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Is everyone okay with using askme as a therapist when they clearly need to be in actual therapy?

This is a conversation we've had from time to time. If I recall the consensus was: If someone isn't ready/able to work with a therapist they are going to reach out somewhere for help. Barring them here just means they'll be getting life advice from Yahoo Answers.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:36 AM on April 13, 2014

As a therapist, I generally deal with a number of clients who come in and hash out the same problem week after week after week for months, with slight gains in insight and behavior. The deeper and longer-lasting the problem, the slower the progress. That's how the process works -- big problems take a long time to break down and figure out and change.

This is totally why I am not a therapist. By the third week I would be slapping clients.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:57 PM on April 13, 2014

*goes off to work on cats in 3D printers site*

Believe me, there is no question about how the cat got into the 3D printer/scanner. Keeping them out is the hard part.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:09 AM on April 9, 2014

Metafilter: Due to excessive modding, a comment was deleted.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2014

Every time I run across a busy-ish street to get the bus, I always get on the bus wondering "what if this was the time I got hit by a car and everything from hereon out is the delusion of a dying mind?

SMBC
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:17 AM on April 3, 2014

Your jr. high classmates touch/lick a woman's vulva like I would not believe? Can you get me contact info? I'd like to make some introductions.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:24 AM on April 3, 2014

The most respected commenters on Metafilter clearly strive for proper English grammar with no technical flaws. I don't feel looked down on when I fail at that, but I am aware that I'm not living up to the best traditions of the place.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 3:58 PM on March 29, 2014

I can't believe nobody has suggested therapy for their anxiety yet!

I'm pretty sure "anal retentive about small details" is a major part of about 50% of Mefites' day jobs. Therapy would destroy our careers.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 5:12 PM on March 29, 2014

Neither typos, spelling, nor grammar are indicators of intelligence

Normally I go along with this sort of thing, but here I'm thinking you'd have to be using an unreasonably narrow definition of 'intelligence' to make it work.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:57 AM on March 30, 2014

There has definitely been an attack of the schmoopy lately.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 4:34 PM on March 21, 2014

>>Or we could just do whippets.
>>
>Whippets are dogs.
>

Shake it a bit, hold it upside down, and suck up whatever comes out of one end. Either way it makes for a memorable party.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:01 AM on March 22, 2014

Whippet good?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:06 PM on March 22, 2014

The deletion is less of a surprise when you consider that taz (as well as other readers) had no idea of the identity of the poster.

Read the comment again in the voice of a middle-aged white guy and it becomes quite a classic concern-troll. And statistically, "middle-aged white guy" is a reasonable guess for an unknown poster in these parts.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:14 AM on March 16, 2014

There is no site that lets you "like" stuff without logging in.

Urban Dictionary does. There are a few others.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:03 PM on March 3, 2014

This really is an odder pileon thread than most. How we got from "Advertising company G has gotten progressively suckier to deal with lately so let's not deal with them so much" to wherever it is we are now is a bit of a mystery really.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:14 PM on March 3, 2014

>>kalessin: Usually we use the contact form to ask the mods questions about particulars like this.
>
>Since just about every one of these threads has a hall monitor so helpfully
>making this suggestion, it doesn't seem like this is something "we" usually do at all.

Since there are thousands of active users and threads like this only appear about three times a week I'd say that it is… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:31 PM on February 23, 2014

There was, and if I recall correctly, even a mod said they wished people would stop "helpfully" reminding people about a thing they had to check a box not to use.

If I recall correctly a mod also said "My primary fetish is cross-dressing Albanian midgets." I'm sure I could find the comment and link to it if I wished my recollection to bear any weight.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:15 PM on February 24, 2014

While I'm thinking about this, the idea that the community should abdicate its self-policing role in favor of the moderators is fairly odious. Moderators have a few extra buttons they can push, but we are all of us responsible for how the site is used and how we interact with one another.

The moderators help police the trouble spots, but they are not a Mom and Dad we can run to for authoritative warm fuzzies whenever any little thing falls out of place. If you have a… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:30 PM on February 24, 2014

No offense, but is there anything you do _while_ wearing pants?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:11 PM on February 21, 2014

What I like best about this is that if I ever need to use this letter, I will probably find it by searching for "scody badass letter" as that's what I'll remember.

Ditto. "Scody badass" is not hard to remember.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:19 PM on February 16, 2014

Given that I also have done this in the last 24 hours I wonder how much meaningless noise is generated every day. At least it's spread out across comments I guess....
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:13 AM on February 14, 2014

>I dunno, freedom of US citizens from intrusive electronic surveillance by their
>government is pretty important,

I guess you missed the part where the U.S. government had turned the entire world's internet into a giant panopticon.

That's what we pay the NSA to do. It's right there in their mission statement that they exist to gather intelligence on foreign states and citizens.

Now… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:59 PM on February 10, 2014

the idea that sexual abuse is considered a contentious issue

That brings forth imagery of people divided over whether sexual abuse is a good or bad thing, which I don't think matches what goes on.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:55 AM on February 2, 2014

Another question I have is how the "My request requires community input and cannot be addressed by contacting MetaFilter staff." button magically gets checked all the time.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 7:33 PM on February 1, 2014

I've got a blue bump.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 3:28 PM on February 1, 2014

When you're tired of Metafilter you're tired of the web.

At least that was how it was for me. Metafilter lasted the longest of a cascading series of sites I got completely sick of. After I disengaged here I went into Internet Read-Only mode for quite a while.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:57 AM on January 28, 2014

The Book Of MeFi?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:11 AM on January 28, 2014

They weren't ever here, so they can't go somewhere else.

It's a METAPHOR.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:53 AM on January 28, 2014

even-handed is something FPPs have to be now?

If you want your post on a deeply inflammatory topic to hang around it is highly recommended. Otherwise it is off to the island of misfit Christmas posts.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:09 AM on December 25, 2013

The data on SSRI effectiveness is completely equivocal. That is quite clear to anyone who has paid any attention to the development of the data, and the reporting on the massaging of the data.

It doesn't matter how many times you repeat this canard, you're still off in conspiracy theory land here. Irving Kirsch has not somehow discovered the secret underbelly of corruption in anti-depressant research; the truth is that he is remains way way out of… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 7:42 PM on December 20, 2013

I found out that the Rheinsteig exists and had one hell of a good walk. Well 60 miles worth anyway.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 3:13 PM on December 16, 2013

I keep my dish sponge in the dishwasher now and it doesn't get eaten by my cat. Except when one of us forgets to put the sponge in there.

Your cat remembers to put the dish sponge in the dishwasher?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 6:15 PM on December 16, 2013

"Other times I try to remind myself that AskMe isn't an expert resource, it's like a chatty town square."

If you're wondering if he should eat that thing,
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just AskMe,
I should really just relax."

posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:08 AM on December 14, 2013

Question: What colour is the sky?

Your good answer: OP, while it depends on what time of day you look, the sky is usually some combination of blue, white, and/or grey during the day, with reds and purples and oranges around sunset or during haboobs. I've never seen a green or yellow sky and I can't imagine the whether conditions that would cause that.

Your better answer: What is a colour? Is it like a color? What country do… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:06 PM on December 14, 2013

or you know, reality doesn't exist.

That's what I kept telling people until the mods got all police-state on me. Out in public they're all like "Oh yes, questioning the premise of people's questions is all just fine" but the minute they get you in the back room it's "Derail this" and "Derail that" and "Je pense, donc je suis."
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 5:52 PM on December 14, 2013

It's traditional for you to go first I think.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:02 AM on December 9, 2013

If you would like your tags to be useful as well as entertaining, here is a list of the FPP tags by usage count.

Presumably people would search using the more common ones.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:41 PM on December 6, 2013

I seem to recall that paid members are a very small portion of the user base. I wouldn't count on our usage patterns being normal.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:03 PM on December 6, 2013

And come to think of it the next time I have some hours to kill I'm going to check out every post with the batshitinsane tag.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:05 PM on December 6, 2013

In times past, loyalty to the cause of the userbase was to be found everywhere. The will of the Cabal was the will of everyone.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 3:48 AM on December 7, 2013

Hah!

I always thought that stood for Single Link Not You Tube.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 9:20 PM on December 5, 2013

You may be confusing this with a discussion site.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:03 PM on October 27, 2013

I thought the post was newsy but it lead to gingerbeer's comment, which is the sort of thing I hang around this place for.

From a spreading-good-information standpoint I think it is far better to leave the thread intact with the rebuttal in place. After the post scrolls off the front page the majority of people who arrive there will do so from search engines and it seems like a good thing that those search terms lead them to some clear information.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:24 AM on October 17, 2013

This is also worth considering:

ZANNI'S RULE OF THUMB
This is cool; other people will want to see it == Good post
This is important; I want other people to see it == Bad post
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:43 PM on October 14, 2013

Metafilter is a fantasy world which is totally different than real life. Some things can come in, but not others

Filter is right there in the site name.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 8:58 AM on October 15, 2013

How do we feel about this?

This part of we has noticed that Metafilter tends to lurch into topic trends now and again. I suspect there's a feedback loop where people read a post about topic A and so they find or notice other interesting articles about topic A which they post and other people read and so on.

I do feel bad for the mods when topic A is a contentious one, but the trends seem to pass relatively quickly.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 11:29 PM on September 30, 2013

And my niece claims cos-play only got big with her generation.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:06 AM on September 29, 2013

Do we need a "My request requires community input and cannot be addressed by contacting MetaFilter staff" checkbox on Metatalk comments?
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 12:07 AM on September 29, 2013

Forget that, I want my forehead to be all sparkly. And none of this modern video toasting either, I want it old school.
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 10:34 AM on September 29, 2013

The presence of someone wrong on the Internet alone shouldn't be enough to scrap the entire concept of people having discussions around science news.

I don't know that I agree with you.

Popular Science's primary mission has never been to enable people to have discussions about science -- for many years before this the only way for readers to interact was via well-written letters to the editor. Comment sections were an… [more]
posted to MetaTalk by Tell Me No Lies at 1:06 PM on September 27, 2013