Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I was in kindergarten and had a very inattentive babysitter.

Boy, that movie will seriously stick with you when your typical fare was Barney related. It’s really the grounding for me having any memories of that period of my life at this point, lol.

This becomes the problem when telling the first story, as this was a long time ago. The way I remember it, we came to at roughly the same time - but while we’re talking about time and its perceptual quirks, memory is also a weird/not 100% reliable thing.

The only thing that makes me think I’m not misremembering that is the pizza aspect - both of us didn’t hear the pizza guy, and there were some missed calls from the pizza place. You’d figure at least one of us would’ve reacted to that and/or knocks/doorbell rings.

I won’t lie - the situation between me and this girl was an odd one, that in many ways shaped what the next several years afterwards looked like for me (would rather not get into that, but if you pick the most generic boy-meets-girl-at-wrong-time trope you can think of, you’ll probably be pretty close). And the rest of the evening in question after this experience was a highlight to that story. Given that, sometimes I entertain the idea of dimensional shift stuff, some blip that manifests as a perceptual oddity when a critical fork in ‘destiny’ occurs.

But I only ever really entertain it as a hippyish food for thought thing - I find it too outlandish to take seriously when “You both fell asleep smoking pot, didn’t realize you fell asleep, and woke up around the same time” is far more plausible/grounded, even if as I say the words there’s a nagging discomfort (much, much less at this point obviously).

Doesn’t quite fit, just because in those cases you can typically account for the activity (more or less) during the period. But I always think your examples are important additions to discussions like this, simply to demonstrate that time perception is very subjective/malleable even under mundane circumstances. Lol, I still remember how my grade school teacher taught this when I was really young - 10 minutes of free play time (given as part of the demonstration) feels very different to 10 minutes in silence for a small child.

Appreciate the comment! Time perception in general is friggen weird when you stop to think about it.

With the first scenario, this was the same batch of stuff I was smoking prior to the experience and got from my usual guy. That and while it’s not impossible that my weed could’ve been laced, where I was at the time (British Columbia) there was so much supply that such cases are rare to unheard of. Edit: Though as a counterpoint, this could account for why both my friend and I experienced this. That said, didn’t happen before that or after with the same batch of weed.

With the second scenario, this definitely crossed my mind, particularly with the motel thing in the mix. I can’t rule it out, but it would be particularly unlucky - I was chatting with a pretty well-respected/on the ball bartender and positioned directly in front of him on a quiet night. Drink was kept in my hands for the most part, so I don’t know that there was an opportunity that wouldn’t have been caught. But there could have been a lapse in that where the opportunity arose that I’m not accounting for.

Appreciate the alternative propositions!

I’d support it. If something is worthy of drawing attention to, it’s worth taking a screenshot and sharing that - preferably with a backup to Wayback Machine.

There’s no need to drive traffic to or engagement with X imo, even if it’s relatively minimal.

Same for Meta products really, though idk if Instagram has some defense against screenshots (I know there’s other photo-focused services that do, I’m just not on Instagram very often/recently at all so idk).

Edit: You know, given the existence of xcancel and similar services, I want to walk this back a little. People are in here making good points - screenshots can be doctored, and having access to a trusted mirrored/archived source is better for verification purposes while still accomplishing what I’d like to see. If it’s technically possible to do, some automatic means of doing that would be cool, but even that’s a bit iffy. Maybe something like that Pipedbot thing could work, even if people kinda hate those bots. Best choice is just posting mirrored/archive links from the get go.

Hey, much respect to that.

I just want to take a moment to say your username is amazing.

Damn right!

See, everyone is coming in and talking about different means of measuring instances, the implications for the fediverse and the position of federated services against corporate monoliths like reddit.

But you, verity - you get it.

So!? We’re #5! Or 4! Or something!

(Not everything needs a point - I just felt like posting this. Though it does look like it’s started a discussion about the relative size of lemmy and different instances, which is neat to think about once in a while - or disheartening depending on your perspective)

Man, I just wanted to chant “We’re #5”, now I have people coming at me with facts. :p

(Jokes aside, I appreciate it. There’s nuance to these metrics and what best accounts for ‘size’, particularly for those cases/services where the metrics reflect a little bugginess anyway)

I mean this is the ideal. Most of the time I’m right there with ya. I’m just really attached to this instance - doesn’t mean that others are bad for not being on this (upon review, actually somewhat problematic) list.

There’s a couple weird things about this re: lemmy.ml data - for instance, the fedidb entry for them specifically shows 147k total posts, but they don’t show up in the top 10.

Not sure what to make of that either.

Huh, you’re right. In fairness this is cropped from an image shared on the AskLemmy .ml thread, so I’m not 100% sure what’s going on there. Edit: Image is legit. Weird…

sh.it.heads: “We’re number 5! We’re number 5!”

(me. I’m probably the only one chanting at this fact)

Man, it’s always weird hearing this, because as a millenial this sounds exactly like my experience growing up.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that people don’t put 88 as a clear dog whistle to white supremacists/general Nazi bullshit. This is more to the comment “who puts their birth year in their username?” bit specifically. The answer is a lot of people.

I also am not excusing Yen for his pro-Trump comments - that was fucking bullshit and I’m deeply disappointed - I’m just saying the YOB thing is a thing, but also coincidentally I also can’t seem to find a source to prove if he’s also doing the YOB thing or something else.

Note to self: Limit Lemmy to 3 beers max, particularly where Trumpian bullshit is involved. And thank god for autocorrect. Apologies, I really should not be interneting right now.

Look, I can’t comment on the significance of binary 88 in this instance with any confidence, but a lot of people use their birth year in their username.

Is it stupid? Absolutely, alongside demonstrating a total lack of any creativity whatsoever. But it’s 100% a thing.

Edit: Lol, will also note the first ‘people also search’ suggestion coming up when Googling Andy Yen is “When was Andy Yen born”, and in the 5 seconds of drunken searching I still haven’t seen a birth date.

Huh. Can’t help but wonder if this is connected to why a significant amount of people find asses sexually attractive across gender lines - something about signs of a good persistance hunter (likely quite overstated by base monkey brain), and therefore ability to provide for spawn.

Probably not, but makes ya think. I also accept that I’m thinking about it from a heteronormative, sex as biological imperative for spreading genes POV - so limited and overall probably wrong.