Editing Whale (section)

==Why are whales like this?==
A big part of this is what's known as the Skinner Box. In the 1950s, prof. B.F. Skinner ran some tests on pigeons using two types of test boxes. One had a button which if pushed dispensed a treat from a chute, the other a button which dispensed treats randomly. Birds locked in the first type simply pecked until they were full, but those in the second type kept pecking constantly. They also developed quirks, if one looked over their shoulder before a peck that released a treat they'd do it again before each peck. You get the same sort of responses with rats, along with humans. The casino industry is built on this.

Most Whales are descendants from people who suffer from shopping sprees. And they themselves have a certain mentality that pushes them to act this way. For one thing; most whales live in economically comfortable social spaces, or have always lived in conditions where they were permitted to obtain anything that they wished to have. That, or they had receive a form of trauma from a life from which they were refused a lot of things. This turned into an obsession with possessing things for the sake of possessing them, or be the talk of the town for a while.

We now live in a world in which there are sales ''constantly''. In the heydays of shopping, such things happened once in a blue moon, so to temporarily boost sales to promote "luxury" items at a "fair" price. Now, what do we have? Black Friday, Summer Sales, Winter Sales, Fall Sales, Valentine's day Sales, Halloween Sales, Nth Anniversary Sales, coupons, reductions, packs, etc. Many people have been living in an environment that tells them to watch out for those reductions. But at the same time, they become easy victims to the scummiest of shit; like corpos augmenting prices just a little bit and then put everything on sale to make you think that you're in front of a good deal. And capitalism being what it is means that they have become very, ''very'' good at manipulating people's desires and making people believe that happiness can best be found through material goods. 

Another common factor for this is the infamous Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO. This made a lot of companies' money, because people with this kind of syndrome hate a timer being set on an item they wish to have. So to bait them into buying quick and fast, they say put a time-limit on a set of items (which in most cases, they could sell at any time), and say; "Oh, there's a timer on that product! Better buy it now or else it's gone! Well, it could possibly come back, but who knows? Maybe it won't!".

This makes the Whale goes absolutely insane. But since they have the money and it works, companies get away with shitty practices that ruining all kinds of gaming. Something /tg/ and /v/ can both agree on. If you need any proof of this, just look at all the bullshit that GW pulled and worked, or the entirety of [[EA]]'s career.

'''How does that affect hobbies and pop-culture, you may ask?'''

Everything is now made and produced to be consumable. Or at least, to fit a certain idea of narration and story-writing that goes directly into satisfying a specific niche of people. No Whales are alike, but they some groups share similarities in their taste for certain things. So to ensure that things are bought on the spot, franchises are tailor-suited into including certain tropes, designs or references that had an appeal in the past (or in the present), and try to sell many products around it until it turns into a fad. What do you think Funko Pops are? Do you think the people buying them actually enjoy the licenses represented? Bloody Hell no, it's just that feeling like you're a part of a greater community through the art of possessing merch makes Whales feel better about themselves.

See it this way; Whales weren't always like that. They ''actually'' enjoyed something at one point, and perhaps they still do. So say a company releases something related to what they once enjoyed, but the end result is [[The End Times|catastrophically bad]]? Whales would still give it a shot, given how they see not supporting their brand as treason. This little "try" turns into a $500 investment. Ironically, in their attempt to "just try" something, they made the product profitable. Which leads to even more terrible shit to be produced because Whales will always support them. May they be blinded by nostalgia or have a very, very skewed vision of their relationship with the company.

Now it might sound like that Whales actually do not enjoy what they actually buy. But most of them do. Just like the most unstable shoppers, they have an interest in buying what they do buy. The most insincere of them are just into nerd shit because it's trendy. But plenty of Whales '''are''' nerds, or have grown an interest for such things. But their appreciation takes the form of mindless appreciation, meaning that they can't look past the issues of modern or old material and will always remain faithful to the brand they've grown attachment to. Leading to more and more terrible things to happen because they keep supporting it.