I don’t blame people for attachment to fictional characters; my primary issue is the way that attachment is cynically exploited for additional profits.

Oh, this episode kind of features a Klingon-conquered world and its people.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mind's_Eye_(episode)

You might be right, though Klingons have been stretched a number of directions, including “Space Soviets” in the TOS and even part of the motion picture series (especially Undiscovered Country).

I find your experience very relatable. I had a similar issue with Genshin Impact and I’d add how cynically monetized and exploitative the way it played really was, pressuring people with emotional manipulation into paying up for the sake of imaginary waifus with low-key gambling characteristics.

Before that, I had a similar issue where I alienated coworkers that I nonetheless had to work with at my school district because they were all loudly into Game of Thrones and kept trying to pressure me to watch the show and the “best” parts (the parts with the most gory torture scenes and/or sexual violence) over and over again and it made even eating lunch around them a very awkward and offputting situation, maybe for them too.

For almost ten years that was their thing, dogmatically, and they weren’t interested in anything I was watching, reading, or writing. Locally, on my side of this networked community, I even got called a quote, “joyless scold” for expressing my frustration and disgust with that show and its fandom, much to my surprise at least at first. It still boils my blood when someone under pretense of “grown-ass adulthood” accuses me of being “childish” because I enjoy shows that aren’t necessarily targeting horny teenage boys (which don’t really seem that mature to me) as their primary demographic.

Making new friends can be challenging, but I believe that it’s still possible to meet and interact with people that may actually like the authentic you, where you don’t have to bury parts of yourself just to try to fit in. Even one friend like that may be like an oasis in the desert, and worth the search.

mostly Leftist because of the political stuff on Star Trek

Decades of festering contrarianism and “bad guys are cool actually” ideology in the Trek fandom made far too many people seem somehow embarrassed by the idea of a brighter future in the setting, or that the Federation was actually cool and good and didn’t need to have edgy murderfucking black ops “Adults In The Room” no matter how much Rick Berman pushed the idea because he was always a piece of shit.

Those toxic fans are numerous enough that I lost count of how many “USS AYN RANDs” I saw flying around Star Trek Online. The zone chat in Earth Spacedock is basically /pol/, 24/7.

Damn right.

and are quick to remind you of your sins

On the other hand, it’s totally cool and good to drag around a big cross of contrarianism in a totally-not-self-righteous way because your treat printers were criticized, amirite?

LLMs, in their primary and most common uses, are planet-burning trash, but the important thing is the contrarian in this thread found a way to feel superior to those that don’t like when material conditions get worse.

I stopped paying attention to it right around the time that the “dae le section 31 adults in the room getting shit done amirite” and “dae le epic terran empire humanity fuck yea amirite” glazers started shaping the discourse as they did on Reddit.

“And that is why it is cool and good when Holden Bloodfeast III has dynastic rule over all of you when he specialized in beer pong before he dropped out of college!”

I think the bigger problem is that each answer it gives basically destroys a forest

That, and it’s filling once-useful search engines with useless and even dangerous gibberish.

This sounds a lot like “I need to catch up; what is contrarian and edgy right now?”

But they were so emotional and should have just cheered on the ruling class commanding the machines making life worse for people instead of better.

I refuse to accept or even entertain inevitabilist arguments about treat printers because of the already present environmental devastation and the fever dreams of rich assholes that know they are making the problem worse and want even more environmental devastation anyway.

If that kind of thinking was in play in the late 80s and early 90s, more CFCs would be dumped into the air year after year and anyone unhappy about that would get condescended to about being “Luddites against hairspray technology and/or glam rock” or something.

Meanwhile, the governor of New York State has announced a drastic expansion of water-devouring data centers to chase the LLM hype dragon.

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-launches-empire-ai-consortium-make-new-york-global-leader-artificial

It feels like saying we can keep burning coal because we’ll develop carbon capture and storage.

The CEO of Google is saying exactly that when he says more LLM data centers are necessary for data regurgitation technology to maybe come up with a solution for climate change that isn’t “stop pumping carbon into the air with more data centers you fucking ignorant bazingas.”

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You seem to be conjuring an imaginary psych degree so you can concern troll. Fuck off.