u/coolcarters14

I look on other subs of young people saying they’ve given up on dating or accepted being single for the foreseeable future and then come an army of people(typically millennials or gen c) trying to play therapist and immediately calling out their “poor/defeatist attitude” self esteem issues or them not trying hard enough to date without really looking at logistics of most young queer peoples lives.

The overwhelming majority of people that struggle with dating on these subs are from the Midwest, let’s face it Midwest dating for gay men is awful, idk how many teens I’ve seen asking for dating advice and how common relocating to an entirely different city is.

I live in northeast Ohio, in Akron, it’s a midsized city but has a microscopic gay dating scene. Most gay activities or spaces are geared towards older men. Theres only one club that has Gen Z kids here and for me I can’t go, I work weekends, and I dont even want to because im just not a night out partying guy. For people that don’t enjoy bar hopping every weekend, apps are their only other reliable option, there are very few queer sports leagues or activities and again, most are filled by millennials and Gen X. I’ve been to a queer volunteer event for a scholarship and I was the youngest guy there.

Dating apps are horrible, not a new statement, but they’re awful because they remove the nuances from human interaction, and to effectively be able to use one, you have to be willing to open your dating radius often 100+miles out, go through the same monotonous intros with people, drive long distances, spend a decent amount of money and work multiple apps essentially like a second or 3rd job all while keeping the mental fortitude that there’s light at the end of the tunnel in face of the majority of convos and dates going nowhere.

None of this is easy, it’s EXTREMELY hard, compared to our straight peers our age, who could realistically just ask for the number of the opposite gender at a mall and walk out by the end of the day with a few numbers. Or our older gays whose social climate was far different than now.

it’s always baffled me that I’ve been told I don’t try hard enough, or other people are defeatist or have self esteem issues for not wanting to put in that kind of effort and accept that realistically their chances of finding a partner is unlikely. Gay dating is exhausting, it’s boring and it’s demoralizing work of sifting through dirt to find gold.

I typically get stuck on self checkout whenever I work at my store and boy howdy are some people just brainless on it, today especially though, the woman that takes the cake is how she didn’t listen to a word I say.

I work at a store that has the same self check system as stores like Meijer or Giant Eagle, its regional but just giving you a picture. I’m not sure if those stores have the exact same design flaw but you have to select the payment type if you’re paying with a card.

The issue is on the card reader it says “waiting for cashier” if you haven’t selected a payment type, which for people with no inductive reasoning skills means I’m not doing my job.

Some people get frustrated, I typically have to say “you need to select your payment type” 100 times a shift but this one particular woman just didn’t listen to shit I said. I say “you need to select you payment type” and instead of taking one of the 5 big ass buttons taking up 70% of the screen she taps the security camera. I say “no hit debit or credit” then she hits the go back button. At that point I’m just over it and walk over a spoon feed the woman and do it myself.

I’ll be honest I typically have no problem doing it, she was older like Gen X so I’m typically more understanding to that aswell, but today I was just seriously at my limit with people, it’s not entirely their fault but half of them just aren’t reading the screen or LOOKING AT THE 2 BUTTONS ON THE SCREEN AT A TIME. My store is local to the community it’s in, and some of these people I’m helping every week or every other day😭😭 PLEASE JUST READ THE SCREEN ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, IT IS DESIGNED TO BE AS EASY AS POSSIBLE TO USE

These teen take overs and linkups that keep happening are not because kids are bored, they ain’t got no home training, and no one watching what they’re doing.

To say that these kids are bored is so pedantic and puts most of the blame that should be on the child and parent on cities( these issues are systemic and do share some blame but not all)

I’m 22, I’m not much older than these kids, I was a teen less than half a decade ago, I don’t even live in the big cities that these are happening in, Philly, Chicago, the Bronx. I grew up in a small scale city in NE Ohio. A city that has far worse public transport and is far more dependent on a car to do anything, and I still was rarely bored.

I will be fair to them that most of the teen bans on malls and movie theaters at late hours happened just as I was exiting my teen years but the bans are in place because kids don’t know how to act. But even so I rarely was outside past 9 in my teen years.

I had my games, I worked a job, I had school, and on weekends I’d either play a game, movie, mall, dinner or roller rink. These kids expect to be outside at midnight like they’re grown and are complaining that they can’t.

I work at a grocery store that’s got some of the worst real estate possible. For one it’s in a pretty low income neighborhood and it’s less than a mile from a middle school. The low income neighborhood part doesn’t necessarily make it worse than one in a rich neighborhood but there’s a ton of meth and fent users that come to the store either high off their ass, trying to steal, or deciding to come to the store 30 seconds before close and getting upset that we don’t let them in.(my store literally closes an hour earlier now because the shoplifting between 9-10pm was that atrocious). Because it’s in a neighborhood though, this makes the store a walkable distance for most people, including the children.

The children make working the warmer months the worst experience known to man, the early hours between 3-5 aren’t atrocious, kids might be loud and asking a million questions all at once but that’s tolerable.

The real issue is between 6pm to close, kids come in and steal, knock TONS of stuff over, argue with staff, and are in general a pain unless we have an officer to deal with it.

But today has really pushed me to my limit with kids. There were hoards of them today, idk what was in the air but there were just tons of them around 7:30 today, and a large group, like between 8-12 of them came in and were loud, running around an spraying fart spray or whatever around the WHOLE STORE. And to add insult to injury one of them vomited. I’m literally still at work typing this an hour after they’ve left and the smell has not gone away.

If this is how they’re acting when they have school the next day and it’s 50 degrees outside, I don’t think I’ll be here to sit through another summer of rolling loud jr. edition when it’s the middle of July an the sun doesn’t set until 9.