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Several years ago, did a little oopsy by calling the cops on 2 black men who refused to buy coffee or leave the store. This is completely legal, but it made them look bad, and so corporate did some typical damage control and got ratio'd on :marseybluecheck::
will close its more than 8,000 company-owned U.S. stores on the afternoon of May 29 to provide to its nearly 175,000 U.S. employees “racial-bias education geared toward preventing discrimination.” Both Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and CEO Kevin Johnson have apologized on behalf of the Seattle coffeehouse giant.
In recent days, also officially declared a “Use of the Third Place Policy,” making it clear that anyone is a customer and is welcome to use its store space, including bathrooms, regardless of whether one makes a purchase.
“We are committed to creating a culture of warmth and belonging where everyone is welcome,” the statement said. “We want our stores to be the third place.”
The Third Place Policy whose URL now results in a server error, meant that would no longer be able to kick out customers who failed to make a purchase. The obvious then happened:
But as I have sat at different locations in New York lately and overheard conversations around me, I witnessed firsthand a new scene that I hadn't quite observed before: At times, stores were mostly occupied by non-paying customers with their own drinks and food while some paying customers looked puzzled and left frustrated without finding a seat. I have also seen customers inside a store being openly solicited for money. source
The same writer did another followup piece a year and a half later which sources the least surprising study ever:
Monthly visits to dropped 6.8% compared with other nearby coffee shops after the open-bathroom policy was put in place in May 2018
With the free bathroom access, the researchers looked at the proximity of a given store to a homeless shelter and found that customer traffic declined at almost double the rate at stores closest to homeless shelters versus those farthest away.
Customer traffic wasn’t the only thing that was hurt. The average income of Starbucks’ customers has dropped compared with the average income of other nearby coffee shops, thanks to fewer visits from “its wealthier clientele.”
The full report is 43 pages, and everyone involved could have saved a lot of time by submitting the sentence "homeless people are stinky" to peer review instead.
Shortly after, closed its (bathroom) doors
Now, the coffee chain is effectively saying it can’t be America’s public potty any longer.
And, because an rdrama post wouldn't be complete without , here's a couple posts from baristas whining about the homeless:
CLEAN IT UP
Every single post is bowing and scraping in subservience to the unhousedchads stinking up the place. Good thing for Redditors the stench doesn't travel over computer monitors or it might break their bubble of moral authority.
i try to have sympathy for them but at this point its very hard. i feel bad for being bothered by them, but i need to rant for a minute.
they usually order a venti or trenta water but get quite angry if we dont give it to them the second after they ordered it.
they also walk through our drive thru and ask customers for money.
sometimes they just come and stare at us through the windows or do drugs in our parking lot and our male shifts have to go scare them off.
not so much now, but earlier in the pandemic they would come up without maks and cough on us. or they would come up with a mask on but take it off just to cough on us before putting it back on.
they used to steal our tip jars
The homeless are people. Talk to them and explain the rules you have to enforce. Learn their names. Just like anyone else if they are treated with dignity they may treat you with respect as well.
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Edit2: I'll categorize this list by activity and create sub-categories later today and probably add to it over time. I put it together so it'd be easier for people to find fun fringe drama or otherwise be entertained. Enjoy!
Please comment if you have others to add to the list. I bit off more than I can chew because apparently there's thousands of these, so I omitted ones that were boring, inactive, and/or redundant.
General or Misc Fringe
New Age
Paranoid/Classic
Religion, Politics, & Conspiracy (aka BORING)
Occult
Scientific & Historical
Lifestyle
Lite
Edit: Oops, pressed enter too soon
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Background
With the start of the upcoming thirteenth season of Riot's classic MOBA game League of Legends tomorrow the community is split upon the argument if Riot is even actively developing new content for the game or rather dragging the game over the line relying on the success of their other popular games namely Valorant and Wild Rift or on the fantastic animated series Arcane. As recent developments in League's history featured a trite pre-season, a new provider for the very important SEA region and the departure of a beloved host (not sjokz so doesn't matter) of the LCS coupled with switching the schedule of the aforementioned professional league to a completely inaccessible time slot in the afternoon, people are concerned about the future of the game in the west. It's hard to gauge actual facts as Riot doesn't release their numbers but from the eye test alone you'd immediately come to the conclusion that League of Legends is heading south. While many people (casual and professional g*mers) have said this for a long time now, the recent developments have made things much worse and I'll tell you why:
Not officially announcing the start of the season until a couple days prior
While this tweet offers a timetable of the season start for each major and minor region you'd think it's kinda weird for a game of this size to not have a concise and clear answer until 2 days before the season start. Players had to figure out the exact date for the start of the season for weeks prior relying on vague he-said-she-said information on twitter or other inherently unreliable sources.
The fact that we have to find out like this after deducing the fricking SEASON START like Hercule fricking Poirot is utterly ridiculous
again we have to look for it on twitter, nothing in the client etc. its so fking disgusting
Is the new events tab we got for no reason (that is entirely more clunky than the event rewards page being in your rewards tab) not enough for you? You think they could somehow manage fixing the client and adding useless shit no one asked for at the same time lol? Nah, they only had the manpower to shift the events page to its own clunky tab that you can barely see more than 2 rows worth of cosmetics in.
Just be thankful that useless new events page didn’t end up breaking the client further, we could have lost the entire runes page as a result of adding that new tab.
And the official insta has a countdown with 12h in their story, some say the new ranked season already started in Korea. I just don't know anymore...
For some reason Riot already started the season and Korea and had to reset all already played games (see here for example).
Not following up on their promises
This headline is intentionally chosen to be opaque mainly due to the fact that I am incapable of finding all broken promises but here are some prime examples of Riot failing to deliver:
Removing Smurf Queue: SmurfQ was a method Riot used in the previous season to combat the menace of smurfs (stronger players playing on new/stolen/friends' accounts against weaker players) in ranked games although they failed to figure out how to remove previously inactive account from this queue meaning if you were a returning player (or any other player with a high discrepancy between your MMR and your rank) you'd end up in full smurf lobbies which was an absolutely miserable experience over and over again. Some people claim it took them tens if not hundreds of games to finally be out of smurf queue and play against people on their skill level. As this was obviously not fun for either the returning players or the plethora of next Fakers in smurf queue Riot decided to just remove the system making smurfs appear in regular ranked matches again. See here or here for further discussion.
Failing to release the new VGU: As League of Legends is quite old now a lot of the older heroes are not capable of keeping up with the power creep of the latest releases making them obsolete and quite frankly incredibly unfun. Riot combats this by updating older heroes to new standards either via a visual or a gameplay update; sometimes even combining both of them for a visual and gameplay update. As a token of goodwill Riot offered players the choice of which hero gets this desired upgrade and the community voted for Skarner who is as one-dimensional as Salvador sperging out about the Ukranian-Russia war. I think he won the poll about a year ago but nothing has been done and the community is quite sceptical about Riot failing to deliver yet again here
From the sound of it they still haven't decided what visual design road to take him in, which sounds really odd at this point.
But we don't know when this was recorded so maybe something changed since then?
I legit think they didn't expect him to win so they didn't even have any plans made.
Honestly I feel like they have no idea how to tackle him which iirc that’s why they didn’t rework him before either
This article talks about an update for this long-awaited VGU that's planned for Skarner but it's still mind-boggling how Riot is simply incapable of doing this in an acceptable time frame.
Other hero updates: Some announcements of older heroes receiving 'ASU', 'midscope' or other minor updates to make them more accessible received mixed reactions and I'm frankly too lackadaisical to write about that here but if you're interested Jax, Rell and Ahri are some of these.
Balance issues: Insert some g*mer seethe abour role/champion/item/team/region being too strong/too weak/too unfun/too fun/too hard/too easy see here: Recently people have come to the adc subreddit and demanded evidence and facts, and with Phreaks tweet., here: Riot Phroxzon follow up comments from the videos (includes ADC satisfaction, healing outliers and more) or here: Isn't the amount of damage riot lets tanks do a bit excessive?
ARAM changes; All Random All Mid is a fun mode in all MOBAs in which players are assigned random heroes to battle it out in a straightforward lane without any depth or strategy. Basically the mode for casuals or people who just want to relax. However Riot updated the mode to make it incredibly unfun and players are NOT happy at all:
The update didn’t ruin ARAMS, you just forgot what the gamemode is all about. [600 comments]
The current state of ARAM balance is an absolute mess. [680 comments]
ARAM Champion specific buffs are borderline insane [600 comments]
ARAM is dead to me [1500 comments]
The game most just feels so awful now. The aram balance adjustments feel awful and the new tower falling/death times feel terrible as well. One of my favorite champions, ashe, is forced to not go adc, while Leblanc gets broken modifiers because iron players suck at her. No aram adjustment should go past 5% in my opinion. Yes some champs will be better than others but at least I don't have to scroll down a list every pre game to see what champs are currently neutered. I can't believe we didn't get nexus blitz so they could further ruin this abomination of a game mode. Goodbye aram I'd rather play weakside top lane then waste another minute wallowing in the filth that is ARAM.
ARAM seems less "for fun" with the recent changes [800 comments]
The failure of the 2023 cinematic
The absolute bomb Riot dropped was the travesty of the newly released cinematic. Despite releasing a couple of hours prior to this post it has already gathered more dislikes and negative comments than all other cinematics combined:
On Youtube:
Alexcx: the cinematic perfectly depicts the state of game: uneventful and below expectations [+15100]
Maple: I can't help but to feel sad about this, honestly. Cinematics were the only thing that NEVER disappointed from riot, yet here we are... [+2000]
Tren Status: After the 2022 cinematic, I can't even begin to explain how DISAPPOINTING this year's is [+6500]
On Twitter: (a lot of people working in the league bubble are disappointed)
https://twitter.com/LeagueOfLegends/status/1612736707220369408
https://twitter.com/viennavtuber/status/1612738189206376448: Darn :/ after last years "The Call" which was the certified banger of all bangers I really feel like yall gave up on League 😞
https://twitter.com/Nanal0l/status/1612769755429015553: I thought this was the riot mmo trailer 😞 dont feel the league hype energy from this
https://twitter.com/YamatoMebdi/status/1612786317003493377: Nah this better not be it
On Reddit:
Is that it?
1 year for the intern to drop their realistic render of the rift and voice a few lines
Fantasticaly underwhelming. I hope this is the biggest dissapointment I'm gona suffer this year.
I admit, after last year "The Call" my expectations were high as heck but witnessing this shit that was goo in 2012 at best probably summs up the issues the game faces and probably make community realises why the voices calling the game "maintenance mode" are louder than ever.
Pre season was already dissapointing enough with core gameplay issues around itemisation is still unfixed ever since new system from S11.
Feels like everything I/WE loved about this game slowly getting tossed aside by every year. :(
It has 8.1k dislikes and 2022 cinematic with 143 million views has 8.3k lmao. Took 1 hour to get the same amount of dislikes.
If this is the future of cinematics for league, I just hope they stop doing them at all. This was so cheap and disappointing wtf. Dislikes are deserved imo.
It's so bad I'm confused - it quite literally looks like a Riot cinematic from 10 years ago, complete with the odd plasticky graphics, and focus on the Summoners/Summoner's Rift instead of the actual world of Runeterra
My personal opinion? Worst cinematic ever. 0 Lore progression, 0 Hype. I don’t know what they thought creating this. After the call, this is probably the painful awakening. It feels like Platin Peter‘s motivational speech to his duo mate, that they will win dia promos this time.
Dash got sacked to make more budget for THIS???
Lil Nas X catching some strays:
The shit that happens when you blow your entire budget on lil nas x
Except the 2023 budget is supposedly the biggest yet so there’s no excuse
his music isn't even mid
why did they even pick him?
the worlds song sucked so fking hard and now this?
Why did they pick a gay black singer to design a skin for a gay black character in a season in which they're trying to promote inclusion?
Summary and further discussion
Go to the League subreddit and I bet you that at least 75% of all posts are complaining about something. It's also honestly fascinating how some posts on this subreddit with millions of subscribers are on the frontpage with less than 100 upmarseys. Some further threads that complain about the state of the game:
Where has Riot's passion for League gone?
'Events' nowadays are just an excuse to get players to buy an event pass. We're lucky if we get a visual novel with it.
Riot's skin philosophy seems to have shifted to "quantity over quality". This is apparent when looking at the Zenith Games skins, Battle Boss Bel'Veth, and skin lines that champions have been forced into like SG and SB.
Champion teasers are something we have to ask for nowadays. I guess Riot doesn't really care about hyping up players for champion releases anymore. But why would they if everything gets leaked anyway nowadays, right?
This year's season start cinematic was terrible. No champions, no nothing, just a render of Summoner's Rift.
Is this the same company that released K/DA, the Annie: Origins cinematic and TFT as passion projects? The same company that made event gamemodes like Odyssey: Extraction and PROJECT: Hunters?
The same company that decided to focus on champion reworks for like a year because they realized that a lot of champions are outdated? Now 'midscope updates' are the new hot thing.
Valo, MMO , project L.. Riot has new favourite child/children.
This is called corporate complacency and is a well known cycle in every industry. It's an issue fundamentally of profit-focused business management culture prioritizing revenue milking over the fundamentals of their original success and consumer unwillingness to punish this behavior.
I nominate the Pokemon company and game freak if you want to see the worst example. 100 man team for game dev reusing assets and can't make a triple a game on a modern console, massive profits. By comparison a game like Warframe has 500 employees.
Do we have to be scared? Are they reducing the budget of League so much?
Ahri took 300 years and she looks identical
Skarner is still in the early CONCEPT stage
Champions are getting post-poned left and right
No new events announced for 2023
Valorant getting better cinematics for a SKIN BUNDLE
Wild Rift getting so many exclusive (and high quality) skins
THAT SORRY EXCUSE FOR A "CINEMATIC" FOR SEASON 2023
What is happening to League? Are they reducing the budget of the game so much? Are we going towards some kind of maintenance mode or something?
I know it seems soon to cry wolf, but all these things together made me really worried for the future of League.
As a former Heroes of the Storm player, I must say that this feels very familiar.
League is the older sibling and the parents dont care about them anymore. All the younger children is getting the attention now.
That's how life often works. Times change.
League is basically running in a skeleton crew compared to 2015-2017.
I mean I remember the gangplank event. the OG Oddysey event and a bunch of stuff like that. the mass reworks that even if annoying af made the game fresh.
anyone who says otherwise its just willfully ignoring facts.
we have gotten the same content the last 2-3 years that we woulve previously gotten in 1 season.
Idk how most ppl don't realize this. We been running on fumes for a while now. I feel like anybody with a shread of wanting to do something diffrent went to TFT.
[..]
All of their best people are on other games. Valorant, TFT, and Runeterra are all fantastic. I'm sure they've got all of their resources pointed at the MMO, too. I guess they figure that League can take care of itself while they flesh out their portfolio.
My guess: Most of LoL Devs moved to the MMO. LoL now only exists to fund the MMO so there will be huge budget cuts while trying to make as much money as possible (thats why there are 2 season resets now, they want us to play nothing but LoL and buy lots of skins).
Personal opinion
'No king rules forever and the times they are a-changin' said the preacher. It's all vanity in the end, isn't that right?
Also please try to NOT make fun of me for writing all of this I'm sensible o-okay
- Arran : I save but don't upvote effortposts :)
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carp this'll be good, it's full of incredible retards
Digital Dating Environment
If you have been taken and/or have been touching grass recently, online dating apps are now the way that most people meet their partners. It's essentially taken what used to be a fairly time consuming process of meeting new people through mutual interests, and condensed it into a literal digital meat market. Most apps lie on a spectrum of how much they lean into this. If you're unfamiliar, or are currently dating and out of the loop, the main players are:
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Tinder - The original swipe app. You're shown a photo album, a brief bio (usually a joke), and you can say yes or no by swiping left or right
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Bumble - Bizarre feminist version of Tinder where women have to message first. Usually slightly better quality women, but they have to make the first move in a text and women are useless at this
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OKCupid - The OG dating site, now mostly full of Filipina women looking for green cards
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Hinge - The better dating app IMO. Premium allows for some pretty strict filters (education filter set to college or higher acts almost entirely like a fat filter, it's amazing). No swipe mechanic, you have to read a profile and like something specific about them, with a message attached if you want.
OKCupid used to run a pretty great blog back in the day before they got bought out by wokies. They used to run experiments on users and then publish the results. One of the more interesting ones was where they removed the bio of people's profiles at random, and saw what happened to their match rate.
Absolutely fucking nothing
They also tried removing people's pictures and matching them at random to see if they'd connect. On average, people had much longer and deeper conversations (increases in number of messages and average message length). Most women will only message you back if you're much better looking than them, which is kind of unsurprising. You would too if you were getting a lot of attention. When you take that away, and even if you go on a blind date, they're generally pretty happy.
Then they turned the lights back on and showed everyone who they'd been talking to, and more than half of them instantly unmatched the other. The conclusion they drew was that people (as a general population) are exactly as shallow as their dating apps will let them allow.
There also used to be a separate score for looks and personality, which were pretty much an exact match.
The whole point of this is to illustrate what turns the gears of online dating: it's photos.
Photos only.
And only the first photo.
As a personal anecdote, this girl I was really into broke up with me and I took a bunch of stupid posey photos to revamp what was a profile full of just average pictures to try and sleep with someone hotter than her. I played with lighting and shot composition. Didn't lose any weight or gain any muscle (5'11" 163lbs for ref, relatively fit) or change my bio at all. I went from one irl date maybe every 3-6 months, to 6 in a week. It's fucking nuts how much of a difference it makes.
Redditors and Not Getting Laid
That last section should not come as any kind of surprise and if someone posts that, please tell them to rope.
It is, however, news to redditards. Despite general public opinion, Zoomers and Millenials are having significantly less sex than previous generations and that's a good thing. I am consistently amazed at what people will show as part of their public profiles, especially to people they're trying to sleep with.
Here's some highlights:
And some women for fun too:
They also can't fucking text if they ever even get a match:
You'll hear a lot of shit about women only going for the top 10-20% of men on dating apps. This is the primary reason - most men are shit candidates. They look like this, take bad photos, give creepy ass intros and replies, and then don't get laid, and are completely surprised how this could happen.
What does this mean for drama?
Aside from the fact that most of these people I've shown are dorks, they post feedback threads pretty regularly. Most of them end up being threads about how "Oh your photos are fine, online dating's just hard!". Or they'll tell people that all they need to do is reorder their profiles.
I call on you, hard-working dramanaut, give these people the feedback they actually need. I will find you the first few, and all you need is to give them some helpful life advice. This is your chance to reaaally get creative with it. Here are some bad examples:
Instead of... (Real Reddit Comments!) | Say This: |
[It’s your look. Hinge is more of a relationship oriented app. It’s not tinder. Be yourself but just understand that’s probably why you aren’t getting matches.](https://old.reddit.com/r/hingeapp/comments/zdnjkv/im_not_good_with_the_prompts_instead_of_the_about/iz5olco/?sort=controversial) | Bitch, you're fat as fuck. No wonder you aren't getting matches. Lose some weight and try again |
[Not sure why your post is getting downvotes, but just wanted to say I think your pictures are pretty good man](https://old.reddit.com/r/hingeapp/comments/zgfwtg/25m_hinge_profile_review/izhphd7/?sort=controversial) | Did you lose a bet, or are you trying to stay a virgin? |