zerozaku

I have constantly avoided using popular social media like Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat etc when I was on reddit. I thought I had best of all worlds being on reddit as it has cumulated posts from all social media. I was feeling that I'm being much more ahead of all the people around me by consuming qualify stuff and not algorithm driven stuff.

But since I have left reddit, I have been closed to all the stuff I used to follow and stuff which aren't there on lemmy yet. I don't usually follow mainstream news either, feeling if something is big enough iit will reach me some way or the other. After my exit from reddit, I have been closed from the news about my interests too. Currently my only source of any news is one small discord server where people share stuff from twitter and thats it.

Recently I have been starting to think if it's all worth it to live like a perfect outcast who has 0 relatable things to share with people irl. All people around me talk about that funny meme that's been trending, that news which got viral and that trendy song which got hype recently and I don't have any idea what they're talking about. I have been feeling very confused on what I've been doing till now. Idk if it's all worth it being the way I am.

Also since I have become a privacy freak too, it adds more repulsive feelings to use mainstream social media. And this also got me thinking maybe privacy thing is not something I should even fight for. Just blend into the public and just enjoy stuff.

Idk, I have constructed this "superior" all different character of mine only to find I just don't have the personality irl to back up the character I've created and was longing to have something to be relatable to people.

( I know lemmy has majority population who are older who would feel easy to say I'm doing great being way from normie media but I'd like to be more open and hear some thoughts from gen z people or a perspective from gen z a bit more. All views are welcome tho <3)

Tldr: Having mixed feelings about staying away from mainstream social media, being a privacy freak and feeling if it is all worth doing this all anymore.

I just realized I don't have many discussion communities on my feed. My feed is filled with all news articles and I rarely find any posts written by people to discuss stuff. The communities where they discuss normal life stuff or anything in particular, majorly with texts, is what I want, idk what you actually call them.

Thanks.

(I hope this is the right place to vent out my thoughts and feelings, idk who will read this though, but pls be kind (: )

I never had any huge crushes in my student days. I had one towards the end but I usually just observe from a distance and admire their beauty. Never felt I should talk to them or make them close.

Cometh my first job. I saw this woman, she was not amazing at first but caught my eyes. Everyday I would look at her as usual with my "crush protocol". Day after day, I felt she was becoming more amazing. This continued for months. Feelings only got thicker, so much so that I started to associate every love song with her. This is something I have never connected to in my whole life. Love songs never clicked to me, never felt attached to them. But this woman changed it all somehow with no word spoken between us.

But on some particular day, heavens have blessed me with an opportunity. She sat beside me during lunch out of sheer luck. Time for more context on my personality. I just don't talk to people. Idk if it's introversion or lack of social skills. Even with my colleagues I just talk when necessary. I just don't initiate any conversation irl until they do. Talking to strangers? Forget about it.

Let's come back to our glorious day. She sat beside me and all the time she was eating I battled within myself that I have to talk to her somehow. And after battling for some hard 10-15min, I went for it. I said "excuse me..." and fumbled my words towards some random question about her work. The conversation was quick and I couldn't carry it longer than a minute probably but much lesser ig. But this was a huge achievement for a someone like me - an introvert talking to their crush.

Days passed but we haven't talked a single conversation again. Here comes the villain. There came a shift in our work that we had to be in different places. Boom. I won't be seeing her ever again. I don't even know her name. Now I am regretting not knowing her name ever again. Fcuk man.

Bye my unknown queen.

I cannot do a damn thing. Be it easy, be it hard, be it rewarding, be it just pure pleasure. I cannot enjoy a thing thinking it is just waste of time. I cannot carry myself to do a hard task thinking about the high effort it requires. Even if I break it into small parts, I would only do the bare minimum for a day or two and stop it.

My entire life is being passed away coming back tired, hungry and yearning for sleep, from a job I dislike to the core.

I am not moving towards my goals. I cannot quit this job. Time is passing. I'm stuck. Weekends cometh, I use them all trying to catch up on sleep.

Every week I'm doing just the bare minimum to survive thinking I might do something on the weekend and I don't. How do I break out this cycle? There's a lot more I could unwind upon but this post is already long enough.

Argh

I don't get it. Everywhere I look there is this discussion about getting into a relationship, getting gfs/bfs and constantly chasing after it. And I'm not doing anything of it. I never paid attention to such stuff. During my teenage years, I thought it was normal attraction which people cave into and pursued such things. But now in my 20s, the same thing I observe, if not a little bit more than I used it. People getting sad because they are not finding someone. People being happy because they have one for themselves.

I'm not that career focused either. I just mind my own business. If it's studying or working, I just mind that. I do nothing like checking out girls in my school/workplace like my peers do. Maybe I'm just scared to pursue such things. I also think having a relationship is a huge headache too. Meeting them, making them happy, going out with them regularly. (I don't go out myself where will I take her to?). All of this while doing your daily stuff.

Am I wrong thinking to put career first before I get into relationships and stuff?

Years ago I read a reddit thread saying you shouldn't pursue friendships or relationships at your workplace. Then I again see all over the places over the internet that friendships don't happen a lot after you become working adult and that they're struggling make new friends. My question is If you don't purse friendships, how would those happen?

Want to know about the thoughts of people over here.

I have quit ranked/competitive gaming and do only casual gaming whenever I get some interest. Honestly I was happy that I've quit gaming as a whole because it was a real addiction. Countless number of times I have uninstalled games only to get so tempted that I would download them again despite them taking 1hr to install.

From that kind of situation to come to this situation where I only play whenever I want to, is a great progress I felt I have made. I have got lots of time on me as expected, but I don't spend it wisely and infact in more "brain-off" fashion eg scrolling, chatting on discord, youtube etc.

Now I feel whenever I come across anything that needs my brain to be spent upon, I feel so reluctant to do high brain activity. I feel there's lot more difficulty concentrating and being patient with my task.

Is this because I have quit gaming? (sounds crazy I know) that my brain has become rather less active than usual?

I recently come across a random study on surgeons that game a bit during the week are doing better at their job than the ones who don't game. Not sure how of it is true but I sure have come across concepts like gaming keeps your brain active and make you perform.

Take this entire assumption as a grain of salt because I haven't done any huge experiments nor do I have any conclusive evidence but a small hunch that I just came across. I just wanted to know your experiences after you quit gaming.

(I know many of you already know it but this incident I experienced made me so paranoid about using smartphones)

To start off, I'm not that deep into privacy rabbit hole but I do as much I can possibly to be private on my phone. But for the rest of phones in my family, I generally don't care because they are not tech savvy and pushing them towards privacy would make their lives hard.

So, the other day I pirated a movie for my family and since it was on Netflix, it was a direct rip with full HD. I was explaining to my family how this looks so good as this is an direct rip off from the Netflix platform, and not a recording of a screening in a cinema hall(camrip). It was a small 2min discussion in my native language with only English words used are record, piracy and Netflix.

Later I walk off and open YouTube, and I see a 2 recommendations pop-up on my homepage, "How to record Netflix shows" & "Why can't you screen record Netflix". THE WHAT NOW. I felt insanely insecure as I was sure never in my life I looked this shit up and it was purely based on those words I just spoke 5min back.

I am pretty secure on my device afaik and pretty sure all the listening happened on other devices in my family. Later that day, I went and saw which all apps had microphone access, moved most of them to Ask everytime and disabled Google app which literally has all the permissions enabled.

Overall a scary and saddening experience as this might be happening to almost everyone and made me feel it the journey I took to privacy-focused, all worth it.