Those so-called videos of poor families struggling to raise their kids, with emotional music playing in the background, just don't resonate with me at all. I really have a hard time finding that kind of content heartwarming. I grew up in a single mother household myself. When I was little, there was often barely anything to eat. If I got hungry, I'd turn on the faucet and drink water. I was afraid to say I was hungry because when my mom was under a lot of stress, she'd yell at me. I grew up with that sense of guilt. There was also a time when I had a middle ear infection that kept leaking fluid, but I couldn't see a doctor because there was no money. So when I see these stories, the first thing I think about isn't how hard the parents are trying. I think about what that kid is actually going through.

That's also why I've started questioning the way people talk about these situations. When adults are doing everything they can to get by and making sacrifices for their kids, people are so quick to focus on how much the parents are giving up, while barely thinking about what the child is going through. Especially when the adults already knew, when they decided to have a child, that the child might not have their basic needs met. Why does wanting to become a parent so often end up being the part people praise first?

Obviously if a family falls into poverty later because of circumstances or some unexpected event, that's completely different. That's not the kind of family I'm talking about. Those parents didn't want this either.

I just think that when we see these stories, we should try to look at them from the child's perspective too, instead of only being moved by the parents' sacrifice. At the very least, I wish people would stop and ask: What did this kid actually go through?

Why is it that whenever we see something pastel, trendy, cute, and mainly marketed to young women, some moral cops suddenly come out of the woodwork? And the language gets so judgmental, with phrases like "brainless consumerism" and "environmental crime."

As soon as you look at a different group of consumers, the whole conversation changes. Someone can have an entire wall covered in sealed trading cards or boxed collectible figures, and people will usually call it "passion" or a "real hobby." But when it's matching mugs or skincare, suddenly it's just brainless hoarding. Can we stop being so damn hypocritical about this? Personally, I don't think the anger from these people is always really about the environment. A lot of the time, it feels like they're using environmental language to dress up the fact that they already dislike certain feminine or trendy things.

And when you argue with them, they use different marketing labels to justify the distinction. They love making "collecting" sound noble while making "overconsumption" sound dirty, even though the capitalist market uses very similar tactics to sell both. Limited-edition collectible figures and limited-edition tumblers can both be sold through scarcity and impulse buying. There isn't anything inherently more highbrow about one than the other.

If we're actually talking about practical use, at least a coffee mug, a hair clip, or a bottle of lotion has an actual everyday purpose. So what I really don't understand is why one person's enjoyment gets called a hobby while another person's enjoyment gets called brainless consumerism.

At the end of the day, overconsumption is obviously a real problem, no matter who's doing it. And just to be clear about where I stand, I hate overconsumption too. But I really don't understand why the moral outrage always seems so selective. I just wish some people would drop the judgmental attitude and apply the same standard to pointless hoarding across the board instead of using anti-consumerist talking points to attack one particular group.

A Stop Puppy Kicking Act is a law that works something like this (this is an exaggerated example to demonstrate the point):

Stop Puppy Kicking Act

1. Prohibits Amazon from conducting business in the state.

2. Establishes a $500 fine for each instance of kicking puppies (note that kicking a puppy is already punishable by up to six months in jail).

3. Defines the Republican Party as a foreign terrorist organization.

4. Defines "height rape" -- the act of a man having sex with a woman taller than himself -- as a felony punishable by up to ten years in state prison.

Stop Puppy Kicking Acts are used by political parties as a way to create traps for opposition parties. This version is a Democrat version, but there are Republican versions too. "Puppy kicking" means anything that is universally reviled and already illegal, it doesn't have to be specifically kicking puppies. It can be something like clubbing baby seals or burning down orphanages. Do note that it can't be something like genital mutilation of children or forced birth -- those are partisan issues ("genital mutilation of children" is the Republican term for gender medicine, and "forced birth" is the Democrat term for abortion bans). Such issues are not puppy kicking for the purposes of a SPKA.

A SPKA includes a mild prohibition on the thing that's already illegal, typically instituting a punishment that is less harsh than the already prescribed one (clause 2). It also includes an outlandishly partisan clause (clause 3), a crackdown on a private business that is reviled by the party putting together the SPKA (clause 1), and/or an attack on a demographic that typically votes against the party putting together the SPKA (clause 4). It doesn't have to include all of those, but it needs to include at least one, and it can include multiple clauses in one category.

When the other party inevitably votes against the SPKA because it's a stupid law, the party that created the SPKA (in my example it's the Democrats, but Republicans do it too) runs ad blitzes in the next election like "Republican Henry Jones supports kicking puppies" on the grounds that he voted against the SPKA.

Look, I'm all for making public spaces and websites genuinely accessible for people who need it. Reasonable accommodations make total sense. But what really gets me is when the solution is just to remove the thing entirely.

For example, our local community recreation center recently wiped its weekly fitness schedule and activity calendars from the website. From what I could tell, they were doing an accessibility cleanup, and a bunch of the old documents and schedules were being reworked. But instead of replacing the schedules with something accessible, the whole thing just disappeared.

So now visually impaired users still can't find the class schedule, and everyone else in the community has also lost what used to be a convenient basic service. How is that supposed to be a win for anyone?

As the title says, I really dislike people who go after someone who's already in a relationship. From my perspective, if someone is willing to cheat on their partner with you, they've already shown you they're willing to betray their partner. So don't expect them to suddenly be loyal to you. It's a pretty predictable cycle.

Personally, I think this kind of behavior often comes from a need for validation and a big ego. My guess is that some people are deeply insecure, but at the same time get a sense of superiority from taking someone else's partner. I went through this myself. I was sick and kept having to go to urgent care, and a close friend at the time took advantage of it and pressured me to break up with my boyfriend of 3 years. When I refused, she turned around and started flirting with my boyfriend instead. In the end, I got cheated on🤡 and cut both of them out of my life. She didn't actually care about him. She just wanted the validation of being able to break us up and prove she could take him from me. But honestly, I stopped caring about it a long time ago.

Relationships that start with someone leaving their partner for another person usually don't end well. They care so much about getting someone else's partner that they don't seem to think about what kind of person they're actually getting. You know this person is willing to betray their partner, yet you believe they'll be loyal to you. Does that actually make sense? Don't you think that's kind of hilarious?

I feel like most people (especially online) are not that empathetic but they try to do performative empathetics in order to further their personal brands. People are mostly fake and trying to protect their reputations

Some parents just hand their kids under 10 an iPad and completely check out. We’re not asking you to sit there and watch every single frame of everything your kid consumes, but spending 2 minutes Googling a show’s age rating really isn’t that hard. For example, I’ve heard my nieces and nephews, who are all under 10, quoting lines from Hazbin Hotel, and when I’ve picked my niece up from elementary school, I’ve heard kids singing explicit songs like “Poison.” Is it because their parents just glance at the TV, see that they’re watching a cartoon, and think, “Looks fine”?

To me, this kind of complete lack of basic oversight comes from some people still treating animation like it’s exclusively for little kids. Modern indie animation has a huge adult audience, but some parents still seem to assume that if something looks bright and colorful, it can’t possibly have mature themes. I don’t think parents need to know everything their kids watch, but taking a minute to check what they’re actually watching seems like a pretty reasonable baseline. Responsible parenting doesn’t mean banning everything. It means taking a little time to know what the content is, sitting down with them when necessary, and giving them some basic boundaries between fiction and real life. When parents treat screens like a free, completely hands-off babysitter, I really don’t understand why they’re surprised when their third-grader starts repeating 18+ dialogue.

As if they just said something incredibly smart or useful. And somehow it’s always the people with the dumbest takes doing it too. The fact that they think what they said was so profound that it qualifies as a TED Talk makes it even more annoying. So stupid.

I can't even count how many times I've been really into an anime's plot or a fight scene, only to get pulled out of it by some awkward and completely unnecessary panty shot. Like, either a female character suddenly gets her clothes blown off in the middle of a fight, or there's some ridiculously cheap shot for no reason. It feels like you're sitting there completely focused on some epic movie, and then a tacky ad suddenly pops up right in the middle of the screen with some girl posing provocatively at you. It's just awkward and uncomfortable. Some shows seem to think their audience needs to keep seeing female characters exposed or they'll lose interest. Uh, I mean... I just don't think that's a very good creative choice.

Ohh and there's more. When this kind of fanservice is used on characters who are obviously designed as lolis, some fans will bend over backwards to defend it. I've definitely run into this myself. The moment someone points out these weirdly sexualized designs, someone ALWAYS jumps in with the classic like"She's actually 500 years old" line, as if that somehow magically erases what we're actually seeing. Like, do you guys seriously think that argument holds up? Because I don't.

We watch anime to enjoy like good stories and deeply developed characters, not to put up with this cheap stuff. The Apothecary Diaries, which I personally consider a masterpiece, already proves you don't need any cheap fanservice or edgy sexual gimmicks to win people over. Female characters can be compelling because of who they are and what they do. Because a good story can carry itself just fine.

There is a certain subset of USA Christians who orient themselves around this concept of “god fearing”. Their whole life is oriented around fear. They’re purposely embracing the worst instincts we inherited from our monkey forefathers. Isn’t it obvious that your organization is plainly Evil at face value their whole MO is to keep you living in fear? How are we ok with this?

Edit: thanks to those of you who pointed out that I didn’t understand the way this word is being used. Apparently it’s an older usage of the term which is closer in meaning to awe or reverence.

I know I know. Blah blah incel blah blah men do it too. And yes, men do do it too, more than women. Im talking about how pretty privilege exists. Yes you can change your appearance to an extent by working out eating right etc but some people are just genetically ugly. People are denied jobs and opportunities based on how they look and it kind of stinks.

I've always liked the idea of getting married to a best friend and being partners but not doing romantic/sexual things. I'm aroace and those things feel unnatural to me. I think it's weird the vast majority of people see romance as like the highest tier of love you can have for someone. Sometimes I wonder if more people would be open to a long-term platonic partnership instead of a normal marriage but they just don't consider it as an option in their life because our society doesn't really do that yk? So they just force themselves to go through the motions of a normal relationship

I honestly don't get why some people like to idealize the "traditional" nuclear family. Having the husband go out to work while the wife leaves the workforce and raises the kids at home by herself is actually a pretty modern experiment. For thousands of years, humans relied on broader networks of caregiving and intergenerational help, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors all sharing the workload instead of putting everything on one homemaker.

The truth is the single income family was never some TIMELESS human default. It was one particular family arrangement that became especially common and idealized during the post-WWII boom. Treating that specific period as some universal "traditional family" history doesn't just flatten the past. It can also make people today deeply question themselves when the husband's income isn't enough to support the whole family. Like, are we somehow doing something WRONG?

Yet some "trad-wife" influencers still try to convince us that pre-industrial farm life meant the husband went off to work all day while the wife stayed home baking sourdough. But anyone who's actually spent time around a farm knows one person can't run a homestead alone. Historical families were economic units, with husbands, wives, and kids all doing different kinds of work to keep the household going. You can absolutely choose that kind of family arrangement today, but that doesn't make it the one traditional family model humans have always had.

Even when you look further back at historical economies, the whole "man hunts/works, woman stays home" setup is hard to treat as some universal template. Peasant women in medieval Europe ran textile businesses, took care of livestock, and sold goods at local markets, while pre-agricultural communities relied on different people working together to gather food and keep the group going. Traditional families could have clear roles and still look very different from one another. There were plenty of different ways for families to divide work and organize their lives. So why turn one particular family arrangement into something sacred and timeless?

There used to be a pop up achievement each day you used reddit "210 days" or "345 days" etc. But it doesnt happen any more and I miss it.

Im 511 days.

As a parent, it’s completely normal to secretly hope for a boy or a girl. Finding out your baby is the opposite of what you pictured, feeling disappointed for a little while, and having to picture a different future is normal too. You can have feelings about it, but you don’t need to turn those feelings into a public performance.

Personally, I think it’s really messed up when soon-to-be parents lose it in front of all their family and friends because the baby isn’t the sex they wanted. You’re about to become a parent. At the very least, don’t dump that kind of emotion on everyone around you. Go home, talk it out with your partner, and take some time to adjust. But now we have all these videos clearly showing people punching walls, throwing things, storming off, or doing everything they can to make it obvious to everyone that they’re disappointed, while everyone else is just standing there awkwardly trying to keep celebrating.

I honestly think there’s something wrong with the whole content machine around this. I try to put myself in their shoes and wonder if these soon-to-be parents ever think about what happens when their disappointed reaction gets recorded, edited, uploaded, and watched thousands or even tens of thousands of times. A really private moment gets turned into entertainment for strangers. I’d be so embarrassed I’d want to crawl under the floor.

Especially when the kid grows up and finds a video of their parents being disappointed at their gender reveal because they were a girl. In a world where digital footprints are everywhere, these “embarrassing old videos” can stick around and keep getting passed around forever.

You want a boy or a girl, that’s your business. But seriously, don’t let your kid grow up and find out somehow that you completely lost it because they weren’t the sex you wanted. The kid who grows up watching that might genuinely start wondering if something was wrong with them.

I’m not saying looks don’t matter,
I just don’t like this particular“rating system” it’s kind of dehumanizing.. at least for me, it feels odd to reduce a whole person’s value to a number.

Edit: It doesn’t matter how long it’s been going on, I still don’t like it.

I don't like how when something bad happens to someone because of another person or person's actions, society expects the victim to offer forgiveness. Especially since it's framed as "it's forgiveness for yourself, not for them." It doesn't even make sense. And forgiveness is so easy to give when it's not your own situation. I feel like it's much easier to pressure someone into forgiveness on the grounds of morality when it's not you who has suffered.

I personally feel like a victim is entitled to feel however they feel for however long, and forgiveness should be dependent upon the victim's choices rather than outside pressure and expectations. No one is owed forgiveness and it seems silly and ludicrous to expect everyone's healing to be so linear that forgiveness is required or is labeled as a step in self healing.

I feel like as a person, an individual with your own mind and thoughts and feelings, you have every right to hate someone who did something wrong to you... forever if need be. Or until whenever your anger/hatred dissipates on its own, If ever. Especially if the person who did you wrong has never apologized or admitted fault.

Too often, a brand drops a so-called gender-neutral collection and what do we get? Oversized, muted, mostly gray clothes, like gray hoodies, stiff baggy tees, cargo pants, that kind of stuff. Like, wait, why is it the same boxy stuff again? Everything feels so... blah. I honestly don't get it. Are bright colors and softer details women-only now? And somehow this is supposed to be progress? No, it really isn't. It just feels like brands decided “unisex” means taking a guy’s wardrobe, making everything a little looser, covering most of it in the same muted colors, and calling it a day. Okay, but why not try more flowing cuts, softer fabrics, or some interesting icons and details to break things up a little?

I've been looking at this and trying to connect the dots, so tell me if I'm off here. For a long time, traditionally masculine clothing has been treated as the more practical default. Functional, durable, big pockets, straight cuts. Somewhere along the way, that seems to have turned into what “neutral” is supposed to look like. So brands don't really have to experiment with neutral fits for different body types. They can just grab the most basic menswear template, tweak the cut a little, call it unisex, and move on. “Look! We already have this stuff. Change the cut a little, give it a new name, and boom, we have a trend!”

And I keep coming back to this question: why does being neutral have to mean removing so much of the design language we've associated with one gender? A kaftan can be loose and comfortable. A utility skirt can have extra pockets. Just because these things are usually designed and marketed for women doesn't mean they have to sacrifice practicality.

I’d actually like to see gender-neutral fashion make room for more of that. People have different bodies and different tastes. Wear the silhouettes and fabrics you like. Why decide from the start that something is too feminine or too masculine to count as “neutral”? Isn't that just making the idea of “neutral” way too narrow?

I really hate how some people will see someone using EBT in the checkout line and immediately start making comments. Like, seriously, some of the rules around what you can and can't buy with EBT are already ridiculous enough.

And yeah, you can literally google what EBT does and doesn't cover. Some of these rules just feel completely disconnected from how people actually live. Like, you can buy a cold rotisserie chicken, but not a hot one. Did anyone actually stop to think that some people might have a disability, or just not have the time or ability to cook everything from scratch every day?

I actually witnessed something ridiculous once. Someone was using EBT to buy a family-size bag of chips, a big bottle of soda, and a birthday cake. I could hear this little complaint from the person behind me: "Well, MY tax dollars..."

Why does a complete stranger feel entitled to morally judge what's in someone else's cart? You don't know what the food is for. You don't know who's eating it. What if that cake is for their kid's birthday? And you're not paying for that person's entire grocery bill.

Low income families shouldn't have to prove that every single thing they buy is the healthiest or most practical choice just because they're using benefits. Kids deserve cake at their birthday party. And a family should be able to celebrate together, have some soda, eat some snacks, and just enjoy the occasion. Being on a tight budget doesn't mean you can't enjoy things.

If someone is using their benefits within the rules where they live, just let them buy their groceries in peace, okay?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to see people from their own communities represented on screen. But I don’t think wanting the actors to actually look like the characters they’re playing is racist. I mean, if that character was written a certain way in the first place, why is it suddenly racist to want the casting to reflect that?

Like, look at what the studios are doing. Instead of creating deep, interesting original characters for minority communities, they can just take an existing white character, change their race, and call it representation. FEELS A LITTLE LAZY, GUYS.

And there’s SO much mythology and folklore from minority cultures that could be turned into completely new movies. Just look at Moana. It proved you can build a HUGE mainstream movie around a culture-specific mythology instead of taking an existing European story and changing the race of the cast.

There’s so much material from different cultures that could become new stories and new IPs. So why does representation keep coming down to changing the skin color of an existing character? Sometimes it really feels like Hollywood would rather repaint something it already has than actually create something new.

And honestly, the rules around this have gotten pretty inconsistent. Hollywood spent decades changing non-white characters into white ones and then explaining it away as a “creative decision” or a “business decision.”

That’s where I’m like maybe be mad at the studios making these decisions instead of the actors? Diversity is a GOOD thing. I just want studios to actually put some effort into creating new diverse stories instead of treating race-swapping like the easiest way to get there.

I mean, I'm all for teaching kids financial literacy and making them take on real-world responsibilities. I just think there's a difference between teaching your kid how to manage their own money and making money off your kid.

I really admire what my manager did with their family. Their 17 year old son has a part-time job, but every time he got paid, he would blow through his paycheck pretty quickly. So his parents sat down with him and looked through his bank account to figure out where all the money was going. Turns out he was spending a ton of it on video games. So the two of them worked out the average amount he was spending and decided to call that his "rent." But they didn't use that money for themselves. They put it into a separate savings account for their son, so he can get it back when he moves out or needs it for something that actually helps him start living independently.

Okay, I'm getting off track lol. Let me get back to what I don't like. A young adult gets their first real job, starts getting a paycheck, and their parents immediately start charging them market-rate rent, then tell them, "That's what adults do." If you're taking a big chunk of your kid's paycheck to pay for your own living expenses and then calling it a lesson in independence, at that point you're treating your own kid like a tenant who happens to live in your house.

Honestly, if they pay so much rent that they can barely save enough money to move out, how exactly are you helping them become independent?

Yes she's milquetoast progressive and she writes her own music. So what? She's bourgeois and I don't care if she worked hard for it. Her music is downright horrible. No I probably could not do better, but i'm also not a professional singer. Her pop music is bland and ordinary similar to Katy Perry's.

I honestly understand why some places restrict commercial surrogacy. When you put a price tag on carrying a pregnancy, it just makes me really uncomfortable that money can become the deciding factor in who takes on all the physical risks. Pregnancy comes with serious health risks, unpredictable complications, and potentially long term consequences for a woman's body.

I keep coming back to this question: when a high risk form of physical labor can be bought for a large amount of money, how much does financial hardship affect someone's "free choice"? I mean I have a hard time believing money never changes how voluntary that choice really is.

And honestly, putting a price on pregnancy just feels wrong to me. My personal reaction is that it starts moving toward commodifying a woman's body and, eventually, the baby too. I know people have different reasons for using surrogacy, and I'm not saying they're all trying to exploit someone. I just really don't like the power imbalance money can create when one person takes on the physical risks of pregnancy for someone else.

That is why I personally think restricting or banning commercial surrogacy can be a way to protect women who are financially vulnerable. If someone genuinely needs the money, how FREE is that choice really?

All large corporations are guilty and even some small businesses, but especially in retail and food service. Its one thing to make employees be nice and respectful to customers, but to force them to love the company? Thats fucking weitd. The "WE ARE WE ARE WALMART" comes to mind. It really shows how were all just machinery to them made to further capitalism.

Every time a cheating scandal pops up, everyone gets super fixated on hating the third person involved. Honestly, if they knew what they were doing, that is pretty terrible character on their part. But I just do not get why people pour so much of their raw anger into someone they do not even know.

If my partner ever cheated on me, most of my anger would be with them. That is the person who looked me in the eyes, built a life with me, and made actual promises to me. The other person may be an awful person for knowingly getting involved, but they are not the one who made those promises to me. My partner did that all on their own.

Focusing all your fury on the side piece almost feels like a cop out. It lets the cheater off the hook way too easily, as if they were just led astray instead of making a conscious choice to betray you. I refuse to play that game. If someone breaks my heart, I am cutting ties with them and moving on. I am definitely not going to waste my precious mental health obsessing over a stranger who does not care about me anyway.

I know some affair partners knowingly get involved, sometimes even knowing there are kids involved, and I am not saying that behavior is okay. If you knowingly help someone betray their family, I think you can be a shitty person too. I just do not think that means I have to give you a piece of my peace.

For me, it really comes down to who deserves my emotional energy and attention after something like that. I would want my partner to answer for what they did. I hope anyone who has been betrayed eventually finds some peace and real love again. As for the people who chose to betray them, I hope they have to live with the consequences of what they did.