I used to talk to random people online. About a year ago, everything was so active. Discord servers filled with people, friends active on Discord, so many random people. Nowadays? Nobody. What's going on? I'm going to college after this summer, sure, and my IRL friends are busy, I get that. But the Discord servers, even games, bro, nobody's talking in games anymore. L4D2? I used to talk with so many random people in VC on it. Now? Nothing. So I thought to myself, sure, maybe I have no life and I should go outside. I went outside quite a lot, rode my bike daily, nothing, dude. I genuinely don't know what's up, lmao. What is everyone doing this summer? Why did everything die this year exactly? I'm genuinely confused. I mean, sure, I could go to parties and meet lots of people, but I just don't like them, there's nothing good about them if you're not drunk.

It's because I'm sleeping.

I know that sounds weird to some, but I've eliminated everything else.

This weird, general-anesthesia feeling fatigue started after I was treated for something that kept me awake, so I started sleeping normally.

When I wake up, the feeling is EXACTLY like coming to from general anesthesia. I've been under before and you don't forget that feeling. I'll wake up clammy, feeling sick, retching. I don't feel normal until around 8 pm.

By 4 AM I am buzzing. My physical movement speed is no longer sluggish and my thoughts are much faster. I'm also way more productive.

Then even though I don't feel tired, I lie down on my bed because sitting up too long hurts my back. When I get too relaxed that's when I fall asleep and feel fucked up. 3 hours, 8 hours. Doesn't matter, if I hit deep sleep even for one cycle, that's enough to flood my brain with general-anesthesia-like toxins it seems.

I moved away from my hometown nearly 8 years ago. I was really close to a lot of people before that (I've known some of them since preschool), but I moved, and grew further apart from them naturally as time went on. This is mainly because they all hung out together in person, and while I attempted to stay in touch with them over the years, I never really found success in doing so.

I did like to lurk on their discord server occasionally, mostly so I could see what some of them were getting up to. I would occasionally react to their messages in their discord server, but that was pretty much it for the last 3 or 4 years. It made me feel a bit of nostalgia and made me happy to see the people they were growing up to be. I don't have social media other than here and discord (and I've frankly been on discord less and less), so it does kind of feel like a bummer that I won't be able to see their messages anymore.

I don't really feel any anger over it since we had grown apart, but I do feel some type of sadness that I can't quite identify. It's probably because in the 8 years that my now wife and I have lived where we do now, we have struggled to meet new friends. I legitimately have no in person friends other than my wife, which is not a healthy place to be. So, I suppose this feels like officially losing almost all of my in person friends, past or present.

There's still a couple that I occasionally chat with on Signal, and ironically I'm in my hometown visiting family right now and will see one of them in a few days. I might ask them about it, but again, I'm not expected to be re-added and I honestly probably shouldn't be. Maybe it'll push me to want to put the effort in to meet some new friends.

For now, though, I'm just oddly sad. It definitely doesn't help that I'm here visiting when I was removed, I guess.

Edit (update): friend I visited today said that they sometimes clean house and added me back.

tl;dr: she [F27] cheated on me [M30] with a one night stand, I forgave her, but I guess she wanted to leave the relationship any ways and just be alone. I didn't try as much to stop her this time, I could see that she doesn't love me in the same way anymore. I just wanted to vent.

I am not saying that I am the best person out there. I've made mistakes. But I always tried to support in any way I could, and in the things that I couldn't, I kept trying to improve.

We had a good run, of about 1.5-2 years (keeping it vague). We had fights, we had good moments, little precious moments as well. But we both struggled in the early days of our relationship and even before. In the early days We mostly spend our time in my shared apartment, where I had a single room. It was big enough that we could spend our time there. But as I got a better job, we decided to move in together.

We found a place, we told each other parent's about us, both sides were supportive, things were going great, we were planning about our life together and even talked about marriage.

But I think I was blind. She struggled with keeping her job and studies. She has ADHD and depression, she also says that she has autism, but I hasn't been diagnosed. I struggle with understanding her views sometimes, but I try to improve. Sometimes I cannot tell in the moments when she's harsh whether I should take it as if she really means it or should I assume it's her attempt to escape the conversation.

It was a few weeks ago that we had another fight. She doesn't want to stay at a job where some of her co-workers are far-right in their behavior. Although in some conversations, I did agree that we can look for other jobs, and we tried to find other jobs. One day, as I was getting late for work, the fight started again on the same topic, and I said to her in a very indifferent manner that she should "just go to work". I think that was the moment when something shattered.

She left that day, for the whole day and night. I tried calling and messaging her, but she didn't respond. Even her family contacted me to know where she is. We all were worried. The next day she messages me that she did weed (she avoided it for years). I remained calm and just asked her to come home and we can talk, but she said that she doesn't want to remain in this relationship. I wasn't ready for this message, I was shocked. I asked her to at least talk with

The next day we met, and she told me that had cheated on me as well during that night from before (with a person that she's been engaging with at a therapeutic clinic that she signed up for as a patient). I knew about the clinic as well as this friend of hers, but I never suspected this. I trusted her.

I simply asked whether she loved me, I am ready to believe that this was a mistake. We can talk about this, we can try to build the relationship again. She said that she feels guilty and that she couldn't continue. But I insisted, thinking that if she does love me, and that there is still intention on fixing this, then we can work on this, despite the mistakes. Admittedly, I haven't been as supportive too, I want to be better as well for her, to be able to understand her, to be there for her when she wants someone to talk to. She said that she loves me, and we continued the relationship. I haven't told anyone about the cheating.

Things were fine during these days. She went to visit her cousin, who as about to leave in a week's time. However, just recently, she came home and said that she's found a different apartment, and that she doesn't want to be in this relationship anymore. I didn't know what to say. I was already pretty feeling pretty homesick and was feeling down most of the day. But I think I knew that there's nothing to save in this relationship anymore. She doesn't love me. No point in asking her to stay. But I still asked her to talk, it didn't go anywhere. She left now, I'm here alone.

It hurts being lonely. I feel that the last 3 years I have been in isolation. With more and more friends growing apart as you age, I never felt so disconnected from others than I do now.

I grew a lot as a person in this city, but what hurts is that the little friends I had left here, only 1 asked to make arrangements before I go. I did ask other friends to see them or to tell them when I'm free, but they don't seem interested, and I won't ask again. This is painful. Just a realislzation I already knew. This is devastating and humiliating.

It hurts being this lonely.

I am a guy who moved to a western country a few years ago. I am a vegan, atheist, antinatalist on top of already being an introvert, a privacy enthusiast, and a person from the other end of the world.

I find it extremely hard to find anyone. I literally haven't been on any dates in, like, 6 years now. I have zero success on dating sites because:

1. Most of my values are so extreme to people that they would not want to swipe right on me
2. This seems to reinforce the algorithms on the sites, and they score me further lower. When requested data from Bumble, I found out that I swipe right on ~3% on the profiles, Bumble only shows my profile to what amounts to 30% of that 3%, and I am swiped right by only ~1.5% of that.
3. I have been blocked a few times before because of stupid stuff like absence of Google Play Services, phone numbers from a different country, etc., which I believe further lowers my score. Also, I do not verify myself, so yay.

(In my opinion, I am an average looking guy, and my photos are okay, so I do not think the photos are the problem)

Between work, a couple of hobbies, gym and recovering from work, I get no time to meet with people in person. Even if I wanted to, there aren't many common places to meet with new people. I miss when we were young, and could casually make friends in school without even trying.

Some days, I just want to remove all those "filters", but then I cannot explain the removal logically/philosophically. I wish I could have lived my life in blissful ignorance of everything.

May be I am doing adulting and everything related horribly wrong. But regardless, I just wanted to vent and get it out.

Note: I know that there are people who do not agree with my values. I would be happy to discuss them (not sure if this thread is appropriate for that though), but I would appreciate if you would not outright dismiss them.

Yep. That's the truth of it all. That big huge conspiracy theory you probably heard about is not really that exciting or not really that much interesting as much as you think. It's really just the government being stupid and playing around with their citizens because they can and they don't care about humanity as much as you and me.

I encountered a theory about how the Doors were feds, if you don't know who the Doors are, is that they were a acid rock, psychadelic rock band formed in 60s and pretty much are known for their interesting and variety of musical styles during a time of 1960s countercultre where most people were known to be hippies and Woodstock.

The theory comes from the fact that most of the people from the Doors and many other individauls of well-known artists of that time were all living in California and their parents were all federal workers or so I was told. Apparently, this means the parents have influence and they all worked for the CIA, and I'm gonna be honest.

****That's not how that works.

If anything, I'm surprised given how the CIA was at that time, I'm shocked that the Doors and many other bands were not censored if anything if that was somewhat true.

I'm so tired of conspiracy theories because they're not that interesting once you actually get some context coming around and they're extremely easy to explain when you finally get some intelligence.. And the worst thing, these theories masks our actual issues constantly on a daily basis because no one doesn't want to read and learn.

"Why did this happen" "Because Protocol dictates so-so-so-so-so" That's not conveient that's literally someone explaining to you why this is occuring. Yes, it's fun to think of random reasons but the most biggest issue while it's fun, we don't say reality outloud and the real reason why this happening in our reality

Why is this happening? Because at reality's core, shit's boring as fuck. It's escapism at it's finest. So that's why at the end of the day, your AM radio or Joe Rogan Podcast, there's just two people on the microphone simply writing real life fan-fiction.

I don't know anything about Kentucky except the fact they invented KFC.

Kentucky elects total scumbags. The kind of politicians that attack scientists, take bribes, cut taxes on the super-rich. Surveys show Kentucky love Trump. So I assume that Kentucky must be really bad place full of evil people.

I generally judge a place by the kind of politicians that they elect.

Wyoming is the most pro-Trump state in the US. I would never go there. I think the majority of them are very backward and violent people.

Maine elected Bernie Sanders. He is an honest man. So I really like Maine.

Did you buy it on Amazon? Can I buy this on Amazon? Can I find this on Amazon?

One of my many hobbies is archery, and at the range, there's this new guy who asked me if he could find some archery stuff on Amazon, because apparently that's the only place he buys stuff from.

One week he's shooting this recurve bow that seems improperly sized for him, then he comes back another week with a compound bow and complains about the draw length being too short. I tell this guy to go to an actual archery website to buy decent equipment since the combined cost of all his current shitty equipment will cover a decent beginner recurve and some additional accessories. He tells me, '"if I can shoot on shitty bows then I can shoot on anything", after that, an arrow bounces off the target and we found out the arrow tip is poorly glued on.

Any of the numerous hobbies I take part in, you don't buy this shit on Amazon. Machined pens, specific airsoft components, balisongs, rock climbing equipment, scuba diving gear, even little fucking resistors on electrical equipment you don't buy on Amazon.

The combination of the easy one place shop for everything and ignorant people will kill people one of these days.

Key takeaway is that I ask all of you in any hobby groups to direct newbies towards places where they can get started in a way where they're not getting garbage equipment that will end up costing them or hurting themselves (and others)

I'm staying in my brother's house and there has been so many instances where something weird happened that I'm starting to think there's indeed a presence in this house.

They all happen in the second floor and the stairs to the third floor but never in the third floor or the first one, even tho the first floor is darker and scarier. I've slept there many times and nothing ever happens.

Now the second floor is another story... The balcony's door opening by itself, hearing steps when there's no one in the house, extremely loud noises of something falling to the floor, noises of the chairs in the dining room being moved, and knocking noises on the second floor's bedroom.

I've slept in that bedroom with a friend, all night long knocking noises that are too ambiguous to know where they specifically come from, sometimes the knocking is faster and then it slows down. The scariest thing is that my friend asked it to stop and it indeed stopped for a few seconds before it starting again... I swear I almost peed myself.

And it wasn't just something we realised lately. Even Athen democracy rejected the idea of elections, mainly because rich can just back the candidate they like.

Like every political cycle, huge sums of donation are made by the rich to political parties. I am not just saying America here, it's everywhere. In plenty of parts of the world, majority donations are made by a few, not the masses, and that's kinda the thing, most people don't have enough cash on hand to even support political parties.

Plenty of people across the world still think of donating money to political parties as some vanity expense, while your donation is very much tied to how favorably the party will treat you. Yes there's voting, but money is equally important to them, if not more, for the political campaigns. Yeah the system sucks, but it sucks much much more when millions of people don't even have the money to donate in politics, thus reducing their voice compared to those who spend money here.

Yeah it's cynical but that does happen. People just don't need a living income. To get a decent voice , you need money for political expenses, and you only get that money when you have decent savings for more important stuff like health emergencies and retirement investment.

Yes, votes matter too. It's not that people without money are totally fucked, but their voice isn't as strong as those who donate money.

I am a dumbass.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that anime and manga as a whole has developed this habit of every shonen series is secretly a philosophical masterpiece. Every movement or a character's development has to symbolize existentialism and that every villain has to represent capitalism, facism or the human condition and they all become some massive graduate thesis.

But over time, after actually divulging my reading of manga since 2005, I've come to the correlation that it is not that deep. And no it's not an insult.

Shonen Manga literally is the demographic for young boys, most of these stories that we find out are adventure, excitement, competition, friendships, cool fights, and larger-than-life characters. Which usually means that they focus on secondary deep and serious ideas, which doesn't mean they can't be explored but it's really secondary nature if anything.

But here's the thing most people often confuse themes with philosophical work, but every story has themes. A sports movie has themes. A superhero movie has themes. Even Johnny Quest has themes, that doesn't make them profound.

Perfect example is Naruto, yes, we discuss loneliness, revenge, inherited hatred, forgiveness and the cycle of violence. Those are legitimate themes, but the story can't spend hundrends of chapters and time dissecting these systems, psychology, or ethics with the level of complexity you find in older manga.

Instead it presents those ideas in a digestible way through action scenes and emotional character moments. That's great storytelling.

But it's not deep. It's shallow. The same for Dragon Ball.

Everyone loves to paint Goku as this buddhist monk, and self-actualization and yeah you definitely state those influences came from somewhere. But Toriyama was famously straight forward about his writing process. He'd focus on comedy, pacing, memorable characters, and exciting fights over talking about intricate pilosophical allegories.

But there are absolutely shonen manga that do more than this, Hunter X Hunter, talks about the ambuiguity of good versus evil in increasingly complex ways. Fullmetal Alchemist talks about militiarism, imperialism, grief, sacrifice, ethics in science and the cost of ambition. One Piece actually breaks the mold for addressing systemic oppression, inherited injustice, slaverly, authoritarinism, corruption, discrimination, and freedom.

So honestly, the problem in't really recognizing Depth, the problem is acting like every series occupies the same place on that spectrum. Dragon Ball isn't trying to be Berserk. Naruto isn't trying to be Crime and Punishment. And they don't need to be, every story chooses it's priorities, some prioritize spectacle, emotion, philosophy and some manage all three but most really don't.

And that's fine.

I think at the end of the day, we forget that depth isn't a meter or a ruling, it's a spectrum.

Makes me frustrated and hopeless, Its quite clear that they do this for the male gaze and whatever its called, but that doesnt justify it and makes me very sick.

Not saying that beautiful characters are bad, but semi naked characters with unrealistic beauty which both have nothing to do with the game at all is terrible, very terriole.
Why ruin a good game for the so called" male gaze" or "sex sells" thing? why?

I feel like a hypocrite and a loser.

Not sure if indie games are any better, itch io is very good, it has great (hidden) gems.

But its also filled with dating games and whatnot, I didnt check the nsfw games, but I wouldnt be surprised if they filled the entire front page.

Anyway, Its a deep issue for me, wanted to vent, thanks for reading.

So first in advance: this thread is heavy pro-piracy; if you are not a fan of piracy, this is not a thread for you.

A few months ago I was debating whether to buy a Macbook (Pro) or not because I still had my student discount at the time (despite having graduated). I searched a lot about it and found that the main complaint was about: price tag and walled garden. But these complaints were also in the piracy community, which surprised me a bit. I understand the initial price is high, but in return you get a great product.

I eventually caved in after figuring out that I could also pirate on a Macbook pretty easily. At least the apps. Thus far, I really like it. So far my only purchase was the Macbook itself. Everything else is pirated.

However, I will definitely purchase some of the apps sooner or later.

I love PCs, Steam Deck, and really debating whether to buy a Steam Machine and fiddle with it. But I also love the Macbook for its simplicity, battery life, productivity apps, and ease of use. Gosh, I love that I don’t have to deal with restarting after every update or the crazy fan noise after just watching a video (I had this on a pretty good Windows laptop).

I do like to give a shout out to some of the apps I use, though:

Chronoid: A time tracking app with an option to bill clients when needed. Just one developer. Definitely going to purchase this one.

MacNotch: An app with the ability to be inside your notch and give you all kinds of things such as launchers for your apps, pomodoros, shortcuts, etc.

Refine: An app that checks your spelling and grammar and corrects it (with a shortcut so that you can decide whether you want it to correct or not).

Cotypist (Pirate, do not purchase): This app is really cool and the first of its kind on the Macbook (as far as I know). It learns how you type and then gives you suggestions, and you can tab a shortcut to accept the suggestion. The reason I say pirate instead of purchase is because the developer got immensely greedy and decided to really smack his beta users in the face with an expensive subscription paywall. Many users would be fine paying an expensive one-time fee for the app, but he refused.

So for those of you who aren't paying attention. This guy is called Nick Sherley.

He made multiple videos accusing daycares in Minnesota of engaging in massive financial fraud. He says democrats and the media of covering it up. Millions of americans genuinely believe him.

It's making me really angry.

Because he isn't a real journalist. He is a liar.

First, what Shirley allegedly “uncovered” is bullshit. This is not some new scandal.

MPR News has reported about fraud at child care centers for more than a decade

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/09/29/day-care-center-raid

In 2022, the Biden administration began charging defendants in connection to a program aimed at feeding hungry children. Merrick B. Garland, attorney general called it the country’s largest pandemic relief fraud scheme.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/us-attorney-announces-federal-charges-against-47-defendants-250-million-feeding-our-future

In 2024, a Somali-American denounced fraud in Minnesota

https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/07/17/a-somali-american-investigator-heres-why-youre-hearing-so-much-about-fraud-in-my-community/

The same year, the press reported fraud in Minnesotta Health Center:

https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/09/17/a-former-autism-center-employee-tried-to-report-fraud-to-the-state-nobody-responded/

In january 2025, Governor Walz announced a new task force to pursue fraud cases

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/01/03/tougher-penalties-ai-technology-tim-walz-plan-combat-fraud

His claim that the press didn't talk about this is an absolue LIE.

Dude tried to walk into day care centers as a random dude who doesn’t have kids enrolled in said day care center, and when he got denied he claimed it was fraud.

This is not journalism. He didn't uncover anything. Pure horseshit.

And yet here’s another critical and substantive point that Shirley entirely ignores.

Donald Trump has personally granted clemency or pardons to at least two dozen individuals convicted of fraud totaling well over one billion dollars.

None of them are Somali. Nearly all of them are white. And this fraud has also been well reported, meaning Shirley and his supporters are either willfully ignorant, or deceptively censoring it. Among them include:

• Trevor Milton, founder of an electric truck company, was convicted of securities fraud and wire fraud and ordered to pay $676 million in restitution.

• Ross William Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, was convicted of running a massive criminal enterprise facilitating drug trafficking and money laundering and ordered to pay nearly $184 million.

• HDR Global Trading Limited, operator of a cryptocurrency exchange, was fined $100 million for violating anti-money laundering laws.

• Lawrence Duran, owner of a Miami-area mental health company, was convicted of healthcare fraud and sentenced to 50 years in prison with $87.5 million in restitution.

Trump pardoned them anyway

Just because you have a camera and scream "FRAUD" doesn't mean you are a real journalist.

It is a tale as old as time.

Is this thing still on Reddit? If so, tell me about it

Laziness. How about a TIL or FYI post in the community one was going to ask the easily answered question? Ya know, for others who may be wondering the same thing? Adding to the discourse of a community? Actually contributing something?

Naw. I’m going to have someone else do it for me. Can you back that up with studies or other primary sources? I’m having a hard time believing you.

Thaaaaanks!

Someone: "Guns shouldn't be sold like candies. Perhaps they should create a permit or something. Why not limit "

American shows up: "MUH GUNS RIGHTS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. WHAT PART OF SHOULD NOT BE INFRINGED DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? EVEN CRIMINALS SHOULD HAVE ACCESS TO GUNS. IT SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED"

Canadian: Why does the US Senate require a super-majority (60/100) to legalize abortion? Why does the US Senate require a super majority (60/100) to reduce drug prices? How can empty states block stuff like that? In Canada, we just did this with a simple vote in the House.

American shows up: "THIS IS CALLED THE SENATE FILIBUSTER. IT PROTECTS OUR SACRED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. 60 OUT 100 SENATORS PREVENTS DICTATORSHIP. WE ARE NOT A SHITHOLE LIKE CANADA"

European: "Why do people who have 10 or 20 speeding tickets don't lose their driving license? Wouldn't this reduce car crashes and save lives?"

American shows up: "FUCK SPEED CAMERAS. THIS IS ANTI-CONSTITUTIONAL. THIS IS AGAINST WHAT OUR FOUNDING FATHERS WANTED"

I'm tired. Americans are the most conservative people I have ever seen. It's like they are against any improvement at all to their country. They don't realize how extremely conservative they are.

im 19, trading for 8 months. Learned an expensive lesson about greed this week.

I started with intraday trading first. Had a good run for a while, but I wasn’t disciplined about stop losses, and eventually gave a lot of that profit back. Switched to swing trading about 3 months ago, thinking a slower pace would suit me better.

For a while, it worked. I was recovering at a solid pace, felt like I’d actually learned something from the intraday phase.

Then three days ago, one greedy decision wiped out 15% of my capital again. Same mistake, same cycle, just a different strategy this time. No stop loss discipline, held on longer than I should have, convinced myself “it’ll come back.”

It didn’t.

What gets me is that I know the rule. Set a stop loss, respect it, don’t let one trade decide your month. I just didn’t follow my own rule when it actually mattered, again.

I’m not looking for stock tips. I’m trying to understand the psychology side of this, because clearly the technical knowledge isn’t the problem, my execution and discipline is.

For those who’ve traded longer than me, how did you actually fix this in yourself? Was it a system, a rule you forced on yourself, or did something just click after enough losses?

Genuinely trying to learn from this instead of just moving on and repeating it a third time.