My ex wife and I used to take a chess board everywhere, play in cafes, parks, restaurants, pubs. It was something to do when we had run out of stuff to say to each other. It was a conversation starter, people would come up and have a sticky, or ask us who's winning. Some people would occasionally ask if they can play. It was nice. Until Queens Gambit was all the rage. Then people seemed to assume we were just following that trend, and there was a noticeable increase in people saying "Queens Gambit eh?" And we stopped taking the board out so much.
Greentext
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
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Dune before the movie came out
The Lynch one, right?
I stayed up to date on ai and machine learning, including language models. I remember hearing that one learned math from language and wondering where things will go. I watched ai safety videos before they felt relevant. Then I heard Openai, which had a good rep at the time, is releasing their new model online, called ChatGPT. Having played with DungeonAI and NovelAI before I was gonna fiddle with this as well.
Then headlines broke, it became a phenomenon. Even then I figured this would be this week's Thing before getting bored, as was common with these ai.
Down the line I remembered hearing ChatGPT on a gas station ad for some travel app. That was when I realized this is permanent. People who aren't even online are likely hearing about this. Suddenly my niche hobby and hopeful dreams of the future became an actual enshittified crisis.
I don't think I need to explain how everyone using language models now is just god awful for everyone. And the attention hasn't gotten us closer to answering long standing questions of ethics, economic change, what is intelligence or consciousness. We've just got a bunch of the lowest common denominator shouting their answers now.
Goddamnit yes. It’s why I’m very pro-gatekeeping. Because people who are new to a hobby because it got popular tend to ruin every-fucking-thing.
For example: flight simulator. That used to be an exclusively nerd domain up until the FS2020 version, which was released on Xbox. The result: a massive influx of new garbage payware and a decline in quality of established brands. While also making the sim worse in order to chase broader appeal. It’s gotten a bit better after covid went away and the normies dropped the hobby, thankfully.
Also: film photography. The popularity of instagram and YouTube ‘influencers’ got a lot of people into our hobby the past decade. It’s lead to increased gear prices, film being more difficult to get and the forums flooding with the dumbest possible questions, since these newcomers are allergic as fuck to reading manuals or watching any tutorial longer than thirty seconds. It’s also lead camera manufacturers to chase this new demographic by making their cameras shittier and more ‘instagram-friendly’. Here’s looking at you, Fujifilm and your shitty X-half.
Take it from someone who’s been around a bit: if you like a thing, keep newcomers away from it. Gatekeep it like the Berlin Fucking Wall, lest they completely fuck up your hobby.
I was a nerdy teen in the 90/00s. There's plenty I could be gatekeeping but the thing is.. I'm not special. Nobody is. All this shit is meaningless. You don't own any of it. Sorry it just all comes off so territorial and greedy in a way. Grosses me out.
I'm in the same boat with a few others here when it comes to some games like Halo and Fallout. But I feel like I'm on the brink with 2 new ones:
- Doom: I played the original when I was a kid and got bullied for it (or probably being a general nerd). 2016 and Eternal were really popular and the franchise took off; but Dark Ages feels off. I played Dark Ages for a bit, put it down, and haven't picked it up since. I think Doom is going down the shitter, especially what they did to Mick Gordon.
- Mother Mother (a band): My SO and I love their music for how unique and interesting it is; and we went to one of their first concerts at a small venue when they came into town ~10 years ago ish? Must have been <500 people. Generally no one else liked their music we shared it with, so we kept it to ourselves. Now? We went to another one a few months ago and it was at a HUGE stadium; absolutely packed. I think one of their songs went viral on TikTok - My Daddy's got a gun. We're proud of what they've accomplished, but really hope they don't lose their identity in trying to become even more popular.
TIL Mother Mother is popular now. Loved O My Heart back in the day
This was from the concert. Pretty packed
I am an avid collector and drinker of Chinese teas, particularly oolongs and puerh. I had been drinking them for years when suddenly the absolute asshole Dr. Oz went on TV claiming that puerh tea was some magical cure for anything and everything that you might have.
Normally, I get excited for new people to share tea with, but this fad caused prices to rise across the board and caused the market to get flooded with awful quality tea. These people were drinking some of the worst quality (fishy, shou/cooked puerh) teas and were more obsessed with how to mask the flavors with milk and sugar than actually slowing down and enjoying the tea.
The fad faded and people went back to putting matcha in their morning milkshakes. Even so, I still run into people that reflexively associate incredible tea with Dr. Oz and the disgusting teas he foisted upon his audience. Sad.
Not to that extent, but crypto. I think its an amazing and really interesting technology. But now it's tainted by scammers and when people hear the term, they get defensive because they are ready for you to scam them
Ive learned a bit off a on about crypto, but never got “into it”. When I first started learning it looked like a really interesting concept with a lot of potential uses.
I can’t remember the details at this point, but when looking at bitcoin I remember seeing so many problems. There was the transaction price, speed, and complexity. There was the insanity of all the wasted energy to “mine” bitcoin. Most importantly, it didn’t make sense to me as a currency. Currency needs to be stable, easy to exchange, and easy to use to buy things. Bitcoin always seemed like a really cool prototype that needed a successor or major revisions.
Then the masses (and braindead hype bros and “visionary” corporate types) jumped on it and turned it into the shit show it is today. When people would get excited about it (“price is going up! Gotta buy now!”), it was clear they either didn’t really know what it was or were trying to hype it to get more money pumped into it. When friends or family brought it up, I’d point out that it didn’t really have any use except as speculation. I’d tell them they if they wanted to gamble, go for it, but they should realize that it doesn’t have intrinsic value (just like all the other currencies) and, as it stands, it’s a really shitty currency. Know that people aren’t buying it because it works well. People are buying it because the price is going up.
People have made a lot of money (or theoretical money if they’re still holding), but it still doesn’t seem like it actually gets used for anything but speculation. The $2+ trillion USD market cap for bitcoin makes my head spin. I’ve always thought that bitcoin was a dead end and would eventually be dethroned by something more viable, but here we still are.
I haven’t looked at cryptocurrencies in a while. Any notable progress in the last 5 or so years toward it being more than a money making gamble?
Feels bad man
It's equally as bad when you discover you like something that has been around for a while and has lots of fans and you don't get accepted or realise you don't want to be part of the fans because of how shitty, toxic, dumb etc. they are. A relevant example for this is Assassin's creed for me. I never like any of the games until AC: Origins, even though I gave most of them a fair shake. AC: Origins is a 10/10 for me, I put in over 600h hours into that game, 100%'ed it and all its expansions/dlc. AC: Odyssey is good too, but I never got as into it, so a 8/10. Valhalla never looked good in any way so never even tried it. Started playing Shadows about a week ago and really enjoying it so far, not as good as Origins but mostly better than Odyssey. But damn do people not like when I mention this, like I'm not allowed to like it because I didn't like the earlier games. I have no issue with people liking them and not the ones I do, never said anything else. Music is a lot like this too. "Oh, you like their newer stuff? Fucking idiot, only the early stuff is good, I now see down on you as a person and hate every opinion you have".
When games have a perceived quality shift people will attack the newer fans because they see them as the reason why the company is allowed to "get away" with producing the worse thing. I don't know how you can avoid that and still have a community that holds the thing they love to a standard. Some communities just like to fight about which games better, Im not really sure what else there is to even talk about with assassins creed (i've only played 2 of the games so idk).