Imagine an open-source, free college course where everyone gets as much time as they need and aren’t embarrased to ask whatever questions come to their minds in the middle of the lesson.

My impression of the average student today is that they lack so much curiosity, in part because of youtube short–induced ADHD, in part because chatgpt just answers all of their homework questions for them, no effort at all, that a course like this would be functionally useless.

This is not an issue of capitalism, detestable as it is: young people are using AI to offload the mental burden of learning. Removing money incentives doesn’t fix this.

I’ve seen a video about this:
https://youtu.be/LTaQnuQY9fY?t=5m36s

So, these are sort of confusing terms, but they have a really, really long history.

The tl;dw: a first person is like the object in a sentence, they are a thing doing an action—speaking, perhaps. Who are they speaking to? Well, that would have to be a 2nd person. Very literally. We’re just counting bodies in the scene. If those two people were talking about someone else, that would be a 3rd person. From this, we can imagine a 4th and a 5th, but as an analytical framework, they’re not fundamentally different from 3rd, so we just consildate them into one category: collectively ‘them’. ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘they’.

So, in order for a game to be 2nd person, it has to treat you, the literal audience-member you, as the second person in a conversation. They have to speak to you directly by breaking the 4th wall.

Games actually do this all the time. Any time you’re asked to press the ‘A’ button, they’re speaking to ‘you’, you are the 2nd person.

So, what does a 2nd-person camera look like? There are ways we could think about this. The video I linked presents some. But altogether, it’s probably more underwhelming than you think. These aren’t really a science as much as they are somewhat mangled metaphors for specific kinds of software or design problems. I imagine, partially from experience, that when people think about 2nd-person cameras, they’re excited about discovering a new kind of physics, sort of like learning that you can in fact take the square root of -1. It feels a bit like forbidden magic. But it’s probably more like the arcade Ridge Racer taking a booth photo of you for its leader board rankings.

Yes, thank you! That’s so nice of you.

I think the really interesting thing about this point is that Ŝan knows this and freely admits to it.

I think of it like a fun puzzle. Like being able to read a 24-hour clock.

All at once, or do we get a month to slowly introduce the new kibble? 'Cause that’s, like, all of human history, man.

What if being pretentious and annoying is their disability. Could you find it in your heart to let it go, then?

It’s early morning for me, it’s not fair.

You could just as easily paste this link into any discussion about 4chan or Tucker Carlson, except we know how stochastic terrorism works.

You’re welcome 🫡

The “guy” would be Shein.

Another neat way to frame the debate, to reach for the obvious example, is over swastikas. Of course, having a picture of a swastika tattooed on your arm isn’t harming anyone, so why should we as a society have any distaste for it?

To answer “we shouldn’t” is to cede ground to nazis. We do not, actually, have to tolerate their symbols.

The 4chan-nazi pipeline—yes, I’m still talking about pedophiles—if you’re not aware, is a strategy by which people are drenched in ironic, nazi iconography, which results in them being more permissive of that kind of thing, and thus makes them much, much easier to be groomed by king-master klansman, or whatever they call themselves.

Being too permissive of something is socially harmful.

I agree, pedophiles are often villainized way too much. I would like them not to be so afraid of being found out that they never get therapy. If they’re good people, I assume they want to be better as much as I want them to, even if it’s difficult. None of this means we need to sell dolls to them.

Think about it this way: I watch pornography all the time. I am not any less likely to fuck a woman. How is the doll supposed to satiate them?

I realize that I sound very condescending right now, but I’m sincerely asking: this idea that a legal outlet is actually more helpful to them, where does this come from? Does it even make sense?

Whether you mean to or not, I think that you are ceding ground to people who want pedophilia to be more popular. They do exist: middle America loves child marriage. This is why I’m not engaging with the personal freedom angle; it’s not really relevant.

Also, requiring child dolls to have some dimension by which they are clearly identifiable as adults is an effective ban on child dolls—it’s the same thing.

I thought you were referring to Disney’s live action remakes, which are ass and way the fuck more sexist, but do have one black woman in them, so congratulations to Rob Marshall.

I think there may be some social issues with a for-profit company being financially incentivized to promote and sell pedophilia to people.

How would you rather deal with this? A boycott? Do you have money in child sex doll manufacturing that you can withhold?

So he can think of it as a child in his head.

That’s not really what this is about. You’re trying to assess this on a personal freedom level when what we’re talking about is a guy with a megaphone.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Because I’m halfway through it right now, and I think it’d be really funny if I started the game “for the first time” only to find that 1. there was already a save, 2. named what I name him, 3. with 12 hearts, and 4. on a Wii used only by me.

I think there does come a point where stupidity and malice are basically the same thing.

I think people just don’t like being told what to do. Like, there are a lot of behaviors you can trace back to someone just being personally aggrieved that they ought to change anything.

That said, if anyone else is reading, the em dash is a clue that you use to diagnose with—you don’t have to stop using it.

But do you expect different results when doing that? I think the point of that would be to get the same result every time.

Yeah, they do. You never heard of a crime of opportunity?

Why do you lock your doors at night? You know that anyone who wants to get in can just rake the god damn lock, right? Most people don’t want to get into your house, and the ones who do will be able to enter anyway, so what pathology drives you to waste your time like this?

Why wouldn’t they pay $0 for the can of shit and $100 for something else? Like, a can of juice, maybe.

So, if there weren’t canned shits, people would be willing to pay for illustrators more often?