Oh no, I get you. I think we are a similar age.

I was at the Reading Festival in '96 and I think offspring were playing.

There was a slightly older guy stood in the middle of the crowd shouting, you call this punk… This ain’t punk. This ain’t shit.

The kids were laughing at him.

This week in Glasgow Green Day played a gig and all I saw was middle aged men and their daughters wearing matching merch t-shirts.

I’m assuming at some point I travel back in time to '96 to try to stop this.

She may be a Puncke: for many of them, are neither Maid, Widow, nor Wife.

W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1623)

Damn, you really old.

That’s not cheese, that’s yellow shrink wrap

Adore the darktable gang.

Yes, do this if you want your work to have the same feel as every other writer who runs their work through an llm.

The cup on the desk… Uh… Yeah that means something different in Scotland.

Here’s a thing. Yes. What you say is true… But when you have legitimate paying jobs that demand recent experience in retail, then this sort of thing becomes attractive to people that just want a fucking job.

Don’t blame people for doing this, blame the system for making them feel like they have to.

I think he made it everyone’s business… I think that he might even enjoy making it everyone’s business.

This meme is older than the cast of stranger things. Here, have an archeology point.

I see you getting downvoted for a correct answer.

IP addresses are like street addresses. I can live at 10 High Street in London, you can live at 10 High Street in Ohio. Those are not the same address right? Folk confusing public and private ip addresses.

Superb work.

Just takes one owner with an aggressive dog and we have canine terror at 1000 feet.

Actually sounds like a fun ride.

Its a really lovely mix of science and literature. Signals a broad and interested mind. Besides, Once and future king is an absolute banger.

I’m second hand books all the way.

Great collection you have, I’m pretty sure you’d be seriously good chat down the pub.

Read mostly hardback books like a king.

Right you are. They started in 2003 a full two years before YouTube and a solid four years after the 90s.

I’m betting they weren’t around in the early 90s. I mean… If we are talking any real sort of publicly available machinima, we must be talking about the start of YouTube.

Unless watching your mate, Gary, do that thing where he voiced over Zangief as if we was a WWF wrester counts.

It is a great step forward, but the barrier to entry is relatively high. You can sign up to substack for free and they take a cut of your profits (that most writers don’t draw enough attention to earn.

Meanwhile ghost charges $9 a month, billed annually.

That’s a significant barrier to anyone that can’t afford to see if their writing will be popular and as long as that remains it will struggle to gain traction in the same way.

And yeah, I know you could host your own too, but again a price point and a technical barrier.

I like ghost, the interface and the ecology, but the truth is that it isn’t going to attract the sort of vibrant, young community it needs if you have to stump up $108 just to see.

I think one of the great things about 2000s/early 2010s internet was the proliferation of free to use platforms like livejournal, blogger and WordPress. Sure there was a lot or jank, but I found some of my favourite writers back when they were scratching their name into the internet.

We had a similar conversation back in the forum days.

A lot of people screaming RTFM.

But someone enlightened me a little.

Often when people ask questions like that, what they are really doing is trying to become part of your community. An easy to answer question, a way for people to assume the mantle of the expert.

Really, how hard is it to answer those questions… And maybe stipulate that the person asking the question can answer it for the next one?

Obviously, some people are just treating you like Google, but if you act hostile, you’ll never know.

That’s the spirit. Give it a whirl, see if it does anything for you, and even it iflt doesn’t, it was worth it to learn it didn’t.

Vastly better than making a low effort post somewhere saying, “should I watch this film?”.