Pretty well, all things considered. I played off and on for about 15 years (more on than off). Got into an awesome family-friendly guild and made some very good friends. I still regularly chat with and occasionally play other games with some of them.
I became the leader of that guild eventually, but by then it was well into a slow death spiral. It was sad to see everything slowly fall apart and there being nothing anyone could do to resurrect it. That was kind of a painful life lesson.
But I also have some very fond memories playing with both my wife and my son, and with those friends.
Maybe I was to much of a 'filthy casual' to get drawn too deeply into it (I only casually raided sporadically). But even still, it did hook me in for a while. And even now it's left an itch I can't scratch. I miss the Wrath era and how vibrant and dynamic and crazy the 'world' could be.
Overall I feel like it was worth the time and money. But I know that's not the case for many others.
My son still plays it sometimes and is trying to get me to come back for the new xpac. But I have zero enthusiasm for it. The last several months I was playing I would log in out of obligation and then almost immediately log off again because nothing sounded fun to do. I didn't (and still don't) like what they've done with both retail and classic. I guess I've moved on in life.
We're also doing a good job destroying the planet, at least from the stance of making it inhospitable for life. Will life survive? Yes. Because "life, err, finds a way". But it sure as hell won't be because of the efforts of the most powerful and influential humans.
A lot of the comments here seem to be missing some key points from this article:
The writer made her own likeness available to everyone on purpose. She did this knowing what would happen, but it was part of the exercise of seeing how weird it would get. So the points that she was stupid for doing, or that she was outraged by this, this are missing the point. Was she stupid? Maybe, but she made a conscious sacrifice on her likeliness. Was she outraged? Clearly not.
It's short-sighted to say "yeah this will happen, so don't put your is image out there". There are lots of people (especially women and girls) who have gone out of the way to avoid having their image/likeness out there for these it similar reasons. But they have still ended up the victim of humiliation and trauma from photoshopped images or deep fakes made against them.
This second point was a big part of what the author was trying to point out. It's both a warning to others about being careful of protecting your identity, and an alarm sounding that there are some really weird and creepy fetishes out there that people can get their likelinesses pulled into, even when you actively try to avoid that.
It also highlights the lack of safeguards on this kind of issue. Consent, age, level of fame... none of that matters in this issue. And in most cases the companies behind these tools don't do shit to address these concerns.
It sounds like Albania needs a new Minister of Virtual Contraceptives. Because either something horrible happened to Diella (their AI bot 'Minister') or she's very horny and very digitally fertile.
My question is: who are the fathers? Did she have a gang-bang with ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Qwen, Grok, Zuckerberg, Data, T-1000, et al?
I think he moved on to other games eventually. He has a fairly high subscriber count on places like Twitch and YouTube. So in some sense he is relatively famous. But he seems to think that that makes him important or that his shitry opinions matter. When he isn't, and they don't.
He's an entitled man-child YouTuber who gained some popularity as an mouthy asshat playing World of Warcraft back in the day. And since then he's convinced himself that because he has a following he must be a gifted genius. And apparently that has translated into him not showering for reasons.
In short, as you already knew and implied, he's less than nothing special.
So the party that's supposedly against government waste and is 'America first' is buying lots of luxury stuff for the Secretary of Puppy Murder and pouring billions into Argentina. Got it.
A few counterpoints to the circumcision pros that you mentioned:
Circumcision rates are dropping across America. In some areas they ared dropping faster than others, but from what I recall the get are basically dropping everywhere to some degree. So I expect bullying about it is on the decline as it becomes less common.
Also, the simple fact is that bullies will find any reason to be shitheads. So if it's not circumcision it'll be something else.
Any straight women who are grossed out by a natural penis are idiots, and your kid will be dodging an asshole bullet if they do reject him over that.
Better to let him decide if he wants to get it cut later or leave it uncut than to take away his free agency.
Props to the guy at the front of that pack. He seems to be completely nude, judging by the transparent ponchos he had on.
I didn't think them wearing transparent ponchos breaks the principle of nudity. But some of them have underwear on. But even that is less than I would have on, so respect to them all regardless!
And I bet to many of them it's still all the Democrats' fault.