I literally just came from another post that was talking about this.

Unfortunately there’s a lot of products that most people don’t even know exist. Hell I keep finding new tools and wondering why I’ve been doing things the hard way for so long.

OTOH, fuck all the advertisers who use shady tactics to make sales, and especially fuck all the people who pray on the naivety of others to steal their money. I was just showing a customer an email I got the other day stating her domain hosting was past due and required immediate payment, and she asked how I knew it was a scam. Uh, hello, because —I— am hosting your domain and website (and this is exactly why I share this kind of stuff with people, to make them think before they blindly write a check).

If I want your shit, I will find you. If I appreciate your shit, I’ll pay you for your time.

This literally won’t happen because you will never find my content without ads.

How do you reach people with a new product that didn’t exist before? Or a Service? Do you want monopolys that never change because smaller business cant advertise with their stuff.

I don’t like 99% of advertising either, especially online, but there are some exceptions.

I’m down voting you because I agree lol

I’m pretty sure ads don’t work on me. People tell me ‘ackshually they do, you just don’t notice.’ Nah, mate. They don’t. They just annoy me.

Marketing is only manipulation. It wants to manipulate me into doing something I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Since I don’t know how well their manipulation works, my only option is to only buy things that I have never seen an ad for.

To make sure I can still buy anything at all, I block/avoid ads where I can.

Are there people who genuinely enjoy ads?

not unpopular!

You really should be directing your angst at the bastards who respond to advertising. If it weren’t for them, there would be no advertising at all because it would be completely unfeasible. Nobody would be willing to pay for something that has no return on investment.

I hate ads as much as the next guy, but without ads get ready to start paying for things. You go to a news website, sorry you need to login and hand over your credit card to access anything. Youtube? Sorry you need to login and pay up to watch anything. You want to Google,Bing, Duckduckgo something sorry you better pay up can’t sell you data to advertisers anymore.

Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing but it will fundamentally change how the internet works and it potentially could limit informational access to poor people.

Too many places let you drive if you do the happy path stuff right: stopping at a stop sign, changing lanes safely, etc. But the most important time of your driving is when you’re about to hit a semitruck and you need to get your car out of the way, and there is no training material for this at all. People often panic and slam the brakes and aggressively turn the wheel, which is a perfect setup for understeer and losing control of your car. They are literally getting in a situation where they are about to die and they choose to greatly increase their risk due to negligence.

It’s cheaper to run simulators than purchase cars and hire trainers. Get em in nasty situations and teach them how to get out of it. For real, if mom and dad can’t evade sinking their freeway missile into a van full of kids, they shouldn’t be able to get behind the wheel and be presented with opportunities where this might happen any time they drive.

Problem is that there’s no other alternative for most people. Unless you live in a city, public transportation isn’t a valid option. Most people living in most locations (at least in the US) have to have personal vehicles to attend school/work, shop, and socialize.

Once self driving cars become commonly available, driving will no longer be a requirement and I think that driving licenses should be stricter on who’s allowed to drive.

Germany’s driving test (and school) is fairly strict and will fail you for small mistakes which is good for beginners but after all, there is no test or reinsurance after some years of driving. After some time, people will see driving as a right not a privilege. This is the case for the vast majority of counties. This is the problem.

This is why I personally am looking forward to fully self-driving cars. We’re a long way off, but when self-driving cars can completely replace the human element, I think the world will be a much safer place.

Imo it’s kinda unavoidable. Humans make mistakes all the time. We could greatly reduce the risk however, if we simply reduced our reliance on independent vehicles. Unfortunately this depends on the place where you live as well but if possible, it would be much safer for the collective majority to bike/walk to areas or use public transport where applicable as it would drop the amount of traffic on the roads

There’s a few places that didn’t get cars until later and “no thank you” was a very common reaction. We really ought to just ban private ownership.

I think updating the driving test to mandate proving you’re able to drive a stick would thin the herd quite a bit.

Especially in the USA

People who die while driving are almost all die by accident.

People who get shot are far more likely to be killed intentionally.

As much as I disagree, I upvoted you just for being brave enough to say that.

I’m on the same train. The original trilogy never did much for me (maybe if I was around in the 70s/80s when it was groundbreaking VFX), the prequels obviously suck, and the sequels are a hot mess too. Now you have Disney milking the hell out of it with all the TV shows and spinoffs. The only Star Wars thing I ever enjoyed was Rogue One.

…then I discovered Dune. And Dune is exactly what I wished Star Wars had always been.

On the last day of my college internship a senior VP at my little company invited me into his office presumably to get to know me prior to extending a full-time offer. To break the ice he asked me what my favorite Star Wars movie was. I smiled and replied that I could never get through any of them.

As I was uttering these words I began to notice the giant Star Wars poster directly behind the gentleman. It then dawned on me that his office was chalk full of Star Wars memorabilia.

The man did not ask me any further questions. He shook my hand, thanked me for my great work, and I never stepped foot into those offices ever again.

If I come across you in a dark alley and we’re all alone then you better be ready cos I’ll accept your opinion and offer some other suggestions of movies that we might like, such as all 3 Lord of the Rings (extended editions of course).

Finely and actual unpopular opinion.

I disagree, which I now realise was the point of this post

It was a different perspective on an imperfect galaxy and one that felt like it was lived in.

Not just Aliens visit earth!

But a new perspective like… what if just because we have faster then light travel, racism didn’t go away, and it had laser swords and near super human abilities powers!

New Star Wars sucks for sure. The originals are much better.

I think so much about it is awesome (visuals, design of ships and sets, music, etc.) but maybe due to lack of repeated exposure to the movies as a child I don’t feel much about them. The modern movies were especially meh, since they all feel like they are trying to recapture the feeling of people who saw the originals in the cinema in the late 70s and 80s, but without doing anything new. I did quite enjoy the Fallen Order game and will probably play the follow up at some point too though.

I absolutely loved Star Wars as a kid. Every movie since then has been a major disappointment. I’ve only watched the first of the OT as an adult so far (with my kids), and I was not as into it as expected. Luke was one whiney kid.

I myself only like the TV shows, mainly Clone Wars.

I downvoted because this is a popular opinion. MCU is the same thing. Most people probably don’t have a strong opinion on Star Wars either way, but for the people who do there are plenty who think it sucks.

And asexual

But I agree. The bi community already collectively decided we are trans and nonbinary inclusive. We don’t need to further separate it out.

I agree. All the little bitty addages don’t make sense. You can be bi and still have preferences. Just keep it simple gosh dangit.

And here I thought pansexual meant you really like cookware.

Upvoted, but I have a slight disagreement. I think bisexual should actually be a label under pansexual. Bisexual doesn’t necessarily account for anyone outside the gender binary.

If we’re splitting hairs, bi should be a sunset of pan.

Also, there is some need for a fourth “none of the above” label…

Out of interest, why? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, that bi is a subset of pan?

As a pansexual I feel that Bi and Pan have enough differences to both be justified while the others are micro labels (not invalid, just less useful as labels).

But I recognize I’m drawing that line very conveniently for myself.

Agree. I understand expressing acceptance of non hetero love so kids know that there are other options and they’re valued, but i don’t need to know what labels everyone has chosen, who they’re having sex with, or what is under their undies. And i believe that many people who are medically trans are chasing a masculinity or feminity that they feel is not allowed as a male or female and it’s sad that the stereotype is what they’re moving towards or away from instead of individuality. Also, kinda drunk, so probably disregard.

Yes, but without those other ones you can’t call the people who use bisexual bigots.

I think this thinking falls into the common belief that “sexuality” and preference within “sexuality” are actually distinct things. I really think everyone’s sexual preferences are unique, and so even microlabels don’t do them justice. But I don’t think the purpose of labeling your sexuality is meant to be perfectly descriptive, it’s a way to connect with people over shared parts of their experience with sexuality and that can be as coarse or fine as you want it to be. You say there should be only straight, gay, and bi, but we could go even more broad and say there should only be cishet and queer.

Why asexuals?

subsets of bisexual

What does bi cover that pan doesn’t :-)

Not understanding what words mean isn’t an unpopular opinion, you’re just wrong

Not about the first bit, that’s arguable

You definitely DO need more labels than straight, gay, and bi. For example: asexual or sapiosexual, those don’t fit into any of the 3 you listed

I totally get that, same here.

But ultimately you can’t just blame people. There is literally an entire industry trying to sell you cheap carbs and fat. Down to the sound a bag of chips makes when you open it (this is not a joke).

So on one hand you have evolution, your body still being stuck in the past where food was scarce. On the other hand you have too much food and it’s highly engineered to be addicting on purpose.

It’s no surprise most people are going to lose that challenge.

I used to be fat, and when I watch morbidly obese people talk about how much they love food and it makes them happy and makes them feel better that is 100% me. Food is absolutely an addiction for some people, including me. Thankfully I have it under control to be at a healthy weight and lose weight when I need to, but some of these people have absolutely tragic childhoods or life experiences and I don’t blame them at all for coping in that way. I could 100% see myself in that position if I had been through what they have been through.

However, those people are self aware that they are unhealthy. The people I can’t stand are the “healthy at every size” fat acceptance people. Healthy at every size was SUPPOSED to be that you can make positive health focused changes at any size and there is no point of no return. But it got twisted into I can be morbidly obese and I am still 100% healthy forever. And they even make people feel bad for wanting to lose weight, even if it’s for health reasons. Those people are trash and fall on the same level as antivax people IMO.

Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, until you start spewing harmful bullshit and then I will judge you as much as I want.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately and your comment is interesting. Your first sentence is definitely phrased in a more controversial way than the rest of your comment, but I can’t help seeing it as very similar to “Being depressed is a choice the vast majority of the time, and I have a huge bias against depressed people.” Is that an unfair comparison?

I know that treating fatness/obesity as a disease is kinda controversial but I feel like folks give people dealing with mental health a lot more grace than people dealing with health issues related to being fat. I’ve also heard that for some people they can be perfectly healthy at a higher weight (though this is clearly not the case for many fat people who are seeing health impacts). I guess I’m assuming that a lot of fat people would potentially like to be less so, but can’t (for any number of reasons) quite get there. This seems really similar for me to people dealing with depression, anxiety, etc who want to change things but keep falling back into the problem.

I guess my question is do you have bias against people who can’t escape other bad cycles like mental health or even stuff like alcoholism? Or is it more just that you think it’s fair to judge people without the discipline/willpower to get out of a state they didn’t want to be in, like you did.

Sure.

But that doesn’t mean go out and harass fat people. Trust me we fucking know. You can’t lose weight instantly. Some of us may actually be working on it.

Also fat people have the right to be happy. People hating on “happy at any size” is just being assholes for the sake of it.

After I got diagnosed with some weight related shit, I turned my entire life upside down, am at a much healthier 150 lbs (68ish kg), and feel so much better, both physically and mentally.

Something disillusioning from the field of psychotherapy research: Our best, most interdisciplinary, low-threshold therapeutic strategies allow people to, on average, lose and hold the loss of up to 7-10% of the weight they’ve started with. Which isn’t even enough to get most people out of the obesity range. What you’ve been through is exceptional. By far most people will never manage to lose that much, not even with professional help.

To put it this way: If we look at obesity like a mental disorder it’s one of the hardest to overcome, harder than depression or anxiety.

I get why so many people share your opinion on this, I just feel like it’s missing context. Because sure, physiologically its possible for a depressed person to “just go out more” or an anxious person to “just stop breathing so fast” or an overweight person to “just eat less and move more”, but this is such an oversimplified way to look at how humans work and why they do what they do that is simply stops being correct. Every now and then you’ll meet someone who managed to do all this just like that, but for the vast majority it’s an unrealistic and unfair thing to ask.

Obesity is a chronic disorder and will continue to be until we get better treatments.

I’m 265 and 5’9", and I spent my whole life feeling like this was my fault. I’ve changed my diet, I’ve tried exercising, but I was always met with extreme difficulty. I thought exercise was supposed to be difficult and I was just a big baby. People would say, you just have to build up stamina. It gets easier. But it never did. It would get to the point where I’d be crying and pushing myself and still not accomplishing as much exercise as even an average unfit person could. I’d walk a few miles every day and never build stamina, never feel better, never lose weight.

I just found out I have an issue with my pituitary gland, likely a tumor (going for a scan). I just had the tests to confirm the issue is in my pituitary (the tests were miserable). I’m actually not producing certain hormones, so it turns out I’m incapable of building muscle. That’s why I can’t build stamina or convert my fat into muscle. I’ve been told this was “almost certainly” my issue for 2 months, (after my mom, aunts, and cousins were all diagnosed; we likely share a genetic defect causing pituitary tumors) and I’ve had the confirmed test results for over 2 weeks. It’s really hard to shift my perspective away from “this is my fault, I just need to try harder.” I expect to battle with health insurance a couple weeks to months before getting my hormone replacement. My mom only took 2 weeks (averages 2 months), so fingers crossed.

I’ve always thought more people were overweight for medical reasons than assumed by the general population, I just didn’t think I was one of them. I see a lot of moms like me hustling after their toddlers, eating well, trying their best, and still being overweight. I wonder if it has something to do with all the “endocrine disruptors” I’m always hearing about. I definitely think some people are overweight “by choice” (or by a mental disorder rather than a physical one), and I have major problems with “fat positivity” (I believe in body neutrality), but I think it’s more people having a medical problem than you’d expect. Same with my wife and child who both eat like horses but have BMIs of 13. It’s not like they’re not trying to gain weight.

I would’ve thought you would’ve learned kindness out of that ordeal. Didn’t people make fun of you? How’d it feel, even if you knew they were right? It’s just rude and inappropriate. There’s no need. eve

Unpopular opinion follow-up: You should be using proper units of measurement.

Don’t get me wrong. I can perfectly infer from the story what you’re saying. But 150 or 250 lbs just doesn’t mean anything to me. Neither does the height or what people write in the other comments.

Hmm I think that for a lot of people, it wasn’t a choice to get fat. I know a lot of kids who are already obese and they aren’t even in their teens.

However, I do think it’s a choice once you’ve realized it and have the ability to actually do something about it.

Kinda related but unrelated: it irks me when someone comments how easy it is for me to be skinny, bc it isn’t. As a previously underweight person, I think gaining and losing weight are just as hard. I had to control my diet, work out, and have a lot of self control to not lose the habits I was building. I folded and stagnated a lot, and yeah it was demotivating but I still had to make a choice to keep going.

There are a lot of people with eating disorders that result in them being overweight. Some people who have been neglected and abused as children can turn to food as their only source of comfort. If you have not been safe as a child, you will likely not have a basic sense of safety as an adult. If no-one has been kind to you and took care of you, you will likely not know how to be kind to yourself and take care of yourself.

So, you use food to feel safe and to get a sense of comfort. You use it to numb the feelings, to feel something nice. Because you do not have the resources to cope with the world that others that were loved as children do have, you do not know how to deal with it another way. And you survive and fight to make something of your life after all that has happened to you.

And then you get overweight. And society will tell you that it is your own fault. That you should show more restraint. That you just should eat less. That you lack willpower. That you are repulsive. That you are inferior to people who are not overweight. That you are unlovable. Basically, that you are everything that they used to tell you that you were when you were a child.

And you try to lose the weight, but you feel awful. You feel unsafe. You have nothing else that gives you a nice feeling. People will compliment you and be nicer to you and say that you look better. But you are constantly stressed. You think about food day and night, constantly, until you break. And you eat and you gain the weight back, and more. And you will feel like a failure, and you will feel unlovable and repulsive. And you do not know how to deal with these feelings in any other way than by eating.

And so, the stigma around being overweight actually makes it more difficult to love yourself and to be kind to yourself. The focus on food and the idea that everything will be okay if you just lose the weight will make you put all your effort into weight loss, instead of solving the real problem. Namely, that you need to process trauma and find other ways of coping with feelings and the world.

I think this is what is happening to a lot of people who are overweight. And they might not even be aware of it. They might think it is just about food, because that is what everyone is telling them. That they should just work harder at losing weight. That they just should have more willpower.

But I think that many people who are overweight do not lack willpower at all. They have survived horrible things. They did not get basic life skill lessons that others did. They did not grow up with a sense of safety and feeling good about themselves. But they survived. And they try to make something of their lifes. And that takes a lot of willpower. And for them to get better and to lead a more happy life, they need help with learning new ways to cope, they need their strength to be acknowledged, they need to be accepted, and, above all, they need to be loved.

The ones that get me are the obviously overweight couples with rotund children.

Being overweight is an overblown focus on people’s health. Most mildly overweight people lead a normal life. There are more important focuses that also impact weight gain without all the shame.

I was never huge, though 212 at 5’9" is overweight and approaching the technical definition of obesity. Due to some undesirable side effects of that weight (medical), I’ve been working to lighten up and am already down 24 lbs in 3 months, with a target of 170. It’s tough, and even painful at times, but it really is as simple as making sure calories in is less than calories out. For the doubters, I recommend just starting with meticulous tracking of activity and food consumption without even making any changes. It gets very obvious very quickly what’s happening, which makes it easier to start making changes.

100 pounds lost is amazing. What did you find that worked for you and how long did it take?

You seem to have found the main nerve

Nah, being fat is the embodiment of laziness. Your bias isn’t wrong, but good on you for trying to give people a chance.

I used to agree with you and still do in a way since I have quite negative attitude towards fat people. However I now realize that while calories in - calories out applies to everyone we’re still different especially in the way we experience hunger.

I’m thin and fit myself but I eat like shit. What differentiates me from fat people however is that I only eat about 3000kcal of shit and then I’m full and it may take quite a while before I eat again but I also go to gym and mountain biking and stuff so I use all the calories too instead of storing them as fat. I also sometimes simply just skip dinner altogether because I don’t feel like eating. I’m just lucky that I can still function just fine even with an empty stomach and I don’t experience aggressive sense of hunger like some other people do. Also I hate cooking and eating. Takes too much time.

My theory for why this is is that my body is just better at switching from carbonhydrates to burning fat (converting it into glucose) and thus I don’t experience the drop in blood sugar levels the way some other people do to whom it takes a while for this process to kick in so they crash hard after all the carbs are used up.

I especially hate when everyone’s conclusion is genetics. That’s such a minuscule percent of obese people that it’s ridiculous.

And, independently of their tax status, they shouldn’t promote political candidates.

I upvoted you, but do disagree with this a bit, there are a few religions which set up food for anyone willing to come inside, like I went to eat langar at a Sikh temple during my friend’s wedding, and all we have to do is cover our head out of respect. Grab a plate, sit on the floor, and eat.

I randomly went with my friend a couple days later, and they still had food out, so it’s not a wedding only thing, but they actually have cooks in the kitchen most of the day.

especially scientology

Absolutely, 100% agreed. I know most other church-goers would disagree, though. Religious organizations should be treated no differently from any other organization.