In late October 2025, as much as US$2 billion vanished from a digital marketplace. This wasn’t a hack or a bubble bursting. It happened because one company, Valve, changed the rules for its video game Counter-Strike 2, a popular first-person shooter with a global player base of nearly 30 million monthly users.
If I don’t own it, it doesn’t exist. I haven’t played since cafés 20 years ago. I would love to play like the old days, but never will I pay for a subscription, stalkerware account, or play any game with micro transactions. Theft, bank account skimming, and exploitive psychology extortion are all the norm. – mBoomer out.
The bank owns my house and money is just a contract with the economy. I carry my gold on my person at all times and my calves look amazing.
It exists because you fund and support it. You cannot fix others, but your vote matters. All you can do is have a higher standard and tell others in hopes of a collectively better world for all. In the end, you are either a part of the problem, or a part of a solution. No one is irrelevant as that reflects a lack of ethics of personal responsibility. Therein is the main cultural problem. If you are unwilling to go without, or take the high ground – when such things are easy, profitable, or nominalized – you are not just a sailor on the ship, you are a pirate as well. The ethics of others are ultimately irrelevant when defining your true self. If such things do not matter to you, why the hell are you a peasant pirate sailor instead of the captain of a fleet?
What exists because I support it? I’m not sure if this is directed at me or society as a whole.
If it’s me, I’m firmly on the side of revolution. Opting out isn’t viable because the labyrinth is infinite and well funded.
If it’s society? Also revolution.
It is an abstraction. It applies to both. I personally disagree with your self complacency, but not in an adversarial or confrontational way. The abstraction is a disassociated philosophical postulate, and is open to similar respectful, disconnected conjunction in the framework of democratic liberalism and information sharing, where skepticism and the right to be wrong are fundamental unalienable rights.
Storytelling, metaphor and jokes are great ways to convey meaning and vibe test in a casual space. The ability to extract fact from nuance and condense it quickly and relatably takes more skill and effort than simply saying what is.
All words are abstractions.
I lack a certain self awareness in this space that seems to always allude me. Maybe it is mild autism of some kind or something. I’m aware that there is something missing, but for whatever reason I am blind to it. I think it is peripherally related to a lack of emotional empathy in general.
I both understand what you said, but likely miss the meaning. I need to traverse the path of logic to arrive at my point. I apologize if that is annoying. I walk a branch and expand it into the leaves of my understanding and interests in that space. Without the walk, I feel lost and have nothing to say. It is like a part of me. Temporally, my immediate thoughts are of no value to me.
I’m not sure if you are accusing me of story telling, or telling me to condense in more relatable ways; being passive aggressive, or helpful. I typically set aside such thought because I see dozens of perspectives and potential objectives in everything people say. So when I talk about ethics like here, I am letting my inner consternation speak justice about how things should be and my actionable inner resolve. I’m stating it in a way that a person with a similar depth is welcome to critique or expand upon. I do not feel dichotomous or dogmatic. I don’t care anything about me in a narcissistic sense, I’m a nobody. I’m genuinely curious and interested if anyone has a better perspective of a higher moral disposition or actionable solution.
In other words, I do not intend to add any emotional component. I’m not really concerned with how people feel about ethics. I care about hurting as few people as possible. Words are of little to no value to me, actions are what makes the person. So I speak of my stance and my actions. I cannot fix anyone else but me, or tell others their actions matter and that they have a choice. Their emotional response is a part of them. If it upsets them to see a higher moral ground exists, their intelligence and fight or flight response determines how they react. I have no clue how they arrived at their plateau or if there is a path to where I am so how could I possibly make that connection look pretty in a way that seems pleasant or well packaged? I simply have no interest in such connections. I am fascinated by the branching and finding the best branches and actionable higher ground. I’m often cynical that others do not care about right, wrong, and not hurting people by taking personal actions when these are evident. Ethics based upon other’s actions or getting caught are not real ethics at all. Life and death are not subjective, so neither are most peripheral factors.
Anyways, I am not relatable because I only really care about curiosity. Everything is subjective, but supporting criminality is an obvious wrong to me.
Abstractions are layered, but some concepts are concrete or literal while others are various levels of abstraction and relative perspective. This area of heuristic and inference based logic is lacking for most people.
I get that ASD can make communication difficult. I can’t say enough how much therapy can ease that burden as someone with a chinese take-out menu of diagnoses.
Allow me to translate.
My first comment was about how ownership and value are ephemeral. I used a joke with a positive twist to show you, an unfamiliar ape, that I’m a friendly ape.
I took your response as “You don’t take this seriously, and are not a serious person.” But then I thought maybe this person is using “you” in the broad sense.
My second comment was “should I take this personally?” Followed by a clarification that I don’t agree with the way things are, either. Ape tells another ape “We can both see the weather sucks, we have something in common.”
Your response sounded like “you still don’t take this seriously, here are some big words because I’m more serious than you.” But then I thought maybe this person is neurodivergent. I shouldn’t read malice into this.
I reponded to say “This is how I communicate with new apes. I put thought and consideration into it. Also, I understand your big words but choose not to use them (in case you’re being a dick.)”
The method of understanding any communication is inference, and heuristics are practical because not all tasks take the maximum effort to get to a workable result.
Regardless, I may have poked, but I meant no harm, strange ape.
There are lots of things I would like to address and fix if I wasn’t stuck in bed with a bad back. Therapy might fix some. Most of my issues are circumstantial.
Not at all trying to be a dick. I’m disassociated from time. I’m not actually using my broader vocabulary. Not trying to be an ass or anything like that. I have been super into AI stuff for the last few years where I need more specific language. I started noting stuff I came across and wanted to recall by posting some of it here as Word of the Day but like 5 people ever cared so eh. I’m rather poor at language IMO.
I blame my time spent painting cars for my dynamic range of detail. Maybe if I was not stuck physically disabled, spending most of my time stuck in bed, I would be more aware of larger vocabulary, or less inclined to ramble on to make my points. I don’t directly interact with much of anyone any more, so I am rather disconnected from feedback of what exactly constitutes big words in a practical sense I can manage. I try not to be a pretentious asshat by using words without surrounding context. I usually save that stuff for real insults, returning 8 to 12 letters for every halfwit four letter expletive dished into the fray.
Normal is a person you have not taken the time to get to know yet. It is a fallacy and abstraction of the mind; normal people do not actually exist. Some take a little digging to find eccentricity, but no one is spherical, or lacking a Chinese menu.