These people are whack

Use the local view on fedinsfw

I did! Most of the arguments against basically boil down to 'make it harder for the average user to do this'. In addition to the unequal access to information, sites like lemvote demonstrate how easy it will be for the average user to bypass the imaginary technical barrier. Sure, you may block it now, but as the Threadiverse grows so will the number of sites and such that do so. Even a browser extension ala RES. Even without the whack-a-mole issue, it's only a matter of time before somebody sets up such an utility for public access with an obfuscated instance that can't be easily blocked.

Security via obscurity🙄

Had never heard of the game before, but the gameplay sounds really interesting

While the guy makes good technical points, he's also high on his own copium.

The only generative media enthusiasts who will have success will be those who hire skilled production professionals, writers and actors, and even then they will need to show behind the scenes production workflows. Audiences want evidence of investment, hard work and talent.

The Mountain Man

Dashrath Manjhi, also known as the Mountain Man, was an Indian laborer. He is best known for carving a 110-metre-long, 9.1-metre-wide, and 7.7-metre-deep path through a ridge of hills using only a hammer and a chisel, from which his wife fell and died from injuries due to it blocking easy access to a nearby hospital on time. After 22 years of work, Dashrath shortened travel between the Atri and Wazirganj blocks of Gaya district from 55 km to 15 km.

It's true what they say, life is stranger than fiction

Almost 1/6 though the year, actually.

Google is not the arbiter of knowledge, but the combined search engines are certainly a decent indexer of it. To claim something is 'common knowledge' when we're unable to find a hint of it anywhere online, and is based solely on something you read a couple decades ago, is pretty ridiculous.

Honestly if it was something you read 20 years ago and there's nothing about it to be found today, there's a chance it was nothing but racist nonsense. (Not saying you're racist or anything, just that the source might have been and you got taken in).

Do you have a link I can read? I'm referring specifically to the part about centuries of built up excrement.

Is that actually a thing? I can find results on Google about their crappy sewage system being overwhelmed, but nothing like what you're mentioning.