Vespair
@Vespair@lemm.ee
- Comment on “Alright my brothers listen closely.” 1 week ago:
Shit, that’s a good deal!
- Comment on How do Americans win their country back? 1 week ago:
Who knows. Apparently half my country is full of legitimately hateful people who just want to watch the people they don’t like suffer.
How the fuck do we come back from that? Honestly, are we even worth redeeming?
For me, this is it. This is when America died. If you’re still “proud” to be an American after this, you’re brain-damaged.
- Comment on It's never a bad time to check your biases 1 week ago:
And then they introduced Coke Zero (pronouns) and suddenly everyone is debating the natural of singular “they”
- Comment on It's never a bad time to check your biases 1 week ago:
Bro maybe if you weren’t so prejudiced you’d be willing to accept that women can be beverages
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 1 week ago:
40,000 monthly active users is probably a more useful number here.
I fully agree. Again, I did not think that the random figure, which I tried to appropriately caveat, was the salient part of my comment.
- Comment on I screen, you screen, we all screen for I screen. 1 week ago:
- Comment on Tencent collaborated with Snoop Dogg for Fortnite, officially adding the 'C-Walk' as a dance, a notorious gang sign for the Crips. 1 week ago:
I may take slight issue with your last statement. To be clear, I’m not trying to have a “dishonest discussion”, I genuinely don’t understand the distinction and there isn’t really an article or anything here for me to clarify.
I apologize, I sincerely wasn’t trying to imply you were being willfully dishonest or disingenuous, I was just trying to offer the correction to ensure clarity. I promise, I intended no offense and did not mean to imply anything about your character. I hope this clears that up and am legitimately sorry if you felt wronged.
- Comment on Tencent collaborated with Snoop Dogg for Fortnite, officially adding the 'C-Walk' as a dance, a notorious gang sign for the Crips. 1 week ago:
I believe the objection is not to Snoop for his gang affiliation, but rather to the dance specifically with is being claimed as a more overt gang symbol, sort of like if they added the blood hand sign.
Of course I don’t think this is even remotely an issue of concern for most of the reasons others have already commented on this post (it’s a pop culture thing now, essentially), but I do think it’s worth acknowledging the distinction between person and symbol here to be able to have honest discussion of the topic.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 1 week ago:
I appreciate the clarity, thank you. As I said, I pulled a random googled number and wasn’t trying to use it as the sticking point of my commentary. But also for what it’s worth, it’s not exactly a fair comparison to the larger giants either as lemmy’s smaller scale means it is also less trafficked by bots, fake accounts, secondary novelty accounts, etc. Depending on what source you’re looking at, twitter is claimed to be anywhere between 15-75% bot or fake accounts. In general my point was there are still a large number of people using lemmy on most scales, we are just choosing to view it on the scale of established corporate social media metrics.
- Comment on do you think lemmy will ever be popular? 1 week ago:
I think we’re going to need to start by defining what “popular” means.
According to fedidb.org/software/lemmy, there are 462,745 total Lemmy users. (Note: I know nothing about this site or their metrics; I literally just Googled “Lemmy users.”)
If 462,745 people showed up to my birthday party, I would feel like the most popular person on the planet.
So, I think we need to consider a less abstract figure to answer this. Will Lemmy ever be as popular as a place like Reddit? I think that’s extremely unlikely, at least not anytime soon. But will Lemmy ever be popular enough to sustain an engaged community? I dunno; I kind of think we’re already there.
Maybe this is the old head in me, but I remember the decentralized days of the early internet, where communities weren’t oceans of people on social media giants, but rather smaller, close-knit forums and message boards. If you spent a few months interacting, you would likely get to know and have specific opinions about individual users that you would regularly engage with, unlike the sort of hit-and-run buzz style of the modern social internet. I think right now, Lemmy is almost treading a special sweet spot between the two eras, and I’m pretty happy with it.
Although I will concede that I’m as addicted to social media as everyone else is these days, and I would certainly welcome the increase in on-the-minute activity that additional users would bring.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
Sure, whatever. The point is I think the key to Lemmy, at least during this community-building stage, is narrowing in on the right level of specificity of niches which can be supported here. Maybe “NFL” is too niche, so we try “sports.” But then maybe “sports” is too broad so “US sports” is the solution. The point is negotiating the level of specificity to find the more zeroed-in on option that can still receive enough engagement to be viable.
- Comment on Stop whining. Do it yourself. 2 weeks ago:
Like another user said, if Lemmy doesn’t have the numbers to support the niche communities you want, maybe you need to move one level up the niche.
Like maybe there isn’t enough NFL activity on Lemmy yet to keep the NFL community active… But could there be enough sports fans to keep a sports community active? Could you perhaps settle for sharing a space with NHL, MBL, and/or soccer fans in a community that sacrifices a little bit of specificity for broadness to encourage activity?
- Comment on 🧿👄🧿 y'all need to step up ur game 2 weeks ago:
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.
- Comment on 🧿👄🧿 y'all need to step up ur game 2 weeks ago:
Vivaldi browser, desktop, 4k screen maximized, lemm.ee interface here, and they look the same to me.
- Comment on Can I not be an adorable junkie 3 weeks ago:
Honestly at this point it’s just engagement bait. Yes, the trend is awful and terrible and stupid, but also people cannot resist the temptation of calling that out as well, so now it serves double-duty of being easy comment farming (note: this applies more to places like reddit than here on Lemmy, but I’m speaking in generalities here).
It’s a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing in terms of responding to this stupid self-censorship.
- Comment on How to clean a rescued pigeon 4 weeks ago:
Fun time to remind everyone that pigeons aren’t native to the Americas, and were brought over originally by the French primarily as a food source (although also as messengers; carrier pigeons).
“Squab” on a menu is pigeon.
- Comment on Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you' 5 weeks ago:
Don’t be disingenuous. It’s the juxtaposition of GOG’s claim paired being intentionally paired with the steam disclaimer so as to present it as if an alternative.
- Comment on Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you' 5 weeks ago:
I don’t think “weasel words” is the right term here.
I agree with you. GOG’s wording is fine, I was hasty in my reaction.
- Comment on Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you' 5 weeks ago:
I think it is more than just technically, personally. A thing I own is a thing I can pass down to my children, a thing I can break apart and rebuild, a thing I can modify without needing permission. I’m not denying that GOG offers a great asset that frees you from a corporate leash; that is awesome. But that’s not the same thing as owning, and presenting it as if it is is disingenuous. You are still licensing, not owning.
Again, I’m not saying this is egregious enough to be wrong, but I don’t like when any company uses manipulative language when speaking to me, even if I appreciate their intent. I just think it’s slimy.
- Comment on Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you' 5 weeks ago:
I like GOG, but this is just weasel-words to take advantage of the ignorance of the public. Whether you receive the installs directly or not, you still don’t own your games, you are just licensing them, same as Steam.
This doesn’t tip the scales into the “this is wrong” territory for me, but I do think this kind of word manipulation exploiting an unknowledgeable public is a little bit slimy.
- Comment on Are there Cozy shooter games? 5 weeks ago:
I don’t know if it counts as “cozy,” but Metal:Hellsinger is an extremely vibey shooter, as you can kind of just zone out, bop your head to the music, and vibe to the music in flow state while playing. Kind of zen, actually.
- Comment on Thanks, Logan. 5 weeks ago:
I broke down an bought a pack of Prime to try recently after seeing it everywhere, even in the hands of people I don’t associate with the whole Logan Paul circus.
It tasted like piss and chemicals. If you’re at all sensitive to the taste of sucralose, it’s like drinking battery acid. I simply cannot fathom how it is as successful as it is.
- Comment on [Tom Warren] The PS5 Pro still hasn’t sold out in the US or UK. Looks like the $700 price point will mean this console will be readily available this holiday 1 month ago:
Why buy a console when for roughly the same price you could buy a PC that does everything the console does and more? Yeah $700 is an insane price for what is effectively a toy.
- Comment on Lord, I was born a scramblin' maaaaan 1 month ago:
I didn’t assume so, but I do appreciate you saying so regardless. Cheers ✌️
- Comment on Lord, I was born a scramblin' maaaaan 1 month ago:
Hey man, I’m allowed to make a Beatles reference if coo coo ca-choose to.
Also All-man Brothers? That doesn’t sound very inclusive; get back to me when you allow women brothers too.
- Comment on If Bethesda released Skyrim today, they would have made it woke 1 month ago:
That’s fair and I see your point, even basically agree with it. That said, I still wonder sort of what standards we’re holding for “good” characters and how realistic that is. And I want to make a brief caveat that I don’t know you and can’t speak to your personal opinions so I will be making some generalizations about the topic in general; I apologize if it feels like I am unfairly lumping you in with anyone and promise that is not my intention. It is clear to me you aren’t a right wing chud screaming about DEI but rather you’re a very decent person looking for fleshed-out representation that isn’t shallow or driven by stereotypes.
Okay, caveats out of the way now, here’s the thing: I have a gay friend who is very proud of their community and themselves for being who they are despite any social pressures. This friend frequently goes out wearing full-blown rainbow attire, speaks with the affectation of their community, and they will absolutely inform you of their orientation upon their first meeting. Of course my friend has vastly more depth than just their community affiliation, but that affiliation is definitely going to be the largest and most prominent quality you associate with them, especially if you never move beyond acquaintanceship to friendship.
If my friend was in a video game, they would absolutely be described as flat or tokenism. But they are a real person. Even if you’re thinking to yourself right now “well frankly it sounds like your friend is lacking in depth in real life,” (I’d disagree, but go with the argument none the less, please), the fact is they still exist. There are people who define themselves by their identifiers first. So I don’t think the mere inclusion of these “flat” representations are inherently problematic.
I don’t think a flat character of an under-represented demographic is harmful in the way that a bad or stereotypical representation is. I think there is still benefit in the normalization of lesser-represented groups in media, even if those representations aren’t the deepest or most compelling characters. A gay shopkeeper who is flamboyant and one-note still helps normalize the idea of gay people in normal aspects of life.
But of course we can’t settle for these characters as the whole piece of representation. We have to still demand deep and complex under-represented characters, especially in lead or primary roles. I just personally don’t think the flatter characters are inherently problematic or detrimental to those goal. If anything, I think they’re almost kind of tangential or non-sequitur to the topic. The point isn’t to complain about flat under-represented characters and discourage their inclusion, the point is to demand good and complex under-represented characters regardless of the inclusion of these flat other representations.
I’m very sorry for the novel I wrote, my brain is crazy today and I couldn’t make it more concise in this moment.
Also I have no yet watched Kaos so I can’t comment on the representation in that show, but it does sound compelling from what you describe.
Also also, in case it’s not clear, I don’t think we’re arguing; I think we probably agree with each other about 90% of the way here.
- Comment on If Bethesda released Skyrim today, they would have made it woke 1 month ago:
I see your point and don’t disagree exactly… but…
I will say it is odd that I hear this kind of criticism of flat gay/female/minority/etc characters but for some reason never hear complaints about the equally-flatly written comic relief characters, or best friend characters, or sage characters, etc. Video games and other stories frequently contain flat characters that are used more as props from the protagonist or other characters to react and respond to, yet complaints about these characters seem to only pop up when said characters happen to represent an under-represented demographic. - Comment on 💸💸💸 1 month ago:
Also like, food and water you acquire is food and water you don’t have to purchase or otherwise gain, meaning you can use the resources you would have used on food on military operations instead.
- Comment on Witchfire is now available on Steam 1 month ago:
No thanks. Games that choose to sign with the anti-consumer storefront don’t deserve my attention as the consumer.
- Comment on That explains it. 1 month ago:
I believe I specifically asked you to articulate how the people I mentioned aren’t sex workers but Instagram and non-nude OF models somehow are.
