Think there's something to this, since the Saudi ownership didn't drastically affect the actual content of SNK's games until COTW and that was when people started complaining a lot more

you know i'm in there but i def get what you mean

Hell, Japan was founded in a very similar way to the US but you hardly ever see that brought up since most of the internet is obsessed with its pop-cultural exports

And i'm the guy whose all-time favorite fighting games are Real Bout 2 and World Heroes Perfect - i'm in the same boat as many here! Still not a tough choice for me at all

SNK dying would be good, that's the point

Hell, i want all of esports to die if this is the only future it can have!

An interesting case i saw recently was Kinkymation, who's growing more popular as a PNGtuber. She mentioned that her Youtube videos would get way less views when she put "VTUBER" in the title and more views when she used "ARTIST REVIEWS x" titles instead

This feels to me like the trend we've seen a bunch in gaming, where something gets hot as a genre then becomes absorbed into the whole rest of the medium so the original genre ends up more niche

Think Japanese-style RPGs and how western AAA games took a bunch of their mechanics

re: Jordan, there's a related theory that his first "retirement" was actually a secret suspension for said gambling!

The NBA's gotta have the most conspiracy theories of any sports league, huh

At least the "Magic took a gazillion dollars from AIDS activists to fake having HIV" one aged out of believability

Yep, just ask anyone who's monitored Kiwifarms - they go after each other all the time when their personal lolcows run out of milk!

Trump absolutely has charisma - it's just extreme love-or-hate charisma. Bush was lucky to go up against two wooden Dem candidates or else i think he wouldn't have made it either

Allegedly this is because he was selling cocaine to a bunch of the Beltway media guys when he was working as a bartender in DC

Would certainly explain why Pod Save America loves him so much...

i mean, Hungary just gave a strong example of why elections should be held on weekends! The US has so many more accessibility issues than other democracies it's absurd - at the very least, have voter registration at gas stations or something. Shouting "skill issue" at that is short-sighted imo

Eh, this is a bit of a lazy narrative when it's obvious Biden only won because of how badly Trump screwed up COVID. Misogyny is absolutely a problem, but electorally their problem is more that nobody since Obama has had the charisma

(This is where i'd think AOC has more of a chance)

A common sentiment among the consultant class is that it's not worth trying to engage nonvoters, FYI. This in spite of the fact that Clinton/Obama/Trump all won in good part by doing exactly that!

What they really mean is "we don't want to change our established identity to engage nonvoters"

Mentioned this in another reply but the "very little campaigning" has been an issue for decades - it's why over 80% of Muslims voted for Bush in 2000, for example

People increasingly do not believe America are the good guys anymore and nobody in power has a plan to make people believe that again, that was the problem there

*Knox County d'oh

There's a parallel to be drawn between that and Bill Clinton's "all of Gaza belongs to Israel, it's your own damn fault you're getting bombed, now shut the fuck up and vote for us" speech in Michigan

IIRC George W. Bush won between 80-90% of the Muslim vote in 2000

What i heard from people who were there is that a lot of them appreciated Bush actually campaigning in their communities and talking to them, in places where Gore never set foot at all

For the leftists i have seen supporting this guy, it mainly seems to come down to viewing the Schumer wing of the party as a greater existential threat to the country than dudes who like Nazi shit

i'd argue this overlooks how said Nazi shit is a sign he'll be on the Schumer wing's side quite a bit!

If there's any meat to the cocaine rumors the GOP will absolutely tear him apart in the general (and probably even if more evidence DOESN'T come out on that)

From my vantage point, the online liberals & leftists both largely can't stand the guy (and accuse the other side of propping him up) and his actual base is the aforementioned Beltway media class + low-info voters who just hate Mills

tbf he's also been constantly promoted by Pod Save America and they're normally very "establishment Dem" types

Rumor is when he worked as a bartender in DC he sold cocaine to a bunch of the media types there and that's why they like him

more or less

Kane in particular has been a racist libertarian forever, he's even mayor of Knok County in Tennessee

Reminder that Star Trek was the only show Martin Luther King would let his kids watch

Khan's got quite the celebrity clientele - besides the folks mentioned above, we know Justin Baldoni & Kim Kardashian have also gone to him.

Guess stem cells & peptides are the new trendy pseudoscience in that world huh

For those who don't know, Scott Carney on Youtube has been doing an expose series on this "regenerative stem cell" doctor in Mexico named Adeel Khan. Peterson & ~wellness influencer~ Mark Hyman both got sepsis after receiving treatment from this guy

Mikhaila threatened to sue Carney, natch

i think ever since bsky added the AI stuff and the staff started openly talking about everyone using claude, that wing of the site has been more aggressively trying to claim the whole thing for itself

they know here and reddit are the only public spaces they have left

Hell yeah, as someone who's been doing it for a while now it's made a such a huge difference in my life. You've got this!