Not Even Our Cake

you know that one meme about the two cakes? the one that's about imposter syndrome or something to that effect. now, imagine you've made your cake, someone else has made another different cake and it's definitely bigger than yours, but you think you decorated yours a little better. all in all, they're both pretty cool cakes, you tell yourself, when a horde of your fans and a horde of the other baker's fans start fistfighting like the ending of UNBEATABLE but depressing instead of cool.

What the Fuck are we Doing??? okay, some examples. I first *noticed* this in a video about a few things but it covered mesh networks as one of them, and it mentioned two projects in particular. ...and how mentioning one was banned in the official reddit of another. now, these were open, progressive projects rooted quite deeply in anarchist ideology, right? so the people involved should know the importance of free association and respect, right?? NOPE LOL U THOUGHT and it's. insane. I see it all the time, frankly more often than I don't -- same with Valkrien Skies and the recently released as of writing Create Aeronautics, two different ecosystems around adding physics and vehicles to Minecraft, and I was just watching people in each server turning up in the chat trying to make it some competition. I don't think people really. Think, before doing this stuff because it isn't useful or productive. like, we Know This. this is how social media is Designed to Get You, it's how politics breaks apart the working class, it's how Football Hooliganism is Like That, on and on and on. it's like people have forgotten how to take inspiration from cool stuff.

and I Get It, if it's, say, Android and iPhone, or XBOX and Playstation or whatever. that's induced, they do that to you and they do it intentionally as part of the marketing strategy. all for that sweet sweet marketshare. but I'm not sold on the strategy when people are doing this stuff for *fun* first and profit Maybe Eventually. and hell, even with the above, the whole thing mostly just prevents people from actually trying out your thing -- gatekeeping hurts your thing, you know. you want *more* people, not less. that means being welcoming, not an elitist.

last time I saw someone get it right it was on Roblox of all places. a Doors clone now most famous for getting UltraCancelled, but back when we were all far more innocent to the horrors of the world I was pleasantly surprised by the way the game actually paid *tribute* to its inspiration. turns out, there's a fair count of Roblox games like this, and most of them are at least slightly inspired by Ultrakill for some reason (I. sort of joke here. there's a few that aren't). and like, it's Roblox so the community doesn't get the message but also some of them do? you definitely *feel* like you're in a warmer community when half the posters read "god please try this cooler game why are you even here dude we suck", as opposed to "ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE OUR GAME IS PERFECT SHUT UP".

and I saw it again with the Proton case where someone Got Got by the FBI working with the company's national police via payment information. a lotta people heard about this news break, and their response was to do a logical backflip and manage to Somehow shoot the messenger -- effectively taking the break as an accusation that Proton was somehow at fault or bad, and thus they were somehow bad or incompetent for using it. and I think this is where we see the sheer depth of the issue the strongest -- firstly, we don't even *need* competition to get here. people get attached to these projects in the same way people define themselves by their opinions and then become hurt when you attack those ideas. hell, I've felt it myself on the topic of Valkrien Skies, when Aeronautics came out, I was initially skeptical and had to tell myself to get Over Myself a bit. but we also see how important it is to avoid the trap: imagine a Proton user in this situation, who's relying on their privacy. this is news of a vulnerability, which they may need to take action upon, maybe change their payment method or call Proton to make sure they don't have any old cards on record.

...but this proton user doesn't think about that. they don't take the news as valuable information key to the efficacy of their own systems, they're too busy getting defensive. I think maybe a lot of us, including myself, are a bit too used to being defensive. especially those of us more acclimatised to internet discourse where it's somewhat drilled into you, skepticism is healthy but dismissiveness is destructive and we gotta walk that line. in these cases where projects compete, we need to learn from each other, else nobody will ever see their best. and for a videogame, that's only unfortunate, but in other spaces, that can spell the end of a movement.

final example, socialism and anarchism, among the other flavours and subflavours of viable progressivism. yes, they're theoretically at odds. they're *also* two effective prybars for use at different angles on the same problem. I see no reason not to use both, considering the challenges ahead of us. we can advocate for distributed communications and also centralised public transport, that's not a contradiction -- it's not a contradiction to find appeal in two good ideas. with so many projects that seem to 'compete' for their place in the world, maybe we need to shift our thinking. maybe, when we see someone other than ourselves in that magic mirror, we should ignore the way our soul flinches, and choose to shake their hand isntead.