Faust

A Faustian bargain. A deal with the devil.

What is it, precisely, that makes a Fasustian bargain Fasustian? Any bargain involves exchanging X for Y, and that’s cool. But a Faustian bargain is more than simply an unfair or ill-considered bargain. It’s more than simply that X was actually worth more than Y. It’s that X was the thing that gave Y its value. That when you surrender X to get Y, Y becomes worthless because you have surrendered X.

Wilde (I think) does this in “The Gift”. The classic is the exchange of your soul for power. Once you have surrendered your soul, any power you might wield you only wield at the command of the one to whom your soul now belongs.

Awesome as Y might be, if you surrender the entire point of having Y in order to get it, then you have made a bad bargain.

No, I will not lend you my fucking lighter.

The fuck is this, dude? It’s 3AM in a deserted, dimly lit car-park. Are you a mugger, or just an idiot? I smoke. I buy a lighter. I just do not understand smokers that don’t.

“Box of matches is 30c!”

A box of matches is 30c? A pack of cigarettes is fifty bucks! If you have enough money for smokes, then you have enough money to exercise ordinary prudence and buy yourself means to light them. What were you thinking? “I’ll just rely on other people for free shit to the absolute limit I can”?

People begging for shit. They are all your absolute best mate in the whole fucking world; unless you don’t give them what they want, in which event you instantly become a “cunt”. I just can’t help feeling its all a little false, you know? Just makes me a little sadder each time. It’s why I don’t go to Civic.

The fact that I have stuff and you don’t does not entitle you to my stuff. No-one takes care of me. I do my own laundry, pay my own bills, and because I choose to smoke take care to have what I need to do that with. The day I simply run out of money, I’ll hang myself. It’s the only manly thing to do.

No, I will not lend you my fucking lighter. Sick of this shit.

#gamergate

You know that reddit is censoring posts, right? That means that this is going to be deleted. So I’ll post it here as well.

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[–]PieceOfShoe 1 point 3 days ago

This is not Mozilla. It’s an opinion peace on an open blog that they run. The blog post even got called down by them later https://openstandard.mozilla.org/our-sincerest-apologies/. I’m having the hardest time trying to find out what GamerGate is. So much noise out there on this topic. Anyone explain it to me like i’m 5?

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[–]PaulMurrayCbr 2 points 10 minutes ago*

Like you are 5? Ok.

Some people make computer games. Some people write about whether the new computer games are good or not. People who write about the games need to be fair and treat the games all the same, otherwise there’s no point reading them.

Well it turns out there’s this girl who makes computer games, and she kissed a boy who writes about computer games so he would write nice things about her game. It turns out she kissed a bunch of other boys too, and even some girls, and the boy found out and got mad and told on her.

A lot of people are upset because girls can get whatever they want just by kissing the boys, and that’s not fair. And other people are mad at them because they say that girls should be able to kiss whoever they want and it’s not fair to tell on them.

Then all the people who write all the stories about games got together and said that all the people who like games are bad for being mad at the girl. The people who play the games are mad at them because the people who write about games were rude to them, and they thought that those people liked games and liked the people who play games and it turns out they don’t like them at all.

And they are mad that it turns out that all the stories about the games are not really true about whether the games are good or not – it’s really just about who is kissing who – so people who are boys and make games can’t get good stories no matter how good their games are.

And they are also mad because it turns out that all the people who write about games talk to each other secretly and decide together what games are good and what games are bad, so you can’t really believe any of them.

And it turns out it’s not just the people who write stories about the games – it’s the people who run competitions for the games with big important prizes, and the people who make the big websites for games. It turns out that there aren’t really a whole bunch of different websites by a whole bunch of different people – there’s just one really small group of people, and they are all part of the whole kissing and not telling the truth about the games thing.

You see, it’s not just bad for the boys who play the games and write the games if a girl can get nice stories about her not-very-good game by kissing the right boys (and girls). it’s bad for those girls too, because boys only want to be kissed by girls if they are young and pretty, and not all girls are pretty and no girl stays young for very long.

But all the girls who are saying that it’s unfair to tell on girls who kiss the boys to get stuff from them are mad at all the people who say this, because it reminds them that they are not going to be young and pretty forever either, and they don’t like to be reminded of that.

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