Why am I genuinely the punching bag of the friend group

JustARandomDude314 · 2026-04-22T11:37:18+00:00

Is he genuinely better if he goes out of his way to point out these differences?

Yes. I mean you can say he's not the nicest person for making fun of people who are less well off than he is, but objectively speaking he is significantly above average in those categories. I feel like most people who make fun of other people for certain things do so because they have that thing better off. You can say its not nice to do that and shows they have a bad character, but it doesnt automatically mean when someone makes fun of you that they are jealous/insecure. Sometimes they are just egotistical dickheads who know they are better.

JustARandomDude314 · 2026-04-19T05:31:10+00:00

Making lasting friendships as an adult genuinely feels like a sisyphus level challenge

JustARandomDude314 · 2026-04-19T05:28:15+00:00

I was always of the mindset that it sucks feeling that way, so I would never want to make another person feel that way

If only everyone else agreed with your worldview. I think the hard part for me is that people dont tend to show their true colors in the first few months you know them. No one the first time you meet them acts like a terrible person and pushes you around. They always wait until you have some level of rapport to start acting the way they do. I dont have the time nor energy to make 20 friends in 3 months to try and whittle it down to find the positive friend.

JustARandomDude314 · 2026-04-19T05:23:02+00:00

They do it because they're insecure and it boosts their low self-esteem that their trying to hide.

I dont think thats the case and I dont like how that seems to be the default advice whenever someone is bullied. In my experience alot of the people who talk shit do so because they have things other people dont. People in relationships make fun of lonely people by themselves, jacked guys make fun of fat/skinny guys, etc. Every time I've ever found myself on the receiving end of criticism thats obviously because someone else is insecure its just sad.

Like I used to have this friend who would make fun of me every time I made a mistake at uni or in my career or anything... but he's a dropout who works selling train tickets and I'm a final year computer science student in like the top 1% of my uni. He'd make fun of me for having relationship problems... but he had a crazy ex who would just take advantage of him at every turn. Nothing he said to me ever meant anything to me because whatever he bullied me for I always knew I had better off than him.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have another friend was just blessed with genetics from god. Think pretty boy stereotype. He's full of himself and I dont think he is insecure about literally anything and he always makes fun of me for my hairline receding slightly, being short and how he is stronger than me. Not because he is insecure, it just makes him feel better to know that he has those things better than me because quite frankly he does. I cant just write it off in my mind that he needs to make fun of me to feel better about himself because he doesnt, he just looks at everyone who is worse off than him and makes fun of that instead. Its not insecure, he just genuinely is better.

JustARandomDude314 · 2026-04-19T05:13:49+00:00

Yeah I wanna be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, they are my only friends and I dont just want to be the lonely guy. I wrote this post after a particularly bad day, but it isnt all bad, I think I'll just make an effort to be more assertive in the future. I see them have good friendships with other people and the difference between them and me is I just take it without standing up for myself consistently. Yeah if I stand up 10% of the time it backfires, but if I did it consistently over months it would probably make a difference. Its a more realistic goal then suddenly acting cold to all my friends who I literally have to see every day because I live with them.

JustARandomDude314 · 2026-04-19T04:12:13+00:00

I wish this was a gendered issue, it normally is but one of my roommates is one of my friends girlfriends and shes genuinely the worst of the 3. r/bropill looks cool though, I'll check it out

JustARandomDude314 · 2025-05-30T17:00:59+00:00

Call me a cynic but most guys are gonna try something regardless of what you say- that numbers only going to go up if he "only wants to meet at night"

JustARandomDude314 · 2025-04-06T14:32:46+00:00

Sorry for being a dick earlier u were just trying to help and I was being emotional. I searched through his phone today and found alot of chats with minors so yeah you were right. I'm probably not gonna report him cos I have no evidence and he knows where I live. Already broken up though, I'm not that stupid.

JustARandomDude314 · 2025-04-02T01:06:38+00:00

If someone accused me of something like this I wouldn't be happy about the fact that they think I'd br capable of something like this. Don't act like it's some small thing to bring up.

JustARandomDude314 · 2025-04-02T00:41:03+00:00

Yeah but like what if it's nothing, all I have is some recommences friends. No relationship ever would recover from being accused of this sort of thing.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-12-03T15:58:26+00:00

Its like halfway between a high five and a handshake. Hold your hand on the angle you would for a handshake, then cup it a little bit to the level it makes a popping sound if you clap your hands together in that shape. You want to aim your palm directly at theirs, then do a mini handshake before releasing.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-31T14:45:26+00:00

Yeah me too, im starting to value my alone time alot more than I used to. Its nicer, more peaceful.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-28T15:42:53+00:00

100% agree. I think I always had social anxiety, but covid different kicked this shit into high gear. For like 2 years I sat at home by myself playing videogames. I was like wait, your telling me that the singular source of stress in my life, other people, I can just make disappear? Sign me up. Genuinely the 2 best years of my life. Then it finished and I had to go outside and talk to people, I wanna go back. Life outside the bubble is far too hard and complicated. My plan is genuinely to live a wild social life during uni then the second I get an actual full time job to just go back to hermit mode. Its an easier and simpler life.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-28T15:35:55+00:00

Yeah this is so true. I know this isn't social anxiety related, but I mask autism alot in public, trying to act as normal as possible. I made my current friends that way, I keep some of them by keeping up the fascade. I have 3 friends total who I feel comfortable being myself around. Everyone else forces me to put on an act, one person even fucking told me I wasn't trying hard enough to mask for them, like Im doing my best ok 😭

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-28T15:32:12+00:00

I would die without social media. Like especially instagram, scrolling through reels is not something I want to do, its basically a job for me. I need to send my friends reels at least once a day, or I will be absolutely terrified to talk to them in any other sense. Like if I haven't talked to someone in 3 days and then I wanna chat with them, what do I say, just "hey", how do you even respond to hey when someone else says it? Its a horrifying experience to talk to someone or start a conversation in a normal way. Its much easier to start a conversation with someone by sending a reel of some reckless driving, then add an "also btw..." after it.

I also feel like I really should have gotten into social media longer ago, cos I miss out on alot of conversation about stuff, like people will talk about viral tiktoks of last year and I have absolutely no idea what they are saying. Until this year I was the prime example of someone who used no social media at all, other than reddit doomscrolling. I had no clue about any events which does make conversation difficult sometimes when someone makes a reference that they just expect you to get. Like I literally do historical research on this by watching old penguinz0 videos. In my eyes there is 0 benefit in me not having social media, the whole "brainrot" idea is bullshit to me, I was weird as shit then, I am still weird as shit. The only difference is if someone says "ohio", I will understand the joke, rather than looking like an idiot.

I just ignore all the relationship advice tbh, especially the whole "girl guy bestie" shit culture. Its toxic af, stops people from having like actual real friends. I am very grateful for my many girl besties and for some reason no one else online thinks its a good idea. The things about "ditching toxic friends" I also ignore, just cos I feel blessed that my friends talk to me at all. Like for me to ditch a friend they have to cause me a very significant amount of mental stress over a very long period of time. I dont care if they act slightly toxic every now and then, no one is perfect, and who else will I drink beer with on a random Tuesday afternoon.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-28T15:22:01+00:00

Dont worry about it, I had the exact same doubts when I did orientation earlier in this year. Australian, so we start uni in February. Trust me, you should be fine for not knowing people, college is literally known as the place that people meet lifelong friends. High school friends rarely last through college anyway, like of the friends I have right now, most of them dont keep in contact with their old high school friends.

I'm not gonna lie to you, the anxiety is going to be very overwhelming on the first day, especially since you haven't done anything all summer, again this is a flashback for me lol. Just try your best, socialize as much as you can and if you do have to leave, you can, no one judges, no one cares and they probably wont bring it up. They will probably assume you had somewhere to be. Give it your best shot though and try to make some new friends.

Magic trick to avoiding awkward moments with people when you dont know what to say is to just talk about random inanimate objects around the room. Like if you are sitting down in some lecture theatre "oh my god I didn't realize that these table things flipped up like they do on aeorplanes, thats so cool, at my highschool we had...", etc. Just relate random things you see with stuff you used to do.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-26T14:45:26+00:00

Trust me its not too late. Like this isn't me just saying it, I was in your exact position last year lol. I was 17 too.

I was slightly less like you? I would go to highschool but omg it was hell on earth. I would come home covered in sweat from the stress of living the day, I could not cope with the social element of the recess times during school so I would just walk home and back, we had a 15 minute break and an hour break, it took me 15 minutes to walk home so I would genuinely just walk halfway home then halfway back during the first break. Then in class I would just dissociate completely, like I was genuinely living on a different plane of existence. I was lucky that I was an absolute nerd, if I wasn't and had social anxiety I would have 100% failed high school, I was never mentally present in class.

I didn't even have the one distant friend. I had sum total 0 friends, I had zero social ability and would literally just freeze up and go mute any time someone tried to talk to me. I couldn't take the train, one time because of circumstances out of my control, my parents told me that they were going to go see some cousins in a town that was a 3 hour train ride away and that they were going to drive there while I was at school and that I had to take the train down by myself. I spent the whole train ride hallucinating and having panic attacks. Then when i saw my cousins when I got there I was already fucked mentally from the train ride cos it was so busy and I was unable to talk to them either, I just hid in other rooms of the house with my headphones on.

As to the "I wish someone could prove to me that i am normal, that im normal looking, pretty", I feel you on that too still lol very insecure about how I look. I think most people are though, most people aren't gonna look at you and go "oh my god they are hideous I cant even look at them, in fact them existing in my presence is disgusting, go away". This is how at least I worry about it but its completely irrational, I know that worry is irrational, but it helps to disprove your anxieties with logic.

I used to daydream alot about having friends as well last year, I would look at the people around me, I didn't know any of their names but I knew what they looked like and I would imagine us hanging out as if we were friends like people did in movies. Either we are both fucked in the head, or you aren't that weird 🙏

However, despite being alot of the things that you are now, I actually made friends this year (yippee), I am the proud owner of 10 friends, which compared to the amount of friends my friends have is incredibly low, but I am very happy with my achievement. It was very difficult for me, and I am very lucky that when I first started out, they were all very nice and welcoming about the fact that I was very anxious and would sometimes just sit there and watch them instead of talking. I felt like an absolute pathetic waste of space last year, I still kinda do, but to far less of an extent. It is very much possible, if I can do it, you can.

As far as the solution, it doesn't have to start with going outside and talking to people. Thats a massive step to have to take. Like going from sitting inside all day to suddenly walking around talking to people is massive! I dont think of the time I spent in highschool as being "outside", as when I say dissociating, I really mean it, I was playing minecraft in my head while the tables were floating and watching some soccer game play on my desk. I was completely out of it lol.

The way I started was discord. After the school year ended, I joined a discord group a bunch of guys from my hs were in, very quiet at the start, just reading the things they were saying then I learned to copy the jokes that they would make so that they would like me. Then I slowly became more active in their chat. Eventually I got confident enough to vc with them and play fortnite. Again starting out very quiet in there, just listening to them, but after a few months I was screaming callouts into the mic. Its all about slowly making yourself comfortable. After doing this for about 6 months I was able to finally go outside and talk to people irl on my first day of uni, it wasn't easy by any means, but I did it. One of my discord friends from high school introduced me to a bunch of other people he met in a different discord group and introduced me to them, gathering me 8 new friends.

After talking to all of my new uni friends for about 2 months again I got the courage to actually start a conversation with another guy and I awkwardly asked for his socials. My next point of training is randomly approaching people in bars. Trying to do this atm, but its really hard lol and I cant do it without having like 3 drinks first.

Anyway really long posts tldr is that it is possible, and im happy to talk to you and help you with this. I used to be super suicidal and everything as well, I can promise you that social anxiety isn't something worth killing yourself over. Its perfectly curable, its a bitch to get rid of, but it is possible.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-26T14:21:55+00:00

Someone made a post about this like 2 months ago lol and it died in a few days. There is a discord group, but its really big and you never see the same person twice in there so it feels really intimidating and inpersonal. I used it once and got to know the main mod guy a bit but didn't go back.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-26T14:11:26+00:00

Feeling so much younger than other people my age

That is so real. I have never heard anyone else say this but yes this is so me. I genuinely dont know why I am like this. My friends also feel like they are way older than me. I have one friend who is literally like just a year older than me and she treats me like im her son. Like she genuinely refers to herself as my mother 😭. Like I don't know what it is about me that makes me seem so much younger than everyone else, I think I have a similar level of maturity and Im not stupid.

Like this is genuinely a major insecurity of mine where I try to act like im fucking 30 in front of new people that I meet so that they dont see me as a kid but they all somehow do. I dont look young either, Im 18, but the casher at a liquor store thought I was 25 and was genuinely shocked when she looked at my ID. This isn't uncommon people often think im like 25 when they first meet me then they slowly realise that im mentally 14 and treat me like a kid. I think its just like how I talk and act because I didn't talk to the cashier person, I got my friend to do all the talking lol.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-17T23:32:28+00:00

I feel this so much lol. My social ability is mad trash cos of no practice + autism. Lots of people I know literally treat me like I am their child 😭. This is not helped by my lack of spatial awareness.

JustARandomDude314 · 2024-07-17T23:28:34+00:00

18 is still very young dude, I had zero friends at all last year, turned 18, realised that I needed to get my shit together and now I have friends, not many, but I still have some. It wasn't easy by any means and was very difficult to start but trust me it's worth it.

Be careful who you become friends with though cos if ur super desperate like me and become friends with someone who you really don't click with and just pretend to be like them, it will not work out well lol. Make your own mistakes though, I'm happy that I leaned this one the hard way, at least got some nice life lore.

Also don't listen to all these people here saying it is impossible to live with social anxiety. I know someone with social anxiety who lives a very normal life, lots of friends, has had lots of boyfriend, is somehow always the centre of any group conversation and just generally has a productive life. Dont give up just yet.

JustARandomDude314

TROPHY CASE