As I mentioned, I have a wife who I live with and spend time with every day. We met online, and only later realized that we went to the same school, but were in different grades. We probably saw each other on multiple occasions, but we were just strangers then. I also have plenty of local friends who I spend time with as well. However, I live in completely different states from some of my oldest friends from school. We voice chat online every week, and meet up in person every few years.

I have a couple groups of people who I play video games and tabletop games with online who I’ve never even seen in real life, and wouldn’t even recognize walking down the street, but we’ve known each other for years and have real, meaningful connections. Two of the friends from one group even realized they live near one another, and have since begun dating, making plans to move in together soon.

And yes, I am a part of several online communities in forums, sites like Lemmy, and elsewhere that I keep up with. We have nice conversations and heated arguments. We help each other with problems and questions. We’re simply a group that any member knows they can turn to when they need to connect with someone.

Life is complicated, and there are an insane amount of different ways to connect with people. Amazingly, some of those are through the internet. The idea that some connections are real and the others are fake is complete bullshit, and you’re clearly making a bad argument in bad faith to let off some steam.

You can literally see that it’s a jpeg. Whatever, man. At this point you’re just trolling. But hey, that’s one of those human interactions that the internet made possible, so thanks for highlighting that for me.

Sorry, bud; you’ve been having a human connection this whole time.

Haha, we’re in a digital age, buddy. Computers are nothing more than the latest way to connect real people in real ways. Sure, bots exist, just like spam telephone callers exist and were probably major issues when that was the main way for people to connect with one another across large distances, but you’re not going to stop it by covering your ears and denying the existence of every person you can’t physically see.

I have a wife and family, I have friends, and I have online communities I care about; they’re all just different legitimate social circles. We may not have evolved for it, but we’re living it anyway, and the faster you adapt to that, the better.

… I can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but if you’re honestly so put-off by human connection and comradery, I’m disappointed. Kind of a weird take from someone on Lemmy if that’s the case, though.

In the context of people who hack their systems? I’d certainly say so.

Don’t fight for yourself, fight for the community.

It doesn’t matter what I want, it matters what the community as a whole wants, and we want more than just pirating. Nobody’s hiding, we’re just not missing the forest for the trees; it’s not honesty in discussion to boil and entire group of people down to the desires of just the few people in this thread, it’s just being self-centered.

If you want to talk about what you as an individual want, feel free, but don’t act like it’s the definitive thing to discuss when the community is greater than all of us.

The majority of people pirate, but insofar as there is a single person who wants to do literally anything else with their hacked system, then it isn’t exclusively about pirating, and the narrative to condemn the entire practice of hacking as being solely about pirating is nothing more than another corporation trying to make it harder for people to modify their own property as they see fit.

Nah, noise in general is annoying when I’m trying to work. I like listening to music, but I’d be annoyingly distracted if a radio was on in the office.