People watch porn on their work computers, after being told not to. And not just a few. The Venn diagram of folks who do that and who wouldn’t give a single shit about handing over their ID has gotta be roughly a circle. A whole lotta folks are seriously ill-equipped for the burgeoning surveillance nightmare, in fact their complacency (and frankly just being thoroughly outmatched in sophistication) will march us all towards it.

In truth, my drift from gaming stemmed from very similar self knowledge, I have such a wealth of ways I can spend my time (including with my kids when I can convince the older one, lol) with stuff that has small but accumulative impacts.

No shade on gaming, engaging with art and storytelling and just straight up play all have deep value and I’d argue all people need those things, but yeah. For me a few games in particular that end up feeling like “Chores Simulator XYZ” and which I almost consider a genre of its own (Stardew Valley, Valheim, TerraFirmaCraft MC were my few) helped me better understand my changing preferences. I’m like “why am I building this fake house and collecting the materials and etc. when my office, garage, and outside areas all look kinda shitty?” I have pets who like activity, I have projects and chores and people to see.

Now, I also do feel overburdened pretty often and my job is challenging and tiring, but yeah. By and large I just enjoy more IRL time spent these days, while also missing the former thrill of gaming with this kind of deep ache.

Edit to add: I should probably also say, I had lots to “escape from”, into fictions of various kinds, and I have over time built a life where that is no longer true, and so my time spent has also internally shifted toward more of a sense of gratitude in general, instead of thinking of things as obligations (though of course they 100% are, of the most critical kind) considering where I came from, and I also get how for many folks games can be some of the only pleasant experiences available.

Yeah I’ll be honest, I don’t have a lot to say about how those kinda scenarios should be managed at the moment, I haven’t thought that stuff through too deeply I’m realizing. I’m pretty happy to defer to folks with experience in community moderation and such, I’m frankly a pretty poor candidate for that, for several reasons (somewhat moody, sometimes fond of borderline hyperbolic takes, etc.).

I do think users should be able to have the experience they want, but that’s vague enough to be almost uselessly uncontroversial, and I also recognize that some people’s wants can be incompatible with others’, without either necessarily being unreasonable or unfair. So, another partial reflection of the human condition in general I guess.

I know that feeling so well, sadly.

Ah yeah that’s a reasonable take and I do know what you mean. I broadly like what federation offers over centralization, but it’s not without its quirks and some drawbacks, I hear ya.

Pretty much same for me! Not sure if I played the actual first or just one of the real early ones, but that def drew me to this one. You should play it! I paid full price and would have paid double, knowing now how thoughtfully made it was.

I guess I’d add, having returned to this, that it’s a bit off-putting for you to be sharing your preferences for how they behave with their own instance, given your non-involvement with that instance itself, or trans things in general.

One of the major points of federation as a concept is for folks to not be mandatorily subject to some overarching singular approach to content moderation. You’re here, so I think it’s reasonable to assume you care at least a bit about the way this platform works and what makes it unique(ish) and valuable.

At the risk of coming across more hostile than I intend - why on earth does Blahaj need to specifically, only, be about trans topics, to be a valid space in your eyes, when it seems they mostly just want to exist how they prefer and interact with federated Lemmy stuff, in the ways federation explicitly intends?

I’ll admit that I don’t always remember to look at where a given post originated from before commenting, and I should get better at that - could be that’s all you need, too 🤷‍♂️

Hilariously this comment is precisely as confusing to me as the comm itself.

I really don’t understand that comm either, but I haven’t looked too closely cuz I’m not that interested. I also moved off .world entirely for my accounts because I don’t like some of their moderation stances. I understand why they have them and don’t begrudge them for it, to be clear. But I do eye them warily as a kind of emerging de facto instance in some ways (AKA potential for more centralization than seems wise, given their need or desire to comply with certain local laws that limit speech).

Sad thing is from what I understand, Spanish language news commonly available in the US (Unavision I believe?) basically fed Latinos a straight up false version of the guy, the description I read sounded even less accurate than Fox.

The overwhelming effectiveness of widespread media manipulation is the real story (and human tragedy…) here.

Blahaj has a no tolerance policy on trans rights, from what I understand, and I think they like how they run their stuff. Maybe you know that already, but if not, maybe that’s helpful? It’s not so much thin skin as “we’re here for the purpose of not seeing that kinda stuff, so we block it here”.

DB0 is legitimately one of the coolest places on the modern internet, I’m curious to hear what kinds of things you’ve seen bans for. The admin/host (by the same name) seems to have very rational, reasonable takes toward moderation, and he values transparency and community feedback. Frankly from my own (instance-level, not community or thread) observations, he seems like a model of high-quality moderation. Your experience sounds off to me, but I hope that doesn’t come across as an accusation, I don’t intend one.

Yeah, it all changed after Trump’s victory and all the crazy shit he started immediately doing. I have both contributed to the problem, and lamented the shift. I don’t want this platform to be about slinging half-baked political takes (lumping myself in there, to be clear), but also I can’t blame anyone for wanting to discuss the terrifying stuff we’re seeing. Really was cooler here, even just 6 months ago.

I like your taste. These are some bangers lol.

If you haven’t, you should play Armored Core 6. It’s a FROM game, and it feels like one, in all the best ways.

But it’s also a mech game, and it feels like one, in all the best ways! Every button assaults your enemy, every motion feels fluid, fast, effortless - or huge, heavy, clunky - your mech is your mech, and many thoughtful builds can become OP. The customization is bananas. And yet - some fights will remain challenging.

With all sincerity, easy 10/10 game for me, I proceeded from NG -> NG+ -> NG++ directly, which is a first for me and I’m an oldish dude. AND I felt thoroughly rewarded by the end of NG++. It’s a literal perfect game, just unreasonably fun and well-crafted.

Dope, detailed writeup, thank you!

Oh, also - largely with you on Robux. I mean I don’t have a problem with it in principle, ideally it lets kids (through their parents) effectively choose which games and creators to support, and there have lately been some big games with big frequent updates that kids have found to be super enjoyable. Like, content updates at rates traditional games would be embarrassed by.

But like all things involving $, I’m sure there’s lots of eventual exploitation. And manipulation of kids to want to buy is definitely bad. But then again, by my measure, kids need to be instructed on recognizing and resisting precisely that from a young age. That manipulation is everywhere and getting worse all the time.

You’re probably right, I’ve once or twice (from an older account) asked a user to elaborate or give specifics, after they’d made some wild claims about safety, never gotten anything.

I do know of at least one truly hideous group of people using the platform as communication and recruitment to some really horrendous (life ruining) stuff, maybe this article references that too. But again, that’s a problem of sufficiently large user bases (especially of kids). Among millions of users it’s mathematically not realistic to prevent every possible group in the size of dozens from congregating to attempt their awful shit. Motivated humans are good at overcoming even well-designed systems.

We’re certainly right to care about safety though, and I do want to know if Roblox is less safe than I imagine.

Roblox chat is so restrictive that it routinely makes it difficult to talk about normal things. My daughter has spent a ton of time on Roblox (while being prohibited from many other things including unfettered YouTube, for context) and I really don’t see what the fuss is about. I’ve played with her on and off for years, it has always struck me as a generally safe platform, and I’m both sensitive and clued in about the topic.

Anything with user numbers like Roblox is going to attract the darkest corners of the internet, that’s unavoidable. It doesn’t strike me that there’s anything particularly dangerous about Roblox beyond that fact, they seem to manage it well and actually the platform seems pretty safe all things considered.

Seriously dangerous! I like your analogy, it’s even a little worse though, it’s like doing that but also the planes have an engineered preference to steer towards the worst places.

Right, this is simple stuff - for a 4 year old, content of any kind must be curated, and I’d argue that stays true in different ways for quite a while.

Yeesh. Before ever turning over entire decision-making power on a very uncontrolled platform to a kid, ya gotta help walk them through stuff and spend time curating / selecting content together. And also wait for them to grow up some and demonstrate readiness.

And certainly never trust YouTube’s curation, ever, agreed.

4 yo rawdogging modern AI slop YouTube shorts, solo, is wild.

And they were cool! And it was better that way! And get off my lawn!