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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • If you accept rejection with dignity, it’s not that big a deal. Don’t be a creeper. It’s not that embarrassing. And if your friend group is cruel about it, that’s good to know. They’d be assholes in that case, and you probably want to find out they’re assholes in a low stakes situation.




  • A friend and I were talking about what’s wrong with the world, and one of the things we discussed was there aren’t any consequences for minor infractions. We’re all too polite. Someone does something shitty, like this person in their car, or someone taking up 4 seats on the bus, or throwing their trash on the street, and no one does anything. No one wants to start a fight or make a scene.

    Many people operate at a very basic level of moral reasoning: avoid punishment. Some people, some of the time, achieve higher levels of reasoning like “I should follow the rules” or even “I should do what’s good for society.” But many people chill out at the toddler level of “I don’t want to be punished.” So it follows that when these oversized toddlers never get punished, they think they’re doing just fine.

    But concurrently, the institution we have to enforce laws and norms, the police, sucks dog shit. Racist, corrupt, no accountability, and lazy. If I see a guy littering, I’m not going to call the cops. They wouldn’t even come, for one thing, but I also don’t want to bring a bunch of armed assholes into the scene.

    I don’t know what the best way forward is. My friend suggested local “guardian angel” volunteers that patrol and “Deal with” people who are shitty, but that feels like it could just turn into the police-but-worse. But I really want people who shit up the world to stop, and it feels like they don’t have enough empathy to understand anything more complex than “you took up four seats on the bus and were blasting youtube out of your phone, so we threw you out. Enjoy walking home, asshole.”




  • Yeah. Often when I talk to people who say they “don’t have time” I wonder where their time is going. Often to watching TV. Sometimes podcasts. Social media is a big time suck.

    But like if you have time to watch all of the office again this year, you had time to play video games.

    A friend of mine realized they were just losing hours a day to Instagram. Delete that, and you have time for better hobbies. Play a game. Read a book.

    Having children seems like a bigger factor. The only couple I know that has kids still has time. One spends it on DND, and other on TV and simple phone games.



  • I don’t think “every single problem … must be reduced down to an individual failing” is super common, but sure, some people refuse to recognize systemic problems. There are loads of people who say racism isn’t a problem, for example, and that’s bad. Kind of off topic from childhood development and people who refuse to admit fault when it is plausibly their fault. (And saying you’re late because there was traffic because the city refuses to build effective mass transit may be technically true in a sense, but it’s also kind of useless, maybe even counter productive, in the moment where everyone else is waiting for you. Leave earlier. Use the agency you have.)


  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networktoFunny@sh.itjust.worksThe two-frame test
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    25 days ago

    A lot of people here seem stuck on the details of the metaphor instead of focusing on how some adults refuse to ever consider they are wrong or at fault, and that’s a real problem in the world. You probably know someone who never admits fault for anything. If they’re late, it’s because of traffic. If they lose in mario kart, it’s because the controller is bad. If they get lost, it’s because the GPS is hard to understand. Never their fault.


  • You have a lot of life ahead of you. The feelings will fade. Don’t wallow. You’ll be fine.

    When I was a youth I had a lot of big feelings about relationships and crushes and friends. The feelings were real. They certainly took up a lot of space in my head, but they weren’t really proportionate to what was happening. Everything felt big because it was new to me. I barely talk to anyone from that time in my life anymore. I live in a new city with new friends.

    You’ll be fine.