this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
790 points (90.9% liked)
Technology
85786 readers
3680 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Idiots?
I'm not one of them, but what makes them idiots? Seems kind of uncalled for.
From the OP of the original post: https://lemmy.ml/comment/26214965
Getting a Post not found on that one.
Weird. Works fine for me. Here's the text:
Ah okay, thank you for pasting that in for me.
I see, that makes sense, then. It was a bit hard to know that it was from that perspective. 😅
It just wouldn’t be a lemmy post without a smug sense of superiority.
Agreed. I don’t know if this is the term for it, but I’ve been thinking of all this as “signaling disrespect,” a deliberate attempt to make people think of their peers as lesser, as other.
I feel like either people have been conditioned to do this online all the time for some reason, or maybe there’s some directed attack against civility. I don’t know. But I refuse to let myself be affected by it. I won’t hate people.
I suppose you're right, in certain communities.
Seems like you feel superior to them
I suppose they call them idiots because they trusted microslop's "eternal" definition and even paid for it when there are FOSS alternatives?
A: gets scammed by company
B: You're so stupid, you should have known that company was going to scam you.
As if Microsoft was founded just yesterday and wasn’t scamming everyone at everything for like decades, right?
They don’t have a history of undoing perpetual licenses though. I mean, I know people who still use a licensed copy of office 2000
Now they have. The point is, if you trust that company for whatever reason, it’s your problem. What makes you believe they’re to be trusted? That they changed? There’s nothing that indicates that, yet people keep not just using their ~~unprofessional~~ incompetent code glued stack, they pay money for it.
Oftentimes it’s not a choice. Microsoft office is a de facto standard in many professional contexts.
I personally avoid using Microsoft products whenever I can but that doesn’t mean everybody has that luxury.
And I cannot blame anyone buying a perpetual licence when the alternative is a subscription.
I'm not defending this action from Microsoft, but for most people, they buy a Microsoft product and then happily use it for years, none the wiser to any of Microsoft's other nonsense happening in the background.
Coming from a background where software is usually pirated and not paid for (which I don’t support now), it’s a special kind of weird to pay for that shite. I mean, who could have guessed? Me personally, I have no empathy for those. Go buy the next license from Microsoft, I guess. Till they screw you again.
If you pay for something, pay for quality. I understand people who buy Apple stuff, it’s not even overpriced when you consider all the factors. Windows people are fooling themselves, and it’s really fun to watch. ‘Idiots’ is the right word in my book. So I vibe with the title, it’s more correct than the Verge’s one.
'Douchebag' is the right word in my book.
North American English, innit?
And those customers shouldn't have been dressed like that!
Not saying that I agree with the title, just explaining what I think was the reason.
Although one could say that trusting microslop to keep their word after what we've seen them do in the last years is... foolish to say the least.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me multiple times since the 90s, that's on me.
/s
Non sarcastic take, only MS is to blame.
That’s what I’m thinking
I bought the win version, because I have a five year old win 10 computer I’m using until win 10 is no longer supported, and I can’t get office for free anymore.
When win 10 is no longer supported, that’s a Linux computer.
Would I be an idiot, if they cancelled support for mine? I guess so. I’m waiting for some edgelord to tell me I am, probably accompanied by y0u sH00d jUsT g0 LinUx n0w
Yeah, no rush.
Come on over to the Linux side when it suits you. You're welcome to the family when you're ready and that computer is ready. 🤟
Certainly will be, this is definitely the last windows I’m running. Cheers.
It was my sons school computer and it’s running education which for win 10 I have been happy with. One son has ditched win 11 and is running Bazzite now. The other is wound back to win 10 I think, but he’ll move
I’m in the process of deciding which distro to move on; I manage my sons NDIS so that’s front and centre; security of federal government records and claims.
Unless you have a specific use case in mind, or have a particular distribution that interests you, I can wholeheartedly recommend Fedora (GNOME or KDE version, either is good). I've not had any issues with it for a few years (I think I had some trouble with it in 2022, but nothing since then).
Thank you, not exactly no, just stable and secure.
I don’t game on it, just book keeping and I do a bit of correspondence. But yeah I need security because the federal government require me to keep records and I make claims through their portal. That’s particularly important now that what I’ve been doing for the last five years will soon become federal law.
The other thing is I’m not fond of allowing the American tech giants access to those parts of my records. Fortunately excel isn’t required for it. At this time the only American tech involved with it is MS.
They probably still came out ahead with 7 years of use without paying subscriptions to Microsoft.
Still not what they paid for though. 😐
It's obviously a play on the common phrase that the honest guy ends up being the idiot. Not because the honest guy is stupid but because the honesty ends up backfiring. It's used all the time in video game DRM contexts.
It was obviously not obvious to me, but okay. I'll take your word for it. 🙃
I think it's just sarcastic
How is it sarcastic? I don't get it, please explain, and please explain how that makes it better somehow.
It's sarcastic because you obviously aren't an idiot for buying a lifelong license to a product.
If anything most of the time it's supposed to be the right choice (I'm only talking about licenced product, not ownership).
Especially if it's a tool you use regularly.
At no point these people where supposed to "know better and not buy this". Microsoft just did a rugpull.
I wasn't aware of all the bullshit these companies were doing back in 2019, but I recall it wasn't full blown enshittification yet.
For your second ask, it doesn't make it better or lesser, it just adds shock value, engagement baiting.
You're presenting an argument here which is purely based on logic. I think OP is not sarcastic, but actually believes people are idiots for simply buying Microsoft products. They are just being elitist. That's my interpretation.
Could (hopefully) be wrong though! If OP gives another explanation I'm sure that'll be true.
Anyone who pays to install software from a spyware company is incredibly naive to say the least
Must be like the vast majority of everyone alive that uses some kind of tech these days, then. 🤷♂️ I just felt like the title is over the top a little bit. If it had been in a comment it would've made me react less for some reason. 😄
I get it. You're absolutely right it doesn't make them idiots. Even I'm being hyperbolic to an extent. The real issue is much bigger and doesn't stop at Microsoft. I get why people feel so powerless and end up going along with the status quo. Really, the fact that we've allowed it is more of a reflection on our collective Idiocracy.
It's only morning here but I feel like this comment is the best interaction online I'm gonna have today.
Great response. And not because you agree with me but because it was even way more insightful than what I said.
Have a good one, friend. 🫶