Arguably, we still are.

Kershaw Shun classic 4" paring knife, Damascus cladding. At least, ostensibly…

Could a machine eat an av-

…oh no

It’s getting to the point that if an internet comment isn’t on-point, up to date, original, and coming off sounding exasperated and a little unhinged, you’d do best to assume it’s a bot.

They did use to wear salmon as a hat. Orcas are built different.

Not wrong but not helping. Sorry, I’m in a similar situation mentally. I’m often wrong in life but being right about this, the joke is fully on me.

America’s now imminent failure is written indelibly in its origins. If you are creating a nation, do not cooperate with slavers or anyone like them. They shaped the voting system to this specification. We did not hang them when they committed treason. We allowed them to persist in their myths of rebellion for over a century, and we have allowed an open insurrectionist to seek and hold office. All because our founding fathers did not find slavery to be a deal breaker.

We must be the good kind of awkward. My kid got an unreasonable amount of candy knocking on doors.

I just can’t with these “Trump will fix it” signs.

I don’t play fortnite and I tend to like experimental media. The article has once reviewer calling the map “more thoughtful than expected”, and I’m also getting the sense that no-gun maps aren’t anything new.

I still think it’s not as weird and terrible as the click-hungry legacy media has been inviting us to find it. It’s a genuine seeming effort to reach younger people less likely to vote or read about policy ideas. It’s just a shame it didn’t catch on much.

If they’re not too busy being an upstart deity, they have my vote

Every carefully crafted game has a deliberately narrowed scope in service of a vision. The saving grace of such deliberate textual framing is that when it’s done well you might notice it, but it gives you a shared point of reference with others in conversation. Instead of e.g. discussing racism in abstract, we can talk about how Measurehead, despite being everything his worldview espouses, is still ultimately a tiresome pawn.

I totally cede the point about framing, but not the one about DE being effective propaganda. To me it reads more like the author had a lot of complex feelings about communism’s promise and its shortcomings.

It’s certainly novel, but there aren’t many voters who will object to being reached out to on their own terms. The election will be the one to decide whether it’s stupid or not. It’d be far from the weirdest aspect of American culture, at any rate.

Games do feel like an oddity as political outreach, but the more I think about the idea the more I think it has capabilities (as Lancelot Brown might have put it). With legacy media like papers, books, art, film, recorded music and all, you are a passive consumer of the media. With video games as art, you are an active participant and your choices define your experience with the work. Games like Planescape: Torment, Tyranny, and Disco Elysium are great examples where you’re expected to engage with political or moral ideas as a participant. You aren’t being treated as a receiver of propaganda per se, but as someone who can develop understanding and agency in the context of certain ideas, which seems like an improvement over propaganda in legacy media, don’t you think?

Damn, that’s crazy

I heard there have been concerts in Minecraft that were popular. Anything beats doing it in Zuckerberg’s whatever thing, imo. Virtual concerts seem lame certainly, but some enjoy it.

As for election propaganda, video games are big media. Bigger than Hollywood. Whatever my preferences, it would be absurd to expect it to be some kind of ideological dead zone.

Like I said I feel pretty disinterested, but more on grounds of taste than any firm feelings of social norms.

I’m not sure how to have a conversation about this if weirdness has a secret definition. What is normal but the weird stuff you’re used to in life?

This isn’t weird, you just don’t like fortnite.

I don’t either, but I’m not exactly holding out for them to put a political ad scroll in noita.

Bargain.

I think I just found out I can reverse my entire life’s footprint if I can manage to blow smoke in one billionaire’s face.