I only have an online life

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]I only have an online life. When I was growing up, I never found where I belonged. I often met people who were older than me or younger than me, so I never formed a genuine bond with anyone growing up. I was often bullied as a kid, viewed as the punching bag of the class rather than being a human being.

[00:00:19]And even when that stopped and I thought everyone matured a bit, I found myself socially isolated from everyone else.

[00:00:27]I couldn't seek relief in my family as I didn't and still don't have the best home life. I never grew up knowing what friendship and acceptance was. My isolation only worsened when I knew I was transgender at nine. Even if I had the perfect life, I don't think anyone would accept me the way I am. So, instead of doing normal adolescent things, I just went home and played video games. I never went outside because there was no point. Even when I wanted to, my parents would come up with an excuse on why I wasn't allowed to go outside.

[00:01:01]This is in all reality because they were too lazy to watch over me.

[00:01:07]My family situation wasn't helping me cope with my isolation. It just made it worse, so I just threw myself into gaming.

[00:01:15]Gaming is all I knew and it was all that I was good at.

[00:01:19]Through my hundreds of hours of gaming, I met some people to talk to. To me, this was some of the first social interactions I had with people. The first time I talked to someone and they wanted to talk to me back. To you, this may not mean anything, but as a transgender, someone not knowing what I look like and what I sound like made it super easy for me to talk to someone.

[00:01:41]My beginning online relationships didn't last long and honestly, they were toxic.

[00:01:47]I didn't have much experience talking to people. I always demanded attention. I was hurt easily and I tried to control their lives to an extent. I was always the cause for one of my friendships ending and it took me a long time to realize that I was the problem.

[00:02:03]Lockdowns in 2020 furthered my dependency on having online friends and furthered my reliance on having an online life.

[00:02:12]I started experimenting with content creation and I managed to hit it big eventually in 2022. For the first time in my entire life, I could host something that revolved around me and what I created. This came in the form of a Discord server and I made a lot of friends that I'm still friends with today.

[00:02:32]But, it wasn't so simple as friending someone. I had a lot of bad qualities as I mentioned before. I finally realized I had to change to be a better person, not for myself, but for my online friends.

[00:02:46]It took a long time, like three years, and I had to sacrifice a lot to learn, but I think I got there in the end.

[00:02:53]Having a Discord and people to talk [music] to really was my ideal version of being happy. I always imagined that this is what I always wanted. But, as the years went past and everyone continued to grow around me in real life and online, I was stuck.

[00:03:11]I always remained talking on my server.

[00:03:14]I never tried to make other friends while everyone found other online friends to talk [music] to or got busy in real life and made real life friends.

[00:03:24]I found myself always messaging first and when I disappeared because I was struggling, no one noticed.

[00:03:31]I got into toxic relationships and stayed. My friends witnessed this and they were well aware of it, but no one told me to stop or intervene.

[00:03:41]I spent hours struggling alone afterwards [music] and I was honestly depressed and no one seemed to notice.

[00:03:49]I didn't understand. I had so many friends, but felt alone. I was hurting and no one cared.

[00:03:56]And I get that I should be responsible for my choices and not be reliant on anyone else, but you know, it would be nice not to be alone.

[00:04:05]I treat all of my friends like family as I felt I never had a family that cared for me. So, like family does, I cared for my online friends. [music] I would be there for them. I would message first. I would be there when they needed me the most. It didn't really make me comfortable and when I didn't receive that back from any of my friends, it really hurt.

[00:04:27]I can't even blame them. Maybe they got busy. Maybe they are struggling themselves and can't message back. Maybe they are talking to someone else. Maybe.

[00:04:37]Maybe they just forgot about me.

[00:04:39]Or maybe it's just my fault for relying on my online [music] life so much.

[00:04:44]You know, even when I told some of my friends my true feelings and that I never always wanted to be the first to message, they didn't do anything. What's worse is some people promised that they would check up on me after hearing my true feelings, but they never did. It feels like I carry all of my life's burden on myself and I have no one to share it with.

[00:05:05]>> [music] >> You may be thinking after listening to me that I should simply get offline more and make real life friends. The reality is more complicated than simply befriending people in real life.

[00:05:17]What really hurts me is I tried to explain my reliance on my online life to people and they write it off as me simply needing to get real life friends.

[00:05:28]What makes it really worse is that some people try to [music] act like they understand my feelings and they promise to treat me better online, but then they don't do anything.

[00:05:39]The reason I don't make real life friends is because everyone I meet is terrible and has no sense of integrity or has moral depth. I don't mean to sound like I'm preaching nihilism, but everyone generally has a bad quirk to them that immediately makes me avoid them. People swear too much. People say slurs. They bully others. They make offensive [music] and insensitive jokes.

[00:06:01]They bully LGBTQ+ people and so on. I don't make friends because I choose not to. [music] I will not conform or give someone the pass for being a bad person to be their friend. Yeah, it makes me lonely and it makes me isolated, but I'm not compromising my morality to gain friends.

[00:06:22]Some people have the nerves to sit in the comments [music] and write, "Oh yeah, just keep looking." Like it's the most simplest thing to do in the world.

[00:06:30]Ah, the privilege some people have.

[00:06:33]Thanks for watching. I'm not going to end today's video on a positive note because it doesn't matter. And again, not to sound like I'm preaching nihilism, the reason it doesn't matter is I can't sit here [music] and give you something positive when I'm still struggling myself regarding this topic.

[00:06:50]All I can really say is I really hope you don't end up like me and yeah.

[00:06:55]I would like to thank these people for making fan art. It is really nice of them to do that and thank you very much and I don't know who's watching to this point, but um I want to clear up some things. Uh first of all, apologies for this video taking forever to come out. I've been struggling to write this video first of all and just struggling to get out from bed, try in school and not be sleeping all [music] the time. Uh but yeah, also I've seen some comments say I should get therapy and maybe not vent on YouTube. Uh first of all, nice privilege you got there. It's not very easy to get therapist. Um and and I do always recommend a therapist if you're struggling.

[00:07:42]Uh but me, I can't really get access to that, but I plan to go into it very soon.

[00:07:48]Uh but yeah, this is not a venting channel by the way. I talk about life.

[00:07:52]I'm just going to talk about my life.

[00:07:53]This channel is pretty selfish. So, yeah, I'm just going to continue to talk about my life and how I view things. And hopefully it can give some I don't know, some relief to some people, you know, to make them not feel alone.

[00:08:10]>> [music] >> Uh some topics I'll talk about were just fun general topics about gaming and life, but for now I'm just talking about myself because we're humans. We love doing that. Anyways, I kind of overstayed my outro, so I'll see you guys in the next video that hopefully doesn't take about like three weeks to come out. Bye-bye.