very literally who the fuck is that?

So the choice is between a mundane life and some flavor if antisocial personality disorder? I'm good. Pass the ice cream.

fuck ketamine

Hubris is one of the side effects

The fact her friends care for succulents means that they, unlike her, can care for something other than themselves

JFC, this is the type of bad monologue that you would find in a 90's Command and Conquer knock-off These people deserve to be curb-stomped with their own expensive shoes

I don't even know who that is today 😂

The deep meaning attached to 'elite' does tip the hand a bit to objectivism and shades in bioshock to me, but I mean you're not wrong.

I really wish they'd shown us Ted Faro's final agony

They were building up to something so cool and then they flinched away at the last second!

Yes! I was hoping to see that bitch in some kinda tangled flesh web fused into a reactor pitifully staring up at us or something!

Imagination has no budget.

I'm hoping its what Bryan Johnson does to himself.

The problem is the rating. Horizon Forbidden West is rated Teen.

Damn, never seen a woman with homeschool sword-guy energy before.

FUCK. 😮‍💨

Horizon ZD and FW completely nail the type of guy Elon and his ilk are, so much so that it ends up not being funny anymore. Until you destroy Ted Faro and the Far Zenith people, that is.

Someone really thinks highly of themselves for creating a gig economy out of the husk of an already existing job title... Truly insufferable

I'm a humanoid and I don't know who this person is now

Wow. My life revolves around my succulents because I love them & they love me. We are a family- even the ones who don’t share genes. I try to make the better place because I care about them & all the ppl I’ve never met too. Anyone who thinks that is a meaningless life is only telling on themselves

I hate, HATE that they were right about what caused everything to end up horribly.

These types of people make me want to vomit.

Main character syndrome c'est effrayant

To quote Mike Tyson, "legacy is just another word for 'ego'

I barely remember the plot of the actual game, but that backstory is incredible. Not stoked about the real life adaptation though.

Amazing plot

"they return home, but they are not welcomed by a triumph" So those poor friends either need to claw their way into the ranks of the elite against impossible odds, or adopt a dog.

Or a cat. The amount of times my cat will meet me in the hallway when I come home

Looks like we have our Far Zenith

One of my favorite games for that exact reason, among many others.

Just like Horizon Forbidden West this account is definitely made up and not real

Yeah the Forbidden West plot line of rich people causing the apocalypse and then trying to escape it by building their own underground bunkers has way too many real life parallels.

To be fair Forbidden West, while it does definitely have the rich bunker (and HOW good god Ted), is much more about the rich people who helped cause the apocalypse and then escaped to space to find a new planet to exploit. Which to be fair also has a lot of real life parallels!

It definitely is not part of why the Schrödinger's government department head has always been so obsessed with colonizing Mars, no siree. /s

1000%

Maya is cool. We are moots :D

"The working class has no great loves" nobody loves you, Emily. They love your wallet.

Thanks to Maya for the gentle but pride-obliterating reply. I'm sure that Emily will recognize her own cartoonish hubris and make a self-correcting move that'll benefit society.

At least we got to shoot them in face with arrows.

What the fuck

Don’t even have to wait 50 years. I have no idea who this nobody is NOW.

Man... Ted Faro is legitimately the most despicable fictional character I've ever seen. Guy killed humanity off... twice!

Oooof, like, on the nose.

Elon Musk Elicits the same amount of rage and hatred in me that Walter Londra and Ted Faro do. They hit the nail squarely on the head.

The only good billionaire being a guy who literally lucked back into good fortune after he was ripped off and having the emotionally maturity to recognize this but also end sup dead by the time of the games is telling.

"My non-elite friends". Well, this is going to be a shit show.

She doesn't actually have any "non-elite friends", she's probably slagging off the help.

I had COVID on election day, and decided to power through the latter stages of HFW while waiting for the polls to close. And man, listening to 50 audiologs in the facility detailing how techbrahs annihilated humanity out of sheer hubris really was the perfect opening act for that evening's events.

Oh jeez I'm so fucking sorry that is a hell of a story to have progressed through/finished right before *that* particular evening holy shit

That game series has so much going for it

Also fuck Ted Faro

Weird 40 year old dudes with anime catgirl vtuber avatars playing trash video games have more people that care what they have to say than Logan Bartlett does.

If we could only harness the smugness…..

Once climate change and war covers the lands, these m/billionaires will either be long forgotten or strung up by their toes for the carrion to eat. What will big tech even matter when we're living in a Mad Max scenario lol...

Been finding Umberto Eco's 11th feature of fascism alarming relevant lately.

Read The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea recently and yeaaaaaah

Some people need more diarrhea. 💩

Really gonna need Rick James yelling at these bozos: “they should have never gave y’all idiots moneyyyyyy!!!!!”

I don't think the sentient cockroaches that inhabit the radioactive wasteland in 10000 years will have a use for the ancient hard drives that'll store these tweets other than to fashion them into spears to hunt and kill seagulls for food. And that's me being optimistic.

Feels good to just not know who this person is.

I will probably regret saying this, but Maya thank you

You can't trick me into believing this is a real human being. Nice try!

Can we fire her off to Sirius as well?

"Humanoids" Weeping, pleading with VC people to try and appear normal for one moment.

Why though? Remembering something a university colleague said decades ago, "if I see a person trying to hammer a nail into a wall with their forehead, I don't stop and ask them what they're doing, I assume they're fucking nuts and walk faster" These people are sad and mentally ill. Avoid them.

That's the thing, though: they're NOT trying to drive a nail with their forehead. They're trying to drive a nail with OUR forehead.

Yeah, see, this is why YOU carry a hammer.

Yeah... they are all incredibly mentally ill and I'm tired of pretending they're not. The compulsion to seek wealth at the cost of others should be viewed as a great evil. These people never know what it feels like to have enough. I almost feel bad for them.

Pretty sure I heard this data file at some point.

Seems like the vc rep doesn’t understand life without inappropriate superlatives. Their 10 second elevator pitch with invigorating adjectives has infected their real life. They don’t see that their fantasy about their aspirational business delusion is just fever.

In 10,000 years, humans won't be speaking anything. We got like half a millennium left before we are bottom feeders, probably less.

Seeing interactions reposted from twitter is like stepping on a psychic landmine

... shit people say when they have snorted an ENTIRE 8-ball.

I was telling my wife just the other day, "We aren't fighting enough battles."

And I never find a quality Enkidu in any of these lousy bars!

The reveal in Zero Dawn that they made self-sustaining murder-drone hordes seemed implausible at the time. But now? Yeah, they’re racing to make the self-sustaining murder-drone hordes.

I do love that the fundamental issue wasn't just the murder drone hordes, but that their creator accidentally locked himself out of their administrator account.

iirc he explicity demanded from his technicians to not build in a back door into the drone hivemind to make them unhackable and even more profitable and then got very angry when his employees explained his fuck-up to him after it was too late.

And they consume “BIOMASS” if I remember correctly? They just eat people? My mom finds all this incredulous. Fucking boomers am I right?

One of my favorite parts of Marvel's Darth Vader comic was Triple-0 suggesting Vader's droid army could be self-sustaining by feeling off the blood of their victims and even Vader was straight-up like, "No."

Always been very appreciative of your works but finding out you've played Horizon Forbidden West is sending me in all the best ways ALSO context for those unfamiliar: Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn and for reasons we find out in the first game, humanity's progress has

essentially been reset, and they live in various tribal groups in a world full of machine animals and the ruins of our society. All of these different tribal groups have different beliefs based on their lived experiences and the bits of our world left behind

In Forbidden West, we meet a tribe called the Quen, which had found a way to access old data and information from our world, but through rather outdated technology. As a result, they utterly venerate several "key" figures they were able to find information on - mostly famous public figures

at around the 2040 time frame - because the information they were able to access weren't historical articles or anything, they were just current events at the time. Many of those public figures absolutely did not deserve veneration - a most notable example being Ted Faro

(Spoilers for the first game) Like a certain Schrödinger's government department head/despot we're having to deal with right now, Faro is a silicon valley techbro who got a lot of positive press in his earlier life but later was... let's just say he was responsible for a Lot Of Bad Things. :' )

But because of the outdated technology the Quen had, they weren't able to access the most recent information (think Microsoft Paint trying to open a Photoshop file). So they almost *worshiped* Ted Faro, and one of the titles of high authority in their society was "ceo" (pronounced "see-oh")

Particularly in FW, a ceo spends a lot of time trying to style himself as "Ted Faro reborn" and causes a fair number of problems during that part of the game. Anyway play both games, they're great and honestly have one of the more accurate looks on how our society could turn out at this point imo.

Thank you for the long explanation from someone who doesn’t play video games. I appreciate the context.

Weirdly still a healthier way to cope with mortality then stealing your sons blood and measuring his dick at night...

Who the fuck even is that? "Humanity in 10 millennia will speak my name", I don't know who you are now. People spoke Alexander's name in his age because he conquered across three continents, not because he whined about the 'normies' on main.

You always gotta remember the fact that the main reason we remember half of the "big names" of the 19th century is not because they are aspirational, it's because they were broadly and rightfully reviled for the horrific acts they partook in. There are countless smaller offenders nobody remembers.

We remember them under the title “Robber Barons” for a reason. But hey, if you can’t be a success , you can always serve as a warning to others of mistakes not to be repeated. (Unfortunately nothing guarantees people will bother to learn from examples of others, as she herself demonstrates)

the problem is, certain people see that as an honorific, rather than the intended insult.

They are Hero in the greek sense. People who do might, memorable deeds, good or bad. And hero worship should be reviled. A man if he must be remember, should only be remember for what he wanted other to forget. Like the time Elon shit himself at a party.

Wow. That really does look like something you would find in a datapoint collectible in Horizon.

The cope is strong with this one

Rip to ozymandias but the mighty *will* gaze upon my works and despair

Wtf

Heroism and lore? Is that what you call drinking "raw water" at Burning Man and living to tell the tale?

There is no way “Emily” isn’t a 17 year old boy cosplaying. I refuse to believe otherwise

Just looked at “her” Twitter and am even more convinced. I know it’s a bit sexist of an assumption but women generally just don’t act like teenaged nazi edgelords like that

We can be insecure megalomaniac assholes too.

No doubt. Check out the Twitter though, it’s straight up groyper who just finished reading Atlas Shrugged level shit. And the obvious AI generated profile pic… it’s just too weird and screams teenage boy to me

I believe you. I was just being an asshole.

So who is this Emily character?

I'm still furious we never got to see the fuckin Dunwich Horror that Faro turned into

There isn’t the faintest chance of visually portraying him in a way that’s authentic to how fuckin’ pathetic he deserves to be. #FuckTedFaro

I think you're right here, not showing it is probably the better choice rather than having to put in all the creature design time to make him as Resident Evil as you'd need. The implied horror is enough

I prefer the implied horror, but knowing property evolution as I do I expect some Elden Ring Eldritch Horror version of him in the next mainline game

I think the main thing is that well made body horror is just kind of inherently cool, you know? And Faro is… well, you know. #FuckTedFaro

Pathetic. They won't even be remembered for their negative impact, and the very few ones who do, won't have anything but utter contempt, because these people cannot help but exhude their idiocy like a noxious aura.

Wow they sound like great company /s

I've already forgotten who this is.

Psychedelics did the opposite of what it was supposed to do with these people

People like Emily were not bullied enough in grade school but I say it's never too late to start now so they STFU and eat a cow pie.

This is doubly funny for me, because I keep getting the saying wrong as "ozymandias wept for there were no worlds left to conquer"

Replaying Forbidden West right now and I forgot just how much this game nails them, from Faro's "I, a billionare, have failed so I'm erasing all human history" to basically EVERYTHING about the Zeniths.

what, they'll talk about how gay she was on the internet? that's based and all but somehow i doubt that's the legacy she wants

These people would burn millions of acres worth of trees to build a a sign with their name rather than plant any for future generations to carve their initials on.

This woman's a fucking dork and I mean that in the meanest way possible.

False. I fight knights on my way to work.

"they fight no great battles" yeah spending all of my free time trying not to be killed by the side effects of this person's mere existence is really just kind of a minor skirmish

I don't know who this person is so in 10 minutes time I will continue to have never uttered their name

a thought experiment i have been posing to people - which will be forgotten first by english speakers - Robin Hood or King Arthur.

As in, Alexander and the terrible horrible no good very bad day?

big "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair" energy

It slightly annoys me that we actually know quite a deal about Ozymandias AKA Ramses II.

I battle great foes every time I clean my room or make my bed!!!!

A bunch of Baby Ted Faro’s looking to screw over all of humanity so they can be the protagonist.

That account is real? It isn't satire? That just Eric Erickson's sixth stage of development I think. But terrible. That human needs a real friend.

lol who is this loser?

See? Forgotten already!

See her bird TL for worse

It’s wild how that game has proven itself as harbinger. The entire story is about a Silicon Valley techbro ruining civilization

The problem is their tech actually did something.

I still think reality is veering a little closer to Fallout, but this is a close second yeah.

Interesting how more than one video game franchise has centered on tech hubris destroying humanity 🤔

Yeah but Ted Faro is the single most believable villain in all of fiction for my money at this point

I didn't care as much for the Zeniths - they're a decent concept executed kinda poorly I think (not enough buildup) but the scenes with Faro where he stammers plaintively through his self-justifications while doing monstrous shit are just so dead-on

ugh now I gotta find like $500 for a better GPU to play it, thanks.

Or just snag a PS5

…also $500

New

Averaging high $300s on eBay used in good condition, usually with expensive shipping. I guess the calculation of value there is up to the buyer.

They usually have a couple at your local GameStop

IIRC there's no less than three tech startups trying to build robots that munch on organic "waste" and pollution for fuel. One for the ocean, one for reclaiming/resetting landfills, and one for clearing war zones.

A Silicon Valley techbro ruining civilization...THRICE. First because he's a moron, and then he proceeds to ruin all post-apocalyptic shelters, AND the thing designed to recreate society later because he doesn't want to be known as a moron. Society could have survived two of those, but not three.

Great game, let’s just hope these Silicon Valley types get the Ted Faro treatment

Do we have to wait until they end the world, before we shove them into their underground prisons, oops I mean bunkers?

The great thing about underground “end of the world” bunkers is they need ventilation systems — ventilation systems that will make handy gender neutral toilets in the apocalypse.

Also their security force who will definitely not instantly turn on them the moment civilisation falls.

I love the fact that these people both want to dismantle public education and libraries but also want their Tweets to be recorded as historical documents.

Who even is that? I honestly have no idea.

Is that Emily!? THE EMILY!? The one that funded Vexaltek and slayed Netuserv? 😱 I'm fucking hyper ventilating right now

“Then Emily wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

The bang of D.E.N.I.S. off this 😬

I don't think she's correct because neither me nor anyone in my immediate vicinity knows who tf she is rn but apparently she thinks she out here felling giants

She'll be in the old folks home tied to a chair raving about her great deeds and the nurse will come in. "Emily dear, it's time for your medicine and yogurt. Come now. Off to your room!"

I don’t know who Emily the VC is, and I really didn’t have much of a goal in life. But now I have a goal. Forget Emily and get others to forget her along the way. I will feel successful if in 10,000 years time, humanoids speak of the campaign for humans to forget whomever she was.

strike their name from every stone so that even the gods will not find it in the book of life

Not once does she consider that us "non-elites" could ever live interesting lives of our own that aren't delusional ego-stroking fantasies, nor that the reason our day-to-days are so mundane and soul-crushing is because we're the blood-soaked gears turning the machine that makes her life so cushy.

I swear to fuck I have met these exact people in SV before. Reminds me of watching Silicon Valley where it rapidly became uncomfortably uncanny. Really makes me want to take a short walk off a long pier.

This is a joke?

Funny enough, I started listening to BtB while playing through Forbidden West for the first time.

Basically. They all think they’re going to be Zefram Cochrane but in reality they’re Ted Faro.

xkcd.com/610