Based Wage Making: Money Sitting as a Service

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Based Wage Making: Money Sitting as a Service

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LanceHunter: Nov 12, 2016; Beautiful People Club

Alchenar posted:

Content. But you can tell how the story ends from line one:

Going for a three-way arbitrage opportunity (involving one currency that is currently undergoing massive inflation) as a retail investor is an absolutely terrible idea.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:18

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# ? Jun 9, 2024 01:16

tater_salad: Sep 15, 2007

LanceHunter posted:

Going for a three-way arbitrage opportunity (involving one currency that is currently undergoing massive inflation) as a retail investor is an absolutely terrible idea.

Pretty sure any 3 way arbitrage ends up with 1 of the people feeling left out.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:27

Ham Equity: Apr 16, 2013; The first thing we do, let's kill all the cars.; Grimey Drawer

Cerekk posted:

The Mariners sell 12oz macrobrews for $5 or microbrew for $6; 300 level seats are $15.

It's basically the only reasonably priced thing in Seattle
(and cheaper than the AAA team in Tacoma).

Once they're mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, you can get 100-level seats for that.

Last couple of Mariners games I've been to have been fireworks night. I don't really like baseball.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:32

Sinbad's Sex Tape: Mar 21, 2004; Stuck in a giant clam

Here�s one from the relationships thread

quote:

AITA for wanting to quit my two jobs and open a VR arcade after winning the lottery?

Here's the situation. I'm a 39M who's been struggling to keep things afloat for my family (wife 38F, two kids) after losing my high-income job a year ago. Since then, I've been working two jobs, which has been exhausting and stressful. We've made a few lifestyle cutbacks, and it's been a tough year but for the most part we've been able to mostly maintain our previous lifestyle. My wife was even able to keep working part-time without picking up a full time job.

Recently, I won the lottery it's not a fortune, but it's still a significant amount, about $200k after taxes. This is where things get tricky.

I've been fascinated by virtual reality technology for years, and I see a business opportunity in our city for a high-end VR arcade. So, I want to use a portion of the lottery money to start this business. This would mean quitting both my current jobs to focus entirely on getting this venture off the ground.

Additionally, after the grueling year I've had, I feel the need to take a break, recharge, and get myself in the right frame of mind before embarking on this journey. I want to take a two-week solo vacation � something that my wife is not too happy about either. Even though I planned on taking them on a vacation as well.

So, boom. Here I was thinking my wife would support me. Instead, my wife thinks both ideas are irresponsible. She's worried about the risk associated with a tech venture and the financial implications if I quit my jobs. She also feels hurt by my wanting to go on a vacation alone after the stressful year we've both endured.

I understand her fears, but I also feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something I'm passionate about and potentially secure our future. I've tried to compromise by suggesting that we only use part of the winnings for the VR arcade, and save the rest as a safety net.

We've been arguing non-stop about this, and I really don't think I'm being entirely selfish.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:36

Agronox: Feb 4, 2005

mrmcd posted:

The US used to have every random bank issuing their own currency because Libertarian and genocide superfan Andrew Jackson thought government owned banks were the epitome of evil. It was a complete loving poo poo show and one of the main reasons they eventually created the Federal Reserve System.

A little off. Private banknotes were essentially federalized during the Civil War; by 1865 there was a tax on them of 10% per year, which basically wiped out the practice.

Reading about that 1832-1864 or so era makes American commerce sound insane. Private banknotes were in heavy circulation and often traded at a discount to coinage, particularly the farther you were from the bank of issue. So a $10 note from First Farmers' Bank of Lima, Ohio might be worth $9.90 in Cincinnati but only $9.20 in San Francisco. Also, each bank used their own designs, so you'd have to look up the more obscure ones in magazines published for that purpose so as to avoid taking in counterfeits.

I used to have two recurring dreams: being unprepared for tests and having a bunch of counterfeit money. No idea where that second one came from, so far as I know I've never been passed counterfeit cash in my life.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:38

gschmidl: Sep 3, 2011; watch with knife hands

"How to Make Money by Losing $300,000 a Year on Slot Machines"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gambling-watching-slot-machines-online-9bfc1345

quote:

Brian Christopher lost $300,000 gambling on slot machines in casinos last year. Hundreds of thousands of people cheered him on, from the comfort of their own homes.

Several times a week, Christopher takes a seat at the slots and livestreams his play on YouTube and Facebook. With a phone pointed at the animated screen in front of him, he pushes buttons to a soundtrack of chimes, bells and cheery tunes.

�Line it up, buttercup,� he�ll often say as he tests his luck.

A new class of niche celebrities have turned the once-solitary experience of gambling at casino slot machines into a spectator sport with millions of viewers and fan camaraderie. Using monopods or videographers to film the action, the players spend hours talking audiences through the highs and lows of jackpots and losses.

�It�s fun to watch somebody else play with their money while you�re sitting on your couch drinking a beer,� said Wayne Deck, a 60-year-old in Fairfax, Va., who watches Christopher online and visits casinos in-real-life.

Sue Leahy tunes into Christopher�s broadcasts from her home in Latitude Margaritaville, a Jimmy Buffett-themed retirement village in Daytona Beach, Fla. Leahy said she grew tired of losing during her own play, so she started copying Christopher. She noted the kinds of machines he used, and how much he bet, and has hunted them down during her casino visits. �Ever since then, I�ve been winning,� Leahy said, while noting that no one wins all the time.

Some who livestream their play are high-rollers who bet $100 or $300 per spin. Others provide practical tips on how to avoid overspending during gambling and remind viewers that the house always wins.

Pat Cudd, a retired English teacher in Gruver, Texas, started playing slots in the early 1990s, and she and two of her sisters have traveled to the Gulf Coast and Las Vegas to enjoy the hobby together.

At home, in the town of about 1,100 people, she soaks up online slots as a bystander. �Some people like to buy scratch-offs at their local 7-Eleven. I�d rather watch them play slots on YouTube,� she said.

Nongamblers, and some who have given up the pastime, also are among Christopher�s audience of 612,000 YouTube subscribers and 707,000 Facebook followers. �They get their fix by watching someone else play,� he said.

Christopher has built his particular brand of stardom into a full-time business with 10 employees�including his husband and Senior Vice President of Operations Marco Bianchi�who pack merchandise, such as T-shirts and shot glasses, manage social-media interactions and help secure enough deals and partnerships to fund the enterprise. Christopher declined to provide his total revenue, but said he makes enough to turn a profit after paying his staff and the $300,000 in gambling losses.

He offers cruise trips through a partnership with Carnival cruise lines, with as many as 650 fans joining him at sea each trip, and gambling together in the onboard casinos. Next year, he has eight cruises with fans lined up that depart from the Texas Gulf Coast, Miami, Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia.

Casinos long banned patrons from filming to avoid distractions and to protect the privacy of other customers. They have warmed to the idea in recent years, influencers say, and often give special permission for filming, or make promotional deals with the social-media stars.

An assistant and a videographer help Christopher film and produce videos, and he posts daily edited snippets in addition to going live three days a week. Some days, he plays online games from his desk in Palm Springs.

The key is to always include the audience at home, he said. When he first started posting videos, Christopher heard from viewers that they didn�t want to hear him curse. Now, when he loses a spin, he declares �how rude.� (His official fan club has 4,000 members who call themselves the �Rudies.�)

�Make them feel like they�re sitting there beside you,� he said. �It�s not, �I won a jackpot.� It�s, �we just won a jackpot.��

Some celebrity slots players disclose their losses as a badge of honor�a signal they�re being honest about the odds. Francine Maric, a full-time high-roller known as Lady Luck HQ, posts her win-loss statements from casinos. She said she lost $320,000 last year, but still made a profit thanks to advertising revenue and sponsorships.

�Some people like to golf,� Maric said. �Some people like to watch sports. Some people like to collect things. I like to gamble.�

Maric, who lives in the Atlanta area, travels with her husband to casinos once or twice a month to record her playing. Back home, she edits the footage into videos she gradually releases over the following few months.

She remembers organizing her first meet-and-greet with fans at the Blue Chip casino in Michigan City, Ind., on a frigid January day. She said she was shocked when 300 people showed up to take photos with her. Fans have brought her good-luck gifts such as a wooden elephant and an angel to keep bad spirits away.

Heather Deurr, who lives in West Virginia, said watching her favorite slot players online is relaxing, like turning on reruns of a favorite TV show. While she enjoys tuning in, though, she dismisses the idea that there is any strategy to be learned.

�Sometimes you could sit down on a machine and have really good luck, and go back the next time and sit down and not win a dime,� Deurr said.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:43

Kenshin: Jan 10, 2007

Hearing playing slots referred to as a "hobby" is extremely sad

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:49

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Kenshin posted:

Hearing playing slots referred to as a "hobby" is extremely sad

The people paying hundreds of dollars a month to watch someone else play slots online are even sadder.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:52

pmchem: Jan 22, 2010

not seeing the BWM part for the player, since they figured out how to make money playing slots and become a minor celeb at the same time

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:53

LanceHunter: Nov 12, 2016; Beautiful People Club

Sinbad's Sex Tape posted:

Here�s one from the relationships thread

While everything in r/AITA and r/relationships has long since been replaced by fully-fictional creative writing exercises; the thing that really gives this one away is someone who is nearly 40, once had a "high-income job", but still considers a one-time ~$200k prize as enough to quit everything and start a business.

gschmidl posted:

"How to Make Money by Losing $300,000 a Year on Slot Machines"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gambling-watching-slot-machines-online-9bfc1345

My mother is near retirement age (and her husband has been retired for nearly a decade). They constantly have these slot streams playing on their living room TV during the day. I guess it's better than QVC for staving off loneliness. As long as they never figure out how to send tips.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:54

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

650 people paying for a cruise themed around watching someone else play slots online is also wild.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:54

Agronox: Feb 4, 2005

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

650 people paying for a cruise themed around watching someone else play slots online is also wild.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 19:58

Raskolnikov2089: Nov 3, 2006; Schizzy to the matic

Kenshin posted:

Hearing playing slots referred to as a "hobby" is extremely sad

I posted some of these streamers earlier, though in this case it was livestreams of scratchoff books. Judging by the comments, the audience is comprised of gambling addicts seeking a proxy dopamine boost and reminiscing about their big wins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6YY7PdXs34

Raskolnikov2089 fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jul 5, 2023

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:04

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

pmchem posted:

not seeing the BWM part for the player, since they figured out how to make money playing slots and become a minor celeb at the same time

This is assuming the guy's telling the truth, which is an iffy proposition at best. Same goes for those FIRE evangelists who work 40+ hour weeks luring in suckers who'll buy their courses on never having to work another day of their lives.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:05

skipdogg: Nov 29, 2004; Resident SRT-4 Expert

There's multiple slot players out there making a fortune on social media. Lady Luck HQ is another one of them. I saw a video where she recapped 2021 or 2022, and they lost over 300K playing slots, but generated over 2 million in social media income. 1M of that was from Facebook alone. The rest from YT and other sources. Not a bad return, and that doesn't count the points and comps they got from various reward programs.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:07

Dr. Eldarion: Mar 21, 2001; Deal Dispatcher

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The people paying hundreds of dollars a month to watch someone else play slots online are even sadder.

If it prevents them from actually going out and gambling themselves, it may be worth the cost.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:08

gschmidl: Sep 3, 2011; watch with knife hands

Dr. Eldarion posted:

If it prevents them from actually going out and gambling themselves, it may be worth the cost.

Well, they go on the cruise...

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:08

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

What do you do for 7 days on a cruise with 649 other people whose only common thread is you have watched someone else play slots online?

I can think of maybe a group watch of a stream and chatting about watching it, but that only eats up about 4 or 5 hours at best.

Even chatting about it has to be limited. How much can you get out of "Remember those 499 times he ran the slots and nothing happened? Or the one time something did happen? That was cool."

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:10

withak: Jan 15, 2003; Fun Shoe

Is it one of those diarrhea cruises?

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:12

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

The 10 biggest non-metaverse companies invested roughly $5.1 billion into metaverse content, staffing, and research in 2021. They had pledged almost $5 trillion in investments over the next 10 years.

In 2023, most of those companies have reduced it to $0.

The largest metaverse platform, Meta's official Metaverse product: "Horizon Worlds", currently has an average of 38 active users each day and generated only $470 in revenue.

Edit: The author corrected himself in the article and a later tweet, but "Decentraland" is the platform with only 38 active daily users. Horizon Worlds has several thousand. The $470 in revenue figure is actually the total revenue for Horizon Worlds - which somehow makes the already crazy figure of $470 even worse.

https://twitter.com/Toadsanime/status/1676627947761926146

quote:

There was a time, not so long ago, when every major architect on this planet was �building� in the Metaverse, the brand name for the open-world virtual reality platform and associated projects under the aegis of Mark Zuckerberg�s Meta. Last year, some staggering names such as Zaha Hadid Architects, Grimshaw, Farshid Moussavi, and, of course, the Bjarke Ingels Group pledged to create �virtual cities,� virtual �offices,� and equally vague sounding �social spaces� to be funded with cryptocurrency and supplied with art (NFTs). The eagerness to latch onto whatever the newest trend the increasingly desperate and failure-prone tech industry dished out was so palpable that even real-life developers like hotel chain CitizenM and brands like Jose Cuervo got involved and threw what one presumes is a whole lot of actual money at the enterprise. The rush to move into virtual real estate was a full-on frenzy.

In some respects, who could blame these companies and firms? Since the virtual reality service�s launch in 2021, the so-called �successor to the mobile internet� became the recipient of a kind of soaring hype few things are ever blessed with. According to Insider, McKinsey claimed that the Metaverse would bring businesses $5 trillion in value. Citi valued it at no less than $13 trillion.

There was only one problem: The whole thing was bullshit. Far from being worth trillions of dollars, the Metaverse turned out to be worth absolutely bupkus. It�s not even that the platform lagged behind expectations or was slow to become popular. There wasn�t anyone visiting the Metaverse at all.

The sheer scale of the hype inflation came to light in May. In the same article, Insider revealed that Decentraland, arguably the largest and most relevant Metaverse platform, had only 38 active daily users. The Guardian reported that the monetized content ecosystem in Meta�s flagship product Horizon Worlds produced no more than $470 in revenue globally. Thirty-eight active users. Four hundred and seventy dollars. You�re not reading those numbers wrong. To say that the Metaverse is dead is an understatement. It was never alive.

In retrospect, that�s not surprising. If you are wondering what the point of the Metaverse is�business meetings? parties? living out a kind of late-�90s Second Life fantasy but without legs?�you are not alone. In fact, no one, even Zuckerberg himself, was ever really clear what the whole enterprise was for except being the future of the Internet and a kind of vague hanging out. And yet, that use case dilemma didn�t stop our profession from dragging their tongues on the floor in search of a quick press release or blurb to show that they were, after all, on the cutting edge of all things.

The Ford Pinto�esque failure of this enterprise, finally put to bed by Zuckerberg himself in May, cost people their jobs, investors their money, people their time. It should cost McKinsey, Citi, Meta, and all the folks in architecture eager to jump on the bandwagon more than a little of their prestige or dignity. But as we saw with NFTs and cryptocurrencies before the Metaverse and the similarly overblown rise of generative AI after, even in the face of such alarming patterns, not much seems to change.

For a field expressly rooted in the construction of real spaces, architecture sure betrays a desire worth interrogating to latch onto the latest ephemeral tech trends. This desire, it should be noted, is applied unevenly among virtual spaces and ideas. Virtual reality is itself far from useless for architecture. When I was studying acoustics in graduate school, designers spent a great deal of effort on creating spatialized sound to be used to sell services to clients, and to even preview what a space would sound like before it was built. Museums have been adding virtual reality elements as a teaching tool since the technology became available. Virtual social space itself is hardly a new idea�it�s pulled from science fiction and, later, the utopian dawn of the Internet, which imagined it as a kind of boundless, egalitarian, free commons. In our contemporary, monetized version of the net, Zuckerberg does have a point: People want to spend time in virtual spaces and they are important for socialization. Just not his virtual spaces.

If you ask kids what kinds of spaces they find themselves in, they won�t say Horizon Worlds. They�ll say Roblox (the controversial monetized game-design platform), Minecraft (an open world building video game old enough that I played it as a teenager myself), and Fortnite (a player-versus-player combat game with a great deal of customization.) Brands know this; many like Gucci and Nike have begun staging events and product launches in these virtual spaces, trying to capitalize on younger and younger eyeballs. But aside from a typical remark from Ingels that �architecture should be more like Minecraft� (i.e., playful like a video game), architecture�a highly professionalized world whose leaders, like Ingels, are in their 40s at their youngest�hasn�t paid much mind.

It makes sense, then, that what is in reality a highly stratified capitalist enterprise (that just happens to also be considered an art) wouldn�t see all of the exciting things bubbling beneath the surface in other parts of culture, like music and fashion. They instead see press releases from colleagues in the same insular, professionalized spheres: McKinsey, Meta, and PR agents.

But perhaps I am being too generous. The simple answer might just be plain old cynicism. In the social media age, architecture has increasingly gravitated toward PR fluff that doesn�t require making buildings or theory, the two central pillars of architectural production for millennia. While PR has always existed in the field (House Beautiful magazine anyone?) the short attention spans of the content creation era have all but guaranteed that the easiest way to get notoriety in or via a publication is to �create� just that: content (images, renderings, perhaps a 3D city in a program like Blender or Rhino). For added relevance, simply attach this content to whatever the issue�or product�du jour is. Climate change, the pandemic, the Metaverse. I�ve come to call this practice �PRchitecture.�

However, the astonishing size of the Metaverse�s failure; the consistent mocking it�s been subjected to; the disparity between the figures quoted by marketing and consulting agencies and reality; and the actual, insane amount of money involved should serve firstly as a overdue humiliation and secondly as a wakeup call.

It is objectively embarrassing for the field of architecture to have tied itself to such a ridiculous fad that anyone with any common sense could see was both pointless and highly reviled by the public. But more importantly, the tech industry in its current iteration�which increasingly looks like a never-ending cycle of intangible hype bubbles at its best and financial scams at its worst�is no friend of architecture. It will not provide anything of lasting value or of considerable productiveness to society. The cycles of boom and bust are getting shorter and shorter and the wares being hawked more and more financialized and unstable.

The tech industry does not like architecture or the arts. It profits off of them, but, as we have seen with the labor implications of AI, is openly hostile toward the creative process and will stop at nothing until all labor and all things produced by it�from concept art and movie scripts to taxi rides and architecture�is overseen by its middlemen and thus gutted of its so-called �disruption.� The sooner architecture realizes this, the better off the field, its practitioners, and the people who work for it will be.

But then again, that doesn�t get so many clicks on Instagram, does it?

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 5, 2023

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:20

LanceHunter: Nov 12, 2016; Beautiful People Club

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The 10 biggest non-metaverse companies invested roughly $5.1 billion into metaverse content, staffing, and research in 2021. They had pledged almost $5 trillion in investments over the next 10 years.

In 2023, most of those companies have reduced it to $0.

The largest metaverse platform, Meta's official Metaverse product: "Horizon Worlds", currently has an average of 38 active users each day and generated only $470 in revenue.

Edit: The author corrected himself in the article and a later tweet, but "Decentraland" is the platform with only 38 active daily users. Horizon Worlds has several thousand. The $470 in revenue figure is actually the total revenue for Horizon Worlds - which somehow makes the already crazy figure of $470 even worse.

[url]https://twitter.com/Toadsanime/status/1676627947761926146[url]

I was looking up Kashmir Hill's piece in the New York Times about Horizon Worlds, which would have had to be entirely fabricated if they only had 38 active users. Then I saw your edit, so I guess this wasn't a piece of massive journalistic fraud...

# ? Jul 5, 2023 20:33

Fil5000: Jun 23, 2003; HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

withak posted:

Is it one of those diarrhea cruises?

All cruises are diarrhea cruises.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 22:35

pentyne: Nov 7, 2012

LanceHunter posted:

While everything in r/AITA and r/relationships has long since been replaced by fully-fictional creative writing exercises; the thing that really gives this one away is someone who is nearly 40, once had a "high-income job", but still considers a one-time ~$200k prize as enough to quit everything and start a business.

My mother is near retirement age (and her husband has been retired for nearly a decade). They constantly have these slot streams playing on their living room TV during the day. I guess it's better than QVC for staving off loneliness. As long as they never figure out how to send tips.

Depending on where you live and the ego of the speaker, "high income" can be mid five figures. Enough that $200k seems like the absolute forever life changing money rather then "poo poo, lets buy some nice stuff and invest the rest"

Realistically the vast majority of lotto winners have lost everything within 5 years regardless; getting a lump sum of money like that completely fucks your brain.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 22:47

mrmcd: Feb 22, 2003; Pictured: The only good cop (a fictional one).

gschmidl posted:

"How to Make Money by Losing $300,000 a Year on Slot Machines"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gambling-watching-slot-machines-online-9bfc1345

The phrase "Latitude Margaritaville, a Jimmy Buffett-themed retirement village in Daytona Beach, Fla" is extremely cursed and now it will haunt my brain forever.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 23:37

smackfu: Jun 7, 2004

quote:

Now, when he loses a spin, he declares �how rude.� (His official fan club has 4,000 members who call themselves the �Rudies.�)

https://youtu.be/gcyOoPDlSuU

# ? Jul 5, 2023 23:38

Evil SpongeBob: Dec 1, 2005; Not the other one, couldn't stand the other one. Nope nope nope. Here, enjoy this bird.

mrmcd posted:

The phrase "Latitude Margaritaville, a Jimmy Buffett-themed retirement village in Daytona Beach, Fla" is extremely cursed and now it will haunt my brain forever.

In all fairness, I sat back and wondered what my Gen X retirement home would be named.

Something all 80s TV themed like Buck Rogers Wing of the Knight Rider Retirement Home Sponsored by Atari.

# ? Jul 5, 2023 23:48

mrmcd: Feb 22, 2003; Pictured: The only good cop (a fictional one).

Evil SpongeBob posted:

In all fairness, I sat back and wondered what my Gen X retirement home would be named.

Something all 80s TV themed like Buck Rogers Wing of the Knight Rider Retirement Home Sponsored by Atari.

Us millennials are probably getting dumped in some place White Stripes themed. A seven diaper army can't hold me back.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 00:22

Elephanthead: Sep 11, 2008; Toilet Rascal

tater_salad posted:

Pretty sure any 3 way arbitrage ends up with 1 of the people feeling left out.

Speak for yourself! With me two people feel left out!

# ? Jul 6, 2023 01:19

100 HOGS AGREE: Oct 13, 2007; Grimey Drawer

It's very funny to me that all of the lovely metaverse worlds are dwarfed by VRchat, which as far as I can tell is either full of children playing spooky backrooms maps, or furries ERPing in virtual nightclubs.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 01:24

buffalo all day: Mar 13, 2019

bad with m�nage�s: with me two people feel left out

# ? Jul 6, 2023 01:27

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

mrmcd posted:

Us millennials are probably getting dumped in some place White Stripes themed. A seven diaper army can't hold me back.

White Stripes? That�s a funny name for a bridge underpass

# ? Jul 6, 2023 02:03

Chainclaw: Feb 14, 2009

100 HOGS AGREE posted:

It's very funny to me that all of the lovely metaverse worlds are dwarfed by VRchat, which as far as I can tell is either full of children playing spooky backrooms maps, or furries ERPing in virtual nightclubs.

I think Roblox is the largest metaverse, by a few orders of magnitude, I think only Fortnite comes close (although it's arguable if Fortnite is a metaverse). Roblox is something like 40 million daily active users.

The metrics for each game are listed differently, but VRChat is something like 22k average users at a time, which probably translates to maybe 100,000 daily active users? A lot of people, but nothing compared to Roblox.

Roblox also has gone all in on the goal of why companies do metaverse bullshit, with things like a branded Chipotle restaurant that children can pretend to work at, to earn fake money to buy virtual Chipotle t-shirts.

edit: Roblox has 1.2 million users online right now, so yeah a lot more than VRChat.

edit 2: Meta Horizon doesn't have daily active or concurrent users listed, but they did list a monthly active user count of less than 200,000 people a few months ago. Roblox is 214 million monthly active users.

edit 3: Another point of interest - roughly 30% to 50% of VRChat users are in VR (depending on which source you find). The majority of people use the traditional, non-VR client.

Chainclaw fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Jul 6, 2023

# ? Jul 6, 2023 03:07

100 HOGS AGREE: Oct 13, 2007; Grimey Drawer

I completely forgot Roblox is a thing, valid point.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 03:24

Chainclaw: Feb 14, 2009

100 HOGS AGREE posted:

I completely forgot Roblox is a thing, valid point.

Because I work on technology for games, I had to learn some metaverse bullshit last year because the metaverse people all want to use game technology.

No one can agree on what metaverse means, everyone has a different unique contradictory definition.

There's a lot of corporate bad with money right now chasing metaverse money. A lot of people take an OK to lovely product, slap the word "metaverse" in the proposal 3 or 4 times, and all of a sudden they're able to get slightly more venture capital.

Luckily I didn't have to actively participate, it was just looking at what parts of game development technology they might need that didn't exist yet. The answer is... nothing they aren't making real products so they don't need technology to make power point presentations they parade in front of investors.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 04:24

Baddog: May 12, 2001

Chainclaw posted:

... a branded Chipotle restaurant that children can pretend to work at, to earn fake money to buy virtual Chipotle t-shirts.

Roblox is the loving devil. Aren't kids tired of this poo poo yet? It's a terrible "game".

# ? Jul 6, 2023 04:28

Sundae: Dec 1, 2005

Baddog posted:

Roblox is the loving devil. Aren't kids tired of this poo poo yet? It's a terrible "game".

Ends up, kids are both stupid as poo poo and also equally as easy to get addicted to things. There are a lot of modern gaming practices that should be outright illegal in things marketed to children, even beyond your standard lootbox stuff.

quote:

The largest metaverse platform, Meta's official Metaverse product: "Horizon Worlds", currently has an average of 38 active users each day and generated only $470 in revenue.

Horizon Worlds: What if SecondLife but segmented like VRChat, with all the avatar limitations of Rec Room but the whimsy converted to corporate bland?

Definitely a winning concept.

E2: I just noticed that my first sentence says that poo poo easily gets addicted to things. Gonna leave that grammar there as a mark of shame.

Sundae fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jul 6, 2023

# ? Jul 6, 2023 05:23

Baxate: Feb 1, 2011

gschmidl posted:

"How to Make Money by Losing $300,000 a Year on Slot Machines"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gambling-watching-slot-machines-online-9bfc1345

Live-streaming from an actual casino seems awfully quaint in this era of full on offshore bitcoin casinos live-streamed on Twitch or Kick or whatever

# ? Jul 6, 2023 07:05

Jean-Paul Shartre: Jan 16, 2015; this sentence no verb

mrmcd posted:

Us millennials are probably getting dumped in some place White Stripes themed. A seven diaper army can't hold me back.

Sign me up for Belle & Sebastown, please

# ? Jul 6, 2023 07:06

Vice President: Jul 4, 2007; I'm number two around here.

look dad we talked about this, the Chumbawamba plan is way out of your budget now after the bitcoin crash of '45 the best we can do is the Flagpole Sitta ward

# ? Jul 6, 2023 10:50

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 9, 2024 01:16

100 HOGS AGREE: Oct 13, 2007; Grimey Drawer

There is only one ruler I will ever respect and that is Carly Rae Jepsen. Send me to Emotion please.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 15:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Based Wage Making: Money Sitting as a Service

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