I must begrudgingly admit I like Tom Nook, betraying my principles.

bell Ian Ayres the worst people on the planet monsters who are gobbling up the earth's resources so that they can log a high score and the global money leaderboards or are they we on the left often say there's no such thing as a good belly NER but if any of us gone out and checked is it possible that the good these ghouls do outweighs the incalculable exploitation that they used to be able to do it no it isn't and we'll explore why here on good billionaires because to be good at being a billionaire you have to be bad at being a human being or another kind of animal or a robot or a mummy dog or a clown Ram Tom Nook Tom friggin Nook where do I begin with this guy look I haven't played much of the Animal Crossing games I've spent a lot of time playing Animal Crossing new horizons but it's my first time properly playing any game in this series I don't know this wascally Watkins history I can only judge him based on his behavior in New Horizons and what little I can glean from reading wiki articles and he is complicated every time I thought I had an angle on him something else completely negates it case in point are Tom Nook Sloane's predatory he kind of seems so at first right he sells you a house and you have to buy a house to live in town and he's the only guy you can buy one from it sure seems like he bamboozles you you show up in town and he tells you he's got a house for you and it's only after you buy it that you find out how much it costs the house is small and squalid devoid of furniture and flooring and you have to buy that stuff extra and guess who sells it so ok he's a slumlord right he forces at-risk youth into his beaten-down houses and makes you sign away all of your money right but no not really Tom Nook gives you a loan for your house that is completely interest-free he doesn't even really bother you to pay it that much you could in theory go the whole game without ever paying him back and nothing bad would ever happen to you effectively making the house he gives you free provided that you never need to upgrade it that's the way better deal than you're ever gonna get in real life so ok how do I do a smear job on this full and make him look like a monster well he lives in he lives in but island that he owns and operates all commerce all residents all Public Works decisions go through Tom Nook he owns the only legal store he owns the bank he even issues his own currency Nook miles gating certain important game features behind them you can't get inventory upgrades a tool ring or advanced tools without earning Nook miles and how do you earn Nook miles you do menial tasks on the island pick weeds chop trees water flowers find specimens for the museum basically everything that a lazy one-percenter like Tom Nook wouldn't want to do himself early in the game he even has you building furniture for new residents to attract them to move to his private island where he'll charged them for a home loan you front the cost of materials and he rewards you with small gifts nowhere near worth the time and effort involved does this arrangement sound familiar to you you move into a town wholly owned and operated by one company you're given a place to stay but immediately put into debt the debt is payable through the private currency of the town which the company has the sole ability to dispense and collect all goods are bought through the company store with prices set at whatever the company decides it's essentially a company town and nook miles are essentially script you're being put into forever debt in order to limit your prospects you can't escape because all your money is worthless and each day you get a little bit more indebted to the company you pick 15 tons of fruit what do you get another day older deeper in that except no not really for one you can exchange nook miles for real money well no not real money but like less fake money the the real money in the game mind you you're still doing it at an exchange rate decided on by Tom Dukes bank but it's a fixed rate that seems fair enough to me also you don't work for Tom Nook he's not your boss you pretty much don't have a job in the game you go around doing your daily activities and trying to gather bells the games real fake currency you can sell any item literally anything at Tom Nook shop run by his two nephews Timmy and Tommy for bells so your whole day spent doing chores and the proceeds of those chores give you money from Tom Nook but you're not his employee it's just that if you want any of standard of living at all it has to benefit him you're free to laze about fishing and I don't know releasing your fish because you can't sell him furnishing your house with whatever floats across the sky on a balloon but if you want money he's the only game in town there are plenty of other people you can buy stuff from there's nobody else you can sell to except fish and bugs which you can sell to a beaver and a chameleon respectively now sure once a day you can make some chump change smack on a magic rock or digging money out of a magic hole that lets you create a magic tree that grows money obviously you can do that that gets you about 16,000 bells from the rock and if you're managing the trees correctly 21,000 bells from that a total of about 37,000 bells a day on my Island an orange the most common fruit can be purchased for about 400 bells in real life the price of a navel orange is about 30 cents extrapolating from this data the conversion rate seems to be roughly 1,200 bells to $1 meaning 37,000 bells the only bells you can receive without going directly through the Nook shop is about 30 bucks that's the most you can get in a day without Tom looks approval don't worry though because according to this very realistic scientific measurement you can purchase the actual real Mona Lisa for about 4 dollars and 15 cents Tom Nook doesn't need money and despite all of the time he spends collecting money and buying from the player money is completely meaningless to him that's why he hides random sometimes highly expensive furniture and the trees each night it's Tom doing that by the way it has to be because only tom has the magic power to change things into leaves sorry I should have mentioned this earlier Tom Nook has magic powers he can transform leaves into anything he desires Tom Nook is a tanuki a Japanese raccoon dog remember earlier when I called him a raccoon did that bother you that was a nerd trap I tricked you I weaved a web of lies so devilish that you couldn't help but bluster into in your ignorance according to folklore there's a type of yokai sort of a mixture between a ghost and and demon called the buckets in a tanuki that is the power to shape-shift using leaves you'll notice that each item an animal crossing' turns into a leaf when picked up but not just any leaf a leaf with a distinctive bite taken out of it the very same as the logo of Tom nooks company not incorporated incidentally BOC a tanuki also have enormous testicles so you know Tom Nook is packing some serious clackers down there all of this suggests that tom is the one putting furniture in trees at night despite his claims of ignorance it's all trickery designed to keep you entertained with life on his island so perhaps then Tom Nook is some sort of cult leader it all seems to make sense he's the charismatic leader of the community everyone within that community is coerced with fear of ostracization into giving over huge sums of money everyone on the island does free work for him through sheer force of charisma but I mean as much as that would be convenient for my argument come on he's not really he doesn't preach any Dogma and he doesn't really seem all that interested in making people worship Him he's just kind of lazy and kind of greedy so what the eff what's with this guy I can't get a bead on him what's his deal how can i contextualise him how am I gonna make it look what Tom look is a bad capitalist so that I can put this video on YouTube thing against Tom look is a satirical character he's supposed to be this hyper capitalist money-grubber but in every conceivable way he's better than his real-life counterparts he doesn't charge interest or set payback schedules on his loans making them way bigger risks to him personally he runs the entire town economy under his centralized control but doesn't seem all that interested in taking advantage of that for his personal gain going so far as to literally buy whatever trash you have on hand just to keep you afloat he is seemingly godlike powers but doesn't even mention it to you and he doesn't want you to know the great lengths he goes to you just to give you something to do in the morning so yeah I guess Tom Nook is a good capitalist in a way that real-life capitalists can't be but he's also a fictional character made by real-life bad capitalists look I love Nintendo I hate corporation but if there's one I find difficult to hate its Nintendo I know all about their shitty business practices I know about the mountain of exploitation that keeps their industry running I know that I couldn't even own a Nintendo switch to play Animal Crossing without some slave somewhere in a poorer country digging out rare earth minerals I know all of that but I still find it difficult to internalize you gotta understand I've been indoctrinated by this particular company for my entire life I was born the year Super Mario Bros came out and most of my fondest childhood memories were directly related to Nintendo in some way if you slap Mario on a product literally any product it increases my odds of buying it by like 20% it can be difficult to recognize that my love for these games these characters these properties was instilled in me to make a buck that's the strange contradiction of art under capitalism it can never be made as pure expression it always has to become commodified because how else is an artist gonna eat don't forget to visit patreon.com slash thoughts slim but in Nintendo's case it isn't the artists doing the commodifying everything I like about Animal Crossing the art designed the music the gameplay all of that was done by artists and then hand it over to Nintendo the corporate body that owns that art and can do whatever they want with it forever intentos games aren't fun because Nintendo wants you to have fun it's because fun games sell better than games that aren't fun fun games inspire more fan engagement sell more toys and make you wait eagerly for your fave to be introduced into Smash Brothers so you'll pre-order immediately who knows what kind of artistic choices these people might have made if they didn't have to answer to the demands of shareholders if they didn't have to worry about paying their bills because if people didn't fork over cash for their art they might not be able to eat that week maybe then we'd see a Tom Nook who behaved a little differently a Tom Nook who is more unscrupulous like the character was in earlier games pressing the player into indentured servitude and constantly berating them for not working hard enough to pay off the debt he imposed on them through trickery maybe you wouldn't be allowed to go fishing or catch bugs or decorate your house until you finished your shift at nook's cranny and by then you'd be - tired a Tom Nook who nickeled and dimed you out of every cent you had because what the hell are you gonna do about it we already know a Tom look like that your boss or your boss's boss or your boss's boss's boss the truth is Animal Crossing can't be a life simulator because if it simulated your life if it simulated the material reality of just going about your day under capitalism why the hell would you play it now I know I said in an earlier video about Minecraft that under the right conditions living under capitalism would make for a very fun game but an animal crossing Tom Nook already owns everything you're not setting out on equal footing and competing with him in an open and free market just like you're not doing that now with say Goldman Sachs if Animal Crossing played like real life capitalism you'd be booting up a game that you lost before you even started playing so yeah Nintendo softened him up made him a likeable character otherwise this game would be like going to work and paying them to do it hello and welcome to the eyeball zone here in the eyeball zone we enmeshed the flesh of small leftist content graders with our own merging into one mockery of God's creation do you like anti-capitalist rants that use video games as metaphors don't lie to me yes you do you're watching this one do you like surrealist horror don't lie to me you're watching the eyeball zone of course you do check out labor Kyle who in collaboration with horror Vanguard and the lit Creek guy made this video outlast in the capitalist death cult that counts as three eyeballing I'm counting it you can't stop me in this video labor Kyle takes a group of ghoulish cultists trying to sacrifice you for their own benefit and compares it to the video game outlast 2 he also does all sorts of creepy Jacob's Ladder if that's your thing that's my thing so I liked it links in the description below if you'd like to submit your project for the eyeball zone and god help you if you do then please follow the instructions I've listed in the description thanks for watching this video about Tom Nook the evil raccoon man from Animal Crossing a lot of people asked me to do this one I it's fun it's fun to make a video about Animal Crossing leave me alone if you if you liked the video guess what I here's here's a little trick you can do and and you can do this on any YouTube video but I'd prefer you just do it on mine and nobody else's you can press that like button that lets YouTube know you liked it and that's good for me I'd like I'd like it if you did that and also you can subscribe to get more videos like this delivered to you each week I put out a new video every Friday that's me I'm thought slime you can also visit patreon.com slash thought slime if you want to give me money there is no pressure I need to do that whatsoever it's tough times financially for everybody in the world so I'm doing fine don't worry about me just you know it's I just I am compelled to mention it in every video you can also check out more of my videos at youtube.com slash scaredy-cats TV where I talk about horror movies just did one about ghostbusters that was pretty fun and every Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time I stream at twitch.tv slash thought slime son as I play animal crossing and you can see me building up my little town there sometimes I make fun of Tim Poole with the surfs I do lots of things on twitch TV and you can watch all of them there you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 95,979

Rating: 4.9629712 out of 5

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Id: IdmMmZkHaRY

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/FibreglassFlags]

That scumbag raccoon dog is the state in a nutshell: he defines what constitutes a currency, he establishes institutions of debts around that currency (be it the "Bell" or the "Nook Miles"), and he enforces those institutions in an attempt to extract labour from you and have control over what you can or can't do even when the actual resources involved are themselves practically limitless. I don't know why people insist that he's an "ancap" or, on the other side of the spectrum, a "wealthy benefactor", because he's obviously neither of those things.

Edit: Also, tanuki don't actually have enormous testicles. The large scrotum thing is largely stemmed from the fact that the skins of raccoon dog scrotums were traditionally used by Japanese as the medieval equivalent of rubber sheets. The animal is known for rummaging through garbage for food, though (as most canids living near human settlements do).