I do feel the same. Somewhere around 2012 - 2015 life just stopped for me. I lost track of media and current hip topics and then life just spiraled into one long series of disasters, both personal and global and now I feel a thousand years old but can’t detect any time that’s passed. When I watch the news and current events, even though logically I know what’s going on, some part of my brain screams that everything looks “wrong” and like we’re in the wrong world.

Late show was also just nominated for an Emmy.

Kimmel and John Stewart are in fact being targeted next.

I predicted that this would happen if the country started an irreversible slide into fascist warlord dictatorship, I just thought it would be much further down the road.

Watch, in about a year all of these comedians and liberal pundits are going to be replaced by right-wing grifters and podcasters capturing the stupid, populist attention spans of people who just want to stare at flashing lights and listen to people screaming about how evil trans children are interrupted by ads for essential oils and testosterone supplements. This isn’t an exaggeration, this is what we can expect.

If it makes you feel better, this has nothing to do with normal Hollywood celebrity shuffling and contractual disputes, this is entirely targeted political censorship. Colbert is/was the highest rated talk show on network television and was just nominated for an emmy.

Opposites often attract wildly.

A lot of really “standard” guys who dress in polos and jeans will look at a girl in a black leather schoolgirl outfit and see mystery, sexual freedom, experimentation, and all the dangers that mother warned you about. It represents an escape from social chains and it’s not just a sexual kink, but it can really feel nice to imagine having someone who challenges your preconceived notions or gets you “out of your shell” because a lot of men have no idea how to do that and fantasize about meeting someone who drags them by the arm through life to get them to enjoy things they’d be afraid to try on their own.

Speaking as a man who’s partner has filled this role for many, many years.

99% of the time if I notice a male coworker wearing nail-polish it’s because they let their daughter paint their nails, which I think honestly should be a special kind of badge of honor that all men should strive for.

The problem is most average looking men, when bedecked in goth shit, look like Bluey got run over by a Spencer’s truck.

The dude in everyone’s imagination wearing black makeup and jewelry looks like a strung-out rockstar with don’t-give-a-fuck vibes who lives for adventure and wild nights. The vast majority of ACTUAL men have the body-shape of a rectangle and have to spend most of every day waiting in lines, attending Zoom calls, explaining to customers why their wifi doesn’t work (Reset the router Ethel, no that’s not a router, you’re holding an egg steamer.)

We gotta abandon the idea that people have “looks” at all times. Lets repopularize costume parties so guys get a chance to try to dress-up without it being some kind of shocking change to their entire persona. I had a stiff, straight-edge boss who attended a Halloween party and went goth. Completely unrecognizable, he was a legend.

I’m really happy to hear about your successes in rewiring yourself to appreciate what you can do yourself, and I don’t mind long replies, I learned how to read before the internet so I won’t be giving those tired lines like “I ain’t readin all that” (after a single paragraph message.) I do appreciate anyone making the effort to share what is going on in their lives and I think we would be a lot better off if we all took more time to share and actually read with interest what other people do with their lives.

I should mention that I don’t actually use THC regularly and particularly not before work meetings! That time was an accident, otherwise I have to be really careful using the stuff because it can make my anxiety much worse or at least make me too sleepy to function.

As for everything else, I’ve been on and off meds of all kinds, not on anything right now but reconsidering because life is HARD yo. I am starting over entirely for roughly the second time, started a new job in a new city with nothing at middle-age trying to compete with younger, more motivated and more confident young hires has been nearly impossible. But I pick up and keep moving. The marathon never ends.

One time, when I was still learning to flex my social muscles and had volunteered to MC a work function, I was incredibly anxious beforehand and downed a large dose of CBD oil. Not realizing that the formula I was using had significant levels of THC also, it’s just that I had used it in small doses so I never realized it before.

While I got through it, it went as you would expect. I was slow in places, I had a hard time focusing and improvising any chatter. It was awkward and I felt mortified after.

BUT, I did not give up. I hosted every work social event, organized charity drives and other special programs, and within a year I was managing a team, chairing two committees and made Employee of the Year. By that time I had been through so much rough shit and embarrassment at work that I was invulnerable to social anxiety. People said I was so smooth and often asked me how I didn’t get nervous public speaking.

The secret to almost anything is to not be afraid to fall flat on your face.

edit: I did not continue to use mind-altering chemicals before social events, it was a bad idea, if I didn’t make it clear.

We can legitimately level a lot of hate at Hollywood and a large swath of “content creators” online for escalating the very idea of “woke” into positions so delusional or terrible that I’m still not convinced it’s not just psyop all the way down. They made the idea of progressivism and social good seem cringe, socially out-of-touch, ham-fisted and unrealistic.

I’d love to see less “recast famous story in new races for controversy and profit” and more original stories that show actual struggles that various groups face because of their ethnicity or other identities. (I’d love to see a superhero movie that goes after corrupt healthcare company CEO’s but someone already tried to make that story on their own.)

They shot themselves in the dick for the express purpose of creating drama and engagement while trying to appeal to their mental image of “liberal america” in pursuit of profit, not ideals.

Honestly, the new Superman movie is a bit of a breath of fresh air, it delivers a powerful social message without falling into the tired tropes and doesn’t sugar-coat it, you know EXACTLY who they’re targeting and who they represent. But they’re also not trying to pander to both-sides. They kept Superman consistent to his values and showed that bad things are in fact, bad. And bad guys exist and are bad. (And they’re usually the wealthy elite.)

In addition to what the others said here, it’s worth knowing that despite all the manufactured contention around this race, Mamdani is heavily favored to win no matter who else enters the final race. The news and youtubers love to find the edge-case weirdos and hype up the drama around it being “BATTLE OF THE CENTURY” because our country’s brains have collectively oozed out our ears.

Yes, Dems have to get flushed, but other than that, this is fantastic news, this is another hubristic blunder by narcissistic political demagogues.

This will guarantee some level of split vote from the people that were going to vote for Adams again or some Republican challenger, whoever that was going to be. And there will be a lot of brainwashed median voters who have no clue what’s going on just hear the facebook warnings that Mamdani is going to enact Turbo Gay Muslim Socialism that will force everyone to stand in breadlines to get their gay muslim rations.

I’ve been reading Bonhoeffer recently. His work is very much relevant right now, and quite depressing.

Massive waves of unemployment as AI takes most office jobs, and continues to develop to take many service industry jobs.

It won’t make anything better, we will just have a greater stratification of society, more poor people and the smaller number of rich people get much, much richer.

These rich people will divide the world into power-blocs and the beginnings of techno-feudalism will really show as different oligarchs and corporations become more outspoken in their political and social goals.

Society broadly will be even more distracted and less involved in a system that will be far too chaotic and full of misinformation and fakery that no human will be able to sort through anymore. We will escape into more wonderous virtual lives and feel more depressed as a result. Suicide will skyrocket as depression, homelessness, health problems and extreme weather events make everyone’s lives more miserable. We will start to see the impact of our falling birthrates which will start crashing even faster in the next couple decades. Governments are going to incentivize raising families with short-term subsidies but it won’t be nearly enough for most people who still see no hope for the future and have no social skills anymore.

In under ten years we will be having our first major “problems” with widespread AI control of systems and governing functions. They will be trained and made by above-mentioned oligarchs who have their own agendas, and will behave unpredictably as a result. People will be misled and influenced to be loyalists to varying positions and narratives with SHOCKING ease as these AI systems figure out ways to utterly hack human motivations.

It’s not looking good. This is the optimistic path.

Don’t be obtusely literal.

If someone is in trouble, you need help and you reach out to anyone and everyone you can to get that help. Don’t trust the police to be your friend always, so don’t go spouting incriminating shit about how you and your friend were getting high or something, don’t approach them belligerently, but give it every attempt to get someone’s attention and take it seriously. The idea that someone has to be missing 24 hours is a myth if you have good reason to believe they’re in trouble. Be respectful and coherent and provide as much evidence as you can. The only time they start investigating even the people reporting the crime is if they determine a crime has occured, and it has to be a bad one.

If you think you look really sus in this situation for whatever reason, try to make an anonymous call from a payphone (I think they still have those) but also shop around for a lawyer because if the person really is in trouble or something happened to them, they will likely approach you either way.

Look, I don’t like cops either. But the couple times I’ve dealt with home invaders, there was nobody else I rather see coming down the hall as I was wrestling the intruder. We need a new system and overhauled oversight and management of law enforcement, but we also still need law enforcement. The two things can exist simultaneously.

Don’t worry, the Supreme Court just gave the okay for slashing 1400 education department jobs and reducing funding.

In no time at all, our population will be so dumb that it won’t matter what words we use to describe anything!

I watched my own father illicitly borrow millions of dollars by bullshitting other rich boomers, acquire vast acres of property across the country, promise the family he would pass it all down to us and our futures were set, then have everything taken away by courts as he and and the rest of my family drank themselves to death after snorting away every family assets on cocaine and other drugs.

I lost everything I owned after investing my time and energy into being there for my family and they just crashed out without any accountability to their next generation. Starting over in the middle of my life from nothing. I may never own property of any kind. I probably will never retire.

I feel like it was all just a microcosm view of what’s happening broadly. The legacy of the boomer generation is going to be crushing us for a century to come or maybe forever.

You likely hold many such superficial judgements, we all do about something or other. I don’t think I would frame it as “mental illness” without expecting a lot of pushback from such an inflammatory statement. Normal, healthy people make judgements all day long based on the most superficial of ideas and perceptions, the question is how much you personally care.

If it’s strangers on the internet you’re just bullshitting with, I can’t imagine caring about how some stranger perceives you. But these things can become self-harmful if you’re genuinely trying to be heard and understood about something that’s important to you. If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media (including forums like this) I’m sure you’ve seen this play out over and over, where people end up deeply stressed because they’re talking past each other and dismissing each other’s actual feelings about things that are important to each other.

This is what I decry, the lack of effort to be heard about important ideas, even if subjectively important, we’re all collectively really neglecting effort and embracing anti-intellectual catchphrases (just put the X in the bag, the curtains were just blue, I ain’t readin all that, etc.) and making our lack of effort to communicate other people’s problem when it goes wrong.

If you think none of this matters, end up in a role of responsibility and have to spend a month interviewing people for a role of great responsibility and sifting through the masses of young people who make zero effort and feel entitled to rewards for it.

It absolutely makes my day that you think this is a fight. Have fun out there.

You don’t have to agree with me, the topic is about people generally and their perceptions, if this wasn’t something shared by a number of people this wouldn’t be a post. You can disagree with me all you want, you will still encounter people who will judge in different ways depending on how you present yourself online. If you don’t like it, go change the world.

Sure, and I do, but anime profile pics come with extra baggage and we all know it.