My opinion of Rule34 (long post)

[theposhmudcrab]

Here is something i wanted to say for a long time, i think this is the only community that can discuss this topic with me in a mature way without turning this thread into a mess.

I hate Rule34, i am very familiar with the rules of the internet and anyone who has spent any significant amount of time on the internet and knows about the culture of the internet will know what i am talking about. I wanted to honestly share my experiences and speak my mind on this particular part of internet culture and explain why i have a love/hate relationship with Rule34.

My first time finding out about Rule34 was on 4chan back in the day when it was still obscure but was kinda surfacing and becoming more known, it must have been around the time of the early 2010's. I never had any friends during my teenage years, so spending my time on the internet was something i used to do often. When you spend a lot of your time on the internet you tend to discover the more edgy side of the internet, with extreme curiosity, boredom and teenage horniness you will eventually discover Rule34. Sometimes i really wish i never discovered it, i wish i could wipe it off my memory. I usually never gave a fuck what i saw in any Rule34 form, it never bothered me. I began to hate Rule34 and tried to avoid it whenever it touched anything that i held dear and near to my heart. Whenever i found anything that i didn't care about get Rule34'd i just didn't care, but knowing that there are things that i do love and care about get the Rule34 treatment that is the point where and when i began to hate Rule34. When ever something gets Rule34'd, the way i perceive it and look on it changes completely, anything that gets Rule34'd in my eyes is completely ruined forever for me(even when i know Rule34 works are not canon). When ever i came across Rule34 of a character that i like, it feels like seeing something you love get raped(I know it is a very extreme way to describe things, but it is honestly how it feels to me). It is crazy that there are good artists out there that spend so much of their time and talent drawing and creating so much perverted content. It must be horrible to be the author of a book, movie or a game that spent so much time creating something beautiful only to discover that out there somewhere someone will eventually use your creation for their fetishes and use it to satisfy their base needs. I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the author whose creation gets Rule34'd. The existance of Rule34 can be explain by the fact that we humans deep down are still just horny animals. Is it really worth it to spend so much time creating elaborate Rule34 content just to use it for sexual stimulation and get a few seconds of pleasure out of it? is there really not enough pornography on the internet to satisfy people? If i was truly asexual as i wish i was i believe i wouldn't have discovered Rule34, and many things that i like probably wouldn't have been ruined in my eyes. I do not know if there is anyone in this community(Loverslab) that share my sentiment on this topic, maybe some do and understand where i am coming from with the things i say and understand me. This entire thread is just me taking a few things off my chest, this may sound trivial but this whole case is one of the reasons why i don't participate in fandoms and communities much because i know the more popular something gets the more attention it will get from Rule34 content creators and it will be tarnished in my eyes quicker. If humans were not sexual creatures to begin with, maybe we wouldn't have any pornography of any sort at all in the first place.   

[Sarathis]

I think your aversion to the concept is understandable but the sad truth of the matter is, to some people there is nothing sacred. There are whole porn genres out there about taking "pure" subjects and purposely defiling them, and legions of people who enjoy that kind of thing. It may not be your cup of tea but there's no stopping people from liking what they perv out on. 

 

Generally speaking I'm in your camp on the idea of Rule34. Overall, it's stupidly popular and over the top but I view it as kind of inevitable. While there are certain subjects that I hold near and dear to my heart and don't want to see made into a perversion, I understand that other people don't feel the same way towards them that I do. As a result, I sort of view Rule34 the same way that I do visits from my aunt or gangster rap; nuisances I occasionally have to put up with but overall go out of my way to avoid. If I come across a porn version of one of those fictional characters I love and want to preserve my personal image of, I just quickly look at something else and forget I encountered it. I don't let someone else's perverted imagination tarnish my feelings towards the characters because that's giving those people too much power over my thoughts and feelings. I'm not about to let some creepy fanartist ruin something that I enjoy. 

[theposhmudcrab]

5 minutes ago, Sarathis said:

I just quickly look at something else and forget I encountered it.

i wish i could do that, my memory is too good to forget anything fully, and bad memories usually stick around longer. I don't want to go off topic, the human brain is a blessing and a curse. if you can suggest ways to forget things, please share, i will greatly appreciate it.

11 minutes ago, Sarathis said:

creepy fanartist ruin something that I enjoy.

i can't even call their creations art or call them fanartists.

When i think fan art i think of something that celebrates the subject it depicts and treats it respectfully.

 

 

[ToJKa]

I know what you mean, and once upon a time felt similarly myself. Quite uncomfortable some of that stuff used to make me.

Good thing life and internet has turned me dead on the inside, and now i don't feel anything. Sad, i suppose. I can't tell anymore ?

 

Thing that mostly annoys me about it is that most of it is ridiculously low quality or poorly made with some 3d modelling program. But there are many gems in there too that i am happy to have found.

[Buddy16]

if you don't want something ruined don't look it up on rule34 then, worked for me so far and it'll work in the future.

also the rule34 thing isn't something new there are are lot of porn parodies out there Call of Booty,Womb Raider..... stuff like that, there is even an Mario Bros. porn which, fun fact, is owned by Nintendo now.

so I if you merely damn rule 34 for that it's a bit close minded because it's just an meeting point for all that art because as rule 34 says if it exist there'll be porn of it, even without rule 34.

 

I don't really care though if someone want to look at porn of Bambi's mother getting fucked by huntsman before getting killed, sure just go ahead who am I to judge you for that, if that's what you wanna see then go ahead and watch stuff like that all day

[balth]

Kinda ironic someone is complaining about rule 34 on a forum devoted to rule 34ing skyrim.

[FauxFurry]

If you want to understand the phenomenon a bit better, you could read the book Tiajuana Bibles by Bob Adelman as well as reading some uploads of old 1960s underground parody comix made specifically to mock the sex negative infantilization of the major animation studios of the 20th century as well as the concept of Bowlderization as it applies to ancient works which were thoroughly suffused by the essence of ribaldry to make them 'acceptable' for 'decent people'.

[gregathit]

[Halstrom]

Yeah I never been able to look at any appliances the same way since I saw a Washer and Dryer humping in a Second Life free sex Sim. 

I always keep the kettle and toaster at opposite ends of the kitchen now

[Guest]

10 hours ago, theposhmudcrab said:

 

Great bait man. A mod should lock this before it gets hairy as I know it will.

[Bulkhead]

I can see where you're coming from and I know some people who feel the same way.

 

Personally, I just accept that they exist and choose not to care. I'd imagine that someone somewhere has gone and made a picture of my favorite TV show character getting pissed on by aliens and... I don't care. I could care, I could let it ruin my enjoyment of that TV show for the rest of my life but I choose not to. Life is too short for that. Instead I just look at it, say "yeah, that's a thing" and move on. Just the Internet being the Internet, nothing to see here.

[gregathit]

2 hours ago, Halstrom said:

I always keep the kettle and toaster at opposite ends of the kitchen now

I nearly blew a snot bubble on that one!!!! 

[27X]

7 hours ago, balth said:

Kinda ironic someone is complaining about rule 34 on a forum devoted to rule 34ing skyrim.

Except not.

 

Sex has been a large part of TES, it's simply been laissez-faire and dare it be said subtle (not really, I mean a jar of honey, a heating lamp and a mammoth tusk in a closet aren't exactly subtle, and neither is a bed with chains attached to it, owned by a 'very friendly to strangers' woman) about it. Todd Howard has said several several several times that TES lore and trapping will always be of perspective only and disputable at any given moment as long as he's the guy in charge, and unless TES VI tanks super hard, he's got about 15-twenty more of that barring illness or whatever life in general. So quite literally Skyrim as CHIM still dictates is literally what you make of it.

 

Sex and Love has literally shaped Mundus, sex via the gods and avatars of those gods.

 

Rule 34 is the deliberate taking of non-sexual characters like Belle and Elizabeth and Ellie having them fuck, ergo the entire cast of Overwatch which is currently earning about 80 people about 300K a month collectively. Rule34 literally doesn't apply to skyrim any more than it applies to Jelena Jensen's website or an Illusion game. Sex happens in skyrim, sex forms the basis of three vanilla quests, much less anything after market.

 

Rule 34 is simply a symptom of lack of creativity, and the general increasing level of bandwagoning present in most creative endeavors. Being creative is hard, being original is a fuckload harder and most people aren't up to the task. These things tend to be cyclic, and right now we're at the peak of follow the leader.

 

As for the OP, your issue with 34 is pretty symptomatic of a much larger issue, and this prolly is neither the format nor context to broach it, much less getting into other people's as-is-wonts or fetishes.

[Jazzman]

For me, Rule 34 just mirrors Rousseau's Condom Principle (AvP), that

I'd rather have one and not need it, than need it and not have one.

 

?

[SpinX]

I don't get it. So what if a game or anime character is portrayed having sex or being raped or doing kinky stuff.  Seperate the sexual fiction from the orignal fiction.

 

You know that your mom and dad have sex right? Most people you meet do. Some are involved into really weird fetishes. You wouldn't find out unless you go looking for it. I treat rule34 the same. To me every character has this secret sexual life. I actually enjoy the idea. If you don't then simply avoid rule34.

[SpinX]

I don't get it. So what if a game or anime character is portrayed having sex or being raped or doing kinky stuff.  Seperate the sexual fiction from the orignal fiction.

 

You know that your mom and dad have sex right? Most people you meet do. Some are involved into really weird fetishes. You wouldn't find out unless you go looking for it. I treat rule34 the same. To me every character has this secret sexual life. I actually enjoy the idea. If you don't then simply avoid rule34.

[theposhmudcrab]

3 hours ago, SpinX said:

then simply avoid rule34.

This is a common and predictable piece of advice, but what i suspect people don't understand is that i am not actively seeking out any Rule34 content. That content can be technically encountered anywhere, so even if you don't look for it you can bump into it. As an example: Once i was looking for some models to use in a video, something sfw and innocent, and during my search/browsing i ended up encountering exactly what i didn't want to see. 

[wokking56]

20 hours ago, theposhmudcrab said:

i wish i could do that, my memory is too good to forget anything fully, and bad memories usually stick around longer. I don't want to go off topic, the human brain is a blessing and a curse. if you can suggest ways to forget things, please share, i will greatly appreciate it.

Look it sounds more like you are dwelling on what has offended you rather than not being able to forget it. You see I also have an excellent memory and find it difficult to forget some things I just choose to not dwell on them. Many things that have made a significant impact on my life at an early age are still vividly remembered even though I am 60+ years old. For instance I still to this day recall my third birthday (well the cake at least), and unfortunately I recall in vivid and gory detail my best friend getting run down by a truck when I was 7. Hell look at my profile pic that's me at 18 on my horse "Pepper" a Morgan/Arabian with my nephew Kris in my arms. He always wanted me off "his" horsey.  These things will never be forgotten you just hide them away and move on. So bury your "rule 34" crap somewhere in a dark corner of your mind and get on with life.

[FauxFurry]

If you're this upset by simple sexualized fan art, you likely would never be able to survive having the contents of said fan works made canon which you would be pressured to praise or else you would be denounced as a bigot or hopelessly stuck in the past.

You may as well use Rule 34 to harden yourself up, so to speak, to face that inevitability when it finally comes (no pun intended).

[Nexussuckstwice]

Absolutely love rule34!

 

Stay out of 4chan's /pol

Now that's truly degenerate place.

 

Every day i see more and more BS from miserable lonely losers who dedicated their entire life to making life miserable for all others (since they are jealous and have nothing else to do).

 

On top of that they are manipulated by older and smarter men (like Mercer family, who used Steve Bannon who used alt-right who used 4chan and eventually they use you. Like fucking condom. They use you - and throw away. Yeah, you are full of their dirty slime now.

 

All this radical right wing Christian BS came back straight from the Middle ages, carefully preserved by people, who still believe in goat herder's tales, hate women, abuse little boys and secretly get off on what they openly criticize.

 

They care not about you, your dreams, your "sacred memories", for them  you are condom. You're only useful once.

 

They make their profit, they use you to defend them, they discard you after that. There is no "moral" to begin with - its only a tool of a crowd control. But even by their own standards those people fucking hypocrite, but hey - it pays off - people like you always ready to bend over.

 

[Nexussuckstwice]

There is a good book - its called "The Dark money"

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

 

Spoiler

 

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, get a lot of attention from political observers and, increasingly, from the public. No wonder. The fortune they possess together is greater than those of Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet, and other private individuals who are often characterized as the richest people in the world. But it’s not the brothers’ wealth that attracts the attention. It’s their heavy-handed attempt to dominate American politics. That’s the subject of Jane Mayer’s explosive new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

As Warren Buffet has said, “There’s class warfare all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” The brothers are at the very center of the war machine.

The Koch brothers are not alone

Though the Koch brothers provide a convenient (and worthy) target, it’s important to understand that they alone are not responsible for the wrenching changes that have taken place in American politics over the past several decades, and particularly since 2009. As Mayer reveals, the brothers — Charles, especially — preside over a network of billionaires and centimillionaires who operate in tandem in support of the most virulent, Right-Wing causes and candidates in the country’s politics. A total of some 300 individuals constitute the network. As many as two hundred have attended recent annual gatherings hosted by the brothers.

The brothers didn’t invent the tactics that have been used to upend the political order. Mayer credits the late Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh-based scion of the Mellon Bank and Gulf Oil fortune. In 1964, Scaife set out to change the terms of political debate by investing heavily in think tanks and academic centers to espouse a radical “free-market” ideology and imprint it on a new generation of scholars, lawyers, and activists. Scaife’s various family foundations were soon followed by the Bradley, Olin, and Coors Foundations in advancing the Right-Wing agenda.

In addition to Scaife and the Koch Brothers, the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” they set in motion includes the aging casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, an obsessively pro-Israel donor who has outpaced everyone else in the country in political spending in recent elections, and the De Vos family of Michigan, owners of Amway, as well as other members of the 0.01%, a majority of whose fortunes were built on oil, gas, coal, and finance. Also prominent within this network are ultra-weathy individuals and families who have used similar tactics to bring about dramatic shifts in the politics of individual states — Wisconsin and North Carolina, for example.

The plutocrats in the Kochs’ network profess similar political beliefs which they characterize as “conservatism” to promote “freedom” and the “free market” in America. However, it’s highly misleading to refer to this ideology as conservative. Instead, it’s radical and reactionary, having nothing to do with conserving anything whatsoever of the past. On the contrary, it’s clear from Mayer’s account that the common intellectual thread that runs throughout this group of supremely privileged individuals is a determination to turn back the clock to the nineteenth century, repealing every political reform instituted under Teddy Roosevelt and all his successors. Child labor laws? Check. Anti-trust legislation? Check. The progressive income tax? Check. Social Security? Check. The minimum wage? You get the point. What these people want is clearly nothing less than the “freedom” to pollute, exploit their employees, avoid taxes, dictate the terms of political debate, and pass their vast wealth on to their children and grandchildren in dynastic fashion.

Though they tend to style themselves as “self-made,” many of them — including the Kochs — inherited considerable fortunes. They live in multimillion-dollar homes (usually, several of them), preside over huge businesses, and donate millions of dollars to “charity” (usually, arts institutions and universities that will place their names on buildings). However, a disturbing number of them are, not to put too fine an edge on things, criminals. As Mayer puts it in her understated way, it is “striking how many members of the Koch network had serious past or ongoing legal problems.” For example, “between 1980 and 2005, under Charles Koch’s leadership, his company developed a stunning record of corporate malfeasance.” The Koch brothers’ and the De Vos family businesses have paid tens of millions of dollars in fines for violation of environmental laws, worker health and safety regulations, and tax laws, causing far more harm to society than even the worst violent offender. In a just society, many of these people would have gone to prison long ago.

Mayer describes the Kochs’ and their allies’ strategy as multipronged. At the outset, their efforts went largely into intellectual enterprises, chiefly think tanks and universities. The purpose of these “investments” was to nurture a new generation of “free-market conservatives” who would (and did) change the dynamics of public discourse. A second prong of the strategy was to press state and federal legislators and the courts to shift economic policy to their (self-interested) way of thinking. At the same time, they consciously set out to foster the grassroots efforts that eventually produced the Tea Party, by creating phony populist organizations (“Astroturf”), providing funding and political expertise, and subsidizing sympathetic media. For example, they paid Glenn Beck $1 million to hype the Tea Party on his show. To round out the picture, they mounted a lavishly funded effort to seize control of the Republican Party and gerrymander Congressional district lines in states across the country to guarantee a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Have no doubt about the success of this strategy: witness the fear-mongering and Right-Wing platitudes consistently mouthed by the Republican candidates contending for the presidency in 2016.

All this is possible now after the 2010 Citizens United decision and its sequels in the courts, which freed what Bernie Sanders calls “the billionaire class” to dominate federal elections to a greater extent than was feasible even under the Robber Barons in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Reportedly, a single session at a gathering hosted last year by the Koch Brothers generated pledges for this year’s election campaigns totaling $889 million, an amount far greater than either the Republican or Democratic parties raised for the last presidential campaign. In all likelihood, this sum will prove to be only a portion of the funds they contribute collectively when the final figures are toted up. After all, they can afford it: together, the men (and a few women) in this network are “worth” considerably more than $100 billion dollars.

You might think it’s not easy to spend so much money, and you’d be right. To bring these massive funds to bear in the political area, the members of the Koch network have created literally hundreds of organizations — think tanks, academic institutes, SuperPACs, “public welfare” organizations, “charities,” and businesses to put their money to work. Some of these entities evidence no more signs of activity than a post office box. Others, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Kochs’ most identifiable political venture, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), are well known and substantial. For example, AFP employed 550 people in the 2012 election cycle. Most of the organizations created by the members of the network exist merely to launder money from wealthy donors, funneling it through a series of obscurely named entities to avoid the few remaining campaign finance disclosure requirements.

To operate this exceedingly complex array of organizations, both bogus and genuine, requires a huge number of political operatives, lobbyists, pollsters, and others. Though none of these people are likely to approach their benefactors in personal wealth, many of them are reaping millions of dollars for their efforts.

Some readers may also find surprises in Mayer’s accounts of the central role of the Koch Brothers and their allies in launching and funding the Tea Party and the protracted (and successful) effort to undermine the public consensus about the serious threat that climate change poses to human life in the near future. Mayer reports that “from 2005 to 2008, a single source, the Kochs, poured almost $25 million into dozens of different organizations fighting climate reform . . . Charles and David had outspent what was then the world’s largest public oil company, ExxonMobil, by a factor of three.”

Corruption, deception and manipulation.

 

 

 

And the funniest part of it - the Koch's and Mercer's are not the worst of the bunch.

Religious right-wingers even worse and use the same tactics and strategy.

Yes, they have a strategy. Patient people, they are planning for several decades ahead, cause their final goal - centuries of domination.

 

There is a lot to read about them and their attempts to return the World back into the Dark ages:

https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/what-is-the-wedge-document/

 

[FauxFurry]

21 hours ago, Nexussuckstwice said:

There is a good book - its called "The Dark money"

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, get a lot of attention from political observers and, increasingly, from the public. No wonder. The fortune they possess together is greater than those of Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet, and other private individuals who are often characterized as the richest people in the world. But it’s not the brothers’ wealth that attracts the attention. It’s their heavy-handed attempt to dominate American politics. That’s the subject of Jane Mayer’s explosive new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

As Warren Buffet has said, “There’s class warfare all right. But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” The brothers are at the very center of the war machine.

The Koch brothers are not alone

Though the Koch brothers provide a convenient (and worthy) target, it’s important to understand that they alone are not responsible for the wrenching changes that have taken place in American politics over the past several decades, and particularly since 2009. As Mayer reveals, the brothers — Charles, especially — preside over a network of billionaires and centimillionaires who operate in tandem in support of the most virulent, Right-Wing causes and candidates in the country’s politics. A total of some 300 individuals constitute the network. As many as two hundred have attended recent annual gatherings hosted by the brothers.

The brothers didn’t invent the tactics that have been used to upend the political order. Mayer credits the late Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh-based scion of the Mellon Bank and Gulf Oil fortune. In 1964, Scaife set out to change the terms of political debate by investing heavily in think tanks and academic centers to espouse a radical “free-market” ideology and imprint it on a new generation of scholars, lawyers, and activists. Scaife’s various family foundations were soon followed by the Bradley, Olin, and Coors Foundations in advancing the Right-Wing agenda.

In addition to Scaife and the Koch Brothers, the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” they set in motion includes the aging casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, an obsessively pro-Israel donor who has outpaced everyone else in the country in political spending in recent elections, and the De Vos family of Michigan, owners of Amway, as well as other members of the 0.01%, a majority of whose fortunes were built on oil, gas, coal, and finance. Also prominent within this network are ultra-weathy individuals and families who have used similar tactics to bring about dramatic shifts in the politics of individual states — Wisconsin and North Carolina, for example.

The plutocrats in the Kochs’ network profess similar political beliefs which they characterize as “conservatism” to promote “freedom” and the “free market” in America. However, it’s highly misleading to refer to this ideology as conservative. Instead, it’s radical and reactionary, having nothing to do with conserving anything whatsoever of the past. On the contrary, it’s clear from Mayer’s account that the common intellectual thread that runs throughout this group of supremely privileged individuals is a determination to turn back the clock to the nineteenth century, repealing every political reform instituted under Teddy Roosevelt and all his successors. Child labor laws? Check. Anti-trust legislation? Check. The progressive income tax? Check. Social Security? Check. The minimum wage? You get the point. What these people want is clearly nothing less than the “freedom” to pollute, exploit their employees, avoid taxes, dictate the terms of political debate, and pass their vast wealth on to their children and grandchildren in dynastic fashion.

Though they tend to style themselves as “self-made,” many of them — including the Kochs — inherited considerable fortunes. They live in multimillion-dollar homes (usually, several of them), preside over huge businesses, and donate millions of dollars to “charity” (usually, arts institutions and universities that will place their names on buildings). However, a disturbing number of them are, not to put too fine an edge on things, criminals. As Mayer puts it in her understated way, it is “striking how many members of the Koch network had serious past or ongoing legal problems.” For example, “between 1980 and 2005, under Charles Koch’s leadership, his company developed a stunning record of corporate malfeasance.” The Koch brothers’ and the De Vos family businesses have paid tens of millions of dollars in fines for violation of environmental laws, worker health and safety regulations, and tax laws, causing far more harm to society than even the worst violent offender. In a just society, many of these people would have gone to prison long ago.

Mayer describes the Kochs’ and their allies’ strategy as multipronged. At the outset, their efforts went largely into intellectual enterprises, chiefly think tanks and universities. The purpose of these “investments” was to nurture a new generation of “free-market conservatives” who would (and did) change the dynamics of public discourse. A second prong of the strategy was to press state and federal legislators and the courts to shift economic policy to their (self-interested) way of thinking. At the same time, they consciously set out to foster the grassroots efforts that eventually produced the Tea Party, by creating phony populist organizations (“Astroturf”), providing funding and political expertise, and subsidizing sympathetic media. For example, they paid Glenn Beck $1 million to hype the Tea Party on his show. To round out the picture, they mounted a lavishly funded effort to seize control of the Republican Party and gerrymander Congressional district lines in states across the country to guarantee a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Have no doubt about the success of this strategy: witness the fear-mongering and Right-Wing platitudes consistently mouthed by the Republican candidates contending for the presidency in 2016.

All this is possible now after the 2010 Citizens United decision and its sequels in the courts, which freed what Bernie Sanders calls “the billionaire class” to dominate federal elections to a greater extent than was feasible even under the Robber Barons in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Reportedly, a single session at a gathering hosted last year by the Koch Brothers generated pledges for this year’s election campaigns totaling $889 million, an amount far greater than either the Republican or Democratic parties raised for the last presidential campaign. In all likelihood, this sum will prove to be only a portion of the funds they contribute collectively when the final figures are toted up. After all, they can afford it: together, the men (and a few women) in this network are “worth” considerably more than $100 billion dollars.

You might think it’s not easy to spend so much money, and you’d be right. To bring these massive funds to bear in the political area, the members of the Koch network have created literally hundreds of organizations — think tanks, academic institutes, SuperPACs, “public welfare” organizations, “charities,” and businesses to put their money to work. Some of these entities evidence no more signs of activity than a post office box. Others, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Kochs’ most identifiable political venture, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), are well known and substantial. For example, AFP employed 550 people in the 2012 election cycle. Most of the organizations created by the members of the network exist merely to launder money from wealthy donors, funneling it through a series of obscurely named entities to avoid the few remaining campaign finance disclosure requirements.

To operate this exceedingly complex array of organizations, both bogus and genuine, requires a huge number of political operatives, lobbyists, pollsters, and others. Though none of these people are likely to approach their benefactors in personal wealth, many of them are reaping millions of dollars for their efforts.

Some readers may also find surprises in Mayer’s accounts of the central role of the Koch Brothers and their allies in launching and funding the Tea Party and the protracted (and successful) effort to undermine the public consensus about the serious threat that climate change poses to human life in the near future. Mayer reports that “from 2005 to 2008, a single source, the Kochs, poured almost $25 million into dozens of different organizations fighting climate reform . . . Charles and David had outspent what was then the world’s largest public oil company, ExxonMobil, by a factor of three.”

Corruption, deception and manipulation.

 

 

 

And the funniest part of it - the Koch's and Mercer's are not the worst of the bunch.

Religious right-wingers even worse and use the same tactics and strategy.

Yes, they have a strategy. Patient people, they are planning for several decades ahead, cause their final goal - centuries of domination.

 

There is a lot to read about them and their attempts to return the World back into the Dark ages:

https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/what-is-the-wedge-document/

 

Do kindly take your political partisan talk elsewhere.

You don't even have to avoid video game sites altogether  (even if they are generally wising up about limiting the amount of political scuttlebutt allowed in their forums these days) as you can go to either GamePolitics.com or Destructoid (whose moderators still don't seem to have gotten the memo that Nero wanted the partisan hackery to desist in an attempt to win back a portion of their disaffected audience) and blame everything on one political party or faction when recent events should have made it clear by now that authoritarianism knows no party lines.
Both of the major parties themselves are just tools used by the exact same kinds of people hiding behind different sets of excuses for their actions.

[SmedleyDButler]

I can see where the OP is coming from - it gets rather tiresome if you fall into that trap where it seems like everything must be about sex all the time.

 

Reminds me of the folks who (for example) swear that Holmes and Watson are secretly gay, which is kind of depressing - not because that would somehow 'invalidate' the characters in the eyes of homophobics, but because the implication of those claims is that the people making them refuse to believe that anyone might form a deep bond of friendship without sex or romance ever coming into it. That mindset leaves too many people sad and isolated.

 

But yes people are going to do this and you generally can't stop them, nor should you, really. Sure, by all means keep an eye out for the few people looking to realize their fantasies with real-world harm. e.g. Guys who draw raunchy and violent pictures of [celebrity] and then start letting slip that they're stalking said person IRL. But that's not the fault of rule 34, that's just a rare case where rule 34 is an incidental symptom of something else. So do ignore it and move on if you can and try not to let some whacknut's Hanna-Barbera vore fetish ruin your enjoyment of dopey 70's cartoons.

 

ALL THAT SAID, regardless of your opinions of Rule 34, try to understand that the OP is specifically saying he has trouble forgetting and so this affects him more than it might the average person. It is after all why he's gone to the trouble of offering a public opinion about it in the first place, because he wants to talk about it.

 

I would like to think most people here are aware that when someone has been traumatized or has PTSD or similar, we've learned to never just tell them to "get over it" or "man up!" or any of that other counterproductive repressive dinosaur crap which punishes a person for being open. Granted, the OP is experiencing a fairly mild form of trauma (it seems that way anyway, based on their posts), but it would still be better to share coping strategies or just talk a bit than to tell the OP to go back to trying things which haven't worked in the past.

 

I'm sorry I don't have much to offer in that regard myself. The things I want to forget I often can't, while at the same time I often can't remember what I was doing 15 seconds ago.

[arpaschad]

tl;dr

 

So your point is everything can be lewded and this disturbs you... point taken...

 

Oh you are in a forum that has lots of rule34 material as well...

 

I admire your mental fortitude still staying here even after being uncomfortable...

 

just stay away from Shadbase's works and you'll be fine...

[landess]

I have used the internet since the days of dial up and BBS's. Yet I still had to look up *rule34 myself.

 

The internet is a big place, so like Bilbo said to Frodo - “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

 

There's a reason I don't go down dark alleys in the middle of the night in real life. I try to treat the internet the same way. Back in the days of Dial-up as I mentioned, once I found a website which may or may not have had 'questionable' content. Without browsers like we have now, there was no way to be sure. So after waiting on the site to answer I was presented with a picture of some guy wearing a gimp hood, pointing a gun at the camera with the words 'Get Out of Here!

 

This has stuck with me to this day.