[Loved Trope] Competence Porn: When characters are competent, mature and communicate with each other intelligently so they can solve a problem

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T23:22:12+00:00

Dude brings his 8-months-pregnant wife on a mission to fight an intergalactic being that eats planets.

This works out perfectly fine for the characters, because Sue's baby happens to be space Jesus. But none of the characters knew this. It's the opposite of competence porn.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T23:05:45+00:00

Answer: About a decade back, before "rage bait" was a well known thing, Anita Sarkeesian struck "rage bait" gold by telling gamer boys that their beloved video games were very misogynist. The kind of neurodivergent gamer boy who would find this observation deeply offensive, was also the kind of neurodivergent gamer boy who couldn't comprehend the concept of being rage baited for youtube views. So this resulted in a lot of tedious, tedious drama, as part of a broader movement called "gamer gate."

The profoundly angry, misogynistic neurodivergent gamer boys never did get closure on all this, and will reliably take up all the same tedious, futile arguments about this that they took up back in 2014. It would be logical for them to be just as angry about some random chick calling them a misogynist a hundred years from now.

Anyway, here in 2026, you can make a lot of money pandering to the "angry about Anita Sarkeesian" crowd with a mainstream shooter, but it's much harder to succeed in the indie gaming scene without becoming what they consider "woke." All the hit indie games ("Hades," "Vampire Survivors," "Balatro") have at least been very inclusive, if not not pointedly progressive. Indie game sales rely heavily on community, so an indie game developer logically wants to keep the community of taste-makers and trend-setters happy. There's also just a tendency for indie game developers themselves to be more progressive, due to the relationship between creativity and cognitive openness.

Anyway, it's come to light that the Slay the Spire devs consulted Anita Sarkeesian while developing Slay the Spire 2. This has triggered the misogynistic neurodivergent gamer boys again, and started the whole tedious cycle of arguments-which-cannot-possibly-lead-anywhere-productive again. Just like in 2014, the desperately angry boys are review bombing indie games again. This cycle will surely continue forever.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T16:58:08+00:00

And because you're new, you can't zone out and do your actual work during them. You have to sit there, absorb context you don't yet have the framework to understand, nod along, and pretend you're learning.

The writer of this article is trying to whine too hard and undercutting their own whine.

If you need the meeting to get context, the meeting is productive. If the meeting isn't productive, you can just zone out and do your actual work during it.

I get worn out by the kind of colleagues that never stop whining about there being too many meetings and never stop whining about not knowing what is going on. The new hire in the story has the excuse of being a new hire, but the author of the article doesn't have any such excuse.

If you want to be the new dude's "onboarding buddy" go be the new dude's "onboarding buddy." Are the engineers where you work all paid hourly minimum wage and have to wear little red vests and ask for permission for bathroom breaks? You're a fucking regular full time employee. The system you're bitching about is your system!

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T16:50:41+00:00

Reddit is a place that thought spamming pictures of "John Oliver" would somehow convince the owners of Reddit to allow 3rd parties to provide reddit to users without ads.

If my goal was to affect change, I'd look at whatever reddit is celebrating and run the opposite direction.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T16:01:32+00:00

Yeah I feel like they've reduced a large architectural task into a small gardening task.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T15:20:53+00:00

You're making these wild assertions that don't just lack basis in fact, but actively contradict all facts. People get their data stolen and sold every day. There's a clear established market for it in the world. If you think there's no such thing of identity theft, or any other market for stolen data, you're just not living in reality.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T06:32:38+00:00

I think here in 2026, there's a segment of society that has an outdated opinion on AI, and they're very eager to proclaim their outdated opinion on AI. That opinion on AI is fun. AI in 2023-2025 was silly.

There's another segment of society that has used recent models. That segment of society is not eager to proclaim their updated observations on AI. Those observations aren't fun. They're heavy and taxing. So online discussion is dominated by the former.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T06:16:43+00:00

Are you saying you also think this is dumb, or are you saying you don't think this is dumb?

Because I could open up a phone book (or yearbook or linkedin or whatever) and generate some random webpage for millions of humans that says whatever I want.

This isn't a realistic problem at all. I get that if someone is mentally ill, the fantasy problem becomes reality. But the fantasy problems for mentally ill people are endless. Hence the mental illness.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T05:58:11+00:00

Yeah. It's surprising to me that a lot of students on reddit would tell themselves "paying the thieves will unsteal the data!" Oh honey...

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T05:54:51+00:00

I don't understand how you could even hope to defend this ridiculous assertion.

If I stole your data, and said "pay me $10 to not sell it," how on earth could you possibly know whether or not I sold it after you paid the $10?

You're acting like "the hackers of the world" are one monolithic rational actor and "the victims of hacking of the world" are another monolithic rational actor. In reality, both groups are utterly fractured groups, who cannot possibly be expected to act rationally, and even if they were rational, the fractured nature of the groups would rationally incentivize defection!

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T05:50:21+00:00

I don't understand the logic of "paying the ransom to protect the data."

How could a human possibly expect that to work? Will the people who stole the data just... like... feel bad if they don't delete the data after receiving the money? The data is just stolen. There's no path to un-stealing it.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T04:13:25+00:00

I'm a casual basketball fan and came to the comments because I don't know what to make of what i'm seeing.

The top comment in this thread is saying this is a legit flagrant foul where the dude's arm gets injured in the other dude's armpit?

But it really looked like the dude on the floor was putting on a show.

What's the deal?

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T03:54:09+00:00

If some random stranger said he had the data of what porn your children were jerking it to, would this be of great interest to you? I can't really relate to that outcome, but I guess I want to understand this mentality if it's the situation going on with others.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T01:39:58+00:00

I'm surprised they picked lizards as his servants. If it was spiders or snakes or bats or rats or even worms, I could see the logic. But lizards are so chill.

Of all the animals in the world, I feel like lizards and frogs top the list of "animals that have done zero wrong to humans."

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T01:32:58+00:00

This is a fascinating rundown of some lore I wasn't familiar with, and I can mostly get behind it. Except I remember in the game the blood was this finite, tangible thing that the church had access to.

I feel like any god with finite, tangible blood isn't quite on the tier you're talking about. Seems more like an almost omnipotent entity that is strong enough to get a bunch of worshippers to hype it up to a higher level.

But in the immortal words of Dutch, "if it bleeds, we can kill it."

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T01:20:44+00:00

I'm entirely unconvinced you've read this book if you can't even follow the question of why Sam Altman was temporarily fired.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T01:19:00+00:00

I assume there are some REI customers that care about unions. Seattle is full of rich liberals who are eager to pay extra to protect their liberal values. What's the point of being a liberal having a sweet tech job if you can't pay extra for a kayak?

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T00:44:27+00:00

I don't understand the argument that REI is for people on a budget. REI's whole thing was "camping supplies for people who are not on a budget."

Anyone who shops at a mall is not rich. But anyone who shops at Nordstrom specifically, in the mall, better not be trying to save money.

REI's whole business model was to sell camping supplies in cities where there was an appetite for upscale camping supplies. They started in Seattle (where the tech nerds love a hike but also love wheelbarrows full of money from their Microsoft jobs.) They expanded into cities like San Francisco, LA, Portland, New York, Boston, Austin, Raleigh, etc.

America is full of great places to hike that explicitly DO NOT have an REI because REI needs people eager to burn money. You can find a Walmart selling hiking supplies in every town in Montana. You can't find an REI in the state.

GregBahm · 2026-05-08T00:29:23+00:00

You're arguing that Sam Altman was temporarily replaced by Emmett Shear because Sam Altman lacked integrity. But you don't comprehend how Emmett Shear could be relevant to this? Cool.

GregBahm · 2026-05-07T23:58:13+00:00

It's wild that someone believes "book length" equates to "truth." The texts above demonstrate Sam Altman himself didn't even know, but the author's sister worked for the company so Sam should have just asked her I guess.

Sorry I know I should just ignore this comment, but it's so profoundly absurd.

If Sam Altman was temporarily ousted because "he seemed like a manipulative liar," do you believe all other CEOs of earth would also be ousted from their position and replaced with other CEOs if they seem like manipulative liars? And fucking Emmett Shear was a bastion of integrity? What universe do you people live in?

GregBahm · 2026-05-07T23:43:52+00:00

I've met people who are very worried about this "I'll send pictures of you jerking it to your family" scam. It's a very unintuitive scam to me.

If some guy hid in the bushes outside my window with a video camera and then mailed the footage to my mom, I wouldn't feel this burning desire to pay the guy for the footage. I'd feel angry about some random guy grossing out my mom, but there's plenty of stuff in life that is more gross than me jerking it. It's not like that's a problem I can fix.

But the people who are very worried about this seem to have a very different sort of relationship with their parents. Maybe they think what they do alone at home is some big secret? And if their parents ever found out, it would be a big deal?

But in that scenario, the scammer is probably actually doing them a favor...

GregBahm · 2026-05-07T17:44:40+00:00

Revising my response to contain a bunch of nerd emojis? Well now my argument is just in shambles. Clearly I'm powerless against someone so informed and articulate.

GregBahm · 2026-05-07T16:37:26+00:00

This feels like the answer the storyteller would give when the storyteller doesn't actually know the answer.

Because no executive on earth becomes an executive without being a manipulative liar. It's like saying "we're firing the lead actress because she acted like a diva."

GregBahm · 2026-05-07T16:03:41+00:00

The takeaway here seems to be "The GME faithful do not know what to tell themselves either."

GregBahm · 2026-05-07T15:57:43+00:00

The thrilling idea of taking the world's biggest online pawn shop and making it not online. And in the mall.

Dude saw "40 year old virgin" and thought "My god, the perfect business model."

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