Someone posted on one of the subreddits I used to read, and I tried it out. I stopped using reddit because of the API thing and a general dislike of private consolidation that you get with sites like it.
It’s been fine. Some rough edges but worth it.
Would rather they invest in, like, housing, food security, climate crisis, any number of other more useful things. I know you could say that about anything- like all the money being spent on movies seems frivolous next to that stuff- but AI is especially dubious.
Our society’s priorities are all wrong, and I don’t think it’s going to get better without a lot of suffering. Maybe not even then.
I have money and they don’t. If I give them $1 or $5 or even $20, I won’t notice the difference and they will almost certainly have a positive change from it.
I don’t give money to the really aggressive homeless lady though, because she scares me.
“artificial difficulty” is poorly defined. Most parts of a video game are artificial. You get 100 health and 5 healing potions? Well those numbers were just made up, and could easily have been 50 and 1, or 200 and 10. The boss takes 5 hits to defeat, or 10, or 3?
I think people say “artificial difficulty” when they mean “I don’t like this”, but that’s not very useful for a discussion without digging deeper.
Your position is about a thousand times better than the denial-ism of most meat-eaters. “Eating meat is morally dubious, but I am making this bad trade off” is better than the usual “Shut up meat is tasty and like they don’t feel pain and if they did it’s only for a moment and it’s longer they deserve it for being lower on the food chain. And the environmental impacts are just made up but even if they were real they’re not a big deal, and if they were then it’s not like it’ll affect me, and if it did well fuck you.”
That is, some people who eat meat refuse to acknowledge that there’s any drawbacks or moral pitfalls. I guess that’s too hard on the self image. Cowards, really.
I try to minimize how much meat I eat. It’s a baby step. It’s hard when like work does an outing and there’s no vegetarian options. I don’t want to make a big stink about it every time. But I’m not going to pretend that eating meat is morally the high ground or good for the environment.
Sometimes people are like “Well I just enjoy a hamburger” as if that’s any sort of justification. Maybe I just enjoy punching cowards in the throat, but we can’t always do what we want, now can we.
Oh, I’m also on that side of the “game difficulty” argument. I mean, I don’t care much about what’s offered in single player games. I usually play on the default settings. But one time I got into an argument with someone who said he should be able to unilaterally adjust his iframes and parry window in PvP, and that guy can fuck himself.
I think I have an undue emotional response because a lot of the time it feels like the other person didn’t even try. It’s like someone who goes to a restaurant and just immediately pours salt all over the dish. Just try it like it was delivered first.
Or they usually eat pizza, but they order this soup dish. And then they get mad they’re burning their hands when they try to scoop it into their mouth. Use a spoon. Stop blaming the soup and use a spoon.
I guess more broadly my problem is I don’t believe other people are any good at introspection and emotional regulation. People just feel things and make up justifications. We all do that some of the time, but I think some people are just always in that mode.
Not great at some of the emotional assuagences. Like, it’s not enough to be right, you also have to make them feel good. Hell, you don’t even have to be right.
Sometimes I feel it’s like “hey don’t eat that it’ll make you sick” -> “fuck you don’t tell me what to do” -> they get sick and learn nothing.
Like, we’re all emotional. Me, you, everyone. But I feel like some people listen to almost entirely the emotional channel, and I don’t really know how to tap into that very effectively.
There’s validity to “found art”, I think. Like “death of the author” for text, sometimes what you pull out of viewing something is worthwhile even if the artist didn’t mean it (or didn’t exist)
A little bit of “I did something creative and profited” would probably be fine. The real life implementation as “I’m going to pay children pennies to sell adulterated bread for dollars” is really bad.
Even less hyperbolic versions tend to quickly become bad. CEOs and such that keep most of the value created by labor. Externalized costs suffered mostly by the poor and vulnerable. People being told to work or die. It’s not a good system to live in.
Pokemon go. There were always people eager to tell you how it’s not very good. Like, ok. Do you want me to stop having fun now, or is there a grace period, or?
Though ironically I do have a bit of a “fun police” impulse around dungeons and dragons via “oh my gosh why are you doing a social intrigue game with this rules set” I’ve been working on keeping that to myself.
I feel like sometimes people just want to feel like they’re a part of something. Not consciously, necessarily. But like, “the in-group says nickelback sucks, so if I make a joke about how they’re bad people will laugh, and like me, and I’ll fit in”
A lot of people never really stop being teenagers.
There are no universal truths about the behavior of “men” and “women” (nor other gender identities)
However, I believe men (at least in the US) are often socialized to more emotionally closed off. Like the only emotion allowed is anger. Other emotions are seen as weak or femme (which are viewed as the same)
It’s a good game, and I say that despite disliking DND 5e. Mods help
All of these stories I feel the same way: moving to another centralized privately owned platform is stupid.
One time I made a joke to the players, “Yeah watch out, the woods could be full of dangerous things. Like fire bears.”
The players were like “lol right”
And then there were fire bears. Bears made of fire. (Some industrialists had started a forest fire, killing a local druid and wildlife, and now they were haunting the place.)
People are emotional. All of us, more or less. Some people also sometimes have other ways of engaging with the world.
But cars are emotional for people. So was 9/11. Facts don’t really matter.
So when you tell someone something bad about cars, they have an emotional response and that’s game over. Especially if they see you as out-group.
I don’t know how to fix this but I think it’s the root of all of our problems.
Maybe if we can get people to see experts as in-group again?
I accidentally made a rom-com subplot in one of my games… Twice… And the players loved it both times.
The first time there was a divorced smith lady who sort of had a death wish, and the timid tavern owner who had a massive crush on her. Of course the players wanted to set them up.
The second time, the players had to infiltrate a masquerade ball. Sadly I’m starting to forget the details. I think there was tension around meeting them while masked and, like a rom com, trying to figure out what they thought about the PC. And then they tried to get the NPC involved in their heist, because they just happened to have a skill they needed. And of course it wasn’t a clean heist, and the NPC had some trauma.
Mergers and acquisitions should be a lot harder than they are. Maybe even prohibited in nearly all cases.
Those people aren’t a good match for you (or maybe anyone).
I don’t think there are good arguments for eating meat, and I think people get mad at vegans because of the cognitive dissonance. “If eating meat is bad, and I eat meat, then I’m bad. But I’m not bad! They must be bad! They suck!”
Sometimes you see this with other things. Like if someone walks or takes a bike instead of driving for the environment. “If driving is bad for the environment, and I do a lot of driving, I’m doing bad. But I’m a good person! Fuck them for making me feel bad!”
Most people are just large children.
Sometimes people try to justify eating meat. Some reasons are more defensible than others. Someone with severe allergies might have trouble getting nutrition from vegan options. Someone saying “but I enjoy it” is acting like a child.
In short, most people are operating mostly on emotional levels. Facts don’t really matter. Feelings drive them. I think this is the root of most of our problems, honestly, that people can’t put aside their emotions.
Personally, I try to minimize how much meat I eat, but I’m okay with accepting sometimes I do bad things.