the sheer suffering of stopping by a "find work" type gamedev discord to help people out with portfolio reviews and find that a student with no professional experience is in every channel people giving advice despite having no idea what they're talking about
circa 2013/14 that place was a fantastic resource for beginner/intermediate devs. I met multiple people on there that eventually became IRL friends, plus the like linkedin voice connections I made were a huge part of how I eventually found work in the actual industry
and then over like a year or two it just turned into.... exactly what aura's describing
just an endless stream of students asking "where do I start" questions and getting the worst possible advice from reddit dudes who've never shipped anything in their lives, but who believe themselves to be experts because they have strong opinions about linux distros lol
genuinely no idea how it happened. It wasn't the mods' fault; I KNEW some of the mods and they were trying their best. It rapidly chased off anyone with real experience, so the whole thing just turned into this totally isolated chamber of students and blowhards leading each other in circles
