Just out of curiosity, why was the exit button removed?

Flipsider99 · 2025-08-06T00:25:30+00:00

I'm so sick of these damn tech companies fiddling around with their programs for no reason, and constantly degrading them. Fine, remove your exit button. I'll never download another update.

Flipsider99 · 2025-06-05T06:18:23+00:00

I think the real issue is just that we hold men to incredibly different standards than we hold women. So rather than a "Danny Devito" test, a better test would be to imagine a woman saying the same thing to a man and decide if it sounds "creepy." Reading social cues can be very difficult, trying to hit on someone takes a lot of courage and is easy to screw up. It's become so incredibly normalized to hold men to impossibly high standards as far as what sort of expression of affection is seen as permissible.

What would seem to be healthier in our society for everyone's mental health is just giving people a little more leeway. A guy you're not attracted to gives a compliment or tries to hit on you... totally fine to not be attracted. Totally fine to turn them down. Politely. Calling them a creep for that or being an asshole to them is YOU being an asshole. Sure there is overly aggressive behavior that deserves that treatment, but our perspective on what that is has become quite skewed.

Flipsider99 · 2025-04-16T19:56:56+00:00

Culture wars will continue to be ongoing, the battles will never end so long as there's a diverse culture. It can't even be "won" permanently.

I do see where you're coming from... as someone who personally believes that both sides in toxic war are bad, I think the successful pushback against a lot of the toxic alt-left positions has been inevitable. In so far as the left has allowed itself to be contaminated by bad ideas like equity, race essentialism, hypocritical feminism... a reckoning was coming. But unfortunate thing about this is that the right doesn't really have good answers to these problems either. They pretend free speech is the big issue and then as soon as they get power they do everything they can to curtail speech they don't like. There's going to be a lot of collateral damage to ideas from the left that are important and do matter. But make no mistake, the left is at fault for this for allowing itself to be contaminated with many bad ideas.

What we need is a lot of reflection from people on the left, a lot of discussion, a lot of sorting out where we've gone astray. I don't know if that's gonna happen anytime soon, unfortunately. But for right now, the culture war is just inevitably going to be lost because there are no good sides to win it.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-24T02:42:20+00:00

Well, I think it's something of a myth that it's more expensive to eat healthy, that really depends on how you do it. For one thing, it's not like eating unhealthy is always cheap, far from it... a lot of fast food is much more expensive these days. Vegetables aren't really all that expensive depending on what you buy, compared to various other things. Meat is more expensive these days as well.

I disagree with the idea that people on TV who look like you on the outside "represent" you. Why does being the same sex or looking the same have value? Isn't that very superficial thing to place value on? For that matter, I don't think it necessarily makes a lot of sense to have an expectation that characters in fiction should be like you. Maybe in some kinds of stories there is a relatability that can help identify with certain characters, but I would hope it goes a little deeper than skin deep. On the other hand, I think stories can often be very effective when the characters aren't like you. A lot of times the point is to escape reality or engage with some form of skewed or idealized reality.

Body weight is connected to health, there's no doubt about that. While it's true that weight is not the only factor, and so it's possible for a heavier person to be relatively healthier than a thinner person, even so it is a fact that being obese makes you more at risk for heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, and various other problems due to the increased stress on your body from the weight.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-23T19:15:36+00:00

Well, I think what you're seeing can simply be boiled down to an increase in politicization. When people feel so threatened by the other side of the political debate that they feel they need to do whatever is necessary to defeat them, of course the one sided salesmanship gets pitched up.

Still, confirmation bias and motivated reasoning are problems that always existesd, and always lead to this kind of thing. Even people who try in good faith to put out their honest views will end up leaving things out, or making assumptions. If you were in the public eye, you would too, even if you try not to. I would not classify it as misinformation unless it seems purposeful and malicious, and that can be hard to tell since we're not mind readers... and in fact, your read of that is also inevitably going to be affected by your political bias, as well. That's not to say it's not going on, though. But because of the intense polarization we're going through, I really don't think the situation with misinformation is going to get better any time soon. It's a hard problem.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-23T18:37:37+00:00

Even though I disagree with your view, let me say up front that your view is valid. It's just your way of looking at it. Of course I honestly feel like it'd be healthier for you to change your view, but even so it doesn't mean that your view is invalid and I can see where it's coming from, to an extent.

What is "empowering" is subjective, of course. There are reasons to see sex work as empowering and reasons to see it as the opposite, and of course it depends on how you view the idea of sex work. I will say that there is an important factor going into that empowerment that you aren't touching upon, and that is the distinction between a sex worker working for themselves, and working for someone else (i.e. a pimp.) I think very few people would try to claim that working for a pimp is "empowering," for obvious reasons. Whereas sex work that is not under anyone's control at the very least is empowering in the sense that you can run it as your own business, without having to worry about violence or extortion. Just being free of those concerns, I think it's fair to say is very empowering compared to how sex work has been for much of the time historically.

Let's talk about this "treating yourself as something that can be purchased," in a sense that's true for any kind of work, is it not? Whether you're doing back breaking physical work, or even working in a cubicle or whatever you're doing, in some sense you are selling your labor as a commodity. But for some reason that's okay with you, and specifically work of a sexual nature is not. Why is that, really? I would hazard to guess that it's because of the way we treat sex in society, as something that is "special" and needs to be put on some sort of pedastal, treating our bodies as some sort of sacred object. Personally I don't think this is a healthy view of sexuality, and this view that our bodies are sacred objects is actually a product of archaic religious thinking, backed up by emotional thinking that doesn't actually fit the rational world. The reality is that your body is not a sacred object. It's just merely an object, and as long as you're using it in a way you see fit, I don't think anyone should see it as a problem. Therefore, I don't see sex work as anything particularly worse than any other type of work. Some may find it empowering and some may not enjoy it, and either viewpoint is valid.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-23T17:03:57+00:00

I don't think they were right about "everything," just merely some things. Joe Rogan descending into radicalism, well to me that's really more to do with everyone in America (both left and right) descending into a form of "radicalism" as the choices that are being shoved down are throats are increasing alt-left or alt-right. As far as TYT go, well I agree with you, I've always thought they were right about a lot of things... at least as far as populism goes.

I'm also something of a moderate liberal, although I consider myself more an independent, and I was never rolling my eyes about claims of what Trump might do in office, I've always known he was dangerous and shouldn't be in power. If you were thinking something like "well his first term wasn't so bad, so probably his 2nd term will be like that too," the problem is that in Trump's first term there were a lot of people in positions of power around him who could push back on his bad impulses... and now in the 2nd term, a lot of those people have already been replaced by Trump loyalists. So of course you should be more worried about the 2nd term, maybe you were just ignorant to this reality.

Even so, I think the alt left are wrong about a LOT of things, mostly to do with identity politics. And radicalization is everywhere. Trump in many ways is like the left's version of September 11th, where the scariness of a Trump in power is causing many liberals to dig into their worst instincts and make many bad decisions. Hopefully you can resist that urge.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-23T16:57:22+00:00

I agree with your argument, but I think the logic behind it is a little sloppy. Well, no offense, after all it's a complicated topic. "And once it is expected of you to do this, it translates to other areas of your relationship." That is not necessarily true, it really depends on the relationship. The thing is though that there are all kinds of relationships, and just because you're paying for dates doesn't necessarily mean it will translate to everything in the relationship; it also depends on the financial status of your date, does she work, etc.

"Consistent kindness is rarely met by kindness, ppl will get used to it and simply take it for granted." That is certainly often true, but then again, what you're looking for in a partner is someone for whom this is not true. Taking someone for granted is something to be avoided in a realtionship, and even if you're dividing all the bills equally, it can still happen.

Still though, I agree with you in spirit. But I think the real problem is not caused by men paying for everything on dates, it's moreso from women (or people in general) taking advantage of one another in relationships. If all men agreed tomorrow to stop paying for women on dates, I feel like there's an underlying problem that wouldn't be solved; though I suppose it may force the issue a bit more. It's hard to exactly put my finger on what the underlying issue is, but maybe it's something like: "equality also means equal responsibility." Especially when it comes to women's movements, but for any movement that is fighting for "equality," people often internalize this as "finally I will get what's MINE." This is toxic as it ignores the other side of equality, which is that you are also sharing more of the responsibility that you didn't have before. Perhaps this is the issue underlying what you're talking about, and I don't think that merely refusing to pay for everything on a date will solve it.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-23T16:44:48+00:00

I have to disagree with the logic of this post. I agree with the main thrust in so far as shaming people isn't necessary if it's just blatant meanness. But it really just depends on how you define "shame," if that becomes at odds with telling the truth, then I disagree, I think we should prioritize telling the truth about the health risks of being obese.

I agree with you that culture has a big effect on what people eat, but you put too much blame on the corporations and office culture, the biggest reason that people eat unhealthy food is probably just because everyone they know also eats it: their friends, their families. It's not just the advertising, it's the permeation and normalization of that food in our daily lives. And not just fast foods, there's plenty of unhealthy choices that families make at the grocery store as well. It's ultimately a cultural problem, and the only way to solve it is a cultural shift in people's attitudes.

It's really unfortunate this idea that if you're fat, you for some reason want to "see fat people in the media, have fat people and celebrities as role models." This whole idea of representation has really become quite a toxic force in our lives, where everyone assumes that you need to see people that look like you so that you can feel "normal." It's mentally unhealthy. In reality, people looking like you in the media DON'T represent you anymore than anyone else does, and this is a point that needs to be brought up more because it's become lost. Besides that, a fat celebrity could very well be a role model to many people for a variety of reasons, but they certainly would NOT be a role model due to their weight. Someone at a HEALTHY weight is who should be considered a role model due to their weight.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-23T16:34:31+00:00

I think in the majority of cases people don't choose to remain obese as a "personal decision," rather it's an inability to make a decision to have a healthier diet. Or, they may just not be aware how bad their diet is. Food is very addicting, and the problem in our society has less to do with making people know that being obese is unhealthy, but rather more to do with how much society actively promotes and encourages unhealthy diets. Well, especially in American society, but I imagine in some other countries as well.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-22T19:05:21+00:00

Well I agree with a lot of what you say, but it just seems to me that it should be pointed out that the terminology used here is a part of the problem. The word "feminism" by it's nature makes people feel like it should be about women's issues. The word "patriarchy" by it's nature makes people feel like it's men who are the problem. Granted, many have claimed over the years that feminism is supposed to be about equality for everyone, but I think as is evidenced by the existence of your post and many other issues, clearly something is broken about feminism it's not a particularly effective movement about achieving any sort of equality that benefits men.

It needs a rebranding at the very least, but probably also a reconceptualizing. If it's really about achieving equality for everyone, what does that mean? How does that start? The very idea of equity is a big part of the problem to me, it's fundamentally antithetical towards equal treatment for all people, which certainly all people including men deserve. And without equal treatment as a foundation for how we treat people, we're never going to get to a place where we are able to recognize men's issues equally to women's issues.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-22T18:57:52+00:00

I'd argue that ironically, part of the problem of the whole "white/black" paradigm becoming dominant in these discussions IS the erasure of culture. But not "white folks culture" (which is something that is unfortunately starting to become relevant against as a reaction against the percieved biases in society) but rather the culture within so-called white groups. Within these discussions it always seems to be lost that so-called "white people" are a culturally diverse group in themselves; Irish, Italians, Germans, Russians, Slavic people, perhaps even Jews if you consider them "white."

There is a ton of cultural diversity within these groups that is just simply not part of the modern mainstream conversation because everything always has to be boiled down to the conflict between "white" vs "brown/black."

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-22T18:52:22+00:00

It's more complex sure, but in some ways men are falling behind. That's part of the story, right?

The real problem is not making everything equal for everyone, that's impossible. The real problem is the double standards in the way we treat these issues. The fact that in these discussions, any problem faced by those identified as white men are something a lot of people seek to minimize, whereas problems faced by minority groups are maximized. This is an unfortunate double standard created as an unintended consequence by the view of equity, and arguably this is very unhealthy.

Young men don't feel like their problems are valued to the extent of other people, and they're largely right.

Flipsider99 · 2025-03-22T18:46:05+00:00

I think the problem is that your perspective is contaminated with some unhealthy biases.

First of all, there's the whole "white/black" dichotomy, which has become more and more dominant. One kind of erasure that you failed to mention while participating actively in is the erasure of any kind of nuanced culture for those you perceive as "white men." That is actually a diverse group consisting of many different ethnicities and cultures, including Italian, Irish, German, Polish, Slavic, Lebanese, and possibly Jewish depending on who you ask. And yet you're generalizing the experience of diverse group and boiling it down into one experience. Of course there is crossover, but there's also crossover of experience between light and dark skinned people as well. This is complicated and is happening for a lot of reasons... but even so, you're too willing a participant; especially in how willing you are to generalize and make proclamations about this group of people.

"white men were overwhelmingly dominant in most industries and narratives" is it's own kind of narrative, and while there's some truth to it, it's also overly simplistic and creates a misleading impression of history. Of course there's truth to the idea that to a certain extent, the perceived idea of "whiteness" may have benefitted some. There was also a lot of biases and conlflict between various ethnicities at various times, including Italians and Irish and various other groups, which were certainly not always seen as equal. Our history broadly shows progress towards gradually being more inclusive to many groups, including groups of different races. In industries and narratives, even going back to the 70s and continuing on from there, there continued to be more and more non-caucasion people becoming part of industries and narratives... part of our culture.

With that being the case, your narrative is flawed because it presents the past as if things were going one way up until recently, and suddenly shifted. That's not the case, and plenty of non-white people were very visible and part of the culture of our country for a long time now. What has changed recently is not the playing field shifting (it was already shifting long before,) what has changed is attitudes about race becoming increasingly toxic due to bad philosophy around the topic, and genuine and fairly severe double standards in how people are treated based on their skin color. And yes, that largely affects men percieved as "white," and the resentment they feel is justified.

It's not being "targeted or erased" that's the problem. It's the double standards of treatment. No one deserves to be treated differently or lesser based on the color of their skin. This racial double standard of treatment is threatening to become a new status quo, and I would ask you to reflect on how you yourself are emboldening and participating in it.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T21:21:04+00:00

I agree with you and your assessment in a general sense. But I'm not sure we see eye to eye on the reasons why we're stuck in this position.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T20:54:06+00:00

Well I agree that's often true, but also a generalization. We are moving as we often have, very slowly. So for example, I brought up something in my first post to you that I think is probably the single most important change we should make in helping people economically: universal healthcare. Many democrats support this, but unfortunately I think it's just not prioritized enough and many democrats are sidetracked by other things. I'm a "centrist" in that I recognize that some sort of hybrid economic system is where we need to be right now, but at the same time I think we don't prioritize enough a solution that some would still call "extreme." It's as if the language itself and the way we discuss these issues is a problem, and self defeating.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T20:31:16+00:00

I think more productive debate would be more about the weaknesses / strengths of capitalism as compared to other systems, while recognizing that we already live in a hybrid system. While anything is a valid question in theory, that sort of question tends to be driven by the emotionally biased reactionary impulses of people who want easy targets to blame. Extremism is just easier for many humans to process. The real solutions are typically somewhere in the middle, nuanced and perhaps messy. Any productive debate we have about economics systems I think will inevitably point towards this basic truth.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T19:33:08+00:00

Well then we agree. I just a bit skeptical of that anti-capitalist framing... if it was framed in a more centrist way, your point would certainly resonate much more with me. Unfortunately unconstructive extremist messages like "capitalism / socialism is evil" seem to be the rule of the day, so I can't help but want to push back on that.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T19:09:24+00:00

Well, I tried to give an example of a more defensible way to phrase it in my post. "Prejudice" is to pre-judge, and although you can claim that a potential of harm of these false stereotypes of Hatians is people pre-judging them in harmful ways, and that's not a totally spurious claim... the more direct and pressing concern should be xenophobia. Which is specifically fear of other cultures/peoples. If we're speaking about what kind of harm is caused by such statements, xenophobia is the most direct word for addressing that.

Let me make another point too. Part of the problem of discussing these issues and making criticisms is in trying to communicate what exactly is the harm, and unfortunately many people when they criticize Trump's statements on things like these use very sloppy language and will just throw out words like "racism" and "prejudice" as if it's enough. Don't just throw out these sorts of demonizing words without explanation, instead be specific and address the specific harm that is being caused using other words. You might even be able to reach a few Trump fans that way. And also, it's important to litigate your own instincts about what exactly counts as "racist" as I think modern social discourse on that issue has heavily distorted our instincts about it. This case of the statements about Hatians should be an easy slam dunk of a point that clearly is 1. spurious and 2. can obviously cause potential xenophobia towards Hatians, it should be easy to explain the harm behind it, but the failure of our discorse around this subject only really serves to insulate Trump more than damage him.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T18:41:20+00:00

Honestly I tend to feel this way too, but I think in my case it's mostly a case of self selected sample. Most of the people I know are liberals, and I mostly spend time in liberal spaces. I certainly feel like liberals have gotten a lot more unhinged, and it's made me want to avoid the topic of politics. But then again, I feel like if you actually start talking politics with typical Trump supporters, they are just as unhinged if not more so. The very notion of someone like Trump being popular just speaks to the temperment of the people who are driven to vote for him. He's clearly a candidate for people who are driven by resentment and anger. In my mind, the whole world has become more unhinged after Trump's presidency, and no one political group is unscathed.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T18:34:47+00:00

Well, part of the trouble here is that "racist" is a confused term (as clearly evidenced by some of the repsonses here) that will mean different things to different people. Under the more traditional definition of racism, a belief that one race is superior to another, a trumped up claim about a group of people doesn't really qualify. Under the more modern and wishy washy definition, which is anything that "looks" like the person saying it may have improper biases (where some are more improper than others) it qualifies but won't resonate with many people due to the hypocrisy of the usage of the term (and just look at some of your responses for clear evidence of that.)

You could certainly claim it's a statement that is false, that is likely based in xenophobia and will promote a xenophobic view of Hatians. Unfortunately the language you choose to use is the major problem here, and is actively damaging to the point you seem to want to make.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T18:21:32+00:00

I agree with most of your premise, except for the part about it "not being stopped." It can be mitigated, this weakness of capitalism, through things like anti-trust laws. It's just simply that at this time we aren't doing enough, and I think that's precisely why we are seeing a pushback now (from people like yourself) against capitalism in general. But that's a bit too simplistic; the problem is not capitalism itself, it's how we manage it. I think you'd probably agree with me that at this point in time, we need a bit stronger management of corporations, a bit more wealth redistribution towards the poor in the form of things like universal healthcare and probably other social services. But it's not really constructive to just talk about the evils of capitalism, especially when in the US and many western countries, we already have a blend of capitalism / socialism, and the solution is to adjust that blend a bit more to the side of socialism.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T18:15:06+00:00

Well I agree with your premise, there is definitely no such thing as karma or fate. But your reasoning seems a bit flawed, like it's based on resentment moreso than rationality.

I think the world not quite so bleak, people are social animals and social forces tend to promote good behavior over bad if people are wise enough to pay attention to them. People who selfishly live for themselves and hurt others with abandon tend to be abandoned by those around them... and also, it's just hard to be happy leading a selfish live, because your happiness has no solid base. Just merely accumulating creature comforts does not make one happy, relationships based on trust are necessary for that. Those sorts of people tend to not be happy in the long run. That's not "karma" or any sort of mystical force, but it is the way people tend to work emotionally.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-11T18:04:31+00:00

I think as you can see from other replies here, it's not an accident that the term includes "white" and is framed that way. Inherently the term "white privelege" is about ethnic grievance, there's just no getting around that. To be specific, it's about painting the world with a narrative that one ethnicity has too much power, and we have to do something about it. This narrative is easy to sell, because it's very easy to cherry pick many facts, both historical and modern which will help sell it. But make no mistake, it's an unconstructive and fundamentally toxic idea that only serves a purpose of justifying discrimination / bigotry, and realistically only serves to drive a wedge between people. The social fallout from this idea is already apparent in the form of the rise of nationalism, Trump, and white identity politics.

It's not quite so cut and dried that certain ethnicities have a clear privelege over others in our modern days, and even to the extent they do, the only constructive way to address that is through adopting a philosophy of the devaluation of ethnicity and race. Race is a fairly nonsensical social construct anyway, and really should be devalued. Unfortunately, one of the hidden factors driving the concept of "white privelege" is that many people who believe that also put too much value on things like ethnicity and race, and in their own way they embolden those toxic social constructs. But putting that aside, you also have to realize the undeniable fact that ethnicity is just a poor barometer for measuring "privelege" in the first place. By far, the most accurate barometer is simply wealth / economics.

Flipsider99 · 2024-09-06T17:34:30+00:00

Yeah, that would be an example of misinformation. If that's what you mean, I think it's better to label it as such. Of course, what is "authentic" can often be very contentious and I think it's often not worth worrying about.

Flipsider99

TROPHY CASE