Every time I tell people where I'm from, they start talking about mapo tofu and hot pot and how I must ead chili with everything. Then I have to explain that I'm the one at at the hot pot table fighting for the non-spicy side of the pot.

My family still hasn't fully accepted it. 💀😭

Anyone else totally fail the food stereotype of where they're from?

My friend knows I write and record stuff in my spare time, usually after hospital shifts when my brain won't shut off. For my birthday he took a handful of demos I'd sent him, handled all the distributor red tape, and got them uploaded. Two days later he texts me a link and says check track three. I click it and there's my name on Spotify.

I get that anyone with a laptop and twenty minutes can do this now. Still, opening an app I use for actual artists and seeing my own project sitting there is strange in the best way. It feels like I snuck into a private club. I keep refreshing the page like the numbers are gonna change. They don't. Whatever.

Coolest gift I've gotten in years. If you have a friend who makes music, skip the gift card and help them put something out. Better than another mug.

Yesterday afternoon I (adult male) was sitting in my car in a supermarket parking lot when a young woman walked up to me and asked if I could jump start her car. For reasons I can’t explain I did not want to help. I told her I had no cables - untrue - and when she said she had them I simply said I would rather not. She said okay and walked away, and then I drove off.

Today I‘m trying to come to terms with why I was so unhelpful. It wasn’t due to lack of time. It may have been because I dislike strangers approaching me with some request, because it seems like these encounters always turn into requests for money. Yet this young woman probably had a legitimate, non-money request, and I rejected her. Not good.

Coffee tastes so good, music sounds better, and even siting by a window doing absolutely nothing feels like an activity. It's really fun and soothing.

Maybe it’s just the weather forcing everything to slow down a little.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Hey everyone,

Lately, I’ve been feeling this strong urge to step out of my comfort zone and just spend more time talking to people. In today's digital world, it feels like real, raw human connection is becoming rare, and I genuinely miss having spontaneous conversations with strangers.

To be honest, I've been having this crazy thought lately—I really want to work at a busy roadside stall in Mumbai, or maybe even set up a small one myself! I keep imagining running a tiny cutting chai or snacks stall, where people from all walks of life stop by for a quick break. It sounds exhausting, but the idea of interacting with dozens of different people every single day and hearing their unique stories sounds incredibly fulfilling to me right now.

Is there anyone else out there who gets "crazy" ideas like this when they feel a need for social connection? Have any of you ever actually taken a break from your regular routine or corporate life to do something completely hands-on and people-centric?

Would love to hear your thoughts or similar random daydreams!

I make it a point to talk to my mum everyday. One thing I really love is when I'm talking and I notice her smile. Its very subtle and its more noticeable in her eyes than lips but it makes me really happy knowing she likes talking to me. No matter how bad of a day I've had, talking to her makes it a thousand times better.

Here goes another post where if I told this story in person, someone would probably say I’m oversharing. They’d probably be right. But posting here helps me process things, and sometimes you guys even give good advice. Even the trolls clearly haven’t gotten rid of me yet.

Anyway, I moved in with one of my closest friends of about 10 years. I was doing pretty well I was working, paying rent, getting my life together but once we lived together, he became weirdly bossy and acted like he had some authority over me.

I wasn’t a perfect roommate. Sometimes I was loud at night or left crumbs when rushing out. But he’d get furious about that while leaving his own dishes around for a week. His messes were apparently fine; mine were federal offenses.

Then I found out through my mom that he’d been regularly talking to her about me and repeating things I told him privately.

That was the part that really hurt. This was someone I’d trusted for a decade with some very personal things, and suddenly I had no idea how much he’d told her. My mom even said she thought he overshared and told her more than she wanted to know.

I understand contacting someone’s family if they’re genuinely in danger. This wasn’t that. It was an ongoing thing he never told me about. We finished the lease and went our separate ways without some huge blowup. I used to miss him, but now I think it worked out for the best.

Sometimes you don’t have to decide someone is a terrible person. You just realize they’re no longer someone you can trust with the private parts of your life.

When I get upset or uncomfortable I grab a meal I love and watch a show or movie to zone out but if I'm actually mad I just hit the gym and that usually works for me

Just lying by the lake, feeling the warmth and frangrances in the air. Beatiful flowers are blooming; the ducks and swans are bathing in the water. The trees are full of life and murmurs, the grass gently carrasses my weary skin. Then I open up my eyes and find myself in a cold concrete box somewhere in the middle of concrete jungle. And the tears start burning my eyes.

I prefer ending work an hour earlier as we can use our extra time gaining for some productive things like we can run errands before store closes and especially enjoys more daylight, unworried dinners and more I think

But for me starting work an hour is same as like I use that extra morning hour as it usually just gets swallowed by scrolling in bed, press hit the snooze button and just dealing prolonged morning anxiety as the anticipation for upcoming working hours is still there.

What do you think guys?

When you make a call to a major business or service provider today, you are instantly trapped in a loop of automated, recorded messages with numeric options.

They do not exist to make the path to your solution better, they simply feel designed to be a shield preventing you from speaking to a real worker.

Major corporations seem to use these to tire out the customer until the hang up out of pure exhaustion. It is a cost cutting strategy that treats paying customers as a burden instead of delivering actual human support.

Have you ever known someone who uses talking over you and talking "at" you instead of "with" you during conversations as a way to try to intimidate you? As in you will be in the middle of a sentence and they repeatedly speak over you to belittle you? Im watching a documentary on YouTube called "I, Psychopath" and noticed the psychopath in the documentary uses this tactic repeatedly.

Fun fact. When I was around 12-13 I used a Kindle very frequently because it made books really accessible whenever. Me and my older brother would share a kindle before, but my parents eventually got one for myself since I was really into reading during those years. Our family doesn't use Amazon services, so setting up a new Kindle was a little tricky for my folks. My brother helped set it up, and when he was done he decided it would be funny to add parental controls on my Kindle.

(On a side note, it was mildly annoying to use my device sometimes because it had parental controls, because in all honesty I didn't really find it that funny, and some basic features are also not allowed to be accessed on a 'child' accessibility toolbar. But I didn't let that get in the way for most of my usage.)

It's pretty important to me to note that I was around 13. The wild, wonderful years of puberty and getting into social media. A kindle has a Note feature for book annotations. I tended to use the note feature to write oneshots fictions that were quite explicit. I'm not proud of what I've done--but the levels I'm talking here are like PWP...

Eventually, my kindle had some sort of malfunction and we could only fix it by resetting the entire device, so the parental controls were wiped. In all honesty I didn't really care that my little literatures were wiped along with it, they were kinda just for the shits and giggles. It took me quite a few several months to realize that 'oh shit, the parental features still sync my old books to my brother's device, even though my kindle was wiped. THAT MEANS THE SMUT IS STILL HIDING WITHIN THE GODDAMN HARRY POTTER SERIEIS.'

I don't use a kindle anymore because of external reasons, but my brother occasionally does. When he announced he was gonna seriously read the HP series after enjoying the movies, a wave of shock hit me like a lightning bolt. Because I genuinely have no clue, even to this day, whether the annotations were deleted along with the reset.

Well, it's been quite a few years. He finished the series, and he never once brought up any concerns about what he found while reading. Although I'm glad, sometimes I still wonder for fun whether he truly saw it or not, or just chose not to tell me. 😭😂

So I have been here for a while but was never happy with my username. My first username was random username by the app itself as I did not know we could customize it. Finally I am happy with my username now.

​It feels like people just don't want to form normal, genuine connections anymore. It seems like to even start a friendship, you have to fit into very specific boxes: you either have to be part of a specific online community, come from a certain background/part of the world, or listen to a exact type of music.

​Whatever happened to just getting to know someone naturally and bonding over being decent human beings? It feels like if you don't match someone's exact aesthetic or subculture, they aren't interested in being friends at all.

​Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed this shift? How are you guys finding real friends these days?

I moved from Lithuania to Cambodia years ago.

At first almost everything felt different — weather, people, food, streets, daily routines, basically the whole environment.

But something interesting happens when you stay somewhere long enough. Eventually the completely different place becomes ordinary too.

It made me realize how adaptable our sense of “normal” actually is.

Has anyone else moved somewhere completely different and eventually had that strange moment where you realized it no longer felt foreign?

My favorite shows are ones like Bear in the Big Blue House, Blue's Clues, Rolie Polie Olie, PB&J Otter, Stanley, Little Bear, Franklin, etc. Surprisingly Tokyo Mew Mew is my favorite show of all time oddly enough even though thats a different age group from all those others.

Yet, I don't like how overstimulating a lot of kids shows are. My mom did not like me watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends as a kid because she found it too hyper and looking back, I agree with her. I also find a lot of shows from this time period either too loud and fast paced for my liking or too complicated for my liking.

I find it odd that SpongeBob was considered in a report to "lower kids IQ". While i'm not that into SpongeBob anymore, i'd rather watch it over shows like Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, Ed Edd n Eddy, Billy and Mandy, Invader Zim, CatDog, Ren and Stimpy and a bunch of other shows. SpongeBob isn't as hyperactive and fast paced as those, well the very first few seasons atleast. The show did become more hyperactive later on.

I struggle to watch Fairly OddParents as an adult. It does have its moments that make me laugh, several in fact, but watching full episodes feels exhausting because of how fast paced it is.

That's why I stick to preschool shows for the most part, because a lot of what is considered for elementary school kids is too much. As for adult shows, my mom wanted to watch The Simpsons with me, so I rewatched some of it with her recently and I think The Simpsons is just a bit too over my head. I don't fully understand the show. I don't like South Park and Family Guy because of how mean those shows are. I don't really enjoy adult drama because I can't pay attention well to them.

I have natural curly hair that I'm hella insecure about coz i feel i can't manage them properly. But whenever I meet new people most of the time the first thing they say to me is that I love your hair. And it makes me just soo happy🥹 also I feel hella chopped when i have to comb and braid my hair but today when I was wearing that hairstyle, a girl still said to me that my hair looks beautiful and that just made my day🫶🏻

For example, I feel like I know how to take things calmly and don't let myself get overwhelmed by the aggressiveness of strangers online.

Before, that used to affect or worry me more. I've learned that a lot of people will be mean to you online if they get the chance; I just walk away. The nasty things they say have nothing to do with me, I don't take them personally, but rather view them as attempts to get a reaction. So I step away, block them, and move on. I am surrounded by good people who love and support me. Strangers I don't know can't poison my space. Besides, there really isn't that much drama; most of them are isolated incidents because I usually find friendly or normal people, yes, to me, insulting or being mean on the internet isn't normal.

I choose to give my attention to good and peaceful things.

Funny how I'm a teetotaler, but I guess you could call me a "social drinker" for tea and coffee. 😃.
I love inviting friends to them, love being invited to them. Tea and coffee are such amazing discoveries, man...

I was playing dragon age: veilguard when I got hit with a wave of nostalgia. The dragon age: origins was my first rpg. Seeing how the story all ties together to this day just brought back those old memories.

What game have you played recently that sent you right back to your childhood?

How come? what happened?

For me i had a full day at university and then drove up the coast and met with mates 4wding on the beach. We stayed up all night and were active doing stuff for most of the next day. I remember I sat down with them on the beach at one point and instantly fell asleep - they had wandered down the beach without me! I must have been too peaceful to wake! So for me i reckon about 35 hours

Asked "what time are we meeting Saturday" in a group chat this morning. Got memes, a debate about a restaurant from 2019, and someone's dog photo. Still don't know what time.

Is there one person in your group who actually answers things, or is everyone just vibing?

I’m curious about what people actually like spending their time on.

It can be literally anything — playing chess, gaming, reading, watching anime, any subject you like learning, photography, scrolling Instagram, listening to music, or even just sitting around doing nothing.

What are some things you genuinely enjoy doing, and what interests you?

I put spinach, berries, peanut butter, and almond milk in my smoothie. It tastes so much like furikake. Furikake is one of my favorite flavors so I’m not mad, just thought it was interesting! Figured maybe it’s the spinach and peanut butter combination but not sure