That's a lot of ecstasy.
It's gonna be a fun night followed by a hard, sleepy day
Looks more like a few hours of cramping body and soul followed by 3 days of emotional hangover
Ehhhhh so this was in 2000. Your standard ecstasy pill (we’re assuming they’re not pipers; these don’t look shiny and they’re not shaped or outpressed) have between 70mg MDMA and 120mg (if they’re absolute fire.)
This would be about 400mg of MDMA total. While that is quite a lot, you’re not going to have a horrible time—I just wouldn’t do it in public because you WILL be a chattering mess. It’ll still feel amazing, though.
Source: oldhead, last time I rolled it was a total of about 450mg but spread out over hours and I was absolutely not in public, just writing naked with my partner)
Rockstar used to go pretty hard.
This game, appropriately, is where I learned there was such a thing as uppers and downers.
It’s likely they were trying to get the news riled up so they could cause a moral outrage that would attract attention to the game.
All right I'll ask the dumb question here, what am I looking at? From what I can tell they are tiny empty bags
Those type of bags are usually used to hold illicit substances, and typically only bought by small-time drug dealers.
Honestly, it puts me off completely. I'm a woman and this is what gaming used to be: women are sluts. The ad isn't even trying to be clever or anything. Like wtf is this this trying to say?
The ad is saying PlayStation is as good as drugs? I'm assuming that the little tabs are supposed to be exctacy or something.
And why is it a "trashy hot" woman despite the target audience being 99% young men at the time? This is what I mean. The ad speaks to a target audience that is not on the poster.
Oh, she's trashy? Why? Please don't tell us you did not get whooshed by the ad now.
Oh, she’s trashy? Why? Please don’t tell us you did not get whooshed by the ad now.
The ad has combined the image of putting tablets on a womans tongue, while also having her in a pose with tongue out that is also used to imply the desire to perform oral sex. This is highlighted by the fact she is looking up, with the camera focused on her face.
That said, I'm guessing here, but I'm sure as hell not going to tell a woman she's not allowed to be offended by sexualization of another woman to sell Playstations.
"Playstation is a drug"
It's edgy marketing. You're not wrong it's also clearly sexualizing her, but they're pushing a console like a party drug.
On the one hand, it's a very dated ad, on the other I really wish marketing companies would do weird shit like this more. Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
There’s nothing wrong with sex appeal. Removing sex appeal, drugs, whatever else is how you get boring corpo bullshit ads instead of edgy corpo bullshit ads.
Listen I'm not going to respond to a woman saying an ad is gross and off putting by telling her to lighten up.
Nah this is still corpo bullshit. It's also one of the tamer specimens of that era. The only difference is, the corpos in charge of advertising at that time were all sentient hardons who heard stories about how drugs are and peaked at 14. None of them lived in the real world and they just churned out knee-jerk sexist bullshit because they wanted to appeal to boys going through puberty and men that never left that headspace.
I ended up chasing gameplay and trying to ignore how fucking awkward and immature most of the shooters were in that era and I don't think I was alone. I think a lot of gamers grew up and drove the market in a slightly more mature direction. Some people blame woke bullshit, but for me it was just being utterly sick of how fucking juvenile everything was and voting with my money. There's still a vocal minority out there that wants the good old days back, but I'd stop playing if the industry went back to exclusively 3xtr33m l33t 4ct10n d00d bullshit.
Sidenote: I played the demo for some Cliffy B game a decade ago on my XBox and hard-quit and deleted when the guy on my comms told me to "fire a rocket directly up the bad guy's poop chute." I was in my 30s and Cliff was probably pushing 40 at the time. What the hell? Are we nine years old again? Then again, he was the guy that threw his cat into his scanner and posted a picture of it every day until the internet told him to stop. Ugh. Let's never go back there.
Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
Counter point: sex appeal is fine.
It's the people who are pushy irl who are the problem. IMO you can still be very "sexy" and as long as you don't push it, that's not a problem.
Said to another commenter as well, but listen I'm not going to respond to a woman saying an ad is gross and off putting by telling her to lighten up.
Seriously, that is not the message this ad is putting out. It's about PlayStation being a drug, like ecstasy pills
Your right it's not clever but it's pretty clear it's nothing to do with woman being sluts.
I’m a woman and this is what gaming used to be: women are sluts.
Why is this saying the woman is a prostitute?
What is wrong if she was one?
semi trolling.
I miss that era. Companies didn’t mind a bit of edginess and weren’t afraid to market to adults. The console culture itself also isn’t what it used to be.
These days, gaming consoles all need to be safe enough for five year olds to play on them. And it’s caused everything to be just too bland and safe, both in marketing and the console itself. Can’t really have things like Xbox 360 Uno with the live camera feed and no moderation. Or the wholly uncensored COD lobbies.
I like the part between your two paragraphs. The early gaming era was really shitty when it came to diversity and... It's not even representation, it's not having to play sluts or princesses or whatever.
The now-era is all AAA all-the-same sanitised stuff, nothing to do with lack of edginess. Just corporate safety in mainstream appeal. Currently, indie games are where the experiments and interesting ideas happen.
I'm certainly not going to say you're wrong on that first part. I've been online since 1996. At that time, the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy... well... going online felt like coming home. Those were my people. I still really miss those days.
But I also know that the experience of someone not like me would've been wildly different. I learned a bajillion slurs on COD lobbies after all. It's a good thing that more people now feel welcome online, as it led to platform growth and functionality that we otherwise wouldn't have had if it was just 'my kind of people'.
The current safe, sanitised, gentrified gaming sphere also has benefits: COD lobbies these days are very pleasant by comparison. You even have to sign a code of conduct to get on multiplayer. It feels more welcoming, less hostile. Of course, companies certainly have been financially incentivized to attract as wide an audience as possible. For example, the very first GTA game sold about 6 million copies. GTA V has sold 200 million. And with ever-increasing development budgets, you can't afford to cater to a niche, you want to cast as wide a net as possible to recoup those costs.
"the internet was the domain of white, heterosexual, nerdy, generally well educated guys. And me being a white, heterosexual, nerdy, well educated guy... well... going online felt like coming home. Those were my people"
Thank you for putting it so clearly. Yes, it is completely valid to long for a time where the own niche was the in-group. As someone who's been on the web from early on but a woman, it wasn't really "my people". It was never a safe space for me, but I totally understand where you are coming from. It's great to be on the side of the "default".
The only spaces I genuinely miss are phpbb forums. I honestly believe they are better than reddit, or the fediverse for that matter. Smaller interest groups have a self selection mechanism and better moderation. I think they could still foster a great environment today that would welcome nerdy educated people on a shared interest without specifically speaking to just one type of educated nerds.
Bro here in Brazil, we have slurs in the millions since gaming took of in the 90s
The number reaches the Brazillions
this isn't marketing to adults. it's marketing to teenage boys.
Everything reminds me of her..
I feel like it means: we are not like Nintendo, we make video games for adults (and children who want to play like adults).
Not much can top the 3DFX VooDoo graphics card boxes.
PS2 is retro now? Damn, getting old really does sneak up on you.
I found my Green game boy Pocket and saw the 1989-1996 copyright.
It looks so pristine. 😭😭😭
Love it.
"Hey, you know what would be a good way to advertise our system? Let's just give children nightmares for about 40 seconds and then splash our logo on the screen at the end."
Can someone make a version of this photo, but its acetaminophen and the girl is just up-aged to how old she'd be now?
There were some bizarre ads from around the late 90s to early 00s.
The Dreamcast Barber comes to mind.
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