The enshitification of Reddit, especially the auto-mods and the prevalence of site-wide, permanent bans for minor infractions.
Plus, when accessed through your fave app, it feels like older Reddit, but I obviously way quieter and, in my experience, nicer people.
Exactly. I even checked the community rules before I posted. Fucking basement-dwelling sociopaths.
I’m actually pretty comfortable in my skin, and with my family at this stage in my life. A few bumps on the road to get here, but never been as content as I am now. Of course family brings it’s own worries. I very much need to start working on myself health wise. The reckless almost nihilist attitude I had as a younger man has taken its toll. Hopefully I can correct things, but I’m leaving it pretty late at 48.
Not all. Kudos to those who are, and deep condolences to those in this thread that have had such trauma that they seek it. But at 48 I’ve never felt more at ease with the world, and I simply don’t want to go.
That said, I’m a fucking idiot. I drink too much most weekends, I overeat and I’m a light smoker/vaper.
Yes I exercise, but nowhere near enough. I need to change, I know it. But I always retreat into excuses.
Depends entirely on the person I’m talking to.
Adding ‘This’ll be a doozy’ doesn’t exactly sign-post a willingness to enter into an open-minded discussion, bud.
Out of curiosity, what would you recommend?
Spotify costs very little and is installed in 3 separate households, but if you’ve an alternative then I’d delighted to hear it.
Amazon prime photos just works. I’ve a Synology NAS that I was using with Plex but it’s clunky AF. We’ve got firesticks simply to access our IPTV, but it also means we can view those photos easily.
Starlink - there’s literally no alternative where I live.
YouTube - had premium, but through an Indian address so cost me £2.99 per month.
Audible - no justification, just a subscription to a service we used.
Meh, probably. I’ve also got a couple of Alexa’s. Honestly couldn’t give a fuck at this point.
Any suggestions? ExpressVPN works pretty well on all my devices, but I’m open to alternatives
Definitely gonna get normie-shamed by some of you guys, but we’ve got:
Spotify premium (family logins shared with sister and parents, so I’m sort of stuck with it)
Amazon Prime (all our photos are in their Unlimited photo storage - it just works and links in with our firestick seamlessly so that the fam can actually look back at the photos easily)
Express VPN (got it for privacy, stayed for the porn which is blocked in the UK)
Audible (forgot to cancel)
YouTube premium (have actually just cancelled now that I can use the Albanian VPN trick)
Starlink (hate Elon, but live rurally so no choice)
Finally, IPTV which is illegal and £80 a year but gives me everything.
Well said. There’s also something about a certain type of atheist who confidently voices their refusal to believe in anything unless proven with empirical evidence, that I personally find mildly irritating.
I appreciate critical thinking and I’m quite skeptical myself, but it’s that confident certainty, that nothing that hasn’t been proven scientifically is real, that slightly irks me.
It’s a mindset that seems to conveniently omit the possibility of future scientific discoveries and ‘unknown science’, and comes off in some as a somewhat smug, arrogant attitude that, somewhat ironically, can often be found in the blindly religious.
“God Speed, John Glen”
Not sure if this counts, but there was a militant trade union leader in the 80s called Arthur Scargill, who made many public speeches predicting what was going to happen to the British steel, coal and manufacturing industry.
He was widely derided, demonised and lampooned as a ‘looney’ by the Murdoch press.
Needless to say, pretty much everything he predicted came true.
I’ve had countless shitty jobs and shitty bosses. Now I’m in charge of a team and, as a product of who I am and my own lived experiences, I treat them fairly and with a degree of kindness and sympathy that I’ve never really had from my former bosses.
I overlook a lot of the petty paperwork and have various on-going deals with staff whereby I’m extremely flexible and they reciprocate by often going the extra mile for me. Our team mostly runs well and my own manager is pleased.
However, I occasionally feel unappreciated by 1 or 2 staff who have been there so long that they’ve forgotten how things could be if I was inflexible, stuck strictly to the rules and came down on them a lot harder - which an other boss could easily do.
I suspect that some mistake my kindness for weakness, even though I’ve always spoken with authority and plainly, albeit in private to those that have needed it.
Truth is we’re local gov, the perks are good, as is the job security, but there’s an element of complacency and an awareness that you have to do a lot wrong to get fired - and it’s a long process.
So yeah, I mostly don’t mind my job, but I resent staff who haven’t had it as bad as I have in the past and don’t seem to understand that their decent conditions are because of who I am, and are not really the norm in other departments.
Interesting question. In our apparent societal quest to remove as many differences between the two traditional genders (yes, there are more than two, but that’s a whole other conversation that’s been covered at length and in-depth elsewhere), we seem very keen to push the idea that attitudes and physiology in terms of masterbation for men and women are mostly the same.
It feels like we’ve conflated equality with similarity, to such an extent that to suggest differencees between the most prominent genders implies superiority/inferiority of one group over another.
I’d argue that the trope of the teenage boy who’s coming of age, suddenly obsessed with sex, who discovers masterbation and does it several times a day - to the extent that it’s viewed in a slightly comedic/immature yet relatable fashion by fully grown men, is mostly accurate. Hence being a wanker is a fairly easy insult to throw - the implication being that the man being insulted is immature and sexually frustrated.
I don’t think that lands the same to teenage girls in terms of the weight of the insult. Girls don’t generally, to my knowledge (3 sisters, multiple female friends, 2 marriages) reference each other’s elevated teenage sex drives when insulating each other.
Away from the internet, there are obviously physical differences and less well understood hormonal and psychology elements at play that affect the frequency, intensity and arguably the nature of arousal in men and women. There are outliers and yes, to some extent we’re all similar… But those differences needn’t be dismissed in a well meaning but, to my mind, over-simplistic take like ‘both men and women can be wankers’.
Yes I’d agree, that’s objectively true, but the very act of pointing that out as some some sort of self-evident fact, shows that there has been a belief to the contrary in the past that’s worth exploring. It may very well be rooted in historical sexism or ignorance, but my point is that we have a tendency to short-circuit the discussion with convenient and acceptable statements, rather than exploring, acknowledging and possibly celebrating our differences.
I got an Atari STE when I was 14 for Christmas. I’m 48 and it’s still going strong. Best Christmas present I ever had. Sure, it spent 20 years in the attic while I was living my 20s and 30s, but I refurbished it about 5 years ago and I still love it. Got my kids playing it now and then, although Golden Axe doesn’t really compete with some of the PS5 stuff they’re into.
Boost. Used to use it for Reddit, then they disabled the APIs or whatever.
Anyway, it’s excellent. Highly recommend.
Truth is, regardless of how fucked that platform is, I still resent being banned and the insane extent to which they prevent you returning. The use of throwaways was entirely normal back in the day, now it’s called ‘ban evasion’. It’s nearly impossible (or at least super-tedious) to get back on once they kick you off. It just seems like such an extreme over-reaction. Permanent bans are insane. I’ve seen people get barred from pubs after drunken violence, but that’s usually only for a year or so. This is basically forever.
I was on there for over a decade and posted in multiple communities all the time. Had a load of karma and rarely got into any aggressive arguments. Then one day I upset a mod for complaining about a removed post, that apparently contravened some petty rule. I’m banned from the sub. I use another account, they found out it was me I’m permanently banned. 12 years of contribution just forgotten, all because of some vindictive little basement dwelling prick.