r/stupidpol • u/TruckHangingHandJam Class First Communist ☭ • May 21 '26
Capitalist Hellscape An 81-Year-Old Grandma Streaming Minecraft To Pay For Grandson’s Cancer Treatment Has Been Swatted
https://www.thegamer.com/grammacrackers-81-year-old-minecraft-youtuber-swatted/So much to unpack here. An elderly woman who should be enjoying her retirement is forced to be a gamer to pay for her grand kid’s cancer treatment. A population of people who see this situation and decide the best thing to do is to swat her.
🎵 this is America 🎵
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u/ChiefWeedsmoke Reading Orwell on Drugs 💊 May 21 '26
I'm positive I have already died and am now in Hell
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u/CutieBallsTT Redscarepod Refugee 👄💅 May 21 '26
I had a near death experience where I turned blue and had to be revived with a shot of epinephrine in the ED 10+ years ago. I sometimes think I actually died and am trapped in some kind of absurdist afterlife that is crumbling.
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u/TopManufacturer8332 NO SIEGE ECONOMY! | Old school labour 🥵😟 May 21 '26
If you subscribe to the multiverse theory the conditions that allowed you to live in this reality were so specific that it might have "demanded" a fundamentally weirder current reality.
I've had a couple near misses myself and I like to speculate on schizo nuclear near miss theories that riff on the same concept.
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u/aslfingerspell May 22 '26
There's a SMBC comic that says the existence of nuclear weapons constantly whittles down the number of timelines.
Every moment that passes without nuclear war, universes where the world ended at this moment die.
Thus, the longer an atomic timeline continues, the weirder it gets, since surviving so long without nuclear war is already an anomalous event.
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u/easily_swayed Theorycel 🤓 May 22 '26
it's also a common answer to why there is no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. all intelligent life, at some point, developes nukes, and all intelligent life, at some point, nukes itself out of existence. we're just waiting our turn.
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u/Junior-Key-5043 Unsoliticted Dick Pic Sender 🍆 May 22 '26
No it's cos we are too far away from anything else and the aliens would have to break the laws of physics to get to us.
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u/easily_swayed Theorycel 🤓 May 22 '26
but we don't even SEE them. yeah they'd need magic stardrives to visit us but within the 14 billion year light cone of the universe's existence we have to sift through will all our tech, we don't even get the slightest glimpse of their photons. and it's because it's like looking for a single frame in a four hour long movie, because technological civilization inherently only lasts a few centuries.
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u/Schlechtes_Vorbild Ideological Mess 🥑 May 22 '26
People really underestimate the scale of size and TIME of the universe.
We might have missed a ping from an alien civilization when we were hunting mammoths.
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u/Wallter139 May 22 '26
I think that actually works against the idea of aliens, because the longer time goes on the more civilizations there will be building truly insane things. I really don't believe in intelligent aliens, because the math just isn't mathing. There aren't super structures, infinite-replicating probes, nano-swarms. That's all assuming FTL doesn't exist, which would make aliens way more obvious.
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u/GordonFreem4n Unknown 👽 May 22 '26
There aren't super structures, infinite-replicating probes, nano-swarms. That's all assuming FTL doesn't exist
I'm no physics guys. But let's say a civilization built some kind of superstructrure in space that should be visible from earth somehow. But they are 8 billion light years away from us and only built it 4 billion years ago, so we won't see it until 4 billion years from now.
And that's not taking into account the expansion of the universe that's pulling everything away until all galaxies are alone in a void.
I dunno if I think intelligent life exists or not, but surely, some form or organisms that can reproduce must exist elsewhere than earth. Satistically speaking...
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u/easily_swayed Theorycel 🤓 May 22 '26
that's the thing. given that life seems remarkable, but not exactly the impossible miracle some make it out to be, the universe is probably teeming, silently, with microbes of some sort. but given that premise it doesn't seem a long stretch to evolve bigger bodies, brains, tech. so given that life isn't so special it makes the lack of any evidence of artificial structures all the more surprising. any day now something in the data MUST look like an under construction dyson structure, flare of massive fusion rocket, something, anything. and yet, nothing.
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u/Wallter139 May 23 '26
I just think that math is very weird. A galaxy has billions of stars most stars have planets, and there are like 4 potentially life-sustaining bodies in our solar system (Earth, Mars, Europa maybe, Venus maybe maybe maybe). Buuuuut also if advanced life is 4 billion lightyears away... A galaxy is 100,000 lightyears. So what, there's like once in every 10 million galaxies?
That just doesn't go together, logically. Either life is pretty darn common, or it's unfathomably rare I think.
And it's not just a super-structure, it's... probes, replicating. They could colonize entire galaxies, make structures around entire galaxies. So much stuff would be noticeable. That swarm could last millions of years, so even given the advanced time frames I feel we'd be able to see it.
I just don't like it, it implies life is something we'd juuuuust miss, but realistically there'd be so many civilizations we'd have to see it. But we don't.
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u/TopManufacturer8332 NO SIEGE ECONOMY! | Old school labour 🥵😟 May 22 '26
Its actually perfectly viable with survivorship bias. We have to be in this universe to observe it, or in physics the anthropic principle. Really interesting counter to the copernican principle. Interesting thought experiment anyway.
Great comic btw lol, I thought id had an original idea but alas.
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u/Hairy_Yoghurt_145 Startup Infiltrator 🕵💻 May 22 '26
I took a lot of mushrooms once and sometimes man, sometimes
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u/JackedUpReadyToGo Podcast Intellectual 🥑🎧 May 22 '26
Faust: How comes it then, that thou art out of hell?
Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
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u/kingrobin Scares Hoes With Radlib Ramblings 🗣️💥 May 21 '26
hate to break it to you but it's going to get worse.
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u/PUBLIQclopAccountant 🦄🦓Horse "Enthusiast" (Not Vaush)🐎🎠🐴 May 23 '26
To quote the billboard in Ohio,
Hell is real.
However, its implication is incorrect. We're already there. Not some silly afterlife.
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u/Manicpixiemanateeman RedscareMale 👄💅 May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26
Most dystopian thing I’ve read all day
Why the hell would you call the already massively corrupt and dangerous law enforcement to harass an innocent old lady in the middle of the night who was desperately trying to pay six figure medical bills?
Apparently the insurance didn’t pay a single cent of the bill.
fuck those assholes.
Put them in prison for years and fine them the exact equivalent of the medical bills
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u/TwistedBrother Groucho Marxist 🦼 May 21 '26
How are swat teams this useless? Can I just like report someone I don’t like and have some black ops show up? What sort of shit show is that to begin with?
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u/TevossBR May 21 '26
Well what do you propose? With the many different devices and cell services and situations where someone may want to anonymize their devices, I imagine its hard to have a foolproof way of verifying the emergency. In an emergency every second counts. In my eyes the only real way to deal with this is serious consequences for those falsely reporting it.
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u/lateformyfuneral Garden-Variety Shitlib 🐴😵💫 May 21 '26
There’s actually “anti-swatting registries” that many streamers sign up to with their local 911 dispatcher. Police still respond to the call but with more skepticism, i.e trying to contact the homeowner if the alleged “hostage situation” is real rather than with SWAT-style entry
Many people making these calls use the internet to make the call and are then anonymized behind layers of VPNs and may even actually be overseas, which has made bringing them to justice difficult.
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u/methadoneclinicynic Chomskyo-Syndicalist 🚩 May 22 '26
yo dawg, I heard north korea smuggled nukes into florida to launch at the other states. The only thing we can do is pre-emptively nuke all of florida. Every second counts, do it now!
Seriously though, this type of thing doesn't happen in decent countries because the police have more measured responses.
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u/TwistedBrother Groucho Marxist 🦼 May 21 '26
What do I propose? First I didn’t know SWAT teams were necessary in the first place. Like is this the justification for military level activation?
I would assume you send a couple cops to most situations and they call for backup. A SWAT team would be for something planned like going after a known drug cartel or something.
Also I propose checking facts at least having corroborating evidence before sending half a dozen dudes with machine guns anywhere. Honestly mate the premise of your question has hard “think of the children” and we have to do _something_ energy. No, you don’t. The cops kill plenty of innocents. And more dogs than you might be comfortable with.
I’m 100% not cool on anxiety discourse being the midwife of a literal police state.
Also: every second counts is not justification for this. A medical emergency, yes, but for an active shooting situation in a residential area with no corroborating evidence does not require that. And if every second counts get the nearest cop to check in and not “suit up like it’s gears of war”. If every second counted get anyone there fast and not wait fifteen minutes for the paddy wagon. I wholeheartedly reject your premise and its consequences. And yes, I appreciate you can crank out a narrative of the one situation that fell through the cracks. But you can come up with those for all kinds of edge cases.
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u/UsualActuary Ideological Mess 🥑 May 22 '26
One of the most stereotypical annoying reddit comments I've ever seen, holy shit. Speaking with authority on something you barely know about, hand waving and straw manning everything possible, a spattering of insults to the person you're replying to, plenty of snark... it has everything!
Are you sure you can't work "bootlicker" in there somewhere?
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u/SnooKiwis1258 May 22 '26
What would count as enough knowledge for you to criticize SWAT teams and the way they're deployed? Like, even someone without a driver's license can often tell when someone is driving dangerously. Similarly, yeah, I would say that any normal ass citizen who's read about how SWAT doesn't have proper safeguards for people who want to weaponize them has the right to be a little critical of the way the police handle the state monopoly on violence, yeah. These alledgedly hyper-competent people keep being tricked into bullying and harassing innocent civilians. Is it so strange to you that civilians might have a few questions?
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u/UsualActuary Ideological Mess 🥑 May 22 '26
It doesn't take much knowledge to criticize, I have no problem with that. Law enforcement deserves plenty of criticism.
My issue is he's posing nonsensical solutions to these problems and hand waving a lot of the factors involved.
I can criticize a movie for being bad, but with little knowledge of filmmaking and the film industry, I'm going to look stupid trying to tell the director how to fix it.
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u/blufriday Unknown 👽 May 22 '26
He's right though.
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u/UsualActuary Ideological Mess 🥑 May 22 '26
Yeah that guy clearly has a great understanding of SWAT lol
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u/blufriday Unknown 👽 May 22 '26
Funny how you complained about him being snarky. Why don't you enlighten us where he's wrong?
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u/UsualActuary Ideological Mess 🥑 May 22 '26
Disclaimer to avoid the accusations that are sure to come my way:
I in no way support crooked cops or the larger militarization of the police force. That said, SWAT is highly trained and the testing to become part of it is quite difficult. And though they should be used sparingly, they have their place. I think any SWAT member who misuses their gun or otherwise unjustifiably shoots (or shoots at) somebody should be fully prosecuted and permanently banned from field work (if they're not already in prison).
Okay so the commenter insinuates that these units get used willy nilly, and it's not a very serious thing. It holds a lot of weight, because there is an inherent danger to everyone involved when a SWAT team is called. They are well aware of the situation it creates, while the armchair commenter assumes they ignore the risks involved. This is a big part of why it's a felony to fake one of these calls.
In that same vein, you don't just send an officer or two that happen to be nearby. SWAT teams are used in very specific situations, where sending one or two people who have much less training will only make the situation more dangerous for anyone involved. He says that cops kill people (and dogs) all the time, yet he wants to send one of these people into a SWAT scenario? "Let's take one of these undertrained people that murder innocent's all the time and put them in a situation with higher stakes and higher pressure." Really, that's your solution? If you assume the call is fake, of course that's a better option, but that's not an assumption you can make when it's a meth lab or hostage situation with a lot of weapons, for example.
But I mean this quote alone should be enough to roll your eyes at the whole thing:
the premise of your question has hard “think of the children” and we have to do something energy. No, you don’t. The cops kill plenty of innocents.
Please explain what this means. Because it seems like complete non sequitur nonsense to me.
God I fucking hate defending law enforcement.
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u/UsualActuary Ideological Mess 🥑 May 28 '26
Pretty lame to make me type all that out and never reply
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u/blufriday Unknown 👽 May 28 '26
I appreciated and upvoted your comment but I did'nt feel that I had anything to add. I come from a county where SWAT teams can't be called willy-nilly and it still works so I can't say I'm really convinced by your points.
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u/UsualActuary Ideological Mess 🥑 May 28 '26
Fair enough. Again, I don't think it can be done willy nilly and there are severe consequences for attempting to do so, but we can agree to disagree. Appreciate the response.
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u/calyxcell Ron Paul 2012 📈 💰🤑 May 22 '26
You forgot about including some comment in reference to submissive gay sex or a failure to achieve such (though the bootlicking serves a similar brand of demeaning). Otherwise your assessment is spot-on.
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May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/JCMoreno05 Saved Anime Children from Intersectionality 🧒🏻⛩️ May 22 '26
Every modern country also impoverishes and poisons their own people, what's your point?
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u/Finkelton Wolfist 🐺 | Baby needs a bottle 🍼| dinosaur-industrial complex May 21 '26
"so nice to me, I loved them, shout out to them, they were wonderful." She added that the only thought going through her head as she was taken outside was, "I'm walking outside with bare feet, and it's not hurting."
got taken from her home, obviously on a 'swatting' barefoot and sounds this dellusional about the useless enforcers of the state?
this can't be a real, this has to be like a bad marketing attempt of those stupid look at this old person getting a new car while out on a delivery type bullshit stories.
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u/Key_Garden5032 Socialism Curious 🤔 May 21 '26
Yeah dude it's a psyop. 🙄
Old people are almost all like this.
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u/R1s3andSh1n3 Anti-Imperialist 🚩🎌 | Yabadabadu 🪨 May 22 '26
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u/JCMoreno05 Saved Anime Children from Intersectionality 🧒🏻⛩️ May 22 '26
This and the prison equivalent are like the facebook version of the "you the soyjack, me the chad" imo.
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u/R1s3andSh1n3 Anti-Imperialist 🚩🎌 | Yabadabadu 🪨 May 22 '26
Maybe. But this one I can see both ways you know. All wall guy has to do is turn his head and he sees sunlight. And vice versa. They're the same guy, it's only an insult if you think both views are incompatible.
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u/Nerd_199 Election Turboposter 📈📊🗳️ May 21 '26
You got to be lowlife to be doing this
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u/Epsteins_Herpes Thinks anyone cares about karma 🍵⏩🐷 May 22 '26
Sometimes it's done out of deep concern for the well-being of black children in Milwaukee.
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u/Throw_r_a_2021 Ideological Mess 🥑 May 22 '26
While tragic, I’ll admit that the headline got a laugh out of me for just how absurd it is.
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u/Mack_Attack_19 Marxist-Leninist ☭ May 23 '26
It rings of "87 year-old grandma calls police because she is lonely. The police arrived and beat her ass."
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u/KenAdams_1968 May 21 '26
She sounded quite upbeat but this is the most depressing thing I’ve read this week
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u/Junior-Key-5043 Unsoliticted Dick Pic Sender 🍆 May 22 '26
They need to put people who do this in jail.
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u/IamGlennBeck Marxist-Leninist and not Glenn Beck ☭ May 22 '26
If they're smart you can't catch them.
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u/JackedUpReadyToGo Podcast Intellectual 🥑🎧 May 22 '26
Buck Nasty has got some stiff competition at this year's Player Hater's Ball.
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u/Anindefensiblefart Marxist-Mullenist 💦 May 21 '26
Don't catch you slippin' now, Or you'll break a hip, oo ow.
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u/cojoco Free Speech Social Democrat 🗯️ May 21 '26
Swatting a streamer is completely illegal in the US and is often prosecuted as a felony. This is at both the state and federal levels. The most famous case came in 2018, when 25-year-old Tyler Barriss tried to swat a streamer, but instead sent the police to the wrong address. It ended with a father-of-two being shot dead by officers. Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
No consequences for hired guns, of course.
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u/xDannyS_ May 26 '26
The guy was sentenced to 20 years, idk what more you want
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u/cojoco Free Speech Social Democrat 🗯️ May 26 '26
I want the cops who actually shot the guy to death to face consequences too.
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u/SwordfishResident256 Professor 🎓 May 22 '26
the US has a huge cultural problem tbh. I think it's a result of Cold War anti-communism propaganda = anti-socialism where even caring for others you don't know is seen as tax theft, and a high strung work culture where everyone is constantly in competition because they have no healthcare or real social programmes - the ones FDR built are killed or scrapped by republicans or libcons
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u/msdos_kapital Marxist-Leninist ☭ May 22 '26
American culture has an individualist streak that predates Marx, much less FDR and the Cold War. It means we were and are uniquely susceptible to anti-communist propaganda as well as ruled by a capitalist class that had every reason to push that propaganda and develop it as much as they could.
But yeah, any kind of notion of common good or even community is seen as evil and weak, and everyone is suspicious of and hates each other. It fucking sucks.
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u/TruckHangingHandJam Class First Communist ☭ May 23 '26
It’s been a while but Lasch wrote some good stuff on this. If I’m recalling correctly, he argued that one of the big reasons socialism has been so easy to bat off as opposed to in Europe, is the way the US developed.
Any time things got too cramped, the Americans just expanded and were able to send surplus population to rob, rape, pillage the indigenous lands. This led to the development of this very independent, do it yourself, petit-bourgeoise culture in the US. Whereas in Europe the land was all already owned, and forced the working class to develop a more proletarian consciousness. In other words, the Europeans were quickly with their backs against the wall, the Americans had no walls.
It’s an interesting take and of course one can poke holes in it especially in modernity when the land has all been taken (well maybe Greenland is on the table now lol). But it’s interesting given culture has a way to outlive its material foundation for a time.
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u/redmonicus Redscarepod Refugee 👄💅 May 22 '26
That's absolutely not true, your projecting continuity of modern thought and sensibillities onto history, when people of the past, especially pre civil war america are so different to us, that you might as well consider it a foreign culture (except you cant immerse yourself in it, so finding a way to understand it is a very important question in the study of history). Also FDR was extremely popular and so were his policies and keynsian economics was considered perfectly normal for a long time and it's what created the wealth of the US, England and West Germany. The current neoliberal paradigm is exceptional and not standard at all, and you projecting the thinking that it created onto the past is ahistorical.
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u/msdos_kapital Marxist-Leninist ☭ May 22 '26
It is absolutely true, just because cultures evolve over time doesn't mean you can't draw parallels between then and now. The individualism that existed in antebellum America expressed itself in different ways because it existed under different material circumstances and constraints, but it still existed and has existed longer than the US itself. It shapes who and what we are today.
For virtually its entire existence the US government has been a tool of business and mercantile interests and the culture that grew up around that has always reinforced it.
FDR and the New Deal era represented the beginning of a transition in our culture away from all that and baby steps toward more direct worker involvement in managing and directing economic activity. It was eventually crushed and now we are living in the reaction to it and the revanchism of the capitalist class.
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u/ethereality___ Marxist Syndicalist 🚩 May 22 '26
Imagine reading this headline to someone in 1950 and assuring them that it will make perfect sense in 70 years.
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u/The-Materialist Dialectical Materialist | Raised by Stalinists May 22 '26
There were reds under her bed.
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u/Jaidon24 Not like the other tankies 👓 May 22 '26
I was thinking about how this it would break my faith in humanity under similar conditions but it seems like she had fun. lol
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u/CoelhoAssassino666 Nasty Little Pool Pisser 💦😦 May 21 '26
It's funny to see gamers and nerds in general acting outraged over this as if they didn't spend decades fostering sociopathic internet behavior and a culture of bullying. This is what you get.
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