I never thought I’d say it, but I don’t even use YouTube anymore. I might go there once a month to watch a tute, but only if I absolutely can’t find help from any other website.

Well, I disagree. I didn’t touch Reddit for a year and finally went back about a month ago.

• THE ADS. Fuck me, the ads now!

• The corporate plug-ins. I had a legit, verified business comment on my post and then PM me after it.

• The videos freeze more often than makes me comfortable clicking on them.

• The pop-up trash now; “follow this”, “click here”, “did you know”, “ICYMI”. The U.I looks like Yahoo’s home page now.

Is it dying? I don’t know. Is it exhibiting every square inch of desperation, turning the corner from what was once cool, to what is now every pixel monetised and sponsored? Yup!

If you stick it out here for long enough, three things will change.

1. You’ll begin to really like it here. It’s different but it grows on you, and it’s growing with its users.
2. Your addiction to these noticeboard-type socials will dramatically reduce. There’s something about Lemmy that’s less addictive in a good way.
3. You’ll eventually go back to Reddit and see it with new eyes, realising just how quickly it’s dying.

Look at you! You a smart snake, huh? You using tools now, huh?

Linux users and vegetarians. Neither can shut the fuck up. Both have made it their identity.

Are you a Linux user?

Hey everyone, shut up! This guy is a Linux user and he’s here to tell us about using Linux.

Yeah I truly hope petitions work but everything I’ve ever signed hasn’t done shit. I think petitions are just a way of letting us think we have a voice.

Well, in essence, propaganda is advertising. And advertising leans on satisfying perceived need.

So if I’m selling you shoes it’s to satisfy your physiological, social, or self-fulfilment order need. Shoes are functional, make you cool, or make a statement.

Propaganda is fulfilling some need to be effective - probably fear based in the social, safety, or belongingness orders, and carried via viral channels like word of mouth or social (viral).

I haven’t really thought about it too much but it’s just a communication or a reinforced message; it’s just advertising. Think about it that way.

And with regard to Russia, they are all ‘fear the West’ and ‘national pride’ driven, compounded over 3-4 generations. It would be such an easy spin.

Shit, my guy or gal.

That’s put my mind massively at ease. Thank you for putting the time in.

And yes, behavioural/clinical is exactly the path I’d go down.

I’m not. I’m aware of how selfish it is but something in my system of belief that I have (undefined? spiritual? no idea?) says that when I’m dead, I should be ALL dead.

Like, if there’s any kind of afterlife, will leaving a functioning part me behind hold up the transition? This even sounds fucked up to me because I’m 100% not religious at all.

I would just prefer all of me to be dead or all of me to be alive. Not fractions of both at the same time.

What echo chamber?

Test it yourself. Try saying anything positive about him. Say he has nice eyes, I don’t care, and watch the downvotes flow.

As a matter of fact don’t even be positive, be neutral. Say something like, “I haven’t formed an opinion on this yet” and watch what happens.

I dunno, man. Sometimes I’m really concerned with the echo chamber here. If you look at Lemmy and Reddit, it’s nothing but an Elon-hating amphitheatre, yet objectively, the guy still seems to be soaring up all the lists that matter.

So, something isn’t right. The guy is obviously popular in places that matter, and it’s worrying that places like this never, ever, ever show it.

I’d like to think Lemmy isn’t one-sided and biased but it clearly is.

And for the record, I’m not pro or anti-Elon. I’m not plugged in (or care) enough to know shit about the guy. But what I’m not going to do is Boomer-lean into one source and parrot the sentiment. Isn’t that what us Gen-Ys and Gen-Zs are supposed to despise, and be too internet savvy to fall for, or are we following our parents into ignorance?

Stupid question: what the shit do you do with your 15 years of communication history if your email provider falls off a cliff?

He’s still worth $200B.

Spending $44B? $88B? $100B. Doesn’t matter. The dude never, ever has to think about money again. If he lives to 85 and doesn’t earn another cent between now and then, he can splash 6 billion dollars a year every year until he dies.

To give you some understanding of that kind of money, he could roughly buy two Lamborghini Diablos every single day for the rest of his life.

So, Harry is next in line, right?

/s

I’m just fucking.

Kids are about the only thing Italians can beat in a fight.

Amirite?

a) discussions aren’t a crime.

b) what are studios going to do to the hundreds of millions of daily pirates? Write stern letters?

c) they tried identifying us and sending us stern letters in 2001 and we all laughed, then kept pirating anyway.

Yup. About 7 years ago I used to darkweb pretty hard in the drug scene (I haven’t in years so have at it, Mr. FBI).

Anyway I used Reddit subs a lot for info on new markets and onions, reliable sellers, and news on exit scams etc, but I only lurked - never commented. Anyone with a brain in their head knew they were honeypots.

New research is suggesting caffeine’s stimulant effects are caused by the placebo effect anyway. The idea of decaf is kind of void if true.

I can offer you a very small example of a difference in thinking that I experience.

I’m a grown ass man and I can’t easily tell my left from right. The best example of this is when I’m gaming and the tutorial tells me to press ‘left thumb stick’, I usually fuck it up. It took me a long time and a lot of thinking on it to realise what was going on. For me, left and right is not instinctive like up or down, but rather, it’s either a feeling, or not a feeling.

The reason for this is because when I was 5 I nearly lost my left index finger in an accident. It was reattached, but during the healing process I was constantly told my left finger was the one I hurt, so I literally learnt left from right as ‘injury’ or ‘no injury’, which I then attributed to as ‘hurt’ or ‘not hurt’.

So now, when I have to choose left or right, my brain has to remember an injury and where it was, then kind of feel that injury and tell myself that yes, I feel it so that’s left, or no, I feel nothing so that’s right. These steps take more time than a normal person’s automatic reaction to left or right direction.

Imagine someone touching you and saying, “does this hurt”. It takes time to figure out if it hurts or not and then reply. Thats what I’m doing every time I need to identify left or right, and if there’s no time for that, like “quick, make a right turn here”, I’m forced to guess.

And there is no way for me to unlearn this.