I loved it. The storytelling was out of this world. The way the poem was revealed throughout the album was 🤌🤌. The build up, the pacing, the lyrics, the themes, it was all masterful. I feel like this is an album that is very much meant to be listened to in one piece. And that is a good thing but it also leads into my negative for the album: I wouldn’t want to listen to most of the songs on this album on their own. Like I’m sorry but I’m not gonna think “hmmm I’m in the mood for Institutionalized/ U/ For Free?/ For Sale?/ King Kunta/ Mortal Man today”. I just don’t enjoy these songs on their own. In the context of the album, they work tho. So that’s exactly how I feel about the album. As an album and as one story, it’s fantastic. But there are not that many songs on the album that I enjoy on their own. That all might change with time tho, it usually happens to me with artists that I just got into. It takes time for me to understand how I really feel about their work. But as of rn, that’s how I feel about the album.
TPAB- 8-9/10

Erik ten Hag

'It is not good enough'

Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag, speaking to BBC Match of the Day:
"We changed something at half-time, and after that we had more control. In the end the win is OK.
"We swapped our sixes from the sides, left and right, that was important. We had a lot of problems defending Joao Pedro in the first half but then we had more control and we were better on the ball. You see the goal, it was a movement in behind. The first half was too static."
On Manchester United’s worst finish in Premier League:
"It is not good enough by far. Although we had less than 60 points two years ago, 58 points, eighth is the worst performance. It is the truth but we should have done better. We knows the reasons behind, everyone knows, but it is not the right moment to go into it. It’s not good enough."
On Saturday's FA Cup final: "Talking about all the things we had to suffer this season, it was good to bring players back. They worked hard, desperate to play the final games of the season and especially the final next week. We get options and hopefully we will have a g week and everyone is on board. We will put a comp team out and we will fight for the cup."
​
Ten Hag says he has a "luxury problem" with players returning from injury. Refuses to say whether he'll continue with the 4-2-2-2 as seen against Newcastle & Brighton, or if he'll go to a 4-2-3-1 with Hojlund. "You need not only 11 players in a final. You need also a bench"
https://x.com/Ankaman616/status/1792244591787119014
​
Via Official Website
https://www.manutd.com/en/news/detail/erik-ten-hag-reacts-to-brighton-v-man-utd-19-may-2024
CHANGE REAPED DIVIDENDS
"The first half, we were not 100 per cent in control. We have seen that. We had to face some chances from Brighton but, after half-time, when we changed something in our way of play, then we got more control. We were better defending, the organisation and pressing, and also kept the ball better and got movements in for the ball behind where, in the first half, it was too static. What did we change? We swapped our no.6s [Kobbie Mainoo and Sofyan Amrabat] from the side, left and right, that was important and also, in the right side, we had a lot of problems defending Joao Pedro in the first half. After half-time, we got in control and were better on the ball and had movements. You see with the first goal, we got movement in behind."
VICTORY WAS IMPERATIVE
"We had to win this game. Of course, for our belief. Of course, we also need the points for the rankings but it was not in our hands. We want to lift our levels. We've got players returning and it's important they're fit for the final but also to return to some patterns. I think it's clear to see that, once we had players back in their positions, when we have original defenders available, again our levels are increasing."
EIGHTH NOT GOOD ENOUGH
"It's difficult but we've talked before over this and it was a very tough season for us. We know it's not good enough, by far. Simple. There are reasons but, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It's United. You have to finish higher and this is not good enough. We know the competition is tough. We have 60 points, two years ago, it was 58 and were sixth and, now, 60 and eighth. But it is not good enough. We're disappointed."
CREDIT TO THE FANS
"They are amazing. I don't know what to say. There are no words. If you have a season like we have had, and they stick with us. In the good times and the bad times, and we have to pay them back. We have the best fans in the world. I mean this. We have to do everything to give the a trophy next week and also, for the future, we have to perform better."
DALOT DOING THE DAMAGE
"It is about making overloads in midfield and, from there on, he is a very good runner in behind, he can do it from left and right full-back. He can attack from there but also in the centre areas and on wide areas, by bringing crosses in. He is a player who has developed as a full-back, and not as just as a full-back, but also as an inverted one too. I think his development has been very good this season and we are very pleased with him."
INJURY ISSUES
"This season, especially in the backline, in the second half of the season, there were so many injuries. Especially in the centre-half positions and the left-back position. All the time, we have to adjust there and make compromises that were no good for our level. No good for the results. Everyone has seen this. It's good we go into the cup final and players are returning, they are desperate to return. We have one week to be 100 per cent fit and put out a competitive team for the cup final. I'm sure we'll get that."
LET'S SAVOUR WEMBLEY
"It's fantastic. A cup final. Such a great event. As a kid, you want to take part in this and get a look at it. Everyone is really excited to lift this cup. We still have a good opportunity, going to the final is a huge achievement and, if you're in a final you want to win. It's all about trophies and we have an opportunity to lift the cup. It's all about winning trophies and, as a result of it, we need to be in Europe and it is our last opportunity."
​

Roberto de Zerbi

"We had a lot of chances to score especially in the first half as well"

Departing Brighton boss Roberto de Zerbi, speaking to BBC Match of the Day: "It was a tough day, a special day. I finish one of my greatest experience, in terms of the relationship, it has been one of the most important experiences of my life.
"We did a great job, especially in the last season. In the first half of this season, we gave our best and gave every game our best. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. We have to be proud of this group of players over the two seasons."
On today’s performance: "We had a lot of chances to score especially in the first half as well. First part of second half, we were playing in the same way we closed the first half. But when you made mistakes in the last part of the pitch, it can happen against these big teams to lose the game and concede the goal."
On why he is leaving Brighton: "Listen, we didn’t find the agreement to move on. We talked together at different parts of the season, I want to keep my way. I know very well what I want to do and I know I am a coach and I have to accept the policies of the club.
"I have no problem with the club or Tony [Bloom]. I have to say thanks to Tony and his family, and Paul Barber, and his family because I can’t forget what they gave me. They gave me an incredible chance.
"They give me the possibility to know incredible people, to play and to work in the Premier League, to play in the Europa League. They gave me the opportunity to know this club, this city, these fans and for that I cannot forget. I have to say thanks."
​
Quotes via BBC

I have a few things about hmhas that people are probably going to hate me for, but I really don’t care, so go ahead and say whatever you want. The first one is that lunch is weird. I’m not homophobic, I’m not hating on her because it about a woman. If a man sung those lyrics, or a women sung similar ones about a man, it would still be gross, so just understand it’s not because she likes women. It is just so gross to sign about that type of thing when you are such a massive artist. Everyone around the world is going to hear your music, and that’s what you decide to sing about? It’s disgusting and no one’s business except for yours. I like the song for the music and the way she sings the words, but the words make me super uncomfortable. I really want to listen to it but it’s so weird. Second, this album was mid. Not only were there only 10 songs, and it took 3 years for those 10 songs to come out, but most of them are ok at best. I really only love 3 of the songs, and the rest are literally just whatever. Hte and WWAFAWDWG are both so so so much better, and even dsam is better (no hate to dsam lol, just not quite as good as the other two). And my last thing is how much she is paying companies to put her face on everything. I guarantee all of you have seen her in like every app you use, and even people who aren’t fans are. It’s a lot like how Taylor swift was, and still is tbh, on literally everything all the time. Only her fans liked it, and everyone else got tired of seeing her everywhere. I hate that that is how Billie is now. If I am getting tired of seeing her constantly as a massive fan, I can’t imagine how it is for people who dislike or hate her (and a lot of people do). Thank you for reading, and now you can be as pissed at me as you want, just don’t be insane.

Hello everyone! Good day!
First of all, i apologize in advance if i make any mistakes in my post, or if i dont tag it correctly, or if this post shouldnt be in this subreddit, since this is my first post here!
Second, i had already made posts about this theme/song twice in the NameThatSong subreddit, however, it was not solved, since nobody over there was able to give me a definitive answer! I have also shazamed it, and i will get to that later in this same post.
Okay, so i need help identifying this horror theme that i've known about for almost 10 years now (https://vocaroo.com/1kRpjK800ZNu clean version with no TTS voice that i made with vocalremover), first heard it in a creepypasta that was posted 12 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LplL2zT59Aw&t=4s theme starts at 1:24), then i eventually came across another video posted 7 years ago which also uses this theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i0xPjGDrUQ theme starts at 1:10). Other users in said videos have asked about this specific theme's origin, although no answer has ever been given by the videos OP's
I myself have tried doing some research about this theme, and while i have discovered interesting things (which i will mention in a moment), it has not helped me find the origin of it!
Theme has "lyrics" (you can hear them more clearly in the videos that contain this song in the background), at one point you can hear a woman's voice saying something that i've made out as: "take a deep breath, come into my world, and relax your body", and later on, near the theme's end, you can hear the same voice saying "close your eyes"
This theme has been used as a sample in other songs, found this out through Shazam. it has been sampled in a song called "O Grande Dia" by an artist called Valdo Siqueira da Silva (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyYZrnM\_rLw at 3:11), its practically used throughout an entire song called "Song for Paris" by an artist called "Just Joe" on spotify (https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/track/4YkfhhHBJ6BpvKWKwueRnb), and a song called "Songe", song that for the life of me i unfortunately cannot find the link to, but its posted on youtube, and another song that i cannot remember the name to and cant find the link as well, but is also posted on youtube.
Here's the interesting part: One day while shazaming a specific part of the song (cant remember which one...) Shazam detected a song called "Close Your Eyes" by an artist called something along the lines of "MS-DOS" or "MSDOS", i cant remember exactly! For some reason, shazam did not provide the link from where it got this result, so i wasn't able to listen to it! but the title that it provided is interesting, since as i mentioned before, in the theme's lyrics, you can hear a woman's voice saying "Close Your Eyes"
https://reddit.com/link/1cvu6m8/video/3cf8wde1af1d1/player
And this is pretty much all i've got and all i can tell you all, hopefully you can help me solve this mistery, i was debating whether or not if i should post this here since i dont know if this song/theme is just really hidden or if it's actually lost
If anyone knows anything, please let me know, Thank you!

Hi all I am a big fan of iBroadcast but I also recognize it’s still on its infancy. I thought it will be smart if we make a list with the functionality we miss and think it will be very awesome to have:
Feel free to add your ideas below 👇
I’ll start with my ideas:
•A protocol similar to Spotify connect
•The ability to search “all songs in your library” in alphabetical order
•An easy access to EQ directly from the song similar to the way the onkyo app does it.
•The ability to choose the quality of streaming and downloading music with more options . So original but also 320kps.
•The ability in the app to look up the internet for cover art and assign it to the song.
•The ability to edit metadata from the app.
•A windows and Mac players with themes and a lot of options similar to musicbee (or a plugin so it works on musicbee). It will be awesome to have like the ability to make themes and share it in the community.
•The ability to burn playlist to CD
•The ability on Android to download music to your main store OR micro sd cards for those DAPs and phones which still use MicroSD cards.
• Like a marketplace of EQ made by experts in which you can choose curated EQ for example how the onkyo app has it.
•Lyrics
•Apple Watch app, Apple TV app , widgets on android, Garmin app would be amazing
•The ability to import your own M3U playlists (currently possibly but only one by one )
•Integration with Denon , Marantz and Yamaha receivers.
•Good integration with phone external DACs like USB Audio Player PRO (or integration directly with USB Audio Player PRO).
-Versions of albums . I for example have By The Way by the RedHotChillPeppers in its original release but also the HiDef re release.
Thanks everything I can think for now but I am sure I forgot something I’ll add it in the comments if some other idea pops in my head .

Please disagree in the comments.
Gale - some playlist of songs you’ve never heard of compiled by an obscure online DJ. When you comment that it’s surprisingly pretty good he remarks that “you should have heard them on their first album, before they were famous.”
Karlach - crowd pleasers all the way. She’s got a mix called “summer heat” or something and it’s full of upbeat hit it songs from the last 50 years.
Shadowheart - religious metal music. Maybe some Evanescence. She bangs her head and mouths the words.
Wyll - a mix of old R&B songs, sentimental pop songs and Disney show tunes. He knows all the lyrics.
Astarion - some edgy remix of a really old song that reminds him of his youth
Jaheira - some really old songs that remind her of her youth. Thinks Fleetwood Mac is “what the kids are listening to” but really likes them.
Minsc - unironically plays anthem rock tunes
Halsin - some folk album that he brought a CD for. Listens to it on repeat.
I still haven’t figured out what Lazael or Minthara would play.

https://youtu.be/rPIEBohSojI?si=4k_85P9EeZRXVjxQ
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rem/getup.html
Hello everyone, I hope all is well. Today we are going back to 1998 with the band’s sixth studio album titled Green. Specifically, we are going to be talking about the second song from the album “Get Up.”
“Get Up” was the album’s fourth and final single and had a music video directed Eric Darnell who would later co produce animated movies like Antz and Madagascar. To me, this song is the perfect combination of the band having fun while displaying thought provoking lyrics and great dynamics.
The song actually begins with the music of the chorus, minus the Michael’s vocals, only including Mike’s faints vocals. The tempo of the songs really cements the idea of getting up with its fast paced drum beat, fast electric chord changes and a killer bass line. You also have some guitar slides from Peter which add to the overall textures of the song.
When we get into the verse, Bill’s drumming is less forward and fits the stop and go rhythm from Peter’s guitar strumming. We also get some hand clap percussion every now and again which adds to the bubblegum pop soundscape of the song. At the end of each line that Michael sings, we get an additional vocal from Michael singing “get up, get up!” Now you may be wondering, why isn’t it Mike singing this part? While I’m sure it was deliberate, it fits the backstory to this song. Michael wrote this song about Mike, who at the time of this album’s record session, was sleeping in late every day. So this song was basically a call for Mike to get up and work on recording the album. Funny thing is that Mike didn’t find this out until the late 1990’s when Michael told the story before playing the song during a show.
Although I think there’s more to be said about this lyrics. Sure, in the verse they are pretty simple “sleep delays my life, where does the time go? I don’t know.” Someone is sleeping away their days. And after Michael sings “you’ve got all your life” you get Mike singing “way up ahead” which ends with him singing in a falsetto for the word “ahead.”
But when the band goes back into the chorus, I feel like Michael’s lyric could take on different meanings. When he sings “dreams they complicate my life” he could be singing about actual dreams you have when you are sleeping, or maybe even nightmares. But he could also mean dreams where you aspire to do or be something. And in that sense he might be saying that his dreaming is getting in his way. I just love how the different vocals over layered on top of each other in an almost dream state way. And I like how the band opened the song with the chorus because the chorus seems to be the person dreaming and the verses are someone telling this person to wake up. Plus the chorus ends with Peter’s slide guitar and the chorus progression seeming to climb higher and higher with Mike’s vocals as if someone is waking up from a deep sleep.
In the second verse we have Michael empathizing with this person by telling them that life is hard and how they see them laying down which is similar to what he sings in the chorus. He’s sings about not knowing where to turn to in life when you face challenges and I like this lyric because it’s extremely relatable to me.
After the second verse we get another chorus. And something else I wanted to point out is that after Michael sings “dreams they complicate my life” you have another vocal singing “dreams that complement my life.” I feel like this goes back to the theory of this song being about two different meaning of the word “dream.” People dream because it complements a life style they want to create for themselves. But if you can’t make your dreams come true then they can possibly ruin your life. I also feel like some of Michael’s vocal phrasing, especially in the verse, remind me of how he sings “Hairshirt” but with a lot more energy and faster overall. Both songs even usual a similar lyric with “my life.”
Now is the time we get to the bridge and it may be the weirdest bridge that the band had created up to this point in their career. The bridge is just a bunch of toy music boxes being played at the same time, backed by a kick drum that reminds me of a heart beat. The idea is this bridge actually comes from Bill who actually came up with the idea from a dream he had. I know this sounds too good to be true but it’s real! And as weird as it is, it works perfect for this song. The dissonance of the music boxes is kinda creepy sounding at first, but it definitely fits the theme of dreaming and sleeping.
Bill leads the band back into one last chorus with a decent drum fill. And this time around Michael sings “this time, no escape, I wake up” as is the person in this song realizes that they are sleeping their life away and now they are going to wake up and do something about it. That post chorus seems to last a little longer as the band builds and ascends as Michael sings another round of “get up, get up!”
And just like that, the song is done. In less than three minutes even! Although this song was one of the weaker singles commercially for the band up to this point, I think this is one of their best songs, especially on Green. It’s a song that’s short and to the point, but it has a lot of different ideas between the lyrics’ double meanings and interesting production choices. Michael’s energetic singing is top notch and it has everything I love in a R.E.M. song. If I had a chance to see the band live, I would have loved to have heard this one.
But what do you think about this song? Is it a stronger song from Green? What do you think the song is about? Favorite musical or lyrical moments? And did you ever catch it live?

https://youtu.be/zseaYPPbcgk?si=StYvg2PAAXkR8Ku_
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/benfolds/rentacop.html
Hello everyone, I hope all is well. Today we are going to be looking at “Rent A Cop” which is the eighth track from Ben’s 2006 release Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP.
This is an odd album because it’s basically a glorified compilation album. In 2003 and 2004, Ben started releasing these EP’s which consisted of original songs and covers. After fans started complaining about these songs not being in one place, Ben collected some of the songs, as well as a few others, and put them on this album which he named by putting all three names of the EPs together.
“Rent A Cop” originally was released on the 2004 EP titled Super D. It’s an interesting song because it’s a fun tune with a lot of humor, but I don’t see it mentioned much on here so I’m not sure how it’s perceived by fans. The song starts off with a drum fill and launches into the main part of the song. Ben’s playing this piano riff low on the piano in an upbeat feel that gives off a lot of energy. We are then hit with some weird robotic synths and some acoustic guitar which is always a welcomed thing in Ben’s music.
But to me, it’s the drums that really make this song. The pattern of the drum beat is addictive and really drives the song because when Ben starts singing, the piano and guitar drop out and it’s only Ben’s voice, bass and those rhythmic drums. Lyrically, this song is basically a precursor to the Kevin James movie Paul Blart as this song is about a mall cop. Ben sings through the perspective of a mall cop who exclaims that that it’s the best job in the world because he gets to “‘troll food courts for girls.” He assures us that the girls love him for his uniform and his “little mustache.”
Then this pervy cop explains how he can check out all the women in the mall because he’s wearing sunglasses. We also get the stereotypical lyric about cops and donuts as Ben sings “I whisper through my doughnut ‘Hey baby, baby light that ass on fire.’” It’s a corny line but it fits the personality of this “cop” and I love how musically you can hear the guitar and synths in between each verse.
We then get to the chorus where this cop seems to hate his job. He’s counting down the hours until he can clock out and complains about how he’s all alone in this big mall. If this song took place today then this mall cop would really feel all alone. I love how Ben’s vocals are a little bit louder and fuller during the chorus and right after the chorus we get these horns that really shine in the song.
The second verse sees this mall cop explaining to a kid that he’s not equipped with a gun. And how he doesn’t “get paid enough to run.” Which must lead into some type of argument with this kid because our mall copy says “so you can call me what you want but I'll be hanging at the check out, checking out your girlfriend. Figure out how she's going to fit all of that butt into that underwear.” Is this one of Ben’s worst lyrics? It’s definitely possible. But Ben is singing this song through a character and the way he’s singing (especially with the “yeahs” after each verse) is really selling the whole thing.
We get some different lyrics for the second chorus. This time Ben, or should I say this “rent a cop”, is flirting with this girl at the mall and tells her that he can help her find where she parked her daddy’s car.
Then we get to the bridge of this song which begins with this awesome drop out where it’s only the drums. I wouldn’t call it a drum solo but there’s definitely additional percussion going on and it sounds massive. But when the piano and horns enter back into the mix it sounds like we get some sort of modulation or key change. The horns are playing these longer notes and Ben’s piano playing is more bluesy. He eventually returns to that opening piano riff but played a couple octaves up. Then the horns really go crazy and start playing the riff as well! The bridge is extremely musical and gets my head nodding every time.
We return to the chorus where the mall cop is waiting until it’s “Miller time” which is basically beer o’clock. Then we get this outro which starts with a percussive sounding acoustic guitar which is eventually swapped out for that funky sounding synth keyboard lead. We get more boisterous sounding drums and those jazzy horns. Each instrument gets a turn to solo and shine, all the while Ben sings “I whisper through my doughnut, hey baby light that ass on fire.” The song eventually ends with a drum outro until you can hear Ben in the studio say “alright that’s good.”
Is this one of Ben’s masterpieces? No, I’m not sure anyone would think that. But I do feel like this song may get overlooked. Yeah, lyrically the song is over the top goofy and this mall cop character is a sleaze bag. But Ben’s vocal delivery really sells the character and it’s not meant to be a “deep” song. Besides, the music of this song is one of Ben’s more lively pieces of music with a full band. Not in a fast or “punk” type of way, but more in a dynamic “big band” sort of way. I wish he toured with horns. What’s cool is that during Covid lockdown when Ben was doing livestreams in his apartment, he played a bit of this song on guitar. Which makes me curious if he wrote this song originally on guitar. You can check it out in this video below:
https://www.youtube.com/live/Riu1A6PPW0M?si=qRytGct3xmnITIG6
But what do you think of this more obscure song? Do you feel like it deserves more love? What do you think the song is about? Favorite lyrical or musical moments? And have you ever seen it live?

I 21F am 12 weeks pregnant, due my first scan on 22nd May and me and my partner 25M are over the moon. We were both still living at home with parents but have found a house and are moving out 1st June. I haven't told my family but friends know. Do I bother telling my mum and brother?
Here's the sinch. For years my mum has told me if I'm pregnant I'm out without a second glance, she was very verbally and emotionally abusive towards me growing up and neglected me. I have a lot of childhood trauma and insecurities because of the way I was treated. My brother (26M) was the one that looked after me more than anything but he was and still is basically my mums lap dog. Does and says whatever she wants. If she has an opinion he will always second it. He cannot speak for himself around her they are a force to be reckoned with. A few days ago I was going through my finances with my brother as I was excited to talk to him about me moving out and he said, and I quote, "just don't pop any kids out and you'll be good" and my mum nodded and smiled, like a knowing smile. As if she agreed completely with what he said. I tested the waters on April fools and sent him a picture of a scan that was a chicken, like a literal full cooked chicken and said "hope you're ready to be an uncle! 🥰❤️" and his exact reaction was "U wot". Both had a very negative reaction whilst when I sent to others they got really excited for a moment and then disappointed when they found out it was a chicken. The difference in reactions was startling to me and they've aired more opinions since on the matter, obviously still unaware that I am actually carrying.
I'm almost in my second trimester, I'm going to start showing soon and I want to announce my happy news, but will I be painted as the bad guy if I don't announce to my mum and brother? Do I really still have to put all the energy in and make a big song and dance to announce to them even though they are gonna be so negative about it? Will I be the asshole if I just make a post on Facebook and let them find out that way? For reference I have bought them all gifts shirts and hand carved glasses and what not to go with a scan picture to announce to them, but after the way they have acted and the things they have said not a single part of me wants to put all the energy in just to be given negativity and put in a bad mood or to have a fight/argument. How should I go about it??

As if in a foggy blur, I remember hearing about Udio a few weeks ago, a competitor to Suno. I wasn't all that familiar with Suno, but I had heard the song "I ONLY ATE THREE CHEESEBURGERS" which had me perplexed ---- ------ no ffffkfffin way that an AI could have written a song this good!
Well, the part I was not familiar with was that you can use HUMAN-WRITTEN lyrics to fill out your composition, and that if the human-generated lyrics are witty and clever then the audio engine will sing them and add common pop-song chord changes like dancing around the Circle Of Fifths, and flittering between vi, IV and ii before jumping to V then back to I.
Anyway, started playing with Udio. FANTASTIC!!! I made a musical with 100 songs in it. Absolutely nobody cared except my mom, and Q8Q from Australia.
And as if in another foggy blur, suddenly this Udio that I was BETA-TESTING became SUBSCRIPTION ONLY and you had to pay for credits. And Inpainting only worked if you attached your Credit card information.
 
Well if you ask me, that jump to monetization happened WAY TOO FAST.   And now around these parts, all the posts are people bemoaning that they blew through 250 credits trying to make a song, fighting with Moderation Errors all the way ((if you don't like the word TWATTED, just TELL me that you don't! Don't just throw up an utterly useless "MODERATION ERROR screen!!)), and end up having spent five bucks to make something unsatisfying TWA_TED
 
Anyway, feel free to discuss this. Did the jump to monetization happen too soon?
==== ===

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If you're curious about my thoughts on previous Yakuza games, here are my much shorter (except for 4, thats pretty long too) reviews for Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 (Remastered), and Yakuza 4 (Remastered).
This is a Part 2 to my Mega big Yakuza 5 review. In the first part I covered the plot and it was absurdly long because I am psychotic. If you want to read that you can read it here: https://www.reddit.com/yakuzagames/comments/1cvry2x/yakuza_5_a_mega_big_ole_reviewsummary_for_a_big/
Combat and Gameplay: I generally felt Y5 was a bit of a step down in gameplay compared to Y4 sometimes. I think Saejima was way more bearable to use in Y5 but I generally found the combat to just be less? fun? it felt a little bland. Kiryu felt much slower for some reason. Akiyama still felt great to use and at times a little better. Shinada's combat style was not my cup of tea. I can respect a characters combat relying on weapons but his felt repetitve and honestly the weapon to bare handed combat for him didn't feel good either way. Haruka's was great though obviously. I never felt such joy or excitement then when I first started the dancing gameplay in Y5.
The upgrade system was lame I did not enjoy it, I ended up just keeping on auto upgrade so I didnt have to bother. It felt like a downgrade back to Y3.
This game was mostly really easy, granted I do play on easy because I happen to be a shame to the video game community, but I very nearly turned it to normal many times. Haruka's dance stuff was so fun I actually did try it on every difficulty mode, hard mode was so fun!
As sure as random combat encounters are in the streets of Yakuza, my complaining about these encounters after every review is just as, if not more expected. Yeah obviously the mugging in this game was excessive for me. I went everywhere by taxi just to avoid getting attacked a billion times on one street. And it is kind of at it's worst in this game not just because of how often you're getting attacked but also because of the battle fields. At first I was pretty excited because the space you can fight was so large I incorrectly assumed you could just leave the fight, wrong. While a bigger battle space sounds better on paper, it's actually a horrible idea. I cant tell you how many times I would have finished fighting three of the goons but the fight wouldnt finish because there was two more hiding AROUND THE DAMN BLOCK. It was so irritating. They did take a step in the right direction by letting Kiryu have a ward off bracelet that kept the attacks mostly at bay, it was so nice I wish other games did that in case you want to just walk around for a change or better yet the rest of this one! Because as far as I could tell none of the others had similar items, and the mugging was at it's worse with Saejima in his city enviroment. It HAD to be bugged with the amount of times i'd get attacked in that area, I probably fought more people there in the brief stint I was there compared to all of Shinada's area. So basically yeah I hate the random fight encounters and it is always one of my main complaints with these games.
I liked the tower sweeps in this game, but the one you do as Kiryu near the end of his section had a horrible situation that I have to complain about, mostly because i'm an idiot. There's an area midway through the sweep where the doorway is lit on fire. Me being the genius I am, I grab the fire extinguisher, point it at the fire, and simply throw the whole thing into the flames. Cue the next 20 mintues being me panic running and collapsing into the fire trying to get the extinguisher :(.
Side Stories
Yeah so this game on top of its massive plot and its many new areas, also added on entire side stories for each character! I'll go through and talk about my experience with each one.
Kiryu: The Taxi Driver
Oh My God. This did NOT have to be as fun as it was. I was amazed that Kiryu even knew how to drive let alone was this good of a driver. So there are three types of missions you can get with this, Racing, Taxi driving where you drive, and taxi driving where you talk. I did literally every possible thing you could in this side story. The racing is a ton of fun, there is a bit of a plot to it that basically consists of batting a rival gang of street racers and leads into your taxi boss's trauma and whatever, I didn't really care for the plot but all the gameplay was stellar. I found the missions with just the conversations to be a bit boring, but my favorite was actually doing my job and driving people to their destinations. What a blast.
Saejima: The Hunter
Okay now I can talk about the bear plot. Saejima's side story is massive and I did love it. I wont go through and summarize the whole thing but Saejima basically stays in the village with the old man who saved him from that big bear he beat up and dedicates himself to finding the bear and hunting it to help the old man and the village. There's lots of ups and downs and twists and turns and I really enjoyed it! I liked the twist that the old man was an escaped convict/former hitman as well.
As for how the gameplay of this sidestory works, basically you go to the mountain and do hunting. You lay traps, shoot animals, etc. As you work through the plot you have more acess to higher parts of the mountain. I can definitely see this gameplay not being it for some people, but I actually really enjoyed it! I do have some complaints tho, I really wish you didn't have to start all the way at the bottom of the mountain everytime, or ESPECIALLY have to walk all the way back down when you're ready to leave. I had hoped those shacks you built would serve as fast travel spots but nope. Also the gameplay is a bit clunky here, I love clunkiness so it isn't a big deal but the male deer charging at me no matter what everytime got hella irritating. Also I was stupid during one of the evil bear encounters and when I was supposed to run I stayed and thought I was supposed to fight him and I sat there fighting for my life for literally thirty minutes before I was like "hmmm whats taking so long?" Anyways I did like it and did literally every mission I could except one lousy mushroom quest because I rage quit it.
Haruka: She's an idol or whatever
Yeah this is the best one. There's not much of a seperate plot here as it basically directly ties into her main plot but it mostly consists of her doing idol activities in preperation for each level of the Princess League competition and eventually her debut.
There are lots of different types of games here. There are actual performances which duh they're amazing. There's dance battles or solo battles where you basically do a dance battle...alone? those are also always fun. There are handshake events which took awhile for me to get the hang of, I think they needed way better directions to be honest but once I figured it out it was alot of fun. There are interviews, these are fine except I hate that they make me answer under a time limit STRESS. There's TV appearances, these range from going on a comedian interview show where you have to answer questions then do quick time events, to running ?, to doing various yakuza mini games like pool or air hockey and more. The running show was so weird, the producer was always like creepy as hell and I really dont get what the point of that show was. The minigame shows varied on fun depending on if I liked the minigame.
Now dear reader, I know what you've been wondering this whole time, youve been BEGGING to hear. What is Alex's Haruka song ranking? Im so glad you asked.
So not including the dance battle songs cuz duh she doenst even sing them but I do like "Like a Arabesque" the most out of those.

1. So Much More: Like obviously right? This is the greatest song of all time! I should be studied next to Bohemian Rhapsody, Nessun Dorma, and Moonlight Sonata.
2. Dream: Technically a dreamline song but who cares. This shit made me CRY. The lyrics are ssoooooooooooo goddamn.
3. Because I Have You: This might be a hot take because I do think's it's less well made then Lonliness Loop, but I still would just rather listen to this. It's a jam, SUE ME.
4. Lonliness Loop: Honestly not a bad song either, I just find it to be thematically the weakest as well as feeling a little awkward execution wise. Still a jam tho!

What are YOUR song rankings?
I also like that the songs some what reflect Haruka's state of mind at the time of her performing them. At the time of So Much More she is just really excited for her career and incredibly optimistic. Then during Lonliness Loop she's generally dealing with the heaviness of her career and isolation of it and if I remember correctly, Park had just died when she went on to perform it. Then Because I Have You is building up to the eventual decision Haruka will end up making at the end, she's realizing how much she misses her family but her dream is still ahead of her, just super duper close. Lastly Dream, the tear jerker, and tragically not on the OST, is about Haruka's dream finally cultivating. She is in this moment achieving her dream, but she's thinking of her family and is grateful to them for supporting her this way. THIS SONG IS FOR KIRYU. Like bro, amazing.
Shinada: Baseball
Anyways lets talk about baseball. I didn't love it. At first I kind of did because I was like omg thank god baseball is way easier in this game if I'm going to be expected to do it way more often. But omg bro its TOO easy. It's just boring man. There's no room for anything interesting or diverging about it. Kiryu's could be pretty repetitive as it's just driving but they offer three different types of driving games within it, Shinada's is just a bunch of the same hitting the baseball game. Granted I liked the little story with him helping the little boy be a good pitcher. I found the main story within it really boring? I struggled to pay attention but the ending to it was cute. Yeah I guess I just dont have as much to say with this side story. I did most of it too, I think I missed one baseball mission? I did enjoy the coach missions that he sends you on for training. Well most of them...THAT UFO ONE WAS EVIL. I've never seen a machine make you get a stick in a tiny hole (thats what she sai-) before as the goal to get your prize like WHAT?
Side stories final thoughts: And thats the side stories! They were alot of fun (mostly) I wish Akiyama got a side story :(. I can't think of what they'd give him to do but I would take literally anything. Any potential side story ideas for him?
Substories
My god I did like 95% of the substories. I did SO many.
Kiryu had a really good lineup of substories. My favorite was EASILY "From a far-off land" I cried so hard doing it bro. Basically Kiryu thinks of his kids during Christmas time and he sends money to each of them so they can get what they want for Christmas. Thing is he thought alot about each of them, it wasnt him just throwing twenty bucks per kid at them through the ATM, no, he sat there and was like "Well Shiro would really like this book, I think it costs about this much so I'll send around this much to cover it" But he does it with ALL OF THEM and its so stinkin cute I disintigrated. My second favorite goes to "The other Haruka" as you can imagine anything reminding me of the kids will be my favorite. This one is good for obvious reasons. As for a weaker substory, I really didnt care for "A knock on the door" Honorable mention to the series of substories with Yuya in them! This game was tragically the only one that didn't have Kazuki in it at all.
Saejima's were the weakest and here's why. Because you only get one chapter in his city area, all of them are incredibly fast. One of them is literally just briefly talking to a guy like ???. He does also have several substories on the mountain but they're more related to his side story so I dont really count them. Anyways, my favorite of his was easily "The Little Match Girl" I CRIED, listen im a sucker for the little match girl story and this was just really adorable. I also loved the substory where he dressed as Santa and had to escape a bunch of kids. His worst is probably that one where he just talks to that guy called "Snow Festival Performer". Mostly to set up the revelation.
Haruka wise, I liked any of her substories where she hung out with Akari, but my favorite overall was probably the one where she does the Okinawa magazine interview it was so cute and it made me wanna cri. Least favorite wise, I hated "starbound" it just felt meanspirited. Haha she's fat, grow up.
Akiyama had alot of fun ones. The best probably being either of the two where he DOES A DANCE BATTLE. It was fucking amazing. I also really enjoyed the "Quirky Idol" substory. I did not like "giving up on a dream" Akiyama was once again being mega weird and creepy, I hated that.
Shinada is much better in his substories then he is normally. My favorite's were "Daddy Papa" and "The Scoop Photo", that guy had crazy hair. I did not like the store clerk one because I am incapable of math.
And thats the substories! There's also the Tatsuya quests. Although I like Tatsuya and I made sure to do all of them, I don't think this was well executed. They dont feel very rewarding and taking Tatsuya to the resturaunts is really awkward, I wish they added like mini cutscenes of dialogue where each person got to know Tatsuya with every resturaunt encounter or something. But it wasn't that bad I hope I see him again.
As for the revelations, I am a huge fan of revelations in the Yakuza games. They cut back on them alot in this one sadly but at least we still got some. Also I know there were weapon revelations but I somehow found none of them so Im going to just talk about the normal ones. Well, more like rank them.
Saejima: This was funny in a looney tunes way, I loved it.
Haruka: Okay I hated the substory starbound but this was so stupid I couldn't help but lose it while watching.
Shinada: This was just really cool.
Akiyama: I can respect that performance
Kiryu: Althought I like the guy and respect the situation, the revelation in itself wasn't super memorable.
There you have it!
Lastly, the settings.
Yakuza 5 is wild because every character (except Akiyama) got their own unique area in the game, plus there is also Kamurocho. Saejima actually got TWO if not three if you count the prison. I found Kiryu's to be really lovely, it's probably my favorite honestly, at least out of the new ones. I felt like I really got a good feel of the place and it had such a relaxing atmosphere. Because of the slow nature of this part of the game, it really had time to develop a unique identity especially because Kiryu was so familiar with the locals. The mountain was a better setting for Saejima, I wish they just expanded the mountain rather then have him go to the city. Saejima's city, While I thought this area was my favorite beauty wise. we aren't there long enough and it feels to restrictive on where we can go. Satenbori felt like coming home and it was SO lovely and nice just like I remembered, no notes. Shinada's lacked alot of character. I actually thought it was Kamurocho for way too long because it looks so similar to it. Granted I get Japan can't look too different from well, Japan, it just struggled to stick out in my mind. It's unique feature was the large park area and that was pretty cool but I like never went over there. Lastly, Karmurocho is as lovely as ever, im amazed they still let me go underground even though we barely spend any time in the city, like there was no need for them to let me but they did and I appreciate it. Goodbye intricate rooftop access though, you will be missed. The Kamurocho hills additon made the whole place feel quite unfamiliar honestly. It was a strange feeling walking around it but I still thought it was pretty cool!
Did anyone have a favorite city we visited?
And that concludes my Yakuza 5 ramblings about everything other then the plot. If you read this AND part 1, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Im excited to discuss this game with people because I loved it alot! Feel free to comment on either post if you want to, otherwise I'll finally shut up.
8/10

I get that I'm more than 15 years late to this conversation, so I'm sure it's been discussed to death, but I just finished the show, and fucking hell is season three great.
I thought the first two seasons were pretty good – it's been a few years since I was into South Park/Family Guy/Rick & Morty, etc. and Moral Orel scratched a similar itch in a more satisfying way. It's deeply irreverent, willing to go any distance, cross any boundaries for the darkest, most shocking punchline possible, with an extremely broad and worthy target in the American fundamentalist Christian right. The first two seasons were, for the most part, just a kinda silly, deeply cynical sitcom, that managed to make a meal of a single target.
Then in the season two two-part finale, the show disrupts its own premise in some pretty major ways, with Orel and Clay's hunting trip going dark in ways that the show hadn't quite taken seriously before. Between Clay's drunken rant, Orel getting shot and the quiet "I hate you", these two episodes felt stronger than almost any other, because they expanded out from the show's perspective of a cynical takedown of religious fanaticism – it actually took the characters created in those circumstances seriously.
I honestly felt like the end of season two was made without the certainty of a third season in mind – the writers wanting to go out on the darkest, most interesting note possible. And it would have been a fascinating ending – if we hadn't gotten season three.
I feel like it's pretty common to see TV shows (particularly subversive sitcoms) end a season with a big, emotionally devastating, status-quo-breaking finale, and then just bounce back to regular episodes when the next season rolls around. And based on the very self-contained structure of the proceeding episodes, it's easy to assume that this would be Moral Orel's approach. But there was a little hope in there – that the show could deliver on all the potential it had built up over thirty episodes. That it would do something different.
Holy shit, it delivered.
Season three is an emotional roller-coaster, deconstructing the show from the very first opening credits with a perfectly dark Mountain Goats song, over a decisive title screen reading "THE FINAL SEASON: EPISODE 1 OF 13". It sets the audience up for something very different from the word go, and that's exactly what it does.
The focus on sidelined characters (particularly female characters) in the repressive town of Moralton is fantastic, and leads to many of the show's most interesting, biting moments of critique. The use of indie rock fits perfectly with some of the more inspired directorial choices in the third season, with some really perfect little heart-tugging moments coming where I wouldn't have expected them.
Choosing to break from Orel's perspective in many episodes also lets the show shed a bit of the core of cynicism that had previously been its defining tone. That cynicism isn't a bad thing, it's what a lot of the show is built on. But getting more experimental with the structure of the show, what it's willing to seriously grapple with, makes the show more than the sum of its parts.
It's not all serious of course – the twist that Clay's actually been MAYOR OF MORALTON the entire show killed me, as did the Reverend's increasingly despondency. But the decision to take a more humanist view of what had previously been somewhat more two-dimensional characters (ha ha) is both surprising and welcome.
Season three goes deep on the complexities of romance, sexuality, cycles of abuse, alcoholism, self-destruction, Freudian instincts, and how children try to reconcile their conception of their parents with a brutally disappointing reality. And, perhaps most surprisingly, it ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that Orel remains kindhearted, breaking away from the cruelty and numbness of his parents and authority figures. It's not what I would have expected based on the start of this show, but it sticks the landing exceptionally well.
Like I said, I'm more than a decade late to the party, but I just wanted to share how much I enjoyed this series. It was a fun, cynical and clever take on a classic formula, that delivered something more potent during its final stretch. Happy to count myself as a new fan of Moral Orel.

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

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So I have more evidence of the duration of contact. She's 7 months married. 6.5 months pregnant.
It started out sexual from his first words. Calling her sexy. Asking to video chat. She didn't, but deflected in a passive way. I know they transitioned to Snapchat after he asked to video chat and stopped using Instagram. ~3.5 yr gap from then to when they added each other on this latest instance of his Snapchat.
Proof I nailed it on at least two counts in our previous talk when I told her that "I don't remember" isn't the defense she thinks it is. It's just harmful stonewalling and lying and I'm going to operate under the assumption: of the possible answers, it's the worst one. Don't remember how long it has been going on for? I take that to mean it's been the whole time. It happened before our relationship and never stopped. She acknowledged that he had asked for sexual pictures. I asked when he started that. "I don't remember." Well that just means that's the status quo. You don't have an event to point to because it didn't stand out. That's just the nature of your conversation. It's always been him pushing boundaries and asking for it.
So when I ask what video she sent and she says "I don't remember?" When I ask what else she has sent and she says "nothing else inappropriate?" Well I don't have proof but I know what my gut feeling is. Let's not get into the "inappropriate" nature of the admitted venting to your ex who about our relationship problems...
Time for another confrontation with newfound evidence to poke holes. Let's see if it's enough to trigger her to come clean now on the rest.
She tries to minimize it. Reiterates that nothing else inappropriate was sent. I tell her that the whole thing is inappropriate and should have been shut down when it started in the way that it did. I asked what was exchanged on Snapchat. She said he asked for more but that she told him I'm married and don't want to do that. I pointed out that he was calling her sexy and asking to video chat and there's no hint of that sentiment in the months it took to move to Snapchat. All I see is (AP):"you're looking sexy" (WW) "thanks. you're looking good too!" and "Im 8 mo pregnant, tired, and don't want to be on camera." Nothing even vaguely expressing its inappropriate or that you want it to stop because you're married. Just quick on the draw when he asks to see that sexy belly or that cute face. Asking to video chat, a shared Snapchat username, and right on over to the platform designed for sexting. Either it's as you say, that you didn't care about him at all and just went along in the most passive way imaginable or you were an enthusiastic participant. I think it's the latter.
She deflects and brings up me texting my ex at one point with a picture of our new baby. Also mentioned a girl I have on Snapchat. Turns out she must have snooped in my phone? Well she never mentioned it to me despite "it shaking her."
Another example of a huge personality flaw of hers. No communication. She just bottled it up and used it as justification for eroding our marriage. If she had mentioned it at the time, it could have been addressed and put to rest. One benefit to living a clean life. I told her that my recollection of the nature of the conversation I had with her was that it was short, congratulating her on getting married and sharing that we had our daughter. That I haven't spoken to her since. As for the other one brought up that's a Snapchat friend, she is a childhood friend that was a few years younger and not an ex. Our parents worked together and our families hung out a lot. That she's in a happy long term committed relationship on the other side of the country and that I havent seen her since we were like 15 and 12. That we had previously talked in college and before our relationship about each others' relationships. Mainly to vent about ones that had ended or complain about the lack of options. At one point she was in one where he wasn't very committed and I told her she deserves better. I hadn't said anything during a relationship besides being happy and wishing her the same. This all being prior to our relationship. Since then it's pretty much just random pictures you send out to everyone like stuff our family is doing or of her and her SO/dog, but not engaging directly. So yeah, nice try at deflection, but these are wildly different actions.
All this gives me the idea to go see if she's got her old phone around somewhere with old messages from before we dated. I had seen the stuff mentioned in the previous post, but had drawn a line back then to not look at anything from before we dated. I feel it's relevant now for texts with AP at least, to be an example of how they interact.
Found it, and checked when she was away. Read their conversation history. Everything out of his mouth is sexual. Pushing for photos. Sending nudes. He was married at the time. She wasn't super cooperative at first, bringing up the wife, but still ended up sending nudes in response to his. About a year and a half before we got together, while she was between boyfriends, he asked to meet her at a hotel when she came back home for the holidays and she agreed. Later said she couldn't because she just started dating someone and wasn't the type of person to do stuff with two guys. Partial credit I guess? Still not a great look into the character of my wife to be comfortable as AP.
Anyway. Stashed away the evidence. I did do some internet sleuthing and found the address, phone numbers, Facebook, etc of him and his wife. More on that later.
In our conversations about him and their history together, she did mention that before we met, she was in a relationship where the guy was suspicious/jealous and was physically threatening (punched a wall next to her) and sexually assaulted her. That she had told the ex and he confronted the guy and made him back off. So there's a new aspect of trauma she hadn't shared fully. She had shared early on that she had a relationship with someone she was scared of who got jealous and started stalking her but hadn't shared the rest. She won't tell me his name which is probably good for my own continuing "not in jail" legal status, but fuck.... I can appreciate what he did for her and still think he's scum. I can understand the sense of owing him for that and wanting that as an option for protection, which lead to putting up with it despite not wanting to follow through (as she claims). That doesn't excuse continuing into marriage though. It's also fertile ground for an emotional affair if he's the confidant she talks to when things are rough. There's also the "well I've seen it already so it's not a big deal if you send more pictures" aspect that makes it easy to slip into that dynamic.
More to follow. I did however have a session with an IC thru talkspace which went well. She brought up BPD which after looking, I can't say hits on all counts but there's definitely a lot of overlap with the Petulant subtype.

I have known for a while I didn’t have a visual memory. Close my eyes and can’t picture anything at all. See lights and sometimes floaters on my eyeballs, but impossible to visualise anything. I also have no inner voice. I have no memory of ever having either. So until recently I didn’t know about the inner voice so wondering how I think is different. Memories, I have them but I can’t visualise and I remember conversations as the happen but no voices to them. I know if I have seen a movie, I know the plot, dialogue but it’s just there. I can recall it. Same with music, can remember lyrics of songs I haven’t heard in years. Do others have the same? Names, I struggle with names as I can’t put the face to a name. I will know I met them before but can’t put a name to them. End up calling people matey a lot! Not good lol. Imagination, I can imagine scenarios, but it’s like a script if I write it down it just flows. I do dream can’t recall always but I do dream. Always thought I dreamt in black and white but thinking more on it I don’t think it is visual at all. Just thoughts. I can read very fast, easily absorbing the information especially fiction. Slightly harder with required information but still fast. I work in IT and I can debug logs and systems extremely efficiently. I found if someone came to me with an idea for a program or a use case, I can quickly grasp it to the point I can see blockers. But not visually just seem to know. Guess I am just trying to understand how others perceive these, with and without visual memory & inner voice.

I'm writing a recap of the beef in my own eyes, based on what has been shown out there.
If anyone sticks around to the end to read all this shit, if you have any comments on what I missed or should be edited, lmk. Also go touch grass.
* October 2023: Cole/Drake dropped First Person Shooter, which sees Drake take shots at Kenny and while he gives props to the Big 3, Cole also claims he’s the best rapper alive. The verse from Cole is a bit disingenuous, calling themselves the Big 3, but referring to himself as Ali and saying "me and Drizzy shits like the Super Bowl," which in turn refers to KDot as the third best in the group. Also calls himself "Muhammed Ali," who is considered the greatest to ever do it. In Jermaine's eyes, its Cole Drake Kenny.
* March 2024: Metro Boomin (rap producer) and Future drop “We Don’t Trust You,” an album which sees them take multiple shots at Drake. One song (Like that) features Kendrick, who is practically inviting him to throw gloves with Drake (and Cole). Responds to the Big 3 claims with "Fuck the Big 3, it's just Big Me." A lot of his verse is going at Drake directly, calling his best work a "Lyt pack," and playing up the MJ Prince comps with the "Prince outlived Mike Jack" bar.
(The Drake Metro beef goes back a bit. Drake wanted to be on Metro's album on the song 'Trance,' but Metro didn't like what Drake had submitted. Drake also submitted his verse late, which pissed off Metro, who ended up removing Drake's verse and keeping him off the album entirely. Drake does not take this news kindly, and ends up leaking his verse, which pisses Metro off further. He goes on a twitter rant, stating why Drake doesn't deserve a Grammy. When 21 Savage dropped his album "American Dream", Drake congratulated him on Insta, with a Screenshot that omitted Metro's name out of the credits. Which leads to Metro dropping "We Don't Trust You" and "Like That" as a result.)
Thank you u/CROW_is_best
* Two weeks later: Cole drops Might Delete Later, a 12 song EP. The last song (7 minute drill) is his response to Kendrick. However fans were pretty critical of his reply, with some claiming that as a diss it was pretty tame at best. Other fans claimed it was just a warning shot, and that it wasn't meant to be a diss back. A few days later, Cole apologized to Kendrick at Dreamville fest, and backed out of the battle. It is rumored that TDE member Schoolboy Q advised Cole to drop out of the beef, as it was between Kendrick/Drake, and it would get more personal.
* April 2024: 3 weeks after “Like That”, Metro and Future drop another album, “We STILL Don’t Trust You." This album features multiple artists who also throw disses at Drake. ASAP Rocky for dissing his BM, Weeknd calling out "leaks in the operation."
* A day after Metro/Future drop their 2nd album, Drake's “Push Ups” leaks online. This song clapped back at everyone that took shots at him on We don’t trust you, from Kendrick to Rick Ross to ASAP to Metro to Weeknd. In the song, Drake makes fun of Kendrick’s height, shoe size, his label split (supposedly he had to give TDE 50 of his publishing), and had a subtle jab at Kendrick’s wife Whitney.
* Drake also dropped a song that featured an AI voice of Tupac (Kendrick’s idol) and Snoop Dogg. Both west coast legends, but encouraging Kendrick to drop and stop being scared. A controversial track that was polarizing to say the least. Some fans praising its creativity in the rap beef, along with great verses from Drake. Others calling it disrespectful to a rap legend, and a bad precedent to allow AI in music. The Tupac estate ended up sending a C&D to Drake, who later removed the song from all socials.
(Note that here the public perception was for Kendrick to drop a reply, that Drake had come back correct with Push Ups and that if Kendrick was going to start a battle, he shouldn't duck when met with a reply)
* Two weeks after “Push Ups:" Kendrick drops “Euphoria,” which goes in on Drakes parenting ability, legitimacy in the rap game, and so on. A very solid dissection into the man we know as Drake, its a very good diss track that shows Kendrick's lyricism in full display. Also acknowledged that the industry is out to get Drake "wtf is this a 20v1," and told Metro to "shut yo hoe ass up and make some drums."
(He replied to this with an IG story of a merengue remix of that Metro bar, which was hilarious lmao. That and the band peforming outside Magic City in ATL were the funniest parts of the beef)
* A few days after, he followed up with “6:16 in LA" on Instagram. Not really a diss track in my opinion, it felt more like a track that had some warnings to Drake. Dot questions the loyalty of OVO and their legitimacy in the group, planting seeds of doubt in the mind of Drake. The cover this song is a black Maybach glove.
* Drake replied with “Family Matters” later that night, claiming Kendrick as a phony, attention whore, and worst of all a wife beater. Also claims that Dave Free (Kendrick’s manager), is the father of one of his kids. He drops this song with a full on music video, crushing the GKMC van, showing off the jewelry of rap legends like Pharrell and Pac, and so on.
(Honestly some of Drake's best work, and fans see it as such. Honestly some of his best writing since at least IYRTITL. That along with the beats make it a top 10 Drake song in my opinion. Some claim it's the best song in the diss. However, I just don't see it, for the reason I'm mentioning below:)
* Not even half an hour later: Kendrick drops “meet the grahams” which has heavy accusations. The cover of this song contains some of Drake's items. It includes: Ozempic/Adderrall/Zolpidem prescriptions, a receipt for the chains that Drake bought, presumably the ones in the FM video, and a visit card. Song claims Drake is a terrible person, has pedophilic thoughts/tendencies, runs a underground sex ring, and has a daughter that he’s hiding who’s at least 11 yrs old. It is a haunting track that sees Alchemist produce the beat.
(In my opinion, the clear turning point of this battle. For Kendrick to drop the time that it did, took the wind out of the sails that was Family Matters. And did it at a time where EVERYONE was reacting to it in real time. If the track didn't hit as hard as it did, it probably does not have an impact and Drake would have been the winner. Which is why IMO it's the best diss song in the battle. Despite the fact that daughter claims are mere allegations, he hit home on every other point that was made, with the cover art being proof of his verses holding truth. Which can't be said about any other diss in this battle, bar Euphoria.)
* He then dropped “Not Like Us” a day after FM/Meet the Grahams, which doubles down on the pedo claims, and also calls him a colonizer. This song is an instant hit and a West Coast banger, as it is currently the top song on the Billboard 200 as of the time writing this post.
(This song shifted the tide to "Drake is cooked" status. Prior to this song, people were still reeling from the back to back disses and asking that both sides bring receipts to the table. But with Not Like Us being a colossal hit, fans flocked to Kendrick's side. This track felt like the equivalent to a 3rd quarter run from the 2017 Warriors. Once it happens, you're done.)
To make matters worse, Metro also dropped a disstrumental called "BBL Drizzy," encouraging fans to drop a verse on the song, giving the winner 10k and a free Metro beat.
(Also a pivotal moment. If Drake wasn't losing the battle before, he lost the internet game with this combo. Now social media was clowning on him)
* A day later, Drake replied with "The Heart Part 6," a play on the The Heart series that Kendrick Lamar has. This song sees Drake claim that he set Kendrick up with fake information, and planted all this from the start. He also continues to apply pressure on the DV claims, and dispells the accusations made against him about him being a pedo. Also claims that he understands why Kendrick is so pent up, as Drake believes that Kendrick got molested as a child, referencing "Mother I Sober." Fans believe this track was a white flag of sorts, with the bars saying "You could drop a hundred more records, I'll see you later," and:
"That's why these pedophile raps and shit you so obsessed with, it's so excessive They actin' like it's so aggressive, but you just never known affection I don't wanna diss you anymore, this really got me second-guessin."
The last bar seems to question Kendrick's motives in the beef, and that Drake wants no parts in a battle that is really just projecting trauma. Regardless, the song was met with criticism for questionable lyrics and disses in the song. Shortly after, both sides alluded to move on, with Punch/Top of TDE declaring Kendrick the winner, and Drake saying "Good Battle, summer vibes up next," with the beef ending there.

(Only Europe, Please) - short note - If you're not into reading or receiving long messages,don't read any further + Please If you don't want to read everything because of my post being too long for you & instead of reading It all - ..skip some parts - find another person to talk to.Let's respect each other and our free time. All people criticizing/making fun of me & other people - will be blocked.Pretty much as people questioning my post and giving me unsolicited advice.I'm not here for any conflicts and I know I can't please everyone - I know I never will.. However It's me who should feel comfortable in my new potential friendship & obviously someone who wants to be my friend - not the whole world.. which is why I don't need any advice from people who don't even want to be a part of my life. The amount of rude people on Reddit always criticizing others and making fun of them is unbelievably high but let me tell you something - NEVER let anyone make choices for you and criticize you only because you're different! Always fight for your dreams and never let anyone make you think you're worthless! It's your life and you're the one deciding what's best for you - If you want to judge me despite not even wanting to talk to me or give me advice better block me! I'm an adult woman and I make all decisions on my own.I'm not trying to "fit in" and be like everyone else - just to get more attention.Accept me for who I am or let go - is my motto.
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Hello guys! 🙂 (read everything before you decide to send me a message) Please send me a message ONLY If you're in the same situation and If your expectations are the same as mine.I want to find like minded people from Europe (Why Europe? Read my post to find out) I'm looking for something permanent (remember - you can feel lonely even If you're surrounded by others - If there's no emotional bond) I'm fed up of meeting people who never make time for me & only text me once or twice a week to ask me "what are you up to?" Out of boredom.I don't want to meet people asking others a million of questions like "what's your favorite movie?" Just to give them one word answer and ask them another question "and music? Your favorite song?" I'm looking for something "deeper" & different 🙂
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What kind of friend would I like to find? Someone to talk to on a daily basis - Someone who needs It & wants It just as much as me
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What are my expectations? I would like to meet someone in a similar situation – why? Because I honestly feel like only a person with the same expectations and a similar outlook on life would get along with me & because I feel more comfortable talking to people like me..Friendless people who need a strong bond - people without friends and partners.. Don't get me wrong…Most people deserve to be happy and It's good to have friends but people who have friends or families in real life are usually more focused on them (which is completely understandable) & have less time for others + I simply don't want to be replaced by anyone..I kind of envy people who can call others , true friends given I don't have an emotional bond with any of my acquaintances. Please send me a message only If you're not In a relationship and don't have friends for the same reasons I've already mentioned before
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Whenever I hear that others have friends I simply get sad because (believe it or not) If I had to choose between 20 people to talk to (acquaintances) and one special person - I'd choose that one special person without any hesitation .
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I also want to talk to others every day because..I want to see someone’s effort & be someone's first choice - not another person to have random conversations with..some people ask me "Why do you want to talk to people from Europe?" Well..Because I would like to see someone I'd get along with - In the far future - face to face :) + I don't want to wait any longer than 6 hours to receive a message - waiting 6 hours to receive a message is more than enough
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I'm by no means criticizing people who don't want to talk to others often / People who really are super busy & People who want to find someone to have unimportant conversations with - I'm aware that not everyone has the same expectations which is why everything you're reading now - is here for a reason :) All I'm suggesting is - I don't want anything temporary and I don't want to be the one always giving more than receiving.Listen people - I used to ignore being..ignored by others..always being just an option to talk to during tough times or moments of boredom.I was too young to realize that I was never important enough for most people that were a part of my life. I don't know who needs to hear this but..No one is too busy to make time for you! People make excuses to avoid others because they prioritize everything and (maybe) everyone..over them. It's true that most people are busy - but It takes only a few seconds to start a conversation (If you're into short messages) and a few minutes (1-10/15) to type a long message . Don't let anyone lie to you.
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Truth is that most people either don't like you enough to make time for you or just simply - feel no need to talk to others often but are they too busy? No..You don't need to send me a message just to ask me and tell me "Do you really want to talk every day? I like long messages but I can't promise to contact you often" If you really are unsure please don't send me a message.I don't need more acquaintances aka people to talk to - occasionally.
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I'm not trying to sound rude but conversations once or twice a week wouldn't be enough for me and I don't need them... Let me tell you one thing – A true friend would never just give up on you for no reason :) It’s always possible to find someone to have a random conversation with – someone willing to send you one message once or twice a week..but..It’s almost impossible to find people willing to make more time for you.
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I’m not asking a busy person to make time for me by changing some plans! Absolutely not! I’m here to find someone who wants to talk daily (throughout the day or maybe even night) of one’s own will.Someone looking for the same kind of connection.Strong friendships are based on mutual support. One of the best things you can do for a friend in need, is just to be there for them when they want to talk.I often see posts from people who always say how friendless they are because they don't feel loved or appreciated by their "friends" remember! A true friend - someone who truly likes you or someone who wants to get to know you - will always find time for you.
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I'm not interested in small talk/short messages - I love long and meaningful conversations. It's so easy to find someone who loves abbreviations and questions like "How are you?" How was your day? Or what are you interested in? But so hard/almost impossible to find a person who knows how to keep a conversation going & show others some effort.Building and maintaining friendships takes time and effort.Never allow pursuits or possessions to become bigger priorities than your relations with other people.Close friendships are so important to us because they are so difficult to form + Having friends can help you feel as if you belong to something that brings purpose and connection to your life
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• I do NOT respond to any „Hey,hmu” or „u want to talk?” type of messages (super short messages or messages full of abbreviations – I literally can’t stand abbreviations and acronyms in text messages) ALL messages full of abbreviations will immediately be ignored.I also don't like it when people ignore everything I say in private messages just to focus on a random question or? When they start talking only about themselves and don't ever ask me anything. I love conversations with people referring to everything I say...I want everything I say and do - to be reciprocated
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• No NSFW profiles (checking mental health subreddits NOT included as I'm a huge empath and always try to understand others) - Please! I'm not looking for anyone to flirt with and I'm not looking for a partner either. I always check people's profiles (even comment history) - To avoid guys, trying to get inappropriate pictures from adult women or? flirt with them + I don't want to see you with no clothes on so If you're on Reddit only because you want others to see what's underneath your clothes - I'm not for you! I just simply don't want to see any s e x related activity on your profile If you want to talk to me.
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• If both of us (you and I) are from the same country (I live in a non-English speaking country) - I want to communicate with you in our first language! No - Not because I don't understand English - because as you see - I do. Why then? English is simply overrated and people don't appreciate other languages as much as they should. So.. If we're from the same country and you want to talk only in English (which is quite common on reddit) - Talk to someone else. I just don't want to talk to a person from the same country as mine - in a foreign language as It's just something I don't understand even If all you want is to improve your language skills
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• Please only adult people 18-36 (age range) It doesn't matter to me If you're younger or older than me (as long as you're not underage) So.. don't worry! I just want to have discussions with emotionally mature people :)
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• I don’t respond to messages I don’t find interesting even If they're long - If after receiving and reading your message I don't feel comfortable or think "I wouldn't get along with him/her" I simply do not respond (what I’m suggesting is that I don’t always respond to someone’s first or second message because..sometimes you just know If you’d get along with someone or not- I’d never ignore anyone after days or weeks of daily conversations though) just because I don’t want to do anything forcefully & because I don’t want to lead anyone on. I read all messages but I definitely don't respond to all of them! I want to make it clear because I don't want to be accused of not responding and not reading people's messages! - Some people don't message me back as well and even If It's a bit disappointing I'm ok with that! - as long as there's no emotional bond - Not responding to someone's first or second message Is completely OK! If people think they wouldn't get along with a stranger - is there a reason to start a conversation? I don't think so. I can't stand being ignored after days or weeks of daily conversations and seeing people changing priorities over time.. but that's something different - something I don't want to go through ever again for real. If I'm really interested in someone's message it's impossible to hear from me "I'm too busy" because I know myself and If I had no time for others - I wouldn't be here. I don't want to pretend someone I'm not and always try to find some cheap excuses to avoid others. (unlike most people who don't want to talk to others)
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• Don’t ask me “Can you tell me something about yourself?” If you really want to get to know me - you can ask me questions :) I'm an open book.
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• It would be better If you guys were into emojis - like me - to describe your emotions In text messages. Two emojis - 🙂 and 🙁 are completely enough! I just don't like emotionless conversations.I also don't like it when people say "yeah" or yea"as it sounds dismissively. First impression Is everything to me! I want to see your kindness even in a text message - Emojis are very helpful to express your emotions.I don't want to meet people who say "crying Is a weakness" - It's OK to cry even If you're a guy!
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• I want to talk on reddit first (just to make sure If I'd get along with you) before moving to Discord or some other app
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• I would rather talk to a homebody - not another person who always has something to do as people who are very busy don't even have time for daily conversations
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• If you're another person interested only in "childish conversations" such as "HEYOOO! I'M BORED! Ya like Pizza or cheese? xDDDD 🤣" I'm begging you! Don't send me a message.I'm not a child anymore and such messages don't make me smile or laugh.I'm looking for someone interested In serious discussions - not another person just seeking some entertainment out of boredom . Conversations with sarcastic undertones (even when It comes to some emojis such as 🤣😂) are not for me. Your typing style matters to me! Why? when It comes to online conversations with someone new - It's not always possible to know If someone Is laughing at you.. or with you. Let me tell you something else! Jokes about cancer, disabilities and death are UNACCEPTABLE to me. If you find joy In someone else's misfortune you are not a person I want to know.
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• Time response matters to me a lot! I would never ask anyone to be online all day long and I'm NOT asking any of you for any instant messaging as I'm someone who would rather wait an hour or two to receive a proper response instead of some short and pointless messages but I'm interested only in daily conversations and I don't want to wait any longer than 6 hours to get a message from you.I don't need unbelievably long messages either! Messages as long as the second paragraph of my post - are completely enough. If you like longer messages? you can send me a longer message, but If you want to send me one word or one sentence as a response to my post - don't expect a reaction from me. I don't want to come across as rude - I just don't want to waste your time
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• I'm strongly AGAINST picking on people you don't even want to chat with - and making fun of them! I can't stand people who criticize others publicly or make fun of them! (only because they disagree with someone they don't even know) There's no place In my life for someone using Reddit, to hurt other people
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• I'm not into foul language and I definitely don't want to talk to people who swear a lot...
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• I want to meet assertive people who know what they want and always stand up for their friends
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• I want to meet someone willing to call me In the future, someone spontaneously sending me pictures of animals or food, et cetera. I want more than just text conversations.. 🌻
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Why can’t you see any of my hobbies listed down below? Because what really matters to me is..who you are (If you’re honest, talkative ,understanding, caring and trustworthy – for example) just simply – It matters to me what you’re like! not what you like.Don’t get me wrong – you can tell me what your hobbies are but from my point of view - people's hobbies are important - If you want to find a gaming buddy or If you want to meet someone to hang out with in real life and..go bowling for example.What most people seem to care about are other people's passions – I don’t. I get along with other people despite having completely different hobbies but I absolutely don’t get along with people way different than me (different expectations and outlook on life – way different sense of humor or personality traits – It’s just an example) It doesn't make ANY DIFFERENCE to me If you're a gamer or? Someone interested in photography! It doesn't make any difference - > as long as you're talkative and kind and If you also want to find someone willing to stay in your life..for good - But If you're into small talk and all you want is to...type and receive super short messages or If you're here only because you're bored and don't know what to do + If you're a very sarcastic person - I'm definitely not for you! I don't get along with overly sarcastic people turning everything into a joke. Friendships should be natural – not forced. I wouldn't get along with people who laugh at everything.. In my opinion most people are way too sarcastic.. It's quite sad... Sarcasm can also be another form of passive-aggressive behavior.
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People who want to be to friends should feel comfortable and have something in common. No - not necessarily a similar taste in music or movies but something else..Most friendships don't fizzle out because of people not having the same hobbies but..because they just simply have different expectations when It comes to something important.I'm not here out of boredom and trust me - I'm not here to meet as many people as possible.I choose quality over quantity.I highly value myself and my time & Sometimes one person but a person who makes you feel comfortable and understood - is more than enough :) We ALL can choose what kind of people we’d like to talk to and maybe even become really good friends with and I? I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.We all have some expectations after all.I know that people don't have to talk as often as possible in order to become friends but I'm interested only in daily conversations. If you really need someone to talk to due to loneliness and If you have time to talk to me daily (throughout the day and maybe even night) I always make time for others.I'm literally always available.I could even stay up all night long only to talk to someone important to me. I’m ready to commit but only If there’s some chemistry between me and someone else.I don’t do anything forcefully.
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If you want to talk to me tell me your story - tell me why you're here, what kind of friend would you like to meet :) Et cetera.Such messages are way more interesting to me than...someone's long list of hobbies. I know! It's unusual on reddit but I don't make friends based on hobbies..I want to meet someone with the same mindset as mine to finally feel understood and get close to someone new. You can share your problems with me - I absolutely don't mind "complaining" as I've been through a lot in my life.What do people usually tell you when you tell them that something's wrong? "Don't complain" or "Life's not over yet - one day you'll be happy" or "There are worse situations than yours" and..obviously "Find a therapist" Life's not a fairytale and sometimes things don't go as planned.Emotions shouldn't be bottled up.I'm sick of people always telling others "everything's gonna be ok" move on " & more..Trust me people - not everyone wants to hear "Just believe in yourself and everything's gonna be ok" Some people take it as reassurance - but others? They would rather hear something different 🙁Imagine being told that things will be okay, only for them to get worse..Do you guys know why telling someone "everything's gonna be ok" Is wrong? Because you can't see the future.
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You can't guarantee others that one day they'll finally be happy + when It comes to social interactions - We're responsible only for ourselves - not others & as you guys know people let us down quite often (sometimes even when there's no reason) so instead of telling people how they should move on, forget everything and be happy or asking them to find a therapist - be there for them! Always be willing to listen to them If you really like them or want to get to know them & don't suggest everyone in a tough situation to find a therapist because even the best therapist won't ever replace a true friend + It's quite normal to be disappointed If people always do something to hurt you. Sharing your hardships with other people in a very similar situation or exactly the same one - is VERY helpful If the other person understands you & wants to start all over by just letting it all out! Feeling emotional support instead of always hearing some "positive quotes" or someone saying "Stop complaining let's talk about something else - Is very important! "Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on. I appreciate sensitive people who always try to understand others. If after hearing a sad story all you want to say is "forget the past and move on" you're not for me. It's important to be a good listener and provide emotional support to others
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Please - If you're a completely different person than the described type of person I'm looking for (If you love abbreviations,If you don't need a stable friendship, If you're sarcastic and quiet) or If you simply disagree with my post - don't force yourself to send me a message.I want my new potential friendship to be natural which is why I want you to contact me only If your needs are the same - I don't want you to pretend someone you're not - only to please me - Pretending to be someone you're not - is the worst.I want to finally be happy again & find someone "always" wanting to talk - sending me random pictures throughout the day - food pictures or pictures of some animals. What is the most important to me? I want to find people who value online friendships as much as they would value real life ones as there's another human being on the other side
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No comments please.Only Private messages and chat requests 🌺
I know It's possible to meet people with exactly the same expectations as mine but It's just not easy because most people are Interested In temporary and entertaining conversations. People like me are just "different" I really want to finally find someone who loves emojis as much as I do.. someone who loves sweet, warm and serious discussions at the same time. Emojis really do - change conversations 😊