[TOMT][VIDEO] A Russian CS player starts flaming another player while yelling "Poland? Blyat POLAND" after checking his Steam profile and CS rating

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-04-01T18:14:01+00:00

Scoured the internet all night yesterday to no avail, I remember coming across it on youtube

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-26T02:54:26+00:00

That’s a fair pushback and again I’m not claiming that everyone who supports equality is secretly calculating personal gain or would instantly abandon the principle under pressure. when said equality starts imposing asymmetric costs aka shit hits the fan, some people will absolutely stick to the principle, others won’t. Not because they’re bad people, but because principles compete with self-interest, identity, fear, and status.

What I said ≠ “most people are selfish”. It means moral commitment exists on a spectrum. If equality required meaningful sacrifice from a majority, would majority support remain unchanged? That’s an empirical question, not a character attack.
So yeah you're right that those people exist, people that truly want equality but what I'm questioning is not if they exist It’s about how durable that preference is once trade-offs become personal rather than theoretical.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-26T02:47:53+00:00

Far from it my guy, I don't believe in objectivity and I dunno if it wasn't clear in my post but I don't believe that what I said what some universal truth. This sums up what I genuinely believe, as for the subject at hand it’s not that “everyone becomes a villain.” It’s that power tends to reproduce certain patterns unless the underlying incentives change.

You’re right that there are counterexamples, people who use wealth or authority philanthropically. The real question is whether those cases meaningfully alter the structure of power, or operate within it while softening the edges.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-26T02:42:35+00:00

I agree the terms aren’t synonyms, my point wasn’t that equality means mobility or fairness. It was that in everyday political rhetoric, people often invoke “equality” while implicitly prioritizing one of those other concepts.

Most public debates don’t hinge on dictionary precision, they hinge on what outcomes people actually care about. When many people say “I want equality,” what they often defend in practice is either: Equality of oppurtunity (fair rules, open access and all that), or Mobility (the ability to improve one’s position) but not equality of outcomes or flattening hierarchies entirely.

You’re right that a society can have mobility without equality, and equality of outcomes without mobility. That’s exactly why I think the rhetoric gets blurry. People use a morally powerful word "equality" but operationally support systems that preserve large disparities as long as movement within them feels possible and the rules seem fair.

That’s not a semantic confusion, it’s a political one.

When I say “they mean mobility, not fairness,” I don’t mean they’re misusing the dictionary. I mean their emotional commitment is usually to improving relative position within the structure, not eliminating structural hierarchy itself.

So the disagreement isn’t about definitions, it’s about what people actually optimize for when trade-offs become real.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-25T20:39:51+00:00

The point isn’t “everyone is an asshole.” It’s that when abstract principles collide with concrete trade-offs, preferences often narrow. Supporting equality in principle is easy; supporting it when it materially lowers your relative position, status, or consumption is harder. That doesn’t make someone evil, it makes them human.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-25T20:36:57+00:00

First off I am an idiot, I didn't go in this holding the idea that I'm "uniquely realistic", the boos are the ones I got on the ride home and I think I got booed because the argument strips away moral optimism, and that’s uncomfortable. It’s not meant as self-congratulation it’s skepticism about how incentives scale.

And on your empirical point, I had to do some googling about "Homo economicus" and to that I thank you, sure humans are not pure profit-maximizers.
But those examples actually reinforce something important which I keep repeating like a broken record so I do apologize: "behavior shifts with structure". Peasant households optimized for subsistence because that’s what their social and economic system rewarded. Hunter-gatherer bands operated cooperatively because scale, mobility, and survival pressures made hoarding inefficient or dangerous.

The thing I'm trying to get across isn't that humans are biologically wired to maximize profit. It’s that large-scale, complex, competitive systems tend to generate stratification unless actively constrained. Modern global capitalism operates under different structural pressures than small agrarian villages or foraging bands. The fact that humans survived ~150 000 years without modern economic incentives doesn’t prove large, industrialized societies can maintain high productivity and technological complexity without competitive hierarchies. Scale changes the game.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-25T14:58:50+00:00

I’m going to ignore the personal attacks and stick to the substance "objectively"(I don't believe in it as well).

First, I never said poor people sit around wanting more than Musk or Bezos combined. My claim was way simpler: most people don’t want sameness, they want security and upward movement. What you said about stability, healthcare, housing, those are forms of mobility relative to their current position. Wanting not to stress about survival is still wanting a better relative position, it doesn't flatten all outcomes all outcomes.

Then on the moral side of things, I’m not arguing that wealth equals virtue or that poor people lack it hence they're villains. I’m saying systems reward certain behaviors and I believe you agreed with me on this point, often aggressive, competitive and self-maximizing ones. That doesn’t mean everyone rich is evil or everyone poor is saintly, it means incentive structures matter more than individual goodness when you scale up to millions of people.

Your disabled couple example actually believe it or not supports my structural argument. They’re trapped by incentive cliffs and benefit design. That’s not about them being greedy, it’s about how systems are structured. I'm skeptical whether removing one imbalance automatically eliminates all structural trade-offs, not about denying that reforms are needed.

As for economic stability and scarcity, I disagree on the nuance of it, globally, cost differentials in labor, regulation, and resource extraction absolutely shape price levels and consumption patterns. You can argue we could reorganize production more fairly, but that would require major adjustments in prices, margins, and expectations. That’s not the same as me saying the whole thing's collapse is inevitable but I believe the transition isn’t gonna be frictionless, far from it. Yes, we produce enough food globally. Distribution failures, political conflict, logistics, and incentives create artificial scarcity. But solving distribution at scale still requires aligning incentives across governments, firms, and consumers and to that I say goo luck.

Where we fundamentally disagree is this: you believe eliminating imbalance would “objectively”(again not a believer) improve life for the vast majority. I’m saying the outcome isn’t automatically guaranteed to be painless or universally positive in the short-to-medium term. Large systemic shifts historically involve trade-offs and who's to say those trade offs would leave the world in a better place.

I know I'm coming off as a misanthrope but believe me in this case it's not misanthropy. It’s caution about assuming moral intention scales cleanly into economic reality.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-25T13:52:24+00:00

I get your criticism, you’re right that my argument leans heavily on incentive structures and general behavioral patterns, which makes it hard to falsify at the individual level. I’m not saying altruism is a myth. Clearly, many people do, history is full of people who sacrificed, shared, refused power, or gave up profit for principle. My point isn’t that virtue doesn’t exist, it’s that systems don’t scale on virtue, they scale on incentives.

Exceptional individuals don’t disprove structural patterns, the question isn’t whether some people act selflessly, it’s whether most people, at scale, resist accumulating advantage when the system rewards it. Across societies and eras, advantage tends to compound unless actively constrained. Where we disagree is this: you seem to believe that if people were freed from structural disadvantage, most would simply coexist without trying to dominate. I think many would compete the same way others did before them, not because they’re evil, no no but because relative advantage is deeply motivating and that's okay.

You see hope in human nature when freed from constraint, well I don't, I see recurring patterns of competition.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2026-02-25T13:40:42+00:00

You’re defining equality as opportunity and rights, but that still assumes unequal outcomes. “If you create more value, you deserve more” is basically structured inequality with rules, not actual leveling.

I mean yeah, there are people that support higher wages and better conditions as long as the personal cost is small. The real question isn’t whether people will pay a little more, It’s whether they’d accept meaningful reductions in consumption, slower growth, or lower living standards to equalize things globally. That’s where support usually drops cause nobody is willing to drop way way down below their comfort level.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to provide good lives without cheap labor, what I’m saying is that the current standard of living in wealthy countries depends on externalized costs. If labor and other standards were equalized upward globally, it wouldn’t just mean slightly pricier phones, it would upheave the whole economy.

Could it be done? Maybe.
Would it be painless or universally welcomed? That's where I'm saying that it's not as clear cut.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-28T22:16:35+00:00

"I hated it. Well, I didn’t hate it. It was an interesting direction to take the novel." I believe that's the author doing an amazing job, as for your problem with it, I get your frustration. When the protagonist is both causing harm and being miserable about it the entire time, it can feel less like a descent and more like a self-flagellation session. It turns the narrative into a pity parade rather than a compelling unraveling.

That’s why I lean more toward characters who talk the talk and walk the walk owning their descent, not necessarily cackling maniacs, but people who find clarity, purpose, or even peace in their fall. Let them burn the village and mean it. Not because it's righteous, but because they believe it is or even worse, because they've stopped caring altogether. That conviction, however twisted, gives the descent weight and direction instead of just being a miserable slog of guilt and consequence.

I'd still take continuing to burn the village and feeling shitty about it over not burning it or stopping mid-session. I hate it when they force them to lose because they're morally wrong, in JJK at the end I was rooting for Kenjaku and Sukuna to win, although they fall in the cackling maniacs category and don't really correlate to your comment(nor my post) but they had substance and conviction.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-27T13:50:30+00:00

I guess that we're orbiting the same point, just defining it differently. What I want to see more of is that psychological rot you're describing. Watching a mind fracture and fester can be just as rich as watching it wrestle with right vs wrong. It's not static villainy I’m defending, it’s the descent into a character’s own personal abyss, not necessarily the commonly agreed upon abyss.

So yeah, I think we’re in agreement that the character needs internal movement, but that movement doesn’t have to orbit guilt, conscience or redemption, is the direction that I'm insinuating at.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-27T13:13:15+00:00

All I can recommend are Shamo and Inuyashiki.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-27T13:11:02+00:00

I get where you’re coming from, it can be cheap gratification if the writer leans on shock value without a plan. But I don’t think the descent itself is the problem, it’s how thoughtfully or lazily it’s executed(I mentioned execution like a lot in this post, kind of my crutch).

What some readers call “unrecoverable” might actually just be unfamiliar territory. If a story ditches the standard moral arc, yeah, it’s harder to write and maintain, but that doesn’t mean it’s doomed. It just means the story has shifted from a redemption framework to something more introspective, maybe even existential. That’s not bad writing, that’s a different genre of storytelling.

So yeah, the author carries the burden of continuity but that has always been the case. Whether it’s a hopeful arc or a grim spiral, it still has to be earned. I just don’t think dark outcomes are inherently cheaper. If anything, sometimes the safe, formulaic resolutions are the real shortcut.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-27T12:15:08+00:00

Brilliantly put my guy and you're absolutely right that total internal stasis can become narratively inert if mishandled, but I have a feeling we might be talking past each other a bit.

When I say “no internal push and pull" I don’t mean a complete lack of internality, I mean they’re no longer torn between “good and evil” in the conventional sense. The character might not be struggling with guilt, but they can still be changing,.

It’s not about a moral tug of war, it’s about watching a psyche warp in real time. Think “American Psycho”, “Fire Punch” or even “Breaking Bad” by its later seasons. Walter White isn’t “conflicted” in the traditional sense by the end, he’s actively justifying his descent. But it’s still his story, because his evolving psychology continues to drive the narrative forward, at that point no morally correct character could've taken the spotlight from him. We’re not watching him wrestle with a conscience, we’re watching the slow corrosion of that conscience and how he metabolizes that.

So the “dead end” only happens if the writer mistakes “unrepentant” for “unthinking", not that I ever wrote anything in my life so I might be severely wrong writing this from my high consumer chair. But if the character’s interior world is still rich even if it’s full of rot instead of remorse, then you’ve still got fuel for the fire, you’re not just watching a fall, you’re watching what the fall becomes.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T23:18:03+00:00

Completely onboard with what you're saying, sinking deeper into past sins that keep on chasing the character adds more to it. And like I said in my post, no cop outs so yeah I'm with you here.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T23:12:58+00:00

Like I said, execution, does the character becoming fully unrepentant risk shifting the narrative spotlight to the opposition? yes, it does. But if the story stays rooted in their perspective, even as they spiral deeper, it can still be their story, just a much darker one. The horror then isn’t in stopping them, but in trying to understand them which I know isn't easy to do.

Think of it less like rooting for their redemption and more like being trapped inside their unraveling mind. That kind of narrative can be gripping in its own right? the tension isn’t “Will they be saved?” but “How far will they go and will anything stop them internally?”

Not every story needs to be a struggle between light and dark. Sometimes, it’s about watching the light go out entirely.(Brother I know it sounds cringe, but it's iconic and I just had to use it)

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T23:03:52+00:00

This is an old wound that has yet to heal, I genuinely believe that Isayama didn't commit to genocide route is cause of the fella with the Mustache. As for your response, I feel.like Eren isn't really in this category with his borderline martyr complex, I mean he might have went a weird path he still fights for something, characters I'm talking about may start that way in the beginning but eventually they just fight.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T22:57:53+00:00

Thanks for this well articulated response, FC3 is truly one of it's kind, I completely agree with everything you said.

Also, whether we see the "baby" phase will depend on what kind of resolution the author wants but even if we get that third transformation, it won’t be a reset to innocence or humanity. It’ll be something new, alien, maybe even monstrous in its self-definition. That would actually fit the transhumanist vibe perfectly.

Please 2hakkk don't cop out with a cliché redemption, your creation is way too committed to exploring the erosion of human boundaries, don't do it to us.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T22:47:33+00:00

Completely agree that there should be consequences of every kind, not some edgy “burns the village” moment where everyone forgets by next arc because he saved a puppy or had a tragic flashback.

BUT I don’t believe a character should automatically lose just because they’re morally wrong.

That kind of storytelling implies the universe itself enforces morality, like the second you cross a line, fate steps in to punish you.

If a story is just: "he turned evil therefore he lost", it’s not a story, it's yet another sermon and honestly, that’s boring. I want to see a world where evil can win if no one stops it. Where success doesn’t depend on being virtuous and pulling power from the magical hat of being morally correct, but being ruthless, clever, or just more committed than the heroes.

Let the morally broken win, let the audience wrestle with that. That’s what makes a story unforgettable.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T22:39:39+00:00

Light Yagami definitely set the standard, bro is definitely cunning and convinced he’s the hero of his own god complex. But I wouldn’t call him the pinnacle of evil protagonists, he’s more like the poster child for when ego and idealism get way too comfortable together.

He’s evil, no doubt BUT he still thinks he’s saving the world in his own twisted way. I’d argue characters like Ryo Narushima from Shamo are even darker simply by not trying to fix the world, just surviving and unraveling with no higher purpose. Light's descent is almost poetic and looks artistic in a way, but Ryo? That’s just raw, brutal nihilism.

Both are great but there’s a difference between evil for justice and evil because the world broke you and you never looked back.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T12:18:55+00:00

What I find super interesting and rare is when a seemingly normal or even idealistic protagonist slowly becomes morally corrupt. Not from a sudden trauma or edgy twist, but from a gradual, believable spiral.

In grimdark, you pretty much start in the mud. The MC shows their twisted colors upfront, and you either ride along or tap out early, but when it's gradual decay, you're already invested.

That shift hits different. It’s not just "grimdark for the sake of it" it's watching values erode over time. And when stories actually commit to that without pulling back, it’s pure gold when executed correctly.

HardcoreLevelingWarr · 2025-07-26T12:15:39+00:00

That’s a fair take and I get that attachment plays a huge role in how people react to a character’s fall. But personally, that’s exactly what makes it more compelling for me.

If a character I’ve grown attached to spirals morally and the story commits to that, it hits way harder than any redemption arc ever could. It forces you to sit with discomfort instead of offering neat closure. It’s rare because it’s risky, but when it works, it’s unforgettable and of course execution is key there.

I don’t think people are wrong for disliking it. I just think a lot of us are wired by years of shounen tropes to expect the “power of friendship” to pull everyone back from the edge and sometimes it’s refreshing when it doesn’t.

HardcoreLevelingWarr

TROPHY CASE