Completely Inconsequential Hot-Takes 2: People Take Too Long to Post New Threads

[Batcathat]

The big determiner for good coffee for me is whether I can drink it black. Okay coffee needs a little milk, or cream and sugar. Good coffee is flavorful and smooth enough to drink with nothing in it.

If you add milk to good coffee, it just tastes like okay coffee.

I've always felt like adding milk just makes it taste less (and that's coming from someone who drinks a lot of milk) while adding sugar makes it taste actively bad. Though I kinda suspect that the sugar thing is because my parents sometimes used to let me and my sister dip sugar cubes in coffee and "drink" it from them, so I might've subconsciously expected coffee with sugar to taste like that.

[Rater202]

Another thing to be considered is the tannins.

some people are very sensitive to tannins but most people can barely taste them.

If you're particularly sensitive to tannins then the bitterness of them are going to overpower whatever unique flavors are present in a given roast or blend and by the time you've added enough creamer or sweetener to compensate for the bitterness whatever unique flavor might be present are too diluted to matter.

I'm very sensitive to tannins, but the time there's enough stuff in my coffee that I can choke it down it's a dark beige color so... Yeah...

..What pisses me off is I'm developing a taste for it. I started drinking it because we were running out of soda and I needed my caffeine fix but now I'm developing a taste for it. I don't even like it but I find myself drinking it.

This is what it's like to be old, isn't it?

[veti]

This is what it's like to be old, isn't it?

Old is when your doctor tells you to stop doing $IT because your $INTERNAL_ORGAN cannae take any more.

I had to stop drinking alcohol. Like, completely. Truth be told, I don't miss it much - but the mere fact of not being able to do it, makes me feel a whole category older.

[Peelee]

Old is when your doctor tells you to stop doing $IT because your $INTERNAL_ORGAN cannae take any more.

Do knees count as internal organs?

cannae

Inconsequential hot take: I need more Scots in my life IRL.

[Ionathus]

On the subject of coffee:

If your business has "Café" in your name, you should be legally required to sell espresso drinks.

I stopped by a so-called "café" while running errands and ordered a coffee and a latte to go. This place had a chalkboard, a giant pastry display case, plenty of machines and bistro "stuff" behind the counter. I was told that they only do drip coffee, so I said "fine" and dropped the latte. They directed me towards the pump thermos hidden in the corner of the room. Greasy spoon diners have better coffee than the junk that came out of it.

These scam artists charged me $4 for watery lukewarm coffee I had to pour for myself from a thermos, and they have the gall to call themselves a "breakfast café".

[Metastachydium]

cannae

Inconsequential hot take: I need more Scots in my life IRL.

I don't know. Are yu sure he's not just a stealthy Carthage apologist?

Do knees count as internal organs?

The bits that matter are very much within the body, but I'd contest their classification as an organ. (Of any sort. No matter how you hit those, no church music will come out.)

[Draconi Redfir]

if a video game spends several hours pointing me in a direction and telling me "go here", and when i get there all i find is an unresponsive NPC who is doing nothing, and won't respond to anything i do except shooting them in the head (which kills them), and no guidance or direction what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing here...

... Then the game / fandom really has no right to be mad at me if i proceed to kill the NPC. i was told to be there and given no other direction, and every other action i tried did nothing.

[Peelee]

if a video game spends several hours pointing me in a direction and telling me "go here", and when i get there all i find is an unresponsive NPC who is doing nothing, and won't respond to anything i do except shooting them in the head (which kills them), and no guidance or direction what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing here...

... Then the game / fandom really has no right to be mad at me if i proceed to kill the NPC. i was told to be there and given no other direction, and every other action i tried did nothing.

Imean, that's a bit of an overreaction for Animal Crossing.

[Draconi Redfir]

Imean, that's a bit of an overreaction for Animal Crossing.

animal crossing has an option to let you kill people now?

it HAS been a long time since wild world...

[LaZodiac]

if a video game spends several hours pointing me in a direction and telling me "go here", and when i get there all i find is an unresponsive NPC who is doing nothing, and won't respond to anything i do except shooting them in the head (which kills them), and no guidance or direction what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing here...

... Then the game / fandom really has no right to be mad at me if i proceed to kill the NPC. i was told to be there and given no other direction, and every other action i tried did nothing.

... what game? Cause that sounds fascinating a situation to find yourself in.

[veti]

I'm not sure, but I think Electronic Arts (EA) may be the nastiest big company in software. Not necessarily the same as "most evil", and certainly not "most successful", but "most soul-taintingly infuriating to deal with".

The competition is harsh. One looks with disdain at Microsoft's product bundling practices, and Google's shameless cross subsidisation. One recoils from Oracle's "ambush licensing" revenue model. One shudders to remember Sony's rootkit copy protection. One turns one's eyes from Xitter's cringeworthy antics to make its users pay up.

But through all the greed, deceit and disdain for their own customers, EA still manages to stand out. I'm not even going to talk about their infamously toxic work culture, or their minimum-effort approach to reselling the same set of games every year. These things are well known. No, what's earning them a unique place in the hall of infamy is what they are doing to innocent PC owners who are not even their customers.

They have taken over where Sony left off: they have successfully adapted the abomination that was SecuROM to the online age. With all its most offensive features intact. And they've manipulated me, among I'm sure many others, into running it on my PC.

[Peelee]

animal crossing has an option to let you kill people now?

it HAS been a long time since wild world...

"AC: This Time We Really Mean 'Wild' World".

[Bohandas]

Hot Take: Agent Smith was the only character in the Mateix trilogy who made any sense

[veti]

Hot Take: Agent Smith was the only character in the Mateix trilogy who made any sense

There was no character who made sense. Sense was the spoon.

Agent Smith was more than ordinarily annoying because... he... en...unci...ated... every... thing... so... slowly. For no reason that ever got mentioned, he spoke like a very drunk Captain Kirk all the time.

[LaZodiac]

There was no character who made sense. Sense was the spoon.

Agent Smith was more than ordinarily annoying because... he... en...unci...ated... every... thing... so... slowly. For no reason that ever got mentioned, he spoke like a very drunk Captain Kirk all the time.

Agent Smith enunciated words like that because it's a stylish way of representing his character. He only does that after he's slipped the system and become his own thinking entity, the contrast to Neo. The first time in his life he has gained the ability to think of words for himself so it has this methodical, forced feeling as he sounds out new words and thoughts as they come to him.

also it's cool and allows Hugo Weeving to ham it up a bit and that's always good.

[Peelee]

Inconsequential hot take: Hugo Weaving is cool but i prefer Hugo Looming.

[LaZodiac]

Inconsequential hot take: Hugo Weaving is cool but i prefer Hugo Looming.

Ah, but what about Hugo Dodging?

On that note I have an inconsequential hot take: people watch films or play games who decide not to meet the thing half way, and decide that the thing is bad as a result. Like someone playing a horror game and willfully trying not to get sucked into the vibe, going "it's not scary it's just a video game I'm not REALLY in danger" and deciding this means the game fails as horror media. No it doesn't you just failed to engage with it on its terms!

[Peelee]

Ah, but what about Hugo Dodging?

Hugo Dodging is great but he's got to compete with Hugo Ducking, Hugo Dipping, Hugo Diving, and Hugo Dodging.

[Draconi Redfir]

... what game? Cause that sounds fascinating a situation to find yourself in.

Specifically; Rainworld.

Spoiler: Storytime/Context

Show

You're a little animal thing who gets separated from your family, an orange worm-thing appears and starts making holograms of images and arrows to help you, point towards food, pointing towards shelter, etc.

Eventually, it starts making an image of you, or a creature like you, and points towards a path. Every other time it's made a picture, it meant "There is this, that way". Picture of bat? "Bats this way", picture of shelter? "Shelter this way". So naturally, i interpreted a picture that looks like your character as "More like you this way".

Somewhere along the way, that picture changed to something else, and you start having dreams of some other, intelligent-looking creature in front of a bunch of TV's and stuff. the dream creature looks a lot like the new image the guide-worm is directing me towards. So i interpret this as "This is some old, wise entity who knows this land, and can help you return to your family."

So i keep following the path, and this path is HELL. Deep water, carnivorous fish, leeches, birds coming down from the sky, carnivorous plants that like to hang DIRECTLY over underwater exit-pipes you need to go through, and only one shelter in the middle of the whole thing, so every death made you re-play through at LEAST half the whole section. i must have died a MINIMUM of ten times doing this, most likely more.

Finally, FINALLY i get to the end, find a new shelter to save my progress, and follow the guide's arrows to where it's pointing me.

This brings me to a large, empty room, with some blue... creature? Standing in the middle of it, connected to the wall via a mechanical arm, and some floating jellyfish-things.

The creature(?) does not speak, it does not move, it does not interact with me in any way. The guide is no longer present, it is not giving me any direction.

So, i start looking around, are there any switches on the walls? no. Any buttons? no. Can i talk to the blue-thing? no, it's just standing there.

I jump, i walk, i grab, nothing happens. EXCEPT, when i grab one of the floating jelly-fish things, this causes the blue-thing to start flailing around in a panic. "Okay, that's progress" i think. so i let go of the jellyfish and start trying to communicate again, perhaps this is what i needed to do to start something? Walk? Jump? Grab? look around? No response. the blue-thing just stands perfectly still in an empty room, not even acknowledging my existence.

Come on man, i was told to be HERE, and went through hell to get here. so what do i need to do here to actually progress? Grabbing that Jellyfish got me some kind of reaction, that's better then nothing. so i grab a jellyfish again, and the blue thing starts panicking again. At this point, I've tried every input the game gives me EXCEPT for one: Eat. So with no other options, i eat the Jellyfish. The blue-thing flails about a bit... and then goes right back to standing perfectly still, not responding. Again i try everything i can to figure out why i'm here, Grab, jump, walk, look around, pull on it, etc. Nothing.

So i eat another jellyfish. it flails, it stops.

So i eat another

And another

Eventually, I'm too full to eat the last two Jellyfish, so i bring those with me to the shelter and eat them in the morning, then i go visit the blue-thing again. Okay, i ate all the jellyfish, that's what i was supposed to do right? Can i get information on how to find my family now?

the blue thing is dead on the ground.

Well OKAY! i guess. And now the Guide is nowhere to be seen. And may i remind you, the Guide was not present anywhere within the room with the blue-thing. So, now confused and guide-less, i go all the way BACK through the hell i went through to get here, to try and find my own way back to my family.


Later on i bring this up on the game's forums, and people start shouting at me and calling me a monster for "Killing" the blue thing. Apparently what you're SUPPOSED to do upon seeing it is "Turn around and leave". How the heck you'd come to that conclusion after all that effort, idk. but the guide would then appear again to show you something, and you'd have another dream the next time you fell asleep, idk.

But i was directed to be THERE. and i went through hell to GET there. Why the heck would i leave!? i was told to be Here, so obviously I'm supposed to be doing something Here!

So now I'm lost and directionless, the fans of the game think i "Killed something beautiful", and I'm no closer to finding my family. If the game didn't want me to eat those jellyfish, maybe it should have given me literally any other option.

Respectfully, i do not feel guilty in the slightest bit. I was following the flow of action, no other option game me any kind of response.




Bonus points: The game does not end with you finding your family. Instead you get something entirely unrelated pulled straight out of lovecraftian horror. so OKAY then! Kinda glad i dropped that game due to it's clunky controls.

[Ionathus]

I'm not sure, but I think Electronic Arts (EA) may be the nastiest big company in software. Not necessarily the same as "most evil", and certainly not "most successful", but "most soul-taintingly infuriating to deal with".

The competition is harsh. One looks with disdain at Microsoft's product bundling practices, and Google's shameless cross subsidisation. One recoils from Oracle's "ambush licensing" revenue model. One shudders to remember Sony's rootkit copy protection. One turns one's eyes from Xitter's cringeworthy antics to make its users pay up.

But through all the greed, deceit and disdain for their own customers, EA still manages to stand out. I'm not even going to talk about their infamously toxic work culture, or their minimum-effort approach to reselling the same set of games every year. These things are well known. No, what's earning them a unique place in the hall of infamy is what they are doing to innocent PC owners who are not even their customers.

They have taken over where Sony left off: they have successfully adapted the abomination that was SecuROM to the online age. With all its most offensive features intact. And they've manipulated me, among I'm sure many others, into running it on my PC.

I swear, Nintendo is going to emerge victorious from the gaming market after everybody else implodes themselves. Call it "Nintendo Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing"

[Peelee]

I swear, Nintendo is going to emerge victorious from the gaming market after everybody else implodes themselves. Call it "Nintendo Wins By Doing Absolutely Nothing"

"Doing absolutely nothing" is an interesting way of saying "famously being one of the most litigious video game companies that exists".

[Ionathus]

"Doing absolutely nothing" is an interesting way of saying "famously being one of the most litigious video game companies that exists".

Lol I didn't mean "nothing" as in "nothing bad ever, Nintendo is harmwess widdle baby" -- it's definitely still a cutthroat multibillion dollar company. I meant more that Nintendo is just off doing its own thing for the most part, and not really following most trends that other game companies compete over.

As the "console wars" have evolved over my lifetime, it's been interesting to see Nintendo basically go from ruler of the NES era, to losing ground with the SNES but maintaining a respectable following, to the N64 falling behind the original Playstation in "performance" but remaining a cult classic thanks to having such genuinely fun games, to the dorky GameCube era trying to compete with the big boys while the PS2 was at its peak, to a somewhat-resurgence with the Wii where they finally cornered the "casual/family" market, which they've mostly ridden through the WiiU and Switch eras. They stopped trying to actually compete as the top dog, and just filled a different niche in the industry.

Everyone else is chasing graphics and live service and cinematic-quality stuff, big massive insane blockbusters and "the next big thing," and Nintendo is still mostly churning out the same style of game that they were doing in the 90s. Super Mario Odyssey plays almost exactly like Super Mario 64 -- just better controls. Their first-party titles mostly set a consistent benchmark of quality: Nintendo has a comfort zone, and they stick to it. It's been interesting to see that sentence spoken with derision or admiration, alternating over the years depending on whether everybody's exasperated with whatever the rest of the industry is doing.

Note that although this sounds like a glowing review, I don't really intend it as such. I have plenty of criticisms of Nintendo. I find it interesting how they've found success "doing their own thing" from the rest of the industry.

EDIT to add: Also, my original statement was meant to reference a specific post I'd seen on Tumblr back at the time of the Reddit mod tools controversy this past year -- Tumblr users were seeing an influx of new users migrating from places like Reddit, who were frustrated with social media sites trying to evolve and monetize, and joking about how "everything else is imploding and everybody's finally come crawling back to Tumblr, the Luigi-wins-by-doing-absolutely-nothing of social media sites"

[Peelee]

Lol I didn't mean "nothing" as in "nothing bad ever, Nintendo is harmwess widdle baby" -- it's definitely still a cutthroat multibillion dollar company. I meant more that Nintendo is just off doing its own thing for the most part, and not really following most trends that other game companies compete over.

I know, and i get the reference. I was just referring to a business tactic they employ which could have very easily backfired on them massively in terms of public perception and reputation.

[Bohandas]

users...frustrated with social media sites trying to evolve and monetize

indeed. I don't know what happened over the past decade or so but everything's gone in the toilet. And somehow it won't flush. A new generation of sites should have long since surplanted the old sites that got greedy by now, but somehow that's stalled

[LaZodiac]

Specifically; Rainworld.

Spoiler: Storytime/Context

Show

You're a little animal thing who gets separated from your family, an orange worm-thing appears and starts making holograms of images and arrows to help you, point towards food, pointing towards shelter, etc.

Eventually, it starts making an image of you, or a creature like you, and points towards a path. Every other time it's made a picture, it meant "There is this, that way". Picture of bat? "Bats this way", picture of shelter? "Shelter this way". So naturally, i interpreted a picture that looks like your character as "More like you this way".

Somewhere along the way, that picture changed to something else, and you start having dreams of some other, intelligent-looking creature in front of a bunch of TV's and stuff. the dream creature looks a lot like the new image the guide-worm is directing me towards. So i interpret this as "This is some old, wise entity who knows this land, and can help you return to your family."

So i keep following the path, and this path is HELL. Deep water, carnivorous fish, leeches, birds coming down from the sky, carnivorous plants that like to hang DIRECTLY over underwater exit-pipes you need to go through, and only one shelter in the middle of the whole thing, so every death made you re-play through at LEAST half the whole section. i must have died a MINIMUM of ten times doing this, most likely more.

Finally, FINALLY i get to the end, find a new shelter to save my progress, and follow the guide's arrows to where it's pointing me.

This brings me to a large, empty room, with some blue... creature? Standing in the middle of it, connected to the wall via a mechanical arm, and some floating jellyfish-things.

The creature(?) does not speak, it does not move, it does not interact with me in any way. The guide is no longer present, it is not giving me any direction.

So, i start looking around, are there any switches on the walls? no. Any buttons? no. Can i talk to the blue-thing? no, it's just standing there.

I jump, i walk, i grab, nothing happens. EXCEPT, when i grab one of the floating jelly-fish things, this causes the blue-thing to start flailing around in a panic. "Okay, that's progress" i think. so i let go of the jellyfish and start trying to communicate again, perhaps this is what i needed to do to start something? Walk? Jump? Grab? look around? No response. the blue-thing just stands perfectly still in an empty room, not even acknowledging my existence.

Come on man, i was told to be HERE, and went through hell to get here. so what do i need to do here to actually progress? Grabbing that Jellyfish got me some kind of reaction, that's better then nothing. so i grab a jellyfish again, and the blue thing starts panicking again. At this point, I've tried every input the game gives me EXCEPT for one: Eat. So with no other options, i eat the Jellyfish. The blue-thing flails about a bit... and then goes right back to standing perfectly still, not responding. Again i try everything i can to figure out why i'm here, Grab, jump, walk, look around, pull on it, etc. Nothing.

So i eat another jellyfish. it flails, it stops.

So i eat another

And another

Eventually, I'm too full to eat the last two Jellyfish, so i bring those with me to the shelter and eat them in the morning, then i go visit the blue-thing again. Okay, i ate all the jellyfish, that's what i was supposed to do right? Can i get information on how to find my family now?

the blue thing is dead on the ground.

Well OKAY! i guess. And now the Guide is nowhere to be seen. And may i remind you, the Guide was not present anywhere within the room with the blue-thing. So, now confused and guide-less, i go all the way BACK through the hell i went through to get here, to try and find my own way back to my family.


Later on i bring this up on the game's forums, and people start shouting at me and calling me a monster for "Killing" the blue thing. Apparently what you're SUPPOSED to do upon seeing it is "Turn around and leave". How the heck you'd come to that conclusion after all that effort, idk. but the guide would then appear again to show you something, and you'd have another dream the next time you fell asleep, idk.

But i was directed to be THERE. and i went through hell to GET there. Why the heck would i leave!? i was told to be Here, so obviously I'm supposed to be doing something Here!

So now I'm lost and directionless, the fans of the game think i "Killed something beautiful", and I'm no closer to finding my family. If the game didn't want me to eat those jellyfish, maybe it should have given me literally any other option.

Respectfully, i do not feel guilty in the slightest bit. I was following the flow of action, no other option game me any kind of response.




Bonus points: The game does not end with you finding your family. Instead you get something entirely unrelated pulled straight out of lovecraftian horror. so OKAY then! Kinda glad i dropped that game due to it's clunky controls.

So something definetly went wrong there, Moon's supposed to give you like, a cutscene sort of projection telling you where to go next and then you leave. The fanbase shouldn't be freaking out at you accidentally killing her though that's just... weird, of them.

You can reunite with your family in the ending actually, instead of leaving samsara to become free. It just requires having beaten the Gourmet first.

Also yeah no Rainworld ****ing sucks. Call that my hot take; cinematic platformer games that make themselves intentionally obtuse are bad actually.

[Draconi Redfir]

So something definetly went wrong there, Moon's supposed to give you like, a cutscene sort of projection telling you where to go next and then you leave. The fanbase shouldn't be freaking out at you accidentally killing her though that's just... weird, of them.

You can reunite with your family in the ending actually, instead of leaving samsara to become free. It just requires having beaten the Gourmet first.

Also yeah no Rainworld ****ing sucks. Call that my hot take; cinematic platformer games that make themselves intentionally obtuse are bad actually.

this was before the update that introduced all the new forms and the pups and the like. i was just playing the bogstandard white slugcat, the only other options were the predator and the monk.


I'd guess the cutscene you're talking about only happens if you visit Pebbles first to learn the language? I never saw Pebbles in my playthrough, somehow ended up walking right past him and onto the floating islands instead. This was after Moon, so i had no guide and was just wandering aimlessly.



For me what killed it though was a point where i had three options: Turn around and go back the way i came, Go down into the void / abyss / whatever that underground area is where you meet large psychic creatures that kill you if you don't have a certain amount of Karma, or make one simple jump in a small square box, from one vertical stick to another one in order to progress to a new area.


For whatever reason, i could NOT make that simple jump. the slugcat just refused to grab onto the stick, no matter how many times i told it too. there were no other sticks or anything i could use as a platform. The awkwardly placed controls certainly didn't help. so i ragequit, and only had the Moon debacle after the fact.

[Ionathus]

I know, and i get the reference. I was just referring to a business tactic they employ which could have very easily backfired on them massively in terms of public perception and reputation.

What can I say? Mario's just got such a wholesome face, it's hard for bad publicity to stick.

Though to be fair I probably would've said the same thing about Mickey Mouse two decades ago, but that's definitely changed. I've heard "The Mouse" said with the same ominous, corporate, hushed tones as if referring to a mafia boss, multiple times in the past few years.

indeed. I don't know what happened over the past decade or so but everything's gone in the toilet. And somehow it won't flush. A new generation of sites should have long since surplanted the old sites that got greedy by now, but somehow that's stalled

Anecdotally, a lot of people I know seem to have migrated over to either TikTok or Discord, though there are some classification quirks there: I'm not sure I would call TikTok "social media" in the sense of dialogues and conversations happening, since it's mostly short-form videos. And Discord really functions more like a bigger, beefier chatroom. I think things are still evolving but yeah, not nearly as much change and development as the previous "generation" of sites.

[veti]

Though to be fair I probably would've said the same thing about Mickey Mouse two decades ago, but that's definitely changed. I've heard "The Mouse" said with the same ominous, corporate, hushed tones as if referring to a mafia boss, multiple times in the past few years.

Hah. I was seeing Disney as The Enemy back in the 90s. Nowadays the edge has gone off their Evil. I think they were taken aback by how much flak they got over copyright extension, and decided to bank the win rather than try to build yet further on it. Since then they've contented themselves with acquiring other people's IP, rather than trying to rob the public domain again.

Anecdotally, a lot of people I know seem to have migrated over to either TikTok or Discord, though there are some classification quirks there: I'm not sure I would call TikTok "social media" in the sense of dialogues and conversations happening, since it's mostly short-form videos. And Discord really functions more like a bigger, beefier chatroom. I think things are still evolving but yeah, not nearly as much change and development as the previous "generation" of sites.

Well, Discord reminds me of Usenet, although I know it's not really very similar - Discord is much more controlled, less anarchic, and the architecture is completely different. But the basic look-and-feel really hasn't changed much since - well, since before the Web was even invented.

And TikTok is just a more evil version (which takes some doing in itself) of YouTube. And seemingly still on the verge of a complete ban, which I for one would shed no tears for.

[Mx.Silver]

Anecdotally, a lot of people I know seem to have migrated over to either TikTok or Discord, though there are some classification quirks there: I'm not sure I would call TikTok "social media" in the sense of dialogues and conversations happening, since it's mostly short-form videos. And Discord really functions more like a bigger, beefier chatroom. I think things are still evolving but yeah, not nearly as much change and development as the previous "generation" of sites.

Yeah, the 'over-centralisation' of the net is difficult to really shift. Partly due to economics, partly due to social inertia. The ubiquity of smartphones as internet devices also plays into it a bit, since at present they just aren't as suited to wider 'net browsing as desktops/laptops (i.e. keyboard + mouse/trackpad interfaces) and so will tend towards more centralised hub sites and specific apps.


wrt Discord: the big problem with it is that it doesn't stop at just being a chatroom/voicechat application, but the way it gets used as a forum replacement. Which it's really not very good at, but because of its popularity a lot of places have pivoted to it and the results have been overwhelmingly negative. So much information just locked in a third-party walled garden.

Hah. I was seeing Disney as The Enemy back in the 90s. Nowadays the edge has gone off their Evil. I think they were taken aback by how much flak they got over copyright extension, and decided to bank the win rather than try to build yet further on it. Since then they've contented themselves with acquiring other people's IP, rather than trying to rob the public domain again.

I'm not sure that's all that much better, to be honest. I'd agree that being a Disney hater has lost some of the fun it had back in the day though, with the way the general landscape's changed.
Also because all the angry youtube men with webcams have been trying to get in on it, so any conversations about it are going to get swamped by a bunch of angry nerdbros ranting about "wokeness" or whatever other buzzword is in vogue that day.

[NichG]

Yeah, the 'over-centralisation' of the net is difficult to really shift. Partly due to economics, partly due to social inertia. The ubiquity of smartphones as internet devices also plays into it a bit, since at present they just aren't as suited to wider 'net browsing as desktops/laptops (i.e. keyboard + mouse/trackpad interfaces) and so will tend towards more centralised hub sites and specific apps.

I wonder also if increasing monetization of hobby activity in online spaces has something to do with it. I grew up through the 'there's not much out there, but we know how to build things, so we'll build it for our own usage and share it' phase of the internet. But now even when I look at what I would have considered relatively small open-source projects, half of the time they have the same generic startup company website template and they're trying to sell consultation services or support contracts. When I was last looking for Discord alternatives, there's a bunch of open-source and self-hosted things, they all look pretty similar, and they are all like 'sure you can host it yourself, but pay us and we'll host it for you and it'll be much easier'.

If people aren't trying things if they can't see money in it, no wonder that making small niche sites that aren't likely going to compete with the big ones but at least let you customize your experience aren't so much of a thing now...