Blurry photos is fine to make an stylistic choice. The 2019 movie The Lighthouse stylistically looked like a 1920s film, before modern music intentionally used bitcrushing, it used vinyl cracks, boomer shooters made in this decade intentionally look like 1990s Doom clones.

When a medium's shortcoming is patched by technology, it ultimately becomes an artifact of the era where it was accidental. Once a few years have passed, it becomes more synonymous with the era than the mistake.

It's not necessarily nostalgia, Gen Alpha and the younger half of Gen Z never grew up without smartphones, so they don't miss the era of poor film photography. Although every generation does this simulation of forgotten mistakes, it's particularly poignant now, where the high quality, perfectly lit, professional feeling photos convey something artificial, i.e. smartphone software emulating camera hardware, faces tuned with filters or outright AI generated content. Even if it's false imperfection, the alternative is false perfection.

Art using deliberate imperfections that were unavoidable in the past is romanticising something perceived as before commercialism, and that's admirable.

People disagree because it's still an abstraction of camo. Wearing it in the first place came from people fawning over militarism.

I actually think it can work with a queer look in one of two ways, so you are likely fine: Either it's effectively teasing the pro authoritarian militarism camo types, or it's a radical anarchy armed rebel look, which without praxis is really just the former look again. Either way these are fine.

Another reason maybe you've been downvoted is that people loathe the deep abstraction of modern, or rather postmoderm society. Camo was made for soldiers > Camo was worn by patriotic civilians simulating the soldier aesthetic > particularly under the Bush administration, it became less a symbol of soldiers, and more a symbol of patriots. Patriotism is nationalism.

Today when most of us camo in the military cosplaying way, we think 'nationalist'. When we see a person in a little bit of camo, perhaps just some came shorts and a regular t-shirt, we think either 'nationalist', 'okay with nationalism' or 'ignorant of nationalism'.

So when most people see someone in a blended queer and camo look, they probably assume one of three things: 'ignorant of nationalism', 'critical of nationalism in a rebellious manner' or 'pro nationalist queer'. Of course one of these is fine, but one is very bad.

I think there is a nebulous point where people collectively agree a game feels old. If I go back to the Witcher 3, it feels a little old graphically but otherwise it's fine.

A friend of mine was once going to run a D&D game heavily inspired by dragon age, so I bought all the games in a sale. I couldn't get through the first one, many hours in I realised that the dated mechanics actually blocked my engagement entirely.

Nostalgia also plays into this. I've replayed the assassins creed games before and I'm basically blind to the early jank because I played them when they were brand new, same with many wii games. But these games definitely feel old.

Not every game starts feeling dated, early mario games were so well polished that the intended experience still shines through playing them now. Minecraft came out closer to Quake than to today and even with updates, it's pretty similar to when it was new.

At some point I'd place near the early 2010's (although it didn't happen overnight) innovation in gaming, particularly AAA games stagnated. Most genres: 4X, Multiplayer FPS shooters, open world adventure, survival horrors, etc found a formula which has largely only been iterated on since. Different genres found this at different times, there isn't a huge noticeable difference between a 2009 Call of Duty lobby and a 2024 lobby. The Witcher series is a good example of this, the games are overhauled in almost every way in the 8 years since between their first and third installment, yet modern open world exploration games feel pretty similar to The Witcher 3.

Games from before this decline of innovation were far more wild west in their development, and sometimes you play a game from then which was beloved and it feels incredibly dated. When I think of an old game, I think of one which feels older, rather than a strict timeframe.

Making it up as you go along isn't inherently bad. Nine times in ten I prefer a story which is planned out but basically any medium that's open to additional seasons, novels, sequels, etc is capable of falling into this category.

It's only really a sin when the medium promises a long form mystery while doing this, hence the fact Lost is #1 here. Sherlock Holmes was written as episodic mystery and Arthur Conan Doyle clearly never planned future stories as he went and nobody minded. Togashi, the manga author for Hunter x Hunter stumbled into his most famous arc just because he'd made his metaphysic and societies up as he went and the stars aligned, leading to the Chimera Ant arc. The Simpsons rarely ever changes it's status quo between episodes, and therefore can be made up as it goes along, because it's going nowhere. Breaking Bad literally changed the ending of season one to not kill Jesse partly due to the writers strikes and subsequent shortening of the season, and Mike as a character exists because Bob Odenkirk was busy.

Any medium that decieves the audience, promising a well reasoned, long form mystery without any planning of what that mystery is, is bad. Perhaps you'll strike gold and have an epiphany as to how to bring the plot together perfectly, but that'll just be luck. Ultimately this is an expression of consumerism; baiting the expectations of art and narrative to deceive the audience for nothing more than engagement, and therefore money.

I find it interesting how people talk about Abrams's Mystery Box as a choice for a writing technique, despite the fact it's objectively shit. I can forgiving it in D&D sometimes, but in a professional story, it's ridiculous.

I'm normally a big defender of erotic content in otherwise non erotic fiction. Enjoying this kind of content is incredibly human and if you were to definite which part is a social construct, it's deliberate inclusion or deliberate omission, clearly the latter is routed in something more artificial, in my opinion.

That being said, this panel is a lame. The cropped framing is particularly objectifying, and it feels very unnecessary, like it's just here to have an ass in shot. It's literally a pulp thirsty trap so people who see this page are interested in the comic.

This isn't really the gen Z stare, I'd describe that as a very neutral expression.

Honestly I don't actually think the Gen Z stare has much to do with the internet or COVID either, as much as it's just something that caught on among people in school. I think another large element is that Gen Z culturally a lot less judgemental of people who don't mask autistic traits.

The general nodding and 'mmhmm'ing we do to affirm we're paying attention is something that's effectively a social contract, although useful. The flip side of the Gen Z stare that people don't talk about is that Gen Z also don't mind recieving the Gen Z stare, and can converse through it.

I was at the end of school during the 2016 election and my closest friend in my Comp-Sci class who I'd known from 11 was in the far right pipeline; this person found Hillary absolute abhorrent, loved trump and was generally the 2016 Pepe style crypto-facist. We live in the UK too, so this is even less common than it probably was in the USA.

When school ended, I stopped speaking to this person, but a few years ago saw that she's come out as a trans woman. I'm happy for her and not really keen to reconnect at all, but oh boy am I nosy about the timeline of her political views. I wonder if she still holds them, was struggling with internalised issues or just had a huge realisation at some point.

It's reasonably safe to Google, it's about this letter where the FBI encourage Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide, using particularly abusive, dehumanising and degrading language. The content of the letter isn't necessarily hard to read the if you want to read it, particularly as it didn't work, but it's still bad to know that this was an official government plot.

I have no sympathy for the people who are being scammed here, I hope they lose hundreds to it. Making fake porn of somebody else without their consent, particularly that which could be mistaken for real if it were to be seen by others, is awful.

I wish everyone involved in this use of AI a very awful day.

Fun fact, sperm whales can generate a sonar click at 230dB. Decibels are a logarithmic scale so increasing by only a few dB is basically double the volume.

A sperm whale may swim past you, think you're interesting and give a little click to scan you, and basically stun or kill you instantly.

I'm not sure I agree with the take for farenheit. It's an arbitraty choice, and to me who grew up in a country that uses celsius, I find that far easier to understand and farenheit may as well be random numbers to me.