It feels weird to connect that line from Joyce Messier to "you critique society, and participate in it? Curious." I saw it as much more associated with the more poignant idea of "capitalist realism" from the work of Mark Fisher. Of course, that idea can be deconstructed and criticized as well, so maybe you'll come back to it. But given her experience travelling through the Pale and how it seems to have impacted her, her self-justification isn't so much "you trying to take down capitalism is hypocrisy" as "there is no alternative, capital either smashes or appropriates ideas of all critiques." Which is a funny way of putting it as "there is no alternative" was a Maggie Thatcher thing, and she looks a little like her. It does fit with your idea of contradiction and Evrart though: she's in a position of immense power, but has resigned herself to powerlessness, and fulfills her role in executing the power of Wild Pines. In the ruined Martinaise, her point about the lack of alternative may seem salient, but it's really defeatism dressed up to keep on the path she has already made for herself. Anyway, thanks for the video.
I also just realized when you said "Thatchian" you probably meant "Thatcher-ian" (I'm not familiar with the term, apologies), so perhaps you made the same connection about appearance.
Yeah I agree with you, it is a profound quote because it's so self aware, the creators of this game realized their critiques of capital needed stockholders and investors . It's not the hypocrisy of participation but rather this ironic idea that capital seeks to profit off of whatever it can, even it's own criticism. Like the saying goes "the capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with"
4:43 a small correction: it's Evrart that has the lazy eye, not Edgar. Joyce says about him, "Yes. Edgar looks *exactly* like his brother, except for that lazy eye." She specifically says Edgar has no amblyopia. Harry doesn't make the connection that Evrart is Edgar because that connection doesn't exist.
@@HidinginPrivate I also thought that Evrart was actually Edgar. Actually, my fan theory was that Evrart would leave and just come back, posing as Edgar, to get around the term limits rules of the union. But then other characters said that they knew both brothers when they were young. smh
On the topic of Joyce, ever listen to the Sea Power song "Praise For Whatever"? There's a reason it's the one that was respun into Joyce's theme, with the opening lyric's being: "It's such a convoluted hour To play amongst the flowers When we're counting all the missiles down from three to one to none And in a world of extremities We all are accessories So let the dancers inherit the party Now here comes the big prize And here comes my reward Yeah here comes the big prize And here comes my reward Today we will just lay here for a little while"
Genius commentary of politics aside, I’ll earnestly say that most of it was lost on me when I played disco elysium. I was more interested in the personal side of the story, the “what kind of cop are you?” Question. Beyond politics, Disco Elysium does a genius job of portraying states of mind as RPG stats, and especially thoughts like Inland Empire and Conceptualization captivated my imagination when I played. I’d love to see an analysis on how these stats are characterized and how disco Elysium uses them to tell the larger story of the amnesiac protagonist, his relationship with Kim, and potentially the ludonarrative between the player and the stats they prioritize and how it affects the larger story told, because if you ask me that’s the most interesting part of disco Elysium
Having said that I don’t want to imply that this video wasn’t interesting to me, honestly it did a lot to flesh out my impressions of these characters, especially concerning the nuances I missed in my own playthrough, and the politics in DE are actually handled really well through them. Stellar stuff private, stellar stuff.
i had the same experience playing the game for the first time, but after playing it again, paying attention to historic events, political discourse and science behind the world around me, the narrative made so much more sense! it sounds a little silly on paper, but the two revolutions that happened years before the strike play a huge role in just about every aspect of the narrative
I agree 100% disco Elysium could possibly even be one of the most branching types of narratives in gaming sense the stats you chose and choices you make a long the way dramatically change the diologue and the way you play.@@dry90125
I appreciate your comment, because imo it's the main part of the game you're meant to enjoy. The politics are a backdrop: a convenient and realistic motivator for the story's twists.
@@MrJohnthegamerHD Precisely. While the politicsl discourse in DE is interesting in its own way and has its nuances and attention to the people involved (the fascism quest is probably the best example: the reason why the people you talk with are fascists are entirely different: the old sick veteran, a young shitty guy, a minority guy with family issues in his past), they can also be summed up in 4 ways. Centrists are a joke about how moderate political positions, even if honestly believed in and practiced, ultimately favour the status quo. Communists are mostly remnants of another Age that never even truly took of and their discourse is mostly between themselves, never directed at the rest of society. Ultraliberals are those that either got the benefit of the current system or the suckers that think they can be thar first group. Fascists are also excessively attached to the past and more often than not it comes from ignorance and limited personal experiences. The actual meat of the game isn't about the politics, it's how politics affect people. It's about why we have fun talking with Measurehead even if it only makes us want to punch him morr
You misunderstood Joyce's quote. It refers to criticism of capitalism that becomes massively popular specifically. Just look at the Boys, a story which is staunchly anti-capitalist being picked up by amazon's prime and now you can buy funko pops and other slop based on the characters from it while completely missing the point. The main reason people like that quote so much is because it applies to Disco Elysium itself, the whole IP got stolen from the devs by a rich fuck through a legal loophole and now they're planning sequels, tv shows and other garbage that will completely taint the original message in favor of money.
Wait, I heard some of the original devs (iirc the primary ones) were cancelled from their own collective by the rest of them and the whole thing folded in on itself after the release of the game. Does that mean that richie rich picked up the IP from the abandoned studio?
Yes, exactly. No matter how genuine your intent is, the reigns of success will be ripped from your hands by the cunning players of said system. The wolves will eat and leave you with bones.
Joice, despite being prepared to see the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher, managed to crack my defenses and made me work for her volunteerly. Politicians are scary
Spoiler regarding Joyce and la responsibilitè: If you pass a particular passive check in the conversation just before she leaves, you actually find out she owns Wild Pines and has falsely represented herself as a negotiator. And while her statements about her place in the hierarchy are a lie, they also have a certain amount of truth. After all, can you lead a multinational company by taking actions against your own business interests? In a certain sense, she is also a cog in the machine, the rich business women who is tasked by the system with ensuring that capital gets what it needs. If she didn't, another company would rise to the top and take her place. Her power is predicated on conforming to her companies interests, and she needs to fulfil her obligation regardless of personal sympathies for the Revacholians. In a way, her characters detachment from the crucial story making could be seen as a statement that there can't be ethical decision making by business owners under capitalism. Oh, and a minor point of correction: Wild pines didn't start out with a lot of money, they started with a royal monopoly. As in the legal privilege of being the only ones allowed ownership in a specific economic sector, granted by a king. This wasn't uncommon under mercantilism, though Joyce does argue Wild Pines got there meritocratically by not going bankrupt like other indotribes. A stronger starting economic starting advantage than just being rich, inherited from feudalism.
This game is so deep and has so many well hidden details. Didn't catch this one but for the reasons you mentioned it's very interesting how it makes the person hypothetically at the top into a cog as well. Cool comment!
@@HidinginPrivate Yeah, it's interesting how much of a passive character she actually is. The game is set in an exploited city dominated by foreign mega-companies, with a major strike occurring and Joyce just stands on a boat in the corner, trying to influence our cop. The only meaningful decision she makes is to flee, and wash her hands of the coming mercenary tribunal. Cool video by the way! It was a genuinely interesting analysis of the political figures, an angle that has been somewhat ignored in the analysis of the game.
IIRC, Joyce doesn't own Wild Pines, she's a member of the board. So strictly speaking, she's not a _sole_ owner, but probably a shareholder. She doesn't have unanimous control. It's also why she has to report back to Wild Pines when she learns that Evrart is really digging in for a siege. Passing the check really didn't raise much of an eyebrow from me because it doesn't really change the dynamic much. Technically, she lied by omission. It's just, I didn't care? We kind of already knew that she isn't here to do anything but represent capital.
@@ved2360 Correct. And even if she did have a 50%+1 of shares, it's simply unrealistic to believe that someone in her position can do anything in complete favour of the strikers and keep that position. Hostile takeovers are a thing, and so are votes to change board politics and whatever else. The point of Joyce character is that beyond the fair and amicable middle age woman lies a cold capitalist past who has been mellowed by time and the Pale, but was also made cold. She probably cares more than she would admit, but at the same time not enough to even think about changing her politics or her life. Why would she anyway? She has become old, she knows whatever change she might try would be overthrown by the rest of the Board or the Moralintern. She is the stand-in for the idea that even if you understand and care about something, there is no winning against a cold system, and so might as well play into it and ensure your own life
@@Hyperversum3 wait, you can actually convince her to give up the port to the Union. She won't (and probably can't) do much about the tribunal but she can be convinced to not further endanger the city.
finished my second playthrough of disco elysium a couple of days ago, this video couldn't have come out at a better time! loved your analysis and would love to see more - about hardie boys, measurehead, hell maybe even tackle the innocents themselves. world of DE is so authentic and alive, its impossible not to think about long after the game is finished
Many people actually didn't like the Deserter reveal, but I think it fit very well with the game's theme of failure, regret and inability to let go of the past... I've been having some naughty bourgeoise thoughts lately, a lot of doubts about what we're trying to accomplish here and viability of those ideas, the game poses those same questions, but it also provides reminders of why it's worth to let go of the past and try to do better in the present...
Another clever deconstruction beyond the physical appearance is that the way Evrart looks out for the workers for selfish reasons _parallels_ what free-market ideologues say about the businessman in a competitive market serving the consumer out of greed. Evrart has elements of the virtuous capitalist despite being in a decidedly unvirtuous industry. It also parallels how some drug cartels (but not others) will often provide for the citizens of towns they're taken up residence in. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather to purchase their loyalty.
its not "you have money therefore bad socialist" its that being rich necessarily means you gained that wealth by exploiting the labor of others, that you're a capitalist. i dont know enough about hasan's case but i suspect he is actually a socialist in his mind but just isn't practicing it.
The thing is you can't be socialist within a capitalist system. Any means 9f exchange or purchasing of goods requires consumption of the exploitation of labor. Starving yourself to death and dieing in a field is all you can really do if you don't engage with it. If you find a systemic issue, you have to interact with the system to change it, especially when it is far more powerful than any small group of people could overpower through force
It's also that despite claiming to try and "reform" the system from within, he refuses to do so. While espousing the benefits of unions, Hassan doesn't use unions to manufacture his own merchandise. Instead, he uses the same third world manufacturing as his opposition. And when questioned on this his only response was to talk down to his audience with a "you don't understand". Hassan is of the same ilk as Hbomber; a grifter who doesn't truly believe in what he espouses beyond the belief that people richer than him are bad. It reeks of envy, and everyone can smell it.
He only mentioned Hasan? Or is my RUclips scuffed? Anyways Hbomber has alot of skeletoni in his own closet. He bullied a trans person to suicide and never apologized, he made a video on copyright but didnt mention Hasan who allways does it, he was also a part of a horrible community on tumblr
I added this video to my watch later based on the topic and didnt realize you were the one who made the rebuttal to those SU "critiques" and it was whiplash for a moment, but welcome whiplash. You don't miss with your takes, and your channel is definitely going to be a must-watch for me regardless of the topic
I went into this video expecting it to focus on the gameplay experience of being lied to in Disco Elysium. Where you have to examine the information presented to you, determine what someone stands to gain from lying to you, or how you can lie to attempt to gain a leg up in the conversation. On top of that, despite their initial perception as the final word on a given subject, you eventually learn that your different stats each have character flaws and beliefs of their own. A successful roll does not guarantee that Drama will correctly assess someone's honesty. Although Drama's "he's lying, sire" seems at first to end the mental game one must play to come to that conclusion themselves, it simply introduces a separate parallel problem of whether or not your own judgement is to be trusted. You focused a lot more on the political side than I expected, and your analysis of how character flaws inform political beliefs and vice versa was very insightful. Amazing video!
I haven't watched many DE playthoughs but one stuck with me, from Woolie Vs. As one of the OGs on internet influencers you can piece out what person he is, he came from an over religious family and like many people raised like that and don't become religious he has an "over reliance" on "reason and facts". So when he got to play most of his skills points focused on rhetoric and encyclopedia, he hated Conceptualization and island empire and he would get confused everytine rhetoric would say something absurd because why would rhetoric not make sense? He thought the pale was too etheral to be real. it is interesting seeing someone who you have some knowledge of how they are playing this game.
If you're looking for a recommendation, I'm not sure if you've played it but the talos principle and its sequel (which just released) are really worth looking into. I think the way they talk about philosophy really resonated with me. It's not as Political as disco elysium but I do think Politics is inherently Philosophical, so alot of the characters can fit into archetypes of our political system and what the game has to say about these things really made me think. Its also a puzzle game with neat lasers on the side if you enjoy that kind of thing.
Amazing video, it’s interesting how Joyce and Evrart are not typical physical depictions of union and company representatives, like the archetypes were swapped. Love the commentary on leftist infighting with the Deserter, keep it up!
Never thought of that. Yeah! The capitalist is caring and nice to you. The union representative is cold, fat, threatens you. Their morals are the same as they should be, but their portrayed personalities are swapped.
Its also kind of a prophecy. Joyce gives the impression of having been a leftist early in life, but her hope has been completely crushed (and subsumed) by the suffocating weight of capitalism and it has turned her into a willing servant of capital. She projects this fate onto the entire world.
I had a friend who basically dismissed all conservatives as sub-human monsters lacking any empathy. As a fairly left leaning person myself who generally despises most right-wing movements and ideology even I found this to be a step too far. I think this speaks to your point towards the end, the left's moral grandstanding and unwillingness to consider other positions as anything other than morally reprehensible is part of the problem. Not to mention, the left loves to argue, but not actually *do* anything, we get hung up on semantics and proving we are in fact the most morally correct, instead of expending that same energy doing something constructive. Great video btw, Disco Elysium is a masterpiece so it's great to see any sort of breakdown of it.
One of the many incartions of a pharase of the years: The biggest enemies of the left is the left. But my favorite one is: You make 4 leftists debate between them and you will get 6 different opinions
And the funniest to me are the leftists who say morality does'nt exist.. yet cry about how evil the right is, how equating nazism to evil instantly without seeing why it Ever got popular and why it became powerful (how can something all bad and all disfunctional be powerful? It cant, nazism and fascism both had positive traits) Im a conservative myself but I don't consider leftists subhuman, just very flawed as they appeal to imperical data without daring to ever critique it. "Chemicals in the water is a rightoid loony conspiracy theory" And now we have "theres plastic in the water" coming from those same people who wrote the last articles. Same with radium products and cigars as cough medicine
It's incredible to look back to the early Marxists, and they are having the same 'intellectual' slap fights we see online today, with large amounts of it being about interpersonal nonsense and personality driven. It's always been the bane of the Left wing.
Please make that part 2. I want to hear your opininions on the Hardie boys, the underground communist youths, the Moralintern and the RCM's polirical role and about the centrist dialogue options too. They are really funny.
The thing about Evrart, is that he IS the worker first guy - the empathy skill check is supposed to clue you in on this, he is definitely, most certainly cares about the city and the people who inhabit it first and foremost. He just doesnt give two shits about his personal image, and in fact uses his sleazy image to a considerable advantage. It wasnt drugs that killed the city and kept it a slum, it was deliberate bombardment of the entire Martinaise and deliberate effort to keep it as a reminder. People being on drugs isnt the reason why Martinaise is the way it is. People turn to drugs BECAUSE city is a shithole, and they cant do anything about it. The drug trade will be there either way, the choice Claires face is a)let the drug trade run rampant; b)spend Unions resources to keep it in check while being strangled by Wild Pines; or c)take control of the drug trade, and invest the money into the strike to get more resources for the people. What Evrart does, is he keeps the port hostage, and uses drug money to keep the strike going. People would have starved otherwise, striking for months is not free you know. Plan is to ask ever greater concessions from corpos untill it is no longer viable for Wild Pines to maintain operation in the city, and Martinaise can get free from the capitalist boot (or rather replace it with socdem capitalist boot) - the port location would still be valuable, the city will not die without corpos. In fact, it is dying because of moralintern. The absolute "pornographic poverty" of the fishing village and wartorn ruin was there before Claires and their shady ways of going about fundraising. The joke here is that Evrart is a puffer fish, he is outwardly greedy and corrupt, but its all a facade. He deeply cares, but the means of capitalism he lives under force him to engage with the corruption and filth of the whole system, and he doesnt wash his hands away of the filth he has his arms elbows deep in. Compare and contrast with Joyce, a wolf in sheeps clothing, who shows concern at every opportunity, but business first and only. And when push comes to shove? It wasnt her call, it was just the company. Massacre by the mercs is not on her hands, when the reason why they are here is blatantly obvious to all who isnt wilfully ignorant. When her job is over, she doesnt give two shits about hundreds of workers that will die to automatic gunfire of supposedly invincible mercs. Reserve army of labor will pick up the slack, it is obvious that there are plenty of people in the ruins who are starving for a job. Or at least thats my reading of it. P.S. Evrart is the guy with lazy eye. Claires dont run the drug trade in person (too fat to do so). P.P.S. People dont find Joyces line to be profound, just ringing way too true way too often. P.P.P.S. Calling mercs militia is confusing, since militia is the cops. Yeah, Revachol doesnt have a proper policing system (by moralinterns decree IIRC) and uses militia for this.
I think this is meant to be left to the interpretation of the player. On the one hand there is all this dialogue about how the player character should get sober (not just from Measurehead either) that Harry would be a better person and cope if he were sober. So it would stand to reason that the canonical interpretation of evrart’s drug dealing is either a necessary evil at best or just evidence of his primarily self interested ways. The communard at the end after all does not believe evrart is a true believer.
This completely ignores what happens when you gossip between Evrart and Joyce, causing Evrart to reveal his ideological beliefs and Joyce to give up the harbor
@@HidinginPrivate I wondered why would anyone choose such a place to be shown in a Disco Elysium video. It all makes sense now. Enjoy your stay in these godforsaken lands I call home!
i've had that convo about my not eating meat before, cause i would eat leftovers that were not my own that contained meat. i've always weighed preventing food waste to be a higher priority than my diet restrictions in the matter of what i buy and prepare for myself. a stance that sometimes confuses
There's an interesting ethical Vegan question about communal meals, for example a group of friends order a pizza and one of them is vegan, is it worth the expenditure of extra resources to get a second Vegan friendly pizza or just partake with the common order. Tough, there's a practical solution to my hypothetical, flipping a coin to decide if the common pizza is meat or Vegan.
Really good analysis so far, but the point you make at 25:30 or so about planned obsolescence in lightbulbs is a patently false conspiracy theory, there’s a technology connections video about if you wanna know all the specifics but basically lightbulbs have to be rated for hours used under certain luminosities. The better comparison would probably be the whole John deer tractor situation with the company locking down the firmware so farmers can’t repair things themselves.
I really like Noah Gervais’ read of Evrart where he is a true believer that every single worker deserves a seat on the board, and naturally he’ll be chairman. Natural as breathing.
Ah, infighting. The Left's original sin Rovics' "I'm A Better Anarchist Than You" also gives me a chuckle, especially since I can partially see myself in it Great video!
Interesting perspective on things, I don't really agree with the vast majority of your analyzes, but it really stands out compared to most other Disco Elysium videos.
I should really give this game another play. I've gone through it once and it was fantastic but hearing what other people go through, it lets me know that there's still so much to experience.
29:50. I was very surprised to realise that the background music... seems to be haibane renmei ost. Great video btw! I liked inclusion of personal bits especially.
I viewed Joyce's quote, "Capitalism has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself" differently from, "Oh but you make a living under the system!" I don't know where I read it, but the example I was given was Hollywood. Where movies will gesture at concepts like "diversity" or anticapitalism, but in a very cynical and pandering way to make money, subtly defanging the power of those critiques. It's very much, "Hey we have women drone pilots now, see how progressive our liberalism is now?" Capital will tear up jeans and sell them to you at a mark-up, commodifying the aesthetic of the "working class" or fashionably poor. Joyce also later comments on Cindy's "infraculture," or the game's version of counterculture. If you talk to Cindy, you can tell she's just just a bratty teenager who larps as a rebel. She's pretty easy to deflate. You're a cop after all, and she hates cops. But as Harry, you can just encourage her to continue vandalizing the apartment and it takes the fun out of it for her. She can't actually offend Harry. Harry is just some underpaid and overworked alcoholic detective. She's not really speaking any truth to power despite Harry nominally being an enforcer of capital. I don't even think Cindy is a communard, a social democrat, a unionist or a socialist. She's just a rebel without a cause. Cindy only senses she should hate Joyce for being in the ruling class. Joyce basically states that her rebellion against the norm or "supraculture" is pretty much meaningless. Cindy is wearing the clothing of old women as fashion statement and Joyce is unoffended and unconcerned by some teenager who has no power to affect her. The "supraculture" is everywhere. It's the music on the radio and the restaurants you eat at. Capital subsumes critique and is unoffended by you screaming at it in rebellion. Joyce is on a yacht, Cindy is not. They might as well live in different galaxies. That's the trouble. Joyce is genuinely likable. She's self-aware, educated and witty. She's an ultraliberal. She _does_ feel guilty about it. Genuinely, she does. We should improve society somewhat. And yes, she too participates in society. But so long as she does, it's good that's she's already on top. At no point does she actually disagree with your critique. She just knows it doesn't matter. Also the Starbucks boycott example is bad. Because boycotts don't work. You paying them for pre-made coffee means they still got your money. Strikes actually hurt them. Your gesture does nothing but make you feel good in the moment. Again, sort of Joyce's point. The critique itself is meaningless. You look impotent doing it because it doesn't work and the symbolism is completely lost because it never mattered. It swallowed the critique and ignored it. All anybody in the media has to do is just say they respect your free speech, even if they think you look silly doing it. How progressive of us and of you. Heck, you could wheel out a clone of Joyce as a spokesperson for Starbucks who'll speak kindly and respectfully about your boycott.
Ironically, Cindy is perhaps the 'realest' communist you will meet in the entire game other than Mañana the not-a-communist. Her thing is to inspire her fellow person through art and she is one of the few people who genuinely tries to help Harry without any kind of bargaining or misleading if asked. All the other communists are either navel-gazing and pretending to be what they think 'real' communists should be like (the students), or are embittered and have actually given up on communist beliefs a long time ago. Remember, Joyce is the capitalist, and capitalists' first line of mental defence against communism is offhand dismissal. Cindy is the ONLY person Joyce dismisses, note, in a break from her usual highly controlled personality, because Cindy is the only person who fundamentally rejects what Joyce stands for. She doesn't participate in consumerism, she lives on her own terms, and she actively does her best to encourage others to reject capitalism on their own terms, including Harry. She can't do much because she is a child, but she actually walks the walk. ZA/UM artwork literally calls her 'the withering away of the state', or in other words, the late stage of communism. Joyce is in fact, a giant trap. She is nice and personable, true! She admits all her wrongdoings and so forth. She also sicced a bunch of r3p*ist war-criminals on the Union. She is the epitome of 'we know the system is broken and needs fixing and our doing our best to do so' whilst doing nothing and actively making the situation worse behind the scenes when you aren't looking. You know, like a real politician. She does not actually feel guilty about any of her actions, she mimes doing so because it suits her to pretend, and because she enjoys being in control. What do you mean 'boycotts don't work', Starbucks has lost $11 BILLION from the current wave of boycotts. Consumer boycotts are incredibly effective, and like everything effective against the capitalist, capitalists dismiss their effects out-of-hand to make it seem as if they are not. Perhaps you need to kill the Joyce who lives in your head, as it seems she has you convinced that the truth is lies.
@@therat1117Vaush already mentioned this but Boycotts especially now don't work. Boycotts are just "feel good" things liberals do to feel good about themselves only to start buying products when said company makes a statement about it. Or you get a situation like the Harry Potter Video Game boycott where the opposition buys the game in order to spite the boycotters. What's the point of boycotting when the customer next to you is a materialistic zealot who will easily drop over 100k dollars on products sold by a company you're boycotting?
@@pank3245 Vaush's ""opinion"" is liberal garbage. You don't need everyone to be in on a boycott. And I don't care if it makes you feel good. That's nonsense individualist drivel. The point is to *bleed* the company. If 10% of their consumer base stops buying, then they don't meet growth targets. Their stocks drop. They *bleed* until they do what you want. And they have been bleeding, badly. Vaush wants to pretend to support Palest*ne as the 'great leftism understander who reads no books' but he's nothing but an armchair liberal vomiting whatever sorry opinion makes his dck tingle.
I love to see that my favorite game is still getting attention in these days! Also i didnt know about your channel, one of the bests disco elysiums i have ever seen!
I largely agree with everything you've said, but there's one small factual thing I'd like to correct. Depending on how long someone's gone without eating meat, they would actually be harmed in a mild way by eating it, just based on how their gut would react to something they're not used to digesting. More of a fun fact than a criticsm of the point
i loved the video, it was super interesting hearing you talk about all the political stuff and dynamics, as someone who hasn't played the game it was still very entertaining and not confusing. I would be leaned to checking the game out too cause it looks interesting and different from the stuff i play
Great video, but I think you're a little off base with Joyce. Comparing her point about critique of capital reinforcing capital to Society Comic Guy is a pretty surface-level interpretation of what she's actually saying. She's not pointing the finger at champagne socialists, or at people who use iPhones - she isn't really gesturing to any kind of imagined hypocrisy at all. No, I'm pretty sure with this line she is talking about Capitalism's ability to respond to critique and dissent with more sophisticated techniques than "repress them until they go away". For example, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle with the explicit intention of turning America socialist. Instead, we got the FDA. Unions and strikes are not alien to Capitalism, they are merely mechanisms by which disputes between labor and capital are resolved. Leftist culture and aesthetics are constantly appropriated and commercialized - see Leninade. This gives Capitalism a level of adaptability that previous dominant ideologies lacked, and I think that plays a large role in why it's still around and why so many, including Joyce, see it as an inevitable fact of life. In turn, this also undermines leftist causes. Whether this tendency should be exploited or outright rejected, the appeal of accelerationism as something that could counteract this, reform vs. revolution, all of these questions spring up in response to concessions made, prompting more infighting and the lack of a cohesive alternate vision. And I think this is what Joyce is referring to because, as the Wild Pines' negotiator, she's seen this process firsthand. She participates in it. And she, perhaps more than anyone, believes this is why the Ultraliberals ultimately won and the Communards lost.
Because capitalism isn't an ideology, its just a description of "how things are currently" . Precisely because it isn't an ideology it can be applied to anything with unmatched flexibility. Theres no ideology in exchanging resource for another resource. Socialists can rant all they want about subversive nature of capitalism, but it is also socialists who buy Che Guevara and Eat the rich T-shirts. Even if you personally dont participate in it, someone will, creating a demand.
You might be wrong with the incandescent lighbulb planned obsolescence thing, was the lifespan of the bulb not just a function of its brightness? There were longer lasting bulbs, but they were dimmer, so nobody really wanted them
You're correct. Technology Connections has a good video on it. It's a shame that one of the most commonly touted examples of planned obsolescence isn't a valid example.
@@gavinferguson2938 One of the safest examples is always online singleplayer games. The developer/publisher gets to decide when to shut down the authentication servers so that no one can ever play the game again without serious (probably illegal) reverse engineering, forcing players to move on and hopefully buy the sequel or other games. A functional, playable game that could be enjoyed by current and future generations is unable to simply because the developer/publisher decided it shouldn't be anymore. A particularly heinous similar example is the Nintendo eShop. It's one of the few ways to legally play older Nintendo games, but they shut it down at the end of every console so they can sell you the same old game again on the next console. They could honor that you bought the game on a previous console, but would rather make it obsolete so you have to buy it again.
Capitalist bootlickers on their way to call themselves Capitalists, owning no industries, having no generational wealth, and having no systemic power 🤯 Pro-Capitalists on their way to also actually do the smallest 🤏 amount of research on the broader global Leftist movement than our “leftist” Democrat party in the United States, and discovering that time and time again Marxist leaning countries actually succeeded under the tenants of Socialism until the historically oppressive and globally powerful Capitalist Imperialist nations came in and bombared, overthrew and Facistized those nations. Fascinating how the Neoliberal mind is so quick to criticize Cuba’s bloody revolution for Communism, when nobody ever mentions how the United States funded a revolution in the Dominican Republic and initiated a Facist genocide there. Undoubtly because the Dominican Facists made money for the United States, while Cuba refused to make money for our Capitalist overlords. And before all the reactionaries once again point and scowl at Cuba, it is unironically a degenerated worker’s state, of course their country failed when the United States blockaded and starved them out, and prevented trade to their people. But let’s not mention how it’s only after it’s Capitalist reforms, much the same with China, that we’ve seen a resurgence in exploitative measures, that even though Capitalist in nature, are chalked up as “Communist Oppression” by the Neoliberal West. God, I sound like Dros. Fucking hate American education, what a brainwashed country.
21:05 idk why i feel the need to thank you for saying this, but i do. coincidentally enough, i would liken this principle going over most surprised heads like turkeys. I know I was dumbfounded when I saw tens of them take off for the first time.
I loved the talk about Disco Elysium and do want to see more. If you're also looking for other games, I'd love to hear any of your thoughts or a topic on a part of Yakuza:Like a Dragon
I disagree on what Joyce meant by that quote, I don't think it's supposed to be an accusation of hypocricy on the behalf of those who critique capitalism, I think it's more cynical than that. Joyce is talking about the ways in which capitalism finds ways to profit from those things regardless. Squid Game, for example, holds a firmly anti-capitalist message at its core; but it has been made, advertised, distributed, and consumed in a society that views everything through a capitalist lens. As a result it has propped up and reinforced the existing power structures; large parts of it have been carved off, stripped of meaining and context, and turned into things like the Squid Game Reality Show. The people who made Squid Game aren't hypocrites, they are paying the price that comes with making a product for mass consumption, if they didn't then nobody would have seen Squid Game and the message they wanted to convey. I don't think Joyce is passing judgement, I think she sees it as an inevitability. The vibe I got from her throughout is that she believes that this is just the way things are, that fighting it is wasted effort, and that people should just face reality. She's not the Sunday Friend, she's not a cultist of capital, she just doesn't believe in any alternative. It may well be motivated reasoning, she obviously benefits from the system, but that's just the impression that I got. Or not, it's art after all, and we all take different things away from it.
One of the most common fallacies in the modern age is the Tu quoque fallacy. For some reason, people just can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that being a hypocrite doesn't make you wrong. More broadly, you could say that no moral failure of a person's character could make their argument wrong. Yet so often, especially in political spheres, arguments that should focus on the issues at hand devolve into moral grandstands and purity tests. I feel like this twisted form of logic is responsible for the lack of political progress in many parts of the world.
100% agree. Attacking the "hypocrisy" of the opponent is probably the most common (and least perceived) kind of logical fallacy in political arguments. It drives me mad.
From an Irish / British POV, I think the term you mean for Joyce is, "Thatherite" / "Thatcherism" I think you use, "Thatchism". She certainly evokes her in her portrait
The hipocrisy of those advocating for change but embracing capital is that they benefit from all the riches coming from capital, but they preach about how capital is evil, but this "evil" is making these people very wealthy. It's counter intuitive, because the other option they are presenting would not get them that wealthy, the whole system that gets them extremely rich is what they say they fight against. This makes them extremely hypocritical. Hassan doesn't sell merch to fight the system, he uses that money to keep his mansion, expensive car and trips to the brothel. He's not creating a political party, he's just accumulating capital, something thwt should be an issue for him.
Just by talking about socialism, people like Hasan are already doing a lot more for the working class than anyone else in their wealth class. And a lot more than a lot of working folks, if we're being honest. If you want every wealthy socialist to act like a saint, or to act like a martyr to the cause, you're shooting your own movement in the foot. Throwing ALL of their money into a fucking political party is not a reasonable thing to expect of any person, regardless of wealth, and by setting that standard you immediately alienate from the cause pretty much everyone who actually has the resources to help. Setting this type of standard is absolutely suicidal if you're a Leftist. Really, the only "Hypocrisy" going on here is that Hasan should, according to Marx, advocate more for his OWN class self-interest, and not for others. Now that he's a millionaire, he really should be buddying up with neoliberal and conservative politicians so he can get bigger tax cuts.
Incredible how bad you misunderstood the game and how compelled you felt to specify what the intent of the authors of the game was, obscuring the finesse of the original work and substituting it for clumsiness.
One theory behind the shipping container is that evrart and the union know that the mercenary was killed by the sniper, who is no longer killing for ideological reasons. So the shipping container is a way for evrart to hide from this sniper or any the wild pines group might hire
I love this game but according to my achievements I was an ultraliberal communist centrist who also was a artsy, good and sorry cop. True centrist grindset lmao?
Damn, I never even caught the connection between Everart being the drug don and Harry's addition struggles, nice observation! Also, thank you for calling Joyce's smart-sounding quote for being as meaningless as it is. Edit: Okay, I do sort of agree with everyone in the comments pointing out that Joyce's statement isn't about hypocrisy. She's basically saying, "all of your futile attempts to stand against the system will just be bought and sold as the newest trend." However, I'm still not super sure if I agree with that either, like I'm not naive enough to act like mass-produced Che Guevara t-shirts aren't a thing that happens a lot. But I also just don't know how I feel about the idea suddenly socialism means nothing being rich jerks can co-opt the aesthetic, like, I think that a shitty capitalist company making a movie with left-wing themes doesn't mean that the movie's themes are themselves incorrect, even if the suits in charge didn't believe in them. I also think it's worth noting that Joyce was talking about Cindy the SKULL and her counterculture fashion when she said that. Cindy probably does dress like that because it means something to her ideologically, but I think it's interesting how Joyce doesn't even consider the idea that someone might want to dye their hair and wear their grandma's old coat purely because... they just like it? At the end of Scrap Take's excellent DE essay (ruclips.net/video/vJkamriBQT0/видео.html), he talks about his reading of the Pale. To him, it represents ideology and politics itself, and I really like that reading and it resonates with me a lot. I am a leftist, and I hate how this sounds, but I think that human connection and understanding are both more important than ideological purity in real life and the moments thereof in DE are the best and most meaningful parts. I dunno if this makes sense or not, but Joyce not considering the idea that some people just dress a certain way because they like it fits with the idea of being born into a world burdened by the actions and beliefs of humans in the past and being told that you need to figure out how to feel about it and take a stance- like every action must be a statement, or a stance. And I think that is true, everything is political to some degree, even unconsciously. And there's no room for just not being sure about who you are or what you believe... it's all so overwhelming. Just like the Pale. Sorry if that got kinda rambly towards the end, but I think I'm just irritated that people hear Joyce's proclamation that there's no resisting capital and simply grimly nod their heads and submit to it. I know it's the ultimate irony because of how the devs lost the IP rights to Disco Elysium, and that sucks. But also, I don't think that DE is a failure or that it's message is suddenly meaningless because of that, or that every politically outspoken indie studio is doomed to the same fate. I think it was Octavia Butler who said something like, "hundreds of years ago, the Divine Right of Kings probably felt as unchangeable and overwhelming as capitalism does today"?
Important detail about Evrart brother... He is possibly dead. If you have high skills and talk with him, joyce and the deserter you can deduct that the union have use the desert in the past as a way to deal with Business people in the past and Evrart brothey could also being one of the victims of him (if Evrart was involve we don't know), that ks why also Evrart moves in a container, he knows that there is a crazy sniper somewhere with a desire of revenge
I don't remember correctly since I played the game years ago, but I do remember the sniper mentioning that he saw either Everart or his Brother making a deal with someone but I don't remember if he told whether he pulled the trigger or not.
I may be wrong, but Joyse quote about the critique of capital is not about you being part of the sistem and talking bad about it but the way any capitalist society can transform any kind of critique or attack into a being of consume. The art, discourses and movements loss their soul to be transformed into products, comercial events or something that feed capitalism. Also, sorry for my way to write, english isn´t my first language.
I think that reading of Joyce's quote makes sense on its own, but she says it when criticizing Cindy the Skull, a super poor street artist who has nothing. Saying she's a hypocrite just because she's anti-capitalist makes no sense.
Fantastic analysis! If you make another video, I'd recommend a breakdown on freedom in disco elysium. Who in this game is free? The actions of everyone from the weak to the seemingly powerful are coerced by external forces. Is there a single character who can act upon their own autonomy?
Unlike most people I agree with your take on the Joyce quote. If she said it in isolation, the common interpretations would make sense, but she says it when criticizing Cindy the Skull of all people.
The critique of Hasan isn’t that he can’t be wealthy at all, it’s the absolute scale of that wealth, contrasted to his fairly meager amount of actual help. A 3 million dollar house isn’t just “some nice things for yourself.” right?
Seems pretty believable for a house in LA. A normal one-family home in the German countryside I live in can cost more than half a million, and looking at LA houses in catalogues three million for a comfortable two/three level house with garden seem pretty reasonable (I've even seen a glorified shack for a million), especially since his his dad and mum also live there.
For 3 mil he could move to a different country and buy a reasonable 200k big ass house, not in fuckin cali or New York or wherever he is. His majority income is his family and twitch so he could live elsewhere He Also owns Multiple diamond rings, multiple hand watches, multiple Gucci bags and multiple Prada shirts. Hes as wasteful as they come, only caring about the name not the means just like how he treats his own ideology. Its all about the name, the asthetic, the status
@@angela_merkeI if you really think a million dollar home is a shack, i shudder to think of what kind of standards youve grown used to. sure, housing prices are insane, but they are not that insane.
@@solidpython4964 The house in question was literally one large not very high room with a lawn. Stop imagining stuff. And the point stands: Buying a house for yourself, your aging parents and your brother (I presume he also lives there) in one of the most expensive cities in one of the most expensive states in the richest country on earth will be expensive.
Wasn't Joyce revealed to be one of the members of wild pines? It's after we completed her and evrart quest and told Harry this before leaving. At the very least Joyce is much higher up in the chain than she originally let on.
at 22:18 i think you are mistaken for 2 reasons : 1) your action influence the person who made the decision -> you have to tell the person in front of you to not buy meat next time for you. you can eat meat, but you have to do something, and often time people are not logic trained and they will think you an hypocrite if you eat meat while telling them to not buy some next time cause your vegan the vegan thing is not "eat meat or die" it's "eat or not eat meat" that mean if there's vegies with the meat, you can only take the veggies (but often "emotional vegan" will not be able to swallow stuff prepare with meat in the same pot, for spychological et physiological effect 2) your action influence future you -> eating the starbuck things will actually soften your "hardness" against starbuck (maybe it's because there much sugar and addiction. or it's because it's good on the tongue and so will create cravings, or something else)
I don't think that was necessarily the point Joyce was trying to make, I understood it as a reference to capital profiting off the critique of capital by e.g. selling Che Guevara merch, "fuck capitalism sent from my iPhone" style. By broadcasting critique of itself, capitalism banalises and disempowers said critique.
You can buy nice things for yourself but there is a measure of gross excess and I think Hasan has crossed that just like billionaires do in a far worse way.
Okay, first off, I have to come clean. I envy you in a lot of ways. You seem to be a well-adjusted person with a tight social circle, a job you legitimately enjoy outside of content creation, and a high level of introspection and wisdom. Given your start with Persona 4, the comparisons to the ace (as in, competent in many ways, not asexual), Narukami are inevitable to me. All things I wished for myself. I cannot bring myself to meet anyone halfway out of boredom and a fear of offending people (I.E. friends discussing K-drama/K-pop boy bands which I have zero interest in, period), worried about my job prospects for a similar reason (I can't stand 8-5 weekly workdays), and of course my mind is just a cluttered mass of ideas. I can never find a grounded truth to believe since the moment I think I have solid ground, it gives way beneath my feet. The other... well, I'll need to do a ritual summoning here and invoke the words. I wonder what your take on Project Moon's stories would be. They seem to take a lot of emphasis on self, and in fact the term "selfishness" is thrown around often. But they do not preach it as a bad thing because of Society's norms, so I want to see your perspective on the concepts.
Well, with PM scoring a contract with ArcSys (the minds behind Persona 4 Arena and Guilty Gear) to port Library of Ruina to the Switch and PS4, the voices clamor louder for your review of the game and its characters.
I don't want to come off as aggressive with this comment because I feel a lot of people are going to take issue with how you characterize Hasan and his current position as "the largest political streamer". So here goes: While I agree with the overall point you made that criticizing Hassan simply he's wealthy is a very simplistic way of viewing him, I think what people actually take issue with is the way he comports himself, as well as the general position he's put himself in that undermines any sort of political agenda he's trying to convey. He obviously has no trouble criticizing people and institutions that have way more power than him, but when it reaches people within his wealth bracket then all of a sudden he changes his tone. The Pokimane drama is a good example since it was about the affordability of the cookies she was selling. Because he and Pokimane run in very similar social circles and are similarly wealthy, he ended up towing the line and defending her practice of this. Now he could have simply not said anything on the matter and that would be that, but the fact that he went to bat for it kind of undermines any other positions he'd hold on similar matters. I'd be curious if he would have done what he did had he been of lower economic class. I think as Hassan attempts to grow his audience and his brand, his social and economic position also changes and he'll eventually find himself in a position where his political commentary becomes less and less effective as he continues to surround with the people and systems he would criticize. Maybe you disagree with this assessment and see it in the same vane of "socialism is when no house" criticism, but I do think the position is currently in does and has undermined any sort of commentary he could make. This comment was going to be a lot longer but the other stuff I was going to bring up was outside the scope of the argument you were making so I kept it to this. I think there's a lot more wrong with him then what I outlined but it would simply come off as irrelevant. EDIT: Just wanted to add that other than that Hasan bit I think your analysis was really on point, especially the Evrart part since there was a ton of stuff I hadn't picked up on across both my playthroughs. Didn't want you to think that that was my only takeaway from your video.
Great video from a leftist perspective. I hadn’t even realized you were the same guy making those amazing Steven universe video essays- I really love your stuff!
I had legitimately never considered that capital is needed to make change to a capitalist system. While an extremely valid arguement I still feel that most afluent hard socialists or communists fall short of the proportional amount of virtue by action needed to back their strong beliefs. I have nothing but respect for a true revolutionary it's just that everyone seems to be corrupted or fall short. Excellent video dude I could listen to you talk all day.
the 'invest money to make more money to give away' thing is a bit of a logic trap, because there is always more you can invest, so it's quite easier to get caught in a loop of accumulation where u never actually give anything away. ideally, the best solution is people doing things collectively, if everyone else agrees, you dont need to accumulate so much money/power personally, u can trust the mass to use thier collective power righteously instead. but like, false consciousness and all the rest are a thing. so i suppose it's a balance. like you dedicate a percentage of power to gaining more power, and another percentage to helping the powerless.
oh, forgot a bit of the point i was trying to make. this is the core issue with a kinda popular ideology right now, "effective altruism" which says its about being objective about how to best use money and power to help people, but i feel its more about making the powerful feel less bad about the harm they cause by even having power in the firstplace.
honestly i was surprised he didn’t bring this up. charity within the system lets the system continue on. capitalism can only survive on slave labor and so people putting in the extra work to help others in a meaningful way when they could have just continued to hoard and gain wealth is a form of free labor for the upkeep of the system, otherwise it would obviously be revolted against because it’s people see no benefits. in the liberal’s logic, the system doesn’t need to change because someone rich will help your plight (trickle down economics strikes again). i do understand though that he was ultimately trying to make a point about those actions not being morally inconsistent- though i would say that actions like that are a necessary cog in the machine, an action under capitalism which ultimately reinforces it (practically, not morally). capitalism does do some good things…. that’s why we haven’t kicked it to the curb yet
It's definitely a logic trap and one that can be used to soothe egos. I also agree with the other reply here about in a practical sense charity reinforcing aspects of capital. I don't mean to propose some perfect ratio of power building to giving away or anything and obviously if one can obtain the conditions needed to change the system from outside the system that is preferable in a lot of cases. More so what I mean is trying to maximize the amount of change for good you can do it more effective practical advocacy than having little to no power to change and refusing or denying any power that could elevate your position
To not talk about the framing of the man in the chair misses why he's so unsettling. It's more than confined, it's a confused world around him. I don't want to type more about what isn't your video, but the framing... that's immediately everything.
There's a part of me that loves delaying something that I know I'll enjoy. Took me nearly two years to pick up Elden Ring, and Witcher 3 is almost 9 years old.
I feel there is a bit more nuance to the "Capital has the ability ..." quote from Joyce. A clip of the dialogue for context: ruclips.net/video/LlQG-5QoJHA/видео.htmlsi=tbbKSv5Q2kZY7elD&t=571 I might have this wrong, but the feeling that I got from the quote wasn't so much the "wanting to change the system while profiting from said system is hypocritical kind" of statement. I felt more that it is a depressing statement. The rat race you're required to participate in to continue living can corrupt you and stop you from protesting it. You may grow comfortable, detached, alienated from the people and the conditions you wanted to help
Good video, although you got a bit off track with the long rant regarding Joyce. Also, it's a bit funny how you call for dialogue and understanding towards the end... Except towards the nebulous entity "fascists", which nowadays has no real meaning other than as a slur to discredit opposition.
Fascists aren't nebulous. Fascism is Ultra nationalist populism that harkens back to a past time period, a myth of decadence once had but now lost or being lost. I know what the word refers to and who I am using it against.
![Judicial Opinions: What Makes Disco Elysium a Modern Classic? [Full Spoilers]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n_7ngJDbUQE/mqdefault.jpg)
It feels weird to connect that line from Joyce Messier to "you critique society, and participate in it? Curious." I saw it as much more associated with the more poignant idea of "capitalist realism" from the work of Mark Fisher. Of course, that idea can be deconstructed and criticized as well, so maybe you'll come back to it. But given her experience travelling through the Pale and how it seems to have impacted her, her self-justification isn't so much "you trying to take down capitalism is hypocrisy" as "there is no alternative, capital either smashes or appropriates ideas of all critiques." Which is a funny way of putting it as "there is no alternative" was a Maggie Thatcher thing, and she looks a little like her. It does fit with your idea of contradiction and Evrart though: she's in a position of immense power, but has resigned herself to powerlessness, and fulfills her role in executing the power of Wild Pines. In the ruined Martinaise, her point about the lack of alternative may seem salient, but it's really defeatism dressed up to keep on the path she has already made for herself. Anyway, thanks for the video.
I also just realized when you said "Thatchian" you probably meant "Thatcher-ian" (I'm not familiar with the term, apologies), so perhaps you made the same connection about appearance.
Yeah I agree with you, it is a profound quote because it's so self aware, the creators of this game realized their critiques of capital needed stockholders and investors . It's not the hypocrisy of participation but rather this ironic idea that capital seeks to profit off of whatever it can, even it's own criticism. Like the saying goes "the capitalists will sell us the rope we hang them with"
4:43 a small correction: it's Evrart that has the lazy eye, not Edgar. Joyce says about him, "Yes. Edgar looks *exactly* like his brother, except for that lazy eye." She specifically says Edgar has no amblyopia. Harry doesn't make the connection that Evrart is Edgar because that connection doesn't exist.
Nooooooooooooooooo. This is heartbreaking I thought I was so smart
@@HidinginPrivate We all make mistakes. 9th circle of hell for 10 million years.
@@HidinginPrivate I also thought that Evrart was actually Edgar. Actually, my fan theory was that Evrart would leave and just come back, posing as Edgar, to get around the term limits rules of the union. But then other characters said that they knew both brothers when they were young. smh
there is no twin brother, evrart has convinced everyone that is such so he can keep power to himself
Yeah, I was kinda shocked when he said that because I remember reading that one of them had a lazy eye, but I didn't remember the name
On the topic of Joyce, ever listen to the Sea Power song "Praise For Whatever"? There's a reason it's the one that was respun into Joyce's theme, with the opening lyric's being:
"It's such a convoluted hour
To play amongst the flowers
When we're counting all the missiles down from three to one to none
And in a world of extremities
We all are accessories
So let the dancers inherit the party
Now here comes the big prize
And here comes my reward
Yeah here comes the big prize
And here comes my reward
Today we will just lay here for a little while"
Genius commentary of politics aside, I’ll earnestly say that most of it was lost on me when I played disco elysium. I was more interested in the personal side of the story, the “what kind of cop are you?” Question. Beyond politics, Disco Elysium does a genius job of portraying states of mind as RPG stats, and especially thoughts like Inland Empire and Conceptualization captivated my imagination when I played. I’d love to see an analysis on how these stats are characterized and how disco Elysium uses them to tell the larger story of the amnesiac protagonist, his relationship with Kim, and potentially the ludonarrative between the player and the stats they prioritize and how it affects the larger story told, because if you ask me that’s the most interesting part of disco Elysium
Having said that I don’t want to imply that this video wasn’t interesting to me, honestly it did a lot to flesh out my impressions of these characters, especially concerning the nuances I missed in my own playthrough, and the politics in DE are actually handled really well through them. Stellar stuff private, stellar stuff.
i had the same experience playing the game for the first time, but after playing it again, paying attention to historic events, political discourse and science behind the world around me, the narrative made so much more sense! it sounds a little silly on paper, but the two revolutions that happened years before the strike play a huge role in just about every aspect of the narrative
I agree 100% disco Elysium could possibly even be one of the most branching types of narratives in gaming sense the stats you chose and choices you make a long the way dramatically change the diologue and the way you play.@@dry90125
I appreciate your comment, because imo it's the main part of the game you're meant to enjoy.
The politics are a backdrop: a convenient and realistic motivator for the story's twists.
@@MrJohnthegamerHD Precisely. While the politicsl discourse in DE is interesting in its own way and has its nuances and attention to the people involved (the fascism quest is probably the best example: the reason why the people you talk with are fascists are entirely different: the old sick veteran, a young shitty guy, a minority guy with family issues in his past), they can also be summed up in 4 ways.
Centrists are a joke about how moderate political positions, even if honestly believed in and practiced, ultimately favour the status quo.
Communists are mostly remnants of another Age that never even truly took of and their discourse is mostly between themselves, never directed at the rest of society.
Ultraliberals are those that either got the benefit of the current system or the suckers that think they can be thar first group.
Fascists are also excessively attached to the past and more often than not it comes from ignorance and limited personal experiences.
The actual meat of the game isn't about the politics, it's how politics affect people.
It's about why we have fun talking with Measurehead even if it only makes us want to punch him morr
You misunderstood Joyce's quote. It refers to criticism of capitalism that becomes massively popular specifically. Just look at the Boys, a story which is staunchly anti-capitalist being picked up by amazon's prime and now you can buy funko pops and other slop based on the characters from it while completely missing the point. The main reason people like that quote so much is because it applies to Disco Elysium itself, the whole IP got stolen from the devs by a rich fuck through a legal loophole and now they're planning sequels, tv shows and other garbage that will completely taint the original message in favor of money.
Yo you want to vist Marxes grave? 5 bucks.
@@okamiv5 I'd spit on it for free.
Wait, I heard some of the original devs (iirc the primary ones) were cancelled from their own collective by the rest of them and the whole thing folded in on itself after the release of the game. Does that mean that richie rich picked up the IP from the abandoned studio?
@@Low_commotion They weren't "cancelled". They got fired by the millionaire who stole the IP from them.
Yes, exactly. No matter how genuine your intent is, the reigns of success will be ripped from your hands by the cunning players of said system. The wolves will eat and leave you with bones.
Joice, despite being prepared to see the reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher, managed to crack my defenses and made me work for her volunteerly. Politicians are scary
Spoiler regarding Joyce and la responsibilitè:
If you pass a particular passive check in the conversation just before she leaves, you actually find out she owns Wild Pines and has falsely represented herself as a negotiator. And while her statements about her place in the hierarchy are a lie, they also have a certain amount of truth. After all, can you lead a multinational company by taking actions against your own business interests? In a certain sense, she is also a cog in the machine, the rich business women who is tasked by the system with ensuring that capital gets what it needs. If she didn't, another company would rise to the top and take her place. Her power is predicated on conforming to her companies interests, and she needs to fulfil her obligation regardless of personal sympathies for the Revacholians. In a way, her characters detachment from the crucial story making could be seen as a statement that there can't be ethical decision making by business owners under capitalism.
Oh, and a minor point of correction: Wild pines didn't start out with a lot of money, they started with a royal monopoly. As in the legal privilege of being the only ones allowed ownership in a specific economic sector, granted by a king. This wasn't uncommon under mercantilism, though Joyce does argue Wild Pines got there meritocratically by not going bankrupt like other indotribes. A stronger starting economic starting advantage than just being rich, inherited from feudalism.
This game is so deep and has so many well hidden details. Didn't catch this one but for the reasons you mentioned it's very interesting how it makes the person hypothetically at the top into a cog as well. Cool comment!
@@HidinginPrivate Yeah, it's interesting how much of a passive character she actually is. The game is set in an exploited city dominated by foreign mega-companies, with a major strike occurring and Joyce just stands on a boat in the corner, trying to influence our cop. The only meaningful decision she makes is to flee, and wash her hands of the coming mercenary tribunal.
Cool video by the way! It was a genuinely interesting analysis of the political figures, an angle that has been somewhat ignored in the analysis of the game.
IIRC, Joyce doesn't own Wild Pines, she's a member of the board. So strictly speaking, she's not a _sole_ owner, but probably a shareholder. She doesn't have unanimous control. It's also why she has to report back to Wild Pines when she learns that Evrart is really digging in for a siege. Passing the check really didn't raise much of an eyebrow from me because it doesn't really change the dynamic much. Technically, she lied by omission. It's just, I didn't care? We kind of already knew that she isn't here to do anything but represent capital.
@@ved2360 Correct. And even if she did have a 50%+1 of shares, it's simply unrealistic to believe that someone in her position can do anything in complete favour of the strikers and keep that position.
Hostile takeovers are a thing, and so are votes to change board politics and whatever else.
The point of Joyce character is that beyond the fair and amicable middle age woman lies a cold capitalist past who has been mellowed by time and the Pale, but was also made cold.
She probably cares more than she would admit, but at the same time not enough to even think about changing her politics or her life.
Why would she anyway? She has become old, she knows whatever change she might try would be overthrown by the rest of the Board or the Moralintern.
She is the stand-in for the idea that even if you understand and care about something, there is no winning against a cold system, and so might as well play into it and ensure your own life
@@Hyperversum3 wait, you can actually convince her to give up the port to the Union. She won't (and probably can't) do much about the tribunal but she can be convinced to not further endanger the city.
finished my second playthrough of disco elysium a couple of days ago, this video couldn't have come out at a better time! loved your analysis and would love to see more - about hardie boys, measurehead, hell maybe even tackle the innocents themselves. world of DE is so authentic and alive, its impossible not to think about long after the game is finished
Hearing your perspective on the Hardie Boys would be interesting. Enjoyed this.
I'll consider throwing something together
Many people actually didn't like the Deserter reveal, but I think it fit very well with the game's theme of failure, regret and inability to let go of the past... I've been having some naughty bourgeoise thoughts lately, a lot of doubts about what we're trying to accomplish here and viability of those ideas, the game poses those same questions, but it also provides reminders of why it's worth to let go of the past and try to do better in the present...
WHY DID YOU SHAVE HARRY DU BOIS'S ICONIC BEARD
I didn't know what horror awaited
He looks better without it
@@Kaledrone False.
@@Kaledrone he looks like absolute wreck
Another clever deconstruction beyond the physical appearance is that the way Evrart looks out for the workers for selfish reasons _parallels_ what free-market ideologues say about the businessman in a competitive market serving the consumer out of greed. Evrart has elements of the virtuous capitalist despite being in a decidedly unvirtuous industry.
It also parallels how some drug cartels (but not others) will often provide for the citizens of towns they're taken up residence in. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather to purchase their loyalty.
its not "you have money therefore bad socialist" its that being rich necessarily means you gained that wealth by exploiting the labor of others, that you're a capitalist. i dont know enough about hasan's case but i suspect he is actually a socialist in his mind but just isn't practicing it.
The thing is you can't be socialist within a capitalist system. Any means 9f exchange or purchasing of goods requires consumption of the exploitation of labor. Starving yourself to death and dieing in a field is all you can really do if you don't engage with it. If you find a systemic issue, you have to interact with the system to change it, especially when it is far more powerful than any small group of people could overpower through force
It's also that despite claiming to try and "reform" the system from within, he refuses to do so. While espousing the benefits of unions, Hassan doesn't use unions to manufacture his own merchandise. Instead, he uses the same third world manufacturing as his opposition. And when questioned on this his only response was to talk down to his audience with a "you don't understand". Hassan is of the same ilk as Hbomber; a grifter who doesn't truly believe in what he espouses beyond the belief that people richer than him are bad. It reeks of envy, and everyone can smell it.
What did Hmbomber do to make you think that of him?
@@FoxiteClipChannelYeah I am often confused at the hate he gets, never found out where it stemmed from either.
He only mentioned Hasan? Or is my RUclips scuffed? Anyways Hbomber has alot of skeletoni in his own closet. He bullied a trans person to suicide and never apologized, he made a video on copyright but didnt mention Hasan who allways does it, he was also a part of a horrible community on tumblr
I added this video to my watch later based on the topic and didnt realize you were the one who made the rebuttal to those SU "critiques" and it was whiplash for a moment, but welcome whiplash. You don't miss with your takes, and your channel is definitely going to be a must-watch for me regardless of the topic
I went into this video expecting it to focus on the gameplay experience of being lied to in Disco Elysium. Where you have to examine the information presented to you, determine what someone stands to gain from lying to you, or how you can lie to attempt to gain a leg up in the conversation.
On top of that, despite their initial perception as the final word on a given subject, you eventually learn that your different stats each have character flaws and beliefs of their own. A successful roll does not guarantee that Drama will correctly assess someone's honesty. Although Drama's "he's lying, sire" seems at first to end the mental game one must play to come to that conclusion themselves, it simply introduces a separate parallel problem of whether or not your own judgement is to be trusted.
You focused a lot more on the political side than I expected, and your analysis of how character flaws inform political beliefs and vice versa was very insightful. Amazing video!
I haven't watched many DE playthoughs but one stuck with me, from Woolie Vs. As one of the OGs on internet influencers you can piece out what person he is, he came from an over religious family and like many people raised like that and don't become religious he has an "over reliance" on "reason and facts". So when he got to play most of his skills points focused on rhetoric and encyclopedia, he hated Conceptualization and island empire and he would get confused everytine rhetoric would say something absurd because why would rhetoric not make sense? He thought the pale was too etheral to be real. it is interesting seeing someone who you have some knowledge of how they are playing this game.
If you're looking for a recommendation, I'm not sure if you've played it but the talos principle and its sequel (which just released) are really worth looking into. I think the way they talk about philosophy really resonated with me. It's not as Political as disco elysium but I do think Politics is inherently Philosophical, so alot of the characters can fit into archetypes of our political system and what the game has to say about these things really made me think. Its also a puzzle game with neat lasers on the side if you enjoy that kind of thing.
I still need to play it! It's seemed interesting for years but I never got it
Amazing video, it’s interesting how Joyce and Evrart are not typical physical depictions of union and company representatives, like the archetypes were swapped.
Love the commentary on leftist infighting with the Deserter, keep it up!
Never thought of that. Yeah! The capitalist is caring and nice to you. The union representative is cold, fat, threatens you. Their morals are the same as they should be, but their portrayed personalities are swapped.
Joyce's line is profound because its not an assertion of hypocrisy, its a threat.
Its also kind of a prophecy. Joyce gives the impression of having been a leftist early in life, but her hope has been completely crushed (and subsumed) by the suffocating weight of capitalism and it has turned her into a willing servant of capital. She projects this fate onto the entire world.
I had a friend who basically dismissed all conservatives as sub-human monsters lacking any empathy. As a fairly left leaning person myself who generally despises most right-wing movements and ideology even I found this to be a step too far. I think this speaks to your point towards the end, the left's moral grandstanding and unwillingness to consider other positions as anything other than morally reprehensible is part of the problem. Not to mention, the left loves to argue, but not actually *do* anything, we get hung up on semantics and proving we are in fact the most morally correct, instead of expending that same energy doing something constructive. Great video btw, Disco Elysium is a masterpiece so it's great to see any sort of breakdown of it.
One of the many incartions of a pharase of the years: The biggest enemies of the left is the left.
But my favorite one is: You make 4 leftists debate between them and you will get 6 different opinions
And the funniest to me are the leftists who say morality does'nt exist.. yet cry about how evil the right is, how equating nazism to evil instantly without seeing why it Ever got popular and why it became powerful (how can something all bad and all disfunctional be powerful? It cant, nazism and fascism both had positive traits)
Im a conservative myself but I don't consider leftists subhuman, just very flawed as they appeal to imperical data without daring to ever critique it. "Chemicals in the water is a rightoid loony conspiracy theory"
And now we have "theres plastic in the water" coming from those same people who wrote the last articles. Same with radium products and cigars as cough medicine
It's incredible to look back to the early Marxists, and they are having the same 'intellectual' slap fights we see online today, with large amounts of it being about interpersonal nonsense and personality driven.
It's always been the bane of the Left wing.
Please make that part 2. I want to hear your opininions on the Hardie boys, the underground communist youths, the Moralintern and the RCM's polirical role and about the centrist dialogue options too. They are really funny.
The thing about Evrart, is that he IS the worker first guy - the empathy skill check is supposed to clue you in on this, he is definitely, most certainly cares about the city and the people who inhabit it first and foremost. He just doesnt give two shits about his personal image, and in fact uses his sleazy image to a considerable advantage. It wasnt drugs that killed the city and kept it a slum, it was deliberate bombardment of the entire Martinaise and deliberate effort to keep it as a reminder. People being on drugs isnt the reason why Martinaise is the way it is. People turn to drugs BECAUSE city is a shithole, and they cant do anything about it. The drug trade will be there either way, the choice Claires face is a)let the drug trade run rampant; b)spend Unions resources to keep it in check while being strangled by Wild Pines; or c)take control of the drug trade, and invest the money into the strike to get more resources for the people.
What Evrart does, is he keeps the port hostage, and uses drug money to keep the strike going. People would have starved otherwise, striking for months is not free you know. Plan is to ask ever greater concessions from corpos untill it is no longer viable for Wild Pines to maintain operation in the city, and Martinaise can get free from the capitalist boot (or rather replace it with socdem capitalist boot) - the port location would still be valuable, the city will not die without corpos. In fact, it is dying because of moralintern. The absolute "pornographic poverty" of the fishing village and wartorn ruin was there before Claires and their shady ways of going about fundraising.
The joke here is that Evrart is a puffer fish, he is outwardly greedy and corrupt, but its all a facade. He deeply cares, but the means of capitalism he lives under force him to engage with the corruption and filth of the whole system, and he doesnt wash his hands away of the filth he has his arms elbows deep in. Compare and contrast with Joyce, a wolf in sheeps clothing, who shows concern at every opportunity, but business first and only. And when push comes to shove? It wasnt her call, it was just the company. Massacre by the mercs is not on her hands, when the reason why they are here is blatantly obvious to all who isnt wilfully ignorant. When her job is over, she doesnt give two shits about hundreds of workers that will die to automatic gunfire of supposedly invincible mercs. Reserve army of labor will pick up the slack, it is obvious that there are plenty of people in the ruins who are starving for a job. Or at least thats my reading of it.
P.S. Evrart is the guy with lazy eye. Claires dont run the drug trade in person (too fat to do so).
P.P.S. People dont find Joyces line to be profound, just ringing way too true way too often.
P.P.P.S. Calling mercs militia is confusing, since militia is the cops. Yeah, Revachol doesnt have a proper policing system (by moralinterns decree IIRC) and uses militia for this.
I think this is meant to be left to the interpretation of the player. On the one hand there is all this dialogue about how the player character should get sober (not just from Measurehead either) that Harry would be a better person and cope if he were sober. So it would stand to reason that the canonical interpretation of evrart’s drug dealing is either a necessary evil at best or just evidence of his primarily self interested ways. The communard at the end after all does not believe evrart is a true believer.
I agree with your comment, very well said. Thank you
@@anthonydevellis6708tbf, the communard doesn't think *anyone* is a true socialist. Not even Harry, who *obviously* is (this is a joke... probably)
100% correct
Except the drug trade in Revochal is rampant thanks to Evrart, to the point that children like Cuno can easily gain enough to sell some on the side.
Definitely do more Disco Elysium
Glad you liked it
Great video! Also, nice Vaush portrait
The Joyce quote about critiquing capitalism was a 4th wall break about the game itself. That`s Why everyone loved it.
And also perfectly encapsulates the recent happenings at ZA/UM
This completely ignores what happens when you gossip between Evrart and Joyce, causing Evrart to reveal his ideological beliefs and Joyce to give up the harbor
6:48 kurwa wrocław
Cool video, I don't think I would ever deduce which "Evrart" is which. Such a great game.
In Poland for the holidays with my partner! The shot of the buildings is also from the wrocław square close to konspira! Thanks for commenting
@@HidinginPrivate I wondered why would anyone choose such a place to be shown in a Disco Elysium video. It all makes sense now. Enjoy your stay in these godforsaken lands I call home!
i've had that convo about my not eating meat before, cause i would eat leftovers that were not my own that contained meat. i've always weighed preventing food waste to be a higher priority than my diet restrictions in the matter of what i buy and prepare for myself. a stance that sometimes confuses
There's an interesting ethical Vegan question about communal meals, for example a group of friends order a pizza and one of them is vegan, is it worth the expenditure of extra resources to get a second Vegan friendly pizza or just partake with the common order.
Tough, there's a practical solution to my hypothetical, flipping a coin to decide if the common pizza is meat or Vegan.
You’re becoming my favorite video essayist out there,, and disco elysium is one of my favorite games!!! It feels like a Christmas gift honestly 😭💖
I hope I do!! I try my best! Merry Christmas and happy New Year
Really good analysis so far, but the point you make at 25:30 or so about planned obsolescence in lightbulbs is a patently false conspiracy theory, there’s a technology connections video about if you wanna know all the specifics but basically lightbulbs have to be rated for hours used under certain luminosities. The better comparison would probably be the whole John deer tractor situation with the company locking down the firmware so farmers can’t repair things themselves.
Hell yeah love Disco Elysium!
It's good!
I really like Noah Gervais’ read of Evrart where he is a true believer that every single worker deserves a seat on the board, and naturally he’ll be chairman. Natural as breathing.
Yo, a David Rovics and Joe Glazer reference? I wasn't expecting that, but I do appreciate it! They're rad, you're rad, good video
Ah, infighting. The Left's original sin
Rovics' "I'm A Better Anarchist Than You" also gives me a chuckle, especially since I can partially see myself in it
Great video!
Interesting perspective on things, I don't really agree with the vast majority of your analyzes, but it really stands out compared to most other Disco Elysium videos.
I just wanted to say that when I heard the OST when you started to talk about Evrart my eyes lit up
I should really give this game another play. I've gone through it once and it was fantastic but hearing what other people go through, it lets me know that there's still so much to experience.
29:50. I was very surprised to realise that the background music... seems to be haibane renmei ost.
Great video btw! I liked inclusion of personal bits especially.
personally I always understood Joyce's statement about capital as being about recuperation
love your analyses, and just finished a disco elysium run.... can't wait to watch this
I viewed Joyce's quote, "Capitalism has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself" differently from, "Oh but you make a living under the system!" I don't know where I read it, but the example I was given was Hollywood. Where movies will gesture at concepts like "diversity" or anticapitalism, but in a very cynical and pandering way to make money, subtly defanging the power of those critiques. It's very much, "Hey we have women drone pilots now, see how progressive our liberalism is now?" Capital will tear up jeans and sell them to you at a mark-up, commodifying the aesthetic of the "working class" or fashionably poor.
Joyce also later comments on Cindy's "infraculture," or the game's version of counterculture. If you talk to Cindy, you can tell she's just just a bratty teenager who larps as a rebel. She's pretty easy to deflate. You're a cop after all, and she hates cops. But as Harry, you can just encourage her to continue vandalizing the apartment and it takes the fun out of it for her. She can't actually offend Harry. Harry is just some underpaid and overworked alcoholic detective. She's not really speaking any truth to power despite Harry nominally being an enforcer of capital. I don't even think Cindy is a communard, a social democrat, a unionist or a socialist. She's just a rebel without a cause. Cindy only senses she should hate Joyce for being in the ruling class.
Joyce basically states that her rebellion against the norm or "supraculture" is pretty much meaningless. Cindy is wearing the clothing of old women as fashion statement and Joyce is unoffended and unconcerned by some teenager who has no power to affect her. The "supraculture" is everywhere. It's the music on the radio and the restaurants you eat at. Capital subsumes critique and is unoffended by you screaming at it in rebellion. Joyce is on a yacht, Cindy is not. They might as well live in different galaxies.
That's the trouble. Joyce is genuinely likable. She's self-aware, educated and witty. She's an ultraliberal. She _does_ feel guilty about it. Genuinely, she does. We should improve society somewhat. And yes, she too participates in society. But so long as she does, it's good that's she's already on top. At no point does she actually disagree with your critique. She just knows it doesn't matter.
Also the Starbucks boycott example is bad. Because boycotts don't work. You paying them for pre-made coffee means they still got your money. Strikes actually hurt them. Your gesture does nothing but make you feel good in the moment. Again, sort of Joyce's point. The critique itself is meaningless. You look impotent doing it because it doesn't work and the symbolism is completely lost because it never mattered. It swallowed the critique and ignored it. All anybody in the media has to do is just say they respect your free speech, even if they think you look silly doing it. How progressive of us and of you. Heck, you could wheel out a clone of Joyce as a spokesperson for Starbucks who'll speak kindly and respectfully about your boycott.
Ironically, Cindy is perhaps the 'realest' communist you will meet in the entire game other than Mañana the not-a-communist. Her thing is to inspire her fellow person through art and she is one of the few people who genuinely tries to help Harry without any kind of bargaining or misleading if asked. All the other communists are either navel-gazing and pretending to be what they think 'real' communists should be like (the students), or are embittered and have actually given up on communist beliefs a long time ago. Remember, Joyce is the capitalist, and capitalists' first line of mental defence against communism is offhand dismissal. Cindy is the ONLY person Joyce dismisses, note, in a break from her usual highly controlled personality, because Cindy is the only person who fundamentally rejects what Joyce stands for. She doesn't participate in consumerism, she lives on her own terms, and she actively does her best to encourage others to reject capitalism on their own terms, including Harry. She can't do much because she is a child, but she actually walks the walk. ZA/UM artwork literally calls her 'the withering away of the state', or in other words, the late stage of communism.
Joyce is in fact, a giant trap. She is nice and personable, true! She admits all her wrongdoings and so forth. She also sicced a bunch of r3p*ist war-criminals on the Union. She is the epitome of 'we know the system is broken and needs fixing and our doing our best to do so' whilst doing nothing and actively making the situation worse behind the scenes when you aren't looking. You know, like a real politician. She does not actually feel guilty about any of her actions, she mimes doing so because it suits her to pretend, and because she enjoys being in control.
What do you mean 'boycotts don't work', Starbucks has lost $11 BILLION from the current wave of boycotts. Consumer boycotts are incredibly effective, and like everything effective against the capitalist, capitalists dismiss their effects out-of-hand to make it seem as if they are not. Perhaps you need to kill the Joyce who lives in your head, as it seems she has you convinced that the truth is lies.
@@therat1117Vaush already mentioned this but Boycotts especially now don't work.
Boycotts are just "feel good" things liberals do to feel good about themselves only to start buying products when said company makes a statement about it. Or you get a situation like the Harry Potter Video Game boycott where the opposition buys the game in order to spite the boycotters.
What's the point of boycotting when the customer next to you is a materialistic zealot who will easily drop over 100k dollars on products sold by a company you're boycotting?
@@pank3245 >Vaush said
Opinion discarded. Set on fire, even.
@@pank3245 Vaush's ""opinion"" is liberal garbage. You don't need everyone to be in on a boycott. And I don't care if it makes you feel good. That's nonsense individualist drivel. The point is to *bleed* the company. If 10% of their consumer base stops buying, then they don't meet growth targets. Their stocks drop. They *bleed* until they do what you want. And they have been bleeding, badly.
Vaush wants to pretend to support Palest*ne as the 'great leftism understander who reads no books' but he's nothing but an armchair liberal vomiting whatever sorry opinion makes his dck tingle.
@@therat1117 This isn't how you conduct a good faith argument now is it?
I love to see that my favorite game is still getting attention in these days!
Also i didnt know about your channel, one of the bests disco elysiums i have ever seen!
Look at the drawings!!! Such a cool video!!!
I largely agree with everything you've said, but there's one small factual thing I'd like to correct. Depending on how long someone's gone without eating meat, they would actually be harmed in a mild way by eating it, just based on how their gut would react to something they're not used to digesting. More of a fun fact than a criticsm of the point
i loved the video, it was super interesting hearing you talk about all the political stuff and dynamics, as someone who hasn't played the game it was still very entertaining and not confusing. I would be leaned to checking the game out too cause it looks interesting and different from the stuff i play
Thank you sir. It was fun being more overtly political tbh
Great video, but I think you're a little off base with Joyce. Comparing her point about critique of capital reinforcing capital to Society Comic Guy is a pretty surface-level interpretation of what she's actually saying. She's not pointing the finger at champagne socialists, or at people who use iPhones - she isn't really gesturing to any kind of imagined hypocrisy at all. No, I'm pretty sure with this line she is talking about Capitalism's ability to respond to critique and dissent with more sophisticated techniques than "repress them until they go away".
For example, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle with the explicit intention of turning America socialist. Instead, we got the FDA. Unions and strikes are not alien to Capitalism, they are merely mechanisms by which disputes between labor and capital are resolved. Leftist culture and aesthetics are constantly appropriated and commercialized - see Leninade. This gives Capitalism a level of adaptability that previous dominant ideologies lacked, and I think that plays a large role in why it's still around and why so many, including Joyce, see it as an inevitable fact of life. In turn, this also undermines leftist causes. Whether this tendency should be exploited or outright rejected, the appeal of accelerationism as something that could counteract this, reform vs. revolution, all of these questions spring up in response to concessions made, prompting more infighting and the lack of a cohesive alternate vision. And I think this is what Joyce is referring to because, as the Wild Pines' negotiator, she's seen this process firsthand. She participates in it. And she, perhaps more than anyone, believes this is why the Ultraliberals ultimately won and the Communards lost.
Because capitalism isn't an ideology, its just a description of "how things are currently" . Precisely because it isn't an ideology it can be applied to anything with unmatched flexibility. Theres no ideology in exchanging resource for another resource. Socialists can rant all they want about subversive nature of capitalism, but it is also socialists who buy Che Guevara and Eat the rich T-shirts. Even if you personally dont participate in it, someone will, creating a demand.
You might be wrong with the incandescent lighbulb planned obsolescence thing, was the lifespan of the bulb not just a function of its brightness? There were longer lasting bulbs, but they were dimmer, so nobody really wanted them
You're correct. Technology Connections has a good video on it.
It's a shame that one of the most commonly touted examples of planned obsolescence isn't a valid example.
@@robertmouse3782Out of curiosity what would be a better example to pull up?
@@gavinferguson2938 One of the safest examples is always online singleplayer games. The developer/publisher gets to decide when to shut down the authentication servers so that no one can ever play the game again without serious (probably illegal) reverse engineering, forcing players to move on and hopefully buy the sequel or other games. A functional, playable game that could be enjoyed by current and future generations is unable to simply because the developer/publisher decided it shouldn't be anymore. A particularly heinous similar example is the Nintendo eShop. It's one of the few ways to legally play older Nintendo games, but they shut it down at the end of every console so they can sell you the same old game again on the next console. They could honor that you bought the game on a previous console, but would rather make it obsolete so you have to buy it again.
I too, love to sarcastically type "socialism equals no house ", during a housing crisis.
Capitalist bootlickers on their way to call themselves Capitalists, owning no industries, having no generational wealth, and having no systemic power 🤯
Pro-Capitalists on their way to also actually do the smallest 🤏 amount of research on the broader global Leftist movement than our “leftist” Democrat party in the United States, and discovering that time and time again Marxist leaning countries actually succeeded under the tenants of Socialism until the historically oppressive and globally powerful Capitalist Imperialist nations came in and bombared, overthrew and Facistized those nations.
Fascinating how the Neoliberal mind is so quick to criticize Cuba’s bloody revolution for Communism, when nobody ever mentions how the United States funded a revolution in the Dominican Republic and initiated a Facist genocide there. Undoubtly because the Dominican Facists made money for the United States, while Cuba refused to make money for our Capitalist overlords.
And before all the reactionaries once again point and scowl at Cuba, it is unironically a degenerated worker’s state, of course their country failed when the United States blockaded and starved them out, and prevented trade to their people. But let’s not mention how it’s only after it’s Capitalist reforms, much the same with China, that we’ve seen a resurgence in exploitative measures, that even though Capitalist in nature, are chalked up as “Communist Oppression” by the Neoliberal West.
God, I sound like Dros.
Fucking hate American education, what a brainwashed country.
Well the state and its members own the housing by 75%. Thank god we have socialist Blackrock to help us out! Who owns the 75% but lets ignore that
21:05 idk why i feel the need to thank you for saying this, but i do. coincidentally enough, i would liken this principle going over most surprised heads like turkeys. I know I was dumbfounded when I saw tens of them take off for the first time.
I loved the talk about Disco Elysium and do want to see more. If you're also looking for other games, I'd love to hear any of your thoughts or a topic on a part of Yakuza:Like a Dragon
I disagree on what Joyce meant by that quote, I don't think it's supposed to be an accusation of hypocricy on the behalf of those who critique capitalism, I think it's more cynical than that. Joyce is talking about the ways in which capitalism finds ways to profit from those things regardless.
Squid Game, for example, holds a firmly anti-capitalist message at its core; but it has been made, advertised, distributed, and consumed in a society that views everything through a capitalist lens. As a result it has propped up and reinforced the existing power structures; large parts of it have been carved off, stripped of meaining and context, and turned into things like the Squid Game Reality Show. The people who made Squid Game aren't hypocrites, they are paying the price that comes with making a product for mass consumption, if they didn't then nobody would have seen Squid Game and the message they wanted to convey.
I don't think Joyce is passing judgement, I think she sees it as an inevitability. The vibe I got from her throughout is that she believes that this is just the way things are, that fighting it is wasted effort, and that people should just face reality. She's not the Sunday Friend, she's not a cultist of capital, she just doesn't believe in any alternative. It may well be motivated reasoning, she obviously benefits from the system, but that's just the impression that I got.
Or not, it's art after all, and we all take different things away from it.
29:40 excellent background music choice, blue flow from haibane renmei : D
Goated anime
12:45 that never happened like that. Technology Connections made a video about lightbulbs, very recommended
So happy your back
Seems you found out before I did haha
One of the most common fallacies in the modern age is the Tu quoque fallacy. For some reason, people just can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that being a hypocrite doesn't make you wrong. More broadly, you could say that no moral failure of a person's character could make their argument wrong. Yet so often, especially in political spheres, arguments that should focus on the issues at hand devolve into moral grandstands and purity tests. I feel like this twisted form of logic is responsible for the lack of political progress in many parts of the world.
100% agree.
Attacking the "hypocrisy" of the opponent is probably the most common (and least perceived) kind of logical fallacy in political arguments. It drives me mad.
From an Irish / British POV, I think the term you mean for Joyce is, "Thatherite" / "Thatcherism" I think you use, "Thatchism". She certainly evokes her in her portrait
That's exactly accurate
There's nothing, only warm, primordial blackness...
Surprisingly, this video makes much more sense now that I have played the game. Who would have thought!
Doubtful!
33:49 Looks like a person who likes horses.
"I don't think I spoiled you, or anything?"
[15 minutes before]
"So you finally found the real killer." :D
Great video essay though.
The hipocrisy of those advocating for change but embracing capital is that they benefit from all the riches coming from capital, but they preach about how capital is evil, but this "evil" is making these people very wealthy. It's counter intuitive, because the other option they are presenting would not get them that wealthy, the whole system that gets them extremely rich is what they say they fight against. This makes them extremely hypocritical.
Hassan doesn't sell merch to fight the system, he uses that money to keep his mansion, expensive car and trips to the brothel. He's not creating a political party, he's just accumulating capital, something thwt should be an issue for him.
Just by talking about socialism, people like Hasan are already doing a lot more for the working class than anyone else in their wealth class. And a lot more than a lot of working folks, if we're being honest.
If you want every wealthy socialist to act like a saint, or to act like a martyr to the cause, you're shooting your own movement in the foot. Throwing ALL of their money into a fucking political party is not a reasonable thing to expect of any person, regardless of wealth, and by setting that standard you immediately alienate from the cause pretty much everyone who actually has the resources to help.
Setting this type of standard is absolutely suicidal if you're a Leftist. Really, the only "Hypocrisy" going on here is that Hasan should, according to Marx, advocate more for his OWN class self-interest, and not for others. Now that he's a millionaire, he really should be buddying up with neoliberal and conservative politicians so he can get bigger tax cuts.
Incredible how bad you misunderstood the game and how compelled you felt to specify what the intent of the authors of the game was, obscuring the finesse of the original work and substituting it for clumsiness.
please do tell!
please do explain?
So that;s why I can't mention Vaush in any other leftist circle without being immediately crucified.
shoulda covered measurehead
Why has this game suddenly become a trending thing? I love it, it's just years old. Can anyone explain?
I’d love to watch more Disco Elysium content from yiy
One theory behind the shipping container is that evrart and the union know that the mercenary was killed by the sniper, who is no longer killing for ideological reasons. So the shipping container is a way for evrart to hide from this sniper or any the wild pines group might hire
I love this game but according to my achievements I was an ultraliberal communist centrist who also was a artsy, good and sorry cop. True centrist grindset lmao?
I was a big sorry cop lol. Kim literally chewed me out for apologizing all the time and I was like "whoops sorry"
@@HidinginPrivate I mean, Harry does have a lot of things to be sorry for ;) Propably the character trait alot of people chose
loved this video, and your channel, keep up the amazing work!
Damn, I never even caught the connection between Everart being the drug don and Harry's addition struggles, nice observation!
Also, thank you for calling Joyce's smart-sounding quote for being as meaningless as it is.
Edit: Okay, I do sort of agree with everyone in the comments pointing out that Joyce's statement isn't about hypocrisy. She's basically saying, "all of your futile attempts to stand against the system will just be bought and sold as the newest trend." However, I'm still not super sure if I agree with that either, like I'm not naive enough to act like mass-produced Che Guevara t-shirts aren't a thing that happens a lot. But I also just don't know how I feel about the idea suddenly socialism means nothing being rich jerks can co-opt the aesthetic, like, I think that a shitty capitalist company making a movie with left-wing themes doesn't mean that the movie's themes are themselves incorrect, even if the suits in charge didn't believe in them.
I also think it's worth noting that Joyce was talking about Cindy the SKULL and her counterculture fashion when she said that. Cindy probably does dress like that because it means something to her ideologically, but I think it's interesting how Joyce doesn't even consider the idea that someone might want to dye their hair and wear their grandma's old coat purely because... they just like it?
At the end of Scrap Take's excellent DE essay (ruclips.net/video/vJkamriBQT0/видео.html), he talks about his reading of the Pale. To him, it represents ideology and politics itself, and I really like that reading and it resonates with me a lot. I am a leftist, and I hate how this sounds, but I think that human connection and understanding are both more important than ideological purity in real life and the moments thereof in DE are the best and most meaningful parts. I dunno if this makes sense or not, but Joyce not considering the idea that some people just dress a certain way because they like it fits with the idea of being born into a world burdened by the actions and beliefs of humans in the past and being told that you need to figure out how to feel about it and take a stance- like every action must be a statement, or a stance. And I think that is true, everything is political to some degree, even unconsciously. And there's no room for just not being sure about who you are or what you believe... it's all so overwhelming. Just like the Pale.
Sorry if that got kinda rambly towards the end, but I think I'm just irritated that people hear Joyce's proclamation that there's no resisting capital and simply grimly nod their heads and submit to it. I know it's the ultimate irony because of how the devs lost the IP rights to Disco Elysium, and that sucks. But also, I don't think that DE is a failure or that it's message is suddenly meaningless because of that, or that every politically outspoken indie studio is doomed to the same fate. I think it was Octavia Butler who said something like, "hundreds of years ago, the Divine Right of Kings probably felt as unchangeable and overwhelming as capitalism does today"?
Its amazing how high you can climb when youre born near the top
What an excellent essay. Thank you for your thoughts
absolutely LOVED this analysis
I'd love any more about Disco Elysium, including the Moralist politician and his rentboy.
This was great. More please.
Important detail about Evrart brother... He is possibly dead.
If you have high skills and talk with him, joyce and the deserter you can deduct that the union have use the desert in the past as a way to deal with Business people in the past and Evrart brothey could also being one of the victims of him (if Evrart was involve we don't know), that ks why also Evrart moves in a container, he knows that there is a crazy sniper somewhere with a desire of revenge
I don't remember correctly since I played the game years ago, but I do remember the sniper mentioning that he saw either Everart or his Brother making a deal with someone but I don't remember if he told whether he pulled the trigger or not.
I may be wrong, but Joyse quote about the critique of capital is not about you being part of the sistem and talking bad about it but the way any capitalist society can transform any kind of critique or attack into a being of consume. The art, discourses and movements loss their soul to be transformed into products, comercial events or something that feed capitalism.
Also, sorry for my way to write, english isn´t my first language.
I think that reading of Joyce's quote makes sense on its own, but she says it when criticizing Cindy the Skull, a super poor street artist who has nothing. Saying she's a hypocrite just because she's anti-capitalist makes no sense.
Fantastic analysis!
If you make another video, I'd recommend a breakdown on freedom in disco elysium. Who in this game is free? The actions of everyone from the weak to the seemingly powerful are coerced by external forces. Is there a single character who can act upon their own autonomy?
Yeah me
What a great little video I’ve stumbled upon.
I'm glad you did
Unlike most people I agree with your take on the Joyce quote. If she said it in isolation, the common interpretations would make sense, but she says it when criticizing Cindy the Skull of all people.
The critique of Hasan isn’t that he can’t be wealthy at all, it’s the absolute scale of that wealth, contrasted to his fairly meager amount of actual help. A 3 million dollar house isn’t just “some nice things for yourself.” right?
Seems pretty believable for a house in LA. A normal one-family home in the German countryside I live in can cost more than half a million, and looking at LA houses in catalogues three million for a comfortable two/three level house with garden seem pretty reasonable (I've even seen a glorified shack for a million), especially since his his dad and mum also live there.
For 3 mil he could move to a different country and buy a reasonable 200k big ass house, not in fuckin cali or New York or wherever he is. His majority income is his family and twitch so he could live elsewhere
He Also owns Multiple diamond rings, multiple hand watches, multiple Gucci bags and multiple Prada shirts. Hes as wasteful as they come, only caring about the name not the means just like how he treats his own ideology. Its all about the name, the asthetic, the status
@@DarkMark-cf1ec agree
@@angela_merkeI if you really think a million dollar home is a shack, i shudder to think of what kind of standards youve grown used to. sure, housing prices are insane, but they are not that insane.
@@solidpython4964 The house in question was literally one large not very high room with a lawn. Stop imagining stuff. And the point stands: Buying a house for yourself, your aging parents and your brother (I presume he also lives there) in one of the most expensive cities in one of the most expensive states in the richest country on earth will be expensive.
Wasn't Joyce revealed to be one of the members of wild pines? It's after we completed her and evrart quest and told Harry this before leaving. At the very least Joyce is much higher up in the chain than she originally let on.
at 22:18 i think you are mistaken for 2 reasons :
1) your action influence the person who made the decision
-> you have to tell the person in front of you to not buy meat next time for you. you can eat meat, but you have to do something, and often time people are not logic trained and they will think you an hypocrite if you eat meat while telling them to not buy some next time cause your vegan
the vegan thing is not "eat meat or die" it's "eat or not eat meat" that mean if there's vegies with the meat, you can only take the veggies
(but often "emotional vegan" will not be able to swallow stuff prepare with meat in the same pot, for spychological et physiological effect
2) your action influence future you
-> eating the starbuck things will actually soften your "hardness" against starbuck (maybe it's because there much sugar and addiction. or it's because it's good on the tongue and so will create cravings, or something else)
To leave a path, first of all, you have to walk.
All you can hope for is that, you get to fly in the realm of unknown some day in the future.
I don't think that was necessarily the point Joyce was trying to make, I understood it as a reference to capital profiting off the critique of capital by e.g. selling Che Guevara merch, "fuck capitalism sent from my iPhone" style. By broadcasting critique of itself, capitalism banalises and disempowers said critique.
You can buy nice things for yourself but there is a measure of gross excess and I think Hasan has crossed that just like billionaires do in a far worse way.
to clear up any confusion, ultra liberalism in the world of disco is more like libertarianism
Okay, first off, I have to come clean. I envy you in a lot of ways. You seem to be a well-adjusted person with a tight social circle, a job you legitimately enjoy outside of content creation, and a high level of introspection and wisdom. Given your start with Persona 4, the comparisons to the ace (as in, competent in many ways, not asexual), Narukami are inevitable to me.
All things I wished for myself. I cannot bring myself to meet anyone halfway out of boredom and a fear of offending people (I.E. friends discussing K-drama/K-pop boy bands which I have zero interest in, period), worried about my job prospects for a similar reason (I can't stand 8-5 weekly workdays), and of course my mind is just a cluttered mass of ideas. I can never find a grounded truth to believe since the moment I think I have solid ground, it gives way beneath my feet.
The other... well, I'll need to do a ritual summoning here and invoke the words.
I wonder what your take on Project Moon's stories would be. They seem to take a lot of emphasis on self, and in fact the term "selfishness" is thrown around often. But they do not preach it as a bad thing because of Society's norms, so I want to see your perspective on the concepts.
Well, with PM scoring a contract with ArcSys (the minds behind Persona 4 Arena and Guilty Gear) to port Library of Ruina to the Switch and PS4, the voices clamor louder for your review of the game and its characters.
I don't want to come off as aggressive with this comment because I feel a lot of people are going to take issue with how you characterize Hasan and his current position as "the largest political streamer". So here goes:
While I agree with the overall point you made that criticizing Hassan simply he's wealthy is a very simplistic way of viewing him, I think what people actually take issue with is the way he comports himself, as well as the general position he's put himself in that undermines any sort of political agenda he's trying to convey. He obviously has no trouble criticizing people and institutions that have way more power than him, but when it reaches people within his wealth bracket then all of a sudden he changes his tone. The Pokimane drama is a good example since it was about the affordability of the cookies she was selling. Because he and Pokimane run in very similar social circles and are similarly wealthy, he ended up towing the line and defending her practice of this. Now he could have simply not said anything on the matter and that would be that, but the fact that he went to bat for it kind of undermines any other positions he'd hold on similar matters. I'd be curious if he would have done what he did had he been of lower economic class.
I think as Hassan attempts to grow his audience and his brand, his social and economic position also changes and he'll eventually find himself in a position where his political commentary becomes less and less effective as he continues to surround with the people and systems he would criticize. Maybe you disagree with this assessment and see it in the same vane of "socialism is when no house" criticism, but I do think the position is currently in does and has undermined any sort of commentary he could make.
This comment was going to be a lot longer but the other stuff I was going to bring up was outside the scope of the argument you were making so I kept it to this. I think there's a lot more wrong with him then what I outlined but it would simply come off as irrelevant.
EDIT: Just wanted to add that other than that Hasan bit I think your analysis was really on point, especially the Evrart part since there was a ton of stuff I hadn't picked up on across both my playthroughs. Didn't want you to think that that was my only takeaway from your video.
Socialists are just guilty capitalists. Hasan is a champagne socialist. I have no idea why anyone watches his stuff, Vaush included.
My only critique is that you're playing with a beardless Harry.
Great video from a leftist perspective. I hadn’t even realized you were the same guy making those amazing Steven universe video essays- I really love your stuff!
I had legitimately never considered that capital is needed to make change to a capitalist system. While an extremely valid arguement I still feel that most afluent hard socialists or communists fall short of the proportional amount of virtue by action needed to back their strong beliefs. I have nothing but respect for a true revolutionary it's just that everyone seems to be corrupted or fall short. Excellent video dude I could listen to you talk all day.
Thank you! I enjoyed reading your comment as well! New vid tomorrow
the 'invest money to make more money to give away' thing is a bit of a logic trap, because there is always more you can invest, so it's quite easier to get caught in a loop of accumulation where u never actually give anything away. ideally, the best solution is people doing things collectively, if everyone else agrees, you dont need to accumulate so much money/power personally, u can trust the mass to use thier collective power righteously instead. but like, false consciousness and all the rest are a thing. so i suppose it's a balance. like you dedicate a percentage of power to gaining more power, and another percentage to helping the powerless.
oh, forgot a bit of the point i was trying to make. this is the core issue with a kinda popular ideology right now, "effective altruism" which says its about being objective about how to best use money and power to help people, but i feel its more about making the powerful feel less bad about the harm they cause by even having power in the firstplace.
honestly i was surprised he didn’t bring this up. charity within the system lets the system continue on. capitalism can only survive on slave labor and so people putting in the extra work to help others in a meaningful way when they could have just continued to hoard and gain wealth is a form of free labor for the upkeep of the system, otherwise it would obviously be revolted against because it’s people see no benefits. in the liberal’s logic, the system doesn’t need to change because someone rich will help your plight (trickle down economics strikes again).
i do understand though that he was ultimately trying to make a point about those actions not being morally inconsistent- though i would say that actions like that are a necessary cog in the machine, an action under capitalism which ultimately reinforces it (practically, not morally). capitalism does do some good things…. that’s why we haven’t kicked it to the curb yet
It's definitely a logic trap and one that can be used to soothe egos. I also agree with the other reply here about in a practical sense charity reinforcing aspects of capital. I don't mean to propose some perfect ratio of power building to giving away or anything and obviously if one can obtain the conditions needed to change the system from outside the system that is preferable in a lot of cases. More so what I mean is trying to maximize the amount of change for good you can do it more effective practical advocacy than having little to no power to change and refusing or denying any power that could elevate your position
To not talk about the framing of the man in the chair misses why he's so unsettling. It's more than confined, it's a confused world around him.
I don't want to type more about what isn't your video, but the framing... that's immediately everything.
Vegans also love avoiding the fact that plants can communicate and feel pain.
There's a part of me that loves delaying something that I know I'll enjoy. Took me nearly two years to pick up Elden Ring, and Witcher 3 is almost 9 years old.
Damn this was some wise political ideas. Thank you for being logical. I subscribed, looking forward to more videos!
Just finished disco elysium yesterday and I gotta say it was an amazing time just like this vid
I feel there is a bit more nuance to the "Capital has the ability ..." quote from Joyce.
A clip of the dialogue for context: ruclips.net/video/LlQG-5QoJHA/видео.htmlsi=tbbKSv5Q2kZY7elD&t=571
I might have this wrong, but the feeling that I got from the quote wasn't so much the "wanting to change the system while profiting from said system is hypocritical kind" of statement.
I felt more that it is a depressing statement.
The rat race you're required to participate in to continue living can corrupt you and stop you from protesting it. You may grow comfortable, detached, alienated from the people and the conditions you wanted to help
Good video, although you got a bit off track with the long rant regarding Joyce. Also, it's a bit funny how you call for dialogue and understanding towards the end... Except towards the nebulous entity "fascists", which nowadays has no real meaning other than as a slur to discredit opposition.
Fascists aren't nebulous. Fascism is Ultra nationalist populism that harkens back to a past time period, a myth of decadence once had but now lost or being lost. I know what the word refers to and who I am using it against.
My man speaks like he's a lawyer (good thing)