The Science of Being Offended: It's only words

I'm starting the first in what will be a series of blog posts about certain subjects. Often there are issues today that come up a lot and need to be addressed, and here they will be.

In this particular series we explore as the title suggests, the subject of offence, and how truly pointless it is on the whole it is. In this post, I found a video posted by one of my YouTube subscriptions, a guy named Thunderf00t, who often has engaging well reasoned videos on a range of subjects, and here he sums up some interesting and good points about perceptions on words that we cannot say, in this case often because of either political correctness or simply because of something as simple as culture and background. He explains this point better than I ever could, so here it is. It shows that many people are being touchy about things that we need not be touchy about. Have a watch.



I hope you enjoyed, and gained some interesting insight into this knotty issue.

Dating Adventures

Some real revelations here people! (as if)

So, a few things I've learnt from dipping my toe into online dating recently. Pretty much everyone loves travelling (with most having been somewhere to fondle cubs of some kind), Everyone loves music (seriously though, who the feck doesn't? Why bother even putting it down? I have never come across anybody that has said, "Y'know, I don't really like music, not really my thing..."), And the there seems to be an overall obsession with tattoos... (Yeah, that's how I'd call it) And seemingly if you don't do skiing or some kind of extreme sport, you're a nobody. Also, there seems to be an abundance of passively cultural types on there too.

Oh and surprise, I don't seem to fit into that world either... Experiment failed maybe? Is it all as vacuous and generic as I've made out? If you must know, I looked at PlentyOfFish. The "friendlier" choice, it might purport to be. Granted, I have been contacted, and have had "matches", but in as far as any real-world gains, no, not really. I suppose that's down to me eh? (haven't actually contacted others yet, so that would be why). How the heck do people use these things? Are they a real means of dating for most people? Or are they just at best a mildly useful confidence building pastime? The latter is where I'm at. I can see how one's ego could be stroked well enough.  I had always been against this kind of thing... Not something I'd do. Surprisingly I seem to have gone into this with actual semi serious intention. I guess, that's good old curiosity at work again! I shouldn't be surprised at what I found here, and there's not much more than this to expect if I were to sample others. Just more of the same people with ridiculous demands, and the same basic attributes. From appearances, most of them have better lives than you anyway...

(EDIT): Although, there is another side to this. I hadn't originally thought of this, but it makes perfect sense. Could it be that a lot of these people are simply lying? I know this is a radical concept, but it could be true! (sarcasm). Many of these people know that they need to big themselves up. A friend pointed this out to me. Other times they may just exaggerate certain qualities. I mean it's perfectly reasonable to assume that some of these people are as they portray themselves, I'm guilty too probably, of shielding certain aspects of myself, although I'd never admit to outright lying, I just see that as dishonest. Problem is, that everyone looks like they're doing it, in the same ways

Anyway, I shall persist with this experiment, in the hope that I'll not be wasting my time and will come up trumps. Wish me luck.

Did I make this sound like I'm some kind of robot? Eep... Maybe I do need to find a woman, and quick!

New Blogness :)

Well hello there! What is this you might ask? I'll tell you. This is a new blog from yours truly! I know, I'm actually going to make one, although, I will admit to this being my second one. So, for the moment, I'll cut the randomness, and talk in more measured tones.

There, that's better. So, as mentioned but a few lines previously, this is a new blog, and is the second one. Although, it is not the second one technically, It is about the third. I first embarked upon blogging some time ago, 2010 I believe. I had just gotten a Blogger account due to necessity. It was required to post on a YouTube help page, and it would not allow me to do so, if I did not have a Blogger account. So, with much groaning, I signed up, although I did think on even back then, that likely, having it would come in handy in the future. And I was right.

So, one day, I decided to start a blog, (technically this blog would be the fourth, but the blog responsible for pushing into 4th place, was merely a test, so does not really count, thus meaning this blog is still only the third). I had no idea what this blog was going to be about, I had assumed that it was going to be about me and my life and things that I come across, as is the norm with a personal, memoir style blog. Even applicable to this blog, I felt, that, I'm articulate with my English language skills, and possibly had a dry sense of humour, that many could relate to, so I felt I wanted to share my thoughts, feelings and all manner of other frivolity with the world, I felt it might be fun. But then, the inevitable happened, I think you can guess. The blog went cold. Beyond posting an initial hello world blog, I did nothing meaningful with it, and it remained forgotten about for ages, despite many mental notes to take charge and actually write on it.

I did however see friends starting theirs, and was once again inspired to create one... But what about? Would people really care if I did? I later decided that I really didn't care what people thought, and decided to produce a blog on beer... Just beer. And it wasn't even going to be super serious, just a blog about beers I liked, and nothing more, no upper class pretension about the flavour or giving the beers any sort of rating, just good beer. This blog was a recycling of the earlier blog attempt, and indeed, the very first post for that blog lives on. (I can't delete anything it seems) If you want to check it out, it's called Piper's Beer List (shameless plug).

Now, we come to this blog, and this one will be about interesting thoughts, or opinions I have throughout the day, or topics of the moment I feel like I want to talk about. Part of the content on these post will be linked to my YouTube channel where I may post video versions of this kind of stuff, and I just wanted to do it because, I feel on certain things, I have interesting things to say, and well, it never stopped anybody else! It's not so much going to be a blog all about me, and my life, just the things I mentioned. So hopefully I will manage to keep this one up, and have plenty of written content coming through.

So, as they say, watch this space!