u/Dreadsin

I’m level 1 and I feel like basic social interactions take insane amounts of energy to sustain. I always sort of feel like an alien trying to blend in around people. When I talk to people, it sort of feels like trying to talk to someone in a language I barely know. I know they won’t get what I’m trying to express and I feel flustered cause I can’t express it correctly

I also can’t stop thinking about them after. It almost feels like when you beat a level of a game and get a rank like S tier or D tier. I always think of what I could have done better, or if I’m misinterpreting, or if everyone just thinks I’m out of my mind for visibly struggling so hard

I find it faaaar easier to just be alone. Less thinking. Less tiring

I’m just wondering, is this the general experience for people with autism, or is what I’m describing more severe? The diagnosis specifically noted social problems

On the first watch of this movie, when the wish vanishes and Nikki is free, it makes me immediately realize: I don’t know anything about Nikki and she’s been in this whole movie. Like who is this woman? We’ve only seen “real” Nikki for maybe a couple minutes of screen time. It got me curious about “real” Nikki on the second viewing

The movie seems to be filmed intentionally from bears perspective and it distorts a lot about Nikki. She just comes off like a girl next door dream girl, cause that’s all Bear views her as. The only scene where we learn anything genuine about her is the car ride home

Then we learn in that short conversation:

- she seemed to quit her job without warning anyone
- she decided to quit because she doesn’t feel “love” in her life
- she’s becoming more serious about her writing
- she’s writing a love story, but it’s not a romance

These things put together to me are so interesting because using context from the rest of the movie, it says a lot

I always thought it was odd that bear never seemed very interested in these topics, he seemed dismissive even, like he didn’t care. He was so focused on what he wanted. The thing is, it’s not just him, it’s the entire friend group and it’s so obvious on rewatch

- bear sees her as a way to fix his loneliness and insecurity
- Ian has been hooking up with her and wasn’t telling bear, who told Ian he was interested in her
- Sarah was working her way in on bear. She definitely crossed boundaries that are unacceptable to even secure people, like meeting someone in your car at 2am. This was after she went to the party and knew Nikki was showing some really unhealthy signs

And to add to all of that, she apparently hates her dad or is distant from her dad. Yeah, no wonder she isn’t feeling love at all. Something does need to change. I think that’s exactly why she quit: she planned to leave town entirely or just leave that toxic friend group behind

When Nikki says she’s writing a love story, and Bear says “so a romance?” And she corrects him, only for him to say “isn’t it the same thing?” Has such an eerily long pause after. Then she says “you’re the only one I get to talk to about things like this”

I think that Bear is viewing love more epistemologically. That means that Bear views love as a puzzle to be solved, and his main concern is “is her love for me real?”, and views love as something to be discovered or confirmed

When Nikki pauses for so long only to say “you know you’re the only one I get to talk to about this kinda stuff”, I think she’s expressing her subtle disappointment that there’s no one who really “gets” her here. She only talks to Bear about this stuff, and he doesn’t get it. We’re getting such a tiny fraction of who she is, cause she doesn’t really express it to Bear (and he doesn’t ask)

The love story she’s talking about is probably more about discovering what love actually is ontologically. It seems absent in her life and she wants to know what it is. Ironically, I think that’s what makes the ending so extra good; she does get to feel love, just in a very twisted way (after she makes her wish)

I think she planned to leave town entirely and seek out something better. She knew she was being used. That’s what makes it so sad at the end because she ultimately couldn’t leave town because someone else had to use her 😕

(Or maybe this is all head canon idk)

I’m looking for someone who seems to dislike thinking. Someone who’s trying to go back to not thinking. So imagine a cop who finds someone who matches a suspect, and arrests them and maybe minimally scans the evidence and determines it’s a match. Or a juror who half pays attention and says guilty without thinking much cause that’s what everyone else said. Or someone who’s eyes glaze over when films or books get too complex, and would rather it just entertain them rather than make them think

It’s not exactly “stupid”, because these people may have a decent breadth of knowledge and average reasoning skills. It’s not “ignorant” because you can be passively ignorant about something (like I’m ignorant of the history of Korea, but that doesn’t exactly mean I’m this way)

One major justification I’ve heard from NIMBYs for preventing housing development is that it would decrease the value of existing housing stock because supply will increase while demand remains the same

However, when I think of very desirable areas, they’re usually in denser cities (excluding areas like the Hollywood hills). There also seems to be a severe lack of missing middle housing and small/medium walkable cities with public transit. In my own city of Boston, walkable housing is as much as 37% more expensive per square foot. Being in a walkable area that’s also within 10 minutes of transit is like hitting the lottery

So, in theory, if one of these suburbs that had a lot of NIMBY policies were to transition to a more dense housing plan, wouldn’t that in turn create higher demand while still raising supply?

Okay so I watched obsession, which feels like it’s a really big take down of these “nice guy” types of guys, and how their behavior is ultimately really bad

I’m wondering if there’s similar but more in the emotionally distant, avoidant, afraid to put themselves out there or commit. Almost like the inverse of bear; instead of being enamored with someone they barely really know, maybe someone who struggles to keep connections even with people they feel strongly towards, or to commit to someone they know is the right person

Tbh I’m afraid that I’m a bit that way and I want a movie like obsession that sort of dives into why it’s so bad, and doesn’t really pull its punches on its criticism towards guys like this

Yeah sure Walmart is cool and all, but I gotta drive to this gigantic box store which is miles from me, which necessitates a car. I gotta sit in traffic. Then I gotta go find parking in this gigantic parking lot, maybe refill my gas when I get there, and walk through this gigantic store just to get some basic food staples like flour and butter. Since the Walmart is in a commercial district, it requires me diverting my commute home entirely

You ever try going to a Costco during prime shopping hours? Parking is a whole task in and of itself. Get in the store and it’s so crowded it’s mind numbing. Lines out the door most days

People turn to Amazon for a lot of things but I think they’re just profiting off of how poorly we’ve set up everything. People want delivery because driving across town sucks. Yeah, they’re nice for if you’re buying niche and hard to acquire items, but by definition, you’re probably not doing that too often

I think we over complicated basic, simple, convenience. Walking to a small-medium sized grocery store in 15 minutes and being able to get 95% of what you want (and maybe some substitutes) is far more convenient than driving 20-30 minutes to a mega mart for more selection. Also a lot of times it’s nice cause you can walk home and pop into a store real quick and grab a few things, it feels less like a chore and more like a pit stop

Like you know when someone points out something like ADR in a movie when American actors speak a different language and now you just can’t stop seeing it now that they mentioned it?

Is there a word for that feeling? Like something is ruined for you now that you know it?

I’ve been wondering this for a while. Quintessential nerd culture to me is like what you’d see in that show The Guild with Felicia Day; people who build their life around this somewhat fringe hobby and are often pretty distinct and odd characters lol. Like I could totally imagine meeting any of those characters in guild chat

I can’t remember the last time there was a game like world of warcraft, where people had a whole second life related to it. I miss actually looking forward to a game at the end of the day 😕 I play marvel rivals and it’s just not the same. It’s a fun way to kill time, but that’s really about it. I have no desire to play with people I played with before or add people as friends

Pre-2020 conventions (for either gaming or anime) were a vibe man, one that maybe never coming back. You got this feeling that the people there were looking forward to this for months or even all year for some local ones. I can’t really describe it, but these days the vibe is totally different. Now when I go, I get this weird disconnected feeling. Like the people here don’t like this thing in the same way that I like this thing (not trying to say they’re “wrong” and I’m better, just that it’s different)

Honestly the closest feeling I was able to find of that old time was a drag show I went to with some friends. I just got this feeling that the whole place was designed to be anti-repression, like we’re all meeting here so we can express ourselves and not feel ashamed about it as we would in “mainstream” culture. It feels like a place with an explicit permission to express yourself if you’re into drag. I’m not, but I found the vibe to be just so positive and lovely, I wish there was a space like that for me. Nerdy spaces used to be that for me. I’m 34 so maybe it’s just my age?

I find for the most part, the “nerdy” content that’s been coming out has been a sort of commercialized lowest common denominator product, rather than a niche product like it used to be. Things like The Big Bang Theory and Mandalorian and Grogu. Superhero movies are always just some conventional 3 act schlock with some predictable ending

I want cringe. I want unabashed, stupid, indulgent fun. Gimme something like Firefly or The Expanse or Star Trek. Or, maybe something like Scott Pilgrim or One Punch Man. I want someone to write a story about their hyperfixation. Yes, Tell me about the 113 plants you made up for your SciFi story on another planet, that sounds great actually! I’d love to hear about the exact mechanics about how this space ship works!

The last refuge of this I saw was for a Hoyoverse popup, where you could tell most people walking by had zero clue what it was. But… outside there was a huge line. People in cosplay. People playing the game on their phone. People trading cards or another rewards or talking about their builds in game 😌 too bad it was just a popup and is gone now

Man I miss it

as we all know, all these companies are running on the promise of replacing workers with AI. I think the plan is one of the biggest enshittification heists in history. Consumer products have been enshittified for a long time, so why wouldn’t these companies do similar to corporations who have deeper pockets?

Anyone who listens to this show knows that right now AI costs are heavily subsidized. Even so, companies like Uber have stated they’ve been spending a ton of money on tokens, often more than hiring a real professional. I think these AI companies are trying to make a play like Uber, ironically — get everyone on the platform, rug pull the prices

So imagine these companies really did start using AI, seeing results, and then firing employees as redundant. They start investing very heavily in these AI tools, making them critical to major workflows, under the premise that they’re efficient and cheap

If Anthropic or OpenAI were conventional companies operating with a reasonable profit margin and managing their debt to assets, they would need to charge more. Much more. I’ve seen some estimates saying it could be as much as 25x more. Honestly, even Anthropic’s latest models are at best mid level engineers, so you’d need to use these expensive, high end models for reliability when you don’t have enough employees to supervise

So when these AI companies start to enshittify, they could basically bring down the entire economy with them. Imagine if every employee unionized and asked for 5x pay across the board, that would be a company’s worst nightmare. Now, with them replacing employees with AI, a company can do basically exactly that. They can just say “too bad, we raised prices” and these companies will either drop the service, or be coerced into paying more

Then, you would have to theoretically compound that with demand destruction. If enough people are fired, then they’re not spending money. Companies now have a smaller pool of potential customers. It’s just the paradox of thrift all over again. They’re kind of screwed on both ends here: not enough demand for their product, and not enough money to pay for AI

Companies will likely have to try and hire back employees if prices get raised. However, they’ve played their hand and alienated all workers, who are likely going to come back with either strong distrust or (hopefully) collective action against these companies. They will also likely only do the bare minimum if they get hired, due to this distrust. I’d also venture to say, depending on the length of this employee outage, there could be brain drain. Those smart employees could move to another country where their skills are more valued

It seems like even if this bubble doesn’t crash, then in turn, it will end up taking our entire economy down with it

I know it might just be to move the plot along, but does anyone else find that strange? Like this guy went out of his way to find out this information

It seems kind of juxtaposed with the fact that Ian never really listens or follows through any other time. He claims there’s a boys night, and he’ll uninvite Sarah but never does. He shows up to bears house at the end when bear explicitly told him not to. He consistently proves himself to be a bad friend who doesn’t seem to have bears best interests at heart

Yet he’s calling around a random state he’s not from about someone he’s probably never met for a problem that isn’t really his. Conversely, Sarah is just like “wait… what? 🤔 you sure bout that bro? Seems a bit odd but whatever” and moves on. That seems like the “normal” reaction

Speaking of, it’s also odd that bear lies to Sarah in that last car scene after it’s supposedly been disproven for so long that Nikki’s dad is sick. Strangely, both Ian and Sarah know that Nikki isn’t close with her dad, but bear doesn’t seem to. Seems kind of odd if he’s enamored with her and doesn’t know basic stuff about her (yeah I know he doesn’t love her)

Like does it seem like Ian is being bizarrely petty and sabotaging everything at every turn? Is the idea that he’s mad about losing the casual relationship?

I’ve heard that there is one sound which is incredibly rare in almost all dialects. In English, it’s seen in the word “rural”, that “-er” sound in the middle. It’s so rare that it only really occurs in two languages with any frequency. However, the catch is that it’s actually common in the two most common languages: English and mandarin

I’ve always hated those dark souls games and I could never quite put my finger on why, until I started playing Kena bridge of spirits. I like Kena… right up until I hit a boss fight

I can’t stand when I get to a boss in video games. It’s always just a tedious, boring slog that hard stops everything in the story and the rest of the game to focus on this stupid mechanic

Most of the time it’s a couple phases and all that really matters is repeating them correctly. I find it to just be frustrating, more like a drawn out quick time event than actually playing the game itself

I don’t find it fun to die and retry. Whenever the boss fight is over I don’t think “that was fun 😌” I think “thank GOD that shit is over with 🙂‍↕️”

I’d rather bosses just be a sort of set piece, but there’s no need to make these tedious and drawn out fights

Like ever since 2016 ish it felt like there was a steady but rapid decline so fast that it’s been giving me whiplash. I constantly think “it can’t just keep getting worse, right?” Then proceeds to get much worse

The problems of 2016 almost feel cute in comparison. You could still get a job and a house if you were moderately lucky. There were some reasonable pathways to success like software engineer

Now those tech companies can’t stop laying people off and haven’t had a new idea that isn’t some sort of finance scam for like 10+ years. Buying a home? lol. They cost twice as much and because of interest like 3x the monthly payment. A 1 bedroom condo in a moderately good location is now basically considered upper class living at this point

I remember in 2016 I was considering if I wanted kids in my future, now I find that idea almost impossible to conceptualize. A one bedroom condo is luxury living now so where tf would the kid even sleep? The living room? Who would take care of the kid when we’re both working our jobs? I’m already burned out from worrying about work, why would I take on a second job with no pay?

I look around and it feels like everything is worse than I even thought possible. If you showed me pictures and headlines from 2026 in 2016, I would have probably thought it was some sort of joke from the future, it wouldn’t even make sense that things got that bad

Then what scares me is like… it’s been 10 years of this. Is this just how life is gonna go? Every year a significant decline from the previous year? At this point, in 10 years, like half the population will be either homeless or not even alive anymore and 10 guys will have all the money (and they’ll still be just as miserable as ever if not more so)

There’s this one guy at the gym who puts me in this situation a lot. It’s a martial arts gym

The first time it happened, that specific class was 50/50 female to male. A fight was playing on the tv with two female fighters and he openly comments
“Damn that fighter is HOT!!” Which I find to be a bit inappropriate, especially considering there’s women in the class and I’m the only other man. I just pretend I’m watching the tv and ignore what he said

The next time he asks if I saw the White House ufc fight. I really don’t like the whole… umm… event. Everything about it. I say I don’t really like ufc because of Dana white not paying his fighters enough, then he slightly argues with me and i go into autopilot and just avoid conflict. This is just my personal opinion, I don’t particularly care if people have different opinions, I just don’t wanna be involved. I just don’t wanna come off as “on his side” outwardly, if that makes sense

This happens a decent amount. I don’t think this guy is a bad guy, and I think he’s just trying to socialize but… man… it stresses me out to be in situations like this. I don’t wanna kill the vibe but I also don’t wanna go along with something I think is not great

What’s the appropriate way to respond to cause the least offense to things like that where I don’t really want confrontation?

Today I was going to the “main city” in my area. Usually it’s an hour drive. You know how long it took today?

Five. Fucking. Hours.

Today was a holiday. My entire day was spent in traffic to go home. Literally didn’t even get a day off. I would have rather been working than sitting in traffic

It’s become an increasingly common pattern. I can’t even go to the gym anymore without looking up traffic hours ahead of time. I even plan to get there 20 minutes early just to decompress from how infuriated I am with traffic

I have gotten in trouble at work because I have a thing called “on call” where I basically have to be able to respond within 15 minutes. With traffic, a drive that’s normally 10 minutes might take, literally, 30 minutes to an hour. So, on the weeks where I have that, I’m stuck at home all day for a week

I can’t even plan my life anymore like this. When I was in the city, I hit up Costco to grab some inexpensive food. I was in traffic for so long, that I got home and all of the meat was warm. Not room temp, warm. I had to throw everything I bought out

I moved here because it was inexpensive but it is a nightmare living in a place that’s so car dependent, idc, it literally feels worth paying $3k+ a month just to not have to deal with TRAFFIC

This doesn’t happen with walking. Imagine if someone lived a couple blocks away and was walking to your house and said “yeah it will take between 15 minutes and 2 hours to get there idk”. Stupid. I don’t see why people don’t see this as a problem

I hate it so, so, so much. I don’t understand why car brained people don’t hate it as much as I do

You know that joke about JRPGs where the progression is like “level 1: rescue a cat. Last level: defeat god”? That’s kind of the vibe I’m going for

Basically something that starts small and snowballs out of control to a point where the beginning was almost unrecognizable. Like the progression is so insane that it’s actually kind of funny

Just for the sake of argument, let’s leave out people who aren’t working cause it would make this example more complex

Let’s say that every single person was mandated by the government to receive some fractional percentage of the company. Some may own more shares than others. No one has final and only say in anything, especially firing and hiring, and the decision has to be made by a large enough “share” of the company

This seems to be workers really “owning” the company they work for, but does it count as “socialism”?

I grew up in the 90s and watched anime then and at that time, it was considered so fringe that a lot of people I went to school with literally didn’t even know what it was. Post pandemic, it’s now seen as cool and trendy. To be clear: if you genuinely like anime and you’re just late to the game, you’re totally welcome here! We’re glad to have you, and I’m glad you found out how cool anime is 😌

BUT

I can tell there are so many people who are just here for clout or because they feel like it’s “cool” now. Like I’ve been at anime conventions talking to people and I’ll recommend a show that isn’t a generic battle shonen or power fantasy (JJK, Solo leveling) and they just look at me like 😟 I recommend reading a manga and they look at me like I insulted them personally. Bro, half the fuckin reason people are here is to go to the manga stalls and pick up new manga, tf are you doing? I’m not trying to be a gatekeeper here cause I think anime is cool and everyone should enjoy it, but it doesn’t even seem like you like it in the first place!

Also I’m sick of seeing sexy cosplays. No, I’m not blaming women who want to wear sexy cosplays, y’all can do that if you want… but there is definitely some influencers who found out that you can sell this to a specific group of gooner men. I don’t like it because pre-pandemic, cosplay felt like it was mostly about choosing a character you really liked and making them “come to life”. That, or people would try to do some creative interpretation of characters. I remembered going places like Blizzcon and the cosplayers spent like, a full year making their cosplay of their hero or favorite character

Speaking of which, fucking GOTH culture oh my god. I used to be goth/metalhead in high school. “I want a goth gf” shut up bro 🙂‍↕️ you don’t even like goth music and you’re a chud who thinks goth subculture is stupid, tf you mean you want a goth gf? Oh… they mean that e-girl who’s wearing black and posting tiktoks that are specifically catered to getting gooner male attention. Fuck you man. Istg from these two experiences, is all anyone cares about social appearances, money, and gooning?

I heard some girl who was dressed in a “goth” way say it’s totally okay for goths to be homophobic, transphobic, and racist. Bro what? Fuckin… it’s a counter-culture derived from punk, do you have any fucking clue what you’re talking about? Words have meanings dude, goth doesn’t just mean “wears mostly black and a lot of make up”

Now I’m into film largely and I see a new group of people moving in and calling themselves “cinephiles” without the ability to like… watch movies. Marty Supreme was a good example of that, like people didn’t understand that the main character doesn’t have to be “the good guy” and were bending over backwards trying to figure out ways that he could be “the good guy”. Man, this isn’t 8th grade anymore. Marty is a piece of shit and gets what he deserves. Hope this helps, don’t know why it was so hard to figure out

YouTube review channels like TheCriticalDrinker or Mauler show exactly how bad this is. Like they can’t even parse a movie thematically at a college freshman film class level, but they’re claiming to be the authority on what makes a good movie?? Lmao. Then they go into these myopic plot details and miss the forest for the trees. “if the world of obsession has a thing that grants wishes, why aren’t there more x/y/z?!”, cause that’s not what the movie is about? idk man, maybe look for thematic patterns instead of looking for plot holes, it’s not the “gotcha” you think it is

Idk I’m just sick of it. I miss when things were just for the love of the game rather than a side hustle