Shit, this is bringing back bad memories of PowerModders on roleplaying forums in the 00s. I mean, we were all like this a little with our precious edgy OCs, but some really needed to one-up everyone and win every fight. I remember a guy teleporting his OC in just to beat my character and the one I was in a fight with to show they were badder than both of us.
I wouldn’t say it was a street fight, but a friend took me to a “bonfire” in his ~10k pop county, and I did see two country boys who were upset (both dating the same girl or something?) discuss (really yelling at each other from like 12 feet apart) rules before throwing down. I felt like a cultural anthropologist. Despite growing up in the south I’d never seen such redneck shit.
Learning Psychometrics in school taught me that you can painstakingly make a survey that reveals sentiment with as little bias as possible…or relatively easily make a survey that says whatever you want it to.
Not disagreeing with anything you’ve said, but the “one professor in particular” was from a working class background. Among other things we bonded over was being the first in our families to pursue higher education, and how he didn’t talk to his family anymore and I looked forward to cutting contact myself.
I remember being a bright eyed youth excited for the change Bernie was sure to bring, and he told me to not get my hopes up and that Bernie’d never win. Hillary was the “safe bet”, which was strange to me as he’d also talked about how Obama/the Dems let us down by not making a public option. I know he knows the system doesn’t work for people, he just can’t imagine anything better, and I think actively thinks pursuing radical change can only backfire.
It still makes me sad. I remember breathlessly coming into a club meeting having watched the CGP Grey video about how much the crown properties make England, and telling him about it and how it “was a bargain to pay the royals what the UK does” and he told me how it wasn’t because they had attained the land by being warlords and were lucky they’d kept their heads much less their lands. I was so embarrassed. By the next week I’d processed what he said and found myself agreeing. I told him at the next meeting that I had come to agree, and further no land could be owned because it had all been bought with blood at one time or another, from the Natives especially. I was so shocked/crushed when he didn’t agree…even more when it became a running joke how you might find me in your kitchen calling it “our kitchen”.
This reminds me of several professors I had in college, one in particular. As a USAian from red country, they were the farthest left people I ever met, and I enjoyed having my beliefs challenged by them, but as quickly as I was helped past some ideological blinders by them, I came to see that they weren’t interested in actual leftism in any way. I’m still not sure if it was because the topics were verboten, or if their actual opinions are just locked to the leftmost edge of the Overton window.
I’ll forgive someone who entered at 18 and then left as soon as they possibly could after seeing what is was like and have consistently avowed the military since. I’ve known a couple people like that. I’ll not forgive people who in any way make that service a part of their identity, or who try and bring nuance to the situation. I’ve known many more people like this. This guy seems to be in the second camp.
The fact is 18 year-olds are dumb, fresh from a propaganda mill, and poor. The military preys on this, and I don’t believe anyone is immune to manipulation.
America delenda est.
Oh man, I wish that was the one I played. Sounds awesome to kid me, but I might have been taking myself too seriously by then
That’s the one where you play as Nairobi or the Asian guy, right? All I remember about it is trying to learn the hacking mini-game / cheat system.
My two predictions for Hillary’s presidency were: 1) a new war she could “win” quickly, and 2) a new social program to put her name on. You could just tell that she wanted to go into the history books.
Yeah, they definitely have it calibrated to get you to open your wallet “just one time”, but it is a shit ton of game…just a mediocre one.
I don’t know if it was Taco Bell, but I remember getting a lego racing game like this from somewhere. It was not a good game, but I still played it to 100% because it was my only PC game and that was really novel instead of my SNES and n64.
Second post because I forgot this game is generally seen as bad.
Star Wars: The Old Republic has eaten more of my life than any game but World of Warcraft, and I wasn’t a teen during my time with SWTOR. Combining MMO Tab-Combat with Bioware dialogue made my brain spit out the feel good chemicals during the worse of my autistic-burnout/depression that lasted from 2018-2023. I still go back to it now and again, but during that time I played through the base game on every single class, and multiple times on some of them. I even played through all of the expansions on 5 characters, one a remake of another to choose a different romance / endstate. Never did any group content though lmao.
Played through it so many times on my gamecube :)
Not sure I ever did lmao
Sorry, all I care about is that she’s a woman and a drummer. That’s too cool to be bad. 
Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning. At no point is the plot actually interesting, the gameplay is quickly trivial if you side quest at all, but I love the daggers and twinblades esp combined with some magic so much.
Also the Fable games, esp Fable 2, but those I’d put a tier above dogshit. Cat-breath?
Edit: As a kid I had Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures on my SNES and I never really got it, certainly never beat it, but I’d put it out every now and then just because there was nothing like it. For those who don’t know (probably most of you) you don’t control Pac-Man, you control a slingshot which you use to shoot things in the environment, hopefully pointing Pac-Man in the right direction, but often making him suicidaly mad or outright “killing” him. You could also shoot Pac-Man. Its still one of only a handful of second-person games I know of.
You have to wonder if it is intentional, and if so then what the goal is.
I know someone who got a job at a prison (medical, not a guard) and successfully used synthetic piss they bought somewhere
I really hope I live long enough to see somewhere on the globe make a 24hr work week the norm (4x6)
Please don’t fall for generationalism. Boomers by and large can’t retire any more than we will be able to. An abundant amount of source