AceTKen

I know it does, and that's a massive pet peeve of mine (if you couldn't tell from other threads). To be clear pre mini-rant, this isn't aimed at you, it's just something that bothers me and I wanted to get it out.

I think clarity and unity of terms use is one of the major issues that need to be addressed, especially now. It's also one of the reasons I often will add the definition of a term being used in our weekly threads, because I don't like people claiming to be correct because their "personal definition" obscures the truth. We have words. They are effective, powerful, and can be wielded to great effect. Changing what they mean in order to shock with a worse term is a horrible thing to do and is a dumbing-down that serves to undermine the original definition. It makes communication worse.

I despise forced political movement of words and don't like turning words into the personal equivalent of morality.

I'll probably be using this as next weeks weekly thread, but I would argue that current immigration policies hurt the non-wealthy which would include any white men who aren't wealthy. It's one of the few policies where I don't agree with any political party.

Not to break into my Econ schooling, but also DEI initiatives, social assistance policies, scholarships, grant funding, many hiring initiatives, and almost everything I experienced in many predominantly non-white countries overseas could be framed as "hurting white men" in the same way the policies you listed above. It really depends on the lens you use to view things.

Most of these (including things you mentioned) are put into place by the wealthy to maintain things as they are, and yes, some white men are wealthy. I'd remove race and sex from things though and draw the battle lines elsewhere, say "gross and abusive amassing of wealth."

I don't and would never label non-cruel policies as leftist or liberal, but the phrase is commonly used by those groups. I feel that nearly every group thinks their policies aren't cruel, however.

"Cruelty" is not always unwarranted, nor is it the same things to every person.

Remember that German guy that had himself eaten by another years back? That'd seem cruel to me, but it was a fetish for both of them and they didn't think it was cruel at all. It's a moral definition and changes for every person.

• Some people would call me cruel for having a cat.
• More would call me cruel for keeping it indoors permanently.
• But many others would yell at me for allowing outside.
• Some would give me hell for drinking a glass of milk.

And all of them can justify their reasons.

People are quite poor at context and misusing and exaggerating words. I absolutely hate it and feel it's one of our worst traits which is not an exaggeration.

I can't believe that you have just convinced me to watch fucking Rampage.

That is an accurate example, but I don't feel it's true in every case (or even the majority) where the phrase is used.

For example, many right-wing policies (that I dislike very much) have the phrase in question used in discussions below them. More often than not it's an ineptness, stupidity, lack of knowledge, or something else cause them to feel that the result would be beneficial. Maybe the intended result is power, or something economic, but it's NOT them just trying to be mean.

I know you know it, but for anyone reading this... Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I've spoken to plenty of limited-understanding people all over the world. Many of them are broadly kind and well-meaning and brutally misguided people. Many express regret at any cruelty they "had to" do, but felt their goal justified it.

Dismissing it as just being shitty to be shitty is stopping people from addressing the underlying issues in the same way that some would dismiss a drug addict as "just an addict" without thinking about addressing underlying issues.

"He wants to be high because he likes being high." Well, maybe? But probably not, or at very least there's way more to it.

Hopefully I didn't overstep.

I agree that things done for an many reasons including ineptness, nonscientific views, fear, reactionary politics, poor training, or even doing things from a detached perspective can seem cruel, but the cruelty is not the point. The cruelty is a byproduct, not the goal. It's a bad and oversimplified phrase and in nearly every serves to obfuscates issues.

For example, knocking down a big tree can seem cruel if you're a squirrel and live there. But if you're a human, maybe you know that that tree was damaged in a storm and is about to fall over and destroy a few homes and potentially kill someone.

A serial killer torturing a victim? Maybe the power is the goal. Maybe the rush is the goal. The cruelty? It's a means to an end. Understanding goals is how we stop people. Hand-waving away true reasons behind things doesn't help us understand and therefore stop them.

You can handily cherry-pick examples throughout history of people being outwardly psychotic, and I'd agree with you. However, when used in modern-day political contexts, most of the time it's used in reference to the things I mentioned. Ineptness, fear, nonscientific views, etc.

I have a shitload of leftist beliefs, but I really hate this phrase and have never seen it used by someone who wasn't left-leaning. I have corrected my initial statement (which is intended to be completely neutral and non-leading) to specify that this is solely my experience with it.

No, I do not personally believe this. I believe that this phrase is one of the shortest-form strawman "arguments" that exist and is usually spoken by itself with zero justification or understanding of the issue referenced.

And beside that, it should be obvious that it is very often not true. Most of the time with issues "the point" is cost-saving, stubbornness, cause & effect disagreements, or difference of opinion on how to carry things out. If there is cruelty involved, it is a side-effect, not the point. Even then, the side being accused may feel the cruelty lay on the opposing side because cruelty is a moral argument, and you can not apply morals universally.

The phrase is like saying "the point of drinking water is to touch your genitals while peeing." It actively avoids the real point in order to make the entire act seem absurd and is a bad faith argument from the jump.

A good way to find out if "cruelty is the point" is to do a thought experiment. "If they could do / remove the crux of the issue and the perceived oppressed group would still be happy some other way, would this still be an issue?"

For example (and I am not passing a value judgment here, I'm simply doing the thought experiment with a real-world example), if a state passed an anti-transitioning law, but found a single pain-free pill to remove all dysphoria from the affected group, would they allow that pill? If yes, then the cruelty didn't factor into the decision - the issue and how to deal with it did.

To be absurdist, if you feel they wouldn't allow the "pill fix", and cruelty is still the point, then why have they not made the suffering worse? They could say "you can have whatever treatment you want, but only if you allow us to torture you for 6 hours per day!"

If a person eats meat, but is grossed out by factory farming and avoids it, is the point the cruelty or the ease, nutrients, and flavour of a standard omnivorous diet? Rationally, do you really feel that their first thought before biting into a burger is "Fuck this cow, I hope it died screaming."

No. That would be insane.

Thinking and speaking in this fashion only removes the ability to deal with difficult situations in a meaningful or rational way and simply shows others that you can't even pretend to fathom other people. It shows that the speaker is not empathetic in the slightest, but sure would like to be perceived as such by their in-group.

As I've said since the beginning, I'd like to see more diversification of opinion in the userbase. There are a LOT of people here that are the kind of activist you'd see get banned on Reddit for being hyper-aggressive and it really turns neutral- or otherwise-thinking users off. They don't discuss, they immediately attack and flame and it's not good for building communities around except hyper-focused ones based on those issues specifically.

I want people who know the reason they think something and don't just have an emotional response and stick with it, then strawman everyone else in the vicinity who deviates.

As we say in the main Rules for our Community ( !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca ), "Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone even slightly to the right of you is a Nazi."

I also want MUCH better Community controls such as the ability to decorate, and disable downvotes.

!casualconversation@lemm.ee

Nice! Link updated in the sidebar. How has it affected the Community so far?

You are correct. I was dumb. I've fixed it now! Thanks for letting me know.

Played the OG version with all the DLC and not the Spacer's Choice version, so take my comments with that in mind:

PROS:

• The music was completely appropriate and fit the world. It was nothing I'd listen to independently though.
• It ran very well the entire time I played it. Very little in the way of hitching, and very quick load times.
• Achievements!
• From beginning to end I was having a darn good time. It's a "smooth" game experience that I stayed up way too late a few nights in a row to get through because I couldn't wait to see what came next.
• Many ways to solve issues; you didn't feel forced to end nearly anything in a certain way. The only exception was one main DLC quest I couldn't finish the way I wanted due to the level cap being too low and not having enough points.
• Zero bugs experienced.
• Plenty to explore and loads of side stories to discover. Some stories weren't wonderfully told and were hard to track, but many more than that were awesome.

NEUTRAL:

• It felt like it ended too soon. A game like this with two expansions should have offered more. That's both a good thing and a bad thing in that it didn't overstay its welcome either.

CONS:

• Some of the achievements are deeply annoying to the point that I gave up on completing the set. You'd have to waste dozens of hours to grind all of them and play in some pretty odd ways that wouldn't match normal gameplay.
• There are no romance options for the player, and only thing even remotely like it in game is a gay asexual romance quest for a side character. You get some G-rated come-ons thrown your way, but nothing can come of it. It's extremely puzzling in it's puritanicality in both how the colony operates, and how everything is treated. Not that this has to be a porn game or anything, mind you, but some options to do SOMETHING romance-related (or characters that operate like they have genitals) like Mass Effect or Fallout would be nice. Heck, there aren't even any kids in the world to show that someone had bred ever.
• Some of the environments and buildings are not terribly visibly distinct and it hurt pathfinding. It would tell me to go somewhere specific and I wasn't sure what it was referring to, and this was after playing for hours. This has something to do with the "corporate jargon" style language they use as well. It fits stylistically, but can be confusing.
• The sidekicks stories felt exceptionally rushed and some of the outcomes were a little nonsensical.
• I beat the game and both DLCs close to 100% in under 37 hours.
• The level cap even with the DLCs is set to 36 which I hit about halfway through the game, and I felt like it needed far more. It really made that feeling of progression you love in these games stop dead. There was nothing to find for new item upgrades or interesting loot past that point. This was my largest gripe with the game by far as it disincentivized exploration because there was nothing to gain by doing so at that stage. UPDATE: The new version of the game supposedly upgrades the level cap to something a little less horrible. I wish this were available during my playthrough as the game isn't worth going through a second time. If you're interested, I HIGHLY recommend waiting for the newer edition.

DID YOU FINISH THE GAME?: Yup! And the DLC. Though if you're playing now, just get the new edition since it fixes the XP progression block that I mention above.

CONCLUSION: While it won't stick with me for years, it was great while it lasted and I would 100% play more in the series. If you enjoy story and exploration, play this. The only things stopping it from being Fallout-level good was the awful level cap and the lack of content.