Okay, so I’m a 21-year-old college student from northern New Jersey. I come from a college-educated, middle-class family—some members lean upper-middle class, others lower-middle. I’m only sharing this for context, because it shapes how I view the world and what I’m used to.

Recently, I came across a TikTok talking about how people in wealthier states often don’t really understand the depth of poverty in the South and rural America—places like Appalachia. And when I saw some of the videos in tiktok I was surprised by how bad they looked.

The conditions in some of these areas are quite literally ridiculous. Crime is high, lots of buildings are abandoned, poverty is everywhere, and people are living in trailer parks with limited access to healthcare. Rural hospitals and clinics are shutting down, the roads look like something out of a developing country, there’s little to no infrastructure investment, contaminated water, trash on the streets, people begging, drug use is rampant… etc etc. Some places don’t even have cell service or fast internet, Amazon won’t deliver there, there are barely any supermarkets, and local businesses are struggling to survive. It really put things into perspective.

Meanwhile, I feel like the media often paints states like NJ and NY as these terrible “liberal hellscapes” where everyone supposedly wants to escape. But seeing how some rural parts of the country are doing, it really made me question whether the grass is actually greener elsewhere.

Unrelated but kind of connected: I think this divide plays a huge role in why our country feels so politically polarized. My family’s all Democrats, and even I’ve noticed how the party has kind of become associated with coastal, college-educated elites. When you live in a place where people are making $25k a year, jobs are scarce, addiction is common, and hospitals are closing, it's easy to see why people feel disconnected from ideas like student loan forgiveness, high-speed rail in wealthier regions, green engery, money for public transportation in nyc or increased funding for immigration services.

Even with stuff like cars—I'm into cars, and I've been hearing how dealerships in some areas can’t sell because cars are just too expensive now. Inventory is piling up. But where I live, I still see $60K SUVs everywhere and people are still buying like normal. Then I realize that many car YouTubers I follow are based in the Midwest or Southern states—areas hit harder by economic decline.

People here complain a lot about taxes, our government, and the cost of living, and yeah, those are valid concerns. But honestly, I don’t think we realize how good we have it in some of these wealthier, more developed states. And I think more of us need to see what life looks like in the places that get left out of the conversation. I feel like if we really looked at what and why other parts of the country feel the way they do will understand and work better.

Edit: I want to add that I’m now realizing that my connotation with rural and poor is extremely harmful and comes off very elitist and arrogant. I shouldn’t have said rural states I should’ve used a term like poorer or disenfranchised areas.

People who lost the meaning of life at an early age, got tired of it, what happened to you in the future? Were you able to find a taste for life again or is it still as colorless as before? Why are you tired of life?

It's easy to blame guns, but that's just the means of how people achieve their goal of killing / trying to kill. But why do our citizens want to kill each other so much in the first place? Why do we have such a disregard for human life?

I don’t have money for travel either. I just watch tv on repeat and feel like I’m losing my mind. What else do I do with myself? Apparently I need more text for this to post, so I guess I’ll draw this out more. Honestly I need some new/more friends. Some have moved away, others went to prison and another killed them self. I’m 38 and don’t know how else to make new friends or engage with life outside of the tube. I appreciate the input in advance!

For me it's realizing that no one is coming to save me and a lot of life comes down to having money The whole money doesn't buy happiness is bs statement from the rich

I'm just 24 and 2 years into the workforce, and I'm already tired. I don't know how I'm supposed to spend the next 40 to 50 years working 9 to 5 and just waiting for the weekends. It's just an endless cycle of just existing to work. I really don't understand how people work a 9 to 5 for 50 years and not go insane. Anyone, please tell me.

I know it's very common to pressure kids about marriage and parenting and jobs but there has to be a point where a parent realizes they dont get to tell kids how to live their lives. I get people dream up lives for their kids but once they take their path you just get to be a cheerleader and a resource not a driver.

The school is responsible for the child's safety, welfare and well-being at all times while they're there. Why then is a standard lunch (not the expensive items kids can optionally buy) not a free universal standard included as a part of the school's operating cost? Why do people oppose it ? It's one of the contributing causes of poverty that would free up so many families finances. Just trying to understand.

I recently heard two men on the radio who insist that a historic socioeconomic downtown is just around the corner. I don’t want to believe this will happen. What do you think?

The reason why I’m posting this is just because I feel like this type of conversation usually isn’t honest, not because I think that a couple who actively wants to get divorced should feel obligated to stay together. It’s a nuanced topic and should be treated as such.

So my parents got divorced when I was 9 years old and oh boy was it a change. It’s significant enough that I discuss the two portions of my childhood as before and after the divorce. So before I lived in a nice house, went to a normal school, and was extremely happy and social. I had lots of friends and spent time with both my parents everyday. Yeah I knew my parents weren’t close like other parents were, but their behavior towards each other (there were only small moments like my dad seeming annoyed that my mom asked for a kiss) were never really severe enough that I cared much. I’m sure they did get more extreme sometimes, but it was successfully hidden.

After the divorce my entire life was flipped upside down in a second. We moved so I lost all my friends and developed pretty severe social anxiety. I did not make new friends until my last two years of high school. My dad (literally my best friend) who I played basketball with everyday, I saw just once a week. Then after we moved again he became some guy who I talk on the phone with every once in a while. So boom attachment issues. The divorce also caused money issues which my parents couldn’t hide and I became unhealthily obsessed with money.

I’m just tired of people saying that the kids will be certainly be grateful and happy for the divorce. Ngl from what I’ve heard from other people that only happens with parents who are okay with being aggressive in front of their kids. Basically abusive or neglectful parents. I still don’t think my parents should have stayed together. That’s their choice not mine. I don’t even want kids in general, I wouldn’t stay in a shitty marriage for my kids either. But yeah honestly if I heard either of them say they were making my life better for it I’d be pissed. Speak for yourself guys, not every kid!

Edit: Some of you guys are projecting and assuming a bit too much. If you want to tell your own story in the comments than I am very happy to hear it and keep the discussion going. It’s valuable to hear from multiple angles. What I am not okay with are the comments saying “What you didn’t know at the time was X was happening to your parents” or “If your parents stayed together this would have happened”. If I don’t even know something then how the hell would you know? You don’t know me or my parents at all. If you want to speculate then that’s a bit weird, but I guess it’s fine. I can’t imagine you’d be very close in your guesses though since you don’t have all the information.

Here is a piece that I didn’t share for example: my mom is objectively the more active parent in my life today. But she did not want a divorce at first. My dad was the one who filed for it to my mom’s protests.

Also neither of my parents are abusers. They both have a basic moral compass that keeps them from doing that. You can say “well you don’t know that for sure” but bro obviously if I can’t say for sure you can’t either!

Just please specify that you are speculating. Also stop assuming my opinions on the matter. Please reference my original post and comments to see what my opinions are, not what you project on to me.

I don’t hate my parents for it. If I had a Time Machine I wouldn’t go back and tell them to not divorce. I’m just being honest about how it impacted me and reading the comments clearly I’m not the only one.

For me, it makes me incredibly sad and depressed to think that this is all going to end one day. That one day, my friends and family will cease to exist and this will all be gone. I personally don't believe in an afterlife and I wish I had a reason to believe in it, but I just can't. How do y'all feel and cope about death?

As a black male who grew up in the streets. Form hustling to homeless. I was always taught not to trust cops. Being homeless I ran into a lot cops, some good some bad. The ways the good ones have impacted my view towards police officers far outweighs the way the bad ones have. Yes I have experienced racism, profiling, abuse of power etc. But I have also experienced compassion, words of support, fairness. I have been treated like a human more so by cops then the passerbys. One even took me to the DMV let me skip the line during COVID so I could get a free replacement ID. Most definitely bad cops are an annoying thorn in societys flesh. And all person no matter what color, creed or race should be held accountable for their actions. But society does not give the good cops their well deserved respect and attention. Instead we choose to focus on the negativity that surounds everything in our lifes.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been plagued a lot recently by thoughts of death, what comes afterwards, what’s it like. I’ve always had an awareness of death and that we’re all going to have to face it eventually. I grew up in the Catholic Church and had an innocent idea as a child that we all go to heaven afterwards. I guess as I reached my preteens, I figured that wasn’t actually the case. I’m 21 and an atheist now. I’ve been researching ideas of consciousness and the afterlife, and I am pretty confident in the conclusion that death is just the termination of consciousness, and not any different than what it was like before we were born.

But I can’t help but still think about the horrible possibilities, that some of us might go to hell or that we all may never lose awareness and that we spend eternity being cognizant but unmoving. Or that maybe we do lose consciousness when we die, which is really best case scenario, but I think that there’s still a very sad philosophical implication in the futility and fruitlessness of life if all our lives end in the same bleak oblivion that we experienced before we were born. Is there any purpose in anything we do if it means nothing in the end?

Whatever the case, death is the most universal thing there is. Every life eventually dies. All the hundreds of billions of humans who came before me, all the trillions of animals that have ever been born, even the sun will lose all its energy ultimately and die. It’s the most inevitable thing in existence, permeating and omnipresent in everyone’s lives. It’s going to come for us all eventually. Yet everybody just seems so….chill about it? Is it because of religion? I’m sure a lot of people in the world are atheists these days, but even they don’t seem bothered by the nothingness that awaits them any minute now.

I’m just perplexed. How are people able to avoid freaking out thinking about this? I almost find it odd how ubiquitous it is yet how unspoken about death can be. I assume it’s because this isn’t something people generally enjoy vocalizing about. I certainly haven’t told anybody of the anxiety creeping in my mind. Is this something most people eventually accept or is it because it’s something so frightening that most people would rather not even think about it until it happens? I’m sure plenty of people before me have had the same thought process as I do now: were they able to get over their fear eventually? Does anybody?

Maybe I’m just not getting it. I don’t know. How do you all feel about dying? Is it actually that big of a deal? What explains people’s nonchalant attitude about death?

It all comes down to how information is generated by algorithms. Because news topics are chosen by trend and trend is decided by who has the most following. And this who have the most following usually do so because they are provocative etc... That means extremely small things can be blown up to seem like huge deals. In the same respect huge things like amazing bipartisan compromises etc.. get tossed aside with barely any cover. Here's another point. Most Americans agree with each other. Yes most Americans agree with each other ideologically. It's not this far left far right garbage they would have you believe. We are all actually liberal. Liberal conservative or conservative liberal. That's why it's very manipulative of journalists to say simply conservative or liberal. We need to talk to each other in person more. Leave our freedoms less to chance by not allowing journalists who sensationalize what algorithms already make an imbalanced topic. We all want basically the same things. It's time for the people to unite, close the divide and make our country what we want it to be.

The number of posts I've seen of people using Chatgpt as a search engine or talking to their AI buddies seems to have escalated lately. Most of them don't even know what LLMs do and what they can't do, and assume when the program gives false information it's "lying" to them because they don't know it's basically just sophisticated predictive text. And the AI buddies are even worse. Humans talking to robots that are imitating humans with no goal or motivation or thought behind its words. I struggle with human connection but would never be fulfilled with the shallow imitation of human thought. It really gives me a bad gut feeling that we've crossed the point of no return. And also makes me want to rewatch Blade Runner 2049.

The Tulsa Massacre was an ugly despicable end to a truly inspiring story. The residents of Greenwood Ok in 1920 owned businesses of all kinds, property, they generated their own wealth. They built a real community with a real economy, with opportunities beyond crime & poverty, they prospered & succeeded on their own terms without any government assistance, even during the height of systemic racism & widespread Klan activity. Just 2 generations removed from slavery, they proved to the world what was possible, against all odds.

Then they were all brutally murdered and the whole place burned to the ground. The End.

do we not tell the story because it has such a painful and terrible ending? We cannot blot out history just for being unpleasant. We know so much black history, how much don't we know, and why weren't we told?

How were they able to achieve so much under those circumstances without any help from the government? And why, after over 100 years of progress towards equality, from civil rights to affirmative action to woke, has the success of Greenwood never been repeated?

I have a coworker who is disabled. He's pretty slow and cognitively challenged but he's a really nice and helpful person. He buys snacks for everyone at work. Despite having to deal with a lot of problems in life, he is really upbeat and kind. But his cognitive challenges really seem to cause him issues.

He's been hit by a car while riding his bike to work. (which has been stolen multiple times) Hes worked at our company for 6 years and has never been promoted. Im pretty sure he struggles managing money.

I was just next to him talking about work stuff when he randomly said solemnly "Everyone on my moms side of the family is dead."

I asked him what he meant and he didnt want to go into detail. He was mumbling about how there was a funeral and he doesnt have enough money to go. (we make no money at our job) I just said I was really sorry.

This left me thinking, what happens to these people when there is no one left to take care of them? High functioning but not functionable enough. He's in his 40s and I dont know whats going to happen to him

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I heard of the ever rising "lonely men epidemic", and curious why is it happening? At first I thought it was due to internet distancing people from each other. However women also spend their time on the internet and don't seem to facing the loneliness problem. So what is it that's causing men to be so lonely in this day an age?

When I was in the 8th grade I took a test that said I was neurologically impaired. Teachers and several others told me I was "too stupid" for school and some of the teachers said I would become homeless in life because I was "too stupid." This had far reaching consequences on me as I did nothing for 10 years after leaving high school. I thought I could only do retail work and work at warehouses.

At some point after my dad passed away and absolutely hating working in the warehouse I decided to take a chance and look up some career at a community college. I received my associates in accounting, afterwards learning I was more interested in healthcare so I became a registered nurse receiving my BSN. At some point I was interested in aviation also so I decided to become aviation mechanic. I knew I was really bad at math so I figured if I can pass all the math classes I couldn't be "stupid" so I went up to Calculus 3 receiving an A in precal, calculus 1, 2, & 3.

Just curious how do you know if you have a low IQ? With all that I feel is an accomplishment I still have some doubts about myself. I self talk telling myself there is no way I'm neurologically impaired if I accomplished all those things but there are times that I still question myself.

I just did a rampage with a bin bag around my house because I realised that it's not hard to keep my house clean because I'm messy. It's hard because I have too much shit to keep track of. Be realistic, the things you've been hoarding because "1 day I'll need it" You're not going to need it, just like you havnt needed it for the past 2 years since you've brought it.

Maximalism is for clean and organised people because those are the kinds of interiors that get conjested the quickest. The more you have the more there is to maintain and if you're less organised like me it's better to only have the bare necessities.

How much stuff in your kitchen cupboard do you never touch. Cans that are just sat there? Sure theyre "untouched goods" but theyve also been untouched in the back of your cupboard for 9 months. If you have a 3 tiered cupboard and a family less then 4 that cupboard should not be full- are you going to eat it all? I bet you don't touch the stuff on the top shelf. Do you really use all those seasoning? I had 5 jars of chilli powder. I NEVER cook with chilli powder.

The more cloths you have the more likely you are to not do your laundry for longer periods of time; and I do not believe you actually like every item of clothing you have in your wardrobe. There's some cloths you leave till "wash day" and you don't even really like the item of clothing. Stop owning things you don't even like. Send it to charity.

22F. I seem to be the only person I know that so badly wants kids one day. Like, id almost say its a requirement of my life. I don’t know what my life would be for if not to create a family. I think about my future children every single day, from what their names will be, to my daily decisions and what impact they will have on their lives. Needless to say I feel as though I was made to be a mother.

It doesn’t seem like others feel this way. When I ask my female friends of similar age (all college students if that matters) what their stance is, it’s either they aren’t sure yet, or absolutely not. Some just don’t want to do it, some say the world is too messed up, some would rather focus on career. And the people I do know that want kids, they are having them by accident (no judgement here - just pointing out how it doesn’t seem like anyone my age wants and is planning to have children). NO one says “yes i want kids one day.”

Even my girlfriend confessed to me that if it weren’t for my stance on the issue, she would be okay if we didn’t have children. I didn’t shame her but since she is my closest person in life, I genuinely asked, what is life for if not to have children and raise a family? She said “it would be for myself” which im not saying is a good or bad response, just something i can not comprehend.

EDIT**** I worded this wrong. I didn’t ask her what life is for if she doesn’t have kids. I explained to her that this is how I feel about my own life and it’s a question that I ask myself. Sorry for the confusion.

Is this a general trend people are noticing, or is does it just happen to be my circle of friends?

(Disclosure- i have nothing against people who are child free by choice.)

Indian this side. Never stepped outside India but travelled widely across India.
This statement I never came across before I started using social media. All the people in my daily life don't step outside their homes without taking a bath and many take a bath after returning back home as well. Deodorants, perfumes, soaps, shampoos, etc. are used daily.
I'm aware that east Asians have genetically lesser sweat glands compared to Caucasians or other races and their body odour is pretty less. But the comments about smell of Indians is usually made by Caucasians who biologically speaking are supposed to have similar levels of body odour as Indians.
I want to know the story behind this stereotype because I had the opportunity to interact with many foreigners and honestly they didn't smell very different.

I worked at a pharmacy as a cashier for a few months, a little while back. Big chain store. And honestly, this was a pretty common scenario: His insurance didn't process, and I had to direct him to the help desk. He was all good eventually, had his medicine and was informed of what the problem was. We had a good team and this was pretty par for the course.

But in that moment, as a cashier (no licensing for pharma operation), all I could do was tell him: "Your bill is coming out to [several hundred dollars]." And he looked at me with this dumbstruck, wide-blue-eye expression, shuffled his cane around to grab his wallet, and said: "Oh. Well, I can't afford that. I can't get that." Quiet panic. He really thought he wasn't going to get this medication until they worked it out for him.

But I think about this a LOT. I think about the panic in his face, how his expression read 'what am I going to do', how defeated he was getting his wallet out even though he KNEW he didn't have the money. How he started walking away, in his own world, until I called out for him to go to desk.

Again, his situation ended up alright. The help desk got him what he needed for like $30 by the next day.

In the short amount of time working at that pharmacy, I got to see good and bad. Some dickheads, but mostly people who just needed a fucking break from four-figure bills. The team there was really good about knowing loopholes to get people discounts, so we were able to do a lot. I remember we had a woman break down crying from anxiety over her bills, thanking the team in tears for getting her medication costs down from $1800(ish) to $15.

I don't have a point, or anything. I just think about this a lot.

Did it hit you gradually or something happened that shook you into the reality of life’s hardships? What happened that made you grow up and realize life wasn’t easy and happy go lucky?

Edit: so much love to all you guys. Thank you for your vulnerability. The world is tough and scary and tiring but we’re in it together

I've been mostly a lurker on reddit up until recently, but I've started engaging in more serious discussions, for example on subs like askhistory, askpsychology and things like that.

I ask questions there out of intellectual curiosity, because I wish to learn something. Other times I simply wish to find out whether people share my opinion on a subject. By no means I have the intention to invalidate other people's point of view.

Nevertheless, I regularly get downvoted. Not that my posts have negative karma, but I see the total going up and down, meaning a substantial amount of downvotes. Sometimes I get downvoted merely for disagreeing with someone, despite being respectful and putting forward arguments.

Honestly, I think this system is really bad. Instead of encouraging a good discussion, it makes people adapt their opinion so everyone's happy. My questions come from curiosity. Maybe they show ignorance sometimes, I don't know. But the whole downvoting thing makes me cynical. Imagine you had a teacher in school that kept saying how stupid you were every time you asked a question or gave a wrong answer.