Kalphite

Pokemon Go has inspired me to pick up Omega Ruby again, which has been a fun little nostalgia trip, though i'm disappointed in my past self for not taking the time to catch a Ralts or an Abra. Still fun tho~ just caught a Skarmory today which has been pretty dope

having to choose between natalie dormer and olivia wilde is probably the most difficult thing I've done this week

That's what inspired this post for me, haha

We all know that OT isn't exactly bustling with activity these days. However, the subforums are even more dead than OT is. The sports forum hasn't had a new post in over 6 months, MMT has only had 8 topics posted in this year (one of which being the What are you listening to thread that is pretty much being kept alive singlehandedly by Dax), and the video games forum only has about 10. However, from our posts in the today thread, none of these topics are uncommon interests for the regulars here, but nobody wants to bother going to these subforums to post about these topics because nobody would read them there (as we just saw with the Pokemon Go thread that got moved to Video games and consoles). I feel like at this point it's extremely unlikely that these forums ever have a rise in activity, and I think it would be more beneficial to either archive the subforums and just forward new posts on these topics into OT or just merge these forums into OT altogether. I think that not splitting these off into other forums would encourage more conversations to happen than our one semi-active Today thread and would possibly get the few stragglers left on these subforums to be a little more active with us as well. What do you all think?

this thread is too old to expect 6 more votes and 10 quaterfinals would make a bizarre bracket. just scratch quaterfinal 8 from the history books and get on with the samifinals

Thank you for saying in like 5 seconds what took me 3 paragraphs haha. In other news, I managed to patch up a spat I had with a close friend last night and it feels so good not to have to worry about that anymore and to be able to enjoy this gorgeous weekend in peace~ Also, it seems like I'll be seeing Modern Baseball, Thrice, and Phish over the course of the next week. Needless to say I'm pretty hyped haha.

But the reason why calling a straight white male a f*g is offensive is because it likens them to a gay man, which is seen as a negative. I disagree. That may be true with some other people, but in my case, I didn't want to be called a f*g simply because I wasn't gay; it was an inaccurate label. More specifically, being called a f*g as a straight dude basically meant you were repulsive to women and couldn't get laid to save your life... which was true back in the day :P It's not like I was thinking, "I'm not one of those people! Don't you dare call me that! I hate those people and don't want to be grouped in as one!" That would be homophobia. If I were gay, I'd be upset for different reasons, as other posters have mentioned. If you think about it, you're actually just confirming what I'm saying though. It's inarguable that the word f*g is used to refer to homosexual men. If it was truly inoffensive to be given that word simply because it was an inaccurate label, then it would be equally as offensive as calling you a squid or a strawberry. However, if somebody called you one of these words to your face, you'd probably just laugh, whereas calling you a f*g is a lot more likely to be construed as offensive. In my experience, using the word f*g has mostly been used to attack men for demonstrating traits that conflicted with the typical definition of masculinity - for example, I've seen people use the word against people who dislike sports, or skinny men/men who wear skinny jeans, or people who like things that aren't "cool" for men to like (for a blatant example, bronies, though there is obviously a lot of less extreme examples that also fit). Of course there are exceptions to this, such as friends using it in a joking context, but this accounted for most "serious" uses I've heard of the word. The case you outlined falls under this umbrella too - if you are "repulsive to women" and "couldn't get laid to save your life", then you aren't displaying the masculine trait of being able to attract a woman. By attacking all of these people by using a word used to refer to gay men, you are reinforcing the idea that being gay makes you less of a man and attacking the identities held by gay men. Even if you're not consciously reacting to such an insult with blatant homophobia, subconsciously you are associating being gay with being less masculine and as a derogatory thing. So even if one straight male calls another straight male a f*g, actual gay men are hurt by the reinforcement of their identity as negative. The end point is that, yes, both groups can be offended by use of the slur, but for very different reasons, and use of the word by straight men strengthens systematic discrimination against homosexual men, even if it's purely subconsciously, which is why it's not okay for straight men to use that word (the original point of contention that triggered this argument) if we are truly trying to work towards breaking societal discrimination against minority groups. As members of privileged groups, we can't understand how painful it is to have our identities used in a derogatory nature, so it is best to listen to members of these groups when they say that doing this is not okay.

But the reason why calling a straight white male a f*g is offensive is because it likens them to a gay man, which is seen as a negative. The very use of this word as an insult further strengthens the idea that being a gay man is something to be ashamed of. This is the point that I think champion is trying to make and is why one of those cases is worse than the other - calling a straight person a f*g is saying that they are similar to something that is to be ashamed of, but ultimately they know that they are still straight and not of the targeted identity and can brush it off. Calling a homosexual male a f*g is telling that person that their existence is something to be ashamed of, which reinforces the hierarchy of them being in lower social standing and can thus cause much more psychological damage. And yeah every single "white racial slur" in that list obfuscator posted is laughable at best. None of those words have the power that slurs against minority groups have towards them.

Scarlett was definitely hurt be inferior pictures in the original post lol

Hey dude, just keep in mind that instagram isnt an accurate reflection of people's lives by any means. People only post about the best nights they're having rather than the nights where they cant find anything to do and end up sitting at home watching netflix. Everyone has good or bad nights, you just can't put that much weight into the image people express on social media. Your brain also isn't doing any favors to you because the fact that you want these things that you think your friends have is causing it to highlight these more, making you pay more attention to these types of posts and making it seem like you're relatively much worse off than you really are. I can completely relate on the event planning thing to. I used to struggle a lot with self-validation because I would judge my self worth by how many people would come to parties I threw. If I couldn't get at least 30 people to come to a party I threw I felt like a failure and like I was losing friends, which is completely ridiculous. Its also really common for people at events to group up with people they know; if you're throwing the event, you're likely the only one who knows everybody. However, if you know anybody there its completely reasonable to go up to anyone you know and say hi and bounce between groups throughout the night. However, I really have only started getting over this recently when I began focusing on hanging out with smaller groups of closer people rather than trying to cram everybody together for the sake of making the party look bigger, and now I've been having a lot more fun doing that and hanging out with individual closer groups of people. I always felt like I was never in any given friend group as much as anyone else I hung out with was. However, the fact that these people will go to your events or hang out with you means a lot and these feelings are probably more based in depression than fact, which is something I've been slowly coming to realize as I've struggled with getting over my own depression. Quality relationships can just do so much more positive work on your mental health than judging yourself based on the quantity of people you talk to. I really hope you don't decide to go down that dark path, dude. You have so much more life left and so many more happy memories to come to throw it away on a balcony. Feelings of social isolation are truly some of the hardest feelings to deal with. I spent a large portion of this last year of school contemplating those kinds of thoughts, but I was always able to talk to my closest friends when times got to their darkest and could rely on them to help me feel appreciated and pull me out of that irrational, drastic state. I'm sure that you have people that care about you enough to do the same.

just got my wisdom teeth pulled out and am starting to come off of the fentanyl a bit and this shit is weird and i ahea neck brace and a head full ogf gauze and cant open my mouth or lay back and i cant wait until this [bleep]ing shit is over lol

I know from time living around them that Detroit, San Francisco, and Seattle all have these boundaries; I have no reason to believe that any other major city is different. Had my first bonfire of the summer last night; feels good that its finally getting warm enough to do that kind of thing.

I haven't participated myself but one of my roommates from this year was a member of it and seemed to enjoy it. My dad also used to be a member a long time ago and he used to bring me to meetings with him occasionally but that was something like 14 years ago so I don't remember too much of it. I've only heard good things about it though.

I enjoyed Civil War but god damn the new Spiderman bugged the living shit out of me. RIP Andrew Garfield

if there are samifinals to come I think option 2 is more deserving of progressing from this round than either of the given women

Not being able to discuss this new season with people because I've read all the books but haven't watched the show since season 1 has gotten so frustrating that I've begun rewatching the entire series from the beginning. It'll give me something to do while I'm doped up on vicodin after getting my wisdom teeth pulled next week I guess, maybe I'll be caught up by the time this season ends haha. I manged to injure myself after a mere two weeks of starting to run and now iI get knee pains whenever I run or try doing squats. This is ridiculously frustrating because I really wanted to get in better shape this summer since I have the time, but now I can't really do any of the exercises I really like doing. I guess I can still do weight training on my upper body and I can go on walks without hurting my knee but I'm really looking for ideas for other possibly more effective ways to deal with this. Bleh.

glad that even after pictures are added option 2 is still holding strong

I'm about 3 weeks out of school at this point and holy [bleep] i have no idea what to do with myself for these next three months until I move to Seattle and my real job starts lol. I've been pretty diligent about exercising regularly at least but I have no clue what to do with the rest of my days aside from random times when friends can hang out. Like I feel like I should try to put a routine together to work on more my hobbies more for the last time I have an extended block of time to do so but I'm so close to going back to some shitty fast food job just to kill some hours in the day. It's given me time to start reading a lot more at least which I'm happy about but I just hate spending this much time in front of a computer if I'm not getting anything productive out of it.

Sorry about your loss Saq :/ I'm about to go see Animal collective tonight. I've been waiting for this since Merriweather Post Pavilion came out when I was in 9th grade so sufficient to say I'm pretty [bleep]ing hype for this, even if their last few albums haven't been as great.

Garbage. I use it occasionally mainly just to have a bit of fun with people and troll them a bit but otherwise. At-least where I (and Maddy live) it is full of "Roadmen" and Uni students complaining about where we live. It is frightfully dull as Rpg says. @saq yik yak is a an anonymous local combination of twitter and reddit.you can only see posts within a couple miles of you, and its basically twitter except with upvotes and downvotes. It's a lot better in a college town. pretty much all of the students here have it so sometimes it can be funny or be a good way to hear about things happening on campus, though there are a bunch of whiny desperate people on there too. When i visit home in the surburbs though it's utter garbage Lol I lived in an apartment this year where another group of people lived underneath me and one time i played my electric drumkit in my living room and saw a passive aggressive yak about how somebody was annoyed that their upstairs neighbor got a drum set right in time for finals week posted around the time I was playing and it was probably the proudest yik-yak-related moment I've had.

haven't been posting much this week but as of Saturday I am a college graduate~~~ It's been a hell of a week, I've gone out 10 of the last 11 days but it's been super hard saying goodbyes to so many people. The hardest one was one of my roommates of 3 years leaving this morning. today i'm stuck here waiting for a melee tournament so i can grab a power cord from a friend and i just do not know what to do with myself in the meantime lol, its 3 pm here and I still have yet to get off the couch

Not your father's root beer was good the first time i had it but from the second time onward it's always just tasted like snow cone syrup lol. I don't really mess with coolers, closest thing I'll get to that is hard cider but I still greatly prefer beer or cocktails generally.

yeah I'm not normally one to delete those but this one was really stupid and included language I wasn't too proud of and accidentally evaded the censor due to had bad my spelling was anyways last night was pretty fun, it was the senior bar crawl for the student org I'm in. Ended up getting a 64oz long island and then we all went to a dance bar for the rest of the night. Pretty good time haha.

-drunk tif snip-

done with all my work for undergrad and had some fantastic beer and fries tonight and things are pretty great rn (but holy [bleep] that machine learning final was in the top 5 worst exams i've ever taken holy [bleep])