I have questions about terminology. Things I never understood. I mean no offense, just curious.

“Neckbeard”. Hair naturally grows on the neck. So we are okay with beards, but if you don’t shave the neck, you’re judged negatively? Not just for your appearance, but for your moral character? I don’t understand. Isn’t this like judging a woman for not shaving her armpits, or judging a man for not being circumcised? What difference does it make if a man has an unshaven beard? And why in the world would you use a natural thing as an insult?

“Incel”. I think this means “involuntary celibate”, right? Someone who isn’t good at socializing and hasn’t been able to get someone to have sex with them. Why in the world would you judge someone based off this? Doesn’t it seem needlessly cruel and illogical? There would be any number of reasons why a person has never had sex. They might not all be bad. But now we’re trying to build a culture where you’re a loser if you haven’t had sex? I don’t understand. I don’t understand how liberal have these weird derogatory categories to put people in.

I can understand being opposed to bad belief systems. I feel pretty strongly about that myself. But it seems like you need to attack the beliefs themselves if you want to get anywhere.

The only problem I have with moving is, I have this feeling that you can’t escape politics by doing that. The problem is social media dividing everyone and pushing extremism. Surely that is everywhere?

Killing people is not okay. You should treat others the way you would want to be treated yourself.

It’s not a law for no reason at all. Free speech is also an ideal, a principle. It can apply, as a moral, to non-legal areas.

What does it mean to use TikTok ironically? How is that different from using it normally?

Tiktok has 1 billion users. Whatever message they decide to push is going to propagate through the masses. I don’t think most people have the ability to notice and deflect misinformation like you’re implying.

A good friend of mine called me and wanted to me to explain to him how to format a hard drive. I tried explaining, but he wasn’t getting it. I asked questions. Do you have a Windows cd to reinstall from? No. Do you know it costs hundreds of dollars? No. Why do you want to reformat it? I just do. Then, it switched to, could I do this for him.

After enough back and forth questions, he grudgingly revealed that he had stolen the laptop from the local university. He had a job as a janitor there. Apparently, there was a group of the janitors that did this regularly, and my friend felt he had stumbled across a good thing.

I was so incredibly angry. Angry at the level that I didn’t know how to deal with the feeling. He wasn’t going to tell me any of this. He only revealed it because I pushed him on it. He tried to trick me into helping him commit crime. He’s stealing laptops from a university, a place that objectively makes the world better.

I stopped returning his calls and talking to him. That was 24 years ago. We had been friends for 10 years. I don’t know why I did that. I often wonder if there’s something wrong with me, something that makes it easy for me to cut people out of my life and not feel regret. I wish that I had at least said why I was angry. I didn’t say anything. I just stopped talking to him.

I’m really trying to. But it seems like all anyone wants to talk about here is Reddit and Twitter.

Sometimes I wonder if the people I'm talking to are even real humans. Their responses can be so totally out of left field.

Nah, I'm not a pacifist. I just think if we're getting a fresh start in a new place, maybe it's a chance to be a little more civil.