Oh I mean, I'm honestly fine.

Had some real bad PTSD style flashback shit for a while, from being homeless for roughly 2 years, still jump at sudden noises and lights, but I've been that way forever, yay for abusive family growing up...

But I only recently did a full check in with all kinds of medical specialists to reorient after I finally stopped being homeless, found a shithole that ain't too shitty, that I can afford to rent... literally, I just wanted a paper copy of the CBT procedures, because they've worked well, honestly very well for me in the past...

And I now have numerous physical injuries from being homeless so long, getting the shit kicked out of me every other week, getting my shit stolen every other day, almost dying from now both a blizzard and a heat wave... SSDI needs you to actually have current medical contacts so they can pull records from them... and I had to get as much of my old MyChart files back together, I don't even remember how many phones I had that kept getting stolen, email accounts I lost access to.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I seriously have never been as mentally free of stress as I am now:

All I gotta do is focus on PT, then try to either get back to a job or start my own software freelancing gig... maybe make a video game... just gotta heal up my wrist and leg and back and ass a bit more, so I can actually sit and type at a 'puter for more than 15 minutes at a time w/o terrible pain.

I honestly love being a hermit, away from my abusive family... I'm not lonely at all, I love the solitude, lemmy is really 95% of what I need for social interactions and excercising my own brain, and of course every once in a while, I hobble with my cane down and chit chat with a neighbor or two.

Basically, nearly everyone in my life I've ever trusted or loved has abused or manipulated me in some way... not literally all, of course, but the vast, vast majority... so fuck em.

Im happier off without em, and I now literally know that I can keep myself alive in the absolute worst possible situation... but, I'm still 95% immobile, don't have a car anymore, that got stolen, so its not like I could meet people and have a real social life anyway.

Gotta heal the body first, literally get back on my feet. Been fixing up my financial situation best I can while I'm mostly bed ridden.

PTSD attacks and night terrors ... and that instant jump to 'ready to defend myself with potentially lethal force'... yeah, that's dissapated significantly with the CBT excercises, and simply having my own, controlled environment, with relatively little external responsibilities... just took time.

that's easy to say, but when someone is in a crisis, I would be wrong to judge then for talking to an AI (shitty terrible solution) instead of a therapist that can be unaffordable and also comes with a risk of then being terrible.

they need therapy, obviously they need help, and blaming them for not doing the most reasonable thing that might be unaffordable is even stupider.

blame predatory AI, openai could in a single afternoon make it so Chatgpt recomends or even helps you find a local therapist, instead of enabling this for profit.

Yeah! Great to hear. Please continue to be a fixture in your neighborhood.

As Fred Rogers told me once, in a conversation that was just between us, a friend is a person in your neighborhood.

You know, I don't even disagree with that sentiment in principle, but expecting people to suffer when they could benefit from a technology because they only see the threats and dangers makes them no different than antivaxxers.

It is possible and logically consistent to urge caution and condemn the worst abuses of technology without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

But no... I guess because the awful aspects of the technology as far as IP theft are - rightfully - the biggest focus, sorry, poor people, you just have to keep sucking it up and powering through! You want empathy, fork over the $100 an hour!

One thing that really lifts my mood is singing.

I'm a reasonably decent natural baritone...

For the longest while, I couldn't, due to fucked up abdomen... couldn't use my diaphragm right.

But... thats getting better now, the PT is slow, arduous, and painful, but it is working.

I was just in another thread posting Johnny Cash lyrics as a contrast to how shitty of a little turdboy Andrew Tate is.

I fell in... to a burnin ring of fire... and so on, haha.

The flip side of that is vast numbers of Gen Z Men saying many Gen Z women are basically misandrists, who asked them to stop interacting with them unprompted, no more unwanted attention... so they did that, they stopped... and now all they see is IG and TikToks of Gen Z Women complaining that no one asks them out on dates anymore, no one is 6' tall with a 6 figure income becore the age of 30, and willing to worship them as a queen.

I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.

So, in that situation: Why bother?

Many men can actually be fulfilled just staying actually single, as in not even dating single, snd getting their own lives, finances, health, to a better place.

Yes this does though also mean that ... because we've just got less general, face to face socialization going on that... basically a larger than otherwise number of them will basically develop harmful, reinforcing neuroses, in harmful echo chambers... but at the same time, that applies to women as well.

This is what happens when you jam a broad economic collapse up alongside a highly digital and publicized modern media landscape that is tweaked all to fuck to highlight and push the most extreme version of everything... along with extremely mixed messaging that an only digitally socialized person recieves, but all as a firehose, that is very hard to make true sense of.

So... fuck this shit I'm out... social withdrawal... basically becomes a reasonable mental health improving move, even if it does leave you kinda socially stunted as compared to pre-internet generations.

Do they need therapy? Or do they need a world they can actually fucking live in?

It's not like either one is available to them.

I don’t scream into a pillow. I just wake up at dawn and have a panic attack until I have to actually move.

Neither is mutually exclusive, but most likely, both of those.

For a community called “technology” there’s a pretty strong anti-AI bubble going on here.

Are you surprised people have opinions about technology, in a community dedicated to discussing technology?

LLMs have no intentions. They only do what the user asks them to.

I only have the beer part of this equation figured out.

Offline it is... Online, they use it as training, and companies buy the data and trends.
Both of you are right. LLMs, are just trained, they repeat patterns, but have no intent in an of itself, but companies will steer towards whatever gets them more revenue, so if an AI bro company goes for psychology, it'll just be a repeat of BetterHelp

I mean, the question was rhetorical. But I don't disagree.

Like seriously – are people using their brains or what?

I am not saying this is any kind of objectively accurate to whatever degree, but I am saying that this is the very common, general vibe.

I'm glad you're not because this is patently false. As soon as you get out of the internet you find young people dating is alive and well.

Literally yesterday we had post about getting involuntarily committed due to psychosis from AI sycophantically agreeing with them about everything. The quote I remember from the ai in that "yes you should want blood. You're not wrong."

Using these as therapy is probably the worst thing we could do.

I didn't know either, but let's box people in before addressing things. What's next, mens suffering through heat waves?

I think there's a lot more to it than cost. Men, even with considerable health care resources, are often very averse to mental health care.

Thinking of my father in law, for example, I don't know how much you would have to pay him to get him into a therapist's office, but I'm certain he wouldn't go for free.

Gee I wonder why ?