wholeheartedly agree. I was but 19 years old though and less wise in the ways of the world. I occasionally try to look her up but have had no luck, I really hope she turned out ok. Been decades though.
Long story short, a girl I knew but always figured was way out of my league expressed interest in me. We quickly started dating, I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. A few weeks go by and she just ghosts me. Nothing for weeks, I was going nuts. Finally I get a message from her, she had checked herself into the psych ward, and wound up hooking up with one of the staff while she was there.
I was at a concert last night and it struck me just how much I LOVE seeing how people who showed up to share an experience can be so different. My kids were pointing at strange looking people but it just made me smile more and more as explained why I loved their expression and courage to literally wear it in public.
Diversity, new experiences, unexpected is how life should be. I am tattooed, mine are pretty ordinary but last night someone commented on one of mine on the way out of the show. She thought it was strange, so I explained it and we had such a lovely conversation. She had recently beat cancer and was about to get her first.
I am involved with a youth organization with my kids. We’re a very diverse group and so several of my kids friends are very precarious right now. I know at least one who carries 5 forms of ID everywhere outside of his house.
Same, been camping twice this summer and both times I was taken aback and both seeing them (it’s become so rare), and how few there were. Used to be swarms of them in my backyard, not I go camping just to see 3 of them.
Exactly, early social media was tons of fun. It was like the early internet but easier since anyone could make a profile with any info.
Then it had to be monetized. They had to glue eyeballs via attention, no matter what kind. Now it’s all rent seeking, innovation is 100% about what can produce an immediate return, no care for the long term. The grift economy…
It was not social media, that was about the people. It’s what the social media companies did in search of dollars that did it in. Greed. Full stop.
I don’t know why obvious propaganda works on so many people. People I assumed had functional brains, just turn them off whenever the online. It’s fucking maddening, and I don’t see any way to combat it.
Why do we need celebrity owned cell carriers? This article makes it sound like a bad thing Ryan Reynolds’s exited Mint, but at least the stars of arrested development still have a cell provider.
I mean WTF, I like that there is competition but what the fuck is wrong with us that we prefer celebrity endorsement to actual features, value, longevity, etc.
I know it’s a bigger question than what I’m asking but this is all part of the rot that our economy is experiencing. All vibes, all promises, all scams, this country runs on nothing but grift.
I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.
So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.
My career has been in building infrastructure for internet services. I got into this line of work because I felt like it was democratizing knowledge and bringing people together. The way it’s instead gone, I regret being part of it, and I wish I would have gone into another line of work.
It sucks because it’s beginning to feel like a life wasted. I got in early, my career pre-dates the 1st .com crash. My first browser was Mosaic, then shortly became Netscape with the big pulsating “N” animation.
I LOVED the early internet. I loved the personal sites, webrings, IRC and newsgroups. I remember the first time I spoke with someone on the other side of the world (hello to my Canberra friend, it’s me, your midwestern buddy). I felt part of something that was new and exciting and fun.
Then ads came and it’s just gone to shit ever since. To the point where I now hate being online, all my shit is selfhosted and I barely interact with anything besides lemmy and mastodon (they still feel like the actual internet).
I used to be slightly disappointed my kids didn’t turn out as nerdy as me. Now I am just thrilled that I was able to be a cautionary tale for them.
There’s more to it than that but of course that is a large part of it. We live in a society that prefers to reward a confident idiot to a pensive expert; essentially we reward dunning krueger.
wholeheartedly agree. I was but 19 years old though and less wise in the ways of the world. I occasionally try to look her up but have had no luck, I really hope she turned out ok. Been decades though.