Really, it’s babies’ fault for not staying ahead of the game. With all the germs they roll in and all the poop they produce, they should have something to show for it by now.

Guess what happened the two whole times I deliberately ignored the “paranoia.”
Go on. Guess.

To add one more aspect: When someone writes a reply asking for a source, did they actually do a short Google-search related to the claim? It basically takes the same time to just look at the summary of the search results as asking for a source. So I assume if someone asks for verification for an easily searchable fact, then they are acting in bad faith.

This point rubs me a little wrong both on the basis that

A) onus of proof falls on the one making the claim

B) if it takes the same amount of time to find the answer as it took for them to ask you, then logically it takes the same amount of time to include a source for anyone that wants further reading as it would to make them look for it

and (most importantly)

C) you can find pretty much anything on the internet if you’ve got 12 minutes to dedicate to looking through all the clickbait.

The result becomes that I can say any batshit thing I want to and now it’s your job to discredit your own stance for me, and if you aren’t convinced, you aren’t googling hard enough. Instead of just asking and finding out I got it from The Onion, which I would naturally be very against having to say out loud.

You’re supposed to ask what brush he uses.

Oh, man. If this is your first, I can’t wait to see what you do in the future. You nailed that

It’s really a mix of both. More heavily the way the site has been for years because people love drama more than anything else. If you want the sweet serotonin of karma, you’ve gotta be simultaneously the funniest, meanest, and most jaded person in the room, and everyone is jockeying for that position.

It just breeds assholes by design. I’ve noticed my own behavior has changed, too, since leaving that place, although partially that’s because I just didn’t want to be like that anymore.

But it really has been noticeably affected since the protests. I was originally trying to stay for one single sub I was in, because they were the kindest, calmest community I’d met since back when forums were a thing.

Just the best group, for reasons none of us really understood and some of us kept trying to find psychological commonalities to explain. Truly 98% of them were people I’d chill with irl and I still know a few on discord. And also here. If you’re reading this, hello!

But the migration away was enough to completely alter the atmosphere imo. A lot of the more conscientious users left for other pastures, leaving behind those that were more neutral or even openly hostile about the protests.

There began to be fights and insults thrown where before this, any aggression had been unusual. The posts took a turn that reflected that feeling and I really stopped bothering with the place after a few months. I’m still a bit sad about it and there are things that I miss, but there just wasn’t enough to hold me anymore. It seemed to increasingly echo every other part of the site.

For the moment, this place is quieter but better. We still get dumb shit every now and then, but it’s not to the same degree and hopefully never will be. As above, I blame the demographic. We’ve grouped all the people with stubborn morals into a little room and it turns out they have things in common. I do miss a couple people I used to see everywhere all the time when kbin first ramped up, but we run in different circles and they’ve gotten lost in the crowd.

And yes, btw, I am also going to name you one of my favorite users to see around. You seem as kind as you are prolific.

This. This was the moment that I found out that the eldest of gen Alpha, the babies after the babies who can only be so young as to be entirely theoretical like they were when we collectively decided on the name, are thirteen now.

It is santa. You think my own parents would just lie to me for over 30 years!? To hand the credit to someone imaginary? Doesn’t make a shred of sense.

11yr old me would have disagreed

I would absolutely do that, my dude, and I’m totally definitely going to do that exactly today, possibly in 3 more hours when I’m sure everyone’s come off lunch.

But you gotta understand there is a 30% chance there’s gonna be another person at the other end of that call.

The manager of that store was the same one who, to name just a few occasions:

• Disregarded safety and climbed up the boxes herself when doing truck, resulting in a large container being dislodged from the top and landing directly on an employee’s face, breaking his nose. She begged him not to tell, and he really should have. While I can’t say that she 100% wouldn’t have paid him off, he was also just really nice.

• Made fun of another employee’s weekly pay in front of all their coworkers. It was only in the double digits because they’d had the flu for weeks.

• When a customer bought a candy bar, stood there in line and ate the entire thing, then immediately demanded a full refund because they “didn’t like it,” forced me to complete that refund because the customer is always right.

• Calmed a different customer over the holiday rush by publicly and very loudly threatening to fire me. The complaint had been quite simply that I (quote) “wasn’t smiling enough” and this must have ruined this person’s entire holiday spirit. Unbeknownst to the customer but fully known to my boss, I had just cremated my brother two weeks ago. The PTSD from that year’s rush is just barely starting to fade twelve years later.

In short, the manager of this particular store would do whatever action was the cruelest to others with the least amount of effort on her part, but then fall all over herself to brown nose A Customer.

No, I’m not aware she was made to pay for the door. She very likely would have been allowed to shop if she physically could have.

Not even solely relegated to old people, either, unless the fediverse thinks 30-40 is old. We had one woman come by our shit little dollar store about 20 minutes after we’d closed. So, long enough for us to start counting out, cleaning, etc., but not long enough to go home yet.

Noticed the door was locked. Noticed those of us not still busy were hanging out and chatting while we waited, surreptitiously watching this person. Visibly read the store hours. Tried the lock again.

Started prying open the door while we all stared in horror, ended up breaking it, then threw a whole fit to boot because we couldn’t sell her anything with all the tills in the back room and we kept trying to kick her out for some reason.

She wasn’t even high. She was just that entitled, because very often for suburban moms, the rules don’t apply if you don’t let them.

Fable does this too. At least the third one. I’d married a beggar with the honest intention of lifting up one of my kingdom’s most socially aware instead of settling for some brainless, peacocking noble, and all he did with his time on the throne was become a national embarrassment on the same old street corner.

So. Remembering the existence of this “Henry VIII” achievement that I’d thought I was never gonna bother getting. I took my beloved beggar-king down to the treasury, positioned him at the very top of the overflowing pile of gold he always seemed to forget we had, and shot him in the head. And then I started thinking about that achievement.

There were a lot of NPCs that really did bug me.

I was just thinking the same thing. More than the usual amount of love went into that one, and most people probably wouldn’t even stop to notice. The subtle fade-out at the top. That is some pleasing vomit.

Anna Garvey has described these individuals as having "both a healthy portion of Gen X grunge cynicism, and a dash of the unbridled optimism of Millennials"

I’m sorry?

Relevant Dr. Glaucomflecken

Only people I like, which is none of them

Originally it was, with a more guilt-trippy headline, but like with most propaganda people like this come up with, I fail to see the problem.

Imagine your parents giving you the chance to be born and grow up in actual Heaven, having never been at the mercy of…*gestures vaguely at everything*…and that’s supposed to be bad parenting.

That’s apparently the evil option. The good parenting option is the one with all the murder and starvation and the constant risk of sin and therefore hell. You’re giving your child the opportunity to go to hell if you have it here, instead of just automatically sending it to heaven like you could.

*I* want the best for my child.

Ok. Mini-rant because I can’t contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I’ve been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I’m quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they’re the type that only hates what they make because they’re the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you’re Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don’t even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn’t what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what’s in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand – this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you’ve got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you’re able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.