Everyone in this comment section is yelling about how bad discord is, telling people to use forums or matrix instead. No one is asking "why?". Why aren't people using forums or matrix? Because the path to user growth isn't guilting people into the 'morally correct' choice, it's making a product they want to use.

Why are small communities using discord over forums? Well, we're talking about small projects, hobbies, and volunteer work. Hosting a forum costs both time and money - renting server space and configuring/managing both the forum and the server. Making a discord channel is instant and free. You want your favorite project to have a forum? Then take up the mantle of hosting and maintaining it yourself. You want all projects to use a forum? Develop a forum system that you absorb the hosting costs for. Neither of these exist, so communities use discord.

Why are small communities using discord over matrix? I'm in my 30s, I spend all day on my PC, I've taken a couple years of college courses in programming. Figuring out matrix was annoying for me. I had to figure out which client program to use, I had to navigate the less-than-ideal way of joining servers, and there was a difficulty curve for understanding the program's features and how to use it. It wasn't impossible, but it took effort. Discord doesn't. For every step of friction, a product will bleed users. Matrix is cumbersome to set up and use, and it's copying something that already exists and does it better for the end-user experience. It shouldn't be surprising that people prefer discord. Want that to change? Start contributing code to matrix and refine the user on-boarding process.

Instead of stating opinions, ask questions. That's how things get changed. No amount of moral grandstanding will change end-users, no matter how correct you might be.

And single women, queer women, and women without families are able to survive by working, instead of being in extremely uncertain/abusive situations (or worse).

So without sarcasm: thanks to feminism, women can experience wage-slaving. Better than being treated as subhumans, even if it's still a crappy life.

Normally I'd say that reddit/lemmy are poor choices for a community - but if the competitor is a live-chat like discord? Yeah. Lemmy is better.

Project leads would just need to make sure to direct users straight to a specific instance that allows instant/unmoderated sign-ups, or else that element of friction will occur -- and certainly not start the whole "there's many instances, pick the one that's right for you!" spiel, or users will give up immediately. I thought similarly about matrix - on-boarding users to a matrix community would be helped by explicitly writing a guide for them to do so, but then we're back to step 1, where making a discord channel is quicker than writing instructions.

Watching the original japanese episodes has been wild. I never realized how much was cut for western audiences. Jessie/James are crossdressing almost every third episode -- that man wants nothing more than to be a pretty princess in a pink dress, and I'm all for it.

You'd be surprised how many steam games have no DRM other than steam itself. And how easy it is to put in a replacement (open-source) dll that acts as a steam emulator and runs the games without steam. I'd say... pretty much every non-AAA game on steam can have DRM removed this way. It's such barebones DRM that I can't really find reason to be angry at it.

Childhood neglect, abuse, autism, and enough money to rely on pre-made foods.

Source: my life

P.S.: Don't be so dismissive of people whose struggles you're unfamiliar with. And that's assuming this image wasn't staged.

When my partner tried to apply for disability, she was initially denied. So she appealed with the help of a lawyer to try to put things in her favor.

The lawyer showed up with a massive stack of papers, said "wow, this is the most proof I've seen, this should go smoothly."

My partner goes into the hearing. She comes out quite quickly, and tells me what happened. The judge confirmed her identity, asked her about her transgender-related healthcare, then said there's no more questions, it seems like she can work, and that the appeal was over.

The lawyer said nothing in the appeal. On the way out, he said "huh, I thought that was a sure thing." We never heard from the law agency again. They were the biggest agency in a major city.

Of course the denial letter didn't mention being trans at all, instead it said she's just lazy, and even had a claim that her medical history is likely faked.

It's an amazing system -- very successful in denying people benefits.

The B is Obunga. T is Koopa Troopa. Questionable, but better than what this was photoshopped from - one of those tacky Liberty, Guns, Beer, and Trump bumper stickers.

As someone who highly values spending time just thinking, it does take a level of privilege to do so. If your needs aren't met, or your life isn't safe/secure, letting the mind wander is giving it the ability to latch onto these distressing topics and create loops of anxiety and stress.

As much as I value spending my time thinking, I also value ways of shutting my brain off so that I don't have another panic attack about how I can't afford groceries yet or not knowing if my housing situation is secure. I can't feel like my life is collapsing if I distract myself.

And more people than not are struggling to make ends meet, so I imagine more people than not have stresses they need to put out of mind, just to retain their sanity.

It's times like these that I'm glad I am autistic. You neurotypicals really over-complicate things and make life difficult for yourselves.

How to flirt as an autistic person: make a friend over shared interests, spend time together sharing that interest, realize they're enjoyable to be around, communicate clearly "I enjoy spending time with you, let's do it more often", slowly morph into a relationship out of convenience. Done.

I cannot understand NT mind-games and obsessive preening. Don't you get frustrated with it? And to think - someone who puts that much effort into judging you upfront is likely to keep judging things about you all your life, with no end to playing games... Stressful, no thank you.

Except you also fell for the trap of pretending to be educated. The entire "how to use 'octopus' as a plural noun" is an internet clickbait phenomenon, and both linguists and communications experts have chimed in to say that language is not prescriptive based on supposed origins of words/phrases, but rather it is labile and the most correct form of communication is that which is most readily understood -- therefore, they agree, saying simply 'octopus' or 'octopuses' is correct in English, as that is what English speakers already use.

A word becomes distinct from its origins based on the context it is used in - i.e. we're speaking English in the modern era, derived from generations of English speakers, and we are so far detached from any Greek origins in our language that it may as well not exist; these words have become English words through common use, and thus are subject to the grammatical rules of English. In the future, other words of varying origins with their 'appropriate' pluralizations and conjugations may be slowly overwritten by casual or undereducated use, adopting English grammar instead, and as long as that becomes the most common use, it is then the correct one.

After all, language is for communication, and communication requires common understanding, so language is naturally defined by that which facilitates communication - not notions of history or propriety.

Seconding these choices. Of note in the second link, TTV LOL PRO is pretty great. It has worked when every other ad-blocking attempt is (temporarily) quashed. It requires manual updating, but considering you'll know when to update because ads are getting through, it's not a hassle.

https://github.com/younesaassila/ttv-lol-pro

Edit: Nevermind, there's an extension hosted through mozilla now, so it auto-updates. Get that instead.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ttv-lol-pro/

That was a >100gb download that took the moderators time to download and test. And the admins weren't involved. All the claims of admins backing the torrent or deleting comments has had zero proof, as it was all hysteria drummed up by the psychotic cracker called Empress, who has had a long standing imaginary feud with 1337x.

1337x can have malware in anything, as anyone can upload. The volunteer moderators downloaded and tested it as soon as they could. I'm sorry some people downloaded it faster, but there's no conspiracy here.

i still really don’t give a shit

Ok, don't respond.

i’m not going to engage just because you tell me too

Ok, don't respond.

repeatedly telling me i should engage on “burning books is bad” is the transphobic part.

Topics in life are nuanced and intersect. Burning one book with the reasoning that it's fighting transphobia does not nullify the other things that book burning represents. If book burning being bad is transphobic, then fascists are trans-positive. Clearly, that's not how the world works. An action is not defined solely by intent, but also by how it is received by others. You do not get to define how your messages are received, and part of human socialization is navigating how others feel about what you do. Communication is a two-way street, but you're demanding that only your way matters.

i don’t need to explain myself or my actions.

Ok, don't respond.

i don’t need to justify them to you or anyone else.

Ok, don't respond.

now please, could you leave me the fuck alone?

You could have exited the conversation by not responding.

I used to think that. Then I realized I was dissociating all my memories away, and that my panic attacks were reality catching up to me. My life's fairly empty, but things definitely happen, I just don't remember them. It wasn't until I started living with someone else that I had someone to remind me of all the things I forget.
But I figure, my brain's doing it for a reason, right? Guess this is just how I deal with the stresses of life. It has its disadvantages, and I'm no stranger to hating myself for not remembering things, but any other way of getting through life would have its own downsides. Or so I tell myself.

This has been known for at least a decade now, and no changes have been made. I've even seen estimates on how little it would cost to modify the feed, and it's negligible, but any extra cost is too much cost I suppose.

You have no idea. I'm terrified of psychiatrists similarly to how I'm terrified of cops. I am disabled due to various mental conditions, and all it takes for my life to end is a psychiatrist deciding I'm not disabled anymore. Oh, and I'm autistic, which means people think I'm constantly lying because of my shit social skills.

And I narrowly risked that recently - in an LGBT clinic, with an LGBT psychiatrist, I expressed concerns with how my mental conditions affect my perception of my own gender. This started an avalanche of being accused of emotionally manipulating the psychiatrist and having my medical record state that I'm likely lying about being autistic and trying to defraud social security.

If I didn't have a therapist that would lay their career down for me, I'd be screwed. In my situation, the only difference between a psychiatrist and a cop with a gun is the immediacy of the judgement.

Oh, and don't talk to self-professed doctors that work in psych wards, like the person you responded to. Almost all of them are run like prisons, but without any form of legal procedure before someone gets thrown in one. You have no idea how horrific they can be. No one with a conscience works in those places - they would quit, just like the supposed "good cops".

Is that... the luminous horror from Tales of Maj'Eyal...?

Awesome.

I hope you some day learn that everything in life is made up of many, smaller, things. And I hope that gaining that knowledge empowers you to feel like you have control over at least some of the stresses in your life. And I hope that leads you to a place where you're not angry and lashing out at the very people you seek validation from. And I hope that when you stop pushing people away, you will receive the validation you need - that we all need, as human beings - and you can feel the relief you're currently searching for. And that some day, the comments in this thread will seem like a silly thing to have been upset about.

I hope you find the peace you need. Have a good day.