The country is Brazil.

If you are unfortunate enough to live in the favelas (aka: Very very poor in a big city), you’ll be under their thrall.

But the little secret is that… They end up being not that different from the government. They have their own ‘laws’, and if you follow them, you’ll be left alone. Their protection rackets become like taxes, except instead of going to jail for not paying, you’ll get tortured – And you might even benefit from them in a way.

A friend of mine tells a story about doing social work in a favela, and how after years of neglect from the government resulting in kids from the place not getting vaccinated, the local crimelord bought the vaccines with his own money and had his own paralell vaccination campaign for everyone that was properly paying their protection money. Hopefully you won’t catch a stray bullet when the illegal liege lord of your neighbourhood-fiefdom is at war with the police or another neighbourhood-fiefdom’s illegal lord for the umpteenth time that year.

If you are not in the favela…

… Well… If you buy weed from a dealer or borrow money from illegal lenders and don’t pay your bills, they’ll probably abduct you and break your legs.

If you do none of those things… You might get pickpocketed or mugged, but that is honestly the extent of interactions that I, a rich boy from the third world, have had with the criminal factions of my country. Muggings. Being threatened and told to hand over my phone (which I did, I’m not stupid). Having a gameboy swiped from my bag while at an anime con.

Inhabitant of a 3rd world country here

I don’t think “kidnapped and tortured by the government” is a thing we’ve done much of since the US stopped funding our far right dictatorship in the 80s (and the military immediately fucked off and ‘let democracy take its course’ when the funding dried up).

… Let us not speak of what our criminal factions get up to though.

Copypasting an intentionally hingeless rant I sent in a group-chat some years back:

I do not care for the ocean… But most of the ocean is just sorta THERE. They’re ugly and freaky but they just do their thing because they are brainless. Someitmes literally. The Man-o-War has giant building-sized tentacles because it LITERALLY does not have a brain, and so compensates by being a living fishing net. You gonna hate on a creature that doesn’t even know it exists? Like sure, do that, but it’s like being angry at a rock.

Dolphins though? Dolphins are different. Dolphins have tasted of the fruit of knowledge, on the same day humans, corvids, rats, and elephants ate the fruit and were cast out of paradise, the Dolphins crawled out of the sea, climbed the tree with their little flippers, and gorged themselves on those forbidden fruits.

Dolphins have complete knowledge of good and evil. AND THEY HAVE CHOSEN EVIL.

Dolphins hunt for sport and leave their kills to rot.

Dolphins use live blowfish as dolphin weed.

Dolphins rape animals, not limited to other dolphins, but interspecies rape too.

AND dolphins get all sorts of special treatment from idiot humans who think that because they are squeaky and can jump through hoops, they must be like doggos from the ocean. In reality they are the spawn of Satan upon this world.

On the other OTHER hand, The Sims 1 was done under EA’s thrall.

I think they were trying to make a joke and failed

… For real?

I was a child that didn’t understand english when I played Diablo, so I’m willing to take it at face value but like.

For real?

I’m good. I mean, there’s a hell portal right next to a certain town in the countryside, but even the demons of this world are more “asshole characters and weird animals” than actual-ACTUAL-demons. Plus they seem to have completely handled issues of poverty and such by taming all of nature with magic, even if they still use money and have jobs. Less ‘socialism’ and more ‘post-scarcity society, but with magic instead of tech’.

… I’m talking about Equestria from Gen 4 My Little Pony by the way.

… Then again ponies are like SUUUUPER racist, so if I end up there as a human, I think I’d be experimented on.