run32.dll

The important thing is that girls and young women got to see today that you don't have to be a man to fuck every woman in the country.

13 hours ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

My bottom-line  is this: don't underestimate the GOP's ability to at least pay sufficient  lip-service to these notions while simultaneously reassuring their donor base that it won't impact them too severely.  The argument is quite simple: surrender a little bit of economic power in exchange for significant, long-term political power...which ultimately results in economic power anyway.

 

I mean, they just captured the court system for at least a generation, if not more.  Why would anyone expect them to be any less "nimble" for other political goals?

This. The GOP have demonstrated that they are willing to make concessions to unify growing non-establishment wings to win and get to do enough of what they want to do rather than nothing. They successfully absorbed the Tea Party by tossing them enough to make them feel heard while the Democrats are fighting the progressive wing tooth and nail. They recognize that politics is soft war and are more ready to kill.

They also voted for the new constitution to be voted on by the people rather than politicians by almost 80%.

2 minutes ago, Emperor Diocletian II said:

I'm with @run32.dll on this one.

 

We should all be very, very afraid of what the post-Trumpian GOP will bring, especially if they finally learn their lesson and stifle the blatant racism.  As I posted in another thread, Trump is doing better with African-American and Latin-American men than in 2016.

 

There's a lesson there for the GOP and a warning signal for the Democrats.

And on the flip side Bernie showed you can activate Latin American infrequent to never voters to vote in a primary by appealing to their material interests. The liberal culture war is largely not going to win them over.

3 hours ago, Anathema- said:

Right wing capitalist fascists aren't going to pivot to the left. They're kool-aid drinkers at this point, true believers. That's how authoritarianism happens. They're not Machiavellis.

Fascists offering some concessions to the general public to take power isn't a pivot to the left and there's historical precedent for them doing it. However, if I'm wrong and the Democrats strategized against this possibility by shifting to the left and becoming a largely social democrat party it's not like we'd be looking back in regret 50 years from now for raising the quality of life for everyone and having a more stable, less alienated country that doesn't punctuate its monthly mass shootings by reaching a fever pitch of burning down the local police station every 2-3 years. Neoliberalism is not sustainable and something will fill the vacuum of its collapse. Maybe the fascists will try in 2024, maybe they'll wait until 2050. Either way, there's not much compelling reason to prolong needless human suffering to find out if we're calling a bluff.

If anyone thought gusanos weren't politically engaged and going to vote Republican I'd like to sell you some ocean front property in North Dakota.

Imagine being such a bitter, hateful person that you want to spend your 80s still fucking over the American people rather than just enjoying the $30 million net worth you swindled with your family until you finally fuck off and die.

35 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Yeah, no.

 

I used to think this until a few weeks ago and the GOP was tripping over themselves to make sure millions of americans don't get $1200/each (at least) checks weeks before an election. Their base is car dealership owners, not disgruntled laid off factory worker herrenvolk. They may make lip service toward the latter but they're beholden to the former

Maybe not 2024 but it will come. When capitalism collapses there aren't too many directions for it to go.

9 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

Tom Cotton is the Scott Walker of 2024. Nice, cerebral, softer edge fascism doesn't sell. 

They've gotten smarter. Try watching Tucker Carlson. He's willing to talk about class divisions while Democrats avoid it like the plague. Soon enough they'll be offering nationalized healthcare, job guarantees, and an authoritarian military state that will crush all of our enemies. Co-opting leftist language and marrying it with strongman authoritarianism that promised to purge civilization of the lesser peoples worked for Hitler and Mussolini. Liberals have already shown their commitment to avoid unification with social democrats and socialists even if it makes them more likely to lose. There's no reason for the GOP to not go with the strategy that could lock down the entire country for them to achieve every culture war fantasy for decades.

After Trump loses the GOP is moving on to their smart fascists that know how to sound polite while advocating for their "traditional" populist cultural nationalism. Then they pick up the Trump base as well as those pearl clutching women of the suburbs and plenty of people dissatisfied with Biden's economic recovery that is merely trying to get people back to working 2-3 service jobs with little to no benefits to just barely make it.

1 hour ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Etch "biden only won because of covid" into your eyelids cause that's what's coming.

It would certainly be a much tighter race if Trump was able to still run on those unemployment numbers and stock market performance.

I cast my ballot today. I voted for Howie Hawkins for president. Before you start raging at me about how that was a vote for Trump, please consider that this was an informed and calculated decision. I have the privilege of being able to cast this vote. If I was in a battleground state or a red state I would have voted for Biden. However, I am in a state where Biden has a very comfortable lead that even Clinton managed to win decidedly. Howie Hawkins is running a unified Green and Socialist party ticket and if he can get 5% of the vote it's the best chance we've had in decades to have a party that represents the interests of workers be eligible for FEC funding and become a viable alternative to the Democrats and Republicans that would be enough of a threat to shift the Democrats to the left. I decided that since I am in the position of being able to that my vote would be better served going towards that possibility than it would running up the score for Joe Biden. I voted Democrat for everything else because those races are all tighter than the presidential race. You may now smash that guillotine emoji.

Alien

11 minutes ago, osxmatt said:

This is incomprehensible.

 Fox News supposedly does not want me to vote for Biden. They constantly tell me he's actually awesome. This is counter-intuitive because they're going to convince people to vote for Biden thinking he's great when he isn't.

5 minutes ago, osxmatt said:

What?

Fox News wants Biden to lose but they keep lying to the public to make him sound much better than he is by telling us he's a socialist that supports universal healthcare, the Green New Deal, banning fracking, etc.

12 minutes ago, osxmatt said:

Joe Biden had a line last night, that I wish he would have taken further, but it was something along the lines of “who do you think you’re debating?”

 

There is Joe Biden, the actual politician and person, and Joe Biden, the Fox News persona. And that’s why Trump’s debate performance fell flat. He was debating Joe Biden the Fox News persona, who doesn’t exist.

If Fox News wants Biden to lose then why do they keep doing false PR making him sound better than he is?

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Chuck Taylor stamping on a human face - forever.

Trump is right. If Kamala Harris becomes president we're not going to have a socialist president.

I desperately wish Biden was the candidate these people think he is.

Gamers with toxoplasmosis was a mistake.

2 hours ago, Moa said:

A lot of survivorship bias going on. People face enough prejudice just going through life, there's no reason we need videogames to toughen people up emotionally. 

 

Most of the people I know who, like me, grew up gaming online tend to be crass and insensitive in ways that are socially maladaptive. I don't think anyone is better for having racial slurs thrown at them while playing CoD. 

I was going nowhere in life. I was taking meth to wake up and heroin to go to sleep. I was stealing copper wiring because I had already stolen all the money and jewelry I could from family and still needed to feed my addiction. Then one day I walked into a GameStop. I started playing Call of Duty Black Ops Remastered Snyder Cut Edition on the demo Xbox One. I killed a guy and he called me a dago. I then immediately turned my life around and founded Lakewood Church.

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Matching their insults with your own does absolutely nothing.  Again, this is just giving them what they want.  They know they're not among friends.  Or in some cases, their friends are in on it and trolling others.

Best thing to do, IMO, is say you're muting and reporting, and follow through.  Puts the question in their head if they'll be punished, and leaves it at that.

If that's what works best for you then stick with it. I've spent enough time in competitive shooters to know they're expecting other people to agree with them and find using the n word hilarious. Odds are I'll eventually just mute them because I'm not going to spend the whole match arguing with them but I'm willing to at least challenge them on it. It's not for everyone but more people doing it would make them feel less comfortable.

19 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Part of the reason, sure, but definitely not the entirety of it.   With gaming, it's likely most about trying to drive a wedge between troll culture and racism.  No easy task.

People can be optimistic about change, or feel outraged that we aren't taking as strong of a stand as we should, etc.  But trying to tell some random person on the internet to stop taunting and jeering is also giving them what they want.  Bullying 101.

Most of the change, culturally, isn't going to happen with you shouting down a racist stranger.  IMO

Right, you're not going to change 20+ years of online gaming culture over night. To clarify I'm not saying to respond with, "P-p-please don't talk like that it's offensive." I'm saying be rude back. Tell them to shut up, make fun of them for being a neckbeard, etc. It's not an all encompassing solution but it let's them know they're not among friends and that if they want to act like that it can come back at them.
 

17 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Bunch of false choices here... when users have actual evidence, screen grabs or recordings that they can provide to developers of harassment this excuse rings false. It REALLY rings false when you relaize we're talking about PAID SERVICES.  Nothing can be done if the will isn't there but since gaming is becoming more and more mainstream and there will be more visibility on these companies to do something about the toxic communities they've allowed to fester on their watch, I FULLY expect we'll start to see some changes

 

 

 

I don't disagree that when a developer is presented with evidence that someone is being racist, sexist, etc. that they should be acting on it. If a developer isn't acting on that then they're just choosing to allow it to continue. I'm not saying they share no responsibility and should do nothing. I'm saying what changes this in a long term is confronting gamer culture and letting them know this is not an echo chamber, we do not all agree with you and you may even be the minority here.
 

17 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I'll outline a system every dev can use freely...

 

AI to filter for abusive/hateful language

Immediately mute the abusive player on detection

 

Seriously, that's it. That alone would do a ton of curb a lot of this toxic behavior.

 

However, if you want to go further you could also just ask players after a match if <insert clip here> was abusive and/or hateful And dole out punishments from there.

 

If, at any moment, you thought to yourself that it would be a lot of work to ask players to do then you understand that's only because there's so much toxicity in online gaming and that's not a good thing and should never be tolerated.

 

No, the real reason nothing is done about it is because developers either don't think it's that big a deal or because they're fearful of turning away a large chunk of their player base.

That's a good idea and I would like to see it implemented although I think it would need human review by someone not in the game or a system for people to challenge it as a false report because there are people that are going to report someone as being offensive just because they think it's funny.

Developers are pretty limited in what they can do to address this unless they're going to double their budget to have a babysitter in every lobby or have people review every instant ban done by an AI to deal with the false positives. It's a culture issue and part of the reason it persists is because the people doing it think they're in an echo chamber and everyone agrees with them. It will most likely never change unless people with thick skin are willing to tell them to shut up.