A common status-quo bias is judging anything new by much higher standards than the status-quo itself is ever held to. This is practically a hallmark of trying to discuss things with conservatives: their dismissal of anything they're not used to for being imperfect, despite what they're used to not being perfect either.
In posting about alternate ways to plan production, inevitably do I get some replies insisting any method but our current one is surely implausible because they can't imagine precisely how it might address some contrived problem they just thought of. The shortcomings of capitalism are meanwhile swept under the rug. In general, they act like capitalism is some gold standard of efficiency, and so any conceivable problem of an alternate is a net loss.
A defense enjoyed for its veneer of academic prestige is the idea that nothing but the capitalist price system could possibly create enough information to plan things by. There's no particular reason to believe this – it's just something they say – but let's take a step back and acknowledge what may well be an even more important point, which is that's not a high bar. We just have to do at least the job capitalism is already doing?
Letting rich people plan the economy is already terribly inefficient and fails all the time. It's not a gold standard just because it's the thing we're currently stuck with (and I do mean stuck).
To consider:

1. The information gleaned from prices is very limited in scope to begin with, concerned only with demand that can be fulfilled in existing market conditions in a way that's profitable for the rich. The homeless, or those people who need healthcare they can't afford, are effectively invisible. Forget about any sort of public work or utility. The externalities of your actions can likewise be dismissed. (This alone is sufficient reason to demand a different system, since the externalities capitalists disregard are what's destroying us. The environment is only the most obvious form of this; it's a multifaceted problem that echoes throughout society. A conservative may appreciate the detrimental affect it has on culture: capitalists have no respect for you, your people, or your traditions; they just want you to consoome. The 'externalities' understanding is here applicable.)
   
2. The information implicitly created by our purchases isn't as useful as you've been led to think. Most consumption is pretty far from 'rational,' and what choices we make (within the limited range of choices capitalists choose to present us with) is more predictable than either planners or consumers seem comfortable to admit. We don't stop and do research before every purchase we make; shopping is (and is designed to be) compulsive; we react well to emotional manipulation, branding, flashy packaging, bullshit 'deals,' and our own addictions. This is what I talked about in my previous thread, 'Let's plan production': giving people actual control over their economy would be far more accurate and meaningful than just observing how they act inside a system that's designed to manipulate them in certain ways to begin with.
   
3. It's not like capitalists aren't constantly mismanaging resources, even with all this information they supposedly have. Economic crises are just a fact of life in capitalist society, and the price system is constantly tainted by things unrelated to any actual demand. The average person has to endure a shoddy housing market because of the extent to which housing prices have come to reflect rich people's penchant for investment, gambling, and tax evasion more so than they are a measure of how many people actually need housing. And the next time the system collapses on itself, it'll again be the poor who suffer while the rich make off like bandits. (And of course, workers losing their jobs and homes and savings is tolerated where it's acknowledge at all, because the operational definition for 'efficiency' for conservatives is 'whatever makes rich people the most money.')
   

So, inside some other post, I was asked why gambling is bad... My reply ended up being really detailed, so I'll promote it to a post of its own (just copy-pasting it here; no new words)... [Note: list of 3 points about loot boxes at the end...]
(I work at a company that sells gambling services... I see how the sausage is made...)
By the way, I love PoE and GGG. Still, loot boxes are bad.
I personally get to see the statistics side of oddsmaking. It's always about suckering you out of your money, because by definition all you are doing is paying more money as the price of getting less money (on average), but you also need to feel like you have a chance at getting the upper hand, even though in the long run you don't.
For example, sometimes, if you're really "good" at betting, you just end up working for the oddsmaker on a bad deal. It's really hard for them sometimes to get the odds perfectly right (although the profit margin still takes care of 99.9% of punters). So, if you're a professional gambler making a regular profit, what's basically happening is that you are investing an enormous amount of time and expertise to try and make tiny profits at the margins, and the bookmaker monitors your activity and learns about the market from you, at what ends up being a lower cost than if they hired experts to give them the same info on a salary. Plus you constantly run high risks! Which is why my company is full of ex-gamblers who were able to make a profit for a while, and intelligent enough to realise that they were still getting a bad deal, and come to the company and offer their services directly. (For another way gambling companies guarantee their own profits by passing on the risk to gamblers, research "balancing the books": yes, a professional gambler could make some profits this way, but if you're possibly making profits by taking on a risk that a large gambling corporation wants to get rid of, do you really think you're getting a good deal, especially considering how much time and expertise you sink into the activity? EDIT: more info)
The only way I know of to make a consistent and considerable profit off gambling is when a pro gambler is allowed to make a profit off other gamblers, in a move that a company makes to increase total amounts played. So, for one person to profit, many others are being seriously scammed, and the company is safely skimming its percentages off the top.
There are many different ways a gambling company presents bad deals to you, hoping that your intuition misfires about one of them and you decide to throw away your money. Examples... There are single bets, of course. But then there are also combinations, and these screw with your intuition--you can convince yourself based on a narrative (e.g. team 1 wins first half, team 2 comes back in second half), where in fact the actual hard cold odds are against you. There is "cash out" where you take a fraction of a likely-seeming win early (but at a loss), which of course simply taxes you for your risk aversion. There are "systems", creating more and more complex bets, until you convince yourself you've set up the perfect deal, and yet the company's profit margin keeps growing the more complex you make it.
Anyway, those are the parts I work on as a software guy. (By the way, this isn't the worst thing in the world, it's not as bad, as, say, the military industry or the military itself, or say religions or banks, because at some level gambling is voluntary. And making gambling illegal is a terrible idea-we should fight it through education, not prohibition. Still, I only work there because I'm currently a completely non-creative software grunt (and currently satisfied with that). If I get to the point of pursuing higher-level jobs, I'll look elsewhere.)
But the most nefarious part of all is the psychological work they pull on you. That's not my area of expertise, so if you want it explained you need to look elsewhere (recommended book: Thinking Fast and Slow--it's not about gambling, it's about psychology). They are constantly doing things to 1) give you false hope and 2) artificially trigger some pleasure response in you.
E.g. most people are naturally risk averse and loss averse, e.g. losing $10 brings more pain than winning $10 brings pleasure. In reality, a gamble is about paying, say, $10 to win an average of, say, $9, so that's a terrible and painful deal. In addition to all the advertising and bright colours and encouraging sounds and making you read success stories and all the other psychological manipulations, they can also straight up befuddle you with numbers. So, losing $10 brings more pain than winning $10 brings pleasure, but what if you pay $10 but you're not really at a risk of losing that much, because on average you win $9 back, so you're only really risking a single $, and yet if you get lucky you won't win a mere $10 but millions? Suddenly that sounds good, right? Risk $1 to win $10000000? Of course not: you're still risking $10 and taking $1 losses on average each time you play, and the high rewards are vanishingly rare and built into that average.
That's it about gambling for money. On loot boxes I'm no expert, but, beyond the basic problems (encouraging addiction, exploiting minors who beg money from parents and don't understand how they're throwing it away, generating gambling "pleasure" while giving you "bits" instead of any real value, etc), I can point out a couple of extra scummy aspects:

1. They can say "the box costs 30 points but all the possible rewards are worth at least 50, the average reward is worth 70 and the best is worth 400"... really??? Those prices are completely arbitrary... Who says the footprints are "worth" 50 or some random hideout decoration is "worth" 200? Talking about average microtransaction point values in a loot box is completely misleading.
2. Either you (a) lose on the statistics of getting complete sets or you lose on (b) being psychologically manipulated into buying extra stuff you didn't actually want so much (or (c) you just lose by getting useless stuff). Let's say you decide to pick up a couple of boxes and see what you get before buying more stuff. You might just get useless stuff, of course (case c). But what if you get the body armour or wings? Now you might say "I'll get more boxes to complete the set". But the chances of getting any one part of a set are not anywhere near as bad as your chances of completing a set (like map lab trials, but much worse because loot boxes contain many more items), so you are getting totally fleeced (case a). Alternatively you could go "oh look, I got x in the box, I'll buy matching items y and z from the shop later" so you think you got x cheap and y and z at normal prices. But you are being manipulated into buying y and z. Would you really have bought x and y and z from the shop if there had been no loot box? Only rarely. The rest of the time you are overspending (case b).
3. Loot box gifts are another scummy behaviour, considering people don't have good intuitions about statistics. Most of us get bad results from the gifted boxes, but some will get lucky. Those of us who are already gambling on loot boxes won't be affected by the outcome of a few extra boxes. Those who wouldn't ever buy them normally, and get bad results, who cares. But those who wouldn't normally buy them but get lucky a few times in a row might decide it's a good deal after all. So, it's manipulating us psychologically in a way that is statistically designed to fail at no cost most times and succeed sometimes, which makes money. (While also giving everybody holiday presents or race prizes, making the company appear generous.)

The hosts say that his proposal made them teary.

• Zac says he appreciates that. And that the proposal was very heartfelt.

Asked to expand on his story of addiction and recovery.

• People got to see him through their TVs. But one of the things he was proud of was that he could be authentic and be himself. And he credits that as a direct result of recovery.
• Those who know him know that he is not ashamed to talk about and share his story.
• “I am aware of the fact that everything in my life stems off of my journey and what I had to do to get to where I am today.”
• He has dedicated his life to helping others and is extremely passionate about it. He didn’t know this was his calling until he got sober.
• He has always loved human connection and even when he was partying, he was the guy who made sure everyone had their drinks and was okay.

First notice of the addiction being a problem.

• He starts by saying that people in recovery are not handicapped. They can do everything other people are able to do. There is a stigma which says otherwise. But he mentions that recovery is almost like a superpower.
• Addiction does not discriminate.
• He grew up with two badass parents who taught him the value of money and how to respect people amidst other things, an older brother who loved him and two sisters who were angels. He had a normal upbringing in a house with a white picket fence.
• While in high school at a Christmas party, some older guys handed him a beer and he ran back to the party crying and complained to his parents about them.
• He had a year to think about taking that first drink. And by the next year, he was ready to take that step. And he started lying almost immediately.
• Lied to his parents about where he was. “The next day I still opened presents and what I got from it was that I could lie and get away with it. And that continued for the next 15 years, till I got 27.”
• Lying is a big part of substance abuse and alcoholism because the people around want to believe in you. No one wants to get caught and hence they turn to lying.
• The drinking behind the garage became like his secret and once school started, he thought it was his social responsibility to be the head of the party & get everyone what they wanted.
• He knew from a young age that his fantasies with drinks was going to land him in trouble.
• He played three sports – football, basketball, baseball – in high school, had a lot of cool opportunities his way, starting kissing girls for the first time…and yet all he cared about was drinking on Fridays and weekends.
• Nothing else mattered after that drink was with him. He felt panicked in the absence of drinks.
• Loved high school because it got him guys who were doing the same thing. Says that in his senior year if anyone had picked any of his 15 friends and said they needed help, it wouldn’t be a lie.
• The way they were drinking wasn’t normal. But today everyone is at a better place.
• Says he struggles dealing with casefiles of teenagers now. Understands how difficult it is for parents. Doesn’t know the solution and what to tell them – do they push the guys into recovery or let them grow out of the phase?

Challenging part about working in recovery.

• Every case is different. He had to hit rock bottom to survive today but some of his friends went into college and grew out of the alcohol phase.
• When someone has a disease like cancer or diabetes, there is a set procedure to follow in order to get better. For recovery from addiction, that is not the case.
• When the host talks about her family member returning from rehab, Zac cheers her on and says every person who has been through that process needs to be applauded.
• When people ask him if staying in the Bachelorette environment was difficult, he laughs and says he could have done it in his sleep because he had been in rehab for 4.5 months.

Family’s importance and that dynamics.

• The families are the unsung heroes in most cases. It’s always tough on the families the most.
• Though it sounds gimmicky, love can help people get out of addiction and through recovery. Continued support to help loved ones through this can save a life.
• Doesn’t appreciate putting 14-15 yr olds in handcuff during interventions because the trauma associated with that goes a long way. And is often times more than the trauma endured afteduring recovery.
• Has had to do quite a lot of adolescent interventions. Has to deal with adoptive parents, divorced parents, 2 or 3 sets of parents, etc.

His experience and his family.

• Studied Sports management at York College. Met his ex-wife in his sophomore year and in his head he thought he would graduate and do life the normal way. Wanted to have a family like he had while growing up.
• “She ended up saving my life. I can safely say that today. She is a wonderful human and I don't have one bad thing to say about her.”
• But she was a part of the puzzle that he was using as a front so that no one would question his addiction. And for the longest time he did a good job at hiding, lying and being the life of the party. Everyone wanted to celebrate his success.
• But when he was working his first job, he rented a house with his college buddies on the shore and suddenly felt dizzy in the car. Saw kaleidoscope every time he closed his eyes. Got it checked at the X-ray place right next to where they were, turned out to be a brain tumour, got it operated the next day.
• Completely fine today. But during the 20+ days he was in the hospital for the surgery, he was never alone. His family was always there – at least one member, at all times.
• “If love could get me sober, I would have gotten sober in that moment. But it didn’t.”
• He couldn’t wait to go out and party again. But also started loving the pain meds that the nurses were pushing into him. Thought no one would say anything to him because he was a hero who had survived a tumour.
• Had the biggest wedding. Held everyone in his life as hostages as he continued to push things into himself. “I am a lovable guy and so people continued to turn their heads away from my bullshit.”

Definition of hitting a rock bottom.

• There is no straightforward answer to that.
• Has seen 16-year-olds smoking pot. Marijuana is probably one of the biggest issues and that is continuing to build.
• Dealt with guys who have been 20 years sober and also with people who have been to rehab 30/35 times & it still wasn’t enough.
• No one has the answer.
• Personal experience: Was sleeping on the streets. Not because he had nowhere to go, but because he was running away from people.
• Went to rehab the first time and relapsed within five days. His wife left and that still wasn’t enough for him to sober up.
• In addition to everything, he was gambling. He owed money to a bookie and he convinced his dad to pay that debt (not telling him the real reason).
• Through everything, he still managed to keep up a front with the perfect house with the wife and cars, car drives and dogs…
• One day when his mom and ex-wife were out for drinks, one of his friends outed him to them and told them how bad his problem was.
• His mom came back immediately and questioned him. He had seen a billboard of a treatment facility and drove himself to it. Was their first drive-in client. Stayed there for 28 days (first rehab). Did everything he was asked to do. But he was full of shit.
• At the back of their minds, everyone knew his issues but no one said anything until that one friend stood up.
• His wife was given a set of tools to detect if he ever relapsed, and as soon as he brought drugs into the house, she caught him.
• “And thank God for her that she kept that boundary. She peaced out and she called her dad. He came and got her. That was the last time I was in that house. Props to her because she listened, and she saved my life. She decided she was done but I had to go on for another eight months to hit that rock bottom.”
• It got dark in those moments.
• His ex-wife was the first person who stopped him from partying. It wasn’t malicious but was filled with a lot of love. With tears in her eyes, she had informed him that she couldn’t do that life anymore.
• A first couple of weeks into rehab, Zac blamed his ex-wife for everything. He wanted to place the blame on her even after a year.
• Eventually, recovery taught him to be accountable. He has learnt to evaluate everything along with his behaviour and look at where he is being selfish or dishonest. And he has learnt that he cannot control others, and can only manage with he is doing.
• His story can make it into a book because he lived a very gnarly life. He accustomed himself to being on the streets, knew the exact neighbourhoods which could get what he needed, dealt with people who would give him the drugs, and got his gall bladder cut out to get the pain meds.

Sobriety

• NYC was his do-over. Which is why he loves it so much and preferred to show his NYC life to Tayshia on the show.
• On his first days of being in NY, his mentor (who helped him become sober) told him to find three guys that he could trust and have a relationship with. It was the best advice because it allowed him to get into the sober community and meet people who were doing better while being like him.
• His theory about recovery changed from people thinking how shit life was to doing great things in life, once he got sober.
• He realized that sobriety allowed him to look people in the eye, admit when he is wrong, and show up whenever needed. That is what he wanted Tayshia to know.
• He thinks he is a reflection of the recovery community and doesn’t want to deliberately make mistakes and get people to think recovering addicts cannot do certain things. Or be named irresponsible.
• Asked if Recovery or sobriety is stressful, he answers before the question ends, “No”. Having his mom crying and not knowing where he was when he was shooting drugs, or thinking about how to get the drugs in the past was stressful.
• “Having to tell the truth and show up, I feel more. But it’s not stressful.”
• He thinks humility and compassion can take people a long way.

Release Recovery and his work.

• It is a family and they try to make recovery fun.
• His best friend, who majored in social works and had a similar journey with addiction, Justin co-founded this organization in 2017. Three facilities – 2 for men and 1 for women above 18 years. 40 beds in total.
• He hates calling it a business but understands that it is one, at the end of the day.
• Works into sober living and getting the recovered people back into the real life & transition into regular life. The program is for three months.
• Has had clients from 82-year men to teenagers with them.
• At Release, they create the home environment and meals are a big deal to everyone there. Family dinner times and positive conversations are a part of this unit.
• Justin and Zac do a lot of consultation, helping and guiding people recognize and deal with loved ones or themselves suffering from addiction.
• Recovery takes a lot of money and it’s difficult for the underprivileged to seek help.
• So, he has started the foundation where they are running marathons and selling t-shirts and raising money to fund those who do not have the ability to spend thousands of recoveries.
• Women and POC are not treated right in the treatment community. Not many cater to these demographics and all the proceeds from his foundation are heading to help them.
• Healthcare system right now sucks. There are very few government aides which can help underprivileged. But it’s not enough.
• They try to call places and help leasing out beds to people whenever they can but not all states have equal facilities and “it sucks”.
• “We need to do something more.”
• Plugs shatterproof.
• “Everyone who needs treatment… deserves that.”

Recovery and life in general

• Story telling and sharing everyone’s stories is important. Since COVID, recovering addicts have not been able to go to in-person recovery meetings, and that has harmed a lot. Connecting with others with the same experience is necessary and a lot of addicts have found it hard to get clean since last March. Because they do not have that community.
• Had to break a lot of habits, get connected with the recovery community, stopped thinking what might not look cool, and started to hang out with new people who had a similar experience to get through the initial recovery phase. See a therapist is his answer to some people.
• The first 6-12 months are tough but if you are mentally tough with a strong & loving family next to you…one can pull through. “I am living proof of that. But you have to have people who know what is going on with you.”
• People usually do not ask him what is in his glass when he attends events. On rare occasions that happens. But usually, it’s people projecting their insecurities or someone looking to have a drink with him that asks him that question.
• Has always been open with people he has dated. Like with Tayshia on the show. He wouldn’t pursue that relationship if she was not okay with his past.
• That confidence and self-belief is a long journey he has had to get through to.
• People have written to him since being back from the show, and he has tried to write & answer everyone back.
• A lot of people and family members have reached out to him with their stories of themselves or loved ones. Some who were lucky, some who weren’t. Tries to get in touch with everyone and send a message. Those stories keep him going and get him to try and help more people.
• Reiterated how his family stood by him for 4.5 months for him to get his act together when they put on a brave face & faced life head on, while obsessing how he was doing. It is not fair on families.
• The support groups in the form of the families are heroes in his eyes. They are lifesavers and the ones who truly deserve all the praise.
• “When you say, ‘I love you’ to someone who is black out drunk, putting that energy out into the world…that person hears you whether you want to know it or not.”
• He mentions that even if one person listened to the podcast and got help from it, it was a job well done for him. Appreciates the hosts (and mentions certain episodes in passing which give the impression that he researched the podcast before coming on) for spreading awareness.

WHAT A GUY!!!
Very rarely do you hear someone who is so self-aware, kind, humble and eloquent.
Please listen to this because the hosts were amazing too. They let him speak and he didn't hold back.

Edit: Actual TL;DR - There is none. It's a complicated issue and I'm hoping you will take the time to read the post if you want to engage in the discussion. That's why the post is tagged 'discussion'.
I made a lengthy comment after reading this post yesterday. What a crazy helmet! But it was the top comment chain in that thread that caught my attention, particularly this comment:

Annoyance leads to a group that is willing to put up with it getting all the rewards but hating the game because it's annoying and a second group that doesn't put up with it but hates that they're missing out on the stuff the first group is getting. Everyone loses.

My thoughts on this subject probably merit its own discussion thread, so here it is.
This reminds me of Grod's Law:

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use

Years ago on the Giant in the Playground forums (a community for the D&D 3.5 edition tabletop roleplaying game), an argument broke out when a user recommended balancing the absurd power of magic using classes by making them meticulously track their material components for each spell.
For those unaware, material costs for spells that didn't have an explicit monetary cost listed were generally just flavorful; holdovers from Gary Gygax's day at the helm, basically little Easter eggs in the game. Like Detect Thoughts required you to use 2 copper pieces to cast, e.g. 'penny for your thoughts?', and Fireball required you to use bat guano (known to be high in sulfur content) and saltpeter (chemically combined they create an exothermic reaction IRL).
Anyway, your wizard or whatever was expected to buy a spell component pouch for a few gold and that pouch was assumed to have all the basic material components they'd need for most spells in limitless quantity. Spells in D&D can be incredibly powerful and versatile in their use, and the most powerful builds in the game all involve casting magic. Well, this user suggested balancing those spells by making wizards have to spend time gathering their individual material components. Want to cast Fireball? Spend a few days scraping bat shit off the cave floor, etc.
The problem with this rationale is that it doesn't really solve any problems. Wizards are still just as powerful, but now the player has to go out of their way, detracting from the campaign and story, so they can scrape their spell juice off the dungeon floor. Grod argued the following:

• The disruptive munchkin ignores it, argues it, or forces the rest of the group to suffer through it. His power remains the same, and he gets more annoying to play with.
  
• The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.
  
• The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.
  
• The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.
  

Tie this back into PoE already!

Yes, sorry. Thanks for putting up with my rambling.
I kinda feel like harvest is like this - A terrible implementation of a mechanic that GGG (i.e. Chris Wilson) hates (i.e. thinks is 'bad' for the game). It highlights a massive problem with itemization and crafting in this game.
Way too much character power is tied up in gear as compared to skills and passives. And Harvest crafts are so powerful because other crafting tools in PoE are are way too random, but the power creep in items over the years has made it way too appealing (various influence mods for example). Crafting most items is a gamble, plain and simple. Gambling is just not appealing to many people, and it can get expensive very fast. It's layers upon layers of RNG for even the chance of getting a decent item, some of which can be build-enabling, and there are very few deterministic methods of getting what you want. It's far easier to just buy a powerful item like that from someone else. Of course, that can't be done for SSF players, but even in trade league it can be problematic when GGG balances the game around meta-builds (supply and demand means you might not get to enjoy playing your build because upgrades are too expensive).
GGG wants the game to be like this. They want you to engage in the skinner box of gambling RNG they've designed. Harvest just doesn't jive with how they want you to build your character, but it's immensely popular for anyone who hates gambling and wants to build their character in a predictable and targeted way. Their solution was to leave it in the game but make it as cumbersome and obnoxious to engage with as possible, so it becomes a massive opportunity cost to do so.
You find a grove in a map. Cue 20 to 30 minutes of reviewing your stash and gear for possible upgrades and reviewing craft options for valuable ones that might be sold on TFT, etc. It completely disrupts the flow of the game and you can barely save enough valuable crafts for one or two side builds. When you finally do get one of the few good craft options, you might not even have something to use it on! Ultimately it's far more time-efficient to sell your good crafts (using 3rd party mechanisms, of course) and just keep playing the game.

How does this affect me, SaneExile?

The system affects the game exactly how Grod proposes:

The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.

PoE isn't a collaborative tabletop game like D&D, so "inappropriate powergamer" is, well, an inappropriate name for this group. Optimizing gameplay in PoE is perfectly reasonable and encouraged. But people who trade crafts in large volume on TFT or are in massive guilds throwing around thousands of exalts are not your average optimizer, and are not affected by this cumbersome barrier to entry. They find the optimal solution and just incorporate it into their gameplay and profit off it massively.

The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.

Reasonable player -> average PoE player. The distinction between these two groups can get fuzzy, but it's hard to argue that someone playing 40 hours per week and someone playing 10 hours per week can achieve the same levels of effectiveness. Practice makes perfect, and practice takes time. Those in large communities are, likewise, not really playing the same game as the solo players (e.g. aura-bots, trade groups, etc.). For some, efficiency is measured in chaos per hour. For a few, it can be exalts per hour. This group is very much the former.

The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.

Class -> game mechanic. In this case, I'm sure a lot of people just pretend the Sacred Grove doesn't exist. Harvest is a thing that other people do. And if they do choose to engage with it, its cumbersomeness and complexity means their overall enjoyment of PoE is diminished. I couldn't even begin to explain the system to someone new to the game, at least in a reasonable manner that doesn't sound like a college economics lecture.

Conclusions

So, average people either suffer through harvest's implementation because it's so damn useful, or they avoid it and suffer FOMO or other gambling-induced psychological issues because the power-players in the community are cranking out incredibly OP gear on the trading market. Lose-Lose. This isn't unique to harvest, it's just the most obvious with this crafting system in the game. Crafting in general is fucked up, when you really consider how it's designed to prey on gambling addiction.
This might not be a problem in the short term (obviously you don't need the helmet posted above to make specters work), but in the long term it throws off the balance of the game through power creep. The Raise Specters gem was meganerfed this league, but it's definitely still playable, and with items like this, it's not even that much weaker than before. Essentially, the power of the skill was offloaded from the gem to PoE's itemization system, and the barrier to OPness is that much higher. The rich get richer and the average market has one less meta build.
GGG really fucked up Harvest, but it's only because Harvest highlighted just how fucked up crafting in this game is. Super powerful crafts have always been something only the PoE rich engage with regularly and with any significant profit. Harvest, for its league at least, let more casual players engage with that system. And the power creep ended up being so massive that they hamstrung it every chance they got.
Ultimately, GGG's implementation ends up hurting the whole game because of Grod's Law - the benefits of it are minimized while the annoyance is maximized. It's possible we can benefit from some stopgap solutions, like more horticrafting station space, tradeable crafts (like beasts), etc., but many of these come with their own host of issues. They're just bandaids on the crafting mechanic as a whole, which is a product of the itemization design.
TL;DR, thanks for coming to my TEDTalk. General disclaimer that this is my personal opinion of the state of the game, one that I've put way too much time into. It's still fun in a lot of ways, but the more I play the more I see problematic design features creeping their way into the game.
Edit: Well this took off. I've been trying to address arguments from you all as best I can, but there's one I noticed in particular keeps coming up and I think my main post didn't clarify my stance as well as it could've:
I'm not against the idea of RNG. Randomness in itself is not a problem for this genre or most games in general. I am however very much against the argument that, 'well the entire game is randomness so more randomness is fine.' I've tried to address that in this comment, which I'll link instead of reiterating.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

Some of you may know me from my previous posts, many of which are among the most upvoted of all time on this subreddit. Just kidding, I’ve never posted here. I’m coming up on day 70 of SR and I figured I would make a post detailing what I’ve discovered.
Introduction
I began whacking off when I was 12. The negative effects were immediate. I went from a popular and liked individual to a member of the untouchable class. Never knew what caused that. Now I do.
At 13, I started working as a blackhat internet marketer. In other words, I was a scammer or con artist. I had immediate success and became “kid rich” in high school. From there, I continued ripping people off until I was 24. (You can read about all of my various scams and schemes in a 255-page book I wrote about my life, and how I changed my life, here. It's free.)
And we're back. Along the way, I became a drug addict. At 14, I discovered weed. At 16, I discovered psychedelics. At 17, I discovered MDMA and other stimulants. My home life sucked (divorced and depressed parents), so I dove straight into the world of drugs.
Overall, from the time I became a teenager, my life revolved around drugs, video games, and scamming people. I also whacked off very generously, considering it to be normal and healthy. I thought it was a waste product. Not an uncommon story.
Accidentally Discovering SR
About a year ago, I hit rock bottom, which you will read about if you decide to read my book. In essence, I was completely broke and living at home, with no friends, and my girlfriend had just dumped me. Coincidentally, I was also whacking off a ton during this time. Go figure.
A string of wild synchronicities led me to read the book Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. Think and Grow Rich was the catalyst that led me to get “kid rich” in high school, so I basically just followed Mr. Hill’s recommendations on how to outwit the devil to the letter… and it worked. I became genuinely happy for the first time in my life. I was crying tears of joy every morning when I woke up.
Frankly, at the time, I was not convinced that lust was a bad thing, because getting attention from women made me feel so good. Still, since the rest of the formula for outwitting the devil was working so well, I decided to completely repress my lust. I even managed to quit drugs under the guise of considering them to be gluttonous.
Life was good. The results were unbelievable. I moved to a new city. After being antisocial my entire life, people were going out of their ways to converse with me. I had tons of friends. Very attractive women were going out of their way to make themselves known to me. I didn’t know what on earth was happening, but my life was better than it had even been before, despite the fact that I was more broke than I had ever been before. Turns out money doesn't equal happiness. Who knew?
After about two months of completely repressing my lust, I decided to have sex. With all of this new attention from women, my lust then spiraled out of control. Repression doesn’t work. Knowledge is the key. Knowledge allows you to want to retain. At the time, I had the belief, but not the knowledge behind the belief, which inevitably led to a lack of faith.
Fast forward a couple months and I was back to where I was before: scamming, doing drugs, etc. Lust truly is the root of all sin. Lose control of your lust and you’re probably going to lose control of the rest of your life to some extent.
Whoops
I once again hit rock bottom in October 2020. I took a big gamble on a big adventure, and it failed. In fact, I came within a minute or two of certain death, and my plans were ruined. Now, I had $300 to my name, no car, no housing situation, and no more possessions than I could fit into a large backpack.
I crashed at a friend’s house and spent two months mostly moping around. At the end of November 2020, I read a random Reddit linking to montalk dot net and had a bout of gnosis.
Here is where things get interesting.
Randomly, I messaged a random Reddit user, and he linked me to The Practice of Brahmacharya. I was sold. I started doing SR, controlling my passion, and being careful to remember that pleasure comes but never stays, the human body is only clay, and everything will pass away. This was the knowledge I needed to WANT to control my lust. Before, after reading Outwitting the Devil, I was doing it almost against my will.
Results
Magnetism. The point of SR, to me, is not to attract women. But there’s no doubt that doing SR will attract women. In fact, it will attract everything and everyone. But the attraction is mostly mental. People subconsciously sense your high vibration and they look at it curiously. You’ll get a lot of love, but also a lot of hate if people are comfortable enough to confront you. Your thoughts begin to influence reality more than ever before.
Invisibility. This is mostly a joke, but I swear it’s real. When you’re vibrating at a very high level, you become invisible to others. Not literally. But I’ll give you an example. I’m walking down this road and the air is completely still. Two women are approaching, gossiping in a negative tone. As they pass, I say hello. They jump, completely startled, and looked at me as if I had just appeared out of nowhere. I was in their field of vision for, like, a minute. They should have noticed me. This has happened a couple times. I’m aware this bullet contradicts the previous one.
Calm. I used to be an explosively angry person. In fact, I used to get violent fantasies. I used to really hate the sheep. I didn’t understand how they couldn’t see through the lies! May as well exploit them. Now, I love the sheep, even though they still chirp at me occasionally, especially with all of this asinine /\/\@$K usage. (I’ve taken a hardline stance and will not put one on for even a second. Since I’m still self-employed as a copywriter, it’s possible to do since my workplace (read: bedroom) doesn’t require it. I’d recommend doing the same if you are sick of the bullshit. We need your help.)
Ability to disconnect emotion from thoughts. Emotions come and go. The error is when you let external influences affect your thoughts. There will be times when you are tense or sad. For example, it’s hard to feel totally good emotionally if you are tired. In the past, I let these emotions go straight into my neural network, which would lead to entire days full of bad emotions, which I masked with drugs. Now, I relax into the emotions, meditate on them, and they pass quickly. I usually learn something in the process. The thought of being able to control my emotions without drugs is awesome.
Ability to heal trauma. If you are not powered by your semen (lol), you’re not as strong and solid as you could be. This makes it nearly impossible to face the trauma of your past, before you woke up. Now that I have healed my trauma, at least to an extent, my life is just wonderful. I’m a complete stranger to my past scammer self, which is fantastic. IMO, the point of life is to realize your trauma, heal it, then link up with the Holy Ghost, Sophia, and help others heal theirs, too. If you’re doing SR but still not loving life, consider reflecting on uncomfortable moments from your past. Don’t repress them, just like you don’t repress your lust.
Loving life, man. If you ignore the ethics of my blackhat marketing, I was always rich in comparison to my peers, and I barely worked. I was also pretty jacked. I happened to be born with a conventionally attractive face and am quite tall. Despite these intrinsic advantages, life always sucked. Now, life always rocks, no matter what is happening. Do I still get down sometimes? Sure. You can’t feel euphoric always. But now I realize that stumbling blocks are part of the equation, and I take them in stride. I get excited for bad moments because I realize I’m about to learn something big which will make my life even better in the long run.
Difficulties / Relapse
I have not yet physically relapsed. But I have definitely let my mental state get out of control before, to the tune of looking at Instagram models, etc. This has happened twice. It SUCKED! Felt crappy for days afterwards.
When I feel it bubbling up nowadays, I take a deep breath straight into my cranium and hold it for a few seconds. It dissipates. I also channel it into my third eye if it’s a lesser urge and I feel like I can actively control it. Learned these two tricks from posters on here.
If I'm out in public, I straight up look away. I never really looked, considering it to be disrespectful. But man, don't feel bad about looking off to the side if there's an attractive woman walking in front of you.
IMO, the mental leads to the physical, and not the other way around. It’s the same as any other addiction. You can’t physically force yourself to stop if you don’t want to stop, because your mind controls your body. So, work on your mind instead of putting all of this effort into repression. Books can provide the knowledge you need to want to stop. Once you want to stop, it’s easy to do so.
Summary
As far as other aspects of my life go, the past two months have been a wild ride, as I’ve healed an absolutely massive amount of trauma in that time. One night, I did the karma meditation on ascensionhelp dot com and ended up screaming at the top of my lungs for two hours, uncontrollably, almost involuntarily. Scamming people for a decade, then realizing all of that karma in a short span of time, will do that to you!
This post has been all over the place, but I just wanted to let everyone know that SR is a very key part to living a good life. Better financial circumstances? SR can help with that. You want peace? SR. Happiness? SR. You want to stop scamming people, even though you’re damn good at it, it’s easy, and there’s no one to stop you? SR. (Side note: I did get sued by Perkins Coie when I was 17 due to one of my early scams, and I was also visited by a 3-letter agency for a particularly illegal scam, but nothing ever came of either of those instances. I’d like to say I talked my way out of them, which I did, but looking back, it was blatant intervention from my Higher Self which allowed me to talk my way out of them in the first place. Thanks, dude!)
SR is not the end-all-be-all to success in your chosen realm, but damn does it ever help. I really like this community because you guys understand the physical, but a lot of you are well-versed in the metaphysical realm too. If you want to do SR to get ahead in the physical world, that’s cool, but understand that the real power of SR is allowing yourself to access the metaphysical and spiritual concepts of this world that are hidden to the masses. Many posters here can give me a run for my money, which I very rarely experience in real life. Peace!
EDIT: Turns out I can't reply to comments on this post since I have no less than 25 karma on here. To u/UniqueUsername203: Fair question. This is an epic trollzor account, minus this post. I've had to branch outside of poker since I'm banned there for 30 days. If I really wanted to scam people again, I know of better avenues than spamming and pretending to be a girl, though I did that in an automated fashion circa 2010. Didn't work that well, only made like $20 - $40 per week and it was weird as fuck (even though I never directly talked to any of my victims).

got asked to make this it’s own post, so i did. For reference, keep in mind I’m 28F (so split between them age wise) and was an athlete in undergrad though not in a sport anyone cared about cause who tf cares about track
Friendship break ups are really hard, especially for women in their 20’s.
For women, that time period is usually the first times they’re actually enabled to make our own decisions, including through sexual empowerment. Freedom from your parents. Your female friendships are often therapeutic in this setting, as they’re the first people who really “understand” you. ESPECIALLY if you’re at a school with casual hook up culture, female friendships can especially protect you from being drugged while you navigate the novelty of casual sex under various substance influence.
At least from the outside perspective, this is how it seems: disclaimer this is psychoanalytical af no I don’t think I’m “definitely” right

• Sofia struggled with substance abuse and mental health in relation to work in capitalism and leaving a conservative rural area for a big city/culture shock where she could finally fit outside of the minute role she felt existed for her in her hometown. Just leaving the environment didn’t negate the years of negativity, or feeling like an “outsider” or “bad influence”
  
• Sofia’s substance abuse started young, in childhood, making her particularly vulnerable to being taken advantage of in these contexts later in life. (Or able to disregard healthy behavior because it’s suspicious to you because you grow up thinking and knowing you won’t be accepted and flaunting “healthy” behavior in conservative cultures only shames normal, human reactions. As a woman who is sexually empowered, especially from a young age, there is a strong will to rebel. Or just not care. To then disregard a lot of “rules” because the ones setting them no longer have your respect. Purity culture especially makes women more at risk because sexual freedom is conflated as “high risk” behavior)
  
• Alex came from d1 athlete mentality, which, imo is always a little toxic. You don’t play at those levels or have that drive without taking negative motivating factors and channeling them into fuel on the field.
  

However, sports psychology is poor. Sports psychology for women even more so.
Female sports don’t command money (in part because we engrain that in our culture)
For a female athlete in college, you’re raised on a pedestal by other collegiate members (“narps”)
Then, you leave college and are pretty much on a level playing field, because that national prestige or ability to remain an athlete and be profitable isnt as realistic or available for women (yet?/it probably shouldn’t be a huge goal to play a game for a living just saying. The other work environments and hours shouldn’t be so shitty that’s the only version of happiness you can imagine but i digress)
Alex happened to leave college and be an athlete’s girlfriend. An athlete within baseball, whose wives’ club mentality is one of the most misogynistic (my brother went back to back to back national championship games in baseball in college. The fan base is incredibly white as it relates to America’s pastime and racism). I’ve posted before about the overlaps in barstools culture with this.
Alex had fuel coming in from needing to be better than her ex. She has fuel in general, as most athletes do, from needing to be better than XYZ. Track is actually helpful in that regard because it’s always racing against yourself, ultimately. Your own PRs. But for soccer, what happens when you no longer have a field to play on? Who are your new opponents? Where is your team?
Sofia and Alex’s friendship came at the cusp of their combined lowest mental points. On a time when they were essentially on their own. They had had to be solo and strong because of their circumstances, mentally and fiscally to an extent (even if they ultimately had parental support or pressure to fall back on). In the process of building CHD, they built each other up, and used their tragedies and lack of caring about other’s mentalities to show it was profitable, smart, and powerful to be a sexually empowered female in a male world.
That’s what so many of us wanted. (Literally the Tyra Banks meme “we were all rooting for you!” Comes to mind) especially for collegiate aged women, sexual empowerment and discussion is NEW and still very culturally based. Women can be sexual but only privately versus men can discuss sexual conquests openly and aren’t thought poorly of if it doesn’t work out with a partner. You don’t assume something is “wrong” with them. You don’t remind them “their clock is ticking”. Hypersexuality is part response to purity culture and likely a response to a heavy atmosphere of sexual trauma and being casual towards it is destigmatizing it inwardly.
But money corrupts.
Power corrupts more so.
Combine both with Alex internalizing that the brand that gave her so much power and happiness and joy to work, during a dark period of her life, as a tangible result of how she was better (than her exes, everyone that’s wronged her, etc) as potentially being taken away from her by sofia (in the deal on the rooftop), versus by Dave (who was very manipulative in his “I keep 100% of the IP and all of your stories and all of YOUR content”) and this is where the break down in how they responded comes in:

• Alex was in it for the money and recognition. She wanted celebrity status, not as justification for herself, but as justification for the attention from others. She was willing to do whatever she wanted to get that. Hopefully, with time, she’ll have a “moment of recognition” in how her actions were, but as long as she keeps carelessly traveling idgaf (I’m an epidemiologist, I have no sympathy for celebrity status right now. Tbh I don’t listen to CHD but I still follow the subreddit and listen to SWAF)

Can we blame her? Isnt that a facet of current sporting culture? Do you actually expect someone who has grown up in the wings of the public eye, whose parental role models were in sporting culture, to not embrace that spotlight? Particularly when her ex who caused her pain has that spotlight and is somebody’s version of a sex symbol? Why can’t she want it for herself?

• but Sofia just wanted validation for HERSELF. As proof that she and who she is as a person was still valuable, that she was still worthy of acknowledgment. That the pain of her substance use and mental health was for a greater purpose. That she could share it and help people, not just profit from them. It’s clear with her guest quality and the work she’s done since going solo.
  
• Maybe Alex also felt pressure in their friendship and business relationship to be Sofia’s healer. To always be the one caring for her, making sure she got home okay, and maybe that was exhausting even if it was a role she enjoyed playing. I often feel like I’m “heavy” for my friends to “put up with” because of my anxiety and PTSD. I don’t like to put pressure on living with them, which reduces my issues, because of this.
  

Alex ALSO has mental health issues, and the combination of living and working with someone else struggling with something so heavy and not having a medically appropriate background to know how to help was likely incredibly toxic for their friendship.
I’m sure it made some great content, but it was clear they didn’t embody or encourage healthy behavior.
Their own healing is going to be subjective. It’s not going to coincide. It’s not going to operate on the same scales or in the same direction and they’ll need different things. Such as separation when one person no longer serves you.
My therapist reminded me “just because someone was a good friend to you at one point in your life doesn’t mean they still are”

• Maybe this is more obvious with knowledge of CHD production behind the scenes. If Alex has constantly been just a figurehead and spoke openly about others stories and content, then to her what she’s doing now is no different. She’s being rewarded by her boss saying “yes keep acting this way. Money is flowing in. Do whatever you want.” So why would she stop? That’s who is paying her bills. That’s who ultimately gave her the “freedom” and show that she wanted to just be herself

To her, it’s the same thing. Especially if she had frequent ghost writers. It was never her content to begin with. Which, ultimately, makes her just a sex symbol for a male dominated gaze who may very well be financially compensated adequately (NOW) but is ultimately manipulated for the entertainment of others. If that’s your whole life, and what you’ve always done... who are you?
Like with child stars or actors in general, you feed off energy i imagine. Extroverted people are almost more vulnerable to social coercion than others. To me, this enables them to be more susceptible to thriving off external validation and avoid the reality of who they are and that they don’t like themselves internally/struggle with who they are as a person (or just don’t know who they are without XYZ existing. If you’ve always been in sports, especially one single sport, your identity is tied to that. You don’t have the time or energy to question who you are. It takes years after graduating or being removed from that atmosphere to do so.) Alex now has money, time, and comes from rich white privilege. She likely will never have people who tell her it’s okay to struggle, because it seems like her family and general friend group is the “everything is fine. Here’s some money. Look! You can travel. You turned out okay”
I’m sure she’ll have a time period later in life where she has this recognition.
However, the CHD brand was built around the symbolism of a female friendship.
Of female empowerment in a patriarchal world.
The sexual empowerment worked because, at the end of the day, you had this community of people who understood you were just trying to figure out yourself and willing to laugh with you at your negativity. Not laughing at you. A community of people who were able to embrace, applaud, and financially reward you for sexual prowess when you’ve been told to dim it your entire life “to be taken seriously”. A community who LIKED the self deprecation because it was RELATABLE because we likely ALL have or know someone with sexual trauma related to drinking/college culture and dating is hard and flaunted like you’re always supposed to be in a relationship, especially if you’re attractive 🙄
Abiding to the influencer brand of how CHD has gone since “the break up” and how Alex has people like Tana—who exploit their childhood abuse, not so they can learn how to be healthier and live happier lifestyles or draw attention to substance abuse, but so they can continue to party in LA with idiotic “celebs” whose only contribution to the community positively is through money. Who go riot malls for YouTube material. Who are stuck in their own cycles of abuse and unhealthy behavior but vlog about the glamour and think “talking about it” is the same thing as “healing” because they won’t go to actual therapy even though they can afford it now. Who don’t realize they’re desensitizing themselves to the trauma by letting random men they barely know choke them out versus addressing how fucked up it was that they were raped as a child, or that their parents couldn’t protect them, or that they needed validation or father figures and only got it from their peers and just wanted an escape from reality and now need one ALL THE TIME. Who dont realize those people they think embrace them won’t embrace them when they’re sober and actually healthy, because it reminds them of how they’re not. But it’s scary to recognize that and you internalize it as not being loveable versus being brought up in unhealthy environments and not knowing better.
Maybe with time, Alex will look back and realize the strength of female friendships lies in being there for each other in darkest times because humanity definitely doesn’t have your back.
In the USA, 1 in 5 women are or will be attempted to be raped in their lifetime, over 80% have been sexually harassed.
And yet, prostitution is not legal. Birth control is not freely accessible. Universal healthcare and comprehensive sexual education is not nationally mandated so a lot of people may never realize just how fucked up their circumstances are. Education is often unaffordable and inaccessible for those who most need it. Sexual harassment is so normalized that we voted in a president despite him being a rapist pedophile. And 55% of white women tried to vote him in again. The visual leader of the Barstool brand endorsed him openly.
Sofia wanting to distance herself from a brand and drinking culture, at a company currently breaking into alcohol and gambling exploitation, on the basis that the majority of their fan base may not have done it otherwise, but will because they now have access to it (like with how Juuls target teenagers with flavoring and people who wouldn’t have normally smoked have nicotine addictions now) as well as FINALLY being paid adequately, YET was labeled as “greedy” mainly because Alex stayed instead of trusting Sofia and sticking with her.
We normalize competition in the sense that most people are competing for just the right to live, for acknowledgment that the things they went through matters. It’s why working classes are currently pitted against each other and conservative Republicans think progressive policies are sure to doom the USA because Fox News says so. So instead of making our citizens stronger overall, we keep half of them convinced that healthcare should be debated, an educated population isnt good on a global scale, and that change ISNT possible even though societies are supposed to adapt that’s literally how progress works. We have research that shows us why we should do it and instead capitalism made education so elite that we distrust intelligence or condemn it as “liberal education”.
So do I blame Alex for her inability to recognize that when she thought she was going to lose the brand that made that feasible for her? Maybe not.
Do I think Sofia got fucked mentally, friendship-wise, and culturally and Alex enabled and fed into it? Absolutely.
Even if CHD was always the “Mean Girls” mentality and didn’t ever really offer advice, Alex embodied “Regina George” and Sofia was “Cady Heron” in its time.
Good female friendships are awesome, and hard to come by in a world that makes it so and makes you convinced you have to somehow compete for these men when the bar is on the actual ground for chivalry and women just want men who won’t scream or yell at them, will communicate, and will explore sexually in the bedroom without stigmatizing them or making them feel bad for their bodies.
Shout out to anyone who read my dissertation.
I’ve been in quarantine on a farm working remote contracts for almost a year now. I’ve also watched a lot of LOTR in the past week and barstool and Dave is going a very “Sauron” way and Alex embodies “saruman” vibes to me, for another allusion.

I randomly bumped on someone during an online game (which I have stopped playing tyvm). While we were playing he started talking about League of Legends (we weren't even playing a moba), how he was "playing since he was 12 years old", that "it's been 10 years since" and that he's "planning on playing until he dies".
I asked him if he's studying or working he said no to both. Told him that I used to play LoL as well but stopped because the human brain craves for the results of winning so you keep spamming queue until you get a good team, a bad opposite team or a combination of both, in order to get your dopamine fix and feel good about yourself in spite of the fact that it took 9 others to win (5 people bad enough to be beaten and 4 people good enough to help you, oversimplifying for the sake of analysis).
Some people are like that: Unashamedly and unapologetically "hardcore gamers". Others treat them as "like a movie but with a sense of progress and achievement" which obviously no movie would ever make you feel achievement for watching it unless it's so bad you had to try hard to keep your stomach from churning.
My point being, just like this sub is against gaming there are people who are pro gaming. They will play the role of your subconscious like that cricket from Pinocchio, play with the definitions of words "depends on what you define as too much", "depends on your definition of addiction", "anything can be addictive therefore nothing is" and the list of crap goes on.
Unfortunately, just like people who play poker without losing their house and property cannot empathize with the gambling addict and feel like all he's missing is "some discipline", same happens with video games. Don't expect understanding, if anything people will secretly think that you just lack discipline and this is why your subconscious keeps throwing video game related thoughts even when you're trying to study.
And this subreddit has some of them, so take what you read with a grain of salt.

Entering the 21st century, we have completely entered the era of pornography. Pornography began to flood in the late 1990s. At that time, it was disc spread. Many people could find pornography at home. Later, the new millennium entered the Internet age. , Pornographic content spread more severely, became more widespread, and it is still free to browse. Later, when we entered the era of smartphones, it was easier to browse pornography than to find stones on the ground. In our country, pornographic content is illegal, while in foreign countries, certain pornographic websites are even legal, which exacerbates the proliferation of pornographic content. However, foreign countries have also realized the great harm of pornography in recent years. They call pornography the new drug. (New types of drugs). There are many rebooting websites and rebooting books abroad, and our country also needs to pay attention to this aspect.
On the surface, cocaine and pornography do not have much in common, but more and more studies have shown that chemical drugs can induce the brain to release exciting chemicals, and watching pornography has the same effect.
Just like drugs, when these exciting chemicals (such as dopamine and oxytocin) are delivered to the brain, they build a new pathway in the brain. This pathway can fundamentally induce porn users to browse pornographic information. When the brain pathways are activated by pornographic information, the brain can release chemicals at the same level as when viewing pornographic information for the first time. This process is similar to the process of drug addiction. Porn is injected into the brain through an eye. drug!
To equate pornography with drugs is the latest scientific research abroad. This understanding is correct. Thinking about the state of looking for pornography, it is really like a drug addict looking for drugs. Studies have shown that watching pornography can cause your brain to release the same pleasure chemicals as cocaine. When drug addicts take more drugs or porn viewers watch more pornography, the neural circuits in their brains will become stronger, making it easier for them to take drugs or watch porn again, whether they want it or not. content. Just as addicts will eventually need more and more drugs to get pleasure, or even just to make themselves feel normal, sex addicts will quickly develop tolerance when they get used to watching the large amounts of dopamine released by pornography. In other words, even if pornography can still make the brain release dopamine, they can't be as cool as usual.
Like drugs, the more stimulus, the more boring afterwards. You must look for heavier flavors and more excitement to achieve the pleasure of tasting the forbidden fruit before. Many people have become psychologically perverted afterwards, and their sexual orientation has also been distorted. Watching pornographic masturbation will bring a series of evil consequences, which will make people fall into a vicious circle. At first, sexual orientation was normal. Later, in order to stimulate dopamine secretion, I would look at abnormalities. As my psychology became more and more abnormal, my sexual orientation began to be distorted, and I would learn to imitate the contents of pornographic films.
It is estimated that there are 2 million heroin users in the United States, and 600 to 800,000 of these people are heavily addicted to heroin. Compared with the above data, 40 million people in the United States watch online pornography every day-this new type of drug. The reason why Internet pornography is a new type of drug is that the brain responds to drugs and sexual arousal in the same parts. Pornography is really a kind of drug. As a 100 billion-dollar neuro-drug industry, pornography is changing people’s concept of sexual behavior more rapidly through the accelerated development of the Internet. Pornographic information is pervasive on the Internet, and it inhibits people’s sexuality. The normal view of orientation leads people to a state of evil, perverted, indecent, and irresponsible beasts.
Imagine that the brain is a forest. Hikers pass by the same place day after day and gradually step out of the way. Browsing pornographic information will also generate neural circuits. As people browse pornographic content again and again, these neural circuits will be continuously strengthened in the "forest" of the brain, and these neural circuits will eventually become paths in the "forest" of the brain. "Thanks to" the Internet, current pornography mixes the most powerful dopamine that the body can release and many other elements-endless novelties, shocks and surprises-all of which will stimulate the release of dopamine in large quantities. And because Internet pornography provides endless content, users can move to new images (postures, costumes, heroines, etc.) every time their pleasure declines to keep dopamine at high levels for a few hours. Professor Jeffrey Satinover of Princeton University described the effects of pornography to the U.S. Senate committee: "It's like a heroin we invented. Users can use it secretly in their homes and inject them directly into the brain through their eyes."
The American Addiction Medicine Association used to believe that addiction is mainly a behavior. Recently, inspired by the new brain science community, the American Addiction Medicine Association redefines "addiction"-a brain disease related to the neural reward system. The powerful influence of Internet pornography on the neural reward system is clearly in line with the new definition of addiction. Dr. Hilton believes that the impact of pornographic images on the natural brain reward system is unique. Unlike the rewards brought about by food or doing other things, the rewards brought by watching pornographic images can lead to "continuous changes related to nerve synapses and plasticity." In other words, Internet pornography not only stimulates the increase of dopamine levels in the brain, and thus produces pleasure. It also literally changes the physical organization inside the brain, so that new neural pathways crave pornographic information to trigger the desired sense of reward.
Pornography is a mixed drug. It triggers two addictive chemicals in the brain by causing excitement (the "hi" feeling caused by dopamine) and creating orgasm (the "relaxing" effect of drugs). This mixing mechanism makes pornography more likely to become addictive and easier to develop tolerance. The tolerance of pornography requires not only larger doses, but also more novelty in content, such as more taboo behaviors.
Although the effects of Internet pornography are similar to the combination of chemical addictions, the effects of Internet pornography exceed those of chemical substances.
For example, the "mirror neurons" in the brain give us the ability to learn: observe a behavior and imitate it. Professor Struthers wrote that because of mirror neurons, “watching pornographic videos creates a neural experience by which the viewer indirectly participates in what he sees.” This unique interactive addiction through The dual stimulation of the brain and the body is realized. In the words of Professor Strathurs, "Pornography involves visual mechanisms (watching movies), motor mechanisms (masturbation), sensory mechanisms (genital stimulation), and the neurological effects of excitement and orgasm (caused by addictive dopamine). Excitement)".
The study of the brain confirms such a serious fact: pornography is a drug release system, which has obvious and powerful effects on the human brain and nervous system. As Dr. Deutch pointed out, "Those who watch porn are unaware of the extent to which pornography reshapes their brains." Indeed, they do not know that pornography is "creating new neural circuits in their brains."
Research on nerves has revealed that Internet pornography has a powerful effect on the brain. Its effect is as powerful as cocaine and heroin, which are addictive substances. In a statement to the U.S. Congress, psychiatrist and former Yale psychiatrist Dr. Jeffery warned the public: With the advent of the information age, the addictive stimulation of Internet pornography has become almost irresistible. We seem to have created an unprecedented substance that is 100 times more powerful than heroin. Internet pornography can be watched privately at home, it is directly "injected" into the brain through both eyes!
In 2014, a research paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association-Psychiatry stated that frequent viewing of pornographic pictures can make the brain slow to respond to sexual stimulation. German scientists point out that this means that the brain needs more dopamine to feel the same degree of "orgasm", which leads to the search for more pornographic images. "Psychology" magazine once published a paper saying that these dopamine surges mean that people who watch pornographic pictures need more tasteful sexual perceptions and experiences to arouse sexual desire. German scientists believe that viewing pornographic pictures may cause brain shrinkage, and the more you look at them, the more severe the brain striatum area associated with rewards and stimulation. This is the first time scientists have discovered that viewing pornographic pictures is directly related to physical injury. In addition, scientists also found that the more time spent watching pornographic pictures, the more different the brain, the more you watch, the deeper the addiction. In 2013, researchers at the University of Cambridge found that when people addicted to pornographic pictures watch pornographic pictures or videos, the "drug addiction" area of ​​the brain glows in a brain scan. When young people who are addicted to Internet pornography browse pornographic pictures, their brains will "glisten like a Christmas tree with colorful lights." In the brains of people addicted to pornographic images, these areas responsible for processing rewards, stimulation, and pleasure are exactly the same as the highly stimulated areas in the brains of drug addicts and alcohol addicts.
Research shows that among all forms of online entertainment (such as gambling, games, surfing the Internet, social networks), pornography has the strongest tendency to become addictive. When pornographic images enter the brain, it will induce the reward center to start stimulating dopamine, which triggers a flood of chemical components, including a protein called DeltaFosB. Usually the role of DeltaFosB is to create new neural pathways to connect with what you are doing (viewing pornography) and pleasure. With the repeated overload of dopamine, viewers become numb to those scenes, and they often find that they cannot feel normal when there is no high release of dopamine. Some people say that they feel nervous or negative until they regain pornography. As they sink deeper and deeper into this abyss of vices, they will become more and more flavorful. Many people who try their best to get rid of this bad habit say that they find it hard to stop.
Like any substance with addictive potential, pornography induces the release of dopamine into the "reward center" part of the brain (also known as the reward channel or system). The reason why pornography is a behavior that aggravates the degree of psychological distortion is because as some pornographic viewers' tolerance increases, the scenes that have excited them become boring. It can be expected that they will often spend longer watching pornography, seeking more heavy-tasting themes, and trying to regain their previous excitement, as a compensation for the boredom caused by old themes. Many watching People find that sharp themes such as violence are permeating their sexual fantasies and habits.
The content of pornography and the way people interact with it have undergone dramatic changes in the past few decades. Internet pornography has the following six characteristics.
(1) Free of charge. People who watch pornography can browse pornography for free on the Internet. In the past, they had to go out to buy discs and books.
(2) Easy to obtain. People can easily access pornographic content through the Internet. Nowadays, most of them have mobile phones, and the Internet is more convenient.
(3) Freshness. In the past, pornographic resources were relatively single, and it was easy to get bored. Internet pornography has many options and can provide continuous freshness.
(4) Large amount of resources. There are huge amounts of pornographic resources on the Internet, and there are dozens of gigabytes or even hundreds of gigabytes in the hard disks of many prostitutes.
(5) Diversified locations. In the past, you could only watch it at home, but now you have a mobile phone and you can watch it everywhere, which increases the possibility of watching pornography.
(6) Easy to carry. Drop it into your mobile phone, mobile hard drive or laptop, and you can take it with you.

I know everyone likes the stock and I do too which is why I’m holding my 10 $GME shares forever and the last thing I wanna do is distract from the movement, but now is a pinnacle time to look at $OCGN. 2 months ago this was a penny stock that I had given all hope up on, until they announced their partnership with bharat biotech. At the time the stock rallied from .30 to 3$ and OCGN and bharat had not confirmed their partnership it was just something that was a possibility. Well the other day contracts were signed and OCGN now officially has exclusive rights to the distribution and sale of COVAXIN in the United States which is a highly promising COVID-19 vaccine that is proven to be effective against Covid AND Covid variants. This is obviously still a gamble as no one will know what will happen with this stock til phase 3 trial data comes out for COVAXIN but Phase 1 & 2 data was released a few weeks ago making the vaccine look like a strong cannidate which is why Bharat is already in talks with the Biden administration for potential EUA in the US if phase 3 trial data deems COVAXIN effective. So like I said before it’s definitely a gamble but if the stars align then we will easily see this go from 3$ - 40$+ in the next 1-3 months. And most of the hate on this stock is coming from people talking about the lawsuit against Ocugen which literally has nothing to do with anything except for the fact that they cancelled a shareholding meeting that was about increasing the available amount of stock for the company which shareholders had already voted they did not want to do previous to the meeting.
This is not financial advice, this is a casino, and I am a gambling addict, so to sum all this up $OCGN 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Edit: For anyone who wants a little extra info https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ocugen-potential-covid-19-vaccine-163624031.html
Edit: When I wrote this $OCGN was $3.07 it is now $7 https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lde482/look_im_holding_10_gme_til_the_moon_or_death_but/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Edit: position - https://imgur.com/gallery/NkBoEaa
Edit: Most recent news - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ocugen-inc-announces-23-million-024400500.html

Sorry for the wall of text, I just find this subject to be a very interesting one, and I just want to hear people's opinions on this since I like talking about this stuff. I focused more on gaming than anything else, but I think this opinion really applies to all forms of art.
There's no clear definition of what makes something "political" or not, but I think its determined by the times we live in and what is considered taboo by the culture of the consumer. What could be considered a political subject today can become a societal norm tomorrow. We shouldn't be complaining that games try to engage with these topics, but instead critique them on how they do so and how well it's executed.
Usually when I see people complain about politics in video games, it's only because they don't like the political stance that the game takes and don't want to engage with it in any meaningful way. Many people online will be angered by, say, the censorship and inaccessibility of a game like "Devotion", but will celebrate the poor sales and critical reception of a game like "The Last of Us Part II" only because they like and dislike the respective political ideas and themes that each convey to the player. There are some people who don't share this viewpoint, and will critique the contents of the game by it's message and how it shares it while not claiming that any game should be barred from sale or "deserves" success/failure based on these elements, but I don't see that viewpoint represented as often as I think it should. It's
I think many people are being blinded by hiveminds and echo chambers into deciding on a piece of art before engaging with it, and I don't blame them because I've made the same mistake on multiple occasions and am in the process of breaking away from that. I'd argue it's simply a consequence of how the internet can be used and how content creators online can use their opinions and their audiences to color first impressions of art before it's released. I'm not saying you absolutely must buy every game and play it and then say what you think of it, because reviews exist for a reason, and nobody wants to support a developer or company for practices or beliefs they find unethical, but I do believe people should be more nuanced in how they talk about games and the ideas they communicate.
If a game has political ideas and themes that convey a viewpoint that is harmful and hurtful to people, I think there can be ground for censorship as well, but I don't know where the line should be drawn. I also think it's better for people to be able to engage with said game and use their freedom of speech to criticize it for those reasons, allowing for people to push back against those ideas via discussion. Not all messages are created equal; it's hard to say how interactive propaganda and the issue of misinformation caused by videogames should be dealt with, especially considering the power of misinformation in our day and age, but I think that it ultimately hurts to gatekeep what can and cannot be tackled in any medium because it can also help us understand viewpoints we might not understand for ourselves. For example, someone may be able to identify with someone dealing with gender dysphoria through a game that can depict the feeling through game mechanics. These ideas may become dated in their depictions and nuance due to shifting norms, but I think that's okay as long as we are able to engage with them and it allows us as people to develop some viewpoint on it. It's inherent that once groundbreaking representations of ideas can become stale and primitive, but it's good to understand the context surrounding it too.
Games aren't hurt by engaging in taboo topics, but instead allow the player to engage with a topic or idea they might not have in a more meaningful way than with a book or movie because it's an interactive medium. There is no artistic medium that benefits from being limited by the subjects it can explore.
They all benefit from good working conditions, though. Fuck capitalism and current marketing practices for making working conditions worse for game developers, thus making video games themselves worse and taking advantage of the consumer in a time where people are finding it even more difficult to be financially stable. No one is a bad person for engaging with things like lootboxes and preorders, but I don't think those ever helped the industry, and can only hurt consumers who may suffer from gambling addictions or other issues. Idk, if you think this last part is wrong on what causes it or how bad it is then I'll gladly hear you out on that too.
Let me know what y'all think.
Edit: Should've clarified one of my paragraphs here. Not all games need to be political, of course. Also, when I say "harmful or hurtful to people" I mean literally calling for people to hurt irl groups, like propaganda games made by terrorists or whoever. When I say there are grounds for censorship, I'm acknowledging that there could be an argument there, not that they SHOULD censor it, I think I say as much later in my post.

My dad went off treatment for lung cancer 6 months ago, and my mother called me about a week ago to tell me that it looks like it’s his final days. I didn’t even know he was off treatment until that call. She asked me to visit him, and I’ve refused.
The first reason is because I think traveling is dangerous. My dad is obviously high risk. My mom is too. My brother’s wife just had a baby (my parents live with my brother). It’s not an ideal scenario.
The real reason is because my dad was an abusive alcoholic who gambled away all $10,000 of my college savings. It’s not like I moved out when I was 18 and never looked back either. My father lived with me for a year, and that entire time he constantly disrespected me. He told me I had to be a better wife (cleaning + cooking wise). He had terrible manners (never saying sorry, please, or thank you) and was incredibly messy. One day, I figured we were both adult enough to talk about the past. I asked him why gambled so much and abused mom. I didn’t know how he would respond, but I definitely wasn’t expecting him to deny everything and say I was a horrible daughter. I said he couldn’t live with me until he admitted his mistakes. He refused and moved back in with my brother and mom.
When my dad got his cancer diagnosis, I still didn’t talk to him. He never reached out and I didn’t either. I did send money to my brother to help pay the bills. When my mom told me he was dying I didn’t know how to feel. To be honest, I don’t love my father, but it was hard to realize he was dying. My mom asked me to fly over, and I refused due to world conditions. I ended up FaceTiming my father. I asked him if he regretted not getting help or if he resented my brother or me for not forcing him to get help. He asked what I meant, and I said with his alcohol and gambling addictions. He denied having either again and blew up again.
This is probably the biggest AH moment. I said things I probably shouldn’t have said. I told him he was a bad dad, and he should be lucky my brother and mom take care of him. I told him I didn’t love him, and I hoped my sons turn out nothing like him. The worst thing I said was that God would see through his lies, and he broke into tears. My mom said I was childish and bitter for not being able to act normal for 5 minutes and causing so much stress. I told them I wouldn’t speak to him again until he admitted for his mistakes and apologized for him. He hasn’t. Somehow other family members heard word of the arguments and called to lecture me about it. I didn’t realize I could’ve been in the wrong until my husband admitted he thought I was excessively harsh after the first batch of relatives called me and I asked for his opinion.
TLDR: AITA for refusing to speak/visit/forgive my abusive alcoholic father who refuses to admit any of his mistakes

This is going to be a really long post, so read it at your pace. I'll try my best to make it worthwhile but I ain't much of a good writer.
​
Genshin Impact has been released since 28th of September and so far the game has received a lot of mixed reactions from the players and most of them not being good ones. Let's dig into them. So this is a criticism/feedback/bitching/complaining post or whatever you like to call it.
​
First of all What is Genshin Impact?
This is something even the game itself doesn't know and is what's confused most of the people around and is what created the first problem. Genshin has severe identity crisis. It's a JRPG? It's a Mobile gacha game? It's a AAA title aimed for all?
The game tried to find something in between all this and created the mess we see today.
You see people trying to defend the game by saying "This is a Gacha game. This is how it works. This is how it's been for years." Now all these things are complete BS.
Genshin isn't and was never intended to be your typical mobile gacha. It tried to appeal to the mainstream audience. The instant Genshin was being developed for PC, Switch and PS4 it rose above your typical Gacha game. It wanted to cater to the mainstream crowd. Now this creates the very big problem that is the difference between Mainstream gamers like PC, PS4, Switch and Gacha Addict mobile market. While gacha addicted mobile gamers are used to being fcked over by shitty practices by those companies, the mainstream crowd is different. Some of them are completely new to the gacha system. Just accept the fact that gacha is a very bad monetization model, some games have implemented it in a nicer way which actually isn't bad, but Genshin monetization is just straight up ridiculous.
Genshin was promoted as JRPG from the very beginning instead of being your usual gacha mobile game. This is where most of the mainstream players expectations shattered. Things like being limited by stamina system for play is a norm practice in mobile games(Not all games do this but most of them do) BUT it's not in the mainstream market and this is something which is not acceptable when you go for broader market. You can't just expect them to conform to your shitty stamina system and be all happy happy. You're gonna get backlash.
​
Resin(this absolute piece of shit item in Genshin)
Resin system is just ridiculous. While being already bad in the first place, it's way worse compared to even the stamina system of other mobile gacha games. Almost 95% of the stuff you do in the game is locked behind resin system. You wanna farm Mora? go spend resin, you wanna farm exp? go spend resin, you wanna farm artifacts? go spend resin, you wanna farm upgrade materials? go spend resin. What's even more ridiculous is the amount you need per dungeons, bosses and the amount you get.
​
Resin is capped at 120. So you can run hypostasis 3 times and poof it's gone. Once you get to higher level even running hypostasis 3 times doesn't give you enough material to level up your character. The regen rate is also crap 1 resin per 8 minutes.
​
This doesn't stop here. One of the shittiest thing in the game is the weekly bosses.
YOU CAN FCKING FIGHT IT ONCE A WEEK AND IT'S STILL WALLED BEHIND RESIN. Can you see double the bs here. On top of being only available once a week you still need to spend 60 Resin just to collect rewards. The sheer amount of bs is ridiculous.
​
Let's talk Experience
To raise your character. The very first laughable thing is that beating monsters of lv60 gives you 14-15 Character exp. I mean why even have it in the first place. This is just shitty on the face of people. You need to fight monsters for months then maybe you can raise one Level of your character. The sheer amount of stupidness that fighting monsters doesn't give you Exp is just wow. You get most of the exp from those Exp Books(Adventurer's exp, Hero's Wit). And guess what you need to spend resin to get those. And what's another fcked up thing is that one run costs 20 resin and doesn't even give you enough to level up even 1 level. Yes you can get it from chests and quests but you'll run out way too soon once you reach higher levels.
​
Money walks in now which is Mora.
You need iirc 60000 Mora just to ascend a character and a lv35 Leyline gives you 44000. The amount of Mora you need to upgrade gears and characters is once again another very bad thing. You can spend few days farming 1 Million Mora and guess what it'll be gone in a poof once you get upgrade 3-4 artifacts(which you'll get fcked along the way. We'll get to that). Everything in the game needs mora be it levelling up character, talents, artifacts, weapons. The amount needed is 100x more than what you are earning. You'll always be short on this.
​
Comes in the Artifact now
You have greater chance of winning a lottery ticket than rolling good stats on the artifacts. The amount of RNG implemented on Artifacts is baffling.
First you need a good main stat(Pray to RNG), then you good secondary stats. Did you know these are also assigned via RNG. Then once you upgrade the artifact additional stats are assigned based on RNG. Once you keep upgrading the artifacts existing sub stats are upgraded(based on RNG) and more new Sub stats are assigned(Based on RNG) which are further upgraded(based on RNG). Those are whole 6-7 layers of RNG to get a good Artifact. So yeah you're better off praying of being able to kamehameha than getting a good Artifact.
You can say that no problem I'm a hardcore grinder I'll farm them till I get them. But then Resin comes and grabs your a$$ and puts you in place.
Oh did you also know that Artifact drops are RNG!? Also Domains drops multiple type of artifacts you on top praying to get a good artifact main stat, first you need to pray to get the artifact at all. And you need to do this with 6 runs per day ONLY IF YOU GRIND SINGLE DOMAIN AND NEGLECT EVERYTHING ELSE.
​
Now Don't ya worry because in comes the weapons upgrade materials
Weapon ascension materials are dropped from different domains and you need 20 resin per run and need to do multiple runs to get enough material to ascend your weapon.
​
Talent Books have joined the Chat
You thought it was over, but it was I the talent books. Yet another piece of upgrade material which drops from yet different type of domains that require resin. Higher levels require 9 per talent level to upgrade and the domain drops 1 per run.
​
Now what's the center of all the problems mentioned above? IT'S RESIN!
This single piece of item limits everything you can do in the game. The only thing you can do in this game without resin is just farming chests which(don't even get me started on this) are just another piece of shit in the game. Chest rewards are very very underwhelming. It's isn't worth farming them except for that Adventure Exp. Have you ever played a Open world RPG which limits 95% of the content behind such a system? This is one of the biggest bs in the game.
So yeah what's the game at higher levels? You login -> burn resin in 10 minutes -> you get trash -> you curse -> you logout -> rinse and repeat. Basically you're a trash collector.
​
​
Congratulations you've made it so far. Now that the resin is done we look at another horrendous aspect of the game that is Monetization and Gacha.
Now for all those white knights out there just accept the fact that the gacha rate is horrendous. 0.6% to get a 5 star character is way too low. As the CN guy said it's just double the rate of a glass blowing up.
Gacha has been for around quite a while. There are examples of good and bad gachas all around. BUT GENSHIN FALLS INTO THE WORST ONE.
You have 0.6 rate to get a 5 star character which is basically non existent and you get pity at 90 pulls. Here's comes another scummy part. At 90 pulls you have 50% chance to get the UP characters. See this bs. It's actually a pity but not a pity. You can pull 90 times but are still reliant on RNG to get you the desired character. Real pity comes at 180 Pulls which is just straight up ridiculous. 180 pulls are 32000 primogems and converting them to real life money that's a whopping $400 just one Freaking 5 star character. That's like whole month worth of food.
and Congrats if you got the 5 star character cuz that's not his full potential. You need another 6 of him to max him. So in worst case you're looking at $2400 just to max out one 5 star character. Holy flames this shit.
4 star rate is also so low that you rarely get them out of 10 pull pity which is just another scummy practice.
Cost for primogems is yet another crappy practice to greed money. $100 gives you 8800 primogems which are about 55 pulls. This is not even enough to hit that initial pity of 90 pulls let alone that 180 one.
​
Monthly Pass and Battle Pass
Another two methods of monetization that the game uses. These two are absolutely worthless. Now you may say that Monthly Pass is actually really good value. You can get 3000 Primogems for $5 which is a steal. and Yes it could have been good had the rates been decent.
Just look at what 3000 primogems net you. A 4 star character you don't want? A useless 4 star weapon? or will you hold out on to hope that it will give you a 5 star character? Even after spending money you are still reliant on that small chance to get something good.
Battle Pass. Oh don't get me started on this piece of crap. It's the single worst BP I've seen during my whole gaming life. From those ridiculous requirements which force you spend primogems to refresh resin to the locking of weekly Exp, this is just accumulation of every single crap lying around. Not even worth a shit.
​
Achievements
This doesn't fall under Monetization but is another bs aspect of the game that I'd like to discuss. Achievements spit in the face of the player. Collecting 100 chests gives you 10 primogems. and what's that number? That's 1/16 the amount you need for one damn pull. Even if we count the primogems you get from those 100 chests it nets you 200(2 from each) + 10 = 210 primogems which doesn't even amount to two pulls. I feel like this system is there just to mock the player.
​
Hats of to you. You've made it this far. Next we move on to other aspects.
​
COMMUNITY
First of all I'm very happy that people are shitting on these crappy practices and voicing their opinions. There's definitely no need to accept these types of things. Once you accept this, they'll go even lower next time.
Along with this I'm baffled at the people still trying to defend such scummy tactics. Take a look at these posts
https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/j799kw/i_will_say_my_biggest_tip_to_enjoy_the_game_and/
https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/j7atw9/my_take_on_the_negative_reviews_as_a_long_time/
I won't go into any of them. Feel free to look at them yourselves.
CN players are not happy and they're bashing the game everywhere and trying to make sure their voice is heard. This is what we also need to do. Some people say that "It's a Chinese Company. It won't matter whether you bitch here". This is 100% bs. This is not just a chinese game. It's released worldwide for everybody to play. They have people everywhere looking at stuff. So voice you complaints wherever you want official discord, forums, reddit, twitter, youtube, in game feedback.
Keep in mind if you don't speak at all nothing will ever change. Once they receive enough backlash from their playerbase things will get better. The community definitely has the power to change things,
Youtube channels
To be honest I was hoping for those youtube channels would bring up some of those concerns of the community but nope. Every single one of them is dripping wet for Genshin and just screaming into the mics.
"5 AWESOME TIPS FOR GENSHIN". "5 INSANE TIPS FOR GENSHIN". "5 SUPER DUPER INSANE TIPS FOR GENSHIN". "5 TIPS FOR GENSHIN TO LEVEL UP AND GET THAT HOT MILF IN YOUR AREA".
I don't mean to criticize those channels, they may create content they want, but a good chunk of community watches those channels so bringing issues with the game will definitely help.
​
"This is a Gacha Game. This is how it's supposed to be. If you don't like it quit it. You aren't enjoying the game" ---- Genshin Impact Whiteknights
First of all I have absolutely no need to hear from someone how to enjoy my game so yeah get the hell outta here with this advice.
And for all you sorry a$$ mobile gacha gaming gambling addicts out there get it through your thick skulls of yours that GENSHIN IS NOT A MOBILE GACHA GAME.
This is something even the game tries to achieve but fails very hard to do so. It wanted to be something more than your typical gacha game but in the end it's own system doomed it.
From the start Genshin is being marketed as OPEN WORLD JRPG rather than a gacha game. It also has every aspect of open world rpgs cuz that's what the game is. It is also a game that it playable on PC and console rather than mobile. 90% of the mobiles don't even run the game good. The moment Genshin touched the PC, Switch and PS4 platforms it needed to shed the skin of mobile gacha gaming concepts.
Currently the Genshin Impact for high level player is login -> burn resin in 10-15 minutes -> logout.
This is how you play Mobile Gacha games. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU PLAY PC, PS4 OR FOR THAT MATTER MAINSTREAM GAMES. This part is limited to mobile gaming. It has absolutely no place in the mainstream market cuz most of the time people play for longer hours on these systems.
Genshin is not a game that you'll play waiting at a bus stop for 5-10 minutes or waiting for your friend at the cafe. The game wants you to play it like a full RPG. and in here comes the point where the game contradicts itself.
It wants you play the game but limits it greatly or just 99% behind a stamina system.
See the absolute madness in this? This is where the greed comes in. It's where they sell Resin refills. Look at the $20 BP with extra resin, look at weekly packs in the shop selling resin. The sheer ridiculousness of the game selling you stamina just to play the game. For people waiting for the feature to pet the dogs, just hope that it doesn't cost you 20 resin to do so or they are only pettable once a week.
​
Even as a gacha game Genshin Impact is a big disappointment
This is coming from my experience as a gacha gamer. The game is literal crap when compared to other gacha games. You've got examples of great gacha games like Azur Lane around(I'm saying comparatively better, not that other ones don't have problems) but still it choose to go with worst ones.
​
​
I have nothing expect gratitude for you for reading this so far. Next we move on to the final segment that is the Company Itself.
​
Mihoyo
The final boss of all is Mihoyo itself and they themselves have been really scummy and shitty.
So far they have been completely turning a blind eye and not listening to the people at all. Starting from the very first CBT to the OBT they have received constant feedback but have completely neglected the main parts which include resin and monetization. Now keep in mind that Mihoyo is not a new company. They have been in the market for years. Their other mobile game Honkai Impact 3 is very big in CN and also quite popular in global too. Throughout constant feedback from players and being in market they have learned what's good and what's bad.
And the shittiest thing is that they choose to completely ignore it and push there scummy tactics. Let's see some of them....
​
The first and very obvious one being the gacha and monetization. Monetization was available during the CBT3 on CN server. It received quite a feedback due to rates being so low. But they still didn't change a thing. They just rolled it exactly the same way meaning they didn't pay any heed to the feedback regarding the monetization. They know about gacha and what's good and bad about it but still purposely chose to go with the shittiest kind of gacha.
​
Unskippable Cutscenes. Let's just accept it that the only reason the cutscenes are unskippable is because they want to prevent people from rerolling accounts. Though it didn't prevent them but it was their intention. That's why they even went as far as banning accounts who pulled 5 star but had no activity for 24 hours or so but didn't even touch those accounts that only had 4 stars. Criticism threads on the official forums are being deleted. Just another scummy tactic.
​
There have been constant bashing on CN forums since 15th, taptap score is 4.7 and on other forums too. Yet they still haven't considered any of them and are just ignoring their playerbase completely.
​
What's Mihoyo trying to do?
At this point it's either two possibilities one that either they didn't research enough into the mainstream audience or it's just deliberate. And the chance of it being the former is let's say 0.6
It seems like rather than catering to what the mainstream playerbase expects, Mihoyo is trying to lure them into the shady and absolute bs world of Mobile Gacha gaming. This is what garnered so much hate from the mainstream audience. While the gacha gaming addicts are used to being fcked over by these scummy tactics all year around, this is not the case with others. Some of them are even completely new to the terms like Gacha. And just accept the fact that Gacha is a horrendous system of monetization. Like Gigguk said "Who said gacha is like drugs. Drugs are way cheaper." To any sane person this model of monetization is absolute bs and it is. Even among this Monetization Genshin goes for the worst one their is. So yeah expecting a whole different player crowd to shut up and just fall into crappy and scummy practices is not gonna work and is definitely gonna blow up in your face.
And I hope that people continue to bash such systems cuz if such kind of system is accepted it will shift many other aspects to the shittier side and thing will continue to get worse. This is the reason why mobile gacha gaming is so bad. The devs pushed poorer rates and people just sat there and accepted it blowing thousands on such practices. This is the reason why something like 0.6% chance to get a 5 star character exists. It's derived from the Mobile Gacha Gaming.
​
​
What's all these complaining posts? Why don't you just enjoy the game?
FCKING STOP PROTECTING/WHITE KNIGHTING THESE SCUMMY PRACTICES. First of all get it through your thick skulls that the who are doing the so called "complaining" are doing it because they love the game and WANT IT TO BE BETTER. They aren't doing it out of spite or anything.
You can dismiss a few troll threads when a user is hating without a reason anywhere. But know that when multiple people are complaining about one thing it means there is something wrong with that. People are making long posts giving proper reasons as to why something is bad and giving a reply like "This is how it is. Quit if you don't like it." is a rotten and crappy mindset.
The reason people are taking their time to write of such lengthy posts is because they genuinely love the game and want it to be better and more awesome. That's why something called "FEEDBACK" exists in this world. As it stands the game is just heading to its doom and the people trying to prevent it are the ones who care about it. People giving crappy answers are contributing nothing to it.
And let me ask this question why do you have to fcking head crash into people who care? Is it bad that the game gets better and everybody enjoys it rather than your sorry a$$ of a gacha gambling addict.
A fact is that if things get better these so called white knights will be jumping in joy too. BUT THERE IS ONE VERY BIG DIFFERENCE. They will call it like "Wow! mihoyo is so generous. They're the best devs in the world." rather than actually crediting it to the people who made the change possible.
​
FINAL WORDS
The game itself is very beautiful. The awesome Open world map, absolutely banger soundtrack all are just too good. I absolutely love the game itself. But the current game system is very flawed and this needs to addressed as soon as possible.
If Genshin Impact stays like this, it will be removed from the mainstream audience. That's why changes need to occur if they want this crowd to stay, otherwise if all want is just money then they'll carry on with these shitty practices.
Know that at the end of all this if nothing is changed Genshin will just be another Generic Mobile Gacha Game where you'll save primogems for months for a char -> Get fcked by abyssal rates -> Curse the devs and game -> Go to sleep -> Rinse and repeat and if you enjoy it that's good for you. What sucks the most is that a game with so much potential will be ruined.

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.