I like to put the phone to my ear like it's a voice call, then pretend to accidentally hang up, then refuse to answer again, then stop responding to texts.

Slapping a shitty coat of paint over a complex and long-standing problem and claiming it's fixed is an apt metaphor for the last 250 years...

People don't often realize how subtle changes in language can change our thought process. It's just how human brains work sometimes.

The old bit about smoking and praying is a great example. If you ask a priest if it's alright to smoke when you pray, they're likely to say no, as your focus should be on your prayers and not your cigarette. But if you ask a priest if it's alright to pray while you're smoking, they'd probably say yes, as you should feel free to pray to God whenever you need...

Now, make a machine that's designed to be agreeable, relatable, and makes persuasive arguments but that can't separate fact from fiction, can't reason, has no way of intuiting it's user's mental state beyond checking for certain language parameters, and can't know if the user is actually following it's suggestions with physical actions or is just asking for the next step in a hypothetical process. Then make the machine try to keep people talking for as long as possible...

You get one answer that leads you a set direction, then another, then another... It snowballs a bit as you get deeper in. Maybe something shocks you out of it, maybe the machine sucks you back in. The descent probably isn't a steady downhill slope, it rolls up and down from reality to delusion a few times before going down sharply.

Are we surprised some people's thought processes and decision making might turn extreme when exposed to this? The only question is how many people will be effected and to what degree.

This may honestly be it for me.

I quit playing games because of all the greed and hype, I went back to piracy when streaming started to fracture and greed set in, I left non-federated social media because of the enshittifaction and invasiveness, and I go to fairly extensive lengths to block ads and protect my privacy as much as possible...

And instead of moving to any number of fair, non-exploitive business models, they're just going to force ads down my throat like that episode of black mirror.

If this goes through I'll be sorely tempted to wipe everything I can and start over as best I can. Only interact with the Internet when I need to.

You'll find me paying cash at the local used bookstore, at least until all the major publishers make that illegal.

EDIT: It's honestly depressing, I genuinely enjoy technology and the internet, but when companies like Google are able to force garbage like this it just sucks all the joy out of it for me.

It's like everying is becoming a shitty mobile game. Do the toolsheds that develop Candy Crush clones not think we can understand why in app currencies are sold in bundles of 100 but every thing we purchase with them requires amounts that end with a five? Does Google not think we know the real motivation behind a system that strives to prove ads were delivered to your browser either?

I know a lot of people may not see the real driver here, but I'm tired of being underestimated and infantalized by a bunch of dorks trapped in a corporate echo chamber. I think I'd prefer it if they just straight up said they're going to sacrifice our privacy and user experience for a quick bump in stock value.

I feel that the majority of innovation occuring in modern capitalism is confined to two key areas:

1. Regulatory capture and market control.

2. New ways to mindfuck people into overpaying for goods and services.

49 year old dude here, skilled labor job, gruff, grungy, rough around the edges, etc. etc.

I would fucking love these. I'd show every single one of them off to my coworkers and talk about how damn cool they are. This is spousery at its finest.

Anyone who sees something wrong with this is just a jealous, insecure asshole.

I gotta unpack this a little...

Reddit's main source of revenue is advertising. Other companies pay Reddit to shove ads in your face. You probably buy products from at least some of those companies, and while market forces and consumer perceptions have large influence, operating costs are still a factor in setting those prices. Just like everyone else, Reddit sets the prices of its advertising services based in part on its operating costs, which includes Spez's salary.

Even if you avoid Reddit, things you buy are more expensive because this fucking toolshed gets paid $193 million a year just to be a sociopathic jackoff with a popular website.

I quit Reddit years ago, but I'm still fucking pissed about this shit and I have every right to be.

Most Republicans think ADHD is caused by liberal parents who don't beat their kids enough, they're silent because they approve.

One thing that gives me hope is that these chucklefucks will happily eat each other alive over the smallest imagined things. If they don't have a "big evil thing" to organize against they're just one giant fucking bucket of crabs, man.

If feel like more of them just realizing that they won't be the exception to the rule and only really care now that it's obvious they'll get the shit end of the stick just like everyone else.

For a great many MAGAs it is and always was about weaponizing a social and political movement to hurt people they don't like and now that it's hurting them, we're seeing clearly that their principles never aligned with what they espoused. It's always hypocrisy with them, they aren't willing to be tradwives and follow the ideals they claim to support, but they're happy to use the idea to attack feminism.

If they wind up being forced out of politics, I have no sympathy for them. It was so very apparent, going all the way back to the beginning of Gamergate, that this was the trajectory of the movement.

Same guy probably complains about his near certainty of dying alone as well.

This.

It's an absolutely unfair comparison for Camacho, who was a pretty good leader considering the setting of the film.

If you insist on interpreting my use of punctuation in a text as anything other than an effort to communicate clearly, I'm likely to start being passive aggressive at some point.

I'm not saying this isn't a sign of something, but Surf and Turf nights are fairly common at overseas bases. Sometimes once a week.

EDIT: Pie is pretty much nightly anywhere with real kitchen.

Fear.

They rally around figures who look strong because they're afraid of losing social status, or feeling xenophobia due to racism, or insecure over economic concerns. As always, everything is projection with these dipshits. They let fear drive them into the sort of groupthink mob they accuse liberals of being.

What if, instead of trying and failing to kick kids off social media, we focused our attention on the reasons why being online is so often detrimental in the first place?

Pre-fucking-cisely.

I'll never like her.

I will begrudgingly acknowledge that she was likely suckered in the same way so many people were suckered, and is now trying to do the right thing.

I will continue to quietly suspect that she's probably an accessory to the cover up in some way and is trying to save her own ass.

However, the enemy of my enemy and all...

Corporations pay stagnant wages, raise prices, funnel money out of the economy to shareholders who hoard wealth, and then get worried when there's no one left who can buy their products?

Tell me again why we think C-Suite folks are smart?

Right, because they'll get bailed out again and stay rich. That's why.

It's a god damn disgrace.

I'm sure someone will come around and tell me how complicated economics is and why we should trust business and industry leaders who went to school for this sort of thing, like basic pattern recognition and common sense couldn't have predicted that people who can barely afford groceries would stop buying cars...

Fuck.

Three way tie in my book:

That episode of Black Mirror where everyone had to ride stationary bikes and were forced to watch unskippable ads if they didn't have credits, except everything you have to watch is AI slop instead of your crush doing porn.

Or the Handmaid's Tale, but instead of some mysterious infertility crisis, fertile women are rare because they die in pregnancy and childbirth due to anti-science rhetoric flat out killing them. (Look up "free birthing", etc.) At some point it gets bad enough that replacing your wife is more like getting a new pet.

Maybe the hot version of The Road. We just have wars over water and resources until the plantet's too fucked for human life, and the survivors are left roaming around making jerky out of each other until the end.

Could be all three at once. Yay!

It's not shame. It's insurance. It's to make it difficult/impossible to file a complaint or win a criminal case in the event that the administration crumbles and someone tries to hold them accountable.