It's a real blog post.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

I've been going over posts from 20+ years ago and wondering where my ability to actually express my feelings other than ranting about current events went.

Anyway, here's some ranting about current events, but not from me:

Watch on YouTube

As I commented on the above video (culled from skeets I made over on Bluesky,)
I feel like the internet took a very sharp wrong turn in 2008. Back then, the main platforms were Myspace and Livejournal, and Livejournal was losing its userbase due to the Strikethrough/Boldthrough debacles, and the sale to FSB front company SUP. They were all mostly going to Tumblr and Facebook. I've started using Bluesky since the election, but I feel like literally all of our problems started to get worse when we stopped taking an active role in creating the internet and allowed Big Tech companies to do it for us. We were a lot better off when the internet was a bunch of personal websites, blogs, and forums.

Anyway, here we are.

I hope everyone has been having a good holiday season. I have been working a heckton of overtime lately. But I had a decent, low-key Winter Solstice/Christmas/Yule. I visited family, got a lot of books, a travel cup, and some peach-apricot jam. I made two quiches, some biscuits, and a Lasagna Au Tuesday for different get-togethers. I went to the flagship Half Price Bookstore in Dallas to get more books, and discovered that they have a new, awesome coffee shop after the old coffee shop closed!

I went to an arcade with some friends last night, and beat King Of Dragons as the Elf in about an hour.

I've been hyperfocusing on Dungeons & Dragons over the past month. I dug up the remains of the TSR "Black Box," aka "The New Easy To Master Dungeons & Dragons Game" set that my sister and I got for Christmas in 1992, which was our first step into a wondrous new world. I checked out the new rules for 5th edition. I might even be able to play soon! We'll see.

Comments

[sabotabby]

Absolutely, you're right.

I started noticing it, weirdly, with tablets. They made people's devices app-based, with no keyboard to type on, which discourages participation in favour of endless scrolling (which was another of the Horsemen, as Zitron would put it). Sure, it makes it easier, but it makes the interactions more shallow and cedes control to developers rather than users.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

I saw an article a year or so ago about how the endless scrolling with no end is part of the problem, and locks people in an endless cycle of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Earlier platforms (like LJ, and I think even myspace) had a bottom of a page. We had to click "next page" to get to more content. It's the auto refresh that's getting people.

I do like the meme that some clever person created where it says, "you did it, you found the dopamine! You can stop scrolling now!"

[flamingsword]

I have friendvy for everyone who got to eat your cooking. Lasagna Au Tuesday sounds amazing.

I think the pendulum is starting to swing back away from Big Tech toward re-Balkanization of the internet, and I’m hoping companies and users learn their lesson wrt putting all of the internets eggs in one basket and then enshittitying the basket. Also I am going to get a Protonmail account to protest Google thinking it can resume tracking my devices and selling that data to anyone off the street. Or giving it to cops if they ask nicely. Fuck that shit.

I’m also going to try getting into GURPS this next year, so I wish you luck with the current D&D adventure.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

GURPS is great! I have hardcopies of a lot of the 3rd edition sourcebooks, and digital copies of a lot of the 4th edition material. It's an extremely versatile system.

[finch]

I'm glad you're still here even if you're not posting much. <3

[numb3r_5ev3n]

Thanks! <3