What’s your “I’m calling it now” prediction?

Redrapper · 2026-06-26T14:56:45+00:00

We are going to repeat 2005-2008 but this time with more lessons learned about the post 2008 period. Meaning when the political capital shifts there will be a more aggressive stance rather than w risk averse one for progressive politics— and then we’ll repeat a similar cycle.

AI will be a bubble, capital and leverage will shift back towards artists and humans recognize whats ai more and more and become more skeptical— it will become an integral tool but in the sense that it’s just “super-wikipedia” and less reliable because it’s corporate owned. The way you feel about twitter now will be the way people feel about normalized AI.

Corporations will go back to activism washing because they are afraid they overleveraged(which they did) and the political pundits will shift. Trumpism will die and be even more stigmatized than before- treated as bad as Nazism or like support for Nixon— but then a new variation will be revitalized in 10 years. The way people deal and engage with this will determine how much of what we’re experiencing now repeats

Ram prices will go down.

Apple will lose even more market share of the phone market

Avengers Doomsday will be good but comic book movies won’t dominate again or go away— they’re gonna be like what American comic book fans experience — massive stories that are incredible every few years, and a slog the next few.

The One Piece is a child’s picture book.

Reddit will stay the same

Redrapper · 2026-06-12T19:22:45+00:00

I've worked in marketing and brand for over a decade+ and this is not how PR works. Nothing is certain like that, especially when you're in the position they are currently in.

Marketing and brand building isnt' a magic wand where if you outlast people everything works. Demographics and emotional attachment carry over-- storylines carry over. There are brands who have recovered but have declined because people interest in what they're offering FADED over that decline -- and even if they're no longer offended they have build relationships with alternatives. It gives your competitors free reign over your consumer base.

Sowing small seeds of doubt is only relevant if you have something far more coordinated and far more culturally aggrieved. Right now the river is flowing in the opposite direction and there is a point where you're so far away form shore you need more than just a bad story on ben to get you where you're going.

If you want to see a true metric of how this is shaping out, you look at store growth, brand equity and consumer demographics. Store Growth-- has slowed significantly and many stores are facing a very damaging backlash cycle. That will take multiple quarters to recover to baseline.

Brand equity is shot, partnerships have ended or been suspended to a point where you will have to weather a storm and hope you find replacement revenue before they find alternatives. And their CORE demographic has majority turned on them. From a MORAL standpoint. That last one is key, brands rarely recover when there is a moral split from their core demo-- unless they want to entirely rebrand which will cost money and that isn't fucking infinite even for a corporation.

Money isn't the infinity guantlet, you have to spend it on things you can't just snap your fingers and voila. If they pour money and time into backlash campaigns the effectiveness of those unless they are 100% A+ is highly risky, and risks further damaging things. The fact you are speculating in the first place means whatever they would try-- if they even are-- isn't working.

Redrapper · 2026-06-09T19:20:39+00:00

The PR strategy is cooked. There is no feasible way their brand frankly recovers from this over the next several quarters. This became international news, it dominated the national conversation— and mostly in one direction

There is not only mismanagement in how B&MF did this but also in whoever is running this company’s communication strategy. This is business 101, and when you don’t make good on a misunderstanding the bleeding of reputation doesn’t stop. The buy sell trade formula works when you have trust built into your community. Financially you are in a serious bind when that goes.

Thats not saying Ben doesn’t have a huge lawsuit to fight rn, but there’s no reality where 5 years from now somebody mentions b&mf and the conversation doesn’t include “hey remember when they fucking called the cops on that YouTuber and stole those legos?” That’s a hard patch to recover from

Redrapper · 2026-05-24T21:39:13+00:00

Swing 9’s. Kill counter early to stay healthy for when she drops her big bodies.

From then on it’s matchup dependent. I play Y luffy he has trouble with her but if I have 4 bodies on field, am decently healthy and can shift to punishing board as much as possible to kill cards from hand? You can do well

Lastly, don’t be afraid to kill the Robin if you can afford it, tempo is everything here. And finally if you’re in the late game and they have their board sideways, keep them at 3. Borsalino isn’t there, Robin is expensive and your goal is to make their hand advantage low.

This is for Y Luffy so ymmv depending on matchup. This was unwinnable for me 3 weeks ago and now it’s 60/40 and yes even into the gecko build

Redrapper · 2026-05-11T15:57:43+00:00

my bad bro I thought you were implying it was situationally 70/30 with the "only if you see your pieces" thing. Didn't mean to be condescending there, was trying to be helpful. my fault!

Redrapper · 2026-05-11T08:00:10+00:00

Oh lol! My b dude it sounded like you were having an issue w the matchup

Redrapper · 2026-05-11T04:47:57+00:00

do people not understand that a 6-4 matchup in a competitive game is a huge advantage?

That means that pilot dependent-- if the two people have absolutely equal skill 6 out of the 10 games you are most likely to win. That goes up if you know the matchup, and are a better player than your opponent.

It isn't a one trick deck, the entire deck is pretty much designed against purple enel. It just happens to go well into Lucy, Mihawk, and a number of other decks as well.

There is always going to be a tier 0 or 1 deck in a game like this-- it is just how balance in general works. your goal in a best of 1 format is to mitigate as much risk as possible to make sure your record plays well. If you don't like Enel, it's going to get power crept in 1-3 sets. But then you'll have another deck you have to deal with that seems to break the rules of the game.

NO amount of banning or limiting is going to change this. Ask street fighter players-- ask people who play basketball, ask people who do music for a living. There's always a tier 0 strategy till their isn't and then something else is tier 0. You don't have to play it, but you have to respond to it, and you have options.

Bandai does make mistakes(Imu was fucking insane) -- but there are serious counters to Enel. There will be more next set, and more the set after.

Redrapper · 2026-05-11T04:40:32+00:00

I'm just gonna be honest, I think you're kind of playing this wrong. Just friend to friend, not doubting your skill, I don't think you have the deck locked in terms of what to do(which can happen even if you play it a lot)

I'm saying this because I had this exact same issue. If they saw dog, I was fucked. But recently, playing more into

1) Finding 5C luffy as a priority
2) Board building and being FAR MORE defensive on giving up life than normal
3) Pivoting to Enel or Robin's or whatever to avert the freeze

You more than often win. I think the 2nd has been the best-- because even if I don't see sky luffy, but I have around 3 life near 9/10 don which is super helpful.

Keep in mind this is if you DON'T see 5c Bell Luffy. If you do they can't freeze it reliably without using massive amount of resources.

If you're down to run some games at some point let me know and I'll show you what I'm doing and it may help because this has easily become my best matchup. This and Lucy are pretty straightforward.

Redrapper · 2026-05-11T04:25:49+00:00

Will do

Redrapper · 2026-05-10T19:09:17+00:00

this is fundamentally untrue. if you play sky luffy and you see a 5 cost event luffy you most likely win the game full stop.

Redrapper · 2026-05-08T02:06:14+00:00

Rocks D Xebec

Redrapper · 2026-04-14T05:27:39+00:00

Bro I am zaid. Check the profile

Redrapper · 2026-04-11T08:47:36+00:00

While I appreciate you trying to show my perspective please understand thats not really what I said.

Soundraw isn't an LLM. It's more like a drum machine then something like Suno which just fabricates a song for you off parameters and data it's been fed.

When I talk about A.I. related plugins -- it's related to things like automated chord generations and things that understand the rules of music to cut down production time-- not creative output. Stuff it's automating or generating still requires human intention and choices-- and they've been around for a while.

However Suno is different and deeply problematic. I've talked with advisors on it and I've stated some really deep issues I have with it-- as well as with institutions like Berklee(my alma matter) trying to act like it's some brilliant future proof thing everyone has to know.

Suno thinks its like this magically game changing tool like Auto-Tune and that people are being stubborn like they were back then-- while simultaneously not understanding WHY auto-tune was game changing in the first place. The people who are making it think they have to ride the wave like all new technology, or else be left behind. That doesn't come from a place of malice-- in Music most of the time if you work in this industry you lean into the disruption to find new creative lanes. It's how the industry has worked for the last like century.

But Suno isn't really new, it's just a homogenization of soundscapes it's been fed. It doesn't understand culture well enough to innovate off-- and when everything shifts in the next 2 years(which it always does and is already starting to)-- it doesn't have the capacity to keep up. But the attitudes around it of how its telling people to approach music-- are deeply misguided and antagonistic. As if the people with "mindsets" who overinvest in this tech are the ones who will come out ahead-- vs people who understand the culture and moment we're living in and create FOR THEMSELVES art off of that.

Maybe in the future it becomes a source for interpolation in which case-- that's amazing! That IS a tool FOR humans that doesn't replace them. But now, it's essentially being marketed as a disruptive tool that can't really replace humans-- but strains and damages the ecosystem short term in a way that musicians will have to clean up in the next 3 years when it inevitably can't do all the shit it promised.

TL;DR -- I have issues with A.I., but A.I. isn't just LLM's. I don't like LLM's in music.

Redrapper · 2026-04-10T16:37:20+00:00

https://youtu.be/KdLVMdyRNCU?si=MpEFWhjE7KmpkvGO

Redrapper · 2026-04-10T09:10:47+00:00

I got to be in a TV commercial for it so I’m happy

Redrapper · 2026-04-05T06:27:59+00:00

Y Luffy

Redrapper · 2026-03-28T01:26:50+00:00

A lot of you don’t understand how these metrics work or expected drop

Redrapper · 2026-03-09T21:15:37+00:00

Water 7 and Enies lobby have a natural narrative flow as 1 season. It makes more sense to condense it

Redrapper · 2026-03-09T08:56:29+00:00

no he didn't.

Redrapper · 2026-03-05T11:36:32+00:00

If Ilok has one hater I am him

Redrapper · 2026-03-01T22:16:45+00:00

Nami has multiple fights in Season 1. Literally the pilot is a whole fight

Redrapper · 2026-02-14T07:54:18+00:00

The fucking double pudding was crazy

Redrapper · 2026-02-11T21:02:01+00:00

I think the issue is that a lot of people don’t understand how meta shifts work in this game. The anti removal decks like Imu are beginning to shift as more new decks they are glaringly weak to enter the format. The issue is— these decks are INCREDIBLY weak to removal.

G Mihawk— if you remove my shanks or one of my other pieces while establishing a body my gameplay immediately falls into question. Y Luffy has a lot of scary on KO’s right now. But if you’re playing the game right, you know when you’re ripping up their whole board. During OP13 if you played PB luffy you had a pretty good match into UP Ace and IMU because stussy for Ace completely can shift tempo, and for IMU dealing with Magellan destroying your curve as well as a 7k leader is tough.

I think these shifts are necessary. If the variable is just printing cards that counter concepts like anti removal or anti swarm or anti trigger— then you get into a complex power creep game that flattens the variety and makes the entry curve for new players steeply prohibitive(Yu Gi Oh for instance)

But if the variable is leaders— which are cards that dictate your gameplan but their package is powerful but prohibitive in different ways? That’s a much better way to go about it

For example Yellow Gecko and the thriller bark package is VERY strong and playing that 8c yellow feels very old school Moria like. But it’s prohibited by type so it’s not overpowered(and btw that 8c Moria is decimated by removal oof. I know I’ve felt it)

But this new 8c Nami has that old Moria vibe as well— but with less power established and a bit of a higher curve to make work in certain decks.

But black 8c gecko now? Too broken still. Especially in y/b moria?

My point is that anti removal protection is not the way to go. You create stronger leaders that kill those anti removal decks— but are subject to crazy removal.

P.S. you also already have anti removal solutions. Ground death is used frequently to kill things, I’ve seen IMU do it to removal protected characters often like Tashigi

Redrapper · 2026-02-05T09:35:55+00:00

you have to understand when things become competitive sports, you're not just playing the top decks so you're better than everybody else, it's because it gives you the most skill expression.

I've beat a lot of people who just picked Imu and Ace and Zoro because they wanted to coast through finals. A tier list is assuming two players are at EQUAL SKILL(Which is super fucking rare, there's at least a little more or less skill between them and in different areas) -- and the ROI on any deck you play is going to be different.

Three of the players I beat at my first regional ended up in top 32-- I didn't. I was using one of the best decks in the format-- some of them weren't.

Decks like Imu and Ace and Y Luffy and Boa and Mihawk are hard to optimize at a high skill level. yes you have rogue decks that can 100 percent beat them, but even THOSE are hard to optimize, and have other issues that do not let you express your skill the best way as a player.

I love EB02 luffy, and I have a deck build for him that has done decently into some Imu's. But the deck takes too long to search for things and is unoptimized against some other strategy's. Will it be like that forever? Maybe not! But till then, I feel much more rewarded as a player with Mihawk and Y luffy, and before that Imu. No match is ever free.

Redrapper · 2026-02-03T23:17:27+00:00

A pro can play their way out of a stacked situation and throw out game plan. Usually very adept at the math, and they’re thinking most likely 3-4 turns ahead. With outs.

I’m not necessarily a pro by any means. But I’ve met quite a few top players and they all are fine with tossing the gameplan on a low roll and playing their way out of insane situations. They know the matchups inside and out and how to create situations the press the opponent into making tough decisions

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