You’d think so, right?

As I mentioned, I have a wife who I live with and spend time with every day. We met online, and only later realized that we went to the same school, but were in different grades. We probably saw each other on multiple occasions, but we were just strangers then. I also have plenty of local friends who I spend time with as well. However, I live in completely different states from some of my oldest friends from school. We voice chat online every week, and meet up in person every few years.

I have a couple groups of people who I play video games and tabletop games with online who I’ve never even seen in real life, and wouldn’t even recognize walking down the street, but we’ve known each other for years and have real, meaningful connections. Two of the friends from one group even realized they live near one another, and have since begun dating, making plans to move in together soon.

And yes, I am a part of several online communities in forums, sites like Lemmy, and elsewhere that I keep up with. We have nice conversations and heated arguments. We help each other with problems and questions. We’re simply a group that any member knows they can turn to when they need to connect with someone.

Life is complicated, and there are an insane amount of different ways to connect with people. Amazingly, some of those are through the internet. The idea that some connections are real and the others are fake is complete bullshit, and you’re clearly making a bad argument in bad faith to let off some steam.

You can literally see that it’s a jpeg. Whatever, man. At this point you’re just trolling. But hey, that’s one of those human interactions that the internet made possible, so thanks for highlighting that for me.

Sorry, bud; you’ve been having a human connection this whole time.

Haha, we’re in a digital age, buddy. Computers are nothing more than the latest way to connect real people in real ways. Sure, bots exist, just like spam telephone callers exist and were probably major issues when that was the main way for people to connect with one another across large distances, but you’re not going to stop it by covering your ears and denying the existence of every person you can’t physically see.

I have a wife and family, I have friends, and I have online communities I care about; they’re all just different legitimate social circles. We may not have evolved for it, but we’re living it anyway, and the faster you adapt to that, the better.

… I can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but if you’re honestly so put-off by human connection and comradery, I’m disappointed. Kind of a weird take from someone on Lemmy if that’s the case, though.

In the context of people who hack their systems? I’d certainly say so.

Don’t fight for yourself, fight for the community.

It doesn’t matter what I want, it matters what the community as a whole wants, and we want more than just pirating. Nobody’s hiding, we’re just not missing the forest for the trees; it’s not honesty in discussion to boil and entire group of people down to the desires of just the few people in this thread, it’s just being self-centered.

If you want to talk about what you as an individual want, feel free, but don’t act like it’s the definitive thing to discuss when the community is greater than all of us.

The majority of people pirate, but insofar as there is a single person who wants to do literally anything else with their hacked system, then it isn’t exclusively about pirating, and the narrative to condemn the entire practice of hacking as being solely about pirating is nothing more than another corporation trying to make it harder for people to modify their own property as they see fit.

If it comes down to it, I’ll split the cost with you. If we can’t get socialized medicine the way it’s meant to be, we’ll make it ourselves!

I’m really looking forward to it. The only reason I don’t enjoy souls games is because I hate their gloomy emo setting, so this looks right up my alley.

I never said anything about Elon being directly responsible for this, nor did anyone else within the replies to the conspiracy theory comment that I was referring to. The fact of the matter is that conspiracy theorists touted Elon’s acquisition of Twitter as being the return of free speech, but immediately after the death of Putin’s largest opposition figure, who’s wife said that she would carry his torch, she’s removed from the platform. Whether due to Elon or anyone else, Twitter is not a platform of free speech, and that should outrage anyone, whether they Like Elon or not, and whether they agree with Navalny and his wife or not.

Believe me, it got sadder and sadder watching it happen in person, too.

Conspiracy theorists are people who believe wild, baseless information, whose only sources are other people who believe wild, baseless information. My mom thinks that the US is owned by some guy in Montana because she saw a youtube video that said so. She believes that any time someone spells her name in all caps they’re literally trying to enslave her. She believes that Donald Trump is literally the second coming of Jesus Christ, and that Elon Musk is one of his new disciples because he allowed him back onto Twitter. She believes that sitting in a chair that vibrates at a specific frequency is more likely to cure her stage 4 breast cancer than an oncologist. My mom is a conspiracy theorist, and she’ll be dead soon from cancer that she found while it was still easily treatable with surgery, but decided then that oregano oil would be a more effective treatment.

So it’s… forbidden to modify it into something that kills even more people. There’s a reason I didn’t use the word “illegal.”

It’s a statement comparing 2 objects that are forbidden to modify. Guns are forbidden due to their ability to kill even more people through modification, video game systems are forbidden due to their ability to hurt company profits through piracy.

People are pointing out the huge moral difference between the bases for those two similar rules, and how one cannot compare them fairly as being equivalent unless they also believe those bases are equivalent.

Pre-orders used to come with sweet incentives, since there’s otherwise no reason to do it. I’ve got cool tins, coins, plushies, and even a working mini harmonica from pre-orders I did in the 2000’s. Now they give you nothing but a few in-game items if you’re lucky. I have no idea why people even do it anymore.