Now that Minecraft has received an update that allows leashing villagers together in train-like formations, how does this analysis change?

All leftist video creators are overrated, leftist authors less so but there’s still a huge contingent of them that are just co-opted by their main topic of critique. I don’t think this is a failing on the creators themselves but a feature of the market.

When you get down to it, no matter how ideologically ‘pure’ you manage to be, once you’re earning money for something - even if it’s not your primary income - your ability to affect the change you’re talking about becomes limited. You don’t want to risk your income. You don’t want to get ‘cancelled’ by your peers. For some this comes down to mindful self-censorship, but for most they don’t even realize that they’ve started down the algorithmic intellectual death spiral.

But! I think this is very okay and for our purposes can be leveraged. I absorbed endless amounts of this content when I was feeling the full affects of alienation. Alone all day, underappreciated and working my body to the bone in a warehouse. The reason I read ML theory at all is because of some of these chucklefucks - ThoughtSlime, The Deprogram, even broader liberal-types like Hbomberguy. They were friendly voices to listen to and fueled an inherent rebellious nature most of us have within.

But content cycles, your interests peak and change, and if you walk away from ““breadtubers”” having absorbed any actual theory, your admiration turns somewhat to scorn, and you begin to feel frustrated with the endless complaining and no actionable solutions. You’ll either fall back into liblight or your exposure to theory will grow into a larger revolutionary sprout.

That’s when you’re pushed out of the content mill and become exposed to the dreaded ideas that YouTubers can’t actually say due to ad revenue concerns. Getting to this stage of radicalization, especially in the west, used to be like pulling teeth. You’d need serious organizational power to spread the education needed.

Now it can be achieved by listening to freely accessible (and even semi-mainstream) content slop and letting well-known parasocial elements play out in a listener. Learning, admiration, surpassing the teacher, and finally finding your revolutionary spirit.

Russian state disinformation is also, seemingly, the most powerful influence on Earth. Seriously, it can get into anything and affect everyone. US-based free media press are under Russian influence depending on who you ask. The president himself? A cold war sleeper agent. It’s all Russia!

These are the same groups of people who, generally, can’t comprehend how Trump won, and how many trumpists spout earnest disinformation like their lives depended on it. So much disinformation is present, Trump won the presidency!

But no, it’s Russian disinformation that’s causing all the problems. America just has, um, cooky rednecks.

I hope my kids don’t grow up to murder me over unhinged conspiracy crap.

crimes, as soon as times get hard in the home country i’m resorting to crimes. organized crimes, random crime, union adjacent political crimes, whatever. fuck fighting for the imperial machine and fuck dying due to austerity. i’m straight crime’ing it.

UberEats but for national defense. If you tip below the threshold they either don’t come or spit in your ammo.

sometimes when I’m in a real ‘shower thoughts’ mood I find it deeply amusing how we needed marxism to understand this, or at least have it defensibly asserted

He’s at my place. Just wanted to smash some cones in the shed but got lost in the smoko.

Great stuff comrade, I think there’s a serious dearth of useful pirating information for the newer online generations.

I’ve only read the novels and partially watched the series, but imagining it as sort of an ‘anti-trek’ is pretty accurate. It’s a rather depressing view of our immediate future. The setting is very interesting and I overall like the novels, but it’s fair to say it’s not for everyone.

And since it’s the 'grad I should mention that you get an overwhelming sense of libness from the authors. A huge plot point is the exploitation of a new underclass that turn into irreverent terrorists who commit the worst crime imaginable. They’re not vindicated in any way by the end and aren’t even the ‘primary’ antagonists of the plot. In fact the crushingly cruel conditions of this new underclass aren’t even ever resolved. The universe just moves on without them. If stuff like that bothers you, consider it a fair warning.

Otherwise - I do generally recommend.

It’s important to note…but not like, the most important to note, I guess.

Villagers aren’t slaves because Minecraft leashes don’t work on them.

I’m really glad to have read this sentence today.

hey man, you have your spaces.

Yes, kill the beloved man, a meme figure of himself, a genuine inspiration to some. I don’t believe state-backed executions of dissidents has ever lead to any notable events.

It’s a mix bag game, each inspiration nicher than the last. It’s a survival crafter set entirely indoors, it’s part half life and part SCP, and it’s genuinely really hard. Hidden gem for sure, I would say.

Playing Abiotic Factor on my own for awhile. This is a great take on the survival crafter genre. Huge recommendation for anyone who has that itch.

With my mates, we’re tackling void crew. Anyone else been playing this? It’s a team based ship combat game with rouge elements. Reminds me of FTL, but in first person.

why tf they picking on venezuelans so much

I love how happy this lil guy is

But have people ever accepted/considered video games to be an artform? That I’m not sure about. They had a big stigma before the monetization got so bad and by the time they became more mainstream, they were at the peak of some of their worst elements for the computerized medium.

We’re very much on the same wavelength here. I think games are materially and inherently artistic projects, but are overwhelmingly produced in a way that’s more adjacent to toys. Problem is the latter is much more profitable than the former. Games with addictive gameloops are much more valued by developers and publishers than a game that uses its mechanics to deliver a message.

It’s such a sorry state of affairs that I think games as art are the exception, and not the norm. Games can clearly be art in how they use mechanics to make you feel something, or say something about the human condition - see DayZ, Lisa, Undertale, Pathologic, etc. These games subvert mechanical expectation and force the player to feel something other than fun/challenge.

But those four games are what came to the top of my head, and I don’t believe the list of ‘mechanic as the message’ games extends more than a few dozen. The market is otherwise made up of pure toys (Fortnite, Call of Duty, etc) or games that carry the aesthetic of art but use nothing from the medium to extend its message (Last of Us, Telltale games, most AAA ‘cinematic’ experiences). These games can easily be movies and the impact is the exact same. In the case of Last of Us, this is provably true.

So, like, no, games aren’t really considered art, are they? They clearly can be art, they have been art, and they have amazing ways to impact us, but the productive forces behind this entire artform are not interested in that. They’re exclusively interested in the money they can extract from younger audiences. Such is capitalism, right?