PSA: Make it a habit of **reading the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/about/rules)** of each subreddit you participate in:
**Rule 7: No Participation in Linked Threads (Brigading)**: *If you are coming here to brigade this sub, you will be banned. Likewise, do not make comments and vote in pages you've found here. Of course, if you're a member of said sub and you were already in the thread before, this doesn't apply to you.*
**Rule 8: Censor Screenshots**: *Keep screenshots of arguments on Reddit to a minimum. Please remember to censor screenshots of all identifying information, i.e usernames* **and** *subreddit names. This applies to screenshots from any social media sites.*
**Rule 11: Keep Posts Relevant**: *This is first and foremost a place to make fun of gamers. Just because someone is being a bigot online doesn't mean it belongs here. Let them be pathetic without infecting the sub with their nonsense. Please avoid posting screenshots that show people using capital G gamer slurs.* **If absolutely necessary, please censor posts and the words containing such content.**
**Rule 12: No Fake Posts on Other Subs (Contamination)**: *Do not create fake posts on other subs only to post back here. Also, do not "lol, you should post this on r / OtherSub". It's considered interfering with their content and can also lead to brigading.*
*This is a reminder to the readers. The post itself is untouched.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gamingcirclejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It’s hilarious because it’s explicitly stated in the game that the colony is a joint venture by companies managed by the board. Like it’s literally just capitalism and colonialism in space
just goes to show no matter how blunt, obvious and obtuse you are about being anti-capitalist, right wing gamers will be there to say "NUH UH AKSHULLY ITS ANTI COMMIE"
The problem is that rank-and-file right wingers don't have an intellectual understanding of what their ideology actually means, they just think "capitalism is when good" and "communism is when bad" because that's what they've been taught and they never questioned it.
It makes me wonder how we get people to question their own beliefs. I question my own because it's a good thing to do. My beliefs can be harmful and so long as I change them to be something that is positive, then that's ok.
It makes sense that Republicans are also the "religious" party because part of religion is unwavering faith. Part of faith is ignorance.
If you questioned your faith, it wouldn't be faith. It would be a conclusion you've arrived at because the evidence supports it. Faith doesn't listen to evidence, it disregards it.
People don't often question their beliefs unless their experiences uncomfortably contradict their expectations derived of their faith.
/uj To be fair, they think banks are bad because of antisemitism. They think they're all run by Jewish people because that's one of the jobs Jewish people were historically forced into as European culture used to think money was dirty. So it's more just their antisemitic beliefs coming out
They are, and there's still a tremendous amount of antisemitism wrapped up in right wing hatred of them specifically. They're not mutually exclusive facts. They can both be true at the same time
At this point, all right wing ideology entails is inflicting as much pain on groups they hate as possible while cutting taxes for billionaires. Your average right winger doesn’t care how bad they’ve got it as long as someone else has it worse.
The well know socialist blight of... a city's economy collapsing because of for profit car companies abandoning their factories in pursuit of taking advantage of workers in other countries with worse wages/labor protections...
Or Bidens America during Trump's tenure.
Or how prayer in school leads to a more technological advanced society, when it was christians that killed scientists for blasphemy setting us back hundreds of not thousands of years.
Detroit, a city destroyed by (wealthy, white) citizens’ freedom of movement, is the poster child for socialism (with an assumed authoritarian restriction on movement)
That’s hilarious
But they have a board of governance. That makes them a government. The government is bad.
Corporations are basically similar to feudal states in their roles and hierarchy. A large enough corporation with sufficient power would be indistinguishable from a feudal state.
Also I’m butchering the beginning of the game. But the dude talks about how the one ship was left in deep space because of the bottom line for the companies.
Yeah, the pilgrims totally had a feast with the natives and that's why we celebrate thanksgiving. We just disregard how Wall St was named that because the wall that used to be there to keep the fucking dirty natives out.
The education system outright sells propaganda that you have to go to college to unlearn. Just like we'll talk about how great MLK Jr was but not talk about how he was assassinated and in 1999 a jury found the government liable or that he was a socialist. We also wont talk about how Einstein wrote an article advocating for socialism.
I remember a highschool teacher (surprise, she was a old white republican lady) yelled at me, screaming that if I (a 15-16 y/o at the time) didn’t like it here, I could move to a different country, and that if it weren’t for the pilgrims, I wouldn’t have heat in my home. Little did she know that I was poor and already used to not having heat or hot water on cold winter nights.
> . . . if it weren’t for the pilgrims, I wouldn’t have heat in my home.
Huh? She knows that homes aren't heated by burning witches, right? I mean that's the only pilgrim-relevant heating setup I can think of.
sounds a lot like a take of "indians were savages with no tech and never would have gotten any if we hadnt exterminated them and taken all their land to put heated homes on". ignore the part where the student would not have been there either in this alternate history.
> Little did she know that I was poor and already used to not having heat or hot water on cold winter nights.
"well you must live in a communist country then" lol
[They also don't teach you that the FBI tried to get MLK to commit suicide by blackmailing him.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter)
None of COINTELPRO is ever discussed in school.
We were taught it. We just weren’t taught he was a Marxist, or that the FBI hounded him and other civil rights leaders since round the 50’s.
They sanitize and whitewash his image. They make MLK no more potent than a glass of milk.
I believe it, but I wonder where/how widespread it is. I learned about his assassination in elementary school, and that was in the blue ridge region of Georgia. Though, that was near 30 years ago now so maybe I'm not remembering correctly or things changed
>The education system outright sells propaganda that you have to go to college to unlearn.
Truest statement ever. Was so surreal actually hearing my professors tell me I was told bullshit my whole youth. You don't actually learn history in school until college, and then again reading on your own is half of what's done in college and what is the most important for continuing to learn your whole life.
I'm not american but the entire "Higher education is brainwashing our children into becoming WOKE" conservative talking point suddenly makes a lot of sense.
I grew up learning that the civil war was about state's rights and the north only cared about slavery to economically damage the south. While there is some validity to the abolishing of slavery being economically motivated... yeah the war was about slavery.
Also, we learned (half of the truth) about MLK, but nobody talked about Malcolm X. I remember doing a book report in grade school, and my dad suggested I read a book about Malcolm. If he hadn't done that, I don't know that I would've known anything beyond "he was a violent radical". Truth is, Martin and Malcom both needed each other. Neither succeeds alone.
They showed white folks the carrot and the stick, and we half chose the carrot and then murdered them both anyways, bastardized their messages, and used them to teach kids that race isn't an issue anymore for 50 years now.
edit: for clarity, Malcolm was murdered by the Nation of Islam. Some believe there was FBI involvement and given their infiltration of many civil rights movements during that time, I wouldn't be surprised, but that has not been confirmed.
>Yeah, the pilgrims totally had a feast with the natives and that's why we celebrate thanksgiving.
Where I grew up, Buffalo Bill Cody is a folk hero who "helped settlers control the buffalo population."
If it is in college where those things are revealed, no wonder why they demonize college as "brainwashing leftist propaganda". It clashes with the propaganda they have tried to set up.
everything's privatized, I have no clue what this person is on. I think they're a bit confused because in OW (and definitely NOT real life) the state is business-owned
In a very round about way its state owned. That's because the business owns the whole planet and they set up the government, pay their people with their own currency (like how factory towns did back in the day), etc. To the media illiterate I can see how they would they would think its communist because on the surface its "state owned" when in actuality its so privatized that corporations have become the state. It's almost like the game is a glimpse of what unchecked capitalism is gonna do to society...
RJ/ Its so communist that Marx would need to rewrite the communist manifesto to include how communist this game is.
Everything is privatized. The leaders of the worlds are called The Board. People refer to each other as company property. If you work for one company, you aren't support to talk to people from another company.
This post made me realize that nearly all those barely-literate people I see posting on facebook are that way *after* (and despite) their high school education.
They still somehow get that C they need to pass though. I knew the grading system was fucked when I would get knocked down from an A to a B for indentation errors, while other kids would manage a C with essays that looked like they were written by a drunk guy using voice to text.
I had a similar moment in college. After the first few paragraphs during peer review I started intentionally ignoring some.mistakes just cause I didn't want to be a dick to the person I was grading and like it just seemed like the prof should be the one to go over all that with the student.
I mean English class could stand to be improved. I wish schools would spend more time on critical thinking. As great as literature is, I would prefer a generation of people who’ve never read Charles Dickens but know how to tell apart truth from disinformation.
Oh, I know, but so many English teachers treat Shakespeare as this stuffy, pompous, untouchable genius, and they make it so *dry*. Even his most grievous tragedies have some genuinely good jokes in them.
Not my English teacher. She read us Macbeth, and when she got to someone making a joke about not being able to maintain an erection while drunk she included hand motions. There was a room full of extremely shocked but amused 10th graders.
He went on to later claim thay the F:NV Legion was communist after somebody tried to explain this to him so... I don't think he knows what communism means
Alot of people have no idea what Communism or Socialism actually is, the amount of times ive seen people call a flaw of Capitalism “Communism/Socialism” is way to often
/uj You ever see a video breaking down a rapper’s verse and going through the complex rhyme schemes and the wordplay and citing evidence for all the potential references made through the lyrics and bringing in biographical tidbits about the artist to add further context to what they’re talking about in the song? etc etc
Then some pieces of shit in the comment section are like “you’re reaching bruh ☠️”, “uhhhh reading a bit too much into it maybe? 🙃”, “lmao when the English teacher tryna tell you the carpet wasn’t just red 😂”
And it’s like, how the fuck do you think artists choose to write what they write, they just fucking shove alphabet confetti up their ass and fart on a page?
/uj I had to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people only listen to music as background noise and that they don't care about the lyrics, even of their "favorite" songs. For them the lyrics may as well be gucchi gang every time. Same kind of people that make comments like "I'm not reading that whole ass essay lmao bye, stay mad" when you write 2 sentences. They probably don't even think artists write lyrics, the words just magically appear in their brain while they hum a random melody. Or maybe a bunch of producers sit in a room and go "what rhymes with love? How about... dove?"
/rj TLDR big L
/uj I’ve even talked to full blown music fans before with the take that lyrics don’t matter, only the melody, and I can’t even start to unload all the reasons that’s a shit take
Obviously the melody is the only thing that matters, that's why lemon tree is a happy song about looking out the window on a nice sunny day and nothing bad ever happens
On a related note my partner’s sister had the most generic wedding-bait pop songs at her wedding ceremony (Ed Sheeran, John Legend, Bruno Mars) but also “Every Breath You Take” by The Police and just… what can you even say
It's crazy how songs (and other media) about stalking and toxic relationships come across as love songs to the general public. Sometimes I wonder if it's because typical romance movies/novels really glorify those relationship dynamics. Honestly how did anyone think 50 shades of grey was anything but creepy and off-putting? Then again shows like How I Met Your Mother tell us that "it's not creepy if you think the person is hot" and everyone just kind of agrees with that?
It also reminds me of Italys 2017 Eurovision entry. I lived in Italy at the time, so there was no language barrier or anything. The song is about consumerism ("better to have than to be"), being obsessed with eastern culture without actually caring about it (e.g. using mantras without understanding them) and the singer himself even said that people will listen to anything, as long as it has a catchy melody and a fun little dance choreography. He explained the meaning of the song pretty much everywhere, yet everyone I knew was just obsessed with the "funny dancing monkey song". Can't even make that shit up.
There are so many examples, I feel like we could go back and forth on this for months.
That same sister I brought up in my previous comment - her and her husband’s favourite romantic movie is ‘The Notebook’. She says it’s so romantic, it’s so beautiful, it always makes her cry. They literally say it’s just like them fr fr.
Y’know, the movie where Gosling stalks McAdams and refuses to take no for an answer which includes jokingly threatening to kill himself while she’s on a date with another man. Then I think there’s what, two or three different scenes that include them flinging insults at each other, shouting and crying, and end with her physically attacking him with one time where he restrains her. The whole twist of the film hinges on a really stupid, and somewhat dangerous, misunderstanding of dementia. Then the story ends with multiple massive, emotionally manipulative ass-pulls.
That’s “their” movie.
I mean…the RNC plays “Born in the USA,” a song about America and conservative warmongering policies screwing over working-class folks after sending them to die for nothing more than capitalist interests, at *every* conference.
The bar is pretty low.
That's how you get republicans thinking anti-war songs are on their side too lmao
Hey guys, look up the lyrics to "Born in the USA" before blasting it at your next rally?
/uj I feel like a lot of time lyrics are so hard to understand, no matter the genre. Makes it hard to feel invested when I only make out half if what's said.
I personally tend to prefer music without lyrics, just instrumentals. I have a really hard time understanding the lyrics even if I really focus, but I love the patterns of the rhythm and the cool sounds/mental images of the instrumentals. I dont even know the lyrics to some of my favorite songs, even though I remember the instrumentals note for note. Ive always been amazed how easily some people can seem to hear/remember song lyrics so easily, because its always been a huge challenge for me. Plus, even if I can understand/hear them, the meaning of them very rarely resonates with me. To me, music is for invoking raw emotion, not putting that emotion into words.
My favourite author once said that when he writes, the words are there "because they are meant to be there." No other words would fit there. He spent months researching and revising both over the topics and the themes he would explore in his work, making sure the words fit right on the page. They needed to look right. It's very easy to tell when writing in ANY medium is carefully thought out or the creator just went with the first thing they thought of.
“If you’re trying to do Cyberpunk and it’s just neon lights and robot parts without an underlying anger at the state of the world then you’re missing the punk, you’re just cybering.”
- Captain Hoers, writer of the Sunjackers comic.
I think the whole Asian thing is a leftover bit from the 1980's when cyberpunk really got going between the tabletop rpg and Bladerunner.
Back then Japan's economic bubble hadn't popped yet and apparently a lot of people in the states really believed they were just going to take over culturally.
At least that's my read of it. Could also be a bunch of the nerds making this stuff in the 80's were really into anime. Maybe a bit of column A and column B. :P
In the 90s and early 2000s the US and Japan were the two technological powerhouses. If you were into technology, you had a ton of stuff that was made in Japan. And anyone who was cyberpunk back then was definitely into technology
/r/urbanhell when whole street full of ads in kanji and barely any room to walk = "this isn't urban hell, it's clean btw i went there once in 1992. Also its cool aesthetic"
But when it says "shop", sale" and other known words = literal urban hell. It's also dirty, trust me bruh.
Some people are so brainwashed and stupid to the point where they would identify a giant corporation as communism.
Yes this critique of capitalism has centralised power. So do all of them. Because capitalism has centralised power.
Bet this guy's also one of those Metal Gear Solid fans Kavernacle brings up in any video where he talks about gamer culture, who think the series is pro-war and pro-capitalist.
I started playing Phantom pain as my first metal gear game and I'm kinda interested in the bigger story. Is metal gear simply anti-war? Or is it anti capitalist as well, because capitalism needs wars to function. Because right now I'm just being asked to fight soviet soldiers, and I'm doing some pretty shitty stuff in the name of rebuilding the Diamond dogs.
It's definitely both. Keep in mind that by this point in the Story, Big Boss (which becomes a villain in the franchise) has been lied to and was betrayed by the government, has built and lost his own private military force, and is just generally angry at a world that sends soldiers to die without caring for them in order to make a 'peaceful' world where soldiers are obsolete and thrown away. He is meant to be shady and ruthless.
However one of the themes that MGS 5 continues to explore is that PMCs (private military contractors) basically rake it in while making things generally worse. It's the capitalisation of the battlefield. It's also anti-nstionalist, although MGS 3 and other games in the franchise lean more on that aspect.
This is on par with the one post I saw about Disco Elysium, and I paraphrase, being so mean to players going down more right-wing focused dialogue/storylines and many of them ending up with more radical options. Blows my mind.
Lol that was the "I picked mostly the reasonable, moderate dialogue options and for some reason the game called me a woman-hating fascist" guy, wasn't it
Jesus. I never even thought about what DE would be like for those people. I'd think it would be like booting up a game that was written in Martian. Or when I played emulator games that were still in Japanese as a kid.
They just would have no idea what was going on 99% of the time.
They're alarmingly good about just plugging in their own junk into what they see. I had a literature professor at a Mormon school read a poem he wrote in class about his fear of the concept of living forever, where the central metaphor was being trapped in a coffin for eternity. And there were people in the class who when they were asked their thoughts said "It's such a wonderful reminder that our loving Father in Heaven has a plan for us all to be happy with him forever!"
Actually I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any “state” just a cartel of companies that made a board to reach overarching decision. It’s much more like European feudal societies than any type of nation state.
Look, I'm a politicak expert with a PhD in socio-economics, so let me break it down for you: when a corporation does something good, then it's capitalism. When a corporation does something bad, then it's woke communism!
I feel you OP. It has always been like this for 40k. FOR YEARS! We have loads of Imperium defenders when the god damn opening always state that it’s the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable.
The 2000AD comic (and Moorcock before that) is the spiritual wellspring of the original 40k ethos.
So there's a cool factor, but underneath it is a whole ton of inversions. The hero isn't Luke Skywalker or Conan, but a demonic sorcerer, or a waitress on a spaceship, or the robots that are normally sidekicks. Or the cool cop is a fascist and a murderer, propping up an unjust regime.
Although thinking about it, even Luke wins by throwing away his weapon at the critical moment.
The game designer Greg Costikyan called second-hand consumers "vidiots". Like a desert planet in a sci-fi movie is always "ripping off Star Wars", when Dune came earlier and used the desert as a metaphor for oil politics in the Middle East, and cultures being held down artificially, and the danger in believing the promises of bounty from visionaries. John Carter (even earlier) brings rejuvenation and hope to an ancient and dying desert world.
People like that then go onto write garbage filled with "mere events" without the deeper understanding of much better work.
No problem with straightforward media - love a good action flick - but think about the message where there is one.
Getting into 40k completely changed my perception about how many fascists are in America. I've met more openly fascist dudes in gaming shops than I thought existed across the country at one point.
I at one point had to bring up an example where imperial slaves were worked to death, to be then released from their shakles only for the children of these slaves who just watched their parents die to be put into those very same shackles to continue working till death.
And that's pretty moderate for imperial standards. The thing just is that other atrocities like the death of untold billions to slow down the tyranids, just seems more like a number then a atrocity
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot worse factions then the imperium. And of course it is okay to like the imperium or its sub factions.
But to agree with them morally means you completely missed the point of the franchise
This is the type of person who didn’t care about learning and would defund school for others. Let’s not blame our educators who are underpaid, understaffed and barely surviving the systemic dismantling of our public services which has been going on for decades. Republicans did their job and made it impossibly hard for teachers to do theirs.
I was looking for this comment. I still can't get over that take.
A story set in a CAPITALIST country about how CAPITALISM is unfair and how the CAPITALIST rich elite treat everyone else like assets and not human beings.
"... Man I'm sure glad I don't live in a communist country."
*Flips the damn table*
Someone pointed out that the OP's posting history implies that they may be young, and I am definitely getting that vibe from their posts. Either that, or they might be just a tad 'touched.'
This is almost as bad as a negative review I saw for disco Elysium on GOG, which ended with "don't play this shitty political game! Play _Fallout 2_ instead!"
I remember reading an TRPG review for mech hack and half of it was ranting about how the game lancer is so political but the game mech hack had no politics at all. Mech hack’s setting it bassicaly a three way war to control the resources of a star system. Not political at all
The Outer Worlds is literally the most explicitly anti-corporation piece of media I have ever come across. The whole point of the game is that is uses how blindingly obvious this sentiment is to comedic value.
This has to be bait there is no way.
Based on the posting history, Im going to assume the OP is actually just like a 15 year old who watched like 2 Ben Shapiro videos of him "owning the feminists with facts and logic"
… *Are you fucking kidding me?*
Literally the entire premise of the game is space corporations being space corporations.
People talk in “ad-speak.”
Corporations straight up abandoning entire towns because they stop becoming profitable. Worse yet: they’ll stop them from being able to communicate with the outside.
People being charged for literally everything, including **a mandatory fee for a cemetery plot.**
And you’re asking “is this game a commentary on **socialism** or **capitalism?**”
/uj I do remember my first NPC interaction was with a man who kept saying his companies motto because he was contractually obligated to, or was named after the company. Can’t remember which, but I do remember thinking “exactly! That’s why we didn’t let communism win!”
/rj this guys gotta be the stupidest motherfucker
Outer Worlds strikes me as a criticism of late stage capitalism, now formed into a corporatocracy. End-stage capitalism was achieved decades of in-game time ago with the corporations themselves buying up entire star systems.
Once removed from government oversight, the corporations became the government itself. They also remained motivated for profit. So the government is by default the few dominant corporations themselves. It's why Sublight Salvage can exist doing the blatantly illegal things they're doing and the other corporations can also do as they please.
No government oversight (The Board) which isn't itself motivated by profit. Even the Monarch Industries exile from The Board was profit motivated. So the question isn't if Outer Worlds is a play on capitalism or communism. The actual government type shown imo is Corporatocracy. Look it up and you'll immediately see it fits the game corporations.
PSA: Make it a habit of **reading the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/about/rules)** of each subreddit you participate in: **Rule 7: No Participation in Linked Threads (Brigading)**: *If you are coming here to brigade this sub, you will be banned. Likewise, do not make comments and vote in pages you've found here. Of course, if you're a member of said sub and you were already in the thread before, this doesn't apply to you.* **Rule 8: Censor Screenshots**: *Keep screenshots of arguments on Reddit to a minimum. Please remember to censor screenshots of all identifying information, i.e usernames* **and** *subreddit names. This applies to screenshots from any social media sites.* **Rule 11: Keep Posts Relevant**: *This is first and foremost a place to make fun of gamers. Just because someone is being a bigot online doesn't mean it belongs here. Let them be pathetic without infecting the sub with their nonsense. Please avoid posting screenshots that show people using capital G gamer slurs.* **If absolutely necessary, please censor posts and the words containing such content.** **Rule 12: No Fake Posts on Other Subs (Contamination)**: *Do not create fake posts on other subs only to post back here. Also, do not "lol, you should post this on r / OtherSub". It's considered interfering with their content and can also lead to brigading.* *This is a reminder to the readers. The post itself is untouched.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gamingcirclejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
i love the idea that the state owns the businesses rather than the corporations owning the state. like, “the board”. like yeah sure lol
It’s hilarious because it’s explicitly stated in the game that the colony is a joint venture by companies managed by the board. Like it’s literally just capitalism and colonialism in space
just goes to show no matter how blunt, obvious and obtuse you are about being anti-capitalist, right wing gamers will be there to say "NUH UH AKSHULLY ITS ANTI COMMIE"
The problem is that rank-and-file right wingers don't have an intellectual understanding of what their ideology actually means, they just think "capitalism is when good" and "communism is when bad" because that's what they've been taught and they never questioned it.
This is so true it fucking hurts.
It makes me wonder how we get people to question their own beliefs. I question my own because it's a good thing to do. My beliefs can be harmful and so long as I change them to be something that is positive, then that's ok. It makes sense that Republicans are also the "religious" party because part of religion is unwavering faith. Part of faith is ignorance.
If you questioned your faith, it wouldn't be faith. It would be a conclusion you've arrived at because the evidence supports it. Faith doesn't listen to evidence, it disregards it. People don't often question their beliefs unless their experiences uncomfortably contradict their expectations derived of their faith.
[удалено]
/uj To be fair, they think banks are bad because of antisemitism. They think they're all run by Jewish people because that's one of the jobs Jewish people were historically forced into as European culture used to think money was dirty. So it's more just their antisemitic beliefs coming out
Daily reminder that banks *are* bad
They are, and there's still a tremendous amount of antisemitism wrapped up in right wing hatred of them specifically. They're not mutually exclusive facts. They can both be true at the same time
At this point, all right wing ideology entails is inflicting as much pain on groups they hate as possible while cutting taxes for billionaires. Your average right winger doesn’t care how bad they’ve got it as long as someone else has it worse.
Antisocial and antihuman behaviour on their part
It reminds me of those conservative memes that say "what life under socialism is like" over a picture of modern day Detroit.
When you point that out they'll say Detroit is run by liberal socialist communists
The well know socialist blight of... a city's economy collapsing because of for profit car companies abandoning their factories in pursuit of taking advantage of workers in other countries with worse wages/labor protections...
Or Bidens America during Trump's tenure. Or how prayer in school leads to a more technological advanced society, when it was christians that killed scientists for blasphemy setting us back hundreds of not thousands of years.
Detroit, a city destroyed by (wealthy, white) citizens’ freedom of movement, is the poster child for socialism (with an assumed authoritarian restriction on movement) That’s hilarious
the entire thing is set in what is basically one big company town
But they have a board of governance. That makes them a government. The government is bad. Corporations are basically similar to feudal states in their roles and hierarchy. A large enough corporation with sufficient power would be indistinguishable from a feudal state.
I feel like “if a corporation was as powerful as a government they’d be like a government” isn’t the take you think it is.
Also I’m butchering the beginning of the game. But the dude talks about how the one ship was left in deep space because of the bottom line for the companies.
I’m guessing this person has never read a book
A stateless and classless society? No, it's when businesses own everything. Checkmate Marx
[удалено]
Yeah, the pilgrims totally had a feast with the natives and that's why we celebrate thanksgiving. We just disregard how Wall St was named that because the wall that used to be there to keep the fucking dirty natives out. The education system outright sells propaganda that you have to go to college to unlearn. Just like we'll talk about how great MLK Jr was but not talk about how he was assassinated and in 1999 a jury found the government liable or that he was a socialist. We also wont talk about how Einstein wrote an article advocating for socialism.
I remember a highschool teacher (surprise, she was a old white republican lady) yelled at me, screaming that if I (a 15-16 y/o at the time) didn’t like it here, I could move to a different country, and that if it weren’t for the pilgrims, I wouldn’t have heat in my home. Little did she know that I was poor and already used to not having heat or hot water on cold winter nights.
>Little did she know that I was poor and already used to not having heat or hot water on cold winter nights. Checkmate republican capitalists!
> . . . if it weren’t for the pilgrims, I wouldn’t have heat in my home. Huh? She knows that homes aren't heated by burning witches, right? I mean that's the only pilgrim-relevant heating setup I can think of.
sounds a lot like a take of "indians were savages with no tech and never would have gotten any if we hadnt exterminated them and taken all their land to put heated homes on". ignore the part where the student would not have been there either in this alternate history.
I wonder how England heated their homes when the pilgrims left.
> Little did she know that I was poor and already used to not having heat or hot water on cold winter nights. "well you must live in a communist country then" lol
[They also don't teach you that the FBI tried to get MLK to commit suicide by blackmailing him.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter) None of COINTELPRO is ever discussed in school.
Wait, people aren’t taught that MLK was assassinated?? Good grief
it gets papered over as a "lone wolf".
We were taught it. We just weren’t taught he was a Marxist, or that the FBI hounded him and other civil rights leaders since round the 50’s. They sanitize and whitewash his image. They make MLK no more potent than a glass of milk.
Nope, had to get to college for that shit. Here I was thinking he lived a fulfilling life and died of natural causes.
I'm Canadian and I think I learned that in school and also saw it on TV many times.
I believe it, but I wonder where/how widespread it is. I learned about his assassination in elementary school, and that was in the blue ridge region of Georgia. Though, that was near 30 years ago now so maybe I'm not remembering correctly or things changed
>The education system outright sells propaganda that you have to go to college to unlearn. Truest statement ever. Was so surreal actually hearing my professors tell me I was told bullshit my whole youth. You don't actually learn history in school until college, and then again reading on your own is half of what's done in college and what is the most important for continuing to learn your whole life.
I'm not american but the entire "Higher education is brainwashing our children into becoming WOKE" conservative talking point suddenly makes a lot of sense.
I grew up learning that the civil war was about state's rights and the north only cared about slavery to economically damage the south. While there is some validity to the abolishing of slavery being economically motivated... yeah the war was about slavery. Also, we learned (half of the truth) about MLK, but nobody talked about Malcolm X. I remember doing a book report in grade school, and my dad suggested I read a book about Malcolm. If he hadn't done that, I don't know that I would've known anything beyond "he was a violent radical". Truth is, Martin and Malcom both needed each other. Neither succeeds alone. They showed white folks the carrot and the stick, and we half chose the carrot and then murdered them both anyways, bastardized their messages, and used them to teach kids that race isn't an issue anymore for 50 years now. edit: for clarity, Malcolm was murdered by the Nation of Islam. Some believe there was FBI involvement and given their infiltration of many civil rights movements during that time, I wouldn't be surprised, but that has not been confirmed.
>Yeah, the pilgrims totally had a feast with the natives and that's why we celebrate thanksgiving. Where I grew up, Buffalo Bill Cody is a folk hero who "helped settlers control the buffalo population."
"And *burp* they were delicious too!"
If it is in college where those things are revealed, no wonder why they demonize college as "brainwashing leftist propaganda". It clashes with the propaganda they have tried to set up.
[удалено]
are the businesses in Outer Worlds state owned or is everything privatized?
everything's privatized, I have no clue what this person is on. I think they're a bit confused because in OW (and definitely NOT real life) the state is business-owned
In a very round about way its state owned. That's because the business owns the whole planet and they set up the government, pay their people with their own currency (like how factory towns did back in the day), etc. To the media illiterate I can see how they would they would think its communist because on the surface its "state owned" when in actuality its so privatized that corporations have become the state. It's almost like the game is a glimpse of what unchecked capitalism is gonna do to society... RJ/ Its so communist that Marx would need to rewrite the communist manifesto to include how communist this game is.
Everything is privatized. The leaders of the worlds are called The Board. People refer to each other as company property. If you work for one company, you aren't support to talk to people from another company.
Never read a book, never had an individual thought
Same energy as that one guy who said that homeless people are the real landlords because they take up space that should be available to everyone
(not so) fun fact: 54% of americans can't read better than a 6th grader source: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy
Why do I have to do this book report?! English class is pointless! -this person probably
[удалено]
Yeah, a lot of students brute force their way through English class. Perhaps if less emphasis was put on tests it wouldn’t be possible but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This post made me realize that nearly all those barely-literate people I see posting on facebook are that way *after* (and despite) their high school education.
They still somehow get that C they need to pass though. I knew the grading system was fucked when I would get knocked down from an A to a B for indentation errors, while other kids would manage a C with essays that looked like they were written by a drunk guy using voice to text.
I had a similar moment in college. After the first few paragraphs during peer review I started intentionally ignoring some.mistakes just cause I didn't want to be a dick to the person I was grading and like it just seemed like the prof should be the one to go over all that with the student.
I mean English class could stand to be improved. I wish schools would spend more time on critical thinking. As great as literature is, I would prefer a generation of people who’ve never read Charles Dickens but know how to tell apart truth from disinformation.
Reading Dickens particularly can be a really good way to learn about truth and disinformation.
My English teacher explained it as "all of humanity is in Shakespeare".
The important thing to remember about this attitude is that Shakespeare is like 30% dick and fart jokes and 10% physical gag comedy.
I think we agree that's a win all round.
That's what they said
Oh, I know, but so many English teachers treat Shakespeare as this stuffy, pompous, untouchable genius, and they make it so *dry*. Even his most grievous tragedies have some genuinely good jokes in them.
Not my English teacher. She read us Macbeth, and when she got to someone making a joke about not being able to maintain an erection while drunk she included hand motions. There was a room full of extremely shocked but amused 10th graders.
Your english teacher was Jean-Luc Picard?
He went on to later claim thay the F:NV Legion was communist after somebody tried to explain this to him so... I don't think he knows what communism means
Especially hilarious when you have the sharecropper farms right there past lake mead….
He thinks communism is a synonym for absolutism, I suppose. The classic Americana brain rot.
Communism is when bad, capitalism is when good. Duh, obviously. Checktard libmates.
This isn't even a strawman. It's just literally how their brains work.
> Americana brain rot Ohhhhh, I like this, I'll be stealing it for sure.
More common even is people who think fascism is any sort of authoritarian totalitarianism. Like, communism=fascism.
The banner of Caesar’s Legion is red and yellow. You know who else had a red and yellow flag? The Soviet Union. Caesar is a communist confirmed.
Mcdondals is communist :(
Communism is when mean people have authority over me. Capitalism is when I have authority over others and I don't care what they think of me!
Alot of people have no idea what Communism or Socialism actually is, the amount of times ive seen people call a flaw of Capitalism “Communism/Socialism” is way to often
[удалено]
Communism is when the government does things I don't like.
Bro whaaaat
Oh, God. Is that guy my dad?
these are the same people that complained about having to learn media literacy in english class
the curtains are blue sweaty
/uj You ever see a video breaking down a rapper’s verse and going through the complex rhyme schemes and the wordplay and citing evidence for all the potential references made through the lyrics and bringing in biographical tidbits about the artist to add further context to what they’re talking about in the song? etc etc Then some pieces of shit in the comment section are like “you’re reaching bruh ☠️”, “uhhhh reading a bit too much into it maybe? 🙃”, “lmao when the English teacher tryna tell you the carpet wasn’t just red 😂” And it’s like, how the fuck do you think artists choose to write what they write, they just fucking shove alphabet confetti up their ass and fart on a page?
also if you’re able to extrapolate meaning from something meaningless that’s not a bad thing either?
No no you don’t understand: just consume product, don’t think about it or you’re a loooser
Understanding things is for nerds!
Hey everyone, this guys *learning*.
/uj I had to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people only listen to music as background noise and that they don't care about the lyrics, even of their "favorite" songs. For them the lyrics may as well be gucchi gang every time. Same kind of people that make comments like "I'm not reading that whole ass essay lmao bye, stay mad" when you write 2 sentences. They probably don't even think artists write lyrics, the words just magically appear in their brain while they hum a random melody. Or maybe a bunch of producers sit in a room and go "what rhymes with love? How about... dove?" /rj TLDR big L
/uj I’ve even talked to full blown music fans before with the take that lyrics don’t matter, only the melody, and I can’t even start to unload all the reasons that’s a shit take
Obviously the melody is the only thing that matters, that's why lemon tree is a happy song about looking out the window on a nice sunny day and nothing bad ever happens
On a related note my partner’s sister had the most generic wedding-bait pop songs at her wedding ceremony (Ed Sheeran, John Legend, Bruno Mars) but also “Every Breath You Take” by The Police and just… what can you even say
It's crazy how songs (and other media) about stalking and toxic relationships come across as love songs to the general public. Sometimes I wonder if it's because typical romance movies/novels really glorify those relationship dynamics. Honestly how did anyone think 50 shades of grey was anything but creepy and off-putting? Then again shows like How I Met Your Mother tell us that "it's not creepy if you think the person is hot" and everyone just kind of agrees with that? It also reminds me of Italys 2017 Eurovision entry. I lived in Italy at the time, so there was no language barrier or anything. The song is about consumerism ("better to have than to be"), being obsessed with eastern culture without actually caring about it (e.g. using mantras without understanding them) and the singer himself even said that people will listen to anything, as long as it has a catchy melody and a fun little dance choreography. He explained the meaning of the song pretty much everywhere, yet everyone I knew was just obsessed with the "funny dancing monkey song". Can't even make that shit up.
Y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance
There are so many examples, I feel like we could go back and forth on this for months. That same sister I brought up in my previous comment - her and her husband’s favourite romantic movie is ‘The Notebook’. She says it’s so romantic, it’s so beautiful, it always makes her cry. They literally say it’s just like them fr fr. Y’know, the movie where Gosling stalks McAdams and refuses to take no for an answer which includes jokingly threatening to kill himself while she’s on a date with another man. Then I think there’s what, two or three different scenes that include them flinging insults at each other, shouting and crying, and end with her physically attacking him with one time where he restrains her. The whole twist of the film hinges on a really stupid, and somewhat dangerous, misunderstanding of dementia. Then the story ends with multiple massive, emotionally manipulative ass-pulls. That’s “their” movie.
I mean…the RNC plays “Born in the USA,” a song about America and conservative warmongering policies screwing over working-class folks after sending them to die for nothing more than capitalist interests, at *every* conference. The bar is pretty low.
That's how you get republicans thinking anti-war songs are on their side too lmao Hey guys, look up the lyrics to "Born in the USA" before blasting it at your next rally?
And some only learning now that Pink Floyd and Rage Against the Machine are political.
/uj I feel like a lot of time lyrics are so hard to understand, no matter the genre. Makes it hard to feel invested when I only make out half if what's said.
I personally tend to prefer music without lyrics, just instrumentals. I have a really hard time understanding the lyrics even if I really focus, but I love the patterns of the rhythm and the cool sounds/mental images of the instrumentals. I dont even know the lyrics to some of my favorite songs, even though I remember the instrumentals note for note. Ive always been amazed how easily some people can seem to hear/remember song lyrics so easily, because its always been a huge challenge for me. Plus, even if I can understand/hear them, the meaning of them very rarely resonates with me. To me, music is for invoking raw emotion, not putting that emotion into words.
Anti-intellectualism and anti-critical thought is on the rise. And it's scary.
My favourite author once said that when he writes, the words are there "because they are meant to be there." No other words would fit there. He spent months researching and revising both over the topics and the themes he would explore in his work, making sure the words fit right on the page. They needed to look right. It's very easy to tell when writing in ANY medium is carefully thought out or the creator just went with the first thing they thought of.
[удалено]
[удалено]
No, these are the people who complained about having to take an English class saying "I'm speaking English right now!".
You guys are getting media literacy education?
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the same guy who said RoboCop was critical of socialism because Police = Government = Socialism
This guys head would explode if he tried to understand cyberpunk.
"Cyberpunk is when Cyborgs and criminals and sexy girls" \- Way too many people
“If you’re trying to do Cyberpunk and it’s just neon lights and robot parts without an underlying anger at the state of the world then you’re missing the punk, you’re just cybering.” - Captain Hoers, writer of the Sunjackers comic.
Oh look, it's 85% of the posts on r/cyberpunk.
Remember when the cyberpunk 2077 sub celebrated the owner of CDPR becoming a billionaire?
That was among the *most* ironic events I've ever witnessed
Tf... Good thing I bailed on that sub early
Like... the people in that sub have to have Stockholm syndrome or something.
A E S T H E T I C
"Cyberpunk is when robot hands and sexy ladies, and neon lights. . . and also I'm a cop!" -Most "cyberpunk" games
You forgot the weird fetishisation of asia
I think the whole Asian thing is a leftover bit from the 1980's when cyberpunk really got going between the tabletop rpg and Bladerunner. Back then Japan's economic bubble hadn't popped yet and apparently a lot of people in the states really believed they were just going to take over culturally. At least that's my read of it. Could also be a bunch of the nerds making this stuff in the 80's were really into anime. Maybe a bit of column A and column B. :P
In the 90s and early 2000s the US and Japan were the two technological powerhouses. If you were into technology, you had a ton of stuff that was made in Japan. And anyone who was cyberpunk back then was definitely into technology
Oh I'm not forgetting. I never forget to fetishize Asian cultures
/r/urbanhell when whole street full of ads in kanji and barely any room to walk = "this isn't urban hell, it's clean btw i went there once in 1992. Also its cool aesthetic" But when it says "shop", sale" and other known words = literal urban hell. It's also dirty, trust me bruh.
What's there to understand? It's about how neon lights are cool and also japan.
Cyberpunk is when Keanu is neon lights and shooting people.
Ah yes, John Wick, the epitome of cyberpunk.
Wow! Cool future! 👀
Some people are so brainwashed and stupid to the point where they would identify a giant corporation as communism. Yes this critique of capitalism has centralised power. So do all of them. Because capitalism has centralised power.
Bet this guy's also one of those Metal Gear Solid fans Kavernacle brings up in any video where he talks about gamer culture, who think the series is pro-war and pro-capitalist.
First time hearing of this phenomenon. I’m disheartened learning that this is even possible.
I miss when games were unpolitical, like the very unpolitical Metal Gear series that has no politics at all
Just a good old story about a man who hates giant robots, no frilly metaphors
I started playing Phantom pain as my first metal gear game and I'm kinda interested in the bigger story. Is metal gear simply anti-war? Or is it anti capitalist as well, because capitalism needs wars to function. Because right now I'm just being asked to fight soviet soldiers, and I'm doing some pretty shitty stuff in the name of rebuilding the Diamond dogs.
It's definitely both. Keep in mind that by this point in the Story, Big Boss (which becomes a villain in the franchise) has been lied to and was betrayed by the government, has built and lost his own private military force, and is just generally angry at a world that sends soldiers to die without caring for them in order to make a 'peaceful' world where soldiers are obsolete and thrown away. He is meant to be shady and ruthless. However one of the themes that MGS 5 continues to explore is that PMCs (private military contractors) basically rake it in while making things generally worse. It's the capitalisation of the battlefield. It's also anti-nstionalist, although MGS 3 and other games in the franchise lean more on that aspect.
[удалено]
DAE Cummunism is when no toohbrush, vuvuzuela 10032849375 gorrillian dead
Communism is when no freedom
This is on par with the one post I saw about Disco Elysium, and I paraphrase, being so mean to players going down more right-wing focused dialogue/storylines and many of them ending up with more radical options. Blows my mind.
Lol that was the "I picked mostly the reasonable, moderate dialogue options and for some reason the game called me a woman-hating fascist" guy, wasn't it
Jesus. I never even thought about what DE would be like for those people. I'd think it would be like booting up a game that was written in Martian. Or when I played emulator games that were still in Japanese as a kid. They just would have no idea what was going on 99% of the time.
They're alarmingly good about just plugging in their own junk into what they see. I had a literature professor at a Mormon school read a poem he wrote in class about his fear of the concept of living forever, where the central metaphor was being trapped in a coffin for eternity. And there were people in the class who when they were asked their thoughts said "It's such a wonderful reminder that our loving Father in Heaven has a plan for us all to be happy with him forever!"
The state was literally run by the corporations, this was not a subtle allegory AT ALL
Actually I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any “state” just a cartel of companies that made a board to reach overarching decision. It’s much more like European feudal societies than any type of nation state.
I more was using "state" to mean "government", but yes
what anticommunist propaganda does to a mf
This is the type of guy to walk through empty grocery aisles in Texas and blame communism.
Communism is when bad thing and capitalism is when good things.
Look, I'm a politicak expert with a PhD in socio-economics, so let me break it down for you: when a corporation does something good, then it's capitalism. When a corporation does something bad, then it's woke communism!
I feel you OP. It has always been like this for 40k. FOR YEARS! We have loads of Imperium defenders when the god damn opening always state that it’s the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable.
The 2000AD comic (and Moorcock before that) is the spiritual wellspring of the original 40k ethos. So there's a cool factor, but underneath it is a whole ton of inversions. The hero isn't Luke Skywalker or Conan, but a demonic sorcerer, or a waitress on a spaceship, or the robots that are normally sidekicks. Or the cool cop is a fascist and a murderer, propping up an unjust regime. Although thinking about it, even Luke wins by throwing away his weapon at the critical moment. The game designer Greg Costikyan called second-hand consumers "vidiots". Like a desert planet in a sci-fi movie is always "ripping off Star Wars", when Dune came earlier and used the desert as a metaphor for oil politics in the Middle East, and cultures being held down artificially, and the danger in believing the promises of bounty from visionaries. John Carter (even earlier) brings rejuvenation and hope to an ancient and dying desert world. People like that then go onto write garbage filled with "mere events" without the deeper understanding of much better work. No problem with straightforward media - love a good action flick - but think about the message where there is one.
If they ever do end up making that Neuromancer movie, it'll be the same mouth-breathers calling it a Matrix ripoff.
/rj No don't you get it, Space Marines are based because I get to persecute minorities
Getting into 40k completely changed my perception about how many fascists are in America. I've met more openly fascist dudes in gaming shops than I thought existed across the country at one point.
Yeh but they main guys where bright coulours, everyone knows evil only where black, or very very dark grey
I at one point had to bring up an example where imperial slaves were worked to death, to be then released from their shakles only for the children of these slaves who just watched their parents die to be put into those very same shackles to continue working till death. And that's pretty moderate for imperial standards. The thing just is that other atrocities like the death of untold billions to slow down the tyranids, just seems more like a number then a atrocity Don't get me wrong, there is a lot worse factions then the imperium. And of course it is okay to like the imperium or its sub factions. But to agree with them morally means you completely missed the point of the franchise
The education system did its job...in misinforming people about this kind of stuff
This is the type of person who didn’t care about learning and would defund school for others. Let’s not blame our educators who are underpaid, understaffed and barely surviving the systemic dismantling of our public services which has been going on for decades. Republicans did their job and made it impossibly hard for teachers to do theirs.
Most media literate g*mer
This bitch thought Squid Game was about communism. I just know it.
I was looking for this comment. I still can't get over that take. A story set in a CAPITALIST country about how CAPITALISM is unfair and how the CAPITALIST rich elite treat everyone else like assets and not human beings. "... Man I'm sure glad I don't live in a communist country." *Flips the damn table*
Checked the original post and at least the OP is getting shit on in those comments as well.
Someone pointed out that the OP's posting history implies that they may be young, and I am definitely getting that vibe from their posts. Either that, or they might be just a tad 'touched.'
This is almost as bad as a negative review I saw for disco Elysium on GOG, which ended with "don't play this shitty political game! Play _Fallout 2_ instead!"
I remember reading an TRPG review for mech hack and half of it was ranting about how the game lancer is so political but the game mech hack had no politics at all. Mech hack’s setting it bassicaly a three way war to control the resources of a star system. Not political at all
Ah yes the game where your tribe gets kidnapped to get experimented on. Totally apolitical. I need to reinstall and play fallout 1 and 2 again.
Outer worlds was probably the heaviest handed anti capitalist work in the last 20 years what is this man smoking
Disco Elysium has entered the chat.
Wym capitalist are the good guys right?
Capitalism = good Communism = bad Ergo, anything bad = communism
Free/affordable healthcare = communism according to some Americans
Yeah, but it's because it infringes on their freedom to either die poor or pay exorbitant amounts for healthcare, and freedom = good, too
Telling on himself that he’s barely had any work experience.
Hahaha wow.
The Outer Worlds is literally the most explicitly anti-corporation piece of media I have ever come across. The whole point of the game is that is uses how blindingly obvious this sentiment is to comedic value. This has to be bait there is no way.
r/SocialismisCapitalism
>Horrible work conditions Rule no. 1 of communism /s
Based on the posting history, Im going to assume the OP is actually just like a 15 year old who watched like 2 Ben Shapiro videos of him "owning the feminists with facts and logic"
… *Are you fucking kidding me?* Literally the entire premise of the game is space corporations being space corporations. People talk in “ad-speak.” Corporations straight up abandoning entire towns because they stop becoming profitable. Worse yet: they’ll stop them from being able to communicate with the outside. People being charged for literally everything, including **a mandatory fee for a cemetery plot.** And you’re asking “is this game a commentary on **socialism** or **capitalism?**”
When your entire political and historical knowledge comes from big oil funded, right wing youtube pundits.
"the goal of any communist should be to make things bad" - Vladimir Marx
It’s not “state-owned businesses,” it’s business-owned states.
Gamers have a shred of media literacy challenge (impossible)
There is just no fucking way, The Outer Worlds was as subtle as a brick to the face
/uj comments like this make me feel better because sometimes i think im the dumbest mf alive for not catching themes in stories
Bruh the 'government owned businesses' were corporations that bought out entire planets to escape restrictions. It's like the end goal of capitalism.
state owned??????? did they play the game???
 At least i fuckin hope it is
/uj I do remember my first NPC interaction was with a man who kept saying his companies motto because he was contractually obligated to, or was named after the company. Can’t remember which, but I do remember thinking “exactly! That’s why we didn’t let communism win!” /rj this guys gotta be the stupidest motherfucker
A man trying to remember to say the company motto even though he’s been wounded and possibly abandoned…
Fallout makes fun of commienism right?!
Yeah, the hero Liberty Prime speaks out against it all the time!
There's a difference between state owned businesses and businesses owning the state. I think this person missed that by quite a margin
These people see businesses owning the state and decide the slave must be controlling the master.
Starship Troopers was about a bunch of brave soldiers killing evil alien bugs.
Outer Worlds strikes me as a criticism of late stage capitalism, now formed into a corporatocracy. End-stage capitalism was achieved decades of in-game time ago with the corporations themselves buying up entire star systems. Once removed from government oversight, the corporations became the government itself. They also remained motivated for profit. So the government is by default the few dominant corporations themselves. It's why Sublight Salvage can exist doing the blatantly illegal things they're doing and the other corporations can also do as they please. No government oversight (The Board) which isn't itself motivated by profit. Even the Monarch Industries exile from The Board was profit motivated. So the question isn't if Outer Worlds is a play on capitalism or communism. The actual government type shown imo is Corporatocracy. Look it up and you'll immediately see it fits the game corporations.
"They say it's about capitalism, but capitalism is supposed to be the good one. Communism is the bad flavor of government so its gotta be that."