Downey’s absence is a VERY large reason.

They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

I go back to (and have said), people aren’t really honest about how much brand identification is really still a thing.

I think the only major issue I’d take is to take anything about Redfall as indicitive of Microsoft.

I think that’s true for Nintendo fans.

Epstein just reads like someone who was part of the New York elite.

It takes a while to absorb the actual arguments. The previous set of arguments in the US were a house of cards and fell apart as such.

Or just start splitting things up. The problem with trying to stop mergers is in the current markets a merger is just a way of gaining scale and preventing them prevents an avenue of competition.  You may not be able to stick the toothpaste back in the tube.

That’s also kind of why the whole thing is ridiculous.

I think people fail to understand that not all people are a “fully cooked” product. A relationship or even “Sex” isn’t really a badge of honor - truly horrible people have had both. They’re both entirely based on who you’ve known and where they’ve been in their lives. So yea those guys will over time develop more and…

The thing is - on the whole accurate but exaggerated portrayals can become hurtful stereotypes. Many of the reasons a particular portrayal may ring true is because a vast portion of the audience may know people that are exactly like that taken to an extreme.

In the end it’s really about us, the audience anyway.  If we won’t buy something they won’t make it.  If we will, everything in it can be AI generated.  Sort of why every business has an ethical slippery slope when you come right down to it.

You still have to have a bunch of other trades go along with that.

It’s the same energy that gets people to say “people should leave Texas” despite the 45% of there that believe the same things they do.

I’ll be honest - I’ve just come to the conclusion that everyone’s making decisions and backfilling the logic later.  It seems obvious in cases where regulators have bowed up recently to Microsoft only to have to back down when they couldn’t prove they were providing consistent logic.

Bingo - “the middle” has been death in American commerce for almost 30 years now (90's-2020's).

Whatever Cultural Capital is - Microsoft as a company has the opposite of it.  I freely admit I bought mine because I couldn’t get a PS5.  I eventually did mind you, but that’s how they got my business in the first place.

Well there is a constitutional remedy -

Honestly I’m not sure (as a card carrying member of team noone) the online rabble has anything to do with it anymore.

The key is in the phrasing “do not deserve to be in the same category as Harvey Weinstein.” Harvey was a serial rapist who abused his authority to enable it.