Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

[quaawaa]

They pay a subscription for iracing, pay about fifteen dollars a pop to access other content like a car or a track (of which they buy many to be able to race in a certain series)

iRacing is fairly priced. You only pay for what you use and the game has received constant updates and support for decades. Servers aren't free and simracing will never be popular enough that the masses of normies who play it once can subsidize the people who play it every day. Buying every single car and track in the game is cheaper than buying a midrange sim rig, which is why complaints about the pricing are ridiculous.

a vibrator under your asshole to simulate the feel of the car on track

That stuff isn't for lap times and the pros don't use them. It's to make it feel more realistic and everyone knows the motion stuff makes you slower. Not everyone is trying to hyperoptimize everything; a lot of people just want to have fun.

I could totally win a race in a hypercar IRL because I do it in my room.

The top tier of simracers absolutely could once they get used to the g-forces; they're better than a lot of "professional" drivers. Max Verstappen's GT3 teammates are his iRacing buddies and they're doing very well (and not just during Max's stints).

Am I insane or a coping pooroid, or does anyone else here do sim racing and feel the same way about these people?

You're a coping pooroid, especially because you think a Chinese knockoff brand is "high end".

 

[Kyria the Great]

iRacing is fairly priced. You only pay for what you use and the game has received constant updates and support for decades. Servers aren't free and simracing will never be popular enough that the masses of normies who play it once can subsidize the people who play it every day. Buying every single car and track in the game is cheaper than buying a midrange sim rig, which is why complaints about the pricing are ridiculous.

That stuff isn't for lap times and the pros don't use them. It's to make it feel more realistic and everyone knows the motion stuff makes you slower. Not everyone is trying to hyperoptimize everything; a lot of people just want to have fun.

The top tier of simracers absolutely could once they get used to the g-forces; they're better than a lot of "professional" drivers. Max Verstappen's GT3 teammates are his iRacing buddies and they're doing very well (and not just during Max's stints).

You're a coping pooroid, especially because you think a Chinese knockoff brand is "high end".

Though I racing does have a problem of professional drivers using it to shit about when major events happen like that LeMan 24 hour split last year. Or that any yahoo can join an event and not be kicked for not preparing for the event and being too bad like that infamous Green Porsche during a split during a 24hrs Daytona event.

Nothing would be more disappointing than to put all that time preparing and doing a 24hr event for it to be ruined by a jackass who thinks it's a hoot and a holler to intentionally race ruin anyone trying to pass them, or by someone clearly out of their depths even if they're trying.

 

[Marquis de Cow]

The Funko Pop-ification of children's toys has gotten under my skin lately. The brand Tubbz, which sells Funko Pop-ified rubber ducks, has me both sad and pissed off.

A small sampling of their merch:

Wyświetl załącznik 9177876
Minis start at $5 and regular ones are $15-20.

Why am I sad/mad? I used to collect rubber ducks when I was little. From time to time, my mom would take me to Party City and let me pick a duck or two. They were only a dollar and were a nice alternative to more expensive things like trading cards or Silly Bandz. Seeing something that was so accessible to grade-school me have its price skyrocket 1400-1900% and become a collectible targeted at adults stings.

These don't even float in water! Why make a rubber duck that doesn't float?

 

[Barry Williams]

Valve has announced the Steam Machine today, and the very first image on the page are these dysgenic faggots (literal) playing the quintessential astroturfed goyslop game Cuphead.



Truly, they must know their audience for who else has $1,000+ to blow but a MALE themby with a septum piercing, long hair on a half-shaved head, and Problem Glasses and his almost hairless pooner partner whose controller and coffee mug pair nicely in the colors of the tranny flag.

You think these people even know how to play the cribbage game sitting on that coffee table?

 

[Potato Burrito]

Why am I sad/mad? I used to collect rubber ducks when I was little. From time to time, my mom would take me to Party City and let me pick a duck or two. They were only a dollar and were a nice alternative to more expensive things like trading cards or Silly Bandz. Seeing something that was so accessible to grade-school me have its price skyrocket 1400-1900% and become a collectible targeted at adults stings.

Oh yay something about which I could blabber forever. The hobby is alive and well, you can still get awesome ducks on the cheap. I have a couple Tubbz and agree they're pricey but they're way higher quality compared to the dozens of Oriental Trading Co. minis all us duck collectors have in our hoards. It's the licensing, they're not making knock-offs. I consider them gourmet ducks I guess, them and Bud Ducks are the fancy kind. You can still get decent 50 duck variety packs off Amazon for a few bucks. And Wild Republic makes some really cool alternative ducks that are somewhat affordable.

I haven't personally sought any out for my collection (I'm a casual these days...ducks find their way to me, I don't go looking for them) but apparently you can get some great cheapies at Five Below, Target keeps pushing out collections too. That last one worries me, I'm starting to see hints that duck collecting could end up the latest social media craze. Once normies are brainwashed into glomming onto it by TikTok it'll be ruined. But hey, maybe I'll make a small fortune selling off some gems from my 30-year collection.

China is pumping out a ton of ugly ass resin ducks these days, maybe TikTok will get obsessed with those and leave the rubbers alone.

 

[Trapper]

The Funko Pop-ification of children's toys has gotten under my skin lately. The brand Tubbz, which sells Funko Pop-ified rubber ducks, has me both sad and pissed off.

A small sampling of their merch:

Wyświetl załącznik 9177876
Minis start at $5 and regular ones are $15-20.

Why am I sad/mad? I used to collect rubber ducks when I was little. From time to time, my mom would take me to Party City and let me pick a duck or two. They were only a dollar and were a nice alternative to more expensive things like trading cards or Silly Bandz. Seeing something that was so accessible to grade-school me have its price skyrocket 1400-1900% and become a collectible targeted at adults stings.

Oh, so that's what that is? I was in line behind a 60 year old lady in a museum gift shop, who got the staff to go out back and fetch her 100 of the same duck to buy. I wondered if she was a school teacher buying them for her class, but then why not buy wholesale instead? Maybe she was setting herself up as a scalper?

Is it still a thing to leave ducks on Jeeps?

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

Valve has announced the Steam Machine today, and the very first image on the page are these dysgenic faggots (literal) playing the quintessential astroturfed goyslop game Cuphead.

Wyświetl załącznik 9180180

Truly, they must know their audience for who else has $1,000+ to blow but a MALE themby with a septum piercing, long hair on a half-shaved head, and Problem Glasses and his almost hairless pooner partner whose controller and coffee mug pair nicely in the colors of the tranny flag.

You think these people even know how to play the cribbage game sitting on that coffee table?

Another new gaming console, this time with an even more ludicrous price tag. More than a grand. How long until the Steam Machine goes the way of the Stadia and Ouya? New consoles already have a tough time competing with the mainstays. The only brand new console line (not Xbox or PlayStation) I can think of that has made it off the ground is the Switch, which is arguably just the evolution of the DS.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Is it still a thing to leave ducks on Jeeps?

The woman that started the Jeep Duck trend died in 2024, but I think the trend is still there. But most of those Jeep owners probably bought the ducks themselves.

 

[moocow]

Another new gaming console, this time with an even more ludicrous price tag. More than a grand. How long until the Steam Machine goes the way of the Stadia and Ouya? New consoles already have a tough time competing with the mainstays. The only brand new console line (not Xbox or PlayStation) I can think of that has made it off the ground is the Switch, which is arguably just the evolution of the DS.

A significant difference is you can run Steam on any Linux machine (amd64 or aarch64, and yes, it includes libraries to dynamically translate amd64 binaries to aarch64 and it fucking works, which blew my mind last year when I tried it -- go look up box64 to see that wizardry) and on most machines capable of running games on Windows, it'll run games better on Linux.

You don't need a Steam Machine to do any of that. You can slap Steam on your regular Linux box and it'll probably work just as well (or better if you've got better specs). I'm running a Beelink GTR9 Pro (AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395), dual-booting Windows and Linux, and underneath all that retarded brand naming and idiot model numbering is a 16-core 5.1GHz Zen 5 CPU, with 128GB of unified RAM, and a monster fucking GPU baked into the CPU. Well, a monster as far as APUs go anyway, but it runs LLMs very nicely and holy fuck does it go ham on games. I run it attached to an ultrawide (32:9, 5120x1440 at 120Hz) and everything I've thrown at it runs smooth as silk.

AMD even recently updated their ROCm stack to fix my only major annoyance with it (prior to this update in April, you had to "declare" the CPU/GPU memory split at boot time in the BIOS, e.g. 32GB for OS and 96GB for VRAM, but that's fixed and dynamically managed on demand now).

Windows games literally run better on Linux now than they do on Windows on the same hardware thanks to Valve's efforts and support of existing (and new) tech to support it. Proton, box64, Steam's own "special sauce" runtimes (open-sourced, btw), Wine, and all that good stuff all adds up to "runs Windows games better than Windows."

Steam Machine should have cost about half this. You can thank the AI bubble for storage and memory costs doubling its originally-slated price. I imagine people will still buy it to support Valve's Linux efforts (and their hardware efforts too) even if the specs don't make it a bargain.

Valve also don't need Steam Machine to succeed either, unlike Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo who need their consoles to even be in this industry. On PC, Steam is the industry. Branded hardware is just the vanity option.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

Valve also don't need Steam Machine to succeed either, unlike Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo who need their consoles to even be in this industry. On PC, Steam is the industry. Branded hardware is just the vanity option.

Thing is, most people already have a PC of some kind, so they don't need to buy extra stuff to play games. Hell, the low barrier to entry alone is the only reason I got into gaming in the first place.

A common defense I hear from Shein shoppers is that it's "all they can afford". There's a cardigan at Target that I really like. It started at $40, which is way more than I'm willing to spend on a piece of clothing. Thing is, I know that it will only cost $12 when it reaches the end of its clearance cycle and I'm willing to wait for it. After ~2 months, it's finally started its clearance cycle and there's still a few weeks to go before it reaches $12.

After 4+ months of waiting, I have obtained the cardigan and can confidently say I've gotten far more enjoyment out of it than the "Shein is all I can afford" crowd have gotten out of any of their hauls. Very cozy and well-made.

My parents, intentionally or not, instilled the valuing of waiting to ger things when I was little. I got my DS and PS2 well after my friends did. The result? I got the sleek, newer versions and they had the bulky ones. Dug up my PS2 a few years back and it sits comfortably below my monitor on my desk.

 

[𝕺𝖑' 𝕯𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝕱𝖆𝖙𝖘𝖔]

After 4+ months of waiting, I have obtained the cardigan and can confidently say I've gotten far more enjoyment out of it than the "Shein is all I can afford" crowd have gotten out of any of their hauls. Very cozy and well-made.

This is why sewing is the ultimate red pill, I got $25ish of some absolutely gorgeous hand printed fabric, plus maybe $5 worth of thread and buttons. a few evenings later I now have a beautiful shirt that fits me perfectly and has workmanship on par with one that would cost hundreds or thousands to buy

 

[The Lawgiver]

playing the quintessential astroturfed goyslop game Cuphead.

were you unable to get past the tutorial or something lmao

Anyways, the ad and price is shit.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

This is why sewing is the ultimate red pill, I got $25ish of some absolutely gorgeous hand printed fabric, plus maybe $5 worth of thread and buttons. a few evenings later I now have a beautiful shirt that fits me perfectly and has workmanship on par with one that would cost hundreds or thousands to buy

Got a Beetlejuice sandworm plushie crochet kit a while back. First thing I ever crocheted. While I now absolutely hate crochet, it came in handy when repairing a torn up old sweater my mom has. I was able to throw together some patches to sew over the holes and she likes it even more now.

I really should've started with something simpler.

 

[The Lawgiver]

I remember seeing those sorts of thick squishy plastic full of brine squishy toy things as a kid and you'd always be fucking disappointed to get one. Like what the fuck do you do with it? Squeeze it for a few minutes and then get bored because that is literally the only thing you can do with it.

back in the day there used to be variants of them where they'd be like on a rope made fromt he same material as the rest of it or in a tube form that'd be a fun thign to mess with because if you held it a certain way it'd just like slide around and fold in on itself like it was coming to life. A lot of these modern ones the last decade have been increasingly lower effort and more expensive

Chinesium companies apparently still make the things apparently.


I can't find an image of one anywhere but one of the ones I had was like a spider or a tick or something with it's ass being the majority of the ball. Wonder how fucked my old ones from 20-30 years ago look now in whatever drawer they've been in forever.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

Spoiler: skinned cat

Boy, if you're gonna post skinned cats, censor that shit.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Boy, if you're gonna post skinned cats, censor that shit.

what the fuck are you talking about

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

what the fuck are you talking about

Spoiler: skinned cat

it was a joke

 

[John Titor]

Another new gaming console, this time with an even more ludicrous price tag. More than a grand. How long until the Steam Machine goes the way of the Stadia and Ouya? New consoles already have a tough time competing with the mainstays. The only brand new console line (not Xbox or PlayStation) I can think of that has made it off the ground is the Switch, which is arguably just the evolution of the DS.

I mean I could see why someone would want one. Being able to take it elsewhere without lugging your PC around or want to use the living room TV. The price is a big no though.