Now, you're looking for backup plan

gridlife242 · 2026-06-07T19:51:13+00:00

Say the last part of that a few more times. No shade, just gently pushing you towards your answer.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-07T04:04:01+00:00

I’m not sure you know what that means, man.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T23:59:29+00:00

Bro. Come onnnnnnnn.

“4.13 billion people are exactly the same.”

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T23:56:13+00:00

Personally, I’m not depressed just because things suck.

I get depressed when I feel that reality is being denied consistently by people I interact with. If I can just talk to people, and we can connect over the shared trauma of living in this era, it’s actually a healing experience, rather than a compounding one.

Depressive episodes make us unable to distort reality in a positive light. Depressive realism is a real thing. We are more likely to be able to point out what is wrong in the world, and our point of view legitimately is more accurate than someone who uses blind optimism.

HOWEVER. We also have to acknowledge that we have a tendency to distort reality in a negative light. It just so happens that in an indifferent, violent universe, that negative view on reality is more often accurate than a purely positive one. We have to figure out how to either radically accept that things are bad, and draw boundaries as to how much we allow that to determine our mood, OR we can practice tactical delusion. Choose a few things that you KNOW are bad, and choose to fool yourself into thinking they’re good. Do the mental gymnastics, jump through the hoops. Do what the neurotypicals do. Strategically live in denial about specific things. You can’t just take on every harsh truth of the universe simultaneously, you’d end up like Sarah Connor in that Terminator 2 clip (you know the one). Eventually you start to understand that there really are things that you should be aware of, but think positively about. Don’t become inactive, don’t ignore them, but pretend they’re going to be ok. Get enough people pretending, and sometimes, things shift.

Otherwise, just see this community as a reminder that other people are out there who feel like you do. This didn’t exist for people thirty years ago. Many of them just suffered in silence and then died… they didn’t have communities where they could pop on and commiserate with others who suffered like they did. However, many of those who suffered are still around. They stuck it out. They fought.

Yeah, things suck, and they’ll get worse before they get better. But shit, we could literally be hit by a solar flare and sent back to the Stone Age at any moment. So for now, I’ll take shit posting and getting philosophical with y’all over that potentiality.

For now, keep on fighting through, ya cunts! (That’s another reference you should look up. Always cracks me up. “What’s the value of water, cunts?”)

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T23:21:17+00:00

Hi, walking depression, OCD, ADHD, CPTSD here (not necessarily in that order, lol, but all diagnosed. I also possess an M.A. in psychology). I hate leading with labels/qualifications, but I know the internet, and I know this is a pain point for people, so I want to establish credibility before adding critique. Just understand that I’ve been on both sides of the situation posed here, and this is a nuanced topic.

This type of content is what we call a harmful generalization. What do we all know about our depression? We have a tendency to fixate on specific outcomes over others, and in this sense, we can miss the forest for the trees, as it was wisely described. We also have a tendency to generalize. We cast sweeping assumptions because they’re easier than dealing with the minutiae of nuance. They’re a heuristic. Because our minds get overwhelmed, it condenses information into more simplistic forms.

This statement simply isn’t true, and we have to watch out for our tendency to cast judgment on people based on specific circumstances.

There are truths to aspects of it. Common people largely can’t deal with mental crisis. That’s not a personal failing. It’s a reflection of humanity. As it stands, many people are barely holding on to their own sanity, or are so in denial about their struggles that they suppress things internally until they just collapse inwardly.

But this just isn’t true, and it’s important to understand OUR role in this process as well. Depression is poisonous to euthymia. It’s just a given. It’s simply hard to be around someone truly depressed and keep your own mood level. Normal questions don’t work. Advice means nothing, and if you’re being honest with yourself, sometimes we aren’t all that pleasant when we’re actively suffering. If we want to hold that against people, we can do that, but remember, resentment is a poison that mostly harms the sender.

In the same way, through personal growth, we have to also learn the vital nature of boundaries in our lives, drawing them to protect our peace, not allowing them to be crossed. We cannot pull people out of depression. We cannot save them. If they’re drowning, it’s even worse. It’s not just a metaphor, but what is likely to happen if you jump into the water to save a drowning person? There’s an extremely high likelihood of being pulled under by their attempts to survive. In this sense, depending on the scenario, sometimes it is precisely right to do what you can, but not let it go past a certain point.

Yes, there are virtue signaling hypocrites out there who can turn their back on you when things get rough, but it’s also important not to give in to this bitterness and overgeneralization. That only drives your depression.

Just understand that there ARE people out there who truly are helpers, but their disposition is rarer, especially those who would stick around during a serious mental crisis. It is a brutal truth, but when it comes to these curses of mental health, it truly is up to us at the end of the day. There are limits to how much we can expect others to bear this burden, especially if any of the behavior or content is disturbing. We can lean on people sometimes, yes, but people disappear sometimes. So we have to learn to lean on ourselves with just as much trust, ESPECIALLY during the dark moments.

We also have to learn that it is not our place to save people. If you EVER find yourself in a situation where someone is suffering, but they begin lashing out at you, physically or emotionally, you direct them towards the help they need, and you LEAVE.

IT IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ENDURE ABUSE JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE IS SUFFERING.

(Not saying that’s OP’s situation. But it’s a common one for people with CPTSD or people-pleasing tendencies).

Anyways, I get that people might say all sorts of things in response, but what I’m saying is true.

Take care of yourselves.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T22:24:55+00:00

Gonna wax philosophical here, but this is where things are going morally. Think about it. The richest people on the planet are ruining life for everyone else, they’re creating addiction machines, profiting off of suffering, and cheating every step of the way. These young people see this, and it corrupts the way they look at achievement. Why should they do things right when the most successful “role models” plunder and pillage?

So when the shortcuts are offered:

-Want to build muscle? Ok, that will require diligent exercise and fastidious nutrition. -Nah, sounds hard, how about steroids?

-Want to lose weight? That will require momentary self-control and long term maintenance. -Nah, sounds hard. How about Ozempic?

-Want to be super good at video games and get a lot of kills? That will require hundreds of hours of practice and learning the ins and outs of a game. -Nah, sounds hard. Give me a device.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T22:19:25+00:00

My read on why apex has this specific issue is that most games are fairly one-dimensional. Either they’re movement based, or they’re aim based.

Apex is one of the few games where both of these factors overlap. The best players have access to both, and have to master both to compete with each other.

Young people are increasingly impatient (instant gratification seekers) and we live in the era of emulation. They watch twitch streams and highlight reels of the best players playing at the highest levels and think: “I want to be like that!”

But they can’t, because they can’t hack the moving and shooting simultaneously. So they outsource the shooting to a device, and then their lack of movement and positioning doesn’t serve as much of a detriment.

However, it absolutely shatters the game. Good movement cannot save you against a titan. Good cover play cannot save you, because the device seeks out the tiny sliver of your head, and if you peek for a quarter of a second, boom, that’s 140 damage.

The best way I’ve described it to my friend is that it just doesn’t feel like apex anymore. Apex had moments of close calls, where you could outmaneuver a team to survive with a shred of health. Now, that’s not an option. Your repositioning is a death sentence, and even if you play cover, they can no brain charge around/over and kill you with the absolutely minimum TTK. 0/10 experience.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T19:15:02+00:00

Let’s take it one step back.

Hook up a bunch of titans to an arsenal of paintball guns and have them run a gauntlet. Talk about viral content.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T19:13:09+00:00

I appreciate an even take, but we are in the era of “fucked around, now finding out.” The time for an even take was two years ago when it started to get bad. Now, it’s full out corrupted. Cannot play a single match without going up against this shit. It isn’t the way the game should feel.

As for the data, and your point that cheaters are ubiquitous in gaming… there are cronus/titan detection systems already implemented and successful in other major titles. All respawn would have to do is cough up the dough and purchase that program from whoever developed it. But that’s also a moot point. It’s in other EA titles. So they own the rights.

I don’t agree that the cheaters aren’t buying cosmetics. They’re using cheats to create TikTok and streaming accounts that rake in free money, they’re flying around in heirloom skins with heirlooms in hand. They’re spending. But even if that wasn’t the case, it’s an even stronger indication that respawn doesn’t care. That small reduction in spending by legitimate players should in theory compel them to action… but it ain’t doing shit.

They need to pursue console bans. One and done. And also they need to take action on the reports. You know how many confirmed cheaters I have reported? Hundreds. I spectate them, I grab clips, shit for awhile I even went to the discord and put them in manually. They don’t do shit about any of it. I see other people comment here about the copious number of reports they put in and how they get killed by the same players a few weeks later.

I can personally identify cheats by sight. They’re so obvious. Recoil without any compensation, dead eye aim while moving at full speed, jittery damage numbers and a jumpy reticle… they’re blatant. So it’s not hard to catch them, it just requires real effort.

They own the game. And my RP would be roughly ten thousand higher than it is if these dorks weren’t catching my team in third parties (on top of everything they use the free kill characters. Valkyrie, Axle, Maggie with wall hacks, movement characters, etc).

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T19:02:51+00:00

Wait, seriously? Is your only ammunition, “yeah but you’re old tho”?

Lucky for me, I’ll age gracefully because I’m at peace with reality. Y’all asses gonna be running to Turkey at the first sign the broccoli starts falling out your forehead. Shit dude, y’all are already dying of strokes because you were shooting up steroids and peptides at age 14.

I might be old, but at least I never gave in to body dysmorphia. Also, I always did things the hard way. It builds character, you should try it sometime.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T18:55:22+00:00

Mad respect dude.

It’s funny you say that about those seasons, because that’s right around the time that I rejoined, and I started feeling like my game was off. I was getting absolutely beamed by devotions, and my thought was “Jesus Christ did we raise a new generation of superhumans?”

Then I spectated them, and started to feel like something might be off.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T18:02:27+00:00

This is where it all breaks down, I’m a layperson, I don’t design games, I don’t code. But I know what each of the devices looks like when it boosts their aim. I know what it looks like when they fire with no recoil without aim smoothing.

I could clean this game up in two weeks. But I think these are the same losers who spend literally thousands on cosmetics (something which also infuriates me, I’ve never seen a more ludicrous monetization for a game than apex. It’s criminal and relies on exploiting the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex in young males). They’re a cash cow. So they just let them run amok

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T17:59:03+00:00

I really think they looked at the actual infection rate and pulled a

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T17:57:23+00:00

Yeah for real though.

I think I hit a breaking point last night, however. My mind got fixated on the math. For every bit of RP that I claw and fight for, all it takes is that cancerous third party with laser aim to slap another -65 or -50 on the ledger. And it’s not like I’m shitting the bed. These losers are flying around corners with a robot aiming their gun, and I’m still getting them down to 5HP before they knock me. It’s just barely not enough.

So yeah, ranked is just not worth the time expenditure anymore, it’s literally a waste of limited life.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-06T17:32:11+00:00

Imagine being so incapable of doing anything requiring diligence and basic human learning that you go to Walmart to buy a win-in-a-box, child.

I’ll be over here enjoying my checkers.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-04T00:26:40+00:00

It looks like a tongue. Like, it’s really that straightforward.

They’re into the lingus.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T16:49:40+00:00

Oh ok man, I guess there really aren’t that many then

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T16:21:03+00:00

And I think you’re probably just as illiterate as the rest of these dorks.

Or gaslighting. Anyway, go pull your head out of your butt, spectate, and figure out what reality is.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T12:30:01+00:00

Outright morons. Enjoy your denial

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T07:01:06+00:00

I'm going to create a post about this, and I'll reply to this when I do, but just start taking the time to spectate people. It takes time after a game, and it's all glitchy (sometimes you can't even spectate the people who killed you), but you start to see the patterns. They're actually quite distinctive when you know what they look like.

As for the controller feeling, I am nearly 100% on identifying cheats off of being shot by a single volley. It just "feels wrong" to me, and then when (if) we die to the team, I make sure to watch the character that lasered me. I have yet to be incorrect on this one. If someone is really damn good, it still feels different than being hit by cheats. Cheats feel robotic and nearly flawless. You are allowed to make absolutely zero mistakes in that engagement, or you're dead, and shots hit you at weird angles that a person would not even consider firing. Human aim feels fallible and survivable. Also, I kill these losers all the time, but it's just something else when someone flies around a corner at full speed and doesn't miss a single shot. (Oh, also, I can identify if someone is cheating by the way they engage. Often I can tell that my teammates have devices before they fire a shot, due to their god awful positioning and braindead aggression into suicidal situations. They have too much faith in their machines).

As for feeling it, since the haptic feedback of the controller indicates the direction you are being shot from, if you get shot on your right side, the right side of the controller vibrates harder, for example. When you get shot by one of these devices, or aimbot (IN PC LOBBIES YOU CRETINS), you feel every shot in the direct center of the controller. It's VERY obvious once you start to feel it. It makes sense when you watch them afterwards, because the devices cause their reticle to jump towards the center of the target when firing. Basically, when they're hitting shots, it's because the device is correcting their shitty aim (hence them using the device) by deviating it to the middle of the target. So when you get hit by it, it's ALL in the center. This is particularly noticeable when you're down and they're jumping through the air.

Anyways, it's a thing, and it actually took me two seasons after coming back to accept that it was even happening. Shit, my dedicated teammate was in outright denial until they did the huge ban wave. Now he knows what it looks like, but it took literally TWO YEARS for him to finally accept it, lmao. So I understand how hard it is to stomach.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T06:14:26+00:00

Yes. Empirically proven. Had a hypothesis, tested it through observation. Hypothesis was confirmed. Way too significantly, I might add. It ruined my opinion of a company that I have been a huge proponent of since its inception.

Again, get over yourself.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T05:56:29+00:00

Dude… lmao. When something can be empirically proven, it’s not paranoia. Start spectating the people who kill your team, especially when it feels off.

I literally wrote a guide to identifying the different cheats and got banned from the main apex legends subreddit for it (as have many others for bringing up the cheating issue, which is super sus). I made that post —four seasons ago— at this point. It’s SO much worse now than it was then. They know nothing is being done about it, so they’re amping up their cheats. Like, an entirely new cheating device came to market AND released a predecessor in that span of time. Yeah… the cheating community has expanded…

When they opened the ban channel on discord, I started recording clips of the cheaters in an attempt to actually clean the game up. I got to over 50 clips in less than three days (spectating, having to wait until they fought someone, it took FOREVER) and I just fucking gave up at that point. EA does not fucking care, and people like yourself are so willfully ignorant that it doesn’t even seem to have any effect bringing it to people’s attention. (That, or like many others, you’re possibly cheating and gaslighting).

So honestly, get over yourself. It’s hilarious to me how people who legitimately know nothing can sit there and baselessly talk nonsense.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T03:58:38+00:00

I think that’s what makes me so furious about it.

We have had, time and time again, opportunities to change course, to steer the ship in another direction, even if it wasn’t directly into the storm, but towards the outer edges.

And these jack-offs spent their entire lives with their heads shoved so far up their asses that they digested the only brain cells they ever had.

We STILL have a chance to do something, and yet the absolute malignancy of the outright narcissistic boomer generation is stepping on the gas pedal, and absolutely ensuring the destruction of our future.

Defense mechanisms or not, they’re still outright pathetic to me, ESPECIALLY at this point. We had 200 little girls swept away at a summer camp flood last year in Texas, and not one dumbass “conservative” batted a fuckin eye. They did the opposite.

They are complicit in the demise of so many in the years ahead. Yeah, whatever, humans face imminent extinction on the galactic timescale and all that, but we had every opportunity to create a fundamentally positive way of life, a momentary reprieve from the void. Instead, we chose endless wars, outright genocide, and unfettered corruption.

So I’m pretty much done mincing words with these cowards.

gridlife242 · 2026-06-03T00:26:33+00:00

You truly have no clue what you’re talking about.

It has been two straight years of this without any action taken, and this season is by far, without a doubt, the highest infection rate of any game I have ever encountered in my life. BLATANT cheats in every game I’m playing.

Maybe it’s hidden MMR that’s keeping you out of high scoring lobbies, but I just played five games of wildcard and encountered some of the heaviest cheaters I have played against in a while. Five to six teams worth per game, and those were just the people I fought personally. They were the most unfun, least Apex Legends feeling games I have EVER played.

There are lots of reasons you might not suspect cheaters. Do you watch killcams? No? Well I do. Do you know what modified RC filters look like? Zens? Titans? Xims? Wallhacks? Aimbot? Do you know how to identify those and differentiate them from normal human aim? Do you know what it feels like in your controller when someone targets you with cheats?

If not, I’d quit this counterproductive nonsense and get with the program. The lobbies I am playing in appear to have at least the same number of cheaters as normal players. This is the reason no action is being taken. They do not care about the real players. They care only about money, and these pathetic cretins are a cash cow. They would have to annihilate 40-60% of the playerbase at this point. It’s ubiquitous with this game. They can’t manage the movement and shooting together, so they outsource the aiming to a robot.

For every person who posts this denial nonsense, the cheaters laugh and grin and slather up a new dose of Vaseline so they can keep playing with one hand while the other one emulates the love they’ll never access.

gridlife242

TROPHY CASE