I am not a number.
I know that there’s a teenager advice community of some flavour floating around in the Blåhaj server. But I’m gonna take a guess that the only reason it’s there is because people who can’t just scroll past things were downvoting it. I have a feeling that if an instance or multiple communities for teenagers popped up, the users here would probably terrorize it until it all closed down.
won’t recommend Lemmy to many of my friends or family because I know they will give up
Yeah, when I first started out here, my experience was like this:
I went to the join Lemmy page, then clicked to show all servers. Then waited. And waited. Then I went to bed.
By the next morning, the list of servers had managed to load. I spotted one that was advertised as “recommended for users to join to reduce load on the Fediverse”, which seemed like a good idea after seeing how even the join page was battling to load.
Found out that the server I joined seemed to have all sorts of issues loading content. And was apparently de-federated from a bunch of instances that align with my interests. So search results were showing me little to nothing in regards to queer communities for example, only dead communities.
Signed up on world instead and encountered multiple posts that said they had comments but loaded nothing. Found out that there were no languages selected in my settings. So I selected ‘undefined’, scrolled down, selected ‘English’, then saved.
I was still missing a bunch of posts after that, so I went back to settings and saw that ‘undefined’ was deselected again. That’s when I realised that you have to ctrl click each language you choose or else it just deselects the previous language that you clicked on.
Finally success! 3 or 4 days later. And now I’m here.
I would love to recommend Lemmy to the few people I know who use Reddit. But I can’t see any of them trying without just giving up and going back to the place where all you need to do is sign up and hey presto, content to look at and interact with.
I have a feeling that even the process of choosing an instance would probably put them off. I could give advice but there’s only so much I could do or explain without being there in person helping them. If they have to read walls of text explaining how to get started, it would probably end there.
I’m not sure what the solution is though, or if there even is one. It might just be a little bit like trying to recommend Linux to people who just want to be able to push a button and go. Which is the majority, based on what I’ve seen.
Also just one last thing and something that has been discussed to death. There’s just not enough content here yet for the average person to see any reason to switch over from the place with all the content.
And on that note, recommending this place to people that I know in real life would be too risky right now that they would see my account and figure out who I am. Because there isn’t a crowd of a million people to slip into and disappear here. And this isn’t Facebook. I don’t want people to know about the very personal things I sometimes say on anonymous social media.
In the '80s and '90s, everything these people didn’t like was ‘satanic’. Then that nonsense seemed to disappear for about a decade. Until those people returned with updated terminology that makes them look like ‘free speech’ warriors to all the kids and not the dogmatic psychos that they are.
So since then we’ve gone from SJW to woke to now DEI. But it’s always been the same fucking people, or types of people, that told me that all the cartoons I watch and music I listen to was ‘evil’ and ‘satanic’ when I was a kid.
I actually almost fell for the SJW thing myself back in the day. I was circling that drain. Until I opened my eyes and saw the company that I was in. Since then I’ve been borderline ‘SJW’ myself because fuck those people.
One thing at least is that when you search “Reddit alternatives”, most articles that I came across seemed to make out like Lemmy is the best option in terms of amount of users and not being advertised explicitly as a “free speech and censorship free platform”, which we all know really means “bigots are welcome here.” In fact when I was searching Reddit alternatives, it seemed to me that Lemmy is really the only option.
What made me leave Facebook was discovering Reddit. What made me leave Reddit was getting banned lol. What made me leave Twitter (or never actually ever bother much with it) is that it seems more like a big popularity contest than ‘social’ platform to me. Besides, if it was really social, there wouldn’t be a character limit that benefits marketing speak and hashtags more than constructive conversation.
Never saw the point of places like Instagram that are based on being able to upload photos. Big deal, you can upload photos anywhere. And the only time I use YouTube is when I’m in the mood for music videos. I have less than zero interest in watching people’s crappy home videos, it’s like reality TV but even more boring and brain rotting. And I’ve got better things to spend my time watching. Oh, and I tried TikTok but noped out very quickly. I see absolutely no value in being spoonfed content by some shady algorithm as opposed to choosing and curating your own content.
Personally, I do not care if the platform that I’m on uses my data to advertise to me. I fell in with the ‘privacy’ crowd like a decade ago and did my time shaking my fists at big brother but I just don’t care anymore. None of this is new. As long as the people on the platform are the kind of people that I could get along with, I’m fine. And quite capable of using an ad blocker if I so desire. I couldn’t care less if Reddit used my posts in the Xena or She-Ra subreddits to advertise romance fantasy novels to me. There’s more important things to focus on.
Fuck ICE. What the fuck are they going to do, deport from my country that isn’t the USA? This makes me feel like I start saying “fuck ICE” on the regular, just to give them more work to do with this thought police shit.
I remember the cheat but not the exact game lol. Definitely Sega Mega Drive though.
ABRACADABRA (R for d-pad right, D for d-pad down).
Going by a Google search it could’ve been Vectorman or Ecco 2. Or both because I played both a lot back then.
I only noticed this in my feed now, so I’m late but I guess that’s how it is on a platform with relatively low activity.
I also used to “fall in love” easily when I was young, so I feel like I can have quite a bit to say here. It’s going to be a long post though.
If you’re anything like I was, it almost feels like what being bipolar must feel like because you’re fully aware that you’re behaving badly but it’s like the chemicals in your brain have gone haywire so you’re not completely in the driver’s seat. And I just want to say, that’s not ‘love’. It’s a slow release poison that is killing you and any chance of love.
Personally I actually just bowed out of relationships for a long time because I knew that I was the problem that needed to solved first. I would maybe suggest making the conscious decision to stop thinking of relationships or “possible future partners” as even being a goal for a while. Make friends along the way but the person that you need to get to know first is yourself. And don’t completely shut yourself off to having a bit of naughty fun once in a while either. But don’t ever expect it or feel like you’re owed it and if it comes along, do it with the mentality of no strings attached as a default instead of immediately seeing wedding bells in the future.
Just be careful though because once you learn to be happy in your relationship with yourself, it can be addictive. I kept it going for a little too long myself, so now I’m at the point where even though I wouldn’t mind having a special someone, the idea of sharing a bed and a cupboard etc. kinda repulses me. I’m going to have to find a very specific kind of person that wants both love and independence at the same time at this point lol.
But that’s part of finding out who you are. In fact part of my problem is that I’m at the very least aromantic. I just do not know how to receive or give the same cues that everyone else seems to be tuned into. So I mimicked my idea of ‘romance’ from romcoms and shit. And (metaphorically speaking because I wasn’t quite that bad) I thought that serenading her with a guitar outside her window or chasing her down at the airport was how it was done and not borderline stalker behavior in the eyes of the person being ‘serenaded’ or chased. Also (and it took me a long time to come to this conclusion because I come from a country where we weren’t educated on all this stuff), I have come to find that I am actually somewhere around non-binary in the gender spectrum and I think that people around me could tell that I wasn’t completely cis long before I knew.
That’s my journey though. You need to find your own answers. My point is that now I am better equipped with the knowledge that I need to try again. Some people have it all figured out from the start, some of us take a while longer.
Aaand sorry to keep going on but I’m also going to punt Relationship Anarchy. It’s actually more about polyamory but I think that there’s a lot of good ideas in here that can be applied to monogamous relationships or even just friendships. Namely as far as your jealousy issues go, I’m going to quote two sections.
Love and respect instead of entitlement:
Deciding to not base a relationship on a foundation of entitlement is about respecting others’ independence and self-determination. Your feelings for a person or your history together does not make you entitled to command and control a partner to comply with what is considered normal to do in a relationship. Explore how you can engage without stepping over boundaries and personal beliefs. Rather than looking for compromises in every situation, let loved ones choose paths that keep their integrity intact, without letting this mean a crisis for the relationship. Staying away from entitlement and demands is the only way to be sure that you are in a relationship that is truly mutual. Love is not more “real” when people compromise for each other because it’s part of what’s expected.
Trust is better:
Choosing to assume that your partner does not wish you harm leads you down a much more positive path than a distrustful approach where you need to be constantly validated by the other person to trust that they are there with you in the relationship. Sometimes people have so much going on inside themselves that there’s just no energy left to reach out and care for others. Create the kind of relationship where withdrawing is both supported and quickly forgiven, and give people lots of chances to talk, explain, see you and be responsible in the relationship. Remember your core values and to take care of yourself though!
And that is that. Sorry for the essay.
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