Category Archives: First World Problems

The McDonald’s collaboration with Genshin was a huge failure.

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Hospital food has more personality.

I had just started playing Genshin Impact months ago. And upon finding out that there was a collaboration event involving McDonald’s, I was psyched.

Sure, McDonald’s is well outside of my typical menu. I care about my health, to the point that people are telling me that I could be a little heavier. But when I found out that I could get a special glider for my Genshin account, as well as a special in-game recipe, I was ready to remedy a problem that most people would be happy to have.

But, you saw the title. You know how it went.

The deal is, you download the McDonald’s app, and place an order for a couple Genshin-themed items on the menu. Then, you get a code to copy and paste that grants in-game items, and you could pick up your Genshin-themed meal and/or apple pie, and, if you’re lucky, you meet other fanatics who play this game, and fire it off over your favorite character, and why Sigewinne is totally underrated and you don’t have to be a psychopath to like her.

That was the deal. And it fell through.

First, and most catastrophically, I didn’t get a code. I checked my email, where I expected it to arrive, and then the spam folder. Nothing. I checked again after I picked up the meal, but still, nothing.

Before continuing, I’ll point out that rising fast food prices aren’t just bluster that you see on social media. Twelve dollars for a medium chicken sandwich meal that includes an apple pie? I heard that the overhead costs of keeping a business running (including energy, property taxes, and wages) are going up, but I wasn’t aware just how badly this impacted the cost of fast food. Just a few meals at McDonald’s, and you’ll have spent enough that you could have instead guaranteed a 5* on a limited banner.

But then there’s the meal. There was nothing Genshin-themed about it. The apple pie box was supposed to feature Kazuha, with his normally-soft features in battle-ready stern determination. Nope. Just the ordinary box.

As it turns out, you had to have emails enabled from the app to get the code. Which I didn’t. I was being punished for my own smart practices when using cell phone apps.

Because I figured this out in the dining area, I toggled on the switch for emails, then placed an order for just the Genshin apple pie. Minutes later, I got another apple pie, also in a regular non-Genshin box. Still no code.

And, to top it off, I didn’t even get my soda.

Having subjected the dubious calorie sources in the meal to my metabolic processes, I began to have a crisis. What was I even doing with my life? I decided to buy fast food, which I seldom do, because I wanted digital assets that don’t really exist for some cell phone game, and didn’t even get them. This game, enjoyed by millions, isn’t something a soulless fast food chain cares enough about to amuse you with a code and printed cardboard.

When I got home and checked Reddit, I discovered that I’m not the only one who had this experience. Many other players out there placed their orders, doing everything right, but still didn’t get their codes. Some players did, but for some reason, many of us didn’t.

From what I could glean, McDonald’s was actually manually sending the emails with the codes. If that’s the case, what’s up with that? I’d have imagined that it would have been an automated process: just place the order, and the code would be automatically sent to your inbox. Makes sense, right?

But no, instead it sounds like it’s more like place an order, and some untrained, unskilled worker at a data center (who probably hates Genshin Impact by this point) has to copy and paste an unused code into an otherwise manually generated email, on top of the many that he’s been swamped with in the few hours since the promotion began.

I can believe that the incompetence is McDonald’s fault. It stands entirely to reason. Mihoyo made a mobile game that’s relatively high production value, and played by millions of players, with frequent promotions that usually go off without a hitch. They’re software programmers and engineers, which are usually in the ballpark of SD+1, at least. While a bright person could end up working at McDonald’s for one circumstance or another, that’s usually the place where a person ends up if they can’t get hired anywhere else. (I spent a few months there. It was my first job, at the time, no one else would hire me.)

So, that’s it. I didn’t even get a Happy Meal toy. You know, a little something to set on my desk and sometimes look at before it eventually takes its place at a landfill, like so many other pieces of merchandise that are real enough to do so.

Maybe I’m making a big deal out of what is really just a mundane disappointment, like I can really expect McDonald’s to give a shit about those of us who enjoy things that aren’t McDonald’s.

To put things into perspective, a bunch of Hezbollah goons had their nuts blown off when their pagers exploded, so it’s not like I’m the saddest boy in the world, today.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Maybe I’m the asshole. Not the worst one, but it might actually be that McDonald’s is not to blame.

I decided to check eBay, and this is what I found:

See the second listing, where it says “116 sold”? That kind of seller is why people like me who want the wings and the apple pie recipe for our Genshin accounts can’t get them, because the system is swamped by scalpers who are buying $12 meals by the dozens, then selling the codes off for a hefty profit each. Genshin almost had a pretty cool promotion, but then a bunch of shitheads ruined it.

We might be missing out on codes, but at least a bunch of scalpers could afford to do the line, tonight. We might be pissed, but they don’t care, because they’re getting high.

Looks like Mihoyo might have to do something other than redemption codes for similar promotions.

They’re late to the party.

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It’s becoming increasingly evident that DEI is coming for anime, and it’s coming at a time when voice actors in anime-style games like Genshin Impact are threatening boycotts and meaningless online petitions (but I repeat myself), and manga localizers are crying foul because they could be replaced with AI.

Okay then, I’ll throw my opinion out there. DEI is really late to the party. I mean, really, really late. The party’s already over, everyone has already thrown up, and no one would have been interested in the Bud Light that DEI brought with them, anyway.

The anime boom is over. It has been, for a long time. Prior to it, it was the nineties, anime was really hard to get ahold of for cheap, because it had to cross an ocean to get to us, and translating it to your native language was not easy. Then the internet happened, and at that point, decades of anime started flooding over, and a person could easily go to Suncoast (remember Suncoast?) and pick up volumes of Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, and lots of less mainstream stuff that’s been in Japan for decades.

That was the west’s anime boom. But then, releases of new anime slowed to the point of what was new to Japan. And, as it so happens, anime is something of a fringe hobby in Japan. So, in the west, anime is starting to settle down as a niche entertainment option, though not as niche as it was in the eighties.

I get that DEI might be going for anime to spite people like me who has long considered it an alternative to the polluted bullshit that western entertainment like Disney has become. I understand just how fun it can be to put a disproportionate amount of resources into what is basically just spite. It can be a fun sport. But oftentimes, it’s just a cynic’s quest. And in this case, the party is pretty much already over.

And what’s more, alternatives will pretty much always exist, and people will always tend more towards entertainment options that will take them away from the world’s problems, rather than remind them of those who are only making things worse.

At this point, there’s pretty much just one manga and one anime that I have much interest in. And if a bunch of astroturfed localizers set out to ruin it, then I’ll just seek out fan translations and perhaps even the Japanese versions, as they’ll be much closer to what the author originally intended when they wrote their story.

Even though I’m not Japanese, I understand that it’s the tendency of Japanese audiences to care more about the author’s original intent, than the agenda of a committee with creative control over the IP. And when you understand that, it will make intuitive sense to you why DEI is going to fail miserably to gain a foothold in Japan. When it comes down to it, while an American audience might not give much thought to the person or people who wrote The Powerpuff Girls, those who read Naruto are likely to care whether it’s the Naruto that Masashi Kishimoto wrote. Just the same, if creative control of Made In Abyss were taken away from Akihito Tsukushi, it’s easy to imagine that most of its fans would be done with it.

If the DEI investors were aware of this, and they’re probably not, then it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything behind their willingness to go after anime and manga than an attempt to destroy it.

But at this point, it’s too late for that. The best manga that has been made over the course of decades has already been localized, most of it about two decades ago. The boom is pretty much over, and the main stuff to go after would be new stuff that trickles out of what was a fringe industry in its home country.

Alternatives will always exist, and they will always be simple for people to find. And it will be because of the connected nature of today’s world, which was what caused the anime boom, to begin with.

When it comes down to it, the general population has a trait that the ideological dead-enders of DEI lack, and that’s the adaptability of mind that enables us to thrive in changing circumstances. The world is changing, fads come and go, and that’s exactly why DEI will eventually be a byword of times gone by.

The candy crusaders need to take it easy.

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It seems like some people were upset that a popular candy had its name changed from “Easter Eggs” to “Gesture Eggs”. This is the impression that one would get from this headline from Not The Bee:

Stores pull Cadbury “Gesture Eggs” promo after some genius removed the word “Easter” and caused public outcry

I think we can appreciate how ridiculous “Gesture Eggs” sounds, since that conjures up the image of a person innocently cracking open one of those Kinder Eggs or whatever, and finding a plastic hand giving the middle finger.

Let’s see what Not The Bee has to say about it in their opening paragraph:

Back in 2022, chocolate giant Cadbury was embroiled in a scandal involving reports of shocking child labor abuses in their supply chain.

The last time a well has been so thoroughly poisoned, a village died.

If one were to go just on the tone of Not The Bee’s article, one would think that a candy company is making a deliberate attempt to distance itself from Christianity by removing references to a pagan holiday that’s been thinly coated with Biblical-sounding names and concepts. And people are peeved, because they like that holiday that was the reason they got candy as kids.

The reality of the matter is far more mundane.

The signage was limited to just a few locations in a chain, which was independent of the will of corporate headquarters, which quickly reversed the decision. It’s true that Not The Bee stated as much in their article, but by placing such important modifying information late in their article, they’re more likely to farm rage-clicks from angry Christians who are more upset about signage used to refer to some candy than a bunch of African Christians who are being killed by a bunch of Muslims who hate that any religion besides their own exists.

Here’s the marketing, as shared by The Daily Mail, tell me whether you notice anything about it:

No, not that the candy has become ridiculously expensive. To help you out, here’s a pic of another product from the same line:

Still don’t see it? Neither do I. That’s because the product isn’t called an “Easter Egg”, that’s a Cadbury Creme Egg. The word “Easter” doesn’t even appear on the packaging. The closest that the candy comes to having anything to do with Easter is that Easter is used to market it. Which pretty much any candy can be.

Saying that Cadbury Creme Eggs have anything to do with Easter because Easter is used to market it is like saying that PlayStation has something to do with Christmas because Christmas is used to market PlayStation.

People threw a hissy fit because “Easter” didn’t appear in marketing for a product that doesn’t even acknowledge the observance by name, like the hypothetical box of Matzah that doesn’t mention Passover.

Did you know that in the religious world, there are problems that actually matter? For example, that Muslims are clashing with Christians. Or that sexual abuse is still a scandal in religious denominations. Or that Muslims are clashing with Jews. Or that Scientology is a predatory cult. Or that Muslims are clashing with Hindus. Or that the current Pope is compromising Catholicism with his left-wing stances. Or that Muslims… let’s just say that they don’t play well with others.

But throwing a hissy-fit over signage displayed with candy? Is this how one inspires confidence in their religion?

Firing Off On Palworld

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Earlier this month, Palworld dropped on Steam, and since then, it’s raised some eyebrows with its resemblance to Pokémon.

I haven’t yet played Palworld, and maybe I’ll give it a try later on. It does look intriguing. This article is little more than my own opinion about the drama surrounding it, not my impression on the game.

In the Pokémon community, this game has stirred up some strong feelings, with many taking a side between supporting the game or not.

As I see it, Pokémon could use a bit of competition to stir them to improve. There have been issues surrounding Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, largely concerning performance issues, with some complaints being petty, and some being well-founded.

One of the matters concerning Palworld that has caught player’s attentions is that some of the pal characters bear a strong resemblance to Pokémon. As I see it, games like Digimon and Monster Rancher have done a lot more to ape Pokemon’s style, yet those games aren’t something that The Pokémon Company has had any issue with.

But there’s evidently something about Palworld that got their attention, as indicated by the following statement:

While one may interpret this as meaning that Pokémon is going to go after Palworld, what it comes down to is that it’s caught their attention, and they’re looking into it. Their statement that they didn’t grant the use of Pokémon assets is not a definitive statement that that Pokémon assets were used. It’s something that they intend to look into, and as the last sentence indicates, they intend to defend their copyright, if necessary.

And it might not come to that, because even though comparisons can be made between certain Pokémon and Palworld’s pals, they may be sufficiently different that no action would be needed to protect GameFreak’s copyright.

Remember that if a company doesn’t defend its copyright, they risk losing that copyright, hence Nintendo’s interest in defending Pokémon, which is the highest grossing intellectual property in human history.

Based on what I’ve seen, Palworld doesn’t infringe on GameFreak’s copyright, it merely imitates it, which wasn’t an issue when it came to similar games like Yokai Watch.

There have been comparisons made between the Pokémon characters and Pal World pals, and you may have seen some. Some of those comparisons may have been misleading, as one source of some more popular comparisons has admitted to scaling some Pal World models to make them more closely resemble Pokémon.

Having said that, I’m aware that there is something about Palworld that stirs up strong feelings among Pokémon fans, one way or another, particularly among those employed at Nintendo. There’s something about arming little critters with guns and sometimes eating them that goes against the established tone of the Pokémon franchise, and most games that plainly took inspiration from Pokémon. But that difference in tone can possibly be used to make the case that Palworld is sufficiently transformative to avoid legal trouble.

Another point of contention that has come up is that the developer of Palworld, Pocket Pair, has developed assets using AI. As I see it, this isn’t a big deal, as this is the direction that game development has been going in. In fact, as I see it, people in the future will be able to make their own games at home for personal use, by simple use of prompts. Imagine arriving home from work after a hard day, and asking your computer, “I’d like a dungeon-crawler JRPG.” Or, instead: “I liked yesterday’s game. I’d like to pick up where I left off.”

AI is already changing the way games are made, and the way things are looking, there’s more change to come. At some point, game design will become so trivial that you could just do it yourself.

While there has been many amusing takes on Palworld, you haven’t read the worst one unless you’ve seen PETA’s take:

However the situation develops, it’s already clear who the biggest losers are.

I could hardly focus.

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Forgoing a decent attempt at an intro, here’s the madness:

Honestly, I struggled to keep focus. When someone starts spouting metaphysical pseudo-spiritual psycho-babble in the same way that Chris Chan has been lately, I have a hard time staying engaged. At that point, I just assume that they don’t have anything of value to say, and my mind drifts to something I’d rather be doing. Such as playing a video game, or modifying a recipe, or even something as normally dull as watching some soap opera that my mom liked, which goes to show how long the list of things I’d rather be doing can get when I’m stretching what politeness that I have to wait for them to just finish talking so I can say, “Hey, that was something. Thanks for sharing that. Bye.”

At some point, I caught that she didn’t quite understand how to explain the gender she felt like, which sounds like she’s under-qualified to do as much as exercise simple metacognition. Because of this, I wonder whether she was really successfully stringing her sentences together, or my mind was somehow filling in the blanks in a hallucinatory manner, similar to how holes in a wall can disappear when they are covered by a blind spot.

Now, here I am pondering whether this wonder of a person can so much as operate a microwave unsupervised, or whether this task is delegated to a handler in an institution. In either case, it’s clear that she’s not wanting for something to eat.

What I did get out of the video is that some woman out there doesn’t know how to explain a gender that’s a product of her own imagination, but she’s so cocksure that she’ll assert that she still knows it better than you.

Whatever drugs she’s taking to make her happy, they seem to be working a treat.

Goofball Finds Support For Israel In Fast Food Wrapper

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You’re not ready for this. You’re about to laugh the hardest you have laughed in a long time.

You sitting down? Here we go:

As much as I’d like to believe that this was all some act, I know that people like this actually exist. When you’ve had a job in which you have to interact with the public, you see many different kinds.

But this is truly special. Here’s the kind of person who listens to a televangelist, and thinks that the sermon had some kind of special, hidden message that was intended specifically for them. The kind of person who makes financial decisions based on horoscopes, and names their kids after the first name they hear after turning on the radio, because fuck any chance they could have at living normal.

“Wow. What does that resemble?” Could it be the McDonald’s logo? A helpful reminder of where you just spent your money? The icon to blame for making you fat?

The moment you heard the woman say, “This is in support of Israel.”, you couldn’t see the guy’s face, but you could hear it drop. I know that wage slaves are under enormous pressure to maintain a veneer of professionalism, but I can’t imagine any manager out there would fault him for saying, “Are you serious?”

But you heard her tone, she was as totes cereal as a sack of processed grains at the supermarket.

What are the odds that two basic colors used on fast food packaging could coincidentally resemble the colors of Israel’s flag? So low that, according to the people who put watermelons in their X posts because the colors are similar to the colors of the Palestinian flag, it couldn’t be a coincidence, and must necessarily indicate support for the state of Israel.

I get the fact that stupid people believe in synchronicities to help them cope with the fact that they’re going to die someday, and that there is nothing special about them, but it’s time to keep it real: belief in synchronicities can destroy your mind. And the above video has shown us a great example.

Dude No Longer Has Free Wi-Fi, Complains To Neighbor

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Sometimes, a guy with a screw loose will come right up to you, and surprise you with what they say. This is one of those times.

A man visited his neighbor complaining that he put a password on his wi-fi, so he can no longer use it for free. And the exchange was caught on video:

I can say first of all that, depending on where you live, it may be illegal to access your neighbors wi-fi without their permission, even if it’s not password-protected.

Second, while it’s great that the man learned well enough to put a password on his wi-fi, he’s probably got some double-digit IQ datasec practices if it took him two years to figure out that that it’s a good idea, and only arrived at that determination after hearing advice. Wi-fi has been widespread for about two decades, and its best practices have been pretty well-established. I can imagine that he’s still yet to use a VPN or ad-blocking software.

Now, let’s get to the heart of the issue at hand. A man has been using another man’s wi-fi for free, without permission. And he’s been doing it for so long and justifying it with his own flawed reasoning that when he suddenly had to do without, he feels slighted.

So, what does he do? He goes up to his neighbor and complains about it, and two worlds collide.

I can only imagine what the guy has been doing with his neighbor’s wi-fi that caused it to slow down to the point that it’s become noticeable. Perhaps he’s been downloading the latest Final Fantasy games in a handful of European languages, not because he has any intention of actually playing them, but because if he’s going to do something so illegal, he may as well go for the gusto.

Of course, we can appreciate just how goofy a guy is that he doesn’t seem to understand how wi-fi works. He knows well enough how to hook up to an unsecured network, but seems to think it’s location based, as though one device on a network can’t tax bandwidth if it’s used outside of one’s personal property. I get the idea that the guy may have had some help connecting.

While the guy suggests a couple solutions to his new lack of access to wi-fi, I have a better one: stop being so cheap and get your own ISP.

There’s something screwy going on in the K-pop community.

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The Hindustan Times reported a story which alleged that a few K-pop idols are receiving backlash for enjoying a “dark anime” with “pedophilic content”. The anime in question is Made In Abyss, an adventure anime wherein a girl and a robotic boy explore a gigantic chasm, navigating its dangerous ecosystems in a quest to reach its bottom.

The Hindustan Times can be blamed for burying the lede, as the real story that led to the controversy would be the cancel culture of the K-pop community, and it turns out that much of its community is pretty toxic.

One might imagine that a collective appreciation for K-pop would bring the K-pop community together, but what we instead see is a toxicity among fans who divide themselves into factions based on their preferences for K-pop artists.

Personally, I’m glad that it’s the K-pop brand of tribalist bullshit that’s keeping these clowns occupied, because if they got into either sports or religion, they’d probably cause some riots.

The K-pop tribalism is so toxic that some fans will actually dig into the social media activity of the other tribe’s K-pop artist of choice to find anything that can be held against them. Pretty much cancel culture per se.

It so happens that this time, the K-pop artists under scrutiny are Soobin, Woozi, and Taeyong for liking Made In Abyss, an exquisite anime with developed characters, excellent worldbuilding, a heavily-favored soundtrack, and a tone that indicates that it takes its viewers seriously. The problem is, the anime is sometimes accused of promoting pedophilia by people who aren’t mature enough for the anime.

It’s disturbing enough that the toxicity of the K-pop community has reached the point that fans are willing to drag K-pop idols enjoyed by another K-pop faction down by making them out to be pariahs, it’s even worse when they are willing to drag down anime communities that weren’t even involved to begin with, and don’t deserve the negative attention that they might end up getting.

Being one who enjoys Pokémon, I can point out that, while there has been some amount of toxicity in the community, much of it came from bad actors who were quickly recognized, and the Pokémon community has mostly resisted dividing up into factions. If you can avoid certain bad influencers, you’ll generally have no problem avoiding drama in the Pokémon community.

That being my point of reference, from my perspective, the state of the K-pop community is surprising and horrifying. I didn’t have much interest in K-pop to begin with, but with the pervasiveness of toxicity and cancel culture within its community, I have no problem keeping my distance.

I suppose some might expect that I’d defend Made In Abyss from accusations that it somehow promotes pedophilia. The fact is, I really don’t have to. For one thing, I’ll refer to this flowchart that I like sharing:

One of the things I like about the Made In Abyss community is that when someone attempts to describe it to someone who hasn’t seen it, they might bring up some of its more extreme elements in an effort to warn someone that they’re there. But in doing so, they might make it sound like some hyper-edgelord anime that it’s actually not. While it’s true that there are some disturbing scenes, they don’t make up the majority of the anime’s runtime, but instead serves to make the point that there is a connotation of danger for the protagonists.

While it’s true that there are brief instances of nudity, no sex acts were committed, and the scenes played out naturally. Anyone who holds these brief scenes against the whole of the anime are failing to evaluate it from a position of honest criticism. One may even get the idea that they haven’t actually watched it.

But in any case, Made In Abyss was made for grownups, and it’s obvious that much of the K-pop community is way too young to watch anime like Made In Abyss.

And what’s more, when someone can be rightly described as smug and closed-minded, I don’t really mind that they don’t enjoy the same things that I do. As I’d have it, I’d prefer that such people were not in my own community.

Finally, it can be pointed out that we live in a world where trafficking of actual, living human children is a real problem. When someone throws themselves into a tizzy because a fictional character, a literal piece of merchandise, may be doing something sexual, they are expressing some misplaced priorities.

This McDonald’s Commercial From Japan Just Made Everyone Cry

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I’ll say first that I don’t recommend eating McDonald’s, seeing as it’s one of the worst things that you can put in you which is still legally classified as food.

That aside, what’s the cruelest thing that you can show a people who are suffering from a declining birth rate? Feast your eyes:

That’s right, you show them just what they’re being fucked out of. And to make it even worse, you show one of the most idyllic moments, in warm colors.

Now you’ve got something to think about as you go to pick up some McDonald’s on the way home. Take your time, because there’s probably nobody waiting for you there, anyway.

Is Starbucks Ditching Pride Decor?

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Pride month isn’t halfway over yet, and we’re getting news of yet another corporation that’s ending the rainbow-colored festivities early, if Starbucks Workers United is to be believed.

Yes, Starbucks. As in, the company that’s in a race with Dunkin to make the most overpriced sugary coffee that adds something like 300 calories to your to your daily tally.

Apparently, Starbucks locations, particularly unionized stores, are taking down pride decorations in an apparent effort to avoid controversy. As you could probably imagine, the professional victims are not taking it well.

Now, if this turns out to be the case, one might imagine that I’d be up for rewarding them with a few purchases for making the decision to ditch cynical activism and pivoting to profit. But Starbucks still comes off as hella shady.

The fact is, coffee is one of the least expensive beverages that one can make from home. So, why spend a few bucks on a cup from Starbucks?

What’s more, Starbucks is typically in a Target store. And even putting aside Target’s current controversy, shitty public image, and that they overcharge for low-quality merchandise, the fact is, a caffeine high makes a person prone to spending more money. When you know that, you see putting a Starbucks in the front of a Target as shady AF.

For a long while, it seemed like corporate entities were powerless to resist the power brokers of the banking cartels which have been pushing ESG and DEI in an effort to force behaviors. But as the Bud Light effect and the Target effect have proven, the consumers actually do have power. And if the people decide that they’re sick of the bullshit, they’ll just take their money elsewhere, and a higher ESG score won’t be enough to keep mega-corporations afloat.

Before we get too carried away, Starbucks corporate have denied banning pride decorations:

In a statement, a spokesperson for Starbucks told Newsweek that “We unwaveringly support the LGBTQIA2+ community. There has been no change to any policy on this matter and we continue to encourage our store leaders to celebrate with their communities including for U.S. Pride month in June.

“We’re deeply concerned by false information that is being spread especially as it relates to our inclusive store environments, our company culture, and the benefits we offer our partners. Starbucks has a history that includes more than four decades of recognizing and celebrating our diverse partners and customers – including year-round support for the LGBTQIA2+ community,” the statement said.

Wow, that alphabet slop acronym gets longer and more jumbled as a function of time. It’s almost looking like a password that would make the NSA proud!

I suppose we’ll find out with time just how much sway the union has over the Starbucks brand, or whether we’ve been fed misinformation (that falsehoods come from the professionally offended must be taken into account). If true, then we might instead find out just how much sway Starbucks corporate has over unionized stores. The nature of the relationship between Starbucks corporate and unions I profess I don’t understand.

One bit of advice that I can give to Starbucks (as though they’ll listen) is to not pick any unnecessary fights, and play it safe by getting out of culture war battles, and staying out. Especially if joining would mean siding with fringe groups at the expense of the majority.

After all, straight people drink coffee, too.