The founding fathers set this shit up and they knew it was going to go sideways from the moment they signed the paperwork. If anything, it likely lasted longer than they imagined it would.

“A republic, if you can keep it” - Benjamin Franklin, 1787

The Matrix really made me understand where Descartes was coming from. When we say something is “real” it’s always subjective and cannot be objective. That’s an incredibly difficult concept for most humans to truly grasp.

I’m always using the word “infer” when I obviously mean “imply.”

I know you’re joking, but it made me think.

On platforms like Twitter I never felt seen. I felt like I was talking to myself for the 30 seconds I actually engaged with it (I never could stand the format or the interface really).

On Lemmy I do feel seen, because it’s so much smaller. I know people read what I write and I get way more feedback here than I’ve ever gotten since (maybe) 2010-era Reddit.

But important? Anyone who can use the Internet to make themselves feel important must have been a sociopath to begin with because as near as I can tell the Internet is a misery machine designed to make you feel like a dumbshit.

Come to think of it, that’s probably why I hate the entire concept of “influencers” and the human toilets who call themselves that.

It’s actually quite nice, conversations seem like you can get heard and people are generous with upvotes. It’s like Reddit was in 2010, but it’s been that way for a couple years (for me) now. I hope it continues.

And yet not a single word in that entire article about bots being used to post on Internet forums to engineer public opinion, which is certainly what came to my mind when I read the headline.

The closest it comes is the section where it admits that because they’re all spoofing known Big Tech scrapers, they can’t actually say how much of any particular activity is actually going on beyond some broad generalizations.

I can confirm though - my web server was positively getting hammered until I locked it down with fail2ban.

How about the thing these dumbasses really pretend to care about - spending? This moron has spent almost 6 TRILLION fuckin’ dollars since he returned to office and inflation is through the roof (just like last time you fucking geniuses!) but I’m gonna need a crystal ball to know who they’re going to blame it on because he hasn’t been elected yet. Whoever they blame, you can bet his last name won’t be TRUMP.

I’ve been through pretty much every stage shown here and now I’m firmly in the “I don’t know” camp. It feels like I’ll be here until I’m dead, tbh. Not that it matters (maybe).

It was different, there was more of what at least looked like cause->effect. People were irrational, but not directly belligerent about their irrationality. Round table talk formats didn’t seem so useless, there being people who were more learned than you giving useful explanations about what was happening in the world (that made sense). Watching them now seems like the blind leading the blind. The world was more coherent and the incoherent parts of it seemed largely marginalized and sidelined. This marginalization seemed fairly permanent, like you could count on society making progress in science and technology without regard to your stupid uncle’s sexist bullshit or your crazy aunt’s vitamin therapy and aversion to aluminum cookware. Now all of them are wrapped up in one Super Saiyan called “Secretary of Health and Human Services.”

taps_head.jpg can’t scan my camera roll if I don’t have one.

This is their wet dream, but I’ll never participate.

Edit: I don’t participate now. I pay for no subscriptions, no streaming services, and I use no cloud services. Oh, and I’m now completely Microsoft-free since October last year.

Which won’t matter at all once they start losing market share to Microsoft’s stupid decisions. The world will not sit on its thumbs because of Fortnight players. And good riddance in any case.

I came here looking for this answer. I’m actually replaying it right now on my Steam Deck via Cemu and having a ton of fun. It was also my first Zelda game and I had zero expectations. It just blew me away and it still does all these years later.

Windows? Facebook?

lol

I’ve never once posted on the Internet using a real name. I’ve never been a member of any social anything other than Reddit and Lemmy. I only even found Reddit because an IRC link aggregator I used to browse for news/memes went tits up.

I’m without question one of the 90% and I never thought they were going to require it for everyone. But I don’t like the idea that an algorithm is constantly writing a dossier about me to determine my “age” because I wasn’t fucking born yesterday.

Open source your shit and make it auditable or I’m not fucking using it anymore.

(you can donate to their defense fund)

I’m pretty certain we’re not going to spend our way out of this. If the answer is not to seize the means of production, then we’re gonna have to at least seize the means of oppression. Everything billionaires own in any country that means to be free should be seized.

This won’t happen, of course, until they wreak a lot more havoc, unfortunately the havoc they are wreaking is not laying the groundwork for the countries that host them to be more free.

I hated discuss.tchncs.de before it was cool.

He’s full of shit anyway. If his life wasn’t going down the shitter he’d be all-in. He’ll probably still be all-in voting red down ticket in November. As long as they hurt everybody else it’s cool just don’t hurt me.

It’s a shame it’s not around anymore. You sound like you would have fit in nicely.