/ot/ - off-topic

Sharing some good videos to start the thread

anything by this guy is a big recommendation of mine

>>597618
this one also helped me a lot

this was also a fun watch

have you guys dealt with someone close to you frequently lying? my mom (who im sure must have some sort of personality disorder) frequently lies to me or keeps things hidden from me.

this summer we had planned to take a trip to a city that's 1 hour away, but she was too lazy to drive and lied about her car being broken.

when our family cat ran away (due to her sheer stupidity and irresponsibility) she forbade my brother, who lives with her, from telling me about it.

she also lied about me and my brother having the same dad kek.

the worst thing is that she's a terrible liar!! and when she eventually decides to tell me the truth she does it in such a defensive way.

>>597625
One of my close friends growing up lied for attention. Like, she would exaggerate everything to the point that it was laughably obvious she was full of shit.

Your mom sounds like she's lying to avoid conflict. Either way, it's annoying and shitty not to be able to trust someone like that.

>>597625
One of my friends in high school was a pathalogical liar.
She lied about everything ranging from what she ate yesterday to where she was from.
Last straw was when she lied to everyone in our school that she, our three other friends and I had group sex. She didn't even gain anything from that. We were just bullied more because of her lie.

She later told our mutual friend that she lies as a self defense mechanism for poor self esteem or w/e but I couldn't give less of a shit what her excuse was and completely ignored her until I graduated.

Once someones ridiculous lies start to hurt you personally, you should just drop them from your life.

Never let anyone use you as a personal therapist. If that person needs therapy but refuses because of some BS like 'I don't need it,' then get away from them. Of course you should listen to a person if they want you to bend a ear, but make sure that they don't take advantage of that and cause you heavy emotional labor. This article explains it better than I can.
https://www.glamour.com/story/emotional-labor-friendship

>>597622
this youtube channel looks entertaining, thanks for sharing this video

>toxic
lmao y'all do y'all tho

I've got a long one that I'll try my hardest to condense.

I met him when I was a month shy of turning 17. He was 23 and new to my city and job at a little indie bookstore. We became close due to being the two youngest employees, and him having to retrain me after some extended time off. I didn't drive so he began giving me rides to my grandparents' after work. He got a cat around the time I started my junior year of high school and asked me on yearbook photos day if I'd like to meet it, knowing I'm an animal lover. The first time he kissed me, that cat was squeezing between us to sit on his lap. And he'd pull away, say, "We shouldn't be doing this," before kissing me again. Then he took me home. We'd made plans to have lunch the following day, talk things through, but he canceled after making me wait an hour for him, citing a panic attack from having made-out with a 17-year-old. The guilt was "overwhelming."

He clearly didn't feel guilty for long because he took my virginity a week later. I gushed about it to my friends in homeroom on Monday. They told me he'd hurt me, pleaded with me to stop seeing him. I didn't listen. We started a clandestine friends-with-benefits relationship. I thought we were dating. He never put a label on things, and I was always too nervous to ask. It always felt too fragile.

We were sleeping together for around 3-4 months the first time around. During this time, he'd regularly cancel our plans and began to go around his house and meticulously pluck any of my fallen hairs from his couch, shower, and bed. He told me of a 16-year-old girl who attended the youth groups his roommate ran, her crush on him and awkward attempts at flirting for about a month. It was only after she "tripped" into his lap while on her way to the bathroom on meeting that he stopped helping his roommate. The only good thing he ever did was convince me to move in with my grandparents for the sake of my mental health (and to be closer to him and the store).

He broke it off the first time right after he turned 24. I'd written him a long birthday card all but professing my love for him. A month later, on Valentine's Day, he texted me to whine that a woman he'd fallen in love with had broken his heart. I asked him, "How the fuck do you fall in love with someone in three weeks?" to which he replied, "You just can." A couple weeks later, a coworker casually dropped the woman's name while making conversation with him. I kept it in the back of my mind.

Somehow he convinced me to try things again a couple months later. He'd sworn up and down that he'd never been with [Woman] as the same time as me. I believed him. The first time we were intimate after agreeing to see each other again was in the stockroom. He started choking me but it was harder than it'd ever been before. He nearly made me black out. Later, when I asked him why he'd done that, he told me, "Because I was angry with you. I only stopped when the your face was turning red and your veins starting popping out."

This time around, he promised me we'd try to be together when I turned 18. Then he got a new job back in his old city. He broke things off the final time exactly a week before my 18th. I was so distraught that I vented to one of my female coworkers the following week. She'd had an inkling something was going on and told me point-blank that he'd been seeing [Woman] the entire time. She and almost all of our other coworkers had met her – he'd brought her by the store at some point. I flipped my fucking shit on him that night. He told me this coworker and another one were both lying. He said he needed space. I didn't give it to him.

Eventually, after another few months of making each other miserable, him reducing me to a "CRAZY FUCK BUDDY" on Reddit and deleting his account after I responded to tell OP the crazy fuck buddy was underage and he'd run away back home with a job under his of-age girlfriend's daddy's thumb to avoid repercussions; us making up after [Woman] broke up with him for verbally abusing her for being on the phone with a friend during a car ride and him using me for phone sex and nudes nightly then abruptly declaring things platonic before calling me while drunk one night to complain that [Woman] thought she was pregnant and wouldn't talk to him, I messaged her. I let her know everything he'd done. I was selfish at the time and didn't tell her of the other girls. I thought she'd reply but she didn't. He called me thrice that night and left angry text messages. Later, he'd try to convince me she'd laughed at me.

Flash forward nearly 5 years. I found out this fall that he was applying to grad school for music. He'd previously told me of a time he shadowed a middle-school music teacher in order to obtain his undergrad music degree. He'd backed out once a seventh-grader "tried flirting with [him]." I panicked. What would he do except become a teacher? My 22nd birthday present to myself was sending a 7-pages-long exposé pdf to that very same job under his same doormat girlfriend's daddy's thumb's company and exposing him on social media. The company never replied but word reached him this past week once my friend made a separate call-out post for him. He locked everything down. I posted a negative review to his company's Google reviews, attaching screenshots of the entire report.

I still work at the bookstore and (thankfully I'm going back to school for paralegal work and have an attorney asking me to send him my cover letter as he reads them at his small firm and thinks I "deserve a chance at a good career") this fucker walks through the door today at 2:30 PM, wearing the same overgrown frat bro uniform as always – a general ply mask and sunglasses to slip past the bosses that hate him and would've kicked him out. He drove 2 hours to try to intimidate me into no longer speaking out while in a lazy disguise, if you can even call it that. I'd know him anywhere, but especially when we locked eyes across the store and death-glared at each other – it was charged in a way I haven't experienced in years. I ignored him after that, cackling with my coworker and joking with the manager he once believed liked him. I sauntered past him when guiding a customer to the section they were looking for. I made moon-eyes at the store's favorite male customer while walking past him, knowing he was staring holes into me – I was certain it was him then, he had his sunglasses off. I carried on like normal, no discernable reaction. Like he wasn't even there. He never spoke a single word and eventually left without buying anything.

When I got home tonight, I emailed his job's HR again. "Considering I never received any semblance of a response from a major, nationwide [redacted] company priding itself in having supposed Christian and charitable values about one of your employees being a statutory rapist and child predator to the point that I was forced to leave a negative review exposing him as such to not only the entire workplace but also the public, I will assume he has been dealt with.

The rationale being that [Fucker] set all his social media profiles to private before deciding to drive 2 hours up to [City] just to walk into [bookstore], where I still work – and where he exploited his seniority over me in order to sexually, mentally, and emotionally abuse me for a year. It is also where he physically assaulted me – at 2:30 PM today, wearing a mask and sunglasses so that my bosses would not recognize him, in a cowardly attempt to intimidate me. He wandered around the store for about half an hour, glaring at me when not pretending to look at books. I was positive it was him once I walked past him while directing a different customer and he had his sunglasses off. He did not speak to me, or anyone else. I completely ignored him, laughing with my coworker and joking with the manager that [he] once believed liked him. I'm thankful that he came in during the busiest part of the day. I was never alone at the front of the store. I do not know what he would have done otherwise – eventually, he just left, still without saying a word, and without buying anything."

Will obviously update if they ever get back to me. I'm not holding my breath.

Pic related is from Lawns by Mona Simpson. That quote rewired my brain.

this helped me understand some stuff, maybe it can help someone else too

>>600105
shit like this is so relatable but makes me feel like a snowflake because no one around me talks about emotional neglect. But then I realize a lot of them probably experienced it as well but had other healthy outlets and people in their lives who gave them attention and love. I was emotionally neglected by my mom and I didn't get that type of attention at school or through friends.

My mom set me up for failure in a lot of was and I want one person to take me seriously when I say that. I'm willing to take responsibility for my actions, but I need people to acknowledge I didn't turn into the poor decision maker I am overnight and through my own doing.

This gonna be long and whiny but I'm still scarred and don't know how to get over it

I knew this guy when I was 15, in school and get a massive crush. After talking a bit, surprise, he's gay. Ok, no biggie! (I handle well rejections after I learned that it's better to built the relationship before than waiting to be too invested, plus I literally cannot fall in love if the person is not comofrtable with me.), get over it and we become besties. Pretty cool, pretty nice, we share the same music, interests, overall I spent a good amount of months.
Turning 16, he cuts off all of his friendships and starts cutting off even his cousins and one of their parents and ONLY talks to me. Literally. We went to the same school but didn't live close, if I did go out with other friends, he would pester me the entire time, wanting attention, wanting to chat all the time because "everyone is so mean to me, so I cut them off" bullshit.
I get another crush and made the ungodly error to tell him, he immediatly searched up this another guy on facebook by mixing and matching profiles and threatened to spread a rumor, if I didn't cut off all contacts with him, that he raped me and is a bad person. Stupid choice, for keeping my crush safe, I decided to not to see him anymore. After this all went to shit.
For a couple years, I was a complete sucker of him.
Always with him on the phone (mind you, he spread rumors about my friends being bad and didn't want more so I cut off them), if I was at his home I had to take my phone everywhere or he will get thru it, messing up my texts, telling me to not to talk to even my dad and such, because he was suicidal and told me that I was his "life support because I was the only good person to him".
I made some friends online, a really nice group, and he obviously noticed. One of these friends of mine is bi and he got advantage of this. He started texting him and the two got close. "Eh." I said, because I didn't wanna seem nosy, so good for them I guess.
By doing this, he thought he gained access to our facebook group (I know it's childish but it was cute, basically since we commented our stuff so often, we made a group only by ourselves so we could talk more closely about the things that interesed us. It was no secret or exclusive thing but it was "our space" you know)and asked my bi friend to join.
Why?
"There's (me) there. I just wanna see what she's doing"
My bi friend, let's call him F, said no and thank god, they were together for a couple months before splitting up but F didn't know about anything in between me and him
Then he, let's call him C, threw a fucking tantrum with me, saying that I had shit friends, that he knew from F that all of the group was badmouthing me and etc. Obiouvsly, none of this was happening but F didn't know about the tantrum. I couldn't speak about anything he said to me from the fear that he would spread rumors again.
F wanted to move to my city, because there's a nice uni. Cool thing, F! :D
F and I get close and we become and still are good friends.
F moves in with two roomates, J and M.
We go out pretty often and I fall head over heels for M. At this time, I was "leaving" C more and more everyday, since I was enjoying their company.
Me and M get together. C knew from F because you know, casual conversation and oh boy, he was fuming but didn't know how to reach me for threwing his rage.
So what did he do? He tried to manipulate F.
"You know, I miss you and your company" and blah blah blah so when I was at their home with M, he came to visit. Multiple times, only to check up on me.
F got tired and said fuck you to C, to the point I was feeling free and told everything to everyone what was happening and that I was sorry for being such a mess and had to clean up his mess. C goes into the void for a year.
Me and M are still together! One night C reacts on one of M's pictures, where there's me, on instagram.
Right after that, he sends me a long ass text where he say he's sorry and wants to see me again. I say "No."
The. same. tantrum. I just say "fuck you"

Because of this and all the years (7 in total) being thru this mess now everytime I enjoy some time without my boyfriend I always text him from the fear that he could feel alone or abandoned. It happened a few times where I texted M "Sorry, M, I'll come back to you soon, I just wanna go to the cinema with some girl friends, in two hours I'll text you again" and M just replying "Enjoy your time baby, I'll enjoy mine with F and J too!" and then panic because I would take that as some sort of passive aggressive text. Is there some way I can heal? I'm in therapy for this….

>>597613
mom:
>is extremly generous, but mostly when it's at someone else's cost - be it my brother(that lives in completly different town), that was told to ride her icelandic friend around the city, "buy her an amber as a souvenir" or her using me as graphic designer, since she doesn't want to pay for a work (basically forced me to make her a logo and kept calling me every day how is the progress. The whole primary/middle/high school I heard how she must be ashamed of me because of my grades and once they finally got very nice in art school she didn't give a single fuck and kept telling me to do her a favor. I remember after the call I went to the bathroom and bursted into tears like never before. Ah and ofc, I wasn't paid anything)
>always when she brags me about her personal life, she hept saying "just don't tell your father" (they're divorced), dad usually learned anyway because she kept bragging it to everyone
>when I was younger and my grandma was diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was arguing with dad how she can annul the marriage now, because "he was hiding his mother's illness from her"
>if you don't do what she wants, you're suddenly irresponsible and "used to me wiser"
>never apologizes, used to hit me frequently when I was 8-12 or slap me for stupid reasons because I was "problematic and naughty child"
>doesn't give a damn about mental health issues, my brother gained much weight after taking antidepressants and all she talks about is how he needs to lose weight
>used to have meltdowns once sister sided with dad, yelling that it's because dad has more money and he "bought her"
I sometimes wonder if she qualifies as narc parent. All three of us (her children) don't ever want to live with her again (we all left our hometown). Extra points for me being closeted lesbian and her being alt-right.

>>597725
this is literally a girl I'm friends with. she tries to run to me with her problems and I use to coddle her but I've started to tell her like it is and that her decisions are stupid, and I'm slowly moving towards grey rock. She's been talking to me less and less and it's great.

>>600745
Are you me? My incarnation of this friend literally told me she doesn't need a therapist because she has me, to which I respond that she does need one because I'm not one and I don't want to be, then she cries because she has "nobody else to talk to", implying I should take it because she's too autistic to make other friends. Am also slowly ghosting (after a dozen attempts at explaining why this isn't healthy for our friendship and trying to set boundaries)

>>600698
Sounds like a narc to me. Or just a selfish asshole at the very least. You and your brother should no longer do her favours if you can help it. Sorry but you deserve way better than her.

>>600745
Yeah I had a friend like this. I became super observant of the flow of our conversations. Eventually I started resenting him because our conversations were literally all about him and if I wanted to talk about myself I had to force my way in. It hurt a fuck ton because I was stuck in an abusive situation with my mom's boyfriend and despite knowing that he would still talk to me about 'problems' with girls on Tinder as if it was the end of the world. After a few weeks I told him how I felt and said I don't want to be friends anymore.
Honestly it's very liberating to send a very ~calm~ letter to a toxic person stating why you don't enjoy their company. Would recommend. You gotta reply to their reply though or you look like a weak bitch.

Literally one of the best things I did for myself was separate myself from a toxic friend group, god damn the transition was hard. I contemplated many times about going back and apologizing, but 2 years later I'm so much better off. I'm surrounded by people who appreciate me, and like what I bring to the table. I think the hardest part about breaking off from a toxic relationship is that you miss the good times you had together, you start to think of all the good attributes they had but at the end of the day you know you were treated like trash.

Sometimes I look back, and wonder if I could have handled our break off in a more polite way, but I'm better off like this I think. There's only so much back talking, lying and exclusion that a person can handle.

i read a tweet the other day about how many people had that "one friend in highschool that hated them/was simultaneously jealous/possessive of them/gaslit you and degraded you/etc." and a lot of people in the replies said it happened to them too. i didnt even realize she actually abused me, and that was abuse. jesus christ. she made it seem like i was the bad one to her friends when i finally had enough and started lashing out, anons i dont want to hold this over my head anymore. i have become afraid of friendships and relationships, i truly just want peace. two years of that constant suffering when it first started, before she was so sweet to me. how will i ever even trust again?

>>601250
unrelated but lmao anon is this a fucking float of the bogdanoff twins

My mother immediately internalizes whatever she hears and puts the people around her on pedestals. Marge from church says that immigrants are the devil? My mother is now of the same opinion. Her travel mate says that immigrants should be helped because they are poor and helpless? My mother is now of the same opinion. She's like a windmill going whichever direction the wind blows. She treats people's opinions as God's word and cites them as if they were infallible. Does this behavior has a name? What is this?

>>601848
Indeed it is! It's to lighten the mood for others and for myself.

>>602096
Kek my grandfather is like this. We, his own family, can suggest a million sensible things to him but of course we are all wrong, stupid, stop talking to me, blah blah blah. But then he will go and meet some bitch at the park who will tell him about this product at the grocery store, and he will go and buy it that day and then try to force us to like it, too.

Or he will compliment the fuck out of the neighbor's yard, how pretty it is, oh look at how they did this and that, and then I look out the window to see what he is gushing about and it is the same cookie cutter grass + half-dead palm trees + costco solar lights combo you see all over the neighborhood.

I don't know if there is a proper term for this kind of personality but in my own experience dealing with someone like this, your mom is an asshole, just like my grandfather who tried to force our dogs to be vegan because so and so at Walmart told me so!!!!

Just be glad you are not this stupid.

Late but whatever.
I'm at a point in my life when I realize that I don't share much in common with my high school friends and never did. I'm pretty sure that for the most part we only hung out because we were nerds. I've realized that I just don't like them much and yesterday was the tipping point.
I'm 26 I should be seeking others who i enjoy being around. Not to mention for years I've been dealing with their toxic traits…
I deserve better, hell none of them talk to me or ask about my life the same way I do for them. It's obvious that we have nothing left, why keep trying?

>>597613
Greywalling always works.