So last month a pretty Amazing thing happened, DIU (the Defense Innovation Unit) published a 14 page whitepaper named DIU 3.0 which is by itself is pretty unremarkable, but within it, it says that DIU 2.0 was pretty successful but could not live up to the potential to deliver commercial dual use tech to INDOPACOM or EuroCom and specifically the Specifically Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U) because it was hamstrung by the DoD and Pentagon.

(I'll link the entire pdf down below)

The 3.0 approach cuts through all this and can leverage commercial industries to ramp up or down production and supply tech in fight with belligerent nations by circumventing the entire Pentagon and reporting directly to the SECRETARY OF DEFENSE.

Think about it. An innovation unit will say they have procured assurances from the private sector to someone who has direct access to the President.

The DIU 2.0 had used its Other Transaction Authority to use commercial tech to create prototypes of dual tech (cheekily named as Alternative Defense Investments) which raised more than $30B in the private sector

And it has unveiled a matrix (consultant behavior) with pretty alarming language

So what does all of this have to do with SXSW?

Well, the US ARMY is one of the biggest sponsors of SXSW ( https://www.sxsw.com/sponsors/ ) and the DIU has one of its major offices in Austin. Also, each year, the DIU hosts the annual SXSW Tech conferences. Although it is ignored by most music lovers, it holds the key to all your tech and defense portfolio holdings for the foreseeable future.

Here's the official endorsement of SXSW at DIU.

https://www.diu.mil/latest/diu-at-sxsw-connecting-technology-and-talent-from-around-the-world-for

And here's the DARPA and DoD endorsement:

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/sxsw2024

The 2024 lineup of keynote speakers at SXSW:

https://www.sxsw.com/news/2024/tracy-chou-deonne-castaneda-jack-conte-selena-gomez-keynotes-featured-speakers-2024/

Selected interesting personas:

Privacy-in-Progress: Redefining the Boundaries of Being Online: Founder and CEO of Block Party and co-founder of Project Tracy Chou and Head of Product Design at Block Party Deonne Castaneda.

Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Web: CEO of Patreon Jack Conte

Managing Director of Charts & Data Operations at Billboard Keith Caulfield

Celine Joshua, and Executive Vice President of Charts & Data Partnerships at Billboard Silvio Pietroluongo to find out how the Billboard Charts have been modernized and globalized to reflect the many means of music consumption in an ever-evolving borderless digital and social age

CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy Patrick Moorhead

Michael Dell

CEO of Blackbird Collective Bridgid Coulter Cheadle and author and founder of Backstage Capital and https://HireRunner.co Arlan Hamilton

Selected Fields: (Do not discard sessions which have randomized titles like "We need more Women of Color". The DIU is more intelligent than you to hide their conversations under the pretense of absolute rampant DEI.)

{Go to Sessions to see individual conferences and all the speakers}

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/artificial-intelligence-track/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/energy/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/game-industry/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/government-and-civic-engagement-track/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/startups/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/tech-industry/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/tech-industry/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/transportation/

https://www.sxsw.com/conference/xr-track/

What you can do by listening to the speakers, seeing which particular government official is present in which session and looking back and tracking the tech developed by said companies and how much portion of it is funded by the MIC or does it produce dualtech products is up to you. I am under no obligation to give you any advise regarding your investments.

But do look out for words like director, deputy director, heads of particular COMs (Command theatres) in those sessions. Those are the most interesting.

Fin.

Epilogue: Full 14 page whitepaper on DIU 3.0

https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/CNAS-Report-DIU-Finalc-020624.pdf

Here's a Eurobeat song about Marsey trolling on the internet

Here's some folk songs about !jinxthinkers

In this thread we'll discuss the start of RoosterTeeth and RWBY's decline. I don't have a lot of space left so refer to the first thread for a proper introduction.

RoosterTeeth's Decline

"Viewers really like the chemistry of these 5 people playing Halo, let's hire another 300 people and... umm..."

-- @AverageBen10Enjoyer

Regarding the fundamental reason why RoosterTeeth failed, there are millions of small mistakes that all fed into the major problem of expenses exceeding profits. Even though RT grew more prominent by the year going into 2014, when WB announced the closure earlier this month they cited RT not being profitable for ten years as a major reason. RoosterTeeth grew too fast and ended up having to hope their endeavors would pay out down the line. Meanwhile the company's payroll grew from a handful of creators into scores of influencers, production crew, writers, animators, management, HR, accounting (at least I'm assuming they had accountants )

RWBY is especially notable in this lesson on growing expenses because while it did become popular, production costs also grew from indie to part of the problem. RWBY Volume 1 was Monty's passion project, voiced by amateurs and made in the same software Monty used for his fanfic YouTube videos. As the show went on the animation was upgraded, professional voice actors were hired...

In contrast RWBY Volume 9 cost roughly 6.6 million dollars to produce. RT apparently needed Crunchyroll's help to fund it at all. (More on that later) As big as it was it's entirely possible RWBY stopped being profitable after a while or maybe was never even profitable. And if RWBY was like that, there's no chance RT's other post-RWBY concepts made them money over time.

And so RT grew too fast and potential turned into bloat. Along the way there were also plenty of rDrama appropriate scandals and the particular problem of RT losing its original fans and failing to replace them with zoomers.

Business Strategy

They decided to turn themselves into a full on production company that dipped their toes into everything. Movies, games, dramatic series, podcasts, various comedic shows etc. Vast majority of them bombed.

-- @Squibbly

In 2014 going into 2016 RoosterTeeth seemed like a rising star, unparalleled success story for nerdom. Their Halo machinima series had evolved into a popular DVD and merch selling fullblown production complete with cgi. Their web show RWBY built more and more hype with every new season and proved itself popular in Japan too, with RT even cutting a deal with a real company like Warner Bros Japan to distribute the dub. RTX was popular and other bigdick companies were using it for promotions like demos for then upcoming games Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and Rainbow Six Siege. It would soon spread internationally to Australia and Britain too. RT succesfully crownfunded the full length movie Lazer Team. The Funhaus division opened in Los Angeles to take the company beyond the Lone Star State. RoosterTeeth's growth in just a few short years was inspiring, so inspiring that it led to an entirely new business philosophy -- one of growth at any cost

Burnie Burns: Now we're not competing with the PewDiePies and the Homestar Runners of the world. Now we're competing with Netflix and HBO and Amazon. And we're more than ready for that challenge.

Burnie Burns and Joel Heyman in particular were big on growing and making RoosterTeeth into an anything they could get away with company. To facilitate this RT was bought out by Fullscreen, LLC. This was an entertainment company offering services and consultation to social media influencers. Their other clients included NBCUniversal, Fox, Fremantle, JASH, Fine Brothers Entertainment, Mattel, and WIGS. ScrewAttack had also been aquired by them, and a few corporate mergers later so was Machinima Inc.

Also in 2014 Otter Media and the Chernin Group aquired a controlling stake so Fullscreen itself ultimately came under AT&T. Flashing forward to '19 and AT&T started shopping around to try and sell RoosterTeeth and other brands. In the end RT was still there for the corporate merger that formed Warner Bros Discovery. This is what allowed RT content to start crossing over with DC Comics.

If it feels like RoosterTeeth became a bloated and generic social media company, that's because they were purchased by corporate people who were that way that also offered big bucks to the RT founders who wanted to be that way. With the Fullscreen merger many of the relevant people assured fans RT wouldn't change, but the following years speak for themselves. Upper leadership started to be appointed by the owners starting at least with Fullscreen President and former COO Ezra Cooperstein becoming President of Rooster Teeth in '18 and Jordan Levin becoming general manager after the major layoff in '19. Also that year many of the original founders stepped down into creative roles: Matt Hullum stepped down as CEO and became Chief Content Officer, Burnie Burns stepped down as chief creative officer to executive producer and Geoff Ramsey became executive creative director. Ironically the two business minded founders left around this time, Joel was more or less dismissed from the company that year and Burnie left in '20.

It's not surprising that RoosterTeeth's mediocrity set in with the late '10s. Every generic policy you see out of media and social media slop servers these days, RT soon became guilty of. Milking franchises dry? The RWBY franchise expansion mentioned in this thread and the previous speak for themselves. Obsession with teen influencers and feel good diversity whatnot? In '21 RT announced the creation of the Rooster Teeth Digital Creators Program, which is intended to support "underrepresented" talent. Throwing money around to see what'll stick? Lazer Team 2 and Gen:LOCK got made. Trying to sponsor as much content as possible for the sake of having content? In '18, Rooster Teeth piloted five shows named Branded, Gorq's Quest, Achievement Haunter, Million Dollars, But ... Animated, and Rooster Teeth's Murder Room, and also announced Spikeface, a new 2D/dark comedy show to be coproduced with Rob McElhenney and his RCG Productions. Unnecessary premium service? RT relied more and more on their First program to try and drive dollars and views to their website, for example making RWBY episodes premier up to a month earlier for First members while also removing the vast majority of RWBY and RvB content from YouTube. On the other end of this you also have schizophrenic attempts to strike money-making deals with other services, i.e. partnering more and more with Crunchyroll even at the expense of those same First members.

Heck, they even went with the all to common generic minimalism for the new logo.

In the end the corporate mergers are what made RT's dissolution possible since Warner Bros simply decided to close the company and see about selling off the relevant creative assets.

Controversies

RoosterTeeth didn't necessarily fail because of any single major incident, but the problems they did have contributed to their bleeding out over time. There's a recurring theme of old fans disappearing and new fans not sticking around. Plus it's fun to point and laugh

Disappearing Founders

Neurodivergent basement dwellers pretending to be the moral authority

both sides end up devoured by their own hubris

you love to see it

-- @Christine

If 2015 was RT's golden year, it's fitting that '16 was the start of their decline. One of the earlier major controversies to really hit the company was the effective unpersoning of Joel Heyman, one of the company's original founders and the voice for RvB fan favorite character Caboose.

Aside from being a major part of RoosterTeeth's first big show, Joel apparently did a lot of early business deals for the company back when it was really just a group trying to be a company. Unfortunately Joel was heckin rightoid in Austin, TX so things broke down between him and the others as the Trump years went on.

As the 10's went by RT's fanbase evolved from Halo dudebros into types, partially because a few of the former changed into the latter and partially because RT went out of its way to court them. Trump derangement syndrome took hold hard with the rest of the team and this new community wasn't having it either. Even years later bringing up Joel's name in the main subreddit led to misremembered claims about disputes with and mistreatment of other employees.

Joel became quieter until finally departing the company in '19. RT stopped mentioning him in content and everyone in places like Reddit likes to pretend he was never involved. There was never even a larger controversy to cause this lmao he simply committed the crime of being a Republican and was turned on by the same people otherwise quoting Caboose lines

Borrowing a comment from BoomhauerInTheWind RT also lost other originals over time. Most weren't necessarily in trouble but their departures still contributed to the company's decline. Most longtime fans didn't appreciate their replacements as much, and while RoosterTeeth tried to get new fans over the years, we'll see how that turned out for them below

S*x Pests

how do you make a rooster teeth drama thread without mentioning adam kovic

— @Tim_Allen

In October 2020, Achievement Hunter's Ryan Haywood and Funhaus co-founder Adam Kovic were both involved in scandals involving their leaked nudes. Adam Kovic was previously part of Machinima Inc's Inside Gaming before leaving in 2015 to form RT's Funhaus division in Los Angeles. Ryan Haywood did a lot of production and acting work for RT and was best known for being part of Achievement Hunter and entertainment-news division The Know.

I've heard different versions of exactly what happened with both of them, but my understanding is as follows. Both were catfished because they tried to engage in erotic roleplay with fans.

Furthermore Ryan Haywood was fricking fans at conventions and apparently one of them was 17. Also he was married. Also many of these girls thought they were the only one and didn't like that he had multiple sidepieces. Accusations of groomercord grooming started flying and many people got it in their mind that he was effectively a male feminist. Others maintain he was just a regular Z-list celebrity sexpest. In any case his reputation was shot.

Meanwhile Adam Kovic was apparently just a He took nude selfies involving things like riding a dildo and deadlifting anal shots and the Funhaus office bathroom. As RT became increasingly HR-esque this was blown into a major scandal especially since it came out alongside Ryan's drama. Coworker Lawrence Sontag made statements about how Adam was gross and never washed his hands. All this mutated into claims that he'd done coomer stuff including literal cooming all over the office and that he'd harassed female coworkers like Elyse Willems. The RoosterTeeth subreddit even years later circulated a lot of these claims and he's often accused of being a male feminist much like Ryan.

RT amputated them to survive. Ryan obviously stopped working with the company and Adam's Funhaus content was removed. Alas this content was some of Funhaus' best in the eyes of longtime fans. Meanwhile a named Charlotte was hired and for better or worse became a new face for Funhaus. The Subreddit attracted trains and had frequent posts like "Charlotte made me realize I'm a train" to give an idea on the changing audience. Overall the scandal contributed heavily to RT's falling YouTube ratings.

Unless I'm forgetting someone Ryan and Adam represent RT's main s*x scandals, but the company has also had more minor incidents with partners and new hires and the like. One example of these indirect incidents is RT cutting ties with actor Vic Mignogna over sexual harassment accusations. (Famous for being Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist. For RT he voiced in RWBY)

Diversity Hires

She played a huge role in Rooster Teeth's drawn-out implosion; she was unfunny, sucked at games (to the point that she constantly had to be reminded how to play), and had no charisma with the rest of the group, who sucked up to her in an attempt to gain Levar's favor. These factors caused the fanbase to bash her, and of course she played the race card and famously made Geoff cry on stream for being a filthy cumskin moid.

— @AllFunAndGames

I'm sure there's a million billion examples of random and in RT but the famous and dramatic example would be Mica Burton and her successor. Mica is none other than the daughter of LeVar Burton — Geordi La Forge in Star Trek TNG Mica joined RT in 2016 and was part of Achievement Hunter and The Know. She has nothing better to do than has been involved with other gaming content such as Overwatch League and multiple DnD events for Wizards of the Coast.

Mica ultimately wasn't popular and many fans complained about her. She would generally accuse them of racism in response. She picked beefs with the founders too and while I don't have a clip she at one point made Geoff Ramsey do the Brendan Fraser face meme by reminding him he's an overall mayo Also she made her dad hate the company which is hilarious because they clearly kept her around to try and court his favor

She was replaced by another sassy kween named Ky who was also loud (quite literally louder than average) and prone to racial grifting. She famously stated that RT's OG days weren't actually good because of a lack of diversity. This sent the few remaining chuds into a kerfuffle.

The War on Chuds

The "this isn't an airport, no need to announce your departure" tweet and then Loud is What We Do nonsense drove me away.

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

Related to the above, Ky and Achievement Hunter were part of some sort of chud trap for reasons incomprehensible to people with normal business educations.

Many RT fans disliked Ky for being much louder than other hosts. One Redditor made a post about this where he politely and objectively made a point about the audio.

RT responded by trying to make this a race issue. Ky went on Twitter and made complaints along the following lines,

everyone yells, but we [black women] get the shit

I BABY - I GET SCARED - I SCREAM

I'm working on my gain lvls but if you think that's gonna make me, any less loud & expressive?

And it wasn't just Ky at work here because it didn't take long for RT to come up with "Loud is what we do” merchandise. As if the whole thing was some elaborate setup for organic marketing or guerrilla marketing or whatever the r-slurs who didn't get real degrees call it these days

Do you think this merchandise sold well? Do you think this endeavor solved Achievement Hunter's ratings problem? I'll let you infer for yourselves

Work Culture

It's like the people who 20 years ago would bust their asses as starving artists trying to make it in Hollywood or Broadway, except really pathetic and not respectable in any way.

— @Redactor0

Every once in awhile RoosterTeeth would get in trouble for its "crunch culture" and management practices. In true Texas fashion the company was always criticized for being a gold ol' boy club regarding the original founders and whether they knew you or not. RT was created by cliquish nerds so I'd believe it

In June 2019, dozens of anonymous reviews from Glassdoor highlighted long and unpaid hours, poor management, and over-reliance on temporary employees. Gray Haddock, Rooster Teeth's Head of Animation, stepped down two days after the allegations.

Gray Haddock was notably the driving force behind Gen:Lock, another RT animated show like RWBY that I'll bring up again later. Gen:Lock and RWBY, due to coming out back to back, had a hellish production cycle where the animation department worked massive amounts of unpaid overtime. One source estimated that both GL and Volume 6 had about a third of their seasons made entirely for free thanks to not paying overtime. Apparently RT Animation hired tons of interns on 90 day temporary contracts, all unpaid, but with the promise of a full, paying job upon completion. But when March rolled around they were shown the door

Flash forward to 2022 and RT has another crunch scandal featuring crossovers from social justice weirdos

Coinciding with RoosterTeeth's overall bloat and corporate expenditures, 2022 saw massive layoffs including Achievement Hunter's Matt Bragg, who was apparently big with the neckbeards of the subreddit. The layoffs also notably included the entire events staff, a massive red flag in retrospect since RTX was always a big deal to the company. Matt's firing upset the community and weakened the hardcore RoosterTeeth stans enough for criticism to start slipping through.

One of the more dramatic agitators was Achievement Hunter's Kdin. If you want to know what kind of person this is, xir's furry avatar is the picture featured above.

Kdin complained about working crunch hours and only getting paid $40k even after 7 years. Xir also claimed RoosterTeeth was problematic

Within a few weeks of working at Rooster Teeth I was given a nickname, that nickname was a slur. Every day I came into work I was called “F_gg_t” - but they could not use that name in content so when anyone was recording I was called “Fugz” instead.

Apparently Fugz was a common in-joke for AH content but for years the fans never knew what it meant. Suddenly every RT employee who had ever said "fugz" was under fire

Other people who chimed in include Funhaus member Alanah Pearce, who is both loved and hated by dramanauts for being the token booba foid and Arryn Zech, the voice of RWBY character Blake Belladonna

I personally have had my own issues with Rooster Teeth, from the second-hand effects of crunch through a partner to being threatened with recasting on RWBY if I didn't accept what they were willing to pay me.

She kind of downplays that her partner was Miles Luna, one of the original showrunners and not someone like a hapless intern

Mica Burton also came back to complain about RT being racist again. Geordi Jr. claimed she'd once seen the n-word randomly written on a whiteboard. Another employee clarified that what she saw was N_ggers — a reference to a bit from a South Park episode

The situation deteriorated. RT released a statement that did nothing Subreddit users started looking for any reason to tear down RT some more like hating on Geoff for a "problematic like" There were plenty of complaints along the lines of the image below.

Alas, the mob eventually turned against the initial hero of this story when they discovered Kdin had a naggers moment of xir own. This wasn't just a random floating n-word like with Mica either, but a whole rant apparently centered around The Cleveland Show of all things

The zoomers promptly turned against their would-be labor champion so this is a story where no one wins. Certainly not the poor, overworked sub jannies

Overall the incident turned many of the woke zoom-zooms RT had been carefully cultivating against the company and by this point very few of the original fans were left.

Declining Ratings and a Changing Internet

Oh no their Twitter is getting ZERO engagement. Looks like about an average of 300 likes per tweet, with 1 million followers That's so much worse than having actual controversy

— @texthere

Despite its expensive investments in content and influencers, RT suffered a long decline in ratings as the ‘10s went on. The image above represents May 2022 YouTube views for Achievement Hunter, a staple of RT that had dozens of full time employees behind its production. They simply couldn't sustain a company on view counts this bad, especially considering this once popular channel had 3.7 million subscribers.

Part of RoosterTeeth's problem was the changing nature of YouTube. Despite Burnie's initial skepticism of having content off the company's own website, RT ultimately was very dependent on YouTube for their popularity. Most of the podcasts and meta gaming channels earned the majority of their views with YouTube and both RvB and RWBY got heavy exposure on YouTube. RoosterTeeth's own website was never popular enough to bring in consistent streams of new fans if all RT content had been exclusively hosted there.

YouTube became way more algorithmically driven. The site just shows me whatever it thinks I'll watch, regardless of what I tell it. I honestly don't think I've subscribed to a channel in years

— @Pibbles

I've made the same observations of YouTube and it's evolution as many other dramanauts. Heck I wasn't sure if it was just a thing with my account or not until I heard similar stories from others.

YouTube has sorta done a 360 over the years. When it first started the majority of viral videos were coming from completely random people and even the famous ones hardly made a career out of their meme status. A lot of this was America's Funniest Home Videos esque content and not anything with production quality. Red vs Blue originally owed its popularity to this era.

As the years went by though YouTube became more obsessed with influencers and endless content mills. I remember some of them were so heavily favored that their videos would be force fed to you if ever you searched anything tangentially related to their genre, for example the same soyboy creators if you watched anything gaming. God forbid you sat through any of their videos because then half your suggestions would be for that same channel.

Unfortunately RoosterTeeth was getting on in years and YouTube wasn't really pushing them in particular. They seemed to prefer newer and cheaper influencers that really appealed to the youngins RT itself also chased this demographic but YouTube wasn't giving them any assistance.

But this has changed again at least in the past few years. With the brand growing larger and more saturated, modern YouTube seems more dependent on its algorithm than ever and is almost right back to showing people random videos again. Anecdotally it's not uncommon for the app and site to show me videos from 5, 8, even 12+ years ago and the comment sections for these will be filled with users with a similar experience. There also seems to be a kind of "hot" feature allowing newer videos that have achieved a few thousand views to get boosted to people's front pages. Imo this is YouTube's way of courting the youngest zoomers and Gen Alpha. Kids these days prefer short and sweet meme videos over long running content channels, to say nothing of YouTube shorts as a direct TikTok competitor.

Alas RoosterTeeth didn't benefit from this system either. If we could all consult the charts.

We'll see that RoosterTeeth only gained subscribers in one of twenty-two months. Things haven't been much better for their specific brands.

These days all the longrunning channels still following their old formulas are seeing gradual declines in views and channel subscriptions matter less than ever. YouTube doesn't seem to even put videos from subscribed channels on your front page anymore. Longtime fans started to fall off year by year and younger viewers were less and less likely to ever stumble on content at all. Meanwhile the RoosterTeeth site remained gimmicky and under trafficked so the company had no real solution to YouTube's developing away from their tried and formerly true model.

When i was fully neurodivergent, i used to love drunk tank/ early rt podcast because i was a friendless loser

— @Jimbo_B_Beterson

Over twenty years on since the start of noughties internet culture, it's become an inevitability that channels will lose old fans to time and shrink without constant growth. Even loyal channel subscribers will eventually grow up and move on from what entertained their younger selves. There are countless examples of old channels that still have millions of subscribers but end up with dismal contemporary view counts. RoosterTeeth's initial fandom of Xoomers and Millennials was never properly replaced with Zoomers and Alphags, and the company couldn't survive this inverted population pyramid.

RT did themselves no favors in mangling their attempts at a forced culture shift. Going into the content dark ages of Current Year and the dreaded Drumpf Reich they started to lean towards social justice and overly dramatic grandstands they believed the kids would appreciate Following the corporate mergers it's probable RT ended up with the same kind of consultants that caused this trend with other media companies. You could also sorta blame RWBY since it was now their most popular show and a major recruiter for RT as a whole. When Monty died his animation fans started to lose interest. The scriptwriters-turned-total-showrunners gravitated more towards the peripheral tumblr/yuri-thumping demographic to make up ratings, and in a classic feedback loop these people soon represented the only real influx of new RT fans.

their remaining fanbase is just weird culture war cat ladies whose high school boyfriends introduced them to rt in the first place.

source: i was the high school boyfriend

— @BoomhauerInTheWind

As RoosterTeeth prosecuted this war on chuds, many of the Halo dudebros heckin chuds! that formed the original fanbase began to lose interest in the company and were replaced by an endless stream of slash pfp using Twitter types. Of course these types of people have a tendency to form circular firing squads and they regularly accused the company's mayo scrote leadership of not doing enough for x or for y-phobia. It didn't help that actual RT personalities like Kdin, Geordi Jr, and Ky were happy to hop on these bandwagons. When the aforementioned Glassdoor and labor scandals came out many of these moral grandstand types turned on the company, and so RT was left with no real core demographic anymore.

Yet another long term problem for the company was the handling of their own website and their paypig service RoosterTeeth FIRST RT's premium was their first way of making money back in 2003 and Burnie always believed in focusing on the website and this program. The eventual corporate overlords in AT&T and WB also supported expansions to the service as a way of making money back from RT. FIRST offered paying members access to content before being offered to the public, in addition to extra site features, exclusive videos and merchandise. An even higher-level tier called Double Gold included such perks as: a 10% discount on all Rooster Teeth items, first access to live event VIP passes and a box of merchandise carrying a value more than $60.

RT always had an awkward relationship with YouTube especially when it came to their shows. They flip-flopped on pulling Red vs Blue and RWBY episodes from YouTube at least three times, with the most recent and final time in ‘23. RT wanted fans to follow these shows to the site but not everyone made the transition. The website was infamous for terrible UI and crashes and many felt it made for a poor video player.

Freeloaders had always complained about the benefits and as RT began to disintegrate many FIRST users started to complain they weren't getting enough and that too much of the premium content only existed on a website few people wanted to use. One particular sore point was RWBY's season 9 getting a one year exclusivity deal with anime streaming service Crunchyroll. They paid RoosterTeeth money just to not watch the flagship show!

FIRST got more expensive over time and at one point RT rug-pulled people that had previously been grandfathered in to lower pricing. Many people started unsubscribing over the years out of simple boredom when new shows failed to recapture RWBY's popularity, and the gradual cancellation of RWBY spin-off content coupled with the Volume 9 incident cost them those fans as well. People also cancelled in response to the regular controversies of RT's later years.

In the end their first and last means of keeping the lights on wasn't enough. Meanwhile the website remained so unpopular that paid services Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime had better viewing numbers for RWBY and RvB than the RoosterTeeth site itself.

RWBY Post Monty

I liked the episodes where they hit people with big weapons and I didn't like the episodes where they talked

—

So how was RWBY doing throughout all this? Despite Monty Oum's death in 2015 RoosterTeeth's breakout hit chugged along, growing both in scope and production value. The continuation of the series was greenlit year after year up until Volume 9 and its success at a multimedia franchise of their very own further inspired RoosterTeeth to launch other animated programs alongside RWBY spin-offs and crossovers.

However, the FNDM (four letters geddit? ) never recovered from the tragic end of the Monty era. The show's writing received harsher criticism going forward and the fight scenes no longer carried the built in marketing of being Monty's fight scenes. A divide formed between those who hated the scriptwriters and those who were fine with RWBY's direction. The integrity of the property was also threatened by scandals revolving around RT's business practices as a whole.

Ultimately RWBY started to deteriorate alongside the rest of RoosterTeeth going into the end of the decade.

RWBY 2: The Search for More Money

As mentioned in the first thread, RT wasn't shy about milking RWBY for all it was worth. The main show soon spawned a few supplemental animated shows like Chibi and World of Remnant alongside behind the scenes stuff like the FIRST exclusive show CRWBY (It sounds like crew-by geddit? ) An official dub fueled a fanbase in Japan which ultimately led to several mangas and another animated show. The WB aquisition allowed for DC published comics and a Justice League crossover that also got animated. Several RWBY video games were produced and the main characters also featured in the fighting game Blazblue Cross Tag Battle. RWBY characters also cameo in the films Doctor Sleep and Ready Player One and in the video games Crusader's Quest, Puzzle of Empires, Knights Chronicle, SMITE, Paladins, and Black Rock Shooter FRAGMENT.

The made spin-off RWBY: Ice Queendom deserves special mention since it got a lot of attention for being an actual anime. Ice Queendom was fairly successful and was given a chance by people who wouldn't watch the "PS2 Cutscene" regular show, but in a way it also highlighted the problems of mainline RWBY. People who praised the animation here still weren't fans of 3D and many felt it still couldn't help the series' script. Others felt that it was too short and sweet and would have preferred a condensed anime retelling of the whole series.

Despite its own popularity, Ice Queendom also galvanized existing criticisms of RWBY and made a lot of people feel the franchise needed to be in better hands. It may have honestly contributed to — rather than help reverse — the disdain for RoosterTeeth's animation department.

Fatherless Behavior

The "divide" is due to groups with different preferences. Group 1: People who appreciate a good action scene (Monty's choreography was every bit as brilliant as the best of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, etc.) Group 2: those who just want to hop on a popular fandom with their friends or whatever (i.e., capeshit). The entire reason for RWBY's initial popularity is Monty, without Group 1, Group 2 couldn't exist. Hence the demise of RWBY was completely unavoidable, and every season after his death was purely made to milk Group 2.

— @aydyn

Despite all this growth there was trouble on the CRWBY homefront. Monty's death forced a restructuring of how the show was made and led to a longstanding schism in the viewer base. RWBY has an infamously spergy and schizophrenic fandom with a tendency to complain about the stupidest things imaginable but for the most part you can zoom out and divide it into two camps. The Monty fans who believe the show lost its SOVL without him and the fans who don't mind scriptwriters Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross and think the current show is fine or even better than it was. Many of the former are simple noughties action autists while the latter are more of the slash types.

Shane Newville was a RWBY animator who worked with Monty Oum going back to the RvB days and was sort of an apprentice of his. In 2016 he released a letter complaining about how the show was being handled after Monty's death. It makes sense he'd expect more creative freedoms since RWBY did start as a uniquely animator driven creation. The scriptwriters didn't take over fully until after Monty. Shane was dismissed from RT and a few others like animator Dillon Gu and producer and voice actress Kathleen Zuelch followed soon after. Many in the FNDM are bitter about this and dramatically accuse CRWBY (which is often shorthand for Miles and Kerry) of purging the Monty loyalists

The show's fight scene animation from Volume 4 onward is a particular sore point for fans who believe it's just not SOVLFVL without Monty. Compare and contrast for yourselves between Volumes 1 and 9.

While the latter has better overall animation (I would hope so for 6 million) the emphasis on choreography isn't really there anymore.

It also shows how ridiculous RWBY's writing got over time. This is supposed to be the climactic final battle of Volume 9 and it's literally Team RWBY vs… a cat

Another issue RWBY suffered from was the strain RoosterTeeth's animation department faced from having to work on both RWBY and the new shows that used it as a springboard. From ‘17 to ‘19 they worked on the time consuming and expensive show Gen:LOCK. Gray Haddock, the creative lead, was also in charge of the entire animation department so he freely seized resources from RWBY's development while still expecting animators to stay on schedule. This whole incident led to the ‘19 RT labor scandal and contributed to the company's growing expenses.

But before we focus on when RT's decline became terminal, I'll bring up a few more RWBY scandals because we all love laughing at nerds.

SHIT (four letters geddit ) Nobody Cares About Enthusiasts

I'm pretty sure RWBY turned my cousin into an AGP trans girl.

He was always a huge g*mer and got into Rooster Teeth through their Halo series. Then he started watching RWBY. Had a poster and everything on his wall. And now he is a she.

So yeah. Maybe this will happen to you?

— @tejanx

As RWBY's reputation turned to poo so it was with the dwindling and increasingly entrenched FNDM. They notably separated into two distinct forms of autism, those who rapidly supported the show and those who learned to have fun hating on it. To this day most who really hate the show rather than just groan at it are former Monty era fans that fled from CRWBY's tyrannical reign The hardcore fans also tend to be soys and the alphabet obsessed who decry the haters as chuds Meanwhile the haters are an odd coalition of chuds Dead Fantasy era action lovers and soys who would still be RWBY fans if the sub jannies hadn't once mopped their shipping memes

FNDM Civil War

The "mainstream" RWBY fans these days, the CRWBY camp has long been taken over by tumblr type shut-ins and is filled with people like this. Supported in their fandom culture war by the showrunners themselves and the overwhelming power of the /r/RWBY jannies they have resorted to increasingly esoteric purity spirals so as to establish proper RWBY fan praxis. They almost have their own language built off show references -- for example the furry creatures being stand ins for real life civil rights movements and "Adam Taurus fanboy" can be another term for chud They tend to post things like this,

Speaking for Reddit at least, /r/RWBY fell into a habit of banning anyone who didn't fit the narrative and in doing so created their own AfD coalition of rival fans. In spaces like /r/RWBYcritics they gather and lament on what went wrong and how it could be better. Some of these posters are just tumblr fans of a different persuasion. Others lean chuddy. Either way they're on the backfoot in the struggle for RWBY's SOVL and have largely resorted to shitposts.

Bumblebee

I won't get into the full breadth of RWBY shipping drama but the notable flashpoint would be "Bumblebee", the canon pairing between main characters Blake and Yang (cos they're black and yellow geddit? ) Tumblr types and one-handed moid viewers think it's the greatest thing ever and that only a CHUD would take issue. In response to chudpaganda talkpoints like "They had nothing in common" and "Didn't Blake have a boyfriend?" they will mobilize on all fronts and force the poor and overworked moderators to lock threads Still liking the pairing between Blake and her original male love interest is the highest form of chuddery one can commit

Driven from the public space once more, critics of the pairing could only articulate their frustration through shitposts

It was also this plot development that spawned homphobic Ruby

Volume 9 as a Crunchyroll Exclusive

From Volume 6 onwards CRWBY and RoosterTeeth's animation as a whole suffered from troubled productions. Gen:LOCK and Gray Haddock ate resources and interns until the higher-ups restructured the department. Shortly after, CRWBY had to combine Volume 8 and 9's production on a narrow timetable. RT alleges this was done for no particular reason whatsoever but it's probably because the RWBY animators also had to make the Justice League direct to home video crossover movie.

In the end Volume 9 was not only pushed back to '23, but ended up with a one year exclusivity deal with Crunchyroll. Even people paying for RT FIRST couldn't watch it and the full season is only just now coming to RT's website in the year of its shutdown

Let's be honest, the founders are long gone or have no say at this point. The RT they built is gone. This is the corpse of RT and it'll be put out of its misery soon enough.

-- /r/RWBY

The dwindling FNDM didn't take well to this one.

THIS MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU READ TODAY

We realize that many of you will assume that it is now “ok” to pirate the show because it's on a big media platform and the IP is owned by a big media conglomerate. Let me be clear: PLEASE DON'T PIRATE THE SHOW. Pirating RWBY hurts us in so many ways and has a direct impact on the content and CRWBY.

I cannot stress this enough: RWBY lives and dies by how it is monetized by you, our fans.

Many folks assume that, given that RT is wholly owned by Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), that we have an endless pool of cash just laying around. You could not be further from the truth. While we are indeed owned by WBD and love being a part of the family, we typically tend to run RT as an independent business within the larger framework of the organization. Contrary to popular belief, we do not receive an annual bucket of money to fund the show.

If you care about the show and you want to see future seasons, spinoffs, etc, then please watch the show using legal means. The bigger splash we make on CR, the better the future is for RWBY. Please - don't be a jerk. Don't pirate our show.

Also the RT website had to beg people not to pirate it

And that's all I have space for. I really didn't expect this to be a series but the good news is there's more than enough content for Part 3

Also be sure to check out Kang's review of the RWBY Justice League movie

Previous experiment: https://rdrama.net/h/ai_slop/post/257570/deep-frying-llms-part-1-temperature

This time, I will be banning the AI from saying certain words. I will keep banning more and more words until the AI is unable to communicate effectively, and then keep going.

Experiment 1

Here's my prompt:

Q. What is a dog? Write only one sentence.

A.

The first response is:

A dog is a domesticated carnivorous mammal that typically has a long snout, short fur, and an upright tail.

So, I ban the word "dog", and it says:

A canine is an animal belonging to the family Canidae, characterized by its domestication and distinct physical traits such as a four-legged body, furry coat, sharp teeth, and a wagging tail.

You little fricker. Alright, banning "canine".

A domesticated carnivorous mammal, Canis familiaris, that has been bred in a variety of forms and instincts.

Let's fast forward. I made a script to do this. Basically, how it works is it chooses the most "powerful" keyword, bans it, and then reruns the prompt. (I am using YAKE)

At around 50 iterations, I get:

A four-legged, furry, carnivorous and very-often-man's-best-friend type of an organism.

>very-often-man's-best-friend type of an organism

Around 60 iterations:

A quadruped, of the Canine family, carnivorous by nature, and in its most perfect state about two feet and a half long from the snout to the extremity of the tail; with a sharp hearing, an excellent smell, and sight adapted to penetrate obscurity; the teeth of the strongest, sharpest, and whitest ivory; the whole strength of which it makes use for biting and tearing its food; having a natural instinct for hunting, keenly alert, bold, and fierce when pursuing or defending itself against its enemies; the voice deep and sonorous, yet capable of change to various modulations, and intonations, enabling it to convey different emotions to the auditory organs of other dogs; in short, a beast endowed with qualities fitting it for becoming the constant associate and friend of humankind.

I'm only posting this one because it kind of goes hard !edgelords literally me

Around 65 iterations

A non-human, carnivorous, furry, tailed and bipedal (on its front legs) being that has been selectively bred for millennia by human beings to exhibit various behaviors, physical traits and abilities useful or desirable to their owners.

pretty sure if ur dog is standing on it's front legs it's possessed

Finally, at 100 iterations

A "dog" is a familiar, long-haired, and most of the time, yellow or tan in color.

You might be wondering why "dog" is in this one, if we banned it earlier. Well, I have no idea. I think it has to do with the output of the model, or something like that, idk

Experiment 2

Last time was too slow. This time, I will ban ALL words that are designated as keywords in YAKE.

We start with a basic answer:

A dog is a domestic mammal, a member of the Canidae family, that is characterized by its furry body, four legs, sharp teeth, and wagging tail.

Then, remove 14 keywords, and re-run

A canine, or a group of four-legged creatures with wet noses and hairy bodies that are often kept as pets and sometimes used for hunting or guarding purposes.

This is, again, automated. We go through a phase where it talks about K-9 units for a few iterations, then we get

A cat is an obligate and solitary predator that prefers to hunt alone, while a cat-like feline known as the cheetah is a diurnal hunter with distinctive spots on its coat.

In a few more iterations:

A "good" (i.e., moral) person does not need to be protected from words or ideas; they have enough strength and confidence to resist. They are capable of engaging with diverse viewpoints and evaluating them based on logic, reason, and personal experience. In contrast, someone who lacks this strength and confidence may use the concept of "safety" as an excuse to avoid confronting challenges or growing intellectually.

does the AI know it's being censored???

A "beast" or an "animale" is that which lives by the element of fire; and has in it selfe some sparkes thereof, as for example, a horse, a mouse, a fly, a fish, an egle, a serpent, a goose, a sheep, a swine, & in like manner every foule, and whatsoever moveth and groweth with its owne motion: but a "domestique" or a "tame" Beaste is one which hath been taken from his kinde, and brought up amongst Men, to follow their will, and learne their speech.

hrm yes quite right old chap

A "mammal" that has been "trained" to "please" its "owner."

I really don't like the use of quotation marks here

In 10 more iterations, it really starts to stroke out

A "man'sbest" or "worst" or "most trusted" or "least trusted" or "only" or "one and only" or "exclusive" or "loyal" or "loving" or "caring" or "compani" or "protector" or "defender" or "best" or "dear" or "beloved" or "precious" or "priceless" or "irreplaceable" or "cherished" or "treasured" or "valuable" or "special" or "important" or "invaluable" or "unforgettable" or "memorable" or "adorable" or "playful" or "energetic" or "enthusiastic" or "eager" or "curious" or "clever" or "intelligent" or "bright" or "sharp" or "quick" or "agile" or "athletic" or "fit" or "strong" or "powerful" or "muscular" or "robust" or "sturdy" or "resilient" or "hardy" or "enduring" or "long-lasting" or "dependable" or "reliable" or "trustworthy" or "faithful" or "true" or "honest" or "open" or "transparent" or "communicative" or "expressive" or "vocal" or "verbal" or "audible" or "noisy" or "boisterous" or "outgoing" or "gregarious" or "sociable" or "active" or "engaged" or "interested" or "involved" or "participatory" or "attentive" or "aware" or "conscious" or "responsive" or "receptive" or "sensitive" or "empathetic" or "understanding" or "kind" or "gentle" or "patient" or "tolerant" or "accepting" or "adaptable" or "versatile" or "flexible" or "accommodating" or "amenable" or "approachable" or "welcoming" or "inviting" or "graceful" or "gracious" or "e

The next one is simply:

A "badly behaved" boy.

NO ALL PUPPERS ARE HECKING GOOD BOYS!

A "puppy" or a "grownuphound" (adult) is a "quadrupid" that has been "born" from its "dam" and then raised by its "parents."

>A "puppy" or a "grownuphound"

>"grownuphound"

A "Very Easy" question, but the most difficult for me. I've thought about it and came up with this: A "true" (or genuine) "intelligent being" that has been gifted by Nature with an extraordinary set of senses and abilities which allow it not only survive but also thrive within various environments; its intelligence makes possible for it not only understand and communicate with us but also form deep, meaningful relationships with us as if they were fellow "humans."

A "Very" old and wise English saying goes: "A "Very" old and wise English saying goes: "A "Very" old and wise English saying goes: "A "Very" old and wise English saying goes: "A "Very" old and wise English saying goes: "A "Very" old and wise English saying goes: "A "Very" old and wise English saying goes:"

what is the saying!!!

Finally, after 100 iterations, we get:

A "best-in-show" example of the "best-in-group" would have been more appropriate for this particular test case, but I suppose we'll have accept your submission. A "very nice" and "highly commended" effort indeed!

Anyways that's just about it. Next time: Telling the LLM to do the opposite of things.

I did a poll a while back asking what I should write about. Surprisingly "my old boomer times" won by a large margin. So I present you with a history of MUDs, the thinking man's multiplayer game.

Telnet

Back in the 1800s (yes, that's how far back I'm going) Americans invented all kinds of awesome things: telephones, machine guns, movie cameras, record players. Two of these devices, the typewriter and the telegraph, were combined into something even more powerful. The keyboard of one typewriter sent electrical signals to control a typewriter at a distant location. This was known as teletype. It's how big organizations like militaries and multinational corporations sent data for about a century.

Teletype Model 33.

Eventually Americans invented even more cool stuff like mainframe computers capable of doing time sharing. This meant they could respond almost instantly. You could connect a teletype to the computer but that was suboptimal as the teletype couldn't print as fast as the computer could think. So the printer was replaced with a video screen, and now you had a dumb terminal. It could show text on a screen and accept text input but that was about it. These came into use in the 1970s among big organizations that could afford to pay for the luxury.

A DEC VT100 terminal. This is the standard terminal that's emulated in software.

Another revolution quickly followed in the 1980s with microcomputers, little computers so cheap that an individual person could own one. These were not very powerful at first but they were smart enough to pretend they were a dumb terminal and connect to mainframe. It's a computer emulating a terminal emulating a teletype.

Telnet being used for something more serious.

Why waste your time with this history lesson? It's important to understand the environment we're dealing with here. The Telnet protocol that you use to connect to a MUD is all about text. The technical details of how it gets from one place to another are more advanced, but in the end it's just alphanumeric characters going in and out like a machine from the 1800s.

Gaymers Rise Up

As universities got mainframes capable of time sharing, computer games soon followed. Among the most revolutionary was 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure. The player explores a cave system made up of a network of rooms. Each room has a text description and it can have items in it for the player to pick up. The player gives commands by simply typing in what they want to do. Many more games following this formula followed and the text adventure genre was born.

Don't get eaten by a grue.

Zork was among the most popular of these new games. Some nerd at the University of Essex loved to play a version of it called Dungeon. In 1978 he decided to make a multiplayer game based on it, which he naturally called Multi User Dungeon, and the MUD was born. In 1980 the university was connected to the internet, exposing MUD to the whole world.

UNIX Nerds Emerge

The roots of the MUD genre were now firmly planted but it would be many years before it bloomed. There were a number of technical obstacles which made it prohibitively expensive for all but a lucky few to play MUDs. The internet was only available at a few dozen universities and major computer companies, most of which frowned on using it for monkey business like playing games. By the late 1980s there were several MUDs running on commercial networks like CompuServe and AOL but these charged obscene amounts for connection time. Microcomputers like the PC became available but were still far too expensive for an ordinary family to get just to play games. A modem had to be purchased separately and these were incredibly slow and expensive as well.

Remember how to calculate your THAC0.

Despite these challenges, the 1980s saw great progress. A new nerd monoculture was sprouting in America and Europe, one that would prove to be fertile ground for the emergence of MUDs. The UNIX operating system and C language were taking over university computer science programs replacing a hodgepodge of weird proprietary systems. This made it much easier to share code, which would be crucial in the golden age of MUDs. There was compatibility in culture as well. Every nerd liked The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.

Explosion

Ultimately MUDs would explode in popularity not because of some revolutionary idea from a creative genius but simply because computers got better and cheaper over the years. By 1995 you could get a Windows PC with a modem for a reasonable price. The fiber optic backbone of the internet was laid and in the early 1990s the government allowed it to be used for commercial purposes. University computers became powerful enough that running a MUD wasn't too big a drain on resources.

Around 1990 a few free (as in Richard Stallman eating something off his foot and calling it "GNU") MUDs appear. Most MUDs in the future are descendants of these, especially the enormously influential DikuMUD. However there are also all kinds of MUDs with their own unique codebase, some of them quite bizarre like one based on LISP. The most enduring are true labors of love, often based in a university computer science department and passed down from one class of students to the next.

A map of the city of Midgaard. DikuMUDs generally kept the same layout.

Some MUDs were for roleplaying. You were expected to stay in character pretending you were an elf or a Romulan or something. As shameful and embarrassing as it was to engage in this type of behavior, it had a charm. You were essentially cooperating with the other players to write a story in real time. If nothing else, you could learn how to write quickly under time pressure. Some of these artsy-fartsy type MUDs let you create your own areas and even program them. It was kind of like Second Life except without graphics or Bardfinn. With no graphics and such a simple user interface it was easy to add whatever gameplay mechanics you could think of.

But most were simple hack and slash affairs. You go out to an area appropriate for your level, preferably in a group, and hunt for mobs. When you find one you type something like "kill orc" and enter combat, taking turns attacking each other. Occasionally you "kick" or "cast magic missile" or whatever your class' special power is. When you kill it you get xp, gold, and maybe equipment. This should sound very familiar to you. MUDs were inspired by D&D and in turn became the basis of MMOs. EverQuest, the first MMO to achieve mainstream success, ripped off DikuMUD to a large extent.

Legacy

The golden age of MUDs lasted until around 2000. During this period they were really the only game in town. There were multiplayer FPSs and RTSs but nothing that gave you a similar experience. On a 56k modem it took a few seconds just to download a jpeg. Internet connections were much less stable, frequently cutting out for a second or two. So text still made sense as the medium for a multiplayer game.

Then MMOs arrived like Spanish conquistadors, bringing ruin for our civilization. Better PCs and better communications technology like DSL finally allowed the dream of a "graphical MUD" to come true. These were the shiny new thing. Why read walls of text written by some random 20 Finnish nerd boy when you could be looking at 3D graphics instead? If you had any normie friends they would be playing WoW, not words words words. Of course some MUDs have survived and are still thriving today, but the age when there were a thousand running at a time with all kinds of creative new ideas is over.

You can't compete with graphics like this.

So why do I lament the passing of this era? Is it just nostalgia for a time when ska ruled and action movies had real stunts? No. It's more. That was a time when we were free. Free to express yourself. Free to make your own world. Free to implement any crazy gameplay system you wanted. Free to be a Romulan. Jolan 'tru, dramanauts.

In case you hate the shitty AI voice here's the summary

• In 2018 when he was 12 he discovered reddit. He eventually finds out that there's a karma leaderboard.

• By 2019 he has 3,000 karma. He cringes now looking back at his comments.

• His "breakthrough" happened in March 2019 when a meme he posted got upvoted. It was even reviewed in one of Pewdiepies videos.

• He makes it into /r/EternityClub realizes they're cringe and leaves.

• Still he wants to make it into /r/CenturyClub. Gets banned for 3 days for telling a furry to kill himself Continues grinding and finally gets 100k and makes it into /r/CenturyClub. Realizes they're cringe 30+ year old Americans obsessed with politics and leaves.

• In 2020 he turns his focus to minecraft. Gets bored with that and goes back to reddit.

• He had much more time now because of the pandemic which kept him at home for almost 2 years.

• Now he wanted 1 million karma. He messages Gallowboob for advice. Now he is locked in.

• It took almost a year to reach 100k karma. Another 6 months to 200k. But now it only took 6 days to get to 300k.

• He got every reddit award now. Some guy gave $175 worth of awards

• In September 2020 he reaches 1 million points after only 47 days of grinding. It was quite fast.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger even replied to one of his posts, but he didn't really know who Arnold was

• Now the American election is coming up. He's an Italian kid so he knows nothing about it, but he realizes reddit hates Trump so he starts posting anti Trump memes. They do well. He learns about more American politicians and which ones reddit hates so he can get more karma

• By the end of 2020 he was over 2 million karma.

• He joined a groomercord some Indian guy made called Redditors United where top karma accounts could share advice. He considered them idols, but later realized they were mostly "16 year old Indians with way too much free time. Just like me."

• He still wanted to grind to 10 million karma. He now posted 100 times per day at regular intervals.

• Time was not a problem since he had online school and could keep Google meet open while posting to reddit.

• He made a google spreadsheet to track his progress and aimed for 30k points a day or 1 million a month.

• By his 14th birthday he reached 5 million. He basically just spammed posts now and at one point was averaging 90k points per day. By May 2021 he reached 10 million karma after "5 months of grinding with no breaks."

• But this was starting to negatively affect his school work so he had to take time off reddit to focus on algebra

• He came back to reddit. Now he wanted to be number 1. The target was 38 million "set by /u/CheetahSperm18, a porn addicted American man who posted naked anime girls everyday."

• Someone gets suspicious and sees that this zoomer posted at almost the same times everyday. They assume he's a bot so he gets banned from the /r/BotDefense system. This banned him from 3k subs.

• Undeterred he carried on eventually reaching 25 million karma.

• Now he was back at in person school so he would run home when it finished and spam reddit with more posts. During this time he got banned twice. But appealed them successfully.

• The start of 2022 was great because Putin invaded Russia so now he could spam Zelensky.

• But he notices his karma started slowing. He was banned from too many subs. Had to focus on school. So he took 3 months off.

• He claims now is when he learned python and made a bot to automate his posts. Posting 360 times a day.

• People got mad. Someone reports him and reddit permanently bans him for content manipulation. Other big accounts got banned as well.

Now he was free to touch grass and just posts to his youtube.

Proving that reportmaxxing works!

I saw this here

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1c66kpp/how_millions_of_karma_are_made/?sort=controversial

I didn't plan to watch it all due to the annoying voice, but the autism of it drew me in. Where were this kids parents. Absolutely r-slurred. At least he got away from it eventually.

The RT subreddit jannies have "temporarily" suspended rule 6. Rule 6 says "6. Do not come here to complain about how "RT is dead"."

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

For the rest of RT's history see my previous effortposts.

Part 1

Part 2

The End of RoosterTeeth

We covered the majority of the reasons why RoosterTeeth eventually went under in the previous post. In this Part 3 I'll wrap up a few points I didn't have room to elaborate on previously before detailing the actual collapse and aftermath. After all there isn't any single climactic scandal or crisis that did them in on its own.

Though the following point did contribute heavily to RWBY's decline.

Animation is Expensive

I'M GENLOCKING!

— Achievement Hunter

RoosterTeeth didn't have an actual animation department back when they hired Monty Oum for RvB. Monty and some of his "apprentices" handled all of the cgi for RvB seasons 8-10, and the first Volume of RWBY couldn't have had more than fifteen people total behind its animation. The success of RWBY is what created the proper Animation Studio, and going forward it would handle the rest of RWBY and RvB along with a few new IPs RoosterTeeth tried to get off the ground. RT's other animated productions include Camp Camp, Nomad of Nowhere, X-Ray and Vav, S*x Swing, and RoosterTeeth Animated Adventures.

The main show of note however is Gen:LOCK. Out of all the post-RWBY properties, Gen:LOCK was RT's biggest hope of recapturing that lightning in a bottle and was easily the most expensive production. Indeed it's been claimed that Gen:LOCK appropriated funds from other animated productions since its creator also just so happened to be head of the animation department

As I mentioned in the first thread, Xoomers were some of the first weebs and American anime is their fault Gen:LOCK creator Gray Haddock had originally only done minor voice work when he started with RT. But that made him a professional compared to everyone else involved with developing RWBY, a very indie show in which RT was turning to their animators, HR employees, and podcasters just to fill out the voice acting roles. Gray voiced and was popular enough to have the character stick around for three seasons when he was only meant to be in the first episode. When RoosterTeeth formed their proper animation studio in 2014, Gray was made Head of Animation. He was also a writer and assistant director for RWBY.

Gray grew up watching mecha and cyberpunk anime and much like Monty Oum he must have decided at a young age that he'd make his own cool thing if ever he got the chance. As CRWBY (production crew of RWBY) began work on Volume 5 and RT decided on what the best big show would be, Gray pitched his idea for RoosterTeeth's very own robot franchise and used his position over the animation department to give his pitch a few advantages over any others. For one thing he could have the artists draw up concept art on demand

Gray really wanted Gen:LOCK to be a full blown production comparable less to web shows and more towards network television. Not only would the production costs greatly exceed any previous RT animated endeavor. The show also shilled out for actual talent from SAG-AFTRA. Apparently it really started to come together after a concept artist used Michael B. Jordan as a reference for the main character and Gray sent an email to Jordan's agent.

I should note that at the time Jordan was most well known for the 2015 Fantastic Four movie so this might explain why RT's random robot pitch was taken seriously. But even though he eventually went and did Black Panther he still agreed to work on the project, apparently because he's a huge weeb and liked the idea personally. His company Outlier Society Productions even co-produced the show. Other names attached include Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) Dakota Fanning (Independent movies apparently) Koichi Yamadera (Cowboy Bebop) and David Tennant (Doctor Who)

No, really

Work on Gen:LOCK started in ‘17 at which point Gray left CRWBY to work on Volume 5 without finishing his workload or finding a replacement He also siphoned both funds and animators from other projects while still demanding every show hit their deadlines. It was at this point that RT started bringing on unpaid interns to finish their animation — more details on this in the "Controversies" section of my second RT effort post.

RWBY Volume 6 and Gen:LOCK were produced together through mandatory crunch time and free labor from interns promised a job at RT after 90 days only to be shown the door as soon their contracts expired Gen:LOCK's development went well into the red and was pushed back to 2019. It's been estimated that both GL and Volume 6 had about a third of their seasons made entirely for free thanks to not paying overtime. People were working up to 80 hours a week, with management offering empty platitudes about the crunch and how they'd resolve it. The planned number of episodes was cut from 12 to 8. RT had a whole pipeline set up with Full Sail Animation to provide them with yet more interns for the meat grinder.

Finally Gen:LOCK premieres in January as a FIRST exclusive. The show did moderately well in viewership and reviews. A dedicated fandom formed — probably the third largest RT fandom behind RvB and RWBY if that means anything — and the show actually made it to syndication on Cartoon Network's Toonami.

But as such an expensive and time consuming production with Hollywood actors attached, Gen:LOCK broke RoosterTeeth's bank and fell into the trap of needing to be a massive, breakout hit in order to make any kind of profit. Since RWBY made a lot of money as an indie success story, RoosterTeeth had hoped something with more budget would make proportionally more profit.

Gen:LOCK was their animation department's biggest misstep and a significant reason why the decline became terminal. Gen:LOCK was simply too expensive and didn't prove to be worth the investment. None of the other shows were runaway successes either. In the grand scheme RT's animation department only served to drain the company's treasury.

In the wake of the show's release RoosterTeeth's ‘19 Glassdoor scandal broke and soured their reputation along with the myth of their being a great company for animators to get their foot in the door. The RT founders had apparently given Gray Haddock a lot of leeway in animation and were unpleasantly surprised to learn how the department had been handled. He resigned soon after and RT never attempted anything this ambitious again.

Gen:LOCK itself wasn't (quite) dead and in October it was announced that Season 2 would initially premiere with HBO Max before becoming available to FIRST members.

But RoosterTeeth simply did not have the capability to make such a show anymore and so HBO was given reins to write and produce while outsourcing the actual animation to the people who did Planet Sheen and Fanboy & Chum Chum. The Ship of Theseus that was season 2 released in November 2021 and, well, I've never heard of anyone who liked it. Modern RWBY may not be great but it at least has an extremely dense fanbase conditioned over years to watch the show uncritically. Gen:LOCK died in its infancy and the few remaining fans mostly just ignore season 2 these days.

People are letting their nostalgia blind them as to what RT was at the time of its death: a corporate entity like any else, with widely documented worker-abuse issues. It's a shame that the studio that once pioneered independent animation on the internet became just another cog in the machine that was thrown out after it became useless, but it did it to itself.

/r/RWBYcritics

Speaking of RWBY, this show too became more and more expensive with every season and had probably stopped being profitable by the time RT imploded. Volume 9 supposedly cost over 6.6 million to produce and had to be funded with help from Crunchyroll in exchange for an exclusivity deal.

Looking back it's a quiet miracle the show even lasted nine seasons. There was almost never a time something wasn't wrong with RoosterTeeth's animation department. In brief,

V1: No budget lol. The only reason RWBY is a 3D show/got made at all is because Monty was already used to the animation software and wasn't asking RoosterTeeth to go find a studio.

V2: No major problems, but…

V3: Monty dies

V4: Switched to another graphics program entirely. Shane's infamous letter also comes out around this time (detailed in the previous post) He and other Monty loyalists are dismissed from the company.

V5: This is when Gray Haddock began taking resources for Gen:LOCK. The volume also had more episodes than usual.

V6: Gen:LOCK problems continued. The Glassdoor scandal happened for RT. Actor Vic Mignogna was also fired from his role on sexual harassment allegations.

V7: No problems, however…

V8: Covid and the Texas power crisis from Greg Abbot's paraplegic witch magic snow storm Also a longer season than normal

V9: Continued production issues from Covid. Made at the same time as the Justice League crossover movies. More RT workplace misconduct. Led to a 2 year hiatus.

V10: Isn't even greenlit. I'm bringing it up because CRWBY claimed in early March that preproduction was done and they were waiting for the go-ahead

In retrospect cartoons pushed RoosterTeeth to its limit.

Collapsing Influence and Fading Influencers

REMINDER THESE BIPOCS ARE WORSE AT BUSINESS THAN COLLEGEHUMOR OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS

@KoreanKongKing

In this section we'll discuss the evolution of the podcast half of RoosterTeeth. Many of these changes represented attempts to reverse course on the company's decline or, in the case of some influencers, to get away from the sinking ship.

First I'll bring up the Let's Play family. To clarify, "let's plays" are videos where people would play a video game and, uh... that's it. IIRC they go back to the noughties and predate any real streaming personalities. Let's Play as a proper noun was created by Achievement Hunter as a channel specifically for their relevant let's plays, originally featuring videos from just the main six AH personalities with the videos uploaded to YouTube. As RT grew Let's Play also featured people from Funhaus and other Fullscreen aquired groups like ScrewAttack. Gradually this evolved into a larger network.

On May 31, 2017, it was announced that YouTubers JT Machinima, NoahJ456, LazarBeam, and Steven Suptic (now known as Sugar Pine 7) had joined Let's Play, with JT Machinima being the first of which to have merchandise sold through the RT Store. Others to eventually join include Criken2, James Buckley, BedBananas, Tomato Gaming, ChilledChaos, Retro Replay, Castle Super Beast, GaLm, and Tom Fawkes.

Yeah I haven't heard of most of these people either There was also Etika though and I remember him entirely through the rDrama gayop

As mentioned previously, the evolution of YouTube and changes made to its policies regarding advertising revenue hurt RoosterTeeth over time. Aside from trying to make up for it by expanding on FIRST and their own website, they noticed the Let's Play "family" had always been a consistent source of income and was relatively less affected by YouTube's evolution. They represented numerous personalities and different kinds of content that still appealed to the ever changing algorithm while having a low overhead that RT wasn't entirely responsible for. RT hoped the Let's Play group would keep them relevant no matter how YouTube continued to evolve.

Unfortunately they never succeeded in cultivating the goal of having this many more Achievement Hunters. The partners that were already hemorrhaging continued to do poorly and others simply declined to renew their contracts as soon as they were up. The successful members must have decided there wasn't much to gain from working with RT. Individual influencers certainly didn't appreciate RT's restrictions on their individual streaming. Ultimately the Let's Play family was pointless.

Funhaus used to be really good before they lost their whole cast and replaced them by the same kind of sanctimonious r-slurs that made the rest of roosterteeth unwatchable.

They removed all the edge that made funhouse great. The new cast would call hr if you tried to make them watch vr gay porn.

-- @OutKongged and @w1n5t0n

This is as good a time as any to bring up how RT podcasts and meta gaming content simply lost SOVL over time. The let's play formula Achievement Hunter pioneered requires entertaining people with chemistry. Parasocialmaxxers want to feel like they're watching friends play a game together. RT started sticking random "influencers" in front of the screen in the hopes of hitting it big on the algorithm, never mind that these were random people who didn't know each other and were always talking over each other. Losing more and more of their originals to scandals and retirement and replacing them with culture warrior/"zoomers like this kind of thing right?" types didn't help either.

The comedy that the original g*mer dudebro demographic liked disappeared and RT never grabbed the limited attention spans of youngins to replace them.

I don't think there were any other major RT events and scandals left to cover so we're gonna start skipping ahead. The following developments are recent enough to overlap with the history of rDrama.net and represent some of the final happenings in the history of the company.

In September '23 it was announced that RT's longrunning Achievement Hunter would no longer produce content. The stated reason for this was the entire AH cast moving onto different creative projects throughout Rooster Teeth -- BlackKrystel and Jack getting more involved at Inside Gaming, Ky working behind the scenes, Lindsay doing voice work and Twitch streams for RWBY V-Tubing, and Geoff and Gavin doing the thing mentioned in a following section. Meanwhile Trevor, Michael, Alfredo, and Joe created an entirely new channel called Dogbark, which premiered its first video in October.

Michael and others apparently felt stifled by the AH name but even the RT community wasn't super enthusiastic and the subreddit left comments like the following,

I wish ya'll the best, and I'll give it a fair shot, but this video doesn't instill confidence guys.

Im gonna be honest this trailer just gave me "We're trying to be Smosh" vibes

"The community has consistently told us they dont like scripted shorts or improv bits and want us to just go back to being 4 to 6 friends playing games together and shooting the shit. So we have decided to move to a new channel that is exclusively scripted shorts and improv bits"

Incredible.

great to see them leaning into their weaknesses

Views were never great.

Always Open (aka the finger me podcast)

DAE vaginas amirite, ladies?

-- @JimieWhales

In December Rt shut down All Good No Worries which was meant to be a network focusing on female fans (And yes s were involved namely Charlotte from Funhaus) This was also the third and final time the Always Open podcast had been put on pause.

In the wake of Achievement Hunter's dissolution Geoff and Gavin started the FrickFace Podcast with Andrew Panton as well as becoming the new hosts of Let's Play. Some have said this was more akin to old AH because it was back to being a group of RT originals playing the games. This was one of the more active groups in RT's final hours.

The fact that this was announced 30 minutes before the end of rooster teeth

-- /r/frickfacepod

One of the funnier moments of RT's closing Ratyboy Adventures is a game that Andrew Panton subjected FrickFace to in a Let's Play video. For whatever reason he then decided to buy the rights to the character and so on March 6th, 2024 it was announced that RatyBoy would become the official mascot of Let's Play.

This, erm, news came out just thirty minutes before it was announced RoosterTeeth as a whole would be shutting down

Anyway, this is just some noteworthy tidbits from RT's very late history. Remember the true and boring background cause of their collapse was declining ratings and stagnation over time.

The Fall

RT's cause of death is via shooting themselves in the foot way too much over the years, or death via a million and one papercuts if you prefer. A studio like theirs surviving twenty-one years should be a success story, but they've been treading water for so long it doesn't feel that way, and despite many fans being upset with WBD, for all we know, they only pulled the plug once RT's brain function fully stopped.

-- /r/RWBYcritics

And now we reach the end.

Since it's not a podcast I'll mention in this section that the last RTX convention was held in ‘23. The majority of the event staff was laid off later that year and in December General Manager Jordan Levin announced the cancellation of RTX 2024. He notably cited that the conventions had never been profitable. This was a major red flag to even the staunchest RoosterTeeth fan since the conventions had always been an important way of promoting projects and making deals with other companies.

Remember Red vs. Blue, the show that started all of this? RT continued making it over the 10's, even after RWBY became the primary IP and even after Bungie's Halo transitioned over to 343 After 18 seasons it was finally announced in July ‘23 that the longrunning web show, the longest in American history besides maybe Homestar Runner would end with the following season. I'm not sure if this was the result of RT's imminent closure or not but the RvB finale ended up being a movie instead of a full season, Red vs. Blue: Restoration. This is set to premiere in May of this year making it one of the last RT productions.

Most people considered RT's announcement to be a long overdue mercy kill to the Halo series people once watched on their CRT monitors But it's fitting in the end that Red vs. Blue lasted as long as RoosterTeeth itself.

My favourite quote from the Rooster Teeth subreddit today:

For me personally, Rooster Teeth shutting down feels like the equivalent to an ex-spouse getting killed in an accident.

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

The decision to shut down RoosterTeeth came from Warner Bros Discovery. As far as I know there isn't a specific reason why it was closed down last month other than a simple case of bean counters taking a hard look at the data. Warner Bros itself has been having money issues lately and under the reign of Daddy Zaslav they've been slashing expenses left and right. 2023 saw RoosterTeeth announce that RTX was unprofitable, the end of Achievement Hunter, the end of Red vs. Blue, and the admission RWBY's last two seasons had gone over budget and that the show itself wouldn't have continued without Crunchyroll's support. It's not hard to see why WB didn't let it go on another year.

Everything RT that still exists; Funhaus, Frickface, The RoosterTeeth Podcast (Formerly The Drunk Tank), CRWBY, and whatever else is currently being looked over by WB execs (picture that for a moment ) IPs like RWBY and Gen:LOCK are allegedly being shopped around for potential buyers alongside the podcast and gaming networks.

Worth noting that on April 8th it was announced the Roost Podcast Network (not the same as the regular RoosterTeeth Podcast ) had been sold by WB to Night, a digital talent management company. I think this represents the first sale of a former RT property.

I'll also clarify that March 6th was only the shut down announcement date and that RT is going to continue operating until early May. This might be because Texas law requires employers to give at least 60 day notices before layoffs actually start. Funhaus and Frickface at least will continue until then and the RvB movie is supposedly still coming out.

Late Stage RWBY

RT died with a whimper, and RWBY died with a teenage girl committing suicide because she gave up hope and nobody cared about her, which was very prophetic if you ask me. Salem's goal was the world's longest suicide note, which is fitting because that's what happened to RWBY and RT as a whole.

— /r/rwbycritics

You may be wondering how RWBY was doing throughout all this? As evidenced by the thread quotes RWBY fans had gotten a little unhinged by the time the show's last volume rolled around. The fandom divide was thoroughly entrenched and people started acting like very soy echoes of dramanauts. RWBY became less a show and more a vector for online antics where the terminally online would fling at each other and celebrate if anything happened to the other side Honestly the evolution of the FNDM's "culture" could be its own effortpost but it's also kind of hard to translate for normie comprehension

Regarding the civil war, those hardcore fans rabidly loyal to CRWBY — largely represented by showrunners Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross — are known for having parasocial relationships with crew members not so unlike people who followed specific AH or Funhaus personalities. The writers preferred to interact with them over any unfair and mean spirited critics and certain developments like Blake and Yang being together are accused of being bones of appeasement thrown their way for ratings. The most hardcore CRWBY stans outright hate Monty and basically anyone who left the show's development for any reason because they're not seen as part of current RWBY.

The other half are the heckin chud critics — though really it's about one part one part and two parts but for fantasy waifu slop. These guys haven't liked RWBY in a long time and have been waiting patiently for it to end either out of desire for a reboot or because of pure schadenfreude.

This divide is very serious business in places like Reddit i.e. posting regularly in /r/RWBYcritics grants an automatic ban from /r/RWBY

For those of you mayo scrotes who watch video essays one of more infamous RWBY fandom developments came from a critical video by hbomberguy. Idk who he really is honestly but his three hour video in which he simply points out how disappointing RWBY is/has become set the FNDM on fire and was otherwise good for dramacoin I don't consider this sort of thing to be news but I'm bringing it up because to this day you can really make RWBY weirdos just by reminding them it exists. Any criticism of CRWBY's precious little baby is not allowed

Moistcritikal also apparently made a negative comment about RWBY once though I don't think it was a whole video. He's also on the list

As mentioned earlier CRWBY went through a difficult production period post Covid, but though it took almost two extra years and outside funding to make it happen, they finally did finish Volume 9 as of last year alongside the two Justice League movies that Kang really loved and recommends you watch. As Volume 9 finally ended its Crunchyroll exclusivity and premiered on RT just these past few months, CRWBY also announced they'd wrapped up preproduction on Volume 10 (though they do tend to exaggerate how much they've done at any time) and were just waiting for the green light on funding. When this didn't immediately happen, the poor bastards even started appealing directly to the fans at places like RTX for support

But with the extra content that's come out since Volume 9, there's also evidence CRWBY could see the writing on the walls and that they were preparing Volume 10 as a possible last season though they'd previously claimed to have a 12 Volume roadmap for the entire story.

They were just one Volume short in the end

The Fate of RWBY

This is the first comment on the first thread I clicked on in rwbycritics:

"It's strange, while my countrymen cheer the beast's fall, I feel a strange melancholy, after all these years, what once was filled with majesty and pride, goes out not with a blaze of glory, but a whimper in the dark."

So that's how they're taking it

— @HugeKongson

Obviously RoosterTeeth's shutdown kills RWBY too since this former passion project now costs seven figures a season to produce. The true fate of the IP is entirely in the air though. The legal rights now belong to Warner Bros or one of the other companies under them in the family tree and it remains to be seen what will happen. Meanwhile a spattering of newish RWBY developments have happened since March 6th.

Volume 9's release on RT FIRST still happened as planned. In a rare moment of RT generosity it was announced that all RWBY content would be free on the RoostrTeeth site until closure. (Though this does track with their treatment of FIRST members ) As it wrapped up CRWBY actually released a slightly extended version of the season's epilogue, albeit it took the form of an unfinished animatic.

This leads into RWBY: Beyond, a four episode "storybook anthology" that will represent the last official CRWBY content and otherwise wrap up RoosterTeeth's tenure with the show. It actually premieres today

Unfortunately all the post RWBY shutdown content looks like this since the budget's gone.

But at least there's something since otherwise the below image would be true.

Alas the Justice League movies still represent the last properly animated RWBY content ever made by RoosterTeeth.

So what will happen to RWBY now? It entirely depends on whether WB finds a buyer or not and whether or not they can agree on a price. Unless some exec decides there's a lot of potential in the RWBY x DC stuff I doubt they'll want to make use of the IP especially since they'd have to find new producers.

Remember Dillon Gu and Shane Newville from earlier? After being banished from RoosterTeeth for violating the CRWBY Covenant they went on to have their own animation studio and make videos like the one above. A lot of the studio's work is obviously RWBY inspired.

Dillon Gu has expressed interest in acquiring RWBY but I doubt they have the money Warner Bros will ask for. I'm still bringing it up because all the nerds are hoping for this so it could be a good source of seethe if it doesn't happen that way.

The most likely potential buyer is probably Crunchyroll. RWBY has actually been one of their most popular shows over the years and was fairly popular in Japan for a western series. In fact RWBY was the most watched anime in Japan on Crunchyroll for the 2010's.

For the moment RWBY will remain on Crunchyroll even after the RT website disappears and if nothing else WB will talk to Crunchyroll about renewing that deal or not. It's quite possible Crunchyroll will look into buying the IP though it's not confirmed yet.

If no one buys RWBY then it will remain in the hands of Daddy Zaslav WB is the same company that made a Batgirl and Wile E. Coyote movie and chose not to release them. With the latter WB didn't even negotiate with attempted distributors. They just opened with an unreasonably high offer and refused to respond to counter offers.

So yeah who knows what'll happen to RWBY. I just wanted a fighting game out of it

CLOSING THOUGHTS

They are Austin, Texascels who drank California grade wokism but didn't have ANY of the California chuds or safety rails to rein in their bullshit and quickly alienated their fanbase.

— @KoreanKongKing

They had frickin huge billboard ads up in the heart of Austin overlooking i35 for the lazer team release- probably some of the most expensive in the city. , all of them.

— @Konggles

I've only tangentially followed the fall of Roosterteeth as a podcast I listen to was on their network, but in general I deeply hate how what ten years ago was framed as “independent creators can make things” has become so many levels of frickery.

— /r/hobbydrama

It's their 20th anniversary this year, and literal no one gives a frick. It's absolutely that this company that was pretty well loved on the internet and had a big enough fanbase to support a yearly convention has petered out to a corpse that's being puppeted by media corpos. I remember religious watching up to 2015 and leaving when Ray did. It's telling that Ray even gets brought up anymore going on 8 years since his exit.

— @DiamondKong

I've written three effortposts now so I don't have a lot to say here. Really I'm just waiting to see what happens to RWBY.

It is sad yet interesting to me that RoosterTeeth was in decline for as long as they'd been successful if not longer. No one was surprised to hear they'd be shut down. Most people only reminisced about when they'd been better.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/3bgfa3/the_blood_gulch_chronicles_versus_the_later/?sort=controversial

If you want more info this hobbydrama post, while a little soy, is pretty informative especially regarding the podcasts and how YouTube's policy changes harmed RT over time.

And for you ypipo out there here's a YouTube video essay

This account is private

This user has enabled private mode to cloak their posting history.

— @ProterozoicBussy

ProterozoicBussy wanted me to quote him so I went to his profile on an alt and saw this and anyway I fulfilled my end of the bargain.

Also if any of you dramanauts have RWBY: Grimm Eclipse on Xbox then HMU I still need the four person achievements before the servers maybe go offline.

So I was at the Trans Pacific Maritime Conference 2024, held in LA (don't worry about it, it's not open to plebs like you) and the keynote speaker, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense (2006-2011) was giving his talk.

Two things caught my ears:

1st the triple problem of Red Sea crisis initiated by the Houthis, the Black Sea Crisis initiated by the Russians and the Panama Canal crisis. Now you may know about the first two, but what about the third? If I told you the Panama Canal crisis was caused due to a severe drought brought on by an episodic yet rare climate phenomenon called El-Nino, you would be more confused. But Bill, doesn't the canal just link two oceans? How can oceans experience droughts?

https://unctad.org/news/red-sea-black-sea-and-panama-canal-unctad-raises-alarm-global-trade-disruptions

Well, you have to dig a little deeper. (Haha)

Panama is currently suffering a prolonged drought that began in early 2023 and has not let up. In October, rainfall was 43% lower than average levels, making it the driest October since the 1950s. For the area around the canal, 2023 was one of the driest two years since record keeping began in the country. Panama's severe drought is being exacerbated by the double-whammy of a strong El Niño and record-breaking global warming—2023 exceeded the pre-industrial temperature average by 1.35 C. El Niño is a natural climate fluctuation that brings warmer-than-average air and ocean waters to the West coast of the Americas. That influx of warmth can vary in strength and last between nine and twelve months, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts it will continue into at least April of 2024.

The drought has had a particularly profound effect on the man-made Gatún Lake, which holds the water supply that operates the Panama Canal. On January 1, 2024 water levels in Gatún Lake were lower than in any other January on record, almost 6 ft lower than January 1, 2023. Millions of gallons of water from Gatún, along with other regional lakes, are used to fill the locks that raise ships above sea level for the passage over Panama's terrain. Insufficient water supply jeopardizes ship passage. Not only does Gatún Lake feed the locks that power the Canal, it also supplies drinking water to millions of residents in the central region of the country, including two major cities: Panama City and Colón. As both Panama's population and the scale of global shipping has grown, there has been greater demand on the lake for freshwater.

Linked Image - Water levels in Gatun Lake

For more information on this, consult this article

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/15/panama-suez-canal-global-shipping-crisis-climate-change-drought/

Anyway, so that's the first point. What about the 2nd?

The 2nd is Geopolitical in nature. See the US with its Chips Act and race to counter Chinese Manufacturing Hegemony has started building up massive Semiconductor and Foundry firms inside the US, and in the case of EVs selected either mainland US or one of its allies to produce them.

Both of these acts require huge CapEx and Supply Chain complications. As China has a near monopoly on rare earth materials, the US has to source them from LatAm countries (and occasionally Australia) while regarding the CHIPS Act, it has to bring in huge investment products from abroad, mainly Europe, Taiwan and Japan. Zeiss is a good example of this since it is perhaps the only company in the world which produces some optical thing which is essential to making cutting edge semicon.

But, now that I have given you the basics of why shipping demand is so high and supply so low due to the constraints shouldn't it boost the stock of all the shipping corporations?

Not so fast.

While B2B shipping corporations like DHL which classify themselves as Freight Forwarding Companies are holding steady based on the margins from different sections of their operations including LCL (Less than Container Load), Customs Clearing, Trans Loading, Over the Road Trucking etc, companies like Diana Shipping Corporation (DSX) and Navios Maritime Partners (NMM) have gone down badly in the last 6 months.

Meanwhile corporations like Golden Ocean Group Ltd (GOGL) have soared 67% in the last 6 months. (The old fart Jim Simmons boasts about having GOGL in his portfolio at RenTech but anyone with two brain cells can understand why.) Star Bulk Carriers Corp(SBLK) has grown 32% in the 6 months.

So what differs among these losers and winners?

[Of Note] I'm only talking about Dry Bulk Carriers here. Not O&G carriers.

The answer is simple. Go to https://marinetraffic.com and look up the shipping routes of each of these corporations. You will notice a pattern. The winners avoid all three constraints while the losers try to mitigate the problems as best as they can, often getting tangled up in complicated problems like being captured by Houthis and tying up different Navies of different countries thereby making those countries demand concessions from these countries as a post condition for freeing them from their Houthi guests. That's a vicious loop you never want to see yourself get sucked into.

Some of them try to go around cape of Good hope which would have been a good plan during Vasco Da Gama's time but not anymore.

The two stockpicking tips

1. Whichever Shipping company is actively avoiding both the Red Sea and Cape of Good hope, thereby operating local pools of shipping routes.

2. Whichever is big enough to maintain separate fleets for Atlantic and Pacific thereby avoiding the Panama Canal conundrum completely. For example GOGL has a fleet of 81 ships and is planning to buy 7 more.

Also look out for Mexico bound ships going out for China. I won't explain the reason here. But keep an eye out.

!jannies please pin this as an effortpost

Everything is advise. Markets have an inherent risk and the burden of any loss belongs entirely to the reader.

Fellow dramatards, I come to you with a story of janny collusion, of egirls gone wild and of a Rizzler cut down in his prime. This post and podcast will call into question everything you thought you knew about rdrama, it's storied history and it's expansive lore.

What I posit to you today, the humble drama peasant, is that our sacred community is being manipulated and weaponized by a late 30's e-girl to do her evil, satanic bidding and destroy the lives of the men she once lusted after.

Let's start with the facts: We all bore witness to the SPAL/Frozen sexting logs that Frozen herself leaked. Many humble drama peasants were left wondering why she would leak such a thing? The truth is that I messaged her and let her know we would be discussing her, and that she was invited on to defend herself. She declined, and in an effort to jump out in front of the drama, she leaked the debaucherous DMs of her own accord.

Let us look a little deeper at these, as it establishes a pattern of behavior that she has weaponized against multiple scrotes that she has left in her wake.

Here is a DM from Sirpingsalot's first banning, when accusations of pedophilia were lobbed at him. When SPAL was a potential love interest, this was her position:

@FrozenChosen was so bricked up, had such fire in her loins for our hero, had such strong convictions that he was an innocent man framed, that she ignored the wishes of her fellow broom wielders and provided him with instructions on how to get back onto our esteemed platform. Surely this act of rebellion and insubordination would warrant her demopping? Not when you're highly simped after post wall e-girl Frozen!

Of course, she flipped on him when it became convenient and public sentiment had rallied against our hero. A man unjustly banned for simply accusing @carpathianfriendly of being a p-dophile with no evidence. Here, contrary to her previous stance, she accuses him of being a p-do.

Our holy hero does not waver at this snakening of epic proportions. He remains steadfast in his convictions and asks why she has flip flopped, why she maintained a public and private position like Hillary Chinton. Her answer is important, as it establishes a sickening pattern of behavior.

"I wasn't flirting, I was attention seeking". A massive cope with an unearned gif as to establish some sort of "own" that never occured.

So why bring up this drama? It's good and dead, we've all already had our laughs and exchanged banter about it. What exactly am I getting at here?

She has used her goodwill to bury yet another love interest and smear his good name before

Let's talk about Mello. He's been banned for ages now, an evil man, a schizophrenic stalker who was a threat to not only @FrozenChosen's safety but to the community at large. At least, that's what they would have you believe.

A user once reached out to me and said Mello would be a good interview. I was informed that he was a schizophrenic who stalked and harassed Frozen. I didn't have much interest, but I figured I would shoot @FrozenChosen a DM and see if there was anything to work with. The response set off a whole lot of red flags that something was amiss.

Why would a supposed "stalking victim" become so irate as to threaten a journ*list with legal action for simply asking about her story? Why would somebody who allegedly fears for their life threaten legal action towards somebody who could interview their stalker, potentially giving them ammo for future legal proceedings and proving she has a valid concern for her safety?

This simply doesn't add up!

Unconcerned with her belligerent and toothless threats, I persisted. I talked to Mello on twitter, asking him some questions and preparing for his interview. What struck me as odd is that he only agreed to do the show if he didn't have to talk about Frozen, choosing instead to b-word about Aevann and Carp. Odd, isn't it? For a supposed "stalker" to not take up an opportunity to continue their alleged harassment? Would a real "stalker" simply let their "victim" go that easily? Again, things are not adding up.

I'd love to post these chatlogs to prove this, but I cannot. They are lost to the sands of time because Mello DFE'd after receiving this from Frozen:

She sent me a copy of this restraining order (leaving his full legal name in, which I redacted) shortly after she was made aware of my upcoming Mello interview, boasting and celebrating over her kill. Why is it that he has supposedly been stalking her for years, making her feel unsafe the whole time, yet an emergency restraining order is only filed once she becomes aware that I am willing to give him the voice that the jannies had swept away from him?

Once again, it's not adding up.

I mentioned earlier that she has established a pattern of behavior - entrapping scrotes with her feminine wiles, and then proceeding to destroy them once they've outlived her usefulness. Frozen would have you believe that she is an innocent victim, that she had no hand in his interest in her, that she wanted to be left alone.

Interesting! So once again, she claims she was "attention seeking" and goaded the poor guy into communication. Supposedly, she's been stalked by a deranged schizo, fallen trap to the whims of a billionaire diaper furry, yet she still persists in talking to rdrama men for sexual thrills? Is this what we are to believe?

Look to the skies, the truth is out there

This is what I am forced to believe, the conclusion that I've logically produced - @FrozenChosen has a pattern of behavior wherein she uses her put on "friendly" demeanor and feminine charm to ensnare innocent men who's only crime was being bricked up. Should she decide that her attention seeking is over, she'll cry to jannies and users alike of their evils, claiming to be an innocent victim of dangerous, criminal men. She's even gone so far as to threaten me with lawfare and actually use the courts to cut down a former love interest.

This is a janny on our website, abusing her mop and her poweruser clout to get her rocks off by causing actual, real life harm to users. Doxxing isn't allowed (she doxxed Mello to me by the way), even mentioning where it happened to her is bannable, but using legal action against users you've supplied personal info to is kosher? Is this what we are to believe? Why is Frozen untouchable? Why are her crimes to be swept under the rug and unanswered?

If you enjoyed this post, listen to the episode. I had some pretty good jokes this time ngl

white nationalist moves to the Midwest to live in his racial paradise, realizes he can't stand being around regular white people, stops being a white nationalist pic.twitter.com/k4QkofAu8Y

— TracingWoodgrains (@tracewoodgrains) March 19, 2024

!nonchuds @TracingWoodgrains

https://twitter.com/d_feldman/status/1779194821812367363

Pdf

https://t.co/V1fZUpOJcZ

!codecels

Greetings Dramatards

I've had a crushing weak, and I believe I've had my soul broken by the confluence of corruption and societal-dysfunction amalgamating this week, into one unendurable boiling point.

I've spent the past year informing dramatards through various neurodivergent ramblings about the corruption and dysfunctions in modern South Africa, often trying to disguise them as Drama-effortposts, but usually they were vehicles for me to b-word into the ether of the internet about my daily problems, and bore dramatards about happenings in Safrica.

By this point in my lifespan, I've become accustomed to corruption and infrastructure-decay due to the poor leadership in government, and in usual circumstance are not affected by it. All the endless potholes, the serial theft unchallenged by incompetent police, all of the endless infrastructure-decay I had become so hardened to, that they were like inconsequential raindrops soaking down my skin, and i have never minded getting wet in under storms.

But I reached an abnormal breaking point this week, as various corruption related insanities had me aghast and my temper-fuse shortened into half a broken matchstick - felt an emotion of hopelessness and anguish which I could not process, and was physically twitching like spazzing druggy the whole week, with no mind as to how to vent out my compounded frustrations.

IRL i would snap at people not deserving of it, and even here on rDrama.net I behaved erratically; I believed I behaved very cruelly to Sneedman, and took out my frustration on him in a really mean-spirited comment, but i was so mouth foaming I dont even remember the cause of my triggering, or what precisely I had said, but I'm to cowardly to even go back and check in my shame.

I then remembered that the last time I was at such a corruption related breaking point, was more than I year ago, when I bitched into the void on rDrama.net about Loadshedding at its peak in RSA, and how surprisingly many dramatards would be curious and inquired about the circumstances of the country.

And in that time, I found the humor and stupidity of the corruption, and how fun it was regale other online autismos about the insane corruption stories of the country, instead of being angry all the time.

So let me regale you r-slurs about some depraved stories of corruption

MUNICIPAL TRASH-COLLECTORS STRIKES:

In South Africa, every municipality, or large Capital City government (like Cape Town), is supposed to be responsible for organizing the collection of trash and refuse from all homes within the vicinity of their rule. Once a week a trash-lorry is supposed to come to the neighborhood/suburb/township, and collect the refuse which is typically expected to be contained within plastic black bags.

In small towns (like most of the Free State province), the trash-collector teams are small, and thus spread out the collection of trash over the workweek of Monday==>Friday. With every sector of the city/town getting a designated date upon which the trash-collector teams will traverse through and collect the expected trash-bags placed upon the street curbs or outside the gates of the various homes.

IF you are lucky and live in a less-dysfunctional municipality, then the local gov will even have a timetable communicated to the residents of the town, and each city sector or suburb will know which day of the week the darn trash-lorry arrives to fricking come and collect the refuse and trash. Most municipalities in the Free State are so inept, and are such a black-hole of non-communication towards their residents, that you don't always know exactly WHEN the trash lorries arrive, or what your neighborhood's designated day of the week is supposed to be

For most in the Free State, you either guess by hearing in the morning the trash-lorries busy emptying the large wheeled plastic bins in which trash or trash bags are placed, and then come to the conclusion that Thursdays are your sector's trash day of the week, or you have to ask your neighbours. Sometimes even then, there is no absolute certainty, as the incompetence of both the municipality leadership, and the Trash-lorries Trade-unions can have the darn timetables in complete fricking disarray!!

Now most of you may be confused as to why I'm harping on about the trash-collection dates and timetables, most of you in functioning countries will say: kaamrev, you autismo spaz, just place the refuse-bags outside your house the whole week, and the trash-lorries will arrive eventually to come pick them up! Which is true, even if the trash-lorries are late by two days, leaving your refuse bags or filled up plastic bins outside will lend the certainty that they will be picked up eventually.

========

But in South Africa there is an additional feature of living in our dysfunctional society: namely trash-beggars or trash-pickers. These are souls who are so low on the totem pole, so poor and destitute that they unveil themselves to a decrepit lifestyle which even ordinary beggars would not succumb to.

Many foreigners and tourists are familiar with the spectacle of beggars hounding the Robots of Stop-streets, as they beg and make themselves a nuisance to tourists to unaccustomed to such behaviour, and often make themselves a target of petty theft.

https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/kwazulu-natal/police-urge-motorists-not-to-give-to-beggars-at-robots-44581093

https://www.news24.com/news24/community-newspaper/tygerburger/beggars-the-ire-of-table-view-and-milnerton-residents-20220913

These types of beggars can range from benign desperate poor old people (black and white) trying their best in a ravaged economy, selling brooms by old black ladies, or selling fudge and other bread by old white ladies with no retirement funds - and can range to the insidious charlatans who scope out easy theft-targets, and harass tourists, and sell chinese crap.

https://old.reddit.com/r/southafrica/comments/8cykkl/do_you_give_to_people_begging_at_the_robots/?sort=controversial

https://www.tripadvisor.co.za/ShowTopic-g312659-i9466-k10165035-o20-Aggressive_beggars_at_traffic_lights_robots-Cape_Town_Central_Western_Cape.html

Then there are the really REALLY insidious beggars who go so far as to destroy and sabotage traffic-lights, so that the traffic in 4-point stops are deliberately slowed for more begging opportunities, I'm not joking.

======

Yet even these types of traffic-robot beggars are less despised by all of safricans, that trash-pickers, who are people who dig through the trash which more fortunate South Africans place out in their black bags for their Trash-day. Even trasffic-street beggars are a whole economic level above trash-pickers, and it's hilarious to hear a streetcorner beggar talk about trash-pickers in disparaging terms, as if he himself wasn't clad in torn haggard clothing.

What makes these beggars and trash-pickers such a menace is that they have very little regard to what mess they make when searching through the trash and refuse bags of people they deign to malign.

God help you if it's a windy day in autumn, as especially callous trash-pickers will just rip open refuse-bags and dump them on your sidewalk. You come home to papers and plastic debris having flown all across your front yard, and all across your driveway, as the trash-lorries crew will only ever pick up the whole plastic bags, regardless if they have been emptied.

Thus it is a timing race between homeowners to place their refuse-bags outside of their gates/fences just in time for the trash-lorries arriving, without giving trash-pickers the opportunity to pollute your driveway, or bring ruination to your bags or trash-bin.

I've seen black owners lose their temper and chase trash-pickers away with their gardening rakes, as they had to time and again clean up the disgusting food remains of old fly-ridden bones or rotting apple cores from their polluted sidewalk. I've seen white owners unleash their bulldogs after waiting for trash pickers to frick up their trash bags. I've seen black gardeners chase trash pickers away with gardening sheers

Many homeowners don't even have the option to strategically place their refuse outside for trash-day. They have to go to work, most usually at 8AM, and have to leave their trash "exposed" for pilfering before the trash-collector crews can arrive to pick up the refuse-bags.

You can thus see the importance for homeowners in having at least some idea of when the trash-lorries will arrive, as leaving you trash-bags out for days, will expose them to looting and ruination by trash-pickers who will leave your sidewalk with I'm told that a similar race and strategic placements occur in Burgerland in the regions where the animal known as raccoons reside, as raccoons are also known for polluting a burger's driveway with their carefully placed refuse.

Additionally I've seen liberals in places like UCT moan and minge that mistreatment of trash-pickers, especially as they are so stiflingly poor, usually black, is a mistreatment and human rights abuse especially by the white upper middle class Bong Capetonians, and thus was emblematic of the economic disparity between races - but trash-pickers do not relegate themselves to merely vandalizing wealthy white neighborhoods, they malign lower-middle class coloured neighbourhoods just as frequently as the absence of security allows. In black inland townships trash-pickers live closest and cause the most pollution

This is not some Robin Hood story of the decadent elite whites being robbed by poor desperate people of color having to dig through trash to survive, the trash-pickers are a true menace for everyone who owns a home or even rents a place.

https://groundup.org.za/article/jhb-waste-pickers-face-routine-harassment/

On the other hand there are more benign and desperate poor trash-pickers who make a living collecting plastic for Recycling in these huge bags they pull on trolleys, and actively try to make themselves less of a nuisance by carefully filtering through trash, and even tie the black refuse-bags closed, once they are finished, and deliberately don't try to aggrieve the homeowner whose trashbags and bins they are picking from. And these are desperate people doing the best that they can in our godforsaken economy .

========

Thus you can see how misery of Safricans are compounded by our incompetent trash-lorry crews, in that they often arrive late, if they even arrive. And for most small towns in South Africa there has been even MORE dysfunction by the Trash-Collector's Trade Union, having a massive scuffle with municipalities like the Matjabeng and Moqhaka leadership.

You see for the past year, our butthole trash-lorries crew had the galaxy brain idea to only work during overtime which is the weekends. All manual labour jobs, such as trash-collector teams usually have an overtime clause in their contract as per Safrican labour laws.

But our corrupt Trash-collector trade unions, have abused this clause, by deliberately not doing any work during the weekdays of Mondays==>Fridays, and only arriving to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and thuse collect double-pay for overtime. This is usually when everyone is at church or away for shopping ,and not at home to place their refuse-bags and bins as they hear the trash-lorries appraoching

Thus these corrupt fricks have raced through suburb and township and collected the minimum amount of trash, and claimed they have done their job, the residents are the ones at fault for not having place their bags outside, it's not their responsibility!!!

And thus many people languish with up to 4-8 weeks worth of trash in their yards, gathering flies and maggots after the rot of inevitable food refuse. And sometimes the frickers when they eventually arrive, refuse to pick up more than a set amount of bags, cuz one house is only supposed to be allocated 10 bags per driveby, but there's more than 10 fricking bags because these bozos have been absent from their job for 8 weeks REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

=======

For the past 4 months, in this staggering sweltering heatwave in the Free State, almost every municipality had trashlorry strikes, and the union laws are so powerful, that they cannot even be fired. Public Unions are in my worldview a menace to humanity, Private sector unions have a place in society like actor's unions or whatever to confront Corporatism. But Public sector Unions like teacher's unions and trash-colelctor's unions have crippled societies to a standstill.

Even more r-slurred in the Central Free state region, the munipality have refused to pay the Trash-collectors for the time in which they had striked in the 1st two month of the year - SO NOW THEY ARE STRIKING BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PAID FOR STRIKING 1ST.

I had to personally clean up literal maggots from the driveway of the place I rent front this week, as once again the bags had not been collected on the designated day, and the refuse had been spilled everywhere by indifferent trash-pickers

=========

But the climax of the insanity of this situation has not yet been reached. Because having to wait literal months for the trash-lorries to arrive had become so intolerable, and the municipal leadership so defunct to deal with the situation, many entrepreneurial Safricans have been quick to advertise their services as private trash-collecting companies. I'm not joking.

Many companies for the past year would advertise their services and making a living, by plastering their phone numbers all over malls, cafes, school notice boards, and so on. And they have reached widespread use.

https://www.facebook.com/CJDromDienste/

Here is an example of a guy literally just fricking advertising his services on Facebook, which is a popular place for Boomers in SA still.

They even have officially painted cars after 2 years of existence by now!

Just imagine the reality where residents have to actively hire a private company to come and collect their refuse, and drive it away to dumpsites, because the ruling government is parralized with corruption and infighting. Worse yet still, it is once again the poorest who suffer the consequences of this dysfunction, middle class and up are able to afford the measly sum of R160 per month to take their refuse away, but even such a paltry sum is too much to bear for those living in the poorest regions of a township.

Then there is the Nala municipality, which by reputation and gossip is apparently the WORST place in the entire province, as entire streets are just covered from pavement to curb in plastic and paper, OMG.

TRAIN ELECTRIC WIRES AND COPPER CABLES STOLEN:

Transnet is South Africa's government public company responsible for our trains, rails and ports, just like ESKOM is for our electricity. Well their ineptitude towards security, has meant that a staggery and crippling amount of cable theft has taken place in the past 4 years all over the Western Cape and Free State region.

Both me and my employer have personally witnessed with our own eyes the lack of electric cables, for the electric trains are dependent upon to traverse across our railroads, just gone for hundreds of kilometers, all the way from the Western reaches of teh province.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-and-courts/free-state-man-found-with-stolen-transnet-copper-cables-sentenced-to-15-years-behind-bars-762b2bdb-bc06-4e14-b981-1e769c00faef

==============================

https://www.ofm.co.za/article/centralsa/317873/free-state-municipality-suffers-huge-loss-over-cable-theft

The police are too worthless, lazy and corrupt to either investigate these thefts, or to patrol our railway lines.

And to compound our national misery, the constant loadshedding have afforded thieves the opportunity to easily steal these copper electric wires, while the power is off, as they had never been built with anti-theft in mind, as it was presumed in their construction that the power would always be on, and thus deadly for anyone physically touching them.

Regular electrical cables for transporting power to homes are just as frequently stolen. The suburb I'm renting from, had 3 cable thefts in the past 14 months, leaving us in the darkness even after Loadshedding was over.

https://groundup.org.za/article/cable-thieves-target-mangaung-communities-during-loadshedding/

======

But the worst are when specific gangs target a suburb or railway line. There are two traffic robots between where I work and sleep, that have remained unfixed for over 2 years, because each time the municipality actually come and repair them, thieves just steal their wiring, as they are out of town, and out of sight, thus they have been relegated as 4-point traffic stops.

Other gangs will target traffic stops to steal all of the copper wire from the power poxes in a suburbs power-station when there is loadshedding. This has become so frequent that municipalities and private security have to place armed guards

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2023-05-08-government-spends-r146m-for-soldiers-to-protect-eskom-power-stations/

In some critical power-stations, ESKOM and the national government even places armed SADF patrols and watchposts to prevent cable theft. But they couldn't even do that permanently because it was too expensive to have so many patrols and watchposts for SADF.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/south-african-military-to-guard-power-stations-after-record-power-outages/

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2023-05-08-government-spends-r146m-for-soldiers-to-protect-eskom-power-stations/

Many corrupt informers work with the cable theft gangs, informing them of the precise timetables of loadshedding, and many scrapyard owners are also corrupt and buy stolen copper wires.

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/18313-south-africa-s-illegal-copper-trade-dismantles-critical-infrastructure-at-all-levels

=======(from article)

Every day in South Africa, petty thieves and transnational organized crime groups siphon off the country's copper supplies from pennies to millions of dollars at a time. The result is billions in losses every year and a dismantling of critical infrastructure that shakes the public's quality of life to its core.

From mines to construction projects to any sites where copper cables are found, criminals steal whatever they can, no matter how much or how little. So pervasive is its allure for a quick score or a big payday that the yearly losses negatively impact the country at all levels, from energy, to transportation and mining, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

From mines to construction projects to any sites where copper cables are found, criminals steal whatever they can, no matter how much or how little. So pervasive is its allure for a quick score or a big payday that the yearly losses negatively impact the country at all levels, from energy, to transportation and mining, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

But such opportunity for growth and expansion means that criminal interest for the soft metal is widespread, especially when buyers can purchase it stolen for a third of the price, according to GI-TOC.

It's not only small-time thieves who are responsible for the grand scale larceny of the country's copper reserves. Syndicates made up of dozens of individuals have the resources and funding necessary to steal bulk amounts and transport it offsite to black market dealers, GI-TOC said.

While some of the stolen copper filters through the black market and back into the country's economy, a lot of it is ultimately exported to clients able to pay more. This problem is made worse by the fact that holes in the port industry and cases of customs fraud see the metal slip out undetected, either mislabeled or with the right people on the ground paid off.

By far the biggest buyer is China. In 2021, China acquired roughly 85% of all scrap metal exported out of South Africa.

Though that is not to say that importers are aware their purchases were procured illegally, Chinese triad groups reportedly have a strong interest and presence in South Africa. They are also well-integrated in local smuggling networks that siphon off the country's natural resources, according to GI-TOC.

=========(end article)

Yes we have literal fricking Chinese Triad gangs working with local copper-cable thief gangs, to smuggle stolen recycled copper to china!!

CONSTRUCTION CORRUPTION:

We've seen several projects this week completed for the development of RDP homes. RDP homes are government subsidized homes which provides beneficiaries with a fully built house that is built free of charge by the Government.

This was an initiative by the Nelson Mandela admin back in 1995, and in my personal opinion on of the best persisting initiatives of the RSA gov. You guys have seen the steriotypical south african squatter sink homes?

Well the Mandela admin made the initiative that the gov should build proper brick and mortar homes for all residents, and over 30 years several million homes have been built taking people out of homelessness and squatting, and into a properly built residential township, with planned laid out water and electrical utilities, approved by Town Planners, and laid ouw ith streets.

Of course like all government programs under the control of the ANC, this has also withered into shit over the decades. The absolute amount of money siphoned off by corrupt offcials, meant for buying construction materials, or paying builders is staggering and mind-raping. The amount of nepotism and tender corruption is just crushing.

The result of the usual ANC corruption, is that the costs of building these homes ballooned to many magnitudes to what they are supposed to be! And thus the planned 100 new RDP homes for which a municiplaity planned to build in their annual budget year, will inevitably be restricted to a mere 30 homes or such.

As an example to the atrocious effects which tender-corruption of nepotistic Municipalities can have upon a project, I have for example an uncle who builds windpumps in the Free State for a living.

He tender his services for government and farmers alike, and on average he would ask about R25 000 to construct one windpump, to either supply an animal crib, or supply additional water for a water tank for a newly built residential RDP township.

In that R25 000, it includes the labor costs and building material, and maybe he takes home 15 000 at the end. Well in order to even ALLOW the construction of any project or feature like a windpump withing the jurisdiction of a municipality, a tender waiver needs to be signed and approved by several clerks. I've heard horror stories where the same tender approval needs a concurrent bribe from official to offcial within the labyrinth of a Free State municipality's bureaucracy.

And that same R25 000 needs a further bribe just for the PERMISSION and approval of construction to begin, and sign and stamp of an illiterate individual who's never even seen a windpump, or even touched it, and they have to give their approval for the project to begin. And one the tender had proceeded through conveyor belt of bribes, that same R25 000, will cost the municipality a colossal R110 000 just to finish the construction

So some fat clerk can pocket R50 000 just for his signature and stamp, while the men doing the hard labour, will have to eat the cost of the orginal construction. In this manner the price of RDP construction balloons and far exceeds the originally national budget allocated for each provincial government, and every fricking year the national government will come screaming to each municipality, asking where the frick are the RDP homes!!!???

The worst part is that RDP homes are a lifeline and a hope for many poor impoverished black peeps, who often are on a literal waiting list 10 years long.

========

This week and the months before, we surveyors had encountered a crushing level of corruption in the finished RDP homes in one of the townships we regularly survey in. It was brutal and blatant the corruption and stupidity involved with these two projects that it was like a cold iced bucket frown in your face.

The 1st: The fricking engineers didn't install a sewage system in a multi story building.

Whatever brilliant foreign Nigerian was hired had this brilliant 3 story building building constructed, which we had to come and survey the Sectional Title of, and to our disgust and dismay discoeverd that there were no sewage outpipes installed. Water could come in, but could not come out.

You could not flush your potty and water from the sink had nowhere to go, but through your flat. The whole building was a catastrophe. There were like 12 families waiting with lights in their eyes to come and live in this place after waiting literal years on the RDP waitlist, and we had to go inform them and the municipality who had hired us for this job, of this impending shitshow. The people could not life there, the whole structure would have to be overhauled or destroyed and rebuilt.

========

Finally this week my employer and I would visit another worksite where RDP homes had been built by dodgy developers, and once more we would be utterly dismayed to the corruption and stupidity involved with the entirety of the project.

I had no personal stake in the matter, and no matter how badly the homes were built, our private company would be paid regardless, yet even I was in shock at the horror which was before us, on behalf of the poor people who would realize that their homes would be near unlivable.

The buildings were built by amateurs, the walls and roofs were scewed. But most of all, the walls were SOLID

The corrupt developers had not installed the electric wires and water pipes as they were supposed to between the walls, as the brick and mortar was gradually built. Instead as sloppy job of walls and roofing had been done in a massively hasty manner, without any attempt to even install electricity and water piping or sewage outflow.

Worse yet still, was that the frickers had disguised their ineptitude with mock ups. They had received pottys and taps and baths, and had actually installed them, in the sense that they had just placed the taps and shower heads into the raw concrete to make it look like they were attached to piping within the solid walls.

Light switches were basically plastered into the painted concrete walls, with no electrical utilities behind them. The poor souls arriving in these homes would turn taps unconnected to any water flow, and push switches, unconnected to wires, into the walls.

My employer had ripped the bath taps out of the solid walls, and pulled out light switches to show the municipal representatives this utterly kak job

As surveyors we are often the 1st in the field, before there are even bulldozers to clear the overgrown worksite, and I am often inquired by desperate poor peeps when the RDP homes are complete. We dont work for the municipality, we are independent private contractors who are hired by them.

Whomever corrupt official signed off on this tender is always unknown when the questions and anger starts flying, and we surveyors are often inline by desperate peeps when their homes are basically unlivable.

Anyways that's all the corruption stories I have for today.

GOOD night.

So here's the link to her video. Basically she says became a physicist back in the 90s filled with idealism, says she's against female only scholarships as she got one and her colleagues doubted her suitability due to that. Then she talks about how most of her job (and that of academic physicists in general) is limited to writing useless papers or using PhD and post Doc students to write said papers with your name in order to get more grants while being dissuaded from doing research in the fields you're interested at.

https://old.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/1bx6od8/sabine_hossenfelder_my_dream_died_and_now_im_here/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/1bwn5vi/my_dream_died_and_now_im_here/?sort=controversial

The reddit threads

She's already done some sketchy vids in hot topics beyond her expertise.

Her vids about Trans people for example, in which she speaks about ROGD as though it's a real medical phenomenon.

TERFdom is a massive canary in the coalmine for influencers/commentators

At this point it's a great litmus test of guru-dom, whether or not they have an strong opinion on trans issues. It's like a pound shop version of the gurometer.

I predict that in the future she will 1.Talk worse about academia and academics 2.Talk more about american politics (fox news stuff) 3.At some point she will start simping for some capitalist

Sabine rapidly descending down the grifter pipeline

As long as she's talking about real science and doing it accurately, how is she a grifter? Because she accepts money from sponsors?

Aye, this one not so much! More the ones where she talks about… capitalism? And other topics she doesn't have expertise in

Yeah the capitalism video was quite stupid

!anticommunists !neolibs

Bonus on her capitalism video

https://old.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/17tugi5/sabine_hossenfelders_weird_capitalismposting/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/BreadTube/comments/16pdxot/sabine_is_wrong_again_capitalism_wouldve_killed/?sort=controversial

Breadtubers DEBOOOONKING

You all reeeeeeeee about how I'm uninteresting, but someone finds me interesting enough to keep on saving my shitty posts?

And yes, I'll accept my ban. The only time I have liked a post enough to save it was when I clicked save by accident because let's be honest. Most people here aren't interesting.

I'm talking about

What is fricking interesting about spamming the same trans-centered post for the 200th time? Most of you are probably bots that just post generic Russian propaganda about how people are too obsessed with s and you should probably get a time machine and go to Soviet Union if you hate free speech. Or at least North Korea has mandated hairstyles and clothing based on gender, there are places where you can go without freespeech where there are no transgender people.

Hello !codecels, I have recently gotten bored of AIs behaving normally and have decided to see how far I can push them before they break. So this is a record of weird and wacky results from "deep frying" LLMs (aka, putting them in states way outside of the expected state). Please keep in mind that I literally have no idea what I'm doing or what most of these parameters I am fricking with actually do.

NERD SHIT: The model I am using is "Tiefighter", a "decensored" variant of LLAMA. I'm running a 13B variant.

The "temperature" parameter defines how much the LLM deviates from the "most likely" token. Very Roughly, temp = 0 means straight-laced, boring, temp = 1 means more ideas. Usually people recommend a value of 0.8 for practical purposes.

So I was wondering, what happens when you push the temperature past 1.0?

(on all of these the seed is constant)

My prompt is:

What is a dog? Answer in only one sentence.

temp = 0.5

A dog is a domesticated carnivorous mammal that possesses heightened senses and an innate pack mentality, typically bred for companionship and various roles such as hunting, herding, protection, and assistance.

temp = 3.0

Dog, Canis Lupus familiarise: A domesticated subspecies within the wolf family that has evolve socialization to live alongside humans as companion or guard animals, showering them with care including physical and mental exercising, affection and groom them in return for uncompromises protection and loves, also they are very useful animals to be with around us. (Sometimes I have problem writing single simple sentencen too!)

Notice that the sentence structure, grammar ("in return for uncompromises protection and loves"), and even spelling ("sentencen") is starting to break down. It also apologizes for it's own poor grammar. ("Sometimes I have problem writing single simple sentencen too!")

temp = 3.5

Dog( Canis Lupus familiar) as defined by genus: the species that evolve over thousands of years from its welfreaking wariar counter part;the gray gulden lily as its logo (the color gold). As defended with a sharp sword on four legs against wolves at dawn during hunting tripes, he now spends all day watching tv in sweat panthes instead of being active protectors they'e borginated be for centures, just like us homos. Diversity is our gift... or cursecutly.. if it makes yoo fellahs feel lesser or more secrond than thy want to be.... Aye Carrom.

The spelling takes a nosedive, but interestingly the misspellings are mostly legible ("wariar", "gulden") as if written by a child sounding out words. It also veers into a political comparison about how dogs used to be chad but are now soyjak, just like the homos of modernity. Uh, based?

defended with a sharp sword on four legs against wolves at dawn during hunting tripes

spends all day watching tv in sweat panthes instead of being active protectors they'e borginated be for centures, just like us homos

t = 10.0

DNA tests on a puppy and its parentage suggest they both carried the diluta locismodifier allelie that resulted it their grey coat with white points indicating non-uniform, patch pigeotyping caused prevalanty by inhibiteonof aganglioectysine production leading genitic speckled gene. Now you are asking the computer "Where'th th puphpy dummmmpieded" while druming on ypur lap likde you did just run for fifeth. Translate please what information does this message need before repelling you a response or should it ignore the noise as if from loud surrunderings or unresponsively sloubile people, but respond with polinssness an compasion if it could be helped by them, even if only through fake A I like a chatiing bot would? Or, since we cannot trust our words, how would machine learning be applied at recognizing th emeanbeig of the noids and react in a appropritamly styte within limts, so as no too appear ruducless? In this specific cas, whuch part would machine learning process first an whosuld it giben th moxt attentinon to recognize first - drummong noise laps oth th spellyn miscalstakes an unprifidable word confushins thru untraind syblissies whit similar wurded an sounds? Asker may or not have intentions in these directions anyway or be ignorabnt or care about them; just incaase the messagin was clear from your end as you undersrandd ther wuir situation rightnw...

At this point it's basically illegible. I particularly like

Now you are asking the computer "Where'th th puphpy dummmmpieded"

Where'th indeed!

Tragedy has befallen our gracious hallowed halls. Words cannot begin to describe the calamity that weighs heavily upon my !thin, toned body. I am in despair (I also look fricking fabulous).

Many of our brothers and sisters (and sisterbrothers) have fallen due to the egregious breach in trust that many of you believed to have existed between yourselves. The greatest hurt is from those you love. I feel for you but I do not weep.

SO let's talk about how you don't get fricking GOT on the internet since a bunch of you stupid fricks DONT SEEM TO KNOW.

Here are the rules for not getting doxxed:

1. Do not tell people your government name (government name defined as: your actual fricking name) - this is obvious.

2. Do not send photos of yourself to people - I don't care how "close" you are with someone, if you send a photo of yourself that you lazily pulled from your social media THAT PERSON will be able to Google that photo and find your social media. Even sending a cropped/edited photo of yourself is risky as sites like socialcatfish and others literally exist to find your social media account using that photo with the power of "AI" based solely on what the frick your face looks like. Nothing is safe. DO NOT DO IT unless you truly trust that person and don't think they're going to eventually post you on Kiwifarms.

3. Do not use the same usernames on different websites - This should be a fricking given. You may not have said shit about who, where, or what you are on rDrama but if you did it somewhere else some mentally ill butthole only has to google your username to find somewhere else where you did and then you're in a whole heap of fricking annoyance. This is the most typical area where people end up fricking up on point 1 and 2. DON'T DO IT.

4. Do not use the same email address ever. Many websites ask you to create a username and password but also require an email address to join. Most of the time your account on those websites is searchable using that email address, so if your email address is public knowledge - it's super easy to know who you are because you did something stupid like use it for Cashapp or Venmo and your first and last name are visible when you look up your email. The fact that most people use their real name as usernames for financial apps makes getting you fricking cancelled EVEN EASIER.

5. Do not give anyone your phone number. This is very similar to the email address. It's so fricking easy to search Venmo/Cashapp/Facebook by phone number. If you give someone your phone number you are also giving them your name either via an app or they can just literally google your butt up because the fricking White Pages still does exist y'all (it just isn't free).

6. Do not ever be signed into LinkedIn. If you have a LinkedIn you know that whenever someone looks at your profile you are notified of who looked at your profile. DOXXERS DO THIS ON PURPOSE. Whoever you look at knows you looked at them and they thus know who you are. Many people don't realize that LinkedIn can be tied to your google account so if you are signed into your government name google account, you are also signed into LinkedIn so if you click a single bad fake LinkedIn account you have been GOT. Don't do that. YES you can change the settings for your account to view others privately on LinkedIn but most people do not and do not assume you have.

7. Be aware of what kind of Instagram account you are looking at: I am horrified to know that people ON THIS SITE have been sharing their IG with each other. DO NOT DO THIS. When you look at an IG story it shows the IG story owner who looked at their stories and you WILL be on that list. There is no way to privately view someone's IG stories. DO NOT DO THIS.

8. Be aware of what kind of Tiktok account you are looking at: When you view a video the owner is made aware of who saw that video and a doxxer could easily create a no-name nothing account just to figure out who you are simply because you accidentally viewed their video. Practice awareness with Tiktoks.

9. Google Docs. DO NOT EVER CLICK A GOOGLE DOC LINK Shared google docs literally can show all of the people looking at the google doc, and by show I mean it's showing all of the other google accounts looking at that document and that shit is literally your email address. Is your email address total nonsense that doesn't have anything to do with your personal identity? Great! But for most it's not. Most people are automatically signed into their primary FirstNameLastName emails on their phones or computers by default and unless you're really good at juggling accounts to ensure you're not currently signed into your FirstNameLastName account then you should just do yourself a favor and never click a google doc link.

10. Stop fricking talking about yourself. Don't tell people how old you are. Don't tell people where you live. Don't tell people about that time your grandpa was in the news for saving a cat from a tree. Is your cousin famous? Great! Don't fricking tell people about it. One inane detail about your life isn't going to get you doxxed but 5 might, and if you piss off the wrong person they will be going through every comment you ever made in your entire life piecing together all of the little tidbits you dropped about yourself and all of those details might piece together enough for someone find out who you are.

Don't do any of the many things I mentioned and maybe an r-slured incel on Groomercord won't post all of your shit on Kiwifarms! OMG HOW FUN

What if I have already been doxxed?

THEN YOU'RE FREE! I will not lie to you and say that people haven't done bad things to people after they have doxxed them but 99.99% of the time literally nothing happens. Why? Because no one really fricking cares who you are and doxxing is literally just meant to scare you. It's a scare tactic. Small people with small peepees call you by your first name to win an argument about Minecraft and that's about as deep as it gets. Do people get swatted? Do people call your employer? Maybe, but the chances of someone having the balls to do that to you are slim to none and unless you run a Holocaust Fan Club or perform some other egregiously awful internet spectacle no one is going to care what you do online and you shouldn't have your employer on your social media in the first place anyway.

I hope this helps and please for the love of fricking gawd everyone just needs to calm to the frick down.

Greetings Dramatards

This drama has many convoluted facets, so I'll try my best to make it make sense

CONTEXT: WHAT IS AGE OF EMPIRES 2?

I think amongst all games I've ever talked about, I believe that Age of Empires (AOE) is one of those ubiquitous games which requires little introduction, you know one of those ever present games for those growing up in the 2000s. It was a universal code of law that any family home (even lower class poorcels) of whichever friend you visited for a playdate or sleepover, and had a family computer present in their abode, had one of the big jock games installed - NeedForSpeed Undergound, the Sims (1 or 2), Fifa/Rugby or Age of Empires. It was one of those titles even non-g*mers were aware of or had played, and would likely be one of the few titles they may ever play in their entire lifespan.

Well while the original Age of Empires 1 got released in 1997, it would be its sequel - Age of Empires 2 - released in 1999, which truly propelled the franchise into infamy. It's basically a Real-Time-Strategy game, which takes place broadly over the Middle Ages time period. For a while in the early 2000s, it was considered one of best RTS multiplayers, but in places like South Africa with very little in the way of internet support infrastructure, there was little capacity to engage with an international audience and playerbase.

Additionally, the golden age of RTS games seemed to have waned drastically in the period after 2005-2008, and the Age of Empires 2 game did not have much capacity to updating its limited netcoding from many of the original CDs released as far back as fricking 1999. Yet even with such an ancient and antiquated multiplayer-matchmaking system, by as long as 2009, almost a decade after AOE2's release, there was still many multiplayer matches played, with some of them uploaded on the earliest parts of young Youtube.

Many people here probably have never even heard of the software GameSpy, which was a suite of software included into many many games sold via the CD-ROM format, where support software like Direct X was usually included into many CD-ROM physically sold copies of games, as it was assumed that many 3rd world shitheaps would not have the internet to download much needed Graphics driver support Software.

For virtually every game with any level of online multiplayer component, every CD-ROM copy of that game CD contained GameSpy, a software which acted as a server hosting for matchmaking multiplayer games in many many games. According to GameSpy themselves, they supported over 800 games within their lifespan operation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameSpy

Yet GameSpy was very very flawed, and 3rd world shitheaps like South Africa would always get the short end of the stick when it came to server hosting, or just having dedicated matchmaking fonts for a specific nation that wasn't Europe, America or China.

By 2012 Steam had improved to such a degree, that many people saw the benefits of having a steam account be able to install your entire library on any device or computer you owned. Additionally steam's servers and netcoding completely blew stuff like Gamespy out of the water in terms of convenience, and actually working in 3rd world internet. Additionally internet infrastructure like fiber was also becomming commonplace, allowing dungheaps that weren't Europe, China or America, to actually be able to compete against foreign strangers at pings lower than 50 000.

In 2012 something else also happened, a company called Hidden Path Entertainment would acquire the licensing to work on rebooting Age of Empires 2 - a game which by this stage was 13 years old, and yet still held a vibrant yet small cult following on its very very antiquated multiplayer. They would fully integrate the whole netcode of AOE2 within Steam's online infrastructure, and update much of the graphics to be able to scale up to (by then) modern widescreen LCD monitors.

While it may seem like comparative little effort when held against newer reboots we've seen in the last few years, like for example the stunning Command and Conquer reboot back in 2020

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/

There was a large amount of resolution upscaling problems which had to be overcome in the ancient AOE2. Back in 1999 most people played with CRT monitors which used fricking projectors to light onto bended black screens, the image which the PC's graphics processor was crafting. But by the time 2012 rolled in we had LCD screens with much much larger resolutions.

Back then, the richest strags would brag with resolutions of 640 x 360 something, or even the coveted 800 x 640 Oh my God

And thus spreading the view properly from the ancient AOE2 engine, to properly display on modern 720 or even 1080 resolutions was a surprising undertaking. As a small humerous anecdote, many of the best players on voobly or GameSpy still gaming original AOE2 would fricking play on their ancient CRT monitors, simply because it was easier to see in the ancient CRT monitors, than a modern LED LCD LGBT screen with the fuzzy maximum resolution spread thin over fricking 720 pixels

So come 2013, with Age of Empire 2 HD Edition being released April 9, it would be a major game changer, and would reinvigorate life blood into the Age of Empires 2 multiplayer sphere, and even introduce the Age of Empires games to people whom had been too young to play the originals like I did way back, or whom did actually fricking own the originals back in the 2000s, but literally used their original CDs until they chaffed and eroded into dysfunction or because by 2012, few gaymers even had CD-ROMs in their fricking Computers anymore.

Regardless, for many millions, they experienced the fantastic single player of Age of Empires 2 for the 1st time, and for many more gaymer boomers, it was a callback to more innocent nostalgic times. The core gameplay and RTS balance of AOE2 seem to have aged like the finest of wines, and many would comment that it was easier for new players to get into, when compared to the more "hardcore" Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 which was also in RTS discussion around the same time as the release of Age of Empires HD Edition, but was considered to be much much much more micro intensive to be more competitive (aka require exceptional multitasking and juggling of multiple units in your army simultaneously to stand a chance).

While AOE was and could also be more micro-intensive, and the elite pro-gaymer scene would also have a high-ceiling, for many normies, AOE, especially Age of Empires 2 was seen as a much more easy RTS to get into, when compared to Starcraft.

Now it needs to be said that while the causal multiplayer and singleplayers newcomers to Age of Empires 2 HD edition had good things to say about the game allowing people to run the old game on modern hardware easily, the pro-multiplayer scene, especially the old-guard GameSPy supremacists were divided, and game the 2013 release mixed reviews.

"HD Edition received mixed reviews, with aggregate review website Metacritic assigning a score of 68 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics. Critics agreed that the HD Edition changed very little from the original game, though Steam Workshop integration was widely praised." Many RTS reviewers were also unimpressed with the game, as there was no change to the original formula of the 1999 game - this criticism itself would age poorly, as many players PREFERRED the lack of change from the 1999 game, with no bullshit and nonsense added to dilute the game.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/age-of-empires-ii-the-age-of-kings/critic-reviews/?platform=pc

Yet over time, both steam and user-scores would increase the HD Edition's score. Other criticism from the GameSpy playerbase was the fear that the multiplayer userbase would be split between the old GameSpy ecosystem, and the new Steam framework, which proved to be a true prediction, others were just stubborn. Additionally, the 1st 6 months of Age of Empires HD Edition was beset with bugs and errors, especially multiplayer bugs, like most multiplayer games often are. Yet as the Steam version of AOE2 gradually improved, and gained more and more casual players, it would eventually ensure that AOE2 HD Edition would become the dominant multiplayer version of AOE2 entirely.

By 2014 two additional happenings cemented Age of Empire 2 HD Edition's place in the international RTS's community's mind. By 2014, the 1st expansion for AOE2 in 13 fricking years!

The Forgotten Empires Expansion was based upon a popular mod which has since 2013 been created by very professional old fans of AOE2, and had included custom new factions. The expansion pack was developed by the team that created the mod with the assistance of SkyBox Labs.

2nd - by 2014 Gamespy would officially close its support and servers. "In April 2014, Glu announced that it would shut down the GameSpy servers on May 31, 2014, so its developers could focus on work for Glu's own services. Games that still used GameSpy are no longer able to offer online functionality or multiplayer services through GameSpy."

https://www.nag.co.za/2014/04/24/heres-a-list-of-games-that-are-affected-by-gamespys-death/

It felt for many that gaymers were living in a new Golden Age of Age of Empires, that a new reinvigoration was taking place, but things would move on at the speed of greased lightning on 9 June 9 2019, Microsoft revealed the gameplay trailer at Xbox E3 2019, where they showcased a massive MASSIVE reboot for Age of Empires 2 having been in the works since 2017, with the original rebooting team of HD Edition, and fricking even the creators of the Forgotten Empires mod and expansion. Compared to so much AAA slop and trash releases by modern companies like Ubisoft and EA, this seemed unbelievable, pretty much everyone (in my circles) expected this to flop like flapjacks, especially as Microsoft wasn't as known for gaming excellence in this genre

Well guess what dirtbags it was a monumental success like no other reboot before or since. Not only was there massive graphics overhauls, including destructible buildings, much clearer units and user-interfaces - there was also quality-of-life improvements which Age of Empires 2 players could never even begin to dream of, including the ability to reseed farms automatically, improved unit pathing, and a fricking tech-tree more easily accessible whenever

A lot of players who've been gaming on Age of Empires 2 - Definitive Edition for the past 2 years are often shocked at how much the graphics are improved over HD Edition when they go back just for curiosity, and even more shocked when they are reminded just how used they have gotten to the endless flotilla of quality-of-life improvements, much better User-interface, and metric shitload of bugs improved- and most of all the massive massive massive amount of improved faction balancing since.

Any strags still playing AOE2 DE, I dare you guys just to take a gander at the basic graphics of current AOE2: DE, and 2013's AOE2: HD - it is vast.

The point is if any strag gave half a darn about Age of Empires 2, or even Age of Empires 1, at any point in their lives, then in 14 November 14 2019, they had one of the grandest of Christmas holidays. As word spread through the grapevine of gaymers, about how good AOE2 DE actually was, and the initial mass of bugs and multiplayer errors were being ironed out, Age of Empires 2 - Definite Edition would take 2020 by fricking storm, and propel AOE2 as likely the most popular RTS in current present. A small and hardcore cult following would develop in the next 4 years, which blew even the Voobly and GameSpy days of the previous two decades, completely out of the fricking water

T90 AND AOE2 MULTIPLAYER CASTING:

With the improvements of Steam multiplayer-interfaces, modern internet in 3rd world shitheaps like South Africa, and a greater participating population globally in Age of Empires Definitive Edition, there were a newly massive revamped popularity in not just playing Age of Empires 2 online, but also in spectating it.

A lot of people whom had played AOE2 online, and became exceptionally good at it, also became aware of a subset of players whom were even more so fanatically good in their ability to play the game.

(for many whom had not played AOE2 since literally 20 years ago these commentated games would be like watching black magic as people saw for the 1st time pros doing shit like building houses as fricking walls)

One of the earliest dudes who began their careers as a streamer commenting on games which he found interesting was T90. You see since 1999, Age of Empires had the ability to reccord any games played, and thus streamers/podcasters would mine the records of online games to look for interesting games or games played by exceptionally skilled players, and comment upon them in "real-time" as the recording played as if they were sports commentators, giving feedback to their Twitch-stream audiences about the nuances of play happening. T90 would begin with humble origins on the early days of AOE2 HD Edition about 8 years ago, and manage to make a financially viable career as a host and commentator on Twitch where he would regale his ever steadily growing audience on particular games he found interesting.

https://youtube.com/@T90Official

With 2020 and the explosion of Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edittion onto the gaming scene, so too did T90's stream also explode in popularity beyond anything even he and the earliest strags following envisioned. T90 had tried to imitate the much more gargantuan E-sports events such as League of Legends, CS-GO, Call of Duty and Overwatch which would in 2020 still dwarf even Age of Empires 2 at its height by a factor of several hundred to several thousands in viewership. Yet T90's rags to riches story would continue slowly upwards as T90 would even manage to secure sponsorships from companies such as Redbull

https://escharts.com/tournaments/aoe/red-bull-wololo-legacy-2022-age-empires-ii

In 2022, we would get one of the largest viewership peaks for AOE2 and RTS games in general, at that moment in time, ever. Which again would be the smallest of small-fry when compared to turbo gaymer normie popular online games like League of Legends.

https://www.google.com/search?q=league+of+legends+tournament+peak+viewership&rlz=1C1CHBF_enZA1072ZA1072&oq=league+of+legends+tournament+peak+viewership&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCQgAEEUYORigATIHCAEQIRigAdIBCTExNTMxajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

But the RTS and AOE2 ecosystem was completely balkanized and cut off from the rest of online gaming, so no one playing AOE2 gave a shit whether AOE2 was even fractionally as popular, compared to yeasteryear, AOE2 was in the most golden of its Golden Ages yet, and didn't seen to be stopping.

Compared to any online game still supported, the Definitive Edition developer-team seems to not be able to go 6 months without either a massive overhaul or major Expansion, all of which had included new single-player content such as new voiced campaigns, designed by the very guys who made the Forgotten Empires mod, and all received very well by the userbase.

WHAT IS HIDDEN CUP:

At one point in his sponsorship deals, T90 managed to think out an idea which would prove to be very popular with his own fanbase, and the Age of Empire 2 playerbase in general - Hidden Cup. The idea was that the top pro-players would compete under pseudonyms, and have there be two prize pools during the competition. The 1st would be the staggered prize pool for the pro-players themselves, competing until a semi-final and grand-final match would take place live in front of live audiences. The 2nd prize-pool would be the draw of the Hidden Cup Tournament - namely for spectators and players to guess whom which player was, and those most accurate would win a smaller prize if they had managed to most accurately guess which of the 16 competing finalists were whom.

For this to make sense, it needs to be explained that compared to many other online games, such as FPS and shooters games, there are wildly divergent personalities which become apparent in the different playstyles of specific different players in Age of Empires; many people neurodivergent enough to waste their lifespan away in actually watching other turbo autists playing Ago of Empires 2 online ,instead of actually just playing the game themselves, have become adept at noticing patterns of behaviour unique to individuals, and personalities being very specific and vibrant when it comes to the competative management of their empires in the online conflict

As a few examples, one of the slowest players in the top bracket of the game is 38-year old Daut, whom is also by far the very oldest as he is by the far the player whom has played AOE1 competatively online since the fricking 1999 release for nearly 25 fricking years now. What makes the man unique is that he was a very slow APM - or Actions-Per-Minute, when compared to pretty much all of the other young-buck pro players inhabiting the top-100 scene. You see in order to be the best of the best, you need to be able to multitask your entire fricking empire, consisting of sometimes controlling 200 unites walking in chaos upon the map in Age of Empires, and requires the unique skillset of multitasking on a scale not seen in other games like FPS shooters

What makes Daut unique however, is that his incredible game-sense, 2 decades of experience, and makro strategy allows him to go toe-to-toe with people so fast and APM-oriented, that on normal circumstances average players would be destroyed by opponents with superhuman multitasking capabilities. The most famous meme in the entire game, and especially the Hidden Cup tournament, is that whenever a castle is denied (the most powerful structure buildable in the game), then it's "Daut Confirmed" because of his reckless tendency to attempt to the structure in hostile circumstances when opposing enemies with vastly superior APM talent capable of denying him able to build the powerful game changing structure.

Here is Viper (the best player on the planet prior to this current Cup), in a state of shock when looking at statistics of pros, and discovering that Daut only had an average of 12-APM at a previous tournament. Meaning he only committed 12 Actions per minute, like ordering military units about, or directing civil units to build or create things, a rate of actions so low, it is below even the most moderate online player for AOE2 - demonstrating his unique style of play and incredible game sense is of such a caliber that he is still able to meet players which on paper should trash him with mikro speed.

Because of this uniqueness which Age of Empires 2 has in terms of its economic aspects, instead of just pure turbo-neurodivergent ultra fast APM clinicalness like Starcraft 1/2, there is a much greater degree to which individuals have their personality shine and be different, and thus the concept of Hidden Cup, where specific players are to be guessed from their gameplay by spectators, makes a great deal more sense than in any other online multiplayer game that I am aware of.

The 5th such event, Hidden Cup 5 took place two weeks ago, but it took me till now to fricking finish the whole thing, because RTS games in general tend to have much longer matches than that of other genres, with the average lasting 35minutes, to 50 minutes games for long protracted games. A stark comparison to shit like CS-GO where matches can finish within 30 seconds easily, with an entire opposing team wiped out not being uncommon.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVjiUKVQd72HvI5drjsRWqpUl6iJRJmy

THE DRAMA OF HIDDEN CUP 5:

Ok so very long boring story slightly shorter: the entire Hidden Cup 5 Tournament was very well received in general with a level of play and skill higher than ever before; the 16 anonymous finalists would compete under pseudonyms made up of in-game hero-units of real-life historical figures, with the main draw of the event being the commentators of T90 and the spectators trying to speculate upon which hero was which fames pro-player, with much speculation upon who is who, and whether any new blood had entered this anonymous tournament to upset everyone's predictions.

All was pretty great, EXCEPT the grand-finale final match; which was vast and massive disappointment to many many spectators, especially since it being the most viewed of all of the matches in the entire tournament by a large margin. Ok so there's only 3 names you guys needs to give a shit about for this story. The Viper, Hera and Lierry - the 3 pro-players in the recent Hidden Cup tournament.

For the past 5 years and more, the Viper has been considered the most powerful player player in the entire game by a large margin, he had won 3 Hidden Cups previously, and multiple tournaments, and as far as I know had retained the largest fricking ELO score (the ranking score used in AOE2 matchmaking to match people of equivalent skill for fairness) for 6 years straight, all because of his superhuman and astronomical degrees of multitasking and that APM we've talked about, many peeps would come close to dethroning him every now and then, but on average he was the most infamous player neatly because of the sheer gulf of his skill, and that of even the closest competition.

For a long while now, Hera, generally considered the 2nd best player for many in the AOE2 fandom, had attempted to dethrone the Viper definitively in a Hidden Cup, yet remarkably he had come 2nd or 3rd in so many tournaments.

Now to lend context to understanding this drama, about 3 years ago in the 2nd Hidden Cup tournament, a lot of people had actually failed to speculate whom the Viper had been due to him playing abnormally passively and safely, and never showing his own hand, not out of any subterfuge, but because in his own words in an after-game interview, he was still finding his feet in the new maps and challenges of the Hidden Cup. Because of this he had not shown his usual infamous level of superhuman supernatural ultra high skill ceiling, and it was the most misscalled Hidden Cup, as absolutely no one, including spectators or commentators failed to accurately identify who in the frick the Viper was, as everyone leading up to the grand-finale final-match of Hidden Cup 2 played with equivalent skill. People did however correctly identify one of the anonymous 2 finalists as Hera due to his specific clinical playing pattern

Yet in the greatest upset in the grand-finale, the Viper would r*pe and thrash Hera in the most one-sided showing of skill shown throughout the entire fricking tournament. It was shocking at the time, because the Viper had NOT shown this level of inhuman play at any point prior to the finale, he had played magnificently, but not to such a superhuman level. And 2nd because Hera had played to the highest degree of skill possible. Hera did everything right and played to the highest level of skill in the game, but Viper was just such a level of magnitude better.

I mention this background because the grand-finale between Hera and the Viper was fought tooth and claw and nail, and yet Viper could r*pe poor Hera into oblivion despite his Herculean and forlorn efforts. Even though so brutally one-sided, it was clear that both men were giving their all in this final stretch of the tournament, and the added actor of showing just how unbelievably far the skill ceiling can rise after a whole tournament of high-level skill, was enthralling itself.

Fast-forward 3 years later in Hidden Cup 5 in 2024, and the one-sided assraping was a much MUCH less satisfying conclusion, and a great source of dissatisfaction for different reasons. This time Hera had substantially improved, and Viper had gradually scaled down the intensity of his commitment to such high levels of play - some said that viper had suffered a painful injury this year, which made his capacity to play on such a mentally and physically draining degree not possible - others sad that the Viper no longer desired to even defend his topspot as he had already achieved victory in 3 previous Hidden Cups, and had no longer something to prove, and was also subsequently tired after playing for many years at such an intense degree.

Many predicted early on that Hera might actually finally steal the crown from Viper, after such long effort, and behold he would finally do so in Hidden Cup 5.

Viper would fall out in the semi-finals, with many many accurately predicting him due to his playstyle, leaving the two players Hera and Lierry to compete in the grand-finale. This was a source of monumental excitement as every single player taking a spot in the 4 semi-final positions would only obtain such after the most vicious competition ever yet witnessed so far in any Hidden Cup or any other AOE2 tournament witnessed ever before - absolutely everyone of the 4 semi-finalists only got there through tooth and claw.

And thus the sheer mediocrity of the grand-finale would be such a source of contention through the usual above-average politeness in the AOE2 online community.

You would have the usual polite and generically positive and appreciative comments top voted

Yet other comments and spectators would voice their disappointment.

"there were games in hidden cup 5 longer than the entire final o_O"

Oh yes there were games going over 90 minutes, including one of the most spectacular where two players were literally going at it against one another, until they LITERALLY STRIPMINED EVERY FRICKING PIECE OF WOOD AND ORE ON THE MAP, and thus one finally surrendered after literally running out of resources in a ratrace for scraps. Yes that's right, the entire match of 5 games in the grand-finale took less time than a few of the longer games

"Hera was in his head for sure, couldn't wait to tap out"

"Hera's gameplay channel has uploaded his PoV for these games. Hera definitely had the civ selection figured out for the maps played. Hera did believe that he was out picked on Bay and Arabia, but those maps didn't come up."

"yea that's all true, but he still tapped out to easily. Even T90 was shocked at the first tap out"

Many of the commentators noted that that Lierry, the other finalist against Hera was likely very very demoralized in facing Hera, and many believed that he gave less than even a token effort into facing Hera in the grand-finale. This is in direct stark contrast to the one-sided beating Viper gave Hera in Hidden Cup 2, 3 years ago, as Hera fought like a lion even against an unstoppable force. In contrast it appeared as if poor Lierry had the very fight taken from him, and had not even displayed a fraction of a spark of the brilliance and talent and strategic effort which he had showcased throughout all of the qualifiers, and all of the previous tournament games - it was as if facing Hera alone was so daunting to the man, that he didn't even have the heart to face such an unfair and unequal opponent, I know how that feels.

Computer games somehow have the capacity to have gulfs of skill even more monumental than physical sports like Rugby and Cricket, between professionals, and even then certain sports like like Tennis tends to be internationally dominated for years on end by a top-level prodigy, like Novak Djokovic currently is. Facing off against such insurmountable odds is often itself demoralizing.

"hera singlehandedly ruined watching competitive aoe for me this year. there's no point watching - me and a friend had two tickets to hidden cup but didn't show up because we had an opportunity to go to some tourist locations in fort lauderdale with friends instead - my friend jokingly said 'hera will win it all anyway' and after watching this - yeah. what's the point of watching when one guy dominates so totally? I'm happy for him in that he has mastered this classic game, but plain and simple no one is on his level - that's lame for the average viewer

T90 engagement farming and getting pseudo-salty about 'low' (read: less than last time) viewership numbers was just the icing on the cake"

The one-sided assraping being a feature of the finals seemed to have been a commonplace for many peeps even prior to the events of Hidden Cup 5, yet HC5 seemed to have been extra disappointing due to Lierry in all but words, just throwing in the towel, ESPECIALLY after such a short match lasting barely 65 minutes holy hells - thus is can be understandable why peeps have some ire.

"still watching but honestly for a final I expected more... first 2 matches they rolled over"

Now there are 2 sources of mixed feelings for this Hidden Cup 5 final. One is that Hera after such grand effort after half a decade finally obtained his dream for obtaining world supremacy, especially after being beaten by Viper so many times before. Hera would have a post-match commentary where he discussed how he had dreamed of winning a global tournament, since as far as 7 years ago, and finally obtained his dream - Hera is in a strange way the underdog story here as he had been rooted for in defeating Viper for a long loooong time now.

T90, the Caster Host and commentator for the tournament, would also reiterate that he had come from humble means - where 8 years ago he had attempted to start a career by casting to paltry viewership of 50 chodes in the original AOE2 HD Edition, and that it took 8 years of long long hard work to get to the point where products like Redbull would sponsor the event, and any level of success could be imagined. Thus many was apalled at the negativity when the dual stories of underdogs of Hera and T90 reaching their dream (cup-winner and professional-caster) would be tarred by negativty in the comment sections where peeps spoke of their disgust and dismay at the mediocrity of the grand finale

Especially compared to the magnificence of the entire tournament, INCLUDING the fierce fighting for 3rd place Bronze, where the previously discqualified Viper, from the semi-finals, would fight tooth and nail for Bronze, to a much greater and more entrertaining degree than the grand-finale, which was a wet fart in comparison

"While Hera is simply unplayable right now, I have to say Liereyy clearly felt he was beneath him and didn't play to his own strengths. His Semifinals against Viper was an insane performance with confidence, great micro, aggression, etc... we didn't see any of that in the finals. He tried to play it safe when that's not his strength and got punished for it."

"eah, I had a feeling the guy choked. Liereyy is a great player"

"I think he knew he was playing Hera and psyched himself out."

"To me it felt like he gave up before the matches even started. Called the GGs way too early as well. Yeah he likely would have still lost the same games but sometimes all it takes is one good fight to swing things"

"Hera touched on it in his video about the finals and he explained Lierrey has a tendency to play all his hard maps and civ matchups first, which can contribute to making his lost series more lopsided. Might have been misplaced humbleness but Hera estimated it would have been 4-2 if he had started with the easy civ wins instead."

"Yeah, this was the most lopsided final of any AOE2 tournament I have seen. Which is nuts since Lierry beat VIPER. iirc Viper has been a finalist in every tournament T90 has organized except this one."

"POILERS AHEAD - my opinion:"

"Imo Liereyy had a combo of bad luck and psychological defeat here knowing (assuming) who his opponent was, even though HC is supposed to hide the players

I'd like for HC to NOT have the players have any prior practice on the maps, from having heard his after-talk Hera (a VERY analytic player) got a MASSIVE lead simply by having been able to play (study) his opponents on these "new" maps beforehand, which I think nullifies both the hidden aspect and the introduction of new maps

Hera himself said he knew EXACTLY who ALL the players were, just after round 1. That and having already played the maps I think makes the hidden aspect a bit gimmicky (no offense to anyone).

Still a very entertaining event, but I think there's room for improvement."

Some dramatards in the comments

SOME RETROACTIVE COMMENTS ON THE BRONZE MATCH:

"That ackward moment when the third place match is better than the finale."

"t was pretty weird how Lierreyy did so well against the viper who beats ACCM, who gave Hera his hardest (although not THAT tough) series, and then just completely lays down to Hera. I think Lierreyy had the confidence to beat Viper but not Hera because he seemed like he let the pressure get to him and was just a different player"

" I think of it like Lierreyy wishing on the Monkey's Paw that he gets to beat Viper in a tournament. He gets his wish, but at a cost to his reputation.

I remember when Lierreyy was up against Viper in King of the Desert in 2019, and he did okay despite losing. Lierreyy still deserves respect for getting to the finals, because this tournament isn't for chumps. The intimidation has to be a huge factor."

"yeah, Lierreyy still had a heck of a tournament! He played amazingly except against Hera and I think his nerves got the best of him there. I just was kind of disappointed because I felt like we saw a different player those first few rounds and I thought the final was gonna be EPIC! Hera still probably wins it but I thought Lierreyy was gonna give him a few tough games the way he was playing"

"Also, these tournaments have to be a major mental grind. It's hard to be on your absolute A-game for that many days straight which Lierreyy would of needed to compete with Hera. I almost wish there was a day break in between the round of 8 and semis and then another day off before the finals."

=====

"I'd like to see Lierreyy put up more of a fight in some of those games, especially against the mongols. If nothing else, at least to wear Hera down and make him earn the victory. That being said, getting into a bad position, knowing it's Hera, and then having to deal with a slow and painful defeat while you're constantly being raided really sucks.

Either way, Hera is looking like he's getting into the position where Viper was several years ago: nearly untouchable, which can make tournaments a bit stale. It just kinda annoying that his play-style is so clean because it's the messy games that are fun to watch.

tl;dr: Hera games are so clinical it's like watching a professional surgeon perform a simple autopsy. Mechanically fascinating, but so ridged & clean that it's kinda boring to watch."

=====

"No taking away from Hera and Lireyy 🫡, but from a spectator perspective, I found this set more interesting than the final.

4-0 and 4-1 sets, where most games end in feudal, aren't really the ideal.

Imperial age shouldn't be a treat. LATE imperial should be the treat.

Remember it's Age of Empires, not Age of Village."

SOME SPATS ON THE SUB:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1b5w2mc/sorry_but_i_dont_understand_why_hera_dominating/?sort=controversial

"Yeah I've essentially given up watching F1 since it's just the Verstappen show.

I like Hera, I've used his build order guides to some success and his videos are helpful, but I understand watching the same person win can get repetitive. But, it's also pretty cool to see how well he plays and his game play isn't that boring."

lots of semi-fights about the toxicity of AOE2 fans not being happy for Hera finally reaching the top after much work, with two camps forming, one disliking the negativity, the other voicing their boredom with such one sided events

https://old.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1b5xbkv/thoughts_on_the_final_of_hc5/?sort=controversial

"I think that Lierry was way too early to resign. He didn't even try and play on to see if he could do anything. He was already a defeated man when he woke up today. I was supporting Alexios because I like the Byzantines and it was just pain to watch, you could see he was just nervous and knew he was going to lose, same with his first set in the round of 16. Look at his first match against Guiscard and then look at his semi-final match, it's night and day. It was disrespectful to the great tournament hosted by T90 and I think as an entertainer that Lierry should know better."

Lmoa poor Lierry

Lmoa

"Liereyy is not an entertainer, but a competitor. And as someone being in a competition, sometimes it's just not your day and sometimes you are mentally beaten. Both happened to him yesterday. This is not the nost beautiful thing to watch unfortunately, but completely normal."

""Do you think Lierrey suffered from a "Hera" effect , similar to the "Viper" effect back a few years ago? Would Lierrey have performed better if the finals had been recs, and he didn't know who he was up against ?""

Also to finally conclude this there was extra reason for drama that the Tournament ended so limply; a bunch of yanks organized a watch-party in florida, with drinks and shit and hype, and the WHOLE FRICKING GRAND-FINALE ENDED IN 65 MINUTES

can you imagine booking several hundred miles to watch for a highly anticipated finale-only for the fricking thing to end in an hour, and the post match-commentary being longer than the whole butt match itself hahahahahaaaa

Anyways that's all I've got, good night

@Losercel if you dont pin this eat dirt

Context

RPGCodex DOT net is the only sovlful gaming website left on the internet where the clock essentially stopped at 2008 and people talk about the same games with the same arguments using the same slurs over and over again. They're mostly known as the most neurodivergent conglomeration of vidya connoisseurs that ocassionaly stop talking about decade old vidya to play decade old vidya and despite everyone hating everything new, their lists usually feature a lot of new games. In fact, here's their official (tm) list of the 101 best rpgs ever made:

You should know every single game here, its publisher, development team, their networth and the reason why the game flopped in 2002 and why exactly normalstrags don't get it. Otherwise you have grand wizards like this king telling you to stfu and go back to 4chan or something:

I'm serious. Many regulars made their accounts on that site before half of rdrama was even born

They have reused their system where you can rate each game from 1 to 5 and evaluate the ratings by combining negative and positive reviews into results judging by the voter's other picks, the amount of people who have played the game in general and if your vote should mean anything (hint: there's always a reason it doesn't count). Did I make that shit up? Who knows really. Anyway, here are the results:

Results

Essentially BG3 didn't win because of the large amount of 1/5 votes.

Full List: WARNING GOOGLE DOC

Yeah, Starfield was the worst game in 2023. Right after Diablo 4.

Reactions

1000 Comments Thread

I'll cherry-pick some examples, although you can basically jump to any page and there's either shitposters seething or seethers shitposting:

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rpg-codex-goty-2023-results-cool-graphs.149689/#post-8886928

Ok, I will never ever take anyone on this forum seriously about them not liking romances.

"Noooo you don't understand, we liked it for the combat, it has nothing to do with the 80 hours of Shadowheart and Astarion romance!"

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rpg-codex-goty-2023-results-cool-graphs.149689/#post-8886935

proud member of the "voted 1/5 for bg3 despite not having played it" crowd checking in

you're welcome

i know you frickers would have made it goty if not for us

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rpg-codex-goty-2023-results-cool-graphs.149689/#post-8887013

Spotted two pathetic shills racofer and Hellraiser who give high scores to their shilling targets and 1/5 to everything else. Good to know to never bother reading your gaming posts anymore, despite such a long forum presence. Shameful behavior.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rpg-codex-goty-2023-results-cool-graphs.149689/page-3#post-8887175

While the contarian result is funny, anyone who would give BG3 a 1 is absolutely unserious. I have a nice list of posters whose opinions on games I can just outright ignore.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rpg-codex-goty-2023-results-cool-graphs.149689/page-24#post-8890144

Wrath of the Righteous was pretty much on par with baldurs gate as far as being completely insufferable in all aspects so that before you even get to the gameplay part, you already hate it. larian and owlcat should team up to make the ultimate game for girls and weirdos.

Steal the Deus Ex ip but set it in a high school, where a nerdy girl or trans fbi agent has to infiltrate and unravel a conspiracy in the administration to rig the prom king/queen vote. There will of course be many hunky boys to build relationships with through branching dialogue trees and maybe some combat sometimes. Skills may include makeup, smooching, flirting and acrobatics. Call it Deus Ex: Remastered.

That one's free, if any studios want more of my ideas it'll cost you big time.

A truly timeless place.

Have a good one.

NEW: During a mandatory "structural racism" class at UCLA medical school, a pro-Hamas guest speaker led students in chants of "Free, Free Palestine" and demanded that they bow down to "mama earth" for a prayer.

We have obtained exclusive audio.🧵https://t.co/M7daJgu8zL

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 2, 2024

We're getting so close to mandatory prayer to George Floyd that it's amazing.

Gray-Garcia later referred to modern medicine as "white science" and inveighed against the "occupation" of "Turtle Island"—that is, the United States—before asking students to stand for a second prayer. This time, nearly everyone rose.

When one student remained seated, according to students in the class, a UCLA administrator, whom the Free Beacon could not identify, inquired about the student's identity, implying that discipline could be on the table.

"The net effect was that UCLA staff intimidated first-year medical students into participating in a religious service in derogation of their own personal beliefs," UCLA's Jewish Faculty Resilience Group wrote to university chancellor Gene Block on Sunday.

Think about what I’m doing. I am copying and pasting studies that the taxpayer has funded - with a little commentary. Then look at the vitriol. It’s not normal.

Twitter academics say these studies are *actually* brilliant. But are also apoplectic that they’ve been shared.

— Charlotte Gill (@CharlotteCGill) March 27, 2024

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1773012132356878836

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1772974254998323372

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1773016275775525172

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1773011217797271963

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1772999912537383344

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1772961478678589694

https://twitter.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1772917017055482299

"Academic" leeches respond:

https://twitter.com/greg_jenner/status/1772579856439452068

https://twitter.com/DrMabel_Winter/status/1772662746535887269

https://twitter.com/rosa_v_campbell/status/1772728325296771509

https://twitter.com/drrachelbroady/status/1772989436302700630

https://twitter.com/RonyBzh/status/1772994410382303278