When my teen years grew tough for my single mom to handle she often accused me of being possessed. She was very emotionally unstable, so when things got rough for either of us, things went to utter shit. Her last resort was to carry around her bible and ask God to bless every corner of the home.

Later, one of my first boyfriends said something similar-- except I was now the demon. At one point he said I was "the demon at the center of the universe, which spawned all other demons". Of course this all occurred when we were fighting.

Anyways, my point is that I think you're correct. It's a last-resort coping mechanism. Very harmful. I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I'm actually human or some kind of universal mistake.

I don't know about you, but if I was with my partner " in a laboratory setting " I would certainly be on my best behavior.

I have a thinkpad I rigged with slackware and a custom WM and whatnot, custom browser, etc. exclusively in dark colors with brighter text. But instead of white I opt for a lighter grey. If I need context highlighting I use variations of red, orange, and blue. It's the perfect setting for me since I also had that "retina burn" effect from white-on-black. On my windows machines I use a redshift app called Flux. Not great for watching videos since the colors are off, but for general browsing and working it's the only setting I can stand with light backgrounds.

Yep. I wrote in a comment above that the bible evolves over time, depending on interpretation and context. That would seem necessary to me for teachings that are intended to survive into humanity's future.

Symbols reveal what is hidden to those in the know.

The bible is full of symbolism, real events in context, doctrine, wisdom, etc. It's not a matter of one language vs another, it's a matter of universal symbolism that can be applied to any age. The monkey as trickster, the poison as subversion. It is incredibly difficult to communicate complex thoughts in plain language, and even then it is liable to a misunderstanding. The bible is not without its misunderstandings, but the point of it is that it's made to be universal in a way that complex meaning is communicated to every age. Every age has its interpretation, and every age is structured by how it puts that interpretation into action.

It evolves with time.

I have the same outlook. There are bad points in every generation, but groups of people don't get arbitrarily worse because they were born together at a certain point in time. Every generation faces a new challenge, and every generation attempts to overcome it, usually with unique results. Previous generations have no concept of the challenges their kids and grandkids face.

I'm a millenial, and my partner's parents, stereotypically, are always going off about how lazy, whiny, and unmotivated my generation is. From where I stand it's the complete opposite. I could explain why but, at the risk of starting a debate about millenials, I'll just say that my generation has been working on solutions to problems our parents either didn't have to deal with, or weren't aware of. And that's just the way "generations" work.

I don't think that's a good, general comparison. Depends on what you're doing online.

I spend my time online reading about my interests or talking to other people. In the outside world, the conversations I have are short and often unfulfilling. People are more open online and I really value that kind of open introspection with others. It's difficult to find information about my interests outside of the Internet as well, unless I go to the library which, for me, is at least an hour commute.

Lots of people are learning how to use the Internet productively because as we migrate our time from physical reality to virtual reality, we crave more corresponding meaning.

The real world sucks for me sometimes (y'know, apart from nature walks and the like) because it's not the apple it's the candy. It feels fake, empty, and lifeless.

I also grew up during the transition. We didn't have Internet in the house until I was 14, and even then my computer time was limited. My story is similar to yours. I had a few neighborhood friendships that only worked out because I was able to tell them what I wanted them to do. Otherwise, interactions with my own age group were never 2-way: if they didn't want to do what I wanted to do the way that I wanted to do it, I just went off on my own and was perfectly content.

In my teen years I spent most of my time writing, reading, or walking wherever. Again, I had a few friends, but I was picky and apart from that didn't care to "maintain" the friendships. When I started using the Internet more frequently, I found more passive friendships online that came and went and this was a much better solution for me. It meant I could connect when I wanted to, and instantly end the connection when I wanted to be alone, without much risk.

I probably sound a little more pathological than you, but my point is that some people just are a certain way. Apart from that there are external reasons why kids prefer the Internet to in-person interaction. The Internet as a solution came about for a reason. The world is so populated now that when one walks down the street, your neighbors are unkind or elusive because people cannot keep up with so many relationships at once. Trains are packed, everyone's chattering, everyone's rushing, there are people everywhere but no one is communicating-- there's no time or energy to connect with people. Some guy on the train is crying, but no one is going to comfort him because everyone has so much shit going on. The Internet, in one sense, is a way to reconnect with one's neighbors intimately while keeping a sane distance. If a guy on reddit is telling me he's crying, I instantly attempt to comfort him.

It's a weird thing, for sure. But, personally, I don't see an easy way around it in the short-term.

I'm not a man, but mentioned in another comment that manspreading is more about comfort due to having testicles and I can sympathize with that. If the dude is significantly impairing my ability to sit straight on the seat, I will usually spread my legs a little wider to force him to move a little, but if not-- if he's just taking a bit of room-- it doesn't matter so much.

I don't think it's a problem that needs to be solved. Imagine if your discomfort was visual: you're walking on crutches or you have a cast. People would naturally give you more room because they don't want to cause you any pain. Men are not about to say, "excuse me, ma'am, my balls are sweaty and it's not appropriate to adjust them to a certain degree in public, and besides that I don't want to crush them between my legs, so if you don't mind, please forgive me if I take up a bit of room on the seat."

Speaking as someone who used to be a man... that explanation is complete bullshit. Whoever told you that was lying. Men can clamp their legs tightly together without even any testicular discomfort[1]. The only legitimate reason for manspreading to be more prevalent with men is that men tend to have larger thighs, but even that doesn't excuse the practice. Keeping your legs spread a bit may be more comfortable, but that's true for everybody, it's just that women are taught to keep their legs together when sitting and men are not.

In reality, men manspread because they can. Spreading out your body to take up more room discourages someone from sitting next to you. This includes spreading out your shoulders and keeping your arms away from your body too. Most men, if confronted, will defend the practice by saying that they'll move if someone wants to sit next to them. But, though they may not want to admit it, they know that they're intentionally discouraging anyone from sitting next to them, and that most people on mass transit will choose to stand rather than ask a complete stranger to stop hogging the seat.

[1] Under normal circumstances. I'm sure there are medical reasons why someone might have overly tender testicles and experience discomfort doing this, but for the purposes of this conversation we're talking about people without any medical issues.

I also make attempts to discourage people from sitting next to me. This behavior cannot be policed. If you want to sit next to a guy spreading his legs, simply ask him to move over. It's courteous not to attempt to discourage people from using public transit as intended, but it's not a gendered issue that needs widespread media attention chastising males.

But that's the thing, it absolutely is a gendered issue. Woman simply do not manspread. A lot of men do. And the real problem is men do this without even consciously realizing it. This is why raising attention to the issue is important. If men realize they're doing this, then they can choose not to do it (or they can decide to continue being rude of course).

> If you want to sit next to a guy spreading his legs, simply ask him to move over.

That is not an acceptable response. It's a fact that people in general do not feel comfortable talking to strangers on public transit. And it's especially true that women do not feel comfortable confronting strange men. Add to that the fact that everybody can be expected to understand that taking up a seat with their bag is rude, so nodding towards someone's bag as a way of asking "can I sit there?" is acceptable, but most men don't recognize that manspreading is a problem, so you can't just nod towards a seat to mean "can you please minimize your personal space so I can sit there?". You'd have to actually talk to someone, explain that they're taking up too much space, and hope that they don't react poorly to this. This is just not something you can expect people on public transit to do to complete strangers in general, and especially not something you can expect women to do to men.

Manspreading is pretty much exclusively a male problem, and "just ask the person to move" is an example of male privilege. And it's been going on long enough that apparently we do need to keep bringing this up over and over again in public discourse in order to get men to even recognize that there is a problem, much less work to fix it.

I don't really know what it's like to have testicles, but I imagine it's more comfortable to keep one's legs apart than not, so it's not a problem for me unless his knees are digging into my thighs or he is blocking an empty seat. Usually this isn't the case-- I've noticed men scoot forward a little on the seat with their legs spread so that it isn't an issue.