AR games and ARGs are different. The key word is augmented vs alternate. AR games use video technology to augment reality, putting a video game in the physical world. ARGs use communications technology to put a puzzle in the social world.

For example, an ARG might begin with a morse code pattern hidden in the border of a promotional poster. The morse code is for a URL that leads to a seemingly normal pizza restaurant’s website. But if you put all the typos in the menu together, their positions in their respective entries make a phone number. Call the number, and you get the next clue, and so on and so on. People work together to solve these puzzles and get to the end, which is often some kind of teaser for an upcoming product. You could even give people a special video game item if they get to the end of the ARG.

They’re really fun, I was lucky enough to participate in the Warframe 1999 ARG. I didn’t make any original discoveries, but I followed along as it was happening and tried to solve the puzzles Myself. I even got most of them! The cool thing about an ARG is that they allow fictional worlds to blend into our world. That pizza restaurant website might be for a fictional pizza restaurant that exists in the story of the video game. So fans feel like they’re part of the game world in a way that video games just can’t do.

An ARG shouldn’t need to collect any user data to be able to work, but since it can really be absolutely anything, I’m not surprised someone used an ARG for nefarious purposes.

Forums are a type of social media.

Look, the six types of social media are: mail, instant chat, forum, blog, feed, and game. Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok are feeds. Discord and Whatsapp are instant chat. Email is mail. Reddit is a forum that wants to be a feed, and it used to also have mail, but they got rid of it and replaced it with instant chat. Tumblr is both a blog and a feed, as is youtube. Any site with user pages is technically also a blog, but most such sites would rather be feeds. And then there’s games, most notably World of Warcraft, but also Halo and Minecraft and chess.com.

Actually, it’s a heuristic.

He sees this as a transactional situation, and he will get nasty the moment he feels he won’t get the returns on his “investment”.

I mean that’s possible… But no, it’s not certain at all.

My girlfriend has rich parents, she’s the type to do this kind of stuff, and we’ve been together for 5 years. She’s also a communist and a class traitor. She sees generosity as fairness: if her family has a lot and her friends have little, she’s got more of a responsibility to provide for all of us than we do. Also, she’s never worked a paying job in her life and has no clue about the actual value of money. She’s willing to give away money because it’s just not that valuable to her.

This is overall very good advice. But I’m going to push back on the stuff about sex. I’m asexual, but I’ve done kinky stuff with a lot of people who turned out to be abusive garbage, and even a Nazi girl. And I don’t regret any of the sexy stuff. I regret the bad relationships and being abused. I regret the love, but not the lust. The best sexual experience I’ve ever had was with an enby who destroyed Me for months and left trauma that lasted years. The relationship was not worth it. But gods above, that one night was…

If you’re gonna fall in love with crazy, you might as well stick your dick in it!

So I was dating this bigender guy, and while we’re dating, he gets a crush on another guy and suggests we invite him to be a thruple. I don’t really see what’s so hot about this other guy, but he’s nice so I agree.

Then a few days later, My boyfriend says he asked the other guy out alone, but I’m not going to be dating the other guy, so it’s not gonna be a thruple. And I figure I’m okay with that, because I wasn’t really interested in the other guy to begin with, and I technically consented. But for the next month, I feel really shitty and jealous.

And eventually during a mental breakdown a month later, I realise it’s fucking cheating to ask a third party out in a way your partner didn’t consent to, and My misery changes to fury. Fuck that guy.

And anyway, a few months later, the other guy contacts Me, drunk, saying he dumped our mutual ex, and he’s convinced his entire relationship with our ex was a ploy to make Me jealous. And I prefer Hanlon’s razor, but I’m glad My cheating ex got dumped and ended up alone.

They only hired one IT guy.

Grok is this real?

There are plenty of asexuals who masturbate but don’t want sex with others. Asexuality is about sexual attraction, flicking the bean and choking the chicken don’t require attraction. Many other asexuals aren’t interested in those activities, but it’s not part of the criteria for the label.

who wouldn’t want reliable orgasms with a caring partner?

Asexuals.

Also, Atrazine (a pesticide that contaminates water sources) turns the friggin frogs trans.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2842049/

Long hand means hour divided by 5. Cut the kids some slack, analog cocks are confusing. They gotta learn their five times tables before they can consistently read clocks. I remember when I was old enough to understand the concept, but a little bit too young to do multiples of five in My head.

I don’t really use this community, but I ban a lot of accounts that talk like an AI, use em dashes excessively, and come to this community to promote “their” projects. 🤔

I speak a bit of the local Aboriginal Australian language and I’d like to see ChatGPT try and translate it.

That’s the plot of Inside Job!

I’m less worried about heavy metals in dumps than I am about Earth becoming too hot for mammalian life. I don’t wanna go back to dinosaur times.

That’s exactly what krafton wants and I’m not letting them. I’m gonna be an early buy if this gets good reviews.