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Gamers, check out Genshin Impact! Just have a look at the artwork and marvel at the waifus. This game is raking in money hand over fist. It is also the biggest Chinese videogame release so far (I’m looking forward to playing it once I have proper Internet access again). The big lesson here is that, strangely enough, people want to look at something beautiful, arguably even moreso now that the world is such an incredible shitshow. I wonder if the great financial success of this game will make Western developers reconsider their stance with regards to depicting women in videogames.
I think Genshin Impact holds a lot of lessons for Western developers, just like Nier: Automata and Atelier Ryza did. The latter two had very modest budgets and were smashing financial successes. In contrast, we’ve seen Western developers wreck franchises for the sake or their shortsighted agenda. Just take the relatively recent high-budget game Control. I didn’t buy it because I don’t want to move a fugly female avatar around in a virtual world. It did reasonably well but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it would have done significantly better with a cute woman, possibly even an anime one.
Not really interested in this game, but to be honest I bought 2 games (resident evil 2 remake & nier automata) because of the nice looking females in it.
Obviously you want to play as a good looking character, not some uglo, but that is not even the main argument.
I think it is also a proxy for how good the story/other content will be.
If the developers focus on fulfilling the wishes of the SJWs instead of creating interesting content, you know it will be shit.
Good example is last of us 2, almost everyone said the story was bullshit…. in a story driven game.
And then you play as a super buff female, in a post-apocalyptic scenario, in which not even males could get the calories to get buff basically.
Also if society collapsed no one who was trans/gay would admit it…. you don’t want to give anyone a reason to perceive you as weak/strange in such a world.
So makes zero sense to put this nonsense in a post-collapse zombie world.
But this also shows you that these freaks literally don’t understand why we had gender roles in the first place. They think it is some totally arbitrary ancient social construct… but in reality obviously the gender roles were a survival adaption.
Only a modern high-tech society can even afford this nonsense.
I like the character designs. The over world sort of looks similar to Breath of the Wild at first glance but some of the screenshots look really exciting, like the one with the giant blue dragon.
I recently borrowed a PS3 and started playing all the MGS games in my spare time. I never got around to playing 4 & 5. I’ve started all the way at the nes (emulated) versions, but goddamn they’re tough (and admittedly the first one has some terrible game design). Thank god for infinite save slates.
I also recently demoed Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. Damn! Makes me really curious about the Bayonetta games now.
Revengeance is pretty amazing, minus that one stealth level where you have to disable (avoid?) sentry robots. Some of the boss fights are absolutely remarkable and arguably still among the best ever seen in this medium. A particular highlight for me was the fight against Mistral when “A Stranger I Remain” kicks in. How many action games can you recall that evoke an emotional reaction? Vanquish is also really good. Those two are arguably the best two games Platinum has ever made. (I should add that I haven’t yet played Nier: Automata, and Astral Chain, which I recently picked up again, hasn’t quite hooked me yet.)
@ Ubermensche
I really enjoyed REmake 2 for the most part. One of my biggest complaints was that certain actions taken in Scenario A didn’t affect the opposite character’s scenario B, like in the original. It sort of made the replay value go down a bit, imo. But all in all I thought they did a fine job and I really enjoyed all the throwbacks and pleasant new surprises. I really loved the stalker Tyrant. Man, that made for some tense moments! Btw, Ada was smoking hot.
I’ve been eyeing Nier for quite a while.
@Pickernanny:
yeah Ada had a really hot model. Also they animated her super well, she moved in a very feminine way.
I also used a mod for Claire to replace her outfit with a super slutty one. PC Master race hehe 😀
@ Aaron
I was just able to find a new copy of Rising on ebay and snagged it. I really liked the demo, you fight the chainsaw wielding wolf AI at the end of it. I also like the parry mechanic even though the demo does a bad job of explaining it (I looked it up), after that I quit dying every five minutes. Also, the visual aesthetic is really nice. It reminds me of a really sleek version of a Sega arcade game.
Astral Chain never hooked me, man. I think the detective work parts bored me, but also the mechanics were really complex and seemed like they would require a good amount of study and practice to get familiar with. I ended up button mashing my way through a few missions and quit. I could see it being rewarding to get good at however, hopefully there is a boss rush option at the end of the game or something.
I wasn’t aware that the demo ends with the fight against that mecha-wolf. I bet the fight against the final boss of that stage really blew your mind. I think the PS3/Xbox360-generation was when games in 3D started to look good enough. I can still go back to plenty of games from that generation and play them unlike PS1/2 games. In fact, I’m ghetto gaming these days. I only have a very limited amount of Internet data available via my phone and downloading big patches is completely out of the pictures, so I’m now back to playing PS3. I think this console has a much better library than PS4. A big difference is that the former has plenty of single-player games with great replayability. With PS4, budgets soared, publishers had less of a risk appetite, so the entire “AA” segment disappeared, which was so wonderfully represented by games like MGR: Revengeance, Vanquish, or Bayonetta (all Platinum titles, btw).
I think I’ll sell Astral Chain. The fighting mechanics are just too complex. This isn’t how you design a good action game. You want relatively straightforward mechanics that can be combined; Platinum has shown that they understand this. In contrast, Astral Chain has so much crap, including elements from Revengeance (adjusting the angle at which a “sword legion” makes a slash after summoning) and Vanquish (slow-down after last-minute cancelling) that you wonder how this game made it past Q&A. Oh, and don’t get me started on the “investigations” where they took hints from The Witcher: find some clues, then follow a trail. This is tedious enough in The Witcher III but it’s even worse in Astral Chain as the world is not very varied. I should add that I only played a few missions, er, files. Maybe Platinum has lost its way. The games I mentioned above are commonly taken to be their best. Their latest hit was Nier:Automata, which came out in 2017. For every good game they produce nowadays, they put out two duds it seems. Their next games I may only buy at a heavy discount, if at all.
I played it for a couple of hours and decided to stop. The game looked and played nice, but I just can’t stomach those pay-to-win type games. I just want to pay one upfront price for the whole game and not worry about difficulty gates that I have to pay to get past. Just going to wait on BOTW2 to get my fix. Decided to fire up Battlefield 4 for the first time in a few years, and it is so much better than a lot of the games that have recently been released.
I looked into monetization of Genshin Impact. It’s actually really fair, i.e. there are no progression-gates if you don’t pay any money. I recall when an extended trailer for Battlefield 4 dropped and suddenly all this chatter about PS4 not being much of a step up from PS3 suddenly stopped.
I missed out mostly on the PS3/360 generation. I had completely given up on gaming for about 5 years or so, and the last systems I owned before Nintendo Switch were a PS2 and a Gamecube. I believe Bayonetta 3 is going to be a Switch exclusive, perhaps they will create something special with it. I have yet to play any of them but the reviews are great.
I’m towards the end of MGS for PSX. It’s going to be cool to see the progression of graphics quality from 1-5 eventually. This series and MGR:R are about all I’m going to focus on for a while. Btw, I remember being really impressed with Snake Eater on PS2. It was one of the best looking games on the console, I believe. Kind of curious to see how it holds up to today’s standards.
Also, the rumors circulating about Konami’s collaboration with Sony and Bluepoint are starting to grow stronger. Apparently Kojima will be working on Silent Hills, while Bluepoint has supposedly had an MGS remake in the works for about 3 years already — The latter rumor being more plausible.
I also mostly missed out on that generation. I thought that the Dreamcast was the last great console. I briefly owned both a PS3 and an Xbox360 around eight years ago, if I recall correctly. I first got an Xbox360 to play some of the big narrative-driven games like Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption, based on the fact that they ran better on that console than the PS3. I later switched to a PS3 to play a few quirky Japanese games like Dragon’s Crown.
Kojima is a bit overrated, in my opinion, so I’m a bit cautious. In any case, I think I won’t get a PS5 for a few years. First, I want to know that not every big game has turned into woke garbage. In that regard, the PS5 is off to a pretty rocky start, I’d say.
“Kojima is a bit overrated, in my opinion, so I’m a bit cautious.”
How do you mean? If I recall correctly, you weren’t ever really a fan of the game on rails sort of movie experience of MGS. I really got invested in the story and characters a long time ago, I’m pretty curious to see how it all pans out (even though MGSV was never properly completed).
I watched a video yesterday and kind of have to agree with the author that the likelihood of the rumors being true is pretty slim. 1.) Bluepoint doesn’t remake games, they remaster them. 2.) Konami is making plenty of money with pachinko and mobile gaming, so no incentive to revive old franchises. And also, they pretty recently did something to where PT is inaccessible on the PS5. Not to mention the ugly fallout between the company and Kojima several years ago.
I don’t think Kojima is a good story-teller, so that’s the problem here. I’m not too big on games that want to be movies, that’s correct. However, from a purely mechanical perspective, I think that Uncharted 2 is told much, much better than anything Kojima has ever put out. You don’t need 45-minute-long cut scenes to tell a story. Heck, some games get away with only hinting at lore and a deeper story, like Dark Souls (one of the games I really should sink some time into).
I think Konami gets a bit too much flak from gamers on the Internet. The company simply wants to make money. From what I read, one of the reasons MGSV wasn’t properly finished was that Kojima kept burning money. He wasn’t able to finish the game within budget, so the final act wasn’t really completed, the game rushed out, and Kojima fired. We also shouldn’t forget that companies don’t have an obligation to make the kind of games a vocal fanbase wants. If you can rake in billions with mobile games that cost very little to make, why sink 200 million in a new single-player gaming IP that may flop. It’s not even a new story. Reportedly, Shenmue was one reason Sega left the hardware business, for instance.
Btw, I’m now on MGS2. The tanker mission looked gorgeous in comparison to the former title. I’m playing the 720p HD version which runs at 60 fps in game. I’m pretty impressed with the animations for the day and the mouth animations look decent. The game looks better than I remember. In MGS1, certain tiles and stuff just looked warmed and asymmetrical. Some things looked okay, like the floor tiles and lighting in the office were the Psycho Mantis boss fight takes place, but other things looked pretty comical. I always thought the CG for FF8 and and Soul Reaver were the best looking the PSX has to offer.
Have you seen much footage from MGSV? I think that game has some of the best animations I’ve ever seen.
I think you made a typo and meant to write “warped”, not “warmed”. This is due to hardware limitations of the original PlayStation. Look up “PSX texture warping” for discussions online.
I tried playing MGS4 and found it incredibly pretentious. I remember that barely into the game Snake has to have a conversation with a black arms dealer about the horrors of war and the arms trade. This game is about as subtle as a sledgehammer with its messaging. As a consequence, I dropped the game pretty quickly and simply wrote off Kojima. This means that I have seen little more from MGSV than the occasional GIF of that scantly clad chick and the accompanying mockery that we will be “ashamed of our words and deeds”. I thought that there was a lot of gushing over MGS4 in all corners of the Internet, but with MGSV quite a few people started to make fun of Kojima.
Aaron,
Here are my thoughts so far on my replay of the series. I enjoyed MGS1 well enough. I really liked how there neat little boss fights seemingly back to back on this one. You end up with a pretty nice little arsenal at your disposal to figure out how to approach some of them and they’re all pretty different from each other and unique and inventive. The story is actually B movie worthy and I like the plot twists and the major reveal at the end. Also, I thought the warp system was pretty imaginative, where you find a few boxes with different labels on them. These boxes serve to help provide a stealth aspect to the play, but if you hide on one of the three cargo trucks in the game, the different boxes allow you to be transported to specific areas of the game so you can backtrack and open doors with card keys that you didn’t have access to before. Admittedly, there’s not much incentive to explore these areas as they contain mostly bunk items (ones that you can generally acquire anyways as items respawn quite often in designated areas). The gameplay mechanics and graphics suffer quite a lot due to age, however.
When I booted up MGS2, I was pretty impresses with the visual upgrade and I enjoyed the cutscenes and gameplay quite a bit throughout the tanker mission. The lighting combines with the rain effect makes the game look quite nice. When you start playing as Raiden, however, it’s almost as if the visual style takes a bit of a hit. Maybe it has something to do with a change in the filter and switching to a daytime setting with clear sunny skies, along with the orange setting of the Big Shell and different interior design. But the facial animations and quality of facial aesthetic just looks less impressive.
The biggest let down is that I’ve had to sit through over an hour of cutscene and dialogue so far and all I’ve really gotten to do is sneak past a few guards and disarm some bombs. And the acting and dialogue takes a big hit, too. The game hasn’t even really made me invested in the new characters yet, but it’s trying hard to make me empathize with Raiden and his girlfriend Rose (who saves your progress via codec). There have been a few cheesy moments between them already. In MGS1, Mei Ling gives you all these neat quotes after you save, while Rose just says how worried she is for you and wants you to be careful all the time. It’s like having your mom around when you’re on a super secret important world saving stealth mission. Could you imagine? Become cool already Raiden!
Anyways, my copy of Revengeance just came in so I’m about to take a break from the Solid series and go hack and slash some shit up.
Thanks for the recap! I don’t think I could stomach the graphics of a PS1 game anymore, but I could imagine replaying MGS2. I probably played it in 2003 or 2004 and thought it was pretty good. I also recall that I was quite emotionally invested in the characters, but I’m not sure how well this game holds up because back then, that level of narrative detail was rather unheard of.
aight, so i hadn’t had sex in awhile. just banged a hooker and my “ED while wearing a condom” problem resurfaced. i had some water-based lube handy, but it didn’t seem to help. how snug should the condom be wrapped around the shaft? is it possible that it’s choking off the blood flow? the condom overall doesn’t look like it fits too tight, but it does feel super tight around the shaft. anyone have any experience with non-latex condoms? any thoughts on silicone vs water-based lube?
I always get ed from tight condoms. So I just use cialis. Bonus is that you can fuck for 2 hours straight if you wanted to.
I know it might be possible to fix this issue by experimenting with condom fits, but I just never bothered. Popping a pill is easier.
Makes sense, but it’s worth noting that with hookers you’re on a time constraint. I’ve noticed women get offended when I take too long to cum; however, that probably just means I need to pay more attention to their clit and getting THEM off.
I always use Cialis for p4p sessions. No reason not to use it in my opinion.
The issues with the condom, I had these as well in the past. I think it is just because you are not used to the feeling when you didn’t have sex for a while.
Yes, condoms can be too tight. Also, she could be too dry, so lube, in addition to condoms that fit well, is a good idea.
had a girl over while i was stoned, drunk and tired. couldn’t keep it up even without the condom. need to focus on having sex when i’m clearer-headed. also, going to pick up some cialis and viagra
You should also ask yourself if you would have had her over if you weren’t drunk and stoned. There is a good chance you would not have bothered or you would have been too inhibited. Also, it’s possible you only found her attractive enough to escalate because you were in an altered mental state.
she’s thin, young and charming. however, for whatever reason she doesn’t make me horny. i like being around her, and she’s aesthetically attractive, just not to my tastes i guess. i’ve got some interest from a 38 year old who does make me horny. working on sorting out logistics to fuck her. the problem is she’s 38, and i want to have kids. maybe i could take a wife or a baby-momma who isn’t exactly my bread and butter in terms of looks, and fuck escorts and hookers on the side? stranger things have happened. the young one would make a good mom i think.
I’d say you shouldn’t compromise too much. Your wife absolutely needs to be physically attractive. Sure, you won’t go for the biggest club slut you can find, but imagine the hell your life will resemble if you come home to a face you can’t stand looking at.
@Herkerderker: depends how old you are. but if you wait for the perfect match your gonna end up like all of those cat ladies.
also if you want children her personality is much more important than if you find her super attractive (as long as she is still acceptable)
@Ubermensch I’m 31
@Herkerderker: I’m just wondering if you are aware of all of the sacrifice you will have to do to become a father.
you still seems to be in the mentality that you want to fuck a lot of hot women… but you have to be aware this will stop once you have children. (I mean you can continue doing it but that would be very irresponsible to your children.. and then I would question why you want to have them in the first place)
Lot of men seem to get children and have no clue what they get themselves into. Friend of me is now complaining that he doesn’t have time for himself anymore… idiot.
You also have to consider your sex life will take a massive hit. The majority of women are not into a lot of sex once they are mothers.
I think men who expect their sex life to be the same after children are idiots, honestly.
And for the choice of the mother, I think you must screen heavily on personality here.
Even if she is hot, you will probably get tired of fucking her after a few years anyways. But if she has a terrible personality (which unfortunately is 90% of women today) she can make your life like hell. So choose wisely.
@ubermensch i’m torn. i’m angry at all the bullshit trauma life has thrown my way that has set my timeline back. i just now have a feeling of hitting my stride in terms of dating.
it’s strange. even though i’m angry at my parents for a lot of shit they pulled, i’m still upset that they’ll probably not live to see what my children become in life. i have one grandparent left who i love very much, and he may never even get to hold my firstborn.
it just sucks. i didn’t even really enjoy sex with my first girlfriend (i was 20). whether it was because of ed, or her pussybjust didn’t feel hot enough, idk. i enjoyed it more once i hit 26, and got my second girlfriend, but i couldn’t make it work with the condoms (didn’t try any pills), and whenever i’d pull out, it would be a chore to get off after that.
now, i’m getting more interest than i’ve ever gotten, and come february, i’ll be in the best position of my life to see if it’s actually possible for me to build a fulfilling sex life. then, the question becomes, would i be better off never knowing a truly badass sex life, since i’ll just have to give it up when i have kids? is there a way to have both?
shit gets me depressed
@ubermensch, thanks for the engagement by the way
the most sane way to do it is what most men do:
you marry one girl, get children with her, and then you fuck escorts on the side (if you have no moral problems with it).
80% of escort customers are married men.
affairs and so on doesn’t really work because at some point your wife will find out. then you will probably get divorced raped (which you have a 50% chance to happen anyways.. odds are not good these days)
having children also lowers your testosterone levels.. so maybe you won’t even bother anymore.
Also I think you have to come to terms with that the expectations you had from sex were just waaay too high for what reality has to offer.
In my experience, it is almost never worth the effort you have to do to get the reward.
And when you go the escort route, even that will get boring. My escort count is around ~150, and the idea of fucking a hot girl is now nothing special to me anymore, most of the time I don’t even bother with it and just rub one out.
It’s just the way our brain works. Life is dissatisfaction. The expectation is always much higher than what you will really get. And once you have it, you will just get bored of it.
Oh by the way didn’t want to discourage you from the whole thing.
And I think you can get the 50% divorce change way down if you pick with your head and not with your dick. Most men are just idiots they marry the first women who gave them any attention.
So if you can avoid that and make a good choice you probably have a much better shot at making it work.
In these statistics there is always a majority of complete morons included, so if you are not a moron they are not as valid to you.
Question is if you are less stupid than the average man? :p
Here’s potentially a logical fallacy: it’s not the case that a particular woman was the wrong one for you. She’d probably file for divorce no matter whom she’d marry. Thus, you can bring your personal odds down, but if all men did this, we would only bring the overall odds down if the marriage rate dropped precipitously. I wouldn’t know how much further it would have to drop, though, as it’s already quite low from a historical perspective.
Comrades,
I had a thought the other day about modern relationships compared to those of our ancestors. In older times it was much easier to obtain and keep a wife BUT you were stuck with her for your entire life. Nowadays it’s more difficult to get a woman but you don’t necessarily have to marry them and contraceptives are more easily available. What I’m getting at is there is a trade off in modern society, women are more difficult to keep them around but you aren’t stuck with them when they are old. Depending on your personality type this could be a good or bad thing. What are your thoughts?
Good for notch counts.
Bad for civilization.
Yes but what’s good for the individual isn’t necessarily good for civilization.
This is how we built civilization over millennia, we made collective sacrifices in order to advance as a whole.
Yep. I think the best model for civilization is enforced monogamy (like we had in Christianity before they became weak).
Obviously for the individual it kind of sucks you have to fuck the same woman all the time, but for stable families I don’t really see an alternative.
Also now we have porn, which makes it much harder because your brain craves the variety.
The final solution will be sex robots and artificial wombs in my opinion.
At least if society doesn’t collapse and reverts to a more traditional state, but in this case we also probably will get back some form of monogamy.
one problem I think why Islam will not be a stable society is they allow polygamy, up to 4 wifes. Sounds great at first but you will end up with massive amount of incels.
e.g. lets assume the top 10% of men get 4 wifes each, and the next 20% get 2 wifes.
So the top 30% of men would take 80% of the women.
so the bottom 70% of men would fight for the bottom 20% of women.
so in this society you will have the majority of men as incels, and also they want to bann porn so these men will be super sexually frustrated.
I think that is why you have so much violence in the Muslim countries…
You could argue we have the same in the west now, but here most betas will still get some ex sluts to beta provide for and they seem to be content with that.
Or they just cope with porn/hookers.
But if you also bann porn & hookers I don’t think this society will be very stable.
We’ll use the men who can’t find a wife to raise an army that invades neighboring countries, I’d supposed. This is what was done all throughout history as well.
by the way, one way to solve all of this would be to manipulate the gender ratios via abortion of males, so that you will get more females per male.
In most countries (e.g. China) where they had a one-child policy, they did the opposite, aborting females, which leads to massive instability in society.
on the other side if there are more females than males I think this could be quite stable, and also this would help to mitigate the issues from the lower birth rate.
(if one woman only gets like 1.3 children on average, this could be mitigated by having a higher ration of females to males)
There are anthropologists who claim that wars can be explained by an excess of young men, i.e. if there are many young men in any given country, its leaders can afford to wage a war (this is obviously not directly relevant to technological warfare). Recall that more boys than girls are born and there is only roughly one woman for every man because plenty of men weed themselves out of history due to engaging in risky behavior.
I agree that enforced monogamy is probably best for civilization although getting stuck with the same woman forever probably gets boring. Also, having to deal with a family all the time isn’t really worth it if all you really want is consistent sex. I guess that is why they force married people young, because once men realized what they were getting into they would back out of it.
Interesting perspective on Islam. I never considered that polygamy is a big reason Muslims are such ass holes. That does make sense. I’ve heard feminists call polygamy sexist. LMAO!! Men get screwed in polygamous societies, and certainly not literally. Elitist, NOT sexist. We see the same thing play out in the dating game in the West. Elite males getting the Lion’s share of women.
Reminds me of the hypocrisy of prostitution laws in the US. So, a girl can go out whoring every weekend and that’s legal, acceptable, and even encouraged. BUT if she gets paid it’s against the law.
Humans are not inherently monogamous. That’s precisely why we HAVE to be told to be in life long marriages. Huge downsides, I know. But it is absolutely necessary for a functioning society. For raising healthy families, for almost every man having a woman etc. With all of the flaws of the past, patriarchal society, it pales to the problems we have today.
Other reasons for marrying young include high fertility, low birth complications, and being closer in age to your children.
@GoodLookingAndSleazy: if feminists say something, assume the opposite is true 😉
right 99% of the time.
Polygamy actually favors women, as they clearly prefer to share an rich alpha than to be forced to marry a beta. And no women ends up alone in such a society as rich alphas can just have harems with many women.
Majority of men will be incel in a polygamic society.
Polygamy seems to me to be the most truthful reflection of the sexual mating pattern of humans.
“This is how we built civilization over millennia, we made collective sacrifices in order to advance as a whole.”
You remind of the concept of civic virtues among the early Romans. In China, they also had the concept of duty (义) to the ruler of the state.
Too bad, this concept was heavily abused by the ruling class, or the wealthier class, which eventually turn into the lowest class making the most sacrifice.
“We’ll use the men who can’t find a wife to raise an army that invades neighboring countries, I’d supposed. This is what was done all throughout history as well.”
I don’t know any modern study that research the percentage of married and unmarried males, but I suspect the picture is not that deemed as Ubermensch painted it.
For example, Vietnam was a polyamorous country until quite recently in 1950s (starting from 1945). My impression is most men get married. Women who lost her husbands must guard her chastity by not re-marrying.
In Chinese chengyu (usually wrongly translated as idiom), there is a one chengyu called 羊车望幸 (Riding a cart drawn by a goat to find enjoyment), which described the first emperor of Jin dynasty (AD266-420) chose his concubines by riding on a goat-driven cart. This reminds that the top men could and impress as many women as they could. The most beautiful and materialistic would obviously vie for the ruler’s attention.
@Cuong Quoc Vu: I’m not sure about that.
I think pair bonding is very strong in humans for a reason.
In animals (like chimps for example) who lack the intelligence to collude/gang up, a single alpha can monopolize a lot of the females.
The betas fight him one-on-one and so he can always hold them off.
But humans have the intelligence to collude / team-up against someone.
If the alpha in a tribe of humans would try to monopolize most of the women, the betas would just team up and kill him.
That’s why polygamy probably wasn’t a big thing in hunter-gatherer times.
The alpha certainly got the best pick of girls, but he didn’t have harems.
Only once we had some level of civilization and some kind of protection (against someone killing you in your sleep), was it possible for alphas to have harems.
And in modern society it works because the beta incels are pacified via brainwashing, porn & computer games.
I think monogamy is more of a Western phenomenon due to the harsh conditions that our ancestors evolved under during the ice age in northern Europe. Harems were not supportable due to the climate. Fighting the elements was the imperitive rather than fighting rival tribes. Making polygamy less of a necessity.
Wars are not “explained” by demographic “youth bulges”, but it certainly is a contributing factor to have all that manpower around. If it is not channeled into more productive endeavors because of other structural and contingent factors, natural or policy induced failures (for exsmple political disenfranchisement) , that is a recipe for instability. That is one of the reasons why the middle east is so unstable. But as said, there are many other factors like religious, ethnic and other cultural fault lines, political repression, corruption and nepotism, meddling by foreign great powers, backward social structures (yes, actual patriarchies that still exist, not the kind woke morons believe in the West).
Regarding polygamy, dont give it too much weight, as a matter of fact, even where polygamy is allowed, very few men actually take on more than one wife, because wifes are costly to support, so only wealthy people can do it. Islamic societies are de facto mostly monogamous.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’m starting to think that ‘conspiracy theory’ is just a shill buzz term. You got The Great Awakening on one hand, and The Great Reset on the other. Oh, you think the elites are all pedophilia-ridden, satan worshipping cult members of some hidden global cabal? You’re a conspiracy theorist.
What’s that, you say? You believe the elites are trying to limit your ability to operate a business ultimately making you more reliant on the state, take away your liberty to own private property like a vehicle or land, and shove you into cramped apartments in crowded cities so you can easily commute to your dead end wage slave job? Meanwhile, the elites live out in the country in gigantic mansions where they have whoever they want over, never wear masks, and travel by plane and helicopter whenever they fancy? What a stupid conspiracy theorist you must be.
Just look at the election, for example. Trump colluded with Russians and stole the election in 2016, now the rhetoric has changed to it being impossible to steal an election. God forbid Trump ‘stole’ the 2020 election like before. Haha. Later guys, going out for some more popcorn.
I don’t believe in most conspiracy theories for one reason:
They all have one thing in common, which goes somewhat like this:
“somewhere, there is a hidden circle of very powerful people, who secretly control everything and have long term plans to enslave humanity for their purposes”
Now, I just don’t think it is possible to plan so much, the world is way too complicated for that.
The reality is, no one has a plan.
e.g. no one probably had foreseen the impact of social media on society
no one has foreseen the impact of HD porn on dating
The true reality is, the universe is just chaos basically, entropy, and our primitive human minds try to find patterns where there is only randomness.
Also the first thing you should ask when analyzing if a conspiracy could be true: who would benefit from it ?
e.g. the flat earth conspiracy. who would benefit from spreading the lie that the earth is a sphere ? I don’t really see how that would benefit anyone… so by this alone you can discount it (not even considering the insane amount of evidence they would have to fake in this case)
Of course I think that there are powerful people with their own agenda, who try to influence stuff, but most of the time they don’t really have a plan either.
You mean hidden in plain sight like the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group or the UN? There are attempts as heavy-handed top-down world government. The EU is little more than a training ground for that. It is also true that our leaders are not smart enough because we no longer select them based on intelligence and real-world achievement, which are highly correlated, but based on diversity b.s.
History has show that in any group or organization of human beings there exists rifts and division, be it the division of interests, of opinions, of thoughts. A group which starts out in unified form, will ultimately descend into factions.
Most conspiracy theory depicts a single powerful group of individuals act in a unified manner. That goes against the keen observation of political history.
If you don’t like the term conspiracy, then you may want to use the term collusion. It’s certainly the case that societal change is imposed in a top-down manner and not the other way around. You would not have Antifa rioting in the streets if law enforcement was allowed to do its job. Yet, for some reason Democrat mayors chose to let Antifa riot. Surely this is not some kind of conspiracy or collusion but complete chance, right?
2020 was the most secure election in history and if you doubt it, you’re a bigot! There was a “blue wave”, despite Sleepy Joe not being able to fill a parking lot for a speech. Clearly, we can’t trust our lying eyes.
I have read more news from the mainstream media and I have been swayed by your view on the political domination of the Left. I also feel that the reason for Antifa and Black Live Matters can prosper and develop into considerable forces is due to certain policies of the government (supporting leftist group). That being said, putting down riots in the most violent way may paint a negative picture of the government. After all, this is the country that constantly accuse other countries of violating human rights.
I wonder what cause the West to become so Left-leaning. Surely, groups such as Proud Boys would receive harsher treatments from the Police Enforcer.
The division over the election of Trump shows that although the public has been shoved all kinds of Leftist propaganda down their throat, they still choose to believe in the Center or the Right.
If this election is rigged (I think there might be errors and mistakes, but they are not rigged, based on my careful assessment of news spread by both Left and Right media, I could be wrong and change my mind when new information unveiled), it would leave a lasting blemish on the democracy of the US, a system that I absolutely adore and wish to see its prolongation.
Anecdotally, my Hispanic neighbours are very well aware of the lies spread by the media.
The current chaos in the US has impelled me to buy the thick volumes of Edward Gibbon “The history of the decline and fall of Roman Empire” and Theodore Mommsen “The History of Rome”.
That really bothers me – four years of “Russia-gate” and “Russia” stole the election for Trump.
2020: the election is super robust because Biden won. BLUE WAVE, morons! /s
If this election makes it to the US Supreme Court, these videos are interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZURHD5BU1o8&ab_channel=CNN
(Clarence Thomas monologue…see the white dude at the beginning of the video…look familiar??)
And then there’s a certain female who looks familiar in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv7_ZmM8BQ0&ab_channel=PBSNewsHour
Karma gonna make a comeback for these witch hunts??
“It’s certainly the case that societal change is imposed in a top-down manner and not the other way around.”
Based on my knowledge of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and the Han Empire in the East, changes occurred in all levels of society. The silent shift of wealth concentration took place slowly. Although such a shift did not escape the eyes of the government, coupling with political instability, they became the root of peasant revolts at the end of the Han dynasty.
For more info, consult the recently published The division of wealth and poverty and the social control of the government (漢代貧富差距與政府控制研究) by Chen Ying (陳英)
It may be argued that social control and social engineering have reached a new state of art in our modern society, both in China and the West. The control of the media and various way of brainwashing must be much more sophisticated than in ancient time. But such a point might be contested by pointing out that the ancients also impose strict ideology on the general population, as was the case with Confucianism in all Chinese dynasties.
Just missing a word from the above post “The division of wealth and poverty and the social control of the government of HAN DYNASTY” (漢代貧富差距與政府控制研究)
There are certainly collusions of powerful players all the time, I don’t doubt that.
I also think they try to do global scale social engineering.
But, I just don’t think they succeed most of the time.
e.g. the globalists who wanted all the immigrants to have cheap labor, I don’t think they have planned the rise of Islam in Europe at all. This was just something they didn’t think about.
They probably assumed the Muslims will just be assimilated into the Western lifestyle.
Basically the world is too complicated for our limited human minds to make any predictions.
Just because someone is super rich / has lot of power this doesn’t give them a crystal ball.
I also think Trump was a glitch in the plan of the globalists.
And for Corona, I don’t think the virus itself was a planned thing. Now of course all the parties try to take advantage of the situation. This is to be expected.
But to believe that Bill gates created this virus to take control of the population… little bit far fetched to me.
The biggest takeaway recently is that there is no need for hidden cabal planning.
You can easily form social trends with media manipulation.
The ideas visibly expressed and in front of you and you are conspiracy theorist if you are simply not complacent or supportive….
Case in point : it is a “conspiracy” that BLM is marxist despite leaders own admission.
white genocide: no one wants to end white people. They just contest when you make attempts at increasing their birthrate.
Open borders: no one is advocating for open borders this is silly conspiracy, but every attempt of border patrol and enforcement is racist and should be scolded , here let’s split these poor poor refugees in eu…
They are not advocating for open borders they are just attacking the concept of borders. Silly semantic trap.
Islamophobia is also a made up term for criticising islam and it is very much in the same vain as the “conspiracy theorist” label. Because you are noticing long term consequences about it.
Given the blatant incompetence of so many people including world leaders, i have always found conspiracy theories hard to believe. Especially when so many of the conspiring entities like BLM of the WEF actually make their agenda public for anyone who cares to check it out.
I agree that it sometimes looks like a deliberately coordinated thing, but i found it more useful to think of it in terms of opportunism. Or, as i heard recently, a convergence of interests.
I agree. Anyone who has ever had to manage a group of people will know how hard it is to keep everything running smoothly. Someone always falls out of sync and causes a mess.
When conspiracy theory involves a collusion between large number of people (say entire medical establishment in the case of COVID-19), you know that the probability of such theory borders on impossible.
Doesn’t this describe the elites? They have those grand plans, yet fumble around constantly. For instance, the Democrats used Antifa and BLM to push their socialist agenda, and now that Biden supposedly won the election, their lapdogs are turning against them and demand the implementation of a full-on socialist agenda. Another great example are “The Finders”, a CIA-backed fringe group that somehow turned itself into a cult that engaged in the sexual abuse of children. Then, to cover their tracks, other government agencies tried their hardest to cover this up.
@Yarara
“Convergence of interest” is a good way of describing the situation. I’ve actually been looking for a term for it. I am absolutely certain that the current times have shown that economic elites and social Marxists have mutual interests that are prevailing. Yet the two party system forces us to choose between the two. What a mess……
The best example I can think of for this is illegal immigration. You actually have lefties repeating corporate think tank generated rhetoric about why we “need” illegals here.
Yet, for whatever mysterious reason, every lefty who can lives in the whites neighborhood they can afford. How come the country needs vibrant diversity, yet the people who push hardest from it shield themselves from its effects? Something doesn’t quite seem to add up here.
I agree with the comments here. Namely, there are two things that are true at the same time
1) Most conspiracy theories are bullshit, and claim impossible things
The vast majority are claiming something that is impossible, namely getting a bunch of different people to all go along in perfect sync.
This basically:
Flat earth would be a good example, as it requires that every single person who’s gone at a high enough altitude to see curvature to be “in on it”. Every single scientist everywhere in perfect sync in terms of every calculation in physics, and a perfectly crafted plan to somehow keep lower level students of knowing the information and nobody noticing a discrepancy.
2) HOWEVER The term is used to silence people discussing actual conspiracies, discrepancies and other irregularities
Most of the time when the term “conspiracy theory” is used – it is to shut down discussion of things that ARE NOT EVEN A THEORY, but an ACTUAL FACT (just repressed information).
In fact, the term is most often used to label suppressed information. Like the great reset thing. Something that’s not kept in secret. It’s right there in public documents with actual informercial style videos produced by the people pushing for it. But if you bring it up “you’re a conspiracy theorist”. In fact most of these global goverment things are not a secret and pushed publically and discussed in public forums. But it’s a conspiracy theory to merely point out their existence.
This is a good example of a non-conspiracy theory. This isn’t like flat earth theory where it means every single scientist on planet earth is lying.
In the case of covid there are COMPETING schools of science and medical science. Some of them are saying A, others are saying B, others are saying C, others are saying D.
Politicans choose C because it fits their agenda and lie “well the medical science says C, sooo listen to the science”… and then when you come out and point out 12012 scientists who are in favor of A you’re shouted down as a “conspiracy theorist”. Merely for pointing out that there’s no settled science on any aspect of covid or what’s the right way to deal with it.
It’s also important to point out that there is implicit buy-in in elite circles. For instance, if you want to make it in government, you better be on-board with mass immigration. The European Commission, for instance, conducts interviews that are designed to evaluate if you embody the “core values” of the European Union. As you can probably guess, it’s a heavily left-leaning institution that is fully opposed to the idea of nation states so you better don’t show any remnants of critical thinking. With such mechanisms in place, you can then gather thousands of people who literally think alike. (I heard similar comments from PhDs and post-docs at elite universities, telling me that their students basically all think the same because their backgrounds are so similar.) Scandals such as the large-scale abuse of white girls by “Asians”, i.e. Middle Easterners, in Rotherham and other places in England, and the decade-long refusal by the authorities to investigate this issue, can be explained this way as well.
Often times the establishment welcomes “conspiracy theories” as they tend to mask the true agenda, which is actually much less complicated. Yet equally interesting IMO.
Aaron,
In normal times every candidate had a ton of people at their speeches. With covid, things are different. From what I see around me, people who call themselves Republicans are more likely to believe that Covid doesn’t exist and Trump’s supporters are way more fanatic. Bring those 2 things together and you have a lot of people showing up at his rallies.
There wasn’t a “blue wave” as much as just people who didn’t want Trump in there anymore. Trump barely won the 2016 election and a high percent of 2016 voters were swing voters and some, get this, were Bernie supporters who decided to vote for Trump after Hilary won the democratic ticket! I even saw cars with Trump AND Bernie bumper stickers! Think what you will, but Trump turned a lot of people off. Many of my well to do friends(think silicon valley types, nyc bankers) who voted for Trump in 2016 couldn’t stand the guy anymore.
To me it was like a maze in a video game: the current way is not working(pre-trump times) so lets try another way(trump). Oh, that way doesn’t go anywhere, lets get back on the main road and see if we can find another path.
We need to let this man Triumph descend from the chair of the President. His failure to contain the pandemic is an embarrasement of the country pride. We lose all respects in the eyes of foreign countries，friends or foes.
Covid is about as deadly as the common flu. It’s total bullshit to lock down the entire world to “contain” it.
Trump lost 5 percent of white males , Many alt right types like Richard Spencer abandoned him and probably a lot of white normies just voted for biden because they were terrified of trump.
“Covid is about as deadly as the common flu. It’s total bullshit to lock down the entire world to “contain” it.”
I don’t understand this. If it is not that serious, why do politicians wish to enforce curfews and push the economy to the brink of collapse? What good does it come from hurting oneself that way.
Even if the disease is not as deadly as the Spanish flu, it is still highly contagious and therefore pose a challenge to public safety from a healthcare standpoint. Unless you argue that lives of many aged people aren’t important, restricting social interactions is vital in saving lives who would die otherwise from the epidemic.
They want to usher in international socialism. It’s a stated goal, maybe not in those very words, of the United Nations and the European Commission. Sadly, the quack they all get hard for, Marx, wrote that we need to collapse society before we can erect paradise on earth. He’s a bit hazy on the details, but I’m sure our high-IQ leaders will figure it out and have a plan B, and a plan C and that this time, it will really work.
“Covid is about as deadly as the common flu. It’s total bullshit to lock down the entire world to “contain” it.”
HIV perhaps has a higher mortality rate (I am not sure, correct me if I am wrong). But it is not as contagious as Covid-19. Therefore, you see that there is no enforcement of restriction of social interactions.
The point is that it is highly contagious, not that it doesn’t kill as many (though the lives of which it robs are still valuable).
The symtomps of Covid-19 also seems much more unbearable than cold flu.
In the end, I want to see an authorized source on the mortality rate of Covid-19. I remember that I read somewhere that the rate is not just that low.
Why and how did the world turned into global socialism? Socialist states died long ago, except for those Communist countries like China or Vietnam. Here, in the US, rhetorics against socialism are still strong and vibrant.
I tend to think of Leon Blum’s presidency when I imagine a socialist European state. Perhaps the power of the Left is different in the US when compared to Europe.
Sure, socialism is dead and McCarthy was seeing ghosts, right? You should ignore those silly labels and instead look at what is really happening. Many countries in the West are much closer to socialism than capitalism nowadays.
“Sure, socialism is dead and McCarthy was seeing ghosts, right? You should ignore those silly labels and instead look at what is really happening. Many countries in the West are much closer to socialism than capitalism nowadays.”
I don’t know how it is in Europe. In the US, the economic system and the political system is far from being “socialist”.
Perhaps universal healthcare and education is the mark of “socialism”?
A massive welfare state certainly is.
Aaron,
The reason Biden couldn’t fill an arena is because Leftists are much more intelligent and empathetic than MAGAtards and knew better than to go about spreading the Chyna virus, opting instead to watch from the safety of their homes or at most – in their cars.
Which also easily explains the mega influx of mail-in votes that appeared in just the right amount, right in the nick of time. The reason Biden received more votes than any president before him was because he is legitimately trying to heal the country and repair race relations despite being a crooked career politician with a terrible track record. And also, orange Drumpfler bad!
So, please. Stop being a satyrical conspiracy theorist, my friend. I personally would never do such a thing, and anyone who does deserves to be put on AOC’s super scary list.
I always love it when your average normie hypes up politicians before an election to a ridiculous degree. “He is going to change the world! The system will be fixed now!”.
Like how retarded are they? Is this the first election they are involved in?
Nothing is going to change… certainly not by voting for Biden.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/brace-blue-shift/615097/
Its not just this election, this phenomenon has been trending for a time it seems
Have a look at the official statistics on race relations. They actually improved under Trump after experiencing a fall downwards during the last Obama mandate. Practical consequence of that could be that Trump gained more votes from Hispanic and Black voters in 2020 elections compared to 2016. And no, I will not provide a link to a ‘study’ or similar nonsense. Find it yourself, and don’t search on The Atlantic, where they regularly produced fake news about Trump, such as him calling US soldiers loosers.
While I do believe that Trump screwed it up hard with coronavirus measures and non-action, which can cost him the elections, I will wait until the lawsuits from the swing states are settled. And seeing from the last few days, they run much deeper in the Democrat establishment than the paranoid-led MSM reporters want us to believe.
Of course nothing will change in a Biden administration. Here’s a little example of his voting record while in the Senate:
–Voted YES on NAFTA
–Voted YES on normalizing trade with China
–Voted YES on the Iraq War
–Voted YES on the war in Afghanistan
–Voted YES on the Patriot Act
–Voted YES on deregulating Wall Street
–Voted YES on bailing out Wall Street
Same ole same ole shit gentlemen……….
Oh, and he was in the Senate for almost 4 decades. Why was the country worse off afterwards?
Because of him and the people who voted with him.
You’re not viewing this from the right angle. Sleepy Joe may have been in government for his entire life but now, when he’s about to keel over into his coffin, he’s really going to change and make the world a better place. Step one will be a bunch more wars.
On a serious note, Biden wants to get the U.S. into new wars but the world has changed, and so did the U.S. military. I wonder how a disunited military that fights for a country that is already at war with itself will do against opponents who know why they are defending their country.
https://youtu.be/PpMAd7uXMSY