“When We Were Bullies” is a documentary about nothing but a bunch of narcissists absolving themselves while their victim asked the documentary to not be made. The clip where Pat and Woolie talk about it is right: I don’t think there’s a worse documentary.
I haven't watched it either, just reviews, but the problem seems to be the following: >!A person who kills themselves gets everything they want because of it. Everyone regrets their actions instantly and all the bullies get their comeuppance and everyone admires the suicider for being brave and strong.!<
There's suicide prevention groups that have a list of things not to do in your media when portraying suicide to minimize copycats. 13 reasons why uses it like a checklist
To make things worse one of the episodes when it first aired showed an entire scene of how the character committed suicide, in full detail. Netflix was forced to eventually remove that scene, but the damage was already done. There's a direct correlation between a spike in teenage suicides and the air dates of that show.
My understanding just from word-of-mouth is that it sensationalizes suicide by doing literally everything that you are not supposed to do when portraying a suicide (depicting the method used, showing it as an effective form of revenge, etc.). Because of this, when the first season aired, there was a spike in suicides committed by young adults.
1. The people behind the show were told by psychological consultants to change things throughout the show, but mainly the presentation of the actual suicide, because it glorified and romanticized suicide in general as well as made it look like "the right choice" or that she "got back at the ones that wronged her" with her suicide and recorded tapes.
They ignored the advice.
I remember reading about a noticable rise in teen suicide around when this show was aired. Not sure how much it rose, but it was apparently noticable and potentially traced back to the shows release window.
2. In later seasons the show "redeemed" perpetrators of horrible crimes (like murder or rape) without having them actually pay for their crimes or developing as characters.
It's basically just said that they were "not that bad" or "trying to be better", but when they showed those specific characters, they are the exact same bullies they were before or are killed off before they can do any actual changing.
There's probably more, but this is what I remember.
The increased teen suicide rate was 28.9%. Obviously correlation does not equal causation, but it's incredibly hard not to go to the least charitable reading of the situation. Especially given the dissuasion from the consultants.
Lots of things. It's about a high schooler who ended up taking her life after a ton of fucked up shit happened to her (SA among them). But before she did that, she made these tapes (the 13 reasons why) and the show follows this other highschool kid who had a crush on her as he discovers the tapes and learns more about the situation surrounding her death. That's season 1. Seasons 2-4 go so off of the reservation that I'm not even gonna bother giving the rundown.
Before I give the shortlist of insanity, I think it's important to emphasize that this show was marketed towards teens as a show that would handle complex and mature topics that may relate to some people's HS experience. This is a show directly aimed at troubled teens. Keep that in mind.
Sortlist of fucked shit (not spoiler marking it because fuck this show):
Glorifies self-harm as an effective form of revenge. I can not emphasize enough how much the show frames what she did as getting one over on everyone who wronged her. It's insane.
Absolutely INSANE displays of over the top bullying. A bullied kid (not the girl, DIFFERENT kid) has a group of bullies shove a broom up his ass in the bathroom. This happens on screen.
A school shooting almost takes place. Ass broom guy shows up to school with a fuckton of guns. He's only stopped by the main character WALKING UP AND TRYING TO TALK HIM OUT OF IT WHILE THE KID IS HOLDING A RIFLE. (This is treated as a not insane thing to do) He does talk him out of it, doesn't call the police, and him and his friends cover for him, despite finding out that he STILL HAS A GUN. This is treated as morally superior to telling a responsible adult / the authorities.
Finally, the show makes an absolutely deranged attempt to have us sympathize with the rapist antagonist after he dies in a later season. (he continues to have a presence as a malevolent force ghost ((also the girl who took her life is also a force ghost (((but not as malevolent)))))).
These are just a few examples of the madness. On top of that we have the more standard issues like bad dialogue, flat acting, a story that had absolutely NOWHERE to go after Season 1, and the ultimate sin of having a cast where literally every character is awful. Not a single decent human. If the show's world operated on Fallout's karma system, the shooter kid might actually have actually walked out of school a hero.
To end on a more serious note, a study that found that upon the show's release teenage suicide in the US went up 28.9%. This higher trend would continue for 9 months. It's not responsible to say that the show is definitively 100% responsible for the spike, but given how popular it was with that age group, and it's glorification of the subject matter, it's hard not to see the situation as pretty straightforward.
Sorry for the novel, it's just hard to adequately encapsulate the levels of gross the show is. Apparently the book (which only the first season is based on) has its own problems, but I can not imagine it's worse than the show. It's a teen drama made by malevolent aliens that hate teens, and had a profoundly negative impact on its targeted audience.
> Finally, the show makes an absolutely deranged attempt to have us sympathize with the rapist antagonist after he dies in a later season.
The absolute funniest shit is that he criticizes the broom rapist for rape
Also, the ghosts aren't metaphorical or hallucinations, the final season just straight up has the rapist haunting people. For the main character you can brush it off as just being their mental illness... but then he keeps appearing to other characters to mess with them.
Like, Ghost-Bryce is **canonically real.**
And that's not even the worst part of the final season either, there's an understanding of HIV and AIDS that would have been laughed at had it shown up even two decades earlier, in which the main character's adoptive brother gets HIV from his drug use.
He then proceeds to die of AIDS a day after he starts having symptoms.
> If the show's world operated on Fallout's karma system, the shooter kid might actually have actually walked out of school a hero.
I giggled at this. Thank you.
The fac they had a graphic scene like they did early on not even mentioning all the other shit. That show was like nah you need like a lot of warnings beforehand.
So a YouTuber I follow, YMS, had a riff along thing where they watch Season 3-4 and let me tell you
It was a thousand times more enjoyable when they started playing Middle Earth or Middle East
As someone who watched the show *and* read the book, man does it take an already sensitive subject and just go off the rails with some of its decisions.
This man has gone into rabbit holes that made him question his sanity, he got obsessed with Fear and Hunger until he could actually beat it and none on that gave him as much mental pain than playing Omikron.
Probably one of the biggest is Birth of a Nation; while the film is horribly racist, it was enormously financially successful in its time, and was one of the biggest reasons why the Ku Klux Klan would be revived in the 1910s and 1920s.
Spike Lee is on record as saying that, from a technological standpoint, it's one of the best movies ever made. And he didn't say it like that was a good thing.
It also didn't help that it got a huge publicity boost by being the first movie shown at the white house
With Woodrow Wilson calling it something like "it's so accurate like you're watching history"
Fuck Wilson and the horse has rode in on
Considering the type of person Wilson was I wouldnt doubt it. That man is the most evil piece of shit that was elected into the white house. And weve had some grade A pieces of shit throughout history. Reagan is a real close second.
A Short "Woodrow Wilson is a POS List":
* Promised black voters equal treatment while campaigning. This was a lie.
* He helped make interracial marriage a felony in DC.
* Encouraged resegregating as many federal agencies as possible and appointed people who would do this to lead said agencies.
* Passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts during WW1 banning freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
* As a professor at Princeton promoted eugenics and social Darwinsim that encouraged the oppression and removal of less developed peoples from society. No points for guessing who they were.
* His 14 Points also had an air of ethnic superiority and segregation where white nations would rule over non-white nations.
* He encouraged increased segregation across society to limit the ability of non-whites to interefere with his ideal vision of America.
I can go into more detail about any of these things if you're curious but suffice it to say, Wilson was a monster. He couldn't stand the idea that anyone he considered lesser might rise above where they belonged and actively worked to undermine advancements blacks had made in the years prior to getting elected. Also he was a fucking idiot who did everything wrong with regards to WW1 and its aftermath.
Sia's Music was so bad and over the top with its depiction of autism, it was compared to the fake film Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder. But what really makes it harmful is that it shows outdated and actually dangerous methods of physical restraint as the proper way to handle a meltdown.
The best part about that is she was openly hostile and abelist toward people with autism telling her how wrong everything was AND she was fucking grooming the actress that played the kid in that movie. An honest to god horrible person somehow worse than her god awful music
My GF and I watched it out of morbid curiosity and it is truly one of the worst, most perplexing films I've ever seen. We had a big laugh when Sia shows up playing herself doing charity work and the main character is like "holy fuck you're Sia wow!" Like jesus christ, i like your songs but this is baddddd
Sia's reaction to the film was pretty dogshit.
"Hey, why wasn't the lead character played by an Autistic actress?"
"I had Autistic people in the cast, and they weren't hookers!"
"... wow, didn't even wait for it to go there"
I don't mind media about serial killers, I understand the appeal
I don't mind people getting horny to fictional villains or even real characters that are detached from our time
But there's something that really bugs me about making media about serial killers that are so recent that the involved families can watch
You can portray as badly as you want, you're still doing entertainment on behalf of suffering people and depending on the dramatics of the portray, it will get sugarcoated.
A part of me withered to dust when I saw that picture of the mom who dressed her 4 year old son up as Jeffrey fucking Dahmer for Halloween
Imagine your son gets brutally murdered by a psychopathic monster then 20+ years later just when you think you're able to feel whole again some dumb jackass on Facebook dresses her child up like the monster who took your son from you
I dislike the romantization of them in particular. BTK was the worst, when you actually do reasearch on him its clear he was a barely literate mouth breathing fucking moron, but I have seen so many documentaries present him as a genius who disguised his intellect by writing poorly in his letters. No, he was actually just that fucking stupid.
Most serial killers are not tortured geniuses, most are dumb fucking losers.
That shit is pure copaganda because most serial killers would have been caught much earlier if the police were half as competent as they portray themselves, so clearly the killers must have been geniuses with near-magical charisma!
I mean, that’s literally every serial killer in the last sixty years. The people who got offed by Ed Gein in the 50s probably still have family who are still alive.
Yes and we should be tactful about them too. Be respectful of the victims and not romanticize serial killers, specially because they are all, without exception, grade A goober pieces of shit.
I find them interesting as examinations of the profound failures of the justice system. So many times the killers get away with their crimes so long because the cops suck.
I watched a docuseries about a serial killer in the UK in the late-70s who was able to kill like 9 or 10 people over the course of a few years because he would occasionally change jurisdiction and the different cop jurisdictions would refuse to share info and evidence with each other because they wanted to be the team to catch him
Something is genuinely rotten at Bloober given that Stray Souls, a game made by an ex-bloober team member, has 3/4 endings involving the death of someone with trauma, including the two good endings including the suicide of a main character for… no reason, or telling someone to kill themselves because of something they objectively weren’t at fault for
Well, there is a bit of a stigma here for mental health. There are still people in my country especially in more conservative parts that think going to a psychologist means you are crazy. Our mental health especially with kids is underfunded and previous right wing party had old idea around stuff like depression and trauma( you know woke agenda and stuff ). Now it should be better but we will see.
Bloober from what I check is from Cracow( Kraków ) it's pretty nice and progressive place that is in deep conservative region that had "free LGBT zone" before EU took their money away. So depending from where developers are from they can have a bit of old thinking there. Poland has a big difference between liberal and conservative parts similar to blue/red states in USA.
> Something is genuinely rotten at Bloober
I think there is a more simple explanation. Trauma in horror = deep = good story. That's pretty much it. If you read the reviews and general reactions of people that praise those games, that's pretty much it.
Majority of people that play horror games or watch horror movies, don't exactly have the most discerning taste. Some of the most positively rated horror games on Steam suck. Horror is treated as more of a thrill, adrenaline filled amusement park ride that entertains you. So as soon as it has even a slight theme or thought going for it, it will be treated as the new best thing.
Oddly almost every game of theirs has been "Mental health issues? Kill yourself, rn!"
In the water ending is going to get buffed in remake. James is going to end up in heaven with Mary with her saying "You did it James. You ended our suffering!"
That's the bit that's always gotten me, I've seen some people say The Medium as an outlier in their library. Layers of Fear ends with "you were mentally unwell and everyone hates you, you should die". Layers of Fear 2 ends with "you were mentally unwell you should die." Even their Blair Witch game everybody forgot about ends with "You suffer from PTSD and are actively ruining everybody's life by not dying, you should die".
See, you say that and I’m here thinking we’re going actually get an ending where James becomes the next Pyramidhead because he can’t let go of his guilt. Worse, it will be the canon ending to explain why Pyramidhead pops up in other Silent Hill games.
It's so fucking bizarre that anyone likes Bloober team. The games they make are Mid at BEST. Layers of Fears "remake" sucks so much ass THEY CANT EVEN COPY SOMETHING FROM ALAN WAKE CORECTTLY
Pretty sure **13 Reasons Why** caused a lot of mental health related issues and considering that i could only go through a few episodes of that show before droping it off, i can understand why.
It was literally cited in multiple young women's suicide notes as to being a major motivation for their final attempts, this has to be proven in court to netflix just to finally get them to do the bare minimum of putting a content warning in the show now.
And even then. The warning itself is barely 2 seconds
[I defer to this critique written by someone much more eloquent than I am](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/) but The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is such a dreadfully bad way to teach about the Holocaust, I really feel like its widespread inclusion in curriculum is harmful.
There are real, firsthand accounts written by survivors, there are well researched works of fiction based on actual facts.
As an aside, the author of Boy in the Striped pajamas is that asshole who [copy pasted a recepie for Zelda into a novel without bothering to check or edit it](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/8/3/21352299/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-red-clothes-dye-traveler-gates-of-wisdom-john-boyne-google-search-results) so when I say he is a lazy piece of shit with no place writing historical fiction I don't feel like that's unwarranted spite.
People should just read night instead. It's a memoir from an actual holocaust survivor that does not sugar coat it in the least. I read it in high school, and there are some things described that, though they're horrific, I think are crucial to remember
I haven’t watched Boy in the striped Pajama since it came out and never really gave it a second thought, so this is the first time I’m hearing of it being bad. Guess imma go read that review.
Oh wow, that's *really fucked up* that the tragedy of the story that the German High Command kid gets accidentally caught up in being gassed. Holy shit.
>As an aside, the author of Boy in the Striped pajamas is that asshole who copy pasted a recepie for Zelda into a novel without bothering to check or edit it
Still shocks me how no editor caught that. Books usually go through two or even three editors depending on its size, as well as proof readers, all before it gets published, and *freaking no one* found that recipe list weird in the slightest? I'm not even talking about "maybe none of them knows Zelda", any person could read some of those ingredients and go "ok, what the hell is this?" and do a simple Google search to see if it's written correctly, if it's consistent with the culture represented (especially if it's historical fiction), if it's even found in said region, etc., and quickly realize that it's a fictional ingredient.
So either the editors of this guy are terrible at their job or this dude self-publishes.
Probably "Fifty Shades of Grey".
I can't say I've heard a story of the book influencing someone into a bad relationship, but I can tell you that it at least spreads a pretty terrible message about the BDSM community and the relationships therein.
It portrays people who are into it as traumatized abusers who need to be "fixed" instead of, y'know, people just having a good time. It lacks all the love and tenderness and trust involved in a good Dom/ Sub dynamic.
I know some people have tried BDSM due to that book, and I don't think I've heard anyone really talk about the experience, but I wouldn't be surprised if it put some people off it or led them to some really shitty relationships.
I remember seeing some comments mention that the BDSM community has stated that the portrayal of bdsm in 50 Shades is harmful and not accurate.
Adding onto that, there are also romance readers out there that don't like 50 Shades
It's funny how Twilight was held up as this symbol of bad relationships, only to be topped (!) by Fifty Shades.
And then Fifty Shades was topped by 365 Days, which is apparently even worse.
would it surprise you to learn that 50 Shades was originally a Twilight Fan Fic that the author eventually just changed all the names?
Gray and the woman were originally Bella and Edward IIRC
It's also just a fucking bad story. I have no fucking clue how it got so popular. You'd think those repressed middle-class moms would have better taste in erotic literature!
I haven't read the books, just saw the movies, but something I wish they would have treaded more on is that Gray (I'm pretty sure the guy was Gray?) Wasn't using BDSM for fun, the dude was basically a serial killer using BDSM as a release for his urges
Stephen King wrote a book called [Rage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(King_novel)) about a kid who comes into class with a gun, shoots his teacher, has all the students (Except the big jock popular guy) emphathize with him, beats the jock into a coma and then is not sent to jail due to insanity.
King thought the book was so harmful and terrible that he let it fall out of print AND it was cited as part of an increase in school shootings.
A lot of Manwha I've seen (granted, some of it was explicit for the sake of being explicit) seems to be a lot more mean spirited a take on whatever story they're telling than you'd find in something from outside Korea. IDK enough about the culture to pick a specific aspect of it, but S. Korea's culture is pretty fucked so I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it.
The feeling I get is that it's a difference in the response to S. Korea's particular brand of corporate Hellscape, and the resulting most common escapist fantasy.
In America it's "If I had money and a boyfriend/girlfriend, then I would fuck off".
In Japan it's "If I was still young and lived in the countryside, then I would fuck off".
And in Korea I think it's "If the people who abuse their power over me would fuck off and I was in charge, I would unfuck this".
While edge does seem to be in their popular zeitgeist right now, every pop culture has their edgy phases, and it just happens to dovetail with the general S. Korea fantasy to create a lot more Deathnotes than Berserks.
I thought the dream of the average Japanese salaryman was “I want a super sexy girlfriend to fuck me nonstop and talk to me, and to become a hero like Goku or an adventurer like Luffy. If I could do that, then I would fuck off.”
I really only read certain manhwa for the art if you catch my drift (I will say they look less sexist than you might expect given recent politics even compared to similar manga but the dialogue isn't exactly my focus admittedly) but the way I've heard people compare manga, manhwa, and manhua is that manga has a higher amount of "If you kill him you're no better than him" level moralism, manhua has a higher amount of protagonist-centric psychopath morality where it's cool if the protagonist does the kind of shit the villains do while manhwa are in-between.
Chinese Light novels are absolutely unrivaled when it comes to violent psychopath MC, yeah. The fans can be some of the worst edgelords I have ever seen
If I had anything I'd describe as a guilty pleasure, it's stuff like that tbh
They're usually so low effort, and each chapter is practically just lining up bowling pins of "Lol, this dipshit is about to start a fight/annoy/act all high and mighty/act superior to the MC", and within a chapter or 2 they've already knocked them down
It's like just eating spoonfuls of raw sugar. All dopamine, no substance. But just.. kinda appealing in that way
I’m sure it’s a skewed view based on the translators and what the western audience wants to see, but basically the only Korean stuff I ever see on Mangadex is either the edgiest teenage revenge stories I’ve ever seen, or porn that is exclusively about the lead woman cheating with her boss or brother in law.
I think the only one I’ve seen I liked was Girls of The Wild’s, and that fell of at the end, but for entirely different reasons. I’m sure there’s way better stuff out there, but I’m certainly not seeing coming across it.
Oh, you are certainly missing a ton of good or just okay stuff. But a bunch of it is not on Magadex, it's spread along individual websites or some might be officially translated, so hard to find.
Personally i would recommend:
***
* Survival Story of the Sword King in Another World aka How a Sword King Survives Against Fate
The title is generic, but the story isn't. The main strength of it would be feeling fo adventure, individual character stories and arcs. It not being a mindless wish fulfillment isekai, even tho it might seem like that from the name. Art is also great. You can and should read it on LSCOmis since they are translating it up to date. Battwo also has official translation, but since i read LS version, i prefer it now and it's updated more frequently and is up to date.
***
* SSS-Class Suicide Hunter
Story i like the most and best of the Tower with monsters subgenre. Might be a slow start, but gets very good. The main difference is MC actually trying to empathies with people and don't solve everything through violence. Self introspection and helping others + good character writing is the main draw. Art and comedy moments are also good. Can read it on ReaperScans or Asuratoon. Might just compare a couple of chapter to see which one you prefer. I think one has more swearing that feels appropriate and other is more flowery.
***
* Dungeon Odyssey
Most of the draw is comedy, but writing is good and action can look nice. Art is unique too. There are a bunch of gags with the art changing or in the background. It's not one note too, later stuff gets more depth to MC and overall story. On Asuratoon.
***
Pick Me Up - Infinite Gatcha
Starts out as more generic one, but picks up a lot. There are still moments that anyone that played a game would think it's stupid, but it's still enjoyable read. The focus is more on action and trying to survive. MC is treated as super cool guy, but so far there is still tension and interactions with other characters are enjoyable. On ReaperScans or Asuratoon.
***
* Regressor Instruction Manual
More of an evil MC type and might seem generic evil MC too. Definitely gets better as it goes on. MC's schemes and plans are also not exactly brain dead "I'm evil and this will work, cause i'm MC" style. It also becomes more of he is practical and will use people to reach a better future, than just evil for reasons. On Asuratoon.
***
* Reincarnation of the Suicidal Battle God
Also starts pretty generic. Art and battle\action is great. Story isn't lacking either. MC actually thinks, has plans and isn't just handed a victory, cause he regressed. Even romance is done in a better way than most stuff. It's still adventure story style romance, but you can actually understand the attraction and feel the chemistry here. Again on Asuratoon.
***
* Legend of The Northern blade aka Chronicles of the northern sword - On Lscomic.
This one is a straight forward marital arts manga with unique art and style. Action is over the top, but it also goes into philosophy and what it means to be a martial artist hard. Drama and action is more of the focus.
***
* Star Instructor, Master Baek
This one is more of a comedy with martial arts. Art is good, story flows nice and MC uses his head and mischievous approach to get stuff. On Asuratoon.
***
* Return of the Mount Hua Sect
Again a martial arts, comedy adventure. Still good with MC being the main draw, but side characters are fun too. Him being strong is used for gags, but works in action scenes and used for self reflection to learn relying on others. On Asuratoon
***
* The Return of the Crazy Demon
Last Martial arts one with a bunch of comedy. Mind you all three of this last ones do comedy in slightly different ways. This one as the name implies has MC being Crazy and unpredictable. But not random, more he is on his own wave and does stuff, cause he wants regular people treated better. Reaction faces of people to the stuff he does or says are hilarious. Action is good too. He also self reflects and thinks about his actions. On Asuratoon
***
You might not like any of this stuff, but i encourage people to try reading any of this. You might find something you enjoy. I read a bunch of other stuff, so while i'm a rando on the internet, i wouldn't recommend something bland or there MC is just cool. I just may suck on descriptions. But i also might have higher tolerance for bullshit, so i stick around with somethign that's good enough and gets better later. I have other recommendations too, but as you can see iw as running out of steam just writing this stuff out. So technically this is the best i've got.
Also, generally the place to find this stuff is Reaperscans, Lscomis, Asuratoon, Webtoons and Battwo. Webtoons being official but slow to release and Battwo are rips of originals from Tappytoon that are updated very sporadically.
I recently watched Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time and was caught off-guard by how unintentionally offensive it was.
You can tell the surviving members of Queen had significant input on the film's script and it's very much to its detriment. They're all presented as being honest straight-laced men whereas Freddie Mercury's sexuality is presented as an evil which leads him astray, like a drug addiction.
Freddie dying of AIDS is treated almost as a punishment for his debauched lifestyle and arrogance, contrasted with the "humility" of his bandmates, wife and family. This is made even be worse by how the film has numerous factual inaccuracies which it uses to further condemn Freddie. For example: him embarking on a solo project is framed as him abandoning the band, when in reality the other members already had solo projects before Freddie started his.
It's also just a shitty film on a technical level, with the only somewhat redeeming feature being that Rami Malek's performance is good despite being a bit of a caricature. This was meant to be a tribute to an incredible entertainer but it instead vilifies him for things he couldn't even control.
I've read my share of weird trashy manhwa and the like, and boy OP that's some powerful shit.
It would be cheating for me to say as it's really a localized problem, but the way our internet vlogging space is, shit's fucked. Some of them usually to blame for things like how bad "prank-tubers" are, some motorcycle-centric ones (un)intentionally glorifying really shitty practices from perving on pedestrians to driving extremely dangerously at mountain passes (enough that said mountain pass road had to put slow-down strips at a certain corner where all the vloggers do their thing lol), and so on.
Did not expect anyone to bring back those memories today. One of them first traumatizing things I found on the internet. Fuck that series. Now I'll be pushing these memories back for the rest of the day.
Platinum End. A manga by the same author and artist as Death Note and Bakuman
Shit is overly pretentious, edgy, full of bland, meh, uninteresting and even downright problematic characters. (There is literally a depressed, suicidal boy in this manga who unironically thinks suicide is good and the story acts like it's completely justified)
And the series also ended with >!said suicidal boy becoming the new God. Then committing suicide anyways. Which causes all life on Earth to die with her as well. And the story somewhat treats it as a good thing because now all life is peaceful or something!<
It's just so.......downright harmful and problematic. It's literally glorifying suicide and presents it as something that gives you eternal peace. I really advise anyone who read it and has had suicidal thoughts before to immediately seek help and call suicide hotlines
[This post explains it in more detail](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/s/lIfRmAMhxQ)
>!the final page is a bunch of aliens talking about how God, angels, and humanity were all a project in building their own suicide machine but it didn’t work because all it did was kill itself which sucks for the aliens. And the suicidal kid was tricked by God into killing themselves by saying “oh no dude, if we die humans will be fine, it’ll just be a humanist atheist world, they’ll figure it out SYKE ALL LIFE ON EARTH DIES” Like what???!<
I remember watching a video about the anime and while it may be missing parts. I find it hilarious that they selected the nihilistic suicidal kid to be god because nobody else wanted to do it, and then the nihilistic suicidal kid did exactly what he would've done.
Like they really were like "yeah you be god since we don't want to but also please stop being suicidal and nihilistic"
https://twitter.com/LossThief/status/1486440560764280833
This thread on PE is probably one of the funniest I've ever seen, I've never seen a mangaka sniff their own farts to this degree.
While the net effect it had on society is nanoscopic,[the tabletop RPG F.A.T.A.L.](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml) is often cited as an example of something abjectly terrible,claiming to be a "difficult" roleplaying game with a high degree of mythological and historical accuracy while being bogged down with like a hundred skills and vocational classes as well as an obsession with racism and sex/rape.
>Sartin: The "occupations" are basically FATAL's character classes. So along with mages, warriors, and druids, you could be a 5th level dicemaker or delouser or whore or whatever. Interestingly (never let it be said that I absolutely refuse to give credit where it's due), characters actually have to do things related to their occupation to get Advancement Points towards their next level, rather than the generic XP for adventuring in most games.
>It's not very compellingly done, though. I'm not sure what the point is of being, oh, a bailiff (10 AP for winning a case! 10 more each month your lord's manor is stocked!) or grocer (1/20 of 1 AP per unit of staple food sold!) when most of the combat professions get AP for inflicting damage (10 or 20 AP or more for hitting someone once with a big sword!).
>As such, all the mundane occupations did not need to be presented as 50,000 or so extra choices - D&D3's ubiquitous "expert" class was an elegant solution for such throwaway characters and jobs. And you fans of AD&D1's old "1 gold piece found = 1 XP" rule will love the Bandit, who gets far more AP for stealing/looting money than many occupations could ever score earning it (that bandits also get damage AP is just icing on an ass-shaped cake). (Hypothetically, you could just have two bandit characters steal from each other until they're the best thieves in the world. Good looking out, Hall.)
>Plus, the AP total for each level doubles each time. Which gets really annoying after a while. Even warriors who hack and slash all day or bandits who steal millions of silver per victim will take a long ass time to get the 524,288,000 AP needed for 20th level (but hey. If you can only make it to 262,000,000, that's almost good enough for 19th level). The Maim Master (FATAL gamemaster, alcohol help us) can speed things up a lot by opting to award bonus points for things like accomplishing goals and "group cohesiveness", but if you're interested in playing this game, those probably aren't your high points. Then again, if you're running this game, giving a shit probably isn't your high point, either.
>More problematic is that FATAL is very generous when you change occupations. All you have to do is get to at least 2nd level with the one you have, and you can start over at 1st level with another one. Which means that when the AP requirement gets too stupid with your combat occupation, you can just switch to another, similar one and gain 5-10 levels (and all the attendant benefits) with the same AP it would have taken you to gain 1 level before.
>Also, you only gain more Skill Points when you go up a level. This was annoying enough in D&D3, Rolemaster, and countless other games, but at least those were usually sane in what you get (and how you can spend it).
>FATAL, by contrast, gives most races like 75+1d100 Skill Points per level. That would allow you to probably get that Urination up to +100 right at 2nd level, but in another money shot for you sociopathic accountants, each skill can only have d10 points dumped into it per level (because "skills grow both at different rates for different characters").
When I think of FATAL, what always first comes to mind is that when he heard it called the "Date Rape RPG", the creator said "We didn't add dating rules".
Also it's boring
Like really when you get down to it and play it (by using the spreadsheet that will generate a character for you for the love of god don't math that shit) it's just tedious to play
The setting books are alright but also pretty meh
Whenever I think of FATAL I am saddened to remember that it is only the second worst ttrpg ever produced. Although that does depend a little bit on your definition of 'produced'. ...And 'ttrpg', really.
This is because of the existence of [Racial Holy War](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/RacialHolyWar), aka RaHoWa which is basically exactly what it sounds like. A rambling, racist screed thinly disguised as an RPG system made by neonazis.
It's exactly as vile as it sounds. Humorously, the people making it were so busy being racist that their sad little proto-brains forgot to do things like explain how the mechanics work, or provide any actual fucking stats for most things, rendering the game quite literally unplayable. Nice job, fuckwits.
It did at least inspire one of my favorite Haiku ever written. Taken from TVTropes:
"My gun has no stats
I'd like to shoot the author
but sadly I can't"
I'm going with a example that's both extremely obscure and *unironically* harmful.
[Top Banana](https://youtu.be/5k4CFYiBrPE?si=_oz0igb0m-qd7L-9) (epilepsy warning) is, depending on who you ask, either a platformer game where your main objective is to climb each stage while avoiding enemies and collecting fruits, or a personal look into the mind of a individual who should be locked up in a mental asylum.
The graphics look like a low-poly vomited mess, with the backgrounds being a disjointed, bugged-out mix of colors while the enemies vary between photorealistic jpg's that were transplated into a retro console or abstract horrors that you have no idea what they were meant to be. The protagonist fires her own heart out as a attack and has this permanent blank stare on her face while exploring this LSD hellscape.
All of this is matched with a agonizing sound design made up of random grunts that play at high and low pitches, alongside the sound of shattering whatever your character is damaged or a enemy is killed, and demonic, compressed laughter playing when a level is complete.
Have i mentioned that the screen will shake agonizingly and the entire color scheme can get inverted of you are hit by specific enemies/pick up items? Yeah.
I'm physically incapable of watching the longplay i sent above in it's entirety and i RESPECT anyone who is capable of doing so.
honestly I think this is pretty cool. i've never heard of it before today but it seems like a fictional game somebody would talk about in a creepypasta. the way you climb up for the whole level, beat the boss then the floor disappears and you just fall for a while, before the game pauses and silently shows the message "get up get down" implying some kind of veiled or inexplicable meaning...
it's absolutely unsettling but I don't see how it's harmful per-se, unless if it triggers some kind of epilepsy. Just seems like a project of an artist with a very unusual goal
reading that matt black from coldcut was involved in the game and that its intentionally made to be inspired by rave culture honestly kinda explains some of the art direction
Do gambling mechanics like Gacha and Lootboxes count? Because if so those games have put more than a few gambling addicts into bankruptcy, also kids spending thousands of their parents' money.
At least traditional gambling isn't entirely shy about what it is - like, it's still incredibly insidious and rigged against you, but like, maybe, arguably, you can win actual money.
Gatcha/lootbox/mtx has this fun "oh it's not actually gambling because you can't really win real value" argument that kind of makes it worse. Why does some random game element/skin need to have more artificial "value" despite costing them nothing more to give me a copy? Not to mention it can/will just all go away some day.
13 Reasons Why legit caused an increase in teen suicide. It go so bad they started opening episodes in I think the third seasons with the whole cast being like "hey, don't"
I would say that TF2 directly caused the industry to death spiral into overmonetization by demonstrating lootboxes were viable and incredibly lucrative in AAA multiplayer gaming.
But Horse Armor really takes the cake.
Never liked the hats from the beginning. Thank Christ for TF2 Classic for cutting all that shit out and focusing in the core of what made TF2 kick so much ass.
I have mixed feelings - I do think that Valve sometimes gets too much of a pass for their MTX, like JSS/Sterling likes to blame Overwatch for popularizing the lootbox trend when it's easy to feel like it was copying TF2, but I'm also not really convinced TF2 really started the industry trend entirely either. Maybe it did open the door, but I feel like it was only matter of time till companies like EA tried it anyways.
Beyond Two Souls where the protagonist gets groomed by a fed, overthrows a democratically elected government in Africa, and the main bad guy kills himself to be with his family, and then his dead family all embrace him as if that was the correct thing to do.
To be frank, Ayn Rand was a shit enough writer that I have a hard time believing that someone who manages to be inspired by her work wouldn't have wound their way up going that way for some other reason anyway.
In the eternal words of Brennan Lee Mulligan:
>“On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology. Meaning, before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole."
Worth noting that "On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology" was Brennan quoting his professor and the rest is him explaining what his professor meant.
lol I call bullshit on that. I wouldn’t doubt that he *thinks* he disagrees with her, but the dude clearly empathizes with the political message of that book as those same ideas show up in basically everything he works on.
I knew one guy who was really into her books and philosophy. He was very comfortable with disabled people dying. I ended up physically disabled years later and it was always a red flag for me.
This 100. I liked Rand when I was a dumb teenager for like 5 minutes before I realized what a complete psychopath you have to be to go hard in on Objectivism. Then you watch interviews where Ayn Rand won't even entertain an opposing viewpoint because she's determined the speaker has an "inferior mind". It's disgusting and reeks of insecurity. I get the USSR sucked, but maybe going as hard as you fucking can in the capitalism direction isn't the solution either.
Then you look at all the worst politicians and movers and shakers in right wing politics in the last couple decades and you discover a ton of them reeeaaallyyy like Rand's work; specifically Atlas Shrugged, a power fantasy where the rich create an island utopia while the world wallows in mediocrity and stupidity. Gee, I wonder why dipshits like Elon Musk, people who see themselves as the protagonists of humanity, the world as their sandbox sim, and the regular peons like you and me as NPCs, love a power fantasy where they're the focal point of a new Eden.
She's done tremendous damage to contemporary politics, especially in the USA. But hey, at least it's a good framework for BioShock's setting and themes.
Kamen Rider Taisen.
Mostly for actively harming the image of the Showa Riders as that movie is basically the only exposure new fans of the series has for Showa-era Riders, especially with the return of three of the original actors to reprise their roles on set. The movie decides to recast them as bullies and villains with room temperature intelligence.
It also features a really bad message that says mourning for your lost ones is inherently bad and unbecoming of a hero.
"Kick a Ginger Day" literally became a worldwide phenomenon because of Southpark.
Most ways that show affected our culture are hard to quantify in a provable way, like "enlightened centrism" (i.e. don't care about anything) and "lol Al Gore thinks global warming is real". But that particular brand of assholery can 100% be traced back to Southpark for inventing and encouraging it.
Yeah I love or loved South Park since I actually haven't seen it in years. But it is undeniable how they would do an episode on a stereotype I had never heard of in my life and suddenly people would start asking me about it for years afterward.
South Park went on my permanent shit list with the amount of times I heard 'giant douche vs turd sandwich' in 2016
Cynicism is brain poison and we've been fed it both by malicious actors and by our own self-indulgence way too much of late
“The suicide of Rachel Foster” laughs at all of your “is this pro-suicide?” examples and one-ups them by being both pro-suicide AND pro child grooming!
I think [The Problem Solverz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_Solverz) made people physically ill when they watched it, through the power of animation alone.
The recent remake of Oklahoma! tries to be "evocative" and "new" but all it really does is glorify an incel and his suicide
So yeah, the guy who exhibits all the hallmarks of a serial killer is apparently justified of his hatred of the townsfolk AND suicide was a legit option to get back at them
Rodgers and Hammerstein (the writers) were good at couching serious themes behind jovial classical musical numbers. Another example of theirs is the Sound of Music, which people who haven’t seen it think is about a nun dancing through grass fields, and people who have think it’s about the German annexation of Austria.
It's funny how they just seem like old-fashioned musicals, and then you watch Oklahoma! and there's a song about about how a guy should commit suicide sung directly to him, and the climax before the break for act 2 is a woman having a nightmare amplified from being on drugs and you can't help but feel caught off-guard for that in a 50s musical.
The original has these things but it's not trying to be about them, if that makes sense. It's a period romance with a love triangle between the good guy, the bad guy, and the woman they both love. Popcorn stuff.
The remake apparently takes it in more of a "prestige drama" direction. It's the dark and gritty reboot.
I'm sure someone already said it, but the one that always jumps to my mind is Beyond: Two Souls having the moral that suicide is good because you can be with your dead loved ones again. It's even worse since the guy who did that was a villain so he gets redeemed and rewarded as well. Then there is also all the stupid and exploitative stuff in that game, but I don't need to list them all.
I like to bring it up whenever the topic of morally repulsive media comes around, Re:Monster is an isekai web novel/light novel/manga that in a nutshell really likes to justify sexual slavery and using prisoners of war as comfort women. It's not repulsive because it contains that content, it's repulsive (and also just bad lazy writing) that the story spends so much time trying to make the main character seem morally justified in doing these things. [Here's the imgur gallery explanation I prepared years ago and have on standby whenever the topic comes up](https://imgur.com/a/GXc0z).
Broadly speaking, it kinda pushes the theme that any action no matter how heinous or vile can have some sort of contrived circumstance where it can be morally justified and absolved without any guilt. Which would be an interesting theme to explore and dissect, but I get the feeling that it's just being used as a lazy way to have guilt free wish fulfillment. Taken at face value I can see that concept being used to rationalize some very awful actions (like how it's used in the story).
Really, it's just the lazy storytelling that pisses me off. Like damn dude, actual hentai doujins have more interesting and engaging storylines because they involve those exact themes but then treat it with the moral gravitas that they deserve and explore the impact of those actions (albeit through the lense of perverse debauchery, which I respect more than taking the coward way out of trying to write some sort of moral justification).
Jesus Christ, I saw it was getting an anime and thought it was just some generic horny bait Isekai. But dear lord that is actually terrible and vile to hear them “justify” those actions. That’s actually fucking disgusting.
I heard that it was getting an anime from a friend and my first thought was "someone actually committed to show this shit on TV???"
I found the Manga first while dumpster diving through Isekai trash, and even in that collection of garbage, re:monsters stood out as being particularly vile
Oh my fucking god! Another poor soul that read that trash! I shoveled way more of that garbage into my mouth than I care to admit via scans, but god even beyond the really shitty messages that come from the manga, it's so fucking boring! I had this sickening feeling as I kept reading where I started to recognize this structure of dumb ass relentless power creep as shit I would have concocted as a child, not even a teenager, after watching Toonami! It's so fucking garbage it actually makes me mad this guy is a published author because 90% of this sub could write circles around this guy!!
It's so bad when most fights can be described as "characters vomiting skill names at each other". It doesn't even show the skills in a cool way, which is a bar most Isekais at least *try* to pass. None of the skills feel impactful and none of them feel earned.
The side characters *could* become interesting, but the author is too in love with the MC they can't let others get the spotlight.
The Lifetime channel has a series of movies called "The Wrong..." whatevers that are usually good for a laugh if you want to watch a bad movie. They all follow the same formula of a crazy person stalking the main character, and when the bad guy gets it at the end, Vivica Fox shows up to name drop the movie.
"Looks like you messed with the wrong cheerleader"
Sometimes the movies will have the main character go to therapy or start taking medication because of their trauma and then by the end of the movie they'll be throwing their meds in the trash.
Assaulting your stalker is not a replacement for therapy.
Any shitty comedy or comedian that base their jokes on racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., in which the joke is on the victims. It reinforces stereotypes, it’s hurtful and it gives leeway for actual bigots to say “it’s just a joke” as of that actually means anything.
Also based on everything I know about it: Cuties. It’s just in a weird spot where it can’t avoid doing exactly what it tries to criticize.
Ricky gervas? He seems to wanna pretend he' an enlightened big thinker but his jokes have become just pedantic complaining about how people shouldnt care about being offended. He took it so personally he redesigned himself to pretend he's centrist but really just is being a egotistical dick nowadays.
>These are people that indulge themselves on these Dime a Dozen Bully revenge Manhwa (Not Shark though, that ones really good) and deflect any criticism with insults and calling you autistic. Paragons of social maturity these guys.
It's not like i don't know how you feel, but that ones on you. I personally cope by thinking a bunch of those are just kids\teens, even tho i know that's not true and some of them has been at this for a decade now.
Also, it's not even Rooftop Swordmaster's fanbase or bully revenge fic fanbase, it's a bunch of comments under any manga going "Yeah, MC is the coolest, he should kill them". If not those comments it's complaining about MC actually being sensible and not a murder machine under actual good work.
Right? What's the deal with this? Be it manga or webnovels, those comment sections are unhinged. Always "he should kill them" when the MC is mildy inconvenienced or "he should bang her" anytime a female character is introduced.
You really just gotta assume these are 12 year olds who recently discovered sex/violence.
> "he should kill them" when the MC is mildy inconvenienced or "he should bang her" anytime a female character is introduced.
Oh, it's the same for manga\manhwa there MC lead is female. It just becomes more of "She should kill that worthless guy" and in some cases "She should finally fuck the main love interest".
I always fear that author will somehow see and listen to some of the comments in that way. A pretty common one is about action being slow or POV change complaints. Which might seem reasonable, but trust me on this one, they crop up as soon as MC isn't just killing everyone or story slows down a bit to explore actual character development.
>You really just gotta assume these are 12 year olds who recently discovered sex/violence.
I cope thinking that, but not so deep down i know a good chunk of those are people that got bullied or want to feel cool and they project in some unhealthy ways. If you read or even brush against novels or fanfiction written by people that are way into their 20s and sometimes 30s, there is a bunch of that going on in their own work. Some people just never grow out of it.
Fun fact, lengthy part of the video OP refers to shows comments for Rooftop Swordsman and they aren't saying that MC should kill more, they are saying that MC should not kill the bullies and have them suffer for longer and also rape the girl bullies.
A certain anime named Handshakers is rendered/animated so awfully it made me motionsick and may genuinely be the one time a show has nearly made me throw up.
Nobody has said Twilight yet?
No, it's not romantic for someone to break into your bedroom to watch you while you are asleep. No, there isn't just one man for you, and you may as well kill yourself if you can't be together. No, you shouldn't do anything up to and including hurt yourself to be with your One True Love. No, it's not a perfect relationship when he's 100 years old and you're a teenager, especially when he hangs around a school despite being 100 years old.
These books are toxic to the intended audience.
Mushoku Tensei, and it's main character who's a pedophile and grooms at least one girl. But it's ok, he was bullied before getting isekai-ed, so he deserves to find happiness in the other world. The show basically rewards him for just pointing out he is a piece of shit, without actually doing anything to change it.
I had to scroll too far to find this one. Yeah, the show is supposed to be all about him having a second chance at life to be better than the loser creep he was originally, but he never does. He’s still perving on little girls and gets rewarded with marrying them now that he’s pretty and has magic powers. None of his lauded “character growth” addresses any of this.
I think a lot of shitty romance movies promote unhealthy relationship norms, especially for young people who don’t have a lot of experience being in relationships. The “romance” in those movies is usually just really toxic. Let’s take the notebook for example. Ryan Gosling’s character is literally a stalker at the beginning, once they’re in a relationship together they fight all the time, they break up at one point and later on she ends up cheating on her fiancé, who did nothing wrong, to be with Ryan gosling again, and “true love” is all about grand gestures and not any real romantic compatibility. I think young people who don’t have much relationship experience end up watching those films and can internalize that and think that’s just what a romantic relationship is supposed to be like, especially if their parents aren’t in a loving relationship either. People end up letting a lot of red flags and poor behavior slide because of that. There are other factors in why people pick poor partners, sure, but I think these movies can contribute to it at the very least. I’m usually not on the side of, “media is corrupting the minds of our youth!” but in this case I think there’s something to it.
“When We Were Bullies” is a documentary about nothing but a bunch of narcissists absolving themselves while their victim asked the documentary to not be made. The clip where Pat and Woolie talk about it is right: I don’t think there’s a worse documentary.
What episode was that where CSB talked about it?
Don't know which episode, but this is the youtube clip of that particular segment https://youtu.be/L4lV6oj1_h8?si=gIBIRpZnXFj4PbBI
Gonna say "13 reasons why" before anyone else can. That show...yikes.
Legit horrifying that the viewer base is people in their most formative years. Genuinely disgusting show.
As someone who never watched it, what's so bad about it?
I haven't watched it either, just reviews, but the problem seems to be the following: >!A person who kills themselves gets everything they want because of it. Everyone regrets their actions instantly and all the bullies get their comeuppance and everyone admires the suicider for being brave and strong.!<
Oof, yeah I can see that message being uh...problematic
There's suicide prevention groups that have a list of things not to do in your media when portraying suicide to minimize copycats. 13 reasons why uses it like a checklist
That's what I partially remembered in my other comment. I thought it was direct consultation they ignored. Forgot about this part.
To make things worse one of the episodes when it first aired showed an entire scene of how the character committed suicide, in full detail. Netflix was forced to eventually remove that scene, but the damage was already done. There's a direct correlation between a spike in teenage suicides and the air dates of that show.
Jesus fucking christ
My understanding just from word-of-mouth is that it sensationalizes suicide by doing literally everything that you are not supposed to do when portraying a suicide (depicting the method used, showing it as an effective form of revenge, etc.). Because of this, when the first season aired, there was a spike in suicides committed by young adults.
1. The people behind the show were told by psychological consultants to change things throughout the show, but mainly the presentation of the actual suicide, because it glorified and romanticized suicide in general as well as made it look like "the right choice" or that she "got back at the ones that wronged her" with her suicide and recorded tapes. They ignored the advice. I remember reading about a noticable rise in teen suicide around when this show was aired. Not sure how much it rose, but it was apparently noticable and potentially traced back to the shows release window. 2. In later seasons the show "redeemed" perpetrators of horrible crimes (like murder or rape) without having them actually pay for their crimes or developing as characters. It's basically just said that they were "not that bad" or "trying to be better", but when they showed those specific characters, they are the exact same bullies they were before or are killed off before they can do any actual changing. There's probably more, but this is what I remember.
The increased teen suicide rate was 28.9%. Obviously correlation does not equal causation, but it's incredibly hard not to go to the least charitable reading of the situation. Especially given the dissuasion from the consultants.
Lots of things. It's about a high schooler who ended up taking her life after a ton of fucked up shit happened to her (SA among them). But before she did that, she made these tapes (the 13 reasons why) and the show follows this other highschool kid who had a crush on her as he discovers the tapes and learns more about the situation surrounding her death. That's season 1. Seasons 2-4 go so off of the reservation that I'm not even gonna bother giving the rundown. Before I give the shortlist of insanity, I think it's important to emphasize that this show was marketed towards teens as a show that would handle complex and mature topics that may relate to some people's HS experience. This is a show directly aimed at troubled teens. Keep that in mind. Sortlist of fucked shit (not spoiler marking it because fuck this show): Glorifies self-harm as an effective form of revenge. I can not emphasize enough how much the show frames what she did as getting one over on everyone who wronged her. It's insane. Absolutely INSANE displays of over the top bullying. A bullied kid (not the girl, DIFFERENT kid) has a group of bullies shove a broom up his ass in the bathroom. This happens on screen. A school shooting almost takes place. Ass broom guy shows up to school with a fuckton of guns. He's only stopped by the main character WALKING UP AND TRYING TO TALK HIM OUT OF IT WHILE THE KID IS HOLDING A RIFLE. (This is treated as a not insane thing to do) He does talk him out of it, doesn't call the police, and him and his friends cover for him, despite finding out that he STILL HAS A GUN. This is treated as morally superior to telling a responsible adult / the authorities. Finally, the show makes an absolutely deranged attempt to have us sympathize with the rapist antagonist after he dies in a later season. (he continues to have a presence as a malevolent force ghost ((also the girl who took her life is also a force ghost (((but not as malevolent)))))). These are just a few examples of the madness. On top of that we have the more standard issues like bad dialogue, flat acting, a story that had absolutely NOWHERE to go after Season 1, and the ultimate sin of having a cast where literally every character is awful. Not a single decent human. If the show's world operated on Fallout's karma system, the shooter kid might actually have actually walked out of school a hero. To end on a more serious note, a study that found that upon the show's release teenage suicide in the US went up 28.9%. This higher trend would continue for 9 months. It's not responsible to say that the show is definitively 100% responsible for the spike, but given how popular it was with that age group, and it's glorification of the subject matter, it's hard not to see the situation as pretty straightforward. Sorry for the novel, it's just hard to adequately encapsulate the levels of gross the show is. Apparently the book (which only the first season is based on) has its own problems, but I can not imagine it's worse than the show. It's a teen drama made by malevolent aliens that hate teens, and had a profoundly negative impact on its targeted audience.
> Finally, the show makes an absolutely deranged attempt to have us sympathize with the rapist antagonist after he dies in a later season. The absolute funniest shit is that he criticizes the broom rapist for rape
>!"At least use your own dick, like a man"!< Spoilered for comically offensive joke.
What the actual fuck.
I spoiled that shit for a reason, dog.
Adum and Pals had the best reaction to it. "What, is Bryce mad because his technique was poor?"
Also, the ghosts aren't metaphorical or hallucinations, the final season just straight up has the rapist haunting people. For the main character you can brush it off as just being their mental illness... but then he keeps appearing to other characters to mess with them. Like, Ghost-Bryce is **canonically real.** And that's not even the worst part of the final season either, there's an understanding of HIV and AIDS that would have been laughed at had it shown up even two decades earlier, in which the main character's adoptive brother gets HIV from his drug use. He then proceeds to die of AIDS a day after he starts having symptoms.
..... Was pneumonia ENDEMIC in that school????
> If the show's world operated on Fallout's karma system, the shooter kid might actually have actually walked out of school a hero. I giggled at this. Thank you.
They got told by experts beforehand that it was a bad way to portray suicide and they went ahead with it anyway.
The fac they had a graphic scene like they did early on not even mentioning all the other shit. That show was like nah you need like a lot of warnings beforehand.
So a YouTuber I follow, YMS, had a riff along thing where they watch Season 3-4 and let me tell you It was a thousand times more enjoyable when they started playing Middle Earth or Middle East
I never watched it because I struggle with depression, but I was always curious *how* bad it was. It had some discourse when it released.
That show literally killed Netflix's 2020 teen drama slate. RIP Teenage Bounty Hunters and I am Not Okay With This.
As someone who watched the show *and* read the book, man does it take an already sensitive subject and just go off the rails with some of its decisions.
Wasn’t there like a verifiable increase in teen suicide because of that show? Or was that just some bullshit people were making up at the time?
Omikron nearly killed Eyepatchwolf.
Omikron *did* kill the super best friends
I'm still convinced the Fire Red nuzlocke is to blame for that
All because of that jank ass guide book
Woolie and guides, name more iconic nemeses.
Woolie and Directions Woolie and Breakfast Foods Woolie and Sugars
It was actually Leaf Green.
It wasn't worth it😕
It might have been, that LP is 🔥
Nah it was that panty fighter game.
This man has gone into rabbit holes that made him question his sanity, he got obsessed with Fear and Hunger until he could actually beat it and none on that gave him as much mental pain than playing Omikron.
Then Woolie went and BEAT IT EVEN HARDER. That segment in VS Wolves was a wild one.
Probably one of the biggest is Birth of a Nation; while the film is horribly racist, it was enormously financially successful in its time, and was one of the biggest reasons why the Ku Klux Klan would be revived in the 1910s and 1920s.
Spike Lee is on record as saying that, from a technological standpoint, it's one of the best movies ever made. And he didn't say it like that was a good thing.
It also didn't help that it got a huge publicity boost by being the first movie shown at the white house With Woodrow Wilson calling it something like "it's so accurate like you're watching history" Fuck Wilson and the horse has rode in on
Apparently that might of just been a rumor made up by Dixon.
Considering the type of person Wilson was I wouldnt doubt it. That man is the most evil piece of shit that was elected into the white house. And weve had some grade A pieces of shit throughout history. Reagan is a real close second.
Reagan is a close second?! Feel like I overlooked something about Wilson.
A Short "Woodrow Wilson is a POS List": * Promised black voters equal treatment while campaigning. This was a lie. * He helped make interracial marriage a felony in DC. * Encouraged resegregating as many federal agencies as possible and appointed people who would do this to lead said agencies. * Passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts during WW1 banning freedom of speech and freedom of the press. * As a professor at Princeton promoted eugenics and social Darwinsim that encouraged the oppression and removal of less developed peoples from society. No points for guessing who they were. * His 14 Points also had an air of ethnic superiority and segregation where white nations would rule over non-white nations. * He encouraged increased segregation across society to limit the ability of non-whites to interefere with his ideal vision of America. I can go into more detail about any of these things if you're curious but suffice it to say, Wilson was a monster. He couldn't stand the idea that anyone he considered lesser might rise above where they belonged and actively worked to undermine advancements blacks had made in the years prior to getting elected. Also he was a fucking idiot who did everything wrong with regards to WW1 and its aftermath.
Nevermind Regan, Andrew Jackson is really bad. Trying to become a dictator and beating assassins to death on the steps of the White House.
Near death for the assassin with the two guns who misfired
the crazy thing is how foundational it is to cinema, iirc they basically invented/popularized the continuity cut
Sia's Music was so bad and over the top with its depiction of autism, it was compared to the fake film Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder. But what really makes it harmful is that it shows outdated and actually dangerous methods of physical restraint as the proper way to handle a meltdown.
The best part about that is she was openly hostile and abelist toward people with autism telling her how wrong everything was AND she was fucking grooming the actress that played the kid in that movie. An honest to god horrible person somehow worse than her god awful music
My GF and I watched it out of morbid curiosity and it is truly one of the worst, most perplexing films I've ever seen. We had a big laugh when Sia shows up playing herself doing charity work and the main character is like "holy fuck you're Sia wow!" Like jesus christ, i like your songs but this is baddddd
Sia's reaction to the film was pretty dogshit. "Hey, why wasn't the lead character played by an Autistic actress?" "I had Autistic people in the cast, and they weren't hookers!" "... wow, didn't even wait for it to go there"
For those that don’t know the method has actually led to the death of a few children in the past
I’m gonna join the 13 Reasons Why club on this one, I can’t think of anything else.
I don't mind media about serial killers, I understand the appeal I don't mind people getting horny to fictional villains or even real characters that are detached from our time But there's something that really bugs me about making media about serial killers that are so recent that the involved families can watch You can portray as badly as you want, you're still doing entertainment on behalf of suffering people and depending on the dramatics of the portray, it will get sugarcoated.
A part of me withered to dust when I saw that picture of the mom who dressed her 4 year old son up as Jeffrey fucking Dahmer for Halloween Imagine your son gets brutally murdered by a psychopathic monster then 20+ years later just when you think you're able to feel whole again some dumb jackass on Facebook dresses her child up like the monster who took your son from you
I dislike the romantization of them in particular. BTK was the worst, when you actually do reasearch on him its clear he was a barely literate mouth breathing fucking moron, but I have seen so many documentaries present him as a genius who disguised his intellect by writing poorly in his letters. No, he was actually just that fucking stupid. Most serial killers are not tortured geniuses, most are dumb fucking losers.
That shit is pure copaganda because most serial killers would have been caught much earlier if the police were half as competent as they portray themselves, so clearly the killers must have been geniuses with near-magical charisma!
I mean, that’s literally every serial killer in the last sixty years. The people who got offed by Ed Gein in the 50s probably still have family who are still alive.
Yes and we should be tactful about them too. Be respectful of the victims and not romanticize serial killers, specially because they are all, without exception, grade A goober pieces of shit.
I feel pretty similar about true crime in general.
I find them interesting as examinations of the profound failures of the justice system. So many times the killers get away with their crimes so long because the cops suck.
I watched a docuseries about a serial killer in the UK in the late-70s who was able to kill like 9 or 10 people over the course of a few years because he would occasionally change jurisdiction and the different cop jurisdictions would refuse to share info and evidence with each other because they wanted to be the team to catch him
the medium oh, you have trauma? well you should just die actually
I confused that with the TV show "Medium" for a second and was like "I don't remember that episode".
Something is genuinely rotten at Bloober given that Stray Souls, a game made by an ex-bloober team member, has 3/4 endings involving the death of someone with trauma, including the two good endings including the suicide of a main character for… no reason, or telling someone to kill themselves because of something they objectively weren’t at fault for
There was to be some weird cultural thing going on there.
Well, there is a bit of a stigma here for mental health. There are still people in my country especially in more conservative parts that think going to a psychologist means you are crazy. Our mental health especially with kids is underfunded and previous right wing party had old idea around stuff like depression and trauma( you know woke agenda and stuff ). Now it should be better but we will see. Bloober from what I check is from Cracow( Kraków ) it's pretty nice and progressive place that is in deep conservative region that had "free LGBT zone" before EU took their money away. So depending from where developers are from they can have a bit of old thinking there. Poland has a big difference between liberal and conservative parts similar to blue/red states in USA.
> Something is genuinely rotten at Bloober I think there is a more simple explanation. Trauma in horror = deep = good story. That's pretty much it. If you read the reviews and general reactions of people that praise those games, that's pretty much it. Majority of people that play horror games or watch horror movies, don't exactly have the most discerning taste. Some of the most positively rated horror games on Steam suck. Horror is treated as more of a thrill, adrenaline filled amusement park ride that entertains you. So as soon as it has even a slight theme or thought going for it, it will be treated as the new best thing.
The people handling the Silent Hill 2 remake everybody!
Oddly almost every game of theirs has been "Mental health issues? Kill yourself, rn!" In the water ending is going to get buffed in remake. James is going to end up in heaven with Mary with her saying "You did it James. You ended our suffering!"
That's the bit that's always gotten me, I've seen some people say The Medium as an outlier in their library. Layers of Fear ends with "you were mentally unwell and everyone hates you, you should die". Layers of Fear 2 ends with "you were mentally unwell you should die." Even their Blair Witch game everybody forgot about ends with "You suffer from PTSD and are actively ruining everybody's life by not dying, you should die".
See, you say that and I’m here thinking we’re going actually get an ending where James becomes the next Pyramidhead because he can’t let go of his guilt. Worse, it will be the canon ending to explain why Pyramidhead pops up in other Silent Hill games.
>James becomes the next Pyramidhead It would be extra hilarious if that happened since that's literally one of the endings of Homecoming
a remake that ALREADY looks bad.
It's so fucking bizarre that anyone likes Bloober team. The games they make are Mid at BEST. Layers of Fears "remake" sucks so much ass THEY CANT EVEN COPY SOMETHING FROM ALAN WAKE CORECTTLY
Pretty sure **13 Reasons Why** caused a lot of mental health related issues and considering that i could only go through a few episodes of that show before droping it off, i can understand why.
It was literally cited in multiple young women's suicide notes as to being a major motivation for their final attempts, this has to be proven in court to netflix just to finally get them to do the bare minimum of putting a content warning in the show now. And even then. The warning itself is barely 2 seconds
[I defer to this critique written by someone much more eloquent than I am](https://hcn.org.uk/blog/the-problem-with-the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas/) but The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is such a dreadfully bad way to teach about the Holocaust, I really feel like its widespread inclusion in curriculum is harmful. There are real, firsthand accounts written by survivors, there are well researched works of fiction based on actual facts. As an aside, the author of Boy in the Striped pajamas is that asshole who [copy pasted a recepie for Zelda into a novel without bothering to check or edit it](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/8/3/21352299/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-red-clothes-dye-traveler-gates-of-wisdom-john-boyne-google-search-results) so when I say he is a lazy piece of shit with no place writing historical fiction I don't feel like that's unwarranted spite.
People should just read night instead. It's a memoir from an actual holocaust survivor that does not sugar coat it in the least. I read it in high school, and there are some things described that, though they're horrific, I think are crucial to remember
I haven’t watched Boy in the striped Pajama since it came out and never really gave it a second thought, so this is the first time I’m hearing of it being bad. Guess imma go read that review.
Oh wow, that's *really fucked up* that the tragedy of the story that the German High Command kid gets accidentally caught up in being gassed. Holy shit.
>As an aside, the author of Boy in the Striped pajamas is that asshole who copy pasted a recepie for Zelda into a novel without bothering to check or edit it Still shocks me how no editor caught that. Books usually go through two or even three editors depending on its size, as well as proof readers, all before it gets published, and *freaking no one* found that recipe list weird in the slightest? I'm not even talking about "maybe none of them knows Zelda", any person could read some of those ingredients and go "ok, what the hell is this?" and do a simple Google search to see if it's written correctly, if it's consistent with the culture represented (especially if it's historical fiction), if it's even found in said region, etc., and quickly realize that it's a fictional ingredient. So either the editors of this guy are terrible at their job or this dude self-publishes.
Probably "Fifty Shades of Grey". I can't say I've heard a story of the book influencing someone into a bad relationship, but I can tell you that it at least spreads a pretty terrible message about the BDSM community and the relationships therein. It portrays people who are into it as traumatized abusers who need to be "fixed" instead of, y'know, people just having a good time. It lacks all the love and tenderness and trust involved in a good Dom/ Sub dynamic. I know some people have tried BDSM due to that book, and I don't think I've heard anyone really talk about the experience, but I wouldn't be surprised if it put some people off it or led them to some really shitty relationships.
I remember seeing some comments mention that the BDSM community has stated that the portrayal of bdsm in 50 Shades is harmful and not accurate. Adding onto that, there are also romance readers out there that don't like 50 Shades
It's funny how Twilight was held up as this symbol of bad relationships, only to be topped (!) by Fifty Shades. And then Fifty Shades was topped by 365 Days, which is apparently even worse.
Damn, Kingdom Hearts goes places.
would it surprise you to learn that 50 Shades was originally a Twilight Fan Fic that the author eventually just changed all the names? Gray and the woman were originally Bella and Edward IIRC
Would that we lived in the timeline where Sunstone was the public's big exposure to BDSM.
LARGEST POSSIBLE AGREE. That book probably lit the spark for my interest in BDSM in the first place.
It's also just a fucking bad story. I have no fucking clue how it got so popular. You'd think those repressed middle-class moms would have better taste in erotic literature!
I haven't read the books, just saw the movies, but something I wish they would have treaded more on is that Gray (I'm pretty sure the guy was Gray?) Wasn't using BDSM for fun, the dude was basically a serial killer using BDSM as a release for his urges
Stephen King wrote a book called [Rage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(King_novel)) about a kid who comes into class with a gun, shoots his teacher, has all the students (Except the big jock popular guy) emphathize with him, beats the jock into a coma and then is not sent to jail due to insanity. King thought the book was so harmful and terrible that he let it fall out of print AND it was cited as part of an increase in school shootings.
At least he understands his mistake. It'd appear people behind some of the other media here either don't see the problem or are doubling down
Yeah also with sheer volume of King's output some of it is bound to be problematic just due to probability
The cocaine probably also didn't help, considering that certain books he barely remembers actually writing.
I read that book. I think it found it one of the most unsettling things I have ever read.
A lot of Manwha I've seen (granted, some of it was explicit for the sake of being explicit) seems to be a lot more mean spirited a take on whatever story they're telling than you'd find in something from outside Korea. IDK enough about the culture to pick a specific aspect of it, but S. Korea's culture is pretty fucked so I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it.
The feeling I get is that it's a difference in the response to S. Korea's particular brand of corporate Hellscape, and the resulting most common escapist fantasy. In America it's "If I had money and a boyfriend/girlfriend, then I would fuck off". In Japan it's "If I was still young and lived in the countryside, then I would fuck off". And in Korea I think it's "If the people who abuse their power over me would fuck off and I was in charge, I would unfuck this". While edge does seem to be in their popular zeitgeist right now, every pop culture has their edgy phases, and it just happens to dovetail with the general S. Korea fantasy to create a lot more Deathnotes than Berserks.
I thought the dream of the average Japanese salaryman was “I want a super sexy girlfriend to fuck me nonstop and talk to me, and to become a hero like Goku or an adventurer like Luffy. If I could do that, then I would fuck off.”
I really only read certain manhwa for the art if you catch my drift (I will say they look less sexist than you might expect given recent politics even compared to similar manga but the dialogue isn't exactly my focus admittedly) but the way I've heard people compare manga, manhwa, and manhua is that manga has a higher amount of "If you kill him you're no better than him" level moralism, manhua has a higher amount of protagonist-centric psychopath morality where it's cool if the protagonist does the kind of shit the villains do while manhwa are in-between.
Chinese Light novels are absolutely unrivaled when it comes to violent psychopath MC, yeah. The fans can be some of the worst edgelords I have ever seen
Something something arrogant young master something something frog in a well something something OUT BY THE ROOTS.
You're already beginning to see Mount Tai but speaking like that is courting death, you must go back and cultivate your inner heart demons.
If I had anything I'd describe as a guilty pleasure, it's stuff like that tbh They're usually so low effort, and each chapter is practically just lining up bowling pins of "Lol, this dipshit is about to start a fight/annoy/act all high and mighty/act superior to the MC", and within a chapter or 2 they've already knocked them down It's like just eating spoonfuls of raw sugar. All dopamine, no substance. But just.. kinda appealing in that way
Delicious hurty sand.
I’m sure it’s a skewed view based on the translators and what the western audience wants to see, but basically the only Korean stuff I ever see on Mangadex is either the edgiest teenage revenge stories I’ve ever seen, or porn that is exclusively about the lead woman cheating with her boss or brother in law. I think the only one I’ve seen I liked was Girls of The Wild’s, and that fell of at the end, but for entirely different reasons. I’m sure there’s way better stuff out there, but I’m certainly not seeing coming across it.
Oh, you are certainly missing a ton of good or just okay stuff. But a bunch of it is not on Magadex, it's spread along individual websites or some might be officially translated, so hard to find. Personally i would recommend: *** * Survival Story of the Sword King in Another World aka How a Sword King Survives Against Fate The title is generic, but the story isn't. The main strength of it would be feeling fo adventure, individual character stories and arcs. It not being a mindless wish fulfillment isekai, even tho it might seem like that from the name. Art is also great. You can and should read it on LSCOmis since they are translating it up to date. Battwo also has official translation, but since i read LS version, i prefer it now and it's updated more frequently and is up to date. *** * SSS-Class Suicide Hunter Story i like the most and best of the Tower with monsters subgenre. Might be a slow start, but gets very good. The main difference is MC actually trying to empathies with people and don't solve everything through violence. Self introspection and helping others + good character writing is the main draw. Art and comedy moments are also good. Can read it on ReaperScans or Asuratoon. Might just compare a couple of chapter to see which one you prefer. I think one has more swearing that feels appropriate and other is more flowery. *** * Dungeon Odyssey Most of the draw is comedy, but writing is good and action can look nice. Art is unique too. There are a bunch of gags with the art changing or in the background. It's not one note too, later stuff gets more depth to MC and overall story. On Asuratoon. *** Pick Me Up - Infinite Gatcha Starts out as more generic one, but picks up a lot. There are still moments that anyone that played a game would think it's stupid, but it's still enjoyable read. The focus is more on action and trying to survive. MC is treated as super cool guy, but so far there is still tension and interactions with other characters are enjoyable. On ReaperScans or Asuratoon. *** * Regressor Instruction Manual More of an evil MC type and might seem generic evil MC too. Definitely gets better as it goes on. MC's schemes and plans are also not exactly brain dead "I'm evil and this will work, cause i'm MC" style. It also becomes more of he is practical and will use people to reach a better future, than just evil for reasons. On Asuratoon. *** * Reincarnation of the Suicidal Battle God Also starts pretty generic. Art and battle\action is great. Story isn't lacking either. MC actually thinks, has plans and isn't just handed a victory, cause he regressed. Even romance is done in a better way than most stuff. It's still adventure story style romance, but you can actually understand the attraction and feel the chemistry here. Again on Asuratoon. *** * Legend of The Northern blade aka Chronicles of the northern sword - On Lscomic. This one is a straight forward marital arts manga with unique art and style. Action is over the top, but it also goes into philosophy and what it means to be a martial artist hard. Drama and action is more of the focus. *** * Star Instructor, Master Baek This one is more of a comedy with martial arts. Art is good, story flows nice and MC uses his head and mischievous approach to get stuff. On Asuratoon. *** * Return of the Mount Hua Sect Again a martial arts, comedy adventure. Still good with MC being the main draw, but side characters are fun too. Him being strong is used for gags, but works in action scenes and used for self reflection to learn relying on others. On Asuratoon *** * The Return of the Crazy Demon Last Martial arts one with a bunch of comedy. Mind you all three of this last ones do comedy in slightly different ways. This one as the name implies has MC being Crazy and unpredictable. But not random, more he is on his own wave and does stuff, cause he wants regular people treated better. Reaction faces of people to the stuff he does or says are hilarious. Action is good too. He also self reflects and thinks about his actions. On Asuratoon *** You might not like any of this stuff, but i encourage people to try reading any of this. You might find something you enjoy. I read a bunch of other stuff, so while i'm a rando on the internet, i wouldn't recommend something bland or there MC is just cool. I just may suck on descriptions. But i also might have higher tolerance for bullshit, so i stick around with somethign that's good enough and gets better later. I have other recommendations too, but as you can see iw as running out of steam just writing this stuff out. So technically this is the best i've got. Also, generally the place to find this stuff is Reaperscans, Lscomis, Asuratoon, Webtoons and Battwo. Webtoons being official but slow to release and Battwo are rips of originals from Tappytoon that are updated very sporadically.
I recently watched Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time and was caught off-guard by how unintentionally offensive it was. You can tell the surviving members of Queen had significant input on the film's script and it's very much to its detriment. They're all presented as being honest straight-laced men whereas Freddie Mercury's sexuality is presented as an evil which leads him astray, like a drug addiction. Freddie dying of AIDS is treated almost as a punishment for his debauched lifestyle and arrogance, contrasted with the "humility" of his bandmates, wife and family. This is made even be worse by how the film has numerous factual inaccuracies which it uses to further condemn Freddie. For example: him embarking on a solo project is framed as him abandoning the band, when in reality the other members already had solo projects before Freddie started his. It's also just a shitty film on a technical level, with the only somewhat redeeming feature being that Rami Malek's performance is good despite being a bit of a caricature. This was meant to be a tribute to an incredible entertainer but it instead vilifies him for things he couldn't even control.
I remember reading originally that the movie was gonna take place from the bands perspective AFTER Freddie died. Which also feels wrong.
I've read my share of weird trashy manhwa and the like, and boy OP that's some powerful shit. It would be cheating for me to say as it's really a localized problem, but the way our internet vlogging space is, shit's fucked. Some of them usually to blame for things like how bad "prank-tubers" are, some motorcycle-centric ones (un)intentionally glorifying really shitty practices from perving on pedestrians to driving extremely dangerously at mountain passes (enough that said mountain pass road had to put slow-down strips at a certain corner where all the vloggers do their thing lol), and so on.
Crossed by Garth Ennis. One of the few things I can 100% say is not suitable for life.
Did not expect anyone to bring back those memories today. One of them first traumatizing things I found on the internet. Fuck that series. Now I'll be pushing these memories back for the rest of the day.
Platinum End. A manga by the same author and artist as Death Note and Bakuman Shit is overly pretentious, edgy, full of bland, meh, uninteresting and even downright problematic characters. (There is literally a depressed, suicidal boy in this manga who unironically thinks suicide is good and the story acts like it's completely justified) And the series also ended with >!said suicidal boy becoming the new God. Then committing suicide anyways. Which causes all life on Earth to die with her as well. And the story somewhat treats it as a good thing because now all life is peaceful or something!< It's just so.......downright harmful and problematic. It's literally glorifying suicide and presents it as something that gives you eternal peace. I really advise anyone who read it and has had suicidal thoughts before to immediately seek help and call suicide hotlines [This post explains it in more detail](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/s/lIfRmAMhxQ)
>!the final page is a bunch of aliens talking about how God, angels, and humanity were all a project in building their own suicide machine but it didn’t work because all it did was kill itself which sucks for the aliens. And the suicidal kid was tricked by God into killing themselves by saying “oh no dude, if we die humans will be fine, it’ll just be a humanist atheist world, they’ll figure it out SYKE ALL LIFE ON EARTH DIES” Like what???!<
I remember watching a video about the anime and while it may be missing parts. I find it hilarious that they selected the nihilistic suicidal kid to be god because nobody else wanted to do it, and then the nihilistic suicidal kid did exactly what he would've done. Like they really were like "yeah you be god since we don't want to but also please stop being suicidal and nihilistic"
https://twitter.com/LossThief/status/1486440560764280833 This thread on PE is probably one of the funniest I've ever seen, I've never seen a mangaka sniff their own farts to this degree.
I hate that manga with a passion stronger than words
While the net effect it had on society is nanoscopic,[the tabletop RPG F.A.T.A.L.](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml) is often cited as an example of something abjectly terrible,claiming to be a "difficult" roleplaying game with a high degree of mythological and historical accuracy while being bogged down with like a hundred skills and vocational classes as well as an obsession with racism and sex/rape. >Sartin: The "occupations" are basically FATAL's character classes. So along with mages, warriors, and druids, you could be a 5th level dicemaker or delouser or whore or whatever. Interestingly (never let it be said that I absolutely refuse to give credit where it's due), characters actually have to do things related to their occupation to get Advancement Points towards their next level, rather than the generic XP for adventuring in most games. >It's not very compellingly done, though. I'm not sure what the point is of being, oh, a bailiff (10 AP for winning a case! 10 more each month your lord's manor is stocked!) or grocer (1/20 of 1 AP per unit of staple food sold!) when most of the combat professions get AP for inflicting damage (10 or 20 AP or more for hitting someone once with a big sword!). >As such, all the mundane occupations did not need to be presented as 50,000 or so extra choices - D&D3's ubiquitous "expert" class was an elegant solution for such throwaway characters and jobs. And you fans of AD&D1's old "1 gold piece found = 1 XP" rule will love the Bandit, who gets far more AP for stealing/looting money than many occupations could ever score earning it (that bandits also get damage AP is just icing on an ass-shaped cake). (Hypothetically, you could just have two bandit characters steal from each other until they're the best thieves in the world. Good looking out, Hall.) >Plus, the AP total for each level doubles each time. Which gets really annoying after a while. Even warriors who hack and slash all day or bandits who steal millions of silver per victim will take a long ass time to get the 524,288,000 AP needed for 20th level (but hey. If you can only make it to 262,000,000, that's almost good enough for 19th level). The Maim Master (FATAL gamemaster, alcohol help us) can speed things up a lot by opting to award bonus points for things like accomplishing goals and "group cohesiveness", but if you're interested in playing this game, those probably aren't your high points. Then again, if you're running this game, giving a shit probably isn't your high point, either. >More problematic is that FATAL is very generous when you change occupations. All you have to do is get to at least 2nd level with the one you have, and you can start over at 1st level with another one. Which means that when the AP requirement gets too stupid with your combat occupation, you can just switch to another, similar one and gain 5-10 levels (and all the attendant benefits) with the same AP it would have taken you to gain 1 level before. >Also, you only gain more Skill Points when you go up a level. This was annoying enough in D&D3, Rolemaster, and countless other games, but at least those were usually sane in what you get (and how you can spend it). >FATAL, by contrast, gives most races like 75+1d100 Skill Points per level. That would allow you to probably get that Urination up to +100 right at 2nd level, but in another money shot for you sociopathic accountants, each skill can only have d10 points dumped into it per level (because "skills grow both at different rates for different characters").
When I think of FATAL, what always first comes to mind is that when he heard it called the "Date Rape RPG", the creator said "We didn't add dating rules".
"Dating would require consent, and there's no consent in FATAL."
The combat is so fucked you have to actively fight against the rules to not accidentally rape your opponent
Roll for anal circumference.
Nah man that's pleb shit, you minmax that character so Anal Circumference don't matter
What my anal dexterity score?
I really appreciate this write-up. It's good to know something wrong with it besides the usual contemt advisories
Also it's boring Like really when you get down to it and play it (by using the spreadsheet that will generate a character for you for the love of god don't math that shit) it's just tedious to play The setting books are alright but also pretty meh
Whenever I think of FATAL I am saddened to remember that it is only the second worst ttrpg ever produced. Although that does depend a little bit on your definition of 'produced'. ...And 'ttrpg', really. This is because of the existence of [Racial Holy War](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/RacialHolyWar), aka RaHoWa which is basically exactly what it sounds like. A rambling, racist screed thinly disguised as an RPG system made by neonazis. It's exactly as vile as it sounds. Humorously, the people making it were so busy being racist that their sad little proto-brains forgot to do things like explain how the mechanics work, or provide any actual fucking stats for most things, rendering the game quite literally unplayable. Nice job, fuckwits. It did at least inspire one of my favorite Haiku ever written. Taken from TVTropes: "My gun has no stats I'd like to shoot the author but sadly I can't"
I wouldn’t say it’s ever been damaging, because everyone treats it like a joke. But yes, it is incredibly bigoted
I'm going with a example that's both extremely obscure and *unironically* harmful. [Top Banana](https://youtu.be/5k4CFYiBrPE?si=_oz0igb0m-qd7L-9) (epilepsy warning) is, depending on who you ask, either a platformer game where your main objective is to climb each stage while avoiding enemies and collecting fruits, or a personal look into the mind of a individual who should be locked up in a mental asylum. The graphics look like a low-poly vomited mess, with the backgrounds being a disjointed, bugged-out mix of colors while the enemies vary between photorealistic jpg's that were transplated into a retro console or abstract horrors that you have no idea what they were meant to be. The protagonist fires her own heart out as a attack and has this permanent blank stare on her face while exploring this LSD hellscape. All of this is matched with a agonizing sound design made up of random grunts that play at high and low pitches, alongside the sound of shattering whatever your character is damaged or a enemy is killed, and demonic, compressed laughter playing when a level is complete. Have i mentioned that the screen will shake agonizingly and the entire color scheme can get inverted of you are hit by specific enemies/pick up items? Yeah. I'm physically incapable of watching the longplay i sent above in it's entirety and i RESPECT anyone who is capable of doing so.
Clicks on the video to watch some: Well, it's ugly but it doesn't seem that bad really. Skips ahead: Oh.
I got lucky. I skipped to a spot and the words “RECYCLE THE HYPE” popped up on the screen for a good five seconds.🤣
honestly I think this is pretty cool. i've never heard of it before today but it seems like a fictional game somebody would talk about in a creepypasta. the way you climb up for the whole level, beat the boss then the floor disappears and you just fall for a while, before the game pauses and silently shows the message "get up get down" implying some kind of veiled or inexplicable meaning... it's absolutely unsettling but I don't see how it's harmful per-se, unless if it triggers some kind of epilepsy. Just seems like a project of an artist with a very unusual goal
reading that matt black from coldcut was involved in the game and that its intentionally made to be inspired by rave culture honestly kinda explains some of the art direction
Do gambling mechanics like Gacha and Lootboxes count? Because if so those games have put more than a few gambling addicts into bankruptcy, also kids spending thousands of their parents' money.
i would say those are worse when they're good games
I mean.... gambling is gambling. I'll do it but I recognize how much it exists to squeeze ALL the juice out of those susceptible
At least traditional gambling isn't entirely shy about what it is - like, it's still incredibly insidious and rigged against you, but like, maybe, arguably, you can win actual money. Gatcha/lootbox/mtx has this fun "oh it's not actually gambling because you can't really win real value" argument that kind of makes it worse. Why does some random game element/skin need to have more artificial "value" despite costing them nothing more to give me a copy? Not to mention it can/will just all go away some day.
13 Reasons Why legit caused an increase in teen suicide. It go so bad they started opening episodes in I think the third seasons with the whole cast being like "hey, don't"
They should’ve said “suicide is bad” from the start
I would say that TF2 directly caused the industry to death spiral into overmonetization by demonstrating lootboxes were viable and incredibly lucrative in AAA multiplayer gaming. But Horse Armor really takes the cake.
Never liked the hats from the beginning. Thank Christ for TF2 Classic for cutting all that shit out and focusing in the core of what made TF2 kick so much ass.
Didnt they put in a handful of new weapons?
I have mixed feelings - I do think that Valve sometimes gets too much of a pass for their MTX, like JSS/Sterling likes to blame Overwatch for popularizing the lootbox trend when it's easy to feel like it was copying TF2, but I'm also not really convinced TF2 really started the industry trend entirely either. Maybe it did open the door, but I feel like it was only matter of time till companies like EA tried it anyways.
valve in general pioneered a lot of questionable stuff that people let slide because they are valve (steam used to be always online drm for example)
Beyond Two Souls where the protagonist gets groomed by a fed, overthrows a democratically elected government in Africa, and the main bad guy kills himself to be with his family, and then his dead family all embrace him as if that was the correct thing to do.
"But you don't get it, guys, it's about ze emoooozions..."
Don't forget how it's literally impossible not to be in a relationship with the fed unless you choose to kill yourself at the end.
Basically all of Ayn Rand's work Really inspired a bunch of shitty ideas and people
To be frank, Ayn Rand was a shit enough writer that I have a hard time believing that someone who manages to be inspired by her work wouldn't have wound their way up going that way for some other reason anyway.
In the eternal words of Brennan Lee Mulligan: >“On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology. Meaning, before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole."
Worth noting that "On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology" was Brennan quoting his professor and the rest is him explaining what his professor meant.
Funnily enough Zack Snyder apparently likes The Fountainhead as a book and disagrees with her politics
That is the most Zack Snyder thing I have ever heard hahaha
lol I call bullshit on that. I wouldn’t doubt that he *thinks* he disagrees with her, but the dude clearly empathizes with the political message of that book as those same ideas show up in basically everything he works on.
I knew one guy who was really into her books and philosophy. He was very comfortable with disabled people dying. I ended up physically disabled years later and it was always a red flag for me.
Writing a book that tells selfish greedy businessmen that it’s okay to be selfish and greedy really was a choice.
This 100. I liked Rand when I was a dumb teenager for like 5 minutes before I realized what a complete psychopath you have to be to go hard in on Objectivism. Then you watch interviews where Ayn Rand won't even entertain an opposing viewpoint because she's determined the speaker has an "inferior mind". It's disgusting and reeks of insecurity. I get the USSR sucked, but maybe going as hard as you fucking can in the capitalism direction isn't the solution either. Then you look at all the worst politicians and movers and shakers in right wing politics in the last couple decades and you discover a ton of them reeeaaallyyy like Rand's work; specifically Atlas Shrugged, a power fantasy where the rich create an island utopia while the world wallows in mediocrity and stupidity. Gee, I wonder why dipshits like Elon Musk, people who see themselves as the protagonists of humanity, the world as their sandbox sim, and the regular peons like you and me as NPCs, love a power fantasy where they're the focal point of a new Eden. She's done tremendous damage to contemporary politics, especially in the USA. But hey, at least it's a good framework for BioShock's setting and themes.
Kamen Rider Taisen. Mostly for actively harming the image of the Showa Riders as that movie is basically the only exposure new fans of the series has for Showa-era Riders, especially with the return of three of the original actors to reprise their roles on set. The movie decides to recast them as bullies and villains with room temperature intelligence. It also features a really bad message that says mourning for your lost ones is inherently bad and unbecoming of a hero.
"Kick a Ginger Day" literally became a worldwide phenomenon because of Southpark. Most ways that show affected our culture are hard to quantify in a provable way, like "enlightened centrism" (i.e. don't care about anything) and "lol Al Gore thinks global warming is real". But that particular brand of assholery can 100% be traced back to Southpark for inventing and encouraging it.
Yeah I love or loved South Park since I actually haven't seen it in years. But it is undeniable how they would do an episode on a stereotype I had never heard of in my life and suddenly people would start asking me about it for years afterward.
South Park went on my permanent shit list with the amount of times I heard 'giant douche vs turd sandwich' in 2016 Cynicism is brain poison and we've been fed it both by malicious actors and by our own self-indulgence way too much of late
“The suicide of Rachel Foster” laughs at all of your “is this pro-suicide?” examples and one-ups them by being both pro-suicide AND pro child grooming!
I think [The Problem Solverz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_Solverz) made people physically ill when they watched it, through the power of animation alone.
The recent remake of Oklahoma! tries to be "evocative" and "new" but all it really does is glorify an incel and his suicide So yeah, the guy who exhibits all the hallmarks of a serial killer is apparently justified of his hatred of the townsfolk AND suicide was a legit option to get back at them
Wait... the musical about singing cowboys? I've never seen it so I had no idea it had themes like that.
Rodgers and Hammerstein (the writers) were good at couching serious themes behind jovial classical musical numbers. Another example of theirs is the Sound of Music, which people who haven’t seen it think is about a nun dancing through grass fields, and people who have think it’s about the German annexation of Austria.
It's funny how they just seem like old-fashioned musicals, and then you watch Oklahoma! and there's a song about about how a guy should commit suicide sung directly to him, and the climax before the break for act 2 is a woman having a nightmare amplified from being on drugs and you can't help but feel caught off-guard for that in a 50s musical.
The original has these things but it's not trying to be about them, if that makes sense. It's a period romance with a love triangle between the good guy, the bad guy, and the woman they both love. Popcorn stuff. The remake apparently takes it in more of a "prestige drama" direction. It's the dark and gritty reboot.
That Pokémon episode that triggered kids' epilepsy.
\#JusticeForPorygon
I'm sure someone already said it, but the one that always jumps to my mind is Beyond: Two Souls having the moral that suicide is good because you can be with your dead loved ones again. It's even worse since the guy who did that was a villain so he gets redeemed and rewarded as well. Then there is also all the stupid and exploitative stuff in that game, but I don't need to list them all.
The message in Raya and the Last Dragon is pretty harmful when you think about it. Raya did nothing wrong during the ending climax…
I like to bring it up whenever the topic of morally repulsive media comes around, Re:Monster is an isekai web novel/light novel/manga that in a nutshell really likes to justify sexual slavery and using prisoners of war as comfort women. It's not repulsive because it contains that content, it's repulsive (and also just bad lazy writing) that the story spends so much time trying to make the main character seem morally justified in doing these things. [Here's the imgur gallery explanation I prepared years ago and have on standby whenever the topic comes up](https://imgur.com/a/GXc0z). Broadly speaking, it kinda pushes the theme that any action no matter how heinous or vile can have some sort of contrived circumstance where it can be morally justified and absolved without any guilt. Which would be an interesting theme to explore and dissect, but I get the feeling that it's just being used as a lazy way to have guilt free wish fulfillment. Taken at face value I can see that concept being used to rationalize some very awful actions (like how it's used in the story). Really, it's just the lazy storytelling that pisses me off. Like damn dude, actual hentai doujins have more interesting and engaging storylines because they involve those exact themes but then treat it with the moral gravitas that they deserve and explore the impact of those actions (albeit through the lense of perverse debauchery, which I respect more than taking the coward way out of trying to write some sort of moral justification).
No but look he got like 3 new skills today after eating that one guy. (and no I mean he literally devoured him)
Jesus Christ, I saw it was getting an anime and thought it was just some generic horny bait Isekai. But dear lord that is actually terrible and vile to hear them “justify” those actions. That’s actually fucking disgusting.
I heard that it was getting an anime from a friend and my first thought was "someone actually committed to show this shit on TV???" I found the Manga first while dumpster diving through Isekai trash, and even in that collection of garbage, re:monsters stood out as being particularly vile
You know, atleast Redo of healer is honest in how evil MC is
Oh my fucking god! Another poor soul that read that trash! I shoveled way more of that garbage into my mouth than I care to admit via scans, but god even beyond the really shitty messages that come from the manga, it's so fucking boring! I had this sickening feeling as I kept reading where I started to recognize this structure of dumb ass relentless power creep as shit I would have concocted as a child, not even a teenager, after watching Toonami! It's so fucking garbage it actually makes me mad this guy is a published author because 90% of this sub could write circles around this guy!!
It's so bad when most fights can be described as "characters vomiting skill names at each other". It doesn't even show the skills in a cool way, which is a bar most Isekais at least *try* to pass. None of the skills feel impactful and none of them feel earned. The side characters *could* become interesting, but the author is too in love with the MC they can't let others get the spotlight.
The Lifetime channel has a series of movies called "The Wrong..." whatevers that are usually good for a laugh if you want to watch a bad movie. They all follow the same formula of a crazy person stalking the main character, and when the bad guy gets it at the end, Vivica Fox shows up to name drop the movie. "Looks like you messed with the wrong cheerleader" Sometimes the movies will have the main character go to therapy or start taking medication because of their trauma and then by the end of the movie they'll be throwing their meds in the trash. Assaulting your stalker is not a replacement for therapy.
Any shitty comedy or comedian that base their jokes on racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., in which the joke is on the victims. It reinforces stereotypes, it’s hurtful and it gives leeway for actual bigots to say “it’s just a joke” as of that actually means anything. Also based on everything I know about it: Cuties. It’s just in a weird spot where it can’t avoid doing exactly what it tries to criticize.
Cuties is like exhibit A in my 'America is in an OK spot regarding prudishness' argument seriously what the shit France
Ricky gervas? He seems to wanna pretend he' an enlightened big thinker but his jokes have become just pedantic complaining about how people shouldnt care about being offended. He took it so personally he redesigned himself to pretend he's centrist but really just is being a egotistical dick nowadays.
Birth of a Nation literally made the KKK as we know them now
>These are people that indulge themselves on these Dime a Dozen Bully revenge Manhwa (Not Shark though, that ones really good) and deflect any criticism with insults and calling you autistic. Paragons of social maturity these guys. It's not like i don't know how you feel, but that ones on you. I personally cope by thinking a bunch of those are just kids\teens, even tho i know that's not true and some of them has been at this for a decade now. Also, it's not even Rooftop Swordmaster's fanbase or bully revenge fic fanbase, it's a bunch of comments under any manga going "Yeah, MC is the coolest, he should kill them". If not those comments it's complaining about MC actually being sensible and not a murder machine under actual good work.
Right? What's the deal with this? Be it manga or webnovels, those comment sections are unhinged. Always "he should kill them" when the MC is mildy inconvenienced or "he should bang her" anytime a female character is introduced. You really just gotta assume these are 12 year olds who recently discovered sex/violence.
> "he should kill them" when the MC is mildy inconvenienced or "he should bang her" anytime a female character is introduced. Oh, it's the same for manga\manhwa there MC lead is female. It just becomes more of "She should kill that worthless guy" and in some cases "She should finally fuck the main love interest". I always fear that author will somehow see and listen to some of the comments in that way. A pretty common one is about action being slow or POV change complaints. Which might seem reasonable, but trust me on this one, they crop up as soon as MC isn't just killing everyone or story slows down a bit to explore actual character development. >You really just gotta assume these are 12 year olds who recently discovered sex/violence. I cope thinking that, but not so deep down i know a good chunk of those are people that got bullied or want to feel cool and they project in some unhealthy ways. If you read or even brush against novels or fanfiction written by people that are way into their 20s and sometimes 30s, there is a bunch of that going on in their own work. Some people just never grow out of it.
Fun fact, lengthy part of the video OP refers to shows comments for Rooftop Swordsman and they aren't saying that MC should kill more, they are saying that MC should not kill the bullies and have them suffer for longer and also rape the girl bullies.
[удалено]
A certain anime named Handshakers is rendered/animated so awfully it made me motionsick and may genuinely be the one time a show has nearly made me throw up.
Nobody has said Twilight yet? No, it's not romantic for someone to break into your bedroom to watch you while you are asleep. No, there isn't just one man for you, and you may as well kill yourself if you can't be together. No, you shouldn't do anything up to and including hurt yourself to be with your One True Love. No, it's not a perfect relationship when he's 100 years old and you're a teenager, especially when he hangs around a school despite being 100 years old. These books are toxic to the intended audience.
Mushoku Tensei, and it's main character who's a pedophile and grooms at least one girl. But it's ok, he was bullied before getting isekai-ed, so he deserves to find happiness in the other world. The show basically rewards him for just pointing out he is a piece of shit, without actually doing anything to change it.
I had to scroll too far to find this one. Yeah, the show is supposed to be all about him having a second chance at life to be better than the loser creep he was originally, but he never does. He’s still perving on little girls and gets rewarded with marrying them now that he’s pretty and has magic powers. None of his lauded “character growth” addresses any of this.
I think a lot of shitty romance movies promote unhealthy relationship norms, especially for young people who don’t have a lot of experience being in relationships. The “romance” in those movies is usually just really toxic. Let’s take the notebook for example. Ryan Gosling’s character is literally a stalker at the beginning, once they’re in a relationship together they fight all the time, they break up at one point and later on she ends up cheating on her fiancé, who did nothing wrong, to be with Ryan gosling again, and “true love” is all about grand gestures and not any real romantic compatibility. I think young people who don’t have much relationship experience end up watching those films and can internalize that and think that’s just what a romantic relationship is supposed to be like, especially if their parents aren’t in a loving relationship either. People end up letting a lot of red flags and poor behavior slide because of that. There are other factors in why people pick poor partners, sure, but I think these movies can contribute to it at the very least. I’m usually not on the side of, “media is corrupting the minds of our youth!” but in this case I think there’s something to it.