proxy.png
[Hide] (4.7MB, 2000x1480) I feel the desire to reply to some things I have read on https://icum.to/ Unfortunately, I have a full-time job and adult responsibilities to attend to as well, but I’ll go ahead and get some of my thoughts out now.
On Meat;
Eating purely vegan is a luxury we are only afforded by virtue of living in modern times. Yes, you can supplement and be (mostly) healthy, but this is to match what eating a balanced meat and vegetable diet will already do without needing supplements that we have to produce with measured, modern science. Otherwise, you are missing key nutrients that are fairly difficult to source (again, without modern easily accessible supplements). Also, we absorb meat protein significantly more efficiently than we do any kind of plant protein. And don’t hit me with that “if you want to eat meat then raise the cattle yourself and kill it” bullshit, be fucking for real. This hasn’t been the case since our species switched to building agrarian societies. I do however think you should be *okay* doing this (killing the animal) if you are a meat eater, and that the processes therein should not be hidden from the layman. This should be entirely transparent, even to children. I think the fact we don’t operate this way as a society speaks volumes to how we want people to perceive things (i.e., behind a veil) but that’s another tangent. Carnivore diet “people” are retarded, we never were and never will be carnivores. We are omnivores and operate best in this state.
Personally, I shop from my local co-op that has a meat department which sources everything from local farms. I can track exactly where it came from, how it was treated and how it was slaughtered. It costs a decent bit more than something like Wal-Mart but I think that’s a worthwhile trade-off. Also, it tastes way, way better. I believe you can taste when something has had evil done unto it. That is my schizo-statement of the day.
On Technology;
Myself and one or two of my friends have tried the whole “Let’s switch to [insert FOSS alternative to popular chatting software] so our friends can chat securely!” thing. It doesn’t work. It never, ever works and it’s never going to work. The internet is no longer by and for people who may be so inclined to install or tinker or learn. People do not want to do these things. They want to talk to their friends, their family, etc. and they are going to use whatever those people use. Inevitably, that is going to be the most accessible, easy to use thing. What WILL change is these services eventually erode, they get more boisterous with advertisements, they slow down, and just generally become shit. These are things that 90% of people DO notice (the other 10% stay behind and populate the old platforms like a ghost town. “I’m used to it!” is something I often hear, specifically with Facebook). These are things that allow up-and-comers to take market share and become the new de-facto social hub. This is exactly what happened with Discord. Most people used Skype or splintered off into the “nerdier” camps of TeamSpeak and Mumble, etc. prior to this, but Discord was easy to use for normies and had the quality out of the box that would take maintenance time and effort for someone coming from TeamSpeak. I would also like to briefly cover some of the alternatives provided,
- Mastodon: This is the only remotely successful alternative here, while most normies left to Threads (e.g., the exact opposite, but it’s new and easy to use) the more “technical” Twitter users came here. I think it’s fairly active but it’s only those kinds of people.
- Friendica: Barren wasteland. Facebook users are all Boomers and retarded Gen-Xers anyway so those people are locked in for life.
- Pixelfed: Not a single Instagram user I know is going to use this. Uber-normies, band accounts, local restaurants / businesses, etc. are literally never going to switch to this.
- Element: I have an entire rant about Element but tl;dr it’s trying to copy the look of something like Discord but ends up being a buggy mess and you still need to be “tech brained” to resolve certain errors that it throws. Hell, I’ve heard the tech-brained argument about DISCORD too. The underlying tech is fine, but the UX still needs tons of work. And having two clients (Element and Element X) is exactly the kind of shit that confuses the hell out of normies. I’ve found the most success in getting *some* of my friends to use Signal (emphasis on the “some”).
- PeerTube: This one is also moderately successful, but I would argue it serves a different purpose to YouTube (where YouTube really doesn’t encourage embedding to other sites or personal pages anymore, PeerTube suits this use-case very well).
- Aether: Okay Reddit is so shit that I might be tempted to try this one. But again, look at all the shit I just wrote and the fact I’m on this website. There are several things being selected for already that do not encompass the average Reddit user.
“Is the extra 1-7 seconds of convenice is really worth the data collection to you?”
This is either highly disingenuous, or highly unaware of how most normal people think. People have walls against change, and they have ten walls around change that involves any alteration to their existing habits, and one hundred walls when you add extra work. And no, for most people it’s not “1-7 seconds” it’s losing access to the people they want to talk to and having to work to get those people on this new platform with absolutely no value proposition other than some vague idea of “security” because no normie is going to really, genuinely understand what that means to them (or care). Normies, the largest userbase of any of these services, do not think like you and I. Trying to use arguments that may convince someone like us is a fool’s errand.
The nice little bow that wraps all of this together is that people are retarded. They want the easiest thing. If there is not an app for it and their friends aren’t on it, end of discussion. I have had this talk with normies hundreds of times. People don’t care about encryption, they don’t care about their data, they don’t care about ANY OF IT. They can’t even conceptualize it, much less care to. Janice will check Instagram because she wants to see what events are coming up this weekend in her local area and maybe see if Facebook Marketplace has any cool new wooden dressers that she can chalk paint and ruin.
I go out of my way to not actively use these services as much as possible, however I enjoy living my life and talking to people I care about. I enjoy meeting new people, I enjoy doing new things, going to concerts, trying new local restaurants, going to events like concerts or shows, etc. I do as much of this as I can in-person and checking out posters that advertise this kind of stuff but the ground truth is that if you want to really live life and connect with people in the modern world you need to interface with this shit to some degree. You need to be able to balance “Oh yeah I’ll follow your [band/local business/cool person] Insta!” vs. “Um actually Instagram is an evil gay reptilian PSYOP that you should never use also get rid of your phone” and coming across like an actual psychopath. The logical endpoint of what you propose is going full Richard Stallman and proselytizing Free Software everywhere you go… with the difference being that Stallman has the credentials and resume to back up literally everything he says. What do you have? What gives your words credibility to an outsider looking in? Are you actually working to convince people and building the bridge to get them there, or are you just spouting what you believe by way of literal word-vomit in desperate need of proof-reading and calling it a day?
Anyway, that’s enough for now. I will probably write more in reply to the “Convictions” entries, but I have gone well over my lunch break getting this out. Peace.