Grrl Power #770 – Reactions are… mixed
I would watch Most Extreme News Network. I’m assuming the format is them mentioning a top level piece of news, basically just the headline. Nothing in depth. Then they make a bunch of bad puns and tangentially related goofy comments.
I’m not 100% sure that what Suzie is saying totally makes sense, but I figure her exuberance is part of her charm.
Deus not knowing how to use PowerPoint is a lot funnier to me than it should be, just because he’s supposed to be pretty smart, and PowerPoint is some basic ass software.
Thinking about exporting our entertainment to the universe, pornographic or otherwise, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would radically change the economy of Earth. Imagine if someone made a movie here on Earth that cost $200 million to make, and after international ticket sales were accounted for, it nets a billion dollars. Now imagine that there are 5,000 other worlds the studio could sell that movie to. So, okay, let’s be conservative and say only 1,000 of those worlds really do gangbuster sales, because we’re talking about aliens and The Titanic, or Avatar, or Airplane III may not land culturally with every species. So 1,000 new worlds of audiences with comparable populations and desire for entertainment, etc.
That would be a trillion dollars in revenue… okay, minus a few bucks for advertising. But still, that’s one movie. Studios with 80 years of back catalog would become economic superpowers with more clout that all the world governments combined, and it would happen practically overnight.
Independent authors could knock out a book, what, it only sold 1,000 copies on Amazon? Guess what, it sold one million copies on Galamazon, and at $2.50 net revenue per copy, they’d be set for life. And that’s for a book that sold pretty poorly by local standards. Stephen King would be able to buy Saudi Arabia just to use as a place to keep all the rest of his money.
Seriously, if the galactic appetite for human porn was at that same level, every webcam girl would be able to retire comfortably after six months of weekly shows.
I’m telling you, the world economy would shift dramatically and rapidly. Of course, we’d probably have a massive trade deficit for a while. Even if we couldn’t get our hands on the latest portable holodeck gameboy gadgets and other sorts of tech, our own consumption of alien media would be completely nuts for decades to come. I mean, imagine if there was a show like Red Dwarf or Star Trek that were literal documentaries because spaceships were fucking real. Ice Road Truckers, except its… well, Planet Express.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
No mention of the Babaganoosh family?
Indeed!
Remember that a thousand worlds means a thousand worlds’ performers vying for attention. Sure, you can sell your indie book for well under ‘coffee’ money (i.e. books need to be priced about the same as ‘I’ll spend this much money for a doughnut and coffee”), but you’ve got to be visible before people can think about purchasing, and established gatekeepers also have established clients with established fanbases.
So I wouldn’t expect Earth’s entertainers to suddenly strike it rich, save for a lucky few.
And remember, Cora said Humans have already been taken out to space in the past, so some of them probably brought things like Shakespeare plays and classic novels with them. So somewhere out there is an alien who quotes Moby Dick a lot.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Moby-Dick
I think you have that first one backwards. A few centuries ago a Klingon author visited London and some hack writer named Shakespeare copied down all of his plays.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Klingon_Hamlet
That’s simply not true.
A ship of Klingons crashed on Earth a few centuries ago, on an island off one of the continents.
In order to survive they did their best to assimilate, with half of them founding a city called Glasgae (a traditional Klingon name), and the others settling into small communities.
One of the first generation born after the crash was given a local name, William son of Shakespeare.
Though he had problems translating his father’s name into the local written language, hence the multiple attempts at spelling it.
Eventually the Klingon population became indistinguishable from the local populace, and that nation took on more a warrior demeanour.
(Brits are actually Klingons!)
That would explain certain items of British cuisine like haggis and blood pudding. And I guess that at some point ‘toad in the hole’ was made with actual toads.
Haggis, is a Scots dish.
scots are british even if they arent english.
[O.B.Juan]:
This would FINALLY explain those “Whizzo” candies:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK3B0gjEjTs]
It would also explain the teeth.
which is why brits only need garden furniture to do what americans need guns for.
You mean mating rituals?
no, but i cant say you are wrong.
Gatekeepers.
Oh. How quaint. You mean publishers and retail outlets.
The stranglehold on entertainment is gone, and higher technology would just mean more distribution outlets and lower production costs.
Also what would the exchange rate honestly be on galactic currency to human currency, nevermind a countries currency? How would we exchange it? We have no idea what physical item makes up the worth of galactic credits or whether that item or items would be intrinsically valuable to us, God knows it’s unlikely diamonds and gold, the usual items that back up our currency on earth, would essentially be useless in a global market, so we would essentially be back to a method or barter with know real way to know if we are being scammed or what the galactic value of items is. Seems most likely that some galactic entertainment conglomerate would purchase the rights to bring human entertainment to the galactic masses and then give a cut to the creators in whatever form they prefer based on the number of times a piece of literature or film is watched, but it would likely be a much smaller share than what we get hear to account for the expense of exporting it galaxy-wide… pennies on the dollar. Still, 14 billion pennies is still a lot of money, but I’m sure at least 50% of aliens interested would bootleg/pirate what they want in some galactic version of torrenting anyways.
Those interstellar entertainment services probably will start with offering a couple of hundred kilograms of platinum for the rights of earth’s more hilarious shows.
And then laugh themselves silly all the way back to their home planet about how those ignorant humans did not realise they were given the equivalent of glas beads because they could have easily gotten many times as much platinum from mining just a smallish asteroid. According to wikipedia a 10 meter asteroid will contain 650,000kg of metals of which 50kg will be precious metals like gold and platinum. That means a 20 meter asteroid would contain some 400kg of precious metals.
Just because governments are going to be a bit wary about earth and its superpowered supersoldiers, that does not mean that the typical huckster that runs an entertainment company is going to show a lick of sense when there is a big profit to be made and they can make the fallout somebody else’s problem.
It is all about the market share. If an artist attract the attention of the 0,0001% of the public and the public is some hundred of billion of sentients, it is still a lot. They can’t become rich, but even niche markets can became profitable when a niche is counted in millions of people.
You may have a huge new audience to entertain, but you’ll also be competing with a lot of alien performers. Some of whom use psionic empathy waves or holovirtual emotional refibulators or somesuch.
The entertainment industry would undergo a massive shift and eventually recover, but I’ll bet most companies would go bankrupt before they could start making any real money again.
Even today there is still a market for classical music. Heck, people still buy vynil, for god’s sake. I’m sure the galaxy have still a market for classic stringed no-tk, two handed-played guitar music.
Sure, it would be a small market, but in the galaxy “small market” still numbers in the millions.
There’s a video series called “Checkpoint” you can find on YouTube that does kind of the equivalent of mXnn except it makes fun of video game related news.
Dave… sir… you have made me laugh unexpectedly but for whatever reason that last panel made me laugh till I literally fell over in my chair.
As a side note on your recommendation I tried Eye of the Tiger. Was a lot of fun. Will be picking up that authors books as I can. In return I recommend Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines. Fun, funny, and action packed story of space janitors.
Are those cufflinks a reference to the infinity stones in the fifth panel with Deus?
They surley are.
He probably has a pdf of Supermegaop antagonist waredrove
They are Flawless Royal Gems from Diablo 3.
Vale seems a tad testy.
Yes, how long before she gets PO’d enough, to eat him?
JFGI is right, Vale.
Is that Leo from That 70’s show?
I think it’s The Dude.
Possible. But i could not find any pictures of The Dude with round glasses. Leo on the other hand always had them on.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/that70sshow/images/7/7a/4leo.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20170623105712
So… Dues is wearing infinity stone cufflinks… is that just an Easter egg or were they in one of the boxes he bought. I’m thinking trademark bs so goin with the egg. Would be a funny place for a little HISHE action though…
I actually imagined them more as Lantern Ring cufflinks. I doubt you could get something with the raw potential energy out of that station that an infinity stone would have. And he did clearly take his portal home, so he didn’t just use them. Damn interesting thoughts, though.
We’re just being politely informed Deus has Nth-tech too. Which would explain a LOT.
They are Royal Flawless Gems from Diablo 3.
I hear your talk about selling to a wider audience but I all I hear is “piracy is easy and more advanced tech would make it easier”. I seriously doubt aliens would have much respect for the idea of funneling huge quantities of cash into a developing nation just to watch movies they could be (and probably have been) watching for free for decades with nobody noticing. That aside, economic forces would adjust *very* rapidly to anything that actually did create a major opportunity shift, even to the point of war. Some people would get rich, but the idea that you could easily predict which ones are the lucky ones and which ones get pretty much everything stolen from them before they even realize what they have, that’s pretty unrealistic.
Deus better call CSI:(Major City Name). His trophy shelf is looking pretty bare. Has there been a break in?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-411-tete-a-tet-offensive/
If those things weren’t replicas, then he probably only puts them out to show for special guests, rather than leaving them where “anybody” could just teleport in and take them. Daphne may not be a thief as such, but one shouldn’t put too much temptation out there…
is his world domination plan writen in a damn powerpoint program
Of course. Some evil masterminds summon otherworldly abominations — others craft powerpoint presentations. And really, the only difference is that the PPT master has fewer tentacles to deal with.
And only slightly less cost to one’s soul.
«roll-eyes» :-þ
It’s … been done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGh0JouBsTE
Something similar appeared in one of the Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross — the bad guys were using powerpoint presentations to eat the souls of those who saw a critical slide. That’s computational demonology for you…
Love the Laundry files!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MdI79MAKko Or here.
Ice planet truckers… Wasn’t there already a movie about a space trucker? Haled square pigs and a killer army.
yep… Space Truckers (1996) was a pretty funny movie once you get past the cheesiness of the plot…
There was a TV show about a spacegoing junk company: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HODkJABWo08
Yeah, your “conservative” estimate is still to high. Every planet producing entertainment has centuries on Earth marketing wise.
They might double their profits though, but not make a trillion dollars. Over 5000 planets, there would probably be a good niche audience for our entertainment. Nerds on the Galactic Wide Web would create forums to discuss Earth, good times by many.
But with the doubling of profits comes an increase of expenses as well. Everything costs money, the Net is not free. Servers must be maintained, Subspace communication relays built and maintained, various other maintenance costs. All this before navigating interplanetary regulation (what if there was a culture that forbade men and women from seeing one another except for the annual conception festival. Most of our media might be illegal there. Or another where it is illegal to show a persons face for cultural reasons, or maybe another world where touching is illegal, except on a Tuesday, the most sexy of days……… So. Many. Possible. Regulations…………..)
Heck, even YouTube is barley breaking even at the best of times. They usually lose money because of these costs.
+1
Um… no. YouTube is a long, long ways from losing money – it’s ad revenue for 2019 will be over $10B (net of its traffic acquisition costs), plus more from paid subscriptions. Couldn’t tell from the writeup if/how expenses were accounted for in the numbers, but even with the scale they operate at IT-wise, it’d be hard to spend that all on servers and maintenance.
In actuality though, no one (not even the SEC), knows if they’re profitable or not because Alphabet won’t reveal per-company data to anyone.
You do have a point about not knowing for sure. But with the number of videos that are posted every day, their costs must be high. They do outsource many jobs though, that might make them more profitable (yeah, the LGTB kerfuffle this year was because they outsourced the manual review process to a conservative country with a Muslim majority.)
If they are making money, I do not think that it is a large margin. (though, if they only make a 20% profit, that is still $2 billion if those numbers is are right……….).
I really dislike not knowing for certain.
Actually Youtube does NOT make money. That’s been true for a while now. While they make (or made, before the multiple adpocalypses) about 9-10 billion dollars, they also COST about 9-10 billion dollars, so they kept pretty much evening out. Now they’re actually in the red, because they are making less from ad revenue – largely their own fault. The possible breakup of Google for monopolistic practices might wind up being a good thing for them, especially with bitchain video streaming waiting in the wings, which is a lot less expensive to maintain than traditional server streaming methods. Youtube has not been a money maker ever since I was in law school. One of my professors in a course called Cyberspace law explained how their business plan works in depth. Even if Alphabet/Google has been trying to keep the SEC from seeing the exact numbers for the last several years, they DO have the numbers from the years immediately after Youtube was bought by Google, back in 2006. They also know how much money was lost by Google Video (Google’s attempt at streaming before they just quit and bought Youtube instead). And it would be a stretch to say that the profits have gone up since Google started becoming excessively secretive about their numbers. In short, Youtube does not make a profit. They are a loss leader for Google. It’s a service that they know is making a loss (and is now making an even greater loss because of the whole platform pretending to be a publisher in order to push an agenda kerfuffle), but they use it in order to attract customers. It’s why Youtube keeps trying to push things that are antithetical to what made Youtube popular, like mainstream news programs and streaming TV services. Sort of like how Amazon’s book-selling service, their original service, is a loss leader for that company, or how the Xbox One is a loss leader for Microsoft, which makes most of its money through video games, not the console itself, in order to compete with Sony Playstation, which is ALSO a loss leader. It’s weird, I know. But not exactly a new strategy for super-large corporations.
I suspect it depends very much on how you decide to silo the books – a major part of Alphabet’s strategy is targeted advertising, which comes from aggregating data across many, many services. YouTube is a just single part of that collection, but as a contributor it’s leading to indirect revenue in their other properties, e.g. whenever YouTube insights lead to a successful targeted Search click. It’s also one of the few areas they cash in directly on advertising dollars themselves (rather than as a 3rd-party broker for ads/analytics on non-Google sites) – over 10% of all ad revenue last year, from a single property.
Sure, it’s expensive to run, but they’ve happily killed other popular services (RIP Reader, and soon Hangouts) due to lack of profitability, let alone the many more they’ve sold off. Various analysts have called it the smartest tech acquisition ever. Over a decade on, even with the tech industry’s incredible tolerance for burning piles of cash, they wouldn’t be tying more and more services to it (Music, TV) if it wasn’t a viable core. I think some of that is cashing in on the YT name recognition to boost other services (e.g. renaming Google Music), and some of it is separating the monetization to avoid hurting the golden goose.
As others have pointed out, they are very, very good at shuffling the profit to the most tax-advantaged country possible instead of reporting it as-earned; I can’t imagine YouTube would be an exception.
Unles thealiens do not have indie authros, the net gain from the alien market will be close to zero. What matters is teh ration of purchasers to writers. If we are all the same in that, the ratio does not change so net sales do not change, only the list of buyers. What may help is that a lot of these places may be fabuously rich, in which case a reasonable ebook price on Blatch-fornor is $4000 not $4.
Seems like there should be at least one news agency questioning if we truly knew the third alien ship to arrive was hostile to Earth. Maybe they were acting against aggression from one of the first two alien space ships? Maybe we just blindly picked a side in an intergalactic war?
The third ship came in shooting.
When law enforcement or the military fire first, it is possible for there to be a rational question.
When aliens enter the atmosphere guns ablazing such questions are outright silly.
… but you KNOW there would still be self-haters making excuses.
“We deserved it because we transmit too much noise into the universe” or whatever sorry excuse they can think up.
LOL
That’s a bit silly.
But there wasn’t any firing or destruction of military or even civilian targets. Just the target of the alien spacecraft that happened to land in your yard.
ARC chose to met that with extreme prejudice.
Interstellar Trade Units (each way).
As Dave mentioned, all creative properties would be potentially exponentially more valuable. Flip side; the pirating of creative properties might degrade that a lot. We’d also be paying for exotic entertainment ourselves.
Cultural artifacts (the Mona Lisa, the Book of Kells, etc.) would become exponentially valuable to alien collectors.
Unique biologicals. Odds are there are biological compounds on every habitable world that are unique and uniquely useful or desirable to other races. A race that finds maple syrup to be a hallucinatory stimulant, or ginger to be an aphrodisiac, for example. On the other hand, advanced races may simply be able to synthesize newly discovered compounds.
Technology transfers. These would almost all go one way, with us playing catch-up. Which is why I’m sure there’s all sorts of galactic-federation laws prohibiting unrestricted trade; it would utterly crash the world economy.
My favorite sci-fi book on this subject is First Contract, by Greg Costikyan. Check it out.
And you’ve evidently read at least part of John Ringo’s quasi-canonical take on Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary.
https://www.baen.com/live-free-or-die.html
Yup.
One of the standard tropes is that Earth is the only place in the universe where you can get chocolate.
IIRC, Alan Dean Foster had a novel where an Earthling had discreet contact with an alien race and was selling them cigarettes for gold. Tobacco is a mild hallucinogenic for their race.
Also in Hal Clement’s “Ice World”; Tobacco was an instantly addictive drug for these aliens who breathed gaseous sulfur. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1875499.Iceworld
you’ve just perfectly described the benefits of unregulated free trade. welcome to libertarianism!
Benefits? Where did he mention anything about benefits? Making ignorant content-producers into celebrities simply because people like to look at them is the cause of such social disasters as Hollywood. That’s the opposite of a benefit. Generating a flow of money toward the unproductive side of society would cause enormous inflation and do tremendous cultural damage as people interested in development projects suddenly find they don’t have the money to attempt them since investors have no motivation to participate (not to mention the huge influx of investment into terrible creative projects that would dilute our creative culture with endless plagiarism).
More money does not imply more benefits on a macro scale. It doesn’t matter how many zeroes you add.
+5
Don’t forget galactic level exa-bit torrent.
God I remember mxc.
MXC. we put the F U back in fun!
Is it just me, or does Deus have one of each Flawless Royal Gem from Diablo 3 ‘Socketed’ on his jacket?
Nah, they’re just so “worthless” to him that he has relegated them to just being nothing more than cufflinks.
:D
Now every nation on Earth puts out help wanted ads for S-class supers now that America has confirmed they have a team that can flatten an alien invasion.
Yyyup!!
By the way, Deus…
Open the slide sorter view, select the slide you want to delete, and either right click to choose delete or hit the delete key.
Hum. A series of power point presentations:
World Domination. Galaxy Domination. Universe Domination. Multiverse Domination. Omniverse Domination.
At a certain point conquering everything is just too much of a good thing – heck, even the initials for Omniverse Domination should be a warning.
“… even the initials for Omniverse Domination should be a warning.”
X’-DD
Yup!!
Oh. And a much uglier thought.
We know what happens when you crack open Vale.
What happens if you crack open Deus.
Probate attorneys and other lawyers pour out of the woodwork, accompanying various women who all claim Deus was the father of their lovechild. By the time DNA testing and the courts are through, each of the hundreds of legitimate heirs gets a modest inheritance.
I think I remember some earlier indications that Vale is at least somewhat attracted to some humans of the female persuasion. And now she seems a little extra-annoyed when she’s just been interrupted while reading a mag whose cover indicates a likely high (and tight) titillation factor.
I don’t think I blame her for being upset, and I don’t think I’d blame her for being upset even if she LIKES doing tech support.
So I don’t know if this has been discussed previously, but since DaveB got has everyone talking economics and Cora outright said it two pages ago, here’s my spiel.
Deus’ intention, at the most basic level, seems to be to “Own More.” https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-417-gravitas-check/ https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-395-the-benefits-of-a-classical-education/
Thus his long-term plan, or at least part of it, is to corner and/or monopolize the interstellar service market for superpowers.
And given how ludicrously specific and rarified some superpowers are, I imagine some abilities that might seem generally useless and/or unimpressive to us would be insanely valuable to other civilizations.
Can you imagine if that geomancer guy had used his powers to extract Uranium from the Earths’ interior instead of gold? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-368-billions-of-bullions/
I don’t recall the specific pages, but i’m pretty sure Dabbler has said that she’s never encountered anything approximate to Earth’s supers.
Cora and her crew(very experienced adventurers) are clearly impressed, not to mention nonplussed.
Even Sciona has stated(sort of) that her own people, and herself in particular don’t have a working understanding of the phenomenon. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-636-promises-promises/
Considering her skillset and experience, and the fact that she has clearly had the time to look into it somewhat, that’s saying something. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-624-vitamin-s/
And of course the Earth’s governments that are aware of supers, along with the global magical community, have all come up with bupkis as well.
During the first press conference, Arianna gave out a laundry list of potential factors in the emergence of superpowers in humans. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-145-lets-talk-numbers/
All of which have been introduced to Galytn.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-393-deus-uses-develop-country-its-super-effective/
A nation that is small, impoverished, and Isolated.
With a new “Czar of Economic Development”. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-387-a-noble-investment-embiggens-the-smallest-wallet/
With all of Galytns’ infrastructure, from water and power to communication and travel, under his control.
Every outside resource – building materials, paving equipment, contractors, medicine, doctors, teachers – hand-picked by Deus.
And he’s keeping tabs on everything and everyone.
In short Galytn is a laboratory, as controlled an environment as a nation can be, whose purpose is to (eventually) give Deus the ability to induce powers in humans at will, maybe even specific abilities as well as general power-sets. Or, at the very least, provide a stable of supers whom he knows inside and out, who have either grown up in a prosperous and safe nation or witnessed the transformation of their war-torn home to such, as a direct result of his efforts.
Superpowers may not be the only marketable aspect of Earth to the interstellar community, but it is likely the only Unique one we have to offer.
Your faces are getting worse
I think Vale is starting to crack a bit personality wise, you can see she is starting to loose it if she hasn’t lost it already.
Two things I liked: 1) I will always applaud an MXC reference because that was a crazy thing I loved. 2) Fatale-Couture is the kind of fashion magazine this world needs.
One ???: Are those cuff-links supposed to be styled after the infinity stones?
One Less Positive: Vale’s yelling face looks off. I am not an artist so I can’t tell you why, but it looks more like she’s about to bite a watermelon than yelling.
Diablo 3 gems of the Flawless Royal variety.
I agree about Vale’s yelling face. But I’m kind of used to faces rarely looking right in this comic anymore. I’ve become somewhat resigned to it. (Though obviously not totally resigned, or I wouldn’t keep bringing it up.)
I don’t recall the name of the series, but there was a set of books about a guy who basically took over earth after discovering that Maple syrup was the equivalent of an Alien Drug, he made so much money by cornering the market on syrup that he was able to turn Earth into a Galactic Superpower.
The Maple Syrup Wars “Troy Rising” is the series name… Basically an authorized non-cannon prelude to the Schlock Mercenary comic strip. John Ringo was the author and the three books were “Live Free or Die”, “The Hot Gate” and “Citadel”.
I wonder when (or if) we’ll see characters like Kevin and the Periwinkle Buttsniffer again…
We do not “secret” knives, we “secrete” knives.
http://www.macdonaldarms.com/armoury/OSS.php (Never mind what search terms I used, other than they were consistent with this page.)
On a side note, things are starting to make the hairs of my neckbeard itch. I’d dump panel two (maybe another reaction scene or even just another joke, but “taste the rainbow?”Ewww.) If every male is a sexist pig, what does Math exist for?
Panel four works, if we can focus on the second part of her statement. The joke in panel two kinda steps on that, because we are prepared for another sexual gag.
You might want to research payment for adult actresses and profit potentials for producers.
What I wanna know is how the FBI’s Ashcroft Rules could be applied to alien space porn that will surely be imported to fund this alleged demand for Earth Human Boobs. And that’s just ONE earth jurisdiction!
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257
There is no single standard for porn actors. Some few still get royalties (and AVN focuses on those) but anymore a flat fee per film is more common. The biggest payoff for many porn actors is that they can charge clients more in prostitution.
Damn, you made me comment
No, unless they are meaning creating knives out of their body (as in, one secretes sweat), they are talking about hiding (aka ‘stashing’) knives on ones person
As for panel two: that is a shoutout to a classic series called MXC (which is a rip off of a little known Japanese game show called “Takeshi’s Castle”)
And one synonym for ‘hiding’ is ‘secreting’. It’s one of those awkward cases where the same word has two meanings, even if many people are apparently only familiar with one of them.
Hold on, something is missing here. This is directly after a superhero battle. Shouldn’t at least one of these people be advertising delicious Hostess Fruit Pies?
Surprised no one has mentioned the appearance of The Dude in panel 3.
That’s because it’s not The Dude, it’s Tommy Chong (from “That 70’s Show”), note the glasses
Seriously? He has a file on his desktop titled World Domination.ppt? How much more obviously evil does he have to be before people notice?
but its in plain sight so no one will notice and even then it just be written off as a joke quite easy
He’s a ruler of a third world country.
Who’s going to do what until he actually moves militarily (or gathers enough resources to attempt to establish a competitive world currency) and under what authority?
It’s not like his office is in L.A. or Melbourne. He runs a sovereign country.
It’s actually a searchable database of ever high class Dominatix in the world ranked by customer review :-) …(“5 out of 5 Whips, would be spanked again”)
The ACTUAL plan for taking over the world in labeled ‘Windows 10 User Manual’, because NOBODY ever reads that…
I had like ten files in my computer about world domination plans; instruction manuals for your people’s new lives after being transformed into pixies; or what to expect and how better their lives will be so they shouldn’t resist occupation by the Ju-el empire (alien empire); and even a guide book for living with demonic rule.
Granted unlike Deus one would be harder pressed to take mine serious if they found my computer; although you’d be surprised what the government will take serious sometimes even when intended as fictional hypotheticals; which we’d assume Deus would play off such a file being discovered as.
He probably has it next to Peter Anslew’s list of top 100 things to do when I become the evil overlord (plus the two cell blocks and couple of anxiliary lists)
I feel like aliens would probably have better special effects available, which would force a lot of earth entertainment into being a niche market at best.
There’s hilarious.
Then there’s hilaribad and camp.
And there are plenty movies with poor quality, by our standard, that are still considered among the best. Ever.
We still love to watch, and laugh at, most slapsticks.
Citizen Kane, Cassablanca and Gone With the Wind are consistently ranked among the best movies ever by critics and viewers alike.
The Princess Bride and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are hardly advanced special effects, but they are still widely known, watched and beloved.
I’d even argue that the reason why so few modern movies are consistently in the top of the best movies lists is precisely because they rely too much on special effects and neglect the story telling.
The only Godzilla movies worth watching all have guys in rubber suits.
I honestly would be surprised if they did. The movie industry was born out of very specific circumstances; and was only expanded on due to changes in the culture at the time including the “need” to keep people listening to radios, then televisions for emergency broadcasts could reach them; and the theaters having competition, a culture that values past time but also needs escapism; with a pre-existing tendency towards imitation as a means of story telling (dressing up and/or using props and puppets to help visually tell a story to others).
Funny enough Earth’s entertainment tech is one of those things that feels stupidly unbalanced from the rest of the tech, like its too advanced compared to things like power grids or house materials, insulation, home heating, ect… because people have felt a drive and created a market.
If you find an alien with too little or too great of an imagination they might have no need; or a culture that finds imitations to be insulting so invests in books not visual mediums. Or the idea of a passive experience doesn’t appeal to them; so instead their entertainment tech focused on games, ect…
The typical, SCI-Fi movie, would look like a comedy, to ET’s.
while I didn’t like the episode over-all, when Farscape had them at last reach Earth I did like Dargo’s reaction to Earth’s alien invasion movies; not that it was pessimistic about space, but rather that humans should understand they can’t always win.
You’d think people would try the delete button when trying to delete things… it does have more uses than backspacing in the wrong direction. ;)