u/IDKBear25

Are you tekin the fuckin piss?

There is a young girl out there who woulda done muchhhh better and much more than Venus Williams with a wildcard for the 2026 US Open women's singles draw.

I have no doubt Serena Williams will get a wildcard for the 2026 US Open women's singles draw as well.

WTA needs to fix its shit.

I haven't played tennis since the age of 14 at school. And watching particularly Wimbledon this year made me want to take the step to actually participate in a tennis session in real life.

I was a bit nervous and intimidated at first when booking the session but my heart wasn't beating at all when stepping into the court.

I met the coach and shook his hand.

One of the members bought a racket from the storage for me to use. It was a Wilson racket. The racket was in okay condition - it wasn't battered but it wasn't pristine either.

Coach told that guy to just hit the ball to me to do some rallies. My first shots were awful. My timing was bad and balls flew all over the place. One ball I actually volleyed and it soared behind a car so it must've flown 100 metres. I then tossed the ball into the air 3 times to try some serving and my serves were just awful. They all flew way wide of the box. That was when I realised that playing tennis is actually difficult and is a skill you master after playing it lots and lots.

So the coach comes back after a few minutes and tells me to join him on a different court to do some 1-on-1 work.

He said he just wanted to get my forehand correct today. He corrected my grip because he said I was holding the racket like a golf club, told me to do the shake hands grip and hold the racket near the bottom with a firm hold in order to not let the racket fly out of my hand but also loose enough to ensure I wasn't tight-fisted, and he also told me to rotate my body. When I did as he told me to with the grip, I told him I could feel the racket doing the work and that it was spot on. He did give a lot of praise regarding my forehand, but a few times the ball did go up in the sky. I hit about 5 balls out of the court and into the car park. Which isn't good. I didn't hit the net that many times though.

I had 3 different hitting partners. The coach told them to take it easy on me as this was my first proper tennis lesson and to get me to keep on keeping on with the correct technique for a forehand. The rallies weren't proper rallies. It was rallying with unlimited bounces, just to get the motion correct of rallying. A few times, I did swing for the ball and completely miss it, as it came to me with pace. And a few times, the hitting partner did hit the ball to me as if I was supposed to do a backhand, but the coach told them no backhands from me today, only forehands. There was also no serving today.

To be honest, the thing I struggled the most with was contact point on the ball. I hit the ball too low more often hitting it too high, which made it soar into the air. And a lot of the time this was due to my hitting partner hitting the ball to me and it bouncing at my shoulder height (I'm 5'9" for reference).

I had to do a few obscure things when rallying such as sometimes, the hitting partner played it to me short, so I had to sprint to get the ball over the net to keep continuing the rally. Othertimes I misjudged the ball and I just saw it soar past me or I had to catch the ball as the ball wasn't presented to me appropriately to hit a forehand.

The coach left the session for the last 10 minutes and came back when it was the session's end time to say "TIME IS UP LET'S COLLECT THE BALLS IN".

I've never met these people before but they were all really nice and friendly and made me engaged. They asked me if I enjoyed it I said I enjoyed it a lot and it was fun, to which they said that's the main thing.

The session involved the coach, 4 others, and myself.

I know my hitting partners aren't licensed or professional coaches, but I'm just sharing my experience to try and gather or figure out whether this is how a tennis lesson/session is supposed to go. Of course I know that the coach can't cater to me every single second and the session isn't "Private 1-on-1 coaching". It's a group where the others played doubles and received very very minute coaching points and I received a lot.

The 4 others have been taking lessons from this coach for 1.5-2 years so they know each other very well. While I was doing forehands with a different hitting partner, they were all playing doubles.

Today I realised just how easy professional tennis players on television make it look to play tennis. Of course it's their job and the thing they do everyday for multiple hours and have done for decades for multiple hours per day, but me struggling today really put it into perspective how difficult it really is to pick up a racket yourself and play tennis.

After the session finished (it was 1 hour long), I went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of Oshee (Iga Swiatek's sponsor) orange vitamin water to carry on the tennis theme.

I started going to the gym in January 2023, and I was skinny as hell. I remember I'd get home after gym and just eat what my Mum had made and be content. I'd just eat a little more than I used to before starting the gym, so it was sustainable.

I never weighed myself then, but I was still thin as a stick.

I remember going to India in August 2023 and there was a weighing scale in my place of worship. I stepped on it, and I gained nothing at all. So I thought to myself "When the new academic year starts next month (September 2023), I'm gonna focus hard on gym and eating to gain weight".

It was still the same food. Rice. Flatbreads. Vegetable stew. Some meat stew (chicken, lamb). Pasta. Milk. Oats. Nuts. Apples. Oranges. Blueberries. Bananas. Orange juice. Apple juice. That was basically my whole diet.

Then I found out about bulking shakes. This is where you blend up milk, oats, peanut butter, a banana and protein powder and you get a thousand calories in this concoction. Then I started drinking these shakes with 2 bagels on the side, sometimes even 4 bagels, with Biscoff spread or peanut butter spread on top.

With this, I felt full as fuck. It was even sickly to get all this food down. But I still did it. In the name of "wanting to bulk".

I bought a weighing scale in January 2024 and it was a set routine that I would wake up every Sunday morning and weigh myself. I would submit this weight number into the Strong app. Then I would evaluate it and put the new weight into a calorie calculator website to gauge how much to eat to get to my next goal weight. I would never track calories specifically. Just eyeball everything.

I remember in October 2024 I got to my goal weight naked. And I felt like I had put too much excess weight on. So I decided to start a cut. I ate a lot less than I normally would. I remember vividly sitting in a class and my stomach was rumbling so much and it was so empty that it hurt and it would contract. So I just drank water to mask the feeling of hunger and thought to myself "In order to lose this weight, I need to push through this feeling of hunger". I also wanted abs more than anything at this point. Even though I did no specific ab exercises.

When I lost a lot of the fat and was starting to see abs in the mirror when flexing, I became mildly impressed with myself.

Then I wanted to start bulking again. But this is where it gets even worse.

I bought a new blender for myself which was smaller than the previous one and the same bottle you use to blend the ingredients could have a different lid put on which resembles the lid of a normal drinks bottle and thus you can carry it around in your every day.

This time, I was putting a huge amount of oats. Huge amount of milk. Lots of peanut butter into the shake. And even some vegetable oil to add extra calories.

And then I would go straight to the gym 1-2 hours after. With that big-ass shake still digesting in my stomach. I remember last year hitting a tough leg day, then going to the changing rooms. I felt like I was gonna black out or vomit. But then when I left the gym and went outside into the car park, I felt like I was gonna vomit again, but nothing happened, so I just walked home.

From then on, I knew it wasn't healthy or sustainable to carry on drinking these concoctions. So I stopped.

I gained a lot of weight just eating normal food which I mentioned above. So I was happy to keep seeing the number on the scale rise. Because it was mostly healthy muscle weight that I was putting on and not much fat.

But still, I would go to the gym and during sessions still feel oats digesting in my stomach due to the quantity because I ate them 1-2 hours before my session.

Now. I haven't been to the gym in just under 40 days. I cancelled my membership and cancelled my payments to the gym. And now, I honestly don't feel any better in regards to eating.

Nowadays. I just eat less. A lot less. Basically half of what I used to eat when I was going to the gym 5 days a week.

And honestly. Sometimes I'm content with it. Sometimes I feel like I'm "damaging" my body. And sometimes, I feel like I don't deserve food or deserve to eat.

I know eating food is to sustain bodily processes and to grow and repair cells. But sometimes I think "Fuck all that shit I am a waste of a human being" and just have to force-feed myself because I know it's healthier and better for me to eat the food than to not eat the food.

When I was going to the gym the food had a purpose because my brain was telling me "I need to eat this food to grow muscle and gain weight and to recover properly and to provide my body with excess nutrients for growth of hair and nails".

I used to look around at the food my friends were eating in school and they were eating sandwiches, crisps, granola bars, pasta, rice, chicken. It was like a buffet. They told me "I love food I love food so much I love different types of cuisine" and that never ever struck a chord with me. Since starting gym, I turned into a "Food is fuel. I only eat for nutrients, not for taste". And still am right now.

Just now I had some chicken and pasta. I just put into the plate however much pasta I wanted which for me is a moderate portion compared to what I used to eat when I was a gym-goer and less chicken than then too. And honestly, it felt like it didn't move the needle. I still felt like I'm eating way too much. Even though it's half the portion size of back then.

Also, I bought a food weighing scale on the same week I quit gym. Well I never got to use it in the "Eating to build muscle" context. But I've only used it a few times because I've had no need to and am amazed at the sheer quantity of food I was consuming when I used to go to the gym.

I also eat the same food basically every single day of every single week. I rarely ever eat out. And I don't know any recipes. So that could be part of the problem too.

I've stopped weighing myself like it was a checkbox on a checklist and now only weigh myself whenever I feel like it every 2-4 weeks.

So yeah. That's pretty much it.

I would love to hear some feedback to help me. Because it feels like I'm stuck in a rut with food.

I only stumbled upon these videos yesterday, and so far I've only watched 3 - Marta Kostyuk's, Zeynep Somnez's, and Eva Lys'.

There's 16 in total that they've made so far with different players and they really go in-depth and show what goes on in a player's day during different tournaments.

Highly recommend you to go check them out and I wanna see videos made by more players!

https://preview.redd.it/4e8n4hg4kq7h1.png?width=1504&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d8dca5f316ed70dcb98d3af4a0d3eca9663dbf6

https://preview.redd.it/ihlol0a6kq7h1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=d741505a1ab8f99d125aa39a417d3822045efab6

It was the first thing I noticed when he scored today.

And with his first ever touch in a World Cup match, mind you. 3 minutes after coming onto the pitch.

The short sleeves revealed the Whoop on the bicep band.

Seeing as though PSG are sponsored by Whoop, surely this has to be a Whoop MG right?

I wonder what the data would've said the moment his foot made contact with the through ball. His heart rate must've steadied. I don't think he'll release the data though.

So I started learning how to drive in April 2025. The first lesson I smashed it, however the third lesson I started roundabouts. That was when it all started going downhill. My first ever roundabout, I went way too fast and it was the first exit. From then, I just resented driving. I had no idea how to use the different lanes for 3rd or 4th exits, and I still don't understand.

It seems to me other people my age just learn driving so quickly. Like it's the back of their hand. Like I'm lagging behind. The instructor would have to dumb things down and repeat them 3 or 4 times to get me to understand.

Every 17 year old here is so eager to learn how to drive as soon as they get to that age. I was never ever like that. I'm 18 now and 17 when I started learning how to drive.

I've been into cars from a young age, from watching shows like Wheeler Dealers, Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Car SOS, Supercar Megabuild - you name it. And I've started developing a big passion for motorsport since 2024 too.

But I find it so difficult to drive a normal car on the real road. Driving at 70 MPH I can cope with. But things like dual carriageways which take you to a roundabout, or roundabouts with 3 or more exits just make me nervous as fuck. Also, I am so so bad at driving with the navigation on, whether that be sat nav or Waze or Google Maps. I cannot concentrate on both the road and the car's infotainment screen at the same time. I find it too overstimulating.

Whenever I used to do lessons (I did my last lesson nearly 5 weeks ago, wow time flies) I would find myself physically being sat in the car but my mind would ALWAYS be somewhere else. Whether it would be the football match that day or that week, or some other shit that life throws at me (I've made in-depth posts about these if you wanna read about them but I don't have the cognitive ability to write like that right now).

And that brings me to the last part of the title. Ever since I told my parents I wanna stop driving lessons and I have no interest, they didn't speak to me for a week straight. Yes you heard me. They wouldn't let me watch Formula 1 or MotoGP at all, as they would say "You watch these guys drive but can't even drive a normal car on normal roads?". My parents are lunatics. They think me not driving means I've failed somehow. That I was a demented sperm that my Dad released. I've told my Uncle I have no interest in driving and he knows that Gen Z have no interest in driving, as he told me his daughter (my cousin) has no interest in driving a car whatsoever either. My parents still see me differently. The relationship isn't the same between us. And ever since I told my parents yesterday that 2 people from my friend group passed their driving test (one is 17 and one is 18), they saw it as fuel to shout at me for not even taking my driving test, let alone passing it. I just resorted to taking my laptop to my bedroom to watch Disney Plus.

I have passed my theory test and it is valid until June 2027, and that didn't feel like an achievement at all. I remember very little of what I had to revise for that theory test now.

People can change their music, smoke cigarettes, input their navigation, play with their dashboard settings (just to name a few things) while still maintaining full control of the steering wheel and gearstick, but I can't even steer the car to keep it pointing in the right direction.

How do I eradicate this nervousness and become natural when driving a car on the real road?

This is just something I'm toying the idea with.

Because people have seen through Whoop's subscription based business model. Now in some regions, not only are they charging for the Whoop standalone band/sensor/chip/strap or whatever you wanna call it, but they're also charging a subscription on top of that too.

Before, the device itself used to be "free".

So with apps being made like Goose and Noop using platforms such as GitHub, would it be worth me buying a standalone Whoop sensor and just using one of these free apps that would free me from needing to subscribe to Whoop?

I know a lot of these apps are rough around the edges (for example they might not be polished or just throw lots and lots of data at you in a given moment). But that doesn't matter to me. I just want my sleep, recovery, calories, steps and heart rate to be tracked. Anything else is a bonus.

My current fitness tracker is a Fitbit Inspire 3 that I purchased in November 2024 and I use it only for those metrics.

I can buy a Whoop band/sensor/chip/strap for £30 or £40 on eBay. I know the hardware is good and it tracks a lot of things. That's why I'm interested.

So would it be worth me buying one to use with one of these apps?

Isack Hadjar has just finished 3rd in the Monaco Grand Prix. His second podium in Formula 1 and his first podium for Red Bull.

After Verstappen stalled on the line and had engine issues and had to DNF, Hadjar bought home the podium (subject to stewards) after having his own engine issues with getting into first gear and a lack of power.

That was a strong show of minerals on display - to defend 4th place from Russell in the W17 when we know how strong Mercedes' car is.

Hadjar finished 5th last time out in Montreal, 8th in Shanghai, and qualified very strongly indeed yesterday in 5th place.

After Verstappen crashed in Melbourne qualifying, Hadjar qualified 3rd.

In his first few press conferences as a Red Bull Racing Formula 1 driver, he was asked about the drivers who were in this seat before him (Gasly, Albon, Lawson, Tsunoda) and was asked about their results and if the car he'll be given will be different to the one Verstappen is given. He just simply said "We have the same car". That was so refreshing to hear him not pin the blame on Verstappen or Red Bull if results went south.

And so far, the results are superb!

I'm glad to see Le Petit Professeur put such good displays in his short career as a Red Bull Racing Formula 1 driver so far. And I have no doubt that will continue!

When he crashes, yes he's tough on himself and punches the steering wheel or whatnot, but it's good to see passion and the blame being put on himself rather than his team or the other driver of the team.

He's only 21, and this rawness and passion will become more streamlined as time goes on.

The car might cause him issues sometimes, but he's dogged, and he brings the car home more often than not in a strong fashion!

We all know Max Verstappen can do the unexpected, and this weekend the car has looked decent.

I think there's a higher possibility for him to get pole position here than there was in say the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix.

I think he's going to get pole position right here right now.

or saddened or depressed or all of the above and more even. The smartphone and the media or content on the smartphone is an escape for them. Instead of tackling their problems head-on and facing them to try and get rid of them permanently, they keep on going back into their comfort zone inside the smartphone.

Also, the way we interact with the smartphone. It's got a touchscreen. Of course this gives us endless ways to interact with the smartphone through gestures or different navigation options. But it enables behaviours like scrolling. And even when not on social media, it makes us do silly things like flick through emails fast that might be important and we gloss over them completely. Or just being trigger-happy and navigating through apps or clicking on apps and backing out of them for no reason whatsoever.

What I also dislike, is the advancement of smartphone and mobile technologies.

In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for folding phones. This applies for phones that have both a single "traditional" display that a slab smartphone has that folds to reveal a tablet display (like a Z Fold7), and also phones with 2 different screens (like a Surface Duo 2). I cannot think of a SINGLE use case where I would ever need to use, nevermind like to use, a phone that folds to reveal a tablet sized display. My solution and my argument to this would be to just buy an Apple iPad. That way you don't have the caveats like battery life problems, durability issues, hinge problems, and the display being smaller than a lot of major tablets already.

And advancements in cellular mobile network technology. Like 5G. And in 2029 they're saying, 6G will begin to be tested. I got 5G for the first time yesterday. With my new mobile plan. And on the bus I was getting 170 Mbps download speed and 40 Mbps upload speed. I thought this was obviously a great speed to be getting, especially on a mobile data connection. But what exactly is the use case for this? I don't game on my smartphone and rarely, if at all ever, use my phone as a mobile hotspot. So when am I going to use all this speed and all this bandwidth? I only ever use my phone to check and send messages, receive and make calls, check emails, watch YouTube videos and listen to music. That is 95% of my phone usage. The other usage is odd times like playing 8 Ball Pool. But the aforementioned is the vast majority of the way I use my smartphone. 4G is fast enough for my usage.

My smartphone isn't even considered "old". Yes it's 5 years old at this point. But it still gets the latest software updates. It's the Apple iPhone 13 and I purposely last updated the software 2 years ago. It's still running iOS 17.5.1. I see no reason to upgrade the phone to a newer model, or even update the software version it's running. I know I eventually might have to, but for the moment all my apps like banking apps run fine. I've been flirting of the idea of getting a newer model of phone, but I can't justify the price, and for my ideology of "Smartphones should never have been invented", me buying a newer phone goes against that and is hypocritical.

My Dad got his first smartphone in September 2012 and it was the Apple iPhone 4S. It was my first ever exposure to a smartphone and I remember playing games on it like Fruit Ninja and Real Racing GTI. The games back then were simple, but they were only a smidgen as addictive as the apps in the future were going to get like Instagram and TikTok. The last "normal" phone my Dad had I believe was a Nokia 6500 Slide and I remember it being in the cupboard just sat there not being used while my Dad was on an Apple iPhone 7 at that point (it was 2019 I believe), and I never thought I'd be imagining how my Dad's life was while using a traditional phone before the age of the smartphone.

Yesterday my parents were talking about the first mobile phones and my Dad said the first ever mobile phone he got was in 1999 and it was a Nokia Brick. It was a mammoth of a device.

Then after that came the switch to flip phones and/or feature phones (feature phones are called "dumbphones" today).

I was watching a movie called The Football Factory the other day and every single character was using either a flip phone or feature phone.

And it made me wonder, and the premise behind this post, was what was life like back in the day before the invention of the smartphone? I am younger than the first mainstream smartphone ever released, so I have no clue. I can only imagine how life was.

So I imagine it to be where people actually respect other people's company. They make eye contact while talking and take everything that the other person is saying in while the conversation is happening. Family time is important, and moments are savoured and made the most of. And there's no smartphone to record moments like you vomiting at 4 AM in a nightclub or a friend pulling your pants down as a joke, which in today's era would be plastered all over social media and bam, the whole world knows about your fuckup.

I was watching videos of old Oasis concerts from the 1990s and 2000s, and I was thinking "These guys performed in the age of the first mobile phone technology and are still going strong, perhaps even more popular than ever, in the smartphone era".

Smartphones are also so stagnant now with new "features". There is absolutely nothing groundbreaking or life-changing or revolutionary now whatsoever. The newest smartphone release is always last year's device with today's price tag. And it's always marketed as being a gargantuan upgrade. It never is. You buy a new smartphone and the "new" features only feel "new" for a maximum of 48 hours after you set the device up.

People feel peer pressure to have the latest smartphone too. When the Apple iPhone 17 Pro and Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max released in the orange colour. PEOPLE WENT CRAZY. Not only because the launch coincided with Halloween, but also because it's the *new* colour. Never seen before on an Apple iPhone. Like how fucking crazy is that? That people go WILD just because there's a different colour on a phone. Then they buy the phone and they only put a massive plastic case on it, because, y'know, they don't wanna drop it and break the glass. Most phones nowadays are a metal and glass sandwich. Not for "luxury" purposes, but so when they crack and break, they can charge us to get it fixed. Metal doesn't crack in that way. There was never any need to use glass on the back panel of a phone. They say it's for "QI wireless charging", but wireless charging requires wires anyway. And Samsung made their plastic back panel smartphones able to QI wirelessly charge.

Now I do not know what the future of the smartphone holds. Nor do I want to speculate. I feel like today's smartphones are way too advanced for my liking, and so is the cellular technology they're being operated on. I don't want a phone to turn into a tablet or some hologram clear smartphone or an augmented reality smartphone or whatever bullshit the rumours are suggesting. I was even speculating buying a BlackBerry to replace my Apple iPhone 13 to go back to basics, but I found out that in 2024, all 3G networks got shut down in the UK and thus I would not be able to use it as a mobile phone.

I am 18. And feel like smartphones are making life dystopian. They are used as mass surveillance vessels and track your every move like the websites you visit and your banking information and some car insurance policies here in the UK (called black box/telematics insurance policies) actually in the fine print of the insurance declaration say "You will need a smartphone at all times with Bluetooth enabled for the insurance policy to be activated". Absolutely fucking absurd.

I don't think I'm the only one feeling this same way. It's 3 AM as I'm writing this post and I'm not even falling asleep. I don't think I missed anything out. I think I've said everything I wanted to say about this topic.

or saddened or depressed or all of the above and more even. The smartphone and the media or content on the smartphone is an escape for them. Instead of tackling their problems head-on and facing them to try and get rid of them permanently, they keep on going back into their comfort zone inside the smartphone.

Also, the way we interact with the smartphone. It's got a touchscreen. Of course this gives us endless ways to interact with the smartphone through gestures or different navigation options. But it enables behaviours like scrolling. And even when not on social media, it makes us do silly things like flick through emails fast that might be important and we gloss over them completely. Or just being trigger-happy and navigating through apps or clicking on apps and backing out of them for no reason whatsoever.

What I also dislike, is the advancement of smartphone and mobile technologies.

In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for folding phones. This applies for phones that have both a single "traditional" display that a slab smartphone has that folds to reveal a tablet display (like a Z Fold7), and also phones with 2 different screens (like a Surface Duo 2). I cannot think of a SINGLE use case where I would ever need to use, nevermind like to use, a phone that folds to reveal a tablet sized display. My solution and my argument to this would be to just buy an Apple iPad. That way you don't have the caveats like battery life problems, durability issues, hinge problems, and the display being smaller than a lot of major tablets already.

And advancements in cellular mobile network technology. Like 5G. And in 2029 they're saying, 6G will begin to be tested. I got 5G for the first time yesterday. With my new mobile plan. And on the bus I was getting 170 Mbps download speed and 40 Mbps upload speed. I thought this was obviously a great speed to be getting, especially on a mobile data connection. But what exactly is the use case for this? I don't game on my smartphone and rarely, if at all ever, use my phone as a mobile hotspot. So when am I going to use all this speed and all this bandwidth? I only ever use my phone to check and send messages, receive and make calls, check emails, watch YouTube videos and listen to music. That is 95% of my phone usage. The other usage is odd times like playing 8 Ball Pool. But the aforementioned is the vast majority of the way I use my smartphone. 4G is fast enough for my usage.

My smartphone isn't even considered "old". Yes it's 5 years old at this point. But it still gets the latest software updates. It's the Apple iPhone 13 and I purposely last updated the software 2 years ago. It's still running iOS 17.5.1. I see no reason to upgrade the phone to a newer model, or even update the software version it's running. I know I eventually might have to, but for the moment all my apps like banking apps run fine. I've been flirting of the idea of getting a newer model of phone, but I can't justify the price, and for my ideology of "Smartphones should never have been invented", me buying a newer phone goes against that and is hypocritical.

My Dad got his first smartphone in September 2012 and it was the Apple iPhone 4S. It was my first ever exposure to a smartphone and I remember playing games on it like Fruit Ninja and Real Racing GTI. The games back then were simple, but they were only a smidgen as addictive as the apps in the future were going to get like Instagram and TikTok. The last "normal" phone my Dad had I believe was a Nokia 6500 Slide and I remember it being in the cupboard just sat there not being used while my Dad was on an Apple iPhone 7 at that point (it was 2019 I believe), and I never thought I'd be imagining how my Dad's life was while using a traditional phone before the age of the smartphone.

Yesterday my parents were talking about the first mobile phones and my Dad said the first ever mobile phone he got was in 1999 and it was a Nokia Brick. It was a mammoth of a device.

Then after that came the switch to flip phones and/or feature phones (feature phones are called "dumbphones" today).

I was watching a movie called The Football Factory the other day and every single character was using either a flip phone or feature phone.

And it made me wonder, and the premise behind this post, was what was life like back in the day before the invention of the smartphone? I am younger than the first mainstream smartphone ever released, so I have no clue. I can only imagine how life was.

So I imagine it to be where people actually respect other people's company. They make eye contact while talking and take everything that the other person is saying in while the conversation is happening. Family time is important, and moments are savoured and made the most of. And there's no smartphone to record moments like you vomiting at 4 AM in a nightclub or a friend pulling your pants down as a joke, which in today's era would be plastered all over social media and bam, the whole world knows about your fuckup.

I was watching videos of old Oasis concerts from the 1990s and 2000s, and I was thinking "These guys performed in the age of the first mobile phone technology and are still going strong, perhaps even more popular than ever, in the smartphone era".

Smartphones are also so stagnant now with new "features". There is absolutely nothing groundbreaking or life-changing or revolutionary now whatsoever. The newest smartphone release is always last year's device with today's price tag. And it's always marketed as being a gargantuan upgrade. It never is. You buy a new smartphone and the "new" features only feel "new" for a maximum of 48 hours after you set the device up.

People feel peer pressure to have the latest smartphone too. When the Apple iPhone 17 Pro and Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max released in the orange colour. PEOPLE WENT CRAZY. Not only because the launch coincided with Halloween, but also because it's the *new* colour. Never seen before on an Apple iPhone. Like how fucking crazy is that? That people go WILD just because there's a different colour on a phone. Then they buy the phone and they only put a massive plastic case on it, because, y'know, they don't wanna drop it and break the glass. Most phones nowadays are a metal and glass sandwich. Not for "luxury" purposes, but so when they crack and break, they can charge us to get it fixed. Metal doesn't crack in that way. There was never any need to use glass on the back panel of a phone. They say it's for "QI wireless charging", but wireless charging requires wires anyway. And Samsung made their plastic back panel smartphones able to QI wirelessly charge.

Now I do not know what the future of the smartphone holds. Nor do I want to speculate. I feel like today's smartphones are way too advanced for my liking, and so is the cellular technology they're being operated on. I don't want a phone to turn into a tablet or some hologram clear smartphone or an augmented reality smartphone or whatever bullshit the rumours are suggesting. I was even speculating buying a BlackBerry to replace my Apple iPhone 13 to go back to basics, but I found out that in 2024, all 3G networks got shut down in the UK and thus I would not be able to use it as a mobile phone.

I am 18. And feel like smartphones are making life dystopian. They are used as mass surveillance vessels and track your every move like the websites you visit and your banking information and some car insurance policies here in the UK (called black box/telematics insurance policies) actually in the fine print of the insurance declaration say "You will need a smartphone at all times with Bluetooth enabled for the insurance policy to be activated". Absolutely fucking absurd.

I don't think I'm the only one feeling this same way. It's 3 AM as I'm writing this post and I'm not even falling asleep. I don't think I missed anything out. I think I've said everything I wanted to say about this topic.

https://preview.redd.it/8ax9wbijni3h1.png?width=1199&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c28bf05cbe848bc5bb1d2c562a7af8f4849807c

From being giant-killers in the Europa League knockout stages in 2014/15 then taking the fight right to Sevilla in the final itself in Warsaw only to be beaten narrowly 3-2.

The club was liquidated in 2019 due to bankruptcy.

The story of the club is a European footballing tale for the ages.

And now the club only lives on in folklore. As the real team became extinct.

So I started playing ETS2 in April 2020, because it was lockdown and I had a steering wheel with pedals. It was a cheap PS3 wheel but I played the game all day most days back then. I've got 5,841 miles of driving which I know won't be a lot compared to some of you more hardcore players but I want to play with this save file.

I downloaded the game today from Steam and all my mods from Steam Workshop were activated. There was 17 in total. Then when I clicked the "Continue Career" button, all the save files had a red triangle. When I clicked on them, both the autosave files and my manual save from 4th April 2021, it keeps saying that the mod wasn't loading in.

The mod in question is called "Ultimate Real Companies" from Steam Workshop. The game crashed several times. After 3 times of this happening, I deactivated the mod in the priority order. Same thing again. Then I deleted the mod and reinstalled it on Steam Workshop. Bam, same thing again.

The progress bar of the save file would get to 40% and the game would crash entirely.

I wanna get to playing ETS2 again with a steering wheel and pedals but the fact that I can't load my save file from 5 years ago makes me not want to invest in buying a steering wheel and pedals.

It's not the computer. The computer is more than powerful enough to run ETS2 at high settings (i5-9300H, GTX 1650 4 GB, 8 GB 2400MHZ RAM, 256 GB M.2 PCIE NVME SSD, and 512 GB SATA III SSD). It can more than handle the demands of playing ETS2.

Anyone else experienced this same thing?

So I started playing ETS2 in April 2020, because it was lockdown and I had a steering wheel with pedals. It was a cheap PS3 wheel but I played the game all day most days back then. I've got 5,841 miles of driving which I know won't be a lot compared to some of you more hardcore players but I want to play with this save file.

I downloaded the game today from Steam and all my mods from Steam Workshop were activated. There was 17 in total. Then when I clicked the "Continue Career" button, all the save files had a red triangle. When I clicked on them, both the autosave files and my manual save from 4th April 2021, it keeps saying that the mod wasn't loading in.

The mod in question is called "Ultimate Real Companies" from Steam Workshop. The game crashed several times. After 3 times of this happening, I deactivated the mod in the priority order. Same thing again. Then I deleted the mod and reinstalled it on Steam Workshop. Bam, same thing again.

The progress bar of the save file would get to 40% and the game would crash entirely.

I wanna get to playing ETS2 again with a steering wheel and pedals but the fact that I can't load my save file from 5 years ago makes me not want to invest in buying a steering wheel and pedals.

It's not the computer. The computer is more than powerful enough to run ETS2 at high settings (i5-9300H, GTX 1650 4 GB, 8 GB 2400MHZ RAM, 256 GB M.2 PCIE NVME SSD, and 512 GB SATA III SSD). It can more than handle the demands of playing ETS2.

Anyone else experienced this same thing?

This question might seem stupid but here goes.

I'm 18M currently in school.

Since the age of 15, I realised that the people I was friends with did wayyyy more stuff than me. I found this out by getting ridiculed. It was the summer of 2023, and I would message the group chat every single day to ask my friends when they were hopping on the game. The gaming session would usually start at 10 PM or 11 PM, and I would normally message in the evening. One time, I messaged in the afternoon, at 2 PM, and my friends said "This game is the highlight of your day". That was true - it was the holidays, however I had no activities to do whatsoever apart from the gym and play video games.

So a few months later, I start becoming close with one of the guys I played the video game with because we're in 2 of the same classes. We talk about life, hobbies, aspirations, how our parents are doing etc. He'd always talk to me about the stuff he did over the weekend like go to restaurants or have houseparties or go to the shopping mall or go play football for the local team or go watch a football match in the stadium. And there I'd be. Absorbing it all, but wishing that I could be able to do just one of the many activities he did over the weekend. Back then (this was Late 2023 to Early 2024) I'd wish my parents would be able to take interest in my interests and for us to not sit at home for the whole weekend. The only thing we used to go and do on the weekends was to go to our place of worship. Back then, I realised somewhat the meaning of what it meant when people say "I have a life".

Even now, I get this feeling when I'm in class. One of my teachers recently said "I had to go to this 40th birthday party then I had to take my kids to their sports class". And when I'm in conversation with my friends talking about schoolwork and asking when they're going to do it, they say to me more often than not "I have a life you know". Some friends even told me "You sit at home all day doing nothing".

And that's true. The only reasons I ever leave the house are either to go to school, go to the gym, or go to my place of worship. That is it. I don't go to the park. I don't go to the shopping mall. I don't go to the pub or club or bar. I only go out to play football once a week.

The rest of my time is spent doing schoolwork, messaging my friends on Snapchat, and the thing that takes the biggest chunk of my time is consuming content.

Whether it be live sports like football, MotoGP, Formula 1 or tennis. Or random ass content where I like the sound of the title of the YouTube video. I find myself scrolling endlessly sometimes and have to snap out of it. By the way, it is fucking crazy that we made scrolling short videos on a screen endlessly an actual "activity" these days. And I play video games sometimes too. Sometimes I binge video games while sometimes I play them sparingly. It just depends on what mood I'm in.

So that's pretty much all I do. Just use my laptop or phone or PS5 and stare at pixels on a screen most of the time to try and be content.

My parents don't do anything recreational or leisurely either. They just sit at home twitching and fidgeting watching the TV or listening to the radio all day everyday. We go as a family to a random family function once every 2-3 months (that's if we ever get invited) and that is also the furthest the car travels for 2-3 months too.

So, this might have been a weird post. But I'm curious.

What does "having a life" actually mean?

What does it actually mean if someone "has a life"?