The most perturbing question for the liberal is the question of violence. The liberal’s initial reaction to violence is to try to convince the oppressed that violence is an incorrect tactic, that violence will not work, that violence never accomplishes anything. The Europeans took America through violence and through violence they established the most powerful country in the world. Through violence they maintain the most powerful country in the world. It is absolutely absurd for one to say that violence never accomplishes anything.

Most societies in the West are not opposed to violence. The oppressor is only opposed to violence when the oppressed talks about using violence against the oppressor. Then the question of violence is raised as the incorrect means to attain one’s ends.

https://redsails.org/the-pitfalls-of-liberalism/

These sort of people act like the organized violence inflicted by the oppressor was just siblings having a shouting match and having to learn to share space. No sense of the gravity of what they're talking about.

I don't know. I can tell you, seeing what the game industry did to video games certainly helped me adopt an anti-capitalist lens. It was influences significantly beyond that though, that got me all the way to communism.

I mean, the game industry killed most of my passion for video games in a death by a thousand cuts. But that didn't on its own get me in front of people who were talking anti-imperialism, talking Lenin, George Jackson, Michael Parenti.

As tempting as it is sometimes, doomerism is counter revolutionary. Not to be confused with being down sometimes or contending with depression. Taking a stance, even if meant in jest (and doomerism does go for dark humor sometimes) that suggests there is no hope is a problem. That's not even getting into the problems with feeding narratives about exaggerated differences between generations, which is a divide and conquer thing, and doesn't help us build solidarity with anyone.

There are observable differences between generations in culture and conditions they face, to a certain extent, but exaggerated statements about them that suggest helplessness or a fixed, doomed state of being is not a good idea. And the liberation cause is one where people have more in common, usually, than they have differences.

Pretty sure twitter got worse with stuff like this since Musk took over. Anecdotal, but even with all the wild BS twitter had, I could swear it used to have more of a veneer of decency on the surface at least. Now it seems like every other post that has a mildly "human decency" perspective has got accounts flooding it with stuff that reads like astroturfing for the capitalist, imperialist order.

And I know the porn bots got worse on there (that's easy to see and I've not been the only one to mention it) so if those bots are getting through, it would stand to reason other bots may be getting through more as well. Not to say there aren't real people who push this stuff, but the sheer amount of it is hard to believe as authentic "deep in propaganda" posting. And with LLMs being how they are now, it's feasible to produce bots who can write more coherent and human-sounding BS.

I have some experience with modding and game making - not paid company work type of stuff, but studied it in college, have made (small) games on my own or with others and have done extensive modding in one game that got a fair bit of attention.

I agree with cf saying it depends somewhat on the game. But also, overall modding is likely going to be easier for a number of reasons:

1. Scope. Modding forces you to work within heavy constraints due to being unable to directly edit the game engine, source code, etc. For creative control, this is a drawback, but when you're just trying to get something, anything made, it's a help. It means what could be an overwhelming pool of possibility and a vision gone out of control becomes more akin to, "Okay, let's see if I can change the color of this house." In other words, it forces you to approach tasks as a smaller set of steps and in so doing, makes it easier to make some kind of progress at all, rather than none.

2. Framework. Modding a game means there's already an existing framework there, a game that functions relatively well, presumably has a decent gameplay loop, etc. So you don't have to worry about, "Am I making something that will be utterly boring/unappealing/etc." because there's still the underlying game beneath it. So it's a lot harder to spend time on something that isn't enjoyable at all. And it means you have existing game design to mimic. In the game I heavily modded, some of the stuff I did was effectively repurposing features that were already there to use them slightly differently. I was still being creative and doing my own ideas, but much of the actual work of it was already done.

Does this mean modding will always be easier than making your own game? Not necessarily. For example, you could make a simple console-based (like command prompt, not game console) grid game with C++ that uses ASCII characters to simulate where stuff is and a player moving from a starting point to a goal. Something I've done before. But, will this fulfill your desire to enact a creative vision? Probably not. The more you have to learn to get started, the harder it's going to be to get to the creative part and that seems to be the part people usually crave as an entry point.

Hope that makes sense!

I would say it's closer to "the US taking the mask off on being fascist" vs. "finding ways to keep the mask on for longer"

Giving citizens access to the outside world would be an interesting thing to see them deal with.

Zero self awareness in people like this. Live in a western alphabet agency bubble of information, but think others are sheltered.

Too many people believe western media uncritically when it comes to international stuff. The contradictory part is they'll sometimes have skepticism, distrust, or even hatred for one or more major news sources that's focused on their own country's affairs. But when it comes to news about other countries, the same skepticism can be missing.

Before I learned about ML and all that, I was in that place to some extent, I think. But now that I have some idea of what to look for and know a bit more about international affairs and history, it's really obvious how western media narratives about "human rights" are just narratives of convenience. The formula goes something like: "Is X country somewhere we want to prop up against Y country? If yes, X country is a bastion of human rights and Y country eats babies. Does X country actively oppose us? If yes, X country eats turbo evil cereal as mandatory breakfast meals in every citizen's state-mandated bowl."

It's very cartoonish. And I mean I'm not even exaggerating to say it's cartoonish. I think of this video, which was from decades ago, yet is still so on point for the style of propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1tfkESPVY

But one thing I'm not sure how to contend with is when people are deep in paranoia about "foreign agents" and "foreign propaganda" kind of thing. I recall one time online trying to show someone that video to make a point about western propaganda and they straight up refused to watch it. IIRC, they were also someone who had come into the convo thinking I was a Chinese shill or something, but weren't open about thinking that right away, so I naively attempted some good faith stuff at first.

The kind of thinking where anything that contradicts the existing narrative must be coming from "the enemy" "in secret" is such a disturbing thing. I think, would hope, most of us here don't fall into that trap of thinking. For example, even something as straightforward as anti-imperialism is not binary good/evil; there can be countries run by factions that are not empowering the working class, the marginalized among their people as a system of power, but are nevertheless an important force of opposition against the western empire, against foreign capital and its exploitation.

Pretty sure he's been showing visible signs of cognitive decline since 2020 elections. The sad part for people who aren't genocidal imperialists, is I'm not sure how much it matters either way. Supposing that he's not all there, a clear-minded Biden would likely be making much the same decisions, considering his past record in politics. So either way, he's still a piece of shit doing immense harm, whether he's all there mentally doing it or he's somewhat of a stand-in for it by this point.

I think they are confused. "Voting with your wallet" has never been effective, but it's also not what a boycott is. "Vote with your wallet" is a trite individualist adage that encourages people to ignore any kind of organized or sustained activity in opposition to what a corporation does and instead silently go their own way, without comment or explanation; the whole spirit of the adage in pretty much every time I've seen it used is to discourage people from speaking out or putting real energy into change and instead, to put it one way, "letting their wallet speak for them." Boycotting means putting on sustained, at least (loosely) organized pressure. A boycott doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether you personally like the product (it could even be your favorite thing); "vote with your wallet" does and is often centered around personal preferences. A boycott is meant to effect change and can do so via sustained numbers of people at it with shared vocalized intent making something untenable as a business decision; "vote with your wallet" is anarcho-capitalist "chaotic and random individual choices will regulate the market" delusion.

Then there's the part where they are so deep in paranoia and racism they think you are a foreign spy if you say anything sympathetic about the country. (I actually had this happen to me once online.)

Nothing to make flying feel safe like an airplane quality whistleblower being unalived.