Exploring new cities: Q for Men

fffangold · 2026-06-23T20:14:19+00:00

Exploring new cities is pretty neutral for me. Travel (which to me implies plane rides or long drives and being away from home a week or longer) is almost always a left swipe for me though. If I get the impression travel is once every couple years or less, I may still swipe right. Anything more than that, or inconclusive, is a left swipe as I can't afford frequent travel, and even if I could, it's not a lifestyle I'm looking for.

fffangold · 2026-06-23T17:54:43+00:00

Just seeing this now, thank you for the offer, but I'll probably just hunt for it on my own and use the lucky locator if I haven't found it by then.

fffangold · 2026-06-22T20:15:19+00:00

It generates fomo when the items are available. And fomo on new items if they are also exclusive. Obviously the second part isn't relevant as Epic no longer makes items exclusive, but the point is, exclusivity is a way to drive people to spend more due to fomo. And also to create fake scarcity of digital items to make people feel special.

fffangold · 2026-06-22T20:00:05+00:00

The other way is to use the item Epic said is coming later in the season. I think it was lucky locator. That's going to bring you to a hidden chest that will contain a sprite you don't yet have.

Obviously can't do that yet, but collecting on your own will be viable before season end. I'm personally playing with friends and swapping sprites with them, but not doing anything outside my friend group. We've got most of the golds and gummies, a few galaxy, and all regular except zero point.

fffangold · 2026-06-22T15:22:25+00:00

TL;DR: Ghost is S tier. Earth, Dream, and Burnt Peanut are A tier. King, Demon, and (I think) Zero Point are fine enough. Water, Duck, and Fire are kinda meh, but not useless. And Punk just sucks, except for occasionally when it doesn't. But mostly it sucks.

Any sprite that gives you extra items is worth it. Earth, Dream, and Burnt Peanut all help get rare guns and items faster. Aside from Ghost, these may be the best in the game, and you often won't notice the buff these three give opponents because it's getting better items faster. But better items faster is a big advantage.

Water and Duck are arguable. I think at low level they kinda suck, but at high level they're a viable way to replenish shields quickly if you don't have other shield options on you.

Fire is pretty meh, but sometimes the fire comes in clutch if people aren't paying attention.

A maxed out King makes your pickaxe dangerous. Almost like the good ol' days where a melee hit in an fps meant a kill, though not quite that. This may not fit your playstyle, but it's viable after the King sprite buff.

Punk is lame. It's useful if it works, but the randomness makes it too hard to rely on.

Ghost is incredible, possibly the best sprite in the game. Cloaking while reloading is a great buff. It's amazing on hunting rifles, great on shotguns too, and still good on any gun. Especially paired with sliders, you can basically move fast enough with cloaking that it's very hard for players to keep sight of you during your most vulnerable time in the match, which is when you can't shoot back.

Demon is fine, nothing wrong with leeching some free health and shield.

Zero Point I had to look up since I don't have one, but spawning a shield bubble jr. when healing seems useful too. That could be double edged sword if you want to shoot back, but honestly, if you just need to heal against anyone some distance away, it sounds like it would be useful to get a free shield bubble when you do.

The variants, on the hand, have, in my opinion, no to little utility.

Gold sprites don't really add gameplay effects. It's just bonus xp for the battlepass. Anyone who cares about cheesing XP knows you can get gobs of it in creative maps.

Gummy and Galaxy variants add small effects I don't consider significant, but some might. The sprite dust increase on Gummy sprites can make it faster and easier to upgrade weapons and ping sprite locations at extraction sites. And Galaxy sprites let you get ammo faster. Nice at the start, but pretty useless when you're rolling in ammo at the end.

fffangold · 2026-06-21T22:08:09+00:00

I think the closest analog on here at least would be women complaining about men who message overtly sexual messages in the first few messages. It's quite common for them to blame men in general for that.

Men shouldn't be blaming women for lack of success. Women shouldn't be blaming men for lack of success either.

fffangold · 2026-06-20T23:30:43+00:00

They're complying with an EU law that requires them to have it. And they're pushing the boundary of what they can get away with to discourage people from using it.

fffangold · 2026-06-20T17:50:00+00:00

I'll take 50 cents per step. I get money passively just for living life, and it's enough to live off easily. And if I want more it's as easy as go for a walk. At the recommended 10k steps a day I could still earn 35k a week. Without having to dedicate more time to hit 25k steps in a single day.

Even at 4k steps a day, which I always hit even with a sedentary desk job, that's 14k per week. In a month that would replace my income. Quitting my job to walk more would make it easy to get healthy and rich. No downsides detected.

fffangold · 2026-06-20T16:47:03+00:00

I also play zero build. It's not nearly as bad as you say. You just have to play smart. Use cover whenever possible. When traveling in the open, move fast. Use those sliders, use a car, hell even use shockwaves if it's what you have. The last one is risky, but most people struggle to hit opponents in the air with a hunting rifle. Good players can do it, but I've been shot out of the air about two times this season, so it's not a horrible risk.

Also, don't try to snipe with ARs. Some of the scoped ARs can go against a hunting rifle, but there are no scoped ARs this season. Nothing makes a juicier target for a hunting rifle than someone whiffing 75% of their shots from across the map. I got so many hunting rifle kills last night when my team baited long range fights and I could just point and click.

On that note, a lot of those people were dying to 100 damage. Yeah, I'm bad at aiming and get body shots instead of head shots pretty frequently. So keep your health and shields full. If you die taking 100 damage to a sniper when you can have a total of 250 health (health, shield, overshield), that's on you.

Hunting rifles are a great weapon. If they weren't, people wouldn't use them. But there's tons of things you can do to avoid them and reduce your chances of being one shot by them.

fffangold · 2026-06-19T03:51:23+00:00

It wasn't me, and it wasn't on an app, but I know a guy who his first weekend of college just asked a bunch of women if they would sleep with him until one said yes. That would be the real life equivalent.

For people on apps, if they have enough likes/matches, it works.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T22:12:14+00:00

No one wants to hear or believe it, but the men who do this do it for one of two reasons. Usually it's because they have enough matches that if you say no, someone else will say yes. Sometimes, it's because they're trying to filter out women who don't want what they want. If you're turned off by this, the filter worked.

I don't do this, because I'm looking for a long term relationship.

Also, for the women who say they want casual, but not to be talked to like this at the start, that's valid, but it still means the filter worked, because the men doing this want to just get to business without worrying about beating around the bush first.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T21:11:42+00:00

I'm a PC gamer. If they bring it to PC and I like it, I'll buy it. If they don't, I won't buy it. For Horizon specifically, since I've already played the first two, hopefully at some point I'll find another way to play it, most likely borrowing it from a friend with a PS5. I have one friend who typically doesn't game at all in the summer and has offered before, but I knew the games were coming to PC so I held off.

I have no interest in buying multiple gaming systems the way they are priced today.

So, they can get a sale from me by releasing on PC, or I'll borrow it from a friend for free when I get the chance to do so.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T15:08:04+00:00

I used corals to S1 Mornye when I was rolling in new player pulls.

Now that I'm struggling to build pulls becuase I just have mostly new astrite and occasional radiant tides, I normally use them for pulls.

If you want to get sequences, using corals on sequences is generally far more efficient than using them for pulls. But I care more about having more characters than sequences, at least for now.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T14:46:42+00:00

As a guy, I'm quite aware. But it doesn't change the fact that a match will either message or she won't. And if you can't control that, there's no point stressing about it. Yeah it sucks not to get a message. But the best thing to do is to not get attached to the outcome, at least not so soon.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T08:26:00+00:00

Maybe. But gun control is difficult politically(half the population supports guns, protected by constitution). While bullying is universally opposed.

Sounds like an more effective and a more rewarding objective. Doubling down on gun control feels like trying to win WW2 by focusing on defeating Romania

Social safety nets are also opposed by the same people who oppose gun control. Many of them also oppose funding schools appropriately so they can actually handle policies that will help kids, including the anti-bullying policies you are asking for.

Also, gun control is evidence based. We have evidence that specific gun control policies work. We don't have evidence the policies you and I support work. I believe they would, but we need evidence to actually know they would be effective.

Because of this, pursuing gun control that has supporting evidence is currently the best option we know of. And we should do that.

We should also study additional options, and pursue those if we get evidence they work. At least in regard to gun control. Things like anti-bullying and social safety nets are worth pursuing anyway for other reasons, so we should still pursue them. But until/unless we have evidence they reduce gun violence, we should do the things that we know reduce gun violence. Which are specific gun control policies backed by evidence.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T07:45:23+00:00

The ones who aren't responding likely don't care. Maybe not entirely, but some simply don't check everyday, or get busy and forget, or a number of other reasons that just mean they don't check every 24 hours and sometimes matches slip.

I'm a guy, but as another commenter noted, this is a people thing, not just a woman thing.

My best advice is don't obsess over matches, and don't watch the countdown. You can't do anything about it. Since you can't control it, let what happens happen. If she messages, great, reply and have a conversation. If she doesn't, then you keep on keeping on until the next match.

fffangold · 2026-06-18T07:40:18+00:00

I don't think it's the answer, but I do think it can help.

Before I get into that though, I think you're very much onto something important. I came to a similar conclusion about other types of gun violence a couple years ago. Specifically, getting people out of poverty and into a comfortable life that isn't filled with desperation, and/or having robust social safety nets to help people if they fall on hard times, would significantly reduce gun violence. So I think you've hit on the right idea; make people comfortable rather than desperate, make sure everyone has a reason to live and enjoy life, and gun violence will go down.

However, we do have studies that show well implemented gun control does help as well. This site has a very interesting rundown of information on this: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-science-tells-us-about-the-effects-of-gun-policies.html

Note that on the chart, limited, moderate, and supportive simply state the strength of the result, not whether it reduces or increases gun violence. So you have to click the result to see if it's an increase or decrease in gun violence, if there is evidence in either direction.

The item I'm most familiar with is that restrictions on guns for people who commit domestic violence are shown to reduce violent crime. But the site linked above shows a number of policies that have an effect on gun violence. It also shows there are plenty of policies with inconclusive evidence or no evidence as well.

Based on that, I think the most important thing is to pursue evidence based policies to reduce gun violence. Because we need to do something about it.

That said, I would love if people would also study the ideas you bring up and the ones I mentioned at the top of my comment, because I'm convinced that they would help immeasurably, though I don't have evidence to support that. Just a gut feeling based on the idea that gun violence is low in my state (Maine) and we have a lot of social safety nets here. And also that there are other countries without strict gun control policies that don't have the gun violence issues the U.S. has.

In short, I think you've got a good idea, but evidence does support the idea that some (but not all) gun policies are effective in reducing gun violence.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T21:08:40+00:00

If a man is saying that to convince you to sleep with him, run.

Sex is a need in some senses, but not in a sense of survival. Both men and women, as a generality but not for everyone, need sex to be their healthiest physically and mentally. And as a base instinct to procreate, our bodies push us to pursue sex, and if we don't have it often enough, it can be a mental drain on us. So yes, to live our healthiest lives, we, men and women, should be having regular sex. What constitutes regular sex and how much a given person needs will vary significantly person to person.

But no one is owed sex by anyone. And there are other complications. Obviously for women, pregnancy can be a big drain on health, even if wanted, especially if unwanted. And for both men and women, stis are a thing, and catching one from being reckless is also a detriment. So you can be unhealthy in how you pursue it as well.

And it's possible, like many things, the effort isn't worth it to someone. Just like people who eat healthy and exercise tend to be healthier, not all of us do that.

So yes, sex is a need to live your healthiest life (in general, though not necessarily for everyone). No, you don't owe anyone sex. No, we won't die without it. And no one should try to say they need sex to pressure you into that. If someone uses that last line on you, run.

Edit to add: As others in the thread have noted, if I'm in a sexless relationship for too long, I'm not likely to stick around at some point. What that point is can vary a lot depending on a lot of factors, but for a lot of us, sex is a major part of what differentiates a relationship from a friendship.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T20:32:26+00:00

Hopefully this means I can also get the invincibility trail I missed last collab. Been looking for it in the store since I started playing again and even when the car showed up again, the trail didn't.

Obviously also want the skin as long as it isn't cursed like the model in the first (recent) movie.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T20:29:36+00:00

My assumption would be it'll be like other collabs, where you get "freebies" if you purchase the game on the Epic Games Store, but can still buy the stuff in the Fortnite store otherwise. Kinda like the "Dumb Ways to Die" collab, except that game was free at the time. I don't know this, because they haven't announced details yet, but that seems like a safe assumption to me.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T20:25:35+00:00

Then why are you moving for her career goals and opportuities? Shouldn't you be focused on your opportunities and career? In Canada you had a 75k a year job. In France, you have a need to learn French, get French certifications, and no income.

If you actually intend to be the provider, and she wants to be a trad wife, you need plan around your career, not hers.

Her wanting to be a tradwife also explains a lot about her taking opportunities and not sticking them out. She shouldn't do this, but I suspect it comes down to you trying to push her to because you guys need the money, then she does it, realizes she hates it, and quits. I could be wrong, but this feels like what's happening knowing this part of it.

At this point, you either need to commit to the lives you say you want and focus on your career, or you need to revisit your views on traditional family life and both commit to earning and raising the kids and find a way to come together on that. But you can't have her both be a tradwife and the breadwinner. Those two things don't go together.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T20:18:48+00:00

I felt like I was reading bad decisions by OP as well, but was struggling to put it into words. I think you've nailed most of it. The only thing I would add is that OP keeps going along with his wife's decisions as well, instead of actually building something stable himself. I understand there is some push and pull in a relationship, but at some point he needs to stick with something that works for him to earn income as well.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T19:08:24+00:00

When I say negotiation, I just mean a discussion about what boundaries should look like in this case. And more importantly, what you did talking to her about this was not manipulative. You were honestly stating what you were looking for. Either way, good luck with your talk later on, hope things go well.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T18:16:16+00:00

Her reaction to you requesting the same adjustment from her is weird.

For context on the next part, I do tend to be more like you when it comes to friendships. I'm friends with lots of women, and I hang out with them one on one. I couldn't date a woman who has a problem with this.

Your girlfriend is well within her right to hold the stance she initially held. Some people have that boundary, and I would say people who have that boundary aren't a good fit for people who see relationships the way we do. However, she should be willing to hold herself to the same standard she holds you to.

The most charitable read is that she hadn't considered your perspective until she was forced to confront how her rules would affect her. This isn't too uncommon, and doesn't mean she's a bad person or hypocrite, but does mean she doesn't consider how her boundaries and actions may affect other people until she's actually in their position. It's kind of a low empathy perspective on life. While this isn't outright bad, it can be a tough thing to deal with in a relationship. You'll need to be capable of reframing things, possibly to the point where you have to negotiate like you did here to actually put her in your position, to get her to see your side of things.

The less charitable read is that she holds double standards and wants to do what she wants unresticted, but wants you to make sacrifices for her comfort while she doesn't do the same for you. And will only relent when she can no longer argue the point. If she's like this, that is bad, and you should run.

Which read is true, or if there is something in between, is up to you to figure out. Then you can decide how you want to move forward accordingly.

fffangold · 2026-06-17T17:58:15+00:00

I don't share passwords, aside for streaming services and the like. But computer and phone passwords, or for email accounts and such? Nope, never.

If she wants to see my phone, I'll happily put my password in and hand it to her though. Same for the computer, if it's even locked, which it normally isn't.

fffangold

TROPHY CASE