Funny events in anti-woke world

Cicada 5

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https://www.thegamer.com/upcoming-aztec-game-changes-entire-premise-to-appease-nationalists/
Ecumene Aztec is slated for a 2025 release and had a relatively low key reveal recently, with a good old fashioned trailer on the internet rather than a showcase or at Summer Game Fest. It looked intriguing, but since then everything has unraveled quickly.

The premise of the game is (perhaps what should ‘was’ - more on that later) relatively simple. Taking obvious inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima, you play as an Aztec warrior who protects his land from the invading Spanish conquistadors. The early gameplay footage looked a little janky, owing to the fact this is a small team working on its first game that won’t be ready for at least two years, but there was promise. It was Ghost of Tsushima with an Aztec skin, but then many called Tsushima just Assassin’s Creed with a samurai skin when it was revealed, and this was a fresh perspective.

While there were potential pitfalls with being so heavily influenced for a first game, and the attempts to look and feel like a triple-A game without the budget, it was intriguing. Unfortunately, it piqued the interest of the wrong people. Though history is rarely black and white, in the battle of ‘the people who live in a place’ and ‘the people who invade it for adventure and riches’, there’s a fairly clean ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’. Some, however, don’t see it that way.

As reported by The Verge, shortly after the trailer went live a site appeared under publisher Giantscraft’s name. This site is not affiliated with the publisher themselves, so presumably was set up in the wake of the trailer as some form of revenge. On the site, there is a quote from famous conquistador Hernán Cortés, an emblem of the Cross of Burgundy, and various Spanish imperialist memes. The Cross is used in the modern day by far-right South American groups.

The negative reaction from the loudest, most toxic parts of the internet did not stop there. In the wake of the trailer, Giantscraft has announced it will be changing the game to allow you to play either as the Aztec warrior repelling the violent white invaders, or as the violent white invaders themselves. This change was accompanied by a PR statement to The Verge:

“It was not planned. However we saw that about 40 percent of [the] audience says that [they] would like to have [the] choice to join [the] conquistadors, so we might actually try to give this possibility. The game is not political in anyway[sic] and never will be, it is history FICTION.”
 

BrawlMan

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Like the article said, those that are upset that the conquistadors are bad guys, are more than likely not going to play anyway. So the developer should have said screw them. I know these are younger and newer developers, but they got to have some type of common sense and backbone. If black game developers and Machine Games (Wolfenstein 2014 reboot developers) can tell those type of jackasses to screw off, then so can whoever is developing this game.
 
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Thaluikhain

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Huh, Taylor Swift and Matt Healy broke up. It's apparently totally not because being his bf was ruining her image in a way that being his friend somehow wasn't.
 

Silvanus

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That... genuinely makes me less interested in the game. Even if it was just a design choice, devoid of the political context.

For context, I fucking loved Ghost of Tsushima. And I can 100% see how it would be a significantly weaker game if they hobbled the strong design direction to shoehorn in a "play as the Mongol invader!" mode. It would undermine the very nature of the game.
 

Casual Shinji

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That... genuinely makes me less interested in the game. Even if it was just a design choice, devoid of the political context.

For context, I fucking loved Ghost of Tsushima. And I can 100% see how it would be a significantly weaker game if they hobbled the strong design direction to shoehorn in a "play as the Mongol invader!" mode. It would undermine the very nature of the game.
Nobody in Ghost of Tsushima was "white" though, so obviously it's no issue. Only when pre-colonized "brown" countries are depicted as being in the right in standing up against white aggressors do racists get ants in their pants.
 

Thaluikhain

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But there are very fine people on both sides. 🥺
There are very fine people opposing violent fascists, and very fine people opposing non-violent fascists.

(Assuming non-violent fascist is a thing, they might not be personally invading Greece, but supporting and promoting an ideology that is based on violence can be said to be violent. People spoke of supporting the war effort by being involved in the home front, and not for no reason.)
 

tstorm823

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Yes, it is good to oppose violent fascists. It is good to oppose non-violent fascists too, but that's off topic
What if I told you that their fighting was mutually beneficial, that they are effectively cooperating to push political extremism of all varieties and diminish the power of their mutual enemies, the moderates? Is it still good to "fight fascists" knowing the outcome is giving those fascists more power?
 

The Rogue Wolf

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What if I told you that their fighting was mutually beneficial, that they are effectively cooperating to push political extremism of all varieties and diminish the power of their mutual enemies, the moderates?
I would reply that you're a complete and utter imbecile with, at best, a tenuous relationship with reality. So it's a good thing you didn't actually tell us that!
 

TheMysteriousGX

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What if I told you that their fighting was mutually beneficial, that they are effectively cooperating to push political extremism of all varieties and diminish the power of their mutual enemies, the moderates? Is it still good to "fight fascists" knowing the outcome is giving those fascists more power?
Appeasing fascists has never worked. Punching Richard Spencer in the head ruined his career. It's clear which one has a chance of working. If the fascists wandering around the country looking for gays to bash didn't have explicit police protection running cover for their crimes, we'd have a much better chance at solving this problem
 

tstorm823

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Appeasing fascists has never worked. Punching Richard Spencer in the head ruined his career. It's clear which one has a chance of working. If the fascists wandering around the country looking for gays to bash didn't have explicit police protection running cover for their crimes, we'd have a much better chance at solving this problem
Street fights with communists is how the literal Nazis rose to power. Richard Spencer was punched in the face, and about half a year later had his moments of maximum prominence with the tiki march leading into the Unite the Right Rally. Punching him gave him more fame and support than he ever had before, the legal system is what brought him down.
 

Gergar12

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Thaluikhain

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Street fights with communists is how the literal Nazis rose to power.
Street fights with Soviets is how the Nazis fell from power.

EDIT: I mean specifically the capture of Berlin, which was done by the Soviets and involved lots of streets (and buildings), lots of others of course fought the Nazis is lots of places.
 

Dalisclock

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View attachment 8961
I don't believe Hell is a real place, but days like this I wish I did, just for fucks like him to feel betrayed when he realizes where he ended up. He spent so much of his life telling others they were going to hell, it would only be fitting.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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The Cracker Barrel has fallen



And Grindr, apparently. Though I suspect they're gonna have a hard time ginning up broad conservative support to boycott that one


Oh, and my lovely governor rejects money to feed poor kids because he doesn't want to fill out a form. Good Christian man right there
 
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Kwak

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Just what is their actual endgame here?
- Convince our viewers to inhale toxic air.
+ ?
= Winning!

....
Despite not being a doctor, Malloy made health-related pronouncements on Wednesday night’s show.
...
“But the reality is, there’s no health risk, Okay? There’s EPA research; they’ve done lots of clinical research on asthmatics, on elderly asthmatics, on children, on elderly with heart disease — not a cough or a wheeze from any of them.

“We have this kind of air in India and China all the time, uh, no public health emergency.”
...
"Weir doesn’t know what he’s talking about; this doesn’t kill anybody, this doesn’t make anyone cough. This is not a health event, this doesn’t have anything to do with climate. First off, this is wildfire smoke, this is natural. This is not because of climate change…”
...
“Particulate matter is very fine soot,” Milloy explained.

“Well, you don’t want to be breathing that in,” Ingraham countered.

“They’re just carbon particles, they’re innocuous. OK? They’re innocuous. There’s nothing in them, the EPA has all this testing, real, live human beings that shows no effect, it’s total junk science to claim this is hurting anybody.”
...
CNN’s Weir had something to say about Milloy’s assertions.

“The guy trashing me is Steve Milloy, who spent the ’90s trying to convince the public that cigarette smoking has no effect on lungs before running strategy for a big coal company and joining the OG science denial gang at Heartland Institute and he seems super nice,” Weir tweeted.