Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Antsan on October 22, 2014, 10:51:46 am

Quote from: Objective on October 21, 2014, 08:01:05 pm

The distinction between meatspace friends and online friends really annoy me, but I guess it's true that people don't value internet friendship.

A meatspace friend doesn't only know how you'd like to be but also how you really act. If you are online you can just quit at any point and you can hide whenever. You are not reachable via the Internet if you don't want to. When you are staying at a friends place you share a part of your life with them and the closer friends you are the less control you consciously exercise about that.
That's a non-negligible difference in how well somebody can know you, because they know stuff about you that you didn't want to show them yourself. People like that can give incredible insight in your own mind. I am very thankful that I know and trust people who know stuff about me that I am not aware of.

There's a balance against this, though. 

Everyone wears a mask when interacting with others in-person.  Everyone.  The things that we are unable to hide about ourselves in meatspace are mostly things that trigger stereotypes and prejudice, anyway.  Personal habits/demeanor/skin color/accents/etc... impressions.  Truly meaningful things like personal beliefs and histories are still hidden until a person decides to reveal them.

My experience with 18 years of online socialization is that there are far less inhibitions.  When people choose to socialize online, it tends to be because they're actively seeking someone to connect with, as opposed to meatspace where interaction is most often a product of circumstance.  On top of that, there is far less threat of immediate consequence, just as you said with your comment about being able to quit and hide.  As such, meaningful details are usually more forthcoming and interactions much more honest.

Most of my deepest friendships have been the product of long conversations over the internet, and became established very quickly as we just happen to strike up a conversation that gets very sincere very quickly because there's no reason not to.

All of my good friends made in meatspace have been people I met by chance while going about my life (i.e. while wearing my public mask), followed by repeated intentional meetings outside of that chance circumstance where we both slowly revealed ourselves over a long period of time.

Also, I've been married 10 years to someone I met on the internet in 1996.

Yes, that's true, of course. But then again almost all of our interactions with other people (or at least mine) are offline and meatspace friends help you see the masks you wear when you've long forgotten them. At least that's what my best friends do for me. Most people are pretty obvious about many of the masks they wear.

Damn.
I wish I could add something of substance.
Only thing I can say is that Caroline probably is right.

...should I care about that? Sounds like they do nothing but take mastah for granted, so maybe a couple of nights on the streets will convince them to look for work and quit bitching that mastah isn't kowtowing to them enough.

I think he said they already did that so I don't think that's going to have the proposed effect.

He clearly thought you were homeless. Probably jumping the gun on his part but.....seriously? You went to a public shopping area with no shoes? What did you expect would happen? "No shirt, no shoes, no service" has been posted at every gas station and shopping center for decades.

If they don't like me not wearing shoes, they can tell me so, instead of claiming they have security cam footage of me rummaging through trash, which is obviously a lie.
I only wear shoes for security reasons or if someone asks me to. Up until now I never had problems going shopping without them and I have actually never see a sign "No shirt, no shoes, no service"

Some people don't like wearing shoes.

Maybe it's because they don't want other people to think they ever shower? Who knows.

Yeah, because not wearing shoes is clearly a sign of not washing yourself. What the heck is up with you and some people?
I don't like wearing shoes. They make my feet sweaty. They are uncomfortable. I like feeling the ground under my feet. There is no reason for me to wear shoes besides work place security and representing someone else who wants me to wear shoes.
It's one thing if people look at me funny in public, it's another if I'm being thrown out of the shopping mall for it and another thing entirely if I'm being lied to about the reasons.
Are feet somehow disgusting in themselves? What the heck?

Wait, so you actually weren't wearing shoes? Why?

Look above. I don't like them. Since I stopped wearing shoes my feet feel better and I cannot even remember when they felt truly cold.
You know that feeling where you're in bed and cannot get your feet to feel warm? Yeah, that's a thing of the past for me.

Yeah, most shops won't want you in without shoes. Same reason they don't want you turning up in pyjamas or a gimp suit or whatever.

I just don't understand what the problem with feet is. Do most people have some kind of hidden foot-fetish and feel uncomfortable being confronted with that in public?
Seriously, I am completely lost here.

I seriously have no idea. When I asked why I had to go he told me he had to obey orders and the people at the security cameras wanted me out. Why he couldn't or wouldn't tell me.

@Helgoland:

Also I don't quite get why the European meddling is the most evil thing since Sender Gleiwitz but the Russian meddling is totally fine...

I never said that. I said it was foreseeable and avoidable by the people who are now complaining the loudest.

And no, nobody wants to go to war with Russia, even if they want to stop Putin. There are means other than brute force, and even transatlantic warmongering Russia-hating NATO puppets know about them.

In the end it's about selling weapons (as that's the goal of the arms industry) and you don't need your own country to go to war for that.

You know, this is the leftist hypocrisy that makes me dislike Die Anstalt. If someone who is closely associated with the AG Friedensforschung (basically a propaganda think tank for Die Linke) writes a piece about how we should do nothing, it's fine and dandy, but when someone associated with our current government writes a piece about how we should arm the Ukrainians, it's all of a sudden a corruption of our free press... There's just a whole lot of dishonesty in saying "We need an independent press" and then assigning the label "independent" according to political leanings.

Fine. Then point out these connections. Doesn't make them right anywhere, especially if the message is hate.

Quote from: Antsan on October 12, 2014, 05:22:17 am

My personal view on politics still says that we shouldn't go to war in the Ukraine, but as I, at this point, really don't know what to do instead of just sitting it out and hoping that the Ukrainians get their shit together, I won't try to argue that point.

Quote from: Antsan on October 12, 2014, 05:22:17 am

So you think there is no conflict of interest if journalists are working for the government and it's exactly those screaming the loudest how Russia needs to be stopped with violent force? Well, that's good to know then.

Who is even talking about that? I have yet to hear anything about a German politician proposing something like this..

Then, again, I direct you to the headlines the journalists where writing. Because, you know, the politicians don't have to if the journalists do it for them.
The connections to the arms industry are a bit less of a surprise, though.

Quote from: Antsan on October 12, 2014, 05:22:17 am

How could stirring up everything there not lead to what we see now, even if Russia didn't meddle?

Without Russian military support, there would be no civil war, simple as that. How can you compare any support the Maidan revolution might have gotten with that?

In what kind of fairy tale world do you live in?

I'm not talking about the USA at all!
And as I said, the Ukraine was instable before Russia did anything at all. Even if Russia wouldn't have intervened the whole thing would have gone to hell and everyone who'd give a damn was able to see it. Russia's behavior isn't really nice, but acting as if they were the ones who escalated the whole situation is kind of ingenious, especially if Russia is kind of forced to do something before they're surrounded by foreign powers who are less than friendly towards them.
Just look at the coverage! Do you think Russian politicians don't notice how they're painted as the bad guys? What impression does that leave in Russia? That we're only trying to help them and they're being unreasonable?
Damn, if Germany was painted internationally as a power that's only not being waged war at because it's so intimidating while Poland as the last ally at my border was going into negotiations to basically associate with those who are my (just yet not) enemies I'd be pretty alarmed. What the hell should they do?

Yeah, the argument that it's somehow our (or Ukraine's) Russia's fault because we juste didn't give Putin the EU everything he they want is textbook idiot pacifism.

What? I know this might be hard for you guys, but for one second assume that the people you are talking about are still humans and just try to apply your arguments on both sides.

Yeah, the argument that it's somehow our (or Ukraine's) fault because we juste didn't give Putin everything he want his textbook idiot pacifism.

Of course this had to be said. It's completely unavoidable that someone is going to shout "blackmail".
If you know you're going to cause a war and what you want is not that important (and frankly, I don't see why we need an association agreement with the Ukraine that badly) it kind of seems like a willing provocation. Or you are just being stubborn.
"Yeah, of course the bear is going to get aggressive if I dance around in front of it's cave, but demanding us to not do that is textbook idiotic environmentalism."
Oh, how much I want a face->wall smiley right now.