The scariest part of the LLM craze is seeing people immediately off-load their critical thinking to a black-box mechanism – for everything from everyday decisions, to life-altering ones like career choices and break-ups.

We have people who are making relationship decisions based on LLM output. People who are getting their delusions validated by AI conversations. I still see human comments posting “I asked ChatGPT and-”. For all the anti-intellectualism I’ve seen, I never thought people would be so quick to offshore their own autonomy, down to the most mundane aspects.

“My Strange Addiction” is a “reality” TV show and absolutely not a source to take any psychology perspective from. I wouldn’t even trust it’s definition of “addiction”. The only episode I remember was one of a woman “addicted” to consuming her cremated partner’s ashes, which sounds like a grief/trauma coping mechanism, and is all around sad.

You list these strawman examples. Fine. Those are made up scenarios. There has been violence, sexism, racism, in the earliest records of civilization, and porn has only existed for the last century… Maybe. You know where I first got exposed to the idea “women should be like children” or “[men]'re entitled to women’s bodies”? The Catholic Church.

You’re describing porn the way the DARE campaign described drugs. At least the DARE campaign was talking about a physical chemical compound.

I was sex-negative until recent years due to Catholic conditioning mixing with unlabeled asexuality. Seeing the rising movements against porngraphy has driven me to veer strongly sex-positive, especially after the 2024 USAmerican election.

An “anti-pornography” movement is incredibly dangerous because it can leverage that label to steamroll through anything “for the children” and ward off all but the strongest and loudest criticism. It’s a lot like “Mothers Against Drunk Driving”. Every Politician fears being the lone dissenter on a “for the children” bill; No judge wants to seen as soft on “children accessing porn”.

Porn may be “transforming how people relate to sex and themselves”. The anti-porn movement is working to rip away digital privacy, trying to destroy LGBTQIA+ lives, and will squash free artistic expression. Think of any work of art that ever includes nudity, or ever depicts sex - through text, imagery or video. Now imagine defending its “artistic value” to an armed soldier who stormed in your house, or being badgered by a prosecutor in front of a judge and panel of 12.

“Anti-porn” or “Anti-kids accessing porn” legislation are the legislative equivalent of setting off a firecracker in your mouth to stop a toothache. I remain baffled every time I see support for this from “progressive” online spaces and voices, especially considering that we are living under the Republican regime, Right Now.

People might be forced to stop paying for these services, at least at their current prices. The recession might force the needed step back from consumerism. If the average person has 4 streaming services, and tightens their bet to “just” 1, that’s a 3/4ths reduction in subscribers across the industry.

As I age I find myself feeling more and more like the cool step-dad or uncle.

Y’know I hate everything Chromebooks stand for. “You get 'em, kid. Now how about we get some pizza?”

YouTube has a pretty strong hold because video hosting and streaming is extremely expensive. That’s why most platforms have strict file limits for them. In the pre-Google days of YouTube, most accounts could only upload <15 minute videos, and that limitation is still in place if you have an unverified account.

I don’t see how we’ll get any alternative to YouTube unless it comes from another large corporation, though I’d love to be proven wrong in that.

Using the tools is fine IMO because the moment those tools stop working, people will move their time to Twitch/Instagram/Bluesky/TikTok/etc. 60-120 second ads will push away all, except for iPad toddlers.

Makes me wonder if Google knows this, and is deliberately adding these ridiculous ads, but not patching those tools, so they can keep their user metrics up while pushing the uninformed/indifferent into YouTube Premium subscriptions…

okay Switch to Linux if you can and are willing to undergo constant troubleshooting. I chose not to, and this is how I managed that.

I’ve been using my device for well over 5 years and have had zero issues. And there isn’t much of an alternative if you need Windows compatibility.

my two cents - install an older version of Windows 10. I use 20H2. You can find clean ISO files on the Internet Archive. Disable automatic updates, and use services like Blackbird (getblackbird.net) to de-bloat your instance.