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I just got an advert for an online store that is selling pretty much all of GW's catalogue at 80% off.

I realised it was fake when I noticed that nothing was out of stock.

Anyone else getting hit with adverts for AARP? I'm 43 dang it! Stop making me feel MORE old.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Anyone else getting hit with adverts for AARP? I'm 43 dang it! Stop making me feel MORE old.

Ooh, you're gonna get hearing aid ads and those companies that redo your bathroom so you don't have to step over the edge of the tub... and that phone that has closed captions on it.

Oh god, what did I buy to make the internet think I'm 75? I'm 44 dammit!

 cuda1179 wrote:
Anyone else getting hit with adverts for AARP? I'm 43 dang it! Stop making me feel MORE old.

I have been since my mid 20s. But, in my case, it is partially because my father and I have the "same" name. In reality, we have the same legal first name and same middle initial, but the middle names are different.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Anyone else getting hit with adverts for AARP? I'm 43 dang it! Stop making me feel MORE old.

I am. And for a while they were next to ads for baby formula and diapers. What kind of secret second life does Facebook think I have?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Anyone else getting hit with adverts for AARP? I'm 43 dang it! Stop making me feel MORE old.

I am. And for a while they were next to ads for baby formula and diapers. What kind of secret second life does Facebook think I have?

It’s not just you, but people that they think are your peers. However they decide that.

Broadly speaking, I do worry about those who grew up in the Social Media Age.

When I was young and dumb(er), it was the mid to late 90’s, and so there’s precious little surviving evidence of it.

And whilst it’s always been a streak in my personality to never really care what someone else thinks of me or how they say I should live my life? I wasn’t exposed to a great deal it as a yoof, let alone the wildly varied and often conflicting nonsense on the modern internet, or anywhere near as frequently.

I fear it’s just going to create people that have grown up in cult like atmospheres.

That's always been there in society. Our generations likely had more TV/film/spots cult followings over internet ones.

I think the greater aspect is going to be one of having internet "scrubbers" that aim to hide all the thousands of embarrassing things you've done and said on your various social media accounts so that you can actually land a job

then again we could easily end up in a crazy world where if you don't have a social media account full of stuff its considered, strange, odd and undesirable for a future employee.

I dunno.

I shan’t give any slap headed, chinless, fake accented interwebular moron the oxygen of publicity, but there are those who encourage a literal cult like following, and deliberately target teenagers. And indeed wives of multi-millionaire interwebular morons with crappy catchphrases they don’t embody, telling young girls and young women that “trad wife” is a great life, which it might be, when you and your spouse that lies for a living never really need to worry about money, because as well as making a pretty penny lying for a living, you both come from money anyway.

It’s the almost enforced lack of critical thinking. That’s what I worry about. It removes all subtlety of position, it removes introspection. It turns anyone not completely aligned with your outlook (which I will stress you’re entirely entitled to) The Enemy. As if disagreement is a direct attack on you and all you hold dear.

Oh my.

YouTube comment sections. Just watched a video on the post decommissioning cleanup of Dungeness Nuclear Power Station Reactor A, as it’s only a few miles down the road from me.

Video itself was quite breezy, and got the main issues across without being overly involved, or patronising. Well done that team.

But one of the video comments. Claiming the decommissioning of Dungeness Power Station was, and I more or less quote “net-zero bs”

Tell me you’re just furious, because you’ve been told you’re furious, about something you don’t understand and have no interest in understanding, because being furious is what you want.

Nuclear Energy Is Clean Energy. Not nasty niffs or emissions. No carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere.

Sure, you’ve got to take care when the fuel is spent because it’s flipping nasty stuff. But the process is, when done properly and without cutting corners and short of a natural disaster, pretty bloody safe by design.

And why was the venerable, commenced operation in 1965, Dungeness Nuclear Power Station decommissioned?

Is….is it because it was ancient as such things are reckoned? And more expensive to maintain in the long run than just replace?

Or, is it because “net zero bs” despite the fact that Nuclear Energy doesn’t produce carbon dioxide?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh my.

YouTube comment sections. Just watched a video on the post decommissioning cleanup of Dungeness Nuclear Power Station Reactor A, as it’s only a few miles down the road from me.

Video itself was quite breezy, and got the main issues across without being overly involved, or patronising. Well done that team.

But one of the video comments. Claiming the decommissioning of Dungeness Power Station was, and I more or less quote “net-zero bs”

Tell me you’re just furious, because you’ve been told you’re furious, about something you don’t understand and have no interest in understanding, because being furious is what you want.

Nuclear Energy Is Clean Energy. Not nasty niffs or emissions. No carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere.

Sure, you’ve got to take care when the fuel is spent because it’s flipping nasty stuff. But the process is, when done properly and without cutting corners and short of a natural disaster, pretty bloody safe by design.

And why was the venerable, commenced operation in 1965, Dungeness Nuclear Power Station decommissioned?

Is….is it because it was ancient as such things are reckoned? And more expensive to maintain in the long run than just replace?

Or, is it because “net zero bs” despite the fact that Nuclear Energy doesn’t produce carbon dioxide?

I think that's just comment sections in general these days.

I follow the local newspaper on Facebook and it's always attracting these kinds of inane comments.
There was a complete non-story a few weeks ago about how the local council isn't using Twitter as much anymore, still got a couple dozen comments, all variations on how this is "Part of the war on free speech" and "The council are frightened of the truth".
At least it made a change from the usual racism.

There was a comment on my local news citing phrenology.

Look at all the people who read a book about wolves and alpha behaviour and then instantly assumed that humans were the same. Then continued to believe it even when the same author published another book that entirely dismantled the "alpha" mentality as being false in the first place.

For some science is all about finding things that sound scientific and which prove a point that defends your already established world view; or one which you leverage to your advantage.

Even if its totally wrong and proven wrong/




I think you can also blame TV here. Growing up in the end 80s and 90s there were more than enough "serious enough" shows that would have things like mediums helping the police and other things that were either outright proven to be right in the show or "left to the audience imagination".
Whilst its all entertainment, when you get the same thing and the same information in multiple different shows it an settle in people's minds.

It doesn't help when you've got actual things like DNA presented right alongside, though often in grossly simplified form.

Some people can separate the two - others don't care to try and believe both or neither. Even if you can separate them if you were young at the time the seed might be planted from "first impressions" and thus takes even more proof to convince.

The same with GM Crops.

Presented as “Frankenstein foods”, when much of it is just rapid, guided evolution via more sophisticated selective breeding. Like we’ve done..since….well….before written history. As well as beating the snot out of each other, it’s something us smelly hoomans are really good at.

Some are more advanced, such as Golden Rice, which is a lab created hybrid to add nutrients not normally found in rice, making it a more useful staple crop, somewhat relieving world hunger and that.

Oprah. You guys are just describing Oprah’s impact on the world. She single-handedly did more for grifting than snake oil and sellable bridges combined.

Ahh I never watch those - but yeah they can be another fantastic source of missinformation/missleading/barmy stuff

Also? I feel a caveat is necessary here.

Not understanding, or having little to no knowledge Of A Thing is fine. We’re only human, and we tend to be best off specialising in a field to the best of our abilities. Even polymaths are rarely masters of multiple fields.

But when you’re wilfully ignorant? That’s when I’ll take umbrage.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also? I feel a caveat is necessary here.

Not understanding, or having little to no knowledge Of A Thing is fine. We’re only human, and we tend to be best off specialising in a field to the best of our abilities. Even polymaths are rarely masters of multiple fields.

But when you’re wilfully ignorant? That’s when I’ll take umbrage.

The difference between being ignorant (when you don't know something) and stupid (when you refuse to learn something).

Exactly that.

I consider myself a clever, if not necessarily learned person.

If I don’t know something? I’ll admit it. I might venture a Chinny Reckon based on whatever my understanding might be, but won’t pretend for a second it’s actually right.

And it’s oddly comforting when you accept that, in the world of science? I Don’t Know is a perfectly acceptable answer. As is We Don’t Know And Quite Likely Won’t Know In Anyone Currently Living’s Lifetime.

Embrace and accept your own ignorance. It’s fine. No one person will ever know everything ever. And if we did? Remember Galadriel’s Fate in The 4th Indiana Jones Movie? That seems likely if we tried. Not just the brain melting, but having to start opposite Shia The Beefs.

Cooperative effort. That’s how we do it.

Just….accept my or your ignorance isn’t a matter for the next person’s Actual Knowlesge.

For me, FB is this non-stop meme-machine for lack of a better description. It'll just show like literally 50 pages of what I guess are called "pages" showing memes content that it thinks I'll engage with. Plus now it has "reels" which I guess is their tiktok and of course has a lot of questionable content. Like can't even open my FB in public anymore.

Mine is endless chess puzzles, because I paused and clicked on a chess puzzle once.

Recently my mum forwarded me one of those videos of the gaming tables where you take the top off and have your play area underneath, and now apparently her feed is endless gaming tables.

One time it showed a missing persons notice that was actually in the town I live in so I shared it and now anytime I go there to see if there are any messages I have a deluge of missing people posts from around the globe.

No, I haven't seen a person missing in Brisbane, Australia while I am in Indiana, USA.

AI voiced YouTube video.

OK, to be fair, I accept not everyone has a voice, let alone face, for Radio. It could a non-standard accent, a speech impediment, nervousness or what have you. So I accept there are talented writers and researchers for whom an AI voice is the last piece of the puzzle in presenting their work effectively. Genuinely no problem there.

But so many are clearly just reading ChatGPT mince. With AI generated video.

If you think I’m liking and subscribing to that? You’re quite incredibly long.

*Dead Internet Theory intensifies*

Indeed.

I do however have that algorithm quite well trained. Lots of Professor Dave type stuff and counter apologetics, lots of history stuff and Time Team. Plus some junk tv type stuff.

So it’s fairly rare obvious AI muck turns up.

It would be nice if it could put 2 and 2 together sometimes. I follow and am active on the local GW’s store page, and a couple other local game stores. I do not care about what’s going on at game stores around the world.

 Nevelon wrote:
It would be nice if it could put 2 and 2 together sometimes.

This is my biggest problem. The algorithms are so dumb and so generic they lump a whole host of material into the same categories and then fire it at you constantly, presumably for about a year until it realises you haven't engaged with any of it, then it moves onto the next random connection it thinks it can justify. Also annoying with Facebook and YT is that the ads I get that are even somewhat relevant are invariably for products/channels/stores that I'm already aware of. Like, I'll go to Wayland's website and then for weeks afterwards I get bombarded on YT by an AI-generated Wayland ad (or at least painfully obviously not actually produced by them, complete with weirdly upbeat jingle and 1990s powerpoint style slides). I know about these places. I've visited them to trigger the damn ads. It's not even like these ads pop up to inform me of a special sale or offer. If the algorithm was halfway intelligent it would be able to figure out I'm in the UK and I'm looking at gaming stores, so maybe show adverts for stores I haven't visited??

Ya, I have some interest in some sports so for a while there I was bombarded with NFL meme pages even though I don't care about that league. I'm sure the algorithm says sports=NFL though. I just kept hiding them until they went away.

Slipspace wrote:
Like, I'll go to Wayland's website and then for weeks afterwards I get bombarded on YT by an AI-generated Wayland ad (or at least painfully obviously not actually produced by them, complete with weirdly upbeat jingle and 1990s powerpoint style slides).

Eh, it's Wayland - unless you've asked them about it and they've denied it, assume they're taking the worst possible path...