SkeletorJesus

Feels like, because of the way that media and culture is experienced in the modern day, I find myself looking for certain "types" of people. That's not to say I'm ignoring people's individuality or reducing them to caricatures, but there's definitely certain grooves that people fall into. Crypto guy is a type of guy, for example. They're not all the same, but they've got some very distinct and shared characteristics. I think, though, that some of these "types" of people are completely made up and do not exist in a substantial way. Most often, I think that these false typings come from sexual fantasy, objectification, and even a form of commodity fetishism. I think this is a huge part of online culture. It ranges from the "___ gf" kind of images to the starter pack meme format to whatever else you might find. Then there's the middle ground. My best example of that would be the idea of the egirl. There's definitely some people who could be categorized as authentic practitioners who simply are that way, but are generally exploded out of proportion because you can literally make a career being a content creator with that sort of persona and that sort of content gets plastered everywhere.

That's the normal level of unhealthy internet culture you'd expect, but I find myself struggling to differentiate between reality and the fiction of the internet. I might say a certain type of person is blown out of proportion by media and aren't that common since I never encounter them in my real life, but that logic doesn't hold any better than the idea that asian people are mostly fake because I haven't met very many. This starts being an issue when it shapes my expectations of people around me. "I wish I knew more people who had this kind of vibe. Wait, is that a real type of person? Is it just shallow bullshit I'm looking for for aesthetic reasons? Do people actually act like that? Do they really act/think like that, or are they just as internet poisoned as I am? Are there secretly lots of hot goth girls in New York but not Salt Lake City? Is that why the real estate is so expensive, or is it the other way around?" It really makes me feel like I am losing touch with reality in a way that is maybe not healthy, especially when it comes to looking for a partner. Often feels rather misogynistic in a way I can't put my finger on, too.

TL;DR how do you all differentiate between actual types of people and vague collections of biases?

Edit: I don't know why I worded this so poorly, but the notion I was looking for was a subculture. I think there are subcultures that are, to varying degrees, inorganic and overrepresented, but there is no way to have empirical data about the representation of such a vague notion of a subculture.

Two years on from graduating and I've become my computer science degree isn't worth the paper it was printed on, so I've made the decision to try and swing a civil engineering degree in two years. Enough credits transfer that it should be a normal class load. But beyond that, I want to get the hell out of the south yesterday. I want to give living in the PNW a shot and I'd rather avoid waiting another two years for it because I'm at that age where I get very self-conscious about what little time left I have as a """young""" person and how I need to meet somebody or get ready for a dating market where most people my age are taken. We're working with layers of complexes here.

My plan is to see if I can't convince the two friends of mine who were already looking to move to come with me, work a year so I qualify for in-state tuition, then do a two year in-and-out at the university of oregon. On the surface, moving 2500 miles away from the only place I've ever lived to go somewhere I've only heard about through the distorted lens of media in order to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt is a fantastically awful idea. Upon closer inspection, it continues to feel like a very bad idea. I could very easily end up far worse off than I started, and I'm already in a very precarious spot. But you know what? I've only done what I felt like were good, safe ideas so far and I'm deeply dissatisfied with where that's left me. I went for a safe major that was supposedly guaranteed employment in a high-earning field and after eating all of the time and money that degrees generally do, it did nothing for me. So now I'm going to take a risk on going where (I think) I want to go to do what (I think) I want to do. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified of the consequences of my own actions, but I just can't take living in the fucking suburban south another year.

I have to acknowledge that, along the shallowest dimension, I want some place that lines up more with my personal aesthetic tastes. Cowboy country pick-up bullshit grates against me tremendously. But more practically, the southern states are on a downward trend. They're the most conservative, the more environmentally at-risk, and the poorest, all of which are troubling signs for the future of the people who live here. Maybe the proper Communist thing to do would to be to stay and fight the rising tide, but at the end of the day, I am a coward who knows no community.

My schedule is pretty rushed since I have to be there before September if I want to qualify for in-state tuition for next Fall. I'll miss my parent's dogs (as much mine as theirs) deeply, and I feel guilty that one of them is getting old and I won't be there to see him through to the end. I'll miss bluebell, gumbo, and Mardi Gras. As frustrating as they can be, I'll miss my parents and my sister. And that's the heart of it. I don't know if I'm giving up everything I've ever known because I'm so internet poisoned that I think I'll be happy because the vague notion of communism is more popular, the economy is better, and I think cold weather is cool. So that's it for this pseudo-diary entry. Can anybody relate? More broadly, has anybody here bootstrapped themselves in a wholly new place before?