I've been playing around with Facebook for the last couple of weeks and the censorship is so crazy these days is isn't funny. But only if you post anti Trump and Elon content, even as a non American. I've already had a couple of posts flagged for 'misinformation' since after Zuckerberg made this announcement and I've seen it happening to other actual Americans too. These 'free speech' people are all fucking jokes and liars and the biggest pearl clutchers whenever someone exercises their free speech to speak against them.

Yeah that's fair enough and I'm definitely generalizing. It's just the general sum of my personal observations over the years. And it could easily be just seeing the wrong conversations in the wrong places or whatever. To be fair, you seem to hear about US issues a lot more than European issues on the net in general anyway.

I don't want to start a war or anything but as someone from neither the USA or Europe, Europeans online often come across as even more exceptionalist than Americans, despite the reputation to the contrary. Because, at least in leftish or liberal spaces, no one is more ready to shit on and call out the USA than Americans. And I don't mean they're anti-American or whatever, they just want their country to be better, so they call out all the shit.

Europeans on the other hand often seem more proud and / or defensive about their countries. Maybe they speak openly in their own country specific communities but I don't get the sense that they're as open and friendly to outside input or criticism as the Americans are.

The way I see it, we're all hooked onto the same stream of memes and billionaire owned news sources everywhere across the world. So thinking we're immune to being overtaken by dangerous alt right nonsense and ignoring all the obvious signs would be a very stupid move, wherever you are. If they're not taking this seriously, they're doing exactly what the Americans did and have done since 2016.

On the flip side of this, my main account was banned there but my alt account that I've also had for a few years now wasn't. And I've even made a post or two with it there in the months since my main was banned, just to see.

And the funny thing is, the last time I was a banned for a few days (I managed to successfully appeal), they also banned my alt account that I had never even posted on before. Then unbanned it along with my main account after my appeal. So clearly their systems are aware that the two accounts are the same person.

I was actually thinking of coming back to this and asking if you'd heard anything. Thanks for the update! Pretty weird that it's just seemingly running like a zombie there.

I haven't seen any of the porn communities in the three non porn instances I've tried here personally. So out of the big ones, world seems to already de-federated at least.

You're right. I honestly wasn't even thinking. Going to edit my comment now.

I think Blåhaj handled this person well over all. Even if Drag wad just 100% troll, drag wasn't being fed in Blåhaj and had to go elsewhere. But also there was always the chance that drag is just someone on a journey or with things to sort out. Some people have completely given up on being any gender and treat it like a joke in an almost nihilistic way. But clearly there's a line between that and an actual troll.

Either way, I wouldn't say that it's standard heterosexual cisgender behaviour to go as far as Drag did just for the lulz. So maybe one of these days, Drag will have an awakening and remember how no one in the community either fed drag or shunned drag when drag was confused and behaving badly.

Fake it. Smile and wave when people reveal their politics or weird shit (that we all have) that doesn't vibe with you. Keep it shallow and surface level, like talk about music and movies and shit. Indulge in conversations about this restaurant or that brand of tea or some shit but never show them who you really are. And they won't even notice that they don't really know you and it's all good being an alien. Maybe everyone does this on some level.

And I'm protecting insanely here in case you couldn't tell (but that's because I relate) but instead of saying "go to therapy", I'm gonna say do yourself a favour and spend some time lurking in some mental health related communities / spaces and see if you relate to any of the things that people say there. And how much of it you relate to. And look up "autistic burnout" too.

As I say (just making double clear), I'm giving you this advice based on my own life so far. So maybe your story is different. But I related a lot to a lot of what you said here.

Based on a couple of arguments I've now had, they actually sound a lot like manosphere, anti woke people. Just a bit more intelligent and well read. But even the "trans ideology" phrase that they like to use is just their version of "woke agenda".

I think that it is a sect of feminism that has been created and seeded by the same right wing christian nationalist types that are also behind the manosphere and MAGA. The Peter Thiel and Elon Musk types. They realised in the '90s that calling everything "satanic" wasn't working, so they started coming up with new terminology to pull people in.

First it was "SJWs", then "woke" but it all attracts the same kind of people. And "trans ideology" was the term they came up with for women that read and aren't completely dense. So they're all behaving like reborn christians and going around stomping out anything the norm. But they also sincerely believe they're right.

But honestly, based on the conversations I've had so far, all alt right people have the same talking points, which TERFs definitely are a part of. They're just, as I say, not as clearly dumb as other alt right types.

From what I've heard, admins can't really do anything about repeat offenders / downvote trolls because of something about scanning through databases or something. But then I also saw a post yesterday about how Friendica reveals the usernames of people who upvote and downvote, so it seems like that information is accessible in the API or framework of the Fediverse.

Haven't been in the right place to grow but I'll probably get a chance to try my hand at growing my own later this year, actually. I've got old friends in the growing and selling game, so I've been involved in the process before.

why did you try to cut weed off?

It's just getting harder and harder to come by the money, simply. And explaining my current situation as far as work and income goes requires another small essay.

workplace that has an EAP that provides counseling and such

No, this is South Africa, that sounds too first world to me. At least in my experience, which is all over the place. I've worked in offices doing mind numbing data capturing and I've worked in a private game reserve building dams and hiking trails and shit. And I can't say I've ever come across any sort of system like that in my life so far. The system I've lived in is working hard for the bare legal minimum and being easily replaceable because the majority of the country is desperate and willing to work hard for the bare legal minimum. Also partly my own fault though because I was a dumbass that dropped out of university to become a rockstar. So I'm one of the expendable proletariat now.

Are there negative side effects you’re noticing?

Well besides my own personal mind storm, I think the only negative effects from quitting that seem fairly universal to me from what everything I've experienced, read and heard from people; is the loss of appetite and difficulty with sleep for a few days.

It also affects dreaming, or maybe your ability to remember that you've dreamed. Although this one seems to be a 1 in every 2 people thing. A lot of people say that they stop dreaming (or don't remember) when they smoke weed regularly, then get crazy intense dreams for a while when stopping. For me, this is a negative effect of actually smoking it. And having continuous crazy intense dreams when you stop isn't necessarily positive either but it returns to normal after a week or two. I do miss dreaming though. I think that if I could get the right kind of medicine and be able to both function and dream, the idea of going back to just smoking a bit of weed on a weekend here and there would sound a lot more attractive to me.

I don't really obsess about framerates myself and I've never had the kind of budget to have the latest and greatest parts but from what I've seen, somewhere around 30fps is fine.

And even though you didn't ask, the last setting that I ever sacrifice is draw distance. I'll turn down textures and shadows and reflections and everything else before I sacrifice draw distance. I don't need realistic graphics to be able to immerse myself and have a good time. But things popping in and out of existence in front of your eyes are the ultimate immersion breaker for me.

I've seen about 3 pop up in All so far. And I just block them as they appear.

As a South African, I'm willing to bet that not a single farmer was amongst these people (and I'm not saying there aren't racist farmers, I'm saying they're more economically literate than these clowns, so they know relocating to the USA would be a bad idea). These are literal trailer trash that had their asses wiped for them by black people all their lives, who now have to live with the 'horror' of not being put on a pedestal for existing anymore. Whether it was apartheid days or now post apartheid days, the only thing that these useless inbred fucking hillbillies ever contributed to society was hate.

I wouldn't wish them on America but I do wish that they would just fuck off somewhere else or die already.

I used to go to internet cafes to look for cheats for video games. Pretty much all I ever used the internet for back then. Don't remember many other sites but I do remember a website where you slaughtered the teletubbies in various ways, like dismembering them or slicing them in half with meat saws.

After that, my first social uses of the internet were MySpace, a forum for metal and alternative music called MakeSomeNoise (named after a magazine that came out in my country) and the chat rooms on The Offspring's website.

I get that these kids were brainwashed a little but what bothers me is that it was never any secret what was happening to women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights but they went for it anyway. It wasn't some secret plot or trick, these people told us all exactly what they're about.

Even if they don't care about queer people, they happily sold out the rights of their own mothers because the word of some ex reality TV star meat head was more important to them. I feel like even if I was that age being bombarded by propaganda, I would've woken the fuck up the moment they started going after my mother and my sisters.

I actually saw a story on Reddit shortly after the election, that's a double whammy in this regard. It was a divorced woman who is currently in a relationship with another woman, telling the story of how her own son visited her and fessed up to voting for Trump and happily said out loud "I don't agree with gay people." Based on the reactions she described afterwards, this dumb piece of shit kid only realised that the people he was hating included his own mother, after it was already too late.

It's all fucked. I forgive these kids to an extent but I know that when I was that age, I did in fact have a sense of morality and could in fact use my own brains to figure things out for myself.

When I find another platform some time in the future and I'm talking about how unfriendly this place is towards feminism and how it allows Christians to criticize other people's beliefs but doesn't allow criticism of Christianity; you can blame the .world moderators that dropped everything and ran to remove my comments for someone that was reporting me while having a 'discussion', while leaving that person's comments up that time not so long ago.

Not impressed with what I've seen there so far. They're the most Reddit-like moderators in this place. Just a bunch of professional basement dwellers that get to feel a little less powerless in life here.

I was going to say something snarky about how they're going to fail because who would pay for social media, then I remembered blue checkmarks.