“I don’t hate women and minorities but I don’t see anything wrong with an economy built off of their exploitation.”

I mean, you’re likely right and I probably didn’t give it a good enough shot. I just haven’t had the smoothest experience with it. It took me twice as long to make an ugly Resume on libre than the time it took for me to make a decent one on “free” word

I’ve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again

Great opportunity to mention Brave is owned by a dipshit right-wing homophobe.

At the moment I just have an old laptop and connect it to my TV via hdmi and installed Parsec on both devices. It’s a nice, free method.

In the future though I do want to look into getting a mini PC and doing essentially the same thing except it could be an individual device for the most part.

I only ever tried using a Roku so I could stream my PC to my smart TV, but it turns out there’s MASSIVE latency. Of course I returned it. If I had to deal with that AND ADS, I would have set that shit on fire

There’s a few things here.

And given how they rarely invite me back, I guess the feeling is mutual

Based on your language, that’s an assumption. I know it’s easy to assume people are uninterested or hate you or whatever, but people also suck at initiating things and are as unsure as you are. It could just be you guys didn’t vibe, and that’s fine. Invite them again or wait to see if they show interest again. That’ll tell you what you need to know.

I am quite cold towards people I don’t know

I get that completely. I used to be this way, until I started working in a more social environment, then I developed a skill to be fake-charismatic. That might sound exhausting but it does help others feel like you don’t despise their presence, and they’ll warm up to you better. And as for the “full sales presentation mode”, I get it. To be honest, asking questions is a great way of stimulating conversation, and it doesn’t have to be just about work. A good piece of advice is to ask questions you want asked about yourself. People love answering questions, and then they’ll get curious about you.

Some events seem to have a lot more of “my people”, some less

So, you’ve found people you can click with, that’s great news. Now it’s just a matter of establishing and maintaining connections, inviting people places and doing things that are within both of your interests. But definitely gauge their interest. If they seem to be drifting off, don’t push them. Also, while being sure to show interest in hanging out, don’t be the only one showing interest. There’s people who feed off of treating others like shit while wanting to receive all the attention. You don’t want people like that in your life. You want a friend who invites you as well.

how could I change this?

You’re not really doing anything wrong per se. You just need to believe in yourself and have the courage to keep going even if things get tough or you mess up. Because that’s how you learn! Also, people have their own issues and you can’t control that. Just keep going at it and with enough time, you’ll have a great group of your own people.

Also, adding this at the end, but new friends can be very unsure but still want to invite you. If you ever reject an invite, you need to be the one to invite them next time. Otherwise they’ll perceive that as you being uninterested in them.

Give money to the artists the AI stole art fr… I mean sex robots