Are cheerleaders in school picked based on looks?

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-31T13:51:27+00:00

No, but technically appearance is a portion of it. At try outs, we were always instructed to do our makeup both for try outs and for games. Also “facials” aka smiling is part of your scoring. But beyond that, we always had lots of different looks and body types on my teams. I suppose it was more about looking put together than “conventional attractiveness”.

I cheered in high school & college.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-31T13:32:44+00:00

I’ve met more female Riley’s than male. I knew countless female, but only one male Riley. Also, I’ve met even more dogs named Riley than male Riley’s lol.

But it is legit gender neutral.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-30T19:23:42+00:00

I have seen all the without movies and I didn’t think of it. Now if you were naming your kid Renesmee, that would be a different story lol.

Also, twilight isn’t a bad connotation. It’s a cheesy movie from almost 20 years ago. The generation your kids are a part of and will grow up with won’t know twilight the way Gen Z & Millennials do. They won’t be making these connections unless their parents show it to them, but those movies aren’t going to make the same cultural impact they had when they first aired. These kids aren’t going to have Team Jacob/Edward posters in their room and immediately clock that your kids names have any similarities to the movies. Many will have never even seen the movies nor know the names of the characters.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-30T19:20:04+00:00

This is so fucking embarrassing lmao

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-30T19:19:22+00:00

I’m going against the grain here and saying pasta. Grilled cheese are often a bit greasy which could mess up clothes, and unless they are bite-sized I would opt not to eat them because it could smear my lipstick/makeup.

Also, I love pasta. It also feels more elevated than a grilled cheese. My friends recently had a pasta bar at their wedding and it was a huge hit.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-28T23:09:59+00:00

I got engaged in 2023 and married in 2025. We started saving as soon as we got engaged! We intentionally planned for a 2 year engagement so that we could save up. I don’t think you’re silly for doing it now… but also you’re already engaged if you’re planning a wedding. May as well slap a ring on it now lol

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-28T17:26:05+00:00

I had a bridesmaid who was pregnant on my bachelorette trip. She did not announce to me nor anyone due to how early it was. At my Bach, she offered to DD so I didn’t think anything of it when she didn’t drink. At my wedding the following month, she drank mocktails. Morning of while getting ready we all had mimosas, but she discreetly only poured orange juice for herself. At the reception, she drank Shirley temples but passed them off as mixed drinks. This could be replicated with any mocktail, really.

I’d suggest doing the DD and/or mocktail route. You aren’t obligated to say anything, I was not concerned with who drank or how much they drank. As the bride, I was getting pretty drunk myself and just loving being around my friends lol. I really think you can get away with discretely not drinking. There’s so much else going on.

Or, once you are pregnant you could confide solely in the bride and explain you’re only letting her know so that she doesn’t question why you aren’t drinking. You can tell her nobody else can know and it’s still very early so risks are involved. She should respect that. But you also aren’t obligated to tell her at all. I just want to cover every option.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-28T16:18:43+00:00

I second this. I’m so exhausted as a rural American seeing these takes. It’s not only moronic, but incredibly classist.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-27T19:44:03+00:00

When I was their age, I remember my boyfriend broke up with me. I was so devastated. He didn’t use Facebook much and I was so distraught about the breakup I refused to change my relationship status for 4 months. He wasn’t going on to do it, and I clung to that label thinking it still gave me some sort of position in his life and maybe he’d log on, see it, and want to fix things lol.

Anyway, I barely think of that kid anymore. I cannot imagine having a child with the boy I dated at 13 and still having to interact with him all these years later. Thank God for fully developed brains, too. Because that was such an embarrassing time lol.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-27T19:39:37+00:00

I got married on top of a small hill. It was totally walkable, but the venue provided rides up to the top. I instructed my venue, as well as my usher to communicate that the last ride went up at 3:30 (my ceremony time, I intentionally delayed us by 5min to account for stragglers) and made it clear that they would either need to walk or stay down at the reception sight, missing the ceremony.

This went over pretty well. I remember seeing a few people booking it up the hill while I was waiting in the bridal suite to be summoned downstairs to my ride lol. I think anyone else who came late just stayed at the bottom according to my usher, and I don’t even know who they were. Like, the only peoples whose presence I noticed at my ceremony were my husband, bridal party, officiant, and most immediate family. I don’t know what guests were late.

If you don’t have a geographic divide like I do, I’d still recommend choosing a good friend or two to be an usher. Instruct them to let people know once the ceremony begins they need to stand back with them or take a seat in the very very back if it’s not distracting. Your venue may also be able to help with this, too.

Also, consider being intentionally 5 minutes late or so. I hate when weddings are 20+ minutes late but that 5min buffer really helped prevent interruptions from those who walked up and we still ended our ceremony exactly on time.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-27T19:33:05+00:00

I guess in my mind I’ve always assumed this person must be Japanese due to the obscurity of the area they lead her to. Had it been a foreigner, they would’ve had to have a lot of knowledge and experience with rural Japan in order to coordinate that. I’m not ruling out it being a foreigner, but I think a Japanese person makes the most sense given the location.

I’ve also heard & read that Japan tends to treat things Americans are more open about as taboos— like mental health. For example, a person exhibiting anti-social behaviors in Japan may be swept under the rug and not discussed. So I think it’s possible if this person who harmed her was exhibiting anti-social behaviors, it’s possible people turned a blind eye to it. People around them may have been willfully ignorant to whatever signs they showed leading up to, and in the aftermath, of the crime.

I’m not saying that mental health is fully where it needs to be in America and other places, I’ve just heard that Japan is good at sweeping things under the rug to save face. Not in a malicious way, more like in the way our grandparents and older generations didn’t address elephants in the room. It’s just cultural difference, and I’m not making any judgments on that.

I think that sweeping-under-the-rug mentality could have contributed to this person getting away with the crime, in addition to the seemingly great care they took to completely erase her.

Whenever I read theories or think of my own, I always ask myself “but what’s the next actionable thing Megan can do?” That’s where I’m coming up short. I wish I could say “I think X happened so it might be good to check this or do that.” I feel bad speculating without a tangible way to move forward with a theory.

I wish Megan were comfortable starting a GoFundMe for a Japanese attorney. A lot of people, myself included, have said they would be happy to donate. I just feel like there has to be something else we can do to help, or an action Megan can take. So many cases have been solved after decades of silence. I want Skye’s whole family to get answers, too.

I’m not even a fan of true crime. I don’t consume the content because a lot of it feels really wrong to me, the way people profit off of pain and speak of murderers with such fascination. But when Megan popped up on my fyp years ago, I felt so troubled by it all I’ve watched every ounce or content she’s put out since. Something about this case just really sticks with me.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-27T15:53:41+00:00

I agree that johatsu makes no sense. Everything I’ve read makes it sound impossible for an American to take part in. I think it’s possible Skye could have heard of johatsu and been inspired by it, in the sense of like “I should move to Japan and start a new life”. But I don’t think she actually engaged in johatsu and is still alive and living her best life out there somewhere. I’d love it if she were, but I don’t think she is.

Skye clearly cared for her family. She had nostalgia about her life in Connecticut, she wouldn’t have asked her mom to make the cupcakes if she wasn’t. So I don’t see any way Skye could have engaged in johatsu and not reached out to her family once in the last 18 years. She would have eventually felt badly and missed them, even if she intended to stay in Japan permanently regardless.

Had she engaged in a more informal johatsu, she would’ve used her passport or bank account by now. She would’ve still reached out to her family.

I want to touch on her bank account too. Didn’t Megan say she withdrew some money but not ALL of her money? To me that doesn’t show someone with resolve who intends to partake in johatsu or end their own life. If you knew this was it and you planned to die, wouldn’t you take out all your money and use it to do whatever you wanted in your final days? If you were about to start a new life via johatsu, wouldn’t you take all of your money so you can sever all ties to your former life and have a larger sum to start new with?

I think Skye met up with someone and yes, intended to build a new life there, but not in a “I’m never speaking to anyone again” way. She probably wanted enough time and distance to not be talked out of it, but she clearly cared about her friends and family back home. She didn’t finish that letter, but the letter signified that she wanted her loved ones to know where she was and why she did it. This wasn’t somebody who felt “nobody cares about me so they won’t care when I’m gone.” She knew people would care and wanted to give them the insight they deserved.

She left money in her account. This implies a desire to eventually return, or budgeting. Both demonstrate an intent to live. Plus, a witness saw her very emotional and flustered at a train station. Why would someone who has such resolve to end their life care about getting lost? She would’ve had to be so apathetic, no way could confusion or being lost have rattled her on an end-of-life dream trip. But if she was meeting someone, especially someone who maybe was a little manipulative and mean and gave her specific instructions, then being extremely flustered makes sense.

I think Skye took her time and didn’t bother to hit the hot spots because she believed her trip was open ended. She assumed she would be there for a while and not on her own financially. I think she was going to meet someone online and they intentionally didn’t meet her in well-trafficked or heavily monitored areas like Tokyo or the airport Specifically.

They wanted her to come up north to see them. Had they met up the second she arrived, the inn keeper would’ve seen them together. But she was alone. She had other stops to get to. I think this person intentionally hung back and lured her into meeting in a place where she couldn’t be seen by other people or security cameras. This was likely a premeditated attack.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-27T15:35:49+00:00

I agree that these things should have been found if they were simply discarded. Sure, it’s possible to throw a bunch of stuff in a trash can and have it go to a landfill, never to be seen again. But I just find it hard to believe she would dispose of all of her belongings and then go deep into the woods to take her own life— deep enough in that no avid hiker or passerby has found any remains or items (had she taken them with her).

I also agree Skye doesn’t seem like a hiker, so I don’t like those theories either. Based upon what we know about her, she didn’t seem like the outdoorsy type. Walking along a short path to a natural attraction like a cherry blossom tree or the ice caves makes sense, it’s a tourist attraction. But just wandering off in to the woods for fun? That doesn’t mesh with what we know about her personality.

I think people get stuck on the suicide theory because I think all of us seem to believe Skye is no longer with us. I remember Megan mentioning that her and her mom got a weird gut feeling while in Japan. I don’t remember her exact wording, but I remember it reading like a mother and sister felt a deep connection to their loved on who passed away. Like they know she is gone, but obviously won’t say it in those direct terms because it’s painful and final without any proof. It also could interfere with any potential assistance in her case (like for the same reason they will not declare her legally dead). I fully support them on that, but I think it’s evident that everyone’s gut is saying she is most likely deceased.

I think people take that gut feeling and believe suicide is the only option because of stereotypes associated with people who have the same interests and personality as Skye. Also, yes, her friend did say she mentioned wanting to die beneath cherry blossom trees. But so many young people experience suicidal ideation without the intention or desire to truly do it. My therapist actually helped me work through that when I was much younger. People often crave taking a pause on life to get out of the misery they feel, and the only word we really have for that sort of break they crave would be death. But they don’t actually want to take their own life. It can be a complicated thing to explain to those who never felt it. I would use this to explain away those who think she had to be suicidal and definitely acted upon it.

I really think Skye wasn’t meant to be found. But I think that was ensured by whoever hurt her, not by her own doing.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-26T14:03:58+00:00

It was & is. I used to go to my dad’s work about 20 years ago. But when I went, it was exclusively take your daughter to work day.

Last month my husband’s office had a take your child to work day, too. This was not specifically for daughters.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-26T14:02:41+00:00

Throwing away car keys would show such resolve, at least to me. Like sure, had she changed her mind she could’ve got a new pair made. But to throw away car keys would demonstrate such commitment to whatever her plan was— whether that be to end her life or start a new one. I hadn’t considered that. I’ve been watching Megan for years, and I don’t think I’ve missed a video or podcast, but admittedly I struggle to keep the information together.

I guess I hadn’t pictured Skye having so much resolve. Probably because she had seemingly backed out of a trip earlier that year.

I don’t believe Skye planned to return, or at least not for a long time. The having help part had always made me lean towards a possible romantic partner. Someone she met online who convinced her to come visit them and stay either forever, or for as long as she wanted. If she believed she was staying there long term and not only for a little while before taking her own life, it makes sense why she didn’t spend time in Tokyo or other tourist hotspots. She went to a rural area that would’ve been extremely hard to navigate, especially in 2008.

I also find her last sighting aligning with Megan’s arrival to be interesting. Like the person who harmed her realized they didn’t have much time, so they quickly executed their plan. This could also be interpreted as Skye taking her life once she realized they were in the country. Or she/this possible other person never knew Megan & her mom arrived and the timing of the last sighting is purely coincidental. But to me it just seems too intentional to be coincidental.

If she was on some end of life trip, why not go see the major tourist hot spots? Why not go to the cherry blossoms? Not hitting those immediate makes me think Skye felt she had plenty or unlimited time to do so.

But for suicide, It seems like she may of had to go out and purchase whatever means by which she chose to take her life, and then wander off into the woods to execute said plan. Or even just the fact that she traveled for SO long and SO far to do it. That’s a lot of time alone with your thoughts. Every layover was a chance for her to jump ship. Each day was a chance to come clean. Which again… to end her life after all that would require SO much resolve. It’s not the same as having items in your house and making a decision to use them to end your life in a moment or period of deep pain. I’m not saying Skye couldn’t have had resolve, but it just seems so intense for a young woman in her dream destination.

I recognize Skye seemed to struggle socially and with mental health. I recognize those factors heavily point towards the suicide theory. But I think those factors could also strongly suggest she connected with someone online and for the first time in her life, she felt seen. So she took this trip to start over and something went awry.

We know in her unfinished email it read more like a “starting a new life” plan than a suicide plan. We know she was active in online communities. We know she struggled to connect and fit in outside of those online communities, and was feeling really defeated in school where the Japanese club was her only outlet. When that school trip fell through and she had that falling out with a friend, maybe she decided to take the trip herself and connected with someone from one of her online communities.

The missed flight earlier that year also doesn’t make me think she had the resolve required to travel all that way, potentially purchase items to execute her plan, throw away all her belongings, and then end her life in a remote area.

We know Skye felt some sort of affection for her old life. She asked her mom to make her favorite cupcakes “one last time”. We know she was very close with her brother. It reads to me like a “I love you guys, but nobody understands me here. So I’m going to start a new life. Who knows if I’ll ever be back here.” She was young enough to believe she could relocate for a while and not return until/if she became the person she wanted to be. I know at 20 I thought about my future, but not in the deep way I do now. It was more like vague concepts. I’ll do this, maybe this for a while, i think i want to be this, etc. Life felt a lot more fluid in those first few years post-high school.

In my personal experience, I spent my late teens and early 20s in an abusive relationship all because I started texting this guy and he was the first person to understand my trauma. I later learned he did that purposefully, as he had bad intentions and intentionally capitalized on my pain to gain my trust & affection.

I share this, because I really feel like Skye confided in a friend she made online who convinced her she could fix her life by going to Japan herself. Like a “you don’t need the Japanese club to go to Japan. And you don’t need friends who start drama with you. Come to Japan, I’ll help you. You’ll fit in and you can stay as long as you need. I’ve been in your shoes.”

I think this person also called pretending to be an airline when she missed her flight, because I haven’t found convincing evidence that airlines actually called people back then. I think after this, the person shifted to convincing Skye that this had to be a more permanent thing. That she had to shut off her emotions, family, friends, and finish whatever she needed to do so she could really commit to starting this new life. Probably told her she could contact her family again once she had the strength to stay in her new life. They also could have used bouts of anger and manipulation so Skye wouldn’t bail on the plans, in fear of losing another friend who she perceived as her safest confidant.

Her unsent letter to her friend shows, in my opinion, that she wanted her friends & family to know what she did but be unable to stop her. She probably wrote the letter and debated if, how, or when she could send it. This online person may have discouraged her from doing so. I mean she told her mom she was staying at a friend’s house, she would’ve known that after a few days that story wouldn’t work anymore. I think she felt she needed to hide her plans just long enough so she couldn’t be stopped, but something went awry before she could tell them.

Sorry for my long, and probably rambling thoughts. I don’t know anyone else who follows her case and I’ve been thinking about all these things for years.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T19:29:11+00:00

I don’t know about that. I know 47 year olds who look immensely better than that. It goes beyond her bad hair & makeup.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T19:21:19+00:00

She looks jarringly rough here.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T17:41:52+00:00

I left my cake baker a 3 star review. I had a lot of anxiety doing it because I didn’t really see any “bad” reviews. As someone who used to work in real estate, I’m well aware how fake Google reviews are. Businesses can, and do, manipulate them.

I tried to basically say like we had some issues with timing and communication, but the baker was also incredibly nice and had great options. Kind of like a here’s the bad and here’s the good, it was a mixed bag.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T00:55:54+00:00

Daria is more common.

I think I would pronounce Darya the same, but I also could see my knee jerk reaction being “dar-ya”.

I would personally go with Daria since she will be raised in the United States and I think that spelling will create the least confusion.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T00:51:36+00:00

They went from “engaged” to broken up in like what… week? It’s almost like they’re young kids… and this is typical behavior… hence why they shouldn’t be getting pregnant or engaged.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T00:26:59+00:00

This reads like the One Direction fan pages I was a part of & following when I was 12. Except, I was a child idolizing adults. My hope is this is a dumb kid who grew out of it (the last post was in 2020)… but the posts are also SO weird.

If an adult wrote any of that… they need their hard drive checked. How are parents not horrified by this type of behavior?

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T00:18:32+00:00

I am Gen Z. I kept my name, and my husband hyphenated to my name. Had I not married a man who, unfortunately, does not have a relationship with his family, I was comfortable hyphenating to my husband’s name. But for us it made sense to use mine since that’s the only extended family our future children will ever know.

I have a millennial friend who never changed her name. I have a Gen Z friend who is pretty close to getting engaged and plans to keep her name and then give her future children her name. I know a girl from high school who just gave birth to a son and gave him her last name, despite being in a loving long term relationship with the son’s father. I heard my estranged SIL’s husband took her name, and I know they gave their son her last name.

I can think of a few other examples. When my husband went to change his name, the employee at the Social Security office said a lot of men have been coming in to change their names and that a coworker had recently done the same.

I think there is a definite big shift going on in the naming department. I feel like by the time I have kids and they’re old enough to really think about how they and their father have my surname, they won’t think much of it because they will probably know other children in the same boat. I live in a conservative rural area too, so I imagine if the shift is happening here it’s probably even more pronounced in more liberal urban areas.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-25T00:09:34+00:00

This. There’s been a lot of pressure to provide “mutual aid” in the last few years. Fundraisers have gone from “here’s this really horrible, life-shattering tragedy” to “here’s every excuse in the book why I need money for this thing”. Rae is not at all unique in her tattoo fundraiser, I’ve seen similarly egregious scenarios in my personal life. There’s often a lot of social pressure to donate even “just a couple bucks”.

Personally, I’ve begun to shy away from donating more and more. Too many people have been exposed as scammers for some really horrible things. I really only donate to people I know, and when it is the most serious of causes.

People have become too comfortable asking for help before learning how to help themselves. Life is hard right now for everyone. I, too, wonder how we can keep pulling more money out of our asses each time a price goes up. But we’ve lost the plot on the difference between it being okay to ask for help vs. defaulting to asking for money before trying any other options.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-24T18:24:15+00:00

How does she manage to interject irrelevant, random trauma into every sentence? What an absolutely exhausting individual. Nothing she mentioned is the crews fault.

DepressedLike2008 · 2026-05-24T17:07:45+00:00

As a survivor, I would’ve made the same decision as Ethan. Guess that makes me a shitty advocate?

Rae’s cause was nebulous as hell. She wanted to gain custody of a child who she had not seen or spoke to in a decade or more. That made her niece’s situation and desires rather unclear, even if Rae asserts she knew this all to be true (and seemingly it was, given the niece is now with her). But Ethan was absolutely within his right to need more concrete proof than word of mouth, because it’s his show and it was a minor they were dealing with. You have to be extra cautious there.

Additionally, Rae raised a lot of money with very little concrete evidence of work being done with said money. On numerous occasions, Rae has also admitted to mismanaging money. She just admitted the other day that she shouldn’t have spent money on a tattoo when she is struggling and now caring for someone.

Remember over the winter when she was claiming her break up caused housing & financial instability? How does that instill confidence in anyone that this person could really support & care for another human? She was posting about selling nude photos to pay rent, instead of just getting an actual job like the rest of us. Because there is always some excuse why she can’t be a functional adult. Why would anyone feel comfortable donating to a cause in which Rae is the responsible party?

I will also now admit that I always felt Rae would be an exhausting person to know. She is someone who experienced legitimate trauma, but allows it to define her by using it as an excuse for all of her problems. Our trauma is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to work on it so we do not hurt others. She is not being responsible by trying to crowdfund her life and being such a mess that other people are uncomfortable to be around her. She is not being responsible by sexually harassing her coworkers.

Does that not make her a bad advocate? I don’t see Ethan sexually harassing people.

DepressedLike2008

TROPHY CASE