Late 80s early 90s there were literal adverts in the classified section of the paper by pirates where you could buy 100s of games for a set sum (very cheap usually). Often you mailed empty disks to them and the money, and they would return it with games. They would also have monthly printed newsletters about new titles.

*In the US.

If that is the only place you have seen Christopher Walken, then you seriously need to update yourself on Christopher Walken movies. He is great in everything he is in, and you are missing out on a legend of a man.

Sure thing, Musk.

Removed by mod

It is funny how easy it is to spot monolingual Americans attempting to write like non-native English speakers.

0 in my country. They were abolished many years ago

The problem is that because the production costs of the crap content will now be near zero, it will always be profitable to create as long as there is just a fraction of the consumerbase falling for it.

It is never going to stop on its own because of lack of demand, it is going to continue and something drastic will have to be thought up to create an internet where everything isn’t buried in AI generated crap.

The problem is that quantity is no longer going to be a problem, it can be created for virtually nothing, so basically just a tiny profit will be enough to warrant it in the outlook of those responsible for it.

Now endless shallow spam, which slightly resembles something worthwhile, can be generated in an instant, because it will generate a meagre profit. It is already happening on the book market for example. Amazon is flooded with AI generated books, and proper authors are simply buried in the mountains of generated spam which is at best nonsensical but at worst genuinely misinforming.

Perhaps consumers will become more discerning in the future (although to be honest not much in the present suggests that will be the outcome), but it will never remove the increasing mountains of spam, because it will be produced for as long as just a fraction of people buy into it. And this will be applicable to everything on the internet. If we thought commercialisation and spam was bad now, we have seen nothing at all yet.

So even with proper discernment, it will take a lot of time and effort just to locate something earnest and worthwhile in the generated spam.

Kenshi, and I still am. Before that it was Stellaris. Singleplayer sandbox with modding is basically what does it for me.

The challenge would be to find paper for it.

In fact it is pretty much the opposite.

Things improve.

It is not a natural law that things will eventually improve. It takes deliberate effort and money and an environment where this improvement is possible. Especially a video hosting site takes a lot of capital. And if powerful actors has a literal stranglehold on the market, then it can be virtually impossible even for obviously better alternatives to gain a foothold.