palordrolap

They’re referencing this character: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Reginald_Barclay

next four years

People keep saying that, but there’s a disturbingly strong chance that he’ll still be President in February 2029.

I want very much to be wrong about that, but if I was a betting man I’d put money on it.

Ah. The article says that it happened on Xitter, and then seems to imply that that means the phenomenon happened all across the Internet. It might, but it’s more likely it was just a trending topic on Xitter for a couple of hours.

Add that to the picture they chose to use and we have clickbait journalism at its finest. 10/10

Where, precisely, are you seeing these things go viral? Or is it a site where it only says that something has gone viral without much further evidence?

Yes, I know this sounds like that meme of “oh no tell me so I never go there” when secretly meaning the opposite, but I haven’t seen any of it in my feeds on the Fediverse, Bluesky or YouTube, to name but three, and I assume you don’t mean on the adult sites themselves.

It could be that these viral things are linked to things you’ve searched previously and some algorithm is feeding you more of the same.

That’s not a complete accusation by the way. I can imagine that if you’re a fan of celebrity news, for example, that some of the adult stuff might start to creep in even if you haven’t been specifically looking for it.

This might also be some use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak

Leaks have always been a thing, but that was a particularly bad one.

I hate that I understand this.

Satire may have been instrumental in its own demise.

People see satire and are either smart enough to understand it - maybe even find it funny, or are offended by it. Those who are offended generally become more entrenched in their beliefs and those who aren’t either don’t see the satire for the warning it is, or do, but mostly choose not to do something about the subject.

And since people have seen what the satirised subject could be like, and they didn’t take action, the subject might take the opportunity to move a little closer to the form it took in satire.

Given this and enough time, satire and reality can become indistinguishable.

And here we are.

Star Trek’s 24th century Earth sounds like a reasonably nice place. I doubt I’d qualify for Starfleet, and wouldn’t try.

I just want to see what life is like for the average broken neurodivergent in that reality. Also, what’s at the location of my current house in that reality? Same construction? Did a version of me live there? Was it there but replaced in the intervening 350 years? etc.

Relevant, but also not relevant at all: The North Pacific Deckpecker

Also UK here. Since it’s mostly used as the verb to mean “hit <someone> in the head”, it didn’t even occur to me to parse the question this way.

Perhaps that was a symptom of my own weak bean.

This doesn’t add much to what others have already said, but there’s a useful saying that applies extremely well to low online prices:“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

The tricky ones are the ones that are between, say, 10% off and full price. Some are legit, others are scammers hoping you’ll pick their slightly cheaper option. And you still need to figure out why the legit one is cheaper. They rarely do it out of the good of their heart.

In the sense of one day you’re there, the other day you’re not, may I suggest not realising that you’re not looking after your mental health, having a total meltdown and finding yourself walking erratically up the road away from the place in a roughly homeward direction, followed by not being OK ever since?

Actually, no, I take that back. I suggest doing the polar opposite of that. Once that particular Prince Rupert’s drop pops, it’s an impossible task to put it back together again.

Also, when back looking at it, you’d begin to realise that the warning signs were there all along, so maybe everything wasn’t so sudden, or isekai, as you put it, at all.

Unrelated: I can’t not hear “he’s a guy” when I hear “isekai”.

Some countries have only banned it on paper. Don’t ask how rich countries in the middle east get their buildings built, for example.

And then there’s always the loopholes that allow unscrupulous employers to pay employees less than minimum wage. Not quite slavery, but it’s pretty damn close.

For example: My country has a scheme whereby some unemployed people have been forced to take on work in order to qualify for, get this: their unemployment benefits. The employer won’t then take them on because then they’d have to pay them, and pay them minimum wage to boot, rather than get free workers from the government.