Having someone as dim as you for a hater is dangerously flattering. I need smart people to tell me I suck once in a while.

I mean if you have issues with people socially then that's one thing but if you choose to target gay people as the reason you have issues with people socially then either you're a bigot or you're using gay people as an excuse for having social problems.

I had one (1) lesbian have issues with me, for which I was blasted by a guy who hates me for disliking mid-2000 indie, and who happens to be gay.

The reason I felt comfortable making a gag about those two (2) misadventures with the LGBTQ community? Because my social circle and cultural world could hardly be any more removed from any whiff of homophobia, and I feel extremely secure joking about it. Walking on eggshells about this kind of stuff is extremely tedious, though I obv have to do it in the professional context as we all do.

What a dork.

In other words, **** everyone's feelings, I say what I want.

Nah, not really. One has to remember that no two people have the same exact frame of reference, that not every joke lands the way it's intended etc. But usually when familiarity and with it a common frame of expectations have been established, and you know you're on safe ground, then yeah, I usually say what I want in the confidence that it wouldn't be misconstrued.

I assumed that was the case, at least to a degree, with me and a few users on this platform: I remember joking around about lesbian friends and their mating habits, for example.

Maybe I was wrong (this is the first anonymous forum I've used since like 2006, not saying I always read the room correctly), maybe Batlord likes the woke high ground a bit too much, dunno. But then I also can't be bothered to care what someone like adidasss thinks about me: life's too short.

I can certainly understand where you're coming from. I think it's just difficult to have that perspective on the internet. Everyone has different views and opinions and the internet and forums in general can be a place where people feel free enough to express those opinions. Believe me, when I'm in a comfortable environment I'm pretty bad as well. Humor knows no bounds. I'll make fun and pick fun at everything and anything. However in the context of the internet and forums, there's already so much negativity and comments being misconstrued that really the safest way to go about it is just to dial back and just do your own thing. And throw in some positivity here and there.

That's my 2 cents anyway. But what do I know, I'm just a guy on the internet.

That's certainly the rational thing to do, and I should consider it more often.

The one downside I see is that it means you're being somewhat cautious and you don't really (or at least not as much) expose yourself to being judged, which is where so much of the beauty of social interaction lies for me. That's how you discover people.

For example if someone who more or less knows what type of person you are still trots out a lecture about "erm actually it's really not cool that you take out your problems on gay people cause that's very colonizer of you " the moment you say something off-color, then you know that maybe it's not someone you're likely to have real talk with.

But that's also how you find the people who like you for who you are, and that can be pretty special, online or irl.

Are you getting paid by the word or is the bloated posting style a soothing mechanism?

I believe I can post in something approaching the American vernacular but it does take a certain conscious effort, so I just let my guard down.

If it was up to me, education wouldn't function as an exclusion mechanism in out society and we would let more people on the carefully guarded secret that it's the most pleasurable thing in the world. Sadly, I'm not that powerful.