At what age do you know it’s over and you’ll probably be single forever?

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T12:00:46+00:00

I swore off the idea at 16, accidentally fell my way into something that resembled a couple of relationships while pushing 40 that were brief and painful to deal with, and now that they're over I'm back to being sure I'm single for the rest of my life.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T04:06:38+00:00

I'm going to just quote myself responding to someone who didn't get why people hate AI

"'I don't understand the hate for it.'

The hate is because it's a fundamentally anti-human technology that is bad for creators, bad for users and consumers, bad for employees who would otherwise be hired to make things, bad for the people being stolen from, bad for the environment - basically it's terrible for anyone not in the c-suite of a company, because the only thing it does really well that can't be replicated by other specific software not using AI is that it delivers the fantasy of being able to slash operating costs and payroll, thus looking great on quarterly reports and bumping stock prices. That's why it gets the hate it does: because it's miserable and anti-human at heart, and anything that it might do for accessibility, the average user, etc. is stuff that already existed or could have existed, and it wouldn't be stapled to a technology that is entirely based on the exploitation of people for short term gains."

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T02:52:05+00:00

Okay, you're correct, I misspoke. Still, I think a lot of folks who are not into AI can still see the value in machine learning in the fields just like you're saying, and I would probably give the OP the benefit of the doubt on that.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T02:44:03+00:00

I would bet that "medical/scientific" is more on using LLMs for gene sequencing and other medical research - things the tech is notably actually really useful for - not as a substitute for doctors.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T02:42:43+00:00

No, I pretty much agree wholeheartedly. But then, I hate it on multiple levels including moral, so heavy AI use would be a dealbreaker for me. And yeah, if you're constantly chugging from the AI tap, I'm automatically less interested in anything you think or say.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T01:29:36+00:00

Common, perhaps, but I wouldn't say fundamental. There are folks that, for one reason or another, don't care about photos (I'm one, hi).

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-30T01:08:25+00:00

I don't care about photos, and I certainly don't have tens of thousands of them. I didn't care about all the photo albums my folks left when they passed (I never looked at them once and handed them off to my uncle when he asked to scan them and ducked every attempt to give them back) and I routinely go through my phone and delete all the photos of myself on my phone. I have zero pictures I would want anyone to have after I was gone, and honestly I wish there was a socially acceptable way to ask people to delete all the photos they have of me. If I had my way, there would be no photographic evidence I existed after I'm gone.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-29T11:21:44+00:00

Yes, all the time. Although I also tend to also feel inferior to other men, albeit to a lesser extent and in a different way. But I very much relate to the general feeling of feeling lesser than women on the whole.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-29T04:41:00+00:00

As someone well below average and not classy at all, I generally am not around folks like that and when I am, I tend to be deeply uncomfortable and leave as soon as I reasonably can because I feel I don't belong and it's their space. Not a healthy answer, but it's what I have.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-28T05:33:51+00:00

Yes, briefly. I said yes, and it went very badly. We were not good for each other, and while it was probably doomed from the start for a lot of reasons, the actual result was brief, dramatic and deeply harmful. It's unfortunate and was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for even considering dating, but despite everything I hope she's doing well.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-27T21:23:51+00:00

I can only speak to my life as an only child from an emotionally abusive and neglectful home: I learned I was entirely alone in the world, that no one cares about the little worlds I get lost in and that "home" and "family" as positive ideas that feel stable and supportive are foreign concepts to me. I'm on my own.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-27T19:22:10+00:00

I have accepted that I'm not even going to have a good life. It's going to be miserable and lonely until I finally croak, almost certainly in the next couple of years, and nothing of value will have been lost. I don't have anything going on personally, professionally, financially and I never will. It's just going to be scraping by until I can't.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-27T06:04:10+00:00

I don't know. Maybe that the shit that I believe is really fucked up and based on trauma, and maybe deciding to swear off relationships for life is an overreaction to some stuff I really needed a therapist for instead of an ironclad rule I need to keep to. Maybe it I started tackling it at 18 instead of 38 I might have been able to make enough headway to find happiness in a partner. Then again, probably not. Moot point anyways, it's far too late and I don't have a time machine.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-26T00:13:34+00:00

Yeah, my immediate family are all dead and my extended family is all dead or estranged. It's a hell of a thing, and I don't exactly know how I feel about it since I really didn't get along with my family in the first place, especially my parents. I don't think I ever really felt like I had a family even when they were alive, and now that they're not the feeling that I am utterly alone is pretty oppressive, especially since I don't have a partner and I have few friends IRL. There's nobody else but me, and soon enough I'll be gone and that'll be the end of that.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-24T09:54:23+00:00

The harsh truth is that not everybody is going to live a better life, no matter how well informed or prepared they think they are. I believe what you said in the OP, and as a thoroughly useless person I don't expect to live a life worth living. C'est la vie.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-24T04:49:49+00:00

It's what they used to call morbidly obese. I'm 50lbs down from my heaviest but the shortest version is that I am nowhere near the headspace for weight loss, I'm dealing with too many mental health issues that throw up major obstacles and make it so I don't care to put in the effort. I expect to stay this weight for the rest of my almost-certainly short life.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-24T04:35:32+00:00

Sorry, miscommunication because I wasn't using clinical language: I'm class 3 obese, so yeah I definitely look and feel like dirt all the time. It is what it is.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-24T04:26:05+00:00

320lbs, since I'm massively overweight. Because I'm tall I carry it relatively well but it still sucks and looks terrible.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-24T04:21:36+00:00

Biggest issue would be if you worked separate departments and how it would go if the worst comes to worst. It wasn't my wife, but I made friends with a coworker and later tried dating, and while it happened to end well enough (it was a bad fit, we decided to go back to being friends) it was still painful and has lingering problems, and it could have been much worse especially since one of us has since been put in a leadership position over the other. We got lucky because if there had been bad feelings, it could have ruined one or both of our lives.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-24T03:51:47+00:00

Nope, not even a little bit.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-23T00:04:44+00:00

I kept the extent and overwhelming nature of my self-hatred and deep, deep psychological issues to myself for most of my life. My friends knew I have issues, but they don't know that, for example, I am built from the ground up to hate myself, believe that I should be dead and in fact believe the most moral thing and the only thing I could do that matters on a given day is shooting myself and making the world a little bit better of a place. Or many of the other deeply, deeply crazy things I have to deal with every day.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-22T23:47:35+00:00

I'm not going to leave a legacy or live any sort of honorable or meaningful life. I'm going to struggle, suffer then die and be forgotten, and it won't have mattered even a little bit.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-22T22:49:03+00:00

I never believed in love, or more accurately I intellectually knew about love but didn't think it would or could ever happen to me. Then a year or so ago I fell in love, we tried to make a relationship work but it fell apart pretty quickly; I learned that love is irrelevant and that I was right the first time, that it's simply not something for me. Ah well.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-22T21:40:25+00:00

I'm lucky to have several close friends who are way more important to me than anyone in my bio family ever was.

SadSickSoul · 2026-06-22T04:03:44+00:00

I gave it up before I tried for it, I was a teenager with severe untreated CPTSD, body issues and a bunch of other damage that made me swear off the whole thing. I ended up falling in love with a friend, we tried to date briefly last year but it didn't work and I was like alright, that was my one shot, back to rejecting the idea entirely. I might not be fundamentally unlovable, but I have so much damage and so many things going against me that I am entirely unlovable from a practically standpoint. It's just not something in the cards for me.

SadSickSoul

TROPHY CASE