u/Hunter654333

I'll go onto a subreddit for advice about my face, and I'll get hundreds of "you look amazing" and "there is nothing wrong with you, I'd date you in an instant" comments.

Then I'll have the wrong opinion on the wrong Facebook page and usually the first thing someone looking to get under my skin will say is "...at least I don't look like Sid from Ice Age!".

So how the hell am I supposed to know who is lying to make me feel good and who is lying to make the insults hurt?

I honestly don't know anymore. I'm numb to every compliment I receive because I just assume it's a white lie. And I wish I could be happy with what I personally think of myself when I look in a mirror, but it ultimately doesn't matter. People dress to impress. And I can't ever be sure I look fine to others, because I can't trust what anyone says about me. I'll never have peace.

So I was on Facebook earlier this week when one of those intentionally provocative posts the algorithm loves to show people for ragebait came up. This one was anti-LGBT with a sign that had a red X through the Pride flag and a subtitle of "it's totally okay to be normal" with a giant Christian cross in the background.

Of course the comments were rife with bigots of every stripe, but one comment thread in particular stuck out to me. There was a guy going against the grain, saying "you know what else isn't normal? Believing a 2000 year-old middle-eastern man walked on water". The guy was somewhat effeminate, and had a Pride flag on his Facebook wallpaper. In no time at all, a different guy with a profile picture of a 30-something overweight balding man in a business suit responded by saying "you don't need to be Christian to know those troons are mentally ill".

This seemed to enrage the OP, and he said something like "why do you care what they choose to do to themselves or think about themselves, outside of just wanting to hate them because you're a disgusting bigoted chud?"

The guy then responded with a slew of accusations that trans people wanted to groom children into becoming trans, were all mentally ill, wanted to force people to let them use the wrong bathroom, etc. He ended this rant by calling the dude a "keyboard warrior fa*got tr00n" and that "loser fucking cuck, I'd beat you up in a heartbeat, you say that shit to my face".

I had seen enough at that point. I glanced at the bigot's Facebook profile and noticed he had foolishly listed his current employer for all to see. He worked for some sort of insurance firm as an adjuster. I contacted them via email with a link to the discussion and all of the screenshots I had taken. Two days later they responded that this man was no longer with the company.

Did I do the right thing? He's a disgusting bigot and personally I have no qualms about causing what I see to be no different from a KKK member to lose their job, but I do often wonder how others see what I did. Do you think I took it too far? Should people have the right to say these things without fear of losing their job?

I have been on dozens of hookups (like one every ~3 weeks) over the past 4 years I've used the app. I have had exactly two encounters with people who either advertised themselves as bisexual, or whom I found out were bi/bi-adjacent.

I've also had three hookups go poorly in all this time, and two of them were those "bi" guys I mentioned. For both of them, they just couldn't finish or even stay hard the entire time. And I'm not a bad-looking guy either. I'm young (26), athletic and personable and I keep myself clean. Almost everyone I've been with has "finished", genuinely enjoyed it and many wanted to see me again at some point.

Anyways, so one of these guys claiming to be "bisexual" actually took out his phone while I was doing the deed and started watching FtM porn. I tried to finish him for like 15 minutes and eventually he just had to jerk it to the porn. Yeah it was awkward and dreadful, and left me feeling insecure.

I think a lot of these guys, especially the younger ones in their early/mid 20s, think they're bi-curious when really they've just fetishized an orientation. Then when the real deal shows up they find out they're not as into it as they were into the porn of it.

So now I'm tempted to just 'pass' on anyone with "straight" or "bi" in their bio. Is this wrong of me? I know there are real bisexual men who feel strong enough about both sexes that they can have fun either way. I just don't want to take the chance that I'll get another encounter like that.

I have been on dozens of hookups (like one every ~3 weeks) over the past 4 years I've used the app. I have had exactly two encounters with people who either advertised themselves as bisexual, or whom I found out were bi/bi-adjacent.

I've also had three hookups go poorly in all this time, and two of them were those "bi" guys I mentioned. For both of them, they just couldn't finish or even stay hard the entire time. And I'm not a bad-looking guy either. I'm young (26), athletic and personable and I keep myself clean. Almost everyone I've been with has "finished", genuinely enjoyed it and many wanted to see me again at some point.

Anyways, so one of these guys claiming to be "bisexual" actually took out his phone while I was doing the deed and started watching FtM porn. I tried to finish him for like 15 minutes and eventually he just had to jerk it to the porn. Yeah it was awkward and dreadful, and left me feeling insecure.

I think a lot of these guys, especially the younger ones in their early/mid 20s, think they're bi-curious when really they've just fetishized an orientation. Then when the real deal shows up they find out they're not as into it as they were into the porn of it.

So now I just 'pass' on anyone with "straight" or "bi" in their bio. Is this wrong of me? I know there are real bisexual men who feel strong enough about both sexes that they can have fun either way. I just don't want to take the chance that I'll get another encounter like that.

I'm a decently attractive guy who has a good career (journeyman electrician), goes to the gym, has hobbies and pictures of me with my hobbies and going out with friends, and I still get maybe 1-2 "likes" a day. One weekend I remember matching 10 times in one session, and I messaged every single one of them with some generic, inoffensive "hey, how's it going?" and only got one reply from a woman who ghosted me a few hours later (probably because of some arbitrary shit like a different guy sharing her favorite genre of music or being 5 miles closer). One in 10. And it's like this every. single. time.

Meanwhile I hear some women complaining about getting 100s of matches and having to "sift through" them to find the one that has zero red flags. What a privileged problem to have - hundreds of options and standards so high you can literally filter them all out and then complain that all men are pigs. Could you imagine if the roles were reversed and the women had a handful of matches and had to watch men complain about no woman being the perfect fit and rejecting 100s of options?

Do you think I like having 1 in 10 matches actually respond, and essentially being forced to give every single woman who "liked" me a chance or else I will simply be alone forever? If I were as picky as the women on these apps, I would never find anyone. It would take literal decades. You have the option to compromise or to give people a chance. I have no options. I must compromise or be alone forever. And it might not even matter if I lower my standards - I might still be alone forever because even the girls with obvious red flags get tons of matches on these apps.

The power dynamic in this situation is completely skewed. I'm the one begging for them to give me a chance because there's 100 other guys they're currently looking at and trying to figure out if they're the perfect fit.

I'm a decently attractive guy who has a good career (journeyman electrician), goes to the gym, has hobbies and pictures of me with my hobbies and going out with friends, and I still get maybe 1-2 "likes" a day. One weekend I remember matching 10 times in one session, and I messaged every single one of them with some generic, inoffensive "hey, how's it going?" and only got one reply from a woman who ghosted me a few hours later (probably because of some arbitrary shit like a different guy sharing her favorite genre of music or being 5 miles closer). One in 10. And it's like this every. single. time.

Meanwhile I hear women complaining about getting 100s of matches and having to "sift through" them to find the one that has zero red flags. What a privileged problem to have - hundreds of options and standards so high you can literally filter them all out and then complain that all men are pigs. Could you imagine if the roles were reversed and the women had a handful of matches and had to watch men complain about no woman being the perfect fit and rejecting 100s of options?

Do you think I like having 1 in 10 matches actually respond, and essentially being forced to give every single woman who "liked" me a chance or else I will simply be alone forever? If I were as picky as the women on these apps, I would never find anyone. It would take literal decades. You have the option to compromise or to give people a chance. I have no options. I must compromise or be alone forever. And it might not even matter if I lower my standards - I might still be alone forever because even the girls with obvious red flags get tons of matches on these apps.

The power dynamic in this situation is completely skewed. I'm the one begging for them to give me a chance because there's 100 other guys they're currently looking at and trying to figure out if they're the perfect fit.

You know the type - the redneck who posts photos of a dead or dying deer he just shot and killed on Facebook, blood dripping from its nose as he holds the head up to the camera and smiles. Later he goes on to chop its head off and get it taxidermied so it can be mounted on his living room wall like some kind of macabre "trophy".

Anyone who can shoot an animal just minding its business, watch it freak out and try to run away with a gaping hole in its side, terrified and confused as to what just happened to them, only to collapse 100 feet later once the adrenaline wears off, afraid and now in pain, looking up, searching for the danger while the life quickly leaves them over the next few minutes, is not right in the head.

Someone who can intentionally inflict that experience on another living creature for no real necessary reason at all and not feel the slightest remorse or question of "why the hell am I out here doing this?" is not someone I would trust with anything. I wouldn't trust anyone who claims to "enjoy" hunting.

Ancient humans hunted because they had to, to survive. You're hunting because you enjoy shooting things and then you consume it after the fact in order to justify your "fun". The venison is just a bonus to you. It's the experience that you're after. You don't see these animals as creatures who feel pain and fear or have a will to live.

If they're willing to feel this way about animals, don't doubt for a second they can be made to feel this way about groups of people they dislike.

*edit*

Hunting for sport means hunting when you don't need to hunt in order to survive. That's it. The fact that you consume it in order to prove you're not being wasteful doesn't betray your original intentions, which is hunting because it's fun to hunt. People in the United States are not hunting because there's no other way to eat to survive, or because they run a hunting business and they sell their meat like we're in Skyrim and you're a meat vendor. Consuming the animal after the fact is usually a post-hoc justification of why they're out there shooting creatures for fun. And even if they're voluntarily shooting animals for the meat, again - they don't have to do this not to starve. It is an elective activity either way.

I keep looking at countries like Russia, which is like American corruption and poverty on steroids, and all the millions of brow-beaten, apolitical Russians who continued to do nothing for decades while the kleptocrats continued to loot and pillage the last vestiges of wealth from USSR, and I have to wonder - is this what awaits Americans one day in the not-so-distant future?

Are we really going to continue to sink to 3rd world country-levels of poverty and corruption, with half the country being apolitical drunks/druggies and the other half being slavering ultranationalists convinced that hating their neighbors is how to fix the country?

I am so terrified that we're not even halfway to rock bottom of what it will take for actual reform. Is this what the rest of my life looks like?

Most people say you need to go full evasion because 5.7 seconds is too long to avoid getting hit in chaotic situations, but is it really?

I was thinking about going armor/evasion and doing a Glancing Blows deflection build.

If 5.7 seconds is in fact too long to wait, then how does pure eshield deal with it? Even eshield with the recharge nodes is still something comparable to 5 seconds in total. Are they all leaning on Convalescence?

Is it because Sorcery Ward is all-or-nothing with the way it fully replenishes every cycle versus the gradual recharge with eshield?

I mean, he knows why is he what he is: he's a cruel science experiment with mental issues as a result. He's keenly aware he's a product of the contents of a blue vial which originated in some Nazi laboratory in WW2.

Is he extremely capable? Yes. But even in that department, Sister Sage has him beat in intelligence so he knows he's not also galaxy-brain like an actual god would be. And he does know this. He's acknowledged that he needs her help multiple times to figure out a way out of the mistakes he's made.

And even power-wise he's been manhandled and held down by other supes like Maeve and temp-v Butcher.

And he also needed a special version of V just to become immortal.

I just never bought this idea that he really, really believed he was a god. The way the show writes him, just gives him far too much self-awareness and experience of his own flaws and limitations for me to buy that he also successfully deluded himself into believing he was a divine being. Someone with this kind of insane grandiose delusion would have 10,000 excuses for their shortcomings and it would be a complex mental gymnastics show in their mind, and they would never admit they made a mistake or needed help from others.

I think he was more like a cult leader who wanted to brainwash everyone into seeing him as a god, when in reality he simply saw himself as "better than most but still flawed".

If you have, say 100% increased chaos damage, will the chaos damage added by "as extra chaos damage" be doubled?

For instance, with 50% added chaos damage on a 100 damage spell hit, you would deal 150 damage. With 100% chaos damage, would this be 100 chaos damage instead, for 200 overall?

What about other damage multipliers like Spell Damage? Do they get applied to the added damage if the source was originally a spell?

I ask because I want to know whether to prioritize chaos damage nodes on the skill tree or if spell damage nodes are functionally the same.

A company which owns an IP shouldn't be allowed to run that IP into the ground with terrible product after terrible product, and yet still retain the sole right to create more content based on the copyright associated with the IP.

I have watched franchise after franchise go up in smoke with horrible management decisions, mass lay-off of the original people who made it, and just a general focus on profiteering above all else.

Meanwhile while this is going on and the fandom surrounding the IP is in revolt, competent freelancers and smaller companies are denied the ability to actually make better content related to the IP even though the vast majority of consumers desperately would like someone else to try and fix it.

Companies shouldn't be able to hold an entire fictional universe hostage like this, in situations where it is in the public's best interest for them to relinquish sole control over the copyrights. There should be a democratic legal process by which some form of class-action suit can be levied to challenge a company's rights to sole ownership over an IP, in a situation where they're clearly massively unpopular.