Indigenous Canadian from northern Ontario. Believe in equality, Indigenous rights, minority rights, LGBTQ+, women’s rights and do not support war of any kind.

  • 30 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Almost made it years ago … I’m a recovered alcoholic and one of my recovery options was to be admitted into a facility but I wasn’t that far gone yet so I was able to go through lighter treatment services and go through the 12 step program instead … that was over 30 years ago and these days I feel like I’m edging towards losing my sanity again every day.

    I only made the comparison of social media to a mental hospital because just about every day I see more and more deluded realities than ever before. At one end, I have my younger relatives (under 30 years of age) living some kind of weird online life that they try to emulate like a k-pop reality show, a soap opera or a comedy show with a laugh track (meanwhile their real life situation is anything but) … and at the other end, I have older relatives (over 50 years of age) who only ever want to be angry, afraid or semi or fully racist or fascist (when in real life their lives are good peaceful and they would never be openly racist or fascist, or show any support for it!). People keep telling me that maybe it’s just the quality of people I am around … but I look into other social media feeds with family who live in the cities down south, the rural areas, the northern remote areas or the busy suburban areas and its almost all universally the same. And I know a variety of people … poor trailer trash types, northern poor people, native families living on reserves … as well as middle class white people living in cities, upwardly mobile professionals, teachers, office workers, government workers, a few medical doctors and nurses and even a couple of millionaires who live in the city.

    I should also clarify that these observations are all about corporately owned social media … and yes I know that they are heavily influenced and managed to be like this … but still, it feels so overwhelming that at one point, it does feel like being trapped in some kind of institution. Sure I can leave but all or most of my family and friends are in there. Most of the people I know are not technically savvy or interested and they just prefer being on FB, IG or TikTok or even X … and whenever I do see them there, I feel like I’m visiting the FB Ward or the TikTok Ward of a giant facility full of deluded people.



  • The thinking, mentality and emotions about all this are normal … I know, because I’m getting to the age and experience in life that I feel this way too sometimes …

    … the part that is not normal is that many of these people choose not to be polite, considerate, accommodating, compassionate, empathetic or kind and keep these thoughts and ideas to themselves.

    Think about it … if I applied every idea or thought that you thought was a good idea, it would satisfy a good percentage of everyone, but it would not be suitable for everyone. The same thing applies to everyone else’s ideas or thoughts. None of our individual ideas will ever perfectly mesh with everyone in society … we all have to learn to accept and live with the idea that we all have to live within certain limits and learn to accommodate others around us and hope that they do the same for us.

    We all have to compromise a little bit for one another and that way, we all get to live in a little bit of peace … because due to human nature and our ever expanding ability to screw with one another in ever more creative ways, it’s the best we can hope for.

    Perhaps the first step towards any kind of sanity in all this is in first understanding that this is how we all are.














  • They are common up here in northern Ontario in Canada … but it’s just a habit with people up here … everyone prefers using the back door and when you get there, you knock on the door. The front door is more or less decorative and seldom used and usually used only for days like Halloween or mail package deliveries (and package carriers are better as they almost always use door bell)


  • lol … my favourite is Halloween … a few years ago, I put up a paper sign on the door with an arrow pointing to the ‘DOOR BELL’ … I even added extra instructions ‘RING DOORBELL FOR CANDY’ … and at one point I even put a sign lower to the ground so that kids could read it. My wife laughed at me and said that people weren’t that stupid and they’ll see the large bright glowing button of the doorbell and use it to get our attention.

    About three quarters of the people - whether they be kids or adults or both - knocked loudly on the door and ignored all the signs. I even had some miffed adults look at me weird for taking too long because I didn’t hear them pounding on the door.

    For the past few Halloweens, I gave up and now I just sit by the door and wait for people to arrive and greet them before they even have a chance to knock.


  • It sounds like we are part of the same generation (honestly, I don’t know or care what generation that is called, I just have a feeling you were born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s and 90s)

    We got to see the internet come into being little by little over the 90s and early 2000s. At the time, we weren’t kids anymore and we did just fine keeping up with the technology. And I believe it was all down to our ability to be able to think, act and do things ourselves without any outside help. We grew up in an education system that forced us to think, to read, to write and to understand using nothing but our growing brain. We didn’t have the luxury of having a device show us pretty pictures or immediately calculate something for us. There is a lot to be said for a child that grows up and learns how to just write ideas, questions, answers and thoughts on an empty piece of paper with just a pencil or a crayon.

    You can mimic all that on a tablet but the the process of using a tablet is partly entertainment because at one point, you start playing with the tablet rather than in learning how to draw a picture. When you have a pencil and a blank piece of paper, you have no choice but to use your mind and put something down on the sheet.

    Because I grew up with new technology and the internet, I got to appreciate it all and I started tinkering with it all. I never turned into any kind of hacker or computer wiz but over the past 20 years, I’ve learned how to use/tinker/adjust/crack/tweak Windows, MacOS and Linux systems as well as build my own PC, recover old parts, mash together parts, keep laptops alive and recover tablets and devices. All done without any technical training other than what I learned from others online. In all that time, I got to meet and see so many young people who either didn’t know, didn’t care or were just ignorant as to how a computer even worked.