The true tragedy is when you get all the social signals and you have the thought “man I wish I could just date multiple people at the same time” and it doesn’t occur to you to try that because… ???

Now I’m old and have to work 1 1/2 full time jobs to pay my bills, so. That won’t be happening.

Lady with social anxiety here to confirm. Flirting is useless. Every time I’ve just given up and asked the dude to date after being extremely forward for a while and they’re always shocked 🤷🏼‍♀️ Once we get past that, it’s great.

We had a wood stove hooked up to our chimney. 😬

Regarding the nightclub … the easiest way I’ve found to sort my feelings out on this was to imagine how hard I’d cringe if this skit was in my corporate-sponsored sexual harassment training. The answer is something around the level of crawl-in-a-hole-and-die rather than endure this skit, and I’m pretty sure “Director So and So is planning a company party and suggested a strip club. How would you respond?” was an actual scenario in one of the many I’ve had to sit through.

Love: weapon durability so long as it’s paired with weapon building and leveling systems. I like that I can’t ever take a weapon for granted and that I can’t hack and slash without thinking. I have Dark Cloud in mind as I’m writing this - it was easily my favorite weapons system I’ve ever played, and it always kept me on my toes. It’s a kind of stress I appreciate because I have some measure of control over it as long as I plan and slow down a little.

Hate: timed anything. Way too much pressure, and it pushes me back towards going faster and not thinking so I can beat the timer, which I don’t like. I especially hate it because I primarily play turn-based JRPGs to get away from having to worry about timing and to be able to play at my own pace. If I wanted to do time-sensitive stuff, I’d play an action game.

Yes, absolutely. It affirms that I’m not alone in my frustration and sadness. I like songs that have an upbeat or energetic feel alongside the dark lyrics though, it helps get me boppin’.

Nope, and I used to do a lot of Reddit - like several times a day, and usually entire evenings just browsing. I used PowerDeleteSuite and deleted my account, and I use an RSS reader with an adblocker for the 2-3 local subs I truly can’t find the same info for elsewhere. One is a university I teach at, and the only exception I’ve made to this was to create a throwaway to answer a question about salaries and point the person who was hoping to teach to our union contract. Worker solidarity > Reddit drama.

Corporations: get your booty back into the office so it’s not empty
Also corporations: we’ve laid off your team in favor of AI, it was a tough but necessary choice due to costs
The empty office building: ???

Hell, I’d do it just because I like sharing information and helping others out. Plus it’s a big project with a sense of accomplishment.

It can also be read as a sign of which class you’re in. I’d blend decently with middle or upper middle class folks, but my “jacked up teeth” (others’ words, not mine) are a dead giveaway about my socioeconomic background. Fortunately, it’s only really visible on the bottom ones. This is also probably part of why my parents kicked that can down the road until it was my problem.

I’d get braces, except I’m only just at the point (after thousands in repairs) of even having a healthy baseline since I didn’t have access to dental care for years. It’s separate and not included in our normal health insurance, and it’s also not required, so if you’re poor, it’s a cost that often gets delayed or cut altogether. Back when I was a kid or through my early career years when I was just trying to keep myself fed and housed, it probably would have been cheaper. Then I was just plain terrified of what the results would be if I DID go to the dentist. I’m still playing catch up and can’t even get to braces if I wanted to until I get my wisdom teeth pulled, because there just isn’t room otherwise.

Tooth problems can also become more serious health problems if they get bad enough.

No idea. Give it a try and report back? It’s easy to use, shouldn’t take too long to find out :)

True! 😁

Welcome! I’m also on kbin.social and have been here a few weeks, so if you’re curious or confused about anything I’m more than happy to help. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of things here, you’ll be at home in no time. :)

I deleted mine too. The time feels right. :)

I’m on kbin too. If you’re ever wondering where someone is commenting from, you can tap their username and their profile will show the instance name. If you’re ever wondering what platform the comments are hosted on, the sidebar (where it says magazine) is the easiest way to see that. I pay attention to that because I know some instances have different moderation rules - for example, Beehaw (which uses Lemmy) is a community that tries to create a safe and productive discussion environment, so I try to be mindful of my actions there to help make sure I’m not interfering when I visit. :) I like to think of it like traveling from my home country to other countries. Norms and customs might different, but we all have some commonalities in how we’re built and communicate at the end of the day.

Lemmy and kbin are just different types of software for communicating, kind of like how you can use an Outlook account or a Gmail account for email. They use the same protocols, but have different interfaces and features. Personally, I like kbin. But either is just fine. Technically, you could even use Mastodon to read this, though that would kind of be like using a terminal for email. It’s possible (I’m sure), it’s just not fine tuned for this type of content or use case.

You’ll get the hang of it quickly. Welcome, be nice, and have fun!

Fuck /u/spez, and more importantly, welcome to everyone coming in today. It’s been amazing watching the growth of kbin, and I’m super thankful for the developers who have kept me connected to my communities - first Christian, now Ernest. I’ve never been in on the ground floor of anything and this has been absolutely wild.

Kinda mad I didn’t grab a short handle while I could, but I wasn’t thinking and just used the same as I had on Reddit. sigh

Deleted my account of 11 years just now as well after verifying PowerDeleteSuite didn’t miss anything the past few days. I thought this would be my hardest non-federated social media account to delete, since it was the last one standing and the one I used most. After what I’ve seen this month, it’s an easy delete. My time there is done.

@christianselig Thank you for an amazing answer to the Reddit app from a former AlienBlue user. It was difficult to lose AlienBlue and the sting is familiar with Apollo. I used your app near exclusively on an iPad and adored it, so I can’t imagine what you must have had cooked up behind the scenes. I’m excited to follow your next chapter from my new home on kbin. :)

I was wondering about this myself. If a bot presents a good argument that promotes discussion, is the presence of a bot automatically bad?

I don’t love that right now, the focus is on eliminating or silencing the voice of bots, because as you point out, they’re going to be indistinguishable from human voices soon - if they aren’t already. In the education space, we’re already dealing with plagiarism platforms incorrectly claiming real student work is written by ChatGPT. Reading a viewpoint you disagree with and immediately jumping to “bot!” only serves to create echo chambers.

I think it’s better and safer long term to educate people to think critically, assume good intent, know their boundaries online (ie, don’t argue when you can’t be coherent about it and have to devolve to name calling, etc), and focus on the content and argument of the post, not who created it - unless it’s very clear from a look at their profile that they’re arguing in bad faith or astroturfing. A shitty argument won’t hold up to scrutiny, and you don’t have the risk of silencing good conversation from a human with an opposing viewpoint. Common agreement on community rules such as “no hate speech” or limiting self-promotion/review/ads to certain spaces and times is still the best and safest way to combat this, and from there it’s a matter of mods enforcing the boundaries on content, not who they think you are.

Whoa - I’ve been reading this discussion and I went to look at what community it federated from, and I was really surprised to find it was Beehaw. I’m sorry you are encountering this here, but I notice that it’s largely not Beehaw users who are continuing interactions that do not meaningfully engage in this conversation. I think this discussion has gotten very heated on both sides (which I understand, I’m vegan myself). I notice you’re coming from kbin.social too - this is just a gentle reminder from a fellow kbin visitor to keep Beehaw’s community guidelines in mind as you’re visiting, and participate in debate with respect. Although you make awesome points, they aren’t being heard right now, except by folks in Beehaw, since they have community guidelines that promote this type of discussion in a respectful manner. It may be better to call this off and restart the conversation in our instance, or choose to respond only to folks who are practicing respectful debate.

Please don’t take the downvotes seriously, especially in Beehaw. Beehaw has downvotes disabled, so what we’re effectively having here is a kbin conversation following kbin rules in Beehaw. If you want to engage with folks who are downvoting you, I think it’s best to do that in our instance or elsewhere to be respectful of Beehaw’s guidelines.

I love the content and community here, and I would hate for our instance to be defederated from Beehaw because we’re not practicing awareness of the community we’re participating in.