Polygon: Indie TTRPG Companies are "sitting in their own little corners of the internet and wringing their hands"

Having a commentary platform doesn't magically make it better of course. I'm amazed by the sheer number of news outlets who have the ability to add comments, and it's clear 1) nobody ever comments, or 2) if they do, it's not moderated and the author never returns to engage. So then who are the comments for?
Advertisers. Each engagement is a reloaded page and the ads being served up again.

A cash-strapped newsroom not wanting to assign someone to, essentially, put their face in the toilet of user comments every day is an easy call for most of them.
 

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BINGO. YouTube has entire countries it disqualifies as traffic from its internal metrics, but will charge customers and "count" them as clicks when it sells ads. Same here.

There are now more bots than people constituting Internet traffic, we've passed the tipping point, and it's all starting to collapse.

Which of course, many of us know or understand at an intuitive level from being online long enough.

Outside of extremely moderated and focused platforms (like forums like this) there is no value left in engaging with the mass of Social Media, its just trash, and its trash controlled by the Tech Companies and in some cases, Governments.

Thankfully, its been so bad, for so long, that many people no longer trust any of it.
 

WOTC got rid of their own forums, arguably for the same reasons: "social media made it unnecessary." That was true then. But for better or worse, it ties communities to platforms that we don't own.

Having a commentary platform doesn't magically make it better of course. I'm amazed by the sheer number of news outlets who have the ability to add comments, and it's clear 1) nobody ever comments, or 2) if they do, it's not moderated and the author never returns to engage. So then who are the comments for?

My favorite example of this is that Facebook decided that comments on posts are so much garbage, it has an AI summarize it for you. They threw in the towel: "look, it's not worth reading the comments, let's just summarize it for you so you don't bother." Not a good sign for the platform.
Oh man, Washington Post (which, in my opinion, completely lost its way during the last election), recently dove head-first into AI slop and added this to their comments:

"This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments."

Like, what else would we use it for?
 

There are now more bots than people constituting Internet traffic, we've passed the tipping point, and it's all starting to collapse.
I think that was true for a long time just with email spam. But now I think internet traffic is primarily video, isn't it?
 

I think that was true for a long time just with email spam. But now I think internet traffic is primarily video, isn't it?
Further reading:
And here's an eye-opening quote:

Looking closer at individual countries, some EU members have even more bot traffic. Ireland had the most concerning numbers with 71.4% of all its internet traffic found being bad bots, with only 26.6% human traffic and 2% good bots. Not far behind was Germany, where bad bots accounted for 67.5% of internet traffic, humans only 25.5%, and good bots 7%. In other words, bad bots outnumber humans by 2:1 in Ireland and Germany’s internet traffic. The situation in France is much better with 75% of internet traffic by humans and only 18% from bad bots. The UK was not far behind with 69% or traffic from humans and 24.8% from bad bots. In the United States, humans only accounted for 38.4% of internet traffic while bad bots took up 35% of internet traffic and good bots accounted for 26.2%. Australia fared much better with rates of internet traffic measured at 63.7% human, 30.2% bad bots, and 6.1% good bots. China was also above the global average for human internet traffic at 56.2% but worse than the global average for bad bots at 39.7% with 4.1% good bots.

Pretty sure the bottom fell out of social media platforms, who have been pretending bots are humans for a while now to boost their numbers. We're all finally noticing, and of course the algorithms are starting to break because bots are catering to bots more than they are to people.
 

Just once, I'd like to run a sci-fi game and when someone asks why this or that works that way, someone else at the table just says, "Because it's Science." ... and then everyone else at the table nods and we move on.
But then you're not running a sci-fi game, you're running a fantasy game using some science-y language.

Going back to the original article, I wish it had told me more about Mothership, rather than apparently going for controversy to generate clicks. I find that there are fewer and fewer sources I can go to that aren't mostly a waste of time - a few crumbs of content smothered in faux outrage or some other angle. Drudge-ified.

Like, what actual new knowledge do I get from that article? It's just a bunch of poorly supported opinion. Most Internet content is a smidgen of fact smothered in unoriginal opinions.

I'm a big fan of traditional journalism, like the New York Times. There are still professionals who, while not without bias (who is?) are doing real reporting, fact-checking, and have a distinct voice. The writers can, you know, actually write. Most Internet content is just empty shouting from uninteresting, unoriginal sources. It's exhausting.

There is something to be said for professionalism.
 
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The problem with web 2.0 as I see it is that it is afflicted with a heavy dose of Dunning-Kruger. Almost never do I see someone say, “you know, I am not sufficiently educated on this topic to have an informed opinion.” Instead there is the attitude of, “well, I have a twitter (now X) account and Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a twitter account, therefore my opinions about astronomy are as valid as his.” (Substitute any other name and field of study as you wish).

We no longer identify “qualifications” that mean we ought to consider giving one opinion more weight than another, whether in the name of “balanced coverage” or simply wanting to be in an echo chamber. What makes an expert opinion better than mine, anyway? (Obvious answer: expertise, usually derived from relevant study and/or experience). Instead we do the lazy thing and either say all opinions no matter how informed or uninformed are equal, or we simply say “the wisdom of the majority is probably right.” (Or we just select the opinion that agrees with our presupposition as “expert.”) in such an environment, no wonder the bots (which amount to an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters) can drown out useful information… we have lost (or perhaps abdicated) our ability to discern expertise.
 

The problem with web 2.0 as I see it is that it is afflicted with a heavy dose of Dunning-Kruger. Almost never do I see someone say, “you know, I am not sufficiently educated on this topic to have an informed opinion.” Instead there is the attitude of, “well, I have a twitter (now X) account and Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a twitter account, therefore my opinions about astronomy are as valid as his.” (Substitute any other name and field of study as you wish).

We no longer identify “qualifications” that mean we ought to consider giving one opinion more weight than another, whether in the name of “balanced coverage” or simply wanting to be in an echo chamber. What makes an expert opinion better than mine, anyway? (Obvious answer: expertise, usually derived from relevant study and/or experience). Instead we do the lazy thing and either say all opinions no matter how informed or uninformed are equal, or we simply say “the wisdom of the majority is probably right.” (Or we just select the opinion that agrees with our presupposition as “expert.”) in such an environment, no wonder the bots (which amount to an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters) can drown out useful information… we have lost (or perhaps abdicated) our ability to discern expertise.
So much this.
 

But then you're not running a sci-fi game, you're running a fantasy game using some science-y language.
You're making my point, implying a sci-fi game's science should be challenged by the gamers at the table. Which often stops the flow of the game once the GM introduces FTL, as it's all theoretical and one person's "correct" FTL theory is someone else's "incorrect" theory.

People seem to play a sci-fi IPs more than just as generic sci-fi game.
 

You're making my point, implying a sci-fi game's science should be challenged by the gamers at the table. Which often stops the flow of the game once the GM introduces FTL, as it's all theoretical and one person's "correct" FTL theory is someone else's "incorrect" theory.

People seem to play a sci-fi IPs more than just as generic sci-fi game.
I would welcome a thread discussing the difference between fantasy and sci-fi RPGs, and why the former are so much more popular than the latter.
 

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