UPDATE: Middle School IT tech Mason David Luxenberg aka "MasonL87" has deleted his Reddit account after researchers discovered credible death threats and other extremist commentary on his profile.

Follow @JR_Newswire https://t.co/ILTEwszU7y pic.twitter.com/hDFNl4WznF

— Justice Report (@JR_Newswire) February 7, 2025

This subreddit used to be nice, now it's just constant sneeding at nitpicks about anything slightly republican (like the recent soying over the CEO of Proton being a chud).

MISINFORMATION!

ENCRYPTION FIXES THIS!

Literally any company can do this, that's why we need DIVERSITY (the good one) in emergency options. Redditors want to stay as cavemen because a chud made something nice. Currently satellite connectivity (provided by globalstar) requires a special chip + proper positioning + has limited data + is expensive to transfer over. Starlink will allow for LTE speeds anywhere in the world on any device without needing to point your phone towards the sky like an r-slur.

LOL

We finally get ONE rational redditor!

Elon is out to r*pe you. Hide NOW.

Lots of beautiful lush grass and thousands of people!

Is that someone pretending to be a wizard? How can anyone take any of this seriously?

😉#SonicTheHedgehog #SonicIDW #SilverTheHedgehog #WhisperTheWolf #tanglethelemur #SilverxWhisper #WhisperxSilver #Silvisper #Whispilver pic.twitter.com/VWxfwcb1rr

— Draws (@Drawzzzzzzz) February 9, 2025

Context: There's two characters that are comics only. Usually they're headcannoned as lesbians because of course they are. Silver is often seen with them, so some fan drew silver railing one of the female characters as the other watched lol.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3130060/Move_Out_Manor/

The game that the post is about.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3336610/Ghostly_Acres/

The new game.

Going on visuals alone this is actually a significant upgrade that they should be happy about. I can't say much about the rest though. It's a little sad that the talent they have is being funneled into the trash. There's talk of "market research." Surely asking anyone in their life if they'd be willing to spend any amount of time or money on a puzzle game where you push boxes around would get them the results that it took nine months to find.

"We did all the things you're supposed to do: Steam page launch, Next Fest, festivals, but still have minimal sales." When they say minimal they're talking less than 100 sales. Likely less than a dozen genuine. It has one real review. The other isn't even a friend, it's a small youtuber who received the game for free. Not a single associate of this team was willing to play and review this game.

When I started making these posts it was to point and laugh. Now the thought of multiple people spending their free time producing content that likely didn't even cover the $100 steam submission fee makes me

I wonder if a Caleb Hammer-type show where "legitimate" devs pitch their idea to a flamboyant host would go well. Ideally the content would have a biggest-loser "where are they now" segment but almost every time it would be - "faded away into obscurity, released nothing."

When a majestic lion appears on the road, all vehicles must stop, regardless of one's urgency. This is a strict protocol that everyone travelling through the greater #Gir region must adhere to.

A mature male lion was spotted on the #Bhavnagar #Somnath national highway near… pic.twitter.com/cTBOQ5ndBE

— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) February 19, 2025

These mayos have no sense of humor

4chan: The internet's unwashed basement where anonymity breeds brilliance and degeneracy in equal measure. It's like a digital Lord of the Flies, but with more memes and fewer conch shells. Genius ideas drowned in a sea of edgelords—congrats on inventing half the internet's culture while staying a cesspool.

BlueSky: Twitter's awkward cousin who showed up late to the party with a "decentralized" buzzword and a dream. It's like someone saw Mastodon and thought, "Let's make it shinier and still somehow less relevant." Enjoy your echo chamber with better branding, I guess.

Groomercord: A g*mer's paradise turned into a labyrinth of crypto scams, furry roleplay, and "community" servers where the mods rule like petty dictators. It's Skype meets Lord of the Rings chatrooms, minus the charm and plus a billion notifications you'll never read.

Facebook: The boomer mothership where your aunt shares Minion memes and anti-vax conspiracies between FarmVille updates. It's a digital retirement home that somehow still knows what you shopped for last week. Zuck's watching, always.

Gab: Twitter for people who got banned from Twitter for being too Twitter. A libertarian fever dream where free speech means "say the quiet part loud" and the algorithm's just a megaphone for the fringes. Enjoy your edge, edgelords.

iFunny: A meme app for people who think Reddit's too intellectual. It's like a time capsule of 2012 humor—edgy enough to feel rebellious, tame enough to not scare the middle schoolers who still use it. Scroll, cringe, repeat.

Instagram: Where influencers sell you a lifestyle you can't afford, filtered through 17 layers of Photoshop and existential despair. It's a beauty pageant for avocado toast and gym selfies, judged by bots and thirsty simps. #Blessed.

Kick: Twitch's scrappy rival that's like, "We'll let you say slightly more slurs!" It's the Wild West of streaming, except the cowboys are 19-year-olds raging at Fortnite and begging for subs. Bold strategy, let's see if it pays off.

KiwiFarms: The internet's gossip rag meets stalker diary. It's a site dedicated to "documenting" weirdos with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the moral compass of a broken GPS. Drama so niche it's practically a PhD thesis in petty.

Lemmy: Mastodon's even nerdier sibling that's all about "federation" and "open-source." It's like Reddit for people who own too many Linux T-shirts and think upmarseying is a sacred duty. Decentralized boredom at its finest.

Mastodon: The hipster Twitter where everyone's smug about escaping the bird app, but it's just fractured echo chambers with worse UI. Toot your horn all you want; no one's listening outside your 12-person instance.

rDrama.net: A site so self-aware it's basically a parody of itself. It's Reddit's chaotic little brother, obsessed with stirring the pot and laughing at the mess. Drama for drama's sake—honestly, kinda respect the hustle.

Reddit: The hive mind where groupthink reigns supreme and every opinion's an upmarsey away from gospel. It's a cesspit of memes, mansplaining, and subreddits so niche you'll find 14 people arguing over vintage toaster coils. Karma's a heck of a drug.

Rumble: YouTube for people who think YouTube's too woke. It's a video platform where conspiracy theorists and "censored" talking heads thrive, all while pretending they're the underdog. Spoiler: You're still not Alex Jones famous.

scored.co: A right-wing Reddit clone that's so obsessed with "owning the libs" it forgot to build a personality. It's like Gab and X had a baby, but it only inherited the angry uncle vibes. Points for effort, I guess.

soyjak.party: A meme factory so deep in irony it's practically performance art. It's 4chan's weird nephew, churning out soyface edits for an audience of three people and a bot. Niche doesn't even begin to cover it.

Threads: Zuck's Twitter knockoff that's as exciting as a beige wall. It's Instagram's text-based midlife crisis, trying to capitalize on Elon's mess-ups but forgetting to bring any soul. Scroll, yawn, uninstall.

TikTok: Brain rot in 15-second bursts. It's a slot machine of dance trends, lip-syncs, and "hacks" that'll have you wondering how humanity survived this long. China's greatest export since gunpowder, and twice as addictive.

Tumblr: The pastel graveyard of 2010s fandoms, now a ghost town of aesthetic blogs and lingering SJWs. It's like walking through a digital thrift store—quirky, dated, and faintly sad. Still waiting for the Superwholock resurgence.

Twitch: Where charisma goes to scream at video games for 12 hours while chat spams "Poggers." It's a cult of personality meets digital busking, with hot tub streams and ban hammers keeping things spicy. Just don't ask about the ad revenue split.

watchpeopledie.tv: The internet's darkest corner, where curiosity meets morbidity in a way that'd make even 4chan blush. It's a grim reminder that some people's "entertainment" is others' nightmares. Proceed with caution, or better yet, don't.

X: Elon's playground, where free speech means chaos, bots, and blue-check clout chasers. It's a dumpster fire you can't look away from—half genius, half trainwreck. Still better than Threads, somehow.

YouTube: The video behemoth where cat clips, tutorials, and unhinged rants coexist under an algorithm that hates creators. It's the internet's TV, complete with ads you can't skip and comments you shouldn't read. Demonetized dreams live here.

Honestly, I kneel to papa musk, never thought that Grok 3 would be that impressive. . Did I miss any social media sites?

The cavity vaccine is finally shipping out to customers.

It's very likely that if people use this to replace the Streptococcus mutans in their mouth with this variety that puts out alcohol instead of lactic acid, cavities will become far less common. https://t.co/01RaXU2L2v pic.twitter.com/PtRUVjTQy6

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) February 18, 2025

Guardian gave it 100/100 we can throw that review in garbage can

Author of the review made a whole big butt article where he bitching about cutscene

https://www.theguardian.com/games/article/2024/jul/23/press-x-to-skip-its-time-we-retired-the-video-game-cutscene

Any one who played video games know a cutscene is better than an in-game cute scene where you can control your character because those are unskippable.

Mote bs reviewers and here it comes

https://n4g.com/news/2652490/civilization-7-review-ign#comments

IGN 7/10 basically the lowest score they could give

https://www.eurog*mer.net/civilization-7-review

Eurogaymers 4/10

So the game ain't that good.

Game probably will be in decent state after like 5 years and 100 paid dlc's

Sad but I guess only monster hunter and yakuza pirates for me in February and then in March butt shadow, atelier yumia, dead or alive prism

The Cat Returns (2002) pic.twitter.com/p2QkZNBqzE

— Retro Anime (@retro_twt) February 12, 2025

Pirate: https://nyaa.si/view/1225344

This is your one chance losers, dont mess it up!

Heres review of the movie shes talking about btw:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/1648nmn/past_lives_an_analysis_of_the_movie_spoilers/

https://old.reddit.com/r/AsianMasculinity/comments/14gykob/has_anybody_seen_the_new_movie_past_lives_by_a24/

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."

https://old.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/1ir8uxd/look_trump_blows_but_liberal_media_should_never/

https://x.com/dailysnoopys/

No hezbollah in the government

https://old.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1ijsb1v/morgan_ortagus_us_envoy_live_from_lebanese/

Syrians hate hezbollah

https://old.reddit.com/r/Syria/comments/1ij3g1o/syrian_forces_clashed_with_hezbollah_members_on/

Lebanese cope that they suck and are about to be killed by Israel

https://old.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1igbqr2/strict_us_warnings_to_salam_and_threats_of/

Syria hates hezbollah

https://old.reddit.com/r/Syria/comments/1ijwq9h/syrian_military_buildup_in_hawik_on_the/

Wikipedia sucks

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1il1zci/lebanon_forms_first_government_since_2022/

"Frick the syrians! Long live palestinian"

-average braindead redditard muslim

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskMiddleEast/comments/1iklmys/syrian_forces_clashed_with_hezbollah_members_on/

Lebanon begs Trump for death

https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1ilsdqb/defying_us_pressure_lebanon_welcomes_hezbollah/

Why do I feel like I time traveled back to the 70s?? pic.twitter.com/jLvPQfOum0

— The Bruiser (@DrHoosierHermit) February 2, 2025