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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Sorry this ended up a lot longer than I intended lol

    I went back and watched through most of the first season, and I really do find it strange, it’s like overtly left leaning text pretty often, but consistent conservative subtext. By that I mean they will have hodgins and bones saying “tax cuts to the rich instead of giving that money to poor neighborhoods like this so they stay poor, and minimum wage hasn’t budged in 8 years, and it’s even worse if you’re an illegal immigrant.” They’ll talk about people being gay and just treat it as normal but don’t ever show it on screen(I would say this is neutral/a little positive?). Bones likes rap music, they’re constantly asking “are you threatened by working with a woman?” and she knows martial arts and self defense and shows it off very regularly. Angela is very independent as well.

    But at the same time, bones is consistently showing needing support from booth and angela (hardly ever the other way around), women are usually dressed in pretty revealing ways (angela and bones pretty consistently wear low vnecks), one episode someone plants a carbomb and they think it’s a muslim, then pretend “how dare we think it was a muslim” and then it turns out it’s his brother who is also muslim and says he did it for his god? Every time Booth mentions christianity it’s seen as positive and heartwarming for him or people he meets, and bones even becomes the damsel in distress and Booth has to rescue her, which makes all her punching and fighting seem irrelevant.

    It’s very weird it feels like it’s all plausable deniability where they could say that’s just what we wanted to write an episode about (other than the Booth is a strong man who cares about real american values) I didn’t even realize they explained away brennan’s autistic coding by saying it was her upbringing, like that’s the only way someone could be like that (or with the autistic kid being autistic only because he’s >160 iq, otherwise he’d be normal).

    .

    I think the only things I would disagree with is, Bones didn’t become rich by pulling herself up, it was just because she worked as an escape, and then I think the writers just wanted to show that she is successful in everything she tries because she’s just awesome that awesome (possibly conservative coding?)

    I would also say Bones feels in charge half the time, even more in charge than the administrator really. She’ll ignore Booth and all the laws and all the rules and do what she thinks is right, and then Booth usually ends up following after her (to protect her of course). The Administrator started off as above everyone but later in the season it feels like he’s their colleague who deals with the press and tells bones that she has to go with Booth sometimes. I think if you replaced him with a woman no one would really notice unless it was in the first few episodes. I also think Booth isn’t quite a perfect conservative American, maybe a perfect soldier, specifically because he will lie to people, do the wrong thing, etc, but it’s what his boss told him to do. At least that’s what it seems like, the writing for him and Bones are probably the most inconsistent in the whole show. Also the autistic kid, I think it literally was just the writers wanted to kill off a main character, and so they just decided on him because it was easy. To be honest if I was the writer I would’ve done the same thing, most episodes it feels like he doesn’t add anything unique or interesting, just a “look I’m smart.” Lots of interesting stories to tell with an autistic character, but if they don’t know how to tell them and it makes the character unpopular, time to get rid of him I guess.

    Other than that I think you pretty much nailed it, I just wanted to say that I found pretty often the show is surprisingly progressive, just maybe not in the subtext of the show. It’s just such a weird mash-up of “look how progressive we are, we have a badass woman, the guy is getting bossed around” that somehow turns into “the strong man learned to do the right thing and also saved the woman.” I think since Booth is always in focus and always showing he’s a strong conservative man, they can get away with saying whatever they want, because the progressive words don’t matter, what matters is how it feels. (Note this is all based off season 1, later seasons they definitely lean in to what the fans want and a lot of conservatives were definitely watching)



  • I would rather say we should make it illegal to do things that cause an inordinate amount of suffering to animals. I would prefer not to kill the dog either, but since most people in this thread seem to believe a vegan diet with supplements is impossible for carnivore pets, what other option is there?

    Personally I see some difference between a dog and a human just as I see a difference between an ant and a dog, probably based on how consciously aware they are. Obviously I would hope to have legal or social consequences for people who eat meat. However If I had someone who would pay someone else to torture 1 animal a day, and then eat it, meaning ~30,000 animals would be tortured throughout their life, and I have no way to make them stop besides killing them, what is your proposed solution? I want to hear the non utilitarian answer to this problem, in this hypothetical where killing them is the only way to stop the behavior.

    The most “moral” thing to do would be for vegans to make it impossible for factory farming to exist, but veganism is still a minority and doesn’t have that kind of power. You’ve baked in that the only options are “kill people who eat meat” or “do nothing.” In a situation where all humans were strict carnivores, that’s a much harder question. Should someone be allowed to exist when their existence relies on the suffering of others? I don’t know and luckily I don’t have to know because we can stop factory farming without killing anyone, and put pets on a maybe-suboptimal-requires-monitoring “abusive” diet, rather than factory farming millions of animals for them.

    e: this is basically just a more complicated version of the trolley problem, would you kill one person to save 4 others? what about kill one person to save 200 animals? I guess if you don’t value animals at all, you would never kill the person. For me, yes at some point there would be a limit, where that is it’s hard to answer.



  • Is this meant to prove or disprove it?

    There are some commercial vegan diets available which have synthetically made nutrients to replace those found only in animal based ingredients.

    There may also be some that do not meet the safety and nutritional standards of other types of food. Manufacturers should provide information to show it is nutritionally complete and balanced. This information can be difficult to find and understand, so it’s important to speak with your vet for advice too.


  • If you want a real answer, ethically you should not have gotten a carnivore in the first place and reduce the demand for carnivore pets. After that it’s just a math problem, how many factory farmed animals will that dog eat throughout it’s life? You won’t like this answer, but what’s more humane, euthanasia of 1 dog, or factory farming of ~4 animals (who had lives anywhere from constant suffering to just slightly suffering) throughout it’s lifespan.


  • The point of the emoji at the end was to “add some more feeling/fun to text content,” like if I ended a comment with “I couldn’t stop smiling while writing this.” It’s irrelevant but it changes the flavor of the text.

    Besides that, many lemmy users are on the spectrum and will read “Donald Trump is known for his great border policies” in a comment that it’s clear they’re joking, and they will still have -5 score and comments arguing with them until the poster says “it was a joke.” Compare that to “Donald Trump is known for his great border policies 🤡” or 🙄 or 💀 depending on how obvious you want to be. It’s just a tool that can be misused or annoying like anything else.



  • I can think of a couple situations, one being if you live in a place where abortion is illegal and you’re talking to someone else/someone who knows someone who wants to get one. Doesn’t matter if you did nothing illegal but now you’ve likely gotten them in hot water. Another is if you’ve loaded a website that hosted something illegal unintentionally, now you have to explain why that’s in your cache/history/whatever (lemmy had a big problem with CSAM being spammed on some instances). Innocent people get put on trial/sent to prison for weak evidence, and your phone is an immense amount of information for the cops to look through and see if they can make anything fit.




  • You can’t do the yard work at 6pm instead? If your neighbors are having loud parties every week then yes you should talk to them and say it’s affecting your sleep, and if they don’t listen report them. My neighbors came over and said they would be playing music past 10pm and if that would be okay. Not being noisy when your neighbors might be asleep (even if it’s a big inconvenience) is just being considerate. If your neighbors are being noisy and you have no recourse then that’s a obviously different.

    Also, get a sun hat and a handheld fan, take breaks, unless it’s a literal heatwave then you can manage (source: have done yard work at noon during a heat wave)



  • I think the reason I didn’t see booth as conservative-coded, is because he seemed to be portrayed (or maybe just regarded by bones) as foolish and outdated (and usually also wrong) for basically every reason you said, but he was a good guy who always showed up and did the right thing. Though I definitely remember some times where he was doing some “hard working man protects the woman” stuff and that was seen as “good” which I thought was very out of place, especially bones reacting to it positively… Maybe the times he looked foolish were meant to be serious and they just couldn’t make it not sound ridiculous lol

    Hearing this makes me really want to re-watch it as I wasn’t thinking about any of this… hmm…

    https://bones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Proof_in_the_Pudding here’s the episode, Angela is pregnant (thinks she is pregnant) with Wendell, but is dating (?) hodgins, who tells her to keep it. I guess maybe this is still a bit conservative coded? Hard to say maybe it’s pretty neutral



  • Yeah I think the gray area is what made me want to make this post, but it being a gray area might be the most satisfying answer I get.

    I looked through about 50 comments and didn’t see any comments positive towards the event, could you show me what you mean? Or did you mean a comment that was supportive of lgbtq? The closest I found is “I’m all for gay pride but it has no place in runescape” which is perhaps not hateful but misinformed. I think it’s a bit unfair to say this video was only searched by those looking to express dissent as this creator gets about 10-40k views on their videos just in general (during those years). If anything this video underperformed which would mean people are not seeking it out.

    I would probably agree there was a decent amount of counter protest, but most people who disliked the update just begrudgingly ignored it, where if someone feels like their friends way of life is being protested against, they’re more likely to turn up.

    The pride event was on I think 1 or 2 “worlds,” where each world has a limit of 2k people and there are about 150 worlds. It was also scheduled to start at a certain time, and this looks like the beginning with the most people. The protests against the event were on uncoordinated worlds with no set times, people were live streaming it and the size of the protest crowd remained essentially the entire day (with I don’t know how many/few on other worlds). This is just to say I feel like exact numbers aren’t comparable, I was just showing there are a large amount of players that are angry enough to actually protest it for hours. I could maybe find one of the streams if you’d like (for the pride event and for the protests)

    Speaking of the comments on the video, someone posted this (I’m not sure how reliable you’ll find it, but this is what I recall being the case too)

    This was a poll done on a live stream, so obviously not a full player base sample. I suppose for me I see the player base as not wanting change and being stuck in the past, quite literally people will say this skill in runescape is terrible but I had to do it so changing it now is unfair. This to me is basically right in line with slightly right leaning, as they are using the values of 20 years ago when they started playing to make decisions today. Not truly hateful but just stuck in how things were before all these “politics” got pushed into their game.

    I think you actually did kind of answer my “gray area” question with all that. You’re going against the wishes of the many for the good of society as a whole, which is unfair but what’s the alternative? lgbtq+ people aren’t allowed to exist? humans are resistant to change so sometimes you have to force it on them for anything to improve.

    I think I would argue that most of them aren’t hateful, I think especially in this case most of them are just in the mindset of “this is weird and irregular and I don’t want to deal with it” and another portion says “this does matter but I don’t want to see it in anything because it makes me feel uncomfortable.” Neither really hateful, but if you have 0 exposure to something it’s going to seem weird and scary. They don’t want to see it because it’s unfamiliar and it’s unfamiliar because they don’t want to see it. Definitely a large portion has some hatred mixed in, though that too might just be because they don’t have a single friend who is even partially involved with minorities.

    What you said about needing to be in a good place to stop being hateful is true in I think even more ways, such as just the way you communicate in daily life. I used to think similarly to “I don’t care but don’t shove it in my face” so I get where these people are coming from, even if it is misguided.

    The demographic of osrs I would wager is 50% people who are just addicted, most polls I’ve seen run by creators have people saying they are somewhat unhappy and are just addicted to the game (it’s pretty similar to cookie clicker, just with a game built around cookie clicker mechanics). That’s why I don’t think these people are hateful, they’re just me back when I was a lot younger but never had the experiences I did that changed my mind. Maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to not meet many truly hateful people.


  • Finally read this reply, the game was “sold” to the players with every little change being polled, and somewhat recently this has been loosened a bit without too much complaint as most people feel the devs have a good handle on what the players want.

    This is sort of an issue of “they know what (most of) the players want, but they’re doing what they think is better anyway.” I think they would be upset regardless of if it was polled or not though, because they don’t think it belongs in an “old school” game, but I was more wondering if it was the majority, is it okay for them to pay to make an uninclusive game for themselves.


  • I just got around to reading this, I’m not even sure what my real question is and I agree they should leave if it bothers them so much.

    My best analogy would be imagine you’re playing your favorite game of all time, and the devs add a feature that bothers a majority of the player base including you, but 5% of the player base feels like they are finally spoken to. The majority of players are upset and want it changed back. You don’t want to leave because it’s still your favorite game, but it does feel unfair when the people already playing the game who are paying to keep the game as they like it, have the game changed out from under them adding parts they really dislike.

    I’m not trying to say this is a reasonable complaint, or that it should “ruin the game” for them.but hypothetically if it did ruin the game for them, is it unfair to make things better for some when the majority is paying to keep the game as it was before?

    I know the playerbase is right leaning because most (all that I have seen) videos on diversity and inclusion posted on OSRS YouTube will be 70% dislikes (before dislike counters were removed) with 250k views. This has been a huge controversy in the game for years

    https://youtu.be/EXE8p8jTKhM pride event first suggested by jagex (almost universally disliked update, I cannot find one positive comment towards it)

    https://youtu.be/u40feYnbYKU video of huge gatherings of players to protest the event

    https://youtube.com/shorts/1Ad8xwv7bnU protest with a very small amount of people counter protesting

    None of these are studies or statistics, and maybe most people actually don’t care and just log in and play the game, I am just stating that from all the players I have seen and all the comments left on every video about inclusion, this is either a large portion of players, or the majority is nearly completely silent (which I doubt because these protests are about 35% of the total population on that runescape world)


  • Hmm I may actually re-watch it and keep an eye out for these but you are more correct than I remember. I would say Bones does seem a little bit autistic, and some of the people in power are women, but it’s in a little bit of a hamfisted way (look at these badass women!).

    I think the episode where one woman got pregnant with someone else’s kid she was thinking of not keeping it but got convinced to keep it by her husband (fiance?), the message still being “them keeping it obviously good.”

    Seems like the writing was mostly fine but sometimes very conservative-coded when the director wanted to insert some spiel about life values. I appreciate the examples, I think I immediately forgot about those episodes specifically because of the weird messaging.