It’s a little strange that there are such drastic changes in culture and climate in such a small area of land, but I still like that they did it. It’s of course completely a fantasy world so they can do whatever they want, and it’s got ‘video game scale.’ But I think the cultural differentiation helps to make the world feel larger and the different areas feel more distinct.
Your generalizations about US consumers has no basis in reality. You really think people would buy these mass-market products if they weren’t good? Just look at the consumer satisfaction surveys. I’m far from a Tesla fan, but for a long time, there weren’t truly good competitors to Tesla EVs. iphones have always and continue to be some of the most highly rated phones on the market.
And what is wrong with voting with your wallet and choosing not to support the business of a terrible person? That’s about the only power you have as a consumer, so people should exercise that power if they see fit.
Lots of iPhones cost way less than $1k, and there’s plenty of Android flagships that cost over $1k, and they’re all decent phones. Sure, go ahead and judge people for spending money on a device they use every day.
And what I said about the ‘default’ phone is true, and that’s for normal middle class families. Far from the elite. I’m just reporting the facts, it’s maybe people have a different frame of reference depending on where they live.
Do you live in the US? Maybe not, but iPhones have something like a 50% market share here, and in some regional cases a lot higher. For example, in southern California where I live, iPhones are easily in the majority of people’s hands. The point is that this feeling is probably more a ‘your problem’ issue, and it’s hard to make a case that people use these phones as a way to feel exclusive if the market share is so high. There may be some issues of exclusion amongst teenagers etc., but teenagers are going to teenager. I’m just talking about the US though. In some emerging markets there may be a case made for the iPhone to be seen as ‘luxury,’ but this hasn’t been the case in the US for a while. iPhones are seen as an ordinary, almost default phone.
I’m playing online. I haven’t tried offline yet, but I’ll test when I get the chance and report back. Seems really shoddy that it would run like that online when D4 is fine.
It doesn’t look like Ray Davies to me. Very interesting show, it’s kind of like Black Mirror if it was done in a more experimental pseudo-documentary format. It’s about the “Video Age” lol.
I won’t pretend to know how it would have gone either way. Had it actually not happened in the timeline that it did happen, it could have easily been different. The momentum, the media narratives, the quickness with which the Democrats united behind Harris, all of these things caught most everyone by surprise. I could see any of those things being wildly different had Biden chose to step down much earlier. We don’t like to admit it, but irrational, unknowable elements like “vibe” and “timing” have always played a huge role in elections.