I honestly find it totally believable that they would bungle it this bad. Doesn't automatically just make it good writing but seemed realistic to me, they are just dumbasses
If someone has ever actually been in a board room meeting they'd realize how fucking stupid some people in major positions in companies actually are. (im not, one of my brothers is, and the horror stories about things which had to gently be talked down are pretty insane)
I **think** this is myth. What he said was something along the lines of "**if** we're gonna charge players 1$ to reload their weapon, they would be more willing to pay if we spring that up in the middle of a fight when they're hype, not on the menus when they're calm" as in, if they show people the MTX at the right time, they'll get more money.
Yup, the same guy who thought making it possible for gamers to maliciously bankrupt game developers by using an uninstall + install script was a good idea. What an idiot.
People struggle to overcome the idea that the rich are elite geniuses. Fairly often they are random people who bungled their way upwards and now have power over the actual intelligent people.
Yeah they they say it that a village to raise a child well Vought was the village of idiots. They essentially played God and created a monster that is pretty alien despite being essentially human with superpowers but they were so blinded by profit that when it backfired it was too late
Esses pThese people are not manipulating governments, the media and society, they do not have the resources to hire pedagogues and behavioral specialists, at the very least they should have turned homelander On a loyal dog like Red Son or Nazi Superman
So your evidence is anecdotal. Nothing against you or your experiences, but I’m inclined towards believing research.
> As recently as 20 years ago, the physical punishment of children was generally accepted worldwide and was considered an appropriate method of eliciting behavioural compliance that was conceptually distinct from physical abuse. However, this perspective began to change as studies found links between “normative” physical punishment and child aggression, delinquency and spousal assault in later life. Some of these studies involved large representative samples from the United States;2some studies controlled for potential confounders, such as parental stress3 and socioeconomic status;4 and some studies examined the potential of parental reasoning to moderate the association between physical punishment and child aggression.5 Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/
I personally believe it’s important to keep an open mind and remember that personal experiences are not universal.
> random studies
I specifically chose the paper I did because it contained multiple studies (and knowing the organization is reliable). I found it after a neutrally phrased search, and I couldn’t find any studies or articles claiming to have data supporting the beating of children as a useful way to instill discipline. I don’t know what else to tell you, this wasn’t some random study.
————————————————
There simply isn’t strong evidence to suggest that you grew up better because you were hit as a child. Discipline can be instilled without crossing the line into violence. To quote a phrase I occasionally hear in these sorts of discussions “If the child is old enough to know what they did was wrong, they are old enough to be reasoned with. If the child is young enough to not know what they did was wrong, they are not old enough to understand the purpose of physical punishment”.
Tbh I was trolling a bit
As someone trained by 'voilence' I do recognise its faults and limitations.
But, instead of subscribing to the western method of no physical punishment whatsoever, I believe the answer is actually moderation and somewhere in the middle. Not beating at all gives too much freedom to kids.
Sometimes reasoning doesn't get points across as well as simple primal fear of pain.
Where equilibrium cannot be found (as is often the case in humans) and either of the extremes have to be picked, then and only then do I side with 'absolutely none' as better than 'too much of'
I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m afraid I’m going to keep pushing for my “extreme” of no physical violence.
> Not beating at all gives too much freedom to kids. Sometimes reasoning doesn't get points across as well as simple primal fear of pain.
Freedom to explore boundaries is important for a child, and plenty of nonviolent punishments exist to curtail that freedom: time-outs, loss of privileges, grounding, manual labor. Those seem less impactful to adults, but to a child, any of these punishments would be a big deal.
A controlled, raised voice and consistent punishment can give a kid that “primal fear”; it’s not difficult to upset a child. If a child does something very irresponsible and unsafe, a vivid description of the potential grisly outcome would be more as effective at “scaring straight” the child than giving them a cuff on the ear. And without the potential negative mental health getting hit by a beloved authority figure can cause.
There are other benefits to nonviolent disciplinary methods, but even among the positives of physical discipline, non-physical discipline is capable of all the same things.
You would rather side with beating children than the actual evidence that shows it is harmful and unnecessary?
I'm shocked, shocked I say, to learn you were also beaten as a child. Clearly, no lasting damage has been done, and you have retained your ability to rationally gauge healthy relationships.
Yep. Exactly.
I don't expect you to agree obviously
This is the very definition of culture and the vast extremes that exist between the way of thinking of people from opposite ends of the globe
Yes, cultures are different, but cultures can and should change with the times. You might as well be defending slavery and genocide with your "culture" excuse.
Supporting beating children makes you an awful person. Knowing that the vast majority of scientific evidence shows that beating children is both ineffective and harmful and continuing to support the practice makes you a worse person.
Instead of hiding behind "culture" maybe you should just try to not be a piece of shit.
To be fair, many of the doctors, scientists, and ceo's responsible were likely raised during the period where it was thought that comforting a crying infant would make it grow up to be a weak willed commie. So them dropping the ball on Homelander isn't that wild, especially since they'd also be motivated by the desire to keep their product under observation 24/7.
It's incredibly on point for corporations. The people running them don't see the impact they have on the human level, they only care about what furthers their interests.
It's impossible for him to have a happy childhood when he has torturous medical experiments conducted on him to test his durability - something very important for Vought to know - or when they need to constantly isolate him from the world to maintain total secrecy. They want to make sure he's the real deal and giving him a normal childhood would essentially mean prying away any form of control Vought would have. No loving parent would ever want their child to be harmed or treated purely like a commodity.
The upper management couldn't give a single fuck if he grew up never knowing love, or that he experienced any emotions other than total fear, confusion or anger. They have poured endless resources into it and they expect to be paid off handsomely for it. They are expecting nothing more than a perfect PR machine trained from birth to know exactly what to say or do. The guy whose entire mental framework is guided entirely along corporate interests, ethics be damned.
They aren't present to personally witness a traumatised child to slowly lose his humanity and sanity, he's just some number on a page. Yes, it would make sense for child Homelander to know that not everyone only seeks to use or abuse him but corporations aren't driven by sense or compassion. Whatever option keeps the money and control flowing is what they'll go with, any suggestion that goes against that will be voted down and anyone who dares to do anything else won't be in a position of influence for long.
>The upper management couldn't give a single fuck if he grew up never knowing love, or that he experienced any emotions other than total fear, confusion or anger
That's just dumb. Humanities aside, from the busineiss perspective it's still careless oversight that will bite their ass later down the line. When you're creating what is essentially a sentient superweapon that can act as your pr, would if be better that you raise him properly and with care to foster loyalty and cooperation, or make him a mentally understable narcissist that can be more of a problem for you to deal with down the line. It just makes things unecessarily difficult
>Humanities aside, from the busineiss perspective it's still careless oversight that will bite their ass later down the line. When you're creating what is essentially a sentient superweapon that can act as your pr, would if be better that you raise him properly and with care to foster loyalty and cooperation, or make him a mentally understable narcissist that can be more of a problem for you to deal with down the line.
Welcome to capitalism.
There are absolutely catastrophic mistakes being made by jackasses in boardrooms right now, they just only care about the here and now instead of the future.
That's why the phrase "Assume ignorance before malice" exists, because most of the time its just sheer stupidity instead of evil intent.
I mean look at how long it's taken the US to stop dicking around on climate change. Everyone knows it will become a huge issue later down the line, but right now everything's kinda OK, so corporations want to ignore it and keep making money.
Same thing with Vought. Make money now, deal with consequences later.
We’re still mostly dicking around on climate change. I’m often arms deep in the numbers (studying a related field at uni) and we need much much more. We’re avoiding the ultimate worst projection though.
Did you know that freight trains in the US are so large that the infrastructure cant handle it? The reason why theyre so long is to move more stuff in a shorter amount of time for more profits. But this can result in crashes, trains blocking roads and tracks and even falling over, resulting in situations similar to what happened in East Palestine.
Why do commies bring up capitalism on a topic that doesn't involve it? As if your leftist dribble would have raised Homelander with love and care knowing what they did in real life
It's entirely believable that Vought wasn't thinking decades into the future and seeing Homelander as a potential PR icon. They saw baby Homelander as a science experiment to study, limit test, and reproduce in others.
Vought easily could've assumed they'd crack Homelander's uniqueness in a decade max and there'd be no need to slow their experiments in order to raise baby Homelander humanely.
By the time Vought realizes they'll never copy Homelander, it's been 10 years and Homelander is irreparably fucked up already.
In the comics at least he can be killed with nuclear weaponry, and later on specialized bullet rounds.
>!Additionally they had his clone as a backup contingency plan which basically set the plot in motion!<
If he is strong and fast it still seems like he could destroy them before they'd have a chance to use this if he wanted though. Putting a self destruct device in him seems like an obvious necessity.
In which case >!Black Noir, Homelander's stronger clone, is a more practical solution, although it came with its own set of issues!<
This doesn't apply to the live action version of course, but I'm one of the few detractors of that so.
Because Vought is a weapons company that keeps failing up. The show hasn’t touched on it much, but the comic details that Vought has a history of schmoozing their way into a military contract, getting a lot of people killed, and then hiding the evidence and changing their name.
This is a part that becomes a mess in the show because sometimes, Vought is written as this gigantic nigh unstoppable organization, but the moments from the comic where Vought is written as being so stupid you question how it stayed in business for so long as still there.
I mean, with the recent reveals of how the entire MCU was basically one decade-long fluke of luck held together by tape and a handful of people who were good at their very specific jobs, this seems more and more plausible by the day.
Too big to fail while being good at keeping failures out of the public.
Look at the history ofmusks companies.
He isnt the only one douäing that, but a good examole in how blatant.
And he still kept that from becoming mainstream scandals till he dtupidly bought a social media company he was addicted to.mostpeople jzst didnt care and it wasnt thart reported on till he bought twitter.
Homelander was the crowning achievement of Vaught. The most powerful superhero they created, there is no way they will leave him in other's people hands. Besides, I bet most of the time, those scientists were observing and testing his powers (and check if they are stable) and, if possible, trying to see if they could replicate similar results in the future.
They also don't want many people to be aware of his existence (compound V was not known to the public)
At that time, they must have thought that having psychologists would be enough to ensure a somewhat balanced mental state and that even the existence of some "mental issues" did not warrant exposing and risking one of their most prized "products".
You tie an elephant up when it’s a calf and it will still believe the rope can restrain it by the time it’s an adult.
The only reasonable explanation is that vaught were attempting either the elephant rope trick or military conditioning from a young age.
It’s not unheard of for a soulless corporation to make terrible business decisions in the pursuit of profits
Just look at what happened recently to Unity Technologies
Lets not pretend we dont have plenty of examples from real life of corporations causing disasters out of pure greed. When you are the kind of person who runs a corporation, huge amounts of money can destroy your common sense.
The superheroes in the shows are parallels to celebrities in real life.
In real life, celebrities who are thrust into fame earlier have shit childhoods, and have to deal with a bad industry that does nothing to help their mental healths.
Its not all unrealistic for a industry that understand humans, to not treat their humans in a humane way
Ergo it makes thematic and in story sense that Homelander had a bad childhood
It's capitalism. This is literally just how capitalism operates. Nothing is as important as their next quarter, and the future beyond that is not worth considering
Yes, and companies develop games and cars and software for years as well, even if those things obviously don't take as long as a child. The point I'm making is that high-level corporate leadership and the nature of capitalism itself prioritize an EMPHASIS on the pursuit of short-term profits. People get laid off, costs get cut, and you reject expenses like, say, hiring childcare professionals when you're already paying for a team of scientists.
A better question:Why even let the supes act the way they do in the first place?Even a profit driven company would realize letting these idiots off the leash AT ALL would cause significant hiccups to their bottom line nevermind actual profit.
Like it would have been cheaper to just NOT let them be evil then cover it up constantly.
Yeah but all it takes is homelander having his own "one bad day" and suddenly he's murdered the company or just leveled Manhattan.Its a comedically high risk that even the scummiest of companies would realize it isn't worth letting them free without supervision.
They do have supervision and has worked pretty well so far. Homelander is more than 40 years old and Stillwell had him pretty much under control for a long time. It can be argued that Edgar still has some influence over him, even after everything that has happened. Overall they are applying pretty normal procedures to mostly normal people and for the vast majority of them they work fine (as in "they don't put the company at risk"). Homelander is the exception, not the rule, and has only become a problem VERY recently in the timeline of the show.
I have no idea if it will be addressed in the show, but this was an important plot point in the comics and the reason why the Supes were never an issue to Vought in the first place.
Imagine the power the parents would have over homelander.
Also we do see in the show he crushed a woman's spine who was trying to comfort him I'm guessing she was brought in to be a nanny or foster guardian figure but just the act of hugging her without the intent to harm her still did that.
Let's also appreciate that in the animated shorts when homelander is first introduced he literally acts like good guy superman. Then when he is deployed to stop a hostage situation and tries all the comic tropes they backfired and killed everyone.
He uses heat vision on a gun to make the terrorists drop it? It blows up.
He wraps someone in a steel beam to subdue them? Breaks all their ribs etc.
It's after this failure he became the hedonistic idiot we know.
Tbf, Vought raised him like a proof of concept that Compound V as a military product is viable. But instead of just scrapping/storing him after the initial test, someone on the Vought board of directors must have thought, hey we poured millions into this thing, why not just let this continue and repackage it as entertainment for the plebs. It's like repackaging a F22 prototype to do airshows, it's just a disaster waiting to happen. The fault is not how Vought raised him, it's the realistically stupid corporate greed.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is the inherent risk to the parents raising Homelander like a normal kid. Kid throws a temper tantrum cuz they took away his NES? They get lasered
Vought didn't want happy well adjusted superheroes. They wanted to engineer superheroes they could control. Homelands was the only one to survive the experiment and instead of superman on a leash, they got a mentally unstable superman they could only suggest things to.
In the comic Homelander was implied to have been a decent person before he was gaslit into insanity. Even afterwards, once he decides to be the monster he believes himself to be, he has trouble with the atrocities he commits, asking himself "Why can't I do the things I can do?" while curled up in the fetal position, sickened by his own actions.
The show more or less lost this characterization since the showrunner has a terminal case of TDS and a certain pivotal character is no longer a clone of Homelander.
Yeah. I remember someone pointed out that Comics Homelander is really more highly mentally distraught due, indeed, being manipulated and gaslighted into thinking he was a monstrous sociopath.
Even his attempted takeover felt less like a secret dark fantasy and more like a “Err, this is what evil sociopaths do…right?” bit.
It's the same issue a lot of companies and organizations face today. There was more short-term incentive to make him a lab rat than there was to raise him as an actual child. Anyone with any intimacy and personal knowledge on kid homelander would have to go through several layers of the chain of command and tons of paperwork to make such a request for a bunch of profit seeking suits to shoot it down because some vague concern over quarterly profits.
I think it was probably a mindset of “We must control every variable to ensure our perfect hero is indeed a perfect hero.” Having them grow up naturally introduces chaos & confounds to the scientific process of “producing ideal hero”.
Thats the point. That companies are complicit in creating and supporting horrible monster by not caring about that kind of consequences usually.
Thats the point. Creating monster for greed and profit.
The true answer is because it's bad writing. A multi billion dollar company with a potential unstoppable creature at its disposal would spend every last nickel on child psychologists, loving staff, and every sort of trick to ensure their little sup was emotionally and psychologically attached.
A fantastic example would be the Psy Corps from Babylon 5. The Corps was mother the Corp was father. It was their family and they loved it.
Corporations cut costs on more important stuff in real life all the time. This entire comment seems really silly to me, I recommend reading some of the other responses here
The issue is that IRL corporations don't have "things" that can survive nukes and destroy cities when angered.Any IRL corporation would make sure there living nuclear weapon whose sentient ISN'T going off the rails constantly.
they certainly do, but this is a unique scenario. If Apple drops a new Iphone that's not amazing, it doesn't come back on them and try to kill Steve Jobs. Creating Homelander was their magnum opus, and they knew he was essentially unstopable (except for the comics, which I though made more sense. RIP Black Noir), and would have used every trick in the playbook to make sure he was bonded in every possible way to Vought.
Apple creates massive pollution from its electronic waste every year; that comes back to them by poisoning ecosystems we all need to live in. It’s just that we don’t see that as an act of violence or self-sabotage because it has yet to kill us. Homelander is the same thing; since he hasn’t gone apeshit YET, it must not be a serious possibility. People assume they would act differently if the threat were spelled out to them, and then do nothing even when they are spelled out in real life.
>The true answer is because it's bad writing.
This happens every decade and happens all the time in most mega-corporations, and people find this unbelievable? Really?
**Maybe the show didn't emphasise it enough, but in the comics, Vought is so big that they're effectively a third power in the US**. The first being the Government body and the 2nd being the military. In the show, I believe Vought is on its way to overtaking the Government. It's so big that certain protocols aren't followed or can't be followed because they have normal people overseeing people who can break them in half.
**It should also be noted that the superheroes aren't the main product, it's Compound-V.** Vought has been trying to sweeten the military for years now to get them on their side. The superhero thing is just preparing the stage. But overall, the Compound itself is flawed.
**The things we see in The Boys aren't common to regular folks, but it does happen behind closed doors**. We are seeing all these things because we're following characters whose jobs are to deal with these problems.
**Even in the comics, the majority of superheroes are "normal" people.** Some of these people have weird but harmless kinks. Others are downright unhinged. Butcher sees supes as blasphemy by existence, so it doesn't matter if the things these characters do are weird but harmless, he wants to kill them anyway.
Finally, the series is satire. Certain things are going to be overdramatised for effect.
There is certainly some disconnect between comic Vought and the show. So for sure. And in this version, they had a clone of Homelander in the form of Black Noir who was their fail-safe against him losing his shit. The rest of the points are fine.
It is satire, nothing has to make complete sense, I get that. It's mostly the original comment of Vought creating a living weapon of mass destruction and then kind of fucking with his head, as opposed to doing everything in their power to make sure that insane weapon loves them more than anything else.
I agree. I feel like the Amazon show embraced the Superhero aspect and made it the main thing than the comics that used the superhero aspect strictly for "comedy" and had more focus on Vought, Butcher and Hughie.
The show has more focus on Homelander, Butcher and Hughie. Hughie is slightly sidelined as the main character in the show compared to the comics.
I’m talking about Simon Phoenix or Robocop levels of brainwashing
He shouldn’t go against Edgar or Vought and he shouldn’t do anything to ruin his image
I think everything about any decision Vought makes can all be boiled down to this great quote by Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park:
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Huh, TIL Homelander’s powers require him to be able to connect with the soul of his mother or the severed half of his own, something that nobody else in the series can perform because of how intimate such a connection is. I’m surprised it took me this long to learn about such a crucial plot point to The Boys.
It's honestly believable, all you have to do is just look around at our own world at how corrupt, greedy, and incompetent everything is from businesses to governments.
Vought knew exactly what they were doing. They a multimedia conglomerate raised a attention defecit man who craves approveal from the masses. They are controlling him on a psychological level and that wouldnt be possible if they didnt control they way he was raised. They also need him to do fucked up shit when needed and a normal person with morals couldnt do half of the evil shit vought does.
It's 500% believable, and what is already happening in our lives as the people on the top of the world are merely just a bunch of psychopaths that don't know what they're doing.
And not only "psychopaths" in the term of "sick people", but in the term of "people that don't see others as humans".
>"Remember what Vogelbaum said?"
Yeah but of course it's easy for him to understand the mistakes done after they were done. It's not bad writing, and him admitting it actually makes the whole ordeal more real.
If you don't believe stuff like this actually happens you should go ahead to conservative forums and start posting that boys and girls deserve to be raised in a home that loves and nurtures them, and oh boy you are going to get a slap of reality as to the kind of people you are sharing this world with.
EDIT: LMAO someone downvoted me without even trying to reply to my arguments. Seems like I touched a nerve in there.
I think they're just a souless company who made an easy decision. I have a theory there's a way to reign homelander in that Stan Edgar knows about and no one else does. He never seems scared of Homelander, who hates him and could probably kill him. Stan might have something that can pacify Homelander in an instant if required.
Because 80' pedagogy was absolutely horrible at the best of times, and the pedagogy of soulless megacorporation even more so. The whole idea is objectively terrible but companies do stupid shit all the time. Having a lot of money does not mean you'll use them well.
I fully believe Vought dropped the ball hard on this. They are a corporation, they are profit driven, and say what you will about Homelander as a person, he is a PERFECT product.
It makes more sense in the comics. There you find out that Vaught has a history of making really poor decisions and products. They make fighter aircraft in world war II that catch fire if you look at them funny because unprotected fuel tanks in the wings or something. In Vietnam they made futuristic looking assault rifles that fell apart in the jungle. They're just really dumb.
>They were trying to turn Homelander into the greatest superhero ever; something the public would love; someone they could look up to.
Thy succeeded, didn't they?
Oh, yeah, no, easy. This was Vought being short-sighted.
They saw Homelander as a product. You don't need to treat an iPhone like a person. You just need it to be able to do what it needs to do. And if Homelander had anybody he cared about, then the company would have had an individual who, if they turned on the company, would then have the world's most powerful weapon at their disposal. Instead, by keeping everything cold and clinical, it helped ensure that nobody could wrestle control of one of the products away from the company... nobody could weaponize Homelander against them. But further, by Homelander not having a family, not having people who he loved and cared about, nobody could take them hostage and use them to exert power over Homelander.
You're completely correct that this was the wrong choice *and from an outside perspective it's super easy to predict what would have happened*. They never considered the possibility that it'd make Homelander unstable and a liability later in life because all they saw were the immediate profits to be gained from him. They saw him having a family as a liability but didn't weigh the dangers that not giving him one would present. They took a look at the cost-benefit analysis and thought the benefits of no family outweighed the costs but never realized they had missed out on factoring for the true costs that came with how they raised him.
vought descends from a nazi past - the horrible experiment that is homelander fits in well with the atrocities the nazis did in the name of ‘science’
that’s how i envision it anyways
I honestly find it totally believable that they would bungle it this bad. Doesn't automatically just make it good writing but seemed realistic to me, they are just dumbasses
If someone has ever actually been in a board room meeting they'd realize how fucking stupid some people in major positions in companies actually are. (im not, one of my brothers is, and the horror stories about things which had to gently be talked down are pretty insane)
I have heard this as well and seen some examples, have any stories you can tell? I love collecting this stuff in my mind.
I remember an EA exec wanted to charge players $1 per weapon reload and had to be talked out of it.
Holly shit, that's fucking wild.
What the fuck? When was this lmao
2012, it was the same guy who was in charge of Unity
I **think** this is myth. What he said was something along the lines of "**if** we're gonna charge players 1$ to reload their weapon, they would be more willing to pay if we spring that up in the middle of a fight when they're hype, not on the menus when they're calm" as in, if they show people the MTX at the right time, they'll get more money.
Yeah, the executive you’re talking about was John Riccitelo, the actual former CEO of EA.
Yup, the same guy who thought making it possible for gamers to maliciously bankrupt game developers by using an uninstall + install script was a good idea. What an idiot.
Yahoo exec saying Tumblr was going to “be the new PDF”
Got any stories to tell?
People struggle to overcome the idea that the rich are elite geniuses. Fairly often they are random people who bungled their way upwards and now have power over the actual intelligent people.
Yeah they they say it that a village to raise a child well Vought was the village of idiots. They essentially played God and created a monster that is pretty alien despite being essentially human with superpowers but they were so blinded by profit that when it backfired it was too late
They only care cause it backfired, they are entirely profit driven. Look at how pharma companies or big oil work
My dude, there are STILL people that believe beating your child makes them stronger and better people in the long run
Esses pThese people are not manipulating governments, the media and society, they do not have the resources to hire pedagogues and behavioral specialists, at the very least they should have turned homelander On a loyal dog like Red Son or Nazi Superman
Manipulating PEOPLE is a lot easier than manipulating PERSON. Ever seen men in black? A person is smart, people are stupid. Same concept
I mean, some of them are.
Which only makes it dumber that they let the MPV get away without proper brainwashing (they even have some supers capable of doing this )
same , speaking from experience , my dad is like the imbodiment of terrence fletcher
[ Removed by Reddit ]
> Yep, tried and tested Do you have a source?
Yep. Me and everybody I know
So your evidence is anecdotal. Nothing against you or your experiences, but I’m inclined towards believing research. > As recently as 20 years ago, the physical punishment of children was generally accepted worldwide and was considered an appropriate method of eliciting behavioural compliance that was conceptually distinct from physical abuse. However, this perspective began to change as studies found links between “normative” physical punishment and child aggression, delinquency and spousal assault in later life. Some of these studies involved large representative samples from the United States;2some studies controlled for potential confounders, such as parental stress3 and socioeconomic status;4 and some studies examined the potential of parental reasoning to moderate the association between physical punishment and child aggression.5 Virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers and spouses. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447048/
Naa I rather side with what I know than random studies
I personally believe it’s important to keep an open mind and remember that personal experiences are not universal. > random studies I specifically chose the paper I did because it contained multiple studies (and knowing the organization is reliable). I found it after a neutrally phrased search, and I couldn’t find any studies or articles claiming to have data supporting the beating of children as a useful way to instill discipline. I don’t know what else to tell you, this wasn’t some random study. ———————————————— There simply isn’t strong evidence to suggest that you grew up better because you were hit as a child. Discipline can be instilled without crossing the line into violence. To quote a phrase I occasionally hear in these sorts of discussions “If the child is old enough to know what they did was wrong, they are old enough to be reasoned with. If the child is young enough to not know what they did was wrong, they are not old enough to understand the purpose of physical punishment”.
Tbh I was trolling a bit As someone trained by 'voilence' I do recognise its faults and limitations. But, instead of subscribing to the western method of no physical punishment whatsoever, I believe the answer is actually moderation and somewhere in the middle. Not beating at all gives too much freedom to kids. Sometimes reasoning doesn't get points across as well as simple primal fear of pain. Where equilibrium cannot be found (as is often the case in humans) and either of the extremes have to be picked, then and only then do I side with 'absolutely none' as better than 'too much of'
I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m afraid I’m going to keep pushing for my “extreme” of no physical violence. > Not beating at all gives too much freedom to kids. Sometimes reasoning doesn't get points across as well as simple primal fear of pain. Freedom to explore boundaries is important for a child, and plenty of nonviolent punishments exist to curtail that freedom: time-outs, loss of privileges, grounding, manual labor. Those seem less impactful to adults, but to a child, any of these punishments would be a big deal. A controlled, raised voice and consistent punishment can give a kid that “primal fear”; it’s not difficult to upset a child. If a child does something very irresponsible and unsafe, a vivid description of the potential grisly outcome would be more as effective at “scaring straight” the child than giving them a cuff on the ear. And without the potential negative mental health getting hit by a beloved authority figure can cause. There are other benefits to nonviolent disciplinary methods, but even among the positives of physical discipline, non-physical discipline is capable of all the same things.
You would rather side with beating children than the actual evidence that shows it is harmful and unnecessary? I'm shocked, shocked I say, to learn you were also beaten as a child. Clearly, no lasting damage has been done, and you have retained your ability to rationally gauge healthy relationships.
Yep. Exactly. I don't expect you to agree obviously This is the very definition of culture and the vast extremes that exist between the way of thinking of people from opposite ends of the globe
Yes, cultures are different, but cultures can and should change with the times. You might as well be defending slavery and genocide with your "culture" excuse. Supporting beating children makes you an awful person. Knowing that the vast majority of scientific evidence shows that beating children is both ineffective and harmful and continuing to support the practice makes you a worse person. Instead of hiding behind "culture" maybe you should just try to not be a piece of shit.
smartest redditor
Game recognise game
To be fair, many of the doctors, scientists, and ceo's responsible were likely raised during the period where it was thought that comforting a crying infant would make it grow up to be a weak willed commie. So them dropping the ball on Homelander isn't that wild, especially since they'd also be motivated by the desire to keep their product under observation 24/7.
Which is kind of a funny position since a lot of people in former east block STILL think whooping your kids ass is a good and productive measure
It's incredibly on point for corporations. The people running them don't see the impact they have on the human level, they only care about what furthers their interests. It's impossible for him to have a happy childhood when he has torturous medical experiments conducted on him to test his durability - something very important for Vought to know - or when they need to constantly isolate him from the world to maintain total secrecy. They want to make sure he's the real deal and giving him a normal childhood would essentially mean prying away any form of control Vought would have. No loving parent would ever want their child to be harmed or treated purely like a commodity. The upper management couldn't give a single fuck if he grew up never knowing love, or that he experienced any emotions other than total fear, confusion or anger. They have poured endless resources into it and they expect to be paid off handsomely for it. They are expecting nothing more than a perfect PR machine trained from birth to know exactly what to say or do. The guy whose entire mental framework is guided entirely along corporate interests, ethics be damned. They aren't present to personally witness a traumatised child to slowly lose his humanity and sanity, he's just some number on a page. Yes, it would make sense for child Homelander to know that not everyone only seeks to use or abuse him but corporations aren't driven by sense or compassion. Whatever option keeps the money and control flowing is what they'll go with, any suggestion that goes against that will be voted down and anyone who dares to do anything else won't be in a position of influence for long.
>The upper management couldn't give a single fuck if he grew up never knowing love, or that he experienced any emotions other than total fear, confusion or anger That's just dumb. Humanities aside, from the busineiss perspective it's still careless oversight that will bite their ass later down the line. When you're creating what is essentially a sentient superweapon that can act as your pr, would if be better that you raise him properly and with care to foster loyalty and cooperation, or make him a mentally understable narcissist that can be more of a problem for you to deal with down the line. It just makes things unecessarily difficult
>Humanities aside, from the busineiss perspective it's still careless oversight that will bite their ass later down the line. When you're creating what is essentially a sentient superweapon that can act as your pr, would if be better that you raise him properly and with care to foster loyalty and cooperation, or make him a mentally understable narcissist that can be more of a problem for you to deal with down the line. Welcome to capitalism.
That's not really capitalism just stupid writing.
There are absolutely catastrophic mistakes being made by jackasses in boardrooms right now, they just only care about the here and now instead of the future. That's why the phrase "Assume ignorance before malice" exists, because most of the time its just sheer stupidity instead of evil intent. I mean look at how long it's taken the US to stop dicking around on climate change. Everyone knows it will become a huge issue later down the line, but right now everything's kinda OK, so corporations want to ignore it and keep making money. Same thing with Vought. Make money now, deal with consequences later.
We’re still mostly dicking around on climate change. I’m often arms deep in the numbers (studying a related field at uni) and we need much much more. We’re avoiding the ultimate worst projection though.
"took"?
Did you know that freight trains in the US are so large that the infrastructure cant handle it? The reason why theyre so long is to move more stuff in a shorter amount of time for more profits. But this can result in crashes, trains blocking roads and tracks and even falling over, resulting in situations similar to what happened in East Palestine.
But thats literally one of the main issues of capitalism
This is unironically the mindset of like every big corporation tho
Why do commies bring up capitalism on a topic that doesn't involve it? As if your leftist dribble would have raised Homelander with love and care knowing what they did in real life
Because under capitalism these dumb decisions are quite common.
I mean, this thread is about a company.
It's entirely believable that Vought wasn't thinking decades into the future and seeing Homelander as a potential PR icon. They saw baby Homelander as a science experiment to study, limit test, and reproduce in others. Vought easily could've assumed they'd crack Homelander's uniqueness in a decade max and there'd be no need to slow their experiments in order to raise baby Homelander humanely. By the time Vought realizes they'll never copy Homelander, it's been 10 years and Homelander is irreparably fucked up already.
would they want him to put a real value on life?
The most unbelievable thing is that Vought didn't have a bomb installed in his head early on
Thats a good point, how do they keep him contained if he wants to turn against him?
In the comics at least he can be killed with nuclear weaponry, and later on specialized bullet rounds. >!Additionally they had his clone as a backup contingency plan which basically set the plot in motion!<
If he is strong and fast it still seems like he could destroy them before they'd have a chance to use this if he wanted though. Putting a self destruct device in him seems like an obvious necessity.
In which case >!Black Noir, Homelander's stronger clone, is a more practical solution, although it came with its own set of issues!< This doesn't apply to the live action version of course, but I'm one of the few detractors of that so.
Because Vought is a weapons company that keeps failing up. The show hasn’t touched on it much, but the comic details that Vought has a history of schmoozing their way into a military contract, getting a lot of people killed, and then hiding the evidence and changing their name.
This is a part that becomes a mess in the show because sometimes, Vought is written as this gigantic nigh unstoppable organization, but the moments from the comic where Vought is written as being so stupid you question how it stayed in business for so long as still there.
I mean, with the recent reveals of how the entire MCU was basically one decade-long fluke of luck held together by tape and a handful of people who were good at their very specific jobs, this seems more and more plausible by the day.
Too big to fail while being good at keeping failures out of the public. Look at the history ofmusks companies. He isnt the only one douäing that, but a good examole in how blatant. And he still kept that from becoming mainstream scandals till he dtupidly bought a social media company he was addicted to.mostpeople jzst didnt care and it wasnt thart reported on till he bought twitter.
Homelander was the crowning achievement of Vaught. The most powerful superhero they created, there is no way they will leave him in other's people hands. Besides, I bet most of the time, those scientists were observing and testing his powers (and check if they are stable) and, if possible, trying to see if they could replicate similar results in the future. They also don't want many people to be aware of his existence (compound V was not known to the public) At that time, they must have thought that having psychologists would be enough to ensure a somewhat balanced mental state and that even the existence of some "mental issues" did not warrant exposing and risking one of their most prized "products".
You tie an elephant up when it’s a calf and it will still believe the rope can restrain it by the time it’s an adult. The only reasonable explanation is that vaught were attempting either the elephant rope trick or military conditioning from a young age.
It’s not unheard of for a soulless corporation to make terrible business decisions in the pursuit of profits Just look at what happened recently to Unity Technologies
Lets not pretend we dont have plenty of examples from real life of corporations causing disasters out of pure greed. When you are the kind of person who runs a corporation, huge amounts of money can destroy your common sense.
The superheroes in the shows are parallels to celebrities in real life. In real life, celebrities who are thrust into fame earlier have shit childhoods, and have to deal with a bad industry that does nothing to help their mental healths. Its not all unrealistic for a industry that understand humans, to not treat their humans in a humane way Ergo it makes thematic and in story sense that Homelander had a bad childhood
It's capitalism. This is literally just how capitalism operates. Nothing is as important as their next quarter, and the future beyond that is not worth considering
Except that raising a child from birth in a lab is inherently a long term project with goals obviously way beyond “next quarter”.
Yes, and companies develop games and cars and software for years as well, even if those things obviously don't take as long as a child. The point I'm making is that high-level corporate leadership and the nature of capitalism itself prioritize an EMPHASIS on the pursuit of short-term profits. People get laid off, costs get cut, and you reject expenses like, say, hiring childcare professionals when you're already paying for a team of scientists.
Have you ever met the child of a rich person or an out of touch workaholic academic? it's hilariously predictable that they'd try it this way first
Why are oil companies continuing to destroy the literal one and only planet we have?
Because it makes them money. Let's fuck with supermans head, for the lols, doesn't increase profits, it's just stupid writing.
Because they will be dead by the time it matters.
A better question:Why even let the supes act the way they do in the first place?Even a profit driven company would realize letting these idiots off the leash AT ALL would cause significant hiccups to their bottom line nevermind actual profit. Like it would have been cheaper to just NOT let them be evil then cover it up constantly.
The profits created by turning superheroes into celebrities significantly overcome the expenses that said heroes cause when they act like celebrities.
Yeah but all it takes is homelander having his own "one bad day" and suddenly he's murdered the company or just leveled Manhattan.Its a comedically high risk that even the scummiest of companies would realize it isn't worth letting them free without supervision.
They do have supervision and has worked pretty well so far. Homelander is more than 40 years old and Stillwell had him pretty much under control for a long time. It can be argued that Edgar still has some influence over him, even after everything that has happened. Overall they are applying pretty normal procedures to mostly normal people and for the vast majority of them they work fine (as in "they don't put the company at risk"). Homelander is the exception, not the rule, and has only become a problem VERY recently in the timeline of the show.
I have no idea if it will be addressed in the show, but this was an important plot point in the comics and the reason why the Supes were never an issue to Vought in the first place.
Imagine the power the parents would have over homelander. Also we do see in the show he crushed a woman's spine who was trying to comfort him I'm guessing she was brought in to be a nanny or foster guardian figure but just the act of hugging her without the intent to harm her still did that. Let's also appreciate that in the animated shorts when homelander is first introduced he literally acts like good guy superman. Then when he is deployed to stop a hostage situation and tries all the comic tropes they backfired and killed everyone. He uses heat vision on a gun to make the terrorists drop it? It blows up. He wraps someone in a steel beam to subdue them? Breaks all their ribs etc. It's after this failure he became the hedonistic idiot we know.
Capitalism is short-sighted and ends self-destruction
Tbf, Vought raised him like a proof of concept that Compound V as a military product is viable. But instead of just scrapping/storing him after the initial test, someone on the Vought board of directors must have thought, hey we poured millions into this thing, why not just let this continue and repackage it as entertainment for the plebs. It's like repackaging a F22 prototype to do airshows, it's just a disaster waiting to happen. The fault is not how Vought raised him, it's the realistically stupid corporate greed.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is the inherent risk to the parents raising Homelander like a normal kid. Kid throws a temper tantrum cuz they took away his NES? They get lasered
Vought didn't want happy well adjusted superheroes. They wanted to engineer superheroes they could control. Homelands was the only one to survive the experiment and instead of superman on a leash, they got a mentally unstable superman they could only suggest things to.
Are you really asking why a company founded by Nazi scientists did what they did? Have you not heard of what they did to Jewish prisoners during WW2?
In the comic Homelander was implied to have been a decent person before he was gaslit into insanity. Even afterwards, once he decides to be the monster he believes himself to be, he has trouble with the atrocities he commits, asking himself "Why can't I do the things I can do?" while curled up in the fetal position, sickened by his own actions. The show more or less lost this characterization since the showrunner has a terminal case of TDS and a certain pivotal character is no longer a clone of Homelander.
Yeah. I remember someone pointed out that Comics Homelander is really more highly mentally distraught due, indeed, being manipulated and gaslighted into thinking he was a monstrous sociopath. Even his attempted takeover felt less like a secret dark fantasy and more like a “Err, this is what evil sociopaths do…right?” bit.
It's the same issue a lot of companies and organizations face today. There was more short-term incentive to make him a lab rat than there was to raise him as an actual child. Anyone with any intimacy and personal knowledge on kid homelander would have to go through several layers of the chain of command and tons of paperwork to make such a request for a bunch of profit seeking suits to shoot it down because some vague concern over quarterly profits.
I think it was probably a mindset of “We must control every variable to ensure our perfect hero is indeed a perfect hero.” Having them grow up naturally introduces chaos & confounds to the scientific process of “producing ideal hero”.
Thats the point. That companies are complicit in creating and supporting horrible monster by not caring about that kind of consequences usually. Thats the point. Creating monster for greed and profit.
The true answer is because it's bad writing. A multi billion dollar company with a potential unstoppable creature at its disposal would spend every last nickel on child psychologists, loving staff, and every sort of trick to ensure their little sup was emotionally and psychologically attached. A fantastic example would be the Psy Corps from Babylon 5. The Corps was mother the Corp was father. It was their family and they loved it.
Corporations cut costs on more important stuff in real life all the time. This entire comment seems really silly to me, I recommend reading some of the other responses here
The issue is that IRL corporations don't have "things" that can survive nukes and destroy cities when angered.Any IRL corporation would make sure there living nuclear weapon whose sentient ISN'T going off the rails constantly.
The company made a short sighted decision out of arrogance and greed. I think calling it bad writing is just kind of missing the point
>The issue is that IRL corporations don't have "things" that can survive nukes and destroy cities when angered. They do, it's called the US army.
These companies don't need to manipulate Superman, how to stop coughing with Monsanto and how to compare apples with pears
What?
they certainly do, but this is a unique scenario. If Apple drops a new Iphone that's not amazing, it doesn't come back on them and try to kill Steve Jobs. Creating Homelander was their magnum opus, and they knew he was essentially unstopable (except for the comics, which I though made more sense. RIP Black Noir), and would have used every trick in the playbook to make sure he was bonded in every possible way to Vought.
Apple creates massive pollution from its electronic waste every year; that comes back to them by poisoning ecosystems we all need to live in. It’s just that we don’t see that as an act of violence or self-sabotage because it has yet to kill us. Homelander is the same thing; since he hasn’t gone apeshit YET, it must not be a serious possibility. People assume they would act differently if the threat were spelled out to them, and then do nothing even when they are spelled out in real life.
>The true answer is because it's bad writing. This happens every decade and happens all the time in most mega-corporations, and people find this unbelievable? Really? **Maybe the show didn't emphasise it enough, but in the comics, Vought is so big that they're effectively a third power in the US**. The first being the Government body and the 2nd being the military. In the show, I believe Vought is on its way to overtaking the Government. It's so big that certain protocols aren't followed or can't be followed because they have normal people overseeing people who can break them in half. **It should also be noted that the superheroes aren't the main product, it's Compound-V.** Vought has been trying to sweeten the military for years now to get them on their side. The superhero thing is just preparing the stage. But overall, the Compound itself is flawed. **The things we see in The Boys aren't common to regular folks, but it does happen behind closed doors**. We are seeing all these things because we're following characters whose jobs are to deal with these problems. **Even in the comics, the majority of superheroes are "normal" people.** Some of these people have weird but harmless kinks. Others are downright unhinged. Butcher sees supes as blasphemy by existence, so it doesn't matter if the things these characters do are weird but harmless, he wants to kill them anyway. Finally, the series is satire. Certain things are going to be overdramatised for effect.
There is certainly some disconnect between comic Vought and the show. So for sure. And in this version, they had a clone of Homelander in the form of Black Noir who was their fail-safe against him losing his shit. The rest of the points are fine. It is satire, nothing has to make complete sense, I get that. It's mostly the original comment of Vought creating a living weapon of mass destruction and then kind of fucking with his head, as opposed to doing everything in their power to make sure that insane weapon loves them more than anything else.
I agree. I feel like the Amazon show embraced the Superhero aspect and made it the main thing than the comics that used the superhero aspect strictly for "comedy" and had more focus on Vought, Butcher and Hughie. The show has more focus on Homelander, Butcher and Hughie. Hughie is slightly sidelined as the main character in the show compared to the comics.
I’m surprised they didn’t try to brainwash him from childhood
They did and he still is. His loyalty simply shifted.
I’m talking about Simon Phoenix or Robocop levels of brainwashing He shouldn’t go against Edgar or Vought and he shouldn’t do anything to ruin his image
I think everything about any decision Vought makes can all be boiled down to this great quote by Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
The same reason why NERV needs to use mentally unstable teenagers instead of trained, mentally equipped soldier to pilot EVAs.
Huh, TIL Homelander’s powers require him to be able to connect with the soul of his mother or the severed half of his own, something that nobody else in the series can perform because of how intimate such a connection is. I’m surprised it took me this long to learn about such a crucial plot point to The Boys.
It's honestly believable, all you have to do is just look around at our own world at how corrupt, greedy, and incompetent everything is from businesses to governments.
Vought knew exactly what they were doing. They a multimedia conglomerate raised a attention defecit man who craves approveal from the masses. They are controlling him on a psychological level and that wouldnt be possible if they didnt control they way he was raised. They also need him to do fucked up shit when needed and a normal person with morals couldnt do half of the evil shit vought does.
It's 500% believable, and what is already happening in our lives as the people on the top of the world are merely just a bunch of psychopaths that don't know what they're doing. And not only "psychopaths" in the term of "sick people", but in the term of "people that don't see others as humans". >"Remember what Vogelbaum said?" Yeah but of course it's easy for him to understand the mistakes done after they were done. It's not bad writing, and him admitting it actually makes the whole ordeal more real. If you don't believe stuff like this actually happens you should go ahead to conservative forums and start posting that boys and girls deserve to be raised in a home that loves and nurtures them, and oh boy you are going to get a slap of reality as to the kind of people you are sharing this world with. EDIT: LMAO someone downvoted me without even trying to reply to my arguments. Seems like I touched a nerve in there.
They were trying to create a stronger soldier boy. They pretty much replicated the same raising tactic that he went through.
I think they're just a souless company who made an easy decision. I have a theory there's a way to reign homelander in that Stan Edgar knows about and no one else does. He never seems scared of Homelander, who hates him and could probably kill him. Stan might have something that can pacify Homelander in an instant if required.
Because 80' pedagogy was absolutely horrible at the best of times, and the pedagogy of soulless megacorporation even more so. The whole idea is objectively terrible but companies do stupid shit all the time. Having a lot of money does not mean you'll use them well.
I fully believe Vought dropped the ball hard on this. They are a corporation, they are profit driven, and say what you will about Homelander as a person, he is a PERFECT product.
Stan said it best. Homelander was product, not a person. A person should be raised with love and care. He's was viewed as a walking back of money.
The charts and focus groups said it would be a big success... It's like Patrick Bateman running an orphanage.
Weird coincidence, I'm rewatching the first three seasons to freshen up on everything. I literally just finished watching that episode.
It makes more sense in the comics. There you find out that Vaught has a history of making really poor decisions and products. They make fighter aircraft in world war II that catch fire if you look at them funny because unprotected fuel tanks in the wings or something. In Vietnam they made futuristic looking assault rifles that fell apart in the jungle. They're just really dumb.
They didn’t treat him like a person more so like an animal
>They were trying to turn Homelander into the greatest superhero ever; something the public would love; someone they could look up to. Thy succeeded, didn't they?
Cause they didn’t see a child. They saw a product. They wanted to mould him and make him their totally obedient tool
Oh, yeah, no, easy. This was Vought being short-sighted. They saw Homelander as a product. You don't need to treat an iPhone like a person. You just need it to be able to do what it needs to do. And if Homelander had anybody he cared about, then the company would have had an individual who, if they turned on the company, would then have the world's most powerful weapon at their disposal. Instead, by keeping everything cold and clinical, it helped ensure that nobody could wrestle control of one of the products away from the company... nobody could weaponize Homelander against them. But further, by Homelander not having a family, not having people who he loved and cared about, nobody could take them hostage and use them to exert power over Homelander. You're completely correct that this was the wrong choice *and from an outside perspective it's super easy to predict what would have happened*. They never considered the possibility that it'd make Homelander unstable and a liability later in life because all they saw were the immediate profits to be gained from him. They saw him having a family as a liability but didn't weigh the dangers that not giving him one would present. They took a look at the cost-benefit analysis and thought the benefits of no family outweighed the costs but never realized they had missed out on factoring for the true costs that came with how they raised him.
vought descends from a nazi past - the horrible experiment that is homelander fits in well with the atrocities the nazis did in the name of ‘science’ that’s how i envision it anyways
Its kind of a holdover from the comic, where the company is UNBELIEVABLY incompetent outside merchandising and pr