how do you think it will play out from here on out?

I would rather they do that than opt not to do it because they fear getting blasted by LibsofTikTok, etc. There is a not insignificant chance that in our lifetime gay marriage is overturned and gay Americans are pressured to hide back in the closet for fear of violence in places where they can openly exist now.

That COD opted to do this this year even as homophobia and transphobia have resurged among their key demographics is at the least a whimpering stand.

Gay rights are attained through hard and soft power, and in fact having US military propagandists--one of the most evil but effective soft power forces in the known world--on your side is objectively strength and social proof. You don't have to find it moral to view it as a barometer for what degree LGBTQ+ acceptance has held up against the recent relentless attacks on it.

In the future should America regress to full gay and trans oppression and you wanted to regale people with tales of a time when it wasn't so, there would be fewer details more evocative of how different it once was than "They even had pride flags in Call of Duty."

Eh, this year after a spate of "groomer" panic that has scared even Target into reducing pride merch and caused a resurgence of homophobia among young men, we can suspend our ironic critique and take what performative solidarity we can get. I think as metropolitan lefties we love defaulting to "it's not far enough" without ever stopping to at least say "it's some effort however cynical."

please try, it takes 3 episodes to get invested

You should post this on Reddit r/facepalm and ignite a war

The thing is, any of his sound critiques of a movie can probably be found in any other Rotten Tomatoes critic's review, but he regularly blames standard pacing and story issues with mid-movies on the writer being too distracted by being woke to attend to those issues--which is nonsensical conjecture and completely at odds with how the filmmaking chain of command actually works.

Furthermore, his fanbase just presumes that he is one of the only people telling it like it is and the critics are all libs, and aren't going to bother to check that "woke" movies fail with critics all the time (Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman 84, Black Widow all got middling reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and movies he liked like Top Gun Maverick got glowing reviews). It's the same indoctrination model as any other conspiracy theory, where you use reasonable surface-level critiques as the basis from which to pivot into "They're all against you and hiding the truth from you, I am your sole source for insider information about this secret unconfirmed way to control you with an agenda," and cordon off a captive ideological bubble.

However, it's as much an example of US decline as any that the popular conspiracies of the day have gone from being about outright weather control and global ruling classes of Lizard people, to being about some blue haired executives sneaking a gay kiss into a Marvel movie or dialing titty jiggling physics down in a Tomb Raider game.

Yes you are part of the problem, why can't you be more like this chad here

Delete account and use nitter.poast.org

Wait I thought the early 90s was when stuff wasn't woke yet and Ripley from Aliens was a non woke female protagonist.

Hilldawg has so fallen out of relevance that the average person who sees this mug without context won't even know what the picture and text are referring to. They'll just presume it's another nonsensical design some sweatshop slapped on a Temu product.

Yeah her, Beto, and Buttigieg had these personality profiles and resumes that were catnip to credential-seeking white middle class libs, making them suspend all long term thinking.

Yeah, this is why I thought Warren stans were psychotic, when their whole pitch was that she had a policy for everything because she did her homework. And when people mentioned that she was unlikely to be elected in the general they shouted "She's electable if you vote for her!" Same inflexible ramming through of a candidate with paltry normie appeal.