Ask Lemmy

I dunno if I even wanted to go into that subject.

I'm somewhere between women (at least in England) having incredibly stuck-up attitudes and dating apps being enshittified to the point where they're more like scams.

I legit get no matches apart from Coffee Meets Bagel and OkCupid.

99% of the profiles curated to me for matching on CMB are East or South East Asian women, and this isn't me not wanting to date Asian women. IDGAF about ethnicity when it comes to partners. I mean I'd rather not be used as the means to a spousal visa by someone who isn't even in the same continent. I met a previous ex on there, and she just wanted to use me for help learning English.

OkCupid is even worse. I get a lot of matches but it's all GPS spoofing SE-Asian and African women. Some are legit, many try to lull me into a crypto scam or ask me to Venmo them money for a passport application.

Part of the reason I got into my current hobby (singing, karaoke) was to meet people outside of apps. Apart from someone making out with me once, it's only otherwise led to gay men hitting on me.

I think about the good things that people do and are capable of doing, yet despite this the world seems like an irredeemable shithole and that we are living under a kakistocracy. I'm not saying any particular nation, but the overall trend across the world.

To use a simple example: there isn't even one single nation that has banned factory farming. My comment isn't specifically about animal ag, just that this was something that readily came to mind.

We (as a species) could do so much good, yet we are squandering it for the sake of greed, religion, hatred, spitefulness, or whatever else is driving people to be shitty.

After years of writing many dozens of job applications, and many grueling interviews, some of them in other countries, at long last I've scored my dream job, in my dream city.
Several months into this, my partner at the time fell seriously ill, and I had to go job-hunting and eventually uproot again, just to take care of her. All dreams of moving in together, into one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and live there until death do us part were gone.
Not to mention that I went from having the greatest boss you could ever imagine to the worst I've ever had, by far.
And it was all for nothing, as a year later, after she had recovered, the relationship fell apart anyway.

How unattractive the world has been making me feel. Haven't matched with anyone legit on a dating app for nearly a year. And I feel like whenever I open up about it (especially on Reddit) I get so much hostility and vitriol.

That I have to grieve a living mother. That I will never know how it feels like to have the warm embrace of a caring mom no matter how much I yearn for it. It has been sad but so liberating at the same time.

It's more personal rather than the many problems of the world, but my dad didn't pass on the inheritance my grandparents promised me, around $100k. This was about five years ago. Housing has gone up so much during that time that it's no longer enough to at least get me into a mortgage. FWIW, My grandparents bought his property and paid for the house to be built on it.

I completelly just missed out on an era, seggregated to my room. Like, I didn't get to hop on the Nintendo era craze and experience it while it was relevant, parties, everything wasted. Now literally everything that was familiar is dead or corrupted.

Today's generations will never get to experience the things that I did: No calm days watching cartoons under your blanket, playing outside, fun toys, everything is enshitified, no hope for the future, institutions actively hate them and want them dead.

I guess I'm in the same place as 10 years ago, but with a job. Need to prep people for the worst.

Honestly, my cats. One of them has an enlarged heart and I worry she’s on her last legs. Shes 18. So shes no spring chicken. I just worry she’s going to die soon :(

She and her bro are my life. I have no friends and no family. I just sit at home all day. Do my cats are vey special to me. They are my reason for living. I’m sure my younger cat would find a new home, but my old lass would die at the shelter if I died :/

Balding

I live in an area completely overtaken by data center construction. The environmental devastation all around me is deeply saddening. Add to that the main purpose is to put people out of work and to make it so people don't have to think for themselves and it really feels like doomsday or something out of a Stanislaw Lem novel.

I guess the people close to me know that losing my cat in January was a way bigger deal for me than I've talked about.

Just writing this, thinking about how I miss him, I can feel the emotion building up. 🥴

I don't think there's any possibility of a good future. I'm an engineer and have worked in some high fields on some crazy stuff. I've watched millions of dollars just disappear in an instant, many times over. All completely unnecessary. This was hardware a decade ago. Now there's 10x that going into software. Homelessness, hunger, poverty, across the globe, could have been eliminated a long time ago.

My cousin's been missing for a few years. Does not want to be found. Had mild paranoia as a kid, turned to an artistic career, used cannabis excessively to manage symptoms and workload, and it just excarbated her paranoia. Went off the deep-end, did not attend her dad's funeral. Reached out to her several times, no contact. We grew up as twins almost.

All the fucking animals are dying and we just keep making everything worse to make a handful of people obscenely wealthy.

A college I teach for part time posted a full time gig in the department.

I fit every requirement perfectly and then some. I’ve been given a perfect rating on every evaluation I’ve ever had here from both admin and students. My classes tend to fill first because I’m known to be a better teacher than most.

My application was ignored. The job went to someone with an MA in our field (I have a PhD) who has been managing the student success center for the college. She took a pay cut for the role because she wants to go back to teaching.

My area has so many endemic and/or threatened invertebrates, and who knows how many have gone extinct. But no one cares. The land is clear cut and treated like shit while streams are dumping grounds. I wonder how much longer until it is all sterile.

I have an awesome job at a telescope. I love it. It's an industrial jobs and I get to work in a range of things from moving giant machinery with overheads cranes to repairing fiber on light collecting instruments. Last year a telescope operator quit and they created a temporary assignment because it would be too expensive for me to fill in at my hourly rate (though it's already in my job duties), effectively to move me to salary. Management and university HR determined a salary and implemented it effective immediately without any good faith offer. By the time I realized how bad the salary was and complained about it, I lost 214 hours of overtime and $7500 dollars. I continued working the telescope operator position as hourly for the next few months until they assigned someone else (who doesn't have the job duties). Their explanation? "We though you agreed" and "you worked an exempt job". Terrible explanations for how this was legal. I've been borderline tolerating it but this week I left the telescope balling with tears in my eyes and crying because I can't tolerate it anymore and likely won't return to work because they have destroyed all my trust in management and the university. Such a small amount of money for them but a huge amount for me.

I don't sincerely believe that life can ever be good again.

I have two adult children who I haven’t spoken to for almost eight years and, last I heard, want nothing to do with me.

The situation is complex, and I’m not completely innocent. From their perspective I’m a dogshit person and they’re better off without me in their lives. There are aspects of the situation they don’t know about, specifically the domestic abuse that I suffered at the hands of their mother, which she was very careful not to do in their presence. So all they know is how they saw me behaving, which was often pretty terrible, and whatever she’s told them, which I know isn’t the whole truth. It’s maddening how completely unfair the situation is but I’m hard pressed to think of a way to better it.

I check in on their social media every now and then. They seem happy. I don’t attempt to message them. I just go about my day with this quiet sadness in the background.

I had a falling out with all my friends in June 2024. Since then I have only seen my wife and family, and the loneliness is pretty hard at times.

I also recently had an MRI and learned that the tumour in my chest is now necrotic and growing, which I am not particularly excited about. In my imagination, I'm either going to die or lose the use of my left hand.