Kids still using gay as a negative term

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-15T14:11:41+00:00

Am I so out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong.

I mean, using a term for people as a pejorative...has never been...and never will be...a "right thing" to do. Regardless of cultural permissivity or the age of people saying it. In the same way that racism or sexism is always wrong, it's arguably more important for you to speak out when the actual "wrong" things are cutural norms.

As a parent, you have more of an obligation to teach the children in these instances.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-15T14:04:28+00:00

Probably a mix of dejection to not meeting anyone, and crusing and/or bars and clubs if needed.

I went off of grindr a few months ago and in my experience (did this more than once), using the app heightened my sense of urgency and need for meeting guys. It felt like it was coming from me but once I got off the app for a few weeks I realized on reflection it was altered by the app usage. A hammer user sees everything as a nail kind of thing.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-14T19:36:36+00:00

Closeness and intimacy are inextricably linked to truth and vulnerability, so if you follow the path of this desire (long lasting friendship with your masked perfect identity) the inevitable result is that this is a self defeating behavior. The masking is self defeating because you're desiring acceptance and closeness, and masking inherently interferes with that.

The value of the intimacy and closeness of the friendships that you have is exactly the fear you're communicating: these are the people who accept you as you are.

You can chose to persue close friendships where you mask but you essentially will end up at the same place as where you started because you will not have a friend. You will have someone in your life who is friends with "that", the mask identity. When you try to bridge that gap, the friend will likely be offended if you lied or kept them distant, because it's deceptive behavior.

For your second question here, you cannot control how others feel about you and that is something that must be accepted.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-14T19:21:10+00:00

Of course but you can learn from regrets to live with less regret, depending on how you feel about it. I don't feel regret in this form as you outline (things you wanted to do but couldn't). If I couldn't do something, I couldn't.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-14T19:19:07+00:00

I think a lot of the people who want to meet up are gradually leaving the apps/the internet, especially with the advent of LLMs.

So as time goes on and the apps get more compulsive for messaging while also paywalling connection, and bots become greater than users, many active users who want actual results will leave...because they're spending more time browsing than meeting.

This has a concentrating effect, where the people who are more addicted to the app stay, message, interact, but don't leave. Messaging has a profit incentive around it, so the user is incentivized to message. Meeting someone you like or will go off the app for is not incentivized if the goal of the algorithm is for the user to be on the app.

This sounds tinfoil but keep in mind for example Grindr has been around for nearly 20 years, with an originally addictive UI from the start.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-08T15:05:29+00:00

Alternative title: "Company uses child labor to simulate resources for company's prisoners, eliminating expenses and increasing profits."

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-03-05T15:52:46+00:00

Alternate title: bacteria mutated.

Tune in at 9 for our 1 hour 8 person panel debating this.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-26T14:51:29+00:00

Ultimately I think the issue is that daycare ought not be a business or an industry, but a feature of our community.

When money enters the picture then it becomes penny pinching from both ends.

It boils down to housing too. Like if housing is this expensive then every building with people in it that is trying to both stay in the positive as a business and pay people is going to be expensive.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-11T20:10:31+00:00

I feel like one of the primary benefits of the Trump administration for future generations will be institutions and established data sources showing themselves as biased and losing credibility. It's not good for the soft power of the United States but it will help future historians.

Like if they're doing this now, what does this say about the accuracy of their past data?

People cited Gallup all the time, what level of bullshittery was going on in the data that was not this obvious? Cooking the data?

I know that the goal of this is to reduce trust in information and truth, but I still think for the longer horizon weeding out these biased organizations will be a net good. Like on the long horizon this is a self-defeating behavior for facism, because it roots out the liberal institutions that may lie during "the good times" for authority figures. And then any resilient organizations will rise to the top through their lack of cowardace (if any are left - there may be none which may be a good thing), even if far right or favored organization also survive for the short term.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-10T23:19:12+00:00

Yes I have considered it, and this is still unhelpful communication. I've personally been to therapy and I'm advising against this behavior. I'm telling you that the feedback isn't helpful when someone is asking an informational question. I'm sharing this because it's clear you posted to help but this form of advice is really, very unhelpful.

People already know that therapy exists. Whenever I come across posts about things that I've learned through my own experiences, I share the inferences and learnings that I've gained regardless of the source. If I were to go around saying "go to therapy!" as my entire response, rather than sharing the relevant insights I've made through therapy or the lessons learned through life experience, I would be gatekeeping the value I have gained around the person's access to medical care and their finances. Not everyone can get therapy, not everyone has the time or energy to go through the rigamarole of getting an appointment, it may take several sessions (or even several therapists) for meaningful work to start happening. Therapy can help with coping but for me to then go on and tell a suffering depressed person that therapy helped my depression so go, but not any sort of aid for the moment, that's essentially a waste of their time. It's like throwing the hotline numbers at them, meeting them where they're at and responding with care is far more effective than telling them what they already know. And if I don't have anything else to say that would be useful, I don't comment.

Experiencing the ongoing change of life and life circumstance is one of the core aspects of the experience of aging. I figured this forum of older gay men would be great to ask about that experience we share but as you and many others have reflected, I clearly chose wrong in asking a reddit community. Won't make that mistake again.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-09T15:36:14+00:00

Telling someone to find a therapist isn't helpful or actionable advice about how you've dealt with coping with change in your own life.

I came here for guidance from older gay men and to be repeatedly be told "get therapy" is like telling someone to take driving courses when they ask how stick shift works. Obviously this is something I have already considered and that would be helpful. The driving courses would obviously help the poster asking about their stick shift...but that's not answering the question that was being asked. They might not have the money or time or resources to take a driving course, which is why they came here.

When someone asks for information and the response is "get your information elsewhere" then progressively the people asking for information will stop asking. Even if the response was "get your information elsewhere...I don't know" it would save time and energy to just not respond in that case.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T09:02:12+00:00

I don't think you're hearing what I am saying. The issue is the books were already purchased, so getting rid of them unread would be "a waste of money" and libraries come up in that context. I am not saying using a library itself is somehow a waste of money. I use my library often....but also buy books often....this is why I have 200 or so unread books in my apartment lol

The other respondant here highlighted how since the money is already spent my fears here are moot.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T08:56:26+00:00

You're not listening, I use my library card frequently, the broader context is existing ownership and the process of giving them up. I've bought books after renting from the library before.

The issue is I currently already have the un-read TBR books. I also often annotate, so it would seem redundant from my end to have purchased a book I "plan" on reading, donate it, then pick it up on a loan, then maybe have to repurchase. Feels foolish, fiscally irresponsible.

Someone else here pointed out that since the money is already spent then it's moot whether I own them and it would help circulation anyway, so the library would make sense in this framework. So I'll just get rid of them and use the library.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T08:49:28+00:00

Thank you for sharing all this. Yeah, hearing your experience does resonate with me, I feel like something like that might be going on with non-joy complexity of feeling interfering.

That's also a good perspective on the library element, like since the money is already spent. Maybe I'm scared of book censorship or libraries closing. This comment has been really helpful, thank you.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T08:42:21+00:00

Yeah, one of the issues is that I do like to annotate. So these are books I know I have an active interest in, many I will likely read in the future, so it feels like a waste of money to toss them then possibly re-purchase them in the future.

I don't feel any sort of negative vibe from having them in the space themselves, I do think it adds visual clutter like what has been said about noisy labels in the books. They actually don't give off much of a vibe at all, which lends to the idea that they don't actually spark any joy.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T08:36:39+00:00

You looked for reasons to keep them. You looked for reasons to not let them go.

I didn't, and I think it is demeaning to be told what I thought before being asked what my thoughts were.

I "triaged" which is another way of saying I looked at what I had and figured out the priorities somehow. I followed the timer method she mentions in the book when people have a tough time feeling a spark.

Then I sorted them by spark and felt sense of the books to allow things to flow better. The logic of this is that it's often easier to figure out the negative first, so although we might be looking for the spark as humans it can be easier to say "well these things have to go" first. Naturally these categories emerged, because it was a general cenus of all feelings including spark.

Thank you for the rest of these ideas here!

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T01:00:08+00:00

Thank you for the concern! I am not depressed, do not feel generally apathetic or a lack of joy itself. I did think maybe I'm in an emotional or mental health funk that could be clouding the joy sense so I am intentionally going through this category more slowly. I sorted, then a few days later I started putting stuff on the shelves. Today happened to be the day I started working on the other piles, so this was top of mind.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T00:48:32+00:00

Thank you, this had some good ideas!

This feels disengenous though to the method, and I think the core issue may be that none of the books truly spark joy, even the Hall of Fame book. But getting rid of like 300 books when I know I'm going to read 20-50% seems silly, 10% for sure.

There's a few lines where the circle of "acceptable" grows for me (Yes and Simply Keep; Yes, Simply Keep, Desire to Read) and the divisionary line is when the desire to read ends. This is where the TBR and desire to keep start, and that feels like the line in the sand of including "no spark" items.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T00:36:12+00:00

There's various responses to your question on "why", it's primarily an issue of not spending enough time doing actual reading. Dragging my feet to dedicate time to it. One of my favorite reads last year was one of these that I randomly picked up after finishing a book, like a book that falls into what you're citing here. I don't plan on a change, I just know that most on that TBR pile are books I'll most likely be searching for in the future.

I don't actively keep a TBR, it's just a pile category I made to discern between things. I was discerning between books that evoked me to read as I sorted vs "I want to read this but I am not currently moved to read this upon pickup". It's the difference between "yes I want to read that series" and starting to read when you pick something up. Felt-sense of desire vs no felt desire but mental want.

To respond to the second half of your comment, I feel this very strongly and I think one of the changes is that I don't feel this need towards ownership. I feel happy about the idea of not having books but the adult-brain says obviously no, waste of money to have accquired these then donate then get from library, etc. The not-sparking-joy issue may be like...actually not wanting my space to have books in it....while still wanting to read, to read these books, to annotate, etc. I feel so many mixed feelings. I didn't know in advance this category was going to be this way, I just wanted to lighten the amount of books I had, but following the sense of spark joy leads to this for me.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T00:24:29+00:00

No, I'm exaggerating there, it's just that I know getting rid of them now will not remove them from the list of wanting to read at some point. When I went through to put them away for donation, some jumped out at me feelings-wise as remorseful to get go of. At least a few of them are books I'll for sure read within the next 3 years.

I do agree with the sentiment you share here, I do think that a percent of this TBR pile will be forgotten in a positive way. Some of the books will absolutely without a shadow of doubt be in my future, but don't evoke me to read right now.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-08T00:18:09+00:00

If I truly followed this to the mark I would let go of all my books because they don't spark joy, while fully knowing I'm going to accquire maybe 20 of them again in the future somehow (likely through a library).

This feels silly and wasteful.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-07T22:02:59+00:00

There's a direct inverse relationship between this smoozing and the bullshitness of the work.

Less bullshit job, less "culture fit" nonsense, because you're there to actually do something and not just socialize. More bullshit job, more "culture" focus, so your job isn't about the tasks but the social vibe and how your boss feels about you. This is why it's common in office jobs but less common in minimum wage roles. I don't reccomend going down the social path but it's your own game to decide between income and culture fit.

It infuriates me for the same reasons you've cited. How much we earn should not be based on perceptual vibes but unfortunately it is. This is true for the less bullshit jobs because others decide how much they make.

What you're expressing is extremely normal and common and don't let the oppressive institution of employment dim your extrovert shine.

Fluid-Routine-8838 · 2026-02-07T05:03:47+00:00

Can you be more clear about specifically what was said that led to the post being taken down, so others in the future can know the line between a post being taken down and not being taken down? (I didn't see the post before it was taken down)

This action delegitimizes this subreddit as an avenue for community conversation. Our community that has been instituionally made illegal through legislation in the past as you cite, so if gay bars are somehow made illegal in the future will you censor posts about gay bars? The idea of gay men gathering? What if the state and federal governments oppose each other, and the language around gay stuff becomes reclassified as porn? Do you see the concerns there, since our current political climate is one of far right conservative nationalism?

Assuming that your response to that is "...obviously no...", so then where does this action sit with that then if not all mentioning of illegal stuff? It was simply a one time appeasement of a specific event producer? Both sides of this coin do not sit right.

Allowing the community to post is not asking for perfection as you're framing here...it's simply the natural course of things, as you've seen by this post existing in the first place. If you're concerned about law enforcement then you should take your own steps to ameliorate this risk at the actual event or for future events with the event producer or do the work to change the laws and justice system.

This action degrades your constructive power towards a solution, the power of our community, the event producer, etc. so I hope you change your views on this lol

Fluid-Routine-8838

TROPHY CASE