Insanely true, I didn’t give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.
Also: ew, Apple.
Edit: Really annoyed it doesn’t have a headphone jack though
It’s pretty modern if you mean popular, although the idea itself is REALLY old.
Rather than going into specific examples because there are a lot of them (especially in gaming and TV), I’d like to say my piece on cliches.
Basically, cliches come to exist because the cliche trope is a really good idea.
“The Butler did it” as a murder mystery trope is a fantastic idea because some people with too much money will use the protection money affords them to mistreat their employees, providing a great motive you can build on to create a great story with relatable morals and characters. It sets up a character with perfect motives, means and a reasonable position of trust to avoid suspicion.
Similarly, “Hell good, Heaven bad” is a fantastic trope because it lets you step back and analyse things like the negative impacts of religion and how authorities (and the bible) will portray themselves as good regardless of their actual actions. Plus of course there were periods of time where people were told doing virtually anything that didn’t fit into an extremely narrow worldview meant you were going to hell. You know, stuff like basketball and Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, the problem with cliches is when someone sees a popular idea that’s also a very good idea, but doesn’t understand why it was a good idea. As a result, when they use the idea, it rings hollow at absolute best, and that kind of terrible execution of something that’s already known and popular tends to be especially disappointing. I think the best example is The Hunger Games, which absolutely defined young adult dystopian fiction for years because it showed how the media industry mistreats its workers, and Alleigant, which used a lot of ideas from Hunger Games (and some other things) without actually understanding the ideas.
(TLDR: Hunger Games has a love triangle as a prominent plot element, but the actual reason is that it’s perpetuated by the media pretty much on pain of death for Katniss so that she can entertain the viewers. By contrast, Alleigant also has a love triangle but the triangle IS the plot element and the author bends over backwards to make it happen despite the fact none of the characters really feel like they’re suitable for it)
Anyways, cliches aren’t bad but you need to know how, why, and when to use them in order to actually fulfil their potential, and the heaven-hell one you’ve mentioned above is no exception.
I know it got quashed; I’m not saying there was a revolution. “Free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times” was the anti-oppression slogan said by the victor of a heartstone tournament (which there was no rule or stipulation against), which caused Blizzard to ban the player from all tournaments, and refuse to pay him the prize money he’d won in an attempt to suck up to the chinese government.
To clarify: I don’t expect a gaming company to stand up to a full blown authoritarian regime. But I certainly won’t support a company that willingly goes the extra mile to sell out to them.
Used to, but I’m a little past the age.
It’s over bro, the developers who made the game you love are long, long gone. That isn’t your company, it’s a corporation wearing that company’s bloody torn-off face as a mask
Source: Former Blizzard fan (Free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times)
Yeah, makes sense. They’re an online community that is famously the gateway drug for rightwing hate groups before they move onto harder stuff. “Execute the furries” into “gays are bad” is basically a core part of the rightwinger life cycle
…Sir, this is the Onion. You’re not meant to report facts.
I mean yeah, we WERE founded because we didn’t want to support shitty business practices from Reddit but we wanted a good Reddit substitute
But we get good posts that aren’t Reddit drama too
Lol yep. Literally Amazon 101, there’s a very good reason you shouldn’t buy from them unless you HAVE to.
Lies, there’s no knot in this list
Alright, that one was pretty clever lmao
Honestly, a profoundly weird experience that I had recently… was playing Dragonstrike (released in 1992 I think?) for DOS, for the first time.
Objectively this game is the very definition of ‘limited by the technology of its time’. It’s a flight sim made before a mouse was a standard computer accessory. I think the biggest in-game sprites are maybe 50 by 50 pixels. It’s outstandingly difficult to play.
And yet… compared to modern games, when I’m playing this, it really just hits me over and over again how they made every single decision correctly. The game has an excellent premise. The storytelling may be simple but it’s good. The core gameplay loop is fun, and your kit feels like it’s complete and well-made, and there’s no stupid gacha mechanics or grinding or oversexualized poster girl or daily quests to try and force you to play X amount of hours. It’s just for fun. And it IS fun, despite the most unbelievably dated graphics I’ve ever seen. If this game was made just a few years later, it would’ve been outstanding.
Shoutout to Deviantart, they a real one
The adult version of this is crafting your own DnD world, and personally I spend a lot of time considering how to craft the perfect little scaly friend to inhabit it
Nobody’s ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I’m honest