Quite frankly, the toxic to non-toxic user ratio here is a bit higher than I would hope for and expect. But kudos to you for confronting the toxicity that drives people away! I do appreciate your effort.

I’m old and unlucky enough to have had many bad sexual experiences, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, by modern standards, I’ve definitely had some questionable experiences where I was taken advantage of (i.e. intoxicated, emotionally vulnerable, etc) and which would likely fall into the non-consensual category these days, so I’ll leave those out, since they were the worst by far.

I’ve had plenty of bad experiences that were totally on me, so for the sake of my own ego, I’m going to disqualify those.

The worse consensual experience I can recall at the moment was awkward and a bit weird. The guy was persistent and braggadocios while pursuing me. He was nice looking and we got along fine online and in phone calls, so when the conversation came up about meeting up for nothing serious, I was okay with that.

We hung out awhile before getting intimate and he was nice enough, nothing seemed off. It’s almost a stretch to call what we did together “sex”, though. He wasn’t able to get an erection. Not a problem honestly, there are still plenty of ways for two guys to have fun. We basically just snuggled together in bed.

At a certain point, though, he just started saying weird or off the wall stuff. I do not know if he had taken some drugs or if he was experiencing a mental health episode. It was like he was hallucinating that he could see the night sky even though we were indoors in his room with the curtains pulled, since he kept talking about how pretty the moon was and things of that nature. And he would ask me the same questions over and over so I know for sure something wasn’t quite right.

If it were maybe 15 years, I could very quickly identify some changes that would easily change the entire trajectory of my life.

At 10 years, it’s hard to say since by today’s perspective, I’ve had my life in reasonable order and heading in the right direction for the past decade. So there aren’t a lot of options to make different choices I’m certain would help me gain things personally. That being said:

I would make a more concerted effort to leave the job I had in 2014. It was a regrettable decision to stay as long as I did and a very toxic work environment for me. I could have made more money almost anywhere else and by that point I had met all the important and amazing people that worked there during my reign, so I wouldn’t have missed out on those friendships.

I do have much better employment skills than I had 10 years ago and most of what I know and do would still apply back then, so I guess I could make use of that to climb the ladder a bit faster and/or earn more money sooner in my career.

I suppose one day to day “exploit” would be that I’d know in advance if any specific purchase was a good decision or not. For instance, I’d know that the car I was going to buy ended up being a fantastic choice or that the piece of crap bookshelf was only going to last me a year before it started to disintegrate at which point I would have to replace it. This could be useful for saving money, since at the very least I could avoid purchasing the stuff that I know would not last or live up to expectations.

I did not have a lot of money back then and certainly not enough to make good use of any stock market foreknowledge from today turn into a big payday. I don’t keep up with lottery numbers. I’m not a sports person, so I wouldn’t / couldn’t make any money off that kind of betting.

If I were motivated enough, I might try to teach myself some music / music production skills and then start releasing my own version of popular songs from the future that haven’t been released yet. Maybe I’d luck out and end up with a lucrative music career! Or similarly, I might try to figure out the patenting process and then start patenting ideas for stuff that had not yet been invented, then do my best to become a bit of a patent troll.

There’s a slim chance I could save the lives of some relatives, but honestly that’s hard to know. I had one family member die suddenly of a heart attack and another that died of an accidental drug overdose. I also had a friend that ignored people’s advice to go see a doctor and ended up the problem she was having was cancer, which she passed away from. Apparently, one of her doctors even told the family that if she had gotten treatment a little sooner, things could have turned out quite differently. We’d been telling her to go for at least a year, but if I could go back I would try a lot harder and be more persistent.

This is second hand info, but everyone I know who has ever worked for him basically hates him. He’s a raging asshole, difficult to work with, and just a horrible human being on a personal level. I’ve never met him myself, but the people I’m referring to are all pretty awesome, wholesome people so I do trust their judgment.

I’ve noticed a downward trend, not necessarily “dropped off suddenly”. One of the most notable signs I’ve seen is from the new comments sort.

When I’m interested in seeing what’s actually active and where the action is at, one of the things I will do is click to sort by “New Comments” and change my view to Comments. Typically I go to that page, see if any of the headlines or comments catch my attention, then go read or reply.

In the past couple of months, I’m seeing more and more new comments on that first page of results that are 5+ minutes old. When I get to the bottom of the page and click to refresh the results, there are times now when I don’t even get a full new set of comments because there haven’t been enough new ones to bump the prior comments off the first page.

That didn’t used to happen much at all, it was rare enough that it really sticks out when it does happen. Typically, the comments on that first page would be anywhere from seconds to maybe 2 or 3 minutes old and every time I hit refresh (I wasn’t spamming the button), I’d have a completely new set of comments to peruse (other than a bug in older versions of Lemmy that would cause some comments to get stuck at the top of that page even when they were significantly older than anything else).

My overall interpretation of this is that it appears there’s less commenting, at least during the times of day that I tend to be most active on here. Of course that’s not the only possibility. But like OP, I’m noticing a lot fewer posts in those top 6, top 12 filters with lots of comments than I used to see. So, those types of observations do have me thinking things are on a bit of a down trend. It could be a seasonal thing, perhaps a temporary lull.

I can’t speak to growing or shrinking in terms of number of users and I try not to bring “feels like” into this since that’s subjective. However, anecdotally speaking, I’ve been noticing signs of a down turn over the past month or two. Perhaps just a seasonal thing, perhaps due to some other cause such as the upgrade to 0.19.X.

The most telling thing to me is that I’m seeing fewer comments during my active hours. One of the ways I browse for active discussions on Lemmy is to sort by "New Comments’ and switch to the view that shows comments instead of posts. So, I do the sort/filter, view the results, looking to see if there are any interesting comments or topics.

Historically speaking, other than a weird bug that would seem to pin some slightly older posts to the top of the list, everything on the first page would be somewhere between seconds to several minutes old. It was incredibly unusual to see anything over 5 minutes old on the first page and also very unusual to see any of the same comments if I refreshed the page.

More recently though, it’s more common to see comments that are 5+ minutes old on the first page of new comments list. It’s also much more common for me to reach the bottom of the page, hit refresh, and then see some of the same comments in the list after it refreshes. And I don’t exactly speed run through this page – I check out the post titles, if it’s an interesting topic, I’ll often click through and read more in the post, sometimes I’ll even respond to comments directly, then return back to the new comments, etc.

As I mentioned, it could just be a seasonal slowdown. Perhaps the 0.19 upgrade results in a slowdown or backlog of things that show up on the new comments list, I know other things have changed like the fact that I can no longer view anything except the first page of results. Others have suggested there are fewer posts/posters, but that what gets posted “feels like” it’s higher quality, but I’d counter that with the fact that what I “feel like” is that’s not actually the case based on what I’m seeing in the new comments list.

just*

It’s the one place some of my family can figure out how to use where they can make a transphobic joke about Mother’s Day for men in dresses is April 1st and get enough positive interactions that they think they’ve actually re-posted something relatable and clever. So it does have that going for it.

I like the taste, but I don’t like the price.

Taste-wise, they taste like pretty much all the cactus fruits I’ve tried so far. There’s not a whole lot of flavor to them, just a balanced sweetness (when they’re ripe), but not overwhelming sweetness. At least in my part of the world, prickly pears are more cost effective and very similar in terms of taste, but for some reason, less often available.

To me, one of the appeals of cactus fruits is the texture from the slight crunchiness of the seeds, which is a good balance to the consistency of the fruit. Also nice that there’s typically not a lot of tartness or bitterness. I like tartness and bitterness in some fruits, but these are a nice change of pace.

Overall, if they were cheap, I’d be eating them a lot more. These epiphytic cacti are fairly easy to grow and bloom as house plants, even in temperate climates, so if you do really enjoy them, it’s something you could potentially grow yourself. And obviously if you live in a tropical to subtropical climate, you can probably get away with growing them outdoors.

The actual scariest stuff pretty much boils down to aggressive dogs being aggressive dogs.

For example: I saw a woman lose control of her pit-mix. The dog rushed over to one of our neighbors, unprovoked, and immediately latched on to her leg and started thrashing it. The dog’s owner was freaking out screeching which seemed to agitate the dog rather than dissuade it from attacking. There was so much blood, but I think the only long term physical damage was scars. However, I only ever saw the victim once or twice after that, she stopped going out on walks after that event.

If you’re willing to stretch the definition of scariest and seen:

Deer are super annoying sometimes. One of their behaviors is that they make a super loud snort-whistle noise when alarmed. So if you’re outside and unaware of their presence, and especially if you’re not expecting a super loud and almost alien-like snort-whistle coming from the woods right next to you, there’s a good chance it’s going to startle the crap out of you.

Where I live, the grocery prices aren’t up anywhere near the double or triple that other people have mentioned. The basics / necessities have generally seen more modest price increases over the past few years. There have been obvious exceptions like when there’s been shortages of specific things or like if I were to compare out of season produce prices to the prices of stuff when its in season, but in those cases I just go without (which also kind of proves they weren’t necessities to begin with).

For the most part, any luxury items or luxury brands that have dramatically increased their prices and engaged in shrinkflation, I stop buying that stuff or cut way back. Even if I can afford that stuff, I’m not going to pay the prices. And if I weren’t really able to afford to feed myself, I would definitely not be buying anything like that. No organic apples for me. No potato chips. No microwave meals. No soda.

In my adult life, I’ve twice experienced food insecurity. I can’t speak to anybody’s situation in specific, but for me what worked was willingness to be flexible and getting creative. I would grow as much of my own food as I could, even in a small shared living space I could grow some lettuce or spring onions in a window. I was also pretty knowledgeable about edible plants, including local/wild stuff, so that helped to supplement my diet as well.

I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think that’s it.

The trip when this happened was 7+ years ago (pre-covid for sure), so I don’t recall the specific location, but it wasn’t in Atlanta proper. And I don’t recall either location looking like a museum or a location where anybody would put a museum, it was a stretch of road/highway with retail space / strip malls on both sides.

The bird: Chick-a-deez nutz.

I always used to laugh at the scene in Best In Show where the yuppie couple talk about how they met at Starbucks. But they weren’t at the same Starbucks, they were at two different Starbucks across the street from each other.

During a trip to the Atlanta area, I saw so many Waffle House locations that I jokingly made a reference to that scene from Best In Show.

Then IT happened. Literally drove past a spot where there were 2 Waffle Houses across the street from each other. It was supposed to be a joke. Only a joke.

Trips to greenhouses and conservatories are a great idea for a good number of reasons. However, don’t read the rest of this if you don’t want any spoilers.

Adding to the ACKSHSCHUALLYies…

If you have hemochromatosis, and you get sick from it, you probably should be asking about bloodletting. Regular bloodletting is one of the most effective and cost-efficient treatment options available to reduce or prevent the myriad of complications caused by this health condition.

Like others, the final thing that prompted me to leave the corporate r-word site was the decision to start charging for the api that forced most of the 3rd party apps out of operation.

The inconsistent, impersonal, and at times improper censoring was already pushing me away before the api change, though. I don’t mind safe spaces and civility being a precondition to participation, but if you’re going to ban people for being uncivil or using a subset of derogatory terms, then be consistent about it.

One of the many tiresome things that happened to me is that I got a warning about being banned site-wide for using one of the banned words in a completely innocuous and generally contextually acceptable way. My comment was something like “you can use baking soda to [redacted verb which in this context is commonly used to mean slow or delay] the growth of mold.” in a post about that topic.

The warning I received was basically, “you’re on our list now, and further infractions will result in a site-wide ban” and of course my otherwise helpful and relevant comment was deleted. Also, there was no way to respond or ask for clarification that I could find, as this was an admin warning, not something from a moderator of a sub. Anyway, a warning like that was obviously obtuse and stupid, but whatever.

What made it irksome is that after that incident, any time I noticed a post, title, or comment using that same word (or some variation of it like td, f*ck td, sh*t t**d, etc) in a derogatory manner, I would report it. And invariably, the comment would not get removed and I’d get the response back “we investigated but did not find it to be in violation of our policies.”

Granted, I also took issue with the fact that the banned terms list was woefully inadequate at addressing the dozens of disparaging terms that were frequently used to target the LGBT+ community and which for some reason where considered completely acceptable by the corporate r-word site.

And no, I don’t think Lemmy is any better on the consistency / censorship front, and in fact is inherently worse in some ways as a result of the general decentralized architecture.

That’s awesome and very kind of you to offer. Not to be ungrateful, but I’m sure someone else would appreciate it far more than me. I don’t have a Playstation anymore and I don’t even have a CD/DVD drive on any device that would be able to run an emulator. Merry Christmas and thanks for being so thoughful!

On the Internet, everything is fundamentally both obscure yet ubiquitous, or so it seems. But in real life, there are at least 2 things that seem to be obscure to the point that people don’t believe me when I mention it:

1. A Super Nintendo game released in the US as Super Ninja Boy. It was a follow-up to (or maybe remake of) Little Ninja Brothers on the NES. I’ve even been told that I was confused and that I’m probably thinking of Legend of the Mystical Ninja.

2. On the original Playstation, there used to be a series of demo discs that would have “hidden” features on them if you pressed the right button(s). One of those demo discs had the entire music video for Usher’s song “Pony” and other than randos on the internet and my friends/family who saw it with me, I’ve never met anybody that remembers it. If anybody here does remember that demo disc, I think there was another hidden music video on there, I vaguely remember a band, with various shots of the drummer wearing black athletic-type shorts with a white band around the leg but beyond that I really do not recall.

Are you asking about a specific episode or community of toxic behavior that originated there but has found its way here? If so, then my answer is no. Granted, I haven’t visited that other site in such a long time, I likely wouldn’t know if some specific instance of toxicity here was actually related to something over there. Also, I mostly avoid the communities here that are named similarly to subs over there which always seemed to be a magnet for drama or poor behavior. Mostly.

But if you’re asking in a more general sense, then my answer is yes(-ish). I have experienced and seen a fair bit of toxic behavior and numerous toxic users here. In many cases, the behavior and mannerisms mimic the toxicity I was used to seeing on the other site. So, I presume it’s something that originated there and then subsequently migrated here, but I obviously couldn’t say with complete certainty and absolute proof.

Granted, that’s not unexpected, and as other folks have already commented, toxic people and toxic behavior are pretty pervasive and ubiquitous on social media sites.