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The Internet is a safe place for socially awkward people. There are no forced social interactions, no planning of meeting with your friends and no running from store employees when they ask "Can I help you?" As a fellow introvert, I love to decompress by reading, watching and scrolling through content online.

The Antisocial Butterfly Instagram page is for those who thrive on being alone, perhaps with only their cat to bother them. Its 2.1 million follower count is a testament to how many of us are out there. So, gather around, fellow antisocial butterflies and scroll through our selection of memes about this clearly superior way of living!

Bored Panda contacted Alexander Danvers, Ph.D., a social psychologist and Director of Treatment Outcomes at Sierra Tucson. He researches emotions and social interactions and agreed to lend us his expertise. Alex spoke to us about the importance of in-person socialization and whether commenting under a Reddit post or dueting a TikTok video can substitute social interaction in real life.

If the memes on this list are any evidence, going outside and socializing is not very popular right now. We here at Bored Panda have covered antisocial memes and jokes several times already in the past few years. We asked Alex Danvers what he thinks about this trend of hating socialization that's so prevalent on the Internet.

"My own take on what people mean when they say that they hate socializing online is that they hate high-effort, put-on-something-nice, 'going out' type of socializing," Danvers replies. "That takes extra effort, and it can feel like a lot at the end of the week."

In 2018 Danvers' colleague Anne Milek published a study about the link between well-being and the amount of socialization one receives. The more days per hour you spend socializing, the happier you are, they found. "The difference between the happiest and least happy people studied is about four more hours around other people every day," Danvers comments.

"The study I recently published showed that if you’re spending more than 75% of your day alone, you’re much more likely to report feeling lonely. Both these studies relied on making audio recordings of people’s daily lives and listening in on when they were talking to other people. Based on these studies, it seems like you actually do want to spend more time around other people – physically, not just in cyberspace – to be satisfied with your life," Danvers concludes.

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Tired Panda
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's so hilarious! I've had that done. I would have laughed. Poor guy was probably embarrassed.

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According to that study by Milek and her collaborators, the type of social interaction hardly matters. The important thing is that just being around people makes you happy. Alex says that it might seem slightly counterintuitive, yet it is true. 

"You don’t need to be having deep conversations, you don’t need to be having witty banter, you don’t need to be 'out' to get the benefits of being around other people," the researcher explains. "It really is just about being in other people’s company, even if you’re just talking about what frozen pizza to make while you play video games."

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Kevin the Manager
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

LOL! "Flesh chandelier" has been successfully added to my insult vernacular! Many thanks!

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Danvers and his colleagues did make a quite interesting discovery in their 2023 study. "We do find a sort of 'tipping point' of 75% or more of your time alone starts to make you feel lonely. Below that, it doesn’t seem to matter as much. So if you hate socializing but still manage to be around people for more than four hours a day, you’re probably going to be OK, or at least not feel lonely," he says.

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Rae Rory
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Mine was clowns coming out of my closet in the dark, but toilet snakes is a close second, now.

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Kobe (she)
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That is ok though. You make at least the kids and parents aware that not all dogs are equally pettable.

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Alex says he himself is not immune to the struggle of going out and socializing. He has some advice for us other couch potatoes – try managing your expectations. "I have to remind myself too, that being around people usually feels better than you expect when you’re just sitting around on the couch at home.

"It can feel like a lot of effort to get out, but it tends to be energizing and mood-boosting once you actually do. So if you can get over the hump of getting out of the house – or getting on the phone and calling a friend to come over to binge-watch something – it’s usually worth it."

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sadmrguna
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's the same in all languages that have grammatical gender. The fact that English doesn't have gendered nouns is actually an exception.

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Nadine Debard
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not in French, because even though we have a gendered grammar, the adjective "binaire" is the same for a man or a woman. So is non-binaire.

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Sky Render
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There is actually a movement to develop non-binary terminology for gendered languages, and Spanish is one of the ones where the effort is especially strong. I believe they're using -e instead of -o or-a endings? Haven't looked into it in a while.

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CrunChewy McSandybutt
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A Mexican friend of mine said there is a movement afoot to use the "E" ending for non-gendered nouns. e.g., binarie [by nar EE ay]

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BoredPossum
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Nice to see that the ai can make mistakes so that we won't be replaced just yet.

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Ash
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So I looked it up, and this glossary also used "no binario" https://www.lgbtqiahealtheducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/National-LGBT-Health-Education-Center-Glossary.SPANISH-2018.pdf . HOWEVER, one way of making Spanish gender-neutral is by replacing the -o or -a at the end of the word with -e. Which would make it "no binarie"! You can also use the pronoun "elle" for Latine NBs. https://strommeninc.com/how-to-use-gender-neutral-pronouns-in-english-and-when-speaking-a-foreign-language/

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Vanessa Smith
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's because different genders either end with o or a, its not a weird thing its just the facts

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Chairman Miaow
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Gender-related pronouns all sounding the same helps a lot in Chinese. Only problem is writing, and you're unlikely to write the relevant character when talking... Had an amusing experience recently, I dated a guy with a "girl's name," and booked us to stay in a hotel, the owner consistently used the female pronoun 她。I still am not familiar enough with the full range of possible Chinese names to pick up on these things all the time.

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Hilary Mol
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeeeeah. Foreign language grammar rules about pronouns aren't going to change even if yours do. Anybody know of any other language outside of English that *doesn't* use masculine/feminine when determining what articles or pronouns are assigned to a word?

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Isaac Harvey
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

“He” is “él,” and “she” is “ella.” If I remember right, the singular “they” is “ello.”

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Cjay
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We’ve had this discussion on a previous post, y’all.

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Zedrapazia
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's even worse in German, we don't have an equivalent to "they" (only male, female and object, and the latter is disrespectful to humans). I don't know what I should say to someone who's nonbinary, and always repeating the name or using a nonexistent sounds awkward to everyone ... Like, seriously, what do you do in such a situation? And even more, how are nonbinary characters written in third person books? I'd actually be really interested in how the latter works, I've just never found a book like that I could look into because they are always plastic wrapped in stores.

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Jaya
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Just ask that person which pronouns they prefer and then use those. If they use neopronouns (pronouns that didn't exist until recently), I get that that can feel awkward to use, I really do, but maybe it helps to think about it like this: Our language is incomplete, we have created a language system that excludes a group of people, and that is painful for them. There's 3 ways we can deal with this problem: either we tell non-binary people that they're not allowed to have this gender identity, or we tell them "sorry, but we're gonna stick to the old vocabulary and not add any new words, too bad", or we simply add a couple of new words to the language. The third option is by far the kindest choice, and in my opinion the best. If you add a new word to a language, there's gonna be an awkward time where people have to get used to the word, but after a while everyone knows the word, and then non-binary people feel included too. And we add new words to the language all the time anyway.

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Thenatural
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5 months ago

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Jaya
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Being nonbinary is about how you FEEL, not about what you physically are. Being a man or woman is not only a word for a physical thing, it's also a gender role in society. And denying that there are people who feel happier in that middle space between the male and female gender role, makes no sense. How can you believe that there aren't people who feel that? Also, although this has nothing to do with nonbinary people, but even physically nature is waaaaaaaaay more complicated than just male and female. There are many gender variations (intersex conditions), there's quite a grey area in between, we just choose to draw a line in the middle and decide to lump biologically more feminine intersex people into the category of female and biologically more masculine intersex people into the category of male. But viewing sex as a black and white situation with only 2 categories is kind of a made up concept, biologically it's way more correct to view it as a spectrum that includes a grey area.

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Mental Liberals
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5 months ago

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Damn imaginary gender keeps getting in the way! Hahaha woke liberal morons!!

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BTDubs
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hahaha uncaring uneducated fascists!! Nonbinary is not "Imaginary" and one could cause serious harm by invalidating a persons very existence. Learn some queer history before you spew nonsensical statements.

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Nosirrow
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5 months ago

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It's not a real thing. The proper description is: desperately waiting attention.

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Jaya
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Do you know how many nonbinary people struggle with coming out because they're afraid of the attention? Hint: the majority of nonbinary people. The vast majority starts out feeling too scared to come out at first, because they know they will get so much negative attention and face so much rejection. If you think coming out as nonbinary is a fun thing to do because you get attention, you really know very little about what nonbinary people actually go through.

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But what about socializing on the Internet, on social media? Doesn't that count? Danvers agrees with the idea that I offer – that people who might never want to go out can be very social online. "My take is that we have a fundamental human need to feel connected socially to other people," he reflects.

"Interacting with other people, whether in person or via text online, is rewarding and engaging. One of the major differences – online socializing can be a lot less cognitively demanding. It’s just easier to post on social media than it is to hold an actual conversation in person."

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Kevin the Manager
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yes, but did you order in an Ancient English dialect that is surprising to hear anyone speak these days?

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"What I think people often don’t appreciate," he goes on, "is how complicated and demanding social interaction really is. When you see a comment that doesn’t resonate with you online, or that seems too complicated to deal with, you can just skim or skip over it."

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️ ️~ lefty libra️ ~
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5 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

as it should be, if the dog (or cats but cats dont really care for anyone) dont like you, then we have a problem bud. edit: guys 3 cats own me. i am speaking from their experiences and many cat memes i have seen.

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Couriva
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I think with images and words, so when speaking it comes out as "I was thinking that if we remove..." *hands flailing around in shapes*

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Socializing in the real world sometimes demands more confrontation. "In a real social interaction, if someone says something that doesn’t resonate with you or that challenges something you have been thinking about, then you can’t just skip it. Just going blank in a social situation doesn’t work; you need to actually find some way to respond," Alex adds.

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Mark
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If you take shooting, fencing, and sailing as your electives in MIT, they’ll officially reward you with a certificate in piracy

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Kevin the Manager
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Pavlov walks into a bar, orders a beer, and takes a sip. A bell rings, he bangs his fist on the bar, and exclaims, "Now I gotta go feed that fuc*ing dog!"

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There’s also the element of timing in in-person social interactions. "People respond with different facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture, etc. It also doesn’t stop when you’re not the one talking," Alex observes.

"Conversation involves a lot of back-channeling while the other person is talking, which can really set the tone of the interaction." He gives some examples: doing things like saying "uh-huh" when someone is explaining, or nodding in agreement to a statement.

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J. Norton
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ohhhhhh! I was kayaking once and a seal plopped up on the front, cute as can be. But, since I had been warned by officials (that I rented from) that it was a federal crime to touch/harass wildlife, I was frantically going "Shoo, shoo, oh aren't you cute, shoo, shoo!"

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In-person communication is harder because you have to get the timing and tone right. You also have to balance different types of verbal and nonverbal communication.

"Compared to real, in-person interaction, the kind of text-only interface of Reddit is really flat and simplified," Danvers tells us. "Just talking to someone in meatspace is a demanding task. I’d think of online socializing as sort of the 'lite' version," he concludes. 

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Kevin the Manager
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I once wrote, "sexual favors" on the "For:" line of a check I sent to pay my doctor. At my next appointment, he and the nurse entered the exam room *with the check* in order to make it clear to me that they personally saw them (along with any jack-assery that I came up with) and that they weren't amused... 🫣😱

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What Alex says next really sticks with me as a chronically online person: "That may be nice to do when you’re feeling tired or burnt out, but it’s also not going to give you the full experience of connecting with another person. To have really satisfying connections, you do need to put in the effort of navigating the more complicated world of in-person interactions."

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LakotaWolf (she/her)
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5 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Although it's not nearly as hilarious, I used to have a cat named Wintressia. (Pronounced "win-tress-ee-uh". In my defense, I was 16 when I named her.) Every time I took her for a vet appt, the techs would struggle with her name. After a while, I was like, "Win. Her name is Win." XD Now, I only have to deal with telling the new staff members that BOTH of my dogs are named after characters from the book Dune. Fortunately, thanks to the 2021 movie adaptation, I don't have to explain why my favorite book is a scifi novel written in 1965. I'm a nerd. I'm sorry. XD

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Kevin the Manager
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At least you didn't go, "HO, HEYYY, HO, HIP-HOP HOORAY..." and completely date yourself.

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Nina
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Asian elephants are more chill though, African elephants are more agressive.

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James Frail
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Gonna nod off to some "it's not you, it's me" now. Maybe a little "this isn't woking."

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Passerby
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

To be honest, I also hate too much PDA. Kissing in public is frowned upon here where I live. I don't care whether they are men, women, trans or whatever.

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Kevin the Manager
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Where are the images of the husband all fuc*ed up from wrestling the cat into that thing? There should be blood EVERYWHERE!

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Passerby
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A librarian from birth? That's how you get 20+ years working experience those jobs ask for entry positions.

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Couriva
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Kaspersky bans things so weirdly. I couldn't even search up about my period

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Deanna Crichley
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

First. I have this hat. My mom lost all her hair during cancer treatment. This hat was on her Christmas wish list, and I bought it for her. She loved it. She wore it in the hospital when things were getting rough. She did die, and the family made sure to give me that hat back. Sometimes I think I'm going to wear it to remember mom, but I usually just take it out and hold it, and think of her.

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Don Adams
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5 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Sales plummeted in 2002 seems people had little desire to have another tower fall....

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