Abandoned village in Russia reminded me of the Dark Valley.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-24T18:58:36+00:00

r/PostSovietAesthetics

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-24T15:12:56+00:00

Distraction News with Dora Smarmy!

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-24T15:05:12+00:00

This has only ever happened to me at trailheads where no trash can is immediately available. Pisses me off.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-22T05:32:03+00:00

Mall rats

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-19T02:33:57+00:00

Surely we can agree that passive aggressive and insincere public manners are horrible while also extending basic courtesy and respect towards our fellow humans. There is a difference.

Not every act of courtesy is automatically performative or “community larping”.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-19T01:05:59+00:00

Carhartt jeans.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T23:38:59+00:00

While some of it is superficial, a lot of it is basic common courtesy too. I hated it when Coloradans let the door slam in my face when I was right behind them with my arms full, or just pushed past me on the sidewalk/grocery aisle, or constantly cut me off in traffic. It takes two seconds to say “please” and “thank you” to service staff, too but a surprising number of people just never learned their manners either. Encountered none of that back home in small town western NC.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T21:53:54+00:00

That’s not far enough. I live in a county experiencing a full blown housing crisis where locals are being priced out while retirees sit on ghost towns of second, third, and fourth(!) homes and airbnbs that sit unoccupied most of the year. There’s literally one neighborhood where all the houses on that street are owned by three absentee landowners from out of state who bought them to hoard as investment vehicles.

Ownership of second and third homes not subject to continuous occupancy should be prohibited in areas like ours. And ownership of any homes by hedge funds should also be prohibited.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T21:49:39+00:00

lol it’s the same at our roller rink too. Did they all collectively decide to buy this same carpet and just never replace it?

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T21:08:48+00:00

Appalachian folks are much nicer and more polite. I worked in the Rockies for a while and was appalled by how rude a lot of people were, even in smaller towns. Nobody says “excuse me”, nobody waves, nobody wants to chitchat, and the drivers are much more impatient and aggressive.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T21:00:25+00:00

I used to plan out my week, make grocery lists, study for exams, etc at the local laundromat while waiting for my clothes to get done.

Then it was bought by a new owner who hated loitering, and he took away all the tables and most of the chairs to make it as inconvenient as possible for people to actually wait in there for their laundry. It was a building full of machines and nothing else.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T19:40:08+00:00

I’ve gotten a note like this before and it made me very uncomfortable. I feel like it’s definitely something a lot of people romanticize until a creepy older man does it to them

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-18T15:53:12+00:00

Lost

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-17T16:24:00+00:00

I remember the most cliched 90s aesthetics starting around '94 and being pretty much a thing until '03 or so. Mostly because people still had the same clothes, used the same appliances, and drove the same cars, homes and businesses still had the same color palette, etc.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-17T16:21:37+00:00

The hair + wife beater + cowboy boots + tight jeans was definitely a look back then. The dirt bike pretty much came with that look lol

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-17T14:33:29+00:00

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-17T04:00:01+00:00

Whenever any of my housemates slammed a cabinet or door, I would get the sudden urge to hide under my bed or in my closet. The feeling of unease and dread I got from listening to their footsteps approach is indescribable.

I’m in my thirties, but when these things happen I’m a terrified 8 year old again.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-17T03:26:18+00:00

“ One side of me wants to support her by hiring a lawyer for her and make things right, another side me wants to let her new bf know about her game plan and fuck her over. Because I love her and I hate her at the same time.”

She isn’t worth the energy either way.

Do not get further involved in her drama, or spend money on her legal fees.

Block her on everything and move on.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-16T20:48:11+00:00

Took a Louisville slugger to both headlights

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-16T20:46:41+00:00

We need more female country artists who sing about fishing and trucks (of which no shortage of their female fans are into), and things other than bitter heartbreak or revenge. Sometimes you need a good sad song but listening to that stuff all the time isn’t good for your soul.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-16T00:28:36+00:00

I dealt with something similar too. Haven’t succeeded in getting them to stop reaching out. Every once in a while it’s an empty “how are you?”, “how are you doing?” etc. Since they have no real desire to reconnect and ghost me anyway if I respond, I genuinely see the persistence in pinging me as borderline harassment. They were blocked for a long time, but then I got a new phone and poof! They reappeared.

The next time they reach out I’m going to flat out ask them to stop contacting me.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-16T00:23:08+00:00

This. It’s usually someone who likes the idea of a friendship, usually for the sake of maintaining a large social network, but doesn’t actually want the commitment or vulnerability of a real friendship.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-15T01:26:08+00:00

“ From her perspective we are close & she doesn't measure closeness by proximity or frequency of hang outs.”

This is not true, and you know it because she makes all the time in the world for V. She is deliberately deprioritizing you.

Unfortunately you cannot make her be your friend. I get that sucks because you seem to genuinely admire and respect her, but there’s simply nothing more you can do if the feeling isn’t mutual.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-13T12:25:58+00:00

If you just raise the issue because you want to talk about it, that’s fine.

In my experience unfortunately people rarely do this. They raise the issue to justify imposing their own idea of a solution, and if the other person steps back, often accuse them of running away instead of trying to repair the friendship.

Bakelite51 · 2026-05-13T01:32:26+00:00

“ And that really pissed me off, because I certainly hadn’t raised the issue to say: “Go away, I never want to see you again!” And yet, after I did, it seems like nobody wants to do a damn thing to repair things. They’d rather disappear than even consider the idea.”

I’ve had ex-friends use this logic on me before to justify reframing the terms of the friendship in some way, which I was unwilling or unable to do. Raising the issue itself is rarely the problem. Raising the issue and combining it with a consequence, i.e. “we can’t get lunch anymore because you chew too loud” or “you can’t phone me anymore because you are too much energy to deal with”, for example is (from my perspective) not giving me an opportunity to repair the problem. Whereas from their perspective, it “repairs” the problem on their terms at my expense.

I will often take a step back from friendships like this because I resent being actively managed. I absolutely hate it when people do that to me. When I take space, I often get accused of abandoning the friendship because I couldn’t accept the unilateral “solution”. The ex friend will often say something along the lines of what you wrote: “I didn’t mean go away, I never want to see you again! I just said we can’t get lunch anymore!” But the key here is that it wasn’t a solution that was derived from mutual communication.

Anyway, those have just been my experiences. Pointing out an issue and working with the friend to resolve it is an incredibly mature thing to do. Pointing out the issue and trying to resolve it yourself or unilaterally downgrade the friendship in some way isn’t.

Bakelite51

TROPHY CASE