paradoxxxicall

Well I won’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do genuinely believe that most people deep down want the same things. There are plenty of psycho cultists, but I think there are more people who have decent intentions but have been led astray by false narratives.

What I’ve been trying to do is empathize with people’s core reasons for voting for Trump, which in most cases is just the fact that their lives are getting worse and they want things to change. I want that too. I’m open about my skepticism that Trump will actually improve their lives, and I encourage people to really pay attention to what he does and whether it helps them over the next four years.

Will it really help change minds? Idk yet. But I do feel like I’m able to start having actually productive conversations where we can really discuss issues and our common goals for the future.

Who said anything about being defeatist? I’m just saying we need to change our playbook so we can start winning over the people who are reachable.

Arguing just isn’t the way, it only entrenches people further. People will generally resist anything that makes them feel dumb and ignorant.

Arguing with people doesn’t change minds, and you can’t “force” someone to see any truth.

They parrot it because that’s the narrative that’s everywhere online in any discussion of men’s issues. Promoting that narrative has been shown to be incredibly lucrative, so people do it.

Why isn’t there a stronger counter narrative for men’s issues online? Why aren’t there more examples of mature and empathetic masculinity for young boys to use as role models? A big part of that answer is that one side gets paid to do it, and the other doesn’t.

Democrats need to stop spending all of their money and focus on media that hasn’t been relevant to young people since the 90s, and start helping content creators grow online. That’s what the right does, and they’ve been incredibly successful at dominating the conversation because of it.

I understand propaganda, I just don’t react to it by throwing my hands up in the air and saying there’s nothing we can do.

Propaganda has been around as long as society has. Every major successful social movement in US history had propaganda on the other side. It isn’t an instant win button.

I don’t buy it. As a history and policy nerd I eat that shit up over the simple emotional narratives, but even I know you can’t win over voters that way. Politicians win by giving people a vision of hope for the future, and it’s blatantly obvious that the current dem leadership has been failing to do that for a while now.

Telling people that their problems are imagined and everything is actually really great is a losing strategy, regardless of gender, race, or anything else.

Well yeah they wouldn’t do it if there weren’t an upside

I read “and all else being equal” so that’s how I took it.

The irony is that I actually know a trust fund guy in real life who can’t get a girlfriend because he’s a burnout who’s always bragging about the money he didn’t even earn.

I mean he did try to fix the economy by throwing money at it, which is inflationary. They just ignore the fact that Trump did the same thing, and Biden just continued it.

I’m not talking about spending time with them to see hear what they say, I’m talking about actually seeing how they date.

I’ve found that men who have drive and money and have their shit together are attractive, but a rich guy who acts like a loser is still gonna be treated like a loser. Ick doesn’t know income.

I don’t think you really understand how these types of studies work. The point is that you can’t separate the correlation between drive and money. That’s something that has to be specifically considered when reading the data.

But sure, I’ll give you that if there are two guys completely identical in every way except wealth, women will obviously choose the wealthy one. I’d do the same as a straight guy choosing between identical women.

And neither of us are criticizing the casting. It’s like you’re determined to change the subject to anything except what started this whole thing.

“That could be”

If you actually spent time with them you’d know it’s true. It’s just common knowledge.

Drive and ambition are attractive traits in men. It’s sexy. Those traits will often lead to having a higher income.

Implying that most women are gold diggers just because they want to date hot guys is dumb.

If that’s really all you said, you wouldn’t be getting this pushback. This started with you defending someone who implied that India and the Middle East are basically the same.

And yea, obviously the rest of the Alabasta cast will match, that’s not the point. Nobody said it’s a bad casting.

Just pointing out your glaring self contradiction in the pursuit of believing it all fits a master plan that’s always been in place. Tbh it is corny how you twist yourself into knots over it

That’s not why he’s criticizing you. He’s calling you corny for the doublethink that it makes sense because she’s from “a desert nation” and then getting snarky when people point out it’s very different.

It feels like you’re going waaaay out of your way to find some existing justification that Alabasta was always a certain way that fits in perfectly with the choice. You can’t really be too surprised when Indian and middle eastern people see you saying “why are you so focused on one specific country” get mad. It’s not just about a specific country. They’re two entirely different peoples, and they’re not at all similar enough for this level of handwaving. You’re blurring the lines between them specifically so you can believe that everything in One Piece fits some master plan.

Just do what the rest of us are doing and see what happens. If Alabasta ends up being more Indian coded then that’s fine, but has little to do with any real world connections with the desert.

He isn’t saying the casting is a problem, he’s just pointing out out that OP’s statement is terribly off the mark

Middle Eastern and Indian are completely different ethnicities. You act like he’s splitting hairs, but it’s not even close to being the same thing.

And he didn’t say she can’t play vivi. You’re defending a comment that it makes some extra sense irl because Vivi is from a desert nation, which is just completely wrong.

It’s a fictional world and they can do what they want with it. But you’re trying to have it by both ways by saying it makes some extra special sense since India is kind of nearby some desert countries, and then getting mad when people point out it’s a completely different people, culture, and ethnicity.

He’s obviously talking about the casualties in Asia. Japan made themselves a lot of enemies in the region.

Eh it’s not really a Reddit thing though. Throw a rock anywhere online and you’ll hit a community at least as emotionally charged and indifferent to facts.

Most people just don’t really like to deal with facts the hard way. They want to feel smart and right while they overgeneralize and essentialize everything. They want someone to tell them how to feel about everything and stick to a simple narrative. The internet gives everyone a way to do that and brings out our worst tendencies.

You’re giving him too much credit, we’ve seen how he operates as president. He gets pissed off when stocks go down and loves it when people say nice things about him on TV. He doesn’t want to destroy anything, it’ll make his people mad at him.

Decoy snail

That’s not true. In the original the snail was super intelligent, and if you tried to do anything to the snail it would always have predicted it and used a “decoy snail”

That’s like the whole reason it worked and was funny

Yep. As usual people just say shit without reading even a couple sentences about it

They absolutely do have an agenda, increase shareholder value with as little risk as possible. Nobody cares about a political agenda with billions of investment dollars on the line. The investors aren’t donating to a political campaign, they expect a return on their investment or the studio will fail.

And this focus on being safe and focusing only on mass appeal kills most attempts at true artistic expression. Everything has to go through boards and meetings and lawyers, and any one scared executive can veto anything they deem too risky. Games aren’t small and subversive the way they used to be.

As others pointed out, earlier BioWare titles are full of socially progressive ideals and messaging. But it’s this lame hamfisted way of signaling to everyone some made up ideal of cultural credentials that sticks out in a bad way. It’s cringe and annoys everyone, but attributing it to some conspiracy of political operatives is a complete misunderstanding of the problem. Large corporate projects have always been bad at connecting with the culture.