Imagine you’re an astronaut for a national space agency on an exploration mission.

You are charting a usual star system named after an astronomer, Kepler.

Everything is normal but you detect trace gases of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Methane and Carbon Dioxide coming from the third planet orbitting the star.

News breaks about potentially organic compounds detected on an exoplanet and your space agency gives you authorization to approach and orbit for closer study.

When you get closer, you find an alarming sight – more than half of the planet, Kepler-3, has golden lights dotting the dark half of the planet.

Initially, it’s dismissed as natural atmospheric disturbances, but a few insightful individuals point out that they can see what look like geometric shapes, organized behavior of some kind.

It’s at this point, the close range scans indicate not just some “organic gases” but trillions of organisms , all of them alien, and worst of all, possessing a chirality opposite to your own.

Your immune system and their pathogens, and your pathogens, are wholly incompatible. You touch anything, you get sick and die, and they get sick and die.

No amount of medicine cures opposite handed chirals. So you do the smart thing, and turn around and leave.

Then, a few years later, an organism on their planet says:

“Lame. Bad event happened and not even any aliens”, being completely oblivious to the biological apocalypse their planet has been spared from.

Revealing negative [accurate] information to a narcissist often carries the risk of backlash, known colloquially as “narcissistic rage”

I’m sorry friend; I still feel that childhood demiurge of “the game”.

I got teary eyed this morning playing a particularly satisfying VR title.

I guess my advice is: Try virtual reality gaming.

You’ve also simultaneously failed age verification

Damn, Joe Biden is so powerful that he’s still president and responsible for gas prices (/s) even though he’s not president anymore

This idea is so gross that I don’t even want to entertain it mentally.

Thank you for your lucid and crystalline explanation though, internet stranger.

Awh man, the title ruined the punchline

I like how no one on Lemmy has to be explained how that would crash the U.S economy. They just know. The average intelligence of this place surpasses Reddit at its inception.

Contrast that with my idiot Trump-voter “friends” who insist: “He’s just bluffing”

I don’t think their world view extends past the two meters in front of their nose, frankly. If they’re not in pain on some isolated root base-ganglia, tooth-infection level, it just doesn’t exist for them. A beastly existence.

Sorry: Just venting. Lost a lot of “friends” due to the last election. :/

Breaking news: People living in walkable cities have less body fat, experts puzzled