Try to understand where they are coming from or why someone might be writing something. Usually when people write disturbing things online, it’s because they did not have a normal, healthy childhood. They weren’t taught to have proper relationships with other people. They may have been abused and excluded from society.

the day my work friend got so mad at me that he cut me off. to keep it short. there was a traumatic few weeks after that where he was taking out his anger on me.

I lost about 60 lbs and went vegan at 24. Had a really chill schedule.

President Taft riding a water buffalo. Always gives me a chuckle.

I barely forced myself out of bed but I did it!

they’ll figure it out eventually.

I have a lot of Republican family members who are personally affected and still Republican. They don’t see any alternative. You need to remember why we got here: our party has done nothing for the past 20 years but fail. Fail to prevent the collapse of the middle class, fail to create a comprehensive re-training scheme, fail to address the consequential homelessness and drug addiction epidemic, fail to lift the south out of poverty, fail to create a rational healthcare system, fail to stop the environment from getting worse, fail to govern effectively and bring the national debt into line, bowed down to trillionaire oligarchs instead of stopping them. I could keep going. I say this with full acknowledgement that Joe Biden had the most positive direct impact on my life and family of any president in my lifetime. I say this with full acknowledgement that the republicans also failed. But when all people hear is that we can’t help them, people will turn to ANYONE saying they can help.

I would assume it went the other way, that the tech companies gave the school money to try to hook young consumers. You will see that with other companies on your campus as well, such as door dash, uber eats, drink companies handing out samples, etc.

It’s not possible for it to not happen. Even if every republican area was complicit, so that they only had to attack democratic cities, they simply cannot attack every place in the country all at once. Also, most authoritarian governments still have elections. They just engage in election fraud, which again, he can’t do in every single place.

They need to recognize there is a problem and want to change it.

Well, red voters need to stop voting red this election. That’s the only way we have to hold our elected officials accountable.

Check out The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. It’s an easy read, I had no trouble with it in high school. It doesn’t need to be violent at all. Very much a “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” kind of book. People focus a lot on “Why should that person have what I have, when I worked so hard?” when the real question is “Why should that person go without what all of us have, when it’s completely unnecessary?”

That sounds more like a local myth. The klan wasn’t really a top-down organization like the church. It had a lot of chapters all over the country. Each chapter was run by its own members according to local norms and preferences. It may very well be that is something that your local chapter did as well as the racism stuff.

It’s completely normal for 30 year olds to interact on social media. That wasn’t a thing 20 years ago when we were your age, but we grew up with social media in our teens. Your dad sounds like a normal 30 year old.

yeah, they want to know whether you suck. the expectation is that most people will be kind and support you, and you will likewise pay it back when you have people under you.

Those are some brave cats.

I don’t think so. it’s like, explanatory. why am I freaking out? oh, I am as mentally fragile as a butterfly and can’t handle literally anything. that’s why.

That I have zero coping skills for stress at all. Not that therapy helped.

Think about how you view other countries. For example, Russian opposition doesn’t change what Russia does

We actually do make that distinction between the country and the people. Just like how people can support the Iranian protests but not the Iranian leadership. I agree with the general sentiment that the posts being addressed are stupid and pointless though.

I was in 8th grade, so it was much better than 2007. My 7th grade teacher liked the popular kids more and absolutely couldn’t stand me, but my 8th grade teacher liked our outcast group more and vibed with me. She was an older teacher, so more skilled, but also I think their generation had a different perspective on weirdness. That was the first year I made online friends. My parents got through the crisis unscathed. Both rented, so no house lost, and neither lost their job. It definitely instilled the belief that I would graduate high school and fail to get a job, which never faded through high school. I would say that time reinforced the messages I received from the Iraq War era, that America was in decline and the old narratives are now false.