"Here's the problem Bro, sounds like you've never been outside of America."

The Privileged and the Masochists are the biggest moralizers online.

Oh gawds, this is the phrase I could say to most of the people I see moralizing against various stuff in Reddit. It’s especially relevant when people criticize video game piracy. In specific, this is the phrase that someone used to put some anti-piracy moralizer in his place. The moralizer said.

They can spend hundreds of $$’s for the original console but can’t afford $10 for a used game?

If it costs an arm and a leg for a new legit game, it must cost them several bodies for a console itself.

It all comes down to buying games you can afford. If they can’t afford MW3 because it is $60, buy older games that are $10.

To which the user pikatu replied:

Here’s the problem Bro, sounds like you’ve never been outside of America. Games in Australia are $100. Do you know how much games in Brazil Cost? 6 month old games are USD$140 [Citation]. What does the average person make in salary in Brazil at USD?

The minimum wage set for the year of 2011 is R$7,080.00 or R$545 per month plus an additional 13th salary in second half of December. Wikipedia

This is why piracy will never go away. Most people play games, will not have money to buy a new game Finally, seeing as how the xbox 360 costs them 581.1743 US dollars Walmart. 4 games cost as much as 360. Older games. With the income they make, they cannot afford it. Piracy is huge in Brazil AND in China, and other third world countries. You talking complete shit while ignorant of how economics works isn’t going to help at all.

So succinctly said and such a great example to point out where most of the piracy is coming from and why.

This kind of mentality – of the clueless First Worlders who projects their own social status on the rest of the world – is frustratingly common. I encounter it almost daily online, and most often than not, it comes from the most moralizing and least empathic people available.

The original commenter then replied

I’m from New Zealand actually. Games here are between $120 and $150.

I’m a student, so I buy games that I can afford. The only brand new game I’ve actually ever bought was Starcraft 2, which I saved up for over 4 months.

I make about $4,000 a year so I don’t buy new games, I buy old games for $5 or $10, and I make less than the average wage of a Brazilian. Granted, though, the games are easier for me to procure in New Zealand.

Which points out the second class of people who like to moralize. The masochists. And if there’s anyone better at moralizing than the privileged, it’s the tools. The 53 percenters and the oppressed who can’t tolerate those more oppressed by themselves jumping up the privilege ladder. Here is someone who had to pay something like half his allowance to buy one game and instead of thinking there’s something wrong with that, and how they’re being excluded from popular culture just because of their economic situation, they’d rather that everyone else is excluded as well, only more so.

It’s the absurdity of not finding ways to improve your own shitty situation, but making sure those in a shittier one don’t get to bypass you.

One thought on “"Here's the problem Bro, sounds like you've never been outside of America."”

  1. Actually my issue with the "just buy games used" argument is that the developers don't see any money from used game sales. One of the main arguments against piracy is that the developers lose money, but if you're going to buy it used anyway the net result is the same; you give the developers $0. The only institution you support are the stores that sell used games, which put major negative pressures on the developers in many ways, such as high costs for advertising in their stores; i.e. requiring that they "purchase" a high volume rack or endcap at a set price in addition to regular costs of advertising. I heard a developer rant about Gamestop and the like before…

    Either way if you're going to give the developer $0 for their game I really don't see a difference between downloading it or purchasing it from a reseller.

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