VoxAdActa

Cool, glad to hear you admit that you’re full of shit and this never happened. Cheers!

Well, if it’s true, you were using another name, because “Facebones” doesn’t show up in any of the modlogs.

Weird how “trust me, bro” suddenly became the standard of proof today.

I’m glad you are very considerate and have never made a mistake when excited about something before. Good for you friend.

I’m serious, though. How do you make that “mistake”? How do you get so excited that you completely tunnel-vision out the simultaneous existence of hundreds of people? That’s absolutely in no way neurotypical.

It’s news that occurred somewhere in the world, I guess. That’s what all the “US news is world news!” people were saying in the meta thread.

It’s not just me. If I was literally the only other person in the store, sure, I could understand that, they thought they were alone, they weren’t expecting to encounter anyone else.

How the fuck do you just stop being aware of an entire seething mass of other humans flowing around you?

Yes, I am incredibly unfriendly when I’m trying to get my shit done. I want to be out of that place as fast as fucking possible. I don’t want to linger, I don’t want to chat, and I sure as fuck have never in my life been so distracted that a hundred other moving, talking people just vanished completely from my awareness. Is that some kind of ADHD thing? Some manifestation of executive dysfunction, like always being late and never letting anyone else talk in a conversation if they can’t actively shout over you?

What mental disorder does this fall into?

This is totally bouncing off of me. How can a person, in a public space, surrounded at all times by other people, just forget they exist for any amount of time, for any reason? They’re fucking everywhere. They’re breathing, they’re talking, their cart wheels are squeaking, the footsteps from their rubber-soled shoes are echoing off the hard tile floors, how do your senses just stop registering any of that?

Hey man if you want to read every interaction in the worst possible light that’s on you.

Please suggest to me a better way to read an interaction in which someone in a very crowded public place just happens to forget that the possibility exists that another human might also need to get down that aisle. “Oopsie doodle! I forgot I was surrounded by a hundred people who would really rather get this chore done as fast as possible! Again! Silly me!”

Give me a charitable interpretation of that person who doesn’t take even a split second to consider anyone else in their environment without having to be verbally admonished.

What’s the metric unit for depression?

but most of us will also correct our mistake if it’s brought to our attention

Most of us will literally never make that “mistake” because we’re aware that other people exist, even when nobody’s standing next to us screaming “HEY, I EXIST! CAN YOU TAKE THAT INTO ACCOUNT PLEASE?”

People aren’t mind readers and they aren’t purposely trying to make your life harder.

Oh, now I get it. They just don’t even notice or acknowledge the existence of other people unless someone reminds them that such mythical beings exist.

Yeah, you’re right, I’m much more sympathetic to them now. They’re not mean, they’re just amazingly self-centered and oblivious!

a handful of times at most

You must have Shaq’s hands, because I’ve experienced this literally every time I’ve gone to a grocery store throughout my entire adult life.

Get the fuck out of the way or someone less hinged than I am is going to move you.

You’re totally right, that makes me feel so much better about having to wait idly for the next 19 minutes rather than get my shopping done. They’re not in my way, they’re connecting! I should try to connect with them, too!

Wow, they left. Why don’t they want to connect anymore?

I’m 6’5". I’d love to hear your suggestions for what I should do with my legs when you recline your seat. Do you think I can just take them off? Am I supposed to sit sideways with my legs in the lap of the person next to me? Am I supposed to do Yoga for a year before I get on a plane, so I can spread my knees out 180 degrees from each other and you can lay your head on my dick?

I’m not “slamming my knees into the back of your seat”. They simply exist where you’re trying to be, and the fundamental properties of matter are causing them to collide. You can be as pissed about your comfort as you want to be, but it’s not going to change my knees into ethereal ghost knees so your seat can lean back.

And from images of ice cascading into the sea, you genuinely drew the conclusion that Antarctica would be completely ice-free in less than 12 years?

So, nobody actually told you that, you just decided it was true after seeing video of ice falling into the sea. But that decision was firm enough in your mind to cause you to believe that, since there is still some ice in 2023, the doom-sayers of the Discovery channel were wrong and we had nothing to worry about?

Fascinating. I wish I had the ability to make those kinds of amazing leaps of reasoning on subjects I know absolutely nothing about and then believe them hard enough to post snarky shit in public.

What was the name of that program?

Who told you that? Name, quote, date, and source, please.

This was a part of the equation when I decided to pursue traditional publishing instead of going the self-publishing route. I wouldn’t be competing against other authors for the attention of publishers, I’d be competing against an ocean of ghost-written get-rich-quick schemes and bots. Sometimes gatekeepers serve a real purpose.

In August, for the first time in my adult life, I’ll be living in a solid blue city in a reasonably blue state. I’m super excited that I can have a pride bumper sticker finally. I’ve always wanted one, but I’ve never lived anywhere it was even reasonably safe to have one. I’m not a coward; I just can’t afford to replace slashed tires or broken-off side mirrors.

I gotta imagine much of them weren’t actually successful.

You’re right. Any individual person going in for these scams is almost guaranteed to lose their lunch money. But from Etsy’s perspective (and I assume Imgur’s), they only need a tiny fraction of their sellers to get the jackpot in order to keep the money train rolling. If they can get a single dollar a month out of 20% of their users, that’s still a baby dragon’s worth of a horde every 30 days. And I’m sure they have other fees and hedges to ensure that even if you never make a penny in sales, Etsy still comes out ahead on you.