Which Life is Better - Neckbeard or Normie?
 

I've been both. I've lived for years in my sisters basement off my family's money, spending all my time playing EQ and other video games while collecting many different greasy residues in my beard; no contact with the female gender for years. In many ways a carefree time... no worry about jobs, responsibilities, honey-do lists, just pure hedonism. But also very depressing because all of society basically looks down on you and you begin to internalize that. I was a disgusting gollum-like creature at the worst of it. I did this for most of my 20's. I watched friends and peers from high school and college get jobs, buy houses, and start families.

But then I got my shit together, got in shape, went to a professional doctoral program with excellent job prospects. I met a rich girl that I love and married her.

Now I have a house and, in a few years, a guaranteed high-wage job. I have a great relationship with the girl of my dreams who loves giving me blowjobs. But sometimes I look at my life and at the path ahead of me, waking up early working 40 hours a week, and I can't help but yearn for those neckbeard days, staying up until 3 AM doing Sebilis with my guildies while laughing my ass off in TS. Waking up at 11AM and doing it all over again. For large periods of that time I was truly happy and carefree. The lows were a lot lower, the highs weren't as high, but the baseline was comfy comfy. And I had absolute freedom.

In objective terms I've achieved all the things that neckbeard Lune dreamed about; the things that brought him unimaginable sadness and angst for not having. But I feel now that I've traded a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage, that this life does not fit me. Another part of me recognizes the powerful and near-universal tendency to want what we do not have, and the fact that I was depressed and suicidal back then, and I'm not now.

I know many of you have lived either or both of these lives. Which was better?

Ignorance is bliss - Normie is better.

Plus sex.

I would vote normie. Having never really been a true neckbeard in the poopsock raiding sense, maybe my opinion doesn't matter. However, you are correct about wanting the things we don't currently have, but that is part of the human element. If you were to do another role reversal, get divorced, quit your job, and be a haphazard layabout, I think you would regret your decisions after a certain amount of time.

Life is all about finding balance and having the control to limit yourself in all aspects, even the things that make you happy.

I enjoyed your story.

Read anonymous conservative, realize that you are an r-selected rabbit with a weak amygdala, and everything will make sense.

Sounds like your situation has improved a bit. I'm happy for you, Lune! I'm clearing out the neckbeard baggage of my old life atm. I'm finding myself in several states of liminality between me getting older, transitioning, and going back to school. I can't say with any authority that the other side of any of those will be better than the earlier state of being, but I'm operating on faith that they will be. Things are always gonna suck, just differently, but I guess we can change how they suck into something we subjectively think sucks less, like you did. Proud of you.

So you were a child that grew up, and now you miss childhood. I think just about everyone feels this way sometimes, with the only difference being that your childhood lasted longer than most people's did.

But the guy who waxes nostalgic for his high school football days, or the girl who misses staying up all night talking to her friends on the phone, are basically the same as the nerd who lived off his parents and played computer games at their expense. We all miss having the luxury of not having to be adults.

Welcome to the (grown-up) club :)

Also I've been listening to the overly loud vocal flailing of the local tribe of male and female nerds at school today for a couple hours and that's no way to live. Shoot me before I turn again. Normie wins by a mile imo.

life is suffering. we can hide from it and wallow in the meaninglessness of our existence every time it finds us, or we can face it, shoulder the burden responsibly and enrich other people's lives in the process. be a light ^^

Seems like society has successfully converted you into its tool. And remember the purpose of the state is to serve the ruling class. It's not that 40 hr a week job that makes anyone happy. It's all the things you a deprived of if you don't have that, that's what makes people depressed.

Which I guess could be justified if we actually needed most of the high-paid employees in the economy. But we don't. Most are useless at best. Or they are positions that serve to siphon off wealth from those that actually generate it.

We need to get to that point where your balancing your tendency to want to be a neckberd with your family obligations. Rather than spending most your time working for some wealth extraction operation or as a useless bureaucrat.