BREAKING NEWS -- REPORT: JOE BIDEN WILL DROP OUT OF PRESIDENTIAL RACE -- BREAKING NEWS

— Breaking News (@BreakingNews) January 4, 2008

That's right folks, tonight, for the first time this election cycle, Former President and Current Felon DONALD J TRUMP will face off in a battle of wits against Current President and Dementia Patient JOESPH BIDEN. There will be GAFFS . There will be LAUGHS . There will be ZINGERS . There will be DINGERS . And, Lord Willing, by the end of the debate we'll all know who we're voting for.

I will try my ABSOLUTE HARDEST to get a STREAM rolling, but I might be late. !jannies, if I am not able to, could one of you start it?

It starts tonight at 9:00PM Eastern Time. Eurocucks are, as always, NOT INVITED.

be there......... OR DIE!!!

Trust them !chuds

• Games journ*lists often beat difficult games, but face criticism and abuse for their reviews.\

• The myth that games journ*lists hate video games is false; they are passionate about the medium.\

• To find trustworthy game critics, look for those with similar tastes and opinions to yourself.

I get it, games journ*lists are terrible at video games. Remember that one guy playing Cuphead? Let's ignore the fact that games journ*lists regularly beat entire games in a far shorter timespan than regular people who don't have deadlines to meet. Turn a blind eye to the fact that they don't have a single guide to help them beat a difficult boss or access an area with some abstruse entry method like drinking poison that kills you at any other time. Forget about the fact they beat them before the patches arrive to make the game easier.

They also hate video games, and chose to cover this beat because they want to destroy the entire industry. It doesn't matter that wages are low across the sector and crunch is rife, especially when reviewing hundred-hour games with bafflingly tight turnarounds. We hate video games, and can't wait to tear them down.

The myth that games journ*lists not only suck at video games, but also actively hate the medium, is one that I've never understood. However, the issue with game reviews is much easier to parse.

Gaming in 2024 is team-based. You're Team Xbox or Team PlayStation. Team Fortnite or Team CoD. Team Stellar Blade or Team Censorship. Team Developer or Team Journ*list. That's how many g*mers see it, at least.

There's a major problem with games marketing that fuels this feudal misery. Hype trailers for games years away from release whip fans into a fervour, and the excitement heightens to a level where any criticism of the game is seen as a personal sleight. Calling Stellar Blade's protagonist Eve boring meant that you're a part of the pro-censorship wokerati who can't stand a beautiful woman leading a game.

There's another issue here, to do with reading comprehension and media literacy, but I won't go into that today.

Team Elden Ring got mad last week, when a couple of reviews said that it was too difficult. Accusations flew across the Twittersphere, the critics behind said reviews were told in no uncertain terms to 'git gud', and suffered far worse abuse, as misogynistic as it was vitriolic. Cuphead has been brought up, again.

Fast forward a week, and players are levelling the very same accusations at the FromSoftware DLC. Countless mods have added easy modes to the game -- one called Journ*list Mode, despite the fact journos beat the game without needing it. Players feel bosses are unfair, they believe the systems are too abstruse, and yet they refuse to engage with some of the game's core mechanics due to believing they're a cheat's way out. I wonder if any of them have apologised to the reviewers who pointed out these very issues?

It's not just an Elden Ring problem. When Kallie Plagge reviewed Cyberpunk 2077 for GameSpot, she was hounded by thousands of players for pointing out the game's negatives. She didn't like the edgy aesthetics that played no meaningful part in the gameplay, so she was labelled a prude. She pointed out offensive depictions of minorities, so she was called an SJW. She called out the technical issues obvious even on PC, so she suffered a barrage of hatred.

Plagge was at the receiving end of a whirlwind of abuse from g*mers excited for CD Projekt Red's new title, eight years in the making. Their excitement, as well as the marketing campaign, blinded them from seeing fair criticism as exactly that -- fair. I don't know her, but I imagine Plagge was excited to play the game, too. Games journ*lists and critics like games! And yet, her 7/10 review sparked days of collective outrage.

However, when the game released, fans saw the truth for themselves. Just days after Plagge's review was published, a post appeared on the Cyberpunk subreddit titled, "Everyone talked shit about her, but I'm starting to agree with Kelly Plagge [sic]". On the whole, the review was more positive than the sentiment on the subreddit. The fan reaction was so intense that a new subreddit, /r/LowSodiumCyberpunk, was set up by the minority of fans wanting to escape the swathes turning on the game for the exact reasons Plagge pointed out.

What gives? At what point do you start trusting game critics and those who review your games? As much as you think we're different to you, that we have different agendas and want to tear down the things you love, we're not. We love video games. We wouldn't do this job otherwise. But we have to be honest about our opinions.

So find someone with similar opinions to you. While Eurog*mer's reviewer found the DLC so difficult it spoiled their experience, our reviewer relished FromSoftware's seemingly insurmountable challenge. I myself play and review a lot of RPGs and text-heavy games because I'm a book nerd at heart. If you, too, like those sorts of games and welcome valid criticism of the genre, keep tabs on my OpenCritic page.

This is how to navigate the media landscape. Find someone your tastes align with, or whose criticism you enjoy reading. Find your Roger Ebert. Don't just look at the biggest reviews on the biggest sites, because you lack important context about the person behind the webpage. You can expect their review to be balanced and fair, but it will also be entirely subjective -- reviews are opinions, after all -- so you need to dig a little deeper to understand whether this is a perspective that is similar to yours. If your favourite reviewer writes for an independent zine, go for it, that might be more valuable to you than an IGN or TheG*mer write-up.

But no games journ*list is out to get you. The vast majority try to be fair in their criticism and unbiased when it comes to inconsequential arguments like console preferences. Nobody's going to give Astro Bot a two because they love Xbox. Nobody is trying to destroy game developers' lives. We're honest, we're opinionated, we're human. Just like you.

At this point we're gonna need a required civics competency exam for both voters and candidates if this unapologetic stupidity doesn't stop.

That's racist

Propaganda works, and we're drowning in it. Unfortunately the good guys don't use it, because they tend to find mass social manipulation with crude psychosocial engineering techniques kinda immoral. So the most effective propaganda is largely produced by our enemies, foreign and domestic.

What we do is not propaganda chud! We're just teaching you how to be a decent human being

more than that, I feel like the sportification of politics has caused some people to just blindly select the "trump good biden bad" option in these polls, no matter what the prompt is.

He says this with zero hints of irony

Not sure where you're from, partner, but in the USA, some people pronounce Fascism kinda funny like…That may help explain the headline a bit.

The party of the working class

The irony is the one who said he'd be a dictator "only on day one" is none other than Trump, not Biden, facts. The mainstream media doesn't realize Trump will shut down the "lugenpresse" if he gets re-elected within a year of his second term, watch.

Burger dramatards you must go and vote for Trump now

Some people believe that the government is ran by a deep state cabal and the only way to fix things and to restore democracy is to let Trump rule as a dictator so he can clean house and purge all of the rogue elements.

Once again, no hints of irony

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” -- George Carlin

Words of wisdom, weirdly… but this seems to be ignorance of a new order. Can so many really not know any better?

So close and yet so far

Nate Silver the Fivethirtyeight dude has Trump most likely to win the election at the moment based on all the poll data. He's not trying to make it a close race to increase revenue. People need to realise that Trump has a better or equal chance of winning than Biden right now.

Fivethirtyeight is an aggregate site, and they haven't gotten an election right since 2012.

Not true they gave trump a much much higher chance of winning than anyone else, they also predicted the Biden win.

What was that question about choosing to live in ignorance again?

😈Satan could show up to America and claim he's the real victim and he's the one trying to save democracy and people will vote for him over Jesus.

Odd, I don't remember chuds claiming that Satan is the real hero of the Bible

The 2012 election was the last election with decent candidates. The fact that you have to choose between a corrupt fascist billionaire and an 81 year old war monger tells you everything you need to know about the state of American democracy. Please travel a lot more. It doesn't have to be like that. Mobilize, educate yourselves. A better system is possible. Look beyond American politics and understand that you've been living in a nationalist regime with neoliberal policies disguised as a democracy.

>please travel a lot more

This is such a bougie 'advice', just take time off work and spend all your savings to travel the world until you agree with me

In 1950, 5 years after the end of World War II, there was a nationwide survey in Germany that asked if Adolf Hitler was good for Germany. Remember that almost every German town got blasted to smithereens, and at the end of the war, 70 year old men and 10-year-old boys were guarding most cities. An astonishing 25% of the German people said that Adolf was good for Germany. Those same people are the ones that you are referring to in these "surveys" that think that drumpf would be good for the US.

This has nothing to do with Trump but it allows me to mention him and Hitler in the same paragraph so get worried already and vote for my side

any R nerds here, haven't used it since finishing my masters

chill post-stream podcast - i had a good day 7:40

• Jinxthinker finished a 4 hour stream. Viewers maxxed out at 5, but one was him checking the stream; nobody talked but that might be because they were Turkish and didn't speak English

• Lots of people thought Jinxsister was French in college.

• He slept for 15 hours after a wanking bender; now he feels like a God. 1:10

• Jinxthinker superchatted Phil 2 Great British Pounds and was acknowledged by Phil. Someone else gifted him a sub, so he's part of the inner circle. 1:40

• It was also a good day because he received a positive reply on 4chan and he wrote it down. "Checked, plus saved, plus jerked off, plus busted mine balls. Take it as a compliment or whateves, this is literally waifu type material. Very good and clean gent. She is a cutie. Thank you, anon." 2:20

• He describes his breakfast burgers that he had before "going to the shop like a Mr. Braniac" 3:40

• Someone in a Twitch chat once agreed with his opinion on energy drinks, further showing he's a trendsetter. 4:20

• Jinxthinker is thinking of getting tattoos to freshen up his look 4:40

• There was an incident with a Tesco delivery driver the other day who wouldn't deliver his groceries up the stairs

• It's just been a good day overall with chocolates to come to make it better 6:00

• Jinxthinker will treat himself to a caramel chocolate which he tries to feed to the camera (you)

!jinxthinkers do you write down positive comments you receive online to brighten up your day later on?

Most Based Comments

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔘

It's capped in the whole country, I believe. (Thanks to Trump!) (34)

You mean Biden right? https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20President%20Biden%27s,dollars%20for%20a%20month%27s%20supply. (-13)

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔥🔘🔘

So they both did it. Well it's nice to see government working together for once! 😂 (19)

More like trump pretended to do it and didn't actually, them Biden actually did it, then Trump tried to take credit. (-5)

Basedness: 🔥🔥🔥🔘🔘

No, I do not. Research it. Trump did this in 2020 and Biden put it on hold when he got into office and then did it in 2023 and took credit for it like a goon. (39)

Nice try but not quite, try reading this https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-facts-about-the-35-insulin-copay-cap-in-medicare/ (-7)

Angriest Comments

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡🔘

Yeah, I read it. A lot of shit the government does is ineffective. People who care do their best. And no, I don't think that's why it was canceled. There'd be no reason to cancel an order before you'd replace it. Politicians like giving people problems so they can swoop in and fix them. (11)

But ultimately this is like a drop in the bucket compared to all the insane and horrible shit Trump did his whole rum? Right? You do understand that, right? (0)

Angriness: 😡😡😡😡🔘

So helpful! Great convo! Feels like a peepeehead like you should be in the regular Minneapolis subreddit (0)

well that was a quick way of saying this:I hope you're ashamed for how dumb you were. You could have easily learned the reality behind this issue on your own. If you just use Google. That level of ignorance is profound. It appears intentional, but I hope it wasn't. You could have easily looked up the actual reality behind the story by googling it yourself, but you did not. You decided to broadcast hatred towards those suffering instead of doing your due diligence. I hope that you actually learn about the reality behind people suffering from such health inequities before you judge them and ignore their deaths and suffering. (1)

Angriness: 😡😡😡🔘🔘

Yeah my b. Still no one in 2024 should be doing because of a lack of funds for insulin. (2)

People will die, though. Maybe they don't have the 35$, maybe they don't have the determination or the social tools to get aid. As long as medicine has financial barriers, people will die over money. (1)

Biggest Lolcow: /u/davidhumerful

Score: 🐮🔘🔘🔘🔘

Number of comments: 8

Average angriness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘

Maximum angriness: 😡😡😡😡🔘

Minimum angriness: 🔘🔘🔘🔘🔘

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