Thanks, I try. ;)

No! You’re not allowed to have fun with AI!! AI bad!! sprays you with spray bottle /s

Personally I find AI use in silly, unserious scenarios like this perfectly fine. While I think that it’s a shame that there will be less of a culture of “spending a ton of time and effort just to create a silly meme in Paint for Internet Points™”, I think the point of memes is for people to express themselves informally in good fun, and how they choose to do that is up to them.

What I don’t like is when people try to use it to generate an entire art piece and then sell it at the Louvre as something they made from scratch, especially when they generate it to look like another artist’s work. That’s not “in good fun”; that’s fraud and theft at the same time.

I don’t hate the tool, I hate the people who misuse it.

Big words coming from the most hideous and deformed rabbits I’ve ever seen.

Lol I’m NGL half of what made me never feel compelled to contribute on reddit and just be a lurker was how some people seemed to not have “conversations” but rather just talk over each other. It wasn’t always true, but it felt like many people weren’t actually trying to understand what the other people was saying.

I don’t thrive in those environments, I much prefer the deliberate conversations that happen in smaller communities.

So yes, long live Lemmy!

it’s the perspective of a NORP Huh, do ADHD people count as NORPs? Or is that more of a mindset thing?

My naivete aside, it’s true that the way I phrased my statement ignores people with ADHD who can experience hyper focus on an activity they’re interested in, or people experiencing mania. I’ve certainly experienced the former, but like you said, it’s not a solution but more of a trade-off with its own set of problems.

I guess I should have phrased it more like “even if you have limitless willpower, it doesn’t break physics”: even if you aren’t neurotypical and can sustain willpower for unusual amounts of time, no matter how much motivation you have there is a limited learning capacity you have and a finite amount of time in a day, and you have to pick what you spend them on.

It’s a bit tricky to convey that nuance succinctly, so thanks for pointing that out stranger. :)

I’ve read that humans can only sustain maximum focus about an hour. I used to think “I can focus for longer than that!”, but I think a more correct interpretation is that “after more than an hour, you start to see diminishing returns on your effort.”

Upon more careful reflection, that sounds about right. I do engineering work that involves deep focus and complex mental manipulation, and I can say that you really can’t do that for more than 1-2 hours at a time without a break. Try to force it longer than that, and you won’t be able to go back for a second round of that in the same day.

The reason why students seem to be able to do it is because of the staggered classes and the variation in complexity for their course load and, you guessed it, taking short breaks in their sessions. Common advice for engineering students is to pair their engineering courses with lower-stress liberal arts courses or courses that use different parts of the brain in a given semester so they don’t burn out, and to rest between classes and study sessions.

And lastly, as an ADHD adult, I’ll offer this insight on the nature of motivation: everyone’s threshold for how much motivation they need to perform a task with sustained focus is different. Sometimes, you just don’t have it in you, because you’ve used the energy on other things. Willpower is not some magical force that you can limitlessly tap into to achieve the impossible; it is very much a finite resource. So if you’re struggling to bring yourself to do more towards a specific goal, consider where you can shave off some energy elsewhere. Or, perhaps after thinking about it, you realize you are already putting in exactly the amount of energy you are willing to. In that case, there’s no need to feel guilty, because you’re already doing what you can and want to.

When I truly internalized that I don’t have to prove my worth to anyone, even if I don’t always know what I’m doing.

Looking back, that sense of self-worth and confidence is what I probably saw in all of the adults around me that made them seem so incredible as a child.

So when I felt that, I thought “huh, so this is what being an adult feels like.”

Boxer briefs. The longer, form-fittint leg sleeves seem to prevent inner thigh irritation the best for me.

In the past I would have said boxer shorts because they tend to not catch on leg hair as much since they’re loose, but the loose fabric seems to cause more irritation from friction, weirdly.

Full disclosure:

1. I am not a psychologist, psychology is merely a hobby.
2. I am from the US, but I will try to stick to my understanding of human emotions as a whole.

One thing I have observed about violence that seems random is that they are often performed by people who have been proverbially “beaten down” by life. When this is the cause, they may feel the need to lash out, but their “beating” was so severe that they become apathetic. They just need some outlet for their pain, rather than a specific individual or group.

Some people will take it out on themselves and it becomes self-harm or suicide. Others will take it out on those who are vulnerable in their immediate vicinity.

Basically, when a person is in a lot of pain, it becomes harder to think about others, because they are already struggling with their own issues. At least from where I stand, random acts of violence is what happens when that idea is taken to an extreme.

As for articles and videos: I’m not sure if you will be able to view the video on this page easily, but there is a transcription on the page: it was shared by a man who claimed he almost became a school shooter. He described what he was going through and feeling leading up to the moment where he almost did it. I think it provides a window into how suffering makes a person volatile:

https://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_stark_i_was_almost_a_school_shooter?subtitle=en

In a similar vein, depression tends to cause a person to focus heavily on their own thoughts and emotions and less on their social connections, not because the person is selfish, but as a means of self-preservation, as described in these articles:

https://neurolaunch.com/is-depression-selfish/

https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/copingwithdepression/2020/12/when-depression-makes-you-appear-selfish

This is just one possible explanation, but it’s the one I am most familiar with personally. I hope this helps.

You know, I had never noticed this correlation until you brought it up, but it’s kind of sad how accurate it is…

This is exactly correct, and herein lies the problem: how do you monetize content creation from people you don’t pay?

Louis Rossman said it best: when you look at a lot of content platforms, you realize their business models don’t make sense. The people managing these companies are riding on VC money knowing full well there isn’t any long-term return. They want to cash out and dip.

This is why I feel like a Federated, user-maintained system is probably best for the long term sustainability of a community. People want a place to enjoy something or someone? Let’s make it happen, by our own means

As someone who really only went on Reddit for memes and techie discussions, I think I can say this: for my use-case, there was nothing special about Reddit itself. In fact, one thing I have realized is just how little the nature of the host matters beyond ease of use. Sure, certain formats lend themselves better to certain use-cases, but ultimately humans are social creatures, and even in the most inconvenient of circumstances, we find a way to make it work.

And once you realize that, it becomes less about the medium, and more about the people who lead the discourse. From what I can gather, Reddit lost that discourse a long time ago. And as such, their downfall was only a matter of time.