Unpopular Opinons

[Malice]

Re: tone tag discussion from earlier in the thread

I think tone tags had the potential to be useful, and in some cases they are, but it's a very flawed system that requires mutual understanding on what the tag abbreviations mean and trust that they aren't lying about the tone they're really trying to convey.

Nobody is going to remember an ever-growing, ever-changing list of tone tag abbreviations, especially if one group might have different meanings assigned to them. Even if you did, there is never going to be a mutual understanding of what some of them actually mean. For example, I have seen people trying to describe what "half-joking" means, and everyone has a different answer. Some tags like that just muddy the water and create subtle social cues that go against the intended use entirely (like how some people use /hj to mean "I mean this seriously but I'm softening the blow so you don't get too upset", kind of like how people end statements with lol or say "lowkey" when expressing feelings/boundaries/opinions.)

The internet also lies. A lot. People have intentionally misused tone tags for joke purposes (using /srs on a joke/sarcastic post). While some people can tell it's a joke, others can't, which waters down the concept of the tags in the first place.

I've also encountered people overusing tags. Like, I'm autistic and sometimes I have trouble figuring out if someone's joking or not over text, but you don't have to use them in every message, especially when it wouldn't make sense to take a message's tone as anything but face value. "Thank you!/gen /pos /nj" just feels condescending and irritating. I've seen this a lot less over the years, but when it first got popularized on social media it was quite an issue.

The original XML tags are a lot better and depending on what spaces you're in they're less likely to suffer from intentional misuse since in my experience people tend to be a bit more mature and less malicious/trolly in forums rather than social media (I think it's because people on forums are more focused on getting a message across, whereas places like Twitter have more of an incentive to joke around because short form posts create a more relaxed culture and it's easy to go viral if you're funny), but the chances are still nonzero.



Since I'm here, my own unpopular opinion would be that people need to either stop filming in public or at the very least angle the phone in a way that won't show people's faces. I don't want to be in the background of your TikTok dance. Other people could potentially be at risk if their face shows up online, like if they're a stalking/abuse victim. I think the modern internet incentivizes sharing personal information wayyyy too much, and it's definitely for data collection purposes. I wish more people would recognize that and think twice before posting their face and real name. It's gotten to a point where people will post photos/videos of other people without their permission and more often than not it's because they want to bully them without saying anything directly to them because they're spineless and have no real lives outside of social media. Even if it's not for bullying purposes, it's still weird because of the lack of consent!

[Lyonid]

I think AAA video games are actually great and important, and remaking games is a fine thing to do. The pursuit of higher fidelity was always viewed as redundant, and I would love to see the industry slow the fuck down and care more about art direction. However, these big jobs are what keep game creatives employed. Labor rights for freelance creatives are already such a mess in various countries, and having any artist actually be a worker is a godsend for their livelihood. Many studios are screwed up and shit the bed constantly, but when I see a long-running Nintendo studio printing high-quality games, I know those are mouths being fed.

While it's easy to dismiss a remake of a game as creative bankruptcy, it is fine to bring back old classics. People say others should just emulate things, and I do agree, but in my eyes that's incredibly ignorant. We have all been in different situations in our lives where games played a very different role for us. We are used to different game-isms, we learned from them, and they shaped our brains so we have no problem parsing older games. It's an unfortunate reality, but many people are now growing up with Fortnite and brainrot, and giving up on them by keeping beautiful experiences locked behind shit experiences kinda sucks. We should strive to get them all up to speed! It's also a long-standing tradition to have new productions of a play or an album, and I think new productions by other people are vital to the industry and to cultural development. Many remakes are absolute cash grabs, but we should recognize a proper, artistically meaningful remake as such. I agree that a completely fresh experience from a fresh mind is exciting, but remakes also have something to say about a piece of the past. A remake of OoT is what keeps artists employed, and booting up an emulator is not.

[rnottelovesowls]

there is no other solution to solving a mental health crisis than just making the world a better place so as to avoid what causes humans to be stressed, anxious, and depressed in the first place. that means getting rid of everything in our society that's making our lives worse; every intrusive big tech practice, every spineless politician, every unjust law, every single thing that prevents all of humanity from achieving life, liberty, or happiness. you cannot solve this with a smartphone app, or a "utopian" society where smiling is mandatory or else. but for this to happen, the rich and wealthy have got to go, or be forced to give back what they hoarded for themselves

i really wish this wasn't an unpopular opinion, but with nerd culture these days, worshiping the ground elon musk walks? you'd be surprised