Topic: Other Unpopular Opinions (tech and non-gaming media) v2

I agree @jump, it is weird the same people who have to remind you wrestling "isn't real" when are the ones who watch shows about men dressed up in costumes in front of green screens, where everything is added in post and all the work is done by uncredited stunt men, not even the actors on the billing. Meanwhile wrestlers are doing everything themselves, there is no fixing in post and no special effects to carry them.

I guess it depends on how you define the spectrum I guess. My view for the longest time is that Liberals are so obsessed with political point scoring that they don't really know what they stand for anymore. And in many respects their "Leftness" is the main reason why I'd never vote for them. They don't believe in market forces, they believe in letting dead end ideas limp on. Mostly because their opponents dared to invest in productivity driving infrastructure. And you better believe they will do anything in their power to subsidise the industries they support. You can't really get any more "left" than state owned infrastructure, especially the out-dated and broken kind

The politically and geographically aware will realise I am Australian and the above reads very differently here. Entirely different even. The unaware might be simultaneously unsurprised and entirely incorrect in their assumptions when I say I am also a republican

@skywake You're replying to a more off handed retort to someone who calling me a liberal (oh what a sick burn that was, I'm still in A&E about it) but yeah fair enough left wing parties fighting over how left wing they should be is the cliche.

It's a different to UK politics though, the right wing government have been mucking things up for the last few years so the UK's growth is either in decline of rising at a snails pace compared to other countries largely because their ideology of not investing and throwing out existing international trade agreements in favour of ones they hope to get which hasn't worked out at all.

@jump
You may have missed my joke there. The Liberal Party of Australia is socially and, on paper, economically conservative. I was leaning into the "Liberals" bit by calling them "Left" for their opposition to renewables, subsidies for coal/gas and their blind opposition to investment in things like rail and broadband infrastructure

Then I threw in Republican for good measure. Because here a Republican is someone who wants Australia to become a republic. Which is again a very different crowd using that word than there is in certain other countries

@skywake Clever word play! And now feel I need to brush up on my Aussie politics so it doesn't fly over my head again.

@Pizzamorg I enjoy wrestling as well, though I typically only watch WWE wrestling currently. I will also be watching WrestleMania this weekend.

Actually that is a good shout @Dpullam, and maybe befitting for this thread, but I actually also went down to just following WWE as well, after spending a few years trying to stay on top of AEW, NJPW and the indies, along with WWE.

I actually think WWE wrestling (not just talking about the whole product, the actual wrestling) is the best out there right now. New Japan is too stiff, I think it is pointless to have a wrestling match where you are actually hurting your opponent and I know this is pure old man yelling at clouds thinking but I think AEW is everything all the wrestling old guard criticised indie wrestling for being.

Don't get me wrong, AEW does have story, but I dunno, I just think WWE understands that giving the audience everything all the time actually hurts the overall experience (still talking specifically just of the wrestling style, not the whole product).

AEW has basically no TV matches, everything feels like a big PPV match. That seems great at first, but after a while it became exhausting to me, because every match felt the same. They also really do heavily commit the sin of structuring matches where it is more about dudes hitting big moves, rather than working through sequences that tell a story. I'd rather have just one high spot in a match, you spend the whole match building anticipation for, than seeing someone kip up from an avalanche Canadian destroyer and then take 20 Superkicks to the chin in a row and still kick out at 2. And you could say I am being reductive here and generalising, and who knows what the product is like nowadays, I bounced around mid 2020, but for that first year or so, this is genuinely how most cards were structured.

Not to mention, WWE gives you a few more flavours both within its main shows, but also with its NXT branding which did kinda take a hit when it became 2.0, but since it has rebranded back to the original branding has really been on the rise. With the NXT branding offering a nice middle ground between the WWE style and the indie style, and I think that middle ground is the real sweet spot for me.

@Pizzamorg Very much agreed on your points. Do you prefer NXT 2.0 or the older black and yellow NXT format?

Outside of the wrestling I grew up with as a kid, NXT from like 2014 through 2018 (thought it kinda went downhill a bit around 2019) is some of my favourite wrestling. Thanks to the Network I sometimes just go back and watch stretches from that run of NXT, as the matches and stories still really hold up.

I'm 50/50 on the AEW and WWE debate. I've found myself enjoying the Women's division so much more than the Men's in WWE (but the Men's has gotten alot better since Trips took over) which is the complete opposite in AEW where the Women's division is so poor aside from the odd moment whilst I really enjoy their strong cards every week with the Men. Brian Cage not being pushed is mad though.

Also there is a wrestling thread but it normally turns into people complaining about WWE and AEW is better so I often lose interest in posting in it.

https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/general_discussion/wrestl...

@Pizzamorg Very cool! I always watch either WWE Raw or WWE Smackdown first before watching WWE NXT 2.0 but I do enjoy the different feel it has compared to the main shows. It is nice having so many different options to watch.

Apple is overrated and Steve Jobs stole all the credit from Steve Wozniak.

Steve Wozniak is a legend and should be remembered more than Jobs for what he did.

I'll happily remember Woz for his work on the Apple 1 and 2 computers but the reality is that he didn't do a lot beyond that. Most of the products Apple is renowned for these days had nothing to do with him.

Jobs though... Yeah, he's a guy who didn't really design anything that was successful without a heck of a lot of work from other people to fix his mistakes, but he made a very marketable personality. I can see why a lot of people would think that the devices he presented with such enthusiasm were his own creations though. You just had to scratch a little beneath the surface to see that he was basically just a front man though. On the plus side though, he's at least the guy who gave us Pixar.

@Matt_Barber Jobs was kinda like Walt Disney, worked in the beginning, and took the credit in the end.

That's pretty much the Steve Jobs myth though, or at least the impression I get from talking to Apple fans.

Most of them haven't even heard of Woz, mind you.

On this topic, you may want to give Halt & Catch Fire a watch, it’s a fictionalised winky insider look of the 80s PC boom. It has Mackenzie Davis and Lee Pace who act the fudge out of it.

I really do not like the cartoon community that hangs out on Twitter and YouTube. They always put down animated shows and movies more than actually enjoy them, and they seem to care too much about the reputation of animated shows and movies, rather than enjoy the medium they claim to like.

Not to mention as a Trolls fan, I find the community unwelcoming as Trolls is a "no no" movie to them and I've seen them attack fans just for simply being excited for the upcoming movie.

FWIW, I love animated shows and movies, but I find this community too toxic.

I really do not like the trend of using fictional anime female characters as the VTube characters.
In my opinion, it started to sexualize the female characters.
I never understand that crazy world.

Social media is honestly awful. I had actually put off getting it for so many years, mostly since it disinterested me (also since I saw how people acted on there) and whenever I did, I’d always use the web version of some sites, such as Twitter/X and Instagram logged out. It wasn’t until they changed the web version of Twitter and made it unusable unless you signed up or signed in so I eventually made an Instagram account since I wanted to share art and potentially gain an audience. But, if I am being honest, I regret getting Instagram and deciding to go into the online space there, not because I’ve had any bad interactions with anyone, but just changes made with the apps and the awful attitudes some people have, especially toward some artists.

Every time someone says something that is disheartening and awful, someone in the comment section goes “oh boohoo, womp womp,” or “I don’t care.” No one likes to respect opinions and get easily offended over simple ones that are in no way serious and just get so angry over them, especially over popular individuals and media. You could say something like “I don’t like [insert famous singer’s name] music, it isn’t my taste” and then some random person will get so offended over it and will then find and put your personal info online for everyone to see, just over some opinion that isn’t serious. If you like a piece of media a lot of people dislike, then they get angry. If you dislike a piece of media a lot of people like, they get angry. Sometimes it seems very one-sided, and on Twitter almost no opinion is accepted at all.

To add, regarding artists, a lot of people on Twitter really love to treat them like garbage and try to start controversies over small things in artworks and throw around such awful accusations toward them and accuse them of being awful people, or just incite arguments and act hostile toward them for no reason. So many people on Instagram just loveeee to randomly accuse great artists of using AI and demanding they show proof, and whenever they get proof of an artwork not being AI-generated, they still don’t think it’s enough for some silly reason. I cannot tell you the exact amount of reels I saw where artist’s show messages they got that accused them of using AI and having no choice but to post speedpaints to fight the “allegations.” It’s super sad to see people mindlessly accuse talented artists of doing that.

I also think that social media can damage self-esteem and social comparison, which Instagram definitely makes me feel a ton. I apologize if I come off as whiny or seeming like “oh woe is me,” but seeing a lot of artists on Instagram post so fast and gain audiences in only the span of a few days discouraged me a lot, and I started to compare myself to them and even got envious of how much people they attracted to their accounts and how much praise they got and how my followers were either my family members, a few acquaintances or random people that followed me but never interacted, liked, or commented on my posts. It started a few unhealthy habits, like I tried to push myself to always draw daily late at night until early in the morning just to post daily artworks in order to get likes that ultimately don’t matter and are insignificant to my growth. Instagram seems to favor more low-quality posts than ones with effort put into them, which just makes the space even more discouraging, especially if you are new, plus they are trying to train AI by taking artist’s artwork and feeding them to the intelligence, so that also doesn’t help either.

Because of how bad social media is, I honestly prefer sites like NL and its sister sites like PX. Although they act more as news sites and aren’t social media by any means, I think it’s better for me to interact with others (plus I made a few friends on here as well) and a better place to post art, since there is an artists thread on here where I don’t have to worry about getting likes or comments or needing to stay relevant, which decreases my quest for seeking validation. I also think the sites being more moderated and having smaller userbases helps too, since it makes it easier to take care of bad behaviors that millions of people on social media exhibit. I love going on these sites and talking with people, plus it’s easier to find people that have the same interests as me. NL makes me very happy compared to social media sites.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Had a lot on my mind.

I only use social media comments to talk about sports, some of the good ones go semi-viral if I'm sane enough writing them. Sports is the topic I have the mosy die-on-hill opinions on, and nobody gets hurt during any reasonable, well-intended sports talk.