#that's exactly how all those repugnant online communities get created | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wilchur · 7 months

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I've seen a lot of people talk about how the game doesn't give you any leeway when you play The Dark Urge, how it makes it very clear that Durge was A Bad Person, but I haven't seen it pointed out that Sceleritas seems VERY well versed in gaslighting the hell out of them and steering Durge away from any doubt or guilt in regards to their actions. Makes me think that they've probably had those types of conversations before because Durge actually always had a soft spot, only it got smaller and smaller in time. I have not had the opportunity to see the Heal cutscene yet, but I've got the butler in my camp now and he had some interesting things to say, like

[Durge: Can you tell me the worst thing I ever did?

Sceleritas Fel: There was one time you gave a beggar some coin while we were en route to the Devil's Fee.

Sceleritas Fel: You didn't kick him or spot on him or anything! I was so shocked I almost fainted!

Sceleritas Fel: I still have nightmares about it to this day. But I'm sure you only did so to lower the suspicions of the Flaming Fist. Surely?]

and it struck me because tossing a coin to a beggar is a bit of a thoughtless act isn't it? You don't put much thought into it, you just see someone in need and you do it. Out of empathy, generosity, something The Murder Incarnate should not be capable of. Sceleritas' uncertainty of Durge's reasoning for it totally convinces me it was NOT intentional. A simple act of kindness that slipped out.

ALSO

[Sceleritas Fel: The only way for a Butler to die is if we are not of use to our Master. But you have always needed abundant assistance.]

They always needed abundant assistance. Why? Because they kept slipping out of Bhaal's grasp? We know they did at least once, with Gortash. Maybe it was not the first time, maybe there are more "Letters of Forgiveness" tucked away somewhere.

To me pre-tadpole Durge is just terribly mindbroken and indoctrinated person hooked onto the sense of safety, purpose and acceptance of their dark side that the cultists and their father give them. Yeah they enjoy murder, gore and all that. That's the curse of their blood, but I don't think they were ever entirely consumed by it. Morality, guilt and empathy have always been there on the edge of their mind. Losing their memories (depending on player choices I know, but bear with me) was what they needed for them to be finally brought forward.

#i am very normal about this #its 3 am #i just hate the “inherently bad baddie character” trope sorry #durge is my little meow meow #imagine everyone treating you like a monster all your life because there's something Wrong with you #and then these wackos come along and are like “actually its all good we love you please do more of that”#unconditional acceptance is one hell of a drug lemme tell you #that's exactly how all those repugnant online communities get created #the dark urge #bg3 spoilers #bg3 #durge spoilers

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blackroseraven · 3 years

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You know, you really don’t have to engage with bad-faith arguments. You can just ignore them or make fun of them for being dumb.

I do try and respond in good faith to most things on first blush, but it’s easy enough to pick out when someone doesn’t want to actually listen to you, they just want to be listened to. There’s hundreds of tropes that you get used to seeing and identifying, like “free speech” and “do your own research.”

Free speech is incredibly important and the First Amendment is the first one for a reason: yes, yes, people say “but guns” and like I get why that’s so important to some people - and I’m not even being entirely mocking - but like, without freedom of speech, a free press, a right to assemble, the government just says “oh yeah we had to imprison Jerry for breaking the law” and like. No one’s going to know that Jerry wasn’t actually breaking the law. Oh sure, there’ll be rumors, but people like feeling safe and comfortable, and a lot more people will be happy reading and following the party line and believing that the government is only punishing the bad people rather than Jerry.

You might scoff at it but just look at how quickly people turn on someone that’s accused of a crime - especially crimes we find particularly repugnant as a society. Or in microcosm, how Jenny can show up with bruises and you know Peter’s always yelling at her but it’s probably nothing and she probably does something to deserve being yelled at, anyway, it’s not our business and we shouldn’t get involved, Jenny’s got friends to help her out anyway. “It’s not my problem.”

But freedom of speech doesn’t mean that telling you to shut up or why you’re wrong is censoring you. That’s answering speech with more speech. Likely, the First Amendment means the government doesn’t get to punish you for your speech; it doesn’t mean that you can’t get kicked off a platform for being an asshole. Unless you’re saying companies aren’t allowed to do whatever they want without government approval, that is, which is. You know. Communism or fascism or whatever today’s word de jour is.

A huge part of freedom of speech is the freedom other people have to respond to our speech - that’s “their” speech, it isn’t just a ME ONLY thing - and freedom of association means I can choose who I hang out with. Just because you really want to cling to me like a circa 2010 teenage girl to Justin Bieber doesn’t mean you can unless I allow you to. Telling you someone to “go away” doesn’t violate that. Blocking someone doesn’t violate that. Bragging about how “I never block anyone!” and “that snowflake blocked me” just makes you look desperate for attention and approval. I mean, if you don’t block, for example, a person who has made it their mission to send you goatse or worse every day, but you pride yourself in being sent that every single day, uh... what are you exactly getting out of that?

Actually maybe I don’t want to know, thanks.

Research is great; I write stuff, I research all the time. But research isn’t looking for an answer that suits you the most: research is asking a question, and looking for people with knowledge and expertise to assist you in finding an answer you can understand. Research is finding facts, not making an assertations and looking for pleasant lies that “prove” you correct.

We like to think of ourselves as logic-driven, but we’re often much more emotionally-driven and, in many unfortunate cases, “righteous” driven. Admiration or love for a person can make us overlook glaring character flaws. We develop particular worldviews that we absolutely do not like being challenged, and we assert that people we like or enjoy must be “like us,” and that means they can’t be cocaine-driven assholes, like James Woods.

James Woods was a fantastic Hades and is a great actor. He’s also a lunatic and a monster who hounded an anonymous commenter dying of cancer who was rude to him online with pointless but expensive lawsuits until the day he died, where he then celebrated “killing” the person who was rude to him.

These days especially, there is a lot of money to be made, and attention to be had, by creating alternate facts for people. Grift is not always obvious, especially when you set in motion a more long-term goal: what if I just recognize there’s a willing audience out there if I create some comforting pablum about how nothing bad is going to happen to you if you contract a certain virus, and then I monetize these videos? What if I create an asshole character for myself to play who does nothing but make the right people angry, and then I announce a tour to places that don’t want me, and fundraise when “my tour was cancelled by those snowflakes?”

It’s not always grift, of course. People who are prone to believing in conspiracies tend to be people who want to impose order on a chaotic world, often as a defensive mechanism. Combine this with the internet and the human need for socialization and reassurance, and things like believing that school massacres are false flag events make more sense. It eliminates the chaos from the world, the fear of pain or injury from some random, uncontrollable event, and creates an easy narrative that’s far simpler to digest. No one actually died: they were all actors, paid for by a shadow cabal, an evil, powerful, but tangible villain. People explain this to each other and it develops a mythos of its own of “theories,” and now you have friends who “understand” and that you feel connected to.

Sure, at first the fact the Deep State is everywhere seems like it would be terrifying. But think of the comfort! The Deep State is responsible for all evil, and if you could just defeat it, no one would ever suffer again. You lost your job? The Deep State saw you getting too close to the truth and is trying to distract you. If it wasn’t for the Deep State, you’d be rich, successful, happy, and independent, and there would be no wars, no partisan divide, and everyone would work together in harmony.

In other words, there is chaos in the world because the Deep State creates it, which ironically makes the world safer and structured.

Understandable.

And in today’s day and age, where you can “do your own research,” you’re now a soldier in the war against the Deep State. You can grow your community and reach out to people to try and get them to understand, and fight the Deep State with you! It’s exciting, isn’t it? Being a hero without ever having to leave the safety and sanctity of your own home. The protagonist of your very own adventure in real life.

A bizarre combination of magical thinking and delusion.

Okay, I’ve rambled and gone a bit off topic.

But the point is, like, you don’t have to engage these arguments. You don’t have to engage with magical thinkers, with trolls, with the willfully-deluded or anyone who doesn’t actually want to listen to what you have to say and just wants to proselytize to you about how they are correct and you are not.

You don’t have to “save” them, “help” them, or “correct” them if they don’t actually want any of these things, and you don’t have to debate or argue with someone just because they scream “debate me!” at you or sealion their way into a conversation or they goad you.

You can just ignore them or mock them or shrug. Online or, shockingly, offline as well. I mean, yes, I know. There are exceptions. People we can’t get away from, people we have to deal with or try and be nice to. That will eternally be a problem humanity will be faced with and it’s above my pay grade to solve.

But you don’t have to feel guilty or oblige strangers with more than a courtesy. Technically not even courtesy, but you know, I’m Canadian and all. And too many of us get dragged into pointless debates with people who thrive off abusing the social dynamics that are often trained into us from a young age.

The short version? People are dumb and often wrong. Save your time and effort for the people you actually value having in your life and who aren’t going to forget about you the moment they move on to their next target.

#politics

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