I’m surprised no one has tried to give any dating advice here. OP, regardless of the virginity thing, do you want to find a romantic partner? It’s entirely reasonable to want both romance and sex.

Here’s what’s worked for me:

• Figure out what kind of person your ideal partner would be, what their interests are, and where they would hang out.
• Put yourself in places where you’re likely to meet that kind of person. For example, if you’re looking for someone that likes the outdoors and staying physically active, maybe look for a hiking group in your area.
• Be confident, and be chill. If you’re neither, fake it until you are.

That’s the basic outline. If you’re meeting people that are sort of like what you’re looking for, but not quite, that’s an indication that you’re on the right track and should keep at it. Dating is a grind and requires patience.

In terms of confidence/chill, that means:

• Assuming that someone you’re interested in could also be attracted to you, instead of just assuming they aren’t.
• Handling rejection gracefully.
• Not keeping your desires a secret, but also having the patience not to dump everything on them all at once. If you want to be sexual, be lightly flirty with them, and see if they respond in kind. If they do, then you can gradually escalate along those lines.
• Not requiring constant attention from them. Give them a chance to miss you. Don’t feel the need to respond to that text right away, for example. Wait 10 minutes or so, then respond. This lets them know that you don’t expect immediate responses, and they can get back to you later if they’re busy. It also slows the pace of conversation down, so that you don’t run out of things to talk about.

The human shield narrative is a whole other level of mental gymnastics for me. Is there something in the water preventing people from understanding militants are people and people live in houses and houses are typically built next to other houses?

I’m pretty sure that that’s something that the average person just does not understand. As both an anarchist and a proponent of civilian firearm ownership, I’ve seen and participated in many discussions with people saying that “there’s no way you can fight the government, they have tanks/bombers/nukes/etc”. Like they think the government is just going to do precision drone strikes on all the insurgents and then it’ll be over. The inevitability of “collateral damage” doesn’t occur to them, and they have no idea how insurgencies work.

People on NCD probably do know better, but some have picked a side, and confirmation bias takes over from there.

I’ve also been a lurker there. The pager memes were pretty fucking disgusting. There’s definitely a sizable “rah rah Israel” contingent there, despite the community leaning more leftward than one would expect given the subject matter.

Personally, I think the term ‘anarchy’ works against them because of its literal meaning and its connotations.

It does, but there isn’t much we can do about it. Its literal meaning (an-archos, no rulers) is exactly what we want, so we have to die on that hill.

The “bad” meaning of anarchy comes from what most people think would happen without some kind of ruler in charge of society. So if we were to largely switch to some other term, people would start to view that more negatively the more it caught on. Even “libertarian socialism” is pretty awkward, given the connotations of “socialism” in the mainstream.

Just picking a random point in this giant thread to chime in. I am an anarchist who is sometimes capable of being serious. So if you want to pick my brain, as PugJesus suggested, feel free.

One thing that I feel I should point out in regards to this particular comment is that anarchists do not advocate for creating power vacuums. Generally speaking, we advocate for people to self-govern in a much more direct way than representative democracy allows for. We urge the creation of voluntary institutions for managing social coordination, shaped by the needs of their members. We want to get rid of positions of power in ways that don’t result in a power vacuum, because people have their needs met and are no longer looking for guidance from a strongman.

We also (usually) recognize that our ideal isn’t going to be perfectly achievable, but we instead seek to get closer to that ideal as we discover new ways to practically do so.

I see that you read a summary of Kropotkin’s ideas, which is cool. He was an anarcho-communist specifically, which is probably the most popular anarchist tendency. I tend to advocate for mutualism, in part because I think it’s easier to understand for people that are accustomed to how capitalist societies function. The short, very oversimplified version is: abolish absentee ownership, create an economy of cooperatives, and gradually replace government institutions with more co-ops.

There’s sometimes tension between the different strains of anarchism, but usually we recognize that we’re all working towards roughly the same thing. Any future anarchist society is likely to be a patchwork of various frameworks serving different groups of people who have different preferences.

Lesser evilism is bannable because it’s still supporting evil.

I’m not going to weigh in on the original bans (contrary to the purpose of this community, I know). However, this is a pretty distinct third-partyist talking point. The “vote swapping programs” thing from your comment further downthread is also straight out of the third-party playbook.

Don’t you feel kind of weird to be pushing the third-party stuff as aggressively as you are, as an anarchist? Like, I’m not big on anarcho-purity tests, but you do understand that all our arguments against the effectiveness of electoralism apply just as much against supporting third parties, if not more so, right?

It seems like maybe Lemmy’s cadre of third party cranks and tankies may have warped your perspective a bit. Personally, I think we should be trying to avoid antagonizing the liberals unless it’s going to result in some sort of concrete benefit. They’re our largest pool of potential recruits, and even short of that they’re amenable to a number of our ideas. Catch more flies with honey etc etc.

That whole thing where people are coming from the wider community and just talking trash to the minority because they’re a minority, sounds like a strawman to me.

It does happen, but it’s mainly on posts that got popular for some other reason, like a meme post (or a Greta Thunburg quote, in this case) that resonates with a wider audience than just the minority community. With the extra upvotes, it becomes more widely visible to “the great dismissive majority”. Some portion of them will feel compelled to comment that “minority viewpoint is stupid”, or what have you.

Depending on what kind of community we’re talking about, they may also be the target of sustained harassment campaigns. This is more common with LGBTQ+ communities, for example.

“Waiter, this drama is dry as a bone. I specifically asked for medium-rare.”

I got banned, and then unbanned less than 10 minutes later. I had suggested that nuke should take a break and calm down. Not really a non-snarky way to say that without sucking up, so I just went for it, knowing what would probably happen.

NCD hasn’t updated on piefed.social since then, so it looks like Rimu might be of the same mind as Ada on this. I don’t blame either of them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Some anime meme communities:

• !anime_irl@ani.social
• !animemes@ani.social
• !animenocontext@reddthat.com
• !yurimemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone

“But I bought those properties with my INHERITANCE MONEY. They’re MINE. These peasants should be grateful that I’m PROVIDING them with housing!”

And that’s true, but I think it’s important to note that Trump is a symptom, not the disease itself. The disease is his base, and the corruption of their belief in democracy. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel like we’ll see this level of politics for a while more.

It goes both ways, really. You’re right in that Trump couldn’t have gotten elected without the existence of that reactionary base. That’s always existed in American politics, though its strength has varied over time. However, his presence in politics energizes them, and inspires them to organize and spread their propaganda, while also serving as a powerful propaganda mouthpiece himself.

You’re also right that Trump’s exit from politics won’t calm things down right away. Hopefully his movement won’t find a new Fuhrer figure, though that’s always a possibility.

I’d been trying to promote gun ownership and training among left leaning folks since early 2016. Took various friends and Facebook randoms to the range and taught them to shoot. Have had motivation issues with that project for a while though.

Cheapest option is an assault 12 gauge.

I don’t think I’ve come across any “assault shotguns”, but maybe you’re referring to the “tactical” variants? They’ll typically come in black rather than wooden or camo pattern, have shorter barrels, and hold more ammo when compared with hunting shotguns.

It’s important to note that shotguns aren’t super beginner friendly, though they’re probably the most financially accessible option for home defense. One piece of advice I would give is to look up what “cheek weld” is when using a shotgun (in additional to general safety and usage info). We’re also pretty late in the game here for those that are worried about election-related violence, since developing marksmanship skills takes time. Better late than never though, just try to get at least one range trip in so that you can familiarize yourself with the basics.

Not looking to turn this into a guns thread, since that wouldn’t be very useful for the OP. If anyone has any questions on the subject, you could make a post in one of these communities, and I (and probably others) can give advice:

• !guns@lemmy.world
• !socialistra@midwest.social
• !armedqweers@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Are the liberals going to stop being annoying if anarchists write enough impassioned comments about how voting is in fact NOT infinitesimally good, but is ACTUALLY infinitesimally bad?

Seriously y’all, move on. This doesn’t matter. You definitely have better things to do with your time, even if it’s just idle leisure. Go, be free. Let anarchist voting discourse chain you no more.

At what point will anarchists stop bikeshedding about voting?

Apparently we need Leninists to tell us how to be anarchists. It’s a good thing TheOubliette is here to show us the light and encourage us to enlighten ourselves by reading theory that Marx, Lenin, and other comrades have so generously blessed us with. /s

Funny enough, the highest concentration of actual anarchists I’ve seen is on hexbear

Good joke, comrade.

Hexbear anarchists are sus, all two of them. I won’t say they’re categorically not anarchists, but I’m going to be automatically suspicious of any anarchist that loves hanging out with Leninists.

I miss 90’s techno-libertarian utopianism. A little naive in retrospect, but I’m holding out hope that it’ll still have some relevance going forward.

Yes, I block lemmy.ml communities when I notice them, just because I don’t want to accidentally contribute anything to that instance. Some of the users are okay, but the admins are not.