100%. We need more personal liability for the evils of big business, not less

Because we don’t live in Candyland, we live in reality. Conflating the two currently viable parties is centrist, in impact if not in intent. The reality is that harm reduction is the adult way to process complex choices in the world. All of the things she claims to care about will be objectively worse under Republican control, full stop. And shitty as it is, the Presidential race is currently a binary, again full stop. Claiming anything else is ignorance.

If she, or anyone else, actually cares about breaking the binary, you don’t do that flirting with a ridiculously unrealistic longshot (this word does not even begin to accurately describe the magnitude here) in the presidential, you do it by focusing efforts on legitimizing third parties where they are potentially viable - local and smaller scale races. You put in the fucking work and put your boots on the ground - you canvas your local community in support of local third party candidates, you inform your neighbors of the issues and importance of third party options locally, or you fucking run third party in viable elections yourself if no third party option exists. Talking about breaking the binary by conflating both sides in the presidential election is ignorance, reductive, and entirely non-productive.

Best case scenario Roan is wildly naive to reality, but even then her words only muddy the waters and encourage preventing very real harm reduction, full fucking stop.

Also what policies? Like what’s the point of feigning a moral stand if you don’t define it? If she has legitimate grievances with the Democrats or leftist politics (yes pedants, I know they’re different and I’m saying “or” to include both, not to conflate them), then she should voice them. Otherwise she’s saying nothing but playing into the bs “both sides” false narrative that enormously benefits the right.

I think she is absolute right and within her rights to be critical and unenthusiastic about the Democratic options, but without actually offering critique then what is her weak centrist take accomplishing?

Name one war which was ever fought on a single battlefield.

Yes, we should be pushing for both regulatory changes and changes on platforms like Steam, but we should also being doing our part.

If there is anything I’ve learned over time it is that nobody is coming to save you. Ever. If you are holding out for someone to swoop in and make things better, you will be waiting forever. Either we do it ourselves, or it doesn’t get done.

Yes. To the best of my knowledge there is no restriction, and the only breakages I’ve noticed in the app in that internal links don’t work (links to a post on a sub just opens the sub) and I can’t view the “other discussions” page on a post.

and demand refunds on any game that adds it after purchase.

This, which is in my original fucking message, applies here. If you think the effort is futile, fine, whatever, don’t try. But my statement was made with full understanding of the timeline, and I stand by it. Feel free to read the rest of the comments in the thread for further discussion of the timeline, or feel free to fuck off, I guess; I’m not in the mood to indulge a pedant clearly just looking for an argument.

Where did I even remotely imply otherwise?

There are plenty of anti-cheat measure that doesn’t require invasive access to your system or performance hits. The objection is not to fighting cheating, it is with the specific overreaching methodology chosen to do so.

Also I personally rarely play multiplayer so it’s even more frustrating to have bullshit installed on my system for a feature that doesn’t even apply to me.

Sadly, a lot of their customers will be pissed about this but will be first in line buying other Rockstar games.

Then they aren’t pissed enough. But yes, talking the talk is completely meaningless if you don’t also walk the walk, I agree.

Companies like Rockstar certainly would meet any requests for refunds outside of very recently purchased with “Go kick rocks.”

If you let them, sure. The reason we use phrases like “fight for a refund” is because these things are hard and they take effort. Like yes it sucks to have to do that and yes I understand our time is valuable, but as I see it there is value in both having your voice heard and punitively costing an offending company manhours in having to deal with you - even if you ultimately do not win the fight.

Again, the point isn’t about winning or getting your money back, it’s about not being passive and just accepting the things that happen to you as if you do not have autonomy.

If you mod a sub, you can still use third party apps for some reason. I have a tiny, practically private sub, and I can still use the Boost app for reddit with no problem.

Yep. The difference is one side is rubbing their hands excitedly while saying it.

and demand refunds on any game that adds it after purchase.

The way I see it, adding it, even this late, is changing the terms of the agreement and thus justification for a refund. Steam will often see it that way too if you word it as such. And if not, hell, you can still badger the publisher for a refund incessantly so at least it still costs them the equivalent in man hours even if you don’t get the refund. The point is not to be passive, even if we don’t get to win every single battle.

Don’t buy games with invasive user-side anti-cheats that hamper performance, and demand refunds on any game that adds it after purchase.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for people. If everyone gave a shit, we could end this. But instead, people would rather just complain while still forking over the money to these companies.

There are so many good indie games without this kind of bullshit. We have better choices.

Hey that’s not fair!

…we’ve also got Star Trek memes.

For real. Every single time I see an article about anything this jackass says, all I can think it “why are we reporting on the words of a liar?” Why are still playing this dumb game as if we can’t read between the lines? Why are we still playing respectability politics as if any of this has been normal behavior of polite society? Can we please just start calling this shit what it is? Why isn’t this headline just “Lying Man Lies Again”?

“Squidward flute” made me cringe so hard I almost passed out. God please tell me none of you are actually that lame

Not in the slightest. I’ll happily talk dicks with you all day; I’m extremely sexually liberal.

But talking about dicks isn’t the same as listening to a bunch of chud weirdos whining and crying about the world’s least consequential issue that’s they’re only mad about because deep down they ignorantly think their tiny dicks would be bigger if they hadn’t had their foreskins stolen.

Again, it’s just a weird fucking thing to focus on. Bring it up when the topic comes up, of course, but to fucking insert it in conversations as if it’s relevant, as was done in this post, will always be weird.

But hey, if you wanna talk about dicks for fun, I’m game. Mine curves slightly to the left, how about you?

I think we’d have to take a poll from the general population and compare it with a poll from an anti-circumcision group and compare it to be sure.

My guy, please be for fucking real right now. There is a difference between an unfounded claim and an outlandish one. If I said “all of the smartest people on earth believe Poland borders Peru,” we wouldn’t need a study or poll to confirm I was full of shit, we could just reasonably deduce it. Likewise we don’t need a survey to tell us that any man who genuinely tried to bring up circumcision as tantamount in the abortion conversation would be rightly laughed out of serious consideration.

Again, I acknowledge you aren’t wrong and I will acknowledge both abortion and circumcision exist under the same very broad umbrella of bodily autonomy, but frankly the scale and scope of the two are so wildly and enormously different as to instantly render any attempts at comparison moot.

And honestly, I really think that you know this too. I truly believe that if you can divorce yourself from your personal investment in this topic, you will also see what an absurd comparison that is.

To the first point, I’d argue that men centering themselves in the discussion which largely centers around attempts to remove bodily autonomy from women only hurts, not helps the cause.

To the second point, it has come up a few times, but yes, the reason I said “leave this on reddit” was preemptive, before the problem migrates here from reddit where the topic is rampant is insanely zealous most often.

As I said in a other comment, I think “they didn’t live long enough” is a bit of misconception. I’ll repeat my comment here rather than writing it out again:

"So I’m no expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s my understanding that while average ages were much lower in the past, this number is heavily skewed by infant mortalities and deaths due to preventable disease. As I understand it, the expected age of an otherwise healthy individual was pretty comparable to us today. More people died young, but those who didn’t lived about as long as us. So I don’t think not living long enough for skin cancer to take effect really jives with my understanding of history.

But again, I’m not an expert and the likelihood that I’m just an idiot who is wildly misunderstanding things is, frankly, high."