So, a lot of you are miserable because you won’t make a basic effort to be socially presentable. You think it’s beneath you to engage in small talk or show interest in the lives of others. Your refusal to be kind and attentive is a moral failing, and it will keep you lonely.
hot take: making friends requires the same intentionality we give to (early) dating
we're in a loneliness crisis. we need to remember real friendship takes time and effort.
in school, it was built-in: shared routines, daily run-ins, automatic consistency.
in adulthood: you must create it for yourself.
put yourself out there. show up, even when it's scary. smile at a stranger. ask to connect. ask genuine questions. be curious. put in effort.
the results are worth it people!!!
Lindy West's whole book is about this. She didn't to but she accepted an open relationship with like two minor rules (ie, if he had another part er it couldn't be anyone in their neighborhood/they knew personally) and he broke the rules MULTIPLE times and cheated on her anyway. Never negotiate your dignity away.
It was easy for Kate Moss to say nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels because she was from England in the 90s. If she had access to takis the whole trajectory of fashion would’ve been very different
unwittingly you've met transgender persons whom you have not even noticed. a courteous cashier, a friendly waitress, a relative of a friend. they are human beings like you. they are not demons, villains. you didn't even notice them. really, you don't have to protect women & girls from them, to the degree that you might need to protect girls & women from random men who commit by far the majority of violent acts against girls & women.
if you doubt this, look up the statistics regarding rape & rape/murder. who commits those acts? when a pregnant woman is killed, who is most likely to have killed her?
seriously: do the research.
Posts like this make me want to cry. In bleak times, it's so useful to remember that every single day, people commit millions of acts of profound goodness and devotion to others - to sick or recovering children, to scared animals, to struggling elders. Most humans are good.
I find Gmail’s new “write this for me” feature deeply sinister. They’re trying to convince you that you are dumb and helpless. Don’t let them steal your ability to formulate thoughts and communicate. You were capable of writing an email in 2022 and you’re capable now.
Let this be the year in which you rebuild your attention span. Big Tech wants you unable to focus on anything for longer than a few seconds. Resist the infinite scroll. Avoid short-form videos. Watch movies without being on your phone. Read voraciously and often.
a mistake that cost me 5 years: thinking preparation was progress. reading every book. taking every course. planning every detail. meanwhile, someone dumber than me started badly and figured it out. preparation feels productive but it's often just fear dressed up as strategy. you learn to swim by getting in the water, not by studying water.
Men are really losing it in the replies because he’s basically exposing the lies men have sold for centuries; biological clock, women aging like milk and the “lonely and miserable” fear-mongering tactic projected unto women that have refused to settle for less and the realization that men are infact the ones these rules apply to 💀
“Why are folks getting dumber?” Because they don’t read. “Why aren’t men as romantic & poetic as they used to be?” Because they don’t read. “Why are people so vulnerable to propaganda?” “Why is everyone a conspiracy theorist?” Because they don’t read. Because they don’t read.
Before you let a man convince you that your degree doesn’t matter or that being a stay at home mother is the wiser choice pay attention to how men react to educated women on here. Every time a woman shows intelligence, confidence or ambition the response from men is almost
Ran across a hair-raising line by sixteenth-century writer John Foxe—“Not to understand what was done before we were born, is to live always as children”—and I think the complete lack of curiosity most people have towards the past is one reason everyone is now twelve.