Short version is that after FO76 turned out to be terrible at launch, retailers started dropping the price after a week or two. Couple months after release, at least some retailers were just giving it away similar to what the story above sounds like.
Hey, socialist revolutionary - no one cares about your gender studies degree. And maybe you should read more than the first page of that history book before you keep supporting the most destructive ideology in human history.
This. In the end, smartphones (at least in combo with social media) were a mistake.
Think about it - this is an addictive item which frequently causes anger, depression and envy, and leads to to frequent distraction to the users. 13 years ago it barely existed, and now it is so common that if you don't have one people think you're some type of weirdo and even sometimes mock you for it (at least, in my experience).
Yes, it does give us access to the sum total of human knowledge in the palm of our hands, but many people just use it to look at headlines and then ignore the actual story so they can go look pictures of what people ate for lunch and what their favorite sportsball player or movie star is doing today. (yeah, I know I'm exaggerating some).
If the cell networks were to just shut down tomorrow, I'm certain the world would be a better place.
That's almost what the Fallout subreddit has become. Any discussion of the BoS over there inevitably has people who start going on about how they're fascist monsters because they don't trust ghouls, synths or super mutants.
Even without the risk of wokeness, though, I can't see the Fallout TV series being anything but garbage. Even ignoring the abysmal track record of video games to TV, trying to convert a game series based on personal choice, morally grey decisions and exploration to a TV series is almost certainly not going to end well.