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I don't know why you guys do stuff like this. Just say the discussion is dumb if you want to. Posting a bunch of meme images after serious posts just makes you look like asshats. If you don't care about the discussion then don't say anything. You guys are good posters on topics you care about but you then have to become ironically detached from discussions that other people care about that you don't. Maybe I'm the only one annoyed by this. If that's true then I guess I'll shut up.

1 hour 14 minutes marker.

*Takes deep breath* Medic: Covers Missing the Bandwagon and generally not being too fussed about the next big thing! Gives advice On Hunting Eidolons in Warframe! Talks about the many music genres she likes! You do you! ...And gives her opinion on the new Justice League film!

seriously, though, can we ever go do an IRL gift exchange?

Well, first off, my mother chose to keep me instead of aborting, since she got pregnant at 18, accidents are fun - but I wouldn't really call that something done to "give me a better future", especially since - in a way - keeping me negatively impacted her future. My father is from a family of nurses and doctors - your typical Asian family - so he didn't grow up even remotely poor. My mother was never "poor" but was most certainly not well off either, I think she was squarely in the lower-middle class, not quite poor, but still not enough to sustain a family, especially in today's economy. My parents divorced when I was around 7 or 8 because they weren't happy with their marriage, my mom got custody of me. My father's side of the family kicked the two of us out of the townhome we were living in shortly after, forcing us to move in with my grandparents. It was their townhome, they were certainly within their rights to evict us. My father didn't do much to try and maintain a relationship with me, nor did I actively seek one out when I disliked how he sometimes would treat his then-girlfriend's daughter better than me, eventually I told him I didn't want to see him anymore. I have cut off my father's side of the family entirely, so he's done nothing to "give me a better future" except not be a dick when we needed to file papers allowing me to move out of state as I was still under 16 at the time. My mother's side of the family wasn't particularly there for us much either, aside from when we had to live with my grandparents. I only ever saw my cousins, aunts, and uncles during Thanksgiving and Christmas, and after we moved out of my grandparent's home, that list included my grandparents as well. My mother's side of the family has pretty much let us go since we moved states. The only thing my mother has done to "give me a better future" has been to provide for me as best as she can as she always has, even though it was difficult then, and difficult now that she's providing for me and her disabled fiance, as well as two cats. We have always just gotten by in life, we've never had the opportunity to make any kind of investment into our future. Seeing how I have a possibility of requiring disability in the potentially near future - I am at risk for two kinds of arthritis, and I may already be exhibiting early onset - my prospects for jobs has diminished severely as I cannot be on my feet for more than 2 hours at a time before I need to sit down for a while. These questions aren't hard to swallow, they're just simply the facts of my life, and none of this can be attributed to simple laziness or being unwilling to work. Don't project your family's success story on anyone else, for every anecdote of someone making it big, there are more than plenty to match of someone struggling or just barely getting by in life even though they too work hard and are just as determined, maybe even more.

Last night I dreamt I was playing a mix of Lego Star Wars 1 and 2, but all the levels were set in various TF2 maps. If anyone needs help getting the Red Brick on Lakeside, you gotta have Boba Fett to get it, after you fight Count Dooku but before you build the giant Lego Sandvich near the Wookies. Hope this helps someone

What part of do you not understand, Caveson? It's not "months" of saving, it's almost always years. If it takes you mere months to save up enough cash to move to a new fucking state, you're obviously not doing that bad in life to begin with. I'm going to be extremely blunt - and in doing so be an asshole - but I don't give a damn about your father's story and I sure as hell didn't ask for it. Because it's exactly the same kind of bullshit that I've been hearing everywhere else about why "The left just wants everything handed to them" "Millennials are so entitled" "Kids these days want the world for nothing". It's always "My parents grew up poor, but they worked and reaped the benefits of their hard work and blah blah blah blah blah" with words like "personal responsibility", "dedication", and "determination". Caveson, you're not this bloody stupid, the entire environment of the United States was vastly different than what it is now, it's why your father was able to actually accomplish that. I don't give a damn what you believe, lack of money is precisely the reason to not move, coming from someone who is currently in a situation where moving is impossible due to financial reasons, you're looking through Red, White, and Blue filtered lenses. Thanks for dropping the pretenses. Fuck the "Free Market". Actually, this more falls into "The internet is a utility - akin to electricity, water, gas, etc. - and should therefore be treated as such instead of letting corporations have unabated control over the internet", nowhere did I ever mention the internet as a "right". Except the states won't be able handle it! The moment a state - and, let's face it, it's going to be California - attempts to actually enact and enforce their own form of Net Neutrality, one of the major ISPs is going to sue that state. And the courts will have no choice but to side with the company because if the FCC repealed Net Neutrality, that means they obviously intended for corporations to be able to do what they're going to do, and therefore the states have no right to try to stop them. It's better than the complete clusterfuck you're asking for. You're assuming a lot about what kind of pricing they're going to offer. Things that use less bandwidth will not necessarily cost an appreciable amount less, and you'll still potentially be making internet access unaffordable for people who regularly use the internet for both "low-bandwidth" and "high-bandwidth" purposes. Gee, gotta love how you immediately jump to some kind of negative assumption of me just because you can't think of a reason so I must be lazy and don't want to do any work. I've already been impacted by differing standards across state lines. Technically I failed the 10th grade according to Georgia's standards, even though by Florida's standards I passed. In the grand scheme of things, it's rather insignificant - that could be said about just about anything - but I remember seriously questioning how and why the standards of education varied enough just across a single state border. The reason I'm making this argument is because the United States has hardly changed over the decades, even centuries. We're still trying to govern on a system that worked perfectly okay in the US' infancy and for some time after its formation. But we've grown tremendously since then, we're now 50 states and ~323 million people strong. Our system of governing has been showing cracks and faults for decades now, and yet, year by year, the wedges keep being driven deeper and we keep adding more wedges. At some point - be it in the near or distant future - those wedges are going to get hammered all the way through the foundations and everything's going to crumble. 2016 was a rather brilliant display of how the low the general landscape the US has reached. You can't always say no to a corporation. For example, I don't really like doing my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, they're not the greatest company. But there's no place around me that has prices as low as theirs, or a wide enough selection of goods my family either needs or would be willing to buy. There's a Publix closer to my house, but they're typically more expensive on just about everything my family needs and uses. There's an ALDI somewhere around here, but it's far enough out and out of the way enough that we'd be spending every potential penny we saved on gas. So I bite my tongue and get my groceries from Wal-Mart, because they're cheaper and we can save that money in case something happens. Corporations don't need to outright force you to buy their products, they can still get you to buy their stuff in a number of indirect ways. And I'd thank you to not make such generalizing statements about my life when you know nothing about it. Disconnecting from the internet entirely would likely drive me to suicide - I'm an introvert and suffer from anxiety, I don't want to go out and meet with people, I dislike being alone in large crowds, so I don't want to go "experience the real world", whatever the fuck that means, and certainly not for any lengthy period of time - the "simpler things" in my life are chatting and gaming with friends I've made across the globe online. I don't have "my friend"s outside of the internet anymore - I don't have anyone I can call up or text and say "Let's hang out" or "Mind if I come over?" - I have "our friend"s, and even then I see them about once a month now. As edgy as it sounds, I don't have anything out there for me aside from some leisurely stuff I can't do at home. As pathetic as it sounds, my life is online. I already suffer from depression and feelings of loneliness, I don't need my one connection I feel the most comfortable with fucked with by some greedy conglomerate that's only interested in money I don't have.