OpenStars

30 seconds costs a minute

I… but… it… wha… my brain just broke a little :-P

There have always been such (it is human nature) - but right now they feel bold enough to speak and act, whereas previously they had been too afraid and embarrassed to do so publicly.

In South Carolina, various KKK-like groups said in advance that they wanted to kill people, wrapped barbed wire around baseball bats (in order to better kill people with), showed up to kill people, then actually killed people, then bragged about having killed people… Oh right, but the other side was not successful in securing a permit for their peaceful protest, so you know, there are “many sides” to every issue I guess.

Misinformation/brainwashing techniques are powerful. Like if you believed that a particular type of human was the root of all evil in this world, then you SHOULD want them dead, under those circumstances… right? You do not bc you know better, not just about that one group but more fundamentally that it is ideas that bring about evil, not people. But the people killing people do not know that, and it is to the advantage of others who seek power, and want to use the army of sheeple to advance their own agenda, for those sheeple to not know that either.

This sounds like something Mothra would say… :-P

I’ve seen individual instances like that, but ofc ymmv. Curate what you do not enjoy, and maybe consider switching instances even if need be, to get something acceptable to use. Life is too short to waste your time otherwise - there will always be trolls, so let them troll, but you don’t have to choose to share the same space as them!

Although ofc some amount of that is going to happen no matter where you go, so it’s a matter of degree (and also of kind, in terms of new levels of severity) depending on your instance, the magazine you are in, etc. Even so, blocking can work wonders for someone who simply ruins every single conversation they are involved in without ever contributing positively. It is not your responsibility to help train everyone around you to live life, if you do not want to! It is nice to have choices, sometimes:-).

That is bc Reddit used to be a discussion forum, but along the way (to the planned IPO) switched to aim to become a social media platform. Longer comments literally got harder to type out, as more users were pushed towards using the mobile app (to monetize their data?), which in turn brought in a younger crowd, used to different forms of interactions from other social media sites. I’ve heard reports of old-Reddit starting to break after July, and you just know they’ll kill it off entirely soon enough, or would if they thought they could get away with it.

Reddit literally changed, lead in large part by the push for the IPO, and it got harder and harder to buck the trend.

Until we all just gave up on it entirely and came here instead - problem solved! :-P

The ability to curate our individual experiences here is fantastic!

As one example: in the main niche Reddit sub I visited there is someone who continually downvotes literally every single comment in any given random thread, no matter what the content. It is extremely obvious when that occurs, especially when there is a rather pronounced demarcation indicating the time that it stopped. Ironically it seems to be just one person! Probably someone who was banned and since lack of consent only excites them further, now is out to “make them pay”, including the randos who never visited the sub before in their lives and now just wanted to ask an innocent question, having nothing whatsoever to do with the mods or common contributors. Here, you can see exactly who downvotes you, and could block someone doing that.

Similarly one person started abusing the report button on practically every comment I made, tagging my name 9 times in a message before I blocked them, so with that avenue to try to hurt me disabled they sought out other means. Here, again I think such reports are public.

Having to put your name to something rather than allowing it to be anonymous may cause someone to pause before jumping immediately to abusive behaviors. Sadly their parents never taught them how to behave, but at least we have better tools here to curate our receipt of what the platform delivers to us from these would-be abusers, making it much more enjoyable IMHO. I don’t think I’d like this place if it became more like YouTube or 4chan, even if some people seem to think the opposite (except those places already exist practically everywhere, even X nowadays, so like… go there if you enjoy it so much, but I’d like at least one place that is NOT that way, somewhere/somehow!?). And Lemmy/Kbin is that place!:-)

The trick is that people can talk however they like, but they cannot mandate that a particular comment rise to the top of a particular scoring scheme. If commentors and voters would both use discretion based on the magazine they are in… but that is a moot point bc that won’t happen either.

Short of something like a separate voting scheme (was this comment (a) popular or (b) insightful? or maybe both types can be up/down-voted independently; but then you could sort by either one or the other), I think it will just continue to happen here, even if less overwhelming than on Reddit, due to both different audiences and scales of population.

Think of it from the LLM’s perspective - in the general pool you have common English, you have less common variations such as this, and then you have whatever the heck people like Kid Rock are doing…

Bawitdaba, da bang, da dang diggy diggy
Diggy, said the boogie, said up jump the boogie

It is only awful bc you managed to capture the thought so perfectly - be proud of its awfulness then!:-D

People have covered most of the bases here. The hardest part is that if you don’t go back soon, you will find that door is closed to you - at least to finish what you started, without having to start mostly over again. College can definitely be worthwhile, but whether it is worthwhile TO YOU is the issue. Also, once you get used to receiving a paycheck and not living on like Ramen… it is next to impossible to go back to being poor and spending every waking moment (and beyond) studying, especially for some undefinable end goal. But on the other hand, I’ve seen it done with like 15-year gaps in-between dropping out, joining the army/navy/whatever and then going back to finish up. Definitely think through all the angles here, b/c you don’t want to do anything that you will regret later - including wasting more time chasing something that you don’t really want to begin with.

I hear that, but also…

Well, I was doing the same, but noticed that even in the niche subs, the conversations seemed to be getting more and more… juvenile? Like prior to the Snoopacolypse (as you called it, and I love it! The term not the event in case that needs any clarification:-P), it was a point of pride for me that I had never blocked anyone in my life - whereas now I don’t think twice before doing that bc who has time to waste on someone not engaging in good faith!? Especially if they lack enough self awareness to even realize that fact about themselves while they are doing it. (Tbf, possibly watching Innuendo Studios’ analysis of GamerGate that uses many tactics of the Alt Right in America had something to do with my changing views as well:-).

Ymmv ofc, bc different subs means entirely different people & thus experiences interacting with them, but I’m just saying that rather than stick with the subset of that community that remained after Rexit, I eventually just find myself going or even wanting to go there less and less, instead enjoying engaging here more, even at the expense of not being able to talk about those matters. I haven’t posted there for months, nor even commented for a month, and barely go once a week to read. Bc I use Kbin and the mobile browser experience here is so horrible to write a comment, I find myself not commenting here often either - but when I do I have much more fun doing so, not having to be anywhere near as defensive as that other place that shall not be named.

I hope you find something that works best for you as well, wherever that may be.

If wishes were horses, then we all would ride.

As it is, instead we will FAAFO.

Not just right now - it was probably always that way. At one point those nations needed STEM e.g. engineers to win those (cultural) wars, while now we are gearing up to use robots and AI instead.

Even so, I think the loss of antibiotics is more of a short sighted side effect. It could need a century of development to overcome, but it is more profitable to sell pain relief right now so… it’s a problem for a future generation to have to deal with, so long as I get mine now, seems to be the way of thinking.

It’d be really funny if he had no idea who she was, cause she just grabbed some random stranger:-P

Fwiw, this meme is more than good enough:-)

Thanks for sharing it with us all.:-D

We may look back at these days - you know, where not all diseases kill you, and in fact were super easily handled, barely an inconvenience!:-P - and wish to have such things as “antibiotics” again, before bacteria all became immune to them.

Or maybe the world will rally together, and start funding research into alternatives quickly enough for it to matter? Just like climate change too…

It’s a good thing that people aren’t anti-science now, bc that surely would be a problem if we want to reach that bright shiny happy future we keep hoping for. :-|

Chrono Trigger

The best game of all time, period.

Yes, it is sad, but we do what we must. :-P

Kevin has altered the deal…pray he does not alter it any further.

Nev…