r/InsightfulQuestions

Currently I'm in my 20s and I'm not really sure if I'm doing okay in life.. Maybe I'm just good at faking it. Things seem fine on the outside. 

- I pay my rent on time. 

- I have a job. 

I even bought some wall art for my apartment. I thought, adults have stuff on their walls so I should too. Honestly, half the time I feel like a kid playing make-believe. Most nights I scroll through my phone. 

I check Instagram, read emails, look at stuff on Alibaba and text old friends. 

I was avoiding a question that's been on my mind: when does life start to feel real? 

Social media doesn't help. I see people getting engaged, promoted, buying houses and having babies. Everyone seems to have their life 

Meanwhile I'm celebrating wins like remembering to buy groceries. 

It makes me wonder what does "making it" feel like? 

Is it an amount of money in the bank? A job title? Do we all just get better at life without realizing it? 

For people, than me did you ever wake up and think, "Okay I'm an adult now"? Or are we all just figuring it out as we go? Wtf are we supposed to be doing? 

Why are we forced to get jobs from the age of 18-70 (after being forced thru the school system too) drag ourself outta bed every day to go do some meaningless bs and come home exausted until we die.. whats it all for? they always say find ur passion but wym my passion? its all made up why can i just be a sheep chillin in the field ....no one asked to be here or designed the world we all just came into conciousness miraculasly and they have turned our existance into an inescapable prison... its all made up, the system the jobs the bills the taxes.... if u really zoom out and think, there was once nothing.. yet here we are, fleeting glimses of life floating around on this perfect planet in the middle of the cosmos and we have been so conditioned since birth into this system that no one even truley questions what the hell are we doing? we are being forced to abandon who we truley are to fit into this bs idea of 'life' they created... we are not allowed to think for ourselves, create things for ourselves... they have designed a system where everyone ends up living the same life... school, career, family maybe, die ... all while going thru so much pain suffering stress and anxiety over made up sh!t... after work, bills, housework, paperwork, maintinance etc etc... there is no time left to even think about who we are and what we might have done with this life if we were not stuck in this system but rather free to roam and be our true selves with no conditioning.... what are we doing? why is everyone so chill about this? the fact we are even experiencing anything is insane and we shouldnt be living under obligation? life was simple.. you keep yourself alive, you eat, you drink, you just live and be ...

but no, weve been lied to and made to belive we are worthless and lazy if we arent interested in selling our souls for corporate jobs ... does no one think that maybe our time here on earth should be spent with every second appreciating and enjoying the sheer craziness of how blessed we are to be alive and just all contribute to the curiousity of discovering things and working together to keep ourselves alive and happy? what happened .. seriously

i’m sure you guys have seen this hypothetical going around; there are two buttons, a red one and a blue one. if more than 50% of people chose the blue button, then EVERYONE lives regardless of which button they chose, there’s no penalty.

if more than 50% of people chose the red button, then the people who chose the red button survive, and the people who chose the blue button die.

which button would you chose? i first instinctively said “blue! because then everyone will survive” but people are saying red is the “logical” choice

here’s the thing, for the red button, in order for everyone to survive, that means 100% of people would need to vote red. it’s easier to get 50% of people to vote blue than for 100% of people to vote red. plus, children and people with mental disabilities aren’t going to understand the intricacies of this idea, so they might just chose blue just because. people are gonna chose blue anyways.

think of this way. if you chose red, but your mom, dad, siblings, friends, or partner chooses blue, then what?

I also feel like everybody on the Internet is oversimplifying this. It’s not just “we will live, regardless versus we might die” so many other things to take consideration of

Every now and then, people will ask if I can 'see' in my dreams; the answer is no. It feels, addditionally--like everything is scripted.

In an nightmare just yesterday, I awoke in my tiny apartment to 3 kids baking something in my oven that involved peanut butter. Icouldn't see the kids or whatever they were baking but, apparently, 'had' to know that so my outrage about my space being invaded without permission would make sense and feed into the anxiety these nightmares are often bounded by.

My question has two parts. First, if I were a psychopath, would I 'feel' less and second, if the nightmares couldn't be based on intense emotion or anything visual, what would they be based on instead?

Title hella werid and dosent full say what im gonna right but i have problems with liking girls like most girls i talk to i either kinda like or i get fully invested even my friends that are girls i develop a crush because we get close like that shi like that but main point is i get mad at myself for falling in love with girls who give me attention and tbh i only get attention from my mother that’s all my sister hating me during my way younger youth so only close female i been to was my mom and it hurts to see everyone with someone when i have no girl especially friend girls because i know probably at the end im gonna fuck up the friend ship from saying I like them an I am kinda of love or lust mf like I wait for marriage but I live in a neighborhood where that is looked at as some loser shi so that’s the one only reason I know I get no girls besides one but I wouldn’t count that so any tips how I can stop it also ps prob might help im short like 5,4 and kinda fat but not chud fat like i love sports but im not the muscular type -Ye

In my history class we are learning about the civil war. My teacher decided to help us learn and understand what different people went through with making us create an ai generated story of a "character" who experienced the pre, during, and post civil war. I feel like this was an insensitive and wrong thing to do. Why not just make us learn about real people and what they went through instead of making something up? This teacher has done other things throughout the year that I want to write to their supervisor about. I was wondering if I should include this, or am I just overacting about this assignment?

Single men and women often romanticise relationships a lot — imagining perfect, movie-like love. But people in relationships say the reality is far less romantic and nothing like the fantasy. So why does this gap exist? Is it media’s fault, or are single people refusing to accept the truth — and what does that mean for their future relationships

I’ll try to make this as short as possible but. Everytime I go out in public I always get stared at. By almost everyone I see. Guys and girls.. I feel like I do have a pretty unique style for where I live. I dress like no one else around. I have a hard time getting girls to actually hangout with me. But I have dozens of chicks that text me etc but when I ask them to hangout there’s always an excuse. I do have very nice cars and some days I feel like I am a decent looking guy. Even tonight. I seen a very very pretty girl I’ve never talked to or meet in my life and she asked one of the guys I was with who I was because she’s never seen me, and he said she made a like “mhmmm” sound and said who’s your friend. Lmao. But anyway my question really is. Why do I get so much attention from females and so many stares. But when I do try to hangout with these females they never want to? I never make sexual remarks or come off weird either..

Was just thinking the other day. Is it possible to run a whole company with just AI and robots alone? Zero human involvement. Are there such companies that already exist today?

In the sense, a man attracted to women in makeup, dresses, jewelry, and long hair and colored nails. And not an androgynous look.

I’m attracted to women; that’s why I want to date and be with a woman. I’m not attracted to men or androgynous look. Are most women offended that I’m straight and I’m attracted to feminine women?

I’ll hear people describe what they’re drinking with all these specific details flavors, aromas, regions and it sounds so natural for them. Meanwhile I’m just sitting there thinking yeah it tastes good and hoping no one asks me to elaborate.
I do enjoy wine but there’s a big gap between liking something and being able to explain why you like it. It almost feels like there’s some step in the middle that I’m missing.

Hi, i wanted to share something that happened to me a couple of days ago and was a little startled by. For my Spanish class (we’re talking university), my teacher had assigned this homework: talk about your favourite book and if you know/follow anyone online that talks about books; each of us would have to share their answers in class and the teacher would ask each person more specific questions (nothing complicated, just ways to practice conversation). Now, 20 or so people were called to share their work, myself included, and the teacher asked everyone the same two questions: “do you like to read?” and “when and what was the last book you read?”. I kid you not, i was the ONLY one that answered yes to the first question, and the only one that was able to name a book for the second that wasn’t *Title of the book they gave us in class the previous year as mandatory for the exam*. Many admitted to never having read anything that wasn’t a school assignment. The most shocking part to me was that a lot of people in that class were getting a LITERATURE degree. Others were getting theirs in things like marketing, business, international relations etc, and i am not sure what the ratio was among the people that were called, but still, it was quite depressing to be honest. I mean, my friend in that class literally told me they picked a book at random cause they didn’t read. Like, at all. So i wanted to know your opinions as to why that might be. I always hear that younger generations aren’t reading anymore, but given the recent rise of booktok i thought the situation wasn’t this bad. Was this an isolated case or is there actually a trend here? Do you have any similar or opposite experience?

I’ll try to make this as short as possible but. Everytime I go out in public I always get stared at. By almost everyone I see. Guys and girls.. I feel like I do have a pretty unique style for where I live. I dress like no one else around. I have a hard time getting girls to actually hangout with me. But I have dozens of chicks that text me etc but when I ask them to hangout there’s always an excuse. I do have very nice cars and some days I feel like I am a decent looking guy. Even tonight. I seen a very very pretty girl I’ve never talked to or meet in my life and she asked one of the guys I was with who I was because she’s never seen me, and he said she made a like “mhmmm” sound and said who’s your friend. Lmao. But anyway my question really is. Why do I get so much attention from females and so many stares. But when I do try to hangout with these females they never want to? I never make sexual remarks or come off weird either..

How do you know when to follow your head vs. your heart?
Like when something makes very little logical sense and could end badly, but emotionally still feels worth the risk.

I’m having a massive dilemma right now. Please help me out.

I‘m in my early 20s and I really want to get married and have kids someday. I need attraction and physical intimacy in a relationship. If those are missing, it would feel like a friendship and not romantic to me. I feel being straight, wanting to get married and have kids is a very typical desire. When a woman I'm into says the feeling isn't mutual, it deeply damages my self worth and makes me feel everyone hates me. Over time based on what I see on the internet as well, rejection causes me to struggle to approach because I feel women hate me for being straight, wanting a family and kids.

Imagine an alien observer trying to understand why we do the completely "unhinged" things we do, like why we enslave ourselves to alarm clocks, shake hands, or even why do we hoard our own trauma.

Every day, I take one human behavior and try to defend it through empirical data, logical constructs, and philosophical or religious perspectives anchored in our collective lore. I capture these daily at linlore.com.

Any suggestions for what the next question should be? What's the human behavior that makes absolutely no sense to you?

1. What exactly caused the big bang?

2. What is past the event horizon of a singularity?

3. Have aliens visited earth, if so how long ago? Intentions?

4. Were there any advanced civilizations before the younger dryas? If so, many are underwater now?

5. Did humanity’s different religions originate from a single event or story?

hi all! i'm really curious to know the psychology behind this

i (24F) was once quite big (4ft10 & 12.5 stone at my biggest), but when i was bigger i didn't really realise i was, and i used to show a lot more skin and dress quite revealing & sexualise myself more tbh.

now i've lost weight (still 4ft10, 8.5 stone), i feel the complete opposite. aside from the occasional cleavage, i actually prefer being more covered up. i just feel more comfortable, a bit more put together, and don't feel the need to show my body as much but i don't know why!

i've noticed this seems quite common too (ive had this conversation with friends who've also been bigger & lost weight). for example, at the gym it sometimes feels like there are bigger girls wearing more revealing clothes, while slimmer girls tend to cover up more

might be a bit of a random question, but i'd love to hear different perspectives on why this might be😊