so before i say what im thinking, i want to define what i think makes a cult a cult, and why i dont think that just because mtg calls maga a cult doesnt necessarily mean shes seen the light.

there are a lot of different defintions as to what makes something a cult, but to me, a cult is driven by fear of the outside world. the leader uses fear to motivate people, because they dont really want to fix anything, they just enjoy the control they have over other people. they believe in conspiracy theories, and they think they have secret knowledge nobody else has, and that the outside world is decieved. that they are the only group that knows the truth about the world. they also typically think theyre persecuted by the outside world.

so, back to mtg. when she explains her reasoning for why she thinks its a cult, its simply she was lied to. shes concerned more about gas prices and affordability (which still do matter, but arent the full picture). but she still believes in these grand conspiracy theories. she still thinks democrats are out to get her and everyone else. she still sounds scared of trans people. she still sounds like she believes in the border invasion narrative. she still sounds like the jewish space lasers lady to me.

at the same time, when she broke off from maga, she said her son got death threats. while i dont think shes truly seen the light, i still think its personal for her. i think the hamster wheel is starting to turn in her head, but i dont think she fully understands why its a cult or what makes one. i think she still sounds like shes carrying that fear.

im wondering what everyone elses thoughts on this are.

.

Could it be that we have misunderstood intimacy and sex in so many ways? I am not talking about the usual conservative attitudes that leave people in the dark about their own bodies and minds. I am talking about something much deeper.

It started with a conversation I had with a woman I used to chat with during our breaks. We enjoyed each other's company, and one day she mentioned that as a woman, she had a hard time dealing with men. Even her own husband. She just could not let her guard down. She was not raised to hate men or to avoid them, but her mind simply could not be at ease. She explained that just being alone in the same room with a man felt threatening to a certain degree. This included her husband, whom she loved very much. We discussed what it would take to make her feel better, but nothing seemed to work. The difference in physical strength, combined with the fact that you can never truly know what is going on in someone else's head, made it impossible for her to fully let go.

That conversation completely changed how I view relationships and intimacy. It is supposed to be the ultimate human connection, but it usually happens in a closed off heterosexual setting where one person is physically much stronger. And this happens in a situation where you literally have to let go to feel any real connection and pleasure. On some level, there is likely a deeply rooted fear of something going wrong. It might not even matter if the man is the kindest and sweetest person in the world, it just will not be enough.

This makes me wonder: are we so focused on isolating intimacy, and especially sex, from public discourse that it has become this dark corner of reality where no one is checking in on you? Is it the monogamous, perhaps patriarchal, culture that reinforces the expectation that it must be an almost solitary experience, one that cannot be shared or collectively evaluated? For most people, I assume, privacy in intimacy is meant to create a safe space for vulnerability. But when that space is completely severed from the rest of the community, it removes any external safety net.

I am not saying that monogamy or privacy is inherently the problem, or am I? While it is important to protect oneself from predators and to maintain personal integrity, are we perhaps too lonely and isolated? Is society protecting a form of ritualized isolation, when what is actually needed is support to balance the dynamic between two individuals who possess very different capacities in a dynamic that can make sex unequal, or at worst, fatal?

Some might argue that power imbalances go far beyond physical strength, but if anything, that only makes the isolation worse, not better. Furthermore, if we allow a deep, self preserving anxiety to ferment in silence simply to make men feel more comfortable, we are actively ignoring a natural survival instinct. Shielding the male ego should never come at the cost of burying a fundamental need for safety.

It would be nice to have an open discussion about how we can balance this collectively reinforced inequality. What radical change to intimacy and the sexual script is necessary for the community to provide the support that will actually make women feel safe? For now, I think many of us, if not most people, live with a cognitive dissonance that normalizes a dynamic where one person lives at the mercy of another, under the guise of love or friendship. It is a love that is very real for so many of us, but the threat facing so many people in completely normal relationships is equally real.

This is not saying that the problem has vanished with tech billionaires still actively (if not more then usual) interfering with information and disinformation to effect politics across the planet using there tech as the means to do so, but with the recent uprising of people on mass voting for left politicians and just in general taking back power, think Serbia, Brazil, France (TBD) each one of these places have had legitimate reasons to protest and fight back against corruption, but the online space is filled to the brim of disinformation mainly far right talking points and bots spinning the stories and pinning the worlds problems on immigrants, but these recent events are showing people are starting to organise outside of these spaces that the tech overlords and right wing politicians have a lot of power in. It’s given me hope seeing these things happens simultaneously across the planet and the shrinking of support for the far right parties and influencers in each country. The balloon seems to be popping. Is this a cope take or not?

Or maybe I’m just a victim of my own algorithm 😭

Me and a friend are discussing if it is valid to say that lemon is your favorite fruit. Her opinion is that you only eat the things that are made of lemon and not the fruit itself. My point is that it is Okay because it’s still is the same taste.
What’s your opinion?

If the Brazil drama seems familiar it's because this is the US now. Candidates in danger of being arrested, the overall emotional tenor is similar.

It's like the cultural trend somehow drifted upward from SA to the US.

It's ok to say the US is allowed to have better politics than countries like Brazil or Ecuador and that 1st world countries can separate themselves from third worlds in that way.

Which means Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking.

This is something people that are very ill, and often very old, do when their life experience has become intolerable for a number of reasons, but they are also lucid enough to make this choice, while also not quite qualifying for hospice care.

I miss when making plans with friends felt easy. Now everyone seems tired, busy with work or glued to their phones. Sometimes even staying in touch feels like another task on an endless to do list. Do you think adult friendships naturally become this way, or have we made ourselves too busy to enjoy the people we care about?

What I mean by that is when did we start caring more about scenarios that personally affect you and dismiss scenarios that don't? To the point that if someone actively shows concern and/or questions situations or other peoples actions that are unrelated to them it's a "Why do you care? It has nothing to do with you" response.

Why does letting off a bottled up sneeze FEEL SO AMAZING?!?!?… it’s such a great release!!!!!! Haha

Drugmakers can't use innovation to justify every high price. New treatments matter, but they don't help much if people can't afford them. Patients need access to medicine, and drug companies should be held accountable for the prices they set.

https://www.axios.com/2026/10/21/high-drug-launch-prices-stress-health-system-report-says

Mariah had Tommy Motolla. Elizabeth had Sunny Balwani.

In both relationships there was a 20 year age difference.

Both relationships blended business and romance.

Both involved controlling men telling their partner how to act, dress and eat.

I have looked into Holmes case deeply and the parallel is there. I think I'm going to tell Mariah. She'll probably stay out of it but you never know. I am a fan of hers, she is a queen.

Apparently she was seen on Air Force One with discussions underway!

Someone breaks their leg on TV and they act like someone died. I don't see how it's any different than a sprained ankle, body parts twist. If it's not life threatening, what's the harm in showing it? It's just weird too me

I've been trying to figure out for years why certain people are willing to defend Trump, no matter what evidence emerges that points to him being implicated in a horrible crimes. Why can't they just admit they were wrong about him?   I've noticed these people share a lot of common traits.

Why can none of these people ever admit they are wrong about anything?

What is it about these people that makes them seem too stubborn to change?

They're protecting themselves from an unbearable truth.

The answer is narcissism, but a specific type of narcissism.

Narcissism better explains everything about who Trump supporters really are And why they can't quit the Trump cult ever.

Here are five psychological reasons why narcissistic Trump supporters will never admit they were wrong about Trump One.

What creates narcissists? 

It's built through specific failures and how you're raised.

Heinz Kahoot was a psychologist at the University of Chicago who spent his career studying how narcissism develops in children.

He found that when children experience specific parental failures, something breaks inside of them.

They can't develop real self-worth, so their brain builds a defense mechanism.  Instead, he called it compensatory narcissism.

Compensatory narcissism is one of person acts superior and Invincible on the outside to hide the fact that they feel fundamentally empty and worthless on the inside.

Neglect as love parents withhold attention unless the child produces results.

So the child learns.

I only exist when I achieve something or get in trouble for something conditional acceptance.

Parents praise only performance, making the child a tool for their own Ambitions.

So the child learns.

I'm only valuable when I'm useful to someone.

Emotional abandonment parents are physically present, but emotionally absent, making the child feel invisible.

Feeling an emotions are deemed as weaknesses, So the child learns my inner world doesn't matter to anyone else but me.

A parent builds the child up as destined for greatness, then withdraws that projection without warning.

So, the child learns my worth is temporary and can be taken away at any moment and the last one unpredictable responses.

The same behavior gets praised one day and shame the next day with no explanation.

So the child learns I can never be safe. I could never predict what will happen to me next. The term walking on eggshells comes from this unpredictable pattern.  These five failures don't create one type of broken person, but they all lead to the same place. Each of these wounds run so deep at the person spends their entire life who running from it.

These children who become adults believe they are fundamentally empty or broken without external validation, they don't exist, so their brain constructs a defense.

They build a false self that acts invincible and Superior. This defense becomes their survival mechanism, but it's fragile.

It requires constant maintenance, constant admiration, constant proof that they matter, and this defense mechanism will destroy anyone who threatens to expose it. This is a psychological survival mechanism built in childhood that now drives every decision they make as adults. The weakness underneath. These are not strong people. They are fragile, mediocre people pretending to be powerful. But why don't we hold our leaders to much, much higher standards? Psychologically? Are we just supposed to watch our leaders destroy everything we've built together because we'd rather be polite and not speak up? What's going on here? Conformity? Hypocrisy?

I was just thinking about this on the way to school. It was a really well liked celebrity unboxing weirdly expensive stuff. (I won't say who because I don't wanna get downvoted)

Obviously we hate Elon as we should, as well as other billionaires, but I feel like past 25 mil and most people will be set for life, so why don't these people ever help to those who need it?

How morally perfect are they simply because they haven't been cancelled?

You'd never need hundreds of millions of dollars to survive in this life, and these celebs don't do anything with their money.

Why don't we call them out yk?

Me and my boyfriend have discussed a Christmas budget to spend on each other which is £100. We slightly disagree as to what a budget actually means. I said that if the budget is set at £100, then you should work towards spending the full £100. Part of my justification is that if you were part of a secret Santa, you aim to spend the full amount. My boyfriend however says that the £100 budget means you don't go over that amount. That if he was to find a gift for £86 which was absolutely perfect, then he would leave it at that. Whereas in my mind, if I was in that position, I would go on to further think what extra little bits I can buy to fulfil the budget

What are your guys thoughts on this?

Hi everyone,

I'm having a really frustrating issue with my artist account and I'm hoping someone here might have a workaround, because Redbubble Support has been completely useless.

Whenever I go to the Manage Portfolio page to edit or organize my designs, it gets stuck on an endless loading spinner and none of my uploaded artworks load.

I've been trying to solve this issue for months now. I have submitted multiple tickets to Redbubble, but nobody ever gets back to me. Whenever I bring up this specific issue, they completely ignore me and provide zero solutions.

Here is everything I've already tried on my end:

• Refreshed the page and cleared browser cache/cookies.
• Tried opening it in an Incognito/Private window.
• Tested on different browsers and devices.
• Disabled all ad blockers and browser extensions.

Has anyone else experienced this long-term loading bug? Is there any trick to force the portfolio page to load, or another way to reach someone at Redbubble who actually answers?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Irrespective of which country you live in