Microblog Memes
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Absolutely no NSFL content.
- Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
I love this idea so much. The Predators we see in movies are literally trophy hunters, and maybe their home society views them the same way the majority of humans view human trophy hunters.
The Predator version of the Office would be pretty funny.
Predator Jim pranking Dwight by leaving a xenomorph egg in his bottom drawer.
In jello
This is a well known concept in sci-fi where civilizations massing in the tens of billions will have all kind of weird outliers. But at such a scale, even the really weird ones can form groups of tens of thousands or even larger. In sci-fi storytelling this is often used to explain weird behavior that probably wouldn't make a lot of sense otherwise.
It also comes up in the fermi paradox a lot. For example aliens always want to stay at home and not be noticed or interact with anyone. But at a certain scale of civilization that doesn't hold water. Even if 99.99% of a given alien species think that way, there would stil be at least a million of them that think otherwise and would be willing and able to act on it.
So it makes perfect sense for all the Predator people to be really normal and the hunting cult is a hobby that got out of hand.
Yeah I’m gonna need examples. I read a shit ton of science fiction and can’t recall having encountered this.
Check out the works of Alastair Reynolds, he loves to apply this principle in his books. Great on world building and describing the weirdest parts of large civilizations.
For more a meta/review/fermi paradox talk point of view check out the content from Isaac Arthur, he also likes to point out this when discussing things like the fermi paradox and sci-fi in general.
Thanks for the suggestion, his stuff looks interesting. I realised I already have (but haven't yet read) "Pushing Ice", which looks like a standalone novel - but looks like there's also a whole set of works in the "Revelation Space" universe. Any recommendations of specific books of his?
Most of his books are standalone, but set in the same universe yes. They kind of follow each other, but can also be read as standalone books.
Pushing Ice is one of the better ones imho, I love that book. The first book I ever read from him was Revelation Space and it blew my mind. One of the absolute best books I've ever read. He has a way of creating a universe that feels absolutely real and logical, yet be completely different from the world we know.
Another good one is Redemption Ark.
And if you like stuff like this I can also recommend Fred Saberhagen, his books are excellent. They are old but hold up pretty well.
Brilliant, thanks. I'll see how I get on with Pushing Ice, but popped the others on the wishlist. I imagine I will very much like stuff like this, so added Fred Saberhagen too (The Berserker ones I've heard of before).
The Dark Templar in Starcraft are outliers.
...and they are not even the edgy dark ones any more.
I've read a lot of sci fi but I'm not familiar with that concept, but it makes more sense than thinking of a whole culture as weirdly sadistic etc.
I also listen to Isaac Arthur.
“Oh, that guy? He’s just a douchebag failson of the third richest asshole on the planet.”
I know it's an important literary device in sci-fi but it always bugs me that whole planets are mostly mono-cultural with usually only up to 3 different governments.
Wait you read sci-fi where a planet has THREE governments?
Maybe I'm reading bargain bin material but the stories I see is a mono-culture, with a mono-religion and if I'm extra blessed, a single ecosystem like frost planet, or sand planet.
This is why I could not get through Xenocide. I absolutely loved Ender’s Game and Speaker For The Dead, two of the all time greatest, but xenocide was so flawed I just couldn’t keep going with the series. Also, fuck Orson Scott Card in general.
The US, Japan, China, India and Europe all watch the same major block buster movies. We can talk to each other about the MCU and at least have some idea what each other is talking about. There are only a hand full of religions left in the world unless you want to counter obscure ones and each sect and even then three of those big ones are basically branches of the same religion. the most common language in the world is spoken by a large variety of people all over the planet while the second is pretty regional.
An advanced society would probably end up being monocultured going by the one model we have. Though it could depend on if they are a space fairing race and how long it takes to travel between 'settlements.'
But what if the species is genetically/psychologically inclined to a single form of governance?
How convenient for a lazy writer
Star Trek crew arrives at a planet. Meets a group of aliens. Meets another group of different aliens. Both aliens are literal opposites of each other. Doesn't agree about one issue. Crew fixes issue. Star Trek ship leaves.
Those predators are just the offspring of the predator oligarchs.
Every "big game hunter" ever.
Nothing screams baby dick energy like killing an animal from a distance, using advanced weapons designed and engineered by people far more intelligent than you are.
What's the yautja word for "ammosexual?"
It's like their version of guys who spend a fortune on gear and tactical everything to go weekend paintball shooting in the woods.
Weekend warriors on a men’s retreat. Anything to avoid going to therapy.
That was the original idea for alien. The aliens are actually this advanced cultured race. But they get crazy in childhood and puberty.
That's also kinda the explanation for the velociraptor behaviour in the second Jurassic Park book. They were a social species and the lab-grown ones grew up to be absolute sociopaths.
That seems more like a retcon when the author of the book found out they didn't actually behave like they do in the movie 😅
This idea is somewhat present in the ending of the first book already, the second one just spells it out, but the second book has a character shitting on Alan Grant for his ridiculous idea that a predator wouldn't see you if you're not moving, speculating the T-Rex was probably fed at that moment (which is accurate). And the whole idea of there being a second island for growing the dinos is treated as obvious by the same character, since the small lab they were shown in the first one is obviously just theatre for the visitors. So yeah, Crichton was not above correcting his earlier mistakes.
I highly recommend both books. They're awesome, and they diverge from the movie in many ways - notably not all survivors from the movie make it and vice versa, so it's still very suspenseful even if you know the movies.
I want to see a romantic comedy, where in the background the TV is playing a news report about how Tokyo is being attacked by Godzilla again. No one in the foreground acknowledges it, probably because it's so common you may not comment on it. Still some people in the background are looking concerned. Maybe a poster for donating to rebuild Japan.
Oh, I say!
Like those hunters in the USA that go out in the wild and get attacked by grizzly bears and almost nobody with any sense has sympathy for them because at the end of the day the hunters put themselves into the bear's habitat and then weren't savvy, educated, vigilant, or concerned enough to stay the fuck away from the apex predators with knives built into their mouths and feet.
Or the assholes like Jimmy John who go out and shoot Elephants.
“Who would win, me or an Austrian with plot armor and a hyper myostatin disorder that makes them naturally huge?”
“I mean, the Austrian, obviously. Don’t they usually travel in packs?”
“I don’t know, man, I’m built different. Plus I just got that new load out from space cabellas’s that makes me invisible and shit. I’m not saying it would be easy, but I could do it, I just know I could.”
“Sir, this is a space Wendy’s.”
“Alright, what if it’s normal non-Austrians, like a tribe of some sort? Hear me out…”
How did they develop space travel for real? These ugly motherfuckas can't be smart enough to develop star drives!
I like that SciFi concept that manipulating gravity/space/time is actually not that hard, and some civilizations discover that a lot earlier and go down a different technological evolutionary tree
So you have like wooden spaceships operated by aliens wielding swords, and they show up to earth to conquer us assuming they're way more advanced than us, but realize we have hella advanced weapons, infrastructure, and communications technologies
https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove
That's heavily implied in Defending Elysium. A phone company accidentally develops FTL communication and as a result an ambassador's ship shows up but is easily shot down by our modern fighter jets when it enters our airspace. The diplomatic fuck up Is fixed by the phone company, which in turn becomes an extra governmental liaison between humanity and the rest of galactic civilization.
The best twist on that, and the best twist as to how FTL-capable aliens don't smash us flat is Footfall. Also shows the most practical way for aliens to attack a planetary surface. Think I'll read again it for the fourth time!
SPOILER
They roll up and start throwing rocks from orbit.
The aliens didn't actually invent their tech and are using a ship, weapons, etc. from a far more advanced, and extinct, species. Also, realizing that they're herd animals goes a long way towards winning in the end, making the title take on more than one meaning.
Favorite part was where they nuke Kansas and the aliens go into a frenzy. "They nuked their own breadbasket just to get one small base?! Are they fucking nuts?!"
Then batman-voice-guy shows up and starts slaughtering them
This sounds like a really good Rick & Morty episode.