Thankful for y’all
American Thanksgiving was yesterday, so I get a nice long weekend. My husband and I spent yesterday with family, while today has been us chilling with our dog while enjoying canned cocktails and delicious leftovers.
In the spirit of the holiday (and speaking on behalf of the drinks I’ve consumed) I want to let everyone know that I’m happy this place exists and is filled with kind, thoughtful people. Tildes is marked by a coziness that, I believe, is largely missing across the modern internet.
I like recognizing people’s usernames and getting to know them. I like the slower pace of things here. I like that people put in effort. It feels good.
I know we’re all random internet nobodies inhabiting a tiny, niche corner of the web, but I’m happy I get to share this space with y’all. What luck that we ended up here, together.
Cheers, everyone. 🍻 Thanks for being awesome.
Tildes is the warm fire and frosty drink at the end of a long day. Grateful to have this place and all of you, even if I don't post as much as others.
:) I recognize your posts and am very glad you're around for different topics, especially early childhood education.
Tildes really is the warm fire cozy blanket well stuff but still soft couch of the internet, because of everyone. All the different perspectives reminds me of a ski lodge games room.
Y'all rock, and I'm always looking forward to what's new on Tildes. We may be a bunch of random internet nobodies, but dammit, we're our bunch of random internet nobodies!
Tildes feels like a bar/pub that's only accessible through a hidden staircase on a busy high street. I've not been here for long but I also like the cozy feeling of it all. Given my age, the majority of my time I've spent talking to strangers online is on social media sites where the discourse is steadily decreasing in quality. It's nice to head to a slower niche 2000s forum-era website where people make an effort to be a part of a community.
I, too, am very grateful for this space, and to all of you who make it up. Whereas I often tease on the day of, to those who understand the reality of U.S. history, and say, "Happy genocide day!" I will admit, however, there is real merit in reflecting on gratitude as a cultural tradition. Thank you for being a part of my life.
Hear hear! Our budding community is fostered in no small part by creative efforts from posters such as yourself kfwyre, so I'm thankful for you all.
I hope all of our celebrating Tildeans enjoyed the holiday, family, and festivities.
Thankful to the community on this site too. This year has been an insane roller-coaster for me and I wouldn't have been able to make it through the year without some the support from the people on here.
Ditto. I've said it plenty of time in the past that I love this place and all the users here, and I really do mean it. This is the only social media site I ever socially interact with people on now. It's my refuge away from the rest of them, with their festering, troll-ravaged, incredibly toxic cultures. So I'm genuinely grateful for Tildes' existence, and also all the kind, thoughtful people here who populate it (yourself included, @kfwyre, especially so given all your incredible contributions and our wonderful conversations over the years).
I honestly shudder to think what I would be like now if @Deimos hadn't create this place, and I was still stuck with reddit as my primary online social outlet. I don't know exactly when it started happening, since it wasn't like that when I first joined reddit, but after a certain point (probably around the time /r/TheDonald showed up?) every year I spent on there I felt myself becoming a significantly worse person; I had become constantly angry at nearly everything and everyone, my heart had filled with genuine hatred, and as a result of that I was lashing out (online and IRL) more and more frequently. And even after totally disconnecting myself from reddit and migrating here, it still took me a long long time to heal from the damage that reddit had done to my psyche, to my personality, and to my behavior patterns. :(
I know you're busy elsewhere IRL these days and so not very socially active on here yourself anymore, @Deimos, but I really do need you to know how (and why) I'm forever going to be grateful to you for creating this place. I hope you feel immense pride in this site, since it's incredibly well deserved, IMO. You've manage to create and, through sheer force of will, sustain a shining beacon of hope and oasis of calm amidst the toxic wasteland that is the modern social media landscape.
When I tell people about Tildes, it's hard to sell them on a place small enough to recognize usernames, thoughtful enough to care and broad enough in interests to feel like an actual community.
In an era where low effort, base emotion posts litter the landscape, I'll echo these sentiments. As @blackforest said, this is the best Cheers pub above the large chain beer hall I've ever been to.
It’s so strange. That’s one of the things that I liked the most about socializing on the internet. If you aren’t learning things about people, is it really socializing?
To me it just feels like venting. So many top level posts, pity parties or rage trains in some topics.
This isn't to undermine the importance of empathy, whether that sympathetic responses or adding to a critical argument, but so many Reddit, Facebook and other social network comments are messages unconnected to the topic.
They're purely a chance for users to vent about the boogeyman du jour.