Ok so you’re probably correct but I also like seeing the opposite of the usual “omg socialism everyone in NYC is already dead!!!”

Part of that falls under the “don’t show up when invited” umbrella, but mostly that sucks. I’m sorry you feel like your efforts and friendship efforts weren’t appreciated.

I’ve definitely had a couple friends (“friends”) that were lopsided. I remember posting about one way back in the 2000s on some web forum, and a guy with a otter(?) avatar told me “This guy, that flakes on your plans and only shows up when it works for him? He doesn’t respect you. Don’t put up with that”. Good advice from a small furry animal, I think.

Some people just aren’t worth it. Maybe they were in the past. Maybe they will be again. But I find it’s important to have boundaries for oneself. It can be hard to balance.

I always wanted to get one of my lawyer friends to play a devil in a DND game I ran. Just have him write the worst contracts for the players that are more air tight than I can come up with.

A lot of our behaviors and coping mechanisms come from our parents. So if they’re lonely and have no friends, you should examine why that is, and try to change it in yourself.

One of my friends realized after therapy they had a lot of behaviors from their dad. Stuff they hated when their dad did (lashing out when uncomfortable, mostly). Once they saw it, they were able to work on it. Before that, it had been a real source of friction with friendships.

Hah, a different ex that I’m still friends with responded with “you rank us??”

No, there’s not a full ranking. I’m still good friends with 2, there’s a lot of ones I have no hard feelings about, and then there’s this one stinker.

The other day I had to use a browser without any plugins to go to a site, and it was unrecognizable with all the ads. When I normally visit it’s clean and simple. These ads pushed content under the fold. Horrible.

“go home and look at Instagram” is largely a stand-in for “I’m tired and can’t muster the energy to do anything that feels more effortful”.

In my limited experience, the trick to getting out of the hole is doing the hard thing anyway. That and professional advice and medication as appropriate. You can’t to my knowledge willpower your way out of clinical depression. But ultimately if you want out of the hole, you have to climb out, regardless if that means therapy, medication, or being mildly uncomfortable. It’s not going to fix itself.

I usually recommend Meetup or similar. There’s a bunch that are just get togethers for board games or whatnot.

But you have to keep going. I think people expect to like go once and make a new best friend and partner. You usually need a lot of interactions to level up from “stranger” to “person I see sometimes” to friend.

I also ran a small meetup for a while before the pandemic. Made a few friends that way, but it’s a lot of thankless work.

Additionally they have to have time to play it.

And money to buy it! Wages are down. I was unemployed for a while so I just didn’t buy any games (or much else)

I leave reviews when the game does something exceptional (good or bad). Or sometimes when steam nags me to leave a review.

It’s funny: if you leave a negative review and keep playing it asks you if you want to change your review.

Been living without a car for (oh no I’m old) almost two decades. It’s pretty great. NYC is a rare city in the US with good public transit.

I wouldn’t willingly move somewhere that needed a car for day to day. I don’t care if it’s a little cheaper or there’s “more space”. I like density and walking places.

I comment. Reminds me of how I’d end up playing medic in tfc/tf2- someone has to do it.

I don’t post original stuff often, though.

I’m reminded of two coworkers. One I could just ask to do something and he would do a generally reasonable job of it. The other would make weird choices and introduce problems. Reviewing the latter’s work was sometimes worse than just doing it myself from the start.

Did a one shot in high school where to cast any spell you had to sing a relevant line from an extant song.

I don’t remember everyone’s picks, but one player pulled out a pretty enthusiastic Beatles’ “got to admit it’s getting better, getting better all the time” for a heal.

I feel like a lot of people who bemoan the lack of friends also don’t invest in friendship. Don’t show up when invited, don’t organize anything themselves.

I used to run a book club and a board game club, and it was always kind of a struggle to get people to show up. The pull of “just go home and look at Instagram” is strong, I guess.

Many years ago I had to explain to a coworker how progressive taxation works. He was like “that’s a great idea! We should do that! It’s stupid that now your pay goes up but you take home less because you get taxed more”

I had to tell him, yes it is a good idea. It’s how it works now. You don’t get more pay and suddenly your whole income is taxed more.

He’d had no idea

I only learned like last year that you can keep convening grand juries until you get one that indicts. Seems kind of strange to me

Arcanum is good shit. I played that so many times when it came out.

• straight damage dealing mage
• beat with an ugly stick orc fighter
• gun jerk
• charismatic elf girl who got everyone else to fight for her, talked the final boss down.

I think maxing out time magic and backstab might have been the wackiest. Got like 90 action points and everyone else got 4. Stab stab stab stab.

I did a lot of stupid stuff as a teenager but most of it is forgotten.

Someone tricked me into stealing my unique gloves in diablo2 once. Felt real stupid after but they just blocked me and I never saw them again. (I think it was that if you die when the item was being moved it drops onto the ground, so they told me to swap my gloves in a pvp fight and then killed me)

I had an ex partner get upset because I used a period at the end of an innocuous text. This is among the reasons why they are my least favorite ex. Just a mess of anxiety and arrogance, where they’d worry about bullshit but be completely convinced that they were right and their way of thinking about things was the only sensible way.

Unfortunately they’re still distantly connected to the friend group, but luckily I haven’t run into them in years.