Rinse and Repeat

: history, September 05 2022 ▶

A gamer by birth I was searching something to play. Before my vacation I was quite busy (and tired) at work, so gaming / binge watching were scarce commodities, but, with some free time afterwards, I started to look around. Gamescom 2022 was at its end, same for the school's summer vacation, no knowledge of new titles for months - how hard can it be? Well, 2 weeks later I am writing this article in utter frustration and fear for the future of this world.
Months ago I have uninstalled "World of Warships" (been playing it since release in 2015) - it has become the poisonous mess of unbalanced (Russian) ships, copy-paste content, crazy bugs and idiotic players (pay-to-win mostly). "Dune: Spice Wars" grabbed the attention for a while, but also lacked the depth to keep me exploring. I caught myself watching hundreds of replays of "Starcraft" (24yo game) and "Warcraft 3" (20yo game) - the first still going strong in Korea, which is absolutely amazing! My PC is rather powerful so, at least hardware-wise, there is no show-stopper. I started searching for a game, where I can deep-dive and potentially escape the "desert of the real world" ... and there is literally nothing out there worth playing! Checked Gamescom titles - from bland sequels, through so-deep-in-development-it-may-never-see-the-light overpromising titles, to the casual remakes. Nothing to sustainably grab the attention. Then browsed Steam and EpicGames stores for weeks - same thing - unfinished games, utter lack of creativity, nothing unique, nothing even moderately intriguing. Remakes, remasters, retitles, reskins, retextures. Re-,re-,re-, repeat.
During my vacation had to drive for quite some time, stuck with whatever radio stations consider modern. Sampled songs, remixes, re-edits. Sounds from the 90s-till-2010s, mixed with some electronic garbage, flagged as brand new songs.
Movie-wise the situation was even worse. Sequels to brilliant franchises flopped miserably. "Dune" - a stunning visual success and "Top Gun: Maverick" was a sweet 80s nostalgia (nothing more), but everything else ... oh Lord, give me strength! I have not seen so many shows canceled in their 1st season. Latest drama is the "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" - it costed Mr. Bezos $250mil to obtain the rights alone and another $470mil for making the Season 1. It bombed miserably even before it started, to such extent that Amazon and its daughter company, IMDB, fixed the review ratings and ultimately banned all reviews. The "independent" critics in "rottentomatoes", properly-fed as always, awarded the amazing 84%, but the audience smashed it with 39%. Personally, I do not believe it is that bad, but again - I am not the biggest Tolkien fan so cannot really tell. But what I can tell is I could barely stand "Star Trek: Discovery" (just a few episodes needed to quit; similar results as per Critics/Audience) and "Star Trek: Picard" was just "meh". Watching Patrick Stewart (82yo) struggle keeping his lines was just sad. Vulturing on a rotting corpse, rather than some development of the beloved universe - that's what it was. And many other examples...you know exactly what I mean.

OK, none of this mess is some news. If your IQ is above the room temperature you already have some idea why this is happening. Here I am trying to summarize the problems with the "Modern Entertainment Industry", not necessarily in significance order.

1. Lack of ideas.
It appears that modern screen(song)writes are just empty. "Everything is already done" is not far fetched, but also not always the truth. Unlike tech (where real discoveries nowadays are almost impossible), writing a "entertainment product" is nowhere near as hard, time consuming and expensive. You need (a ton of) talent and motivation. Especially for musicians - Metallica still gathers 50K+ people on their concerts, singing the same songs for the past 3 decades. Can you compare them to a band from 2012 onward? No, you cannot. Any contemporary hit-song is hammered down on a conveyor belt and sold to the highest bidder (one-time-hit performers mostly). Recently, everything is just "sampled" garbage, rinse and repeat. I guess talented people are busy with other activities.

2. Corpo greed.
I remember the big writers strike ~2008 and the aftermath - we were overwhelmed by bullshit movies for years. When the person, who wrote the script, receives a dime and some Hollywood clown "voice acts" for millions, the former surely reconsiders further such endeavors. Greed cuts corners and a brilliant idea ultimately fails due to the low quality or presentation of the end product. It even endangers the people during their work - Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a lady on set, as the company replaced the gun experts with some cheap idiots. In another twist, the Greed does not care about the franchise longetivity, the fans, the ideas, the legacy - they will just make a survey on what will bring the quick bucks and follow its results, regardless if it may end the product's universe or not. The Greed will push out an unfinished game and will cut 3 of the planned 10 episodes (murdering the plot) of you favorite series. The Greed will take money and adjust the movie/game/music video to the narrative of the puppet masters, despite knowing that the majority of the audience will hate it.

3. Squeezing the franchise.
Star Wars, StarTrek, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, FIFA, etc - all victims of milking the franchise dry. The Corpo Greed rushes dull, repetitive, numerous spin-offs, just to grab the short-term fruits. In another article I wrote about high-ranking CEOs, who do not see past the quarterly-bonus-horizon. Same applies here. If they notice a decline, they will not try to improve, they will not listen to the community. They will inflate the product with some unnecessary, unwanted, dreary content presenting as "the next big thing", thus frustrating the audience even further. As cheap as possible!

4. Pay to win / watch.
You buy a streaming subscription. Several months later some of the content requires additional payment. Or you buy a AAA-game (~$80) and the multiplayer component introduces real-money-only loot-boxes with premium equipment. Or an "expansion" 3 months after the launch, which basically forces you to spend cash if you want to continue playing. Sound familiar? This is not related to the quality of the product, but is a predatory practice, which destroys people's trust and drives the fanbase away - same result as if the game is bad.

5. Overpromising and and under-delivering.
Games in particular are plagued by this. Regardless if an unfinished game is published due to greed or plain management's stupidity it can destroy a franchise irreversibly. Another example is watching an incredible trailer, then receiving something completely different on your PC/Console/Movie screen. Especially if the game/movie lasted forever to produce and consumed millions in green - you just scratch your head in disbelief where all these money went?

6. Woke "culture" and correctness (I know and I do not care).
We reached the most controversial and significant cause. Recent movies, games, music are deliberately pumped with brutal brain-washing messages, not to the taste of the regular person. Most of the time they have nothing to do with reality - they just follow somebody's sick agenda (the puppet masters). Black people need more recognition (...than white!) - put a black actress as Ariel, the little mermaid. Wakanda is the most advanced country in the world (but surrounded by 3rd World such). We need strong (black) female characters - the next James Bond can be a (black) lady - what a wonderful idea! Not enough LGBTQ stuff on screen - let's randomly throw gay scenes here and there. Oh, it is a children's movie - even better! Our primary political opponent is USSR/Balkan/MidEast/China - the bad guys will always be dumb Russians/Balkans/MidEasterners/Chinese (replace the variable to match the recent enemy). "Refugees" need to be respected more and get all benefits immediately - all trespassers from now on are "refugees" and the actors, women and children of course, match racially the current immigrant influx.
Forcing such foreign "virtues" will always fail, no matter what! People are already pushed too far from the Woke culture (it is "canceling" itself as we see) and will fight against any such "entertainment". We have numerous examples of such fiascos and LoTR is its latest victim.

P.S.
Just I was hitting the "nothing to watch" mood, decided to try "The Boys" - a long-time bench-warmer of my "to watch" list. And, oh boy, was it a good one! A fresh breeze of honest brutality, hard-hitting sarcasm, some soul dive, intriguing and intense story. A twisted parody of the modern Corpo-culture and Marvel/DC pink-unicorn's bullshit. I had so much fun, I can forgive the casual plot holes, pinches of "woke" and cut-backs. Highly recommend it, especially in the light of the upcoming Season 4.

Puppet master's guide - Part 4 - propaganda mayhem

: history, May 18 2022 ▶

What a time to be alive! You can skip all the "puppet master's guides", just take notes. If you are smart and patient enough, you may even pierce the vale of the greatest propaganda schemes there is/was - the war in Ukraine.
The article is not about the war itself. It is about the reason and the manipulative activities we all are part of. Check the title picture. Happening probably since the beginning of the human history, but now it is way more obvious, as everyone, even the stupidest person, can "express opinion" over the social media. Suddenly you realize the term "being surrounded by idiots" is an understatement. So, people, seeking for a simple answer of a complex problem, are falling straight into the whirlpool of mass propaganda and total brainwashing. If you seriously think, that a one-liner like "Putin did it for resources" or "The maniac just wants war and territory" can explain what's happening - this website is not for you.

Let's get several things straight:
- Russia executes insane propaganda over its population, but so is the Western world. For the "evil empire" (as the US president Reagan refers to Russia) that's pretty much the standard operation mode - so no surprises here. For the Americans - kind-of a daily business also, especially after 9/11. For Europe - not so much. Since 24th February 2022 the people in EU are under the same (or worse) level of disinformation as Russia, China, USA and the rest of the world.
- This war is entirely wrong. Mr.Putin has his own (and probably valid) reasons to start it, but he could have achieved his goals (whatever they might be) by other means.
- Russia is conducting their activities in some tandem with US - if not for something bigger, at least they warned them several weeks before the invasion occurred.
- At this point (18th May 2022) nobody knows what the exact goal of this war is. But a "bonus" objective is the destruction of the EU. The economical harakiri that the powerful EU countries (Germany, France), with the kind push from US and UK, are imposing on the entire union and their own citizens is undoubtedly part of "The Great Reset" and the new world order. In several years, the deindustrialized and weak EU will be no more.

Back to our main topic - the Propaganda. And more specifically - the one spreading in the so-called bastion of the free speech and democracy - the EU. Get your puppet master's gloves and mandate things to your lackeys (the EU governments):
- first and foremost - all official and established media should be put under your control. Cut off any foreigners. (I had a russian TV among the channels of my provider - it was replaced by Ukranian almost immediately. I used to watch it just to estimate the direction of the current propaganda and not for actual informative purposes) Only one view point is valid and that is yours - no matter the truth! That's a basic principle of the good propaganda since the dawn of time.
- second - smother all debate possibilities on the topic. On "day 1", there is one direction - yep, you guessed it - whatever suits you. Someone may think on "How is such coordination even possible, without prior preparation?" and now we come to the next point.
- whoever questions media's standpoint should be flagged as agent-provocateur of the opposition. Again - it does not matter if your side is right or wrong, if it has moral, historical, rightful superiority. Discredit and mute everyone who opposes you.
- conveniently skip deep historical analysis on everything that led to this conflict. The sheep will not understand it anyway.
- put some dubious data out. It should indirectly refers both sides, but yours should be easily dismissable (Mr.Biden's Twitter followers are mostly fake, Mr.Putin's approval reached 83%, Adrian Bocquet who?, no NATO officers on the battlefield and so on...). People will get lost in the myriad of fake news.
- some may make a parallel between Russian aggression and US "freedom" operations in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen - nonsense! Obviously the first thing is a barbaric slaughter and the second is spreading the democracy. Look at the previous "PM guides" about lying to go to war.
- turn the lens on the facts (the ones that even you cannot smear or deny). Take a look at the example below. The article came ~24 hours after the Asovstal commander announced surrender. The title translates as "260 Ukrainian soldiers leave Asov steel mill" and the bold text below the picture is "After weeks of blockade, the fighters, some of whom were seriously injured, were taken away by Russian units. They are later to be released as part of a prisoner exchange. The area around Lviv became the target of new air raids". A masterpiece indeed! The best brainwashing is the subtle one (although for any intelligent person that's not so subtle) - here the puppet media does not use "surrender" or "captured". And immediately shifts the topic. For the same story, you can easily find more or less the same description, but with the "proper" use of the word "evacuation". If you can do this with an exemplary, established newspaper as FAZ, imagine what you can achieve with all other second-hand, hungry media.

- nowadays it is not uncommon for any side to use mercenaries. Shush extensive talking about Ukrainians and overblow everything for the russian military (a country that has ~200 ethnic groups). One may find suspicious how Ukranians handle perfectly, in a matter of days, battle equipment they have never seen before (even with interface in arabic) - again, nonsense! Slap one "russian bot" here and there - see - everything is fine now.
- nobody will even notice if you censor, ban/delete accounts or put your own fake news. So why just not use it.
- the time is ripe to create the "Ministry of Truth" - if you have no idea what this is, please read some books (1984) or just watch what Mr.Biden's administration is doing under the term "Disinformation Governance Board".
- some of your weak henchmen may slip (under oath in front of a jury), that you have been going around the international regulations and developing bio-weapons (replace with "bio-laboratories") in the affected country. Nullify the following "cause-and-effect" reasoning, if this might be just one of the many reasons, your adversary attacked.
- promote that this is a war between Ukraine and Russia, and you have nothing to do with that.
- announce plans for cutting all ties with Russia (for your vassals of course). Oil and gas for sure, as soon as possible. No worries - you are the biggest re-distributor of such. Profit awaits! Plus unknown number of russian ships will depart ports with "unknown destination" in their logs. Guess what will happen in the international waters. Suddenly, countries with no raw materials will start exporting huge amounts of both. While Europe commits suicide, you can continue importing fertilizers and diesel with a simple legislative switcheroo.
- being a puppet master is a tough and tiresome job. Get some fun in your daily activities by creating the "opposite of art"-type of musical festival, where the first place is always won by "the victim of the day" - if your chosen country cannot really cut it (come on, do I even have to say this?!) just manipulate the results a bit.

Do not forget the other tools of the puppet master. There is just no better time to rob the people by printing an endless amount of money. War (indirect military help), recovery plans, cutting the dependency on the russian raw materials - all bottomless pits where the money flow unsanctioned and unaccounted for. Additionally put some of your corporations as a "middle man" so you have a cut from every shady deal, every "classified" trade agreement etc.
Dump unknown amount weapons in the hands of a notorious para-military unit. It does not matter how many of them will be further sold to terrorists. The main point is causing chaos, prolonging the war and keeping the industrial-military complex going - hurting the "enemy" comes just as a bonus.