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Mix Media

Something that has always rubbed me the wrong way is the bulk of Mix characters acting like they hate any media NLM produces and that it's all for topsiders.

Y'all realize that is essentially all of the media that is being produced anywhere in the solar system, right? And there is absolutely no way it's being marketed exclusively to corpies. There basically isn't other music, TV, film, video games, or print out there aside from small indie projects like you sometimes see players running. There's no serious alternative.

You can believe the corporation is evil and still eat up their TV shows the same way you can believe VS is evil but still love having food and medicine, or Genetek and clones.

It's really no different than the way it is today on a larger scale.

How many people are getting tired of the same pop music every year? The same bad SFX action movies? A lot of people dislike many forms of the current corporate owned medias, how is this different?

And yes, there sort of is, but unless I misunderstand your meaning it's all fluff. I believe there were a list of band names that one could easily RP having known or listened to, and you could just as easily make up tv shows.

Or do I misunderstand what you mean?

If everyone is the coolguy exception who doesn't like Juicy Vee then no one likes Juicy Vee despite the fact that he is one of the most famous people in human history.
I've seen that a lot of players like him, as well as most of the corporate (as they pretty much should), and it should be kept in mind that there is a quote floating that the players are the people who stand out from the other seven million, so how should music choice be super different?
Nearly every Mix character I run into unilaterally claims to hate all NLM music and television, which means that they hate all music and television.
@Seir

Today, we have alternative forms of media. There -are- no alternatives in Withmore, not counting the very VERY indie.

And even within what's available from the monopoly, there's still a wide wide range. NLM isn't going to just be pushing out the same exact thing time and time again, with various FX, production quality, directing, etc etc etc.

That last comment ignores anything the mix is doing

I would imagine that player is trying to run an archetype against the corporations, then. I don't think it's a big deal though I certainly see the point that it seems odd.

What causes the worry though? Do you feel like the sixty or so out of the seven million not liking Vee is un-worldly?

It doesn't matter what the Mix is doing. Without NLM or maybe a shady backer pushing bootlegs at great risk to themselves, you have no marketing, no distribution, no broadcast, and no real media presence in the world.

An indie band that is famous among thousands in the Mix should not even really be on anyone's radar next to the latest album that even a low level media star has dropped. If you are the rare hipster exception then you should be the -rare- exception.

I've seen groups of people threaten to hurt someone for liking an NLM musician more than once. That feels weird to me because those albums are on every shelf in every store everywhere in the world and Mixers are the bulk of NLM's audience.
Actually

No, not seven million. The entire world...what's the world population now? Eighty or so players, whatever the number it is, into that.

I mean sure some players hate NLM as a whole, but there is also no consideration of...maybe they like the NLM products that isn't being broadcasted (media stars have been in a very slim spectrum for a while as far as I have seen), or simply do not like the trends of the era?

I would say anyone who is a musician or has something to do with media and not NLM is likely going to despise the corporation for censorship.
I'm not sure what about my comment ignored anything the Mix is doing when I clearly stated the "very VERY indie".

Yes, there are Mixer musicians. But anything you see distributed widely is going to be NLM.

Seir I don't think you scan me here. NLM is ALL of the media. There is nowhere else to turn. If you are not into sugary pop and prefer dark underground techno? They own all of that too. The psycho bloodmetal? They own it. That crazy Prussian shit? They own it.

If you don't like NLM-produced music, then you don't really like any music, because that's basically all there is. Do you know a single person in real life who refuses to listen to any music put out by a major label or distributed through streaming services and only ever listens to bootlegs of live local bands?

These people exist IRL but they are one in a billion.

So Vera, are you saying that without the backing of an expensive corp, mixer artists can't get exposure or money cause....... Youtube and instagram disagree
NLM owns Youtube and Instagram...
Youtube and Instagram are massive corporations and in Sindome, NLM owns all services like that.
Yeah Vera is right here, this is just overzealous application of the theme. Mixers might hate corporates but they're still consumers who eat Bitchn' Chickn', wear Du-Wear, and listen to Juicy Vee. It's immersion-breaking for 90% of PCs to hate NLM media in the same way it was immersion-breaking back in the day for 90% of PCs to be experts in pre-21st century pop culture or whatever.

If your character has good reason to hate corporate media, go ahead, but 'because I'm a mixer and fuck the corporates' isn't compelling. Mixers are the target audience for all the lowest common denominator garbage the corporations are putting out.

Right but... so that means people wouldn't burn CDs on their primitave shit, or pass out thumb drives? Like music outside of GOLD just wouldn't exist? C'mon mang...
Poor pepople, 75% of the time ARE music.
There's meant to be an element of irony there. I hate the corps so I will fight against them with my WAI armor, ZMI pistol, VS nanogenics, and SK cybernetics. I will research my targets on NLM's grid network and coordinate with my anti-corporate allies using my Progia phone. I will probably die but thank god Genetek can revive me so I can continue my brave fight against *checks notes* Genetek.

Mixers are the market. They gleefully throw all their money at the corporations constantly.

hating a NLM artist because "Corpie" is kinda silly.

Hating a NLM artist because you don't like their content is fine.

Mixers aren't all hipsters who only listen to old cassettes fished out from behind Ashlin Pawn
I mean, silly as it is, people RIGHT NOW hate lota things cause corpie, or cause establishement,or cause government.
Right but even the anarchist are still paying taxes
Yes, but they still watch TV, listen to music, consume media, use the internet...

Besides live shows in the Mix, there are no other alternatives to the others present in SD.

Evidently you've never lived in a storage container buried off highway 20 in the hills of Wyoming.
And Jotun, I was in an indie band. We would get hundreds of people at our shows and I still get recognized all over Seattle. We sold merch, CDs, digital albums, tickets...counting expenses I probably made about four hundred dollars over the course of five years and the number of people who have heard my music, ever, is in the low thousands. I am very proud of what I did but I'm not going to compare myself to Taylor Swift.
I kinda see this more, yeah. I do still think it's okay to state that a pop star is shit, because that kind of music is easy to attract disdain, but I see how everyone hating the majority doesn't make much sense.
Are we really arguing about this? Counter-culture is bought and sold. I don't see a problem with a bunch of people claiming they don't buy into NLM mainstream and it's part of who they are as a mixer. Maybe you're just IC smart enough to realize they are a poser shopping at Mix Topic or maybe they are that one in a million real mixer motherbaka.

I think Vera is asking for is a little awareness but I think cluelessness is fine too. I think the lack of a real way to process and promote audio content on the sly in Sindome is the root cause here. If people had something to parse - they could form better opinions on it and would be incentivized to do so.

NLM isn't the mainstream, it's the entire stream.
You can play a social outcast who shuns all corporate media but you should respect in your RP that you're one out of ten million and utterly surrounded by people blasting Juicy Vee, instead of treating it as a matter of course that a mixer would hate everything NLM makes. Right now people are just going to it by default.
I think there's also a misconception here that NLM is only Nickelback, Beyonce, Michael Bay, etc. Lowest common denominator.

NLM doesn't just own the big names in every genre.

NLM owns the David Finch types, the Harmony Korine, the Alejandro Jodorowsky.

You don't listen to songs with 530million views on Youtube? Well NLM owns the ones with only 500k too.

There's a substantial disconnect as well that NLM in an OOC sense is the vanishingly small minority of any performative experience had by players, while the Mix has vastly more actual performers, live shows, and other media-related RP.

I personally have no issue with the anti-corporate anti-big media sentiment that pervades the Mix, I think it's a great source of topside-mixside friction.

There's a difference between saying NLM is an evil media superconglomerate that sucks the life out of everything it touches and saying that you hate ThrillFuxxx because they are produced by NLM. There's simply no one else who could produce them. Everything you see and hear is NLM unless you're at a tiny local show.
Ultimately you can't police other player's opinions -- why not just call them out on it IC? And these local, tiny shows actually make up the bulk of actual player experiences for the most part so I don't think it's unreasonable to view players who go to them as being in the exceptional minority, and not representative of the Mix itself.
Vera isn't saying people shouldn't go to those player performances and experiences.

Vera, HolyChrome plus others are stating that as a playerbase we should distinguish and understand that NLM is a mass marketing mega corporation, the premiere, the only true producer of media in the solar system. From the high class sounds of Blue to the grunge of the Mix, they can and will market every single last genre with nuance to their intended target demographic.

It's okay for your character to hate genres and NLM, but the reality is that NLM produces music and other forms of media specifically tailored for the styles any of our unique characters may like.

It's not my IC responsibility to play theme police despite how often I seem to be called upon to do it. :P

I am mentioning it here and not IC so that people take a moment to consider whether they are being unreasonably overzealous on the media front. Every single song that plays in every single Mix club is probably an NLM hit. All the movies, shows, comics, and books our characters like are probably owned by NLM. Consider contending with that IC, cognitive dissonance is fun.

Just from personal experience, in the past year I've seen two NLM-originating media events, and somewhere between fifteen and twenty or so 'independent media events, this as a character with basically no opinion on the class divide, media ownership, or anything else. It's just the real content that the bulk of players happen to be exposed to, and by-and-large that content is anti-establishment, so it's little wonder the audience would be as well.

The mixside player-character base is also (especially of late) far more hostile to pro-corporate sentiment than the 'background' level of opinion of the notional Mix itself, which I imagine has a knock-on effect to how people express their preferences.

I think I'm with Vera here to a point.

I think people need to be more granulated and discerning in how they RP this kinda of thing. Yeah you can be a fan of some relatively small / obscure rapper who's only popular on Insta / Soundcloud and isn't a huge record deal star but like whoever said, Facebook / etc. own all that shit at some level, though not everyone always knows that.

The difference is, Facebook or whoever isn't actively owning/promoting that rapper, that rapper isn't on blast about how WONDERFUL Facebook is, man isn't Zuck fucking a gift to humanity, etc.

So I think while it's thematically accurate to remind people that NLM is directly or via whatever subsidiaries owning and controlling and profiting off of 99% of the media in the city / universe / multiverse / whatever and hating every musician and album they promote bc anti-corporatism is lazy RP (hard agree!), I also agree if said musicians / TV people / whatever they are, are obviously promoting and espousing love for NLM and towing the corp line they're of course fair game for obvious reasons, and if some mixer is fawning over some NLM talent (like a face of the brand in a big way) publicly, getting gutter stomped is like, what you should expect.

There are tons of indie Mix artists and I think most of us appreciate them a lot. But they're the equivalent of your friend's band when you were in college IRL. They might have had some fans but you don't hear them playing over the intercom at the grocery store, do you?

Playing a media star at NLM has historically come with some restrictions and expectations that have kept it from being a popular role for player characters. That doesn't mean there aren't thousands of NPCs doing the work every single day in Withmore.

That's an excellent point Jameson, there's definitely a disproportionate degree of propagandising in the in-game media as a way of encouraging the thematic divide, and I think that definitely influences things. If you're in the Mix and you say you love X's newest single, and then X jumps on SIC to spout anti-mixer or pro-corporate sentiments, that's definitely rolling the dice as far as being viewed as a corpie-lover.
To be clear, I actually completely agree about the thematic divide being way, way too stark. That basically every Mixer PC is anti-establishment and every Corporate PC is pro-establishment is nothing like representative of how an actual society functions, I just think it's an inevitable knock-on effect by how the divide is pushed and enforced on players, and the chilling effect that results from that in terms of moderate opinions.
Years ago it was much more lax and caused people to totally ignore theme. Corpies were walking around in the Mix unmolested and Mixers were sitting on keys with corpies and it turned the themely divide into mush.

I think it's simply a case of overcorrecting. A mix-as-fuck musician might not be a real Mixer since he's a billionaire corpie, but he also kind of IS the Mix to a lot of people. It'd be up to that guy to walk the tightrope act of appealing to Mixer fans without putting himself in a position where his corporate peers would look down on him.

Corpies have more leeway than you think. You can be a bleeding-heart biotech who believes in engineering solutions to poverty and hunger rather than gassing the Mix just so long as you aren't associating with those people. Not everyone needs to play the same note as long as theme is being respected overall.

I think this is one of those things where it has to be this way for the sake of the divide. It might not make all that much sense when you really think about it from a super realistic perspective, but there are a lot of things in SD that don't completely match up to reality as well.

Sure a mix club might play music produced by NLM, but were the club owner to admit that on SIC they would probably get into shit with the vast majority of mixers. Imagine what would happen if a mixer tried to claim Juicy V was mix within the current climate.

And that being said, PCs absolutely hating the corps no matter what in public should definitely be the norm to keep things as they are right now. The only time that should change, imo, is when the corps pass money under the table to someone for something to be done in the mix.

"Not everyone needs to play the same note as long as theme is being respected overall."

+1 billion, Anor fucking bless.

Sure a mix club might play music produced by NLM, but were the club owner to admit that on SIC they would probably get into shit with the vast majority of mixers. Imagine what would happen if a mixer tried to claim Juicy V was mix within the current climate.[/]

"Yes, I used nanos... N-no, they're not Viriisoma."

And 99% of ambient NPCs in the Mix think that Juicy V is the Mix already.

NLM even owns Lemon Demon.
@Necro

Nah, we just need people to RP with an ounce of nuance RE: the divide, which is itself, most of the time, a nuanced thing. Not every issue is as stark as a lev-station WJF checkpoint in a nice neighborhood.

A mix club owner isn't gonna be like 'Dig this hot new track from DJ MixyTits, straight from NLM Producer Karen McBitchFace in Studio 7, floor 59, co-written by algorithm #90900 and a junior content slave named Janine!"

This is why brands have subsidiaries that own stuff, and why big congloms that have brand image problems (hi Facebook) that buy up big popular things like Instagram go out of their way to make it not super obvious they now own Instagram.

I think there's two separate conversations here -- one about the way things ought to be in an IC sense, and one about how things are in a meta sense. Necronex666 has, I would say, neatly encapsulated how things are now: This (admittedly weird) dissonance is a secondary effect of how the theme is enforced, and it's not likely to change until the mechanisms of that enforcement do.
Here is my take on all this:

Yes. You can choose not to like NLM as a corp or not to like particular musicians. Regardless, your neighbors, co-workers and pretty much everyone who isn't a PC still listens to NLM's music, watches their shows and uses their services. If you decide to hate all NLM products and services, you are the oddball. Not them.

No, mix artists are not at the same level as NLM artists when it comes to brand or influence. They can't be. The system is completely against them. These guys will keep on as indi artists struggling to get a full bar unless NLM scoops them up and the artist goes with it. It doesn't matter if PCs put on 20 shows in the mix and only 1 topside. That doesn't change the theme.

No, there is no youtube or instagram in Sindome. Check the grid. I assure you they do not exist. The closest you have to that is the feed and forums. In my opinion this is very themely. NLM has had a monopoly a long time and why would they want to overly empower independent artists?

No, we will not be softening the class divide. This is a game. A collaborative storytelling effort. We want action and cool things happening. We are not trying to replicate the nuances of modern day moderate classism most of us westerners are familiar with. We want classism that is extreme and in your face and pervasive. Something that causes conflict.

That's not to say that the class divide doesn't already have nuance. It is there - even if you can't see it. And that is as it should be in my opinion. But I am personally against some kind of moderate stance becoming the norm or any other change that lessens conflict.

wow. I read all of that. I'm pretty new here, but I want to voice my opinion.

A single PC beating up another PC for liking NLM produced music makes sense. It also doesn't make sense. It makes sense for the perpetrator, but probably not the victim. OOCly, there is not enough information given to decide if this was themely.

If I (projecting my own personalilty IG) found a music player full of Juicy Vee, or, let's actually say something more corpie, I would totally listen to it. In private. And never tell a soul, except Maybe my Ace Kool. And if if Junkchain John beat on some stranger for liking that same music, I'd cheer him on, echoing all of his opinions, Yay, fuck NLM! Because life is too hard to get shot for a song I like.

IG, all music that's not a live band is NLM, and likely digitally enhanced with neurolinguistic programming to be cool as as ever loving fuck. And there is just too much of it for any Mixer, period, to not like at least a couple songs. That doesn't mean they've heard those songs. That doesn't mean what comes out of their mouth when they're voicing their opinion is the truth about how they feel or what they like. Right now, it's trendy to say fuck NLM in the Mix. Makes sense to me.

That being said, two more things. I'm glad this thread was created OP, by pointing out some potential dissonance, I can refine my own play using some of the facts and opinions presented here. Secondly, someone needs to flesh out who these subsidiaries of NLM are, so I can say "Fuck NLM, except, you know, Exylust labels and that one artist Black Rabbit. They cool."

I'd do it if I knew how to spoof up some lore and content.

Re-read Mobius' post. Question: IS there any sub-brands of NLM, even if they're obviously owned by NLM?
That's the thing though. There's ambient messages about vans blasting Juicy V rolling through the Mix. And there's so many of them, no one's going out of their way to tip them over.

Imagine punching every guy you met who used a Progia phone.

Exactly.

I love what someone said, I think Vera, about the intended play on irony.

Not to lean on IRL examples like Facebook, but I think it makes it easy to extrapolate into a dystopian future. We (well, a lot of us?) are already grappling with this irony -- that a lot of us are uncomfortable with the increasing degradation of things like online privacy, our data being traded and weaponized, etc., while at the same time...more or less needing to use so many of these apps / sites, for whatever reasons we feel are necessary.

Amplify that tech and irony and pervasiveness all by 100x and that's Withmore.

Even the woke Mixers who hate the corporate oppressors rely on things like SIC, the grid, progias, nanos, chrome, even if they want to fight the man. Same with people who want to consume music and TV.

There's still the line I tried to touch on earlier -- if Pop Star #93's whole public persona is all about talking about how great NLM is or shitting on mixers, and some mixer is on pubSIC 'OMG #93 I LUV U SIGN A SHIRT AND DROP IT OFF A SKYWALK JUST FOR ME' it's perfectly themely if that mixer maybe gets their shit kicked.

Imagine punching every guy you met who used a Progia phone.

how else am i supposed to get his phone

Slither said no more mean salty mean shitposts, Vera ;o;
This is a great topic and I want to add a few things.

As Vera pointed out, and plenty of other people have pointed out, NLM IS media. They own it ALL; the recording studios, the equipment in it, the producers, the artists, the radio airwaves, the broadcast equipment, every single channel on TV, the Grid and last but not least, the artists. They are a monopolistic cartel. If an artist wants anyone other than people within immediate earshot to hear their music, NLM is going to get some slice of it.

I have had the good fortune to roleplay with a couple of really good artist PCs. One of them really stands out specifically because of the way they roleplay the challenges of being an artist. They want to record, they want to get their music out there, but they don't want to work with NLM. They want to buy the equipment, but they can't afford it. Because of that, they have pretty much resigned themselves to never really making it. A part of their character is dead inside because they have a dream, but they will never achieve it. That is how all pervasive NLM is. Even a "popular" (in terms of practically every PC in the game knows of them) character is never going to make it... unless they bow down to NLM.

On the subject of music in general, music is a universal language. There are some tones and melodies that make people feel good. Others that make people feel edgy. Others that are soothing. etc. Just think of how films use music is an integral part of a movie or show. Or how lullabyes all follow a familiar, sing song melody that appeals to and soothes children. Music transcends NLM. Even though a character might HATE NLM as a corporation, it is practically IMPOSSIBLE for them to NOT like NLM music. Because music is music, and people are people.

It's a bit easier to not like the programming. The visual media. The news. The shows. Plenty of people realize that it's called television "programming" for a reason. As another poster pointed out, NLM would definitely be using NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) to target content to the respective markets. Some people are attuned to that and will consciously opt out.

But....Those same people will likely nod in agreement with a haphazardly put up poster on the wall of the maglev station that decries "Fuck television! Fuck the Grid!" while not realizing that the poster is part of guerilla marketing campaign paid for by NLM. And that the poster is there so that the cameras can track who nods, or otherwise exhibits body language cues of acceptance to the message. Videos which are then analyzed by AI video analysis algorithms to categorize Citizens with potential anti-corporate bias.

In a controlled environment like Withmore, it is impossible to escape the media and NLM. 99.99% of people in Withmore are not going to think about why they like that new song with the catchy beat. They're not going to question why the pop music channels have commercials for beauty products and clothing, or why the angry death metal channels advertise neXus armor.