My 2 cents on this.
Stay off your phone.
Gaming consoles offer a better experience than the low-quality entertainment on phones and tablets.
Spending time on toxic social media is like feeding your brain junk food.
It’s all designed to quickly exploit you.
I’d prefer my kids use a gaming console like the Switch instead of an iPad.
Gaming consoles just mean you’ve already bought into their walled garden. They don’t need to use the same tactics the mobile games use; you’re already trapped. Hell, you’re probably already paying a monthly subscription for online play, and then there’s still nothing stopping individual game publishers from further enshittifying on top of that!
No, what you should really be doing is gaming on PC (Linux), ideally with games bought DRM-free (e.g. from GoG) or even by only playing Free Software games. I personally compromise enough to accept Steam, but that really is at the absolute limits of acceptability (and only then because of factoring goodwill from all their work on Linux compatibility for games).
Yea wow. As a 90s kid I’d never thought of comparing smart phones to consoles. Great point. Gaming together on the couch or a truly fun and social activity and way more wholesome than doom scrolling
What they haven’t realized is paying for living quarters for their tests. Give a homeless person a roof for watching ads all day?
I don’t think the homeless are a typically sought-after demographic. Maybe for loan sharks?
Dang, that is a dystopian scenario for affordable housing. That’s some black mirror Fifteen Million Merits stuff.
I think I could tolerate it for a couple months at most. The problem is that good advertising doesn’t exist very often so it’s all just fucking annoying
Full on conspiracy?
there are hidden interests and hands that pull the strings of the dynamics that are harmful
The conspiracy take would be that someone wants the specific negative outcome we have and is deliberately calibrating their actions to achieve it
“Hidden interests and hands” in this case more charitably refers to the vast complex system of distributed incentives that different actors in the system have. If everyone washes their hands of their own little corner of the problem and refuses to take accountability at any level, in aggregate it leads to negative outcomes at scale. And of course no individual actor would want to publicise knowingly looking the other way: thus, hidden interests and hands
A Bo Burnham fan I see
