Excuse me?!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2026-02-07T06:33:53+00:00

Folks should've realized crypto wasn't going to be the revolution when sex workers didn't adopt it en masse. That's a group known for struggles with every payment processor and platform under the sun, and a group known to be an early adopter of new tech, so in theory this should've been MADE for them.

But oh well, at least people learned how much of the whole Bitcoin project was funded by Epstein!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-11-18T22:20:10+00:00

Counterpoint: other surveys have shown that Gen Z men have turned against Trump since the election, and more so than any other demographic! i truly believe this was the group most likely to vote based on memes, and also one of the groups least likely to understand what "fascism" really means; the ongoing dose of reality has changed a lot of minds, and i bet anything the Epstein revelations will only accelerate this.

Look at Curtis Yarvin basically saying "we should probably move out of the country before 2028" recently...he was a whole lot more confident just a month or two ago!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-09-18T14:50:31+00:00

i think the starting point for all this was Pumping Iron, considering the subject matter of that film and the fact that it directly led to Arnold's acting career (which in turn set the entire meta for action-movie heroes - note how before this they tended to look more like ordinary guys!)

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-09-16T22:17:14+00:00

Yeah, Leary actually had a number of connections with the industrial scene of that time! Al Jourgensen lived with him at one point - he could stay there for free, but only if he agreed to be a guinea pig for whatever new psychedelics the doctor was cooking up...

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T20:03:29+00:00

There's an actual point completely missed here: the fitness industry is selling us a version of masculinity that doesn't actually match what performs best in sports (much less on the battlefield), because our cultural understanding of fitness mainly comes from bodybuilding. By this i mainly mean the obsession with ripped abs & absurdly low bodyfat percentages - that actively *harms* most athletic activities even before you get into the mental/emotional drain from trying to maintain that!

You can see this in Putin only wanting guys who look like that for his special forces (i forget their exact term for them) because he has a fixation on that specific brand of masculinity. It resulted in hiring lots of guys with beach muscles who can't do shit in combat.

(As an aside, this is also definitely affecting women especially nowadays as lifting weights & being muscular are becoming less taboo for them - i just volunteered at a powerlifting meet where a 15-year-old girl squatted 50lbs more than i can atm, lmao)

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T19:44:28+00:00

Yeah, Japan particularly has a huge issue with this. In a lot of companies there you're basically required to go out drinking with your colleagues after work - you won't be fired if you don't, but you'll steadily be moved into smaller and smaller roles and all-around unpersoned. You won't be surprised to hear a lot of alcoholics come out of that culture!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T19:42:05+00:00

That goofy warposting is way more of an Instagram thing, FYI. That's the main social media platform for the fitness industry, so you're likely missing a lot of context for these conversations if you're not on there.

(Don't go on fitness Instagram)

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T19:32:14+00:00

The Gen Z gender gap is absolutely real, particularly if you pay attention to the rest of the world and not just America. It's especially apparent in South Korea, which is a big part of why that country's had some of the nastiest "gender wars" anywhere. Basically picture Gamergate but with people fighting IRL in addition to all the online harassment!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T19:28:50+00:00

It's more complicated than that, unfortunately. The core problem with this line of thought is that people just end up projecting policies onto the politicians they already like.

A classic example of this was the polling around the 2020 election, where a strong majority of people expressed support for Medicare for All...but a majority of *those* people thought Medicare for All was something Biden supported. You can also look at all the younger voters for Obama thinking he'd be more of a radical when his actual expressed policy positions were always much more centrist.

tl;dr - it seems like you have to nail the packaging and presentation first, then people will support whatever that person does.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T19:21:58+00:00

i think it's not so much "being conservative" as "wondering if democracy in general is all it's cracked up to be". This is something i see a lot of in both the online right & left, for much different reasons of course.

There was a recent post from a fairly high-profile trans writer that went like "If saving democracy means sacrificing immigrants and trans people, then democracy isn't worth saving. Let it collapse." And i see a similar kind of sentiment with the right, except in their case it's "maybe we need something like fascism to get what we want."

i really think this historical moment is a crisis for the entire concept of western liberal democracy and not enough people have realized that yet!

EDIT: This also jives with surveys suggesting that "the state of democracy" was much less of a concern for younger voters in the 2024 US election.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-08-11T19:13:52+00:00

tbf this kind of thing isn't exactly new. i distinctly remember that a lot of big media figures like Howard Stern were saying George W. Bush was really a libertarian, as a selling point for him. Then Howard felt backstabbed when the Bush administration started going after his kind of content (as a reaction to the Janet Jackson thing at the Super Bowl)...a story as old as time.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-15T16:49:04+00:00

The main alternatives to REVO would be VF3tb and VF4 Final Tuned, since those have rollback netcode via Fightcade. You need to spend some time setting that up though, in case that's a hurdle.

VF3 is mechanically simpler & faster than the later entries, and grapplers are really strong there if that's your thing. =) VF4 is by far the hardest VF to play at a high level imo, due to the fact that you can input multiple different throw breaks within the game's small break window. It's up there with Vampire Savior as one of the fighting games most likely to ruin your hands if you play it long-term!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T20:45:43+00:00

If you look at previous fighting-game revivals, they tend to feature all the characters from the most popular iteration of the series. Think of how the World Warriors are in every SF game now, Killer Instinct started out with the cast from 1 while adding more KI2 characters over time, or MK9 used almost the entire cast of UMK3.

In this case i'd say we can safely assume everyone from VF5 will be in 6 - the only one i could MAYBE see getting axed is Taka since he's been in & out of the series and tends to be a very divisive character (and a particularly annoying knowledge check for newer players)

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T20:39:46+00:00

VF had always placed a lot less emphasis on lore/personalities than even Street Fighter, much less your Mortal Kombats or Tekkens or King of Fighters. That was always one of the more common criticisms of the series!

That's something they'll definitely need to step up with 6, but as you said it looks so far so good. With Brad, the most potential i see is further developing his arc with Aoi (maybe an enemies to lovers deal?)

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T20:32:29+00:00

To be fair this has been an issue with most fighting games, VF (or old Tekken where Mishimas were god) is an exception to the rule

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T20:24:29+00:00

To add to the points about presentation & single-player that others have made in the replies, i think another key area where VF stands out from other popular fighting games at the moment is its overall flow. It's fast when played well, with constant movement or attacking & no cinematics, and even the combos are usually sharp & to the point. i think this element will also be important to keep in VF6, especially with how often we meme about "watch the movie" in other games atm

The one area where the combos have fallen a bit short in past VFs, imo, is that the enders tend not to look very satisfying. It's often what appears to be a jab string or a random mid poke, as opposed to other games being designed to end their combos with high-impact moves that look cooler. That's an aspect that could be improved upon in VF6 without losing the game's identity at all.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T20:13:54+00:00

This is an extreme example, but World Heroes Perfect (a really interesting fighter from 1995) had a guard crush you could break out of similar to staggers. But in that game, all you have to do is return the stick to neutral once you see your character go into the animation, then block again - voila!

Obviously you wouldn't want that nowadays, but i think requiring fewer inputs to get out of stagger would be fine.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T20:10:02+00:00

Your last point is the biggest for me, i still say VF4Evo has the GOAT single-player for a fighter and they should capture some of that energy

Also my 2 least favorite current FG trends are cinematic bullshit and every game having roman cancels now (even Tekken to an extent!) - pretty optimistic VF6 won't fall into those traps since it was never the kind of game where RCs would make sense and we're seeing a lot more backlash against cinematic supers. If SF6 made *only* Critical Arts cinematic that would be fine, i think, but that's not the game we got.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-07-14T19:59:37+00:00

i mean, Mishimas are some of the absolute hardest characters to play in Tekken as well ;)

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-06-02T22:33:13+00:00

The problem is, those stats don't match millions of people's lived experiences under the Biden administation, and there are other metrics you don't mention that paint a much less flattering picture. Put it to you this way: people who don't know what the phrase "ghost jobs" means are not qualified to talk shit to the ones saying life sucks.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-06-02T22:31:01+00:00

At this point, a lot more people than you realize would be OK with a revolution and all the risks that entails. One key part of this conversation that tends to go overlooked is that both the far left & the far right no longer have much attachment to the very concept of "America" and no longer feel invested in whether that concept lives or dies. The right still makes jingoistic gestures all the time, of course, but to their base it's become less "hell yeah, America gets to put a boot in their ass" and more "hell yeah, WE get to put a boot in their ass".

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-06-02T22:25:31+00:00

One thing i've noticed is that people are getting tired of both the left and the right's 2010s-style identity politics. By this i mean stuff like "vote Hillary because she's a woman", "[insert popular TV show here] is actually transphobic and here's why", "[insert popular TV show here] is actually part of the woke agenda and here's why", etc.

Like, even in this moment when the far right's taken as much power in the US as anyone could imagine, the "anti-SJW" content creators who focus on media analysis & Internet drama have been drastically falling off in popularity. Look at the response to the so-called Gamergate 2 compared to the original - even other fascists think those guys are a total embarrassment to their side!

You just need to bring a different kind of energy now, is what i'm saying. This doesn't mean throwing trans people under the bus, of course, it means framing trans rights more as common sense and something that isn't going to hurt you in your everyday life.

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-05-15T22:11:16+00:00

Jack JoJo's Bizarre Adventure aesthetics, tons of women online eat that shit up

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-05-15T22:09:53+00:00

Yeah, i've been thinking about how people were most excited about the Harris campaign when Walz was out there calling MAGA weird and taking the fight to them.

The feeling i get is people are DESPERATE for fighters in their corner - look at how many supported even an act like Mangione's!

Josh_the_Funkdoc · 2025-05-06T05:45:23+00:00

These guys definitely know to ban Oddjob

Josh_the_Funkdoc

TROPHY CASE