Feel like I've had it harder than most people my age

I'm actually going to go against the grain here, in that I don't think you're wrong, necessarily. I'm going to try to explain this the best that I can despite that it's really late here (or early, depending on your interpretation) and I haven't slept much at all.

Reddit is not yet so big as to be an accurate snapshot of the world at large. It still mostly reflects a segment of society that has been privileged in a lot of ways, and with that comes certain expectations and biases. In a lot of ways this actually serves to contribute to the quality of the site, but it can also contribute to the myopic nature of its opinions.

To be frank, you're getting a lot of answers driven more by agenda than honesty. People are turning this into a value judgment because they feel personally judged. People always get uneasy when you bring up issues of class or privilege or hardship, and this has become compounded by the knee-jerk strawmanification of "check ur privilege." Unfortunately this doesn't lend itself to any practical advice for you, and I believe people are being misleading--either intentionally or unintentionally.

It's like, I know that my computer is made from chemicals harmful to the environment and assembled in factories that likely utilize slave wage labor, but I don't want to think about that when I'm masturbating to internet porn.

It's true that life is difficult in a myriad of ways, but not everything can get boiled down to a grey slush of relativism. For example, it's true that depression sucks, but actually [spoiler alert] being malnourished is worse. Literally worse. So what do you say to someone complaining of their general, aimless malaise when you've gone days without food? Well, the truth is that you can't relate--or they can't, or however that works--but you should try. You should try because it's in your best interest. When you ascend to these upper realms of society you may find that you can relate to them less and less. There is likely a part of you that doesn't even want to. But if you never at least try, you can't know if someone else out there knows what it means to be hungry. Don't let feeling unable to connect to other people make you unable to connect to other people.

/r/socialskills Thread