I don’t think there’s less stuff. I think there’s more slop and trash, so the percent of good stuff is lower.

When we’re constantly ‘killing time’ on our phones/screens

Reminded me of that quote from House of Leaves

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.

Forums were cool. They often had their own culture and in-jokes. People would become well-known on the forum. There’s a couple names I recognize on here, but it’s mostly transient. (On the other hand, I’ve probably had a vicious argument with someone and then a nice chat with them later, without realizing it was the same person).

Most internet users seem bland, and just congeal onto youtube, discord, twitch, and other nightmares.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat

People are being ground up by capitalism and it’s easier to just look at tiktok or play Baldur’s gate than actually engage with a messy person.

I try to stay in touch with people but it’s hard. I’m also kind of an insufferable asshole, and I think some people leave because they’re tired of “capitalism sucks” coming up

Of course people are using AI. It’s the default behavior of Google, the most popular web search. It confidently spits out falsehoods. This is not an improvement.

And there are definitely people “needing to convince others to use the tools.”. Microsoft and Google et al are made of people. They’re running ads to get people to adopt it.

Buying stuff online and email are useful stuff in ways LLMs can only dream of. It is a technology nowhere near as good as its hype.

Furthermore , “the general public likes it” is a dubious metric for quality. People like all sorts of garbage. Heroin has its fans. I’m sure it’d have even more if it was free and highly advertised. Is that enough to prove it’s good? No. Other factors such as harm and accuracy matter, too.

It seems to mean people who don’t consume AI content not use AI tools.

My hypothesis is it’s a term coined by pro-AI people to make AI-skeptics sound bad. Vegans are one of the most hated groups of people, so associating people who don’t use AI with them is a huge win for pro-ai forces.

Side note: do-gooder derogation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation ) is one of the saddest moves you can pull. If you find yourself lashing out at someone because they’re doing something good (eg: biking instead of driving, abstaining from meat) please reevaluate. Sit with your feelings if you have to.

Trying to get people to use signal. People don’t care about ideals or principles or future problems, so it’s a difficult sell.

Lack of money is certainly a chilling factor. Went bowling the other week, and it cost like $30/person. That’s pretty cheap, but not if you’re dead broke. Went out for brunch and a short bar crawl this weekend, and they cost like $50/ea for food and a few drinks. Not that expensive, but also kind of a lot.

You can socialize for cheaper. Had a little get together the other week- I spent like $40 for pizza and snacks, but could’ve probably gone cheaper. The real limiting factor is getting people who will show up.

I imagine it’s hard to bootstrap that, if you have no friends or only sad-sit-home-alone friends.

I feel like most people don’t buy software anymore. Everything runs in the browser.

Like, nerds and enthusiasts and game playing people sure. But most people? Nah. It’s all Instagram, Facebook, tiktok, Reddit, YouTube. Maybe like roll20 if they’re a dnd nerd. Most people aren’t doing Photoshop or blender.

Being an adult in the sense of being responsible, feel pretty good about. Pay the bills. Feed myself. Go to work.

Being an adult in the sense of having no fun, or tightly restricted fun, not so much. Still go see live music and play video games.

Good. The more people switch, the more support there will be.

Sometimes the word “Interesting” causes my brain to recall the character generation in Morrowind. The guy says something like ““Interesting. Now before I stamp these papers, make sure this information is correct.””

Conservatism, mostly.

Probably get as many conservatives out of power as possible. Once they’re gone we can work on climate change, better electoral systems, removing the evils of capitalism, and so on.

I could accept it matters more than 0, but it is pretty far down the list of issues given the state of the world.

I occasionally become insufferable and recommend people play other games, but people don’t really care. It’s like getting people off twitter.

This is broadly true, but given the low level of rules mastery I’ve seen I say “shared understanding of the rules” is a generous description.

Still, like a national fast food chain sometimes you just want something familiar even if it’s not as good as other options. You know it’s not likely to be worse than your expectations

Everything is an option according to them but it’s ultimately isn’t.

It really is a more restrictive system than people think. If you have a concept that’s like “psychic batman” you can’t really make that concept go in DND. Trivial to make in the other games I play the most (fate, CofD).

D&D is not as good as it is popular. It’s a very idiosyncratic game that’s mostly focused on a particular kind of play, but people treat it like it’s a general purpose tool.

Clearly people can have fun with it, and that’s what really matters. I’m still convinced many of them would have more, easier, cheaper, fun if they picked up a different game.

I briefly toyed with some of the early image generation stuff. It was a fun toy for making NPCs for RPGs.

But now it’s everywhere and being used as an excuse to squeeze labor harder and deliver dubious value. If it just stayed as a toy I wouldn’t mind it much. I get annoyed at the aggressive “do you want me to rewrite that for you??” shit that pops up now.