sprigatito_bread

As far as I know, the current culture around dating/relationships includes meeting your SO's family and letting them meet yours. And probably sometime on the first few dates, at least asking about family. Problem is, my family is batshit insane.

• My parents are in an abusive relationship and constantly scream at each other

• My father is a violent abuser who avoids talking to people because he can't even pretend to be sane

• I had to raise myself because most of their advice was hateful trash; they tried to raise me into a bigoted loner asshole who only cares about himself and ties his self-worth to pretending he's better than everyone else

• My brother is an emotionally volatile gun owner in a relationship with an insane psycho who abused her cat to death

• They all believe that people who are different should be suppressed or purged from society because God or something

I think at this point, my family may be too dangerous to maintain ties to at all. I really wish I could burn it all down and start over, but I might not be so lucky due to my fledgling financial situation.

Ridding myself of my family's influence has been a decade-long project that I've been working hard on, and I gotta say, "Your parents raised you well" has got to be my least favorite compliment.

Jokes aside, I'm interested in hearing about experiences from others in similar situations. How did you talk about it?

I feel like this is an unavoidable red flag either way for a lot of people (After all, how would anyone know that I'm as sane as I claim to be?), but I'd still like to find the least horrible way to talk about it without lying.

Thanks!

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I experience heterosexuality very differently than my peers. I'll describe in broad terms to keep things SFW.

Bodies are not "hot" to me. I'm drawn to feminine features because I find them pretty, but bodies do not physically excite me in the way that they excite others.

My sexuality is focused on receiving loving and romantic physical affection, and to a lesser extent, giving it. To my brain, affectionate physical contact is sex ITSELF, not a prelude. In practice, this means that I'm very attracted to kisses and don't care about real sex unless I had a partner who wanted it.

If I approach a woman, it's because she seems nice and I want to get to know her, not because I find her physically attractive. I never pursue romance from the get-go; I develop friendships for their own sake and romantic feelings may develop later.

I have some concerns about this.

I've long suspected that there are certain signals that I don't give off. Female friends have called me things like "innocent," "adorable," or "Christian" (lol). While that may be due to my gentle demeanor, I wonder if my unique attraction profile eliminates behaviors that signal sexual availability, such as flirting. Perhaps the absence of these signals creates an impression of purity and sexual abstinence.

If that's the case, I feel like that might prevent most people from finding me attractive, simply because I lack the hardware to speak their language. My actions might just come across as friendly, and I don't want to lie about feeling attraction that I don't have.

Another concern of mine is submissiveness: my physical attraction is centered around receiving. Although I want a relationship that's reciprocal—giving and receiving in equal measure—I absolutely need moments of receiving affection to be sexually fulfilled. From what I've seen, submissiveness is stereotypically a turn-off, and I don't know how widespread that is.

But I'm not BDSM-submissive; I don't want a dominatrix. I just want someone gentle, kind, and willing to kiss me a bunch lol. I want to create a space of warmth and safety where we meet each other's needs and I love the idea of being an affectionate and caring partner. The receptiveness I describe is episodic, not all-consuming.

These worries may sound silly, but being different is a catalyst for insecurity. It's very easy to speculate because I can't measure how much heterosexuality varies. I would expect that I'm a rule-breaking outlier and most heterosexuals have similar attraction models.

But I lack perspective, especially because I've never been in a relationship.

What do you think?

I've been nuking my online presence on big tech platforms, and among the biggest data sources are my Google accounts, including the one I used for watching YouTube.

Using a service they provide for exporting data, I was able to download a list of every video I've ever watched since mid-2020. How many of them were there?

Fifty-four thousand.

I have watched more than 54,000 videos since mid-2020.

I knew that I was chronically online and became complacent due to my disabilities, but seeing it laid bare like this suddenly made it feel much more real.

I am awake an average of 15 hours a day. That's 5,475 hours per year. It's not unreasonable to assume that I spend around 15 minutes on each video on average, especially given that I often read comments. So that's about 13,500 hours for all of the videos.

That means that, since 2020 alone, more than two entire years' worth of my waking hours have been consumed by YouTube.

Two full years of my life, gone. From just YouTube. And the worst part? I hardly remember any of it. Out of all of those videos, I remember maybe 10 or 20 of them off the top of my head. The remaining 99.9% of them were just noise. Void. Nothingness.

How many novel experiences could I have had during that time? How many thought-provoking books could I have read? How many interesting people could I have met? I don't want to know.

I've always felt like there was something wrong about it being 2025 already. It feels like it should be much earlier in the decade. But I think I finally know why: I have created very few memories in the past five years, because most of my time was spent staring at monotonous and forgettable Internet content. That's why time has gone by so quickly.

Instead of trying new things, engaging with enriching material, and meeting new friends, I allowed my time to be siphoned off by an attention-hungry algorithm that doesn't care about the incalculable damage it's doing to millions of lives. I am not the first one to have these regrets, and I certainly won't be the last.

Never again.

“Everyone will think you’re useless,” my brain tells me, as if every person thinks that way. It thinks I’ll be shunned if I ever need help or can’t do the same things others can. People will think I’m gross and want to stay away from me because this neck brace I have to wear makes me look like some kind of sick, feral creature. I could never get a partner because I would be too much of an economic burden and my chronic conditions take the fun out of everything.

What’s my source for this? My narcissistic father, who always tells me that I’m a useless failure who will never succeed. He told me that people would react in that way. My lived experience refutes many of his claims, but apparently that didn’t stop me from internalizing them. Maybe I should start wearing earplugs around that guy.

I’m getting ready to touch grass for the first time on my own since I become disabled 3 years ago. I know things won’t be easy, but I also know that this kind of self-defeating thinking is more than useless and literally why it took me 3 years to want to go out in the first place.

Maybe I should reject my father’s framing entirely. Why can’t I put a positive spin on it? The world threw a bunch of bullshit at me, and my presence alone is proof that I didn’t give up. I kept going. If people see that as weak, that’s their problem.

I should stand in solidarity with everyone else fighting through their own bullshit and we can help each other in whatever ways we can. Life wasn’t meant to be a singleplayer game. We’re in this together, and I can find like-minded people who recognize that.

I hope my defiant spirit that’s ready to kick some ass and make lots of buddies wins out.

To my brain, nothing is worth pursuing or trying. “How can you guarantee that you’ll be alive to finish anything you start?” My brain asks. And it’s right. I can never make that guarantee.

It directs me to spoil myself with instant gratification because it knows I will still be alive to experience it. There’s no risk of working towards nothing. Don’t make goals. Don’t take risks. Embrace mediocrity. Do the bare minimum needed to survive. That way, you will never be disappointed.

I’m so tired of thinking like this. It started when I got a serious chronic illness that couldn’t be diagnosed. I always manage to survive for longer than I predict, and then I look back and notice that I have done nothing for the last 3 years.

I hope that I don’t continue to make the same mistake in response to Current Events™. I’m sure that falling for it again would be helpful to the exact people I really don’t want to be helping.

Defeatism, cynicism, doomerism, essentialism, materialism, anti-intellectualism, consumerism, and cruelty are everywhere on the Internet... and I'm just not into it anymore.

I used to buy into self-limiting beliefs because I thought they were answers from people with more life experience than me, but they just limited my thinking and led me astray. They were why I was insecure and unhappy. They were why I was doing nothing to make my life better.

Once I started to push back on all of the Internet's supposed "wisdom," I figured out that my fundamentally flawed beliefs were paralyzing me from actually doing anything with my life and being brave enough to take risks, especially socially. I'm noticeably happier, I've developed a positive life outlook, and I'm more comfortable in my own skin because I stopped getting my opinions from the Internet and started thinking for myself.

I recognized that others' opinions don't define reality. Opinions are the result of someone's life experiences filtered through their brain. They may have some value, but they are often incredibly biased and should not be taken as gospel. If you take them all seriously, you will be riddled with insecurities in no time flat, subconsciously trying to appeal to people who you don't even like and would never be friends with.

I honestly can't say I know who social media is even for at this point. There is so much content promoting unhealthy ways of thinking just haphazardly strewn about everywhere. I don't know how anyone can avoid it all. I don't know if the benefits can outweigh the costs. Even the most harmless content is forgettable and eats up valuable time that could be used for something more meaningful.

Sometimes I think about how we never see any posts from the happiest people alive. They don't need social media validation, their positivity wouldn't generate clicks, and the negativity of social media platforms probably scared them off long ago. As a result of their absence, negativity and unhealthy thought patterns have proliferated unchallenged.

I feel like I don't even belong on the Internet anymore. I can't relate to all of the doomers and cynics. The constant firehose of simultaneous anxiety and apathy, the lack of introspection and empathy... what use do I really have for it all at the end of the day? It's getting so old and stale. I feel like I can't grow as a person anymore if I continue consuming Internet slop.

There are so many, much more constructive ways I could be spending my time. If I should be using the Internet for anything, it would be to aid me in doing that. For example, finding good books to read. I can't wait until I finally overcome my behavioral inertia and move on with my life.

I was born to love. I'm this soft and gentle introverted guy with a bottomless well of tenderness and affection. It is, without exaggeration, the greatest blessing I have ever received.

I vehemently ADORE the idea of making a special someone so happy and being so devoted to her happiness and well-being. I get so giddy just thinking about it! I'm this big bundle of joy and affection inside who wants to shower someone with hugs and kisses and words of admiration. And yet, I have a tender, steady energy to me that will dole out that affection at a calm and measured pace.

That's one of the things I love the most about this personality. I have this sweet, quiet, and unassuming presence, but under the surface is an enormous wellspring of love and care brewing of inside of me that I just HAVE to let out. My inner geek would meticulously observe and study my partner's wants and needs, her likes and dislikes, and the things that make her feel loved and cared for. And then, I would translate my theories into sweet, sweet praxis.

And when any kind of affection is shown back to me, I will completely MELT. There is no facade of masculine stoicism here. If my partner touches me, I'm going to turn into jelly. Everything she does will have me on the floor, incoherently blubbering about how much I love and appreciate her. I live for utter trust and surrender to someone who loves and cares about me, and my partner will surely know it.

I'd love a relationship where we treat each other as equals, where we listen to one another and make decisions together as a team. A relationship filled with mutual love and devotion where we can take turns lavishly melting each other with affection sounds like heaven.

I'm so endlessly glad that I didn't end up as some misogynistic jerkwad who treats his partner like dirt and orders her around all day, because my father was exactly that. But I shouldn't pat myself on the back too much, because I can always improve and I will always have blind spots. I need to be attentive to my partner's needs, communicate effectively with her, and honestly reflect on what effects my actions had. Cultivating a loving relationship is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done deal. It takes work and commitment, and that is an endeavor that I wish to dedicate myself to.

I've never actually been in a relationship (I'm only 22), but I want to actively grow and nurture a healthy mindset now. I'm an idealist at heart, but I know that ideals are goals to work towards, not promises to expect. In order to for a big, beautiful flower to bloom, you have to start from a seed and care for it over time. You can't just expect perfection to appear on the first day. The mindset I wish to cultivate is the knowledge and the heart required to become a gardener of love, to carefully attend to those delicate flower buds every step of the way so that they may blossom into big, beautiful roses.

But just knowing that I hold the power inside to create something so heavenly and fulfilling for someone else in spite of the world's hardship and strife... it's hard to describe to beautiful that is to me. And it's an incredible honor to have the privilege of creating anything even approximating that. I feel a moral duty to take good care of this part of myself and use it to create the most loving and supportive relationship that I can.

Whenever I indulge in my fantasies of a loving, nurturing relationship, I feel waves of euphoric warmth wash over me. It feels so cozy and comforting, like being wrapped in a warm blanket or a gentle hug. It's the ultimate life hack; I can trigger a whole deluge of positive emotions for free, without needing separately packaged, inferior versions to be sold to me piecemeal. It feels uniquely soul-mending, like something making me whole again, restoring a sense of safety and security that I seemed to have lost long ago.

It has made me so much happier throughout the day. I find myself wanting to be so openly warm and caring to other people. Negative things just don't impact me as much. Seeing who I am in these fantasies makes me want to bring that part of my personality out more, to say kind things where I may not have said anything before.

My dream isn't to become rich. It isn't to become famous, to become an astronaut, or to climb Mount Everest. My dream is to become the sweetest, cuddliest, most sensitive lovebug of a boyfriend I can possibly be, and make someone else so incredibly happy.

And I am so, so happy that I have the chance to embody that person.

I'm interested in egalitarian heterosexual romances where it feels like the partners are best buddies. They don't care about societal expectations and will often do gender non-conforming things just out of happenstance. There's a vibe of casual playfulness and spontaneity, with neither partner taking themselves too seriously. They have a lot in common and feel like equals, not dominant/submissive. Both partners initiate and receive affection and feel intense love and passion for one another.

I don't want to see the same old tired gender expressions; I want to see guys who are super warm and bubbly and women who are playful and tomboyish, guys who are shy and sensitive and women who are outgoing and assertive, and all kinds of other variations that don't get so much representation. I like the idea of buddies who have a natural chemistry instead of a "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" dichotomy. Both partners can be sweet, both partners can be silly goofballs, and both partners can share many of the same personality traits in differing amounts and contexts.

I've seen communities like "gentle femdom" and "role reversal," and while there is certainly some overlap with what I'm talking about, they feature a gender dichotomy and power dynamics, which don't appeal to me. Do I want permission as a man to be soft and cute and pampered by my partner? Of course! Does that mean I want to adopt inverted gender roles and become her subordinate? No, not at all.

I'm attracted to the idea of mutual relationships where partners are free to embrace nonconformity, but in a way that rejects prescribed social roles and hierarchy entirely instead of boxing people into new ones. Both partners respect and care for one another, and acts are done explicitly to please the other in a mutual give and take. Both partners have complex emotions and personality traits that do not fall along arbitrary gendered lines.

The ideal is a relationship that feels so authentic and natural that gender expectations fade away in favor of two people complementing one another in their own special way.

Does anyone know any books, media, or online spaces that fit the bill? Personally, as a gentle sensitive sweetheart kind of guy, I'd appreciate material that I feel represented in, but even just nonconforming straight couples in general would be super based. Thanks!

I've been thinking of potential measures that corporate-controlled authoritarian governments could use against any kind of left-wing information or organizing, and it seems like an obvious one is a sudden, widespread crackdown on left-wing content. In practice, social media companies would collude with the government to:

• Wipe out all left-wing social media profiles and ban left-wing rhetoric under the justification that it is "terrorism-related content".
• Block access to thousands of left-wing sites at once and de-list them from search engines
• Update content moderation algorithms to prevent more of this content from being published or recommended
• Do all of these on the same day to cause the most disorientation and fear
• Continually go after the hosts of the niche left-wing news and communication channels that still remain, such as small websites, fediverse instances, and encrypted communication channels. Throw their operators in prison and make examples out of them

In effect, due to the centralized nature of social media and news, the online left could instantly be scattered through the collusion of just a few large corporations.

It would:

• Galvanize the populist right-wing base
• Stoke feelings of fear, isolation, and hopelessness among the opposition, deterring action
• Weaken the left's ability to organize
• Make it harder for people to learn about real left-wing ideas and stances

Why wouldn't they take that opportunity?

The bulk of online left-wing activity could instantly be wiped out in a single day. Why am I not hearing more people talking about that? Why do so many left-leaning people think sites like BlueSky will save them? Do they really think they are resisting by using centralized social media platforms? The corporatocracy has complete control over all of the infrastructure...

In my opinion, every influencer on the left should be screaming from the rooftops every single day that the most productive thing you can be doing is talking to people, building connections, and organizing in the real world, because our platform on the Internet could vanish instantaneously.

Anyway, I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like something that could easily happen. What are your thoughts?

Preferably in real life and without religion or alcohol.

Being a really emotional guy is wonderful! I love how much joy I can find in the smallest things. I adore how much warmth and goodwill I feel towards people I barely even know. And it warms my heart knowing that I strongly wish to spread love and joy, be there for friends in need, and offer gentle, compassionate support. My whole being yearns to connect deeply with others and show them great affection through my words and actions.

I was put on this planet to be a sweetheart, gosh dang it! That's just who I am, and I'm not going anywhere!

I didn't always feel that way, though...

I grew up in an abusive household, and I was taught by everyone around me, at home and at school, that being emotional was a terrible thing. I was bullied because it was so easy to make me cry. Boys weren't supposed to be emotional, they would tell me. Eventually, I believed them. I hated myself for years, convinced that I didn't belong in this world and nobody would ever like me. Believing that social interactions were harmful and would erode my identity, I retreated into perpetual isolation. I only spoke when necessary and kept interactions impersonal and distant.

But it only took the kindness and compassion of one person to change my life.

As much as I tried to hide who I was, people could still kind of tell. One day at work, I made a silly, harmless mistake, and my coworkers all laughed. As I became flustered and apologized, one of them, who was a couple of years older than me, emphatically said, "Oh my god, you're adorable, you know that?"

In the moment, I was utterly confused, having just received a compliment that fundamentally clashed with my idea of masculinity. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Did someone actually like my soft side? Was that possible? The next day, I mustered just enough courage to talk to her about it. And I mean JUST enough courage. I was so nervous and shaky that I could barely speak, which drew immediate concern from her as I practically choked out the words explaining my plight.

She affectionately reiterated my adorableness, describing me as a sweetheart who lots of people would really like if I opened up more. I was in disbelief, citing the fact that I have often heard the exact opposite regarding those who break male gender norms. "Don't listen to those people," she said. "They are miserable and will only drag you down with them." At the end of our little impromptu therapy session, she added, "By the way, is anyone here telling you this? If so, tell me who they are so I can kick their ass." She was wonderful.

After being burned countless times, it was hard to accept that anyone truly liked me as a person. But my curiosity kept me coming back to her, because I had to know if I was wrong. She became something of a mentor to me, and every time I confided in her, she would say or do something genuinely helpful that nudged me in the right direction. I was filled with doubts and cognitive distortions, but she never once lost patience with me, gently redirecting me each time they showed.

"I promise there are people, like me, who genuinely like you and enjoy talking to you!" She wrote in a text message. "I think once you learn to let go of your worries, you'll learn just how awesome you really are and how much people will want to be your friend."

Blinded by my desperate attempts to cling onto my old belief system, I didn't immediately internalize her message. This was in part because I couldn't be friends with her in a conventional, reciprocal sense due to how emotionally unstable I was. In a message explaining the purity of her intentions and the joy she felt in helping me, she affectionately wrote, "You're like a little brother to me." While this is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, it also gently implied that I wasn't an equal friend, which complicated my feelings at the time.

But while she wasn't the kind of friend I wanted at the time, she was exactly the kind of friend I needed. She single-handedly dismantled the foundation of my self-hatred and provided irrefutable evidence that I had been lying to myself the whole time. She went so far above and beyond that I could no longer explain her actions with anything other than genuine care. With my core harmful beliefs severely compromised, it was inevitable that the sophisticated mental construct that tormented me for years would finally collapse.

I feel so lucky to have met my coworker, and I am forever grateful for the irreplaceable role she played in my life. Although I was far from healed, she was the one who gave me the tools I needed to take myself the rest of the way there. And for that, she is my hero. While I may never get the chance to properly thank her, I wish to follow in her footsteps and use kindness to change lives in her honor, just as she did for me.

Now that I'm a bit older, I know that the takeaway from this story isn't all sunshine and rainbows. I wasn't completely delusional; there was a very understandable reason for me to develop the insecurities that I did—people who hate soft guys are everywhere. Traditional male expectations are deeply ingrained throughout much of society. But what's critical is that she provided concrete proof that not everyone believes in them and I have the agency to choose who to surround myself with.

The truth is that there are no rules. The social landscape is a decentralized web of connections where no single authority dictates what is or isn't acceptable. The people you're with and the contexts you're in influence the subjective sense of what's normal, common, and acceptable. Is it weird to wear a Spider-Man costume? Well, it depends. At your local coffee shop? Probably. At a comic book convention? Probably not. Are the majority of people geeky introverts? Generally, no, but at your local book club? Quite possibly!

And that's where the power lies—you can rig the odds in your favor by being intentional about which social settings you choose to engage with. This way, you can more easily find people you vibe with and who will love you for who you are. And because of that, there is great hope.

Each one of us has millions of people out there who would hate our guts if they knew us. But we also have millions of people who would sincerely care for us and cheer for our happiness and well-being. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be focusing my efforts on finding people from the latter camp.

I know for sure that I've found at least one!

Recently, I've been trying to find ways to manage my time better. The biggest problem is that I would get stuck in YouTube binge-watching sessions that I couldn't pry myself away from. I would constantly be looking for the next thing to click on that was just interesting enough to keep my attention.

As I became more and more disillusioned with my situation, I began to realize just how severe the problem had become. I spent most of my free time just watching videos. Not socializing, not making anything cool, not learning any new hobbies. Just YouTube. Was this the life I really wanted? How many of those videos do I even remember anyway? Oh god. Thousands of hours of my life are being lost forever... I HAVE to stop this. How?

Analyzing my behavior quickly revealed the culprit — YouTube video recommendations keep tempting me with content that I never planned on watching. My eyes would always be drawn to the wall of titles and thumbnails for me to click on next, and that kept me in a vicious cycle. Click on a mildly entertaining video, look for another mildly entertaining recommended video, click. Rinse and repeat.

What if instead of doing that, I threw it all out and only chose a select few really good channels to watch? Oh wait, that's called the subscription feed!

I went through all of the channels I subscribed to over the years. Disturbingly, I found that I didn't actually care about most of them. It was cheap, mass-produced content to make the creator lots of money, and it was just barely entertaining enough to keep my attention.

I removed 95% of my subscriptions and kept only the best channels. These were often beautifully presented, thought-provoking STEM content, which prioritized quality over quantity. Now, instead of a binge of 30 videos, my subscription feed for the day had... just three. That's it. After those three videos, I would be done for the day.

There was only one thing left to do now — delete the recommendations.

I wrote a hacky script that simply removed the recommended video column and end screen, and finally, I added the YouTube homepage in a webpage blocking plugin so I only looked at the subscription feed. Just like that, I had fixed YouTube. There were no more distracting recommendations. The choice of what to watch was back in my hands.

It only took 20 minutes before I grew completely bored and wanted to do something else. But that's not a bug; it's a feature. That sense of boredom is there to push me to do something meaningful with my life — make something, pick up a new hobby, or meet people. The fact that I felt it so strongly meant that my plan was working. All of those things I always wanted to do... now I can actually do them. As long as I never allow endless scroll feeds and recommendation algorithms to rule my life again. But knowing the damage they've done to me, I never want to go back.

Because to be free, I ultimately need to make the Internet boring again.

What about you? Do you have measures to prevent the Internet from taking away all of your free time?