Well, I survived yesterday. Woke up in pain, called in sick to work, struggled through the basic morning routine, then sat down and literally cried in pain. Ended up spending the day using most of the rest of my (almost gone) supplies of pain meds to nuke myself into a stupor.
Still in pain, but much much less than yesterday.
Even better, find out what manufacturer the TV is and download the remote control app for it. Change it from your phone whenever you want! My sister did this for a hospital waiting room TV to get it off of Fox News.
Actually, I think the issue is that the one guy is a complete asshole. Didn’t anyone tell him to knock it off? I’m not being critical of you and I have an understanding of your position so I’m not blaming you at all! But I don’t understand a group of adults letting this jerk take apart a young guy starting out. Yes, maybe he was arrogant. That’s his age. You don’t rip him and his confidence to shreds.
I did. I also told him he was acting like an asshole. I never have to mince words with that group.
It’s… This is what happened. A buddy of ours had a very friendly, open-style writers group that often got bogged down with people showing up who had no idea what the hell they were doing and didn’t really have the commitment to follow through. They were just wasting time for more serious writers, but he insisted on being super inclusive of everyone. There’s no delicate way to put this… the buddy who created this group is now terminally ill. A few months ago, he handed over leadership to Group Leader and is now too sick to manage the group.
At that point, there were 4-5 of us who were regularly. seriously involved in the group. We all agreed we wanted something more focused on craft and that it would probably be better off juried. We made decisions together about what the new group would look like. This created a form of intimacy that can’t easily be reproduced. We regularly talk to one another outside of group, we’ve formed friendships, we know deeply personal things about one another, we swap stories all the time, we’ve seen multiple drafts of the same thing, and we can be brutally honest about each other’s writing without damaging relationships with one another. We’ve become very close very quickly, but we are a dark-humored, sarcastic, frequently inappropriate bunch of goofballs that people could totally read the wrong way if they didn’t know all the mushy stuff underneath.
This has absolutely affected group culture. There are about ten of us now, and I think our honesty is one of the best things we have to offer. But our threshold for taking offense is so high within that group that it can be difficult to tell initially if someone is crossing the line, or lines can get crossed more easily. And when lines are crossed it’s easier to repair them because we have this foundation of friendship and loyalty and mutual support. New Kid had no context for any of this. On his first day, I was feeling super feisty, came right out the gate with a pretty harsh comment toward Group Leader’s piece, (Something like ‘‘Sometimes you write with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer’’) and the kid jumped right on it and interpreted it as some kind of free-for-all to insult people’s work. That wasn’t it, he just didn’t have the context, but that wasn’t his fault.
I blamed myself for all the animosity people suddenly had toward New Kid because I was the one who set the tone with that comment. Apparently, his redline critique comments were really rude, too, but it’s not like we’re all sunshine and light with each other. So I’ve been trying to set it right ever since, and everyone, including Asshole Friend, has been telling me it’s not my responsibility to fix. I think I’ve actually been making it worse by trying to fix it. Maybe it would otherwise blow over.
I’ve never really been such a big part of a group like this, it’s teaching me a lot about group dynamics I never really had to consider or understand.
That’s what I said. For clarification, the ‘‘kid’’ is 25. He’s an adult also, just younger than a lot of those guys in the group. But he’s definitely a new writer. And it’s total bullshit to accept someone into the group and then treat them like a 2nd class member. I’ve made my feelings on this crystal clear.
Then might I suggest that newcomers be advised to act more as ‘lurkers’ for their first meeting or two to understand they dynamics? You know, like we often suggest for this board?
Maybe even a warning for newcomers that honesty in the group is highly valued and some of the criticisms may sound very harsh, but this should not be interpreted as a ‘free for all’ to savage people’s work.
That is an excellent metaphor for what happened. Some people join the Dope, gather a very superficial overview of what we are about, dive right in, and promptly get their asses handed to them. That happened to me, actually.
Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so sympathetic toward this kid. 
So wrong, so funny, and so delicious.
Job hunting? Hunting I could do! Scattering bird shot into the wild blue yonder hoping something falls just sucks.
Why the Hell did stupid news people switch to using the stupid British use of banned instead of suspended? Hope solo is not banned, she is suspended for 6 months. Banned implies permanent status,or at least one that stands until removed. Not one with a scheduled end.
It just really annoys the fuck out of me for some reason.
I posted a video I thought was funny. Social justice “friend” took exception to it and now we’re arguing about it. It’s so trivial I don’t even know how it got on her radar, much less how she got so mad about it she had to repost it with her own prejudice and assumptions. Buffoon comes to mind when I think of her.
So what was the video? Let’s see if it triggers any Doper SJWs.
Yeah, I have to see this now.
puts on judging hat
Not sure this link works for everyone, it’s a facebook public page so I think so - She's absolutely nailed this... credit: Whoa Susannah | By VTFacebook
I posted it with “HAHAHA the subtitles!” because that’s what was funny to me.
The response I got was:
And back and forth from there
That was hilarious! And yes, the subtitles translating to English were half the fun. 
It’s called “humor”. Not everything has to be deathly serious. You may want to find instructions for removing the stick from one’s ass and post it for your friend or whatever she is.
That was hilarious.
‘’…at least go to Macy’s!’’
Exactly what I was thinking.
In my experience, the majority of people who make humorless posts like that are overcompensating for the fact that the only thing they do about these world tragedies is bitch about them on Facebook. It’s pretty much the reason I left, because with every soapbox post from my ‘‘Friends’’ I wanted to kick them in the teeth (even if I agreed with them, they were so fucking obnoxious) and with every soapbox post I found myself making, I lost that much more respect for myself for not actually going out and doing something to change the things I hated.
One of my friends, who I sadly have to admit is fucking rabid crazy, had a tendency to go apeshit about social justice issues and block anyone on his page who didn’t agree with him - especially regarding feminism and women’s right to ‘‘hate all men’’, he only tolerated my disagreement because I was a woman :rolleyes:. Just to be clear, a man was telling me, a woman, why I should hate all men. It was beyond all rational sense, twisting people’s words, talking about how terrible humanity is, and at one point we were conversing because he was feeling really depressed, and I told him I was trying to address my own depression by spending less time ranting on Facebook and more time, you know, doing stuff.
His response was something like, ‘‘I work in Silicon Valley with a bunch of other white men, this is all I got.’’
My mind was just blown. If you truly care about all these issues facing minorities, what better, more fertile place is there for social change than a place you view as the seat of white male privilege? Just STFU and do something about it.
Ex-coworker. Nice enough but I always thought she’s a bit odd.
Yes! And posted. I didn’t tag her, but whatevs.
Hahaha. #Unfollow
Getting sick of the fake profiles on dating sites.
