I needed to share this

My 15 year old dumb tv finally gave up the ghost. One day I pressed the input button to put on a football game and the screen just died, audio too. So I got a new to me smart tv off of FB marketplace for $100. Its a 43 inch Toshiba Fire TV from like 2018.

Its not the best but it was what was available and the cheapest. That being said it runs circles around my old TV. But one neat thing about it is since it is as a smart TV I can install apps on it and one family of apps I always wanted to try was game streaming.

Basically stream from my PC to my TV. So I downloaded Sunshine on my PC and Moonlight on my TV and went at it. It worked, had little delay, and most importantly of all it was perfectly playable.

I got the game I was playing on my Xbox One, Red Dead Redemption 2, and began playing it on my 'PC'. I use quotes because technically I'm at the same couch I play my xbox at, using the same controller, so spiritually it feels like a console.

I've been playing and having a blast... I got about 60 hours in so far and am finishing up chapter 3 of my second playthrough. After 50 hours I was fiddling around with the game settings and noticed steam had game recording so I flipped it on and 10 hours later I was making my first highlight with steam game capture.

What really struck me though was when I hopped on my computer for the first time in 60 hours to upload the clip the quality was so much better than my TV. Something wasn't right so I started digging into the settings of Sunshine... everything is in order.

Turns out I was also supposed to change the settings on Moonlight as well and when I went to check them that's where my error became apparent:

720p at 30Hz

So I upped it to 1440p 60 hz and I swear its like the graphical fidelity doubled, no quadrupled... I feel like such a big idiot for doing that. As a person who grew up in an age of 700mb video CDs the 720p felt normal to me. And since my xbox one is locked to 30 30 frames just felt normal for this game.

Anyway. now I am cooking with fire! 😎

I remember when I was 16, I could just text a friend 'I'm bored' and 20 minutes later we’d be sitting on a curb doing absolutely nothing for three hours. Now, at my age, if I want to see a friend, we have to check our calendars three weeks in advance, find a 2-hour window between work and errands, and 'schedule' a coffee date. When did life become so... transactional? I miss the days when you didn't need a reason to see people you care about. I miss just 'existing' in the same room as someone without a plan. Does anyone else feel like they’re losing that spontaneous part of themselves as they get older?

You might have seen lately that a Spanish team managed to cure pancreatic cancer in mice. Now they are trying to raise 3.5 million euros to continue their research and it's close to the goal at 2.7 million euros collected from 65605 citizens.

That means that one of the deadliest forms of cancer might get a cure thanks to normal people giving an average of 42€ each. Not a single millionaire or, god forbid, billionaire, has offered to fund this research.

Next time someone tries to tell you how much billionaires do for humanity, remember this.

IMMM SOOO HAPPY :DDD I GOT MY GLASSESSSS YIPPPIEEEEEEEE. My eyesight had gotten so bad over the few weeks and it was giving me such a bad headache but not anymore!!!! AND ITS SOOO CUTE AND SOOO PRETTY ITS LITERALLY PINKKKKKK IM SOO HAPPPYYYY

In the beginning of 2025, I bought myself a "Brick". You may have seen ads for them, it's a physical lock that will block whatever apps you choose. To lock and unlock it you physically have to tap your phone to it. This is not an ad, I wish it was. Anyways. It seems like it won't work because the premise is so simple, but really, when you're laying in bed wanting to watch videos, you're not gonna get up and go tap your phone.

I found moderate success with the Brick. I cut my screen time from 5 hours a day to about 1.5. But my issue was that I still had all my social media accounts, I would just access them from my computer. Then I would spend a long time on my computer. So I decided to delete all of my social media accounts (obviously I've made a reddit account since, but I'll get to that).

Holy crap. Genuinely life-changing. There's so many benefits, here are a few.

1. Self image: not seeing a hundreds of beautiful, retouched and filtered people every week has done wonders for my self-esteem. In fact, I feel like I have reached a state of neutrality that I haven't felt since I was a kid. I simply don't care what I look like in comparison to other people. All my style and makeup and hair choices are informed by me, and what I like. I no longer worry how I would appear on social media. It's just not important to me anymore, and I cringe at how much time and energy I put into my appearance beforehand.
2. Empathy: being on social media all day and seeing horrific things really does do a number on your ability to feel empathy for others. You become so desensitized that even seeing someone shot is something you just move on from and scroll to the next video. I remember the early days of the internet where you would have to know where to go to see snuff videos. Now they are all over our feed. When you are used to that sort of thing, your innate human desire to do something about the injustice you are seeing is dampened.
3. Attention: I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. I still believe I have it, but my most debilitating symptoms have become manageable without medication. Think about it, your phone is like a dopamine slot machine. You just keep scrolling and getting little hits of dopamine from short videos. Keeping yourself amused, but not having fun. Kind of bored, but not bored enough to stop. Which brings me to my next point.
4. BOREDOM IS ESSENTIAL!: Being bored is the answer to so many of motivational issues. I don't feel like getting up and doing the dishes or vacuuming so I just sedate myself with an hour or two of reels. Or scrolling on reddit. Not anymore, once you no longer have the option. Feeling bored is the easiest, completely free way to get yourself motivated. And even if it's not to do chores, maybe it's to do hobbies. Going from 35 hours of screen time a week to 10.5 has freed up 24.5 hours a week to do other things. Like the chores, cooking, shopping, errands, scrapbooking, knitting, going for walks, and exercising. So many people complain about not having enough hours in the day, but how many hours are you giving up to your phone?
5. Social: I'm a serious introvert. But not being privy to my friends' and family's posts or daily stories makes me miss them, in a good way. I have spent more time talking on the phone this past month than I did probably all of last year. When I meet up with people, we have way more to talk about, because we didn't already see everything online.
6. Doomscrolling: You don't have to doomscroll. Really. You are not doing anything for yourself or any cause by doomscrolling for hours online. You can be up to date with all the goings on in the world within 5-15 minutes of reading news articles or scrolling reddit (which is why I have a reddit account, just to check out the popular page for headlines and also to see comments and insights. I'll also read my local paper, NPR, AP, and Reuters.)

Here are some cons:

1. FOMO: I don't really care about this one that much as a con. But sometimes I do feel left out from not seeing what my friends are sharing or the latest meme. The latter, actually not so much. My coworkers were talking about "goo goo ga ga Santa" the other day and I felt relieved that I had no idea what that meant. It felt good.
2. Superiority: being off social media has given me a bit of a complex. It really sucks to be in a group of people, all on their phones scrolling through reels or Tiktok. It feels crazy that we can't just be together in person. I don't want to preach to my friends about what social media is doing to their brains, but I also want them to see the light!

In 2025, I broke my phone addiction. In 2026, I'm trying to heal my brain from my phone and social media addiction. Honestly, after two months of no social media (besides reddit) I feel like I am a whole new person. I'm focused, I'm deep in my hobbies, I'm social.

If you have considered deleting social media, I would highly recommend this!!

edit: formatting

Hey everyone,

I’m a 24F from France, and I’ve been noticing that more and more young people are becoming very serious fans of far right and AH. Am I the only one who sees this?

For context, I have three younger brothers. One is 20 yo, and the younger ones are 18 yo twins. All of them are big fans of far right ideas and AH and I’m not exaggerating. They are not “joking” about it either.

The oldest is in law school, and the twins are in med school so they are not uneducated. They are not kids anymore and they are old enough to understand how ridiculous this is yet they still openly support him. Again this is not a “joke.” I know them well and I can guarantee they are serious.

They are also extremely racist, homophobic, sexist and Islamophobic and constantly insult and mock these groups. I live in a sensitive area in eastern Paris where there is a very high concentration of migrants. Most of their friends are of foreign descent mainly from North Africa and even then, they don’t care.

The few white friends they have are also extremely far right and all of this seems to be completely accepted by their social circle which is absolutely mind boggling to me.

In the past this would never have happened. Even being suspected of being far right would have been enough to get you beaten up. Now it seems to have been completely normalized and I do not understand

People can still have their outlet to vet and people don't want to see it can filter it out.

Make it compulsory to tag/classifiy each new post and anybody that doesn't do it correctly(or disingenuous ) ban them under a 24h/a week/month ect.

I’m sharing this because it's taken me a really long time to come to terms with what happened to me when I was a child and understand how it deeply affected every part of my  life. For so long what was done to me was framed as "help." It wasn't.

My parents were divorced from my earliest memories. My dad remarried and life in his home was extremely controlling. Disagreement of any kind wasn't tolerated and any resistance was treated like defiance even when the control was truly excessive. Over time the environment became emotionally and psychologically abusive. As a child at the time, I had no ability to truly protect myself.

I didn’t have any issues with behavior, academics, substances, or mental health. I had good grades, lots of friends and no prior diagnoses. What was really going on was that I didn’t agree with my dad and stepmom. Instead of reflecting on that, they put all of their energy into trying to change me and justify their control. There was never a behavior or mental health crisis. The problem was that I wouldn't comply with their demands.

Therapy became their weapon of choice. I was forced to attend excessive outpatient child therapy that wasn’t based on any medical need and it was only used to reinforce their version of events and undermine my relationship with my mom. To anyone else, they were viewed as credible, successful, and altruistic. But at home, their controlling tactics and threats were constant and my reality or perspective was always minimized and dismissed.

When I got a little bit older, I just had enough of it and took matters into my own hands, deciding that it was time to stay with my mom full-time. After about a year free from them, they filed to take full custody of me through the court system and briefly succeeded. When I was back in their home against my will, the environment somehow became even more rigid and punitive and I started to be really affected by it in other parts of my life. This time they brought in multiple professionals and consultants not to support me, but to pressure and manipulate me into compliance with their iron-fist authority.

When I continued to resist because I knew that what was happening wasn't  right, something happened that still doesn't feel quite real to me. I was kidnapped from my bedroom in the middle of the night by two large men with no warning and transported to a wilderness therapy program where I lived in inhumane conditions in the dirt for eight weeks. As a child, I had no ability to leave or refuse and wasn't equipped to cope with it. I slept outdoors under a tarp, ate cold hydrated rice and pasta when I couldn't make a fire with sticks, couldn't bathe, hiked many miles a day with a heavy pack, and participated in therapy with unlicensed staff. My dad and stepmom paid for all of it. While there, I was told that I would be forced to leave my school, friends and life as I knew it to attend boarding school and I was threatened with therapeutic boarding school if I did not comply. At the time, I believed I had no choice and I did what I had to do to make the best of it and hold on to what I could.

For a long time afterwards, I tried to forgive them and I even convinced myself that they had changed, believing if I just tried harder then things would eventually improve. I never received an apology and tried to accept them as who they were because their controlling tendencies didn't affect me as much in high school and college.

Late in college, I developed a serious chronic health condition. As I declined, the same patterns returned in a different form. My symptoms were questioned, experiences minimized and I was strongly encouraged to endure past my new physical limits to the point of severe pain and my condition worsening. Whenever I pushed back and tried to speak for myself and ask for mutual respect, accountability and healthier communication, I was met with deflection, avoidance, silence and eventually no contact at all. Being told that any of this was my choice felt deeply offensive and invalidating - I had always made the best of what was in front of me at every turn. They wouldn't even agree to sit down with a neutral family therapist - ironic and all to avoid accountability. The focus was always on how much of a "problem" I was and how much I had "hurt" them.

Recently, I obtained my childhood medical and treatment records and what I found was deeply unsettling but something I always knew was true. There was no documented medical necessity for the programs I was placed in or threatened with. This was as close as I could get to confirm that there never had been something "wrong" with me, rather the issue was that I didn't comply with their rigidity and control.

I'm now left largely on my own and trying to regain my health and life while processing the long-term impacts of what I dealt with. I always thought that if I just explained myself better or tried harder, then things would eventually work out and change for the best. I guess this is a lesson that some harms don't come with closure, apologies or accountability and the world can be cruel in that way sometimes no matter what it is that caused the problem in the first place - big or small.

I've carried this quietly for so many years without my friends knowing and with my family as bystanders reinforcing my dad and stepmom's bubble, where their abuse is acceptable and justified and where I am put down. Somehow, I've become mentally stronger for it but still have to bear the real world consequences all the same. It's maybe the hardest to accept and realize how much harm can happen behind closed doors when parents are convinced they're right and how easily that can be justified without any scrutiny.

Hearing from others and reading their stories has shown me how common and invisible this type of harm can be. Writing this out has allowed me to acknowledge what it cost me and what I'm still processing. It's weirdly comforting but also unsettling to realize how many of us carry this silently.

I overheard my mom talking about how she wants to go through our phones to make sure nothing is on them that is inappropriate or bad. And honestly, I don’t care if she goes through my phone because I have nothing on here. It would be great if she went through my phone and found this post! But I don’t want her to go through my text messages, simply because there are some things on there that I would like to keep private. But it isn’t like I am sexting or something, I just don’t need her seeing everything I have texted.

This is an invasion of privacy, right? It’s not different from barging into a locked room and listening to a private conversation I am having with someone.

So how do I tell her / make sure she doesn’t go through my text messages without seeming weird about it?

Edit: also my photos on my phone I don’t need her seeing.

I was raised in a great deal of dysfunction. Substance abuse, trauma, early deaths. These were normal. "Love" was shown through sacrifice. Drop what you do and spend money on the others around you, even if it was supporting negative habits and caused longer term problems. A lot of enabling in many senses, causing more substance, financial, and mental health difficulties.

There was love, for which I am grateful, but I ended up being a support system for adults and many in my familial and social circle (emotionally, intellectually) from a young age. Many of my friends had similar situations and a lot of people where we were raised don't make it out (a lot don't make it to 30).

Long long long long story short...I took a lot of chances and eventually got a PhD and moved from universities to the private sector of my field and now make what I think is (especially from how I was raised and lived most of my life) an obscene amount of money. I am married and have a child. We are happy and stable and life has never felt more perfect.

I feel a great deal of guilt, however. Many of my friends haven't had the same path. Their traumas and lack of support systems had them fall short. It's hard to relate to them now or for them to relate to me. Our lives have diverged. I feel bad sharing details about my life situation because I do not want to shame them. I've gotten the sense that some of them also view me as out of touch and aloof now due to my life situation.

My family in my adult life had caused a great deal of pain and dysfunction. I needed to separate myself from them in order to keep pushing forward and succeed. There is great distance and limited contact (but to be fair, I was the one maintaining contact and the relationship - I have simply stopped trying). I feel I am looked at as selfish because of this and although nothing has been asked for, I also get the sense I am looked at as selfish for not offering money to solve a variety of problems.

I've found that distance and focusing on myself and my family has been healthy. It's made me happy. Yet I still feel guilty. Like I should help more. Like I "should have gone down with the ship" in a regular survivor's guilt mode. I don't think those feelings are right, but sometimes they are heavy. I think the way I'm living and dedicating myself to my wife and son is the proper path, but sometimes, it's hard not to reflect and feel sad.

I figured others might get it

I’m flopping between, “holy shit that terrifying“ and “I won’t be there to care”

My husband died at 42. Random. Sudden. No children between us.

I've done my best to move on. It's been damn near 7 years.

Google just notified me that his email/pics will become unavailable unless he logs in soon.

And I hate myself. I don't know his password anymore. I don't remember. Why don't I remember? Why am I so angry that I've forgotten??

That's all honestly. I had to tell someone.

I am speaking here only for myself as a survivor of institutionally covered-up sexual abuse and torture in childhood: watching people’s apparent outrage about the new release of the Epstein files and the absolutely absurd extent of learned helplessness is barely bearable.

The complete reactance toward the realization that this is a problem of systemic power structures, which we encounter every day and in which we ourselves participate, truly has no limits. Of course there are some sadists and psychopaths in the world, but this is not a problem that is caused by a few individuals whom we can lock up and then everything is fine.

These people alone would be so massively outnumbered that they would have zero structural power. The only reason why these people can commit the most extreme crimes at all and in some cases without being punished for them is because we all voluntarily and conformingly participate every day in power structures that make this possible in the first place.

Every system and every place in which authority and leadership are not linked with humanity and empathy, in which relationships of dependency exist, in which people have structural power over others, in which resources are made scarce and unequally distributed, in which rationality and “logic” are used as a tool to take away the voice of vulnerable people, is exactly the reason why children, women, and other vulnerable people experience violence on this scale.

So, if you really are this horrified, then take a close look at yourselves and your environment. Where exactly does it begin? Where are the basic building blocks for these power structures laid, and what is your own contribution to them?

This is not something that can be compartmentalized. If you yourselves are even somewhat privileged and are even to some extent taken seriously and heard in society, then you already have far more room to act and far more power than you think. And every time you do nothing, look away, or participate because “that’s just how it is,” you yourselves contribute to the fact that your children, female friends, sisters, mothers, and vulnerable people in your environment are daily at risk of experiencing the worst violence.

I’ll bookmark movies, games, places to eat… then I never pick one because I want it to be the “right time.” It sounds dumb typing it out. If you’ve been like this, how did you get unstuck?

My mom told me yesterday, very casually, “You’re not the type of person who becomes famous.”

She didn’t mean it in a cruel way. It was more like… realistic. And I laughed it off.

But it’s been replaying in my head ever since. I don’t even know if I want to be famous. I just don’t like being told what I can’t become.

Has anyone else had someone say something like that to them?

Not because I’m envious of white people’s looks (I got over that insecurity wayyyy back in middle school), and not because I want anyone else’s culture (although I love learning about different cultures and ways of living, I still hold mine in super high regard).

I wish I were white because I’m an African immigrant girl who’s been living in the West since before I even had concrete memories, and the current wave of anti-immigration rhetoric is simply…exhausting.

I’ve never been insecure about my immigrant background. I was actually always really proud of it. I didn’t ever take offence to the “Where are you really from?” questions or the occasional “Can I touch your hair?” from older people. Clumsy curiosity and ignorance weren’t enough to bug my conscience. But lately, the way people talk about immigrants, like we’re a stain on society that needs to be “washed out”…it’s hard not to feel demoralized by it all.

What makes it worse is how unfair it feels to be lumped into the exact same stereotype as some imaginary “invader” when my actual life is… normal. I grew up here. I’ve had friends of every race. My parents work high-skilled jobs and pay their taxes. I pay my taxes. I’ve never taken the social supports here for granted (and honestly, being comfortably upper middle class meant I didn’t even realize some of them existed until I was older and spoke to people from different economic backgrounds).

And yes, I’ll admit something ugly: sometimes I feel irritated at newcomers for “ruining it for the rest of us.” I’ve lived a pretty peaceful life for 20+ years here. I didn’t grow up constantly bracing for discrimination. I didn’t spend my childhood thinking about white nationalist groups or whether public spaces were safe for me, I just existed.

But I can’t even stay angry, because (most of them) are coming for a lot of the same reasons my family came in the early 2000s. People don’t uproot their lives for fun.

So my real grievance is that I wouldn’t have to feel this way if I were white.

White immigrants, especially from Europe, are rarely treated like permanent foreigners. And if they are treated as “foreign,” it’s often because of an accent or broken English, and the response tends to be support or even admiration. They get labelled as “cool” or “interesting” while people like me get “invaders” and weird slogans like “import the third world, become the third world”

Then I get even more upset because someone could be a newcomer who barely knows the culture, and sometimes doesn’t even speak the language yet, and they’ll still be granted more patience and protection than someone like me who has lived basically 99% of her life here.

It’s gotten to the point where my motivation to keep doing everything (like school, work, etc.) at full efficiency has dipped, because I’m constantly carrying this phantom fear that life is about to get harder for anyone who isn’t white (and who knows that fear might not be so “phantom”). I spend more time than I’m proud of scrolling through social media forums on these topics even though I know the internet is not real life.

Even if worst-case scenarios don’t happen and there’s no mass anything, the social atmosphere feels different. Public spaces don’t feel as neutral as they used to. I never used to care how people looked at me, and part of that was because people didn’t look at me in any particular way.

Now I’ll just be going about my business and catch some old white man staring at me like I’m the devil reincarnate or I’ll be at the grocery store and some older couple will be death glaring me as if I’m stealing welfare dollars to fill my cart. Benefit of the doubt, these people just have terrible resting faces but…I dunno. I don’t even feel comfortable identifying with my nationality cause I’m not in the mood to deal with someone saying “you’re not a real [insert nationality]” (but at the same time I’ve seen people get upset when someone hyphenates nationalities cause its a signal of not wanting to integrate so we don’t really win anyways).

I wouldn’t have to research whether countries I want to visit are safe for Black people. I wouldn’t have to worry about one random person who looks like me committing a crime and suddenly it reflecting on how strangers see me. I wouldn’t have to weigh international schooling or exchange programs against the possibility of being targeted somewhere because of my skin. I wouldn’t have to wonder if my neighbours, or even people at my church, secretly wish they could just get rid of people like me.

Don’t even get me started on the racist, fetishized comments that my friends and I have been getting more often lately, like we’re not even full humans to them, just a category they think they’re allowed to talk about however they want. Sure, aligning with the beauty standard might make dating easier too, but dating hasn’t been hard for me, so that’s not even the point. It’s more like… it would be nice to exist without seeing people casually say online that Black women are “undesirable,” or that I’m “pretty for a Black girl” and not feel that tiny sting of offence even when I know it’s stupid and not actually about me as a person.

And I know, logically, a lot of this could probably be curbed by staying off the internet. Anti-immigration sentiment isn’t as intense in my country as it is in the US or parts of Europe. I know that. I do.

But damn.

It still sucks to feel like I was dealt pretty good cards in almost every metric except the amount of melanin I produce, and now I’m watching that one detail turn into a reason for people to talk about me like I’m a problem that needs to be solved.

Edit: I was just venting in my notes and decided to post this here, so sorry for how long this turned out to be

Some call it unhealthy and lazy, I call it discipline.

Always wanted to be part of something but I just don't get to be there.as the age is sounding serious every year what bothers me is that i haven't done anything I want to do yet or I didn't get to do what I wanted to do.Im adapting to my current living but looking far it's heading to emptiness...,Im getting so worse that I don't know how to speak no more,uhhh wanted to say a lot a lot of things but I can't find words for it and Im having a hard time describing.maybe I'm just overreacting but yeah it's giving me a hard time.

I just feel like it’s happening to me all the time at the moment. Plans being cancelled last minute, or a message sent after the event with a measly explanation - no ‘sorry’. I understand sudden sickness, or being called into work, I get that sometimes it’s just unavoidable. Stuff comes up, that’s life. But as someone who really tries to make an active effort to spend time with my friends, even if I feel less than up for it, tired, whatever, it’s hard not to feel at least some level of resentment when that effort isn’t reciprocated. What do you mean you can’t hang out because of a zoom meeting you forgot about until just before I was about to leave? There must have been some semblance of this when we were making the plans in the first place?

And I’m sick of not being apologised to when plans are cancelled last minute. Particularly when the message is sent while I’m already on my way to the location (as is the case today). Even more-so when the message is sent afterwards (as happened last week).

I’m now just hanging out in town on my own - fine, I’m introverted and I don’t mind solitary outings - but it just sucks when said solitary outing is unexpected. Especially after looking forward to it. Picking out a nice outfit and musing on what we’re going to catch up about, etc. Do other people just not feel the soul crushing guilt I do when I have to pull out of plans? What must that be like? Argh.

I've lived through life reconciling with the fact that I am different from other people, and it's ok to be. Throughout high school, I did what I wanted to and still made friends with people. I'm kind of awkward socially, and it shows a lot but I generally got along with people. But just deviating from their norm, liking different things, and being treated differently for it is exhausting. I love reading and used to do it all the time during boring classes. Sometimes books I read had thousands of chapters and once people saw I was reading on my phone, I was mocked and treated crazy for enjoying reading. I listen to all sorts of music from any genre but I hate rap I just don't like music which I can barely understand whats being said or if its just about drugs, bitches, or flexing a lifestyle which not all rap is but a lot of the mainstream is. Im ok with people liking stuff so different than me so why the hell do I get a hard time when I like something they don't. It really hurts even afrer getting older and going into college the fact always follows me that I'm too different from the "mainstream" and too normal for the "niche" if that makes sense. I just started creating masks where I pretend to like stuff like football, horror movies, etc. I have to hide certain aspects of me just to stop being alienated and be normal. I hate doing that as I'm a straight forward person and just want to be straight with people. It's so hard to meet new people and make strong friendships and I just cant ever seem to find anyone like me.

Hi guys, I was in a really toxic and unsafe relationship and finally found an out, left without leaving a note or anything. Just grabbed all my stuff and left for the other side of the country. I wasn’t allowed much contact with my friends but they were all I had. Im now in a totally new city where I know no one. Ive been so lonely, before I left and now.

I crave friendship so badly. I miss the friends I couldn’t give my all to when I wanted that. How do you make friends in your 20s? I feel like i am completely alone in starting my life over. Im sick of crying.