Proudly Pointless

This nexusmods forum discussion, is such a good read, holy shit. initial reply:

It's crazy how so many people complain that it's 'too difficult' to download mods when they put in minimal effort to actually learn to download the mods, then they wonder why it doesn't work and opt into blaming nexus for their own ignorance. I'm not saying everyone does this, I have certainly had issues in the past, but it's usually stimmed from the creators' lack of care for their mod, which still isn't nexus's fault in any way. You all love to complain but don't forget this is where most of the good mods are. Modding would be a lackluster if it wasn't for this website. I am not saying it's perfect and it does need work, but it's still a thousand times better than getting mods from discord or some unofficial website that looks like dog shit. You people complain when the food is perfectly fine, it only needs a little salt and your own common sense to go with it.

Next reply, which is what justified posting this:

I think- not to throw shade- this is genuinely a generational issue between those who grew up before phones, and those who grew up with phones being considered the "default" internet experience. Those walled gardens discourage learning and investigation and punish those who try to do things outside of their box... for a lot of people nowadays, learning to install mods is the first they'll ever open a .ZIP, first time they've ever moved files on their system, first time they've ever had to actually read and process and follow instructions beyond "tap icon to make it go." And I honestly can feel nothing but sadness for those people who have been disenfranchised from their own technology so thoroughly. Between that and the enshittification of online communications, it's lead to a culture of people who genuinely do not know how to communicate with peers online beyond sending short one line, maybe two messages in a row because that's what people do on twitter, tiktok, and other algorithmically-derived websites that prioritize snappy viral hot-takes over actual, nuanced, valuable discussion. When everything is Content and the Content requires ten seconds of your attention span per blip of experience, no one invests in anything anymore. And while reading comprehension has never been particularly great in any group, it truly died a miserable soggy death in the last twenty years or so. Add to that the rise in... certain sociocultural biases and shifts towards attacking rather than seeking to understand, condemning rather than communicating, and harassing rather than hearing, and we come to the era where instead of trying to read and understand a set of simple instructions to drag and drop FILE A into FOLDER B, we get people who've been socialized like feral cats calling mod creators every name under the sun because the "mod doesn't work" (aka, they couldn't figure out how to unzip a .7z. and think attacking the 'guilty' party will inspire that individual to assist them.) The concept of simply googling your query, question, or concern seems to have straight-up vanished from the cultural consciousness and it scares the s#*! out of me. That is largely unrelated to the circumstances of Nexus, but it's worth stating that this is... not an isolated issue and is tied to larger socioglobal shifts in how people engage with both each other, and the technology that shapes our lives. Back on-topic, I... am cautiously optimistic of what's to come and curious what the renewed focus on Vortex will mean. I am no mod author of note, all I've done is put out a few ReShade presets -- but as a user of mods, I am extremely prolific for games supported both on Nexus and off of it. I have always been a user of mods, even when I was a little baby learning to install my own Rollercoaster Tycoon mods from The Amazing Earl's web-1.0 homepage. So, I will be curious to see what changes to, and enforcement of, policies will be next to come down the line. Thank you for all your hard work -- for now, I shall assume all is done in good faith.

just when i was about to say 'maybe we should stop clowning on him'.......and here comes this

David "8-Bit Guy" Murray. Aka "the guy who wore an AR-15 assault rifle to Subway and Target to protest gun laws after a school shooting" Or "the guy who destroyed one-of-a-kind vintage computers by trying to jump start them with a paperclip because he was 'under a time crunch'" Has decided to make an AI slop "movie"