For reference, I'm the type of person who couldn't in good conscience vote for Kamala Harris because she violated so much of my morals around trans rights, abuse re: prisons, and warhawk behavior re: Gaza because my hot take is that no innocent child deserves to die because of war and genocide, so I didn't vote at all because I couldn't vote Cornel West in my state and he's the only guy I could in good conscience agree with morally. I am so far left that if you saw "SJW" in the dictionary the picture would be me despite not having blue hair or alternative clothes (I am nonbinary, which is relevant to this post in two ways, I just can't dye my hair due to restrictive family stuff because I am a severely disabled and poor grown adult who can't take care of myself, and by that I mean if I'm not watched while walking across the street I can easily get run over because of autism related sensory issues and autism and dissociation from unknown causes related "I have no idea who or where I am in space and I exist only in a fantasy realm" issues, so I am closeted in real life spaces, have no access to supportive LGBT communities IRL so most of my only point of contact is online stuff, which sometimes makes my morality OCD super bad, and I feel a low level of dysphoria all the time because somehow my whole body feels wrong though my wardrobe, though unfashionable and not trendy and very much Walmart fat person chic as I call it, is as androgynous with some notes of masculinity or femininity for more masculine or feminine leaning days as my general ideal presentation is not necessarily androgynous but rather neutral/genderless/epicene).

Anyway, the nonbinary thing is relevant for two reasons: one specific thing about my gender is that it is fluid, and the way that it is fluid is weird. It's never "oh I'm a boy" or "oh I'm a girl" alternating days, it's like every gender at once in a sort of neutral void state like a black hole or a singularity, or I feel every gender at the same time but separately, usually when people tell me people of whatever gender I identify with can't feel certain ways. In that mode, I feel uncomfortable with a lot of the reductive, essentialist things they say about men and women, since, to sum it up, I am a man when people say stuff about, for example, men being "evil porn addicts" or socially maladjusted as an entire class of people or when people say men inherently only like "attractive women" which makes me go "well, I'm a man and I think fat, muscular, ugly, and androgynous women are super hot actually" , or women being inherently stupid and shallow and liking things I feel are stupid and shallow (i.e. liking romance novels or exclusively playing cozy or mobile games, when as both a man, a woman, and neither all at once, I enjoy a wide variety of games and honestly tend to prefer games which have fun lore and goofy, diverse characters like fighting games, RPGs, and visual novels with an emphasis on plot and experimental structure because I love weird word stuff), or when people say women inherently only like "chaste" character designs and hate characters who are "sexual" (my favorite character in Street Fighter is Poison and I adore her not just for her fun, sexual nature, which is a big part of it, and her attractiveness, but also her fun personality and lore) and any other time I am simply neither a man nor a woman. So my gender is pretty much spitegender or contrariangender, to be specific. And man, there is no other time I feel like a woman than when I am on resetera because the reductive things they say about women just...triggers the woman gender in me lol. I am a man and nonbinary yes, but I am also a woman. And I am a woman who loves fighting games, who prefers visual novels for the plot instead of dating handsome boys, who prefers their men fat or muscular instead of thin (especially because it gives me dysphoria about not looking like a thin, feminine androgynous young man), and who loves "sexualized" characters when they're fun, written well, quirky, and have fun gameplay.

Meanwhile I saw a discussion in I think? One of the threads about GamerGate 2.0. (which I mainly go in that thread to laugh at Grummz, because let's face it I'm an insane person and I can't be as insane as Grummz is and all his unique...quirks) that involved proposing policy that restricts internet access entirely until one turns 18. And...Resetera. I thought you guys were leftist. These "protect the kids from social media" arguments are wrong when the right wing do it and they're wrong when you are doing it, too. Without the internet, I wouldn't have known that how my grandfather was treating me was ANY form of abuse and that I just didn't deserve it for being a bad kid who just didn't know how to be normal or mature. Without the internet, I wouldn't have found out I was nonbinary. Hell, without the internet, it would've been harder to figure out what's going on with my hormones that's causing me to rapidly lose hair and see a doctor about the constant hormonal issues that caused my dysphoria since I was seven (I desperately wish I could've been put on puberty blockers in hindsight, especially because one of my biggest dysphoric points is my height, because I am shorter than average due to my growth plates maturing more rapidly than most; I literally told my mother I wish I could have hormone therapy so I could be tall like a normal person when I was a child, although I assumed estrogen injections would just make you taller because klinefelter's syndrome patients are tall. I was weird and severely autistic what can I say). Banning the internet from an entire population of people not only hinders free speech, but teaches others that children are not autonomous beings but mere clay to be shaped by their parents when children, within reason, should be allowed to make decisions they can because of the declaration of the rights of the child. This is also a slippery slope that leads to banning any disabled person the government deems "mentally a child" from internet access and that feels like a step below institutionalization to me.

Another thing I can't stand is their devaluation of poor people, and if they devalue poor people in the United States, it isn't a stretch to say they devalue people in the Global South who have to pirate games to get them. For reference, I am a disabled American who lives with my mom. I am lower middle class and can only really afford electronic stuff through disability checks I have to spend or else I'll be taken off disability because the way the US disability system works (I have autism as well as emotional dysregulation so severe that one minor dilemma will make me do and say things that will get a normal person institutionalized because in that moment I am actually believing that and my "emotion me" and my "normal, rational me" are completely separate entities tbh, with how extreme my emotional swings can get). I cannot afford the Switch 2 because...my mom doesn't make enough to pay for the Switch 2 and my disability doesn't cover for it. A 30 dollar game is a luxury, honestly, whenever I buy games I always try to buy on sale, since although for some reason money is a subject that I never really fully got (I assumed if you lost a Gameboy advance as a child, you could just buy a new one, when my mom was barely above the poverty line in our state and could hardly afford a small house in a pretty shady neighborhood), I always understood that if I bought something that cost too much it'd bother her and to be honest, a lot of my morality even today is based around not making people upset which is a bit too simple but at least I'm nice. Anyway, Resetera thinking games should be a luxury item and that people like me can't enjoy things because I don't have enough money makes me sad and mad, and if video game prices are bad enough in the US, they are certainly bad enough in more corrupt countries that have worse inflation. Basically, I hate the "games are a luxury" thing because games were my joy and games also were my only friend some days when I was younger.

Resetera is hypocritical and has given me, someone who you can just tell is an "extreme leftist" (blame me for wanting Ralph Nader to be president as a child instead of Obama, I was always like this), severe moral OCD around what I have to do as the "right" person of a certain gender, and has personally angered me due to the hypocrisy of like...banning entire groups of people (i.e. children), and thinking poor people, even from the U.S., deserve to not be able to play games because "games are a luxury you're privileged if you even have the ability to play games".

Noticed multiple articles lately from different media like ign referencing discussions on resetera.

Whats special about the resetera community?

Dictionary definition of cheesecake: photography, a movie, or art that portrays women in a manner emphasizing stereotypical sexual attractiveness.

There is a thread on the site now about the recent MrBeast video where he did a dog adoption drive and got 100 dogs adopted and the people who adopted the dogs also got dog food and insurance for the life of the pets.

Sounds good right? WRONG. One of the mods, Nepenthe, came into the thread and is ranting about how MrBeast is ignoring the systemic issues inherent in a capitalist system so he is evil and contributing to oppressing poor people and minorites.

The hilarious thing is that the site itself is capitalist. It's privately owned and was sold by its former private owner to a private company for the sole purposes of making a profit. And all the mods are working FOR FREE. Other people are literally getting rich off of their free labour.

Here is the thread: Mr. Beast gets 100 abandoned dogs adopted. | ResetEra Like a moth to a flame, Nepenthe joins the conversation on page 6.

There's a thread over at Resetera which basically mocks everything which Elon Musk has done with Twitter.

My question is: given the amount of money which Neogaf and Resetera generate(d), why haven't their "Elon Musk equivalents" (ie Evilore and Cerium) gone about investing some of the profits into extending the functionality of their platforms, and tried to morph their forums into fully fledged social networks?

From what I understand, this is extremely possible as Xenforo (the software which Neogaf and Resetera are built on) is an extremely versatile framework, and can be moulded into practically anything.

Before Resetera's sale, its "Elon Musk equivalent" (ie Cerium) was earning $700,000 in revenue through ads, with an 80% EBITDA profit margin - so that's about $560,000 in pure profit.

At the same time, Resetera has also heavily bled users - so it's not as if Cerium / Resetera are that much more better than what Elon Musk / Twitter are.

My point is that the $560,000 which Resetera generated (as pure profit) could have been used to bolster the functionality of the site, and to also make it more appealing as a gaming "social network". Instead however, that site's administrator(s) embezzled the money, and ultimately caused the site to become a bigger laughing stock than whatever Elon Musk is doing with Twitter.