Avowed Inframaterialist

Via @rajaeen1 in Instagram

If I go spend 20 dollars at a restaurant we wouldn’t call it a micro-transaction, but if I spent the same amount of money in a video game then it is a micro-transaction?

Then they made their way to video games. And it used to be that they presented a reasonably comprehensible bargain:

You get to play a full-featured videogame for free, in return for which the game will occasionally advertise a premium cosmetic or unlock of some kind, for prices like $.99 or a couple of dollars. This was considered slightly annoying, especially in the mobile gaming space, but the trade-off was clear. Free game, paid optional content for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

The absolute maximal price you'd pay for a League of Legends skin was about $30, and those skins were considered an absolutely outrageous expense for totally dedicated League of Legends lifers, and were expected to be the absolute peak of technical possible quality. And those were still mocked as ridiculous expenses for weirdos, the sort of thing that no normal or average player should ever be expected to blow money on.

Bethesda was mocked for MONTHS for trying to sell $2.50 horse armor cosmetics in Oblivion. Microtransactions? In a premium product? In a sixty dollar game? Absolutely unacceptable! That was a breaking of the bargain!

But Bethesda's transgression was the thin end of a wedge. More and more of those post-launch monetizations started creeping into premium products, and by sheer erosion, by sheer slow grinding normalization, they started to multiply and the prices started to creep up and up and up, and day 1 DLC became normal, and ultimate and premium editions and super ultimate exclusive digital deluxe collector's editions and battle passes and lootboxes and... yeah.

It used to be a... not amazing, but at least a reasonably fair bargain. A transparent bargain. You get to play a game for free, and the price you pay instead is the soft pressure of microtransactions—actually micro transactions—being advertised to you.

This sketch is incredible. Perfect moment to capture. 10/10 for the artist.

Link to post

On Monday Nationals MP Alison Penfold introduce this private bill to federal parliament in an attempt to reshape the Sex Discrimination Act to target trans people while claiming not to target trans people

It is worth noting that this bill is being pushed by the National party, one of Australia's main right-wing parties. The party currently in power is the Labour party, our biggest left-wing/centrist party. The party pushing for this bill does not have the votes needed to pass it, and thus either needs to convince centrists to agree with them or are doing this to curry favour for the next election or some other goal.

When it comes to the bill itself, they are defining anything relating to one's sex in terms of the sex binary in a way which excludes intersex people in many ways. They also are changing the definition of sexual attraction, and the main change this makes is an exclusion of non-binary people in attraction. However, it is also worded so a trans woman lesbian is considered straight, and their definition also doesn't properly include asexual people. Those wording issues are already present in the original law, however.

If you don't know who your member is you can use this link to look up both state and federal members, just use your postcode or suburb to check.

"i am a self described enemy to liberation and i think being asked to respect children by making a minute change to my speech patterns is why nazis have a point" if you stopped acting incredulous so you could hear yourself maybe i wouldn't have to kick you in the shins for being a fucking fascist apologist. if you think not insulting children makes right wingers correct, you don't actually think that, you just already thought right wingers were correct and wanted an excuse.

this posturing is the exact behavior my post was criticizing and it's embarrassing anyone would even say the first few lines, let alone the baiting plausible deniability and accusatory nonsense she followed it up with. you help no one but your ego and oppressors, you are the enemy of child liberation and because i am not a fascist that makes you my enemy too. this is what people mean when they say liberals think fascists are correct and simply disagree about how moral fascist action is.

"but what if i want to imply lesserness of a person and other them by comparing them to a disadvantaged social group" then don't. it's that simple. im tired of people dancing around it. there are extremely simple ways to say that someone is acting inappropriately in any given situation none of which need to include a degrading comparison to an oppressed group. thinking that our language cannot have fascist propaganda baked into what you think is unassuming phrasing just means you fell for the propaganda.