I saw a study that claimed almost 55% of Australians dislike the us and only 15% support them. I was wondering if this was true and if so is there any particular reason why?

Asking redditors how they feel about the US?

I'm not mad at the US, I'm just disappointed

You sound like one of the reasons we don't really like the USA. Don't take this the wrong way, it's not like we really care, but you sound like an idiot to anyone in a first world country.

The entire globe thinks the U.S. is a joke. Because it is. I live in Colorado at the moment and laugh my butt off at the stupidity of this country every day

Guns. And the total chaos that is Trump. We can't seem to understand how millions can believe the crap that he says and not see what a terrible,lying, hypocrite he is. It is like the world is watching on in disbelief at a country that was once so respected, and then to allow one clown to ruin hundreds of years of an envied global reputation.

Trump is absolutely new to American politics. Off the top of my head, he's the first criminal president. He absolutely doesn't represent conservative politics as they were understood even 20 years ago. What are you on about? You don't even understand your own country.

America has NEVER had a populist president before

Comment chains are good and you should go and read some

https://www.edsupportforum.com/threads/recovery-destroyed-my-body-my-life-is-finished-tw-suicidal.4548034/

Hello :)

I'm not new to EDSF - for years, I have viewed the site, reading posts for advice and support - but I have never posted. To be honest, sharing my ED journey is embarrassing.

I live in England, in the countryside, with my mum and dad. Before I struggled with my mental health, I was a high-achiever and a perfectionist. I attended a selective all-girls school, played musical instruments, acted, participated in orchestras, volunteered and was in the top team for every sport. I worked 24/7; education was my life. I had ambitions and aspirations. I was determined and resilient to reach them. Typical story - a perfectionist struggles with mental health… My life began to fall apart in 2021. First, I developed anxiety, then, OCD and depression and lastly, my ED.

I have Binge Eating Disorder. I will not lie, writing that is humiliating and mortifying. I am so ashamed. Pre-ED, I was naturally underweight and had no interest in food - I ate healthily, skipped meals and hated junk food. In 2022, I had urges to eat food I did not want, then eating when I was anxious/stressed/depressed became a habit. The binges started small and grew. I gained a lot of weight and felt suicidal because of my body. I began therapy to recover from Binge Eating Disorder. I learnt to control myself around food 60% of the time, the other 40%, I binged. Thankfully, I over-exercised, so I managed to lose weight. I was proud of my body and the happiest I'd ever been in my life. I was confident, determined and 1000x better than the ‘normal' me. Then, my life began to fall apart again. Long-story-short, I was incorrectly diagnosed with Anorexia (I binged weekly on 10,000+ calories and had binge urges everyday) and forced into recovery. A lot happened. It was traumatic and the medical professionals and CAMHS were AWFUL. They made me gain weight without providing any therapy or even advice/support. CAMHS think eating disorders are weight disorders and do not care about what you are struggling with mentally. They encouraged me to binge (I had BED!) and told me to eat junk food. I lost my willpower and control over food that I had learnt in BED therapy, I lost my motivation and I began binging more. Now, I binge every single day, all day. I do nothing else. I have at least 5,000 calories each day, up to 25,000. I have gained 5st in less than 3 months. I can't exercise, I can barely walk up the stairs, my mum helps me to shower, I look disgusting and unrecognisable, I'm uncomfortable 24/7 and I pray each night that I won't wake up the next day. I attempted suicide because I hate this body. My body is ruined - my teeth, hair, skin etc, everything is ruined. I'm having private therapy to help my Binge Eating Disorder but it's not working. Anorexia recovery and all the people who forced me to gain weight have destroyed my willpower/determination and now, I have zero control over food.

I want my body back. I wish I had hidden my weight from everyone or faked weight gain and recovery. Now, I'm just waiting for my life to end.

!football

!eurochads

What do you think of it, years later?

I couldn't finish it, it just seemed like it dragged. With some tighter editing I think I would have finished it but I have no attention span.

In response to constant bitching from jannies (unpaid) that new users aren't asking good questions, Stack Overflow have added a new feature called the Staging Ground:

Basically new users aren't even allowed to ask questions directly onto the site anymore and their questions are instead pushed into a separate pipeline where no one can give them answers and their questions are instead disseminated by powerusers. Only if a question passes this multi-stage process does it actually make it onto SO proper. Spoiler: nothing ever passes.

Let's look at what this new user experience looks like...

A new user asks a Python question (now deleted so no link). It's correctly formatted, it explains the question clearly and shows the error. This sounds like a good question, right? WRONG.

They're asked to edit the question (which they do), and then they're told to edit it again. The question is then closed as being "off topic" (it's a Python coding question lol) and to rub salt into the wounds a poweruser asks the Meta (aka poweruser sneed) forum how to punish them further in How should we respond in the Staging Ground when OP ignores feedback, makes a trivial edit and submits for re-evaluation?.

The response? Ask for more changes:

This is exactly what declined re-eval was added for. To elaborate more: we added this feature for this exact scenario, and it is designed to give the reviewer a frictionless way to both tell the author that they still need to address the original feedback (IIRC, banner tells them this). And if the author continues to ignore it, they will be temporarily blocked, with clear explanations why

Of course OP can't actually do this because their question has been closed as off topic.

Congrats Stack Overflow, you're going to die even faster.

My 28m gf 27f called me "Ben 10" during s*x. I think she might be cheating. How do I check?

So my gf and I are doing it this morning and we're doing it missionary and it's really good.

At one point she screams out "give it to me Ben" my name isn't Ben, she then pauses and says "10, give it to me Ben 10, oh yea you like fricking Gwen don't you?".

She later acted embarrassed and admitted to me that she has a huge thing for Ben 10 as he was her first crush as a kid.

But I think she might he lying and there might be some Ben out there.

Am I crazy?

Tldr gf claims to have Ben 10 fetish

Sam, 26

Michael, 28

Rio Grande Valley

Personal Life/Career:

• Recently married, April 6th this year

  • Engaged for 4 months

  • Dating for 4 years

  • Never talked about finances before getting married?

• Assistant Manager (Her) timestamp

  • 2'100 a month roughly

• Truck Driver (Him) timestamp

  • 2'400 a month

• She is currently in school? timestamp

  • Studying Social Work? Doing a Masters

  • She has student loans but I did not catch what they were

Financials:

• Combined finances less than a month ago, she added him to her account

• "Different opinions" on spending timestamp

  • She says she's more frugal, he likes spending on electronics and vehicles

  • He Upgraded to new iPhone, FOMOS into newest thing

• How do their financial conversations go? timestamp

  • She says she wants to pay off debt quickly, "to zero as fast as possible" even if it's 0% apr

  • "He sees zero apr and he's like oh, we don't gotta pay anything at all"

• They have zero in their savings (paid off some cards recently)

• She paid off a few things that were at 0 instead of another 0 that was about just hit the interest period timestamp

  • "To be fair he signed up on a property without me knowing"

  • 120'000 property? He told her he was going to look and he ended up buying it on sight? "Owner to Owner financing"

    • Before marriage

    • Paid 117'000 with financing?

    • Applying to refinance "soon" timestamp

      • Currently at 12% over 30 years

      • they want a lower monthly and fewer years

  • Specifics timestamp

    • 6'000

    • There's another 6'000 that went to paying the parents?

      • Paying back parents for wedding?

• Built a 860 sq ft "frame house" on the property timestamp

  • Property is 3 acres

  • Building the house cost $37'000

• Score timestamp

  • He says - 8

  • She say - 4

• Credit Card 1 (Wells Fargo) ($4'120) tiemstamp

  • $42 minimum payment

  • 0% interest until October

  • 92 in new purchases

  • CC was opened because she wanted to start a business timestamp

    • Coffee cart selling expresso drinks outside markets

    • "Got busy" so she couldn't keep doing this, sold all equipment - didn't make money? timestamp

      • Awkward laugh when asked what she got from the sale? Got 2500 back?

      • Spent 10'000 on this?

      • Got a job because this wasn't working well?

• Credit Card 2 (4'028) timestamp

  • Interest about to start accruing

  • Paid 5'000 - claims she doesn't remember where she got this

    • Balance was 9'000

    • After getting pressed, says it was from a 20'000 personal loan

  • 92 in new purchases

• Personal Loan (21'749) timestamp

  • 21% interest

  • Gets pressed hard on why she traded 5'000 at 0% for a 21%

  • more info timestamp

    • In her name

    • They didn't know it was $21'749

    • Weren't able to make any minimum payments because of his motorcycle? timestamp

      • He doesn't even use it and now it's busted - front shock went out and it would be a 2'000 repair bill

  • Paid off the bike with this timestamp

    • 227 a month

    • 7'000 balance on it

    • 7% interest rate

    • Bike's used value is around $9'000

• She remembers why she paid off his credit cards timestamp

  • She did not like the monthly minimum payments?

  • "I don't know what I'm doing"

• Credit Card 3 (Lowe's) timestamp

  • Paid off, one of the things in that personal loan

  • Would have been interest free for another couple months?

  • Ate a late fee at some point

  • Was 2'000

  • Paid for a washer/dryer on here? timestmap

    • 0% financing at Lowe's

    • Her dad had given money for washer/dryer, he used it for the wedding and 0%'d the washer/dryer. She did not know about this and thought they were paid for in cash?

      • Her parents are divorced

• Credit Card 4 (Discover) ($10'656) timestamp

  • To build the house - he clarifies that it was finishing the interior of the house

  • "Because we didn't have the money for it"

  • He has never watched the show before - she has

  • Roughly 3000 a year in interest accruing on this?

• Credit Card 5 (City Simplicity) ($5'909) timestamp

  • His, she paid this one off as part of the personal loan

    • actually this was with the wedding gifts? 6'000 in wedding gifts? actually the wedding gifts and some savings?

    • Actually it was a different much smaller card she paid off

  • 0% interest

    • He thinks this ends by August

    • Actually it ended 3 weeks ago

  • $59 minimum payment

  • 29%

• Credit Card 6 (Home Depot)

  • Paid off

• Credit Card 7 (Capital One Savior One) (Paid off) timestamp

  • A bunch of Amazon purchases on this one - for the wedding?

    • Lights, table covers, etc?

• Credit scores -

  • His is 630

  • Her's is 695 (last she checked)

• "How did she convince you to come on this show?" timestmap

  • He didn't want to come on

  • He didn't watch the "on-boarding video" because "she didn't tell him about it"

  • they try to justify their financial opinions timestmap

• Purchased a water slide timestamp

  • He is trying to make money with this by renting it out?

  • $1'600 total

  • Hasn't been able to rent it yet?

• Bought some pc fans timestamp

  • He's been playing Helldivers 2

• Attempts to convince them not to be r-slurred timestamp

• He has 3 vehicles timestamp

  • 1 at his house

  • 1 at parent's garage

  • 1 his dad uses

• Checking Account ($31) timestamp

  • Disastrous amount of eating out

  • It's like they think credit cards are literally free money

  • 453 just on going out to eat

  • Phone bill is $185 (they both owe on their phones)

• An attempt to explain how interest works timestamp

• Budget time timestamp

Father murders the mother in front of a 7 y/o girl and then commits suicide. I'll be pretty easy on this one since the gravity of the situation. What was my immediate thoughts? No ‘thats fricked' doesn't count but was a thought.

!football

!eurochads

Hi dramafrens!!

Have any of you heard of this obscure little indie game company called Valve? You may have heard of them from niche titles such as:

Half-Life

Portal

Only the biggest gaming platform of all time, Steam

But today we're talking about a game very close to my heart: Team Fortress 2! Valve's hit first person class-based team shooter is an iconic game, earning it a place of glory amongst all vidya and entrenching it in internet and meme culture, and even a somewhat recent meme trend depicting the TF2 characters as buff, totally heterosexual Wagnerite Ziggers has produced some of the shiniest gemeralds of all time

(video courtesy of @CREAMY_DOG_ORGASM_fan17)

It's really close to my all time favorite game and definitely my most played. Countless hours were sucked from my childhood as baby me learned to use my first slurs whenever I came across a particularly annoying enemy Demoman

Which is why it's all the sadder that I'm now talking about its spectacular fall from grace.

The Beginning of the End

Meet Your Match

TF2 had a reputation of being a quite regularly updated game, with a major content release happening around 3-5 times a year. Besides usual gripes from boomers these updates were pretty well received, and I certainly have held a positive view of almost all of them although that could just be me yearning for my teenage years.

However, on July 7th of 2016 the most controversial TF2 update to date released: Meet Your Match.

Before this update all TF2 players would play the game through a generic server browser. Valve ran their own public servers right alongside all the community made ones, and filtering for a server you wanted was incredibly easy and streamlined. You could filter by player count, full/empty, whether or not the server used the shitty Valve Anti-Cheat, whether custom decals were allowed, you name it. Everything was hosted on the server browser, it held everything from official Valve servers to servers run by the dregs of society. I fondly remember joining a server when I was about 11 running a map that had furry porn plastered all over the walls you never forget your first time, !furries.

So what did Meet Your Match change? Well, it didn't remove the server browser. Not outright. But it did take all official Valve-ran servers off the browser and move them into a shitty matchmaking system No longer could you filter for a specific Valve server running your favorite map, you now have to queue up for matchmaking in a party with up to five friends (no more just joining your friends through Steam or the server browser!), have a certain list of maps selected, and pray to god it lands you in a game within the next 15 minutes. Even worse, since the matchmaking system's job is to get you into a game by any means necessary, it could land you in a game with no players or a game about to end and switch maps to a shitty one you don't like. Additionally those official Valve servers got way shittier, due to the removal of the ability to switch teams, removal of sprays (basically the ability to plaster a custom image onto any surface you want ), and the increasingly outdated Valve Anti-Cheat system being easier to exploit by cheaters. Oh, and those five friends you get to party up with? They will only be on your team, meaning you can only have friendly competition with these friends if somebody gets auto-balanced (which remember is a necessity since you can't change teams manually to even the balance )

That server browser still exists, but it's been relegated to its own separate tab and no longer has any Valve-ran games on it. That would be fine if you don't like Valve servers, (and who would? ) but the average TF2 player is just going to hit “find game” and not bother with the server browser, leaving a bunch of half-empty, struggling community servers—not to mention that most of the community servers are shit themselves, but for other reasons; no way in heck am I downloading 13 trillion Touhou reskin mods just to play on a shitty weeb server!

The update understandably made a lot of people upset, me included! But we had no idea how much worse it was going to get.

Jungle Inferno, or, Pain of Neglect

Released on October 20th of 2017, Jungle Inferno was a pretty bog-standard update, as far as things go. A few new weapons, some balances, a few new maps which were mostly shitty, we've all heard it before. The problem? It was the last time Valve would do anything significant with the game. Any updates past Jungle Inferno were repeating seasonal events, and the last Saxxy Awards (the TF2 community's version of the Oscars, where people would create kino animations using Valve's Source Filmmaker) ever to be held to this date

“But Shelly,” you might ask, “you said there were still seasonal event updates! Surely stuff was being added then, right? ” Well, yes. But it wasn't Valve. Every Halloween and Christmas Valve would have some intern scour the top rated maps, cosmetics, weapon skins, and taunts from the community workshop. So surely game's health is in the community's hands, and doing alright, yes? Well…

All of this shit was just bad, frankly. Often times the skins had missing textures, the cosmetics were r-slurred and unwanted or even outright broken, the taunts didn't work, all things that could go weeks without being fixed. Besides, hats and skins don't affect the gameplay!

Well maps do affect the gameplay. But they were all shittier even than the skins! A prime example is Wutville, a community made Christmas map. I think I'll let this image of the first attacker spawn and the known bugs list speak for themselves.

So we have a map that is basically a long, sniper-heaven corridor with no flank routes, tons of bugs, and is a visual fricking mess to boot! And this is just one extreme example of many broken community maps; don't even get me started on Bread Space, which started the defending team out facing the wrong way, so half the team would obliviously walk the entire way back to their last point in the setup phase! It was obvious that Valve was not bothering to playtest anything they were putting into the game, let alone make it themselves.

Why was Valve refusing to work on such an influential title? Despite all their decisions the TF2 player counts were continuing to grow, almost suspiciously so… (more on that later ) surely if Valve put in the effort they could bring ever more players in and just get that much more money from anyone participating in its famous economy. It has a lot to do with their company work philosophy: on the outside, they claim to avoid “treadmill work” and prioritize employee freedom by letting them work on any projects they had passion for. Beneath this stupid pseudo-commie work structure however everyone knew Valve operated on the principle of “Do nothing and let Steam make us infinite money.” They didn't need to work on TF2 because it made them zero billions of dollars.

Attack of the Machines

The Sniperbots

In 2020, there was a source code leak, leading many people to fear the worst. A lot of rumors were in the air at this time, everything from exploits in the code being used to hack accounts to even in-game doxxing. While none of these ever really came true, there was certainly an opportunity for cheaters to exploit a vulnerability in the game. And exploit they did!

A bit of background is needed. Basically there are nine classes in TF2, but out of all of them none is more powerful than the Sniper. With two clicks he can instantly kill 5 out of those 9. In a game played by humans, the main barrier to playing Sniper is the human player's skill and ability to quickly land those instakill headshots. A good player can theoretically steamroll the entire enemy team only by playing Sniper, but nobody but the most turbovirgin autists could ever hope to reach the skill level needed.

A robot though…

With the game's guts on display for the world to see, people naturally quickly made programs that could run an account on TF2 playing sniper, which would proceed to walk straight into combat and land every headshot, wiping the entire enemy team but it wouldn't just be one, it would be five, ten, fifteen sniperbots with absolutely zero counterplay pooping up entire game servers. As expected, these bots were also equipped with the latest in slur technology and would frequently call votekicks on human players

It was a dark time, and still is. These bots are still running around, and the game is absolutely unplayable outside of peak hours. The bots don't stray outside of casual matchmaking so community servers are fine, but the same problems I already highlighted with those servers still exist today

Valve managed to “fix” the slur-spamming problem by removing chat permissions for all free to play players. I don't think I need to mention why this is a bad idea. In addition to that the bots aren't really fixed, they still flood casual servers and kick every human player out. To this day, it seems Valve has no intention of actually fixing this issue.

#SaveTF2

The problem eventually became Reddit's problem. /r/tf2 is the epitome of a modern day vidya subreddit, astroturfed to heck, filled with shitty memes and r-slurred redditors who think they can accomplish anything by making smug comments. Their solution to the bots, the content drought, and the general decline of the game? Be heckin' wholesome 100 about it, and start a hashtag

The SaveTF2 movement started with the general goal of getting Valve to fix their darn game. Get rid of the bots was the first priority, and after that people generally thought that Valve would notice TF2 as profitable with the surge of new players coming into a fresh, shiny, bot-free classic game! After all, TF2 was still reaching record numbers of concurrent player counts, () imagine what new heights it could reach from there!

It became fully Redditized incredibly quickly. Constant mentions of Valve and Valve developers on Xwitter, r-slurred “spread the word” posts all over reddit in unrelated subs, and getting the voice actors to go along with their shitty memes are just a few of the regular Keanu Chungus redditor actions you would expect from such a movement.

The Valve Response

In May of 2022, the TF2 Twitter account posted this:

https://twitter.com/TeamFortress/status/1529970640224018433

This lead many to rejoice in the triumph of the SaveTF2 movement. Honestly things were looking pretty… hopeful? Maybe the Reddit activism got to them? After years and years of total radio silence it looked like Valve might actually care about this ‘dead game' that continued to grow.

An update was promised and actually… delivered? In July of 2023, TF2 players got the Summer Update! What was in this update, you ask?

• Community-made cosmetics

• Community-made skins

• Community-made maps

Sound familiar? But hey, at least the wholesome reddit seal was added into the game! (No, I'm not joking)

This satisfied the redditors though, and the SaveTF2 movement gradually lost momentum, sputtered, and died. All the while, the bots still ran free.

The Coming of the VLTIMATE TRVTH NVKE

On April 30th of this year, a long time TF2 YouTuber by the name of ZestyJesus woke up and dropped the fattest trvthnvke ever made on the TF2 community:

For those of you who don't want to watch an hour long video, the TL;DR is that after scraping years of data from third party sites and even neurodivergentally collecting his own information, this guy came to a frightening conclusion… You know how I said that despite everything, in spite of the bots, the content drought, the shitty community made updates, in spite of all of it, TF2's player count continued to grow?

In the video, this guy provides pretty darning evidence that over 70% of TF2's reported players… are bots. But not those sniper bots I've been talking about previously! No, these bots exist specifically to sit in private servers with TF2 running in text-mode (no graphics to reduce RAM usage) and periodically receive item drops, courtesy of Valve's age old gacha system. These bots then sell these items for irl money, inflating both the in-game economy and the reported player counts. The actual player counts? Declining, and had been since Meet Your Match.

ZestyJesus took aim at the Redditors in his closing statements in the video, highlighting how much of a massive failure SaveTF2 was and what an embarrassment it was that the movement lost steam as soon as Valve threw them a bone that looked and tasted exactly like all the other bones they had been thrown for seven years.

So naturally, the redditors crawled out of the woodwork.

#FixTF2: The Redditor Strikes Back

Not taking any hints as to the actual point of the ZestyJesus, some clown by the name of WeezyTF2 releases this video:

Basically he's just saying the movement needs to start again with a different name. TF2 players, still stunned from the TRVTHNVKE fallout, have begun clinging onto this new movement as of late. It basically just involves a lot more whining, which at least does more than the reddit activism they were doing before.

Another YouTuber by the name of shounic, who mostly does explanations of the game's mechanics and code released this video a mere day ago, highlighting all the barriers to actually fixing the game and all the pitfalls this new movement could fall into:

And at around this time TF2 starts getting massively review bombed!!

At least reviews are an actual form of protest. But what about other Valve games? It appears that Half-Life 2 has also been the target of a few stinkers!

Surely this will go well.

Conclusion

Redditors suck and I hate them all. I hope Valve does something with my favorite childhood game but honestly I'm not holding my breath. I think Valve realizes they're probably going to make more money from their newest Overwatch-clone slop than they could ever make from fixing TF2.

And if they don't? They have the money. Steam will bail them out.