Starfield is a classic case of some misleading marketing on purpose, and, well, it just falls into the perpetually doomed category of games/media that will always suffer from extremely high expectations: sci-fi/space/cyberpunk. The imagination wanders especially far with games like these, and there's little to none us, the consumers, and they, the devs and publishers, can ever do about it.

That being said, you're right in not praising the game. It's a niche fun in my opinion, and only shines if you take it for what it is, but not for what it seemed to have been marketed as.

TL;DR Stafield is a Bethesda game through and through, but with a coating some Microsoft PG-13 "play it safe" attitude.

Sometimes you also think that you're the one who's got it all figured and can provide something so insightful, so powerful, so eye-opening that you're going to change someone's life, and consequently, the world, for the better - we like to feel special and big, but we're not.

People who dislike these videos and comment on them to say that the perpetrators are morons also contribute to the tractiosn it gains because algorithms love engagement, corporatations love engament, so they'll happily show the videos to more people in the vicious cycle of engagement.

If you were a faceless algorithm

There are people behind algorithms. They don't exist for the sole purpose of gathering the data for the sake of it - the data is later accessed and processed by people.

I'm giving my address and information to plenty of companies I get services from.

And how is that different from giving any of information to me? I'm just trying to gather some statistics here, nothing more.

Those false equivalences are why people don’t take you seriously.

Is this why Zuckerberg went to trial and the EU is preventing apps and services whose sole purpose is to hoover up some data about you to become available in its domain?

If you don't mind such things one bit, would you mind sharing with all of here all of the following:

• your physical address (preferably in the format that would let anyone of us send you whatever we desire)
• your age
• your full legal name
• your phone number that you use most often
• your school
• your work (its address, your title, company, etc)
• your income
• your expenses
• the stores you go to and what for, also when and how often
• your hometown
• your pet names
• your mother's maiden name
• your bank of choice
• what tech you own in detail
• your schedule
• your search history
• your browser bookmarks

And many other things, too. Somehow I doubt you'd ever do that, but you're fine trusting this kind of data to be handed away to many corporations for absolutely no benefit on your end. They'll just sell it for cash money, only to be bought by con-artsists to try and scam you out of something later.

I mean being a contempt consumer is one thing, but defending some entities hoarding more data about you than your entire family knows is just delusional. Especially given the fact that you are most likely more careful with your data in other circumstances, like talking to strangers or using the Internet for at least some things, but then you defend careless and irresponsible handling of your data when it comes to what, mobile apps?

You should really learn more on the topic.

Also, Zuck can point to us feddies not wanting to federate with him, and say “see? Interoperability is pointless, even the geeks don’t want it”. Which is oddly accurate…

I think the easiest counter-argument here is healthy disagreement.

Being exposed to multiple opinions is undoubtedly important and is far, far better for us all in the long run than only limiting ourselves to only those opinions and views we already share or at least like, but having an option to wall somebody off on an Internet platform has its benefits, too, like not actually wasting your time in endless and fruitless arguments. As great as it would for everyone to be able to have a healthy and productive conversation about the differences in their views, it simply isn't wise to honestly expect that from everyone.

Besides, having two opposing ideas communicate on the same platform is not what the fediverse is for - not exclusively for sure. It's the freedom to self-host and self-regulate places dedicated to specific things to various degrees: lemmy.world, for instance, is wide and large and encompasses many things at once, and has an option to federate and communicate with smaller, more niche communities and vise versa, while letting the users open a single account with either.

Otherwise it's just the old Facebook formula of encouraging opposing views to constantly clash for the sake of engagement. That's just not real, not healthy, and only exists for the purpose of being some sort of KPI in a corporation perpetually hungry for money and influence. So yeah, we don't want that.

I think it's more of an ego thing. The people with healthy egos probably never end up as execs in companies as big as Reddit, and the people that do are likely driven by something else other than the desire to actually build a platform that respects its users and works well in cooperation with them - "I'm smart, I'm sexy, I know better than these plebs making us money".

I wouldn't count on big companies ever going that route, to be honest. The decision-making people there will likely never trust Lemmy or similar software enough because it's not like them - not proprietary, not closed source, so they'll keep wasting money on making their own shitty websites with their own shitty forums if they ever want to give their communities an official place to hang out.

Next we need politicians and policy makers putting their fists to work instead of sending others, preferably in taxable ways, too.

One could dream.

YMusic is great Android app, too. It's mostly intended for being able to properly use your phone when you want to focus on the audio, i.e. you can freely disable the screen, browse other apps, set timers, tweak the built-in equalizer, that kinda stuff, but it is perfectly functional and complete video player for YouTube as well.

And it doesn't roll YouTube ads.

Dude, you know, killing an entire town because you couldn't wait in a line to get your milk like everybody else is not entirely a healthy thing, nor any of your "health" pipes are.

Jokes aside, your original post gives me a feeling that the very idea of not suppressing your emotions all of the time for the sake of masculinity is not yours, really. You mentioned your friends and family, who do seem to exert the macho behavior in unhealthy ways.

Get in terms with yourself first and foremost, because you're the person you spend most of your time with one way or another. Allow yourself to feel anything and carefully analyze when and why you feel, then try to understand whether you want to have that kind of reaction to things at all. Personally, I have always found honest writing helpful, because it makes you go through things in details, which makes it invaluable when dealing with emotions and reactions.

Also, being constantly talked down to or annoyed or belittled or simply experiencing any kind of stress is a very prominent contributing factor to feeling like you're not right. In some cases, it may help to find another group of people to regularly communicate with, finding comfort in some different pattern of behavior, one that makes you feel good and like you belong. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to ditch other groups - just make sure you experience the opposite of what depresses you on a regular basis. I can't find any examples, but the Internet is surely full of understanding and caring people that you can probably try and bond with to have a good time together, with your thoughts being really far away from anything that makes you feel like you're "not masculine enough".

Lastly, try your best to calmly persevere when it makes sense to. Suggesting a person to do some sports for the sake of their own benefit is one thing, which you absolutely can politely decline if you don't care because you're the one living with the consequences, but making a person feel uncomfortable because of the emotional range they experience is plainly moronic (again, unless the person really needs some help, but shaming is no help).

Life isn't static. Who knows, maybe you'll manage persuade everyone around you to be more mature and welcoming and understanding, or even notice yourself changing and becoming in more direct control of your emotions, ending up chuckling looking back at your today's self - I know I did.

So, cheer up, Dude. You seem like you got this, and believe in you.

Because the decisions like that made by the people who don't know shit about these things or don't care to know shit - most likely, it's also cheaper for them to run this kind of office anyway.

Sie sind eigentlich etwa näher als die Angelsachsen und ihre Sprache unterscheidet sich tatsächlich.

Oder?..

Looking at the way things have been going for years (decades) now, giving someone a birth would be a huge disservice - they'll inherit a simultaneously more globalized and divided world, a world with technology that has the potential to trivialize sharing knowledge and experience, which is instead use to drive up engagement for the sake of profits, effectively breeding hate groups and echo chambers, a world with economy consisting of bubbles and not-so-careful manipulations, leaving our offspring in a position few would probably envy. Oh, and there's rapid climate change that is being ignored and actively accelerated by the people and other entities that are capable of doing anything about it.

I know more than a few people who have never considered any of the above, and I'm sure many people here know such people as well, so it's more than safe to say that whatever the humanity is facing in the near future, it's nothing similar to extinction through lack of birth.

The future seems really good for certain groups of people, but I doubt my kids could be a part of these groups, or even want to a part of these groups. Not that I would actively indoctrinate them, but I'd imagine that living with me through the years when they're developing and shaping themselves is going to leave its mark regardless.

Maybe I'll regret that decision when it's already too late, of course, but then again, this is not going to be a world-ending decision by no merit.

Me neither. Following the logic of the name, boosting should help the post rise up. Following the same logic, upvotes and downvotes don't influence the position of the comments and posts. Yet, the reputation of a given user seems to be affected by the amount of boosts and downvotes, but not the amount of upvotes.

Maybe that's still WIP, though, I never bothered to look it up.

Chuck hasn't been the same since that whole phone batter chicanery...

It's not some exclusively Reddit behaviour - it's just that much common, unfortunately.

Because people like to act shallow and just put other people into grouos they hate regardless of actually knowing anyone form that group?

Gee, that's always works well for everyone.

Hopefully my experience can help some people see the bright side of going off Reddit.

To me, Reddit has been a great platform in almost every possible way - except meaningful engagement. At some point, I realized that any somewhat big subreddit that I frequented for news and discussions of topic I'm interested in is plagued by dead-end threads: karma farms through reposts, lame jokes and similarly low-effort content that's breeds equally low-effort comments, and things that don't provoke any sort of discussion in general.

Joining the protest made me go to difference places, especially forums big and small, where the only real way to engage with the community was to actually reply to what they said. I quickly realized that Reddit has long turned into another brainless scroller akin to Instagram or Twitter, which all may have their place, but that's just not what I joined Reddit for back in the day.

Now that I've basically kicked the Reddit habit, I'm finally enjoying the Internet again - it's not the same as it was in the 00s, and it will never be, but it's much, much better than going to a single website, owned by a single company, for nearly everything I want to do online.

Today, I finally have a proper choice for the first time in years. A lot of that choice consists of the fediverse, with different scopes and goals, but some is just basic and mainstream places I'd forgotten because of the convenience that Reddit seemed to bring.

Today, I'm finally having actual conversations with people in the communities I choose to interact with, rather than just reading through the witty chains of comments.

I know that Reddit means different things to different people, but to me, it has lost its meaning long ago, and it's only with the protest that I managed to kick the habit of going there for basically nothing. As surprising as it is, the whole thing lead me to enjoy my online life much more, and actually engage with the topics on the old, deeper level of fun, rather than just being exposed to an absurd amount of things, each pretty shallow and uninspired.

De-juro, US already uses metric - there's samples and document and stuff like that, just like in other countries. This makes it even more peculiar, because it's just the people that aren't willing to drop some old system that they brought from the colonial British Empire with them back in the day; you'd think it only makes sense, with all the freedom and independence tendencies, but somehow the archaic measuring system from the monarch is still vigorously beloved and defended by millions... even though they've declared independence from the monarch a couple of centuries ago.

We live in a weird world.