oh snap, this is actually legit good

well i guess you’ve told the world where the bodies are buried :P

Illegally cute borb

I’ve generally found that avoiding the biggest crowds seems to also avoid some (though not all) of the worst behavior. More specialized subreddits, communities, and magazines tend to be more chill, and also more focused on their topics.

It’s arguably so easy to “farm karma” that I accidentally did it for a while. Just kept posting silly puns to reply to stuff people post on the Florida Man subreddit.

Reddit karma ain’t worth much at all.

On one hand downvotes are an expression of negativity, but on the other hand downvotes are an outlet for negativity.

Meanwhile, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out why a bunch of the top comments here got like one downvote each, lol.

Honestly I don’t think an algorithm needs to work very hard to “be mean” like that. Sure, you can purposely put people with clashing views in each other sight on a place where people go to hang out and have fun. But you don’t even need to go do that on purpose. To some extent, people naturally produce more “engagement” with stuff that’s controversial/argumentative.

Imagine if I were to walk past you and say some completely innocent comment. Now imagine I were to walk past you and insult your favorite movie/show/song/game/whatever. You’d be far more likely to respond in the latter case.

So, as people respond, more activity is generated, and that makes the post “hotter”. Simply boost what’s hot, and you have a veritable litany of controversy.

How big is their userbase? I presume it’s far smaller than Instagram’s, so there’s going to be less concern with having a sudden influx of users than with Meta’s Threads.

Can someone provide or point me to a quick rundown of how Misskey and Calckey/Firefish differ?

I heard that foundkey’s development has stalled. I’m guessing we’re gonna see instances move from Foundkey to either Misskey or Firefish?

So it seems their reasoning is as follows:

1. billionaires “control” (in some way) the US government
2. said billionaires have an interest in getting people to join their companies’ platforms
3. therefore, they will collude to make the US government ban the fediverse

I doubt that they will readily consider the following information with a level head, but if they are willing to listen, you may want to cite the following:

• “Big Tech” is actually rather politically unpopular right now.
• The US government has actually held various hearings grilling leaders of major tech companies. Unfriendly hearings, I would add. (Your friend may just try to dismiss this as “theater”…)
• The various major tech companies see each others as rivals more than partners. Doubly so with Elon Musk gratuitously adding his own ball of stupid chaos into things. Heck, tech companies are more likely motivated by finding new disruptive technologies to undermine their competition.
• Meta and Tumblr have both expressed interest in supporting ActivityPub.
• ActivityPub, Mastodon, Lemmy, and the rest of this whole shebang is all open-source. Even if you make the flagship organizations illegal, the open-source nature of the software will lead other people to create their own hubs, and even to develop these platforms further in the absence of a flagship.
• The US government is gloriously slow to do anything.
• Hell, billionaires hate digital piracy! Have they been able to ban it? (This might be your strongest argument…?)

Tangential sidenote: I find the Lemmy easier to understand than Reddit.

(or his mother)

lol, suspiciously specific denial

Yeah, I wasn’t really using Reddit much before Reddit had its meltdown and the threadiverse exploded onto the scene. I’ve had a lot of fun here. Frankly I think I understand how the threadiverse works more than I understand how Reddit works.

I’ve had a similar experience with Mastodon. Wasn’t a big Twitter user, but now I’m more active on Mastodon than I ever was on Twitter. On each of multiple Mastodon accounts.

Seconding basically all the (mainline) Metroid games.

I did not expect to see this headline today.

“I fear no well-reasoned argument. But that internet troll? It scares me.”

I’m usually playing older games of some sort. There’s retro games, like those from the 32-bit era and before, but I also play…old-ish games, ones that were released within the last decade or two. Just last year I began playing Tokyo Xanadu eX+, which was released in 2017 (albeit as the definitive version of a 2015 game).

I think a number of the indie games I play are generally newer. Though, given my tastes, many of them tend to be games designed to evoke some sort of similarity to those older styles of games. So I guess it’s an interesting question whether they count as “retro” or not.

That said, given that I pretty much only use store-bought laptops (and not of the “gaming” variety), my hardware means that I’m much better off playing older games anyway. “Newer old” games can probably still run, depending on the game, but some may be choppy and I can probably wait on those.

I knew of the stellar reputation the old Thief games have, so I bought them a while back, but have yet to play them. And I have yet to play basically any of the modern games shown. However, this video make a surprising lot of sense.

For instance, I’ve had experiences in games where I can tell that the game is visually pretty but I’m just not paying attention to it – and ironically missing out on some neat visual features – because it’s just not important to the gameplay. This may be more appropriate when I’m revisiting game areas I’ve already been to, but it can be a problem when I’m missing the awe of my surroundings because I’m too focused on making my way through the obvious walkable area and clearing out generic mooks.

Maps in games are an interesting thing. I play a lot of so-called “metroidvania” games and their ilk (heck, most of my gaming is 2D), and I don’t really like it if I’m frequently consulting my map to find my way from place to place. The best level designs in such games, in my opinion, are the cases where I end up learning to navigate the world without (or with minimal) consultation of my map. I think this generally means having sufficiently varied level design that there are memorable visual cues for where I am. A “maze of twisty passages, all alike” can be appropriate in some situations, but I find that it’s often more “organic” – especially when it comes to things like the interiors of buildings – to have recognizable details differentiating things like different hallways that would otherwise look similar. While the game might still effectively be a bunch of corridors to run through, anything from more varied theming (even just different paint colors and lighting on walls in similar parts of the same area) to architectural details that directly affect gameplay (a broken stairwell that must be jumped across vs. an intact stairwell that can just be walked up). People in real life design buildings to be easily navigable (usually) and leave environmental markers in natural spaces because this makes navigation smoother in real life.

And yes, there’s so much to be said about the value of integrating story into gameplay. In general, I feel that there’s something to be said about how videogames shouldn’t (in general) aim to be “cinematic”. A film is a medium of passive experience, but a game is a medium of active experience. Cutscenes aren’t bad per se, and even cinematic cutscenes aren’t bad per se, but care should be taken in their use. Sometimes, a fight scene rendered in-engine – even if this means 2D pixel art sprites beating each other up – can be much more immersive than a high-quality video with panning shots of the characters as they’re throwing punches and wrestling. The latter takes the player’s consciousness out of the game world, reminding them that they are merely the audience, while the former can be presented seamlessly without changing the player’s perspective (as surely the player has already gotten used to mentally processing the game world in a way that feels comfortable to them).

Thanks for sharing this video! I boosted it over on Mastodon too.

One way is to just follow hashtags and see whoposts to them. Since hashtags are basically the de facto way to find relevant content on Mastodon, not just a marketing tool like on Twitter. And then once you see who posts interesting stuff, you can then add them to your follows.

There’s also some sites that list users by topics of interesting such as http://fedi.directory and https://communitywiki.org/trunk .

Another way is to check out instances that talk about things you’re interested in. There are several websites that list them but here is a shorter list: https://fedi.garden Check out their feeds and see who posts things you’re interested in.

Furthermore, you can follow a.gup.pe accounts, called “groups”, which work similarly to hashtags. Each a.gup.pe account is basically a repeater that boosts (i.e. “retweets”) every post that pings it, so that anyone following it gets that post. For example, I follow @climate@a.gup.pe, and every time someone pings that (it’s like including a hashtag), it’ll boost that post and I’ll see it too.