No you won’t, you’ll just yell at them anonymously online. We know your tricks!

I cut off contact with my narcissist father and stepmother about 8 or 9 years ago. I had previously cut off contact for a year or two at a time, but would feel guilty and reconnect and nothing changed. This time it’s permanent.

Since then, my mental and emotional health has vastly improved. I have accomplished more in these years than in all the previous ones. I now have a great writing gig and life isn’t perfect, but it’s better now than ever before. If I ever did speak to them, the only thing I’d say is, “I couldn’t have done it with you.”

I went a couple of times years ago when it was just starting to turn into what you describe. Had a great time, but it quickly priced me out. Now, it sounds like an influencer-laden hellscape. The addition of premium plug and play sites was the nail in the coffin. That said, a lot of the old time Burners are fucking amazing, creative, resourceful, and helpful people.

In Arizona, we all do. We have to.

The struggle isn’t men vs women. It’s different mindsets. There are men, women, and other identities who view things in an us vs them bigoted way and then there are those who don’t look at what someone is, but how they treat others. The latter tend to be capable of getting along just fine together and use communication skills and emotional maturity to create solidarity with each other rather than pointing fingers at each other and creating absolutist rules and narratives. They show what is possible and are creating change and progress through being the solution of unity and solidarity by simply being cool with each other and not assuming anything about each other based on whatever identities they have.

At least they could have the social courtesy to hop on the digital bandwagon and use autotone.

That’s the thing about partisan politics being intertwined with social issues. Everyone’s so fixated on arguing with “them” that they aren’t open to anything that is less than hostile.

He looks like he was made by Nintendo.

It’s funny how I use this guy as an example of what’s actually effective rather than just making noise, and the usual response is a LOT of noise. I just ask them, how many people have you convinced to stop being racist and leave the KKK with your current “efforts”. Kindness is not weakness, it’s effective.

Sorry, other students. I like to draw.

I appreciate that. You as well!

My religious search ended gradually as I became atheist over time. The scientific method seemed to be the most reliable way to find out what is true. I began my search in earnest probably in my late teens and really ramped it up in my early 20s and I was atheist by age 36 or 37.

I’m American, but switched it to the male UK voice. Far less irritating and a lot less “by the way…” crap.

Once I hit my early 20s I had a goal for myself: to find out what the truth is, whatever it may be, even if it shatters my most cherished beliefs. I went through so many different belief systems. I explored every kind of mindset I could regarding everything I could. I would get very involved with some belief system or ideology for a time and absorb what I could from it and then move on to something else.

Over time, I saw a ton of patterns emerge and I saw that ideologies of any kind place a limited filter on how one views reality. I decided that what makes the most sense to me is to simply seek to do the most good while doing the least harm. Whether or not one believes in a god is irrelevant as life does as it will anyway. Adhering to a political party is just team sports. Social norms are basically attempts to not be uncomfortable and only pretend to be about safety and order (neither of which exist regardless of what social norms exist).

I guess birds aren’t real after all.