I had never really used it before. I made an account for porn because yeah, and had one a long time ago just for some momentary fandom interaction, but aside from that I never really interacted with the environment in any meaningful way, especially not when it came to more important conversations.

Until the other day when I decided to make a real account just to check things out. I mean, it's one of the biggest social medias in the world, and everyone seems to be on here. So many important figures are here to share their thoughts or make announcements, and so many important topics are discussed. It seemed a bit inefficient to get all my information from there through random screenshots in other places or second hand comments. So why not try it out?

I don't really use social media that much aside from Reddit. And I had heard that Twitter was a "cesspool", but I thought it couldn't be that bad. People on Reddit aren't exactly the greatest either a lot of the time, and I imagined it might be similar over there. And I had TikTok for a while, which was full of terrible and stupid people, but I didn't think it would apply so much to such a different environment.

I thought I had already seen the worst of people on social media and that people were just being a bit dramatic.

Oh my fucking god. What the actual fuck? Guys Twitter is absolutely fucking awful. What in the actual fuck is this?? How is it possible that such a terrible thing and such terrible people exist? Everyone is angry all the time about everything. Everyone is terrible to each other all the time. If you break even once and reply to a single controversial comment or discussion, the algorithm immediately takes note and adapts to keep feeding you more of the same thing.

I tried to engage with some fandom stuff since a lot of shows are releasing episodes now, and it took no time until most of the posts popping up were just people being angry and complaining about what other people are complaining about what other people are complaining about.

I experimented a bit by purposefully engaging with a couple bad posts on more serious social topics, and the amount of insane inhumane delusional stupid nazi racist rapist homophobic mysoginistic and inhuman takes I got fed as a result was absolutely fucking crazy. Everything was terrible on all sides and everyone seemed to treat everyone else as the enemy.

It's full of bots. FULL of bots everywhere. Just tweeting controversy after controversy after controversy for engagement and social manipulation. Spreading malicious links everywhere. Pretending to be real people and feeding into terrible narratives. A lot were very obvious, even if the comments didn't seem to notice, and I'm sure a lot were much better disguised. I'm not even sure if I ever interacted with a real person there.

We're fucked. We're actually so fucked. How is this ok? How is this legal? Why has this continued to be allowed to exist? Between this and TikTok, I'm not surprised in the slightest about why the world is heading in such a terrible direction. This is the worst of humanity all at once with an algorithm that just feeds you more and more of what makes you angriest and what makes you think the worst about everyone around you. If I was stupider and genuinely thought that what I read here represents the general population out in the real world, I would be a neo nazi by now. I can't even imagine how many kids are making accounts on here just like on Tiktok, and having their worldview of other people informed by this. I can't even imagine how many adults are falling for all this too.

We're dead. That's it. We're dead. Someone invented the perfect thing to break society and someone else perfected it and it's here. Humanity is dead. Our social problems will never be fixed and we will only become more and more divided so long as this exists. Anyone who makes the mistake of signing up for these sites and tries to engage with the cultural or political conversation will be manipulated into thinking everyone is the enemy and that everyone is stupid except for you.

I don't understand how this happened. I don't understand how we fix this. I don't understand why nobody seems to feel any sense of panic about any of this. What is wrong with everyone? People talk about this site as if it was just a mildly bad social media where a couple crazy people say some stupid stuff somtiemes. But this is genuinely society breaking. Does genuinely nobody care?

I'm a man in my 30s who has been going through quite a lot unpacking lately. Trying to get to the root cause of my chronic unhappiness/sense of emptiness, despite having a good life.

At a young age, I came out as gay. I lived fully embracing that identity until about a year ago. After really analyzing why I felt so fixated on men yet always felt empty trying to be with men, I realized I'm actually bi. Not only that, but I'm possibly bi with a heavy preference towards women. I just needed to work out some things, but my attraction to women really became apparent. Like something just snapped into place.

I'd always felt like something was missing. I had many women throughout my life have a crush on me. I always said I was gay, because there was always some mental block for me when it came to being with a woman.

Looking back on it, i had probably sent more than a few mixed messages. I'm sorry, I was just as confused.

Life is so chaotic and I am literally drained.

The Women’s shelter that me and my baby were staying at had called this morning to let me know that I had mail to pick up since we moved into our new apartment. I got the mail & there was an invitation for my 7 yr old for a Halloween birthday theme on Saturday. I have literally spent every dime I have to just keep a roof over our heads so we don’t end up back into this shelter .

I decided to go to the Goodwill just to see if they had some secondhand costumes she could wear. When did the Goodwill get so expensive too? She has been asking to dress up as a fairy & I had found a pair of pink babydoll slippers in here size there but for $14? I am stumped. I even went to Walmart to just try my luck in finding a cheap puffy skirt & it’s outrageous. I HATE disappointing my baby, but I had to buy my seizure meds & now the regret is kicking in.

She has adjusted to her new school & making friends. I am thankful that she is finally getting past the trauma her father put us through. It was hard enough that she was getting bullied a few weeks ago because we can’t buy the newest clothes or shoes & I handled that situation with her teacher. I take 3 steps forward then get pushed back 10. I know what we are going through now is temporary but it’s hard to just survive.

Used to write creatively when I was younger, but fell out of it as I got a more full time job, more serious girlfriend, etc. Years on I'm married, and my wife along with other people told me I should write something because I seem really good at it and was thought to be pretty creative. So I decided to give it a go again and get back into it with some low-bar stuff in the hard scifi-high fantasy department. 30K words in and I felt okay about the stuff I was writing, I really liked my characters, what I had to say with the plot and the overall feel of the world.

So I recruited a few people in my personal life to beta read for me and answer a few questions I had about each chapter to see if I was getting stuff across the right way. They agreed enthusiastically and I sent them the first chapter. It took a little over a month to get follow-up from anyone.

I also pulled in my wife because she was the first to suggest I write, and began to read it to her in small parts at night after we put the kids to bed. First time she agreed readily, second time too, third time she said she was tired and suggested the next night, and avoided the topic after that. I stopped bringing it up.

I had also sent my second chapter off to the beta readers. They still haven't gotten back to me on it. I don't think they're going to.

Final nail was when I submitted a small excerpt on Reddit to try and get some feedback about a particular interaction to see if I got a character right, and then it got completely dumpstered by someone who informed me that the entire prose was over-written; apparently glaringly so enough that they didn't even bother answering my question about the characters. But that's no excuse. If it's not good it's not good, and all evidence pointed towards my story being complete garbage.

So I decided to toss the whole idea, deleted the files and moved on. It sucks because I really liked my little imaginary people and their world, but I couldn't stop thinking about how pointless and worthless it all was every time I sat down to write.

There's not really a moral to this whole thing and I suppose I'm just waxing poetic at this point (which I suppose is fitting for the flaws in my writing), but just needed to get that out there. If anyone else has gone through this kind of thing too I'd like to hear about it, helps me feel like I'm not alone in it.

I've destroyed my career, my life, my future.

After getting a computer science bachelor's degree, doing projects, and doing internships along the way, I'm now unemployed, homeless, and 30k in student loan debt. I should've just dropped out of high school. My soul is tortured. Wounded. Fractured. Fragile. Screaming, yelling, shrieking at me for this to end. I have no self confidence.

I don't see any light, any hope in front of me. Another homeless guy I met recently was a high school dropout turned criminal for physical assault. He offered me a few drugs when he heard my story. Thought it'd help me cope.

I didn't say yes, yet, but I'm considering it. My life is utterly destroyed into millions of tiny glass shards, far beyond repair. What should I do? Take the drugs? Become a criminal? Wander around like a zombie for the next few decades?

I hope this isn’t low quality content and if it is, please remove.

But I am standing here in line, at the Employment Insurance office. It’s packed (lots of people out of work) and I tried to let out a little fart 💨.

It sounded like a carpenter slamming a full sheet of plywood down, in an underground parking lot.

In short, it was thunderous.

It also smells, badly.

There is an Asian women behind me. I caught her eyes for a second, they were filled with contempt.

So here I am, typing on Reddit pretending like I dont know what going on.

JFC, it smells like last night casserole dinner.

i’ve always been someone who tries to understand people. even when they hurt me, i find myself wondering what happened to them, what made them the way they are, and whether there’s something i’m not seeing. i don’t think i’ve ever been particularly good at disliking people because somehow, there’s always a part of me that wants to understand them.

but i think somewhere along the way, i got so used to making sense of everyone else’s feelings that i stopped knowing what to do with my own. i can sit with someone for hours, listen to them, and try to understand things from perspectives i don’t necessarily agree with. but when it comes to myself, i tend to suppress everything until i eventually forget what i was upset about in the first place. which, now that i’m typing this, probably isn’t the healthiest coping mechanism lol.

and i guess what makes it a little sad is that i don’t think i’m asking for anything extraordinary. sometimes i just wish someone would put the same amount of effort into understanding me. not because i need them to agree with everything i say, but because i’d like to know what it feels like to have someone genuinely curious about the things i don’t say.

anyway, i don’t really know what the point of this post is. i think i’m just realising that being understanding and feeling understood are two very different things.

I look and sound like my Dad's clone, but internally we're very different. My mum's side is often said to be a bit spectrum-y and I am a leading example of that. My dad's side on the other hand, very emotional, passionate, full-on people. They feel like a sensory and emotional assault to me a lot of the time. I must seem like an unfeeling robot to them.

It's just sad, cus I don't think my dad's a bad guy, he's just very 'human' in a way I've tried to emulate, but that attempt took every bit of strength I had and ruined me. So I just don't do that anymore. I don't try to be what I'm not.

But it means every interaction my dad and me have is superficial, both of us just trying to avoid a fight. Not the father son relationship I envisioned. I hoped we'd go fishing, play snooker, darts, maybe have some movie nights, like we did when I was a kid/young teen. He just makes excuses when I suggest anything like that.

I had to remind him to say happy birthday to me this year. I may not be the most emotionally expressive person, but that felt not great. I miss who I thought my dad was growing up. He probably misses who he'd hoped I'd become.

Just a shit old situation. Sorry if this ain't the best place to post this, I just wasn't sure and the sub description seemed more or less open to such stuff. If not let me know I'll remove it. Try find somewhere else to post.

Hello everyone,

With a sunken heart and a foggy mind, I am writing this post because I feel like I have hit absolute rock bottom. I apologize for any grammatical errors or if something doesn't make sense. I am quite literally numb as I type this out.

• I am a relatively early career CS grad (graduated in late 2023). I previously worked at a fast-paced startup, where I managed to work my way up from software testing to Machine Learning Software Engineering.
• I became fascinated by AI research and decided to pursue it remotely and unpaid at a reputed institute (in hindsight, perhaps out of greed for the opportunity and prestige). I was asked to independently explore research ideas and work towards publishing papers (again, in hindsight, perhaps a red flag).
• We attempted two projects. During the first, I was unfortunately unable to make much progress. After a short break, we decided to try another.
• During the second project, the professor and PhD student were unavailable for meetings for an extended period. I continued working independently, shared updates whenever possible (after a while, my updates were mostly requests to resume meetings as I had no response to technical updates), and managed to come up with two novel algorithms. While waiting for access to compute resources, I also obtained some preliminary results using whatever resources I had available.
• When meetings finally resumed, I was suddenly asked to stop working on the project because I "hadn't implemented anything." I tried explaining and sharing everything I had worked on through emails, but for reasons I still cannot understand, they did not seem particularly interested.
• I now have a career gap of approximately one year. I reached out to my previous startup to see if I could return, but it seems unlikely at this stage.

This experience, while deeply traumatic, has also been eye-opening.

I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my decisions and shortcomings, and I have come to realize that I seem to possess all seven deadly sins in one form or another.

However, I am now completely lost as to what I should do next. It almost feels as though my career is over before it has even properly begun.

• The job market is already difficult, and having a gap of approximately one year only makes things worse.
• I worry that my time spent pursuing research, without a publication, will be viewed negatively by prospective employers.
• I also fear that I have fallen behind my peers, both professionally and technically.

If anyone has gone through something similar, I would be incredibly grateful to hear how you managed to move forward.

I just want to understand whether there is still a realistic path forward and how I might begin rebuilding my career.

Thank you

As a guy, I’m genuinely embarrassed by how small my hands and feet are.

My hands are ridiculously tiny, to the point where they look like they stopped growing when I was in third grade. I’m not even exaggerating when I say they look like the hands of an 8-year-old kid.

The worst part is that I’ve never met a single girl whose hands were smaller than mine. It makes me feel weirdly insecure about something I have absolutely no control over.

I know it might sound like a stupid thing to worry about, but it genuinely bothers me. I feel like my hands make me look less masculine, and I can’t help comparing them to everyone else’s.

Are there other guys here with unusually small hands and feet? Does anyone else feel insecure about something like this, or am I just overthinking it?

There’s been only one constant in my life: a deep, intricate, kind of labyrinthic sense of loneliness.
Logically, I know I’m not alone. I can’t be. I have friends, not that many, but there they are. I have a five-year-long boyfriend who loves me. I have a mother and a sister and an extended family that’s kind of funny. I made some friends at university, though I do not really see them much outside. I tend to get along with people, and I am (almost) extroverted.
Still, I feel so alone and alienated, as if everyone were looking through me, ignoring me completely, as if I were just a sad ghost of myself. Every word I say seems to vanish in the air, like a fucking kite made of wind, and no social interaction, no matter what, seems to be able to remove this screaming hole in my chest, this underlying loneliness in everything I do.
Is it a mere numerical issue? It’s true that my relationships are quite scarce. In my entire family, there are only nine of us, and not everyone gets along (for instance, my sister and I don’t really talk much). I have a group of five friends, of whom only two are actually close, and at university, though I am currently in my fourth year, my relationships have been terribly superficial, God knows why. My boyfriend is the exception, honestly, which doesn’t seem very feminist on my behalf.
My therapist tries to pick me up, and it makes me hate her. She says at least I have someone; she says that nowadays people are more alone than we want to believe, that connections are transactional and banal, and that I’m lucky to have two or three people who would actually go out of their way to help me. Even if this is true, it doesn’t help. Every day I feel like shit.
Could it be caused by my thriving narcissism? My desire to be important or recognized, which makes me feel that I need a lot of friends, a lot of people staring and listening to me and telling me they love me. That’s the thing, really. Like in Neil Young’s song, I need someone to love me the whole day through. Whenever they don’t pay me enough attention, when they are not present, I just feel their love disappear, and I disappear alongside it. It’s so bizarre; it’s like I’ve never built any sort of trust in people. When they are not around me, I can’t be sure they care for me. It’s like the thread that unites us gets broken in an instant, and all of our memories seem to change into a recollection of lies and misunderstandings. They never liked me.
This is a real fucking problem, as every decision I make is completely tainted by it. I choose to do what I think would make me less lonely and then feel guilty when I do, as it never seems enough.

(I write and share this for reasons I can’t really comprehend right now, but I suppose I need to get this out of my chest, and I need to be read. You may notice why.)

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

(24M) I live with my parents, and my father always was an overly critical person. I wouldn't say i have daddy issues, bc i don't dislike him nor want him to change. I just wish he wasn't so critical. Actually we love each other, but sometimes he is so critical and demanding at me that i end up feeling a complete piece of shit. Since i was a kid, he would yell at every thing i did wrong. Some toy i let on a different place, if i forgot the TV on, the way i was dressing myself, the way i kempt my hair, if i talked too high or too low. It is the main reason i didn't have that "rebellious phase" ,like other kids and teenagers did. He always was an angry person and if i caused any trouble or didn't behave well, the dragon would wake up and toast me hahahaha. I was never able to hide anything from him. I was in general a well behaved and chill kid, but he made a storm out of every mistake.

I grew up and i'm a wretched pile of insecurities, full of frustrations. My dad is still a controlling person, even though he loves me. Currently, i'm unemployed and studying to tech school. He often come at my room to reprehend me. On how i should have been more "responsible" and bold if i want to be a succesful person. He starts those " your cousin James is younger than you and did this, did that. Smith's daughter is about to buy an apartment. Your school mate ,Carl ,did this. You need to be more". I mean, sir, i did mostly everything you taught me, and it is still bad?! Sometimes his lectures and complaints made me want to be a robot, which he could configure himself the way he likes. Bc i dont know if i would ever reach his expectations.

I hate this life, i hate everyone around me, i hate myself, i hate waking up, ive been feeling like this for a while. i just want to disappear. everything feels like torture, my parents don’t give a fuck about me at all (i’m 16), force me to study, shout at me and make everything even worse. i don’t know what to do, i don’t think i will ever get better, and i don’t want to, everything is pointless. there is no way out, i wanna die but suicide isn’t an option for me because i fear pain and what other people will think

I have ptsd and I had a breakdown a month ago, all the trauma coming back. One minute I was someone, now I'm something else. I removed everyone and everything from my life. This event totally fucked me up.

This has happened before and every time it takes 6+ months to get back to 'normal'. I'm exhausted. Everytime I revert back to the worst version of myself. I know they say progress isn't linear but I feel I have been set back even lower than I started.

Having different interests and values, another sense of humor, being on the spectrum, having a mental disorder, being friends with toxic people... So many things can happen in relationships that just makes you realize how you don't belong in the room.

Sometimes you're happy but then you spend time with people who just ruin your mood.

If being alone is so bad, then why my mood is better before interacting with others?

People will you make feel lonely, being alone can be daunting but it's honestly freedom from people's opinions and negativity.

I'm a real black sheep in my family.

I lost any connection with them around age 4-5, when I realised the abuse would go on and on, and my childhood was sad, lonely and depressing.

My relationship with my parents has always been money-based: they invested in me hoping I'd pay them back once I got a good job. They love me as a kid but hate me as a person. They never let me joke or show emotion, got mad if I was too happy or too sad, and were furious that I was the least attractive girl in my class, though both have admitted they adore how I'm not like them and that I'm extraordinary.
I share only a few traits with them (my mom's bubbly extroversion, my dad's nerdiness, and the lowkey unhinged humour of both). I was beaten, kicked out many times, and they wanted to give me up for adoption, and I still deal with PTSD five years after moving out for uni. (I was never acting up,honestly, they just couldn’t manipulate would often get at me mad for no reason most of the time).

My uncle cut me off for taking my parents' money, ruined my birthday mood after a joke triggered him, and complained about me to my mom, so I blocked him everywhere, he is dead to me now.
My grandma, never close but always nice, now seems mad or sad around me, and I don't know if it's because she had a stroke-like episode or if she starts to hate me too. My 12-year-old brother is sweet, fits the family perfectly, and is the only one who doesn't seem to hate me, but my parents and uncle tell him I'm selfish, stupid, ugly and a loser, so I think he'll hate me eventually.

I graduated 2-2.5 years ago and still have no stable job. I once worked half a year for free because the owner scammed me, but I needed the portfolio, and it later helped me land freelance gigs, though I've never reached financial independence. For the past year my parents have sent me money for rent and occasionally clothes, which is great, but they really hate me for it. I get that they're mad I still ask for money in my early twenties, but despising me this much is insane, and I have no choice until I find a job. I've applied every day for a year, even for waitressing, and keep getting rejected. I'm tired and don't understand this job market, I can’t land even a waitress job.

Oh my goshh I have such an issue with sound. I absolutely hate hateeee chewing/ slurping or any eating noise in general. genuinely makes me wanna scream. also absolutely hate public places due to noise, i hate sitting in the bus because people talk really loudly but i also hate whispers cause it’s annoying.

im constantly wearing my AirPods because of all this and it might be affecting my hearing aha. anyway i can sort this out? cannot do exposure therapy it gonna drive me insane

ps I’m not medically diagnosed with anything (apart from RA </3)

I knew I hated myself, but didn’t really understand why. Recently I realized that I could just choose not to, and what I was shocked to discover, was the resilience I felt to that. I realized that I enjoy the feeling of caring myself. It’s cathartic, sort of addictive. Like how when you’re a kid with a loose tooth it kinda felt good to press on it even though it hurt. Like this disgusting sort of perverse pleasure in just fucking despising myself. I mean it’s not like I’ve done some horrible thing. I’m not perfect I’ve definitely done things I regret but nothing worth despising someone over. But just hate myself and for some reason, I get some sick pleasure out of it, so I don’t know how to stop, or why I’m like this. Especially because I’ve only ever been given love by my family and everyone in my life. Nobody taught me to be this way. I was never even bullied.

I think I might be an asshole. I’ve noticed over the last few months in particular (but there is a history of it) that I’m quite a contentious person. Some people seem to really like me and most seem to have ambient disdain for me if not outright hatred. I want to bridge the gap and become more neutral. I feel like drama follows me around a lot or touches on me, or if it doesn’t initially I get sucked in.

Any advice?

It's strange how lonely life can feel sometimes. Since yesterday, I've been lost in a daydream I can't seem to shake. I think about it when I lie down, and it's still on my mind when I wake up.

There's a woman. She's a cellist who also plays the flute. We share a home, and together we're finishing a song that was left unfinished. She's carrying our baby. And we're making memories. The kind that, years from now, when our child is all grown up, they'll be able to look back on and say, "So that's how Mom and Dad met."

Well... I imagine us playing our music while our little one sits there listening. I don't know why this particular dream has stayed with me so deeply. Maybe it's just loneliness. Maybe it's the longing for a life I've never had, with someone I've never met. But who knows? Maybe parallel universes really do exist. And maybe, somewhere out there, we're sitting together, finishing that unfinished song. And we're just writing a song of our own with a life together. This gave me an idea that I'll make a song about this, though not sure about its title yet.