At the very least, everyone should be entitled to at least one free name change as an adult. But children and teenagers need to have the right to their own names, too. There's already a history of children taking their parents to court in order to get a name change when the name is absolutely insane (but we all know that would be rejected for a trans kid sadly).

This.

I know people want to think this is the problem, but people paid for cable, which was all of this. High prices, ads, and lower quality experience as they started cutting and/or speeding up shows to fit extra ads in. And on top of that, people then paid for premium channels like HBO just to access some sort of quality. And cancelling could be a nightmare.

What's really killed the TV experience is shorter episode counts and less seasons. TV works as long form story telling, and a popular show gets everyone talking and speculating about it, but this can't occur with short episode counts and cancelling things within one-two seasons before they can build up their audience.

Then there's cancelling shows without giving them a proper finale, which leads to not wanting to get invested in TV in the first place, and is effectively worthless for a streaming platform because few people want to watch something without a proper finale. To be fair, this has been a problem since time immemorial for TV, but is far more noticeable when it's easy to rewatch and binge.

Add on top of that decreasing attention spans, and social media like TikTok and Youtube inevitably bleeds away your audience.

Sure, people whine and complain about price hikes. But do they actually cancel? I've rarely seen people actually care enough to do something. Obviously a place like this is biased towards dropping these services, but the average consumer doesn't care. And sadly, these price hikes are generally based around the idea that they'll lose some people, but the price hike for the shumcks that will continue to use it at higher prices will ultimately make them more money than trying to retain the customers who weren't paying. When that no longer becomes the case, you'll see them offer some 'buy a year' deal for cheaper price nonsense or something. Eventually, they'll create a 'value' bundle for all streaming services in one. And when that's too expensive, don't worry, they've got your back because they'll shave a few dollars a month off your bill if you sign a two year contract.

Surprising no one, another show is cancelled, lol. At least it made it to a 'season 3.' Hopefully it has a proper finale, and the change in showrunner doesn't shoot it in the foot.

Unfortunate for fans of the show. Honestly, it felt more like a Kingpin epilogue than anything else to me.

But aside from that episode, the continuation did nothing for me personally.

Because generative AI has been built off the backs of everyone, whether they consented or not. Because AI companies (Nvidia, Facebook, pick a company) have pirated enough material to keep any individual in jail for life, and yet they have no consequences and can profit off everything.

If generative AI can not be used for commercial purposes, it also cripples the ability to replace artists, writers, etc., with an AI that stole all their work in the first place and is regurgitating it. Generative AI isn't the issue, and it won't go away (I wish it would, but the world doesn't work that way). It's the way it's being used. Take the profit out of it, and we can all (to some degree) benefit from it. Take the profit out of it, and stop them from hoarding and destroying books/knowledge, destroying the environment, destroying your economy.

I'm sure people more well-read into generative AI can give a better example than a layman who is tired of billionaires and trillionaires doing whatever they like with no consequence, destroying our environment, our jobs, our economy, and now our souls along the way.

2026 is so depressing, lol. I've noticed this with some (non-gaming) Korean media, where the writing feels very AI (and I'm kind of suspecting a lot of it is considering East Asia's quick embrasure of it).

All of this is easy to legislate (not necessarily fix because people will just lie and face no consequence if they're rich). Ban generative AI for commercial purposes.

Anything with art, being that games, illustration, even writing feels tainted these days. Those of us who don't want gen AI are going to have to find ways to form our own communities (and hope we can trust the majority of people in them).

On the bright side, I'm suddenly feeling okay with not getting to play a lot of the Switch 2 games.

Outside of one community I use to track sales for a niche hobby, my main use of reddit is looking up old threads. There's nothing new on there that's helpful anymore. I like looking up old episode discussion threads for TV shows that I'm watching for the first time, for instance.

I wish Lemmy was a good alternative. But without enough people using it, it can't really come close to a replacement. All my interests are more niche too, and I hate Discord, so it leaves me out here touching grass.

Reddit's always been toxic, it's just worse the more MAGA and AI came to prominence (also a lot of what appears to be Russian astrotufing, but that might just be the subs I used).

Unfortunately, Lemmy's not always better. I've been trying to figure out which instances to avoid, because I am really tired of certain people harping on about certain things.

Congratulations on getting a regular exercise routine down! Took me longer than it should have myself.

On PC, yes. That's basically what an expansion pack was. But Sims 2 DLC was absolutely ridiculous in comparison. I realize I put 'Sims' in my original post, but I had been talking about Sims 2. It's actually mild compared to some games now.

Gamecube was the best. I wasted so many hours playing Super Smash Bros Melee and Mario Kart Double Dash. I had only gotten to play Ocarina of Time on a friend's N64, so I finally got to play that one too. I went through a ton of games. X-Men Legends, Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, there's too many to name. One of my favorite consoles of all time.

Of course it didn't. I don't think some people understand how completely irrelevant the individual is when it comes to corporate decision making. They don't care if you're upset. They're either going to do something extreme, then dial it back (on purpose) to something worse but not as bad, or they're going to ignore you. If they keep at it long enough, newer generations just grow up thinking this is all normal.

Look at DLC. Younger people on here probably think that's normal or good. But older people can remember a time where when a game was released, it was expected to run out the box or you'd immediately refund it because they sold you a broken product. And the game was whole, not locked behind paywalls. Even when PC games got DLC, The Sims still looked absolutely crazy for the sheer cost of all those expansions. To probably well over half of the users here, though, this is the new normal.

My best advice is to support and enjoy indie games that do things right (and can probably run on your PC without costing you a fortune), or start learning to enjoy older games (there's tons of great ones out there!), most of which can be found easily and played on just about any modern computer. SNES, Sega Genesis, Gamecube, PS2, 3DS, etc. There's so many good games out there.

And of course, don't be afraid to find other hobbies. If you really want to make a difference, stop giving any money to these corporations. Video games aren't a necessity. You can choose not to support Sony gaming, simple as that. Not temporarily, but until their business practices change whennever.

100% they won't. Disney was very eager to join the MAGA crowd to throw trans people under the bus.

Disney Spokesperson about cutting trans character: "When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

Article on them censoring their stuff in regards to this quote and at other points.

Plenty of other sites cover this specific case too. Unless something changed, this was the last I heard of it.

Disney also restricting LGBT+ content for children on Disney+. Unsure if this was ever followed up on, as it's older news.