The first rule of the internet I ever encountered back in the mid-90s was “don’t feed the trolls”. We’ve lost that piece of philosophy along the way, and now we all actively engage with cunts instead of just blocking them and moving on. Oblivion is the ultimate tool for dealing with anonymous people who behave like fuckheads. It’s a win for them if you respond to their provocations, so just don’t. Don’t be posting shit like “I know you’re trolling, but…” just don’t even acknowledge them. Block/report/move on. It’s really that simple. The simplest remedy is also the most effective. How cool is that? We just have to tell our limbic systems, because the urge to engage is overwhelming sometimes. But take pleasure in sending these bastards into the abyss, enjoy hitting that block button and growing your blocklist. Look at your blocklist from time to time, and bask in the glory of it. Delight in how many people have been stopped dead in their tracks from ever bothering you again. Get excited when you see a new cunt emerge, and how much fun it will be to add them to the list.

As for ‘reply guys’ and general pissiness from curmudgeons (that is, people who are dickish but not actually harassing you) you can simply think of whatever anger or displeasure they’re expressing as being very much their problem. If they talk to you like you’re stupid, just know that they’re struggling with their own issues and that’s why they’re behaving like a stone in everyone’s shoe. Talk to them normally and without emotional language (if you need to talk to them at all), and keep in mind that anyone else who happens upon this interaction will see that you’re a reasonable and cool person and the other guy is a wanker.

If you knew the other person had a brain tumour that made them behave like a prick, you’d be much less bothered by them, but the thing is, that “brain tumour” exists in everyone. No one is really the master of their own behaviour, we’re all dragging millennia of other people’s genetic shittiness behind us, and our individual capacity to introspect and reflect on our shittiness and try to do better is also something we don’t create within ourselves, we’re all pretty much stuck with what we have, with our wiggle room for improvement being as preordained as our circulatory systems. So think of everyone as a tumour-riddled victim of circumstance and they won’t be able to hurt or annoy you anywhere near as much. Be happy that your particular tumours aren’t making you behave like a dickhead in public. It’s all about framing, just don’t let the other guy do the framing and you’re good.

It has always struck me as being the same impulse that makes hoarders do what they do. It’s just that, because the rich are hoarding wealth, which everyone sees as a desirable thing to hoard, they’re not treated like the fiending addict freaks that they are. I think it’s simply their warped personalities, rather than some Machiavellian master plan.

Immediate suicide for me, I’m afraid.

Star Wars holds a place in my heart mainly for nostalgia reasons. Seeing those original films for the first time was formative back in the day when I was a wee cunt. But yeah, they’re pretty indefensible from a film criticism standpoint.

My takes:

1. Goodfellas is fine. It’s a’ight. It’s about 900% more beloved than it deserves. Casino was better, even though it was the same damn movie.
2. On Goodfellas: Ray Liotta is fucking awful in it. He gives me second-hand embarrassment watching him. He’s been great in other roles, but he just seemed so out of his depth trying to hold his own in amongst the De Niros and Pescis of the world. I also think the actor playing Big Paulie was fucking awful, but he doesn’t have much screen time so it’s easy to forget how shit he was.
3. Also - and lastly, I swear - on Goodfellas: the editing is less “fractured and frenetic like the rapidly-imploding mind of the main character” and more like “fractured and frenetic like the coked up Parkinson’s-suffering editor during a violent bowel movement”. Unnecessarily janky and rough around every single edge, to put it mildly.
4. Nic Cage should not be allowed to be in films, full stop. Not even a documentary about Nic Cage in which he agrees with me, personally, through the camera that he’s terrible.
5. The Godfather III was good. Yeah, not as good as I and II, and the downright offensively-bad acting from Andy Garcia (you thought I was about to complain about Sofia Coppola, didn’t ya? Andy was an order of magnitude worse) definitely knocks a few stars off my IMDb rating, but the film was fine.
6. I’ve posted about this in Unpopular Opinion before, but I think remakes and reboots are great, as long as the film-makers are trying to do their best and make an honest go of it. I especially love when a film is transported from one culture into another. For example, Unforgiven - the Clint Eastwood modern classic - was remade in Japan, except instead of the gunslinging Wild West it was the samurai-sword-swingin’ Meiji period. How cool is that shit? I love it. Now I have two awesome movies where before there was only one.

Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle is an interesting one. He’s pretty fucking despicable, but when I first watched the movie as a freshly-pubescent teen, I bought into his sick view of the world and took the film at face value. That is, I thought it was a story about a weird-but-well-meaning dude who decides to take on some baddies.

It’s from 1976, but if it were made today, Travis would 100% be a violent misogynist incel posting his manifesto to 4chan instead of writing it in his diary.

Homophobia was the norm where I grew up in the '80s and '90s. Took me until the late '90s to start questioning that, and probably a year or two more to become completely cleansed of it.

When I was a kid, there was a period during which I was convinced my dad was planning to kill me (or have me killed). I’d have regular nightmares about it.

I have one [non-dream] memory in particular where we were walking through Belfast on a sunny Sunday afternoon, it was pretty much empty except for us. We were walking along a path holding hands (I was like 6 or 7), and an alleyway opened to the right of me, and I thought “this is it…” and was expecting a masked gunman to come out, and for my dad to let go of my hand and step aside, his job now complete. Genuinely thought that was about to happen and almost had a panic attack. No idea why I thought that, or why I eventually stopped thinking it.

I was later diagnosed with all sorts of neuro/psych shenanigans, so I guess it was probably that. I still have intrusive thoughts, but I’ve had therapy so I’m a bit better able to manage them. CBT might do you some good if you have access to a shrink. You can even do most of it on your own, or with a bit of guidance from someone else who’s already done it.

They’re banking on severe vendor lock-in preventing people from moving on. So many communities are solely on Discord now, it’s insane.

Would something like Stoat (previously known as Revolt) eventually have the same requirements?

be on the wrong side of history speedrun

I can’t do small talk or general chat, but I can do meta. I can talk about how awkward it is to talk to strangers, for example. That feels like information exchange, as opposed to a complex two-person dance where I don’t have rhythm or sufficiently-malleable limbs, which is what small talk feels like to me. The goal of small talk seems to be the process itself. If we’re instead ‘educating’ each other about something, and that information is the ultimate goal, I’m much more comfortable.

At least they have an AI-free option, as annoying as it is to have to opt into it.

On a related note, it’s hilarious to me that the Ecosia search engine has AI built in. Like, I don’t think planting any number of trees is going to offset the damage AI has done and will do to the planet.

I’m gonna get a stupidly-hot wife despite being a fat layabout piece of shit with a clear neurological condition.

I guess that’s not really physics related, so I’ll also add “gracefully float towards delicious food on a wafting scent trail”. I could toss a burger down a canyon and use the scent trail to lower myself down safely. Like a Portal gun, but for fat layabout pieces of shit with clear neurological conditions 👍

I was gonna give it a chance back when they were letting people reserve their usernames. When the site first went live (in beta, I guess?) they wanted me to pay them money to gain access. Enshittification is baked into the platform.

Is there like a petition or something we can all sign to show that literally no cunt wants this?

I was an early adopter of No Man’s Sky (long before the shift in public perception), and I fucking loved it back then, and love it now as well. But admitting that in public a few years back was tantamount to saying that stapling your child to a rabid badger was a great alternative to hiring a babysitter.

This is an angle I’ve never considered before, with regards to a future dystopia with a corrupt AI running the show. AI might never advance beyond what it is in 2025, but because people believe it’s a supergodbrain, we start putting way too much faith in its flawed output, and it’s our own credulity that dismantles civilisation rather than a runaway LLM with designs of its own. Misinformation unwittingly codified and sanctified by ourselves via ChatGeppetto.

The call is coming from inside the house mechanical Turk!