@qwbanana

Maturity

TW: immature people will not appreciate this post

There’s a lot of stuff I really want to say about controversies and stuff but I know I shouldn’t. I have been controversial in the past (IYKYK) and being on the outside now really reveals how stupid it is. I don’t want to start that again. So I’m gonna give some meta thoughts, and why I’m hopeful this will stop eventually.

Most of the recent controversies have been about jokes that someone made that were in bad taste, and then it turns into an argument about some bigger issue (Imagine somebody makes a joke about their friend being so stupid for using 24hr time. If it blew up, it would become an argument about which time method is better.). This is just immature. If you really don’t want to start controversy, don’t post a joke if it even has a chance of starting an argument. “But I should be able to make a joke ” Is it worth it at the expense of a controversy? Set your priorities right.

How this looks practically:

I’m going to use myself as an example. I used to be super controversial. I became more mature and look what happened. I haven’t been involved in any major controversy at all. I used to use wasteof on my Apple Watch. I stopped doing this because it made it easy for me to post something without thinking. Now I only use it on my computer, and I only use the computer between noon and 4pm. Maybe you should do the same thing. Put barriers between yourself and this site if you have a problem with not thinking about your words.

If you set limits on yourself, eventually you will get used to them and you can go back to how it was without the limits, because the limits make you more mature. I can’t use wasteof on my watch because of a bug with watchOS, but I think I am mature enough to handle it now.

TLDR: Do whatever it takes to get maturity and avoid controversy. This may require leaving wasteof, or changing how you use it. But no matter what it takes you should probably do it. Stop the immaturity and focus on what really matters.

The good thing is, maturity naturally grows with age. wasteof seems to be around it’s carrying capacity (the amount of new users has decreased massively from its late-2022 peak), so from this point on the average age of the site will only increase. The average maturity should do the same. So I think it will get better in the future.

I am not leaving wasteof anytime soon and I think its a really bad move to do so. Leaving because you think the community is bad is really prideful (“I deserve better”) and it usually makes the community even worse, starting a negative feedback loop.

Anyways, hope this is helpful. Maturity is really lacking on here and I think it’s the core problem that causes fights and arguments. That and a lack of humility.