Anon likes a thing

My ex wife and I used to take a chess board everywhere, play in cafes, parks, restaurants, pubs. It was something to do when we had run out of stuff to say to each other. It was a conversation starter, people would come up and have a sticky, or ask us who's winning. Some people would occasionally ask if they can play. It was nice. Until Queens Gambit was all the rage. Then people seemed to assume we were just following that trend, and there was a noticeable increase in people saying "Queens Gambit eh?" And we stopped taking the board out so much.

Dune before the movie came out

The Lynch one, right?

This happens to most things I like. I really liked JoJo's Bizarre adventure when the anime was first coming out and I read all the manga and then when part 3 got super popular the fandom became completely insufferable to the point where I was stopped recommending the show or keeping up with any updates. I have also been really into AI/language models/machine image generation for years before ChatGPT exploded and now "being into AI" usually means "Exporting rational thought to a chatbot." I also feel like reddit is like this.

Jojo's was popular for a while before I got into it. I was very confused by part 1, because none of it lined up with what I was expecting from the memes and general online discourse. It was good, I liked it. Part 2 with the Pillar Men was the thing I watched that year.
Part 3 was awful. Jotaro is the worst jojo. They did my boy Joseph dirty. Hamon is much more interesting than stands. I could not force myself to finish watching part 3.
- I felt the same about Stardust Crusaders but pulled through. The second half is substantially better with E34 (D'Arby the Gambler) being my favorite episode of the show.

yeah sorry Anon, go fuck yourself and your nazi skull flag. That shit's the Totenkopf, what, did the new generation of chuds ruin Nazi for you? Poor fuckin' baby.

Maybe a "Death in June" band shirt. Which makes things ... well... I dunno. Probably not better.
- was not familiar with them....
  from their wiki - had performed at rallies for The Right to Work, Rock Against Racism, and the Anti-Nazi League. -
  holy shit this is a ride
  "The Totenkopf-6 is a slightly grinning skull, framed by a circle and a small 6 in the lower right corner. Death in June has, since at least the State Laughter / Holy Water 7″, used variations of the Prussian Totenkopf or "Death's Head" symbol. Indeed, there is another explanation that has been given by Pearce, he has also stated that it symbolises "total commitment" to the group, akin to the total commitment of soldiers of the SS"
  ah... getting to the shit that matters -
  "The Southern Poverty Law Center considers Death in June to be white power music harboring neo-Nazi sympathies."
  yeeeaah this all fits
Thanks for the important context. I’d assumed it was a pirate flag until I read your comment and then looked it up. Fuck this particular anon.
- gotta call out the nazis at every turn otherwise the place will turn into a nazi bar.
Now, now it is only a Totenkopf if it is from a distinct region of Germany.
- ah yes the death's head valley
that's 4chan for you. id be less disturbed by the amount of nazis on 4chan and more by the amount of lemmings that agree with Anon on any given subject

Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty was the show for me in the beginning even when the dumbasses showed up, but it lost its appeal after the scandal. Just doesn’t feel the same.
- the scandal???
- honestly it was getting a bit stale before, with its creator still onboard. its just that the scandal probably shooed people away all at once.
I remember being hyped about it since I was a huge fan of Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, even told some friends to keep an eye on it. I recall watching the premiere of the first episode and even telling more friends about it.
Then the entire thing became super popular before Season 1 was over and then... well you know what happened. I continued watching after Roiland was gone and the show popularity declined, but I am absolutely staying as far away as possible from that fandom
I saw a clear separation between me and the idiot part of the demographic who enjoys the show at the Pickle Rick episode.
It wasn't funny. It wasn't even a good story or episode. It was just the writers deciding to come up with the most blatantly random thing for the sole sake of randomness.
- I hate that I'm writing this because I'm gonna sound like the *"to be fair * copy pasta but, the fact that it's so lame and stupid is kind of the whole point of the bit.
  He gives his big "I'm pickle Riiiiick!" presentation like it's supposed to be some big huge awesome thing, and it's presented like a punchline that you're supposed to laugh at and find funny... Then it's a hard cut to Morty's disappointed, slightly concerned face for a solid 10 seconds. Morty is you, the viewer, painfully unimpressed by what is presented as, well, "the funniest shit ever".
  Remember in an earlier episode when Rick makes a reference to the non-existent Redgren Grumblholdt, and the kids laugh because they think it's supposed to be funny and just want to fit in? Those are the people that the "funniest shit ever" meme is about. People that are fed an intentionally bad joke, don't understand the irony behind the bad joke, but sees that everyone else is laughing at the bad joke, so they pretend the joke is funny. Two people laughing at the same thing for entirely different reasons.
  The whole Pickle Rick plotline is just background events anyways. The meat and potatoes of the episode is with Dr Wong.
- It was so dumb that it was funny to me
- I liked the bit at the end where the therapist calls him out.
- The whole show is about how Rick is a selfish prick. That episode was also about Rick being a selfish prick and trying to weasel out family therapy by turning himself into a pickle.
  That's it. That was the entire reason for Pickle Rick. But the idiots who idolize Rick for some reason cranked it up to full retard.

Roblox. I played it as a kid around 2007 when it was just a small Lego-like building game with your friends. It's been really weird seeing it become some predatory, monetized app game that kids play on their iPad now.

For reference, I'm almost 30 and haven't played it since I was like 14. My friend's kid was playing Roblox on his tablet and asked if I "heard of this new app game called Roblox" and it hurt my soul.

It's stupid but I started playing Roblox in 2008 and I still check in on it from time to time, there are a couple of half decent games out there if you know where to look because it's pretty much just a game engine.
Between the s*** or the facilitate the worst of mobile gaming practices and playhouse to an innumerable number of pedophile rings is super f***** up. They basically trick children into developing video games and pay them scraps of what they're worth. Limited edition Hats play host to what is basically a gambling or stock market system. I think one of the worst Parts is that pretty much any transaction the company takes an enormous cut of.
I have an item that's worth 350,000 "Robux" that I bought for pennies like 10 years ago. I don't have any way of cashing that out for real money but that's still hundreds of real life dollars and also roblox would take a 30% cut if I sold it anyway.
Part of me wishes that I had actually learned to build properly in that game, for some reason i always struggled to wrap my head around scripting and actually building anything that looks decent for myself. I suppose from a certain perspective it's not too late but what would be the f****** point roblox is trashed now.
Oh yeah the chat filter is a nightmare, roblox uses a chat service called Community sift if I remember correctly and it's pretty much just makes it so that it's impossible to communicate because they can't be ours to moderate their stupid platform anymore anyway.
Also they are weirdly sexist, they enabled the publishing of user generated content and they allow some honestly pretty crazy alarming muscle bound and homoerotic masculine body shapes but any even remotely feminine shape no matter how tame and innocent is required to have these big ugly weird looking color blocks on them that look like underwear and honestly are way worse than having nothing there at all in terms of how it looks.
the devs have pursued every bad idea and settled on 'child labor and exposing kids to fucked up shit seems profitable' so yeeeeeahh.... the game industry looks at them and hangs their head in shame
- To be clear, the “game industry” has no shame so this is inaccurate. In fact, there are a few companies trying to recreate their success.
Unfortunate that it's more popular than ever before.
I remember when my nephew first asked if I knew about Roblox. I was so excited to build some stuff with him, until he showed me this crappy superhero fighting simulator. I can't complain too much, since it's basically the new-age version of crappy flash games, but it was still a disappointment.
- I mean, was Roblox more about building in the past? To me, or at least when I played it back as a 10 yr old or so, Roblox was always about playing the diverse amount of games. If you wanted to build stuff, that was for Minecraft. I was always playing party games, anime clones, survival games, etc.
Still have friends I met there back in 2014 that are my closest and still talk to, pre-enshittification was peak Roblox era and are my most cherished memories

if so then name your thing

Sort of I guess: em dashes.

Not to talk about, but to use when writing.
\ Now they are apparently the hallmark of AI-generated crap.

Same. I learned this was a thing just the other day.
I don't use them often but do find them nicer for parenthetical remarks sometimes.
- Me too—sometimes
I've never been called out as AI for using them; but if I ever am, I have the strategy of knowing the alt code for them (0151). I even know the shortcut in word to insert one — pressing alt-X with your cursor at the end of "2014". I also have a vscode macro set up that is just an emdash, just in case I'm in a situation where there's not a way I know to insert one.
- Alt-codes are for nerds
  60% gang
  I really think more text formatting should do as mobile devices do and just auto convert two hyphens into an em dash. Make it simple, i beg.
I just got into them and I'll be damned if I'll let some toaster ruin a perfectly beautiful bit of punctuation

Here's a controversial one: Target shooting.

It used to be a skill you honed, going to the range to become better every time. Participate in competitions, meet people. It was a great hobby.

And then the idiots who unironically wear Punisher logos ruined it.

I used to enjoy going to the range. Apparently the one I frequented in my youth was all army guard/reserves and prior service, because when I moved and sought out a new place it was a fucking clown show. Simple shit like 'keep your weapon pointed up and downrange' is too fucking hard for these gravy seal shitbags.
Welcome to "gun people who hate gun people"
- How will that end ?
I feel sorry for you - I live in one of those socialist hellhole countries where owning a gun requires annual testing that you can actually hit a target (50/100 on a B8 target for beginners, not exactly tough) and pass a psych test. Going to the range is lovely here, and competitions are usually paired with a nice meal afterwards for people to socialise.
I watch US videos, and most of them just seem insane. One notable exception is the JaredAF channel, that guy can really properly target shoot.
- Switzerlahd? When I lived in Denmark the laws were about that tough, though still surprisingly simple after I gained citizenship.
For a moment I thought you meant shooting up a Target store.
- That isn't what it means? ... Shit, I should clean this mess up.
Same, man. I like it, from the meditation-like state when you take it serious to the gun goes bang part when you are just messing around. But some of the people, man... Where do I start.
I think I should go again regardless, if everyone with wane opinions leaves, that would be surrendering.

The internet

immediately where my mind went.
From "haha, raspberriesareyummy will marry his computer one day" to most everyone around me constantly staring at their whatsapp, tiktok or "talking" with siri/alexa.
Fuck this shit :(
- I’ve been online since 1995. I weep for what we lost. The web should have stayed a nerd domain. We’d have been better off as a society.
- I'm so sorry that they called you that
- Oh god I heard that constantly as a kid. Gah. Now they’re all married to Facebook and don’t know how to use it. Oh well.

I spent a lot of time on computers (shocker, right?) and that was seen as nerdy and weird when I was at school. Even after I got my first real job, I remember my girlfriend dismissing things I'd say because "nobody cares about your stupid internet". Predictable rest of comment is predictable.

ffs moopet, why did you let your internet get this bad
Good God, this one hits home for me. “He’s always in his room on his cuhpyooter.” “He’s a hacker, he’s a nerd.” Ummm, no. I’m just pretending to be a girl and swapping tit pics with other dudes who are pretending to be girls and playing video games. Y’all living in the stone age with your magazines and your Nintendo. I’m in my room with every Nintendo game ever made and a new pair of tits to look at anytime I want.
Now half of those people are fumbling around and giving scammers 200 dollars, constantly glued to their little 30 dollar smart phones and “playing on Facebook”. And of course, they be calling me to ask how to find an app they got from the play store. “It used to just go on the screen I swear.”

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Blud thinks it's c. 2100–1200 BCE
- I remember that damn ad on TV back in in 2009. It was for SakuraCon, a annual Anime convention in Seattle.
  I went there once with a group of friends. Made anime look uncool very fast.
I see more people aware of it today, but was there a burst in pop culture with idiots that then died down? The people who talk about it today seem pretty genuine and get good reception.
- Yeah, it got really popular when the Bible dropped in the 2nd century BCE. The Noah flood story was basically a copy-and-paste of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Bible nerds were annoying af.

Nazi ideology, OP OP. There was a nice little thing we had once, until you cunts took it up like a hoard of malignant nihilist pussies 😒Now we can't even bring up the Third Reich's many incredible qualities in conversation without someone rolling their eyes! n-chan numpties ruin every fandom.

/ss

lmao about the /ss
- Underrated comment
I hate that 4chan losers have somehow become the face of nihilism.
- Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos

Serial Experiments Lain. I managed to acquire a bootleg Japanese VHS of the show (sans subtitles) in '99 or '00 and fell in love. I bought the English dub as soon as I could find it. I was totally obsessed, even going as far as carrying a messenger bag like Lain had, and making a custom Windows XP theme based on Navi. I even bought a Palm Pocket to mimic the smartphones shown in the show.

Lain shaped my passion for IT, and I feel it changed my life in profound ways.

I'm confused by the sudden popularity. It went under the radar for so long. Now all of the merch goes for insane amounts of money.

No shit, that’s back?
I loved it when I watched it in my youth. The theme song still pops up on my playlist once in a while. I did try to rewatch it like 5-10 years ago but it didn’t connect like it did when I was young. Still, lots of fond memories from it and how much it inspired me.
I’ve been wondering when it would come around again.
Shit man i bought that on dvd centuries ago
I watched the first ep of that a week ago. Its a beautiful show, but to me its kind of ruined because instead of experiencing it as something new and experimental i experience it as an already established pop culture. I'll still watch it but i probably wont lainmaxx like most of the nerds who watched it in their formative years.

Soon it will be Lemmy
- Plz no...
- Already happened

Computer games. Anything that can be monetized will turn into shit.

Ah yes, computer games, I almost forgot it ever existed!
Yes. Man.
I miss when you could look forward to new games at all times.
Now I just play old games over and over. I’ve beat Super Metroid like 8 times this year.

$thing is Warhammer 40k

Yep. Popularity hasn't yet died down, but having a bunch of closed-minded "anti-woke" (i.e. Fascists) people dogpiling onto 40k as though they're begging to be Servitorised in the service of the Emp'rah is... dismaying, to say the least.
Worst part is, one can't even have a conversation with such fans, as they instantly shoot down any and all subjects which they deem even marginally related to "woke stuff," sometimes with disturbing zeal. How such an obvious satirical dystopia can be misinterpreted in such a way is beyond me...
- Some people are just really passionate about their tiny yellow plastic toy soldiers all having imaginary penises. The penises are important to them. They can't bear to imagine a Legio Custodes that doesn't have a full armament of cock.
When did it become popular for the hordes?
- When? No idea, but all the sudden it was quiet normal to see Spacemarine and Orc figures appearing on the desks of nerds...
- I'd say Space Marine 1 did a significant job in making the franchise more nerd-mainstream. Before it, it was the Dawn of War game and expansions. Slow and steady growth of awareness, I think
Yeah, I always feel a little embarrassed to bring it up. I'm liking that there are more underground games coming out now like turnip28 and trench crusade, but they don't scratch the same itch in the same way yet.

Computers

Desktop computing in particular.
Yay you get my vote.

Roguelikes. I'm not saying some of the modern roguelites aren't fantastic, there are many that are. But the genre boom has all but pushed traditional roguelikes (NetHack, ADoM, Angband, Brogue, etc) out of the conversation.

My best experience so far was with Dungeon Crawl. I love their "no farming" philosophy.
I love how hard they gatekeep /r/roguelikes to keep it true to the genre. One of my favorite things is going there to watch all the modern clueless "roguelike" lovers get downvoted to oblivion.
What's wild is that the nethack source is so easy to read and understand, that it is trivial to add new content. I'd like to see some of the mechanics from the newer gen roguelikes like Shattered Pixel Dungeon make it back into trad nethack
Brogue is fucking sick, man.
- Brogue
  damn that brings back dnd.exe sessions
NetHack, ADoM, Angband, Brogue
One of those things is not like the others.
Also you're missing Elona (2007), game where your wizard can dual wield rifles while riding on an abomination with the head of your pet cat, body of a tyrannosaurs rex and 8 claymore wielding human arms taken from your gene slaves. Or get rich while playing a piano and finish the game by using that sweet sweet moneh hiring adventures and sending them to die exploring the BBEG lair.
All with cheerful pokemon-like gameboy graphics.

Minecraft. Started playing in 2011 and have played off and on every year since then. It's now really popular again, but I distinctly remember around 2017-18 it became suddenly uncool to play. When I would be in a VC with friends while playing it, they would ride my ass for it. The ~10 year nostalgia/hype cycle is coming full circle lol

I got my copy back in May 2011. I think the only thing that pisses me off that's related to its popularity was it being sold and sold again, and so when I wanted to start playing with my children, I had to re-buy the game. I transferred from minecraft to Mojang, but didn't do Mojang to Microsoft, and so that was that.
Beyond that, I'm 37 and have two kids and I don't really know if it's popular and what the community is like, I just play with my kids, and they're scared of endermen, so it's fun.
Since 2011 for me too. I sometimes step away for half a year at a time, but I always end up back.
As much as the modern image of Minecraft might be obnoxiously shouty youtube shorts, that's not all there is to it.
You have the groups of talented builders recreating the Lord of the Rings world of Middle Earth at 1:1 scale, and then the crazy redstoners building fully working computers inside the game.
Minecraft has always been for everyone, and I hope it always will be.
God yes. I was one of the first people to buy it. Back when you had to send Notch himself five bucks to play it. I was interested in the concept, but frankly didn’t think it would have much appeal beyond people who enjoy completely self-guided experiences with no set goals.
How wrong I was.
It’s been wild seeing it rise to the top of the pop culture heap, become popular with 12 year olds and eventually result in me seeing a movie starring Jack Black based on it.
It’s wild that it started with me and a handful of guys sending Notch a fiver.

Sounds like Rick and morty

anime

it's become waay too popular and drowned in a sea of mediocrity

I'll be honest here; anime has always been a large sea of mediocrity, with the few sprinklings of stuff that is occasionally actually good, and some incredibly rare few things that are consistently good.
- Right? Like the reason it was so popular in the early 2000s is because we got all the good stuff at once.
- I think it’s a right place / right time sort of thing. I have never gone back and rewatched an old favorite without regretting it. Things that meant a lot to me at the time just hit different from a different head space, and revisiting that old space just makes the flaws more noticeable.
That's like saying too many people listen to music and it's flooded with mediocrity, there's a lot of really unrelated genres and time periods, and trends that come and go continually, like everything there's a big amount of meh tier work.
eh it hasn't declined in popularity to the point people think you're talking about some ancient thing when you mention it
Now they don't even bother with localization anymore.. which would be a good thing except now we have screens full of untranslated onscreeb Kanji that the story demands you be able to read and overly long and literal titles like "The Time I Gained The Power To Turn My Sister's Panties Into Angelic Guns By Meeting God On The Planet Golbacky While Drinking My Juice In The Hood That Tuesday Night." Which aren't even what people in Japan call the show since even in the tongue of Nippon that'd take too dang long.
Hell you're lucky if there's even a dub at all. Let alone one that hasn't been beaten to the ground by politics
- As I've become more casual I just stick to dubbed anime titles. It's more likely to be something decent and avoids some of the more egregious problematic tropes of the genre.
- meh, i don't mind watching undubbed anime; anything that's "internationalized" is probably watered down anyways ... i wanna see raw, undiluted japanese weirdness
I got into anime when you had to go to shitty distributor conventions, in shitty city limits hotels, and walk through a big room filled with smoke, rifling through boxes of tapes, while greasy guys in cheap suits tried to talk you into buying shit. The other option were shoddily scanned, black and white, prints of distro catalogues you could order from. They would always be companies you never heard of, from buildings in weird places, and you could never know if you were actually going to get something, or just lose that money. The Sci Fi channel would have saturday morning anime, which would play, uncensored, stuff, but generally only the biggest hits. So it would cycle through Akira, Vampire Hunter D, Bubble Gum Crises, and about a dozen others.
It started to get a better at the end of the 90s, when you had a couple larger distros that came on to the scene, and you could reliably get what you paid for. They would also always have previews of other anime they were selling before the movie started, and it was likely set to some KMFDM track. Then in the 2000s is when it sorts hit a sweet spot, it was easy to get, there were multiple options on TV, and it hadn't quite yet become totally mainstream. Haven't really bothered with it much since then. Sometimes I will get recommendations from people I know I can trust to not be suggest the millionth iteration of watered down Fist of the North Star, fan service vehicles, or things that are just collages of bad anime tropes turned into a show.

There's literally an episode of Doug where Doug's standard outfit inexplicably becomes super popular. So watch 90s Nick to learn what to do.

Dooo doo-dooo doo-doo-doo doooo doo-doooo doo-doo
I remember that one. I think he tried to change clothes and just ended up accepting the new trend just in time for it to end. He was then happy to be bland again. I think skeeters clothes were the next trend....idk I'm old some of that may be made up.
that's awesome! I never saw that one. I'm gonna have to locate Doug again some time

Ratatat. I got into them through an Albino Blacksheep video, and they were my secret favourite band for a bit.

Then they got popular, and people that I didn't really jell with started casually raving about them, and I found it difficult to enjoy the music because of those people.

Years later, I grew up. Music is for everyone, and everyone forms their own relationship with it that shouldnt impact the enjoyment of the music itself.

Yes, they were sold on the band through mass advertizing channels. Yes, I discovered them through a more organic means. But that's how fans are born, and yes some of them aren't there for the music, but they are there to have a good time and maybe those songs hold special memories for them later in life when they were hanging around with friends.

Oooo I saw Ratatat the first time I got high on weed in public. They were incredible! I didn’t realize they got popular!

Battle Royale (2000)

Ok, so yes it was cool. But even when it first came out the people that were really into it were weird.
- Hey, I was weird and off-putting, but at least I wasn't generic, weird and off-putting.
Oh my gawd that was 25 years ago. I am so old D:
I don't remember it being popular. Do you mean the Hunger games books and movies being it's mainstream rip-off?
- The fact most people have now heard of it proves its popularity. It was a pretty obscure movie before the Hunger Games.

I am an avid collector and drinker of Chinese teas, particularly oolongs and puerh. I had been drinking them for years when suddenly the absolute asshole Dr. Oz went on TV claiming that puerh tea was some magical cure for anything and everything that you might have.

Normally, I get excited for new people to share tea with, but this fad caused prices to rise across the board and caused the market to get flooded with awful quality tea. These people were drinking some of the worst quality (fishy, shou/cooked puerh) teas and were more obsessed with how to mask the flavors with milk and sugar than actually slowing down and enjoying the tea.

The fad faded and people went back to putting matcha in their morning milkshakes. Even so, I still run into people that reflexively associate incredible tea with Dr. Oz and the disgusting teas he foisted upon his audience. Sad.

Maybe not as big as Anon is talking about, but Bob Vylan.

I just heard this name for the first time yesterday. I have no idea what it is, but I was really upset that I didn’t think of that name.
- It is a good name. They're (the band, a 2 piece) a punk/rap band from the UK. Very into the social injustices and whatnot. They're in the news because the singer is apparently "anti-Semitic" for chanting "Death, death, to the IDF" at Glastonbury. Not sure if it's obvious, but I do not agree with that. Shining light on genocide does not make someone anti-Semitic.
  I've listened to them for a couple years now, but am even more now to promote them. (Although listening to them more probably doesn't really do anything)
Last month my friend asked what I wanted for my birthday and I said I wanted their The Internet is Dead hoodie. I don't think I'm getting that hoodie.
- Oh, why not?
You mean canceled him before it was mainstream. (In light of recent events)
- No. Listened to them (the band) which I still am. Even more now actually. Due to the recent events.

Tabletop RPG. It used to be a niche of the internet in the early days, with people posting here and there their scenarios, campaign, ideas etc. It was hard to find and so pleasurable when you found something.

Nowadays it's trusted by ... Wizard if the coast ? Online only platforms and what have you.

I loved #scenariotheque, but now it's almost a ghost website (pardon the french).

I know if sounds like old man yell at clouds, but damn do I miss the early days.

I feel with you but I think it also brought some benefits. Finding time to meet up with my friends has become harder and harder with everyone growing up, studying, getting jobs.
The influx of people during covid catapulted the virtual tabletop solutions ahead and now we regularly play again using foundry vtt since everyone can just sit at home.
But yeah, online everyone just talks about DnD or Critical Roll it feels like and unless you're on reddit there's very few communities left.

Star Wars

This happened to all the ols school Star Wars fans. Disney created the "idiot fans"

All of the more recent Star Wars slop has made me realize that the original films aren't really that good either.
- Bite your tongue. Like a lot of things from the past, they need to be viewed in context
- I keep getting people telling me they won't watch Andor because of the other slop and it makes me sad
Yup. Was a huge fan of the EU books and lore. Wanted to give Disney a chance, so I saw the first few movies. It was like seeing your ex at the club but she'd gone through massive amounts of plastic surgery and they'd removed all the unique features that attracted you originally. Haven't watched anything Star Wars since the second movie in the new trilogy, literally 0 desire to see the conclusion or any new Star wars content.
- Yea, Disney swore off all of the EU books stating they had no place in Star Wars. Then they started stealing portions of the EU books and basically making bad fanatic versions of them.
- I thought the force awakens was pretty decent. I mean it's literally just a new hope redux.
Old school Star Wars fans harassed the actor who played jar jar to the point that he considered suicide...

Not to that extent, but crypto. I think its an amazing and really interesting technology. But now it's tainted by scammers and when people hear the term, they get defensive because they are ready for you to scam them

Feels bad man
Ive learned a bit off a on about crypto, but never got “into it”. When I first started learning it looked like a really interesting concept with a lot of potential uses.
I can’t remember the details at this point, but when looking at bitcoin I remember seeing so many problems. There was the transaction price, speed, and complexity. There was the insanity of all the wasted energy to “mine” bitcoin. Most importantly, it didn’t make sense to me as a currency. Currency needs to be stable, easy to exchange, and easy to use to buy things. Bitcoin always seemed like a really cool prototype that needed a successor or major revisions.
Then the masses (and braindead hype bros and “visionary” corporate types) jumped on it and turned it into the shit show it is today. When people would get excited about it (“price is going up! Gotta buy now!”), it was clear they either didn’t really know what it was or were trying to hype it to get more money pumped into it. When friends or family brought it up, I’d point out that it didn’t really have any use except as speculation. I’d tell them they if they wanted to gamble, go for it, but they should realize that it doesn’t have intrinsic value (just like all the other currencies) and, as it stands, it’s a really shitty currency. Know that people aren’t buying it because it works well. People are buying it because the price is going up.
People have made a lot of money (or theoretical money if they’re still holding), but it still doesn’t seem like it actually gets used for anything but speculation. The $2+ trillion USD market cap for bitcoin makes my head spin. I’ve always thought that bitcoin was a dead end and would eventually be dethroned by something more viable, but here we still are.
I haven’t looked at cryptocurrencies in a while. Any notable progress in the last 5 or so years toward it being more than a money making gamble?
- Bitcoin hasn't made much progress. There are some layers on top of it that let you send instantly and cheaply, but they are at best impractical (for lightning, of you want to be able to receive money you have to create a channel with a "server" node and them spend bitcoin which buy you liquidity to receive money. Utterly worthless)
  The two I have my sights right now are monero and ltc. Both of those let you send pretty fast and with less than a cent fee
  There is a tech that is called proof of stake that means that mining is waaaay more energy efficient but none of those are implementing it. I've heard it has drawbacks but I'm not sure I understand them
  Also monero is mined in a way that buying GPUs or ASIC (mining specialized hardware) is not worth it. You get better results on a CPU, making mining more accessible for everyone
  Both of those have confidential transactions so no one know who sends who how much money nor how much money each part has. Which is pretty cool

While not to the same degree as a lot of folks, Fallout got into it some time around New Vegas because it was featured on game fly. Anyways delved headfirst into it and fell in love with the classic games. The post Fallout 4 boom gives me a headache sometimes I just want to talk with old bastards and my fellow autists about Fallout without some profligate butting in cause they watch the TV show.

Russerfrushenrushen kids and their first person fallout games. All my homes know best fallout is third person isometric turn based.
- Technically that includes Brotherhood of Steel, careful there that game is still actively worse than anything Bethesda has made.
I was lucky enough to have played fallout 3 before new Vegas. So the series for me went from “that was fun, interesting setting” to “Wow this is genuinely amazing and feels like a living world that I’m inhabiting and interacting with.”
And then fallout 4 came out, and I was hoping that Bethesda would have learned something from New Vegas. But that was foolish, modern Bethesda doesn’t write stories, they don’t understand characters, they are a software company manufacturing a product, not a studio crafting playable stories. What narrative and story do exist, are the minimal needed to serve the gameplay loops. They make toy boxes, not experiences. Some people like that, but that’s not what I play these kinds of games for.
Going back and playing fallout 1 and 2 solidified this for me further, if Bethesda was going to learn from what made new Vegas great, they would have done so from 1 and 2 and implemented it in 3.
I haven’t even bothered to try fallout 76. I know what it is, it’s a looter shooter live service game meant to Skinner box you in to spending as much time as possible grinding up numbers and finding the best stats on rare drops. It’s not what I’m in to. I’ve accepted that.
As much as I love the fallout setting and the potential for story and world, there will never be another fallout game, just Bethesda products wearing the aesthetic. There are plenty of other great games out there that have story and gameplay working synergistically to create an experience.
- Well if you want to scratch that CRPG story itch may I suggest Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Tainted Grail, Wasteland 2 and 3, and basically all of Owlcat games except maybe Pathfinder kingmaker.

Anon thinks it's 1939

I stayed up to date on ai and machine learning, including language models. I remember hearing that one learned math from language and wondering where things will go. I watched ai safety videos before they felt relevant. Then I heard Openai, which had a good rep at the time, is releasing their new model online, called ChatGPT. Having played with DungeonAI and NovelAI before I was gonna fiddle with this as well.

Then headlines broke, it became a phenomenon. Even then I figured this would be this week's Thing before getting bored, as was common with these ai.

Down the line I remembered hearing ChatGPT on a gas station ad for some travel app. That was when I realized this is permanent. People who aren't even online are likely hearing about this. Suddenly my niche hobby and hopeful dreams of the future became an actual enshittified crisis.

I don't think I need to explain how everyone using language models now is just god awful for everyone. And the attention hasn't gotten us closer to answering long standing questions of ethics, economic change, what is intelligence or consciousness. We've just got a bunch of the lowest common denominator shouting their answers now.

I miss when it was just goofy proof of concept s*** like seth bling teaching a neural network to play Super Mario Bros.
Or there was this site called "Thisgirldoesnotexist" with several sister sites like this cat does not exist and so on and it would pretty much just generate a headshot of a character. Extremely primitive versions of the image generation technology seen today. But now it's basically just used to s*** out copious amounts of image files with no purpose and no soul.

Deadpool.

did people even read the last 3 green lines?

I have several things that interested me and became popular, but I didn't hate on the new fans. At most I sometimes missed the feeling of having this thing that was a bit obscure and in case of channels on youtube, the intimacy of interacting with the creator and other subscribers was nice. But I can't hate on something I like becoming popular.

As for concrete examples, I do remember subbing to this small gaming channel with 9000 subs called Markiplier back in the day.

I subbed to OKI Weird Stories when he had like 600ish subs.

I subbed to Creepcast before it had any videos on it, but that one is cheating since both meatcanyon and wendigoon were already very popular. Still, it's been a bit nuts seeing the podcast explode in popularity. I even know people irl who listen to it.

Currently I follow a small channel, also podcast format, called The Daydream Arcade that focuses on reading reddit stories, but the hosts are two friends, who bring some warmth and personality to the format which is nice. For me, I stick around becuase I really like their friendship and their personalities. I'm also a older than the both of them and feel a bit big-sister-protective of them. I want them to grow and I believe they will because they already have 4500 subs compared to the 900 they had when I found them, but also don't like the thought of them reaching a point of popularity where the mean assholes come crawling to tear them down.

Plot twist, all those fanbases were already kinda garbage before they got flooded with normies and most of the toxicity didn't come from the casuals.

Steampunk aesthetic ( 1990's ), generative art ( early 2000s )

Man, I like some pretty retarded shit man, but I've never been bullied for it, man

I like some pretty retarded shit man
Like casual ableism?
- If you're trying to bully me man, I already said it doesn't work

Pogs are cool little disks

Then it became a children’s verb

The new term does derive directly from the old disk game, and the disk game derives its name from a juice beverage that originated the disks as part of the caps.
Pog might be the most diversely derived words in the English language, it being an acronym of the words Pineapple, Orange and Guava. Pineapple being derived from apple which comes out of Germanic languages, orange coming out of the Dravidian languages of south India, and guava coming out of the Arawakan languages of South America. These three language families share no known common ancestry.

I'm in the same boat with a few others here when it comes to some games like Halo and Fallout. But I feel like I'm on the brink with 2 new ones:

Doom: I played the original when I was a kid and got bullied for it (or probably being a general nerd). 2016 and Eternal were really popular and the franchise took off; but Dark Ages feels off. I played Dark Ages for a bit, put it down, and haven't picked it up since. I think Doom is going down the shitter, especially what they did to Mick Gordon.
Mother Mother (a band): My SO and I love their music for how unique and interesting it is; and we went to one of their first concerts at a small venue when they came into town ~10 years ago ish? Must have been <500 people. Generally no one else liked their music we shared it with, so we kept it to ourselves. Now? We went to another one a few months ago and it was at a HUGE stadium; absolutely packed. I think one of their songs went viral on TikTok - My Daddy's got a gun. We're proud of what they've accomplished, but really hope they don't lose their identity in trying to become even more popular.

TIL Mother Mother is popular now. Loved O My Heart back in the day
- This was from the concert. Pretty packed

I was really into punk music when I was a kid since the late 80s/early 90s, then the big boom happened in the mid-late 90s, which eventually yielded to pop punk and emo music from the early 2000s. I kid you not, I was bullied as a kid for liking punk music, before it became mainstream.

I still listen to it and I've even seen a resurgence coming as it coinciding with the 20 year nostalgia cycle, which is great in my opinion. But being a punk fan before it achieved mainstream success and after it went into decline by 2010s made me feel exactly as this post describes.

Punk was big in the late 70s - mid 80s, though? I thought the big boom was early 80s. It was buried under things like nu-metal and emo in the late 90s (I'm fuzzy on this because of reasons).
- It was buried under things like nu-metal and emo in the late 90s (I’m fuzzy on this because of reasons).
  there was stuff like the offspring and green day , them sum41 as a death throe.
  source : was into 2/3
- correct, should've clarified, I was big into what was at the time, old-school punk. As I was not alive in the late 70s.
  I welcomed the punk-rock wave of the 90s with open arms.
- Moopet casually crushing a lemming's self-image

It's equally as bad when you discover you like something that has been around for a while and has lots of fans and you don't get accepted or realise you don't want to be part of the fans because of how shitty, toxic, dumb etc. they are. A relevant example for this is Assassin's creed for me. I never like any of the games until AC: Origins, even though I gave most of them a fair shake. AC: Origins is a 10/10 for me, I put in over 600h hours into that game, 100%'ed it and all its expansions/dlc. AC: Odyssey is good too, but I never got as into it, so a 8/10. Valhalla never looked good in any way so never even tried it. Started playing Shadows about a week ago and really enjoying it so far, not as good as Origins but mostly better than Odyssey. But damn do people not like when I mention this, like I'm not allowed to like it because I didn't like the earlier games. I have no issue with people liking them and not the ones I do, never said anything else. Music is a lot like this too. "Oh, you like their newer stuff? Fucking idiot, only the early stuff is good, I now see down on you as a person and hate every opinion you have".

When games have a perceived quality shift people will attack the newer fans because they see them as the reason why the company is allowed to "get away" with producing the worse thing. I don't know how you can avoid that and still have a community that holds the thing they love to a standard. Some communities just like to fight about which games better, Im not really sure what else there is to even talk about with assassins creed (i've only played 2 of the games so idk).
There's way too much gatekeeping in gaming. People don't seem to understand that everyone has different tastes, and it's all subjective. There is no objectively good game. For me it's Half Life 2, I don't like shooters, tried it but couldn't get into it. But to many it's one of the greatest games ever.
- There are objectively good games. There are not objectively fun games.
  Half-Life 2 is objectively good, and if you say it's a bad game you're simply wrong. However if you say it's a game you do not enjoy and isn't fun for you, that's not wrong.
  A game can be both good and not enjoyable to you.
  Conversely, a game can also be objectively bad and yet fun for some people.

Yeah been saying 'Casuals Ruin Everything' for a while now

I was a nerdy teen in the 90/00s. There's plenty I could be gatekeeping but the thing is.. I'm not special. Nobody is. All this shit is meaningless. You don't own any of it. Sorry it just all comes off so territorial and greedy in a way. Grosses me out.

Goddamnit yes. It’s why I’m very pro-gatekeeping. Because people who are new to a hobby because it got popular tend to ruin every-fucking-thing.

For example: flight simulator. That used to be an exclusively nerd domain up until the FS2020 version, which was released on Xbox. The result: a massive influx of new garbage payware and a decline in quality of established brands. While also making the sim worse in order to chase broader appeal. It’s gotten a bit better after covid went away and the normies dropped the hobby, thankfully.

Also: film photography. The popularity of instagram and YouTube ‘influencers’ got a lot of people into our hobby the past decade. It’s lead to increased gear prices, film being more difficult to get and the forums flooding with the dumbest possible questions, since these newcomers are allergic as fuck to reading manuals or watching any tutorial longer than thirty seconds. It’s also lead camera manufacturers to chase this new demographic by making their cameras shittier and more ‘instagram-friendly’. Here’s looking at you, Fujifilm and your shitty X-half.

Take it from someone who’s been around a bit: if you like a thing, keep newcomers away from it. Gatekeep it like the Berlin Fucking Wall, lest they completely fuck up your hobby.

Anime

I hereby name mine Mr. Law Yawnson, it's a total bore

What a tragic viewpoint to take. Imagine seeing something that you like becoming more popular and having all these new people to share it with from such a perspective. Depressing.

Depends on the people. Eternal September has been a meme for over 30 years at this point. It is a cyclical pattern in just about anything social: experimentalists/creatives create new thing, early adopters join which gives new thing legitimacy, social contracts are implicitly drafted because the community is small and easy to reach consensus, then it gets exposure, masses of new people join the thing that aren't interested in the social contract, community cohesion eventually evaporates. This is how you go from "Man, our thing is so cool" to "Fucking newbies spamming in general, begging." You don't want to share your cool thing with a bunch of mouth breathers that aren't capable of appreciating what makes the thing actually cool. Eventually the grifters come, and then it is game over. So the original community members scatter to the winds. Some creative people make some new thing and it starts all over again.
You misunderstood the enshitification part.
\ The thing was out before & not new.
\ The sudden influx of new ppl possibly (almost always) came bcs of interests & opportunity of a company, but certainly that happened after it became popular.
\ Op lost the ability to enjoy or be public about the interest, that is a loss (that happened bcs of random fuckery for profit).
\ A lot of such things irrevocably change forever after fubared by monetisation or mass short-term popularity. So the actual thing & how one enjoys it might be changed forever/the old one non-existent anymore. (In anons case at the end only the general public knowledge changed for the worst & now prob just hides a bit that part of his life.)
Also why would you equate 'more people' with 'better' in the first place?
Blockchain.