TL;DR: Bad Shit that overshadows My Shit happens in the world. But My Shit happens to Me, and my not liking it doesn’t in any way negate the others’ Bad Shit (which they’re also fully allowed, encouraged even, to complain about).

People complain. It’s human nature. The happiest people in the world have complaints. If you feel like you’re seeing it too much, it could very well be a symptom of where you spend your time. Taking some of your points one-by-one:

“… at least from what I can tell on the internet”

This is your biggest problem. The Internet is hardly an accurate reflection of society. Half the people on social media work hard to project what they think is a “perfect life” to others. The other half pretty much do the opposite: complain.

“… other countries have wars… we complain that eggs are too expensive…”

You ever heard the saying “all politics are local?” This, right here, is that, 100%. We can all agree that what’s going on in war zones and third-world countries trumps any thing likely to happen to us in a “these western 1st world countries,” but does that mean I’m not allowed to be upset about the things negatively affecting me, or just that I’m not allowed to voice my frustrations? “Oh, I just got fired and will probably be evicted in a couple months, but people on the other side of the world don’t have food, so I should be happy.” Me being mad at something that angers me doesn’t lessen the tragedies of the world.

“Why do people waste all this time with complaining…”

If you’ve ever dated someone, or had a really close friend, you learn that sometimes when they complain to you, they don’t expect you to fix their problem. They just need an avenue to vent. The Internet is also used pretty widely for this. They’re not “destroying their own life,” they’re venting, or actually looking for help, which is actually pretty healthy!

“Fundamental changes,” and “innovative” have me worried “shitbox” will prove to be more apt. I really hope I’m wrong!

Agreed! I’m actually hoping no more people leave Reddit. I like the community here so much better. For sure, there’s some trolls and echo chambers, but it’s mostly a pretty good place.

This may be overthinking things a bit but…

I mod a desert of a sub for my alma mater, and I’m pretty sure the same person downvotes everything I post there. No comments, just a single downvote. As a mod I would love to be able to confirm my suspicions, but as a user, I like my votes to be anonymous.

As a middle ground, perhaps the software itself could auto-mod a bit. If a single user only ever downvotes content from a community, and crosses a certain threshold, they might be soft-banned for some number of days with a note in the mod log to the effect of “negative contribution.” After some amount of time, the ban is automatically lifted. If a community mod notices that the same user keeps getting soft-banned every 30-something days (the soft-ban limit plus some amount of time for it to kick back in), they can decide if they want to ban the user.

We either fry everything or drown it in some kind of sugar. If we’re not doing that, we’re doing both.

Adding that all the older Stephen King books are worth the read. 11.23.63 was the last one I read, and I really enjoyed it.

If you’re into science fiction, check out the Wool/Shift/Dust trilogy by Hugh Howey. I also enjoyed the Lattice trilogy by Erik Hanberg. You’ve probably already seen some movies based on Robert Heinlein books. GS Jensen also has a bunch of fun series. Finally, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is what got me into sci-fi as a wee one.

Alternatively, head over to a book community, or the books community on BlueSky is pretty active. Tell them some things you really like and ask for suggestions. If you liked a movie or TV show based on a book, there’s a very good chance the book was a bit different and considerably more in depth.

VLC is pretty great. I would say IINA is at least a close second on Mac. Haven’t had a problem playing anything in it yet.

You really need the GIF from caddyshack for the appropriate tone!

Yeah, I don’t get it either. People who take joy in the anger of others are… a different breed.

Damn! I forgot all about that! Maybe cause I didn’t take it seriously because no real publisher takes the Chicago guide seriously! MLA all day every day m-fers!

Damn. This is perfect.

When I first got on Lemmy, there were a bunch of discussions about getting rid of downvotes, and I thought this was a bad idea. For the most part, they do a good job of allowing the communities to self-moderate. Sure there are trolls that downvote everything, and they can rot in Hell, but they’re a very small majority. Generally speaking, up/downvotes provide an easy way to sort the wheat from the chaff in both posts and comments.

To be clear, I didn’t say people shouldn’t replace the default messaging app, I said do use Signal to do it. Every time I’ve tried it’s a shit show.

Edit to add, since SMS was apparently dropped, it might be better. I take it nobody uses SMS anymore?

I love signal, but I would add to tell Android users NOT to let it replace their default text messaging app. They will have a Bad Time. Other than that, Signal’s great!

Agreed! Love begins with self love. If you can’t accept and love yourself, you’ll never be able to love someone else.

That doesn’t mean you think you’re perfect. Far from it. It means you accept yourself, warts and all, for who you are without judgement. You look for ways to improve what you can, and work with or around what you can’t. Once you’ve learned to do this for yourself, you can begin to do it for others. But it must start with you. There’s no shortcut.

Also, virgins make a bigger deal about virginity than it needs to be. You’re a person. You’ve done some things with other people at some point in your life. Sex is just another thing you do with another person (or people I guess). Love is what makes sex special. Without it, it’s just another thing to do with someone else. Granted it’s a fun thing that feels good, but without love it’s just a thing. Don’t let it become this mountain you have to climb. It isn’t.

So basically something that should be commonplace to navigate the hellscape that is US healthcare.

Agreed, the first time I used it I think I edited my post 3 or 4 times before getting it right.

Feels like this could be helped immensely by a blurb at the top of his GitHub page pointing to a gofundme to help pay for a lawyer. If the case has legs, settle and move forward. If not, it should be trivial for an IP lawyer to get dismissed.

Forgot to add the SA image was cached in my browser. So when my roommate asked me about it I brought it back up and, of course it looked fine to me! No dicks to be seen.