The result for the people who block them is still the same, though: they no longer see the troll garbage.

I look at it this way: I don’t let in the crazy person on the street screaming racist garbage into my house, so I also don’t have to listen to or engage with that person on the internet, either. That doesn’t make my house an “echo chamber.”

For a long time I tried to treat “internet people” with some level of “respect” so to say. That is, I didn’t spend time blocking people and whatnot. But now? Screw em. I don’t have time to listen to nonsense, so if someone tries to come in to a conversation in bad faith, it’s very easy to block and move on.

Or on short-form social media like Bsky or Masto or whatever if someone posts a racist thing. Or a bigoted thing. Block and move on.

Those trolls live off of engagement so just don’t give it to them. And those same trolls are the ones complaining about “echo chambers.” “Waaa, no one wants to listen to my racist nonsense. It’s an echo chamber!” No, you are just a trash human, and no one is obligated to listen to you.

Troy Baker sure is Troy Bakering in this one.

The moment you stop having a sub for something like FF14 (which has no in your face upsell garbage in-game), you turn in to something like LotR: Online (which when I played that briefly was FILLED with windows trying to get you to buy gold or other nonsense).

You pay a sub so the servers stay online. So the writers/coders/management get paid. In the case of FF14, so the game can continue being great.

Another problem is they ruined their own search with AI.

Kicked themselves right in the nuts.

Only used by rednecks in their garbage pickup truck who want to blind everyone on the road.

Oh nice. I’ll take some time to read that today.

Not really.

Have you spent any time there?

That’s addressed in the blog post. She was saying it was currently 5TB and growing. So anyone wanting to set up a server would need to pay for that space, and that’s not cheap.

I hadn’t used my twitter account in over a year, but today finally deleted all my posts and disabled the account.

I had it for 16 years and thought it’d feel different, but I’ve been so far away from it now I really had no emotions to shutting it down. It was easy, and now I have no ties to that garbage any more.

So did the Pixelfed app just never materialize? It seems like all work shifted over to this Loops app.

You can’t say anything bad or joke about him. He’s god around these parts.

A lot of these people will probably also say “billionaires shouldn’t exist” but for Gabe he’s “our” billionaire so it’s fine.

“I was just stumped,” Newell said, sipping a drink on one of his many yachts. “Maybe I’ll get unstumped with my next yacht purchase.”

Overhearing the conversation, George RR Martin, sitting on a pile of money, quipped, “Yes, and I am thiiiis close to finishing the next book.”

They are big scared of Bluesky and their custom feeds feature.

Sure, but what percentage of users are bots on twitter at this point?

I read an article today about these newer social media apps, and they mentioned that Masto is focusing now on quote posts among other features, so that may be coming soon.

The CEO of Bluesky just posted they hit 17M users today after hitting 16M in the last 24 hours.

The juice is juicin’.

A couple of those items have at least been addressed to varying degrees now.

There’s definitely a screen to show you “who to follow” now, and an Explore tab to show popular posts of the day.

Not saying that solves all the problems, but at least they have made some strides in the last couple of years.

I think they described some basic-ish stuff you’d get if you subbed, like longer video uploads. There were a couple of perks that I don’t remember off the top of my head.

And that may not be the only revenue stream in the end. They may still get financing from somewhere else, which certainly has its issues. But at least trying to figure out something while they are relatively small is probably a better approach than waiting until the walls are falling down and then scrambling.

For FFXIV, specifically, if you are looking to add some friends I’d say start by hanging out one of the three starting cities (Gridania, Limsa, Ul’Dah) near the Aetherytes. Often people are just hanging and chatting some there. Limsa, on my server at least, seems to just be filled with people all the time hanging out. And you may even see some open calls for people to join Free Companies (Guilds). Those people are actively looking for new blood, so you could start up a discussion with them and see if their group is something you’d like to join. By doing so you may be able to get several friends pretty quick that way. Just remember that you owe nothing to those folks, and if the free company vibe doesn’t feel right once you get in, then bounce.

But commenting on someone’s look is fine, too! People work hard to collect or craft certain pieces of gear and dye them to make their character the way they want so if you notice something cool chances are they will be happy to talk about it.

There was one time last year during a Live Letter (this is a live streamed event the producers of the game do a few times a year) I went to Limsa and said to anyone who could hear it that I’d be “over by [a specific bench] to discuss the Live Letter” and lots of people I didn’t know gathered around and we all had a fun chat about the event as it streamed.

Or even if you have questions, say them out loud in a crowded space and chances are someone will help. FF14 is notorious for people NOT being trash, so most often you’ll find helpers before finding jerks.

And I promise that you can’t out-weirdo the weirdos that run around pretty much any game, so try to not worry about that.