Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
OldAlias
Nov 2, 2013

What bothers me is the SA culture in general. I've thought about it at length yesterday, and realized that SA are essentially a bunch of jealous ludites. Here are some examples why that is true:

1) Furry fandom is a community of incredibly artistic people, full of painters, writers, musicians, and entertainers, who organize, put together huge international conventions, and raise hundreds of thousands for charity while contributing tens of millions of dollars to local economies of the cities hosting those conventions. The only thing SA contributed is to make fun of them.

2) SecondLife allowed for unprecedented communication, collaboration, and creativity. Players there got a chance to explore design, fashion, and architecture skills they never even knew they had. They used their creative skills to make new games, experiment with fashion in virtual space, and practice things like investment and business/real estate management before building real life businesses using those skills. People there earned from thousands to millions of dollars using nothing other than their brains and creativity. The only thing SA contributed is to make fun of them by making random penises fly around, and when told that they are causing serious damage and costing actual money, their only reply was, "don't take it so seriously."

3) Bitcoin is a new financial concept entirely without precedent. We are only scratching the surface of what is possible with it. The only reason it has any value (and the thing SA seems to focus most on) is that it is impossible to duplicate, and has a guaranteed limit on quantity, which is extremely unusual in the copy/paste digital world. But besides inflation resistance, it can do awesome things like, for the first time ever, allow software to own valuable property. This was never possible before, w/ closest thing being that a program could control bank accounts or own contracts in someone else's name. Now, for the first time, it's possible for a program or a "virus" to own money, decide on its own how to spend it, and actually take it with it as it travels around the web. The possibilities for AI, concept of property, and ownership/copyright law are mind boggling. This is just one example of many that Bitcoin allows for, and those that realize such possibilities are working hard to make them come true, earning real money in the process (as much as $6,000 a day, or $2.3mil a year). The only thing SA has contributed was to willfully stay ignorant of basic finance and economics and make fun of those involved with bitcoinOther than that, all they are able to do is stare at the system without understanding it, or being able to figure out how to make anything out of it. As they have with SecondLife, or any other fandom or technology.

All this makes me think that SA goons have absolutely no imagination or drive. On the contrary, the group seems to be based around making fun of anyone who shows any sort of imagination, or attempts something out of the ordinary. They are like a pot of crabs, grabbing and dragging anyone who dares try to escape and achieve something back down with them. The group has no accomplishments to its name, other than being a nuisance to everyone else, and providing a circle-jerk of entertainment to its members in the style of bullying people they don't even want to understand. Any discovery of scammers or bad people in other communities is at most a purely accidental result of them being so eager to try to attack anything and anyone. This of course suggests that the SA group consists primarily of losers, who lack any initiative, imagination, or drive, and who's actions only suggest that they are jealous of those who do (which is perfectly exemplified by their whining about how Bitcoin is unfair, benefits early adopters, and their insistence on the belief that everyone involved with it is a selfish idiot who's only philosophy is "F*** you, got mine."). And judging by the few people I know in that group, including even my ex, that seems to be completely true.

My biggest pet peeve is ignorance; especially willful ignorance. Racists, religious extremists, jingoists, and ludites who believe they are right, and everyone else is an idiot, who are afraid of anything they don't understand, and actively try to avoid understanding or learning new ideas. SA is in that group, and that's why I hate them.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

OldAlias
Nov 2, 2013

My grandmother recently died, and as you can imagine it was a pretty tough time for the family. In all honesty though, it was a bit of a mercy. She was extremely elderly, in pain a lot of the time, and her mind was starting to go. She had a good life, and she was the kind of woman who would have wanted us to celebrate her life at her funeral. To say we were in high spirits at the wake is misleading, it was, after all, a funeral. But she died peacefully rather than tragically, and the atmosphere was warm and friendly. Perhaps it is a consequence of our Irish heritage.

We live in a fairly small community, and we've been using the same undertakers for generations. Of course we're never pleased to see them, but they are nice people and a trusted help in tough times. We invited them to join us for a drink at the wake, and a few of them accepted. I was chatting away to one of them, and in the course of the conversation it transpired that we share an interest in libertarian politics. I'm a Bitcoin evangelist, and although it might seem like an inappropriate occasion I couldn't resist spreading at least a few words of the Bitcoin gospel to someone I thought might be receptive. I knew Grammy wouldn't have minded, although she never could get her head around Bitcoin. Especially towards the end.

To my great surprise he'd not only heard of Bitcoin, but he was an active proponent. He and his son had even set up a mining rig at the funeral parlor. We chatted for a bit about Bitcoin, and I jokingly suggested that I'd settle the bill for the funeral in Bitcoins. I never for a minute thought he'd accept.

A few days later we'd hammered it all out, and I'd transferred several thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin to his address. He's done pretty well out of the deal so far, because this was just over a week ago and we all know what has happened since then.

This was the first real world service that I'd ever paid for in Bitcoins, and although I wish it was a happier occasion, I can't help feel like it is a fitting tribute to my grandmother's life.

OldAlias
Nov 2, 2013

http://genecoin.me/

  • Locked thread