IDK if the original hypothesis is true or not. But it's kind of impossible to make judgements on evolution based on anything we know about humans and society. Modern homo sapiens are only about 150,000 years old and were pretty sure any semblance of a modern hierarchical society didn't begin until about 7,500 years ago, much less the concept of money which only happened another thousands of years later.
10,000 years is a drop in the bucket evolutionarily, hell, 100,000 years doesn't even do much, so any theory of evolution or why a complex hormone like cortisol evolved to be used in the way it is now is way off base if you're referencing concepts like "rich" and "poor" or reference to any form of societal structure made in the last 10,000 years.
Maybe, but we are losing a vast wealth of collected and archive information. Anything from resources for anyone who wanted to learn any hobby, places to go in cities for every niche interest you can think of, suggestions for what to do for various college situations tailored to every college in the US. The list could go on for a hundred more topics.
For a while it's been the only place you could get Google results that you could be reasonably sure you were getting multiple unsponsored human opinions and discussions in a thread. It's honestly tragic to lose that.
Mostly (and this is probably true for over 60% of Republicans), it's about defunding half of the government programs they rely on but don't realize it, sold to them through the euphemism of "tax cuts".
I think the right to control women is next on the list, but even then we see that even republican public opinion on abortions is stricter than the left's, but would actually prefer less extreme laws than what has been passed.
As much of a meme as it is, most rural religious folk aren't militant about marrying children and burning crosses. We hear about every instance of child marriage cause it sucks so much, and people have been openly, violently racist despite the law for centuries, all it takes is a town full of like-minded people.
I would bet it's more like "gaming has expanded to a larger market". Gamers who were willing to fiddle with computers and online gaming, hell, up till the late 2000s are probably also the same type of people who are willing to be patient and fiddle with a complex game and learn where the fun is. Now playing a game is easy as 1,2,3 no matter where you get it, I'm not talking down on anyone, and I don't care if that's where the AAA trend is going, just that when the access gets easier the group expands to more and more casual audiences.
Also, console games have always been way more "casual" as those markets expand gamers kind of defacto have a larger preference for casual games.
It's all kind of a subset of sociology. Why do groups make decisions? It's down to individual psychology. But that's similar to saying all science is derivative of physics. It's technically true, but it does us more favors to split it up.
And you just know the burden of that new criminalization won't come with the expensive and long legal procedures needed to bad all the ad blockers but instead will just be a piecemeal tax charged to consumers
I would say it's actually pretty easy to find a handful of good ones. Go to the top downloaded podcasts and you'll get Stuff You Should Know, Behind The Bastards, a couple of Max Fun podcasts etc. its when you want a podcast on your specific hobby or niche interest where it falls off a cliff.
A nice charm of Lemmy is that people will post this every couple of months until the site dies.
No shade to OP, it's a nice little consistent thing we'll have.