I used to get frustrated with people very easily, and honestly I still do, but I've gotten much better at keeping my cool. I can't think of any specific moment or anything that brought me here, but at some point I realized that getting angry and blowing up at somebody just doesn't do anybody any good. Like even looking at it from a completely selfish perspective, shouting at somebody over an annoyance isn't going to help me with anything at all, and in fact it's likely to just make the situation worse. It's been long enough that I don't really even feel tempted to anymore.
Another thing is like... I used to lean much more conservative until I eventually realized that it's just rather self-destructive. I never bought into the more extreme stuff like believing certain ethnicities are inherently, genetically inferior to others, but to put it simply for a while I was convinced that things like feminism and environmentalism were going to "take stuff away from me." Not even on some grand scale of like destroying western civilization or whatever people like to say these days, but just that I as an individual would be less likely to succeed and get rich or whatever.
I was more libertarian-ish in college, and I think it was all the battles for net neutrality around 2013-2015 or so that finally got me to realize that a complete lack of government oversight would be untenable for anyone who isn't already wealthy. From there, especially as the online right started getting louder and crazier, I started to figure out that the same people who'd been "warning" me and other sad nerds like me about feminism and whatever were the only ones who were actually trying to force people to do anything. Most people just want to exist, man. They're not trying to push some agenda on everyone else, they just wanna live their damn lives.
As for the environmentalism bit, yeah I only ever "doubted" climate change because I thought trying to prevent it was gonna stop me from getting rich and having a fancy car and shit. I always knew it was real, I just wanted to not care and be all belligerent about it. And no, of course I didn't have a plan for how I was gonna get rich lmao, I was a dumb, selfish kid. Now I know I'll never get rich no matter what I do and we're all gonna die in a climate disaster anyway, so whatever lol.
I dunno how much I can say any of this guides or inspires me, but I do feel like I've become a better person at least, somehow.
In theory I can enjoy either one pretty much equally.
In practice I feel like I tend to enjoy movies more these days, since for the most part they're actually made with an ending in mind. A lot of TV series tend to either get cancelled inconclusively or just keep stretching on aimlessly forever as long as the studio thinks it'll make money.
I didn't really "participate" in the internet in the early days, those being the early 2000s for me. Most of my memories from back then are of flash games and animations, had a lot of fun with those over the years.
Most of all I think I just miss the pre-gamergate internet on the whole. Obviously there have always been bigots and assholes on the internet, but now they've really staked their claim and driven their hooks in deep. It sucks to watch everything I enjoy become part of the culture war and the most vocal parts of virtually every fan base that I would otherwise be a part of turn into raging pieces of shit.
Though I suppose the internet already had enough evil in it to harass a bunch of actors from the Star Wars prequels to the brink of suicide well before gamergate, so maybe shit was just always bad.
I don’t buy the idea that disintegrating my molecules and reconstructing new ones is tantamount to murder or suicide.
I definitely don't think teleportation in science fiction is meant to be killing the person using it and making a clone of them. Like unless a story is specifically about that, I don't think any given sci-fi author is trying to set up some sinister background plot where everyone is unknowingly killing themselves all the time.
But I do still have to wonder if that's how it would end up working out in real life. Sure all our cells have died and been replaced since we were born, but that typically doesn't happen with all your cells at the same time lol. imo it's probably less about cells and more about like... Consciousness or "the soul" or whatever, I don't know. Whatever it is, I accept that teleporters in fiction have some way to store and transport it, whether it's stated in the narrative or not. But in real life I have no idea how we'd be able to tell if such a thing could even work.
Damn I guess I misremembered. The Thanksgiving thing is a video he did, and despite it being like 90 minutes long I've gotten it as an ad on other videos. Haven't watched the fuckin thing and I don't plan to. Idk why I thought the sign had that slogan, but I feel like the video title used the same "change my mind" thing.
Yeah, I know I'd seen the original meme format around for years before I ever actually learned who Steven Crowder was lol. I imagine most people who post the memes don't know either, or at the very least they're not trying to promote him or anything, but it gets a little hard to unsee once you become aware of it.
The Jedi in the time of the prequels were evil because they decided to become cops who were more interested in upholding order than justice. Luke ate fascists for breakfast.
The original one said something like "Thanksgiving isn't racist, change my mind," which is like... Not a thing that anybody says. The way Thanksgiving is taught to American kids is racist and full of revisionist history, but not even the ideal reddit caricature of an SJW would go around telling everyone that eating a turkey and mashed potatoes makes you racist. It was like inviting people to dEbAtE him on an issue that people aren't really even trying to make, so he'd get to sit there like a smug asshole without having to do anything.
Edit: I remembered the wrong slogan, the original sign said something else. The Thanksgiving bit was from a video he did, iirc the title used the same "change my mind" naming convention.
I want to be able to say I'm going down swinging, but at this point I have no idea how we're supposed to do that aside from like... Blowing up pipelines or whatever. Having a year's world of recycling be undone by one minute of a coca cola plant operating normally doesn't exactly feel like swinging lol.
My middle school banned Pokemon back in the early 2000s. It probably would have worked out for them if they didn't try to escalate things too far though.
Like at first you could bring a gameboy or the trading cards and play during recess. First they banned gameboys, then they banned the cards, and eventually we literally weren't allowed to say "Pokemon" or we'd get in trouble. I don't think they ever unbanned gameboys, but I think it took less than a year for them to walk everything else back and soon enough everyone was playing the TCG at recess again.
I don't think we'll be dead, but I do think the world is gonna look pretty different. Like I don't think humanity is gonna go extinct within my lifetime, but shit's gonna get bad.
Although I suppose there's decent odds that I as an individual will be dead by 2050 lol.
Hell sometimes even when it does. There are some with really shitty locks and I've seen people just rip them open anyway and then blame the person inside for not locking it.
It's me, I'm the person inside.
He can be your angle or yuor devil