I stayed up to date on ai and machine learning, including language models. I remember hearing that one learned math from language and wondering where things will go. I watched ai safety videos before they felt relevant. Then I heard Openai, which had a good rep at the time, is releasing their new model online, called ChatGPT. Having played with DungeonAI and NovelAI before I was gonna fiddle with this as well.
Then headlines broke, it became a phenomenon. Even then I figured this would be this week’s Thing before getting bored, as was common with these ai.
Down the line I remembered hearing ChatGPT on a gas station ad for some travel app. That was when I realized this is permanent. People who aren’t even online are likely hearing about this. Suddenly my niche hobby and hopeful dreams of the future became an actual enshittified crisis.
I don’t think I need to explain how everyone using language models now is just god awful for everyone. And the attention hasn’t gotten us closer to answering long standing questions of ethics, economic change, what is intelligence or consciousness. We’ve just got a bunch of the lowest common denominator shouting their answers now.
Goddamnit yes. It’s why I’m very pro-gatekeeping. Because people who are new to a hobby because it got popular tend to ruin every-fucking-thing.
For example: flight simulator. That used to be an exclusively nerd domain up until the FS2020 version, which was released on Xbox. The result: a massive influx of new garbage payware and a decline in quality of established brands. While also making the sim worse in order to chase broader appeal. It’s gotten a bit better after covid went away and the normies dropped the hobby, thankfully.
Also: film photography. The popularity of instagram and YouTube ‘influencers’ got a lot of people into our hobby the past decade. It’s lead to increased gear prices, film being more difficult to get and the forums flooding with the dumbest possible questions, since these newcomers are allergic as fuck to reading manuals or watching any tutorial longer than thirty seconds. It’s also lead camera manufacturers to chase this new demographic by making their cameras shittier and more ‘instagram-friendly’. Here’s looking at you, Fujifilm and your shitty X-half.
Take it from someone who’s been around a bit: if you like a thing, keep newcomers away from it. Gatekeep it like the Berlin Fucking Wall, lest they completely fuck up your hobby.
I am an avid collector and drinker of Chinese teas, particularly oolongs and puerh. I had been drinking them for years when suddenly the absolute asshole Dr. Oz went on TV claiming that puerh tea was some magical cure for anything and everything that you might have.
Normally, I get excited for new people to share tea with, but this fad caused prices to rise across the board and caused the market to get flooded with awful quality tea. These people were drinking some of the worst quality (fishy, shou/cooked puerh) teas and were more obsessed with how to mask the flavors with milk and sugar than actually slowing down and enjoying the tea.
The fad faded and people went back to putting matcha in their morning milkshakes. Even so, I still run into people that reflexively associate incredible tea with Dr. Oz and the disgusting teas he foisted upon his audience. Sad.
Dune before the movie came out
The Lynch one, right?
My ex wife and I used to take a chess board everywhere, play in cafes, parks, restaurants, pubs. It was something to do when we had run out of stuff to say to each other. It was a conversation starter, people would come up and have a sticky, or ask us who’s winning. Some people would occasionally ask if they can play. It was nice. Until Queens Gambit was all the rage. Then people seemed to assume we were just following that trend, and there was a noticeable increase in people saying “Queens Gambit eh?” And we stopped taking the board out so much.
Not to that extent, but crypto. I think its an amazing and really interesting technology. But now it’s tainted by scammers and when people hear the term, they get defensive because they are ready for you to scam them
Ive learned a bit off a on about crypto, but never got “into it”. When I first started learning it looked like a really interesting concept with a lot of potential uses.
I can’t remember the details at this point, but when looking at bitcoin I remember seeing so many problems. There was the transaction price, speed, and complexity. There was the insanity of all the wasted energy to “mine” bitcoin. Most importantly, it didn’t make sense to me as a currency. Currency needs to be stable, easy to exchange, and easy to use to buy things. Bitcoin always seemed like a really cool prototype that needed a successor or major revisions.
Then the masses (and braindead hype bros and “visionary” corporate types) jumped on it and turned it into the shit show it is today. When people would get excited about it (“price is going up! Gotta buy now!”), it was clear they either didn’t really know what it was or were trying to hype it to get more money pumped into it. When friends or family brought it up, I’d point out that it didn’t really have any use except as speculation. I’d tell them they if they wanted to gamble, go for it, but they should realize that it doesn’t have intrinsic value (just like all the other currencies) and, as it stands, it’s a really shitty currency. Know that people aren’t buying it because it works well. People are buying it because the price is going up.
People have made a lot of money (or theoretical money if they’re still holding), but it still doesn’t seem like it actually gets used for anything but speculation. The $2+ trillion USD market cap for bitcoin makes my head spin. I’ve always thought that bitcoin was a dead end and would eventually be dethroned by something more viable, but here we still are.
I haven’t looked at cryptocurrencies in a while. Any notable progress in the last 5 or so years toward it being more than a money making gamble?
Bitcoin hasn’t made much progress. There are some layers on top of it that let you send instantly and cheaply, but they are at best impractical (for lightning, of you want to be able to receive money you have to create a channel with a “server” node and them spend bitcoin which buy you liquidity to receive money. Utterly worthless)
The two I have my sights right now are monero and ltc. Both of those let you send pretty fast and with less than a cent fee
There is a tech that is called proof of stake that means that mining is waaaay more energy efficient but none of those are implementing it. I’ve heard it has drawbacks but I’m not sure I understand them
Also monero is mined in a way that buying GPUs or ASIC (mining specialized hardware) is not worth it. You get better results on a CPU, making mining more accessible for everyone
Both of those have confidential transactions so no one know who sends who how much money nor how much money each part has. Which is pretty cool
It’s called Monero, aka XMR. Typo there.
I know what i said
/s
~I’ll edit now~
Feels bad man
This happens to most things I like. I really liked JoJo’s Bizarre adventure when the anime was first coming out and I read all the manga and then when part 3 got super popular the fandom became completely insufferable to the point where I was stopped recommending the show or keeping up with any updates. I have also been really into AI/language models/machine image generation for years before ChatGPT exploded and now “being into AI” usually means “Exporting rational thought to a chatbot.” I also feel like reddit is like this.
Jojo’s was popular for a while before I got into it. I was very confused by part 1, because none of it lined up with what I was expecting from the memes and general online discourse. It was good, I liked it. Part 2 with the Pillar Men was the thing I watched that year.
Part 3 was awful. Jotaro is the worst jojo. They did my boy Joseph dirty. Hamon is much more interesting than stands. I could not force myself to finish watching part 3.
I felt the same about Stardust Crusaders but pulled through. The second half is substantially better with E34 (D’Arby the Gambler) being my favorite episode of the show.
I remember that episode, was a good episode. shame that nothing that happened in it actually mattered to the overarching plot.
Here’s a controversial one: Target shooting.
It used to be a skill you honed, going to the range to become better every time. Participate in competitions, meet people. It was a great hobby.
And then the idiots who unironically wear Punisher logos ruined it.
I used to enjoy going to the range. Apparently the one I frequented in my youth was all army guard/reserves and prior service, because when I moved and sought out a new place it was a fucking clown show. Simple shit like ‘keep your weapon pointed up and downrange’ is too fucking hard for these gravy seal shitbags.
Welcome to “gun people who hate gun people”
How will that end ?
I feel sorry for you - I live in one of those socialist hellhole countries where owning a gun requires annual testing that you can actually hit a target (50/100 on a B8 target for beginners, not exactly tough) and pass a psych test. Going to the range is lovely here, and competitions are usually paired with a nice meal afterwards for people to socialise.
I watch US videos, and most of them just seem insane. One notable exception is the JaredAF channel, that guy can really properly target shoot.
Switzerlahd? When I lived in Denmark the laws were about that tough, though still surprisingly simple after I gained citizenship.
For a moment I thought you meant shooting up a Target store.
That isn’t what it means? … Shit, I should clean this mess up.
Same, man. I like it, from the meditation-like state when you take it serious to the gun goes bang part when you are just messing around. But some of the people, man… Where do I start.
I think I should go again regardless, if everyone with wane opinions leaves, that would be surrendering.
Tabletop RPG. It used to be a niche of the internet in the early days, with people posting here and there their scenarios, campaign, ideas etc. It was hard to find and so pleasurable when you found something.
Nowadays it’s trusted by … Wizard if the coast ? Online only platforms and what have you.
I loved #scenariotheque, but now it’s almost a ghost website (pardon the french).
I know if sounds like old man yell at clouds, but damn do I miss the early days.
I feel with you but I think it also brought some benefits. Finding time to meet up with my friends has become harder and harder with everyone growing up, studying, getting jobs.
The influx of people during covid catapulted the virtual tabletop solutions ahead and now we regularly play again using foundry vtt since everyone can just sit at home.
But yeah, online everyone just talks about DnD or Critical Roll it feels like and unless you’re on reddit there’s very few communities left.
I’m in the same boat with a few others here when it comes to some games like Halo and Fallout. But I feel like I’m on the brink with 2 new ones:
- Doom: I played the original when I was a kid and got bullied for it (or probably being a general nerd). 2016 and Eternal were really popular and the franchise took off; but Dark Ages feels off. I played Dark Ages for a bit, put it down, and haven’t picked it up since. I think Doom is going down the shitter, especially what they did to Mick Gordon.
- Mother Mother (a band): My SO and I love their music for how unique and interesting it is; and we went to one of their first concerts at a small venue when they came into town ~10 years ago ish? Must have been <500 people. Generally no one else liked their music we shared it with, so we kept it to ourselves. Now? We went to another one a few months ago and it was at a HUGE stadium; absolutely packed. I think one of their songs went viral on TikTok - My Daddy’s got a gun. We’re proud of what they’ve accomplished, but really hope they don’t lose their identity in trying to become even more popular.
TIL Mother Mother is popular now. Loved O My Heart back in the day
This was from the concert. Pretty packed
Minecraft. Started playing in 2011 and have played off and on every year since then. It’s now really popular again, but I distinctly remember around 2017-18 it became suddenly uncool to play. When I would be in a VC with friends while playing it, they would ride my ass for it. The ~10 year nostalgia/hype cycle is coming full circle lol
God yes. I was one of the first people to buy it. Back when you had to send Notch himself five bucks to play it. I was interested in the concept, but frankly didn’t think it would have much appeal beyond people who enjoy completely self-guided experiences with no set goals.
How wrong I was.
It’s been wild seeing it rise to the top of the pop culture heap, become popular with 12 year olds and eventually result in me seeing a movie starring Jack Black based on it.
It’s wild that it started with me and a handful of guys sending Notch a fiver.
I got my copy back in May 2011. I think the only thing that pisses me off that’s related to its popularity was it being sold and sold again, and so when I wanted to start playing with my children, I had to re-buy the game. I transferred from minecraft to Mojang, but didn’t do Mojang to Microsoft, and so that was that.
Beyond that, I’m 37 and have two kids and I don’t really know if it’s popular and what the community is like, I just play with my kids, and they’re scared of endermen, so it’s fun.
Since 2011 for me too. I sometimes step away for half a year at a time, but I always end up back.
As much as the modern image of Minecraft might be obnoxiously shouty youtube shorts, that’s not all there is to it.
You have the groups of talented builders recreating the Lord of the Rings world of Middle Earth at 1:1 scale, and then the crazy redstoners building fully working computers inside the game.
Minecraft has always been for everyone, and I hope it always will be.
Rick and Morty
I saw a clear separation between me and the idiot part of the demographic who enjoys the show at the Pickle Rick episode.
It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t even a good story or episode. It was just the writers deciding to come up with the most blatantly random thing for the sole sake of randomness.
I hate that I’m writing this because I’m gonna sound like the *"to be fair * copy pasta but, the fact that it’s so lame and stupid is kind of the whole point of the bit.
He gives his big “I’m pickle Riiiiick!” presentation like it’s supposed to be some big huge awesome thing, and it’s presented like a punchline that you’re supposed to laugh at and find funny… Then it’s a hard cut to Morty’s disappointed, slightly concerned face for a solid 10 seconds. Morty is you, the viewer, painfully unimpressed by what is presented as, well, “the funniest shit ever”.
Remember in an earlier episode when Rick makes a reference to the non-existent Redgren Grumblholdt, and the kids laugh because they think it’s supposed to be funny and just want to fit in? Those are the people that the “funniest shit ever” meme is about. People that are fed an intentionally bad joke, don’t understand the irony behind the bad joke, but sees that everyone else is laughing at the bad joke, so they pretend the joke is funny. Two people laughing at the same thing for entirely different reasons.
The whole Pickle Rick plotline is just background events anyways. The meat and potatoes of the episode is with Dr Wong.
Nail on the head
When this pickle rick stuff went down, I felt like I was taking crazy pills.
The whole show is about how Rick is a selfish prick. That episode was also about Rick being a selfish prick and trying to weasel out family therapy by turning himself into a pickle.
That’s it. That was the entire reason for Pickle Rick. But the idiots who idolize Rick for some reason cranked it up to full retard.
It was so dumb that it was funny to me
I share this view. It was so nonsensical that it was actually funny and memorable.
I liked the bit at the end where the therapist calls him out.
See, that’s the thing. Pickle Rick was funny because he went through all that bullshit just to avoid going to therapy. The show was making an excellent point about how stigmatized therapy is, and how bettering yourself is hard work, work many people just don’t want to do. (Basically, “men would rather turn themselves into pickles than go to therapy.”)
Of course, any actual nuance is lost on the “high IQ” R&M fans. I’ve always seen Rick as similar to Eric Cartman or the Joker: if you idolize him, you missed the point.
Rick and Morty was the show for me in the beginning even when the dumbasses showed up, but it lost its appeal after the scandal. Just doesn’t feel the same.
the scandal???
I assume they mean Justin Roiland being found out as a sexual predator of underage girls …
Probably this one where a bunch of fans attacked a McDonald’s to get Szechuan sauce. Rick and Morty got some mainstream attention. People would say something like “You like R&M? You must be toxic.”
I feel like they’re more likely talking about Jeff Roiland’s (edit: creator, one of the main writers, and voice actor for most male characters (including both Rick and Morty)) abuse allegations, after which they canned him as writer/ voice actor and the show kind of lost it’s flair.
they canned him as writer/ voice actor and the show kind of lost it’s flair.
You’re joking, right?
Roiland is a great voice actor, but the rambling “comedy” bits got old and repetitive real fast. I don’t miss them. That, and the new VOs hit it out of the park.
Nah. Morty’s alright. Rick lost his edge
kind of. but it’s mostly character development. His edge mostly was “I’m drunk and an asshole who pretends to not care”
He starts to actually care about his family. The ultra depressed suicidal rick got a bit tiring after a while
Personally, I think the new VAs are pretty good on their own. Morty even sounds a little better.
Tbh, the current and last season are great.
The voice actors are great. If I didn’t know about the change, I’d never have noticed
I just learned about it now. I didn’t notice.
they really did do a great job replacing the voice actor
Yeahh the Szechuan thing kinda tainted the whole show for me. It was a dumb bit that went too far and the cringe fallout still lingers…
honestly it was getting a bit stale before, with its creator still onboard. its just that the scandal probably shooed people away all at once.
I remember being hyped about it since I was a huge fan of Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, even told some friends to keep an eye on it. I recall watching the premiere of the first episode and even telling more friends about it.
Then the entire thing became super popular before Season 1 was over and then… well you know what happened. I continued watching after Roiland was gone and the show popularity declined, but I am absolutely staying as far away as possible from that fandom
While not to the same degree as a lot of folks, Fallout got into it some time around New Vegas because it was featured on game fly. Anyways delved headfirst into it and fell in love with the classic games. The post Fallout 4 boom gives me a headache sometimes I just want to talk with old bastards and my fellow autists about Fallout without some profligate butting in cause they watch the TV show.
Russerfrushenrushen kids and their first person fallout games. All my homes know best fallout is third person isometric turn based.
Technically that includes Brotherhood of Steel, careful there that game is still actively worse than anything Bethesda has made.
Eh, I remember enjoying it, though never played it again so 🤷 possibly nostalgia. It was just not an open world or rpg.
Oh wait, I was thinking of fallout tactics. BOS was like wasteland skinned diablo right? That is, not turn based so not in my original grumpy old man comment.
Yeah it was the one with Ballz energy drink instead of nuka cola. I was just poking fun since isometric can sometimes include top down.
I was lucky enough to have played fallout 3 before new Vegas. So the series for me went from “that was fun, interesting setting” to “Wow this is genuinely amazing and feels like a living world that I’m inhabiting and interacting with.”
And then fallout 4 came out, and I was hoping that Bethesda would have learned something from New Vegas. But that was foolish, modern Bethesda doesn’t write stories, they don’t understand characters, they are a software company manufacturing a product, not a studio crafting playable stories. What narrative and story do exist, are the minimal needed to serve the gameplay loops. They make toy boxes, not experiences. Some people like that, but that’s not what I play these kinds of games for.
Going back and playing fallout 1 and 2 solidified this for me further, if Bethesda was going to learn from what made new Vegas great, they would have done so from 1 and 2 and implemented it in 3.
I haven’t even bothered to try fallout 76. I know what it is, it’s a looter shooter live service game meant to Skinner box you in to spending as much time as possible grinding up numbers and finding the best stats on rare drops. It’s not what I’m in to. I’ve accepted that.
As much as I love the fallout setting and the potential for story and world, there will never be another fallout game, just Bethesda products wearing the aesthetic. There are plenty of other great games out there that have story and gameplay working synergistically to create an experience.
Well if you want to scratch that CRPG story itch may I suggest Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Tainted Grail, Wasteland 2 and 3, and basically all of Owlcat games except maybe Pathfinder kingmaker.
played a lot of those.
I remember VtMB particularly fondly.
Now if only VtMB2 would get out of its development hell so we could know if it’s shit or not.
I was a nerdy teen in the 90/00s. There’s plenty I could be gatekeeping but the thing is… I’m not special. Nobody is. All this shit is meaningless. You don’t own any of it. Sorry it just all comes off so territorial and greedy in a way. Grosses me out.
Nazi ideology, OP OP. There was a nice little thing we had once, until you cunts took it up like a hoard of malignant nihilist pussies 😒Now we can’t even bring up the Third Reich’s many incredible qualities in conversation without someone rolling their eyes! n-chan numpties ruin every fandom.
/ss
lmao about the /ss
Underrated comment
I hate that 4chan losers have somehow become the face of nihilism.
Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it’s an ethos
Fuck me, Dude. Nihilists?
Fun fact, I recently learned it’s meant to be pronounced nee-hilism. But if you ever call it that in real life nobody will know what you’re talking about.
