Ayashe Ninetails

You know the real kicker? I wasn't supposed to be doing any of that. I was a temp worker. I was supposed to be filing documents at the most. However, they promoted someone in the dept to a different line of products (managing orders for a more expensive product line), so they gave me her old region to manage in her absence (how generous!!!!!). It just so happened to be the largest region of the country (very generous!!!11) with the most field sales reps (yay!). They said it was because they trusted me and I proved to be so good at the job (uh huh). I handled it well enough that they promised they'd hire me FT and give me a full salary and benefits but oh noooes suddenly a hiring freeze months and months into it! I eventually quit when they tried to add the switchboard duties on top of everything else. Girl bye LOL. Ran out channeling Gladys Knight "I'MMM NOOOT YOOOUR SUUUPERWOOOMAAAN!" 😂 But anyway, most of my jobs have been like that. Since I was like...18...every job was nightmare fuel on some level. Girrrl the inner workings of most offices are a HOT MESS. If you show any ability to stay organized and keep your head on straight and get work done on time (or god forbid, early), they will have you take over every gig in the joint. Someone quits? Oh that's your job now! 😂 And this is why I freelance!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait - what's a VR home? I should Google - I know I'm being lazy here. 😂 Roast away! But no really - what's the purpose of a VR home? I don't think I've ever heard of that (yet).

OMG I love that so much. 🤣 Off-topic real fast, but I remember this viral video that went around years ago of an ambulance driver jamming out on the road, too. Voguing or something. Was hilarious.

You'll have to tell that to every single company I've ever worked for. Encountered the requirement as a temp numerous times when I bounced around between companies. Encountered it as a graphic designer (that's a required skill *especially* working in design - you tend to have to use multiple programs to even create a single design and you often have to work several projects at once to balance deadlines). Encountered it in retail. Needed it even working at my college. Recruiters/hiring managers absolutely do not want people who just zone out on a single task for 8 hours a day. If you can't "juggle multiple tasks" or "be flexible" or "handle multiple responsibilities well" on the job (that's usually how it's phrased in employment ads), good luck staying hired. But anyhoo, I work at home now, and multitasking is still something I do quite often - so I can't see a benefit to putting on/taking off VR glasses/goggles all the time. That doesn't mean development in VR should stop (I don't think anyone in this thread said that) - it just means some of us personally see no reason to use it in its current form. Want to make it accessible - Ditch the 1990s box goggles completely and make it more friendly to users who need to work on multiple tasks at once, and maybe more would be open to using it for longer than 10-15 minutes in a day.

Multitasking while driving is one thing I'll absolutely never do! Unless you count dancing at red lights. Dancing I've done... Oh boyyyy, even that's an understatement! Attorneys can be such a mess. I had one try to sneak a motion covered in BBQ sauce to court because he ate over it and was too impatient to wait for a reprint. Thought he was slick running for the door. I saw that! Grrrr... you come back here... !! No, it is not fine... 😲😂 At this point, doing ten things at once is baked in.

I don't know how this convo suddenly sidetracked into driving (and I'd hope nobody's driving while wearing VR glasses, that's for sure), but multitasking is a skill I learned and had to perfect on the job, as it's quite literally a job requirement in many industries. I couldn't even work as an admin assistant without it. Some places straight up ask in the interview. Don't even get me started on the "handle your customer's calls while checking in with your field sales team while placing orders while updating orders while asking the logistics team about that special shipment while managing the switchboard and oh yeah get tech support up here to fix that printer and don't forget to keep an eye on your email and we've got a meeting at 10 you should prep for and remember to update me on the status of..." nonsense I had to do on a daily basis. And forget working in a law firm. Oh my god - the chaos. A zillion tabs and programs open at once? Yeah, that's where I learned how to do that.

There are no arms (usually). 😂

Disclaimer: I'm only using the design example since that's my actual field (or was, once upon a time, though I'm working on getting back into it). Designing for web is not any different than designing for print. You use the same software. All that would change is what color mode and resolution you're working in and how you save your files, usually. Everyone in the field, regardless of whether they're printing large format posters or creating graphics for a blog, uses the same types of software (Photoshop and/or Illustrator are the industry standards, or you can use their cheaper/free alternatives, and InDesign for layout and publishing work). Digital artists and illustrators who paint a bit more than design and want to simulate real media might use painting software (Clip Studio Paint is big, Krita is big and free, Corel Painter, etc.). Doing any of that stuff in VR doesn't sound fun in the slightest, to me anyway. 3D artists might find VR a bit more exciting than us 2D peeps, tho. But that's an entirely different field.

There's a biiiiig difference - I can see artists hopping into VR and playing around with it. Yeah that looks fun (minus the dizziness and motion sickness but I know not everyone's affected by that). But I'm talking about paid designers/illustrators in my example - either people designing for themselves (to sell graphics on their own sites or web marketplaces or creating graphics for their own projects) or people doing client-focused work (most designers). How is it more efficient to do paid client work in VR - like...I dunno...designing restaurant menus or websites or logos or t-shirts. Like...why do that? Designers WILL be needed to design FOR VR, yes. But that's not the same job/role as a product designer who is creating the packaging for a new Kellogg's cereal or a logo designer working with Adidas or a book cover illustrator working with Stephen King. Those jobs aren't going anywhere for a long time (and you can multitask while doing all of that, which was my original point - that it's way harder to multitask in VR).

Not even. IF every VR environment looked like Half-Life: Alyx, I could see wanting to live in there 24/7. But yeah...most VR doesn't even come close.

I don't know how relevant it is, though. Or practical. That's my main thing. If someone is a writer or graphic designer/illustrator, for example, I'd be extremely surprised if they made the jump to VR to do any of those things. Why would they? You can absolutely have Affinity Designer, Photoshop, Krita, Illustrator, Clip Studio Paint, Word, etc. etc. etc. open while doing other things in the background (SL, gaming, Twitch, Discord, social media sites galore, etc.). You can absolutely jump between a keyboard, mouse, and pen tablet with zero issues. But why would you ever want to add VR to any of that?

Now you're just trolling. 😂 And none of that is related to what I do.

That looks absolutely redonkulous. And again, the constant jittery movement makes me want to puke just seeing it on screen. No. Absolutely not. There's zero chance I'm ever going to write and edit whole bleepin' articles in VR. And forget digital drawing/illustration oh my god.

Oh god. That looks awful (and made me dizzy in no time). That's just way too much tilting/movement. Problem is, I also need to be able to type. Like, a lot. On a normal keyboard. And swap with a pen tablet eventually. My style of multitasking absolutely wouldn't work with VR no matter how much they fiddle with reality.

I'm American. It was a very jarring suggestion to me as well. It made me wonder what the non-Americans were thinking, too.

Not exactly that. Transhumanism on its own is an ideology or philosophy, really. Many people write about it, read about it, discuss it, debate it, argue the ethics surrounding it, etc. It's a topic (an interesting one, but that's besides the point!). Like many ideas, people are conflicted and go back and forth on it. For me, a cult in general is a bit different. I see those as groups (so in this case, a group of Transhumanists) that adhere to whatever chosen ideology for whatever purpose. For something to qualify in my eyes as a cult (in the negative sense), there'd need to be some coercion, influence, control, manipulation, etc. to keep members in line. And isolation is one way that's accomplished (hence why I said community living off on their own). If you've ever seen interviews with former cult members, sometimes they mention being gradually pulled away from friends/family. Now yeah, there are online groups that might fall into the cult definition despite not being clustered together on a commune somewhere, but isolation and manipulation could still apply. They tend to have their own websites, chat channels, Discord servers, forums, etc. that are generally not the most welcome to outsiders. I personally wouldn't call religion or regular practitioners a cult. However, there are religious cults.

I think the opposite. I'd consider that way too broad to fit my definition. If there are actual groups and communities out there isolated from society and physically modding themselves and creating their own little utopias, then yeah, maybe they might be. But overall, I wouldn't consider it one.

In the US. Might be different depending on the country.

That's fair. A lot of gaming population numbers are registered accounts - not actually active users - so they can be a bit inflated. This gives a little more insight into Epic itself, including daily active users, accounts, money spent, etc.: https://www.engadget.com/epic-games-accounts-500-million-165908445.html For Xbox, that number is for monthly active users (this article is from 2021, so I'm not sure how up-to-date the info is now): https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/26/22250795/xbox-game-pass-subscribers-growth-microsoft

Oh yeah, I used to use emulators a lot (for C64 and DOS). On the DOS side at least, GOG made that unnecessary. At least, in theory. Not sure if I'd ever go back to using DOSBox now. It's all such a hassle. 😄

Some of the older games can be super finicky on newer systems, yeah. If you got them from GOG.com, they should work in theory, but you still might face technical issues sometimes. Occasionally, a mod is made to help with that, but not always. It kind of sucks! I love playing retro stuff, too, but thankfully, GOG has all of my old favorites on there now - tweaked to run on newer systems. Did you peek at the game forum on there? There should be a link to it on the main sales page. Sometimes you can find solutions to tech issues there.

Not sure how relevant it'd be in 2015 either. There's a lot of conflicting info in there. At least, to my uncaffeinated brain.

This article was written in 2015? So then, that 1.3 million number isn't even accurate for Steam anymore (and neither are his other stats). Also, a ton of other platforms now exist. If you're interested in up-to-date Steam data, try poking around on https://steamdb.info/. Keep in mind that Steam is only one platform among many. Epic didn't even exist in its current form when he wrote that (Epic Games Store released in late 2018), and tons of people use that (thanks to Epic exclusives and the hundreds of free games they've given out weekly over the last 2-3 years). So it's hard to say what games gamers "stick to" when only looking at Steam. Just using myself as an example, the majority of my game collection is not on Steam, but spread across many, many different portals and launchers. I have Game Pass for PC, Epic, Origin, Steam, GOG, Itch.io (houses my largest collection at 1,700+ games - thanks to an insanely cheap charity bundle that went viral), independent MMO launchers not tied to any platform, Battle.net, Big Fish Games, Ubisoft/Uplay, and...I'm probably missing some others in there. Yes - I use them all. Many of us do - at least until Microsoft eats everything. 😂 There are also quite a few popular games that aren't on Steam at all (Epic exclusives, games you download direct like Escape from Tarkov, etc.). And of course - consoles. And mobile. Both of those markets are insane on their own. I game daily (across numerous genres), but open Steam only a few times a week. GOG might be a better thing to analyze, if possible, considering there's now a launcher (GOG Galaxy 2.0) that allows you to link all of your platforms and compile your complete gaming library into just one single launcher. Not sure if anyone can get usage stats on that, though. And I'm not sure how many people even use it. It's still in Beta, I believe. Besides being out of date, though, that article is kind of confusing. I'm not really sure what he's saying there, but it could be a lack of caffeine on my part.

They really are! I just snuck in and grabbed em. There didn't seem to be any vendor delay, even without hiding everyone, so now might be a good time to try.

Pssst! Group is still not free, but they announced a new giveaway just as you predicted! 1L male and female AdvX heads (WILL work with Evo X skins, yippie!). I don't even know why I'm telling y'all this as I haven't managed to get in yet and certainly don't want to drive more traffic there before I do, but it's available until June 30th, so no worries! 😄 Pardon my lazy screenshot. I just put the group images side by side.