sanity_is_maddening

I stopped using YouTube a while back.

There’s still content creators and people in there still trying to do good work, most of these (although not all) are on Nebula, in case people wish to support them and ditch youtube altogether.

But YouTube as a platform has become unusable for me. And it was not recent.

And I don’t want to use second party clients anymore either. Chasing which one isn’t blocked now is a hassle that is just not worth it for me any longer. The culture that exists in there is not something that I want to bother myself with this much for anymore.

Throughout the last decade after Google purchasing the platform in 2010 (if I’m not mistaken?), I saw YouTube become the first epicenter of everything that is the most horrible online. Gamergate started on YouTube (and was maximised and driven by its embedded algorithms after the Google purchase) before moving on to reddit, 9Gag, instagram and virtually any other platform. And now it’s just rampant common ground in culture, with “SJW” becoming “Woke”, and “Anti-SJW” becoming “Anti-Woke”.

And the masses took the silly pill.

Clickbait articles are the least of the problems that YouTube has for a very long time.

Misinformation unchecked and even blatant lies allowed freely to circulate for years and years now. Just check how many flat earth channels are spewing nonsense freely over there for so long now. And that is just one example. Just one.

Rage and disgust rewarded by the algorithm, resulted in deranged forms of behaviour and rage inducing statements to become common ground in the pursuit of monetization.

Then there’s ads there are openly scams for the gullible to fall for. Yes, I know Meta allows these as well, but I stopped using anything Meta even before stopping youtube. Yes, even WhatsApp. The Cambridge Analytica scandal should’ve made everyone quit in rage and never look back. But hey, I guess I was mostly alone in that. And look at where that got us now. Not just the U.S. but the whole world.

And then there’s AI…

If people need a case study for how the once considered silly “Dead Internet Theory” is becoming true, take youtube. Plenty of AI generated content as a non-stop sludge, reacted by brigade bots, scam bots and sex bots, all rising in the algorithm through faux viewership. The human is becoming incidental in their current model.

Now, everytime I end up on youtube through some website sharing a link to a video there, I can tell you that the feeling for me is one of entering a loud space of derangement, a most horrifying circus, displaying mental illness and sociapathy as their acts.

But to be honest, ever since I moved to the fediverse exclusively in the last couple of years, that’s how I feel about every major platform now. But youtube still does feel worse in many ways to me.

And I hope nobody here takes this as judgement for their usage of these platforms. Youtube alone took hours of my week before this. Reddit too. I know how absorbing it all is. But now, on the outside, I also know how draining it was.

But if your focus is truly just on “clickbait”, know that predates youtube and even the internet in the form of sensationalist headlines. Tv made it worse. Then the internet exploded it in scale. And Social Media consolidated that as the only viable option through the algorithmic incentive for it.

Just check News Headlines from reputable sources from each decade and you’ll see the issue glaringly worsening throughout time.

Good luck on your project and I also hope you’ll share it on the fediverse.

Cheers.

Yeah, Bazzite has the best word in town for a gaming distro.

Rendered speechless I am, as I weep at the sight of such sublime prose.

A delight worthy of a true bard!

Bravo!

Did ye mention the cursed option?? It is wretched and thou shalt not name it to others here!

“Amazon”! “Google”! “Apple”! “Microsoft”! These art with the devil and shalt be pledged to be forsaken! Forbidden words here, ye see? And thou shalt forsaketh these!

Linux, by the one Torvald is the bid! We shalt fork it or foster thine many bastard children to a better morrow.

And all sources shalt be seen!

And all protocols shalt be open!

To all who shalt join the bid of a morrow of freedom!

Great job! Keep it up!

And welcome to the decentralised side of the internet! It might not be perfect but it sure feels a lot less dystopic.

Cheers!

I usually mention and explain the Fediverse and the many already existent platforms to anyone who starts complaining about the current state of social media. And explain why it would be better for the world for us all to move into a decentralised network than a corporate owned infrastructure.

As for Lemmy, most people were never on reddit. In my social experience, very few people ever used it. But the ones that used and use reddit, absolutely lemmy came into the conversation. And older tech nerds become immediately interested. As they should.

I saw someone mentioning “kew” in another comment thread the other day.

Here’s a link:

https://github.com/ravachol/kew

I haven’t tried it yet so I don’t have feedback of my own. But on the surface seems pretty great as an indexation of one’s digital music library.

Because as long as the risk of coercion isn’t higher than the risk of homelessness in that situation, creeps will continue to do it because odds are in their favour. If you are in that precarious of a situation, and ending up on the streets in the cold and the rain is a larger possibility than the creep who exploits that precariousness to “get some” who might only get a slap on the wrist or dismissed in the courts as a possible outcome, this becomes the most probable outcome.

Most would say… call the police and ask them to listen in to these creeps “negotiating” their chances of sex after iniatially proposing them. No recording. Direct line and called in as distress in the form of coercion.

I agree, but… most people are still afraid of what people who are capable of these heinous propositions are still capable of doing to them after being exposed. Fear of retaliation. Added to the the fact that they’re still not gonna know where they’re gonna live.

Yes, this requires much more attention. And not just in the UK. Everywhere.

But I also need to say this… if nobody is under coercion, I have zero problems to the agreements that people come to on their own terms. It’s a tough and shitty world out there, and I’m not gonna shame anyone for making offers to get by or to get a roof over their heads. If both parties have no issue, neither do I.

But if there’s coercion. That’s the same as rape. Plain and simple.

If not, have fun and no need to bother anyone.

This all sounds like the beginning of a horror flick.

Paranoia and jokes aside, if you feel like there are red flags or that you’re just feeling uncomfortable, don’t go. There’s nothing weird about being the only girl or the only guy in a group, it’s the people themselves and their character that should be under judgement, not the ratios.

About not having internet. I’m too old to answer this question with a straight tone. But I’ll try…

I can go weeks without internet. Without electricity, I would find inconvenient but still doable. Take in the scenery to begin with. Don’t keep snapping photos at every chance. Scotland is gorgeous. Take it all in. Then books, playing instruments, biking, playing cards and games in general, and learn how to identify fauna and flora and you’ll never run out of wonders to contemplate.

Another advice, one with a paternal tone if you allow me… Asking strangers online if you should go on a trip that has a lot of strangers to the point that makes you go ask the strangers online… that is worrying. It’s one of the ailments of the new generations. Having this subservience to the abstraction of the internet as some form of counseling is a huge mistake. The internet is full of terrible people and terrible advice. You should treat the internet as cautiously as you treated the idea of going on this trip with strangers.

Having said that, I hope you consider the judgement of your parents and the people closest to you for this purpose more than anyone in here or anyone on the internet in general.

And if nobody finds anything wrong… then I hope you have a wonderful trip.

“Filmin” - is Spanish and has a very decent film catalog in my opinion. If you like Cinema and not just movies as some snobs will say.

ARTE.tv - is a French and German Platform that has public financing and therefore is free and is full of great documentaries and concerts and interesting content.

Those are two that I enjoy very much.

Some will suggest MUBI (British) but I won’t because is full of problems in financing and several Filmmakers have finally called it out recently. Look into it.

But if people are hell bent on watching those American TV shows, then yeah, piracy wins. But the attention in American centered media remains and nothing changes. That’s a sure bet. If all people watch is American Tv shows and movies, that means that all that they’ll mention in conversation is… obviously American TV shows and movies. Doesn’t matter that is pirated or not. The ones who don’t pirate will watch what you mention too by reference. That is continuation of dissemination. But I still intend to watch American stuff… when it interests me. Paul Thomas Anderson has a new film coming out. But right now I don’t want to give Warner or the U.S. money. So the high seas are looking bright for that one. But a case could be made that that film in particular deserves to be raised in the cultural moment of the U.S. and the world and I can’t argue with that logic either.

But in Europe we can start a petition to have the EU start a public owned streaming platform that gathers all the public financed media in the EU countries in one online platform for all of us to watch with subtitles available in all the languages from the countries that are members. A deal can probably be extended to Britain for the inclusion of BBC in exchange for granting British citizens access to the platform as well.

Meanwhile VPN can grant one access to a lot of public owned broadcasting online platforms all over Europe and the world. Language barrier is the limitation in the meantime. One can only watch content in the languages one speaks. But this works with BBC and Australians have a lot of great TV dramas and comedies as well.

I don’t need streaming services to rewatch anything that I love because I’ve been buying physical media since the VHS times. And because I like “snobby films” more than just mindless entertainment as a “snotty snobby”, that means European Specialty Boutiques are still releasing my favourite movies being made in our time. A lot of them by European Filmmakers. And this way is a direct contribution to their work that allows them to continue to exist. And I use Rarewaves (British) a lot to order stuff from. But there are other websites.

Anyway. I don’t care much about what is said on reddit because reddit is very American centric. Which is only ridiculous when it’s not American subs.

Oh, cool. Need to check it. I never heard of it before.

OpenDoor. Noted. Thanks.

My kind of heroes. People who seek to better the world without seeking attention while doing it.

And there’s an app to help contributing to openstreetmap.

Here’s a link to it on f-droid…

https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/

Although there’s great people still committed to doing great work in there, I’ve stopped using YouTube because the platform itself is utter garbage. It’s a hellscape, and in my opinion it was no coincidence that when Google bought it in 2010, it only took a few months for Gamergate to happen from that point of injection. I eventually gave up youtube and when I go there without an account to watch just one singular video that was posted elsewhere as a link, I’m reminded why the world is just a shit show now. Fascist grifters, AI Slop and rage bait accompanied by all the disinformation possible and fraudulent ads to top it with. Just awful.

And if anyone has never checked YouTube without an account… it’s a grim look.

I have to say I use Peertube from time to time but I haven’t checked Odysee yet.

The “Fully Functional” is something that the most level headed adults that I know, men or otherwise, would refute on the spot. I don’t think I know anyone who feels like a fully functional person. Or an adult for that matter. As that is an elusive concept to begin with. Although, that doesn’t mean one can’t find ways to mature.

I’m 40. And the thing that I’ll say is that kids and younger people have it harder these days. The world is in a state of unprecedented cacophony, in which the previous existential threats that loomed over the previous generations are all stacking up to form a massive sense of unease.

Whichever adult, men, woman or other, that claims they have it all figured in the face of increasing calamity is lying. Possibly to themselves first.

The men who feel the way(s) that you mentioned, are not wrong in feeling the way they do. They can only be wrong in how they act in response to it. Because from time to time, we’re all bound to feel like that at one point or another. And unfortunately in some circumstances and contexts that might be more persistent than others.

The great failure of our time is not that men, young or not, are failing more, but that we are all failing more. Because we are all failing each other. Some more than others, obviously. But even so, we’re failing to reach one another at some point in a growing secluded world.

You can eat your greens. Go to the gym. Earn income that allows you comfort. Find a partner. And even have a child…

And still feel all the things that these “men” do.

The point of maturity is to not make others pay for what burdens you.

And the only escape out of that isolated space is not the “self-improvement” route that the fraudulent will try to coach others. As that is just maintenance.

The way out of loneliness is in service of others. Which has always been the the case and will always be.

Trying to find a way out of loneliness by trying to find a romantic partner to “fix that” is just offloading the burdening responsibility to another person. And regardless of sex or sexual orientation that will always lead to a toxic dependency and a relationship that never ends well.

I’m a 40 year old dude. I have a home. I get to do what I’m passionate about. I have a partner that I live with and I love her. But if anyone comes knocking for advice, I tell them that if they’re looking for easy answers, they’re looking for lies to comfort them out of what they already know to be true… That life is complicated and none of us really know what we’re doing while we’re roaming this earth.

But it sure is a whole lot easier when we’re kind to one another. And that is about the only certainty we’re gonna get before we die.

Everything else is noise.

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Oh, absolutely. Biomagnification is inherent to the logic of raising through the trophic levels. So even if we forego the zoo experiment as a setting, in theory any time there’s a toxin or a man-made hazardous chemical due to pollution in the wild, we are bound to find higher levels of either due to the concentration effect alone.

We can even point that back to the study, as the zoo animals were eating domestic raised animals by humans and the inherent hazards of that practice surely increase the risk of cancer, not lower it. Maybe they can even start a lab grown meat trial with carnivorous zoo animals and see if the cancer rate actually lowers from that alone. In theory, it should.

No, you don’t need to “grow up”. You’re right in feeling the way you do. Growing up in relation to that sounds like giving up. If anyone needs to grow up or give up is the people destroying Nature and people’s lives just so they can get more tokens in a rigged game that always benefits them.

Thank you!

If anyone here can find it, a few years ago there was also a meta study that evaluated the aggregate information provided by zoos and found that carnivore animals are a lot more likely to develop cancer than omnivore animals and herbivores. Herbivores, the least likely. Which from a trophic balance makes absolute sense. Given that a large predator without self regulation would require other population control occurrences to be in place from a meta-space perspective. And amino acid density doesn’t really discriminate what is growing, anyway. So, it all makes sense. As it’s supposed to.

And speaking of this, us Humans have to develop our own self-regulation at an individual level and species level combined or we’ll continue to predate on the environment and each other as a result of our own devised resource scarcity. The fact we fight viruses and cancer better and better only makes it more necessarily so. Lack of self regulation always leads to scarcity. It is how the initial predation systems were formed to begin with. Ambulant organisms reproduced and consumed without any inhibitors or restrictions, leading them to prey on each other when the lower trophic levels were no longer available to sustain their numbers and consumption. Again, it all makes sense. As it’s supposed to.