Penny Arcade is dumb

[RIP Syndrome]

I just laugh at things I don't like

[RIP Syndrome]

I wish we still had titles on pagetopping posts


it used to be so much fun to make jokes in them

[RIP Syndrome]

shit this isn't the general dump

[Fizzbuzz]

After watching the CAD animated series, no.

I never saw that so I guess I should be thankful I haven't

[Perrydotto]

I never saw that so I guess I should be thankful I haven't

Someone called for a paintube tonight?

[Void Chicken]

FIzzbuzz you fool!

(Yes please.)

[Jill]

dump him

[Aria Genisi]

DUMP HIM

[Daikatuna]

dump him

[Octavia]

I could only make it 3 minutes. But it definitely has the same awkward timing as CAD.

[West Filly]

HOLD THE PRESSES

LET ME RUIN IT FOR YOU ALL

Possibly the most cursed image I have ever created

[sharkmafia]

I just laugh at things I don't like

Depends on the thing

Just laughing at/making fun of GAMERZ COMIX is generally sufficient but then someone brings up some transphobic bullshit a comixboy pulled and suddenly yeah its pretty justifiably serious time

[sharkmafia]

good talk in this thread tbh, i mostly couldnt muster the effort for seriousposts but despite her repeated protestations that 'other people know better' or had 'made better posts' perry had that shit on absolute lock

[Bigdog]

perry's posts are some good shit. they're not exactly the thoughts that i would have posted but they mesh pretty well with mine, which is about the best possible outcome if you think about it

I tend to think there are bad ways and good ways (or at least negligible harmful ways) of doing or experiencing just about anything, from drinking a sweet carbonated beverage, to playing curmudgeonness for humor, to emptying an AK-47 into someone's chest, etc. I won't say this is true 100% of the time, but in my experience you are much more likely to win by betting on it and looking for the solution than you are by betting against it out of hand. The trouble is that a lot of people take the path of least resistance, as Perry puts it. So you end up with a situation where people are applying quick fixes or justifications to make themselves feel better without actually incorporating those changes into a way of being that's healthier for you and those around you. The person drinking a Diet Coke still weighs 700 pounds because they're eating ten orders of french fries along with it; the comedian playing a curmudgeon character flanderizes them and turns them into a mouthpiece (if they weren't one all along) rather than presenting them with nuance or flexibility; the human body being torn apart by bullets is only pixels and polygons on a screen but your gamer rage at the fucking noobs on the enemy team is real and is dehumanizing them and destroying you from the inside, etc.

incidentally, this is why it's actually really good that a bunch of this thread is "how you'd do this same sort of thing if you weren't letting yourself be a sold-out hack"

im gay

[Gloomy Rube]

[Gloomy Rube]

the only good animated comic

[Bremen]

But I admittedly have a hard time understanding how you would like me to prove that PA and their kind actively encourage bad behaviour. I don't have the means to conduct deep studies and I certainly doubt someone being a crusty elite gamer on Twitter will say "btw Penny Arcade taught me everything I know". All I can tell you is that the dismissive attitudes of people like the PA creators are part of the big overarching shittiness of gamer culture, and how it tries to stay purposely toxic and insular to push out new takes on the medium, new creators, and sometimes basically anyone who isn't white, cis, and male. They are not the biggest part, I don't think, but a culture's attitudes is made of many little pieces, and the attitude of the PA folk and creators of their kind has a big reach.

I wasn't trying to argue that the creators are saints. Most of your post is personal beefs with them, and I wont dispute those. But I did feel like your belief that PA reinforces those attitudes you find problematic was unfounded, and honestly have evidence against it, so I posted it. For a long time people have been quick to blame media we consume for various ills; from television rotting kids brains to violent video games turning people into murderers, and they are generally wrong. It's extremely hard to show correlations between the media people consume and their attitudes, even when you feel like there should be an obvious link between media A and attitude Y. I'll point out the troublesome elements in the MLP community as evidence of that, because if anything one would expect FiM to teach acceptance and open mindedness.

And it's kind of hard for me to get angry about a webcomic being crusty about games that don't suit their tastes when this whole thread is people getting crusty about webcomics they don't like. Yeah, I get that gaming culture is problematic, and it's not like a thread of people complaining I shouldn't like a webcomic I like is equitable to an entire culture telling you shouldn't like the games you like. But when you say things like "The people that tell me that something isn't a real game or just for casuals or whatever are the same people who will laugh at Penny Arcade and feel being agreed with." and I'm here, saying I enjoy PA and I've never told anyone they're not allowed to like a game in my life, and all the other PA fans I know wouldn't, I think it's fair to ask you to re-examine your own beliefs and consider if you have evidence for them or you just assume them to be the case.

[Perrydotto]

good talk in this thread tbh, i mostly couldnt muster the effort for seriousposts but despite her repeated protestations that 'other people know better' or had 'made better posts' perry had that shit on absolute lock

aw geez, thank you! I try but I never feel like I express myself quite right, so the praise is very welcome

[Perrydotto]

I wasn't trying to argue that the creators are saints. Most of your post is personal beefs with them, and I wont dispute those. But I did feel like your belief that PA reinforces those attitudes you find problematic was unfounded, and honestly have evidence against it, so I posted it. For a long time people have been quick to blame media we consume for various ills; from television rotting kids brains to violent video games turning people into murderers, and they are generally wrong. It's extremely hard to show correlations between the media people consume and their attitudes, even when you feel like there should be an obvious link between media A and attitude Y. I'll point out the troublesome elements in the MLP community as evidence of that, because if anything one would expect FiM to teach acceptance and open mindedness.

And it's kind of hard for me to get angry about a webcomic being crusty about games that don't suit their tastes when this whole thread is people getting crusty about webcomics they don't like. Yeah, I get that gaming culture is problematic, and it's not like a thread of people complaining I shouldn't like a webcomic I like is equitable to an entire culture telling you shouldn't like the games you like. But when you say things like "The people that tell me that something isn't a real game or just for casuals or whatever are the same people who will laugh at Penny Arcade and feel being agreed with." and I'm here, saying I enjoy PA and I've never told anyone they're not allowed to like a game in my life, and all the other PA fans I know wouldn't, I think it's fair to ask you to re-examine your own beliefs and consider if you have evidence for them or you just assume them to be the case.

The problem is that I could literally switch around what you said about My Little Pony and what you said about Penny Arcade and nothing would be different. "I enjoy My Little Pony and I never told a woman to fuck off and all the other MLP fans I know wouldn't, so the problem can't be that bad" which indeed, is a very real thing I've encountered numerous times in all the volunteer work I've done in this fandom. And as people definitely smarter than me have written about many times, there are indeed real problems with sexism, toxic male culture and harassment in the Friendship is Magic fandom. Stuff like Molestia was just the tip of the iceberg. And no, My Little Pony didn't say "yo harassment is great", but it served as an unintentional foundation for a bunch of shitty men to reinforce each other in their shitty attitudes about women and femininity (see all the bro culture in the fandom and the attempts to declare MLP a manly thing to enjoy).

And see, that shit can happen even when you do not purposely pander to it in some shape or form, because people and the systems they participate in can be real bastards no matter the springboard. That's why I find it particularly regrettable that Penny Arcade does, indeed, encourage some of this behaviour by pandering to a crusty, entitled mindset that some gamers still share and sometimes violently defend. I'm not saying that they want people to be shitty about games they don't like. But man, if their characters seem to very unironically shit on games they don't like, because their joketelling makes it really hard to tell if their characters are meant to be laughed at or with, other people will feel encouraged to unironically shit on games. I'm glad you wouldn't do that, and your friends wouldn't, but the comic and the blog posts read very supportive of this sort of mindset, and people like feeling agreed with by people they look up to. I'm not saying "Penny Arcade literally tells gamers to be shitheads, look at these assholes", but they clearly pander to a very low common denominator among gamers, and said denominator happens to be a mindset repeatedly shared by older white male gamers who at least sympathize with a bit of elitism and defensiveness over their hobby. It's not there all the time, in the same capacity, no - But if people wanna find that sorta thing in Penny Arcade, it's really easy, and those about 3 million people that read Penny Arcade aren't all gonna be as chill as you.

I do not have it out personally for these guys, as I've said. And nobody has said you can't like a dumb or problematic comic. I like a lot of dumb and problematic things. I'm simply having a hard time communicating why it's good to be aware of the ways something has issues while you enjoy it, because I feel like I've communicated that a bunch already and I don't know any new arguments. If you really want, I can crawl Twitter for an hour and link tweets of gamers being defensive and crusty, but since I again cannot conduct a longrunning study on how Penny Arcade might have influenced or reinforced those ideas, I doubt you would care for that.

I'm just gonna repeat: Penny Arcade benefits from appealing to what they perceive to be the lowest common denominator, which in their case means pandering to insular and smug views popular among certain types of gamers, and they have not communicated much at all that they are introspective about this or care about how this makes them one of the many building blocks of shitty gamer culture. At some point, when a common view is also kind of a lame and shitty one, happily profiting off of this view even though you'd have the power to at least go somewhat more against it instead of with it makes you at least part of the problem. Not the biggest part of the problem, or the only part of the problem, but a part nonetheless. They are allowed to do that, but I'm also allowed to say that "hurf I don't get what these newfangled kids like, lemme talk down to the kids in great detail" and such stuff makes a lot of people feel less welcome in this hobby, and if you put a lot of instances like that together, you get a walled off path.

As that great excerpt I posted earlier says: Systems aren't people, and people aren't systems, but systems cannot happen without people. And I find it saddening and sometimes maddening when people don't seem at all self-reflected about participating in said systems, even though they have the privileges and means to at least understand better.

[Fontra]

For a long time people have been quick to blame media we consume for various ills; from television rotting kids brains to violent video games turning people into murderers, and they are generally wrong. It's extremely hard to show correlations between the media people consume and their attitudes, even when you feel like there should be an obvious link between media A and attitude Y.

The movie Jaws caused a widespread shark panic that put some species on animal endangerment lists.

Yes, you are correct in saying violent videogames/movies/tv shows by and large do not cause people to go out and mow down people with machine guns, but this does not mean media doesn't have any influence period.

[Daikatuna]

Possibly the most cursed image I have ever created

good

[BackgroundPony]

Possibly the most cursed image I have ever created

literally

laughed

out

loud

[RIP Syndrome]

A good webcomic

[Perpetual Motion]

Possibly the most cursed image I have ever created

I never asked for this.

[Blarghalt]

The video game comics you see passed around on the intertubes these days are better than ongoing video game webcomics of yore because they're one-offs that the artist was specifically inspired to write about games they chose to play, not done out of obligation to keeping a regular schedule and playing every new hype game at launch.

Hence why Awkwardzombie is objectively the best video game comic

[Blarghalt]

Subject A:

[Octavia]

Possibly the most cursed image I have ever created

Gem Mine

[Blarghalt]

Possibly the most cursed image I have ever created

oh god, i didn't notice the words at the bottom at first

i think i'm going to die

[Bremen]

The problem is that I could literally switch around what you said about My Little Pony and what you said about Penny Arcade and nothing would be different. "I enjoy My Little Pony and I never told a woman to fuck off and all the other MLP fans I know wouldn't, so the problem can't be that bad" which indeed, is a very real thing I've encountered numerous times in all the volunteer work I've done in this fandom. And as people definitely smarter than me have written about many times, there are indeed real problems with sexism, toxic male culture and harassment in the Friendship is Magic fandom. Stuff like Molestia was just the tip of the iceberg. And no, My Little Pony didn't say "yo harassment is great", but it served as an unintentional foundation for a bunch of shitty men to reinforce each other in their shitty attitudes about women and femininity (see all the bro culture in the fandom and the attempts to declare MLP a manly thing to enjoy).

Saying that it's true you could switch around what I'm saying about PA and Friendship is Magic is exactly my point, though. I'm not saying that the gaming community as a whole doesn't have problems, no one here is. I'm arguing that I don't think it's far to say that PA caused or exacerbates the problem, and if you reversed the situation and it was "I don't think it's fair to say that Friendship is Magic caused or exacerbates the problem" then I think you'd be completely correct. And in fact I'd say there's at least some evidence for the former, because while saying "my experience is that Penny Arcade fans are considerably less toxic than gamers in general" is not comprehensive evidence, it is not worthless either unless there's evidence to the contrary. I'm not trying to demand you come up with evidence that, as you say, would be hard to find, just maybe hoping it'll encourage you to question your own beliefs like your posts did for me.

The movie Jaws caused a widespread shark panic that put some species on animal endangerment lists.

Yes, you are correct in saying violent videogames/movies/tv shows by and large do not cause people to go out and mow down people with machine guns, but this does not mean media doesn't have any influence period.

My point is not that media can't influence people, but that the way media influences people is often contrary to our gut instincts. If someone has evidence that PA makes its readers elitist or otherwise unpleasant, I'd be more than happy to listen to it, but that "I feel like it promotes harmful attitudes" is a saying that has, in the past, been wrong far more often than it has been right.

[Bremen]

Subject A:

This is kinda weird to me since it seems exactly like the kind of comic PA might make. Unless I missed the sarcasm somewhere, which is entirely possible.

Edit: Well, art style excepted, of course.

[Fontra]

HOLD THE PRESSES

LET ME RUIN IT FOR YOU ALL

btw, I think this might actually be a joke edit by a troll as nothing else seems to indicate Elias Toufexis voiced Ethan but IMDB, But westfilly's comic is still amazing.

[Fontra]

[Perrydotto]

Saying that it's true you could switch around what I'm saying about PA and Friendship is Magic is exactly my point, though. I'm not saying that the gaming community as a whole doesn't have problems, no one here is. I'm arguing that I don't think it's far to say that PA caused or exacerbates the problem, and if you reversed the situation and it was "I don't think it's fair to say that Friendship is Magic caused or exacerbates the problem" then I think you'd be completely correct. And in fact I'd say there's at least some evidence for the former, because while saying "my experience is that Penny Arcade fans are considerably less toxic than gamers in general" is not comprehensive evidence, it is not worthless either unless there's evidence to the contrary. I'm not trying to demand you come up with evidence that, as you say, would be hard to find, just maybe hoping it'll encourage you to question your own beliefs like your posts did for me.

I basically dunno what else to say other than "they say the same stuff ignorant gamers say without any noticable distinction from the real deal" at this point. Again, I'm glad you and your friends aren't grumpy jerks, but the PA people strongly come across as such, and I have a very hard time believing none of that has trickled over to their tens of thousands of PAX visitors, or their millions of daily readers. If someone looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I simply can't believe everyone will not treat it like a duck.

I'm not believing something here, as said, I have no personal grudges or evil vendettas to pursue. I'm just really tired of a lot of gaming culture being people who say this exact lame and ignorant stuff, and so people who say this exact stuff get scrutinized by me. You don't need to get it, and I'm glad you don't seem to have as many run-ins with gatekeepy shitheads as I do, but I just really have no other ways to explain myself than what I've already written. People who say the same ignorant shit as the shitheads are somewhat part of the problem, that is the long and short of it.

[Bremen]

Alright. I certainly didn't intend to undermine your experiences in any way. I will admit that as a white cis male gamer, it can be easy to be blind to the problems that others go through.

I will say that, as someone who reads and enjoys the comic, their grumpiness does come off to me as intentionally ironic 99% of the time. If it doesn't come off that way to others, then that's a fault in their writing.

[Perrydotto]

I understand. I'm still glad we had this discussion, so no worries.

I wouldn't mistake people's silly and quick posting style in PPPP as a full reflection of their opinions, though. It's really not intended to be that way.

[Perrydotto]

I will make jokes in the joke subforum but that doesn't mean I am expressing my full thoughts or opinions, and I think it's the same for most others.

[sharkmafia]

This is kinda weird to me since it seems exactly like the kind of comic PA might make. Unless I missed the sarcasm somewhere, which is entirely possible.

Edit: Well, art style excepted, of course.

Considering that this gag relies heavily on its visuals (to contrast the cartoony bro-ness of the COs with the horrors of actual war) the visual style is very important for the joke. Penny arcade's style would both be unable to handle the drastic shift in visual tone and would probably also distract you with its weird wavy teeth.

Furthermore I believe that this comic demonstrates a mastery of brevity of language and comedic timing that penny arcade does not possess. If Tycho was involved, there would be a LOT more words.

So yes, this is a joke they would make. But they wouldn't make it nearly as well, at least not consistently, and that's important.

[sharkmafia]

This is of course independent of the still ongoing more important discussion but yeah having read lots of both awkward zombie is a wayyyyyyyyy better and funnier comic than PA at least as far as judgements of 'is thing funny' can be at all objective

[Daikatuna]

[Bremen]

Umm, ok.

Proof that humor is very subjective I guess.