Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

I see it as a much-needed escape that TV shows and video games are already providing me with. Anything to distract me from the noises of real life. If I couldn't make it in the world as a person in terms of relationships and my career, I see no reason why I have any stakes in staying in the real world at all.

@Sunsy

@Fizza I'll definitely try to let ya know in advance so we can get to racing! Thank you so much, appreciate the kind words and the greeting. Glad you're enjoying ma stuff!

@MarioLover92 BAH. Yea, that Ever Elusive Sundae..OH how you escape us so! Thanks dudes for the best wishes and support

@Tyranexx Yea, defo never a bad time with pinball. Ahh really? I quite like them, I never got to play too many of em, but when I do play em they're great! Sin & Punishment Star Successor on the Wii is a really fun and unique one. Naw, no worries.. glad ya had a good time, and damn what a score!

@Sunsy Ahh for sure.. I heard Kung Fu Panda was pretty cool. I haven't really been watching too much of anything lately. Thing's are getting quite busy but that's a great thing sometimes. Awesome, I'll let ya know when we go for a race again!

You speak my language so much. lol Anxiety does debilitate me to the point where I just don't feel comfortable interacting with real people anymore. I haven't gone down to my local food courts to buy takeouts as often anymore, resorting to home deliveries from McDonald's instead. We have this app in Singapore called "Grab" that's like Uber, and it lets you hitchhike or order delivery services from restaurants and supermarkets (freelancers who work for Grab can then accept these requests on the app and make the delivery). Grab basically means I don't even need to leave my home to eat or go shopping anymore. I could just press a button and food comes to me. And if Grab doesn't have it, there's Amazon and eBay, all delivered to your doorstep by your friendly and hardworking neighborhood postal workers.

I do think that as technology advances, it has spoiled me to the point where I could just abandon "real" human interaction and it wouldn't cost me much. lol It is what it is though, a reality of how our world is like today, and no amount of protest from me would change that reality, so I might as well accept it and enjoy the technology.

And to be honest, is virtual interaction really that bad anyway? We're still communicating and interacting with one another, you and I, just in a more digital form. I feel like the argument to abolish digital interaction more often stems from technophobia than anything else. Yes, it's easy to encounter trolls on the Internet, but hello? Far worse crimes happen in real life, crimes where you lose more than just your dignity. If anything, going virtual completely would mean we would be sealed off from murder entirely, safe in our home. But that's why enforced rules are important online, whether it's in forums or other social media platform, just like how there's law and order offline.

@Maxenmus I feel the same way.

I mean, that might be easier if you're living in a big country like America with lots of opportunities for meeting people with diverse interests, but Singapore is a small country, which is why the Internet is such a useful tool for me to connect with people.

@Maxenmus
I’m not scared of the meta verse, I just kinda don’t get why it exists.

I know, right? It's like, let me live my life and you live yours.

I found it funny that whenever some big event happens, a lot of people would go, "But what does this celebrity think about it?" Ricky Gervais, a rather well-known celebrity himself, called out on this and said, "Who cares what I have to say about some world event?" It's like, come on.

People acting all shocked that Will Smith slapped a guy, as if he's the first person in the entire history of Earth to have slapped someone else on stage.

Because money. lol It's always been about money.

But in spite of Mark Zuckerberg's greed, if his greed leads to technology progressing, if it leads to me living a virtual life separated from my empty and hollow offline life, then I can't complain.

@Maxenmus @blindsquarel @NeonPizza It feels like the more technology advances the more all humans are eventually going to recede back into their homes and live life from their bedroom, like 2020 but permanently.

In a way it's really sad because the world little by little is ruining itself, so you'd think humans would want to get out there while they can. Instead generally speaking we're sitting here waiting to die, in a cynical elementary sense. Not everyone lives in that kind of environment though. I don't, every summer from April to September it's 45 (110) degrees in the day and 35 (96) degrees at night. Going outside for a fifteen minute walk at 6am gives me the same exhaustion as swimming for an hour for that reason.

At the same time the way our culture is developing, we're inventing new social norms as fronts to defend the indefensible. This for me is even more dangerous than technology. Writers back in the 60s told stories about AI and how it could rise up and enslave us. But the reality is that we humans are doing that ourselves. We're bringing our own ruin.

Cancel culture's one part; silencing voices that are against the mainstream, even if they're reasonable. Debates online end with petty remarks and get personal quickly. Accusations of prejudice are the first resort when disagreements happen both online and in real life. Watching some of it makes me want to rip my hair out because it's downright sickening. And when it comes to writing, movies and video games, risk-taking is almost nonexistent. It's become so corporate; it needs to tick a box, it needs to have everyone from every demographic, it needs to happen this way.

But we're here having a good time. So sometimes it's not bad to look away.

Well, it's like you said, not everyone lives in that kind of environment. You have your circumstances why you prefer going outside, I have mine. Fair's fair. People have their reasons to be extroverts or introverts.

And really, those of us who do defend such lifestyles (or "defending the indefensible" as you put it) on a gaming forum on the Internet aren't usually in power to make the kind of improvements you're expecting people to make to prevent such "ruination to the world." We're not politicians or businessmen. I'd imagine those people wouldn't have as much time as us to spend on the Internet. Let us have our fun of griping about our pitiful little lives that we're frustrated by on an Internet forum. I say, let us have our escapism as we wait to die. Because the only other solution is therapy and medication, the former of which I'm already paying for as a treatment recently, and that's clearly working wonders for me. lol But no, I think that in the meantime while we're trying to put our lives together and fixing our little anxieties and OCDs, popping pills and whatnot, escapism is a tool that has its uses, to get away from the BS of real life temporarily before we're forced to confront it later on.

See, I'd normally agree with you on this point. I do agree that is the kind of culture and climate we're living with nowadays, the tendency to cancel someone out if you say something others find offensive. But I think that when it comes to conversations on the Internet, it's kinda a grey area, a fine line between being "reasonable" and being a jerk about it. You're allowed to take risks and whatnot with your opinions, and I'd back you up 100% of the time... unless an individual is attacked, patronized, judged, despite not having done anything to harm you. I think that attacking faceless corporations is fine. I think that calling out on immoral behavior is fine. But I draw the line at criticizing an individual for something they might not have control over, especially if it's related to mental health or even self-esteem issues, and especially if their mistakes weren't intentional. It just leaves a bad taste for me to see people online going after insecure people. These people need help, not your "reasonable judgment."

I do agree on corporations taking less risks though. I watched a video earlier talking about how Disney wanted to please shareholders (specifically, BlackRock) and even certain other countries, so we get a business practice of "ticking boxes" to please those demands. To be fair, companies pleasing their shareholders and playing it safe isn't exactly new. It's always been how businesses have to be ran, watching what you sell, what your employees say, what your brand projects, etc. It's just that such practices are more exposed to us nowadays because of a little invention called the "Internet." You could literally Google up everyone's buried skeletons these days. And Disney/Marvel, being this gigantic billion dollar corporation, naturally wants to have "everyone from every demographic" in their viewership to make the most money possible. That's what Disney has been like ever since businessmen like Michael Eisner and Bob Iger took the reigns of the company over from Walt and Roy Disney. That's why I'm disillusioned by Disney and the "innocence and magic" they marketed to impressionable young children, and I no longer feel comfortable paying for their films.

My, have times and the music space changed.

@Kermit1 That opening, I was listening to We Need A Little Christmas a few weeks ago, Johnny Mathis version. Great version of the song.

@tekoii Kung Fu Panda is a good trilogy, with a fourth movie along the way. Future's looking fun being someone who likes Trolls and Kung Fu Panda as both are getting sequels. Indeed. Was a great time racing that night.

Maybe I should just shut up about unpopular opinions from now on. You make a post responding to other people's posts and having a nice chat with those people, and everyone else uninvolved in the chat calls you out for having a nice time talking to others.

What an emotionally exhausting day it has been. I'm getting real tired of dealing with this drama.

@Maxenmus what are your favorite games? To put things on a lighter note.

@Kermit1 The Mass Effect trilogy. I liked the journey, and the way I could subtly affect the way the story goes. It was probably the ME games that made me addicted to games where player choices matter, where your decisions could affect the story, like Detroit: Become Human. I'm a big fan of storytelling, so the fact that I could decide how I want a story to go feels exhilarating. Plus, I like how they feel like personality tests, reflecting your principles in your choices.

Nowadays though, I'm more into SMT games, but I'm really not enjoying Soul Hackers at all, the first one. Can't wait to finish it so I could move on to Devil Survivor: Overclocked.

I'm tears right now. thinking of this image and the idea of self bidet.

@Maxenmus It's fine to have unpopular opinions, usually I state what I'm about to say is an unpopular opinion to be clear on it. Also, the point of the unpopular gaming opinions thread is to be able to say those gaming opinions without worry.

Went up to go do an elliptical workout and three hours later I woke up on a beanbag with no workout taking place. Not sure how that one happened. Don’t even remember getting on the beanbag.

@blindsquarel what breed of squirrel are you?

Just got Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks from the Wii U eShop! I never played the DS Zelda games before so they'll be brand new to me. I just started playing PH recently.

@Sunsy Oh that's awesome to see that a lot of people were there. Nice, when I see that Mario movie, I'd want to wear the one that has the group artwork of Mario, Luigi, Peach, and many others (it's a lot like one of the Club Nintendo Mario posters). I do love more characters than just Mario, after all.

Yep, Puyo Puyo's indeed pretty challenging. I am pretty good at Tetris, and decent at Panel de Pon, at least.

@tekoii Yeah no problem! I do want to spend more time at Piskel too, I think I have the potential to be a decent pixel artist.