Did it really predict these things? We’ve had data surveillance and algorithmic targeting for a while before Watchdogs. A lot of “prescient” sci-fi is just writing about stuff that’s already happening but which people don’t pay much attention to.

I was thinking about this recently when I had to look at a website without an ad blocker. (Btw, does anyone know an Adblock option that works for iOS Lemmy? Memmy’s browser doesn’t block anything.)

The website was absolutely packed to the brim with ads. Animated, expanding, moving, etc. All competing for your attention. How can ANY of those ads be getting enough attention for it to be worth it?

Yeah. It’s not hard to see why people don’t trust the media anymore. Amongst other things, the big ones I can think about in my life: They uncritically parroted lies the government used to justify the Iraq War and they regularly gave equal air time/consideration to climate deniers as though they were equivalent to climate scientists.

It’s still crazy to me how much of the bad shit the government has done has been declassified and publicly available and people still just kind of ignore it. Who needs censorship when people are just willing to overlook reality? Or even worse, just make up nonsense.

Plagueleech.

I went to a restaurant recently that had fried cauliflower in a sesame sauce or something. It was pretty good and I normally don’t like cauliflower.

Gender: beef jerky.

It’s mostly just finding some reviews/word of mouth sources that you trust and which align with your tastes.

On the review side of things Second Wind covers a decent spread of indie games. I also occasionally see some new stuff from streamers, but that’s more of a toss up since there’s a lot of sponsored coverage.

I know you’re joking and that there’s a lot of garbage videos out there, but what possible value would there be in sending a novel per second? Can anyone read a novel per second? It only makes sense to use the higher bandwidth to send higher density information like video, audio, or interactive media like games.

My adblocking doesn’t work on twitch anymore, so I stopped using it for everything but one streamer I’m subbed to.