My first guess for something like this would be your local library’s databases, or Archive.org. 🤔

It’s crazy how poisoned search has gotten over the last like ten years.

Right?! Nothing good for one’s humanity happens on Instagram.

It’d just be monkey bars all day. Monkey bars on loop, like on CNN in 2003. So much monkey bars your kids would be swole like great apes when you got back.

Then the LAN games…

“C’mon let’s plug in and do a 6x4 comp-stomp on StarCraft!”

The Internet was for anyone!

(Stares 1000 yards away)

…But it should never have been for everyone…

I even thought social media was brilliant when it came to say, earlier MySpace.

Why? Easy way to keep in touch with people all at the same time. “Oh look what’s going on in so-and-so’s life”, instead of hoping they’ll stumble on your blog lol.

Even early Facebook was kinda like this. Network of friends and family. Chronological order. Simple, but not exploitative enough.

Then, yeah, I think it all went dumpster-fire when the incentive was “How many complete strangers can I get to follow my hot takes?” and adding rage-based prioritizing instead of chronological, and whatever the hell the “For you” section is. (When I rarely pop on FB with TOR, it’s all just NSFW thot content…that I cannot disable.)

When it all became about following celebrities and being all “notice me senpai!” on their feeds.

…Putting bad companies on blast can stay though. A platform to publicly shame bastards like airlines and politicians is/was a feature. Lol

I have this crazy longing to go back to having time for hanging out in digital worlds with people, without feeling guilty like I’m wasting my life away.

One of my favorite online moments was playing Wurm Online with some random dudes, chatting about whatever stuff while slowly chopping trees, cutting logs, and wheelbarrowing them back to the village.

We built a little supply room that day. Felt pretty accomplished.

Same. I feel like my lungs catch enough pollutants just from enduring modern living, without me putting nasty stuff in them on purpose!

I tried a fancy little disposable vape pen once, but dropped it quick and never looked back when I realized I actually really like breathing. Haha.

Yeah! :)

The intro says it best: “The rich and powerful take what they want. We steal it back for you.”

It’s a modern heist + Robin Hood concept, where these super-thieves pull cons on our society’s everyday awful bastards. It’s a lot of fun and satisfying to watch.

(It’s also an excellent example for how an excellent tabletop role-playing group should play off each other, but I digress lol)

I wish there were some gold-hearted people like that out there for real, exceptionally skilled enough to stay one step ahead and righting wrongs that the law refuses to (or is straight up complicit with).

They’re a bit archaic to me since they were quite a bit before my time, but I have so much respect for the Ultima games and kinda wanna make myself figure my way through them…

“These edibles ain’t shi–” to “I can’t remember when I’ve had a more pleasant day!”

Occasionally I’ll spin it up on my local machine and have a chat with it about technical stuff.

Sometimes it’s fun just running scenarios with it because it’s novel. Or I use duck.ai kinda like an instruction manual you can ask things to. Never ever on anything with actual stakes.

I do find it’s good at deciphering Linux stuff, and I do end up actually learning rather than just blindly trusting whatever it spits out.

I don’t want chatbots to replace friends asking each other things or discussing technical topics on forums though. That would be sad. But sometimes it helps with those simple “been asked a thousand times” issues where I’d get bogged down reading 15 tabs and still not be certain what the best move could be.

So I guess I find it good at distilling existing information.

Using it to “create” anything though? As an artist and game dev, I find the thought genuinely disgusting. I suck at coding, but I’m not selling out my coder brethren and sistren to a machine, just like I’d be disappointed in them doing the same to me as an artist.

They probably thought there would be a car bomb or shooting or something, and we got 9/11.

It’s sickening to consider how many holders of defense stocks and positions of power were likely “pleasantly surprised” by this development.

Two video games got me kinda obsessed with psionics as a younger person:

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. It’s a near-future military thriller where the main character has amnesia, but finds himself with telekinesis, pyrokinesis, remote viewing, mind control, and “mind drain” to power those abilities. That game was amazingly cool and had a banger single called “With My Mind” by Cold (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZQk3ig-i_s)

It’s been a long time, but our guy basically battles a rogue paramilitary bad guy faction that’s like “If MK ULTRA actually worked on a few dudes and they were super fascist.”

Second Sight: Still gotta play this one! Kinda like Bourne Identity. Guy wakes up in a strange facility with psychokinetic powers and amnesia, and strange government people are trying to kill him. He can throw things around with his mind.

(I feel like these were the same game pitched to two different publishers hahaha)

Hehe I remember really trying to exercise my mind to put out matches or move objects. Was quite disappointed. :p

Chronicle: This one is an interesting movie. Kinda a found footage superhero film. Three friends touch a weird rock and end up with telekinesis. Things kinda derail out of control from there. Excellent effects.

(Somebody already mentioned “Push” which is also super cool.)

You’re right fundamentally, but I also share OP’s frustration in this concept that, especially with tech, it all just seems based on vibes now.

I wish “Leverage” were real. So badly. That’d be my dream work. My calling.

That’s exactly what I’ve been racking my own brain for lately: How do we make their money worthless but continue to survive ourselves?

That was the big problem with crypto. It might’ve even started as a cool idea that would “democratize currency”. . . except the dickheads with all the fiat money could just buy and hoard it all like everything else, because they had all the money. So it just became another high stakes gambling operation for them to extract MORE wealth from us.

If their loads of money didn’t buy them everything anymore, they’d be left bare as the useless human beings they truly are, and would stop causing harm.

But obviously, our entire society runs on the same money they’ve stolen so… it’s so frustrating…

Jon Stewart is a hero. We got the wrong “TV personality” promoted. :(

Then you’d get Musk and the rest running, too.

1. Renames country and everything in it to “X”

2. Entire world’s missiles target the country by default. 😬