!g*mers

Chipped a tooth and i csnt even think straight rhe pain is so bad.

Jsut a reminder to everyone who jduged me the past month while i have been in exreme pain and unable to think properly,

That

If your mother,

Was in pain, and wsnt thinking straight,

When the world judged her, whatd yoy think of the world after them jdugeing yoyr mom and spitting on her and her reactions?

So dont judge my mothers child..

Habba also said that new criminal charges will "absolutely" be filed in its wake

https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-files-pam-bondi-trump-1a6af3e9fa1cfb6d267985a971a4929a

His fratboy neocolonialist cishetnormative anthem of mysogyny :

about how much they support the misogynist taking a stand against national socialism

https://old.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/1io0uh5/ben_folds_resigns_from_advisory_position_at/

misogynists stay losing

I had a long weekend back in SF. I took this woman all over the region from Santa Cruz to Presidio and showed her all the things that would make her happy. She loved it and completely fell in love with the area. She couldn't believe that I was telling the truth about everything (how beautiful the area is, how physically ugly the people are, and how god darn expensive it is).

We role played for a few days that we were in a relationship and I was showing her the area. I was still recovering from my surgery but even more importantly - this was the death rattle of our time together as lovers. I've grown more distant to this woman and care for her a lot but on this trip I felt love for her but not the kind that would blossom into an ever lasting relationship.

I've been really having a hard time adjusting with so many factors. I'm in my third year of living in NYC, I miss the bay area, I'm losing my apartment and have to find another, and I still can't get a job due to this frozen butt economy. I've been stuck in team match for closing in on a year with one of the biggest tech companies because they simply aren't hiring. I'm plenty good at interviewing but no one is really hiring.

And all the while, I feel that this surgery was quite intense for what will be minor payoff. It truly is a 1% better type thing. It's going to be unnoticeable on the daily but it's like having your teeth a couple shades whiter. It'll subtly move you towards being more attractive and therefore getting people to acknowledge you as a potential suitor.

I'm just feeling down because I turn 35 sooner than later and this is just not the life I've imagined a 35 year old me would be doing. Cosmetic surgery? Unemployed? Nearly homeless? Unable to find a woman who is suitable for a relationship? It's incredible to think I've worked so hard at so many facets of my life and I've still come up so incredibly short. It truly speaks as to how much is determined by your genetics and the environment you're born into. I've truly done incredible things to get where I am and I've never met anyone who has gone from where I was and gotten to where I am. But the fact I am no closer after three years of insane effort to being in a happy family speaks to how broken the idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is.

The woman who I spent time with is great in many ways btw. If it wasn't for a few things, she would otherwise be very good. The biggest one though is that I just don't have that urge - that urge that normally compels me to be with someone and talk to them endlessly and want to always be around them. It's not there at all and never really was there to begin with. I've tried to make it happen but it isn't there. I want it to be because then my life would be easier (not perfect) but it hasn't happened and I've really given it a shot.

We've covered this in the past with:

• /r/starbucksbaristas: "we're so tired of homeless people overdosing in our stores". Also /r/starbucksbaristas "noo you can't ban homeless people from our stores, they're people too "

• /r/starbucksbaristas are still defending the homeless

They're still mad... OP has written an absolute wall of unhinged nonsense so let me pick out the key bits:

But this back to Starbucks stuff might have me at my breaking point. It all feels so illogical, it's not even smart capitalism the direction we are going. It's money-hungry greed packaged in between "we care" statements and vague community pledges.

"Back to Starbucks" = "you can't be in a Starbucks unless you're a paying customer", with the aim of returning Starbucks to the local coffee shop feel it once had, rather than a homeless daycare centre.

Anyway, since the reset, we have turned homeless people away from getting water, people who haven't purchased anything away from using the bathrooms, there was one woman holding her tooth asking for a cup of ice because she went to the dentist that we turned away because she didn't want to buy anything.

lmao you wouldn't give a woman holding her tooth some ice? YTA

One customer in the drive through wanted a cup of water and even offered to pay for it without any way for us to charge for just a single plain cup of water.

Who the frick goes to a drive thru for a cup of water?

What's stopping someone from buying a petite vanilla bean scone or avocado spread, using the restroom, then asking for a refund?

Nothing, but a homeless person won't do that.

I've seen SSV's be yelled at, baristas be heckled and given attitude

But I bet you haven't been assaulted by a homeless person or had to clean up the bathroom after an OD since the change.

If a human being is thirsty, I will give them water. If a human being is hungry and I can give them food, I will.

Work for UNICEF then.

Our CEO private jet commutes to work. He makes tens of thousands a second.

Calculator needed.

Dont believe it will evee be a coffee house. the way the company has gone downhill since howie left. we are far too gone to return back to pur roots. our roots are buried deep and new ceo is very focused on profits than experience

The new CEO is actually laser-focused on the coffee house experience, these baristas are deranged.

Someone tells OP they're wrong but they're buried at the bottom of the thread:

The bathroom policy has been good overall actually in my district. I'm in Manhattan. And while it is annoying sometimes to tell people they can't use the bathroom, and some people have an issue, it's MUCH better than dealing with: Guy who comes in weekly and takes all the napkins out of the dispensers and throws them all over the floor; the guy who would "take a shower" in the bathroom and leave the floor covered in water, and leave his loofah and soap behind; the guy who would come in and ask for a "sample coffee" 5x a day; the guy who would bring in multiple bags of cans and spread them out and organize them on the floor; the guy who would roll up his blunts and have loud explicit phone calls, and the NYPD said they couldn't do anything lol; the guy who would stay in our bathroom for 20 mins, and when we'd ask him to get out he'd sit at a table and put his needles on the table while he slept; the lady who would sit in the lobby all day and occasionally yell and insult customers

(I think paragraphs are banned on the subreddit, I wish I wasn't shadowbanned)

!coomers @Discuss

!schizomaxxxers

Forced Unnatural Sex With Wife Not An Offence: High Courthttps://t.co/oBUnPZwtBz pic.twitter.com/tWwuE49Z7j

— NDTV (@ndtv) February 11, 2025

Macron story is even more crazy than we tought. pic.twitter.com/SBhDUsaPU6

— Johnny (@j00ny369T) February 18, 2025

!schizomaxxxers

!eurochads

https://old.reddit.com/r/FnqQueerEvents/comments/1ixs8vg/hands_off_trans_kids/

"That shit bleedin', P"

~unknown scholar

I probably didn't cook f enough

Tonight I'm a freaking carnivore

Got the uhhh kraft ranch too

for the !goyslopenjoyers in the audience

A year into their relationship, Jess and Nate got engaged next to the sea. "It was a golden, sandy beach – empty and secluded," says Jess, 26. "It was just us two there, so it was really intimate."

Except that the couple were actually hundreds of miles apart – and they were role-playing their engagement in the video game World of Warcraft.

Nate, 27, was living just outside London – and Jess was in Wales. After meeting briefly at an esports event in Germany in March 2023, the pair developed a long-distance relationship, playing the game together "from the moment we woke up to the moment we went to bed", says Nate.

The couple still play the game daily, even though they've been living together in Manchester since March 2024. And they know other couples who have found their partners through video games: "It's a different way of meeting someone," says Jess. "You both have such a strong mutual love for something already, it's easier to fall in love."

Nate agrees. "I was able to build a lot more of a connection with people I meet in gaming than I ever was able to in a dating app."

A selfie of Nate and Jess on the left, and on the right, a screenshot from World of Warcraft showing Nate proposing with the words, "Will you marry me?"

Nate and Jess (pictured, alongside their virtual engagement), found love online - but not on a dating app

Nate and Jess are not alone. According to some experts, people of their generation are moving away from dating apps and finding love on platforms that were not specifically designed for romance.

And hanging out somewhere online that's instead focused on a shared interest or hobby could allow people to find a partner in a lower-stakes, less pressurised setting than marketing themselves to a gallery of strangers. For some digital-native Gen Zs, it seems, simply doing the things they enjoy can be an alternative to the tyranny of the swipe.

Internet dating at 30 - a turning point?

Since it first appeared with the launch of match.com 30 years ago, online dating has fundamentally altered our relationships. Around 10% of heterosexual people and 24% of LGBT people have met their long-term partner online, according to Pew Research Center.

But evidence suggests that young people are switching off dating apps, with the UK's top 10 seeing a fall of nearly 16%, according to a report published by Ofcom in November 2024. Tinder lost 594,000 users, while Hinge dropped by 131,000, Bumble by 368,000 and Grindr by 11,000, the report said (a Grindr spokesperson said they were "not familiar with this study's source data" and that their UK users "continue to rise year over year").

According to a 2023 Axios study of US college students and other Gen Zers, 79% said they were forgoing regular dating app usage. And in its 2024 Online Nation report, Ofcom said: "Some analysts speculate that for younger people, particularly Gen Z, the novelty of dating apps is wearing off." In a January 2024 letter to shareholders, Match Group Inc - which owns Tinder and Hinge - acknowledged younger people were seeking "a lower pressure, more authentic way to find connections".

"The idea of using a shared interest to meet someone isn't new, but it's been reinvented in this particular moment in time – it signals a desire of Gen Z," says Carolina Bandinelli, an associate professor at Warwick University whose research focuses on the digital technologies of romance.

Getty Images Joggers running in a parkGetty Images

Many younger people are exploring alternatives to dating apps, from gaming to running clubs and other social activities

According to Danait Tesfay, 26, a marketing assistant from London, younger people are looking for alternatives to dating apps, "whether that be gaming or running clubs or extra-curricular clubs, where people are able to meet other like-minded people and eventually foster a romantic connection".

At the same time that membership of some dating apps appears to be in decline, platforms based around common interests are attracting more users. For instance, the fitness app Strava now has 135m users – and its monthly active users grew by 20% last year, according to the company. Other so-called "affinity-based" sites have seen similar growth: Letterboxd, where film fans can share reviews, says its community grew by 50% last year.

Rise of the hobby apps

And just as in the pre-internet age, when couples might have met at a sports club or the cinema, now singletons are able to find each other in their online equivalents.

"People have always bonded over shared interests, but it's been given a digital spin with these online communities," says Luke Brunning, co-director of the Centre for Love, S*x, and Relationships (CLSR) at the University of Leeds.

"It's increasingly difficult to distinguish between behaviour that's on a dating app and dating behaviour on another platform."

Hobby apps are taking on some features of social media, too: in 2023, Strava introduced a messaging feature letting users chat directly. One twenty-something from London explains that her friends use it as a way to flirt with people they fancy, initially by liking a running route they've posted on the platform. Strava says its data shows that one in five of its active Gen Z members has been on a date with someone they met through fitness clubs.

"[Online] fitness communities are becoming big places to find partners," says Nichi Hodgson, the author of The Curious History of Dating. She says a friend of hers met his partner that way, and they're now living together.

The same appears to apply to Letterboxd, too. With users including Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, it's a popular platform for younger people - two-thirds of members in a survey of 5,000 were under 34.

The company says it's aware of several couples meeting through the app, including one who bonded over a shared love of David Fincher's opinion-dividing 2020 drama Mank. "It could be that seeing other people's film tastes reveals an interesting aspect of themselves," says Letterboxd co-founder Matthew Buchanan.

Why the shift?

So what might be driving this? While dating apps initially appeared to offer "the illusion of choice", and a transparent, efficient way to meet partners, the reality for many has often proven to be different. The Pew Research Center found that 46% of dating-app users said their experiences were overall very or somewhat negative.

The recent decline in user numbers might also be a response to the way some apps are structured – in particular, the swipe feature for selecting potential partners, launched by Tinder in 2013 and widely copied.

Its creator, Jonathan Badeen, was partly inspired by studying the 1940s experiments of psychologist BF Skinner, who conditioned hungry pigeons to believe that food delivered randomly into a tray was prompted by their movements.

Getty Images A psychological experiment with pigeons conducted by BF SkinnerGetty Images

Tinder's swipe mechanism was partly inspired by Harvard Professor BF Skinner's psychological experiments with pigeons in order to understand the brain's reward system

Eventually, the swipe mechanism faced a backlash. "Ten years ago, people were enthusiastic and would talk quite openly about what apps they were on," says Ms Hodgson. "Now the Tinder model is dead with many young people – they don't want to swipe any more."

According to Mr Brunning, the gameifying interface of many dating apps is a turn-off. "Intimacy is made simple for you, it's made fun in the short term, but the more you play, the more you feel kind of icky."

The pandemic may have had an impact, too, says Prof Brian Heaphy at the University of Manchester, who has studied dating-app use in and after the lockdowns: "During Covid, dating apps themselves became more like social media – because people couldn't meet up, they were looking for different things."

Although that didn't last after the pandemic, it "gave people a sense that it could be different from just swiping and getting no responses – all the negatives of dating-app culture," says Prof Heaphy.

And in that context, the fact that video games or online communities like Strava or Letterboxd aren't designed for dating can be appealing. By attracting users for a broader range of reasons, there's less pressure on each interaction.

"Those apps aren't offering a commercialised form of romance, so they can seem more authentic," says Prof Heaphy.

The World of Warcraft characters of PurplePixel and Wochi

The humans behind Wochi and PurplePixel (pictured) met while playing World of Warcraft, though they say finding a partner wasn't their original intention

It's a type of connection free from the burden of expectation. A different couple who met on World of Warcraft – and go by the names Wochi and PurplePixel – weren't looking for love. "I definitely didn't go into an online game trying to find a partner," says Wochi.

But although initially in opposing teams, or guilds, their characters started a conversation. "We spent all night talking until the early hours of the morning, and by the end of the night, I'd actually left my guild and joined his guild," says PurplePixel. Within three years, Wochi had quit his job and moved to the UK from Italy to be with her.

According to Ms Hodgson, "While some dating apps can bring out the worst behaviours, these other online spaces can do the opposite, because people are sharing something they enjoy."

Because of these structural elements, she doesn't think the recent decline in numbers is temporary. "It's going to keep happening until dating apps figure out how to put the human aspect back."

New kinds of dating app

The dating apps aren't giving up without a fight, however. Hinge is still "setting up a date every two seconds", according to a spokesperson; Tinder says a relationship starts every three seconds on its platform and that almost 60% of its users are aged 18-30. In fact, the apps appear to be embracing the shift to shared-interest platforms, launching niche alternatives including ones based around fitness, veganism, dog-ownership or even facial hair.

They're also evolving to encourage different kinds of interaction. On Breeze, users who agree to be set up on a date aren't allowed to message each other before they meet; and Jigsaw hides people's faces, only removing pieces to reveal the full photo after a certain amount of interaction.

It means that it's premature to proclaim the death of the dating app, believes Prof Heaphy. "There's now such a diversity of dating apps that the numbers for the biggest ones aren't the key indicator," he says. "It might actually be a similar number to before, in terms of overall membership."

And there's a downside to people going to more general-interest apps looking for love – people might not want to be hit on when they just want to talk about books. Dating apps, at least, are clear about what their purpose is.

What might the future look like?

In an increasingly online world, the solution to improving relationships might not simply be to go offline. Instead, apps that can offer an experience which more closely mirrors the best of IRL interactions, while tapping into the possibilities of digital ones, might also show a way forward.

With the imminent integration of AI into dating apps, we are "right on the cusp of something new", says Mr Brunning. "It's interesting to see if we'll end up with specific apps just for dating, or will we end up with something a bit more fluid?"

He points to platforms in China that are more multi-purpose. "People use them for chat, for community, and conduct business on them – they can also be dating platforms, but they're often not exclusively for that."

In the meantime, the interactions possible in less mediated communities like World of Warcraft could offer more of a chance to connect than conversations initiated by a swipe.

Jess and Nate's in-game engagement on the beach might not have been real, but the couple are hoping to change that soon. "It's a matter of when, really. There are a few things we need to tick off the checklist, and then she'll be getting her ring," says Nate. And there'll still be a gaming element.

"You can role-play getting married," says Jess. "So it could be funny to get all our friends together at some point in the World of Warcraft cathedral, and we could have a marriage ceremony."

@DaddyReagan Yоu оnсе аskеd whо ís

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