While I wouldn't mind the more convenience-oriented stuff to stay, I think some of you are underestimating the value of in-person...well, anything!
Shaking hands, hugging, fist bumping, etc. is just a part of being social. I can guarantee you that the companies everyone here buys from are still doing that, especially those on the top who are just using this pandemic (and who may or may not be dependent upon the government, and thus are doing its bidding because of said dependence) to do things that they've always wanted to do. Sure, they might have masks and be promoting everything out in public, but you can't convince me that Biden, Harris, and everyone else in the administration and CEOs who prefer a populace that's more subservient to mindless capitalism that's driven even more so by giving everyone checks that, while some may need it, others of us, like myself, don't. And the chickens are eventually going to come home to roost from this, btw.
I think more options is still a good thing. I just think that everyone, be it on here, other parts of the Internet, and in the world in general, who's not looking at some of the very convenient data that's come out after Biden was inaugurated is asleep in a way that, when presented with the evidence of some very weird phenomena and some statements from the CDC about how lockdowns and other procedures don't work, the WHO stating that the PCR tests were overamplified last year, leading to a dramatic number of people testing out to false positives, and Fauci not being able to keep his narrative straight from statements he made last year, all of this happening after Trump is out of office? Hmm...convenient, if I must say so myself.
The fact is, a lot of the statements some of you are making about socializing with others pre-pandemic is not the norm. For a lot of people, they go, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can't hurt me." And those are the ones who develop the resilience in life to move up the ladder, make more money, and be able to provide for themselves to where they wouldn't even need the government for assistance. But when you have small business owners who just want to stay open, not have their operation vandalized physically, financially, or socially, and then you have the government determining whether you can keep your business open, the only thing that keeps the government's authority in check is a populace that keeps deciding to take it in the back.
I don't know about you guys and gals, but for me, you only live once. And honestly, when it comes to video games, anime, movies, books, manga, hell, just entertainment in general, there's really not much new stuff that's been truly innovative or that's made me super hyped to try this or that out immediately. If anything, now its more like, "OK, I guess I'll buy this game, and I'll get to it...eventually...if I ever get to it..." and I want to be truly free for once. I've grown up in a strict household with more Republican beliefs, and really, if I'm to be completely honest for once, this whole thing with masks, social distancing, political correctness, trigger warnings, respecting people's pronouns even if you have no way of being able to tell if they're male/female/nonbinary/whatever, and really, if they're that secure in their identity, they would be tough enough to be able to take the stuff that they like to dish out to those who have no dog in that fight.
The left has become a cult no different from that of the Independent Fundamental Baptist church. If anything, I'd say they might be worse. The IFB hasn't gone and looted businesses, broken their windows, cancelled them for whatever reason, advocated for their opponents to be killed in one way or another (which I know some have on this forum, and you know who you are), or have actually killed innocent people.
What is it people want? Full equality? Forget it! It's never going to happen! Any attempts to level any playing field takes power away from individuals to change their paths in life! When you didn't work for something, you have less appreciation for the fruits of your labor as opposed to when someone just gives it to you. Not to mention, people and businesses are and should be competitive. The reason the minimum wage being raised to $15 an hour would destroy jobs like no other is because businesses can't afford to keep that many employees on its payroll! "But the rich should pay their fair share!" Oh, really? You seriously think they don't know how to exploit loopholes in these tax laws that keeps them rich? You think they do anything out of the goodness of their hearts just because they care about people that much?
Do you think the CEOs of Walmart, Coca-Cola, Target, Pepsi, Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Dr. Pepper, Whole Foods, Tyson Foods, Papa John's, Domino's, Burger King, McDonald's, Remington, Logitech, Nintendo, Corsair, Gigabyte, Nvidia, AMD, Sony, Microsoft, 3M, Farm and Fleet, OSF Saint Anthony, Amazon, Best Buy, and every business others really care for people outside of the money and value they give to them? There's no way they could, because those businesses are so big, and the CEOs of a lot of them have inherited it from someone else, who replaced someone else before them, and eventually leads to a man who did care enough about the business to launch it in hopes of getting it to where it is today! And these are people who have their own families to provide for, and their own interests they want to maintain. They aren't some evil mustache twirling villain from some cartoon who's holding a gun to your head like the government is doing to people not just in the US, but Australia, Spain, Italy, and others. They are people with their own interests, who, as it turns out, benefitted an awful lot from the transfer of wealth that occurred last year from small businesses to ensure that they were the only players in town, and is still occurring in the US at large!
There are no free lunches in life. The only reason some of you can afford to be as anti-social as you come off on here is because those who are working are taxed for their work to support you. When someone lends someone money from someone else, the latter is hoping that the former will spend it on what they're saying they're spending it on, and that the latter will get their money back. It's only fair, right? But when you have the government saying that its everyone's responsibility to pay for the results of a woman's lack of self-control and/or a chaperone on a date, or the results of the local drunk causing a ruckus and losing his job because of it, and/or another person's problem, it lets that person off the hook for their behavior where, in the case of the woman, they would either be dependent on their family/church/community for support, and lets be honest for a second, a lot of the time, the people who get themselves into destitution from this kind of situation know what the consequences are for it. The drunk would be told to, again, turn to his family/community/church/some sort of recovery program to get himself/herself back in order to be able to function in regular society again. Its no different from when parents tell kids that a toy/game/system/whatever is too expensive, they can't afford it, and that if they really want it that badly, they should make the money themselves. Its telling them to take up some responsibility and to try and make something of themselves, be it running a lemonade stand or whatever, something that was easier to do in the 1950's/1960's as opposed to even pre-pandemic today.
Life is about more than just materials. Its about persevering in a world that owes you nothing when you get right down to it, learning how to survive, how to get past the point of survival, and to co-exist with others peacefully. And its time to face the music: GBATemp's big name users are a minority statistically speaking; most people can't wait for the mask nonsense to go away, and the fact that you the vaccines they're pushing out aren't going to be the end to that, combined with reports of people dying or at least having rough experiences with one of the two shots, isn't exactly making the vaccine all too enticing except...wait for it...vaccine passports, because that's not going to fail and lead to a microchip in any way, shape, or form!
But when people's understanding of freedom of speech is the more self-centered form as described in the following webcomic, what can you expect? You can't exactly make a horse drink even if you lead them to water:
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Freedom of speech, as I've always understood it to mean, is saying, "I may not agree with or even hate what you're saying, but by God I will die for your right to say it!" That's not a selfish statement. Its a selfless one that describes a society that can co-exist and is truly united.
"But what about Trump and others attacking the mainstream media?" You mean for making defamatory, out-of-context, libelous, and slanderous claims that, in a righteous and fair justice system where the law applies to everyone, and with lawyers, jurors, and other individuals that aren't bought and paid for, would get them sued and have them losing a lot of money, not unlike what happened with Nick Sandmann!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...4250-million-lawsuit-out-of-court/ar-BB179ATb
Stuff like what happened above (and was facilitated through 4chan, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and other sites that have become leftist circlejerks) is why trust in the mainstream media and journalism has seen a sharp decline. When you keep lowering standards of quality, people are not going to be as willing to subscribe to whatever magazine/journal that is losing so much money left, right, and center that people using AdBlock is what gets them to force an online subscription to read their articles!
I don't mind talking about games, homebrew, emulation, anime, movies, etc. around here, but as far as personal beliefs about how the real world should work? Its like I'm an alien. I'm the guy who the hippies in the 60's said not to trust because I'm over 30 or I act like I'm over 30.
The fact that people can't see what's wrong with their behavior, beliefs, and their views on things by putting themselves in others shoes and/or observing other peoples' behavior currently or throughout history makes me wonder why people seem to act like the Internet has become so much "nicer" than it used to be. If anything, I wish sites like Youtube and MySpace told investors and other business people who's only interest is making money for the sake of making money to fuck right off, because pre-2010 Internet was a lot freer, more fun, and more fulfilling than it is today.
