easymode

I have a lot to say on this subject that can't be summed up in a forum post, but I thought I'd bring this up now and see what others think.

I've seen some say that the age of personal conputing is coming to a close. With prices and availability at a worse point than possibly any time that I'm aware of and the rapid enshittifcation of the web as a whole, I can see why this senetiment is spreading...

Call me naive, but I feel kinda skeptical of this idea. Not to minimize the nightmarish state of things, but computers, especially of the modern day, last a remarakably long time. There's machines out there that are a decade old and even older that still run everything that most people could ever possibly need and so much more. Think of all the new, perfectly usable hardware that is being tossed into landfills every day or the stuff that rolls off the assembly line and gets thrown away a few years later just because the shiny mew thing came along. Sure, the corporate overlords want us on this treadmill forever, but fuck the treadmill. We don't need web 5.0 nightmare internet. We don't need games that still manange to run like shit on top of the line gpus. We sure as shit don't need that goddamn buzzword that I can't bring myself to type.

Sorry if this feels like I'm just shouting into the void. I wanted to get a discussion going and it turned into my dumping all this here. I've written and erased this post four times. Feel free to give me your thoughts.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic but I feel like people respond to powerful people making things worse by searching for ways to make things better in small ways or ways to become self-sufficient without powerful people. My favorite example in recent memory is how, in response to Microsoft killing Windows 10 support, and Windows 11 basically being malware, regular desktop users who might never have touched Linux before are adopting and discussing distros in a big way.

I think no matter what happens, people are always going to develop and share FOSS or decentralized alternatives to mainstream proprietary software and services. Even if every government in the world decided tomorrow that encryption is gonna be totally illegal from now on, people would still resist it and people would still find ways to use encryption wherever they could.

On the hardware side of things, I don't think the hiked up prices for hardware is going to last forever. People thought GPUs would be unobtainable forever while crypto mining was hot, and then... it wasn't hot anymore. Sooner or later, companies and corporations are gonna see how nonviable AI is as a capitalistic venture and it'll end up just being a thing that weird enthusiasts work with on their home computers instead, and they're not gonna buy up all the silicon on the planet to build calculators that say 13*18=251 anymore.
(As much as I'd like AI to go away, it's already out there, it won't go away completely. It'll shrink a bunch in the future, though.)

I've been thinking about making a rant video about this. I think you're onto something here... and you're not shouting into the void, because I think something needs to be done (I'll come back to this).

I've been bored with hardware for about 10 years, but I've kept making videos... because I hate myself? lol... Every six months they want me to be excited for a 3% performance increase or a 4% efficiency increase... or a 2% price reduction etc. I feel like none of that really matters... what does matter is what we do with the hardware; what the hardware enables. I understand hardware for the sake of hardware is a thing and that matters to some hobbyists, engineers, etc... and that is fine, but for most people, it's about the games and the software... the media and the work we can do.

The tech marketing influences and such will probably go on hyping the latest trends... But I feel like something else needs to be done. We need to reject the enshitified stuff... reject the ai slop-filled operating systems, reject the ai that is sucking up all the hardware, reject the AAA cash-grab, lootbox games that prioritize algorithms and dark patterns over fun... we need to share indie games, retro games, retro hardware, and human-made stuff with each other.

This is one of the reasons that I've been posting these "how I play X game," posts. I'll continue to post those as I play various games. I'll also focus more on videos about this kinda stuff. I want to make sure there are plenty of resources (and places like this site) to help those wanting to get away from the big tech and AAA junk. What if we can just say, "fuck off," and do our own thing? Let these rich idiots drown in their slop... we are already seeing blow-back from the rejection of Windows 11... and Microsoft sounds so stupid out here saying, "People, please stop saying slop?! Why don't you like it?! Maybe you just need more? Please like it?" No. We're good.

Graphics have basically stagnated since 2016... we just keep getting 50 extra effects each year that make the games look blurrier and weird... so Nvidia can sell the solution with more DLSS. I actually prefer the sharper, slightly "worse" graphics from 10-15 years ago. So, I don't think hardware is the issue... it's the direction of the market. Wait, this is a much bigger rant about the state of games that I'll leave alone for now.

TLDR:
We should be ignoring big tech and AAA games... focusing on retro hardware, indie games, retro games, and properly optimized modern games. Let the rich idiots fail. We need to break free of their algorithms and marketing hype. So, I think it's good to come up with some ways to help others (especially newbs and younger people) get into real gaming using decent older hardware.

I'll leave it at that for now.

ward wrote: Feb 21st, '26, 01:37Graphics have basically stagnated since 2016... we just keep getting 50 extra effects each year that make the games look blurrier and weird... so Nvidia can sell the solution with more DLSS. I actually prefer the sharper, slightly "worse" graphics from 10-15 years ago.

I don't want to hijack the thread and make it all about gaming, but I did wanna say that I totally agree with this.

Nioh 2 released on Steam in 2021, the game is around 76 GB. With my GPU at the time, I was getting between 60 and 120 fps at max settings without FSR.
Nioh 3 released on Steam in 2026, and as of posting, the game is around 125 GB with additional content planned for the future. With my brand-new GPU I'm getting between 20 and 60 fps at not-quite max settings while using FSR, and the game looks worse than Nioh 2. What are we doing here?

Meanwhile, my favorite game graphics are still from the 6th and 7th generation eras. I'd love more modern indie games based on Dreamcast graphics; a few exist already but there's not many at all.

(refer to my bio, especially my PC build, if any of this is missing context to you. I'm drunk, happy birthday to me)

I have a DDR4-era machine, built from new old stock 2 years ago, that plays everything I want, when I want it to, in any way I need it to, and all according to my specific needs. Nothing particularly new, "cutting/bleeding-edge" or even "next-gen" is necessary to satisfy my tastes at this point in my life, so I don't think I'm missing anything anymore. I can't help but think most people find themselves in that headspace beyond still being brainwashed into the idea that you need the newest, latest thing, always. Maybe like, a few more RAM gigs, and zram-as-swap fills that gap already, so no need to fix what isn't broken.

It's not the easiest thing to set up, but the barrier to entry is looser than ever and I can still figure out a way to play all the games I want to at 4K with a XX60-grade video card. This machine runs hardware that's about a generation late, and it still performs to modern standards with what I've done with it, and frankly it doesn't take much horsepower to get me where I wanna be. I've Saitama'd myself with this build and I have never even so fucking much as laid eyes on a single DDR5 stick. If DDR6 is ever a thing just know that I'm probably not gonna notice

I don't see what people mean or what excuse they have to say that personal computing is coming to an end, apart from hardware-build materials reaching scarcity (artificially or otherwise). Maybe the ATX/x64 era, sure, but we have a lot of options to choose from with ARM devices and the like, and the fact that most hardware people need can run without hardware fail for 20 years minimum. At least that's my observation.

PCs, especially for gaming, were never meant to be replaced every so 5-7 years like a console. We fucked up as a consumer base (per capitalist standards) when this attitude seemed to change at some point. I stopped paying attention after 2017 or so.

I don't think it's the end of personal computing but I do think it's evolving into something else. Most folk I talk to now don't have a laptop or a desktop at home, those devices are strictly seen as "work" devices. Which I think is a shame, a PC can be such an empowering device for learning, artistic pursuits, creation, or just to have fun. It can be argued you're able to do a lot of the same functions on say a tablet or smart phone but I would counter with they're not purpose made for those functions. By their very design they are closed off and difficult to get work done, in my opinion.

So why isn't personal computing dying? Well folks are still computing but it's different, it's corporatized closed off systems where privacy isn't even on the table. It's low effort junk food for the masses that doesn't require to put in effort in order to participate.

So I don't believe PC is going away, it's evolving to fit it's new market of rapid pace of half thought out posts thrown to the wind without the consideration of their consequences. Because of the primary user base and the centralization of these internet platforms the C Execs have decided to pivot and focus on the systems and products that make them the most money.

With the recent trend of grotesquely priced hardware I could see our next step being akin to the Cyberpunk TTRPG lore. Piecing together old tech and having separate local networks (Think Meshtastic or Meshcore) where you can still have a community and some semblance of privacy.

You can kinda already see this in the real world, Cuba for example, with the "El Paquete Semanal" (The Weekly Package) is a sneakernet internet where people bring the "internet" in on USB sticks to share news, telenovelas, games, and software for a price.

Overall as long as there is folk like us I think PC will stick around, we're kinda stubborn to let something as cool and special as personal computing die. Sorry if it's a little all over the place, I was getting kitty aggro.

Archmage wrote: Feb 22nd, '26, 06:05 Most folk I talk to now don't have a laptop or a desktop at home, those devices are strictly seen as "work" devices.

I also know quite a few people like this and I do not understand it. Not even getting into productivity or creative endeavors, there's just so many things that are easier to do on desktop or laptop. Filling out most government forms has been terrible if I try to do it from a phone and I don't even want to think about trying to do my taxes on one. Also, maybe this is just a me thing but if I'm making any kind of major purchase it just feels weird to do it on a phone. I need to be at my PC with several tabs open comparing options lol

I feel like I've been reading some variant of this for at least a decade now and none of it has come to pass.

Casey wrote: Feb 20th, '26, 21:49 Call me naive, but I feel kinda skeptical of this idea. Not to minimize the nightmarish state of things, but computers, especially of the modern day, last a remarakably long time. There's machines out there that are a decade old and even older that still run everything that most people could ever possibly need and so much more.

I was going to mention this after seeing the title, even in the unlikely event that consumer hardware becomes totally unobtainable tomorrow, there's about 20 years of solidly built stuff from 2006-now that enthusiasts aren't going to just throw away. Most of this will outlast us as long as it's not spending its entire life overheating.

I share the sentiment that, while personal computing won't go away entirely, I think it will be drastically different from what we've seen in the past.

AI seems like the final straw for a lot of people, and is the crystallization of years of data mining, enshittification, and corporate overreach into the personal computing space. We'll still find ways to exist in this space, but ultimately I think it will require people to take a much different approach to personal computing. People expect things to "just work." Corporations are great at providing this experience, but FOSS struggles with this quite a bit, as it's much harder to achieve this with the small teams responsible behind these programs.

Whether or not you're optimistic about the future of computing, I think it's purely fact that the independent personal computing scene will survive in one way or another, even if it's no longer in the public realm.

Hi, first post here and I couldn't resist jumping on that thread.

I do not think personal computing will go away, if there's a profitable market, it will continue existing as long as there's a buying audience behind it. Big powerful computers are going to be less of a requirement in the future because what propelled the need for powerful computers was work related or gaming. Gaming is taking a turn now, lower specs are going to be a thing, which is going to a lot of creativity but also, most likely, to final death of the run for graphical fidelity. Today many indie games are made with lower specs already and they are creative and interesting to look at, that's a transition that has been in the making for years.

What that means for us ? Well if you have a good PC, it's likely going to last you for a while, but I also think customer hardware while perhaps more expensive on average may take a turn for more durability and resource optimisation. The other thing to take in account is that people are very creative and resourceful, and corporation are too big, bureaucratic and loaded with career-mongers to manage or allow any kind of real innovation or do something that actually appeal to people.

The other angle is geopolitical. Outside of the US, people are becoming painfully aware that if they do nothing they will have to completely depend on US infrastructure for their computing and have all their data in US cloud and I probably do not need to explain why it's an absolutely terrible idea. It is likely going to lead people to innovate and find other solutions as well, but it may also take some time.

The final angle is how many people, but also companies are getting more and more aware of privacy risks, this will also be a force able to drive the market for personal computing.

I think people should really stop panicking right now. At worse your hobby is going to be more expensive for a few years and you are perhaps going to plan your next PC build with a more durability minded approach, which isn't a bad thing either. Patience, resilience and creativity is what is needed in our current moment.