I appreciate how angry this post seems to have made some people. Maybe I’ve just been in the furry fandom too long. I feel nothing anymore.

Halo.

Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad game or you’re a bad person for liking it, but man, I have never been able to see the appeal. As someone who has played a lot of shooters (mostly PC) and read a lot of sci-fi, I find it exceptionally mid. And I’m not really fan of the militaristic reverence vibe it’s got going on like … bleh. Does it actually criticize this more as the series goes on or is it really just all oorah? I also kind of blame it for the trends of vehicle segments and only holding two weapons that leaked into other FPSes at the time (looking at you Bioshock Infinite - WTF), although I do admit that’s more of a petty, personal point. I respect that it pushed FPSes and online multiplayer forward on consoles, but when people tell me it’s their favorite game with one of the best storylines ever I’m like, “But have you played any other games?”

I used to work in a game store back when Halo 3 released and I was a much more fervent hater back then, I decided I was gonna play the original Marathon games so I could be a hipster snob and hate on them, too. Actually ended up really loving them, though they’re only loosely related, I think they had a lot more going on stylistically and story-wise even though the gameplay was more primitive.

I retry every few years, but never get very far. Maybe I should skip to 2 because one is so bland I get bored of it.

Yeah so Lennart Poettering is on the Executive team of Amutable (https://amutable.com/about), how do we feel about that? Remind me again how the open source community feels about trusted computing … https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html

People need to remember that slippery slope is a very specific fallacy where a hyperbolic chain of events is not backed up by supporting evidence.

If we allow gay marriage people will want to marry their dogs!

While none of us can possibly know where this ends, this is preemptive compliance with privacy invading measures that are practically indistinguishable from the kind of overreaching control desired by malicious parties. This is a much stronger case and even IF this is the last step, there’s no reason to take it in the first place.

It’s morally correct to loudly object at every step, that’s how you fight this.

None. I’m a Millennial, I will burn any corporate loyalty I might’ve had in a heartbeat if you so much as think of crossing me. Do you know how many industries my generation has slaughtered in cold blood?! Watch your step and pray I don’t notice you enough to decide you’re next.

Alright, don’t take this diatribe personally, but it just set off a chain of thoughts for me I’m gonna post now because loudly hating on AI at all times is the morally correct thing. You don’t seem like a person looking to be convinced.

In a capitalist society our only real power is as consumers. I know even that’s not really terribly true these days as they largely dictate the markets at us but it’s all we’ve got. An overwhelmingly negative public sentiment does still erode value and makes it harder to support the illusion, we’ve seen that recently with the DLSS5 stuff. It also fortifies community opinion by creating a unifying front. It can slowly shame susceptible targets into changing their stance and help convince people who may be falling for it when they see their friends and respected individuals take a firm stance. Anyone who says armchair warriors can’t accomplish anything just wants you to shut up so you don’t accomplish anything. Ideally you do more, but what other options do we have against this currently?

I understand how AI works and what its legitimate intended use cases are (largely referring to the current crop of LLMs/GenAI here and not broader ML) and that’s exactly why I don’t use it. People who say that they have figured it out and that their specific use cases are legitimate are practically indistinguishable from those who have drunk the Kool aid. Are you one of those rare people I don’t even fully believe exist who has a valid use case or are you another mark who’s fallen prey to the lying machine that lies, was built off plagiarism, destroys the environment, and was purpose built to devalue labor? One of these things seems slightly more likely than the other.

Fuck AI.