My family shares our Netflix account. We live in different states, but all in the United States.

I used it yesterday and it was fine. But today it was not. I got the "you are not part of this household" message, with the three options being:

1. make your own account
2. make this location the household location
3. I'm traveling

I watch a lot of random stuff, but mostly on different services. So, while it's kind of a bummer to uninstall Netflix, I have plenty of options. It's moreso just depressing that the enshittification has finally hit North America. Will probably see more of this stuff around on the internet soon, as I'm guessing I just got my number pulled before most people (which is doubly depressing since this we've had Netflix since like 2005 or something and were strong advocates of it when linear tv was still dominant - THAT'S CAPITALISM FOR YA!~)

So, I've always been fascinated with things like Star Trek and their idea of Utopia. I get that it's basically just Asimov on Adderall, but even then, there are ideas and hopes there that really make you wonder if/how we'll get there.

And one thing that always stuck with me was the replicators.

If we had replicators, a LOT of stuff in society would change dramatically overnight. The ability to essentially turn energy and matter into whatever you want is the science fantasy political commentary version of relatively sustainable 100% production automation. That's a huge deal.

So, over the past ten to fifteen years that I've finally gone back and watched all the different shows, now that I'm mentally mature enough (not 5 years old or so when some of these were still airing new episodes) and can understand and deeply think about a lot more of it, it really makes me wonder:

Society and technology constantly try to approach the magical barrier of full automation, and even my boomer parents have wondered about what that would look like or how unrealistic or unsustainable would it really be? There's been a lot of discussion about how we could get there and what PEOPLE would do. Would they/we just go around doing art all day?

Well, basically, yeah, we're already pretty close to that already. A ton of people basically just shuffle information to other people that shuffle and massage around information. Whole industries, in fact. Except, that we're still doing it for profit. We need profit to buy stuff, right?

TO BUY -STUFF-

S. T. U. F. F.

So, imagine, for a second, that AI and 3D printing and robotics get super progressed, and somehow we, the people, reclaim the means of production entirely. Except... It's all 99.99% automated.

Nobody makes any money except whoever runs the machines. However, goods are somehow infinite (just bear with me, suspend that disbelief, and stay in the abstract "what if"), and essentially we would have nobody manufacturing or production work - nobody would need to work if they didn't want to, because everything was super easy to get, exactly like if you had a replicator.

But wait a minute, you say, there has to be some sort of financial support or movement of money around for this to work, right? Otherwise it's basically communism!

Government takes power of production, actually listens to the people, money doesn't mean much, UBI, and people just find meaning through the stuff we already actually want to do: make music, go to parties, socialize, science, write books, make videogames, innovate, or just get yolked af 24/7.

The thing that's limiting us from ever making this jump will be capitalism. It won't be science, it won't be war, it won't be famine, and it won't be religion. It'll be the people in power, disgustingly rich, at the top, utilizing that existing and well utilized unlimited power to try to seek more power against the very direction that everybody else, regardless of politics or creed actually wants. It'll be the devs of this site being required by society's ever increasing cost of living absorbing all their free time and energy and money just to sustain it rather than develop it, and that's not coincidence.

So, to finally get to my point, the "shower thought", and the punchline of all of this:

The closer we get to [perfect automation], the more the government needs to control price and phase out capitalism and move towards mixed socialism.

Because, as workers become so efficient because of technology and less workers are needed for the same work, the value of an amount of work goes down. Yet, in capitalism, the price goes up because of consolidation - if you only need one person to control your factory, that job is in high demand, you can pay really low and nobody has any money and still needs those goods, and the goods/services cost so little to produce so the owner makes tons of money.

Theoretically there's competition, but because of how capitalism works, eventually there's a threshold of buy-in to compete that most people cannot get to and you end up with cutthroat, profit maximizing, zero ethics industries. And so you have to be as powerful or more to do anything about these companies.

Which is where the government is supposed to step in (when ethics or laws or whatever are broken), but they do less and less since the extreme elite basically control everything, including the government, in pure self interest, which, we've defined above to be explicitly against any movement towards "utopia".

So the real question then, is, if the "overlords" (be it real people/puppet-masters, an unintentional conglomerate of unconnected oligarchs, or even an emergent reflection of our own human idiocy) cannot be controlled by us because WE are being controlled, or the government cannot control them because THEY are being controlled... Then how do we get past this limitation and prevent it in the future?

If I've learned anything from egoistical professors in the past, it's that the first step to fixing a problem is admitting there's a problem, and the second step is identifying the problem.

We all know something is wrong, we just can't seem to all agree on what it is, exactly. We know that prices are way too high, basically none of us have enough stuff, and we have to all suffer from Stockholm Syndrome in our jobs to continue getting better and continue working to pay for the things that we ACTUALLY want. Sure, there are those whose stars aligned and it works for them, that's great, but, what about everybody else? That's not a system that serves us all. We know that something is wrong.

Our level of technology, there's literally no reason that anybody in the world should go hungry, die from easy to treat problems, not have running water or decent infrastructure, or not have the bottom level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs covered (physiological: shelter, excretion, food, water, warmth, clothing, sleep, air) - except capitalism. Lecherous levels of capitalism prevent basically anything good happening anymore.

I gotta try to end this rant somehow because now I'm tired and this is getting repetitive.

The world needs more technology and less capitalism and more better education. Ownership needs to be more limited, we need to work to provide better safety nets for people in society, and the road to all of this is a complete rehaul of public education. Standardize it, fund it way way better, stop stripping citizens of their rights, the government only exists to help the people, profit is not the only road to innovation and does not lead to prosperity, teach empathy and philosophy and anthropology, make it k-18, all tax supported, and instead of training soldiers, train engineers, inventors, scientists, teachers, creators, and most of all, train people how to be good people. Being a good person is not hard, but learning to be one is and the same way we're taught that 2+2=4, we should be taught that people with heritage nearer to the equator have longer and thinner fingers arms and legs and torsos and have more melanin, and that skin color is just a temporary adaptation by animals of the human race to protect ourselves from ionizing radiation from the increased amount of sun, and that everybody came from Africa, and nobody actually knows how to define biological gender, and that the scientific method is only a hundred years old, and we are ALL primates, and that different people have slight genetic predispositions to subtle differences, that being overweight is almost ALWAYS a physical manifestation of really fucking bad mental health, that everybody WANTS to work, that nobody laziness doesn't exist, that emotions and logic are separately valid but also intertwined and both can be seemingly directly opposed and both be correct, that two people arguing can both be correct and both be wrong, that everybody has real struggles that you don't know about and may never understand, and that, yes, you should ALWAYS follow your dreams because life is too damn short to not, that haters will always hate because that is their very real problem with themselves and it's really really sad, and that no matter what anybody tells you, you ARE worth loving and it's never too late to change your mind and do better.

I don't know why, but I believe that this world has a future so full of hope, so full of peace and beauty... If we are capable of fucking it up as bad as the history books have shown us, we are capable fixing it. Maybe not in our lifetimes, and that's sad. But at least we're not rocks. I'm happy I'm not a rock, because a rock is just a rock, and does not feel or think or see or love or hate or do the things we get to do. Life and consciousness are gifts so rare in the entire universe; every second you're allowed by fate the ability to ponder yourself pondering life and conciousness is an actual priceless treasure. Once you're dead, no amount of money or gold or number of horses or votes or gallons of oil or diamonds can give you that again. How many seconds did it take you to read this? An actual inconceivable amount of value, yet you got this far because you want better.

Seriously, if you read this far and you remember even one thing from any of this, just remember that life is short but the race is long, and in the end, it was only with yourself. And please, try to forgive yourself - past you and future you will appreciate it.

First off, tons of people adopted the name and have accepted the existing and earned elitism that goes along with the name.

Personal computers ARE a superior platform and the users ARE and SHOULD be elitist about it for very good reasons: they pay like 10x more. Forcing that image of elite to the forefront all but ensures that the idea that if you spend more you should get more. And in a time where microtransactions and other incredibly abusive and predatory industry practices are taking advantage of gamers without serving them actually good content is on an alarmingly fast rising trend that's set to be the redefinition of gaming VERY SOON, we all need to be fighting for better quality of content, and let the undercutting that brings down price happen later, which is an unfortunate series of truths.

"PC Master Race" is attractive to those who want more and feel good about it, and it's out there. Whether or not we change the name here on Lemmy, is not going to affect that meme. I'm all for coming up with new names, but, unless there are actual fascist behaviors emerging or being actually attracted to the communities and platforms, I very seriously doubt PCMR is going anywhere, anytime soon.

EDIT:
Also, I want to add that, Linux people are even moreso pcmr than most pcmr and nobody thinks they're actual Nazis. Largely people recognize them as mostly power users, which, in the gaming space, often pc users ARE.

The difference is that, Linux users, and pc users in general, WANT you to join us because it makes us ALL stronger. Nazism and fascism is... exclusionary, but console wars stuff is about as serious as sports teams being angry at each other. And even then, pcmr is about deliberance and technology and intelligence, even going as far as to self-depricate if elitism gets too pretentious:

Getting too full of yourself? Blindly following others? Spending tons of money and getting nothing for it? You must be: PCMR!!

Because at the end of the day, people just wanna play video games, and you buy what you can buy, and console peasants and PCMR are still eclipsed by mobile games, the true dregs of gaming society. 🙃

Home video game consoles have numbered generations.
NES was the third.
We're currently in the 9th generation.
Each generation lasts roughly about 6 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_video_game_console_generations

Is your favorite generation the one from when you first played games? Or is that unrelated and coincidental?

Is there a correlation with strength of a generation and society's financial state (2009 recession's effect on the 7th gen)?

I'm an aspiring developer and trying to answer the age old question of: Are games getting worse? In what aspects yes or no?

They absolutely are getting better audio&video fidelity, but that doesn't mean much to, at least me, if the music is less memorable, the bugs are all patched, everything is over-monetized games as a service, all the assets are generic, and it's all hyper-derivative remakes of remakes. I get that "fun is fun", but once you've played so many games, you look back at games from 2001 and wonder why the only innovations we have are mantling, $20 hats, and Microsoft is buying everything.

There are absolutely good games right now, on the way to par with number of good games of most previous generations. So why does it still feel like everybody I talk to, regardless of age, feels like there's an itch that hasn't been scratched in ages? And, why is this a contentious issue? Surely, there's a measurable way to debate seemingly subjective opinion of where we are.

Game devs: We see you guys working your asses off with very little appreciation. This isn't about you guys, as much as it's about risks (or lack of) that the industry takes as a whole.

Historically, porn has organically decided which platform or formats become dominant. It's incredibly anti-censorship, but walks many fine lines.

As Reddit now and tomorrow reveals more weaknesses, where will the OnlyFans creators, porn posters, and all those grassroots porn communities go? The creators need to make money by showing to a large and interested user base. The users need lots of content to choose from and be fed constantly, with very few hindrances between them and their...goals. Many of the niches actually have respectful and healthy communities, too. Those people deserve an easy to use platform, just as much as people that want to look at cats, some of those groups, arguably more.

The thought of how to pose this to the Fediverse, now, has been on my mind for weeks:

Can the fediverse rise to the task? Does it even want to? Should it?

Personally, I think it should absolutely try, but I'm not sure it can do so without several deep strides in tech and development. I'm aware this is a hot af take, but it's undeniable that the internet IS for porn, and denying that would be a huge opportunity loss for inevitably winning this popularity context.