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Samsara

@energynede.bsky.social

66 followers 36 following 160 posts

Jade. Co-Admin of @tasvideos.org , technically on indefinite hiatus but trying to claw my way back. Views and thoughts expressed here are my own and do not reflect TASVideos unless explicitly stated.

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Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · May 3

for anyone who needs to hear it: you don't have to love your relatives unconditionally. choose your own family and love them as much as they will love you.

"blood is thicker than water" just means they're trying to spill your blood and deny you the water you need to live.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

Museum of ZZT is quite literally the name, a museum of ZZT, a source of history and information, accountability for what happened in the past and curation for what's happening today. i can't think of a better way for it to be run, honestly.

...someday i'll TAS Town of ZZT. wanted to for a while.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

suht up mmeory

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

after all, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it", right?

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

as long as the discussion on RA and their apology remain visible, that's perfect archival to me. like a museum, it's showcasing the full history. no erasures, no information lost, and no explicit showcasing at the end of the day.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

because neutrality isn't just about equal treatment, it's about fair, logical, and unbiased treatment as well. you can, and should, be fully neutral while still dealing with blatant issues and active threats, because those just defy neutrality altogether.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

the people who want the information, i.e the people archiving appeals to, will still be able to find it. purpose fully served, goals fully met and matched, and that importantly includes the overall goal of neutrality.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

for RA, it's simply letting discussions over this kind of content happen and not silencing anyone through bans, mutes, or deletions. games don't have to reach the showcase level to be archived as long as they can at least be discussed.

people WILL take showcase as support. remember that.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

there is an alternative that fits archival better, though, and that's simply letting discussion and user interaction happen in the first place. for TASVideos, this means keeping submissions without publication: this provides an archival, informative history without any implicit endorsement.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

the idea of allowing EVERYTHING does have appeal to it, because it can easily be seen as the best option for content variety, but you can't actually have no limits. otherwise you just get the bad end of the nazi bar story, and now you're welcoming people to RetroAchievementsForRacistPokemonHacks.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

to entertain them with the dopamine rush of cheevo collection and raising point totals. i don't really see ARCHIVAL in that process, they're two different concepts in my opinion. maybe not completely detached, but, well...

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

adding support for it is, implicitly, endorsement of it. it incentivizes people to seek out and play the hack, and then they get to see a white supremacist ghost or whatever. that's the draw of RA after all, to draw peoples' eyes back to retro games and their offshoots and give them reason to play.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

again, publication is implicit endorsement. we absolutely don't endorse or support HK97 or its disgusting content, but we published it, and people saw it as endorsement because we were giving it a high level of attention.

in RA's case, working with that edgy pokemon hack is the same thing.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

it's in front of the entire outreach of the site and will be for a decent period of time, which is where it can cause the most damage.

this happened with Hong Kong 97. we published a TAS for it, people were rightfully outraged by its hateful content, and we unpublished it immediately.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

so if wires get crossed and something gets published that shouldn't have been, it's extremely hard for anyone to ignore because there's so much attention put on it upon publication. it's seen by every casual visitor, every YT sub, even people that put us on their RSS feeds over a decade ago...

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

publication on TASVideos is, effectively, endorsement. it gets put on a little pedestal as the latest YouTube upload and as the highest spot on our front page. inherently, we can't avoid putting the spotlight on every publication, because that's how the site works.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

if something terrible, hateful, and actively harmful to people slips through the cracks and sees publication, that goes completely against not just any mission statement we had or will ever have, but against our entire purpose for existing. the entire core of the site is to entertain, not to harm.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

in that regard, we have to have some form of curation, because people go to TASVideos expecting to see and be entertained by tool-assisted speedruns. in my opinion, any site that has a direct focus on entertainment, such as RA, should have at least a base level of curation like this.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

meanwhile, TASVideos visitors are coming to us for entertainment. someone comes in, they see famous video game character Mario wahoo-ing and yippee-ing around at mach speed and they love it. we HAVE information, of course, and a lot of it in fact, but it's far from the main attraction of the site.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

a museum's primary purpose is information. you go to one out of historical interest, you're told exactly what happened in the past and why it's important for us to remember it. "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it", after all.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

RA and TASvideos aren't really archives. because of the nature of what we are, we can't be and we really shouldn't be. we're not museums: for one thing, TASVideos has zero tolerance for stolen content so we can't be a museum, but we don't even serve the same purpose. museums inform, we entertain.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

a good chunk of the thread was written before RA's apology, which means that i've been working on this for hours (as is the Samsara way), but hopefully it all still scans well. genuine shoutouts to RA for taking accountability within the day.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

shoutouts to @ezgames69.bsky.social for having had the post open before i deleted it and screenshotting everything so i can rewrite it all from scratch. bluesky really needs drafts. or post editing. or representatives that don't act like Lowtax.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

speaking as a TASVideos admin, particularly one who's been forward about wanting TASVideos to serve an archival purpose, i've got a few thoughts on the RetroAchievements thing and the nature of archival itself.

reposted 🧵because i don't know how to write apparently.

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

well that was a great use of my day. hours writing/editing a thread and it was riddled with typos.

reposting soon w/ fixes

Samsara @energynede.bsky.social · 4d

GOD DAMNIT SAMSARA