Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Fun

A hot take on Hot Ones

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There’s an internet show called Hot Ones, and it’s about eating hot wings. That’s a pretty disingenuous description, so let me expand on that. There are hot wings, yes, but that’s just the backdrop for the actual show. Sean Evans is the host, and there are ten wings in front of him. He has a celebrity guest on the other side of the table (sometimes two if they’re paired in any way) who also has ten wings in front of them (or five if it’s a shortened episode). He asks them questions as they eat the wings, starting from mild hot sauce to ‘why the fuck am I eating this?’ hot sauce.

I don’t know how I started watching. Maybe someone showed me an episode, but more likely I saw an episode online somewhere. Either on someone’s social media or because I went down a rabbit hole, and I was hooked. I watched several episodes based on the guest. There are ten seasons, so I was hopping all over the place. I will note that the interviewer is easy on the eyes in a working class, I will kick your ass kind of way.

Before I get deeper into the show, let me share with you my love for the hot sauce. Or rather, how I used to love hot sauce. My brother and I had a friendly competition to see who could give each other the hottest hot sauce. It morphed into one of us giving the other a bottle for Christmas. Same wrapping paper every year, and maybe even the same box. It was fun, and I would obsessively look for the hottest sauce. I don’t remember the year, and I can’t find it on the Googles, but it’s at least ten years ago. Probably more like fifteen. Anyway, I found this bottle of hot sauce that had just come out, and it claimed to be the hottest hot sauce ever.

It had the picture of a nuclear bomb on it, and it was, indeed, called ‘Da Bomb’. Tagline: Beyond Insanity. I bought two bottles–one for myself–and I made a huge pot of chili and put three drops in it. It even suggested you put one drop in for a pot of chili. I was macho, though, and I put in three drops. Big mistake. My throat closed, and I could feel the heat coursing through my veins. It was the most pain I’d felt in my life, and I couldn’t even finish the pot. I gave the other bottle to my brother with a warning. A few days later, he informed me that the competition was off.

As a side note, when the Carolina Reaper was invented in 2013, my brother sent me an email saying, “Competition back on?” I laughed and declined because I was off that tip by then. I wanted flavor with my spice, and when it’s that hot, you can’t taste anything but the heat. Da Bomb in particular was nasty. It was nothing but heat, and it wasn’t even good heat. It was acrid and vinegary, and there was no pleasure with the pain.


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The Surge 2 dirge and asundry

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The Surge 2. Let’s talk more about it. First of all, the stuttering and freezing is getting worse. I’ve done some fiddling with it, but it’s still there. I’ve always had a problem firing up the game as it took several seconds to launch and my computer would freeze in the meantime. With GeForce, it would try to launch and fail, try to launch and fail, try to launch and fail, and then finally launch. Most of the time, the enemy is hindered by the same glitches, which is good, but it’s really fucking frustrating. My computer should be able to handle this game no problem, so I don’t know what is up with the game. I have read that other people have been having the same issues, which means it’s probably a game problem and not a ‘my computer’ problem.

I find myself strangely reluctant to play the game, and I say strange because I like the game fine as I play it, when it’s not stuttering or freezing. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it, either. Which in itself is weird for me. I have strong reactions to most things, and it’s rare when I’m meh about something. I also find myself trying to talk myself into playing the game more than I’m actually playing it. It was like this in the first half, but it really ramped up when I hit Delver, the boss I mentioned in the last post.

It speaks to the unevenness of the game that I can kill the enemies of the area with relative ease and then get wiped out immediately on the boss. And not in a ‘learn its moves’ way. In addition, the mobs are not done well. In my last session, I went through the beginning of the new area I’m in (again), and was reminded of one of the most frustrating things in the game–the difficulty imbalance. In this area, there is one of the robot dogs that I hate, one of the sniper shooters (A.I.D. officer), and another A.I.D. officer who all advance on me as a group. The only way to deal with them is to run back until all but one leash, and then beat that one enemy, rinse, lather, and repeat.

I just read a review of The Surge 2 that is spot on, though it is harsher on the game than I am. It suggests a fix for the freezing which is to play offline. It says you don’t get the hints from other players that way, but it would be a small price to pay. I’ll have to give it a whirl. Or not. The bigger points the review made about the game being a hodgepodge of other games really made me think. The reason I bought the game was because it was touted as a Souls-like. Or rather, the first game was a Souls-like, and this was supposed to be more in that vein.

It starts out that way, but then quickly morphs into something else. I was complaining to Ian how it shouldn’t be that I just level up my gear and myself to make a boss trivial, but that’s what I did. As I mentioned in the last post, I might have been slightly under-leveled for the area, but  it shouldn’t have made that much of a difference. Yes, you can over-level in Souls as well, but you still have to have some skill to beat the bosses. Or maybe it’s just my way of playing.

You can parry and block in this game–I just don’t. At this point, I pretty much just tank hits, bash the enemies, and continuously heal. I have plenty of core power, so I may tinker with my implants again so I don’t have to worry about my health at all. That will make the game so much easier, but as pointed out by Elijah Beahm in the review I linked above, it’s antithetical to Dark Souls.


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Feeling meh about The Surge 2

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Let’s talk more about The Surge 2. I haven’t played much this week because while I enjoy* the game as I’m playing, I don’t have a burning desire to play it when I’m not. In fact, I oftentimes don’t have the wherewithal to play it, so I choose to play a game that doesn’t tax me as much. I love Souls games, obviously, but I have to be up for playing one. Funnily enough, I’ve reached the point with actual Souls** games where they are comforting gaming to me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t have trouble in places. It just means that I know them well enough to turn my brain off as I play, especially if I play as a pyro or a strength-caster. Dark Souls III is my ultimate comfort game, and I have been thinking of playing it again instead of finishing The Surge 2. I’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s talk some more about Delver.

Delver is the nano beast underground who has three health bars. I have accepted, barely, two health bars, but I don’t like it. Yes, I understand that it adds excitement and tension, but it also feels cheap much of the time. I know it’s a staple of the FromSoft games, and they had one of the best ones in Sekiro (The Guardian Ape) ever, but I think it’s something that should be used sparingly. Having three phases?*** No. Now that I’ve said that, though, two of the three-phase boss fights have been amazing, and they were both in the DLC for DS III. Please note, however, that that meant fighting them near the end of the game. Yes, you can do the DLC earlier, but it’s not recommended.

Delver is halfway in the main game, and he is not optional. Come to think of it, I don’t know if there is an optional boss in this game. One of them I’ve fight *might* be optional, but I’m not clear on that. The rest, however, are not. Having a three-phase boss halfway through the main game sucked all the air out of me at that moment. I had no desire to spend hours battling this guy, so I Googled how to fight him. I stumbled upon a reddit thread (or a Steam thread. I don’t remember which) from a guy who said he had spent five hours fighting Delver and still hadn’t beaten him. Five hours! That’s how much I spent on several FromSoft bosses!  I was not willing to put in that much effort for this boss.

I’ve said before, but part of the reason I’m having more reluctance playing this game than the original is because it’s markedly better. The first game was a hot mess, and I pretty much accepted that. I played it without any expectations, and as a result, I had a good time with it. This game, however, I had expectations from the start. I expected it to be better than the first game, and it was–markedly. The environments are better; the graphics are better; the NPCs are more interesting; and the weapons are better.  Almost everything is better (though there is still a healthy amount of jank), and the bosses in general are…not sure better is the word, but harder is definitely fair to say. And more interesting.


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The Surge 2; the good, the bad, and the frustrating

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So.  Let’s talk about The Surge 2. I’m still dealing with some shit physically, but I’ve been playing The Surge 2 on and off. More on than off, and I have feelings. So. Many. Feelings. I’m about halfway done with the game, which answers the question of whether I beat the first real boss or not. Who, by the way, is officially the third boss, but I refer to him as the first boss because the other two were tutorial bosses. In fact, in looking up the bosses for this article, I didn’t even remember the first boss at all. I mean, I had to fight him because I got out of the detention area, but when I saw his name, I was like, “What the fuck?” Even after reading about him and watching the video, I did not remember him. That’s how unmemorable he is, and I wouldn’t even call him a boss. We’ll get to that in a second.

Anyhoo, beating

*spoilers*

Little Johnny came down to sheer stubbornness on my part and something I mention often in playing Souls/Souls-like games: luck. There is always one or two moves by a boss that are troublesome for me.

Side Note: One thing I like about these games is how different people deal with different bosses. I’ve never had a problem with Gwyn, for example, and others took five hours to fight him. You’re supposed to parry him, and I’ve watched videos of people parrying him into oblivion. It’s a thing of beauty, and I really wish I could do it. More on that later as well.

I find in a good boss run, the boss doesn’t do the one move I hate that often. In the case of Little Johnny, it’s when he vomits the little spiders that shock you. He only did it once or twice in my successful run. Also, the stompy stompy bit. He didn’t do that much, either. I was pleased to be done with him and to be moving on with my life. Then, I encountered the area known as Gideon Rock, which was a microcosm of all I like and dislike about this game.

Let me just say flat out that gear is important in this game. In the original, I used the Liquidator set which was a light set with good resistance. Early on in this game, I wore the Scavenger set (Operator class) which was light, and the full set bonus was health regen on a finishing move. I will always take health regen over almost anything else. In Gideon’s Rock, I ran into an enemy that was way above my level. It’s called the GAIA Statue, and it’s a golden-plated statue that turns into a robotic enemy when you near it. When I first entered Gideon’s Rock, the statues had a red number–which meant they were waaaaay above me. I fought the first one right outside the hub for nearly an hour, and I didn’t manage to kill it once. I decided to run by it and continue on in the area.

I liked the new enemy type, Hunter, even if it frustrated me. They can go invisible, which they use to get next to you before trying to shank you. One thing I appreciate about The Surge 2 is that it has distinctive environments, which is so different than the drab industrial interiors of the original game. Gideon’s Rock is outdoors and very nature-based. I will say I had a chuckle at Metea Forest because it looked so much like a Souls‘ area, especially with the hunters, but that’s forgivable in my eyes.


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The positivity in negativity

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I am a pessimist, and I have a negative outlook on life. I know it; I own it; I’m trying to change it. Or rather, I’m trying to modify it. I don’t want to ever be a blind optimist, though I know they live longer. It’s a funny twist of life–optimists live longer*, but pessimists are more realistic about life. Anyhoo, I’ve been thinking of negativity vs. positivity a lot this week because of several things I’ve seen/heard on the internet. One is a post on Ask A Manager about a coworker being relentlessly (I initially typed resentfully, which is a Freudian slip If I’ve ever written one) positive and forcing others to be positive as well. The reaction in the comments was swift and brutal–the coworker must be murdered, and no jury would convict. I had to laugh, albeit ruefully, because that was my response as I read the letter as well. The comments touched on the toxic positivity mentality that is prevalent in America (and I went down the rabbit hole of suggested links, also about this kind of forced positivity), which struck a chord in me.

I can hear you thinking, “Minna, what does this have to do with video games?” My response is, “Relax. I’m getting there. I’m just taking my sweet time as is my wont.”

I listened to the latest RKG podcast for producers, and one of the questions was from a supporter who had secured a job in games journalism. His main question was just asking for tips on how to be a good writer in the field, but he also touched on his guilt at being a white cis het man in a field that is, well, glutted with them. I’ll get to the second part later, but it’s the first part that ties in with the positivity/negativity theme. Gav went off on a rant about how he hated it when people immediately tore down something as their go-to. He was speaking specifically in the industry, and he said it was his pet peeve how people just wanted to rip on something new. Rory was in agreement with Krupa being a bit more tempered. Krupa pointed out that it’s not easy to write a negative opinion/critique well, which I agree with, but he wasn’t as on board with the ‘don’t be negative’ thing (possibly because he’s the problem solver in the bunch).

Gav said there was someone on Twitter that he follows who always is snarky about something new coming out. Again, I’m assuming in the field. The example he gave was the new Jurassic World movie in which apparently Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum are appearing in. He’s super-excited about it, and the aforementioned guy on Twitter posted something snarky about it. Gav was like, “Why can’t you just enjoy it for a second? Maybe it’ll suck, but why not just revel in it right now?” He didn’t say ‘revel’, but you get the picture.

Full disclosure, I’m touchy about people policing other people’s Twitter/FB TLs/Feeds because I’m a weirdo who doesn’t like what other people like and because I’ve had it done to me. Someone got mad at me because I posted so much about cold and snow on my FB page (heard about it through someone else), and I saw another FB friend post something about why do people who hate Christmas have to talk about it? Why couldn’t they just keep it to themselves? I hadn’t posted anything really anti-Christmas that year, but she certainly knew how I felt about it. I’m sure I wasn’t in the forefront of her mind when she posted her rant, but that’s kind of my point.

Here’s the thing. Those of us in the minority are usually well-aware that our opinion is not usual. Many of us keep 90% of that shit to ourselves for that very reason. Small example. I was at Cubs yesterday and exchanging pleasantries with another customer. I said something about the sun being so bright, and she said, “At least there’s no snow!” I laughed and said nothing, and we went our separate ways. Had I been true to my feelings, I would have blurted out, “I fucking love snow!”, but it wasn’t necessary to say that to a stranger.

Here’s the other thing. When you are in the majority about something, you vastly overestimate the times you hear about the opposing opinion.** Or rather, you don’t notice how many times your point of view is being vocalized. If you live in America, you can’t fucking escape Christmas starting from the day after Thanksgiving (actually before, but I’ll be generous). It’s everywhere, and it’s annoying as fuck if you don’t actually like Christmas/are indifferent to it/don’t celebrate it. Let’s say you read three posts on Facebook in a week about how Christmas sucks. You probably read a hundred pro-Christmas posts in the same time-frame, but because you like Christmas, it doesn’t even register in your brain.


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Hacking off more limbs in The Surge 2

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party people!
If you like pina coladas….

I’m sick. Or rather, I have a ‘bug’ that is sapping my energy and my will to do anything. I’ve had to cut down my morning routine to the bare basics, and I’ve been dozy all day long. I have not played The Surge 2 for the last two days because it takes a lot to play that game. However, before I got sick, I managed to finally find the first boss. I don’t know why it was so difficult for me to get to him, but probably because when I play this kind of game, I wring out absolutely every inch of content I can. I will go on every side path, and I will do every fetch quest, er, side quest.

An aside: There is a bug in the game that if you don’t get your reward from a certain NPC the first time she asks, you don’t get to open the magnetic lift next to her. It probably doesn’t matter in the long run other than it makes it hard to get to her, but it’s annoying.

Aside II: There is an area right outside the first Medical Bay (not in the prison) that you unlock, kinda, but that is walled off by some bad-ass motherfuckers. Supercops, if you will. You can go in there, but you probably don’t want to. It’s the same with another area. It has two supercops walling it off, but I picked them off and went behind them. To my disappointment, there wasn’t anything I could do yet there. I understand that they’re trying to organically wall off areas, but if you can get there, there should be something there waiting for you.

In the second walled-off area, I decided to take a peek behind the three supercops. I did a stealth thing down the side road and picked off all the enemies along the way. I stealthed into the  plaza, then started running like hell because there were turrets and enemies and all kinds of bullshit.

Side Note to the Aside II: I really hate the turrets. Hate, hate, hate it. There is one enemy that has turrets and spider drones and rifle drones, and uses them all interchangeably. Yes, I have a turret drone and a rifle drone myself, but I don’t have unlimited ammo the way they do. Yes, Souls does the same thing with enemies having endless stamina/firebombs/whatever, so I know it’s not a novel idea, but it’s annoying and as frustrating as hell. Once again, I’d like to note that there is a really fine line between ‘difficult, but fair’ and ‘flat-out bullshit’. The Surge 2, unfortunately, crosses that line more than once.

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And now for something different

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I’ve been cutting back on my Streets of Rogue obsession because of a little game called Children of Morta (which I call Children de la Muerta in my brain) by Dead Mage. It caught my attention while it was in development, and I watched in interest when it was released two weeks ago. I was still in the throes of my Streets of Rogue fervor, so I didn’t buy it yet. Then, I started watching NL play it because it was what he replaced Streets of Rogue with. I was immediately grabbed by the art style and the story, even though the narrator sounds like he’s trying to be Wayne June (the narrator of Darkest Dungeon). I also really like that the family is called Berson, and the individual names are Grandma Margaret, John (father, playable), Mary (mother), Linda (oldest daughter, playable), Kevin (younger son, playable), Mark (older son, playable), and Uncle Ben, the blacksmith. Oh, there is also Lucy, the younger daughter, who is (as far as I know) not playable. The graphics are pixelated and gorgeous, and it’s an epic story of…well, I’m not sure, yet, but it’s fantasy, and then to be playing as Linda Bergson. She’s my favorite, by the way, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

I was hooked from watching NL, and I quit watching so I could play it mostly unspoiled. I bought it yesterday, installed it, and I have to say it didn’t immediately grip me. Not because of the game itself or the story or the combat, but because of the controls. I was using k/m, and Left Shift/Q/R as common buttons felt awkward to me. I found out from Ian that you could use controller, which was my impulse in the first place, but I hadn’t seen any keyboard remapping so I erroneously assumed it wasn’t possible. Dark Souls has done this to me, and I’m not entirely displeased with it. By ‘this’ I mean being a console grrl and a PC gamer.

The controller felt much better, but with two weird things. One, the dodge/evade button is A. I tried it as B (forever the roll/dodge button in my brain), but it didn’t work because of weird thing number two. As Linda, you can use the right stick to shoot while you’re moving. In that case, hitting B to dodge is inopportune. I eventually settled on A (the original button), but I don’t necessarily like it.

Either way, I started over with controller, and I played two hours straight. I made it to the first boss and beat it in five or six tries. I came really close on my second try, but then I fucked it up. At no time did I feel as if the boss was undoable, and it’s in part because I saw NL fight it (and beat it on the second try). I did give John, the melee character a go, but he’s very vanilla and boring. Linda is ranged with a bow and arrow, and I like raining different arrows down upon my enemies.


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A plethora of choices and two obsessions

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I have an obsessive nature that if I don’t rein in, can run rampant throughout my life. It’s especially apparent when it comes to pop culture. I don’t like much, but when I do like something, I suck the blood out of it. Which is apt because I played as a Supervampire yesterday and died in the Mayor’s Village to a bullshit situation. I was trying to use an item, and then hwen I went back to actually playing, either my fingers were off or the keyboard wasn’t properly responding. Or, what is more likely, it somehow reverted back to Dvorak. Any rate, the Supercops killed me before I could figure out what went wrong.

What game am I talking about? Streets of Rogue, of course. The game I was going to quit before, several times, but then get sucked back in when I win a run. That high is almost comparable to beating a Dark Souls boss, but not quite because there is more RNG at work than in beating a DS boss. Yes, there is some RNG there, but it’s instances, not whole floors. In SoR, I often feel whether I win a run or not is based on items I get, traits I get, and which missions I get on which floor. Also, which character I play. Cop is the easiest (Supercop is cruise mode) with Soldier being a close second. (I would argue Supersoldier is easier than Supercop, especially with Infinite Ammo.) Assassin, once I got the hang of her, was super fun, and Vampire was fairly chill as well once I fully embraced her nature–and was able to chomp on people even when I was fully healed. It still surprises me that I won as the Shopkeeper, but I basically played her kitted out with as many guns as possible. And, since she got great deals on everything, I had enough money to buy ammo every floor.

So far, I have won with Soldier, Cop, Shopkeeper, Vampire, Assassin, and Doctor. I finished the Big Quest with the Slum Dweller, but got ripped apart in the Mayor Village.

Side Note: I’ve seen a recent spike of people using ‘apart’ to mean ‘a part’, and it makes me rage every time. One of my personal pet peeves (in English).

When you finish the Big Quest of the Slum Dweller, you become an Upper-Cruster. The other Super Special Abilities versions of the characters are way overpowered. This one seems like a joke because the only two positives I can see to her is that she starts with a tidy sum of money and she can use the alarm buttons during the later levels to summon a Supercop. This I know by reading about it because I have not made it very far as the Upper-Cruster. With the other souped up characters, I sailed through the game. Either I’m doing something wrong with the Upper-Cruster or she really is just a joke character (a poke at wealthy people being useless). Oh, Upper-Crusters run from conflict so having friends of your own class is not helpful in this situation.

Side Note 2: Teleport-Happy is god tier as a Trait. I didn’t value it much at first, even when Norrtherlion mentioned people telling him it was god tier. You can transport anywhere anytime as long as no immediate danger is president. Why is that a big deal? I’ll tell you why. Because you can avoid much of the mayhem on the Floor 3s, and you can transport to the Exit from wherever (with a few small exceptions). You can also teleport from indoors which you can’t do without it, which means once you finish the last quest, you can just teleport to the Exit. It’s fucking amazing, and it’s the reason I got at least two of my wins.


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The dark side to love

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This week in video game sexual harassment has been a particularly harrowing one. It started with two women accusing Jeremy Soule, a video games music composer, best known for Skyrim, of sexual misconduct up to and including rape. Three more women have said he put pressure on them to date him as well, and it turned out badly (career-wise) when they turned him down. Then, Alexis Kennedy, creator of Sunless Skies was accused by several women of using his position to pressure them, younger women, to date. He has a history of dating women who work for him, and they claim he abused them during those relationships. There were more, but the one that hit me the hardest (and was revealed in response to the Jeremy Soule accusation in support of Nathalie Lawhead, the victim) was Zoë Quinn declaring that Alec Holowka, one of the developers of Night in the Woods, had lured them (preferred pronoun) to his place in Winnipeg after they started a long distance relationship, then through a mix of emotional abuse and intimidation, isolated them from their friends and made them afraid to leave.

Zoë suffered through this for a month, and then left. They broke up with Holowka over email, and he proceeded to blacklist them from the industry. This was early in their career, and they said he’s done it to a certain extent. At first, they didn’t name him, but two women asked them if it were him. That’s when they realized he had done it more than once.

You may be thinking that the name Zoë Quinn sounds familiar. It’s because they were the victims in a case of revenge that kicked off GamerGate. They were vilified and dragged through the mud, and it showed the very ugly side of the gaming industry and how it was still steeped in misogyny. At the time, Zoë identified as a woman, and the hatred for ‘her’ and her perceived gender was gruesome.

Once the allegations came to light, Alec killed himself. His sister, Eileen Holowka, released a statement of shock, disbelief, and distress, but also support for the victims. Ian was covering the news (the link is his), and he broke it to me gently when I messaged him in the morning. He set it up by talking about the other accusations, and then he said one was going to be especially hard to me. That’s when I knew, and I had to brace myself for it. When he told me, it hit me in the gut.

Side Note: I have never had to face loving something by a person who has done something so heinous. I will get to that in a minute.


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Get your gate-keeping out of my games

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Recently, in the RKG group, there was a post by a guy (gender relevant) which stated that it may be an unpopular opinion, but you cannot say you truly beat Bloodborne unless you do the Chalice Dungeons and beat all the bosses (paraphrasing). I posted my opinion which basically is who the fuck cares? I was more diplomatic than that, but it’s what it boils down to. I hate gate-keeping in…well, anything, but I notice it most often in things I care about, naturally.

First of all, just fucking state your opinion. That’s tangential to my rant, but it irks me when someone starts anything with ‘this may be unpopular’. Own your shit! Who cares if it’s unpopular or not? Of course, I might be particularly cynical in this instance because all of my opinions are unpopular. Well, not all, but many of them. In addition, my whole lifestyle is unpopular in one way or another, so I’ve become inured to it. In addition, it has a whiff of excuse giving in the beginning. Kind of like, ‘I’m not racist, but’ blah, blah, blah.

Again, that’s just a side note to the real irritation–men who unilaterally decide the markers that make someone a TRUE whatever fan. I later tweeted on Twitter that while I loved the Souls games, I hated this aspect of ‘the community’.

Side note: I love the Souls games with the intent to replay them. I love Sekiro, but it broke me. I intellectually thought Bloodborne was a good game, but I didn’t love it. I would replay it if it were on the PC, but I don’t like playing on the PS4. I would replay Sekiro until the cows came home if I could co-op. I understand why I can’t, but I’m not willing to spend ten hours on bird daddy or the last boss once again. So when I’m talking about the community, I mean the FromSoft community in general.

Anyway, I know the gate-keeping thing isn’t specific to FromSoft games, but there’s something about this kind of game that brings out the extreme toxic masculinity. I think it’s because the games are difficult to begin with, so if you play them, it’s easy to get an attitude about it. I will say beating a FromSoft boss is unlike any other feeling, especially after hours of failing against the same boss. There is a dopamine hit unlike any other, and it’s why I continue to play the games.

Part of my disgust is because who gets to be the keeper of the gate and why? Historically, it has been men. Mostly white straight cis dudes who hang every part of their identity on their knowledge of a certain thing. It’s a way to keep people out, and it’s similar to a ‘no girls allowed’ sign. It’s a way to make someone feel better about himself.


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