Meme dump time!

I'll preface this the same way that I always do: I stopped using the big 3 social media platforms around 5 years ago and I have never looked back. I hate it and I think it is extremely damaging to people's lives and especially their mental health. Now the only thing that I engage in that could even be considered social media is 9-gag. A site that has mostly memes. Of course there is a ton of political propaganda in there as well but the community itself normally prevents this from getting widespread due to the voting system. You can also opt out of seeing anything that bores you such as Biden, Trump, Russia, Ukraine etc because regardless of what the content is about a flurry of downvotes are automatic if something is mislabeled according to tags.

So the times that I have dead time such as between sets in the gym I will turn to 9gag instead of stupid IG and FB or even worse, Twitter. These are the memes I have seen that either made me think or made me laugh.

As a big fan of dogs as well as Rick and Morty this immediately appealed to me. This is very true in my own life as well. My dog, Nadi, really enjoys spending all of her time around me and she gets very anxious if I so much as move a little bit. She seems to be constantly afraid that I am going to leave the house without her, and I do this as infrequently as possible. Most of the time though, I am just standing up to go to the bathroom or get a drink from the fridge. The reaction is the same though and she follows me wherever I go in the condo even though it isn't that big.

This one impacted me directly. I have had some level of insomnia all of my life and this is because of the fact that even though I feel most days like my brain is on standby during my awake hours, as soon as my head hits the pillows my mind starts wandering to all of the issues I have in my life as well as things that happened years or even decades ago. I have been on some sort of sedative most of my life and this could end up being a bit of a problem for me. The days that I can get to sleep without some sort of chemical assistance are few and far between and I don't think I am alone in this.

I've been comfortably single for around 4 years. I'm not an incel or anything like that. I'm no Ryan Reynolds or anything but I am in reasonably good shape and I suppose decent looking. I just didn't want to date because I was comfortable being alone with my dog. Well, recently that has kind of changed and I have been dating again.

I'm in my 40's and the above meme is absolutely true. Most of the conversations that I have with girls I go out with and especially ones that are around my age, consist of us talking about not what we did that week or month, but what we did 10-20 years ago.

Speaking of dating. I dabble in YouTube videos that focus on the rather unrealistic expectations that some women have about their own self-worth as far as the dating pool is concerned. The salary expectations of a lot of women are pretty outrageous and I can speak from experience and knowing people that are seriously wealthy. These people tend to have spent so much time on being extremely good at what they do for money, that they have focused very little if at all on any other aspect of their lives.

Not trying to be overly misogynistic here, but there was a survey done where they asked women would you rather date a 21 year old virgin or a successful 45 year old lawyer who has been with hundreds of women. The women in the survey chose the lawyer at over 90%. When the question was done in reverse the men didn't factor in the occupation of the potential woman to date at all.

The death of Chandler was such a surprise to me that at first I thought it was one of those online jokes that 4-chan tries to pull on the world to see how many people will believe it. These sorts of deaths are quite concerning to me because Matthew Perry had hundreds of millions of dollars and access to the best healthcare in the world. I don't know the details of how he died, but it is frightening to me that people that are just a bit older than I am are kicking the bucket. Keith Richards is immortal apparently.

While not true and also not a meme, it as on 9gag anyway and I enjoyed it. I think there is a very big problem with "men being men" in that we don't talk to our buddies about the things that bother us. If you do ever talk about it and your friends also have that sense of machismo, they are pretty unlikely to give you any sort of meaningful advice.

Not that long ago I was hit with a sort of mid-life crisis and the people I did confide in that were men sort of had similar responses to what is featured above. "You need to get past that" sort of responses and what not.

A girl who I know who is a friend - not a girlfriend - was talking to me about Tinder, which I reluctantly joined recently. She was lamenting the fact that almost everyone she matches with is just trying to hook up with her and that's the end of it. When I found this meme I sent it to her and she got a real kick out of it. While you and I might not be using apps like Tinder for this sort of thing, you have to admit that a vast majority of people on it are using it for exactly that and you women out there that post pictures of you in a bikini that makes your butt look oh so perfect, you shouldn't be surprised when everyone is trying to F**K you.

There are a ton of pubs where I live and one of them, which is located very near my house seems to attract the lowest common denominator of the expat population here. I'm not trying to get up on my high horse but honestly, if it wasn't within sight of my house I likely would never go to it. While I am in there I am privy to a level of idiocy that is sometimes so stupid that I feel as though I might actually be made dumber just by being in proximity to it. It's sometimes fun, but other times it makes me worry about the overall intelligence (or lack thereof) level of the population at large.

I'll end this the way I always do, with a picture of my dog, this time desperately hoping for a scrap of delicious Pizza Hut thin crust pepperoni to fall to the ground. I don't think she would know what to do with it if I were to give her an entire slice. Probably scarf it down too fast and then throw it up undigested 20 minutes later.