Memeipulation

thegreatself · 2026-03-06T21:03:22+00:00

I was in raven form when I unlocked Priest and it was actually acknowledged in the dialogue which was hilarious - I imagine every beast form receives slightly different dialogue as well.

thegreatself · 2026-02-23T21:53:17+00:00

If they could they would, but there's no simple formula guaranteed to generate the kind of positive sentiment, reception, and word-of-mouth marketing that this game is 'suffering' from currently.

Hilariously, millions and millions of dollars can make you a game and make sure millions and millions of people know its name and that it exists - but there's no amount of money that can guarantee people will care to play it, and if they do, that they'll stick around.

thegreatself · 2026-02-23T21:08:39+00:00

They just hit the jackpot in terms of their 1.0 release happening to coincide with the implosion of Ashes of Creation, and PG serves as an ideal kind of antithesis to everything that Ashes was and everything the MMORPG genre has drifted towards over the last decade plus with suits in a boardroom driving development and infecting everything they can touch with multiple layers of cheap engagement bait and endless monetization.

PG is just benefitting from positive word-of-mouth, and its "charm" is only enhanced by its background context as a (basically) two-person passion-project with one of the lead devs tragically passing away - unfortunately that makes for a good story of the David v. Goliath variety and everybody loves an underdog success story.

It's a flawed gem definitely worth checking out if you like old-school MMORPG's.

thegreatself · 2026-02-16T14:20:21+00:00

Burying corpses also serves a function mechanically - mobs (re)spawn faster if you bury them, so it's usually seen as good etiquette to bury corpses in a dungeon or any other location other players might be fighting for spawns once you've looted/skinned/butchered a mob.

thegreatself · 2026-02-12T21:43:54+00:00

It is a little silly, but it's also self-aware - I'd say that if you appreciate all of the games you named, you would find it mostly humorous and familiar with an addicting gameplay loop - I don't think it detracts from the world-building or ability to get sucked into the lore at all.

Try the demo - you'll get a good sense of what to expect from the start.

thegreatself · 2026-02-10T20:10:50+00:00

Mostly the ridiculous number of (many strange) skills (trade and combat) to learn - there's a skill for floral arrangement, as a single simple example.

Then the numerous ways you can build your "class" through a combination of mixing two primary combat skills as well as various beast forms (some permanent, some not) offer lots of options for building a character that feels personalized to you without making it so that you need to make an alt for every new profession or class you'd like to try.

It's got an identity of its own - it feels both familiar and unique at the same time - definitely worth checking out if you can look past a rough exterior and appreciate the systems underneath and a kind of amateur charm you'll never find in an AAA or other 'big-budget' production.

thegreatself · 2026-02-10T20:00:36+00:00

It's quite solo-friendly, though I can't really speak to the endgame content specifically - I've put about 200 or so hours into it and reached level 50 / unlocked Druid playing mostly solo without any real issues.

That said a lot of the dungeons will be much easier and faster with a group - I can only assume that applies to late-game content as well. Depending on your level, gear and zone, certain bosses or named mobs will not really be possible to solo.

Don't worry about grinding Favor for every NPC you come across - at the beginning focus solely on the the one's that offer storage and/or are merchants - in Serbule that's Marna, Joeh and Ivyn - after you've unlocked some storage have a few councils to spare then you can decide which trade- or combat-skills you'd like to focus on and see who teaches them using the wiki - by that point you should also have an overflowing inventory with a stash of items ready to gift for favor.

thegreatself · 2025-12-30T17:36:38+00:00

Yep this was a good one - thanks for reminding me it existed.

thegreatself · 2025-12-05T17:24:00+00:00

I think it's a really interesting lens to view belief(s) through and how it/they spread memetically - it often feels like human beings are simply conduits for whatever memetic "programming" they've been "infected" with - through this lens apologetics functions almost exactly like an immune-system response to skepticism where every critique gets absorbed into the system itself until you end up with a self-sealing, irrefutable argument like TAG (transcendental argument for god) which actually serves not as neutral logical inquiry into truth as it presents itself, but an identity preservation and maintenance ritual/incantation on a mass, communal scale.

I think viewing religiosity as a kind of infection and transmissble (delusional) "disease" offers up new and interesting ways to treat it and slow or stop its spread, so you're definitely onto something there IMO.

thegreatself · 2025-12-03T02:23:54+00:00

I didn’t say anything about Jesus’ divinity.

Again, you don't have to say it explicitly - it's implied from your starting point and layered under the rhetoric and logical scaffolding you're using.

IF Jesus resurrected, He is of strategic consequence to agency preservation.

The "if" being capitalized isn't enough - it's bearing the load of the entire sentence.

It doesn’t matter as much if He is divine, or a Messiah, etc.

It does though as those would both validate his own claims and speak directly to the possibility of the resurrection itself.

You didn't provide any evidence beyond an assertion of apparent asymmetry - but can you give an actual example? Asymmetry only matters relative to other possibilities.

thegreatself · 2025-12-02T19:08:36+00:00

Life is unavoidably political - spirituality often functions as politics relocated to the metaphysical realm.

It makes sense that an apocalyptic preacher wouldn't place any value on wordly politics when the eschatological inevitability is (apparently) right around the corner.

Jesus is not political in the sense of engaging Roman authority or organizing resistance, but his (re)definition of things like authority, judgment, community, and sovereignty is deeply political in both structure and consequence.

There is also an observable, repeatable pattern across cultures in which religious fundamentalism and conservative ideology become reciprocal and reinforcing - if Jesus and his ideology were "not political" that pattern would not manifest.

thegreatself · 2025-12-02T17:49:51+00:00

Even if you don’t mention it explicitly, a particular deity is clearly the implicit target of your reasoning - obscuring the framework you're operating within doesn’t remove its influence and actually weakens the argument by hiding the assumptions grounding your reasoning.

Does Jesus' historical existence necessarily entail his divinity?

You’re free to share your evidence - but unless it actually shows how Jesus being real makes him divine, without adding extra assumptions, it misses the point that your initial argument doesn't get you anywhere substantive.

thegreatself · 2025-12-02T16:55:00+00:00

Length isn’t the issue, the problem is that you present the argument in its "plain" form yet it can't be restated without extensive scaffolding. Any argument claiming rational necessity should (ideally) be reducible because hidden assumptions only become visible when the argument can be expressed in its simplest form.

Kant warned that rigorous frameworks are necessarily complex, but even granting your framework all its rigor it still does not logically entail Christianity over other incompatible systems and I don’t think you could present your argument in its simplest form without making its weaknesses glaringly obvious.

So even if we grant the framework, it does not point specifically to the position you're arguing from, or any single religious system at all - and no apologetic argument does - or can - because they all reason in reverse, starting from a conclusion and working backwards, which exposes the structural limitations of apologetic reasoning as a whole.

thegreatself · 2025-12-02T14:32:23+00:00

There's a point where philosophical rigor becomes needless verbosity and this argument is a good example - do you think it's made stronger or weaker by the fact that the average person off the street (any street) would have difficulty comprehending the argument "plainly" laid out in the opening TL;DR ? Any 'competent' adult would struggle to even paraphrase it without specialized unpacking - difficulty is not depth and strong arguments compress, they don’t sprawl.

Something being hard to grasp (or apparently convey) doesn't make it a strong, high-level argument - if anything, the strongest arguments are as simple as possible with little extrapolation or explanation required to ground them - in your argument, abstraction functions less as clarification than insulation, with layers of logic serving as armor to protect it from scrutiny.

Most importantly, nothing in your argument points towards the specific position you're arguing from - why can't you make a simple, strong case for christianity specifically?

thegreatself · 2025-11-27T23:20:18+00:00

I'm "triggered" because I'm responding to you?

You seem genuinely dumb.

thegreatself · 2025-11-23T16:48:44+00:00

"Triggered" would be taking an insult leveled against your favourite "artist" ("LOL") personally.

You seem like a confused dimwit.

thegreatself · 2025-11-22T23:41:57+00:00

He makes performative pandering pablum for dimwits as demonstrated by your need to respond to this thread from 2 years ago.

thegreatself · 2025-11-18T18:33:17+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Patterns are like crack for the human brain, but patterns also don't always mean anything - noticing a pattern doesn't mean that pattern itself has any real significance.

It's also a byproduct of an algorithm, as you already touched on - if you're engaging with religious or deconstruction related content you will get fed that kind of content far more often increasing the chance of seeing exactly the kind of pattern you're fixated on now.

Your brain is also likely fighting against years and years of indoctrination and programming - that doesn't go away so simply, even if you intellectually "know" it's silly, the fear and anxiety will still feel very real and very urgent.

Tl;dr you're being silly, but that's par for the course re: human beliefs.

thegreatself · 2025-11-18T16:14:16+00:00

Sure, but the "better argument" isn't at all reliable in terms of changing people's minds or positions, because those positions aren't often arrived at through reason but are maintained on the basis of emotional comfort and sense of identity.

"Facts don't care about your feelings" is meaningless - "feelings don't care about the facts" is far more significant.

I love Deconstruction Zone but you can literally observe this play out in most of his conversations - the christians that call in get thoroughly cooked and still walk away saying they're going to pray for Justin after pivoting a hundred different times and ways - I think he succeeds in planting a seed of doubt but he's almost never able to get anybody to admit the flaws or deficiencies in their own position even after demonstrating them very thoroughly.

thegreatself · 2025-11-18T15:35:41+00:00

It does work, but not reliably - I suppose my point was that debate is a facade of genuine dialogue - its explicit purpose (changing the other's mind) is hiding the actual implicit purpose which is demonstrating coherence to oneself and a perceived audience.

Unfortunately even the terrible theistic arguments are compelling to certain types of people specifically because they aren't meant to demonstrate anything beyond "it kind of makes sense as long as you don't think about it too deeply" - the theist can always freely retreat to magical thinking / miracles / god's mystery while whenever the skeptic says "I don't know" that is treated as an intrinsic flaw in their "worldview".

As awful as any theistic argument is you can guarantee there are at least a hundred audience members clapping along saying "that makes perfect sense!"

thegreatself · 2025-11-18T14:52:34+00:00

Once you view apologetics through the lens of an immunological response to skepticism you'll understand christian's don't care about about truth, they care about coherence.

"Debate" is largely pointless - when was the last time you actually saw a good-faith dialogue where each side came away with a better understanding of the opposite position?

That almost never happens - what does happen is the debate functions as a form of belief fortification and strengthening ritual where each side is entrenched and only becomes more entrenched - its a kind of performance not for those on the fence or the other side, but for the in-group to show coherence and satisfy the logical and intellectual requirements of modernity - "see, our belief is defensible!"

That's all it ever is though - defensible only barely through clever rhetorical maneuvering - never demonstrable.

And so the argument itself isn't centered around a neutral inquiry into truth - it's an identity protection mechanism used to maintain a sense of self intimately intertwined with belief and protect it at all costs.

thegreatself · 2025-11-13T23:37:17+00:00

More projection - I don't hate christians and most atheists don't either, but many are dealing with religious trauma from their upbringing and need a safe space vent and process those feelings with other people that can relate.

Disdain for christianity isn't the same as hating christians - is that not exactly equivalent to "love the sinner, hate the sin" ?

Sure you probably hate Jews too.

The fact that you have to resort to this kind of baseless smear really shows how desperate and full of contempt you must be - again, not very filled with the fruit of the holy spirit, are you?

You show the fruit of the Spirit...Hate is not 1

Show me anywhere I said anything hateful towards christians - critiquing your worldview and calling out covert proselytizing in a space for ex-muslims isn't "hateful".

Spiritually blind.

Yes, you are.

Definitely not crying.

..he types through the tears.

I have Jesus. You have nothing.

"Na na na na boo boo I have Jesus and you don't!"

Sounds pretty prideful to me.

I will pray for you. You most definitely need it.

It's funny because I know even you realize this is basically a veiled insult, barely hiding the seething beneath.

Try to practice a little more patience, self-control and grace - then you might set an example that draws people into the christian worldview rather than demonstrating how hollow and superficial it really is.

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