u/tertiaryAntagonist

I would consider myself politically moderate, having voted both for Republicans and Democrats in the past. I've read a decent chunk of the Federalist Papers, love American history, and my general interpretation of the constitution is closer to an originalist viewpoint. I have a profound respect for the Founding Fathers and their vision for our country. I used to want to be a lawyer but wound up following a different path in life. Nonetheless, I try to keep up with jurisprudence and stay educated as I am able.

Any time a court case or legal situation goes viral, it just increases my respect for what our founders wanted for our nation. The presumption of innocence with the burden of proof being on the state is a core element of our legal system. Maybe because civics aren't taught well or because people are just so emotional and indoctrinated these days, it seems like the public has divorced itself from these values when a case offends their particular moral sensibilities. This applies equally well to right wingers, left wingers, feminists, men's rights advocates, and most interest groups -- especially online.

At any rate, if you found yourself joining mob mentality around punishment before a guilty verdict on

• The Cornell Seven

• Lindsay Clancy

• Kyle Rittenhouse

• Dereck Chauvin

• Luigi Mangione

• Hunter Biden

• Trump's various legal entanglements

• Casey Anthony

then you should spend some time thinking about if you have been radicalized and if you are living up to expectations of rationality when it comes to the matter of state sanctioned force. Regardless of how guilty or not guilty you think any of these people are / were, investigation into facts should remain boring and rule-bound especially when they touch on highly sensitive knee-jerk feelings. People seem to want to discard established, precedented, protected constitutional procedure when they get upset. Everyone I listed above is entitled to legal counsel, a jury, and a well-ordered interrogation into the truth before any conviction occurs REGARDLESS of what the court of public opinion thinks should happen no matter how nasty the accusation.

It's a very popular sentiment online that rape is the worst thing you can do to someone. But as a survivor of sexual assault that I was hospitalized over I just can not be lead to believe what happened to me is worse than being killed. This attitude and belief trivializes the LIVES of victims. If I had been killed instead then I wouldn't be here to write this post.

People online will argue that rape is categorically worse because there's never a justification for doing it. Whereas, there are cases where killing someone else is reasonable or at least comprehensible. However, the vast majority of killings are a total loss of someone's personhood. A cessation of existence. The total collapse of someone's internal world, autonomy, or chance to experience anything else in life.

Its been ten years since what happened to me. I was traumatized for a while but at least life has gone on for me. At this point I'm pretty well past what happened. My life wasn't totally ruined. Ive done great things in the last decade. I got a research paper published. Ive traveled internationally. Ive gotten three degrees. I've made new social connections. I am a part of a community. I volunteer. I've sold my artwork. Who knows what is going to come my way next!

Rape is a heinous crime, I'm not diminishing the significance of it. But at least I survived and thrived past it. I'm not going to allow something bad happening to me ten years ago to define my entire future. But if I had been murdered, my whole story would have been written for me by someone else.

For those who don't know, Snapchat has a map function where you can click on anywhere in the world and see what people there have posted. I was curious about what life looked like in iraq. I noticed that most women wear black outfits. I know covering is not mandatory in iraq. I am wondering why most women don't want to wear other, maybe lighter colors? I looked through about 100 pictures and maybe one woman the entire time was wearing something different. I'm not trying to be disrespectful I'm just wondering why people don't seem to want to wear blue or purple or anything else in this selection of pictures?

Short a serious medical abnormality almost no one is ugly. Average people have been denegrated by an excess of media -- social and conventional -- into a state of horrible self esteem. We are bombarded with imagery of specimens in the 99th percentile of appearance and regular people feel bad about themselves as a result.

Even if you're lesser in appearance, a good outfit and grooming can do you miracles. Go look at pictures of regular human beings from back in the day where everyone was wearing suits and nice dresses. They all look great. Go ask older people and they'll call basically everyone younger than them attractive.

My heart breaks for everyone who's been impacted by media in this way. You are not ugly. You might not be the most beautiful person in the world but you're not ugly.

I am autistic and did not have any close, regular friends until I was 19 years old. In college, I fell in with a bit of a rough crowd and when I was 24 I decided I needed to completely change the people I was hanging out with. I've cultivated several social circles to be a part of since then, and I'm older than you so I can say for a fact that it's not over. Here was how I did it!

• Made two close friends off dating apps who I did not wind up dating. I was looking for a partner, met some people I liked, but we did not end up together on account of life goal differences. We kept talking and hanging out. Both integrated me into their social circles. This is easier for women than men.

• Took some community college classes in topics I was interested in for fun. There are plenty of people who miss school but not enough to go to grad school and take a night class occasionally at community colleges. I took some welding and art classes and made friends in those places. Stopped doing art classes though because I dated a prof and she cheated on me. Oh well! Don't make that mistake.

• Used meetups websites to find topics I was interested in. Went to a bunch of groups. Some were not for me. Some were. Made two friends last year who are now my best friends in the entire world. We now hang out pretty much every week if not more often. Special note: if you're autistic / severe ADHD / anxiety, there are likely groups in your area for that sort of thing. Those groups are especially accepting if you're socially awkward or have strange interests. They're a great starting point if you're scared to even get out there.

• YMMV on this one, but I found a Bulgarian church an hours drive away because I wanted to get in touch with my ethnic heritage. Not really religious but when you're a "minority" religious association there's a lot of focus on the more ethnic parts of that. Not many people my own age there but I still made a few friends a few decades older than me that I spend some time with pretty regularly too.

• My current partner joined Bumble BFFs and had a lot of luck. He made three friends that he hangs out with every month. I tried too but did not get anywhere. It's easier for men than women because women on friends apps are just as picky as women on dating apps.

• Getting back in touch with high school and middle school acquaintances. A lot of people start shedding friends at this age in life and might be interesting in rekindling connections. I reached out to someone I rode the bus with in kindergarten and we hang out a few times a year. Not my best friend in the whole world but it's better than nothing. I also ran into my second grade best friend at a bus stop and we reconnected. Studies show that nearly everyone appreciates someone from the distant past reaching out. Worst case scenario, they don't want to talk to you and you're in the same position as before.

• Started posting funny things on facebook. Added people I did not really know who lived in the area. Most accepted my friend request. Some started talking to me. That's how I got my current boyfriend.

• Local discord groups. I've never actually used these, but odds are your town or geographical region has some online place to connect with local people. You have to participate and show up to things for a bit before people will take interest. My friend had some luck with this when he moved to Sacramento.

I did all of this because during college I fell into a really toxic crowd and knew I had to make some changes. I grew up with 0 friends on account of being severely ADHD so I stuck with the first people who would have me at all. I knew I could not go back to having nothing. So I slowly started finding more and more new people until I finally worked up the nerve to distance myself from my first set of friends.

Unfortunately you're not in college anymore so you're not going to have an automatic set of people in a similar situation to you. You're going to have to try to put yourself out there and meet people. Not every single person you meet is going to have open "friend slots" so to speak. You have to look for people who both like the same things YOU like and they also have to be looking to grow the social circle. You should also be willing to drive / travel a bit. You should also be open to friends who aren't your age. When you're almost 30, having a friend who is 50 or 60 is not weird in the way it would be when you're 20.

For what it's worth, I have 0 interest in D&D, robotics, gaming, and cosplay and have still had a lot of luck as you can see. You don't have to follow the typical advice. Even if you don't make friends immediately through all of these steps, you will still be developing social skills and increasing the chances you will make more friends later. Don't expect everyone in groups to be your friend right off the bat, you typically need to show up four to six times before people get invested in you. That is because lots of groups have people who show up to one event only to never return.

You don't need to make friends with every single person you meet. You just need a handful of lucky breaks. If people like you enough, they will pull you into their other social circles. From there, you're not starting as a stranger. You're starting as a friend's friend which will already get you a bit of social capital out the gate.

More advice, especially for neuroatypical lonely people. Often times, we have a strong sense of justice or moral code. I'm not saying to drop it entirely, some values really are just that important. However, try to be a little open to people if they don't meet every single moral standard or expectation that you have. Unless it's a serious infraction, try to view it as a sociological exercise at first where you're just observing how other people interact and operate in the world with as little judgement as possible. As you build a social circle and expand your understanding of the human condition, you'll get a better understanding of what's typical and what is and is not acceptable to you.

Finally, when you go out to these places. Please be sure to wash your clothes, put on deodorant, and shampoo / condition your hair. Even neurotypical people accept a lot of weird stuff, especially as societal understanding has grown. However, smelling or being dirty is not going to amplify the difficulty in connecting with others. If you're starting with nothing you have to cast the widest net possible.

In the last couple of years, internet Fandom spaces have started moralizing about age ratings more than they ever did when I was growing up. I'm not really sure why this is. It seems to happen more often with foreign games which could either imply a xenophobia element or a difference in demographic because you never see this kind of pushback with M rated western games which in many ways get even more graphic.

I'm almost 30 now, but first experienced Dangan Ronpa when I was either 13 or 14 when it was a text based reading experience on I think Something Awful forums. I've grown up to be a completely regular, well adjusted adult. I don't feel reading Dangan Ronpa as a younger teenager affected me in any kind of meaningful or detrimental way. If I had a kid in that age bracket, I wouldn't be concerned to learn they were enjoying it with the exception of maybe Ultra Despair Girls. Even then, it would depend on the maturity of the kid.

The adult elements of Dangan Ronpa boil down to violence which is cartoonist to the point of absurdity and then some sexual jokes and moderate sexual imagery. American culture is already inundated with even more violent content even in PG13 material. The sexual jokes in DR don't amount to anything worse than I heard in middle school or high school honestly.

Modern culture seems to want to shelter kids from adult content even past the age of 18. Sure, 17 and 18 year olds are still kids in a sense but the moral scrutiny just seems paternalistic, hyper sensitive, and weirdly conservative -- and I don't mean in a political sense.

I almost wonder if the rigid insistence to keep underage people out of Fandom discussion spaces is a defense against enjoying cartoons as older people. You see this with The Amazing Digital Circus and Hazbin Hotel fandoms especially. In my view, unless it's a NSFW complaint space if teenagers want to experience this media they should be able to without being attacked. No one becomes an adult over night when they turn 18. You become an adult by continually trying to become an adult and accumulating experiences that diversify your mental space and expand your world view.

You see this sort of thing everywhere. Plenty of musicians are fine with using AI art for album covers or promotional material but are firmly against the inclusion of AI in musical endeavors. Somehow, because their preferred work is "valuable" and deserving of protection but something they don't care as much about isn't.

Or you'll see more commonly people arguing against AI art period but are fine with it being used for tasks they don't like / don't respect / aren't good at. I got into an argument with a local artist who was loudly decrying AI art while saying it's fine for cognitive tasks like mathematics. As someone who does quantitative work for a living, why is what I do (and enjoy as a hobby) not worthy of protection? Probably because the artist in question here doesn't think that my work / hobbies are an extension of human creativity and expression the same way he thinks his work are hobbies are.

If you're fully anti AI, that's fine. If you're fully pro AI then that's also fine in my book. I don't really have a firm pro or con opinion about it myself. But it's offensive when someone picks and chooses where AI is fine as long as it doesn't have some kind of effect on them. That's a worst of both worlds opinion, totally self serving, and hypocritical.

You see this sort of thing everywhere. Plenty of musicians are fine with using AI art for album covers or promotional material but are firmly against the inclusion of AI in musical endeavors. Somehow, because their preferred work is "valuable" and deserving of protection but something they don't care as much about isn't.

Or you'll see more commonly people arguing against AI art period but are fine with it being used for tasks they don't like / don't respect / aren't good at. I got into an argument with a local artist who was loudly decrying AI art while saying it's fine for cognitive tasks like mathematics. As someone who does quantitative work for a living, why is what I do (and enjoy as a hobby) not worthy of protection? Probably because the artist in question here doesn't think that my work / hobbies are an extension of human creativity and expression the same way he thinks his work are hobbies are.

If you're fully anti AI, that's fine. If you're fully pro AI then that's also fine in my book. I don't really have a firm pro or con opinion about it myself. But it's offensive when someone picks and chooses where AI is fine as long as it doesn't have some kind of effect on them. That's a worst of both worlds opinion, totally self serving, and hypocritical.