Say four guys are sitting in a bar having a sports argument—talking about the upcoming college football playoffs, say. They begin by agreeing that Ohio State is the favorite because it is currently ranked number one in the polls, which it in fact is.

But one of them says: No, Texas A&M is number one. The other three look at him like he’s insane. They reach for their phones, they tap, tap, tap, and they show him the rankings. But he keeps insisting. Those polls are fake. It’s Texas A&M. Everybody says so.

The conversation stalls. The liar has “won” the argument. Not in the sense that he is factually correct; he is not. But he has won in two senses. First, he has shut down what might have been a rational, interesting, spirited debate that proceeded from shared factual premises. Second, he has forced the other three to waste time and mental energy debating a proposition that is not remotely up for debate, and in the process has succeeded in making himself the center of attention and controversy whom everyone else talks about.

Sounds like they should remove the liar from the bar. Maybe not beat the shit out of him and leave him in a sobbing pile of piss and vomit in the back alleyway, but certainly not just letting it slide.

Liars and such get by because people are too polite to do anything about it. This goes for other bad behavior, too.

Someone in my extended friend group got a divorce, and her ex-husband started acting like a creeper. He was bothering the other women in the group. Eventually, another dude in the group pulled him aside and said if he doesn’t behave, he can’t hang out with them anymore. The guy didn’t change, and now he’s out of the friend group.

Of course, there’s so many shitty maga-hats that maybe he went and found a new group of misogynists .

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat

The other day I accidentally looked at YouTube without adblock, without history off, and it was a nightmare. Just AI slop and rage bait. Absolute trash.

I pretty much only use YouTube for music and very specific clips. It’s a bad place.

[mode="snob] read more books. [/mode]

People are being ground up by capitalism and it’s easier to just look at tiktok or play Baldur’s gate than actually engage with a messy person.

I try to stay in touch with people but it’s hard. I’m also kind of an insufferable asshole, and I think some people leave because they’re tired of “capitalism sucks” coming up

Of course people are using AI. It’s the default behavior of Google, the most popular web search. It confidently spits out falsehoods. This is not an improvement.

And there are definitely people “needing to convince others to use the tools.”. Microsoft and Google et al are made of people. They’re running ads to get people to adopt it.

Buying stuff online and email are useful stuff in ways LLMs can only dream of. It is a technology nowhere near as good as its hype.

Furthermore , “the general public likes it” is a dubious metric for quality. People like all sorts of garbage. Heroin has its fans. I’m sure it’d have even more if it was free and highly advertised. Is that enough to prove it’s good? No. Other factors such as harm and accuracy matter, too.

This is very heteronormative and gender binaried. Queer people exist and date.

That said, anecdotally, from the handful of women I’ve talked about this with: many don’t like making first moves on these apps.

Using dating apps is a skill, and if you haven’t been practicing sending messages you’re going to be bad at it. The vast majority of first messages I got from women were “hey”. Trash tier. Probably because they just haven’t done it very often.

It seems to mean people who don’t consume AI content not use AI tools.

My hypothesis is it’s a term coined by pro-AI people to make AI-skeptics sound bad. Vegans are one of the most hated groups of people, so associating people who don’t use AI with them is a huge win for pro-ai forces.

Side note: do-gooder derogation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do-gooder_derogation ) is one of the saddest moves you can pull. If you find yourself lashing out at someone because they’re doing something good (eg: biking instead of driving, abstaining from meat) please reevaluate. Sit with your feelings if you have to.

Any time I realize the optimal path is really boring or tedious.

Like, imagine you could sell junk to vendors for money, but for some reason you get more money if you sell them one at a time. Spending five minutes splitting inventory stacks sucks, but it’s 30% more gold and that’s the difference between the cool sword or the basic sword.

A made up example, but hopefully gets the point across.

Related: long travel times with nothing interesting or challenging happening. I remember playing some shitty MMO and you had to like run through a building, go up an elevator, and down a long hallway every time you wanted to learn skills. Just five minutes of nothing. Gotta juice those playtime stats, I guess.

It’s different if there’s stuff to do en route. Monsters to fight or whatever. But when it’s just jogging? Very disappointing.

Trying to get people to use signal. People don’t care about ideals or principles or future problems, so it’s a difficult sell.

Lack of money is certainly a chilling factor. Went bowling the other week, and it cost like $30/person. That’s pretty cheap, but not if you’re dead broke. Went out for brunch and a short bar crawl this weekend, and they cost like $50/ea for food and a few drinks. Not that expensive, but also kind of a lot.

You can socialize for cheaper. Had a little get together the other week- I spent like $40 for pizza and snacks, but could’ve probably gone cheaper. The real limiting factor is getting people who will show up.

I imagine it’s hard to bootstrap that, if you have no friends or only sad-sit-home-alone friends.

The problem is most people are lazy and don’t understand anything. They just use the app they know, even if it sucks.

If you got it to be popular it could work , but I don’t see how you could.

ls never asks you to create an account or to update.

Don’t give anyone ideas.

“Pay $2.99/mo to see hidden files!”

I feel like most people don’t buy software anymore. Everything runs in the browser.

Like, nerds and enthusiasts and game playing people sure. But most people? Nah. It’s all Instagram, Facebook, tiktok, Reddit, YouTube. Maybe like roll20 if they’re a dnd nerd. Most people aren’t doing Photoshop or blender.

they reach critical mass, shit will actually get fixed and no neoliberal or maga will ever hold a major seat of power agai

People are pretty stupid and would probably fall for maga bullshit again

Managers are often idiots in over their heads. AI is really aggravating that problem.

Yeah, it mostly worked. Mostly.

It’s hard to say if my previous group worked better because they were used to my style, or just a better fit for me, or some other factor.

“I’m a Grok guy,” said Vance. “I think it’s the best. It’s also the least woke!”

What a fucking idiot. Really wants everyone to go back to sleep

Being an adult in the sense of being responsible, feel pretty good about. Pay the bills. Feed myself. Go to work.

Being an adult in the sense of having no fun, or tightly restricted fun, not so much. Still go see live music and play video games.

I did have a coworker that was both a picky eater and didn’t cook. She’d order seamless (GrubHub) for most meals. That’s got to be like… $30/meal, two meals a day so $60, seven days a week, ~$400/week? My monthly food budget is like $200. Plus she’d go out drinking. Guess that adds up. That’s like $100k over five years.

She also had an expensive gym membership she didn’t use and was too shy to cancel.

Some of my peers should be rich enough to retire, but fell victim to lifestyle inflation. Sure they’re making $250k/year, but they moved into a $5k/mo apartment, go on expensive vacations, and just do whatever in their day to day. I don’t know where their money goes. Maybe they are secretly investing.

Meanwhile I live like a goblin on less