Hey
@saltytanked, what you described in the first three paragraphs could be applied to the staff meeting I ZOOMED into for 2 hours this morning. The laziness of the typical participant in life these days has been told to use AI and the "Information Highway" to quickly find the truth on any subject. What they have not noticed is that the truth on many sites is edited almost daily, or if they do notice they feel lucky that whatever they read today here was a good answer.
My answer will not be read by many folks because it is already too long, which means many folks will only skim it or simply pass to the next post where someone who can summarize information better will provide a simpler answer that makes the reader feel good about themselves, which is obviously the correct answer they were looking for, even if the information is completely wrong and a total lie.
Only Jesus knows when the last reefer will emanate in this planets unfolding population. I suspect that the hobby will be outlawed and become a thing that only criminals and rich people will carry on in secret based upon the posts I read on here and the environmentalist and young people I encounter at work who value "saving the planet" a lot more than I do.
I am a skeptic when it comes to altruism and the human civilizations expansion and the history of modifications of the planet by humans. So many things look great when they first come out but after a few years (or a few centuries) the corruption or damage caused by our activities are eventually recognized and civilization pivots to fix that problem, creating something new to plague the planet. All the while the population keeps expanding until by design or by chance the house of cards collapses and all this time the reefs on the planet will keep doing what they do, with or without our coral collecting or reef tank hobby.
Actually, it's probably not all that bad, and it may never be as far as the hobby goes. I don't care. I got a new clam coming soon and I will do my best to take care of it until I get recycled at Forrest Lawn. After that I won't be able to go the LFS anymore and they probably won't miss me there either.