#capitalism is the real eldritch horror

[vysaika]

"How intriguing."

I'll admit that I startled a bit when I first heard the voice. It wasn't a harsh voice or anything, quite the opposite in fact, it had that smooth and mellow quality of an old-timey radio dj. But as I was theoretically the only one here, the fact that I heard a voice at all kinda made me jump a little, you know? And despite how pleasant and calming the voice sounded, after last night's adventures in trying to find the bathroom and then the door to my bedroom not being there anymore when I got out, I wasn't in any mood to be calmed.

"Oh, are you the one fucking with the doors?" I was probably just going nuts, but arguing with my own imagination wasn't exactly new ground for me anyway. I finished slurping down the milk from my cereal and flippantly fired back, "I need back into the bedroom so I can get changed for work. Mind putting that back where I left it? Thanks."

"None before have seen a fourth sunrise within our walls without succumbing to madness." The voice kept talking...which was a bit more surprising since when my imagination argues back it isn't usually audible. And it sounded like it was coming from the sink right behind me...but I refused to turn around.

I also didn't bother answering it. Couldn't spend the morning arguing with myself and risk being late. Not when I knew my manager was just looking for a legal excuse to fire me. Even with the rent as cheap as this place was, I had other bills to pay. Couldn't lose another job. Just go get changed and leave.

But when I finished plodding my way up the stairs to hopefully find my bedroom door where it was supposed to be...there was no hallway. It wasn't just the wrong hallway, that had happened a few times and I just kind of ignored it. This time there wasn't anything there at all. Nothing. No hall, no door, no room. The stairs ended in a goddamned wall.

I punched the goddamned wall. My fist made the right sound, my hand hurt as expected(this wasn't my first adventure in wall punching, I knew what the intersection of fist and wall felt and sounded like).

I looked back down. I was still at the top of the stairs. The livingroom was still down there where it was supposed to be. I turned back to the wall in front of me. Still there. Still a wall.

Huh. There's no way I was imagining this. Not sure if that made it better or worse.

I sat down on the top step, my back to the still very present and solid wall that was not supposed to be there, and addressed this mysterious voice, "Look, I can't go to work wearing my underwear and a ratty old shirt with more holes in it than a bowl of cheerios, alright? So if you want to talk about my descent into madness, we can do that after my shift because right now I need to get fucking dressed so I can afford to buy my meds tomorrow. So I'm gonna stand up, and this goddamned wall is going to be gone, and the goddamned hall that's supposed to be here will have my bedroom door in it." That's where my words stumbled a bit because I had no idea what to threaten a disembodied voice with so I just let it drop and hoped the point got across.

There was silence for a moment...I almost worried I had just been imagining things despite the feeling of the wall behind me, but then the voice returned. Again...right fucking behind me, like it was coming out of the wall.

"Is that the secret to your will? A dedication to your work, an ambition to succeed so powerful it eclipses all fear?"

Ambition? Dedication? I wanted to laugh, but honestly right now I was just too pissy. Slamming my elbow back into the wall, I snipped out, "what part of 'we can talk about it after my shift' was unclear? Give me back my fucking clothes you dumbass demon house!"

The voice suddenly sounded actually affronted, "We have not taken your clothing. We have never once interfered with your belongings."

I slammed my elbow back into the wall again, "well if you haven't taken them, why can't I get to them, huh? Oh no, you didn't ~take~ them," my own voice was starting to slip from anger, which only pissed me off more, "you've just taken away my ability to get to them which is totally different...except that it's not any fucking different at all! I want to change my clothes, but I can't because YOU aren't letting me get to them, therefor YOU have TAKEN my CLOTHES!"

As I was yelling at the house around me, I stood up and glared at the offending wall. And right in front of my eyes...the wall faded away. The hallway was there. There was...exactly one door in the entire hallway this time.

Refusing to let any shock at all of this show, I marched my way right to the door, threw it open...and saw my bedroom exactly as I had left it the night before. "Thank you," I forced out a very clipped thanks to the voice and also forced myself to not think about the fact that whatever it was could probably watch me change.

I brushed my hair, got dressed for work in record time, and got myself to the front door before turning around to face the inside of the house to address the voice one more time, "we can talk about what the hell you are and what you want from me and why I'm even here when I get back, alright?"

The house you just rented is beyond compensation - staircases and extra floors coming and going, rooms rotating and changing places. You just ignore it. On the fourth day, the eldritch horror informs you that you are the first to stay inside it for more than 72 hours without going insane.

[the-girl-from-another-place]

Magnus Protocol should do an episode about when the pharmacy won’t fill your prescription

[thecrabbybarista]

We should talk about The Lords in Black I'm gonna do that right now because I wanna talk about their trope subversion and symbolism and shit.

So obviously The Lords in Black are a subversion of Cosmic/Eldritch horror and I'm gonna explain how using an ant metaphor

So the classic ant metaphor for cosmic horror is to imagine that you're an ant encountering a piece of human technology, right? I believe it's usually a circuit board. The whole point is you're witnessing something deeply incomprehensible and unfamiliar.

The ant metaphor for the Lords in Black is: imagine you're an ant and a teenager starts burning you with a magnifying glass.

It's still incomprehensible, but not in the way the complexities of a circuit board is. If you were suddenly stricken by a scalding beam of light, the only way you could rationalize that is that it was an act of a god. You and your ant colony would invent and fear this god.

The Lords in Black each represent a kind of strange and inscrutable cruelty that the modern world offers, the cursed lasers that cut into our souls, from places we have no power over.

Wiggly is obviously the idol of capitalism. Animalistic desperation, commodity fetishization, and the exchange of money, products, and emotions. All of the things that the other Lords represent stem from elements of capitalism, hence why Wiggly is THE Lord in Black, the leader of his brothers. What Wiggly offers will never be enough. He is what leaves you always unsatisfied.

Nibbly is the idol of the consumption of human beings as products. Obsession with self image and presentability, trends of all kinds, and the beauty and fitness industries. People in the modern age are desperate to be consumable, and some would go to any lengths to do so. This is an attitude that especially impacts women, who feel that they need to wear make up every day just to earn respect. And when we feel the need to change to be respectable, the need to look appealing and to be consumable, the bourgeois eat well. Our quest to look special makes us like any other customer, filling. It's no mistake that the two leads of Honey Queen are women desperate to be noticed and respected. It makes them all the more eager to be eaten.

Tinky is the idol of infinity and repetition. Dead end jobs, middle class suburbia, and the inability to escape one's circumstances. It's no coincidence that the first time we see Tinky is at a wedding, a ceremony dedicated to eternal commitment, or that he's associated with CCRP, a company in which most of the workers do useless busywork all day. When you look at the life you have ahead of you, it can feel crushing. Will you ever have a real career to be proud of, or will you be stuck at this job until you die? Will you ever not struggle to make rent? Will you really love your spouse forever? What if you don't? Isn't it just easier to continue the routine than to address the problem? After Ted is driven to insanity by the Bastard's Box, after he discovers that he can't escape the person he's become, he becomes homeless, one of the most terrifying eternities a person can find themselves in, fully dependent on random acts of kindness to survive while your situation drives you further into insanity.

Blinky is the idol of the panopticon. Gossip, public drama, and unwanted attention. One of the first things Blinky does on screen is sexually objectify a girl who's fresh out of high school, and this plainly displays a consequence of living in a content driven world. There is constant scrutiny and interpretation given to your every action. At any moment, you could have over a thousand eyes on you, whether you want them there or not. The panopticon we live in captures us in moments of time, and turns the person we were in that moment into an object deserving anger, embarrassment, lust, admiration, judgement, or anything else a watcher might assign. But Blinky also targets another fear, the fear that we feel when we can't see the danger, and cannot protect ourselves or those we love. Alice's anxiety that Deb might cheat on her when she's not around are made manifest in Watcher World, and Bill's frustration at not being let into Alice's life are used against the family. We are inclined to both want and fear the panopticon. We hide, and we seek, and we expose.

Pokey is the idol of tyranny. Complacency, sedation, and obedience. The world revolves around the few and uses the many in service of this. We are all expected to fill some role in service to the rich, to work for a corporation and to buy the products of those corporations, and when we cannot fill these roles we are at risk of starving, or being kicked out of our homes. We must join them in their quest for profit, or die. But we must also accept their pacifiers or we will be driven insane. We must choose between complacency or despair in confronting our place in the world as a pawn, as an ant in the colony. Isn't it easier to accept the comforting lies? Your job is important. Corporations give people what they want. People in power deserve their power. People in power are using it well. We are happy. America is great.

These are the magnifying glasses that are being used to torment us, that we cannot make reason out of, that we've made dark gods out of. But this isn't the first time humanity has encountered scorching light from the heavens. When the people of ancient Greece witnessed burning rods of light, falling viciously from the heavens, they invented Zeus.

But we know where lightning comes from now. We know the science behind electricity and its place in the world. We know what keeps lightning away and what attracts it. We can protect ourselves from it.

But there's an important difference. Lightning is natural. It's existed long before we have and it will continue when we're gone.

The unorthodox cruelty of being alive today is not natural. We cannot logic our way into surviving it because it does not operate under a sound logic. But we can make things a little more bearable by focusing on what is sound, understandable and natural.

There is humanity. There are families friends and lovers who would go to the ends of earth to protect each other. As long as we have this humanity, we have hope.

That's why Miss Holloway's deal with the Lords erases her from living memory after her temporary deaths. To have the powers that she does she gave away the power most important to have under the Lord's rule: human connection. The only real thing we have left.

Alice and Bill escaped Blinky's manipulation through the love they have for each other

Emma survived the longest out of any character in tgwdlm because of the genuine hope Paul gave her of a better future

Lex snapped Tom out of Wiggly's control by reminding him of what his son really means to him

Ted couldn't escape Tinky's plan for him because he was too jaded to make a genuine connection with a woman.

Linda was eaten by Nibbly because she didn't have a loving connection with her father, because her father always made her believe that she was never good enough, because this mindset led her to take for granted the connections she did have in her life.

The world no longer cares about us. We have to care for each other. It's the only thing we have left

[justarandombrit]

Wrote all this down ages ago but forgot to post it anywhere, so here you go:

I was just thinking about how cool it'd be if every main character in TGWDLM was linked to one of the Lords In Black, and then I started properly considering it.

Pokey, Blinky and Tinky are all obvious. Paul, Bill and Ted. If you know anything about Hatchetfield lore you'll get this.

Then, I thought, “Well Nibbly doesn't really have any sort of ‘special guy’ like the others, since he just eats whoever becomes Honey Queen, without having any real attachment. I guess there's Roman Murray, but he's just a member of The Church Of The Starry Children, he's not specifically linked to Nibbly, and anyway, we're talking about TGWDLM characters.

So. Which main character of TGWDLM is most linked to Nibbly? Oh, I don't know, maybe THE ONE LITERALLY CALLED SWEETLY?!?!?!?

Yeah, I settled on Charlotte. It was mainly because of her last name, but I do think she fits Nibbly’s whole cutesy eldritch horror thing he has going on. Also pink.

That, of course, leaves one main character left for TGWDLM. Emma Perkins.

Even though this is only because I decided all the others first, I think it works pretty well. Emma, as we know, absolutely fucking despises capitalism. So, her being linked to the literal embodiment of capitalism actually makes a lot of sense.

Think how goddamn climactic it would be if Emma was the one to defeat Wiggly. Realistically speaking for the future of the series, if the Lords In Black ever do truly get defeated, it's either going to be by General MacNamara, Lex or Hannah, or, most likely, Miss Holloway or Webby, but imagine if it was Emma. Emma Perkins, who once described her business model for selling pot as “Raging against the capitalist patriarchy… in, like, a chill way. While still making tons of money”. So for Emma to ditch the “chill” part and LITERALLY FUCKING SHOOT CAPITALISM IN THE TENTACLES?!?!?!?!? That would fuck so hard

[evilminji]

Having seen it several times... I Wonder (<.< )

Amity Lore has a protective barrier/timeout zone for Bad And Naughty invaders called The Suburbs.

Short little street. Nice-ish houses, fully stocked with food and electricity. Quiet. Alone...

*sweats in introvert*

O-Okay but listen. Here me out! *twitch*

Fffffuck capitalism, man! That sounds SOOTHING! Let me in! LET ME IIIIIIIN!!!

How do I convince the arguably sentient City I would like to go to The Quiet Street?

Is this a monumentally bad idea? Probably! NEVER give the sentient-non-human and Probably Eldritch city control of your life! It loves you but is incapable of understanding your human intricacies! I GET that!

....but it would be so soothing. My autistic ass would have to be DRAGGED out.

TEXTBOOK "jokes on you! I'm in to this shit!" Material. Endless, soothing, repetition broken only by what I create? No messes I have to keep track off? Don't have to keep track of paperwork or scheduling things?

If I can negotiate being able to come a go? I fuckin LIVE there now.

I'll just politely ask Amity to let the internet through. Keep MY corner or the repetitious hell barrier away from the part that has Dirty, Dirty Crimial Crime People's in it.

I haunt the walls now ( 👁 👁)

Hmmm? (👁 👁 )

Oh! HIIIII DAAAANNYYYYYYYY (👁 👁 )/ I haunt the walls now! Yeah, Amity says it's "rent" I just gotta stand on my front walk and Stare(tm) at The Feds when they drive in.

Yeah. In a bathrobe. Really creepy like. I think my bathrobes too nice. I need a really ratty one. Any tips? Gotta pull that real "horror movie" vibe, ya know?

@hdgnj @stealingyourbones

[96percentdone]

capitalizing on cecilsweep to say that i absolutely love everyone's incredible designs for cecil they're all SO good you guys rule, but i want to throw my hat in the ring despite not being an artist.

we know that cecil canonically is a fashion disaster. and good for him. but. and hear me out now. what if cecil is a fashion disaster because if you put him in normal clothes. he just looks like a background character. like he is visually indistinct. the platonic ideal of 'some guy.'

like. just thinking about how kevin describes him in the most nondescript way possible. it would be fitting! or how cecil in at least the early narrative is clearly struggling with a sense of self to establish he really exists in some way he dresses like a trainwreck to feel real. even if he gets past that y'know it would just be habit.

and also. just just the icing on the cake. for me anyway. would be. cecil looks like just some guy, despite being one of the most babygirls of all time...and steve carlsberg looks like an eldritch horror combined with anime protagonist despite his personality being the most 'some guy' in the entire series god bless have a wonderful night.

[silverskye13]

hi! whats your opinion of / perspective on NITW?

It's pretty! It's poignant. It hit a lot harder eight years ago when I was terrified of being alive, but it still drives some points home.

I remember playing it for the first time and crying because I had just had my biggest mental breakdown [major depression] of my life and I felt incredibly seen by this silly little cat who Just Wanted Things To Be Normal in a world that increasingly tried to tell them that normal hadn't existed for years, and maybe would never exist, and maybe also never had.

It's cosmic/lovecraftian/eldritch horror at its best and most interesting, when the monster isn't a monster, it's the things we can't possibly understand. A cult to the "old American ways of living" that will kill to maintain a status quo that doesn't exist, and a protagonist who "just wants things to be the way they were when everything was good" who is lost in the exact same backwards nostalgia that makes the cult think it's right. A universe that literally confronts you and says it doesn't care, that people keep calling it "god" and that it couldn't care less about gods and people, it just is, and a protagonist who is desperately searching for meaning and who is begging god to give them answers that don't exist, because god in that literal human Knowable sense doesn't exist, and if it did, it couldn't give you meaning when you can't find it yourselr. The idea of the end of the world, of how something Hungry and Terrible is waiting to devour everything, and how the town they're living in has been devoured year by year by forces outside their control that have nothing to do with Unknowable Maliciousness and everything to do with capitalism and union busting.

It's a game that sat down an analyzed why people like small town horror: because it looks at big, impossibly large existential fears and breaks them down into interpersonal relationships and your local church and a poetry club and the parts of your town that are still alive even though you keep saying it's dead, and a local graveyard where the poor graves are dug on a sinkhole and you have to pray mom didn't get washed down the river with the flood, because people in power have no incentive to care, so you have to.

The protagonist, Mae, is an asshole because she's young and scared and doesn't know what "real problems" are because she's been sheltered from them her whole life. But now she's an adult and her problems are real, not because she's facing consequences -- though she does -- but because she can feel the peer pressure of everyone she knows growing up and facing their consequences and how much they're growing because of that while she stays stagnant. It's about her reconnecting with friends, mourning the loss of the way their relationships were and forging on ahead to the new ways those relationships are changing. It's about feeling genuinely bad that change happens and also figuring out how to cope with the fact that change is inevitable.

I'm no longer the target audience for the story. I used to be, but now I'm old enough to hate the character traits in Mae I used to deeply empathize with. But that doesn't make it unenjoyable. Now I empathize with her parents, or Angus who's Trying To Be Responsible, or Bea who had to grow up because she had no choice [we never have a choice about that in the end I think, only How we grow up exactly] and it's interesting to see that shift. And I feel the nostalgia I still felt when I played the game the first time, and I recognize the peril in it, because the game's point at the end of the day is that nostalgia is good only as an enjoyed taste and never as intentional stagnation. And the fact that Mae, for the entire plot, is stuck moving side to side, always progressing towards the left of the screen, backwards, until the end of the game where she ends it walking right, to the edge of town, to a bridge, where she sits and enjoys the sunset. And she's still in her hometown but she still also somehow moved forward.

The game is ultimately about a universe that doesn't care, and people who do, and it's very hopeful when it tries to be.

Also there's a mini game where you steal pretzels in a calzone shop to feed baby rats and make a rat army and if that's not a Vibe I don't know what is.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Doctor Who: 73 Yards Review. Short Version: WHAT?

So, this review’s late because there’s not a lot to actually say about 73 Yards. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad episode, per se, but it definitely had a certain filler-y quality to it. The Doctor steps on a witchy string thing and vanishes because of supernatural nonsense, leaving Ruby to deal with a creepy woman in black who’s always exactly 73 yards away from her: a sort of manifestation bound to her at a set distance. Other people can approach the woman, but if they speak to her, she tells them something and they run away in terror, after which point they refuse to even speak to Ruby again, meaning she can’t get any useful information on the spectre or entity or whatever-the-fuck-she-is. And, to be honest, it’s all pretty effective and spooky: a good premise for a horror story that works well for as long as its happening. The problem is that there’s very little substance under the hood.

Oh, there’s some chaff about a psychotic Prime Minister planning to start a nuclear war, which Ruby has to fix by positioning herself 73 yards from the fellow so her mysterious stalker will appear besides him and terrify him into resigning from office. I’m not even sure that counts as a spoiler because it just kinda happens and then the episode continues to putter along, following the course of Ruby’s life as she tries to live without the Doctor and with her creepy shadow. Almost as though none of it mattered even slightly.

At the end of the episode, we finally get an explanation for the woman in black. See, it turns out it was Ruby herself all along! That is to say, when Ruby’s an old woman and on her death bed, the entity touches her and she becomes the entity, sent back in time to the moment she first appeared- or rather, just a few seconds earlier- so she can fix the timeline and stop the Doctor stepping on the witchy thing. As explanations go, it’s very Who-ish: a riff on classic sci-fi tropes with a twist. But, er, it doesn’t seem to match with what we know about the Mysterious Woman (fuck it, I’m just going to start using capitals for the sake of clarity, even if they were, in no sense, earned). I mean, why would Ruby’s older self scare away everyone Ruby knows and loves, alienating her and preventing her from living her life with any kind of support network? Also, how? I mean, Ruby’s old as balls by the end of this decade-spanning episode, but she’s not an eldritch, Lovecraftian horror. Sure, she’s probably seen some shit, but she doesn’t know any deep, dark cosmic secrets that would send everyone around her running for the hills. She’s just a nice old lady whose come in stuck in time, Slaughterhouse 5-stylee. The explanation we’re ultimately given therefore feels like it’s for a completely different set of events to the ones we saw. I’d have been fine with the Mysterious Woman being left completely unexplained, like the thing in the David Tennant episode Midnight (in which the best we get is vague theories and reckons from the tormented characters), and I’d have been equally fine with a full, satisfying explanation. This ‘explanation that doesn’t make sense’ thing… yeah, I’m not pleased. It feels like an attempt to resolve the episode while deliberately laying down a mystery at the same time, but it’s a slapdash way of doing it; an ill-fated compromise between true unknowability and a real resolution. I wasn’t a fan.

Another minor complaint: what does this episode have against the Welsh? When Ruby first realises she’s being stalked by the Mysterious Woman, she flees to a little Welsh pub and the locals use it as a chance to mock her relentlessly. They act like their steeped in the supernatural and don’t know about banking apps (for some reason), and then accuse Ruby of racism when she takes them at face value and believes them. They refuse to take the fact she has a potentially dangerous stalker seriously and diminish the validity of her dread at every turn, offering no help whatsoever. Later, the evil Prime Minister is also from Wales. Er, what? Why is every Welsh person in this episode an irredeemable cunt? I’ve been to Wales. Broadly speaking, the people are pretty nice, if a natz more sarcastic than the UK average. I don’t get what 73 Yards’ damage is.

So yeah: that’s the episode. A spooky story undermined by its own explanation and inexplicable anti-Welsh racism. Go figure. On the plus side, the upcoming instalment promises a scathing critique of social media and giant slugs, so that ought to be good for a laugh.

EDIT: someone just replied to point out that Russel T. Davies is, himself, Welsh. For those of you who don't read the comments, I figured I'd add this edit-y bit. I mean, I don't know if it contextualises the show's weirdly hostile portrayal of Wales or just makes it more baffling, but it seems like important information for an unbiased reviewer to provide and an informed reader to have. So there ya go. RTD is Welsh and this episode, written by RTD, portrays the Welsh as unreasonable nutters. Make of that what you will.

[tothepointofinsanity]

Generic favourite video games list (new favourites + all time) because my friends (and Twitter) enticed me into doing it. I feel as though looking at this, it's pretty clear I don't play enough games. Luckily, I got some recommendations, so I'm excited for the holidays where I can Do Nothing and Game again. Below are some of my notes, but there is one mention of child death and some spoilers for these games, so please be careful.

Notes:

• There were some others I didn't add but also liked, such as Alice: Madness Returns, Little Misfortune, Nun Massacre, Babysitter Bloodbath, Mad Father and Paranormal HK.

• Detention and Devotion both had immense impact on me back then because it was the first time I saw others interact with a Chinese game on mainstream media. It was interesting to see how others reacted to the cultural aspects and storytelling of these two games, and it was actually my first ever look at something that made me feel represented, in a way. Detention also helped me learn about Taiwanese history. On this list, Devotion is the scariest horror game to me. It wasn't about monsters or evil spirits that scared me. It was the protagonist's desperation and obsession tied in with religious themes that ultimately killed his child which made me upset and haunted until even now. Horror based in reality feels tangible. It's very real. I've seen such incidents occur in this culture. Even now, I relate to the child of the story: a girl with panic attacks overlooked.

• Nowhere, MI is a demo game that is still continued being worked on by the developer. However, the demo was fulfilling and very fun. Also, the protagonist is a weirdo that wields a cool sentient gun.

• Underworld Capital Incident wasn't really that old of a game, but the graphics make it seem that way. It's quite niche, but has a unique premise where you play as one of Hell's escort demons. I wish it was more popular.

• Bloodborne is on this list but not Dark Souls solely because Bloodborne has Micolash.

• Taylor Swietanski games (caged bird don't fly; that night steeped by blood river) are pieces of media that will be projected onto a sloppy PowerPoint slide on the day of my funeral. My threshold for what constitutes as boring is very different from the common soldiery because while I may not know what these games are about, the music is nice and it makes me feel something.

• Pearl grabber (made by yatoimtop, the same dev behind Greener Grass Awaits) was sadly not in the database because if it had been, I would have added it.

• Gohome was a weird weird game that combines surreal and horror elements into the familiarity of walking back home. This is similar to "Walk" as well. In both games, strange eldritch beings stalk you. I think I like games that are based on how a home is no longer a home once invaded by your own presence. There's something ironic about it.

[nemxricultrix]

( Random out of pocket late night thought/idea/somethingGenshin Impact horror au where the power of the Vision starts to corrupt the users, leading to painful transfiguration the more they use it. The Archons, though not wielders, have to be extra careful as they're direct conduits.... Except for Furina, who was given her Vision by the Hydro Dragon Sovereign Neuvilette. Her, along with The Traveler+Paimon, and maybe a few others have to try to find the cause of the corruption before the world is destroyed by those utterly lost. Among the survivor party I'm thinking Mona would be there, since her Vision is pretty much just a fancy trinket and she's actually using real fuck off Capital M Magic. Maybe also Cloud Retainer/Xianyun, given she's an Adeptus and thus doesn't necessarily need one to be powerful.

it's not much of a zombie apocalypse, more eldritch horror as the Heavenly Principles are dead and The Abyss has won?

Idk this was a Random Brainworm from a week ago)

[elexuscal]

dashboard osmosis game: Wolf 359 and The Magnus Archives

Wolf 359

Is it dashboard osmosis as much as 'stuff you've said in the group chat' osmosis? Regardless...

It's a narrative driven podcast

There's a space station

I think the space station has an AI and its name is Athena? Possibly Hestia. Greek goddess, regardless

They're fighting against. capitalism?

i think one character gets tortured and brainwashed

possibly the Wolf 359 itself is a spaceship?

lesbians?

okay yeah i don't have much

The Magnus Archives

okay i have actually listened to like 1-3 episodes of this back in 2020. not sure why i fell off exactly? possibly just i was Really Stressed Back Then (can't imagine why) and not in the mood for horror

regardless, i have picked up quite a bit

horror podcast

anthology style of a guy, John Sims, reading aloud testimonies of people who have had brushes with the supernatural

(for extra confusion, John Sims is also the name of one of the shows writers)

John Sims works for like the British SCP Foundation, but like, if it was incredibly underfunded and worked out of a closet

John Sims always looks very dapper with a suit and tie in fanart, but i'm not sure if that's canon or just Sexymanification

John has a romance i'm 95% sure is canon with a cute plump blond guy in a sweater vest

pretty sure the cute plump guy gets possessed at some point?

a lot of people get possessed

at first John thinks most of these stories are totally made up by people drunk or hallucinating or whatever. 'maybe magic maybe mundane' yadda yadda

spoilers: most of them are real

and a lot of them seem to be aspects of these eldritch abominations which are personifcations of Large Scale ideas?

i'll confess i can't name any of them off hand but if i saw them i'd recognise them

names like The Empty and The Wet and The Hungry or whatever

something about a big hole of meat

there's a big fight against an apocalypses at the end

i assume the good guys win but i don't know for sure. probably someone has to sacrifice themselves and it's very sad

[obscurecharactershowdown]

Group E Round 1

[image ID: the first image is of Zinn, a creature made of a mass of dark tendrils and many eyes. the second image is of Victor Spooky, a noir detective wearing a red and purple fedora and purple trench coat, that dissolves into red and purple smoke around him. end ID]

Zinn

(Note: The author mostly uses it/its pronouns to refer to Zinn but have used 'he' and 'they' a couple times.) Zinn is a creature called a Monstrum who is a type of alien from a world made out of light. Due to unknown circumstances their universe was breeched by enemies who devoured their peaceful existence. In turn, the Monstrum were exiled and stripped of their forms. Somehow, Zinn ended up in a Steampunk adjacent world and came to be lovers with a powerful human women called the Shaman Empress. Their relationship, while described as tender, may have been one sided. Zinn loved her dearly, only referring to her as "The Beloved' but it is implied that she used it for her own deeds/gaining knowledge and power. Monstrum drain energy from anything they touch so they are incompatible with the mortal realm. Zinn inhabits the Shaman Empress's bloodline and is passed down through generations to minimize(?) damages. Eventually Zinn gets passed down to the main character who. in simple terms, as not to get sidetracked, is a Girlboss, capital G. She is a descendant of the Shaman Empress, technically making them blood family. Which is kind of hillarious. Imagine this tentacle creature being like "Hello. Yes I am your great-grandfather. Let us kill and consume flesh". They pick up a rag tack bunch of other characters( not limited to a necromancer cat, a psychic kitsune child, a brooding guy with crow wings, gay furry tiger pirates) and they are so found family… image link Zinn, despite not being too well-versed in human culture cares for them all the same. It has so many funny interactions with the cast, particularly the Kitsune girl, Kippa (as it does not understand her cheerful and positive attitude). Examples: -https://64.media.tumblr.com/ab33f45b9506033cdec6a6a2a9d55655/baa027673994792a-2d/s1280x1920/fb57ea6a550181e49d588a60473f050fac30300d.pnj -https://64.media.tumblr.com/41f0c01fa1e8c4e9e7dda5bcb589f24d/38ba370cd51ca323-59/s1280x1920/c96e0a11d0c0ab8b92b14cbebccd276c0e2c3c8a.jpg -https://64.media.tumblr.com/4cc511e4b365359842c0a9825dc416d5/e4f6cb4faa1aa13d-8e/s1280x1920/9f0ca9abdb590fdaca5c7a93e230a79bfe32fd2d.jpg -https://64.media.tumblr.com/c32edb01ada4ebf159bbb70b5a00c36c/3bca30f2ba708ae4-c3/s1280x1920/6f04c20b2fe1e47c0898b513e71772f99581ea13.jpg Zinn also has that tragic sibling swag, accidentally killing its sibling. It has so much trauma, but for a space-alien-god is very withdrawn and weary of the world. Although it tends to act cryptic and not reveal too much. It seems like it used to be elitist but with time has come to appreciate the mortal world although it would never admit it outloud. ANYWAY. VOTE FOR THIS PATHETIC HORROR OF GUY. Monsterfuckers and monsterfriends assemble! (and go read Monstress! There are many queer characters and the lead is sapphic! also cool monsters, cool worldbuilding, and real world cultural references) TLDR: Its an eldritch god who misses its dead wife :( / There is something very wrong with them (affectionate)

Detective Victor Spooky

Spooky's game still only has a demo, so there isn't much for me to say at the moment, but he's still a very interesting character. At some point in his life, he died of unknown causes leading him to become a ghost. Despite that, he still continues his detective work, though in the game he gets a supernatural case. He's acts serious, but without his clothing, his appearance is actually just a typical simple ghost design. He talks like your typical, charismatic, noir protagonist, but the fact that he's a ghost paired with the worldbuilding and concept makes him pretty unique.

[lynnaquinn]

My Thoughts on the current emergency

Woke up this morning to see a long list of posts about mutual aid scammers. These always make my stomach drop because I'm always scared my intentions are misread. Especially right now, with our current need. (I guess this is going to be a full thread, buckle in.) We are raising for a move, one that is a serious emergency as if we sign the new lease, we won't have any way to afford things such as food as both me and my wife are disabled. My mom offered my wife and I a place to live, we just have to figure out the how Originally the plan was to have my uncle with a U-Haul come down, but as my uncle and I are the only two without a weight limit and both of us suffer from chronic pain issues (part of why I'm disabled,) this is far from a viable option, so we started to call around to movers Here is the thing, our lease ends at the beginning of July, this is a huge time for moving and companies up there rates at this point of time...but luckily we found one that reduced cost because of my wife and my disabilities. We will be going into a situation that is actually sustainable though, a light at the end of a tunnel of stress, financial horror, and the nightmare of being disabled in a late stage capitalistic society. But unfortunately all things cost. So I've been verbal about what's been going on (as per usual) and how we saw a huge uptick in people moving from our complex. Lot's of people can't afford the new lease that is required of us. How this looks to us is that we either starve or face homelessness unless we go through with the move; this doesn't even include the fact of the safety risks on us where we are currently living (long story, I explain it all the time in my streams.)As the deadline creeps closer and closer, fear and anxiety has destroyed my sleep...I was fortunate last night and actually got 4-5 hours...the past few nights have been 3 hours non-consecutive sleep...this whole thing is flaring up my insomnia. All I can do is think of the future, when we get there, make up rewards for myself that I probably will never get just to keep me from falling into a deep pit of despair. All this accumulated from being in survival mode for a few years now...I feel it in my body...it aches, I can't concentrate on anything except the move, I'm scatter brained to a level that even I'm not used to...but this emergency HAS to be funded...I'm not going to starve or be homeless again.... So I try and push myself harder and harder...seeing the impossibility of this task while still needing to figure out basic costs...I'm not blind to the sheer size of this task, the sheer amount that is needed...it's almost an eldritch horror to me 4 hours of sleep to wake up in a panic, where my brain is just telling me to stream more, I haven't even broken enough for the U-Haul...how could I afford the option that actually takes our disabilities into consideration... Nothing boxed yet because I am frozen in fear....because I face an existential horror that is the no win situation. Only thing keeping me moving is that light at the end...the fake rewards I tell myself, the narrative that everything will be better...It keeps me moving to that goal while inside it feels like I'm slowly turning to stone; my pain and my cognitive issues becoming so bad that I am having troubles even standing upright...but I must push forward...I hear myself when I say the total...mention the $4k, mention how I need to raise the down payment early on, mention the still need for basic necessities that a fix income hasn't allowed us all the while seeing a scammer breaking people's trust while our emergency exists I'm so scared with everything...this situation is consuming me more than anyone can know just by talking to me... it's horrifying, like I've peered into the abyss and the ancient evil that is capitalism blinked...how can I keep on moving forward? But in the end, I have to, I have no option. I can get my wife and I out of this hell, out of the constant state of no real proteins only starches, out of having to choose veggies for one day or pasta/ramen for a week, out of constantly looking over our shoulders... All it took was our landlord demanding us the impossible, demanding us to gather blood from the stone. Giving us the impossible task or forcing us to face a herculean task of raising what we have to in two months time...But I look, realize that this will be the chance for my wife and I to get back onto hormones, to put out the content we want, to actually eat balanced meals instead of noodles or frozen burritos and bologna... To be able to budget because the difference between payout and SSI won't be pennies in our account. A chance to be able to focus on something other than the next meal...So I hold out hope...but I'm frozen with fear...paralyzed at the giant before me...scared of what will happen if I fail...realizing that failure means a depth I've never fallen into...I can't fail...I need to get through this.. But every morning...fear grips me as I scroll...seeing everyone who needs help...seeing a sea of voices...then seeing people who are using this to hurt others. The shadow of it all is oppressive. I can't breath due to fear. I can't even stand straight up...We need to raise this money, we need to make it to my mom's house...we need to survive. This move will save us.3 years of hell almost over...soon we can breath, all we have to do is slay a giant. How can we even succeed?6am and I'm awake and typing this...my inner thoughts waxed poetic about a fucked situation. But everything will be better once we get there, our quest errant finished. A life where we can do the things because I want to, not because we need to...where we can eat..If you want to help and can, my PayPal is 27count@gmail.com and my CashApp is $lynnaquinn We need to use my CashApp and not Naz' because of her disability...just to be safe. It's a lot of money, but I think we can persevere over this giant, we can slay this horror. (copied/pasted from my Tweet this morning.)

[jocielynn-blog]

My feelings on my current emergency.

Woke up this morning to see a long list of posts about mutual aid scammers. These always make my stomach drop because I'm always scared my intentions are misread. Especially right now, with our current need. (I guess this is going to be a full thread, buckle in.) We are raising for a move, one that is a serious emergency as if we sign the new lease, we won't have any way to afford things such as food as both me and my wife are disabled. My mom offered my wife and I a place to live, we just have to figure out the how Originally the plan was to have my uncle with a U-Haul come down, but as my uncle and I are the only two without a weight limit and both of us suffer from chronic pain issues (part of why I'm disabled,) this is far from a viable option, so we started to call around to movers Here is the thing, our lease ends at the beginning of July, this is a huge time for moving and companies up there rates at this point of time...but luckily we found one that reduced cost because of my wife and my disabilities. We will be going into a situation that is actually sustainable though, a light at the end of a tunnel of stress, financial horror, and the nightmare of being disabled in a late stage capitalistic society. But unfortunately all things cost. So I've been verbal about what's been going on (as per usual) and how we saw a huge uptick in people moving from our complex. Lot's of people can't afford the new lease that is required of us. How this looks to us is that we either starve or face homelessness unless we go through with the move; this doesn't even include the fact of the safety risks on us where we are currently living (long story, I explain it all the time in my streams.)As the deadline creeps closer and closer, fear and anxiety has destroyed my sleep...I was fortunate last night and actually got 4-5 hours...the past few nights have been 3 hours non-consecutive sleep...this whole thing is flaring up my insomnia. All I can do is think of the future, when we get there, make up rewards for myself that I probably will never get just to keep me from falling into a deep pit of despair. All this accumulated from being in survival mode for a few years now...I feel it in my body...it aches, I can't concentrate on anything except the move, I'm scatter brained to a level that even I'm not used to...but this emergency HAS to be funded...I'm not going to starve or be homeless again.... So I try and push myself harder and harder...seeing the impossibility of this task while still needing to figure out basic costs...I'm not blind to the sheer size of this task, the sheer amount that is needed...it's almost an eldritch horror to me 4 hours of sleep to wake up in a panic, where my brain is just telling me to stream more, I haven't even broken enough for the U-Haul...how could I afford the option that actually takes our disabilities into consideration... Nothing boxed yet because I am frozen in fear....because I face an existential horror that is the no win situation. Only thing keeping me moving is that light at the end...the fake rewards I tell myself, the narrative that everything will be better...It keeps me moving to that goal while inside it feels like I'm slowly turning to stone; my pain and my cognitive issues becoming so bad that I am having troubles even standing upright...but I must push forward...I hear myself when I say the total...mention the $4k, mention how I need to raise the down payment early on, mention the still need for basic necessities that a fix income hasn't allowed us all the while seeing a scammer breaking people's trust while our emergency exists I'm so scared with everything...this situation is consuming me more than anyone can know just by talking to me... it's horrifying, like I've peered into the abyss and the ancient evil that is capitalism blinked...how can I keep on moving forward? But in the end, I have to, I have no option. I can get my wife and I out of this hell, out of the constant state of no real proteins only starches, out of having to choose veggies for one day or pasta/ramen for a week, out of constantly looking over our shoulders... All it took was our landlord demanding us the impossible, demanding us to gather blood from the stone. Giving us the impossible task or forcing us to face a herculean task of raising what we have to in two months time...But I look, realize that this will be the chance for my wife and I to get back onto hormones, to put out the content we want, to actually eat balanced meals instead of noodles or frozen burritos and bologna... To be able to budget because the difference between payout and SSI won't be pennies in our account. A chance to be able to focus on something other than the next meal...So I hold out hope...but I'm frozen with fear...paralyzed at the giant before me...scared of what will happen if I fail...realizing that failure means a depth I've never fallen into...I can't fail...I need to get through this.. But every morning...fear grips me as I scroll...seeing everyone who needs help...seeing a sea of voices...then seeing people who are using this to hurt others. The shadow of it all is oppressive. I can't breath due to fear. I can't even stand straight up...We need to raise this money, we need to make it to my mom's house...we need to survive. This move will save us.3 years of hell almost over...soon we can breath, all we have to do is slay a giant. How can we even succeed?6am and I'm awake and typing this...my inner thoughts waxed poetic about a fucked situation. But everything will be better once we get there, our quest errant finished. A life where we can do the things because I want to, not because we need to...where we can eat..If you want to help and can, my PayPal is 27count@gmail.com and my CashApp is $lynnaquinn We need to use my CashApp and not Naz' because of her disability...just to be safe. It's a lot of money, but I think we can persevere over this giant, we can slay this horror. (copied/pasted from my Tweet this morning.)

[bleuberries-and-video-games]

The best part about religious trauma, is that you still reciprocate the same violence you were taught and that was done to you, and you don't actually do anything to fight the real issue that hurts you in the first place.

Yes please continue to blame the religion, get angry at the book, feel Vindicated when you look down at other people for following a religion you have left. It's not like you need to confront those emotions and actually work through them, it's not like it's just any other trauma, it's special, it's religious trauma, it gets an exemption from working through your shit, you get to continue to be fucking mad and have an unhealthy fixation on it.

You know what, you're right, in fact you're perfectly right, your specific amalgamations of crystals and cards and Loosely tied together white supremacist jargon from Helena blavatsky or a fetishization of logic and antitheism so irrational that calling it logic is an insult to logic itself totally doesn't have an equally massive and unquestionably bad body count, or ties to racism so unapologetically evil that it worked in tandem with Christianity to contribute to islamophobia in the 2000s and 2010s.

It's not like you can trace lines directly from New Age bullshit Magic and new atheist bullshit directly to the current Far Right movement in the United States that has a body count that is counting and currently is weathering away at trans rights both in the United States and the United Kingdom and across the world. Just religion, organized religion is the problem, that's all it is, and your religious trauma totally justifies you being this pissed and blaming one specific institution as opposed to the amalgamation of systems and institutions wielded by people with capital and Power.

Yes your religious trauma totally allows you to be a piece of shit, simply because it hurt you.

Don't ever work through your problems, don't ever confront it or face it or deconstruct the bullshit you were taught. It's entirely the book, it's entirely the religion, it's not the unique intersection of capitalism, racism, imperialism, sexism, and their abuse of religious institutions to maintain their power, it's not like government or Social Clubs and spaces. Religions different, religions archaic, religion is the problem, and once we get rid of religion everything else falls apart. It's not like in the absence of organized religion in various groups, there's a distinct power vacuum that needs to be filled by something, and very often is by very hostile colds that have less predictable behaviors that often times have larger ramifications, like the incel movement, or Mystic fascism, or Theocratic fascism, or New Age fascism, it's not like these things suddenly get filled the moment you remove them, that's not how society works, when you get rid of something it's gone forever, forever, and that's it! It's not like we have evidence that social institutions, and their current establishment bleed into the Next Generation and it requires a constant dismantling and work to undo.

No it's the book.

Keep blaming the heretics, your Evangelical bullshit is showing.

Oh and just for the record I have my own religious trauma. I've been through shit too. I was you once. I asked questions, felt wrong, didn't believe what they were touting, and felt like it was utter bullshit, and I was fortunate and privileged enough to have a support network that helped me through things and showed me that the world was not black and white, and that what they were saying was not the end of it.

It's not that religion is evil, it's that it's been weaponized against us, like every liberatory Force we've had, it's been co-opted by machinations Beyond us, Eldritch Horrors that desire to divide and alienate us. You are not just traumatized by a book or a priest, you felt abandoned by a community alienated from you, isolated and alone, pained and unable to ask for help. And it wasn't the religion that said you couldn't ask for help, no God in Heaven Nor on Earth what deny the aid or liberation of their people. No the people who had power over you did social, fiscal, and cultural capital.

God did not abandon you and you didn't abandon God, they abandoned God and told you they hadn't. They listened to your questions and made you feel comfortable, got you to trust and confide in them, and then used that against you. It doesn't matter how far you run, doesn't matter where you go or what institution you put your Faith or power or person behind, there will always be people who do that, it's not exclusive to religion and it's not unique to religion and it's not just as bad in religion, it's just more hypocritical in it, and seen as more acceptable in those other spaces. It's part of politics to get people to trust you, in capitalism manipulation is King, in racism alienation and division is the goal, in sexism creating class systems is tantamount, and imperialism is dividing up the world into various little collections of land, and conquering them, and subjugating their people. Isn't it strange how we had, for thousands of years, organized but localized religions, somewhat similar to each other or related over larger regions, and then suddenly with the Advent of power into capital, in the creation and establishment of Nations, when power mattered more than people, those Unique Systems of Oppression seem to utilize it, cut it to pieces and put it back together as a Frankenstein abomination? Isn't it strange how something that brought people together was used to divide them up Suddenly, mark them as though they were monsters? Isn't it strange or something so fulfilling suddenly became so evil really quickly? How, when it was changed to justify some sort of power or some person sort of validity, it suddenly became a place where you were subjugated?

Human spirituality and religion as an institution are not the sole reason for why people are subjugated, the reason why it's tied so deeply to the history of religion is because religion was one of the first institutions to be weaponized against people. Who would have thought that one of the oldest things would have some of the longest history of being weaponized? It's not like we can find that happening in sex work, and how despite sex workers being a vital part of society, their mere existence is weaponized against them and has historically been for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

It's almost as if religions can change their intentions but racism can't, and religions can renew or alter or learn and grow, but sexism can't. There is such a thing as Liberation through theological examination, there is no Enlightenment through sexist philosophies and ideas, nor Liberation through racism.

Your trauma is valid, the things you faced hurt you, but god, the book, your belief didn't fail you, and the thing you held dear and you were told to lift up did not betray you, people did. The priest did, your youth Minister did, your choir teacher, one of the elders or apostles, your faith leaders did, the missionaries did. They, people, failed you. They did so wrapping it in a Bible, handing you a Quran, they did it reciting passages and singing hymns, they wrapped you in blankets that you didn't want, and hurt you in ways I cannot express, they didn't listen, and they should have. Some out of ignorance, many out of apathy, and many out of malevolence. And the only path forward is to atone, to reconcile, do not forgive the people who did wrong, but not punish the people who didn't. To build back whatever trust was lost, and fight the actual issue which is power, capital, true and utter strife. Words of Peace didn't fail you, those hungry for power, divided from you, made to hate you or use you and abuse you, they failed you.

Trauma makes it scary, makes harrowing, makes painful that which is mundane or truly an effective. It makes a glass of water scary, the humming of a tune a nightmare, the motion of a hand a flashback. The bitter pill of trauma is that it lasts, and it makes things that would otherwise not hurt us, hurt. And if we are fortunate enough to leave, we should work to help those who can't and to help ourselves confront it.

Religion isn't the issue, and destroying it will not fix your trauma, it will not answer for your pain and suffering and anguish. It's absence does not cure every ill, it just emboldens the ills that remain to fill the void the vacuum that will be present.

To fix your trauma, we must liberate it, liberate you, liberate religion, we must liberate and dismantle, and build upon the foundation and systems that function, the ideas that represent goodness and that can help us further liberation.

You cannot remedy trauma by re-traumatizing, you can only remedy trauma by sitting with it, confronting it, working through it, and finding the source. And God knows a book didn't put a gun to your head, a person did, and blamed the book. Hurt people hurt people. That's all there is and that's the only truth. The only way to stop it is not to destroy it, that's what those systems want, that's what those destructive things want. The only way to stop it is to dismantle that power, to embolden and Empower those who seek to help, and remove from Power those who hurt, and hold them accountable. That is the only way.

[wurmeatworld]

As an artist, I think ai art is a very complex issue. Yes it can be used as a tool to advance creativity, but capitalism ultimately twists it so that it is not used ethically.

I like some ai generated memes. Its really funny to watch Joe Biden banter with Leon S Kennedy, or watch deepfakes of Preminger singing Lady Gaga. But I feel like the same humor could be achieved without the use of ai. You could splice together lines ala ytp or animate Preminger singing. It just requires more time and skill, and thats really the draw of ai. Ai helps a greater pool of people do things they normally couldnt do because it cuts out the work.

The capability to expand what people can do and create is good! I once followed a disabled person on tumblr who made ai art for personal use because his disability meant he couldn't draw. Ive also used ai art generators in the past, back when the results were super uncanny and whacky, to generate funny images or interesting eldritch horror-y art. If ai art wasn't built upon so much stolen art, that'd be a completely beautiful thing. Id love to donate my art to an ai program that only trains on explicitly donated work. I think thatd be really cool. But most people Ive seen making ai art and ai art generators are tech bros who only care about end results and money instead of appreciating the intent, technique, and artistry that artists pour into their work. And of course, not giving two shits about us getting paid.

Ive seen people make ai to intentionally copy the works of particular artists. It's almost indistinguishable from their art style, and to me, that feels insulting. These artists put so much work into their art, only for someone to churn out much more art in their style, and faster. Copying art you like has always been a thing among artists, to pay homage to creators and to learn new things by studying, but these ai art pieces that explicity train on an artists work and replicate their style feel... really hollow. Wheras among most artists, their replication comes from a place of respect and admiration, and requires truly learning and following the techniques an artist used, ai art just pulls from already existing assets with no real direction to guide it except a simple prompt. Theres no respect for the artist here, just someone who wants more of an artists work but doesnt actually care about the artist themself.

The amount of labor you need to create ai art vs regular art, and how ai art steals work from artists, is a discussion all on its own. This doesnt really have an easy black and white solution because of capitalism. In a world where we wouldnt need money to survive, it wouldnt really matter that ai art takes less effort to make because it wouldnt infringe on artists livlihoods. But as it is, and especially in our "quantity and familiarity over quality" consumerist culture, the attention it takes from artists can cause loss of revenue, and people offering ai art commissions only hurt artists more. The most popular areas of the internet already arent great platforms for artists, even though were forced to use them. Our culture doesnt really value our work, and most artists offer their work for ridiculously low prices just to sell anything at all. My pixel art commissions are $9. $9 for hours of sitting at my computer, working and shaping and reworking the pixels until theyre just right. Color, position, everything has a lot of time, care, and skill put into it. I wish I could charge double what I pay, but I have an extremely small platform, so Im forced to charge barely anything at all. If we did not need money to survive, it wouldnt be that big of a deal. But we do. So it is.

And as things stand, even disregarding the problem of capitalism, theres just too many harmful ways ai can be exploited because theres barely any regulation. The deepfaked nudes, the easy misinformation, etc. I personally dont think regulation will be enough bc the base problem is caused by capitalism, and tbh I think media literacy plays a huge part, but there still needs to be. Its just an incredibly dangerous technology as it stands right now.

Also worth noting, is how algorithms can easily lead to radicalization. A study came out showing that new tiktok users who watch certain "gateway" content will gradually be shown more and more extremist stuff. (Source: x *) Especially on social media sites, which are designed to promote controversial posts because theres more engagement, this can lead to someone potentially becoming part of a hate group. I bet theres ways algorithms could be written to prevent this, but everyone wants money, so its probably not gonna change anytime soon. Consumerism is a bitch.

Also, algorithms promote the most commonly accepted ideas, which causes bias and can cause social and scientific progress to become stagnant at best, and actively harmful at worst.

Basically, ai needs to be better regulated, capitalism sucks, and ai art is a whole can of worms. I feel like humanity needs to keep ai art on the highest shelf until we can work out the ethical dilemmas we already have.

(This was originally a comment I left on this video, but I put a lot of thought into it so I thought I'd repost it here. Please watch the video, it brings up more ideas on ai and is just a fun watch)

*Its a youtube video and the info is compressed and presented quickly, but sources are all linked.