Is this your hobby? Thinking about why Taylor Swift is bad?

That might be biased because your own age puts you into groups of interest to others your own age. I tried to be encompassing with “middle age” because, well, that probably includes me, a 30-something teenager. But that being said, I have felt there’s been a slow swing to at least be inclusive of 18-25 year olds. But I also have confirmation bias there because I can’t hang with the kids’ slang anymore, so it stands out when I see it.

Digression: I’d like to do a study on “what’s the funniest number” because it’s both age and time dependent. 69 has been funny for a long time, but for boomers and older, was there any other funny number? Gen x and some millennial would likely say 42 (Hitchikers guide to the galaxy). Other millennial might hark back to SpongeBob with 24/25. But what has obviously gotten me curious is 6-7. Of course, my assumptions stem only from my own observations and I could be missing large entries.

It’s a platform catering towards techy middle aged men that can’t relate to her story at all. Of course, there’s always the bullshit about “of course I can’t relate to being a greedy billionaire” but it’s every single aspect, namely, never having been a teenage girl.

These guys will then go on to act like the teen girl story is a gimmick and that she should do something more mature, then scroll and geek out over painting some 40K figurines. Spoiler alert, we never stopped being kids, we just got wrinkly and gray.

I don’t get Swift. 300,000,000 women do. Clearly, she’s striking a chord somewhere significant.

This is what they wanted. They wanted Trump to run the government like a business. They somehow think businesses do well after Trump pulls his cash. They somehow think the government should be run for profit as if the government will pay them. They somehow think the grift was anything other than firing half the staff to cut costs and then fleeing the company a year later right before the listing ship keels over from the weight of mismanagement. They somehow think they’ll be C-level once Trump empowers them.

They somehow think they won’t be the fat trimmed for efficiency.

He still has a sizeable tech bro/temporarily embarrassed millionaire following filled with politically-apathetic/“right leaning for the tax breaks” people. But I can’t imagine they’re opinionated enough to take his opinion as a call to cancel their own convenient Netflix subscription so your point still stands

In sea and air, sure. Not as street racers. Not since radios became standard issue for police and even less with much better tracking. Drugs are much more likely to be in a van or gray camry doing the speed limit than a loud exhaust, underglowing, speeding charger.

Have you seen the average car on the road? There’s plenty of people driving cars in such disrepair they’re just as dangerous as street “racers” that won’t pass tech. I might prefer a speeder with an old drip over a dipshit that ignored the grinding noise and wore brake pads down to the backing plates

Weirdly puritanical view. Drug dealers aren’t running like moonshiners.

There is nothing cheap about track days unless you mean drag racing. And even still, you know most people’s cars won’t pass tech inspection.

There’s so little actual street racing that I’m not convinced OP is actually asking about racing. Speeding, weaving, running lights, playing in traffic, stunting motorcycles, sliding cars, donuts, burnouts, takeovers, launches, pulls, hits, runs, and digs can all be variably reckless events that the gen pop will call “racing”. Donuts/burnouts have plenty of crash videos where they damage property. Mustangs eat crowds, chargers smack stopped cars, infinitis hit other takeover kids.

Squids have always been gearless riders to me and my circle, not the name for reckless riders

Check out the lyrics to “Home” by Corey Taylor, singer of Slipknot (I’m not a fan of the song itself). It’s a romantic-love song, but I think you could find a friend-love meaning in there because it’s about being partners.

Slipknot makes music for us. They reach out to the loners, the outcasts, those abandoned, those forgotten. I have friends double your age into Slipknot. The lyricism has some extreme imagery and obviously their concert presence is scary, but, at the heart of it, it’s painting a picture of sad feelings, screaming out into the void as if it’s anger. He’s hurt and doesn’t want to hurt others the same way. Yes, the music attracts some aggressive people (not getting into THEIR psych right now), but by and large, the fans are people who felt lonely in their teenage years. Look at the lyrics to Slipknot’s “Danger keep away”. He says “we, too, feel alone”. We! There’s something beautiful to be discovered when 10,000 “loners” step into their concert. Maybe you’re not so alone. Maybe you could reach out better to others. Maybe other people have a totally different inside personality but they’re afraid to show it. They’re struggling inside the same way you are. They want to be accepted. Unfortunately, it’s easier to find common disinterest than interests, so it’s so damn easy to earn social points by joking about the weird interests.

I made my judgements in school of other people. They judged me. I drifted away because of that, even from the ones I wanted to call “friend”. Over a decade later, I somewhat reconnected with some. Even my ex. Nothing deep, just casual, but comfortable. You don’t know it yet, but you’re not done growing up. You’ll hopefully realize that for all the times you acted immature, your acquaintances did too. They were also young. I’m not saying their personalities will flip or they’ll become your best friend, but most will hopefully look back and laugh a little. I had a roommate fight about sponge etiquette.

Or maybe you’ll never see them again. That’s fine, shit happens. People move. People get all different jobs. People make new families. If you find yourself dwelling on something you feel you messed up by being awkward or if you’re still angry someone else judged you as uninteresting, try to learn from it. How would you have presented yourself today to improve yourself? Or how would you have presented your interests in a way that’s more amicable to someone entirely unfamiliar? I don’t dive right into talking about nebula composition and orbital mechanics, I pull up some astro pictures I’ve made. I gauge it from there. Would they rather hear more about the camera, the travel, the stars, or are they not interested at all? Switch to cars? Motorcycles? The sci-fi book I’m in? Slipknot? The weather? Nothing? Just because there was no common ground found today doesn’t mean there won’t be in the future.

There’s a cool side effect with never seeing a former social group again: starting entirely fresh in the next one. They don’t know you were weird last time, so there’s no reason to assume they think you’re weird. You don’t have to be interesting all the time, but work on giving a comfortable vibe. Don’t gatekeeper your taste but don’t dive into a whole thesis either.

I won’t agree with the other comment about ditching the degree, but absolutely work on social skills while you’re there. This is a good time to shape them. Join clubs or events. You have a good amount of time and you’ll be in a group of people with an amazingly similar demographics. You’ll come across jerks, you’ll be overly weird. Work on it. You might never see them again or they might never think about that interaction again. So don’t worry about it and don’t beat yourself up.

And then watch Corey Taylor sing the SpongeBob theme song because why the hell not?

But anyway, really, this will work out. It’ll take time. If you’re comfortable with yourself, people will get comfortable with you. You don’t have to be the center of attention, but you’re saying you wish you had some attention. Use that logical communication brain of yours to figure out where you are, where you want to be, and what to do to merge those two identities.

My 2 cents is get a laptop (or desktop) soon. For educational and technical purposes, I believe it’s way more valuable than is perceived. Around 24, my laptop was so slow I never used it. I relied on my android phone as well, believing it to be the same. It wasn’t. The simplified UI, inaccuracy of small touch screens, and small screen drastically reduced the depth of my device usage. I became a Facebook/reddit blob. I can understand the argument that someone 22 today is likely less adapted to the pc UI, equalizing their depth of usage, but I do not accept the inverse, suggesting my older age makes me significantly worse at using a phone. Even just having a full page worth of information at once, providing context for the entire form, is something lost due to readability on phones by zooming in. Spatial relationship is better retained with a large view than sliding around on a phone. Spatial relations improve memory retention as well.

I’m scatter brained on this explanation because I’ve never written it down before. I just feel for you because your situation isn’t far off from where I was at that time.

I’m finally back into creating art. Even though I’m in a highly technical field, I can’t turn off the creativity. I got back into doodling, back into imagining creations, back into viewing art. There’s no way I could make a career out of it though and I probably wouldn’t want to. I’d hate it soon. But, while I do believe I have a good job now, I’m only here to get paid. But at least now I’m at a point where I can find the emotional energy to be freeform in my own time. Money has leveled out, housing has stabilized, and probably most importantly, I got “more” of a social circle simply by removing all the asterisks I was tacking onto each relationship. Work buddy? Friend. Childhood friend? Friend. Hobby friend? Friend. Friend of a friend? Friend. Limited shared activity friend? Friend. Online-only hobby friend? Well, turns out, I traveled that way and they welcomed me into their home. What do you know, friend.

Fuck. Where am I even going? Other people are giving you technical advice but I read your post as someone stuck in their feelings rather than in their logic. I don’t know.

Alright, that’s on me for not clicking and reading. Thanks for the direct info though

I read an article on this like 2 months ago and still don’t understand what purpose the tooth has in this situation.

“When I can’t immediately tell a child’s gender, all I can think about is their genitals” - inner thoughts coming outside

Now we need their birthday and the founding day. We can’t let this approximation slip

Have you been in a desert at night? It gets cold, fast. Have you ever dug a few inches down into sand and touched it? It’s much colder than the blazing surface in the summer. Deserts to not typically have dirt, they have sand. Black panels shading a typically black roof will of course decouple the heating from the building. Black panels shading a very pale, very reflective, very insulative ground material is going to absorb and retain more heat

https://www.droid-life.com/2025/04/30/android-16-teases-secret-ui-update-that-should-bring-fresh-beauty-tons-of-blur/

Pixel, specifically. My 7 is what just updated. Blur through drawers. At this point, I can’t remember if my app icons were already circles, but now I’m looking at them now again and still hate them. Sliders now have detached bar indicators. Cartoonish status icons. It’s another step into iPhone styling to, I guess, tackle a market demo that thinks the phone market is Samsung vs iphone.

Are you sure it’s not getting better? This morning, my Pixel updated to take away all my corners again. It’s been what, 4 years since they last made everything rounded and bubbly? My wifi bar and cellular bar are now different stacks of noodles. Improvements nobody knew they needed.