Thank you. I’m looking for movies that have shots of close ups of the eye because I really like this type of shot in films
A lot of shots featuring people looking at things away from the camera or to the side (it doesn’t show the pupils close up) I’m looking for something that shows a close up of the pupils.
Thanks.
A lot of shots show the person looking off into the distance or at something but rarely do you see shots where they’re looking directly at the camera, you can see their pupils, and it’s a close up.
Are there any films that feature shots like this?
Looking for something set at the earliest at 2000 and hopefully later. Something sent in the present that reflects modern times, short, maybe about late Gen Z or millennials. Maybe a lil depressing? Idk.
I used to like all that alt lit stuff.
Prefer if the character is kinda depressed
thinking about freedom lately and how that feels for different people and what someone wants out of life.
I just want to be free from expectations from the daily grind from being alone I feel trapped in the systems of life of mortgages and bills and jobs and assignments and deliverables and interview rituals and assignments and odd standardized tests and certifications and stupid little expectations. I feel just so alienated and overwhelmed by all these artificial systems and limitations that have been placed on society, but I don’t want to live alone in the forest like some hermit. Things are just way too abstract now. Everything runs through requirements. Rent depends on work. Work depends on credentials, interviews, performance metrics, and repeated evaluation. It’s constant and never ending. Even moving forward in life feels like passing through gates and checks.
There is this steady feeling of being contained inside something structured and impersonal. My days fill with tasks that are about proving readiness for other tasks, and the distance between effort and anything real starts to feel so abstract, there is a sense of alienation,
Every person I know seems to have their own private version of escape. One friend became obsessed with FIRE and passive income spreadsheets. He talks about compound interest with this weird spiritual intensity like he’s building a tunnel out of prison one percentage point at a time. Another moved three hours away into the desert and sends photos of tractors and empty roads and says he finally feels human again. Then I see him posting online every day anyway, still staring into the same glowing rectangle as the rest of us. What good is that? I guess he is free.
Another friend just gave up completely and settled into the rhythm everyone else seems to settle into. Wake up and Work. Come home then drink. Scroll until 2am. Go out with some friends and hit on some girls on hinge. Stupid and shallow dates that never go anywhere, repeat. To him, it seems life gets easier once you stop asking big questions. I don’t find any beauty or glory in this type of life yet I’m forced into it, into living sedation. You’ll always find him on the couch, TV humming in the background, a vape in his hand, sports betting app open, little pleasures stacked on top of each other to insulate against reflection and consciousness.
I know some friends who find freedom through love. Or maybe through surrender to obligation and life. Through marriage, children, routines, building a small private world with another person. Perhaps that can be your own little freedom in between beings trapped at work. To some people I think that’s another form of containment but lately I understand it a lot more. Maybe freedom comes from having somewhere to direct your care. Maybe people can survive almost anything if they feel necessary to someone else…maybe that’s what’s missing from my life?
I don’t know. I just know I constantly feel trapped in something and I can never explain it correctly. Sometimes I feel like a caged animal pacing back and forth in an enclosure. there’s this invisible architecture around modern life that quietly compresses the soul into a box. Every day starts feeling pre scripted and it drives me crazy. All the news, the notifications, the traffic, the emails, bills, and algorithms feeding you your own personality back to you.
What is being free? Maybe freedom is physical space. Land. Silence. No neighbors for miles. Learning how to fix things yourself. Growing food. Owning your own time. Sometimes I think freedom is financial insulation from humiliation. Enough money where you can say no without fear. Sometimes I think freedom is chemical and people spend their entire lives trying to alter consciousness because sober modernity feels fundamentally wrong to the nervous system.
I knew a guy who backpacked around Europe for almost two years sleeping in hostels and he told me he felt most free when he owned almost nothing. Then he came home and immediately got depressed again within like three months. Freedom apparently has an expiration date once you reenter systems and obligations.
Maybe freedom only exists in fragments and one must enjoy the little pieces of they get. In certain nights, certain conversations, when you drive with no destination, when you’re falling in love for a month, when you’re sitting alone somewhere quiet enough to hear yourself think again. Maybe people spend their whole lives constructing different mechanisms to briefly forget the sensation of confinement.
I just know I want to be free. I’ve felt this since I was a kid and the feeling never left. Some days it becomes almost physical. Like pacing inside my own life and home trying to locate the exit, but there’s no way out.
Thank you
Something portable
does practice practicing your art get abandoned for financial reality and other long term goals? and how do you sit with that?
I keep circling a question that feels hard to resolve cleanly.
There is a path where I put all my time into art and full financial resources and I either hit the lottery ticket and become successful or (way way more likely!) nothing happens and I’m broke. I wonder if being a full time artist takes delusional self belief or confidence because how tf else can you do this?
There is another path where most time goes toward steady paid work in the corporate world because it carries rent, stability, and the ability to plan a life that includes home, family, and long term responsibilities. I am currently doing this and it’s comfortable but I day dream constantly about making art and spend a lot of my time looking at paintings and art and going to shows wishing I could just have my art somewhere one day.
The reality hits though that I am an adult and no longer in my 20s and cannot afford to be making low money.
Currently I am at a job that has an ok work life balance but takes 50 hours of my week so it gives me SOME time to make art on weekends. However this job doesn’t provide me with as high of an income as I’d like so I’m thinking of going back to do more schooling which will take away all my time as potential career exit opportunities result in hours of 60-70 a week; this means no more art at all probably and the thought of it makes me sad.
I’m trying to balance the pull of being an artist and expressing myself and potentially not having much income with the balance of going hard towards the corporate grind being miserable a little but having all the creature comforts I need and potentially, being able to support a future family and partner. For men, this desire for income is especially higher and noted.
As one gets older, time and energy become finite in a way that forces a decision in practice.
For people who have been in this longer, I’m curious how that has actually unfolded. At some point does full time studio practice get set aside mainly for financial reasons. How does that decision land internally over time. Does it feel like a clean shift into stability, or something more gradual that carries a kind of ongoing tension.
There is also a version where the art practice continues alongside work, but on reduced terms. That version seems common, and I’m curious how sustainable it feels over years rather than months. I know it doesnt have to be one or the other but in practice it’s way more difficult to balance. I miss the freedom and wish I started with my art practice when I was younger.
Would be interested in hearing from people who have lived through that stage of the question.
Would love to see contemporary work people have come across recently, especially from current biennials, museum exhibitions, gallery programs, or new institutional shows. There’s been a lot happening lately and I’ve been finding some incredible artists and projects.
Thinking this could become a recurring weekly or monthly thread for sharing and discussing recent discoveries.
Please share links to official exhibition pages, museum documentation, gallery archives, interviews, essays, reviews, or professional writing that includes images of the work. This helps preserve proper attribution and context for the artists and exhibitions.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone’s been finding lately.
I feel like there used to be an entire genre of man that barely exists anymore. The obsessive romantic. The guy writing deranged letters at 3am. The guy ruining his life over a woman. The Kafka type. Pathetic in a way, yeah, but also sincere and emotionally incandescent.
Now if a guy acts too invested too early it triggers some kind of evolutionary contamination response. Women read intensity as low status, unstable, manipulative, embarrassing, etc. Even saying “I adore her” with full sincerity sounds culturally off now.
I keep wondering what changed exactly. Part of me thinks modern dating flattened male desire into performance metrics. Everyone is self aware, ironic, optimized, emotionally market-tested. The old romantic archetype depended on longing, distance, fantasy, projection, delayed communication. You could disappear into obsession because people weren’t being psychologically surveilled in real time through apps and social media.
I also think women receive this type of attention from everyone now so it’s a turn off
I also notice the simp archetype was probably attractive when men were more aloof and stoic and unemotional(seen funnily enough as a good trait now??) and downright abusive
So earnestness itself starts getting coded as danger or desperation.
There’s also something weird where detachment became erotic. The cooler person wins. The less affected person controls the frame. Entire generations learned attraction through scarcity psychology and algorithmic attention economies.
I don’t even mean this in some trad “women used to like nice guys” way because that’s a different thing entirely. I mean there used to be men whose entire inner world became mythologized through love and yearning and madness. What happened?!?
I’m in my mid 30s and seriously considering law school. I keep circling back to it every few years and the thought never fully leaves.
My issue is that I genuinely can’t tell if this is a meaningful pivot or a terrible idea driven by restlessness and wanting direction. I already feel behind in life in a general sense. Starting a long expensive path at this age feels psychologically strange when I see people my age already established in careers, married, owning homes, etc.
I’m trying to be realistic about the profession too. I hear a lot about burnout, debt, oversaturation, miserable associates, and people leaving law entirely. At the same time, I know some people genuinely thrive in it and seem intellectually alive because of the work.
My current role makes $90K and has a decent work life balance but I worry about continuing to coast. At the same time I fear the grind and the hard work and the fact that I might lose out on doing anything else and lose out on my freedom. However at this current moment, I’m not doing much with this freedom anyway so might as well do something great.
For people who went later in life or knew older students: how did it turn out for them? Did age become an advantage in terms of maturity and discipline? Did the debt and opportunity cost feel worth it?
I’d especially like to hear from anyone who entered law school after feeling directionless or stuck beforehand.
I’m in my mid 30s and seriously considering law school. I keep circling back to it every few years and the thought never fully leaves.
My issue is that I genuinely can’t tell if this is a meaningful pivot or a terrible idea driven by restlessness and wanting direction. I already feel behind in life in a general sense. Starting a long expensive path at this age feels psychologically strange when I see people my age already established in careers, married, owning homes, etc.
I’m trying to be realistic about the profession too. I hear a lot about burnout, debt, oversaturation, miserable associates, and people leaving law entirely. At the same time, I know some people genuinely thrive in it and seem intellectually alive because of the work.
My current role makes $90K and has a decent work life balance but I worry about continuing to coast. At the same time I fear the grind and the hard work and the fact that I might lose out on doing anything else and lose out on my freedom. However at this current moment, I’m not doing much with this freedom anyway so might as well do something great.
For people who went later in life or knew older students: how did it turn out for them? Did age become an advantage in terms of maturity and discipline? Did the debt and opportunity cost feel worth it?
I’d especially like to hear from anyone who entered law school after feeling directionless or stuck beforehand.
I am single again after a breakup and it has been hitting hard. I feel a lot of sadness and I have been spiraling around it. I am looking for something to ground me and give me direction again.
I am open to fiction or nonfiction. Things about finding a path forward in life. Things about purpose and discipline. Things about confidence and identity. Things about relationships, masculinity, and how people relate to each other in a healthier way. Things about attachment patterns, emotional regulation, and people pleasing.
I am also curious about the role books actually play in this process. Some part of me wonders what creates real change and what just creates the feeling of progress while you are reading.
idk if anyone else feels this but i’ve always had this weird drive to become insanely good at something. not even mainly for money or status. i’m obsessed with the idea of reaching a level where the thing becomes part of your nervous system and you can just flow through it naturally.
i wanna disappear into a craft or skill hard enough that it reshapes my whole life around it. repetition until instinct. i think part of it is wanting to feel undeniable somehow. like if i became exceptional at something then my existence would feel more solid or real.
the frustrating part is i keep moving from thing to thing. i’ll spend years on something, get good, hit a plateau, then start feeling like i don’t have that x factor and drift somewhere else. real mastery seems to require a level of obsession that consumes everything around it, and modern life feels structurally hostile to that kind of focus.
i’m also really drawn to people who have that aura. musicians, athletes, artists, programmers, whoever. people where the skill becomes inseparable from them and there’s this weird gravitas and libidinal energy to what they do.
maybe i just want a lane where my brain fully locks in instead of scattering everywhere.
curious if this is a normal human thing or if there’s something more specific psychologically going on here. does anyone else relate?
idk if anyone else feels this but i’ve always had this weird drive to become insanely good at something. not even mainly for money or status. i’m obsessed with the idea of reaching a level where the thing becomes part of your nervous system and you can just flow through it naturally.
i wanna disappear into a craft or skill hard enough that it reshapes my whole life around it. repetition until instinct. i think part of it is wanting to feel undeniable somehow. like if i became exceptional at something then my existence would feel more solid or real.
the frustrating part is i keep moving from thing to thing. i’ll spend years on something, get good, hit a plateau, then start feeling like i don’t have that x factor and drift somewhere else. real mastery seems to require a level of obsession that consumes everything around it, and modern life feels structurally hostile to that kind of focus.
i’m also really drawn to people who have that aura. musicians, athletes, artists, programmers, whoever. people where the skill becomes inseparable from them and there’s this weird gravitas and libidinal energy to what they do.
maybe i just want a lane where my brain fully locks in instead of scattering everywhere.
curious if this is a normal human thing or if there’s something more specific psychologically going on here. does anyone else relate?
The older I get the more I realize every modern male archetype looks kind of bleak up close. I have multiple friends that perfectly capture this. I am happy for all of them but find myself questioning which path I myself should take while vicariously living through their lives. I keep questioning where u fit in through all this?
I got one friend living the full digital nomad life. Dude wakes up in some beautiful Airbnb in Brazil or Spain or Thailand, answers a few emails from his laptop, spends the rest of the day eating insanely good food and sleeping with women having their travel experience hookups from all over the world. European, South American, young, very pretty, and looking for adventure and excitement. Nothing serious. Every woman I see him with is your dream girl wifey that you would do anything for. Every photo looks beautiful. Rooftops and beaches, scooters driven by the honest people of wherever, wine glasses in a winery in a city you count pronounces, strange foods, international friends, gain an hour lose an hour. Life runs through and is mediated apps and the power of the dollar though cheap labor. Uber. Airbnb. Match Group. Translation apps. ChatGPT. Food delivery. Currency exchange apps. Sometimes I think he cracked the code. It’s hedonism but it’s the hedonism we all secretly want. What else are you going to do? shitpost on here all day? It’s all going down man. Might as well enjoy it’s this life is a thousand times better than scrolling twitter all day for screenshots to share to RS. Sometimes I think he’s just really good at staying in motion so he never has to sit still long enough to ask himself certain questions, but what good is me asking any of these stupid questions? It’s all just mindless rumination and navel gazing. Maybe I’m the one not living life.
Another friend works a normal sales job and honestly seems content in his routine. Wakes up early, gym in the morning or gym after work, closes sales, vapes like a chimney, watches basketball, football, hockey. Meal preps. Eats simple meals made for single servings. The type of food doesn’t matter as much as the macros themselves, balanced for all the nutritional needs to keep his body running. Sports on the weekdays. Fights on Saturdays with the boys. Hangs with local friends, bets on games, goes out for a drink at the local bar, scrolls social media for a few hours before bed. Very regular life. Nothing dramatic. He’s like a calm efficient worker bee, waking up, sleeping, and continually churning to keep the machine running. He’s not trying to optimize himself into a productivity machine or turn life into some cinematic arc. He enjoys the daily simple pleasures, a nice coffees, brand new shoes He isn’t even trying to sleep with the most women, like my other friend, he’s just happy to meet one or two girls and chat with a bunch from various apps. The girls are always incredibly attractive but very local into their routine girls, gym, posting on Instagram, and live local normal lives, and deriving their value from looking hot. He just lives, and does what he needs to do. He is very self disciplined and looks great. There’s something respectable about people who can still enjoy simple shit without needing to intellectualize everything. Meanwhile, I’m still shitposting on RS.
Then I got another friend who went full career mode. Did the higher education, top of the class. Got the prestigious job, he’s always interviewing or thinking about interviewing, when he’s not he’s dealing with superiors and working crazy hours, he’s trying to decompress from work and getting hammered with me talking about work.
Nice apartment he goes to relax in. Netflix and YouTube is always on. Orders every meal because he’s exhausted, which I do too. All the girls seem to see dollar signs in him, which sucks when you’re trying to date intentionally. The girls always highly educated, very selective, high maintenance types, they’re always carrying a Chanel purse, always in dresses, the Instagram is an advertisement for them, there’s never any swimsuit photos, it’s classy looks all the way, always pretty. Dating feels like a second job for him now because he is looking for marriage, the stakes are high and most women are interested in him for the title and prestige and money his career offers and want the fruits of his hard work. A lot of the dates are hob interviews. He is ambitious and wants to make more money and grow more, but I honestly don’t know why, he seems to live a nice but modest life, he isn’t driven by wanting to buy something but rather to perform at the top of what he’s doing, money is just the quantitative indicator. A lot of meaning here is derived from the job and the job title and how people treat you due to that. I appreciate the ability to strive for me, to be ambitious, and to compete. But is the ideal life in an office?
And somewhere in the middle of all this I keep asking myself what the actual point of all these paths are, where I fit in, and what I want, and what I should do. I’m in the middle between all these cross roads, just thinking instead of going anywhere. Perhaps that truly is the worst choice of them all.
Travel forever? Grind forever? Do your routine forever?
Hedonism feels all prescriptive after a while. Normal life feels sedated. But grind culture turns people into human infrastructure for corporations. Every path seems wrapped around screens, apps, subscriptions, algorithms, delivery services, and some form of managed consumption.
Feels like every version of western life now just comes packaged differently. One guy consumes experiences. One consumes comfort. I think about it and shit post on RS
I genuinely can’t tell which life makes the most sense anymore.
Maybe this is what people mean when they say modern life feels spiritually off. Endless convenience and stimulation and options. Very little meaning.
Which way western man?
It’s kind of wild watching a whole generation spend a decade talking about independence, careerism, deconstructing gender roles, “boss babe” culture etc then immediately pivot into tradwife aesthetics the second the economy got bleak and social media started rewarding domestic nostalgia again.
A lot of people’s politics and identity aren’t really rooted in anything particular to them but are rather legitimately downstream from algorithms, rent prices, and vibes.
IG and TikTok I think drives way more ideology than people want to admit. You can almost map cultural values directly onto the economy and the algorithm.
Hustle culture exploded during cheap money years when aspiration meant status and consumption. People are exhausted now. Rent is insane
People are getting laid off so peoples careers feel unstable now everybody’s burned out, and suddenly retreating into domestic fantasy. Everyone starts looking for comforting and aspirational fantasies.
I don’t even mean that as some moral judgment. It just feels strange watching identities change this fast while everyone still talks like their worldview came from deep personal conviction. Half the internet seems to absorb beliefs aesthetically first and rationalize them afterward.
They’re all an endless loop of obviously staged pranks, low budget videos , and AI-generated slop stitched together with no discernible purpose at all.
The ones that have no point, he watches like 7 times to process exactly what’s going on which only further drives the algorithm to show him more of this stuff
The worst part is how much he loves it. Genuinely delighted, laughing out loud. Meanwhile I’m sitting there watching clearly scripted “reactions” and thinking about the heat death of the universe cursing those techie fucks for ruining even time with my dad. FUCK THE PEOPLE AT FACEBOOK / YOUTUBE.
I smile through it. I nod. Most of the time I’m scrolling my phone with him, I feel really bad but I can’t handle one more fucking second of an Indian guy who fake pretend fights another Indian guy for his girlfriend. Or an African dude doing pranks on his friend that is pretending to be a bystander. Or some short that shows someone in an undeveloped country making some shitty food that would give you ungodly diarrhea. I perform enjoyment like it’s a second job. I want to spend time with him but this is impossible.
Shorts are a genuinely malevolent technology. Whatever algorithm feeds him this stuff has figured out exactly how to hold a human brain hostage between one fake prank and the next piece of content that makes you dumber just by proximity to it.
None of it is about anything. It doesn’t build toward anything. It just is a firehose of pure, weaponized meaninglessness.
And he’s having the time of his life.
Must be sign of a trash dick my ego has never recovered from this