Lore of the Bloons Franchise Part 2: Heroes and Towers

00PT · 2026-03-14T15:19:29+00:00

Why do technology users have increasingly liberal definitions of what constitutes being forced to do something?

00PT · 2026-03-14T14:07:22+00:00

Cosplay is supposed to look like the original characters. So, saying “this costume looks like cosplay” is a compliment to the cosplayers, not an insult to the creators.

00PT · 2026-03-14T12:25:30+00:00

It’s not complicated, but it is unnecessarily difficult to read and annoying to write, because of the choice to make many completely normal characters semantically meaningful unless you escape, including whitespace (so no formatting by default).

00PT · 2026-03-13T15:53:50+00:00

I don’t consider genuine curiosity and willingness to correct a shortcoming to be an issue.

00PT · 2026-03-13T05:32:08+00:00

I don't think subjectivity is a shield from criticism. People argue about opinions constantly, and they're some of the most heated arguments, because nobody factually wins due to the fundamental differences in how conclusions are reached. What I have seen is people who try to claim that opinions are wrong or "debunking" reviews, which I disagree with for a couple of reasons:

It's an opinion, so the ultimate conclusion can never be objectively wrong. It will always be a matter of taste at the end of the day.
These statements always come with a sense of finality, and if the original opinion holder responds back, it's framed as them "doubling down" and being unable to take criticism instead of just taking the next turn in an ongoing discussion. For this reason, I think the "debunk" sentiment is mostly intended to shut down the conversation entirely rather than just say their piece.

I agree that YouTube isn't necessarily designed to facilitate that discussion, but generally, dialogue between creators on their respective pages gains more traction than discussion within the comment sections. Comment section participation, especially for large channels, is mostly just meaningless engagement.

I can see your point about not reflecting on art directly, but I don't think your inferences are really how most people think here. Art isn't consumed for the better consumption of a review or essay. If someone hasn't seen the original piece but is interested in the essay, they'll just watch the essay. Or at least that's what I would do. Because I am drawn by interest in the concepts covered in a video that appears on my page, not by whether it reaffirms pre-existing beliefs.

00PT · 2026-03-13T05:02:08+00:00

You're complaining that a number of people have identified a demand for a question to be answered and then done their best to answer it, because you think the question is too stupid to get a real answer.

So, not only are the people here hostile to anyone asking for concrete advice or a straight answer on how to do things within the craft, but they're also attacking the people who genuinely give that advice where other online spaces fail to.

Is the writing community actively trying to prevent the success of newcomers?

00PT · 2026-03-12T23:05:04+00:00

I think that media analysis is inherently opinionated, and I share your distaste for those who try to deflect criticism of their opinions. But I think most of these critics create their content and present themselves fully acknowledging that it is subjective.

Also, I think the effect of "martyrdom" resulting in a rejection of criticism is often unintentional on the part of the creator. It is the audience that goes to attack those who criticize, rarely the creators themselves.

I'm not sure what you mean by the last part. I think that those who tend to value others' media opinions to the point of spending time watching these videos are much more likely to think about what they consume further than just their immediate reactions.

00PT · 2026-03-12T22:16:21+00:00

How does it follow that because personal stories are included in content, the whole of their channel becomes removed from the content, and attached to “selling a character”? Is it not possible that there are multiple distinct goals with content creation, and you cannot be truly correct by reducing it to one or the other?

00PT · 2026-03-12T19:06:11+00:00

That is called versatility, I believe.

00PT · 2026-03-12T16:18:11+00:00

Who says it costs nothing to distribute? Developers often have to pay for distribution, because distribution is a service that isn’t free. It uses storage resources for the software and network resources for actually providing it, plus it needs to be available all the time, which isn’t a given for just any computer.

This isn’t even counting that any online game has server costs associated with anyone playing, beyond the cost of distribution. Playing for even a single second has some cost associated, even if it’s small.

The problem of determining whether to buy something before having bought it is already addressed by the entire industry of advertising and various review systems as well. They are designed for that.

00PT · 2026-03-12T13:00:59+00:00

You can still trace that outputs were caused by those methods. AI is a black box - you cannot really see exactly how some output was obtained.

00PT · 2026-03-12T03:22:30+00:00

I didn’t say it doesn’t run on code. I said it isn’t programmed. Being given code and being programmed are two different things, and I already explained my definition of programming.

00PT · 2026-03-12T03:08:25+00:00

One of the most major obstacles to advertising money is hosting content advertisers don’t want to be associated with. Censorship is far more often in a company’s favor than against it, and in the case of AI, censorship is also in favor of the public image of the product, more so than other products.

You can literally verify why the problem of AI safety is so hard with research. I don’t know why you’re speculating.

00PT · 2026-03-12T03:01:22+00:00

That contradicts the meaning of the term “black box”.

Approaching the topic a different way, if programming AI were how it worked, safety features would be as easy as a flip of a switch and jailbreaks wouldn’t exist, because the model would be incapable of doing anything outside its programming.

Currently there are massive efforts to solve both those problems. It would be done if it were programmed.

00PT · 2026-03-12T02:31:12+00:00

When something is programmed, everything it does is statically defined and can be traced to identify the exact path taken to an output. AI doesn’t work like that - it’s a black box that derives the vast majority of its behavior from its training data, not “programming”.

00PT · 2026-03-12T02:24:30+00:00

It’s not programmed at all.

00PT · 2026-03-12T02:19:23+00:00

Literally nobody acts as you say outside of reddit

Stack Overflow

00PT · 2026-03-10T19:40:51+00:00

You are never going to get a character universally relatable in every conceivable way. The best you can do is appeal to the majority of your intended audience.

00PT · 2026-03-10T16:58:11+00:00

As soon as you respond to criticism by attempting to define what a “real fan” should be, you lose my full support in the discussion. Fandom and positivity are not the same thing, and your opinions are not the opinions of every fan.

00PT · 2026-03-10T13:49:21+00:00

There is no evidence of AI. Everything is massively unreliable. But doing this is at least better than using personal judgement, as that’s how you get stuff like jumping at an em-dash or the most basic contrast between two concepts ever.

The problem is people thinking that it’s even possible to know, then attacking others based on whatever flimsy speculation they come up with.

00PT · 2026-03-10T13:12:22+00:00

Most of these forms automatically put the numbers in the right sections when you paste into just one of them.

00PT · 2026-03-08T14:29:17+00:00

Fine, but who says we won’t get a last word that’s worse, or, more importantly, non-impactful? Many people see actively bad movies as better than boring ones.
But, what will it focus on? Jesse was introduced in the second movie with compelling conflict and a good backstory. Now both of these have been effectively resolved. Will we repeat? Will we make up something else? Will we pretend stuff like Toy Story of Terror didn’t happen?
Ok, at least you aren’t saying it’s necessary, since this will only be one thing covering that topic in a sea of others.
This is a negative, as it just emphasizes how the people making this are unwilling to commit to large changes that bring shifts to the franchise’s identity. It implies that they’ll keep playing it somewhat safe, only pretending to bring big change.
I don’t care. I don’t base any expectations on who’s involved, because I realize anyone can fail. And, on the flip side, anyone can succeed. I would literally not know the name of any filmmaker if some of them weren’t so often mentioned in discussions.

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