this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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Fuck Subscriptions

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Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.

Expect use of strong language.

Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.

No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.

Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.

New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.

==========

Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:

Right to Repair/Ownership

Hedges Development

Privacy

Privacy Guides

DeGoogle Yourself

F-Droid

Stallman Was Right

Some other useful links:

FreeMediaHeckYeah

Louis Rossman's YouTube channel

Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:

Piped

Invidious

Nitter

Teddit

 

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[–] [email protected] 181 points 1 month ago (8 children)

The stupidest censorship I’ve seen like this is Community’s first DnD episode. Chang dresses up as a drow and that is considered “blackface” even though they address it in the episode that he isn’t black but a drow. So goodbye episode on streaming.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Oh, man. A Drow in a long-sleeved Guayabera. That's an insult to my Cuban heritage. Keep it banned. /s

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

He's one of those weird seldarine drow that hangs out with the humans.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean, I guess if you're a drow and see this, you might be offended.

Not because it's drowface, but because it's a human, therefore not drow, and thus is beneath the drow.

They kind of have an extreme isolationist, and borderline racial superiority thing going on.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

But they are also praying to a giant spider and kill their own children, so not exactly nice people.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Not offensive, but fucking terrifying!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Whoever thinks black people look like that is racist

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Do you think this isn't an obvious reference to blackface? The joke doesn't make sense if blackface had never been a thing, so it's a joke about blackface. And that's bad.

Community is my favorite show and this episode is fantastic. But pretending it's not blackface just because "he's actually a drow!!!" is so stupid.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Haven't seen the episode, but it seems clear they're making fun of blackface.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

You're right but it seems like most people still missed that as the majority of comments think the joke is that it isn't blackface (rather than very clearly too close to blackface and Chang, somehow, not registering that).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

It is a setup to a joke about how anything vaguely similar to a terrible thing is assumed to be the terrible thing, and that Change is too clueless to catch on.

The drow makeup is not blackface any more than black face camo is blackface.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Reminds me of how that musician Michael Jackson did whiteface 😮‍💨 I was beyond offended, we need to address behaviour like this more often, absolutely deplorable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Michael Jackson had a skin condition called vitiligo, which causes patches of skin to lose their pigmentation, resulting in a lighter skin tone. He used makeup and skin-lightening creams to manage the appearance of his skin, which led to public speculation about his changing appearance. He never did "whiteface", his face was literally white.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Born black, turned white?

Sounds like cultural appropriation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

How tf did u lot acc think I was being serious 💀 ik, I'm satirising

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

they could have avoided this crap by just choosing grey. drows and variants come in various shades. it's so fucking stupid

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The joke wouldn't work as well if they did that. They joke about blackface, so you need black. This doesn't look like a black person does anyway, so I don't see how gray would make it better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They joke about blackface, so you need black.

Yeah, making a racist, bad take joke was so worth it. It surely wouldn't have made Shirley look out of touch that way, making a different joke that wasn't as SUPER EDGY.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'll bet you don't understand Tropic Thunder's humor either.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I guess I'm out of touch with the race politics jokes of 1890s, so the parody seems out of time for me.

EDIT : Maybe if they threw in a tin pan alley, player piano or travelling curio joke, I'd have gotten it a bit better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Well, the first problem is that you think the Drow makeup is blackface or that Shirley being out of touch is a bad thing. Shirley's character was out of touch initially and she developed over time as part of her character arc. Yvette Nicole Brown knew it wasn't blackface and that the joke went over some people's heads.

Cast member Yvette Nicole Brown mentioned that it did not seem the joke was understood by those criticizing it, as there was context that in her view made it different from blackface.

The joke was that it was a passing resemblance, Shirley makes an assumption, and everyone else moves on because it isn't actually blackface. This is very different from the other shows like 30 rock and always sunny where the characters were in actual blackface while mocking blackface. I still think those shouldn't have been removed since they were mocking blackface, but this is completely different.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

OK. Let's break it all the way down explicitly.

The joke is that Chang's character is in Drow makeup, and because Shirley is out of touch with games, she thinks that the Drow make up is blackface.

The depiction of the Drow makeup has chosen an "ambigious" shade of black/grey that made it seem to some viewers or people who want to see it that way , as blackface, in real life, not as a character in the show. This caused problems.

The suggestion, is that if they chose grey or some other ashy shade , and or gone more elaborate with the make up, like red contacts, or pointy ears, they could have done EXACT joke, but made it not "ambigious" and avoided the heat that the episode has actually gotten.

I would even say that having a LESS blackface looking make up would further accentuate Shirley's out of touchness, making it funnier, as it would be more ridiculous that A) She would think that make up is blackface and B) Shirley thinks that's what Chang thinks making himself look like a black person would entail, red eyes and pointy ears and a non human shade of darkness.

Furthermore, expanding on my other point which was not adressed in your post :

I guess I’m out of touch with the race politics jokes of 1890s, so the parody seems out of time for me.
Maybe if they threw in a tin pan alley, player piano or travelling curio joke, I’d have gotten it a bit better.

What the fuck are it's always sunny et al doing making fun of this outdated shit in the first place? Did they get that mad at Spike Lee making Bamboozled and using blackface as an analogy of people acting up to stereotypes to get ahead in life , that they had to address it as a commentary on blackface, an "artform" from the 1890s as a target?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

The suggestion, is that if they chose grey or some other ashy shade , and or gone more elaborate with the make up, like red contacts, or pointy ears, they could have done EXACT joke, but made it not “ambigious” and avoided the heat that the episode has actually gotten.

That is the kind of mindset that leads to banning any mockery of a thing because it contains anything close to the thing, because you don't understand nuance.

What the fuck are it’s always sunny et al doing making fun of this outdated shit in the first place?

Mocking terrible people by mocking things that terrible people do and it isn't like it is in the distant past.