Not to that extent, but crypto. I think its an amazing and really interesting technology. But now it's tainted by scammers and when people hear the term, they get defensive because they are ready for you to scam them

While not to the same degree as a lot of folks, Fallout got into it some time around New Vegas because it was featured on game fly. Anyways delved headfirst into it and fell in love with the classic games. The post Fallout 4 boom gives me a headache sometimes I just want to talk with old bastards and my fellow autists about Fallout without some profligate butting in cause they watch the TV show.

Anon thinks it's 1939

I stayed up to date on ai and machine learning, including language models. I remember hearing that one learned math from language and wondering where things will go. I watched ai safety videos before they felt relevant. Then I heard Openai, which had a good rep at the time, is releasing their new model online, called ChatGPT. Having played with DungeonAI and NovelAI before I was gonna fiddle with this as well.

Then headlines broke, it became a phenomenon. Even then I figured this would be this week's Thing before getting bored, as was common with these ai.

Down the line I remembered hearing ChatGPT on a gas station ad for some travel app. That was when I realized this is permanent. People who aren't even online are likely hearing about this. Suddenly my niche hobby and hopeful dreams of the future became an actual enshittified crisis.

I don't think I need to explain how everyone using language models now is just god awful for everyone. And the attention hasn't gotten us closer to answering long standing questions of ethics, economic change, what is intelligence or consciousness. We've just got a bunch of the lowest common denominator shouting their answers now.

Deadpool.

did people even read the last 3 green lines?

I have several things that interested me and became popular, but I didn't hate on the new fans. At most I sometimes missed the feeling of having this thing that was a bit obscure and in case of channels on youtube, the intimacy of interacting with the creator and other subscribers was nice. But I can't hate on something I like becoming popular.

As for concrete examples, I do remember subbing to this small gaming channel with 9000 subs called Markiplier back in the day.

I subbed to OKI Weird Stories when he had like 600ish subs.

I subbed to Creepcast before it had any videos on it, but that one is cheating since both meatcanyon and wendigoon were already very popular. Still, it's been a bit nuts seeing the podcast explode in popularity. I even know people irl who listen to it.

Currently I follow a small channel, also podcast format, called The Daydream Arcade that focuses on reading reddit stories, but the hosts are two friends, who bring some warmth and personality to the format which is nice. For me, I stick around becuase I really like their friendship and their personalities. I'm also a older than the both of them and feel a bit big-sister-protective of them. I want them to grow and I believe they will because they already have 4500 subs compared to the 900 they had when I found them, but also don't like the thought of them reaching a point of popularity where the mean assholes come crawling to tear them down.

Plot twist, all those fanbases were already kinda garbage before they got flooded with normies and most of the toxicity didn't come from the casuals.

Steampunk aesthetic ( 1990's ), generative art ( early 2000s )

My ex wife and I used to take a chess board everywhere, play in cafes, parks, restaurants, pubs. It was something to do when we had run out of stuff to say to each other. It was a conversation starter, people would come up and have a sticky, or ask us who's winning. Some people would occasionally ask if they can play. It was nice. Until Queens Gambit was all the rage. Then people seemed to assume we were just following that trend, and there was a noticeable increase in people saying "Queens Gambit eh?" And we stopped taking the board out so much.

Man, I like some pretty retarded shit man, but I've never been bullied for it, man

Pogs are cool little disks

Then it became a children’s verb