Gay was one of those substitution words to imply a different meaning, that eventually became the word itself. No one wanted to say “homosexual,” so they instead said that some guy was “gay” (happy) around other men. Wink, wink.

Eventually, it got overused to the point it became synonymous with homosexual, and now that’s the preferred term. For a while it became a slur, but gay people have reclaimed it over the years. Bigots still try to use it as a slur, but it has very little effect nowadays.

Lemmy is my main social media account. I also switched from Reddit when Spez killed third party apps, and I won’t go back. I use Sync for Lemmy on my phone and tablet. I paid for the lifetime Ultra account, because that’s how much of a “fuck you” I wanted to give Spez. I’ll gladly pay the $100 for an alternative ad-free app than use Reddit’s free app.

I also use Imgur, although it’s been suffering from enshittification ever since Sarah and the team sold it. I can’t even save a post without getting a pop-up asking to subscribe to the user or follow similar content tags. Or downvote without being asked if I want to block the user or related tags. Just let me do the thing and move on! Stop trying to customize my experience! I’m still able to block their ads, thanks to my VPN service, but they built a dedicated ad space at the bottom of the app that I can’t make go away. So a section of the bottom of my Imgur screen is unusable black space. I miss being able to use my full screen to browse images.

I still have Facebook, but only because everyone I know from my childhood until now is there and it’s my main way of staying in touch with people. If I dump Facebook, I’ll have practically no one left in my life, except for my sister, wife, and maybe two friends. If I need social engagement concerning something going on in my life, I’ll post it there. But I don’t use it much.

I have LinkedIn and spent years keeping my profile up to date and super detailed, expecting to need some good references and a solid history of experience and accomplishments. But then I retired at 38 years old and found out I don’t need to work anymore, so it’s just been collecting dust for the last 2 years now. I still get the occasional request to connect from someone offering to help me find a job (I’m a veteran), but I don’t need their assistance. I’m quite happy being retired young.

I have a Discord server I built for my closest friends to stay in touch, but only 2 people regularly interact on it. I subscribed to maybe 30+ other random servers, but I mute pretty much all of them so I’m not inundated with Discord notifications all the time.

I have Twitch, but mostly used it to stream the games I’m playing when I’m bored. I’m happy if I get 1 or 2 views. I do it just for the fun of it, not to build a following or anything.

I have NextDoor, but there are thousands of people in my town who use it regularly, so it’s hard to stay in touch with my “neighbors.” I mostly ignore it unless I’m trying to find suggestions for something local.

I made a Bluesky account last year; got an invite from a friend before it opened up to everyone. But I hardly ever used Twitter in the past. I always felt like it was pointless unless you were a celebrity with tons of followers. So I’m having trouble thinking of ways to use Bluesky now.

I have Instagram, but only because Facebook merged my account with Instagram when they bought it. I’ve never used it, not even to browse others’ content there.

I made a Snapchat account in high school, but never used it. That was over 20 years ago. Back then, Snapchat was just used to share selfies, and I didn’t like taking selfies so I had no use for it. Is Snapchat still a thing?

I had a MySpace account when I was a teenager, but I guess the site got sold sometime in the past decade or two. I kinda forgot about it, and the last time I went to check it out, it was a totally different site and didn’t recognize my login anymore.

I made an account on Pixelfed last year to share pictures, but I don’t really have anything to share right now. I only remembered I had the account because I just now found their app in my phone.

I use Patreon, mostly just to follow a few people I know and support them.

I worked as an IT guy in the military, and we were explicitly banned from using TikTok when it became popular, because it was a Chinese spyware program and they didn’t want it stealing data on US military members. When you installed it, we found that it embedded itself in your phone in a way that was extremely difficult to fully remove, then granted itself full access to your phone and started trickling your data to Chinese servers. It was a massive security vulnerability, which is why President Biden pushed to block TikTok from the US. But the app was so popular, he got a lot of pushback and it never got blocked. It’s still wildly popular, but I’ll never touch that program.

Okay, now can we short sell GameStop stocks and bankrupt them? /s

I tried Warhammer 40K once, but I got the cold shoulder when I mentioned I didn’t have any minis to play with.

They also took 3 sessions to finish pursuing a suspicious character across an alley. I nope’d out of the group after that.

I enjoy the imagination and storytelling most of all. Coming up with an adventure for all of us to discuss and enjoy is fun!

But most of the groups I’ve played with take forever to do anything. We’ll spend like 4 sessions just trying to wrap up a scenario in a tavern and move on. I need to find a DM who can keep the action going and not just give people all the time they want to talk their way through a situation before acting. And I also need to find players who are more decisive.

I’ve played with five completely different groups in the past 20 years, and all of them were exactly like this.

Not at all. I believe the game was actually made for English audiences because the speaking animations seem to match the English subtitles and look like a bad dub in French. There is a lot of French in the background, but it’s more like immersive world details. The important stuff is either place names that are explicitly mentioned, like the Saint-Michel Rotunda in the first screenshot, or written in English. Heck, I think there’s more English in that first screenshot than French.

I love the idea of DnD, but every group I’ve ever played with just made it such a drag. I’ve never had fun actually playing it. So now I follow the memes and that’s about it.

Oh, and the Mann Shorts videos about DnD. I would totally play with those guys.

I suggest that I’m going to have sex with someone. Then, as a form of retaliation, I tell them I’m not going to have sex with them. By your logic, this is not punishment.

I think I see the problem with your logic here. This whole 4B movement is about women taking back control over their bodies, especially in an upcoming era that’s allowing misogynistic men to be more vocal and accepted in society.

It has nothing to do with punishment. Claiming that women are “retaliating against” or “punishing” men is making the topic about men instead of what it’s really about - women’s rights.

No women is required to date a man, or sleep with a man, or even associate with men. Period. 4B is just a way for women to protect themselves from the incoming onslaught of openly misogynistic men that Trump’s presidency is justifying.

Will women dump their current partners and/or spouses to join this movement? Doubtful, unless there are already some red flags there that they’re just now picking up. But that’s inconsequential because again, this movement isn’t about men.

As men, it’s so easy for us live our lives without fear. Almost no one tries to rape and/or murder us because they thought we were hot. We hardly ever have stalkers. So we don’t realize just how prevalent that scenario is in a woman’s life. Even my own wife, who I always felt was tougher than me, is still terrified to go out by herself at night because she’s already been victim to sexual harassment and assault, multiple times. That’s not something I’ve ever had to deal with in my own life.

And the crazy things is, women really don’t know who they’re getting involved with until it’s too late. Sure, to us men it seems like most men are fine and harmless. But that’s because we’re not the sexual target of most men. A dude who seems like a fine gentleman might have some fucked-up desires or views on women’s autonomy behind closed doors, and they can be really good at pretending to be a decent human being in public. It’s only once a woman is alone behind those closed doors that they might truly learn the awful plans a guy has for her, and at that point, it might be too late to get out without danger to life or limb. Or worse, surviving a situation like that and then having no one believe you in court, so you can’t prevent that person from stalking you.

Preventing that scenario in the first place is the whole point of 4B. Women always live in fear of dating men because it’s always a gamble. Truly kind and respectful men who understand boundaries and never push them are extremely rare. Even “decent” men still think with their dicks from time to time and push boundaries, hoping they can convince their partner to cave and give them what they want. With the surge of misogynists coming out of the woodwork and being openly threatening to women, it risks spreading acceptance of the mindset that women don’t get bodily autonomy around men. So abstaining from men entirely is the safest thing they can do right now. It’s too risky trying to figure out if someone is truly a gentleman or if they’re just putting on a mask to get laid.

Basically, women are saying they’re trying to protect their lives and you’re trying to turn the discussion toward men’s rights instead. The topic isn’t about men. And treating a women’s decision to retain bodily autonomy like it’s a reward or punishment for guys is honestly super misogynistic in itself. No man is entitled to a women’s body; it is not punishment for a woman to decide not to associate with a man.

I actually prefer Lemmy because my voice isn’t drowned out like on Reddit. Anything even remotely interesting already had 10K+ comments on Reddit by the time I found it, and my own little addition isn’t going to be noticed by anyone. But here on Lemmy, the most popular posts have like 20-30 comments, tops. I could add my 2 cents, three days later, and still get up/downvotes.

I’m more likely to reply and vote on posts and comments here because I feel like I’m contributing to a small-knit community, not just adding to a massive statistic. Reddit was more about consuming content. My pithy up/downvotes and comments over there hardly made a difference most of the time.

Here you go, I added some pixels to your post:

Yeah, that $950 was already 2 years of payments, which OP was complaining about “investing” in his games. Where are they coming up with an additional $200 per month?! At that point, why not just invest that $200/mo and keep enjoying your games?

EDIT: OP changed their math literally a minute after I posted this. It makes more sense now.

Oh my god! I used to read Sam & Fuzzy about 2 decades ago when I was a teenager! I didn’t realize the strip was still running. It got weird for a while and the main characters disappeared for about a year of strips, so I kind of lost interest. I wonder what’s happened in the last 20 years. It looks like it was rebooted about 15 years ago, and I don’t recognize any characters in recent strips.

If I had to ask my boss for permission to use the restroom all the time, I’d probably respond the same way.

For Karl!

The Driller I regularly play with has a nasty habit of abandoning our group to go drill tunnels where we don’t need tunnels. He’s always looking to take shortcuts directly to his objective instead of following the caves.

Then, when we’re trying to run to the drop pod, Molly will just go straight up one of his tunnels in the ceiling, where we can’t follow. Then we’re frantically running around, trying to find another route to the drop pod without Molly’s flags.

Oh, and he fights every large bug with C4, nearly killing us all in the process.

I’ll get there one day… but it’ll be a while before I have the free time and motivation to slog through it again.

Good to know, thanks!

You’re absolutely correct, I am approaching it from the wrong mindset. The thing is, I like my crafting games to be chill sandbox games. I have ADHD and am easily distracted, so being dumped into a world where I’m struggling just to survive, and then finding threats everywhere while I’m trying to progress on a build or something… I find myself stressed and unable to focus on progression. So I prefer games that let me go at my own pace, without distractions from the task I’m focusing on.

With Subnautica, I don’t know where to go to progress without spending time exploring and getting distracted along the way. So it will take me hundreds of hours to actually complete the game; time that I rarely dedicate to any single game. And too much time if I’m not having fun along the way.

I’ve been meaning to give Techtonica another chance. I was enjoying it, but I tried to play it with a friend and he checked out early because the build menus and crafting mechanics were too complicated for him. Because of that, we switched to another game to play regularly and I never really got back to Techtonica. I agree with my friend that it was a bit complex at first, but I was enjoying figuring it out.

For me, games are strictly a form of entertainment. I play to escape reality and do something fun for a while. So when a game “treats you like an adult,” I feel like the fun is gone and now I’m stuck working just to gain a little bit of progress. I don’t get a sense of reward from that, I just get frustrated.

Especially if there are important events that you can miss. I used to be a completionist with my games (I still am, to a degree) and I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of a game to really enjoy every bit of effort the developers put into creating this world. But finding out a game takes 50+ hours to beat, and then realizing that I may have missed important details and that I’ll need to replay that lengthy game to find them again… no way. That’s too much effort. I mentally check out really quick.

I agree with you about The Outer Wilds. I think I’ve played about an hour of that game and I had no idea what I was doing or what the plot was about. Everyone kept saying it’s better if you go into it blind, so I didn’t read anything before playing and, well… I don’t know what I was playing. That’s another game on my list to give a second chance before I give up on it completely.