Hello,

So I’ve reflected over the past ten months about why I left Beehaw. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my initial feelings about it - I knew it wasn’t just the atmosphere of political commentary being everywhere, and people’s responses about it seemed understandable.

I still check back in on the central feed every few months to see how things are going, and I’ve formed a theory as to why I found things so uncomfortable.

I think it’s this: All news contemporary news headlines are formatted and designed with a dilberate desire to upset people and spread misinformation.

My example for this is a recent thread: Link.

It directly borrows the headline of the article it’s about, which is:

Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’

If you examine it, you’ll notice that it’s designed to provoke people who understand LLMs into correcting it, because it presents subtextual misinformation about how LLMs work - attributing them motive and internality that they do not possess. This, in turn, causes people who have been persuaded by corporate propaganda and misinformation campaigns to oppose those people, creating the image to third-party observers that there is an undecided discourse about what is true regarding LLMs and their capacities.

This, in theory, drives traffic to the article, but in practice causes this post and article to be part of an argument that is almost a ritual at this point - no new information is really obtained, nor is actionable advice given, it just causes a pointless, played out argument that creates stress, hurt feelings and alienation.

As an example, I think it displays the central problem that I have - By reproducing the headlines of news articles verbatim, you expose people to a statement intentionally designed to provoke a strong, often negative response, while the underlying article offers basically nothing new to any ongoing discussion.

Conclusion/Tl;Dr

I think that people should consider reading the article and providing a summarizing title of their own instead of providing the headline as the thread title. If they do this, and possibly even provide commentary in their initial post, the resulting discussion will be more productive and browsing will be more pleasant.

Hello fellow bees.

I’m exhausted of seeing US politics and world news creep into all the communities in trying to use. I have the vast majority of communities and instances about this blocked for a reason, but no matter how many communities I block it still happens.

I’m not trying to ignore what’s going on. I am not feeling the wrath of the privileged at the acknowledge of the suffering of the weak. I devote a specific amount of time each week where I brace myself and gaze upon the horrors so that I can stay informed.

The problems I have with a lot of this is that it seems predominately to be regurgitating the news cycle uncritically. Many posts don’t even rephrase the headlines that are purposefully designed to be upsetting.

What I would like is if before someone resposted this kind of thing that they would consider if it’s:

Actionable, which is to say it has a clear call to action about the problems it presents.

Significant, which is to say it bears relevance on people’s immediate well-being in a way that is not simply a restatement of extant problems.

Useful, which is to say it both represents a useful resource and is presented in a way that makes that easy.

I don’t need to see news articles about how 7 out of 10 Republician senators would rather eat a baby than put out a trans person on fire. I know and I don’t need to be reminded while trying to find something interesting to read at the bus stop.

If it doesn’t do one of the above, I think posting it is contributing to information overload exhaustion that makes people feel so helpless.

At the very least, could we try to keep the stuff restrained to the relevant communities? I already have 10 of the current Beehaw communities blocked because they’re either about political news, are dominated by it or represent an undue risk to being suddenly jumpscared by it.

What do you think? Please advise, because I enjoy Beehaw but this is so exhausting.

Hey all,

I’m new here and I wanted to start a discussion about TTRPGs that people enjoy. I really like seeing people talk passionately about those sorts of things. I’m, personally, a big fan of games by Jenna Moran (Nobilis, Glitch, etc) and have a lot of positive experience with certain Powered by the Apocalypse Games. I’m also fascinated by a lot of OSR content because I feel like it has the potential to capture some of the more interesting parts of early D&D (my partner and I discuss AD&D quite a bit).

I used to write homebrew for Exalted and I’ve played some WoD games, but it’s not my true passion, except maybe for Changeling the Lost. I had a long-running game of Ars Magica 5e a while ago, which was a tremendous experience and really ignited my interest in more dense, bean-countery games that I had previously been discounting in favor of lighter, more narrative-drama experiences.

I’m not as big a fan of D&D as some, but my partner and I did meet because of 3.5e homebrew, so I do have some positive nostalgia.

Anyway, what about you- what TTRPGs are you interested in? Which ones have you had long or interesting games with? What are you looking forward to playing, or setting up to play?