0xRusty

A deep, open world RPG (akin to fallout, or the Witcher, say) set in a pirates of the Caribbean/monkey island type setting.

This situation sounds quite similar to me. In my mid 30s now and the COVID pandemic has pretty much killed off the social life I used to have. A group of us moved from the UK to Canada about the same time 10 years ago and for a few years we used to do everything together. We'd be that big group at a restaurant on a Friday night, ordering cocktails and sat there for 3+ hours that everyone else rolls their eyes at. Someone would always be up for doing something at the weekend and no one was ever really alone. Today that group chat has gone cold. The last text message was from about Dec 2019. No one wants to do anything anymore, some have got married, some have had kids, some have bought that cabin up in the sticks and spend weekends there.

I go to the movies alone now. Instead of going to restaurants with a group I now sit alone in McDonald's or maybe a ramen bar if I'm feeling fancy. I'm a loner, I'm not really interested in romantic relationships, I might get a dog one of these days but the time isn't right at the moment. Do I feel sad? Not really. I've kind of resigned myself to this realization that this is the way it's going to be. This is my life . It's lonely socially and I don't have a huge number of friends left, but I'm super busy at work. I'm in (and actively leading) teams calls from 9am to 6pm, monday-friday, literally non stop. I get home exhausted.

My solution to all of this - VR. My oculus quest headset provides me with a great outlet on those fairly rare occasions I feel sand and lonely and need to reach out. I can play poker with a table full of people often with exciting and colourful lives of their own. I can watch a movie with a theatre full of people making witty or insightful comments at just the right time. I can play 1 on 1 mini golf with a stranger and have some deep interesting chats for an hour or so.

For me this is enough.

As a Brit living in Canada and working in the visual effects and creative industries for the last 9 years, your point about their culture being all about "not being you" really hits the mark. Canadians think they're the country the whole world loves and wants to be. The reality is they're irrelevant on the world stage. Culturally they offer the world very little. There are basically 3 maybe 4 cities. With the exception of Montreal (which has some history and culture to call its own) they all spout "diversity being our strength" - this leaves cities like Toronto and Vancouver as the most soulless, boring places I've ever had the misfortune to live in. They have no culture of their own, instead borrowing from everyone else. There is no "Toronto food", "Toronto music", "Toronto scene". Politically they're led by a smug, manipulating, self serving narssisist who calls you a racist and a Nazi yet wears blackface and suspends civil liberties, rushing through emergency war powers to deal with a protest. The healthcare system, as the last two years have shown, are completely inadequate. Quebec was locked down from 8pm while the sun was still shining for fear of overloading a health system they have done nothing to improve since the start of the pandemic. I'm counting down the days until I leave for America and never look back.

Check out Mark Felton playing with Oasis

https://youtu.be/CZxexZ8v-QI

Commercial sales and large businesses buying 1000+ iPhones at a time would probably appreciate the discount refurbished phones might offer

And hundreds if not thousands of other movies and tv shows. Shake was it. It was all there was around the late 2000's to be able to comp 2k footage in reasonable time. The void filled by its demise was so real some vfx companies panicked and bought the source code from Apple for a fee (I think it was about $100k) to maintain their own version. Luckily nuke came along by around 2010 and is now the absolute standard. I don't know of a single major vfx studio that doesn't use it for all their compositing.

I love being back. The office is quite empty, but after two years of not being around 500 people every day I think it would be overwhelming to all be back together in one instant. I'm happy to be in that first wave of those returning. It's not just the office, it's the area I work in. I work downtown, I've forgotten how much I missed all of my favorite cafes, coffee shops, casual lunch places. They remember me too, it really made my day when one of my favorite lunch places recognized me and we had a great chat for 10 minutes. I'd forgotten how much of that life is missed. I live alone, I'm a fairly solitary person, I don't get out much. I always said work from home would suit me as long as I still did a few things in the week (go to a bar once a week, have lunch out a couple of times) but I didn't do any of these things, my friends have become hermits and we hardly see each other even at weekends. The last two years have been hell frankly. I've come to realise my work is my social life. Call that if you like but it's the reality and I actually enjoy spending time with people that share interests with me. Since I've been back in the office I've been to a bar and had a nice relaxing conversation over a beer for the first time in 2 years. Not all of us are lucky enough to have that opportunity to have amazing social lives away from work. I wouldn't go back to working from home if you doubled my salary.