BahRamYou
3d ago
well, i don't have any group of friends so... guess I'm doomed to misery lol.
BahRamYou
3d ago
Yeah that first case is what frustrates me so much about the modern internet. it's all ephemeral, designed to prevent being google searched. I guess that's good for a quick private chat, but it's really annoying when you just want to ask a frequently asked question.
Seems like you gotta have friends to make friends... everything is like a job search now.
BahRamYou
3d ago
How do you use discord?
I don't need, like, a literal user's guide. I mean, how do you use it in a way that's actually practical, fun, and not overwhelming?
I grew up with AIM and online chat rooms, so i'm not a stranger to this sort of thing. But discord just seems so hectic and overwhelming. It's, well, discord in a literal sense.
Every channel I join, starts with this huge list of rules that I have to agree before I can even see anything. Then there's usually a host of hidden channels that all require separate hidden handshakes to enter. It's policed by mods who seem to take their jobs very seriously. Then there's so many different users, all spamming things at each other, and so many different notifications. It's literally impossible for me to read everything even from just one discord channel, let alone if I'm in multiple.
Bad experiences that I've had:
- had been chatting with people on there for a while. Tried to set up a dinner to finally meet offline at an event. It got too hectic and we never managed to find each other.
- had been chatting for a while with a different small group. We had our own subchannel led by a mod. The mod apparently had some hiddend drama with the admin (I have no idea what), got banned, and our whole group was kicked out. We all lost contact.
- Went to a newly created channel where there was only 1 other regular user. We chatted for a bit about random stuff, then got warned by a mod for being "offtopic" and moved to separate rooms. We were literally the only people there.
- in general just a flood of notifications and messages that I find incredibly distracting. I can't keep it open if I need to do anything else. I have no idea how some people manage to just sit on there all day and respond to everything.
BahRamYou
5d ago
I remember back in the boom years of online poker before it got banned in the US, a number of people did things like that. People who weren't good enough to make money playing in a normal way would play just enough to clear the bonuses that sites gave to new players. They called it "bonus grinding" or "bonus whoring." The main caveat, I think, is that it's an incredibly soulless, boring way to make money. It still requires a certain amount of mental effort, and without even the fig leaf of pretending like you're doing something beneficial to society. So most people got bored of doing it, and started to play for real, sometimes losing back the money they earned from the bonus.
BahRamYou
20d ago
I think most of the students are left-leaning even before they enter the university, they just don't express it so strongly. But yes, some indoctrination is clearly taking place. But it's more from student clubs and off-campus organizations than from the classes. Also probably pressure from dudes trying to impress women to get laid, and women are usually more left-leaning than men.
BahRamYou
20d ago
In many cases, students’ politics are no more attributable to indoctrination by professors than are their green hair and pierced septums.
This is such a funny sentence. It feels like it belongs in the 1960s, when I can imagine a stuffy old-fashioned college professor being shocked by dyed hair and piercings.
Nowdays... well, first it's not very shocking. Second, the students who have that kind of fashion are almost all liberal, sharing the same politics as the faculty. Many of the faculty probably had those fashions when they were younger (or still have them). And the school's admissions policies actively select for those kinds of kids via their vague "personality" rating, which rewards people for personal demonstration of radical leftist politics. Which is to say, it rewards them for having the right fashion, and for a college, that means counterculture punk shit.
BahRamYou
26d ago
Cool, thanks. That's the first time I've ever heard of the European Broadcasting Union.
Seems like the US is also a member!
BahRamYou
26d ago
What's the reasoning behind this? Did they just decide that it's good business to keep expanding the contest year after year? Is it eventually going to turn into a worldwide contest?
BahRamYou
27d ago
Do you get an even bigger discount if you hold them in your arms using no bags at all? I'm guessing not, but I feel like you should since that's even more environmentally friendly than the reusable bags.
I feel like the "type of person who is happy to use a reusable bag and make small talk with the cashier" and "type of person who rules-lawyers these policies to save a few cents" are just fundamentally different types of people who will never understand each other.
BahRamYou
28d ago
That would actually be cool if they really did it. Imagine if a city 400 years ago had set up a project like this and they were still going at it, generation after generation. The Notre Dame cathedral took almost 200 years to finish, but this would put even that to shame.
That sounds like "the best way to use it is to not use it at all." But yeah I'll try adding more mutes.
More options
Context Copy link