u/ObjectiveExpress4804

i think the internet stopped feeling magical because it got nerfed from “forest full of unlicensed wizards” into “airport mall where every kiosk is trying to calculate your lifetime value.”

when i was younger, math/science stuff online felt like finding trapdoors in reality. linear algebra was like: what if space is secretly made of spreadsheets but the spreadsheets are god. differential equations were like: what if motion had grammar. arxiv was forbidden candy i ate in a mcdonald’s back room like a victorian chimney orphan discovering gradient descent.

now everything feels pre-chewed. seo foam, ragebait, ai slop, affiliate sludge, five apps in a trench coat pretending to be civilization. the old internet felt like stumbling into someone’s weird cave. the new internet feels like being escorted through a casino by a growth team with a law degree.

mayyyyybe kids aren’t less curious; mayyybe we just paved over the curiosity wetlands and replaced them with content farms. no wonder everyone’s brain feels like a browser tab that got spiritually waterboarded.
anyway my current personality is just “make reality have devtools.”

i haven’t been doing 1000% the past months so its not like i can show her 12 interviews scheduled per day. i look lazy and useless. i don’t know if economists are calling this the second great depression but it certainly is depressing for me. yesterday an interviewer asked me what do i do for fun and i just said ‘nothing’ and then i said ‘i just like walking but im not very social’ and i feel like i ruined my chances by saying that. i shouldn’t speak negatively about myself. but i don’t know what im going to say when my aunt asks what ive been doing

i haven’t been doing 1000% the past months so its not like i can show her 12 interviews scheduled per day. i look lazy and useless. i don’t know if economists are calling this the second great depression but it certainly is depressing for me. yesterday an interviewer asked me what do i do for fun and i just said ‘nothing’ and then i said ‘i just like walking but im not very social’ and i feel like i ruined my chances by saying that. i shouldn’t speak negatively about myself. but i don’t know what im going to say when my aunt asks what ive been doing

i haven’t been doing 1000% the past months so its not like i can show her 12 interviews scheduled per day. i look lazy and useless. i don’t know if economists are calling this the second great depression but it certainly is depressing for me. yesterday an interviewer asked me what do i do for fun and i just said ‘nothing’ and then i said ‘i just like walking but im not very social’ and i feel like i ruined my chances by saying that. i shouldn’t speak negatively about myself. but i don’t know what im going to say when my aunt asks what ive been doing

he should only do this ‘evolutionary’ approach to getting the answer he wants to hear for the first one or two questions. then if they still aren’t saying what he wants them to say then he should switch to explaining and asking more biased questions instead of blank guess questions

pomo, 26m, i have disabled sibling + elder friends inside who i see the organization being a net positive for (afaict)

im wondering if the organization was previously useful as a propaganda channel for interest groups and since privacy rights now cripple their defining behavior they are now largely driven by internal financial interests instead. because i don’t understand how they could be so consistently unresponsive to csa problems in policy unless that was part of some higher controlling groups interests. like when i was younger a child might’ve been assigned to read some super sexual bible reading from ezekiel (real, elder said “it’s just what the system decided”) but now child-separated schools at kingdom halls isn’t unreasonable tho that would also have it’s own problems.

anyway, i’ve just been thinking a lot about it, and I understand that people need things to hope in to keep dealing with daily life and so I feel like the financialization of the organization might be a wonderful change because it would make the controlling incentives much more tame. it would force him to work within the legal constraints and to be much more responsive to feedback in places where it has hurt a lot of people. Not saying everything’s going to be fixed, but it will become much safer in many ways.

i need to matter to someone. ideally a girl who loves me. but i’ve felt so lonely. i don’t want to live anymore a lit off the time. and i actually really don’t want to hurt my parents. i just listened to a yt girl talk about how much it hurt when her boyfriend unalived himself and it made me cry to hear that and i really hate life a lot but i don’t want to hurt mommy and daddy. and my dad actually seems to kinda be this way too tho maybe not because he still has a job so he has a purpose to live for outside of just survival and the provider instinct is strong with him. i lost it all after i told my parents in early 2025 that we needed to euthanize my beloved dog because his tumor was making it hard for him to breathe. but god and hope and everything god died after that and i don’t enjoy socializing or seeing things or doing fun things anymore. no that’s too simple. i was always depressed ever since high school when i started noticing my feelings i knew i was different. but it really came crashing down hard after i had to admit that death should win and then a few months later i would try to kill myself also but i got scared so i grabbed into a plant instead of falling cleanly off the cliff. and i hung on to it for a minute until i decided to let go but this time with the survival instinct to not push off the edge and instead of falling to my death i just tore up my back and slid down the cliff and suffering injuries. now ive been really thinking about doing it but i can’t bring myself to hurt my parents

i’m sorry i know this is asked all the time and most of the girls on this platform in the comments will probably be assuming i just want to have sex and be in the comments telling me to start treating women like people. i do. but i really really really really really want a real girlfriend. i want to be close to a girl for reasons that are entirely appropriate and normal and i just need help

we met on Twitter in 2024 and just started talking and we’ve tried to be present for each other emotionally and it’s included flirting and other romance in various ways that various times. I really do enjoy hearing her and I wish I could spend more time with her. We just hung up because of her battery. It’s almost always the battery that makes us have to disconnect, but I wish we could keep on talking. I just like to listen to her. it made me so happy to hear her

this is such a big deal for me you guys don’t understand. not only is she a girl in the 23-27 age range but she’s also attractive! and into robotics!

i ve spent most of my teens and early 20s feeling fundamentally invisible to girls. like genuinely accepting that flirting is only something that happens to Other Guys. so i almost don’t believe it. especially because she’s into robotics/ai stuff too?? hello??? what is happening???

just getting attention at all is a big deal. i’m going to try and get a date with her as soon as posible. maybe this weekend. maybe next week. and she’s also a technology reporter and i’m doing independent research atm so i might try to get an interview with her. i’ve always fantasized about being on the other end of a table with a hot girl asking me about my life and thousands of other guys watching. ok i won’t get carried away but im just excited 😜 😜 😜

i had so much going for me. top ten at prestigious high school, 3.901 gpa, 1470 sat, multiple admissions and full rides, etc. life was difficult, but meaningful. and yet when i told my parents and associates at church (JW), they encouraged me to stay nearby. since i can’t drive and we were living in rural nevada at the time there was no alternative to pursue and no peers to hang out with. just old people from church and parasocial relationships. so my life just fell into a rut for the last four years. now we’ve moved to fence for dads work, but i’m just as sheltered and socially underdeveloped as before. every time i see kids that look my age at the store hanging out i get so sad and angry. that was the life my well meaning parents and associates stole from me when they couldn’t see it themselves. i just want to wave and say hi to them and ask if i can join their conversation but at my age (26) that’s too weird. that’s what i would’ve done at college. why didn’t i take the ticket to ut? :’((. and don’t get me started on dating and sex. (still haven’t done either). sometimes i’ll just get super lonely and wish i were dead or that i could take out my revenge on my myopic life advisors (though don’t worry, i’m going to therapy for this. but still, i just believe that i wouldn’t be fighting anger demons if i got to actually live). What can i do???

tw: death

in 10th grade we were reading epic of gilgamesh out loud in class and i was gilgimesg bc i always volunteered for the loudest most attention seeking things and that’s also how i read as a tenth grader lol

but when i got to the lines about g realizing he was going to die too like his friend i started being actually authentically emotional and it started coming out in my voice and at this live (which forever burns in my heart):

“i am afraid of death, so i wander the wild.”

my voice cracked on afraid and i had to stop and wipe my eyes midway and then i said out loud that NO! i dont want to wander! and asked where can i find life in front of the whole class and it was the biggest 😭 moment ive ever had around others and then i started actually crying in class bc i suddenly realized everyone dies and i asked to go to the bathroom and hid in the stall for the rest of the period

and ive been really sad recently and i just remembered this moment and now i have a better perspective to understand my 38yo english teacher’s unrecognizable look where she was noticing that teen discover mortality

i grew up in the jehovah’s witnesses and i was very socially isolated because we believed that we were supposed to remain separate from “worldly” influences at all times. this led to me becoming a person who felt i was generally better than other people. and im sorry im too depressed to articulate this in a way that’s way to follow a flow of thought but they convinced me to turn down a full ride scholarship to ut tyler and also brainwashed me to make hateful statements about other people in high school. im sure other people could see the incentives driving me to do these things but they also didn’t push too hard against my decisions either

and so i gave up sooo much opportunity at 17 and now im never going to get it back. never again. and now i’m learning things about the jw organization and it’s making me break down. there’s so few people i can trust. the jw leadership are wicked men who don’t act for care over the lives they destroyed. i am so angry at what they did to me and what it cost. nothing can repay this. i’m really sooooo hopeless and such a worthless person i really just want to —— a lot of the time.

i’ve felt that way ever since seventeen when i had to tell everyone including my dad that i wasn’t going to college. that hurt so much. i’m so sad and i wish i could applaud to my dad but it’s too late. it’s too late. i cried so much last night when i realized how much they took from us.

the only thing that keeps me going is this girl. i used to have a girlfriend from twitter that i would send naked pictures of myself when i was 24 and she was 25 and it gave me so much excitement and validation that she would acknowledge me as a sexual boi with sexual feelings and sexual body parts but now we’re just friends because we both know we can’t keep pretending this is a real romantic relationship without real physical affection.

but the jws and my mom never allowed me to be around girls and i never even saw a naked girl in a photo until i was in biology class at 21 and it made me orgasm in my pants because it was so new and i suddenly realized all these girls around me were attractive and i was such a shy guy just admiring the long beautiful hair on the backs of their heads in CS class for the remainder of my senior year but never did anything because talking to a girl out of lust (attraction) would be a sin

and i still have a very hard time talking to girls. i just noticed this girl on the train was cute and i wanted to say hi to her but i couldn’t so i asked chatgpt for help and it gave me really simple instructions but i just couldn’t and i teared up a little because im still a handholdless hugless kisless virgin and im 26 years old but im acting like a teenager because developmentally i really am one

and on that ‘developmentally still a teenager’ aspect, after i started noticing girls at 21 (turned 22 two months after the incident) i only had a few more months to be around then because i already had a remote job so i knew i wouldn’t get to be around girls anymore and i started to feel the longlines that i felt in hs. i had been a top 10 student in high school (rank 7, tho i know it doesn’t matter now since i never cashed it in for uni) and gave it all up and now i was about to do the same thing at the end of college just going for a 75k swe job while everyone else was doing 150k+.

but i had no plans of moving out, growing up, or living life because everything i cared about was already in my room at my parents house (i had never spent more than a few hours apart from my mom since birth) and i didn’t even know what i was missing out on - it was never a temptation because i didn’t even watch movies or read ‘bad’ books - but now im sooo sad on all the fun i missed out on. and now i can’t make myself enjoy any of that. my phones about to run out but im just so depressed and i feel like so much life was wasted i don’t want to try relearning life anymore. i’m depressed a lot of the days and i can’t do anything.

i hate the jw leadership and i want them to all be punished very severely for what they are doing and somehow repay if they could. but last night after not being a jw for a year i realized that nobody is going to fix things and jesus is just a lie and this is all unrepairable and i hate them so much and i just cried so much and so loud for so long until i couldn’t cry anymore. i hate this. i hate this i really do

i grew up in the jehovah’s witnesses and i was very socially isolated because we believed that we were supposed to remain separate from “worldly” influences at all times. this led to me becoming a person who felt i was generally better than other people. and im sorry im too depressed to articulate this in a way that’s way to follow a flow of thought but they convinced me to turn down a full ride scholarship to ut tyler and also brainwashed me to make hateful statements about other people in high school. im sure other people could see the incentives driving me to do these things but they also didn’t push too hard against my decisions either

and so i gave up sooo much opportunity at 17 and now im never going to get it back. never again. and now i’m learning things about the jw organization and it’s making me break down. there’s so few people i can trust. the jw leadership are wicked men who don’t act for care over the lives they destroyed. i am so angry at what they did to me and what it cost. nothing can repay this. i’m really sooooo hopeless and such a worthless person i really just want to die a lot of the time.

i’ve felt that way ever since seventeen when i had to tell everyone including my dad that i wasn’t going to college. that hurt so much. i’m so sad and i wish i could applaud to my dad but it’s too late. it’s too late. i cried so much last night when i realized how much they took from us.

the only thing that keeps me going is this girl. i used to have a girlfriend from twitter that i would send naked pictures of myself when i was 24 and she was 25 and it gave me so much excitement and validation that she would acknowledge me as a sexual boi with sexual feelings and sexual body parts but now we’re just friends because we both know we can’t keep pretending this is a real romantic relationship without real physical affection.

but the jws and my mom never allowed me to be around girls and i never even saw a naked girl in a photo until i was in biology class at 21 and it made me orgasm in my pants because it was so new and i suddenly realized all these girls around me were attractive and i was such a shy guy just admiring the long beautiful hair on the backs of their heads in CS class for the remainder of my senior year but never did anything because talking to a girl out of lust (attraction) would be a sin

and i still have a very hard time talking to girls. i just noticed this girl on the train was cute and i wanted to say hi to her but i couldn’t so i asked chatgpt for help and it gave me really simple instructions but i just couldn’t and i teared up a little because im still a handholdless hugless kisless virgin and im 26 years old but im acting like a teenager because developmentally i really am one

and on that ‘developmentally still a teenager’ aspect, after i started noticing girls at 21 (turned 22 two months after the incident) i only had a few more months to be around then because i already had a remote job so i knew i wouldn’t get to be around girls anymore and i started to feel the longlines that i felt in hs. i had been a top 10 student in high school (rank 7, tho i know it doesn’t matter now since i never cashed it in for uni) and gave it all up and now i was about to do the same thing at the end of college just going for a 75k swe job while everyone else was doing 150k+. but anyway my sexual desires was really not calibrated for a 22yo because i was not attracted to girls my age. i was honestly perverted for those first 3 years - looking at things that would be understandable for a 16-17 yo but really aren’t appropriate at all for a 22-24yo and i feel so guilty about it. like i messaged this 18yo girl on twitter and we talked a lot about our feelings on sexual matters and shared pictures and all that. i was always respectful and she has never said anything about it but i think we were both naive about what was appropriate and i feel really gross about being sexual with an 18 year old girl who’s only barely legal like only a few weeks over the limit when i started messaging her and she seems so innocent and i hate that i did this to her and i haven’t talked to her in two years except to briefly advise her to not start in a city near the war front because i wanted her to be safe and i still care about her even though she doesn’t understand what she means to me. its so disgusting

but i had no plans of moving out, growing up, or living life because everything i cared about was already in my room at my parents house (i had never spent more than a few hours apart from my mom since birth) and i didn’t even know what i was missing out on - it was never a temptation because i didn’t even watch movies or read ‘bad’ books - but now im sooo sad on all the fun i missed out on. and now i can’t make myself enjoy any of that. my phones about to die but im just so depressed and i feel like so much life was wasted i don’t want to try relearning life anymore. i’m depressed a lot of the days and i can’t do anything.

i hate the jw leadership and i want them to all be punished very severely for what they are doing and somehow repay if they could. but last night after not being a jw for a year i realized that nobody is going to fix things and jesus is just a lie and this is all unrepairable and i hate them so much and i just cried so much and so loud for so long until i couldn’t cry anymore. i hate this. i hate this i really do