I’m atheist, but raised as a pretty diligent episcopal. I wouldn’t have any issue dating someone who is religious. I’ve dated a few women with different religious/spiritual views and it was never an issue. I’ve always been fascinated by religions and their histories despite never really believing in one myself.

I’d honestly be open to the idea of “converting” for someone I love, so long as the culture of their religion is compatible with my existing moral standards. I haven’t been to the point where I’d have to do that, but I don’t see why not to except that I’m not sure if it’s right to simply perform the practices with no belief in the core of it.

I only use Lemmy. Not because I’m hardcore about the fediverse or anything, but because I wanted to start moving off all major social media. Now I rarely engage with any social media and I think it’s done wonders for my mental health.

I love driving and I do it professionally now despite being a very anxious person. I felt exactly the same when I was younger and had lots of friends who felt the same. Drive as safely and slowly as you’re comfortable. Don’t let jerks on the road pressure you, they can wait a bit if need be. Over time, you’ll become more comfortable and capable.

My friends play games together every night and I join them pretty often. I could game more if I wanted, but I’ve been losing interest. All of us are broke as hell, but no kids, no marriages.

I think pc spec creep will eventually leave us in a situation where we need to upgrade but can’t afford to and I’m not sure what we’ll do then.

Growing up, I lived a lower middle class life. Now, I can only eat once or twice a day and still pay my bills. My parents are in the process of a divorce and selling the house and when that’s done I’ll be homeless.

My life has never been like the image of poverty, but money has been very tight my whole life. We live in a rundown and neglected suburb, but it’s certainly not a ghetto or slum. I did get some toys growing up and played in sport leagues and very rarely went on trips to places. After I turned 10, money got way tighter for my family and most of my comfort and luxury has come from working and buying my own stuff. Luckily my parents are too prideful to shake me down for money which is normal for other poor parents to do to their kids around here.

I don’t think there’s too much a middle class person has experienced that I haven’t, but I’ve spent my adult life so far by spending as little on my day to day as possible so I can afford to go out and enjoy life. Last week, I went to a fancy indoor gokart place and ate at a restaurant after with some friends and another day I went to street festival. This week, I’ve eaten 7 times total and haven’t gone anywhere. Eventually I’ll leave this overpriced shit hole, but I’m trying to hunker down and not shake anything up while The Orange Emperor reigns.

Kingdom Hearts 2. I think my parents randomly got it with the ps2 slim they got me for christmas or a birthday when I was a kid. I knew nothing about final fantasy or anime, but I absolutely loved disney movies. I don’t really know too well why it got me hooked so much. I had a head injury when I was 15, and have heavy amnesia of my life before it. The fact I remember so much about that time is really a testament to the impact it had on me.

I remember the aesthetic was completely new to me and I thought it was really cool. In hindsight final fantasy characters hanging out in disney movies is pretty weird, but they just looked like really cool guys fighting evil in the background of the movies.

Roxas’ story was also super compelling for kid me, the entire prologue felt dreamlike, emotional, and thought provoking. It was like I was playing a novel. For context, the games I had played up until that point were essentially just pokémon, spyro, smash bros, and mario kart. So the idea that a game could be emotional and have an interesting story was completely new to me.

Now I can see the flaws and oddities in the series, but I still love it and it’s had a ridiculous impact on my life. I sometimes worry a little that if the people in my life played the series they might see the inspiration for so many habits I have now and pretty much my entire sense of style is heavily influenced by the idea of Tetsuya Nomura design blended with disney vibes.

It is not a “counter to religion”. Religion and science are both ways to find explanations for things, but they’re not a binary nor even on the same spectrum. They both have aspects to them with no parallel from the other. Science doesn’t define morality and religion doesn’t engineer buildings for example.

I said “counter religion” because people treat it like a stand in for religion. Science fundamentally doesn’t declare truth. Scientific theories can and have been wrong, yet some people act as though it’s unquestionable and anything not scientifically proven isn’t true. Those people also tend to really identify with believing they’re right, almost exactly like any smug religious person.

Where I’m from, nothing announces the exits. There’s just a pair of doors opposite each other and you go out whatever one opens. I’ve never even thought about it before. Is there a reason it needs to be clarified on your trains?

I pretty much always win with votes. If I get upvotes, I think someone appreciated it. If someone downvotes, I think they’re a hater.

I won’t lie though; my adhd ass checks way too often in a desperate search for dopamine.

Some people seem to like using “science” as a counter religion. Instead of being smug about believing in a god, they’re just smug about how much they don’t believe in one.

It does nothing but divide people more and I’ve honestly started questioning whether it’s all good faith or some kind of psy-op to divide the left a bit more.

What’s wild is that my dad is a democrat, “union man”, who is himself otherwise liberal. He agrees that there’s a class war, but that the rich are organized specifically by a few secret unimaginably rich jewish families for unclear purposes.

I was eating dinner with my dad a year ago when he told me about how he believes jews secretly run the world and that there’s something fishy about the Rothschilds. I burst out laughing thinking my dad had suddenly developed a very modern online sense of humor, but unfortunately no.

I’ve never known my dad to be antisemitic, and he even explained that regular jews are a different group from the ones in control.

I straight up told him it’s ridiculous and that he needs to get off the internet, but he never agreed with me. I still don’t know how to handle the situation really.

Oh and my mom went borderline sovereign citizen a few years ago, but I don’t remember what insane thing she said first.

Where I’m from, the tourists are usually nicer and more respectful than the locals.

Something I rarely see brought up is specifically the edgelord to right wing pipeline. When I was a kid, it was essentially standard for any boy online to try to be super edgy. Adolescents and teens just have a natural urge for rebellion.

The problem comes when kids think edgy and shock value humor is their favorite thing, but more mature online users reject that behavior and exclude these kids. These kids feel misunderstood and are drawn to figures and role models that accept what they like.

I’ve met a bunch of younger, “conservative”, incel types recently and they’ve all been edgelords who found their own little community instead of growing up. They largely have no ideology in the beginning but slowly absorb manosphere bullshit and over time they become less “ironic”.

The thing that got me to stop being edgy was joining the swim team and having my friend group go from edgelords to gay swimmers. I developed a ton of respect for them and they were my teammates; it completely changed my mind without me having to “conform” to the things I wanted to rebel against. I don’t really know how to get that across to some many kids that get sucked up into this madness though.

I felt that way for a while, then I found out those people didn’t care about me as much as I thought. I’ve been holding on to my anger at that to keep me going for a year now. I dunno what’ll happen once that burns out.

Ah, yeah I got my sense of smell knocked outta me when I was a kid. I’ve read about some kind of treatment to help people train their sense of smell. It came up a lot in some anosmic groups I was during the pandemic. I never looked too much into it because there’s no point, but it might be worth a trip to an ENT in your case.

I’m anosmic too and I had the same experience in college. I never had to deal with “fresh” milk ever being not so fresh though. Although after reading your post, I think I’ll get a pitcher for milk so i can pour out the bottle when I get it to double check for chunks. You could try that too, but I can’t say how well it works.

I don’t think I can taste if milk is sour, but I’ve developed a tolerance to food that’s gone a bit bad anyway.

The tag I played melee under was “frenchfrymaster” which was stupid. So I changed over to my in-game nickname “FRYD” which was supposed to be “fried”, but a few years later I found out it’s the norwegian and danish word for joy and I started using a bastardization of their pronunciation.

Good luck!

I probably shouldn’t tell you what your goals should be, that’s my bad. That said, you’ll eventually become less fearful on your path to fearlessness and it’ll be up to you to decide when it’s good enough.

If you’re afraid of therapy, I understand that. I don’t know you, but I was personally afraid of my inner thoughts causing people to reject me and I was also afraid that I may come to discover I’m worse than I thought. I’ll tell you how I came to see those things over time and maybe you feel something similar even if you can’t describe it and it may help. I unfortunately can’t do much more.

For the first fear (rejection) there’s two main things I clung on to: 1) There’s always someone worse than you out there and likely any therapist has already dealt with someone much worse than you or I. 2) Therapists are trained to deal with all kinds of people and manage whatever stress that may cause them. It’s why they cost so much money and that training is the difference between a therapist and a good listener. It’s also worth mentioning that they’re legally required to maintain confidentiality and unless you’re a danger to others, they’ll never spread anything you say.

For the second fear of realizing I was worse than I thought, that wasn’t really assuaged until I started. One thing most people come to realize as they become better at self reflection and self evaluation is that your imagination is almost always worse than the reality.

Whatever your particular fears are, it’ll take a measure of will power to overcome them no matter what. You should be proud then when you do go since you overcame your fear for your own betterment.