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[–]ilikeborbs 16 points17 points18 points  (0 children)
Definitely! When I first saw this I was so surprised that the developers took the time to do this, it's such a small thing but it's amazing. Made me have even more respect for the devs than before
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[–]wtchappell 10 points11 points12 points  (0 children)
One of my favorite Quark features is indeed the fact that it makes racists angry. :)
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[–]Vazkii- Mod Creator[M] [score hidden] - stickied comment (0 children)
I appreciate the appreciation. Locking the thread cuz some people can't behave.
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[–]Ahlixemus 5 points6 points7 points  (0 children)
I get where a lot of people are coming and especially how contraversial this topic is, but racism won't end if efforts like that of Vazkii aren't put together. Although I cannot condone any of the harmful riots, I can condone peaceful protests because words are power and change WILL happen. Perhaps Vazkii is integrating this message in his best interest, but at least he has the right idea..
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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points  (0 children)
I really really really don't care about this. What am I supposed to do this while I am living in a country so far away from the US? Why should anyone outside the US get to see this message?
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[–]mzbear comment score below threshold-17 points-16 points-15 points  (37 children)
Sure, let's talk about that.
That propaganda nag screen was first posted as "bugfixes and performance improvements", which was a lie to trick people to install this user-hostile update. As a matter of fact, since the onTick remains forever active, the nag screen decreases the performance ever so slightly, so it's literally the opposite of what it pretended to be.
Initially Vazkii didn't want to give anyone a chance to avoid that screen, as it was set to display every time the game was started. After some feedback, he took a few steps back and even provided an opt-out method for the propaganda screen to avoid backlash. However, any mods that utilize the official opt-out method get hunted down and reported by Vazkii's fanboys and CurseForge removes the mods. Vazkii seems to be perfectly happy with the state of affairs, with the opt out documentation buried in release 244 changelogs where nobody will find it, and all mods that provide implementation of it banned from CurseForge. This lets him pretend to have a moral high ground while still forcing everyone to suffer from the nag screen to the maximum effect.
The skipping instructions only appear after 25 seconds, at which point the player has already been forced to read the entire message. Furthermore, the skipping instructions are a lie; pressing ESC will not skip the wait, it will instead change the message to a more hostile one, and another keypress is needed to skip that. The first keypress is enough to let the mod know the player wants to move on, but Vazkii wants to have the final word to harass the players who would rather just play the game. The message was unsolicited to begin with, but after the first ESC he's still maliciously forcing it upon the players who have explicitly expressed that they do not consent to it.
Vazkii likens himself to the police who's holding a knee on Floyd's neck as he makes the comparison between these two wait times in the second nag screen that appears after pressing ESC. He wants the make it clear that the player isn't skipping the message by themselves, Vazkii is letting the player skip it, on Vazkii's terms. This show of force is an unusual tactic for someone who is purportedly taking a stand against excessively oppressive authority figures.
A distressing description of police brutality, along with the attempt to guilt trip the player for just wanting to play, is the last thing anyone wants to see when they're launching a game to relax a little. Vazkii doesn't care about that the slightest bit. As a matter of fact, he has repeatedly mocked and belittled the critics who find his approach to be overtly hostile. It's as if the man himself is living in a constant state of anxiety and distress and unable to see the damage he's causing by forcefully pushing such distressing things upon others.
The entire propaganda screen is a form of psychological violence, and has no place in any minecraft mod. I cannot understand why anyone would think it's okay to harass players like this.
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[–]WitchWhoCleans 11 points12 points13 points  (21 children)
Did you just compare Vazkii putting this text in their mod to a police officer murdering someone?
Are you seriously so disconnected from reality that you think these two things are comparable in any way?
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[–]mzbear -2 points-1 points0 points  (11 children)
Vazkii made the comparison himself. The second screen, after pressing ESC, says:
Before you go, remember: You can skip this.
George Floyd couldn't. Black americans can't.
While you're waiting to play, they're waiting to die.
His comparison, not mine.
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[–]WitchWhoCleans 5 points6 points7 points  (10 children)
That’s pointing out how they’re different...
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[–]mzbear -2 points-1 points0 points  (9 children)
Pointing out how two things are different is called a comparison. Don't take my word for it, please check your favorite dictionary.
comparison (noun): a consideration or estimate of the similarities or dissimilarities between two things or people.
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[–]WitchWhoCleans 4 points5 points6 points  (6 children)
You said Vazkii was being authoritarian like the police by preventing people from playing minecraft for a few seconds. Vazkii is trying to create an empathetic connection between the player and George Floyd. Clearly not the same thing as likening himself to the police.
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[–]mzbear -2 points-1 points0 points  (5 children)
You are right about Vazkii's attempt to create empathy through the experience of waiting. However, you fail to see that the analogue of wait time also extends to the authority that is enforcing it. Floyd had the police enforcing it, Quark's users had Vazkii inflicting it. He is definitely taking the role comparable to the police, whether deliberately or not.
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[–]WitchWhoCleans 4 points5 points6 points  (4 children)
You can choose to not download Quark mod, you can't choose not to get killed by the police.
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[–]mzbear -2 points-1 points0 points  (3 children)
You realize the comparison you just made is the exact same comparison I was talking about, right?
Do you remember what you said yourself a few messages ago?
Did you just compare Vazkii putting this text in their mod to a police officer murdering someone?
Are you seriously so disconnected from reality that you think these two things are comparable in any way?
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[–]WitchWhoCleans 4 points5 points6 points  (2 children)
Sorry for speaking in a slightly inaccurate way. Would you like to discuss the point instead of the way I talk?
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[–][deleted]  (1 child)
[deleted]
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    [–]WitchWhoCleans 1 point2 points3 points  (0 children)
    Funny that you say that but you're hiding behind an alt and you aren't responding to my collection of studies.
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    [–][deleted]  (8 children)
    [deleted]
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      [–]WitchWhoCleans 6 points7 points8 points  (7 children)
      First of all, it's not the police's job to kill people. There are some instances where it's unavoidable, but it is their duty to do everything in their power to avoid killing someone.
      Next, let's go through the thing you linked.
      236 people were Black. 376 people were White. Black people make up about 13% of the US population and white people about 76%. 23% of people murdered by police were black while 37% were white. Clearly police violence is disproportionate.
      The person goes on to dismiss every single instance of police violence against someone who was armed. It's not actually illegal to have a weapon on you in the US.
      They go into detail about a few cases but I don't think anecdotes are a good way of discussing this issue so I'm going to ignore them. I can bring up lots of examples of white people doing awful things and it really wouldn't matter to the argument.
      So let's look at the last thing there. They claim that police don't murder people without cause, I'm quite certain George Floyd would disagree with that assessment. They bring up FBI crime statistics. It is true that black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. However, this is attributable to socio-economic factors. People who are impoverished are far more likely to commit crime than middle class people. Black families have about 1/50th the household wealth on average compared to a white household. There are many other factors that create the disparity between black/white crime rates but I will stop here.
      So let's take a look at some studies: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319660605_More_Black_than_Blue_Comparing_the_Racial_Attitudes_of_Police_to_Citizens This study suggests that police are indeed biased against black people.
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/black-americans-killed-by-police-analysis Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police than white people despite there being more than 5 times as many white people as black people.
      https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 Black people get killed by police a lot.
      https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/puar.12956 This study shows that police violence is not due to a few bad apples and is a systemic issue.
      Even with all this data, someone might make the argument that this is caused by black people simply being more violent than white people genetically. When accounting for things like poverty and location, crime rates tend towards parity. This shows that these crime issues can be solved by fixing these racial disparities rather than simply cracking down harder on violent neighborhoods.
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      [–][deleted]  (6 children)
      [deleted]
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        [–]WitchWhoCleans 6 points7 points8 points  (5 children)
        Shame you can't read the studies I cited. I think you just hate black people.
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        [–][deleted]  (4 children)
        [deleted]
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          [–]WitchWhoCleans 6 points7 points8 points  (3 children)
          There's nothing to debate. You didn't respond to my points, you just reiterated that you think black people are bad crime people.
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          [–][deleted]  (2 children)
          [deleted]
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            [–]WitchWhoCleans 4 points5 points6 points  (1 child)
            Ah yes, I remember saying that. Your side is so damn weak that you have to make up my argument in order to beat it.
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            [–]deepinferno 2 points3 points4 points  (13 children)
            Isn't a major point of protesting is to be disruptive to bring awareness to the issue? Sounds like he is doing exactly that.
            Just in a 21st century sort of way.
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            [–]mzbear -1 points0 points1 point  (12 children)
            Disruptive protests are effective, yes. However, Vazkii went too far by trying to guilt trip players who wanted to skip the disruption. People launch the game because they want to play the game, and condemning the players for wanting to play isn't just a disruption, it's an attack against the players. It's harassment.
            The trust has been breached, and thus I wont be touching any of Vazkii's mods ever again. The man shows zero remorse over the distress and damage he has caused, which means he WILL abuse his power over his users again should he think it would further his agenda. Unfortunately all the major modpacks use his mods, so he pretty much eliminated the enjoyment of most of modded minecraft for me. The game used to be a safe place, but that feeling is now gone.
            Maybe this is exactly what he wanted? I mean, he probably doesn't care if anyone enjoys minecraft at all, as long as they learn about BLM.
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            [–]deepinferno 1 point2 points3 points  (11 children)
            Not really much of a disruption if you can just skip it is it? Can you just skip a traffic jam caused by protestors? I would argue if you could just skip it then it would no longer be disruptive.
            Distress and damage? Dude your really really overselling this. Your not damaged from having to read a few lines (or just ignore them for a while). Your fine, you will have no lasting damage from this.
            You have been INCONVENIENCED and your acting like someone has harmed your family. You need to gain some perspective on things and relax. You don't have a some sort of constitutional right to play someone's mod pack immediately and without disruption.
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            [–]mzbear -1 points0 points1 point  (10 children)
            The damage isn't caused by the lines of text, but the implications of what Vazkii is capable of doing.
            Minecraft mods are executable code and they can do absolutely anything, and Vazkii has demonstrated he has no respect towards people playing his mod. I no longer trust him. Who knows what the hell he will push out in future updates to his mods?
            Next time, it might not be just text. I mean, wouldn't it be really effective to start snooping on people's browsing histories to determine if they're pro-BLM or not and then do something based on that information, right? How about installing disruptive screens that happen during Windows startup instead of Minecraft startup? How about taking over email clients and browser webmails to send some BLM propaganda to the player's address book? Where would Vazkii draw the line? Would he draw the line ANYWHERE at all? Maybe the only reason he isn't doing any of that is because it's too much work to get it to work properly and he knows he only gets one shot at the more extreme measures before people stop using his mods.
            He has already resorted to lying and deceptive commit messages to push this BLM nag screen. Maybe in the future he might ship code that has additional patches on top of what he's showing on github. There's no way I'm going to reverse engineer every new version of his mods to see if they're safe to use. Most people don't really seem to care, and that includes modpack makers, which unfortunately means I will not be playing any of those modpacks at all anymore. As a matter of fact, I've stopped playing modded minecraft entirely for the time being. With how boring vanilla gameplay is, I might just stop playing minecraft entirely for the rest of the year and see what the situation is like in 2021.
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            [–]deepinferno 3 points4 points5 points  (9 children)
            Holy slippery slope argument batman! Your arguing about future actions things he hasn't done and would be a felony. You can't argue future actions, that's insane!
            Just because someone dosen't agree with you about issues dosen't make them some sort of evil boogie man, someone who will stop at anything to damage you and your family.
            He INCONVENIENCED you, he did not harrass you, hack you, expose personal data or slander you. Your just making the rest up in your head because in your mind people who are pro BLM are some sort of antichrist radicals.
            Let's do a short list of pro BLM companies
            Airbnb
            A16z
            Bumble
            Cisco
            Docusign
            DoorDash
            Eaze
            Etsy
            Grindr
            Grubhub
            IBM
            Matchstick Ventures
            Microsoft
            Niantic
            Peloton
            Reddit
            RobinHood
            Salesforce
            Shopify
            Snap
            Uber
            Techtonic
            Just so you know who else are radical hackers in the waiting and who's services you should avoid.
            Hell reddit is pro BLM! They have made many many messages about this and to today still have the logo blacked out in support. I guess there going to hack you soon!
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            [–]mzbear -1 points0 points1 point  (8 children)
            This isn't about BLM or about disagreeing with his political views. He can have his opinions and I don't care. It's about his methods. I'm not particularly interested in arguing about BLM at all, I just no longer feel safe giving Vazkii the ability to run code on my system. He lied when distributing the code, he lied in the nag screen itself, and he mocked people who criticized him for what he was doing. He even shitposted an "are you winning son?" meme that included my critic about the "breach of trust" among other people's feedback, which shows how he feels about deliberately messing with people.
            Besides, those things I mentioned are not exactly felonies since running a mod will explicitly authorize him to access the computer. There are some implicit expectation about what a minecraft mod should and should not do, but as long as he doesn't access financial information or obtain data with the intent to extort anyone, the actions I described are not felonies. Not to mention, as far as I know the guy lives in Portugal, not USA. I just briefly read through the cybercrime laws of Portugal, and I think as long as he doesn't "severely disrupt" anything (i.e. make the computer completely inoperable, which would count as "Computer Sabotage" under their law), it wouldn't be illegal to do any of the things I described in a minecraft mod.
            The only question is, how much is he willing to do? Call it a slippery slope, but that's how trust works. Once broken, it's completely broken.
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            [–]deepinferno 2 points3 points4 points  (7 children)
            When you start with "That propaganda nag screen" you can see how i would be a little confused about the source of your anger. Dont spin this into you not caring about his political views, its frankly disingenuous and pretty sad.
            Vazkii is protesting, sometimes protests are inconvenient. deal with it, or stop using the mod, you don't need to sit here claiming to be harmed by it.
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            [–]mzbear -2 points-1 points0 points  (6 children)
            Dictionary definition for propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
            Are you saying Quark's BLM screen is not, in fact, propaganda?
            You accuse me of being insincere, but I'm just calling it what it is. It IS propaganda, and calling it propaganda has nothing to do with what I think about rights of blacks, police brutality, BLM, or anything at all. I hate the idea of any kind of political messages being force fed upon me, especially ones that are trying to cause emotional distress. I play Minecraft to relax. It's the worst possible timing to harass me with shit like that, because I specifically want to disengage from real life when I launch the game. Ruining that is an asshole move.
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            [–]deepinferno 1 point2 points3 points  (5 children)
            No I wouldn't call it propaganda and calling it such would be strongly implying it's false. The word propaganda has clear negative connections and you know that, I know that but for some reason you feel the need to say you didn't mean it that way.