DJDarren

No, it hasn't.

I think for me it's Terry Pratchett's 'The Colour of Magic'. Not because of that book in particular, but because of it being a gateway to the Discworld as a whole.

As much as I enjoy those books, and have read almost all of them at this point, it's more that they taught me how to be a thoughtful, empathetic person when I was a thoughtless, selfish teenager. Almost on the sly, Terry instilled values in me simply by virtue of the heroes of his stories being mostly good people who just want to have a positive impact, even if they're flawed in different ways.

Like, Sam Vimes is undoubtedly a hero. Night Watch shows us that he strongly believes in the power of good, and that people can - and should - band together to limit the tyranny of power. But he's also distrusting and curmudgeonly. Nanny Ogg is foul-mouthed bon viveur who places a lot of emphasis on living her best life, but she always puts her family and friends before her if she needs to. Even the Nac Mac Feegle work together for the greater good, even if, in their case, that means being able to get more drunk and fight more violently.

GNU Terry Pratchett

Justice sensitivity made driving very hard for me, before I figured out what was happening, and trained myself to be more chill behind the wheel.

I mean, you see some Grade A, top choice weaponry piloting their fucking Audis about on the roads, driving far too fast, sticking right on people's arses, flashing their lights, beeping their horns, and generally being copper-bottomed shitcunts. And that drives me fucking mad.

But I listened to a podcast a while ago, during which the host noted that one of the things we tend to do is get angry with others for breaking rules that we make for ourselves. My values when driving are not the same as someone else's. Someone else believes it's perfectly reasonable to flash their lights at someone who's only doing 90mph in the outside lane because they want to continue doing 110mph. Me getting angry at that person form my car isn't going to help them understand that they've broken one of my personal rules, so why bother?

This shift in mindset has really helped me to chill the fuck out when driving, which in turn has permeated into other areas of my life. People don't share 100% of my values, and that's mostly ok.

But I won't say that I don't get really pissy when I see injustice being perpetrated by the rich and powerful. How former Presidents and Prime Ministers keep getting away with all manner of fuckery because society is built for them. As a result, I've mostly taken to ignoring the news, because otherwise I'd just be angry all the fucking time.

I think the way I see it is that the vast majority of Reddit users have no idea that any of this is going on, and wouldn’t care if they did.

So from Corporate’s perspective, all they have to do is deal with a few weeks of whining and teeth gnashing, before everything calms down again and they can get on with whoring Reddit out.

Ultimately they’ll end up back in the black again, and making enough money from the IPO to not give the tiniest rats ass about any of this. They’ll sail off into the sunset on a fleet of expensive yachts, and never give Reddit another thought.