I can find sources but for one thing, aspartame has been looked at for years as a carcinogen, 4-MEI (caramel coloring) is also a carcinogen, articles like this one point to sucralose being quite bad for you in many different ways.

If your sugar free soda contains caffeine then it can actually contribute to hydration loss, this is because caffeine is a dieuretic (something that increases urine production and removes extra salt and water from the body).

Plus the simple logic is: sugar free soda cannot be almost identical to plain water because of the sheer amount of additives. You will always be better off health-wise drinking clean water.

For one thing I wasn’t the OC. For another, what the OC immediately pointed out is that women have been invading male only spaces for decades. In fact it was practically propagandized following the second World War, unless we’re conveniently forgetting about ‘Anything you can do I can do better! Anything you can do I can do best!’ .

Literally, men’s only private clubs were almost sued out of existence because of women alleging discrimination (because they weren’t allowed in and the club catered to men first, god forbid).

All of this to say, completely disregarding what men actually do in male spaces is thoughtless at best — misandry at worst. Truth be told, I don’t actually give a fuck if men or women have safe spaces — I don’t expect anything of value to come from either environment. I blocked the women’s only community immediately.

I think if you look at in isolation, sure, much like beer in a survival situation. Sugar free soda is still linked with things like higher blood pressure, diabetes — which, to me, sounds like you’re just better off drinking water.

The suggestions that are being used as placeholders for numbers.

Big difference between being allowed to piss and shoot and being allowed into a women’s club to talk about women-specific issues.

Your comment you trog, only things I added were burping and farting — congrats on your tag.

Yes because everyone knows when men get together all they do is burp, fart, piss, and tell racist jokes.

There are a ton of dogshit takes in this thread.

One thing to consider is that your relationship with taste might need to be re-examined.

Human beings can go most places in the world and find food. Taste is a big part of our ability to do so as a species, sure, but the fact remains that being able to eat/drink solely to satiate your desires (rather than survival) is actually an abnormality if we compare it to the rest of human history. In a sense, it is a privilege to simply be able to say ‘no’ to something strictly based on the flavor.

Try to guage it based on how you feel rather than how it tastes. You should be able to feel the difference between how a day with only water feels vs a day without water (I’m not including beer or soda here, yes it can keep you hydrated no it is not a solution to hydration unless you’re trapped in a desert). If it’s hard for you to notice a difference, give it a week. Being regularly hydrated should effect how you feel at every part of the day, especially in the mornings.

A lot of techbros are convinced having a watch on makes people take you more seriously.

I think that’s a bit different from setting up a drone to bring you a gun, personally.

Still falls under your control in that instance, unless you’ve got someone else summoning it for you (we don’t need to talk about how, just assume it’s a drone and not magic) at which point we’re talking about a conspiracy.

Gambling is like alcohol, some is fun but you need to learn your limits.

If you go into gambling thinking ‘I’m gonna make 100 dollars!’ you’re gambling wrong. If you go into gambling thinking ‘I’m gonna spend 100 dollars.’ you’re gambling correctly.

Gotcha, so your point is not that meditation is woowoo; your point is that expecting meditation to connect you to the spirit realm is woowoo.

Just so we’re clear, this is called transcendental meditation and I’m pretty sure it was created and started by an Indian man in India.

Edit: ooh, didn’t like that one did ya? You’ve earned your tag.

My feelings on the Last of Us are complicated. Last of Us in isolation is good, TLoU and TLoU2 together are bad. Way better story than Crimson Desert’s, though.

Mass Effect… I’m sorry but everything past 1 was bad, and 1’s story was good because of the expectations set up for future games. Like Kliff, Shephard is a nothing character — only there’s an actual narrative driven by him/her and the rest of the cast + the events from the previous game.

We’ve discussed Zelda and Dark Souls, but I think Valheim is actually a point against what you’re saying — yes you’re reacting to the world but Valheim has next to no story (I’d say no story but I haven’t played it in a while).

Kliff could have been anyone. You could replace Kliff as the main character with Damiane and the story literally wouldn’t change (only you can’t because the Abyss can only be accessed by Kliff).

Only for >!this to mean absolutely fucking nothing because Oognka goes where he pleases.!<

I think the world is beautiful and you could subtract the entire beginning of the story and filled the game with only side quests and side stuff in the world — it would have been a better experience. Simply deleting the dogshit Yann and Naira quests would make it a better experience. If a game’s story would be strictly better with half of it deleted, I’m sorry but the story is just bad.

Edit: not a huge spoiler but I’m sorry, I meant to be spoiler free.

Edit: Forgot Shephard is unisex.

Are you suggesting meditation is ‘woowoo’?

Legend of Zelda, believe it or not, does not have individual good stories.

Great games, love me some LoZ — stories are consistently weak across all entries. Robust lore, poor individual narratives— see Dark Souls if you want another example.

That all being said: the game (Crimson Desert) very strictly establishes rules regarding the Abyss. Kliff is the only one who’s allowed to go up there — because reasons! He’s the hero!

I spoil something here so be warned - >!To reiterate, the game is very strict about letting anyone but Kliff up into the Abyss throughout the entire game. You’d think there’d be some overarching reason for it, right? No, Oongka practically instant transmissions to save you at the end of the game. No explanation for why he’s there, no explanation for why he couldn’t go there before — nope he just pops in and saves you from… it’s still not clear.!<

Like I’ve beaten the game. The bit I mentioned up above literally made me burst out laughing. If it weren’t for how cool and alternative the unarmed system is, I’d have put the game down right then out of boredom.

Bottom line: you’re allowed to like whatever you want, but Crimson Desert would have been a better experience with a custom character and less narrative. I mean for fucks sake, Kliff literally has a canned goofy ass ‘Yes’ response for random NPC dialogue — it literally would have been better if they just made him not speak.

Edit: oh, that’s to say nothing of fucking Yann. When one of the only memorable characters in your story (because yes, everyone involved in the narrative is simply forgettable) is only memorable because the character routinely pisses you off — I’m sorry but your story is cheeks.

Oh, hey — I’ve gone through this since his first term.

Yeah I asked my Trump loving office trog what he thinks about all the stuff Trump, Hegseth and the other sycophants say. His response boiled down to ‘I don’t pay attention to everything they say or do.’

The average Trump voter will not be described as discerning in the history books. It’s a shame they’ve been allowed to be the loudest Americans.

Again, that’s largely my point. You can’t market a game and just sell 5 million units. Marathon sold 1.2 million units because a) it’s a Bungie game so people would be paying attention to it and b) it had heavy marketing behind it. It would’ve sold even less without those two things, but that’s besides the point. The idea that you can just sell 5 million units through marketing is simply not true and Marathon proves it.

Let’s put this into perspective here.

Pearl Abyss is a relatively unknown dev, Black Desert is not an unknown IP. Pearl Abyss has been pushing BDO for years, roping in larger streamers to play their game over time. BDO is a game that does not respect your time however, and player retention is pretty low as a result. Actually, the BDO community itself is known for helping newbies through some awful grinds — mainly because they recognize that most newbies simply won’t withstand it. This has created a pretty committed community towards the game, and Pearl Abyss hasn’t been actively shitting on them. I can’t think of a better word of mouth machine, especially one already entrenched in social media platforms like Twitch.

Meanwhile, Bungie has spent the better part of the last 5 years making it clear to anyone with a brain that Destiny 2 is simply a cash cow for developing other IPs. Bungies content creator network has seemed like paid actors for years, I know because I played Destiny 2. If Pearl Abyss has been generating their community, Bungie has been actively destroying theirs.

Bottom line, Pearl Abyss has set themselves up for people to give them a chance and the recent success of Crimson Desert is the culmination of years planting seeds. Meanwhile Bungie has been resting on their laurels, actively destroying their community, creating people like me who will simply never purchase a Bungie IP again — and the game still sold over 1.2 million copies.

If anything, Marathon’s success is a testament to the power of marketing pushes.

I want you to tell me a singular storypoint that requires Kliff to be Kliff.

And my point is that if you asked your normie gamer, which really didn’t exist in the same form, in 2005 who Bungie is — you’d mostly get question marks.

The comparison to Marathon was explicitly to debunk the idea that you can sell 5 million units simply by doing marketing.

This would be relevant except that Marathon only sold as well as it did because of the heavy marketing push. If you’ve been following what Bungie has done with Destiny 2 then you should know it’s fucking amazing anyone bought into that soulless trash. They have burned so many bridges with their community. Had they released Marathon before Bungie was sold to Sony it would undoubtedly have sold better. They literally needed the marketing push.

Yet if you’d said Elite Dangerous it would be much more recognizeable, just like BDO is with Pearl Abyss.

Plus, Pearl Abyss has been working to get people to play their mmo for quite some time — Shroud played it for a bit and I know some other popular mmo streamers played it. All of this to say, Crimson Desert’s success is not wild — and using Marathon as a metric is just the worst thing you could do because Pearl Abyss hasn’t been shitting themselves reputation-wise.