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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Notes -
If you were able to meet your past selves with perfect recall of yourself at the time, how far back (what age) could you go
without feeling cringe atand still be satisfied with your character/intellect/overall decision making?About 12, but that's just the earliest that I can say for sure. Character hasn't changed (attempts to manually force it in another direction mostly fail- something I tend to refuse to learn for whatever reason). Decision making abilities were about what they are now- might have been a bit simpler, but not meaningfully so; still emphasize and de-emphasize the same things to the same benefit and detriment.
World outlook established at that time proven mostly correct now.
Slightly dumber now than then. More tired now than then.
Much older, not much wiser; still confused by people who claim prior actions can be "cringey".
Knew what I was doing, not embarrassed by that. Maybe it's a memory thing, because I don't really understand why anyone would be.
Social strategies largely unchanged, more successful now that most people I know are adults. Lonelier then than now.
Younger me would have been more unsatisfied with older me than the opposite.
I'm surprised you find that confusing. There's nothing that you've ever done that you feel embarrassed by in hindsight? Here's a decent example from my own life. When I was about 7 years old or so, my parents used to watch Cheers. And at the time they had a story going where Frasier divorced his wife because she was cheating on him. I had to ask for an explanation of what that meant, and while I don't recall the exact explanation I got a brief explanation. Fast forward to a month or two later, my family was eating dinner and my mom mentioned something in passing about a guy she lived with at one point. I connected that with the story from Cheers and just blurted out "were you cheating on Dad!?". To which she gave me a look and said no, this was in college before she met my dad and it was her roommate.
I don't lose sleep over this memory. I was a child, and I had a child's understanding of the world. It's not a character flaw on my part. But it is embarrassing that I said something that dumb, even though it isn't the end of the world. It was cringey that I accused my mom of being unfaithful to my dad without any evidence. I've read that such moments are how we learn how to be social creatures - we cross some boundary, get reprimanded for it, and we feel shame. The shame teaches us to not do the same thing again. It seems to me like this is a pretty universal human experience, so I'm surprised you say you can't even empathize with the feeling.
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