OpenTTD

joined 1 year ago
[–] OpenTTD 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The issue is mostly the type of disability. You have to realize mental disability is not visible unless you know what to look for and even then you're dealing with some strange and often self-hated traits. So while physical disability is accounted for, mental illness and especially mental trauma (abandonment issues, PTSD in my case) are simply not even recognized as existing.

In most solarpunk I've seen, the issue of permanent differences in how a person functions is simply never addressed, and it feels like a gentrification of the problem. "Maybe we should push the mentally-handicapped somewhere else!"

It hurts even more when you get the handicap after you're born. Most mental issues are genetic and so they have no reference point. I didn't ask to be fucking beaten by a foster father who smoked in the house and refused to be questioned. I didn't ask or deserve to be stolen from my family by corrupt government officials. I didn't ask to be beaten by a bully so hard that he went to juvie for it and I was bedridden for a month. If you want to improve life, do it for people who have less than you without lowering anyone's standard of living. Otherwise you're asking for a world I cannot live in because I am a permanently-scarred psyche and I cannot support myself nor function in a community.

Don't get me wrong, inclusivity is bullshit. I only ask for a future I can rely on machines in, not one in which I would be doomed to die. I can see how being exposed to solarpunk via people first might make that something you didn't expect at least.

[–] OpenTTD 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How do I live the life I want to live in a setting that tells me I "don't really enjoy this, you're just brainwashed by capitalism" over and over? By fighting back.

You and the aesthetic (idea) you follow are not powerless and you desire a world I am excluded from, purely because the part of my life I enjoy most (the fulfilment of escapism) doesn't fit into that worldview. I am probably not going to change anything, but so be it I wanted my position to be clear. You propose taking away a life(style) that I enjoy, and I want to point out that is what you're proposing. I cannot hold a job, I have issues which are permanent and pervasive that exclude any existence in a community-focused world and if solarpunk will not accommodate that then I will not accommodate it. I can't kill an idea, nobody can, but maybe I can get people to realise that solarpunk is not about only good improvements, it has a dark side and that dark side is that there are innocent people who fall through the cracks when only "the greater good" is considered.

[–] OpenTTD 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Mainly my issue is that I am simply not interested in nature and solarpunk works I've personally viewed have - at least by chance - been extremely anti-urbanist and anti-disability the first three times.

I have no issue with the environment being protected, only with valuing it at the expense of someone whose only place to be themselves used to be online. That isn't even a "me" thing, it's a "this work doesn't necessarily need a token disabled person, but you should design it so that disabled people will still be just as if not more able to function without being forced to make social connections IRL or on centralized social media or even (for now) federated social media" thing. The reason disabled people fantasize about VR worlds with superpowers is because if we had that power but were still ourselves, we'd feel like equals rather than "superior" because we'd have something people value us for.

I think the fediverse is a mistake. I shouldn't be here. You might think that just because I prefer FOSS that I would promote it, but it's been almost a year and Lemmy/etc. are a bigger cesspool than reddit. Maybe Web³ is right, as far as VR is concerned. People who do hate reality are on whatever fledgeling metaverse platform they're on because the fediverse will never be like golden age reddit. We finished the Web in 2D and it's a corporate shithole. Time to move to a greener pasture...

[–] OpenTTD 3 points 8 months ago

To be fair, it seems like I may have had bad luck in the first three solarpunk works I ever experienced. My issue against the whole idea is "this is a society that can no longer afford to value non-practical pursuits, it is the future we are headed towards, therefore our present society can no longer afford to value non-practical pursuits" that was somehow in all three solarpunk works I encountered.

The three in question were Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl, the Necroverse by "RichM", and a story that a fair-weather friend wrote that I no longer have a copy of that showed a dystopian cybersolarpunk hybrid where "Covid-19 has ended the modern age and now everything is powered by wind turbines because most of us are dead".

As a result of such bad luck, I may have overestimated how central that theme of "self-sufficiency or die" is to the genre.

[–] OpenTTD 1 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Mainly because, at least as far as I've seen, solarpunk societies requires "taking responsibility for your survival into your own hands" which I am mentally incapable of doing, and not from lazyness or lack of effort. Trust me, if I could hold a job I wouldn't be able to afford to not be working right now. I might have a mild form of oppositional defiant disorder or a bad case of PTSD, but when someone is a jerk to me I take it personally and hold grudges, making working with people who give me orders or take orders from me essentially like ordering a cat to herd sheep.

[–] OpenTTD 6 points 8 months ago

ChimeraOS. If you have a non-steam gamerdeck, I recommend backing up the Windows 11 install and replacing it with this outright. It's based on the Steam Deck OS and makes the process of selecting a game much faster because Windows 11 is bloated as shit.

[–] OpenTTD 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

To be fair, I'm aware you're correct, it's a shitty book with very little actual optimism. It's not alone though, aside from the Necroverse I also have issue with the general attitude of solarpunk because it proposes that humans can't have a genuine affinity for a digital existence.

"You don't have to upload if you don't want to, and I will march with you against the singularity to defend that. March against me, though, and I will not be subject to your worldview willingly." I don't actually believe the singularity is likely, technology doesn't work that way, but that point still stands. Solarpunk demands you sacrifice what you have for "the greater good" even if you have very little to begin with.

Imagine if the evil cyberpunk megacorp, or the steampunk empress, or the dieselpunk dictatorship, or the biopunk megacorp, told you up-front what the costs really are. Nobody would buy into their machinations. Solarpunk tells you "You want satisfaction? Run away to the middle of nowhere and pretend electronics can be made at 1nm scale without semiconductor factories and never play with your tech toys ever again." and doesn't seem to care that outliers like me will say "Actually, I am satisfied. I'm angry because you want to take that away."

Scratch that. It doesn't have to care. "If everyone but the corner cases wants it, we can FORCE it to happen. Just like the conservatives did with cyberpunk." It learned, so to speak, what the Social Media Dystopia did to win. It bought an election of an ideology, because without the popular upvote a corporation can't become powerful in a world with online criticism. I'm trying to kill an idea before that idea truly becomes an issue, by pointing out that solarpunk is still dystopian.

[–] OpenTTD 0 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Mainly I'm a sci-fi author who hates the genre because almost everyone else wants it to be true and I'm the only one saying "it would literally be like the world is a prison to me" only to get the response "you're the only one not allowed to be happy, suffer so normal people are all equal".

[–] OpenTTD -3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Then don't build it and we're fine. I'm angry because I'm disabled and Solarpunk is usually Ableist yet everyone is obsessed with social media detox and lumping all technologies in with it.

[–] OpenTTD 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Explain why then, despite someone important mentioning video games occurs in the Necroverse (Transhumanist Cyberjock/Solarpunk story by "RichM90071"), no games being played are EVER shown.

[–] OpenTTD -4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Asshole, I never said that. I'm well aware TTD was originally a commercial product, that's my entire point. You can't make games for free, and yes, I value video games more than continued lifespan because art allows me to ignore a reality I despise for being defined by everyone else.

You don't have the right to fucking judge me for the tiny little quirk of liking a game, I only mentioned it because it was mildly relevant.

[–] OpenTTD 0 points 8 months ago (11 children)

Read "Project Hieroglyph" and the way one of its "optimistic" stories ("Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl") shows a multiplayer superhero game and the main character hates it. That's not how mental illness works, computers used to be GOOD for providing social contact. That's not education, that's "fix yourself".

I am not broken. I am unhappy because I don't want to live in a world where I face reality, whether that's "IRL" or "social media". You know why I like the 4th Matrix movie? It reminds us that this image isn't what the world provides, it's what the Matrix - real life - forces us to work towards. The Matrix isn't just the fake world, it's the fake world on top of a real one and the real escape is to change, not break, the system that binds us because there is nothing in the real but vast lifeless desert. Mars, the Moon... Dead rocks. There is no evidence of an afterlife nor any point to "accepting" a secular life you hate because you will still hate it and "scientific evidence only" doesn't fix anything or change who you are.

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