Ah I see, yeah you’re right!

That is something that occurs to me too. It’s weird to me now, imagining couples separating to go to work or whatever, and you just gotta believe everything is gonna be fine, and if there were an emergency, someone has to be near the right landline.

Although I grew up with earlier cellphones and pagers, I got my first cell way later than a lot of highschool kids.

But yes, definitely, If me and my wife couldn’t reach each other during the day, that’d be a ton of anxiety! The world’s too insane these days to not have rapid communication on hand.

I only wish technology evolved as a tool for the user and the people, rather than primarily as content consumption and surveillance devices.

Then it would be more normal to have a setup like we do: We chat on Signal and can send our location voluntarily and it stays between us, without a dozen third parties quietly listening in, analyzing, and selling that information.

I do however, think there would also be a certain serene peace in being unreachable by undesirable contacts but not by loved ones.

For example, it’s dystopian how non-emergency jobs evolved to expect that they can just zip a message to you whenever they feel like, and you’re almost coerced to receive it and respond, and setting boundaries against that can be risky. It brings an unwanted cop or nanny into our personal lives.

Well, I’ve got 99 opportunities to succeed…

…but management ain’t one!

Swear that sounds like the inside of my brain sometimes lmao.

It’s so weird seeing the reaction they’re having to this noxious…erm…“dish.”

Weird because I guess I’ve been blessed enough to have very few memories of smelling something so bad it made me actually want to vomit. Like it’s hard to relate to and yet terrifying imagining how bad it must be.

When I saw someone comment something like “That is an aggressively country child.” I laughed so hard lol

We reference this all the time now. It’s a permanent memory artifact. XD

“Ah, Moses but a pirate.” Is not something I was planning on thinking today LOL

May the laughs and memories last forever XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN6jkWxxm2Y

Alright, folks lock the thread, we have a winner. Lol

God, there’s a huge part of me that hopes this isn’t real, but I’ve also been on the 'net long enough to know better.

As a human being that shares this earth with the rest of us…I don’t see anything wrong with this. You were practicing lots of Yoga, and it was significant enough for you to outwardly mark yourself with it, you can back up the fact you studied and immersed in that (sub)culture.

You clearly didn’t just spot it on the wall and go “lol that looks cool.” While drunk or something lol.

I am white as the driven snow.

It sounds like this is where some perceived guilt is coming from. Contrary to what sections of the internet will tell you, there’s nothing wrong with consciously adopting a culture that meant something to you. Even if you’re “white.”

There’s this weird expectation that white folks should only be able to get tattoos of like, what, the Wonderbread logo, or Elvis or something LOL.

they all seem to like it

This speaks volumes in itself. It’s obvious to the people OF that culture that you’re not just some poseur ripping them off to self-aggrandize. They seem thrilled to meet someone who saw it and said “I want to learn from them!” This is why humanity is beautiful.

The world’s a smaller place now. People move. Cultures evolve now as they always have. That’s how traditions like Yoga or Kung Fu traveled across the world in the first place right?

I’m just some guy on the internet, but It sounds like a cool tattoo, and I hope maybe you can feel less burdened by it, especially when it doesn’t cause anybody else any harm.

Sounds like the opposite, actually! It seems like it gives you a connection to others and has started a lot of conversations, when you’d otherwise be seen as an outsider!

I had one retail manager who constantly kept using “moving forward” for everything. It was so freaking grating!

I hate that I’ve learned to censor myself around these soulless void-skulls by replacing “problem” with “challenge.” No, I don’t “solve problems”, because to acknowledge something as a problem is negativity we just don’t need here at Emperor Clothing Inc! I “tackle challenges”!

It’s so freaking goofy and they just eat it up. Everything needs some sort of business-positive spin or they lose their minds and think you’re not being a “team player.”

My thoughts exactly…Every time I walk by the door that says “server room.”

“Every interaction makes 35 telemetry API calls, and uses up 45 gallons of potable water so it can run that through GPT to pick what ad to push before finally, begrudgingly, doing what the user requested. Isn’t it GREAT?”

Been talking about this a lot lately. Older millennial here. I loved that brief little slice of time I got to experience, when DSL / cable was around and no longer “pay by the minute” and someone answering a phone wouldn’t kick you off.

Web pages loaded fast enough. They were fine. Downloads? Just be patient. No problem. WoW and friends, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 2142, all ran just fine.

But mostly…

I miss when the Internet was a place you went all its own, it wasn’t everywhere, it wasn’t inside of literally everything. You had to “visit” it. Logging on meant you could also log off. It didn’t follow your every move.

Handheld game consoles were still airgapped, the main ones had it optional.

People had blogs for fun, they used the web to express themselves and share ideas and stupid subcultures and memes. It didn’t “matter.”

It wasn’t “the commercial internet.” It was just The Web. It was somewhere else.

Everything wasn’t built on inescapable addiction algorithms that follow you everywhere, and have already your shadow identity shared to innumerable servers because someone knows someone who used one of those services and you were in a group picture once.

For the younger kids, there was a time when your entire life from birth wasn’t shared without your consent for the world to see. (How many people really understood privacy settings anyway?)

Disconnecting now feels more impossible than ever, it takes a huge effort not unlike fasting, and mental overload is the norm.

So much of it is just corporatized, weaponized, and predatory.

I’m gonna venture he means being totally unreachable…

… by your boss on your day off.

Suburbs and freeways, man. :(