A Personal Reflection on Toxicity and Attitude

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately with the dynamics I’ve been observing, particularly in my interactions with a certain group of younger individuals. It’s hard not to notice that some of the Gen Z girls I meet display a toxic nature that I didn’t expect. Their attitudes often come off as dismissive, and there’s a level of arrogance that can be hard to bear.

I’m not trying to generalize all Gen Z girls, but in my experience, there’s a tendency to place their worth on social media likes and follower counts. It sometimes feels like their egos are inflated by an overwhelming need for validation from the online world. I find myself longing for the more grounded and genuine interactions I’ve had with millennials, who, despite their own challenges, seem to communicate with more understanding and empathy.

There’s a kind of maturity and resilience in the millennials I've crossed paths with that I deeply admire. They approach conversations with an openness that fosters connection, rather than the competitive, often hostile energy I occasionally feel when talking to some Gen Z girls. It’s almost as if they are more comfortable with themselves and don’t feel the need to constantly prove their worth.

I don’t blame the younger generation entirely; after all, we’re all products of our environments. But I must admit that I feel a sense of responsibility to bridge this gap. I want to share my perspective without sounding judgmental because I truly believe that we can learn from one another.

This confession isn’t about bashing a generation; it’s about expressing a genuine concern for the toxicity I sometimes see and the hope that with awareness and dialogue, we can cultivate a more understanding space for everyone, regardless of age. We’re all trying to navigate this world together, and perhaps it’s time I lead with empathy rather than frustration.

Can you believe it

Hello all! I am in a conundrum and in search of help.

I’m in a profession that is very male dominated. Military.
Currently away from home, away from norms, in a different place.

A couple of girls and I decided to make an all women’s Bible study!!! (I’m sorry if this is not a religious place, it’s pertinent to the story.)

It has been going GREAT. In a setting where we’re basically with men’s 99.9% of the time, a girls only get together is amazing we do a Bible study once a week and a little just hang out every other week on a different day. The group is smallish. 10-14 girls. All different ages, races, backgrounds, experiences, some moms some not, some married some not. Genuinely the best time ever because we are all feeding off and learning from eachother.

Until yesterday, we had a new member. I was one of the founding members, so I have to interface with her a lot. All our texts have been very short & curt from her. While I’m using emojis, exclamations & trying to be warm. I’m very glad she came , but she seemed to be upset? To be there?
We do intros with anyone who is new, they read off why they wanna join & what they want to learn.

She said “so I’ve typically not had a lot of female friends over my life, I lean a lot more toward men, because I HATTTTEE drama”

And it was a red flag to me. I feel like that’s something teenagers say, not grown women. She is in her 30s , married and has kids.

She went on to say how she wants to be around like minded women and have friendships. So that was redeeming.

But my question is: is she the problem, OR AM I?? Because I feel like now IM being judgmental when I should be the one being welcoming and happy she’s here. But she is giving weird vibes and her saying that, on her FIRST NIGHT seemed soooo awkward.
Help please. I don’t want to be a mean girl, NLOG, pick me, etc.

Basically, a month ago, I was the person who posted about being an engineering major and have a friend that is a business major who doesn't get along with and is passive aggressive to my other friends who are engineering majors.

A lot of comments in that post were asking me about why I still continued being friends with her despite this and it's because recently this business major friend confided to me that she was diagnosed with autism and is on the autism spectrum which, in her words, leads to her also having a bit of a narcissistic personality disorder and which causes her to say and act like this towards others.

I'm not someone who judges if a person really is on the autism spectrum nor do I go around investigating someone way too much if I suspect someone but I'm not sure what to think. I don't want it to seem I'm ending our friendship because I can't handle her autism or disorders. What should I do?

This was found on Fragantica under a review for Versace Dylan Purple EDP. Also, why the hate for the Beverly Center. What did it do to you?

I know this isn't a hot take or anything but I hate that so many girls/women feel like they need to be different in order to be respected. This obviously doesn't apply to everyone but I feel like so much NLOG behavior would be stopped if people and media didn't portray women and "girly" things as less than. It makes me sad to see so many girls feel like they need to be different to be liked. I had a phase like this when I was young, maybe 8-10. I said I hated pink, girls weren't as fun, etc. I never hated pink, I did and still do love it. I wanted to be seen as cool and not like all the stuff I heard. I wanted to distance myself from being the bad "girly" stereotype. I'm very thankful to have grown out of that phase. I love being like other girls now. I wish I never felt pressured into being NLOG.

I know this is a bit of a rant. I needed a place to vent my frustrations about society and girl hood.

My NLOG phase featured heavily in my early teens. Around 12 to 16 years, before fizzling out by the time I was 19 when I realised girls are cool and I am like them.

I am now 27, and I am realising the people around me (that I also knew growing up) still treat me like the angsty 14 year old that I was. I dont know why, and I dont get it either.

My close friends had a NLOG phase similar to me, and have grown away from it as well. We were all still in contact in our early 20s, but off to different universities, so we did have space apart as well.

The edgelord that I was used to say things like I would wear a suit to me wedding instead of a dress. So now when we went shopping recently for an event, they were trying to show me pant suits and gentle parent me about it. All like I dont have a vision of me in a cute frilly dress and getting my hair and makeup done.

And its about everything that centres around traditionally feminine things. Working a way around it all so I dont have to shave, or wear heels, or they offer to do my makeup for me for a night out and explain how everything works. Even when we all talk about guys, or person hygiene, it takes them a minute to realise I am interested as well.

And now to do some NLOG-ception here. I am not like my aunties/ cousins/ friends that do all this. (/s) out of all of us, I am the one most likely to be wearing makeup, or freshly waxed with a dress on, or any other 'girly' thing. So I just find it so weird that people around me struggle with this idea that I am into all of this now. Its not like I am trying to keep up, I just deeply adore being one of the girls. Its also been like 10 years, cant a girl just grow. Damn.

i want just some reassurance since i am a newly military spouse by myself (he was deployed in my country and we met, so don’t mind my english).
they’re partly so entitled and posting shit like “better a PHAT RING in my 20s than being a hoe #militarymarriage” . at first why the hashtag?
and i constantly see those post’s, am i the only one cracking when i see this?

I want to preface this by saying that I have autism, so I am going off of my own experiences of being around other autistic women.

We all know of the NLOGs who are the way they are because of the desire for attention from men, but I think there is another breed that can get forgotten: girls and women who’ve been bullied by other girls and women who feel like they need to “get revenge” somehow. And I think you see a lot of this among autistic women and girls.

I remember being “an early bloomer” when I was in school. I was also *extremely* shy and never talked to anyone. Suddenly, boys were looking at me and acting awkward around me and girls were getting increasingly hostile towards me. But I had no idea what was going on. I thought the girls who were mean to me were just being mean to me because of only one thing or another when it was actually a complex social dynamic going on that I didn’t understand yet. Like, I was in grade 6 and had leg hair, and there was this girl who was constantly criticizing me for it and saying I needed to shave (and there was a day I remember when she looked at a hole in my jeans to see!).

Another thing I see is that many autistic girls have interests which aren’t “feminine”, and we often more concerned about wearing comfy clothes over following fashion.

The social system in the world of women and girls is often more complex, too. As autistic women, our brains often default to being literal, but a lot of female socialization just isn’t like that. While boys and men are more likely to say what they mean and mean what they say, women and girls are often a lot less direct. It’s in the body language, the look on their face, the *way* they say it, and even what’s *not* being said. And when it comes to bullying, girl and women can be really mean. We just know what we said or did something wrong, but we don’t know what it is. We try to look at it as something simple and change that thing, but it doesn’t work, and they continue.

And, after being bullied for not liking what we’re “supposed” to like (and finding that we often can match boys more in that way or that we have the “wrong” “feminine” interests), finding the ”right clothes” to be uncomfortable and unappealing, and being treated horribly by some neurotypical women and girls without knowing *why* (and finding it exhausting to figure out), I think some autistic women are just likely to write women off. All that hurt that they’ve been through still hurts, and instead of processing it, it’s easier to put up a shield and say “you think I’m a loser for not being like you? Well, I think YOU are shallow and stupid for caring about nothing but makeup, hair, clothes, pink, boy bands, and sharing stupid selfies with cat ear and huge lip edits on Instagram, so there!”

I think I’ve gained a lot over the years by seeing that all people are three-dimensional and have a place in the world and have something to contribute. For example, I am not a nurturing type, and I’m in my early 40s and without kids, and that’s ok. I prefer having cats and snakes. There are also some women who’ve looked forward to being moms ever since they were very young, and that’s also ok. There’s room in the world for all of us.

EDIT: I am not talking about all autistic women and all neurotypical women here. If you are autistic and you do not relate to this, that’s ok. I’m sharing an interesting conversation that I had with someone who’s worked in mental health for decades and is a local expert on autism. Both of us have met a lot of autistic women who have experiences like this and react to those experiences like this. I tried editing the post to always say “many” and “some” to make it clear that it won’t apply to every autistic or neurotypical person. And, yes, autistic women can definitely be interested in things like make-up, fashion, and boy bands, and that is not a bad thing at all. I’m also talking specifically about autistic women, not all ND women.

"I just can't make friends with other girls; I'm only friends with guys."

Seen in Ketchikan, Alaska.

In Dolly’s defense, lots of people, including women, are/were mean to sex workers.

So I know this person. She regularly refers to things women like as “stupid girl shit” and referred to occupations which are primarily dominated by women as “useless women’s work”. She says that romance and drama movies (which are predominantly enjoyed by women and girls) are “objectively horrible”. She said that she is grateful that she got into one of her favourite video game series as a kid and is happy that “it saved her from getting into worthless girly shit like makeup and clothes”. She said that modern horror movies “are for wimps” (she used another word here, I think you know what it is) and that “all the good manly horror movies with blood and gore were made in the old days”.

I confronted her in yet another post about it a little while ago. She said “I’m not interested in getting ratio’d”. She deflected and just went on about something else I mentioned. I was persistent. I told her that a lot of what she posts comes off as misogynist. She never addressed that. She deleted her post and then told me to shut up and drop it. I didn’t. I continued to say that her posts, at least, came off as NLOG and, at worst, misogynist. She dodged it for a while, then said stuff like “I’m not feminine, get over it” and “I don’t like feminine stuff, get over it”. I said that that’s fine, but she is insulting women, and she doesn’t need to bring others down to lift herself up. She didn’t seem to get the point, as she just kept saying the same thing and then just started with “shut up”, “I’m not interested”, ”get a life”, and “I’m done”.

Years ago, she told me that the anime I enjoyed are “probably stupid girly shit”. Even though she apologized, the rants she has continued to post over the years show that her attitude has not changed. When I confronted her a while ago about her offensive NLOG posts, she said “Sailor Moon is mediocre garbage that I outgrew years ago”, even though she knows how important Sailor Moon was to me when I was young. Pretty ironic that she was getting upset just days before this about some random post in which someone said some video game character she likes sucks because saw as a hero when she was a child (and he saved her from getting into “worthless girly shit”).

We commonly think that things like this stop after a person grows up and reaches a certain age, but no. In some cases, being the cool quirky tomboy who doesn’t like ”shallow, immature, and inferior” women’s stuff becomes a way of life and one’s way of walking the world, and when you try to confront them about it, it feel like an attack on their very core and they panic.

She has since deleted a bunch of posts where she says these kinds of offensive things. There is a small chance that she has realized how she comes off, and a bigger chance that she’s just afraid of someone saying something again and her looking bad.

Even though she says we’re friends, she never shows any interest in things I like. In fact, I don’t even bring them up because I know she’ll just ignore me.

So is this NLOG? Is this outright misogynist? Someone said to me that it’s not misogynist because it doesn’t directly attack women, but I think there is a lot of insinuation there. What do you guys think?

EDIT: now unfriended. She told me during that conversation that she’s “not like other women”. She also denied being misogynist. I don’t think she understands that “NLOG” doesn’t just mean being a gender non-conforming woman. It means being a woman and actively putting women you perceive as “more feminine” down to build yourself up as “the cool quirky tomboy”.

She said she has no interest in self-reflection (because “she has a life”, you see), and she has put down therapy in favour of playing video games. She has no interest in changing.

She has since deleted all of her recent posts which have misogynist undertones, but I can’t be sure if she actually realized that she’s in the wrong or, if she saw that I’ve called her out in them, or if she just “isn’t interested in getting ratio’d”. You guys can share your insight on this. Anyway, I’m not dealing with her anymore, so unless she comes to me, admits that she is wrong, and shows remorse through her action, I’m done with her.

no matter what i do it feels like i'm pretending to be a girl. at one point i thought this meant i'm transgender, or nonbinary, or some other kind of gender fuckery, but after some time im a girl i'm just really fucking bad at being one. recently i've gotten better at doing my makeup and dressing like a girl and i love the way i look but i don't recognize myself when i look in the mirror. i've heard the term 'pig wearing lipstick' being thrown around and i feel like that's how i feel all the time. maybe other people see me as a girl but i just feel like i'm performing or pretending. i still don't know how to talk like a girl or act like a girl. i'm not comfortable in majority male environments - that's when i feel most like a girl - but in female environments i feel like an alien trying to blend in and say the right things in a careful dance. what the fuck is wrong with me and how do i fix it.

They have internalized sexism, I replaced it with internalized ageism long ago.

They try too hard to be edgy, I try too hard not to be edgy.

They're proud of being into special things, I wish I was into normie things like sports and makeup.

Their favorite food is junk, I like vegetables.

They think they're better than everyone, I think I'm worse (and I think you can tell who's actually the better person!).

They listen only to niche music because they're worried about being boring and ordinary, I listen almost exclusively to mainstream pop (it gives me depth and nuance!).

They see emotions as weakness, I analyze them so I can get stronger. Life is not worth living without emotions, I really want that part of my brain to just shut up and stop pretending to be special.

They're pretentious pseudo-intellectuals, I am a total idiot who only scores that high on IQ tests because of luck and guesswork.

They're falsely modest, I say I'm falsely modest but I'm actually the modest-est person in the room and would never ever humble-brag.

They're edgy brainrot kids who probably think 6-7 is the funniest thing on Earth, my mind is purely pure and devoid of any edges.

They judge people because of trends they follow, I am the most open-minded person you'll ever meet.

They like deep thinking and philosophy but are actually petty and shallow, I hate Nietzsche purely because stereotypical edgelords worship him.

They use way too many emojis😒, I believe thoughts💭 are better expressed🗣️ with written✍️ words🔤 because I'm just that smart🤓.

They have no sense of humor, I have gifted you this totally funny post because I'm just hilariously random like that 😆

Just to be clear, this is satire. Please do not take any of this seriously or assume I'm this unfunny in real life (even though I am).

Idk why women attack other women on OF. You’re not special, you’re putting yourself out there for the male gaze just as much just in a different way.