#it's ruining my industry

[stellaralignment]

I'm having to train a replacement at my IT job (I told them I was leaving before he was hired, and they asked nicely) and genuinely it makes me afraid.

Long story below the break

I'm a software engineering major. I understand I probably have a significantly higher technical knowledge of a lot of things than most people ever should (nobody who isn't getting paid for it should have to deal with windows powershell). And not in an XKCD "most people only know a few command line commands" way but as in "I worked the front lines helping 70 year old professors who never used a computer in their life before covid forced them to teach remotely setup zoom". I am intimately familiar with how little most people know about computers.

But you see, I do have what I consider a basic knowledge that I expect someone to know if they're in tech. Fellow IT workers and programmers just need to know these things to do our jobs effectively.

So, when the guy I'm training searches "Google" on his browser's address bar, clicks on the google link on the google search page, and then pastes the URL he had copied to his clipboard INTO THE GOOGLE SEARCH instead of, ya know, using a web browser normally. I get concerned.

Because, see, it's not even that he's a business or horticulture or any unrelated major who's working IT just to pay for college. Happens all the time with student positions, and we're more than happy to help these guys learn more about tech and help send some more power users into their fields.

No, he is a software engineering major. Just a year behind me. I know what courses he's taken, because I've taken them. He should know better. He's not a bad programmer either, I've seen some of his work. He has written websites from scratch. But cannot navegate a web browser to save his life.

And I realized in that moment, that singular moment, why all those 100 level courses I took that I hated because I fell asleep in them, why they were inportant. Because this knowledge, at least in my university, just isn't being passed down. "Intro to Computing" taught him what a mouse and keyboard are, why a monutor is useful, and gave him a basic cursory glance at the different parts of a PC internally.

But nobody explained to him what a URL is. Or what different parts of a web browser actually do. They jumped straight into code, giving him hardlinks to follow and step by step guides to set everything up, without really explainung what he was doing or why until his dev environment is setup and he's writing code. He can use keyboard shortcuts and command lines like the rest of em. But he doesn't know what the Chrome address bar is, that it's connected directly to google anyways, or that he can put URL's into it to get to websites directly.

Im terrified. That it's even remotely possible that someone who is paid to be giving tech advice to others at a major institution can be missing these key skills.

To be clear, I don't think we're in danger of losing important fundamental tech knowledge yet. There's good learning resources out there and people who are working to expand this knowledge and preserve it. And we should share them with more people. My grandmother enjoyed showing her yarnworking group how to use a pattern database website she'd found, and they're all deepy entrenched in new fun projects using patterns they found on Ravelry.com

But knowing who to trust for information on the internet is crucial for your own and other's safety. And the fact that someone hoping to go into working on the very fabric that underpins the information superhighway doesn't know how to change lanes or read a map? Means who we trust when asking tech questions is even more important, especially with the rising prevelance of "AI" information, which is just wrong. The machine we built to guess how to end sentences makes up lies. Wow. I can't believe my phone autocorrect we trained on stolen books and almost every wrod ever written on the internet without anyone's consent doesn't correctly write a program to pilot a rocket.

Im rambling now. But maybe if you do know what I'm talking about, reach out to someone who could benefit from a little more computer knowledge and show them in a fun way how a web browser works. We all benefit from increased computer literacy.

this can't be true can it

[medicalunprofessional]

never change, man !

[vainvaiheart]

im a little late for mermay

[ladywaterfall]

One of the other ways clothing is steadily getting worse: pants of all kinds are getting thinner and show underwear lines almost as a standard now, even when the lines of the underwear are thin and masked with lace. This wasn´t a problem years back, but now I have to check every pair of dress pants I try on, and even some jeans - JEANS - for underwear lines.

"Just wear seamless underwear-" they're all made of plastic fabrics which aren't good for the bacterial enviroment of the coochie bc they don't breathe. The solution to all fabrics getting thinner and thinner should NOT be "buy bad plastic underwear instead".

[baejax-the-great]

Archive-locking the fics that YOU WROTE and are thus 100% yours to decide what to do with 'hurting people' is so silly tbh. Skill issue on their part. Wish those people could be normal about the amazing fics that writers like you put out & be understanding or at the very least respectful of the choices that writers make about how and where they make their fics available. Especially in light of recent ai training theft and nonsense & all that.

I hope this doesn't sour the fic writing & sharing experience for you too much. I love your writing & think you're very talented & skilled!

There seem to be dual attitudes I'm coming up against recently (and obviously these are not held by everyone, I don't even know that they are held by a majority, but they are certainly held by a plurality).

The first is that authors should be grateful that readers deign to read what they put out there. I think this stems from the "content creation" mentality and the idea that everyone who posts things wants as massive as an audience as possible (for monetization purposes which... isn't a thing in fanfic). I think this mindset also leads to readers demanding that people write specific tropes/pairings/whatever, or threatening basically to take their business elsewhere. "Nobody will read unless you do [X]." 1. Not true and 2. Okay, you weren't my audience.

(I also think authors circulating those posts about how badly they want comments/kudos feeds this mentality of readers doing authors a favor by even clicking on the fic. "Wow, if people are so desperate for attention, then mine must be worth an awful lot!")

Fanfic ain't a business, and I write for myself. Readers choosing to read my work isn't a privilege or an honor they are bestowing upon me (nor are comments for that matter), just as me posting my writing where they can see it isn't a privilege or an honor for them. We are both engaging in hobbies and a love of some media, and sometimes we will overlap and connect and sometimes we won't. Readers aren't reading out of altruism for attention-starved authors, and authors aren't writing out of altruism for content-hungry readers.

And there are those who will read these paragraphs above and think to themselves "wow, what an ungrateful author," and that's exactly the attitude I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, it's delightful and rewarding to receive comments on fics and chat with people about Blorbo and the Situations. But it should be delightful from both sides of the exchange, or why the hell are we doing this? If I'm meant to be grateful for every commenter who jumps into my inbox, then every commenter in my inbox better be grateful for me, and I can tell you right now there is a population who is not. There is a population who sees me as a service provider for their entertainment, and whatever form I take in their brain, it is not shaped like a full person.

This attitude also leads to people thinking that things like lorefm are no big deal. Don't I want to get my work in front of more eyeballs (or ears)? Don't I want to broaden my audience? And once I put my work out there for readers to see, should I be shocked (or express any negative emotions at all) when someone plagiarizes/scrapes it for AI/demands updates rudely/reads it on a monetized youtube channel/binds it and sells it for profit?

The other idea I've been coming up against is almost the opposite of this--that because some readers form attachments to fic, deleting that fic (or even archive-locking it!) is actively harming those readers. Sure, they can't be bothered to hit the download button or get an AO3 account, but that's no reason not to think of these strangers first before doing what I want with my creative output.

Yall, life is ephemeral. There are things we will see and enjoy and never find again for one reason or another, and it's not harm being done to us, it's just the nature of existence. Having an emotional reaction to something does not give you any sort of ownership over that thing. Artists are allowed to change their minds about whether they want that art in the wild, particularly given that it's free. Maybe it's because I utilize the library a lot, but reading a book and then losing access to that book is not a crime against you, it's just a normal thing that happens. If you read something and it means that much to you, there are ways to avoid losing it (download it).

Seeing this particular attitude extend out to "not making your fic available for as many people to read as possible is harming them" is beyond bizarre. If I woke up tomorrow and deleted everything I have ever written, there would still be thousands upon thousands upon thousands of beautiful, emotional, meaningful fics out there for people to read. They would lack for nothing. Would some people be upset? Probably. Would I be hurting them? No, not really.

Sometimes people have negative emotions because of our actions, but that doesn't mean we did anything to them. This is one of those times.

Lastly, this AI and everything else bullshit really has taken a toll on my enthusiasm for posting my work. It's one thing for companies to try to pillage every thought, every word, every stroke of a pen or paintbrush to enrich themselves while actively making the planet an unbearable and inhospitable place to live, it's another when fellow fans are telling you that "Whelp that's just life, what did you expect, give us your content anyway or you're a bad person and if you complain, then I'll be taking my business elsewhere, you sensitive, entitled creative, lol."

[plixiedust]

Tagging my interests on this post so I can have more fandom mutuals >_< teehe!!!

(There’s way more I need to add I might make a part 2?)

[highspeedinterconnect]

this week has been fucking awful I just wanna lay down somewhere quiet w my gf and cats. holy shit

[godofstars]

I JUST GOT A CALL SAYING I GOT THE JOB IVE BEEN DYING TO GET

[soundsofastar]

rant ab the tech industry in the tags read if u want

[that-gay-jedi]

Please watch and enjoy this video regardless of whether you like/engage with cowboy iconography at all bc it's got something for everyone.

Also addresses uncomfortable truths about race and colonialism in the wild west mythos in a context that made my brain do a little lightbulb pop to like... the ways in which care jobs, professional cleaning, fast food, retail, and call center work fill a similar niche today, in the sense that many PoC find employment there for the same reason many LGBTQ+ people do and both groups experience a gooey mix of (relative) opportunity and blatant exploitation therein.

[leonardcohenofficial]

the way i have to apply to approximately a dozen and a half jobs in the next month

[idkwhatimdoingbutslay]

ADAPTATIONS DO NOT HAVE TO BE BAD ADAPTATIONS DO NOT HAVE TO BE BAD ADAPTATIONS DO NOT HAVE TO BE BAD ADAPTATIONS DO NOT HAVE TO BE BAD ADAPTATIONS DO NOT HAVE TO BE-

ADAPTATIONS ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD ADAPTATIONS ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD ADAPTATIONS ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD ADAPTATIONS ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD ADAPTATIONS ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD ADAPTATIONS ARE NOT INHERENTLY-

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Prologue • Terror • Preacher • Tainted Love • Blasphemous Girl • Close Your Eyes • Absolution • Horrible Pain (within my heart) • Monster • Sick With It • My Beautiful Flower • Diavolina • June 10th • Bright Red Scream • Cosmetic • Sycophant • Epilogue • Beware Of God

Spotify ♪ Bandcamp ♪ YouTube

[thefirstknife]

While I 100% agree that if people aren't having fun they should take a step back/quit, I don't like the "if you're not having fun just go find another game" argument because it's so often used to shut down actual legitimate criticism from people who are otherwise enjoying the game but want genuine problems to be addressed. (I've seen it, for example, when people try to bring up bigotry in games and suggest maybe making some changes to remove it. I always get wary when I see people say it now.)

Oh yeah absolutely. There's real criticism that we have to be able to point out and discuss. A lot of the times people use this for any minor criticism someone has and I agree, that's often a way to shut down the conversation. Criticism in general is supposed to come from a place of love: you love something and you want to see it be better.

Unfortunately, in this case, when the community turns into ONLY negativity and criticism, it's kinda hard to believe they care about the game anymore. If people still had some positive stuff to engage with and were enjoying the game but had issues, then sure. But most of the negativity online right now is just purely rage bait. Bungie apparently has no redeeming qualities, and Destiny is dead. Misinformation is spreading about everything: all devs abandoned Destiny to work on Marathon (claim with no source that's accepted as fact and makes no sense: Destiny is the only game making them money, they can't abandon it before Marathon is out. Like, logically), monetisation is the worst in the industry (I genuinely don't believe that they play other games if they think that Destiny's monetisation is the worst in the industry), Bungie is maliciously banning people for fun (????) but also Bungie isn't banning people enough, Bungie is maliciously making server issues and didn't develop a "fix server" button in their office, game development is easy and Bungie is just lazy and the devs don't want to tell us anything because they're evil, Destiny is falling apart and nobody is playing anymore (just trust me bro), and most recent one which is possibly the most baffling of all - Bungie Foundation is a scam to write off taxes. Yes, that is currently discourse (which apparently gets recycled every year). Bungie Foundation, a charity organisation that's been going on for 13 years and is an independent registered organisation, is a scam. This is where we're at with the community mentality. And there's even more.

When we're at this point, it's truly something else. Like, if they believe conspiracy theories about Bungie and think Bungie is scamming them, maybe they just shouldn't play the game anymore. Why are they still here if they think this is all a scam? I would drop the game if I believed any of this so strongly.

Normal people having criticism and all is perfectly fine however! I did my fair share especially recently about the season pass pricing changes which I called a predatory practice and still believe it is. There's a lot more stuff to complain about while still enjoying the game and not basing your entire online existence and personality on hating Bungie. If they've got nothing else to do besides sitting on twitter shitting on Bungie, maybe it's time to move on.

I've also had my suspicions about the motives for hardcore Bungie hate after the incidents involving transphobic attacks on Bungie devs following the LF showcase, as well as all the crap about Nimbus and their VA. Given the recent developments about the general anti-LGBT+ mentality, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a contingent of people who are focusing on Bungie more than anyone else for how outspoken they are in their support for LGBT+ causes. Like, not to do some big reach or something but it's fairly curious that gamers online are adopting the anti-LGBT+ sentiments while Bungie is aggressively supportive. It just rubs me the wrong way that the one company that's committed to this and has been for years before most other companies jumped on the bandwagon is the one that they're choosing to paint as the worst villain. And the LGBT+ support isn't even all, as Bungie has other initiatives where they actively support women's right, reproductive rights, poc rights, disability rights and so on). I don't know, I've been a part of the gaming community for a long time and while there's been massive changes since the early days (and since gamergate days), the issues of bigotry in gaming remain. It feels particularly suspicious to, out of ALL companies, single out Bungie which invests in charities and progressive causes. Like, in the grand scheme of things, every corpo is robbing me blind, I know that, I have to give money to corpos to live on this Earth, so I at least want to give it to a corpo that considers me to be a human being and funds causes that promote my rights, instead of wanting me dead.

Ironically, all of this weird hate makes it harder to have actual normal criticism. It just gets drowned and lost in the sea of exaggerated bullshit and lies and conspiracies perpetuated by people who just don't seem to like the game anymore. At the end of the day, it's a video game. Whatever criticism we have, if it gets to the point where we just can't handle the state of the game, the best way to show it is to simply stop playing. A deluge of harassment on twitter will not bring about meaningful change nor will it adequately convey our criticism to anyone. If they truly want some changes, they would do this criticism in a way that matters, instead of creating a horde of angry gamers who will latch onto every lie and create a hate bandwagon.

[urban-echoes]

Always wanted to visit Silent Hill? Welcome. 📸 Moscow, one of the abandoned buildings

[age-of-moonknight]

“For Now,” Phases of the Moon Knight (Vol. 1/2024), #4.

Writer: Fabian Nicieza; Penciler and Inker: Moisés Hidalgo; Colorist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo; Letterer: Cory Petit