awsamation

Shit, I remember these in school. And I’m 22, pretty sure early 20s isn’t ood enough to count for an “are you this old” meme.

Exactly.

Everyone loves to support local independent small businesses when it’s convenient. And some people even have the gumption to hold to those ideals when it’s difficult. But the vast majority don’t care most of the time.

When big business makes it cheaper and more convenient to buy from them, most people will. I’m just as guilty of that as anyone else. When money and time are plentiful I love supporting a local bakery for lunch and a local book store for that greeting card. But when I’m pressed for time or money is short, it’s straight back to Walmart to get a card and an entire meal for the price of one baked snack from the local place. And in 10 minutes instead of half an hour.

And the megacorps don’t need a majority market share to win. They don’t even need a large enough market share to be profitable, they just need to make sure your market share is too small to survive. And once you fail, then they can change practices away from kill competition and back to make money.

Do you actually care that much about the creative story behind the latest widget that was added to your new appliance? Are you going to be choosing the 30% more expensive option every time because of that concern.

We aren’t talking about art here, very few people give a shit about getting a “personal connection” with their new toaster. We’re talking about buy use forget consumer goods. And if someone else is selling the same quality and the same features at a lower price, that’s the one that your average Joe will buy. And will keep buying until you can’t afford to keep making and selling yours because you can’t compete on the metrics that people care about most.

And you’re going to compete with them on price then? Even when they can and will sell every unit at a loss until you’re driven out of the market. Unless you’re wealthy enough to be part of the good ol boys club, you can’t afford to play that kind of game. They can.

I’m sorry for, pointing out how popular isn’t the best choice of word?

But no matter how you slice it, popular isn’t a great descriptor. Whether you choose the prescriptivist “the dictionary says x thus the word means x no matter what” or the descriptivist “most people use the word to mean y thus the word means y no matter what”, in this case they both agree.

Both groups agree that when I say “Jim is popular” it makes you think that people generally like Jim. It evokes some level of communal approval. The dictionary literally defines the word to mean likeable, and the general usage still seems to denote general approval.

So either way, it doesn’t represent the Empress situation. A situation where the majority of the community at best doesn’t care and at worst openly dislikes her as a person because of her behavior, but still comes back for the games. She has a monopoly, but that doesn’t make her inherently popular. Most people who know seem to dislike, and most who don’t will also have no bearing on her popularity.

Because those big businesses are only motivated by the profit possibilities.

If you take away that protection then they’ll just stop trying. They don’t give a shit about any of the motivations you listed. They’ll wait for you to come up with something new, then use the advantage of their size to force you out of the market. You’ll end up either giving up or trying again at which point they’ll just repeat the cycle.

And there’s nothing you can do to stop them because now they can be as open and blatant as they want with directly using your exact plans.

None of those motivations you listed actually need IP to be abolished though.

If you’re trying to differentiate yourself from the competitors, having IP protection is jn your favor. The large corporation you’re competing with can’t just swoop in and destroy you by making an identical product at a such a loss of profit until you run out of money.

If you’re fueled by creating open source knowledge, well you can already do that. You can choose to release your IP into the world for anyone to use unrestricted.

And for a sense of community, well that’s just the second point again. Abolishing IP was never going to make you feel community with Amazon. But having IP isn’t preventing you from having community with individuals. You can still work on a project together without abandoning the idea of IP ownership.

Depends on how exactly you define popular.

If you use a definition that includes anything like “liked and admired” then she doesn’t fit. Her service is busy but as this thread shows, most people openly state they only go to her because they have no other choice for these cracks.

Using popular hides how many people actively want to jump ship if only there was competition. It’s like saying that Comcast is popular because they have so many customers who don’t have a viable alternative to using them.

Popular feels like the wrong word. If you’re the only game in town for a specific service, that doesn’t inherently mean you’re popular.

I was fully ready to believe that a vantablack pool would boil in direct sunlight. Not flash boil, but I excused that as the author being a bit enthusiastic.

Wasn’t till the nuke that I was acting ready to call bullshit. The chlorine gas thing felt wrong, but I don’t know enough about chemistry to be confident that flash boiling chlorinated water wouldn’t produce chlorine gas at possibly lethal levels.

But you still can eat them. Behind the societal norms they’re just as much good meat as the hamburgers.

Except there are inevitably power mods who would happily nump at the opportunity to claim a few more subs for their fiefdoms

Facebook in specific? Sure.

But the idea of platform meant for keeping in loose direct contact with your extended family and social group? That has merit.

Not necessarily.

Something like Facebook is still useful for keeping in touch with extended family and social circles. I may not particularly care about great uncle John, but it’s nice to be aware that he’s in the hospital after a bad fall without that information going through 5 rounds of the telephone game.

Somewhere like Reddit or the fediverse? I would never want my real identity associated with these accounts. It’s nice to have some anonymity.

Really really really stupid as judged by the “musk stupidity index,” not just really really really stupid for a normal person.

That’s what they’re saying.

They aren’t arguing against leaving an “abandon reddit” message. They’re arguing against leaving the original content alongside that message.