I think article linked below on reading level is important to note in regards to this.
https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-level-analysis-will-change-the-way-you-write/ By keeping his language simple, he is able to reach, and have his keywords understood by a larger American audience. Of course understanding speech and reading are slightly different, but it's word choice still becomes important.

As this video notes. Trump is a salesman. And he's selling his crap expertly well. He circumvents the answer with babble that never actually answers the question. He never answered if it's un-American to have a religious litmus test to allow people to visit the US, he just says we have a problem, and implicates all the people of one faith in that, which ISIL itself said sometime ago was their goal, to turn the world against all of Islam to make it easier to recruit and radicalize more people... which is off topic. He doesn't address the point of the question, he sort of skirts it and generalizes it into his overall framework. One could argue that yes, saying there's a problem is itself an answer to the question, but it isn't a direct answer.

I don't know as if he's intentionally talking at that low a level though, or if he's just his style period.

It'd also be interesting to see if Hitler's run-up to being elected, if he used similar style. That is if he used a simple style to appeal to the masses. Not just Hitler, but other leaders of his ilk. I choose Hitler here as more an example of an elected leader gone wrong, that had mass appeal to his people, but later regretted to the point of shame.

Even if Britt's famed Warning Signs of Fascism isn't fully accurate by all scholars (and I'm aware he doesn't actually have academic scholarship) many do come close. I think most can agree that it requires at least Extreme Nationalism, warmongering, a loss of civil liberties and rights (Patriot Act, wanting to increase the spy power of the NSA, etc), corporatism a merger of the state and corporate power, racism (Britt's warning signs says sexism, but I think racism is more apt and I don't think what people normally think about sexism applies, though we need more of a racism slash something, to note those who "sin" differently than others, such as the gays).

@Jinx

I am a bit confused. Earlier you used the word "conned" to describe the game, now you say it's not a hoax.

Aside from that, you certainly have voiced legitimate concerns. I'm also sick and tired of the usual pre-order business model. I decided that after playing the utter mess that was the Halo: Master Chief Collection for Xbox that I would never pre-order a game again. It's one thing to buy a game on day one, but yeah, in the usual sense, pre-orders need to die.

Thing is though...this is a kickstarter, thus the rules are different, by it's very nature, you HAVE to sell promises and pre-orders, or at the very least, contribution promises/swag/perks/etc. It's an alternative to going to a publisher and begging them for money to make the game and risk having the publisher exert creative control over the game/product/etc and whatever other compromises a publisher might force a developer to make. How many games have been utter shite because the publisher meddled and forced a game out before it was ready. Too many.

With kickstarters, it's the other way around. Backers demand that a game not be released before it's ready, but now the hype train has to start chugging along WAY earlier than a publisher-backed game in order to generate interest, because now the publishers are the backers and this is happening long before a game even gets to an alpha stage.

There is a risk with any kickstarter. If it was anyone other than Chris Roberts, I doubt I would have backed it. I backed the Shadowrun games mainly because it was being run by the guy who created the game originally and that turned out to be successful...twice. I'll be going for the hat-trick with the Battletech game they're working on now. Chris Roberts and Jordan Weisman both have solid reputations and have demonstrated they can make solid games. If it was Derek Smart or someone relatively unknown, I doubt I would have backed.

I find it interesting how the detractors are coming from various levels. Some of the detractors seem to be against kickstarters in general. Some seem to be against SC specifically and I think others are simply against it just because they want to see something ambitious crash and burn....and then there's Derek Smart who seems to have a personal, unhinged, vendetta against Chris Roberts.

Regardless of how successful SC will or won't be. SC is still a niche game by the very fact that it's a space sim. Even if it is a complete and total success, it's going to be a very complex game with a crazy amount of information to absorb and it will be difficult to be good at it. It is not for the casual gamer. So it will never reach mass appeal or become a widely recognized franchise like, say, Halo or Call of Duty. I think that is part of the appeal. A couple decades ago, publishers as a whole gave space sims the middle finger, but now thanks to crowdfunding, space sims are making a comeback.

Roberts has clearly tapped into something or people wouldn't be giving him money. He originally only asked for 2 million dollars, so even he didn't think it was going to be this big. (Europe is going absolutely bonkers for Space Citizen, they're way more into SC than we are in America)

Considering the dick-waiving that the whole Star Trek vs Star Wars thing always devolves into, I actually enjoyed the light-heartedness of this skit.

That said, the purpose of the stories told by each is meant to be completely different. That Star Wars goes for the simpler, classic hero's journey doesn't make it a lesser work, it just has a more singular focus, and the original trilogy did it well. But when you have a strong foundation like that, you really can't expand on it without losing a lot of the charm of the basic story. That's part of why the sequels were so disappointing. They couldn't retell the hero's journey without being a rehash, and by focusing on the hero's downfall, they had to up the complexity of the plot. But how complex can you make a plot before it just drags the movie down? (The exception was Clone Wars, which was able to circumvent this because it had more space to tell the story.)

This is why I am fairly certain that the new Star Wars movies will be lacking. They can either go the simple route and end up with a rehash, or the complex route, and end up with a similar mess to the prequels. There's a fine line they need to ride in order to make a good set of movies, but there are a lot of things working against them, from the expectations of the Star Wars fans, to the concessions writers have to make to appeal to the mass audience of modern movies. (To say nothing of Abrams, whose insultingly abysmal treatment of Star Trek gives me little confidence.)

Now on the Star Trek end, the stories are meant to be more complex, with commentaries on philosophy, modern politics, and the human condition (as well as showing the unique technological possibilities that the future held). Most of the stories were designed for introspection, and that's a major part of what made the show popular.

But if you lose that introspection and focus on action and special effects, the stories become empty. This is why many of the later movies, which again had to focus on mass appeal, were so lacking. (Movies like Wrath of Khan, Undiscovered Country, Generations, and First Contact avoided this because they were able to draw on the richness of the show to round out the themes they were trying to express, but even still, they weren't quite up to par to the shows when it came to the fundamental concepts of Star Trek.) The same goes for much of Voyager and Enterprise, which often ended up going more for appeal than intellect. (Perhaps the writers ran out of things to say, perhaps the audience just got dumber, who knows.)

So in the end, which one is nerdier? Star Trek, hands down, and as ChaosEngine said, it's a good thing.

Which one is better? That depends on what kind of story you're looking for.

But in the end, there's no denying . . .


Riker is a freaking boss.

I didn't hear any deep societal issues being addressed and the depth of the commentary was consistently shallow.

In fact, these are the same mainstream, shallow attempts at 'profound thought' that we get from Hollywood and Madison Avenue. The type of mass appeal positivity that viral advertisers try to capture because it so easily plucks the emotions of the everyday, busy, 9-5 commuter.

And here it's being delivered by exactly the type of person that will be ignored, out of hand, by the same busy people who will go home and endlessly upvote and share these same thoughts. As long as they come in the form of a youtube video with dramatic background music. (ahem) Why is our acceptance of the message conditional on the social acceptability of the medium by which it's delivered? Do we fear being ostracized to the community of mad men if we don't hate his message?

I feel like I'm being mocked for my readiness to expose the vapid sentimentality that's replaced meaningful emotions in my life.

Maybe I missed the point. The music was a fitting addition though.

I like this video. Upvote and Share.

@ChaosEngine

I will venture that "socialization" of the means of production can remain separate from their "nationalization," and also their only possible compliance with non-aggression while contributing to free-market prosperity, comes -- if by "means of production" we mean, not the built factories, railroads, whatever, but the allowance of such building. That is, if we socialize "intellectual property."

As such, patents plain and simple legally restrict "the means of production" to those who own them. Socialism, when it comes to IP, does make sense. It makes no sense, however, when it comes to scarce goods.

In this regard, Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Fascism" (PDF) is a good book to read on this subject as it goes a long way towards explaining the mass appeal of the state. He may focus too much on irrational drives, and remains stuck in untenable syndicalist ideas, but here we must distinguish thymological irrationality from praxeological "irrationality." Praxeologically, humans are always rational, never irrational.

For this, I think it'd be interesting to put Reich's theory next to "public choice" theory for a more complete picture, but then, we'd need to have an intelligent discourse rather than the name-calling and epithets I've come to expect.

While this may all seem rather academic, this discourse has many practical uses, like understanding the chances of reversing social trends towards statism, etc. since it seems to me that a Manichean system, with a mix of chaos and order dominating, and periodic tilts towards one end (chaos, nazism, communism) or the other (order, rationalism, anarchy), can serve social orders like a yin-yang with neither pole ever dominating totally or for long.

The gelatinous cube was mass appeal compared to the one on making round-collared beige shirts

It's pretty fun that there seems to be a disproportionate fanbase on the sift for lindybeige. A bunch of us are subscribers, he's got a couple of #1s, including this one for swinging a sword about in his front room...I mean the guy's last video was on modelling gelatinous cubes for D&D sessions; he's not exactly mass appeal.

1) it's clearly not for Ellen alone. It's the 21st century equivalent of the open letter. It's meant to have mass appeal so Ellen will see it. Somehow I doubt Ellen watches every video she's sent and even if she just sent it privately...

2) that's no excuse for the condescending tone and the poorly presented argument. Ellen is no doubt a busy woman and will only ever hear a summary of this anyway.

3) Ellen is not a complete idiot. I'm sure she's aware of the criticisms against psychics. So that means she either a) believes in psychics, b) doesn't put any stock in the criticisms or c) knows they're frauds, but figures they get good ratings.

And yes, it would be fantastic if this worked. If it does, I will publicly stand up and applaud skepchick. But I really wish she'd done a better job of this. For someone who makes a living doing this kinda thing, it's just really poorly done IMO.

edit: And just for the record, I didn't realise it was Watson when I first watched it.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, or one of the less-grounded members of this community (you all know who you are!), and I'm not trying to make this out to be the good/bad/evil scenario, i.e. Emperor Palpatine et al. I use "government" as a collective, general term, however I felt it was apt in this context given that people strictly within the government, and maybe lobbyists to an extent, are responsible for these various decisions that have led us to this point.
No, they don't seek power for it's own sake, but the handful of objectives I listed in my last post are a sampling of what might drive an organization to pursue power fervently.

There does seem to exist a greater, definitively single-minded pursuit of lessening the civil rights of US citizens since the turn of the millennium, in an attempt to have more power over them, and while "government" at large generally fumbles over itself when it attempts to get all the parts moving together as one, I believe you can see the broader cooperation happening here. From inclusion of said US Tech companies roles, the nation-wide abuse by the police force, aggression of US border patrol agents, random TSA checkpoints on some state highways, and the statements made by the president and his staff, which only seem to serve to blow off civil concerns with one breath while granting increased power to these same entities with the next.

At this point in a country's history, it seems to me that the only thing that can change the course of an entire nation is decisive action by it's citizens on a scale that would simultaneously qualify as an act that justifies all their overreaches of power. And I don't mean in any way acts of violence, but if there were a 5-million-man-march on the capitol tomorrow to show a mass appeal for reason and demand accountability, I believe it would be used as an example of why the government is pursuing such surveillance to begin with.

Sorry this is long winded, but lastly, I wouldn't feel too bad about Obama's allegedly targeting only foreign individuals. To me that felt like damage control to appease the US populace rather than an affront to foreign nationals. They said the Exact. Same. Thing. about the Patriot Act, and that was being used to arrest US citizens for minor infractions by local law enforcement not 6-months after it was passed. Disgusting.

i'd honestly really like to see a first person shooter where you play the nazis, or the iraq'is, or the japenese.
or something other than an American indestructo-terminitor-special-forces-Seal-Team-Six-Juggernaught mowing down legions of brown people. frankly i'm a bit tired of playing games that pretend that all the losers in american wars (and often wars of aggression) weren't actual people with actual lives and actual feelings and actual stories to tell. but instead something less.
Yes I know it's a GAME and it's all fantasy rather than a realistic simulation
still, millions of young minds play this drivel and for once, just once, it could be somewhat realistically even-handed ... or even enlightening for something with such mass appeal to offer a different fucking perspective on the supposed world.

and i hate being killed by 7 yr olds online

Language changes to muddle the issue, so you would generally agree with what they say if it were your friend or relatives saying those same words. That way if you repeat what a politician says to someone else, it sounds completely reasonable. The true intent is not among the soundbytes and quotes, they are there for mass appeal.

The purposefully try to muddle the conversation so there's so much redefinition of the words that you can't even begin to argue with them...because no one knows what the hell the other side means when they say each word.

If your point was in the best interest of the people you represent (IE not corporations) there would be no need for all this. And this is why I don't understand when plain spoken people who don't mince words aren't more popular. At least then it isn't like the guy is speaking a foreign language that sounds a lot like the one everyone else uses.

Yeah westy, they could go buy a buncha flour sifters and put a VS sticker on them....Eeeevryone would want one..they'd sell like hotjacks or flapcakes....*cough

The bottom line on the T-shirt's appeal is simple-Firstly, The clever quips that appeal to the admins or the users who create them have no mass appeal. Secondly, The designs themselves look home-made remedial like autistic kids who just discovered Corel draw. The pseudo-intellectual, stream-of-consciousness ramblings have just enough appeal to guarantee that 10 nerds a year who know nothing about this site, MIGHT wear one if they decide to go outdoors, and then only if it is given to them free. I wouldn't wear any of them without a gnawing sense of embarrassment and chagrin.

Success in any business endeavor has the perfect combination of artistic expression in product or implementation, mass-appeal, and timing. T-shirts are always timely, until we all dress Chinese-styley...otherwise the designs lack the other two elements in a big way.

I know I can't be the only person here who shares this simple armchair critique.

Sorry dudes, yer shirts blow chunks. Try some stock art or treat Photopshop like God's own handwriting for the next year.....take clever pills.

Excellent sift. Broadway seems to be competing directly with Hollywood in terms of ponderous production and dumbed down scripts with mass appeal. Yes, that includes The Lion King and Wicked.

If I want to see theater, it should be thought provoking, challenging, and above all *cheaper*. I ain't dropping 80 quid to see some tired production like Les Miserable (unless I am trying to get into a chicks' pants).

nice - thanks!!

In reply to this comment by rasch187:
*promote

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

ba-ah ba-ah Batman. Cry the sheeple. Seriously, what do you think the skew of comicbook loving fanboys is on IMDB and RT?

I'm being a jerk - but mass appeal on the interwebz does not a good movie make.

This is not a great dark movie. 20 years from now people will not be holding this up to compare with Clockwork Orange. Hell - even Dark City will age better than this shallow fare.