Quality over quantity.

1. Meta is so well known for having good moderating. (/s)

2. Meta is so well known for promoting posts that are active hate-speech. (For example, CW in Link: suggested “Threads” posts on Instagram have shown transphobic posts to me Which kind of goes back to point 1, terrible moderation. Btw, my partner is involved with Queer Activism on facebook and so it’s not like I am being targeted for hateful ads. This is just what they decided to promote, probably because it got a lot of comments and shares. Oh, why do we want Threads users who are actively sharing this rhetoric? Seems antithetical to the entire concept that the fediverse was founded on.

3. What happens to the rest of the fediverse when it’s overrun by millions of Threads users, hundreds of thousands of them promoting this sort of content? All defederated instances will now have to pick and choose - something we already do, but I would say we only need to look at Lemmy.World to see why this is a bad thing, as imagine Threads communities become the regularly used ones, so now any instances that defederate don’t have access to the most active community. In turn, this either kills the defederated communities by keeping these communities small, or actively encourages those new to the fediverse to just join Threads since it has “the most active” communities.

4. Now that there are millions of threads users, what happens to smaller instances that are now being overrun by traffic that their server couldn’t handle, or malicious users on Threads - with Lemmy’s moderation tools this can be a cumbersome and difficult process since, from my understanding, this becomes a case-by-case situation for the Instance Moderator, all while the Threads Moderating Team will likely do nothing and ignore the inflammatory users. From my understanding, you can have 1 Threads account per Instagram Profile, and users can have 5 Instagram Profiles. Obviously, this is also a Lemmy issue, but with Instance Admins having control over their users, Threads as an Instance Admin historically hasn’t seemed to be great.

5. The Fediverse is some ~1.5m users. Threads is already 100m. As mentioned about server load, there’s also just the entire idea of it being so big that it naturally becomes a vital resource. E1) Extend. As it becomes widely used, Meta starts taking an interest in the future of ActivityPub. E2) Embrace. And finally, now that it is established and smaller instances are either defederated or have some form of, effectively a shadowban, all that is realistically left is Threads content. E3) Extinguish.

Is the fediverse being more accessible a good thing? Absolutely, not many are arguing that. The idea is that Threads gets so big that ActivityPub either can’t exist without Threads, or Threads leeches the userbase from the rest of the Fediverse. Someone you like is on Threads but not the rest of the Fedi? Well, why have a Lemmy.ML account when you can just have your Threads account?

Before you know it, we’re back to only having one website again for all of our social media needs.

Commenting so I can come back to this later with the site, I can’t recall the name at the moment

Alrighty, it looks like the list has grown and I can’t remember what site I had used previously, so here are a couple options. It looks like they all roughly have the same format of: create account, fill out games from database, possibly account and app linking options.

In no particular order:

How long to beat: create an account, has a games library for your profile

Keep track of my games: create an account, “pay what you want”-ware (free), can import gaming accounts (Steam PSN etc) to fill out list.

Backloggd: Create an account, can fill out games to your library and has space for reviews and other user profiles

Grouvee: Create an accout - homepage is pretty minimal

Gametracker: Seems more “game team” oriented but it has a spot for filling out a games library

GameTrack: Has an IOS app as well, can link gaming accounts for achievements, can make lists to sort games

Playtracker: Create an account, looks like there is a software download for the computer

Stash: Has both Android and IOS apps,

Of all of these, the feature sets look basically the same, the main differences seem to be UI layouts and more niche options of sorting/filling out. All of them look to need an account (expected). Since I can’t recall which, if any of these, I had used in the past I will just say that the websites for Playtracker, Backloggd, and How Long To Beat looked the “best”.

Hopefully this helped and didn’t just give you more choice anxiety, lol.

Let me just say, I have found that my barometer is, “does it perpetuate the issue or does it highlight it.” I find that IASIP does a gold job highlighting issues, and if people choose to ignore that that says a lot more about them than the show. In regards to the Jerry and Dreyfus commentary about comedy today, IASIP is a perfect example of a show reframing how they talk about _____. I think we can look to Dennis for this example, as a creepy, high libido man who wears a whole different face and manipulates women into sex, in early seasons (after it’s established), his character in 2007 says things like, “you want to see real girls going wild*” and in 2023 he has a whole monologue about learning how to sleep with leftist vs. rightwinger women. His dynamic has stayed the same, how the show uses comedy around the situation has evolved. To put it frankly, Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t like his stuff to be grown up, hence his issues with the evolution of comedy.

In the case of Drawn Together, when the pig straight up said “I just don’t like black people!” And wiggles his eyes and smiles, to me it comes off less as highlighting an issue and more just being crass and edgy because it can. You’re right that at no point does it try to present any of these characters as good in the first episode, but I would argue that it doesn’t really try and make any point with any of them either. It seems to exist just to take existing characters and put them in a reality TV style situation. The link character is a gay twink just to be funny, not to highlight anything.

Not everything needs to have a point, but it certainly helps when your content is dealing with terrible characters who are actively perpetuating a very poor way of acting. For example, if The Gang rarely has actual consequences in IASIP, but the way the characters are written makes it clear that they are aiming to highlight certain social issues and use these characters as a way to frame perspectives of each side of the issue. Them being awful is a way to deliver the commentary.

Again this is just from the first episode and so I’m not going to speak for the entirety of the show, that would just be wrong. But from the research I did after the fact and comparing it as a pilot episode from the early 2000’s to others, if we simply look at “The Gang Gets Racist” (episode 1 of IASIP, 2005) and Episode 1 of Drawn Together (2004} the former makes clear statements about culture and character, that people will give up thing that make them uncomfortable for money, and that people who say they will support a cause might stop when they don’t get recognition (and money). Just an example as this is just 1 of a hundred possible reads, because the show does a good job at framing the awfulness of the characters and the situation. This dynamic is one that they’ll come to revisit, as you have 2 sets of characters on one side, 2 on the other, and then they meet in the middle (or blow right past each other per the Gun Fever episode)

Now, the pilot of Drawn Together on the other hand is a direct to video, which from my understanding the show was picked up by Comedy Central after the fact. The focus of the episode seems to be a lot more shock factor, which for a show that wasn’t initially intended to be aired, I can’t really fault it. But, watch Betty Boop and Cinderella become lesbian, watch a smoking Pikachu say Toyota and Hyundai, there’s a lot of stuff happening but not a lot of stuff that I personally could easily point to and say, “now that’s good social commentary!”. And it’s okay for the show to not be created with the intent of highlighting these issues, it just means that rewatching it is watching something that has aged very poorly. The actual content of the episode is just playing with the idea of what reality TV is like, making fun of behind the scenes style footage while playing up the drama.

I think they definitely were able to highlight some issues, such as how some characters used sex to deal with avoidance and how people do certain actions to cope, but I wouldn’t say that my takeaway was that Betty Boop was being used to highlight these things. The show and the characters were treating her as the joke, in my opinion thus perpetuating this problem. For me it just didn’t do a good enough job at making the distinction, so each component fell apart. The reality TV set is a great medium, the… extremeness of each character sets a very strong stage and expectation, but the end result turned out to be saying and doing edgy things to make the audience gasp. Which, after 20 years, doesn’t give a lot of room for any sort of social commentary with staying power.

I’m sure that season 2 and 3 do a better job at attempting to have some social commentary, however I do have my doubts that there was ever a point that Ling Ling the racist Pikachu could really make. In regards to liking it back then, comedy changing, racism existing… I think all I need to really say is that a show succeeds by making it clear to the audience what the joke is. In IASIP, every single character is the butt of the joke because they are an idiot that thinks they are smart, so we laugh at them.

In what I saw from Drawn Together, every single character is the joke, because they are an extreme stereotype or caricature. We’re supposed to be laughing at Betty Boop cutting after being fat shamed and for being emo. We’re supposed to laugh at Ling Ling saying the names of asian cars as his language. We’re supposed to laugh at the pig explicitly saying he is racist. At no point did the episode even attempt to give these characters consequences or make a setup for why they are the way they are. They simply exist to be a stereotype to laugh through, and I say this because the show gave no reasoning to believe otherwise. As in, what is the point of Ling Ling? To be an Asian stereotype. Because at no point does the show try to make him be anything else.

Finally, I should say that comedy is an ever-evolving medium and that rarely does comedy age well, almost inherently due to the nature of it being so strongly linked to a specific cultural era. That is nearly the sole reason that comedy doesn’t age well. However, there’s a huge nuance in this, because there can be more than 1 reason why comedy doesn’t age well. If we look to analyze comedy in American cinema, we would have to look at blackslpoitation films which dominated the 1920’s. We would almost universally say that none of these are funny today for a litany of reasons. But even when you go to actually study the writing, that sucked too! The jokes were bad and not funny. Because these were written for white people to point and laugh at the funny black people. The humor back then was racism. So not only was the writing shit, but the reasons for it as well.

So, to say that “racism exists” - yeah, obviously which is why comedy should work extra hard to utilize that and make it humorous. It’s Always Sunny does this nearly perfectly in its very first aired episode, having a gay black actor in Philly dating Dee and Mac saying things like “so you people actually are related!” You can make fun of anything, that doesn’t mean it will be funny. Sometimes, people aren’t laughing because it’s funny but because they’re uncomfortable. Sometimes, people are laughing because it’s how they feel.

That last bit is important, because if you’re going “oh man it’s so true it’s so true!” And you’re reacting to Spanky Ham talking about Foxxy Love… well, let’s just say it’s probably the same type of person unhappy about The Boys S3 and S4, or IASIP past season 12. They don’t like it because they finally realized it’s making fun of them.

Tl;Dr does comedy perpetuate an issue or highlight it?

This show was really fucked up lmao my partner and I stayed at an Airbnb and while looking for something to watch and she saw this was like “honey this is kinda raunchy but we HAVE to watch it since you haven’t seen it” and then 10 minutes in we had to turn it off because of how awful it was haha. Fat shaming goth cutter Betty boop, gay link, racist Pikachu, hypersexual pedo superman, generally just racist to every possible point like the pig character and stereotypes.

My partner just said, “the racist characters existing themselves I could handle, it was the racism they were perpetuating that made me tap out” lmao. [Edit: I said it already but I feel the need to re-iterate, this was all in the first 10 minutes!! end edit.]

But to your point, this sort of show done right would be hilarious with the public domain characters lol

This makes me wonder, what is the difference in the environmental cost of uploading/downloading this data vs. shipping a USB.

I would guess that shipping emissions would be higher than digital ones, but I don’t have any basis for that theory. (I’m just curious, not trying to say or imply anything here)

I really dislike this trend of suggesting people to buy Google phones specifically to de-Google them. Like, shouldn’t we be avoiding giving them sales?

I get it, the phones are decent. I just think it’s kind of counter-intuitive.

It’s a phone service and business communications. I have to use it for work

You people are paying for Windows licenses?

If you are going by titles, GTA 6 is expected to have a reasonably deep single player storyline filled with cultural references.

The more recent trailer just seemed like them recreating events that happened in real life, and less being a mockery to create commentary on events of real life.

IMO this is the distinguishing difference I noticed from trailers of previous titles and this current one. Of course it was literally only a minute and 15 seconds of trailer, but it does just seem a little odd to me. Of course, when I wrote a small essay the only comments were “bro piss off it’s GTA” and “it’s GTA you’re reading too much into it.”

Most just don’t care. And many more have not played the earlier titles which were a little more brazen in their commentary due to the world these characters are living in – CJ as the experience of living in a poorer urban area surrounded by a wider richer city, where you have the dichotomy of what is happening in the story alongside the events on the radio (mostly the hosts reactions), or Niko as an immigrant in New York which brings a different perspective but keeps that thematic class separation while having some pretty decent social commentary.

GTA5 just doesn’t hit those marks IMO. Yes, there’s active class divide what with Trevor and Michael, but the storyline and the events of all 3 characters definitely have some emotional moments, IMO it just doesn’t hit the same points. Part of this I think is due to each of these characters almost acting as a sort of archetype, not necessarily of character but of game play. Michael is very much set for success, so you can easily progress. Franklin isn’t, and thus has to work for his status. And Trevor is the maniac who just blows shit up.

In terms of social commentary, there isn’t much that the game actually tries to say, IMO as a byproduct of their overemphasis of the heavily conservative and hyper-capitalist radio, which further is failed by Trevor and Michael being the most average Americans who are part of the problem. And while I like Franklin and his story, it’s ultimately just another story of someone in a bad spot trying to do better, and falling victim to how hard it is to get out. Which, yeah, that’s a decent and very real message, but it’s undermined by it all working out for him and owning a business – don’t worry y’all, crime pays as long as it’s with the right friends!

So, for me to see the trailer of GTA6 just literally recreating the events that happened in the real world, I sort of feel like the creative insanity where GTA allows us to see whacky shit that could never actually exist is highly diminished as a result of that. Again, it was under 2 minutes of footage and of course there’s plenty more.

I also personally think RDR2 is not fun and the hype around it is pretty much entirely manufactured as “it’s so good because it’s R* and the ultimate realism!”. Well, that “realism” made for shit gameplay for horses and boring fetch quests. It’s a beautiful game, it’s got a great story, it is not a good game because of that. That’s not to say it is terrible through and through and never has fun moments, I just personally was more frustrated with the game than I was enthralled with it for a majority of my time playing it. Shooting is nice though.

I must also say, I’ve never been a particularly die-hard fan of GTA or R*. I grew up playing their games at friends houses, so they’re really nostalgic to me. RDR and RD1 were great for their time, Revolver still holds up pretty well today through emulation. Slow for sure, but it holds up. GTAIV was my first real experience at open-world sandbox games, and while I enjoyed my time with it, it definitely is not my sort of game for long-term enjoyment. I can only play the story so many times and then get bored just driving around like a maniac. The best part of IV’s replayability is the physics, which seemed to have been drastically scaled back for GTA 5.

And I haven’t even gotten into what GTA:O has done, so I don’t have high expectations. I think your assumption of the developer output perspective is likely very apt. GTA5 came out in 2013, 11 years ago. It will likely be on 4 generations of consoles, unless they choose to only sell GTA6 for the PS6 and Xbox1920.

There is no way that their focus is on a long term single player experience. There’s just no way.

I think the offsetting cost factor basis is that a PC is a computer that can be used for more than gaming and the console is pretty much useless after 3-5 years (considering the PS4 @ 2013, PS4 Pro @ 2016, and the PS5 @ 2020, and how PS4 Pros are beginning to struggle today, and OG PS4’s being obsolete). Are PC’s more expensive upfront now? Sure. But you also don’t have to re-purchase your games each generation at the whim of the publisher, like you’re likely going to end up doing with Sony and Nintendo, with the added benefit of being able to use it for other projects after its contemporary gaming lifespan.

Basically, if you built a PC in 2013 you’re probably still able to use it today as a server or hobby project PC (digital art, music, etc). PC’s were also cheaper back then before NVIDIA made GPU’s cost $1,000. Good luck re-using a console.

I see you don’t replay games, so why even own a console if you only play a game once?

Fully use? Synthesizers. I just don’t think that’s possible.

Otherwise, I’m pretty good about using the things I buy. Maybe my HOTAS and Race Wheel, as those are the most niche gaming things I have. But price/per use is still not that bad, I put a lot of time into some of those games, I’m just not actively playing them as much anymore.

Something like Weylus?

Samsung tablets have this functionality natively, along with drawing tablet connections

So the fediversary lol

Only 4? Oh… lol

I use a safety razor (~$25) and a pack of 100 is around $5, definitely much better than the Gillette line, and honestly I like it more than even the cheaper “good” razors like Dollar Shave or Harry’s.

Looks interesting, reminds me of a pared down Plexamp

So what did you think of the game .

Why would karma have to come from the self and not from nature?

As an American duck seems more available than goose. I’ve seen turduckens, I’ve never seen a Goosiken

I don’t know if me talking about my Steam controller counts…