[EDIT: I'm adding shows as people suggest them but sticking to ones I've actually seen and can vouch for.]
Number one pick: Space Above and Beyond. It's largely about WW2 (they will mention during the show stuff like this "hey this is like Guadalcanal") and Vietnam but told as sci-fi which gives them the opportunity to open it up to other stories. Made by Morgan & Wong, the guys who did all the really good parts of the X-Files. Hence the nerd in "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" (best episode of tv ever) wearing this t-shirt.
Probably the most underrated TV show of all time. It's not just the same stock war movie characters you've seen since the 1940s, there's interesting stuff going on. Much of it was very directly ripped off for Battlestar Galactica. Canceled after one season in a pretty epic ending.
You may have seen me post my crippled brother Col. McQueen describe how I feel about slumming it with you tards:
Other sci-fi shows from that era that you may have overlooked (at least I did). I ignored these at the time because Trek had my expectations too high, but they're quite watchable:
Stargate SG-1 - Doesn't take itself as seriously as Star Trek but in a good way. It's fun. The problem is you've got to watch the episodes in order because you have to actually know the lore.
Total Recall 2070 - Blade Runner turned into a TV show, except they couldn't get the rights to Blade Runner so they bought another Philip Peepee property. Very underrated. Maybe the closest to a Star Trek show on this list.
Battlestar Galactica - As I said earlier, ripped off a lot from SAAB. It was kind of a breath of fresh air at the time as it was a little bit more real and post-9-11 than the slop we'd been served before. Goes off the rails toward the end because the writers had no idea what to do. Stop watching when you get to a plot twist that's just too much for you.
Earth: Final Conflict - I've only seen maybe 15 episodes but it's got some interesting stuff going on. The best depiction I've ever seen of how an alien invasion would really work.
The Outer Limits (1990s) - Surprisingly really good, actually better than the original probably. I totally missed this back when it was on. I guess it wasn't broadcast here.
Max Headroom - Late 1980s cyberpunk show. Pretty good. To me one of the most interesting things about sci-fi is what it says about the time when it was made. It's very interesting for that. That era when people involved with computers understood the internet was coming soon and the general public had a vague idea that it was.
- Farscape - I've seen scattered episodes and I'm ambivalent. I do not like the puppet aliens. There's a reason why in Star Trek the aliens are all just people with ridges on their forehead or funny hats. But there's a few episodes of this I got sucked into and really liked. I intend to watch more.
Older TV shows that must be watched (that aren't completely obvious):
- The Rockford Files - A couple weeks ago I was talking to this random old boomer on the train and I was like "Man, how about the Rockford Files." And he's like "James Garner amirite." And I'm like "We don't have anyone that cool anymore." Private investigator who is a gigachad but also vulnerable and half the time he's clueless about what's going on and getting the shit beaten out of him. Has some very high-brow episodes.
- Hawaii Five-O - Again, cop show with better scripts, actors, people giving a shit than usual and a fascinating setting.
Columbo - The mystery genre flipped around on its head. You see who committed the murder in the beginning. The mystery is how Detective Columbo is going to catch him. It's based on the interplay between Peter Falk's Columbo, who fakes being an annoying slob, against the guest star playing the murderer who is just as good. You'll recognize a lot: Montalban, Shatner, Nimoy, Vaughn, McGoohan, let's see... Culp, Landau... basically all the top actors of the time. Even if it doesn't sound interesting, give it a try.
The Outer Limits (1960s) - An inferior rip-off of The Twilight Zone, but still pretty good most of the time. If nothing else, watch the episode that James Cameron ripped off to make Terminator just to see how he never had any good ideas of his own.
Relic Hunter - Tia Carrere is being Indiana Jones but she also needs to take her shirt off at least once an episode. Surprisingly good for what it is.
- Honey West - Early 1960s show with Anne Francis (of Forbidden Planet, Twilight Zone, etc.) as a sexy private detective who has a pet ocelot and a pet man. Again, fascinating if nothing else for seeing how a female action hero was depicted then.
Cop shows:
- The Shield - A team of corrupt LAPD detectives against all the scum on the street and their honest fellow cops. Remarkably realistic about how people really are. No Hannibal Lecter genius cannibals.
- Miami Vice - There's actually a lot of overlap between the writers here and TNG. It's a cop show in an interesting setting where they just try a little harder than usual. The writers, directors, everyone is just about 50% better than usual.
Korean and Japanese dramas:
If you're willing to step outside your comfort zone a little, there's endless hours of great content out there. This is what I did when I'd run out of American TV to watch. I don't watch as much anymore but I can recommend lots of stuff.
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Gilmore Girls!
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Did she ever stick with one boyfriend who wasn't an butthole in that show? (I've only seen it while walking by to go to the refrigerator.)
More importantly, it feels like the mom is vicariously living through her in a really unhealthy way.
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Watching GG as a tween:
Watching GG as an adult:
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Your weight from all the inactivity.
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I might have actually lost a couple pounds from not eating as much.
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Have you watched Babylon 5?
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Do I need to see 1-4 first to get it
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Oh yeah, I knew I was forgetting a lot of stuff. B5 is great. Back in the day nerds would fight about whether it's better than Trek but really they were complementary. I could watch both at the same time and not feel like they were colliding with each other.
I rewatched most of it a couple years ago and it really holds up well. The guy who works for the Shadows is one of my favorite characters ever.
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Star Trek was about perseverance and the good guys winning, B5 was about how sometimes evil wins.
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I know its cheesy but the moment when Vir gets his wish from Mr Morden is one of my favourite ever callbacks, still makes me feel like when I was a teenager watching it with my dad.
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Babylon 5 dose several episodes better then ds9. Like mass pandemic episode is so bleak in b5. And ds9 its just meh
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The episode where the Narn are defeated is better than anything Star Trek managed.
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I have, don't know if it'll survive a rewatch though.
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I watched it a few years ago, it still holds up imo. The CGI is hilariously 90s but the stories and characters are still really good.
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The budget for B5 was amazingly low but they had good actors and writing, and pretty good costumes and makeup
They made props out of the junk abandoned in the hot tub warehouse they rented, and that's why there's so much tubing lmao, it was free
If I remember right, the cost for all five seasons of B5 is close to one episode of many other series
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I typed something about this and then deleted it because I didn't want to sound negative. There's some stuff they did that was incredibly cheap, like the Zocolo just not having any background at all, just blackness. From my avant garde theater days I can appreciate a minimalist approach, but it's not something you do on TV unless you ran out of money.
Looked this up because you got me curious:
I've heard the figure $2 million/episode for TNG, presumably for the later seasons.
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No lexx
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I think this is really obscure in America? I dunno, I almost never hear about it.
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I'm starting to rewatch First Wave cause the sexual tension between Sebastian Spence and Roger Cross is unbearable.
And I love that Traci Lords is in it. She was also great in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160277/
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I've never even heard of this. I don't think I had cable then so that must be why. Just like there's a some good shows that were in broadcast syndication that are totally forgotten now.
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I'm sorry to hear your parents didn't love you as a child...
SciFi used to have the Friday night block of shows - LEXX, Farscape, Andromeda, First Wave, Alien Nation, Dark Angel...
The golden times of science fiction on television.
This site is a good resource for remembering the shows we all forgot
https://www.innermind.com/sfc/index.html
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Half of these we had in syndication on broadcast. We had the network stations and we had KPTV 12 which mostly got shows off syndication, which is how Paramount was selling TNG. So it was this weird situation where... that's a story for another time.
I notice you didn't mention Space Above and Beyond. Oh wait, neither did I.
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How I first heard Patsy Cline in "Never No More". I almost cried at the end like a cute twink.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0706366/
James Morrison was a fricking stud back then too WOOF
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And the guy who says he's not a fan of Johnny Cash. And then 10 minutes later he says we're going out on Operation "Get Rhythm".
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Watch Latin American movies as you already enjoy foreign stuff and you're used to subtitles
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Suggestions of where to start? I've seen very little. Latin America is a part of the world where I haven't known many people. I'm sure my dad made me watch some when I was a kid but the only thing I can think of right now is some groomercordcel here got to me to watch Black God, White Devil.
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Argentina cinema is top notch.
This is a dark anthological comedy. They do a lot of dark humor, even more "serious" films like "El Secreto de tus Ojos" have it, which fits the country mood.
If you're interested in the dictatorship there's "Argentina 1985" which is a recent film about the trial of the Junta. And there's "La Historia Oficial", a film from 1985 which is about an upper class woman who begins to suspect her adopted daughter was an abducted child of a dissident, that film was made right after the end of the Junta when stuff like disappearances and abductions were coming out of light.
Mexico has great cinema but I'm not as familiarized. Brazil's cinema is unfortunately mostly shit (crap slopish "comedies" with gross humor and lame dramas) with a few gems like Tropa de Elite and Central do Brasil.
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Okay, I'm going to write down on paper to do this and put it somewhere I'll see it...
I have r-slur savant powers where I can remember where every tribe lived in 500 BC but not anything about my own life, so remind me if I forget it.
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Have you watched Lower Decks? The Orville is also pretty good
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I watched a couple early episodes but it really rubbed me the wrong way. Too many constant references to past shows. But later I saw they had Susan Gibney as a guest (Dr. Leah Brahms on TNG, Cdr. Benteen on DS9) and I love her so much I gotta give it another chance.
Also got somewhat turned off after watching a few early episodes. It's funny but Seth MacFarlane trying to say anything about politics is so nauseatingly stupid. The South Park guys are like 50-50 in using the show to push their political ideas so I guess he thought he could do the same thing. The one where I lost it was the one about how zoos are terrible, which was so heavy-handed and r-slurred that it really turned me off even if I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea.
So again, I should give it another chance. I probably wouldn't hate it as much when I've got people now I can complain about it to without them being like "omg you want to commit genocide on all homos because you didn't like a cheap joke on a tv show".
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It gets pretty preachy with the
kid
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That one was kinda really funny though because the other message of that episode was actually "biological s*x can be so important it will reassert itself no matter how hard you try to hide it."
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SG1 was kino, Atlantis was ok.
Farscape was also good.
Have you seen Columbo?
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Agree, agree, haven't seen enough to judge, yeah I like it. Updated my post.
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add farscape to the list
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Oh yeah Fartscape is great, I plan to rewatch it soon.
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Stargate SG1 is the GOAT. I rate it at or above the best Trek.
Farscape is beloved by a lot of people but I always found it entirely mid.
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Better than "A Taste of Armageddon", "Balance of Terror", "Best of Both Worlds" (well part 1 at least), "Frame of Mind"?
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your list disappoints me
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Pale Moonlight is good but it's still really fricking tame. OMG some unlikable characters got killed off.
Garak is the best character on the show and that's probably the high point of it, but as much as you f-slurs claim it's so good because it's "morally gray", you never will get into that, will you? What if he killed a thousand kids? Ten thousand kids? That would start to approach a moral dilemma.
I guess what I find annoying is it's writers totally disconnected from how war works. Were the guys who bombed Germany in WW2 "morally gray" because they missed sometimes and hit the wrong people or do you want the Holocaust to keep going on? Those are your fricking choices in the real world.
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Isn't that kind of the point, though? The Federation is so cushy and so strictly adherent to their luxury moral code that they can't fathom what's actually needed to win an all-out war like this. Garak, who actually knows how to handle business, has to trick Sisko into doing what's necessary and it causes Sisko to have a whole-butt ethical breakdown about it before deciding that winning and stopping all these people from dying is more important than his moral code.
Fug, what kino. I should go rewatch it right now.
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Yeah, that's obviously the point of it.
I'm saying Garak needs to drag them farther into it. Really into it. Not just killing unlikable people. My grandparents were involved in the deaths of thousands of people. Some of them were innocent women and children. Heck, some of them were on our side. C'est la guerre f-slur.
This was whiny kitties who couldn't make up their minds. Do you want to win in Iraq or Afghanistan or just kill 100,000 people to make it look like the current president is doing something before he bugs out?
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Babylon 5
Stargate
Farscape
Columbo
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You're such a fricking chad, man. Just in time for dinner.
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Watch
Andor with 
@Nightcrawler
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I only watched a few hours (IIRC the fish suggested it) but I feel I'm qualified to guess about it. It's a ripoff of 1940s-1960s movies and tv shows about spies in Europe except with laser guns and gay robots and shit. Where they don't use the Star Wars aspect of it to broaden the story or anything. It's just because children these days don't get that 7.62mm Tokarev will kill you and need to see a laser blast and a baby ewok mourn over your corpse. And 8 other characters who are going to get spinoffs.
I might consider it if anyone watches Danger Man (AKA Secret Agent) with me.
!francais Remember when the Deuxieme Bureau just did whatever the frick wanted with no civilian oversight? Those were the days.
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Watch Firefly. Sure it's got some of the usual Whedon trappings but since it's not too long it doesn't overstay its welcome.
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I decided to hate it in the first 3 minutes because they were Confederates, but it has some things going for it. Really good casting. Nathan Fillion is a chad as we all know from Castle.
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please provide in depth reviews of each star trek show
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I end up talking to my physical therapist about this question every time I go there, so maybe I should save time by writing it up.
I've actually started writing a review of each character on DS9 and I should finish that up. Then go on to Voyager. TNG and TOS are too close to my heart so I don't think I have anything useful to say. After 2nd season TNG they made a decision that they weren't doing "high concept" shows driven by a sci-fi plot anymore. Most of the episodes after that are character-driven focusing on one character. DS9 and VOY were written by basically the same people in the same way. So it's pretty easy to evaluate each one.
My #1 takeaway is that Keiko is so fricking hot in that one episode where's she's an alien psycho femdomming O'Brien that she should have had her own TV show.
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SeaQuest DSV: what if Star Trek was on a submarine?
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I remember this! I lost interest pretty quick because it was kind of like the Flintstones. Everything was like Star Trek except it was
rockwater.We had a kitten and some tard in the family wanted to name it Darwin after the fricking sentient dolphin.
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Yes yes yes yes yes
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Watch Columbo. Then finance a Columbo hole and pinggroup.
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Watch Arcane but only season 1. The moid character is a chad but he is not in season 2 so the show turns to shit compared to season 1.
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You let /r/stupidfrickinglongposts die.
Also lol 'watch Arcane' neighbor are you 10?
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its an artistic masterpiece. I can appreciate graphics.
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I was banned!
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Reply to
@WayOut's question.
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Old cop/spy shows are kino. Besides The Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-O, there's Mission Impossible, Man from UNCLE, Mannix, Kojak, Hill St. Blues, Adam-12, Peter Gunn, The Avengers, Dragnet (I like the '60s one too), Danger Man, The Fugitive, The Saint, The Prisoner, and so on. All just good entertainment and almost always self-contained episodes, no goddarned season or multi-season plot archs.
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Even lower decks?
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I've seen all of TOS & TNG multiple times. (Literally every one.) Almost all of DS9, probably 80% of VOY. ENT I've seen some of but you gotta watch them in order so just the beginning.
Most of my TV watching is when I got insomnia so it's not that systematic.
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Check out the Orville. I've enjoyed it as a comedy take on Trek far more than Lower Drecks.
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Speaking of cast members of Castle, Penny Johnson Jerald is
in everything she does.
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Though not compulsory, it's good to watch the film Stargate (1994) before SG-1.
It does a lot of the world building, and is a pretty good movie in its own right. The antagonist is particularly great.
But new viewers should know that the series is more an adaptation of the film, making some changes along the way.
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Agreed. It gives a little more gravitas to the enemy to see them in movie form. But yeah, like Kurt Russel and Richard Dean Anderson are completely different characters. As different as you could possibly be.
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I mostly only watch TV when I sew but I'm going to go through old American Experience documentaries while working on my next quilt- I watched 2 but I need to order more fabric. I started first with The Donner Party (1992) which was excellent and shows Ric Burns is the superior brother. I then watched The Perfect Crime, about Leopold and Loeb and us relatively new, from 2016. The Perfect Crime was not bad but what I really liked about it was how different it is from documentaries being made by Netflix, HBO, etc. Their docs are very slick and dramatic and a lot of times too long. PBS docs are so low key and mostly short (The Perfect Crime is a brisk 53 mins), they feel so refreshing.
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You should watch Frontline's thing about Lee Harvey Oswald which I argue is the greatest documentary of all time except that one about the Lebanese Civil War that we won't talk about. Really revealing about him as a person and why he did this.
Wouldn't be the first time. Tony Scott was better.
Imagine never watching Rope. It's interesting for its gimmick if nothing less.
Alfred Hitchpeepee already made a movie about it long before we were born.
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The time go right out the window
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Monsters (1988), Perversions of Science (1997).
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Cool Cat.
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In a dark fiber cable, cool memes
in the air
Warm smell
of mtn dew , rising 
up from my hair
Up ahead
in the distance, I saw a couple 
chuds
My eyes grew heavy
and my DC grew light 
I had to stop for the night
There krayon (sister toucher)
stood in my DMs
I saw the little
red bell
And I was thinking
to myself
"This could be marsey
or this could be heck"
Then they lit up that soyboy
and they showed me the gays
They were flaming up and down the board
I thought
I heard 
them say
Welcome to the homosexual
cat site
Such a lovely place
(Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the gay
dating 
cat site
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You'll find festive
our cheer
Her mind is stuck on the dogpill, she got the marsey41
loaded up
She got a lot of big butt neckbeards she calls simps
How they screech in her comments, begging
for a tap
Some beg for attention, some beg to forget
So I called up Aevann
"Please bring me my awards."
He said, "We haven't had that discount here since October 24th"
And still those chuds are flaming from far away
Wake you up in the middle
of the day
Just to hear them say
Welcome to the homosexual
cat site
Such a lovely place
(Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the gay
dating 
cat site
What a nice surprise
I only saw goatse twice
UwUs on my haters
The Olde english
on ice
And he said "We are all just visitors here, on your own device"
And in the Jannie
groomercord
They gathered for the beast
They stab it with their ban awards
But they just can't kill the OGs
Last thing I remember
I was doxxing
chtorr
I had to find the passage back to the clique I was in before
"based," as the moon man says
"We are programmed to hate,
You can log out any time you like
But you can never
delete!"
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