MudMan

That's exactly what I was saying. Which is not the same as what you've been implying I was saying but is the same as what I was saying I was saying earlier.

Hopefully that clarifies it.

He then ran down a string of recent hits developed by independent devs and studios: Balatro, Baldur's Gate 3, Helldivers 2, Clair Obscur—even the venerable Minecraft, an archetypal indie superhit before Mojang was sold into the Microsoft stable.

I mean, by that definition he's not wrong.

It's just that the way that works is indie devs become big enough to either become whatever the hell triple A means or get bought by whatever the hell triple A is.

Magicka was an indie game, I really struggle to fit Helldivers 2, a Sony-published sequel to a Sony-published game, into that same bucket. Ditto for Larian. Divinity OS? Sure. Hasbro-backed multi-studio Baldur's Gate 3 with its hundreds of millions of budget? Myeaaaaah, I don't know.

I think the real question is how you keep the principles that make indie games interesting in play when the big money comes in. I'm all for an indie-driven industry, but I'm a touch more queasy about a world in which major publishers use tiny devs as a million monkeys with typewriters taking on all the risk and step in at the very end (sometimes post-release) to scoop up the few moneymakers.

You are confused. In theory, for the purposes of this conversation in the way it's being carried out.

The key to your confusion would be apparently lacking an understanding of the word "but" and how it works in a sentence, though, which may be a bridge too far.

No, we are not talking about them. I said "they think it's normal, but it's not normal". That's not what you say it is.

See? Now the fact that you're misrepresenting the conversation for trolling purposes becomes a problem, because we have to talk about what I was actually saying, so the whole thing falls apart.

But I didn't ask if you would say it's "their normal". I asked if you would say it's "normal". Not qualifiers, no possessives. Also, I wasn't talking about how women being socially expected to alter their identity based on having sex with a man as a habit "consider it normal", I was talking about how I don't consider it normal.

So that's kind of a lot of sneaky adjustments you made there. Wanna try that again?

In that context it's the speaker who has an expectation for what is normal for that office. The office normal and the speaker normal are the same.

There is nothing in the definition that demands normalcy to be defined by the object.

If every language on the planet put the verb at the end of a sentence and only one language set the verb in the middle of the sentence would you say it is incorrect to say speakers of that language are doing things the normal way or would you get nitpicky about it and say that's inaccurate?

Which, again, not the point, you get what I was saying, you're mostly trolling. I get it, you get it, we established this at the go. We're just trolling around the relative inaccuracy of the trolling here.

Not by your definition. By your definition it's "what's expected or usual", it doesn't say anything about who decides what is expected or usual.

That can't possibly be a real sign.

And if it is, it can't possibly have worked.

But you've never explained why that is. You just... kinda like it that way. Their normal takes precedence (it didn't for a bit, but I called you out on it and now it does again) only because you say so. No definition you put forward included whose normal goes first when two normals happen at once.

To be clear, normal doesn't work like that, it's not what I meant and you fully understand this. But if we play by your definition, nothing in your definition decides which normal is the more normal. I say my normal goes because I'm the speaker and my set of expectations define normalcy in my speech. You have provided no argument against this.

We won't indeed. And that's why the neoliberal fantasy where the market self-regulates is bullshit.

We won't because our set of incentives isn't infinitely fluid to the point where every negative, hostile or illegitimate action is unprofitable. And we shouldn't have to, because there already is a mechanism to account for that fact, and it's the law.

We're not meant to judge our spending money in fungible commodities and entertainment based on political stances and larger considerations about long term convenience. We're not meant to weigh whether Nintendo has a right to disable our device remotely as part of the choice to play a cute racing game.

That's not the sphere where those choices belong. We've been told it is by neoliberal capitalists who don't want a government to tell them what they can and cannot do, so they keep insisting that they can be as crappy as they want because if they do something the public won't like they will "vote with their wallet" and the market will settle in the optimal spot of profit vs service. And if it doesn't a competitor will give people what they want and they'll buy that instead.

But that's a lie. It never worked that way, and it doesn't work anywhere close to that way in a global online oligarchy. You're meant to be able to buy whatever the hell you fancy because there is supposed to be a state regulating things to be safe, fair and protected when you engage in small commercial exchanges.

Because you need Office, Microsoft doesn't get to be the Antichrist. Because Netflix has the show everybody wants to watch it doesn't get to be the worst. The idea is those companies are supposed to be held to the level of being-the-worst-Antichrist we all deem minimally acceptable. Market forces can play within that space, and no further.

So you want Netlfix to not be the worst? Get a legislator to enforce it and watch Stranger Things to your heart's content. Because whether you like Stranger Things isn't supposed to be connected in any way to how Netflix conducts its business or how abusive it can be in the process of doing so.

No, you've said many times that it being relative means the bar for normalcy that takes precedence is theirs and not mine. Which doesn't follow from your premise. And whenever I tell you that you just repeat the wonky premise.

Alright, that's harsh, you just quietly backed away some by moving from "it's normal for them so it's normal" to "it's normal for them but not to you", which is not the same thing you were saying before. I guess I'll take the small compromises in a conversation we both knew was a waste of time from the first post.

To be clear, I agree that you don't have to be into politics. Not caring enough is fine. Social media expressions of opinion are always black and white. AI is the end of the world, Nintendo's piracy stance is a war crime, Windows is the antichrist... You're allowed to be bummed out by any of those and not do anything about it because you're not bummed out enough. That's a refreshing degree of online moderation, if anything.

What I take issue with is confusing those sorts of market results with actual political action. A brand can decide something unpopular isn't worth pursuing for PR reasons, but they can also decide it IS worth it. To my knowledge the people I shared Netflix accounts with that were impacted by the location checks are still impacted by those. Your EA and Uber examples were barely impactful at all until regulators got into the mix, and regulators got into the mix hard about those issues. I invite you to go look up how both of them played out, because, man, is there a difference between how fast the companies reacted once there was someone in a public position going "hey, maybe we need to take a look at this".

Mistaking how a brand manages its public perception for effective political actions is dangerous. Letting corporations appease you through those means only serves to set up a bad precedent when those brands decide the time has come to squeeze and go hard on monetization. You need public institutions that are strong and vigilant enough to put some bite behind that public displeasure.

Can a boycott work? Sure. As a coordinated political action, the consumer-side equivalent of a strike. This takes just as much work and coordination as any other political activity.

But spending your money based on the outrage that reaches you through social media is not a functional way to generate change. It's just you being part of the mass of consumers brand manage with their messaging tools. You're a rounding error in a stat, part of the manipulation of the market that is built into every corporate action. When you do that you're a focus group data point, not a political actor.