It might for the time being, but it's stupid to think a single point of failure and be fixed permanently. I don't get why we continue to centralize things when everytime we do it's a bad outcome. We have to be smarter
I doubt you can judge someone as bad based off that
EDIT: I'm gonna go with better terms here: Not responsible enough and ignorant, I still don't believe someone can be considered bad as a person for this.
Yeah I mean, I have seen people do that countless times at the walmart near my house for example, I feel like that's just calling a very high portion of the population to be bad people unfairly.
Yea I mean just because a lot of people are doing something doesn’t mean it’s okay. And yea, I think a large portion of people (Americans especially) are bad people. I don’t think it’s unfair, if you can push a cart walking several miles up and down a Walmart supercenter, you can take an extra 2 mins to push it back to the corral. Or if there’s no corral, just take it back to the front of the store, its really not that hard.
What error, exactly? If someone makes a choice and doesn't take responsibility for that choice, there's no error in judgment calling that person irresponsible. Mitigating circumstances like a person's childcare situation are only mitigating circumstances because there was irresponsibility in the first place to mitigate. It's still irresponsibility. There was no error.
. Mitigating circumstances like a person's childcare situation are only mitigating circumstances because there was irresponsibility in the first place to mitigate. It's still irresponsibility.
I took the cart into the store to shop with my cognitively disabled child. This was a responsible decision.
Due to my child's medical disability and changing circumstances resulting in a behavior meltdown, I had to take him back to the car and stay with him, to prevent elopement that could put him and others at risk. This was a responsible decision. Due to the changing circumstances, I can't return the shopping cart to a particular location.
At no point do I abdicate responsibility. My first responsibility is to the safety of my child, and others who might suffer if he elopes. If you think I'm a bad person who "gives zero shits" because I put that first, then I call that error.
If you want to live in you self-righteous bubble and judge people from afar without knowing jack squat about their circumstances, I call that error. I'm sure my situation is not unique; issues must come up all the time with children, pets, the elderly that necessitate putting a shopping cart aside and attending to the needs of others, and it's not always possible to return the shopping cart.
I can't stop you from making an error, of course, but I'd hope than when the error is explained to you, you'd commit to avoiding it.
Red flags aren’t always accurate. That’s the point, it’s a quick gut check, not a foolproof way to analyze someone’s worth. Your neighbor who stares too long and had red stains on his shirt could be a surgeon with myopia, but there are some red flags.
To be fair, read the comments. There’s exceptions to all of them, because it’s impossible to draw a line about what only good people or bad people do. Was Oskar Schindler a bad man?
Actually as I was explaining to another person, unfortunately, there is a reason.
I am living in Tampa, Florida, the nearby walmart to my house, has a huge parking lot, but a car corral near the entrance and ONE on a huge damn parking lot.
The thing is, while I am not against returning carts when possible in anyway, what can I do if I park my car all the way on the other side on the parking lot and not near the cart corrosal? And the reason I park there is because it's one of the few parking spots available in a busy day? I am sorry but in such cases, people will just leave the carts on the side and leave with their car.
Not to mention, the damn sun here, it gets absolutely hot here at times, even I don't see myself walking halfway to the other part of the parking lot just to leave a cart when I already walked all the way from the entrance carrying all of my groceries, I don't see myself returning in that case.
Again we need to think in practical real-life scenario, so not only should people start returning carts, stores that don't have enough cart returning points in parking lots especially, should increase them.
I am not saying I don't return carts because that actually doesn't apply to me, atleast lately, as I have been mainly ordering stuff online mostly.
I do also want to make it clear, I am in no way giving justifications for those who make these basic mistakes without a genuine reason, I don't ever see myself not returning a cart when there is indeed a fairly nearby cart corrosal, and unfortunately, there are people who won't return their cars even if they have a nearby car corral, and i'm not arguing for them!
Do you think it's fair to think that just because you are able to, others can too? I've been living in Canada before moving to florida, opposite weather here, extremely hot, I try to stay cool as much as possible, it's good that you "crossed a parking lot at a street" (assuming that is long distance, don't extactly understand the meaning here), but I am not you man, different people, scenarios, circumstances.
I know people are going to downvote this for me lol, again I ain't justifying for those who actually don't return when there is actually a cart corral nearby, but I am not trying to justify my own actions or argue for those who make this mistake without a genuine reason wantedly, in-fact as I''ve mentioned in several other comments in this thread, I do online shopping mostly these days, so this does not even apply to me.
I am simply trying to discuss from another not so popular perspective here in this thread.
I am also wondering if people have different definitions of what "bad" could be, because to me, this is more about lack of responsibility and ignorance when you are able to return a cart, but you still don't. If I saw someone doing this without a genuine reason like I have stated before, I don't think that'd still make them a bad as a person, I'd consider them not so responsible and kindly ask them to return it.
It's interesting how you assume I do it when I am not even exactly arguing for it, you people just can't seem to understand or deal with the fact that some stores out there don't have enough car corrals and practically in real-life out there, people are bound to do this if the stores aren't bothered enough to have enough cart corrals in a big damn parking lot.
Nobody will cross to the other half of the parking lot, especially if it's busy with moving cars, to return a cart, if we can't come to this agreement, those who have been downvoting me are being delusional in my opinion, remember, in my opinion.
And it's wrong to judge someone of doing that just because they are arguing from a different perspective, I am not even saying it's okay to do that when you do have a cart corral nearby, there are people who do that and don't return the cart even they do have a cart corral nearby, but expecting customers to do that even with the lack of cart corrals is nice to hear, but UNREALISTIC.
If they're physically able to push the cart somewhere they should be able to return it. Bar some edge cases I don't see why someone wouldn't return the cart.
I think you have stricter definition of bad and a looser definition of acceptable reasons. For me "not responsible" is bad, like a minute amount but still in the bad zone, and tough weather and distance isn't enough of a reason to not return the cart.
The thing is, pushing the cart to take groceries to a car is a must for a person isn't it? The same can't be said for returning it, and while I respect a lot that you seem to have returned the cart every single time even if there is no nearby return spot, I don't see everyone being that way, especially when some stores barely have enough cart return spots on parking lots with PAID staff who are there to collect leftover carts.
If I am being honest, when I do physically grocery shop, in most cases since I mostly order online, when I really only have to, I do physical visit and I don't buy much, I just carry them with my hands to the car, I never had this issue lol.
I think a lot of people, me included, have been cart pushers or other similar minimum wage jobs so it's a bit emotionally charged. For me even if there are staff it's still not nice to pile work on them, you know? Like others in the thread said, I don't value my time more than theirs.
I do understand where you are coming from, and I really hate to sound like that guy who wants the other to do the work for him, but unfortunately a few others (and I think I myself have done a not so great job at conveying what I am really trying to say here) have done a great job at making me sound like that.
What I am just saying is that it is unrealistic to expect that from the majority of the public customers from doing that if there is not enough cart corrals, this is bound to happen until stores take action to make cart returns a must, and add more cart return points in the parking lot for customers with cars.
Again I don't really oppose this, I support this in-fact, I am only saying that we have to address this issue in a way where we are not JUST blaming the people doing this (excluding those who do this despite having a nearby cart corral), we also need to consider the lack of cart corrals issue that some stores have realistically.
Other than that, I really don't want to be that guy who is irresponsible and lets the other guy do the work for him, but if I go do physical grocery shopping on a very busy day with moving cars in the parking lot, asking me to travel to the other side of the parking lot to return a cart seems a little bit unreasonable, and that's if the store is one of those that lack cart return points.
But if there is one near me or even in the next row or after that, I am more than happy to walk there and return the cart, really, I am just talking about stores that have barely cart carrols, and if they do, it's like, on the whole other side of the parking lot, you are basically walking back and forth from one side of the building to the other.
I actually took the five minutes to look at all 10 Walmart stores in Tampa on Google Earth, and I can see more than one cart corral from space... How are you missing them in person?
Sigh, I live near Tampa, I don't live there, not in the main city/area (outer part near to Tampa for added context. I don't think Ill give my exact location here though.
Not to mention, the damn sun here, it gets absolutely hot here at times, even I don't see myself walking halfway to the other part of the parking lot just to leave a cart when I already walked all the way from the entrance carrying all of my groceries, I don't see myself returning in that case.
Lost me here, nope, nooooope nope nope nope. The weather is the least justifiable excuse -- Someone has to walk all that way to return that cart in the hot sun if you don't. If anything, making someone else do it is worse because of that weather.
I also saw you throwing out "but they have employees who do that" in another part of the thread. You wouldn't throw trash on the ground instead of walking it to a can just because a place has a janitor, I'm sure. It's exactly the same logic, and the reason you wouldn't ruin a janitor's day is the same reason you shouldn't ruin a cart collector's day.
I get that your local shop sucks for only having one corral. I really, truly do. But you know what I do when my closest store has practices I can't deal with? I don't make someone else clean up after me, I take my money elsewhere.
Lost me here, nope, nooooope nope nope nope. The weather is the least justifiable excuse -- Someone has to walk all that way to return that cart in the hot sun if you don't. If anything, making someone else do it is worse because of that weather.
Interesting, you do realize the employee who collects the carts get them when the store closes, hence at night? It would make 0 sense to do that in the morning because customers will keep coming.
I also saw you throwing out "but they have employees who do that" in another part of the thread. You wouldn't throw trash on the ground instead of walking it to a can just because a place has a janitor, I'm sure. It's exactly the same logic, and the reason you wouldn't ruin a janitor's day is the same reason you shouldn't ruin a cart collector's day.
This is a very bad example and a comparison, why? If I have trash, even if there is not a garbage bin nearby, I can keep it with me until I find one or just take it with me to home and throw it there.
Now with carts, that's a whole different story, I wish there was a machine where it could carry it for me until I reach to the whole other side of the parking lot, in a very busy moving parking lot with cars, but such magical machine doesn't exist.
Companies like Walmart earn millions and billions of dollars, maybe they should be installing more cart return points as the customers are the people who are keeping them in business.
I get that your local shop sucks for only having one corral. I really, truly do. But you know what I do when my closest store has practices I can't deal with? I don't make someone else clean up after me, I take my money elsewhere.
I already countered the point that I am making someone else do that for me, because first of all, they are just doing their job, and I am not being disrespectful here, but even if you may be okay dealing with the inconvenience the lack of cart return points, I am not, you can't expect everyone to be okay with something just because you are.
Regarding taking my money elsewhere, that'd be travelling twice as much, which is dooable, I have a car, but that just makes 0 sense, i'm wasting double the time of mine, and there is no guarantee walmart has enough cart return points there too, considering another person said walmart has been removing them on california, if they are doing that there, then I don't expect it to be any better.
Also, asking me to do that for a damn cart, seriously? And the employee is just doing their job, they will do it anyways even if I go or not, and please, don't compare that again with trash, it's a whole different story, because you make it sound like I am the type of person who throws trash on the ground wantedly near a place where there is a garbage can, so I can watch the janitor pick it, that is crazy.
I know someone (in California, for added context) who works as a shopping cart collector at Target during open hours, so this isn’t the case everywhere.
I really don't have the desire to deal with this level of unhinge over carts, especially when most of it is self-contradictory, begging the question, and/or straight up incorrect.
If I was willing to meet you halfway with "just irresponsible, not bad" before, this response right here eliminated all that.
I really don't understand you took this so seriously in the first place, and many of the arguments you made make 0 sense like that trash comparison, and the fact that you asked me to go somewhere else so what, I can return a cart? Or the fact that if I don't return the cart, I am making someone else do the work for me when some stores have people PAID TO DO THAT, because they lack cart return points, and how I am making them do it for the same reason I don't want to: climate, when they wouldn't even pick up carts from parking lots till night.
Not to mention how me returning would mean that employee's will be free from getting the carts until that is not true, because people are bound to just let the carts on the sides if the store did not bother to make return points, and literally have someone ready to pick them up at the end of the day, which tells me even they ARE NOT bothered from the store. Even if I stop, that wouldn't matter a bit if others didn't do the same, there are tons of people living nearby, and customers are bound to do this if the store doesn't give proper return points, this is reality.
Man, that's just a whole other level of insanity, glad you can't deal this argument anymore because I am really not interested in this either.
If you think this is bad or irresponsible given a genuine reason, then you haven't really seen the real irresponsible and bad things out there in the world, because this is nothing...
There was once in walmart a year back when they asked us to return the carts properly because it was too windy outside so it won't hit properly
AND WE DID RETURN THE CARTS IN THAT SCENARIO
Again, I find this funny, you sound like an absolute perfect person who wants everyone to be extremely responsible and do it despite inconveniences i've mentioned above...
Look, it's nice to hear that, but in the real practical world, people WILL leave their carts if stores are not bothered or care enough to install return points in the first place.
“Nobody else’s time, wants, needs or desires couldn’t possibly matter more than mine. Because I think and feel this way, no one else feels thinks differently.”
Incidentally, I've got another measure for when someone is probably a bad person. Someone else in this comment section said it, so I'll quote and link.
Now, see, that up there was me enforcing my boundaries, and you hauled off and insulted my sanity and made all kinds of assumptions about my life experience. Painted yourself into a corner on this one, my dude.
Please don't take this in a different direction against me lol, I am only calling this discussion and your arguements as "insansity" like the trash comparision you made that makes no sense to me, I obviously don't even know you personally, so that no way was mean't to apply for you, just the arguement and some of those points you put forth.
I didn't mean or never called you as a person as insane lol
And it's funny how you left out 90% of my arguements, cherry picked them as per your liking and highlighted them against me.
EDIT: And I just realized you have been cherry-picking since the very beginning, leaving a lot of the good points I put forth, only highlighting some points alone like the weather, making it seem like I am being ridiculous with excuses, although I had a bigger context behind it.
You also said: "I don't really have the desire to deal with this...."
Yet you can't put a full stop and try to understand another perspective rather than your own, you seem to have a very locked and closed mindset, atleast from having this conversation although that may not be the case.
But you need to understand, it's nice to speak like a very responsible person, expecting everyone to be that way, I admire that, but the reality is, people won't go to another store and find a place with huge cart corrals just to be able to return it (I am saying this as you wanted me to take my money elsewhere), that's just not practically possible and it simply isn't convenient out there in the real world,
nobody is going to travel somewhere else that could be much further away just to be able to return a cart, I bet it's not even something people think off when they go do grocery shopping, you have to be considerate when demanding people to be more "responsible".
I had this discussion on here a week or so ago. I guess I’m just lucky enough to live somewhere where the summers are mid 80s and the winters are high 50s. My three friends who got jobs at the local Target all said that the best part of their day was collecting carts.
They still collect carts if you put them where they’re supposed to be, it’s just a safer job, because they are where cars expect them to be instead of all over the parking lot fishing lone carts out of bushes and off medians
There are two main reasons you wouldn’t return carts to a cart return location:
Fuck them people
My time is worth more than this
At the very least the person is inconsiderate, and worst a complete psychopath. Both are not great signs, and all the ones between are also not positive aspects.
You’d think something that small wouldn’t be much of an indication on a person’s overall nature, but it’s nearly always the little things that add up to the whole thing.
I think really the only excuse for not doing it is you get a call from the hospital and someone is either being born or dying. Otherwise, yeah, put back the fucking cart, you spent an hour in the store, thirty more seconds isn’t going to fuck up your schedule.
I understand where you are coming from, but most people who do this at times are more likely just ignorant than even "fuck them people". In-fact, the walmart near me has a guy waiting outside along with the security most of the time to collect carts once the store closes, so many people are like "he is going to collect all the leftover carts anyways".
Especially for those who have parked their cars a bit away, I really doubt such people are going to return all the way just to put a cart on the cart return location, rather than just putting the car on the side and just take off with their car.
To make things worse, there are staff on stores often these days that organize and collect leftover carts, so it's been a while since I have seen a good chunk of people return their carts to their return location, especially from parking lots, unless they are close to that return spot.
Most if not all big box stores have cart corrals out in their parking lots where you are meant to return the carts so that they can be collected more efficiently without having some employee run all over collecting carts. Andtheres the matter of run away carts especially if it’s a windy day. Those carts can really get moving and cause some damage to cars parked out in the lot. No one is saying to take them back to the entrance of the store, simply to put them in the collection point so they don’t wander.
I stand corrected especially on one area, I just remembered that there are indeed cart corrals out there in the parking lots, unfortunately my walmart has like 1 on a huge parking lot which is really not enough, but it is true that most stores do have a lot of them, if they are nearby a car and that person still doesn't return the cart, then that's a problem.
Maybe that's why I see staff collecting carts, due to the lack of cart corrals, maybe stores that lack enough of them do this instead, but I am also debating within myself about the fact that there are tons of people that still do this mistake with enough cart corrals.
So I personally think the right conclusion would be, such people are not bad, but not responsible and are ignorant. When possible, returning would make life easier for staff that do collect carts too, they don't have to go all the way to collect all of them. And of course, avoiding the risks of the carts hitting other cars in-case of natural wind, great points that didn't come to my mind at first.
I think this one wouldn't go under bad though as I said, it has to be a lot more than not returning cart back to the car corrals to be a bad person....right??
Yeah, I can see it being an issue when there’s a massive parking lot and no return locations. I’m sure some stores did the studies on how much time and workforce it saved to put those corrals out in the lot as most people are inclined to do a bit to help out others.
For reasons that I can't quite fathom, they've been taking them away in California. Stores that used to have them, don't any more.
Often there isn't even a safe place outside. You could put them up on to the sidewalk in front of the store, but is that the best place? It's convenient for the workers but it also gets in the way.
I view not returning carts as inconsiderate or lazy, but most employees I’ve heard discuss this say they don’t mind going out to get carts, because they get the chance to be out of the store for a while.
“he is going to collect all the leftover carts anyways”.
This mentality is just selfishness and self-centeredness. This is the same mentality of people who cause a huge mess at restaurants or movie theatres because “it’s their job, I’m giving them work to do.” It shows an extreme lack of empathy, and it’s very much a “they’re beneath me, I’m helping them” disgusting mentality.
Oh man. I live not too far from a Walmart (about 3 miles by car, but 1 by foot with shortcuts). Recently, someone in my neighborhood has started walking to Walmart, filling their cart, then just bringing the cart home with them and abandoning it on the access road in our neighborhood. We are 6 carts deep and my anger towards the perpetrator grows every day.
This is such a strange phenomenon to me. In all the countries I've lived in, all but a few select stores have a dongle on each cart that takes a coin to unlock it from the chain of other carts. It's perhaps the cost of a back of toilet paper, but that seems to be sufficient for it to be exceedingly rare to see an abandoned cart. One can only imagine that any such carts are quick prey for enterprising teens looking for a quick boost to their candy fund.
I'd say it's conditional. At a certain point, it's on the business themselves. For example, a giant parking lot with one or two cart returns only, in a front corner.
A massive sprawling Walmart parking lot with only one return, and I had to park really far away, and it's super busy and trying to get the cart to the return requires going through multiple rows? I'm a goodie two shoes who will clean up after others, and tries to improve places... but I've got limits with time, effort, and desire to deal with crowds of people in parking lots.
If they have good placement though, then yes, it's absolutely on the individual.
Not disagreeing with you here, but just for fun, what would you say about a restaurant asking you to wash your own dishes when you’re finished with your meal?
I’d say, if they make it clear that you don’t need to use their dishes, but if you do, you have to wash them, that you’re an asshole if you don’t wash your dishes afterwards.
I'm still working on it because it doesn't happen to everyone, which is why it's not that simple. Before the release, the problem should already be resolved, so please have a little more patience :)
@ernest Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. Kbin is great and I appreciate all of your hard work. Take the time you need, no one could have imagined how this instance would take off!
Thank you for all the work you're doing to improve kbin!
Only somewhat related, but along with periodic logouts, I've noticed that if I interact with a page that's been up for a while (I get distracted, read a bunch of headlines, or going back to a previous page) it will error out and attempt to resend the data when I try refreshing. I can go back to the original page and reload and it works just fine.
Lemmy can see kbin magazines. I’m on a lemmy instance right now.
kbin.social itself has had some federation issues in the past month, but I think that’s more growing pains of a new platform than anything inherent in the system itself.
Yeah this seems to be a temporary thing. I've been following the federation issues we've been having on kbin and I'm hoping they can resolved as everything stabilizes.
I'm unsure if the ingest from kbin > Lemmy was working because last I checked they were returning error responses on requests that had "kbinbot" in the name.
Yeah that doesn't look like it's federation correctly. I'll raise it again with some of the other devs, maybe one of them will know. Pretty annoying ;(
I'm unsure if the ingest from kbin > Lemmy was working because last I checked they were returning error responses on requests that had "kbinbot" in the name.
It's only lemmy.ml, not all of lemmy, that's returning a forbidden response on requests from kbin.
I hope kbin gets federated by lemmy.ml it seems they have been rather trigger happy with blocking. It seems we will have to wait and see which instance is the most free.
A lot of the original Lemmy instances are quite trigger happy. It’s one really nice thing about the new instances with new admins who block but still prefer not to unless it’s really necessary.
i kind of knew what i was signing up for with this lemmy ecosystem, so at worst people will just switch instances and the most free gain the most leverage, it beats this hopping from one centralized service to another by far.
I’ve been all-in on the fediverse since early 2021, including the threadiverse. It may not be the future for the masses, but I think it might be the future for people who value freedom and autonomy.
there are like 10 times or 20 times more users online than back when reddit even started, i think we will be fine even if it wont be for "the masses". I respect that you got in early, a true pioneer.
Oh, maybe that's where I got the idea that Lemmy couldn't see them, I've only been on the fediverse for a couple weeks. People were saying Lemmy couldn't see kbin, but I didn't realize that was temporary.
There's some suspicion that the specific instance lemmy.ml is rejecting incoming requests from kbin via a configuration, but lemmy.world, lemmy.ca, beehaw, etc. seem to be federating well enough.
Not really suspicion at this point. They are proveably 403 rejecting requests from the KBin useragent. You have the letters "kbinbot" anywhere in your useragent (case insensitive) you ain't getting content.
As a bonus they're still sending out stuff to instances though. But since KBin can't then resolve it it amounts to a DoS attack as the messages just build up in KBin retry queues.
A lot of people on kbin are here because we don't support reddit anymore, and we are especially displeased with spez holding decades-worth of accumulated knowledge and content for ransom.
Even if they're questions which could be easily found on reddit or with a Google search, I think it's a good idea to ask them here (and on other instances) anyway. It will give those who are boycotting reddit a new space to search for answers, it will foster more content creation on kbin, and it will decentralise the combined niche knowledge and expertise of all netizens, so that it is less likely to be lost or held hostage again.
I think it's also a good starting point for anyone who is usually a lurker, but would like to create quality content here to promote community growth. Ask a question you could easily search (or maybe one you already know the answer to?)
We can come together as a community to ask and answer those questions, rather than each user trying to single-handedly create valuable content from scratch, which is much more daunting.
I myself was enamored with vampire stuff and in high school met an online boyfriend who really committed to the shtick of being a vampire - though a significantly weakened in bloodline so he could walk in sunlight. I think at one point he was also claiming to be a vessel for the archangel Michael. Please know this was all happening in 2000/2001, so long before Supernatural!
I caught up with him briefly about 15 years after high school, and he's still claiming to be a vampire. A divorced vampire who smokes a lot of weed, but still a vampire.
I went through a period a few years back of catching up with some of my exes, and it was a montage of dodging bullets. One guy was heavily into opioids for pain management after flipping a truck during street racing. One was married to a homophobic Renaissance faire kind of woman while over time, he had come to understand he was bisexual. And then there was the divorced vampire.
I learned my lesson: I don't want to follow up with any of them ever again.
Yeah, I thought for sure he would have outgrown it by then, too. He copped to making up the archangel Michael bit, which surprised me, but he was keeping the dream alive as a vampire.
Thanks man. I had to crawl through some filthy comments, I'm pretty sure it was worse than whatever those chumps on Juno Beach during the D-Day Normandy invasion had to endure... You got a medal for me? Let's see what you have.
The whole social media collapse has been crushing for a recluse like myself. I mean, I might as well come out straight and say that. I'm not tactile and I don't socialize, so the internet is my main source of communication with the outside world. I'm guaranteed to find people who share my interests, people who "get" me, people who don't act like I came from Venus when I finally open up to them. When that all folds in on itself, or mutates into something that would make the monstrous works of HR Giger look like HR Puffnstuff, yeah, it's kind of painful. Like living through your own digital 9/11. That sounds dramatic, and I mean it to be, but yes, losing social networks that were trusted sources of discussion has been like a sledgehammer to my mental health.
TMI, sorry. I do leave my house when needed, but it's more business than pleasure. (There's very little pleasure involved.)
I hear you. I spent most of fmy social time as a teenager in those new-fangled chat rooms in the mid-late nineties and I don't think I ever really learned to socialize properly in person. Lol. That said, I don't find the newness of this platform too daunting. I was one of the people who left Digg back in the day too.
I do miss my May 2023 baby bumps group now that I'm on maternity leave and have a lot of down time feeding the little one though. It's not like it's easy for me to leave the house with a toddler and a newborn even if I was to join a real life parenting social group.
Taking my daughter to organised play groups several times per week was forced upon me due to needing access to the community nurses who attended, as she needed constant monitoring of a birth condition. However, I'm incredibly glad I went, and continued to do so long after the condition ceased to need such close attention.
I made friends with several other parents, our children bonded and made their first friendships and learnt the basics of social interaction. The shared learning and support we were able to offer each other smoothed over countless daily needs and little fears. Sure, these friendships didn't all sustain themselves long past our kids starting at their various different schools, but by that stage they had already learned so much that I could tell apart many of the children who had benefited from a similar experience and those who hadn't.
I say all this simply to encourage you to try these sorts of groups. You might not make friends who last forever, you might not meet people exactly to your liking, but that's life and it's a valuable experience for the kids for that very reason. People are never more welcoming and friendly than when you have young children and need some companionship, we're all in that same exact boat.
Hey, I know what you mean. As a teen I spent a huge amount of time on the local BBS scene, before moving on to the Usenet groups, IRC, and then various forums.
I'd say don't despair. Interest groups will find a way to congregate somehow. We did fine socialising online before garguntan social media networks, and we will continue to do so without them. There'll be a dip in the near-future, but others will come to take the place of these social networks. They may not be huge and all-encompassing, but maybe that's what we really need: Smaller communities tailored to more specific needs and wants.
I think I figured it out immediately after posting this, lol. If there's a red line next to this comment, then I think that's to highlight OP's comments in their own thread.
It’s great you are looking out for your friend’s well-being, at the same time unless they are causing harm to themself or others I think it can come across as insensitive to try and tell them their spiritual beliefs are “wrong” even if they seem new or unusual. Would you stop a friend from praying even if they think that it’s a literal attempt to get a higher power to intervene on their behalf? Is casting a spell really that much different?
Thank you for this perspective I hadn't considered. No harm is being done as far as I know, to himself or others. He does have a history of self harm but he's beyond that now, and is thankfully in a much better place emotionally.
Not a supernatural creature, but I've never seen someone so committed to something, let alone pretending to be a character, like a friend I have.
So, for context, I have a friend who disagreed with his Dramatic Arts professor on how a character had to be played (or something like that) on the first class of the year, and apparently after some arguing, the professor challenged my friend to attend to any business he needed to do in the campus as normal, but portraying a character, any of his choosing, for the rest of the year. And god damn, he did. For the rest of the year, he bought a Victorian era costume, complete with cane and top hat, learned many quirks of the language at the time, and many of the behaviors of society. And Sir Marcus Godwin was born.
He went full in-character mode. He talked using the time's English, walked like a gentleman, and behaved like he was a Victorian era man who was time travelled into the present. It was really hard not to laugh, specially when he spoke, with professors trying REALLY hard not to laugh. I think the DA professor must have warned all other professors of the classes my friend had, because I'm surprised he wasn't expelled of any of them. But he made it to the end of the year nonetheless and not only did he get the max grade on that class (which apparently was nearly impossible with that professor), but also got a fuck ton of money on bets he made along the year.
Moving to: m/AskMbin!
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