Asklemmy

The Swallows and Amazons book series. Written almost exactly a hundred years ago, about early teenage children camping and sailing boats, mostly on a lake in England. Simple innocent stories, no sex, no drugs, no guns.

Schlock Mercenary. Amazing webcomic, by one of only like 2 webcomic authors that I'm familiar with that have the simple capability of putting out a comic on time (although this no longer applies as the story is finished) and is a fantastic story from beginning to end.

Yet, none of the friends I've ever recommended it to have been willing to read it

The Marvel Cosmic period starting with the Thanos series written by Starlin, ending with Thanos Imperative (edit: or Annihilators, I guess), with all the amazing stuff in between, especially Annihilation.

Custom Roms I love how I can load custom ROMs on devices. I tried to talk my friends and co-workers into it but they seem really disinterested. I even took one of my older phones and showed it to them in person. They weren't really fascinated by the fact, that I got something different than Android or iOS on my phone. The only thing they liked was, how the lockscreen in Ubuntu Touch looked.

Destiny Potato. Their debut album is one of my all time favorites. It was released with pretty much no fanfare or PR, and while I'm usually disappointed by my Spotify recommendations, this is how I discovered them, and holy hell am I glad I did.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m9V078hBuAWG4B0368meY3o-ToBdKLpng&si=zIwSPQRG3QRCLs0h

Demoscene stuff. Basically just digital art written for fun and to show off your coding skills. People have been doing it since the Amiga. If you've ever pirated software in the 90's to 00's, you've probably seen a realtime animation and mod-based techno track accompany the keygen - that's an example of Demoscene art.

I can't find anyone in the US, not even one of the nerds that works in tech with me, who gives a single shit about this stuff. There are parties and conventions all the time, none of them in North America...

I'm traveling to Germany at the end of March to go to a Demoparty just for the chance to meet a single other person who cares. It should be fun.

I made my own prod discovery service if you ever want to check it out: https://prods.page/ (Yes, I need to update it).

LSD haha, its insane and awesome, so many people should experience it before thinking they know themselves.

EverQuest. I know it's old now but even when I was playing in the early 2000s, I could never get anyone to play. I was the only one I ever knew in person who played. At that time the subscription kept people away. As time went on, it was the sometimes painstaking pace, older gaming conventions, and most of all, the graphics.

Dude I just can't get my friends to do anything other than OSRS

Virtual Reality has completely revitalized my long dead interest in gaming. I initially I got into it during COVID just to socialize but then I started being immersed in games in ways I never had and it's all I want to do now.

the netrunner card game. All my MTG friends are so used to the idea of lootboxes and I'd rather not play anything than gamble.

My recommendation is the work of Joel Bocko, whose website and general web presence, Lost in the Movies, is superb and really not well enough known IMO.

He's best know for his amazingly in-depth looks at Twin Peaks, including Lost in Twin Peaks (a podcast offering episode-by-episode discussion and analysis of the entire run), and the more thematically-based video series, Journey through Twin Peaks.

These are not so much in the "Try to crack the code" mode so much much TP coverage goes for - rather they are about appreciation and analysis of the show as a piece of TV/cinema; its themes and messages, its characters and plotlines, its direction and aesthetics, and its production, artistic vision and contemporary reception. They're wonderfully satisfying and well put together, and deserve much more attention.

He also does a huge amount of work on other cinema and TV, ranging from major blockbusters (usually in the form of him discussing major films he missed on initial release) to older genre movies to obscure arthouse cinema.

I can't recommend his work enough :-)

Nobody in all my gamer friends play Starfield like I do. Thank God for online communities.