I'd say great, it makes the losers deny themselves treats everyone else is playing for literally no good reason which must result in some gamer suffering at least, but you just know none of them actually have the principles to do that. They just wanna cry about woke and make little databases about it, but none of them will actually put down Baldur's Gate 3. Makes it doubly pathetic.

56% wanting to be astronauts in China vs. only 11% in the US is pretty different, but I think his point is that when you look at those who aspire to be YouTubers it's 30% in the US vs. 18% in China, which is not the grand cultural difference OP is making it out to be.

The etymology of dumb is rooted in ableism, yeah. ~~I'm not sure about stupid.~~ Those are two I struggle with to this day, because in my mind they're so detached from the ableist definitions. I've never in my life associated dumb with a mute person, for example, even though that's the definition.

~~To be completely real, I'm not sold on 'stupid' being ableist but~~ I'll try to avoid the language if it has the possibility to be harmful, e.g. I edited one of my recent comments from stupid to silly. Ignorant is another good alternative.

EDIT: Okay, yeah, the etymology of 'stupid' is also rooted in ableism.

If you believe broadly that people should be given dignity regardless of gender, sexuality, race, disability, appearance, etc. etc. etc., it should be clear that using a descriptor of those things to mean something generally negative deprives them of that dignity. You're saying they're lesser, inferior, below you, purely because they don't fit into the status quo.

I feel so silly rn. I, an adult man, just learned that antlions are real animals and not just a fictional enemy from FF9.

I read this post and was like "what do you MEAN you're fishing antlions"

For real, same. I think about how much I can fall into despair now even with this place, I can only imagine what it would be like without it.

Oh, I'm so so sorry about your ex... Yeah, I didn't mean to downplay how much those online spaces can mean to us. It's really awful that it was taken from you for not towing the mainstream line. I have a Palestinian flag pin that I put on my backpack but I take it off when I go into the office because no one at work would sympathise and I worry about retaliation for it, so I understand. Fucked up world we live in.

Hi friend. I know it seems hard right now but try to put yourself out there as much as you can, you'll thank yourself for it later. Do whatever you can to push through the anxiety and muster up the strength to talk to people and be social, in whatever way is available. You aren't annoying, you aren't desperate, you're just new and how you're feeling is completely understandable. The decent people know and understand that and there are loads of them. Good luck.

Hi friend. I know it seems hard right now but try to put yourself out there as much as you can, you'll thank yourself for it later. Do whatever you can to push through the anxiety and muster up the strength to talk to people and be social, in whatever way is available. You aren't annoying, you aren't desperate, you're just new and how you're feeling is completely understandable. The decent people know and understand that and there are loads of them. You can do it, good luck.

New insomnia just dropped. Being so chronically anxious of dreaming about having a bath and flooding the house that you can't sleep.

I don't think I'll ever be a huge, huge poster. But what this site offers to me as a lurker is hope. Sometimes I feel like we live in hell on Earth and part of the punishment is that no one else is allowed to acknowledge it, but we acknowledge it, we call it out, and we commiserate. I wish I was closer to people here but sometimes just waking up and seeing that other people see it too is enough.

Honestly you're better off. Being on Reddit is self harm.