ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
Use your mind! Create new memories! Interact! Don't just add it to a library of forgotten photographs! - Megatron
User ID: 2120
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Good question! I don't have an answer lmao, even though I'm effectively unemployed for a couple months every year in my current career, not exactly what you're talking about with a 20 hr work week (when I am working I'll put in 50-70 hours in a week, which I'm more or less fine with). I still earn enough money to keep myself comfortable and content (no spouse or kids) while still putting away about 1/4 my net every year, though I earn wayyy less than I'm guessing most here do, at least in part because my job is specialized if unskilled labor. Never went to university as I thought I was supposed to pay for it, baka that I am.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
The biggest ups for NetShaq, one of the last online content creators that is, in my opinion, worth a goddamn.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It might have been received too many plaudits but I wouldn't say it was boring. Visually interesting and had a lot of heart (its message of unconditional love and the rebuke towards the post-ironic cynicism in our society landed nicely to me), though it leaned into the zany a little too much for my liking. I'd give it an 8/10 if you held a gun to my head. For reference I would say something like Annihilation or Oldboy (2003) are functionally perfect films for me, I love great visuals and think good acting and compelling stories are less important (not that I can't appreciate an excellent performance, There Will Be Blood is in my top 10 all time and I will sit down and re-watch it any time, if asked).
Speaking of performances, have you seen The Whale yet?
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thanks for your analysis, any insight on if ItAOtS album cover is a yam or a drum?
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Fair enough, maybe my personality is too neurotic to find "the life of the party" attractive. Thanks for letting me ask in a place I'll get a straight answer, fans and haters alike would rattle off the weird inside baseball stuff that I know and don't care about, which can be fun and funny but is counterproductive to getting a straight answer. Sounds like it really is just a me thing.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Absolutely, though it wasn't a full litre every day, or even most, that was more of a weekend thing. I was drinking at least 500ml daily. Colossally stupid of me in hindsight, but at the time I wasn't exactly thinking about my liver, more concerned with drowning my sorrows and committing slow motion suicide (narcissistically, I thought it was kind of tragic and cool). Hindsight makes that seem laughable to me now, but at the time I very much felt that I was in a complete dead end in my life. My coolguy self-affirming mantra has since changed from "live slow, die whenever" to "live purposefully, die after around 30,000 days".
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Not germane to the discussion, but can you explain Bert Kreischer for me? I like Tom fine, think he's quick and pretty funny, most of the rest of the deathsquad guys are pretty okay at least to me, but Bert has always been a guy I just don't get. He feels to me like he isn't a real person, I've always felt like he's some kind of cutout for a PR company whose name no one knows (Bent Pixels maybe?). Am I just a hater? I'm okay with having an irrational dislike of a comedian, pretty easy for me to just not consume content that rubs me the wrong way.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
people that didn't have any apparent drinking problem proudly announcing that they've quit drinking and feel so much better
This makes sense on an intuitive level if you assume HBD (in a less CW application) is correct. Alcohol is basically poison and causes widespread if minor damage to every system it touches, and if you're a descendant of a culture or lineage of teetotalers then you might not have the same degree of resilience to/recovery from the holistic harm dealt by booze (HBD isn't necessary for this, variation amongst individuals is an equally plausible explanation).
sleep certainly has downstream effects, but I also think that you have to drink a lot for these to be all that noticeable
Speaking only for myself, I went through a period of heavy (.5-1L of cheap bourbon daily) drinking some time ago. The main reason I stopped was the general malaise that I felt, but the thing that kicked it over the edge for me was how frequent my more intense nightmares became when I would crawl into bed wasted. I still have this problem now, more than 6 drinks in a day (with very little correlation to how close to bedtime I've been drinking) is almost guaranteed to have me visited that night by the very worst my unconscious mind has to offer. As a result I don't really drink that much, when I even bother to in the first place (still enjoy the sensation of being drunk, but I have enough consistently bad dreams already that it's just not worth being haunted by myself, the hangovers have gotten significantly worse as I've gotten older too).
Scores for individual posts are hidden for the first 24 hours
Except for this one and your other reply in this thread, which was made two hours ago but apparently edited 21 hours ago (?). Paging @ZorbaTHut
Edit: nevermind, the times on these posts are what's shifting about, I grabbed a screenshot from my phone showing these as sub-1 hour. Weird.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I did eventually notice the downvotes (maybe they don't show up on mobile or something? for some reason in some views I didn't see them)
Scores for individual posts are hidden for the first 24 hours to encourage users to engage with the actual content of the OP/reply, rather than the numerical value of community sentiment. This also has the lovely side effect of curtailing the more odious forms of karma obsession, such as "E: wow, didn't expect this to blow up!" or "haha the kids are mad, tell ur mom to send more pizza rolls to the basement".
One problem with the downvotes is that it's not totally clear what they're about
A problem you and I share.
30% Your position is stupid, I'm not going to argue, just downvote, go do some research
Far and away the most reasonable excuse for the reaction you received, there's an unspoken assumption here that one needs a fairly comprehensive understanding of the differing views and narratives of sundry CW topics. I don't have a particular opinion on this norm as I can understand both positions WRT how well informed a poster should be when saying something here (pro: you are wasting peoples time by prompting them to explain something that could've been googled. con: you can't expect everyone to stay abreast at all times of the goings on in every genre of the CW in order to contribute to the discussion).
I want to hear the d*rwin story
I am confident you wouldn't once you did, it's boring forum drama and the poster in question either sublimated his rhetoric to the point he blends in with the background or just didn't bother following this forum to its current iteration.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Thank you for clarifying, I knew Pavlik was a bad example of what I was attempting to gesture towards but my collection of annotations and bookmarks is a mess right now, and I didn't want to dig through my disorganized references for a better one. Thank you for putting in the effort on my behalf. I understand that Pavlik isn't quite what I intended to describe, but it's something along these lines; authoritarian regimes (it need not be the USSR; North Korea also works and is a more contemporary example), extremist/terrorist organizations and cults as a necessary function of their position in society at large must encourage the individual to atomize, to cut away as much of the social safety net as thoroughly as possible.
I feel no discomfort over the idea someone might terminate a relationship of their own accord (up to and including, sometimes especially, family), but I do find it disturbing to see others advocate that path. It sets off just about every alarm I have in my head and makes me question the moral fibre of those recommending it. Your ideology of choice doesn't have a couch to crash on, it doesn't have that one recipe that it makes every time you visit, it won't provide comfort in your grieving, in short it can provide exactly zero aid or succor to you the human being. A person is fundamentally feeble in a universe that is very, very strong, and it's only inside of a circle of close friends and family that one can move forward, let alone make their mark on the world (there are few loners remembered by history, almost never in a positive light. They also tend to be exceptional human beings for whom a case could be made that they had no peers, at least not locally available to them. I think they can safely be considered an exception that proves the rule). The annulment of any relationship should be taken seriously, even if said relationship is trivial, and telling someone that that is their best course of action borders, IMO, on evil. In the interest of civility and because I know that my gut is imputing motives on others, I'm perfectly happy to settle for calling it inappropriate.
Wholeheartedly agree for this specific reply, it's the only one that I felt managed to answer the actual question as posed by the OP without being sandwiched between a few paragraphs of moralizing. I tried to avoid mention of specific posts and posters because I didn't and don't think that hectoring them would do any good and probably would do a modicum of bad, but that was the post I had in mind when I wrote
nearly every response I've seen them receive.(added emphasis)
Personally I violate Western best practices egregiously and comically, and avoid dropping friends regardless of political differences, psychopathy, psychiatric conditions and material conflicts of interest. It tends to work out in the long run;
Loyalty, in my opinion, is among the greatest virtues a human can hold, and I personally feel it acts as something like the metaphysical cousin to a sacrament the more irrational and unconditional it becomes. I believe that a person's relationship with his friends and family regardless of who they are should be treated as unimpeachable. The person in question may be in fact quite impeachable, as a matter of law or what have you, but the actual relationship itself should be held as sacrosanct. We, as a species, are way too messed up in the head to be able to either afford or justify easy dismissal of one another. Glass houses, and such.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Yeah, the question of whether or not the post in question was made in good faith to begin with seems to be the main source of contention here, and what I'm seeing as poor behavior is being read as good and deserved judgement. I'm on board with any idea that pushes an accusation of trolling towards something less immediate and personal, since trolling is both a legitimate problem in any online community (with an exception for those dedicated to the art form itself) and also an easily weaponized memeplex that regularly confuses actual disagreement with malice.
I also agree WRT the "vibe check", it's hardly rigorous and easily motivated by bias and shouldn't be trusted, at least in a vacuum. That's fine! My operating assumption on topics and people I do not have extensive personal experience with, is that I am almost certainly wrong about every aspect of my mental model to some degree (I'm not enough of a schizo yet to believe I've stumbled upon the Grand Narrative of Universe, just enough to have my own pet theory on it).
My assertion that themotte has pushed and is pushing towards higher Red tribe participation is purely anecdotal, based mostly off of how many individual left-leaning posters I can recall from the old SSC and theMotte subreddits, to how many have made it to the off-site, as compared to the more prominent right-leaning posters. Obviously this is selecting for more than just temperature or political bias, and probably should have been lampshaded with the usual epistemic-uncertainty caveats (I'll admit to some difficulties on that front. I don't want to misrepresent my position, I also don't want to write a small essay each time I reply to someone. Balancing precision and concision is hard and I'm awkward with both). Besides, as you point out, there are plenty of good reasons to stop participating here besides feeling unwelcome.
Your polling idea sounds interesting at the very least, and is on-brand for themotte.
I also basically agree with all object-level responses given in the thread
Same. I don't disagree that these trans friends hold an irrational, low information and censorious cluster of beliefs, but this is something I believe to be comorbid with the Human Condition™. I too hold a number of irrational or otherwise low information beliefs on a great many topics, and I suspect everyone else here does as well. The idea that one should take the advice to cut ties as a result of ignorant opinions with those in their immediate circle, as delivered by a stranger on the internet (regardless of context or object level content) seems preeminently dim to me, let alone reasonable. I'll confess to some difficulty now squaring your circle: how can someone of your background and obvious familiarity with the history of a culture that rewards filial impiety1 be comfortable endorsing a practice that is at least superficially similar in type? Or is this something you've already considered, and feel that these two are sufficiently (or completely) disparate subjects?2 Please keep in mind I do not mean that there's never a reason to cut someone completely out of your life, or that you even need a good reason for it, only that the idea of someone (who is unfamiliar with your life beyond whatever broad strokes you provide) telling you to do it for political reasons is just wild.
Perhaps we need to learn to not engage so... earnestly.
In essence, that is my point. Being met with a circling of the wagons doesn't assist in the exploration of ideas, even if the point of exploring said ideas is to eviscerate them more effectively.
Maybe we need to codify this heuristic into a rule (haven't we already?).
I also thought that there was something along those lines already enshrined, but the closest thing to such a stricture would be the rules pertaining to consensus and inclusion. Nothing said in any of the immediate replies rises, in my opinion, to the level of requiring moderator action. That said I believe that the letter of the law may rhyme with the spirit, but that they do in fact mean different things. You don't need to say "as everyone knows" when everyone coincidentally seems to know and profess the same thing. No use getting worked up over consensus building when the consensus is obviously already built.
the measure of the community is whether there is still the will to engage on proposed terms, helpfully and within the bounds of polite discourse.
I agree, and I may have gotten carried away with doomsaying; themotte is not even close to declining to the point I would stop visiting, let alone lose its value on the broader 'net. I don't believe this is a problem as it stands, but I do believe this specific ailment I have described will raise its ugly head in the fullness of time. I lack the experience, knowledge and understanding needed for maintaining an online community, and have little to offer as far as adjustments go. I only believe it's necessary to avert this particular future if this place is going to hold any value down the line, and I can at least point out what I see as the first sprout poking up from the soil.
You can notice my absence there
An amusing downside to posting prolifically is that one's absence does in fact become notable, if only for a given genre of topic.
1Apologies for the source, but the internet is inexhaustible and SEO has crippled my ability to confidently scrape for a more reputable source of my illustration in a reasonable timeframe.
2I am genuinely curious, I am not accusing you of any sort of hypocrisy or double standard. I don't even recall if it's a topic you've explored publicly here, if you have done so I'm always ready to read or reread your write ups.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Agree that a sense of entitlement is pretty universal, and I assume is socially mediated rather than caused by one's sex. That said I think it's an easy case to make, however, that this is split along gendered lines. (I will try to pull only from my understanding of the literature surrounding psychological differences between the sexes without leaning on any evopsych mumbo jumbo)
Men resent and will misrepresent, to themselves and others, in no particular order and by no means exhaustive, their immaturity/narrow shoulders/weak chin/small stature/small penis/wispy facial hair/flabby body or physical weakness/getting outskilled in sport.
Similarly, but sitting on the other end of the binary, women resent and misrepresent their current or historical romantic partner(s)/or lack thereof/social status/getting old/looking shabby/compensating with make-up/small breasts/thick waist/narrow hips.
All of these things are in common as they're all measures used (often unconsciously) to judge reproductive and general fitness (I'm certain the specific features in question vary from one culture to another, and I don't think there's a good reason to obsess over at least the immutable ones) in a sexual dimorphism-specific context. An introspective or anxious person paying close attention might notice themselves automatically running this sort of checklist against themselves (or their friends/enemies) from time to time, without ever appearing in your "cone of consciousness". Any perceived attack along any one of these vectors is almost guaranteed to provoke an angry or upset response, and rightly so. It's taken, whether knowingly or not, as a direct challenge to one's own viability as a lifeform. If the charges are legitimate then one is offended multiply, if only because it rings in your own ear as the truth and should be taken to mean that you are, in fact, less fit along some dimension than your peers.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I don't disagree with anything you've written here, sans the reiteration of this guy's troll status. Maybe my trolldar is out of whack but IME even concern trolls don't seriously respond the way he seemed to. Perfectly willing to accept that I'm wrong in this instance, but I still think it's uncharitable to levy that accusation based only off of that thread. That said I still can't help but feel like my takeaway here hasn't been taken away. I can only assume this is due to a lack of precision or unintentional obfuscation on my part, or maybe the point was made, received, and summarily discarded (that's fine, if I've been spazzing out here please let me know, seriously. If that's the case then I sincerely apologize for wasting the reader's attention and server runtime). It was wrong of me to even mention score (I personally loathe that there's even a scoring system here in the first place, but people seem to like it so I'll accept that I'm in the minority and won't be a pest about it), it distracts from what I'm trying to describe.
What bothered me was that after the second or third reply, his post kept attracting rejoinders for days (I know, I know, it's an internet forum and responding to a day or two day old post isn't necroing, but I didn't think it was worth remarking upon until I saw another dunk close to three days after the OP) with an almost identical theme to the rest. What I don't mean is, that if someone already said what you think then you should shut up and not say anything at all. What I do mean is, that after receiving a few replies making it clear in detail that this framing is inappropriate for this place, the dead horse kept attracting blows. It would be more healthy for the site, in my opinion, simply to not try (deliberately or not) to drum others out for such a faux pas. Yes, I think the average person (and especially a Blue1) receiving this degree of reaction one or two times will most likely never come here again. The point I have struggled to convey is: that someone saying something objectionable should be objected to, but just because you disagree with a post doesn't mean you need to say it, especially when you can just scroll down and see your opinion already well represented. It just makes you feel good, and them bad.
To use some verbiage I hate but still find useful, I think the way this community treats the Blues is toxic. Is it justified? I'm willing to concede that point, but I didn't come here to turn the tables on my outgroup, I came here for discussion featuring light as opposed to heat. I hope it isn't necessary to say that it's bad when the Blues do it, and it's bad when the Reds do it. I think themotte has already started down the path of becoming a social media-tier echochamber, just in photo negative. I hold this place and its users to a significantly higher standard than I do twitter or reddit, and it's not because everyone here is smarter than them but rather everyone is trying to be better than them.
Thank you for taking the time to write a serious reply.
1I am perhaps being uncharitable when I say that lefty potential-posters are more easily offended than the righties. For clarity's sake, I do not advocate a two-tier moderation system for the opposing ends of the political spectrum as a solution for this.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It escapes the rage-bait/circlejerk flair that the r/*advice subreddits almost universally share.
Really? Because what I saw was 8/9 top level replies using varying degrees of effort and wordcount to say essentially the same thing; "your friends are unreasonable, possibly deranged, your continued existence as a mentally stable sophont is in jeopardy if you leave these people in your life". Social circles are vitally important and are precarious things at best, and telling a stranger to rip up a part of theirs (who knows how sizeable that part is, immaterial to my point), especially over a CW topic, is not good advice, by any measure. The problem for me however isn't that this advice was dispensed (I think it's a real position that a reasonable person can have, I'm not accusing anyone of misrepresenting their own beliefs), the problem is it's the only goddamn advice he got, sans the one person who read his post and provided an answer to the actual question within.
Additionally, I believe that you can in fact discuss CW adjacent topics like "how do I navigate a situation where my friends feel strongly about !issue and I really don't, here are my uninformed and nascent opinions, wat do" without the obviously negative reaction he received. He very technically invited this when he said
Any response is much appreciated.
Still not an excuse for the smug dogpile, not in a place allegedly dedicated to good faith discussion.
I suspect if the political valence had been flipped he would've received at least a more neutral/positive response e.g. "My friends are strongly pro-life and think that Roe being overturned is a landmark victory for innocent life, I kind of feel like it's not murder but this isn't an issue I care much about and I'd rather not alienate my friends if that isn't necessary, wat do." "Wow wow sounds like ur friends might have something to teach u, try asking them for profound opinions" (I view the pro-position on both abortion and trans issues to be largely unreasonable along very similar dimensions and to somewhat similar degrees, but I think a differently coded question of the same genre would have prompted a VERY different response, not like my exaggerated example but along those lines).
The level of detail - trans friends (who I love dearly) - coupled with the admittedly amusing false dichotomies is a dead giveaway. There was no need to go into that level of detail to get meaningful advice - "my friends are getting offended because content-creators have different views than them, what should I do" would have sufficed and would have nonetheless garnered, I reckon, substantially the same response.
Maybe this is uncharitable of me, maybe I didn't make my point clearly the first two times. Regardless,
Maybe he's a troll. Maybe he intends to stir shit up, JAQ off, dissemble then flame out. Cool. Wait for that to happen. I'd like to see this place manage discourse a little bit better than mentally installing a script that turns [Blue Tribe shibboleth] into [!downvote] regardless of how ridiculous I or you or anybody else might find the woke catechism.
I've lurked this place for years in its various forms, and yes, there are fewer and fewer high quality leftwing/liberal contributors every year (are libbies too thin-skinned for rational discussion? I think so! Does public pontification on the topic of Blue tribe irrationality and pussification drive away left-wing posters? Yes! That's why I will always keep my mouth shut for topics I can't write an evenhanded take on). That's why I feel it's incumbent upon all users of this site to point out the burgeoning Red tribe bias that is contributing to the evaporative cooling here. Is it a problem at the moment? I don't think so, could be wrong. Is this going to be a problem in a year? Probably, and it'll compound over time. This place is neat, I've made my case upthread already for why I think that is. If I come here same time next year and this place is where the 125 IQ groypers and Anime PFPs™ hang out, well, miss me with that shit. I know plenty of smart rightwingers in my personal life, I don't want to go online and read the shitpost version of something I already agree with.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Fascinating, very much not my analysis of what TLP was attempting to convey. When I read his piece originally and read it now, my takeaway is that if a given piece of propaganda found its way into your hands, it's not by accident. If your reaction to it is (an execrable) Wholesome 💯, consider that was the intended response. If it results in frothing rage, consider that to be the intended response.
We live in an era of superstimuli: I'm willing to bet that companies (or a Company) with small-nation-GDPs for market caps and a specialization in marketing have heard of shibboleths before, and maybe they're releasing scissory material on purpose.
I personally assume that anything which tries to hijack my emotional train of "thought" is a weapon of some sort; maybe deployed by my tribe, maybe deployed by another, doesn't matter, the point is the reaction. Who cares if they're cringe or factually incorrect, even if it is, dare I say, based? You saw it and you felt a certain way. Mission accomplished.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
Sorry for adding to the wall of text, but I just realized you were one of the respondents there (I realized I was getting pretty bummed by the way some posters I really respect had written their replies and I try to avoid hanging feelings on a person online). I want to be clear, I have no specific issue with most of what's being said in that thread. Again, my big problem is primarily with the pile on. His question was fairly innocuous and considering some of the other material posted here made very, very few assumptions. The one mistake was being blue-coded.
Also to your credit and undermining my point, you did in fact seriously engage and provided a thoughtful and reasoned response when asked.
In the interest of not talking past each other, I would like to stress that my hopes for frank and civil discussion are for here, not the rule of discourse for some random guy with trans buddies. Everyone is free to dab on the outgroup as much as they like but he shouldn't be berated for having trans friends, not here of all places.
He asked for help navigating a difficult social scenario. He received approximately one genuine response to his question. The rest who deigned to engage did so so they could point at him and say that the people he actually knows and engages with are unreasonable actors and must be educated on facts of the matter, if that doesn't work then they should be excluded from his life. Sure, this is an answer to his question; it is addressed to him/references something written in the OP/is a coherent English sentence. Telling a person to cut someone out of their lives is a big big deal; if someone I didn't know told me to do so myself (for any reason. I do mean any reason), I would dismiss them out of hand and update to devalue their opinions somewhat on everything. If it were done to acclaim from everyone else around I would update to assume that I was in very much the wrong place. People who are interested in your long term wellbeing tend to not give advice that's quite so crazy.
Maybe he's a troll. Maybe he intends to stir shit up, JAQ off, dissemble then flame out. Cool. Wait for that to happen. I'd like to see this place manage discourse a little bit better than mentally installing a script that turns [Blue Tribe shibboleth] into [!downvote] regardless of how ridiculous I or you or anybody else might find the woke catechism. Maybe I've misunderstood the point of this place and I'm going to look very silly in front of everyone, if so you have my apologies in advance.
I thought after writing this that I should've been clear that I didn't mean absolute difference between only positive scores. What I was attempting to highlight was the presence of unjustified negative reactions to what is a pretty banal question. Besides, saying something unpopular should in fact be incentivized, it's (partly) the purpose of a good faith discussion. Heat-forward, inflammatory, noisy shitposts should be disincentivized.
I suspect somewhere around 16 people read his question and made it to the part where he said "my trans friends" for the first time, then decided they hated what they were reading and hit the appropriate button. I happen to believe that is an ugly and stupid way of engaging with someone who is earnestly looking for an answer.
(Edit: the score has also shifted somewhat to the positive since I wrote this post, I believe my point stands)
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
It may very well have been a legit (above) average neurodivergent slav who had a bone to pick with our Russian friend. As a group, they seem to be quite handy with computers.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I don't use any type of warez to cover myself (besides a VPN where good hygiene is advisable), due in part to sloth and also a lack of wherewithal. My justification for this is probably cope, but my layman's view is that, these days, unless you have a pretty comprehensive suite of software and are unrelentingly fastidious with your choice of hardware/setup, any government entity or motivated individual/group who wants to find you will.
As a result I try to keep myself clean with burner emails, use a new handle for every new platform (and password, which should go without saying. That said I know an embarrassing number of people who use the same pass for everything, up to and including using their ATM card's PIN for their phone) I find myself on and semi regularly (1-3 years) change up the primary screen names and PFPs I use. My last trick and the one I use the least because it discomfits me some is lying consistently about minor identifying details. The consistency of it is important as the purpose is to generate a false positive that'll show up in the kinds of datasets you were demonstrating in your previous post.
Gwern's incredible analysis on Death Note was the primary inspiration for these practices, not that I'm familiar with opsec/digital fingerprints or anywhere near important enough for someone to look for me. The idea is to just throw enough obstacles in the way that, contingent upon an amateur getting ants in the pants over my presence online, I have time to scrub what I can from the 'net (not much, in practice more than you think, so long as you aren't notorious or prolific, as you said). Then I can move my daily business over to a set of cutouts made a while back that I keep the credentials for in my safe.
I'm not anonymized from serious players but I can't play at that level anyway, so fuck it. If things get that far I'll have bigger fish to fry than that time my teenaged self wrote the n-word on a BBS for a kids show fifteen years ago. Would love it for someone with actual expertise in this field to chime in, maybe let me know how if my prophylactics are stupid or not.
ratboygenius
i came here to be alone
1yr ago
I remember the 90's fondly, but I can understand finding the aggressive Dutch angles, howling FM radio bumpers peppered in across media and the practice of over cranked footage from a camera zooming into a person's face to be an off-putting aesthetic.
https://www.themotte.org/post/383/wellness-wednesday-for-february-22-2023/68713?context=8#context
First of all, I hope this poster has read https://www.themotte.org/post/195/what-to-do-when-you-get
Second of all, I'd like to express my disappointment in nearly every response I've seen them receive. The fact that their question, which appears to have been made in total good faith, is still getting dogpiled and drive by downvotes is vicariously embarrassing. This isn't a culture war issue. It's a person in the life advice thread asking for life advice on interpersonal relationships as it pertains to their trans friends concerns over a tendentious CW item. prof xi o isn't even stating a position, only that they have trans friends and like Harry Potter (apparently this justifies an accusation of trolling, to the tune of a 45 [edit: 30, my back of the skull hangover sums aren't great] updoot difference. An uncharitable read might see some of the responses from prof xi o as sealioning. Cool. Take your uncharitable reading and keep it under wraps). If I was feeling extreme, I might posit being told you shouldn't be friends with my outgroup is not a valuable remark.
If I want to dunk on wingcucks I can go to arr drama. If I want to dunk on globohomo I can go to /pol/. If I want to dunk on chuds I'll join Hasan's discord. If I want to dunk on MAGAts I'll head over to /r/news. If I want to dunk on libtards I'll join the Mug Club. This is it, as far as I know, for frank and civil discussion between people, whose only commonality on themotte are their shared, seemingly intractable differences. This is unbelievably important to me, because there exists a reality where I am wrong. There is a chance that you too are wrong. Having a place where I can be presented with the absolute best argument against my pet philosophy (and those of others) is valuable, and it's valuable because it can if nothing else, diminish the evil I do as I navigate a confusing and confused world.
Overt forum-wide bias of any particular flavor or stripe, in my opinion, is the most pressing threat to the long term health of this site. Please don't fuck it up for everyone.
P.S. I will be appropriately embarrassed if the OP turns out to be another d*rwin, until that point try leaving the internet at the door and treating everyone as if they are, in fact, sincere.
PBR is like the final boss of cultural baggage attached to something that's just good on its own merits.
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