As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Submit your response here!

• Direct link: https://survey.tildes.community/-/what-is-your-favorite-video-game-8/
• This survey closes on June 14, 2026 at 10:00 UTC
• The results will be published on June 14 shortly after the survey has closed. I'll edit this topic and post a comment about it!

The current plans for questions that will be asked in the coming weeks are as follows:

I was initially thinking of doing something like kfwyre suggested where you could submit a top 5 or so, but then I thought it would be more fun if I made you decide on a definitive answer. Like how with the pineapple pizza survey there was only Yes and No as answers, you have to make a choice!

So that's what I've decided to do! Pick your ultimate favorite video game. And feel free to discuss your honorable mentions in the comments, of course. ;)

Please submit your ideas for questions here! Even if they've been submitted already by someone else. All input is valuable! You can view all submitted questions on this dashboard.

Thank you all for participating!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 213 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!

I'd like to thank @TaylorSwiftsPickles and @DefinitelyNotAFae once again for helping out with this survey! <3

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I was talking with a friend about recent events that seemed eerily suspicious to me, and was wondering if all of you might have any similar experiences.

(Preemptively tagging this as politics. If anything in this thread is deemed malicious or inflammatory, let me know and I'll delete the thread)

"Different" can be interpreted in any way, in any context, for any magnitude.

When did you realize you were different?
What prompted it?
How did you feel about it then?
Has the difference changed over time?
Have your feelings changed over time?

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 115 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results! And the next four surveys we will do are:

1. In first place with 26 votes: What is your gender identity?
2. Second place with 25 votes: What's your favorite video game?
3. Third place 24 with votes: How optimistic are you about the future?
4. And fourth with 23 votes: How often do you visit/read Tildes?

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

Question for those interested, what would be a good way to pose the next question "What is your gender identity?"

I have some ideas but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts too since I think historically this has been one of the more debated questions in the demographics surveys. And I think this one's an important one not to mess up. Let me know!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'm not some big psychonaut or anything. I haven't even had a proper trip outside of smoking some laced weed a decade or so ago. I microdosed shrooms (golden teacher) for a few years, but I topped out at 100mg twice a week. I've done about 2g of shrooms (different varieties), but at that level its more like a really great buzz off of alcohol with a little euphoria on top. Nothing crazy.

Anyway, I have a cartridge of NN DMT. I'm going to start light with only one hit, which should last only five minutes or so. I have a connect for ayahuasca, but it all seems to intense and drawn out and... just more than I want to do for a first go. I also don't really want to be that deep into something around a bunch of randos who also coughed up a couple hundred bucks to trip in some lady's living room.

I've been reading up on it for a while and have absolutely no anxiety about it. Even though its light, I'm still going to have a friend sit for me just to play it safe.

Ultimately, I don't have any grand expectations or anything. What I get out of it, positive or negative, will be good. I've read about higher doses actually improving the task-switching in the brain, which would be nice for my ADHD. I don't take any drugs for ADHD, depression, or anything, so I'm in a great spot on that front too.

Tell me your experiences (good or bad!)

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 318 people that responded! Check out this special results page to see how the Tildes community chose!

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Could be something about you, your thoughts, priorities, health, etc.

Could be something about the world, the way things work, etc.

Could be anything really.

What has changed, and how do you feel about it?

You've just been convicted by the UN security council for being a Tildes user, and have been sentenced to 7 years in a penal colony, but you get a choice. Do you choose either:

1: Mars - 7 years without ever being able to go outside without a suit on, but afterwards you could travel back to Earth, if you desired.

2: New Mongolia: An Earth-like planet, almost as if Earth was new again. But it's a one way trip.

(Asking for a friend)

Had been wondering about this for a bit. The "classics" we know had already all been written and popular by then. Right now, I don't see any major piece of writing apart from the occasional r/nosleep posts that would evoke that kind of feeling when being read which I would get reading say, "Psychosis" or "Gateway of the Mind". The "backrooms" theme was the only recent concept I know that came to be in that subculture, but that was lot more visual than in a literary format. Thinking about it, a kind of mainstreaming of this culture happened in the years before 2020 through memes and animations, and then it just faded out of memory. What do you folks here think happened to it? Where might the authors be now? Horror as a genre doesn't feel the same again since creepypastas have gone.

Edit (from a comment): Might it be so that text-based subcultures died out in favor of visual ones? SCP articles rely heavily on the visual aspect of things. I can't imagine someone putting out the effort to write out something like "Ben Drowned" and get a good audience nowadays, though of course I may be wrong.

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 148 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the results! Here's a few quick stats:

• 50 total distinct languages were submitted!
  • 30 of which people responded speaking fluently
  • 40 of which people responded they are familiar with
• The top 5 languages (combining fluent and familiar):
  • English with 146 responses (not a surprise :P)
  • French with 54 responses
  • Spanish with 50 responses
  • German with 39 responses
  • Japanese with 25 responses
• And people responded with this many languages (combining fluent and familiar):
  • 1 language at 9.5%
  • 2 languages at 39.9%
  • 3 languages at 22.3%
  • 4 languages at 14.9%
  • More numbers on the dashboard!

• View the full results dashboard here
  • If you have any ideas for visualizations or stats I can add I'd love to hear them!
• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating!

Also I'm making a change to the schedule! The survey for the coming week will be a simple one: "Pineapple on pizza? Yes or no". I have an idea I'd like to work out to make the surveys more customizable and easier to set up but that will take some time, that's why I'm deciding to have a fun in-between survey and next week we'll have the vote on the next surveys coming up. :)

I was reading the potential gatorade-esque business idea thread @daychilde put up the other day and it got me thinking about all the potential business ideas my partner and I have been kicking around. I'm hoping folks can post their prospective business ideas here and folks within those industries and provide feedback, insight, or hurdles to the ideas. Kind of like the hobby thread from a few weeks ago. Excited to hear what everyone is thinking about!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Something that generally works for most people, but you were an exception.

Something you were expecting to help, but it didn’t.

Something that promised a lot but failed to deliver.

Something that fell through.

Something you couldn’t get used to.

Could be an item, a piece of advice, a plan, a path, a relationship, etc.

Whatever it was, it didn’t work and that was significant.

What was it? Why do you think it didn’t work? How do you feel about it?

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 174 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the visualizations and a rough comparison with the previous survey! Here's a few quick stats:

• 41 distinct countries are represented!
• Spread across the following continents:
  • America at 45.7%
  • Europe at 39.9%
  • Asia at 8.7%
  • Oceania at 5.8%
• With the top 5 countries of most responses:
  • United States at 36.2%
  • United Kingdom at 8.6%
  • Canada at 6.9%
  • France at 4.0%
  • Australia at 3.4%
• And the results for whether people were living in the country they were born in:
  • Yes at 74.7%
  • No at 23.0%
  • No answer at 2.3%

• View the full results dashboard here
  • If you have any ideas for vizualisations or stats I can add I'd love to hear them!
• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! I hope to see you in the next survey. :)

An event, a moment, an experience, etc.

Can be big or small; significant or insignificant; serious or funny.

It doesn't have to be a bad thing. You could be glad you missed out on something!

What did you miss out on?
How do you feel about it?

@RoyalHenOil's comment in another thread got me thinking, and I feel like it might be helpful for me to hear what other Tilderinos have to share about this. I've wondered for years if I might have ADHD. Any time I've looked into it, it never seems like I check enough boxes for that to be an accurate label. But I've also gotten the impression that many psychological things like ADHD might be better understood as a spectrum (or even a region?), so lately I keep coming back to the possibility that I just have some other/related flavor of executive dysfunction. Or maybe I just haven't figured out how to "adult" properly yet for other reasons. I don't know, but it feels like being able to name the way my brain works would help things somehow.

I tried for hours to write up an explanation of my experiences, but I couldn't come up with anything that felt accurate and was a reasonable length, so the five-second version is this: The thing I keep coming across and identifying with is the "hyperfocus mode" that some people report. I enjoy this but also feel like it must have something to do with my struggles in some areas. I can prioritize tasks effectively plenty of the time, but I also can't at other times. If I used an Eisenhower matrix, things in the "important but not urgent" category would mostly be gathering dust (except for ones I happened to focus on). I don't really have any control over the "hyperfocus mode" and its target changes unpredictably.

There's an exhausting amount of nuance I could add to the above. I'd really love to hear from anyone who's had experience with any sort of divergent executive function that doesn't seem to fit into any of the currently available boxes we use to understand these things.

Addendum: I reread RoyalHenOil's comment just now and I think responding to it directly might be easier than writing out my own explanation from scratch, so I'll include that response here for anyone who feels like reading it.

Radicalization has, of course, varied meanings to pretty much any person you ask to define it and it is both contextual and a spectrum. I will provide no definition of such here as this isn't a pissing contest and a person's definition is likely to be highly personal based on their own lived experiences up to and post said "radicalization".

Today is my yearly reminder of what I consider to be the impetus of what "radicalized" me.
So thought I'd ask all of you for yours.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 244 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for a map visualization and a breakdown per continent, region and country! Here's a few quick stats:

• 43 distinct countries are represented!
• Spread across the following continents:
  • America at 48.5%
  • Europe at 39.0%
  • Asia at 6.2%
  • Oceania at 5.8%
  • Africa at 0.4%
• And the top 5 countries with the most responses:
  • United States at 37.7%
  • Canada at 8.2%
  • United Kingdom at 8.2%
  • Germany at 4.9%
  • Netherlands at 4.9%

• View the full results dashboard here
  • If you have any ideas for vizualisations or stats I can add I'd love to hear them!
• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! I hope to see you in the next survey. :)

I keep thinking about this post from @first-must-burn and the genuinely amazing way he helped one of his family members, and it inspired me to ask this question.

No need to be modest or downplay your efforts in your answer. Feel free to pat yourself on the back and acknowledge the good job you did (even if it feels awkward to do so!).

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Many of us were dinosaur kids (I assume), but I know that our understanding of dinos has changed a lot from my childhood: more feathers, warm-blooded, and the brontosaurus survived its deletion attempt! Land Before Time, Dinotopia, We're Back! a Dinosaur's Story, Dinosaurs, and Jurassic Park have been supplemented by Jurassic World, Velocipastor, and many dinosaur "documentaries".

So Tildarianitearinis, what is your favorite dinosaur?

(For purposes of this question dinosaurs will be inclusive of prehistoric archosaurs without pedantry. Aka pterosaurs count. )

Breathe Deep Seek Peace Ψ

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 324 people that responded! It was honestly a bigger number than I was expecting so I'm really happy with how it turned out. :D Here are some stats that I can put in Markdown:

• 34 years old is the median age
• We have lived a combined 11615 years
• And the generational breakdown with:
  • Millennials at 59.0%
  • Gen Z at 26.9%
  • Gen X at 12.3%
  • Baby Boomer at 1.5%
  • Greatest Generation at 0.3% not sure if this one is legit ;)

View the full results here

• Tip: You can set a custom age range using the "Set age range" filter to get a better view of results! All the graphs update along with that filter.
• Or get a ZIP download here of the data

Let me know your thoughts about the survey, what you liked, what you didn't like, if you'd like something different about them, you name it!

Thank you all again for participating! I hope to see you in the next survey. :)

I have been gifted a tiny bit of VPN quota from a relative to allow me to upload my beatsaber creations. Its been the most important thing for me to put out, had found a very kind community, was known-ish in it. I spent multiple weeks working on one of the projects i had planned, it was the only thing do to daily. Since it was finished life's been nothing after nothing after nothing. Fear, stress, depression, power infrastructure might get hit, planning for loss of power, loss of water, loss of food.
Constant stream of people asking for internet in news website comments. On the verge of crying 80% of the time.
I'm not gonna buy atrociously prices VPNs, even in this state people are scamming eachother with fake VPNs.
I miss life, life's been on pause for more than a month. the best describer of life is that it's on pause, that's all.
I was never at risk for depression, my friends who were now have it and struggle with it.
I have lost weight and gained a few more white hairs tho.
I love everyone and everything, i wish to get back to life.

Will be seeing you hopefully in a better state.
-Pooya (slabs37)

edit 2026/4/14:
got connected via another paid vpn, don't think this one will last long either. i put the wrong url, because ofcourse i did...

Seriously!

My husband brought me a tiny little bubble wand he got as a party favor and it somehow has managed to provide me with hours of entertainment. It's kind of perfect for me because it gets me to stop thinking about all the shit I'm worried about and instead get out of my head. Here's some fun things to do if you're looking for a fun time.

Games you can play with bubbles

Bubble catcher

Catch bubbles with the wand. Try to get it directly in the loop for maximum fun.

Bubble bouncing

If you've made small enough bubbles, you can use a bubble you've caught to bounce other bubbles with! I notice that

Bubble multiplication

Catching a bubble on your wand re-establishes the surface area needed to blow bubbles with! Turn one bubble into 20!

Your homework

Go buy some bubbles and report back so I don't feel like a crazy person.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I've been thinking about the demographics surveys recently and how they usually draw a good reception, but are difficult to compile in a privacy-minded way and finally visualize the data. I think the 2024 survey never ended up getting its results published?

So I thought maybe instead of one big yearly survey we could organize smaller weekly or monthly surveys that ask one or a couple questions at a time. And then while the current survey is running the question+answers for the next survey could be plannedy out. And the questions could be about anything and not just demographics related things.

In terms of technical setup I've been using a self-hosted n8n instance for a while and with tinkering around with it I've come up with a decent proof of concept to make these surveys happen via n8n's Form nodes. This makes it so all the data is in our own control and it's just a matter of building out any visualizations we may want.

And at the end of a survey the data could be anonymized and published so any further analysis can be done by whoever wants to.

One other thing I've come up with is a way to "authenticate" responses so we can know when a response was made by a real Tildes user. In the survey flow the server can generate a UUID and give it to the user to put in their profile bio. Then we scrape the user's bio and check if that UUID is present and now we know that yes, this is a real user. And then the UUID can be removed again from the user's bio (so it can't be linked back to them). This would also enable us to not have to save usernames at all (yay privacy). Edit: this would be entirely optional if it were to be added. There would be no requirements to fill in the survey unless we start seeing a bunch of spam or bogus responses.

What do you Tildoes think? That's what we settled on right? Is this something you'd be interested in?

Edit: Since the topic has a good amount of votes I quickly set up a server and a form to collect questions for anyone that has ideas! :)

-> https://survey.tildes.community/form/submit-your-question

The "nobody" in the title doesn't have to be literal -- it can be a battle that very few people know about. The important thing is that it's mostly hidden.

What is the struggle?
Is it hidden by choice?
Do you want more people to know about it? Why or why not?

So much of what the algorithms surface is negative. For all of the reasons that mostly everyone's aware of at this point.

It's easy to get the general impression that times are dark without realizing it. I think sometimes it's good to intentionally offset algorithmic (and general human) negativity bias.

Lets do a positive news thread, I'll start:

Hungary votes out Orbán after 16 years

Perovskite solar cells hit 34.85%

Portugal hits 80.7% renewable electricity

Hidden drainage system found in human brain

First lab-grown oesophagus using hosts own cells (fully incorporated with muscles, nerves, arteries within 6 months)

And of course Artemis II! Why is space exploration somehow more positive than the sum of its parts?

Please post anything, it doesn't have to be "news". The full range of the humanities works too

I'll be brief.

I have a collection of plastic water bottles including a large 12 liters container. I am in the process of replacing them with metal, but large metal containers can be expensive (I'm not in the US). How much risk do quality plastic water bottles really poses to my health?

Thanks!

the two examples that I have are Final destination movies and junji ito's manga "Uzumaki".

it doesn't have to be a manga or movie of course, I just would like something similar but it can be any medium. books, movies, games etc

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Hey Tildes,

There's a product that is sold in US Costco, where the Kirkland brand is a fraction of the price of the Canadian Costco brand name version. Without knowing anything about tarrifs or customs clearing, do you guys know of a service that I can ship to in US, that will forward my package to a Canadian address? Or is that all kinds of illegal or was possible but not anymore? Brief search on Reddit turned up AI and astroturfed results sadly

Do you know any other playlists list like Absolutely understand guitar or The Secret Life of Machines?

Basically any Bob Ross like content of a person calmly teaching a topic.
I find some of this content through archive.org, but their search is not the best.

(This post turned out longer than I planned. TLDR: I’m thinking about going to university at forty and I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with this and would like to share those?)

For those of you who would like to know more background:

I grew up in a dangerous household which is why I moved out from my mom’s house at seventeen and immediately started working. I worked as a freelancer and started some small businesses, mostly in advertising and technology.

About ten years ago (at 30yo) I felt both advertising and technology were not the places I wanted to work in. These were just the places that were accessible for me at the time in order to make a living and survive. But when the survival mode subsided, I found they didn’t fulfil me personally.

I had a daughter on the way and wanted to find a way to make more of a positive impact on the world. Because I had no idea how, I started interviewing people who I looked up to. People who are very aware of the issues that the world faces but are not paralysed by it. People who try to fix the biggest issues of our time.

Very unexpectedly, those interviews became a big hit. The response was so overwhelming, that it has now been my full time job for ten years. I’ve interviewed 150 beautiful people, published two books in the process and I’m working on the third.

In the past 6 months the financial stress of running this whole thing has lowered dramatically and we have found people who are helping us with the whole practical side of running this thing/interview series/podcast/art project/… (I don’t know what to call it). Which made me think about what’s next.

When I was seventeen, all my friends were at university. I loved having them over and talk about what they learned. At the time, I hoped my business would become so successful I would be able to afford private tutoring in everything that peaks my curiosity. That didn’t happen :).

The interviewing I do sometimes feel like private tutoring. I have learned an immense amount from these people. Albeit not really in a structured manner.

On of my favorite YouTubers had similar issues growing up as me, and recently posted a video where he announced he was going to college. It made me think about my own life. Maybe I don’t have to stay ‘a dropout’/“selfmade” (I disagree with that term but many people call me by it anyway).

My life is safe enough now to go to university. I can afford it, and I believe getting a formal education would very much challenge me, enrich my work and my writing and could maybe even be fun?

This is a long winded way of asking if anyone here has any experience in going to university at a later age. As I stated in the title, I am almost forty, and as much as this idea excites me, it also scares me and some relevant stories would maybe help in knowing what to expect.

Thanks for reading this far and sharing whatever wisdom you’re willing to share.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

You're the glue, the leader, the center of gravity, the one making it happen.

Without you, it would probably fall apart, cease to function, or stop.

What is it?
What do you do?
Do people appreciate your role, or is it invisible?

I've been working on an ocean life repository website for work, and I found myself randomly rambling about sharks because they've always been such a fascinating example to me of how evolution can keep a very recognizable blueprint while splitting into a ridiculous range of lifestyles.

A whale shark, a thresher shark, an angelshark, a tiger shark, a goblin shark, and a reef shark all still read instantly as "shark", and yet they're doing such different things that it almost feels wrong. Filter-feeding giants, ambush predators, open-water hunters, deep-sea weirdos, tail-whip specialists. All while still sticking to this unmistakable shark... ness?

I've been trying to pin down what I even mean by that "blueprint". Not just body shape exactly, but some deeper structural identity that survives a lot of diversification. Other groups feel a bit like this too. Felines, canines, birds… they can branch into very different niches, sizes, and behaviors while still feeling strongly constrained by a common template. A tiger, a lynx, and a house cat are all very clearly "cat". Wolves, foxes, and chihuahuas are very clearly "dog". Canaries, hawks, parrots, and hummingbirds are all still "bird".

It fascinates me how common this is in evolution: nature finding one robust structure and then radiating outward in very different directions without losing the core design. Not the most morphologically extreme variation possible, maybe, but variation under a very conserved plan.

Sharks just feel like one of the wildest examples of that.

So: what's everyone's favourite shark, and why?

Mine is probably either the lemon shark or the thresher shark because of how smart they are. Lemon sharks are fascinating for their social behavior and learning, then threshers are incredible both for that absurd tail and for feeling like such a weirdly specialized, clever branch of the shark blueprint.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'll be brief. A friend of mine told me about an Android app called Slowly, which simulates sending letters to people around the world with a time delay representing their distance. I answered that I probably would rather send actual letters instead. I installed Slowly but it is a hellhole of gamification and aggressive monetization. So I went back to the idea of just sending letters to people that I write on paper. I am new to this and several websites exist to facilitate finding pen pals. One of them, Global Penfriends, also has an internal messaging system, which I felt kinda misses the point? Anyway, I think that might be a great inexpensive hobby but I have no idea where to begin with. Some websites have premium tiers too, but it is not clear if this is something I would need.

Any suggestions?