HRDS_654

Aight, I am going to say that I misused left when I mean liberal in some places so I have edited it.

They haven't done that... Yet. As FD Signifier said, "you can't out-right the right". Democrats screwed themselves in many ways this election such as letting Biden hang onto his candidacy when he was unpopular and not communicating their plans to the public as much as they should have, and because of how fresh it is everyone is looking for someone, or some group, to blame. At the risk of defending Harris, which I'm not because I didn't like a lot of what she said, she really only had 100 days to actually put together a campaign. Trump has been campaigning since he left office.The truth is that this has been a long time coming and the American failure to recognize that is was ACTUALLY led to this. Well, that and the fact that Harris was a black woman. Racism and misogyny hard carried this election term in addition to the unpopular policies Harris proposed. As unpopular as those policies were though, the number don't show that the policies are what lost her the election.

I also blame this on left leaning influencers AND news sites because they spent more time making fun of Trump than actually saying anything to convince the right to vote for Harris. Again, I'm not even saying that I agreed with Harris, but she would have been better for a LOT of minority people than we know Trump is. Laughing at Trump working a closed down McDonald's is one thing, but they didn't do much else. This is the reason I'm kind of done with the online liberals in general. They spend so much time making fun of people that they don't realize we need people on the left to be in positions of power before things can change in a meaningful way. And they need to actually EDUCATE people. Not just tell them "how it is", but tell them WHY it is. The liberal media got cocky and so they contributed to Trump winning. They never brought up that he was a felon, a rapist, or attempted a coup. Nothing.

It is almost always the non-voters that are the problem. In this case it was a combination of demographics that just chose not to vote at all which led to Trump winning.

This doesn't even make sense to me. Trump has no clue what "working people do. Riding around in a garbage truck for 15 minutes isn't fucking working. Shutting down a McDonald's and forcing workers to take the day off, more than likely without pay, isn't working. I can't look at Trump and the people around him and say" yeah, this guy won't screw me over".

Yeah, the preamble bit is funny, but I felt it was needed because I have... issues that make me insecure about being misunderstood. I tend to over-explain things so I wanted to make sure people knew where I was coming from. I agree that it can be a fun place, and it is especially nice for those with limited means to connect with people. It's not like I'm arguing for the end of all social media platforms, but more that some people need to have limits. When you spend enough time disconnected form people and the reality of living people become an their username and not the person they were. I truly believe social media does more good than bad, but because of the human condition the negative will always outweigh the positive. As my final though, I just believe that there is a difference between making connections, personal or otherwise, and sharing too much of yourself. This may be personal, but I don't even share EVERYTHING with my parents or close friends.

It could be that people backing off social media is why it seems to have gotten worse on some platforms. If all the dissenting voices leave it is easier to believe you are correct. I have also stopped using social media as much since Reddit went to shit. That kind of opened my eyes to how volatile typical social media is. I pretty much only look at social media to see if someone I watch is live, but mostly I'm on Twitch and YouTube just to watch videos. Every time I look at the comments I regret it.

I generally live by the adage that everyone makes their own personal choices for their own reasons so I try not to make fun of people for their choices, or in a few cases genetics. I especially try to avoid making fun of people for something they actually have no choice in such as genetics. I'm a bald man, but when I was a kid I used to make fun of my dad for being bald until he sat me down and explained to me how horrible it was to make fun of a person's genetic situation. In general the rule I try to keep myself to is that I won't joke about it unless the person in question would joke about it as well.

The fact that anyone can insult Dolly Parton immediately shows you their true character.

I mean, I agree that the form factor isn't what matters, that's not what I was saying. When you boot the Steam Deck it actively hides that it is a computer. Let's be real here, all consoles are basically just dumbed down PC's at this point. They have slightly modified AMD chips with AMD GPUs. The only difference is that you can't access the file system. You can on the Steam Deck if you want to, but Valve tries to simplify the experience by presenting it as a console. My argument has nothing to do with the form factor and everything to do with the default presentation.

I just want to say I'm right there with you, and I was trying to make that clear while still explaining my thoughts on why the Steam Deck isn't really a "gaming PC". It could just be the old man in me, but the Deck PRESENTS itself as a console on startup, and to do anything beyond that you have to restart the device. For the general public restarting the device is a huge barrier. Again though, I'm happy the Steam Deck exists and hope that game companies in general will get their head out of their ass and start making more games run natively on Linux. Even with devices that have better performance and look like an upgrade I immediately discount them as an option the moment I see they are running Windows.

My post was not meant to take away your points, and honestly I tend to forget about the Steam workshop because, as you said, I and many other general PC gamers don't mod games that much. I'm not trying to be negative about the Deck, just realistic. Unfortunately for me, my general lack of optimism can be seen as inherently negative. The Steam Deck has already succeeded in its goal as evidenced by the, inferior in my opinion, knockoffs from Asus and Lenovo. The main point I was trying to make is the very fact that if or when people try to install a mod they immediately run into the barrier of having to reboot the device. This isn't a bad thing, but it does tell many people this is not the main way to use the device. Remember that for the general public defaults are the most powerful thing on their device.

For transparency, I have a gaming PC. I have a Steam Deck. I love the Steam Deck to death and would never give it up. For many people, it is the closest thing they will see to PC gaming. I can say without a doubt that the Steam Deck is a PC in the same way a chicken is a wild bird. Can you do 90% of PC related tasks with the Steam Deck? Yes, but with a lot more work, and much more required knowledge. It's not even because of the OS, which is great because it's just Linux based. It's because the Steam Deck does not put necessary parts that average PC users need as forward facing concepts.

The Steam Deck is a console first, and a PC in a pinch and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's the reason I love the device, but also use it less. A good example is modding Elden Ring for Seamless Co-op. You can do it, and it's not HARD per se, but you may have to find files in the OS to make sure Steam knows to open them, and because of how the file tree works in Linux vs Windows it isn't really a simple case of "type the file name in search".

I'm okay with that. I don't want some program I don't control having access to the kernel of my system.