Woah mama, Last of Us 2, no one ever talks about that! I get it, this topic is old and has probably been tired out. But I wanna share my opinion because I don’t think many people are on the middle ground position I’m arguing for. SPOILERS below.

Most people think this game is either one of the greatest masterpieces conceived by man or the worst abomination in existence and may as well have crawled out of Hell itself.

But what if I told you that this game is neither good nor bad when you weigh the evidence?

The game’s voice acting, gameplay, and graphics are great, and so much so that this is relatively non-controversial. Even the story could be considered good for a video game if you pretend like this game is an original story and not a sequel. Video game stories are not supposed to be that great in my opinion. Many “movie games” wouldn’t really pass very well as actual movies or tv series.

The problem with this game is that it’s a horrible sequel, it takes the original game’s characters and disrespects them so much that it reeks of the nihilism this game doesn’t want to admit. You don’t just take a beloved character who was the main one in the original story and make a sequel where he’s tortured and killed 2 hours in. Ultimately this game’s story and dialogue seem to be a mouthpiece for the writer’s philosophical or retrospective views on the original game.

The apologetics for this game can get really annoying and dishonest as well. Some of it feels so rationally forced because people want to like it. TLOU2 fails the sequel test and the cinema test. But it does not fail the video game test or the independent (video game) story test. The game is aight.

Especially dogs and cats. they've had to rely on us for food. but how would they know they wouldn't become the food, or encounter a psychopath who kills just cause?

Pheromones. dogs and cats can smell the pheromones for empathy and reason in others. and they avoid people who don't give those pheromones off.

i CANNOT stress how many times my dog must have saved me from bad men and people in general by barking at them and telling me whos right to be around.

These are symbolic presentations for the people in the building. They have never been associated with the start of individual television programs. Broadcasting them is gratuitous and a waste of broadcast time.

Edit- Yes I am talking about pro US sports leagues, not international competition

I love the Last of Us but the biggest problem I have with the sequel is them trying to get us to empathize with the people who tortured Joel.

I've seen people say that we should've started out as Abby after having killed Joel, played as her, watched her friends die and then it's revealed that she killed Joel and we switch to Ellie.

I feel like that would've made more sense and helped people not be as biased and also made for a good twist.

Thought I’d take my shot at an unpopular opinion here! But there it is. 🫠 I feel one should be able to pull out a Nintendo Switch at work and play a game for a little while. We’ve normalized cell phones to such a degree that no one questions if someone is at their desk on their cell phone — watching YouTube, on social media, dead scrolling during work hours. I’ve worked multiple office jobs and you see it all the time. Apparently that’s totally fine. But God forbid I switched it to a handheld gaming device. I’d be instantly judged or told it’s not acceptable. 💀 What’s the difference? Obviously, cell phones or hand held devices shouldn’t be utilized while one is working. But my point is this: if you’re going to socially normalize one and give an unspoken green light to it during work hours, but not the other — it’s a bit hypocritical. It’s all or nothing lol.

While there are many case studies of private equity-backed brands/portfolio companies failing and/or deteriorating, the same can be said about independent and public companies. It is not a private equity specific problem. Overall, private equity-backed businesses are a net positive to the economy and labor markets.

1. Productivity gains. Strong operational value-add focusing on active management, R&D, strategic planning, and modernizing supply chains.

2. Better governance and incentive alignment. Concentrated ownership, active boards, and management teams usually have meaningful equity and skin in the game.

3. Jobs are reallocated versus lost altogether. As portfolio companies grow, some jobs might be redundant. However, many times what made a company a good target to begin with is because of the people. Those people are put into roles that benefit the larger organization.

4. Returns for pensions and endowments. These are the LPs who are investing in private equity funds. University endowments, teacher pension funds, foundations. Strong PE fund performance benefits Main Street.

5. Succession for founder owner businesses. PE offers founders and family owned businesses a path to liquidity and rewarding them for their life’s work, when no one else is willing or able to offer a liquidity event.

6. Competition. PE portfolio company activity makes goods and services more competitive, and other businesses (both independent and public) need to compete for market share.

Replying to your friend (or friends) takes 10 seconds max. Not a single human being on this planet is that busy to the point where they can’t reply to their friends (or return their call).

Obviously I am not saying that you need to reply instantly. But unless you’re dealing with an actual emergency, there’s no reason for someone to simply not reply to the people they call their friend within a day at least.

I say this as a 27M. We all know that young people are always on their phones, hence why the “sorry I’m a bad texter” excuse is complete bs.

Lola is absolutely shallow, opportunistic and status obsessed. I’m not arguing that she was secretly a good person. But she WAS remarkably transparent about what she wanted.

Oscar becomes rich and famous, and Lola suddenly wants him because she likes status, money, attention and being associated with someone important. That is terrible relationship material, but it is not exactly a hidden agenda. She straight up called him a loser when they first met and ADMITTED what she wanted. She didn’t come around and pretend she secretly loved him the whole time. She never lied about any of that.

Meanwhile, the entire movie is built around Oscar lying about being the “Sharkslayer.”

Angie is obviously a much better person and even friend than Lola, and she definitely cared about Oscar before he became famous. But I’ve started to dislike the idea that this automatically meant Oscar was supposed to end up with her.

Angie having loved him before the fame does not mean she needed to end up with Oscar. She also doesn’t fully confess how she feels until Oscar is already involved with Lola, and the argument becomes partly, “I loved you before all of this.”

Okay. That proves Angie cared about the real Oscar.
It still does not mean Oscar owed her attraction.
People are usually much better at recognizing this when the genders are reversed. If a man quietly loves his woman best friend for years, supports her through everything, and then gets upset when she dates someone else, most people correctly say:
“You were her friend. She doesn’t owe you romance because you were nice to her.”

Same principle here.

By all means, tell Oscar that Lola is a terrible choice because she only wants him when he has status.
But the solution did not have to be, “Therefore Angie is your rightful girlfriend.”

Oscar could have ended the movie single.
He could have learned that chasing status was making him miserable, become comfortable with himself, and eventually met someone who liked him for who he actually was, AND whom he was genuinely attracted to.

And Angie could have found somebody who reciprocated her feelings without needing an entire movie to notice her. Lola being a user does not make Angie entitled to being Oscar’s romantic interest.

Angie being loyal does not make Lola healthy.
And Oscar being an idiot does not mean the movie needed to reward one woman with him like he was the final prize at a carnival.

Sometimes the emotionally healthier ending is simply: none of these people should date each other right now.

Its a lovely song, and obviously the meaning behind the song is one of tragedy, but it doesn't elicit any sadness in me when listening to it. It sounds like a pleasant easy listening folky ballad. It just doesn't musically sound sad. 'How to disappear completely', 'Asleep', 'Everybody Hurts' or 'Nutshell' sound far more bleak to my ears, sonically speaking.

I belive souls game are artificaly difficult with somewhat simple mechanics just so they can squeeze the most out of your dopamine, doing anything that is hard is extremely rewarding regardless of the process, by boiling down mechanics to just dodge, attack and parry it makes even the most casual of gamers see the throughline of how they can win this, that's why souls games are so big with normies because you don't engage in something that has any real depth or complexity is just a test of patience and the fake status given by the community.

In light of the recent discontinued production of pennies, I think it’s time we also evaluate the $1 bill as well. While the penny was discontinued for many economic reasons, my opinion stems more from the change in societal needs for currency. $1 in the US doesn’t have nearly as much buying power as it used to. As the cost of goods rise, less and less items are costing around $1, and less under that. To me that signifies that the dollar bill is being relegated to a change currency, with the $5 bill being the next bill up that can comfortably buy many different kinds of small items. Yes, the $2 bill exists, but it is not used widely enough and would be dwarfed quickly with the continued rise of costs.

If a plot doesn't explain itself in the first 15 minutes or relies on subtle character work, people call it "slow" or a "plothole." if youre watching a movie will scrolling reels and miss microexpressing on a character face because there was no dialogue to tell you whats happening, its not a plothole.

The Station Agent (which i watched recently and loved) proves movie audiences have completely lost their attention spans and blame "bad writing" for it. If that film came out today, the internet would be flooded with people complaining that "nothing happens" and calling Fin’s lack of a giant emotional breakdown a plot hole. It’s a brilliant movie because it lets people just sit in silence and be miserable together without shoving a forced third-act resolution down your throat, but modern viewers literally can't process a story that doesn't scream its plot points at them every five minutes.

I dont think we are conciously aware of the fact that the literal most important person in our entire life is ourselves. Everyone knows it, but so few are concious about it.

A friend doesnt want to hang out as often, a lover decides that they dont love you anymore, a random person makes a hurtful comment, your bestfriend betrays you. These are all bad experiences created by other people. The sole reason they are this bad is because we give value to them.

But YOU deserve atleast 1000x more value, because it is your own life. It should be disrespectful to your own being that you get sad because of other people. I’m not saying to ignore your emotions or something, but the initial impact is much lesser compared to your own thinking about these events.

If you love yourself, respect yourself and value yourself more, then you’ll realize no one even comes close to hurt you that much in the beginning. You are the only one to experience your life, all others are just random people, you are there all the way from the beginning to the end. Love you all.

Edit: I dont mean this as being selfish, as you could understand from the examples I just gave you. Its more about the bad experiences that YOU had. I'm all for helping others and being a community, and I always give too much of myself to other people. The main thing I'm saying that these people shouldnt be able to take part in your mental health, because you (and your mental health) are much much more important! We are social creatures and bond too deeply with our close ones, but we shouldnt forget that this is OUR life and experience, very independently.

I think it's so much easier to tell someone you love them, because, if you like em, what's the guarantee it'll ever turn into love, you can like someone, so many people but it's so rare to love someone as deeply as your existence.

It just doesnt look nice on most people, specially pants.

Im tired of pretending that selvedge denim looks nice. I love the history of the brands and the production process but not everyone can pull it off imo

I feel like it's almost unfair to be able to add this to a chore* list

If you 'wash the dishes' (ie let the dishwasher wash the dishes for you), this should be included in the end task

It takes less than an extra minute

People right now are complaining that Deadlock has been getting worse because they are assigned to toxic or incompetent people in the team, like it's a unique situation and worse than Marvel Rivals for example. Isn't that the case for every game like this? I think no matter what you play and the game has comms you'll always meet someone toxic, same thing with incompetent players who SOMEHOW climbed up to high rank/level

Team-based games harbor the worst people naturally, so best one can do is just playing not to win and muting anyone who screams on mic. It's that easy.

Baseball was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of this. Fun to play, you couldn’t pay me to watch it. It’s boring. I feel like football and futbol have both become more social events than actually watching the sports. And the people who watch the Olympics mind boggle me. All of it is boring as hell, I would rather do the thing I’m watching. 90% of the time someone turns on pro sports I either just talk to people or scroll on my phone. Way more entertaining. Not saying that these pro athletes don’t deserve respect, but good lord it’s boring to watch them.

I love playing football, in real life or on a video game... but honestly, watching it has become a torture, especially club football.

Before the season even starts, any fan with half a working brain already knows who's going to win the title and who's going to finish near the top.

Famous last words: MESMA MERDA

The cause is money and the damn inequality.

- Bayern won eleven Bundesliga titles in a row

- PSG strolls through France and even put the reserve team plenty of times

- Barcelona and Real crush their league without letting anyone breathe

- In Brazil, Flamengo and Palmeiras play with gigantic budgets and are already turning our league into a cesspool

- Leicester, Leverkusen, Monaco, Lille, Valencia, Deportivo, Atlético... All exceptions.

Inflation completes this nightmare. Nowadays, any scrub is worth millions of euros.

Absolute Shit!

Football needs to discuss spending caps and new rules... otherwise it'll always be... this.

I have always avoided taking an IQ test even though I grew up in gifted and advanced placement programs. I think that if you find out that you have a high score, you can become arrogant and stop listening to advice from others, thinking you are always the smartest in the room. On the other hand, if you find out you have a low IQ score, you can lose your confidence and feel hopeless. I don’t see any benefit to knowing your IQ score.

Why do people hate glitter? Just the concept of it, i understand some is bad for the environment . But i just mean like when glitter gets on things like now you have a bedazzled pretty sparkly thing. Now that thing is prettier than what it was before . Glitter is awesome.

I mostly encounter this in fan spaces for various media, so for all I know it could be a completely normal opinion to the rest of the world.

If I see someone complaining about a piece of media, let’s say a show, and they express that they don’t enjoy it, I tell them they can just not engage with it and focus on something they DO enjoy. Every time, I’m told that it’s a bad take or call me the r slur or whatever. And I genuinely don’t think it is.

If you're listening to a song and you don’t enjoy it, you change songs. If you’re eating food and you don’t like it, you stop eating it. So why the hell is it any different for shows or movies or games? Nobody is holding a gun to your head, and if you’re not enjoying something then the logical thing IS to stop engaging with it. Engage in something you DO enjoy. Forcing yourself to engage with something that you don’t like just because it’s popular or because you want to have an opinion on it doesn’t make sense and you’d be a hell of a lot happier just focusing on what you enjoy.

Sounds good on paper but you’re telling me the people that can’t read a “pull or push” door sign are what’s between you and a prison sentence?!? The people that need warnings on every product. The ones who can’t list all 50 states?

A jury, yes. Of MY peers? Absolutely not

This is just for a standard family day, not restaurants or big occasions. But, just washing dishes by hand as you go through the day and after dinner is way easier than loading a dishwasher, running the cycle and then unloading the machine. Just washing dishes them as they are used put them in the drying rack.

Just for reference- I have a wife and kid and cook three meals a day, just like doing them by hand🤷🏻‍♂️

Letterboxd used to be a platform for film fans to actually share their opinions and provide nuanced reviews of films. Over the last few years, it’s become so mainstream and popularized that too many casuals have come onto the app and ruined its intention. Now, every review is some shitty, unfunny one-liner purely intended to farm likes. I was looking through the Clayface review page today to see what people were thinking of the movie, and every top review was just some unfunny joke from people with TikTok humor. If you look at more esoteric films or even ones from a few years ago when the app was smaller, those films actually had substantive reviews from actual film fans.

Look, I’m fine with having joke reviews, it’s a social media platform after all. But the app has turned into a bunch of wannabe comedians competing to see who can get the most likes rather than a place for actual analysis. I know they never would as it would dramatically reduce their engagement, but I honestly wish Letterboxd could either add a dislike button or disable likes entirely to stop this.

Also, the influx of casuals has also led to a disproportionate amount of recency bias. Films like Obsession, The Odyssey, and Project Hail Mary have inflated scores and are immediately thrown into the highest rated films of all time. This is mostly because of people who just throw 5-star movies at the latest popular thing or any new movie that they like. The app used to have balanced ratings and a top rated movies list filled with more unknown, older, or foreign films that are less popular, as opposed to something like the IMDB top 250. That was one of the reasons I used to enjoy the app so much, and now that’s gone. I honestly think we need a new app like this for real film fans and need to ensure we keep it niche. I have nothing against people who casually enjoy movies or are just looking for a fun time, but they don’t belong on an app intended for cinephiles, and the influx of them has ruined Letterboxd’s intended purpose.