Small niche games Mass Effect and Dragon Age, which only sold a handful of millions. When will nerds start realizing they were always a marketable target demographic
Also, saying Larian “picked up” the formula after BioWare “abandoned” it is patently wrong. They have been making these games for as long as BioWare
Dragon Age sold well but it was totally unexpected. People thought CRPGs were dead, and then EA tried to make sure of that with Dragon Age II. Mass Effect arguably killed Bioware by giving them the idea that they could pick up more fans if they just made action games with dialog trees. I'm in the minority but that series got worse and worse in my opinion.
The quality of Mass Effect 1 and DA: Origins came from how polished their stories were. The gameplay was the weakest point of both games. Don’t get me wrong, I liked playing them, but they do not hold up. Then, or now.
Both Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 experienced the exact same quality shift. Less quality on the story side, better gameplay. In DA 2’s case, they might as well have handed the writing off to the interns.
It only got worse after this. We all remember red explosion, blue explosion or green explosion at the end of ME3. DA Inquisition existed, the multiplayer was fun (and similarly the only fun thing, to me, in ME3).
I played every mass effect in a row like a year ago and honestly the gameplay is still good. It’s nothing really that involved and it’s definitely a lot more interesting by Andromeda. But the original was still good honestly.
I liked it. You liked it. I still think Origins is fun.
However, there’s a reason the gameplay shifted from what it was to where it ended. Many people thought both ME1 and DA:O were bad, gameplay-wise. It’s just sad that the story got fucked in the process.
I genuinely thought the combat was bad, but it’s also been so many years since I’ve played it that I couldn’t give you a nuanced review of why it’s bad.
As a mage, you could bomb high level enemies from afar over and over again and jump multiple levels on one kill. A single mistake got you killed though. I loved that game.
Divinity: Dragon Commander was another Larian gem.
My current character is a warrior mage that has the ability to mind control enemies. He usually doesn’t have too much trouble but those 4? Commander bases I kept getting one shot before before could even use any of my spells, so I am trying g to get a few more character levels.
The game still runs really well, the controls and animations are a little clunky. But there aren’t many games that give you such an experience. I’m not sure how much of it’s lore was retconned, which is another reason why I would like to see it remade. It can just be more or less the same game, but with updated engine, graphics, and lore.
They need to remake everything before Divinity Original Sin. I'm playing Divine Divinity and it has been the most painful experience just getting the game to display properly. It doesn't have a proper settings menu with graphics options like resolution or windowed/full screen modes so you're just fighting with the ConfigTool to get it working.
That’s a tough call. Tabletop rpg vary wildly from table to table, and they gave birth to many radically different kinds of video games. Bioware only dig one kind of these games. They never made a dunjon crawler or a hackn slash for example.
But indeed, they took from this. But even in this one subgenra they still haven’t figured out how it evolved around 2015.
Dude worked with me and two of my players (not mtg, but ttrpg) at a fast food joint back when we were still in high school, and right after.
Guy was dumb as a brick, but just genuinely nice. Always willing to help people out with whatever.
But he was couch surfing. And he’d never had good hygiene (we find out later) because his family were almost homeless, and rarely had fancy things like running water.
His teeth were literally green.
He starts playing d&d and my home brew system with us. Again, dumb as a brick, but he’s totally into it, does voices, physically acts things out, just straight baller of a player, the kind that keeps a table on a good vibe.
But Jesus fucking Christ, the smell of the guy. And his skin was horrible on top of that.
Me and one of my friends took him aside after work and talked to him about it. Me being me, I was pretty blunt. Said something like, dude, we love playing with you, you’re a great guy, but I’ve smelled rotten skunk that smelled better; what’s the deal?
He was pretty ashamed, but me and my homie reassured him that we liked him anyway, and wanted to help.
Well, dude didn’t really have a place, and had to limit himself to one bag. So we talked to my dad, and another friend’s dad. Got permission for the guy to shower at our places here and there.
I was a nurse’s assistant, got my certification during this time, and ended up having to teach the guy how to take care of himself. It was a bit weird, but as he started getting cleaner, feeling more confident, he’d open up about things. Dude didn’t know how to wash his dick properly. So my freshly 18 year old self had to instruct this mid twenties dude in how to keep his junk clean lol. Nobody else involved really knew how to teach someone stuff they took for granted, but I’d had to kinda relearn all the hygiene stuff from a new perspective, so it was easy.
Anyway, a few months into this, and he’s looking better, smelling a lot better, and lands an assistant manager position because of it. I mean, it’s fast food, so it’s a shit job, but it was a big step up for him. And it came with insurance (amazingly), so he started getting his teeth fixed up a little at a time.
About a year and a half passes, and he meets this girl at a party we were throwing. Not exactly a friend, but known to us. She sees him and gets all flustered, red faced and stuttering. Turns out, he cleans up pretty good. He’s smiling a lot more because he’s not hiding his teeth. He’s got better clothes, his own place, he’s a new guy from the outside, but still this awesome dude inside.
About a year later, they’re married. Me and the ttrpg group are all standing with him, the second of any of us to get married, and the first not to elope lol.
A little over a year after that, he’s got a kid new born, and is a regional manager. Still dumb as a brick, but because he’s able to follow instructions and the company had good ones, it’s something he can do well. Plus, everybody that worked under him loved the guy because he was still just righteous.
They ended up moving to Colorado for her job, and he was stay at home dad for a while. We kinda lost touch except for the occasional email or call, but they were happy and doing fine the last time we caught up.
There’s no real moral to all of that, but it was similar enough to the greentext I figured it might be of minor interest.
I’ll say this much; it never hurts to try reaching out to someone.
Damn you for making me shed a tear for a comment on a greentext post, what a wholesome story.
Really shows the impact that your family and upbringing has on you. You were good friends and good people for helping him out, so good to hear stories like this.
Legit, my mom and dad were incredible about that kind of thing. I was one of those kids that always wanted to help my friends when they needed it, and my folks put their home, and their income behind that, every time.
That guy, Keith, wasn’t the first or last person I was allowed to open our home to in one way or another.
They really did lead by example in how to treat people, especially friends. The number of times an aunt, uncle, or a friend of the family, would spend a few weeks with us after life hit them hard is high enough I can’t count them. Goes back to before I can remember because there’s folks that spent time with us when I was a baby that still come to visit my dad and me, telling stories about me as a baby.
My family, my parents in particular, led by example, so I give props to them :)
There’s a few of my friends that were with us for a while when they needed it, and plenty of other people that are relatives or friends or even a couple of friends of friends or relatives lol.
My folks were reasonably careful in that they wouldn’t just let any stranger in the door or anything like that, and they paid attention to what any guests would do around me and my sister. But if they could help someone, they did.
It was really, really awesome knowing that, no matter what other flaws they had as people, if I went to them and wanted to do something for someone, they’d take it seriously and back me up.
The special pan allows air flow at the bottom. A normal pan being solid won’t. And for people like me, air flow on 5/6 surfaces is freaking good enough.
It doesn’t take half an hour to pre heat, it doesn’t heat up the whole house, and I’m not sending my power bill through the roof every time I want to make a meal for one person lol
Just tested my air frier and it’s takes about 2 minutes, but obviously, it’s way more energy efficient. Plus easier clean up. I can just throw a bunch of fries and chicken strips in there and it’s good to go. Whereas with an oven I’d probably need to buy a special rack or something so all the oils don’t stick to the bottom of the fries. Plus heating up all that empty space!
It’s possible he’s running it at 120v if the electrician did a bad job in the kitchen. 400v ovens are fairly common where I live and can run on 240v in a pinch (even if it’s not recommended).
The only large appliances that aren’t running 220-240v in the US are the refrigerator and dishwasher .Ovens, washing machines, tumble dryers, furnaces, and water heaters are all on 240 volts.
I’m sure there are countless social or personal reasons for it, but kids having kids without being taught responsibility or how life works means you get a lot of unfortunate children growing up who were never taught about making plans and goals in life, nor are they provided resources to be successful past childhood when you’re just expected to exist and nobody gives a flying fuck about you.
Honestly? Because he’s a good character. No one takes his morality to heart that wasn’t already deeply damaged, but a character who builds their psyche and motivations around trauma and idiosyncrasies creates a fascinating piece of a story, nonetheless. Similarly, Breaking Bad is never viewed as a tutorial on losing your morality by a thousand cuts, people view it as the chronicle of an intelligent character intentionally blinding themselves to the damage they cause and reacting in a relatable way. The fall from grace and subsequent dwelling in hell is a beautiful story arc and there’s a reason it’s employed so frequently.
I remember coming across a post of tumblr where someone said that if a guy says his favorite movie/tv show is Breaking Bad, Rick and Morty or Fight Club, you should run immediately.
The reason was that while these are good works exploring complex, broken and often violent men, a certain subset (the kind of people who would claim that one of those was their favorite of all time) doesn’t have the reasoning ability to understand that they’re the villains of their universe and should not be idolized.
Rorschach easily fits within the same mold as Tyler Durden, Rick Sanchez and Walter White, a complex and entertaining protagonist who’s also a terrible person who no one should want to be.
Tumblrtards are kind of infamous for magical thinking, often bordering on or just outright being delusional, being unimaginably pretentious, incredibly emotionally unstable, and absolutely loving to glom onto bandwagons of virtue signalling one-upsmanship as well as hate brigading ideas they dont understand and people that they dont like.
They often jump to conclusions ludicrously.
Here is what I mean. If a person’s favorite movie /is/ Fight Club, all you have to do is then ask them ‘why?’.
If you tell me your favorite movie is American Psycho, and the reason why is that you think its a gripping, iconic film criticizing the superficiality and violence of the chauvanistic capitalism of the late 80s…
…that is a lot different than if your reason is that Bateman is just so cool and crazy!
See the context of this ‘advice’ is ostensibly whether or not you should be a friend or partner of someone.
If you are deciding who to have in your circle by whether or not they like one of three objectively popular and excellent films, which are misunderstood by some, but not others…
…then you are actually being very shallow, and impersonal.
Superficial, even.
Right like with Rick and Morty I can tell you I loved the show for the first few seasons…
…but then its quality went down, culminating in the show eventually entirely abandoning one of its main foundational truisms:
Life is brutal, unpredictable and unfair.
The latest seasons of the show abandoned the total /randomness/ factor that defined the earliest episodes, and replaced it with much more standard… and structured plots.
The fanbase clamored over fan theories and details, anything to make there be a grand overarching plot, continuity, and eventually they got it.
But to me that is the show betraying itself. There isnt supposed to be continuity. It is supposed to be unpredictable. Most fans of the show entirely missed the point, and thus cringe ensued.
Now say what you will about my interpretation of the show here…
… but its a little more nuanced than uh, Rick is zany Pickle man.
And I dont think my interpretation indicates I am some kind of maladjusted chauvanist fascist.
But what if I answer that I liked American Psycho, not because it’s incredibly deep view masculinity of the 80’s and all that philosophical stuff, but because it’s funny.
Honestly I would say that that is a legit, if non nuanced take. The movie is absolutely hilarious if you have a dark sense of humor, so all I would really conclude about you personally is that you have a dark sense of humor.
I might be able to infer that you are not super into politics and social theory or whatever, but, you know, I would have to get to know you better to really know that one way or another.
This isn’t magical thinking, as you said it yourself, either you like American psycho because of 0 media literacy (in which case we all agree you’re undesirable to date for a Tumblr user)
Or you like American psycho because of the reasons you cited, which mind you aren’t bad reasons to like it, but it makes you a film bro. To consider it amond your top movies means all you care about in media is how it made you think about society, and honestly if the most you’ve though about society was when watching American psycho then I can see why someone wouldn’t want to date you.
The Tumblr rule of thumb isn’t entirely about not dating bigots (though bigots do tend to be weeded out by this check which was kind of the point), it’s also about avoiding dating asshats in general. What does it say about you that you like Rick and Morty because you agree that life is brutal, unpredictable and unfair? What does it say in the context of someone debating whether they should date you?
Look at all the assumptions you’ve made about a person over their opinions on two pieces of media. That is exactly the behaviour that was called out and you walked right into it.
No, I’ll stand by it. If your favorite movie is American psycho, either you have 0 media literacy, or you’re an asshat.
“Oh but people are complex and it is my right to like American psycho” yeah, sure. But if it’s your favorite movie then I wouldn’t take the chances of dating you. That’s what it means.
Out of curiosity, what are some favorite movies that would, to you, be strong signs that you would be very interested in dating a person who told you it was their favorite movie, with no knowledge of why it is their favorite movie?
Who the fully fuck do you actually believe like American Psycho because they like to murder? Is this the topic on hand here? You shouldn’t date criminally ill murderers and that they like movies about murdering? Because I don’t even think murderers do that
If I have an interpretation of American Psycho that is that it is a critique of society… than this means I am only capable of criticizing society when watching a movie.
Well for one, no, that is not personally true of me, and most importantly, that is not even kind of logically valid to assume or infer.
If I read a book and have opinions about it, does that mean I do or do not have similar opinions of similar real world situations,? Does it mean I do or do not incorporate those opinions into other parts of my personality, or job, or activism or lack thereof?
No. Obviously no. To make that leap would be a vast overgeneralization.
Sure, some people have opinions about art and media, but it doesnt affect their actual lives and actions much. Other people have strong convictions that drive much of their lives, and have consistent views on art and media to go with them. Still others may have an obviously hypocritical view of a real world situation, or not even realize the similarity of a real world situation due to ideological blinders. And others are every other possible kind of something else.
You end with literally begging the question, the answer to which was my whole original point:
Dont use overgeneralizations and assumptions to assume you know what a person thinks, when you could just actually ask them what they think.
Look, I love Fight Club. Fight Club is a big step in my process towards becoming less of an asshole. Worked as intended, 10/10, would reconsider my perception of the world again.
But even I can see how, particularly for a time in the 00s and sometimes beyond the examination of toxic masculinity became the iconification of toxic masculinity. It's not "if they say it's their favorite film, run", it's "man, on the aggegate all of those did the opposite of what they were ostensibly trying to do".
Never, ever, ever underestimate the ability of the public to miss the point. Any interpretation of media, no matter how obvious and intented, will trigger "you're just reading too much into it" or "leave your politics out of my movie" comments.
Also, I have terrible news about what your interpretation indicates, because yikes. It's not that what you're describing is inaccurate, it's that "it was cool when it was hardcore, uncut nihilism justifying why the main character is right to be an asshole, and then it sold out" is not looking great for that armchair psychoanalysis you're inviting.
Well, from the text. Of the show, not the post. I mean from the show.
Arguably the whole ethos of early Rick and Morty is the infamous “nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die, come watch TV” speech. If you're here to tell me that's your jam and you think when it strayed into having a moral stance on being an asshole is when it started going downhill I'm gonna infer some stuff.
That speech is not given by Rick. It's given by Morty. If you're gonna do the textual analysis thing, that's a key difference. The show acknowledges Rick is messed up, but Morty is supposedly the normie trying to get by and he uses that particular turn of phrase to comfort Summer, who at that point is coping with the fact her family is dead and replaced by transdimensional dopplegangers. Randomly, as the OP says.
So it's not Rick's stance, it's the stance of the show telling us that, at the very least, letting go of reasons and meaning and purpose and indulging on the commonplace while suspending knowledge that the universe is fundamentally pointless helps in coping. That's the show talking, not the character.
Alright, that's way too much Rick and Morty analysis for now. If you get it you get it. I don't need to convince anyone. Because, you know, nobody exists on purpose, and so on and so forth.
Yes, that precise statement is given by Morty after his whole family was killed and replaced by another one, but if you rewatch the scene it’s very clear that he’s definitely not okay! He’s trying to find comfort in behaving and rationalizing like Rick would, but being miserable while doing so anyways. At no point during that scene, or the whole show for that matter, is the message that it’s the correct approach to coping with anything! If anything, only after the characters suffer cathartic moments and let their emotions run free for a bit is when we see some sort of growth and positivity.
So here you just completely admit to doing the very thing I advocated against.
You are not responding to what I said, you are responding to me based on a thing I said I liked, soley based on associations of that thing I like, without actually asking me /why?/
Then you also assumed I believe things, or have opinions or whatever that I do not actually have.
I did not expect an actual example of Tumblr hivemindism to actually manifest when I criticized it.
You have to consider, if only for a moment, that people are going off of context cues here, friend.
Hey, context cues can be deceptive. The Internet is prone to generalizations, and nobody has time to be selective, so a ton of babies go waaaay out of here with a deluge of bathwater. But at the very least seeing people react to what one does online provides... a sense of branding feedback?
People love to make sweeping declarations in social media. It's all mostly crap, but it's worth interrogating what one is projecting to make that cut sometimes. And I say this as somebody who gets branded a "reply guy" all the time. Often rightfully so.
Mhm, so you got caught being a hypocrite and are now doing an extremely cringe explanation of how being a hypocrite is normal and fine, while in an anime pose.
My /whole point, from the start/ is that going off context cues alone is not a good idea, especially when trying to have an interpersonal relationship, or considering whether one is worth pursuing.
But you appear to be unable to admit that you completely missed that point, acted like a fool and an asshole, and are now being even more insufferable by basically saying stylish things that only further illustrate that you are a hypocrite.
‘The internet is prone to generalizations’
Mhm, yep, that is not a good thing though. See my /main point/, you know the one you completely missed?
‘Nobody has time to be selective’
And yet here you are, continuing to selectively respond.
‘Branding Feedback’
I suppose that yes I am providing Brand Feedback to Tumblr and its largely insane user base. It was kind of like the opening preamble to my original comment. Is that what triggered you initially to speed read or wilfully misinterpret what I wrote, to describe hardcore Tumblr users as acting as you are now?
‘Social media is full of generalizations but sometimes thats bad’
Again… thats basically my whole main point, from the start.
You have now dropped into third person / impersonal descriptions of the mistakes you have made so as to dissociate yourself from what you have done, seemingly in an attempt to avoid responsibility for your obvious errors.
You /could/ maybe admit you made an embarrassing mistake and give a genuine apology, but instead you appear to be basically doing a really bad attempt of gaslighting me into somehow both forgetting /my main point this whole time/ and also offering it as an excuse for your behavior, in an extremely dramatic and pretentious manner, while pretending to be an anime character.
Uh… ok then. So you have checked off a bunch of the boxes I initially set out that describe TumblrBrain. I guess uh have fun living in your little personal anime fan fic universe.
At this point, any one who reads this whole thread may agree with me when I say that perhaps knowing that a person spends way too much time on Tumblr should be seen as a red flag and you may want to reconsider being their friend or partner, as here we have an example of what is presumably a TumblrAddict being manipulative, hypocritical, gaslighting, being unable to admit or take responsibility for an obvious fault of their own, who retreats into a strange kind of alternate personality when cognitive dissonance becomes to much to bare.
I have not been in Tumblr since... what, 2010? I don't think I've ever posted anything on Tumblr.
But then again, you've had a whole argument against a made up person, so why stop now?
Also, you may want to re-read my post, because you got hung up on the anime character pose joke... and you didn't get what (specifically: who) the anime pose joke was about.
I don't know who hurt you on Tumblr, bud, but it may be time to let go. In any case, since you don't need me to have this conversation at all, you can carry on by yourself, I'm sure.
I swear to Crom, online edgelords have been having an argument with an entirely imagined adversary for decades now, and I'm old enough to remember being one of them and getting over it. Frankly, the retroactive shame hurts my feefees so, so much more than any piece of media I've ever watched, played, read or listened to.
But also, having grown up as a kid in the media wild west of the 80s the idea of "only liking safe art" is absolutely hilarious.
But even I can see how, particularly for a time in the 00s and sometimes beyond the examination of toxic masculinity became the iconification of toxic masculinity. It’s not “if they say it’s their favorite film, run”, it’s “man, on the aggegate all of those did the opposite of what they were ostensibly trying to do”.
Never, ever, ever underestimate the ability of the public to miss the point. Any interpretation of media, no matter how obvious and intented, will trigger “you’re just reading too much into it” or “leave your politics out of my movie” comments.
I guess I don’t see why mass misinterpretation needs to be the final word on a film’s cultural impact (and/or moral value). Times change, people change, and ideas change, but the movie and the message of its creators is still there.
Sure, it's not like it was an intended result, but it's still a valid critique of the period and the movement. It doesn't have to be the "final word", but it's definitely A word. Some of the cultural impact was absolutely the opposite of what it intended, that's a fair observation. I think Palahniuk, particularly after he came out, has addressed that pretty head-on (see below), but also with much less social repercusion.
I also don't think it's a moral assessment of the film or the book or their authors, though. It's a read on the audience, for sure. I think it's valid to point out that if one is unironically on board with good ole Tyler Durden that's... you know, a pretty big red flag right there? Not for the movie, but for the individual audience member.
If your take away from my description of Rick and Morty is that Rick is justified in being a horrible asshole and that he is an good character who in general should be emulated, then uh yikes, you are reading that into what I wrote.
At no point did I state or even insinuate that Rick is some kind of ‘good’ character or role model.
For the record: its at least obvious to me that basically all the characters in Rick and Morty are so flawed that they often do extremely horrible things. Rick in particular is yes a nihlistic asshole, who is at least well enough developed that you can sympathize with him at times, but uh no he is obviously not some kind of role model.
I said the show in general was about brutal unpredictability.
Anyway, you managed to completely miss the point of what I said, and basically just bemoan that Fight Club got adopted by idiot chuds with a misinterpretation that justifies their worldview.
The person I am responding to gave a supposed quote from Tumblr saying ‘run if people have one of these movies as their favorite’ and my point was ‘thats reductive and superficial and impersonal, why not just ask them /why/ its their favorite movie?’
Then you come in and say that actually, what other fandoms did to the movies is so bad that it means the supposed Tumblr overgeneralization is in fact correct…
… which simply ignores my point that if you are trying to judge a person based on a favorite movie, you could actually be personable and ask them why.
The whole point I am making is that you shouldnt judge a book by its cover, and that there are legitimate reasons to have Fight Club as a favorite movie that do not mean a person is a chud, if only you would have a genuine conversation with another person to learn more about them.
But here you are, putting words in my mouth and shaming me for them on the one hand, and then just totally talking around my main point on the other hand.
It’s tumblr. They use hyperbole. They’re not literally saying you should run a mile, just that it’s a potential red flag and worth using appropriate caution before declaring that you’ve made a new best friend, e.g. by asking what the person likes about the piece of media, just as you suggested. Some tumblr users will inevitably end up taking the post at face value, just as you did, but they’re a tiny minority and not worth fussing about. Most will be frequent tumblr users who know half the posts they see are ludicrous exaggerations of the points they’re actually making, and to scale anything back before taking it as life advice.
Ah, so tumblr is full of hyperbolic comments, thus whatever you personally take away is the correct interpretation, and most users just know not to take much seriously, because most of what is posted there doesnt actually mean anything.
Sounds like a wonderful place full of stable people and very insightful discussion.
Nothing more intellectually engaging than ‘actually this thing i said doesnt mean what it literally means, and instead means a watered down version of it, i was just being dramatic to get attention, and you are actually foolish for taking anything i say seriously.’
Cool, still doesnt invalidate my criticism of the actual words that were said, but that doesnt matter to TumblrBrains, because its really all about building a community based on shaming outsiders for taking anything said on Tumblr seriously.
Meh. Being young, ignorant and willing to learn in a new job is very different that being old, proudly ignorant and refusing to adapt to how your current job evolved.
i can actually type slightly faster on a touchscreen keyboard, despite spending most of my time on my pc.
typing special characters is painfully slow on touch keyboards tho
I’ve also found (I’m a teacher) this generation is far less proficient at search. They (generalisation) type a whole question into Google, and read the Google created text box to get their answer, taking it as gospel - regardless of if Google has completely gone off the mark.
Contrast this to a generation that grew up with needing to refine search terms with key words, who can find far more relevant info quicker.
It’s hard to get them out of the rut and teach them to be more critical of sources. They’re so used to having what they need served straight up for them. LLMs (AI) are feeding into this more - they struggle to believe that AI hallucinations exist until I show them.
Again all this is generalisation - when I say ‘they’ I don’t mean ‘all’.
Ask it esoteric questions on something you are intimately familiar with. Heck it doesn’t even need to be esoteric. I asked Bing who won the 2023 World Series and it confidently told me that it was Astros vs the Phillies that the Astros won in 5 games.
I asked Llama 2 the same question and here is the answer. Idk if it is acually right, I don’t watch sports.
Sure! Here’s the answer to your question:
According to the search results, the Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series. They defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks in the championship series, winning four games to one.
I generally get ask it to provide sources for its work, and then show the students that most of the time those sources don’t actually exist.
Like it’ll have a real author, and a real journal, but a fake article name that the author supposedly wrote.
Or a real website that 404’s - once is fair enough, websites change, but when ten of the sourced websites are all 404s that’s not right. You also try to search for the article that’s meant to be on the website, but even the website doesn’t think it exists.
I’ve even been in an argument with Bing where it was adamant that an article existed on a university website, and it shut down the conversation with me when I kept pointing out I couldn’t find it.
Unfortunately this generation google is getting less proficient at search as well. It’s like it treats the search term as a vague idea and any syntax as a non binding suggestion.
That is as much monetary as it is a response to consumers.
I read an article a few weeks ago that - ironically - now I can’t find when searching for it, because all the search results are crowded by SEO blogspam. (Even though I’m using exact phrases I recall from the article!)
The gist of the article was that while your search terms are displayed in the address bar, Google will opaquely substitute words, add ‘invisible’ search terms in that it doesn’t tell you it’s added, or otherwise alter its search metrics to return results that are more heavily laden with advertisements and/or sites that advertise with Google Ads.
If a straightforward search no longer renders straightforward results, then there’s not a good feedback mechanism for users to learn how to be better at searching. We all are just getting rolled by the algorithm to look at advertisements.
I imagine folks who remember when the internet was good will take this as Google now being bad, but folks who don’t/aren’t of that age will just assume the internet always worked poorly. It might be why LLM’s are acceptable as “AI” despite their flaws.
Another teacher here. Teaching English for the first time. I didn’t realise their skills were this bad unless I saw with my eyes. Glad I’m not alone in this battle!
To play a devil’s advocate: could this be them learning how to use a search engine? When I was a young teen learning to use a computer for the first time I would type full on sentences into Google and not get any results.
Couple of years back I used to help this kid with computer related stuff, and it really baffled me how he was nearly computer illiterate. He had no idea what make his laptop was, no idea what OS he was on, or any of the specs.
He called it a gaming laptop because he played games on it, but it was a pretty decent school/work thing without a dedicated GPU.
I’d always envisioned the younger generations getting better and better with tech, but it makes sense that won’t be the case as tech moves to be easier to use, more reliable, and less intrusive.
Modern iPads are nothing like the BS DOS/98 I grew up with.
Fr I think this is my problem with the new “advancements” and why I find myself more drawn to Linux as time passes. The “foolproof” of modern tech is also troubleshoot resistant and difficult as hell to do anything with.
I often say I am lucky that I grew up in the narrow window between when computers became a household commonality and when running and repairing them was affordable, because in that narrow window it was learn or buy. Learn to fix it or shell out for a new one, and they weren’t stable enough for buy to be an option for most households for what was basically a toy. So fam being broke, I learned. I’m not in IT or anything (don’t have the credentials to get hired and entirely unwilling to get them when I already know how to do all the things, I’d rather be unemployed than spend more on worthless credentials… see? Millennial.) but I love running my own hosting and stuff, which means constant learning how to maintain. If I didn’t grow up at that exact time, would I bother, considering this isn’t a job for me and never will be? Probably not, honestly.
I hated the iMac lockdown (and deleted the hard drive registries from every iMac I came across while it was an option to do so, essentially bricking every device I came across, because that’s just piss poor management to allow a group user to brick the entire device… 😅) I hate the windows forced-maintenance (11 doesn’t give a fuck what my active hours are, because I have them set to everything but a 6 hour span of morning when I actually won’t be using it. Still does updates mid afternoon, breaking everything I host on it until I’m home to confirm login even with all security disabled and resume settings enabled…)
I just hate everything except DIY, and I grew up with that. It so difficult to get it to do what -you-want it to do without bowing to the overlords who dictate how it can be used and I’m so over it.
(The swap off Linux was of necessity 2x, the Beast died due to mobo failure and I bought an off the shelf win tower to replace it, but also needed to run the VM for work and Linux couldn’t manage the niche client they went with… but now I’m not employed, buh bye windows! Nevah again.)
Similar thing happened with cars. My grandpa would take them apart and reassemble them. my dad (somewhat generalizing to generations a bit) were really into cars and engines and would do some basic diy. I know nothing about them and don’t care to learn much.
I think computers are doing a similar thing. Millennials sit in the middle of the adoption and saw it emerge from more of a technology wild Wild West to being central to modern society. We could take the time to delve into details (since they mattered), but now it’s more taken for granted and things are there.
I guess, I’m just thinking it’s some sort of technology adoption thing that naturally plays out in a “victim if it’s own success” way.
Oh, that’s definitely happening when the five-years-away promise of fully self-driving vehicles as promised a decade ago make their appearance in 2050.
I would guess that’s it’s a combination of what you mentioned and also the generation rasing it not bothering to actually teach them properly about that sort of stuff. I never learned about car stuff, never had anyone to teach me. Now as an adult I know enough to do the basic oil change stuff but nothing more.
I think the situation is also somewhat different with cars. Old cars used to be much simpler to take apart and tinker with than modern cars. Computers and operating systems are still just as easy to pry apart (since the fundamentals haven’t changed since the 90s lol).
My theory is that as tech came to a wider appeal and became more user-friendly, more people are using it who don’t run into issues that need technical knowledge. Early OSes needed highly technical knowledge to use. Modern OSes can be operated by a monkey. Therefore, their inclination to learn about the computer is less because it just fades into the background.
I think you have some good points, but I’m not 100% sure I agree though. Modern computers are much more complex than earlier ones if the 80s and 90s. (I guess I’m ignoring the earlier VAXs and stuff and thinking more of personal computers.) I saw a keynote from an OS conference which was pointing out that there are very few actual os papers, as the hardware is so much more complex and actually multiple smaller os’s managing the various system on chip components.
Also, Mac has over the years gone to great lengths to hide how things actually work. Like 5 years ago I remember getting really confused just attaching a debugger to a c simple C program I was toying with.
At the end you say that OSs are so easy monkeys could use them, and I think that’s my point too. They intentionally get easier to use and fade into the background and don’t really encourage tinkering with the lower level stuff.
You are correct that the basics of computers are similar and that’s why arduino and other microcontrollers are still basically the same as they were years ago, just the main difference I’ve seen is moving to more and more RTOS and trading off a bit of speed and memory, whereas a decade ago it was a lot more low level assembly optimization.
Good points though! I appreciate them. I teach some computer engineering stuff and I think about a lot of this and how best to talk about some of the lower level stuff.
This reminds me of the comment “you refer to women as bitches”
Like people actually think people walk around talking exactly like they would on the Internet. Yeah let’s ignore the fact that a lot of popular media refers to women as bitches
If it was just water vapor they wouldn't be sucking on it like it was Meet Your Future Husband Night down at the Bowl-A-Rama. They can take their cotton candy chemical cloud and blow it up each others' asses.
To be honest, the older I get the more I realize the value to being lazy.
And for the record, the vast majority of people are fucking lazy. All life forms are, they don’t really don’t want to do work. We weren’t put on this earth to work to live.
Contrary to the perceptions of nature as a well-oiled machine, we see inactivity in all corners of the animal kingdom. In fact, it seems that many creatures spend the majority of their time inactive, which is defined as time that an individual is awake but not engaging in any specific task or activity. Observations of animals have shown that some creatures spend between 75% (lions) to 85% (hummingbirds) of their time being at rest. That’s a lot of time doing nothing!
Depends on where anon’s family is. A lot of small towns have no jobs left for the people graduating high-school. Some cities, like Detroit, have a lack of jobs.
well a lot of listings are just straight up fake because companies want the optics of having open job offers but don’t actually want to hire people, and a huge chunk of jobs are either so out of the way that the commute would leave you without enough money to live on, or they require such absurd qualifications that basically no one is eligible.
A favourite is when programming jobs require 5 years of experience in a language that was made 3 years ago.
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