2022: HOLD MY TEA! šŸµ

Algorithm got the memo that I enjoy writers critiquing other writers

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Maybe this belongs in the ā€œtournament AI cheating preventionā€ thread :thinking:

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Aren’t we all tired of having to go through with the thing.

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Good to see she’s doing better after her health scare last year :heart: long live the Queen!

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So seems the queen is not good at yose.

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Probably not unheard of to some of you, but here’s some quick :popcorn: to get us through Monday:

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It could be a thing, but we should also keep in mind that people prepare a lot for an interview. There are coaches, top tips, paid mentors, polished answers… I wouldn’t consider it so strange to hire the wrong person just because they replied correctly to the ā€œwhich is your biggest weaknessā€ question.

However, this one sounds more like someone trying to steal data. I would think it possible if the employee was a mediocre professional but not when the person makes so many blunders and doesn’t even try to keep up the pretense.

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It seems like a person with different physical characteristics altogether…

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Two weeks ago I impersonated someone at an apartment viewing, because she and her wife were out of town that day, and it is extremely hard to find an okay apartment in Berlin at the moment. You’re lucky to even get invited to a viewing, so if you don’t show up, you’re out.
I’m a pretty bad liar, but it went well. :sweat_smile: They didn’t get it, though.

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Pam, pam, personal stories.

Now with a picture

Went to ophthalmologist. Now I have cat eyes.


Yep, that’s me. I imagined the future would look brighter with pupils like that. But turns out I just can’t see anything. And have a slight headache because of it. On the other hand, now I feel better about my usual vision.

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Well, the original point was illogical, but the fact remains that there are too many games, indie or AAA.
The problem, of course, is not that they are a waste of time to create or to play - who on earth is anyone to dictate that? - but because they are just too many for the consumers.

I mean who here has actually played ALL the games in their Steam library before buying a new one?
Has anyone on the planet managed this?

Are there any ā€œtraditional gamer journalistsā€ anymore?

Can we have him run for our national elections? He might actually win. Seems like a decent chap.

To add to the ā€œ2022! best year vibeā€ I think that two days ago a minister was ousted for being caught on tape admitting giving money to voters to vote for him and was immediately replaced by someone that is caught on video saying that they should ā€œfirmly remindā€ their voters that ā€œthey owe themā€ instead … :melting_face:

Because, plot twist, now you have the apartment :stuck_out_tongue:
Seriously though, wouldn’t it be funny if they got it and then you’d have had to show up for all the other typical obligations and signings?

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Not really, when you consider how many target markets they have yet to tap.

Also, TV shows are too many, movies etc, but it’s so predictable for mainstream media to ā€œattackā€ video games…

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Yes?.. Obviously?.. There’s even dedicated forums out there?..
Weird thing to be so sure about.

I’d say there are too many of those as well.
There is an Aesop myth about the fox that knew 100 ways to escape the hunting dogs, but she spent too much time prondering which one to choose and by then the dogs caught the fox.

Doesn’t this remind you the situation where now we have a multitude of streaming platforms for movies, series and music, yet quite a lot of people declare to be bored?

It reminds me of that old Beavis and Butthead ā€œquoteā€ where someone mentioned that there were like 250 TV channels and one of them said ā€œhey, imagine if one of them didn’t suck?ā€

It is kind of a problem … a weird problem, but it is there.

Like what?

Well, most people have not specifically bought each and every game.
Gifts, bundles and ā€œok, this has a massive discount, let’s buy this and maybe try this laterā€ really bloats everyone’s library.
Missing the refund deadline is also a thing (I have a couple that have issues with handling or massive bugs, but it is too late to refund).

I actually went and checked and my ā€œfinishedā€ folder is the same size as the ā€œnot really interestingā€ folder.

If there are people that do go and play through all their games for some ā€œbragging rightsā€ sort of thing, I can believe that. I had a friend that when I told him that it was an ā€œeaster eggā€ he actually sat and clicked ā€œrerollā€ 99999 times just to get perfect 18 attributes on Temple of Elemental Evil.

But I was thinking normal every day people.

If there is a forum of dedicated people that have finished all their games in their Steam library, I want to go there, as a pilgrimage and see what’s up. Please share :slight_smile:

Yes, many :roll_eyes:

Absolutely not :wink:

(but they’re so easy to find them really, so if you haven’t been there they’re not up your alley, and that doesn’t equal obscure you know…)

It is an insidious problem, that it is not really classified as one yet, so I guess that makes sense.

I’ll give you two examples.

example a)
Back in the day there were few books in my house, among them an encyclopedia. No video games, TV was just for a couple of kids shows and the rest of the winter days/nights were empty.
So, I read the encyclopedia, saw the maps and the pictures, came up with stories and blah blah blah.

People would classify this today as mind-numbingly boring, what else was there to do? It was either study more for school or that.
As a result I have forgotten more things that most people nowadays ever even come close to learning.

But I am not reading the encyclopedia anymore. Haven’t touched it in 20+ years.
Too many things to do, too many obligations and, in the occasional free time, too many disctractions, books, hobbies, games etc.
Too many choices.

Yet the benefits of the few choices I had growing up, remain.
Do young people even get near an encyclopedia now? Do they even still exist? Most people say that ā€œhey, who cares, I can google everythingā€, but they forget that in order to google anything, you have to know something first. :wink:

All the people I know now raise their children with tablets, phones, TVs, games, hobbies, activities.
The poor little fellows hardly even have the time to sit on a couch and do nothing and let the imagination fly or read a book or make up their own game or story.
Too many choices.

example b)

For the people old enough to remember the dial-up internet connections, do you remember how patiently we waited for the web-pages to load for 10+seconds and how we would happily let the computer open during the night, just for LimeWire to find a couple of seeds and finally finish in 15hours that obscure 5megabyte mp3 that we wanted to listen to?

Now, even for us, if the data does not get downloaded immediately, if the video is buffering or if the response time in an online game is sub-par, we get aggravated. Younger people get outright frustrated and who can blame them, even if we have become attached to the speed of availability?

Ease of access and over-abundance of choices seems like a ā€œno brainerā€ of a ā€œgreat leap forwardā€ and ā€œpositive resultā€, but that’s just superficial. If I’ve learned something is that there is nothing that doesn’t come with a trade-off.

This over-abundance is, of course, a very recent thing and I do not know if it has been studied or not (apart from the ā€œattention spanā€ perspective and younger people getting hooked up on phones and apps, I am not talking about that aspect), but sooner or later it is going to be recognised as a severe problem. However it might be too way ahead for 2022, to stay in topic.

I’d say give it a dozen years … if things haven’t collapsed, that is.

I’ll need some proof of that, because I honestly think that it is incredible.
Unless we are talking about instances of accounts with a few games, then there is almost no way someone hasn’t at least bought or got gifted a bundle which contains some games you do not like nor intend to play.

I actually cannot find a forum of people that have finished all their steam games and I honestly would like to visit that place.

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Maybe the cake resigned …

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The late, great Neil Postman wrote a tremendous groundbreaking book on this subject, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). I read it in one day, almost in one sitting.

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If anything, I think the real problem is not the amount, but how hard it is to find the good stuff. Same goes for TV series, movies, music, etc.

I love playing games made by small indie companies, but it’s so hard to find the good ones. Meanwhile, Steam keeps recommending things like Red Dead or Cyberpunk to me: I know those exist, I’m not interested…

Same with Spotify or YouTube, its recommended songs / videos are always garbage for me (so much so that I’ve hidden the recommendation on YouTube).

We’re living in an age where software should be exceptionally good at finding things that you like, since providers like Steam, Spotify or YouTube know basically everything about what you like. But I expect that the business model doesn’t allow for such great recommendations. If someone rich wishes that their product is seen by more people, and pays a handsome amount for it, then it gets recommended to you, whether you like it or not.

I did check just now. There’s 8 games in my library that I haven’t played because my hardware doesn’t meet the requirements, but that I bought in a sale thinking that I’ll get a good PC sooner or later to play them. If I had that PC already, I would play each of those right now.

There’s Civ V and VI that I haven’t found the time to try yet, but that I surely am interested in; I’m afraid that I will spend three weeks without doing anything else when I start those. Then there’s one unplayed Zachtronics game that I want to play when I’m in the mood for good puzzles, and there’s Left 4 Dead 2 that I was going to play with friends at some point, but we never got around to doing so.

Other than that, I’ve basically played all games in my library.

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