What the actual fuck

Well yeah, just being an asshole doesn’t make money. But when you see how easily people are tricked into giving away their money to unethical actors, it’s easy to see one’s own conscience as a roadblock. Like, “If I would feel comfortable scamming people, I could be rich.” But I’m not comfortable scamming people, even if it would be easy. Ergo, my conscience keeps me from making easy money.

When my car’s radio system completely busted over a year ago, I wasn’t in a rush to replace it. To replace it with the same original radio would’ve cost over $3000. Meanwhile, all the car radios I saw in stores were touch screen - I refuse to buy those. So I’ve simply gone without.

But the radio/infotainment was connected to other systems, including the back-up camera and clock. I can’t change the time and I need to look out the windows/windshields to back up. I take some solace in knowing that despite those minor set-backs, at least I don’t have to worry about my car’s radio system being a little snitch.

Not spam per se, but there does seem to be a sharp uptick in brand new accounts making tons of posts and getting banned. It seems every day I see numerous posts made by users that are already banned by whatever community they posted in (by the time I see them.) Mods must be working overtime.

I was thinking about this just the other day. There’s a popular market in my home state, one I’ve been going to since childhood. It’s a single store, not a chain, and it’s almost always packed. I’ve never seen nor heard a single ad for it in my life. Naturally, that makes me like the place even more.

Some people like to say that nobody’s immune to advertising. Maybe so, but there are definitely some of us who aren’t as affected by it. When most ads you see are for things you’d never buy anyway, all the crap kind of blends together.

For me, no amount of fast food ads, car ads, vacation ads, etc. are going to have any meaningful effect. I already don’t buy fast food, don’t purchase new cars (and if I’m shopping used, there are certain criteria that matter far more than a brand or dealership), and am way too poor to take a vacation. Yet, the ads persist.

Even if I weren’t muting and skipping them at every chance, you can’t get blood from a stone. End stage capitalism, man. Can’t spend money I don’t have!

This is probably the 4th or 5th post I’ve seen on Lemmy about this poll this week. Each time I checked the results, they were the same (except for the very first one I saw, which was different by only one percentage point.) The answer’s pretty clear.

Although I’m pretty sure it’s a PR stunt at this point, I do appreciate that DDG asked its users at all. Every other company seems to be like, “We’re gonna make you use AI, regardless of whether you want to or not. Suck it up!”

Ah, that makes more sense.

I generally avoid the downvote button, at least, I think so. I downvote AI slop (especially in communities that explicitly forbid it.) Though for comments I may put a train of downvotes for some troll that’s all over a thread.

I feel like there may be a misinterpretation here though. My ratio is more “upvote-oriented” than yours. Unless you mean aggressive with upvoting, which perhaps, I may be.

I curate my feed, blocking communities that don’t interest me. So yeah kinda.

Hm, I’ve got an upvote/downvote post ratio of 315:1, and a comment ratio of about 14:1.

I guess I’m an optimist.

I’ve had a great experience using Orion’s reader mode to use Wikipedia on my phone. Safari? Not so much. Safari’s reader mode breaks Wikipedia pages, whereas the only issue Orion has with them is not including the titles to subsections. Which I can hardly complain about when all I want is to read an article on a darkened screen before falling asleep.

It’s such a strange thing to get hostile about. Ironically, it low-key bugs me that we put the dollar sign before the number it’s indicating. “$64” is read as “sixty-four dollars,” not “dollars sixty-four.” So why write it like that? (Not rhetorical, I really want to know. I tried looking up this question to find out the answer, but haven’t found anything conclusive.) Putting the currency symbol behind the number makes more sense, like how some countries write the Euro. (Which also explains why some people might not intuitively place the dollar sign before the number - it’s their native convention and it follows clear logic.)

So maybe the point was ignorance or fear of the foreign? Or a misguided attempt at English language purity? Or they’re a former Redditor who hasn’t quite shaken off the Reddit “pointless, hostile hot-take” mentality?

Don’t they already have shadow profiles on all of us, even if we don’t use Facebook? I long ago figured that they’re able to get ahold of all the info they want on us without our consent. Is tracking our habits and relationships not enough? Even if the idea is to use this as age verification, I highly doubt Facebook’s as clueless as to not have a ballpark estimate on all of us by now. (Or did the introduction of AI break things so bad that they can no longer deduce the sort of data they want? Hey, I can dream.)

Sometimes I debate on making a comment, and sometimes I simply don’t have the energy to complete one. But sometimes, I think, “every comment grows Lemmy a little bit more” and decide, fuck it, I’ll say something. People might like it, people might not like it, but you never know what can grow from such a little spark.

I appreciate Lemmy in this regard. We live in a world with many voices trying to drown out each other for a bit of public attention. It’s enough to make some people think their own thoughts aren’t worthy and to stay silent, discounting their potential contributions. Having a platform that’s low-stakes, where people aren’t chasing internet fame, gives many of us an opportunity to express ourselves for the sake of expressing ourselves. Having this outlet is vital for many of us. I’m glad to be a part of this community, and it is truly a community. I have no idea if anyone recognizes me, but I definitely recognize other frequent commenters. It’s almost like we’re neighbors, not in physical proximity, but with a shared gathering space to meet and share our thoughts.

And I love that.

I asked this same question to my older coworkers back when I was 20. The main answer I got was: travel, travel, travel! “Travel before you have kids.” “Travel before you start a long-term career.” “Travel before you buy a house.”

Naturally, being a Millennial, all three of those things became non-issues. 🙃

So let me give some advice for the ages instead, regardless of what the future may hold for you:

• Never stop learning

• It’s okay to not know what you want to do with life

• And, especially in a post-truth, AI-infested world, question everything!

Take the time to learn what logical fallacies are (at least the common ones.) You WILL encounter them, and knowing when you or someone else is using faulty logic can keep you from harm, whether it be from another person (like what we see in politics) or from yourself (like the “Sunk Cost Fallacy,” which might otherwise lead you to stick with bad jobs, bad relationships, and more.)

Tangentially, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” Nobody knows everything. Anyone who expects you to know any given thing (unless you’re known to have studied it, of course) isn’t someone worth the admiration of. People with realistic expectations will see you as genuine, and being genuine can carry you far.

I could probably think of more if given the time, but those are the most important things off the top of my head. I’m open to questions in the comments; I’ve lived quite a peculiar life, so I’ve got a range of experiences, from being a homeless vandweller, to being a pilot, to pivoting 90° to working with kids and making art. I’m more than happy to answer any questions that might help people out!

Lmao, where I live that’s par for the course.

I wish I had the permissions to install ad blocks on my work laptop. On the plus side, the kids I work with are learning that ads are to be disliked. When an ad interrupts something we’re watching, I go “booo.” Now one of my students does it, too.

At least I can consider it a form of inoculation - gotta teach ‘em young to resist the ever-present brainwashing attempts advertisements.

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She needs to be defrosted from her summer stasis in time to sing about Christmas.

Though in all seriousness, it’s sad to think that enough people saw that AI slop of an update summary and thought, “Yep, that sounds better than anything I could’ve come up with. Let’s run with it.”