Jimmy Kimmel might want to have a little chat with the people who write his material, because his recent routine on YouTube’s new video game channel isn’t going over well. His routine makes fun of the new service, calling it the “We Should All Be Ashamed of Ourselves for Failing as Parents” channel. That was how he began his routine. It wasn’t a strong start.
He did manage to get some laughter from his audience by saying that when he was young, he only watched other people play video games when he ran out of quarters.
His routine went downhill, however, when he brought up how much money YouTube personality PewDiePie made last year, which was in the millions of dollars. The applause started, but fell flat, perhaps because the audience thought that he crossed some line. It’s kind of surprising to me that he had a live audience for his routines. I would have assumed that his applause was canned. It has this artificial sound to it. Personally, I suspect that he has several people planted in the audience that are paid to whip them up into applause, as though they needed some cue to laugh at something they found funny.
Personally, I doubt that Jimmy Kimmel identifies with his audience. Jimmy, who is an entertainer, is probably a millionaire. If he wanted to play a video game, he’d just go out and buy any one he wants. In fact, he could probably go over to a Gamestop and buy a copy of every game on the shelf as well as the systems to play them on, and still have more than enough money for seven Jacuzzi parties in the same week.
Then there’s the rest of us. There are people living in America who can barely manage to scrape $60 together to buy a new game in a month’s time after living expenses, and if they did, they’d probably do something different with that money than buy a new video game. It’s not like everyone can afford to buy every game they want.
Bringing up PewDiePie and how much money he made was a mistake. PewDiePie makes as much money as he does because his channel is monetized, and there are a lot of people who like watching his content. If there is such strong demand for video game content on YouTube, that’s an indication that we live in an age where interactive entertainment is not taboo. So is the fact that video gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry (perhaps over 100 billion dollars).
It’s evident that Jimmy’s perspective on video games is very dated. It’s no longer the age of arcades, where home consoles are in relatively few homes. This is the age of big-budget, photo-realistic big-name games and gaming-to-go on cell phones. It might actually be very difficult to find someone who has never played a video game.
This being the case, making fun of gaming culture is a huge misstep on Jimmy Kimmel’s part. I doubt that he writes his own material, but he should have at least recognized that something was wrong with the script that was handed to him. But, he recited it anyway on his show.
As of now, the likes to dislikes ratio of the YouTube video of his routine is perhaps the most unfavorable I’ve ever seen. Currently, it has 46,876 dislikes, and 3,937 likes, many of which were probably accidental. A video would have to be especially bad to be viewed by so many people and have a higher ratio of dislikes to likes than the trailer for Metroid Prime Federation Force.
Jimmy compares watching people playing video games to watching other people eat at a restaurant. But, again, Jimmy fails to connect with his audience. Jimmy is rich, of course he can afford to eat out whenever he wants to, perhaps for every meal, if that’s what he wants. Those of us who budget their income to get by, however, have a different lifestyle. There are many people who rarely eat out, primarily doing so for special occasions. Besides, there is a television channel that people can watch to learn about restaurants and cuisine. It’s called the Food Network. Perhaps Jimmy already made fun of that. I don’t know, I don’t normally watch his routines.
I don’t know what Jimmy Kimmel’s career looks like right now. That’s not something that I’m especially concerned with. What I do know is that he made fun of something that he should not have.
Feminists have been hard at work to appear as immature as possible, and some of them have found an irresponsible new way of doing so, and it’s called “free bleeding”.
If you’re afraid that that means that feminists are now experiencing their periods without the use of tampons and pads, I have bad news for you: that’s just what it is.
This became a thing just after Kiran Gandhi ran the London Marathon without using a tampon. She was going through her period, and she reasoned that it would be far more comfortable to run the marathon without a feminine hygiene product, though she also said (likely as a pretext) that she did it to raise awareness of women that don’t have access to feminine hygiene products.
So, she bled a gross black mark right into the pants she was wearing. And feminists enjoyed it, adopting free bleeding in an effort to overcome oppression and erase the stigma associated with menstruation.
What oppression would that be? If it’s oppression to use a maxi pad, would it also be oppression to shower and brush one’s own teeth?
Believe it or not, there’s no stigma associated with menstruation, and it’s not oppression when there’s an expectation that someone exercise hygienic practices associated with it. Menstruation is a natural part of a woman’s life. It’s not unfair in any way that women experience such a thing, nor is the expectation that she manages it in a safe and hygienic manner. Not managing one’s period safely creates a biological hazard, and it leaves people with an impression that the person is irresponsible. And psychotic. If menstruation is gross, it’s gross because it’s not being properly handled.
If a person doesn’t have maxi pads or tampons, does that really mean that they have no solution to managing their period? Maxi pads and tampons are relatively recent inventions. Women have been finding numerous solutions throughout history. Why have they been doing this? Probably because they want to avoid ruining their socks, shoes, and other clothing, and maybe also because there would be something unpleasant with having one’s genitals be bloody and infected.
I know that there are people out there that would prefer for men and women to be the same. They’re not getting what they want because there will always be physiological differences between men and women, and therefore differences in medical treatment and routine maintenance regarding these differences. You play the cards you’re dealt. Before someone mentions it, I’ll point out that going transgender can only take a person so far. The most science can do to change a person’s gender is butcher their body to get them to closely resemble a member of the opposite gender. If you’re a man who thinks he’s a woman or vice versa, you have a psychosis. If you don’t like what I just said, you don’t like facts.
There are times when what you’re saying is so obvious, you kind of feel like you’re being condescending. It would be a matter so self-evident, that it’s tiring just to think about arguing about it at length to someone who just doesn’t want to accept it. It’s particularly the case when it comes to arguing with liberal fringe groups such as feminists and vegetarians. If they were to come out of their immature worldviews, they’d have so much to gain, such as no longer being wrong about something and experiencing the benefits of putting something that works into practice. But they don’t want to. They’re so determined to be so wrong.
Feminists in particular strive to be offensive. It’s the reason why many of them unashamedly accuse men in general of crimes for which individual men have no guilt. Their hypocrisy is so obvious, accusing men of being sexist when they themselves practice it. But they don’t care. Feminists are out to be grating and offensive. This new thing involving free bleeding is just another step down into the pit of insanity.
I had just watched some of the videos recently posted on the YouTube channel The Center for Medical Progress, and I’m floored. The videos in question expose operations by Planned Parenthood to sell aborted fetal tissue.
If you’re wondering, selling fetal tissue is highly illegal. It’s a federal felony.
You can watch the videos if you want. But if you do, you’ll probably be shocked and disgusted. These videos show a side to humanity that might change the way you look at people. The following embedded video is the first uploaded to that channel, so it’s works well as a place to start:
In the past, the issue of abortion has been a topic that’s been very politicized, to the point that if a person stated their stance on the issue, then you could figure out their political affiliation pretty quick. Planned Parenthood became the most famous offerer of abortions in the United States, so they became like a face for a controversial topic.
However you stand when it comes to abortion, you really should not be defending Planned Parenthood when it comes to this. This is the kind of thing you should want to distance yourself from, and fast. What Planned Parenthood has done is not just illegal, it’s morally repugnant and offensive to basic human decency. The president would have to try pretty hard for his next scandal to look worse than this.
These videos, more of which are pending, are the result of a three-year-long investigation. What this by itself indicates is that Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in dead baby parts has been going on for a long time. Hearing their employees and leadership speak of this in these videos as though they weren’t a big thing is pretty chilling. What’s obviously evil to the rest of us can be just another day in the office to someone who has long since reasoned away what they’ve been doing.
Planned Parenthood has since gone on damage control, saying that the videos in question have been heavily edited. Which might not sound like a defense against the accusation or a refutation of the evidence clearly shown in the videos, because it’s neither. It’s quite a lame defense for such a serious crime. It’s like if hundreds of photographs of the concentration camp at Auschwitz were being circulated in newspapers during WWII, and Goebbels answered this by saying that some of the pictures were taken at a Dutch angle. Also, “FULL FOOTAGE” videos of the investigation were, in fact, posted to YouTube on the very same channel, making the “heavily edited” defense entirely useless.
As hard as it may be to believe, the full footage videos may actually be more incriminating than the shorter ones that get to the point. For example, in this video, at about 4:27:50, a conversation starts between the investigator and a Planned Parenthood employee regarding another client. The client wanted a variety of baby parts to help them to make humanized mice.
Yes, humanized mice.
Planned Parenthood is knowingly in cahoots with a bunch of mad scientists who want to make humanized mice. It sounds like a cross between a bad sci-fi movie and a right-wing worst case scenario lecture. But it happened.
And yes, it’s highly illegal.
There’s no defending Planned Parenthood anymore. If someone would try to defend them, they’re either an obvious troll who is trying to get a reaction, or so far to the left that they fall off the side of the plane, or something else that’s probably a little difficult to explain. Maybe some kind of ideologue that Democrats would be happy to have voting for them.
So, what’s it going to be, America? Still going to wait for matters to get worse? It can get worse. We’re arriving at the point where those who do evil can do so without fear because they know that most of us don’t have the nerve to do anything about it. A lot of what we’ve seen lately has been pretty horrible, but that’s just the stuff we know about. There’s bound to be far more.
I’ve been noticing a trend where people append their sentences with “but…”, and that’s how they end their sentence. An example of this phenomenon is as follows:
“I intended to park closer to the store, but…”
When expressed in writing, the substance of the sentence ends with a comma, then the word “but” is appended, followed by an ellipsis.
When a person ends their sentence with “but”, they often look to one side, with their head leaning slightly, as though to leave the remainder of their statement to be inferred solely though their tone. Rather the finish the sentence, the speaker trails off and shifts the burden of interpreting the incomplete thought to the listeners, because the speaker cannot be bothered to properly express the thought that might not have been properly formulated in their mind to begin with. As they do so, they often smugly roll their eyes and stress the word “but” as though using such a lazy template of communication were something that they could take pride in, not respecting you enough to communicate with you as though you were their intellectual equal.
The word “but” has nearly the same meaning as “however”, and is often followed by more information that adds to or may even modify the previous statement. It may also indicate exceptions or perhaps even make contradictions to the preceding proposition. Furthermore, ellipses (…) indicates omissions; statements intentionally left incomplete.
Considering this, when a person ends a sentence with “but…”, they could be leaving out just about anything. Even important information could be omitted. So the example sentence above:
“I intended to park closer to the store, but…”
…Could have omitted the following:
“…I was attacked by killer ants from outer space.”
“…my car gave out in the middle of the parking lot.”
“…there are picketers outside that hate the fact that this company makes money.”
“…I was a little concerned with the militant, pedophile rapists that are throwing rocks at our windows.”
Why omit something that, if known, would have likely influenced decisions made by the hearers?
If you’re sick of this kind of corner-cutting in communication, there’s something you can do about it. When someone ends a sentence with “but…”, ask them “…but what?” Have them finish their own sentence. In so doing, you’ll be directing the burden back onto them of formulating their own thoughts in their own minds, where it belongs, and making them properly express that thought in the form of a complete sentence.
It might be that, after several times, they’ll get the point and stop being lazy with their communication. Or they’ll just take their lackadaisical sentence structure to someone who doesn’t mind that they’re not finishing their own sentences. In either case, you win.
If someone were to be just as lazy with other areas of their life, how would it work out for them? Imagine how they might sound confessing to it:
“I tied one shoe, but I didn’t tie the other one. Oops. Oh well, I’ll just leave it like that.” *
“I know you wanted a turkey sandwich, but I found this ‘Tofurky’ instead. Close enough, right?”
“I started the laundry, but then just left the wet shirts in the washer for days. Now they have mildew on them. My bad!”
“Yeah, the steak is underdone, but what do you expect when I only cook it in half the time! Aren’t I cute?”
“Yeah, I want kids, but I’m still making you pull out before you’re done.”
Like that last point, leaving sentences incomplete by ending them with “but…” is like making someone pull out before they’re done; you’re obviously not concerned with the other party’s satisfaction at all.
* Wow, that sounds stupid. It wouldn’t be surprising if that became a fad in middle schools and high schools.
For a long time, Metroid has been one of my favorite game franchises. Growing up, I actually made friends because of Metroid games. The games themselves were excellent expressions of interactive art. They starred a lone hero exploring an alien world. Metroid games weren’t divided up into levels. Rather, the player could explore the alien world at their own pace, collecting power-ups that increased mobility and endurance as they did so, making it easier to defeat strong enemies and making previously off-limit areas accessible. In the year 2000, there was a controversial announcement that a new Metroid game would be made with a first-person perspective. Players were initially skeptical, but the Metroid Prime games turned out to be among the most critically-acclaimed Nintendo IPs.
After a while, Metroid game releases became scarce. During this slow period, Metroid Other M was released, which was controversial for several reasons, but was still generally a good game. One might have assumed that Nintendo wouldn’t make another Metroid game unless they could really wow with it. Metroid has a coolness appeal, and players enjoy exploring alien worlds at a pace that they set.
What has the Metroid franchise been doing lately? Check out a recently-released trailer for Metroid Prime: Federation Force:
What was Nintendo thinking?
What we see is a trailer for a four-player shooter game that doesn’t have Samus or Metroids in it, but the name Metroid was slapped on it anyway.
This game stars four Federation troopers. You know, those guys that get killed in Metroid Other M? There’s a reason why troopers are depicted without their faces in IPs like Star Wars: you’re not supposed to care about them. Troopers are an archetype of disposable character that get killed in large numbers and no one bats an eye. In Metroid Prime Hunters, the different playable characters at least had individual aspects beyond what color they were. It’s like in Metroid Prime Federation Force, you’re being challenged to care less about the main characters.
To make matters worse, the troopers depicted aren’t the sweet-looking ones seen in Metroid Prime 3 or Metroid Other M. Instead, these troopers have the composition of lego men. It’s an ironic thing: at this year’s E3, Sony showed off an HD remake of Final Fantasy 7; the original version of which had polygon models that looked like they were lego characters. Nintendo took something gritty and realistic like Metroid and did the opposite. At least when Nintendo changed the graphical direction for The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker, the game still starred Link. Where is Samus in Federation Force? And for that matter, would we really want to see what they’re doing with her?
Also, Metroid Prime Federation Force is being packaged together with Metroid Prime Blast Ball. Which, once again, doesn’t seem to star Samus at all. When you think Metroid, what do you think of? Do you think of sports? No? Me neither.
Again, what was Nintendo thinking? Here is one guess:
Nintendo manager: What are you working on there? Former Metroid staff member: I know that you didn’t want me working on Metroid games since Metroid Other M, but I have this neat couple of pet projects here that have a Metroid theme. One is a soccer variant, and the other is a game starring lego versions of Federation troopers. Nintendo manager: They look terrible. Get back to work. I have a meeting to go to. Later, at the board meeting… Nintendo director: Metroid fans have been begging for a new game. E3 is coming up real soon. Do we have a game or two that we can slap the Metroid name onto and hastily throw a trailer together for? Nintendo manager: YES SIR!
You know that Nintendo really messed up when, right after the announcement, the first result for a Google Search for “Metroid Prime Federation Force” is a petition to have it cancelled. If you’re interested, here is a link to that petition. You can sign it to try to send a message to Nintendo that this isn’t the kind of Metroid game we want. I don’t think it would make much of a difference. Nintendo is probably determined to release this game, not caring much about fan objections that it doesn’t look like a Metroid game. If they release it, and it fails, they’ll probably take it as a sign that we’re not interested in Metroid games anymore, and they’ll probably just stop making them.
That’s why I’m happy that there are projects such as AM2R. The way things are looking, the ones who remember what Metroid games are really about are the fans. While Nintendo is making shooters about impersonal characters in multi-player battles, the ones that can really be counted on to make games in the true Metroid fashion are players themselves.
UPDATE (6/18/2014): In an interview with Kotaku, Nintendo’s Kensuke Tanabe revealed some features of MPFF, including:
Samus will make an appearance, and
You will be able to see metroids in a certain mission.
This doesn’t change the fact that I was disappointed with what I saw. The game looked bad for a DS title, it doesn’t look like a 3DS title with a concept that’s been around for 10 years. If it’s been in development for even half that time, I’d wonder just what they were doing.
Samus making an appearance doesn’t make MPFF a Metroid game any more than it makes Super Mario RPG or Kirby’s Dream Land 3 Metroid games. If Nintendo wanted us to know that Samus and Metroids were in MPFF, why didn’t they just include them in the trailer instead of having someone from Nintendo say so in an interview on the second day of the E3 trade show? It looks like Nintendo knows that the fans don’t like MPFF, and they’re doing damage control.
I’m seeing comments appear calling those who signed the petition to have MPFF cancelled entitled or crybabies. I don’t think the petition will make much of a difference, Nintendo will probably release the game anyway. If someone wants to express disappointment or even issue a complaint with Nintendo because the game looks like a waste of the silicon it was printed on, that’s up to them. When (and if) the game is released, the vote that will really matter is the votes that we make with our money. I might play it, but that’s going to be far more likely if, by the time it’s released, it looks much more like a Metroid game than what I saw in the sad excuse for a trailer that Nintendo showed for it (and for that matter, it would have to look much more like a professional product).
There are those who passionately white knight this game, but I don’t see much point. Even if it were revealed without the Metroid name, it would still look like a seriously sub-par FPS game that looks several generations behind even 3DS launch titles. Think that’s a harsh assessment? Look at just about any 3DS game, and compare it to what we’ve seen so far from MPFF. Nintendo’s 3DS can do much better than PS1-level visuals. Take away the Metroid name, there still wouldn’t be much to defend. As it is, it may be one of the biggest mistakes that Nintendo has ever made.
UPDATE (6/23/2015): The petition is only a week old and has over 20,000 signatures.
UPDATE (6/25/2015): The backlash against Metroid Prime Federation Force has gotten to the point that it’s caught Nintendo’s attention. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has responded:
“Look, we know that fans want a straight Samus Aran game,”
Sounds like we’re off to a good start, right?
“We also know that the best way to launch a game is to surprise and delight them, to give them a launch date, in an environment like this let them play it versus what other companies do, which is to announce a project that you may not see for five, six years. It’s just not the way we do things.”
Oh no? We don’t have a launch date for MPFF. As for letting us play it, was it even playable at E3? I mean outside of the Treehouse meeting where the press watched Nintendo staff play it. Was that what you meant? It’s nice that Nintendo announces projects that they’ve already been working on for years, so that you have something to show with your announcements. But did you really mean to suggest that Federation Force has been in development for years? Because it doesn’t look like it.
“Remember when that art style was first shown. The uproar from the Zelda community was intensely negative. If there had been social media then, there probably would have been a petition to make that game go away.”
Reggie, you’re the president of the American branch of a huge tech company. Did you really not know that there was social media back in the year 2002? Does “Friendster” ring a bell? How about “Xanga”? Or SixDegrees.com, or Classmates.com?
Do you know why there was an uproar over the art style of Wind Waker? Because it was inappropriate. It went against the image that the public had of The Legend of Zelda. There are people who have never played it because the game looked ridiculous to them. That means that this endeavor:
“(We) will also push the envelope in developing something that we know is high-quality and that we know will deliver in the marketplace.”
…May very well be rendered self-defeating.
Image matters. Those who dismissed Wind Waker as silly missed out on a high quality game. That’s not just their loss, it was also Nintendo’s. This is because they didn’t buy it. Making games that gamers aren’t likely to buy doesn’t seem like a good business practice. And if feedback has been an indication (and it usually is), MPFF isn’t going to do so well.
“We know the community wants to see a straight-up Metroid game. We know it.”
Thank you. That says a lot: it’s an indirect admission that MPFF is not the game we were waiting for, and it indicates that you do understand, at least in part, what we are expressing. What it means to me is that the Metroid franchise might not end on the sour note that is MPFF.
When it comes to introducing sequels and new entries in IPs, there is such a thing as taking too big a risk. Metroid Prime Federation Force is an example of a big risk being taken, and it didn’t go over well. I’d think that Nintendo would understand that some amount of predictability is a good thing. Imagine if, after years of not seeing a new Pokemon game, Nintendo announces a Pokemon racing game. Or if, years after not seeing a new Legend of Zelda game, a Zelda tennis game was announced. There’d probably be rioting. It’s been years since seeing a new Metroid game. Is it unreasonable to ask that the next one stars Samus Aran?
A Metroid sports game? What was Nintendo thinking?
If you’ve spent time in malls, cities, or college campuses, you’ve probably run into a DJ dimwit.
What is a DJ dimwit? It’s someone who plays music loudly from their phone as they walk about or do other things around other people. I chose the word “dimwit” to keep this post somewhat family-friendly, but you can probably think of a number of other pejorative adjectives that also start with the letter “D”.
People who listen to rap aren’t the only ones who do this, but they seem to be far more inclined to do it. Another thing I’ve noticed about people who listen to rap is that they seem to spend a lot more money on earbuds and earphones, but not use them (a lot of them complain that they’re broke, though).
There seems to be a positive correlation between how often you hear music from the phones of DJ dimwits and how bad the music is. To demonstrate this correlation, I’ve made a chart:
The trend appears to be that DJ dimwits actively avoid playing anything of quality from their phones. It’s hard to know what to make of this, aside from that they do this as part of a concerted effort to demoralize our society with substandard garbage. Unless their idea of singing is to either talk or bark to a beat.
On the rare occasion that you hear a DJ dimwit play a song that’s good (probably accidentally), they still upset people because they don’t want to hear that song played by a DJ dimwit.
For the most part, DJ dimwits are bad judges of what the rest of us want to hear. It’s kind of like how most streakers at sporting events are male, even though the typical viewer of sporting events are also male. Like the streaker, the DJ dimwit is making an assumption about whether the rest of us care for what they have to share.
I’ve heard about this thing in which people were putting butter in their coffee. The idea comes off as some sort of life hack that, when done, allows a person to lose weight and live healthier. Supposedly, a person who does this gets more out of their coffee by feeling alert longer and feeling fuller and more energized. Some even say that they can pretty much skip breakfast by drinking this so-called “bulletproof coffee”.
It sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a bit of a try to see whether the claims are true. I was a bit skeptical. Wouldn’t that be a little fattening? Wouldn’t such a thing be of little nutritional value?
The results? I’m not sure whether it’s connected, but for the time that I’ve been trying it, I haven’t been feeling very good. Actually, I’ve felt bloated and somewhat sluggish while trying it (which, for me, might be a little hard to imagine).
As it turns out, I was doing it wrong. To truly drink “bulletproof coffee”, I had to use grass-fed butter. Also, the coffee had to be a certain variety. Specifically, the same kind of coffee sold by the company that primarily encourages the fad of adding butter to coffee.
I don’t mean to say that a person can’t lose weight by having only buttered coffee for breakfast. If that buttered coffee is a replacement for bacon and eggs, it’s possible that such a diet could result in weight loss. However, that might have more to do with a person eating less of what they were eating before than a supposed benefit of an alleged miracle diet.
Could it be that many people have been had? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Decades ago, the Beechnut corporation had large quantities of pork belly. Pork belly was viewed as discards, but it was also the usual ingredient for bacon. Beechnut hired Edward Bernays, the man credited as the father of public relations, to market bacon to an American people who, while it may be hard to believe today, largely didn’t want it. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, so he knew a few things about how people think, including that people tended to put a lot of trust in professionals. The usual breakfast at the time was a slice of bread and a cup of coffee before rushing out the door to work in an increasingly industrialized America. Bernays sought out doctors in an effort to find some that would agree with him that Americans would benefit from a heavier breakfast. He would then use this as the basis for his push to market bacon. How successful were his efforts? America seems to be much heavier for it. Bacon, which is usually mostly pork fat, appears in many food items and many consider bacon and eggs to be breakfast staples. Many even came to think of breakfast as being the most important meal of the day. Beechnut made off well, as they found that an effective way to dispose of pork belly is straight down the throats of millions of impressionable people, and they even convinced them to pay them for it!
Fast-forward to today: Dave Asprey, CEO of Bulletproof Coffee, wants you to believe that he “learned about the power of butter at 18,000 feet of elevation near Mt. Kailash in Tibet”. His corporate logo appears to be a man in meditation with a round symbol on his chest that might bear resemblance to some kind of far-east mystical symbol, which may be an indication of the kind of people that he’s looking to take advantage of.
May I have my coffee without the implied mysticism?
In the article linked to above, Asprey cites a fictional character when making his point that cheap coffee steals a person’s mental edge and “makes you weak”. He links to the Wikipedia article for that fictional character, but he doesn’t provide scientific or scholarly citations to back up his claim. What he does link to is his online store.
Incidentally, as I was looking at his online store, I found this warning:
California Proposition 65 WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, or birth defects or other reproductive harm.
This may sound a little picky, but I prefer to drink coffee without being concerned about whether it damages my parts.
I went back to normal coffee, without the butter. And it tasted far superior. Still, I think that, like many fads, this fad of putting butter in coffee might last a while, even though it seems pretty weird to see someone do. Kind of like wearing one’s pants under their buttocks so their boxers are showing. From what I can tell, that was a trend that started about two decades ago, and people have since then found out how ridiculous it looks (but not quickly enough), but there are still a few people who do it anyway. Maybe if there were more occurrences of wedgies, they’d stop doing that.
Yes, Greninja has just been banned from Smogon’s OU tier on PokemonShowdown.com. If a person wants to use Greninja on their team in Smogon’s competitive environment on PokemonShowdown.com, they would have to do so on the Uber tier (or on Anything Goes).
Personally, I like Greninja, so it’s a little sad to see him removed from a tier. However, I understand the reasoning behind the ban. There are a lot of other Greninja fans out there, though, and not all of them are likely to take this news very well.
It should be understood that Smogon doesn’t make it’s rules to enforce on the general community of competitive Pokemon players. Smogon only makes it’s rules for use by those playing in Smogon’s competitive community. So if you have a pokemon battle with someone in a parking lot somewhere and they insist on you not using Greninja because Smogon banned it, you can point out that you’re not on PokemonShowdown.com.
Having said that, Smogon does see the occasional newbie who joins their message boards and insists on unbanning every pokemon that they like and changing what Smogon does. That person isn’t likely to get very far, and in most cases, such people don’t understand why Smogon does what it does. Smogon mainly focuses on providing a balanced competitive environment, and this works better when pokemon that are too overcentralizing are restricted from use. Greninja was an excellent example of an overcentralizing pokemon that was unhealthy for the OU tier.
Greninja was a pretty good pokemon in X and Y, but when ORAS came out, Greninja got some additional moves to answer the pokemon that checked it before. Low Kick was a physical Fighting move that works well on Chansey and Porygon2 (the latter of which was mainly played in OU as a check to Greninja). It also got Gunk Shot, which gave it a strong solution to Fairy types like Clefable. Greninja was quickly running out of counters. With it’s excellent speed and special attack, combined with an ability that gives it STAB on every attack move it uses and makes it a snap to fit on just about any team, Greninja was becoming a pokemon to prepare for when team building, sometimes by including more than one pokemon for the purposes of countering it. And sometimes by adding it’s own Greninja.
Those against the ban pointed out Greninja’s frailty, saying that it could be easily revenge killed. That may be true, but to revenge kill something first requires that a pokemon be KOed. Then the revenge killer can come in and get revenge. That’s why it’s called “revenge killing”. But here’s the thing: the Greninja player can just switch out. This simple move can bring a defensive pivot into play which could handle the revenge killer, and allow Greninja to strike again at a later time. Greninja might be frail, but that only matters when Greninja takes hits. Greninja is very fast and has a high special attack. If Greninja can KO an opponent before it makes a move, then it’s low defensive stats aren’t going to make a difference. This is why some players can confidently give Greninja a Life Orb to hold. The item gives Greninja a boost to it’s damage output, and the recoil damage for it’s use is a very good trade-off.
There are bound to be people out there that resent Smogon for the decisions that they make. Their solution to that problem is to battle in a different competitive environment. Again, Smogon’s rules are intended only for the Smogon competitive community. If players don’t like what Smogon does, they have the choice of battling in different communities. Back when Garchomp was banned in generation four, some players answered by doing just that. It would seem that they wanted to use Garchomp really badly, so they found some competitive communities that allowed it, and probably spent plenty of time battling in environments where Garchomp appeared on nearly every team.
Will something like that happen now that Greninja has been banned? Maybe. But there are bound to be some fans that will be disappointed by the decision, as there are plenty of people out there that really like Greninja. Perhaps one of the reasons that Greninja has so many fans is because it could win lots of battles. Of course, that it’s a ninja probably has something to do with it.
Smogon is no stranger to seeing some upset critics. However, a lot of these critics don’t understand competitive play very well. If you’re going to have critics, you’re probably going to prefer that those critics don’t know what they’re talking about, because that’s a sign that you’re probably right about something.
Still, it might be interesting to see how the OU metagame shapes up because of this. It stands to reason that some more obscure pokemon that were mainly placed in teams to deal with Greninja will see less use. That means that we’ll likely see less of Empoleon and Porygon2. Landorus-T is also likely to decline in use. During suspect testing for Greninja, Heatran replaced Landorus-T for the #1 spot in PokemonShowdown’s OU usage stats, and the margin has been widening. Heatran isn’t likely to be banned, however, because it’s not as overcentralizing as Greninja, and is likely only as popular as it is due to a lack of pokemon that can do what it does.
The dust has settled from the latest suspect testing, and it’s been revealed that Greninja has been banned. Some are likely to be really surprised by this, unless they’ve been reading some of the arguments made for and against the banning. As much as I like Greninja, the arguments supporting the ban sounded to me like they were very well made. Some are likely to disagree, however, and the likely result is some seriously heated nerd battles for some time to come.
If one really likes Greninja and they want to see this matter in a more positive light, they can look at this as a promotion for Greninja: Smogon has promoted Greninja to the status of Uber pokemon because it’s a very strong pokemon. That might not work for everyone, though. Still, if a player doesn’t want to play by Smogon’s rules, they can just find a different competitive environment out there. And if they really want to, they can go to some message board on GameFaqs and write a rant about it there. It might be that they’ll get into an argument that they can’t win, but that might be safer than posting the same rant on Smogon’s message boards, where the poster would lose the argument much quicker.
So yeah, Greninja is banned. What do you think? Me, I’m a little disappointed. But in battles with my friends, I can still use my Greninja to Gunk Shot their Clefables. A person could still use Greninja in VGC, the official format of the Video Game Championships, which is likely to be dominated by Mega Salamence. That would be the pokemon that Smogon banned from OU without a suspect test or vote, and it would seem that just about no one questioned them about it. Sometimes, a pokemon is way too strong for it’s environment. As for Greninja, it certainly had an impact. It’s currently ranked #8 in PokemonOnline’s ORAS Uber tier. That’s pretty phenomenal for something that’s neither a legendary or a mega pokemon. Of course, it’s possible that it’s being used by fans that just want to use it.
I know that some of you might be quite upset about this, but please keep it civil in the comments section.
I remember that in Pokemon’s early days, there was another monster battling franchise that came along and grabbed the attentions of gamers everywhere. That franchise was Digimon.
The two franchises were similar enough that it was very difficult to avoid comparing the two. Many did, many claimed that their favorite game was the better of the two, and many heated playground fights and nerd battles broke out. And heated they were.
Many introduced to Digimon after the popularity of Pokemon really took off have guessed that, because the two were so similar, Digimon had to be some Pokemon rip-off. Then some started saying that, because the Digimon Tamagotchi Pets came to America first, Pokemon had to have been a rip-off of Digimon.
If such a statement were true, it would have been outrageous! It would have meant that Pokemon, for how imaginative it seemed and for how popular it was, would have owed inspiration to some other franchise! How scandalous that would have been!
Many have accepted that to have been true, without looking much into it. Even so, Digimon faded into obscurity while Pokemon had a bit of a decline, though Pokemon would later explode into popularity again.
Does Pokemon owe it’s inspiration to Digimon, or was Digimon attempting to copy Pokemon’s popularity? Considering Digimon’s relative obscurity, one might not give it much thought. However, even today, Digimon fans continue to passionately defend it. Because of this, I decided to do some research to find an answer, and with it perhaps a resolution to so many playground battles.
Many who insist that Digimon came first point to Digimon’s earlier arrival in the United States. For many people, their introduction to Digimon was to the Digimon anime, Digimon Adventure, which aired in the States beginning August 1999, nearly a year after the debut of the Pokemon anime the previous year.
However, the first Digimon product that would see it’s debut in America was the Digimon Virtual Pet. This made it’s debut on June 26, 1997 in Japan. The exact date of it’s American debut is unknown, but it is known for sure that it arrived on American shores in the year 1997. This was the year before the Pokemon anime made it’s debut on American television, with English versions of Pokemon Red and Blue coming shortly afterward.
The Tamagotchi Digimon Virtual Pet, the first Digimon product
So, a Digimon product arrived in America before Pokemon made it’s debut here. Does that mean that Digimon came first?
Not so fast. Just because a product arrived first on American shores does not mean that it “came first” in terms of originality. The question as to which franchise came first cannot be sufficiently answered unless one were to consider their global debuts. To answer the question as to which franchise truly came first, one should know which one was first to debut in any form anywhere in the world.
Both Pokemon and Digimon made their debuts in Japan. The first Digimon product was the Digimon Virtual Pet, and as mentioned above, it made it’s debut in Japan on June 26, 1997.
The first Pokemon product to be released was Pokemon Red and Green for the Game Boy on February 27, 1996. This was about 16 months before Digimon’s debut as a Tamagotchi virtual pet. In the time between the debut of the first Pokemon games and the arrival of the Digimon Tamagotchi, the Pokemon Trading Card Game made it’s debut with the Base Set and starter deck, as well as the Jungle and Fossil expansions, and thirteen episodes of the Pokemon anime were broadcast on Japanese TV.
Pokemon Green version. This came way before the Tamagotchi Digimon Virtual Pet.
So that’s it. Pokemon came first. In fact, the Pokemon Anime and Trading Card Game, two well-known facets of the Pokemon franchise, debuted before there would be a Digimon product of any sort. This matter is resolved, right?
There are some stray arguments related to this that I would like to answer, so let’s examine them.
Sometimes, a Digimon fan may claim that because Digimon was a Tamagotchi, Digimon had to have come first. That really doesn’t work, because even though Digimon was originally a Tamagotchi product, Digimon was distinct from Tamagotchi in several ways. It doesn’t work to say a product came first because it’s predecessor came before it. Besides, the Tamagotchi made it’s first debut in Japan on November 23, 1996, nearly nine months after the debut of Pokemon Red and Green. Thus, Pokemon came before Tamagotchi.
Sometimes, someone in a discussion involving Pokemon and Digimon will point out that Godzilla involved monsters fighting. Apparently, the idea in bringing this up is an attempt to defuse the argument by suggesting that they both had to have taken inspiration from something else. However, this is like comparing sea sponges to nitrous oxide. Pokemon and Digimon involve young characters making monsters battle while commanding them to use certain attacks. The Godzilla series involved giant monsters fighting each other, caring little about how many young characters they step on or blow up in the process. Pokemon and Digimon made their debut about 16 months apart, with one of them (namely Digimon) making obvious changes to emulate the success of the other.
Sometimes, I also hear that Pokemon wasn’t originally called “Pokemon”, but changed it’s name from “Pocket Monsters” in some attempt to copy Digimon. You probably see in the picture above that Pokemon Green was originally called “Pocket Monsters Green”. It’s true that Pokemon was originally called Pocket Monsters, however, it’s name wasn’t changed in an attempt to emulate Digimon in any way. Pokemon was originally a fan name for the Pocket Monsters franchise. The Japanese love nicknames and shortening names, and Pokemon was another example of how the Japanese did this. This fan name became so popular, that when Pocket Monsters made it’s American debut, Nintendo decided to call it what the Japanese called it. Pokemon wasn’t officially accepted as the name for Pocket Monsters in Japan until the debut of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, and by then, Digimon had already declined as a franchise. Besides, why would GameFreak want to change the name of their franchise to emulate a less-popular one?
EDIT: There is another argument that’s been coming up recently, that Pokemon is somehow copying Digimon with the recent addition of the mega evolution mechanic to the sixth generation games. A similarity mentioned is the temporary nature of mega evolution, which seems similar to how digimon typically revert to a previous form after a battle in which they digivolve. It seems the main reason people make this assumption is due to the use of the word “mega”. In the original Japanese version of Digimon, the mega stage was actually called “ultimate”. Later, when Digimon was released in America, the “perfect” stage was instead called “ultimate”, so when the ultimate stage was revealed, it was called “mega” instead. It would seem that the only similarity is that mega pokemon revert after a battle is over, but even then, mega pokemon weren’t the first to do this. Cherrim and Castform have been doing it for a while. It would seem that similarities between mega pokemon and mega (actually “ultimate”) digimon is coincidental. But at this point, it hardly seems relevant, considering that Digimon has very little media presence anymore, and less popular franchises are scarcely chosen for emulation. (This topic is explored further in this article.)
So, that’s it. Pokemon came first. That seemed obvious to me for a long time, but the question kept coming up on message boards, so perhaps someone could benefit from seeing it explained here.
Every now and then, some things need to be repeated. For example, these few simple rules of etiquette for using public restrooms.
Don’t stand three feet from the urinal to use it.
Long-distance urination is not an Olympic event, so there’s no reason to do this. Someone might see your stuff, you might actually hit someone else, or get the floor messy. There’s too much room for something to go wrong.
Unzip and undo your belt buckle while in front of the urinal, zip up and redo your belt buckle before turning away from it.
There’s a strong chance that failure to follow this rule could be seen as exhibitionism, be unwanted, and result in social isolation or winding up on some list of creepy people that anyone can look up by using their iPhone. Even if you think your penis is really handsome.
If urinating in a toilet, lift the seat or sit down.
Your aim probably isn’t nearly as good as you think it is. Don’t take that chance. If a urinal is available, it’s probably advisable that you use that, instead. If you don’t want to lift the toilet’s seat, don’t stand up to pee in it. Don’t act like you’re twelve years old.
If at least one urinal is occupied, the ideal one to take is the one the greatest distance from the occupied urinals.
The idea is to prevent accidental peeking, either on your part or someone else’s. To facilitate, take the urinal either to the far right or the far left if none are occupied. That way, the next person in can take the farthest one down if you’re still there. If you’re both there while another person comes in, he can take one of the ones in the middle, if available. It’s simple, really.
Don’t put toilet paper rolls on the floor.
It’s hard to imagine that many people would want to touch to their bum something that’s been on the floor of a public restroom. Walking into a stall and finding the toilet paper roll on the floor is grounds for selecting another stall.
Wash your hands.
Don’t act like you weren’t just holding yourself. Wash your hands, or don’t be surprised if I don’t want to shake your hand.
Don’t initiate a conversation with someone using a stall or a urinal.
The person who’s using the stall or urinal may find this seriously creepy. Think about how weird it would seem if someone started talking to you when you were trying to pee. Unless it’s something really important, like some information that, if passed on, could save the world, it can wait until the recipient is done taking a leak.
When using a urinal, keep your face and eyes forward.
Otherwise, someone may see you and think you’re trying to peek. It’s generally preferable to avoid fist fights in public restrooms. It’s not a good place to wind up bloody and bruised.
If using a single toilet restroom, keep the door locked as you go about your business.
Most people would not like having someone walk in on them. You can do your part to ensure that this doesn’t happen.
Knock before entering a single toilet restroom.
Yeah, someone should be doing their part to lock the door as a precaution. But, not everyone does. Many people attempt to open the bathroom door confident that, if someone were using it, they’d lock it. When they fail to do so, walk-ins can occur. Because of this, the rest of us have a precaution to take.
This stuff is simple. Really simple. Yet, so many people fail to do these, and when these people sincerely wonder what’s with all the judgmental staring, they’re communicating that they weren’t aware of the basic tenets of restroom etiquette. If someone doesn’t understand restroom etiquette, it’s safer for them to just stay out of them.
Magnetricity 