Twitter isn’t and never was useful as an organizing tool. Arab spring was a failure. Twitter is actually more useful to the ruling class than not because it gives a way for the masses to expend it’s restless energy without changing anything.

As Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service issue.

I’ve selected this text as I think it’s the heart of your post, if you disagree then let me know. I don’t agree with this statement, I think that it is a rights issue, and I think I can prove that with a thought experiment.

Suppose for example, game companies took this idea to heart and did not do anything to stop piracy, they only focused on providing the most seamless storefront and gaming experiences possible. They create a store that works perfectly, has all the features you’d want, and has no DRM of any kind - this includes no log in needed, they go by the honor system. They expect people to only download a game that they’ve paid for. Here’s the question: will people pay for the games or not? I have a view of human nature that people generally go along the path of least resistance, and I think this is born out by evidence (but I could be wrong about this). Some people will pay for the games on moral grounds, the vast majority will not. If a developer wants to get paid, they have to make sure people pay for it. And now we have DRM. The goal of DRM is to make piracy annoying enough that the path of least resistance is to just buy the game.

This, to me at least, proves that piracy is only a service issue in a world where DRM exists. Because DRM makes piracy annoying. If people find the DRM more annoying than piracy, it has failed to be effective DRM.

So to get to the heart of things, I agree with you that when DRM is more annoying than piracy something has gone terribly wrong. Denuvo, in my life, for the way I play games, is not and never has even gotten close to being more annoying than piracy.

But at the end of the day, I don’t think it is morally or ethically wrong to put DRM on a game or storefront. I just see it as something to work out on a practical level, case by case. But I made my original comment in the first place because it seems to me like a lot of people have issues with it on a moral level, which I think is silly.

It’s not evil. DRM as a concept is not evil. There is actually no real philosophical justification for why it is wrong to use DRM to protect your software. Because if you made it, it is yours and you get to decide how other people use it.

The paranoia that surrounds things like DRM show just how laughably selfish and entitled some gamers are.

Everyone is already giving the generic advice of do hobbies or volunteer. This is good advice! That’s how you meet people. But the transition from “hobby” friend to “life” friend is difficult and frankly just awkward. It’s kind of like romantic relationships, there isn’t a right or wrong way. You just got to take leaps of faith and be vulnerable with people with the expectation that rejection is possible.

I’m still kind of navigating this phase. I have some good friends that I do my hobbies with, and then it’s like, how do I go from there? Really it’s just about being open and hospitable towards others. Opening your home and inviting people in, asking people if they want to come over for dinner or watch a movie with you.

“The World Doesn’t End” by Charles Simic

“Deaf Republic” by Ilya Kaminsky

“Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay

“Words for Empty and Words for Full” by Bob Hicok

“Life on Mars” by Tracy K. Smith

Those are books that have personally influenced me deeply. Other poets I like but haven’t read deeply are Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Elliot, Wendel Berry, W.H. Auden.