I think overall that piracy is good.

It returns control over media, instead of being bound to specific platforms or stores.
It allows you to test things on your hardware, before committing to a purchase.
It makes it possible to recover old media that you physically lost.
It makes your media portable, able to copy it to a new device or hardware without being locked out.
It makes things sharable, able to give a copy to a friend to have them try it out.

But one thing I find difficult is just the sheer amount of things that exist nowadays.
I don’t know how you guys manage it, but I have more media on just my laptop (external drives and such excluded) than I could really enjoy in my lifetime. How to even make choice of what to watch, play, read, next?

I know, very much a first-world problem. But still, it boggles my mind.

  • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    17·
    1 day ago

    This is the answer, OP. Curating your tastes and learning to seek out art based on your values is a skillset that algorithms are attempting to destroy.

    You are not a product, engage with art meaningfully like how a person should

    • AloneDownUnder@quokk.auOPEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      I suppose I struggle with the ‘seeking out art based on your values’ part.

      I don’t really have strong preferences, I always liked a wide variety of things. (Or maybe I never bothered figuring out my taste)

      And even If I know my taste, how to find something that fits without spending hours filtering through things?

      I’ve thought about just asking my friends what things they would recommend me. That would already limit the selection. But maybe then again, It wouldn’t be my taste, but theirs.

      • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        14 hours ago

        Well, have you ever seen the website TV Tropes? You can get lost for hours just looking through the different examples of specific plot ideas that make up the entirety of written and visual media. You find a kind of story beat and then some examples and from there you’ll build a vocabulary of how to describe stuff. So when you say, “I really like horror like in The Thing where the monster is our own human body” you can use that to find entire groups of media that’s just like that

        There’s also looking at the creators of stuff you enjoy and connecting them to other things. In the music world, musicians often travel from project to project to collaberate on different things. So if you like, say Rage Against the Machine, Tom Morello has actually done all kinds of awesome stuff with other groups.

        • AloneDownUnder@quokk.auOPEnglish
          2·
          14 hours ago

          Thanks for the suggestions!

          TV tropes seems useful, but also something where I would spend waay too much time.

          Searching for things from the same authors/creators is actually a good idea. I don’t really do that too often.

          • sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            14 hours ago

            Glad to help! I was gatekept from a lot of stuff when I was younger so I’m glad to pass along techniques or pick up new ones. When you discover something by yourself, it can feel pretty transcendent. 🤘

    • tea@lemmy.todayEnglish
      7·
      23 hours ago

      This is something that I learned after having kids. There are more things I want to do than I have time to do them. I needed to learn the skill of being selective because time is a zero sum game, unfortunately.