im definitely a much worse human than i was 20 years ago. stripped of all empathy for others and generally narcissistic and selfish. I also hate women and californians which i didnt really care about before.
Date: July 7th, 2026 1:50 PM Author: wild soul-stirring new version native
i like that i'm willing to engage in painful and recursive self reflection, that i'm willing to delve down into issues far deeper than most people that i know, that i handle my responsibilities fairly well, i think my takes are fairly unique as far as they go. mostly though i like that i'm accepting my path more than before, which is a narrow and very obscure one and has been very hard to accept
Date: July 7th, 2026 2:20 PM Author: Chartreuse Resort Cuck
am I proud? not really, in terms of career there are an infinite number of people more skilled than I am, nor do I have kids so there's nothing for me to be innately proud of. I would consider ragnus-tier what I would actually be proud of and I neither have the IQ nor the drive to get there. I more consider myself extremely lucky and blessed than proud
That's not to say I don't enjoy it though, for as long as it lasts until I get blown away by AI. Nor is it to say I don't have an ego, because I would not change places with anyone. I like who I am and I'm right and you're wrong.
Date: July 7th, 2026 5:16 PM Author: Fucking Fuckface
Can't have any wasted time interfering with productivity over decades of a fraud-ridden lifetime. Whatever you do, keep your nose near the grindstone and don't you dare pop your head up to look around
Date: July 7th, 2026 5:19 PM Author: Multi-colored locale gunner
not even remotely the point. if anything, this mindset is more amenable to just letting things happen. "address the issue" might mean just saying ok. Like a serenity prayer thing.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:25 PM Author: diverse disrespectful university
like myself - Sure.
are you proud of, satisfied with who you are - Sure. As a kid I would be perfectly happy with this outcome.
who others recognize you to be - This is the only one that really changed with time for me. Most people dgaf about you. They're not really impressed or deem you insufficiently prestigious or whatever. They simply go about their lives and only care about you to the extent you mean something to their lives. Therefore, worrying about this is incredibly stupid.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:29 PM Author: abusive piazza
you are being aggressively judged both consciously and unconsciously every single time you step out your door. every one of your coworkers, every single person you know, everyone who lays eyes on you for more than a couple of seconds has a very concrete notion of who you are. they don’t have to “give a fuck” to judge, judgment is inevitable.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:55 PM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
not flame, being fat is a sin. nothing in nature is fat. it's a sign of our sickness. it should be shamed into the ground, but i recognize the difficulty of staying fit in modern america. i think we celebrate it because it's so obviously repulsive but we feel helpless against it. so like we all know it's bad but we cheer it on anyway because what can we really do? look around, everyone is obese.
and we should all be fit, but it has nothing to do with other people. it's for yourself.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:58 PM Author: abusive piazza
not disagreeing with u but i think ur being too particular about the language here to make a separate point than the original question is gesturing towards
Date: July 8th, 2026 12:00 AM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
he should feel undignified for himself, for his own pride, for his own inability to move and thrive in the material world. he's worn out walking from the restaurant to his car. it's pathetic.
and even if no one else existed, the fat man should feel ashamed. we struggle with fatness because historically it was a sign of prosperity, but now it's the complete opposite. it's a sign of submission, of weakness. even if no one sees him huffing and puffing across the parking lot, he knows it's ridiculous.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:47 PM Author: diverse disrespectful university
Real talk: most people here are UMC lawyers with a net worth of roughly $3m. To the legit rich (those with $100m+) we're losers, your daycare teachers thinks you're absurdly rich. In general, everyone is a loser to people significantly above them and a winner to people significantly below them. People with $100m are losers to people worth $10b+. This is why caring about "yourself in the eyes of the world" is retarded. If you're really asking "did we end up in the place we would have been ok with as kids" then that's fair and my answer is yes, definitely. But I sense that this isn't really what you're asking.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:42 PM Author: diverse disrespectful university
Not really, they're thinking about their SO/work/whatever game/buying a boat or computer or house or car or whatever/where they want to hang out later/their kids or other family/some show or movie they were watching/their next vacation... You are mostly invisible to them except to the extent you matter to their world in some way, and for most of these people that is in some minimal way. Sure, outliers produce judgment - the homeless guy walking towards you, for example.
When you're young you really think this way and everything matters and how important it is to be popular and well liked and all of that. That's because young people live in a very unattached world focused on establishing everything - their relationships (social, professional and romantic) and therefore this worldview makes sense. When you get older that becomes fundamentally untrue. Everything is settled and it doesn't really matter. Further, your own views on people reflect this. What do I think about whatever intern? Mostly a big shrug. They're unlikely to blow my socks off and to the extent they're very memorable it is probably a bad thing.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:46 PM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
what if it's just money? people only pretend as long as they need the money. at 40 a lot of us are ready to walk, so we don't care anymore.
this was like the whole hipster identity - how young can you be and still act like nothing matters? well that depends on how much money you have. popularity is just a proxy for wealth.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:54 PM Author: diverse disrespectful university
I don't think so. Plenty of young people with pretty settled life paths dgaf about any of that shit. It takes longer for UMC striver types because it takes much longer for us to get settled in life.
Imagine that you go to sleep tonight and you wake up. Your life was just a dream. A super weird dream. Instead, you're starting whatever grade. New school. Your memories are coming back - you hope this one cute girl is there. Oh, and your best friend moved away so he won't be there, which sucks. Your perspective will go back into that worrying how everyone views you, who you'll be friends with, who you'll date, how the teachers will see you because that'll impact your grades, etc. None of that shit impacts us now. We're married and have kids, we have settled jobs and careers. It is a different perspective entirely. It isn't just because we have enough money - I certainly don't and if I lost my job I'd have to find a new one.
Date: July 8th, 2026 12:07 AM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
yeah that's fair, the 45 year old ohio teacher is just as settled as the 45 year old LA lawyer.
if we had to start over again now there's really nothing there. like what would you do, take up yoga? enroll in some artsy masters? you're in your 40s. no one wants to hang out with you. there's no structure for the midlife crisis. the cute girl isn't there.
Date: July 8th, 2026 12:17 AM Author: diverse disrespectful university
Idk, I'm perfectly happy with what I do and my area and wouldn't want to "be an artist" or whatever. I suppose I could take up yoga but have no interest in doing so. Plenty of people our age and older take up new hobbies. And if anything getting a "cute girl" is much easier - you can get a sugarbaby (even Are Reptile managed this) or straight up escort. If you mean a high school like relationship where she comes over to your house and checks out your CD collection and you talk about your favorite class at school then no, that isn't a thing for us.
I actually don't feel any pull towards the whole midlife crisis thing. I'm happy with where I ended up, I don't feel "my youthful vitality fading" whatever that means. Yes, this stage of life is different but I don't have an issue with that. Maybe if I were more disconnected with my family or unhappy with my career.
Date: July 8th, 2026 12:21 AM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
i'm not unhappy with my career but it doesn't mean anything to me. i'm very fortunate and grateful, and i'd hate to lose it, but it'd be a kind of relief if it all went away and i had to start over. ofc within a couple months i'd be wishing i had my sweet lawyer gig again.
it's just so meh. and i understand that's almost everyone's life, at least mine is comfortable, but i keep seeing what looks like idiots who have self actualized and it makes me disappointed with myself. like i'm not interested in this at all, and i never have been, i was just good at school and figured this was the next step. and now i'm 45 and it's over.
Date: July 8th, 2026 12:27 AM Author: diverse disrespectful university
"i'd hate to lose, but it'd be a kind of relief if it all went away and i had to start over"
My takeaway from this is that you don't really like your job but you like the money and the success. That's kind of rough. I'm a tech dork that does tech dork things for a living so I'm as happy as a pig in shit.
I hope you at least work in something with decent work-life balance so the "meh" isn't your entire life. When I first started biglaw my office was next to a partner who was depressed and miserable. I knew this because he would call his psychologist from the office and would sometimes forget to close the door. The stuff I heard made me keenly aware that I didn't want to end up like that guy.
Date: July 8th, 2026 12:30 AM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
work life balance is 180, i really can't complain about anything. but here i am, griping about it because it isn't fulfilling at all. just a total waste of time, years of your life in exchange for money type of thing. and i recognize that's a good outcome for 95% of people, but i'm supposed to be talented.
i feel like you tech dorks would still dabble in tech dork shit if you had millions of dollars. i'd never talk to a lawyer again.
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:43 PM Author: controlling a virtual character on a computer
yeah they're judging you but they don't actually care about you
the above guy is 100% correct. we all carry around the default assumption that other people are thinking about us 24/7, because we are thinking about ourselves 24/7
but other people really just do not care about you beyond how you affect them personally. and so the more you can live your life among those people exclusively (those whose lives you actually affect, and who actually affect your life), and the less you can expose yourself to the meaningless masses beyond them, the better your life will be
Date: July 8th, 2026 6:34 PM Author: Chartreuse Resort Cuck
"we all carry around the default assumption that other people are thinking about us 24/7, because we are thinking about ourselves 24/7."
it took me a very, very long time to understand this and how fundamental it is to understanding how many people think and view themselves. i always thought from a baseline of "I have an ego and I'm mostly only thinking about myself, not other people, therefore nobody else actually gives a shit about me"; it never dawned on me until I was basically 30 that many people actually arrive at the opposite conclusion ("I am obsessed with myself therefore everyone else is as well"). it genuinely blew my mind when I realized e.g. relatives blabbering about other non-immediate relatives thinking they're all judging each other and the like was genuine and not some sort of schtick
Date: July 7th, 2026 11:28 PM Author: Provocative Idiotic Boltzmann Public Bath
halfway. i'm a kind, thoughtful, responsible guy, everyone has liked me throughout my life, even my wife. i've seen and done a lot, but the more i see the more i realize how small my world was, is, and will be. i'm a nobody from nowhere. i go to these places where families have been grinding it out for 500 years and it blows my mind. my family has been here for ~120 years and we have nothing to show for it. i'm smart but lazy as shit, i've coasted on talent my whole life, and it's led me to a pretty cool place with a lot of cool experiences but nothing exceptional. but i also realize it's all flame, so why hustle for more? i never swung for the fences, so why not just run around the field and be happy with it. i'm just fending off boredom at this point. i wish there was something more meaningful, but i don't see it happening. it seems so ingrained. you see the hustlers and think they would've made it no matter what. or the rich kids who it was just laid out in front of them from day one. i never had the drive for a purposeful life. i should've been a prole.
Date: July 8th, 2026 3:26 AM Author: abusive piazza
half the people itt are using the excuse of "nobody actually cares about me" to excuse the fact that they are stupid ugly faggots who are blights upon the surface of the earth and an offense to mankind
I don't know how a middle-age XOer can not be "proud of, satisfied with who you are, who others recognize you to be." You've had ~40 years to work on this.
Granted, I'd like to have the combined genetics of Lee Priest & Richard Feynman and a trust fund set up by great-grandpa Rothschild, but I don't think that was the intent of the hypo.
Date: July 8th, 2026 7:26 PM Author: Chartreuse Resort Cuck
the problem for most people is that coming up with a vision, and realizing that vision, is genuinely hard. for most of history circumstances were forced upon 99% of the population. the choice and opportunity of self actualization is not something we are used to as a species and you shouldn't belittle people who struggle with it.
40 years is more than enough time to achieve pride & satisfaction in oneself.
I'm thinking XOers are plagued by the striver mindset where someone feels themself to be a failure because they got dinged at Harvard and ended up at Princeton, only make $250k instead of $250M, or can only bench 315 instead of 495.
If a person's unhappy due to obesity, bad financial choices, or drug addition, that's just a failure to learn or execute (over a period of 40 or so years).
Perhaps I'm biased because I can't imagine why so many people feel unhappiness, shame, or a lack of pride (excluding external circumstances forced upon them)... or why 15-20% of Americans are on anti-depressants.
Date: July 8th, 2026 6:48 PM Author: rough-skinned flirting step-uncle's house death wish
I like myself more than I suspect the vast majority of people I know well would like me if they knew me and all my thoughts and feelings and things I’ve done as well as I do. I sometimes worry that means I’m a psychopath, but just haven’t gotten around to committing any violent crimes yet.
Re “who others recognize me to be” I am reasonably satisfied but annoyed that I’m not more wealthy like many of my friends are despite the fact that we all have nearly identical CVs and specializations ie I have several friends who got very lucky with RSUs and I left a low seven figures worth of RSUs on the table when I decided to shift my career during Covid. But nearly all of them have worse kids and wives and live in shittier places than I lived for most of my career. I’d be extremely satisfied with how I am perceived if I can get a promotion and up my total comp about 20-30% sometime in the next 3 years or so.