still doesn’t change the fact that that’s not a game for kids, and the adults for whom that game was made can make as many bad decisions with their money as they can afford

i’m not in favour of gambling for children don’t get me wrong, in fact i was once a victim of it (thanks to wizard101, a game advertised as and marketed for children), but Valve just did not enage in that. if a child is playing a game that’s clearly marked “M” or “PEGI 18” then it’s the parents’ responsibility to figure out if its something appropriate for their child

nahhh, lootboxes existed before CS:GO or TF2. and neither was supposed to be for kids in the first place! card games like MTG were one of the first mass created to use those mechanics

you know what was supposed to be for kids, had (& still has) lootboxes galore and other predatory monetisation tactics? Wizard101 (2008)

i don’t see many people complaining about MtG or Wizard101, but folks love to point out how Gaben did a bad thing by taking something that was already a concept (that people liked) and making it digital, whereby he accidentally created something he could never uncreate

i’m european though

i’m 3.5

any and all UI changes will make people angry

steam has had so few of them compared to idk youtube that, imo it’s fine even if it’s kinda pointless

but it feels to me like Aziraphael would have a panic attack of Crowley started bratting to him. i couldddd see a soft dom potential but a fragile one

no way, Aziraphale is definitely the bottom, he wouldn’t be able to top to save the world (except that one time when he terrified everyone in hell)

I’d like to purchase some PORNOGRAPHY :)

do you think workers got rights by asking nicely?

if factories didn’t get set on fire with the owner inside people would still be breaking their backs working 16h a day in conditions that shorten their lives by a year every month spent working, every day going deeper in dept to the company store. Oh and they asked for better conditions, they protested, they demanded, they went on strikes, but there was no way out.

violance isn’t the answer - violance is what happens when you take away someon’s hope. And this is not a new relevation:

Sun Tzu said ‘When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard’

because a desperate, hopeless foe will fight to the death

by that i mean - that an emotional reaction doesn’t make something art

i experience an emotional reaction when i step in shit too

the only pause it gives me is when i notice nonsensical details blending into each other, the only emotion it moves in me is then disgust and foolishness as i just spent time on slop that was not an expression of something, but an intentionless imitation of one. and it sure as hell doesn’t make me self reflect as it manages to be both shallow and hollow

it’s not AI “art” itself that sparked a conversation, no singular piece stands out as something people talk about (a piece that is more than just a more seamless version of the pervious attempts, something memorable even after it stops being the best at imitation). The talk is not about AI “art” itself it’s about the idea of it. Nobody points to a single thing AI made and claims that is proof it’s not art, because it’s not individual pieces that “make us think” – it’s the concept of an intentionless thing being fed human art and then making misshapen copies of it at the whims of people who can’t be bothered to engage with art at all.

sure it does make you think, but only if you - knowingly or not - treat the entire emergence of AI slop as a kind of performance art itself, any individual piece of slop is not the topic here

i’m reading enough into your comment. i literally explained why that wouldn’t change much

never mind a canvas, if the guy cared in the slightest about the “art” AI made he’d at least print it on poster paper

this experiment shows how even the “artists” just do not care about those images, and why would they? why would any of us care?

this shows exactly the core of the issue - every piece of art made by a human, no matter how good or bad (whatever that means), is a reflection of the artist. Sometimes they pour their entire soul into a piece, sometimes just a small part of them, but it’s always a reflection of them. So the artist will care about what they’ve made because it’s their own self, in a way. And others will care about it too, because we crave to get to know others, understand them, see the world how they see it - and art allows us to glimpse just that.

AI slop elicits none of those emotions, there is no artist to care about, no reflection of the self, no worldview to glimpse, no way of caring about it, nothing – even if it was you who wrote the prompt, you just can’t bring yourself to give a shit

wow, it seems like it’s printed on printer quality paper. really amplifies how those who use AI for “art” don’t give a flying fuck about art

oh it is not getting addresses correctly.

there’re many grifters out there taking advantage of lonely men - they promise turning into a chad and getting laid… if you just buy this course of mine and oh btw its a subscription model website.

then there’s 4chan and the infinite sea of incels with their various pills pushing people further into feeling like victims oppressed by women (a nifty distraction from the real problem of society’s constant push towards individuality and capitalism’s constant battle to destroy public spaces) and giving up on even trying to get out of their homes. once you see yourself as an incel being pathetic becomes a personality trait, and internalising that can make getting out of that hole incredibly difficult.

women obviously are also affected but their bonds between each other seem stronger, maybe because they are allowed to hug each other without being called slurs.

so yeah, the problem is being address in all the wrong ways. even the talk of man specific societal issues is incredibly rare outside of the grifter spun narratives to get you to buy their courses or reinforce your feelings of being pathetic.

most people are focused on women’s rights - which yeah, they should - but i don’t think those two issues are disconnected. after all, the more lonely the men, the more it’s the “women’s fault”, the more hateful they are towards them, the worse both problems get.

now how do we get out of this pit?

it’s not positive to bring others down to feel better about yoursefl

the state as an idea is bad yes i agree. but there are better and worse states, and if i have to live in a state because us anarchists can’t organsie well enough to create a state-less society, then i’d rather live in a better state rather than a bad one

in a way i think yes. in the dark ages at least any insane cults and ideas couldn’t spread far. if your village or castle happened to have dark ages version of ben shapiro then his words aren’t going to go far (unless they infected the local ruler as well, and even then it’d still be contained within your area, or your country at worst). If you were on the receiving end of insanity you could always just kind of– pack up and move to another village, walk 30km away and you’re like a new man! Worst case scenario find your way to a port, fuck off to another country - passports or border control did not exist, passage was often granted for free to those able bodied that joined the crew for the voyage.

obviously i’m romanticising here a bit, modern medicine and technology makes day to day life easier. but it also makes other things much harder. our privacy is going extinct at an alarming rate, freedom of movement across borders belongs to distant memories of our great grandparents, (unless you’re french) your protests will be ignored and/or vilified, and if you dare care about other humans and speak up about it you can be labelled as a terrorist in some places

i do truly hope that those years of unrest aren’t here to stay…

idea: we do the whole leftist infighting thing after we win against the common enemy, deal?