Shacknews LoL

I don't even know why I'm adding into this, since the decision has already been made, but I guess I'm hoping this gets read by the mods and considered regardless.

First of all, I don't visit the chatty for the porn. However, the chatty is pretty much my single source for NWS material, simply because I don't ever really go searching for porn. Those of you that keep saying "there are plenty of other places you can go look at porn" are correct, but you are missing the point: we ARE NOT coming here looking for porn in the first place.

What I come to the chatty for is a filtered down aggregation of "Best Of What The Internet Has To Offer Today" I've been lurking/posting for 13 years, and the "chatty" (previously First Post/Werd/Evening Reading) has NEVER been a "video game forum"; it has been "anything we want to talk about" in a community of video game nerds. Sure, we discuss video games in the chatty all the time, but the community was specifically given an "any topic allowed" outlet for us to grow and bond together over the sharing and discussion of similar interests. To argue that "porn doesn't belong on a video game forum" is completely flawed, because again, the chatty is not, nor was it ever, a video game forum.

For over a decade, the chatty has been the only website I visit on a daily basis. I could come to the chatty to keep up to date on current events, politics, funny meme's de jour, gaming topics, and see quality NWS content. The community has had it's ups and down, but I've always kept coming back because I could always find something that interests me, and ignore the stuff that didn't. I never came here searching for political posts, but I would still read some and skip others. I never came here searching for food posts, but I would still read some and skip others. I never came here for NWS posts, but I still read some and skip others. See the pattern? What I'm getting at is that I understand that although I am a part of the community, I recognize that this is not my community. This is no one's community. The community does not belong to anyone, and it cannot be defined by how someone chooses to perceive or it what they think it should be. The community will will always define itself by the input of the contributors. That's not to say we shouldn't have mods, but they should be here to police abusive behavior, not define what this community is.

This is the first community guideline change I can remember being changed for the sake of content censorship without an undeniable underlying harmful aspect. We killed off MP3's because of the liability; we killed off pirated games/software because it hurts the gaming community we all love; etc. The closest comparison I can make between this new guideline and an existing guideline based solely on content would be banning meme overuse. One might say that banning overused meme's is content censorship, but I don't agree that it's the same as banning porn posts. Overused meme's truly offer NOTHING new and unique to the chatty, it's just rehashing the same annoying bullshit over and over again. However, so-called "contextless" porn dumps are introducing new content to users. Just because some people may think that content isn't appropriate doesn't change the fact that the it's new content and therefore it cannot be considered contextless. If you don't like people going "HOLY SHIT I WAS TO EAT HER SKID-MARKED THONGS" can scare people away, then ban those types of comments. Again, police the user behavior to curb the negative tone of the community; don't try to police the content. We already have filters to keep people from seeing the topics they aren't interested in. Leave it at that.

Anyway, I really hate even arguing about this topic, because I'm sure many of your who are in favor of killing of porn posts in the chatty will just assume I'm some greasy neckbeard neanderthal who just needs more material for my wank bank so I can squeeze one out. Well, I'm not...I'm just a guy who enjoy video games, and movies, and sports, and politics, and yes I enjoy me some nice looking nekkid womens. I liked being able to come to my one-stop shop for most of the things I enjoy seeing. Now one of those things is going away, which sucks. It's not going to stop me from coming here, but I'm going to miss the so called worthless "porn dumps". A great example is when I would see an NWS post from grendel I usually checked out the pics because it was pretty much guaranteed to be some quality hot women. Now I'm not going to get that quality hotness delivered up mixed in with everything else. I can accept it, but damnit that sucks.

Again, no clue why I'm even wasting my time typing this out since the decision has been made. But it's a sad day in the chatty for me. :(

So as some of you may know through various situations when I have posted about it in the past, I am a personal trainer. While my goal for everyone I work with is to improve their quality of life, I had a client recently that really made me appreciate things and put some perspective on things.

So my business partner is actually someone who grew up in the next city over from where I did, the two cities run together and each had 1 high school. I went to one towns high school and she went to the other, and we graduated the same year. As time has gone on we have had several instances where our friend circles had crossed paths before and it was just kind of a cool thing to talk about whenever they came up.

A few weeks ago, she gave me a call and told me a story about a guy who she had went to high school with who posted on facebook a picture that had a caption "What people think of me" and it had a soldier smiling with his dog and it was all good. then below that it said "how I really feel" and it had a soldier with a gun to his head. So she reached out to him, and had the vet suicide hotline give him a call and talk with him. The next day she gave him a phone call and met with him for lunch and the guy is really struggling with PTSD from his deployments when he was in. So, she offered him some personal training free of charge, thinking it would give him a healthy something to do, and increase his self confidence.

So he comes in to get all setup, and she introduces him to me, he is 37 years old, just like me, had a nice beard going, some pretty badass arm tattoo's and he works as a Jeep tech at a local jeep place. I tell him I have and love a 91 wrangler and so it kinda broke the ice for conversation. He is mostly reserved, and constantly has this kind of pained look on his face, even while talking about something he clearly enjoys.

Fast forward to the training, Im training him and he is doing some reps and after he finishes he's taking his rest period between sets and he goes "you know, you dont have to pretend to want to do this or talk to me, I get it and I know that you were asked to do this for free, im no charity case" it kind of caught me off guard and I instantly felt awful because I didnt know what to say. I replied "nah man, its not like that. I wont ever understand it like you do, but my entire family has a military background, everyone from my father, step dather, and even my wife spent time in the active military so I have always had an appreciation for what you guys who serve did." He was curious as to why I didnt join, having had the kind of upbringing and family experience with it and I told him the truth which was "i wouldnt have ever made it" because it was the honest to god truth, I have never been cut from that cloth and knew it very early on.

He actually laughed a bit and responded with "well, we cant all be badasses can we?!" I laughed and said "you got that right!" Anyhow, since then, the guy has really gotten into training and is loving the gym and feeling a lot better about himself. Conversation just flows so well now and today he came in and had a gift for me, so I opened it and it was a bullet, I looked up, puzzled -- he responded with "that bullet was going to make everything ok for me, it was how I was going to stop being a burden to people". I again had no idea what to say. Luckily I didnt have to, he followed up with "I cant express how much your time and honesty has helped these last few weeks, Im starting to feel like me again, and thats more than I ever thought was going to be possible" I told him that iwas no problem, and that he was the one who did all the work, and that I was just trying to give him the right tools to fix things as best I could.

This experience and new found friend has taught me just how fragile we can be. Ive been around people who have PTSD before, and its always different depending on the individual, but Ive never been directly involved in their lives before. I feel like Im the one who got the better end of this deal, and knowing that I somehow was able to help this man, was just the best feeling ever. I just wanted to share, and encourage actually just talking and being real to people. I know its easy to just go about your life and have that tunnel vision but sometimes...just talking can help. Previous to this situation I was a huge skeptic about all that kind of stuff. This tho, was a truly an amazing experience and ill never forget it.

TLDR - I helped a vet with PTSD, but it helped me too.

This is not a great idea.

[deleted]

May was the first month in 5 years that Shacknews had shown year over year growth in monthly unique visitors. We believe that June is on track to continue that trend. Shack is back, and I am really proud of the team. The conference was a success for us, and we look forward to the future. We just hit our millionth view on our Twitch channel and both the Gamerhub.TV and Shacknews YouTube Channels are rocking. Very exciting times. Thank you Shackers for sticking with us during the transition. I am really excited about the future of Shacknews!

[deleted]

she's not wrong

The [lol] script is five years old today!

I didn't think it would last a week. lol

In every one of these threads, your primary refrain seems to be "I use guns responsibly." I want to very plainly say that no one cares. Even if you are the fabled "good guy with a gun" that we've been hearing rhetoric about for 25+ years, it. doesn't. matter. The majority of gun owners don't kill people, nobody's saying that. You aren't special for not killing people with your guns.

Not just that, but you yourself frequently tout how many more restrictions there are on your gun ownership than on the average American's. Ongoing background checks. Classes and testing. Direct oversight and unscheduled inspections. If everyone's gun ownership experience was more like yours, we might not have to have these conversations weekly.

The fact is that guns don't serve a positive role anywhere. So why do we need them? Vehicles transport goods and people and are important socially and economically. Alcohol serves an important social role for many people. Cigarettes, well, kinda suck and are being combated in the public arena as well, but are also widely used off-label to self-medicate for a wide variety of mental health issues. (The research on that is fascinating btw, people with undiagnosed mental health disorders are much more likely to be lifelong smokers.) Guns... kill. That's what they do. That's what they're designed and marketed to do. If you don't believe me, try to talk to a gun enthusiast about their favorite gun without the phrase "stopping power" coming up. That's a code word for "effectiveness at killing."

"But guns do serve a positive role! A rancher's gotta protect his herd." - His profit margins, you mean. I doubt many career ranchers get as attached to their animals as parents do to their kids. The herd is bred to die.
"But hunters..." - Cool, give them some sort of single-shot contraption that takes 20 seconds to reload. An animal isn't going to stick around if you miss the first shot anyway. Also, we've got grocery stores and refrigerators these days, so not a lot of people really HAVE to hunt to survive. So it's largely about recreation, and sometimes about saving some cash.
"But shooting is fun!" - Yeah, it is! Nailing a tight grouping at range is crazy fun and satisfying. But not nearly as satisfying as watching your children grow up.

None of my hobbies, possessions, or even potential career paths are worth rows of tiny coffins. Stop being selfish for 5 minutes and really think about the cost to society of having guns so readily available. Maybe you don't misuse them, but others do. That means we've got to significantly tighten controls on everyone because it's not exactly easy to tell who's a lifetime responsible gun owner and who's stocking up to do something awful.

Yes, we're asking you to consider accepting some inconvenient limitations on something really cool that could potentially be part of your livelihood. No, it's not fair that a handful of jerks ruin it for everyone. Yes, we ALSO need to work on mental healthcare (and healthcare in general) in this country.

Even if all of our collective gun control dreams come true, kids will still die sometimes. People will still hurt each other. Other plagues on society will still plague us. Just because other bad stuff also happens doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to stop bad stuff from happening. This is something we can fix. I know because most of the rest of the world already has.

Dear Shack members,
I do not know where to begin......my name is Tracy and I am BlockheadBrown's wife.
I thank all of you so much for your concern. And I'm truly amazed by how so many dug for information to find where he had disappeared to. Unfortunately, his sudden and unexpected passing has left us all with so many unanswered questions.
The generosity shown by this community in raising money for our son was beyond belief. It warms my heart, and gives me hope that we can get through this.