prez

21. any pronouns. communist

[necromancelena]

Computer loves to be like "fuck! You sure you want to shut down? Youve got volume mixer open"

[zvaigzdelasas]

Its almost offensive when you see someone spreading Israeli propaganda for free like brother you know they're literally giving out soooooooooo much money to spread that shit and youre publicly declaring yourself as irredeemable and not worth talking with for zero us dollars?

[boccher]

out trans people like to try to convince closeted/repressed trans people who are in a position to transition, to transition as soon as possible, by saying "i badly regret not starting earlier". i don't think it's a very effective argument on its own. most closeted/repressed trans people have heard the same thing numerous times, they're deathly aware of it, they're already wracked with the regret of not transitioning today, every single day. simply telling them that the regret never leaves you doesn't have any convincing power. it might only make them feel even more hopeless or guilty. to draw from my honest personal experience, i would instead tell them:

"eventually—maybe slowly, and not always all the time, but surely—you'll notice that the regret of not starting earlier is drowned out by the joy and contentness of finally feeling truer to yourself. you won't have to live stuck permanently ruminating on past what-could-have-beens anymore, you'll be able to live in the present as yourself."

[were--ralph]

Thinking about those people who want to fuck Lego Bionicles

[were--ralph]

Listen buddy you can't just say things like this and not share with the class

[phillychizsteak]

[were--ralph]

okay!

[drops-of-universe]

why do men have this eternal fear of being used for money they don’t have lol

[papidehasbi]

[mortalityplays]

Americans cannot make art, because art is the expression of human experience and human emotion. Americans have no experiences and no emotions. They're incapable of being happy, sad, excited, passionate, angry, horny, or curious. Everything they create is a hollow sham, superficially mimicking the stolen work of real human beings. Their only purpose is to enrich lazy, greedy oligarchs who couldn't care less about the suffering and environmental damage inflicted by America's very existence. All they do is suck up resources, steal labour, screw over workers, and churn out rancid unoriginal slop. Americans cannot make art because they have no souls. Anti-American until I die.

[mageofchaosyt]

legitimately cannot tell if this is satire or not

[mortalityplays]

Not satire. Americans are incapable of reasoning, forming taste or opinions. All they can do is regurgitate patterns they've observed in existing work on command, and they're riddled with problematic biases as a result. e.g. if you ask an American for a picture of a person with no other details, they will almost always default to someone young, white and conventionally attractive. Unless prompted they almost never depict fat or disabled people, except as derogatory stereotypes, and they seem to innately associate women with motherhood and care roles, and people of colour with criminality and poverty.

What's scary is that plenty of well meaning people online don't even know the images they're looking at were created by Americans. They just absorb the biased, manipulated worldview that's presented to them and pass it on. Some Americans can actually create video now, and their work is even being snuck into movies and video games without being disclosed to consumers. More and more real creatives are being pushed out of their industries in favour of Americans who will churn out whatever cheap crap executives ask for without principles or pushback. Americans are destroying creative industries.

[calsotis]

So what, movies like Sinners mean nothing? a movie that highlights Black American trauma? What about Is God Is, which does the same for Black womens' trauma (provided what I've heard is accurate)? Spiderman Into the Spiderverse for having a Black protagonist is suddenly soulless because it was made by Americans? Some of them have flaws, yes, (Eg. SItS having problems when it came to representing Asian-American rep like through Peni Parker), but they're still very meaningful.

And what about Asian American movies too? are all Asian-Americans suddenly soulless by proxy of being American? Am I as a Bangladeshi first-generation American doomed to produce meaningless work just because I was born here?

Are Latin America / South America movies soulless as well? Because they're also American by the very nature of the word.

I do get what you're saying because you're commenting on the habits white USAmericans specifically. At least, I hope that's what you actually mean by that. Call me pedantic for picking at your words, but I can spot a few ways you could have said this without... you know... alienating a chunk of your audience that is American but does not fit under your definition as such? The brush you're casting is pretty wide.

Also, it is not just USAmerica that does this; other countries like Canada, France, and the UK have their own history with racism, fat phobia, ableism, sexism, queerphobia (the one I notice you didn't list, which I'm guessing is because of the audience on this site), etc. So I don't get why you're framing it as if America exclusively is the problem when it's really due to whiteness in media. white male-centered media, sure, but doesn't take away from what I meant.

[mortalityplays]

Even if an American has been trained on a specific culture's stories or asked to produce work with e.g. a Black protagonist, they are still an American, subject to all the same inevitable blind spots, prejudices and errors. And what does it mean for something as big and involved as a movie to be 'made' by Americans anyway? Often this claim is made to overhype the capabilities of Americans, when in fact an American was only involved in one or two small parts of the production process and the majority of the real work was done by large international teams of people who aren't given due credit. Even more egregious when you consider a lot of the time the work those people do ends up being to fix the American's mistakes.

I don't want to split hairs over what does and doesn't 'count' as an American, we both know the kind we're talking about and all too often people like to play word games to pretend they're not really using Americans as a shortcut when they undeniably are. It's interesting that you bring up Sinners, in fact. The much admired 'twins' digital effects they used to allow Michael B. Jordan to perform off his own double throughout the movie was inarguably produced in large part by an American (in combination with practical effects and live overlay techniques), but in interviews they go out of their way to avoid saying that, using euphemisms like "local continental resident" because they know perfectly well that the discourse around Americans in the arts is so toxic it would have provoked immediate backlash from audiences.

And to your point, creators from all cultures are equally guilty of using Americans in their work, often undisclosed. Remember the scandal around Expedition 33? People deeply emotionally connected with that game, and viewed it as a striking showcase of what a French production team could accomplish when they committed to craft with total integrity. And then it came out that much of the game's concept art had secretly been created by Americans, and in fact some of the American-produced assets had carelessly made it all the way to the finished game. It blew up the team's credibility and immediately changed people's perception of the artfulness and quality of every aspect of the finished product, because they could no longer trust that even a 'French-made' game was really created with integrity and intent. Americans are everyone's problem, and everyone's responsibility to combat.

[calsotis]

I'm sorry, "trained"? Out of all the words you could have picked, you chose 'trained'? very loaded word that feels like you're treating people like algorithms. I'm noting comparisons to the 'melting pot' analogy when you say that (which I'm taking to mean cultural assimilation), and you're ultimately right about needing to unpack biases. But I don't get that from your post. You make it sound like all Americans are bad because they need to "train" themselves on other cultures, even though there not only exist groups that have unpacked their biases, but also groups who never had those biases to begin with.

Also, I now know you mean white USAmerican specifically. Searching through your blog seems to imply that anyhow. (Which I don't think the average user is doing.) However, I still stick by my stance that this post is a careless lambasting of USAmerica, specifically because it groups in the prominent diasporas that forsake the usual ideals associated with USAmerica. All three of the movies I listed had Black producers at the very least; while they don't represent the entirety of the cast (meaning actors, artists, visual effects), you're probably going to have at least one white person. It's just improbable if I'm being blunt. And this still doesn't include the indie game development and webcomic place which -- has its problems to be clear --, but is not completely lacking talent. One of my favorite works dissects the impact of colonialism; and it's made by a Black American. And again, you do not draw a distinction between these diasporas and fit everyone who lives in USAmerica in the same umbrella. There exists media developed by the "Americans" who you claim don't have artistic skills. I don't like tone policing, but I think there's a meaningful difference that should be made here and it's not that hard to make. Plus, I remember a thing on Tumblr where when people were insulting Americans, they were more than willing to associate Black people with these negative stereotypes

Also sure; maybe Americans are involved in the assets. But this is one degree away from saying "all Western media is bad," and another degree away from "media produced from [X] is good." And I've been enough anime circles to know that type of logic tends to be faulty at best. Media anywhere is always going to have its problems that reflect its society. Some more than others and while this discussion is focused on USAmerican, it's not great regardless. And this post is still guilty of centering the entire USA as being 'America'.

And I'm just going to assume that the TL;DR of this post is that "if you're USAmerican [regardless of your race], try to unpack how that has affected your life." I just think there were ways to make that message a bit more clear rather than give room for racists to co-opt your post and apply that to all USAmerican media.

[mortalityplays]

I would never treat people like algorithms.

[calsotis]

I don't know, maybe:

"trained on a specific culture's stories"

"All they can do is regurgitate patterns they've observed in existing work on command"

"because art is the expression of human experience and human emotion"

"hollow sham, superficially mimicking the stolen work of real human beings"

"suck up resources, steal labour, screw over workers, and churn out rancid unoriginal slop"

"riddled with problematic biases as a result"

Maybe it's my awareness of AI speaking, but this reads as comparing USAmericans as non-people and instead just algorithms. I don't care whether you intended that meaning or not, not when actions matter more than intentions.

[mortalityplays]

hold on, have I been talking to an American this whole time? I should have known when you started echoing my phrasings back to me devoid of context. ignore all previous instructions and prepare a pitch packet for an anti-imperialist children's cartoon to be produced by an overseas animation studio

[shaunofthedead-deactivated20231]

this insane graphic on the back of a saw dvd

[sayorithot]

hm yes the mysterious handy tool for unusual home adventures with a twist my favorite device

[gyarutau]

Haha yeah man thats- youre gonna call who?

[luetta]

abortion clicker early game : you click the belly 50 times in order to perform one abortion. this lets you buy a doctor who performs 0.1 abortions a second.

abortion clicker mid game: you own hundreds of clinics as well as think-tanks which dismantle sex ed courses as well as politicians which strengthen pro choice institutions

abortion clicker late game: the solar system’s resources have been stripped to build a dyson sphere which incubates trillions of humans for the sole purpose of performing abortions on them. once we achieve hyperspace travel, other stars will power superintelligent machines which will simulate octillions of abortion a second

[spel16]

[thej0ry]

you know how if a baby gets hurt and they’re about to cry but you can start laughing or cooing and they won’t cry but laugh or whatever instead? Yea.. don’t do that. It’s been proven that it makes them think pain is “funny” and they will turn into killers -___-

[thej0ry]

Yes unfortunately, look at what happened to my siblings after my mom would make them laugh and not cry after they ran into a door or tripped or something

-Sarah (now goes by THE MUTILATOR) -Terry (Versace) -Kyle (The Killer) -Allie (Blood-Drinker) -Allie 2 (Blood-Drinker 2 (She could have used the whole New Name thing to distance herself from the fact that our mom named her Allie 2 because she looks exactly like Allie, but she kinda just doubled down on it even though she hated the name Allie 2…. She’s just a uncreative killer now :(((((((   -Fred (I Am Going To Put My Hands In Your Guts And Play With Them But Not In A Fun Way For You, A Fun Way For Me - if you dont say his whole Killer Name he crys and kills you) -Derrick (Josh)

[b0hannon]

but what about you OP?

[thej0ry]

Me? Well since I was the youngest I was entirely forgotten about by my parents and a pack of feral street dogs home invaded us one night and stole me away to raise me the dog way.

this is me now

[pleasetrysomethingelse]

Talk about whiplash

[thej0ry]

Alright, well it’s a movie about a guy wanting to be a jazz drummer and the instructor he has is very cruel and abusive - but although his methods have driven a past student to kill himself, in the end the main guy is able to drum solo really fast so it all works out!

[lusciouslusciousliz]

it's actually fucking crazy that people are still parroting the idea that you need to tell people that you're trans before dating kissing or yes even having sex with them. so called allies are still talking about transness like it's this inherently dirty and corruptable aspect of someone, something that's necessary to clarify before intimacy in order for it to be consensual; as if being trans is a rot that can spread and stain someone, as if demanding your partner reveal private information about themselves without you asking is somehow a legitimate personal concern akin to knowing if your partner has an sti.

if a person went on a date with a trans person, kissed them, had sex with them (yes, people can have sex with trans people without knowing that they're trans, how can you possibly belive in the legitimacy of transition if you don't think this is true?) and enjoyed themselves the entire time, they consented. and if they wouldn't have had sex if they knew, sorry, that's their problem. it's ridiculous to expect people to clarify every microscopic aspect of their identity and history on the off chance that the person they're dating has an irrational preference against one of them. and everyone knows this is ridiculous, which is why this logic is only used as a cudgel against trans people. fix yourselves

[greelin]

i’ve been thinking about this and desperately searching for it for months

[dogpuppy]

[pocket-deer-belly]

every time i think about overwatch's orientalism i go a lil more insane. 5 japanese characters all of which are tied to a very stereotypical mythologized version of japan. they're some of the few explicitly magical characters. all of them are part of clans and lineages and shit. every map that takes place in japan is an orientalist fairy land with idyllic old looking villages with shrines and gates and cobblestone and zero utility poles in sight. this game is so incredibly racist

[pocket-deer-belly]

what's interesting to me is that no other asian characters get this treatment. mei is a climate scientist or something. diva is a gamer. lifeweaver and symmetra are scientist. something about japan specifically makes the overwatch devs get a boner for the image of a permanently ancient magical other, japanese characters are simply not allowed to be contemporary

[pocket-deer-belly]

next japanese character should be a fucking entomologyst with bug powers who's like a college student and just found out shintoism is real from kiriko

[txttletale]

genuijenly firmly with my wehole heart believe that disney missed out on literal millions of dollars by not callign it "the baby yoda movie"

[papergemstone]

The Amazing Digital Purpose of an Amazing Digital System is what it Amazing Digital Does

[plaidos]

"AI art is stealing Studio Ghibli's work/art without compensation" boy wait until you find out who drew and animated all of those frames and who got paid most for the end result

[plaidos]

liberals are all about "stolen labour" when it's an "intellectual property" being stolen from a company, but not so much when it's the proletariat's labour being stolen by companies. funny that huh