rules from 10+ years ago than it would be to try and establish a legitimate and fully-functional libertarian/ancap paradise in real life. So I don't have much internal conflict for taking a hard stance for it online. I can defend pedos online without worrying about being assaulted or abducted, unlike real life public spaces, for instance. Same with other highly volatile topics. Free market of ideas, and all that.

I appreciate the argument about losing one battle in a bigger war you're trying to win, but I want you to not attribute all possible bitterness the OAG brand receives towards idealism. There's another major factor, in that OAG was a figure of hope (maybe not a top10 hope, but still) for people who are feeling trapped in demoralization, but the leadership has changed hands and there's little reason to expect the same under new leadership. Such an audience has been burned too often to have use of promises; all you can do for them is make a good product, consistently (which was hopefully already a goal).

I'm not surprised to hear about KIA giving you trouble. Bad blood between us and them, for one thing. They seemed to despise the work on OAG, felt it was all too extreme and biased for them.

Well, I once said fellow channer instead of Vtard

For clarity, I want to point out that the "fellow gamers" thing isn't an issue of labels, it's just a trope that demonstrates a degree of disconnect when an outsider attempts to penetrate a group. As other commentors have referenced, it's like the meme "how do you do, fellow kids" (often attributed with an image of Steve Buscemi attempting to blend in at a high school).

I was mostly shit-testing you with the ESL remark. I'll accept that it may accurately reflect your thinking process.

So far it reeks of managerial troubles, but there's really nothing you could do to clear up my concerns there because I'm biased against such scenarios. If it helps, I'm not just gonna write it all off as doomed and I think a lot of us are eager/willing to try out some new pieces before final judgment.

I think doing this on election day was also a poor choice. I imagine a lot of our regulars are out hunting for "salt" or otherwise doing the internet culture equivalent of partying.

While I don't respect your PR work here, I do appreciate you shining light on some of the ugly truths of this matter.

You're making a serious argument against free speech - in a gamergate community! It's quite something.

I was on 8chan

Yet you don't know the rule of lurking before posting? Or you thought it just doesn't apply anywhere but 8chan? Since you censor yourself saying faggot in another comment. And not in a normal manner, even. You capitalized the F, then censored 3 letters.

The OP starts with "Hello fellow gamers," don't expect any serious participation, it's presented like a troll operation. Awkwardness and corporatism are no excuse for lacking awareness of one's audience. Not your post, I know, but it's embarassing and a huge red flag.

Also, what's your first language? I don't think it's english. I thought the rigidity was awkward formality at first, but no, that's not it.

Tell the owners/managers to come out and clean up their own shit. They won't because they can't handle hardball questions like business models or being called out on misunderstanding 101 basics like demographics.

Sadly, when in clown world joking and predictions get all interwoven. So I was joking, but only in a serious effort at predicting the next act in the circus.

Been a while since I heard blue beam mentioned. Looking it up again, it sounds frightening so I don't really want to entertain the idea. I figure most of the world will break down in terminal laughter as soon as they hear about aliens, but if there isn't laughter...then shit gets scary.