Taiwan sounds amazing!

All I know is that one is a couch fucker. No clue who the other two losers are.

I agree with this. I love cooking and I’m a man. I do all of the cooking in my household. My fiancee never really learned how and I’d prefer to be the one who cooks anyway. I grew up in a very large family and I was the oldest so I learned a lot of things to help out like housekeeping and cooking. Boys really should learn how to cook. For me, it’s a fun creative outlet. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

They do it because they’re banking on elderly people to not know what they’re paying and lazy/oblivious people not to care. A long time ago, I would help older people with various things. Sometimes I’d play music for them or just listen to their stories. One thing I realized is that so many “legitimate” businesses exist simply because they’re scamming elderly people. I even worked for a PC repair shop for a few years. You can guess who 90 percent of our clientele was. We’d sell really shitty refurbished PCs to them for nearly a thousand dollars. They’d force me to try to make them trade in their PC regardless of the issue so we can part out their good parts and sell them some bare bones piece of shit. I felt so scummy while I worked there. It’s really gross how much of our economy is based on scams.

I’ve seen others bring up historical context before, but isn’t that just men with multiple wives because women had fewer to no rights in nearly every case.

What was the joke? Michelob Ultra is my choice for light beer. It just tastes better than the other light alternatives. I’d prefer better beer, but sometimes you have to count your calories.

Some people, definitely. I get that it’s gross, but I also worked as a janitor and worked in landfills. I’ve dealt with much worse.

There’s definitely solutions to the problem. You could carry disposable gloves. People with dogs carry plastic bags everywhere. That could work in a pinch. You could wedge the door open and use your foot to open it to leave.

I personally just try to not use public toilets as much as possible. I carry hand sanitizer spray and a bottle of water in my backpack. It’s definitely gross, but it’s not unsolvable.

You clean your hands but then you have to touch a probably dirty handle to open the door.

No worries! That is just the tip of the iceberg for the extremely fucked up childhood my siblings and I had. I’ve mostly made my peace with it, but my siblings still don’t talk to certain parents and I don’t blame them at all. We went through every kind of abuse a child can go through between my dad, mom, and step-dad. I just figured I’d share my experience since I just remembered it happened when I came across that meme.

I definitely get that feeling though. It is comforting to know that you weren’t alone in having had to deal with shitty adults as a child. I think it’s important for everyone to realize that some people should just never have kids regardless of what’s expected of people. My parents definitely should never have had children and I never will myself. I really think unless you are willing to sacrifice your time and freedom and dreams you shouldn’t have kids. Unfortunately, too many parents treat kids as extensions of themselves or accessories to their own life.

You’re right, the more I think about it something definitely could have happened had one of us scraped the money together for a flight. Another reason my mom might have been fine with it is that she was in high-school when she met my dad and he was 10 years older than her. She also let my sisters boyfriend move in when she was still in high-school and he was a lot older than her too so I could definitely see her letting me go. Like I said my parents were not good parents at all.

No it definitely got weird. At least in my case. We talked on the phone a lot and she asked me multiple times to fly out to California to meet her. She even ended up talking to my mom on the phone. I’ll just say my parents aren’t good parents or even good people, but whatever small amount of concern my mom had was gone after that. I was in middle school so there wasn’t any way I could have flown out to meet her so maybe that’s why my parents stopped caring. Regardless, the woman eventually lost interest. At the time I didn’t even realize how weird it was.

Me too, but in Diablo 2. Nothing sexual happened or anything. She lived in California and I lived much further north, but it’s kind of funny/scary that this is a common a occurrence with divorced women and underage boys.

Sure…

I never said there is anything wrong with easy games. I play many easy games that were designed to be easy and accessible. Games can be memorable for different reasons. I play Souls games because I love the difficulty. I also play farm sims and VNs because I love story telling and other aspects. My point is that Souls games only exist and are only memorable because of the difficulty.

I’ll go back to the Rubik’s cube. It was released in the 70s. It’s a square puzzle that isn’t flashy or intricate. Do you think it would still be relevant over 50 years later if it wasn’t difficult? That doesn’t invalidate other games or puzzles that survived the test of time that are much easier. The Rubik’s cube was designed to be difficult as were Souls games. Without that difficulty they don’t have much else to offer.

One of the big inspirations for Dark Souls was the manga Berserk. A man in an impossibly difficult position fighting against demi gods and the many monsters in that universe. You don’t see how a “normal” difficulty would destroy that vision?

I’ve heard the same excuses about Souls games that I hear about learning an instrument. Many times it’s from the same people and no they aren’t disabled. They just say I don’t have the dexterity or it’s too hard I could never do this or that. To them I show them this amazing man: https://youtube.com/@rickrenstromofficial

This man has an obvious disability, but plays guitar better than like 90% of guitarists. The same argument can be made about paralympic athletes. They’re often in better shape and more talented than people who aren’t disabled and the reason obviously isn’t some natural talent they have. They’ve put in the work to be great. That’s what it takes to master anything. You have to practice, you have to try, you have to push yourself.

That would be more like a mod or trainer, which pretty much everyone agrees is completely fine. You can do whatever you want with your property.

I’m going to make this point again because it went unnoticed due to the sheer amount of comments, but you wouldn’t complain about a Rubik’s cube or crossword puzzle being too hard or anything else designed to challenge you. I’d argue that without the difficulty of solving a Rubik’s cube that toy would be lost to time. The only reason it still exists today is because it was so hard to solve for children when it was released. Souls games are the same. The only reason we still talk about them and the only reason they gained the popularity that they did is because of the difficulty.

I remember distinctly picking up dark souls on sale on a whim before it started really entering mainstream discussion. The guy working at Gamestop warned me that people kept returning it because it was too hard. I took it home and played it and really learned the mechanics then I brought it to my friends to try. They learned the mechanics and since then we’ve had an unofficial race to see who can beat the newest FromSoft game fastest. It was the difficulty of the game that made it so addicting. Without that the game would be boring and no one would know what it was in 2025. If you don’t believe me install the easy mode mods and come back to let us know what your experience was like.

With mods it’s an option and it definitely wouldn’t have hit the same way. The whole point of souls games is overcoming challenges with practice. Too many people avoid challenging themselves and it’s a real problem I’ve seen in many people. That’s why you see people who waste away at the same job and same level for years instead of taking chances and risks and pushing themselves to try something new. I’ve known people with budding talent in things like music that gave up because they weren’t instantly the best at it. Not everything in life will be easy, or instant, or convenient. Too many people either forget that or don’t realize it. Some things take hard work and practice and they are extremely rewarding when you put in the work.

Would you complain that a rubiks cube is too hard or a crossword puzzle or anything else that’s designed to challenge you?