A picture of a distressed man smoking and lamenting how computers don't feel good anymore

It’s not fun to be on the computer.

They changed everything about it.

It used to be so cool.

Connor O’Malley’s “Endorphin Port” video is completely unhinged and still makes so much sense. We do need a new place, right? The places we have don’t feel good anymore.

The body is bad, the body’s not good!

It used to be so cool

This past weekend, I had some time to myself and I was excited to find a project to sink into. One night, I decided to try my hand at hacking together GC Loader support into FCEUGX for the GameCube so I can play NES games from my SD Card there. It worked! I felt so cool. I love retro tech, and I’ve always loved following the homebrew scene, so this felt like a really cool entrypoint to giving back, even in just a small way.

This feeling of accomplishment that I think a lot of “computer people” chase - this feeling of connecting the wires so the lights blink the way you want them to. That’s cool. It was the perfect synthesis of interest, novelty, and past experience that allowed me to figure out what I wanted to do, and do it. I didn’t use any special tools, no coding assistants, just me and visually walking through C++ code for a few hours. When I plugged it into my TV and turned it on, it worked.

They changed everything about it

Things have gotten worse, right? On the computer?

In my mind, it’s worse for one single reason: ads. Ads are everywhere, and new technology is deployed every day with the eventual goal of pushing more ads.

Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets you to the thing.

When I want to watch a TV show or movie, I don’t want to watch ads - I want to watch the show. It’s so much harder to get to the thing than it used to be. It doesn’t feel good to be on the computer anymore.

Isn’t it frustrating how everything is a subscription product now, with a free to use version that bombards you with ads? Is that really good?

Now, every company is coming out with their own AI-driven product. Anecdotally, I’ve heard that some people use ChatGPT as a “better Google,” because Google has gotten objectively awful. What will they do when AI chatbots start subtly pushing ads?

It’s not fun to be on the computer

But you can fight back.

The so-old-it’s-new-again method of resistance is paying for stuff. I know it seems outdated, but I assure you, it’s worth it. My personal rule (not strictly followed) is that I’ll pay for the ad-free versions of things that I used. If it’s too much money for the ad-free version, I won’t use it, or find alternatives. I subscribe to a few podcasts this way and not listening to the ad breaks is awesome. I’ve also paid for YouTube Premium, which has the unfortunate side effect of making me want to spend more time on YouTube.

There are technical things you can do to.

We can make the computer fun again. We can get to the thing.