I can share all of the systems that I have developed for the Webfishing server for yourself or @Stigsbandit35z@hexbear.net to use if you are interested.

I'm taking a break from everything due to poor mental health so I'm on light duties and it means my response time is usually at least a couple of days, so set your expectations accordingly.

It's not that difficult to set up a server in Webfishing for this purpose but I did take a few steps to help with accessibility, like multi-modal ways of understanding the time it was scheduled (because of time zone conversion issues.)

In my experience the demands vary depending on what people need on the day. I'd say that it's important to have a clear understanding in mind for how you would manage any disruptive or inappropriate behaviour (though I didn't encounter any at all across the times I've run a server) and what you would do to maintain a safer environment (reminding people not to over disclose if they seem to be digging too deep into something that is raw and traumatic [i.e. where you would draw a line and guide them to talking with a support hotline or therapist instead], reminding people about being cautious not to give out too many specific personal details, and how you would respond if someone is in a mental health crisis etc.) This is probably overkill but there is a duty of care that you have when you set up a space like this.

Ensuring that you have the right self-care in place is also important, especially if you are newer to facilitating groups like this. Having your own support network to help you with debriefing and processing stuff is crucial.

Let me know if you're keen and I'll provide you with what I've got, just remember that it will probably take at least a few days for me to do it.

The big sad as temp-banned me from functioning but I'm still here. No ETA on when I'll be active again, nothing to worry about, and nothing to do with this site or anything external.

I don't have the capacity to deal with much more than the basics. Could I ask that you edit your comment to remove my username or to put strike-thru formatting on it so that I don't become the center of drama that I'm unable to address at present? I'd really appreciate it.

That's really weird. I've checked this in two different browsers on my phone and it works fine but I thought I should quickly check on PC and it is showing an error when I open the link there, but I can download and view the video just fine. I'm a little stumped by this lol.

I wonder if there's some sort of problem with catbox. I've just tried reuploading in a completely different way hopefully that works. E: Seems to be working fine now? Strange.

"Would you say that Brexit was a scam?"

"Yes."

"And would you agree that it was sold to the British public through propaganda and outright lies?"

"Very much so."

"Do you take glee at the news at the victims of this mass-scale scam have faced hardship and financial ruin, if not openly wishing death upon them?"

"Of course I do."

"And would you agree that you are morally superior than these people and that you have their best interests at heart?"

"Undoubtedly."

It's shit like this attitude that I just cannot square the circle of. It's much easier for someone to detect the open scorn and contempt that another person has for them than it is to detect the lies that someone like Nigel Farage feeds them.

That's not to say that Farage isn't transparent with his bullshit but when someone genuinely hates you and wishes ill upon you, it's virtually impossible not to take notice of it. I'm not saying that reactionary and bigoted beliefs aren't contemptible or that they should go unchallenged but, generally speaking, treating people with contempt is one great big own-goal imo because you aren't gonna get far educating and agitating amongst people who you consider to be human garbage.

I once found a really niche, deep-youtube channel of a person who was a consumer-animatronic enthusiast who collected and refurbished mostly Big Mouth Billy Bass.

At first I thought it was satire but the person genuinely knew their different editions with different features and would collect and refurbish them. They seemed to be part of a small community of animatronic enthusiasts and it was like peering into another world. I thought it was neat and it was really nice to see that they had found their people and what brought them joy in life.

[Sung to a thrumming new wave baseline]

🎵When a problem comes along, you must Beanis!
When there's something goin' wrong, you must Beanis!

I say Beanis
Beanis good🎵

Oh hell yeah, is this getting discussed in the mainstream more?

AMAB/AFAB seem like they have just become stand-in terms to conceal bioessentialism by using progressive-sounding words. I tend to use them only in a pinch and I've made efforts to be very intentional about saying "was" and not "is", as this subtle distinction makes a big difference if I'm going to resort to using those terms at all since your assignment at birth is not who you are but rather it's something that happened to you. Even then it's something I generally only use for shorthand to refer to socialisation and mostly only in referring to myself. E.g.:

"I was AMAB and so I'm still trying to figure out whether I'm genuinely NB/agender spec or if there's some really super deep internalised misogyny that I'm completely oblivious to lurking in my psyche which is there because of how I was raised."

I think one of the things that works is finding users who you particularly enjoy having exchanges with, often the ones who you find sharing an overlap in interests with and who spends time in the same comms and who seems to enjoy replying to you (especially if the comment exchange goes for more than one or two replies).

The next step is usually connecting with them via DM or exchanging socials. Usually this is easier if you have a purpose for contacting them rather than trying to strike up a discussion from nowhere.

There is the visual cuisine which happens once a week, I think, and is announced in masterposts like this upcoming one. There's a chatroom in there which you can use to engage with others. There are other events like a peer support space that I try to run at least every week or so via the game Webfishing, although that might not necessarily suit your interests.

I've seen comrade CorgiWithALaptop invite people to impromptu viewing sessions via the visual cuisine cytube space but idk how that works exactly, but I think they set a good example of how to invite people to hang out.

I think this stuff is kinda hard to navigate as someone who is autistic because understanding the nuances of the whole thing can be kinda tricky, speaking from personal experience. Not to say that you should self-segregate but you might find it easier to try a comm which could be more accommodating such as the neurodiverse comm or to ask the mods there if they would consider helping you set something up via that comm if you feel like you would benefit from getting some assistance with connecting with other users or organising a group activity like a watch party via cytube, for example.

When it comes to content warnings I try to be specific about the content and to give a estimation of how in depth the content is because I think it's helpful for people to make an informed decision. I also try to remember to bold my content warnings and to put them on a separate line, often I will put them halfway into a comment right before the CW content appears as that way a person can still read part of a response while choosing to skip over a detailed example that may be triggering.

I'm going to give some examples of what I think are better and worse content warnings to illustrate my point in quoted comments:

CW: violence
I disagree with your point because sometimes violence is necessary to defend yourself from harm. For example, take a child who fights back against their abuser...

So in this one the CW isn't as visually distinct so it's easier to skip over if you're skimming and it also excludes a person from reading a response before the potentially triggering content. Also "violence" isn't really descriptive - is it shouting? Is it a gunshot? Is it something really gruelling like you'd expect from a gory horror movie? This makes informed consent much trickier and it unintentionally excludes people.

Another example:

I don't agree with the absolute pacifist position like you've described. I think that justice is something that needs to be defended, with violence if necessary [note here that just mentioning violence in the abstract isn't a problem imo because what are you going to do - say CW: violence before you mention the concept of violence?]. As MLK put it, the absence of the absence of tension vs. a positive peace, which requires the presence of justice, is an important distinction to make.

[CW: Brief discussion of child abuse and neglect in the abstract]

For example, only the most rabidly dogmatic pacifist would denounce a victim of child abuse for resorting to an act of violence to defend themselves unless it was wildly incommensurate with the threat or perceived threat that they were defending themselves against. Maybe they would take a different position for a child that is being subjected to serious neglect like a child who is being denied meals but I'm uncertain tbh.

In this example, if a person decides to skip the comment because of the content warning they can still participate in the discussion to a large extent, even if they opt out of the last part so it's less exclusionary by its structure.

The content warning is also visually distinct and it's descriptive - it provides a good example of what to expect in the next part and who the language will be addressing. If it wasn't an abstract discussion I might say something like "Detailed personal experience of psychological abuse as a child who went through it" or "Description of fictional animal abuse in a film" because these can be very different experiences for someone to read about and they can have very different impacts.

When it comes to really intense stuff often I'll just put a CW at the top saying something like "Really in-depth discussions of transphobia, SH, suicide - if this stuff can be too much for you just skip the comment because you won't get anything out positive of reading this comment." such as in a case where maybe I'm really getting into the weeds and educating someone on a topic and encouraging them to shift their opinions. Or I might say "Blanket CW for very detail discussion of most/all forms of child abuse" rather than attempting to make a laundry list of each type of abuse. That sort of thing.

Anyway I'm not saying that this is how everyone must do their CWs but I feel like this is a good way to go about doing better, more helpful CWs.

I don't think it's a libbed up take but I can give you the boilerplate lib-brained "rational self-interest" ethics response, which is just a variation on their answer to "Why would you support free education if you don't have any kids yourself?" with that answer being that we all benefit from a society where people have access to this, even if it doesn't benefit us or our loved ones directly; those people getting an education are your colleagues and neighbours and friends and everyone else in society so an educated population (or a healthy one) benefits us as individuals, if only indirectly. I don't need to point to the ongoing pandemic or previous ones to help you extend this analogy just slightly further for a real-world example of why this also applies to health. I don't think this is the ideal basis for justifying universal healthcare but if that's what it takes to shake people out of their edgy Ayn Rand phase then so be it - it's hard to argue against this point.

If you want to take a restorative justice approach then even the worst people to exist need good healthcare so they can repair some measure of the harm they have inflicted upon the world for as long as is possible.

If you want to take the most punitive approach to justice then even the worst people to exist need good healthcare so that their lives can be as long as possible in order to exact the most retribution from them because a swift death would be far too merciful for these people.

And if you're going to provide good healthcare to the very worst people in the world then you're kinda obligated to provide good healthcare to everyone else, at least if you're going to be morally consistent about it.

Sure, but there's a massive disinfo machine which has sprouted its own backyard propaganda industry that works 24/7 to mislead people. In a perfect world, this wouldn't exist. In a perfect world, people would be highly educated and politically developed where only if you are knowledgeable about the person you are voting for would you vote.

But based on my own anecdotal experience the average person who supports Trump isn't as intelligent and they definitely aren't as educated as the average person who supported Harris. I think it's safe to say that Trump's campaign exploited this demographic to get him into power again. Sure, if someone in his voterbase isn't grossly misguided then they have vicious political beliefs but the idea of celebrating a person's impending death because they are being stripped of healthcare for having the wrong political beliefs is really fucking vile.

The democrat supporters love touting the fact that studies show they have a higher level of intelligence and education and, often, that they demonstrate higher levels of empathy too. Yet they get a thrill out of shit like this or the carpet bombing of Gaza and, like the trees in the forest voting for the axe (like they always love accusing conservatives of being) not only do they vote for the (other) party that represents the interests of capital at their own expense but in doing so they vote for the (other) neoliberal party which continues to strip funding from welfare, education, healthcare, and housing that ensures that the next generation will have poorer educational outcomes and thus who will be in the prime demographic for conservative voters when they come of age but they are also actively ensuring that the development of the coming generations will have lower "IQ" because they are negatively impacting on nutrition during developmental years and doing shit like exposing kids to hazardous levels of lead in the water supply.

The only people who I have much more than a baseline level of sympathy for are the extreme progressives who haven't quite managed to figure it all out yet but I'm more inclined to be sympathetic to the person who is, allegedly, too stupid to know better than the person who is implicitly arguing that they themselves are more intelligent and that they do know better and yet still support a near-identical party. (Edit: I could have worded this part better. Fascists get no sympathy from me. Radicals get all my love. For all the liberal cohort, though, what I said in this paragraph applies.)

Bought a handheld gaming device fairly recently, a nice one. I know I'm gonna sound like an absolute crackpot by saying this but a lot of the impetus for getting it was about making some accommodations in my life and for (semi-)therapeutic outcomes.

No, I absolutely would not believe it if someone told me this either lol. And yes, there have already been some notable positive outcomes from this, which means that they are probably more significant than I realise cos I have this blind spot where I downplay positive outcomes that are personal to me and I'm usually the last person to notice improvements in myself.

It's nice to know that my elaborate scheme seems to be a good one so far and that it's already working as intended.