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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1266 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Also I'm now at the point in my life (maybe an age thing) where I simply do not feel significant 'shame' over attempting to do things authentically.

Based. And I do think it's an age thing. Perhaps it's because as you get older you feel secure in your social circumstances (you have found your people, you know they aren't going to ditch you even if you make a momentary fool of yourself), but either way it seems to come with age. Or as CS Lewis put it: "When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly."

There's absolutely a lot of the "I'm secure now and to some extent I can either enforce or flout social norms because I have higher status relative to others."

I also worked through a lot of my remaining insecurities in the wake of my big breakup.

I've also mastered the art of 'doubling down' when you do something cringey... just roll with it man. As long as nobody is hurt or seriously offended you can make something funny or cool just by recovering smoothly.

Tools that would have been useful to me in my twenties, but back then I wasn't even self-aware enough to know when I should feel shame, so...

Tools that would have been useful to me in my twenties

This is gesturing towards a Sunday question I've been thinking about, which is how many Xers/millennials had Silent/Boomer same-sex parents that they thought were in any way useful in providing advice in the realm of sex/dating/marriage. It seems like a lot of guys I know (I know far less about women's opinions on this issue) had to reinvent the wheel during their 20s and even into their 30s on those topics, and there seems to be a strong overlap with a not-very-helpful-with-advice Silent/Boomer father.

I sure did.

My parents were high-school sweethearts, who divorced when I turned 18, which meant my conception of idealized romance was suddenly rugpulled out from under me, and I didn't have any other good models to latch onto. And then MY high school sweetheart broke it off with me the first semester of college, which spiraled me pretty hard thereafter.

And the next ten years was exactly that, me trying to reinvent the wheel... WHILE living in a world where the standard romantic playbook was actively being destroyed.

I can't even blame my dad, he did find love afterwards, eventually, but he didn't have the experience needed to help me navigate the world I found myself in.

I can't even blame my dad, he did find love afterwards, eventually, but he didn't have the experience needed to help me navigate the world I found myself in.

Yeah, I don't mean it in a blame way, or even to suggest I would've listened to my dad had he provided advice. More of a Noticing a pattern kind of thing.

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