Woah mama, Last of Us 2, no one ever talks about that! I get it, this topic is old and has probably been tired out. But I wanna share my opinion because I don’t think many people are on the middle ground position I’m arguing for. SPOILERS below.

Most people think this game is either one of the greatest masterpieces conceived by man or the worst abomination in existence and may as well have crawled out of Hell itself.

But what if I told you that this game is neither good nor bad when you weigh the evidence?

The game’s voice acting, gameplay, and graphics are great, and so much so that this is relatively non-controversial. Even the story could be considered good for a video game if you pretend like this game is an original story and not a sequel. Video game stories are not supposed to be that great in my opinion. Many “movie games” wouldn’t really pass very well as actual movies or tv series.

The problem with this game is that it’s a horrible sequel, it takes the original game’s characters and disrespects them so much that it reeks of the nihilism this game doesn’t want to admit. You don’t just take a beloved character who was the main one in the original story and make a sequel where he’s tortured and killed 2 hours in. Ultimately this game’s story and dialogue seem to be a mouthpiece for the writer’s philosophical or retrospective views on the original game.

The apologetics for this game can get really annoying and dishonest as well. Some of it feels so rationally forced because people want to like it. TLOU2 fails the sequel test and the cinema test. But it does not fail the video game test or the independent (video game) story test. The game is aight.

Especially dogs and cats. they've had to rely on us for food. but how would they know they wouldn't become the food, or encounter a psychopath who kills just cause?

Pheromones. dogs and cats can smell the pheromones for empathy and reason in others. and they avoid people who don't give those pheromones off.

i CANNOT stress how many times my dog must have saved me from bad men and people in general by barking at them and telling me whos right to be around.

1 Bathroom for any home with 2 bedrooms or less; 2 bathrooms for almost everything else.Maybe a stand alone toilet (half bath) if it's a multi level home.

I'm so sick of seeing floor plans for apartments and houses where half the damn space is taken up by bathrooms, it's a total waste of space and an annoyance to keep clean. I don't want to see a third bathroom until a house has at least 5 bedrooms.

Edit: Just to be clear, when I say ‘bathroom’ I mean a room where people shower and wash themselves; I’m not counting rooms that are just a toilet and sink. I’m fine for there to be one of those for every level of the home in anything other than a 1 bedroom apartment.

For instance, they're slowly but surely making us less aware of the speed limit signs. Making us less aware of keeping the lane, when we know the car's got our back most of the times.

But that's the problem I have with all of them:

They work most of the times.

So you can't 100% depend on them. You still have to do your job the same way. But now you are maybe feeling safer, thus the ride is demanding less of a challenge to keep that control yourself. Thus we're slowly getting worse in driving and predicting accidents.

Excuse my limited skill in speaking or writing cohesive English. This has boggled my mind over the years and I really wanted to catch your others opinions.

Not sure if this is considered as an unpopular opinion, but every time I see anyone mention this, ppl proceed to disagree and consider it to be something only older ppl or snobs would say due to nostalgia/tryna look like they have elite taste. Movies today dont care about anything; story, acting, camera work and production in general - most of them keep recycling and are using the mainstream recipe and subpar actors. A lot of propaganda to sell it too. Music is a bit more up for debate as the concept of what sounds good can't be defined objectively that easily and its there to awaken a broader, often simpler emotional and functional purposes. But all in all, quality declined severely. Saying there have always been bad movies and songs misses the point: the argument isn't that bad media never existed before, but that poor quality seems to have become far more prevalent.

Edit: I strongly urge the new commenter to check some of the comments and my replies, as you are writing the same things over and over again. I answered them. And, since you all love to call survivorship bias - no, its not it. Bad movies always existed. Doesn't excuse the lack of good movies today and fall of cinematography.

Alright then. Due to repetition of the comments I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave, since I have spent 3 hours on here discussing. I'll keep the topic up so you guys can discuss further and you can check some of my previous replies if interested - you will most definitely find an answer to just about anything you were ready to comment.

Replying to your friend (or friends) takes 10 seconds max. Not a single human being on this planet is that busy to the point where they can’t reply to their friends (or return their call).

Obviously I am not saying that you need to reply instantly. But unless you’re dealing with an actual emergency, there’s no reason for someone to simply not reply to the people they call their friend within a day at least.

I say this as a 27M. We all know that young people are always on their phones, hence why the “sorry I’m a bad texter” excuse is complete bs.

Critics deeply despised that era of rock. They hated especially nu-metal, metal, alternative rock, and post grunge, but that was a great decade for it; it generated some of the best music we ever seen from the genre. It got panned because it wasn’t exactly original, piggybacking off of the 90s success, but neither was grunge in the first place. Grunge was a mix of other underground genres before it.

Linkin Park was a groundbreaking band who produced some of the most original music. The same can about Disturbed, Korn, System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Drowning Pool, Static X, Rammstein, Killswitch Engaged, Deftones, etc .Chevelle was also awesome. Limp Bitzkit was unapologetically smash mouth and unforgiven. They transcended rock. Slipknot was massively popular too despite not getting much love from radio stations. Radiohead was producing some of the best music ever. Tool was doing the same thing. Manson was great in the 2000s, as well.

That era is loaded with talent and under appreciated bands like Spineshank, Diecast, Life of Agony, Art of Dying, Eyehategod, Bullet for a Valentine, Skillet, Downset, Type O Negative, In This Moment, Hatebreed, Three Day Grace, Rob Zombie, Breaking Benjamin, Mastodon, Lamb of God, Seether, Seven Dust, Mushroom Head, Fear Factory, Machine Head, Stone Sour, Nothingface, Cold, Crossfade, 10 years, Opeth, Murderdolls, Trapt, Nonpoint, Daughtery, Coal Chamber.

Even deeply hated bands like Nickelback, Staind, Creed, Puddle of Mudd, Shinedown, etc had their collection of hit songs and deep songs that rocked.

There’s a narrative, at least in a lot of east coast US cities, that the mountains are “fun to visit but not good places to actually live in full time”

I just came back from a work plus fun trip to western Maryland. Went all over Garrett County Saturday. Grantsville, Friendsville, Accident, Deep Creek, Oakland, Swanton, Kitzmiller. Then went to Cumberland and Frostburg on Sunday.

The downside to this area is that this area does not have the economy that the east coast proper (Baltimore, DC, Philly, etc) has.

But, the properties are amazing. If you do find work, your purchasing power will likely be higher here than back in the flat lands. You could have enough land for pigs, goats or sheep on a regular income and cows or horses on a medium high income. This would all need a very high income down in the flat lands.

I think a lot of people only see a very thin, often somewhat superficial side of the mountains, such as Deep Creek Lake, Seven Springs, some touristy parts of the Poconos, etc. and then decide “this is fun for a trip but not for a full time life”. Which, fair, Id be dine with Deep Creek activites in like 3 days. I don’t know if the novelty of a house in the mountains near Grantsville with enough land for a goat pen and a pig pen would wear off that quickly though.

While there are many case studies of private equity-backed brands/portfolio companies failing and/or deteriorating, the same can be said about independent and public companies. It is not a private equity specific problem. Overall, private equity-backed businesses are a net positive to the economy and labor markets.

1. Productivity gains. Strong operational value-add focusing on active management, R&D, strategic planning, and modernizing supply chains.

2. Better governance and incentive alignment. Concentrated ownership, active boards, and management teams usually have meaningful equity and skin in the game.

3. Jobs are reallocated versus lost altogether. As portfolio companies grow, some jobs might be redundant. However, many times what made a company a good target to begin with is because of the people. Those people are put into roles that benefit the larger organization.

4. Returns for pensions and endowments. These are the LPs who are investing in private equity funds. University endowments, teacher pension funds, foundations. Strong PE fund performance benefits Main Street.

5. Succession for founder owner businesses. PE offers founders and family owned businesses a path to liquidity and rewarding them for their life’s work, when no one else is willing or able to offer a liquidity event.

6. Competition. PE portfolio company activity makes goods and services more competitive, and other businesses (both independent and public) need to compete for market share.

If a plot doesn't explain itself in the first 15 minutes or relies on subtle character work, people call it "slow" or a "plothole." if youre watching a movie will scrolling reels and miss microexpressing on a character face because there was no dialogue to tell you whats happening, its not a plothole.

The Station Agent (which i watched recently and loved) proves movie audiences have completely lost their attention spans and blame "bad writing" for it. If that film came out today, the internet would be flooded with people complaining that "nothing happens" and calling Fin’s lack of a giant emotional breakdown a plot hole. It’s a brilliant movie because it lets people just sit in silence and be miserable together without shoving a forced third-act resolution down your throat, but modern viewers literally can't process a story that doesn't scream its plot points at them every five minutes.

It just doesnt look nice on most people, specially pants.

Im tired of pretending that selvedge denim looks nice. I love the history of the brands and the production process but not everyone can pull it off imo

Basically any time anyone talks about their home price estimate from Zillow they get completely shit on. "It doesn't take in to account the unique parts of your home"..."It ignore upgrades"..."Every home is different"..."It only works in an area where every home is the exact same"

Yeah sure that's maybe true to some extent, but its +/- 5%. That's it. Anything more than that is a complete wild card scenario.

Homes aren't special. There are almost always 100 (or 1000s) of nearly similar models whether its city condos, suburban single famlies, or rural farms. The value lies in what it is and where it is. And therefore its all extremely relative and therefore extremely predictable.

Baseball was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of this. Fun to play, you couldn’t pay me to watch it. It’s boring. I feel like football and futbol have both become more social events than actually watching the sports. And the people who watch the Olympics mind boggle me. All of it is boring as hell, I would rather do the thing I’m watching. 90% of the time someone turns on pro sports I either just talk to people or scroll on my phone. Way more entertaining. Not saying that these pro athletes don’t deserve respect, but good lord it’s boring to watch them.

I've seen many times where people complain that Americans' politeness is fake and superficial. Even if that's true, it's not as bad as people make it sound. It's better to have a stranger smile at you and talk politely even if they are faking it. It still makes your day. It's not important whether they "genuinely" care about you. For someone you'll likely never meet again, it doesn't matter if they are cussing you deep down while smiling on the outside as they serve your coffee. We can't expect strangers to be truly emotionally immersed anyway. And we can never have any control over what others think about us.

Sounds good on paper but you’re telling me the people that can’t read a “pull or push” door sign are what’s between you and a prison sentence?!? The people that need warnings on every product. The ones who can’t list all 50 states?

A jury, yes. Of MY peers? Absolutely not

idk if this makes sense but sometimes i think what we call healing is just getting used to being unhappy.

like, something happens and it completely messes you up. at first you can’t stop thinking about it, it affects everything, and you genuinely feel like you’ll never be the same again.

then time passes. you start going to work, watching movies, laughing at stupid things, talking to people like normal. eventually you stop thinking about it as much.
and everyone assumes you’ve healed, including yourself maybe.

but what if you’re not actually okay with what happened? what if you just got better at living with it?
i’m not saying healing isn’t real or that people can’t move on. i just wonder how often we mistake being functional for being okay.

maybe sometimes we heal, and sometimes we just learn how to carry things without letting them ruin our entire day.

idk, just something i’ve been thinking about lately. do you think there’s actually a difference?

edit2: I’m putting this on top because y’all seem to be confused about what sub you’re in. This is r/unpopularopinions and I made an appropriate post. I don’t necessarily hold this opinion. In fact I mostly don’t care. It’s just when I was a young concert going teen tour shirts were exclusive to tours. One t-shirt dedicated to the tour the rest were regular merch. So to me it’s weird to see them being sold outside of the tours shows. However I’m happy to have provided y’all with some meat. Have a good day and enjoy your tour merch however you bought it.

Edit end

I dont have a problem with the band making generic tour merch to put on there webstore but the shirts sold at shows should be different and not available anywhere but at a show and once the tour is over the tour shirts are burned and written off as loss on their taxes.

Edit: ok so a lot of you are under the impression I’m young. I’m not I’m old enough to remember when that is how it was. I used to collect tour shirts as a teen.

I am not that worried about people wearing them that much honestly but it is a minor pet peeve. I just knew it would be an unpopular opinion and do numbers here. Glad I could be unpopular for y’all. Have a great one and wear whatever you want. It don’t change my life one bit. No that’s not me giving you permission (weirdo) it’s me saying people have the liberty to wear whatever they choose. Peace and thanks for the interactions.

I mostly encounter this in fan spaces for various media, so for all I know it could be a completely normal opinion to the rest of the world.

If I see someone complaining about a piece of media, let’s say a show, and they express that they don’t enjoy it, I tell them they can just not engage with it and focus on something they DO enjoy. Every time, I’m told that it’s a bad take or call me the r slur or whatever. And I genuinely don’t think it is.

If you're listening to a song and you don’t enjoy it, you change songs. If you’re eating food and you don’t like it, you stop eating it. So why the hell is it any different for shows or movies or games? Nobody is holding a gun to your head, and if you’re not enjoying something then the logical thing IS to stop engaging with it. Engage in something you DO enjoy. Forcing yourself to engage with something that you don’t like just because it’s popular or because you want to have an opinion on it doesn’t make sense and you’d be a hell of a lot happier just focusing on what you enjoy.

I’ve been noticing a lot more posts online lately where people complain about how they were treated, whether it’s an interaction with a stranger, a disagreement with a friend. But the more I read these stories, I find myself thinking that the person posting was actually the one in the wrong. What’s interesting is that we’re only getting their side of the story, which you’d think would paint them in the best possible light, yet somehow they still manage to come across as unreasonable, assholes, or completely lacking in self-awareness. It feels like a lot of people come here not because they genuinely want another perspective, but because they want validation for their behavior. And the comments often make it worse with people immediately taking the OP’s side without questioning anything. Obviously, there are plenty of legit complaints, but I think more people could benefit from asking themselves whether they actually the victim in a situation or just upset that someone didn’t respond the way they wanted. People should be more introspective.

there is no plot line no consistency in any of the follow up movies. no mention of them. its all just reboots of a reboot of a reboot of the original movie made in the 1980s. there is a reason why Bruce has never been in a cameo of any of them

They actually are extremely emotional and take everything personally. They make a big deal about everything. They say "That's not funny!" as if it's a fact and not an opinion.

People who make everything a joke and can't be serious about anything can be immature but most of the time they know that nothing deserves a whole bunch of unnecessary energy and can move on quickly when things don't go their way. But overly serious people are always insufferable in every situation they even make serious situations worse because they are so damn melodramatic

There's nothing wrong with not having a sense of humor or not being silly but if everything is a damn soap opera it gets weird and annoying

I think property damage liability limits should be capped at a reasonable amount, like $150k.

If you choose to drive a $1 million Ferrari, why should someone driving a $30k Toyota have to worry about potentially owing you a million dollars if they cause an accident?

I'm not saying people shouldn't be responsible for the damage they cause. But there's a difference between taking responsibility and being financially ruined because someone else chose to drive an insanely expensive car.

Public roads are for everyone. Most accidents involve normal cars, and a $150k limit would cover the vast majority of them. If you want to drive a car worth $500k or $1 million, you should carry your own insurance to cover the extra risk that comes with owning it. Why should everyone else have to account for the possibility of hitting a supercar just because a few people choose to drive them?

If you want to own an unusually expensive car, you should bear more of the risk that comes with it.

Edit 1: A few people brought up building/property damage, and I think that’s a fair point. I’m specifically talking about auto damage, not property damage in general. If you cause $500k+ in damage to someone’s home, business, or other property, that’s a different issue and I’m not arguing that those losses should simply be capped.
Edit 2: Also, to clarify something I think is getting misunderstood: your auto insurance liability limit is not the same thing as the maximum amount you can personally be held liable for. If you have $150k in property-damage liability coverage and cause $500k in covered damage, your insurance may pay up to your $150k policy limit, but that doesn't necessarily make the remaining $350k disappear. You can still be personally liable for amounts above your policy limit. My argument is specifically about whether that unlimited personal exposure for auto damage makes sense when the underlying risk is largely driven by the value of someone else's unusually expensive vehicle.

All the usual advice is to like yourself and be yourself before trying to find someone but emotionally damaged people can find that hard to do, and often a relationship is the thing that makes them feel better, or rebound. There's nothing wrong with engaging in co-dependent relationships and it's done quite often.

If a person can't learn to be happy with themselves independent of a romantic relationship, then they should do what they gotta do.

It's often touted as a poor financial decision, but it's actually the opposite. Instead of investing into consumable items and having to carry financial decisions long term, it allows to reduce every aspect of a decision to a monthly financial cost. You can truly compare the cost of owning a car vs renting vs having the latest iphone vs eating. You don't care about the mortgage rate in 5 years, what happens if you have an accident with it, or if you can afford it. You just check your monthly income and see if and what you need to cut to afford it.

Been playing video games for a long time and honestly this is an opinion I’ve heard over the last few years. “If the story sucks it’s a bad game. But I can excuse bad gameplay”.

Honestly limiting a game to whether it had a “good story” is very limiting of the artform. If I wanted a great story there’s so many other artforms to get that. It feels weird to see people expect gaming plots to be the next war and peace or on Citizen Kane level. I feel like most game plots are there to advance the gameplay, rather than the other way around (at least it used to be pre ps3 era).