Robert Silverberg’s “The man in the maze” is a cool science-fiction book based on the Greek play Philoctetes. Iirc it’s a very short story (maybe about one or two hundred pages), I don’t remember the exact length but I recall reading it in one sitting. It is a very character-driver story where the “maze” itself is an allegory about mankind, isolation and disability, but it is very much enjoyable as a casual read as well.

The protagonist (“man in the maze”) is an astronaut who has been somehow cursed to always radiate its emotions in such a way that others, even his family, find repulsive, so he self-exiles to a remote and long-dead planet to live the rest of his life in isolation. But when an alien species makes hostile contact with humans, he is needed again, as his “curse” is the only way to properly communicate with them and maybe convince them that humans are sentient beings and thus their equals.

I’m Italian. School explains all there is to know about sex and stuff, so I never needed the “talk” with my parents. I also had a bigger brother that would tell me everything way before the time lol

About drugs, I think I already got everything from TV? I certainly didn’t need my parents explaining to me that drugs are bad.

EDIT: For those curious about how/when SexEd is taught in school in Italy: I had SexEd in my 5th year of elementary school (10yo), 3rd year of middle school (13 yo) and again in high school (I think it was the second year, so 15 yo, and then in my fourth year as well, when I was 17 yo). My parents were required to consent to the school teaching us SexEd only in elementary school; no consent form was required from middle school onwards, it was mandatory.

And I think that drugs were discussed in school as well. I think in middle and high school, around the same time as SexEd.

Oversexualization. Panty shots, ass shots, boob physics, the same old jokes from the ‘80s about a guy “accidentally” groping a woman, guys peeping into a girls’ space, suggestive poses, barely-disguised fetishes (included, but not limited to, harems, incest and pedophilia).

It got to the point where a friend would recommend an anime, I’d watch it, and walk away halfway through the first or second episode because it was just unbearable. Friends would tell me to turn a blind eye, but why the fuck should I put up with sexualizing minors in a show? I’d rather spend my time doing something that doesn’t make me feel sick.

It also attracts the wrong kind of audience. Since the medium is so keen to produce oversexualized content, that’s all people look for and talk about. Any anime discussion thread degenerates into gross memes about “flat is justice”, “twincest is wincest”, people patting each other in the shoulder while calling the other “man of culture” for sharing their kinks, and shit like that. It’s so extenuating that, back when I was interested in the medium, I still actively refrained from interacting with fellow fans because I felt grossed out by them. Fun fact, I had a female classmate back in highschool who was interested in anime, and I thought that I could find common grounds with her, but no, it was the same thing, just reversed (she would only watch anime with sexualised boys).

The medium also forgot what its name stands for. I haven’t seen “animation” in “anime” in years. It’s just still frames and more still frames and whenever there’s an action sequence, the characters will constantly interrupt them to explain or think about the thing that I’m already watching and needs no explanation, or having flashback sequences, because it’s cheaper to animate. The fact that Ghost in the Shell and Akira from thirty years ago had better and more fluid animation than the shit they produce now is just sad.

Oh boy. Just one?

I guess I’d go with “signing up to a random online forum back in 2012”.

I was a very shy and introverted kid back then, without friends or social life to speak of. I would spend all my time playing videogames and reading books.

That online forum gave me a chance to speak to other people while staying “safe” in my shell. Without realising it, I slowly gained confidence and social skills that helped me make friends both online and irl, some of whom I still speak with to to this day. Thanks to one of the people I knew on that forum, I now have a job that I like.

I wouldn’t recommend online forums nowadays to fight depression/lack of social skills, as the internet has become a cesspool. Online chats are breeding grounds for political extremists. But in my case it definitely helped.

A close second would be having a girl in college confessing to me. I had never really thought about my sexuality back then: it just wasn’t on my mind, like, ever (which should’ve been a red flag, but whatever). She was really nice and wasn’t pushy at all, but I knew that I couldn’t leave her hanging forever, and I had to give her an honest answer in a relatively short time.

Well, long story short, I realized I wasn’t straight. At first I thought I was bi, then gay, but a few years later I understood that I am ace (again, should’ve been obvious by the fact that I literally never thought about sex for the entirety of my teenage years, but I’m dumb).

But seriously, there are so many important moments in one’s life, it’s difficult to choose only one or two. Watching nature documentaries with my brother as a kid turned me into a huge animal lover, to the point that I’m literally unable to kill a fly because it makes me sick. Thanks bro, those are some of my most treasured memories!

The brothers Grimm for me. I don’t see many people discussing it online, but I enjoyed it. That scene where the horse eats a kid is still distressing to me years later.

I recently bought a Jabra Elite 2 for €60. They have great sound quality and active noise canceling. I also recommend them.

I’ve always used headphones though, so I don’t have experience with other earbuds to compare them to the competition.

I’m not a pet owner anymore, unfortunately, but I have a few to share.

My first dog was able to recognize the sound of my father’s car from the street, and would make sure that everyone in the entire building knew that she recognised the sound. She would bark from the moment the car appeared on the street, until my father was at home. We eventually managed to convince her to bark a little less, but even then, she would still bark a few times. Problem is, my father would frequently come back from work late at night!

My second dog loved to jump. Like, seriously, he was the world champion of jumping. He didn’t know how to run, he trotted and jumped to gain speed. When somebody entered our home, he would come to them and jump around them. A lot. Sometimes we were forced to put him in another room and close the door so that he wouldn’t greet our guests. He was very dumb. A very playful fella, though.

I can relate to that. I recently went to the cinema alone to see Godzilla Minus One, because none of my friends and relatives were interested. Watched big lizard smash things. Felt happy for the rest of the day.

Same for me. I browsed Reddit exclusively for a bunch of small but active communities about books and niche games or shows. Most of those either don’t have a place on Lemmy, or the place they have is a ghost town. Too little posts, and even fewer engagement. I frequently see posts with upvotes in the single digits and zero comments.

I don’t plan on going back to Reddit, but at the same time I don’t think that Lemmy is a valid substitute yet. Maybe it’s also a problem of discoverability? Like, I heard of Lemmy during the APIcalypse, but I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere else, and I don’t know how a normal person looking for a community online is supposed to find Lemmy, or even learn the existence of it.

I see mobile games as the natural evolution of flash games from the old days. I used to spend my time playing those games and I had fun, but I would never insist on them being the best experience I’ve ever had in gaming. They were just cute games to spend some time on. To use your examples, Minigore is just like Boxhead. It may be fun but there’s nothing “genius” or ground-breaking about it.

In the end, gaming is just an experience, and our emotional attachment to it decides our rating. I hardly care about Call of Duty, but the people who spent their childhood playing online with friends rate it as one of their best/most formative gaming experiences. Surprise, people’s opinions on things are subjective.

By the way, as you’re the same guy who dunked on Uncharted, The last of us, God of war and Witcher for being games that rely too much on story exposition and have too little gameplay, you seem to have a preference for games with zero/near zero story and offer immediate gratification via gameplay. That’s also a characteristic that lots of mobile games share, so that may shape your preference as well.

Personally, I rate mobile games very low because I hate their monetization and I despise touch controls.

I am literally unable to remember people’s faces. If you talk to me, go for a walk, and come back ten minutes later, I won’t recognize you.

Once, the guy who sat next to me at university for two years, and with whom I spent countless time together, took the same bus as me. I hopped on the bus, saw him, and my brain told me “Uh, that’s kind of a familiar face, I guess”. I smiled to him (because he looked familiar), then I passed him and and went to sit some rows behind.

He’s made fun of me ever since.

The worst thing is, I work at the front desk of a hotel. I always struggle to remember who’s who. Sometimes I recognize their shirt, their hair, their voice, or I see a family with two kids and remember “oh yeah, they’re from room 210”. But most of the time, I must ask them to remind me which room they are, even if they checked-in just ten minutes before.

Agreed. This has nothing to do with advertisers. It’s about creating a community where hate speech is not allowed. Free speech doesn’t include nazi, transphobes and the likes.

I second Summit.

Very active developer, he just released mod tools and multi communities. I spent years browsing Reddit with Relay and felt miserable with every other Lemmy app, but with Summit, I felt right at home.

You can’t just say “Perchance”