MrGG

Already planning on it here in Canada once my friends and I have the money for what we want to do.

Farming (+greenhousing) and some cottage rentals on the side.

Peace out, modern society!

Data's Day! It's the dancing doctor that tells him to smile.

Wow, my comment is real weird taken out of context...

Weird. I run the same setup as you (Firefox on Android with Bitwarden and SwiftKey) and I don't think I've ever experienced that. How much RAM does your device have? Do you have a lot of other apps running? It sounds like it is purging the page from memory when you're switching away.

This might be my favourite fediverse comment so far.

My first choice would have been Gilbert Gottfried, but he died last year. Done in the style of The Producers, of course.

Rural ass Appalachia

haha say no more. I'm from Toronto and have never been to the Appalachians (rural or not), but uh... that area of America is well known. Infamous, even. I'm a bit surprised there's a discernible gay community there at all. There's a lot of "parTying" here too (I see what you did there), not my vibe at all. As someone from outside of America looking in (because we are perpetually bombarded with American culture) it seems like the vast majority of the country is anti-intellectual. Which is of course by design, it's much easier to stage an authoritarian coup if the majority is too dumbed down to think critically and fight it. Plus starve the beast, wedge the class divide further, and you have masses of people fighting each other for crumbs. I suspect your life would be greatly improved if you were able to get the hell out of there (of course that is easier said than done). I can't imagine it's going to get much better there anytime soon.

Wow, imagine waiting 10 years to be with a meth dealer. That man clearly has some serious issues. And the gall to assume that someone would agree to be in a long-term relationship with an expiry date. Plus if things end up going really well, and he doesn't want to wait for his meth-man anymore and just be fully committed to you, you then have a potentially angry ex who just got out of jail, expecting his guy to still be waiting for him. No matter which way that would go it would be absurdly messy.

They’d catfish a guy on Grindr, and then pummel the shit out of him.

What in the fuck? If something like that happened here it would be front page news. But the way you describe it, and the fact that it has a colloquial term, makes it seem like it's a common occurrence? That's fucked up to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if you could apply for asylum in Canada because of it.

Okay, with all of that in mind I'd probably also be hesitant to accept and integrate friends into my life, and would have a very difficult time dating.

You mention the culture where you're from -- might I ask what part of the world you're from?

I know this will sound very therapist-y, but why do you think it takes you so long to consider someone a friend? Do you have a very high threshold for what you consider a friend? Are you worried about trusting them?

Regarding the "they're not the person I want to spend my life with, so what's the point" statement: so what if you know you don't want to spend your life with them? Are you enjoying your time with them at that moment? My friend, I worry that you're sabotaging your present in search of your future, but what if you're also sabotaging your future by doing that? We're monkey-brained humans so we're constantly pondering all "what ifs" and that can sometimes distract us from what is right in front of us at the time. We constantly spite good in search of perfection, but there usually isn't such a thing. It'd be like refusing a modest lottery winning because you're waiting for the big jackpot. Work with what you have, my dude!

I can appreciate being gay can greatly reduce the dating pool, too. I'm a bi man but most of my relationships have been het; scouring dating apps for gay men I find the vast majority I do not vibe with at all, and most bi men here are poly with het female partners and are looking for threesomes / group play -- from my experience, anyway. So I can't fully appreciate how difficult it is for you to find someone you connect with (culture where you're from, someone to talk about philosophy and books, etc) but I do have some idea. However, even if they don't check all your boxes, sometimes "good enough" can be good enough.

Ah, don't be so hard on yourself. Most people are not "lookers" anyway. Win them over in other ways!

This is a bit of a tangent, but: does it bother you that you've never been in love? I suspect if it's a premise that is popping up in your dreams, and conscious-you has recognised that contrast between dreams and reality, it must.

I think it's actually fairly common. You've probably had partners you cared very deeply for, but not at an intensity you would consider "in love," yeah? I don't think that's actually a problem and more relationships / marriages are like that than we think. Just two people that care about each other, enjoy each other's company, get intimate periodically, and are trying to survive this flaming roller coaster of a life we're all experiencing. That's why "partner" is an apt term, we're all just trying to survive (and thrive), not live out a Harlequin romance novel.

If it works for both of you I wouldn't fret too much - but I know brains don't really work that way.

Was the INXS song Original Sin?

Haha I was sort of anticipating that too. I actually do use Signal, and wish more of my friends / family would too, but I don't have the time nor the energy to try and convince all of them to switch away from Messenger.

Meta IS evil, but they don't have my real name and I try to block as much of their tracking as possible. An unfortunate requisite evil right now if I want to easily keep in contact with people.

Oh you 😂 you think I should ask the multinational behemoth social media company (that is routinely antagonistic towards the laws of other countries, and rejects feature requests from users for sport) to support WEBP as a shareable format in their messenging app, rather than the very receptive developer of a small app that I directly support through my subscription?

You have contact info for the team I should be talking to at Facebook?

Oof. I guess that's slightly better than what happens with Facebook Messenger, which is a generic "an error has occurred" dialogue box.

I know what WEBP is, why it is used, and why some instances would prefer to use it. But sharing WEBP to Facebook Messenger does not work, it returns an error.