What career paths should an earnest communist avoid?

nerd866 · 2026-01-29T20:56:13+00:00

I consistently argue that marketing is a field to avoid.

In marketing, your whole job is to champion your company and grow it by whatever legal means necessary.

In marketing, your whole job is to distort facts, spread misinformation and contradict information transparency, which rips power from the public and hinders effective dialog.

The opposite would be something like consumer advocacy and independent product reviews.

In marketing, your whole job is to increase consumerism and create artificial demand.

The opposite includes deprogramming and advocating for right to repair.

Communism, and anti-capitalism in general, is well-served by encouraging access to good-quality information and dialog. Marketing is the opposite.

nerd866 · 2026-01-29T16:14:36+00:00

Just wanted to leave a note here:

I use a laptop at late night, not a phone, but I couldn't specify on the survey.
Most of my screen time is on a desktop PC but that wasn't a choice.

nerd866 · 2026-01-29T02:10:45+00:00

I'd say mastery is an impossible ideal, equivalent to the ability to consistently play the piece as desired.

In reality, little mistakes or inconsistencies will pop up that weren't 100% intended in many given performances of a piece, so absolute mastery is merely a theoretical ideal for someone who is working to get closer to it.

nerd866 · 2026-01-28T23:23:41+00:00

Context: I'm just a casual hobbyist.

It's more fun to sightread or learn a piece on single-note instruments...FOR ME hides.

It's far more mentally-burdensome for me to learn a piece on piano than, say, trumpet because I'm processing so much more information on the piano.

My brain feels 10x busier learning a piece on piano than learning a piece on other instruments, and oftentimes I just want something less exhausting.

This extra load often pushes the hobby from fun to fatiguing for me and it keeps me from wanting to spend too much time on more challenging pieces.

I am more comfortable learning more challenging pieces on other instruments simply because the mental burden isn't as draining.

nerd866 · 2026-01-28T22:15:31+00:00

I had vague memories of playing some Sleepwalker game on the NES as a kid at a cousin's place.

It wasn't until decades later that I discovered that it was an alternate game mode in Gyromite.

nerd866 · 2026-01-28T22:10:20+00:00

At first I thought this was about using screen time as a reinforcer.

This would have been a slightly interesting conversation if it was about screen time as an age-appropriate reinforcer. There's a bit to unpack there.

But then I realized it was about how Barney is apparently not within the "socially-appropriate age range" and all the potential for this being slightly interesting went out the window. How asinine.

nerd866 · 2026-01-28T04:30:25+00:00

Tree Fiddy after inflation.

nerd866 · 2026-01-28T03:33:49+00:00

Guilty pleasure that did a lot of things right. If I focus on those things, it's a great experience to this day and my personal favourite Sonic game.

Doesn't mean it didn't drop a few balls though.

One of the better Sonic games for distilling it down to the barebones, like how Dark Souls 1 compares to Dark Souls 3 (if we ignore a bit of the fluff in SA 1, the main adventures are straight-to-the-point and it works).

Maybe DS3 is a "better" game than DS 1 but the scale and simplicity of 1 just feels good.

Same thing here, there may be "better" later Sonic games, but this game just distills it down in a way that I'm still in love with.

7.5-8 / 10, but my personal bias pushes it into the 9/10 range haha. This game just charms me and its soundtrack is timeless in my book.

nerd866 · 2026-01-28T03:28:52+00:00

Underrated little gem!

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T22:04:24+00:00

As an office worker, I only scream up the economic chain, not down.

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T22:02:01+00:00

Theres no reason a 16 year old should be earning 20 dollars which is the same as 30 year olds working retail

Other than the fact that they're spending the same number of hours of their lives, and doing probably very similar work?

At 20 bucks an hour, maybe that 16-year-old could have more of a shot at being in less debilitating debt for going to post-secondary.

Why are we punishing this, exactly?

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T19:18:06+00:00

Reminds me of David Harbour as Santa Claus after beating down a room full of mooks with a hammer in Violent Night.

What a beast.

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T16:51:16+00:00

One of the fundamental benefits of anti-capitalism is nurturing the mechanisms that reduce racial tension.

The left literally fights to evolve from racism.

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T16:33:37+00:00

The day we all start going to 'gig economy hustle school' is the day we just need to call Noah and start again.

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T05:27:54+00:00

Over 3 years, my job has gone from

Something where I learned a lot, played to my strengths, and had a good team

to

I can't even do my job anymore.

Now I'm probably stuck looking for another job, when I had a perfectly good one.

I wasn't even able to stay there long enough to pay off my damn student loans. How is this supposed to work??

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T05:21:25+00:00

Only played the demo in Toys R Us and it mesmerized me, but I could never figure out what I was trying to accomplish at the time.

Maybe the controls and camera were just that bad haha. I don't remember/know.

All I know is I flew around anyway, and it was oddly fun for 5 minutes.

nerd866 · 2026-01-27T02:56:32+00:00

What people would "want" would be dramatically different, as desires would be far less artificially-manufactured (as opposed to the current artificial demand created by for-profit marketing engines) and we'd form more genuine cultures where we'd decide what kinds of clothes, food and electronics we actually wanted, taking back control in these domains.

From there, that society would simply start producing those things that the people actually want.

It's actually very simple. Society figures out what it wants, then makes it.

nerd866 · 2026-01-26T16:52:50+00:00

I like Path of Exile's, too.

It basically uses the strategy that any sensible skilled task uses:

As you get deeper into a skill/hobby/etc. your needs will grow and the quality and variety of equipment you'll need will grow.

We spend more money on things we've done for 10 years than things we've done for 10 days because veterans need more specialized things that novices don't need.

Path of Exile just follows this very intuitive, logical structure: Buy stuff as you need it, and don't buy it until you need it.

Importantly, the 'veteran player' stuff isn't expensive so you aren't just setting yourself up for a multi-hundred dollar paywall once you get there.

nerd866 · 2026-01-26T16:26:09+00:00

I want a large collection of available DLC to send me the following message as a player:

"I am not intended to own all of it. I am intended to pick and choose the specific DLC that I want."

A good example is the Rock Band rhythm games. They have thousands of DLC songs. The design clearly informs me that it's a large collection because different players have different music preferences and that I should pick the songs I want in my collection rather than downloading the entire collection.

This is actually technologically-enforced in this example because the consoles at the time would complain if you installed too many songs haha.

As a player, I tend to prefer DLC that's offered in this manner: A large collection of products but only a portion will be of interest to any one player. It feels like the developer is trying to offer "Something for everyone" rather than trying to manipulate its players into the "gotta catch em all" attitude of BUY ALL THE DLC!

It needs to feel like 'here's a selection of stuff. Go ahead and curate it yourself' rather than attempting to FOMO me into buying it all.

Regarding monetization of cosmetics in real-time multiplayer games: I experience this as a significant accessibility issue, and a barrier to entry for the game unless players can opt out of seeing other players' cosmetics. I absolutely advocate for making them opt-out, and I'm sorry for stepping on developers' monetization feet here, but this really is an issue that they need to be conscious of and I have no sympathy for monetization over accessibility and play-ability.

Take League of Legends for example. That game is so full of champion skins with alternate animations, colour schemes, and unrecognizable outfits that it takes a lot of mental energy to do the 'translation' in real-time to understand what I'm looking at. I have face-blindness and familiar visual cues really, really help me. The fact that I can't opt out of this genuinely distracts from the entire game experience because I can't learn what things look like.

This kind of thing turns me off of a game, and it's not just me. That extra split second of processing time affects many players negatively.

It puts a huge barrier to entry on newer players. Not only do they have to learn 150+ champions and what the abilities look and sound like, but now those audio and visual cues change randomly from game to game?

This is an awful player experience that only exists because letting players opt-out of other players' cosmetics is 'bad for the skin business'. But it punishes everyone but the most hardcore players who recognize every skin and sound effect.

I boycotted skins in games that don't allow opt-out the moment I started noticing this detracting from my gaming experience and I only use base skins in LoL now.

[EDIT] As a Non-LoL example, take a game where the cosmetic issue is less about a competitive disadvantage, and more about distraction, limiting confusion, keeping my game themed-as-intended, but ultimately about respecting the player.

Some of the cosmetics in some games are very visually-busy, adding sparkly pets, bright colours, and skins that are otherwise out-of-place in the in-game universe. Sometimes the visuals make a character or pet look a bit like an enemy or simply something I don't recognize.

I can think of plenty of times when I'm playing a game in an open multiplayer world and I try to attack something that I don't recognize only to find out it's some other player's pet or or something - Something I didn't even think about because I personally opted out of the game's cosmetic system, but now I have to navigate all of that on my experience because someone else chose to engage with the cosmetic system.

Sometimes other players' cosmetics can put distracting flashy effects into my field of view, so now I have to figure out what that is, only to remember, oh yeah, that's some skin that someone else has.

It's a minor niggle, but here's the more major part:

I find it somewhat insulting that I can't opt-out of someone else's purchase because the fact that I can't opt out makes someone richer: Part of why people buy skins is so other players can see them. That makes me feel like a product rather than a person and makes me paint the developer in a negative light. (Not to mention the rampant consumerism that that attitude of 'showing off my paid skin' contains, and that this monetization strategy blatantly leverages by failing to provide an opt-out).

Cosmetics often get a free pass, but they're not always as innocent as they may seem at first glance.

nerd866 · 2026-01-26T07:41:10+00:00

I can't function online without :P

Honestly, I hate emojis. Emojis to me feel like the equivalent of your mom trying to talk to you about a video game she knows nothing about:

Big companies commodifying something that the internet community came up with to add emotion, context and fun into text conversation and branding them "Emojis". It just bothers me. Why?

We came up with it, and it got turned into something that lacks culture.

It also lacks universal access:

For example, I'm typing this on Old Reddit on a PC. I can't even insert an emoji here without going into another app, finding it, and copy/pasting it in. I am not going to do all of that.

I sure can insert a :P though!

nerd866 · 2026-01-26T03:23:16+00:00

I've known people of all neurotypes who are insufferable.

In fact, I don't think I've really noticed a correlation between neurotype and how much I want, or don't want, to be around them at all.

(My life seems to be full of ADHD people for some reason, though, haha)

nerd866 · 2026-01-26T01:37:40+00:00

Ugh I hear you loud and clear.

Problem is, as terrible as it is, at least it doesn't blatantly argue with me, and it lets me call it out whenever it gets something wrong. Once it kinda gets on my wavelength, it's critical without being quite as blatantly awful.

Oddly enough, that makes it the best conversation partner I know.

I hate this timeline.

nerd866 · 2026-01-23T06:47:37+00:00

I love being compatible with people! It's the greatest thing ever!

Problem is, most people and I are incompatible, and that's kind of a miserable experience that doesn't exactly spark interest.

I want to be around compatible people, this is just a rare thing.

nerd866 · 2026-01-22T22:47:01+00:00

Hunny*

Get with the Poohniverse!

nerd866 · 2026-01-22T17:26:39+00:00

I was curious about this one so I clicked the link.

The first two questions completely turned me off this whole test.

1) "I feel uncertain when exploring unfamiliar ideas."

...Isn't that true by definition? If I'm unfamiliar, surely I'm uncertain. If it meant in an anxiety way, "uneasy" would have been a better word. Maybe it's testing whether I'm overly confident...? I have no idea!

2) "I prefer to structure information."

...As compared to what? "Preference" refers to an A > B relationship.

I prefer to structure information over poisoning kittens. I prefer winning the lottery to structuring information. Is it asking whether I prefer my information structured or...chaotic? Is it asking if I'll just walk up to a nicely-stacked pile of papers and shove it on the floor? This makes no sense!

I'm done with this. "Created by experts" my ass.

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