I hope that this works because apparently even though I’m signed up on lemmy.world and visiting a sub native to lemmy.world, all that this subreddit loads for me is one single post from 2024 (and yet I can see all posts from my myserv.one instance).
I don’t mind if no one reads this, I just need to get my experience of my chest, especially my Bluesky experience over these last couple of months.
I’ve tried Twitter on and off, well before Musk, and it never really clicked for me. I could sort of see the appeal but largely it came across as a sea of jocks and trendy assholes. So it was never much of a big deal for me to just walk away from it.
Enter Bluesky. I was attracted by its left wing reputation and all the cool queer people there. But I’m afraid that over all, it didn’t do much to change my opinion that this sort of social media is for the ‘cool’ kids, cliques and people who prize their image above all else.
In the beginning it was pretty fun. I used the same profile pic and account name as here and didn’t list my age in my profile. And I was having enough fun to stick around. But after the 3rd DM from someone that I’m pretty sure was a teenager, I decided to do the right thing and mention my age on my profile. I also decided to use my real name and add an actual photo of me, making it clear that I’m AMAB despite my tastes and the company I want to keep. And I can tell you, from that moment, the little bit of fun that I was having there completely dried up. From that point on, the only people following me were porn bots and these weird accounts with no posts that look like they lifted the profile pic from the ‘management’ section of a website somewhere.
Now, to be fair, there were a few cool people in my age group (38) that I followed but most are married with 2.5 kids and are these bluewave people where every second post is a picture of Trump’s face or Kamala Harris. And as far as men go, my faith and trust is also at an all time low at this point. But that still doesn’t make me feel any less like a reject piece of shit.
I also did something there that I will forever regret. While I had my real name and photo up, I decided to take the major step of telling the world that I realised I’m non-binary a couple of years ago. My heart was in my fucking throat because I was now putting myself at risk of people in the real world finding out what’s been going on with me. And the reception that I got to that was crickets chirping. Not even the few clearly NB / trans / non-conforming people that had deemed me worthy enough for a follow back chipped in with anything. I ended up deleting the post in shame 24 hours later and reverting back to anonymity.
So yeah, Bluesky was largely heart breaking for me and made me feel a dog desperately scratching at the door to get in somewhere. I don’t know how people do it. Every attempt at socializing that fails, and the endless tweaking of my profile to try and attract some friends feels pretty degrading to me. I WAY prefer a platform like this where I can join a conversation about She-ra and the Princesses of Power and gush about how rad Adora is if I want. And actually get feedback and someone to let me know that I’m alive without taking a look at my profile picture or age and judging me before the conversation has even started. I just wish this place worked better. Thanks for listening.
Yeah it’s a pretty sad state that the system in the US is comparable to 3rd world countries. Here in South Africa, the standard healthcare isn’t awful. I’ve had quite a lot of dental work done over the years for a once off payment a few years ago that was less than a movie ticket.
But it’s a chaotic experience. There’s definitely no personal touch, you’re just one in a sea of people getting herded around until your turn comes, the staff are overworked and most likely underpaid so they don’t exactly have an aura of friendless and helpfulness, and you’re not even guaranteed to end up seeing the same dentist every time.
And I kinda shudder to think of what the mental health version of all of this would be. Not at all confident that they don’t just prescribe random generic pills to every second person and call it a day. I actually made a post asking for advice about it in the autism sub on Reddit around a year or so ago and never got a response, so clearly there weren’t many South Africans around there.
We get this for the price of bankruptcy except most of the upper layers of care (high level nurses, drs) are well paid. As I wake up with dental pain needing a root canal I am jealous that you got work done for a movie ticket. I’m honestly considering a trip to Mexico to get work done. I think a root canal here is at least $6000 for one tooth vs $500 to pull the tooth entirely. I already lost one tooth I don’t want to lose another… for reference $6000 would buy me a half decent used car with moderate to high miles here.
We live in a state of collapse but it’s hypernormalization where nobody seems to notice and everyone just walks around like nothings wrong.
Tooth issues are the absolute worst and I’d only wish tooth pain on the worst of my enemies. Just one of the areas I’ve wrecked my life personally. Even now I still haven’t developed the clockwork habit of looking after them and have to stay consciously on top of it. I’ve been working hard on it but I’m still paying for my past in that regard. And just on the subject, what I get for that movie ticket price is fillings and extractions and that’s it. For anything else, like root canals, you have to go private. Although $6000 is just sadistic (so is $500 for an extraction actually) and I’m sorry that you have to deal with that. I would definitely be considering Mexico in your position.
I don’t use this expression a lot but so much this. It’s like everyone has just accepted that things are shit and so they’re going to wallow in shit and that’s fine. This reminds me of another story that’s probably going to be at least another paragraph, so if you check out of reading now, I don’t mind.
When I was in boarding school, at one point the staff punished the entire hostel for something that someone had done but not owned up to. I don’t know what was in the water that day but people were pissed to the point that a protest broke out. Marching around and going where we weren’t supposed to be, singing protest songs. I was in my element. I still remember our over religious, hypocritical asshole hostel master peering out from behind his curtain with a scared look on his face, it was lovely. Then the bell rang for homework time and the protest immediately stopped then and there and everyone went inside to do their homework. I can’t remember if the punishment was lifted but I doubt it.
And I think that moment left a lasting impression on me as far as my opinion of people in general goes.
My lasting impression of people happened when I was young and in school too. I was awfully bullied for being queer, I’m talking really serious violent bullying that the 90s was known for before “zero tolerance” and all that existed. It was known that I was being abused by my peers and yet nothing ever came of it. One day I was forced to fight back as I was put in a chokehold and then I blacked out mid fight and kicked the kids ass in the process. I was suspended from school, nothing happened to the kid. From that point on I never trusted authority and have been anarchist since.
That’s awful and I’m sorry. But seemingly the way bullies are handled and I just don’t get it. I never faced anything nearly that bad. My major bully for a while was also my ‘friend’ that would tell me things like everyone else thinks I’m a nerd and loser and that he’s the only one that likes me, and would completely and randomly out of the blue put me in a headlock or wrestle me to the ground when I wasn’t expecting it. That stopped after I kicked him in the balls during one of those headlocks. And there’s one other guy I can remember that would do shit like pull me hair if he was sitting behind me. But most of my bullies were teachers to be honest. My class / grade 1 teacher went so hard (literally SCREAMING in your ear if you dropped your pencil or didn’t write neatly enough) that I ended up with a stutter for a little bit.
But I think I lucked out geographically in the '90s. In South Africa those were very hopeful times, at least when I was a little kid that hadn’t seen through the lie yet. Mandela was in power, we prided ourselves on being progressive and having “the best constitution in the world” and I bought in fully to the ‘rainbow nation’. We never really had bully problems in any schools I went to and there weren’t cliques like in American movies. Just the normies and not normies. Those on the inside and those on the outside. Plus we also wear school uniforms and boys have to have boy haircuts and girls have to have girl haircuts etc. So it was impossible to present as anything even remotely different to your AGAB, even if you wanted to.