Most settings, the key is paying attention to indicators of interest/disinterest. If someone isn’t engaging with you beyond grunts, looks visibly uncomfortable, etc. that’s your cue to gracefully exit.

This is the hard part for a lot of people, properly gauging interest after initiation and knowing when to move on. If it’s not intuitive, unfortunately there’s not much else you can do to improve this other than practice.

Sometimes you can find more casual philosophy-focused discussion/reading groups too - I know a few have a presence on Meetup in my area. They meet at a pub or something and discuss a particular topic for the evening.

-Neutral name (sorry SJW)

Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

So chances are you’ll have some options, but I can say the options for lower THC weed here in Canada (well, Ontario to be specific) are slim. There just isn’t as much market demand for it once the older folks who abstained during prohibition have tried it and moved on (usually to low dose edibles, tbf). The real money is in appealing to chronic smokers who chase THC %.

Sucks for me, who would love more options with moderate to low THC grown/processed really well (e.g. nice flavour profile, pretty nugs, etc.). There’s been a few, but they usually don’t stay on the market for very long or stay in a grow rotation.

For now, one hitters and lots of attention to dose thresholds are the way I get down. Which means I buy less weed, which also means my preferences aren’t well reflected in overall demand.

Naw, screw that - we need more people trying to make this place fun. If by some chance it is Ottawa, I’m sure they’d find receptive folks at The Dom/House of Targ/Arts Court/The Mayfair/Rainbow/AskAPunk/Tuesday Club/PROBE/One of the festival committees (except poutine and rib)/Spectrasonic/Awesome Ottawa/Canada Council for the Arts/White Rabbit/SPAO/One of the Zine collectives/Gladstone Theatre/Ottawa Little Theatre/Brass Monkey, for some reason/T’s Pub/Swizzles/Enriched Bread/Absolute Comedy/Cafe Dekcuf/that one house in Barrhaven (iykyk)/CKCU/CHUM/probably quite a few others I’m not aware of. Heck, you could bug the Night Mayor, what exactly is he up to these days?

It all really comes down to what you consider fun. Are you going to have the same degree of options as you would in Montreal and Toronto? No. But if you want fun, there’s things to do, places to check out, people to meet and a not-insignificant number of folks who want more of these.

Off the top of my head:

1. Start researching your local ordinances and bylaws. Like someone mentioned here, there might be a reason your town dies after 2200.
2. Think about the kind of things you want to see in terms of nightlife. Does that mean live music? Block parties? Techno night at the clurb? Kink stuff (seriously)? Theatrical performances? Hash and coffee socials (sort of a joke, but thinking through the logistics of such a thing has been my daydream du jour recently)? Etc.
3. Find others who would be interested in the kind of stuff you’d like for nightlife activities. Start talking $ and logistics - are there any grants you could try and apply for? Fundraising activities? Where are you going to do this stuff? What do you need in terms of insurance? Do you need to address any pesky bylaws, and can start working with your local government to try and tackle that? And so on.
4. Make a plan and act.

The big starting point is really just defining one or two things you want to see, and working to get to the point where you see them. In the course of this you might be surprised by what you find (someone mentioned good ol’ Ottawa, ON as an image of the place you’re describing - but there’s actually a decent amount of stuff, both above- and underground, you can find when you start poking around).

What up, fellow Ottawan?

Trying to dive into the local music scene was my approach - mostly because I suck at trivia.

“@!#?@!, motherfucker!”

It’s a term that’s taken on some additional baggage/meaning. Originally it simply meant someone who was involuntarily celibate - wants to have sexual relationships, but doesn’t. Now it usually refers to someone adhering to a kind of peculiar set of ideologies around that (see: social value theories taken to some often ridiculous extremes; good ol’ fashioned misogyny/perhaps misanthropy; etc.).

There’s a kneejerk reaction to incels in the latter sense because so much that comes out of that is pretty awful. That and it’s often folks who engage with the latter stuff who are more inclined to identify with the term incel - most others who just fit the former definition just say they’re single.

IMO the latter usage is just more proof that we are failing and continuing to fail men, badly, in terms of community and mental health supports.

True, but you can meet in the middle re: this kind of thing with the ring. Having established that it’s going to happen at some point, take a trip to a jewelers ‘for fun’. Pay attention to what she goes ‘oooh’ over - style, stone, cut, etc. Write this information down to search separately.

It’s a bit of a stereotype I suppose, but trust that your future wife knows what she’s doing on that visit (particularly if y’all don’t browse jewelry together frequently - it’s kind of an anvil of a hint). This way there’s still an element of surprise, but you’re not just picking something random in hopes it pleases.

MSN was for your friends and friends of friends, ICQ was gamers and pre-MSN friends, IRC was for pretending you were a 17 year old girl from California.

Used to love it, had too many weird promptless experiences, unplugged it and now it’s gathering dust on a shelf.

Though it was nice to say “Hey google, tell me today’s news” and get a few different news updates while making coffee.

Edit: Out of sheer curiosity, have you tried factory resetting it?

I likened it to a room with bidirectional portals yesterday - your analogy is much better, and has been stolen for future use.

🥳

I don’t have one particular highlight, I just love being here. Good admins, good people, good discussions, people are pretty chill. What’s not to like?

sh.it.heads 4 lyfe, yo!

Bring a gay homie to this place and treat it like a two for one promotion.

Note: You are probably going to have to be willing to throw down/draw for your gay homie. Edit: Reading more it’s probably just best to not patronize this place at all.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but I’ve met a small number of disabled people who do exactly this, for similar reasons.

Wouldn’t offer it as a suggestion though, kinda feel like people have to come to that decision on their own.

Holy shit man, what a ride.

I’m glad you figured some of your shit out and are making progress. I’ve seen more than one person just crumple under less than half of what you’ve been through. Big ups, dude.

100% agree. It’s a big world out there with people of all kinds, living lifestyles you couldn’t possibly imagine (in both a positive and a negative sense). Those rare moments you get to connect with those people, human to human, are always interesting as fuck.

Every time I took acid in public, I was a magnet for massive weirdos, but every time it’s ended fantastically well.

(Can’t responsibly recommend though, there were very real risks of getting stabbed or robbed a couple times)

Having an in-depth conversation with a crossdressing or trans street sex worker at 0100, claiming they were thirty but who looked eighteen at most, looking to do tricks for meth money, while I was outside of a bar on karaoke night on acid.

She showed me her DeviantArt page, which included a drawing of her as a queen on a playing card fellating a shampoo bottle. It was the most fucked up, but interesting drug-addled conversation I’ve ever had. Very friendly, eventually went down a block to another group of people because quote ‘They look pretty drunk’.

Every part of this sounds made up, but I swear it’s true.

Edit: For some reason, I think it’s important to point out this was a Thursday night.

If you have an issue with a given community, find or start an alternative one on another instance. If you have an issue with how your instance deals with anyone, sign up for a different instance.

I urge you to consider this before giving up on Lemmy entirely, it’s kind of the beauty of the federated services.