Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@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.

@Octane NOOOOOOOOO!!!!

@Octane. Well time to start over.

Wait, is that The Sims 4 for Switch ? 😆

@gcunit I agree about societies. Then their solution is to forcibly homogenize behavior rather than realize that essentially, people don't belong together in large groups at all and only bad can come of it.

Huh. Humans basically evolved a necessity to be around other humans.

@StableInvadeel Humans didn't evolve to live in large dense societies, cities, or anything of the sort. Humans are not herd animals by nature. Humans need space and distance without seeing any other humans at all beyond small groups of humans. Family/clan/village. Not much more than that. The structure of the modern world is inherently contrary to the human psyche and nature.

The result is the "delightful" world we see around us.

@ThanosReXXX - Your body will be on the other side of the street, as will all the other unique and important chemistry that makes you you. If you were unhappy on one side of the street, odds are you’ll feel the same on the other side, even if you find what you’re looking for. We know the cars are on the street, so it’s our job to cross quickly and safely. I acknowledge sometime people still get run over, even on the sidewalk.

I’ve been on IG for five years, and I’ve never had a cross word with anyone. I have a public account under a pseudonym, and I use it to see pictures of art and my friend’s kids, and I text with people I’d otherwise not be able to contact (yo, @Anti-Matter ). Everything has been beautiful. No ugliness. I just cross the road carefully, no loitering. We’re in lockstep from prior conversations about not wanting to know what every idiot in the world is thinking about, and I avoid finding out at every turn.

The Mommy Mafia sounds like a nightmare. Parents judging other parents is just ludicrous. We’re all a sideways moment away from total crisis. Pretending we have it all together is futile because everyone knows we don’t.

@NEStalgia Without humans living in groups, there wouldn't even be any humans left to speak of, after all these millennia...

But in all seriousness: thousands of humans living on top of each other in cities and so on, is indeed a forced scenario, but we're certainly not solitary beings, so at the very least, some companionship is required for humans to thrive and to stay relatively sane. Modern society just super-sized and aggravated that, to a point where it's gone over and subsequently down the hill.

I guess the takeaway is that, once again, moderation is key, even with humans themselves...

@bimmy-lee Yeah, I meant being run over on the sidewalk, which was basically a metaphor. The relative safety of posting on your own account being standing/walking on the sidewalk, and the runaway cars and motorbikes being the a*holes that still hunt you down and troll you regardless.