u/Beneficial-Put-6724

I know this sounds really ironic, a bunch of people so overstimulated by other people getting together with people just like them…

But I would actually like to meet other HSPs, because I struggle to connect with other types of people.

So is there some kind of online gathering community for HSPs?

Just drove around town for an hour this morning in the rain dropping my wife and kids off for their things. There was an awful lot of traffic, lots of waiting, lots of meeting situations, lots of long queues.

But what struck me the most was how considerate most people were.

Yes, there are knobs on the road, which I have complained about before. Hold someone up for more than 12 seconds and they start tooting away, or drive at the speed limit and they will angrily overtake you.

But the vast majority of drivers in this country actually seem to have a reasonable degree of courteousness. It seems most drivers mostly follow the rules, most drivers drive safely and if you’re in a tricky situation you don’t have to wait long for a driver to make room for you or let you go ahead.

Compared to a lot of other countries in the world, I think we’re quite lucky with the standard of drivers we have. I’m sure there are better countries, but i think the worse countries are by far in the majority.

So I’ve been driving my first car for about a month now. I still feel very inexperienced, but every drive I’m on my instructor’s lessons are ringing in my ears. Also every drive my stress levels are extremely high but gradually going down.

I feel overall I’m doing OK. I’m not rushing. I’m not driving slow either, if I’m in a 30MPH zone I’m either at 30 or close (e.g. 27), if it’s 60MPH I’m either at 60 or close (e.g. 56). Progress, progress, progress. BUT NEVER RUSH. That was one thing my instructor hammered into me repeatedly. It’s a good lesson. Sure makes my life easier. But it seems it pisses off a few people.

Junctions and roundabouts I find are where I get honked at, because I don’t rush.

One time, I’m waiting at a mini roundabout for a driver coming from my right to come out. Driver doesn’t come out because lots of cars from their right are coming. I get honked at.

Another time, I’m waiting to turn right into a side road but there’s oncoming traffic. So I wait for a safe gap and keep cars behind me waiting a grand total of 15 seconds. I get honked at.

Yesterday I’m waiting to turn left onto a main road. Lots of cars approaching, no safe gap to go get in, so I wait and wait. Again, I get honked at.

In each of those instances, I felt that if I went for one of those gaps, I would have had at most one second to clear the gap, and there would have been a high likelihood that I would have caused other drivers to apply their breaks.

It seems some people expect me to take those gaps. Like their destination takes priority over everyone else’s safety.

With more experience, I’m still not sure if I’d take those gaps. Maybe I’d have the ability to come out faster. But that’s not the kind of driver I want to be. I want to drive safely, considerately and respectfully.

Unless I misunderstood the lesson, affecting other drivers is the cause of some of major faults in the test. When coming out into junctions, don’t cause other cars to have to break inappropriately. Did I miss understand that?

I’m starting to realise that some people show their true colours when in a car, like a car is a protective outer shell so now they can start to bully other people. Those people can go fuck themselves.

But I must say, overall in the UK, most drivers seem courteous. There are plenty of idiots on the road, but most seem to have a reasonable degree of consideration compared to some other countries.

Curious what your thoughts are on this. Is it wrong of me to not want to be the one that rushed at junctions, to not want to take unnecessary risks? Or does that make me a burden to society?

There are a number of things about most people that I just can't relate to.

For example, their need for other people. I need me time. I can only handle a minimal amount of human interaction before my social batteries are completely drained and I need to retreat to solitude. But everyday I find people's demands of me conflict with my need for solitude. My wife needs to get things off her chest, my kids need to show and ask me things, my parents need to chat. I love them all, and I appreciate that they need me, but they're needs require me to sacrifice mine, not because they are selfish, but because we are all wired differently.

Recently I've been watching a reality show. Yeah, not a great reference for people in general. But I find it fascinating watching people on these shows. Why do they care so much about what others think of them or their appearance or about how someone said something in a particular moment? The only contexts where I care what others think are with my family, and anything that will affect my work. Beyond that, I do feel generally concerned around people in a way that means I don't want to upset them or cause trouble in general. But I don't feel a need for most people's approval, nor even their respect. Should someone comment about my appearance or be rude to me, I will feel it in the moment, but after a short while I will rationalise like this:

We evolved for a hunter-gatherer context, and in such a context we depend on the group for survival, which means we evolved an instinct to crave social acceptance and fear social rejection, because acceptance means we can be with the group and survive, and rejection means we are cut off from the group and most likely will die. So this need for approval, for status, for belonging, is instinctive, and in some cases it is rational (for example if you are in prison and a gang gives you an ultimatum of either join them and survive or reject them and they kill you), but in most situations in the world, especially when you are an independent adult, there is no rational need to belong. You can choose which group to belong to, or even choose to belong at all. If a group rejects you for who you are, there is literally no rational need to belong to them.

Maybe it's just easier for me to rationalise that because I have so little capacity for people in general that my preference is solitude. Maybe most people need far more from others so the instinctive need for belonging is far more significant.

I have spent most of my life on the sidelines. I remember as a teenager and in my twenties being envious of people with their social groups. Then I'd try to join one and find it absolutely exhausting and meaningless, and find them to be really petty, horrible and shallow. Increasingly, I just spent more and more time on my own, with my thoughts, and my observations. I lived in a foreign country for more than a decade, I was a white guy living in Asia, and I loved it because there was no question of me belonging just from appearance alone, and I could live on the fringes of society where I feel most at home.

I am extremely lucky to have a family. I'm grateful for the support, the partnership and the little moments of joy a family can bring each day. As I'm human, I still have social needs even if they are nowhere near as strong as most people's needs, and my family more than cater to those. But even family is just a little too much for a person like myself, but I'd rather have too much of family than no family at all.

I have a few close friends as well. I see them once every few months and they know all too well that I can't handle much social contact and they respect that. Those are true friends.

In terms of people, I have more than enough in my life, just a little more than I can handle. I have very little desire to know more people, I find most people extremely disappointing and odd. I am content with my quiet, boring, independent life. I think when I am about to die, even if I knew there would be no memorial or funeral for me, it would hurt for a moment, then I'd quickly rationalise it and realise it wouldn't matter because I'd be dead, and whatever memorial people made for me would be nothing in comparison to the minuscule impact I've already left on this world just by being alive.

Wondering if anyone else here relates to this?

So I’m just an outsider, merely a subscriber to the YouTube channel and someone whose only involvement with the Parkour community was a brief stint around 20-25 years ago.

But I’m also a father who has let his kids watch those videos, and I am deeply disturbed by what has transpired.

But what disturbs me the most is that I could see something like this happening just from the behaviour in their videos, but also because I’ve seen it before.

I remember during my brief involvement 20-25 years ago, I briefly befriended an individual (also based in Brighton actually) who later turned out to be a shoplifter, drug dealer and a pedophile (he was grooming a 9 year old girl for sex at the time). So to see the same thing happening again in the same community does not surprise me.

Going back to Storror, my gut made me feel very uncomfortable watching their videos, but I ignored it because of the entertainment factor.

What my gut was nagging me about was this:

This was a group of grown men, who were perfectly comfortable breaking the law, trespassing and at times angering people, all in pursuit of their own selfish goals.

But they made incredible videos thanks to that behaviour. I am still blown away by them jumping over those rooftops in Hong Kong. So I ignored the bad behaviour and showed my kids.

But now these events with Callum have transpired, plus the messages with Josh (I’ve been browsing the forums) and even Toby, plus my own personal experience from all those years ago, I am wondering if this was actually all quite predictable.

Not to say that it was predictable that one of them would be a pedophile.

But predictable that at least some of them would be very comfortable breaking the law, violating, trespassing and disrespecting individuals in pursuit of their own personal gratification.

I’m in my 40s now, and I’ve seen these kinds of behaviours time and time again. You see it in the corporate world; when someone is willing to screw someone over once, break the rules once, even break the law once, they’ll easily do it again in another context.

So to see in their videos the times they angered an entire Moroccan village, the times they broke a street sign on the streets of Tokyo and got arrested, when they were jumping over ancient ruins in India, even when they were breaking into building sites and walking around the streets of Guangzhou in China topless (I lived in China at the time and cringed when I watched that video), not to mention all the times they angered people (seriously, if you anger people that frequently it’s time for some self reflection), I start to see a pattern.

The other thing that unsettled me, was the very adolescent tendencies these grown men showed in their videos. Being obsessed with doing sick moves, whilst showing such a lack of responsibility, is extremely adolescent.

And when you behave in such a way, you attract other adults who behave in a similar way, or you attract adolescents.

When you’re a grown adult, and you’re surrounded by children and adolescents, why is that? Maybe you’re really passionate about inspiring the next generation, in which case good. Or maybe you’re surrounded by people with the same maturity level as you, in which case grow up. Or maybe even worse, you surround yourself with them because you’re sexually attracted to them, in which case seek help.

They say they’re all about inspiring the young generation. Really? With that kind of behaviour? I am more convinced they are about monetising views from a mostly adolescent crowd.

These are just my own thoughts. I could be right I could be wrong. But I really wanted to get them out because this has really bothered me. I have my own kids and this has been a wake up call to how vulnerable they can be when I leave them in the care of other adults.

Would appreciate other people’s thoughts on this.