Being A 24 Year old...

You sound like you're gonna go on a gun rampage or something.

sorry, to the threadstarter, unless it actually is kenan

Thanks Latham

Also, who's kenan?

ha

Other habits to avoid; closely related to too-close-talking: spitting on co-conversants, letting white stuff accumulate in corners of mouth.

can i get your number? you sound really neat

Lentils
kidney beans
lima beans, chickp–

oh, sorry.

With all this work you do, can you afford a scooter or something to get you into town?

it's not just that folks who are depressed and ill-adjusted are liable to spend too much time on the internet?

At first I missed that LoneNut said he was into violence and bizarre imagery, and thought this was just general dating advice.

I concur with the advice wherein this fellow gets a job, or a few male buddies to go out with, or any other kind of conventional social interaction that'll ease him out of the basement netherworld of geek-violence and back into the daylight. People will probably still think he's creepy, at first, but it'll be step one to getting it all ironed out.

Yeah but the 40-year-old virgin was totally socially functional and not obsessed with violent imagery or viciously self-loathing about anything but his romantic prospects. He barely even went that far into porn. Which makes him a pretty improbable character -- if he was really like that, he wouldn't be a virgin, and if he was really a virgin, then he'd probably be psychologically worse off than that -- but hell, it's kind of a twee premise, unlike what we're getting from LoneNut here.

Why not? Are you saying that if you haven't had sex by the time you're 40 (and want to) then that turns you into a psychological basket case? Or that only a basket case could make it to 40 without having sex?

My comparison was more based around the interest in staying at home, and being into comics and video games.

Also, the 40 year old virgin wasn't socially functional at all at the start of the movie -- he could barely carry on a conversation with his male coworkers with whom he'd worked for a couple of years. He was trying to use slang that he'd obviously only read about and seen on TV, but had never used IRL. The improbable part for me was how quickly he went from complete ineptness to being a person that guys and girls wanted to hang out with. Yeah, that ugly duckling transformation stuff happens in movies all the time, but in this case they rushed it through in the first 45 minutes before getting into the love story in the second half, which was nearly a completely different movie.

Alba, I'll explain the comment. The virgin was a nice, mostly-normal guy; his problems were that he was goofy and had somehow been scared out of even making efforts to attract women. Right? But this depends on the whole movie-world fiction that there aren't women in the world who are basically like that, too. This is a good, workable device for narrative fiction, because the story is of his learning to relate that way to people in general -- but my observation is that in real life a guy like him would meet a similarly nice girl at some point, possibly one who's no better or experienced at romance than he is. I don't think I've ever seen that not happen to anyone, even people very much like the movie-virgin. As to whether you can get to 40 still a virgin and not be too socially or psychologically maladapted, well, sure, that seems perfectly possible if you can bracket off and suppress the whole thing, the way he does in the movie -- if you don't, at some point, really want it. But the majority of people will still want it and become frustrated about it, and will channel their frustration and disappointment in other directions, and wind up not "basket cases," but usually with at least a couple weird traits, right? Like e.g. I'd be interested to know -- and I don't even mean this in a judging sense -- what kind of violence LoneNut is obsessed with. (I'm guessing "sexualized violence against women" is in there as an expression of frustration, and maybe "torture of men" as an expression of self-loathing. Though I super-apologize for fake psychoanalyzing that way, and I do want to be clear that I'm not implying dude is some kind of psycho-killer or rapist or anything -- just using those as examples of the kind of stuff someone might get obsessed with in a vague net-surfing way as a match for personal/social issues.)

It sounds like you're suffering from depression due to a sincere lack of self-esteem and this is causing you to spend more time locked indoors at your computer rather than actively trying to do something about this.

I've been in this situation and it feels hopeless, but you need to step away from the canvas - which is what you've done by venting your spleen upthread. And though it sounds a bit cheesy, the old addage that "this is half the battle" still applies. You've recognised that you're unhappy with yourself and that it's time to change your situation. The worst thing you can do is be stubborn about it. I'd suggest waiting for a time to contemplate, when you are the most relaxed - for instance lying in bed or sat on the toilet. Think about all the things that are bugging you. Think about what you could do to change this. It could be something about yourself, for example. Sometimes if I'm feeling ugly or unattractive, I'll go and get my haircut or buy some new clothes. If I'm feeling unhealthy or unmotivated, I'll go for a bike ride and get the seratonin pumping. If I'm feeling socially inept then I'll think about the way I act around people and try and imagine myself speaking to myself and how I'd like me to act - does that make sense?

The human body and soul isn't a rigid structure and is designed to adapt and change. Developing yourself isn't anything to be scared of, and while a lot of people might think that by taking measures to change themselves is somehow being untrue to themselves (like a band selling out for instance), you'll often find that if you make a small change to your life you'll feel all the better for having achieved this.

So OTM that the money been driven into the ground.

Getting a job is definitely the answer. I would add that you shouldn't be too proud to get a crappy menial job if that's all that comes up (I mean, draw the line at dishwashing or McDonalds or whatever). I was unemployed for two years in my early twenties (am now, as a matter of fact, but that's temporary, honest), sort of vainly wishing that the perfect fun job for me would appear out of nowhere. Eventually I swallowed my pride and got a rubbish retail job, and my general state of mind improved vastly. Just having somewhere to be at a fixed time every morning then doing an easy job well can do wonders for your self-confidence.

Just don't come whining to me if you end up with a beer gut, I'm currently trying to work my way off that one. But girls kind of like burned-out scrawny guys with a little bit of a gut, or so I hear.

Do you actually want to be in a relationship, or do you just feel like that's something you're supposed to have done by the time you're 24?

"Socially functional", to me, excluded the ability to look after your own apartment and hold down a decent job. The 40 year old virgin did those things in solitude, but what he couldn't do was carry on a simple conversation with his coworkers about their weekends. He didn't know how to interact with people on a casual, friendly level. His upstairs neighbours were a strange (and unexplained) exception because at the start of the movie he doesn't have any other friends and knows virtually nothing about his coworkers' lives.

Anyway, my point was that some of the advice on this thread was reminiscent of scenes in the movie. I wasn't trying to imply any equivalence. And it's true that the social interaction thing is completely separate from the "WTF to do after college" thing. Just about everyone suffers through the latter (e.g. me, right now).

The HBO show about Nevada hookers had one 24-25 y/o guy who was brought in and paid for by his mother to lose his cherry. I can't imagine how that came about or how HBO talked him into speaking on-camera.

Did he have a name? :)

Maybe I do think I should have been in a relationship, this is what hurts a lot. I've turned down stuff before in the past, and it makes it more miserable because I think there's something really wrong with me. I'm afraid of sex because I don't ever want to get a girl pregnant, I don't ever want to have kids...so I keep thinking if that's the case, why bother doing it at all? It's just confusing is all...

If it's all the same to you, I reckon you need to ease certain insecurities before you even have to start worrying. Don't get me wrong, but your last post sounds rather confused. It sounds like you're bitter about your virginity. God knows there's an unspoken stigma about having to do certain things at a certain age, but it's all bullshit. All those kids you knew at school bragging about how they lost their virginities at 11 are either lying, showing off or retarded - but mostly it's not even important. Does it really make them better people than you? Course not. You come across as an intelligent and straightforward guy, so who cares what you have and haven't done?! If you go to bed tonight thinking about what you can do to make yourself happy instead of dwelling on what you have and haven't done, then you'll be all the better for it.

I wish you the best of luck fella.

the way to go, dude, is..

fuck her up the arse.

Ha, I watched this again: he totally carries on that conversation! It's just that he tells a really long boring story about making egg salad. He tells the story about as well as can be expected, too; the problem's more that he didn't do anything over the weekend worth telling a story about. (I.e., yeah, we're just niggling about the definition of "socially dysfunctional" -- I figure he's just kind of boring and dweeby and socially inept, but there's nothing really off about him.)

As to actual LoneNut issue: that fear-of-sex thing seems pretty major, man! The practical response would be that, umm, maybe you're afraid of sex in part because you've never had the emotional comfort with anyone that's required to jump into that -- and maybe once you actually do find a woman you're comfortable with and trust, that won't be as much of an issue. The other response would be that that sounds like the kind of fear that therapy might be good for.

Relax! You're young!

As for the job thing, I would suggest just taking any job that will get you out of the house during the day, and into the world. Temping can be fun. First of all, it doesn't require much imagination, so your mind can wander. Second, it sounds like you've got the computer skills, at least, to avoid manual labor, which can be hard on your back. (Though even that is at least a way out of the house.) Third, you get to enter a variety of companies and meet a variety of people, if you wish to. Or you can just do your job, read during lunch time, and at least get some exercise on the way to and from the job.

Getting out of the house and getting some excercise is key. I would advise against the alcohol/drug route. That's an easy way to put a layer between yourself and the life you're not happy about, and the consequences of that mix are obvious and notorious.

I'd also suggest volunteering. It's a way to have a routine that you feel good about, and it's a way to meet people.

By the way, everyone on earth thinks about violence. It's really nothing unusual, or something to get worried about. Doing violence and thinking about it are entirely different things.

Some other places to start for common sense shit:

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (book)
Dating for Dummies (very small book)
Blind Date (TV show)

I wish I'd seen all of these before I started "dating"...