Things I Dislike

This is a non-exhaustive list of some things that I want to rant about.

Bloatware ~

Bloatware is just so inconvenient. Software should be kept as minimal as possible, only including absolute necessities and without introducing features that replicate another software's job; it just clutters the UI beyond recognition (with its layers upon layers of toolbars, dropdown menus, and buttons), increases the loading time, makes bugs and security issues more likely (and thus tiring the developers to keep up with open issues), confuses, disgusts, and distracts the users, makes the software harder to use in the way it was originally intended for, and decreases efficiency since the feature won't do it as well as the actual programs built for that sole purpose, and it won't be used anyway for most of the time by most users. Putting more than one type of functionality in a program which is unnecessary and irrelevant to its usage is pointlessly duplicating the job of the window manager. Sure, I'm not completely against features that are relevant (yet still non-detrimental) to the usage of certain programs, but I think it's way better if they're simply ruled out as extensions (i.e., plugins, patches, etc.), so they can be excluded from the core (thus nullifying interdependency), tested separately, scrapped easily, and removed or replaced at any time by the user's own will without fear of any problem.

Cloud Storage ~

The fact you have your own HDD/SSD means there's absolutely no need to store your data on someone else's computer, unless it's some really unimportant stuff that you don't need to store locally (an old archive, for example) or stuff you want to be available to others.

Dependency on Reviews ~

Often times on gaming forums, for example, there's always that one post asking or even debating what's the "best" game there is. In reality, this is counter-productive because there's truly no such thing as a "best role-playing game," "best visual novel," "best slice-of-life manga," etc., only those that other people perceive them as such. The concept of a "best" game (especially across genres) lacks objective criteria and becomes increasingly ambiguous, as it equates to comparing apples and oranges. People's works offer diverse perspectives and can provoke various reactions that may evolve with time and exposure; exploring unfamiliar territories can be rewarding, it can enhance one's appreciation for them.

Discord's Social Issue ~

Putting aside the fact that Discord is spyware and that it killed every feature we love and switched everything to React Native (which is why, for example, the latest usable mobile version is 126.21 all the way back to June 2022 when they still used Kotlin), it's also the reason so many communities have broken apart; it killed almost every forum online (along with all online cultures and identities) and instead centralized media into groups populated by awful people and managed by even more awful people. Joining any Discord server takes zero effort or investment, pretty much anyone can join any group with no strings attached, someone can join a group for a community and then simply lurk around and never interact with anyone or even read what's going on inside of that group. Unlike other chatting services (e.g., IRC), there's no obligation whatsoever for a Discord user to ever contribute to the group in any way, mostly because the user is part of far more groups than he should be in at once, which would also take away time used to bond and make friendships with others, and as such, Discord makes forgetting/ghosting people seem like a trivial thing to do.

Improper Gatekeeping ~

There must be some sort of selectivity when it comes to gatekeeping people from a certain community; completely blocking every single person isn't a good idea, and completely allowing in every single person is still not a good idea. Both are improper and effectively destroy communities, so there's got to be a balance between the two.

You don't want to give every community AIDS, do you!?

Internet Extremism ~

One of the worst things I hate is seeing my favorite site that came a long way from a harbor of people who want to discuss anime and who actually have talents and hobbies devolving to a cheap man's Stormfront run by deranged gore-addicted autists, gender-dysphoric autists and neo-Nazi autists; a hole inhabitated by disgusting autistic individuals whose only job is to post poorly made soyjaks, pepes, and pornography (for whatever reasons), where the only good posts or threads are those buried by the invalid opinions of an unstoppable horde of abortionists and genital mutilators or the constant /pol/posting and namecalling against different ethnicities and ideologies.

Light Themes ~

There's no reason to use the light theme unless you're an old mutt who thinks that "it worked centuries with books, so it must work with software," as if the flashing screen isn't sending its uncomfortable blue rays straight into your eyes and through your eyelids. On websites, for example, it's a trend these days to offer an optional dark theme alongside the disgusting eyesore that's the light theme, and this is a step in the right direction considering how only a few years ago we all had to suffer under the light theme. My dislike of light themes is pretty much why this site doesn't have a theme switcher; there's no need for it, and implementing it would require the usage of JavaScript and cookies which many people have disabled.

Loading Screens ~

We all dislike loading screens, but I perfectly understand a loading screen in video-games, as it takes a while to load in 3D models, 8 billion by 8 billion pixel textures, lossless WAV/FLAC files, and so on. The real problem is loading screens on websites; they're definitely not games. If you need a splash and/or loading screen to hide the fact your webite is broken before you finally let me in, then your website is plain broken even after everything has been loaded.

Matrix ~

One day, a bunch of developers who once belonged to an (((Israeli))) company known for spying on people have received a suspicious amount of fundraising to further continue their development on "Matrix"; the monolithic, awfully trendy re-implementation of XMPP. They could've improved the XMPP ecosystem by creating a polished client and being a server vendor, but no, instead they re-invented the wheel, poorly, by making a pseudo-decentralized protocol with major privacy concerns (such as metadata collection by central Matrix servers) and with no extensibility in the protocol at all, meaning if Matrix chooses what the new version of the protocol contains and then you don't upgrade to the new one, you're basically kicked out of the federation and left out alone. The only usable Matrix server (i.e., Synapse) is extremely resource hungry compared to any XMPP server, and the clients as well are so bad that most of them are either too buggy to use (e.g., FluffyChat, Cinny, Nheko) or are Electron soyware (e.g., Element). I see no reason to use Matrix.

My Internet Service Provider ~

The internet dies out all the time for some reason.

Online Help ~

Going by my wonderful day, I open up my laptop to do a bunch of stuff where suddenly, it seems like I don't understand a specific aspect of a program. Hesistant for help, I urge the program to let me refer to the documentation, yet, and to my horrified look on the monitor, F1 merely launches a web browser instead of a nice set of man-pages. Are you kidding me? Help should be provided to those who need it without the need to connect to the internet, because a computer doesn't revolve around constant internet connection. Think about all the possibilities where people can be offline; power outages, places without Wi-Fi, temporary ISP shutdowns, moving out, or simply being me. Even if people have internet connection, offline documentation remains superior because it's fast and future-proof, whereas online documentation requires that an external website should be up at the moment of accessing (which by the way can be prone to link rot).

Pointless Abbreviations ~

I don't know where to draw the red line where an abbreviation becomes "pointless" and it's entirely subjective to my opinions, but let's not lie, the degradation of language into a bunch of informal unintelligible caveman grunts is a serious issue with textual communication. I might be okay with some "ig," "yk," "imo," "afaik," and "lmao," in fact I can often just guess within a nanosecond what a common abbreviation means without actually using my brain for that, but what is "ygtr," "ifyp," "adih," and "omdb"? Why do I have to be forced to check Urban Dictionary to look for (and memorize) the meaning of a useless abbreviation instead of the other peer in the conversation takes an extra second to communicate his point in a coherent manner? If a person can't care less to spell out a few dozen extra characters to make himself sound normal then I can't care less to read it.

Pointless Punctuation ~

Exclamation marks, ellipses, and the many other punctuations are made to reflect a change in intonation for the sole purpose of emphasis. If a whole sentence is emphasized, then none of it is. Just use periods, damn it!

Politics in Software ~

Both proprietary and open-source software developers are guilty of not maintaining apoliticism in their programs. You can open up your personal X/Twitter account and shit the words out of your mouth, whatever they may be, but when it gets to the borderline retardation of using the project's socials to post propaganda instead of software updates, using an emblem or flag as the background under the software's icon, and then having "usage policies" all over the program's README, then it really got to shit. A calculator program, a game engine, a third-party Discord client, or an alternative Minecraft launcher is not the right place to voice your thoughts on a socio-political issue, no matter how "rightful" or "noble" it may seem to you or to others; I suggest you keep them to yourself and don't involve others through your program just to seek validation for having buttsex, scissoring, or cutting off your genitals and crossdressing, you disgusting homosexual. I can't believe some people are still debating this.

School ~

The educational system; the forced enlistment of children to a mental torture chamber constantly under surveillance in which they, in their the most significant brain development timeframe, waste most of it sitting on a chair amidst a sea of boisterous social retards to note down state-imposed indoctrination and pointless knowledge that they'll either forget then relearn in adulthood or drop off as redundancies because they'll never need them in their lives, then lug home with them heaps of homework that feel like legcuffs, all in order for them to clearly receive the message that they're really not in control of their lives, and that their hidden talents should be buried even deeper because they need to solve some dumb mathematical equation instead of following their hopes and dreams, which are being gradually crushed in the process. Wonderful! :3

Social Media ~

Social media is nothing but a disease whose only remedy is amputation. They're nothing more than spying platforms designed to psychologically manipulate users, promote the acceptance of immorality, advertising, constant surveillance, and conformity, as well as the employment of content moderation as a weapon with the ability to restrict movement by removing the content (((they))) "deem inappropriate." Whether they be centralized or decentralized, they're all walled gardens in the sense that you are conformed to the formats that they specify, and any quality posts are just going to be buried in the ever growing sea of goyslop and brainrot. This is why I'm of the belief that anyone who has any content worth sharing would own a website of his own; this way people can maintain everything themselves so they can post whatever they want in whatever way they want without any worries of content moderation (so long as they don't do anything illegal). Personal websites also eliminate the problem of "toxicity," because they seclude and quarantine people (and their personal ideas) to their own spaces; that way, if you don't want to see a certain website whose content you may potentially dislike, all you can do is just not to look at it or block it out of your reach.

Unmaintained Git Repositories ~

It just messes with me to see, for example, a great GitHub project that hasn't been updated for 2, 3, 8, or 13 years, whose issues (that can be fixed within a few lines of code and a pull request) haven't been touched for months or years since the developers have either abandoned it, or have muted all new incoming issues (or even worse, disabled them). If a repo is no longer maintained, either take it down and archive it or mark it as "unmaintained." It's not that hard, come on.

Verbal Communication ~

Real-time voice communication is great if I'm doing something important that I can't get my eyes off of, like multiplayer gaming or watch-along sessions, otherwise it's a way less superior form of communication than textual/visual means because it hinders you from having multiple discussions, requires you to drop everything and focus on speech so that people don't reiterate statements, and it's used sometimes as a tool to mock people, de-anonymize and reveal their identities, conventionally interrupt them, raise their voices above them, and is just harder to consume and follow up with. Voice messages are even more of a no-go in some cases; they're impossible to search by their contents, take more bandwidth as well as storage space, make archival even more difficult, and they're almost always received at the worst moments possible where I'm not ready to listen to them (e.g., being in public spaces). This is why I'll never upload any sort of audio/video media to this site, ever.

VPN Anonymity ~

VPN services are being shilled everywhere; torrent tracking sites, privacy-focused forums, YouTube channels, etc. It doesn't matter what the marketing says, VPNs only address two aspects of your online signature:

1. Concealing your WAN IP address from the destination servers/peers.
2. Obfuscating traffic from network observers (e.g., ISP or other devices on the LAN).

These mere two things allow a multitude of useful applications, including but not limited to:

• Circumnavigating geographical IP blockades.
• Accessing sites which have blocked your real IP address.
• Concealing your P2P file sharing activity (e.g., torrenting) from ISPs subject to tyrannical jurisdictions.
• Concealing your IP address from P2P peers who may abuse knowledge of your real IP address.
• Protecting traffic while on potentially hostile (W)LANs.

However, using a VPN is essentially only rotating ISPs towards the correspondent VPN service, so when you connect over one, you're only shifting the trust over from your real ISP to the VPN service (and the laws of the country it's hosted in); the model is trusted, not trustless, and VPN services can only ever be used for privacy but never anonymity. VPN services still see you connecting from your real WAN IP address (thus we can see the hundreds of reports about some VPN services selling user IP addresses to governments), and constantly remaining on a VPN connection gives out your network activity fingerprint over to some exit point (which can serve to correlate it with where it appears elsewhere, also a very useful surveillance tactic for governments), so anyone seeking actual anonymity should consider using hidden networks like I2P or Tor instead.

YouTube Videos ~

YouTube videos are anything but simple nowadays, and getting to the point is becoming seemingly a near impossible skill to master. Back in the old days, videos contained 100% content, but these days, almost all videos follow the exact same pattern; a video would be 20-35 minutes long, full of sponsorship, irrelevancies, and those 4-6 unskippable ads throughout the video, all accompanied with a thumbnail where they make a Gapejak face out of themselves, an all-caps clickbait title, and a description that's almost entirely links to their setup, socials, alt accounts, and some book they're selling on Amazon. I understand that this is pure YouTube pressure as they have to make videos this way in order to squeeze as much ad revenue as possible (which is getting harder and harder to get with each passing year), but when "content creators" create actual garbage, then they'd better find another job instead.