This is the reason I’m a Mutualist/Market-Socialist.

I think that its a system that metaphorically is trained in Aikido against some of human’s worst elements and maximizes the positive of human being’s behavior.

Disclaimer: I’m not 18-25.

I have a ton of women friends (more than men ATM) and have solid evidence that I am a significantly attractive man. I’m also bi so my options are a tad more broad than average.

Even with this I can say that dating is unpleasant and I have never asked for one and barely do them (women are rarely bold enough to be the initiator). It feels like a socially awkward job interview where I have to spend money I don’t have and I fucking hate job interviews.

Admittedly, I also am autistic, socially anxious, and sexually repressed (American sex culture sucks).

I enjoy Sudoku, but that is something I learned. There is no “enjoy sudoko” element within me that I did not put there myself.

You didn’t enjoy learning Sudoku in the first place? Did you have to force yourself? Did someone teach you how to enjoy sodoku after you learned how to actually play?

Maybe there isn’t a specific Sudoku drive in human beings but that’s not what intrinsically means. There is an intrinsic drive to follow your natural intellectual and physical interests that do not have to be taught. They are variable depending on the person’s personal inclinations, but you are not “trained” to enjoy something. Even as seemingly fundamental like reading. You might have to learn how to read first, but that’s not being “trained to enjoy” reading. Whether you enjoy it depends on the type of person you are.

Like, if I saw someone doing something that looks fun or interesting, I’d want to participate intrinsically.

If someone offered me money to participate I would be extrinsically motivated.

They did. Everyone I knew back in the Windows 3.1 days already had computers. Most of those people didn’t have Windows, and used standalone applications. The increase in ownership came when hardware prices finally fell enough for them to be affordable. Windows development was a result of that uptick, not the cause.

I mean, maybe, price is obviously a compelling aspect here. Its hard to separate correlation and causation, though I’ll hand you that price was probably more compelling.

That said, the people you knew who already owned computers were part of a minority, only about 15% of American households had a computer when Windows 3.1 released.

Dude, in a previous job I had a superior aggressively refuse to let me teach him how to do some extremely basic things on his computer (he’d just call me over to do it whenever he needed it done) and told me he did not know what an internet browser was (he used one everyday).

Now, I did not understand his thought process, but he exists. There are 100% people who understand the basics but experience intense cognitive stress at the mere sight of a command line.

In the short stint that I bothered trying to use a dating app I just swiped right on people I was attracted to and seemed compatible based on their bio.

If I wasn’t physically attracted to them it wouldn’t work anyway so IDK why I’d want to waste my time???

But yeah I gave up not because of the swiping/algo but because in a few cases people misrepresented themselves or were overly vague in their bios. In one case someone swiped right on me but then changed their mind because the reread my bio (read the fucking bio in the first place people) or in one case we had made plans to hook up and so I kind of got busy and stopped messaging them for a few days, they messaged me annoyed that I was not showering them in consistent attention and disconnected.

After that I was like, online dating sucks fuck this, and uninstalled.

The only things that people “intrinsically” want are food and fornication. Everything else, they have been taught and trained.

EVERYTHING? I enjoy doing things that aren’t eating and sex on a intrinsic level that I was never trained to enjoy. I just… wanted to do those things. A lot of things are intrinsically fun that are not eating and sex.

The training they have received from Microsoft domination has been “don’t learn how to use a computer”.

Why didn’t people adopt personal computers en masse before Windows came to be then? After Windows 3.0, personal ownership of computers more than doubled over the course of 5-6 years and then continued to balloon, speeding up adoption well beyond the previous decade.

Look, I’m not a fan of Microsoft either but this is conspiracism.

Microsoft is not the reason I believe its a pipedream to turn people into computer techs. Its a cold hard reality.

Even particularly smart people have to want to be computer techs. I work with teachers, genuinely smart people, who have zero desire or motivation to learn computer use outside how it can help them teach in a fairly “if its not broke don’t fix it” mentality. They aren’t incurious but they have limited time and resources and they use such elsewhere. My attempts to get them to even try Linux Mint has thus far failed, the idea that I could get them to learn CLI is absurd.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe even dim wits could learn to be computer techs and use a command line, but that requires them to want that. Most people do not intrinsically desire that.

What is your goal? Are you content with Linux being niche?

If not, what group do you think this appeals to?

The casual device user continues to ignore Windows desktops and use their phone let alone Linux at this point.

The normie desktop user who just wants a internet browser and basic office software can easily be won over to Linux Mint. You advocating everything be CLI based will kill that.

The casual desktop enthusiast & PC gamer will get irritated and impatient and go back to comfy Windows. They mostly just want their games to run smoothly and maybe look pretty. Maybe install an application that does something moderately technical for them with tweaks here and there.

You already have the hardcore techy users. They don’t need to be converted.

In my opinion, Linux and its various distro’s main goal ought to be to undermine for-profit OS. Not to turn everyone into computer techs. The latter is a pipe dream anyway.

Look, on many things, we probably agree. Maybe even more important things.

And I don’t even love this comic, its just, fine, its whatever.

That said I upvoted this comic to spite you and your comment here, because I don’t like your sentiment that people can’t like and share things that they like because your hipster instinct kicked in.

The average “not a computer person” does not own a computer at all, they use their smartphone for literally everything

Absolutely. If anything, this reinforces my thought towards many Linux evangelists. Hell, I am arguably a Linux Evangelist myself, but I know realistically the biggest group of people Linux has a shot at getting on board (that aren’t already) are the “middle group”. People who are semi-techy who insist on having and using a desktop but still want to be able to do things as easily right up front as they could with a new Windows OS. And this is the group many Linux users seem to aggressively despise for a lack of purity.

This group in particular is made up of a lot of “casual enthusiasts” and PC gamers, which is probably why the Steam Deck represented such a huge bump in linux usage.

I use both Windows and Linux. I also mess around with github programs here and there and they almost all require use of a command line to install or manipulate. And because a command line intrinsically is going to inform you way too little or way too much about what you are doing I end up having way more technical issues because I don’t realize I’m missing a dependency or I glazed over an error that popped up in a sea of text during installation.

Linux’s leaning on CLI is good for extremes: ultra-techy programmers and perfectionists and the exact opposite: people who just want internet and a word processor (who will install like basically nothing anyway so CLI wont bother them and probably keep them from breaking something in a GUI settings page).

People in the middle who are semi-techy end up annoyed because if they want to do some middle of the road changes to their system they have to use a command line or even code something themselves. Instead of just using a search engine to find the 1 out of a billion different little windows based applications that already exist to do the small yet very specific thing to a “good enough” level. Which just requires a minute or two of internet research, clicking download, waiting a bit, then installing a thing. Some of those tasks you can do while doing something else.

Or yes, maybe they end up needing to edit an ini file or a registry file (very rarely in the latter case).

Basically I’m talking about tech users that always use the path of least resistance rather than the most advanced or custom. People who want to do 20% of the work to get 80% of the results.

Man I don’t exactly love two out of four of those genres myself, but this thread has a few commenters that seem to want to pretend they’re the adults in the room but in reality they’re just a bunch of miserable cunts that either hate music or only want to listen to the same fucking popular shit over and over.

Like, popular music is fine to be clear but so is wanting to listen to weirder stuff.

In a vacuum, your post implies we should stop giving birth to boys as often as girls on a pure ethical basis to minimize the amount of miserable lonely people. Like, abort 75% of all male babies or if abortion is too yucky for some of you use some kind of geneforge to make female births 5x as likely.

Also thanks for letting me ramble. I tend to get excited when I seem to be helping in some way so I’m trying to keep it together but may go off a little.

I enjoy discourse of most kinds so the pleasure is mine as well.

And hey, if you’re nailing it 95% of the time those are excellent numbers with so much wiggle room! You can be waaaaaaay weirder with numbers like that, and it shows me that you have a strong ability to read the room and measure your response to things.

Yeah but, those 5% moments can be ruinous… I still remember one particular Halloween party. The kind of memory that keeps one up at night.

Many times its just me breaking and being clearly either grumpy (sick of people) or smell of lonely neediness. Or I’ll mentally short circuit and say something way overly blunt/irrelevant/obsessive. All can just make me legitimately unlikable and maybe deserving of the label. Its not like “fun zany autistic” moments.

So imagine a super charismatic type just suddenly breaking character after something slightly socially unexpected and outwardly presenting as a lizard person or android following that.

I get what you mean. You get so used to doing it that you basically no longer have evidence for things being ok when you don’t. I kept a note going every day for a whole year writing down stuff that happened; It was like a journal but focused on working on this stuff and I was so surprised to find how much I was expecting to write “and then it all fell apart” but finding that when it came time to write it down I just couldn’t actually come up with examples. I’m not saying you have to journal, but food for thought.

Yeah I might start doing little journals on my phone. I started using an open source note taking app, Logseq and thought maybe be one of the uses for that. I just need to create a template or something for that I think.

I got the basics covered, in fact I tend to be fairly anxiety riddled about making sure I meet bare minimum expectations if I go out of my way to socialize. I only really let myself go (in multiple ways) when I’m depressed. Which admittedly I probably am right now.

Its funny you mention board games. I’m actually not super into board games on an intrinsic level unless its a supremely nerdy/crunchy game. I get very meticulous/competitive/analytical/meta-gamey but I do go to casual board game meet ups anyway because its “fun enough” and I can socialize occasionally.

I think though you hit on a key element: I don’t live in a metro area. I live in a rural hellscape, and commute into a small city. And for a number of reasons I tend to not socialize after work and instead head straight home. I’m usually tired after work and I worry about driving home later than that potentially and driving exhausted. (45 minute commute)

Vulnerability is definitely something I am not able to do without rumination or severe anxiety later. I usually only reveal my deeper thoughts when I’m seriously drunk (edit: or when I’m on the internet). It feels great in the moment, but then the next day I worry I came off like a nutcase (because I probably did) and agonize over it.

Normally I am very “survivalist” minded in my social interactions and I’ve been so for a very long time. I’ve gotten extremely good at it, so good that I’ve kind of forgotten who I really am to a degree.

I’m good at masking with significant charisma with preparation/rehearsal/caffeine for some amount of time. Though I have “high highs and low lows” on charisma. 95% of the time I’ll ace it and people will like me, other 5% of times I come off like an unhinged weirdo, robot, or alien. Usually when I’m socially burnt out or the opposite, socially starved/desperate.

As a Windows & Linux user, I can, in the same way that I get that car people love working on cars.

I still really don’t ever want to work on cars but I understand.

I largely use technology of any kind for the applications of its use, not because of an intrinsic desire to knee deep in technical work.

I suppose I’d like to have the happy carefree loving energy that people naturally gravitate towards and it to be earnest (rather than it being a mask or something). I’d want to be a normie.

Even more I wish to basically be a himbo. People love himbos. But I’d have to become dumber, less judgemental, and more confident in myself. Someone who believes in astrology/spirituality because everyone else around them believes in it. Someone who’s not anxious about politics all the fucking time.

Like, I want to be a different and happier person. Maybe its a “grass is always greener” situation.

Talking to people doesn’t make me a better person. It makes me mask and feel further alienation. (Though yes, being completely alone is awful so I still socialize.)

And I can’t talk to a therapist for many many reasons.

Its too bad there isn’t a gym for one’s personality.