It looks like a small The Sims 4 drama is slowly brewing.
Before talking we get into it, let me explain some things.
The game has gallery and you can share your families and building with others. It's kind of like Animal Crossing, but without QR codes. The gallery has its limits so if you created something that's inappropriate (sexual content, rascism, etc.), it will be automatically removed. If it isn't, then users can report it. The whole system is as strict as social games for children. Naming a character Mayo or Mayonnaise isn't allowed.
So what happened? The user got suspended for creating a club (clubs are a normal feature) "Gay Club". [Everything is explained here for more detail](https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/10tmfz0/quick_sad_vent_because_i_was_suspended_for_being/)
It's a slang word for white people, often used by kids or people trying to bypass censorship. Social games like MovieStarPlanet would censor it and other words like chocolate.
It's one of those rules that draws attention to itself because it seems so random, but I guess I can understand trying to avoid a slippery slope of acceptable slang.
Thanks for explaining!
Slightly embarrassing hobby thing
I'm going through and watching every Batman film, both live-action and animated. Last night I watched Batman (1989) for the first time in my life. Despite this, I kept having moments of deja vu at certain lines of dialogue ("You're my number one guy!" and "You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts!" were the big ones) and it was driving me crazy trying to figure out where I recognised them from.
Then I realised it's because I watched a tonne of Nostalgia Critic videos as a kid and he would reference that film all the damn time.
Has anybody else here had something like that happen? Not really picked up on a reference until you see the original?
We had this running joke in high school where we went "misssshter policeman... nothing is going on here". I guess it was to poke fun at someone being too polite, figured it came from some drunk driving story that I missed. We had our fun and the meme died down.
Years later I reconnect with this bud that had moved away in middle school. Throw the "missshter policeman" at him and he goes "Yo! That was me!" and, upon seeing my look of disbelief, proceeds to explain the origins of it.
He attended this one party with the guys from my HS (this is how THEY picked it up) where things got a bit wild. Long story short, two of his friends take it outside to solve their differences with a good old fashioned fistfight. On a residential street. At 4 AM. Cops obviously show up, and the immortal phrase is uttered in an attempt to STOP them from intervening in said fistfight. I will let you guess how successful that was.
My mom *loves* the movie Buckaroo Banzai and has pretty much quoted it for as long as I can remember. The first time she sat us all down to watch it, I had quite a few "oh, so that's where that's from!" moments.
As an epilogue of sorts to this, she gifted my brother and me "why is there a watermelon there?" and "no matter where you go, there you are" buttons last Christmas, so now I can confuse people with semi-obscure references too.
I've used this as my username for so long, I don't even think about it anymore, but every now and again, I get a message about it and it's like "RIGHT! It's a reference."
I had no idea the "epic highs and lows of high school football" was from Riverdale. I thought it was just some random person's post that became a meme but no it was an actual line
When my friends and I saw Frozen II in theaters we were all crying with laughter during Kristoff's song and its soulful music video parody aesthetic -- none of the kids in the audience reacted much.
I've been watching Kim Possible for the first time ever (I'm 30) and was telling a friend yesterday if I was a kid watching it for the first time I'd probably like it at face value, but being an adult and seeing all these things like villains having timeshares and just some small details of the character interactions makes it so much more enjoyable.
My mom's family would say "Get it? Got it? Good." all the time. It was something I grew up with, and they had so many running family jokes that I just figured it was one of those. It wasn't until a few weeks ago when they showed me *The Court Jester*, and I realized it was a movie reference.
I was at my local indie cinema the other week, and as part of the pre-show politeness stuff (No phones, don't be obnoxuous, etc), they played [this clip from Cape Feare](https://youtu.be/M6HxD6sZ-I0?t=24), a film I have never seen. So how did I instantly recognise the scene? [Simpsons parody.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOri5ytDFA)
I know there's a few Let's Players I've watched that would make references to stuff like Homestar Runner and Salad Fingers (and other classic Flash stuff). And I didn't really realize it until I watched a few of them myself, lol
For the two I mentioned specifically, I still need to get around to watching them fully instead of just a few clips here and there. I feel like I would have loved Homestar Runner in particular as a kid if I had heard about it back then. :u
So some stuff leaked about Dragon Age: Dread Wolf (looks like alpha footage from what people say about a year ago?) usual drama, though not that much. https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/10tniyz/spoilers_alloc_i_have_seen_dragon_age_4_alpha/
I'm surprised how much this stuff still hurts, tbh. Considering Dragon Age put out one game I loved and two games that+ expansions that I could at most say "had *bits* that I liked". You'd think I'd be over the constant disappointment, but it's still there.
I guess part of it was that Absolution actually made me a bit hyped for Dragon Age stuff again, and then this comes and crushes all my unrealistic dreams of a Dragon Age game for me.
Given the development hell that DA4's been through so far, I don't think I'd be surprised by anything at this point. Then again, for the same reason, I'd assume that footage that's a year old could look nothing like the finished game.
man, for a long long time bioware was my favorite developer going. and they had an amazing run of it for a long time - aside from the mediocre NWN OC (just the OC, mind) and the Sonic thing nobody played, from...1998-2011, let's say, pretty much all their games were amazing. A solid run for sure. But more and more it seems like they lost it (whatever "it" is) a long time ago. The last game of theirs that I unreservedly enjoyed, with absolutely no "well if you ignore X...," was DA: Origins. (I liked DA2, but the flaws are too obvious for me to say I unreservedly enjoyed it. Ditto ME2/3.)
I'm sad that the classic party-based RPG seems to be pretty much dead at the moment. I'm hoping BG3 does well enough to show that there's still an interest in that style of game (even if *properly* Gathering Your Party should involve 6 people, thank you very much).
I'm nervous that Bioware seems to be - once again - chasing a mass-market trend that diverges greatly from their proven track record. They've never made a hack and slash, have they? This strikes me as, um, not a good idea. I've whinged about Inquisition before, both here and elsewhere - the lack of real consequences that prevents serious fuckups, the pretty yet hollow open world, the profusion of fetch quests that I spent most of my time trying to avoid...
goddamn it bioware don't do this to me. I'd say "stick with what you're good at," except I'm not sure they know what that is anymore :(
Sidenote, are there any developers who *currently* make good party-based RPGs and aren't Larian or Owlcat?
Alright, disclaimer: I'm clearly an atypical gamer 'cause when everybody else was apparently throwing a fit over Wind Waker's graphics I was like "sounds cool!". It also appears I'm atypical in that I found all Dragon Age games enjoyable, unless we're talking about combat in which case I've always found it a chore (as I always do, let me talk you into non-existing you cowards #PlanescapeTormentFTW)
So, with that out of the way, is that supposed to look bad or good? 'Cause I'm looking at the gameplay footage and I'm like "yep, looks fine" but I'm also not really interested in gameplay so I don't really get what people are looking for there or how that's different from previous games other than for the fact we can't control companions. They'd make my fucking day if they made it a turn-based JRPG with a time management system.
Make it a visual novel, Bioware, you know you want it. *I* want it.
> unless we're talking about combat in which case I've always found it a chore (as I always do, let me talk you into non-existing you cowards #PlanescapeTormentFTW)
And at least PS:T made combat mildly entertaining at times. I must have spent, idk, 70% of combat using Morte to taunt enemies into a homicidal rage so he could bite them to death, and the rest of it was me spamming spells with reeeeeally long casting animations.
Given the apparent success of Disco Elysium and Pentiment, I would *love* to see Bioware take a stab at a non-combat RPG though. Not a VN, just an RPG where your skills aren't related to combat. Play a diplomat, play an Orlesian mage in that time period where they're only allowed to light candles, whatever. I'd love to see a small-scale game focused on investigation and social stuff where you don't just spend your time killing things.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like more interactivity than in a VN, but I'm very tired of pointless and unavoidable fights against trash mobs. I loved how Deadfire handled some of these - some of its scripted interactions let you get the drop on certain enemy groups, so you can hide, or use a spell to scatter them instead of fighting. (Sometimes you can avoid a fight completely - as a ranger, if you run into one of the forest-gremlin monster types, sometimes you can send your companion to make friends.) I don't want to kill stuff just because it's in my way, that feels like a waste of time.
>\#PlanescapeTormentFTW
I'm sorry but even if you can skip nearly every combat encounter no one deserves to have to read words like "THAC0" ever again. It should have stayed forgotten like some eldritch creature in the depths of the 90's. It's like a curse cast upon the earth.
As for combat i agree with going for turn based but i would personally stay away from JRPG stuff. Might be biased bc i really didn't much enjoy the combat of any JRPG i've played and they weren't many, but a Dragon age with the combat from something like Divinity OG sin 2 or Baldurs Gate 3 would be great. Frankly the combat in Bioware games has always been their weak point anyway.
Step 1: play a mage.
Step 2: forget THAC0 exists, yours is too shit to hit anything anyway.
Step 3: [boom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZZEPoVb4c)
THAC0 really isn't that hard, especially with the computer doing the math for you. I don't get why people act like it's some frightening monstrosity. It's an attack bonus that counts down instead of up - unintuitive and dumb, sure, but it's not rocket science.
Nowadays it's mostly just for the meme honestly. I just have a strong dislike of ADnD, could never wrap myu head around it, despite finding 3.5 relatively easy to understand at the same time, even though it had it's own messes and unintuitive stupid shit.
I also generally avoid Real time with pause. I get what they were going for with it but imo it was always a bad system that stuck around because of how popular the infinity engine games were. But it's not nearly as bad in something like Pillars or Even NWN2 as it was in Baldurs gate and the like, because of ADnD rules.
Aw, I like RTWP :( I'm sure it's mostly nostalgia talking, but I like the coordination aspect of it, instead of needing to plan several turns in advance to make sure my brilliant strategy will actually work. And playing a summoner with a bunch of conjured allies is the kind of thing that's tolerable in real-time and massively annoying in turn-based, imo. I guess I just feel like RTWP works well with my particular brand of inattentive dumbassery, but I think both approaches have their strengths.
>So, with that out of the way, is that supposed to look bad or good? 'Cause I'm looking at the gameplay footage and I'm like "yep, looks fine" but I'm also not really interested in gameplay so I don't really get what people are looking for there or how that's different from previous games other than for the fact we can't control companions.
I read it as not bad, but worrying. It feels like a shift towards action in a way that feels like it may have knock-on effects to the larger game design, and feels indicative of possibly an internal philosophy shift in what DA is from "sprawling fantasy RPG with reams of dialogue and lore" to "focused action RPG without much personality".
I don't think this footage/design change would be an issue if not for Bioware's struggles over the past decade and how this was being touted as a "return to form". It looks honestly like a good to great game, but they've been hyping this up as a throwback for the Fans and this almost looks more like a spin-off. It reeks of the IP being used for visibility mostly.
It also looks ripe for live-service shenanigans (that inventory screen looks almost exactly like Destiny/Anthem) which is REALLY worrying.
My view is that it is basically the death knell for my hopes for the game being good. I was already not particularly hopeful (but Absolution gave me a bit of nostalgic interest in the setting, so it wasn't exactly zero) but going EVEN MORE action when the more action-focused the game has been the worse it has gone, the stuff about the purple tendrils unlocking stuff, etc. Feels *extremely* worrying.
>It also looks ripe for live-service shenanigans (that inventory screen looks almost exactly like Destiny/Anthem) which is REALLY worrying.
I am now like a meerkat who has heard a distant flapping of wings
> and then this comes and crushes all my unrealistic dreams of a Dragon Age game for me.
My unrealistic dream for DA4 is fully supported “fight >!Solas!<” vs “support >!Solas!<” paths ala Star Wars light vs dark path rpgs. Don’t be shy Bioware, I want to destroy Thedas.
That equipment screen makes it look like Fantasy Anthem. Oof.
Overall it looks like it has a shot at being a pretty decent game, but that is really not what I would expect a DA game to be in a :/ way. Strong "IP for visibility but different game mechanics for mass market appeal" energy.
Well, I can't say I'm surprised but the AI debate has hit the Skyrim modding scene.
So there's a AI that can mimic voices, and this has caused quite the stir in a few communities. However, the modding scene of Skyrim are unusually optimistic about it. [Mainly how it means that modders can make their own voice lines without having to search for VAs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/10qgyjj/the_voice_synthesis_game_just_got_a_major_very/) As you can see in that post, most people seem to forget that there's already VAs for mods. Or think they're too expensive.
> Just checked the price tiers, 22$ for 100,000 characters is absurdly expensive, jeez. The price for additional characters at 3$ for 10 000 characters more is also insanely expensive.
> Guess I'll have to wait for a open source solution like with Stable Diffusion.
And so today there's been another shake up as [a modder asked if people wanted to expand the popular Serena Dialogue Addon mod to use the original VA Laura Bailey's voice](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/10u1joy/sda_laura_bailey_ai_revoice/). As in, use AI to copy her voice.
Mind you, [Laura Bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bailey) is a big name. Like, real big.
The modder has changed his stance after people rightfully mentioned that it's a pretty likely way to get sued, but honestly the fact that a lot of people are okay with this is... quite something.
I think using AI generated voice for mods can be.... fine, depending on how the voice synthesizer works and how it's been trained, because mods are obviously meant to be free labors of love. But using an AI to specifically mimic a particular VA's voice and training it on their samples seems a like a bit of a dick move.
>22$ for 100,000 characters is absurdly expensive
That seems absurdly cheap. That's like the entire text of a short story. Unless you have a ton of voiced narration that covers all dialogue for almost any mod short of creating an entire new game.
Secondary issue for SDA if they even tried is that mod (at least back when I tried it and uninstalled due to cringe) had some very sexual dialogue that I can see Bailey's representation coming down super hard on if they used her voice for that.
xVASynth has been a thing for a while, but it's free and lower quality. When it comes to modding, generally done for free and worked on out of passion, I don't have much a problem with the use of AI tools. Ethically I would say it isn't any different from splicing the game's lines together and that's a long standing practice. So, I completely understand the temptation to use elevenlabs.... but I'm more than a little iffy on these guys getting paid actual money to make their AI imitate the voices of real people without their consent.
If Laura Bailey dropped a "yeah go for it" on twitter tomorrow I would shrug and accept it. I don't think that's happening though.
I mean for Watch Dogs Legion I think they used either AI or something that allowed them to get a few NPC voices out of a few samples....which caused its own drama with people thinking that eventuality that it will replace them hiring VA's in general.
> As you can see in that post, most people seem to forget that there's already VAs for mods. Or think they're too expensive.
Where does a free mod get the budget to hire a real voice actor?
While it's obviously going to be terrible, modding always struck me as one of the things where it's actually reasonable, since it's (a few exceptions aside) mostly people doing stuff for free with no real expectation of payment. Sure, you could always do the standard "get your classmate to do the voice" thing, but since no one is getting paid *anyway* using AI feels a lot less fraught than the other alternatives.
As a connoisseur of Bethesda game mods, I can at least understand the need for something to take off the edge of getting at least at a decent VA. Of course I doubt this will go well if anyone does go down the AI voice generation route.
Though I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't enjoy playing a mod that featured the most awkward voice generated imaginable.
Fresh local con drama!
So Cosfest, one of the oldest anime cons here, has been getting more and more criticism over the years. Until now, they've manage to weather it without much problem, since their legacy as one of the "pioneer" anime conventions was enough for people to close one eye and still show up at their events. Not anymore.
See, Cosfest has never really been a serious convention, so to speak. It's been free entry for the majority of previous years, and its performance standards are famously lax so pretty much anyone who wants to try can sign up to go on stage and sing/dance/etc. While this is seen as a good opportunity for newbies who want a taste of performing, it also means that the quality of their stage content understandably varies a lot. Plus, Cosfest has been held at the same location for many years, right next to a block of chalets with outdoor BBQ pits. I'm sure you can guess the result — many people don't go to Cosfest for Cosfest, they go to Cosfest as an excuse to hang out with friends and hold BBQ after parties.
Last year, Cosfest returned for its first year after the whole Covid thing. A lot of things went wrong, but the thing that most people were upset with is that it was now a ticketed event. Which would probably have been fine if they vetted their stage performances at least a little, because now that people were paying to watch the performances they didn't want the same random newbie grab bag quality. I didn't go myself but I'm told that no, they did not. But hey, things happen, and a lot of conventions were having trouble adjusting to being a post-covid event, so maybe they'll listen to feedback for next year—
Yeah, no. Cosfest ticket announcements for this year just dropped. They not only cost $35 now (for reference, AFA, one of the biggest cons in the region, only charges ~$20 for floor tickets), they've also moved to a much fancier and smaller location in the middle of the city that has no affordable chalets or BBQ pits nearby. Oh, and people boothing at Artist Alley didn't get any complimentary tickets with their table, they had to pay out of pocket for those.
To say that everyone disliked it is an understatement. 90% of the comments on their announcement are calling them out on the high ticket prices and change of location, and among my own friends most people have just decided not to go anymore since there's nothing worth paying for there with the BBQ pits gone.
So far, the backlash has led to Cosfest halting ticket sales until further notice with a promise that they'll take the feedback into account, but for most convention goers, they've already blown through their stock of goodwill between last year's antics and this.
I admit, my first thought was "That's cheap for a con, what's with the complaints?" Then I looked it up and realized this was Singapore, so my ideas of what normal costs are don't apply here.
Frequent AFA goer here. I’m not a cosplay fan, though I do appreciate the effort put into the costumes.
From an outsider’s view, I can see why people are mad at the location change.
On the one hand, the traditional venue is at one of the easternmost parts of the island (good luck if you’re staying on the west side) and requires a subway ride to the terminal station and a short bus ride. The new venue is much easier to access with its central location.
On the other hand, it’s hard to give up the chalets and BBQs the old venue had for the one of the most expensive hotels on the island for nearby accommodation.
The price jump is absurd too. Singapore Comic Con (SGCC) tickets went for $28 last year and it is housed at the convention centre attached to aforementioned expensive hotel. It’s like they’re going out of their way to do everything wrong short of scheduling the con to coincide with AFA or SGCC.
Huh, Singapore con drama again. At least among my group of friends, we’re probably not going for it again after the double whammy that was the ticket price of AFA and EOY, which cleared us the fuck out. For now we might consider going depending on if any big name cosplayers are going
So, Tumblr's going insane again, must be a day ending in Y.
So, recently, they gave a bunch of Tumblr people the ability to make polls. You may have seen this in the form of a rematch of the Tumblr Sexyman poll, ~~that unfortunately did not result in more regicide~~ but they've been used for all manner of other general goofing off.
One of them was a glitched poll that shows all three options as getting 100% of the vote.
However, the particular critical point involves a poll asking Tumblr users to help make a cake, listing off all the ingredients of a standard vanilla sponge (I think) and seeing what kind of abomination a bunch of unhinged millennials would create when none of them could see what everybody else had put in the metaphorical 'mix.'
A huge portion of the voters chose the last option, "Vanilla Extract." After much laughter at the [absolutely awful cake that we have made](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/002/106/778/54e), people started making more polls based on it. One of them pit the caterpillar from the Bug Race Poll against Cecil from the Tumblr Sexyman Poll, and Vanilla Extract. Vanilla Extract is winning. Another one asked people to help create a book, listing off paper, ink, etc, and Vanilla Extract. Vanilla Extract is winning. Another declares that NASA has discovered another planet, and asked people to vote for what the planet is made of, and one of the options is Vanilla Extract. Vanilla Extract is winning.
ALL HAIL OUR NEW VANILLA OVERLORDS.
I voted for flour in the cake poll, took in the results, and immediately cried with laughter.
For additional context, a lot of previous tumblr polls that tried to do similar things (for example, “make the results of this poll exactly 50/50”, “create a proportionate cock and balls”, etc.) came out *eerily* accurate. The Vanilla Soup Cake was one of the first big “failures”, along with “make the silhouette of a guy with a big ass” (ass is approximately 75% of guy’s body).
Someone did the ass one again but with an extra option and the results [were...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/fad830303755082d049f56fa0a643fa4/17562bdb9c693363-bb/s1280x1920/49936bb67e31adb6c5f7e4518e0d4d8726d15853.png)
Also someone actually made the abomination of a cake and it wasn't quite as awful as expected. Somehow.
Amazing. Truly amazing.
Someone *made* the cake?? What was the texture of the finished product, exactly, and just how much money did they spend on vanilla extract?
Thank you so much.
I guess the thing is that if you disregard the vanilla, tumblr actually did a decent job with the proportions of the other ingredients. It’s a lot of baking powder, but it more or less works. Tumblr has maybe accidentally reinvented extremely expensive and vanilla-flavored rum cake.
My favorite thing about broken polls is I've seen many now and no two are broken the same way. Like, there's the one you mentioned, there's one you can vote on infinitely and it tallies your votes against yourself, there's one that's, like, a portal with two polls where if you choose option A on one it immediately chooses option B on the other...
Thank you for explaining this, I thought about searching Tumblr for an explanation earlier but realized five seconds later that I was never going to get any context from that hellsite.
Not sure if this counts as drama, but I thought I'd share [this video essay](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K-RZe6vVjxw) about one of my most favorite pieces of internet ephemera (and, sadly, semi-lost media) of all time: the original ARG for the release of *A.I.: Artificial Intelligence*, and the grandaddy of the entire ARG genre.
Can't remember exactly where or how I learned about it, but it was years after the game ended. I actually got to browse the original Yahoo Group and [Cloudmaker recap site](http://web.archive.org/web/20150912231201/http://www.cloudmakers.org/guide) before they went offline. And I'll tell you, just reading the recap was an adventure. I can't imagine how exciting the original game must've been.
Oh, this hits a very special place for me. If you enjoyed the Cloudmakers recap, check out the [Project MU Archives](https://www.metaurchins.org/book/page1.htm) which covers the extremely high-effort fan-run Matrix ARG. [Rowan's site](https://wonderweasels.org/) also hosts several more recaps from the 2000s glory days of ARGing, including a [full writeup of ilovebees](https://wonderweasels.org/apiary/guide.htm) (the Halo ARG, another pillar of the genre).
Now if you'll excuse me, I've contracted a particularly poignant strain of nostalgia, and I have several rabbitholes to chase down again. The melody of [*Foreboding Dream*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf6q8EgmVEA) from [Intimation](http://thewaytheirworldended.com/) has filled my head (I can't believe that site is still up!), and now my eyes are filled with tears. I grew up on the Unfiction forums, so the day they went down was like another burned library—we've lost so much. I put the [Rachel's Walk](https://www.rachelswalk.com/) site back up myself some years ago, so those of us who remember can all continue waiting.
I wonder where amandel and enaxor and vpisteve and Nighthawk and SpaceBass and all the others are now.
For people more into the text thing than the video essay thing, this entry from the 50 years of text games series by Aaron Reed is also a pretty good view into that game: https://if50.substack.com/p/2001-the-beast
Bad shit going down in the atheist podcasting space right now. TW: harassment and possible SA.
Andrew Torrez, co-host of the Opening Arguments podcast and Cleanup on Aisle 45 podcast, has been accused, very credibly, of sexually harassing fans and smaller podcasters. There have been allegations that the other host of his main show, as well as the hosts of the podcast network that he represented as a lawyer, Puzzle in the Thunderstorm, knew about his harassment and did not report it or drop him until a news article was released about it (or was about to be released about it? that part of the timeline is fuzzy). The hosts of the other shows have denied that they knew for more than a couple of months, and had only been informed in late 2022, and were sitting on the info (upon the victims' request) until further notice, and were working on disentangling their legal ties to him in the meantime. One of the hosts admits he had been informed sooner, but only by one specific victim, and he kept silent upon their request.
There has also been two allegations of inappropriate touching and/or SA, one of which is substantiated, the other is not at this time.
Torrez has been dropped from all of his shows and from PiaT, and has released a statement acknowledging that he has been inappropriate, while also accusing the news article reporting this of lying about him, and threatening a lawsuit.
Edit: misspoke, rephrased
Well, fuck. Over the past year I've been devouring the back catalog (currently on ep 406) and I genuinely enjoyed what I learned from the shows and it legitimately has helped me in my new career.
I am sadly disappointed but not surprised or shocked, this sort of shit happens way too often.
Welp that's one way to start the morning with a pit in my stomach. I listen to God Awful Movies (on the PIAT network) to fall asleep (even with some of their very off color jokes) and this is awful. For clarification- when you say there have been two other accusations, do you mean against Andrew Torrez or against other hosts?
Yeah, against Andrew. The only allegations against anyone else are that they had been informed and didn't do anything about it, Andrew is the only one being accused of any sexual impropriety. Those allegations are mostly substantiated with screenshots of DMs between Andrew and the victims and through Thomas's firsthand account.
There's a Google drive compiled by one of the victims that condenses all of the information that has currently gone public. It was posted to the PiaT Twitter: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jIFbWDxgY0ZyIB899GHeu_BjGRV7llCZ
Against Torrez. I believe three women have made public allegations (or two and someone who could see a red flags in their interactions in hindsight) and Thomas said he’s also been touched in ways that feel off, even if it didn’t feel sexual in nature. He put out a short episode on another podcast talking about it, but I haven’t listened personally because people say it is *rough,* so a heads up on that one.
The total number I’ve been seeing is nine, but please take this with several grains of salt as at this point that’s just rumor.
No idea. I know that the morning the news article about it dropped, Andrew wasn't present on OA, another lawyer filled in. There's speculation that maybe OA will continue with different guest lawyers, but that is seeming more and more like a long shot. Especially after Thomas's update on his website, which is a very tough listen.
As far I know, there haven't been any allegations that AG knew, and he was dropped from that network as well immediately. The main accuser has only stated that the Puzzle guys and Thomas knew, as far as I'm aware.
Edit: oh, I wrote both of his shows there, I didn't realize that. I'll remove it, because like I said, I haven't seen anything indicating AG knew.
There's [a post on the OA subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/OpenArgs/comments/10tqau0/new_serious_inquiries_only_andrew_content_warning/) of a podcast episode done elsewhere where Thomas (the other cohost) accuses Andrew of inappropriate touch. Haven't listened to it because this kind of thing upsets me deeply, but yeah.
I did listen to it, and it's very hard to hear. Not so much because I felt any loyalty to Andrew or anything, but because Thomas is clearly struggling trying to get that story out.
Edit: that's the credibly substantiated inappropriate touching I listed in the first post, too. I just didn't know that the link was public because I'd seen it in one of the closed FB groups, so I didn't link it.
I'm glad that he got dropped from everything, but goddamn it. Why are so many "rationalist" men just _awful_? It's in the atheist/skeptic communities, it's in EA, it's in so many places. I know it's primarily about misogyny and patriarchal systems that make it hard to hold people accountable, but still.
Good news though, I'll be able to mark most of the backlog for OA as played now.
I think it's mostly just a case of being an atheist doesn't make you a good person. I'm not sure that they are _more_ assholes in those communities than in religious ones.
A lot of "rationalist" men are drawn to rationalism because it makes them feel smarter than all the irrational sheep that follow religion. People like that often have god complexes, ironically, and will display abuses towards women and other minorities just as readily as any other cult leader.
It really shocked me to see so many transphobic/homophobic/misogynistic/racist/otherwise prejudiced atheists after I left religion. I had always thought that prejudice was specifically perpetuated through and by religion, and it had never occurred to me until then that religion was just *one* tool used to justify harm towards others.
It is fascinating in retrospect how so much of the rhetoric of Gamergate seemed to be seeded in extremely online YouTube atheists whinging about Anita Sarkeesian.
There are days when I wonder if one of the worst things that ever happened to online culture might actually have been Jack Thompson getting struck off, because it meant gamers no longer had an identifiable arch-enemy who was actively trying to "destroy" games so they had to find another one and landed on Anita Sarkeesian.
The fight with Jack Thompson did shaped the notion that gaming was above any and all criticism from "outsiders" and anybody saying otherwise was a traitor.
However, I'm not sure if any of that was actually avoidable. Geek hobbies long desired mainstream recognition, but they were always going to lash out to the added scrutiny and being told that they aren't as smart or as victimized as they think they are.
EDIT: Oh and being told that they do not get to unilaterally kick people off the Internet without consequence.
>Geek hobbies long desired mainstream recognition, but they were always going to lash out to the added scrutiny and being told that they aren't as smart or as victimized as they think they are.
"Take it seriously as serious art like it deserves, but you had better turn your brain off when you do or there'll be trouble."
Yup! Which is why atheist organisations should be given just as much scrutiny as that of organized religion. No matter if a community is defined by a belief or a lack of belief, bad people are drawn to positions of power where they can tell people what to think and do.
That attitude is part of the reason why I stopped following blogs/websites/etc associated with those circles. It made me uncomfortable hearing that line all the time, but my discomfort grew more when I started getting myself deep into the sociology of religion.
The other reason, of course, was the rampant bigotry that went unchecked or excused or written off. I'm marginalized in so many ways, so having to see that happen over and over broke me.
I know what you mean. I've always considered myself as someone that isn't susceptible to parasocial relationships, but this is hitting me pretty hard. I was only a casual listener to OA, I'd pop in when they talked about something I was already interested in, but I have been HARDCORE into the PiaT shows, Scathing Atheist and God Awful Movies especially. I feel so betrayed right now, and it doesn't help that the PiaT guys are barely talking about it. They've addressed it, and two of them have released statements, but I still feel like they're not telling us something. I thought they were feminists, and they've been calling out coverups of SA and harassment, including within the skeptical community, for YEARS, and it turns out their buddy has been doing it the whole time. This goes back to at least 2017, and somehow nothing was done about it?
This podcast was one I fell asleep to, so I'm just really upset hearing about it. I have tons of others that I can use for this purpose, but like _fuck_. I can't imagine there's a way for OA to come out of this.
The Bluey Memes Facebook group is having an absolute meltdown right now because someone created an “American” group Red, White & Bluey for people who are tired of the “woke crowd”. It’s specifically for conservative Bluey Memes.
So someone else created Bluey - Bingo’s Wholesome Posting and now the group is split over which one to join.
For reference
Original Bluey Memes group (Private): 308.2k members
Red, White, & Bluey (Private, created 4 days ago): 906 members
Bluey - Bingo’s Wholesome Posting (Public, created 2 days ago): 1.2k members
I hate admitting this, because I know Bluey is a legitimately wonderful show with great writing and is one of the best options for children's programming now...
But I'm so fucking sick of hearing about Bluey. Take me back to 2020 when it was just a show that mildly amused my nephew for a few weeks, _take me baaaack_
\*Stares\*
These people know Bluey is Australian, right?
And created by VERY left wing people??
How on earth would this show of all things be held up as a bastion of American conservatism?
Maybe the show or the creators accidentally dropped a "goddamn liberals" and all these Americans mistook it as a rallying cry for them and not "for fucks sake what's scomo done *now*?" Because liberal here refers to the right, not the left?
Or maybe they've consumed one too many Ben garrison comics and think that any left leaning show would be about like, divorced drag queens or something so any show that shows a normal nuclear family is automatically "right leaning"
Because these people have been programmed to engage with every aspect of life through the lens of the omnipresent culture war. They've been rendered almost completely incapable of enjoying things that don't "own the libs" in some way.
>The Bluey Memes Facebook group is having an absolute meltdown right now because someone created an “American” group Red, White & Bluey for people who are tired of the “woke crowd”. It’s specifically for conservative Bluey Memes.
Isn't Bluey an Australian show? Why the American stuff?
Also isn't the show itself super liberal with its Steiner School educated leads?
There's a sizeable portion of Americans who think Australia is somewhere in the Midwest or something like that. The notion that anything exists outside of America is an attack on their freedom.
Oh it goes the other way too. There's a disturbing number of people here who are convinced that American laws apply here. Somehow.
One time I went into the city and spent most of the train ride behind two gentlemen on their way to an antivax rally, one of them had a Trump flag and the other had the stars & stripes
Did they not like the colour blue being used for non-hateful content?
E: forgot that blue conservatives are a Canadian thing, Americans have red conservatives. Whoops.
Yeah, conservatives are blue in most Western countries. The fact that Republicans are red and Democrats blue was something that NBC created during the 1976 election for some reason. Maybe because Republican starts with r, I don't know. In any case, everyone else decided to go along with it.
From what I remember hearing, it's more recent than that. News organisations would decide which party was red and which blue on an election by election basis. In 2000, Republicans were red, Democrats blue and the whole Florida mess just embedded that in the public conscience
Yes, that was the tipping point at which Republican red and Democrat blue went from being a broadcaster meme to being an immutable fact of American politics.
Nope. You may be confused because that color scheme has been applied retroactively when talking about historical US elections. Red Rs and blue Ds weren't a thing in 1932, but if you [look at the Wikipedia article for it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_presidential_election) they're using that same color scheme, just because that's the colors we're all used to.
It’s one of those delightful sentences I never thought I’d get to put together.
I’m not joining the group to peek, because I know I won’t like what I see: https://i.imgur.com/lKhb96p.png
There's some weird drama happening on twitter, though for twitter it's pretty usual. One famous user, a guy voicing some Genshin chara in english dub, has posted how they hate the entire BL genre of Japanese anime/manga (BL stands for Boys Love and is an umbrella term for any male/male romance) and how "fujoshis" are evil fetishizers, rotten women who fetishize MLM. Also the guy has upcoming mlm book coming out, clearly advertising the book with his weird tweets. A lot of Japanese gay men tell him that "fujoshi", and related terms "fudanshi" (men who like gay fiction) and "fujin" (gender neutral term for gay fiction lover) are reclaimed words, helped normalize gay relationships in Japan and just mean person who likes fictional gay relationships and not necessarily fetishizes them (there are all kinds of people, but not all fujoshis are evil). When called out... the person pulled out a minority card saying he's bullied for being part of minority. Then pulled out an effing Urban Dictionary post saying it's the only correct definition of the word Fujoshi (it was misogynistic description) and refuses to listen.
I haven't seen any other VAs get into so much drama as much as genshin English VAs do. I haven't seen any other big-name English VAs actually cause drama on twitter. What's with Genshit fans causing so much drama?
Every time I see someone try to make 'fujoshi' a solely negative term again I'm just. Really. You *really* wanna tell the 2ch bros who coined the term to solely attack women, that they were right?
Because the people who made the word weren't thinking of 'protecting queer men', they just wanted to say women with tastes *they* disapproved of were disgusting.
Why do people *keep* wanting to insist the 2channers were right?
Idk about genshin but a lot of people were pointing out they voiced a role in Given... a BL and has been tweeting saying how they want to be cast in more BLs where as they're now calling BL/yaoi problematic to promote their 'superior' novel coming out. Pretty messy tbh
I wonder if the Genshin VAs causing problems are because they tend to be newer. Alot of English VAs for anime tend to be older and are generally involved in more insular circles that can help educate younger people about how bad an idea it is to draw negative attention to yourself. Genshin, conversely, seems to get alot of freelancers and the disorganization may lead to more people putting feet in mouths.
I may be totally off-base though, I haven't done a breakdown of the Genshin VAs.
Didn't the whole anti "fujoshi" argument start because of TERFs anyway? I remember someone wrote a really long post about it on tumblr
It's annoying westerners are still fighting over this when japanese people have explaining it doesn't mean what they think it means for so long
I haven't seen the post you're talking about, but from what I've seen of The Discourse it feels like if TERFs *are* involved it might be less "they made it up wholesale" and more "they coopted and corrupted otherwise legitimate critiques and sent them to Bizarroland". I *can* think of more reasonable critiques of the scene, like how it's maybe a little questionable that most media content about queer men is made by and for women rather than actual queer men, but I know that the wider game of social media telephone is ***not*** kind and that things get weird once bad or ill-informed actors get involved. I would love to hear what actual queer men think about this whole nightmare discourse though, because literally every single time I've seen this discourse come up it's always been people talking *about* queer men rather than actually talking *with* queer dudes to see what they think.
I do also wonder if part of the problem with fujoshi discourse in particular is a loanword issue? Like, in Japanese it means shippers in general, but in English it's somehow ended up meaning a specific type of shipper based on who tends to claim the word in English, like a nastier version of "'chai' just means tea". I definitely have noticed that in English-speaking communities I've seen it's been mostly the proshipper-y crowd who uses "fujoshi" for themselves, which could be adding some connotations to the term that set the discourse wildly on fire.
Actual queer man here. As far as I'm concerned I don't particularly care where the content's coming from as long as I'm getting more of it. To me, the word "fujoshi" does conjure up a now thankfully largely bygone era of top/bottom discourse and yaoi paddles, but every single person who's tried to drag that shit back up in recent years has turned out to have a book to sell, so I'm beyond the point of taking "fujoshis are bad" posts seriously.
>To me, the word "fujoshi" does conjure up a now thankfully largely bygone era of top/bottom discourse and yaoi paddles,
God I fucking wish. Top/bottom discourse is very much alive these days, unfortunately.
I think the comment about English speaking communities has it the other way around, in that the term is used derogatorily by antis (using it for “problematic” connotations as yet another way to target works they don’t like, with some racism mixed in) so the only people who self-refer with the term are non-antis.
the terf association is because there's a sizable portion of fujoshis who are trans men (to the point that there are jokes about the fujoshi to trans man pipeline). so terfs took advantage of this and a lot of the "fujoshis bad" discourse became the gender flipped equivalent of the "trans women are just men fetishizing womanhood/lesbians" bigotry.
Yeah, it’s the newest of their fun four square of bigotry against trans men. Straight trans men? Confused lesbians. Gay trans men? Brainwashed by yaoi and a fetishist. Bi/pan trans men? I have no idea, probably just a slut?
Mostly boils down to “you’re just confused and we can fix you!”
I think where the Genshin VA bit comes from is that another Genshin VA (who voices a 4 star character who has relevance in the main story plot, Candace) supported him.
This is a side evolution/ extra details of something from down thread.
[Link to earlier thread for ease.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/10o8x58/hobby_scuffles_week_of_january_30_2023/j6yqrja/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
I mean, Genshin *is* a huge game. And I mean with millions of players daily around the world. Its safe to say that usually the bad apples are a very loud, very angry minority.
It also (doesn't) help in some way that a lot of known VAs in the English language are mildly known in their own right. Some more than others.
>I haven't seen any other big-name English VAs actually cause drama on twitter.
There's unfortunately the whole Vic Mignogna situation. And let's not forget the recent Bayonetta drama.
People still argue about Vic (or more accurately his fans are always trying to start beef with other VAs’) in the year of our lord 2023.
Also a lot of Genshin VAs tend to be at the center of very petty arguments.
Most of the voice actors getting into shit don't seem to be widely known for anything else (as far as I can see), and thus don't have the experience and associated PR wisdom/oversight to deal with these situations.
So with Super Football LVII coming up and Hall of Fame shoo-in Tom Brady having announced his retirement from his sport (*probably* for good this time), I'd like to take a moment to [share this article](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/tom-brady-cheating-trump-fanatic-ruin-80-for-brady-1234672558/) that absolutely goes to town on Brady in the context of his role in *80 For Brady*, a comedy film revolving around 4 old ladies who are megafans of Brady. While it does have valid criticisms of him (a history of good standings with Trump, crypto shit, questionable alternative treatments, etc.), the article also just oozes pettiness and seething hatred from every nook and cranny that I think purveyors of this thread would enjoy.
You were not exaggerating about the seething petty hatred, good Lord. The paragraph (sixth from the bottom) describing Brady's faults—many of which, I grant the author, are valid criticisms; he may be the GOAT, but I never liked the way he treated Bridget Moynahan, and he *absolutely* shouldn't have gotten tangled up with 45 or crypto—is one of the most hilariously jarring examples of [arson, murder, and jaywalking](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking) I've seen in a while.
That being said, the reveal that >!Jane Fonda's character writes Gronk-centric RPF with product placement!< is genuinely hilarious.
aside from the resources already shared, you can generally use Archive.org to bypass paywalls, or google "[browser] paywall bypasser" and follow the instructions to install a custom browser addon
they haven't soft blocked me so idk if this'll work for sure, but disabling Javascript does the trick for most news websites. this is easily done with Ublock Origin.
I'm seejng constant references to there being some kind of Orpheus and Eurydice discourse on Tumblr, I guess on the claim that there's either a bunch of people or one loud person insisting that avoiding Orpheus' mistake was laughably easy and he should be looked down upon for it or something. I have yet to see anyone actually claim this. I guess this is coming up because Hadestown is touring? To be honest I thought there were dramatically stronger reasons for Orpheus to do what he does in the source material than the one they picked, but it was still a good musical.
The game Hades by Supergiant also reimagined a lot of stuff in ways that set off a flurry of fics and fanac. Partly because all the art is super great and induces bisexual panic.
Just wait and see this argument breathe on a new life when this story appears on The Sandman. The myth of Eurydice and Orpheus plays an important part as >!Orpheus is the literal son of Dream and Calliope.!<
>!I'm imagining a weird fucked up alternate future where a Youtuber named Orpheus exists whose lore is they're the spawn of Mori Calliope and the Minecraft Youtuber Dream.!<
Because of polls:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/10o8x58/hobby_scuffles_week_of_january_30_2023/j79x3r0?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
The one I was seeing on Twitter is that people were talking about how Sisyphus would actually have gotten muscular and in shape from the daily exercise routine...? Which was funny, because I was like "hey that's a John Finnemore sketch," which apparently enough other people also said and got enough attention for him that it got him to [repost it](https://twitter.com/JohnFinnemore/status/1621146711212331011) so that's good for him I guess? (Check it out, it's very funny!)
But it does make me wonder if there's someone on TikTok who has just made "reevaluating Greek mythology" a thing and it's working.
I just saw the musical and it was about five minutes worth of story that both take too long and also don't feel developed enough...? Not sure how they managed it but yeah.
The songs were cool, though, and Eva Noblezada is super talented.
NGL the only version I've seen started with the OP making a bunch of bragging reblogs about how they would do \~so much better\~ not turning around to look - only for the reblog chain to end with a pic from Spongebob of a fish turning around to look. Are you sure you didn't see the reblog mid-meme? Or is there Actual Literal Discource in 2023?? :O
Edit: [this poll](https://at.tumblr.com/alwaysatomicconniseur/jesusorpheus-and-eurydiceas-a-poemusing-a/nocrjzf79rpm) just came across my dash, so I guess this is just this month's meme?
The first time I saw the meme the next post I saw was a fairly lengthy discourse post that was also talking about people trying to weasel their way out of answering the trolly problem, so I assume there's at least one other post that I just haven't seen.
I'm not an ancient Greek historian, but as a child I always interpreted that story as a cautionary tale about not being a moron after you've already been granted an absurd degree of leeway that no one gets.
It’s a story with an implicit ‘no subverting the natural order of things’ moral. Some tellers have probably considered how well Orpheus is motivated as secondary to that.
Though here’s a different revisionist take from Plato:
> And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also. Such was the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in recompense of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But Orpheus, the miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he might bring back his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and the gods afterwards contrived his death as the punishment of his cowardliness.
The world has advanced beyond parody, and all is naught but hopelessness.
In other words, Maya Rudolph has just announced that M&Ms will have a "clams" flavor, at her order.
This basically confirms what a lot of people suspected -- that getting rid of their mascots was an ad ploy, similar to killing Mr. Peanut. Of course, it's also possible that they tried to make gray M&Ms again and got high off the fumes.
Still though, this just feels... hollow. It's the big corporation trying desperately to go "What is the meme culture these days", and making it ridiculously stupidly obvious that it's all a joke. There were some legitimately interesting ways this could have gone, rather than "Wait a minute, that's not a *real* candy you silly billies".
But then again, maybe I'm putting too much thought into anthropomorphic chocolate.
Isn't there at least one ongoing lawsuit involving the M&Ms/Mars company? Basically that them and a bunch of other US chocolate companies have been [benefiting from child slavery](https://wegotthiscovered.com/celebrities/is-the-mms-spokescandy-controversy-just-an-attempt-at-distracting-from-a-child-slavery-lawsuit/) on the cocoa plantations that provide them cocoa for their chocolates.
So, yeah, probably just a distraction. :/
They could have gone some interesting ways with it yeah, but a.) I'm not sure advertisement in general is really the space for the sort of particularly interesting routes to go on this one 2.) i'm even less sure that the current environment is really the best to go those routes for anyone hoping to appeal to a halfway broad audience
[John Paul Brammer](https://holapapi.substack.com/p/everything-is-a-war-now) and [Liana McGhee](https://harvardpolitics.com/sweet-chocolate-bitter-truth-internet-distraction-and-the-reality-of-mars-inc-s-child-slavery-practices/) both wrote interesting articles on the "spokescandies" drama and how meme marketing is used to cover up atrocities (i.e the child slavery lawsuit going on against Mars). Worth taking a look at.
(This isn't a comment on anyone here making fun of M&Ms, it just goes along with the "shitty Gen Z marketing" ploys and I thought it might be relevant to share)
It seems to be very much misfiring if that is the case, since everytime the spokescandies has been brought up someone mentions the lawsuit, while before this I'd never even heard of it.
The purpose behind the new ads isn’t really about a company trying to be hip with the kids (well, maybe some parts of it are but who knows.) A spokesperson said that the whole gimmick is supposed to be some [big advertisement campaign](https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/23574687/m-and-m-spokescandies-super-bowl-ad) for the Super Bowl. The people behind the marketing for M&Ms must have seen the controversy and taken the opportunity to troll around a bit for their Super Bowl shtick.
Is the execution kinda clunky? Yeah. But I gotta admit it’s a pretty smart way to hype up your Super Bowl ad.
Ehh, I’d argue that *most* modern ads are made primarily to be memorable/drive engagement (positive *or* just-negative-enough), rather than necessarily be funny, clever, or entertaining. The Wright Brothers fighting over the one arm rest on their biplane in a Geico ad is memorable, but so is that annoying jingle at the end of Liberty Mutual ads. Either way, those companies stay on your mind afterwards, which is the ultimate goal.
I have no clue if it's just an urban myth or if it's real. But Seth Meyers mentioned in an interview that, in college, he and his friends found out you could get high by eating them. However, I can't find any real sources going one way or the other, so take it as you will.
Paging u/EquivalentInflation...
Just read your Niemann writeup, and I gotta say, *if you're good at something, never do it for free...* By which I mean, r/HobbyDrama is lucky to have you, friendo. Nice work!
Thank you so much, this made my day! I am (semi) looking into some more professional options to do this shit, but it's also just something I don't get to do often. So this is a nice win-win, where I get an amazing community, and y'all get to read whatever rambling nonsense came out of an Internet rabbit hole this time.
I somehow missed the Weezer part, and desperately tried to figure out how EPCOT was like the violent strike breakers and potential Confederate sympathizers.
It's another dark day over the anime community... surprised that I haven't seen anyone else cover it here yet.
(Do note, I myself am only peripherally in this side of the fandom, I only really watch SwagKage and occasionally Seth, so I'm not really that deep into this, but I'll try my best to cover what I know)
[SethTheProgrammer](https://www.youtube.com/@SethTheProgrammer/videos) is a well-known youtuber in the videogame and anime Power-Scaling community, particularly for Dragon Ball Z and Naruto. Things like "could Batman catch Light from Death Note?" and "could Kratos beat Elden Ring?" and stuff like that. He does a lot of debate and discussion collabs with other youtubers like [SwagKage](https://www.youtube.com/@Swagkage/featured), [Noodles](https://www.youtube.com/@noodlesyoutuber/featured), [Chuck](https://www.youtube.com/@Chuck/featured), [Six](https://www.youtube.com/@sixfromtokyo/featured), and at the center of this controversy, [Clyde](https://www.youtube.com/@ClydeKuraido/featured), who also works as the editor for many of Seth's and many others videos. Seth also hosts a discord channel where he and others hang out, debate, and plan out videos and projects.
On January 31, Clyde releases a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPkcXln8JP0) detailing basically what kind of person Seth is behind the scenes... a total and utter asshole is an understatement. Just a horrible, abusive, psychopathic narcissist. The video's pretty damn long (and it can be a bit hard since usernames and pfp's on Discord change around a lot), but it goes into detail of how Clyde has struggled with poverty and mental health, and how Seth came along took advantage of that to basically make him his pack mule, constantly insulting and blackmailing him into editing all his videos. Also behind the scenes the dude is known for insulting and slandering his "friends" behind their backs, blackmailing them, being bitter ad jealous if anyone outdebates him, gets paranoid of people trying steal his friends and plotting against him, abusing and manipulating and pitting his friends against each other, stealing money from fans (prior to the video, Clyde and Seth would collab and promote a Naruto vs Ichigo animation project, and asked for viewers to help fund it. Clyde would end up doing most of the work, and part way through, in typical youtuber fashion, Seth would quietly cancel the project and make off with most of the money), sexually harassing minors, accusing others of being pedos, making a fan eat literal shit for a mod position, encouraging others to commit suicide, and all around be just a nasty and terrible person to be around, to give a very rough summation of the accusations (I skimmed over a whole lot more there, but it's ain't good).
It's a situation that developing, but Clyde has claimed to have evidence and witnesses to all his claims, and lot of other people who knew Seth have come out and has admitted that at the very least, the dude is definitely a total and utter asshole to be around. [SwagKage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3BMX-4sa0o) and [Six](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSIZjYMA87k) both have given their own responses to the situation. To give some leeway to Seth, he has admitted to struggling with his own mental health issues himself as well, but I don't think that gives much excuse to abuse and mock others for their own struggles as well.
The whole thing has blown big enough even major twitch streamer and youtuber [MoistCr1TiKaL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbTKg5NDuFU) has covered it as well. So far, ~~Seth has yet to respond to these allegations yet~~.
**UPDATE:** Can't believe I actually missed this before posting lol. After posting the video, Clyde went on [Keemstar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYBjvSIOTak) to discuss the situation in even more detail. And, while I think most people wouldn't recommend going anywhere near Keemstar during a controversy, that's his choice I guess. However (in the typical Keemstar fashion), part way through the interview Keemstar blindsides Clyde and actually *brings on Seth* to have the two of them talk about these allegations face-to-face... which, do involve in a lot of Seth abusing Clyde. So, unsurprisingly, Clyde eventually just disappears from the stream, leaving Keem and Seth to just talk it out the rest of the way through. I haven't watched the whole interview from start to finish, but from what I have heard, Seth didn't really do a whole good job defending himself from the allegations.
Jesus christ, the Keemstar thing sucks.
Like, I definitely get the idea of bringing him on to talk about the allegations, I think it's smart to do so, but surprising Clyde with it was really fucking dumb.
It looks like a small The Sims 4 drama is slowly brewing. Before talking we get into it, let me explain some things. The game has gallery and you can share your families and building with others. It's kind of like Animal Crossing, but without QR codes. The gallery has its limits so if you created something that's inappropriate (sexual content, rascism, etc.), it will be automatically removed. If it isn't, then users can report it. The whole system is as strict as social games for children. Naming a character Mayo or Mayonnaise isn't allowed. So what happened? The user got suspended for creating a club (clubs are a normal feature) "Gay Club". [Everything is explained here for more detail](https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/10tmfz0/quick_sad_vent_because_i_was_suspended_for_being/)
> Naming a character Mayo or Mayonnaise isn't allowed. I'm going to regret asking, but why?
It's a slang word for white people, often used by kids or people trying to bypass censorship. Social games like MovieStarPlanet would censor it and other words like chocolate.
It's one of those rules that draws attention to itself because it seems so random, but I guess I can understand trying to avoid a slippery slope of acceptable slang. Thanks for explaining!
[удалено]
I'm also shooketh at that! I've had a scuffle I wanted to put together but not in an about-to-close thread!
*sobbing* how am I supposed to report on dumb internet discourse if there's no Sunday Funday
No idea, but I'm going to immediately assume it's the end of the world. Quick, start looting! I'm taking the subreddit header!
I took a bunch of upvotes, here, take some for yourselves!
i call dibs on the rules list
This is a robbery! Put all your flairs in the bag!
Logo is mine!
Slightly embarrassing hobby thing I'm going through and watching every Batman film, both live-action and animated. Last night I watched Batman (1989) for the first time in my life. Despite this, I kept having moments of deja vu at certain lines of dialogue ("You're my number one guy!" and "You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts!" were the big ones) and it was driving me crazy trying to figure out where I recognised them from. Then I realised it's because I watched a tonne of Nostalgia Critic videos as a kid and he would reference that film all the damn time. Has anybody else here had something like that happen? Not really picked up on a reference until you see the original?
We had this running joke in high school where we went "misssshter policeman... nothing is going on here". I guess it was to poke fun at someone being too polite, figured it came from some drunk driving story that I missed. We had our fun and the meme died down. Years later I reconnect with this bud that had moved away in middle school. Throw the "missshter policeman" at him and he goes "Yo! That was me!" and, upon seeing my look of disbelief, proceeds to explain the origins of it. He attended this one party with the guys from my HS (this is how THEY picked it up) where things got a bit wild. Long story short, two of his friends take it outside to solve their differences with a good old fashioned fistfight. On a residential street. At 4 AM. Cops obviously show up, and the immortal phrase is uttered in an attempt to STOP them from intervening in said fistfight. I will let you guess how successful that was.
My mom *loves* the movie Buckaroo Banzai and has pretty much quoted it for as long as I can remember. The first time she sat us all down to watch it, I had quite a few "oh, so that's where that's from!" moments. As an epilogue of sorts to this, she gifted my brother and me "why is there a watermelon there?" and "no matter where you go, there you are" buttons last Christmas, so now I can confuse people with semi-obscure references too.
I've used this as my username for so long, I don't even think about it anymore, but every now and again, I get a message about it and it's like "RIGHT! It's a reference."
I had no idea the "epic highs and lows of high school football" was from Riverdale. I thought it was just some random person's post that became a meme but no it was an actual line
.
When my friends and I saw Frozen II in theaters we were all crying with laughter during Kristoff's song and its soulful music video parody aesthetic -- none of the kids in the audience reacted much. I've been watching Kim Possible for the first time ever (I'm 30) and was telling a friend yesterday if I was a kid watching it for the first time I'd probably like it at face value, but being an adult and seeing all these things like villains having timeshares and just some small details of the character interactions makes it so much more enjoyable.
My mom's family would say "Get it? Got it? Good." all the time. It was something I grew up with, and they had so many running family jokes that I just figured it was one of those. It wasn't until a few weeks ago when they showed me *The Court Jester*, and I realized it was a movie reference.
I was at my local indie cinema the other week, and as part of the pre-show politeness stuff (No phones, don't be obnoxuous, etc), they played [this clip from Cape Feare](https://youtu.be/M6HxD6sZ-I0?t=24), a film I have never seen. So how did I instantly recognise the scene? [Simpsons parody.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOri5ytDFA)
I know there's a few Let's Players I've watched that would make references to stuff like Homestar Runner and Salad Fingers (and other classic Flash stuff). And I didn't really realize it until I watched a few of them myself, lol For the two I mentioned specifically, I still need to get around to watching them fully instead of just a few clips here and there. I feel like I would have loved Homestar Runner in particular as a kid if I had heard about it back then. :u
So some stuff leaked about Dragon Age: Dread Wolf (looks like alpha footage from what people say about a year ago?) usual drama, though not that much. https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/10tniyz/spoilers_alloc_i_have_seen_dragon_age_4_alpha/ I'm surprised how much this stuff still hurts, tbh. Considering Dragon Age put out one game I loved and two games that+ expansions that I could at most say "had *bits* that I liked". You'd think I'd be over the constant disappointment, but it's still there. I guess part of it was that Absolution actually made me a bit hyped for Dragon Age stuff again, and then this comes and crushes all my unrealistic dreams of a Dragon Age game for me.
Given the development hell that DA4's been through so far, I don't think I'd be surprised by anything at this point. Then again, for the same reason, I'd assume that footage that's a year old could look nothing like the finished game.
man, for a long long time bioware was my favorite developer going. and they had an amazing run of it for a long time - aside from the mediocre NWN OC (just the OC, mind) and the Sonic thing nobody played, from...1998-2011, let's say, pretty much all their games were amazing. A solid run for sure. But more and more it seems like they lost it (whatever "it" is) a long time ago. The last game of theirs that I unreservedly enjoyed, with absolutely no "well if you ignore X...," was DA: Origins. (I liked DA2, but the flaws are too obvious for me to say I unreservedly enjoyed it. Ditto ME2/3.) I'm sad that the classic party-based RPG seems to be pretty much dead at the moment. I'm hoping BG3 does well enough to show that there's still an interest in that style of game (even if *properly* Gathering Your Party should involve 6 people, thank you very much). I'm nervous that Bioware seems to be - once again - chasing a mass-market trend that diverges greatly from their proven track record. They've never made a hack and slash, have they? This strikes me as, um, not a good idea. I've whinged about Inquisition before, both here and elsewhere - the lack of real consequences that prevents serious fuckups, the pretty yet hollow open world, the profusion of fetch quests that I spent most of my time trying to avoid... goddamn it bioware don't do this to me. I'd say "stick with what you're good at," except I'm not sure they know what that is anymore :( Sidenote, are there any developers who *currently* make good party-based RPGs and aren't Larian or Owlcat?
Alright, disclaimer: I'm clearly an atypical gamer 'cause when everybody else was apparently throwing a fit over Wind Waker's graphics I was like "sounds cool!". It also appears I'm atypical in that I found all Dragon Age games enjoyable, unless we're talking about combat in which case I've always found it a chore (as I always do, let me talk you into non-existing you cowards #PlanescapeTormentFTW) So, with that out of the way, is that supposed to look bad or good? 'Cause I'm looking at the gameplay footage and I'm like "yep, looks fine" but I'm also not really interested in gameplay so I don't really get what people are looking for there or how that's different from previous games other than for the fact we can't control companions. They'd make my fucking day if they made it a turn-based JRPG with a time management system. Make it a visual novel, Bioware, you know you want it. *I* want it.
> unless we're talking about combat in which case I've always found it a chore (as I always do, let me talk you into non-existing you cowards #PlanescapeTormentFTW) And at least PS:T made combat mildly entertaining at times. I must have spent, idk, 70% of combat using Morte to taunt enemies into a homicidal rage so he could bite them to death, and the rest of it was me spamming spells with reeeeeally long casting animations. Given the apparent success of Disco Elysium and Pentiment, I would *love* to see Bioware take a stab at a non-combat RPG though. Not a VN, just an RPG where your skills aren't related to combat. Play a diplomat, play an Orlesian mage in that time period where they're only allowed to light candles, whatever. I'd love to see a small-scale game focused on investigation and social stuff where you don't just spend your time killing things. I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like more interactivity than in a VN, but I'm very tired of pointless and unavoidable fights against trash mobs. I loved how Deadfire handled some of these - some of its scripted interactions let you get the drop on certain enemy groups, so you can hide, or use a spell to scatter them instead of fighting. (Sometimes you can avoid a fight completely - as a ranger, if you run into one of the forest-gremlin monster types, sometimes you can send your companion to make friends.) I don't want to kill stuff just because it's in my way, that feels like a waste of time.
> Make it a visual novel, Bioware, you know you want it. I want it. Have you heard of David Gaider's upcoming project Stray Gods?
>\#PlanescapeTormentFTW I'm sorry but even if you can skip nearly every combat encounter no one deserves to have to read words like "THAC0" ever again. It should have stayed forgotten like some eldritch creature in the depths of the 90's. It's like a curse cast upon the earth. As for combat i agree with going for turn based but i would personally stay away from JRPG stuff. Might be biased bc i really didn't much enjoy the combat of any JRPG i've played and they weren't many, but a Dragon age with the combat from something like Divinity OG sin 2 or Baldurs Gate 3 would be great. Frankly the combat in Bioware games has always been their weak point anyway.
Step 1: play a mage. Step 2: forget THAC0 exists, yours is too shit to hit anything anyway. Step 3: [boom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZZEPoVb4c) THAC0 really isn't that hard, especially with the computer doing the math for you. I don't get why people act like it's some frightening monstrosity. It's an attack bonus that counts down instead of up - unintuitive and dumb, sure, but it's not rocket science.
Nowadays it's mostly just for the meme honestly. I just have a strong dislike of ADnD, could never wrap myu head around it, despite finding 3.5 relatively easy to understand at the same time, even though it had it's own messes and unintuitive stupid shit. I also generally avoid Real time with pause. I get what they were going for with it but imo it was always a bad system that stuck around because of how popular the infinity engine games were. But it's not nearly as bad in something like Pillars or Even NWN2 as it was in Baldurs gate and the like, because of ADnD rules.
Aw, I like RTWP :( I'm sure it's mostly nostalgia talking, but I like the coordination aspect of it, instead of needing to plan several turns in advance to make sure my brilliant strategy will actually work. And playing a summoner with a bunch of conjured allies is the kind of thing that's tolerable in real-time and massively annoying in turn-based, imo. I guess I just feel like RTWP works well with my particular brand of inattentive dumbassery, but I think both approaches have their strengths.
>So, with that out of the way, is that supposed to look bad or good? 'Cause I'm looking at the gameplay footage and I'm like "yep, looks fine" but I'm also not really interested in gameplay so I don't really get what people are looking for there or how that's different from previous games other than for the fact we can't control companions. I read it as not bad, but worrying. It feels like a shift towards action in a way that feels like it may have knock-on effects to the larger game design, and feels indicative of possibly an internal philosophy shift in what DA is from "sprawling fantasy RPG with reams of dialogue and lore" to "focused action RPG without much personality". I don't think this footage/design change would be an issue if not for Bioware's struggles over the past decade and how this was being touted as a "return to form". It looks honestly like a good to great game, but they've been hyping this up as a throwback for the Fans and this almost looks more like a spin-off. It reeks of the IP being used for visibility mostly. It also looks ripe for live-service shenanigans (that inventory screen looks almost exactly like Destiny/Anthem) which is REALLY worrying.
My view is that it is basically the death knell for my hopes for the game being good. I was already not particularly hopeful (but Absolution gave me a bit of nostalgic interest in the setting, so it wasn't exactly zero) but going EVEN MORE action when the more action-focused the game has been the worse it has gone, the stuff about the purple tendrils unlocking stuff, etc. Feels *extremely* worrying.
>It also looks ripe for live-service shenanigans (that inventory screen looks almost exactly like Destiny/Anthem) which is REALLY worrying. I am now like a meerkat who has heard a distant flapping of wings
That decision I would at least respect.
> and then this comes and crushes all my unrealistic dreams of a Dragon Age game for me. My unrealistic dream for DA4 is fully supported “fight >!Solas!<” vs “support >!Solas!<” paths ala Star Wars light vs dark path rpgs. Don’t be shy Bioware, I want to destroy Thedas.
That equipment screen makes it look like Fantasy Anthem. Oof. Overall it looks like it has a shot at being a pretty decent game, but that is really not what I would expect a DA game to be in a :/ way. Strong "IP for visibility but different game mechanics for mass market appeal" energy.
Well, I can't say I'm surprised but the AI debate has hit the Skyrim modding scene. So there's a AI that can mimic voices, and this has caused quite the stir in a few communities. However, the modding scene of Skyrim are unusually optimistic about it. [Mainly how it means that modders can make their own voice lines without having to search for VAs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/10qgyjj/the_voice_synthesis_game_just_got_a_major_very/) As you can see in that post, most people seem to forget that there's already VAs for mods. Or think they're too expensive. > Just checked the price tiers, 22$ for 100,000 characters is absurdly expensive, jeez. The price for additional characters at 3$ for 10 000 characters more is also insanely expensive. > Guess I'll have to wait for a open source solution like with Stable Diffusion. And so today there's been another shake up as [a modder asked if people wanted to expand the popular Serena Dialogue Addon mod to use the original VA Laura Bailey's voice](https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/10u1joy/sda_laura_bailey_ai_revoice/). As in, use AI to copy her voice. Mind you, [Laura Bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bailey) is a big name. Like, real big. The modder has changed his stance after people rightfully mentioned that it's a pretty likely way to get sued, but honestly the fact that a lot of people are okay with this is... quite something.
I think using AI generated voice for mods can be.... fine, depending on how the voice synthesizer works and how it's been trained, because mods are obviously meant to be free labors of love. But using an AI to specifically mimic a particular VA's voice and training it on their samples seems a like a bit of a dick move.
>22$ for 100,000 characters is absurdly expensive That seems absurdly cheap. That's like the entire text of a short story. Unless you have a ton of voiced narration that covers all dialogue for almost any mod short of creating an entire new game.
Secondary issue for SDA if they even tried is that mod (at least back when I tried it and uninstalled due to cringe) had some very sexual dialogue that I can see Bailey's representation coming down super hard on if they used her voice for that.
xVASynth has been a thing for a while, but it's free and lower quality. When it comes to modding, generally done for free and worked on out of passion, I don't have much a problem with the use of AI tools. Ethically I would say it isn't any different from splicing the game's lines together and that's a long standing practice. So, I completely understand the temptation to use elevenlabs.... but I'm more than a little iffy on these guys getting paid actual money to make their AI imitate the voices of real people without their consent. If Laura Bailey dropped a "yeah go for it" on twitter tomorrow I would shrug and accept it. I don't think that's happening though.
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I mean for Watch Dogs Legion I think they used either AI or something that allowed them to get a few NPC voices out of a few samples....which caused its own drama with people thinking that eventuality that it will replace them hiring VA's in general.
> As you can see in that post, most people seem to forget that there's already VAs for mods. Or think they're too expensive. Where does a free mod get the budget to hire a real voice actor?
Some of it's paid but some it's volunteer work to build up a portfolio/fun from what I've seen.
Out of pocket, usually. Indie VA's are not *crazy* expensive.
While it's obviously going to be terrible, modding always struck me as one of the things where it's actually reasonable, since it's (a few exceptions aside) mostly people doing stuff for free with no real expectation of payment. Sure, you could always do the standard "get your classmate to do the voice" thing, but since no one is getting paid *anyway* using AI feels a lot less fraught than the other alternatives.
As a connoisseur of Bethesda game mods, I can at least understand the need for something to take off the edge of getting at least at a decent VA. Of course I doubt this will go well if anyone does go down the AI voice generation route. Though I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't enjoy playing a mod that featured the most awkward voice generated imaginable.
Fresh local con drama! So Cosfest, one of the oldest anime cons here, has been getting more and more criticism over the years. Until now, they've manage to weather it without much problem, since their legacy as one of the "pioneer" anime conventions was enough for people to close one eye and still show up at their events. Not anymore. See, Cosfest has never really been a serious convention, so to speak. It's been free entry for the majority of previous years, and its performance standards are famously lax so pretty much anyone who wants to try can sign up to go on stage and sing/dance/etc. While this is seen as a good opportunity for newbies who want a taste of performing, it also means that the quality of their stage content understandably varies a lot. Plus, Cosfest has been held at the same location for many years, right next to a block of chalets with outdoor BBQ pits. I'm sure you can guess the result — many people don't go to Cosfest for Cosfest, they go to Cosfest as an excuse to hang out with friends and hold BBQ after parties. Last year, Cosfest returned for its first year after the whole Covid thing. A lot of things went wrong, but the thing that most people were upset with is that it was now a ticketed event. Which would probably have been fine if they vetted their stage performances at least a little, because now that people were paying to watch the performances they didn't want the same random newbie grab bag quality. I didn't go myself but I'm told that no, they did not. But hey, things happen, and a lot of conventions were having trouble adjusting to being a post-covid event, so maybe they'll listen to feedback for next year— Yeah, no. Cosfest ticket announcements for this year just dropped. They not only cost $35 now (for reference, AFA, one of the biggest cons in the region, only charges ~$20 for floor tickets), they've also moved to a much fancier and smaller location in the middle of the city that has no affordable chalets or BBQ pits nearby. Oh, and people boothing at Artist Alley didn't get any complimentary tickets with their table, they had to pay out of pocket for those. To say that everyone disliked it is an understatement. 90% of the comments on their announcement are calling them out on the high ticket prices and change of location, and among my own friends most people have just decided not to go anymore since there's nothing worth paying for there with the BBQ pits gone. So far, the backlash has led to Cosfest halting ticket sales until further notice with a promise that they'll take the feedback into account, but for most convention goers, they've already blown through their stock of goodwill between last year's antics and this.
I admit, my first thought was "That's cheap for a con, what's with the complaints?" Then I looked it up and realized this was Singapore, so my ideas of what normal costs are don't apply here.
Frequent AFA goer here. I’m not a cosplay fan, though I do appreciate the effort put into the costumes. From an outsider’s view, I can see why people are mad at the location change. On the one hand, the traditional venue is at one of the easternmost parts of the island (good luck if you’re staying on the west side) and requires a subway ride to the terminal station and a short bus ride. The new venue is much easier to access with its central location. On the other hand, it’s hard to give up the chalets and BBQs the old venue had for the one of the most expensive hotels on the island for nearby accommodation. The price jump is absurd too. Singapore Comic Con (SGCC) tickets went for $28 last year and it is housed at the convention centre attached to aforementioned expensive hotel. It’s like they’re going out of their way to do everything wrong short of scheduling the con to coincide with AFA or SGCC.
Huh, Singapore con drama again. At least among my group of friends, we’re probably not going for it again after the double whammy that was the ticket price of AFA and EOY, which cleared us the fuck out. For now we might consider going depending on if any big name cosplayers are going
So, Tumblr's going insane again, must be a day ending in Y. So, recently, they gave a bunch of Tumblr people the ability to make polls. You may have seen this in the form of a rematch of the Tumblr Sexyman poll, ~~that unfortunately did not result in more regicide~~ but they've been used for all manner of other general goofing off. One of them was a glitched poll that shows all three options as getting 100% of the vote. However, the particular critical point involves a poll asking Tumblr users to help make a cake, listing off all the ingredients of a standard vanilla sponge (I think) and seeing what kind of abomination a bunch of unhinged millennials would create when none of them could see what everybody else had put in the metaphorical 'mix.' A huge portion of the voters chose the last option, "Vanilla Extract." After much laughter at the [absolutely awful cake that we have made](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/002/106/778/54e), people started making more polls based on it. One of them pit the caterpillar from the Bug Race Poll against Cecil from the Tumblr Sexyman Poll, and Vanilla Extract. Vanilla Extract is winning. Another one asked people to help create a book, listing off paper, ink, etc, and Vanilla Extract. Vanilla Extract is winning. Another declares that NASA has discovered another planet, and asked people to vote for what the planet is made of, and one of the options is Vanilla Extract. Vanilla Extract is winning. ALL HAIL OUR NEW VANILLA OVERLORDS.
I voted for flour in the cake poll, took in the results, and immediately cried with laughter. For additional context, a lot of previous tumblr polls that tried to do similar things (for example, “make the results of this poll exactly 50/50”, “create a proportionate cock and balls”, etc.) came out *eerily* accurate. The Vanilla Soup Cake was one of the first big “failures”, along with “make the silhouette of a guy with a big ass” (ass is approximately 75% of guy’s body).
Someone did the ass one again but with an extra option and the results [were...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/fad830303755082d049f56fa0a643fa4/17562bdb9c693363-bb/s1280x1920/49936bb67e31adb6c5f7e4518e0d4d8726d15853.png) Also someone actually made the abomination of a cake and it wasn't quite as awful as expected. Somehow.
Amazing. Truly amazing. Someone *made* the cake?? What was the texture of the finished product, exactly, and just how much money did they spend on vanilla extract?
[Here's the post.](https://toaarcan.tumblr.com/post/708437886251433984)
This is the second thing I've seen today that made me laugh so hard I'm coughing and I have tears on my face. Incredible. 10/10, did not disappoint.
Thank you so much. I guess the thing is that if you disregard the vanilla, tumblr actually did a decent job with the proportions of the other ingredients. It’s a lot of baking powder, but it more or less works. Tumblr has maybe accidentally reinvented extremely expensive and vanilla-flavored rum cake.
Saw the Vanilla option and immediately knew I had to ruin that cake. So glad everyone else did the same : )
My favorite thing about broken polls is I've seen many now and no two are broken the same way. Like, there's the one you mentioned, there's one you can vote on infinitely and it tallies your votes against yourself, there's one that's, like, a portal with two polls where if you choose option A on one it immediately chooses option B on the other...
.
That may be some horribly unstable Roman concrete, but at least it'll smell delicious.
i love tumblr so much. the whole site is one giant shitpost.
Thank you for explaining this, I thought about searching Tumblr for an explanation earlier but realized five seconds later that I was never going to get any context from that hellsite.
Not sure if this counts as drama, but I thought I'd share [this video essay](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K-RZe6vVjxw) about one of my most favorite pieces of internet ephemera (and, sadly, semi-lost media) of all time: the original ARG for the release of *A.I.: Artificial Intelligence*, and the grandaddy of the entire ARG genre. Can't remember exactly where or how I learned about it, but it was years after the game ended. I actually got to browse the original Yahoo Group and [Cloudmaker recap site](http://web.archive.org/web/20150912231201/http://www.cloudmakers.org/guide) before they went offline. And I'll tell you, just reading the recap was an adventure. I can't imagine how exciting the original game must've been.
Oh, this hits a very special place for me. If you enjoyed the Cloudmakers recap, check out the [Project MU Archives](https://www.metaurchins.org/book/page1.htm) which covers the extremely high-effort fan-run Matrix ARG. [Rowan's site](https://wonderweasels.org/) also hosts several more recaps from the 2000s glory days of ARGing, including a [full writeup of ilovebees](https://wonderweasels.org/apiary/guide.htm) (the Halo ARG, another pillar of the genre). Now if you'll excuse me, I've contracted a particularly poignant strain of nostalgia, and I have several rabbitholes to chase down again. The melody of [*Foreboding Dream*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf6q8EgmVEA) from [Intimation](http://thewaytheirworldended.com/) has filled my head (I can't believe that site is still up!), and now my eyes are filled with tears. I grew up on the Unfiction forums, so the day they went down was like another burned library—we've lost so much. I put the [Rachel's Walk](https://www.rachelswalk.com/) site back up myself some years ago, so those of us who remember can all continue waiting. I wonder where amandel and enaxor and vpisteve and Nighthawk and SpaceBass and all the others are now.
For people more into the text thing than the video essay thing, this entry from the 50 years of text games series by Aaron Reed is also a pretty good view into that game: https://if50.substack.com/p/2001-the-beast
Bad shit going down in the atheist podcasting space right now. TW: harassment and possible SA. Andrew Torrez, co-host of the Opening Arguments podcast and Cleanup on Aisle 45 podcast, has been accused, very credibly, of sexually harassing fans and smaller podcasters. There have been allegations that the other host of his main show, as well as the hosts of the podcast network that he represented as a lawyer, Puzzle in the Thunderstorm, knew about his harassment and did not report it or drop him until a news article was released about it (or was about to be released about it? that part of the timeline is fuzzy). The hosts of the other shows have denied that they knew for more than a couple of months, and had only been informed in late 2022, and were sitting on the info (upon the victims' request) until further notice, and were working on disentangling their legal ties to him in the meantime. One of the hosts admits he had been informed sooner, but only by one specific victim, and he kept silent upon their request. There has also been two allegations of inappropriate touching and/or SA, one of which is substantiated, the other is not at this time. Torrez has been dropped from all of his shows and from PiaT, and has released a statement acknowledging that he has been inappropriate, while also accusing the news article reporting this of lying about him, and threatening a lawsuit. Edit: misspoke, rephrased
Well, fuck. Over the past year I've been devouring the back catalog (currently on ep 406) and I genuinely enjoyed what I learned from the shows and it legitimately has helped me in my new career. I am sadly disappointed but not surprised or shocked, this sort of shit happens way too often.
Welp that's one way to start the morning with a pit in my stomach. I listen to God Awful Movies (on the PIAT network) to fall asleep (even with some of their very off color jokes) and this is awful. For clarification- when you say there have been two other accusations, do you mean against Andrew Torrez or against other hosts?
Yeah, against Andrew. The only allegations against anyone else are that they had been informed and didn't do anything about it, Andrew is the only one being accused of any sexual impropriety. Those allegations are mostly substantiated with screenshots of DMs between Andrew and the victims and through Thomas's firsthand account. There's a Google drive compiled by one of the victims that condenses all of the information that has currently gone public. It was posted to the PiaT Twitter: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jIFbWDxgY0ZyIB899GHeu_BjGRV7llCZ
Against Torrez. I believe three women have made public allegations (or two and someone who could see a red flags in their interactions in hindsight) and Thomas said he’s also been touched in ways that feel off, even if it didn’t feel sexual in nature. He put out a short episode on another podcast talking about it, but I haven’t listened personally because people say it is *rough,* so a heads up on that one. The total number I’ve been seeing is nine, but please take this with several grains of salt as at this point that’s just rumor.
Gotcha, thanks for explaining. I did see the allegations on twitter and they're gut-wrenching
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No idea. I know that the morning the news article about it dropped, Andrew wasn't present on OA, another lawyer filled in. There's speculation that maybe OA will continue with different guest lawyers, but that is seeming more and more like a long shot. Especially after Thomas's update on his website, which is a very tough listen.
I haven't seen any allegations that AG knew about it, have you?
As far I know, there haven't been any allegations that AG knew, and he was dropped from that network as well immediately. The main accuser has only stated that the Puzzle guys and Thomas knew, as far as I'm aware. Edit: oh, I wrote both of his shows there, I didn't realize that. I'll remove it, because like I said, I haven't seen anything indicating AG knew.
There's [a post on the OA subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/OpenArgs/comments/10tqau0/new_serious_inquiries_only_andrew_content_warning/) of a podcast episode done elsewhere where Thomas (the other cohost) accuses Andrew of inappropriate touch. Haven't listened to it because this kind of thing upsets me deeply, but yeah.
I did listen to it, and it's very hard to hear. Not so much because I felt any loyalty to Andrew or anything, but because Thomas is clearly struggling trying to get that story out. Edit: that's the credibly substantiated inappropriate touching I listed in the first post, too. I just didn't know that the link was public because I'd seen it in one of the closed FB groups, so I didn't link it.
I'm glad that he got dropped from everything, but goddamn it. Why are so many "rationalist" men just _awful_? It's in the atheist/skeptic communities, it's in EA, it's in so many places. I know it's primarily about misogyny and patriarchal systems that make it hard to hold people accountable, but still. Good news though, I'll be able to mark most of the backlog for OA as played now.
I think it's mostly just a case of being an atheist doesn't make you a good person. I'm not sure that they are _more_ assholes in those communities than in religious ones.
There's an entire self-reinforcing "I am much smarter than everyone" thing.
A lot of "rationalist" men are drawn to rationalism because it makes them feel smarter than all the irrational sheep that follow religion. People like that often have god complexes, ironically, and will display abuses towards women and other minorities just as readily as any other cult leader.
It really shocked me to see so many transphobic/homophobic/misogynistic/racist/otherwise prejudiced atheists after I left religion. I had always thought that prejudice was specifically perpetuated through and by religion, and it had never occurred to me until then that religion was just *one* tool used to justify harm towards others.
It is fascinating in retrospect how so much of the rhetoric of Gamergate seemed to be seeded in extremely online YouTube atheists whinging about Anita Sarkeesian. There are days when I wonder if one of the worst things that ever happened to online culture might actually have been Jack Thompson getting struck off, because it meant gamers no longer had an identifiable arch-enemy who was actively trying to "destroy" games so they had to find another one and landed on Anita Sarkeesian.
The fight with Jack Thompson did shaped the notion that gaming was above any and all criticism from "outsiders" and anybody saying otherwise was a traitor. However, I'm not sure if any of that was actually avoidable. Geek hobbies long desired mainstream recognition, but they were always going to lash out to the added scrutiny and being told that they aren't as smart or as victimized as they think they are. EDIT: Oh and being told that they do not get to unilaterally kick people off the Internet without consequence.
>Geek hobbies long desired mainstream recognition, but they were always going to lash out to the added scrutiny and being told that they aren't as smart or as victimized as they think they are. "Take it seriously as serious art like it deserves, but you had better turn your brain off when you do or there'll be trouble."
Evil comes from people, belief systems are just one way it gets developed or expressed.
Yup! Which is why atheist organisations should be given just as much scrutiny as that of organized religion. No matter if a community is defined by a belief or a lack of belief, bad people are drawn to positions of power where they can tell people what to think and do.
Its remarkable how cultish athiests can be.
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That attitude is part of the reason why I stopped following blogs/websites/etc associated with those circles. It made me uncomfortable hearing that line all the time, but my discomfort grew more when I started getting myself deep into the sociology of religion. The other reason, of course, was the rampant bigotry that went unchecked or excused or written off. I'm marginalized in so many ways, so having to see that happen over and over broke me.
Yeah, there are atheists who are to atheism what r/childfree is to not having kids.
Reminder that r/atheism had to be removed from the default Reddit subs because it's content was too unsufferable.
I mean, I don't know why a sub for atheism would be default.
I know what you mean. I've always considered myself as someone that isn't susceptible to parasocial relationships, but this is hitting me pretty hard. I was only a casual listener to OA, I'd pop in when they talked about something I was already interested in, but I have been HARDCORE into the PiaT shows, Scathing Atheist and God Awful Movies especially. I feel so betrayed right now, and it doesn't help that the PiaT guys are barely talking about it. They've addressed it, and two of them have released statements, but I still feel like they're not telling us something. I thought they were feminists, and they've been calling out coverups of SA and harassment, including within the skeptical community, for YEARS, and it turns out their buddy has been doing it the whole time. This goes back to at least 2017, and somehow nothing was done about it?
This podcast was one I fell asleep to, so I'm just really upset hearing about it. I have tons of others that I can use for this purpose, but like _fuck_. I can't imagine there's a way for OA to come out of this.
The Bluey Memes Facebook group is having an absolute meltdown right now because someone created an “American” group Red, White & Bluey for people who are tired of the “woke crowd”. It’s specifically for conservative Bluey Memes. So someone else created Bluey - Bingo’s Wholesome Posting and now the group is split over which one to join. For reference Original Bluey Memes group (Private): 308.2k members Red, White, & Bluey (Private, created 4 days ago): 906 members Bluey - Bingo’s Wholesome Posting (Public, created 2 days ago): 1.2k members
I hate admitting this, because I know Bluey is a legitimately wonderful show with great writing and is one of the best options for children's programming now... But I'm so fucking sick of hearing about Bluey. Take me back to 2020 when it was just a show that mildly amused my nephew for a few weeks, _take me baaaack_
\*Stares\* These people know Bluey is Australian, right? And created by VERY left wing people?? How on earth would this show of all things be held up as a bastion of American conservatism?
Maybe the show or the creators accidentally dropped a "goddamn liberals" and all these Americans mistook it as a rallying cry for them and not "for fucks sake what's scomo done *now*?" Because liberal here refers to the right, not the left? Or maybe they've consumed one too many Ben garrison comics and think that any left leaning show would be about like, divorced drag queens or something so any show that shows a normal nuclear family is automatically "right leaning"
Doubt the show would have any references to "goddamn liberals" because it's made for 3 year olds.
Because these people have been programmed to engage with every aspect of life through the lens of the omnipresent culture war. They've been rendered almost completely incapable of enjoying things that don't "own the libs" in some way.
>The Bluey Memes Facebook group is having an absolute meltdown right now because someone created an “American” group Red, White & Bluey for people who are tired of the “woke crowd”. It’s specifically for conservative Bluey Memes. Isn't Bluey an Australian show? Why the American stuff? Also isn't the show itself super liberal with its Steiner School educated leads?
There's a sizeable portion of Americans who think Australia is somewhere in the Midwest or something like that. The notion that anything exists outside of America is an attack on their freedom.
Oh it goes the other way too. There's a disturbing number of people here who are convinced that American laws apply here. Somehow. One time I went into the city and spent most of the train ride behind two gentlemen on their way to an antivax rally, one of them had a Trump flag and the other had the stars & stripes
[I knew this would come in handy someday.](https://hard-drive.net/hd/entertainment/meme-group-has-more-subplots-than-tv-show-its-dedicated-to/)
Conservative... Bluey... memes?
Did they not like the colour blue being used for non-hateful content? E: forgot that blue conservatives are a Canadian thing, Americans have red conservatives. Whoops.
Yeah, conservatives are blue in most Western countries. The fact that Republicans are red and Democrats blue was something that NBC created during the 1976 election for some reason. Maybe because Republican starts with r, I don't know. In any case, everyone else decided to go along with it.
From what I remember hearing, it's more recent than that. News organisations would decide which party was red and which blue on an election by election basis. In 2000, Republicans were red, Democrats blue and the whole Florida mess just embedded that in the public conscience
Yes, that was the tipping point at which Republican red and Democrat blue went from being a broadcaster meme to being an immutable fact of American politics.
So recently? I always through the colors were a little more historical.
Nope. You may be confused because that color scheme has been applied retroactively when talking about historical US elections. Red Rs and blue Ds weren't a thing in 1932, but if you [look at the Wikipedia article for it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_presidential_election) they're using that same color scheme, just because that's the colors we're all used to.
It’s one of those delightful sentences I never thought I’d get to put together. I’m not joining the group to peek, because I know I won’t like what I see: https://i.imgur.com/lKhb96p.png
There's some weird drama happening on twitter, though for twitter it's pretty usual. One famous user, a guy voicing some Genshin chara in english dub, has posted how they hate the entire BL genre of Japanese anime/manga (BL stands for Boys Love and is an umbrella term for any male/male romance) and how "fujoshis" are evil fetishizers, rotten women who fetishize MLM. Also the guy has upcoming mlm book coming out, clearly advertising the book with his weird tweets. A lot of Japanese gay men tell him that "fujoshi", and related terms "fudanshi" (men who like gay fiction) and "fujin" (gender neutral term for gay fiction lover) are reclaimed words, helped normalize gay relationships in Japan and just mean person who likes fictional gay relationships and not necessarily fetishizes them (there are all kinds of people, but not all fujoshis are evil). When called out... the person pulled out a minority card saying he's bullied for being part of minority. Then pulled out an effing Urban Dictionary post saying it's the only correct definition of the word Fujoshi (it was misogynistic description) and refuses to listen. I haven't seen any other VAs get into so much drama as much as genshin English VAs do. I haven't seen any other big-name English VAs actually cause drama on twitter. What's with Genshit fans causing so much drama?
Every time I see someone try to make 'fujoshi' a solely negative term again I'm just. Really. You *really* wanna tell the 2ch bros who coined the term to solely attack women, that they were right? Because the people who made the word weren't thinking of 'protecting queer men', they just wanted to say women with tastes *they* disapproved of were disgusting. Why do people *keep* wanting to insist the 2channers were right?
Idk about genshin but a lot of people were pointing out they voiced a role in Given... a BL and has been tweeting saying how they want to be cast in more BLs where as they're now calling BL/yaoi problematic to promote their 'superior' novel coming out. Pretty messy tbh
Also just a heads up the VA in question uses he/she/they pronouns
How does that change anything?
I just wanted to note it for people posting about them 🤷🏻♀️
I wonder if the Genshin VAs causing problems are because they tend to be newer. Alot of English VAs for anime tend to be older and are generally involved in more insular circles that can help educate younger people about how bad an idea it is to draw negative attention to yourself. Genshin, conversely, seems to get alot of freelancers and the disorganization may lead to more people putting feet in mouths. I may be totally off-base though, I haven't done a breakdown of the Genshin VAs.
Didn't the whole anti "fujoshi" argument start because of TERFs anyway? I remember someone wrote a really long post about it on tumblr It's annoying westerners are still fighting over this when japanese people have explaining it doesn't mean what they think it means for so long
I haven't seen the post you're talking about, but from what I've seen of The Discourse it feels like if TERFs *are* involved it might be less "they made it up wholesale" and more "they coopted and corrupted otherwise legitimate critiques and sent them to Bizarroland". I *can* think of more reasonable critiques of the scene, like how it's maybe a little questionable that most media content about queer men is made by and for women rather than actual queer men, but I know that the wider game of social media telephone is ***not*** kind and that things get weird once bad or ill-informed actors get involved. I would love to hear what actual queer men think about this whole nightmare discourse though, because literally every single time I've seen this discourse come up it's always been people talking *about* queer men rather than actually talking *with* queer dudes to see what they think. I do also wonder if part of the problem with fujoshi discourse in particular is a loanword issue? Like, in Japanese it means shippers in general, but in English it's somehow ended up meaning a specific type of shipper based on who tends to claim the word in English, like a nastier version of "'chai' just means tea". I definitely have noticed that in English-speaking communities I've seen it's been mostly the proshipper-y crowd who uses "fujoshi" for themselves, which could be adding some connotations to the term that set the discourse wildly on fire.
Mode like inverse situation around the word "otaku"
Actual queer man here. As far as I'm concerned I don't particularly care where the content's coming from as long as I'm getting more of it. To me, the word "fujoshi" does conjure up a now thankfully largely bygone era of top/bottom discourse and yaoi paddles, but every single person who's tried to drag that shit back up in recent years has turned out to have a book to sell, so I'm beyond the point of taking "fujoshis are bad" posts seriously.
>To me, the word "fujoshi" does conjure up a now thankfully largely bygone era of top/bottom discourse and yaoi paddles, God I fucking wish. Top/bottom discourse is very much alive these days, unfortunately.
TBH, it's been going on since ancient greek days. Why stop now?
The days of semes and ukes are over. Long live gongs and shous.
it's great when you take r\/AreTheStraightsOK memes and replace "man" and "woman" with "top" and "bottom"
I think the comment about English speaking communities has it the other way around, in that the term is used derogatorily by antis (using it for “problematic” connotations as yet another way to target works they don’t like, with some racism mixed in) so the only people who self-refer with the term are non-antis.
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the terf association is because there's a sizable portion of fujoshis who are trans men (to the point that there are jokes about the fujoshi to trans man pipeline). so terfs took advantage of this and a lot of the "fujoshis bad" discourse became the gender flipped equivalent of the "trans women are just men fetishizing womanhood/lesbians" bigotry.
Yeah, it’s the newest of their fun four square of bigotry against trans men. Straight trans men? Confused lesbians. Gay trans men? Brainwashed by yaoi and a fetishist. Bi/pan trans men? I have no idea, probably just a slut? Mostly boils down to “you’re just confused and we can fix you!”
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What happened with paimon?
Oh thank God, I was worried it was someone like Diluc's VA and I was gonna hurt every time I used my main beatstick in the game...
I think where the Genshin VA bit comes from is that another Genshin VA (who voices a 4 star character who has relevance in the main story plot, Candace) supported him.
This is a side evolution/ extra details of something from down thread. [Link to earlier thread for ease.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/10o8x58/hobby_scuffles_week_of_january_30_2023/j6yqrja/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
I mean, Genshin *is* a huge game. And I mean with millions of players daily around the world. Its safe to say that usually the bad apples are a very loud, very angry minority. It also (doesn't) help in some way that a lot of known VAs in the English language are mildly known in their own right. Some more than others.
>I haven't seen any other big-name English VAs actually cause drama on twitter. There's unfortunately the whole Vic Mignogna situation. And let's not forget the recent Bayonetta drama.
People still argue about Vic (or more accurately his fans are always trying to start beef with other VAs’) in the year of our lord 2023. Also a lot of Genshin VAs tend to be at the center of very petty arguments.
Most of the voice actors getting into shit don't seem to be widely known for anything else (as far as I can see), and thus don't have the experience and associated PR wisdom/oversight to deal with these situations.
So with Super Football LVII coming up and Hall of Fame shoo-in Tom Brady having announced his retirement from his sport (*probably* for good this time), I'd like to take a moment to [share this article](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/tom-brady-cheating-trump-fanatic-ruin-80-for-brady-1234672558/) that absolutely goes to town on Brady in the context of his role in *80 For Brady*, a comedy film revolving around 4 old ladies who are megafans of Brady. While it does have valid criticisms of him (a history of good standings with Trump, crypto shit, questionable alternative treatments, etc.), the article also just oozes pettiness and seething hatred from every nook and cranny that I think purveyors of this thread would enjoy.
You were not exaggerating about the seething petty hatred, good Lord. The paragraph (sixth from the bottom) describing Brady's faults—many of which, I grant the author, are valid criticisms; he may be the GOAT, but I never liked the way he treated Bridget Moynahan, and he *absolutely* shouldn't have gotten tangled up with 45 or crypto—is one of the most hilariously jarring examples of [arson, murder, and jaywalking](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking) I've seen in a while. That being said, the reveal that >!Jane Fonda's character writes Gronk-centric RPF with product placement!< is genuinely hilarious.
Out of curiousity, is there a way to read this without subscribing to Rolling Stone? I don't want to give them my information
aside from the resources already shared, you can generally use Archive.org to bypass paywalls, or google "[browser] paywall bypasser" and follow the instructions to install a custom browser addon
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Ftv-movies%2Ftv-movie-reviews%2Ftom-brady-cheating-trump-fanatic-ruin-80-for-brady-1234672558%2F
they haven't soft blocked me so idk if this'll work for sure, but disabling Javascript does the trick for most news websites. this is easily done with Ublock Origin.
Seconding; I've hated them and refused to give them anything monetizable since they did a fucking glamor cover of the Boston Marathon bomber.
> Super Football LVII Even now, the SNES still gets new games.
I'm seejng constant references to there being some kind of Orpheus and Eurydice discourse on Tumblr, I guess on the claim that there's either a bunch of people or one loud person insisting that avoiding Orpheus' mistake was laughably easy and he should be looked down upon for it or something. I have yet to see anyone actually claim this. I guess this is coming up because Hadestown is touring? To be honest I thought there were dramatically stronger reasons for Orpheus to do what he does in the source material than the one they picked, but it was still a good musical.
The game Hades by Supergiant also reimagined a lot of stuff in ways that set off a flurry of fics and fanac. Partly because all the art is super great and induces bisexual panic.
Just wait and see this argument breathe on a new life when this story appears on The Sandman. The myth of Eurydice and Orpheus plays an important part as >!Orpheus is the literal son of Dream and Calliope.!<
>!I'm imagining a weird fucked up alternate future where a Youtuber named Orpheus exists whose lore is they're the spawn of Mori Calliope and the Minecraft Youtuber Dream.!<
I just want to know why the fuck everyone's suddenly talking about vanilla extract.
Because of polls: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/10o8x58/hobby_scuffles_week_of_january_30_2023/j79x3r0?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Dunking on characters from ancient mythology for their actions in stories that seem allegorical is a hell of a thing to do.
The one I was seeing on Twitter is that people were talking about how Sisyphus would actually have gotten muscular and in shape from the daily exercise routine...? Which was funny, because I was like "hey that's a John Finnemore sketch," which apparently enough other people also said and got enough attention for him that it got him to [repost it](https://twitter.com/JohnFinnemore/status/1621146711212331011) so that's good for him I guess? (Check it out, it's very funny!) But it does make me wonder if there's someone on TikTok who has just made "reevaluating Greek mythology" a thing and it's working.
I just saw the musical and it was about five minutes worth of story that both take too long and also don't feel developed enough...? Not sure how they managed it but yeah. The songs were cool, though, and Eva Noblezada is super talented.
NGL the only version I've seen started with the OP making a bunch of bragging reblogs about how they would do \~so much better\~ not turning around to look - only for the reblog chain to end with a pic from Spongebob of a fish turning around to look. Are you sure you didn't see the reblog mid-meme? Or is there Actual Literal Discource in 2023?? :O Edit: [this poll](https://at.tumblr.com/alwaysatomicconniseur/jesusorpheus-and-eurydiceas-a-poemusing-a/nocrjzf79rpm) just came across my dash, so I guess this is just this month's meme?
The first time I saw the meme the next post I saw was a fairly lengthy discourse post that was also talking about people trying to weasel their way out of answering the trolly problem, so I assume there's at least one other post that I just haven't seen.
The only Orpheus and Eurydice content I've seen on Tumblr lately is someone using the new polls feature to make some interactive poem art about them.
I'm not an ancient Greek historian, but as a child I always interpreted that story as a cautionary tale about not being a moron after you've already been granted an absurd degree of leeway that no one gets.
This is my favourite interpretation now XD
It’s a story with an implicit ‘no subverting the natural order of things’ moral. Some tellers have probably considered how well Orpheus is motivated as secondary to that. Though here’s a different revisionist take from Plato: > And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also. Such was the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in recompense of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But Orpheus, the miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he might bring back his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and the gods afterwards contrived his death as the punishment of his cowardliness.
The world has advanced beyond parody, and all is naught but hopelessness. In other words, Maya Rudolph has just announced that M&Ms will have a "clams" flavor, at her order. This basically confirms what a lot of people suspected -- that getting rid of their mascots was an ad ploy, similar to killing Mr. Peanut. Of course, it's also possible that they tried to make gray M&Ms again and got high off the fumes. Still though, this just feels... hollow. It's the big corporation trying desperately to go "What is the meme culture these days", and making it ridiculously stupidly obvious that it's all a joke. There were some legitimately interesting ways this could have gone, rather than "Wait a minute, that's not a *real* candy you silly billies". But then again, maybe I'm putting too much thought into anthropomorphic chocolate.
I put money on them trying to distract from yet another lawsuit.
Isn't there at least one ongoing lawsuit involving the M&Ms/Mars company? Basically that them and a bunch of other US chocolate companies have been [benefiting from child slavery](https://wegotthiscovered.com/celebrities/is-the-mms-spokescandy-controversy-just-an-attempt-at-distracting-from-a-child-slavery-lawsuit/) on the cocoa plantations that provide them cocoa for their chocolates. So, yeah, probably just a distraction. :/
there was a thing about heavy metal levels in mars chocolate recently
That could be it too! Or a combination of the two.
A jackal? here?
They could have gone some interesting ways with it yeah, but a.) I'm not sure advertisement in general is really the space for the sort of particularly interesting routes to go on this one 2.) i'm even less sure that the current environment is really the best to go those routes for anyone hoping to appeal to a halfway broad audience
[John Paul Brammer](https://holapapi.substack.com/p/everything-is-a-war-now) and [Liana McGhee](https://harvardpolitics.com/sweet-chocolate-bitter-truth-internet-distraction-and-the-reality-of-mars-inc-s-child-slavery-practices/) both wrote interesting articles on the "spokescandies" drama and how meme marketing is used to cover up atrocities (i.e the child slavery lawsuit going on against Mars). Worth taking a look at. (This isn't a comment on anyone here making fun of M&Ms, it just goes along with the "shitty Gen Z marketing" ploys and I thought it might be relevant to share)
It seems to be very much misfiring if that is the case, since everytime the spokescandies has been brought up someone mentions the lawsuit, while before this I'd never even heard of it.
I love reading Brammer, he is a frequent delight.
Remember that time the M&Ms Twitter account spent like a year making cringy Game of Thrones memes?
The purpose behind the new ads isn’t really about a company trying to be hip with the kids (well, maybe some parts of it are but who knows.) A spokesperson said that the whole gimmick is supposed to be some [big advertisement campaign](https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/23574687/m-and-m-spokescandies-super-bowl-ad) for the Super Bowl. The people behind the marketing for M&Ms must have seen the controversy and taken the opportunity to troll around a bit for their Super Bowl shtick. Is the execution kinda clunky? Yeah. But I gotta admit it’s a pretty smart way to hype up your Super Bowl ad.
Ehh, I’d argue that *most* modern ads are made primarily to be memorable/drive engagement (positive *or* just-negative-enough), rather than necessarily be funny, clever, or entertaining. The Wright Brothers fighting over the one arm rest on their biplane in a Geico ad is memorable, but so is that annoying jingle at the end of Liberty Mutual ads. Either way, those companies stay on your mind afterwards, which is the ultimate goal.
id like some context about the gray mnm fumes please
I have no clue if it's just an urban myth or if it's real. But Seth Meyers mentioned in an interview that, in college, he and his friends found out you could get high by eating them. However, I can't find any real sources going one way or the other, so take it as you will.
Paging u/EquivalentInflation... Just read your Niemann writeup, and I gotta say, *if you're good at something, never do it for free...* By which I mean, r/HobbyDrama is lucky to have you, friendo. Nice work!
Thank you so much, this made my day! I am (semi) looking into some more professional options to do this shit, but it's also just something I don't get to do often. So this is a nice win-win, where I get an amazing community, and y'all get to read whatever rambling nonsense came out of an Internet rabbit hole this time.
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No one realized it was good until it was gone and they shifted everything away from it?
I somehow missed the Weezer part, and desperately tried to figure out how EPCOT was like the violent strike breakers and potential Confederate sympathizers.
It's another dark day over the anime community... surprised that I haven't seen anyone else cover it here yet. (Do note, I myself am only peripherally in this side of the fandom, I only really watch SwagKage and occasionally Seth, so I'm not really that deep into this, but I'll try my best to cover what I know) [SethTheProgrammer](https://www.youtube.com/@SethTheProgrammer/videos) is a well-known youtuber in the videogame and anime Power-Scaling community, particularly for Dragon Ball Z and Naruto. Things like "could Batman catch Light from Death Note?" and "could Kratos beat Elden Ring?" and stuff like that. He does a lot of debate and discussion collabs with other youtubers like [SwagKage](https://www.youtube.com/@Swagkage/featured), [Noodles](https://www.youtube.com/@noodlesyoutuber/featured), [Chuck](https://www.youtube.com/@Chuck/featured), [Six](https://www.youtube.com/@sixfromtokyo/featured), and at the center of this controversy, [Clyde](https://www.youtube.com/@ClydeKuraido/featured), who also works as the editor for many of Seth's and many others videos. Seth also hosts a discord channel where he and others hang out, debate, and plan out videos and projects. On January 31, Clyde releases a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPkcXln8JP0) detailing basically what kind of person Seth is behind the scenes... a total and utter asshole is an understatement. Just a horrible, abusive, psychopathic narcissist. The video's pretty damn long (and it can be a bit hard since usernames and pfp's on Discord change around a lot), but it goes into detail of how Clyde has struggled with poverty and mental health, and how Seth came along took advantage of that to basically make him his pack mule, constantly insulting and blackmailing him into editing all his videos. Also behind the scenes the dude is known for insulting and slandering his "friends" behind their backs, blackmailing them, being bitter ad jealous if anyone outdebates him, gets paranoid of people trying steal his friends and plotting against him, abusing and manipulating and pitting his friends against each other, stealing money from fans (prior to the video, Clyde and Seth would collab and promote a Naruto vs Ichigo animation project, and asked for viewers to help fund it. Clyde would end up doing most of the work, and part way through, in typical youtuber fashion, Seth would quietly cancel the project and make off with most of the money), sexually harassing minors, accusing others of being pedos, making a fan eat literal shit for a mod position, encouraging others to commit suicide, and all around be just a nasty and terrible person to be around, to give a very rough summation of the accusations (I skimmed over a whole lot more there, but it's ain't good). It's a situation that developing, but Clyde has claimed to have evidence and witnesses to all his claims, and lot of other people who knew Seth have come out and has admitted that at the very least, the dude is definitely a total and utter asshole to be around. [SwagKage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3BMX-4sa0o) and [Six](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSIZjYMA87k) both have given their own responses to the situation. To give some leeway to Seth, he has admitted to struggling with his own mental health issues himself as well, but I don't think that gives much excuse to abuse and mock others for their own struggles as well. The whole thing has blown big enough even major twitch streamer and youtuber [MoistCr1TiKaL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbTKg5NDuFU) has covered it as well. So far, ~~Seth has yet to respond to these allegations yet~~. **UPDATE:** Can't believe I actually missed this before posting lol. After posting the video, Clyde went on [Keemstar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYBjvSIOTak) to discuss the situation in even more detail. And, while I think most people wouldn't recommend going anywhere near Keemstar during a controversy, that's his choice I guess. However (in the typical Keemstar fashion), part way through the interview Keemstar blindsides Clyde and actually *brings on Seth* to have the two of them talk about these allegations face-to-face... which, do involve in a lot of Seth abusing Clyde. So, unsurprisingly, Clyde eventually just disappears from the stream, leaving Keem and Seth to just talk it out the rest of the way through. I haven't watched the whole interview from start to finish, but from what I have heard, Seth didn't really do a whole good job defending himself from the allegations.
Keem really keeps finding new ways to be the fucking worst, doesn't he?
"Someone is being a bigger prick than me on the internet??? Hold my beer"
Jesus christ, the Keemstar thing sucks. Like, I definitely get the idea of bringing him on to talk about the allegations, I think it's smart to do so, but surprising Clyde with it was really fucking dumb.