I haven’t bought into it or anything, but I followed the development for a while in the 2010s because I was really excited for what they showed.

Speaking personally, I just want a game that would let me feel immersed in a spacefaring future human civilization. I’m never gonna live to see that. So, I’d like a game where I can at least pretend.

EvE doesn’t work for me. I’m not interested in spreadsheets, and I want to be able to fly my ship instead of just clicking to move (I assume that’s still how it controls? I only played briefly in the 2000s)

Starfield is…Starfield. I just appreciate that they tried something, honestly. No Man’s Sky seems pretty neat, although I don’t really know what you do in that game outside of just collecting resources. I need to try it sometime.

Elite Dangerous is great. It comes the closest to scratching the itch. Zooming through the galaxy looking for different astral phenomena and sights to see is a really chill way to spend an afternoon. But, it only really gets so deep. The space legs (I mean, the Odyssey expansion) only do so much to make you feel present. Space stations and outposts really only consist of two or three different layouts of one big room with the same shops. Settlements mostly only exist to be mission objectives. You get 8 guns and 3 pistols to choose from. That’s about it. Not super immersive once you step outside of your ship (personally speaking).

But, pretty much the main thing they’ve been trying to accomplish with Star Citizen is to make it the most immersive experience they can. It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? You get to play at a citizen of an interstellar civilization. That’s the idea. I’m not sure if that’s the reality.

So, yeah. Speaking personally, I’ve got a dream I’ll never see realized, and (it feels like) no one stepping up to offer a proper simulation. I imagine a lot of folks are clinging to Star Citizen out of desperate hope, since there’s not really a proper alternative if it ever goes away.

What the fuck? These assholes stole my catchphrase

I have learned to circumvent this issue by simply never being important enough to be invited to formal events.

It’s worked well thus far, though nobody seems to notice.

I would agree with this. The rational part of me likes to try and eat a sandwich in a 3x3 grid of bites, right-to-left, working my way downward.

But, I’m a wacky, inconsistent li’l bitch, so it almost never works out that way. But, I don’t think I ever exceed 12 bites. That’s a pretty solid ballpark range.

Considering the question posed was, “Am I insensitive to the world if…,” I will politely say the answer is “Yes,” and impolitely say, “you huge dipshit.”

“Hey, man! Glad you could make it! Can I get you anything? Some chips, some pretzels, an entire baguette, maybe some iced tea or something?”

Damn. I always felt bad enough for women with big boobs having to deal with the back pain, but I never considered that they might jingle, too.

As a certified Orange Enjoyer, it always perplexed me how other kids were always so ready to trade away their orange Starburst.

As someone who also thinks the pink ones are way overrated, though, it ultimately didn’t matter to me, because li’l me was out there making some deals

Wasn’t so long ago that someone would get laughed out of a room for taking the internet this seriously. People never planned for the inevitability of the internet being central to modern life, and, years later, here we are.

So, to whomever needs to hear it: Maybe start taking things like what this person is saying a little more seriously going forward.

Look, I respect your right to be how you are, but keep it in your church. I don’t need to see it everywhere I go, and I damn sure don’t want it anywhere near me. I don’t have a problem with you, but if you try any of that God shit on me, I’m gonna put you on your ass, bro.

It was the threat of the bartender reaching for the bat. If the nazi didn’t think there was a chance he’d actually use it, the threat wouldn’t work.

The threat of violence is a deterrent to keep nazis from getting too bold, thinking they can do what they want without repercussion.

Some people think the threat of violent response is overreaction to someone who’s just expressing their ideas. As a bisexual man, I think it’s a pretty even response when those ideas are “hey, what if we rounded up you and everyone like you and marched you off to death camps?”

At the very least, you can never let them believe that you’ll just roll over and let them do it.

Probably a bug I was saving for dinner? I don’t anticipate I’ll have a whole lot to bring with me at that point.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is one that’s very pertinent to my life right now.

So, I was a pretty dedicated musician in my younger years, but I’ve never quite gotten around to learning how to produce music digitally. Recently, I’ve been trying to learn. Thing is, since I’m in my early 30s, I’m only just now hitting that age where my neuroplasticity isn’t what it was when I was 20, and learning things is starting to become noticeably a little more difficult.

So, that’s where I think the expression comes from. You get older, you try to learn something new, you underestimate how much more difficult learning that new thing is at your current age (because, honestly, you have no way to gauge how hard it’ll be until you’re doing it), the challenge gets the better of you, and now you have to admit defeat.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is basically a different way of saying “No, no! I’m not owned!! I didn’t lose!!!” It’s a way of shielding oneself from the sting of defeat by framing it as “well, that’s just the way things are when you’re older.” It’s not that you couldn’t rise up to the challenge of learning. You just cannot teach old dogs new tricks, and that’s a fact. Don’t you hear people say that all the time? Why would people say it so much if it weren’t true? So, yeah. I didn’t lose. I’m not owned.

It’s an especially harsh process when you’re learning to do something related to something you already know really well, and struggling with it, like I am with music production. It makes you question how well you really knew that thing in the first place. But, like I said, I’m only in my early 30s. If I were 60 and struggling to learn a new way to do something I’ve been doing my whole life, I’m sure it’d be wayyy more demoralizing. I’m sure I’d want to guard my feelings from that.

So, I get why the expression exists. I just don’t think it holds any real weight. People treat it like it’s some fact of life, but it’s just an excuse. You’ve just gotta keep pushing, be prepared to accept failure when it rears its ugly head, and then muster the energy to get back up and get back on as many times as you can before you’re beat. Easier said than done, though.

Damn, I have almost the exact same answer. Switched to Steam once WON got taken down (held out as long as I could), and had a friend send me a Gmail invite a few months later.

Only differences are that I mostly used mine for TFC, and my account won’t technically hit drinking age until early next month.

I kinda wish I could say I had like a bottle of liquor I’ve been saving for the occasion, but the idea of a “21-year-old Steam account” genuinely never occurred to me until one day I woke up and realized it was about to turn 18. Made me realize how fast shit moves, and this is just driving the point home…

I used to mix it in with fried rice that’d been left sitting out for too long and turned really dry. Gives it some moisture and a vinegary edge, but probably not for everyone, since ketchup’s trademark is stomping all over the subtle flavors of a dish.

When I was in elementary school, I’d dip my pizza crusts in ketchup at lunchtime. I still do that every now and then with Sriracha ketchup

Also, same elementary school lunch: on pizza days, they also used to give us a side of tricolor fusilli straight-up. Just plain pasta without even so much as a little olive oil. So, fuck it. It got blasted with 'chup.

It’s true. Once, when I was visiting Kyoto, I actually forgot how to eat, and a kind elderly man held me and tenderly bottle-fed me. I didn’t even ask him to.

I’m biased towards Y2K from the nostalgia, since those were the prime years of my childhood right before my teenage years kicked in.

But, I love the design of that time because of how obsessed with futurism everything was. It took the future chic look of the mid-late '60s and revamped it, taking that hype for the future- with the Space Race- bringing it back, and updating it for the Information Age.

It felt like we, as a society, had so much optimism for the world that was to come. So, if anything, I think that’s what I’m mostly nostalgic for. I was so excited to grow up in that world. Damn.