I used to smoke. Roommate and i quit at the same time and kept each other honest. It worked out really well and we’re both still grateful to each other a decade later.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the vast majority of people under 50 seem to be in polyamorous relationships. I’m fairly new to poly, but I’ve done a lot of reading and therapy, and it’s working out pretty well for me.

I do tend to be people’s anchor partner, so I’ve admittedly never experienced the pain that comes from being a secondary when you wish you were a primary. My anchor partner tends more towards relationship anarchy and doesn’t like hierarchical relationships, but i made it clear that my expectation is to be the priority in her life. We’ve made it work, although it takes a lot of communication.

Probably it’s more the former reason. I used to curate my experience on reddit carefully and mainly participate woman centric subreddits, and few male centric ones, and I got used to that. Lemmy looks more like what would happen if you browse default subs on reddit, which tend to be very toxic. It’s a chicken and egg problem: you won’t attract women unless there are spaces women feel comfortable, and those spaces don’t exist unless there are women there to create them.

I still find myself going back to reddit for certain niche fashion or fitness things. And when i try to get my normie girlfriends to look at lemmy, it’s hard to sell them on it. They don’t care about politics or mod drama and reddit is still better for them.

Lemmy is super uncomfy for women right now. The women i know are either still on reddit or just gave up on social media altogether.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s easy to say “things could never possibly be that bad” when you haven’t experienced it. I hope you never do. I’m guessing you’re a white man between 20-40, and while life hasn’t always been easy, the social contract has mostly held for you.

That’s the thing that has always driven me crazy about our way of speaking about these things. Politicians say “we created x jobs” like it’s something to optimize for. People fear automation because it takes away their livelihoods. But, automating work and eliminating jobs should make people’s lives… better? Why doesn’t it actually? Where did the wires get crossed?

Why did we incentivize making humans suffer, at a grand societal level? Are we insane?

Not implying, just saying it. What do you think SW means?

This is normal in the United States and has been for a long time. When i was a homeless LGBT teenager trying to survive, i went to a temp agency trying to make a living some other way than SW. They sent me to this warehouse where a bunch of felons and ESL people were working in some of the most inhumane conditions i had ever seen before. 12 hour days in a 110 degree warehouse working with toxic industrial chemicals that we had no information on, with a bare minimum of PPE, intense physical labor moving large stacks of equipment, and one break at the 6 hour mark to drink water. Most of the people there had been there a while. They just had this quiet resignation and determination to survive.

I didn’t even last a single day. I started to feel heat stroke coming on around the 8 hour mark. Shivering, no more sweat, everything started to feel distant and confusing. I tried to go get water and they wouldn’t let me, so i threw all my equipment on the ground and stumbled outside to find water, and never went back. I’m white, trans, and feminine enough to survive other ways, but most of those people didn’t have any other options.

Fuck this monstrous place. I’ve been radicalized ever since seeing things like that.

A decade ago working at a retail store. My manager told me in a private meeting that i was expendable and he would fire me for any excuse. It’s not like i even did anything, it was just pure, spiteful power tripping. Later on i was bitching about what an asshole he is to some coworkers, and mimed him sucking the owner’s dick. I think one of my coworkers was sleeping with him, and i guess she told him. He was crying when he fired me. I feel a little bad, but also fuck that guy.

Carry on spending the weekend in peace. My gf and i had some amazing sex when we woke up this morning, went to the farmer’s market, went to some cute shops, did cute gay stuff like holding hands while we walked all around our city. I’m content, for the first time in my life. Dying now wouldn’t be so bad.

No, they refuse to speak to me to this day. My gf’s family called her to wish her a happy birthday last week, and i cried quietly wishing mine did that too.

I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.

I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.

I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn’t quite hit my goal by age 30, but I’m close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that’s meaningless until we IPO. But it’s profitable, and in the meantime, I’ve adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I’m content.