I'm Back! (Kinda)

General Off-topic discussion
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Hello, everyone! It’s been what, a year? Two years? Too long is how long. Anyways, I’m back! (well, sort of.) I’ve come to open up about some things that I had dreaded talking about.

For the past two years, I had been dealing with anxiety because of a video I had seen on YouTube.

THIS VIDEO SHOWN BELOW

As the days went by, I began having these constant thoughts in the back of my head while I was animating that a hacker was watching me and taking my files under my nose. They kept getting worse and worse and I had eventually reached my limit. I stopped animating, drawing, composing music, writing and pretty much everything on my computer for good.

Months went by and I had begun to grow paranoid over anything that had to do with the internet or related hackers. I no longer felt safe, it even got to the point to wanting to take my own life.

But before I had completely lost it, I reached out to some friends and my family got to help. Eventually within a year, I slowly got comfortable with my computer and got back into the things I thought I had lost forever. And now that brings us up to here. I am glad that I finally got the courage to share this with you guys, because it hadn’t been easy.

Over the course of time since I had been gone, many things had happened, I became an adult, I started attending college (which wasn’t easy, the first year :skull:), adjusting to new life, plans for future jobs/careers, and I met a beautiful woman who cares so much about me.
As for animation, I’ve switched to a more efficient software, Adobe Flash CS4. I’ve been struggling a lot with getting the rigs to animate, but I’ll get the jist of it (somehow).

Now the big question, am I still gonna be active here? Maybe. That’s for me to decide. But until then, have a great day! It’s been a wild ride.

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Welcome back :slight_smile:
I wish you all the best.
(Did you check your PMs btw?)

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I’m going to say something that should reassure a lot of people.

The information disseminated is not always accurate, sometimes it is false, sometimes it is correct but distorted from the original meaning, sometimes the title of a subject is misleading but the rest is true.

Personally when I hear information I know that it could be false, or true,
either I accept it, or I refuse it, refusing it means for me,

It goes in through one ear and immediately comes out through the other.

Then there is self-persuasion:

if you say something out loud, for example randomly:

I love my job it’s great, you will love your work.

If you say something out loud like I hate: *********, you will end up hating it.

If people want to delve deeper into the subject you can go to a dedicated YouTube channel. Who explains the lies, the true or false information and how to do it, well the channel is in French, but with the subtitles and automatic translation you should understand.

Good bye.

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You want to know why self-persuasion is very strong, (it may work with some people and not with others) but with me it works very strongly.

And I’ve never told anyone this, 1st experience I was in the car next to the driver in the mountains, I got a bit dizzy because of the 90° turns. But nothing serious, it was just in my head at first.

Then he says to me, you’re not going to throw up, and I say “yes, maybe”.

That’s when my stomach and throat started to contract, and I felt like throwing up for the next 2 minutes. So he stopped and I got out. And when I got back in the car, I was as good as new.

2nd experience, I was at the doctor’s surgery because I had a flare-up of pimples on my hands, and I was becoming paranoid to the point of counting them every day. In short, I was in a disastrous psychological state. So I went to see my dermatologist, and during the consultation I was so emotional that I said, I think I’m going to cry (even though I didn’t want to), and I was on the verge of tears for 1 minute. My dermatologist was in a panic and didn’t know what to do to calm me down.

That’s when I knew that self-persuasion, i.e. saying things out loud, was the way to go.

Cigarettes are bad, I’ve got to stop, and what’s more, they’re costing me money.

(well, I don’t smoke) but if you say that every week, you just might start to quit.

Everyone is different. I have plenty of experiences like that on self-persuasion, I’ll stop there.

Here I am going out. I hope that many will have learned from these 2 messages, which will perhaps change the course of your lives.

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Just a quick small message, to whomever who are having this type paranoid:-

  1. Everything mentioned in this video is true, but it could be also you who have done it and forgotten.

  2. If you believe something is wrong, contact a cyber cafe, and ask them first to see for any suspicious things.

  3. Create a live bootable media of any operating system, on your usb or external ssd.My Preferred is mostly fedora for normal end users, you can still look for everything on your computer. But I prefer kali linux live bootable for advanced users. Just to find any hidden file that windows doesn’t show. And modify them. And do more geeky stuff.

  4. If you have your data backed up in the usb or any backup service. Just reinstall your operating system with a fresh installer.

  5. If you have a 128 or 256 gb usb, which is fast and reliable. Then just use ventoy, drag a windows installation iso in it after configuring ventoy, then add other needed iso’s like fedora, kali linux, slax, you won’t need anything like rufus or balena, until and unless a iso requires different file system.

  6. No need to rely on third party antivirus, Microsoft defender does a very good job. I haven’t used any third party antivirus since 2015, I used the paid version of mcafee before. And I am definitely not just like any other normal user, I deal with a lot of viruses. Mainly to test security of my own home server, and network. And defender pretty much has the highest recognition rate, it detects like 99.5% of the malware.

  7. And always, enable all security settings, double think before surfing something suspicious on internet, and just use the normal online ethics.

  8. I mean, just spend your bucks if your data is important. A 20$ subscription wouldn’t do any damage to your pocket, if your data is important than that. I have all google drive, onedrive, and Dropbox subscription for double-triple backup, so my data is safe with me. And on top of that, I have built a home server (nas) with my old pc and hdd lying around my house. You can build one too for pretty cheap with an old computer.

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