And apparently it is adult-themed and explores millennial angst and disenchantment, because reasons. Yes, really.
And apparently it is adult-themed and explores millennial angst and disenchantment, because reasons. Yes, really.
My obscure nostalgia moment from the N64 was the game Blast Corps, where you had to destroy buildings with a range of vehicles to clear a path for a nuclear missile on a truck. Getting the side-swiper to skid just right was so satisfying.
And of course Banjo-Kazooie, as much for the immersive soundtrack as the colourful worlds.
The problem is one of those evolutionary arms races, for a reason in your observation: if the points are useful in seeing the popularity of a given post or comment, then why not simply create a bunch of fake accounts to boost said post/comment (which is exactly what the OP was complaining about in the first place).
Individual karma ratings allow a weighting for upvotes so that, in theory, contributors who have a track record of constructive interaction can be the ones who have more influence on what rises to algorithmic prominence. But, of course, everything can be gamed, hence upvoting bot/sock puppet-rings like the one OP observed, or people buying accounts on reddit that had pre-established karma to let them astroturf away with impunity.
No idea what the long-term solution is, beyond the vague “build a community of known faces/names” which runs the opposite risk of turning cliquish or closed-off to new content. Or maybe abolishing all algorithms and just sorting everything by new (which brings us back to the ancient commenting issue of a whole chain of people saying “first!” rather than adding any meaningful observations).
I’d say the more incredible part is how Twitter is still going, and how people are still actively there, in spite of the rolling dumpster fire that’s been happening for literally months now.
Yes, on par I lean towards it being a good thing as publicly available information rather than shadowy mud-slinging. I had one post downvoted by someone who apparently has done nothing else before or since, which takes a bit of the sting out of it. There will probably be debates about it at some point, and probably the occasional tit-for-tat attacks around the place, but overall I think it does link a bit more identity to the person who does the up- or down-voting which creates more of a community feel instead of hiding behind total anonymity.
The 3rd party apps are closing at the end of this month, which means there’ll be somewhere around a week or so of people realising just how bad the official app is, plus decreased quality content as the actually-motivated people who post things continue their gradual migration away from reddit and driving redditors to seek other places to gather.
I’m on the fence about it. On the one hand, the memes (at least the ones I’ve seen) were heavily influenced by the article in The Atlantic a week ago about orcas attacking yachts, tapping into the justified vein of resentment against out-of-touch billionaires - a label which can apply to three of those on board the Titan. The fact that these people paid $250,000 each to go down and sit near a shipwreck that they couldn’t see (portholes would be a dangerous pressure-point) instead of using that money to actually benefit humanity in a time of widespread hardship is questionable at best - and what does the company they gave this money to spend those millions of dollars on? Obviously not quality-controlled safety tests.
On the other hand, there is the human dimension of the teenage son who was terrified about the trip and only went as a Father’s Day bonding experience with his rich dad, or the French naval expert who was genuinely knowledgeable about the Titanic and had recovered many artifacts from the wreck over his life, which represents a genuine loss of expertise.
So I smile when I see the pic of orcas banging pans and saying “billionaires, it’s safe to dive now!” But I don’t go out of my way to find those memes or exult over the deaths.
Paul Ekman demonstrated back in the 1960s that, when showing photos of expressions to previously-uncontacted tribes in Papua New Guinea, these people who had no access to other media recognised and could name the feelings described. Also, blind children who have not been told what “a smile” is, will display the facial expression automatically. This research finding was one of the nails in the coffin of the Behaviourist school of psychology (with rats pulling levers) that said everything was learned by rewards/punishments.
Ekman identified 6 “basic” emotions: happy, sad, disgusted, angry, scared, and surprised (which, except for the last one, were the characters in Pixar’s “Inside Out”). Later researchers have proposed a seventh emotion of “pride”, which has the posture of puffed-out chest and smug half-smile, which again is displayed by blind athletes on winning competitions.
I’d like a remake of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri with the option to not go into all the psychic stuff, just building on a new planet having to take into account rainfall for farming and such.
Actually, one bizarre research finding is that, “among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day is associated with a lower risk of heart problems”.
No one’s quite sure why or how or whether it’s some sort of odd correlation (but it does seem to resist all attempts to p-hack it out of significance), and there’s not much appetite among researchers to look too closely into it because everyone knows that ice cream is bad for you.