For me it’s driving while under the influence. If you couldn’t tell, I like me some ganja. However I have long since held the belief that it is utterly insane to drive while under the influence of most substances, with maybe nicotine and caffeine being the exception. All too often I see other stoners smoking and driving, which I simply can’t fathom. I’ve only operated a vehicle once under the influence and it was just to move a U-Haul around the block to a different parking spot, which was such a scary experience while high that I refuse to even consider getting behind the wheel again while high.
Car culture constantly being irreversibly intertwined with a bunch of right wing redneck bullshit. Its so pervasive that I have to actively avoid most social media car content because it will inevitably contain or be filled with comments of “FJB”, “cry about it liberal”, “Trump 2024”, and repeats of 500 anti gay/trans statements that have literally nothing to do with cars. And if I subscribe to any of it on a mainstream platform, my entire recommended feed instantly gets filled with a bunch of Andrew Tate chud sexism content and a constant barrage of other nazified political spam.
I’m here cause I like things on wheels with vroom engine, not your political pisstakes. Christ. I can barely even go to local car meets either because almost all of the boomers that gatekeep such events can’t get 3 words out of their mouth without jumping into a Great Replacement conspiracy. Fuck my life this hobby is a hellhole.
As a result I mostly keep to myself, drive my little shitboxes out in the forest, and work on a couple Goofy ahh engine swap projects without talking to anyone else.
And yes, I’m calling gonna call them a racist if they think the confederate flag belongs on the roof of an orange 1969 Dodge Charger (or on the front license plate cover of Generic Pickup Truck #99,412). I don’t give a shit that Dukes of Hazzard was a car culture classic. Get fucked lol.
I feel your pain, I’m a trans woman and cars and motorcycles have been my hobby since I was a teenager but I avoid most car meets like the plague. The import scene seems to be a lot better than the classic and muscle car scenes but there’s still a fair bit of right-wing bs. I do find it hilarious when I roll up somewhere in my classic jeep and notice some maga chud oogling it, the look on their faces when I step out is priceless.
Oh yeah I feel a weird version of this, ugh. See, I’m a big fan of going places and I like complicated mechanical toys and I guess I actually know a lot of deep down details about cars especially after a year or so stint doing car-related tech things, but I’m also an environmentalist who hates cars.
So, like, goofy engine swap projects, actually racing the damn sports car, actually taking the SUV off road to see something cool, details required to engineer a V12 sports car that doesn’t spin out, et al are all interesting to me but then literally everything to do with car culture seems like folks who are driving their super-fancy tuned vehicle in a traffic jam wasting gas spouting right wing BS.
This was explained to me as being a car person vs a “car person” by a friend who mentioned what giant douchebags car people are, in a group chat with her best friends who are extreme car nerds.
I know it’s getting into a sort of strawman/“No True Scotsman” realm, but I’ve definitely noticed it at a lot of car meets unfortunately. There are a lot of people who are very much attracted purely to the idea that “fast loud vroom car will make me attractive as a person”, and those tend to be the assholes who buy a $100k sports car that they won’t even take to a local autocross, and will use it solely to terrorize people in surrounding neighborhoods.
On the other hand, there are people who get excited seeing basically any interesting car. It doesn’t matter if it’s slow and cheap and isn’t flashy, it’s just a unique car and that should always be exciting to see.
My stepfather very much falls into the 1st category, and going to Woodward (absolutely massive car show/cruise in Detroit) was absolutely painful. He would shit on basically every car that went by, and on the rare occasion a flashy supercar drove by, would be like “I bet my car is just as fast”. He’s had multiple very nice sports cars, and I’ve invited him numerous times to autocross/track events, but he refuses it every time questioning why he’d want to. He’d much rather be an idiot doing 3x the speed limit on backroads than just take it to any one of the many nearby track events. Absolute numpty
I imagine going to a track for someone like your stepfather is a rather vulnerable experience. Odds are higher that he might run into someone with a better car than his compared to just toodling around back roads.
Oh, for sure. Likely, it’s not even going to be a “better” car, it’s going to be a much slower car, but with a better driver. That would be even more galling, to have his flashy sports car passed by some dude in a Miata.
Yeah, like, we’ve got a fairly nice sporty-ish sedan that’s approaching 300k and since we’ve only got one car we kinda have to be ready to buy a new one quickly, I’ve done some of the thought process based on our needs and where we are in life. And the thing is, I like a nice car but I’m unclear on exactly how nice of a car I would actually appreciate driving, given that I don’t like to die or hurt other people, so I’m not going to go 3x the speed limit on some backroad and have never gotten a speeding ticket just that the upgrade from a 1.8L engine ecomony-ish sedan to a 2.5L engine sporty-ish sedan did feel real nice.
Meanwhile, one in-law got a Porsche so another in-law on the same side of the family had to trade in his Audi SUV for roughly the same SUV on the Porsche side and it’s all some douchebag power fantasy.
But, yeah, I like seeing actual-car-persons nerd out because I know enough to get at what they are nerding out about. Joy is much funner than douchebaggery.
This is why I got OUT of the scene. It’s a car. Chill with all the hot takes bruh. I just want to have fun with people that know about cars.
That’s a really fascinating, if depressing insight. I’ve long wondered what it’s like for “normal” (nah, fuck it, just normal) people in subcultures with so much baggage.
Try being someone on the liberal side of the political spectrum who is primarily into the history and engineering of firearms, rather than the power fantasy of “gubmint and libruls better fear muh guns”.
It’s an absolute hellscape and it’s extremely disheartening to start talking with someone and sharing in a common interest, then seeing “FJB” and 1488 bumper stickers. I refuse to let bigots ruin my hobby though, and make an effort to make the hobby as inclusive as possible.
Sounds rotten :-(
It definitely sucks, but there are an increasing number of people like Ian of Forgotten Weapons getting people interested for the same reasons I am, really only getting into the politics from the historical or design perspectives, and always in a very objective manner. I’m also now in a far more liberal area and the local ranges are very inclusive, so that helps immensely.
same with motorcycles!
oh man, some “biker dudes” are the worst dude bros in all mankind. And it’s like they take pride in committing felony moving traffic violations…
I don’t know you, but I love you.
Check out the honda insight forum, they’re pretty chill over there.
I’ve got a few other places I can shoot shit with people who know some about my daily driver/project car maintenance and have largely avoided the bigoty shit, largely due to my low bullshit tolerance and gender identity lol
One of my hobbies is the social deduction game Blood on the Clocktower. Heavy social deduction games will draw certain types of people. Many of the people are very nice and inclusive. Others not so much.
I just played a game with a new group the other night - games usually take about 90 minutes in my experience. These people are all about playing super optimally rather than having fun. I made a sub-optimal play as an evil character, solely to create chaos. This led to mass confusion toward the end of the game. When my play was revealed at the end, people were literally yelling at me.
No one cared that it worked, and evil won, and that I completely followed the rules. I just did something no one would expect because I knew it would cause confusion. Some people take all the fun out of the game.
Well that sucks. My favourite moment in a hidden role game was when a player won by misreading their card and convincing both of us that we were allies at the start. They ended up the only evil player for most of the game and then in the last round after we’d worked together to systematically kill everyone else (all weirdly innocents, we were both feeling guilty by this point), when they finally realised they knew there was no evil player they checked and… killed me. Total madness and a glorious victory for them. How can you be mad at that?!
Jesus, what a bunch of freaks those people sound.
I mean, set aside that you outsmarted them with an unexpected move, but, oh no, you mean the evil side didn’t do things by the book?? Who’da thunk it?
Even my own team was pissed at me because my move was super risky. But because I could see the way people were expecting optimal play, I figured it would work in our favor.
One person said, “WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING SO FUCKING STUPID? YOU THREW YOUR OWN TEAM UNDER THE BUS”
Yeah, but it worked cuz nobody expected anybody would do such a crazy move.
Exactly - really glad it worked out, especially if that’s how the others are going to react! :-)
This is really dumb imo (the other people). My friend and I both like to be agents of chaos sometimes, so when we play Secret Hitler it’s a nightmare because even if we’re not on the same team we just cause so much mayhem and have everyone doubting everything. Isn’t the fun in the chaos and confusion???
In most social deduction games, the point of the minority team is to create confusion, since they have all the information. The majority team is trying to deduce roles, so they benefit from players who telegraph their strategy.
My nerd herd play this game too, the usual suspects are getting to the point where I worry that will be the problem. Right now the main irritation are meme accusations. 2 players dont trust eachother even if prove they are on the same team.
Lieing about being someones grandmother and randomly guessing a role (and getting it right) has ended multiple games. Its gotten to the point we have to just treat some people as agents of chaos even if they arnt on the evil team. Its still very fun and most people get a laugh out of a good play.
I turned the spent fisherman in between the vigor and assassin into the empath in my game. Not a single person believed the spent fish would suddenly get a 2 empath reading. They got read as a minion panicking in final three when the raven keeper was on the block lol.
I was pretty proud of the psych out play.
My recent claim to fame from this past weeks game, winning our groups first psychopath script. I got to play Patrick Bateman and didnt do anything for 3 turns (Our GM kept calling me crazy) because my demon (the Al-hadihkia) handed me the flower girl as a bluff. Convinced the town fool, who had validated their role worked in front of everyone, that I was above board and proceded to axe the philosopher on the last day to win the game for the evil team. The fool still owes me a beer or sandwich.
I’ve never gotten psycho yet, which makes me sad. It looks like so much fun to play.
I think playing as a minion is the most fun, demons are too stressful and outsiders usually mean your paranoid or intentionally throw yourself under the bus for the good team.
Some of the most fun I’ve had has been playing the Baron. Just getting to sew as much discord as possible early game, and if I die? Oh well. I once managed to get into 3 double claims on day one and somehow didn’t get executed till day 3 lol.
I’ve got quite the game collection, and that kind of competitive behavior annoys the hell out of me.
If I’m learning a game, I stumble along, take my turns, and figure out how everything works as we go through the process. I don’t expect to win, and if I do, it’s probably because I got some lucky rolls/draws.
I have a few friends/family that get angry when they aren’t winning, and nothing pisses me off during a game more than that.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with getting frustrated with a bad draw, or when someone has the perfect counter in their hand, but, if your enjoyment of the game is solely determined by how much you’re winning, you’re ruining it for everyone else and you aren’t getting invited to the next game night.
Yeah. Even my own team was pissed at me. I took a risky move that worked out in the end because I used their weakness against them. That’s part of the reason that BotC is so much better than many social deduction games - it’s often not entirely solvable, even with optimal play. And just let people have fun sometimes, who cares about making the “objectively best decision” at all times.
Chaos moves are so much fun.
When a friend and I play Coup (hidden role card game), we’ll typically start out playing normally - especially if there are new players - but as things progress, we get into “advanced” strategies. We might not look at our cards at all, and publicly proclaim it, such that nobody can possibly know if we’re BSing or not - since we don’t know ourselves.
My old group loved to do a few blind rounds of coup after we were ready to move onto another game. Made for chaos and great fun for everyone. That was usually our warm up game - still waiting for people to show up, maybe snacks were still being prepared, Hosts walking the dog, etc.
But of course, first round, EVERYONE is a Duke.
Looks like evil won and then some. ‘evil laugh’.
Unplanned amputations.
I’m a woodworker.
Table saws are serious shit.
Woodworking hobbyist with an emergency medicine background who worked in a replantation centre for a while: I can absolutely confirm this.
And table saws are amongst the most harmless devices in an average workshop.
I saw some gnarly shit over the years and tbh, I had some near miss cases as well on my own. (like when a milling head died on my DIY CNC and flew through the workshop - close enough to my jugular vein to graze my skin. 5mm to the right and I would have been in a very very bad spot)
And table saws are amongst the most harmless devices in an average workshop.
You have my attention with that line. I’m used to thinking of the table saw as the most likely amputator of my shop. What in your experience is the bigger maiming hazard?
In absolute numbers the table saw will win because everyone has one. But they can be used in a safe way - with a sliding carriage, a push stick and a cover or even a saw stop(even though that is a ridiculous shitshow on my side of the pond)you have a near 0% chance of hurting yourself. That is different for a lot of other machines. They can hurt you even if you do things right but are unlucky.
Band saws are far more likely to hurt someone and old planes are inherently unsafe as their spindles often are designed in a way that they often easily send their blades towards their operators. Especially when they are older models. And of course mortisers - I saw some really really gnarly shit over the years, e.g. someone who lost control of their mortiser when hitting an knothole and then the machine went towards his groin - still running as he panicked and did squeeze the handle even stronger by reflex. In the end the half groin area was bloody pulp he injured a major vessel that nearly killed him. A friend of mine collapsed (due to a medical issue) on a table mortiser and missed the blade by less than 2cm. With a table saw he would have simply collapsed on the cover, here it was pure luck.
Wow that’s nearly opposite of what I’ve always heard. Like I’ve never really heard of mortising machines being particularly dangerous. We’re talking the specialized cousin of the drill press, right? Like I don’t know how to “lose control” of a Mortising machine.
I’ve actually seen more injuries at the drill press; bits like to grab sheet metal and spin it right at belly level, give you the first half of a tummy tuck.
I feel much safer using a band saw because it won’t kick back on me or generate adverse forces, I guess they’re fairly quiet and affable that you forget it’s a saw until you start dropping phalanges. Table saws can get ornery.
Or does “your side of the pond” mean you’re European and you’re referring to different tools than I am? Like in America a “plane” is a hand tool., and my thickness planer would struggle to throw its very well encased knives at anyone.
Pishing. Some birds will make a warning call known as a “pish.” Making that call yourself—if you do it correctly and have a bit of luck—can make flocks of tiny, hard to spot birds come close to you as they try to figure out what some ‘hidden bird’ is warning everyone about.
If you’re a bird watcher wanting to spot them this is super exciting! And if it’s in an isolated area or somewhere not many other birders visit it’s not super stressful to the birds. The problem comes with places like Central Park that are bird watching meccas, and suddenly a patch of woods might have dozens of people doing that in the span of a few hours. Repeated or prolonged pishing can stress birds out the same way that playing recorded bird song at them for hours can stress them out, because it makes them think there’s an unseen threat to confront.
To me it’s just disrespectful to the wildlife. They’re not there to be your toys or to fill out your IRL pokedex, and stressing them out because you want a better look is edging into unethical territory.
This is really interesting because I’m a very casual bird observer and occasionally try to whistle to get their attention, but I hadn’t thought about this aspect of it!
Whistling is probably fine since it’s not something they’re likely to mistake for a warning call from another bird or as a song from their own species, so don’t feel bad about that! 👍
i try to mimick some bird call but yeah it’s usually just to try and get their attention if I’m taking a picture. i don’t play bird noises or anything else, just look at them and maybe take pictures
I just want to teach my neighbor crows to bring me shinies for really, really good seeds lmao
You may know this already, but in Scotland, the term “pishing” is synonymous with “pissing” - ‘going for a pish’, ‘he was totally pished’ (drunk), ‘i pished myself laughing’, etc.
Just a heads up in case you ever decide to come here and ask someone where a good place for pishing might be :-)
Also used in Norn Iron.
Also whenever there’s a rarity photographers always insist on going off the path to get as close as possible often scaring off the bird which obviously ruins it of everyone else who’s just trying to see it from a reasonable distance.
Translation: I can do it but no one else should
Try reading again because I said nothing like that ❤️
Another hobby, though I haven’t been in a few years is SCUBA diving. I learned how to dive under people who took all of the safety limits and procedures quite seriously. I was always diving in a pair with a person I knew, and we always had a comfort level of communication and teamwork based on familiarity with each other.
I left that constant diving life, and later to scratch the diving itch I decided to go do a recreational dive in the US. I showed up to the place and got on the boat. On the ride out to the dive site, I was expecting a pre-dive meeting where details would be gone over, and I’d be assigned my partner so we could interact at least a little bit before getting in the water. That never happened. I was waiting and waiting for the meeting to start when the boat just stopped, the people running it announced we were at the dive spot and just started pointing to pairs of people to be “partners” basically as they were jumping off the boat. I’m used to doing an equipment shakedown with a partner, but my assigned partner was some guy who just hopped in the depths and was gone before I could do any of that.
This was a simple dive to a flat sand bottom. People were mostly looking for trinkets down there. That said, the lack of organization was shocking. When time was up, people just started shooting to the surface. Nobody else was doing safety stops on the way up, and because of me doing it I was the last person out of the water. It was very scary sloppy and I did not go back to any open-to-the-public recreational dives after that.
Thats terrifying, especially given that the ocean is potentially more dangerous than space. the power of water is not to be underestimated
It was really scary. I’d shadowed some recreational groups before to help out with the shop I’d been close with and a reoccurring theme would be that customers who dived for maybe one week a year were so caviler about safety because they were “very experienced”, while the people who dived so much they were having to calculate their weekly limits were abundantly respectful of the depths.
As one person working there would say, “You never get a brain aneurysm until you do.”
Can you explain what the weekly limit is about? I know very little about scuba.
There’s a lot of biology involved that I don’t understand the intricacies of, but basically the more time and at more depth you are underwater the more your body is dealing with changes in the density and makeup of your blood. You need time on the surface to normalize. For a similar reason you need to do safety stops to allow your body to adjust to the changes.
For normal recreation dives, it’s pretty simple that people are limited to (IIRC) two dives/two hours per day as a general guideline. Once you get into deeper dives, using different breathing mixes, and other stuff people have to start doing a little bit of double checking to make sure they don’t overdo it.
How deep was the dive? Thinking that these guys do these dives regularly without ever doing safety stops is giving me decompression sickness by proxy
I honestly don’t remember. It wasn’t notably deep, but I had 100% of the time always done a safety stop and a controlled ascent in all my dives. The part that made this especially bad was people would go absolutely flying from the bottom to the top, with no attempt to control their speed.
My ears are very sensitive, that shit would burst my ears. In a normal swimming pool, I would still need to equalize.
Was this ran by a PADI Dive center? I feel like if it was an official dive center they would be more rigorous and Divemasters would be helping you out.
No, I was used to PADI and certified by them (outside the U.S.). The place where I had the bad experience was affiliated with some U.S. organization I wasn’t familiar with.
PADI is international, I feel like most reputable dive shops need to be PADI certified.
I know. Like I said the shop had a US only organization I wasn’t familiar with and it was my first experience with recreational U.S. diving, which is why I specified.
I showed up in the U.S. expecting PADI, but being unfamiliar with how U.S. shops operated, and presumed that whatever non-PADI organization they were with would be similarly standardized. Clearly they weren’t. Which is why I didn’t go back.
Interesting, I live in the US and I didn’t know there are different scuba organizations other than PADI and SSI, and NAUI. I would be sussed out at that dive center. I’m sorry you had to experience that.
With airsoft, it has to be the fascination with using lasers. There’s no such thing as a totally eyesafe laser, just “less harmful ones” and I know that many of the ultra cheap lasers on places like aliexpress are totally lying about their ratings, using lower rating stickers on more powerful lasers. Which is a problem as it’s easier to make a brute force amped up laser when you want something bright to appeal to airsofters. The teens buying these lasers have no idea what laser ratings are in the first place anyway, they just buy whatever appeals to their Call Of Duty addled brains.
In addition to being inherently unsafe, which is full stop reason enough, lasers tend to be pretty useless especially in outdoor games. It is very annoying to be in the woods and randomly get swept by a lasers from somebody far away who doesn’t even know where I am. I have literally heard people explain that they find where the laser is pointed by looking for it with their magnified scope. Which is completely insane logic.
When the topic comes up, laser users claim that they never aim at peoples’ eyes. In a game, that’s a completely impossible promise to keep. Also some people do intentionally aim lasers at faces for an advantage, and since it’s impossible to avoid this whole mess, lasers should be banned entirely.
(And before anyone mentions the laserbox on my airsoft gun, it’s fake. It’s a hollow box where I keep the gun’s battery for easy access.)
I used to play on an outdoor field over a decade ago and still have a vivid memory of this one guy in particular. I distinctly remember that he had multicam EVERYTHING: full MC clothing, a MC helmet, even a MC wrapped Systema. But the cherry on top was a green laser that stayed on 100% of the time. You could see the fucker coming from a mile away.
He was also a douchenozzle
Airsoft runs on the honor system, and you’re relying on the honor of sometimes maladjusted teenagers with access to their parents’ credit cards. (Not all teens, and sometimes the older players are problems, but to be real 8 out of 10 times, it’s a “that guy” teen causing problems.)
With my 3-power optic I get to see great views of BBs just bouncing off people who are invincible to them.
This is a really interesting one i think for the reasons you pointed out above. There is very little safety oversight for this and these people genuinely have no clue how to actually use laser aiming systems. Not to mention that if you have a laser, it should be set up such that you don’t need to look for it (especially not with a scope that’s mounted parallel to the laser) because it’s to help your fine aim. Oh well, i was young and thought tacticool stuff was cool once too.
There are these amazing laser based aiming systems out there called “red” “dots”. They have the advantage of being better AND not flashing people in the eye.
exactly!
A lot of the tacticool is just dumb and awkward; that’s sort of just good fun LARPing nonsense. Some poor choices like not wearing mouth protection are flatly stupid, but at least it only punishes the person making the choice. My problem with lasers is that the person making the dumb choice isn’t affected, only people otherwise doing everything right.
I’ve actually asked a few fields about implementing no laser policies, but unfortunately owners seem apathetic about having to enforce it.
The “macho” attitude to safety. From soldering to woodworking. In soldering, there are fumes created when burning a substance called flux. There are commercial fumes extractors to purify and remove these fumes, but many refuse to use them, even if they’re cheap. Saying stuff like "What’s a little tree sap gonna do to me?. Chances are, none of them could run a mile due to the irritation of their lungs.
Another one is woodworking, especially around power tools. Table saws can shred your fingers before you can blink. It can pull extremities towards itself, and can launch wood fast enough to perforate organs. Yet there are still people who insist “I don’t need no push stick”, “don’t bother with a crosscut sled, just free hand it”.
For woodworking: Add the “old machines were soooo much safer,you need to use this 1968 Asshole-Wankerville saw if you realllllyyy want to have safety”(not true, especially when using planers) and the “if you don’t do it this way you should not be let close to a pencil!”(does it in an antiquated, overly complicated way that is safe but if you do one little thing wrong it isn’t anymore)-Gatekeepers.
Especially the whole story around saw-stop and how it was perceived by amateurs (even when they were unaffected by the manufacturers propaganda) is a shame.
Old machines can be good. Old machines can be a deathtrap. And things decay over time and something rotating with 30.000 RPM for 50 years close to someones groin/stomach maybe isn’t a risk someones should take lightly.
And most people who talk like this are old idiots who learned/teached themselves how to do things somewhere in the 70ies/80ies and then never developed after that. But they are so fucking sure about themselves.
I have an emergency medicine background, including some accident research. And even then people try to argue with me. “No,that kind of injury can never happen with this brand”. Idiot, I have seen it myself,talked to the person who nearly killed themselves, etc.
I feel this way about angle grinders and seeing people using them without a guard or any safety equipment with their face inches away from a cutoff wheel they bought from harbor freight as they plunge it into a piece of steel.
Oh god,angle grinders,yeah… I have one, but I don’t use it in my workshop for obvious reasons.
The wife recently thought I had a stroke as I was screaming at the TV, because a show had invited an “expert” who was cutting some metal in front of the audience.
… Without ANY safety equipment on himself or the machine. … Heavily BENDING the disk.
… Someone is going to do this like on TV…and die…I was impressed that none of the audience died because that’s where the blade would have landed.
And I saw first hand was an angle grinder disk does to someones skull. It has the habit of stopping in a place that will not kill you. But leave you blind,deaf and dumb, suffering for a long time. They scare me. When I use mine, I am wearing full PPE, have a guard on the machine and still keep a tourniquet around.
It especially makes my blood boil when bosses do this. They frequently do because they don’t suffer the consequences but reap the gains.
If workers take a dangerous shortcut: increased productivity.
If workers get injured, they blame the worker for disregarding safety precautions. OSHA usually only steps in if safety equipment/practice is outright missing, not if workers are told to not use them.
Honestly you sound like you’ve three years in the industry and everyone but you is incompetent, especially the ones been at it forever.
It especially sucks how that attitude will trickle down and erode the safety practices for everyone. Depending on what and where you’re learning, you can potentially end up knee deep in hazards before you even know what you’re supposed to be avoiding.
I’m an apprentice bench jeweler and the common practices in this industry are fucked. There’s a container of actual asbestos that we pack around stones to insulate them for a weld. I was looking for a good method for affixing tiny parts for welds and everyone says just superglue it, since the glue burns off and doesn’t contaminate the weld. It just depolymerizes into highly irritating gases, and benches are fucking NEVER properly ventilated. There’s oxydizers we use weekly that say “only open outdoors” on the container.
A good respirator is a great investment, pretty much no matter your industry.
Motorcycle riders not wearing a helmet be like
I have guns. I’m also super liberal. The amount of range patrons, employees or gun shops that talk unprompted about politics to me is disgusting. They just can’t understand there are liberal or left leaning gun owners.
I generally don’t get people like that. Starting a conversation with a stranger about polarizing topics like politics or religion is just high risk low benefit gamble.
I prefer to start conversations at the range with “ya ever tried riding a dick while high?” It really kickstarts things.
Rage stacking lol
Step 1: work less & join range Step 2: ask dudes about their preferred dildo manufacturers 2a. Wink wink, suggest tentacles
Especially when you know for a fact said stranger is armed.
Yup. Super off-putting. More than half of my local shops all have massive trump banners and associated ephemera along with some form of lib-bashing. Can’t be in that space for more than 5 minutes without hearing some fake news, racism, or mockery of some group. It’s really killing the sport for me. It never mattered when I first got into it, but the identity politics are destroying just enjoying a good day a the range.
It’s like they believe gun ownership is some kind of underground club that is impossible to be a part of unless your republican.
Warhammer, we’re here to play with over priced miniatures, don’t be a Natzi.
i keep up with the lore in a very small capacity, and im confused how they can eat the pasta so hard.
Ah, everyone’s favorite game: is this person playing Krieg IG because they like the aesthetic, or because they "like the aesthetic"?
I have a pile of hobbies and I guess one common thread is obnoxious dude shit. And I say this as a male type person.
3D printing is a weird one because 3D printers are hella good for all kinds of stuff, from the more “femme” coded hobbies to the “dude” hobbies. But somehow the not-male people I know engage with some of the same communities as I do and for some reason I always get a lot more useful answers to my questions. There’s a certain aesthetic to homebrew open source 3D printers and it’s kinda industrial.
Electronics hackery is worse because it’s a lot more “masc” coded. Even software stuff isn’t quite as bad because at least there there’s been concerted social pressure.
Photography is sad because if I work with a female model I have to go through a whole process for her to make sure that she’s going to be safe during our shoot, some of which I didn’t even fully realize that was part of the process for a while. And pretty much all of the semi-pro-to-pro experienced models have at least one story and sometimes Names Are Named and it’s someone I’ve met, so I have to be constantly on guard.
oh shit yeah i feel you with realizing things you do as habit really are learned because of shitty things that have happened to people.
You know, we have a word for “male-type person”: its man. It doesn’t matter if you are not a biological man, or in some kind of transitional stage, or whatever else might be the cause for this awkward phrasing. It is simply how this is called and it isnt discriminatory, you can use it. Also, a “female model” might well be referred to as a woman. That’s not discriminatory either.
I don’t know what your goal is in being this persnickety about someone else’s wording, but you should probably be sure that you’re right before you go around correcting people. For example, if we replaced “female model” with “woman”, it would make OP’s comment way less clear, because a photographer works with people other than just models and that wouldn’t be clear with just “woman”.
Regarding “male-type person”, I would ask you to take a moment to try to imagine a world where “male-type person” is a more appropriate and correct phrasing than “man”. Arguing in good faith means temporarily setting aside your belief that “man” is more correct in order to better understand OP’s point and their overall point. As an example, OP may not actually be a man at all, but may be perceived as male by people within the hobby, in which case, “male-type person” may not be elegant phrasing, but it’s more correct and informative than “man”.
You claim your corrections aren’t discriminatory, but that’s besides the point, because a comment can be “not discriminatory” and also impolite and unconstructive to the discussion.
I also found the wording a bit needlessly convoluted (kinda like gender, amirite). But yours is a really interesting perspective. I’m not sure if I’d write the same way but I also wasn’t bothered enough to correct their diction lol
I’m not entirely sure why everyone assumes I have some nefarious bigoted purpose here.
My point is, it doesn’t matter for a quick anecdote if the person in question is whatever makes simply “man“ imprecise, and requires the “male type person” (what could that even possibly mean if not man?) specification, be it they are trans or identify as something else.
Is the next step to introduce the reader to the preferred pronouns of all parties involved? I dont know these people and it has no bearing on the anecdote. That is entirely too convoluted and unnecessarily complicated if there is no actual reason.
I would also argue that if they are for example trans they could just reasonably be called man or woman depending on what they now identify as. Doesn’t require a specific qualifier. Why all this convoluted doublespeak when there are already normal words for that?
Call women, women. Men, men. Trans women and men too of course, because why not and unless the fact they are trans is somehow relevant, it is fully sufficient. For everyone who identifies as neither, keep it with neutral pronouns (again unless more information is relevant).
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding of some inclusivity in regards to non-binary identities here.
There are a lot of grey areas that use different words very specifically. Masc and Femme for instance describe a wider range of binary and non-binary identities than “Man and Woman” as many non-binary people are closer to binary trans folks but use a different set of mental mechanisms where they don’t strictly align with the categories of “man and woman”. Masc and Femme can be used with “presenting” to specify what people tend to read someone as based on cultural dress and behaviour or but left as is to describe gender identity.
On the other pole of talking about sex rather than gender or gender presentation some have started to move away from “assigned gender at birth” and use descriptives like " male/female phenotypic (or type for short) when needing to refer to one’s physicality to describe aspects when talking strictly about lived experience regarding their body’s sexual characteristics.
The trans community particularly has a lot of very specific language regarding how different aspects of our experience impacts us. For instance a male phenotypic person will have certain aspects assumed about them because of their body independent of their gender which given certain circumstances they need to talk about in a neutral way. Talking about sex can be a bit of a landmine situation in trans circles because it’s both a touchy subject and it’s where the most dogwhistles tend to be. As such it’s a bit chaotic… As such Phenotype does not strictly mean “birth sex”. It’s more about what physical sex characteristics people perceive and react to… Trans language wise it’s something not universally adopted or liked but it is consistent with the usage in the above post where the poster is describing people perceived as at least potentially possessing some sexually male characteristics. This covers cis/ trans men/ masc non-binary people, some trans women / femme non-binary and various flavors of non-binary people.
While I can understand feeling like this is a bit much but it’s mostly that language and conventions inside the community and inclusivity forward movements changing rather rapidly to account for the way discourse changes from year to year with new dogwhistles popping up with the evolving discourse as more people become knowledgeable about the basics. Less awkward conventions of language are always being tested because universality is likely a ways away. Trying to be pedantic about it might prove to be a losing battle. Give it another decade or two and it might settle into a singular convention once there’s more concensus.
They probably likely meant they come off as a typical man. I felt your comment was unnecessary, like stop looking for it and you’ll find it less. You know? You took what was likely poor phrasing into something else entirely.
The bikepacking community sometimes feels more like a gear flaunting contest than a fun outdoor sport. Particularly amusing are 90kg men obsessing over a 10kg bike to save weight.
Mountainbiking in general. I bought a used rocky mountain slayer. I asked the guy why he sold it, because it was like new. He explained me that he liked the bike, but it’s not good for climbing because it’s too heavy, and showed off his new bike. I looked it up when i was back home and he bought a 8k dollar bike that was 900 grams lighter.
I know a guy who bought an 10k dollar ebike because of how light it was. He’s like a 90kg man as well. He doesn’t even really ride it. He also bought some carvon rims for it to shave of a few grams. Bro, lose some weight and save some cashI mean if the seller is still big into it and his mass is mostly compromised of non-fat body mass I can see how shaving of 1kg of weight for a hike of 5km can be worth it.
Probably the cheapest and easiest way for most people to get into bike camping is by getting a trailer instead of obsessing over squeezing everything you need on the bicycle itself. I imagine some folks would consider that “cheating” but fuck 'em.
i really want to get into backpacking but I don’t have a car to travel and the gear is so expensive. it seems interesting. thank you for your perspective
There’s a town a few hours from here and I’m certain that some people drive there with all their gear, then ride around town all kitted up, and drive all the way back to the city.
“All the gear, no idea”.
This applies to pretty much every hobby or interest I’ve had. It describes people who start a new thing, and immediately go out and buy “the best” equipment, which they do not have the aptitude to use.
For example, a few years ago I started kayaking, and joined a local club which has kit hire available for most kit, especially the expensive bits (kayaks, paddles, helmets, paddles). Kit hire is insanely cheap, literally £1 an item per day, so you’d need to hire a kayak hundreds or thousands of times for it to be cheaper to buy your own boat. Hiring also allows you to play around with loads of different makes, models, and shapes of boat to find what works for you.
When new people join the club they have two intro sessions, in which, in a purposefully stable boat, best case scenario, they do a mile on calm, slowly moving, water, some figure 8s, and don’t capsize.
Context for people who have never kayaked before, at this stage literally no one can paddle in a straight line. Hell, most people end up spinning around 180 degrees after 3-5 stokes as their dominate side overpowers. Trying to turn the kayak is scary because you have to lean over (like a bike) but you don’t want to go for a swim in the river, so you don’t lean far enough, which makes the kayak feel less stable. Overall for most people starting out it’s an enjoyable time, but with a lot of nervousness and trepidation.
The club provide a list of kit recommendations for people starting out, all of which is related to clothing to keep you dry-ish, and costs max £100. Both the club officials, and the members, continuously tell people to not go out and buy loads of stuff immediately and how the majority of members hire the boats.
But every year one or two of the newbies decide they absolutely love it and next week come back having spent a few grand on their own kayak, paddle, and high-spec clothing (dry suits, etc), and proceed to spend the next 2 months absolutely hating their lives because they don’t have the skill to paddle the kayak they’ve bought, continually capsize because it’s “so unstable”, and ultimately quit through frustration.
The record for this is when someone bought three boats - whitewater / river, sea, and playboat - each of which require different skills, some of which are mutually exclusive (in a river kayak you lean left to turn left, in a sea kayak you lean right to turn left). To their credit, they’ve stuck at it, and were either very lucky in buying boats which fit their style, or are just sticking with them and learning how to paddle them through sheer insistence. Either way, fair play.
Buying a ton of gear to replace skill, or just because all the YouTubers are pushing it is so common.
I’ve made a conscious effort in all my hobbies to push as far as I can with entry level gear. Only upgrade when I’ve worn it out or I can articulate why I personally need better. Helps from ending up with a bloated collection of useless expensive things.
damn that’s wild. for hobbies i have experience in and am returning to, like climbing, i tend to rent gear one or two times and see if i wanna get back into it and then buy gear. i prefer to rent but for some things you just want your own gear. im not the most consistent with a lot of things, but when i buy gear i tend to keep returning stuff because i get reminded about a hobby when i see that i have it and then im more likely to do it.
something like your kayaking club though sounds absolutely perfect and i couldn’t fathom dropping thousands on a kayak when you haven’t even tried a bunch of stuff that’s available for you to try for damn near free.
My take on this is that it’s a predominately “rich person problem”.
Like pretty much all hobbies kayaking can absolutely be done cheaply, with some sensible ways of saving money and some rather dangerous ways.
Because the best kit is expensive, and status kit is even more expensive, rich people presume that because Awesome Person X uses Y, and they can afford to buy Y, they should also use Y.
What they forget is they are not APX, they are a newbie who cannot even get in the kayak without capsizing, and is now resorting to dragging their 3k carbonfibreglass composite beauty over gravel and rocks. We all start here, but most of us are in scratched up plastic boats where 1 more scratch doesn’t matter.
This tickled me.
A decade ago, I lived by a little lake. Bought essentially the cheapest single -piece kayak I could find. Fucking loved it. I don’t have that one any more but lately since I live so close to a national park it’s tempting to get one I can hike with. It never even crossed my mind that there’s enthusiast gear, aside from a super cozy pfd, sun protection, and maybe an anchor lol. Maybe it’s because I fish, too. I mean, why wouldn’t you? You can reach the best spots from the water!
A surprising amount of fire performers think it’s perfectly ok to use fire and other dangerous props while shitfaced on whatever substance of choice. They give all the same excuses that drivers with DUIs give. Majority of them I’ve met like this are from Florida, surprising no one.
Yeah. I did fire eating and related things semi pro for a little while. I was at an event and some hula hoop fire person asked if I could spot her. No blanket, no extinguisher, no plan, no nothing. Just “stand and watch me, if something goes wrong, you know, do something.” I said nope. Not gonna be held responsible for your lack of saftey. She was using fucking gasoline.
Eugh yep I know exactly the type of person you describe. I know the title says hobby but it’s really a profession for me. The amount of crazy unsafe shit I’ve seen people try to get away with is insane.
I’ve had to yell at people for showing up with bags of fuel, for traveling with Coleman in a glass Snapple bottle, and for trying to spin in a polyester onesie. It’s even worse where I live since we have strict regulations (NYC, I’m producer licensed)
What the fuck? I’m an amateur in something similar and while I can take stupid risks like going extinguisher only with isopropyl as my fuel, that’s just ludicrous
Not a fire performer, but an aerialist - I love circus arts but some people just should not do it. Not because they suck, or they’ve got the “wrong body” or whatever other bs, but just because they completely eschew anything safety related.
The number of people who assume they can just pop a hookup in their drywall ceiling, maybe checking for a joist first, and then hang a lyra from it and try to do drops or high speed spins on it is staggering. Or, like, hanging silks from a random tree branch. Or doing anything more than 3-4 feet in the air without a crash mat under them. Or trying to teach themselves from fucking tiktok videos. Please, please just stop. You’re going to hurt yourself, and in the process you’re also going to make everyone else’s insurance rates skyrocket. Hate it so much.
thats also pretty scary. I’ll do some stupid shit while fucked up but usually it involves me potentially hurting myself doing something that seems fun. whenever theres a risk of hurting others or being responsible for others i stop that shit quick.
i also don’t put my safety in other people’s hands without prior agreement (like a trip sitter), especially not without having put safety precautions in place.
So I’m super involved in my local bdsm community and it’s probably my main hobby. There’s a lot less misogyny than people not in the community think and a lot more than many of the men of the community think.
A lot of guys take that dom/sub dynamic too far, as an extension of misogynist beliefs. Agreed re: your evaluation.
It’s also pretty sad - you’re in the most permissive time in history for this stuff, someone is giving you a gift that (carefully approached) can let you live out your deepest sexual desires to everyone’s satisfaction, and you’re going to treat the person giving you that gift as actually lesser!? For fuck sakes man, not too long ago you’d be thrown in a psych ward for this shit.
That shit’s a problem for sure, but often the community weeds out dominant men who mistreat submissive women. That’s not to say we don’t have broken stairs and whatnot, I run a women’s group, it’s a problem for sure. But in my experience that aggressive of misogyny in such contexts is far more present in online spaces than reputable irl ones.
The area I see it most manifested is in the way dominant women are treated by men, both dominant and submissive. There are dominant men who love and respect submissive women but just struggle to treat dominant women as their equals. And on the flip side a lot of men who submit to women have a lot of hang ups about it and many treat them as sex objects.
There’s also still a problem with people assuming men are dominant (especially if they’re charismatic and/or handsome) and that women are submissive (especially if they’re small, shy, or feminine).
At least that’s what I’ve noticed as a woman who submits to women
Thanks for clarifying. I can’t say I’ve personally seen that to any great degree, but to be fair my experience was more of a toe dip. I can certainly see that being the case.
Yeah there’s definitely a thing where a local community in a good state doesn’t have as much of it, (though it will often exist) but when things get disrupted more can seep through. It’s been on my mind lately as I’ve been befriending a Domme that’s very new to all of this and her experiences are really elucidating the patterns I’ve seen glimpses of, but thought were more of online problems.
I practice BDSM occasionally and i recently did a scene with someone. There were times where boundaries were accidentally crossed, but my reaction to that was an immediate “are you ok and do you need to stop”. Luckily the person was very understanding and actually discovered some stuff they liked, but I simply cannot fathom trying to take advantage of someone who is giving you so much already. I didn’t like nor enjoy that I had accidentally transgressed on boundaries, and am working to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, but the priority is and should always be safety and comfort.
The good thing is, you’re most people - looking for all parties to have fun within the boundaries of safety and participant comfort. Topping is a huge responsibility, and you had the correct reaction.
But just like in the everyday world, there are abusive people out there. Folks, particularly bottoms who are still fleshing out their boundaries, can be vulnerable to these people. My opinion is that situation can be made more complicated due to the taboo nature of the interaction and unique social norms that have a learning curve (ex: what happens if you’re newer, someone starts spewing ‘true dom/true sub’ crap early on, and that sets your expectations for BDSM?).
Captain Lez is bang on when saying this is the value of a community for vetting and feedback re: what you’re doing. But again, like in everyday life, people can ingratiate themselves into that community as a means of cover.
It really isn’t all that different from abusive relationships in every other context, just with an additional layer of sensation and social norms that can cloud judgement/mask the abuse.
Will say OP made great points on misogyny in this world expressed in less aggressive ways, and heck, even this conversation underscores it. People like you and me jump right to guys in a dom role disregarding the boundaries of women in a sub role, for reasons of hating women. We’re not those people, most of the people we meet in this context aren’t those people, and the few we become aware of are usually blacklisted pretty quick, so we think misogyny is not a major problem in the community. The stated dynamics between some Doms and Dommes, and male bottoms to their Dommes, challenges that. I may not have come across it simply because I am a guy who doesn’t feel that way, my community is very much female-led, and everyone I met was pretty respectful/darned greatful a community existed at all, but I can definitely see it being a thing.
Thank you for your kind words. I get a lil scared domming sometimes because as a victim of sexual assault, i would never want to out someone through that. I’m glad the community seems to be doing better than the majority of society.
I find this one especially egregious because as a fellow practitioner, my first priority is safety, safety, safety. i hate to see the bigotry and lack or respect
There are a lot of cosplay elitists, that think you need to be a supermodel or look exactly like the character to cosplay them. Bruh, this is about creating art of our favorite Fandoms. I’m allowed to make sexy versions of characters, people are allowed to cosplay characters of different ethnicities as long as there’s no blackface, people can make costumes of anyone, even if they don’t know every bit of info from the source material. Let people have fun… this isn’t about you and all your gatekeeping is doing, is stopping you from having awesome and talented friends.
