The Big Picture: Magneto Was Right

Optimystic

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OctalLord said:
Aiddon said:
(too bad there's no story mode though).
Actually... http://kotaku.com/5518024/marvel-vs-capcom-3-will-be-a-living-comic-with-a-deep-story

And in case you're not feeling the link, Quote from the article

"It's important that game's have strong stories for Marvel," Baker said. "With fighting games it's not as essential as an action game or role playing game but we are very much insisting there be some cohesive kind of story for this game.

"We actually have a subtitle for the game that means something this time. In the coming months we will be giving you more information about it."
"There must be some kind of cohesive story" actually gives me less hope. It's like the Marvel brand guy walked in, saw all the Capcom designers busily making Wesker and Deadpool beat each other up, and yelled "Enough already, guys! Work on a plot! I don't care, just make one!"


OT: I'd never join Magneto. Maybe I wasn't bullied enough (not very much at all, actually,) but... there are good people, lots of them, and Magneto doesn't care. But this episode has shown me why it's probably a good thing we don't have superpowers. There are way too many people with baggage who would just lash out and catch a lot of undeserving folks in the crossfire.
 

Raioken18

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I'd like to claim I am special, however I think maybe people don't pick on me just because I am pretty much insane.

During Primary School, I was bashed almost every day by three bullies. Looking back I now realise the actual social structure of our whole year. These bullies were not the biggest or the toughest kids, no the biggest and toughest were the cool kids, and they didn't really bother picking on people. These three bullies were the fat kid, an ethnic kid and a pasty white guy. Want to know what the common factor was? Abusive parents and siblings.

I consider bullying to be a learned behaviour, one that is shaped by similar actions derived by others. Let me continure with my story, so there's the three bullies, and they pick on a few different kids, not just me. One day, the kid with ADHD in our class tries to befriend these bullies so that they will leave him alone, he then proceeds to really violently harrass a few kids to show them he's the same, and then he picks on me...
...I snapped and severly beat him until he lost concious infront of 100 other school children.

Want to know how it felt? It felt horrible... I was crying so hard that the teacher didn't even punish me. I went back to class and everyone treated me like even more of a freak. So I went up to the weakest kid in our year, someone who had no friends and was an outcast because he was a religious guy, and I asked him to play handball. We didn't become friends, but I did make friends with some of the other outcasts in our year, the smart kid (now a uni bludger loved by any girl that meets him), a guy who wet his pants until he was 10 (now owns his own electrician company and models), the guy who loves dinosaurs (this guy became a bit of a stoner, but now is getting married and is happy).

Anyway, so then comes high school,
I was forced to go to a different all boys high school in year 8, where I didn't know anyone.
The first thing I did was walk up to the group of tough kids and told them I wanted to be friends, (yeah insane right?) some of them laughed but no one reciprocated. Then I walked up to the goth group (they were pretty scary too), one of them was picking on a guy from the nerd group sitting next to him. I proceeded to sit inbetween them. I sat silently until the goth lost his mind and was yelling at me, who are you? Are they your friends new kid, are you going to be in their group ******? I looked him dead in the eyes and said I don't have any friends, and I don't belong to any group, but that if I did join a group it wouldn't be to take **** out on others.

After that, because I was usually hanging out in between them, I made a few friends with the nerds and the goths and eventually they merged into one group, ah and the new group just decided to one day sit where the tough kids usually sat... this led to a conflict between this new group and the tough kids. The story goes that I beat one of them in a fight and it earned respect so we all became friends (That's not the truth). The truth is that one of the tough guys remembered that I said I wanted to be friends, he started a fight with me to try and make sure that both groups stayed together so I had friends (they had started to grow apart). Only because I was so used to taking a beating, he couldn't easily knock me down, so when I hit him back, he took a dive so that the fight would end. Apparently it's the only time someone had considered hitting him back.

So the end result of my schooling involved 3 different social groups forming a larger group that provided a lot of mutual benefit.
-Because of long lunch lines, the nerds had a system in place of sending runners from class to get lunches first so everyone in the group could eat early, and because they were smart the maths for what everyone owed was always done correctly. (They were also tipped $1 per lunch per day)
-The goths provided a joint knowledge of both fantasy and a sort of macho reality styles meaning that they were the most social in between the groups. The violent nature of the individuals in this group amped up the intimidation of others who would pick on the weaker kids.
-The tough kids provided physical protection for the other groups, tho the nature of this support was usually verbal.
-The last support came from the nerds and goths reteaching concepts to the tough kids, by doing this they refined their own knowledge as well as helping out others.

The really ironic thing is, even though I hung around them a lot, I never really joined into any of the groups and still had very few friends... but I'm kinda like that. Apart from that one time, I was never bullied in high school.

A lot of people tend to refer to me as the quirky, crazy or eccentric guy. And most of the people I know keep in contact with me via games and stuff, even the ones I'm not friends with.

I don't think I'm superior, I think that I'm weird and someone that probably could have made a ton of friends but chose to still be a loner. I like being a loner.
 

TankCopter

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I say fuck both sides, I'm going to go live on a mountain somewhere. Distancing myself is much easier than finding the justification for taking a side.
 

etherlance

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I'd be on my own side:


I'll leave everyone alone and be nice and polite to people......but if someone decides to attack me in some way, you bet I'd be shoving a lightning bolt/Fireball up their arse!!!
 

Kyn8

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Lots of interesting comments. Bullying can have a huge impact on a person, most bullying occurs during adolescence but it's not the only time - it's rampant in human society and I'd think has probably always played a part (as several others have also noted).
Aspects of bullying appear in gangs and clubs, 'initiations', stand-over tactics and the many varieties of extortion just to link a few behaviours we know of outside schools.

It's an animal instinct, pack instinct and we are most definitely animals -we may have clothes & cars and paint pretty pictures... maybe even fly around in capes, but we're still animals.

With the great benefit of hindsight, I know that my parents and all the adults we knew gave us the worst possible advice - ignore them. You're better, smarter, you can afford to ignore anything you don't agree with, don't do anything you don't want to do.
Learning this has cost me and other people I know who were bullied dearly.

Failing to deal with an issue, open conflict or otherwise and being taught in dramatic fashion (thanks to the drama of bullying) produces people who can't face challenges, who feel trapped and throughout the rest of their lives powerless and resentful.
In some twisted way sometimes bullies are trying to open your eyes to a serious issue that they just can't communicate by other means, sometimes meant as a wake-up call, I'm sure it was in my case and I wish I'd woken up. But I was superior, more astute and was assured by everybody I trusted that ignoring it all was for the best.

It's affected my life and the lives of some of those other people drastically so I'll say it again,
Ignoring the challenges, wilting or being high-minded and putting your head in the sand to "deny them victory" is the worst of all advice.

Learning to understand people (basic human psychology, communication skills - nothing fancy) and learning how to deal with your own inadequacies - even if revealed to you, especially if revealed in a harsh or surprising way is critical.
Everybody has faults, everybody makes mistakes or has to deal with problems of somebody else's making - get over it, deal with it, man-up, grow up.

Sometimes being involved in a conflict (words, fists, ideals) means you'll come off second best, losing sucks but it's not the end of the world (ok, not at the level we're talking about). Nobody wins at everything all the time, dealing with problems, conflict, loss, failure are all critical to living, to surviving both as individuals, as a race and as a society. How you deal with conflict, taking hits and continuing on is what counts.

Efforts to punish bullies & shelter our precious snowflakes are all for nought, they're not addressing the life-skills people are missing.
Revenge won't grant those skills, it doesn't figure out why the conflict exists it only serves to make the next person angry, hurt, scared and all the more likely to lash out or dream of revenge.

In answer to Bob's question,
I would be greatly saddened to face off against the friends I grew up with.
 

Griffolion

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Aug 18, 2009
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Hmm, I'm a little sceptical as to the whole predication of this argument. Bob assumes there are only two sides to take, the evil guys or the good guys. I'm pretty sure this is a real life interpretation of the crappy morality systems we see in games today that everyone bitches about and it's no different here.

I was bullied in primary school and a little in secondary school, but you know what? I got over it, grew up and moved on. So if I had a mutant power and was forced to join one side or the other, it would probably be the 'good' side, because I'm not a big fan of the whole revenge thing, it's childish and pointless. If anything, I'd want to do what I could to change the over-arching social structure Bob mentioned that allows bullying in the first place.
 

RedheadedKate

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My uber geek husband was lucky enough to go to the real life equivalent of the X-Men school or Hogwarts: A private school for super smart kids where intellectual superiority became the norm and you were therefore cool for being there because you were surrounded by kids who hadn't been cool in their middle schools.

Like that super run-on sentence? Yeah, you did!

Some girls at least have the relief from being picked on if they're lucky enough to be cute and get boobs at some point. Then the bullies don't care as much that you're into geeky things, because they kind of want to date you. And they soooo don't get to. President of the National Honor Society and Odyssey of The Mind who looks like Richie Cunningham and has seen Star Wars a million times? Yeah, you're taking me to Prom!
 

ZeppMan217

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Apr 13, 2010
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Man, that's some real shit. I'm now looking forward for the next episode of BP rather than MB.
 

Christopher Bryer

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im kinda glad i dont have superpowers..For 2 reasons.

1-I barely have any self control as a normal human and i can do over the top things NOW..Pulse i was contently picked on and beat up for numerous reasons so ya not so good for the world..But not to sure if i would be on ither side..Probably end up being part of the Alpha Flight or the X-Statix.

2-And well i dont already trust the government and i consider them to be the biggest "bully" on the playground id probably end up being kidnapped and turned into a assassin or somehting so not so go ither way
 

adamtm

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Aug 22, 2010
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Sorry Bob, couldn't hear you over the sound of Ayn Rand and Orson Scott Card...
 

Lazzi

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VenusInFurs said:
Hmmm, I'm sorry, but I can't relate to this. The jocks at my school were nice and minded their own business. To top that off, most of the "nerds", "geeks", or "people who were into anime and the like" were kind of fuckin' stupid. I was into "geek" culture, but not a nerd. I'm amazed I even graduated from high school. I think it depends where you're from. I grew up in New York and stuff like that doesn't happen here. I've notice that is a suburban thing. NYC students really don't give a fuck. They go to school to get the classes over with then leave, well, that was my high school experience.
I think its a costal thing, becuase It really doesnt happen here in Miami. I guess the when you have people that have different races and cultures mixxed together in high density and learn to like them, then people that only have different preferences dont seems all that different.
 

teknoarcanist

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"Rainbow Coalition of Torment" is the most fantastic thing I've heard all week.

But seriously though. Have you looked around in the year 2011? We've got youtubes in every computer, superheroes on every silver screen, fratboys unwinding with 360 . . . the trappings of the nerd lifestyle are not quite the suppressed underworld they once were.
 

Mangue Surfer

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May 29, 2010
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Holy Shit! Every time I see a nerd complaint on the internet is always about the same things. It's like the nerds try more than any one follow the stereotypes.

Yes, I'm nerd, no, I'm don't get bullied and yes, I starting think that some peoples really deserve. So, X-Men all the way for me.
 

DSQ

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danpascooch said:
DSQ said:
NinjaTigerXIII said:
Woh Bob, I'm sure I didn't just hear you make fun of Michael Jordan. That man went through so much hardship to get where he is today.
This is so true, just because he is in sports doesn't make his life any more or less important than bill gates.

And this is coming from someone who hates sports and decrys the lack of recognition that scientists are given.
Who has had more of an impact on society? Bill Gates, or Michael Jordan?

It's not even close.
I'm not saying Michel jordan has had more of an effect on socity (although to say he has had no effect at all is naive) i mean i'm working on windows 7 OS, nuff said.

But every though i don't think bob ment to insult michel jordan, he was kinda imlying that his live was worthless compared to bill gates.

I mean yes in the long run what bill gates has done will have more of an effect on socity and sports are taken a little to seriously, but they are both people and i don't think any life is worth more than the other.
 

Mantonio

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Apr 15, 2009
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370999 said:
Mantonio said:
Interesting video. It would be tempting, but I don't think I'd be on Magnetos side. If simply because Xaviers side has a guy with unbreakable bones and claws that can only be killed by drowning.

Also, Bob, you should TOTALLY cover Marvel Civil War next.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I think we should all make a pact to never ever ever mention it ever again. Maybe God will decide to delete it if we all wish hard enough for it's non-existence.
WE HAVE TO DO IT MAN! WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IT! IT'LL JUST KEEP TEARING US APART UNLESS WE LET IT ALL OUT!

Seriously though, what a bloody shamble Civil War was. The only way they could have turned Stark and the pro-reg side even worse is to give them all little Hitler moustaches.

ESPECIALLY that S.H.I.E.L.D. woman. You know the one. The one that actually orders the soldiers to fire on Captain America.
 

Chefodeath

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Dec 31, 2009
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Hmm, I'd be on the "holy fuck, I have super powers!" team, and would proceed to enjoy life as one big video game.

Just as nature intended.
 

SoulIsTheGoal

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Nov 25, 2010
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Did anyone actually watch the video? Did you actually hear what he said "I think this idea that normal people hate others because they're superior is a FANTASY". He's not saying nerds are better, he at no point boosts his own ego. In fact he's incredibly honest with us throughout the whole thing. His point is that if you WERE better and everyone picked on you you would go to Magneto's team. Thinking about it I'm still not too sure.

It's really strange that everyone is having a go at Bob for something he really didn't say.

FYI, bullies are usually bullying others so that they don't get bullied. It's a pro-active measure against being made to feel inferior either in terms of intellect or physicality. Either that or they have deep-seated inferiority complexes. A lot of the bullies at my school had issues at home, as did a lot of the nerds. They just adopted different coping mechanisms.
 

Caliostro

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Jan 23, 2008
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The idea that people bully you because you're different isn't right, but it's not far from right either.

Why does anyone bully anyone else? Why does anyone make any other person feel bad on purpose? Because they are feeling bad themselves, so they feel better. Bullies are, generally speaking, people who are unhappy with something too. They can feel bad about their social skills (think The Simpson's Nelson Muntz stereotype). They can do it to elevate their social status, because they don't feel good about it. They can do it because they just feel like crap, and hurting someone else makes them a little happier in sharing the misery. Or maybe they do it because they feel like they have a small penis, and it's their way of compensating their perceived lack of masculinity through another stereotypical masculine trait: violence (I'm not joking here, this DOES happen, a LOT).

I'm not saying any of these are good reasons, nor that they should do it, I'm saying that's what happens.

As to the big question,"Why me?", the answer is simple: Because you're an available target.

Minorities are generally, well, minorities... Whether they're ethnic or sexual minorities, as the word implies, are generally present in less significant and threatening numbers. People who are different, in general, tend to gather less social support than people who conform to the norm, and therefore seem like more appealing targets. It really is the only guiding principle for being targeted for bullying. Being an available target. Not being threatening by yourself. Lacking a significant and by itself threatening social support... Nobody messes with the 7 ft guy built like a brick wall and an expert in Krav Maga despite how much of a weirdo he may be. Similarly nobody messes with the stupid kid who's brother is an all star on the football team. Conversely, everyone picks on the small, skinny, frail looking dork with no friends that would probably break his own wrist if he punched you.

You stated it yourself Bob. Things changed considerably once you grew up and tended to tower over your class mates. You were a far less appealing target.

That said, pretty much everything else you said is right on the money. The people who were very bullied do tend to succumb to this fantasy that "it's because I'm better, they're afraid of me!". It's a self defense really.

And yeah, I would totally go with Magneto either ways. Diplomacy only works when both sides of the argument are willing to reason. If one side isn't, the only option is force.
 

Mr. GameBrain

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I'd probably join neither of them, and happily live as an "outcast".

I've been bullied a lot when I was younger, and I have violently reacted to my tormentors in the past, (and trust me, I've always been a big person who can hit hard).

I've always felt horrible about it afterwards though.

These days I just pity bullies. They are just stupid, unstable people.
Its just such a shame some people are just too ignorant to realise bullying is a horrible thing, thats physically and psychologically damaging to both parties, (to this day, I still am normally very cautious around people my own age, (especially if they show no signs of nerdiness/geekiness)), and foolish enough to think their behaviour will go unnoticed, (which, at least in the UK, these days normally doesn't).

And what is wrong with actually being different from the established norm?
Nothing! (unless you're a murderous psychopath! XD)

I'm glad to be different, to be a little eccentric, a bit smarter than the average bear, to have different tastes and experiences, it makes life more interesting!!
(Though I will admit, I do get a bit annoyed that the regular joe never gets my jokes, refferences or ideas (I tend to think very much outside of the box for some things that can either be great or a hindrance), or they say something or do something incredibly stupid, (though I normally hold my tongue because I'm a nice person))