When All The World's A Stage, Blame Someone Else
WARNING: This post contains mild swearing and references to popular media and current events. Continue at your own risk.
So I'm perusing the Discovery page, and my curiosity is immediately piqued, seeing two posts that are clearly related to one another, listed adjacently.
Brandon
I feel you. But also, things change.
I loved listening to Tom Scott and the Technical Difficulties. I've been listening since their pre-video days, clustered around a mic in a stuffy apartment (inevitably made worse by Gary's flatulence, while conversely improved by Matt's cock jokes). Citation Needed was brilliant (and I understand why they stopped). Two of These People Are Lying was alright, and I accept it had to end because the metagaming ruined it. But I have no interest in Lateral. I stopped following Tom altogether, but I'm still subscribed to Matt.
Do you remember pre-VGHS Freddie Wong? When it was just a bunch of talented folks running a video studio, I loved everything they produced. The first season of VGHS came out, and it was alright, if a bit drawn out and cliche. I actually backed the second season on Kickstarter. It was horrible. But Freddie had gotten his taste of stardom, and they lost all the fresh perspective I'd fallen in love with. Corridor Digital hung on a few years longer, but they too seem to have fallen into their own trap.
Hell, I remember watching the first season of Red vs Blue before YouTube was a thing. But RoosterTeeth is gone now. They sold out, got toxic, hired abusers, and trashed their own rep, until they finally shut their doors in 2024.
You can dream of The Days That Were or The Earth That Was, but remember that you're mostly remembering the good things, and ignoring the bad.
Brumph
I mostly understand your complaints.
I remember when folks were dreaming of the new Web 3.0, looking forward to redeeming the shit show that 2.0 was and bringing back the camaraderie and community feeling of the early days, when 56kbps was living large and web forums were the place to be. Before social media giants, there was GeoCities and Angelfire, cringetastic websites with generous use of "blink" and "marquee" tags, and color schemes that made your eyes tear up in pain.
And then 3.0 came out, and it was all the shit folks hated from 2.0, with hardly any lingering delights of the web experience we all wanted, commercialized to death until most folks find themselves trapped in gated communities and Stockholm-Syndromed to never leave.
But then you get to the "last thing".
On the Fediverse, tools exist to filter out, for example, things tagged #USPol (for US Politics) from your feed so you don't see them at all, but very few USians use the tag after ranting about some hot political news, so I see them anyway.
I guess you're not aware that filters aren't limited to tags alone?
I mean, I totally feel your pain. In the last 3 to 4 months, I've added more filtered terms than I did in the previous year. But I'm not limiting it to measely "#uspol".
Filter name: Politics Hide Completely
Keywords: tesla, maga, magat, doge, totalresistance, totalresistence, screwthecoup, coup, south africa, america first, americanfirst, bezos, protonprivacy, mozilla, teslas, 50501
Filter name: Politics Hide With Warning
Keywords: musk, elon, uspol, trump, cheeto, orange felon, nazi, turmp, capol, depol, politics, fascism, facism, fasisim, fascist, facist, fasist, crypto, vance, protest, govtrack
Filter name: Random Hide Completely
Keywords: google, chrome, kickstarter, indiegogo, mutualaid, organizedcrime, organized crime, deepseek, proton, replyguy, chatgpt, firefox, mozzila, #apple, advanced data protection, apple's adp, apple adp, #ibeteloncant, #likeaman, #hastaggames, hashtaggames, meme, fediversechick, fediverse chick, pokemon, niantic, alexa, cortana, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, softball, sports, nba, nhl, nfl, severence, rowling, jk, discord.gg, brave rewards, brave browser, whatsapp, patreon, nanowrimo
Very few of those are actual hashtags, and many of them cover common misspellings/mispellings/misspelings/mispelings. Stop blaming people for not #hashtagging #their #posts and #add #more #filtered #terms.
Though I commend you for choosing to distinguish between "USians" (the name of the country) and "Americans" (the name of the continent).
in summa / in summary
Shit changes. In many ways I don't like it any more than you do.
There's no harm in morose yearnings for what used to be.
But trying to assign blame for it... if you can't take accountability for your own choices or lack thereof, you're living in a glass house.
And there's loads of folks in this world ready to start throwing stones.
Leave a comment or continue reading: other Sunday posts, messages on accountability, or more quotes.
