Thanks!

[P3nT4gR4m]

If we hadn't grown up in jail we wouldn't know what it feels like to kick down the walls.

If we hadn't had to learn to fight for freedom and steal it from right under their noses, to flaunt it in their miserable grey faces, to laugh at their blind obedience to rules, both written and unwritten, dictated to some degree by the state but imposed, much more rigidly, by themselves...

...Why, if that hadn't been the hand we was dealt, I reckon we'd have been bored out our fucking skulls.

Thanks big brother. Thanks for sticking us in a cage and telling us , over and over, to do what we was told. What to think, when to think it, how to act, what to say, what to buy, how to wear it. Thanks for setting guards on all the exits, and traps beyond the fences. Thanks for making sure we was watched as closely as it could be arranged, at all times. Thanks for setting us the challenge, throwing down the gauntlet.

Thanks also for keeping us in the dark about the game and the cost of playing. Thanks for never telling us the prize for cheating. If we'd known about it, the whole act of finding it would have seemed so much less intense. Like the movie where the hero is chasing something that everyone says doesn't exist. We always prefer those movies to the ones where the goal is clear from the outset.

Rumours and myth and legend lay a trail of clues, to the fringes of society. Where secrets and maps and keys and and promises of all kinds of treasure lay in wait.

The winds that blow through these places whisper "Freedom". Some of us learn what that word means and, every once in a while, we'll cross paths with someone else who scratched the itch and braved the gauntlet and lived to tell the tale. And we'll know, by looking one another in the eye, we earned that shit, paid for it in blood sweat and tears and we wouldn't trade it for the world.

Most especially, big brother, thanks for never quite being able to still these winds.

Srsly!

[hunter s.durden]

I agree with the sentiment here.

I've always been better at tearing down and destroying than I was at building up and creating. Without a system to tear down I'd be bored as shit!

[P3nT4gR4m]

 

[hunter s.durden]

I used to talk about a concept that I called "The Lost War." The Lost War was what I called the punks and hippies attempt to stir the pot. They raged against "the government" and "the corporations" while smoking Marlboro's and shopping at Hot Topic. The glaring contradictions were evident even to me, who at the time had little understanding of civics and government. I always saw them as having nothing better to do than complain. They didn't have to spend days hauling water or hunting food, so they raged at even the slightest of injustices.

Funny thing is, about 4 years ago something changed. I'm not sure what it was, but I had a ton of time on my hands and no tangible enemies. "You know," I began thinking, "vagrancy laws really are fucked up. And the war on drugs? What the fuck? Fuck these people, lets burn some shit."

Here I am.

[Cramulus]

to p3nt4gr4m for conceptualizing The Machine as the coolest video game ever.

If you can attain freedom on the most difficult setting, you get a much better ending than if you're playing in pre-industrial-revolution mode, right?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Fucking nail on the head, Cram. Heroes don't get to be heroes in situations where everything is handed to them on a plate. Question I'm always asking myself is "if they made a video game out my life, would I want to play it?"

[Jasper]

I used to always wish they'd make a game that reflected my town, with all the people in it.  I'd buy a grappling gun in real life, make one that mimicked it in a game mod, then go around figuring out where it can get me and what's possible.  Then, in reality land, I'd know exactly where the thing can get me without looking stupid by trying things that don't work.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I used to always wish they'd make a game that reflected my town, with all the people in it.  I'd buy a grappling gun in real life, make one that mimicked it in a game mod, then go around figuring out where it can get me and what's possible.  Then, in reality land, I'd know exactly where the thing can get me without looking stupid by trying things that don't work.

Wasn't there a sub-plot like that in The hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (only they had done it so that they could galavant around the galaxy and still be able to go to their favorite pub at lunch or something like that, I think...)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

If we hadn't grown up in jail we wouldn't know what it feels like to kick down the walls.

If we hadn't had to learn to fight for freedom and steal it from right under their noses, to flaunt it in their miserable grey faces, to laugh at their blind obedience to rules, both written and unwritten, dictated to some degree by the state but imposed, much more rigidly, by themselves...

...Why, if that hadn't been the hand we was dealt, I reckon we'd have been bored out our fucking skulls.

Thanks big brother. Thanks for sticking us in a cage and telling us , over and over, to do what we was told. What to think, when to think it, how to act, what to say, what to buy, how to wear it. Thanks for setting guards on all the exits, and traps beyond the fences. Thanks for making sure we was watched as closely as it could be arranged, at all times. Thanks for setting us the challenge, throwing down the gauntlet.

Thanks also for keeping us in the dark about the game and the cost of playing. Thanks for never telling us the prize for cheating. If we'd known about it, the whole act of finding it would have seemed so much less intense. Like the movie where the hero is chasing something that everyone says doesn't exist. We always prefer those movies to the ones where the goal is clear from the outset.

Rumours and myth and legend lay a trail of clues, to the fringes of society. Where secrets and maps and keys and and promises of all kinds of treasure lay in wait.

The winds that blow through these places whisper "Freedom". Some of us learn what that word means and, every once in a while, we'll cross paths with someone else who scratched the itch and braved the gauntlet and lived to tell the tale. And we'll know, by looking one another in the eye, we earned that shit, paid for it in blood sweat and tears and we wouldn't trade it for the world.

Most especially, big brother, thanks for never quite being able to still these winds.

Srsly!

FUCK YEAH. 

[Jenne]

I'm not to the thanking stage yet, but this is a damned great rant.  Awesome writing, P3nt.

[Requia ☣]

to p3nt4gr4m for conceptualizing The Machine as the coolest video game ever.

If you can attain freedom on the most difficult setting, you get a much better ending than if you're playing in pre-industrial-revolution mode, right?

Pre industrial revolution *is* the highest setting.  These are the fuckers who didn't know anything beyond the next county, who couldn't read and whose sole source of information was the church.

We have the internet, and newspapers, we can read, I talk to people on the other side of the planet every day, and there's a few (shrinking) hours each week where we're allowed to think.  The very tools the machine tries to confine us with can be used to break free.  The best the machine can do is give us an ever weakening illusion that we have control, and scatter a few hot topics around to try and grab the young and stupid.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Damn Silly that was beautiful!

[Aufenthatt]

[Soylent Green]

If we hadn't grown up in jail we wouldn't know what it feels like to kick down the walls.

If we hadn't had to learn to fight for freedom and steal it from right under their noses, to flaunt it in their miserable grey faces, to laugh at their blind obedience to rules, both written and unwritten, dictated to some degree by the state but imposed, much more rigidly, by themselves...

...Why, if that hadn't been the hand we was dealt, I reckon we'd have been bored out our fucking skulls.

Thanks big brother. Thanks for sticking us in a cage and telling us , over and over, to do what we was told. What to think, when to think it, how to act, what to say, what to buy, how to wear it. Thanks for setting guards on all the exits, and traps beyond the fences. Thanks for making sure we was watched as closely as it could be arranged, at all times. Thanks for setting us the challenge, throwing down the gauntlet.

Thanks also for keeping us in the dark about the game and the cost of playing. Thanks for never telling us the prize for cheating. If we'd known about it, the whole act of finding it would have seemed so much less intense. Like the movie where the hero is chasing something that everyone says doesn't exist. We always prefer those movies to the ones where the goal is clear from the outset.

Rumours and myth and legend lay a trail of clues, to the fringes of society. Where secrets and maps and keys and and promises of all kinds of treasure lay in wait.

The winds that blow through these places whisper "Freedom". Some of us learn what that word means and, every once in a while, we'll cross paths with someone else who scratched the itch and braved the gauntlet and lived to tell the tale. And we'll know, by looking one another in the eye, we earned that shit, paid for it in blood sweat and tears and we wouldn't trade it for the world.

Most especially, big brother, thanks for never quite being able to still these winds.

Srsly!

"He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother"

[Aufenthatt]

If we hadn't grown up in jail we wouldn't know what it feels like to kick down the walls.

If we hadn't had to learn to fight for freedom and steal it from right under their noses, to flaunt it in their miserable grey faces, to laugh at their blind obedience to rules, both written and unwritten, dictated to some degree by the state but imposed, much more rigidly, by themselves...

...Why, if that hadn't been the hand we was dealt, I reckon we'd have been bored out our fucking skulls.

Thanks big brother. Thanks for sticking us in a cage and telling us , over and over, to do what we was told. What to think, when to think it, how to act, what to say, what to buy, how to wear it. Thanks for setting guards on all the exits, and traps beyond the fences. Thanks for making sure we was watched as closely as it could be arranged, at all times. Thanks for setting us the challenge, throwing down the gauntlet.

Thanks also for keeping us in the dark about the game and the cost of playing. Thanks for never telling us the prize for cheating. If we'd known about it, the whole act of finding it would have seemed so much less intense. Like the movie where the hero is chasing something that everyone says doesn't exist. We always prefer those movies to the ones where the goal is clear from the outset.

Rumours and myth and legend lay a trail of clues, to the fringes of society. Where secrets and maps and keys and and promises of all kinds of treasure lay in wait.

The winds that blow through these places whisper "Freedom". Some of us learn what that word means and, every once in a while, we'll cross paths with someone else who scratched the itch and braved the gauntlet and lived to tell the tale. And we'll know, by looking one another in the eye, we earned that shit, paid for it in blood sweat and tears and we wouldn't trade it for the world.

Most especially, big brother, thanks for never quite being able to still these winds.

Srsly!

"He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother"

Orwell was a prick, go read all his books.