By the way, what makes an image turn .avif? Whether I upload .webp or .jpeg it turns to .avif when the upload finishes
I do notice that it takes more effort though. Before online platforms figured out the whole engagement outrage pattern, I spent a lot of time playing video games, yes, but also reading books or making art.
Then the online platforms started investing in trying to figure out how to engage you, and it is easier and easier to spend time online by default to the exclusion of other things and feel bad about it because your online time wasn't spent on something that made you feel good like it did in the past. It is surprisingly hard to resist the current big platforms are trying to push us down.
People on the Threadiverse have taken at least a small step by disengaging from Reddit and going to an open-source, non-corporate-controlled engagement-maxing platform. But human negativity bias still makes it a lot easier to post outrage and comment outrage and get in fights. Hell, I am making this comment because of my own negativity bias and desire to expound on how much I hate what has been done to our attention spans! It's a lot easier to complain than to analyze why I enjoy something. And I think the engagement bait outrage has ruined my brain a bit to still sort of seek that out and scroll (but better Lemmy than Reddit). I've been trying to get off but change is hard. Sometimes I relapse and click an article I know will have negativity and anger, like this article I clicked on.
I do really appreciate what you did by posting something to help instead of yet another "thing bad" even if I super agree with "thing bad", and I'm being part of the "thing bad" pattern right now.
I do know of !takeyourtimeback@lemmy.world which might be able to help with the whole online engagement problem.
Been using Cattails: Wildwood Story, a !lifesimulation@lemmy.world, as my relax-after-work game.
Started The Farmer Was Replaced (if you like things like that, !automationgames@lemmy.zip), to try to ease me into coding again. There is a function to pet a flying piggy available to you right from the beginning of the game, and they tell you this. I feel shocked that only ~25% of players have that achievement when about ~75% have gotten the achievements you get for the very first actions you do in-game. Also, the sounds of you harvesting crops (or of them going into the piggy bank for items, not sure which) reminds me very much of the Minecraft item pickup sound.
Seeing people do themed or challenge runs is always entertaining.
!crpg@lemmy.world might like this
Cattails: Wildwood Story (!lifesimulation@lemmy.world, some mechanics will feel familiar for !StardewValley@piefed.social players but it's not the same)
man I love personality quizzes
To each their own, I bought the game because of that kind of thing!
It is also something I also want to avoid as much as possible. I'd rather have the uncomfortable conversation with someone than ghost them and I have actually walked that walk before, having uncomfortable conversations I wanted to avoid in order to not ghost someone else. Just wanted to show empathy for people who do it and maybe provide an explanation to the rest of us wondering why others hurt us that way.
As a person who spent a lot of time feeling rejected and unsure of why people were happy to be my acquaintance but not my friend, never getting any explanation why I wasn't good enough (the answer was undiagnosed autism and the trouble with social skills that comes with that), ghosting with no explanation hurts me in my soul.
I get why people do it though. How do you know if it's a person who was clueless to what their bad behavior and is desperate to have literally anyone tell them what they do wrong so they can change, or someone who will flip out and get violent or stalkery or super spiteful towards group members once ejected from the group? How do you know it will not spiral into some giant drama, especially if you were wrong or others disagree about if their behavior was objectionable? Conflict avoidance, whether for justified reasons or not, is very very common.
Thanks for letting me know!