A deeper reason behind our isolation?

Subscribing to our lowlife lifestlye, we are removing ourselves from having an convenient online presence to interact with other people or no online presence at all. Lains have understood this sacrifice for the benefits of being private. However, I've been taking more extreme lifestlye changes than compared to my friends, colleagues and contemporaries. Such as a eating a whole food diet, so I can't eat out in the same places they would like to it. Different tastes in music, movies, so we cannot relate on that front, and other stuff. Ultimately I'm wondering if I'm digging a hole into these niche practices because I genuinely love and believe what I'm doing or is it because I'm afraid of being open around people. Hopefully this makes sense to someone and I would love to hear what you guys have to say.

I think its a combination of both. That isnt to say its bad to have a niche lifestyle, its just a lot harder to find people that you can integrate in your life. Hanging on to people that dont fit your true self isnt worth it.

>>34970 >A deeper reason behind our isolation? dealing with people is a pain

I'm quite normal and hang out with people IRL. It's just that I got fed up with Facebook years ago and then got into the anti-social media rabbit hole in imageboards and such. Nowadays the thought of having something like a twitter account disgusts me deeply. I'd rather build a life outside.

>>34970 >Ultimately I'm wondering if I'm digging a hole into these niche practices because I genuinely love and believe what I'm doing or is it because I'm afraid of being open around people. I've done this to myself and it's good and bad. Overall I wouldn't recommend it. I was a fitness nut for years and ate tons of vegetables and protein and soykaf. Weighed my food, etc Didn't have cable television back when almost everyone else did. Had extensive adblocking and custom scripts/css, used rss feeds. When I'd see a stray ad it was jarring as fuarrrk. I got my news from a custom set of RSS feeds that were then filtered to remove all goofy human interest stories, entertainment news, sports. I lived somewhat monastically, with the heat off, spent my evenings studying and working out. Generally I was happy but lonely. I found I couldn't talk to new people, my girlfriends would flip out about what was in my fridge even though I told them they could go to the store and even spend my money on whatever the fuarrrk it was they ate. I would go out and party with a few friends and have people at my house for beers quite often but that was it. Around normal people I could talk about working out, politics, getting laid, doing drugs, and that was just about it. I never had any idea what shows were popular, what movies were out. I had and have issues, I was able to deal with them in isolation but it was easy for outside events to disrupt my life and send me off balance. I was at the time, entirely unaware of the root causes of my problems. They could pop up randomly and send me into month long depressive episodes, I'd have no idea why I was so sad, why my concentration would fall apart, why I'd lose my charm and become a ball of anxiety and nerves.

When I was a kid and just starting to use the internet my parents always told me not to tell people who I was or anything about myself, there was a big pedo scare at the time. I guess that sort of sunk in and I really liked being anonymous online. Fast forward a bit and I'm now in my late teens and my peers are starting to get instagrams and such and I really just don't see the appeal. I have way more fun online when I'm pseudo-anonymous, and I just don't see why I should use those online services when I could just text people and/or talk to them in person. It's less uncommon than you may think. Many of my friends are the same way. WRT living unusual lifestyles, I'm pretty unusual in ways we don't need to get in to here, once I learned some basic social skills I don't think me being unusual has made any problems for me. People like weirdness if you temper it with kindness and openness. For instance if I go out I usually just eat beforehand and tell people I'm trying to save money, which is true enough. In the future I hope to change my lifestyle to be further from baseline, but it is not hard to imagine that this might involve actually becoming more social.

It's just what I'm used to. I don't know if I can say that I grew up "poor", but I was poor enough not to afford the luxuries the other kids had. For instance, I liked games. But I couldn't afford anything current, so I stuck to SNES-era emulators and Doom wads. This meant having no common ground with anyone and therefore being seen as boring. When I got older and started making enough money to buy and consume stuff, all I could think was, what's the point? I remember building a rig thinking "alright now I can finally play what everyone else has been playing"... and then I looked at all the games for sale and didn't find a single one interesting. At least I still get mileage out of it for non-gaming purposes.

>>34998 Same. I spent my childhood skimming the Wolf 3D dome for new TCs thinking Coming of the Storm was the greatest thing on earth, when I finally installed the Doom shareware it actually blew my mind despite all my classmates playing MGS or God of War at the time. It feels like I missed out on a big part of my own generation's culture due to having never owned a modern system (save for a cracked PSP 3000 with Metal Slug and a bunch of PSX homebrews) for most of my school years. Similarly many of my classmates from elementary to HS were big into manga and anime but I absolutely did not care for it at the time.

>>34998 Very similar story for me, but I do enjoy some modern games. Living in the middle of nowhere for all of my formative years was probably also a component for doing all my interactions online. If you weren't into the local sports, there really wasn't much that people were doing. This of course meant developing niche interests that basically no one local was into. Then I simply got used to doing so and felt comfortable continuing even when I moved into bigger towns and cities. Nowadays I just find that whenever I try normal person-oriented entertainment... it's awfully trite, oversimplified and uninteresting. So I have very little to say to other people living around me.

Social people will do activities that don't get in the way of being social. Their music is background music or music to dance to. Their movies are movies to watch while paying attention to each other, chilling in comfy sofas, chomping popcorn. Their video games are popular ones to discuss and play together. They play their sports together. Doing these things together with others increases the value of both the social interaction and activity, and since removing either makes the experience less valuable, they think of the social aspect and the activity as the single, same valuable thing. Niche interests often require silence and your attention, or the will and dedication to pursue the activity alone, at least initially. This means that you get used to pursuing it alone with your whole attention, so you'll be less willing to sacrifice that attention for the purpose of keeping things social. Regardless of how good the niche interest in, social peopel will reject it because it violates their recipe of social+background. They believe in the synergy of these two harder than they can believe in any activity by itself, so even if it's 10/10 it'll be more like 10/20. They will be willing to pick something worse because it can be consumed/done socially. A social person may become a fan of something niche because if it's good enough, they just need to sit down and experience it properly. But for a niche person to fit into a social situation, they have to consume enough background music/movies/games in their loneliness - where those things feel shabby - to be able to roll with a social group. The early inability to roll with the social group, and also the consumption of background music as a main course will make both the group and their activities feel more shallow than the complete experience is.

>>34998 big same. I have found some modern games that I enjoy playing with my friends but they are invariably 'retro', could have been made 10 years ago, or are based heavily on older games. >>35034 >Their movies are movies to watch while paying attention to each other, chilling in comfy sofas, chomping popcorn. tbf most movies work pretty well for this. Watching movies with friends and cracking jokes is an excellent experience, I highly recommend it. >But for a niche person to fit into a social situation, they have to consume enough background music/movies/games in their loneliness - where those things feel shabby - to be able to roll with a social group mmmaybe. In high school all my friends played League of Legends or Dota and I didn't like either, it kind of sucked because I never had any idea what they were talking about but I definitely could roll with the group.

>>35035 >tbf most movies work pretty well for this. Watching movies with friends and cracking jokes is an excellent experience, I highly recommend it. I think he meant stuff like blockbuster movies and he was specifying an audience of social people. Obviously there's a lot of movies that can be enjoyed with friends or even strangers though often this is unintentional on part of the movie. Like people group watching and laughing at the Room or two friends going over a movie they both liked in the past, it's either unintentional engagement or a personal experience. I pirated some Marvel stuff because I have friends into that soykaf. They're okay but not terribly interesting, though something that always annoyed me were the designated "audience cheers" moments that get telegraphed really hard, or lulls in conversations for the sake of audience laughter like they're almost expecting a laugh track. Also overindulgent CGI fights means you can half pay attention and not miss the important bits like who wins. It's the blockbuster intentionally being as socially accommodating as possible.

>>35044 oh man Marvel movies suck so much. I've never seen one past I think Iron Man 2 when I was a kid. And maybe one of the Thor movies too but they're so forgettable. Usually me and my buds watch indie movies bc we got one guy in the group who loves them.

This is a question only a therapist or someone who knows you well can answer. But at least you are asking it. Its true theres a thing called intellectualization where we create fairly logical narratives or choices that still ultimately are just there to avoid confronting something. Its probably the biggest contributor to most lainons struggles, because the ethos of this board is very much to retreat into your head when problems arise, to do it yourself. But when foundations for your thinking and highly valued things are just defense mechanisms the more you build on them the less you will ever break free of them. Its this combined with a paranoia. IE "my friend isnt capable of commenting on what im doing/how I think about things because they dont and will never understand me" Sometimes true, sometimes not, but I think it seems daunting to expose the inner world irregardless for most lainons. Especially for those of you still being entangled in your families values, judgements, etc. And then if there is truly no one to share your thought processes with, you need to find someone, another obstacle. Easier to retreat, to cease valuing things that might disturb our isolation. Which is fine. Or would be fine except a lot of you have an unshakeable morbid curiosity and hatred of boredom. If we were on wizardchan or something id just say its fine, we all branch down different new undiscovered paths in life and its asinine to say which is best. I only think its a negative because I think on average a lot of you want something new, and what is new lies in other people. And youl meet other people and get bored or frustrated with that too, and maybe youl cycle back to being a hermit. And maybe youl do this 3 times before getting bored of the cycle itself and find some middle ground, and get bored of that and do something amazing or horrifying. Id ask yourself whether you relate to that and whether you think its something you can live out in your bedroom, if so no harm done. If not though itd be best to maintain a connection with the outside world, perhaps maintain as many worlds as possible.

>>35046 also everyone has their own little internal media library. If you enjoy less popular stuff you just have less people to share with. But in any connection theres an exchange of media, stories, etc. and youl learn the other persons little knowledge base. I wouldnt worry about that too much.

I'm afraid maybe I'm too afraid to open up and as an excuse I'm pushing myself away from norms so I could feel in control for why I don't fit in. Blaming others for being dull, or too freaked out by me. Having this control over your life feels good when you, at least in your head control how people react to you

It's only the fear that holds you back. You're afraid of making mistakes that you're overcome by your anima. Most people don't even manifest their anima or their thinking self so they end up just doing what they want at the moment regardless of the risks or even dangers. >I've been taking more extreme lifestlye changes than compared to my friends, colleagues and contemporaries. Such as a eating a whole food diet, so I can't eat out in the same places they would like to it. Different tastes in music, movies, so we cannot relate on that front, and other stuff. Most people also fear this that's why they always magically align with their fellow co-normers to not miss out on the new TWD, GOT, new capeshit/netfix, new fad (like bubble tea or some matcha soykaf) the next time they meet each other but also it could be that they've been manipulated by these manipulative 'addicting' trendsetting platforms that used to follow the trends until they got the magic algorithm. FOMO is what it's called, if I remember. Remember the subcultures? Goth and all that, they're probably gone now for the sake of fitting in with the crowd . The crowd is great isn't it? Who doesn't like it? You're just true to yourself for having different-from-usual taste but that's not at all important. There's a lot of indie niches out there, it's just that most people take on the path of least resistance. The well-trodden path.

>>34970 That's odd to me. You're accusing yourself of deliberately picking up niche hobbies so that you have a valid excuse to be alone because you (secretly, secret to yourself that is) fear people. I'm always accusing myself of deliberately picking up niche hobbies so that when I do interact with people, I can give off an air of being unique and mysterious. The question for you (and me) would be: sincerely, do you enjoy these hobbies? Is your joy whilst engaging in these hobbies the predominant joy? That's all that matters. Even if, in some corner of your heart, you are happy that your hobbies give you an excuse to not spend time with people, if you truly do enjoy your hobbies and people-avoidance truly is just a side-benefit and nothing more then I think that's acceptable. You'll have to do some introspection to answer the question and really do your best to observe your inner feelings on this matter. I think it goes without saying that you should strive to be sincere with yourself. All delusions ultimately bring pain. It would be a tragedy if deep down, you really was using these obscure hobbies as an excuse to isolate yourself because you fear rejection. Striving for sincerity with one's self, you should re-shift your life priorities with what you really want on top.

>>3497 I feel you, lainon. Persuing my hobbies instead of maintaining friendships is something I've noticed in myself too. Programming and electronics projects are way more interesting and fun than people and not socializing doesn't show immediate drawbacks for me, only after some time I get some form of slow onset deep lonlieness and existential dread. So I isolate myself in my room playing with the blinkenlights only to wake up one day after two weeks with paralyzing lonlieness. I don't think I have a deeper explanation for that though. The only benefit of social interaction in my view is that it prevents that lonlieness. I'm not even scared of people, it's just that social situations require so much energy and offer too little of value in return.

>>35217 As someone, that never had a relationship I don't know if im scared of intimacy, but i am scared of opening up. i don;t like to revel much about myself and i like the idea of my friends not knowng much about me. its fun, but for the reasons OP

>A deeper reason behind our isolation? I think the reasons for that are ultimately different for everyone, with maybe a few overlaps here and there. Personally, my tendencies for self-isolation can be explained by a number of things. I was quite sheltered and had a massive sense of elitism cultivated in me, which led me to look down on others, distrust them and and avoid all unnecessary contact in general. I didn't have much shared values/interests/other with my peers: I didn't have the means to play the then new and popular games and I barely watched any TV or read any books and comics. As such, I spent most of my time on the Internet. I didn't make any new friends there, and it could be argued that it further isolated me from my immediate surroundings and the mainstream. The majority of Internet communities and the kind of interactions they offered were either seen as boring and pointless or were not entirely available to me, either due to hardware limitations or the linguistic barrier, seeing that I come from a non-English-speaking country. The content I consumed was almost entirely in English, however, so I persisted in learning the language. This put me in a grey zone where I couldn't connect with my Internet 'compatriots', but at the same time I couldn't really communicate with the English-speaking community. As I became more able at holding a conversation in English and all that, the differences in cultural backgrounds and the realia experienced made themselves evident. "Doritos", "Burger King", "McDonalds", "Xbox", "Halo", "Gamecube" and other little things that were so common to an average American/Westerner were more like abstract notions to me. I wished I could try all those things firsthand, but couldn't because of regional availability and (relatively) steep prices. Then my family moved to another country, and all the "real-life" problems above were made worse. On top of that, I started having problems with my mental health which were promptly ignored by my family. My reclusive tendencies peaked, my physical health suffered, I was staying inside most of the time, so I had nothing better to do than further practice my English and learn new hobbies that didn't require you to interact with others much, and were connected with computers. Then, one thing led to another and now I'm here. Regardless, I've occasionally made attempts at overcoming my prejudices towards people and media, becoming more sociable, and I'd say all of them felt extremely worth it, especially after years of more or less conscious avoidance, continued elitism and self-imposed seclusion. A part of me wishes I could take it further.

>>35217 Stop being literally me plz.

>>34970 maybe i'm just coping but i don't view myself as being fully at fault for my isolation. i'm willing to accept people who are strange or different or whatever, it's the normal users that expect 100% conformity at all times that I find uncomfortable. I even see the benefit of a certain level of societal conformity that I'm willing to sort of meet halfway with and all of that, i just think the average person makes things intolerable to even be near. even all of the "alternate" lifestyle choices that have become trendy over the past ten years are people attempting to be "weird" but within the boundaries of what is cool or whatever. i just think people are soykaf to be honest and you'd have to be naive to feel comfortable around them.

sounds like an honest effort but that can only be temporal. i dont think its about agreeing or disagreeing in tastes or choices, but about being able to stop giving importance to people's opinions, be them positive or negative. cause there, you are just doing the same as everyone but in te opposite sense, whch still consumes your mind in function of other's gaze. the thing is that minding about other people's view is an innate tendency in us, meant to allow us to adapt to our immediate group. getting rid of that, or at least shaping it in a new way, is something that needs more than just intention or conscious efforts.

>>35217 i can relate to this, but i've managed to find a couple people who don't really care about regular social interaction either and are fine with just talking online. it helps if you at least text them somewhat frequently. if i don't do that i feel like it's difficult to have a natural conversation because you have to spend a bunch of time catching eachother up on what's been going on in your lives, which can be draining if you just want to shoot the soykaf. some people need to see their friends in person or they don't feel like the friendship is "real". i think this is annoyingly high maintenance behavior, but it is what it is. regarding the loneliness.. i've gotten very good at finding places online i can speedrun social interaction if i'm craving it. livestreams with no viewers are great for this. chat rooms too. even just messaging some stranger privately on social media can work. this is probably not healthy behavior, but it's hard to motivate myself to cultivate deeper friendships when this kind of thing is so easy.

>>35034 This seems like a pretty good analysis. Somehow I've ended up doing most things alone in life, and it's become hard to see the value in doing things with other people since it inevitably distracts from whatever it is you're doing. At the beginning of the year, however, I started watching shows with a friend over discord. At first it annoyed me to have to divide my attention, but I've come to really enjoy his company. It's definitely a completely different experience from watching stuff on my own, and I see how one could easily fall to one extreme or the other of the social/solo activity spectrum as I mostly have. >>34986 >I don't think me being unusual has made any problems for me. People like weirdness if you temper it with kindness and openness. I think this answers our question, OP (because I've been asking myself the same thing). I think I've made it into a convenient excuse that "I can't relate to normal people because Marvel™ movies suck," when the truth is as stated above.

>>>35046 I'm thinking of going back to therapy, but i always end up leaving at the end

I don't listen to the same music as my friends No interest the same moves, shows, music, fashion I don't relate to ant of my friends, they're my roommates but I don't feel close to them at all.

>>37126 This is such a huge mood. Over the years I've diverged from everyone I know in every way.