I migrated because I was frustrated with having to constantly fix problems caused by forced updates. I didn’t expect the benefit of my computer being WAY faster.

No. Chatbots are machines built by billionaires with the agenda of making money. They litterally design these bots (even the therapeutic ones) to be sycophantic to the point they tell people anything to keep them chatting longer. To the point some of their users lose touch with reality. How many cases do we need of a chatbots helping a teenager plan and succeed at a suicide? Altruists did not design these machines. Even with a human therapist we have to watch for the landmines of their personal agendas. That’s a thousand times worse for machines that have no humanity, are capable of LIES, and have secret unwritten priorites written into their code by rich sociopathic creators. If facebook taught us anything it should be that if something is free on the internet it’s not because we are the customers.

Also DO NOT TELL ALL YOUR DEEPEST DARKEST SECRETS TO CHATBOTS! They aren’t required by any legal bodies to protect that information! OMFG

Speratism has been increasing everywhere on the right and the left. Rather that’s an intentional divide and control strategy or people organically getting sick of the systems around them - whose to say. I used to say nothing will come of it but then I watched the UK take themselves right out of the EU and found out Cambridge Analytica had a heavy hand in it.

Also 20% is a big number. That’s one in five people. Every fifth person. That’s a LOT. You only need 3.5% of the population to make a nonviolent policy change, 10% for a revolution against Great Britain. Even if that number stays at 20% my worry is some entity will organize that angry mass towards a goal.

On its own in a vacuum, no. But that’s why propaganda is seeded across multiple sources over extended periods in places people are half checked out in mentally. It’s the same reason advertising works. That one advert won’t get you, but if you hear a jingle, see a commercial, a billboard, an ad, an endorsement, a logo at your favorite team’s sports park… Ever wonder why your favorite softdrink is your favorite softdrink?

These propagandistic channels only need to plant the seeds of an idea, regularly feed it, wait until people are convinced the idea is their own, then wait for a counter pushback. That’s when the propaganda really takes root. Just like with Q or flat earthers, they will dig in to defend themselves from anyone challenging them. Logic need not apply. Push back only makes their conviction stronger.

YOU don’t watch it. But I’ve watched in real time while videos like this appear on relative’s feeds while they doomscroll as they uncritically absorb everything that appears. Sometimes watching the same video two or five times because the damn app loops. And when I point out “you know that’s bullshit right?” The response is always some variation of: “I wasn’t paying attention to what it said I was just watching.” But they are absorbing it because days or weeks later they will parrot that same BS at me in a conversation.

Just get a squatty potty. You’ll be fine.

That depends on the definition of “better.” Don’t mistake me, I LOVE modern games but there was something magical about needing months to beat one game. And while old games didn’t have online components they were definitely a community effort. Siblings, neighbors, friends from school, all coming over and collaborated with to beat each game. Together we discovered every secret place and learned every trick. If someone figured something out it became local game lore and everyone would try to replicate it. We used to all pile in a room to play Mario bros and work together to knock out every level in an afternoon (if you you know), then run it again with the worp whistle trick because we could. There were games we never beat. Simon’s Quest haunted us (I looked it up as an adult and beat it on nesticle - screw you garlic merchant). But that was part of it too, we didn’t have the safety net of a search engine to bail us out when we got stuck. Frustrating? Yes. But it forced us to slow down and think about the challenges in front of us. It wasn’t better or worse, just different then now. (Also please try to keep in mind part of the reason your controls might feel clunky is the game was designed for a different controller then you are using).

That being said I will never miss that hinky as fuck Nintendo cartridge nonsense that required a ritual involving alcohol, prayer, and the breath of life to get it read a game cartridge. Fuck the NES - again if you know, you know.

I think you’ve perfectly described both AITAH and reddit with that sentence.

I agree. It was weird.

I was always partial to:

MC LARS - Download This Song https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VBkuiChImb8

My favorite will always be being banned from AITAH for being too mean?/honest?/using a curse word? I’m not sure they just said my language was inappropriate. I may have used the word asshole.

To be fair, when they tried outside influences actively sabotaged the attempt.

Dude lives off raw road kill washed down with drowner brain cocktails. I don’t think the portal is why his tum tum is upset.

FUCKING THANK YOU!

When we all switched in 2016-ish whatsapp and discord were pretty like-for-like for what my social group needed (and I agree, old discord had a much better UI). At the time Discord also had the added benefit of being easy to cross-platform with pc, which made online voice chat easier. (Vent had always been persnickety, and skype went from being great to trash almost overnight.) I don’t/didn’t have a problem with lag/bugs on discord but I tend to stay in smaller social circles, and actively avoid the unholy number of giant af chat groups that discord has spawned. Likely I simply benefit from not using all the app’s “features.” Doesn’t surprise me tho that with all the nonsense they keep shoveling in that people are experiencing slow downs and other problems. Textbook enshittification. Even if this latest debacle doesn’t do discord in, it’s only a matter of time.

I was in the military. Chat apps made it easy to keep up with friends and family even when we weren’t all in the same country. (Poor international communications is definitely a downside of standard phone services). But all of us all are back stateside now and it’s mostly been a gradual slide towards texting for my social group.

I abandoned WhatsApp for Discord after meta got its greedy hooks into it. Do they think people won’t just make a new account elsewhere and move on? Millennials have done it every two years ever since MySpace imploded after Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch bought it. We have been conditioned to let our accounts go.

(Also text messaging, group chats, phone calls, and video calls are things that come standard on smartphones without need of an app. Texting stupid memes to everyone I know has never been easier. Maybe it’s my age, but everyone I regularly talk to on discord is also in my phone. Oh noes, I’ll have to “text” instead of “chat.” The horror.)