From my personal anecdotal evidence, yeah, to an extent. I live in the States and a lot of our culture is pretty toxic. I had to find a few non-toxic, non-misanthropic groups to hang out with to reverse my misanthropy. Moving out of a conservative state helped a lot. Prior, I’d end up hanging out with other reluctantly socializing misanthropes who repeated prevalent toxic behaviors. It always resulted in a lot of unnecessary drama and hurt feelings.

Here’s an old but short one. I was selling my Xbox 360. A couple comes to pick it up, so I start it up so they can test it out. Red ring of death. It never had any issues before. I was so flustered and embarrassed that I just gave it to them.

This is a great idea! I also get tons of time wasters. We once had over 10 people flake on picking up a free couch. I could instead list things for cheap and just give them away to whoever shows up.

I’ll start with one that happened over the last two weeks. I had a weight set I was giving away. I was first contacted by a fellow who was interested but couldn’t pick it up for two weeks. He asked if I’d hold it for him. For two weeks. WTF. I refused and told him that I’ve literally never had anyone follow through when I’ve held items, so hit me up in two weeks if the posting is still up.

He calls me and lays this sob story on me: his mother needs it for physical therapy but they don’t have a lot of money. They’d pick it up now but his father is out of town with their only vehicle for two weeks. He promises me that he’s a man of his word and he will keep his word to get it if I keep mine to hold the gym set. My inbox is already blowing up from others wanting to get it, so I know I’ll be able to offload it, no problem. I decide to give him a chance and hold it.

A week later, I text him to verify he’s still interested. He assures me he is and that he’s so grateful I’m holding it. I text him again the day before he’s supposed to pick it up to check again. He tells me they bought a new set instead. I respond, telling him how I made an exception to not holding things and he gave me his word. He tells me to go fuck myself.

I relisted it and it was gone within two hours. Just for giggles, I check a few local listing apps later that day. My former weight set is now listed on Facebook Marketplace, using the same picture I had, for $100.

It totally looks like purple drank/lean/prescription cough syrup and soda.

I had moderate mysophobia as a child to young adult. I wouldn’t share food or drinks due to a fear of mouth bacteria (and would throw it away if someone else helped themselves to it), I’d excessively clean dishes and cooking surfaces, wash my hands multiple times if I touched something I considered contaminated, cooked meat until it was beyond well done, etc.

It got way better after I went to college for microbiology. Actually understanding microbes helped immensely. I’m still a little weird about other people’s bodily fluids, especially saliva, but otherwise probably care less than many people about “germs”. I uphold much higher standards for other people’s food, but I’ll (conditionally) eat food I dropped on the floor, cook my chicken to a bit less than 74°C and eat blue rare steak, ferment my own foods and brew my own alcohol, pull mold off my bread or cheese and eat the rest, and I now wash my hands an appropriate amount.

I can’t say no fucks given, but instead a situationally appropriate amount of fucks given, with a lot of extra leeway due to uncommonly advanced knowledge.

I’m 5’6. Yeah. So much. I was rejected like crazy for my height in my teens and early twenties, but I lived in a particularly shitty part of the United States, so I’m not surprised in retrospect. I also dated a ton, so there was a lot of opportunity for rejection. I even remember a woman I was not interested in and had shown absolutely no interest in going out of her way to tell me she would date me if I wasn’t so short.

I relocated to a much more progressive part of the country and it hasn’t come up once in nearly a decade.

Edit: I should mention it was only an issue with women, I never heard anything about it from men.

My partner and I have surprisingly little in common when it comes to interests. I like a lot of nerd stuff: homelab, 3d printing, robotics, brewing, welding, woodworking, sci-fi, etc. They like not nerd stuff: copaganda shows, murder porn (podcasts and documentaries), dog training, cooking, etc. I like metal, they like jangly indie, we both like punk. We both really love cats.

We also both hate small talk, so we only discuss what we find to be pertinent or interesting. Since we have a lot of individual interests, we actually have a lot to talk about. We just had a really great conversation on using Docker or a VM to circumvent some silly online testing issues. Otherwise, it’s just comfortable silence. I really love them.

1+ for koreader, it’s so much better than the stock Kindle reader.

I thought baby pygmy hippo.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but there’s so much commonly misunderstood classic literature. The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, Wuthering Heights, and Romeo and Juliet come to mind. I’ve bitten my tongue more than once as I’ve listened to others use Romeo and Juliet or Wuthering Height as enviable examples of romance.

And are the kids in karts too?

Looks great, bravo!

It doesn’t, it still has some exclamation point action that might be the issue. If it helps, you should be able to copy and paste my example markdown. I gave it a try and it still works.

I believe this is what you’re looking for:

::: spoiler Visible Text
hidden content goes here
:::

Looks like:

I really hope so, for their sake.

We do, but I didn’t even know they existed before this incident. I’ve luckily had few dental issues.

Red aggro nailed it. There’s a gap at the gum line between my remaining tooth and the crown, leaving exposed dentin.

I had a dentist give me an unnecessary root canal when a filling broke and they didn’t even do it right. I’m still pretty salty about it. I’ll always get a second opinion moving forward.