I mean Jim Jones was pretty damn effective at convincing a large group of people to commit mass suicide. If he’d been ineffective, he’d have been one of the thousands of failed cult leaders you and I have never heard of. Similarly, if Hitler had been ineffective, it wouldn’t have takes the combined forces of half the world to fight him.

Are you having a stroke?

I mean I agree with this part. That’s why I’m commenting on this site and not the other one, but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend the other one doesn’t exist and that we don’t care what’s going on there. I agree that everyone should move here, but nevertheless, most of them aren’t, and I cannot control that. The fact is that most people are not deep enough into the internet to make a pros and cons list of social media sites. They just use what other people use, or what pops up first on Google. We are neither of those things, and until we are, I have a vested interest in what happens at the other place.

Not in a way that’s accessible to casual audiences. You can watch literally any show, and chances are there’s a sub where you can go talk about it. That was not the case 10 years ago. Unless your show had a cult following, the only people to talk about it with were people you knew. I hope that someday we can turn this site into the same kind of thing, but we aint there yet.

I mean we don’t have a /c/ for that yet, so might as well be here.

I am so tired of this sentiment. You’re not wrong about the corporate stuff, but blaming people for wanting it to get better serves no purpose. For all its flaws, Reddit had something that no other site, not even this one, has been able to remotely replicate. I didn’t use the site for news, politics, memes, or mindless scrolling. I used it because it was literally the only place to discuss niche topics and interests.

Whether we like it or not, it’s the only place where a lot of these niche communities exist. Users that were here since Digg will find a new home, but the one who can barely use a Macbook may not. And I’m all for helping as many of those communities migrate, but the truth is that for many communities, especially the ones less technically inclined, the death of Reddit means the death of that community, and that’s really fucking sad.

I agree with your examples, all of which have been heavily criticized for anti-consumer behavior, particularly Disney and Netflix, so I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. Just because Netflix does it, doesn’t make it okay for Nintendo to do it. Digital media companies have strong incentive to practice anti-consumer behavior, so public outcry is important to counterbalance that.

I don’t think the Ford and Apple examples apply, as these companies make primarily physical products. Both of these companies really do want you to use their products for two reasons:

• Most of their marketing is literally just people seeing their products being used.

• Cars wear out with usage, as do computers, so the more you use their products, the sooner you’ll buy a new one.

Digital media is unique in that it’s not highly visible and using it more doesn’t make it degrade.

From the data, it looks like average lengths have gone down since about 2004, so this year may just be an anomaly.

For me, it just came down to how unintuitive and slow Windows’s desktop environment is. Setting up the most basic customizations requires going through like 15 sub-menus or dealing with the registry. Also, GNOME and KDE are just so much prettier than Windows’s desktop environment.

You’re coming dangerously close to re-inventing the kilt

This is the real answer. It’s easy to forget that for most people who are famous for their unusual political views, most of their overall content has nothing to do with that. There’s something about politics that can turn even the most open-minded of individuals into raging idealogues.

It’s hilarious to me that Joe Rogan is now known for his like 3 conservative views when I mostly remember him as the guy who hosted Fear Factor, did every drug known to man, interviewed scientists in every field out there, and did that really popular interview with Bernie Sanders a couple years ago.

The point is that every hobby and niche interest has someone who gets way too hung up on one particular issue and devotes way too much time to talking about it, dragging the whole community down with them.

I feel like it’s more about distribution of responsibility. If you have a king, he’s either a good king and runs things well, or a bad king and runs things poorly. A King’s success is generally measured by the quality of his kingdom, which is at least somewhat tied to the wellbeing of subjects.

In a corporation, even if you have a comparitively “good” CEO, he’s still answerable to the shareholders, and thus obligated to raise the stock value by any means necessary, a factor which is not necessarily dependent on the wellbeing of his employees.