Stole it off of reddit
I used to be the guy that knew everyone, introducing my friends to others, and others to others.
These days, I have maybe 2 friends.
The good friends I once had believe everything they see on Facebook.
I just couldn’t anymore.
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. Probably childhood abandonment, abuse, and neglect.
My poor mom tried, she really did. She was abandoned, abused, and neglected too. A lot of things that would have seemed absurd to a healthy person were normal for her so she tolerated a lot and expected a lot. She suffered so much as a kid that whatever idea she had about family, she was sticking to.
I have no close friends and I LOVE it that way. I wish I didn’t.
Being alone is my favorite way to be. I can’t move in any direction in life because of it. Fortunately my wife wants me to be a stay at home dad. She isn’t crippled like I am and she loves me anyway, thank goodness.
You are at least fortunate enough to have the type of love only your wife could give.
Everyone is broken in some way.
Some want to break others because of it. Some want to comfort the broken.
Your life is yours to live. You have someone who, it sounds, respects that. That’s more than many could ever wish to have.
Yeah, I’m very lucky to have her.
I sometimes think of who I’d be if I were anyone at all, but I’m happy to be nobody right here where I’m at.
Algorithmic social media just ruins everything. Once twitter and facebook started pulling out all the stops to keep us on their sites instead of letting us use them as a starting point to connect and/or simply augment our existing irl relationships.
I tried to befriend a friendless dude in college. Found out he was friendless because he went around asking women what their “cunt diameter” was. Even women professors!
How did he not get kicked out for that? If not for sexual harassment, at least for failing to get IRB approval!
My college was desperate for students and couldn’t afford to kick anybody out. There were people around that did worse shit than this guy and stayed.
What the shit
What a creep! Everyone knows you’re supposed to ask for the cunt circumference, or circuntference
Post or pre coutis?
I assume you meant “coitus”. Definitely pre-coitus - he had never had sex and I’m willing to bet he still hasn’t ever, 37 years later.
im the second picture…
yeah, I’m the person 🙈
The person going “Ewww this person is toxic” or the other side?
Anxiety sucks, or is there different reasons why I don’t have irl friends?
Domain checks out
Anxiety can give you fog brain so your real thoughts/wit doesn’t show through.
Tried and true way past it is some light drinking!
edit: drinking socially. Not just all the time. Don’t just start drinking because I said this.
I’m the dude with no friends because of the BPD relationship spiral.
Meet someone new. They’re cool. Like them. Hang out all the time. Start to hate everything about them. Leave/Drive them away. Meet someone new. They’re cool…
Oh damn, same. What should I search to read more about this? Mentioned to my therapist that this is a pattern of mine but it was tangential to some other stuff so we didn’t end up processing it specifically. Is BPD referring to bipolar or borderline personality disorder?
Borderline Personality Disorder.
Two weeks ago, I saw the loner at the table of an event. Went to go talk to them because they were alone for a while.
In less than 10 minutes, they made a offensive joke that would have insulted half the people here, and complained about their living situation unprompted.
Idk why in imagining them telling a version of the aristocrat’s and then saying, “So anyway, that’s my roommates.”
Now I want to know the joke
The guy made a comment about women and minorities about if I was just trying to meet a DEI quota.
He said this to me, a person of color, at a tech event where according to the census, 60% of Engineers are white.
Maybe he is a want to be racist. Not actually racist enough to avoid you but racist enough to make nasty jokes.
…
You know something that often gets overlooked about bigoted “humor”, is how predicable and tiring it it. Even if it wasn’t inherently offense, it’s not funny.
Yeah that shouldn’t be surprising. When you make a joke that puts people down it is rarely funny unless you hold certain beliefs.
Bold move
I’m that lonely guy. One friend, love him because he stuck around when my mental health was at its worst. Eventually I finally got a psychiatrist, my first one, who told me most of my toxic negative attitudes and behaviors were stemming from my mental illnesses. It took a couple years to get through therapy and monthly psychiatrist appointments but where I am now is… Well still pretty awful but at least I can give my best friend the space he needs, and function without the anxiety and panic attacks that were caused by overthinking every single message or lack of message. My medication regime is strict and full of pills, but hey, doing better then I was last year. I can’t forgive the people who left when my mental health got out of control but I do understand why they made their choices. It hurt and made my depression a lot worse. The only thing that kept me sane was my last friend. He stuck around and helped. Im still lonely and want more friends, but it’s a slow healing process. More friends might make the social anxiety worse, or it might help. Not really certain I wanna flip that coin. Taking small steps though.
Whelp that’s enough oversharing with complete strangers. Have fun everyone!
Perhaps you might be preying upon a vulnerable person with your “friendship”.
Thus far you have milked them for imaginary internet status points. What a friend.
not to brag, but i’ve graduated from not befriending friendless people to driving away friended people who try to be friends with me
less people, less drama
*fewer
Fewer would only be used in this case if drama was plural. Fewer dramas vs less drama
I was referring to fewer people lol.
Really though the jury is kind of out with fewer/less in a lot of situations, but a strict rule would probably say “fewer people, less drama”. The real contradiction is “15 items or less”, which should really be “15 items or fewer” but the former is so well established now it won’t go away.
In what situations are objects ambiguously countable?
thanks new friend! fixed
Fewer people, less drama (other way around)
Booo
Perfect lmao
Happened to me a few years ago, started in a new office and one of the guys seemed cool so we talked more frequently. Ended up helping him get the apartment upstairs from me because his lease was expiring and carpooled to work. That’s when the clinginess started, couldn’t go half a day without him always texting or calling over stupid shit and borderline unhinged behaviors. I distanced myself real quick from him. The final straw was when he had asked what “village” my girlfriend was from in Brazil, then doubled down when I called him out for assuming she was from some uncontacted Amazonian tribe. “Well you havent been there yet so you don’t know lol” yeah ok fuck you, dude. Haven’t talked to him since, even though he still lives upstairs.
IDK man, the people with no or few friends tend to be weird but not really bad in any meaningful way: socially awkward, shy, odd interests, neurodivergent etc. Difficult to get to know, plain and simple. People with a lot of friends are often worse people, manipulative and/or have a transactional attitude to relationships
Yeah I’d like to think I’m not a bad person. I just have intense social anxiety. The only way I’ve made friends are when chatty people tend to talk to me and invite me to things. I’ve always appreciated when people do this, but then I just don’t retain the friendship when I or they have moved across the country or when we’ve moved into different life stages (ex: graduating from high school or college or changing jobs). I’m fortunate enough to have a friend now who is just nice and talks to me. Prior to that I didn’t have anyone for a while outside of my online friends. Some of us are really just terrified of other human beings is all.
Part of this is that I have always an intense paranoia of appearing too clingy, so I never invite anyone else out to do things. Notice how one of the commenters said they broke off a friendship because the other person was too clingy. Well I just break it off first by never engaging because I don’t want them to think I’m too clingy or weird. Even now with the one friend I have I fear that I text too much or bother them too much or things like that. I try to limit myself and leave them alone but I never know where the line is between never speaking and between speaking too much.
So I just chill alone I guess.
Just be chill
I rarely do anything with people I know. I’m not a super social person and I tend to keep to myself. I tend to hang with people that I either know very well or that I work do something with.
When I was in high school there was only one kid with no friends and he was racist
At least he wasn’t the popular kid
Same. It was in the Tennessee suburbs so there was actually a lot of racism, but dude was like, Klan level racist, and that’s just rude.
There were probably others with no friends who just had social anxiety. You probably didn’t notice because they just blended into the background and didn’t stand out much.
My school was very small I knew everyone there
Damn, wish the racists at my high school had no friends.
Idk man, the people with no friends and the people with a lot of friends and even the people with a middle amount of friends seem to follow a standard distribution of personalities.
Some awkward people and some charismatic people just suck. Some awkward people and some charismatic people are awesome. But most of all, people are just kinda shades of in-between.
Yeah I don’t think it’s really fair for anyone to be generalizing people over the number of friends they have. There are shitty and no shitty people in both camps.
The people with no or few friends tend to be weird but not really bad in any meaningful way: socially awkward, shy, odd interests, neurodivergent etc. Difficult to get to know, plain and simple.
*Raises hand*
awkwardly high fives raised hand
Alone together
And when it’s not any of those cases then that person has a horrible pattern of behavior. I’ve learned this lesson way too hard.
Can relate; have friend who I somewhat wish I never met
Just start pretending that you don’t know him. Just me like “who are you?”
Just kidding don’t do that
It’s the risk you take. I’ve met some of the most interesting people this way. If you go into it with an open mind and understand that usually it’s not going to work out, you’ll be better for it.
I think the times we befriend loners and it’s goes positively are easier to forget than the times we go out of our way to try to include someone only to find out that they’re toxic to be around.
Hey some of us are autists that somehow evaded a diagnosis and therefore any kind of supportive treatment or therapy. We’re doing our best OK?
A bit defensive? :)
Yeah because I’m in this picture and don’t like it.
Nice username
