I'm 24 and it's pretty rough, to be honest. Things were a lot better for me socially when I was still kind of, sort of drinking the Kool-Aid, but I still had doubts and concerns that kept me up at night even then.

I live in a pretty purple area now, which nowadays basically means that everyone I meet is one of two brands of crazy (three if you count the hardcore Libertarian types that keep popping up). I don't like any of the brands, I just want to find normal people in my age range who are able to have a level-headed conversation without telling me I'm literally murdering trans people for questioning gender ideologies, or murdering helpless babies for being pro-choice. Is there no middle ground anymore? I don't even need them to agree with me, I just need them to not stop seeing me as human for disagreeing. Literally, my former best friend posted on social media recently that he (actually it's "they" now, but fuck that nonsense) can't be friends with anyone who disagrees with him on anything politically.

I've thought about moving to a bigger city so I have more social opportunities, but then I realized that that's just picking one brand of crazy and paying a premium in rent for it, so I think I'm going to stick where I am and hope for the best. There's one gay bar in town and I went there sometimes before COVID, but it's getting more and more TQ+ heavy. Everyone I meet who's sort of reasonable on anything turns out to be straight men with serious misogyny problems. Or they're seventy years old, which I guess is better than nothing.

At this point I've totally given up on dating, I'd just take a friend in my age range who is somewhat palatable to be around sometimes. No more dating apps for me. I'm even in the process of deleting my few remaining social media accounts. It's too much crazy.