So theres been a lot of stuff recently about governments trying to protect kids or whatever, and getting rid of a lot of privacy in the process. Youtube is making an ai to tell if you are an adult, the UK already put into place laws mandating aggresive age verification, and visa and mastercard both pressuring steam/itch.io into deleting nsfw games. Really quickly, I want to touch on that. thats fucking scary. As much as no ones gonna miss "incest futanari visual novels", this move shows that payment processors have the power to get rid of whatever they want, and next it may not just be something gross that no ones gonna care about. next it could be games talking about a specific issue or political opinion, or games that critique payment processors or big comanies in general. This is fucked up. on top of that, youtube as a whole, and the UK government are now requrieing facial/id verification to prove you are an adult, which is downright dystopic. But theres a good side to this! With this amount of censorship and verification, people will start to find other, more niche and less for-profit stuff on the itnernet. things like, yknow, personal websites!! what this all boils down to is the end product of enshittification. Companies keep pushing us, and eventually we will get sick of it and abandon the corperate internet. Personal websties, niche video sharing platforms, blogs, it will all come back as people get away from the opression and control of corperations, and find alternatives. TLDR is this: let this shit crumble, cause what will come after will be awesome. also DONT. GIVE. WEBSITES. YOUR ID OR FACE!!! I DONT CARE HOW MUCH YOU WANNA USE IT, ITS NOT WORTH IT IN THE LONG RUN. ESPECIALLY IF A DATA BREACH OCCURS. which happens very often because companies cant get their shit together and proctect the data they collect, see https://haveibeenpwned.com/ for proof, even my paranoid ass has found its way in a data breach (fuck you hot topic)

I originally Found this series through a friend, and watching through it it had a LOT of potential. the humor was on point, the darker moments really hit, and the uncanny nature of the entire thing really sold me. The whole concept was that before the animated garfield show that we know today was created, an odd and shady studio picked up the ip and cast comedian Gilbert Gottfried in a darker, more absurdist rendition of Garfield. The series satirizes both ARGs as well as lost media as trends, and has interesting things to say about corperate greed, and the lengths companies will go to keep their darkest secrets. This is all muddied by later videos usage of deepfake technology, as well as AI generated images. I have a LOT to say about AI, but I will leave that for a different post. For now, all I will say is that its usage really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and made me hesitant to continue watching. If you must watch it yourself, I would reccomend only watching the episodes from "Gilbert Garfield introduction" to "An uplifting european finale", as that was not only the best part of the series but also the "season" with no ai usage. (to my knowledge) Overall, It is a shame that such a discomforting and absurd series was tainted by creators laziness. He is definately talented, But I just cannot understand why he didnt just use that creativity to make something real instead of relying on AI.