I don’t consider “raison d'etre" a suspicious phrase. It’s not something people use multiple times a day, but I’d consider it common enough that when I hear someone say it, or in this case I suppose type it, that I would give it a second thought.
The NES was pretty popular in the UK, wasn’t it? In our solidly working-class home, we had a NES. I remember getting Super Mario Bros 3 for christmas one year and so did many of my friends at school, who all lived in semi-detached two-bedroom homes or masonettes. So, we weren’t in a wealthy bubble or anything. I’m sure it sold multiple millions of copies in the UK and TV shows like GamesMaster were popular and had NES games on a show watched by a pretty big audience. How old were you when it released that you’ve never seen one in the flesh?
Okay, that's interesting. I was in my early teens when it was released. Absolutely everyone I knew had either a Spectrum or a C64, aside from the one rich kid who owned a BBC Micro.
I just had a look at Wikipedia, which says, "the NES performed less well in Europe, where it faced strong competition from the Master System and home computers such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum."
The NES did get past a million sales in the UK, but a lot of them seem to have been at a cheap price late in its life once the SNES and (more so) the Mega Drive had established a popular market for consoles in the UK.
An indicative fact on consoles vs computers that the article highlights: in 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog on Mega Drive reached #11 in the UK charts on its release, and it was considered a remarkable and unusual achievement for a console game to do so well.
I got one about 1992ish I think. I had a Gameboy before that. And a spectrum before that. To be honest the game boy was a revelation, smooth fun polished games. My spectrum crashed all the time (thanks Alan sugar and your cheaper manufacturering).
Nintendo games had multi person dev teams instead of some poor guy looking at a video of an arcade machine and trying to recreate at on a spectrum.
Though everyone I knew got a snes and street fighter 2 for Xmas one year. I only knew one other nes owner
This video that breaks down the crazy financial positions of all the AI companies and how they are all involved with one called CoreWeave (who could easily bring the whole thing tumbling down) is fascinating: https://youtu.be/arU9Lvu5Kc0?si=GWTJsXtGkuh5xrY0
I’ve been using Claude Code, Gemini 3 Pro, and Nano Banana Pro to plan, code, and create custom UI elements for dozens of time-saving applications. For years, I have been searching high and low for existing solutions, but all I found were either overpriced cloud offerings that were bloated with endless features I didn’t need and just complicated the UI, or abandoned GitHub repos consisting of an initial commit and a roadmap that has been waiting eight years for its first update and what code was present was half baked and out of date.
The reality is that my requirements are so specific to my workflow that until these latest models came along, building exactly what I needed in a matter of hours for a cost of $20 a month was inconceivable. Now I provide a description of what functionality I need, some sketches of the UI I made on my ipad with an apple pencil and after a bit of back and forth to get everything dialled in and I’ve created a bit of software that will save me dozens if not hundreds of hours of previously tedious manual work.
It's awful what happened to literally. The enormity of the change in meaning is so egregious. When it literally gets used with both meanings in the same conversation, decimating my brain, I have to wonder how nonplussed anyone trying to learn English must be. I'm sure there are plenty of words it's happened to, but this must the most egregious example.
I don’t think it can be fixed. When the internet was used only by people who were geeky enough to find chatting on IRC exciting and set up websites and blogs simply for the fun of it, there was a thrill in doing all this stuff for the first time and you had to organise IRL meet-ups just to find like-minded people. Once everything became about clicks and ad impressions and content was created to make money, not just because you wanted to share something you thought was cool.
Obviously, this is still possible and many people do maintain blogs and websites for the love of it, the overwhelming amount of internet users are happy using a handful of giant social networks.
Heck, internet dating used to be looked down on as something so pathetic only complete losers did it. The world and the internet has evolved and as much as I miss the wild west days where it felt like anything was possible, the giant corps have taken over and people are too scared to say the word suicide on YouTube lest they be demonetised, so everyone trembles and mutters unalived and everything gets a little bit worse.
I’m old enough to remember when blogs were bad news for the culture at the time, which was forums, IRC and static sites (you know, with under construction banners)
It seems the prevailing pattern is that removing barriers to entry means things get worse. In 2025 there are no barriers left and everyone is online all the time. It’s the end stage of the internet we loved.
In fact the barriers have been destroyed so utterly that we are awash in AI generated content now. The dead internet theory is real. Why are we still here?
