I see the appeal of being a conspiracy theorist. Sometimes a social trend is so bonkers or out there that you have to believe that it's completely artificial and being pushed by some shadowy group. But reality, I've found, is much more simplistic.

It's that time again, where Rings of Power is getting it's second season and Tolkien fans the world over (on social media at least) are pissed off about it. They swear up and down that anyone who likes it is either a shill or a fool because the alternative is too horrifying to comprehend. I'm not into ROP myself, because I'm not giving Amazon Prime a fucking dime of my money after being ripped off last time, but I've observed the fanbase and it feels natural to me. Plenty of fanart, fanfictions, character studies, the works. RoP has all the hallmarks of something people would be into. It's an adapatation of a popular fantasy series, it has a colorful cast of characters, beautiful men and women, and Orcs. Who doesn't love orcs? This is exactly how Game of Thrones and The Hobbit got off the ground back in the Tumblr days.

Another example is Velma, which got a second season. Twitter was alight with instructions begging people not to "hatewatch" and just let it rot. Then it became one of the streamed shows. At that point, I have to ask: Is it more believable that 10s of thousands of people watched Velma just to make mean reddit posts about it, or that a lot of people just wanted to watch Velma? Velma's a really funny case because it's not a great show, it's like 3/5 but the hate is so exaggerated and manufactured that you'd never know it. If you google it right now, you'll see thousands and thousands of 1-star reviews made by people who just did what they were told.

So to conclude, modern society really needs to grow up and stop thinking everything popular that got a bad video essay review is a scheme.

Hello friends, if you're a Zoomer like me (Well maybe, I was born in '96 so I'm either the last Millennial or the first Gen Z) you may have noticed that we're often the butt of many jokes. "The worst generation of snowflakes ever" or something of that nature. I will admit, we seem a little strange compared to old folks but when you actually take a step back and look at the facts it makes perfect sense.

1. Zoomers have dumb language. One of the biggest things Zs get mocked for is lingo: Skibidibop rizz with the gyatt, deadass smh at my goofy ahh uncle. Took me a while to realize it, but when's it's not just memespeak the reason there are so many nonsense words floating around now is because big tech and social media has become so ludicrously censor happy that you need to talk like a fucking baby to avoid getting your post flagged for one reason or another. Even saying too many normal words in the "wrong order" is enough to get shadowbanned these days.

2. Kids are inside and on their phones too much. What the fuck else are you expecting them to do? Putting aside the 2 year lockdown due to a pandemic, there's not many options for outside activities. Parks and playgrounds and other things just aren't safe a lot of the times. Whether it's animals, shady characters, or the jungle gym being delapidated. Teens can't go to the malls anymore because they're all closing and anywhere they gather is immediately swarmed with the cops. Nowadays, you go to any big city and the most happening spot is a McDonald's or something because at least you can eat and socialize without getting dirty looks.

3. Z's are immature and rely on their parents for everything. I had a professor tell me that a not insignifigant amount of zoomers show up to job interviews with their parents and that's bad. I'll admit that everyone needs to grow up eventually but...when did attentive parents become a bad thing? Most older people I know had a bad relationship with their folks or they passed away early, so they were forced to mature sooner. Now this one is purely subjective because I can't speak for every 20 something and their parents but this just seems like another generational gap that's caused by shifting social values.

I can go on but I just had to jot all this down. The kids aren't crazy, you're just just not noticing how hard they've been hit by the downward spiral of the western world.

Not even going to post a particularly cringe and creepy NAFO meme I found but that's what sealed it. Acknowledgement is confirmation as far as shill sccounts go.

I don't doubt it, but I think what's really happening is that they're getting rid of spam reviews by people who don't actually own the game and just leaving negative feedback for culture war purposes.

A lot of outrage over Kill the Justice League. Just imagine how much better life would be if young people could get this spun up over real problems like, you know, genocide or gas prices.

This shit is only going to escalate now that soldiers are able to come back from the genocide with absolutely zero reprecussions. The fact that this isn't front page news, that two foreign military personnel just carried out a chemical terrorist attack, is insane.

There's been a thought rattling around in my head for a long time and I haven't had a good way to articulate it until now, so I'm planning to ramble for a bit.

Everything going on in the world right now, in Palestine, in Ukraine and Africa is a good reminder that the mass killing of humans isn't some archaic practice that went out of style a thousand years ago. There are real consequences for dehumanization and calling for one group or another to be wiped out. It starts small, as many things do, as just a little grain in your head that some people are just lesser or worse and thus you'd be okay if they weren't around you. I find that a lot of this rhetoric comes from pop culure, you see it in books, movies, anime, and video games. Especially when it comes to the fantasy genre. For anime, you have stuff like Goblin Slayer or Frieren where Goblins/Demons are little more than animals and need to be genocided for the betterment of society. Books, you have Orcs in Tolkien (Something I appreciate about ASOIAF is that Grrm doesn't do this and always treats the idea of a full on massacre like it's horrible). But video games is where it goes all out.

--Nerd Speak Below This Line--

I've been playing a lot of Elder Scrolls lately, which means I've become reaquinted with the lore, and one thing aout TES that's always been a little concerning to me is how many of the backstories end in genocide and displacement. The Nords, the strapping 6-7 feet tall beautiful white people came down from the north and killed all the snow elves nearly to the last, the Orc homeland of Orsinium has been sacked and destroyed multiple times scattering them across the land, the Redguards showed up and killed pretty much everyone they could find for miles before being happy to stop in the desert, and the Empire has essentially been engaged in an extermination war with the Elves (who aren't saints either) for thousands of years. Two events that I think are really disturbing are Pelinal Whitestrake and Tiber Septim's conquest of the Summerset Isles. Now I'll be brief: Pelinal is this uber badass Terminator from the future who had a bad habit of murdering elves so hard that he came home from war covered in blood. Which wouldn't be too bad if they didn't specify that he often wiped out civillian populations and even other races that aren't even involved just because they look like them. Tiber Septim was mad that the High Elves were able to fight off his Imperialist bullshit multiple times and ultimately got a superweapon to go kill them all horribly until they submitted. Both these characters are beloved and their victims get the old "They deserved it" routine. And yes, the backstory does "justify" the purges because the Elves are almost always cartoonishly evil, but still. TES tries to be morally gray but that's kind of a lie because when all we ever see is what was written by the winners, it starts to look like that's what we're supposed to takeaway.

--Nerd Speak Ends--

When you wake up in the morning and see a news program about a school or hospital being bombed, seeing someone say "They deserved it" even in regards to a fictional species hurts in a deep way. People are programmed to think this shit is a joke from a young age. And some react violently when you try and pull them out of that mentality. So yes, I don't like genocide. Even if it's happening to to a nonsense race of animal people.

I doubt the tides are turning but still, it's refreshing.

Apparently the 14th Waffen SS was unique in that it was the sole branch of the Nazis that didn't do anything Nazi like, and never attacked the other Allies. Nope, just fought the communists.

How convenient.

Like the kind that made you stop and think for a second about how stupid the person advocating it is. For me, it's the classic "The biggest mistake in recent history was the Allies not pushing into Russia after the fall of Berlin."

There's just a level of imperialist arrogance and blood thirst in there that makes my skin crawl. The worst thing in human history was that the US didn't immediately betray the Soviets and wipe them out until they were sure communism was done for.

First of all, it's written in the most flowery and self aggrandizing way possible. The group is referred too as a "successful counter to Russian propaganda", meanwhile their actual sponsors and leaders are left notably unmentioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFO_(group)

What do they actually do? Oh they just post irrevent memes. NOT PROPAGANDA, memes. Nothing meant to be taken seriously of course lol.

There is a reception section, and a recognition section, but no "criticism" section. Surely there are people out there who don't support this group right? According to Wikipedia, there is not. Every pushback comes from the Russians, the vatniks, and the orcs. No one cares about the harassment or the slurs, at least no one who matters.

As you can see in this image, the way Wikipedia is set up you'd need some notable source that claims that the group is divisive in some way...except there are no notable sources because all of the approved media says they're the heroes.

If there was ever any doubt that the doge pfps had government/corporate backing here you go. You aren't even allowed to mention them in a negative context. !

Reading the news about the Jordan Neely murder is legitimately making my blood boil. Cons and libs both are in complete agreement that he was subhuman filth and deserved to die for the crime of being black, homeless and mentally ill all at once. You hear more about the dude's criminal record than you do the fact that he was fucking killed and it's madness.

But more than that, I'm starting to wonder why the fuck people even leave their houses in America anymore. Things are just not safe. You go to a public place, like a mall or a school and you run the risk of being caught in a mass shooting. You go home to your apartment and you might get arrested by a cop who somehow mistakes you for a guy on another floor in another building. You knock on the wrong door and the guy inside has full rights to shoot you execution style. And now you might witness a murder on the subway and watch the killer just walk off like nothing happened.

Things have gone insane lately, and the people have go insane trying to keep up. Honestly, I can't see life getting back to normal. Whatever that is for us.

I like how this patch was allegedly made by Taiwan's military but is in english and has an American meme on it.

NAFO and the Ukrainian flag's are already in the comments mindlessly showing their totally not artificial support. A lot of pledges to buy a boatload of these dumb things.

Mainly because a lot of the problems these guys are talking about just not materilaizing within the franchise have existed since like 2012.

Too many quips? Avengers 1, Dark World and Age of Ultron were infamous for this.

Every new movie is a sequel hook? Iron Man 2 was a 3 hour trailer for the Avengers, and this series popularized post credits scenes

Bad Special Effects? Phase 1 films looked like they were cooked up in about a week because their sets were so cheap.

Bad writing/Too much bait and switch? Remember how mad fans got over Iron Man 3 with the Mandarin twist?

I think all this discourse is less about Marvel "not being good anymore" and more about people starting to unconsciously realize that mindless corporate shlock isn't actually that gripping once you start holding it under the microscope. Like this series has been going for 16 years and hasn't actually changed, of course you're sick of it.

They were fully prepared to turn the working populace into slave labor and then the government was shocked to see that descision was unpopular.

One thing that catches my eye about this article is that the Guardian specifies "young people" as the cause for the pushback, Gen Z and Millennials, as if everyone else would be perfectly fine working until they fucking die. Just more "Zoomers bad" rhetoric.

Isn't it interesting how libs and cons are both fine with the romantic idea of revolution until someone actually seriously suggests doing something drastic? Y'know, in minecraft?

I was looking for a certain textbook for my class and then I saw that the place I normally go was out. How can that be? It's not a physical thing you're giving me, it's 1s and 0s. I sure hope there's a way I can blame the capitalists for this.

Pretty much every day I see conservatives desperately trying to blame those guys for everything going wrong in their putrid way of life and frankly I don't really get it. You can't even look them up reliably because every article on the subject is deepfried in paranoid Mccarthy style doomsday talk. I will admit that that particular group comes off as a bit ominous but all the NWO shit is the same deflective nonsense it's always been: This pathological need for a villain to make all the complex problems facing our society make sense. If it's not Klaus Schwab, it's Soros, or Clinton or lizard people.

So yeah, what do actual socialists think of all this? And please spare no detail, I'm in the mood to read.

I'm a huge Tolkien fanboy, loved LOTR and the Silm since I was a kid. But I swear interacting with other super fans is like walking on thin ice. Everything's chill as long as you go with the hive mind, but then you say that you think X character isn't that good or that a certain aspect of the plot wasn't done well and you get dogpiled. This also includes the obvious, like the blatant racism on display with orcs and elves or the treatment of some characters who are implied to be neurodivergent or gay. The r/tolkienfans subreddit comes to mind, I've seen a lot of threads turn into passive aggressive shitflinging because the OP talked about gays, praised the movies or made a "childish" thread about a character they like (God forbid every post isn't an essays worth of analysis)

Rings of Power definetly made things worse. If you expressed anything but pure contempt for the very concept, and everything attached to it. You get called out hardcore. I told a guy that it didn't look too bad and suddenly, I'm a fake fan that loves to consume corporate trash. Amazon's an evil company of course, but I remember a lot of th backlash being more about the women and POC than anything Bezos is up too.

How fucking deep does this go?

I know I sound like an r/conspiracy poster but this is absolutely insane. Even the Pope is telling everyone to send all they can to Ukraine. No other charity, no other warzone, JUST Ukraine. The same Ukraine that just outlawed Orthodox Christianity and suddenly has Neo-Nazi rituals and witches all over their social media. This is a scheme, there's no other explanation, this is a massive money laundering operation. If a person can't see that at this point, they're beyond help.

Maybe the US finally ran out of free money to give and that's why it's being called "donations" now instead of lethal aid or humanitarian assistance.

There's a YouTuber I used to watch, CinnamonToastKen. It was pretty good, family friendly fun of him and his buddy just making fun of reality shows and stuff. One of those shows was this TLC thing called "G*psy Brides", which is about Romani people acting like rednecks and that being funny for some reason. It was at this point, that I began to realize that neither Ken nor any of the commenters realized that the G word is a genuine slur. That wasn't the dealbreaker though, that came later when he said in an aside during a video that he was told by someone that it was, indeed, an ethnic slur.

So Ken's response to this was bewilderment and his immediate assumption was that this wasn't a real thing and just another instance of "people being offended for others." So he decided to ask his community if it was really a slur and to leave an explanation in the comments. Because, y'know, that's somehow easier than just googling it. He ended up hearting a comment that gave a childish oversimplification of the issue that ultimately said "Some people feel that way but most don't care"

To this day I feel disgusted that instead of taking the L about his accidental racism, he just assumed it was a made up issue and then chose the one comment that protrayed it as some trivial thing. I guess I should've known he wasn't on the up and up when half his videos were collabs with Pewdiepie.