It kinda looks like tennis for the unathletic, which means I should fit right in, but I have zero interest.

Eh. This day and age it should be a fatass with a maga hat and a Trump brand bible. They still do the dumbass oils though.

They're so far up each other's asses and whacked outta their gourds on whatever drugs that they're honestly out of touch with reality. Gonna be a cold, cruel morning when the light of day finally reaches them.

100% this kind of techbro need to be cool and liked is one of the main drivers behind why our nation is fucked right now. Zuck, Musk and all of the other guys flipped right when people called them out on legitimate bullshit because they could find easy validation among the MAGA rubes, MRA choads, and conspiracy nutters. They sold out their platforms and the country for a tiny dose of external validation. Fragile little man-children.

This.

It's an absolutely unfair comparison for Camacho, who was a pretty good leader considering the setting of the film.

I'm no psychologist or sociologist, but it seems that most of the people who treat their kids this way had kids because of external expectations or for status. They treat their kids like property or as an extension of themselves. Raising them to be cis no matter what is not about their child's well-being, it's about how having a trans child makes them look in the eyes of their bigoted, greedy, status-seeking, peers. When their kids come out as trans, they see this as a personal attack on their place in the pecking order.

In general, they treat even their cis children like shit, because they don't think of their children as people, children are just assets in what they think is some kind of cosmic dick measuring contest.

It's incomprehensible because it's pathological and generally sick.

I feel that the majority of innovation occuring in modern capitalism is confined to two key areas:

1. Regulatory capture and market control.

2. New ways to mindfuck people into overpaying for goods and services.

True, but I don't think it's due to a lack of faculties for most people, it's just not an area of interest or a primary concern. It should be, because this sort of consumer and media manipulation is being used to enable some very dangerous things at present, but it's really hard to make headway when you're telling people how fucked up and unhealthy the one thing that's providing them with a little escape and joy is.

It might be easier to lead an addiction intervention.

I try to reframe privacy concerns with the idea that if someone was stalking you and recording your every action in physical public spaces that you'd be pretty disturbed. Most people get it, they understand the idea and can view their internet activity through the lense of that metaphor.

But they don't really feel it, and that's where the disconnect comes in. How do you get people who don't feel the Internet is part of "real life" to understand how invasive this is on both and intellectual and emotional level? Because of digital privacy and user rights don't hold some sort of emotional significance for them, it's going to stay a back burner issue in their lives.

What were we warned about back in the prime Facebook/Twitter era? Short term dopamine driven feedback loops or some such?

This is the result of not heeding that warning.

You're right that blaming phones is dumb. The phone is a tool, just like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build something, or destroy something. It's all about how it's used.

This may honestly be it for me.

I quit playing games because of all the greed and hype, I went back to piracy when streaming started to fracture and greed set in, I left non-federated social media because of the enshittifaction and invasiveness, and I go to fairly extensive lengths to block ads and protect my privacy as much as possible...

And instead of moving to any number of fair, non-exploitive business models, they're just going to force ads down my throat like that episode of black mirror.

If this goes through I'll be sorely tempted to wipe everything I can and start over as best I can. Only interact with the Internet when I need to.

You'll find me paying cash at the local used bookstore, at least until all the major publishers make that illegal.

EDIT: It's honestly depressing, I genuinely enjoy technology and the internet, but when companies like Google are able to force garbage like this it just sucks all the joy out of it for me.

It's like everying is becoming a shitty mobile game. Do the toolsheds that develop Candy Crush clones not think we can understand why in app currencies are sold in bundles of 100 but every thing we purchase with them requires amounts that end with a five? Does Google not think we know the real motivation behind a system that strives to prove ads were delivered to your browser either?

I know a lot of people may not see the real driver here, but I'm tired of being underestimated and infantalized by a bunch of dorks trapped in a corporate echo chamber. I think I'd prefer it if they just straight up said they're going to sacrifice our privacy and user experience for a quick bump in stock value.

Coverage of politics became commodified and sensationalized in the name of ratings and advertising dollars and coupled with intense competition for viewer attention this has led to the news becoming more of a form of entertainment than anything informative.

At the same time, voter apathy drives politicians to search for new ways to create interest, promote themselves, and generate a following.

This promotes more and more sensational behavior, which is further played up by the media, which raises the bar for the kind of things a representative from a flyover red state hardly anyone cares about has to do to maintain a presence on the national stage.

Repeat that cycle a few times and now congress is looking at Hunter Biden's nudes.

I would suggest 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neil Postman for further reading.