Harp the Wigglytuff @wigglytuffitout@computerfairi.es

@eightbitsamurai@elekk.xyz wow we really are hurtling towards chair anime level ridiculous at every passing moment aren't we

ah yes, my shoulder's beautiful songs of CRUNCH SNAP POP CRUNCH

@InspectorCaracal you just hit exactly what finally drove me off chickensmoothie lmfao. trying to say "we're a small indie op! it's just like two people!" while also going "anyway buy our microtransaction funny money, and we're going to push events to be more and more ruthless so you'll want to buy $$ to trade for tokens..." ...yeah i pointed this out and got a bunch of torches and pitchforks lmfao.

and yes. ARTISINAL HAND-CRAFTED ADOPTABLES. FREE-RANGE!

@Alyx GOD honestly valid

i'm just amazed at how many times it's the same people doing the advertising. like, if i click to see the lipsticks, maybe i wanna look at the lipsticks you sell, daggum website, not three clicks later and two full page scrolls down to finally see The Fucking Lipsticks lmao

for a brief second i forgot SheRa was named SheRa and mixed it up with YoRha from nier and just sort of accepted the she-ra characters all "ambitious crossover, but it could work"

@Alyx GOD yeah

i kinda miss when the hotness was a tiny window of content and lush - but STATIC. - window dressing around it

tbh the last time i shopped for something at e.l.f. i got a 'take a survey!' and just went on a screed about how their web designers should feel bad, because the number of clicks and scrolls to get to a thing i clicked to see was absurd. it's like the internet is full of pushy salespeople swarming you, when you just want to look at the shelf

@Alyx same, tbh

...let's not discuss the i-frame craze that followed the great Side Frame For Navigatio Or No battle. i'm trying to forget the time in my life when i thought 300x500 px was more than enough room to read all content contained within it, with a pastel-colored scroll bar and text at negative fuckyou pixels

@InspectorCaracal yeah, it's hard 🤔 i mean i think it'd be great to do here, until i think about implementation LOL

especially because the conceit usually meant allowing the person to hotlink - like, they'd put the adopted egg on their website, then it 'growing up' would be creator changing the linked picture

making it a more streamlined system is possible, but it does lose some of the... rustic charm? like chickensmoothie is the modern solution, but also... a tad boring.

one of these days i should actually grub around up in the backups, find if we have a working zip disc reader (any of y'all remember those??? and them being a thing for like 5 fuckin minutes???? laserdiscs of the pc world lmfao), and go through my old backups

i bet that there's at least one vickimouse 'mouse house' in there, and there might be some old petz too

@InspectorCaracal me too honestly, they used to be such a huge thing... i remember i also got into the ones that were like, you adopt an egg and see what it grows into, or ones that simulated cat/dog breeding

sites like chickensmoothie are obvious inheritors to a bit of that, but i miss when it was just like small communities of single people on geocities or what have you, and weren't quite like modern adoptables on dA which are typically for cash and for a defined character

okay actually it wasn't just neopets it was more...

do any of y'all also remember Vickimouse Adoptables? possibly vikimouse, i can't remember how the name was spelled

little pixel mice anthros (or other animals), and part of "adopting" was that you went to browse through all of the pixel art that you could use to "build a house" for them

it used to be such a big thing but it's as if it's vanished, i can barely find traces of it existing but it was a huge part of my childhood

honestly the last time i felt like i knew computer science type shit and web design was when i was able to hand-code a simple webpage in notepad with all my knowledge gained from making neopets webpages.

and i'm pretty content with that being the zenith of my cs career

@wolf@sunbeam.city this is a hella good solution!

i've always been fond of < /sarcasm > tags anyway, even if it's just closing ones

(also that format means we all get to be a bit nerdy honestly. but like 2002 nerdy, when straight html was still relevant, which is great)

my computer in benchmark rated a "high"

but i'm proud because it was processing it as a desktop, at the largest resolution, when it's actually a laptop i'm running at lower rez lmao

THAT'LL DO, EDI. THAT'LL DO. yes my computer's name is EDI don't judge

in the words of Carrie Fisher, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra -

be afraid, but do it anyway.

but also honestly i've seen a lot of people who cloak themselves in irony, in jokes, in shitposts, and then in the rare moments of sincerity talk about how they feel disconnected, unsatisfied, and lonely - and exhausted because they feel like they must be "on stage" doing their bit to be loved.

humor is sometimes a way to feel safe. but you can sometimes be, in essence, too safe.

opening yourself up and being vulnerable is fucking terrifying.

but it's also worth doing.

so yeah, if you feel like you have to cw for being sincere, i would say (in all my armchair fuckin quarterback glory) that maybe it's time to take a step back, recalibrate, and examine how you're doing. sincerity is how we connect with others on a fundamental level. sincerity is recognizing your gestalt whole, not just one aspect of yourself - the Jokes, for example - connecting to someone else's one aspect.

and yeah, i struggle with this shit, too.

i also think it's worth keeping in mind that, while i love dark humor as a coping mechanism, there can always be too much of a good thing. if a thick layer of irony and jokes is keeping you from connecting with others, it's a bad thing. if you feel like you can only interact with others by being The Jokes Person, that's also a bad thing.

humor is often a defense mechanism in that it's how we keep from feeling vulnerable - but we can only make true connections while being vulnerable.

before people celebrate me too much wrt recent shit i inserted myself into, i also think it's useful to have a discussion about irony and jokes; specifically, we can all try to keep in mind that shit can and will be misused. and also that on the internet, via text-based communication, we lose the nuance of tone of voice, facial expression, etc. which means it's even easier for a joke to be read straight.