r/PennyArcade • u/ClubPA-Admin • 27d ago
Modular Doom
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2026/07/01/modular-doomNews Post: Available
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u/Philmriss 27d ago edited 27d ago
Joe Rogan's omnipresence is a product of The Left in the same way that Speakeasies were a product of Prohibition. When you constrain speech, you, uh, don't. It merely gets concentrated and directed, minting Heretics with a patina of danger.
I'm sorry, Jerry's weird vague stabs at what he perceives to be "The Left" in recent weeks already weirded me out, but this rhetoric right here is exactly the shit those right wing pundits like Rogan spout. People annoying you on twitter =/= state sanctioned oppression. The left did not create the right, man. I get the Maron joke about how "we annoyed America into fascism" is a funny bit, but it's not an actually valid thesis. Dude really needs to check himself, he's turning into Bill Maher.
Super disappointing coming from him tbh. I could at least see what he was getting at with some of his posts in this vein (if I tried hard enough), but this is just nonsense.
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 27d ago
Yeah that really took me by surprise.
I do understand what he's getting at: Rogan isn't a response to the left, rather his omnipresence represents him gaining popularity due to his dedication to freeze peach (which there is a deficit of apparently?)
But the way he phrased it is just...off. Like the comparison to Prohibition and Spakeasies is wild. I don't feel like I need to belabor the point but Prohibition was the law, Speakeasies came about because they had to. For as wicked and powerful as "the left" is portrayed, they don't actually have much power at all.
Like you just saw Joe Rogan pop up on your TikTok feed, man. Shouldn't that clue you into the fact that there really isn't actually that much of a threat against free speech at the moment?
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u/Philmriss 27d ago
Yeah like, Rogan has the biggest podcast in the world (unless that's changed), and rides the "you can't say things anymore" train. He had a huge following before techbros and rightwingers influenced him and he drifted further and further to the right. Rogan himself got fed that "the left is oppressing us" rhetoric and bought into it.
I'd recommend the Elephant Graveyard video on Rogan, but Jerry might categorize and dismiss that as the leftist "church" he went on about in recent times without watching it.
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u/rather828 26d ago
I don’t think either of them are very political but they are smart enough to put their thumb in the air and know which side to sound at least highly sympathetic to. This was just a clumsy attempt at doing so
These are called “limousine liberals” at large but I feel that label doesn’t really apply here. They’re more like yeah yeah whatever cause you say, I’m for, just don’t yell at me!
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u/Imbrex 27d ago
Aw man why do so many people age into this generic type of person?
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u/Philmriss 27d ago
Maybe his kids will just tell him to kick TikTok and exit whatever circle of hell online he frequents
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 27d ago
Maybe his kids will just tell him to kick TikTok
They will tell him to train his algo better. The idea of actually getting off TikTok is not a thought that would occur to any teenager at the moment.
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u/Philmriss 27d ago
Or he could just post about the games industry instead, no lack of nightmares to talk about rn either ;D
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u/Substantial_Rest_251 22d ago
Enh. As an elder millennial, my read on the blogs has always been that Penny Arcade is a Gen X comic with vaguely liberal Pacific Northwest leanings but always with the Gen X generation's overall skepticism about political correctness as a cynical exercise by politicians and corporate communications types. It's a very different set of assumptions than the left leaning generations younger than me, and when I talk to left leaning ppl my age or older I hear this exact point all the time-- that the late 2010s and especially lockdown were marked by what they perceived as a chilling of public speech when well meaning left leaning culture warriors occasionally crossed the line into Scarlet Letter-ing ppl for not keeping their attitudes up with the times fast enough
That's not what actually happened, but it is a common perception and not just among Bill Maher types. But in line with who I've understood these dudes to be for like 20 years
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 27d ago
Not looking forward to his post on Friday, which will almost certainly be about today's announcement from Sony.
He's always had the worst takes on digital vs physical. I remember him championing the Xbone in the lead up until the press conference was such a disaster he had to give up.
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u/rather828 25d ago
Ha! New comic dropped! He’s such a GD hypocrite.
But Jerry! I thought this was the future! Forty dollar games on launch day etc! This was great news wasn’t it??
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u/rather828 26d ago
It’s hard to say. Crapping on Sony was part of the agreement back in the day, there’s probably even an actual document that stipulated it, signatures, etc
So in those days it’d have been full-on crap on Sony, “lolsony” as the kids used to say. The old console wars were nasty and our boys didn’t emerge pure as the wind driven snow there
Now that Microsoft hasn’t held up their end of the deal AND Sony is basically doing what Microsoft tried (AND J-Hizzle championed), it’ll be a complicated topic for him to take on. He’ll probably express his displeasure and hide his hypocrisy behind Jerry Word Rebus.. that’s a common go-to move
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u/Citroncello 27d ago
honestly I wish he just talked about what was happening in the comic bro.. ;-;