You are likely scanning my profile and history because I said something in a tone that made you feel funny or angry. This is called being reactionary. You can overcome it.
Not getting maimed is far more valuable to me than a trophy from some tournament.
When I finally got to the point that I was learning knife-fighting, my teacher told me "If you get in a knife fight, even if you win, you will probably lose." And went to tell me stories of bar fights where both participants died later, or the person standing at the end lost an eye or ended up with permanent, disfiguring or debilitating injuries like severed tendons and organ damage.
I don't want to get in fights. I do everything I can to avoid fights.
Even still I've had to fight home invaders, it's incredibly scary when you don't know what someone is going to do, what they're carrying, or how it's going to end and you know you have to fight to survive. The post-fight emotions and feelings are insane.
I don't engage with kids trying to troll, get lost.
I've heard a lot of the world's worst people use that as an excuse to do the most horrible things, and I despair that so many people readily embrace it as a validation.
We are animals but we are different than every other animal, and we can be better and do better, and if holding yourself to a higher standard because you were born with sapience is too inconvenient, I'm sure there are some political and ideological groups out there who would love to have you.
edit: I regret spending any time responding to the obvious trolls in this post. Block and move on people. If you ever find yourself having to argue that we're better than animals, you're not arguing with someone participating in good faith.
This is already a shitshow of a comment section.
I wish people would stop debating "ages" of children and "cutoff points" and start talking how better to reduce suffering and trauma broadly.
Judging ourselves by what animals do is a wild take. I guess we've just all broadly stopped caring about being human sometime around when "alpha males" became a serious topic of discussion in human behavior.
I don't think anyone is taking this constant assault step-up as seriously as they should.
We thought Roe Vs Wade was safe, now nobody even talks about it anymore. Project 2025 outlined all of this and how to accomplish it and so far they've been following the playbook to great success.
And we're here "LOL AT THE FUNNY LADY."
Yah it won't pass or even be considered. Today.
But next time someone with more power and influence raises it with a stronger case or argument, most of us will have tuned out as it gains more and more traction. Like they did with everything else so far.
After same-sex marriage they will go after interracial marriage. I dare some fucker to tell me that's hyperbolic, I already know the pretense and argument they will use to "ease" in the long dick of dicking americans.
Absolutely, we definitely need to ramp up shaming men for not knowing what to do with their emotions. That really worked out great over the last 20 years.
Now that every miserable 4chan incel is a grown adult in positions of power and in many cases running our world.
I hate misogynistic assholes as much as the next decent person who has people they care about, but the online discourse has been nothing but damaging and it's primarily because people seek out whatever validates their feelings. The worst people read the worst messages. This won't end unless the internet ends.
You ain't missing anything, it's just bait.
I haven't read a single exchange with a .ml tankie that hasn't been utterly juvenile roleplay nonsense with no desire to engage with reality, I don't give them any amount of my attention or even irritation, if kids wanna do roleplay stuff between games of Hearts of Iron 4, they can, but other instances should ban roleplay outside of their specific circle-jerking forum.
Trump’s eponymous battleships will be armed with guns and missiles, as well as hypersonic weapons, electronic rail guns and high-powered lasers.
The lack of robots and sharks makes me worry he might be losing his touch entirely.
don’t gaslight me.
The fact that you sense "gaslighting" in casual conversation about reframing perspective for better material results tells me you have a ways to go before you should even attempt to throw yourself into an emotional cold-war confrontation with anyone who might see you as some kind of ideological opponent.
Seriously, this is out of left field for the tone of our convo so far, that I don't think I want to reply anymore because there are a lot of things in life that are hard to hear or challenging, and if you can't handle that in the mildest form without recoiling and fearing that you're the one being manipulated, there is no CHANCE of you changing someone else. You have to have a LOT stronger self-worth.
okay, so this won’t work with all the social media maga telling me to kill myself.
Get off social media, at least with any connection to your real self and identity, and don't try to move people there with anything more rigorous than memes. This isn't the kind of environment that gives any kind of meaningful results.
If you have people saying anything positive about you, you're succeeding on some level, and I don't think it has as much to do with gender or race or identity as much as how comfortable you can make someone. I'm not the only person who advocates turning bigots with careful connection tactics, and I'm certainly privileged by being male, but I don't accept people saying they can't do things because of a label they've fixed on themselves, anyone is capable of fantastic things if you don't see limitations in yourself. You adjust and adapt your tactics for the role you play.
Making it somehow your fault is another amazing trick by thr corpos to shift the blame for what they do on people who has nothing to do with it.
If you have a better plan that individual people can do who don't want to fight corporations, be sure to put in the same effort to spread those ideas as well.
I've been dealing with difficult people for decades, I am not speaking out my ass when I warn you, that you will not get what you wish for. You don't have to do the work, as I said it's perfectly fair if you want to say "I don't have the emotional fortitude to even want to change people" and that's valid.
But trying to rally others to hate before acting for change, that's a special kind of darkness and it won't serve you well. You are going to spin in ever-increasing disappointment waiting for something to happen that will NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN. You have to start accepting that the universe owes us nothing and the glorious revolution is never coming, so you have to find your own ways to deal with the frustration of injustice. If you can't get to that point at least, you're going to become that which you hate. Hate just makes hate.
You don't "be polite" you be a person who can be social, listen and ask questions and read someone's feelings.
If you can do that, you will not only be a more social person who others will want to be around, you will also have a chance of playing right-wing dipshits like a fiddle.
You don't make a scared dog respect you by being a cowering stooge, you show dominance while at the same time not being a threat.
I'm not saying YOU need to do anything, I'm saying this can be done, and shooting down people who have actually done it many times makes it seem like you rather have vindication and justice than change. The universe is sadly lacking in justice and owes us nothing, but I would absolutely take change as a close second.
they also, as a group, tend to be more likely to be offending pedos, rapists, domestic abusers, and mass shooters. which for me reinforces the idea that they aren’t people.
Also, see... this is an obstacle on your part I would dismantle as readily as I would dismantle some chud's idea that liberals are all groomers or something. While it's true that conservatism seems to draw in people who are social rejects, there are plenty of people around you who you would think are allies and great people who have their own skeletons and things that you would be appalled by.
Part of affecting change in the world and changing people is about getting out of your own head, it's never about your own vindication or justice or creating the idea circumstance or changing someone to suit you. It only works when you genuinely make it about the other person, and to get there you have to discard judgement or preconceptions. Again, it's hard and I don't blame people for not wanting to, but if more people at least tried, I think we could make great changes in the world.
i’m curious how you did it. i tried being nice, they’d just attack me.
It really depends a lot on context and situation, ideally it's someone you already have at least SOME passing acquaintance with so they give you a chance. And the most important thing to focus on is listening and asking questions. It's not about being nice, it's about giving someone the feeling that someone wants to hear their story. (And EVERYONE wants to tell their story.)
This also goes hand-in-hand with learning to be better at socializing broadly. About learning to take in someone's perspective and memories and feelings and be active and ask questions, not just waiting for your chance to say something or "push back" on anything. You can't go into this kind of exchange expecting to turn anyone or change someone's mind, but the moment you make someone feel like you want to hear them and understand them, something magical starts happening and they start wanting your acceptance. I like to use the analogy of socializing a scared dog. A dog who is scared of strangers often will display that fear with barking and growling, which we translate as anger, but really it's fear.
And if you've raised dogs, you know that the secret to getting a dog to stop growling and being afraid is exposure and calmness. Again, niceness doesn't really come into play, it's more about demonstrating your intent. And you can't just say I mean no harm, you can trust me, you have to show them, and that can take time. So patience is also part of it. Have an ongoing repertoire where you talk and get to know each other, but the key here is not to attack, you can talk clearly about your own feelings, identity or beliefs, but you can't direct it outward.
These people have been trained for years and years that you're the enemy, that you're something to be feared or hated or that you're trying to destroy the country... there is a strange allure to that, everyone wants to see the movie where the hero and the villain sit down and have a conversation in the diner. You can use that in some circumstances as long as you don't show either fear or disrespect.
In time, they may start seeking you out to get your reactions, to try to make points, to try to do "gotchas" on you, and you can take that any way you want, again as long as you're doing so in good humor, or at least giving them the chance to talk and the space to hold their beliefs, no matter how fucked up it sounds. Again, that's dog barking. These people don't have the well-thought-out values and ideas you do in many cases, that's why the right appeals to them. It doesn't force them to do emotional labor. Because they are very emotional inside.
Those feelings will come closer and closer to the surface over time. You can start leveraging it slowly, gently, by asking about their family, their loved ones, their memories of childhood and what they want for their kids, or their future, or what they wish they could do in life... and ask why they can't.
Again, your strategy here is not to say "AHA! Well socialism actually wants that too!" but just ask more and more questions. "I can't get ahead in life because the goddamn libs" well that's something to dig into... which libs? why? What could he do to change it? How do other people get around that obstacle? It's again, a matter of both hooking emotions and not invalidating them, but making them use language to question and articulate their own beliefs.
This cracks people. A lot.
This isn't new either. People have used this tactic to unbelievable effectiveness, but it's also very hard to do, it's tiring, but imagine how the world would change if every MAGA chud knew at least "one good one" and how that might change how they listen to media and news that tries to make them hate you.
In my case, I used to "turn" incels this way, younger people but the tactic is mostly the same. I had great success rates and have had people thank me for "saving their lives" which I am sure is hyperbolic but I am glad I've touched a few people and made them start using their minds.
I learned and taught self-defense for many years. Enough to say you can never know for sure about someone, I've seen some really unassuming people turn into beasts in the sparring ring, and seen some big, tough dudes not be able to take a light gut punch.
All that said, I would be shocked if someone like Zuckerberg could handle the swift, primal, animalistic speed and violence that comes with an actual fight. He lives out-of-touch with the world and doesn't have to watch his back on the bus ride home or learn how to spot dangerous people ahead of him hanging out in a parking lot. Even if he's really good at katas and sparring, it's a far cry from actual fighting, and survival comes from as much mental preparation as it does physical.
Hytale will come out when we have fusion plants and space elevators. It's always "just around the corner."