>>25201
>balding
Wow, really? How did that happen?

>But I got really lucky and it all worked out I guess
What's that mean?

>>25201
Excuse me, but are you implying you aren't a virgin anymore?

The un/intentional ambiguity is pretty amusing.

>>25202
Not op, but I think probably male pattern baldness (genetic, onset around 25-30)?

>>25208
Not OP but that's around when I started to get it. I'm over 30 now and very clearly balding. It's a bit depressing as I felt my looks were one of the very few things I had going for me, but even that's going out the window now.

>>25203
You know exactly what he's implying.
Why can't these faggots just get in their goddamn fords and drive the fuck away from here?

youwintheprize.jpg

2D > 3D always
I could win the lottery, I'd still prefer 2D.

My life hasn't changed much at all, but my mental health has improved dramatically.. Though perhaps that's untrue.. I may be mistaking complacency and/or apathy for clarity. Either way, I'm completely content. The feelings of inferiority, shame and loneliness I used to feel constantly have all but disappeared. Still a virgin and I couldn't care less. Nothing bothers me anymore. I feel like I lucked out big time, and all it took was a few half-sincere attempts at "self-improvement".

I couldn't accept that my identity was wrapped up in fantasies of "underground" web culture, always in opposition and always inherited. I never had an identity. As soon as I stopped caring, I became happier. My thoughts/actions became more productive.

>>25216
>all it took was a few half-sincere attempts at "self-improvement"
What was that like and how did it go? Tell me more, please.

>>25216
>>25217
I want to know too. I'm so old but I feel I have barely progressed in the last 20 years, sometimes I just feel the same than when I was 15 yo, the same shame and fear.

>>25217
Sure. It's very cringe, though. It'll be a rambling mess, also. Not much to be gained from reading..

I alienated a lot of my immediate family living at home like a shut-in, and was forced to move out on my own when I was 20-ish. I lost contact with a few relatives I loved, and the pain became unbearable. Eventually, the escapism I would use to numb my pain became another source of anxiety, and I found myself walking. I started for no reason, each and every day walking until I was exhausted. I'd walk 10-12 miles in two or three chunks by the end, listening to podcasts/livestreams and the like. This gave way to a desire to work out, as the livestream content I was consuming was geared towards alienated people like me who wanted to individuate (if that's the word?) on some level.

I lost a lot of weight, and I started to gain confidence. Unfortunately, I overdid it and incurred a few nagging injuries as a result. I was too eager, and as a result I couldn't walk or work out the way I used to. This put me back down where I was...

I went straight back to vacuous consumption, binging everything I could. At the same time, I became engaged in politics (or at least /pol/..)
This introduced me to ways of thinking I'd never encountered, and was frankly unprepared for. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I was too stupid to know what I was getting into.
At this time I started writing to myself a lot. This forced me to reckon with my thoughts over time, and give them shape according to my own deliberate introspection and insight, rather than my immediate whims. I never stopped writing; to this day I keep notepads throughout my computer. A big part of what grounds me and my thoughts is a need to make sense of things in my own way... as it happens, the more I tried to make sense of most topics, the less sense would be revealed. "My" way of making sense was fucking nonsense. Hyuk hyuk.

This frightened me, but at the same time, it made me realize that what I thought I was, what I thought I cared for, was missing a crucial foundation.. more than one, even. It was painful at first, but got easier as I went.

AND SO.. I kept writing. Writing helped. I had to face up to my emptiness, and the embarrassment of having spent so much of my time arguing with authority things I hadn't explored, identifying myself with things I knew nothing about. This freed me from the ground up to basically write my own story from there..

I stripped myself away to nothing. Not that there was ever much to begin with... Just a selfish, self-destructive shut-in who loved anime and vidya. Funnily enough, I'm back where I was in some ways. I love anime and vidya again, purely for their own sake. My unhealthy habits (2D etc.) are no longer things I hide away from or feel shame for. They are a part of me, and I can live with that. "Manchild" or no, I simply don't care.

I gave up. That's the truth. But doing that somehow spurred me onto a healthier, more productive path. I'm still a shut-in, but I enquire in better faith about the things I come across, and things have become more interesting to me as a result. They interest me for their own sake, not for their utility as like, ornaments for my identity or something. I became apathetic in a way, but uh.. came to care a bit more because of it?

I realized that the things I thought I wanted, love, companionship.. those things don't last. You need to love yourself. I became selfish, but through a bit of better living I gave myself reasons to love myself. It took pain and willpower. Pathetic for most people, but for me it was a lot. I was one of those people who spent their life saying things like "I know" a lot, pretending to make an effort, giving up before I'd tried. It sounds small, but owning up to that is hard for some people. It was hard for me.
I don't talk with anybody much, really. But I don't need to. I may be going insane.. I dunno! But I'm happy. I'm no longer a burden, to myself or others. I live an honest, somewhat degenerate/hedonistic life. That's all I want. I'll do my time and die at 50 or whatever.

I changed a few lifestyle habits for the better, rediscovered old ones and saw them in a new light, and I suppose that's really it. It's a sham, but it worked for me. I was a fraud to begin with.

>>25219
This was an interesting story, anon.
>forced to move out on my own when I was 20-ish
So how do you sustain your lifestyle?
>missing a crucial foundation
>I was a fraud to begin with
Why did you become a shut-in to begin with? How did the whole school -> college -> job thing get interrupted for you? I don't think going through that process leads to happiness, but the common metric of "progress" and "improvement" includes it. The only thing on that metric you did is exercise it seems like. What was your goal in "self-improvement"?

>>25221
I live alone with the help of NEETbux. I have a long history of being on welfare, and am borderline unemployable. As soon as the NEETbux go, if that ever does happen, I'm out on the streets. Shit happens, right?

As an adolescent, I was a wreck. I became an alcoholic very young, and was incredibly withdrawn. It started at 13 and never really stopped, I was bullied a lot and one day I decided to try something from my Dad's liquor cabinet on a whim. That's that, really. The rest is the usual boring stuff, a lot of rejection, one or two friends who left eventually when I became a burden. I was always a loner, but took to staying inside for prolonged periods during my teenage years. My family grew increasingly frustrated and concerned, and it eventually boiled over. They kicked me out and I got a place thanks to the NEETbux I was already on.

The "metric" I suppose I was measuring myself by was always an idealized image of whatever I thought typified the group I would follow along with at the time. I was living a total lie, living vicariously through inerhited beliefs/rhetoric and escapist mediums (anime, the internet), all the while convincing myself I was smart, above other people and thinking critically about myself, the things I felt and the things I desired. There's nothing wrong with it really, but I would go through convoluted phases of attachment towards certain "vague" stuff... Yes, I realize this is woefully autistic. I had to basically learn how empty I was, and that wound up being a tremendous relief in the long run. The "metric" ultimately underpinned each short-term, inconsistent "goal" I'd work towards when it came to improving myself. I could never settle on what I wanted, but once I stopped enjoying vidya and anime, I wanted to walk for some reason. Then that turned into wanting to know more about certain aspects of the world (politically), which I used to underpin a new identity I wanted to personify. After, I wanted to strip everything away, every lie I'd told myself for so long. I wanted to throw away all of the junk I'd used to patch over my pain and emptiness.

I basically learned an apathy which surmounted the bigger problem of my constant negativity and self-doubt. I abandonded everything about myself, and my family too. I chucked it all away by writing (inadvertently) over a long period time, and in the "end" (for now) I looked at what I was left with. I embraced certain aspects of myself that I'd been running away from, and gave in to some darker aspects of myself which had remained all along, things like my shame for my manchild ways, my arrested development, my failure to adapt to modern living in any way. Counterintuitively, this seemed to release me from a lot of the shame I felt living the way I did (and to some extent still do). I really can't explain this very well, but I'd been running from myself for so long that to stop and accept myself for what I ultimately was at my core, stripped of all the fanciful ideological crap, of all the posturing: I was just a selfish glutton. And that made me question why I'd want a thing like love in a different way, which made me question other things.

I'm not sure if any kind of semi-sane, well-meaning person would get anything from this. I'd be very surprised if anybody did, really. I told myself a better truth, and that tore everything away, leaving me free.. or apathetic? Or naive? Either way, I'm happier than I was. Much happier.

I should have mentioned that getting rid of the internet helped me a lot. That was fairly important for a time!

Sorry for the massive walls of text.

>>25222
>getting rid of the internet helped me a lot
What do you mean by that, Anon? I also feel that I'm addicted to information / internet and it is fucking my head up, but I don't feel like I have the willpower to stop. How did you do that? Do you still keep internet at minimum?

My memory is kinda fuzzy but I remember image boards when the first Railgun was popular, I liked the show and my associations with it tied to where I browsed at the time so it was bittersweet. I'll watch the newest one when it's finished and subbed. I was 16-17 at the time, things haven't changed much for me. If I compared my state only then to now. I feel like I seen it all on the internet now, starting to run out of cute shows to watch too I think I'll enjoy since I'm pretty picky sometimes. I'm too old to get into any new friend circles anymore socially online without feeling like an alien. It's all also so different now and I don't know why but I can't stand Discord.

>>25271
>It's all also so different now and I don't know why but I can't stand Discord.
It shouldn't really be a surprise considering that the demographics of Discord tend to skew heavily towards people that seem to enjoy spamming memes and being part of some cliquey in-group. In fact I've never really liked any form of real-time chat, as even the anonymous "liveboards" (doushio et al.) seem to suffer from the same general problem that in realtime chats it's often one or two people who dominate the conversation. Moreover no one is afforded the time to write a well-thought post, which eventually results in the level of discourse devolving into casual smalltalk and banter. While even IRC suffers from this problem, I think the non-ephemeral nature of Discord (combined with profile pictures and ability to post inline images) worsens this issue.

>>25274
Yeah I think it was the fact that it felt more like I was playing a game than using a chat program. Everyone also wants to hold up their image a little too much so I'm sure that also contributes to the chats either being a game of domination, a spam party, or dead silent. The tension was high. I'm glad I remembered this place though, happy to see it's still a little active.

>>25274
>I think the non-ephemeral nature of Discord (combined with profile pictures and ability to post inline images) worsens this issue.
I was going to post something to this effect too. There are those who bemoan IRC's transience and lack of rich media features, but these are features. (Less is more!) After all, chatting with someone isn't supposed to come with a history other than memories. If one needs some form of permanence, images, profile pictures, or whatever else, use a damn forum. And somewhat related, fuck Github and the whole social-coding-media faggotry.

>>25276
What's wrong with Github? I sometimes get nice programs or mods from there, so it seems alright to me.

>>25277
Not that anon, but Github is alright as just a place to dump code I suppose; it's their push to make things more "social" that's less then stellar. Though this is really subgroup dependent; wading into the "issues" section of a webdev repo is usually a minefield, and I'm pretty sure that's what led to all this "code of conduct" nonsense. From a technical side it's probably adequate, although their PR system is atrocious and their search is complete garbage.

>>25278
Eugh, I had no idea. I just used github as a platform for collecting and uploading light programs.