What the fuck did you just fucking type about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class at MIT, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids with Anonymous, and I have over 300 confirmed DDoSes. I am trained in online trolling and I’m the top hacker in the entire world. You are nothing to me but just another virus host. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on the Internet, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with typing that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we chat over Lemmy I am tracing your IP with my damn bare hands so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your computer. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can hack into your files in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in hacking, but I have access to the entire arsenal of every piece of malware ever created and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the world wide web, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking fingers. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit code all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
Hold the phone, folks! Looks like we’ve got the ultimate keyboard commando here, armed with a degree in “Top-Secret Internet Intimidation” from the School of Pixelated Bravado. I’m genuinely in awe of your prowess in DDoS dance moves and your extensive hacking resume. Did you know they teach “Tracing IPs with Bare Hands 101” there? I’m not sure if it’s more impressive or terrifying.
You know, there’s something oddly inspiring about your passionate monologue of digital doom. It’s like watching a master chef prepare a soufflé with a flamethrower – unconventional, but you can’t help but admire the dedication.
I can’t help but wonder, in the heat of your impending online apocalypse, do you plan to unleash an army of malware minions or just summon the mighty Blue Screen of Death? Your commitment to imaginative chaos is truly commendable.
However, might I suggest we channel this creative energy into a friendlier arena? Let’s conquer the digital world with laughter instead of threats. After all, the pixels we share today might just be the start of a legendary meme saga. Keep typing, intrepid warrior!
Ps: made with ChatGPD was to lazy to write something by myself :p
That was the time when all the apps were standard XMPP. It didn’t have proper encryption back then. WhatsApp is still XMPP nowadays, but excluding federation and non-standard implementation on Meta servers and so on
Sure, but now you show me all the clients that supported OTR back then 😜 - or now, for that matter. Besides, OTR doesn’t work in multi user chats. OMEMO does, and support for it is still not exactly widespread…
Most popular clients supported OTR back then… Pidgin, Gajim, Adium, bitlbee, Psi, you name it.
And that’s at a time where absolutely no one did E2E, even SSL wasn’t a given.
Yes OTR* doesn’t do group chat, but now you’re just moving the goalpost.
*There has been a proposal in the works for years and years, but OMEMO stole a lot of it’s traction, and the last nail in the coffin was the arrest of Ola Bini in Ecuador as he was one of the main contributors.
You seem to not get that OMEMO is directly based on OTR.
It also powers the communications / presence on many gaming avenues as well like Fortnite, League of Legends, & whatever Nintendo is using for notifications + online status (assuredly a lot more games).
XMPP is old, stable, & massively scalable for industrial applications – while maintaining decentralization + efficiency & allowing for extensibility like OMEMO encryption which is covering most folk’s chat use cases. Since the XMPP foundation don’t put budget into marketing & hype, a lot of folks weirdly assume it’s dead or not being used. It’s strange to me how folks seem more interested in RCS & Matrix despite their histories/ownership/flaws rather than embracing what is already good.
We can start it up again. Time to nudge in the next Lemmy AMA to allow XMPP addresses alongside Matrix. You’d be surprised how little things like that can nudge adoption & pique curiosity.
Yeah, XMPP is great and all, but the client side is a big old mess, everything is full of friction and missing support for feature xyz. Have you tried using XMPP on iOS?
Conversations compliance test has brought most clients into an acceptable base to where most basic chat/audio/video needs are met, so if you are comparing older legacy clients then the experience will be different. The XEP system means everything is optional & can be pitched by making a spec & seeing who uptakes the idea. It also means the bar to create your own server is absoluetly minimal since everything is an extension which means you could build one in a weekend which is great for those learning to code since the barrier to entry is extremely low if Conversations isn’t the goal.
IDGAF about Apple since you have to have a wad just to publish an application on their proprietary store & the EU didn’t do a good enough job so it’s expensive to open alternative stores like F-Droid while also being antagonistic towards sideloading as well as PWAs (not to mention needing to buy their overpriced hardware to build/release applications). Heck, you can’t even publish a GPL-or-similar-licensed app on their store. This is a giant slap in the face to free/ethical software developers & probably why the clients aren’t in a good state; if you aren’t trying to make money, why would you develop in an ecosystem that is entirely hostile for you to develop in?
I actually tried pidgin maybe 6 months ago just for kicks if it could handle whatsapp, signal and telegram, and whaddaya know, it could. It was ugly as hell, but it could be done.
For whatsapp, my experience with Pidgin was terrible. Stickers had to be downloaded as photos, group chats would only show up once someone sent a message, contacts would only show as the full international phone number, all existing chats were horizontal tabs, like a browser.
You could also read it differently nowadays 15 years later with all the emissions scandal. Probably wouldn’t want to trust Volkswagen with such statements huh.
Cassandra uses epoch milliseconds for timestamping snapshots. This means that each node will have a different name for the same snapshot. Trivially solved with truncating the timestamp with * wildcard, but just… why?
It’s a war of attrition. Slow and steady will win this race.
Lemmy, just like Mastodon has seen spikes followed by users leaving. But every spike leaves more users on Lemmy/Mastodon than previously.
Truthfully, in the event another Reddit Exodus, which will happen, we need to try and be more of a content-oriented system during that era. Making more posts and focusing on adding to niches.
Reddit is about Niche communities and Content Saturation. Lemmy isn’t really about that, but it can be for moments at a time to pull users in. At some point we’ll reach a critical mass of users that leads to easier justification for new users to join.
We just need a group of extremely disorganized and disagreeable people to organize and and agree on this.
I think Lemmy would either need to find a way to wean Redditors off of their dopamine machine or replace that dopamine machine long-term to sustain an exodus from Reddit. Either that, or Reddit will need to break their dopamine feedback loop. There are some cracks showing, and that might have already killed the platform in the long term, but it’ll keep going from pure momentum for a while. Maybe as long as months or years.
Seems like there’s more sexists and racists than I used to see over there, which is definitely offputting. I’ve found communities that are supportive of thoughtful discussion are more appealing, and Reddit definitely lacks that lately, outside of some small, relatively niche communities.
Reddit also gets a little bit worse every spike, too. There are few mods remaining on Reddit who are doing anything more interesting for their communities than basic spam removal. Automod does all the work when all the largest subs just repost the same content and fake stories anyway.
It’s not like going to implode or anything anytime soon but the quality (from my perspective at least) has totally flatlined since June because why would anyone in their right mind invest creative energy into cultivating a unique community? I think that eventually a Lemmy community will pop up that simply couldn’t exist on Reddit and will serve to illustrate why I believe this model is better.
There is still some new content (rocket league videos come to mind) that is hard to move to a federated platform, because video streaming is expensive.
Another hurdle is getting game devs to treat Lemmy instances for their games as official points of contact, which is definitely something reddit still has that Lemmy doesn’t, unfortunately.
I like your optimism but theres not a lot of great examples of the little guys winning lately. I’m not sure exactly how, but I predict things end badly for Lemmy. Just seems like a more likely outcome in today’s world. Guessing reddit does ok everyone just ends up a bit more miserable than before. Sorry for being a turd, I just think your prediction is statistically unlikely.
Except Lemmy isn’t a single Lemmy.com that will one day run out of money and implode into nothingness.
Lemmy, Mastodon, and other ActivityPub based Fediverse Networks are muliti-node systems.
This is just pure nihilism without a hint of thought put into it. Nothing short of the world exploding and human annihilation will kill Lemmy, And even then, there are bots.
Bonkers. There is a critical mass that keeps people willing to support it. I can run an original Quake server and find a few people to play with, but distrubuted multinode systems don’t mean a damn without a critical mass user base. Lemmy is far from bulletproof.
I’m not suggesting this social media format will die, it’s just likely that a corporate entity will develop a lemmy alternative that becomes more popular and causes fatal atrophy or Reddit will get new leadership and Lemmy hopefuls will cross back over if content development here is slower than the collective patience. I’m pro Lemmy FYI, I just don’t understand the unbridled optimism about it’s future.
Why does everything need to be politicized? No one gives a flying fuck if you’re a leftist, unless you’re a Leftist and no one gives a fuck if you’re a right winger unless you’re a right winger. Jesus christ the US Politics are absolute fucking cancer.
Those are issues that are relevant in YOUR region so why do I have to discuss them? Politics are regional and Lemmy is a worldwide space. The majority of Lemmy is from outside of the USA, yeah we can talk a bit about US politics but not all the damn time.
Yet I see a lot more anti liberal rhetoric on here. Also these people getting off on wanting a civil war… because destabilizing a country always worked great.
Irony: living in a country that has destabilized more countries than any in history and fucking those countries for generations. Meanwhile wanting destabilization at home. Lol.
It’s considered ‘left’ to support queer and trans rights, and there are a good number of people that seem to have a problem with that whether my queer self is political or not.
Guaranteeing that every individual has the same rights independently of their sex, sexual orientation, race, skin color and so on… Shouldn’t be neither left nor right. It just should be. It’s just common sense.
There are plenty of another topic for the left vs right to debate. Leave identity politics out of it and just let people live like they want.
But like if people keep intentionally misgendering someone, trans people aren’t gonna wanna be in that environment. Those people will feel more safe here than reddit
“Leave identity politics out of it” you do realize the modern Democrat party revolves around playing victim and identity politics? They’re not going to let it go now. Need more victims.
The Republican Party also plays identity politics, especially white and Christian identity politics. A lot of Christians base their identity around the idea of needing to feel persecuted.
I don’t understand that. What did Democrats do or say to make you claim they’re “revolving around playing victim and identity politics”? Could you give some examples of that behavior?
I mean, maybe I am too far left or just too European, but from my POV it clearly looks as if it’s the rightwingers who are doing their part of identity politics by fighting the “woke” people vigorously.
While Democrats just want minorities and disadvantaged groups to enjoy the same rights as everybody else. Which I would appreciate.
I wouldn’t consider that a left-right issue. China’s government would certainly be classed as leftist, but they engage in LGBTQ oppression. It’s been getting better in some ways recently, but they’re no friends to LGBTQ people.
I usually put such issues somewhere along the line of socially liberal/progressive to social conservative.
You just don’t understand normal politics. This American shit is a massive psy op to discourage any politics. Because of more than 2 young people voted, shit would change real fast
I find posts like this so confusing. Does politics, i.e.the policies organisations across the world implement to actively change the way the masses live not directly or indirectly affect your life? Whenever someone says something like this I just assume you’re not within a marginalised group because there’s no way you’d make an enlightened centrist post like this otherwise.
It sure does but why do we have to bring up political topics (or rather: US politics) all the time? Whats the point in discussing politics (which are always regional) with people that dont even understand it or care (because I doubt you could give educated opinions on the politics of more than a handful of countries)…
And then people like OP feel entitled to generalize all of the people using Lemmy from all over the world as “Leftists” just because some peoole with certain political views cant stop pushing every debate into a political direction.
Liberals and leftists exist elsewhere outside America. There is nothing about the original post that yells exclusivity to America.
Everything has something to do with politics. People saying “stop shoving politics into everything” just don’t like to he confronted with that fact, when some people are forced to confront that fact outside of political discourse every day. There are literally billions of people in poverty around the world due to the direct actions of some of the most powerful governments the world has ever seen. But you and a few people could not possibly even bear seeing a meme talking about Leftists and Liberals because that’s too political hahaha what the fuck.
This post was for (quoting OP) “berating [his] ideological opponents because they are losers”. Because, (quoting OP) “to be taken seriosly offline [they] would need to present well-researched […] arguments”. So they do it on Lemmy.
In what world is this meme of any actual value? Generalizing Lemmy as leftist for their agenda, as was admitted in this case (what else could this meme be for?) is not in any way productive, is it?
Most people (especially in the US) can’t even define what they are IN FAVOR of politically. All they do is denigrate what they think they don’t like, even when it is against their own best interest. Bunch of fucking lemmings we humans are, just waiting to be taken advantage of by the sharks.
I hate that evolutionary part of me that cares about having sex/a mate so much that I actually allow myself to become depressed based on the goddamn preferences of one person.
For years the only happiness I’ve found has been by removing myself from the market entirely and just writing off the notion of being with someone, a “with no hope/expectations there is no letdown” kind of thing.
I was carrying on just fine like this until I got a beautiful new coworker a few months ago who laughs at even my worst jokes like it’s going out of style. Alas though I’m sure she likes me I know I’m too old for her so here I am just unusually unhappy in my solitude for the first time in years. Ugh, is it time to get on tinder? I fucking hate the whole enterprise of dating.
Alas though I’m sure she likes me I know I’m too old for her so here I am just unusually unhappy in my solitude for the first time in years.
Just ask her if she knows of any single women your age she can set you up with. If she really likes you, she’ll tell them what a great person you are. Or maybe she can give you tips about where to meet someone, how to ask someone out, etc.
Don’t despair for having a potentially good friendship, those can be just as valuable as physical relationships.
I dated women in their 40s while I was early 20s, we got some funny looks occasionally but generally no-one gave a shit. What two consenting adults do is their own business. Though now I’m in my early 40s, I don’t think I’d have a lot in common with someone at 21; and maintain that just because it’s ‘legal’ doesn’t mean it’s ethical, someone at 18 just does not have the life experience nor fully-formed pre frontal cortex to deal with someone who’s fully-adult. Ripe for abuse imo.
I agree with others, man. What’s the age difference? Because I understand someone being too young (I’m 28 and I’m not sure I could date someone under 24 for example). Just very curious! You never know
Sounds like you don’t have friends and you expect your partner to be your only source of emotional support. You should fix that before you try to be in a romantic relationship.
Cute. I’m not the one who needs to date someone to be happy.
I hate that evolutionary part of me that cares about having sex/a mate so much that I actually allow myself to become depressed based on the goddamn preferences of one person.
Okie dokie everyone, canuckkat is the best of us, he has never felt down for want of a relationship with someone. He just has SO many friends that he’s immune to romantic emotions.
And actually, my friends do fulfill 70% of my emotional needs and I’m pretty good at fulfilling my own needs as well. I have zero desire for a romantic relationship or connection at this point in my life.
Because this isn’t someone who hates women. This is someone who simply gave up looking for a partner from frustration or depression. Now, they are deciding to change and passively asking for advice. You know, positive personal growth.
I hate that evolutionary part of me that cares about having sex/a mate so much that I actually allow myself to become depressed based on the goddamn preferences of one person.
Hate to break it to you, but you framing this as in inherent part of yourself does not really help in dealing with it. It is something you can absolutely work on and for the sake of your mental health I hope you will be able to do that.
I wonder if the downvotes are from people who think you sound incel-y. I mean, you do a little bit, but I think a lot of people nowadays identify with that “there’s no point dating” feeling, though are too nervous to voice it. All but the most narcisissistic of us have a little voice in the back of our minds giving ‘sage’ advice about how worthless we are from time to time, and if you’ve dealt with a lot of rejection that only gets reinforced.
If you do try stuff like tinder, be well advised that it’s a very long shot. You might be better off with a paid service like match.com… my dad found love after his divorce pretty quickly when he joined that site, I assume because anyone who’s paying to be on a dating site is more invested in finding that someone special vs apps like tinder which incentivise short-term approach to dating.
He was probably afraid to call for help due to the insane prices the search and rescue folks charge. Might have wanted to wait another day or two to be sure he was really lost before calling for help.
It’s a U.S. thing! Yay! You can buy insurance for it if you do a lot of backpacking but that’s rare. I believe it’s in the five figures for a rescue. But apparently occasionally it can be free if you’re lucky enough to get rescued by the one agency whose name I forget.
A childhood friend of mine had to sign a waiver in New Zealand because her and her team were climbing down some canyon notoriously hard to get to except by rescue helicopter. She got stuck, and the rest of the team went to go get help. She paid $58,000 in 1990s money for the rescue. So it’s not just the US.
It depends on the state and payment is more likely required if local officials deem you negligent or if youʼre a part of a common pattern in that location (e.g. Floridians visiting southern Utah every winter and getting themselves stuck in cliffs).
I remember reading about this. He was actually lost, in that he strayed from his trail and didn’t immediately know how to return.
Rescuers were alerted because a family member had reported him missing after he didn’t arrive home on time.
As the story goes, to the best of my recollection, the “lost” individual went for a hike and said they would be back before sundown. When they got lost, they obviously missed that deadline. They were biding their time in the forest until daybreak to try to find the trail to get back because it was too dark to look for it. So while he was “lost” it was mainly because the sun had gone down. He didn’t feel like he was in any danger, and wasn’t at any risk of immediately being harmed or killed; AFAIK they were reasonably familiar with that forest and they were more than capable of surviving in those conditions; so he had no motivation to seek help.
I get that he didn’t feel like he needed help. But he told his family he’d be back before sundown so wouldn’t the thought to call or even text your family to let them know you’re ok cross your mind? That’s the part that seems strange to me.
What’s more likely is that in his panic he wasn’t thinking quite straight. It’s very common for people to make decisions that seem silly in retrospect in situations like this.
Some could still like capitalism and ditch Reddit for Lemmy, because it’s about the customer’s choice and “voting with the money”. Reddit is no monopoly on its category of application (or else Lemmy wouldn’t exist), but it’s pretty big. But, for the ones that still use Reddit… Let’s say that they like being stepped on by corpos when they can just leave
Exactly. I love raisins in trail mix, but any cooked or baked raisins are disgusting little bugs that pop in your mouth when you bite down on them and omg it makes me wanna hurl just thinking about it
To the American palate natural sugars taste like sour lemons. The rest of the world goes crazy for sultanas or raisins in things because they are such a sweet little surprise. To Americans raised on a steady diet of factory brewed high fructose corn syrup, they seem to offend and overwhelm their senses.
I hear so much raisin hate on American podcasts etc. I’ll never understand it.
You’re not far wrong, but the corollary is it’s really hard to avoid unless you’re fairly nutrition aware. After moving away I lost several kilo in a year by accident. Eating normal food and living someplace walkable does a lot.
Lol that’s absurd hahaha People have different palletes and culture and socioeconomic history. To just slash out us little Americans for a quick jab is ignorant at best. Everyone loves fruit in America. Everyone on earth loves fruit. Put that pet theory to rest.
For what it’s worth, I love raisins in bread, cereal, salads and cookie and I’m American as they come.
Damn it, man! I just bought a big pack of those little boxes of raisins for my toddler yesterday. Now I’m gonna remember this and instinctively check the damn box before I give them to her. Thanks a lot!!
Well I hope you do! Just pour the raisins into your palm, see that they’re fine, put them back in the little box for the kid to pinch out one at a time. Meanwhile, put all the little boxes in a ziplock bag to keep pantry moths out. If you want to be extra sure, I think if you froze them for a day or two you’d probably kill anything that was already in there.
I love raisins on their own. And in raisin brand for some reason. But I strongly dislike their texture in baked goods such as cinnamon buns or cookies.
This is way late, but it needs to be said. Jenny from Forrest Gump. She gets so much goddamn flak from people who have seen the movie. It’s like they tuned out completely at the normal human experience just because they think Forrest is adorable. Jenny didn’t think she was in love with Forrest because she thought she was taking advantage of him the same way her father molested her. For fucks sake, Forrest is retarded. Jenny, out of everyone who’s ever met him, knows this best of all. She knows that her closest friend and only loved one is a fucking idiot. Imagine that. Imagine for one second that the only person who was always kind to you was someone who didn’t know any better. Everyone in the world who knew about your father looked at you either as a victim or as something disgusting, but that one man doesn’t. And it’s because he’s retarded. Jenny doesn’t think that way at the start. As a kid, she just thinks he’s different and is just glad to have a friend. But as she gets older, especially as a teenager, she realizes that her closest friend will never mature like she does. He loves her like he would anything and everything else, so long as its nice or cuddly, like a pet or a sibling, at least in her mind. Her father treated her like shit, and there was no way in hell others didn’t do the same when they found out she was molested. She would have wanted to feel loved. That’s where she gets the abusive relationship crap. She wants so much to be loved that she doesn’t understand that they are taking advantage of her. She thinks that as long as they aren’t forcing her to have sex, that’s normal. Getting beat on, pressured to drug addiction, and dragged around into whatever dangerously extreme political bands they’re into is just fine, as long as they don’t rape her. That’s why she’s so shocked when Forrest defends her from harm. Why would anyone do that if what they’re doing to her is normal? She keeps leaving Forrest behind because she convinces herself that he doesn’t really love her. She convinces herself that his affections are shallow, since he would never be able to really understand love either. I mean really, how many of you honestly think someone who is that mentally challenged could understand the complexities and nuances of love? There’s no way they could. What they have is something simple, and Jenny doesn’t think that could be real. And even IF she believed he could, even IF she got out of that abusive cycle, she knows better. FFS, if that scene with Forrest and her in her college dormroom had the genders reversed, people would be so fucking uncomfortable about that scene because it’d be inching so close to rape. Jenny knows that. She realizes that. That is why she shuts off her feelings for Forrest, above any other reasons to stay away: she thinks she is molesting him. She saw how uncomfortable he was when she did that and thought holy fuck, what the hell am I doing? Can you imagine how twisted you must feel after realizing in that moment that you turned into the father who molested you? How the fuck can you love yourself after doing that to your best friend, when you know what that’s like? Would you ever let yourself get close to them again if you really cared about them? So Jenny kept running away. Every time Forrest gets close and saves her, she runs off before she falters. She won’t let herself get near him, and as the movie goes on, she fails a little more each time. First she blows him off after the strip club, telling him to stay away. Then she walks with him in DC, but still leaves with her boyfriend. Then she stays with him in his house and finally sleeps with him, after that one critical moment. When he tells her he does know what love is, and asks her why she doesn’t love him. She finally gives in and does sleep with him, but can you imagine thinking afterwards? Would you, in her shoes, with absolute and unwavering certainty, think you did the right thing? Or would you be afraid that you did exactly what you had been avoiding because you do actually care that much about him? So she runs away. She hides her child from him, because she thinks he shouldn’t have to worry or pay for something he can’t handle. She thinks she’s wronged him, and the least she could do is set things right by raising a good child, without dragging him down. And then she gets sick. Doctors don’t know what it is, but she’s going to die. Her kid is only a few years old. Can you imagine struggling with that decision to tell your victim that they have a kid and now they have to take care of it because you’re going to die? That’s what she struggles with before coming to terms with the fact that she’s happy with him, and he’s happy with her, and that’s what love actually is. It’s something simple and unconditional, and even Forrest can understand it. It takes her her whole goddamn life to figure out that love is just that simple, and she dies months afterwards. She realized she had been running away from what made her happy, and it isn’t wrong, and she only gets so much time together before it’s over. And instead of realizing that narrative even exists in the story, people just bitch about how Jenny is such a slut, but she won’t even love the only person who cares about her. Jenny always loved Forrest, during the whole fucking movie. She loved him so much, she thought she was taking advantage of him and ran away for his sake. She didn’t realize she was wrong until it was almost too late. Fuck, that’s depressing.
I never saw it like that, but damn you’re spot on. She was running from Forrest because he could never understand love, but in reality it was her who didn’t understand
Jenny from Forrest Gump. She gets so much goddamn flak from people who have seen the movie. It’s like they tuned out completely at the normal human experience just because they think Forrest is adorable.
Jenny didn’t think she was in love with Forrest because she thought she was taking advantage of him the same way her father molested her.
For fucks sake, Forrest is retarded. Jenny, out of everyone who’s ever met him, knows this best of all. She knows that her closest friend and only loved one is a fucking idiot. Imagine that. Imagine for one second that the only person who was always kind to you was someone who didn’t know any better. Everyone in the world who knew about your father looked at you either as a victim or as something disgusting, but that one man doesn’t.
And it’s because he’s retarded.
Jenny doesn’t think that way at the start. As a kid, she just thinks he’s different and is just glad to have a friend. But as she gets older, especially as a teenager, she realizes that her closest friend will never mature like she does. He loves her like he would anything and everything else, so long as its nice or cuddly, like a pet or a sibling, at least in her mind. Her father treated her like shit, and there was no way in hell others didn’t do the same when they found out she was molested. She would have wanted to feel loved.
That’s where she gets the abusive relationship crap. She wants so much to be loved that she doesn’t understand that they are taking advantage of her. She thinks that as long as they aren’t forcing her to have sex, that’s normal. Getting beat on, pressured to drug addiction, and dragged around into whatever dangerously extreme political bands they’re into is just fine, as long as they don’t rape her. That’s why she’s so shocked when Forrest defends her from harm. Why would anyone do that if what they’re doing to her is normal?
She keeps leaving Forrest behind because she convinces herself that he doesn’t really love her. She convinces herself that his affections are shallow, since he would never be able to really understand love either. I mean really, how many of you honestly think someone who is that mentally challenged could understand the complexities and nuances of love? There’s no way they could. What they have is something simple, and Jenny doesn’t think that could be real.
And even IF she believed he could, even IF she got out of that abusive cycle, she knows better. FFS, if that scene with Forrest and her in her college dormroom had the genders reversed, people would be so fucking uncomfortable about that scene because it’d be inching so close to rape. Jenny knows that. She realizes that. That is why she shuts off her feelings for Forrest, above any other reasons to stay away: she thinks she is molesting him. She saw how uncomfortable he was when she did that and thought holy fuck, what the hell am I doing?
Can you imagine how twisted you must feel after realizing in that moment that you turned into the father who molested you? How the fuck can you love yourself after doing that to your best friend, when you know what that’s like? Would you ever let yourself get close to them again if you really cared about them?
So Jenny kept running away. Every time Forrest gets close and saves her, she runs off before she falters. She won’t let herself get near him, and as the movie goes on, she fails a little more each time. First she blows him off after the strip club, telling him to stay away. Then she walks with him in DC, but still leaves with her boyfriend. Then she stays with him in his house and finally sleeps with him, after that one critical moment.
When he tells her he does know what love is, and asks her why she doesn’t love him.
She finally gives in and does sleep with him, but can you imagine thinking afterwards? Would you, in her shoes, with absolute and unwavering certainty, think you did the right thing? Or would you be afraid that you did exactly what you had been avoiding because you do actually care that much about him?
So she runs away. She hides her child from him, because she thinks he shouldn’t have to worry or pay for something he can’t handle. She thinks she’s wronged him, and the least she could do is set things right by raising a good child, without dragging him down.
And then she gets sick. Doctors don’t know what it is, but she’s going to die. Her kid is only a few years old. Can you imagine struggling with that decision to tell your victim that they have a kid and now they have to take care of it because you’re going to die? That’s what she struggles with before coming to terms with the fact that she’s happy with him, and he’s happy with her, and that’s what love actually is. It’s something simple and unconditional, and even Forrest can understand it.
It takes her her whole goddamn life to figure out that love is just that simple, and she dies months afterwards. She realized she had been running away from what made her happy, and it isn’t wrong, and she only gets so much time together before it’s over.
And instead of realizing that narrative even exists in the story, people just bitch about how Jenny is such a slut, but she won’t even love the only person who cares about her. Jenny always loved Forrest, during the whole fucking movie. She loved him so much, she thought she was taking advantage of him and ran away for his sake. She didn’t realize she was wrong until it was almost too late.
Fuck, that’s depressing.
EDIT: Obligatory gushing, but actually I just wanted to add a TL;DR:
TL;DR: Jenny thought she was molesting Forrest because he couldn’t understand what love is, so she either suppressed her feelings or ran away.
Second EDIT: I want to make things clear, I in no way am the author of this post. I am not op, I copied this from someone on Reddit who copied it from another user on Reddit.
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