 Alright, so I want to talk about a mentality out there that sort of annoys me, and I don't want to point any fingers, but some of my subscribers have this mentality, in fact a lot of them. Some of them have it jocularly, but it is out there, in fact it's all over society, so I think it's worth talking about. So a couple weeks ago, as you probably know, I made a forum, forum.lukesmith.xyz, and you know, of course there are various topics, most of them are technology, but I didn't make some sub-forms for like, I think there was one that was something like real-life topics or something like that, and the thing about that sub-form is right now it's a bunch of moping, and it's a bunch of, well you gotta put it in perspective, gotta say the obvious, so my subscriber base is not representative of the population at all. So first off, there's something like 98% male, that's not very representative, they, of course all, most of them are into computers, that's a smaller subset, most of them are into Linux and free software, or Vam or LaTeX, or you know, something weird, so I think the people who watch my videos are gonna be the kind of people who, let's say the kind of people who deprecatorily call themselves autistic, or the people who years ago you would have called nerds or something like that, but now that term's been totally degraded, but those are the kind of people who watch my videos, and so I have, so of course a lot of these people have a very self-conscious image of themselves where I'm a nerd, or whatever you wanna call it, I'm a weird person, I'm autistic, and that's something that sort of they wear as like an identity, because nowadays we live in a day where you have to be labeled with all of your mental traits as if they're like discrete diseases or something like that, like it can't be a personality trait, you know what I mean? And so a lot of these people went to the forum and basically, I get no offense to you if you did this, but a lot of people get in this mindset where I'm a particular person and I have these flaws that I can't overcome, or sometimes they take things that aren't flaws and assume that they're flaws because they're different from other people. Now first off, I think there are two main points to this. One is, first off, you're not weird, and second off, a lot of the things you think are weird are not really weird, in fact a lot of the things that you do that differentiate you from other people make you more normal than other people, okay? So on the first point, you're not weird. And to put it in perspective, first off, most of the people watching my channel are a little younger than I am. I'm 28. I got a lot of people watching this channel who are in high school or who are in college or something like that. They're in their early 20s or something. And let me just tell you, first off, from my perspective, I look back at my high school days and yeah, I have memories of high school, some good, some bad, mostly good. I think it wasn't particularly the good high school. But the thing about your high school days is that once they're over, they're over. Same thing with your middle school days and your elementary school days. Time passes and all of the little social things that you think are very important don't really matter. What matters for me in high school was the fact, for my personal development, is that's when I started getting into computers, I guess. That's also when I started learning Latin. That's when I started doing different things. Those kind of things lasted. The fleeting social encounters, if you looked awkward at some event or if you look really cool at some event, those things don't matter. First off, and if you're the kind of person who's a late bloomer or if you're someone who didn't socialize as quickly as other people, like maybe you're still in high school and you still say slightly inappropriate stuff and oh God, I must be autistic. There must be something wrong with me. No, that's a natural thing to happen. I'm sure maybe you can get diagnosed with autism if that means anything, but that's a totally normal thing for people to go through. I mean, totally quote unquote normal people, chads, they have the same thing. Go to a party and sometimes a lot of people say things that are just inappropriate and they totally mess up that isn't funny and it's just awkward or something like that. That's a normal thing to happen and when you do that, if you do something like that, you can't beat yourself over the head with it. It's a silly mentality. So the mentality you need to get it or other things like if you're 22 and you've never had sex, I'm sorry, you're not weird. Like there's nothing weird about that. I don't know when, what the average age that someone has sex, but it honestly doesn't matter, dude. That's something that so many people get obsessed with. Like so many people talk about their body counts like it matters and just as you get older, it's just like all watered under the bridge. I mean, the things you should be thinking about are the things that are permanent, skills you will have for life or when you do run into a relationship, whether that's romantic or rather that actually matters, be sure to keep watering that relationship. All the other ones, they don't really matter that much. So that's the first point. First off, you're not weird. Secondly, there are a lot of things you do that are different from other people, but that doesn't mean you're the weird one. And that is a lot of people who I hear in the comments section or on the forum will beat themselves so up over the fact that, oh, I don't like Game of Thrones and TV and normie stuff. I don't like going out to clubs. I don't like drinking. That's not very fun. I don't like small talk. And a lot of that is just totally normal. Like the thing, there are very few people I think in the world who really like going out to bars. They do it for different reasons. Sometimes they want to get dates. Sometimes they want to do different stuff. But no one really likes doing that, I think, at the core. They're, well, OK, there are some people. I know some people who like doing it. But if you're the kind of person who sees that and you're like, what the hell is going on, that's the totally normal reaction to have. The same thing is true. When it comes to TV, I can't watch TV without getting disgusted about different things. But if you're the kind of person who can't watch TV, that's totally normal. In all times and places, it's not a normal thing for people to sit in front of the TV and watch it for hours and hours. That's like a disease that occurred in the previous generation in our country. And that's never happened before. And hopefully, it never happens again. It was a terror. TV was a mistake. So if you don't like things like this, or even things like dating, so dating is sort of the same thing as binge watching TV. The institution of dating, as it exists right now, is really awkward and uncomfortable, right? Meeting someone you don't really know. Going out for dinner a couple times, the whole rigmarole is not like an organic institution the way that courtship used to be when we had civic institutions. You had community clubs. You went to church, stuff like that. We use dating because basically we're all bowling alone. We're all living in this isolated society. But my point is there are a lot of things about society that are sort of off. And if you feel weird because you don't like those things, it's not you who's wrong, you know what I mean? So don't beat yourself up about it. Anyway, so that's about it. Again, just don't get in the mindset of I'm a weird person. I'm diagnosable with some mental trait or something. That makes me different. I can't improve myself. I have to put myself in this box. And I have to be a prisoner in there. Just don't get yourself in that mindset. Yeah, people are different. Maybe it's harder for you to engage socially than other people. And that's not bad. I mean, the thing you have to remember about society, like we're not all supposed to be middle of the bell curve people. Some time society is a big genetic mesh and people have different traits and people do different things. And there's nothing wrong if you're the thing that you're supposed to do is something a little different. So my advice again for younger viewers, improve yourself. Don't worry about the social details if they're not going to last. If you think they will care about them, otherwise just ignore them. Actually, probably most things you think are important socially. They're probably still not important. But anyway, so that's pretty much it. It's sort of a random video. But I'll see you guys next time.