We’re truly in the post-1984 era.
We're not even completely in the 1984 era yet. Read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and Sybille Berg's GRM. Brainfuck and RCE – Remote Code Execution. If you want to know how a post-1984 era would really look like, Serverland by Josefine Rieks portrays it in a realistic way.
tl;dr: People don't care until it's too late, but it will all collapse anyway.
it’s going to make things very difficult as my character will be super weak.
Who cares? That's a challenge.
Do you guys really spend hours of your day just researching on the internet how to play these games? Or do you just jump in and wing it?
I jump in, wing it and if I don't know how stuff works I quickly search it in the game's wiki or guide. Time spent figuring out how stuff works by trial and error is time I could play the game instead.
Well, two of my Arch Linux desktops recently don't like to shut down but reboot instead. What gives?
Brainwashing is also a form of education.
I don't know, because I don't know where you live. I kind of want to assume you're Murican, since they have no idea that there are other countries where you can vote.
Why the dist-upgrade?
Educate your peers then.
Counter Strike 2 has recently been released. Valorant and Overwatch also seems to fit the description.
Revolt then.
That's why after dying 3-4x I will do a quick research on how to die less. There's a limit to my trial and error in games.