I mean… pretty much anything that gets hyped. For me, hype is one of the most reliable signals that I’m not going to be into something. That said, I’ll admit that the hype itself often keeps me from even giving things a fair chance. So it’s not that I’ve disliked everything that’s been hyped, but more that the ones I did try and didn’t enjoy made me even less likely to bother with the rest.
This is me in a nutshell. The more people that tell me to participate in any thing, the less likely i am to try it. Still haven’t watched Tiger King, for example.
Pick-up trucks for anyone that’s not a farmer, construction worker or dirtbike rider.
They are so dumb and impractical for normal driving. I don’t get it.
I believe there was some tax-benefit for them in the US at some point…? Then it makes a tiny bit if sense i guess.
But what’s even dumber: cross-overs. Worst of both worlds.
I love my small car but it’s getting impossible to drive anymore when the LED headlights of these trucks are literally at my eye level blinding everything. They are a danger and the only way out it seems is to join them and get above the lights.
I agree with pick ups. The issue has been that bigger pick ups are generally exempt from fuel efficiency mandates resulting in manufacturers making bigger and bigger pick ups. They don’t make compact pick ups anymore. Add in America has some fascination with owning trucks. I’m actually gonna disagree on crossovers. For most people I agree they’re impractical. But they’re better than SUVs and pick ups. Most people actually need a mini van or wagon but we just stopped making those
I would go further and say they are stupid for everything. Oh i need it to haul stuff. And you didn’t get a bus? Are you stupid?
Part of it was EPA regulations fucking up small trucks. Another part is that they’re safer for the occupants, deadlier for everyone else. And then there’s general machismo.
Nowadays I use my pickup for work, but when I bought it, it was simply for fun - not for any practical reason. There’s not much more to it. They look cool, they’re fun to drive, and they make you feel like you’re operating a machine, not just something meant to get you from point A to point B.
You’re just not the kind of person who’s into that - and that’s fine. You probably aren’t into playing the flute either, but I doubt you’d say you “don’t get it” or that it’s dumb.
feel like you’re operating a machine
Funny because I’m assuming your truck has an automatic transmission. Try getting a very cheap, small car with manual transmission and tell me what feels more like driving a machine to you 😏 . The cheaper the better, because all those electronic aids like lane assist, traction control, adaptive cruise control, etc are just disconnecting you from the actual metal.
I rented a small base model Peugeot 108 when on holiday on Crete a few weeks back. Nothing more exhilarating than taking that go-kart onto a mountain road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl3a-LWS_kE
But honestly, thanks for the comment! I’m happy to learn why people like them so much!
I’m assuming your truck has an automatic transmission
It’s almost 20 years old and doesn’t have automatic anything.
Then I haven’t said anything, but you’re also not the person I was writing about 😉
Playing the flute doesn‘t kill people and endanger others :)
As a non- flute player, other people playing the flute improves my life. Non-essential trucks take up more space on the road and hurt the environment more than alternatives, for absolutely no reason.
But this thread wasn’t about what you feel morally superior about compared to others, so I’m not sure what your reply has to do with anything I just said. We’re discussing not understanding the hype around something and that’s what I was responding to.
This thread also isn’t about justifying hyped activities. I responded to your comment, like you responded to the comment before yours.
Explanation is not excuse.
What about excuse? I haven’t edited my comment, and I didn’t mention excuses. Did you reply to the wrong comment? Or do you think justifications and excuses are the same thing?
It’s a saying - it just rhymes better than “explanation is not justifying.” You know what I meant. I gave an explanation for why some people do what they do, and you responded as if I were justifying it, which I wasn’t.
Had you used the word excuse, that would at least suggest I acknowledge something is bad but am still okay with it - which would be closer to how I actually feel about it. But saying I’m justifying it implies I think it’s right, reasonable, or morally acceptable, which completely misrepresents both my view and the intention of my post.
I believe there was some tax-benefit for them in the US at some point…? Then it makes a tiny bit if sense i guess.
It’s even stupider than you think. California made a rule requiring that auto makers transition to making EVs, but exempted certain heavy vehicles from the transition, and auto makers responded by turning every single car into a heavy exempted vehicle. Twenty years of marketing later and now you can’t convince an American to buy a reasonably-sized car, which is why crossovers are a thing.
This is basically Florida. Tons of massive trucks on the roads, all driven by assholes that I will judge absolutely by their truck alone.
Locking as the community moved, see you at !casualconversation@piefed.social
Tik Tok. It’s just vine but no one is funny. How many videos of people just driving their cars with some nonsense text overlaid, like, how many hundreds of that are needed? How are you going to stand out? It’s just a way for the uncreative to take part in creativity. Which they aren’t.
The funny ones are all just somebody using the sound from a funny skit but acting it out themselves.
I’m so funny, I acted out this funny skit somebody else made
Just like the fast food thing, TikTok is literally addictive. It’s the new breed of addictive tech. It’s the fentanyl of tech.
The last of us games, pretty generic trope filled badly paced story. And just super meh gameplay that feels like you are walking through molasses.
If the show is anything to go by, TLoU is horrifically fascist and nihilistic. The main writer is a zionist with some pretty disgusting views and his politics seep through everything in the show.
Haha I have a TLOU tattoo. Hate the 2nd game though
Was it too “woke” for you?
Too miserable and not credible IMO
Life is strange. Just pure shit.
i mean it was intended to be a slow paced game as a counterpart to their other franchise Uncharted which was more arcadey and fast paced.
Also to put into perspective, the first TLOU is as old now as Deus Ex was when TLOU released, which speaks of the quality of TLOU since it holds it’s weight technically to this day.
I finally started playing the first game on PC a few days ago… It’s not great. Story is whatever I dont really care. The actual gameplay itself is just…not fun? Clunky and imprecise.
I had the same problem with red dead 2. I don’t have the attention span to care about the characters or the story so I need solid gameplay to keep me hooked and it just wasn’t satisfying to play for the most part. Felt like I was suggesting movement controls rather than actually controlling my character. The guns all felt meh. It’s got some fun mechanics, but the bounty system was horrendous and the survival aspect is non-existent.
I have goopy goblin gamer brain as some call it. I need the gameplay to be excellent as I do not care about graphics or story. So many games have amazing graphics and legendary stories but the gameplay itself just isn’t fun enough for me to finish it.
Lol no wonder the game industry is a slop fest nowadays.
Not really sure how to interpret your comment in response to mine tbh. Are you talking about games with great graphics and dogshit gameplay or me as the problem player?c
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Hyper space. Just no. Existence is chaotic enough without adding uppers into the mix.
Vinyl records.
If you’re rejecting online music streaming and wanting music in physical form, CDs look a lot more practical. CDs are smaller, less delicate, and don’t physically degrade every time you play them. CD playback hardware needs essentially zero maintenance and is crazy cheap still.
Could it be for nostalgia? But I’ve seen people younger than peak vinyl get into music on records. They wouldn’t have any nostalgia for vinyl.
Is it for the sound quality? But I’ve seen chiptune albums available on records! It would be truer to the music to load it onto a real Game Boy or something.
The reason the people choose vinyl is because of its limitations. CD has a larger dynamic range, but because it’s fully digital, producers can abuse that fact and make an extremely loud and dynamically compressed record and the CD will play just fine.
If you tried doing that on vinyl, the needle would fly off the record. So thanks to this physical limitation, people who produce for vinyl are forced to make a quieter, more dynamic record. It’s less fatiguing on the ears, and if you want a louder record, you can simply turn up the volume.
I don’t have room for any sort of physical media. Yeah, I have some legacy tech I occasionally fuck with, and my sound system parts are from the 70s, 80s, 90s and up, but those parts do their job.
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Thank you for being the voice of reason.
This is untrue. CD’s have a much larger dynamic range; 96dB compared to ~70dB, depending on how the record was pressed.
The reason why people say vinyl is more dynamic than CD is because producers are forced to make vinyl records more dynamic, so that the needle doesn’t fly off the record. With CDs there’s no such limitation, allowing people to make the album as loud and dynamically compressed as they like.
Edit: I should also mention that the 44.1kHz sampling rate of a CD is enough to produce a perfect analog waveform all the way up to 22.05kHz, which as you know is beyond the limit of human hearing. If produced correctly, a CD will always sound better than vinyl. Problem is that CDs often aren’t produced properly.
Because you don’t have to factor in needle skipping, you can produce a loud record that distorts, either because you want to be the loudest song in the listener’s music collection, or that you simply don’t know/don’t care about proper dynamics.
The distorted bass you’re talking about is not because of the limitations of CD, but simply because the CD version was not produced/mastered correctly. Like I said, the sampling rate of CDs are high enough to reproduce a perfect analog waveform every time.
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The reason I like vinyl is how slow and deliberate it is compared to other mediums. If I want to play a record I have a limited curated selection which I purchased with a specific use case. These are all played in my living room and are generally slower and relaxing type music. If I want to play a record I will need to start at the beginning and typically commit to hearing the entire thing in its entirety. Each side I have to choose to continue which slows down the process. I can’t skip ahead to the songs I like and it doesn’t automatically play anything once its done. Its slow and has a large physical object which I enjoy.
If I used CDs I could skip to whatever song I like or have it automatically play the next CD. With a multi-disc changer I wouldn’t have to choose what I want to hear each time. I have CDs which I use in my car for a different use case which is to listen to when the radio is being annoying.
This exactly.
It’s the ceremonial steps that precedes the listening experience that adds flavour to the enjoyment.
If I want to just listen music and do other things I just use Apple Music + AirPods/Soundbar, but if I want to listen a certain album and make the experience more active, I use the record player.
My music collection on vinyl is curated since each album involves a higher cost.
There is also my fascination on analog things, I have an automatic turntable and love the orchestra of mechanical sounds from all the internal components.
Edit: Forgot to mention that on streaming platforms sometimes the only version available is a remastered version that was rereleased on CD that fucked the dynamic range during the loudness war or is an edit of the original one.
It’s the ceremonial steps that precedes the listening experience that adds flavour to the enjoyment.
Exactly. Its a ritual for the listening experience. If I had to add up the hours of listening to Vinyl vs streaming, streaming would win hands down. But I love the vinyl when I use it which is usually an experience. We do a lot of vinyl around the holidays since we spend a lot of time in my living room relaxing. Which adds to the experience
I like vinyl for it being big enough to be somewhat like a poster. I’m hoping to eventually gave a vinyl wall when I have my own place
I’m 30 so CDs were well and truly widespread during my formative years so it’s not nostalgia for me
Switch 2
Mario Kart World and that new Donkey Kong game. everything about the Switch 2 looks underwhelming
dr who
Souls games.
Ed Sheeran.
In-N-Out.
Blockchain. I’ve always seen it as a solution looking g for a problem. And I’m a 12+ experienced software developer now.
The only real use for the block chain is tracking stocks to prevent illegal shortselling.
So it will never ever ever get used for that purpose.
Obligatory fuck citadel.
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Meh I think the decentralization is a pretty nice use case actually. It’s great that no one can shut it down and no centralized entity can just decide that your money is gone now (for cryptocurrencies).
Look at Monero. Since it’s almost impossible to track governments are actually trying to ban it but they can’t shut it down because anyone can just spin up a node and there’s nothing any government can do about it except banning it from exchanges. I think that’s pretty neat, although the environmental cost for this technology together with LLMs are absolutely crazy
Oh god, I feel like I’m going to be massacred.
K-pop
Isn’t it basically the same as back when western boybands were popular, just with more internet? I suppose I don’t quite get those, either, but it’s not that hard to figure out why these groups are so appealing to many girls and women.
K-pop is purely about looking pretty. Some of the boy bands looked pretty average but their music was decent.
I mean, there’s more to being effeminate than being really really ridiculously good-looking.
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The comparison with western boys bands makes sense, but it is not very flattering IMO. K-Pop is very competitive as an industry, and the artistic and technical level is miles ahead when compared to a backstreet boys or bands like that. Korean performers are world class, they have badass producers, insane music videos etc…
It’s not my jam at all but I have to admit there’s good shit in there.
That’s the thing, I don’t know
Is it something more than just Korean pop groups? Is it a fetish? This is the most I’ve thought about it honestly because some of the fans just made it nuts.
I worked at a B&N and the calls I would get for exclusive versions… 12 versions of the same album except for some trading card inside or something.
I find it bizarre but I just don’t understand
“fetish” might be a bit much, but I think the somewhat effeminate style of the men in these groups is a very welcome contrast to the kinds of male musicians who are popular with boys+men. They also heavily feature dancing, which is a lot more popular with women than men, too. And it’s probably specifically about korean groups because korea has a large boygroup+girlgroup industry and being east-asian they have a novelty-bonus (dare I say exoticism-bonus?) compared to western groups.
Fetish was the wrong word. Desirable I guess is what I meant to lead with.
You have had the longest conversation with me about k-pop. I get it a little bit more than I ever meant to.
I begrudgingly thank you lol
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There’s good and bad kpop, like there’s good and bad of most genres.
hey, you’re valid… I’m from Korea and it’s crazy seeing how people drool over kpop nowdays. no attention for the actual good music, the korean rock and hip hop and funk and jazz and so on… just the corporate boybands.
It’s the same shit that’s popular in the US. manufactured popularity. we could talk about all the factors about how they pulled it off, but who cares, it’s a bunch of shitty music created by desperate people selling their souls to rapists who prey on modern social isolation to sell empty fantasies to the masses.
that’s the point of the music! you should be proud to dislike it. now go listen to something good, like Jaurim (자우림)
Celebrities
I couldn’t care less about any of them, I don’t understand why people follow them on social media or read gossip about their love lives.
Makes zero sense to me
