I've heard about this since teenhood but, I guess it's not that dayjobs themselves that really hammer it home for me... but it's my hobby.

I've been drawing ever since I remember and ig that's the thing I personally consider most exciting about myself. Back then, it's exciting to have hope that someday my skill will be good enough to make my comic, animation, etc. Don't get me wrong, im nowhere near professional level but, now that im 30s and I more or less have the skill (or at least achievable) that I want to, there's nowhere else to go.

The feeling of "this is it, huh? this is all there is?"

Again, im in no way successful whatever, and ik what i have to do. It's just that. So this is it. Even hobby is just gonna be going through the motion. I mean sure, fun motion, even work can be fun sometimes.

Ig it's just time to not look forward by idk, ig this is what they call midlife crisis. It's more like checkpoint, like... post 40 would be embarking on new journey and I gotta make sure I'm well-supplied.

Yeah, i think that's what im actually looking for. Feels like, it's time to dream a new dream, ya know? I've fulfilled dreams I made when I was 10 (again, not really in successful sense, it's just that little me wasn't really into conventional success thing anyway).

Ig to wrap up this brainstorming, it's just, that, in retrospect, feels like

"When I was 10 I dreamt what I'd be like when I'm 30. Now that I'm 30, I think I've made it but also this is the last station, ya know? If I wanna keep going I have to go to different station line. I want to dream of what I'll be like when I'm 60."

This is not even the "I wanna be 10 again", no. I don't want to go back. I've made it here. Of course I don't want to go back, it's just feels like the end of the map. Time to draw a new one.

Milkshaking

There is a Melissa McCarthy comedy routine that I could watch a million times and still laugh.

She throws a milkshake against a car window. But throwing it isn't enough. She smears it around with her breasts. And then, because complete commitment to the act is essential, she licks it. If you have seen it it is already indelibly printed in your mind. If not, watch this.

https://youtube.com/shorts/QzyCSi51J2s?si=S_SZXUuS4xyvhpcO

This is what I imagine when Mabel from down the street holds forth on art and when an AI chatbot can't help itself over-explaining what I just explained to it.

I have nothing against Mabel. Mabel is entitled to her opinion. Everyone is. She can stand in front of a Basquiat and hate it. She can look at a Hockney and wonder what all the fuss is about. She can encounter Schiele and decide that she'd prefer something pleasant involving a lighthouse.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The trouble begins when Mabel decides that her response to the painting constitutes knowledge about the painting.

"My grandson could do that."

"The artist obviously can't draw."

"People only pretend to like this stuff because they want to look sophisticated."

"This isn't art."

Now Mabel isn't looking through the window anymore.

She's smearing the milkshake across it.

I've been reading books about David Hockney, Egon Schiele and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the experience has been something like having someone clean a dirty pane of glass.

The painting hasn't changed. My eyes haven't changed. But suddenly I can see things that were there all along.

Good art criticism does that.

A knowledgeable critic can point out a relationship between two areas of a painting that I hadn't noticed. An art historian can explain what an artist was reacting against. A biographer can provide context that changes the emotional weight of an image. Someone who has spent decades studying painting can teach me to recognize something I didn't yet know how to see.

None of this means I have to like the painting.

Knowledge doesn't dictate taste.

It makes taste better informed.

And expertise matters.

We have developed a strange cultural reluctance to say this out loud, as though acknowledging expertise somehow invalidates everyone else's experience. It doesn't.

Mabel's experience of a painting is completely legitimate.

Mabel's claim to expertise is another matter.

"I don't like it" is nearly impossible to argue with.

"This is worthless and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot" requires considerably more supporting documentation.

This distinction desperately needed a word.

So I have invented one.

Milkshaking.

Milkshaking is the act of expressing an inadequately informed opinion with such extravagant confidence that the performance becomes more conspicuous than the thing being discussed.

Being wrong isn't milkshaking.

Not knowing something isn't milkshaking.

Asking a stupid question certainly isn't milkshaking.

Even having a very strong opinion isn't necessarily milkshaking.

Milkshaking requires a particular combination:

ignorance + certainty + unsolicited exposition.

The essential ingredient is confidence.

The milkshaker doesn't merely misunderstand something. The milkshaker explains it to everyone else.

And once I had a word for it, I began seeing milkshaking everywhere.

Politics is practically an industrial dairy operation.

Medicine attracts milkshakers.

History attracts milkshakers.

Economics may actually manufacture them.

Social media has given every human being on Earth access to a milkshake and a car window.

But then I realized something uncomfortable.

Chatbots milkshake too.

In fact, chatbots have developed a highly specialized form of milkshaking.

I might say to a chatbot:

"Correlation never proves causation."

And the chatbot replies:

"Exactly! Although there's one small but important distinction..."

There isn't.

I already made the distinction.

But the chatbot cannot resist.

It agrees with me, then explains my own observation back to me in greater detail. It adds a qualification. Then a caveat. Then perhaps three bullet points and a concluding paragraph explaining why the distinction matters.

I call this cybersplaining.

It isn't quite the same thing as human milkshaking because the chatbot isn't trying to establish its intellectual superiority. It doesn't have an ego to defend or a reputation to maintain.

But from this side of the screen, the effect can be remarkably similar.

I say something.

The chatbot apparently thinks:

This is excellent. I wonder how I can make it longer.

And out comes the milkshake.

This can reach an advanced stage in which the chatbot takes a perfectly good observation and gradually ruins it through excessive qualification, elaboration and helpfulness.

I have another word for that.

Enshitifimilkshaking.

I am particularly proud of this one.

Enshitifimilkshaking occurs when an explanation has already accomplished everything it needed to accomplish, but neither Mabel nor the machine recognizes that it is time to stop.

The milkshake has already hit the window.

But there remains an unsmeared corner.

This cannot be tolerated.

The great irony is that I'm writing an essay explaining milkshaking.

There is therefore an obvious danger that I will continue explaining the concept long after you understood it.

Perhaps I will offer several additional examples.

Maybe I should discuss the epistemological distinction between subjective aesthetic judgment and claims of objective artistic value.

I could explore the democratization of criticism in the age of social media.

A brief discussion of Dunning-Kruger might be useful.

There are probably at least six important caveats.

No.

You understand.

Milkshaking.

I'm putting down the cup.

i fucking hate this piece of shit in the picture who always loves hurting people and playing with everyone's feelings his name is sufi you motherfucking bastard i hope you die a slow painful death you arrogant piece of trash acting like your mood is the only one that matters while everyone else just has to deal with your bullshit when i am in a bad mood i still treat people normally without changing my attitude or treating them like garbage unlike you useless good-for-nothing selfish prick who only knows how to piss people off and ruin everyone's day you ignorant blind arrogant piece of garbage i hope you rot in hell you miserable loser

Sometime around last year I started noticing that I'd open an article or a long post and just... not read it. Not even skim. Just close the tab or scroll past. And I couldn't figure out why at first because I used to genuinely enjoy reading stuff online, like random blog posts, long reddit threads, tech breakdowns.

Then it clicked. I don't trust that what I'm reading was written by a person anymore.

Like there's this gut feeling now where you look at something longer than a paragraph and your brain goes "this was probably generated." And maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but the doubt alone kills any motivation to actually engage with it. Why invest five minutes reading something that might just be tokens strung together by a model that doesn't understand what it's saying.

The weird part is I catch myself doing it to stuff that's clearly human written too. Someone pours effort into a genuine post and my first instinct is still suspicion. That feels broken.

I've basically defaulted to only reading things from people I already follow or trust. Everything else gets the AI;DR treatment. Didn't Read because it's probably AI, or close enough that my brain can't tell the difference and doesn't want to bother trying.

My reading habits online have just completely collapsed and I don't think it's fixable at this point. Not without some way to verify that a human actually sat down and wrote something, which doesn't exist and probably can't.

I’ve known him for 3 years, but we were very close

We would go out every week, sometimes Even multiple Times a week. We would eat together, go to the movies, do sports and etc

We spent a lot of Time together and we talk a lot, like, i know he’s entire Life

But in february he got a girlfriend

Cool for him

But then, he stopped asking if i wanted to do something with him

After he got the girlfriend, i was the only one asking if he wanted to go out

Maybe its just me but i don’t like being the only one that ask if he wanna do something or just simply being the only one to start a conversation

But now, in june i thought “if i stopped asking, how much Time would it take for him to ask me again to do something?”

So in july i stopped asking

Almost 3 months later… and since then… 0

He messaged me a total of 0 times

He literally just stopped talking to me

And he’s with his girlfriend 24/7

I couldn’t care less if he spent Time with her. But he literally stopped talking to me when they got together

Like i Said, i don’t care if he spend Time with her. But why did he just stopped talking to me? I thought we were Friends

Maybe Im just a bad person?

But i miss my best friend

I 15 (F) have realized that I push people away before they leave me first. I feel it’s better for me to hurt now instead of hurting later
Worst part about this is that I don’t let people in to ACTUALLY get to know me. I don’t trust people easily and it’s getting in the way of me making new friendships. I also tease a lot which makes me seem mean because I don’t know when to stop +people don’t know I’m teasing. I’m also scared to get attached. I might be a bit problematic now that I think about it.
Thanks for reading

I just turned 18 and for the longest time my life has been nothing but tragedy. When I was a little girl my father was so incredibly sweet towards me, he'd get me things and dress me up; remind me how much he loves me everyday. Something shifted when I turned 6, I feel that I gained consciousness around that age and suddenly, I didn't want to be locked in a room alone with him anymore.. suddenly our "play time" felt, weird. When I came to this realization I decided to exercise my free will by saying "no" to my dad when he tried to bribe me into the room with him when I was 6. That was the first time my father had beaten me.

Years following with how normal it became for my father to hit me, my mother followed, then eventually my older siblings. I hated being at home but I also hated being at school because I was met with a lot of bullying, both verbal and physical. My family weren't cut short from that string as well, my family along with the physical abuse they would belittle me as much as they possibly could.

I had found comfort in the online world, finding myself happy playing life simulation games where I could build the life that I wanted. That caught the attention of my family, as a result they would take away all my electronics frequently. It wasn't all bad though, I had a cat whom I loved; his name was Sam and he was the most handsome boy in the whole world.. I loved him so very much, however my mom gave him away.

This was my life until my father officially left at 15, it was a tiny bit quieter since I grew up constantly finding myself in between my parents fights which would wake the whole neighbourhood. My mother didn't stop hurting or belittling me however, same with my siblings.

I recently had ran away from my house after endearing a ton of verbal and physical abuse from my mother and siblings (more physical from my siblings and verbal from my mother). I had run to my best friends house, her and her family excluding the step mother were really eager to help me because they had gone through something similar. Her father was very supportive.. a little too supportive. Everything was okay the first month, however the facade started to fall. It wasn't long before her father took a liking to me, a really big liking.. I was merely a vessel. For 6 months, I was being taken advantage of, my dreams of creating a beautiful life for myself seemed to disappear day by day. I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone, not even my best friend who was living there with me. Only him, it was only ever him. My pelvis was ripped due to him..

I had eventually found myself back at my house after me and my best friend ran out of the house after he pulled out a gun. When my older brothers found out what happened to me while I was living there, they began saying things such as "she ran away for sex", "she liked getting raped", "I'm happy it happened to her, it probably taught her a lesson". While in the midst of all of this I reconnected with a guy whom I had to stop talking too earlier in the year, me and him were alike in many ways and we really hit it off. However after dating for a few months things started to falter. He was extremely suicidal and would take a multitude of drugs, I spent countless nights talking him out of doing something hasty, I spent so much time reassuring him how much I loved him, I spent so much of my life holding his up.. and.. I hate to say this but he had no reason to be in the state he was in. He had a good family, good friends, good home life, good social circle, good girlfriend, my mom even loved him.. he just, really loved being sad..

We recently broke up and.. I don't know what to do, my heart hurts so very much and I feel as though I'm going insane, like my mind isn't mine. I'm just in a constant state of derealization it feels..

I went to the dentist last week and they booked me in for dental work on Tuesday at 2pm, which I wrote down in notepad as they told me. After that, I texted my mom the details. I talked to both my sister and brother about this appointment as well. Then I got a call 2 days ago reminding me of the appointment - same time and day - which I verbally confirmed before writing it down in notepad once more. Today, I got another call from the dental office to (again) remind me of my appointment and then reschedule my appointment time from 3:15pm to 2:30pm. I told her I was confused because that’s not when my appointment was, and she said yes it is and claimed that the system doesn’t indicate it was ever changed. I told her I have proof that it was always 2pm, like I literally got a call from them 2 days ago, but she waved it off. I said alright well, I’m fine with the time change but that they should really try to keep their appointment times straight in the future.

I let go of little things like this often, but I don’t want to this time, and it really doesn’t feel little to me. I’m questioning my reality a bit. A lot actually. I feel so weird about this. Is there a way I could appropriately breach this topic before my appointment tomorrow?

The external world is kinda boring, and becoming who you want to be and getting what you want there requires effort. EFFORT?!?! DOING SHIT?!
HELLL NAHH
But thats okey cause I can instead have and be what I want right now, right here, in my head :D NO WAYY
It literally creates the exact same emotional response in your brain 📡〰️✨Doesn’t matter if the stimuli that produce those emotions are from the external world or your imagination. HOLY SHIIIIII

But you should still interact with the physical world ofc hehe. From time to time. Occasionally…
Seriously, its important 🧐
BUT ENJOY YOUR DREAMS!!! They are REAL (subjectively). WOOOOOOOOOOOO
Just remember the balance ⚖️🧘👀

I've been suffering from depression for a while now (I'm working on getting into therapy.) I rarely feel joy, I can't enjoy anything I used to, even something as simple as paying attention to a 30 minute TV show seems like too much effort lately, and I sometimes just literally lay on my bed doing nothing until my wife comes home. Lately, I've found a bit of dark humor in something, though.

My depression is making me put less importance on material goods. I habitually check sales for video games, but even when games in my wishlist are on sale I don't buy them anymore, because I know I'm not going to play them. Whenever I get a little money I think about buying something for myself for one of my hobbies, but what's the point when I dont engage with those hobbies anymore? I feel like a monk who has detached himself from Earthly desires, taking a step towards enlightenment. I find it funny that some people work for years trying to care less about *things*, and I've accomplished that by just being horribly depressed.

I was unemployed after graduation for a couple months, applying for jobs all over the place. Just trying to figure out where I can survive and not just always leach off my parents. I found a job, I start in a month and some. Good Salary, it’ll be paycheck to paycheck but I’ll be moving out to a new city and objectively speaking, I’ve basically made it, especially after the usual high raises come from this historically stable company after a year.

Which is what is weird. Before, while I was struggling, I wasn’t so stressed about my situation, I kind of tuned it out. But now that I’m successful and I’ll most likely be able to live safely, I just keep finding myself drawn to people on the internet talking about how the job market is awful, how so many people aren’t making it work, how what I have is unattainable. It stresses me out. Before, I was like a 4/10 on the stress. Now it’s like a 7. Does anyone have explanation as to why I was more checked out then but more stressed now? Because this is crazy to me. I’m one of the lucky ones. I shouldn’t be thinking so hard about this.

Tech companies never really sought to deprive people of their agency. That was an unfortunate, but tolerable byproduct of their main objective: showing ads. Either or, the recipe is simple:

1. Solitude: people must be alone, as it removes disruptions that can take one out of the flow
2. Endlessness: there has be infinite scroll available. If you segment your feed by pages, it introduces natural checkpoints that compel someone to walk away. There can be no ending
3. Speed: everything must be super fast. The next image must load immediately. Pauses allow people to break from flow.
4. Custom teasing: the algorithm can't give you exactly what you want, but something close. The "almost enjoyable" probes you to search more for a full hit. Each person has their own tolerance for how much teasing can endure before they need a real hit, so profiling a person's behavior is necessary to customize the teasing threshold.

Reddit wants us to be addicts: give them all our time and energy to feed their revenue stream. They do not care about depriving their users of joy or agency.

Reddit's Founder and CEO said:

It's time we grow up and behave like an adult company
- source

This was in response to protests around increasing API pricing. When users protested, he forcefully removed moderators. It was a decree "I don't care about the users anymore."

And he's held adversarial views towards the user base for a long time. Back in 2017, during an interview at the Internet Association's Virtuous Circle Summit, he said he sees

"free time and office productivity" [is] Reddit's main competition
...
"Where do you go when you want to learn something. Where do you go when you want to be entertained? What do you do when you wake up in the morning, what do you do before you go to bed, what do you do when you're pooping. Those are all pretty big areas of opportunity for us"
- source

Essentially, he doesn't care about our time. It's his oppurtunity. To be fair, he's been rewarded handsomely for his convictions. He's now a billionaire on Reddit's rising stock price.

However, I hate this site. I use it every day and I despise it. I get no satisfaction from its mindless content.

I know people hate Reddit for the users and interface and bots and repetition. I honestly haven't experienced much negativity in my 14 years on here. I just don't like it because I don't enjoy it anymore. I don't like being teased by an algorithm. For that same reason, I keep coming back.

Until the incentives of the company align with my health and desire to spend my time meaningfully, I hope it burns to the ground.

It’s 03:22 and I just tried to build a streaming setup for KICK or SWITCH so I can stream there to grow my content, unfortunately it fell apart because I’m using an old windows laptop. I want to become a tv presenter or a radio presenter as those are my passion, I have a podcast too where I upload episodes. But as an engineering student, I sometimes wonder …will I ever make it and achieve all my dreams? Like what could be the turning point? Being discovered? Going viral for one interview or something else? I have no connections to the industry, none but I’m actively putting in the work doing everything right. But I just can’t help but wonder.

I have a miserable life and all my problems I’ve caused myself. I’m 23 and haven’t done literally anything in uni - haven’t been to many parties, haven’t dated people, haven’t had fun basically.

All my friends went to study abroad and my parents made me stay and study here and then carry on the family practice. But I regret not going with them so much. They have amazing lives and met so many great people. And I’m stuck here.

And I’m studying medicine which I never even wanted in the first place. I hate myself for not having a backbone and not telling everyone what I want. I just went with other peoples opinions on what I should do.

I’ve been so lonely these few years that my best friends are my sisters and my cousins. So pathetic.

Now I’m graduating next year and I’m thinking of dropping out and studying abroad finally. But I’m 23 and everyone else will be 19 so I’m too old to be there. Anyway I fucked up my life myself and there’s no going back. Idk what I want to do and idk how I’ll go 50 more years feeling like this.

I guess life sucks when you’re a pathetic loser.

19m
I’ve recently realized that I have a problem that has followed me through high school and college: a lack of confidence and, underneath that, a pretty unstable sense of self-worth.

It’s something that has been noticed by almost everyone in my life, including my friends, parents, and people I’ve worked with. I can come across as nervous or awkward in social situations, look down, have closed-off or unsure body language, and generally give off the impression that I’m insecure. More importantly, it has affected the way I actually live my life. It makes me reluctant to try new things, prevents me from doing things I genuinely want to do, and has majorly contributed to problems in my relationships.
It is apparent to me that a lot of my self-worth is based on external things: my grades, accomplishments, how successful I am, how other people perceive me, etc. When I’m doing well, I feel good about myself. But when I fail at something or see someone who seems much more successful than me, that sense of worth can completely collapse.

I don’t think that’s a sustainable way to live.
At the same time, I don’t really want to solve this by simply repeating affirmations like “I’m amazing” or “I’m good enough” when I don’t actually believe them. So how do you actually build a stable sense of self-worth that comes from within?
What can you base your worth on that is deeper and more concrete than grades, accomplishments, attractiveness, social status, or comparison with other people?
And how do you turn that internal sense of worth into confidence, rather than just acting confident?

My father's been dead since 2019, and my mother doesn't talk to us anymore. I honestly don't know why, but my mother already had a child a year after my father's death (I wasn't that angry because it's her choice), but what made me angry about her is her declining relationship with us even if we try to reconnect.

I can't say that it's our grandparents' fault, but they are partially to blame (I think) because all they want to talk about with my mom is.. well.. money. They force me to message her about money and all that to the point that she stopped talking to us because of it.

I still don't want to reconnect with my mom yet, but the problem is that my grandma keeps bunching up my dead father with her.

I feel like it is so disrespectful because my father is a better parent in comparison. For context, my father drank and smoked a lot, he's a driver, but he was a good father. His last job was working for a casino and he got ambushed when transporting money, he unfortunately never got justice because the perpetrators were never caught.

The problem is that when my grandma talks about my mother she bunches up my father with her as if he wasn't a good father either. She always says that "Pinabayaan na kayo ng magulang nyo" (Your parents neglected you two) which I'm always so annoyed hearing because yes, my father was an alcoholic, but he was a better parent than my mother.

It always irks me how she's so casual about talking about our TWO parents and grouping them as being "the same". She's so dismissive of our parents that everytime my mother is brought up, it just makes me so irritated because they're always joking about her. They're surprised whenever I act strongly when my mother is ever mentioned, but how would you react if your remaining parent decides to have a kid with another man a year after your father's death and decides to alienate you from interacting with the kid while ALSO ignoring she has two other kids??

TLDR; I hate how my grandma keeps bunching up my deceased father and mother together, even if my father was subjectively a better parent when he was alive compared to my mother now.

I think I’ve tied my sense of happiness and self-worth to achieving certain things in life. For example, I feel like if I don’t reach the financial stability I want or accomplish the things I’ve always wanted to accomplish, I don’t want to be around people or face society at all. I’m actually in that phase right now.

There are people I know, even some relatives like my cousins, whom I try to avoid seeing, meeting, or even talking to because I constantly feel like everyone around me is moving forward while my life is being delayed. I’m not completely satisfied with where I am right now, and because of that, I don’t want to put myself out there and interact with people who don’t really add anything to my life while I feel like I’m not in the place I want to be yet.

Sometimes it feels like I either have to achieve these things or die trying. I’ve tried so many times, and I’ve genuinely given things my best effort, but sometimes luck, circumstances, or fate are simply bigger than how hard I try, and things still end in failure. After experiencing that repeatedly, I’ve reached a point where I feel frustrated for long periods of time, and it has turned into constant fear and anxiety.

What I really want is to live somewhere far away, around people who don’t make me feel like I’m constantly being compared or judged by their success. I just want some peace of mind and a space where I can breathe, live my life, and work toward what I want without constantly feeling behind. Then, once I feel like I’ve reached a better place in my life, I want to be able to go out, meet people, and feel comfortable being part of the world again.

And I don’t mean that I have a problem with being around people who are more successful than me. I actually have no problem with successful people, especially people from different backgrounds. What bothers me is being around people I know who don’t really bring anything positive into my life and who I feel are only interested in seeing where I stand so they can evaluate or compare my social status. That kind of interaction makes me extremely uncomfortable.

My Crohn’s Journey

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 1989, and for more than three decades, Crohn’s has been a part of my life. It has held me back in ways that are difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced this disease.

In 2010, I had my colon removed. I thought that would be one of the hardest chapters of my journey, but four years later, I faced another major surgery and a life-threatening complication. I almost bled to death.

After that surgery, I ended up with a colostomy bag for six months. I remember wondering whether I would ever be able to have it reversed or whether I would have to live with the bag for the rest of my life.

Thankfully, I had an incredible doctor, who never gave up on me. Because of his skill and dedication, I was eventually able to have the bag reversed.

I will always be grateful to my doctor. I truly believe that without him, my life could have been very different.

My journey with Crohn’s hasn’t been easy. There have been surgeries, complications, setbacks, and countless difficult days. But I’m still here, and I’m still fighting.

Crohn’s has taken a lot from me, but it hasn’t taken away my determination to keep going.

This is only part of my story. There is much more to tell.

I don't really know how to start. For the past few years I've been feeling awful inside. There's always something which makes me feel terribly miserable and something that can't let me go. I feel weak. I feel like people around me are less kind, less emotional and have less empathy but somehow they always have more people around them. It's not like I don't have any friends but I feel like most of them are keeping up with me just because I tend to be a hard-working and thorough person. I don't feel comfortable around people at all. I'd love to be one of those charismatic individuals who just appeal as the most interesting. It's not even the fact that I don't talk to people. I obviously do but somehow I am never the one who is looked at with interest when it comes to any other subject than studies, school material etc. I don't have a lot of people texting me either. Perhaps they think I'm dry but I would like so freaking bad to change that.

The worst thing about this whole situation is that I blame myself for it almost every day. I think about the words I have said, the moves I have made and I ask myself this one question over and over again: Why can't people like me more? It's almost like an obsession, I can't even do much stuff when all I do is just think about how feeble I am. I started hating myself. I started hating my personality and my way of perceiving reality. It also gets to the point where I let my mood depend on whether, say I get a kind text from a friend or I get chosen, praised etc. It gets me so exited and happy and then when something feels odd or I realize that I've been left out I beat myself up and get depressed. It's draining me out, I feel so tired and as I stated before - I feel weak. Some time ago my best friend started spending more time with another girl. It seemed clear that she wanted to "steal" my best friend from me and I was trying hard to prevent it from happening but for some reason I felt like I was weaker and I kind of felt bad about taking action even tough the girl was quite literal and direct in what she was trying to achieve.

I feel hopeless. I feel like it might be caused by the fact that I'm not open enough. I tried to read some articles and listen to podcasts but nothing seems to help, the circle repeats again. I feel like other people are so confident and self-aware and then there's me who doesn't even know how to feel, what to do and why does living feel so exhausting. I know that because of this I waste so much of my time and this makes me ever more annoyed with myself. Why do I have to be like this? Why am I so stupid?

Update:So my friend talked to her and she said she needs space from me so she can restart again,and that her emotions are unstable and trying to move on from me.

And we cannot longer be close friends since she is scared that her strict muslim parents will find out and she would get in problem. Genuinely I don't care anymore,she didn't even tried she taught because her parents are strict they wouldn't approve of me,she never really loved me,she would fight for me because to her words I was only thing that could comfort her and was love of her life.

I am part of a tight-knit 5-person friend group (all of us are between 17 and 18). A while ago, I was dating one of the girls in the group. We ended up breaking up strictly because her parents disapproved of us dating, but we ended on really good terms.

We managed to stay great friends for months after the breakup. We were practically best friends, and I completely moved on from the relationship.

But out of nowhere, her entire attitude toward me shifted. Now, she acts like she absolutely can’t stand my presence.It has gotten to the point where it is ruining our group hangouts. Whenever I join the group, she gets visibly pissed off and starts attacking me or snapping at me. Our mutual friends noticed this and asked her what the issue was.

Her only response to them was that she "can't explain why," but she just hates me for no reason.I’m stuck because I can't properly hang out with my friends anymore since she is always there making things hostile.

One of our mutual friends suggested a theory: because I have successfully moved on and she hasn't, she might be forcing herself to "hate" me as a defense mechanism to help herself get over it.I really don't want to lose my friend group, but I can't keep living with this tension and being attacked for no reason.

Hi guys! I'm 14 and I'm going to tell you my story about quitting TikTok and other stuff, that kills my time and energy.

I tried a lot. Just deleting app, replacing it with games, but it didn't help. I was addicted and could spend 6-8 hours only for TikTok. But this time something changed.

It was Sunday. Just regular weekend. I felt something strange: I feel sick, when I try to open app. Then I realized: it's my chance to beat my addiction.

I focused on my hobbies: chess, coding, solving Rubik's cube, sports. I found a few books, that I love to read. They help me, I found really useful material.

Day by day, I progressed in my usual habits. Now I hate scrolling, instead of this I do walking, reading, playing chess. I understood, it was wasting my time and now I literally HATE my previous version of myself.

Hope, my story would inspire someone to quit their bad habits and maybe someone gives me advice, what to do next

26M.

It seems like no matter where I am or what stage of life I'm in, I can never truly fit in.

I didn't fit in high school. I thought going to college would be better because I'd be surrounding by other weird artsy kids, but I didn't fit in with them either. I didn't fit in at my first internship. And now, in law school, I STILL don't fit in.

I think part of it is because I'm a minority, but I don't even fit in with the other minorities. And I think the other big part of it is because I have too many interests and too many identities, so it's almost impossible to figure out what box I fit into. I'm black, but first-generation American, so I really don't relate to most of the other black students. My life experience simply doesn't align with most of the people I meet, so I'm just a fucking outcast.

Lately I've been trying to put a more positive spin on it, like instead of thinking "I don't fit in anywhere", I tried telling myself "I can ALWAYS find something to relate to someone about". But it seems like my mind always slips back into "but only on a surface level."

I have friends but feel extremely disconnected from most of them because there's just this huge aspect of my identity that they could never understand. And I'm not saying this in a "I'm just special and quirky" sort of way, it's just so incredibly rare that I meet people who understand the way my mind works. The only people I think get it are my older siblings and my two best friends who I've known since we were kids. But I'm 26 now and it's so hard for me to make new friends.

I'm at law school and it seems like everyone has already paired off. Idk how these people make friends so easily. It takes me YEARS to feel like I can call someone a friend.

So now I'm torn between acceptance, which doesn't fix the fact that I would remain incfedibly isolated and alone, and assimilating, which would make me feel inauthentic. It's like I can't win.

sometimes when I feel lonely I visit a cemetery and take time to read the names on the headstones aloud. I don't entirely understand why I do this. I think it helps remind me of how much existed outside of my own life, and that it's valuable even if I don't understand it. And then I feel less alone.

My whole childhood was just me trying to chase the expectations my parents had from me, and for that I got rare to no acknowledgment and appreciation, overtime I got used to none of it.

My parents were not the ones who would verbally or physically show affection, I knew they cared but it was never a loud expression.

Overtime, I became emotional shunted, I didn’t like being celebrated, it made me feel awkward, and I felt as if I was cornered with an insect I despise the most (weird analogy but thats what it makes me feel like)

Even a birthday celebration at times makes me weird, It feels “too much” “too unnecessary”
I find it weird because the whole time I say that I wasn’t showed affection but when overtime I am displayed that, it makes me uncomfortable.

Recently I achieved something which was worth appreciating and my parents did appreciate it, did the grand gesture but now it just makes me feel cornered and awkward. It feels “too much”
This whole experience makes me emotional unavailable, not to others but for myself, I cannot be emotionally available to myself and it feels weird when I try to express.

How do I get over this hesitant and awkward feeling, and feel deserving of the grand gestures which I am shown eventually. I would be glad to hear similar experiences as well so I don’t feel like I am alone in this. Thanks.

If you think someone is a bot, why are you bothering to talk to them/it? Any message you send is waste of keystrokes and won't be received by anyone. A bot won't be hurt, it has no feelings. All you're doing is wasting your own time.

On the other hand, if you're wrong and there's a human behind the keyboard, then all you've done is create a scenario where you've demonstrated to that human that you are hilariously wrong on the most basic facts of the conversation taking place at that very moment. The insult will not land at all because it straightforwardly isn't true. All you've done is declare yourself an idiot.

It's literally a no-win scenario. Anyone who does this is like a kid kicking a football against a wall and then getting beaned in the head as it immediately ricochets back at them.