Grrl Power #1013 – The Faketrix
If you can make copies of yourself, there’s a lot of mischief you can get up to. Harem has customized all her dupes with dye jobs, haircuts and tattoos in some cases, but there was a time when she had at least two of herself that still looked identical. Well, that happens each time she gets strong enough to make a new dupe. It appears as a copy of her strawberry blonde self, but usually she figures out some fashion trend to take it down so it doesn’t stay looking like her “original” self for long.
But the pranks that a duplicator can pull really pale in comparison to the ones a teleporter can pull. Unless the duplicator can make disposable dupes which they can pitch headlong into a tree mulcher or any other number of gruesome things.
Really, the teleporter can do the “I invented a disintegrator gun, watch!” or a “Beam me up, Scotty.” with minimal effort, and presumably Harem’s already pulled those on multiple people. The “Log Off” requires a slightly more tech savvy group, but has the potential for hilariouser consequences.
She could also really push the “yeah, this is a video game” prank if she wanted to by talking about DLC and teleporting one of her other selves into the space she just occupied to make it look like she bought a new hairstyle and a fancy dress using “ImmersionQuest Bucks” and then watch a room full of people wave their hands about trying to pull up their UI while she films them acting like mental patients. She’s found the prank usually falls apart well before she gets that far though.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Proofing’s kind of on hold until I get the vote incentive out.
January’s vote incentive is titled “The Origin of The Might Halo.” Hopefully the reason is evident.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Also, I laughed why to hard at the “And Therapy” line.
Best. Joke. Ever.
It was hilarious. I was laughing until I started coughing.
Normally, I think the “vote incentives” are oversexualized. However, I found this one quite tasteful and adorable.
Makes me love her mother and father all the more. I hope they will be feature on more occasions.
I didn’t get why she’s holding an axe, until I spotted the sketch and then the Heavy Metal cover art.
I assume she is holding an axe in the Nude version? The non nude she is holding her housecoat closed.
Yes, sorry. She’s holding a battle-axe by the handle, the head resting on the floor, in the same manner (same hand position) she’s holding her robe in the clothed version.
I……. I don’t have the additional resources to donate to Patron, and nudity really does not interest me much. So I only ever see the regular “vote incentive”.
I support the comic by leaving ads turned on and the weekly voting. It is the best I can do.
Same. I appreciate the human form, and the skill required to depict it, but also believe porn (of all kinds) harms healthy relationships and expectations. I dropped my Patreon support when the rewards switched from fun extra scenes to exclusively nudes. :(
At least she didn’t say Ply me with wood. because that would have been awful
Groan! :D
I have no one to tell that I am sad because my old dog had a stroke and died today.
We have heard and you have our sympathy.
I have fond memories of my long gone cats and horses.
Take a month or so to grieve, but try to have friends and family bring their dogs to visit. Then start your Search of shelters, and the One or Two you need will be waiting. The dog(s) you find will never replace your old One, but will bring you Peace.
All of my friends are on the internet, no family to speak of.
how depressingly relatable. :|
Thankfully family and well, I’m a loner by preference but it absolutely sucks when that’s not what you want.
I’m gonna second Damoinion right here. I’ve had three go so far. One had to be put down (lost all control, the mind was there, the body was not). The second also went more or less the same way but by god she went fighting. My third, most depressingly, I’d gone to sleep, and we’d just got him back from a cancer scare, he couldn’t get to me so ended up curling up to someone else and simply died. Wasn’t that old either unlike the other two..
Each one it’s like they take part of me with them. I have another pup now but pretty sure they’re going to be my last. I learned my lesson though, my dog sleeps in my room whether they like it not.
Sorry for your loss. :(
I just realized that I am now a ‘lost dog poster’…
:)
…..
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
https://vader.joemonster.org/upload/rjw/185394119a196b9you_had_me_f80c949af.jpg
I’m so sorry. Losing anyone that you care about is heartbreaking. I know that you will always remember your friend but I hope the grief is soon replaced with a dull ache that is outweighed by good memories.
I hope their trip across the rainbow bridge was peaceful.
I’m sure s/he loved you very much and would want you to be happy.
Why have the number of Harem’s freckles increased exponentially?
Seems like you’ve made drawing her a lot more work for yourself… for honestly not a better looking final result (matter of opinion I suppose).
Ahhh… It’s the makeup. Sometimes Harem may have been… a bit light on… with the foundation maybe? Or at the end of a long day?
You’re spin doctoring. Her face is made of pixels.
They thought they were in a simulation, but it was being simulated, but it’s actually a web-comic and the joke is one character pretended to be in a simulation and she actually is.
I wonder what Krona thinks of the simulation hypothesis.
she knows it’s real and has the cheat codes.
duh. ;P
I laughed at this so hard for 5 minutes, I had tears in my eyes and nearly passed out because I was laughing too hard to breath.
I would pull that one if I had the power of teleportation.
This reminds me of how back in grade school they would ask the kids if they had a super power what would it be and how they would use and while most kids were either saying something heroic (which would fall apart if thought about realistically but I digress) or some criminal activity (seriously the sheer number that amounted to theft or sexual assault…)
anywho, I always mentioned pranks.
now as a thought experiment I have kept that up, like what pranks I would pull with various powers or just *If I had the powers of (insert character) what would I do with them.
so if I had the powers of a god, or just one of my own main characters really, one of the big things to do on my list would be to fly or portal to Mars and just screw with the Mars rover(s)…like totally random stuff like either something subtle like place something really strange and clearly manmade far enough away that the image would be fuzzzy but as it gets closer use a dimension displacement spell to switch it out with a similar size and shape but more natural object, and just keep that going till someone figured it out or drove them nuts.
the reverse being to say screw subtle and just make it so random that it just mentally shuts people down…say for instance just putting a soccer ball in front of it…that’s it, just a soccer ball. No signs, or alien images, just drop the ball in front of it and vanish before being seen and sit back and watch NASA lose their minds.
If I ‘were’ invisible, I would fart in a lot of elevators that contain 3-5 people. It would be more enjoyable than crop dusting my NMRC group as I was sent off for a ‘random’ drug test. I was about 30′ outside the door when I heard “oh my god what died!”
“crop dusting”–hehe.
“One of the big things to do on my list would be to […] place something really strange and clearly manmade far enough away [from the rover] that the image would be fuzzy but as it gets closer […] switch it out with a similar size and shape but more natural object“ – <Rhuen
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this a confession we see before us?
Interesting idea. We’re all NPCs. User1 logged off and left the program active. Did someone else log in or is this just the savescreen?
well if its an on-going self sustaining, replicating, and adapting MMO then over 99% of all active people and items would be NPCs. In sci-fi the best example I can think of off the top of my head is Star Ocean’s “Eternal Sphere” where a higher civilization built the universe and its rules but the program is on-going and self sustaining after a certain point and actually got to the point the people who made it were in a fight over continuing to use it as an MMO, put it in a museum and observe only, or destroy all civilizations inside the simulation capable of discovering they are a simulation and manipulating their own code (the corporate guys were pushing this and even had started to do it without letting the scientists know.).
I’m not an NPC but I think I need to re-spec my character and change some of the stats. Probably should have chosen to go for tank instead of support.
Good luck with that every time I try to respec the button’s greyed out (grumble grouch cussing) maybe the timer ran out on it? lol
I have been trying to put this in for many days… WordPress has soooooo many wrinkles, I think it refuses to admit the Guilded Age URL…
I thought I had put in a reference to the Guilded Age comic but I was wrong, so here it is. It had me really scratching my head for a while, but eventually I got it sorted…
Harem there is a wide line between drunk enough to be credulous and so drunk you get deeply traumatized by a little ontological damage, it shouldn’t be hard to hit.
A couple of grammar notes: “Ones and zeroes” is spelled without apostrophes, and I think that guy is thinkinbg of “simulation theory”, although I could believe the intention is to suggest these folks are just drunk enough to talk weird.
No, simulation hypothesis is correct. A hypothesis becomes a theory when it has been thoroughly tested and not found to be wrong. And the simulation hypothesis is currently not possible to really test.
Some future husband is gonna get a improved version of “honey, i’m pregnant” scare.
Would she marry one or many?
If Harem only marries one bloke, he’s practising polygamy… BAD.
If each of the Harem took one bloke, they could probably be done for… Nothing. GOOD.
Harem is legally only one person, she points out in the comic that she can only marry one guy.
There was a character in sort of a similar multiple body situation in Prachett’s Tiffany Aching series.
I forget the name, but the character was literally a female who was born with two bodies. Not twins, though you’d be forgiven for making the mistake, a single mind that has two bodies and two brains. It caused a fair bit of social weirdness for people not in the know, because a person might be doing something with one of the bodies and then leave and run into another one doing something else entirely.
Yes, Miss Level in the book A Hat Full of Sky. She was born with two bodies, and when one got killed she still had a phantom body she could still use.
So what if each Haremic iteration romances Daphne’s husband jointly or severally?
Of course, how has Daphne set up her iterations with the US government? I mean, do her iterations have separate legal existences?
“While I agree space travel won’t happen without a socialist agenda,”
Um….. space travel is already a thing, technically Although if you guys mean interstellar space travel, there are plenty of examples in science fiction of capitalism being a motivator for that as well, including:
The Expanse
All the Alien movies
Avatar
Stargate SG-1
Babylon 5
Star Wars
Firefly
Heck, even Star Trek, in which the Federation is presented as a neo-socialist post-scarcity society (largely thanks to Replicator technology) still does use money despite frequent claims otherwise. Usually in the form of gold pressed latinum, mainly because the Ferengi brilliantly convinced most of the Alpha Quadrant to use it as a standardized form of exchange, since latinum CAN’T be replicated. Heck, the origin of the Federation was because of capitalism. Zephram Cochrane only invented warp drive in order to buy and retire on a tropical island where he can get drunk surrounded by naked women. Truly a laudible goal, but one based on wanting money, because Cochrane was capitalist-minded which drove him to invent warp drive in the first place.
Zephram Cochrane: “You wanna know what my vision is? Dollar signs, money! I didn’t build this ship to usher in a new era for humanity. You think I wanna go to the stars? I don’t even like to fly! I take trains! I built this ship so that I could retire to some tropical island… filled with [smirks] naked women. THAT’S Zefram Cochrane. THAT’S his vision.”
William Ryker used ‘one gram of biomemetic gel’ as a currency as well. Because even if the Federation thinks it’s moved beyond money…. the rest of the universe apparently hasn’t. :) Basically, the Federation is otherwise going to be at a disadvantage in any trade negotiation if they don’t employ use of agreed-upon currency that others will accept, since they are then limited to the Barter system (and even there, Ferengi are much better at it than humans, judging from Nog and the Great Material Continuum – the Ferengi version of the Force, if I was to mix universe:) ).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6QVPbD9rD8
I’m reminded of this back and forth between Jake and Nog:
Cadet Nog : It’s not my fault your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement.
Jake Sisko : Hey – watch it! There’s nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity.
Cadet Nog : What does that mean exactly?
Jake Sisko : It means… it means, we don’t need money.
Cadet Nog: Well, if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need MINE.
At which point Jake, being such a little weasel, resorts to guilt tripping Nog until he agrees to lend Jake the money. To buy Sisko the baseball card. :) At an auction. For MONEY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSW8WndZcYU
Plus, yknow, speaking of Star Trek…. in real life, it’s capitalism that finally let William Shatner experience outer space. That spaceship ticket wasn’t cheap.
It’s true, it’s really hard to imagine anything beyond capitalism. Although as far as the real world goes, you could argue privately sponsored space travel is lagging at least 50 years behind the public sector’s effort.
“you could argue privately sponsored space travel is lagging at least 50 years behind the public sector’s effort.”
I could, possibly. Mainly because a lot of the stuff NASA has done in the past did not have anything profitable about it, and NASA has already done decades of the heavy lifting in R&D and risk. So it’s not like NASA is useless and there’s a definite argument about public sector efforts in space travel still being the future for humanity.
But I’d probably lose that argument against a halfway competent debater arguing on the side of private sector entry into space exploration being the future, most likely. Mainly because the reason private space travel WAS behind public sector by 50 years or so is because the public sector started doing space travel 50 years before the private sector. However…. the private sector is not only catching up insanely fast, it’s already surpassed the public sector in multiple areas. And mostly in the last 10 or so years – a very short period of time compared to NASA or other foreign governmental space agencies.
For example:
SpaceX has been taking over the formerly governmental role of flying cargo adn supplies to the International Space Station, and even sometimes the astronauts to the I.S.S. Because SpaceX does it cheaper, more efficiently fuel-wise, with less waste, and now has a rocket which can land back on its starting point on Earth with an almost completely reusable rocket, instead of making near space more cluttered with debris.
SpaceX and Relativity Space have started 3-D printing entire reusable rockets.
Axion Space is in the process of building a commercial space station for one tenth that SpaceLab had cost, and even less expensive than the ISS, despite also being planned as a modular station just like the ISS is.
Astrobotic is planning on landing a ship and a rover on the moon by the end of 2022.
The good thing about these companies is it does not cost the taxpayers anything. The private companies are the ones taking the risk and can reap the reward, but also have ties to NASA so that NASA can benefit as well… without the hefty pricetag.
The rover that Astrobotic has built (the CubeRover) was so efficient and could run continuously for so long without any performance degradation that NASA has seven contracts with the company and has already sent them one, and will be sending them another soon. Each of which as efficient or moreso than any rovers that NASA has made for a lot more money.
More importantly, it takes a lot to get the public excited about space nowadays, which makes it harder to fund the space program with less and less interest. And government space exploration is still important – at least for areas of study which do not have anything immediately or in the near-future profitable about it, like the Hubble telescope (it’s been in orbit since 1990 and it does not make money, but it’s very importatnt for its scholastic value).
Not to mention several of the people heading these companies are doing it not only for profit, but because they genuinely want humanity to become a multi-planet species. Mainly Branston and Musk, admittedly. With Bezos it often feels like he’s just doing it because it’s a new toy for him to play with, but if he wants to play and the net result is making space exploration more accessible to the masses, that’s fine with me.
They just happen to also be able to do it while being self-funding and operating at a profit instead of like the government, at a loss. Because their own money and their stockholder’s money is involved, they need to be a lot more efficient with every dollar. By the private sector using capitalism to further space exploration into something where it IS profitable and self-funding, the government can basically ride on the private sector’s coat-tails, just like the private sector rode on the public sector’s coat-tails originally. And that way, the government can spend the money it saves on problems currently facing us on Earth, that are more helpful to the public welfare.
“… NASA has already done decades of the heavy lifting in R&D and risk.”
In so many ways you are correct. Especially with regard to the Space Shuttle Columbia… We realise that the requirements of the Mission dictated the omission of many safety-related items, so it was not surprising there was not even a space-suit on the ship, or a goodly coil of 3/8″ or 1/4″ nylon rope.
What terrified me was that IF a space-suit and a rope had been available, any one of the crew could have been thrown overboard to suss the hole where the missing thermo-protection panel used to be. Plus the total poverty-stricken non-availability of a spare shuttle to rescue the crew.
In Oz, the only moral(?) support NASA got was the Federal pollies, but everyone understood that those still had to go “All the way with LBJ”. The people’s sympathy was for the families and friends of the Columbia crew.
I would like to think that the Private Sector has a much more enlightened approach to crew survival. And I note that the klunky Soyuz had (has?) a higher safety rating, and the Mir space station performed for 250% of its predicted life-span with what, 90% occupancy rate…?
> [arguments about why the private sector is doing better than NASA and don’t cost the taxpayers anything, and NASA is not valuable]
Actually, NASA has been a massive profit center for the US economy. Every $1 put into NASA has put something like $7 back into GDP, because NASA does basic research, creates applications, and then spins those out into commercial ventures. Basically, it’s a free R&D wing for the corporate sector, meaning they get all the benefits at taxpayer expense. A few examples of things that have come from NASA: Cellular transmission technology, cordless tools, better batteries, improved optics that get used in laboratory devices, and the imaging technology used in MRI machines.
As to the corporate sector moving ahead of NASA…I mean, yes. They get to stand on the shoulders of giants, so obviously they will see farther. On top of that, private space companies *do* get taxpayer money in the form of government contracts, which is money that could have gone to NASA instead, thereby forcing the corporations to stand on their own two feet. Finally, NASA’s budget has been declining for 60 years (modulo a small bump in the 90s). cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA Between that and government mandates about what they work on and how they do it, what is surprising about the fact that dozens of corporations who are able to focus on one single thing are each able to do better than NASA at that one thing?
NASA pays for itself over and over. Even the Webb telescope will (eventually) cover its huge cost overruns with the innovations its team developed.
“NASA has been a massive profit center ”
“it’s a free R&D wing for the corporate sector”
Please notice what you just said here. You said they are a massive profit center that gives back $7 for every $1 put into it, and at the same time you said their R&D is free to use for corporate interests.
Free is not ‘profit.’
The only people here being profitable are the corporations which are cutting costs on R&D, then using that R&D to make profitable business ventures. What you just described is not NASA operating at a profit, but NASA operating at a loss.
“As to the corporate sector moving ahead of NASA…I mean, yes. They get to stand on the shoulders of giants, so obviously they will see farther.”
But they did so with such speed that one wonders what would have happened had they been allowed to start at the same time that NASA started. Government tends to be very slow to innovate. The private sector innovates quite quickly in comparison.
Take the post office for example. For a long time, the US had pretty much a monopoly on this, which makes sense since it’s one of the few duties that the federal government is CONSTITUTIONALLY OBLIGATED to perform, whether at a profit or a loss (it does so at a loss btw, especially in the last 80 years).
Fed Ex is created, and instantly, they have overnight delivery, same day delivery, invent things like TRACKING NUMBERS, etc. Why did the USPS not think of tracking numbers after almost 2 centuries of existence? Why did it take private industry only 4 years to come up with this innovation.
Same deal is happening with space travel. For decades, space travel was expensive, polluting, and inefficient, leaving a lot of space debris in orbit, which ironically makes space travel even more dangerous.
Then SpaceX comes along and develops a rocket which can land back where it blasted off from with almost no space waste whatsoever. Even the federal government’s ‘innovations’ are not their own innovations in space travel.
The Space Shuttle was invented by Lockheed martin, Boeing, and Alliant Techsystems, not NASA. NASA just bought it FROM those companies for about 211 billion dollars in 2012.
People claim Spacelab was created by the European Space Agency… but nope. It wasn’t. It was invented by a company called ERNO, which was a subsidiary of VFW-Fokker (a company started in 1969).
Government is very good at buying things. Because it’s not their own money in most cases. It is not nearly as good at innovating as the private sector is, because the private sector actually has a stake in making sure that what it creates actually works, and is efficiently built. That’s why SpaceX and Virgin Galactic manage to do the SAME thing as NASA…. at 1/10th the price.
“On top of that, private space companies *do* get taxpayer money in the form of government contracts, which is money that could have gone to NASA instead, thereby forcing the corporations to stand on their own two feet.”
I don’t mean this in a mean way, so please don’t take it as such, but I don’t think you understand how it works.
In addition to private sector companies which produce goods for the government AND for civilians, there are also private sector companies that basically are in a monopsony (not to be mistaken with a monopoly) on certain things that the government needs (or they were, before companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX came into being). I’ll explain what monopsonies and oligopsonies are if anyone wants to know.
The private sector (whether in a monopsony or not) is not getting taxpayer money. The -government- gets taxpayer money. Then NASA is given a budget FROM that money. Government has almost nothing that, on their own, is remotely profitable. It’s almost always a huge money sink.
Then NASA BUYS stuff from private sector with that money. The companies bid on contracts, each bidding lower than the other to make their company more enticing (unless it’s a monopsony). If they did not buy these goods and services from private sectors…. they wouldn’t be able to do anything, or it would cost NASA so much more to even TRY to do it themselves. That’s why even NASA has to rely on the private sector for a lot of stuff. Even with the bloat (because the private companies realize the government will overpay for everything), the private sector is still more efficient than the government.
Then when you take the government out of the picture, the private sector winds up being forced to be even MORE fiscally efficient as long as they do not have a monopoly, because the private sector does NOT get their tax money like the government does, and has to actually produce something that people will find useful enough to spend their money on, which the actually earn (as opposed to how the US government – and any other government operating in a capitalist economy – gets most of its money).
BTW, I’m not saying NASA is not profitable overall. And I’m realizing it might come off that way.
NASA is pretty unique among government agencies in that they DO generate a profit. It’s just a lot less than the private sector would generate. And most of their profit is BECAUSE of deals with the private sector in the first place. Mostly because of the 1976 NASA Technology Transfer Program, which basically was NASA saying ‘we don’t know how to make a profit from this stuff we came up with for spaceflight – if you companies can, we will license that tech to you and you pay us for the license, then you can get much much richer while we get a little richer.’
But the lion’s share of what NASA does is NOT profitable, especially in any reasonably short length of time that an investor would be patient with. What NASA does is beneficial to humanity and to the United States, OBVIOUSLY, but usually not as profitable as when a private company does the same thing, because the private company goes onto the job thinking ‘how can we make money from this.’
I’m quoting a star trek book here, but money buys pride in the federation. Yeah, your basic needs are covered by replicators and the common good. But you want a ticket to see a star singer? Eat food cooked by a real chef? Get some of the wine from the Pickard family winery? Use money.
Plus a lot of stuff about ‘no money’ in the Federation never made sense to me for humans in the Federation that were not an active part of Starfleet on their ships, stations, research stations, weapons platforms, political areas, etc.
Picard’s family owns and runs a vinyard where they SELL wine.
Sisko’s father owns and runs a cajun (I believe) restaurant. He has staff working for him. I don’t think the waiters are ‘trying to better themselves and all of humanity’ by being waiters or cleaning tables when they are not working for the Federation.
These are businesses. They provide goods and services. They hire workers. I’m assuming there has to be some sort of financial compensation for those workers’ services since those workers are not RUNNING the vinyard or the restaurant.
I’m assuming Boothby the groundskeeper at Starfleet Headquarters hasn’t been doing it out of a sheer love of picking up and removing trash from Starfleet grounds, and his love of trimming bushes and shrubs, which is what a groundskeeper does. If he does, that sort of feels more like being a slave or prisoner of a gulag than a career. :)
Even in a post-scarcity society, where anyone can get whatever goods they want for free thanks to replicators, there are still going to be objects for which replication would not duplicate the value of the object.
Kirk’s glasses
Sisko’s baseball
Chateau de Picard’s vinyard wines
Data’s cat, Spot
Not to mention, even when most goods are freely available, special services are not able to be made in a replicator. Although I suppose it could be done by holograms…. But special skills might still devalue their worth if it’s done by a hologram.
Because as the paragon of humanity, the perfect man, the savior of all, Deus, has said:
“There are some things money can’t buy. Well… there aren’t, but in some rare cases, buying a thing would devalue it.”
In the same way, there are some things Replicators and holograms can’t duplicate. Well, there aren’t, but in some cases, duplicating a thing would devalue it.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-413-green-herring/
(panels 3 and 4)
PS – all praise Deus amen.
How in the Name of All That is Holy — and Deus as well — did Gene Roddenberry ever think any form of humanity could get a society that doesn’t use money? Did he have a Barter Economy in mind?
“How much is that six-pack of corn?”
“Ahhh, a dozen eggs.”
“Aw crap, I’ve only got a pig.”
If you have enough of anything and everything that you no longer need to ration it, there’s no reason to keep track of how much each person has taken or given.
Money only matters when you don’t have enough of it. All the same interactions we have now could still happen without any money changing hands. It’s our belief in money that provides the motivation.
Ummm. I actually can conceive a… civilisation… that works on providing all life’s necessities at such a low cost that it’s actually more expensive to charge for them. Of course, we’re in von Neumann territory here, not merely from the necessary self-replication, but also the automata producing the essentials themselves.
I remember TANSTAAFL. Who pays the ferryman?
Some people have this odd belief that money is a vile invention of ancient mage-capitalists, for the sole purpose of enslaving the peons and the proletariat. But almost every civilisation on the face of this real life planet has found it necessary to develop some form of coinage to grease the wheels of trade, whether at an urban shop-front, a farmer with 5 acres of grain to get rid of, a tent-maker… the list gets endless very soon. Some of the less civilised semitic nations around ancient Ur felt that giving slaves anough to live on would ruin them for work, as did the slave-owners in the Southern States of the USA, and these communities survived at least, even if they never thrived.
It’s not my job, business or responsibility to ensure everyone has a “correct” belief about anything. So I won’t. However, it’s worth noting that along with the development of “money” — an intangible noun, a concept only — there was the realisation that the planet Earth is in fact a ball. And both of these happened ten to fifteen thousand years ago, along with the development of calendars.
Enjoy your beliefs.
“Money is a sign of poverty.” The Culture
Ironically of course in the earliest book ‘Consider Phlebas’ the galactic currency is discussed and although the Culture doesn’t use money at all internally it is speculated that they have by far the greatest amount of that currency of any of the involved civilisations owing to their advanced industry and energy processing.
But there is no use of it within the Culture itself, all citizens and guests can have essentially whatever they ask for and do almost any job they desire to for free.
The idea of no money is due to the invention of the replicators and unlimited power production by removing the need to barter or exchanging money for things just to survive or the competition to have more or be more than everyone else. The unlikeliness of that actually happening is because those who have power will fight to keep it!
Our real problems aren’t the physical world. It’s people.
“It’s people!”
“How in the Name of All That is Holy — and Deus as well —”
All praise Deus amen.
“did Gene Roddenberry ever think any form of humanity could get a society that doesn’t use money?”
Gene Roddenberry was a very imaginative science fiction writer. But he was also a hard-core Maoist (and that’s according to his wife even, not people who did not like him). He was not exactly good at basic economics.
“Did he have a Barter Economy in mind?”
Yes. He did have a barter economy in mind. I’m not joking. It’s in several episodes of both TOS and TNG. It’s not until the Ferengi (the stand-in for the stereotypical ‘stupid and greedy capitalist’ that was only finally FIXED with Quark in DS9) that anyone thought ‘hey…. this is a really stupid system to establish trade among trillions of aliens and humans on thousands of inhabited worlds in the Alpha Quadrant and it would never work in any practical sense’ and invented ‘gold pressed latinum’ – where latinum, a rare silver-colored liquid could NOT be replicated, and therefore had actual value or use in Star Trek, unlike gold (which has no value beyond it’s chemical composition and ability to be a binding agent). Thanks largely to replicators.
But yes, most stuff in the Federation seemed to be done via barter. And again, even there, the Ferengi were simply better at it than humans because they understand the Great Material Continuum. :) Even though it made things a LOT more difficult to engage in transactions.
Capitalism is one of those developments that, once you come up with it, it’s so vastly superior to the alternative you never give it up.
Agriculture.
Money.
Writing.
You may end up doing so much other stuff that it becomes less visible, like agriculture has if you live in cities, and aren’t regularly driving past huge fields of crops, but you never really stop doing it unless, rarely, something better comes along, and we’re only speculating about that, because nothing better than those four has ever shown up yet.
Yeah, even the nominally communist countries practice capitalism. Just badly, with the government as the sole owner.
“Capitalism” has been lightly defined in one of my earlier posts down below at {January 11, 2022, 8:52 pm}.
You’re quite correct in saying “… once you come up with it, it’s so vastly superior to the alternative you never give it up.” However, the dirty little Leninist/Stalinist dictatorships never did use capitalism. They couldn’t because they did a Henry VIII on their financial machinery and shot all the economists who could have made it work again. “Those who don’t read History are condemned forever to repeat it.” And — purely incidentally — they never were a threat to the rest of the world: they had mighty armies yes, but they had no mighty will.
I do agree with most of your post, but in regards to the bit about the Lenin/Stalin dictatorships not being a threat to the rest of the world, due to a lack of will, I have to disagree.
The model of the Russian form of communism used in the 40’s to 80’s required expansion to maintain power, as an expanding number of people using a limited number of resources requires the people to gather more resources from more land or to innovate to make better use of existing land, in a closed system. In an open system you can trade, but only if you are able to provide something others a willing to barter for. During this time the USSR was acting mostly as a closed system with few exceptions, and most of those exceptions where with countries used to fight with the USA during the cold war. Russia and these countries could be considered their own closed system, and while some of them where ok for growing crops in such as Vietnam, eventually that would stop working and Russia did not believe in the field of science that leads to innovations in agriculture.
This field being genetics. All but one geneticist was shot during the cold war in Russia because it disagreed with the philosophy of equality. (not really related but kind of cool: The man who managed to escape getting shot did so by telling the government that he would raise and kill foxes for fur coats, and so they let him do that until the cold war was over. He domesticated the foxes, killing the aggressive ones each generation for the coats, and found it take 4 generations or so to domesticate foxes, after the war he published his findings.) This means as crops will remain the same, the same amount of resources will be produced every year until it is no longer enough.
As a side note, did you know that Nasa basically won us the cold war? We (the USA) knew we could afford to spend gobs of cash on space, but that Russia would more likely then not run out of funds sooner or later. Doubly so when our rockets only needed on fuel tank and launching bit, excluding boosters, while the Russian model used something on the order of 57. We made ours better, they strapped more bits on. By simple resource accounting we needed less to do more.
P.S. some things in this may be a bit off, most of the information comes from Government and History Lectures, and some of those where ones I sat in on when I was like ten and delirious from being sick. Dad was a professor so even my sick days where at school.
“… did you know that Nasa basically won us the cold war?”
Kinda korekt. It was the base use of Capitalism to keep the US economy at a state where the US could out-spend any two nations in the Defense allocation. There is an ancient saying “Never use your own money when you can use someone else’s” and the USA has taken this to heart.
Very ironically, the PRC is the US’ greatest lender, to the point where many heart attacks happened when it was suggested the Chinese government might want to foreclose on the USA.
I have commented elswhere in this comic page that “the klunky Soyuz had (has?) a higher safety rating, and the Mir space station performed for 250% of its predicted life-span with what, 90% occupancy rate”.
NASA killed more Americans than the Stalin/Kruschev Roscosmos killed Russians (CCCP citizens).
Post-revolutionary Russia was a dismal, dingy and pest-infected hell-hole, especially compared to the US merry-making social environment, but their technical achievements were at least the equal of any other place in the world.
There are other possible choices than capitalism and “the alternative”. Capitalism may be the most effective system we’ve found yet, but it is inherently inefficient. It misallocates labor and resources, and unsold products are destroyed and discarded rather than given away.
I dream of meritocracies.
Capitalism may get you to the moons and nearby planets, but only with unnecessary sacrifice, undo monopolizing and competition that shows short term bursts that give the illusion of rapid expansion; only to fizzle out and pop (yes this can take decades or even centuries depending on how strong the cultural imprint or how well the “elites” strangle hold their work forces.
however it will not get you to the stars beyond your home solar system. Too great of cooperation and equality is needed for civilization ships to run, for shared resources without restrictions.
Also I highly doubt terraforming or even real permanent self sustaining colonies in space or other planets will even exist under capitalism as they’d lose too much profit if the colonies they are supplying with resources suddenly didn’t need those resources anymore; a certain level of altruism that seems incompatible with large scale capitalism is in order here.
“however it will not get you to the stars beyond your home solar system.”
What are you talking about? Mercantilism (ie, a form of proto-capitalism) was the driving force behind England taking over a quarter of the planet at one point in human history. And capitalism works much better than mercantilism.
“Too great of cooperation and equality is needed for civilization ships to run, for shared resources without restrictions.”
Again, what are you talking about. Capitalism does require cooperation. Both sides NEED to agree to want one thing more than another thing and be willing to trade for it, which makes any investments to get those things worthwhile in the first place. And civilization ships do not require equality to run. They just require both sides to be satisfied with the deals being made. The equality involved is highly subjective from both sides.
IE, I sell you a comic book for $5. I view the $5 as being more important than the comic book. You view the comic book as being more important than the $5. From each of our perspectives, we got a good deal. From each of our perspectives, the deal was equal. From an outside perspective, it might not be equal – someone else might think you got a bargain, or that I ripped you off. So no – ships don’t require equality. They just require informed consent and satisfaction.
“Also I highly doubt terraforming or even real permanent self sustaining colonies in space or other planets will even exist under capitalism as they’d lose too much profit if the colonies they are supplying with resources suddenly didn’t need those resources anymore;”
Do you feel that people will mine the asteroids or Mars for no profit incentive whatsoever? And if a colony no longer needed one resource, then the customer would just need to find some other resource that the colony DOES want. That’s the main difference between mercantilism and capitalism. You’re thinking mercantilism. I’m thinking capitalism. You’re thinking Britain and the US colonies. I’m thinking Mao-Kwikowksi Industries from The Expanse or Resources Development Administration from Avatar or Weyland Corporation from Aliens. Just… yknow… not evil.
“a certain level of altruism that seems incompatible with large scale capitalism is in order here.”
Altruism isn’t required. In fact, altruism is not a good plan long-term to rely upon, because while a singular person might be altruistic, it’s not a core function of either humanity or most lifeforms in general. Need is. Altruism requires already having everything you require to live first.
Mutual greed and agreement that each side needs or wants something more than what they currently have is what’s actually required, which is why capitalism tends to work so well. It comports with human nature instead of fighting against it. It FORCES people to be useful and even simulates the same results as altruism (even if it’s not actually altruistic), without there being a stick involved, just carrots. If you don’t provide something useful, you don’t get what you want. You don’t have anything taken away from you, but you don’t GET anything either. So if you want to get what you want, you greedy so-and-so, make sure you have what the other greedy so-and-so wants as well. You clearly have not been following Deus’s philosophy and are spiritually lost as a result. Have faith in Deus, savior of us all and paragon and light of humanity, all praise Deus amen.
“for shared resources without restrictions.”
You’re thinking of a zero sum system. A successful interstellar civilization basically flies in the face of a zero sum system where one side wins only at the expense of the other side losing. Successful capitalism actually requires a win-win situation instead, and promotes the GROWTH of wealth overall, not just shifting it around. That’s why they supply of money and goods today is so much more than it was, say, 100 years ago. Because we do not live in a zero sum game system, and humanity and economics has expanded so much in exponential growth in the past 200-300 years compared to the previous several thousand, and progressed even more exponentially in the past 60 or so years compared to the past 300.
While you have good points all your examples still fall within one system which I did say was possible with capital incentive however what I am talking about is the trend for companies to try and abuse this system and return to a guilded age set up where only a small percentage gains while the rest barely survive. Spread out into space and yes you could get a return to a colonial system and iron fist on resources as those who went out to gain money to send back home are taken advantage of as they rely on the company just to survive and can’t afford to protest. This sort of thing is possible and would need to be nipped early on with strong unions and humanitarian laws that extend into space with over sight. No space Fords and Rockefellers in other words. We see companies today trying to cut corners with little care for their workers whenever they get the chance. Amazon forcing workers to stay on the floor during a deadly tornado, Nestle abusing local water supplies ECT…to trust a company wouldn’t pull some crap if there are no strong unions or non corruptable over sight committee in space is a tad too optimistic. I am not saying no financial insentive I am saying the current set up and trends can get into space but ultimately will be self defeating
Actually this reply is for Pander, but I need it up here to bring it back into context.
And I need to apologise for the incomplete reply to Bharda at the bottom of page 1. But I was not prepared to stretch the economics lesson at that stage as other considerations needed to be mentioned.
====
I am not convinced of the need for “mercantilism” as a label. There is no significant difference between that and “capitalism”, merely of scale: the merchant is willing to get dirty hands, while the capitalist prefers to remain in an office or at the Club. Both are necessary to the growth of the relevant economy, but it is sufficient to only use the Capitalist label in general discussion. Cora is probably a “mercantilist”.
Mercantilism is different than capitalism though.
There are some similarities – the profit motive is the most apparent similarity, obviously. Which is why it’s often referred to as a form of proto-capitalism.
But the main difference between mercantilism and capitalism is about competition and individualism.
Capitalism supports a competitive business environment where the forces of supply and demand determine the price of goods and services. In mercantilism, industries are run and controlled by monopolies which are protected and supported by the government through subsidies.
And I completely can predict the argument that will be made next. That…. what I just described seems a lot like the crony capitalism you see with the ‘Too Big to Fail’ banks, Big Tech companies like Alphabet, Facebook, and Amazon, and quasi-government ‘private’ companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And all the scandals and corruption that comes with it.
That’s sort of the point though. Those companies do pull a nation’s economic model more towards mercantilism than capitalism when their monopolistic and oligopolistic practices are not prevented. It’s not lost on me that this is sort of the counter to the modern pro-socialist/communist “There’s never been true communism” mantra. “There’s never been true free market capitalism” (although there has been, but as the system gets bigger, more corruption leaks in and it becomes crony capitalism or devolves back to mercantilist tendencies). The more monopolies and more regulations are allowed by a capitalist country, the less capitalist it actually is. Ironically, one of the strongest free market economies in the world is actually Denmark, despite how some people who don’t understand economics claim it’s a socialist country (it isn’t – it’s a rather intelligently formed free market economy that just happens to have a very high tax rate for government-provided services)
TL;DR: The difference is:
1) Capitalism views wealth creation as the key to economic growth while mercantilism believes that economic prosperity can be achieved through the extraction of wealth.
2) A capitalist society supports a competitive business environment while mercantilism advocates monopoly.
“Cora is probably a “mercantilist”.”
I don’t know, I think Cora seems to independent-minded to be a mercantilist, but it’s possible.
So if you regulate capitalism, it’s no longer capitalism… But if you don’t regulate capitalism, it transforms into something else.
Capitalism isn’t a stable system. You have to constantly prop it up and prevent it from destroying itself, or destroying the world it feeds on.
I don’t think the laws are the issue. I think the issue is that the laws don’t have any teeth.
I look to France’s solution to its royal problem for inspiration. Behave. There are effectively countless humans, and the bajillionaires are just as replaceable as Captain Homeless.
To put this another way we are hypothesising how a company which currently work in competition with one another on am international scale which already sees yearly scandals regarding short cutting and mistreatment of employees pushing the limits of international laws expanded to a multi planet scale with possibly monopolising of large areas such as entire moons, series of asteroids, and controls the living space of it’s employees to the extent of even providing life support. Is it not reasonable to assume given existing patterns that such groups would not abuse this control and exploit their work force to dangerous extents if there is no strict control or shift in the relationship between companies and their work forces. With any new frontier there is that risk and likely unnecessary sacrifice of workers for the sake of profit.
to put it bluntly every single right workers have they have had to fight for, weekends, overtime, holiday pay, safety regulations including not locking fire doors, giving proper equipment to workers, escape routes, breaks, ect… and in many cases these “negotiations” turned violent and the companies attacked the workers (including actual armed conflicts).
we like to think this was all in the past but every time you bat an eye you see some company today trying to pull some crap or make some “legal claim” that its okay for them to drain so much water from the area it creates a welling effect preventing locals villages from drawing water so they have to buy it from the copany, or the use of child labor, sweat shops, underpaying workers (which they do, wholesale, in the US, and have even got a PR campaign going that has convinced millions they are being greedy or point blame at fellow workers for actually wanting pay raises to actually coincide with inflation, some workers are by inflation despite raises making LESS money than when they started out based on the cost of living increases.
do you really think we could trust these companies to operate on Mars, moons of Jupiter, with a monopoly on the areas of operation, and possible public relations media control over what Earth sees is happening. its not Dystopian pessimism to assume an on-going pattern would continue and become a bigger problem at a larger scale. When I say altruism I don’t mean give away all your things I mean not Smaug. It is hard to explain this but as this currently stand I wouldn’t trust Kellog’s, Nestle, BP, Sam’s Club, Easter Seals, Amazon, or anyone of the big companies to operate off world and not discover some massive dehumanizing scandal and mistreatment of workers had occurred pretty much immediately when the first batch of workers came back home.
“do you really think we could trust these companies to operate on Mars, moons of Jupiter, with a monopoly on the areas of operation, and possible public relations media control over what Earth sees is happening.”
1) No, that’s why you keep them in check with money. You don’t have to trust them – you just have to be willing to pay them so they provide you what you want.
2) I heavily encourage you to watch The Expanse and Babylon 5. They have a LOT of examples of what NOT to do with Mars, and why capitalism would have worked SO MUCH BETTER than treating them like vassal states of a government, which led to them breaking away from Earth in both of those cases, then forming their own capitalist nations which wound up being a lot more technologically advanced (especially in The Expanse).
“I wouldn’t trust Kellog’s, Nestle, BP, Sam’s Club, Easter Seals, Amazon, or anyone of the big companies to operate off world and not discover some massive dehumanizing scandal and mistreatment of workers had occurred pretty much immediately when the first batch of workers came back home.”
In general, I wouldnt trust any one of those companies, no, because I do not trust monopolies or oligopolies. I do, however, trust free market capitalism, which monopolies and oligopolies hurt. I would only trust those companies if the Sherman Antitrust Act was actually enforced with regularity. Which it isn’t, unfortunately.
That being said, your description of “dehumanizing scandal and mistreatment of workers” intrigues me, since far, far, FAR worse has been done by governments, including but not limited to (1) Mass sexual abuse and rape (see U.N. Peacekeepers as an example), (2) Genocide and mass death (we’ve seen a LOT of that by governments, especially in the 20th century to levels that would dwarf the previous 19 centuries), (3) Slavery, (4) Child abuse, (5) Forced conscription.
The more authoritarian the government is, the worse the abuses tend to be, usually because there’s no concern about being called out for it, whereas a corporation at least has to deal with the shareholders and public perception (since the public perception can affect consumers if there are other companies to buy from instead). Again, another reason to dislike (if not outright hate) monopolies and oligopolies unless absolutely necessary to exist (until they no longer need to) – it allows for corruption to ruin a capitalist free market economic model.
And while I do not trust the companies you mentioned to operate off world, I trust the governments even less so, unless the companies become ‘quasi-governments’ in which case I’d lump them all together as government, like I do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
never said governments (as they are now or with their patterns) would do any better a job and haven’t needed the same checks.
hell this is actually the worse case scenario where in space the “company” effectively IS the government. The Nabisco Mars colony has declared independence as a nation, but still allegiance to the parent company scenario.
“I wouldnt trust any one of those companies, no, because I do not trust monopolies or oligopolies. I do, however, trust free market capitalism, which monopolies and oligopolies hurt.” – Pander
Regardless of whether it’s run by a company that now exists or not, the reality is that off-planet activities are not compatible with those aspects of capitalism which are claimed to prevent abusive monopolies.
That supposed safeguard revolves around one core assumption: that if you don’t like how the Big Guys do it, you can start up as your own supplier and gamble on there being enough others who are similarly dissatisfied to make your venture viable. It assumes minimal costs and latency in both start-up and switching, it assumes no technological, logistical, or legal hurdles, and it assumes a large enough total market that there is actually room for more than one supplier. And in the off-Earth business, all of those assumptions are false.
In reality, it’s only those who are already Big Guys who would have the resources to establish a new settlement and keep it provisioned, as opposed to working within the confines of an existing one. Which means that the network of systems that makes the settlement viable – air, power, engineering, harbourage – are essentially under the control of the local Big Guy. The Big Guy is also most likely the majority employer, either in mining or manufacturing, as the settlement will have been built for the workforce servicing their facility – there may be smaller businesses within the settlement, but the paychecks spent there all come from the same place. That’s not just a monopoly, it’s a Company Town. At best you may get a few neighbouring Company Towns, if their activities are complementary and/or a mining opportunity happens to cross the border between legal claims, but it’s far more likely that they’d co-operate in a single joint-venture settlement – still a single Big Guy, even if this one has two heads.
Y’know, in this day and age when we are supposed to be educated (as in not completely clueless about how things work and how other cultures keep it together), so many people are convinced that “Socialism” is immiscible with “Capitalism”.
Marx and his mate Engels both — jointly and severally — stated many times that “Capitalists are necessary for providing jobs: they are the only ones with the capital to build and maintain factories.”
Socialism is the philosophy of ensuring that everyone has access to life’s necessities, where Capitalism is the philosophy of utilising [financial resources] to generate more wealth. One may be forgiven the assumption that Socialism walks hand in hand with Democracy, but this is not often the case, as many so-called democracies are in fact Plutocracies, in which Socialism is considered a jailable offence… The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a Socialist program which directly impeded the 2020 Republican electoral platform, since so many Republican Congress-people could see their electors walking straight across the political street in revenge.
Unfortunately, there will always be those who wish to be given everything without the cost of working. This includes the wealthy and the impoverished: both are impediments to the progress of a just society.
FWIW, Marx deeply regretted for the rest of his life writing the “Communist Manifesto” for the Russian revolutionaries, noting amongst other things that the Russians did not even recognise the Parisian Communards from which the label “Communist” springs.
I am not nor should ever be interpreted as all one or all another thing. That is too simple and would never work. I do not think in black and white, more purple and ultra violet. I am commenting on current status and historical trends that do not bode well for long term prospects. Long term is not something as short as a century by the way. Do you think modern society would be possible if the guilded age’s treatment of workers had continued , no anti trust laws, no over sight? The threat for expanding companies as major powers in space exploration is to.return and expand these past conditions if they are not nipped early on.
Oh plus I recall that, before Nog entered Starfleet, Jake and Nog had a short-lived but thriving business where they both made a fair deal of money. Apparently Nog SAVED his money, while Jake wasted his away because humans in Star Trek have very poor fiscal sense. :)
Hence Jake had to emotionally manipulate Nog to get him to lend him his money. Which he would never had paid back if he had won that baseball card in the auction.
I’m not a fan of Jake Sisko. :)
Regarding Firefly, I think citing capitalism as the motivator is a bit of a darker realism thing.
The Legend of Earth-That-Was literally states that people took to the stars because Earth got “all used up.” While you can look at how the various terraforming and closely clustered solar systems got put together, the start of that story seems to boil down to
“There were too many of us and we were so greedy that we destroyed our home, so we had to make a new one.”
Capitalism is both extremely efficient and extremely wasteful. It’s a resource allocation mechanism, and what it accomplishes is using up resources as quickly as possible.
“The Legend of Earth-That-Was literally states that people took to the stars because Earth got “all used up.” ”
But that’s the thing isnt it?
They DID make new ‘Earths.’ Thousands of them. And because of it, yes Earth got used up, but now humanity is far less likely to ever be completely wiped out by being stuck on one single planet.
“There were too many of us and we were so greedy that we destroyed our home, so we had to make a new one.””
Yes, exactly. They destroyed their home, but now they have several thousand new homes, some of which are just as good as the first home even if the first home is still thought of with nostalgia.
And who’s to say that they could not just terraform Earth to make it the Earth-that-was again, if they wanted to?
Btw I’m completely aware that I’m the cause of this meandering thread which has little to do with the comic.
And I apologize for that :) I don’t know how it happened, dangit.
I can’t help but wonder if any of them was related to each other….yeah, therapy
I love the small detail of the can being (slightly) crushed in panel 7.
There’s a joke about this with “First guy to get a teleporter”…
And both are hilarious.
yeah i can see that screwing with people. also being her after the matrix was released and as people leaving having one copy walk to the restroom then having another identical copy do the same thing like the deja vu scene
Hmm… some ARC SWAT gear and a few close-timed teleports would make it pretty easy to convince a few gamers they were missing out on the good “skinz”.
So… maybe someone should tell them they are not in a video game, but in a comic.
I would, but it would go against my programming.
Vaguely recalling an episode of… i think it was deep space 9 but don’t quote me on that where the plot was a deal of some sort was going on using a rare metal that the replicators could not make which meant it was considered insanely valuable.
…that was meant as a reply further up but noScript broke the reply opps.
on the topic of this prank ya I’d probably do that in her place if anyone I knew would get the joke at any reasonable pace…
Now how would one go about making a prank to make someone think they are in a comic instead. You’d have to be able to fake panels with illusion and time magic or something
Much harder. You need speech buble or narrator speech paper, show next page, explain why them remember past if they are only one Picture in whole comic and why now are not static
Latinum.
So rare and valuable that when the latinum was extracted from the gold it’s pressed with, leaving only hundreds of pounds of pure gold, they were disgusted.
If I had those powers, I would totally do that!
A discussion I can’t believe we did not see. If you had super powers what kind of pranks would you play?
So I can’t remember but can harem save her older/(younger?) forms like a preset loadout she can select and use like can she make younger versions of herself from when she first got her power? Is she effectively Immortal?
I don’t remember if you ever said at what age she got it but the idea of a 10 year old girl Harem sitting at a desk and writing a expense report in pink glitter pen wearing a hello kitty dress is Hilarious to me.
Last idea but it is about a paycheck does Harem get one normal paycheck one for each body a extra large one odors she get shafted became she is only really one person that can do several jobs at once.
As I understand it, when Harem gains an extra body it’s at the same age as her existing ones. The new one can simply be VORPed in, without needing to VORP out one of the existing ones first.
Following on from that, I suspect the VORPing aspect of her Power developed significantly earlier than the multi-body aspect. She needed to have cut-and-paste working before she could copy-and-paste herself an extra body.
Tag yourself, I’m an NPC
That’s the best/worst kind of prank. The kind that is genuinely terrible but I can also completely understand why someone would think in the moment that it would be funny.
As someone who suffers Schizo-affective disorder and is fully invested in Ancestral Simulation Hypothesis, this has to be the best joke you could play on anyone. Hands down best prank ever.