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Cake day: July 11th, 2023

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  • He’s also done a lot of wide-spread horrible things to get that money though, that’s the thing, the good stuff billionaires do rarely makes up for the stuff they’ve done to get that money in the first place. The most fantastical thing about Batman is that he and his parents are usually depicted at face value as good rich people who get their money legitimately without hurting anyone and then only do good things with that money. And despite that Gotham is still an eternally crime-ridden cess pit. Most billionaires donate huge amounts to non-profits or start their own. Hell I bet trump himself has done plenty of philanthropy, but that automatically doesn’t make up for the way they earned their blood money in the first place. Is Bill Gates going out of his way to lobby for taxing the rich, or universal healthcare, or other systemic changes that would help a lot of people but likely reduce the rate he accumulates wealth? Because he has more than enough money to make large waves in those political arenas and still be rich for the rest of his life. If he never made another cent and gave away 90% of his money to homeless people he would still have enough left to be rich for the rest of his life.


  • I mean yeah there are tons of other kinds. I can think of lots and lots of superheroes who are fundamentally anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist etc. Spider-man for example is hardly right-wing, his motto is literally antithetical to the individualism of right wing ideology: with great power comes great responsibility. He’s seen as a working class man’s superhero who isn’t an old rich guy, the friendly neighbourhood teenage hero. And when you get into iterations like Miles Morales it gets even less right-wing. I’m sure the presentation of Spider-man differs depending on the writer, but at the core he’s not what I’d consider a right-wing fantasy by any stretch.

    Heck, even if you look at the Punisher, I haven’t read the comics so take this with a grain of salt but a lot of people who have read them have noted that the Punisher hates cops and the series does not actually align with right-wing ideals the way right-wingers seem to think he does. From what I’ve heard the Punisher comics, especially modern iterations, usually depict him as someone doing bad things as a result of the system failing him and driving him to try and take things into his own hands in all the wrong ways. Not a glorification of vigilantism but rather a deconstruction of it. But even if you set aside the problems with vigilantism, enjoying it as a fictional concept isn’t exclusive to right-wingers. A lot of people who fall under other political ideals can enjoy it for different reasons. Robin hood isn’t a superhero but he is a classic vigilante archetype who is not right-wing in nature. He literally steals from the rich to give to the poor. And enjoying the concept in fiction is fine, fiction can be escapist sometimes, what’s important is understanding why it isn’t a good thing in real life.

    Even rich superheroes aren’t automatically a right-wing power fantasy, it can be the fantasy of people with other political ideals for rich people to care about the little guy and take accountability. Tony Stark for example is someone who did become a billionaire by being a bad person and inheriting it from a father who was also a bad person. He becomes a superhero after being hit in the face with the consequences of that and seeing the truth of where his money is coming from, and after that point with most versions of his character he does use his money to try and enact real social change large scale and help people on top of funding himself and other super heroes, who are necessary in a universe with aliens and gods and magic and shit. His story is centered around him realizing that his money was ill-gotten and him trying to take accountability for that by trying to undo the damage he’s done and use his money to help people instead. That is at heart a fantasy that isn’t right-wing even if it is unrealistic. In comparison Batman as a character reads as more right-wing (if unintentionally) mainly because there’s generally not much criticism levied at him as a billionaire. Even his father is usually depicted as a good person, a loving parent who didn’t deserve to die, because the loss of his parents is his motivating factor, compared to Iron Man, whose motivating factor is making up for the things he and his father did to become rich in the first place. Batman is depicted as a good rich guy, son of another good rich guy, and you know he’s good because he doesn’t kill people. His money is bloodless and innocent. Though of course I’m sure there are iterations of him and stories which do address this, but the most well known version of him does present in a way that is appealing to right-wingers in a lot of ways.




  • I mean Musk wasn’t as loud about his bigotry at that point, not in the way he is now at least, and Mr Beast has been openly supportive of trans people. Being a bit of an idiot and being a raging bigot aren’t the same thing, and that incident mostly convinced people that Elon was an idiot. It’s entirely possible he’s changed his mind about Musk in 3 years. I’m not a Mr Beast fan by any means, I don’t watch his content or anything and tbh I found his reaction to the Jacksepticeye thing to be annoying which hasn’t endeared him to me, so I don’t have any skin in the game on his end of things, but there were a lot of people who didn’t hate Elon after the cave diving thing who do hate him now so I wouldn’t really treat that post as gospel personally. A lot of people don’t want to admit it but Elon used to have way better PR than he does now, and a lot of people have changed their minds about him over time. So atm I don’t see any reason to believe that Mr. Beast would revoke his support for trans people for Musk. His support of trans people is more recent as well. Maybe I’m wrong but I’d rather be optimistic about it until he gives me reason not to be.








  • This game could be the second coming of Jesus, Robin Williams, and Mr. Rogers all in one and it still wouldn’t excuse the shit the devs have pulled. This isn’t a case where its reputation will be fixed with an amazing final product. The moment you charge thousands of dollars for fictional video game ships in an unfinished video game that has been in development for more than a decade is the moment you cross a moral event horizon as developers and can never recover your reputation as anything other than leeches. This game will never have a good reputation, it could jerk you off to the tune of the Imperial March and it would still be worth less than a glamorous prostitute. At least a prostitute would charge more appropriately for their services.


  • No ship should cost any real world money to buy. If the stuff you can buy in a game with real world money can give you an advantage over other players or unlock parts of the game faster than players who don’t pay real money for it, then it’s meaningless to say the game itself is “only 45$”. The ships make up a huge chunk of the game and you can pay 48k to obtain them all immediately, or rather, not you because statistically speaking you’re probably poor, so you don’t get the same game for 45 dollars, not unless you want to spend a fucking loooooooooooooong time grinding in-game (based on what I’ve seen the time needed to grind for enough money to buy even one high class ship is ridiculous). Meanwhile richer players get to fly in circles around you in their better more expensive ships from the start. You get access to less of the game than them.

    Also, 1.2k for a single video game spaceship in a game that hasn’t even been officially released yet is disgustingly predatory enough on its own.


  • The fact that you can buy any ship in the game with real world money at all is the problem.

    These people are paying to remove that part of the game which blows my mind

    Yeah for people who actually enjoy putting the work in it doesn’t make much sense, but for some people who play video games it’s not about the getting it’s about the having. The problem is that in this case they can use real world money to have better stuff without having to work for it, giving them an advantage over other players who are poor or don’t want to pay for their ships. If this was 48k for just ship skins and it didn’t affect gameplay at all then it’d be pretty stupid still, but I would at least concede that the average person doesn’t have any disadvantages if they only pay the 45$ for the main game and don’t need to pay thousands of dollars to reasonably compete with players who have bigger wallets and less impulse control. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here since different ships have different stats and abilities afaik. This essentially means that rich people (or gambling addicts which are their own can of worms) can unlock more of the game and perform better faster than people who only pay for the base game.




  • Someone having a schizophrenic episode can become much more susceptible to radicalization which can contribute to them adopting bigoted views. So while that doesn’t mean anyone is obligated to tolerate them when they express extreme or bigoted views, I do think it’s much more nuanced than just saying “it’s no excuse”. Disabilities/disorders are called that for a reason, which isn’t because they’re easy to manage and only have pleasant symptoms. Cognitive/mental disabilities influence the way we think and act as well as our level of control over those things. People with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to being taken advantage of by cultish movements and ways of viewing the world because of something they usually don’t really have any control over. That’s why it’s important to help them seek treatment and why they need to maintain that treatment consistently such as making sure to stay on their meds and listen to their doctors and therapists. But unfortunately not everyone has access to treatment.

    I agree with the other commenter that sometimes depending on the situation something CAN be an excuse. Having schizophrenia can absolutely be an excuse if the person literally doesn’t have control over the way their brain can leave them vulnerable to certain influences or ways of thinking. That’s why in some cases it’s an acceptable defence in court (one of the few cases where the insanity plea might be successful, depending on how the schizophrenia influenced their actions and how aware they were of whether what they were doing was wrong or avoidable). I think it’s important to recognize the difference between “it’s not an excuse” and “I don’t have to put up with it”. Nobody has to tolerate or put up with inappropriate behaviour from someone else even if that person isn’t in control of themselves, and even if they do have an excuse that doesn’t mean we can’t avoid them or call them out for what they say or do, or that they shouldn’t experience the consequences of their actions if those actions harm others (winning an insanity plea doesn’t mean you’re set free after all). If they can be given access to treatment and regain some level of control over their body and mind then that’s all the better. We can refuse to accept or allow that behaviour while still showing understanding of someone’s situation.

    If course, just because someone has schizophrenia that doesn’t mean it’s ALWAYS an excuse, there are a lot of factors, and it’s possible for someone with schizophrenia to do something wrong and know that it’s wrong while doing it, even while having an episode. Of course that can be hard to establish for someone that may be getting harassed or mistreated by someone with schizophrenia, and I wouldn’t try to dictate whether they’re allowed to blame the one who harmed them or not. But I don’t think we can just dismiss it wholesale by saying “lots of people with mental illness aren’t bigoted”, because mental illnesses are very diverse. Sometimes the symptoms of mental illness can be unpleasant or unpalatable. Not everyone with adhd has memory issues, but some do. Not everyone with depression is suicidal, but some are. Not everyone with schizophrenia experiences delusions, but some do. And doesn’t just mean that they hallucinate stuff visually, it can mean that they start to believe things that don’t make any sense and aren’t based on reality. Those beliefs can be nonsensical like “the aliens are using my brain as a radio antenna” or they can be dangerous like “the Jews control the world’s banks and the holocaust didn’t happen”. They typically can’t control these beliefs any more than they can control visual hallucinations. So I think it’s unfair to say that schizophrenia, or any mental illness, is never an excuse under any circumstance.

    That said, it’s difficult to diagnose someone over the internet so there’s some caution that should be exercised in declaring that someone has schizophrenia and thus might not be entirely responsible for their behaviour. Sometimes bigots can resemble schizophrenics if they grow extremist enough, but the difference is they generally have more control over the thoughts, decisions, and actions they took to get where they are.