Interesting. Malls around me seem to cater mostly to young adults with expendable income. Lots of non-traditional cuisine (commercialised of course, not high-brow places), wine bars, etc. Places where you'd go to on a night out with the gang.

Now that you mention it, they have stopped catering to the youngest demographic. I think the laser tags closed down before the pandemic, and the arcades have been gone for a decade. Unless Chuck E. Cheese has some, I haven't been. Maybe we're catching up, then. I still see young teens, around the age I was when I visited those places, walk around. No idea what shops they go into though. Maybe the ice cream places, and the food court.

So I'm not in America and might be able to offer some insight. Others have mentioned big box stores, online shopping, and lack of money as the main culprits. I'm fairly certain big box stores are not it, and the fault may lay almost entirely on amazon.

Where I'm from, malls are still the place to go for new things to buy, including electronics, clothes (of varying degrees of quality and price), drugs (the legal kind), and home decor. Businesses like Walmart (as in, supermarkets that sell things other than groceries) have shops inside those same malls. In the whole city, there is one standalone Walmart, in the emptiest part of town with middle-upper class suburbs around it. The one exception is Costco, which has two franchises in town, not inside a mall, but the demographic that goes there is decidedly middle class families and businesses.

We can order stuff from amazon, but it ends up being about the same in terms of cost, and takes up to a month to arrive. Money is tight for pretty much everyone at the moment, but we all still go to the mall from time to time, for one reason or another.

For example, I'm overdue a visit to get my eyes checked again, my glasses need replacing. And I'll probably stop by the radioshack (yup, remember that?) and nab some rechargeable AAs.

Can confirm. When I got diagnosed with GAD, SzPD and rediagnosed with ADHD, my therapist asked me why I was so anxious all the time. After giving them the rundown of everything going on around me, they told me to not think about it.

Like, I get it. Would be cool. But, it's around me. Would be easier to avoid the ground beneath my feet. They did end up helping me fine-tune my routine to unfuck myself when spiraling into a panic attack though.

America, americans, or american politicians? I've got different opinions. The common american may be misguided or misinformed, but they're not hateful. America itself, has done incredible damage to the world, all while claiming they're all for liberty and freedom after being dragged into the most clear-cut good vs. bad war almost a hundred years ago. Ever since, it's has been dragged kicking and screaming towards progress, and fighting very hard to go back to the stone age. American politicians are nearly all wastes of skin.

For reference, I'm latino.

Nah. Went over to Liverpool and London, there's good food. Just avoid low-end british cuisine, high end is fine, but expensive. Lebanese places in particular seemed to be all-around great, with good prices, tasty food, and friendly people.

One caveat to this: make sure it isn't a game you know inside and out. You'll go by memory instead of actively trying to interact with the language. At least that's the way it goes for me.

Oh, music theory? How intro is it? I've wanted to learn some for some time, enough to maybe understand why my favourite songs work.

I took classes when I was a kid but wasn't interested, several years later I was really into classical and jazz and I was able to play by ear but it literally takes me a minute to recognize notes on a sheet, nevermind recall notes. Some of the inside baseball stuff might as well be binary, too. Just incomprehensible.

Hm, Lenovo? Cus you just described my experience with them.

Family problems, health problems, carreer problems, and just GAD piling up on me. Someone took my pulse and it was running a sprint while I was sitting. Hands were absolutely numb and my fingers were twisting by themselves into weird poses, I couldn't hear a thing and I couldn't breathe.

That was the worst one I've ever had, and thankfully, the last one. Over a year ago. Every now and then I can feel one coming up but I've learned how to calm myself down in therapy.

Hard work does not always lead to success. Most of the time, it just leads to more work.

Just rock or is metal allowed? Cus if so:

1. Ghost (Ghost B.C. in the UK) is very silly. Guys dressed in corpsepaint clergy, sounding like a hodgepodge of 70's/80's hits you missed. They got lore too, which is appropriately silly.

2. Electric Callboy is silly. They are... Like, deathcore mixed with whatever they feel like for that song. We Got the Moves is deathcore with a bit of hard bass, for example. And it's a song about partying. Pump It is about going to the gym. Spaceman is about a guy going to space and rapping in german. Honestly one of my favourite bands.

3. Wind Rose is silly as hell. Bearded guys, singing about dwarf stuff. They covered Diggy Diggy Hole and blew up, and props to them because their version is a banger, but they got good original stuff too which is sadly overlooked because Diggy Diggy Hole was just that good.

4. Powerwolf is another one, similar to Ghost. They're vampiric werewolves? And their songs are all in-keeping with that theme. Power metal though, unlike Ghost.

5. Austrian Death Machine is also silly. Voice actors emulating Arnold while the vocalist growls about lifting weights, the cookie monster, jingle bells, getting to the choppah, etc. The vocalist's history has kind of soured the band for me though.

6. Gnome is underrated. Their songs are simplistic as hell, and none of them are virtuosos. But their songs go hard. Wenceslas is great, Ambrosius as well. Edit: writing this gave me an earworm and went down Gnome's songs. Their bassist is a goddamn genius. Simple licks that sound great, and they got weird time sig changes here and there that tickle my brain in the best ways. I can't figure out if they are actual time sig changes or just weird changes, and I love that.

Those folks are really good, just wish their songs didn't sound so samey.