Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@HobbitGamer duuuuude nice!! Spend it on the ol truck or even better, games!

@Tyranexx Trust me, nothing I haven't heard before. I still have a Facebook account, but only to use the messenger app. I never visit the feed or website anymore. The closest thing to social media I still use is this website and YouTube. And when I'm feeling stupid, I read the comments on news articles and remember why I lost my faith in humanity.

So apparently you can control YouTube on the switch completely with a usb keyboard. No need for anything else.

That’s cool.

@Heavyarms55 News articles in general, or merely the articles here? All of the above make me wonder about humanity a lot of the time. It's something I try to avoid doing more and more. I think the temptation comes from trying to find any rational discussion. I'm usually disappointed. Even the most innocent things seem to draw negative commentary these days.

I wouldn't say I've completely lost my hope in humanity. There's occasionally a positive spark of something every now and again.

@Tyranexx Naw even the most toxic comments on here pale in comparison to anything in on a "real world" news page. I read an article the other day about homelessness issues in California and there were dozens of comments with hundreds of "thumb ups" and none of them had any sympathy or suggestions for solutions of helping the homeless. Just aggression, judgement, hatred and ignorance - almost nothing backed by facts or data. It put me in a bad spot. That much negativity actually hurts me, I don't think I have actual issues with depression or "getting triggered" or whatever but I don't know how else to describe it. It took almost the rest of the day before I could stop feeling angry and negative toward everything. It actually made me feel physically ill.

Just one example. But I always go a while without reading and either forget or assume I over reacted last time and make the same mistakes again. I don't like ignoring the news even though sometimes following it messes me up, badly.

@Heavyarms55 Agreed on news blackout vs. trying to stay informed. I likewise get irritated and wonder why I bother to begin with. On one hand, I like being informed and knowing what's going on in the world. On the other, all the negativity does nothing to help my mood...particularly on days that were already quite crappy. That negativity, unfortunately, is often what earns clicks and turns heads.

I get nearly all my news online since I don't have TV. Unfortunately, sometimes my feed pulls in opinion pieces that for some reason seem to pass as news, or start as news but clearly have a very biased slant woven in. These often are in certain echo chambers, so heaven forbid if your opinion deviates ever so slightly from them in the comments.

@Tyranexx Thing is, it's often not the news itself that gets to me. I expect politicians to be self serving human garbage and pathological liars as much as I expect the sun to rise tomorrow. I can even handle it when there is news of some atrocity committed by the monster of the week or a natural disaster ruining a city. Yeah it's bad news but it doesn't get to me as much as when I see people talking about it and see a total lack of empathy. See people mocking or laughing at the victims or defending the monsters and liars. People laughing and saying the natural disasters are punishment for whatever popular thing in said city is that they don't agree with. Seeing comments with hundreds of thumbs up saying things like "we shouldn't help them because they they voted for so and so" or "serves them right because they do this 'immoral' act that my religion says is bad" etc etc.

I can even sympathize with news agencies focusing on bad news to get the clicks and ad revenue - because let's face it, no one checks the news when the headline is "Nice day in Shinjuku today, things are calm and peaceful, moderate traffic." or "Today in Birmingham had remarkably few traffic accidents, experts suggest drivers are becoming more cautious" It's when I read the bad news and it looks like there aren't a couple of monsters as the extreme outliers - but thousands, perhaps millions of people who relish in each other's misery. Obviously it's a small sample size - I know that - but I don't feel it after reading this sort of thing.

Facebook is toxic I have it but never use it.
I preffer twitter, that can be toxic as well

Social media is toxic. Blanket statement. The flavor changes and the degree varies but the problem is not limited to any one site or app.

@Heavyarms55 It makes me laugh a little inside when people say 'social media' is toxic, as if it's the fault of the apps or something. Society is 'toxic'. Communities can be relatively functional, but societies are just too big to cope with the gamut of human behaviours.

I thought it was obvious, it's not that the apps themselves are magically changing people, people are the problem. But social media provides an environment that brings out the worst in people.

@Heavyarms55 you avoid al social media?

@DenDen Pretty much. Aside from this site. And I use Discord for game chat.

Can someone tell me where Pikmin 4 might be? There's been no mention. You think it's being saved for a "lull" in game releases?

@Joe-b I'm gonna let @Octane answer this one for you.

@HobbitGamer A Cure for Wellness is a good one as well, so I definitely also agree with that recommendation, @Tyranexx.

@Tyranexx I can totally relate to your "bad phone reception at parent's house" story: nowadays, it's a bit better, but my dad also lives outside of the city, in a small village, and when I'm over there, I don't get full bars on my reception, but it's okay compared to how it used to be, where I literally had to hang in the window sill on the street side, to be as close as possible to the strongest signal.

And long distance is still bad sometimes: if I call my dad from my house in the city, it sometimes goes straight to voicemail, and then I often just end up calling him on a land line, and have to listen to him once again telling me he has no idea what's up, since his smart phone is lying on the table right in front of him...

@Heavyarms55 Completely agreed with your assessment of social media and how it affects so many people in the worst way possible.

My philosophy with social media is, “wherever you go, there you are.” You’ll find whatever it is you’re looking for, whether or not you realize you’re looking for it.

@HobbitGamer - A lot of that flew right over my head, but it still sounds brutal. Hope you’re not still awake from yesterday, trapped under a mountain of coffee grounds.

@bimmy-lee Well, obviously it's undeniably true that you are wherever you go. If I cross the street, then I'll most certainly not be on the same side of the street anymore, but at the same time, that doesn't mean that I'm looking to get run over by a queue of runaway cars or motor cycles, which is often what happens on social media.

Of course, the anonymity and the disposable nature of it, the ease of posting a quick quip also factors into it. That's also where all the negative labels come from: cave trolls, keyboard warriors and so on.

Some of the worst of these are people that post toxic comments underneath completely harmless photos that people posted on their own account. I don't know what the exact English label is, but over here, there's this group of people labeled as "The Mommy Mafia", and these anonymous women literally slam and bash every other woman that dares to post a picture in which something is done wrong, according to them, with a kid, such as picking it up the wrong way, letting it play with the wrong toys, giving it the wrong type of food, and so on.

And then there's of course the body shamers, and the rest of them usually consist of the known scum of the Earth, that pre-dated the internet, such as racists, bigots, misogynists, and what not...

@Joe-b Reggie stole the beta version when he left Nintendo.