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What's something you want to understand the appeal of?
Is there something you just don't get? Something that you have no idea why people like it? Something that baffles you personally, but clearly not everyone shares your neutral-to-negative feelings? Now's your chance to ask.
Here's the way it works:
- Someone names something they want to understand the appeal of.
- People respond, doing their best to convey why they (or others) like it in a way that's understandable to a skeptical audience.
This can be anything: musical genres, food combinations, personal habits, life experiences, etc.
Importantly, this is NOT meant to be a thread about grousing about what other people like. Think of it less as "telling people to get off your lawn" and more "why do those people like to spend time on my lawn in the first place?"
This topic is locked. New comments can not be posted.
What’s the deal with people willingly having children? How has your perspective changed since you became a parent ?
Signed
A Climate Change Doomer
Hello! I'll do my best.
To start I have been into family genealogy for a while, and I found myself being being really sad when I'd run into a branch that ended....also when I'd run into the tragedies (2 year old died on boat trip over).
Knowing this history of my family and seeing how short/long some lives are I guess the doom of the future vs the keeping the tree alive got to me.
Furthermore for our society to have a chance at climate change we will need people who can do their best to solve for the issues that are going to arise. In some ways I think smart people selecting not to have children and then mocking how we're becoming idoitocracy are ignoring their role in that contribution through their lack of action.
However I fully understand not wanting to bring in offspring who may have to suffer through the next Civil War, water wars, heat crisis, etc. Than again I've lived through 3 lifetime economic events, a lifetime pandemic, multiple wars we started, so as the song goes we didn't start the fire it was always burning.
I really appreciate your perspective, thank you for sharing.
I do understand and feel the innate drive to procreate, especially since I’ve always heard the love for one’s child is like no other; and I’m fortunate enough to have had an up brining the demonstrates what unconditional love is. But, I just can’t shake the feeling of doom and impending societal collapse. The web of interconnectedness of the global economy and its fragility was heavily exposed in 2020.
You make and interesting point with the end of gene lines and I often (incorrectly) assume I will live on into old age (90+). To me, I am the last generation to see the good days, I’m the generation that will bear the burden of solving humanity’s biggest crisis yet-but only if I live on to old age.
I must face the reality that I could pass at any moment and maybe before that time I should instill wisdom on my next of kin before it’s too late. As others have mentioned, if we (those who are aware of the issues and care) give up now, humanity is more doomed than when before.
Again, thank you for the perspective, you have definitely given me a lot to think about!
I honestly think a huge issue is fear mongering in the media to get clicks.
Things have always "seemed" bad, for example look at what these kids thought the future would be like.
And sometimes things were really bad, like when the Black Plague killed most of Europe. Or the world wars... And yet, even then people continued to have kids.
Relatively speaking, things are very good now for most people, and especially those who live in rich Western countries.
I honestly think the future is bright. There's so many smart, capable people and we're educating more and more children in STEM and beyond. They will find a way, I really don't think things are as bad as they "seem."
But yea, that's my optimistic perspective :).
Some of those productions were spot on. How did that kid know about factory farming way back then?
After reading many comments I feel like well, the only scenario for me to have kids is to immediately become hardcore ecoactivist.
:) Taking donations (of time and energy and expertise and advice) from you child free folks on behalf of kids who are already here. Let's pool together resources and up our collective chances of making it?
Aye. Kids need new shoes like every 45 minutes. Thank goodness for thrift stores and buynothing.
high five fellow thrifter and buy nothinger
Kinda sometimes hard not to side-eye folks who call me selfish when they're traveling by air more and eating more meat and buying a whole bunch of disposable toys and rare earth mineral devices.... Hey man I'll take all your stuff that you don't want.
I used to think this… and this might be an unpopular opinion… but after the past couple decades of being bombarded with news about being on the brink of cataclysmic climate crisis, I’m now more worried of my previous eco-anxiety robbing me of time I could have had with my kids. I don’t have any yet, but I’m deeply excited for if/when it happens.
Wow, this combined with the others responses has really refreshed my outlook on bearing a child in this world. I like your term “eco-anxiety”-that precisely what I’m facing currently.
Like NinjaSky mentioned, gene lines come to abrupt stops, it would be shame for mine to do so at the behest of my fear of what I can’t control.
I think it's important to think about the fact that the world has constantly been drunkenly whirling from cataclysm to cataclysm since we have been writing things down, and most of them have been human made. A lot of the time, we have just weathered the issues.
Here's a small story that gave me hope. When I was a kid, we heard a lot about Acid Rain. Acid Rain was a huge problem; we were going to have Acid Rain all the time, and sometimes we legitimately could not go outside because of the quality of the rain. So then what happened - in the western world at least - we all got together and the scientists said "we have to make some changes" and then politicians pushed through the laws that made those changes happen, and now we mostly don't have acid rain. We mostly dealt with it.
When I was a kid, there was a huge hole in the ozone layer, and everyone thought that we were basically going to die because of it, but then, as above, the scientists figured stuff out, the politicians made some regulations, and we figured it out. It is expected that the ozone layer will be back at pre-1980 levels by 2040. We mostly dealt with it.
Climate change is real, and it is catastrophic, and it will have drastic implications for people currently living, and probably all people moving forward. It's important to fund the scientists who are trying to fix it, and to vote in the politicians who will create and enforce the regulations that will help us to continue to avoid a cataclysm.
So while I think that climate change is a catastrophe - and maybe one of the worst catastrophe we've ever faced as the human race - I think that we have been facing catastrophes forever, and we will probably get through this one. That's why I have had kids.
I think eco-anxiety was a great term that @BitsMcBytes introduced here. I think it's important to understand the gravity of the situation, but to understand that it's something that we can deal with. And note that I didn't say "We fixed it" for either of my examples; we mostly dealt with it. There are still problems, and we need to do better, but historically we tend to try to do better.
I used to think like that too (not saying you're "wrong" for thinking the way you do or that my new thought process is more "evolved" or anything, it's just different now). I don't have children and I'm still not interested in having them, but my best friend wanting and having a child made me think more about it.
I think they just have hope instead of doom. They think things are going to be okay. They want to create and love life. They're willing to make a lot of sacrifices to raise a child.
I don't really know more than that, but I think that's cool of my friend and their partner. I'm happy for them and the hope they have and share with others.
I too want to create and love life. But I feel we’re charting into unprecedented territory of human existence. Being responsible for a child in world that feel like it’s becoming more hostile and chaotic just seems crazy to me. But like others have mentioned, the show must go on and if humanity is to have a chance, wise people will need to procreate. (Not saying I’m wise, but I do care deeply about the state of the world and hope to leave it a better place than I found it)
People have faced some terrible challenges in the past. Most forecasters consider it a climate catastrophe if 10% of the population were to die due to climate, like from what I've seen that's often beyond the +3C prediction (Paris was +1.5C. Many predictions for global deaths, even above paris, are <5%).
I find it helpful to ask myself if I think humanity should have given up at any of these earlier points. And I emphatically think they shouldn't have given up in 536, or the Black Death, etc. Climate change is my #1 most important issue, I'm no climate denier, and I think it will tragically lead to deaths that could have been avoided if we got off fossil fuels earlier. But I don't think humanity should have given up in 536 and decided not to have kids, and I think in a few hundred years we'll look back and think the same.
I also think that the only way out is through. As NinjaSky mentioned, it's about choosing hope. Climate doomerism and climate denialism can sometimes from the outside look the same because both propose we do nothing.
Which part is selfish? The sacrifices they're willing to make? (Rhetorical sarcasm).
For what it's worth, you're not going to get a lot of good discussion by assuming that your opponents are "extremely selfish and arrogant"
Not op, but I also find it selfish and arrogant. Knowing we're doomed, we're not even on the edge, we're past the edge, bringing innocent kids to this catastrophe, this capitalistic and ecological horror sounds selfish for me. I'm in my thirties and would like to find a reason to have kids, however the more I live the less reasons for them to be here I see. I don't want to be accused by them in the moment of ecological collapse.
The thing is that for people like me we need very strong data and research on the possibility of collapse not happening. I'm afraid, I think kids will be afraid even more.
You don't know that, though. Nobody is able to see the future.
I'd go as far as to say that human history shows that we are, most likely, not doomed. All of human history is littered with people prophesying the end of the world, and the end of society. Thinking it is certain now is little different than thinking it was certain 2,000 years ago.
I'd also say that human history shows that immortality will not be achieved within our lifetime, since people have been thinking it is achievable within their lifetime for centuries (we'll find the fountain of youth!).
We finally figured out how to turn lead into gold, but the cost is literally too high.
The scientific method has categorized science for 400 years. Aristotle is recognized as the inventor of scientific method in the 4th century CE. None of this is saying that climate change is not a huge issue. None of this is me saying that climate change is not going to displace humans, that sea level rise is not going to move shorelines and knock down homes. But the end of human civilization, the end of humanity as a whole, and the end of life on the planet Earth is not the same.
Dirty fuel ships emit roughly 1bn metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Me and my wife not having our single child is not the solution to climate change.
Science is supposed to be uncomfortable. It's supposed to question assumptions at every step of the way, and that includes climate change. If that somehow makes me a "denier", then so be it. Science is not a crystal ball.
I would like to point out 2 examples where common conclusions regarding climate change did not play out as examples:
Permafrost thaw is usually expected to emit CO2 on net. Instead, a 37-year analysis of the northern high latitude regions found that for now, permafrost-rich areas have been absorbing more CO2 as they get warmer. However, northern forests are absorbing less carbon than predicted by the models. -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33293-x
Sulfur emissions from cargo ships were actually (and surprisingly) cooling part of the ocean, which changed in 2020 due to regulations aimed at protecting the environment -- https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1633566568528375811?t=OEGp9PQh9zEiR0bRz4FERg&s=19
I point these out not to say climate change isn't happening (I personally believe it is), but rather to say "we" don't have all the answers. Things are changing, but by how much and how it can be solved will always be a question.
That's the very core of the scientific method:
I think calling people who disagree with doom and gloom conclusions about the future "climate deniers" is not productive.
My entire argument is that science isn't binary, nor is it ever 100% conclusive forever. It's always questioning and in motion, which is why I quoted the scientific method at the end of my comment.
Can you specifically point out which part of what I've said is being actively used by people to deny that climate change is occurring? Because at this point I'm confused by your response.
From my perspective, you seem anti-science, just as much as the "climate deniers" (at least the ones who truly believe some form of climate change is not occurring). I say this because you've drawn your absolute and concrete predictions and conclusions about the future, and you're doing it in the name of "science." Any counter argument received is brushed off as a "climate denier", which is essentially an ad hominem argument.
Okay… so let me see if I’m understanding things here. Within this discussion, you’re making no specific claims or predictions, but you’re happy to throw out plenty of evocative and emotive words? Your intention is not to add evidence to the discussion, but when other people do so, you (indirectly) wash it over with a coat of “dangerously close to climate denier” paint while never getting close to making your own point which might be countered?
I feel like your lack of conviction in making actual statements and having specific arguments to make, ends up landing in the same bucket as not useful contribution to the discussion.
Do you seriously expect the world to collapse within the next 100 years?
Yes, maybe countries richer and further from the equator will have more time, but overally - yes. By the world I mean being able to live as a human. Because for sure, the world - the Earth - will outlive humanity.
Yeah of course, but acting like humans will go extinct or have a worse quality of life in a matter of a few
generations is insane thinking.
Except it's already happening, it's just not as prevalent in developed countries. There are already millions of humans with a worse quality of life, largely in part because of climate change. I feel that hand-waving this away as "insane thinking" just completely ignores this. 2.1 million people were left homeless in Pakistan because of catastrophic flooding, a third of that country was literally underwater.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/04/1120952641/how-melting-glaciers-caused-by-climate-change-led-to-to-floods-in-pakistan
That's very different to saying "Knowing we're doomed". It's not like kids born today will have awful lives because of global warming. Yes it sucks that species go extinct and ecosystems are destroyed, but humans will survive just fine.
People are going to hate me saying this, particularly parents, but having a child will always be a selfish decision in my mind. We could live in a lovely world, and I would still believe it is selfish because at the end of the day, you are choosing to bring someone in the world for your own desires. You want to be a parent. You want to make the world better through your child. You want to continue your bloodline. Etc. Etc. Etc. That child, however, has no choice. They are literally forced into the world. They could be happy about it, but it's still based on a selfish decision made by the parents.
The exception to this, of course, being situations in which women are forced into pregnancy and/or are not allowed to abort it.
This isn't necessarily good or bad, mind. It just is.
have you considered that there are doomers who know for sure it's going to totally and irreversibly collapse, who nevertheless (and perhaps because of that certainty) choose to have children? What do you think they're thinking by choosing to have kids?
IMO Doomer mentality is no better than Evangelicals that are eagerly awaiting the rapture. Its just more Nihlism.
I don't doubt that society as we know it is going to collapse in some fashion. I think when that happens (and it becomes much harder to manufacture pesticides) that pollinators and nature will be able to bounce back.
So long as we remain adaptive, and not behold ourselves strictly to "thats just how things are," there is hope. Even if it's Waterworld/Mad Max type hope.
I mean, I'm seeing a lot of that in this thread. Advocating for people to not have children is the cowards way of saying 'lets curl up and die.'
I think society as we have it has a lot of major problems that are so structurally engrained nothing short of collapse will fix them. I don't see collapse as intrinsically a 'doom' thing as a result. But I think it's also not going to be a sudden thing, I think its going to play out over hundreds of years.
That’s a big assumption coming from someone who keeps asking people not to make assumptions. How do you know the parents in this thread aren’t doing both? Children take a long time to get to the point of meaningful societal contribution, around two to three decades. It’s more efficient to keep having them now, raise them right and work on the problem, and then work together once they mature.
Yes, there are people like this for sure. But what is your point exactly? I don't understand.
I think....this thread is a good thing if it helps each of us consider the viewpoints of others. I think it is not a place where we are looking to change someone else's mind or look to have our own minds changed. it's good enough if we can imagine another person who is just as rational and virtuous and wonderful as ourselves, choosing something we wouldn't choose.
That's my point I guess, that there are people who saw the same data you saw, conclude that collapse is inevitable, and decide thusly to have children
With regards to the intent of this topic, you’re spot on. I intended the whole thing to be an exercise in perspective-taking rather than convincing others. I think there’s a lot of value in stopping at considering disagreement rather than continuing those disagreements into arguments.
I also didn’t want it to be come just another complaint thread. Those are easy enough to come by and don’t accomplish much except letting people vent. I’d rather the whole thing be motivated by curiosity than spite.
I think it's a great thread - and, y'know, people feel strongly about things they feel strongly about. But I hope that after a day or two people will think about what they've read here with a little less passion, and overall we will all become fuller people as a result. :)
In that case, I'd like to learn „why?“ However, I've read some of the comments probably giving answers. One of them is - the more (new) people the more probability to change this dramatic course of events. I find it understandable. Maybe I just don't have this much courage, combined with other factors, to have kids.
Anyways, thanks for your explanation.
first of all thank you for responding kindly : ) and second of all it's a wonderful example to see one trying to come up with reason "for the other side"
For me, the "my kid could save the world" reason is still part of non-doomer attitude. That it still belongs to the hope camp of things, and thus more in line with "world's not ending so why give in to climate anxiety". I'm more curious about folks who firmly believe there are no turn arounds even if all of humanity bands together for once in our history.
Perhaps I'm in the minority of minorities: when I think about whether or not I should have a child, I am really asking, "despite inescapable pain and suffering and 100.00000% mortality rate, is existence to be preferred over non-existence". The thought experiment I made with myself, is that, should the most horrible thing imaginable happen to my child, say, kidnapped as a baby and subjected to torture and slavery forever until they die, even in that extreme case, is existence still a good thing. If my answer is no, then I am betting on some invisible guarantee that my child's life will be relatively pain free. Life gives no guarantee, and in that thought experiment I should not be having any children, even if I can be reasonably certain (say 99.99999%) that they will live happily to old age.
So I'll throw in my data point as an outlier: I believe that LIFE, even at its worst and most fleeting, is better than non-existence.
I didn't always hold that view, so yes, I crossed over from child-free to open-to-parenthood when the above condition changed.
We don’t have to read between the lines; your other, longer comment fills in the gaps where you explicitly call the parents commenting here arrogant, illogical, and selfish.
From your other comment:
You know exactly what you’re doing and how you’re saying it.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I empathize with your position on genuinely wanting to know something and making attempt to learn something. I've done it servers times on this thread.
Perhaps this is the problem:
Inquisitive is fine and welcome, but I believe you'll get more bang for your buck if you don't place the onus on the other to back up YOUR claim that they are selfish and arrogant. Assume the other person is LESS selfish and arrogant than yourself, then imagine how on earth it makes sense from their perspective.
With all due respect this is a "share so we can all learn" thread, not "change my mind" thread. What nourishment you and I can get out of this thread will be proportional to how much we choose to masticate the viewpoints here presented. I try not to ask to be spooned but even on this thread you will see me failing at it: the more we want to learn and understand, the more sometimes we can present as being demanding and off-putting, unfortunately.
I'm one of the parents in this thread, but I certainly think that having a child is selfish. It requires sacrifice, yes, but it is definitely not a selfless act; it is similar to saying, "I think the world needs a whole bunch more me" and then doing what you can to ensure that the more you does as well as possible.
How is it selfish and arrogant to have hope?
It's not, but the doomers in this thread are convinced and I say if they don't want to have children...good! I wouldn't want to be raised by people who think the apocalypse is coming next week.
That's kind of mean and exxagerated.. the "doomers" in this thread are coming from a place of wanting to do less harm in situations they can't predict.
I'm not going to pretend to know where all the doomers are coming from but I can read what they've written. I've seen the word arrogant & I've seen the word selfish when it comes to describing people who happen to disagree with them. But I'll tell you one thing I wouldn't want to be raised by people who are going to instill fear in me.
They wouldn't want to raise a child with the fears they have, that is literally the point. It is not a personal attack. Something that feels selfish to me doesn't mean I'm making that judgment on others. I would feel so selfish if I had a kid right now because the reasons would all be selfish ones. I do not have abundant resources and would have to rely on support, to me that feels selfish. My best friend just had a kid, and she relies on support as well, and I don't think she is selfish. People are different. I'm happy to support her and love being around her little boy, but if I had my own I would be completely unable to do that, i would only be able to take, not give. Resources seem scary, and there are already soooo many children, not having one more is a kindness to the ones that do exist.
I am just asking you to have compassion. We literally get accused of being mentally unwell for not reproducing.
Well I'm going to come right out and say it, I don't think you're mentally unwell because you choose not to have children. It's your life and you can do whatever the hell you want to and I totally support it. And as for people who think the end of the world is imminent, I enthusiastically support their choice not to have children. I'm going to say it for a third time, I would not want to be raised by parents who are convinced the end of the world is right around the corner.
By definition, won't they "breed their mentality out" by the fact that they won't have children?
Those having children are not of the same doom and gloom mindset, and are raising their offspring with a more positive perspective. And only those that retain that positive perspective will procreate, so... the mindset appears to be self-limiting.
I'm not sure you could breed someone's mindset out of existence. I mean the fact that they're around means their parents didn't think that way so it's probably not something that's strictly genetic.
You do have a good point.
There's always various factors at play (i.e. accidental births, the lack of climate change urgency for their parents, etc.) but I guess I'm trying to say that, in general, the majority of those having children would have a more optimistic mindset and raise their children in that optimistic environment. I believe this is more of an argument for nurture, than nature (genetics).
I agree with you.
"I more meant that it was privileged to have that level of hope."
If you could expound upon this I'd love to hear your reasoning because I don't feel being pessimistic or optimistic has anything to do with privilege.
Interesting, I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion but there is some logic behind it. I was just watching an interview with someone who survived Auschwitz. Now many of the people in the camp voluntarily had themselves killed because they just couldn't take it anymore and were convinced that this hell they were living in the camp was going to be the rest of their lives. But there are a lot of people who didn't do that. I certainly wouldn't call them privileged in any way. So I personally wouldn't conflate privilege and someone deciding to not to have children because they are convinced that the world is going to end soon. Hope isn't always logical.
Not who you asked, so I hope you don't mind my answering. I feel that there is a certain level of privilege involved in having the level of hope discussed here. Someone from a more privileged background is inevitably going to have an easier time in dealing with bad things in their life than someone from a less privileged background. The average child living in the suburbs of California will have an easier life than the average kid living in the Mississippi Delta, and both of those kids will have a drastically easier life than a kid who was born in Sudan, so when climate change comes around, these kids aren't necessarily going to have the same propensity for hope and optimism.
Another example is myself and a friend of mine. He had a less-than-stellar background than me growing up, so our perspectives on the world are drastically different. So when they came to me with a problem, and all I could really do was say, "It'll be okay, have hope," they're right to be cynical and a little jaded.
I just think privileged is the incorrect word. I'm sure a person existed who had the worst life in the history of the world however that doesn't make us all the rest of us privileged. And you have to remember we're talking about hope. What exactly is hope? Personally when I hear the word hope I think of things could get better. And I'm not convinced that the guy in Sudan who will suffer the effects of climate change before we will is inherently hopeless.
Is wanting to have a child having "too much" hope?
Hardships are a part of life. A child born right this moment will experience hardships that we can't even imagine right now, just like all children born in the past did and all children born in the future will. That is life.
We do not know what the future holds, and we can choose to change our current trajectory.
Do you not think you’re displaying a similar level of arrogance by deciding that you know best, and anyone who disagrees is wrong, selfish and/or a science denier? I’ve seen you discount scientific research in this very thread. You seem absolutely sure in your POV, which is fine and in some ways admirable, but you need to show a similar level of respect to other peoples POVs as you’d like for yours if you want to be heard. No one is denying climate change, here, people have just drawn a different conclusion about what the science and tech means for the future. You really dont know the future, and it’s a little absurd to claim that you do
I’m not sure you’re communicating in the way that you think you are. I won’t respond again, but I would suggest maybe looking at the way you say things, and the implications, and the parallels you’re drawing and what those mean. You’re injecting a lot of plausible deniability here by lightly implying things, whether you mean to or not, and then claiming that it isn’t what you said because you didn’t use those exact words. Just be careful of that!
I hope that doesn’t come across as antagonistic. It’s genuine advice that I think could be helpful.
I am not religious. I do not believe that a god is going to magically make everything better. I believe humanity can choose to better ourselves. It is okay for people to have hope. Why is what I am saying "uncomfortable?"
How am I, or others on Tildes who are explaining why people choose to have children, discounting the scientific community?
"To me, even the chance it's going to be bad, hell even if it ends up being half as bad as they're saying, is reason alone to question having kids"
And that's fine, You have the absolute right to think like that however there are many of us who think the complete opposite. And personally I would rather be a foolish optimist than a correct pessimist. But like I said I support your right to think differently than me.
I appreciate your perspective and thanks for an enlightening conversation.
I'm actually hoping to go this route soonish myself. I absolutely want kids but it feels so wrong to subject a new life to all of this. I'd rather just help an existing life make the most of it.
Those are some of my exact motivations to go down the adoption pathway. I don't particularly want kids but I am good at looking after them (experience with a significantly younger sibling and cousins, far, far beyond the realms of just babysitting) and I see it as more of a lifelong mentorship role than parenthood. I'd like to help encourage and invest in one of these kids who might not have had the opportunity otherwise. Most people don't get beyond the "I don't want kids" bit though, it is complicated and difficult to articulate.
This is coming from someone who wasn't really into the idea of having kids- I'd have been happy childfree but they're here so...I think I agree with Ninjasky. I'm anxious for my kids but I also hope that they will be part of the generation(s) which turn this thing around. Every child raised with a critical thinking, progressive, tolerant foundation is another chance to help the world and the species.
I appreciate your perspective. I have people close to me who hold similar beliefs. I honestly hope one day I could shake my fear of doom and gloom and impart some wisdom on children of my own. Part of me feels like that is selfish but I know that is just how the world has always worked-human ingenuity to preserve through booms and busts.
For what it's worth I understand your doom and gloom. I'm forty two now, and living in Singapore. The pessimistic outcome is that I and my family die in ten to twenty years time from soaring wet-bulb temperatures or famine if the global or even regional food networks collapse. That does scare me sometimes.
the earth is a big place and will heat unevenly: there are already places that are no longer survivable. Given that Singapore will be hotter than say, Ireland, when will it (if ever) make sense to start planning on where your kids or grandkids should live?
I don’t fear death of myself but the suffering of loved ones would be the toughest part especially a child of my own that I willingly brought into the climate crisis.
I suppose the only way forward to to live in the moment and appreciate the good days while we have them before we’re forced underground as mole people to beat the heat, lol. (Sorry, comedy is my coping mechanism)
So I'm going to try to say this gently, and I hope you understand that this is said with a deep level of care and as much grace as I have.
I think that you might be depressed, and that depression is causing you to say things that are unfair to people who chose to have kids. The reason that I'm saying that is this part:
This isn't cynicism, or realism; this is straight up anhedonia and / or depression. This is not a point of view that is sustainable, and it is the sort of thing that could lead to harm - of self or of others - and I would greatly recommend talking to someone about feeling like that. You might feel like this is normal because you have always felt like this, but this is not how anyone should feel.
Most of the other people in this thread are coming at the question from a fundamentally different place, which is not currently being depressed. It is fundamentally unfair to make a blanket statement that no parents have thought about how their children are going to survive; I would guess that most people who have children have thought about how their children will survive, as it is a primary consideration of people who have made a conscious decision to have children, and a constant thought that good parents have day-to-day, every single day as they try to make their way with kids through life. Some people address it in different ways, and some of the ways that we address this idea are good and some are bad, but almost all parents address "how will our kids survive" every single day of their lives:
Hope is the important part here. Most of the parents are approaching the future with hope, because we have the capacity to have hope.
Based on your last paragraph, it seems like you currently don't. I understand that - there have been times in my life where I have struggled with depression. I thought that the world was insurmountable, that trying to make a life for myself was pointless, because everything was going to end, that nothing I did mattered, that people who were enjoying things were stupid and wrong. That is depression talking. Without going into too much detail, I got help, and I understand that those thoughts weren't actually my thoughts, but were an inability to process what I was going through on my own. I spoke to a therapist (still do with some frequency) and my brain now allows me to feel joy, to have hope, and to plan for a future.
If it is possible for you to do so, I would gently recommend that you write down the paragraph that I quoted, and take it to a therapist and start talking about how you feel. I say this because I'm worried about you, and I say it with not the least amount of judgment for what you have said. I just want you to never have to feel like you do in that final paragraph.
I'm not depressed, my life is going very well, and I still agree with them. People have kids for themselves more often than not, and will not be honest with themselves about the happiness they expect to provide for their child, and whether or not their kid's quality of life will be better than their own. They focus on how much joy having a kid will bring them, how much their ego will be stoked by shaping another human to their ideals. This is a serious philosophical debate we should be having, instead of deflecting their point as signs of depression.
This is an unsupportable stance. You do not know why almost every other person who has had a child has had that child, or what consideration they have given to having children. You've made an assumption based on your own feelings on the matter.
There is an overwhelming amount of information that people consume to learn to be better parents, because they want their children to enjoy their lives. There is an overwhelming amount of industry dedicated to letting people give their children more enjoyment and better lives. If people only cared about how babies made them feel, that wouldn't exist.
I have found that this conversation generally ends with parents getting really emotional, angry, and then mean. We are right on track. It is not safe to say some of the things being said publicly because so many parents take it as a personal attack on them, and so many people try to claim that choosing not to have a kid means there is something wrong with you. It's really frustrating the lack of compassion some people have toward people who are genuinely coming from a good place and trying to be thoughtful... me not havings kids means there is more resources for theirs, that is kind of the point... I have been in enough conversations where I try to explain myself that I eventually gave up. They don't want to understand, they want to figure out the "problem" that is causing is to make a different choice than them so they can say "oh that's why, you're broken somehow".
I don't think that the goal should ever be making people emotional, angry, or mean, and if you are doing so, you are on the wrong track.I misinterpreted your intent.I guess what I'm referring to is a pattern of conversation I've experienced time and again in my life, and seen play out if discussions online as well. By telling someone I am not having kids on purpose, they feel entitled to challenge me and argue the reasoning. Parents typically do not ever get harshly questioned/challenged for their choice, and so maybe they don't understand why it doesn't feel good to be on the recieving end. And usually I'll engage, try to explain, because they don't understand me and I like being understood. Inevitably the explanation has to do with my view of the world, and things I can't control, and it would feel very selfish of me to bring a child in. This is a personal choice and not a judgment on others. More often than not in my life, the childfree person gets defensive (because they are being interrogated or accused of mental illness) and the parent in the conversation gets offended, feels judged or attacked (which is absolutely not coming from me), and the conversation shuts down or goes to them saying hurtful things like "good you would be a shitty parent anyway" or "well I wouldn't a parent like you" or "let me tell you why you are wrong and would change your mind". When I said we are on track, it was my cynical take, on having already seen such a comment in this thread. Another commenter referred to having kids as normal people doing normal things, so questioning the opposite choice is what makes sense. The implication that not choosing them is abnormal is kind of rude, which seems to just go under the radar. It's not compassionate language I guess.
I am not making anyone emotional, angry, or mean just by existing and answering questions honestly. That is coming from inside them. And again, it's just my own personal experience as a childfree woman in the US.
While I respectfully disagree with some of what you've said, it means a lot that you are being kind and compassionate in your responses.
I apologize, I 100% misinterpreted your comment; that is my fault, and not an issue with what you said at all, and I am sorry for my previous response, which I have left up so that the conversation makes sense, but crossed out the majority of what I said.
I understand and appreciate that there are too many people who will say, "When are you having kids?" and then berate people who elect not to have children. I wish that we were in a society where that was never a topic for smalltalk - the reality is that there are so many instances where "when are you having kids" is going to have a painful response from whomever was asked, and it's generally just better to never ask something like that in a light chat.
I also recognize that in the vast majority of cases, someone electing not to have children is not a judgment on people having children, just as the reciprocal is true, but both parties have the frequent misfortune of interacting with the most vocal antagonists from the other party, which tends to colour everyone's opinion of everyone. This is a problem with more than just this specific issue, too; hyper polarization is a real problem across the board for just about anything for which there are opinions.
I think there's two intertwined issues which are very delicate:
I really wish people would understand that "not in perfect alignment with the majority" doesn't mean "abnormal". Using the same sort of reasoning as above, and forgive the rather silly comparison:
It's way weirder to be Canadian than to elect to be childfree, but one would never guess that from interactions online.
All that is just to say that I fully respect and understand wanting to be childfree. However within the context of this thread, there was a lot of talk about people who have kids being climate change deniers, or anti-science, or thoughtless, and I think that the many people who have children are none of those things, just as many people who elect not to have children are none of those things, and it's especially grating when the point of the thread is to ask people why they would elect to have children.
I think that there is a big difference between "I would prefer to not exist" which is how you started and "if I didn't exist, I wouldn't exist to have an opinion on it" which you said here. I think the second is trivially true, whereas the first is a state of mind.
I think that a mentality of hoping for the best and preparing for the worst is a good one, and I think opting not to have children is a personal and acceptable choice for anyone. I'm certainly not here to convince people to have kids, and I would actually say to anyone who is on the fence about having kids to not have kids. However, you have repeatedly said that people who have had kids are thoughtless, haven't considered science, etc. It's a classic childfree mentality that is, frankly, repugnant. Lots of people who have had kids have thought things through fully, and have just reached a different conclusion from you. That doesn't make us climate change deniers, or anti-science, or thoughtless, or uninformed.
A quick note on this: stealth editing your comment now, after people have responded to it, wouldn’t be great. On the other hand, adding an edit message afterwards, or a
strikethroughof some parts you want to move away from isn’t a bad thing at all and is very much in line with the type of conversations we want to have on Tildes.I think we’ve all had instances where we’ve said things intended to come across one way and have them generate a completely different response in others, so going back to reassess the starting point of that is wise and valuable. It also acts as an example to others that this isn’t a place where we have to dig in our heels and defend our words to the death no matter what we said. Sometimes changing what we said is valuable because our mind has changed, and sometimes changing what we said is valuable because, even if our mind hasn’t changed, we understand that we weren’t conveying precisely what we wanted to and our messaging might need some adjustments.
It doesn’t change the discussion that has already happened, but I think it’s a good thing to do in hindsight as well as for any future discussion that might come about. Editing your message to reflect your new perspective on the conversation is, to me, a good thing for the community, and it models a behavior that others can benefit from (and that I would love to see as a social norm here).
I appreciate you being open about this topic. It isn't easy to discuss. I agree with much of what you are saying (and with many other commenters as well). It is however a very unpopular opinion.
I appreciate you taking the time to talk in this thread. People get concerned and defensive with the opinions you've shared in my experience. It's nice to see the conversation continue. I'll admit, I was concerned as well with your original statements about not existing but understand your tone in later comments.
Some thoughts on the topics I interpreted in this thread.
I agree that matter-of-factly if I didn't exist I wouldn't care and likewise if I died I wouldn't care because I would not exist. I don't feel like I need to change the world. I also don't try to make it worse. I have a cat. I like playing with her and that makes me happy. I'm cool with that. I agree with you that this sentiment is different than wanting to die. I consider more that my death would make my family and friends sad. That matters to me because I care about them.
Whatever reason people want to have kids is fine, as long as they are not harming the kids or others. Though I find it weird when people have kids to continue their interests, which is what the climate change focus reminds me of. Every person has their good and bad moments growing up. It's making a best effort to take care of your kid that's important. This includes stability in my book. I say this as a female-born adoptee abandoned in a place that preferred males under a single-child policy. I do not know why my birth parents made their decision, but my mom, adopted mom, is my mom. I'm happy with living, but I wonder if it would be more humane to kill a child you do not plan to care for than abandon them where they may or may not be found.
A year ago I wanted to have kids. Now I do not know. I've thought on reasons both ways. This is what I consider thinking before having a kid. All of it can be selfish if you look at it that way. Even wanting to care for someone else is selfish in a way.
I want to have biological kids, two because only children are odd in their own way without the social balance and other focus for their parents. Since I was abandoned, I have no biological family. I like the idea of having that connection. It always surprises me when I see families that look like each other and have that connection. If I do have biological kids, I want to have them with someone else I care that much for. I don't have that person right now.
I want to foster or adopt kids. I tend toward mentorship. I want to listen to people and if someone wants help I want to help them. I think I can care for a kid who doesn't have that care. Feeling cared for is an amazing feeling and one I want to share if I can. It's important to me to give that 'think' part of the statement enough thought. A kid isn't something you take back. And kids in need likely have scares because of it. It's hard to care for them. And I want to make the best effort to consider if I'm ready for that.
I don't want to have kids. I don't have a partner I want to have them with. I grew up in a home with one parent. They did a great job, but it is hard. It's hard for the parent and it's hard for the kid. Having one parent can be better than having two, but I'd like to have that partnership in raising a kid. I don't want to take care of a kid right now. I got a cat. She's enough responsibility for me. I love dogs. I decided not to get a dog because I didn't want the responsibility of taking them out and cleaning up after them and my place was too small for the size dog I wanted. I apply similar thinking to having a kid. Though having a kid is more rewarding in seeing them develop and grow into themselves vs a dog in my mind.
I think the issue here is that you don't see any inherent beauty in life. I'm childfree by choice, but to me it would be a gift to share this world with another life. For all the suffering you see, I see love and beauty and wonder. I don't have a problem with creating another person who can experience these things.
I would have felt the same as you do when I was depressed though.
Counterpoint: the holocaust survivors I know (or knew-- most have passed away after a long, fulfilling life) really embraced the beauty of life more than anyone else I knew. They lived through horrifying events and suffered from PTSD, but despite the fact that these events lasted way to long, they had a life worth living before and after these events that they wouldn't give up for the world.
Suffering does not last forever. Suffering can be extreme, sure, but it's not what defines life.
Exactly. Nothing. "Nothing" is not inherently bad. The lives of those who did not survive sucked, but they no longer suffer, so why does it matter? On the flip side, the lives of the survivors got better. It was worth surviving.
Not everyone's world is okay right now, but most people will at some point in their life experience a moment that makes life worth living. As long as that moment exists, I think life is a gift.
Others have already said but I want to echo them. You should talk to a doctor, if you're having anxiety and extensional dread and wish you never existed you need to get help. From my personal experience, I agree that you're most likely depressed. I had a similar outlook before I got help.
In regards tot he points you made, you should be more aware that the same things you're accusing others of, arrogance and faulty logic are the same things you're falling prey too. Your view is skewed from your own personal experiences/thoughts and perhaps trauma.
. First, there is no guarantee climate change ends humanity, second this is not the worst thing we have faced. Child mortality was 3/4 in Europe in the 18th century. There won't be one "savior" child who rescues everyone from climate change. It's going to take millions or even billions of people to make this change. If it's going to happen we're going to need more "helpers" than "doomers" or "deniers".
Yes, most people are wired to have children, I don't know why you attribute it to "someone" when it's quite literally evolution. Less than 1% of people are asexual, you'd be better off pointing out how many people are gay or lesbian.
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality
I guess my question is, what specifically about climate change is making you not want to have children?
edit: I think it's a given that we're almost all genetically programmed to make children, so it seems more relevant to dig into the specifics of why someone wouldn't want based on climate change first, rather than writing out a laundry list of why normal people do normal things.
For me, climate change is one part, albeit a small one. It's more the state of the world, and the increasing depression that goes along with it. Perhaps it's just that now we are more aware of it, but it seems like there's a lot of hopelessness in the younger generations, and unless something drastically changes, I don't see that getting better. Why bring a child into this world who is going to have to deal with that? ... Not to mention the insane cost that goes along with having a kid in 2023
Costs aside (it's a real problem), in a sense the children are the only ones worth fighting for.
I do believe humanity will survive the crisis. I don't believe society as we know it will. But that chance of survial approaches 0 if everyone gives up having babies entirely.
“The children are the only ones worth fighting for” is such a good key point here. Sure we can talk about the carbon costs of having kids, but I wonder how motivated child free people are to fix anything. Why would they care? Who are they fixing things for?
In my experience, people who are child free are also motivated by the future of humanity, and are often just as much, if not more, environmentally active and conscientious. I can't speak for everyone who is child free by choice, but of the ones I know who are, it is 100% "doing it for your kids and all the other kids."
You don't have to be a parent to care about the future for humans.
I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that you have to be a parent to care about it and I’m sorry if I worded it poorly to come across that way! I see a certain amount of nihilism in these comments from child free people, which does often come with this idea of “everything is already fucked so why bother trying”, but of course I acknowledge that people aren’t a monolith and motivation for change (or lack thereof) will vary wildly between people.
A case of typing before I thought through fully what I was thinking about, I think.
I'm sorry if I misinterpreted what you were saying! I'm certainly doing that a fair amount in this thread. I just wanted to point out for posterity that parents and non-parents alike can both be making improvements for kids... or not making improvements for anyone. There are loads of reprehensible parents just making things worse out there for everyone, like any number of billionaires. I just think the desire to be how we are need not be rooted in being or not being parents.
Emotions tend to run high with this kind of topic, don’t they?! The fault is all mine, on rereading I can totally see your interpretation being the most obvious, and I guess I was implying that a little, especially by not fully explaining myself.
I think what I’m really rallying against, here, much more so than anything to do with the choice to have or not have children, is that we’re all doomed and the end is nigh. Things are bad, yes, in some ways worse than ever - but in other ways better than ever, too. Maybe I’m naive or burying my head in the sand, but I really think that, on the whole, it’ll all turn out all right.
Would your opinion change if you had more money? The way I see it, and this is a bit self-centred, most people who end up suffering severely from climate change related issues are going to be on the very poor end of the spectrum -- realistically, my children, and probably my grand children, aren't going to be so adversely affected that they won't have an excellent quality of life.
I have plenty of money, that's not the problem. But coming to terms with spending a significant portion of it on a child? I don't know... Maybe I just don't have the kid urge that others do, but I like my life the way it is, and the things I mentioned above are just kind of the cherry on top.
At the same time though, I do thing you are downplaying the effects of climate change pretty heavily. We're just at the beginning and already we are seeing severe droughts, heat waves, and flooding like never before, even in the richest and most prepared countries. Countries in the middle east and Africa are already dealing with mass droughts, causing food insecurity, we're taking tens of millions of people; and this is just the beginning. It's going to get so much worse
Pretty much this.
I feel like people are burying their head in the sand way too much when it comes to climate change, as much as I understand the importance of not being a doomer, it is also important to not be a blind hoper.
Are we the most advanced we’ve ever been as a human species? Absolutely.
Are we also in the middle of an extinction event caused by humans? Absolutely.
You can have all the financial security you want but nothing stands in the way of Mother Nature forever and she’s going to come back and bite all of us in the ass with a vengeance like never before seen.
Life isn’t rosy, life won’t be rosy, life is just life, and the fact of the matter is we’re destroying ourselves.
Humanity may never go extinct, but we sure as hell are likely to be reduced by 90-95% in extreme cases (yes I pulled that number out of my rear)
I see the word is heavily reliant on globalization which inherently exploits poor people across the globe. These same people the global state of affairs currently relies upon will be disproportionally effected by global climate change. I’m talking crop failures, due sweltering heat waves and droughts. Since the dawn of modern civilization the powers that be rely on “bread and circus” for placating the masses. We’ll what happens when the bread disappears? Complete societal upheavals with mass migrations / civil wars.
Overall, I fear the consequence of local catastrophes ringing on global scale due to the interconnectedness of the modern world on scale we haven’t seen before.
You know, this is sort of out of scope of the discussion, but I take a completely opposite perspective on globalization.
Globalization is what allows poor people across the globe to live. Massive shipments of fertilizer and grain arrive in Africa every day. Globalization gives the world's poor an opportunity to advance, develop, and make money more than it exploits them.
Without globalization people in a lot of the world would still be living in huts and/or starving to death. I don't think they would be better off.
To continue being off topic >.>
Globalization allows poor people to live, insofar as they are able to trade their labor for resources. Poor people globally have worse health, shorter lifespans, less education, less medicine.. If a population is not valuable to the supply chain, it is not supported. There are hundreds of millions of people living in huts and starving to death. Almost 10% of humans are undernourished.
You say that, but I like to use India as an example that just lifted over a 400 million people out of poverty as of this year.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-poverty-levels-415-million-15-years-united-nations-101689054752864.html
The fact is we're doing better, and despite the doomer narrative life is getting better.
The proportion of undernourished humans was vastly higher prior to the advent of globalization. In general, the globe has seen the greatest increase in wealth, by all metrics, in human history. In relative terms this increase is greater in poor countries.
Regarding your assertion that if you don't produce, you don't get paid - the UN provided 41 billion USD in aid in 2022. The United States donated almost as much bilaterally, followed by Germany with tens of billions more....
Does that mean that there are no problems with globalization? Of course not. But if your argument is that globalization is making people poorer, that's just not supported by any of the data.
=====
Separately: what is the alternative? In full seriousness.
Let's take Burundi, by some metrics the poorest country in the world. It produces almost nothing; most people are subsistence farmers. The economy is almost entirely dependent on foreign aid. There's no end in sight for that, because Burundi also has no natural resources to speak of.
I'm not trying to play gotcha, but what better solution is there for Burundi that doesn't involve globalization?
I want kids, and am actively trying. I am a millennial and have spent a lot of years with climate doom looming in the back of my head. So I hope I can speak to this even though I’m not a parent.
A lot of people think it’s selfish, about the bloodline or whatever. I’m an adopted child; for me it has nothing to do with preserving or furthering bloodlines, or anything like that. I just… look, human beings are not gonna stop having babies, and I honestly think I would be great at raising kids who can turn out to be great people. We need good people.
And yeah, I have hope for the future. As much as things seem insane, is this really the time period where it seems the MOST insane? Honestly, probably not. My parents thought nuclear war was imminent when I was conceived. Industrial revolution kids were doomed to factories. Children before them had problems, as did children before them. There are always problems. And it seems to me that life is always a gift.
It’s not that I don’t worry about environmental (or other) concerns— it’s that I know I have the capacity to teach my children to be brave and to be creative. And I know I can teach them, too, that life is a gift, even when everything feels like it’s going to shit.
I also think, as an aside, that it’s a beautiful thing to bring a new person to the world. Based on the replies below, I’ll likely regret saying this.
This is basically my stance as well. On top of this I also dislike the idea (at least for myself) to come into this world, and only consume while not giving anything back for the future. I see a lot of the people who don’t want kids, who want to just travel, party and have fun (not saying the op wants this) They are not contributing to the possible solution, and while they have no obligation to do so, it just seems like a waste. Like you said, we need to try and put more good people into the world, it seems more selfish for people who are smart to not do so. It does not need to be giving birth. It can be adopting, volunteering to helps kids, becoming teachers, councilors, etc. Something.
I do engineering work in renewables and green energy. I grew up in a hodunk town where most didn't believe in climate change, was the only person in my family to go to college, moved to the west coast and was never going to have kids. All the same reasons about climate change and general state of society and our planet. Then at around 30, i thought about it some more. People in the hodunk town had 3 or 4 monsters running around ignoring the problems of the world. It's like the movie idiocracy. The kids inherit the planet and the majority are probably going to be ignorant. And you know what? life itself doesn't really care. Life has been through many mass extinction events and this won't be the last. This won't even be the first mass extinction of humans. How many times has war, or plague, or natural disaster reduced the population of a city/country/empire to a fraction? This is no different than any other time period in the history of the planet, in fact, the looming gloom of potential extinction is basically a prerequisite for life, in general. We have made life cozy, but life has always been hard, tragic, and fleeting. Every organism on this planet dies, more often than not they die brutally after having lived a very tough existence, but they did live and they continue to live. Depression isn't increasing, we just have the self awareness to measure it now and try to make it better. Civilization may crumble, but people were around before civilizations and i expect some will be around a long time after. humans will probably go extinct at some point and join the countless other species that have existed, and that's okay. there are ways to enjoy life between the tragedies.
When it came to kids I decided i could do it better than those in the hodunk town. I could pass on a better understanding of people, the world, finances, and the way it all works. So my wife of 10 years at the time, and i decided to have 1 child and it's going great. We aren't having any more, because we know the cost environmentally, but there was no reason to withhold something from ourselves or our child just because the world is a dark, scary, and ever changing place. The world has always been that way, this is just the only time we have personally been alive to observe it for ourselves.
I don't have kids yet, but plan to.
I think most of America that is not in the South will experience hardship, but not absolute apocalyptic disaster. And as someone that is fairly wealthy I think I will be able to buy my children what used to be normal and free. Currently I think that a child born in a more mild region of the States will have a far better life than the majority of children of the world before there was any sign of climate catastrophe.
But I understand how many people will look at the general state of things and opt out of parenthood.
I don't understand the thought process. If you view climate change as that inevitable what is the point of anything?
I've always wanted to be a father. Maybe it's because I'm the youngest in my family? Maybe I wanted someone who would look up to me.
My 3 year old is one of the funniest people in my life. If I didn't have his little charisma, I'm not sure if I'd still have the will to go on with how depressing the world is.
It's immensely rewarding watching a mind form. Seeing this little goober go from a form which, without outside assistance, would absolutely die, to a walking, talking being that recognizes patterns, remembers things, and goes potty all by himself. I helped make this thing. I'm guiding this life form to be a self sufficient human being.
It's an opportunity to course correct. In the twilight years of my parents lives I've finally begun to recognize the traumas that they put me through. What I thought was normal discipline for a child I now recognize as abuse. I can raise a child free of that.
I've always had the nagging thought in the back of my mind though... Am I doing the wrong thing? Am I condemning my son to a slow painful death at the hands of the oligarchs that have a choke hold on our society?
I don't know. Maybe he'll be fine. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll incite the change the world needs.
But if he wasn't here I'd sure miss him.
When your little dude turns 16, graduates high-school, or wins some award and you got to give a speech, make sure to mine a bit of the energy or even wording in this post. It'd probably mean a lot to him to hear this when he's old enough to understand.
Got settled into my career by my 30s and could finally provide the life and nurturing my kids deserved.
As far as the climate thing is concerned A, don't live on the coast, B it seems like we're finally starting to tackle this issue.
We've always had the ability to solve this issue almost 50 years ago, we just didn't build nuclear plants for nuclear energy and here we are.
I'm fascinated by how engaged people are with spectator sports. What's the appeal to rooting for one side over another? Is the appeal passed down from parent to child? Are there people who watch sports but their parents don't?
Hello! I might not be the most qualified to speak, but I think I have some perspective that may help.
Once upon a time I never watched any sports say all. In fact, I was exactly the type to say mocking things like "sportsball" in reference to... well, ball sports. It took until I was an adult and I gained an interest in eSports to understand the appeal in watching a game.
I think the appeal of watching a game is a little different to everyone. Some people feel regional pride, others want to bet money, and even others just simply love the game. All of them, however, share a similar trait: following a sport is exciting. You may want to bet on a player/team that is underrated in your eyes, or maybe you want to rally behind a player you think represents the "beauty" of the sport, or maybe you just want to see your home represented on the big screen.
I think when I first started watching eSports, and then directly after "real" sports, it really hit me how differently these people see the game in front of them. You really get to see a slice of how they think and play, on an individual or on a team level. And in sports that don't appear that "mental", maybe you just get to see the hard work and dedication pay off in the form of physical strength. Either way, you're consuming the result of a lot of blood/sweat/tears and that's what I love about it.
There's a few aspects. One is that it is a spectacle, especially athletic sports. If you've ever played them before, even casually as a child, watching the absolute best in the world do something is extremely impressive. Sometimes it's just impressive as a human being what people do, like when a particularly athletic basketball player dunks from a crazy distance.
Another is that it gives you something to talk about. I mostly keep track of the NFL for a placeholder watercooler talk.
There's also a bit of tribal, "war" energy to it. Sports is like a safe, recreational version of a war, ready for people to pump out their monkey instincts for competition and tribalism in a mostly safe way. It's exhilarating when your "tribe" wins, it's distressing when your "tribe" loses, either way it's emotions to feel recreationally.
Finally, especially in the internet age, there's an aspect of optimization fun to it with the rise of fantasy sports. Which is both fun in a figuring-out-spreadsheets way and in a gambling way.
I don't follow any major sports, but from an outside perspective it absolutely does look like a safe recreation of war. Or perhaps even training for it.
Football? You have a group of people similar in size to a military squad that need to make observations of enemy movement and relay that to the commander, who then makes snap decisions about what to do and gets those orders out to the group. They then maneuver against the opponent on an open field, where short bursts of heavy exertion are used to gradually gain ground. There is emphasis on closing with some target (the football/the mission objective) as well as diving/tackling moves that repeatedly send the players falling to the ground.
This is perfect practice for all kinds of skills that would be later needed for infantry, it fits so closely that if you didn't know the history of the sport you'd think it was this way by design.
It's true that there is physical activity and teamwork both important for soldiers. But beyond that, I don't think there's much resemblance. For one thing, soldiers have guns, and that changes everything. My understanding is that in Ukraine it's sometimes rare to be able to see the enemy, and if they see you you're about to get shelled.
Also, games can't be much like war due to all the rules about keeping the game fair, when war is about exploiting whatever unfair advantages you can get. There's nothing fair about a surprise attack or getting shelled.
Even many martial arts are not much related to real fighting, for many reasons but one of them is guns. (A rare exception is in the Himalayas where there are rules about not having guns.)
Other sports are even less like war. Consider baseball and basketball.
Nowadays I think video games are more like war, particular the ones specifically designed to simulate realistic combat. Only in some aspects though, because they need to keep the game fun.
I think that's going at it on the wrong level of abstraction. War does have laws that govern how it works, the most fundamental laws of all - the laws of physics. Within the confines of a ruleset, you do have equivalents to something like an "ambush" - now, unlike physics, sports rules can be amended if people start doing things that are not appreciated by the players, whereas the soldiers in the trenches just had to deal with it, but both war and team sports are all about optimizing for a goal within rules by coordinating a team of humans.
I absolutely agree that there's a huge level of abstraction, but if you look at the US military around WW2 and Vietnam, small squad tactics would absolutely have been able to transfer a lot of football skills into what they were doing in the field.
There's a lot of differences of course - biggest one I can think of is the focus on a ball and not eliminating enemies - but there are so many similarities it's uncanny.
Sure, with any analogy I guess you can focus on what's similar or what's different.
Teams optimizing under time pressure, within constraints, while doing physical activity might be a one way of looking at it.
I enjoy watching sports but my desire to watch dropped off during the pandemic and hadn't really recovered. I'll try my best to answer your questions in a random order.
My parents didn really watch sports while I was growing up. At some point I got the idea in my head that "men watch sports" and started forcing myself to learn more.
As a kid, I loved Mario Lemieux. I'm Canadian, so enjoying watching hockey is in my blood. That said, I can't skate and don't really like playing hockey. Maybe that is why I was so impress by Lemieux as a kid? His ability to skate around defenders? I'm not sure. My theory is that most people get into sports when they are kids because of their parents or an athlete and then stick with that team. I'm still a Pens fan today.
Around the same time, the Toronto Blue Jays went on their back to back world series wins. My parents brought me to a penient game and I know exactly where I was when Joe Carter hit his walk off home run to win the Jays second world series. It is one of my earliest memories. The Jays being good I'm sure had a lot to do with me becoming a fan even if I then had to wait 21 years for them to make it back to the playoffs.
I could go on, but then I'm just telling you my story instead of answering your question. I think the main appeal to rooting for one side over the other is that you're part of a community. If we like the same sports team we immediately have something to talk about and bond over. I'm generally bad a small talk but tell me you're a Pens fan and I instantly have an in to start a conversation and get comfortable with you.
I imagine for many people the joy of sports comes from their parents, however that was not the case for me.
Hope that helps!
I don't understand people who watch sports that they don't personally play, but I do enjoy watching people do things that I enjoy doing. I get a sympathetic response from imagining myself being in the situation, and also there's just a lot of learning happening.
Do you enjoy listening to music from instruments you don't personally play? It's kind of like that.
There's only so many sports one can play, but I can still recognise the expertise and athleticism of others.
I also don't have to do something as a sport to tangentially grasp what it would take to do it at a higher level. What I mean to say is that I have been swimming, ice skating, biking, running, and more, but while I've never done any of those for sports I can still recognise what it would take to be good at it.
Not a sportsperson myself either, but I think I understand the appeal. It's about belonging to a group.
Like Americans describe themselves being a part of a specific "church" instead of specific religion. It's about having a group of like-minded people they get together with to do stuff, not as much about the religion itself.
Same with sports, people of all backgrounds and upbringings can be a fan of SPORTS_TEAM, they'll recognise each other from the clothes and instantly have something to talk about.
Pokemon Go had a similar effect when it was at its peak. Random people had something to talk about while they were hanging around waiting for a Raid to start at a specific location.
To your point,
https://convergencedesignllc.com/the-liturgy-of-baseball/
It is religion.
Most people would find it odd that you think there's not a lot of learned skill and passion (and creativity and strategy) in physical sports.
I think perhaps they never clicked for you and so you're "blind" to their nuances. So like one person just sees tin cans clashing against each other, you just see adults running around with a ball like children.
I watch individual sports during the Olympics but I don't go out and watch mainstream team sports. I can imagine going out to a game to watch a favourite player or indeed all players because of the skill but cheering for a team, that was put together because money and nearly no other reason, does not make sense to me.
It's passed down culturally. In my family, you were born a Browns fan and hated the Pittsburgh Steelers. Nothing else was acceptable, and children want to make their parents happy. I don't have a ton of fond memories of Browns victories because they never really happen, but I do of the family times we spent watching, the games my parents took me to, which was under ten in my life. My dad liked the Cavaliers so I was a fan. It's all like that: family is a Clemson fan, you're a Clemson fan. Good memories make things nostalgic and the brain likes nostalgia.
Tattoos. I'm not offended or disgusted by them, but I've literally never seen a tattoo and been like "wow, that's a nice tattoo". It's always somewhere between "what the hell was that person thinking, that's terrible" and "eh, it's a tattoo". Gen Z seems to love them for some reason. When I ask my niece the meaning behind stuff she gets, she just says "I thought it looked cool". I'm curious as to how many people actually regret (as opposed to being willing admit regretting) ink that they got a long time ago and have since changed their interests.
I literally just got a new tattoo yesterday (my fourth one!) so I'll answer. For me, my tattoos are for me, and I think that's basically it. I love sharing the meaning and why I got them with others, but if they don't understand or care, why should it bother me? My old tattoos I got 5-6 years ago are nice, maybe I wish I got them in different places, or slightly changed, but overall they're just kinda a part of me now.
For me it kinda helps too because I have a huge scar right around where I got one of my tattoos that's basically permanent anyways, so another permanent thing doesn't change anything really.
I can appreciate tattoos as being nice art in the sense that the artist does a good job. But I don't much see the point in putting that art on my body. The ink fades, skin sags, and it becomes a shadow of what it once was. Not to mention that (good) tattoos are expensive as hell. I'm not exactly the "my body is a temple" type, but I just don't see the point. Anywhere I can put one that isn't going to prohibit me from getting hired in my field is only really going to be seen by someone if we're getting naked together so it would mostly be there just to be there. And of course if you do end up regretting it its costly and painful to remove. I know this isn't inherently correct, but part of me just associates tattoos with impulsive people (doesn't help that certain ex's and friends help confirm that bias).
The prevalence of tattoo removal services would suggest that quite a lot of people regret getting them! But I think it might also be contributing to people caring less about what their tattoos are - rightly or wrongly they think they could be removed one day.
I have some tattoos that I don’t regret, but I wouldn’t choose them now. I don’t even really think about them though, I’ve had them so long that it doesn’t register to me any more. I imagine this is true for a lot of people.
Ahh, I shouldn't have said regret since there are indeed tattoo removal services for people who truly regret their choice. But I think you worded it better - many people get tattoos only for it to matter less to them in the future as their interest in that particular subject changes over time. If they had a poster or other symbol/display of that thing, they would've removed it. But now that it's permanently inked onto them, they either just live with it or have to go through a painful removal. Maybe I'm just not as much of a risk taker, or accept that my interests in things are fluid enough that I don't see the appeal of it becoming a permanent physical part of me.
I understand totally what you’re saying, but for me when I say I don’t regret them I really mean that even if I could remove them completely, for free and with no pain, I wouldn’t. They’re as much a part of me now as my eyes or fingers. I might be in a different place where I wouldn’t go out and get it, but I don’t dislike them. They’re just there, like the scars I have. I honestly don’t even notice or think about them at all!
i have a significant portion of my body covered by tattoos and feel the exact same way. People always ask “what about when you’re old and wrinkled” and I usually respond I guess i’ll have old and wrinkled tattooed skin then. My brain doesn’t even register then when I look in a mirror. I enjoy that they remind of great times in my life.
I love that old and wrinkled comment because it’s like, do you imagine looking in a mirror at 80 and thinking your untattooed skin looks amazing? I don’t imagine hating it or anything but I’m pretty sure tattoos or no I will at best be neutral but probably thinking “I wish I didn’t have so many saggy bits”. I can’t really conceive of tattoos making any kind of difference at all!
I can't speak for everyone, but personlly, I just like how it looks when someone has a bunch of random pieces of art on their body. It really is a aestetic thing, and I don't think there is much else to understand. You either like them or you don't. I'm not an outgoing person, so its not like I want the attention for having them or something, I just like how they look. So I guess I agree with your niece, although I always try to attatch some meaning to what I get, but thats just me. I do have one "drunk" tattoo of a slice of pizza, but I don't regret it at all, I can look at it and laugh and it reminds me of where I was at that time.
All that being said, there is some trash art out there that I would be embarrassed to have on my body, and I don't understand how its happens if you do about 5 minutes of research before choosing an artist.
That's fair, thanks for the explanation. Maybe the fact that I'm not really much of an art person is the reason that I don't see the appeal. I do understand that people do it for themselves and not anyone else, I guess the permanence of such a thing is the part that I struggle to understand.
At least the way I see it, my body is only as permentant as me, which is only around for a really short time so who cares what it looks like (within reason obviously.) I think its kinda cool in an existential way to have something physical you have to "carry" around for your entire life. I can see that being extremely unappealling to some people though. especially when you see someone with a Big Chungus tattoo or something.
I should also mention I have the luxury of having a career that allows me to not care about it. If I had interests in any public facing work, it would be a different story.
I can take a shot at the appeal (for me). I've been getting tattooed since I was 18, but it's only in my 30s that I'm getting super into it now that I have the money and am getting work by high quality artists. I have about 70 hours of work at the moment.
It is mainly about the aesthetic. I like how being heavily tattooed looks, and I always have. It makes me happy to see tattoos on my body. The more I get, the more I want to fill in the empty skin. I don't particularly care about showing them to other people, and most of my work isn't visible in my regular clothing. It's just something that makes me feel good.
I also have a lot of admiration for tattoos as a craft. There are artists out there doing work that takes an incredible amount of skill and dedication on the part of both the artist and client. It's fun to collect pieces that highlight different artists' style and talents.
As far as regrets, I don't have any true ones. I recognize that some of my earlier work isn't the best quality or that I didn't pick the best artist for it. Instagram has really changed tattooing and made it easy to find an artist whose style is really what you're after. I give artists a lot more freedom now and choose people whose work looks like what I want. The results are much better. But my old work is part of me. Much of it has been there for essentially my entire adult life, and I'm used to it. I sometimes wish I could have the space back to do things that are more in line with my current tastes, but that's about it. I might eventually cover one or two, but I've never considered removing any.
Thanks for the detailed explanation!
This makes sense, and is probably something I didn't think enough about. I personally don't like the look, but I can see how wanting that look would lead to getting tattoos if you do like that aesthetic.
I had tried to describe this in my original post, but failed by using the word "regret" which was way too strong. The relative permanence of a tattoo (obviously they can be removed or covered up, but that adds more complication), contrasted against fluid nature of most people's interests is a big part that I struggle to understand. But since you said that you wouldn't remove any, maybe that's just not as big of a deal to most people and they're okay having pieces that they no longer really care about or don't mean much/anything to them anymore. If you like a heavily tattooed look, then perhaps having a piece that no longer really resinates with you is better than not having anything there at all?
For me anyways, exactly. I'm okay with having pieces that I don't have the same emotional connection to any more. They're still a reminder of a particular time in my life. And it's not like my tastes have changed so much that I actively dislike anything I've chosen to put on my body.
For more this is less clear, but it's definitely the case that the more tattoos you get the more they blend together. A lot of heavily tattooed people have some really badly done pieces on them, but you tend to notice them much less than you would if it was the only thing on them.
This is the part that I guess I just don't identify with. When I look at myself 10 years ago vs now, my interests and quite different. I'm not really a big art person, but if I were, I do imagine that I would need to rotate pieces and not have something that hangs on the wall forever.
In any case, thanks for the explanation. All of these replies are helping see the myriad of reasons that people have for getting and/or appreciating tattoos.
I have some feelings on this. I've seen many many tattoos that I didn't like, but also a lot that I do. Since I was younger (90's kid, born in the 80's) I've seen tattoo culture change a lot. As a child they were almost always a sign that the wearer lived outside the mainstream, was anti- or counter-cultural in some way, and inspired a kindof fear in the straight-laced crowd. For that reason alone, I always wanted one. As I got older, of course, tattoos became a lot more accepted by mainstream folks. To me, though, they still have an element of rebellion in them, and I think that's a part of their appeal to most "tattoo people".
I also have been extremely picky about tattoos for my own self. I got my first one at age 30 (wife and I got matching geometric designs). The only regret I have is not getting one at one other point in my life (which was another major turning point-- when I decided to dedicate my working life to mathematics) when a friend suggested we do so at our first math conference.
Sometimes I see young kids covered in ink and figure they'll regret a particular design choice or something, but most people with tats don't regret any of them. They're way less about the significance or visual appeal to others than they are about representing a moment in time to the wearer, namely the moment when they decided to get it. Getting a tat for an average person is a way of saying "I want to remember this moment forever", and most people have at least a handful of moments like that in their life.
Friends of mine has lots of ink, some of it downright dumb stuff, but they don't regret the tats because of the memory attached to them. It's a perspective thing. I do lament the change in the culture a bit; tattoos were cooler when people were afraid of them, and when taking off your shirt to reveal some ink had impact; but I also like that more and more people are expressing themselves outwardly nowadays.
my two bits.
I can appreciate tattoos that cover scars (maybe from mastectomies or fires) or ones that commemorate a friend or family member but that its.
Replace tattoos with children and I have the same questions.
I don't have or want children, but I do understand why people have them (for some people, they see it as their purpose in life). From the answers I've gotten about tattoos, the reasons for wanting children do not at all overlap with the reasons for wanting a tattoo.
making a decision you can’t easily undo and accepting/rationalizing that decision has no overlap with having kids?
i beg to differ.
The fact that it's a "permanent" (or difficult to undo) decision is the only commonality. The rationalities behind those decisions are what do not overlap. Everything overlaps if you give general enough definitions. But based on the responses I've gotten here, the reasons people have given for tattoos do not apply to having children.
many children aren’t even a decision but instead an accident.
And i suspect the reasons for having kids are just post act justification. In the end no one knows why they prefer anything or why they decide anything.
Huge vehicles. Like, why?
People (here in America) are driving around these monstrous things that barely fit on the roads and are ridiculous to maneuver in parking lots, and I have no idea why.
Some amount of people use their gigantic pickup trucks for truck stuff, and I can see the SUV being useful for those who are hauling around four kids and all their stuff, but both groups are pretty small compared to the amount of these huge vehicles driving around.
I appreciate your honesty, but to me this point seems like a good argument for making huge tank-like vehicles illegal. It's great to want to protect your kids, but if you ever get in a serious crash you are more likely to kill a couple of innocent passengers in a much smaller car you collide with, while your children are at school, totally safe anyway. And if one of your kids gets hits by a similar huge vehicle while they are riding their bike, the odds of them being killed is quite high. This is the sort of stuff that justifies having government regulations that attempt to make everyone in society safer, rather than the chaos of a 'every person for himself' approach to society.
The vehicular arms race is actively contributing to less safer roads. Yeah having a large mass will make you "win" against a smaller car, but instead that other person had the same idea and also drives a "5,500 pound SUV". Neither is particularly safe in that situation, add in the fact that these giant vehicles tend to roll and the argument to all just drive smaller pretty much makes itself.
But, like any game of chicken on a societal scale: Are you going to be first?
This mindset of giant vehicles is the exact reason my dad is dead. His car got essentially flattened by a gigantic suv. I have 0 sympathy or understanding for people that drive these oversized murder machines for their own 'safety'.
2 regular sized cars colliding is much less likely to kill someone than these people driving 4 ton monstrosities.
I drive a 1994 Mazda Miata and half the cars on the road here would instantly kill me. There are many cars that are twice the height and 3 feet longer than mine and that's terrifying. I hate how we got here, how everyone drives tanks now and it just endangers pedestrians, cyclists, or drivers of smaller cars.
I think that vehicles over a certain weight or size should required additional licensing, because it's very clear that half the people that drive these tanks don't know how. I have to take evasive action every time I drive my car and I'm constantly angered at the people that drive these things without actually needing s vehicle of that size.
My second car is actually an SUV, but it's a 2001 CR-V, it's very modestly sized and has great visibility. It seats 5 and still has space in the back to haul. I don't understand why anybody needs an SUV that's any bigger than mine.
My first car was a '93 Geo Metro! Not quite as fancy as your Miata, but just as tiny and adorable. I think part of the reason I've been able to avoid accidents for over a decade is because I learned to drive under the condition that, if I crashed, I died
Same. You have to learn avoidance in small cars, with the way other people drive, and its made me a better driver, even when I'm in my slow ass CR-V.
A huge part of the problem is that bumper height is regulated based on vehicle class. So an SUV is allowed to have a higher bumper than a sedan. This means that when you rear-end an SUV in your Honda Civic, your hood is going to crash directly into the rear bumper of the SUV. Over half your crumple zone is useless, the protection of your front bumper is useless. If you're really unlucky, some raised vehicles will have your windshield be the first part that hits. You'll be dead.
If the government enforce standard bumper heights for all vehicles we would all be significantly safer.
Oh, you certainly don't come off as a villain. Wanting to protect your family is totally OK.
Ehh, he comes off as mixed. Good ends, nefarious means. It's mutually assured destruction with cars. The only thing that gets you is more destruction.
I have a friend who was in a fairly bad accident several years ago. He had no qualms replacing his totalled Prius with a larger car.
So I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with @ZeroDarkRainbow's choice here -- you can't control how dangerously other people drive, after all. And certainly there should be government regulations mandating that cars be built much smaller. But I doubt that will happen anytime soon, which does leave a bit of an ethical pickle: how "selfish" should people be in the absence of sufficient government oversight? For what it's worth, I think the point about having foster kids is in @ZeroDarkRainbow's favor, since they now have a duty to someone besides themselves.
I agree, such cars should be illegal. I understand their reasoning, since they care for their family. However if we had such regulations, you wouldn't have to (and be allowed to) drive such huge, dangerous cars.
In current times, without such regulation it's understandable for me. However we should actively go in the direction of limiting the size of a car one can drive.
I can understand your other points but common you can't seriously think driving a 12mpg tank with its big tires is environmentally more friendly than driving a Prius.
Doing a couple of back of the envelope calculations, will give you an allotment of ~36 Prii?! until the production emissions start to outweigh the better efficiency. Over such long mileages the former are simply not relevant. This doesn't even factor in things like tire usage, increasing maintenance requirements, and wear leading to worse efficiency.
The source for the numbers is this video by Engineering Explained.
The production emissions are about 10t, and don't significantly vary between vehicle types because at 500,000miles@12mpg you are looking at about 370t of CO2 emissions (8.9kg CO2/gallon) compared to the 80t a 56mpg Prius would emit.
At first those numbers looked excessive to me, but it makes sense when you think about the fact that your car's CO2 emissions aren't just limited to the gas that it burns, but also the energy required to produce that gas, as well as transport it
You can believe what you want but unless the production of one battery pack - in the case of the Prius a pretty small one - emits 290t of CO2, your SUV is factually worse for the environment. There are plenty of independent non-manufacturer sources to back that up but you yourself have to actually want to seek them out.
It seems to me that this is some back-end justification. On the one hand, you say that the lives of other motorists don't matter when it is your life or theirs, which inevitably leads to unsafe roads for everyone when the mindset is shared by everyone. But then bring up the morality of lithium and cobalt mining when mass producing batteries based on the idea that we should be concerned about their lives as well.
Nobody can argue you on your choice to protect your family given the choices you have available to you. But I think it is very clear that if you are looking at the environmental impact 1:1 between one Prius and your vehicle that the overall cost of emissions and pollution between the two won't be close. Here is additional information regarding the manufacture of lithium car batteries:
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufacturing-batteries
And listen, like you said the V8 engine has been around for a long time. It has been refined over the course of many, many years. The manufacture and production of electric batteries for cars is still in that process of refinement and getting better. If it is true that as of 2018, it only takes 18 tons of CO2 to manufacture one battery, then in a time when climate anxiety is only going to get worse, that the drive to make these processes more efficient will be high.
If this came across us an insult or aggressive than that wasn't my intention. I had plenty of similar conversations in the past and especially with this example can't really understand how there can be any ambiguity. So this makes me believe you simply don't want to accept that, and this is fine. If my interpretation is wrong, then do feel free to make some cursory searches on Google Scholar and similar places :)
May I ask you this question, and if it is offensive to you I humbly apologize and please totally ignore me.
What does your decision to win at the roads arms race teach your children about how they must live as human beings?
I also knew some people who picked a huge car for their kids -- one of whom should not be on the road at all -- precisely because of the "better my kids live than yours" motivation. It's certainly one way to live, and quite a good way to ensure your very young passengers, all the way to full sized teenagers, live long enough to grow into mature adults who contribute positively to their environment and society. You'll probably be pleased to know that these children walked away from many crashes totally fine, never more than some minor bruising.
But as a fellow parent I'm curious about the "moral" aspect of their safety and upbringing: I would argue that this "look out for number one" attitude is also a value that is passed down parent-to-child. By choosing this vehicle type precisely for its safety over others, it will inform them of your answer to questions like: to what do we owe each other | how do we personality participate in the Tragedy of the Commons | does the Golden Rule apply when I personally stand to lose. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this
you're absolutely right -- and your perspective is so valuable -- I've completely neglected the point of view of these very much already here children with very real need for safety and stability.... What they are going to learn is that someone (you) takes their safety very very seriously, that the world can fend for itself, while they may not previously have had anyone to fend for them, and that you are here and now giving them this attention, making them out to be your highest priority, and providing for them precisely because the wider world didn't, and won't. That they are not loved simply as fungible "child" are caring for, but are loved uniquely as an individual.
I like all your other points other than mass and is also why I would buy another corolla next time: boring, old tech, mirrors etc.
Consumer report: :
I can see your reasoning. And after reading this thread I'm going to for sure choose a corolla (or similar) next time I buy a vehicle precisely because I have children as well. :) Thank you for being honest in something that might be unpopular
Leave this kind of hostility back on Reddit. It has no place here.
Off-topic, but it's a shame that OP chose the nuclear option of deleting all comments in the thread rather than setting to ignore it. Sure, not all responses may have been particularly courteous, but I didn't see any outright hostility either, and it is a topic people feel strongly about by nature, so some disagreement is to be expected.
If I recall correctly, on Hacker News you can't easily purge account history precisely for the fact that it hurts the overall discourse. Although it has obvious drawbacks with regards to privacy, I'm starting to see their point. Not saying that Tildes should adopt a policy like that, just slightly disappointed in the individual choice made here.
When I have to go work on my houses I need a place to carry lumber, tools, and supplies.
Unfortunately if my tenant detonated a toilet, I need a car that can fit a toilet in it so I can go replace it.
Driving experience: you get more space and creature comforts, plus a higher seat gives you a better view while driving.
Availability: A brand new vehicle is a terrible decision! What I drive will be strongly dictated by what's for sale on the used market, and that's frequently going to be trucks, vans, and SUVs.
Funko pops. They feel deprived of individuality, and personally I find the style rather ugly. Why those instead of proper figurines?
I’m not a huge Funko collector, but I do like the style and it’s consistent to where you can have characters from different properties (or in some cases, the same property) all together, whereas “proper” figurines will probably not “fit in” unless they’re from the same set.
I can empathize with desiring consistency, but it rubs me the wrong way when the distinct visual identity of the character is lost as a consequence.
I'm not much of a collector, but I did have a sizeable home library at one point and I know the feeling of mild frustration when two books of the same series have different covers (e.g. from different reprints) — hell, I have two volumes on the shelf right now that are from the same edition but look nothing alike. But at the same time, I appreciate each individual book or series having its own appearance; after all, they all have different voices and different stories to tell. I think these days I tend to appreciate the beauty in diversity and asymmetry more so than uniformity in general, although both have their charms, of course.
Tangentially related, I remember hearing how (although I'm not sure how true it is) in Japan it's more prevalent for family members to each use their own individual pieces of tableware instead of set pieces. I find that fascinating as a form of self-expression.
I think a lot of my distaste for Funko pops comes from the eyes. Being steeped in the world of anime-style art where the nose and mouth can be a dot each but the eyes have 20 layers of detail, it's jarring to see the beady, perfectly circular black holes plastered on a bar of soap for the head. It hurts to see this turn into this.
Anime eyes : hello kitty would like a word.
According to the creator of hello kitty, she's made expressionless with dot eyes so that fans can freely project whatever emotions they are experiencing onto Kitty. According to 'Yuko Yamaguchi, the current character designer (meaning "boss") of Hello Kitty:'
https://www.tofugu.com/japan/hello-kitty-face/
Some people find blank expressions more expressive. Perhaps the appeal is akin to love for characters like Rei Ayanami?
It's interesting. Kitty overall does have a similar shape and facial structure to a Funko pop and I find her appearance relatively cute, but the actual Kitty Funko pops to me look horrifying and like they're going to murder me in my sleep. I'm pretty sure it's the dead fish eyes that trigger it for me.
Ironically, it seems that Funko can make non-misshapen figurines as well. I guess the Google Nest-headed ones are just that much more lucrative.
I do generally enjoy emotionless characters, so I do not see a correlation there. It is purely the shapes and proportions that turn me off.
interesting. So maybe it's not that you find them "categorically" horrible, it's just how this particular one does the eyes that you can't get excited about, which is fair.
what about if they did something like 2B? or a sleeping Zenitsu? Does it make these more tolerable? Or is it the SD aspect of it that "ruins" it for you?
for most people, their initial foray into Funko's are through an existing love for a particular character. Sort of like how people who love SD Gundam usually get in through love of a particular (unit or series of) full size Gundam first. And then the collection aspect takes hold and new ones are purchased to add to that etc.
The small footprint, the regular size, the storage boxes, the similarity across many styles......they all contribute to why some people would like it.
The examples you gave don't provoke a visceral reaction, but I just find them really unappealing still. I like a lot of things in the same vein: chibis, fumo plushes, tsum tsum plushes, the Knights's design from Hollow Knight. Despite that, I strongly dislike Funkos.
This is obviously purely a matter of personal taste, so I'm not going to argue that scale figures are somehow objectively better, but personally if I could get a free Funko pop of one of my favorite characters, I'd rather have nothing at all. For entry level collectibles, I think art prints are an excellent option, and there are inexpensive figures out there if you shop around. If it's specifically the homogenized look people are after, then we can only agree to disagree as I don't see that as a positive trait at all, at least not the way Funko does it.
I kinda agree with you that Funko sorta strip any individuality away from whatever they are depicting.
I also kinda think whenever I go to someone's house and they have a few, that they also lack individuality since they bought this lowest-common-denominator chachka. But then I read about the White Lantern example given by someone else, and I'm happy for that person. I'm upset with DC, and other companies, for not otherwise meeting an obvious demand for figurines that has let Funko become what it is.
+1 for the consistency. Some of them look good, and it's nice having a few from the same collection, they decorate my desk nicely. I don't really care if I lose them.
What I don't understand though, is people who not only buy dozens of them, but also keep them in their boxes like some sort of expensive collectible that needs to be preserved. You can't even see them properly in their boxes. I've had colleagues literally stack them like in a shop, it drove me mad - and I drove them mad when the first thing I did was destroying the cardboard.
I do mostly think they are ugly, but the thing is there are funko pops for everything. I have a white lantern Kyle Rayner pop from DC, when DC proper has never put out a proper white lantern figure and likely never will. It’s the closest I’ll get to one without needing to 3D print one.
Funko is a local company to me, so that’s part of it. They are in Everett, WA — about 30 minutes north of Seattle.
I don’t have a big collection, under 10 for sure. A lot of them are samey-samey, but a few are not. Pinhead (hellraiser), xenomorphs, etc are all kind of fun.
I just realized all of my collection is horror characters. Also have chucky, pennywise, killer klowns from outer space, Michael meyers…
This is fairly off-topic but up until about 30 seconds ago I thought Funko pops were a type of candy. Thanks?
As a woman I don't get makeup. It seems like an expensive and time consuming task. Also maybe it because obvious makeup is obvious but it sometimes doesn't even look flattering.
Oh or long nails, just cannot grasp long nails....how do you type, wipe, etc?
I like makeup to cover my rosacea, which can get so bad I don’t leave the house. Often, the makeup to cover it is so thick that it’s definitely obvious and probably unflattering, but I have to pick my bad and I’d rather people see the bad make up than the bad skin.
It can be fun too, though. And it’s a nice little meditative ritual of me time before I go out. I don’t wear it every day, so it doesn’t feel so much like a big chore
Let me start by saying I really appreciate the time you’ve taken and the intention behind your words. I agree with you totally, it would be better to own it. There’s just only so many times you can hear a horrified-but-sympathetic “oh my god, what happened to your face?!”
When I’m out and there are no mirrors, I forget and whether I’m wearing make up or not I feel good. But someone always says something and reminds me if I’m not wearing any, and then I feel horrible.
If only more people would learn to keep their thoughts to themselves, right?!
I do also enjoy make up and what I can do with it, so it isn’t only a cover up. But I won’t pretend that isn’t a big part of it.
I’m happy for you that you’ve found your confidence! It’s a journey we’re all on, isn’t it, some of us are just nearer the beginning :)
I think what you've said makes sense considering if it's something which people (perhaps even usually from a good place) comment on it or are concerned about. Owning your uniqueness can be incredibly liberating, but it can also be utterly exhausting. Sometimes it's just nice to "fit in" in a crowd and just vibe and exist in that space.
I think you’ve put that very well!
I hope you didn’t delete your comment above to me because you thought it was inappropriate in any way - I really did think it was a good comment and great advice! It’s something I’ll be thinking more about, and I think would be helpful for others too :)
I'm not the author of the deleted comment. :( I was just a third party chiming in with my own thoughts. I agree that the comment wasn't bad either so I don't know why they did so.
Ah whoops, I was making assumptions!
I had a friend who's normally very socially aware ask that to a professor once as we were passing in the hallway. I internally facepalmed so hard. I could get asking a close friend or family member that you tend to share a lot of personal details with, maybe, but asking a professor? In a hallway? What was he thinking?
My professor (whose face was covered in red marks) had a one word reply, by the way. He just said "dermatologist." This left me with more questions than answers to be honest but I sure as hell wasn't going to ask!
I guess if my professor was a woman he might have just chosen to wear makeup that day to avoid any such interactions from occurring.
Edit: This actually just triggered a memory of the same friend (the one who asked he prof about his face). He said to me he had a secret that he didn't want me to tell anyone else. Well tildes, this happened 15 years ago and you'll be the first to know the secret. This friend's very private secret was that he wore (daily) makeup to cover bad acne that he was sensitive about. Guess he didn't want anyone asking him about his face...
People are very well-meaning and just concerned but I think everyone needs to learn the 1 minute rule:
If someone can’t fix their appearance in one minute, don’t mention it to them!
So, yes tell someone if they have an ink mark on their face or their skirt is tucked into their undies. Don’t tell someone they have a massive spot (they already know, I promise you) or that you don’t like their dress.
That’s funny about your friend and I think really highlights how people see their comments. He wore make up because he was worried people would be mean; he felt comfortable making a comment to someone else because he knew he was just being concerned. Obviously the problem is that the person you’re speaking to might take both of those scenarios the same way!
Thank you for sharing, you bring up an excellent point and I shouldn't be surprised people are so rude still I am a bit appalled by that. Probably the same people telling me to smile more, I should tell them if I smiled more than you'd probably say something stupider so no!
I hope you don't mind me inquiring but I worry make-up will make my skin worse and dry it out, have you found you have to be very selective about what you choose for make-up?
I do have to be careful with foundation; other make up I can get cheap drugstore brands. Clinique make a range specifically for redness which not only doesn’t flare up my skin but actually has ingredients to calm it - I really like this one but at $50AUD it’s a lot but then if you don’t wear it every day it isn’t so bad. I find generally the higher end the less likely to flat my skin. I’ve also tried NARS which was ok, but only after I’d spent a lot of time fixing my skin barrier with skincare.
Much more important that the foundation has been looking after my skin. I use simple products designed to rehydrate and restore the barrier. The ordinary hyularonic is amazing (use on damp skin after cleansing), The Inkey List polyglutamic acid has worked really well for me, for moisturiser in winter I use La Roche Posay cicaplast B5 Baume and in summer The Ordinary Moisturising factors. Use in that order. After doing this for a few months I could use a lot more on my skin without it flaring, but I would still be wary of a very cheap foundation!
My wife only wears makeup on special occasions, but rosacea has been getting worse every summer, so now she has been trying to find something she doesn't hate to help cover it up, with not great success so far.
I got her a parasol, and tried to convince her that she would be the coolest chick in the neighborhood picking up the kids from school with her cool parasol, but the parasol has not left the house lol
Ask her if she’s heard of azaleic acid - it’s working well for me! I only just learned about it.
The parasol was a sweet idea :)
I will do, thanks for the heads up!
Honestly, I'm a woman who doesn't wear makeup either. But I think makeup is like a mask. Masks are comfortable because they hide the real you. I think of the old phrase women would say "let me put on my face" when getting ready, referring to makeup.
There's also "obvious" benefits like makeup can make one look more "objectively" attractive, and since society largely judges people by their appearance, that can help someone have a big step-up in life.
In addition to being a "mask", makeup can be like a "costume". I usually wear makeup to special things - dates, events, parties, festivals. I love how it can change my face to fit whatever vibe I am going for. But also sometimes I just want people to look at me and be like "whoa, shiny!" :) It is another accessory to me, like jewelry.
I don't understand relying on makeup as a necessity.. but for fun, I totally get it.
I like wearing makeup sometimes like I like dressing up sometimes. It's a fun change, and I can go back to being myself later.
What I don't like is office settings where I'm make to feel unprofessional for not wearing it. It's bad enough that I'm getting paranoid about ageism and my thinking hair at work, I don't need more appearance based judgement on top of that.
Makes total sense, I think I just dont know how to apply it that I worry I'll look more silly than without it. Fortunately my work places haven't been hostile about it. I do occasionally get a person or two to comment on how much I blush when I get nervous and hate those comments at work.
aside form the perspective of dressing up/ masking / fitting in already mentioned, there's also just "beauty"
all the advertising we see are of airbrushed and made-up people; all movie stars, all shows, all tv hosts.....we've all come to judge that "birds who carry a white bead around are more attractive than those who don't", to use a completely ridiculous example. It is natural human vanity to want to be pretty. A lot of the effects of skin care and make up aim for the illusion / enhancement of youth, which is another thing society idolizes.
To your query about "how?!", especially when it comes to make up that's super obvious or over the top, and nails that are way too long....I imagine it's the same way that people put too much salt in their food, or people who don't eat any spice, or people who run for hours every day, or how comb-overs happen, or hoarding or owning 40+cats : you do a little, then a little more, and before you know it your baseline of "normal" shifts entirely.
As a new convert to keeping (slightly) longer nails, apparently one hits a point where they are much easier to clean. I'm typing with the pads of my fingers a lot more now than the tips, and yes my speed and accuracy are down (way down). I wasn't ever a big fan of girly stuff but recently there are people in my life I want to encourage, so I'm kind of learning with them and experimenting and sharing the ups and downs together. :) Further questions welcome.
I appreciate you have people you're encouraging, I also appreciate your perspective here.
Dubai.
I can't wrap my head around why anyone would want to visit, much less live there.
It feels like it might be on the same spectrum as being impressed with brands or being invested somehow in celebrities, neither of which I have any time for.
It's like Vegas, without the games. It's wealth, spectacle, and hyper-superficiality. Some people love the idea of experiencing something they know is insanely expensive, even if the quality is nothing to write home about. I find it tasteless, but some people find the status of it appealing.
Cynical me says (for immigrants with money from wealthy countries) lower taxes and the "opportunity" to employ cheap domestic servants. Otherwise migrant workers trying to make a living.
That's actually understandable to a certain degree. If people are going to hoard wealth then there's some sense in doing so in a low tax environment.
Tourism, on the other hand...
The sibling comments covered Westerners or other developed country folks visiting Dubai well. For a lot of folks living in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, Dubai represents one of the few areas with stable rule of law and relatively tolerant attitudes toward personal beliefs and lifestyles. This area of the world at this time is very unstable, poor, and often intolerant. This is why so many emigrants from the region go to Dubai and why Dubai has so many migrant workers.
I'm actually planning to research this for a project so I'd appreciate insights. But I just can't wrap my head around the highly invested fan-cultures. I'm sure there's official names but I'm talking about the rabid fans of VTubers, j/k-culture, crypto, influences, red/black pill, fanfiction, celebrities, true crime, billionaires, FNAF and just about anything else.
I can see the individual appeal of each thing and know it's probably the loud minority. I also know it's always been a thing in real life and on the internet. But today, it seems like obsession is almost a requirement with some communities.
Please post your results here when you finish. I'm interested in some of the content you've listed but almost never engage with their communities out of second hand embarrassment.
Fan cultures have always been like that though: see Elvis, Beatles.
I can't answer for myself, but I have some friends who love fan culture. What I've gathered from them is that the main appeal is a kind of externalized excitement. They themselves love the thing (Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, what have you), and they really enjoy being in an environment where others echo the same level of passion. When I asked a friend about why she loved midnight showings of movies, she said her favorite part was hearing the gasps or other reactions in the same way she reacted when she read the books the first time.
I tend to think of it like live sporting matches. The quality of the game is sometimes secondary. Being around others who carry the same excitement is part of the experience.
I have another friend who was a fanfic writer. She loved exploring the existing world in characters with thought experiments of "what might have happened if..." Getting feedback from others who read her work helped her get a sense of actually contributing to expanding and spreading the lore as well as being around others who felt the same way and enjoyed the same thing.
I think liking similar topics is a huge part of how friendships form, and fandoms isolate that single aspect of friendship and amplifies it.
This is a HUGELY important aspect! It can be almost euphoric to be involved in a community of people who collectively get excited about the same things - especially when first discovering that community after initially getting into one interest or another on your own, and then meeting others and being able to share your thoughts.
Seeing other fan communities be passionate about whatever it is they're into, often feels contagious and makes me want to look into that thing, even if it's something I wouldn't have been interested in otherwise.
As a heavily invested vtuber fan, I'll try to take a crack at this one. The reasons why I am so invested in vtubers boil down to two specific things for me, and I think that same combination can apply to many fan cultures. Those things are interest/passion and social/community.
Starting with interest - I have a genuine, passionate interest in vtubing itself. I am deeply fascinated with all that it has to offer. It's a very new industry, only having been around in the modern sense of vtubers for about 6 or 7 years, and has changed and evolved so much in just that short time, which is fascinating and exciting to watch unfold from a perspective of understanding why each change is significant and looking to how things could change in the future. The technology itself is also relatively new, and it's incredible to see all the unique ways it can be used as an avenue for creativity and self expression. If vtubing existed in a vacuum, without the massive fandom or fan culture around it, I believe I would still be fascinated by it.
It doesn't exist in a vacuum though, and that's where the social/community aspect comes in. Imo, this is what elevates people from being just a fan of something, to the kind of deeply invested super-fans I think you're referencing. Coming to know and understand the intricacies of a fan culture gives a sense of inclusion. It may not sound that substantial to people who find themselves to already feel like part of a community in other ways, such as with friends, family, or work; but not everyone has that. For me, who has no family, works a solitary job from home, and has few friends - being able to engage with others who have the same interest as I do gives me an instant feeling of connection and understanding. It's a kind of shared experience that can create a strong emotional attachment to the fandom in question.
In the context of VTubers there's a fantastic video by Accented Cinema that exactly try to explain the whys of VTubers.
Spoiler
It's kayfabe, just like in pro wrestling ! One particular quote I like is
Honestly I'm not sure that video does a good job at it. The wrestling comparison doesn't make any sense to me. Rarely do VTubers dig more than surface level into their model/"backstory"/characters, and usually it just gets augmented with nonsensical things that they like (e.g all of them get cat ears at some point). The degree to which they do "acting", as wrestlers do, is minimal, and only decreases over time.
Obviously they likely have a separate persona for streaming, but that's just true of human beings. Everyone has different personas for different social situations, and broadcasting to thousands of anonymous people is certainly a different social situation.
I think you answered this part yourself. It's mostly due to a loud minority which can also cause a feedback loop due to them sometimes driving out less casual fans. For example, I absolutely love following FNAF but I've never once harassed Scott Cawthon about his political donations, ranted on the internet about how trash Security Breach is, complained about how the lore has jumped the shark, etc. So in the course reading internet discourse you have an extremely small chance encountering a fan like me even though fans like me are most likely in the majority.
I don't think the answer would be the same for all of them. What do you consider to be highly invested or a rabid fan?
Chicken and waffles.
I understand this has been a thing since forever (or at least since Mildred Pierce was written), though I never even heard of it until well into adulthood. I like fried chicken, and I like waffles. But seeing them together my reaction is a deep, visceral "But... why? It makes no sense!"
It’s got a lot going for it in my opinion. Diversity of textures from super crunch chicken breading to soft and fluffy waffle insides. Sweet from syrup and waffles, salty and savory from fried chicken. Spongy waffle holds on to more syrup and chicken juices. There’s a place around here that also serves it with spicy sambal Mayo, which adds a great kick.
If it’s not prepared well, like dry chicken, or if it sits long enough to lose the crunch, then it’s a really disappointing experience.
I can actually see some appeal in that, though I can't say I've ever seen it offered that way in the places where I've noticed it on the menu.
Chicken and Waffles is just a twist on creamed chip beef over biscuits.
Oh I meant as a personal take. A good number of American breakfasts are just different excuses for having bread and gravy with meat for breakfast. Most of the rest are about justifying desert for breakfast. :)
Okay, okay - I can say none of that really appeals to me, which is probably why the whole thing is lost on me, but that's a great explanation and I can see why some people would go for that. Thank you!
I'm curious if you've tried it. Its one of those food combos thats easy to be skeptical about until you try.
I have! It's just... awkward. And I don't see the point.
I had never understood it either... until I tried it. Friends would talk about chicken and waffles, and for a long time I was vegetarian so I just ignored them. After a long time, I decided to re-enter the meat-eating world, and it never crossed my mind. I'd usually just make stir-fries, or pastas, or whatever else I ate as a veggie, but with a bit of meat tossed in.
Then one morning my (not yet at the time) wife suggested we go to a local place for chicken and waffles. I was like "okay"... and holy shit. Especially with sausage gravy.. it's just so decadent and amazing. If the chicken is spicy, waffles are fluffy, a side of biscuits and gravy all just come together in a symphony of absurd caloric convergence.
Once per month. No more. Lest we get the 'beetus. But on those days, we maunch, we nap, we smile.
The comedian James Corden.
He gets a lot of hate on the internet and while I don’t hate him or anything…I just don’t get why some people (mostly my parents age, it seems) like him so much.
Can someone explain what I’m missing?
This is one of the great mysteries of the world. He is so unlikable, I just don't get it.
I don't mind James Corden.
He has been in a lot of things as an actor where I thought he did a good job: Gavin and Stacy, The Gruffalo, Begin Again, Into the Woods, Esio Trot, Kill Your Friends, Trolls, probably some more. He was also on some panel shows and was relatively funny, like Big Fat Quiz, Would I Lie To You. Overall, I find him to be an adequate interviewer, and I think carpool karaoke is fairly entertaining, and the spill your guts or fill your guts bit on his show was kind of funny, and his monologues were average. Overall he's a relatively inoffensive, relatively clean comedian.
I think that a lot of people's dislike stem from negative PR, likely mostly on Reddit. Everyone kind of "knows he's an asshole" but all I know from Reddit is that someone called him out with absolutely no proof, and he got frustrated with Redditors during an AMA. As a person who has been profoundly and seriously perturbed by Redditors for most of the last 15 years, I can hardly fault him for bailing on an AMA. So I haven't really given too much thought to the shroud of negativity that surrounds him online.
his best work is the Wrong Mans, I'm afraid. Its a Shawn of the Dead-like series.
I had totally forgotten about that series. Yeah, it's not bad.
its too bad he's such an absolute piece of shit, if the word on the street is accurate. I liked him enough on Cats does Countdown.
I think his trick for success was bringing the Graham Norton guest couch to the US late night.
It's a different dynamic when the guests play off each other and the host can ask questions from each of them in whatever order fits the flow best.
He's also a decent singer and doesn't seem to be precious about his image, Carpool Karaoke and the Sidewalk Musicals are fun to watch and somehow he gets big stars to go along with him in them.
I understand why you appreciate parts of him, though I would disagree with the 'doesn't seem to be precious about his image' since him and his team (although now that I think about it, it might just be his team trying to keep his image afloat so money rolls in) have put in effort to squash rumours of his bad behaviour, as well as try to do damage control/delete all of the negative comments about him in his great reddit AMA.
But I can definitely appreciate bringing the Graham Norton interview style since it's nice not to just have one-on-one and instead allow other people's voices in an interview.
I think there's a weird juxtaposition regarding his image. His natural British self deprecation comes out in his personality, but that's at odds with his new Hollywood showbiz lifestyle. My perception is that he's simply not cut out for a life in Hollywood and would benefit from the occasional slice of humble pie.
I can't speak to how he's viewed in America, but in the UK, his popularity came about due to the character he played on his TV show Gavin & Stacey, Smithy. Whilst publicizing the show, it turned out he was just as personable in real life, which lead to him appearing on panel shows and eventually hosting things.
He's not a comedian, just someone who's very personable; the kind of friend your mum would like. I'd say his popularity as a host isn't necessarily due to how funny or talented he is, but rather how good he is at interacting with guests etc.
As for the reactionary echo chamber of hate towards him, Jimmy Carr regards him incredibly highly and I honestly trust his judgement more than Reddit's.
Why do people like mushrooms?
In my experience, the texture is gross (they’re all slimy and spongey) and the flavour strongly reminds me of dirt. Good quality gardening soil, for sure, but like dirt nonetheless. I don’t know what dirt tastes like (or can’t remember? I’m sure I’ve eaten dirt as a kid, but that was a long time ago), but I certainly know what it smells like, and mushrooms taste like the way dirt smells.
I just don’t understand how to reconcile those qualities with food. I’d like to, and I’m always trying to expand my palate, but unless the cooking has entirely hidden both the flavour and the texture (in which case why is it even in the food) then I just don’t like it at all.
I’d love recommendations on how to start turning that around. What are the baby steps from “mushrooms are hella gross” to “mushrooms are okay actually” to “mushrooms are delicious”?
I have a very similar experience and background to you. What got me interested in actually really wanting to try to like them was learning just how economical of a protein source they can be in a certain sense. Basically I watched a food show that visited a mushroom farm, and they showed that a crop of button mushrooms would take 8 days to be ready to harvest. That boggled my mind.
As for how I actually came to use mushrooms, my first step was meat. I would slice white button mushrooms, marinate them with the whatever meat, and cook them with that meat. I initially tried with fajitas, I think. When done like that, they absorb all the flavors of the meat and marinade. That’s what taught me that the sponginess of mushrooms is their greatest strength, especially with a neutral white button that doesn’t have a strong flavor on its own. They absorb the flavors around them, to great effect.
To take an aside, you asked “why is it even a food” in the context of them taking on other flavors. Some people may just like how a plain mushroom tastes, but I don’t think that’s either of us. Some people might just like how a plain hunk of chicken tastes. I can’t say that I do. Mushrooms are an economical and fairly ecologically sound food source that can take on the context of the dish they’re in. For me, that’s kind of the main point. I also learned that they can in fact taste good.
Now, the texture is a difficult thing, because if cooked poorly then they really are just slimy and gross. But I don’t take that as a fault of the mushroom. If you cook a chicken breast poorly, it might become tough and dry. If you cook green beans poorly, they might become soft and bitter. Generally if I’m cooking with mushrooms in something like a stir fry, I’ll start them first and cook them hotter. You can brown a mushroom like anything else! And like I mentioned before, they will absorb whatever you put in there, such as soy, vinegar, hot sauce, whatever.
Finally, expanding past the neutral mushrooms, some mushrooms like oyster and alba have their own flavor which is stronger than a white button, but not earthy. I first tried alba mushrooms at a Korean barbecue place, and they complemented the rest of the flavors wonderfully. Personally I don’t go out of my way to venture into other mushrooms that are really known for their pungency or earthiness. I think that’s probably okay for the both of us.
Cooking them properly.
Buy cremini or baby bella mushrooms. You want them to be firm to the touch, smooth skin, no divots.
Wash them lightly and quickly, dry immediately. Do not soak. Trim the ends off the stems or remove them altogether. Quarter the mushrooms.
Mince a clove of garlic.
Clarify some butter. Add the garlic in to the leftover protein dregs. Add panko and gently toast it all together with salt and pepper to taste.
Turn a large burner to max. Heat a large frying pan. If your stove is electric then you're going to have to wait a bit. You can get this heating while you clarify the butter on another burner.
Add the clarified butter and mushrooms to the scorching hot large frying pan. Do not cover, unless you have a splatter guard. You don't want to steam anything. Everything will splatter and pop, this is normal. Stir and toss intermittently so they sear on all sides.
Dump it in a bowl. Put the garlic butter panko mixture on top.
EDIT: The above is if you want a simple but terrific mushroom side dish you can make from a trip to any grocery store. If you can find Maitake mushrooms then simply cut into one centimetre steaks and sear off in a similar fashion.
If you can find Matsutake mushrooms, they're a game changer. Buy two, slice and sear, then add minced shallots and cream and simmer into the most amazing sauce.
Take a pan, butter, salt, pepper and cream with you to the forest and try to find some chantarell type of mushrooms. Pick them up, find a good spot where you can make fire and cook them and eat them right there in the forest. Everything tastes soooo much better after you have wondered around the forest for a day and when you cook them fresh and in the forest.
Thats how I learned to like mushrooms. Didnt eat any of them before doing that with my aunt. Now I make a creamy mushroom stuff almost once a week.
Maybe trying different types of mushrooms?
The standard white/brown button mushrooms do have a slightly earthy taste, which I like, but I understand where you're coming from. Shiitake mushrooms are ok but personally while I eat and enjoy them they're not my favourite.
I would suggest trying the King Oyster mushroom. It has a very thick stem which you can slice into scallop-like rounds and sautee with your choice of seasoning. They're thick, meaty and neutral-tasting so once you use a seasoning you like they just serve to carry it and give texture.
Edit: Given your username, you bear a duty to overcome your mycophobia, Baggins
I've got a couple of suggestions:
Try different types of mushrooms. There's a ton of them out there and they don't all taste the same and have different textures. Also the way you prepare a mushroom or the dishes you put it in can drastical change how it tastes or your enjoyment of it. Eating a button mushroom raw in a salad, vs lightly sauteing it in some butter are two very different things.
Also you can just wait for awhile and try it again. I used to despise mushrooms a kid. Tried them again in college and found I liked them and my girlfriend at the time now (now wife) loves them and introduced me to different kinds and ways to enjoy them.
So for babysteps:
Look for recipes for the type of mushrooms you have on hand.
Try a few different things with that type that sound tasty to you.
Repeat that with a couple of different types of mushrooms.
At the end of the day if you don't like them you don't like them. There are so many different types of food to enjoy in the world and ways to prepare them so don't sweat it if you don't like this one kind of food.
You don't have to force yourself to like a food you don't like. But note that there are a lot of foods that may seem boring or unpleasant if they aren't cooked, flavored or otherwise prepared in a certain way. Octopus - slimy and chewy. Avocado? Tastes like nothing. Can you think of other foods you dislike that may have similarities with mushrooms? Are there foods with similar flavors or textures that you actually like?
I hated mushrooms as a kid until the first time I had fried morel mushrooms. They were delicious and the texture was just right for my picky self. The downside is that they aren't really all that commercially available (to my limited knowledge) so I rarely got them. All others were categorized as gross, so I wouldn't even really try them.
Fast forward to my twenties. I was at a Chinese buffet, and they had stuffed mushrooms. Think crab Rangoon filling, but in a mushroom cap instead of a fried wonton. I decided to be brave and try it, and turns out it wasn't that bad. Since then I've tried them more and more, but I'm still in the "okay, actually" stage for the most part.
So I guess my advice is keep trying them in different contexts and types. But please, please don't just go out and grab some from the woods without a lot of experience first. It's a good way to get dead.
It took me almost 35 years to appreciate mushrooms. Even now, I don't like them that much on their own, but they can really enhance the flavor of other things.
They lose that spongy, slimy texture if they're pan-fried. My wife pan fries hers before putting them in stuff like omlettes.
Mushroom gravy also makes for a nice, rich addition to a steak dinner.
I also didn't used to like them, I had issues with both the texture and the taste. I grew up in the Midwest and mostly had access to canned mushrooms.
What changed my mind was good Chinese food. I made some Chinese friends, they took me out to eat and cooked for me. Turns out I love black and wood ear mushrooms. Once I was willing to try them, I find out that I also love a lot of different kinds sauteed in butter with a little garlic. I still dislike canned mushrooms.
I am not a mushroom lover or expert, but the texture and flavor can vary wildly. I dislike some mushrooms for the same reasons as you (especially the slimy texture), but I've had other dishes with mushrooms that didn't have that issue. Unfortunately I don't know which mushrooms were used in those dishes, so I can't give you any recommendations myself.
It also might help to try them in meals where it's just one of several toppings, like some pasta dishes or pizzas.
I've found that super fresh mushrooms taste way, way better than store-bought. The texture is totally different.
If you like deep fried food, you could try deep fried enoki. Salt the enoki, squeeze out excess water, coat with corn starch while separating the enoki into individual strands. Sprinkle(?, don't dump it in as it will clump) the enoki into the oil and deep fried until crispy. It doesn't take long at all. Eat plain or with your favourite seasoning or sauce.
My favourite summer food is grilled champion mushrooms wrapped in bacon.
Grab a bunch of small-ish champion muchrooms, pop out the stem, fill the hole with some processed cheese that doesn't liquefy completely when heated (I use green pepper flavoured cheese), wrap a piece of bacon around it so that it's covered.
Grill them on a low-medium heat until the bacon is crispy and the mushroom has lost some moisture.
Crispy on the outside, soft mushroom in the middle and a tasty cheesy treat at the center. 🤤
Mushrooms are the protein source of the future, they can be grown anywhere even without light, they grow fast and aren't picky about the soil.
Multiplayer games. I don't get why people would want to either play against other random people or in teams (but I'm not a sports guy either admittedly).
Achievements (like the ones on Steam) for single player games.
Multiplayer is easy. Me and my friends meet weekly to team up and kill some 9 year olds in Fortnite. It's a nice bonding experience like a poker night that lets us blow off steam and shoot the shit.
Humans are more fun to play against. More unpredictable.
I used to like achievements when I played on Xbox for having that Gamerscore number go up. But nowadays I'll go for achievements in some games if I enjoy them. Usually, the achievements that have you try for different play styles or in some cases beating the game on x difficulty can be fun as a way to challenge myself in a single-player game.
That being said I'm not a fan of collectible achievements as they feel like padding to me now that I have limited time.
I think my view may be coloured by the fact that I mostly play Europa Universalis 4 and a few other Paradox games and the achievements for those just seem like trophies for absurd minmaxing and map painting.
The last year or two had an insane amount of achievements that are just forms of "conquer the world with this pun", but you're also a bit dismissive of some really cool ones that force you to alter the playstyle a bit or get you to play nations you wouldn't otherwise while giving you a stretch goal that may not exist when you're going full sandbox.
EU4 has some proper achievements that are enriching to the experience.
That's fair, I can't say I ever did look extensively at the achievements of Paradox games. I played a bit of CK2 (~150 hours which is a drop in the bucket for how much I could play that game). I looked at the achievements in CK2 when I looked to see what there was as something that would push me to try something new, like playing a game in India or one for recreating a Jewish Isreal.
There's tons of games where the achievements are fluff or annoying. I guess looking at them as a potential goal or something new to try.
Thankfully they just exist for that and for a lot of games there isn't anything gatekept behind getting acheievements
Achievements really don't mean all that much as a casual player but when you like the game, it gives you can incentive/goal to play the game more.
I don't get the appeal of competitive games. I can answer for the achievements though. I almost look at it as sort of a checklist of fun or out of the way things I can challenge myself with in games I really like. My friends with the same mentality also like to compare rare/difficult achievements. To me it's just a fun way to extend the playtime I get out of a game. Retroachievements is a website dedicated to making an achievement system for retro games and has a surprisingly active user base. The addition of those achievements has gotten me to go back and enjoy a lot of gba and ps2 games from my childhood all over again. Even seeing things I'd missed before.
Ooh oh finally something I can answer.
Multiplayer games are about:
So multiplayer is a package deal of fun and social skills. That's what attracts me (and 2-3 million others) to play a game like CSGO that was originally released in 2012.
I don't play games much, never really have and I don't understand achievements. However, when I do play I almost only ever play multiplayer games. The reason being that I'm only really interested in playing against other people. Beating ones and zeros feels boring, predictable, and empty to me. Playing single player games late at night as a child always felt profoundly lonely to me in a way watching movies or reading books didn't. The artificiality of the fact that it's just binary behind the screen made any success feel hollow. And it never felt earned in the same way that it does when I realize that I have out thought or out fought an actual living breathing human. I also find humans to be more creative and interesting than machines. Both as opponents and just in general.
To clarify, you're saying you don't understand only multiplayer games with a competitive aspect? Or are you also baffled by strictly cooperative multiplayer games, with no competition?
Both/Either, really.
My answer is basically the same as @vord 's - it can make the experience more social, and more interesting as well, because humans bring their own ideas, strategies and knowledge to the table, different than mine. Competitively, playing against a human is more interestingly challenging than against the software. However, it can also be much more stressful, which may not be for everyone.
I don't play multiplayer games because I don't have the time or the willpower to get good enough in them for them to be fun. There is no way I can match a Monster-fueled teenager who plays 150 hours a week in skill.
Same with achievements, I don't have the time to spend finding bingablongs in the game to get an achievement of finding all of them. The ones I get, I get accidentally by playing through the game.
Multiplayer games are fun if you can get the correct group though, but getting older and having a family really cuts down on the chances to do that. If we manage, by some miracle, to get a game together, we play something we can play just among ourselves like Borderlands or Valheim on a private server.
I like competitive multiplayer games. They tend to be skill based and I like to feel like I'm improving, or outplaying someone else. They also tend to be updated frequently and have much more replay-ability. There are a couple games that I've played on and off for 10+ years. I also dislike grinding, and the best competitive games keep very little if anything behind a paywall (except cosmetics).
I like multiplayer more than single-player because the latter is often just too predictable.
The AI is never reactive, creative and adaptable like a human player will be. The challenge of game AI generally only scales in terms of how much the devs allow the computer to "cheat" so to speak.
In the back of your mind you know a computer could dodge every shot, see through walls, teleport etc. if the devs let it. It doesn't make mistakes or get disoriented. Kind of like how a human being will never, ever be able to beat a computer at chess if that computer isn't artificially limited in some way. From your very first move, whether you're a chess master or a beginner, the computer will win simply because it can see potential permutations many orders of magnitude anything a human could ever hope to do. That's boring to me, like getting into an arm wrestling contest with a factory robot.
I don't really play competitive games anymore. I liked FPSes in my teens/early 20s (Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, some less known HL mods, Battlefield, Call of Duty...), I guess like people like competitive sports. You get a few adrenaline hits when you're doing good, you progress, you unlock stuff (for modern games). Those games are also easy to pick up and play and don't require much mental investment if you're playing half-casually.
I also loved the feeling of outsmarting people, finding good placements, flanking... It's obviously more rewarding than playing against a computer.
Now that I'm older, I've lost practically all interest in these. I still launch them once in a while when I want to play a dumb game, but ultimately I'm not good anymore, so I avoid small team games where me being bad will negatively impact the fun of everyone.
I've also discovered Deep Rock Galactic three months ago; think Left 4 Dead with big bugs, dwarves, and ores to mine. This game has a wide range of difficulty settings, and it's really hard to lose a game in difficulty levels 1-3 (out of 5). So the stakes are low, players are chill, no-one is going to shout at you because you're too slow or don't shoot enough enemies, or even because you need to be revived 3 times in a row. The developers did a great job at making a non-toxic multiplayer game. That's a multiplayer game for busy parents who don't need stress when playing.
I enjoy competition that has no real-world impact. It feels good to be good at something.
It's also a good way to hang out with friends. It's a bit sad but yeah it's easier to meet up and do something online than it is IRL when everyone's busy all the time.
Taylor Swift. Not old Taylor Swift, but recent Taylor Swift.
Her songs sound extremely depressing to me, and something about the lyrics and sound production really annoy me. What is the appeal?
What about old Taylor Swift did you enjoy before? I think her latest tour (the Eras tour) really highlights the fact that Taylor has had many Eras, each with their own distinct sounds and production, and I don't think anyone has to love all her music. I didn't particularly love Reputation for example, but during the Eras tour it seems like a lot of people LOVED it.
What about the songs sound depressing? Her latest single, Karma, didn't really have that vibe, nor did most of the songs in Midnights. I loved Folklore and Evermore because they were very enchanting and cozy cabin feeling, which makes sense given the conditions they were written in.
phoenixrses covered most of the music part, but there's also the performer part. I went to her 'Eras tour' and had seen her once before but it was a while back. Her show wasn't just a concert, but more akin to a play. She played 45 (!) songs, for over 3 hours. Numerous sets, dance numbers, and costume changes. It was quite the experience with ~65k people screaming along to every word. I personally enjoy her music but every 'era' is not my favorite. I think it's totally okay to not like art in any form.
I was at Eras at MetLife! I remember telling my sister beforehand that the Reputation string of songs would be my bathroom break but I was just so mesmerized by the performance. I got tired just standing around and singing along, I can't imagine having the energy to dance around and go through outfit changes too, her work ethic is insane.
Marriage.
I get the desire to stay with someone you love for a long time and I understand the ritual of publicly professing undying love to that person.
What I don't understand is getting the government involved. I know that there's some minor tax benefits but like... Why? And can't any two people in the same residence file jointly anyway?
I'm not against it because "oh she's gonna take muh money!" I just don't see the appeal of two independent adults signing a paper that says they'll be together forever when they almost certainly won't.
When I broke up with my boyfriend of 10 years we gave up the apartment we shared, we packed our respective stuff and tried to divvy up the things with no clear owner. I was moving into my mom's spare room and didn't have much space so I let him have nearly everything. I couldn't store it and it was mostly thrifted anyway. We had a couple of things that came down to a discussion but we figured it out and both left relatively satisfied. We could have fought over things or broken each other's stuff but it would have been more of an inconvenience than anything.
Now, I'm married to my husband. We have a house and a child together. I'm the stay at home parent. If we were to break up, things are much more complicated now. I no longer have a reliable income, and who would get the house? and how would we manage sharing custody of the child? Involving the government provides the legal framework to prevent either of us from completely screwing each other over. We both have a lot to lose now. I won't say (and didn't) that we will be together forever, we're both pragmatists, but we recognized the need for a mutual legal commitment. A marriage is quite literally entering into a contract with a partner, it gives you grounds to pursue restitution for particular grievances a casual relationship doesn't have. I can't just take the kid and he can't just kick me out of the house. If we do ever split, we both know there is a well established process that will help us divide our assets and make sure we have the appropriate rights to custody.
Now, if you don't want kids that's fine, and if you have no significant shared assets then you might still not see the point. But people living together for a long time do tend to intertwine their existences, and everybody's split might not be as amicable as mine was.
That's kinda what I mean though. If you are both independent and mature adults what's the point? If one of you clearly has the bulk of the household income then a marriage would be important to consider to limit financial abuse.
If an unmarried couple grows apart like everyone does, you can just leave. Maybe there's some stuff to figure out ownership-wise but if they aren't emotionally mature enough to figure it out amicably, isn't that why they split to begin with?
If people have a messy divorce, I imagine they aren't in the right headspace to cleanly separate their resources without spite or bias. Having a document ahead of time to mediate it somewhat probably helps.
My SIL is going through a messy divorce. Things get petty quickly, and without the legal construct of marriage that helps insure fair divisions, it basically comes down to who has the power.
In this case, my SIL would have been thrown out of her house homeless, peniless, and unemployed. Now that the law is there to help divide assets, she's getting her 50% due.
And it is so often the woman who has less power. I don’t want to generalise here but I see a lot more men who “don’t believe” in marriage than I do women, and I think this is part of it.
not everyone grows apart. and there is more to a life together that you need to split than just money and assets. Most successful couples give up certain individual things to make the whole successful and that can’t be accounted for fairly by people in the relationship should it go sour. There is also the concept of “fault” which could play into the division of assets (like if someone cheated) which good luck getting your gf/bf who cheated on you to admit that means you deserve more.
This is the crux of it. Without the legal framework, its a free for all. They're a roommate, and if they're not on the lease they have no rights.
Even the happiest couples can fall apart messily if something sours the relationship. One drunk night could be all it takes.
If you've been living with someone in a mono, equitable relationship for 5+ years, really think about getting married. If for no other reason that married filing jointly and mutual health insurance can save a bundle on taxes and other costs.
"when they almost certainly won't"
If you grew up in an environment where the most elderly couple are still married after nearly a century, where nearly every adult couple is still married, where you can count the example divorced couples with one hand and you hear over the gossip grapevine the obvious pitfall to avoid, then your personal bias might skew the other way - you might have problem understanding why couples don't get married.
It's natural for some people to want to participate in a structure that promises structure and stability, recognised by nearly all governments and cultures for the last several thousand years. It's a quick short hand to explain with few language barriers.
What if I were travelling somewhere and got sick and my "partner" needed to jump through more hoops to be recognized, whereas they could have said "spouse" and be granted access?
There's also the optics aspect. If we were randomly interviewed by tv, and they were my 'boyfriend/girlfriend', and the 16 year olds who started dating last week are also boyfriend girlfriend. Or if they were my partner, we're standing next to two business partners and we smile to each other and explain not like that. Lovers feels strange because growing up lovers are what adulterous scandals are called, or else communist relationships.
At the end of the day each couple will take a look at the shape of their relationship as a "peg/block" , and try to fit it into the shape holes that they are familiar with. Some couples decide their relationship most resembles "marriage": a permanent, life long covenent that promises fidelity and care through wealth/poverty, through sickness/health, even if both people fell out of love and are unhappy they made a commitment to work at it instead of following passion. For those who can't see it being real I understand why choosing this shape to describe their marriage seems foolish or overly optimistic at best.
"could have said spouse"
That's precisely my point. All your examples could be solved by just changing the words used. We are married as far as anyone who knows us is concerned. I just don't see how an official marriage makes things any more stable than just being mature adults to begin with.
You interact with many people who do not know you at all. As such, they do not know how trustworthy you are when you say that you are in a serious relationship with another person. They want to be reasonably certain that the claim is factual.
Government is a trusted entity in this regard. The government can say things such as "this piece of paper represents money and has value" and that thing is considered as factual and accurate for both you and other people. You both trust the government here so they are not required to trust a random stranger. As such, government proof that you are married (communicated by saying someone is your spouse) allows strangers to know that your relationship is serious without needing to trust you at all. The government is the common authority that can be trusted and can convey the information to both parties.
People who you know are also people who trust you. As such, they don't need the government to vouch for the seriousness of your relationship.
Well, I'm right there with you that calling something X doesn't make it X, and does not grant it all the magical properties of X. "A rose by any other name...." etc. An official marriage does not "make" a relationship more stable. And yes, words used by society can change and often does.
It comes down to "how do people want to describe themselves", though, does it not?
You and yours probably take some form of pleasure from being NOT married, correct? That you could if you wanted to, but you feel like you are making more of a statement, living more authentically, and describing your relationship more accurately to yourselves, by choosing to not be married, right?
It's like same sexed couples who have been together for eons: detractors are all like, why do they "need" legal marriage if all their rights are guaranteed and they can live exactly the same was as married people: why insist on it? Because we all want to choose the label that best describes to the outside, how we feel on the inside.
getting back your point of legal vs civil marriage -- because a lot of people feel neutral-to-positive about their government, and because they like the association of being identified along with a "default" majority. Like it or not, when selling a house, part of the neighbourhood demographic that appeals to buyers is "percentage of families". And of course potential buyers perceive a married couple living there before as being "less complicated" than other arrangements or blended families.
Statistics Canada's definition of "family" still lists "married" before "common law". The change log below will show you how recently these inclusions are made. Some people like to slide into the easy default setting and be able to stop reading sooner.
Have there been times, whether filing for taxes, traveling, navigating insurance or legal documents, where you needed to spend extra time to make sure you and yours were included in the same category as the married people? That there were not extra clauses you'd have to worried about? Were there times when you were watching the news you'd have to tune in a bit more closely to see if some crazies are proposing changes to how common law works in your area?
My theory on that (after being married, divorced and married again) is that living together common law is a 99% commitment. And for many people that's enough. But I see marriage as 100% commitment. Its not hard to get into marriage, but its hard to get out of legally, socially and otherwise so it takes that extra bit of commitment to say 'Im 100% committed and Im taking this vow in front of you, the officiant and our friends and family because I have no plans now or ever to leave, no matter what happens, for the rest of our lives'
And that obviously didnt happen to me the first time around, but then again, I discovered that it only takes one person deciding to leave to end a marriage. I stayed true to my vow but sometimes you aren't given a choice.
I mean there can be some real legal consequences to not getting married. If you die without a Will, your partner will not get anything. If you need emergency medical attention and your partner isn’t on your healthcare power of attorney, they will default to your parents or whatever closer relatives you have. In some states you can own property jointly in a way that protects your home from your creditors, but you can only do that if you’re married. It makes finances easier, it makes it harder for shitty parents or siblings to fight your partner if something ever happened. These are just some things, and if they’re not a concern to you, that’s great, but time and circumstances change peoples attitudes, and what’s not a concern now could be a concern in the future.
It’s funny because I have almost the exact opposite view - when people are basically married, why not just get married? I can’t fully explain my POV, but that’s my knee-jerk reaction.
I would feel weird calling my husband my husband if we’d never actually got married. It would feel like a lie to me. And introducing him as my partner (which, to me, sounds like a business arrangement) or boyfriend (too juvenile) wouldn’t feel right either. So I guess it’s about how I want the world to see us, how I want to present us as a couple. I also like the idea of a wedding - I’m not religious so it’s nothing to do with god(s) - but standing up and promising things and showing the world you’re serious is meaningful to me.
I actually do believe we’ll be together forever. Call me naive, if you like, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t bother being in a relationship in the first place. I think “almost certainly won’t” in your final sentence is not true nor supported by stats. Those “50% of marriages end in divorce” lines you hear are a) a little outdated and b) skewed by people who marry and divorce multiple times.
I'm right there with you. My "wife" and I have rings together and kids and a house and all the other trappings of marriage except actual marriage. I don't care about her taking my name, or that the government recognizes us as partners, for me it's enough to know she's with me and I'm with her. She feels the same way; she already went through a real marriage and following that, a real divorce. She's over it.
The only thing I could see being a real benefit is if a medical emergency happened to one of us, but that is solvable with power of attorney.
That's precisely how me and my "wife" handle it. As far as everyone around us and ourselves are concerned we are married. We even had a small ceremony and invited our families.
I used to think that as well, but I've come to realise that marriage isn't really about the people getting married; it's about the family and community. It's more akin to spending Christmas with family or going to a bar mitzvah. This is even more the case for Indian weddings, regardless of whether they're arranged or not.
We have this romantic image of weddings, but that image is no more real than diamonds are rare. If you're happy with your relationship and don't want the family/community celebration that comes with a wedding, or have the pressure to do so, then I don't see many good reasons for a marriage on an individual level outside of the legal ones you've already mentioned.
Hip Hop, Rap - It does absolutely nothing for me. Zero music appreciation.
I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that this doesn't come from a 'racial discrimination' place the way that a lot of these comments come from. I've seen thousands of the 'it's not real music!' comments and it always boils down to 'who is making the music.' Moving on, though -
I'd suggest looking to early rap first. Guys that were testing the waters with a new form of music that was just catching on. Bounce around that a little bit, see how they rapped - I'm talking stuff like Sugar Hill Gang, just to be clear here. Real early. This in particular - this is commonly misattributed as the 'first' rap song, which it's not, but it's certainly one of the first to achieve mainstream success. Listen to it, feel the music.
Then, jump into the 80's. RUN DMC and LL Cool J were real popular, until NWA came out and changed the game from tracksuits and bucket hats to gangster rap, where you see the quality of song really level up. That's when dudes started realizing that there's a lot more than can be done with the genre than the basic, slow, funky beats they'd been working with.
Jump ahead to the 90's, now you've got tons of quality - Nas releases Illmatic, widely considered to be one of the best front-to-back rap albums of all time. Biggie Smalls is in the prime of his career with the best flow that the game's ever seen. Tupac is helping to revolutionize the medium, using rap as a way to tell stories, talk about culture, make social commentary, becoming a national icon in just a few short years.
Come the turn of the century, Biggie and Tupac have both been tragically, senselessly murdered, and now you've got people like Eminem, 50 Cent, and Jay-Z blowing up, all with massive strengths of their own - but I'm going to highlight somebody else, somebody who is often described as 'your favorite rapper's favorite rapper,' MF DOOM. MF DOOM, whose career is criminally underappreciated, may very well be the best lyricist of all time; he died recently, of natural causes*, but he epitomized the belief that the aesthetic doesn't matter, the jewelry and fancy music videos mean nothing, all that matters is the music.
I've neglected these videos up to this point, because I want to really press the importance; think back to that Sugar Hill Gang song. Think back to the lyrics, how they'd only rhyme on the ends most of the time and were slow, bumbling, and generally amateurish (this isn't a dig at them - just how it was at the time.) Now, watch this, and really think about how much things must have progressed for MF DOOM to be able to rhyme like this - it's several orders of magnitude more impressive than anything released just twenty short years prior.
For another aspect of it, you could also look to freestyles; people having to come up with rhymes on the fly. Harry Mack is a fantastic example of this, showcasing artistry and skill by implementing words people have given him randomly, and he's considered at least top 5 freestylers of all time.
To anybody in the know - yes, I know I butchered a lot of rap history there, but I was trying to make it more digestable. In any case, I hope I've maybe helped you see the appeal a bit there and realize that it's a genre built on the bones of jazz and soul, lifting itself up to become an entirely unique entity.
Edit - and as mentioned in one of the sub-comments (awards? not sure) I didn't put a ton of focus on lyricism, but Killer Mike/Run The Jewels is a fantastic place to get started, as well.
*Extra edit - I've just learned that MF DOOM did not die of natural causes, but was murdered by medical malpractice.
This is a great write-up on the history of rap. I was writing at about the same time, I think, and I think it's interesting that we both went with the same Tupac song. Great choices all along, especially MF Doom. I think you're right, he is one of the best lyricists of all time; I especially hope that everyone watches the third MF Doom video you linked (the first two are also incredible), which really highlights how flow has changed over the life of the genre.
And the Harry Mack videos always just feel good. He's a delight to watch, and all of these are magic, but especially the end with LB; the positivity in what he's doing is amazing.
Thanks for sharing, what a great writeup.
Everything you listed is classic rap/hip-hop. Something I really love and have loved since the late 90's when a friend introduced me to it, starting with RUN DMC.
The songs have a message, either local or universal. The rappers have amazing flow and the beats tend to vary.
Current rap/hip-hop is something I do not understand.
The lyrics talk about having sex and being rich, with no apparent political message. There is no flow, they just ... say the words and not even to a beat. I couldn't tell one song or artist from another even if I tried.
I think what you need to do is make a different distinction. 'Current' rap has a lot of people who have political messages and meanings in their songs. Kendrick Lamar, J Cole, Childish Gambino, Joyner Lucas, Dumbfoundead, Run the Jewels (and both pieces of it, El-P and Killer Mike,) Denzel Curry - all people I listen to frequently who are talented songwriters that have genuine messages in their music. Granted, they might do a 'party' song every now and again, but you look somebody dead in the eye and tell them that Kendrick raps about 'bitches and money' and anybody that's heard his music is gonna laugh you out of the building.
So, the distinction is incorrect - there are a lot of current people who are storytellers and activists. What you dislike is pop rap. People like Drake who make the most bottom-tier music to appeal to all the people that just want to listen to a tune that sounds good, or to dance to it, not to somebody that's really feeling, loving, and enjoying the music. You see this happen in a lot of genres - look at modern "country" music, which is 90% repeating the same progressions, talking about the same exact stuff as the last 50 songs, all sung with just about the same exact voice. There are people out there who make actual music, but then you've got 'pop country' that's trash and utterly indistinguishable one song to the next - sound familiar?
cc: @superphly
Kendrick Lamar was the first non-classical/jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. I don't even listen to a lot of rap or hip hop, but Kendrick Lamar's music has specific gravity to it -- a magnetism that I can't really put into words.
The guy can write. He captures nuanced, complex sentiments in compelling words with an incredible mastery of rhythm and rhyme. A lot of times his stuff goes against what I want in the music I generally listen to: I like a lot of "background" music that doesn't require my attention and just kind of makes me feel good in the moment, but his music almost demands that you listen carefully and deeply, and a lot of it is far from feel-good. It's dense. It wants you to think.
To borrow language from another type of media, most of the music I listen to tends to be of the "beach read" variety -- easy to get into and eminently satisfying without any effort needed. Kendrick Lamar, meanwhile, comes across more as "literary fiction", where he speaks with metaphor and complexity about the human experience. When I pick up a beach read, it's primarily for entertainment. But if I pick up literary fiction, I'm expecting something heavier, deeper, and more complex. Lamar's music is like that for me.
Kendrick, as far as I'm concerned, is responsible for waking me up to the realities of life in a lot of ways. The man is an incredible talent and the world will be a much worse place when he's gone.
These lyrics?
Throw a steak off the ark to a pool full of sharks
He'll take it
Leave him in the wilderness with a sworn nemesis
He'll make it (He'll make it)
Take the gratitude from him, I bet he'll show you somethin'
Woah (Woah)
I chip a nigga lil' bit of nothin'
I chip a nigga lil' bit of nothin'
I chip a nigga lil' bit of nothin'
I chip a nigga, then throw the blower in his lap
Walk myself to the court like, "Bitch, I did that!," X-rated
Johnny don't wanna go to school no mo', no mo'
Johnny said books ain't cool no mo' (No mo')
Johnny wanna be a rapper like his big cousin
Johnny caught a body yesterday out hustlin'
God bless America, you know we all love him
I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and assume you want to discuss this more but what don't you like about these lyrics? I'm assume you read the Genius analysis and something isn't clicking or something?
As an aside, it feels pretty suspect that you have so many answers to something you want to seemingly learn more about but only engage to include this weird "gotcha" moment that doesn't seem that well intentioned.
Ah that’s being a little unfair, no? From another genre, a lot of people speak about Queen as being revolutionary and writing deep and considered lyrics but if you only look at Bicycle Race you’ll come away with a different opinion!
Bicycle Race is a goddamn masterpiece compared to the likes of Body Language.
Bicycle Race is a masterpiece compared to anything I love that song.
Point stands and is backed up by your example, I think! You can find meaningless lyrics in a lot of peoples songs, but it doesn’t mean they never write anything meaningful
Yeah, I was agreeing with you point. I was just making a joke because Bicycle Race is a fine song imo with just some silly lyrics. But anyway, I'm missing the point a little. My hip hop diet isn't too deep, but it's easy to see that OP took a snippet from a single track which is clearly part of a concept album which is telling a bigger story.
Oh yes, I was building on what you said not arguing with it :)
I adore the remix they made Meow the Jewels.
But yeah, great rap is being made all the time with real storytelling chops. I remember almost every moment of what I was doing and where I was the first time I listened to Dance With The Devil by Immortal Technique (very NSFL)
Give Logic, Connor Price, Killa, Macklemore a chance. Many other new rappers that still elevate the use of spoken word as a medium exist, just got to dive in and find what you like.
There's a lot of survivor bias when looking at music from the past vs music from today.
We remember the good stuff from the 60s-present but forget that there was a tonne of shit put out as well.
There is also a lot more volume of music being made today because phones and computers have made it very ease for anyone to create music.
Survivor bias is a good point, but as a counterpoint I might add that the 90s was "fire" as the youngsters say in music and in film :)
Yeah people like me who don't appreciate rap are in an unfortunate postion, similar to people who think vikings are interesting, or people who want to homestead. There are groups of people with similar taste who are despicable.
I just never responded musically to rap. Motown and Tina Turner, most definitely, but when rap was getting popular, I was already into retro music. My favorite song at the time was Aqualung. I will spin up Whitey's on the Moon, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, alongside Ghost of Tom Joad when I'm in a certain mood. And I have Assata and Stamped from the Beginning on my bookshelf alongside Wendell Berry's the Hidden Wound. No white American can claim to have defeated racism but I have made an effort. But neither rap nor opera do much for me.
There are two types of people in this world: those who appreciate rap, and those who have never listened to Illmatic. I feel like it's the perfect entry point to the genre. The first time I heard it I felt like someone reached through the speaker and yanked me into another world. I wish I had the ability to articulate all my feelings about it, but all I can say is that it's a masterpiece. When you hear Nas paint such a vivid picture with complicated verses (while making it seem effortless) and you add that to DJ Premier's brilliantly constructed beats, it should be obvious.
This is how I feel about To Pimp A Butterfly. Don't get me wrong, I love Illmatic, but TPAB's jazz/hip hop fusion just screams to me, this is music. This is soul, this is artistry, this is magic.
I haven't listened to Illmatic yet. I just did and it was great.
Sorry to go off topic a little here, but one of the times I saw Nas live was for the Illmatic 20th anniversary tour, he did the whole album front to back, and he sounded exactly the same as he did then. The consistency! It was magic! Illmagic, if you’ll forgive the bad pun. I was always a big fan of his, but that show (and his others) really highlighted for me why he’s still at the top of the game and so well respected
I have immense respect for those artists that can create musical flow with just words, and make narrative sense. Not so much those who just pick whatever words sounds good despite being incoherent...
In a lot of cases, those 'incoherent' lines are really just slang you've not been made aware of yet.
Specifically thinking Nicki Minaj when I say narratively incoherent. Perhaps I'm way off base, but it seems her work isn't as much coherent than a medley of words that "work". Perhaps her work really is just all master-class slang that is lost on me.
Nicki is a good place to draw the line from 'pop rap.' She doesn't make thought provoking songs, she makes songs about being a bad bitch, shaking your ass, having fun, etc. so while they're not exactly 'coherent', you are probably missing out on the intended meaning of the words said.
She transitioned from actually being good at rapping (her featured verse on Kanye West's 'Monster' is incredibly good) to just another pop rapper quite a while back.
I think there are a few things that are important to understand about rap, and one of them is hard for me to talk about as a white person, but I'll do my best. I'm also going to be going super fast - understanding the appeal and importance of rap is something you could take a whole college course on, or study in a post-graduate degree; this is a single comment, so it'll be brief, but I'll also recommend a previous comment I made about appreciating music which is probably pretty relevant.
Rap tend to be less about melody and more about rhythm and flow - both of the accompanying music and the rap itself - and a big part of the music is about getting you to move your body. The accompaniment to the rapping tends to focus a lot on bass and drums, and there is often a loop over which the rapper performs. The flow of the words is really important; how it weaves in and around beats, how it rhymes, and the story it tells are all woven together to create a piece of music, and it's important to think about how the voice itself is both a story and a mostly percussive instrument.
Musicality aside, rap is, at its core, black music that often is about the things that black people face in the world. I think it's important to listen and learn about the things that other people and other cultures are going through and experiencing. Sometimes it can be hard to relate to, but I think it's important to try to relate and I believe that one of the best ways to build cultural bridges is with music.
Changes by Tupac is one of the greatest songs of all time. I think it's one that it is relatively approachable, even for people who don't like rap. It starts with a beautiful melody and accompaniment that sounds almost like it is setting up for an 80s diva love song, but instead goes right into a heavy beat and Tupac. The flow, to me, is unreal - every stanza is a bit different, and the interplay with the beat of the music is awesome, and coupled with the lyrics themselves; they come out hard:
They get bleaker, and they get eerily prophetic:
And I could do some analysis and say something like which part of the line lands on which part of the beat, generally, and how some lines don't land on the same part of the beat, and that's for emphasis, but I think it's better to read the lyrics, listen to Tupac deliver them superfluously well, and enjoy how he was a living instrument, a storyteller, and an artist.
What kinds of music do you like? I've grown my appreciation for rap (I'm no expert, just a very casual fan) through 1) inroads into the genre via stuff I like (i.e. edm>trap>phonk>lofi hip-hop) and 2) learning about how a song was made. For number 2, I recommend trying the podcast Song Exploder, specifically the episode about the Run the Jewels song JU$T. I'd never heard the song, and became a big fan of it by the end of the episode.
I second this question, especially because you can't get to most modern music genres without hip hop and rap.
I'd recommend listening through Operation Doomsday by MF DOOM, and Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys and I'm sure you'll feel something
I mean maybe with some pop-rap, but pop music tends to be pretty superficial anyway. There's a lot of modern artists, some popular and some underground that are incredibly talented.
Czarface & MF DOOM - Bomb Thrown - 2018
El Michaels Affair & Black Thought - Grateful - 2023
Kofi Stone - It's Ok to Cry - 2022
Three very different songs, very little cursing or grunting, intelligent lyricism, all from the last 5 years.
I think the trick to understanding hiphop is actually listening to the lyrics, there's a lot of wordplay and story telling, a lot of people just turn their minds off and don't actually listen to the words.
Sneakers.
They're just really expensive shoes and not usually even that comfortable, why the hype? Why collect shoes you're never going to wear?
Why are some sneakers so popular that people are literally robbing them off others? Do they rob them to sell them or wear them themselves?
And why would someone buy used shoes anyway?
I don't rob people so I can't answer that aspect of it, but I do (did) collect sneakers. It's been a while since I've been super deep in it, though I did grab a pair of Jordan Lost and Founds a couple of months ago that I love.
I think your answer is twofold. There are definitely people who are looking for an easy flip, which I personally despise. I personally have a rule that I only buy sneakers that I'll wear, nowadays, especially after moving so much. I guess I'll ask a question to your question, how do you feel about fashion?
In general people have large collections to have something for many occasions. It's not about comfort, it's about expressing yourself. Some people like wearing sneakers to show off that they have money, some people like wearing them to show off their style, both are valid. As someone who was part of the sneakers subreddit for a while, I will say that I think people keeping them and not wearing them is a bit overblown, there's generally been a "wear your sneakers" sentiment I've been seeing more.
As for the people who do collect them and not wear them, why not? What's the difference between collecting Lego or keyboards or movie posters?
I think one of my hangups is jealousy for people who can just buy random "size 9" shoes off the internet and they'll fit.
I've got weirdly specific feet and I very rarely find shoes that fit. I've never been able to wear Converses for example, my foot just doesn't fit the shape of the shoe at all.
Haha to be fair that'll make you an excellent sneaker collector, size 9s are always out of stock first :(
And also remember, fashion isn't necessarily about comfort at all. It could be a part of it, if you choose, but fashion overall is about expression. Some people express things differently
I don’t collect shoes, but my best guess is the creation of things like Air Jordan’s, where shoes became connected to an icon the world loved. In that sense they became not just shoes and art collection pieces. The same way people collect action figures even though they never play with them, video game boxes that are never opened, trading cards which are never traded, etc.
I buy a pair whenever my old one wears out, and I like them because they're pretty and comfortable.
Used shoes are great because they're super cheap and are clean after a good wash!
Music- hear me out. I like going to live music bars and occasionally to concerts for bands I like (going for The Strokes next month, yay) but I've never quite gotten the way most people listen to music. For example, people listen to music in the car where I would most likely put on a podcast or an audiobook. Yes, I like certain types of music and specific songs while I'll listen to when I'm driving with other people or occasionally by myself, but it's not really a default for me.
Even stranger to me are the people who buy and listen to albums like I would read a book. As in there are people who will sit down and listen to albums all the way through. Intellectually I understand why- it would be like reading a book, but on a personal level I can't understand it.
Because I feel it.
The beat, harmonies, timbre of the voice, how the words are sung or rapped... I vibe to it. I get chills. Sometimes a song hits on first listen, other times it takes a few. Sometimes a song is associated with a memory or moment from a show or movie or game. I can get lost in it or have it in the background while I'm working on something else.
Some people get emotional from seeing beautiful landscapes. For me it's music and sound. It's been this way since I was a kid. I can remember getting chills up my spine when hearing a good church choir. I think it's just how I'm wired.
I definitely get this reaction too. From Freddie Mercury to a choir singing Anglican hymns to the howling guitars of big dumb stadium rock. Kanye's beautiful pun 'dress smart like a London bloke/ before he speak his suit bespoke' in American Boy never fails to amuse me.
But somehow it doesn't move me to seek music out.
I'm borderline and bipolar. I suffer from severe anhedonia and have constant dark, morbid brain noise. Music, especially metal, is the only thing I have found that consistently makes me feel something and drowns out all the noise in my head. In fact, when I hit a point where I realize I'm not listening to music or able to get into it it's a huge red flag I'm heading into a very bad episode.
Some albums are really good if you listen to them from one end to the other. They were put together as a cohesive experience.
See, I read a lot, but in the car? Unthinkable! I don't understand that. I need full focus when I'm immersed in a book. I would either crash immediately, or miss parts of the book. Music, however? My brain plays music 99% of the time anyway. I'm used to multitasking it.
What do you like about the music you enjoy?
This is a fascinating question and one I have to think about. I don't know if I can come up with a coherent answer.
As a musician and someone who basically always has music playing, I actually only considered this question recently and it stumped me for a bit. Maybe my example will help you figure out your own thoughts?
Anyways, hope that gives you a step in the right direction towards figuring out what it is you like in your music!
Wow, we have really similar tastes, fellow obvious prog fan!
Hello there! Is it really that obvious? Lmao
While the art of the album has faded substantially in many ways, especially with internet streaming, its still around.
You're right that a good album will be a lot like a book. A good album takes you on a sonic journey, even if its not a concept album. It should have a vibe or rythem to it as a whole, not just as a bucket of 10 songs slapped on a CD.
Quality of equipment also matters at least a little. I wouldn't want to listen to an album for the first time on my car stereo, I'd want to listen to it either on my home stereo or using my good headphones. I want to be able to pick out details, to notice new things in songs I've heard a dozem times. Like focusing on the bass one time or the drums another.
Albums that have movies can help bridge the gap. The two I always will reccommend are Interstella 5555 (for Daft Punk's Discovery) and Pink Floyd's The Wall. They're in some ways akin to the same level of movie adaptions that books get...sometimes the raw emotion you felt from the first listen on an album hits differently with a visual, especially if that visual is off.
Part of it is just how the human brain is wired to respond to music. There have been multiple studies on how the brain reacts to music, and it triggers a lot of areas. It can actually alter the brain's structure in some ways, such as how it stores memories or its ability to process speech.
It can have a physical impact on people too, with effects like raising or lowering blood pressure or impacting energy levels. I remember an article by a man who had to have open-heart surgery without anesthesia was told by his doctors to pick out soothing music to play during the procedure to try to help him relax as much as he could. The effect is multiplied if you associate the music with specific movements, like marches or certain dances.
For me personally, some songs flood me with energy, while I've also been left feeling physically drained by the Goodwill Christmas Playlist. It can influence my mood pretty directly, which is useful to me as a writer. Then, some songs and instruments just hit this sweet spot in my mind. If I find a song I like, I can replay it for hours on end. That said, I actually consider myself as more of a casual music fan. I wouldn't listen to a single album all the way through, and I wouldn't listen to only music on a car ride because I need more stimulation. (And also I'm picky, so trying to have a random playlist or a station would not work well for me.) I've never felt the deep, emotional connection to a song that some people describe, though I can get why they feel it.
Of course, the impact varies by individual. I recall reading once that some people have a much stronger natural reaction to music than others, so they're more drawn to it. I'd assume the inverse is true too, and you're probably on that end of the spectrum.
There is a character in Buddenbrooks who (maybe?) has a similar reaction to music as you. I wonder how you feel about this description of the rather non-musical Thomas Buddenbrooks talking to his extremely musical wife Gerda:
Compare this to a passage about Thomas' very musical son Hanno playing a piano-violin duet with his mother:
I assume you are not a musician or not very much into music theory? You can get a lot more out of music when you think about how the song is structured etc.
If I buy a new album I try to listen to it in a dark room with little to no distractions. That way you can sink into the music and at best it can be a psychedelic experience.
Yeah, I'm not a musician, although since my son is getting into guitar I've been trying to teach myself some basic chords. I like music but yes, I don't appreciate it in the same way I would a poem, or a novel or a collection of short stories. I get the analogy though.
Check out the youtube channel Doug Helvering. He does those reaction type videos but hes also a classically trained musician and he breaks the songs down a bit while listening. Might be helpful.
Just like literary criticism can help you understand a book, I found that reading long-form album reviews helped me "get" what people were listening to whole albums for. Since you like Kanye - read the pitchfork review for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and then listen to the album straight through.
It really just sounds like you haven't found a genre of music you really love yet.
I had a similar feeling towards music until a few years ago, until I decided to go on a journey of actually finding something I liked. Now I'm buying CDs, listening to full albums, etc.
Probably singing to the choir here, but reality TV.
I get following people's professions. What I don't get is shows following celebrities. Should I care what a Kardashian is doing today, or the house some B lister lives at?
It's wierd to me.
my guess is that people like rich and powerful people, and if they create a parasocial relationship with them, they feel involved with their lives, and in turn, somewhat rich and powerful.
I can't stand reality tv myself, but a podcast I listened to has two hosts that love it.
The way they put it makes it seem like they enjoy the storylines created in the shows, exactly the same way I think most people enjoy fictional television. For example: drama between two housewives when so and so is found to be being inappropriate with another woman's husband. It's kind of the appeal of watching catastrophic failures: you can't look away from the car crash. It not being truly "real" isn't necessarily a downside since story/drama arcs can have a resolution, and the severity of the actions might not be as serious as portrayed in the show. But the fact that it is "reality" and has a hint of truth makes it more compelling than a pre-determined fictional story arc. If the stars of the show are also rich or famous, it ups the stakes and widens the range of possible "stories."
At least that's what I gather. Hopefully someone who likes reality tv can chime in.
I like reality tv, but only if I’m watching it with my wife. It’s more of a sport to us than it is anything serious. That makes it enjoyable, but in any other circumstance I would never watch it on my own.
I'm somewhat of a librarian in my day job and have been in the position for going on six years. Between libraries, because I move between different sites, I've noticed a weird trend - all of our cook book sections are disproportionately large to a heavy degree. I'm talkin' 'bout multiple shelves (Dewey Decimal, by the way) before it slowly trickles off into the next section. My question here is to understand the thought process of people going out of their way to purchase tons of cookbooks when we have the hellscape that is the internet. Before anyone mentions tangibility, yeah, that's the thing that doesn't make any sense - why on Earth would someone prefer paper material that can easily get stained over a digital device? I don't understand...
I can't speak for cookbooks but I personally can't stand swiping through pages on a screen. Recently I've been trying to learn programming and a foreign language and it's just so much easier and more enjoyable for me to be able to physically flip through a book to find something. I can read novels digitally just fine but if its something like a textbook or something I need to reference then I prefer a physical copy. It's also easier on the eyes. Not much of an explanation I guess since it mostly just boils down to paper is enjoyable and swiping on a screen is irritating.
I am the same way. But I am going to add on the fact that I can add notes in the margins of the books (that I own, I am not going to do this to a rental or a library book). Which helps retain the information better for me.
Honestly I’ve really started to hate looking for recipes online. Most of them have like two pages worth of bullshit fluff that the author adds just to fill up the page that you have to scroll through to even get to the recipe, or the page is littered with more ads than empty space. Both are infuriating and quite frankly I’d rather just open up a cook book and look for what I want.
I don't actually buy a lot of cookbooks, but I use paper notes and a dossier in the kitchen. Why? Because it's much more straightforward to me to manipulate these things, scribbe notes and flip pages while busy cooking than it is to try sliding my greasy fingers around on a tiny expensive screen. It doesn't really matter if the paper remains in a pristine condition - but that might not be the case if I'd borrowed a cookbook from a library.
Some online recipes are pretty terrible - just plain outright wrong. The only thing that exceeds them in ridiculousness are online recipe reviews, which are sometimes the delirious, incoherent rambles of people who think that, like the ship of Theseus, it's still the same recipe even if they replace all the ingredients. By which I mean, it can sometimes be difficult to trust an online recipe over a traditionally published one, especially if the book has good reviews.
I could replace every cookbook in my house for the price of one good cellphone. I'd rather have a few ruined books than 1 incident with a phone. A lot of nasty stuff going on in kitchens that isn't great for electronics. And while the IP ratings are mostly good enough now...there's enough potential for a fuckup I'd almost rather print off a recipie if I'll use it more than once rather than fiddling with a screen.
I'm not a chef, but I think one of the appeals of a published cookbook is just that it feels more professional than an internet recipe. There are plenty of jokes about how recipes on the internet open up with some weird anecdote tying their great uncle Tom's weird shoe obsession to the mashed potato recipe. I think that alone removes some of the credibility on a subconscious level, as do all the lists of recipes that are clearly just articles meant to gain views and earn money. The recipes often feel like they're not by professional chefs or cooks, which can make them a little more iffy.
A published cookbook though gives an impression of quality. It takes more effort to publish a physical book than post a recipe online, so there's just a subconscious expectation that the recipes must be good enough for that effort. After all, multiple people are usually involved in the publishing process, so there's more oversight than a blog.
That, and they're good for discovering new recipes. You can just flip through the pages to see what's listed and get ideas. I remember looking at a preview of a (I think Norwegian?) baking cookbook for my cousin, and there were multiple recipes that looked fairly interesting which I never would have known existed. It also helps that they tend to follow themes, so you have a general idea of what base ingredients might be needed.
With the internet, if you're not looking for a specific recipe, finding a totally new one can be overwhelming. There are so many recipes and cooking-centric websites online, it's hard to know where to start looking.
There was a story on Reddit written by a dude whose sister wrote cookbooks.
She didn't even try the recipes, she just wrote them out when she needed to get a new book out. =)
The sad truth is that most cookbooks have maybe a half dozen good recipes (recipes that fit your style and palate) and the rest are just fluff and filler.
Some cookbooks, like Americas test kitchen or milk street, are all recipes that were actually tried and refined.
True, those are actually good and they make multiple versions of them.
But there are A LOT of cookbooks, some of them mostly sold with a celebrity's name on top. I can guarantee you that they didn't test and make those recipes themselves =)
I think the views and money part is pointing to the overall problem of online recipes. People tend to search for a recipe and go to wherever the search engine goes. The act of loading the page meant that the page has the views and ad money already collected from you before you read the first word. It is likely that the long winded story part of the recipe is to try to encourage the search engine to drive more people to the article.
A book, on the other hand, is purchased by people leaving good review of the recipes within, people being drawn in by the cover, and/or whatever recipe page they glanced at when making their decision. In other words, the content of the recipe is given more value in a book than it would be for a web page trying to be tempting to search engine bots.
In addition to Echomist's comment, here are some other reasons I like cookbooks/I can see why libraries would have a hefty cookbook section. First, good cookbooks provide a set of interesting/good recipes in one convenient book, so I don't need to go scrolling between lots of recipes and hoping I find a good one. I also appreciate the chef's insights into the dishes and food in general -- a stellar example of this is The Zuni Café Cookbook. If I do value certain authors and want to get their version of a recipe, it might not be available online, thus necessitating a cookbook.
Additionally, the cookbooks at libraries could have been purchased prior to many recipes being available online. Some people who use cookbooks also might not be the most technically savvy and find cookbooks easier to use or not have a suitable electronic device to view the recipe while cooking.
I put my phone completely away when cooking. No way I'm going near that thing when I've got all kinds of food residue on my fingers!
I think it's also a throwback to the old "grandma in the kitchen" concept, where traditional methods are valued. You get a huge wave of nostalgia from holding a well-loved recipe book in ways that just don't replicate with a phone or tablet.
Plus there's a quality issue with recipes online. So many of them are shlock, if I'm going to spend an afternoon cooking something nice I want to be sure it will turn out properly!
Our church runs an annual fundraiser, where they collect recipes from everyone in the congregation and compile it into a cookbook for sale. There are few things I'd trust more!
I'm starting to get used to it, but I really hate when I'm using my phone for a recipe and the screen shuts off. If I set a cookbook up on a stand, it's there. It's not going to randomly disappear. Speaking of disappearing, there's no guarantee that website will exist the next time I want it.
I don't own very many cookbooks. I mostly have the classics and a binder full of family recipes and other recipes I've made and really liked.
I like it if it's a curated collection. America's Test Kitchen (who have awesome recipes) has a slow cooker cookbook that I use frequently. I have some cookbooks from games, movies, and tv shows. I have Max Miller's Tasting History for a collection of awesome ancient recreations.
But like, generic cookbooks I don't really get, if I want to cook something without a specific theme in mind, I just google the name of the dish and find a well-rated and interesting recipe for it. If all of the collections I have had website versions, I'd use those for convenience, but they're exclusive to physical or digital books usually.
Think about the difference between a short article you'd find online and a book. My wife enjoys collecting cookbooks, not only to try new culinary experiences, but to learn more about the shared experiences and cultures the various authors have. She'll curl up on the couch with a cookbook, and actually read the thing, because it's not just a list of recipes. "Wow, this person is ethnically Indian but is from such and such part of the world, so her childhood was so unique and interesting and the recipes reflect that!"
It's like when you're trying to Google a simple baked chicken recipe. You just need a quick recipe, you don't care about the person's life story or how their Grandpa cooked chicken or blah blah. The inverse is the same with books, you don't just want a boring list of recipes, you have the Internet for that already.
So to answer your question, why would anyone prefer a book? Well, because it's a book!
I wonder if this is the wrong question? Many library books are donated, right? To me, this seems that people are trying to get RID of cookbooks. Maybe people wanted to learn more about a particular style of cooking, or it was gifted to them originally, but at some point they didn't find the cookbook helpful enough to keep around.
Most library books are purchased, not donated (at least, in libraries in the US). Donations typically go to library booksales, although we may nick a few gems out of the donation pile on occasion.
Interesting, thanks for correcting me!
I agree with most of what has been said, but approaching this from another angle, libraries have a lot of cookbooks because people want them (community demand). That sounds kind of reductionist, but many libraries live and breathe by circulation stats. As long as there is demand (or a librarian that is adverse to weeding), there will be a ton of cookbooks. A lot of library-goers are people who love physical books, so it makes sense that those people may prefer a physical cookbook.
Also, most libraries' collections have older books that predate the ubiquity of online recipes. Some of those older cookbooks are prized, as cooking styles and trends change over time (who's up for a Jello mold casserole?). Some people want to revisit those older recipes or have nostalgia for an old fashioned cookbook.
Ultimately, libraries serve their communities so if people want old cookbooks, the library will provide them.
Diablo 4... I don't get it, I bought it and gave it a solid 5 hours; it just seems like a button masher. I think I must be missing something. I've tried to talk to friends who like it about the appeal, it's one of the most popular games right now after all... but I just don't get it. It cost a pretty penny, so I'd like to enjoy it
So there's multiple ways you can play ARPGs like Diablo 4. The more casual way is to play through the story, which is fairly OK in Diablo 4 for an ARPG, and has some excellent cutscenes and campy gore. There, on the easiest difficulty you can mostly just mash buttons.
ARPGs for more longterm players is a bit different. One thing to note is that most are based around seasonal gameplay - seasons usually last a few months, and new characters have to be made for them. They usually have some new game mechanics to spice up the game.
Here, one major selling point is the process of making your build, and experimenting with new builds. The seasonal mechanics cause what's good and bad to change with every season. Some things are deterministic, like your skill tree, but others are random. If you get a particularly fantastic item or gem that works in a particular way, that may force you to change your build entirely.
Making your build, and watching synergies come together is satisfying. There's usually end-game content that is essentially the pinnacle of what you're aiming for - in Diablo 4 this would be T100 Nightmare Dungeons and Uber-Lillith.
Do people who play ARPG seasons play other games at all?
Because I can't imagine myself spending time in Diablo creating seasonal characters and slogging through the game with different builds repeatedly while knowing all the time that I have 50+ excellent games in my backlog I want to experience for the first time.
Absolutely. As you get more experienced, the time to create new characters lessens more and more.
For example, I personally play Path of Exile. For a new player, getting through the campaign generally takes about 20-80 hours depending on how experienced you are with ARPGs and if you're following a guide or not. Most people who have been through it once or twice before though can generally make it through in less than 16 without any effort. I myself generally take about 10-12 hours. It's not uncommon for some people to be able to do it in under 6, and a few of the top players can even do it in just 2-3 hours.
A lot of that is because the time it takes to play the game when you're starting out is just learning and understanding the game. Comparing gear, changing skills, dying (so much dying), and just generally trying new things or figuring out where your issues are. Additionally, as you gain more experience with the game, you learn how to do more with less. You can pick skills that are best for leveling until you reach the point where your build can function and you do a small respec if that's even needed at all. Your movement will get better as you learn you identify dangerous enemies. You'll get a better feel of how many enemies you want to kill before you move onto the next zone. You'll better learn the possible layouts for each of the zones. (They are random, but there is a pattern to them.) And so many other things. There's a surprising amount of optimizations you can do to increase your efficiency.
Many players do often play only one character each season, but that character can't carry over into the next one that has all the new content. So for those people the new season (or league for Path of Exile) is just an excuse to try a new character or build. Checking Steam Charts to see how many players have been playing at any given time makes it quite clear. The new season starts, and the player count peaks. About a month later, roughly half the player base is gone. A month after that, maybe half of that remaining is left. Then just before the new season starts, there's hardly anyone playing. Especially if a newer and shiner competitor like Diablo 4 just came out.
And yes, a lot of (if not most) players are playing post campaign content. Even so, much of what I said remains true. Much of the time many players spend in the game is essentially idling and the more you play, the more you learn optimize your play time and reach end-end game sooner. The very best players have often beaten all the end game bosses and reached max level within the first few days. Even in Hardcore (where if you die, your character is effectively deleted), Solo Self Found (no trading or partying up with others), and Hardcore Solo Self Found, people tend not to be that far behind and start taking out said bosses by the end of the week.
Then I would imagine, as some of the peaks on the Steam Charts are higher than those that follow them, many players don't play every season. They'll just come back when a season looks particularly good or they've been missing the game. I need to do this myself and only play every second or third season at most, else I burn out very quickly and just become unable to bring myself to play.
Usually, yeah. Diablo or PoE can be your main game but usually you do some builds when the season starts, get your fill of mechanics, do some other stuff after that, rinse and repeat. If the season isn't interesting, skip it. And so forth.
I played a few seasons of Diablo 3 on my Switch. Basically it was an excuse to try out a new character or a new build for 2-3 weeks, collect some rewards, and move on. Builds are varied enough to feel like a different game.
I was part of /r/patientgamers even before I knew it existed :)
I very rarely play games at or near launch, usually when I pick them up on sale I can get the Super Ultra Deluxe Pro Edition for 20-30€ and it has all of the updates included already.
But I will definitely return to Night City when Phantom Liberty comes out =)
All those "slammed" cars with ridiculous camber to the point where it's just darn right impractical.
I don't understand why you'd want to go through tires at least 2x as quickly and expose your fender and undercarriage to all sorts of possible damage (road debris, potholes, speed bumps etc).
While a slightly modified ride height for a little bit more of an aggressive stance can be aesthetically pleasing, the completely slammed car with insane camber is not, to me. It's simply a car culture I can't wrap my head around.
yeah I wish I didn't find it so ugly, because it's certainly really really popular
it feels like automotive foot-binding
I cant say that I understand the full logic either, but I think it comes from an exaggeration of racing culture. Formula 1 cars for example, usually have 1 to 4 degrees of negative camber (top of tire tilts in) which aids in cornering and keeping the full wide tire in contact when cornering hard as the car is leaning. Someone thought, 'hey 4 degrees looks cool, Im gonna go with 8 degrees' and then, since a lot of car culture is a pissing contest, the next guy says, Im gonna go with 15 degrees... and pretty soon the guy with the biggest negative camber is the coolest guy on the block. And thus we end up with tires that are riding on the thin inner edge with rims that are scraping the ground. Definitely impractical. Definitely hard on tires and rims. Definitely "cool" to a certain subset of car guys. That's my theory anyway.
Radio, especially stations like classic rock or oldies.
I just cannot understand why, in this age, that people will willingly listen to the same 30 songs on repeat with the same commercials peppered in over and over again.
I've seen on reddit many times and even on here now, people complaining about sirens or horns in radio commercials and I'm like "why are you listening to radio in the first place? Why not pick something out of the millions of recorded songs, podcasts etc."
I'll pull up to a stop light and someone next to me is blasting a commercial at an ungodly volume. Why not turn it down for commercials?
I can't hear my own stereo over an advertisement for roctober or toyotathon. It's absolutely obnoxious.
How many times can someone hear "Uptown Girl," or "Sweet Home Alabama?"
How do people not get tired of it?
Some people did some studies that report that customers are happier when music is playing and now I can't go to a restaurant without hearing "Jesse's Girl" or a hardware store and have to hear "Summer Of '69."
I just want to eat my pizza in peace, I'm not here to "rock out" to tired, over played hits of yester years.
I don't need to be "entertained" when I'm buying drill bits or tomatoes.
I often have to bring headphones just to avoid such noise. And I won't even go to a restaurant in December. No way I'm getting some religions music shoved in my ears, it's absolutely disgusting.
When is enough, enough? Can we ever as a society just say okay: "Paradise City" had its place in history, but we've all heard it, we know where to find it if we want, but let's move on now, there's millions of songs, but we're stuck with just a few to be bombarded with ad nauseum, decade after decade after decade.
It's maddening.
Good radio vs bad radio I suppose. Radio Paradise is a great online radio station. There's a local high school radio station that does great variety for me.
Part of it is Clearchannel, the gobbled up so much of the radio market. Used to be that you could get the vibe of a local area by the radio DJs and what they're playing. This is still true in some markets but if you're in a Clearchannel dominated area yea its pretty terrible samey stuff.
There was one local radio station playing a Butthole Surfers song the other day. High school me circa 1997 would be flabbergasted.
Another upside is because you have so little control, you get better exposure to new/old stuff you might have ignored otherwise. Like the flip side of paradox of choice.
I somewhat agree with you, particularly all the songs you specifically called out by name, but I do like the radio. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed by choice, so I put on a radio station that I know pretty reliably plays stuff I mostly like.
I will say I listen to BBC radio which is, imo, the best in the world and doesn’t have ads. I don’t listen to the local radio stations who are much more in line with everything you’ve said here!
Art. Paintings, sculptures, murals, etc. Pretty much anything physical when it comes to art. It just does nothing for me.
Pretty sure all my character creation points got funneled into musical ability and appreciation because I just don't understand why anyone would ever want to go to an art exhibit.
Wow, this is such a hard one to answer, because I don't really understand not liking physical art. Without being absurdly reductive I think it's probably easiest to relate it to an appreciation for music.
I love music, and one of the things that really gets me is physical ability to play an instrument. One of my favourite bands is Tool because Danny Carey is an incredible drummer. I've seen them play a number of times, and every time I am blown away by the ability of this human - who is similar to me in most of the ways that matter - to use two sticks, his feet, and a variety of blunt objects to make an incredibly complex polyrhythmic experience. That level of artistry and expertise is like a quasi religious experience to me.
That feeling of awe at the ability of someone to take relatively simple tool and make something complex and beautiful is the exact same phenomena with a beautiful piece of art. It can be a photograph, or a painting, or a sculpture; seeing a beautiful piece that has been developed and thoughtfully produced using expertise is something that resonates for me on the same level of appreciation as the one I have for music. Some pieces of art resonate more strongly than others, just as some music resonates with me more strongly than others, but at its core, it's that same fundamental quasi-religious experience; a person used basic tools to make something beautiful, and I get to share in it.
I definitely don't think others are wrong for liking art per se. I just don't get it myself lol.
I can look at a painting and think to myself "yep whoever made this is very talented and that's a well done piece of art" but...music makes me feel things, ya know? Paintings don't make me feel emotions beyond "huh. Neat."
I can understand not wanting to go to an art exhibit or finding it boring. Personally I like them but different strokes etc. I’m wondering, though, whether you like art in the context of decor for your home or other places you visit. Do you prefer a plain wall or do you like something there to visually break up the space? If it’s the latter then congratulations, you understand at least one reason for art! Of course art can be emotional and thought provoking and important, but it can also just be something nicer to look at than a wall and that’s fine too.
Not to be too glib, but I like beautiful stuff because it's beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful things (and I'm using "beautiful" for convenience here, but I'm including beautiful, ugly, disgusting, etc) and I enjoy when something I'm looking at makes me feel the sublime or sad or hopeful or whatever. And as an artist myself, I enjoy the craftsmanship in solid work, thinking about the choices that went into the composition, etc.
Do you enjoy looking at a beautiful sunrise or a treeline at the golden hour or a misty mountain range, or whatever type of natural environment appeals to you? That gives me nearly the same sensation as looking at, whatever, Klimt's The Kiss or Canova's Cupid and Psyche. If it's a really beautiful thing, it gives me goosebumps the same way that other people get goosebumps listening to music.
But honestly, I think I might be your opposite. I like music well enough, but hearing beauty almost never moves me the way that seeing beauty does. I don't think anyone can talk me into enjoying music on their level, so it might just be that some people aren't wired to enjoy X medium.
It depends on the art I suppose. Some times its historical curiosity, the provenance of the piece could have an interesting story, or perhaps its very old and serves as kind of a window into how people saw the world back then, maybe the technical mastery of a medium is remarkable, or it could be that a thing is just visually stimulating to look at or ignites the imagination.
Some art is also more impressive in person. One of my favorite paintings is one of Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage. The painting itself is some 8ft by 8ft wide, and when you stand in front of it it kind of fills your vision so going to see it in person enhances the experience. The main appeal of that particular piece to me though is the face of the figure, and what a subtle kind of expression the artist achieved, the effect of being drawn into her gaze is engaging to me.
But that's the thing, it's entirely subjective and different art evokes different feelings and thoughts from different people. It might be that if you engaged with more art you might stumble across something that connects.
You don't think highly of them. Brands do change how people perceive you - some may perceive you as foolish, others may perceive you as wealthy, or in the know, or as a particular subculture.
Secondly, while the extreme cases like Supreme are mostly about the brand's own allure, they are also a signifier of quality. I think people overestimate your ability to source products of similar quality - what, are you going to tromp around China looking for a direct to consumer sale from their manufacturers? Brands like North Face, Patagonia, Canada Goose, and so forth cost a margin more but from experience they are just better made than cheaper products. Of course there's a markup, but my time is money as well, I'm not about to make my own down coat when my expertise is in something else.
Secondly, brands can make you feel better and more confident. That relates to the part about perception. It is just a thing. We have monkey brains - sometimes it's best to just go with the flow.
That's funny cause my brother-in-law spent $220 on a Supreme t-shirt. $50 I can "almost" understand but $220 just seems so stupid.
Anime. I just don't get it.
I'm not a massive fan myself, but I've enjoyed some series and/or movies. Is there something specific about it you don't understand?
It's a creative style, like stop motion or 3d animation, or live action. Within that style you can fit any kind of story, or any genre.
Originating from a different culture, the tropes that are used can be strange, or uncomfortable for people who didn't grow up in that culture, but that's also what makes it interesting.
Finally I'd say that like any source of entertainment, most of it is average at best, but there are occasional gems worth watching.
Not a huge fan of 'general' anime, but there are a few things that I like, like Nichijou or any of the Ghibli films. It's just a style of animation, so of course there will be good and bad.
Tiling window managers.
Unless you have massive monitor real estate I don’t understand the appeal of tiled windows. Most of the time I don’t want to look at a squished gui that was probably designed to sit in a space 3x as big. When I do, I have keybinds to split windows to the left and right, or into one of the four corners. Anything beyond that seems horrible to me on a 1440p monitor.
For terminal apps, tiling is of course awesome but why not just use tmux at that point?
I suspect the appeal is quickly switching windows, ides, and terminal emulators with a few keystrokes. Tiling is probably only used occasionally, like for looking at some code on stack overflow while typing.
For myself, I prefer just simple floating windows; tiling WMs just don't flow with my style.
KDE lets me do like 90% of what I want out of a tiling window manager between activities, hotkeys to snap windows, and rules to make sure apps always open on the correct activity and window position.
It covers edge cases way nicer than any tile WM imo.
Hell yeah, big fan of tmux the terminal multiplexer, for the following important and totally serious reasons:
For real though, it's the first thing I install everywhere.
I love that when I open a new window it automatically splits the screen for me and I don't have to do it manually.
That's it. That's the reason.
I usually only have a single window at a time, and when I do open another, it's usually because I need to do something between the two. I'm probably an extreme outlier in this, because I get the sense that the type of people who use tiling WMs are programmers and actively sought them out as a way of managing their complex workflow across lots of different windows, desktops, and potentially monitors.
Meanwhile, I have the most casual workflow possible (if you can even call having Firefox open and occasionally loading up my notes app or the file manager a "workflow"). I didn't seek out a tiling WM, I just happened to get one when Pop!_OS switched over to include it by default. Immediately, I was thrilled that I no longer had to manually lock and unlock windows to the sides of my screen. It just happens organically now! Wonderful.
Meanwhile, I don't understand why people use tmux when they can use tiling WMs :)
I also do have massive monitor real estate in comparison (4K). When I'm on a smaller laptop screen I tend to just do tabbed fullscreen layout for everything.
I can jump to exactly the plane I want workout having to touch a pointing device. I also love zooming in and out, I use that all the time. My eyesight isn't getting any better with time, lol.
I think if you have a 1440p monitor, then there isn't much of a need beyond what you have described. My laptop has a 2k screen, and my external monitor is a 5k. Looking at websites fullscreen on the 5k always looks silly; having a tiling manager makes it relatively easier to deal with. It's just about convenience, that's all.
Chess, specifically at a competitive level.
Obviously it is a game with a lot of history. I also assume the appeal is similar to sports: trying for personal improvement in a skill. What doesn't quite make sense to me is that it seems like chess is a solved problem. There is an optimal response to an opponent's moves, and how good you are in the rankings seems to be a memorization test rather than one of strategic skill. Is this actually the case? What makes you like the game and be willing to grind the it over and over again in ranked matches?
Sincerely, someone who has only played chess casually on family game night.
It's not a solved game, per strict definition or in practice. You're probably talking about openers, which can be more memorized, but remember, the state space of a chess board grows exponentially with the turn count, and once you enter the midgame, everything is out the window. No one knows what the actual optimal move is until you reach the endgame, where computers can brute force the remainder of the tree (although humans still can't!)
Even then, you can watch videos of Magnus, one of the best chess players ever, literally troll the first 4 moves by moving a bishop back and forth, and win the game against other GMs, who would also crush 99.99999% of players.
Here's a clip from this year's world chess championship where everyone thought the eventual winner, Liren, would go for a draw, but he decides to go for the win instead
Thank you for the insight!
When I say "solved" I was thinking in a computational sense. I followed a little bit of the Hans Nieman cheating drama that happened a while ago and it seemed like one of the reasons they suspected him was because his moves followed a computer model too closely. Doesn't that mean the computer has the "right" move throughout the entire game? Or is that only true at the end of the game?
No, it’s just that computers are incomparable superior to human players by now. So a computer will play better than a human player, but that doesn’t mean it’s solved by any means, and there is a meta competition between chess algorithms to see who is superior.
Orgasms. (Let me know if this is too nsfw for this topic, I assume non-erotic or graphic discussion of sexual topics is ok but I will delete if needed.) long story short my body is able to orgasm but it doesn't reach my mind, in a sense, so I really don't "feel" the orgasm as a pleasurable thing. I was wondering for other people how they experience it, why it's pleasurable or desirable to have? Like, I'm content to have sex without it. For those of you who can't go without, why?
Are you on any medications? Mental ones in particular can really mess with the neuroreceptors that make orgasms pleasurable.
Quality makes a difference too. It's very bleh to masturbate, but with a quality partner its quite a different story.
I've been on and off various SSRIs for years, as well as Adderall. In a recent year long stretch without being on any antidepressant medication, this issue still persisted(though, the things around it such as libido did improve I would say) so I'm guessing it's just something about how my brain is wired.
You're totally right though, the experience improves tenfold for me,orgasm or no, if I am with a good partner. Set and setting as well!
Yea SSRIs are great medications, but they definitely have their share of interactions.
In a similiar vein, I started with a variety of of medications after a psychosis episode, and now getting drunk doesn't have the same feel to it, kind of just mild buzz whether I'm drinking 2 drinks or 8. Even though I've been off those particular meds for years.
Oh, yes I understand. I have a similar thing with how trying lsd changed my experience with weed. It's subtle but it does feel different now, and it in general makes me so curious as to how that actually happened in the brain(this phenomenon of taking one medication changing how your body experiences another drug). How in the world does that work? I'd love to see research on that someday.
Organized religion. I just don't get the appeal.
I Think You Should Leave by Tim Robinson. I don't understand where any funny is in it. I like most other comedy and sketch shows but I have yet to see a skit from that that entices a giggle in the slightest. Is it just "loud man screams" humor that gets people? I just can't wrap my head around it and I generally really like comedy and humor, I just don't see anything in that show that classifies as humor.