sailsperson

sailsperson, 11 months ago

Not to whitewash the take, but it's a bigger issue.

The idea of success and being big meaning nearly the same as being relevant are the true villains of the story here. Every business wants to go big, every businessperson wants to make more, every platform wants to aggregate more and more content, etc. The people making the most impactful decisions in companies are plagued with these ideas and lead their businesses in the opposite direction, while staying blind to the alternatives, no matter how small, because they believe that the fact that their users are fleeing to smaller places is a joke, a temporary inconvenience, or a failure.

But it's not, truly.

Kbin and Lemmy and Mastodon and Calckey are, indeed, smaller platforms than Reddit and Twitter are, with less content and fewer people, but the fact of the matter is that is a considerable amount of people that fled both Reddit and Twitter for good in favor of smaller, to some "less relevant" platforms. The effect is the same - less traffic for Reddit and Twitter, less influence from these two, less ad revenue.

I don't want to sound like I truly believe that CEOs and other exec-level people are stupid and make decisions based on ego and simple solutions (like looking at numbers and judging nothing but the numbers), but hell, it does feel like humanity, as a whole, is not perfectly capable of properly functioning at the scale we're trying to function at right now. Smaller companies are more sensible and have higher net profit margin, smaller communities are often safer and more welcoming (on top of being more manageable, too), smaller projects are easier to keep track of and deliver with more satisfying results, etc. Execs don't seem like the type of people to even consider these simple facts, instead opting for being the bigger fish with the bigger wallet and market share.

Maybe that's just me feeling increasingly less comfortable about anything that is sized to unmanageable degrees, thus just seeing things... but then again, that's the tendencies we've seen time and time again in this late stage capitalism, with synergy becoming the same good ol' monopoly, while the common folk begrudge another "mall", its policies, and their results.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

Tell me about it! I swear they have been making adjustments to their algorithms for the past months year.

Before thee protest, I've been getting increasingly annoyed at the content Reddit decides to show me. The subs I chose to follow are all great and often offer something engaging in the best ways possible, and finding a good piece of content there has never been an issue... expect for the past time, where I got what felt like pre-digested and advertiser-friendly posts that I was supposed to maybe vote on and keep scrolling.

I understand that business is about money, but seeing tech largely following the same practices and strategies just to keep pumping cash for execs to liquidate is so mind-numbing and obnoxious. That's gonna sound stupid, but sometimes I wish the tech people would just kick the finance people out of the field and do their own thing, which is what the average people like, too, simply because that's the conditions when really cool and enjoyable shit is born.

Or maybe we all should just collectively pile up some cash buy some land, build ourselves a self-sustainable settlement and get away from the hungry execs.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

The Binding of Isaac, also known as the game of complete and utter bullshit.

Knew I'd see this one here, just didn't one which of the many gorgeous ways to describe the game I'd see specifically.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

I think it's good that they went for a seemingly small period, at least at first. This is a great way to convince the users to join the protest, which is the fuel of it, as asking so many people to forget about Reddit for longer easily could result in more people ignoring the actual boycott because of the scale of the change to their internet habits.

Having many services welcoming redditors is a great help, of course, but it's much easier to convince a large number of people to keep the protest going now that many have found alternatives they like - perhaps some won't migrate completely, but they may use Reddit less as a result. The amount of these people could have been significantly lower had the people had to consider going off Reddit for a similarly significant longer period of time.

The 48 hours of boycott may seem like a small step, but this step is a stepping stone to huge impacts later on, as we're already seeing by the attention the whole situation is picking up.

We're far from the credits roll in this movie.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

This wad made me feel like it was going to be a great Spooktober material, but now that's so many people played it, commented on it, and loved it, and now John himself is playing it, I really wanna play it myself and join the still fresh talks.

On Doom, no less, the game that breathed in so much life into the FPS genere and thus modern gaming as a whole, released back in 1993, and yet still active and alive thanks to its community! I love modding!

sailsperson, 11 months ago

I've been wondering the same since we knew the expansion was on the way. Still no answer, though.

I'm going to start a completely new playthrough anyway since they're revamping so much about the game that I'm going to have to make new builds with all the changes coming anyway.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

I've been thinking of contributing for several years now, but never had an actual opportunity to do so for the software that I feel confident enough about. There's always Linux, but I'm far from being able to make a meaningful contribution there.

Hopefully I find some time to learn more about the tech kbin (and perhaps other fediverse platforms) uses and finally put my skills to use in open-source.

Knowing that there's something I can do sitting in front of my computer and mashing my keyboard that has the potential of making something that I use together with many other people is dizzying, honestly, even if that's just a prospect. Knowing that it can put me into a good light in the development world is even more dizzying.

Man, there's some things I do hate about software, but there's so much to love!

sailsperson, 11 months ago

I kinda owe this whole protest the fact that my most recent complaints about the internet have finally found an answer in the shape of many place I have discovered, like Lemmy and its instances, Kbin and its instances, Matrix and its instances...

I am finally feeling a little more like I used to when I browsed the internet in the 00s, when I just had so many different places to go for different things, rather than just being actively manipulated into staying in one play that "has it all". Sure, the fediverse, too, may have the same effect, but its instance actually feel different, and I think I'm seeing different kind of content as well.

There are things that I consider dear to me about Reddit and the communities I discovered there, but if its decline means that I stop mindlessly scrolling it trying to find that "final" stimulation for my brain, and instead start interacting with actually interesting, human-like, and though-out content, then the sacrifice is well worth it. Life changes, and the good changes should be welcome, even if they result from something less than pleasant like this.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

I'm not bragging here, but I can't even recall mine!

sailsperson, 11 months ago

They might be downvoting you because you're basically declaring the variable twice, with the same name, too. If someone knows better, though, please correct me.

Either of the following should work just as well:

var magazineString = 'kBiNmEta';
magazineString = magazineString.toLowerCase();

var magazineString = 'kBiNmEta'.toLowerCase();

Another reason some people may be upset is that they see it as downplaying the complexity of the issue, I suppose, but I'm not going to play psychic here or put words into peoples' mouths. One thing I'll say for certain is if there's anything I learned about any sort of work, is that it's always far more complicated than it sounds/looks like; applies especially well to software.

But don't you get discouraged! Learning to code yields great result even if you decide to not pursue the career with it for whatever reason - it's fun, it's rewarding, you can easily turn into something useful, you can contribute to open source, etc. There's always something.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

I have always played RPGs from the good guy perspective - responding to the calls for help to actually help, risking my life for the strangers' wellbeing, having a rigid and perfectly calibrated moral compass, all while being an emotionally complex and multi-layered individual...

Not in Starfield. Once I learned that it is possible to join the pirates, The Crimson Fleet, I knew that this is going to be my first time being an absolute scumbag. I'll pick a backstory, traits, and skills all based around criminal way of life for one, and one purpose - for my own good.

I'm going to be a steel rat of the settled systems, and I salute your devotion to plunder.

sailsperson, 11 months ago

Arch here. I heard it's like Manjaro without the headache!

sailsperson, 11 months ago

You think you choose the distro, but distrohopping clearly shows that it's the distro that chooses you when you finally stumble upon the right one.