Freedom Day

[Makeshift Python]

It’s pretty effective. I should know, I was banned once.

[Beastro]

Plus the board has shed so many other users, who's left?

Well, because I'm lazy, looking solely at people with 1000+ posts, these are the following that are still active:
BridgeConsoleMasher
Yukaphile
Fuzzy Necromancer
Clearspira
CharlesPhipps
Madner Kami
Dragon Ball Fan
Thebestoftherest
TGLS
Makeshift Python
Deledrius
Winter
McAvoy
Riedquat
Rocketboy1313

And these are the ones that are less active (Username, Last Post Date, Last Active Date):
Captain Crimson, 03-Jun-21, 03-Jun-21
Robovski, 16-May-21, 22-Aug-21
Admiral X, 19-Feb-21, 01-Sep-21
GreyICE, 09-Feb-21, 24-Feb-21
Antiboyscout, 19-Oct-20, 25-Oct-20
Darth Wedgius, 07-Sep-20, 07-Sep-20
LittleRaven, 27-Jun-20, 27-Jun-20
Mecha82, 03-May-20, 03-May-20
Karha of Honor (AKA Slash Gallagher), 01-Nov-19, 04-Oct-20

Two appear to just be quiet and not really posting at the moment (their decision), but even counting them as inactive that's still more than 60% retention. On the second page sorting by post count, there's only three users who haven't been active in a month.

I'm still around, just very very busy. Often I can only pop in to make a post and not be able to linger to continue replying the way things are.

[Beastro]

That's the thing that pisses me off so much about this damned pandemic, whether you wanna call it fake news or something else. I've talked to many in the conservative political leaning over in RK Outpost, many of whom aren't even in America, so it's not like you can divide them into arbitrary groups of "my side = good" and "orange man bad = DISREGARD." They're not monsters, they're not devils, they're not demons. The one argument I've seen come up over and over is that we've been on a downward trend for a long time and COVID is accelerating that. What the secular right cares about, gets upset about, mostly among the libertarian crowd, is the increase in loneliness and social isolation. That had already been building and frankly, it's getting worse. Take the movie industry. All these big-budget films are bombing because the industry was already on shaky ice as they now transition more fully into direct-to-streaming. But that's technical detail shit. People can't deal that way. Suicides have gone up due to COVID. People who already felt worthless see no reason to want to return to society, because they never fit in. I'm not a conservative, I never will be, but I agree there. The more and more you look at modern society, the more you realize how overrated it is and that SOMETHING has to give. It cannot be sustained. Eventually there will be an implosion and while I'd never ROOT for human life to be taken, at the same time, I AM cheering for that implosion to come. Maybe things will improve then. I don't know.

Sound like, to put it one way, they're people who have sworn off food but are sensible enough to recognize their hunger pains are a problem.

I'm not a conservative, I never will be, but I agree there.

Never say never, Yukes. I say that as someone who has very much softened their outlook since he was younger than you.

I AM cheering for that implosion to come. Maybe things will improve then. I don't know.

Don't cheer for it, but recognize that one's mistakes can't be ignored forever.

We have built a great tower and have spent much time hallowing out its foundations saying the tower is too grand to ever fall if it's cut off from the ground underneath it.

Mistakes are made and lessons must be learned. We feel we're too big to allow mistakes to set us back, which will only result in even larger mistakes happening down the line.

And welcome back. I hope you're doing better. You sound like you are.

[TGLS]

I'm still around, just very very busy. Often I can only pop in to make a post and not be able to linger to continue replying the way things are.

Admittedly you would have qualified as an "active user" given your last post was a week before me collating all that data (and I think were recently active too). The thing is you're about 30 posts short of a thousand so I didn't count you, along with everyone else who isn't super active.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

The thing that sucks about this pandemic is that it's too unsafe for leisure but not to unsafe for work. People who look at the evidence have figured out that it's actually unsafe for work, but our employers want us to die anyway.

Yuka, you don't have to be a monster or a devil or a demon to be plain wrong. Some people want to pretend the plague is over because they are sick of it. The difference is that some of us who are also sick of it are trying to fix the problem so it can really be over, and some of us are actively fighting every effort to solve it because it reminds them that it isn't really solved.

[McAvoy]

The thing that sucks about this pandemic is that it's too unsafe for leisure but not to unsafe for work. People who look at the evidence have figured out that it's actually unsafe for work, but our employers want us to die anyway.

Yuka, you don't have to be a monster or a devil or a demon to be plain wrong. Some people want to pretend the plague is over because they are sick of it. The difference is that some of us who are also sick of it are trying to fix the problem so it can really be over, and some of us are actively fighting every effort to solve it because it reminds them that it isn't really solved.

The big problem highlights how much of this country trusts and doesn't trust science. How many actually really doesn't trust modern medicine.

I am pretty sure those commercials that say this pill helps with depression, but also causes heart attacks, anal leakage, lung implosion, skin flipping inside out and suicidal tendacies as side effects, doesn't help either.

[Yukaphile]

I'm sorry, you can't have a risk-free life, and I think woke is being misunderstood. I think it's why political correctness must be REJECTED. Harshly and viciously. It's the lie we can be better than we are. But we really can't, can we? We haven't changed THAT substantially in 100,000 years. Our DNA hasn't improved much since then. What we have is better tools. And I think our tools can fill in those gaps, but quite frankly, you have to learn to LIVE with contradictions and we seem less willing to DO that as a society now. Older liberals kinda seem to accept we're primitive animals that always seem on the verge of war, of killing ourselves at any times. It does NOT justify hardcore evil shit like serial murder, rape, torture, burning people alive, whatever. It does, however, more fully EXPLAIN some of it, you know? You have to live with contradictions, and... it'd be nice if we could have perfect, risk-free lives. It would. But you know, we won't, will we? Our tools have stagnated. Our computers still operate kinda the same as they did in the 1980s, 1990s. Or hell, one could even stretch it back to the 1960s with the first four hook-ups in the ARPANET. I don't know when it began, and I don't know who started it. Frankly, as a leftist, you should agree our leaders are LIARS. Don't care about us. And have their OWN agenda. And the Internet is just a tool for more perfect CONTROL. Many right-wingers I've seen agree. More that unites us than divide us. So who IS right? Really. I don't care. I'm just gonna live my life and not live in fear like they want.

[Yukaphile]

Never say never, Yukes. I say that as someone who has very much softened their outlook since he was younger than you.

I feel like at most, I'd call myself a classical liberal. My Latino friend in Arizona, big YouTuber, identifies more that way than not. I would prefer not to name him, but I could ask him. He is a Dragon Ball Z YouTuber who does power levels. A power scaler. I used to think of him as a rabid conservative. Not so much anymore. And less and less with every passing day. And the funny part is that the LGBT liberals seem to alienate the VERY allies they need. You know, it's a uniquely... Bernie Sanders phenomenon. People do not like being preached at OR singled out to be pandered to. And you know, if Trump outperformed his standing among minorities in 2020, it sure seems as if higher numbers of POC could be thinking the same thing. The fact the DNC does NOT take the time to actually walk among these communities and get an insight into how they think and feel and operate is all the more proof of that, you know? The right is quite correct when they say the DNC leadership are bigots, because they don't interact with the common people. In this case, like I do.

[Yukaphile]

Just fuckin' TELL me how a plague that evidently has a 99+% survival rate even WITHOUT the vaccine AND which is 50% asymptomatic is this killer bug. You know, I find "delta variant" very convenient. It really does just feel more like they are trying more and more to find a convenient excuse to keep control over us, that they've lost long ago, that they WANT back, and the left is FALLING for it. And if YOU are wrong and the right is correct on this, then it's going to be a HELL of a lot harder to return to normal than you'd like to admit. You'd object to this in the name of "national security," but not "public health," wouldn't you? Which is what was being done AFTER 9/11. During the era of Bush. Fuzzy, don't lie to me, I've been down the SJW road before. Our view, we're taught, is that the older white fuckin' men are the problem, they are horrible, they are awful, they are evil only based on what we see from the GOP side of Congress that, ironically, is somehow becoming MORE diverse in recent years, but let's ignore that. So if that's the case, it's good all the fuckin' older bigots watching Fox News are dying off (even though my mom watches MSNBC while I reject cable news AND social media trends), WHY are we so obsessed with cleanliness now? WHO would COVID hit the worst? Older people. You don't see an issue there? "It's so good the older bigots are dying off. But let's take away all our liberties in the name of saving older people anyway." And I will make exceptions for hospitals, and it's not like I go out all the time anyway. I rarely go out except maybe for food or something. That's it. I'm a social loser who has no life and will die a virgin. Need to make peace with that. But I NEED to start asking these questions because in the year I've been on RK Outpost, I've met a lot of good people and had my core values challenged, which is how it should, it's how you get diversity of thought. Without that, it's an echo chamber.

[Yukaphile]

Using numbers needs to be proportional. Like the way corrupt agenda-pushers in the movie industry don't account for inflation. I've learned about that recently. I have not met 99.999999999% of the human race, so those numbers are not going to affect me personally. And I hate sharing this planet with seven billion idiots anyway. As sad it is, let nature do its thing. Herd immunity. If it kills, what is it, like... 1% of the human race? That's NOT a pandemic. Certainly not up to 1918 numbers, know what I mean? With the population of human numbers at the time THEN. What was it, a billion? And you know, I did celebrate when gay marriage came about. I think they were RIGHT to fire federal clerks who wouldn't obey the law of the land. I don't think it destroyed the American family. But I'm not going to stop asking questions.