chosensilence

hey everyone. i'll cut to the chase:

be careful of users like https://lemmy.world/u/Sadbunny3. we met 18 days ago and privately messaged each other a few days before exchanging contact information. i thought her speaking style was "odd" but not off. conversations flowed logically, past texts were referenced and thread replied to.. everything seemed rather genuine. this person appealed to me as somebody wanting a friend. we shared interests and then our personal lives. over the next few days i was told that this person wanted to help me out of my financial predicament that i confessed i was in.

i pushed back. i brought up how i felt uncomfortable, how i was disbelieving in their kindness, and they reassured me every step of the way that there are good people out there and sometimes good things do happen. they agreed with me that there are tons of bad actors out there, but they wanted to convey their seriousness to me, and that they weren't pulling my leg.

it took me another day or so to be willing to have them walk the walk. they asked how much my expenses were and started adding up totals. again, i called attention to the fact this was very, very strange. i didn't understand why somebody who knew so little of me valued me so much. in a way, i wanted to believe this was possible. i wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, a new friend was that generous.

lol

lmao

guys

no

as they were setting things up today they told me they were going to ask their accountant to wire me money (this was supposedly a therapist which explained their gaps in responses). i said ok thinking still that this was not going to happen. then, they informed me they had to send a check and blah blahFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK...noooo i'm so dumb godddddd!!!!! i said nahhh, not comfortable giving out my address. then they hit me with a "ohhh it'll be an email that is quick, easy, and convenient!" y'know, the way people talk to each other?

18 days. they pursued me for two weeks. i called them out and dialed their number until they answered. silence on the other end; not a single sound other than breathing. i blocked them and came to Lemmy to see if they were trying to message me or others. nope! and guess what? they stopped making public posts 18 days ago. they got me. they didn't need the account anymore.

i was floored. i have avoided many, many scams online. i ultimately prevented my first but it got uncomfortably far. i trusted someone i shouldn't have when there were red flags early. however, i didn't know those were red flags now in 2025. somebody not having the most fluid way of texting can be explained, but now i have to consider that a tell if things don't add up. idk just make sure you are being more skeptical nowadays, please. don't get scammed like i almost did.

my top ten is attached. lot of great metal this year tbh.

one of my favorite albums at the moment. great song off of it.

idk where else to post this. my state denied me coverage for healthcare and food share for “making too much,” and now since i can’t acquire insurance elsewhere since i simply can’t afford it, i’m going to lose medication that is currently treating a chronic, life shortening illness. i do not have $509 a month to spend on this drug. and since nobody in my state gives a shit about me i am simply going to go without and suffer the consequences of being unmedicated with my disease.

great.

means testing is immoral and fuck everyone who supports it. you are why i won’t be medicated anymore.

after living decades of my life as an overweight person, i eventually accepted my future as morbidly obese and filled with crippling insecurities. i tried to control my eating, my behavioral habits, to exercise at all, to speak to a therapist.. i did a lot. it wasn't until the public release of glp-1 medications that something began to genuinely work. i have been on Zepbound since November of 2024 and i reached 100lbs lost at the end of June. i feel incredible. i am not where i want to be physically (still have my insecurities) but my body absolutely knows the difference. everything is easier to do and my blood pressure is finally normal.

i am looking forward to more loss and eventually feeling more comfortable in my existence. i know this won't cure me of my psychological issues but this will absolutely make it easier to manage. i can't believe i'm here! 100 lbs is a truly unbelievable amount of weight for me to have lost. i mean it quite literally, i cannot believe this is real. i am thrilled. :D

we are all susceptible to manipulation tactics, lies, and propaganda. some of us may be more resilient than others, some may have quite the skill at resisting, but if you are an emotionally responsive person than you are not off the hook.

in 2025, i'm sure most Americans consider themselves immune to dangerous and bigoted messaging. "i'd never support Hitler if i lived back then," they claim. but many of them absolutely would have and they cannot see it. they are incapable of making the connection.

take what we are seeing now with how the average American is responding to the rise of modern American fascism and you can easily apply it to pre-nazi Germany. the banality of evil encompasses all walks of life.

i think to myself who would be a nazi if the Holocaust were to happen in America today?

• Joe Rogan
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Jeff Bezos
• Tim Cook
• Buzz Aldrin
• Paula Deen
• Kelsey Grammer
• Zachary Levi
• Taryn Manning
• Kanye West
• Amber Rose
• Kodak Black
• Kid Rock
• Lil Pump
• Sexyy Red

the potential for this list to all be nazis is unfathomably high. All of these people have supported Trump either vocally or by showing up to rallies or helping by visibly associating with the Trump campaign.

the amount of celebrity nazis we would have to deal with would become overwhelming and tiring. idk, it hit me that Hollywood would be filled with open fascists if it were acceptable.

I am very confused. RIP to Jesus and what an awful disease AIDS is, but.. huh???? Everything I read about this death tells me it was sudden and unexpected. Jesus definitely did not look like he was dying of anything pertaining to AIDS. Also, how does somebody even progress to AIDS in the US in 2025? Especially a rich famous hairstylist? It would be more understandable if he were underprivileged or had difficulty finding healthcare and treatment, but there's literally no way that was the case for him lol.

You're telling me Jesus had HIV for however long, didn't know about it, and then it became AIDS and weakened his immune system to the point where he died of a fungal infection? I find that incredibly hard to believe. Either he kept this hidden from literally everyone and ignored his HIV and kept all his physical symptoms a secret or this isn't an AIDS related death and the suggestion that it must've been an AIDS complication comes off as a homophobic implication.

Can anyone give me some insight? Maybe I'm missing something? I am gay and know a bit more about HIV/AIDS than the average person but what is going on here? Can AIDS develop silently and without symptoms? I hope not because that is horrifying and doesn't seem to make sense given what HIV does to the immune system. You can't hide severe illness much.

I have been prescribed tirzepatide by my primary care physician of 12 years since last November. In the approaching 7 months I've been on Zepbound I have lost a total of 91 lbs (or ~40kg) and I am noticing significant improvements in various aspects of my physical and mental health. My doctor gave me this medication to treat me for my morbid obesity. I weighed 363lbs at my heaviest and struggled my whole life to lose and keep the weight off. My sleep apnea was also a cause for treatment with Zepbound but that was an added bonus as far as me and my doctor were concerned.

I was on public assistance up until very recently as I started a new job and had to purchase my own private insurance (none offered by my ER). Obtaining prior authorization while on state funded care was rather simple and straightforward. Nobody fought with my doctor and agreed the medication was necessary. I figured the switch to Chorus would go the same. Unfortunately, Chorus began dicking me around with prior authorization. I had to call a bunch of people to figure out how to obtain proper approval and was informed that Chorus is careful with prior authorizations for these kind of drugs because people have "found out" about an "unintended side effect" causing weight loss and all the shortages have taken them away from people who REALLY need it like people with sleep apnea (literally used that as an example).

Firstly, the shortages with Zepbound are over and have been for a while lol. Secondly, how would Zepbound treat sleep apnea if not for weight loss? I would like to know Chorus' explanation for that. It is not a sleep apnea drug. It is approved to treat obesity which treats illnesses caused by it, like sleep apnea. It incidentally treats sleep apnea. That's the unintentional side effefct, not the weight loss.

I am so enraged, honestly. Because now I feel no support from them! Should I consider myself lucky I have hypertension and sleep apnea? I'm worried once these issues are controlled they're going to take the drug away from me even though it is a life-long medication. Once you stop taking a glp-1 drug it's likely you will regain the weight. You can alternate every other week but you need to take the drug eventually. As it currently stands, these drugs are forever.

I can't stick with Chorus next year. I sent them a message basically saying all of this and told them I would be choosing another insurance company next year. They're all crooks but fuck, one of them has to be greedy enough to want all the money Eli Lilly is making lol. "Yeah take all the Zepbound you want! Fuckin' shove it up your ass I don't care!"

i have had ADHD ever since i was a child. i grew into a very depressed and anxious teenager and my mental health worsened over time as a young adult. fast forward to November 2024 when i start picking at the wounds healing on my skin. i've done this before. a lot of us have. however, this time i couldn't stop. i would pick until it bled, let it heal, and pick it all over again. then i'd move on to another spot and repeat the process. weeks turned into months and i was still picking at my skin. the areas impacted were spreading. i knew about dermatillomania and assumed i was having an episode for some reason i wasn't yet consciously aware of, but being the curious person i am i did some internet digging and learned way more than i thought i would.

it turns out that skin picking, or excoriation disorder and no longer referred to as dermatillomania, belongs to a newly described category of psychiatric conditions called "Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders." much like how there are several disorders pertaining to anxiety and depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder is a spectrum not limited to classically presenting OCD.

huh.. interesting. wait. this is a form of OCD? i thought to myself.

i continued to read more about OCD related disorders (OCRD) when i made a personally intense discovery. while there are many conditions thought to pertain to the wider spectrum of OCRD there are generally considered to be four primary disorders that are unquestionably obsessive-compulsive: body dysmorphic disorder, hypochondriasis, tic disorders, and body focused repetitive behaviors. when considering the list of wider OCRD disorders, i suffer from seven of 17 common conditions. however, narrowing it down to these few four actually makes things worse for me, because i live with three out the four disorders.

it seems i have been going about the world with untreated OCD my entire life. i couldn't help but immediately reflect over past scenario after past scenario. i spent the next several hours consuming as much information as i could about obsessive-compulsive related disorders and uncovering why i was avoidant and pathologically shy and reserved around others. i was finally finding answers that i had spent 35 years working towards. i was closing in on why i was the way i am.

when i thought i couldn't possibly learn anything more significant about myself i read that people with both ADHD and OCD have higher rates of autism than the average population. in fact, it's a good indication you have autism if you have both disorders.

oh. hm. uhhhhhhhh. fuck. i have wondered over the years if i was on the autism spectrum but never really gave it much thought. things were clicking even deeper. like with OCD i looked into autism and it was like reading a summary of my lived experiences. everything felt right. everything made sense. this is what's going on with me. it's this right here.

i was floored. the very next day i made appointments with professionals who met with me and agreed that i was likely correct and set me up with a psychiatric assessment for June. i will soon be given confirmation of what i know likely to be true: i have ADHD, OCD, and autism. and it took until my mid 30s to put it all together.

if you are struggling and still can't make sense of yourself, it isn't for nothing. this could happen to you too. keep pushing forward because the alternative is to give up. the alternative is you lose.

one of my favorite EBM bands and they only have their debut out so far.

this album would fit in nicely in the No Wave scene of the 70s.

stumbled upon an industrial pop focused Buenos Aires artist the other day and have been sharing ever since. Juana Rozas' other song "Antonio" sounds SOPHIE inspired and if you liked this one then i recommend it.