it’s the same type of non-performative speech you see when any company says “we value our customer’s complaints”, or “we work hard to have a diverse and inclusive team”, as if by merely saying these things that it magically becomes true
ah but meta has cracked it this time; if they just say “we never sell your info” that means they don’t, right?
opinion time:
the truth is players don’t lose all the time. companies setup the matches to deliver a 50/50 win loss ratio, because if they didn’t do this, then some players would be losing all the time, these players would uninstall, and then they lose money because they can’t sell boxes or whatever they push these days.
however, humans also experience losses worse than wins. the magnitude of a loss emotion is typically greater than an equivalent win emotion. we evolved like this to make sure you didn’t lose your stash of food in the tree somewhere, or perhaps at the back of the cave - if you did, you died, and so those humans who preserved a sense of dread when experiencing loss were more likely to pass on their genetics. this is why playerbases constantly whinge and moan about being on the losing team - you are actually getting 50/50 win/loss, but your brain only pays attention to the losses, it doesn’t remember the wins as well, and so your perception is distorted.
only in some rare brains is this emotion spread dampened - these rare humans are able to tank losses easily. it still feels bad for them, but they can take the hit way easier. these individuals are typically also the professionals in competitive ventures of all strokes. since society sees them as “elite”, this is now seen as a good thing, even though in rougher times, you can’t expect these people to give more than a cursory fuck about the food supply being lost to bears. it’s one of the reasons why you see elite athletes constantly developing drug problems, catching rape charges, and going bankrupt. the loss just isn’t as emotionally bad for them. they can tank it. it’s not psychopathic, it’s just… they have less aversion to losses.
anyway, if a game is equal, balanced and fair, then an overwhelming majority of the playerbase is experiencing more loss emotion than win emotion, on average. this undercurrent of loss emotion is the true cause of the “violent” part of “violent video games”. it’s not the shooting itself, it’s the competition between players that festers these loss emotions, that then causes the aggression.
boomer legislators get this part mixed up and confused all the time, and so they speak reductively of the problem when they demand less bloodsplatter and gun imagery. what they don’t get, is FIFA, Super Smash Bros, Rocket League etc, can also cause this horrible feeling, because they are competitive games. it’s the competition that does it, not the violence. this is the true origin of toxicity in playerbases. no wonder DotA2 players always have 4000+ hours and say “i hate it, but lets go again”. “just 1 more round” it sounds like drugs, doesn’t it? “just 1 more bump brooo”. “cmonnn, just 1 more”.
solution: stop playing competitive matchmaking. it’s not good for you, it’s not healthy. you are feeding your brain a virtual drug. you are chasing the win, just like a gambler. stop feeding your ego, you don’t need to be good at a game to feel valid. overwhelming chances are you don’t have a “winner-style” competitive brain that will help you cope with loss emotions and truly let you enjoy comp/ranked games, so please stop trying. you’re hurting yourself. “top” rank will never be worth your mental health. you have to let it go.❤️
sources: (loss emotion magnitude in dota2, pdf)[https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7348&context=etd].
(elite athletes found to be arrested far more frequently for DV and SA than non-athletes)[https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1483&context=honors]
(competitive games, not the “cosmetically violent” games, lead to aggression)[https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/video-games]
and lastly, my own personal experience dealing with this in 2018. most of this post is anecdotal, it’s an opinion piece, and i don’t care to back this up further.
if you’re serious, then here’s two places i recommend to make a start on that train of thought
https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org should clue you in on which “advanced economies” might skew towards the life factors that interest you
and https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison-tool might help you narrow down which of these will be a better cultural fit
i’m aware there’s a lot of subjectivity in these two links but, it could help you make a start.
many people are great at saying “get me out of here” online, but not many people follow up that thought, and ask themselves “but where to?”
be one of those who answers the second question. start working on your escape today! 💪
i see a lot of commenters thinking this is a bot meme. so, i’m gonna explain the joke in excruciatingly painful detail for the normies, who i hope are never required to “get” this meme otherwise.
~
in hospitals, people sometimes decorate the floor with various liquids, sometimes willingly.
as a cleaner, you need to be able to dump a bucket of bleach on this hospital floor, and get scrubbing quickly.
to facilitate this, the floors are made out of a smooth material with minimal pores. you dump bleach, and it just works.
this comes with a side effect of the floor needing to be very, very slippy.
~
psych ward patients must have all their gear removed, this includes shoes and socks.
this is because you can use the laces and elastic to commit sudoku.
but now all your psych patients are at high risk of slips and falls instead.
to counter this, “hospital grip socks” are issued, like the yellow socks in the bottom left of OP’s meme.
these are issued to patients as part of their hospital uniform, to counter the slippy floor problem.
you can now navigate your room safely without slipping and injuring yourself.
these socks are also issued to regular patients like elderly, weak to stand, etc etc. but on the internet, these are “psych ward socks”
~
so, the actual joke is that OP is outing themself as a psych patient by demonstrating knowledge of the uniform.
sidenote: i assume the orange sandals are for bougie in-patients at private facilities? it seems silly tbh, i would want to throw them.
ik ben dom Engels, excuseer. ik ben leren Nederlands. ik vond dit, en ik hoop dat dit is grappig voor je
the issue put bluntly, is that in federation, your data cannot be 100% safe. even if this instance is secure and perfectly private, if this instance is then federated, that federated data can then be copied and have anything done with it, or to it.
or, to phrase it in a way that opened my eyes to this, quoting from someone else a month ago, “what makes you think you’re in control of your data on any instance?”
here you go:
more can be found like this, @chichi__charlie in any good web browser