If you’re in a good headspace I think your reaction is 100% percent typical and the right way to interpret it. The kicker is sometimes you just feel like shit about your body and that changes the way you understand it. I hope this guy gets over it because it clearly wasn’t meant that way, but he’ll have to work through his emotions to do it. It really does impede the way your mind works

Lots of people in here just acting like Men aren’t ever insecure about their bodies.

I don’t see how someone telling their partner “if I saw you on the street I wouldn’t find you immediately attractive” is something that wouldn’t bother you. Maybe the dude is overreacting, especially since she seems conciliatory and apologetic, but if I’m suffering from a period of body dysmorphia and my S.O. tells me that it would hurt a lot. People like to feel desired and this compliment, intentional or not, could easily be taken as saying you’re not.

My initial theory would be number of potential athletes but Germany kinda breaks that hypothesis

reckon with the system and use my privilege and success in life to help raise the conditions of those who’re put done by the system

notice my position and then performitively wish to be black to wipe hands clean of a responsibility to do anything

What sucks is that this bullshit makes me cynical and tired when relatively normal Americans do cool things to. Sorry Simon Biles, your comment about sportsmanship being important falls flat as hell when the only thing that matters and is shown is when Americans do well, not to mention when your Olympic peers repeatedly demonstrate their inability to compete. I don’t know her politics, beliefs or whatever but it’s so frustrating when athletes get who may or may not understand their cynical deployment as propaganda get coopted into “America number one” bullshit.

Your post reminded me of the song “Old Home Place”

… It's been ten long years since I left my home In the holler where I was born Where the cool fall night makes the wood smoke rise And a fox hunter blows his horn. I fell in love with a girl from the town I thought that she could be true I ran away to Charlottesville And worked in a sawmill too. What have they done to the old home place, Why did they tear it down And why did I leave the plow in the field And look for a job in the town. Well the girl ran off with somebody else The sheriff took all my pay And here I stand where the old home stood Before they took it away. Now the geese fly south and the cold wind moans, I stand alone and hang my head. I've lost my love, I've lost my home And now I wish I was dead. What have they done to the old home place, Why did they tear it down. And why did I leave the plow in the field And look for a job in the town.

Anyway, when I graduated my parents ending up selling moving out of our old house. It just became to expensive to maintain and they wanted to do other things with their lives. The quiet lake which we lived near has gradually been more and more developed to the point of 50% of of the shoreline being someone’s yard. You see trees cleared away and the natural dirt banks which cave in as the supporting earth is eroded away replaced with piles of grey rock hauled in from some nearby quarry. Our house, the holder of my cherished memories, became the summer home of some rich pricks from a rich city in the state. No one lives but a few months of the year. The entire stand of young trees that was growing in a place were 20 years prior a mighty oak had fell were flattened because you could see less of the lake. Our simpler wooden dock had been replaced with one much grander and the shoreline, much like all the others, took on that grey rock border.

I feel you in earnest here. It sucks that the passage of time and the warmth of the past is gradually drawn out of much of the world. I hope my somewhat similar experience can being you a little solace.

I feel for you comrade

Skyrim is a beautiful game with no flaws heh

I don’t think you can divorce the streamers and YouTube content creators consumption of obscene amounts of bullshit from the amount of the money they make. Sure they may get “donations” and ad reads but that’s all contingent on this consumption bs in the first place. Streaming may be exploitative relationships that huge platforms benefit from; many of the biggest strangers are companies in and of themselves. Their platform and streaming is run like a business. They have employees through editors and mods (not paid monetarily) that do labor for them to produce content. Their expenses for videos are carefully calculated to generate revenue. I think there’s a few similarities here with someone renting commercial space the more I think about it.

Something that sticks out to me is “if you love my content and want me to make more…” which is not greatly different then a normal commercial exchange. It’s just veiled in para-social mediated charity.

That being said I totally agree with you about how it’s not problem A.

Edit: I hope it didn’t feel like I was putting you in a corner to defend a position you didn’t hold.

I dunno man. I’m not entirely sure where I fall on this issue but people in imperialist countries consuming fuck tons of resources while providing “entertainment value” always comes off shitty to me.

Call me a purity fetishist but goddamn I’m tired of not acting like conspicuous consumption isn’t a fucking problem and indicative of moral decay. “I destroyed a Lamborghini…, 100 iphones vs 50 caliber bullet etc…” isn’t something that I think is acceptable.

Furthermore, I think being bitter that some dumb bro gets millions of dollars to do reaction bullshit while you slave away at work for pennies is something you should feel bad for. It’s okay to call the existence of rich celebs bullshit whether they made the money through movies or the Internet or whatever.