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.
I miss when it was just goofy proof of concept s*** like seth bling teaching a neural network to play Super Mario Bros.
Or there was this site called “Thisgirldoesnotexist” with several sister sites like this cat does not exist and so on and it would pretty much just generate a headshot of a character. Extremely primitive versions of the image generation technology seen today. But now it’s basically just used to s*** out copious amounts of image files with no purpose and no soul.
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.
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
Dune before the movie came out
The Lynch one, right?
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 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.
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.
yeah sorry Anon, go fuck yourself and your nazi skull flag. That shit’s the Totenkopf, what, did the new generation of chuds ruin Nazi for you? Poor fuckin’ baby.
Maybe a “Death in June” band shirt. Which makes things … well… I dunno. Probably not better.
was not familiar with them…
from their wiki - had performed at rallies for The Right to Work, Rock Against Racism, and the Anti-Nazi League. -
holy shit this is a ride
“The Totenkopf-6 is a slightly grinning skull, framed by a circle and a small 6 in the lower right corner. Death in June has, since at least the State Laughter / Holy Water 7″, used variations of the Prussian Totenkopf or “Death’s Head” symbol. Indeed, there is another explanation that has been given by Pearce, he has also stated that it symbolises “total commitment” to the group, akin to the total commitment of soldiers of the SS”
ah… getting to the shit that matters -
“The Southern Poverty Law Center considers Death in June to be white power music harboring neo-Nazi sympathies.”
yeeeaah this all fits
I was a goth in my youth and they were among the more controversial bands. They could be just edge lords or Nazis. The guys that listened to them turned out to be Nazis, so there’s that.
I was in the scene at the same time and me and my friends were always making fun of neofolk bands and their fans, because its such boring music and simply copying clothing styles of the 1940s, fitting to the boring mind of a nazi
They could be just edge lords or Nazis.
I refuse to make a distinction anymore. If you “joke” about being a Nazi, you’re a Nazi.
I used to think the nazi edgelord stuff was kind of funny, because I found it absurd.
The idea that anyone acting like a nazi was ‘actually’ a nazi never crossed my mind, because I genuinely thought we as a species had collectively agreed that being a nazi is the closest thing to pure evil.
Oh how wrong I was.
it’s certainly an interesting nuance. ty for the tip
Thanks for the important context. I’d assumed it was a pirate flag until I read your comment and then looked it up. Fuck this particular anon.
gotta call out the nazis at every turn otherwise the place will turn into a nazi bar.
Now, now it is only a Totenkopf if it is from a distinct region of Germany.
ah yes the death’s head valley
that’s 4chan for you. id be less disturbed by the amount of nazis on 4chan and more by the amount of lemmings that agree with Anon on any given subject
Rick and Morty
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.
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
they really did do a great job replacing the voice actor
I just learned about it now. I didn’t notice.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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
Roblox. I played it as a kid around 2007 when it was just a small Lego-like building game with your friends. It’s been really weird seeing it become some predatory, monetized app game that kids play on their iPad now.
For reference, I’m almost 30 and haven’t played it since I was like 14. My friend’s kid was playing Roblox on his tablet and asked if I “heard of this new app game called Roblox” and it hurt my soul.
It’s stupid but I started playing Roblox in 2008 and I still check in on it from time to time, there are a couple of half decent games out there if you know where to look because it’s pretty much just a game engine.
Between the s*** or the facilitate the worst of mobile gaming practices and playhouse to an innumerable number of pedophile rings is super f***** up. They basically trick children into developing video games and pay them scraps of what they’re worth. Limited edition Hats play host to what is basically a gambling or stock market system. I think one of the worst Parts is that pretty much any transaction the company takes an enormous cut of.
I have an item that’s worth 350,000 “Robux” that I bought for pennies like 10 years ago. I don’t have any way of cashing that out for real money but that’s still hundreds of real life dollars and also roblox would take a 30% cut if I sold it anyway.
Part of me wishes that I had actually learned to build properly in that game, for some reason i always struggled to wrap my head around scripting and actually building anything that looks decent for myself. I suppose from a certain perspective it’s not too late but what would be the f****** point roblox is trashed now.
Oh yeah the chat filter is a nightmare, roblox uses a chat service called Community sift if I remember correctly and it’s pretty much just makes it so that it’s impossible to communicate because they can’t be ours to moderate their stupid platform anymore anyway.
Also they are weirdly sexist, they enabled the publishing of user generated content and they allow some honestly pretty crazy alarming muscle bound and homoerotic masculine body shapes but any even remotely feminine shape no matter how tame and innocent is required to have these big ugly weird looking color blocks on them that look like underwear and honestly are way worse than having nothing there at all in terms of how it looks.
the devs have pursued every bad idea and settled on ‘child labor and exposing kids to fucked up shit seems profitable’ so yeeeeeahh… the game industry looks at them and hangs their head in shame
To be clear, the “game industry” has no shame so this is inaccurate. In fact, there are a few companies trying to recreate their success.
I can only speak of the dev scene where I live, but I know many many devs who have had the opportunity to work for Roblox and did not because of their rep. I know exactly one who did go to work for them, and that person was… kinda a dick.
I do not see any local companies trying to emulate the child labor shit, but any time something is successful assholes will try to copy it. hopefully they lose their shirts in the process.
Those people that made Mind’s Eye were the big example I’m thinking of.
BeamNG is a little like it too.
not familiar with either product, but thanks for the tip. ugh.
Unfortunate that it’s more popular than ever before.
I remember when my nephew first asked if I knew about Roblox. I was so excited to build some stuff with him, until he showed me this crappy superhero fighting simulator. I can’t complain too much, since it’s basically the new-age version of crappy flash games, but it was still a disappointment.
I mean, was Roblox more about building in the past? To me, or at least when I played it back as a 10 yr old or so, Roblox was always about playing the diverse amount of games. If you wanted to build stuff, that was for Minecraft. I was always playing party games, anime clones, survival games, etc.
Someone has to create those games.
And that happened in-game.
Yeah, I played a ton on a server called like ultimate build where it was an open plain with a bunch of blocks to build. You could make planes, cars, boats anything really just like lego.
I found it back in the mid-2000’s while I was looking for a video game where I could build stuff, similar to legos, so when I played it all I did was make castles and robots and whatever. Maybe you could make minigames for people like they do now, but it didn’t seem like it was the main focus, at least from what I had seen back then.
Still have friends I met there back in 2014 that are my closest and still talk to, pre-enshittification was peak Roblox era and are my most cherished memories
if so then name your thing
Sort of I guess: em dashes.
Not to talk about, but to use when writing.
Now they are apparently the hallmark of AI-generated crap.Same. I learned this was a thing just the other day.
I don’t use them often but do find them nicer for parenthetical remarks sometimes.
Me too—sometimes
I’ve never been called out as AI for using them; but if I ever am, I have the strategy of knowing the alt code for them (0151). I even know the shortcut in word to insert one — pressing alt-X with your cursor at the end of “2014”. I also have a vscode macro set up that is just an emdash, just in case I’m in a situation where there’s not a way I know to insert one.
Alt-codes are for nerds
- 60% gang
I really think more text formatting should do as mobile devices do and just auto convert two hyphens into an em dash. Make it simple, i beg.
Hard disagree. My text is my text and I want it how I typed it. I hate how I constantly have to disable auto bullshit on every device and in every program and half the time these days there isn’t even a setting for that anymore.
If I type two hyphens, it’s because I wanted two hyphens.
Similarly, emoticons being converted to emojis without my consent also annoys me.
Same except i have never wanted two hyphens in my life.
it’s the principle of the matter.
lmao beautiful
Two hyphens are an en-dash. Try 3 for em. Filthy casuals!
(Obvious /s but yea don’t mean to insult.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
I set my caps lock key to the Compose Key (ck), and it changed the game for me:
- — is ck then “—”
- é is ck then “e” followed by ’
- ° is ck then double “o”
- ½ is ck then “1” followed by “2”
I’m sure there’s many more combinations, but honestly, I never intentionally used CAPS LOCK for anything.
One of the windows keys is a compose key here. Has been that way for years (trivial to add in kde)
I don’t trust people who don’t have caps lock mapped to escape though, compose key or not.
I just got into them and I’ll be damned if I’ll let some toaster ruin a perfectly beautiful bit of punctuation
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.
The internet
immediately where my mind went.
From “haha, raspberriesareyummy will marry his computer one day” to most everyone around me constantly staring at their whatsapp, tiktok or “talking” with siri/alexa.
Fuck this shit :(
I’ve been online since 1995. I weep for what we lost. The web should have stayed a nerd domain. We’d have been better off as a society.
Absolutely. The biggest individual loss for me was the usenet. That was the first time google showed its true, evil and ugly face - by introducing tons of people who had no idea what the usenet was via google groups.
The second blow was when people no longer required any technical knowledge whatsoever to “go online”, because ISPs sold internet access complete with a router that took care of the connection.
The third blow was when every idiot and their mom who have no idea how to operate a computer or a keyboard got access to the internet via mobile devices with touchscreens and an app for everything.
Eventually, the absolute enshittification of centralized social media (ongoing).
And now - AI slop.
Exactly. Back in 1995, my dad could never get online. Heck, he couldn’t even remotely figure out a PC. We tried to teach him some basics like ‘click with the left mouse button to open something’, but he was downright scared of the thing. He never, ever touched it.
But ‘thanks’ to the iPad, he’s e-mailing, on Facebook, on YouTube, TikTok etc. Which also has the unfortunate effect of subjecting him to boomer brainrot. He’s now more actively misinformed than he used to be because of that fucking iPad.
We’ve made the web accessible to people who shouldn’t be on it. Because it’s hurting them and hurting society as a whole.
We’ve made the web accessible to people who shouldn’t be on it. Because it’s hurting them and hurting society as a whole.
Did we do that though? Or was it some hardware / software developers with no backbone to stand up to greedy corporations who wanted to make it accessible? Other than that - yes, sadly I agree.
I’m so sorry that they called you that
But raspberries are yummy
Oh god I heard that constantly as a kid. Gah. Now they’re all married to Facebook and don’t know how to use it. Oh well.
I spent a lot of time on computers (shocker, right?) and that was seen as nerdy and weird when I was at school. Even after I got my first real job, I remember my girlfriend dismissing things I’d say because “nobody cares about your stupid internet”. Predictable rest of comment is predictable.
ffs moopet, why did you let your internet get this bad
Good God, this one hits home for me. “He’s always in his room on his cuhpyooter.” “He’s a hacker, he’s a nerd.” Ummm, no. I’m just pretending to be a girl and swapping tit pics with other dudes who are pretending to be girls and playing video games. Y’all living in the stone age with your magazines and your Nintendo. I’m in my room with every Nintendo game ever made and a new pair of tits to look at anytime I want.
Now half of those people are fumbling around and giving scammers 200 dollars, constantly glued to their little 30 dollar smart phones and “playing on Facebook”. And of course, they be calling me to ask how to find an app they got from the play store. “It used to just go on the screen I swear.”
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Blud thinks it’s c. 2100–1200 BCE
I remember that damn ad on TV back in in 2009. It was for SakuraCon, a annual Anime convention in Seattle.
I went there once with a group of friends. Made anime look uncool very fast.
I see more people aware of it today, but was there a burst in pop culture with idiots that then died down? The people who talk about it today seem pretty genuine and get good reception.
Yeah, it got really popular when the Bible dropped in the 2nd century BCE. The Noah flood story was basically a copy-and-paste of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Bible nerds were annoying af.
