r/rs_x

I grew up in a decent sized city of around 200k people, but it always felt MUCH smaller given the lack of activity, nightlife, and general things to do.

I moved to Boston after graduating college and loved every second of living there aside from not having much money ever. All the generic big city feelings one gets taking the subway, walking around downtown, and tipsily stumbling down the block with your buddies late at night were experienced and I have no regrets.

Long story short: Covid came and left myself and all my roomies unemployed. All the perks of city life came to screeching end and the party was over. Our shitty basement apartment with no windows became a void where days would blend into months. I had enough.

I ended up selling all my stuff, renting a car, and moving to a more rural New England town I had never actually visited before on a whim. I picked it because it had beautiful nature and gorgeous pictures online. Luckily, it worked out and really changed my life for the better. It was almost like lockdowns didn’t exist there and life seemed normal. I eventually met my wife too a year later!

Anyways what’s your story?

I sometimes get Youtube recommendations for Vindicta-flavoured women's self-help kinda content, you know, some mix of beauty/confidence/relationship advice paired with more dubious or un-PC stuff like Robert Greene, manifestation, social climbing, pretty privilege, shit like that. There must be a large audience for this crap because there's a lot of it.

It's making me apprehensive about how many people around me got influenced by that, because it's basically tailor-made to validate dumb people's narcissistic tendencies. It teaches some very twisted things about self-confidence that are just one tiny layer of social acceptability away from being a huge bitch. To register as appropriately 'high-value' and dignified and confident, you have to play some weird signalling game which has the end result of making people antisocial and hard to deal with.

Like, you can't be nice or give people the benefit of the doubt, or be willing to hear different viewpoints, because to that category of people this reads as weak and contemptible. If anything bad happens to you as a result of not being socially dominant enough, it's your fault and you deserve zero empathy. You need to show signs of being a bit stuck-up and entitled. The funny thing is that all of this is laughably easy to criticise or dunk on, but it's your word (a 'low-value woman') against the word of some Youtube or Tiktok guru with millions of followers.

You may be asking why this is living in my head rent-free — well, I'm Eastern European and we already had a big cultural problem with trying to take advantage of people, exploiting them, probing for weakness, so it's fertile terrain. (The algo probably got me because it was an Eastern Euro IP looking at fashion videos.)

I (m) have three sisters and mostly female friends. Always thought I was kind of in touch with my inner life and also able to communicate it adequately.

Currently obsessed with reading that girl dinner subreddit. Is this how female friendships are?

Why are women so much better at talking about their emotions and relating them to what's happening in their lives?

How can I build that skill? I want to be a better boyfriend and friend.

TLDR: "Sensitive" young man realizes that the average woman has a much higher EQ than he does.

Last night I went to aomething and they were doing the typical spiel where they were outlining how the discussion rules were going to be egalitarian like realize your positionality etc. etc. And they do the ones where “if youve been talking a lot maybe shut the fuck up for a little” where fine, but then they get to this crazy one where apparently you should only use equivocating, subjective language when talking about anything. So you shouldn’t say “the text does this” but “I feel that the text does this.” I’m sorry this annoys me to no end, declaring meaning completely subjective is not woke, if anything it’s neoliberal. Texts and arts are objects in the world that are distinct from our ‘feelings’ and should be treated as such. Also be confident in what you’re saying, what you’re saying doesn’t just have validity because that’s what you feel but because it can say something truly profound or maybe not. Part of being a grown up is the vulnerability to be wrong. They also had this bizarre warning against jargon in a reading group on a dense theoretical text?? I swear the left is infantilizing at times.

The "random humor O_o" things haven't really aged well, but it has tremendous comedic timing and a bevy of clever little jokes. I loved it as a kid, but I'm belly laughing and feel like I appreciate it far more as an adult. The Netflix movie was super too

Been trying to understand why I have a thing for french nails. Thought it's because my crush has them and whenever she touches me it jolts me back to the present. But then I realized I've liked nails of all shapes and sizes for a while now. Long talons, intricate designs, charms dangling off them, you name it.

Then I noticed I also like rings and bracelets and visible veins. And in that moment it clicked for me that I'm just into hands. The same way I have a thing for belly buttons and bare midriffs.

Didn't even know somebody could be into that until my best friend told me I had nice hands back when we were 18/19. Full circle moment, I guess.

he assaults the host live on tv, angrily freaks out, not one single person in the room intervenes or says or does anything, then he’s allowed to stay and accept an award. and there were even people there defending his actions being interviewed on the night. totally broken dysfunctional culture.

Or I feel it's more accurate to say Will Toledo re-released Teens of Denial but removed all the swear words

It's not a new recording either, it's the old recording with some new lyrics mixed in very obviously and poorly. There are some brand new songs on there as well to be fair which are fine.

Bizarre. I could be argued into calling Teens of Denial the greatest rock album of the 21st century, I like How to Leave Town, outside of that my opinion of his work is sour. It feels like nowadays he hasn't a clue who he even is or what he wants to say.