Yes, I know. Earth-shattering take. But I was only able to play it at my girlfriend's house at the time, and I was in high school then, and she thought it was corny and stupid, so I had to mask my admiration for the game behind a layer of "heh waow"

I had all but forgotten about it until something jogged my memory of it a few days ago, so I did a bit of a vicarious revisit via YouTube and so on.

That game was awesome and I had a blast with it and I don't care if it's uncool. Suck my ass, Bethany, Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle) is fucking cool, The characters are fun, the story is more nuanced, complex, and engaging (dare I say epic) than it seems, and yes, the chao are adorable and the chao garden is great, and "Live and Learn" is a banger.

I am no longer ashamed! ✊🏻😠

When I was 17 in school (sixth form) there were some girls who kept chatting shit about me behind my back. there was this tall, very loud guy who went by "D" who'd always seem to be shouting things at random people in the hallways so I tried to avoid crossing paths with him. one day D caught these girls chatting shit about me and he came up to me and told me about them. we became friends and he'd always step in to defend me. after we became friends nobody dared to chat shit about me. everytime we crossed paths in the hallway he'd yell "YOOOOO" followed by "saaafe maan" and either do a thumbs up or a slow fist bump. he ended up asking me out one day but i said idk if I'm ready for a relationship and he was understanding about it. this was in like 2010 so it was a looong time ago. i hope wherever he is he's doing well

My friend joined a car forum, because she's into cars. She wanted to ask about car components, and the thread got about 14 pages in just a few days, but most people weren't actually answering her questions, they just kept accusing her of being a man because the forum apparently once had someone "pretending to be a woman". They kept calling her he/him, even though she said that she is a she (she's cis). She's 23 and most of the userbase on the mentioned forum are men in their 30's and 40's. She was being civil throughout the entire thing mentioning that it's rude to misgender someone. Apparently the way she talked was too "proper" to be "girly" and people responded that her knowledge of car components was a "red flag" that she must secretly be a man. She pointed out that she doesn't know why they're so obsessed over a random stranger's genitals and they replied back with "you're the one who mentioned genitals, we think you're the obsessed one here". I wish that I was joking. Reminds me of the internet 20 years ago.

I just finished driving for 16 hours. I'm away from my partner, our place, our animals. I'm headed up into the mountains tomorrow (er, today, in like 6-8 hours) to see my family at our annual reunion which I have normally missed for the past few years. I'm currently in my childhood home, which also happens to be where my partner and I lived for a short while, trying to fall asleep.

I'm exhausted, of course, but it's hard for me to fall asleep here, all alone, no animals, partner, or family.

My partner and I are very isolated from both of our families, the closest to us being mine. We've gone through a lot of pain over the past 6 or so years, including multiple debilitating injuries and near losses of our pets. In the 6 years we've been away, we have barely made any real friends in person. It's really bad, because we've become so dependent on each other and we can never really travel together because our animals require twice daily meds.

Driving back here alone, seeing the place I grew up, where I met my friends, where my partner and I got our start, where I proposed.. it's all so much emotion. It would be one thing if I were able to share these emotions with someone, but since it's just me.. it's crushing. The loneliness is the hardest part.

I'm staying in my sister's old room, which has been decorated and filled with things from her, myself, and even my partner. I made the grave mistake of finding my yearbooks and looking through them, and then realizing I have no one to share them with at the moment. All of my friends, many of which I haven't seen in nearly two decades, adding on to the feeling of being alone.

Anyway, that's my 16-hour-drive-fueled vent. Thank you for reading, stranger.

I was always told that as I got older so would the people I like but for me it hasn't worked like that. As of now I'm a 65 year old woman and I'm only attracted to those in they're 20's-30's.

Honestly, girls my age are just as gross to me as they were when I was young. I don't like how grey, saggy and wrinkly they are. I can see why girls the age I like wouldn't want me. I'm attracted to youth, ok that came out wrong. What I mean is that I like young features like smooth skin, firm breasts, colourful hair and big butts.

I really regret not doing more when I was that age. I missed out on having a sex life and now I'll never get that time back. I wish I could turn 25 just for one day and make up for lost time.

It sucks not being able to get the attention of the girls you like. As of now I cope with this by going to strip clubs every now and then and I'm considering getting into prostitutes again.

So I recently purchased two phones and signed a contract with AT&T, due to a technicalities in their fine print they where trying to shaft me of about $1,500 in value.

I went up and down their customer service lane and got no where.

So I wrote a letter to their legal entity (don't write a letter to their corporate address, I mean you can, but legal entity is what you want)

And in that letter I laid out two options

• Give us what you promised regardless of any BS
• Let us walk away with our new phones free and clear

I citied case law, I then citied my own state law where I can sue for 3x damages in small court.

They called me today, we settled for everything I wanted. Was it a pain? Yes, does it feel good to win aganist a big giant? Yes!

had a dental appointment earlier because I'm getting sensitivity after eating chocolate and it turns out I have a tiiiny early cavity the dentist's gonna fill next month. i had to have 2 x rays one on one side and one on the other. well the x rays picked up more than just a tiny little cavity, there's a wisdom tooth that's literally at a 90 degree sidewards angle to my bottom molar, it's not causing any pain but holy shit i didn't expect to see that on the x rays and i hate having any kind of dental work done. i just hope i don't have to have general anaesthesia for this one bc general anaesthesia freaks me out so bad

I turned 30 yesterday. Nobody besides my family believe me when I tell them how old I am. Everyone else consistently says I look 18 or 19. I do not use make up or any skincare products. I've always eaten a diet of junk food so it makes no sense. I've always looked considerably younger than my actual age throughout my life, consistently freaking people out when I tell them how old I am. When I was 16, people told me that I looked 9. One of my friends messaged me about this study which said that some people actually do age a lot slower compared to other people, and looking considerably younger is often a sign of that. My appearance got the attention of doctors who were convinced that I had some kind of hormonal disorder, but when those tests came back normal, they were stumped. Whatever it is, it's not genetic because my sibling looks their age, so do all my other family members on both sides. I used this app called FaceAge (after one of my friends told me about it, curious what the results would be) and it estimated my age to be 18. When I uploaded a photo of myself from 2020, it said I was 16.

I got really sick a little over a decade ago which caused me to be semi-bedbound from when I was 19 all the way up until I was nearing 30. I had heart and neurological problems caused by Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which have since been treated, but because of that illness affecting the blood supply to my brain, I hardly remember anything from my 20's. My 20's seemed more like a weird fever dream than anything very tangible (I mostly just remember hospital appointments) and suddenly I'm 30 but I don't feel 30, physically or mentally. Anyway, I recently thought about the people I knew in school who I forgot the names of. Some of them were a couple of years older than me, and I'm just imagining how old they must all look now even though they aren't that much older than me, and how they're probably experiencing slow downs. I look like how they did when they left school now. That just makes me feel really upset for some reason. The best way I can describe it is similar to how you feel about a cat or dog ageing a lot faster than you.

Another issue is with dating. If I put my age on my profile, with my photos, I'm going to look like I'm catfishing or something, even though I'm not. And even then, it's going to look weird for a 35 year old man to go out on a date with someone who looks like she's barely old enough to gamble.

Im not sure where to post this at but it bugs me and i want to share my experience and thoughts.

Hello im 19 year old with autism if that matter. Im not allowed a job because parents said no and yes i know im a adult but i cant drive and im dependent on family and they are with me aswell. Anyways i felt so down in the dumps and just wanting a way to earn money, that i thought surveys and get paid to sites would be a change. There a waste of time and only good for earning pennies. most of the time you do the survey and when you fishish it screen you out not giving you a reward. I even get money from the government for having autism but it goes towards bills and life, the little i have left i always blow it on something dumb (I have a problem).

I want to let you know never try those sites there just not worth it and take weeks of slave labor to even get a dollar.

And now i ask how do i earn money in a real way or get a job from home? I wanted to be my own boss sense i felt busy but im not sure anymore.

I am a 22 year old Panamaian-American woman who a little while ago got into a car crash. I don't feel ok with getting into the pacifics all you need to know is that it left me needing to go to the hospital. I suffered some injuries that weren't permanent but serious enough to need me to go to the hospital. After I had mostly recovered from my injuries the state of my mental health came into question. Me and my mom decided I should see a mental health professional so we both chipped in and I started seeing one.

After like a little time I got a formal diagnosis which was less than flattering to say the least. It turns out I have something called "anti-social personality disorder". At first I thought that meant that I was autistic or something but it turns out that's the fancy term for "psychopath"/"sociopath". Which means I'm literally a psychopath now🥀🥀🥀. They also found out that I'm a neurotic alcoholic woman with histrionic and paranoid personality disorder as well as a poor memory. I thought they were making things up to diagnose me with. I've always been a nice person I don't see how I'm a "sociopath". As the kids say, I'm cooked💀.

so, i have this friend and we talk about the wallace and gromit character victor quartermaine.

i know this reads like a shitpost but i am really obsessed with him and all i do is get really happy and dazed and giggly around him and it's so annoying because he's not even real and he gives me energy to keep me awake at night and i go to sleep thinking about him. ughhh and my friend is like his biggest fan and she also likes him please help. it's a fuel for my creativity to make headcanons and stories with victor but this feeling hurts to like him so much and i also don't want to make my friend jealous.

and the other character is the vicar and NO ONE talks about him and that kind of hurts too because no one will like him like i do but at least i have someone with victor.

My dad thinks people who put Confederate flags up are admirable and just "proud of their ancestry"... Oh dear.

ok, so i'm generally kind to everything and everyone, but bugs, slugs, snails, etc. really bother me. i have intrusive thoughts and i really get the urge to kill these things and have in the past because i hate them. i'm scared that this is going to be the sign of a future serial killer because i also have the urge to kill and destroy things but i don't. it's not often i get the urge, but when i don't like something, i absolutely will lol

of course, i need help, not for someone who can say definitely, because only i can.

ok, so i'm born female, but i don't identify as such. honestly, i think i align myself somewhere on the "man" part of the spectrum, but i feel very "soft" and "tender", i guess that means i don't feel a sense of hypermasculinity or a strong sense of gender.

part of me seems to be male aligned and the other part just feels soft like i say, no specific gender. rather, i'd say a gender but not one that counts as male or female. since i can't express my gender, i say i'm just me, but i do get curious what gender i would count as. i'm just me in the end, but still.

I know it's been like a day but she asked me since we asked each other out does that makes us BF and GF now and I said yes! And she said we could get on a call and watch a movie as an online "movie date" hehe!!!!

Why did it hurt when he said he didn't want to talk to me?

The way he moved on so quickly and said he felt nothing for me immediately after I stopped doing as much stuff for him.

The way he was always on-and-off, like "I love you". Then "we should break up".

The way he would sometimes feel nothing for me even in the relationship.

He suddenly didn't like me anymore. He wasn't focused on a mutual, loving relationship, but more on what I could give him and do for him. He was always happy when I comforted him like I was his parent. Always happy when I did stuff for him, like make gifts, buy gifts, etc. But not once did he try to help me or do anything for me, not even like my interests or watch my movies when I did, like he said he would! Then, he suddenly didn't like me and we broke it off.

Now, his bio says "A owns me", but when I ask him about it, he says that it's "some dumb quote he found".

So, I'm autistic+BAD(+possibly ADHD) and my parents were both idiots when I was a kid.

They both thought children only take making right choices from their parents, not parenting work. Or only surgical excessive parenting work where they thought it was important (which wasn't always good too).

With my mom it was her NPL and the fact that her parents were both not very responsible, with my dad - I think he secretly knew he's autistic, but was terribly afraid of that and thought only autistic kids need parenting and I'm normal or something delusional like that.

So they picked a school with a not very good kind of people being prevalent, children of government workers mostly, and not the lowest caste of those.

Somewhere around 16yo I had learned nothing of substance other than drawing dungeon plans and reading fantasy and sci-fi and fan-fiction on those, and I was trying at computing things, but it was hard and mostly imitative talk, like you'd do imagining a sci-fi story. At the same time sometimes quite pretentiously, while feeling myself mentally impaired (couldn't concentrate or keep myself on actually learning things). And I felt like in prison in that school, and the worst was the feeling that I might become one of those kids (this wasn't possible, was probably a trap and so on).

So I'd intentionally try to distance, sometimes via actively insulting that whole layer of society and their idea of authority. The paranoid idea is - that the little bitches and some of their teachers recorded my words and used them as a prank on someone quite respectable from my point of view. Possibly even real-time. Say, a person big enough to be present in some BSD Unix manpages. And a few other such pranks, with the overarching goal of somehow hurting me. And a few of the people around that man decided to take revenge without checking.

What's important in that paranoid idea is that those people might have had different reactions and done different actions. Some might have done pretty bad things until realizing that they were wrong. Some might have behaved right from the beginning. Some of those might have been sorry upon learning that, some not. It's as if this story were slowly traveling behind my back and people would first start telling me something with indignation against me, and then decide it shouldn't be told to me.

And I have a habit of insulting people in the Internet.

So - my progress since then might have seemed like a flat line (even though it wasn't), and I'm both worried about that being known to the people who've reacted properly, upsetting them, and about the possibility that I, with my habits, might have insulted some of them.

And it sometimes feels very needed to reach some of those people and check that they are not too disappointed and this is not such a big deal.

The question of whether it's a psychotic idea or gaslighting is important because of executive dysfunction and having yet achieved far less than I would want to have.

In general this fear becomes weaker every time I have something like a hyperfocus, but that happens rarely and usually involves exploring something for a token toy to keep, and not learning or doing anything further in that area. In very rare bursts, most of the time is wasted.

It's a bit like vibe coding inverted (and not just in coding, but in making POV-Ray renders, drawing, writing poetry, making themes for FVWM, generating ambient music, whatever), where with vibe coding the process itself doesn't matter, while here the functional result matters less than the vibes of a working program or a configuration or a rendered picture (I think with renders this isn't different from the mainstream though).

So, to partially close such a gestalt, I'd have to do a useful project, but that's the thing - I have done toys complex enough (though messy and ugly) and requiring understanding of the tools and the problem. But I have never done useful and conformant things of the same scale. It's as if I physically couldn't do big things that are work, only big things that are play.

And probably to really reach some of those improbable people ; which doesn't seem a good idea both if it reminds them of something bad and if it doesn't.

So. No question, though advice is welcome. Just learned there's a community with such a name and decided to share.

EDIT: FFS, feels like exhibitionism.

i just broke up with my bf. i can let friendships and love blossom, but i won't go around asking people even if i get the urge too. i'll give it time.

I was taking annual mandated training at work the other day. Like, you know, watch the video, try not to snooze when you fall asleep, and then answer a very basic question or two at then end. One of the videos was about ethics. I work for a government contractor and ethics is a big deal.

But it was boring and I started noodling on my phone. I looked up my employer's Wikipedia page. And wouldn't you know it, they mentioned that my employer was responsible for running a disinformation campaign in the Philippines during the pandemic, at the request of the American government, trying to convince people that the vaccine was bad for them because it was from China. There are very likely to be people who refused the vaccine and died because of the lies of my employer, and I was learning this literally while an ethics video played on my computer screen.

This came to light only because my employer had, according to a government report, "sloppy tradecraft" and failed to sufficiently cover their tracks.

Okay, so my online friend "Ana" asked me out. I panicked and told her, "Sorry, no," and I ended up apologizing because I panicked. She said she understood, it wasn't my fault, and that she didn't mean to make me panic, etc. She also told me that she really liked me for my kind, good-natured personality. (Aww!) I ended up sending her the link to one of my posts, and she said she would accept whenever I was ready to ask her out, even if it was not now. I just asked her out and I'm looking at her response...

She says she would love to be my girlfriend.

I'm 22 years old and trans (man). I'm definitely on the aroace spectrum, but when I do feel attraction, it's towards women.

I've recently been talking to an online friend of mine, Ana, who recently confessed to me (like a few days ago). I felt really bad and eventually decided to ask for advice.

At first, I panicked and said "Sorry, no." Then, I cried. I apologized to her and got an answer back that it wasn't my fault (according to her), she didn't mean to make me panic, and that she likes me because I'm genuinely kind and good-natured. She says I make her feel seen and loved.

I responded with "Thank you." but I'm afraid it seems like I don't like her back when I do. I'm far too scared to ask her out but I definitely want to.

I work in Cybersecurity, and have about 4 years experience. I’m currently in a SOC Manager role. Working at an MSP, it hasn’t always been easy to deal with the politics surrounding some of our clients, especially in the current administration.

One of our clients is, at least from my perspective, directly involved with supporting and advocating for genocide. This has been eating at me for months, and finally culminated in me telling my manager I was resigning.

He took it well, and they asked me to stay on for 90 days while I looked for a new job. The issue is that I’m 45 days into this and have barely received a few nibbles from my applications. I know my resume isn’t perfect, but I’d thought my experience would be enough to hear back at least from tier 2 analyst positions, if not the management ones.

They’d probably let me stay if I asked, but my soul can’t take it anymore. But I’m really worried about the job search getting even harder once I can’t say I’m currently employed.

idk if there's a word for this, but i recently argued with someone who was ranting about "boat people", referring to migrants coming to the UK. i was like "ohhh you mean sailors? I like their hats. mad respect to them, must be a tough job ay?" and then in front of everyone the bigot clarified they meant people who aren't white entering the uk which then caused other people to confront him since they knew what he meant. basically i like getting them to show themselves up in front of everyone. like asking people who are against "DEI" what it stands for. always funny when a bigot is being vague on purpose and then they can't resist saying what they really mean lol

i feel like satan or some demon is inside me like i said. i must repent. i must pay for my sins. i must make an offering to the lord. idk why i feel this way. 😭

i'm genuinely starting to believe that some sort of demon or satan himself is inside me. i know it's not real and i should get help, which i am getting, but i just needed some comfort or perhaps anecdotes. no criticism please and i don't think i need advice, i'm getting help and i will talk to someone. it feels like a demon is giving me urges to say mean things i normally wouldnt say. i'm crazy aren't i?

i just need comfort or perhaps someone share similar experiences.