Who’s up for watching a train wreck in slow motion?
You can tell that NBC News has done something special here, considering the like/dislike ratio of this video:
Oh, hold on…
Considering that NBC News is a huge media institution, that subscriber count is pretty low. For comparison, here’s the subscriber count for a YouTuber:
That guy’s subscription count is higher in spite of the fact that he’s not an outlet for the corporate media. He’s just a guy who gets on YouTube and talks about how crazy left-wing fringe groups such as feminists are. Even though he’s just a guy, he has more power on YouTube than NBC News. This is in spite of the fact that the YouTube main page tries to shove the channels of old media outlets up our butts.
Back on subject, NBC News has attempted to connect GamerGate with the Neo Nazi protests in Charlottesville and the grassroots movements that got Trump elected, and dragging Discord’s name through the mud, while they’re at it.
That in itself is a mouthful, and I don’t really have to say anymore. But I’m going to keep going. That old media is finding new ways to disappoint us is surprising at this point.
I’ve said already that old media doesn’t have to convince the smartest people among us for their ideas to gain traction, they only have to convince enough idiots to make a difference, and they are the ones that they are primarily aiming for. Today, the idiots that old media are aiming for is an old group that we’re already familiar with; the Pharisaical busybodies that see video games as some boogeymen that cause violent crimes. The tune has apparently shifted, because the social engineers have determined that the most effective way to drag someone down is to call them “racist” or “sexist”, because those are the words that currently have the most impact. Therefore, these ad-hominems are now being thrown at gamers.
If you’re among the brighter people among us, you’d look into matters before arriving at a determination, rather than taking old media’s word for it. Better yet, you wouldn’t have used old media to inform you to begin with. Of course, anyone using their brain will know that the connection between racists and sexists with video games just doesn’t exist. There’s a certain baseline for intelligence that NBC is aiming for, and they decided to exclude those who can think above it.
Today, NBC’s efforts to mislead the public are backfiring in a huge way, considering that most people play video games in some form, and understand that the presence of racists and sexists among us is greatly overstated.
If you haven’t watched the above video yet, here’s an interesting point to keep in mind as you do so:
Cherry Picking fallacy: When only select evidence is presented in order to persuade the audience to accept a position, and evidence that would go against the position is withheld. The stronger the withheld evidence, the more fallacious the argument.
Description from LogicallyFallacious.com, “Cherry Picking”
Can you find examples in the video above? Here are just a few to get you started:
Discord is made out to be a haven for racists, even though such communities on Discord are few, if any even still exist. Discord themselves have even shut such a community down.
GamerGate is made out to be a sexist movement because some members have made sexist remarks, as the video shows. In reality, these members don’t represent the movement as a whole, as the vast majority of the GamerGate movement are for ethics in game journalism. It’s their stated objective.
Footage was shown of someone using racist language in a game’s voicechat feature. This is treated as representative of gamer culture as a whole. It should be obvious why this is unfair.
I only went about halfway through the video before I decided to stop taking examples. It doesn’t stop there. It just keeps going.
(EDIT 8-Nov-2017: This tweet has been found to have originated from Kevin Dobson, who directed them to Anita Sarkeesian. The problem? The Kevin Dobson tweets were issued a day before the #GamerGate hashtag was coined. NBC News has been caught editing the #GamerGate tag onto a tweet not associated with them to vilify them. It just gets worse and worse.)
But while most of it was a train wreck, there is one part that made me bust out laughing. That part starts at 3:41. That’s the part where Lester Holt, with a bright, enthusiastic smile, asked me to subscribe to NBC’s YouTube channel.
Sometimes, I go back to a webcomic that I’ve reviewed to see what the artist has done with it since. I decided to check out Vegan Artbook, and found that it had two updates, one of which addresses a point that I’ve made in the review.
As much as I’d like to think that this means that the author has read the review and has taken it to heart, taking it as an impetus to improve, if you were to read her latest update, you’d see that this is not the case. The point that I made was that veganism propagated through dishonesty and predation on ignorance.
Here is what Vegan Artbook has to say about that:
You can see what I meant about the comic declining in artistic quality, but that’s not what I’m arguing against here.
Putting aside that she speaks of meat and vegetable industries as though they were in competition, the main problem with her argument (putting aside her incessant use of straw man fallacies) is her use of cherry-picking, which stands out like neon breast implants. She mentions those huge celery, pear, grape, and peach industries as those who don’t “hire PR agencies to write newspaper articles for them every week”. This says nothing of the apple industry, or for that matter the broccoli, turnip, mushroom, or even the mammoth, heartless, soulless zucchini industry, with their briefcases packed with freshly-printed hundred dollar bills. Did she leave them out because they do this?
I know that the typical vegan worldview pictures the meat and vegetable industries as being in some kind of competition. But in reality, the two fall under the banner of “agriculture”, and are happily married. They do stuff with each other, and they even have awesome children such as hamburgers. And jockish duds such as gummy candies.
So, why does the meat industry want PR articles written? The answer should be obvious: because vegans make up lies about them incessantly. Priya is the cause of the problem that she’s complaining about! What she’s doing is called defamation. However, it’s pretty hard for an industry to go after ordinary members of the public for a civil defamation suit. It’s more cost-effective to use PR to undo the damage that they cause.
No surprise; vegans lie to propagate their cause. Here are a few examples:
A few years back, vegans said that eating meat made it more difficult for men to maintain an erection. If this were true, you’d think that vegans would make up a higher percentage of the population by now.
They said that the Bible promotes a vegetarian lifestyle. It does not.
They say that it takes N gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. Like with the gender wage gap, the fact that the number fluctuates so wildly indicates no consistent source, and someone is making it up.
They also say that vegans are smarter. The vitamin deficiencies of a vegan diet directly results in irreversible neurological damage.
And there’s more. I can keep going. Their willingness to lie is symptomatic of the post-truth mentality that plagues left-wing fringe movements, which are already predisposed to the thinking that lies are justified if they somehow benefit the cause, rather than the liability they should be viewed as.
I’m going to conclude this with the same point that I’ve made in my review of Vegan Artbook:
If it’s necessary to lie to get people to accept what you’re trying to sell them, perhaps you shouldn’t believe it, either.
One of my favorite comics while growing up was Calvin and Hobbes. It was about a boy, a stuffed tiger that seemed real to him, and it had tons of social commentary.
Being a kid, I didn’t immediately understand what Calvin and Hobbes was about. To me, it seemed to be about what a bad kid Calvin was in spite of his intelligence, and the misadventures he could get into when his imagination would run away with him. It wasn’t until later, when I had grown up and long after the comic had concluded that I realized just how much of it was clever criticism of commercialism and syndication of the comic industry in particular.
Of course, I was a kid, so there wasn’t much expectation that I’d understand just what Calvin and Hobbes was really about. But imagine if someone not only missed the point of the comic, they made a comic that attempted homage, claimed the original as its inspiration, did everything that the author of the original pined against, and failed in just about every way imaginable.
You really don’t have to imagine such a thing, because Addanac City exists.
Addanac City features Hank (pictured above), the worst possible thing that could happen after a night of drunken sex that you don’t remember. But while Calvin misbehaved but was generally relatable, George Ford (the author of Addanac City) went well out of his way to make Hank out to be a horrendous child with no redeemable qualities. So yeah, Addanac City goes the Allen Gregory route in storytelling where the main character is so abrasive and rancid that it befouls just about everything else that the comic is attempting to do. Not that it was doing any of it particularly well to begin with.
Addanac City is supposed to be a gag-a-day strip. It fails every single time because the jokes are so horribly repugnant that it’s almost as though someone were struggling to make something bad on purpose.
I was going to post an example here, but I decided to instead post a link to the archive. Go ahead and pick any one at random. There isn’t a single one that won’t prove my point.
Speaking of the “bad on purpose” thing, people can quit it with the whole “make-something-that’s-only-ironically-likable” dealie. I know that it seems easier to win a race to the bottom, and thus stand out as being the worst at something. But there are so many people running that race that it’s an actual challenge now and takes some effort to “win”. Because of this, it’s harder than it’s ever been to plod along with a minimum of effort. So, why not put some effort into making something that’s actually a positive contribution? Besides, Sonichu exists, so you’d already be beat, anyway.
Because it’s classified as a gag-a-day strip, George doesn’t have to bother with something called “plot”, freeing up his precious little effort for characterization. But he didn’t bother with this either, because the personalities of each of his characters are various degrees of fulminating rectum. Even Susie Derkins Christie, one of the victims of Hank’s antics, has her moments.
As far as art goes, each of the characters are to the eyes as farts are to the nostrils. It takes someone with some funny preferences to not be totally disgusted. George takes the concept of cartooning to mean that there’s no need to consider either anatomy or consistency. While it’s acceptable for cartoons to have colors that are vivid, George makes them so stark that they’re an attack on the eyes of the person who views them.
Another example is not being posted here. Here’s another link to the archives. You can pick any one; the art hasn’t improved at all since the comic’s inception.
There is an inconsistent use of gradients for shading, which makes everything that’s not shaded look flat, and in some cases, clothing textures are Photoshopped in for some outfits, but not for others. It’s as though George wanted to use some Photoshop effects for his comic, but neither knew how to use them properly or consistently. The result is a comic with a mish-mash of improperly applied effects with bright, painful colors.
Okay, fine. Here’s an example:
See all the problems? Now you know why I don’t want them on my blog. I don’t want George Ford’s content dragging mine down. I also don’t want men blaming me for erectile dysfunction or women blaming me for not self-lubricating.
Everything about this comic conspires to make it terrible. What makes it even more of an insult that he’s comparing his work to Calvin and Hobbes. If any humorous irony can be had from this, it’s that the author is so inept that he doesn’t recognize his comic as being the very thing that his source of inspiration warned against comics becoming: a bunch of illustrations for bad jokes that can be completed to the author’s satisfaction before lunch.
If you want to see something really interesting, here’s a YouTube video of George having one of his comics read aloud:
What’s interesting about it? That he got a woman to read it with him. And that woman is his wife. HIS WIFE. Something to think about if you’re one of those lonely men who find themselves wishing for a woman with low enough standards.
Now for a score that reflects how this comic holds up against my own standards:
0.2 / 10
You know how I usually find something funny in the comic to use as it’s score? Not this time. I just don’t want to go back there. Jack was a better webcomic than this. Vegan Artbook was a better webcomic. Even Boss Rush Society holds up as a better webcomic. Addanac City is just a mess.
If you like cheesy sports games, you might want to sit down for this one, because believe it or not, there are game series’ out there that only release a new entry when someone can think of an idea or few that would make a great game, not just to tweak some rosters a bit. One of them is Metroid.
The Metroid series is one in which the game makers usually put in a monumental effort to make something enjoyable to play, and most gamers just sit it out even as those who’ve played the game rave about how great it is. Once again, those passive sit-this-one-out types are missing out while those of us who like Metroid games are once again enjoying one of the most immersive, atmospheric, and enjoyable games that gaming has to offer.
Metroid: Samus Returns is a retelling of the story of Metroid II: Return of Samus. Calling it a remake doesn’t do it justice, because the entire game has been redone from the ground up, leaving just the basic scenario intact. What this means is, having already played Metroid II doesn’t mean you’ve already played this game.
Samus Returns starts you off as Samus Aran, who has just landed on the planet SR388, tasked with the job of exterminating the metroids there. Apparently, at this point, the Galactic Federation has found the metroids to be more trouble than they’re worth, so they’ve decided that they’ve just got to go. What better way to exterminate a bunch of dangerous super-monsters than to send a lone bounty hunter to do the job, with no backup whatsoever.
This game is huge. Because the caverns you’ll be exploring are so immense, it helps to have plenty of tools at your disposal. As one might expect, typical Metroid series upgrades are here, including High Jump Boots, the Varia Suit, and the Spring Ball, which is to be expected because they are in the original. The Spider Ball is included as well, which is welcome because it definitely adds to Samus’ mobility and makes tons of areas accessible, and itself is available early on. So much freedom is given to Samus’ movement, that Samus Returns doesn’t feel like a typical platformer. Whereas in most platformers the walls are obstacles, in Samus Returns the Spider Ball makes them feel like a tool that can be used to reach new areas. Because of this, one can imagine the care that must be taken to take into account Samus’ abilities as each area is designed to keep the game balanced and consistently challenging. This is something that developer Mercury Steam succeeded at. What’s more, there is a real sense of empowerment in the number of options Samus may have in overcoming an enemy or obstacle. It really feels as though the player is in charge, and that if something can’t be reached, then the player simply wasn’t intended to access it just yet.
However, power-ups aren’t the main keys to progress in Samus Returns. Samus progresses by collecting metroid DNA, which can be obtained by slaying metroids that Samus comes across. This DNA is then scanned with a statue, which removes progress-blocking acid once Samus collects enough, and there’s just enough metroids in the area to do this. One could ask how an ancient race can know just how many metroids will be in an area and their exact DNA compositions decades in advance, or just what they’d have to gain by roadblocking an exterminator that wasn’t even born yet. But hey, it’s a video game, what matters is that the game is mechanically sound.
Samus does get some new abilities that weren’t present in the original, which add to the uniqueness of the experience of Samus Returns. Among these is the melee counter. This is achieved by quickly pressing the X button as an enemy charges you (easy to tell, because they’ll “glint” a certain way just before they do it). This stuns the enemy, giving you the opportunity to kill them while they’re stunned. If you respond with blaster fire quickly enough, you’ll automatically lock on to them and kill them with a single shot. As much as I’ve played Samus Returns, I’ve found this satisfying every single time.
Taking advantage of this isn’t a bad idea. Because otherwise, the enemies in this game are tough, taking more shots than I remember similar enemies taking in most other Metroid games. What’s more, the enemies in this game are very aggressive. Some of which will charge you on sight, which is usually right when they appear on screen, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to use this fun new mechanic. Thankfully, there’s no cheesing it like the sensemove mechanic from Other M, so your timing has to be on point.
One welcome new mechanic is the inclusion of Aeion abilities, which are pretty powerful, but their use consumes an Aeion bar, which gets replenished by pick-ups, and its maximum is increased by Aeion tanks that can be found throughout the game. There is variety in these abilities, which can be switched on the fly due to them being mapped to the control pad. There’s an ability that helps offensively, one that’s defensive, one that just about renders the Speed Booster obsolete (how’s that for cryptic?), and one that’s controversial because it makes exploring the huge map much easier. In my opinion, it really didn’t take anything away from the game, and was great to have considering that the maps in Samus Returns are huge. The Aeion meter depleted faster than I would have preferred, but that’s fine, because these abilities would be broken if players could constantly use them as a crutch.
Another great ability that’s welcome is the ability to “analog aim” by holding down the L shoulder button. Doing this causes Samus to stop in place and you can aim her gun using the control slider. Because of this, Samus is no longer limited to the 8 traditional directions to aim her weapon (though this can still be done while moving), and you can now aim with more precision. This might take a little time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it’s great to have, as you no longer have to reposition Samus to hit certain targets, and can be used in boss battles to get more attacks in.
In the original, the boss battles were the metroids themselves, and there were a few dozen of them. The original was repetitive because the variation in experience between metroids of the same form was supplied by the environment you fought them in. In Samus Returns, however, that repetition mostly vanishes for several reasons. For one thing, there’s more variation in the obstacles the environments provide. What’s more, the metroids themselves are no longer straightforward in their attacks. Each one will usually have several attacks, which call for different responses. Better still, metroids also have attacks that can be melee countered, giving you the opportunity to deliver some serious damage.
Speaking of boss battles, there are a couple new battles in there to change things up, one of which has some pretty significant implications for the Metroid series continuity. It’s a welcome addition, especially for fans of the series.
Amiibo Corner
Would you be missing anything if you didn’t use Amiibos? Yeah, but whether it’s a big deal would depend on who you are. Amiibos supply backup tanks for health, ammo, and Aeion energy, but they really aren’t game breaking and don’t count towards your item collection rate. There are more post-game bonuses, such as gallery images and a music room, but whether these are a big deal will depend on whether you care about such things.
The really big Amiibo to own would be the squishy Metroid one. During the game, it gives you the location of a metroid in the area. This can be a big help, but not always. It doesn’t always give you the location of the most practical one for you to find next. Still, this comes in real handy considering that otherwise you might be spending a lot more time combing these huge maps. But even more significant would be the post-game bonus that it provides: an extra mode that provides even more challenge than the Hard difficulty.
That’s something to think about right there. This game’s normal mode is already hard. Which is just how I would have wanted it. Each of the games challenges are just hard enough to offer a sense of satisfaction upon overcoming them. Then there’s a Hard mode, in which enemies do double the damage. The difficulty level offered by the Metroid Amiibo is Fusion Mode, in which the enemies do four times the damage, and you see Samus in her Fusion suit, serving as a reminder to watch your step. Having this hardcore difficulty behind an Amiibo paywall may upset some players, especially considering how difficult to find these Amiibos are right now. And we certainly don’t like the idea of rewarding Amiibo scalpers for what they’re doing, which is taking advantage of those who weren’t able to get their Amiibos on day one.
If you’re one of those gamers that don’t own a 3DS just yet, it would be worth going out to buy one, even if just to play this game. It’s that good. How many stars would I give it? How about a galaxy out of ten?
Which is a 10 out of 10. This game deserves it, and so does developer Mercury Steam. This game offers tight controls, atmospheric visuals and sound, high replay value, and novel gameplay mechanics that only add to the experience. The only catch is, you gotta buy it. Which I did. Twice. I did my part to encourage excellence in game design. How about you?
The moment you realize that only the first two letters of that rebuttal are necessary.
If smugness had an official webcomic, that webcomic would be Vegan Artbook. The sheer amount of arrogance we are dealing with here would take Satan aback.
Vegan Artbook is about a group of vegans and their interactions with non-vegans. Those interactions boil down to how vegans are such great human beings, and how non-vegans are the cruelest, stupidest, most short-sighted monsters that the artist can imagine.
You could attempt to contact the artist directly and let her know that she’s wrong, her positions are all oversimplifications, many of her “facts” are misleading, and throw numerous scientifically-supported facts firmly grounded in nutrition, biology, and physiology, with supporting documents from reputable sources that can be checked with Google Scholar, etc. Then you’d read a few of her comics and come to understand that she’s aware of these facts, and just doesn’t care. If she cares enough about what you have to say, she’ll draw a caricature saying it which will usually have squiggly arms, buck teeth, acne, or whatever she can think of that would make you seem like a monster. Then she’ll honestly wonder why her webcomic has critics.
To her credit, however, she actually does delete some of her comics if someone can succeed in convincing her that making them was a terrible idea. Here’s one that was edited:
Old, left. New, right. Can you spot the difference?
Or this one, which was deleted from her page altogether:
Gather around! Vegan Artbook is going to teach us what a straw man fallacy is.
So, let’s not give up on the artist altogether. Let’s keep going! With enough persuasion, she may just delete every single one of her comics, and finally come around to being a decent, normal human being! But let’s not get our hopes up.
Vegan Artbook does have a cast of characters, but calling them characters is unfair to any other comic that has characters and to the definition of the word “character”. While there are different personages with distinct appearances, each of the protagonists are mouthpieces for the artist’s agenda with no deviation in the slightest. There’s a girl named Dolly that starts out as a meat-eater, but shortly into the comic, she changes sides and loses any aspect of her character that differentiated her from the rest of the protagonists, besides the color pink.
The antagonists are portrayed as varying degrees of insane, and they usually only serve as faces to say whatever argument that the artist feels like arguing against on that day, whether it be a ridiculous straw man argument or something that the artist doesn’t realize sounds reasonable and rational. But by the end of the page, they’re usually reduced to being unable to argue further, often by the counter-argument the artist wanted to convey or some quick zinger.
The art in Vegan Artbook seems competent at first blush. It’s so cute, that I just wanna huggle the entire cast, even as they call me a vicious monster! But then you realize how wrong you are for liking it because Priya went to the Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V school for webcomic art. Because of this laziness technique, she only has to draw each character once, and if she gets it right the first time, just modify the facial expressions, and it’s smooth sailing from then on out.
While most webcomic artists improve with time, the art style in Vegan Artbook is one of the few to have actually gotten worse. While her earlier comics were vibrant and colorful, Priya’s latest comics (which star a self-insert, tending Vegan Artbook towards Sonichu territory) are done in a monochrome with brown. This is somewhat reminiscent of old sepia-colored photographs, but is entirely inappropriate for a webcomic done in a Sanrio style. I’m puzzled as to why she would choose to do this. My guess is that the artist thinks that this is somehow more eco-friendly, but that would only matter for the printed books in her online store (which are still printed with bright colors), not for something transmitted as data and displayed on a monitor, which uses no ink or trees.
Then, with no warning, the comic hits you with gore. Some panels are filled with photographs of gory images that the artist uses to show just how ugly the production of meat is. This comes with no warning for those who happen to be reading her comic at work, which can actually make her comic a disservice to the careers of its intended audience. As you could probably imagine, some of the images used are discredited photographs that were once used in PETA propaganda.
For most of this review, my focus was on the webcomic itself. But for a moment, I’d like to indulge by taking on the author’s philosophy, seeing as it takes center stage in her comic. Like many SJW comics, not every page of Vegan Artbook is a comic page. Some pages are “splash pages” or “pin-ups” that convey distilled smugness. The following summarizes the purpose of the author’s personal philosophy pretty well:
Vegans and vegetarians alike bloviate about how it’s their mission to limit suffering, harm, or whatever they choose to call it. When you talk to one enough, you’ll find that that’s what their position pretty much comes down to. However, their entire endeavor is self-defeating, which becomes obvious when you make the following observation:
Suffering is an intrinsic part of life.
Think about it. You suffer day after day. You suffer because some jerk cut you off on the highway. You suffer because you slave away with MS Office in a cubicle for 8 hours a day working with people who have no idea what you do and therefore assume that you have no value. You suffer because congress votes your constitutional freedoms away while shooting down any solution that could make anything any better for the rest of us. You suffer because your teenage children think that they know better than you, even though you’ve been around at least twice as long as they have, and they’ve spent half their time alive soiling their undergarments. And none of this is unusual.
Then you look at livestock. They never have to worry about paying the bills or having their property repossessed. They never have to worry about starving, or being hunted by natural predators. They have it well until the day that they’re slaughtered and made into someone’s food, which is done with a manner that’s quicker and far more humane than a natural predator would. Livestock have it so well.
In spite of this, the suffering of livestock matters more to vegans than the suffering of their fellow human beings. This is what makes them so reprehensible. But there’s more to it. They say that they’re in it to limit suffering, but they always draw the line when things get too difficult for them.
There are two things that vegans could do if they really wished to limit suffering. I wouldn’t even bring these ideas up if it weren’t clear that I disagree with them (which I do). I bring them up because I want to make it known just what veganism and its underlying philosophy leads to when followed to their shared conclusion. Here they are:
Stop procreating. Throughout a person’s life, even if they’re vegan, they consume plenty of resources, including the indirect deaths of numerous insects, small mammals, and other animals that are killed in an effort to bring these resources to you and your children. This includes the numerous rodents that are directly or indirectly killed as a result of grain harvesting.
Taking your own life. If you do this, you’ll immediately stop consuming natural resources and stop causing indirect deaths that make vegan diets possible. Also, numerous insects and microbes get a free meal, so there’s that.
I could also bring up the possibility of going on a shooting rampage, but some vegans would probably actually consider it, and it’s not necessary to go that far to point out how morally moribund that the vegan philosophy is.
But I don’t just dislike Veganism for what it becomes when it’s followed to it’s conclusion. I hate it because it propagates through dishonesty. Veganism makes more vegans by preying on the under-informed, including those who are unaware of the necessity of iodine and B vitamins in neurological health, resulting in the brain damage of those who adhere to the vegan diet, and starting a vicious cycle which makes the vegan’s victim more likely to accept anything that they say.
Vegan Artbook lies to you all over the place to try to sell you veganism. That’s why this comic upsets me so much. Vegans themselves should stop and reconsider what they’re doing. If it’s necessary to lie to get people to accept what you’re trying to sell them, perhaps you shouldn’t believe it, either.
Take the comic’s opening salvo:
It’s a popular belief that Calcium is all that’s needed for strong bones. Calcium’s absorption into the body is aided by vitamin D, vitamin K, and magnesium. All of the above vitamins and minerals are in milk. This makes milk pretty much ideal for bone health.
Now, look how that comic is numbered. Yep, this is Vegan Artbook number one. That’s the artist’s commitment to research and starting strong with statements supported by facts.
Oh, by the way, Priya actually compares meat-eaters to Hitler. You know, the most infamous vegetarian in human history?
And there’s more. Lot’s more. This review could have easily turned into a point-by-point rebuttal of every stupid and naive claim that’s made in Vegan Artbook. But then it would be super-long and not really be much of a review. Still, it bears mentioning, considering that Vegan Artbook is one of those webcomics that is made with the intention of teaching, in which case it matters all the more that she gets the facts right. It doesn’t help that her idea of teaching is to repeatedly call everyone who disagrees with her stupid until they stop.
And speaking of stopping, I’m going to stop this review and give the webcomic its score, which is a the-reason-I’m-ending-this-review out of ten.
Which would be a 0.8 out of ten. A person can only take so much of this. Besides, I’m going to head out and see whether spite makes hamburgers tastier.
UPDATE: It does. The fact that I get vitamins from it that vegans only get from BS sources if at all is icing on the cake. Carnivores have more fun.
I’m aware that there is another webcomic by the same name that came before, and that it’s somewhat stylistically similar. But that’s not the strangest thing about Jack.
This webcomic is classified as “horror” on The Duck, but I really don’t know how to classify it because most horror comics demand that it be taken seriously. Otherwise, it’s a particularly sick comedy. But hey, it doesn’t do particularly well at either, so whatever frame of mind you get into as you read this, you’re not bound to enjoy Jack very much.
Jack stars the title character, who is a man in a hockey mask who was supposedly a fugitive of some sort. Jason Voorhees would find this lame. The comic starts out with Jack on a stake, being threatened by a man leading a lynch mob, with Jack and the lynch mob trying to talk the man out of killing Jack. There is a highly unrealistic conversation about the legal consequences of killing Jack coming from Jack himself, because apparently it’s completely realistic to expect that a raving lunatic with a lynch mob at his side would be dissuaded by the legal repercussions of what he’s doing. From then on, Jack is released and sets out to avenge his kidnapping with homicide. But, as it turns out, Jack was actually killed, and Jack was telepathically tasked with rescuing the corpse of the alligator that ate him from the guy who left him to drown by the alligator itself.
Confusing? This comic is only getting started.
In the next story arc, Jack goes to a bar. A prostitute offers him some fun for some money, and Jack refuses. The prostitute does not take this well, so her pimp has him kidnapped in retaliation.
Fast fact: generally speaking, prostitutes don’t get upset if you don’t feel like having sex with them. They’re in it for the money. If they have bills to pay, and you don’t want their services, they’ll just move along and find someone who does.
So, what does the couple do with Jack? They rape him. No really, that’s what they do. We’re already past the point of “what-am-I-even-reading”, so it’s amazing that this comic can further continue its plunge downhill. But it does, and the hero is rescued by some random furry who happened to be walking by.
You read that right. This comic has furries. The author wants you to take it seriously as a horror comic, and it has furries. And you’re supposed to take it seriously. And it has furries.
Where was I? Oh yeah, after this, Jack goes to jail, where he’s allowed to keep his mask, because it seems like standard procedures are suspended in this comic that you’re supposed to take seriously. It’s there that Jack meets someone who knows the people he just killed, and he somehow cuts his ears off when they’re behind the straps of his mask, and Jack does nothing to stop it, even though no one is holding his arms down.
Is it too much to ask that he struggles or does something more than look slightly peeved that he’s being disfigured with a knife?
That’s not an anomaly, either. That’s just how fighting is handled in Jack. Every blow is taken directly with usually no effort on the part of the assailed to practice basic self-preservation. An enemy can be completely upon his victim, with every perceivable advantage, but it’s still the victim’s turn to attack, and the assailant won’t so much as resist until their opponent has finished their attack. Because of this, the fighting in Jack is so stupid that it’s fun to read in a way the author probably didn’t intend.
Yes, I know that the point of all this suffering on the part of Jack is to show how he’s breaking down to the point that he’s the psychopath that he ends up becoming. I know, but I don’t care. This comic is so stupid and poorly-executed that what’s supposed to be tragic instead comes off as funny.
In Jack, there isn’t really one consistent art style. Jack comes off as an experimental comic in which numerous artistic styles are tried, but nothing is really stuck with. The result comes off as something that some high school student drew to show his friends how crazy he/she is so they don’t mess with him/her. Then they honestly don’t understand why they’re still being relentlessly made fun of.
There are parts that are mostly monochrome. The exception would be the blood, which is colored in red, as though we’re supposed to have our attention drawn to it. Aside from this indulgence, this is easily Jack at its best-looking, as it shows that the artist is competent at shading.
Other parts of the comic are full-color, but the colors are bright and garish, and appear to be colored with Crayola markers or an equivalent. Crayola markers are terrible for coloring, and are usually only used by children who don’t have a more sophisticated option available. It’s super-easy for strokes to overlap, which in the case of Crayola markers, results in darker colors where it happens. Someone who is masterful can take advantage of this to create depth, but this isn’t a skill that the author of Jack appears to have.
Then there’s the anatomy. Most humans are skeletal in appearance, which can probably be sold as being stylistic to go with the punk-metal horror style. However, you also notice how muscle tissue is misplaced in such a way as to interfere with a sense of depth, and you know that this comic is drawn by someone who is terrible with anatomy.
Being a furry doesn’t get you off Scott-free. The author only knows how to draw wolf snouts, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t still attempt to put other animals, such as rabbits, into her comics. Behold:
Is it a rabbit? Is it a dog? No! It’s just ugly.
This comic starts out confusing, and then descends into unintentional sick humor. Or was it intentional? It’s hard to tell. Maybe the artist is some kind of super troll, and everyone who points out this comics numerous flaws is playing into her hands in some way that can only be done by making a hilariously bad webcomic. Sounds like an airtight explanation, until you figure that there’s no perceivable benefit to doing such a thing. It’s just easier to say that she’s a bad webcomic artist. Hanlon’s razor and such.
Anyhow, on to the score, which is a there-there out of ten:
Which would be a 3.3. Because it’s not all bad, right?
I get the idea that this comic is intended to be enjoyed when in a certain frame of mind, which would be achieved by playing heavy metal from your speakers, drinking Kentucky bourbon, and banging your head while making a goat sign. But you could enjoy all that even more by not having this comic have anything to do with it.
Suppose you’re in the mood for some righteous indignation. Some frequent, scheduled YouTube content where some guy shouts at the camera about random topics. Then you stumble across an old channel called “AngryAussie”. You watch a few videos and say, “No thanks”, then you keep searching.
That’s pretty much the entire AngryAussie experience.
However, suppose you were to stick around and poke about his archives. That’s when things really start to get interesting.
For one thing, you find out that the channel is old. Really old. Some of his videos have been around for over a decade, so he got into YouTube shortly after it got started.
You also notice something else: there was a time in which the guy was skinnier. Much, much skinnier. He does take his efforts to hide it. His avatar is of himself from back when he was skinnier, and his newer content shows him from the chest up, whereas the content from when he was much skinnier showed him from the waist up. While he’s going to these pains to make a better image for himself, he’s apparently not taking the effort to lay off the donuts.
Why does it matter? When you spend time in front of the camera, your image is part of what you’re doing; your face is how you make your living. And, as it would seem, time has not been kind to AngryAussie.
This is true in more than one sense. While his older content from shortly after he got started had viewcounts numbering in the thousands and even tens of thousands, his newer content only has viewcounts numbering in the hundreds. Yet, he keeps going, with a certain persistence that one would only have if it didn’t matter to them that no one is interested in their content any longer.
And that brings us to the main problem with AngryAussie’s channel: the content.
AngryAussie’s videos can best be described as going on angry tangents about whatever is newsworthy or whatever random topics just happen to catch his ire. When I say “angry”, I don’t mean “angry” as in “tee-hee he’s an internet comedian with his fair share of clever zingers”. I mean “angry” as in “aggressively beats you over the head with whatever point he’s trying to make”.
Unless your opinion is completely in lock-step with whatever point he’s trying to make, you’re bound to come away feeling at least a little condescended. This already does plenty to limit AngryAussie’s appeal. But it gets worse: if you leave a comment telling him that you disagree with him at all, prepare to see your comment deleted, and your account possibly being banned from his channel.
AngryAussie seems pretty sincere in the belief that freedom of expression should belong to him, but not to the people who frequent his channel. One could argue that this made him very early to the SJW movement. However, when your content has very limited appeal to begin with, it’s a bad idea to block whatever few viewers that you have over petty disagreements.
Want evidence of this? Go back to his earlier videos. At one point in time, he replied to most people who commented, and it’s interesting to sort them by date to see him replying to comments that are no longer there. Of course, it would be much easier for him to respond to each commenter now, seeing as he has so few. The fact that he blocks those who argue back likely has something to do with how few viewers he has.
If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out to begin with. In fact, critical feedback is a good thing, as it provides insight on how to improve. It’s not unusual to run into criticism that has no purpose other than to tear you down, but the solution to that is to carry on unfazed, and grow some thicker skin, if need be.
Let’s take an example of his content to see just what we’re dealing with. The following video is titled “WAINGAFAT? Koran quoting bigots!”
Your first question may be “What is a WAINGAFAT? Some kind of Australian slang?” No, it’s an acronym which is short for “What Am I Not Giving A Fuck About Today”.
His choice of topic is one that I agree with, because I too get tired of seeing bigots use the Koran to advance their sordid agenda. Let’s examine what he has to say.
INTRO WARNING: Content starts at 0:17
“Who am I not giving a fuck about today? Random losers who go around online and prove that Islam is evil,”
Wow, there goes my expectations! As it turns out, the people who he thinks are losers are those who are critical of a religion. This happens to be something that AngryAussie himself does, by the way.
INTERNAL CONTRADICTION WARNING: He does it in this very same video.
“putting out random, out-of-context quotes from the Koran, saying ‘THAT PROVES IT!'”
It does prove it. If a fanatical ideology that kills people has a proclamation calling for the death of non-believers in it’s very charter, that is proof that it is a violent ideology. QED.
“…A quote from the Koran doesn’t prove a fucking thing.”
This would get quite a response if it were instead directed at Muslims. They’d wonder just who this man is that he thinks that he’s in a position to tell them what their religion is all about. They’d call him a religiouly-ignorant rattling cap. And they’d be right.
“Something is lost on you because you’re not capable of a logical sequence of thought.”
Apparently it’s not logical thinking to point out what a book says as the reason behind the behavior of those who take it seriously. Also, it’s apparently not logical to look for reasons why a particular ideology turns out a disproportionately high number of violent fanatics.
“You do not actually LISTEN to other people. Listening involves understanding what the other person says. Not just waiting for your next turn to spout some shit.”
From 0:55 to 1:07. That’s the point in the video in which he completely demolishes everything that he’s ever done on YouTube. Go ahead, watch it. If you’ve seen any of his other videos, or just this one for that matter, you’re going to laugh so hard.
In just 12 seconds, he destroyed his entire YouTube career.
“I can give you quotes from both the New and Old Testament that justify murder, rape, and slavery. Does that mean that all Christians and Jews are terrorists too?”
No, you can’t. Murder and rape are endorsed nowhere in the Bible. In the Old Testament, slavery was merely tolerated, and heavily regulated to the point that it wouldn’t have been considered attractive to practice. The New Testament discouraged slavery in favor of a brotherly relationship between believers, which was the entire point of the book of Philemon. The Christian world would eventually use New Testament reasoning to call for the abolition of slavery in the western world altogether. Source: Every reputable theologian and Bible scholar ever.
On the other hand, Muslim countries still practice slavery, and some are actively involved in the African slave trade to this day.
“Um, Atheists, don’t bother answering that, because I know what your answer will be.”
AngryAussie himself is an Atheist, and therefore assumes their response. I don’t, but that’s because I believe that most Atheists are better people than AngryAussie.
“But where they do start to shit me a bit is when they say ‘you should read the Koran, then you’d know’ as if they’d read the Koran. And they will bald-faced lie and say that they’ve read the Koran.”
What really starts to “shit him a bit” is when someone not only presents evidence, but invites him to see the evidence for himself. It’s easier for him to just say that they’ve never read the Koran, and then never bother to look into it. This is called, “being lazy.”
As an aside, I’ve read the Koran. Extensively. In fact, I’ve spent thousands of hours researching Islamic ideology to see just why Muslims do what they do, and whether the desire of their fanatics is actually supported by the Koran. And it is. It didn’t even take a few hours to arrive at that determination; the reason why I’ve researched it so much is because Islamic theology is fascinating. Muhammad was the Chris-Chan of the 7th century.
That fact isn’t preventing AngryAussie from doing no research whatsoever and then acting like he has any idea what’s going on.
“This is the same kind of moron who pulls a quote out and says ‘this proves gay marriage is evil and wrong, homosexuality is bad’ because it’s described in the Bible as ‘an abomination’. Yeah, in Leviticus, the Jewish book of law. So, if your using that, saying ‘ooh, that’s God’s word, that’s absolutely it’, Leviticus also talks about keeping Kosher! Do you keep Kosher, right along with saying that man-on-man sex is an abomination?”
It’s amazing how, with every word, AngryAussie proves that he doesn’t understand a thing about Christian or Jewish ideology. For one thing, homosexuality wasn’t just denounced in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, it was also denounced in the New Testament book of Romans. There is New Testament justification for the Christian position on homosexuality. The key difference is that the NT doesn’t call for stoning people for being gay. The reason for that is because the command to stone them is understood to be limited to Israeli national law, which is why Christians and Jews don’t practice stoning. Source: Every reputable theologian and Biblical scholar ever.
Incidentally, Islam not only actively teaches that homosexuality is wrong, but actively calls for the death penalty for those who practice it. If you think that they’re wrong, find the Koran passage that tells them that they’re wrong, go over to ISIS, and show them. They claim to take the Koran seriously, so let’s see how they take it. It would probably be an eye-opening experience for them.
“And, Orthodox Jews? You don’t have to answer that, because I know what your answer will be.”
I suspect that it would sound something like, “You just mocked what we stood for. Don’t act like we’re friends.”
In the end of the video, he does admit that some “dodgy” things are done in the name of Islam, so by that point, he’ll have insulted every religion that he mentioned in his video. He wraps up by saying that he isn’t interested in any resultant backlash that may result from touching on this topic, which is what you’d expect from an internet angry man who can’t take it as well as he dishes it out. Want proof? Scroll down and try finding the comments of the commenters he insults. Can’t do it? That’s because he deleted them.
Of course, that regrettable pile of crap was from 8 years ago. What’s AngryAussie up to today? If you answered making fun of Donald Trump and calling right-wingers Nazis, then that groan of “Of course. Another one of those.” probably came from you.
So yeah, AngryAussie is currently competing directly with the corporate mainstream information media, and pushing the SJW narrative at a time when the SJW movement is going through its backlash phase, during which it’s seriously not cool to be an SJW. And if the SJW movement is anything like the punk or hippie movements that preceded it (it is), the whole thing is only going downhill from here on out, and in just a short while, the dead-enders will be the only ones left.
I’m getting tired of this guy, so it’s about time to give his channel it’s score, which is censorship out of ten.
Which is a zero. That’s what you get when you get on a platform that gives you a voice, call everyone else stupid for not having your worldview, then delete the comments from those who respond in kind. Enjoy having a platform that YouTube grants you totally free of charge, while denying that same platform for your fellow users.
With Pokemon Gold and Silver being released to Virtual Console today, there will be many players out there that will look up teambuilding guides, considering that the Gold and Silver versions were hard.
Some would look up things like “Best Team For (Pokemon game or region)”. While these guides seem well-thought-out and comprehensive, they are flawed and are generally terrible for making in-game teams. The reason for this is because these guides usually suggest full teams of six pokemon with the idea being to be prepared for what the game throws at you, but these guides are terrible for the late game, when you face much higher-level opponents, and the EXP you get from battle doesn’t spread as well among six pokemon, leaving you underleveled and struggling against the later, more powerful opponents. This can be overcome with grinding, but it’s a serious chore to level up six pokemon one-at-a-time.
A better way to play the game is to focus on a core of three or four pokemon of different types, so you’ll have that balance of team diversity, and be on par with most opponents you face. The other two team members can be there for HMs so you can overcome the numerous obstacles that these games throw your way.
So, on to the team:
Your starter should be Cyndaquil. It’s hands-down the best Johto starter, and is well-equipped to take on many of the game’s challenges. It’s a fire type in a region where it’s great to be a fire type, having an advantage against gym leaders such as Bugsy and Jasmine, and against the common Grass and Bug types that you see many trainers use. Fire types are hard to come across in Johto, but this one is available to you at the start of the game.
Not only that, Typlosion rocks. It can learn Thunderpunch and Earthquake, which gives it excellent coverage against pokemon it would normally struggle against.
Cyndaquil can solo the game until you get to Goldenrod City, but it’s not a bad idea to get it a Pidgey companion until then. For one thing, Cyndaquil is weak to Mud Slap, which is spammed by Falkner, and lowers its accuracy. Pidgey is immune to the move, and gives you another pokemon to switch into to bring Cyndaquil’s accuracy back to normal. Also, later in the game, you can have Pidgey use Fly to get you around. You can instead get yourself a Hoothoot to do the same thing, if you think Pidgey is too mainstream. Also, Hoothoot can learn Flash, so it’s actually better in that regard.
Once you make it all the way to Route 34, you can catch yourself two pokemon that do your team big favors. One is Abra. Abra only knows Teleport, so catching it mostly involves chucking Pokeballs at it right off the bat and hoping they work. Once you catch an Abra, it doesn’t do much of anything until it reaches level 16. But when it does, it evolves to a superstrong Kadabra, and immediately gains a useful attack move. Not only that, Kadabra tends to learn strong moves sooner than it really needs to. Its defensive stats are low, but with the kind of speed and special attack stats it has, it might not matter very often. Glass cannon.
If you know someone else with Gold or Silver, you can evolve it to Alakazam through trading. This makes an already great pokemon even better, but still isn’t necessary because Kadabra can still get you through the game.
The second pokemon you want to catch on Route 34 is Drowzee. Not to raise, but to trade to someone in the Goldenrod Dept. Store for a Machop. Machop is great for a number of reasons. For one thing, it can just about solo Goldenrod’s Gym. Not only that, it can beat the many Normal and Rock types that you run into with ease. It learns strong moves that match its type by itself, has a high attack stat, and stays useful throughout the game. The fact that it levels up faster due to being a traded pokemon is the cherry on top.
Now, some might wonder about how to handle Whitney herself. She has a reputation for having a Miltank that’s so strong, that it brings many playthroughs to an end by discouraging players from continuing any further.
While Stomp and Milk Drink are moves to watch out for, the main concern with Miltank is its move Rollout, which starts out weak but gets to the point of wiping out teams as it’s used consecutively. However, this can be easily beaten by lowering Miltank’s accuracy. Cyndaquil might be weak to Rollout, but it starts out as a weak enough move that Cyndaquil might get a few uses of Smokescreen in. If Rollout can’t hit consecutively, it doesn’t gain in strength. After that, Machop can clean up with ease. With this strategy, Whitney will be crying away in no time. For those who never beat her, that literally happens. Be ready for it. Oh Whitney, why do you have to make things hard for us, every step of the way?
For your next team member, you have a pick between two equally-good choices. One is Gyarados from the Lake of Rage. It’s convenient in that you get it as part of a scripted event, so you can’t miss it (though you can fail to catch it, so save the game before battling it). Once you catch it, it can clear through most opponents just using Thrash, which it can use several times in a row with just one PP. It can also learn Surf, Waterfall, and Strength, which are good as attack moves or to use Gyarados as an HM slave. The drawback for Gyarados is that it doesn’t learn any moves that both match its type and utilizes its outstanding attack stat. All Water moves are special attacks in gen 2, and Gyarados doesn’t learn any Flying moves.
It’s more inconvenient, but Lapras is an excellent alternative. It can only be found in Union Cave on Friday after having beaten Morty (Surf is needed to get to it), but it’s well worth the effort. It’s a little on the slow side, but it has high HP and its stats are otherwise balanced, and it’s a Water/Ice type that can learn Ice Beam by itself. You’d have Surf at that point, so you’ll have a strong move for it already, and you can teach it Thunder if you want.
The other two pokemon on your team can be HM slaves, which can include things like Pidgey/Hoothoot to fly you around, something that can use Whirlpool if you prefer not to teach it to Lapras, or if you’re going with Lapras, you can still keep Gyarados around for HMs.
You can use either Lugia or Ho-oh on your team, depending on which version you’re playing. If so, it might be better to use it as a substitution for another pokemon on your team, if to avoid type redundancy. Lugia might make a good replacement for Lapras/Gyarados or Kadabra, to avoid having too many weaknesses to Electric or Dark. Players might be a little squeamish about subbing out their starter, but Ho-oh can replace Cyndaquil/Quilava/Typhlosion pretty well. It might add another weakness to electricity to your team, but Ho-oh’s special defense is very high, so Electric attacks might not do much damage, anyway.
So, there you have it. With this team, Pokemon Gold and Silver will be much easier. Certain opponents such as Lance and Red still won’t be a cakewalk, but this can get you through much of the game, without having to power-level too much. If you want a challenge, the Gold and Silver versions don’t have a Hard Mode. But you can go with Chikorita as your starter. That would make the game plenty hard.
Disagree with some of my team choices? Comments section.
If sadness had an official food, that food would be soup. That’s because soup is almost entirely insubstantial. There’s a few chunks of meat or vegetables or whatever, but the vast majority of it is broth. What is broth made of? It’s water, flavored by whatever else is in the soup. Therefore, soup is mostly water. Does water make a good meal? Of course not.
In just a few bites, you’ll have eaten the substance out of the soup, and be left with flavored water. So, what do you do? Leave the table, of course. You’re done. But no, not if you happen to share the table with a Pharisee. The busybody will come after you for not finishing your “meal”.
So, how do you finish your “meal”? By lifting the bowl up to your face and drinking your water. But no, you’re not being miserable enough for Mrs. Manners. She’ll want you to lift that water up to your face one spoonful at a time, and sip it with the kind of dignified elegance you’d only see in an old oriental painting.
Is it okay if I’m at least a little indelicate? I’m a man, after all. My idea of repairing an old motor is to hit it with a comically large hammer and seeing whether that makes it start.
You know what’s better for dinner than soup? Just about anything, really. Like stew. If you’d take the water out of soup, what you’d be left with is stew. Stew is great because it’s not watered down and insubstantial. Soup is stew, cut with water.
Also, curry. Curry is great. That’s some good eating, right there. Most people complain about it because it’s super spicy, but that’s the great thing about it. Their problem is that they’re being wimps. Spicy food rocks.
Do you know anyone who actually likes soup? I thought not. Therefore, argument over. I win. I know about the famous “Soup Nazi” that was marketed using an episode of Seinfeld. If it weren’t for Seinfeld, no one would care that there was a restaurant in New York City that sells soup. There are a bunch of other restaurants in New York City. Why anyone would stand in line for soup, then pay for it, I have no idea.
Out of curiosity, I looked up man cards using Google image search. This one caught my attention:
The fact that it was made on an existing template wasn’t really new. It’s another symptom of meme culture, and can be likened to another 13 year old DeviantArt artist that thinks that they’re making something of their own by tracing/vectoring someone else’s work.
The reason why this “man card” is lame is because the feats listed are lame. I suspected that maybe the creator was aiming for something ironic, and I was ready to hammer on it anyway on the claim that I was taking it at face value. However, I found the blog entry that featured it prominently, used in a non-ironic manner. At least I didn’t have to go out of my way to credit the author, considering that the watermark was so huge. The fact that he was willing to go so far out of his way to take credit for it led me to the conclusion that he was really serious about this.
The problem with his man card is the same problem that I see with so many other man cards: the feats aren’t really feats, which leads me to suspect that the author is keeping expectations within his own ability to fulfill them.
In fact, here is a list of each of these accomplishments with me making fun of them one at a time:
Grow Mustaache (sic)
Stop for a moment and let it sink in that a spelling error is in the very first feat on his card. That’s the level of ineptitude we are dealing with here. Not only that, there’s the fact that he has growing a mustache listed as a feat. Growing a mustache isn’t a challenge. Your body does it by itself if you let it. Unless you live under some fanatical oppressive government that is cracking down on mustaches, growing one is no more an accomplishment than drinking beer.
Drink Beer
The simple consumption of a grown-up beverage. I’m sure your daddy is real impressed. If you’re one of those guys that avoids alcohol for whatever reason, then I suppose drinking barley juice would suffice.
Rescue kitten from tree
I’m giving the author this one, even though it’s another task that one can accomplish without leaving their back yard. After all, it’s the closest thing on his wimpy little man card that bears any resemblance to a real accomplishment. But somehow, I get the idea that he was so eager to put it on his card because it was the most exciting thing that he had ever done.
Survive a snake bite
Lame. For one thing, why would you want to give snakes a chance? What’s more, 90% of snakes are non-venomous and therefore surviving a bite from one is not an accomplishment in which you can take true pride. Unless it’s from something hardcore like an anaconda, there’s not much to brag about in surviving a snake bite.
Eat Bacon
Oh yeah, because we all know how much of a challenge it is to go to the supermarket, spend a few dollars on something, then prepare it for consumption after taking it home. By the way, everyone can get over bacon, already. Edward Bernays is dead, so let’s just move on.
Bait your own hook
If he wanted something on here about fishing, he could have made it something like catching a trout then killing, cooking, and eating it. Instead, he wants to brag about baiting the hook. At this point, he wouldn’t surprise me if one of these feats was “wiping from front to back”.
Wear spandex without looking fruity
That’s right, he wants you to wear spandex. Also, it matters to him whether you look “fruity” while doing so.
Adjust your own derailleur
That’s right, he literally listed changing gears on your bicycle. Something that can be done with levers mounted on handlebars for that very purpose. Notice the use of the word “own”, because adjusting someone else’s gears would not be satisfactory.
Fix your own bike
This is almost an accomplishment, but it’s not as though bikes are mechanically complex. Seeing as the author writes for a mountain biking blog, it’s strange that he’d list it as being a true feat. Obviously, he wanted to take the opportunity to elevate his own hobby by elevating a mundane task thereof to the status of manliness. It’s easy to see through.
Wear pink, confidently
No.
Kill Spiders
Did the author’s girlfriend write this? This isn’t exactly a feat of daring. Men are much bigger than spiders. Much, much bigger. The spiders wouldn’t stand a chance.
Drink Espresso
I’m sure that the guy who listed “Eat Bacon” as a manly deed would find just as much fulfillment by going to Starbucks, ordering one of their espressos, then drinking it. What kind of sheltered life does this person live if he’s listing such modern conveniences on his man card?
Ride a motorcycle
The reason why motorcycles are considered manly is by association with the manly men that ride them. When we see someone ride a motorcycle, we imagine that the rider does gutsy things, such as punching rattlesnakes. Now we know that there’s one biker out there that wants a gold star for eating bacon.
Shoot Guns
I suppose that BB guns count, and those tin cans in his back yard didn’t stand much of a chance. For the two or three communist-sympathizing net cafe refugees that read this, no, shooting a gun isn’t hard.
Work on any car
It doesn’t say “get it working again”, so you can be completely inept and claim full credit just for trying. Yay for participation trophies!
Grill Meat
When I came to this one, I decided to go back and make a tally of how many feats on this card involve food. It’s four. Great work, He Man. You can eat things.
Smoke Cigars
Smoking is one of the stupidest things that people today do. You know you’re dealing with something special when people willingly consume a product that tells you that it causes cancer on the label. If someone tells you that he doesn’t consider you manly unless you smoke, you don’t need his respect.
That’s it? That’s a relief. If he kept going, he’d probably have suggested walking the dog or eating ham. What a lame-o man card. I’d be embarrassed to carry something like that around.
While looking, I found a man card that I actually liked, and it was posted in a Wikia about manliness, of all things:
Now that’s what I call a Man Card. The fonts, the pic of Mike Conley, and the fact that the feats are actual feats, it’s great. I haven’t even done all the things listed on that card. That’s what a real man card is all about: challenging yourself to do things that you have to come out of your comfort zone to do. If more people carried man cards like this, and accomplished its feats, women would spend less time wondering where the real men went.
But if you’re wondering where the round-faced Nancy-boys are, they’re the ones that are at home giving themselves check marks for eating bacon.
(EDIT 8-Nov-2017: This tweet has been found to have originated from Kevin Dobson, who directed them to Anita Sarkeesian. The problem? The Kevin Dobson tweets were issued a day before the #GamerGate hashtag was coined. NBC News has been caught editing the #GamerGate tag onto a tweet not associated with them to vilify them. It just gets worse and worse.)
The moment you realize that only the first two letters of that rebuttal are necessary.
Old, left. New, right. Can you spot the difference?
Gather around! Vegan Artbook is going to teach us what a 
Is it too much to ask that he struggles or does something more than look slightly peeved that he’s being disfigured with a knife?
Is it a rabbit? Is it a dog? No! It’s just ugly.
Magnetricity 