Reflecting on the state of the country/world, the transition to the 7th party system, and whether we just lost for a generation

 So...with the second inauguration of donald trump, the country is not in a good state. I've been reflecting on it and I'm kind of realizing how screwed we might be. 

First, there's Donald Trump himself. I'm not kidding when I say he's American Hitler at this point. He really is, and he's already trying to break every check and balance in his way. He's trying to do what only the constitution can do via executive order, and while so far the checks and balances seem to be holding, uh...given both congress and the courts are controlled by republicans, we are on thin ice.

The democrats, well, they're nowhere to be found. We should be breaking out the mitch mcconnell playbook, but they seem to be rolling over for trump, doing things like doing a press conference like a week after we pardoned the January 6thers. Pathetic. As Kyle Kulinski has been stating on his channel, it looks like they're rolling over, acting like we're now in the "trump era" the way we were in the FDR and Reagan era. THAT is a VERY bad sign. When the opposition decides to align themselves with the opposition and stops fighting, that is often the realignment being sealed. The GOP won. We lost. And the democrats just seem to be surrendering. This is now the Trump era.

But beyond that, there's yet ANOTHER problem that we havent been touching on. And that is who is pulling the strings behind Trump. It was pretty noticeable that those in the front row of Trump's inauguration were actually...the robber barons. All the biggest billionaires. I've heard it said that this weird plan to invade Greenland might be being pushed by billionaire Peter Thiel. Heck, most of Trump's agenda is directly being guided by billionaires. The austerity, the tax breaks, all of it are just to enrich some oligarchic robber barons.

You know, I've been working on a book expanding my political philosophy. This isn't really any surprise, and when I really lay out the argument, it seems clear that the core way the world is as it is is because of the will of the ultra elites. We work our lives away because the rich want us to. They dont want us to wake up and realize that they're the ones making our lives miserable. They want us to be good little wage slaves. When I first approached the topic, I thought it was just christianity. And I have no doubt, it is, but the wealthy have always been the one pulling the strings, and they're the ones who impose this right wing hellscape onto us. 

I've read articles sent to me by friends in which the wealthy appear to believe they are untouchable. That they mock us behind closed doors. Because they're part of the elites and we're not. They look down their noses at everyone else and laugh at us for not being them. They know that climate change is screwing the planet, and they dont care. Enjoy society while it lasts, it doesn't matter what comes after, they'll be dead. 

I've seen a video today about how the biggest corporations have more wealth, and functionally more power, than most nation states. We are literally in a world run by this ultra rich who dont give a crap about any of us, and who basically enslave us for profit, and trash our planet, while they fricking control the world. It is no secret by this point that US foreign policy has done the will of these corporations for decades, and will actively intervene in and overthrow any government that steps out of line. 

Like, corporations are the fourth branch of government, and they have no checks and balances. If anything, in the US we just gave them all the power with citizen's united. Unlimited campaign contributions, and within 6 years, our political system was broken, if it was ever not broken. Since 2016, we've had the republicans controlled by donald trump, and the billionaires clearly control trump and are ramming through radical right wing agendas whether we want it or not. The democrats? Dependent on campaign contributions, and been running to the right ever since trying to appease this billionaire class. Like, really, them rolling over and being so useless isn't a mistake. It's literally weaponized incompetence, or controlled opposition. 

Our democracy is a farce. It's been corrupted by big money. We basically live in the billionaires' world now, and the mask is basically slipping off. I mean, in all fairness, some would say this has always been what capitalism is in the west. Even FDR compromised with this wealthy establishment class. And now they're rolling everything back, and we find ourselves in this new gilded age, where the billionaires run everything and F all of us. We are their slaves. They are ruining the planet, and our lives for profit, and laughing the whole time. 

Everything feels so hopeless. It's like 2024 was this I HAVE BEEN IMPRISONED FOR A THOUSAND YEARS AND I AM FREE energy. And it's not just the robber barons. It's also THE FRICKING NAZIS. Like what the ####, America?! Like, in retrospect, we had this latent nazsm here the whole time. Ya know, the south, the confederates. I was thinking of that one guy whose videos I watched 10 years ago who used to sound so progressive and how somewhere he just went full rightoid. I read the article i wrote about him recently and how he was a progressive because of so called "civic nationalism." I also hear the trumpers say we need this "civic nationalism" myself. And let's call it what it is, nazism. This weird nationalist thing where we all serve the fatherland or whatever. Like what the hell people. Didn't you learn history growing up? Don't answer that, if you're from the south, of course you didn't. You did NOT learn the same history we yankees did. But yeah. We got people fricking doing seig heils OPENLY NOW. And speaking of that, Elon Musk did the same trajectory as that guy. 

There was a time when Elon Musk was just a goofy tech nerd and I actually kinda respected him. 10 years ago, he was talking about robots automatic the jobs and UBI. Now he's doing fricking seig heils and it's coming out that he may have held these beliefs all along. Holy crap, this modern political environment is wild. 

I really hope that this isn't the realignment itself. If it is, we are ####ed. I really hope this is just some weird end of the previous alignment thing where in the next election cycle or two, something snaps and the people push HARD in the other direction. Again, if not, we're screwed. Idk how else to say it. We are SCREWED. 

I hate to be a bummer. When I left christianity, despite realizing how messed up the world was, I had faith that if only we left religion, came together, and realized what mess we were in, we could improve things. At one point of time, I really thought the biggest problem with this country was actually ignorance. It still is, in a sense. But it's becoming increasingly apparent that no, the world is the way it is because powerful forces want it to be the way it is, and we're powerless to stop it. So, for people like me, it's just...the mask is off, I realize how screwed we are, and we really can't do anything about it. This sucks. I wish I could be more optimistic than this. But really, this SUCKS. 

And before any leftist thinks Im radicalizing, um, you do realize i can understand how bad things are, without advocating for your solutions, right? Socialism isn't gonna solve crap. And anywhere it's been tried, it just makes the situation worse. So no, communism isn't the answer. We just need like, our institutions to actually be democratic. Our economy to actually respect freedom. The fact is, the theory behind our institutions are noble, and are worth having. It's just that they've been massively corrupted by several key design flaws. We dont need literal communism to fix that.

Just throwing that out there since leftists think the second you realize the above about the world, that you're magically gonna become one of them. No, I'm not. My views are my views, I'm just kinda realizing how bad things are getting with the direction we're going in. 

Bad things should be bad, and we should reject them. Good things should be accepted. How screwed are we that it's like everything that is evil, we are embracing as a society? What the ####, people...

Once again disagreeing with Kyle on the subject of work

 So Kyle had a video yesterday in which he was talking about how it's bad that these tech oligarchs want to take away all of the jobs and they dont want to pay employees anything, and uh, I just wanna go into this a bit.

Dude. I've been doing my own studies into the history of capitalism, how it works, and the whole reason we linked property to work and forced them to take on jobs from the glorious "job creators" in the first place is basically to enslave them. This worldview came from christianity, where it was screwed up enough, but then it was adopted by the oligarchs to functionally create a slave class in which we forcefully try to make everyone take on jobs that serve them and make them money.

They NEVER wanted to pay us. The whole reason capitalism sucks is because they will literally make us do the most work and use us like dispensible cogs in a machine for the least amount of money possible. That's literally what our system is set up to do. And now we fear transitioning to a world where they dont need us any more and we can use robots to do the work instead because then they won't pay us? Dude. That's when we develop a new system of property rights and distribution to ensure that everyone can be fed, and we do it WITHOUT work.

Either way, I dont think work is disappearing any time soon. We act like omg the robots are taking our jobs, we need a basic income. But if robots took all of the jobs and there was NO work and we ONLY gave people like a $16000 a year UBI or something, that would be a pathetically low amount. No, by then, we should be redistributing resources even more widely to ensure that every individual can live a dignified middle class life without working. Where every family ends up with some variation of the highest sustainable median income possible under capitalism. The UBI should probably be DOUBLE what I propose in that situation. It would literally NEED to be double to hit around $70k for your typical 2 adult 1 child household (my 2025 plan doubled would give such a household $75k). But yeah, if we literally find ourselves in a world without work, that's what we would have to do to keep America going. Everyone would make the same amount, minus the ones who own the means of production, who would get profits, and even then, without any labor to justify ownership at all, we could probably start talking some form of socialism or something by then. 

I don't think we're gonna reach anything close to such a reality any time soon. And if anything one of the reasons we keep the farce that is work going is to prevent having these kinds of discussion. We insist on work forever, so we can have capitalism forever, so that we dont have these discussions. And even if we did wanna do away with work, like I do, we're likely gonna be in something resembling some form of transition phase for the next one hundred years, in which my ideas are perfectly suitable. After that, we can likely decide. Do we wanna do away with work altogether and transition to socialism? Do we wanna keep working and growing? How much do we wanna work? Etc. Those questions aren't in the purview of my ideology. I'm just interested in getting the transition going, and recognize that in the mean time, we will never likely actually run out of work. Most people want to work, they wanna consume, they wont be satisfied sitting around with the bare minimum, so it's up to them. 

Either way, we shouldnt fear automation. What I fear is actually the opposite. Jobs forever and eschewing all further progress on the issue because we fear we might change our institutions if we do. We are functionally slaves in this society we have, where everything revolves around work and work ethic. Our entire lives revolve around work, and it often isn't a choice for most. It's do it or you starve. We shouldnt want more of THAT. So yeah, let them automate the jobs and implement UBI. Revisit the issue in like 100 years and see if society needs further progress (which it probanly will, in one way or another). 

100 years ago, the issues of the time were just making work tolerable. 40 hour work weeks, labor rights, etc. Now, it's reducing that work week, and giving people their freedom through a UBI as far as Im concerned. That is the issue that should define our times, not whatever the heck we're doing. So yeah. Hard disagree with kyle on this issue. I just have to say it.

What our real message should be on social issues

 So...someone asked online just after I posted that last article, that how can we convince Americans to shift the argument away from red vs blue and culture war issues, to being about class. You do it by just doing it. As I said, the democrats used wokeness in order to divide the democratic party in order to promote their band of economic centrism. Their goal is to keep us so entrenched and embroiled in a culture war with each other, that we stop focusing on the real issues which are the economic ones, particularly those of the wealthy employer class vs the not wealthy working class.

One part of this message stood out, they said, that we need to convince right wingers that trans people and immigrants arent the problem with their lives, billionaires are. And yes, that's the message that we need to convey. And this is what I wanna say to the right. Look, immigrants and trans people, what have you, they're not the problem with America. They're just people who wanna live their lives for the most part. They want their rights, we should give them their rights. And yeah, mind your own business. 

Really, why the excessive focus on social issues in the first place? As a right winger, what do you get out of trans healthcare being banned or immigrants being deported? If anything, deporting all of the migrants is gonna cause inflation in grocery prices again, and trans healthcare does nothing for you either way. Here's the lesson we millennials learned about gay marriage. What does gay people living their lives do for us? Nothing. What does it hurt? Nothing. Why should we ban people from enjoying their lives if it doesn't affect us? We shouldn't. But that's the thing. The right, the hard right, they're moral authoritarians, and sometimes we HAVE TO push back vs the right and say "nuh uh, these people are just living their lives and not hurting anyone, mind your own business." And that's our message at its best. We dont wanna impose anything on the right. If the right wants to live their little traditional lives, all the power to them. Get married, have kids, do whatever nuclear family stuff you wanna do. Heck, here's some paid family leave while we're at it, as that's popular for many on the left. 

Like, we wanna make peoples' lives better. And we gotta defend against those who wanna make them worse. Yes, we do have to defend people on social issues, but our interest in the culture war is purely defensive. I would love to say we reject "woke" ideology and this wierd cult of caring crap we wanna impose on others. We reject being moral authoritarians ourselves and trying to impose our way of life on you. We just want people to have rights, and you to have rights, and then we wanna make YOUR life better through economic policies that help you. And that's what our message SHOULD be. This isn't rocket science. This was a pretty mainstream left wing position until 2016. And we were WINNING until then. I dont think us losing over the past decade is a coincidence. Our priorities are mismatched with the public at large, and despite what the reddit power mods think, we don't wanna force our way of life on people. So don't force your ways onto us. If we can come to that agreement, we will advance significantly in this country, and get out of this horrific rut where one side are becoming nazis and the other side are basically that but with the complete opposite viewpoints.

Why reddit being left leaning is actually problematic (sort of)

 So...someone asked this on a sub I'm on, given how reddit is overwhelmingly liberal/leftist, and as someone who used to be a conservative, and who hates the current left wing zeitgeist on reddit, I wanted to give me answer for why this is problematic.

Reddit has ALWAYS had a left bias. However, this hasn't always been a problem for me. Even as a conservative, I've been used to being outnumbered. My city is blue, despite my state being purple. I went through colleges as a conservative in a social sciences major of all things. I'm USED to being the minority. And while ultimately, reddit did play a HUGE part in shifting me left, the left that used to inhabit reddit was much different than it was today. 

Like, back in the day, say, 10-15 years ago, reddit was left leaning, and I'd say the ratio was about 2:1. But it was mostly FAIR. Reddit was a platform dedicated to free speech, and there was a strong undercurrent that lasted there until the 2016 election. People mostly just gave their own opinions, and honestly? The reason reddit seemed left leaning seemed to be because it was full of intelligent millennial redditors who debated issues, and the left wing perspective was generally objectively correct. This is also why colleges lean left wing too. Reality actually does have somewhat of a liberal bias, and my belief was that as time went on, conservative beliefs would eventually die out and be replaced with a liberal zeitgeist. What seemed to drive this was the digital divide. Older generations got their news from traditional media, with all of the biases associated with that. Fox news was rotting boomers' brains, and as it turned out, MSNBC and CNN werent a ton better. So a lot of young people turned to the internet, and once again, given this culture of free speech and debate centering around actual objective facts, after a while it became difficult NOT to shift toward liberalism, because within the two party confines that existed, the left wing position was typically the objectively correct position to hold. Conservative views mostly seemed justified in appeals to tradition and authority, logical fallacies, and ignorance. And as long as that dynamic held, I honestly believed that left wing ascendancy was assured, and that if anything, the triumph of the left was a good thing. It would end an age of ignorance and lead to a new golden age of more rational discourse, where we could develop actual solutions to our problems and move society forward.

However, like is my theory of everything these days, the world went to crap in 2016. And this affected reddit too. Up through 2014 or so, reddit seemed to mostly be organic. Like, the stuff that rose did so because it was popular. But when 2016's election cycle ramped up, reddit took a darker turn. Democratic operatives from the democratic party and associated with clinton's campaign started functionally astroturfing the crap out of it. They literally promoted narratives that clinton was the best candidate or else, and that bernie couldn't win, and you HAD to support clinton or else the GOP would win. Because they couldn't win people over through reason and logic, they did so via brute force and fear. They promoted it as OMG THE GOP IS SO BAD AND YOU HAVE TO SUPPORT US OR ELSE THE GOP WILL WIN. And again...we also saw social justice ideology become part of it. I dont think the introduction to social justice ideology was mainstream. It was used by these democratic operatives as a cudgel. Why? Because that was clinton's one strong suit. She could play the identity politics game and appeal to her womanhood and her husband's legacy with the black community and then use social justice stuff to bully all of those "bernie bros" into line. And that's what they did. So, basically, reddit, which was originally filled with sanders supporters, became astroturfed and filled with OMG YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR CLINTON OR YOU'RE THROWING MINORITIES UNDER THE BUS, BLAH BLAH BLAH. And social justice became the uniting force of the left, whereas prior to this, it was secularism. 

Seriously. Early on in this site's history, r/atheism was a premier default sub. And given me questioning my faith at the time of joining reddit, it appearing in my feed every day when i went to look for memes...made me think. It made me question, and ultimately, it led to me losing my faith in Christianity. The left won me over not through bullying me, but through logic and reason, and that open minded "reason and evidence" "free thinking" mindset actually contributed to the basis of my post christian worldview. I stopped being a christian because i ran out of logical and evidence based reasons to be one. I was won over via debate.And I respected that tradition. Reddit's original founders were hardcore free speech advocates. They believed in the openness of the internet and as a bastion against censorship.

But...when social justice ideology took over, that went out the window. SJWs are a cult. They're literally a cult. They're a cult of caring. A cult of inclusivity, a cult of promoting their ideology. And they value the furthering of their own ideology above the ideals I outlined above. If you arent with them, you're against them. They believe in the paradox of intolerance, that we cannot tolerate intolerance, and that if your views happen to go against them, you should basically be censored. And this mentality makes all of the difference. 

I mean, here's how the secular free thought, free speech version of reddit approached right wingers. "You're free to have your views, just keep them out of our lives." We didn't try to correct for the views of the right. If anything, we realized, being ex christians ourselves in many cases, that trying to censor christians will just rile up their overtuned persecution complexes. So we had a compromise. We won't try to censor and oppress you, but we have to fight your ideas being implemented in government. We played defensively, recognizing the right had a right to whatever views they held, no matter how disgusting they may be, but we had to defend against them implementing them. The idea was simple, if you wanna live YOUR life that way, that's fine, but don't impose that crap on anyone else. And largely it worked.

But 2016 was the year that broke the internet. And it was the year that the left became authoritarian. Again, astroturfing was part of it, the introduction of SJW ideology was part of it, but another part of it I didn't discuss yet is the policies on censorship. I honestly believe that the takeover of reddit by the democratic party left is more complete than it seems. Because around that time, not only did reddit become FLOODED with what seemed like artificial pro clinton content, but also, the mods on the big subs became complicit. And when normal users, like me, started calling out obvious shills and astroturfing, we would get banned from them. Subreddits changed overnight, and between this shock and awe fear mongering and brute forcing a narrative, mods seemed to start becoming complicit in removing content that went against their narratives.

After the 2016 election, when Trump won, the knives REALLY started coming out. That's when we really got into the hardcore rise of wokeness. Everyone was so fearful of OMG HES GONNA TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS and stuff that early in trump's first term, around 8 years ago now in early 2017, we started seeing this social justice left morph into something more toxic. Suddenly people were talking about beating up nazis and banning people for daring to express right wing views. Again, it was this paradox of tolerance crap. The idea that we can't tolerate the intolerant or it will lead to the downfall of society. IN a way, I kinda feared the SJW left more than the right at the time. The right, in office, can do damage, yes, but authoritarian is never the way to handle it on the internet. You just can't ban entire viewpoints, and as an ex conservative, I kinda realized that the lines that the social justice left were so extreme that they would functionally ban right wingers from the platform. If you disagreed with them on say, homosexuality, or trans issues, you would be considered a bigot and banned. And then apply that to racism, sexism, etc. Like these guys became a cult where anyone supporting anything remotely similar to "traditional values" was no longer welcome, because the mere idea that a person hold such values is against their rights.

The problem is that we live in a pluralistic country, and literally half the country doesnt see things their way. So basically, on reddit, expressing socially conservative viewpoints became a bannable offense. And over time, the amount of conservatives dropped to levels of being endangered species. The social justice left not only now controls most major subreddits and will ban people for petty reasons like daring to disagree with them (as we see over the elon thing), but they'll also organize to change site TOS to make such behavior bannable on the entire site. And then these people will literally go around and find right wing subreddits with people expressing right wing opinions they disapprove of, and mass reporting them to get them off of the site.

As a result, while conservatives always were minorities, now they're pretty much an endangered species on reddit, and every sub, even non political subs, often become insufferable circlejerks of social justice ideology where anyone who expresses right wing opinions gets banned from the subs in question, possibly the platform, and even if they express them in their own safe spaces, the subs set up bots to auto ban people who post in subreddits that they dont like until someone actually blocks said bots, which most dont know how to do (u/saferbot is one of said bots). 

All of this is done in the name of "inclusivity." Because we can't tolerate the intolerant, as they're an existential threat to our way of life, and because any wrong think on social issues needs to be punished, people of non left wing persuasions end up functionally being unwelcome on reddit. Instead, they inhabit right wing spaces like meta, X, 4chan, etc, where they radicalize and fester. Lefties won't bother going into those spaces to debate. If anything, in the modern era, they'll literally leave those spaces voluntarily, and now we're seeing the reddit SJW power mods trying to ban even linking to such platforms. Again, because we need to create an "inclusive" safe space for people. No wrong think is allowed. We cant tolerate the intolerant, and after a while, everyone is intolerant but us! 

Honestly, I think the real paradox of intolerance is that those who say they're tolerant, aren't. They care only about furthering their side, and banning and punishing anyone who thinks differently. In this case, they're literally made of the same cloth as trump himself.

Tolerance is about TOLERATING. It's not about liking someone's views, or agreeing with them, it's about agreeing to LET THEM EXIST. To TOLERATE them, despite the differences. It's actually a key part of free speech and the whole idea that I might not like what others say, but I defend their right to say it. Which is the stance i officially hold on say, the elon musk situation. Do you honestly think I like elon? HELL NO! But would I try to ban all content from his platform in the name of ending hate and bigotry? Also hell no. This isnt "the resistance" to trump that we need. We need organizing and actually pressuring people in congress to resist trump's tyrannical impulses. We don't need some stupid virtue signal combined with further erosion of our freedom of expression on reddit.

Honestly, this is why reddit being as left wing as it is is such a bad thing. It's because reddit these days allows for nothing else. For all of its talk of diversity, that diversity is limited to agreeing exclusively with the social justice hive mind that exists on there. I legitimately thought, and legitimately hoped that losing the 2024 election would "end wokeness" and on the few subs where genuine political discussion with conservatives exists, this idea comes up a lot. But the problem is, these guys are so dedicated to their cause, and so entrenched into the power structure of reddit, that they'll literally drag reddit down into the abyss before they give up power. They literally have an attitude that they cant be wrong, everyone else is wrong, and if you disagree with them, speak up so they can permaban you from their subreddits. That's literally how this "resistance" to trump's second term is going so far.

 Honestly, trump is a threat to the country, and he is a threat to our freedoms. In a lot of ways, the social justice left is right about trump and his movements. BUT....they are ALSO a threat to our liberties and our freedoms to express ourselves, and creating echo chambers where any opinion but the approved ones are functionally banned from the platform. And that's why reddit being left leaning these days is a bad thing. If it were organic like it was in the old days, fine, but 2016 and trump broke peoples' brains so bad, that now we're just to the point of banning people who we dont agree with. And I agree, debating can be exhausting. I dont debate like I used to either. But that's when you start a blog, like I did. Or you just block individual annoying posters without banning them from an entire platform. Like, what you dont do is ban them from said platform. But again, that's the SJW way, we can't tolerate intolerance, so everyone but us must be banned. And then we wonder why we end up being out of touch when it turns out the majority of the country isnt on the same page as us any more. But hey, they must all just be nazis, right? Over 50% of the country, right? They voted for one, so they must all be complicit, right? I mean, we can't just be doing something wrong or unpopular or something, right?

 Welcome to politics in 2025. Give me the time machine back to 2010 already. 

Oh HELL NAW!

 So, some republican congressman has proposed a resolution to allow Trump to run for a third term. It's highly likely that this will never pass, as it would require a constitutional amendment like most stuff the trump administration is proposing it seems, but still, guys? I gotta say this. This is how it starts. When Russia got Putin in, he ran for 8 years, did his job, and then ran for prime minister while his puppet Dmitri Medvedev ran for president. Then Putin's party amended the constitution, and allowed Putin to run again. Then they crushed all opposition and started rigging the elections there. This is how you break democracy. You start with a functioning democracy, and then you make weird power grabs like this. You dont take away the democracy altogether, but you erode the mechanisms of it to render it inert. Most dictatorships are actually democracies on paper that aren't. The US is already, by my estimation, a very flawed democracy and functionally an oligarchy, we only got 2 parties, they've gamed the system to centralize power in those two parties, and they crush the opposition. But if we let trump do the stuff that he wants to do, we might trend toward a one party state, where Trump and the republicans control everything, elections are a sham, and then Trump is dictator for life, followed by another Trumpian figure (possibly a son?) who picks of the reins and continues the movement. This is scary. 

With all of that said, the democrats gotta use all of their power to push back here. Thankfully we have a robust system of checks and balances where for better or for worse, it would take vast supermajorities to make this a reality, and if democrats hard oppose them, they can beat them. But yeah. This is why I keep saying we gotta resist trump and show him no quarter. Shut down and obstruct as much as possible. You know, just like they do to us when we're in power. We cant let this madman succeed in remaking the country in his image. If he has a legitimately good idea once in a while, eh, maybe think about jumping on board, as I said, I'm not hard opposed to EVERYTHING this guy proposes. But the vast majority of it? Yeah. And anything that will remake the country into something we dont want it to become? Yeah. 

Democrats, do your jobs, shut this crap down. Dont let them gain ANY steam here. This is the do or die moment for America, "the resistance" needs to be resisting. Thankfully a measure like this should be extremely easy to defeat, but yeah. Again, we can't give trump ANY room here. I've said it for a while, this dude wants to be putin. Don't let him be. We contained him last time, we gotta contain him this time.

So let's address this elon thing once and for all

 So, Elon is now responding to the criticism against him with literal nazi jokes, and I figured since this crap isn't going away, it's good to address the controversy more directly. This is gonna be more Q&A style than anything.

Was Musk's gesture a Nazi salute?

Yes, it basically was. Here is the salute posted along side literal Nazis giving the same salute. Corporate needs you to find the difference between the two pictures. They're the same picture. 

Does this mean Musk is a nazi?

While it was possible he was joking or being ironic, he also has come out in support of the AFD, which is basically a nazi or at the very least nazi lite party. He also has ties to apartheid south africa from when that was a thing. 

So yeah, given that the salute is just the topping on the cake and his statements have been controversial for a while, let's just say that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and gives certain salutes like a duck, that he's a duck. He is at the very least doing a bad cosplay of a duck, which is concerning in and of itself given how touchy that subject is.

NOOOO BUT IT WAS JUST A ROMAN SALUTE!

First of all, you realize nazis used a lot of roman aesthetics in building their "reich" right? Vaush talks excessively about this whenever I watch him, going on long diatribes about how fascists have no actual artistic mind of their own and just coopt the aesthetics of others. They love the roman stuff because it makes them feel strong and powerful.

Second, okay, well....I've heard some people say it's the same kind of salute that Benito Mussolini gave back in the 1930s...um...you realize you're literally not helping your case, right? Mussolini was a fascist, and he was literally aligned with Hitler. So you're literally not helping your case at all.

NOOO BUT HE WAS JUST SAYING MY HEART GOES OUT TO YOU!

Okay, some people are saying that maybe he got a little carried away. Okay. Maybe he did. WHY DID HE DO IT AGAIN? WHY IS HE MAKING JOKES ABOUT IT? WHY DOES HE SUPPORT THE AFD WHO ARE BASICALLY LITERAL NAZIS? Like, eventually you gotta stop indulging this guy's behavior or you start sounding like this. When someone shows them who they are, believe them.

NOOOO HES JUST AUTISTIC AND A LITTLE ECCENTRIC!

So...as an autistic person who has been hearing this BS a lot, I'm just gonna say, STOP ASSOCIATING US WITH THIS GUY! Okay, actual autistic people? Not saying Elon isn't one, I'll get to why he is why he is in a minute, but okay, actual autistic people who aren't billionaires? WE DONT ACT LIKE THAT! Many of us are so scared of being interpreted the wrong way and construed that we try to overcorrect and go out of our way and NOT do that. And if Elon realized what he did and was like "oops, sorry, got a little out of hand with the gesture there, i didn't mean what it looks like", i could be like okay. But let's face it. The dude is from the upper class of apartheid of south africa, ya know, the one that benefitted from its policies. He is playing footsie with the AFD. He's in with the Trump administration, who, as I stated, basically is a fascist lite, even if he's a little boorish and doesnt have the thought out ideology of an actual fascist, but is nevertheless about 75% compliant with the definition and should be treated as such. He's doing the salute. He's joking about the salute. He's a nazi. The dude could grow a short mustache, put on the uniform, do a seig heil and start screaming racist things in german and people would still act like he's not a nazi somehow and that it's all "ironic." No, it's not. This is scary. On day on of the trump administration, they're outing themselves as what they are. BELIEVE THEM. 

Here's the real problem with elon. It's the same problem with trump too. He's a rich ###hole who has never been told no in his life, and doesn't know how to take no. As such, he's never developed the boundaries that a normal person would, including high functioning autistic individuals like himself, and because there is no power structure to ever hold him accountable, because quite frankly, when you're that rich, you ARE the power structure, he just does whatever he feels like.  He has no boundaries. 

So why do you crap on the reddit mods doing their cancel X thing? Aren't you supporting elon by doing that?

No. If anything, and this is what people need to understand, I'm holding yet another petty tyrant accountable here. Here's the thing. The SJW reddit mods who think this stuff up and shove it down our throats, they're made of the same petty tyrannical cloth as these rich people. They get a little power, and then they start tripping and abusing it for their own stupid virtue signalling and vanity projects. 

It's one thing to say, I refuse to use twitter because he's a nazi. it's another thing, to force your little boycott on everyone else, and to ban those who disagree with you (since some mods are explicitly doing that). 

As a liberal, one who believes in freedom of speech, the rule of law, what have you, Elon does have a right to his opinion, as do you. And I don't really like any incursion into free speech in the name of some weird mob mentality or to appease some petty power tripping mod. Quite frankly, i think reddit mods are just as pathetic as elon and trump are. And cut from the same cloth, they might bat for the other side technically, but as we know from WWII, is the answer to nazism really like...communism, or even SJWism? No it's not. Stalin is no better than Hitler. I will oppose any weirdo power trips no matter what side they come from. That's how you actually oppose this stuff and stand up for freedom.

So what should be done about Elon?

Well to some extent, what can we do? Either way, I would support a voluntary exodus from twitter/X. We've seen some people move from X to bluesky since the election in order to accomplish this and stick it to elon, and quite frankly, given elon's poor management of the site, I think it's a good move even without the nazi stuff. For the record, I'm not a fan of twitter. I made an account there in like 2010 but never used it because what's the point? IMO any platform with a 280 character limit or whatever it is isn't one for serious discourse. 

I just dont like weirdo petty reddit tyrants forcing their stupid little virtue signals on us and thinking the answer to this is to try to force everyone to stop using twitter because they have a statement to make. You're free to not use twitter, again, I actually encourage the movement on a voluntary level. I just dont like people forcing it and then power tripping banning anyone who doesn't think their way. Quite frankly those kinds of people are liabilities to the left and make us all look bad. Did these guys get the memo that their "wokeness" is unpopular? Maybe if they shut the heck up, we wouldn't have just elected fascists to public office in the first place (nah, inflation was the real reason, but to be fair, this woke crap ain't popular either). 

Like...that's the thing. To some extent, the trump phenomenon comes as a backlash to wokeness. It actually does. It's that whole "own the libs" thing. The trevor's axiom from south park thing. The whole people hate these idiots on the left so much they're enabling fascists as a way to retaliate thing. And that's why we're losing the culture war. We didn't lose it during the obama years. because the left was sane during the obama years. No one likes this "woke" zeitgeist except for these petty internet powermods who really need to touch grass (yes, I know its january just....go touch snow instead, yes, florida man, that means you too). 

Conclusion

There isn't much of a point to this post, I just wanna point out that yes, Elon Musk is a nazi, and if you actively support him, uh...you might wanna reconsider that. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot we can do about it right now. We just unleashed evil upon this earth for the next 4 years. All we can really do is try to plot a comeback in 2028. Use the power we have to resist the trump administration in the next 2 years, including pulling out all of the stops with obstructionism like they do to us, try to win seats in 2026 to increase our power to resist him, and then in 2028, kick him out of office for good. 

Really. People dont like that answer, but that's all we can do. We can do our virtue signals. Like, for example, my profile pic on my sites is bernie's picture from the inauguration. I was serious. In a world of trumps, be a bernie. I just dont think that these virtue signals should involve censorship, eroding our rights further, or empowering petty tyrant reddit mods looking to power trip. You can oppose trump/musk, and also think this boycott is stupid. It's called nuance, and people should try it some time.

Was generation 6 REALLY the best era for games?

 So, I decided to look up what other people thought about console generations after I gave my opinion, and there are some divergences I'm seeing online. A lot of people insist REALLY STRONGLY that gen 6 is like the best era for gaming ever.

Honestly, this comes off as pure nostalgia for me. I admit I kind of underrated gen 6 when it happened at the time, but the best ever? I can't really justify it being higher than say, 3rd.

In my actual ranking, i gave it 4th. part of me feels like my actual #3 choice, gen 4, was too generous. But here's why i ranked gen 4 so highly. It was the peak of the 2D era. It didnt have the most games or the best games, but it was the most definitive era for what it did. It was the most mature 2D generation before moving to the 3D era for good, and I wanted to recognize its accomplishments in that regard. You could argue that in terms of the number of games both gen 5 and gen 6 were better. However, I'd be hard pressed to say gens 5 and 6 were the best gens at anything. They were the first 2 3D gens, and I found both awkward. Gen 5 had that nostalgia factor for me, but forcing myself to be objective, I actually think gen 5 was kind of weak. It was weak because the games aged poorly. The graphics look poor in the modern era, and it's made even worse by the fact that on native hardware they run at extremely low resolutions and framerates that make them unpleasant to play today, and they also have awkward control schemes that make you go what the heck were they thinking.

So at the time, yeah, gen 5 seemed great when it happened, it just aged really badly. Gen 6, for me at least, was the opposite. I was old enough at the time where i didnt have as strong of a feeling of nostalgia for the era. Much like today, at the time, I didn't think the early 2000s were a great time. 9/11 happened in the real world, and it seemed like after how magical the 90s were the whole world went to crap. Gaming also just felt kind of awkward to me as it transitioned to gen 6. After the dreamcast, I was just meh on gaming for a while. The PS2 didnt grab me, and i bought it out of peer pressure. I admit part of me was just "doing it wrong", and there were tons of games. GBA really carried it for me, and gamecube and xbox actually had more titles at the time that i would have liked over the PS2. 

Still, it wasn't just the games. The era also didn't age well, much like gen 5. The games look bad these days. They had better control schemes, but they still ran at low resolutions with poor frame rates, and were a bit awkward to play. The best of the era was great, but much of the era was junk to me. And even then, looking at the nintendo titles....I actually prefer the gen 5 titles I think over the gen 6 ones. Gen 6 was an important evolutionary step similar to 6, but for me, it was gaming's awkward puberty phase. Both 5 and 6 were basically that all things considered, and that's what disqualifies them for me.

I think gaming peaked and matured more with gen 7/8. Late gen 6/early gen 7 was when the modern era really started taking off for me. And the high continued through gen 7, into early gen 8. 

If anything, you could in some ways, argue gen 8 was better than gen 7. But idk, for me, I like 7 better. The fact is, early gen 8 was basically a continuation of gen 7, but late gen 8 kind of started getting that fatigue I now have with gen 9. Late gen 8 saw the beginning of the battle royale trend, the whole hyper competitive zoomer twitch streamer trends that changed gaming for the worse, and yeah. Gen 8 was a gen that started out great, but ended poorly. 

Gen 7 was great all the way through. Gen 6, in retrospect, started off kind of awkward for me but ended fairly well. Like, again, a lot of the best titles were in the 2004-2006 era when we started going into gen 7. 1999-2001 was good but in retrospect it felt more like gen 5 to me. And 2002-2003 were the middle of it and just felt awkward in general. Again this is just a me thing, but yeah. 

Gen 6....I think people love it because of nostalgia. And it was good. It just wasn't the best. The games in gen 7 and 8, barring from nintendo's awkward consoles, were the best we had. We got a lot of them, they were fun to play, and it seemed like the fun was never ending. There were always games I wanted to play in gen 7. In gen 6 I found I would buy stuff only to be disappointed and bored with them at the time. Again, partially a me problem, but yeah. 

I get it, people have a tendency to say "my childhood was the best". being a 90s kid, I get that obnoxious temptation, but being objective, was it the best? While I love the gen 4 and 5 eras of my elementary school years, hell no. Again, 4 only got rated so highly because it was the last 2D era and kind of perfected that craft. I recognized it so highly more for historical significance than it actually deserving to be that high. In some ways gen 6 and even gen 5 were objectively better. They just werent the best as what they did. I rank them lower because, once again, they represent gaming's awkward transition phase between 2D and 3D and in retrospect, never aged particularly well. Going back to gen 6 games now, i cant say i dont have fun with them. But are they truly better than what came after? Definitely not.

Generally speaking, I do tend to subscribe to the theory of progress that in some ways each generation is better than the last, and builds on the last. The only reason I come down so hard on gen 9 is because of the whole "peak gaming" thing and how few games there actually are worth playing, how many of them are remakes or clones of what came before.

Like, with gen 9, let's be honest, what gen 9 games am I playing lately? Black ops 6, the yearly generic COD game. Delta force is a really awkward feeling chinese battlefield/tarkov knock off. And it's basically owned by tencent so yeah, it feels like a cringey F2P game. It's good, but it's not amazing. You got marvel rivals, which is basically just literally overwatch. The heroes feel like overwatch, the graphics and game play style are identical to overwatch. And speaking of which on the graphics front, like....its 2025. Overwatch came out in 2016. You could have told me this was overwatch and I would've believed you graphically....but it runs like crap and has higher system requirements and lumen ray tracing built into it. You seeing the problem with modern titles? Not that games like battlefield (which hasnt released a sequel to 2042 yet, which is 3+ years old now...), do it better as far as delta force goes. And that's the problem. Like these games are all fine I guess, but they're basically just....clones of games I've already played. And then you got for single player me playing the RE4 remake...you know, the remake of the 2005 gen 6 classic, and yeah. 

Again, gaming is just....in a rut. The games feel generic. They're often not optimized. They require tons of resources to run while not looking much better than stuff from...what's going on 10 years ago now...and yeah.

So that's why i rip on gen 9.

Other than that. Yeah....gen 6 is better than gen 5. Gen 7 is better than gen 6. Gen 8 is arguably better in some ways than even gen 7, i just couldnt give it a higher rating overall. And then gen 9 is kinda meh.

One thing I will notice, a lot of people do dunk on gen 9. But with me, I feel like my criticisms are more substantive. Like, i see people admitting, ok, games are unoptimized, there arent that many good ones, they're not overly fun to play, etc., but you wanna know what they're also saying? "it doesnt have muh nostalgia". It doesnt have that chime when the console comes on. it doesnt make me feel like a kid again. People wanna experience their childhoods and maybe even young adult years again. And I admit, I'm not immune to this and this might be one of the reasons i dunk on gen 9 too, but I feel like I rein it in more.

People who think gen 6 is the best are just going full on "my childhood was the best" like we 90s kids often do with gen 5. And you know what? I've seen zoomers even do it with gen 7, even if I'll admit gen 7 was fire. So...again, just because it's your childhood and it gives you a magical feeling you dont experience as an adult doesnt mean it was the best. Sorry, it doesn't. 

Again, I feel like Im objective about gen 6. It was strong, stronger than I gave it credit for at the time. But it wasn't the best. It wasn't even close to being as good as 7 and 8. And if I were gonna actually go by nostalgia, I'd actually rank it even lower than I did because I literally have more positive feelings toward 4, 5, 7, and 8. Literally every other gen in my lifetime that I actively experienced other than gen 9 and maybe gen 3 (which i only experienced due to gen 4 portable systems basically being gen 3 game machines). So...again...maybe nostalgia aint that great? Just saying. 

But yeah, objectively...it's 3rd or 4th for me. Not the best, definitely not the worst, a strong showing, a stronger showing than i would say it got at the time, but yeah, it's not the best. Not even close.

Discussing the limitations of growth

 So, this is an idea I've been sketching out in my other project, and I kind of wanted to do a free article here on it, since I think it's an important concept. And that is the limitations of growth. As you know, balancing growth with other priorities is the third pillar of my own iteration of "human centered capitalism." And this doesn't mean I'm anti growth per se, but I am skeptical of the "growth at all costs" narrative.

Economically, the argument is simple. Growth comes with tradeoffs. We have this phrase in our capitalist societies: "time is money." I don't like this phrase, because it assumes that the default, that the norm, is we should want to trade hours of our life for money. We should try to use our time purely from a profit pursuing perspective, and think about how to maximize our output for our time. In moderation this isn't bad. Efficiency is good. But at the end of the day, as I always say with growth, we have a choice when it happens, we can either output the same amount of stuff with less effort, or output more stuff with the same effort. Capitalism creates an environment that pressures people to be working all of the time to continually maximize output. it doesn't matter how much output we achieve, it's never enough, we need to keep focusing on MORE growth, or the NEXT thing. With me, growing up, my work ethic was always built around efficiently using my time, so I could have more of it, to do what I always wanted to do. I wasn't "lazy" per say, but I didn't have the slavish work ethic our society encourages. I was the kind of person who wanted to get done with my work, and do it well so I would be rewarded for it, but then to go off and do my own thing. I didn't want more work, more responsibility. I kinda did wanna do the bare minimum, but I also wanted to do it well enough, if that makes sense. Like, A was an A student, I was rewarded for getting As, and punished if I did poorly in school. I would do well enough to get rewards, without getting punished, and then I would maximize the time I had left to enjoy said rewards. Sounds simple, right?

But capitalism doesn't actually reward efficient workers. It punishes them by giving them more work. If you do 40 hours of work in 20 hours, the solution of the capitalists is "oh cool, heres 20 more hours of work to do!" As such, capitalism actually does, to some extent, encourage inefficiency. it encourages procrastination. Pretending to be busy when not really busy. Because our society is more fixated on ensuring you suffer for the correct number of hours, than achieving the desired output. 

Of course, the result of this is also growth. As people continue to put in the same number of hours, output goes up over time. That person who now has twice as much work to do does twice as much, and living standards increase as a result. But here's the question: should we be living this way? I would argue no. At the core of my "efficient worker" work ethic is the mentality that for every hour spent doing work, I can be doing something else. I get my work done, so i dont have to do any more. When I do have to do more, it just makes me wanna give the frick up. Because I dont wanna actually be working. I understand some work is necessary and HAS to be done, but i dont like this society's slavish work ethic where we show how many hours we worked and how much we suffered and sacrificed as a badge of honor. I dont like the protestant work ethic and I kind of resent it.

Again, if anything, instead of a work ethic, I have a play ethic. Every hour of work is wasted, and what I really wanna be doing is NOT working, so I basically try to work efficiently so I don't have to do more. And honestly, I would rather just do what I have to do and be left alone, than have to work more and not have any time to actually enjoy the fruits of the labor.And this is why modern society and its work ethic is sisyphusian hell to me. I think we should be striving to work less as technology frees us from labor, but our institutions keep us working the same amount as living standards go up.

And this isn't even just not good for humans, it's terrible for the environment. Our tendency toward infinite growth is trashing the planet. We're using natural resources faster than we can replace them, we're leaving future generations literal islands of garbage in the middle of the ocean, and we're warming the planet in a way that is changing the climate and probably leaving us worse off in the future. I think that future generations, like say, around 2100, 2200, are gonna look back at us around the year 2000 give or take and be like WTF WAS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS?! Seriously, because of our gluttonous habits, they're gonna have a harder time in the future, as we leave them a polluted planet with a crazy climate, and ironically, they're gonna have to work harder and struggle due to the natural limits of scarcity associated with overuse in this era where they're gonna WISH that we all decided to work less.

Like really, I wouldnt call myself like a "degrowther", but I have noticed the link between my growth narrative skepticism and how it could save us from this growing environmental crisis of this era. And I do think that long term, it is going to have to be THE solution. It's the only way to voluntarily rein this stuff in. 

Anyway, with that said, I've also noticed the same issues with video games and hardware lately. I keep saying it, the problems with "generation 9" in gaming is the issue of "peak gaming". Kinda like "peak oil" and the looming environmental crises that will be affecting us in the future, we're starting to feel those effects in gaming. Generation 9 is really the straw breaking the camel's back. In the early days, consoles were affordable. And they provides massive jumps in performance for not a lot of money. These days, moore's law is breaking down and in order to maintain the same rate of progress we always have, stuff is getting more expensive. So now we're pushing people to buy these more expensive nvidia cards and the like for ray tracing and stuff. It's crazy. Like, inflation happens in economics but it happens in gaming too. What is the point of progress when any technological gains from a hardware perspective are met with the software becoming more bloated and demanding to the point that it cancels out the gains. 

Like, the people making AAA games for consoles are still living in some reality of the past that sub 1080p and sub 60 FPS are somehow enjoyable gameplay experiences. They're not. originally, these 9th gen consoles were sold as 4k 120 FPS machines and the like, we're gonna make games be higher fidelity resolution wise, and we're gonna make them run faster. Which is fine by me as Im fine at 1080p/60 FPS. But now it's like, nope, let's take ALL of that power and make these monstrously demanding games.

And honestly, I dont think the graphical transition from gen 8 to gen 9 has been that impressive. Especially since gen 8 already had a bit of a resolution and FPS upgrade with the mid gen refreshes. But yeah. Games are becoming more demanding, the hardware isnt there, the hardware is expensive. Games take longer to make, they're buggy at launch. And honestly, there's just diminishing returns.

As far as I'm concerned, it is perfectly acceptable for us to admit that we're past some sort of realistic peak here. I think it's perfectly fine to admit that stuff is gonna slow down from here on out. We could, with all the progress we're making, go in a different direction. We could make games higher fidelity in terms of resolution. We can improve their framerates. And trust me as a PC gamer, thats what a lot of us prefer. The 4k crowd who uses 4090s is actually a minority. Most of us are playing gen 8 games and esports on like 3060s and 6 core processors. We dont need the best of the best. if anything, much of nvidia's new tech is just making our gaming experience worse, since tech like frame gen and DLSS and ray tracing are just replacing traditional rendering and it's just not as good. Sure, shadows look more realistic. Cool. But our frame rates are crap, our games are blurry messes, and we're spending 1.5-2x on GPUs compared to a decade ago (or we're functionally going down a tier to maintain the same price).

And dont get me wrong, I'd be fine with the tech stagnating...as long as games were made for that tech. but they're not. This mentality of growth makes us have to constantly upgrade, to conform to the system, and we're spending more when we do upgrade. I dont like this weird feeling common in capitalist growth oriented societies where we constantly need to be with the current thing and if we're not with current thing, we're gonna be left behind. And then the software ends up chasing current thing where if you arent on current thing, you really DO get left behind as new games flat out wont run on older hardware.

What I'm saying is I'd rather have games that look a little worse, but run on lower end hardware. I'd rather see the prices of hardware go down before we adopt new tech. I know the whales who spend like $5000 on their PCs will scream bloody murder over that, but they're also the people in the economy who are the most well off under capitalism and just expect the average joe to cater to their whims at any moment. Ya know? Like, we got a problem where we let the top 20% of people dictate things for the bottom 80%, and then the bottom 80% is just expect to keep running trying to keep up. It's ridiculous.

Honestly, I don't care if games are stuck on gen 8 graphics for the next decade at this point. I'd rather just bring the price of hardware down to pre inflation levels and THEN start growing again.

You know, back in the day, we used to have new consoles every 5 years, and on PC there's be a corresponding system requirements jump. They extended the life of gen 7 in part due to the diminishing returns thing, arguably, but also because of the recession. if they replaced the consoles in 2010, no one would buy them, because no one could afford them. So they waited until 2013. We then replaced those consoles in 2020 during COVID. PC hardware was even more affordable than it was today due to insane demand for GPUs. Like, we actually regressed to 2013 price/performance for a while with even a GTX 1050 ti being $400 or something crazy. And we decided, during that crapshow, to just release a new generation of consoles. The PS5 was unaffordable for many, it was scalper prices, like $800-1000 a year. Like $500 for a console is already a lot. That's a big investment. But then it was 60-100% more than that due to scalping, and then it took years for the price to come down, and quite frankly, since 2022, the price of hardware seems...stagnant. Even in early 2025, the price of GPUs is what it was when the market finally corrected in late 2022-2023. Which is why this generation feels so short. Most of us couldnt even afford a PS5 for the first several years of its life cycle. Nor could we afford a PC comparable for one. We're just now at a point when a PC gamer can affordably replicate a PS5 style experience at reasonable prices and we're like 4 years into this new console generation. It's insane. With the gen 8 consoles, we were at PS4 Pro/Xbox one X time, and you could get a GPU for PC that could accomplish that quality level for $250. You could accomplish base level performance around $100. That doesn't exist any more. And then people wonder why I'm pissed.

Again, it's fine if growth slows down so people can catch up. I'm tired of this weird darwinistic growth at all costs mindset we have in society where life is a massive struggle just to keep up with newest thing. It's fine to slow down if we're getting to the point of the ketchup bottle where we gotta hit it a few times before the ketchup comes out. No need to keep shoehorning more growth is that growth comes with higher costs. Because that just leaves people behind. But then again, the people at the top don't care, sink or swim is their attitude.

Again, growth isn't bad. It's not bad in economics. It's not bad in technology. It's this mentality where we expect people to conform to systems, rather than having the systems meet people where they are. And that's the point of human centered capitalism. The economy exists for people, people don't exist for the economy. Work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Growth should be balanced with other priorities like leisure, the environment, human well being, etc. Instead of viewing growth as a sole metric of well being, it should merely be seen as something to enhance it, you know? 

It's okay to slow down and smell the roses once in a while. Honestly, if it were up to me, gen 9 would last until like 2030. We dont need new stuff before then. I certainly aint ready for a massive system requirements bump in 2027-2028. It's already 2025 and I already just upgraded 1-2 years ago. I'm ready to just sit and chill for a while. This stuff is expensive. This gen barely has any games worth playing and people are already talking about the NEXT generation. I don't care. As a PC gamer, everything from gen 7 on has just been one massive generation anyway. All we see are buggy games and increased system requirements while games from 2-3 years prior look just as good and run at 80 FPS. Im just now getting to the point I realize how dated gen 7 games truly are now. Gen 8 was just more gen 7 until halfway through it turned into gen 9 in a sense. Really, I keep saying it, but the world changed in 2016. It changed politically, it changed culturally, and the gaming aspect changed too, and it's never had the magic that the world had prior to that point since. And I miss the old world and think the new world sucks. 

And thats where people end up being. Despite all of this growth, most people get older and then want things to be like they were when they were like 20 years old. Ya know? Maybe newer isn't always better. Just something to think about.

Clarifying my stance on DEI

 So, I got word that Trump basically repealed a 1960s Executive Order banning hiring discrimination in the government, which is, quite frankly, insane, so given I came out in support of him getting rid of DEI recently, I wanna thread the needle and clarify my stance.

I oppose hiring discrimination. It SHOULD be banned. However, I oppose DEI because DEI...is...hiring discrimination. The point of DEI is to promote hiring more POC, women, etc, in order to promote "diversity, equity, and inclusion." It sees the status quo as "systemic racism" and how we basically need to be discriminatory to compensate for the discrimination in the system that exists, even WITH bans on hiring discrimination, and I just see it as trying to make two wrongs equal a right. 

So...I oppose hiring discrimination, and I agree that should remain banned. Trump is wrong for repealing that. But I still oppose "DEI", if that makes any sense at all. I think that's a pretty reasonable stance to take. 

The things Trump did that I actually agree with (on paper at least)

 So...going by his day 1 executive orders, in all fairness to the guy, what did he do that I actually liked? 

So let's go into it.

"Delivering emergency price relief"

Idk how he's gonna do it, and that's the thing, it's probably a toothless virtue signal of a decree, but I do like the idea of raising living standards, even if I think he's not actually doing F all here.

"Ending weaponization in government"

Yeah, I like the idea of not using the government to go after political enemies because they're your enemies. However, let's face it, trump is just ending weaponization against him. He's fine with taking down general milley's portrait or rescinding john bolton's secret service protection. But yeah, I like the idea in principle. I just understand he's not gonna be consistent in it

"Restoring freedom of speech"

 I like free speech, but again, trump isn't gonna do anything horrifically hypocritical in cracking down on the speech of people who doesn't like, is he? I know, I look like padme right now in that meme.

"Protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship"

 So, this is gonna be controversial on the left, but I dont actually like birthright citizenship as it exists. I DO think there is a loophole, and at least one parent should be a legal resident at the time of birth. I dont think this is controversial. I mean, you get someone coming here illegally, popping out a kid, and then boom the kid is a citizen? That's ridiculous and it's problematic.

Now, people might ask why I care so much. Well...I support large universal social safety nets. Ya know, the kind that you dont have to work for. The ones that would likely be tied to citizenship or legal residency. Giving a UBI and universal healthcare to illegal immigrants is unsustainable and politically toxic. It threatens to undermine my entire economic ideology. So...I gotta take this stand in order to protect ideas I prioritize higher than this. If anything, this is where liberalism is kinda going in the wrong direction for me. They care more about illegal immigrants sometimes than they care about the well being of citizens. Ive seen liberals oppose UBI because they care so much about their "nation of immigrants" BS that they would subject us to a jobist pro work regime with open borders forever because they care more about being open to immigration than they so large universal safety nets. Such liberals are not my allies. And yes, I do have a nationalist and protectionist streak to my politics that aligns somewhat with Trump's priorities at times that doesnt fit into the modern democrats. It fit well into the pre 2016 party, and even Bernie was like "yeah i aint for this open borders crap, thats a koch proposal", but yeah, I'm NOT in favor of just...letting illegal immigrants waltz in here and get citizenship via a loophole.

I will say, solving this through an executive order isnt the proper way of doing this though, and that this is likely completely toothless and a virtue signal. 

"Ending DEI programs"

 Look, I dont like preferential treatment in regards to race, gender, etc in hiring decisions. While I believe in large universal safety nets, I dont believe in the right of a job, I see jobs as relatively scarce commodities for workers, and I believe in pure meritocracy as far as who gets them. I dont think that DEI is fair for, say, white males who work hard and are more qualified for positions, and I think that such policies are needlessly divisive. Even if I agree systemic racism and sexism in the workplace can be a thing, this ain't the solution. So...I dont like DEI. I'm sorry, I don't.

And yeah, that's about it. 

As you can tell half this article is "oh hey i like that, I know that trump is a total hypocrite on this issue though and I called him out. However, as you can tell, there are some issues where I'm actually somewhat aligning with Trump here. Most notably ending birthright citizenship for someone born of two illegal immigrants, and ending DEI programs. I just have a different brand of progressivism and don't really go all in with this hardcore "woke" social justice oriented vision of the left. There are issues where I kinda cross the aisle and agree with conservatives here. Not everyone is gonna like it, but it is what it is. I would still say I agree with the left like 85% of the time, but this is where you see that 15% in practice where I kinda go with Trump.

Does this mean that I like him or support him? No. These are just broken clock moments. Or really, positions i never shifted on from my formerly conservative worldview. You guys realized I used to be conservative and I kinda just wrote over most of my old worldview right? But that doesnt mean that occasionally I dont have a view that never shifted. I have the old school 6th party system conservative view of being "color blind" and not liking weird social justice liberalism or its initiatives. I also tend to have some protectionist views on immigration as they relate to my economic progressivism (again, see the link between my pro UBI ideology and being moderate on immigration, UBI isnt compatible with open borders). 

And yeah. it is what it is.

The proposed "X ban" on reddit is the most terminally online thing I've ever seen this week

 So...my reddit feed is blowing up with every sub now proposing some ban on X (twitter) content on their subreddits. And I'm going to be honest, let's not act like it's coincidence that this is being proposed literally a day after Trump's inauguration, and Elon decided to give a certain salute that....looks like a certain salute that....was used in the 1930s and 1940s in a certain central European country. And before anyone says it wasn't that, yes, it was literally that. I won't post it, but I've seen a gif with it along side actual nazis giving the salute and it's the same fricking salute. Elon just outed himself as a nazi basically. It's not surprising. And this is who is in the trump administration. 

So...let's talk about this proposed twitter/X ban. You know where this came from. It's probably some brilliant idea of some SJW types to wanna do one of their stupid socially performative boycotts that do nothing in the real world. These guys are weirdo moral authoritarians and the opposite coin of the alt right's growing nazi problem and while I cant say these guys wanna genocide anyone like nazis did, they do believe in doing these stupid boycotts and punishing people for not toeing their line in politics. And now they're pushing some line about how we gotta ban X because hateful content and blah blah blah. 

I'm gonna be honest. If you looked at the inauguration, all the tech billionaires were there. Zuckerberg was there, the google guy was there, the apple guy was there. They were all there. ANd they're all in with the swamp, and they're all cucking themselves to Trump. Let's be real. The only one who wasnt there was the reddit guys, and we already discussed how deeply astroturfed by the democrats they are. And then there's tiktok, can we not forget that the whole point of banning that was because american politicians couldnt control it? That's what that was really about.

So to me, this whole thing is just more of that. More brainrot from weirdo moral authoritarians who think everyone needs to be protected from content they don't like. And me, being pro free speech, my stance is this. If you dont like someone else's content. YOU block them. YOU refuse to listen to them. But you dont just blanket ban it because YOU wanna make a point and do this socially performative thing that no one in the real world cares about.

And I'll say it. Stupid crap like this is why Trump won anyway. because these liberal/leftie authoritarians are so smug and so self righteous, that a lot of people move the other way to "own the libs" and end up joining forces with the actual fascists. Seriously, this stupid crap is why leftists suck at politics, and this is one thing that I wanna correct out of them. We win by taking the moral high ground and respecting free speech. Take shots at people when called for it. And you know what? Elon deserves all the crap he gets for his salute. F that guy from the bottom of my heart. 

But...you know what? I'll say it. I'm GLAD, in a sense, that Elon did the salute. It's like the end of Inglorious Bastards when Aldo Raine is like, yeah, wars over, you're gonna take off the uniform and no one is gonna know you're a nazi any more. So then he carves a swastika into the guy's forehead so everyone knows he was a nazi during WWII. 

I dont support carving anything in anyones forehead. BUT....let's face it, if the guy actually thinks like that, I'm glad he has the balls to show it. Because now everyone KNOWS he is one. And that's how I feel about extremist content on X. Let it all hang out. I'd rather know how morally decayed our society is than have it masked. Because when it's masked, we end up electing morons like trump because we think "oh he aint that bad." Uh, yeah he is. And so is elon. We just elected a fascist government. And while we should go full "resistance mode" in 2025 against it, opposing it as vigorously as we did in the first term, well....again, I'm not really pro censorship. 

And before some tribalistic idiot pulls some with us or against us ultimatum on me, I'll say this. 1) this is how you cost us the election to trump in the first place, 2) i can be pro free speech but also think elon is a nazi POS. 

So yeah that's my stance there.

beyond that, there are some legit arguments. Like elon paywalling content and making the site unusable unless youre logged into an account. That is a pain and if it really is about useability, yeah, okay. But let's face it, I dont think it is about that. I think it's just some terminally online leftist thing where SJW reddit moderators are trying to use and abuse that tiny bit of power that they have to be socially performative bullies online because they get a power trip off of banning content that they don't like. And I refuse to enable those idiots either.

The five worst things Trump has done so far

 So....Trump's in office, and his administration is horrifying so far. There's a lot to cover, even with him only being in control for a little more than 24 hours, but there's already lots of stuff to talk about. However, I mostly wanna focus on what I consider to be the worst. 

So, let's discuss the worst of it.

5- Designating the cartel as terrorist organizations

One might wonder why I decided to go with this one, and here's why. It can be used as a pretext for the president to invade Mexico without congressional authorization. Ya know, like Bush did. Because terrorism bad. Like, it doesnt sound bad on paper, but it actually kind of is. It's more the implications of this one, rather than the actual nominal action itself.

4- Return to in person work

Being as pro labor as I am, I have to really crap on him over this one. Remote work is based. It's more convenient and beneficial to workers while not harming productivity. Sadly, for conservatives and business leaders, it's not about the productivity, it's about the control. These guys wanna be mini dictators over peoples' lives and don't want people to have any sense of independence from their work. The hate on remote work is irrational and really just about making things worse for workers.

3- The drill baby drill stuff (and other anti environmentalism)

So climate change is a national emergency linked to several actrual emergencies and disasters currently ongoing (LA wildfires, Helene still leaving Appalachia a hot mess), and this guy wants to drill for more oil and take us out of environmental agreements that help stem climate change. I've heard that he wants to take down windmills and stuff to. Nuts. Totally nuts. 

2- Pulling out of the OECD global tax deal

For as protectionist trump likes to pretend he is, pulling us out of a global tax on corporations is actually REALLY BAD. Because part of neoliberalism is the fact that these corporations can just shift their assets to countries that dont tax them, hence the tax haven issue, and why corporate tax is a race to the bottom. By establishing a minimum tax, it makes the tax functionally unavoidable and ends the race to the bottom, forcing corporations to pay a fair share. Trump just got rid of that. Scary.

1- Pardoning January 6thers

So....we all knew it was coming, but he blanket pardoned ALL Jan 6thers to my knowledge. Like full blanket pardon. Even violent ones. Which is insane. I'm sorry, but January 6th is a blight on our country, and the huge reason why I went so "resist lib" against trump this time around. Like, I can tolerate normal BS, but things that violate the peaceful transfer of power are a hard no for me. 

Oh, and before people go BUT BUT BIDEN PARDONED PEOPLE TOO. yeah, he did preemptive pardons for his family and people close to his administration because trump is a vindictive ###hole who would literally weaponize the justice system against these guys. So Biden is looking out for his team. That's all it is. The only one who actually committed any crimes was hunter, and even that conviction was politically motivated. Trump keeps trying to draw false equivalence and muddy the waters here, it's literally his MO. He blurs reality with his rhetoric and political tactics to get out of the crap he did while acting like some offense by someone else is just as bad. Which is why biden acted as he did anyway, since he literally would weaponize the justice department against him.

Heck, let's be honest, the dude also pulled secret service protection from John Bolton, basically opening him up to assassination attempts. And he removed general Milley's portrait from the pentagon, showing that basically the dude's fired for not being loyal to him. So yeah, the dude is a petty ##### who will stop at nothing to punish those disloyal to him.

Now, with all of that said, this isn't a comprehensive list.

However, let's face it, a lot of trump's actions so far are more virtue signalling than anything. Like saying that its the official policy of the US that there are only 2 genders, or decreeing that government maps call the gulf of mexico the gulf of america, or declaring a state of emergency at the border.

What about his birthright citizenship thing, you might ask? Well, I looked into the language of that and kind of agree with it, it only disqualifies it for people whose parents were both illegal. And this is a policy I've technically advocated for for a while, as birthright citizenship has a very obvious legal loophole there. Now, is this my top priority? No. And is the way he's doing it kind of bad? Yeah, we would need an amendment or a SCOTUS ruling to argue that. But Im not opposed to it in principle. 

And some stuff just doesnt have its full implications known yet. Like other stuff might end up being bad as things evolve from here, like his deportation stuff, but we just don't know yet. All of this is happening so fast i dont think we can really understand the implications of everything here. It will be good to revisit this topic at the end of his term maybe, if I'm still doing this blog.

Creating a tier list of console generations

 So, as we get into the Trump administration, I find myself kinda...tuning out and focusing on gaming. I did this during his first term too, although I am paying attention with horror at what he's doing. I might cover some of that later if I'm feeling up for it. Don't have much energy these days and I think I kind of need some time off to recharge and reorient myself.

With that said, I did have an idea for an article come to me, a look at gaming's evolution and creating a tier list of console, or gaming generations. All opinions are my own, although I do try to be fair. With that said, I'm going to judge on a 5 tier tier list: S, A, B, C, D. I won't include F because no console generation truly deserves an F, even if, perhaps some individual consoles do (looking at you, virtual boy). One caveat I will add is that I'll also grade nintendo separately from gen 7 on. I do this because Nintendo kinda went off and did their own thing and I actually find I have different opinions than nintendo during various eras than I do the mainstream generation in general. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. With that said, let's get to it.

Generation 1- D

Notable systems: Magnevox Odyssey

So, gen 1 is way before my time. And I actually had to google wtf gen 1 was if gen 3 was the master system and NES and atari 2600 was gen 2. Basically, it was the first console, it was expensive, and it was primitive. You know the OG pong where it's like just a dot and 2 lines as paddles? Basically that. They had more games than that, but reading descriptions of them, it's all basically like that in a way. Characters are dots, and yeah. I mean, gaming has to start somewhere I guess, and it's the 1970s. But yeah, this is way too primitive for me.For me, gaming functionally started with gen 2.

Generation 2- D

Notable systems: Atari 2600, commodore 64

So....gen 2 is where gaming actually starts for me. We're now in the early 80s. We get pacman, space invaders, missile command, that primitive version of duck hunt. I actually did get a commodore 128 as a kid from a friend, that was way ahead of its time too. Like gen 3 graphics. The more notable, mainstream atari 2600 though? Eh, still pixelated blobs, but blobs are better than dots. And it was in color. Technically the gen 1 was too, but yeah. It was primitive but it was something. Again, gaming had to start somewhere. Still, the generation did end in a gaming crash and tons of copies of ET being buried in the desert for some reason, so yeah. Kind of the definition of failure. 

Generation 3- B

Notable systems: Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System

So now we get into the mid 80s, and this is where gaming started being what we can recognize it now. This is the "8 bit" era. For a while until gen 7 everything was bit power even though that's not actually how computing works beyond a certain point, but it was a good marketing strategy. But yeah. This is where we started seeing the rise of the 2d sidescrollers like Mario and even Sonic (even though sonic was gen 4, the game gear used the same hardware as sega master system so stuff was backported to gen 3 from game gear). We got tetris, we got the first fighting games. You know, we start seeing some major diversification here. Gaming is what it is today because of the diversification that happened in the 3rd generation.

Generation 4- A

Notable systems: Super NES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy (OG), Game Gear

So...gen 4....that's when I started getting into gaming, and this is functionally "my childhood" (along with gen 5). We're in the early 90s now. We get the peak of the big rivalry between nintendo and sega, where sega does what nintendon't, and everything is "16 bit", and later on, some experimentation with 32 bit. This is a very classic generation, but also a weird one. Gaming wise, it's the peak of the 2D era. Sidescrollers were commonplace, Mario and Sonic were the top contenders. And I was a sega fanboy at the time with the game gear and genesis being my actual introduction to gaming. Nothing against nintendo though, they were fire with mario, and also starting to delve into early 3D stuff with Mario Kart and Star Fox. PC started getting the first 3D (or 2.5D) shooters like wolfenstein 3D and Doom. And both major console manufacturers had their failed experiments too. The virtual boy was a weird NES/SNES clone except you had to look into the device with goggles to see the screen. I remember testing one out in toys r us in the 90s and while I never bought one, idk, it seemed cool, but yeah, why do that...when you can just use a screen. Sega started messing with add ons to the genesis like sega CD and the 32X (32 bit genesis), and both of them kinda sucked. Like they had a mainstream sonic title, like sonic CD on sega CD, and knuckles chaotix on the 32x, but mostly, they didnt have enough library to draw people in. I did have a 32X and will insist its underrated. We got doom on genesis because of it which got me into FPS games at the tender age of 8. Knuckles chaotix was fire, and yeah, wasnt a bad era at all. Very nostalgic. Obviously not as good as what is to come. But yeah. I loved this era of gaming. 

Generation 5- B

Notable systems: Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color

So, this is where we really transition into 3D. We did this a little bit in primitive ways toward the tail end of gen 4, especially on PC with games like doom, wolfenstein, etc., but this is where 3D went mainstream. Sony originally worked with Nintendo, but then went in another direction, releasing their own console to compete with nintendo. Nintendo one upped them by having a "64 bit" system (again, everything was bit power until we kinda realized it stopped mattering and CPU/RAM/GPU is more important). Sega...imploded. They had the saturn, it sucked and barely had any games. No mainline sonic games worth mentioning, etc. The playstation did what sega didn't basically, and had a much stronger library, even though I've always found sony to be overrated. Still, they did have a decent amount of PC ports at the time and some games in their own right. For me, the crown jewel of gen 5 was the nintendo 64. It had amazing graphics for the time. They really transitioned to 3D with games like Mario Kart 64, Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64, Goldeneye 007, and the Turok series. This is also a big part of my childhood and very memorable for me. PC also had a lot of 3D games in this era that are considered classics today. We got RTS games like command and conquer. FPSes like Quake and Quake 2. It was a pretty booming era for gaming.

However, I can't rate this generation as highly as gen 4 for a few simple reasons. Gen 4 was the peak of the 2D era. And most 3D games were PC games with PC control schemes that can be modded (think doom). As a result, Gen 4 games have aged quite well and are easily playable even today. It was a very plug and play generation, and the games seemed to age well. Gen 5 games have aged like milk. You try to play an N64 FPS today and you wonder wtf were they thinking with the control schemes. Not to mention the games themselves were hampered by gratuitous amounts of fog to limit view distance, they ran at like 240p or even less, often at sub 30 FPS. And outside of the best PC games of the era, I find much of gen 5 hard to play today. Some games have aged gracefully in it, but many others did not. It really was an awkward transition generation from 2D to 3D. 

Generation 6- B

Notable systems: Sega Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, Xbox (OG), Game Boy Advance

So, we're now getting into the 2000s. And I'm not going to lie. At the time, I kind of felt like gen 6 "fell off" for me gaming wise. I actually kind of fell out of love with gaming in a sense, similar as I did recently with gen 9. Part of this was my own fault though. I started out with the dreamcast, and that died. The dreamcast wasnt a perfect system in retrospect. It actually feels more like gen 5.5 now. It was weaker graphically, the control scheme was weaker for FPS titles and the like. And while it did have some good software, it lacked a lot of the titles the other console had. After it died, I had a choice: PS2, Gamecube, or Xbox. And I chose the worst option. 

Like, don't get me wrong, the PS2, which I ended up choosing due to peer pressure at the time, had good games. but it didn't have games I liked. I dont like most of sony's exclusives of the time, like gun, bully, GTA, final fantasy, kingdom hearts, tekken, gran turismo. And in retrospect, the peer pressure aspect of it really was a bunch of middle school teens wanting to feel edgy by getting into these M rated titles. But yeah, I never really got into most of those, and ended up playing multiplats while losing out on TONS AND TONS of nintendo exclusives on the gamecube, and stuff like Halo, Doom 3, Morrowind, Fable, etc. on xbox. The fact is, I should've went for something else like gamecube or xbox. The games on those systems were more up my alley. And I feel like I can honestly come back to gen 6 having a more objective historical look at it and realizing it was low key good, I just didn't do it right at the time.

 Still, it isn't the best generation. Much like gen 5, the 3D growing pains continued into gen 6. We had a lot of innovations and refinements to gameplay, and in retrospect a lot of gen 6 games did age a lot better than gen 5 ones as a result. But still, I kind of consider it a relatively average era of video games. Like, the nintendo exclusives, looking at them now, werent as good as the gen 5 counterparts a lot of the time. It was mostly the third party games that were better. But yeah. Each of these eras evolves and builds on the last, and honestly, gens 5 and 6 in general are like those awkward teenage years for gaming where a lot of necessary changes happened, even if the era felt kinda awkward and underappreciated at the time. 

Generation 7 (mainstream)- S

Notable systems: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PSP, (Wii, 3DS) 

This is where I'm gonna start rating nintendo separately. Im doing it for a few core reasons. Here, nintendo kinda went off and started doing their own thing. They stopped competing directly with competitors, giving up the graphics war to them, and focusing instead on a lot of weird innovations, some of which ended well, but some of which didn't. 

The mainstream of gen 7 was FIRE. This is THE peak era of gaming for me, and part of the gaming golden age. It actually started late in gen 6 on PC, with games like half life 2 and Doom 3, but those games also made it to gen 7 consoles, if not late gen 6, and fleshed out the library significantly. This is also when PC gaming and console gaming started melding together, where PC functionally became a console too. Up until this point it largely had a separate library of games and if you were PC only you lost A LOT. Now, you only lose nintendo titles. If something is on PC, it's also likely on Xbox and/or Playstation, if not both. Sure, all the systems had exclusives, like Sony had killzone, god of war, and resistance, while microsoft had gears of war and halo, but yeah, we started seeing a lot of innovations here.

Gen 6 started the online trend, especially on PC, and some systems had primitive online services to mimic the PC experience badly, but only Xbox even remotely pulled something off with halo in gen 6. Gen 7, everything went online, and it was kind of a golden era of gaming. Here, i got into the Xbox 360, before migrating to PC in the second half of the generation and staying there since. There are so many titles from this gen that I loved that I cant even name them all. Some of them, like halo, call of duty, and battlefield, got their starts in gen 6, but it was gen 7 where they really shined and became household names. We got games like fallout 3, new vegas, skyrim, far cry 3. And yeah, we got tons of open world games. We got crysis on PC, although that wasn't that good, it just had gen 8 graphics away ahead of its time. But yeah. This era of gaming is especially magical for me, and kind of the peak of gaming for me. I've been chasing that high ever since, and it's been slowly wearing off.

Generation 7 (Nintendo)- C

Notable systems- Wii, DS

So...this is where I grow out of loving nintendo really. The fact is, they changed in gen 7, and not in a good way. The DS was an interesting concept, I liked the idea of a handheld N64, but in reality, the software library never was as good as I wanted. Yes, it had some decent first party titles, but it never really lived up to being a portable N64 for me. it ended up going in a direction of lots of shovelware games and kind of felt like an early version of mobile gaming at times, where you have a touch screen and all of these crappy low quality games people dont wanna play. Still, for what it's worth, the DS wasn't that bad. But the company did change and I quickly became disenchanted with nintendo here.

The Wii though, oof. Like, here's the thing. The Wii lacked a lot of the third party support other titles got. This is because the Wii was functionally like a game cube with motion controls. It was a little more advanced, but not a ton, and it shoehorned motion controls into everything. Lately I've been doing retro gaming and going back to the wii and find playing many titles painful. many of them FORCE motion controls on people, even if they have third party ports on other consoles. Like, they really tried to force people into the whole motion control thing. If you just wanted to do normal controller gaming, you were crap out of luck, and returning to the wii today is often relatively painful as a result, since that stuff didn't age well. It kinda felt like the virtual boy in a way. But yeah, nintendo kinda...went in a wrong direction here, and it honestly took them until "gen 9" (or gen 8 part 2?) to recover. 

Still, if I had anything good to say here, it's that the first party titles were still quality. It's just a shame everything has control schemes that are just plain weird and nonsensical now. I'd rather play N64 games than much of this system in terms of controls. That's how bad it is. 

Generation 8 (mainstream)- A

Notable systems- Playstation 4, Xbox One, PS Vita

Gen 8 never quite lived up to the hype of gen 7, but it was, quite frankly, a continuation of that golden era. We got so many good games in this era I can't even count them all. And until COVID, this was the current era of gaming, and even then, it still continued into 2022-2023ish if you really wanted it to. It had a lot of good titles. The graphics were stellar, and this is the era where graphics really stopped mattering. When everything looks this good, who needs more "progress"? Game play was refined from gen 7, we got tons of multiplayer titles. Xbox and Playstation titles started making their way to PC itself. And yeah, I won't say everything is a winner here, but overall, the generation is. 

However, as you know, I do think it kind of dropped off toward the end. Although did it? 2019 had a TON of good games, and was a solid send off to such an astounding generation. 

Generation 8 (Nintendo)- D

Notable systems- Wii U, 3DS

Not everyone in generation 8 did well though. Nintendo kind of crashed and burned. The fact is, they innovated too much, and the consumer base pushed back and punished them for it. The Wii U continued the trend of underpowered systems with terrible awkward control schemes, this time with a controller with a...screen on it? Yeah. The games werent that bad in retrospect, but yeah, they were clearly isolating themselves from the rest of the industry and outside of their stellar first party titles, there's little reason to invest in a nintendo console.

In the handheld market, the 3DS was never received as well as the DS. It was expensive, and it seemed to have this weird mentality of chasing trends, like "what if we took the DS...and made it THREE DEE?! Like...stereoscopic 3D was a trend in the early 2010s. We had it in some PC games too, but you needed specialized monitors for that, and people just wanna...sit in a chair or their couch and play games. The motion control schtick was getting old by this point, adding 3D to their handheld was weird, and they even had to release a 2DS (which I do own) that basically was the 3DS...without the 3D gimmick. And it was cheaper, and yeah you could still play the games. The fact is, nintendo just went down this whole rabbit hole of awkward here and while their first party games are excellent, with many of them being released for the nintendo switch, that's literally all that you got here. Otherwise you get inferior hardware with weird controls, limited ports, inferior ports when they do exist, and just an awkward experience. Unless you really REALLY like nintendo's games, just avoid. 

Generation 9 (mainstream)- C

Notable systems- Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5

Honestly, this is where I feel like gaming is hitting its "fat elvis" phase. Remember my article on "peak gaming" and how modern gaming sucks? Well, let's face it, it all hit the fan at the start of gen 5. This is where we wait for years just to get buggy games with poor optimization, questionably better graphics than gen 8. and here I am longing for the old days returning to retro gaming and partaking in buying remakes of older games. This generation really fell off for me in terms of games that I like. THe FPSes are getting too hyper competitive and try hardy outside of COD, the old franchises like halo and battlefield are in a civil war with their fan base regarding what direction they should go, while the developers end up screwing it all up anyway and yeah.

To be fair I did point out things started falling off in the second half of gen 8. In a sense, those trends are amplifying in gen 9 and I'm left wondering if gaming's best days are behind us now. Even when given options to buy games, I just cant justify most purchases. The games are too expensive for questionable value. And it seems like in the PC gaming industry the robber barons at nvidia are trying to ensure that the experience to game is as painful as possible without their fricking overpriced hardware.

Like...here's an unpopular opinion. it's fine for things to plateau. Not all progress is good. Look at what happened with nintendo in gen 7 and 8. I really think they fell off there. Look at what happened with the virtual boy and all the genesis add ons in gen 4. Look at gen 2 just fricking making tons of games that suck and the industry imploding until nintendo came around to save it. Gaming hits ruts sometimes. It goes in weird directions, it doesnt always get it right. And sometimes not all trends are good. As I said, i think by gen 8, we kinda hit a peak graphically where further improvements dont matter. back in the day, every console generation was a MASSIVE leap over the last. I'd say gen 7 started hitting the plateau where that slowed down, especially as PC games were basically looking like gen 8 for the most part even in gen 8. And in gen 8, we were looking like gen 9. Now they're doing a lot of gen 8 remasters and they just end up looking like gen 8 games always did for us. With only minor improvements graphically. Everything has to be ray tracing and DLSS and lets be honest, the trends of having games regress in resolution and framerate to push fricking ray tracing and the like is disgusting. It's actually causing a DOWNGRADE in visuals and performance quality. Like the whole point of gen 9 was originally "we're gonna make 4k mainstream", and now its "you need a RX 6600 or RTX 2060 just to run this crappy game at 30 FPS 720p with upscaling" sometimes. 

Again, peak gaming. We're at peak gaming. We care about shoehorning progress at all costs were regressing.

And honestly, the BR trend, the open world trends, which started in gen 8, are starting to get old by this point. And the aesthetics are just cringe. Like everything is monetization. I saw a video recently showing in COD your gun can look like a unicorn and fart rainbows. I'm not kidding. Wtf. I kinda miss the old aesthetics of the 2000s at this point. 

And honestly? The games arent that fun. Outside of the older games like halo, Battlefield and COD, which outside of COD are struggling, everything has to be hyper competitive. or it has to have a gimmick. You cant just have a basic FPS any more. It has to be like, an open world survival FPS with roguelike elements and blah blah blah. Like, games arent simple any more. Everything has to be as confusing as the first witcher with yahtzees OG PC master race reference. It kinda sucks. As such, I'm starting to mostly miss the gaming of the past decade or two. Really, anything from gens 7 or 8, or even 6 at times as far as SP games go. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for gen 6 since...I felt similarly to gen 6 back then as i do to gen 9 now in a way (just the feeling of falling out of love with gaming), but yeah at this point im coming back around and saying gen 6 was WAY better, and those 5-7 years had far more stuff I want to play than anything these days does. 

It's not gaming's lowest point, we haven't hit rock bottom. But I'm just meh on this entire era so far. 

Generation 8.5? (Nintendo)- B

Notable system- Switch

It's hard to tell with the switch, given its staggered release date, and how it spanned both gen 8 and gen 9, if it's truly a gen 8 or 9 console. It's kinda gen 7 hardware wise, with performance closer to the PS3/360/Wii U than any modern system. But it came out after the Wii U failed, and kinda feels like what the Wii U should have been if it didn't suck. But it also lasted a long time, really only having its replacement announced last week with the Switch 2. 

In a sense, it is gen 8. It has gen 8 style nintendo hardware, and most Wii U games worth their salt are being ported to the switch, where we finally return to having sane, normal control schemes. Wii U being underpowered is also actually somewhat justified here, it made the price tag relatively low, although still kinda high for my own tastes, but the biggest benefit is it doubles as a handheld. You can play a nintendo switch with a big TV....OR...as a handheld. And it's just as appropriate in either situation. If anything, Nintendo finally found a niche that works. Not BS motion controls, but instead, a truly portable console that is both a console and a handheld. And the switch is also why, I would assume, we're seeing the rise in PC handhelds like the steam deck, or even android handhelds for streaming like the razer edge, which I just bought. The fact is, people are looking for new ways to play their games, and portability is something people actually want. So the switch, and the switch 2, are both aimed at doing both. 

The Wii U's best games ended up being ported to the switch. And while I never got into the switch, since I have issues with nintendo's entire business model in other ways (mainly their reluctance to ever lower prices of hardware/games), I have to say, having played a bit when a friend brought one over once, and looking at their library objectively, the switch is easily nintendo's best console in 20 years now. It still aint perfect. It still has the issues of being primarily carried by nintendo's strong first party library including stuff like mario, mariokart, pokemon, legend of zelda, etc., and third party support is weak. Not all 3rd party titles will be ported to the switch given its currently 2 consoles behind on power, and because the ports they do get end up being poor half the time, but hey, they made it relatively portable. Still, as PC hardware has shown with the steam deck, rog ally, etc, it's now possible to have handheld PS4/XB1 level graphics, and the switch 2 is intending to hit that or surpass it. So we will be getting a new console with the same design philosophy, and I can see it being successful. 

Still, the switch is a fairly middling generation for me. Despite peer pressure to buy it, I never did. The fact is online multiplayer being killed my interest at launch. The console isnt TOO prohibitively expensve, like $200 for a handheld only model and $300 for the full monte version, but then you gotta keep in mind there's only like 5-10 games I'd actually want, and because nintendo never drops prices, you'd be paying like $60 each. Given the opportunity costs, I just never justified the purchase. Like....nintendo just lost me after the DS, and all things considered, the game library isnt much stronger than the DS for me. it's just nintendo third party titles, and I dont think nintendo's IPs are worth paying full price, or buying a dedicated machine for. I really wish they would release their games on PC and the like. Like in retrospect, sega getting out of the hardware industry was a blessing in disguse, since now I can play sonic games both on my PC and my phone.

Really, I wish nintendo would get with the rest of the industry and become more multiplatform. Console exclusivity is a relic of the past, and one that isn't good for consumers. I would rather have one or maybe two eco systems for games, with those being PC and android. Nintendo still tries to leverage its first party titles to pressure people to buy their ecosystem, but I'd honestly rather just buy their stuff on steam. 

Conclusion

With all of that said, how to I rank the generations roughly? Well, if we go by my tiers, I would say:

S- Gen 7 (mainstream)

A- Gen 4, Gen 8 (mainstream)

B- Gen 3, Gen 5, Gen 6, Gen 8.5 (Nintendo)

C- Gen 7 (Nintendo), Gen 9 (mainstream)

D- Gen 1, Gen 2, Gen 8 (Nintendo)

With all of that said, what about rankings?

Well, Gen 7 is #1, we know that.

Gen 8 is #2 for me I think. I gave Gen 4 A due to historical significance but I dont think it competes to how good gen 8 was.

Gen 4 is therefore #3.

As for the Bs....thats a lot of stuff. I'm gonna say Gen 6 is #4, Gen 5 #5, Gen 8.5 (nintendo) #6, and Gen 3 #7, again the older stuff doesnt compete to the new stuff as well.

Next, I'd say Gen 7 Nintendo for #8, and Gen 9 for #9. Gen 7 nintendo had games, this modern gen just kinda...sucks. 

Beyond that #10, I'd give to gen 8 Nintendo, they had games, just poor gimmicks. Gen 2 is #11, and Gen 1 is #12 for me, they're just too old to enjoy. 

With that said, let's see it all laid out better.

12- Gen 1

11- Gen 2

10- Gen 8 (N)

9- Gen 9

8- Gen 7 (N)

7- Gen 3

6- Gen 8.5 (N)

5- Gen 5

4- Gen 6

3- Gen 4

2- Gen 8

1- Gen 7

And yeah, given my explanations, I think this seems fair. These are just my opinions of course, but yeah, it sounds about right for the most part. Gens 1 and 2 were gaming's infancy and not comparable to the rest of the beast. Gens 3 and 4 were the 2D era, with gen 4 being far more mature and refined, and aging well into the modern day. Gens 5 and 6 were like gaming's awkward teenage years where the transition to 3D, while very impressive at the time, hasn't aged well (well, 5 was well recieved at the time but aged poorly, 6 was poorly received but redeemed in the historical context of things). Gen 7 and 8 were basically gaming's peak years, and now gen 9 feels like a weird midlife crisis. 

And then from gens 7-9 nintendo went off doing their own thing trying to be different, but tend to be poorly received by me, who outgrew their business model. Their gen 7 and gen 8 shenanigans aged poorly, and while in a better place now, honestly, the only thing attracting people nintendo is their IPs, and honestly, for me, they're often just not valuable enough to make me wanna buy their consoles. Some call them the disney of video games, child friendly, exclusive, and driven by IPs, but yeah, idk, as an adult, it's not that I dont like nintendo, it's just that I aint going out of my way just to play their stuff, especially when they only have a handful of franchises that i genuinely like these days and most are targetted by kids (not saying that adults cant enjoy them too, but again, given the opportunity costs, they're not worth enough for me to invest the steep startup costs given the cost of the consoles+games). 

Still, given that mainstream gaming is in dire straits as I see it in this modern era, idk, nintendo is starting to look more attractive at this point. I did give them a B while the mainstream gaming gets a C, so...yeah. 

Idk...gaming's just in a weird spot now. Idk if it's me getting old, or if games actually sucks compared in the past, but i do notice a lot of other people in the 30s sharing similar sentiments as me, while some other people seem to think im off base. Idk. Honestly, i almost think we need another video game crash to right the industry. And then become just a tad more like nintendo, focusing more on gameplay than on just pumping out increasingly realistic graphics. Graphics have been "good enough" for a good 10-20 years now. I'd rather invest more into making more games work on cheaper older hardware to make gaming more affordable than chasing progress at all costs. That's my opinion, I know I'm in a minority, but yeah.