it is interesting how many people on this forum, including me, have severe mental instabilities, but instead of helping one another and trying to be understanding we hate on each other for it. I wish being selfish was much harder than it is.

you can get through to people, but it is very difficult when a lot of people are responding at once. Then you start focusing on reading each post instead of absorbing each post. For some people groups help them, for others one on one helps more. This guy is better with one on one. So telling him to step away for a bit and cool down, and possibly talking one on one afterwords will help. I may contact him on skype, but first I want to see if he can restore himself on his own. I hope so, we will see

@56
O come on.  You and everyone else on here can't have it both ways.  The media wasn't proven to anything.

There was a model, it claimed 60000 deaths for the U.S., everyone reported on it, everyone on audiogames.net said that that was exaggerated and how dare the mainstream media be so unrealistic, it can't possibly be that bad.  I believe including yourself but I'm not going to dig through literally a thousand posts to find it.  But now here we are at around twice that number in the U.S. and counting, and the media is still exaggerating.  Really?  When does the media stop exaggerating?  How many people have to die before it gets through to you and everyone else spouting bullshit conspiracy theories?

You have the choice to be mature, or to act like a winy teenager.  The world sucks.  I literally woke up this morning and had to look up safety information on tear gas because I'm in Seattle literally on the same block as the protests and it's getting into some apartments and I had to find out if it could get into mine, plus I've also been on lockdown living alone since near the beginning of march with basically no human contact beyond grocery delivery and work.  I don't enjoy these things.  Very little is good about 2020, and the way it's shaping up very little will be good about 2021 either.  But that doesn't mean I go on the internet and prolong drama as an outlet for it, and if I did, I'd sure as hell not expect people to give me some sort of covid lockdown pass.  Everyone else is experiencing it with you, and everyone else isn't deciding to stir shit up for the hell of it.

I think the best approach to these topics is to kindly ask him to delete the topic and step away for a bit. The only problem with that is it would look like supression to him. So we would have to convey our message properly that this is not the case before anything else. Edit 83 I am going to look that up right now, sounds interesting.

Also even if that one percent figure is entirely correct, that’s likely under the best of conditions. Some are not as lucky as us Americans.

I honestly think I would have assumed that NevEd was being homophobic as well, though not seriously so.
Straight, used in a context that I've literally never seen (straight up) used in before, followed by a jab at the phrase woke, and a few posts later talking about lunatic leftists?  Yeah, I've read enough youtube comments to know when someone is trying to tell me something about how they view the world.
It's basic pattern recognition, and being misunderstood is a consequence of being a snarky sarcastic edgelord.  Don't like it?  Change your attitude.
I consider my self to be slightly left of center most times in politics, and for me it would have been a hard decision on weather or not to say something.
I honestly can't say for sure how I would have handled it, I think that I most likely would have considered it free speech but maybe given a general caution just encase and definitely not lectured him extensively on it , and unlike Jade, I'm not far left either.

@56, you have got to be fucking shitting me right now. I wasn't going to respond to this topic at all (I rarely respond to much on here these days) but any sympathy I had for your cause, of which I had at least a small amount, is completely gone once you start spewing crap like this. Why don't you tell the families of the 1% your views? Do you think they'd like being referred to simply as the 1%? Don't you think that they already feel bad enough, not only because they lost a loved one before their time, but also because right now they, and everyone in their inner, outer, and concentric circle, is being scrutinized not only for statistical purposes, but also because, y'know, they were/could have been carriers?

Let me tell you something, when this pandemic first took hold, I was one of the naysayers, cavorting around freely and not giving a solitary shit about the possible consequences. I, like you, thought, "oh, it's just a glorified flu, who cares." One of my least proud moments as a human being, never mind on this forum, was spraying around such toxic vitreal. I leave it here as a testament to the fact that I am a mostly broken work in progress.

Then, the unimaginable happened. Someone I deeply care about was badly affected by this virus, this shiny pearl that you claim the media gleefully clutches to their collective bosom as though it were the holy grail of ratings. And, to be fair, it is. But are you shocked? Are you seriously trying to tell me, and everyone else, that you didn't know that the media feeds upon the fear, uncertainty, and weakness of others? If so, well, then I have no words for the amount of sheltered you are. If not, stick with me here, because I'm about to tell you how it feels to be circling that black hole from which there is no return if you find yourself sucked into it, flirting with the disaster that is the 1%.

If someone you love gets the flu, or hell, most other treatable, communicable diseases, even if they end up being hospitalized from complications of said disease, there is a semblance of understanding, because you know that medical professionals at least know, in theory, what to do and how to help that person pull through. With something whose origins are as murky as this, with no solid hope for proven treatments or vaccines in sight, there's a much stronger urgency to the situation. Add to that the fact that you're watching someone you love suffer from states away, and there is literally nothing you can do about it, because even if you took the next flight, you could not be by their side due to heightened restrictions imposed by what we don't know about the transmission of this virus... And lest you think it can't happen to you? It can happen to anybody. You know what one of the worst parts of my experience was? While someone who should not have, statistically speaking, suffered complications was doing just that, the hot story in the media was about this previously perfectly healthy 30-year-old dude who was struck down in the fucking prime of his life. And, yes, it was surely sensationalized, but just imagine how it would feel to be inundated with a story like that when both myself and the person I'm speaking of are the same age as the man who passed away.

Yes, I'm belaboring this point. Honestly, I feel I'm not doing nearly enough. Just because everything turned out ok for us in the end doesn't mean I have any right to let my guard down, or forget what we both endured. It also means that I must be humble and remember that, while I view what I went through as a traumatizing experience, I have no right to feel that way, since the 1%, as you so thoughtlessly and coldly refer to them as, clearly have experienced much worse than me. So, if you can be reached at all, and you're hopefully not as selfish as your post would have me believe, if you have a modicum of empathy at all, then quit whining about what for you is a mere inconvenience, which, I might add, literally everyone is dealing with to one degree or another. If social media is your only outlet for social interaction, think about the elderly, severely cognitively disabled, and abused who cannot or will not access any of the morsels of interaction you scoff at. When you despair of ever leaving the house again, try thinking of those whose grief has paralyzed them to the point they may never live a normal life, or the families wracked by financial devastation due to unemployment, or the mentally ill whose symptoms have been exacerbated by prolonged isolation, who are even now being brushed off as an afterthought and viewed as "those people" as per usual. then come back to me and keep talking about the 1%, after you've felt what the majority feels.

Wow. I'm not even finished reading through the 3rd page but I figured I might as well post my opinion here now before someone comes along to close the topic.
@1 I definitely appreciate you having more patience than me to break things down and write a post about it. People are getting a little too wound up about the spelling remark IMO. But hey, like the reason for this post existing in the first place, that's how a lot of people are nowadays. Especially those who haven't seen how truly shit life can be and worry about frivolous trash like that. I don't think you should be getting as pissed as you are outwardly but I definitely understand where the frustration is coming from and I agree with you pretty much completely. It's funny that the people here talking about "don't care, you're stirring up shit" or implicating stuff without proof, and then being replied too, and then being sarcastic assholes about it are being hypocritical.
Make the euphomism excuse if you wish but that's not how things work. It's its own separate topic and it wasn't even that inflamatory to begin with besides the general point of "YOU GUYS ARE BEING RIDICULOUS AND OVERREACTING." If you don't care, just leave it, because being a snarky prick will definitely not send the topic into a downward spiral of insults sprayed at everyone. And the people claiming that others are acting as if their morally superior, are themselves thinking they're morally superior by saying that others should do what they themselves feel is appropriate and that's that, without any logic or reason, or for others to express their opinions/grievances. That's stupid. While I did go off on Stirlock harder than I really needed to, I still had a valid reason for answering him, being called "ignorant." Which any person with dignity shouldn't really appreciate. I don't make posts without knowing what I'm talking about, or without at the very least admitting not knowing everything, which I even did later in the topic. I did put a spoiler warning in my post however because I was informed that people may not want that particular bit of the story to be spoiled.
As for Jayde and the warning post, I definitely shouldn't have attacked Stirlock like that but I think people that have went through instances where one word is said and a blanket is thrown over you will understand where the fucking boiling rage came from. I definitely was the aggressor and IMO him calling me dumb wasn't even worth warning him for IMO. You get what you give. If I was calmer and he still flipped shit on me, yeah, me being me I definitely would've ripped him a new one. But back to Jayde, it's just another one of those situations where you have to agree to disagree and just stay out of each other's way. I'll take the warning for crawling up Stirlock's ass but I think my general statements that weren't really meant to throw absolutely everyone under the bus upset him a little bit, and I don't know what he went through in life, I'm not gonna even bother him or argue with him, as I said, the warning was justified, but taking bits of other people's words to throw them into another political extreme just because of gross coincidence irritates the shit out of me. Theirs no rite political side, party, wing, etc IMO, but that's another topic and I'm not getting into that because frankly I don't have the patience.
But everyone, collectively, just chill out a little bit, and don't contradict yourselves, even though we all do sometimes, and sometimes for valid reasons. And I'm including myself here. Because that's what I did, and I was wrong for that, because I effected others.
Now that that's out of the way, if people still have issues with me, and feel the need to snarkily reply to this post, I quite frankly don't give a shit and the entertainment would be welcome. Nobody is required to like me, or you, or anyone else. Doesn't mean you should claw their eyes out at the drop of a hat, either.
That is all.
PEACE!!!!
Edit: One more thing. Well actually 2. I've been living a relatively socially isolated life for a long time now, since middle school. Mostly my own fault. Social isolation is fucking horrible for the psyche and you lose skills that you didn't know you had until they're gone, and develop habits that you don't know you have until you try to do "normal" things that you haven't done in a long time. And when you not only have blindness to deal with, but also a progressive hearing loss that showed up in your middle school years that gets worse and worse, shit is fucking tough. Granted I didn't do much to try and counteract my current lifestyle and not make it worse (frankly because I didn't know any better at the time), but different people respond to their circumstances differently. Case and point, living like this definitely has made me (and others) more hotheaded, because when you live a life on the internet like I do because your anxiety makes it fucking impossible to do normal things that others do without getting a little high to quell your nerves but you can't do that because you haven't established those kinds of relationships yet, or any for that matter, when something comes along to "disrupt" the few activities you enjoy doing, you get very very angry. I was like that especially in my younger years and I think a lot of more social people, whether they ridiculed non-social people or not, are starting to understand how that feels. It fuckin sucks. But I don't expect others to just give me a pass because of that anymore. Frankly, in the grand scheme of things, none of us are "special", we all have problems. It's all a matter of perspective. And of course the moment I realize "You know what, I'm almost fucking 20 years old and I haven't had a major interaction with a girl since high school and I have issues that I need to deal with if I want to get out of my Mom's house with the kids and the craziness, maybe it's time to apply myself to things I enjoy and put energy out there that others may recipricate, let's see where I'll be by the end of the year." Covid comes along and sends all that crashing down, had to leave college and my dorm, I'm stuck at home now. Combined the fact that I never really was completely into college because of the fluffwork and ended up failing both of my major classes because I lost motivation because of said fluff work, I'm even more fucked up than I normally would be.
It's easy to ignore the media for the most part in normal life but now that your forced to basically masturbate 24/7 it's more difficult to escape. I watch YouTube pretty much every day. You know what's plastered on the front page? Covid19covid19covid19covid19covid19trumptrumptrumptrumpprotestorsprotestors, with a bunch of people in the comments flaming people because they have a view that might hint that they occupy an opposing party to them. It's ridiculous and it irritates the shit out of me. Nobody should ever believe what the media says at face value. As for others saying it's exaggerated, well, I'm sure it partially is, but not to the degree you want to believe. Lots of people have fucking died from this, and that's an understatement. I know people who know others that have died from it. Anyone who knows Hip-Hop, Westside Gunn had Covid, almost died from it, but still made a fucking album out of it. What a G. Fred the Godson unfortunately died from complications relating to it. Scarface was doing real bad from it but I think he's ok now because I heard about that 2 weeks after it was posted. Several YouTubers I know mention people they know or have worked with have died from it.
Shit is definitely real and 2020 definitely is blowing major ass. But we're all getting angry at the wrong things, we're getting angry period. Blind rage isn't gonna help anything or help others realize that maybe shit wasn't what they thought it was.
Just realized I made a pun unintentionally. Blind Rage. Heh. New audio game title? I want royalties for whoever takes that, god damn it.

Heaven help me, 90 was a great read, too.  Every time I feel there's no hope for this place, I try to remember these little tidbits that are like little rays of sunshine.

So, this exploded. I go away for six hours, and I come back to this.

I'll actually keep this brief, as most of what I have wanted to say has already been said extremely well by folks like Defender, Turtlepower, Liam and Nocturnis. But a few things do need clearing up.

NevEd's first post was not all that bad. I believe I even said that when I stepped into that thread. Touchy, maybe a little, but not awful at all. You'd have to be pretty thin-skinned to automatically assume the worst from that alone.
Stirlock, ahem, stirred things up a bit, NevEd exploded, and based then upon the entirety of the interaction, I made a judgment call. As Defender pointed out, essentially it looks like the sort of thing folks do when they're phobic. Perhaps this was unintentional on your part, NevEd, and if it was, I do apologize. I am not wholly convinced, but it is not an open-and-shut situation. I have seen this sort of pattern literally hundreds of times in social media posts, and in nearly every situation I would have been right to talk about homophobia or transphobia or whatever. Whatever your intentions, you showed a pattern that is pretty easy to spot and recognize and pretty difficult to mistake for anything else. It is possible that I misread you. And it's also possible that, being keyed-up as I am lately from all the silly bullshit I'm seeing in the world at large, I am more primed than normal to call out things when I see them. There's another post on another thread where I do this pretty loudly (not to NevEd, mind you). Point is, this was a bad combo. I'm taking no crap from anyone when it comes to racism of phobic comments, and NevEd comes in and basically lights a bunch of signal-fires. I drew a conclusion, acted on it, but warned him for personal attacks, not for his beliefs.

NevEd was not warned for his first post in that thread, and we wouldn't even be having this discussion for that post alone. I'd have just shaken my head and moved on. Not worth getting upset about. But he did escalate far enough that he deserved a warning and got one.

I also had some of my personal observations under the moderation heading. I am used to sticking a moderation notice at the top of a post, but in this case, it was wrong to have done so. I fixed it last night and I'm sorry that I did that. I feel that I'm entitled to the opinion I voiced, but it is not a staff opinion, it's a personal one. I will be better about this going forward. I don't feel that I should have to not put personal opinions forth, but I have to clearly mark them apart from moderation posts, lest it seem to others as if I'm moderating based on personal beliefs. I wasn't, and I don't, but that line can blur, and I contributed to that. I'll own it, and I'll do better. Defender, thank you for pointing this out.

Turtlepower, great fucking post. Seriously. Also, I'm very sorry at what you've gone through. I feel extremely fortunate in that the only person I know who's gotten sick got well with few complications and is fine now. Many, many others don't have that privilege.

DanGero, I could carry on about your reactions and such, but at this point, I doubt you'll listen to anything coming from me, so I'll leave it to the rest.

Oh, speaking of the rest of you, we may want to ease up on the dogpiling a bit. I don't want to have to start moderating this thread. I think there have been some pretty serious tactical mistakes in how this was handled in this thread, but I'd like to see things scale back. Righteous anger is fine. Calling people out on their shit is fine. But taunting, teasing and beating a dead horse just makes everyone involved look petty.

Yeah I've found that Jade is allot like me and you NevEd.  We come on strong as hell and then back it off as we calm down.  It's gotten me into so much shit you wouldn't even believe!
It does show people that your honest though, if impulsive.

Also, I would try not to worry about the whole being at home at 20 thing so much.  Our society and economy is allot different than it was decades ago when you were expected to leave at 16 to 18 years old with no exceptions, and to be honest allot more people live with their parents up until there 30s or 40s than you might think.
It's more about contributing to the household as an adult should than getting the hell out IMO.  If your helping out financially, even if it's just enough from your social security to cover your food, utilities, phone, and internet costs, or if your helping as much as possible around the house with chores and baby sitting with a minimum of bitching, than your doing your part.

It's hard to shake that lingering feeling of shame for not being on your own feet yet, and by no means am I suggesting that you shouldn't be working on school/learning new skills or trying to get a part time job or volunteer opportunity or improving your blindness skills when possible.
But you have to agree that logically, you are at a dual disadvantage with blindness and mental shit, and can't realistically be blamed for not being at the same level as some of your peers yet if the system isn't built well enough to help you get there properly as it can with others.

I don't know your specific situation.  Maybe cultural baggage, family troubles, or serious economic problems make things different for you, but I personally couldn't hold it against you unless you just weren't trying at all in any category.