• 0 Posts
  • 9 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: December 9th, 2023
  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoMemes@lemmy.ml•Never forget what they took from us...
    1·
    26 days ago

    Thank you for the thoughtful response

    It’s also kind of interesting to consider the impacts of the biters themselves, they aren’t really a life form, they’re more akin to a bacteria, just on a macro, insect scale. They literally only do something productive for themselves once you get in their way. Their entire evolutionary lifeform is predicated on you being a negative influence on their environment. They consume your pollution, and use it to grow and become stronger. However, left to their own devices they seem to spread across the entire planet, almost like a cancer, just without the consumption of life that is typical, because biters seem to be magic?

    I mean I would accept magic, but anything less of an explanation of the biters behavior seems like a problematically reductive view of life.

    Even the behavior of bacteria is complex and more nuanced than a cancerous process.

    I get that it is a game, but I think these things do matter, especially for computer minded people who want to understand everything as a computer programs and recklessly ignore the reality of the environment around them. Media like this severs the salience of the surrounding landscape to people, and contextualizes it simply as a resource to exploit.

    Idk, I mean factorio is amazing, I totally get why people love it, and I know the focus of the game isn’t on this but still…

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoMemes@lemmy.ml•Never forget what they took from us...
    41·
    26 days ago

    I like factorio but the game never even asks the question of whether destroying an entire planets ecosystem just so you, one person, can get home is ethical or right.

    I don’t know, it is a small thing, I totally get why people get addicted to factorio’s gameplay loop not disputing how amazing that is it is just the basic premise of the game makes me uncomfortable in it’s disinterest in the planet you are on being anything but a resource to conquered and consumed or in thinking about how you are actually the villain in this situation from the planet’s perspective.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoMemes@lemmy.ml•I hate that guy
    283·
    3 months ago

    Why would anyone care who the stereotypical white dude is?

    Because he doesn’t deserve to be the guy in the meme. Think about all the other actually cool people who have been immortalized in silly memes, a lot of times they get interviewed and it is really funny. Everybody enjoys on some level that the person in the funny meme they are looking at is actually a real human being who has the goofy honor of being famous for the really specific, niche context of that meme.

    Why give that joy to a complete asshole and loser? Why give it to a media personality who spreads hate? Who cares if nobody recognizes who Crowder is, Crowder doesn’t even deserve to be interfaced with as an anonymous white dude in a meme, it takes away the necessary shame Crowder should experience at every interface with the broader public.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyztoMemes@lemmy.ml•This is the way
    3·
    3 months ago

    You can also still experience that strange calm people love that comes from driving at your limit, where there is zero room for anything other than your presence in the moment reacting to the road, your vehicle and what is coming around the corner……

    But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others – the living – are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

    But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

    The above is a quote from Hunter S. Thompson on this odd but enchanting species of calm that he gets from driving his motorcycle too fast and though I am sure it is much more intense to do in real life, the fact is if you play a good driving game you absolutely go to a similar place in your mind. You face the same mental situation of the road coming at you so fast that all you can do is exist in the moment, except instead of the edge-y boy antics of almost killing yourself or someone else from driving like an asshole (and also burning fossil fuels for no reason, though with a motorcycle that point is moot they get such good gas mileage usually) you are playing a video game where a spectacular crash is part of the fun (looking at you Flat Out, Burnout and Wreckfest :P ).

    That mental state that people who love driving fast crave is the same mental state gamers who like playing competitive games pursue (you ever see someone play quake multiplayer competitively? It is the same exact flow state even when it isn’t a racing game), it’s just one hobby puts human lives at risk and the other is a fun time no matter what.