discipline posted:
I think they're too violent and there's too much cursing. Generally, women are portrayed in an offensive way and they're basically a giant flashy waste of time.

Depends on what you focus on. Its just like movies or TV or books, etc. Some are pulp trash and others are better. There are lots of complex mapgames out there. I've spent some freetime this summer in the long 19th Century of Victoria II, learning what factors were used to unify Germany, how Manifest Destiny led to wars in North America, and so on.

As to women, some games portray them poorly, but some are fine. If you look at a Quake or Unreal Tournament, bloody and violent, the females are just as viable and equal as the male avatars. If you look at World of Warcraft, you have a world that's basically done away with sexism in the mythology and choosing male or female doesn't hinder you. It's not all bad.

discipline posted:
no what you watch or consume definitely has an impact aside from sitting on your butt for 6 hours. this is science fact and common sense.

In the real world we objectively see violence going down, though. Its not good to be obsessively gaming but at least those folks aren't bored and taking their pickup over the wrong side of the tracks to mess with the first minorities they come across like back in grandpa's day. I think there's something to be said for the old cliche about MMORPGs distracting what should have been the next generation of serial killers, too.

ilmdge posted:
i made a big post at wddp about how much i think video games are wrecking human development. i cant see it now but one of the things that bothers me about them (besides being addictive and sedentary and violent etc etc) is that they desocialize human beings and reduce communication to worthless unthinking ejaculations like pwned. the generation growing up with facebook and iphones and these games is going to have the worst ever social skills and will be individualistic as shit.

I agree about the social problems and my psychologist has talked about it too. I don't think every effect is a net negative, though. When the Area 51 arcade game was around I could fire my gun just before the creatures popped out I had the levels down so well, and my dad said something about it being a scheme by Ronald Reagan to create a generation of super reflexes. In terms of situational awareness, etc. I think video games have helped a lot. Also I know main-tanking for a raiding guild in WoW really helped my ability to multitask and evaluate tons of series of numbers in parallel at one time. There's a reason a good WoW players UI looks like a spreadsheet, because they're using all of that data at once. That's not even getting into the good Starcraft player mindset, which is like air traffic control in real time, with people capable of 200 or more discrete actions per minute. I don't think that level of response existed before video games except in the random gifted genius.

lungfish posted:
Nintendo still puts out lots of kid-friendly games with their popular franchises like Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, etc.

Yea people underestimate how popular the old-style games are. Mario still beats GTA and Call of Duty sales figures. Mario Kart Wii moved like 30+ million, New Super Mario Brothers was like 20 million each on Wii and DS. The Sims and Myst are like absolute tops in terms of PC game legends. A lot of media attention is given to the outrageous violent games but they just end up as trash in the dustbin of history, like Mortal Kombat I did.

watwatsen posted:
I realized that basically everything I, and most people our age, were playing was violent and imperialist and there was a serious lack of peaceful and constructive shit out there. Red Orchestra and various Paradox strategy games at the time, mostly. I suppose bayoneting fascists is constructive in one sense, but still. The military even one-upped themselves with their house-coded America's Army bullshit and opened million-dollar recruiting centers in suburban malls.

I disagree. I think the whole mainstream jingoist videogame is a fairly new phenomena. Having played since the 80s, I think the tradition has long been a lot more skeptical one of not trusting existing hierarchies and being skeptical. Deus Ex and Half Life etc. show you the government is up to no good, games like Diablo and some Final Fantasies and a million others tell you to be skeptical of the "Church" (whatever the large religious organization is in a video game, 9/10 times its corrupt and evil,) Bioshock was a takedown of Ayn Rand, and so on.

ilmdge posted:
*snip* Video games replace potentially healthy activity with sedentary activity. *snip*

Compared to an ideal world where everyone has friends and is out playing sports and stuff? Yea, video games are shit.

Compared to the reality of the last 50 years which is people sitting on their ass watching TV for hours or seeing trash movies? Video games are a big step up, honestly. At least the mind isn't literally turned off and rotting in the skull.

babyfinland posted:
anti-govt and anti-church are like the tenets of the angry right wing libertarian nerd political philosophy

Well the ideology is bunk but those sorts of feelings aren't totally misplaced. Also, libertarians tend to be free-market and trusting in big corporations, but there are tons and tons of anti-corporation video-games too. I think video games do a more frequent job in general of showing how large hierarchies collude and use violence unjustly than other popular media.

I mean, a game like Deus Ex made me dislike what the WTO/police forces were doing and what the leaders were doing <i>as an organization</i> but also made the point that many of the average grunts were just in it for a paycheck and not devoted fascists, so there was a moral decision about whether to avoid killing them or not. That's fairly complex compared to the usual anti-government movie or TV show where they betray the protagonist and everyone working there is fair game to hold hostage or slaughter in revenge.

babyfinland posted:
cool is this a hip hop youtube thread now?

start a new thread if you wanna post about that.

blinkandwheeze posted:

babyfinland posted:
cool is this a hip hop youtube thread now?

hah i'd rather it not be, those always end up embarrassing as fuck, but i posted the song i did cause it dealt specifically with the issues watwatsen raised (yes, even iran-contra) from the perspective of an artist entirely apart of what you could call "gangsta rap"

the dichotomy between rap that is "conscious" or "gangsta" has ALWAYS been a false one. ice cube, a figure more responsible than most for the rise of g-rap in the 90s, was a close associate with & consistent advocate of the NOI, for example.

baby finland is correct to an extent, in that what rap currently is huge in an entirely traditional sense, regarding chart placement etc, owes this to appealing to a broader, white, audience. but you ignore that the mainstream music industry has had a total disconnect with the hip-hop community for a very long time. for the past number of years it has been entirely possible to be a hugely popular artist while relying entirely on the autonomous grassroots networks of the mixtape game. you can see this with people like gucci mane or waka flocka that have reached a great deal of recognition despite building their careers entirely on independent & freely distributed music.

absolutely

germanjoey posted:
babyfinland posted:
cool is this a hip hop youtube thread now?


start a new thread if you wanna post about that.

can make general purpose youtube and music thread?

watwatsen posted:
Dead Prez own, agreed.

dead prez are okay. omali yeshitala owns.

watwatsen posted:
I'm not condemning anyone, I believe it was you who categorically rejected any and all substance use as counter-revolutionary

you condemn when you see the contemporary rap community as weak enough to simply be perverted by corporate influence, as defined only as plagued by ignorance, superficiality & misogyny. i only reject the use of psychotropic drugs as counterrevolutionary, a line inherited from activists like cleaver who you would do well to learn from.

watwatsen posted:
I never said nobody should sell drugs or rob or steal, those are the only avenues to survival for many of the most desperate and disadvantaged, who have no other alternatives. Not my place to judge. My only point was that it's disingenuous to hold up the path of "sell drugs and write rhymes, you'll make it and be rich like me" which is statistically much more likely to land one in the morgue or a privatized prison cell than it is to fame and wealth. Is that not peddling willing illusions and phantoms as you said? In the past, classic artists professed an alternate path to success (not that I'm pretending that the middle class still exists or that poor people regardless of race have any chance of making it in today's austere class warfare, mind you)

you say it is not your place to judge, yet you actively criticize the members of the communities effected by these societal ills for simply expressing their lifestyles, their identities, their viewpoints, there experiences? you expect young black youths to have identical ideologies and intentions to new york 5%ers from a time long gone, and are disappointed when they fail your ridiculous standards. killer mike never advocates drug dealing, is simply honest about his experiences with it, and harshly criticizes the systematic abuse that makes crime a necessity to many, yet you project onto him as a corrupting influence. the only thing mike advocates here is a good work ethic, the same this rakim advocated, the same thing chuck d advocated.

watwatsen posted:
BTW Public Enemy had 6 albums in the top 50, 5 were top 10 on the black charts, Eric B. and Rakim had 3 albums in the top 50, 4 in the top 10 black charts, while Paris had two singles in the top 20s on black charts.

i was talking about singles, the primary format on which hip-hop was built, and the format where a presence in mainstream culture can be actually established, through radio & television. but you make a fair point. even so, it was rare for these albums to breach the top 40 until these artists were accepted as legitimate cultural entities, no doubt influenced strongly by advocates in the white music press.

watwatsen posted:
For what it's worth, I myself have had a complete disconnect with the mainstream music industry since the mid-2000s. I've really never consumed read or listened to any "white music journalism" be it in print, TV, or the internet, I was introduced to classic hip hop by black friends down in Colorado in the early 2000s (up in Alaska nobody listens to real hip hop, just wiggers who like bullshit like ICP and tech nine)

if your only exposure is to "classic hip hop" & icp, how can you reasonably make any statements about its current quality?

watwatsen posted:
You both should check out Bronze Nazareth's "The Great Migration" from 2006 it's solid. He uses a similar line "like wolves licking blades in the cold" to address the same topic.

i have no interest in listening to dull "conscious" bullshit just cause i might agree with an artists political views

watwatsen posted:
P.S. autotune is whack bullshit

Qft, tired of autotone.