Whatever, slippery coward.

As a species we tend to mask irrational feelings with stories our brain make up, connecting abstract social issues and ideas to make us feel like our irrational discomfort is somehow part of a bigger, more “rational” story, but it all leads back to something that makes us uncomfortable. The cure is sanitizing sunlight.

And because Lemmy is packed with incel-adjacent minded young guys and require some pushback on their bad ideas, because people no longer experience social pressure as long as they can retreat to like-minded online spaces, so I rather people are open about what they think so we can challenge it, support it or offer alternatives depending what the actual feeling is.

That’s why I care.

Your turn.

Someone said it best describing Destiny 2, that it’s a perpetual feeling of building towards something that’s always just around the corner, but when you get around that corner, it’s just more grinding and pushing premium content, just around the corner. It’s gonna huge bro, I promise. Big stuff coming. Just ahead, just buy one more season bro.

I notice it’s a reoccurring theme for people to go through stuff like that with MMOs.

I think we all have our check-out bottom we will fall to when life hurts too much, some people will just rot in bed and some will watch old movies and some will camp in the woods. We have breaking points in life, and sometimes an online game where people seem to be having normal lives just feels like being someone still connected to the world. When I was little and my parents would go on week-long drug benders and spend the whole time screaming at each other, I would check out into comics and books, so it’s probably where I learned how to do it inadvertently.

The shot reminded me of Elder Scrolls Online at first, and I had that very real PTSD twinge that made my stomach lurch.

When I was going through the worst part of my life, losing everything, burying my family and pets, closing down my business and having my home foreclosed due to family medical issues, I played Elder Scrolls for a couple years for no other reason than to spend time with other people, including someone I cared about a lot. I hated the game, it was exciting for the first couple hours until I realized how far it deviated from the actual franchise and how limited the gameplay really was, how everything was just a funnel towards premium content and skins.

I drank like a fish and laid in trash watching my life fall apart as I sat in Elder Scrolls listening to people chatter and watching them duel, because I didn’t want to be alone because I didn’t trust myself to be alone.

I did start over and everything is a lot better now, but holy shit, that game ruined Morrowind, Skyrim and the entire game world for me.

Why is everyone vague-posting in here? Just say directly what bothers you about the comic.

They’re fantastic if you keep your blade maintained, it’s honing, not sharpening.

Whetstones by themselves will get your blade sharp real fast, but by themselves all you’re really doing is making a micro-serrated edge every time, and it dulls fast. Smoothing your edge after whetstone with a honing rod smooths the cutting edge and reforms the edge shape after regular use.

If you lose your edge you have to start over from the whetstone, so maintaining the edge with a honing rod will save you time and not take as much material off your blade.

Also, a lot of households have utterly worn-out honing rods in their knife blocks, as the household often will try to use it for actual sharpening and scrape off a lot of the honing texture, and eventually will get so smooth they do nothing.

Nah cynical dipshits on the internet who try to Jordan Peterson every conversation about art theft and AI regulation who are creating division. Have a good one, enjoy your AI titties and shit.

There are a lot of serious laws in the US about owning, transporting and storing explosives (thank you Anarchist bomber movement last century) as well as requirements for permits and the like, so you would have to prove it was a “gift” and not intended to be used for anything, but even then you would not only face negligence charges/manslaughter if someone was killed, but also various kinds of “aggravated” charges related to public safety. I am not a lawyer but I have a feeling the prosecution would make a pretty heavy case to make an example.

No you’re right, and part of the problem in the US is our absolutely batshit, contradictory social conditioning around sex, nudity and the body.

We are utterly archaic in social attitudes here. We had a full-on national crisis when everyone saw a nipple at the super-bowl one time. Yet we sexualize anything remotely female and young to a sickening degree.

This kind of weird paradoxical attitude designed to make you feel shame and desire together has completely ruined any chance of healthy attitudes around sex for millions of young boys who grew up in this media landscape, and had no idea how to deal with it and fell down the incel pipeline, and millions of young girls who only see a world of predation and those angry incels and want nothing to do with dating or boys, driving the wedge further and further, a whole generation of people hating and fearing each other grew up and are now running the entire country.

This utterly baffling societal attitude has empowered people like Epstein and his affiliates since way back, and made it a lot easier for people to commit sex crimes, particularly against children. 🙈 🙉 🙊

Yah except in reality it’s just a drone with a taser and an explosive charge. It doesn’t give you a warning, it already has your face in a database of known “opposition members” and you’ve been targeted as a radical terrorist for laughing at that meme someone posted to your facebook. It doesn’t care about stairs and can wait patiently outside your house for you to open a door or window.

Your violent death will be celebrated on state media along with everyone in your terror cell. (Family.)

I don’t know how satire writers are going to survive this century.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/elon-musk-says-tesla-will-stop-producing-s-x-models-shifts-making-robo-rcna256409

They never have concrete rebuttals to thought-out replies. If it was a matter of thinking, they wouldn’t be going to bat for generative AI. Good work though.

I just think it’s silly

I think you need to ask yourself why this one thing is annoying you enough that you felt the need to push back. I don’t want to know, I won’t even see the reply, I am suggesting you ask yourself why it’s important to you to fight a sentiment that a vast number of people who don’t otherwise share anything, happen to all feel the same about and what good you think you’re doing for anyone, even if it’s just yourself.

Yah.

You sound predisposed to being insufferable.

Okay but do you ever lose an argument?

I lived in a rural area and the nearest phone for emergencies belonged to one house that lived a quarter mile away.

The owner of the phone got hooked on WoW on dial-up at some point and basically ended the party line for everyone.

If it’s a personal friend group and we’re talking about life or sharing things or watching a piece of media, or the meeting is about each other, sure, makes sense to show up and “be there.”

When it’s gaming acquaintances and we’re just playing a game, it feels odd and out of place.

Ah, so your idea is a dead-man’s-switch, clever.

I used to basically do it. I was talking to young guys online since before Reddit, and then when Reddit blew up I was right there as well on the frontlines of a huge relationship-related subreddit doing the same thing. I never fancied myself an expert, but I am good at communication and a lot of these guys just needed help being explained how dating and relationships “work” and expect some kind of proceduralism around it.

You can scream until you’re blue that it’s not a system with rules and levers you pull, but if someone is neurodivergent, they’re going to be stuck on “X leads to Y, which means Z” mentality about relationships, and then they will try to apply that thinking in real life, meet rejection or embarrassment and get really bitter and angry. Right wingers and grifters (but I repeat myself) seized onto this with a thousand different “systems” erupting like volcanos in Iceland, covering whole swaths of people with bullshit “redpill” and “PUA” bullshit.

I tried. I really did. I had great success with the guys I focused on, but for every self-described incel who thanked me for helping turn their lives around, 30 more were waiting behind him, each angrier and more foul-mouthed than the last.

It was too much, and it’s extremely exhausting.