my visit to gamestop . . .

[Exodus2011]

Now, if I could put myself into a subculture it would probably be just hipster/nerd combo. So that means in the olden days whenever I visited gamestop or say a music store I felt like I was with my people. There were people there I could socialize with, if a girl was there i could prolly date her, and they are prolly the kind of guys i wud have competed with for jobs

But today i went to gamestop and saw all these nerds I know i could have connected with mentally . . . . . . . but that huge chasm of baldness was there now. it made me feel so goddamn inferior seeing myself as below even the nerds and betas of gamestop. the same guys who i was on equal ground with just a few years back.

it feels like i don't even want to talk to the people there anymore, despite knowing that I could get along with them. i mean, i'm bald and look 10 years older, how could I relate to them nowadays?

as fred pointed out, even if a bald man is successful with girls and socially, it is still awkward seeing young bald guys out and about . . . . . . .

damn it i hate going out into public. if it was not for going out in public i would feel a lot better about baldness.

 

[Notcoolanymore]

Did they give you any weird looks? What game did you buy? I recently bought Destiny for XB1. Good game.

 

[Exodus2011]

i was trying to sell my iphone

and i had my hat on so no one was looking haha

and yea i heard destiny was cool. but it sucks being focused on the people at gamestop instead of the games . . . . . **** baldness

 

[winnyblues]

Exodus have you thought about smp?

 

[uncomfortable man]

I feels man. Lets face it, we are a spectacle to the youth. Im glad you were wearing a hat though, you gotta, I gotta. Just the other day I saw something while stopped at a red light that pissed me off. There was a bald guy on a bike with sunglasses wearing all black crossing the intersection at the corner of which were a group of three teenage guys on bikes. As the bald guy passed one of the kids laughed at him but as the light turned green and I drove past the teens I could see that one had taken a picture of him on his phone and was laughing as he was showing it to the other two. My heart sank a bit.

 

[Exodus2011]

wow that is strange and messed up ucman . . . . . .

**** those kids

 

[uncomfortable man]

I could tell myself they were just kids but im convinced at least half of adults are emotionally stunted grown up teenagers anyway. But hey, im glad your doing threads like this that I can relate with. Keep up the good work my fellow.

 

[Exodus2011]

good work, ha. i didn't earn this lol

i try to just swallow it i guess but it is hard . . . . . .

its so weird . . . . . sometimes i disconnect emotionally from it all and i'm just struck by the stark strangeness of the fact-I am bald at 21. it sounds strange doesn't it?

it's just so . . . . . weird. of course i guess around the one percent mark . . . . . . which is pretty damn weird considering that is one guy out of every 100 that is significantly bald during their early 20s or before. i might look up the actual percentage and post it. we need an official thread on hair loss statistics and studies, i think that would be good.

 

[winnyblues]

If I could rep you I would Fred.
Its 100% true. I feel like I've definitely been in the position of not wanting to be saved, to drown myself in my own sorrows, its like feeling comfortable in knowing how **** you feel but you just don't want to feel better because you are comfortable with the situation

But I've come to a realization that you can't stay in a depressed state forever, because you only actually live once so whats the ****ing point of feeling **** for a prolonged period especially when we are in our 20s.. like we should be making the most of it regardless of how bad the hairloss/other factors are. Hence why I'm gonna save for a hair transplant/SMP and start feeling good about myself

 

[Exodus2011]

yea true i can't lie . . . . i could be doing more to change my situation now.

meh, i have always been a huge procrastinator and been scared to do everything. from being too scared to ride a bike when i was young, to being afraid of talking to the girl i liked, to now, being unable to get a job or go to school because of baldness. it's so weird lol, i used to feel being a pussy was the worst thing ever, now i care more about being bald.

baldness was like my trigger event i feel to truly become hermit mode.

i need to get a job and keep going to school. damn i guess i was just socially anxious already, and then baldness adding to it makes it unbearable to find a job.

this is weird tho, how i am just pouring my heart out here lol. you guys are thousands of miles away . . . . . .ahhh 2015

 

[Exodus2011]

damn i need to use that feeling for motivation

 

[doublebatman]

Yeah I was thinking about that the other at my new job. It's been a week and my colleagues really treat me nice.

I wonder how different it would be if I was still bald. I would be so much more self-conscious and awkward, constantly thinking:

"They see I'm bald, they must think to much less of me because I have no hair." Now all that negative thinking is just gone, and it feels great.

Edit: Wow, this is my 3000th post on this forum.

When I was losing hair visibly I remember always worrying about what people were thinking or would be saying about me. I would do everything to try and hide my balding, tilting my head back, positioning myself in corners, wearing hats, when I was attending lectures I would always sit at the back row so nobody was beind. I would always get nervous of people laughing, i thought they were laughing at my bald slot.

The whole thing was exhausting, I find myself worrying less since jumping on the "just shave it bro" bandwagon... So that's something I guess.

Since being basically bald I haven't noticed people around me ( work and social circle) acting any differently. That said I do tend to socialise and work with people in the 25-60 age range who are generally professionals. I'd imagine it would be a different story if I was in my early 20s and involved in the dating/club scene.

 

[scorpiolove]

If I could rep you I would Fred.
Its 100% true. I feel like I've definitely been in the position of not wanting to be saved, to drown myself in my own sorrows, its like feeling comfortable in knowing how **** you feel but you just don't want to feel better because you are comfortable with the situation

But I've come to a realization that you can't stay in a depressed state forever, because you only actually live once so whats the ****ing point of feeling **** for a prolonged period especially when we are in our 20s.. like we should be making the most of it regardless of how bad the hairloss/other factors are. Hence why I'm gonna save for a hair transplant/SMP and start feeling good about myself

You got a valid point winnyblues, why feel depressed for a prolonged period of time when you can work on feeling better.

 

[Notcoolanymore]

Knowing him, he will say he doesn't have the money. Even though he bought a laptop recently.

I don't want to sound harsh, but as I've said before, some people don't really want to be saved.

Hair loss provides an easy excuse to why your life sucks, and don't get me wrong, it's a valuable excuse.

But saying that there's absolutely nothing you can do about it is not true.

You don't have to walk around like a cue ball if you really don't want to.

And once the problem is gone (because it's possible, I'm an example of that), and your life still sucks at times, well you have to find another excuse, and it can be quite scary.

I would positive rep this too if I could. I quoted the entire post because it was that good. There are solutions out there if you truly want to do anything about your hair loss. I get they aren't the best treatments/solutions, but they are at least something. I am glad I finally decided to do something about my hair loss. It still isn't close to being perfect and I have a bald spot, but I am not a hat prisoner any longer. If you guys are hurting that much then you gotta try something.

 

[uncomfortable man]

Im not saying its absolutely imposible but can we at least cocede that it is no easy task to go from fully bald to acceptable full head of hair as of 2015? If it were that accessible, then we would see muuch fewer bald men around because if given the choice, every bald man would want their hair back... even the sly guys admit to that. But until that breakthrough finally comes, hair restoration will still fall short for many if not most bald men. Its a simple issue of supply and demand. They dont call it a largely unsatisfied market for nothing.

 

[uncomfortable man]

Fair enough fred but since your success everyone is under the false impression that "Hey, if fred could get his hair back, any bald guy could!" That just simply isnt the case because as I've said before, you are the exception not the rule. For every fred there are ten guys who are worse off than before with crappy work and nothing to show for it.

 

[swingline747]

It's not possible, but a couple of well-planned FUE megasessions can potentially take you from bald to someone who have hair in the eyes of society.

That's what I did, yes it was kind of a leap of faith, with all the possible complications a surgery can bring. But I'm glad I did. Best decision I've ever taken.

Honestly it depends on your donor region. There are some guys that simply have NO donor available. Unless they are taking the 1.5" stripe horsehoe and implanting it as a mohawk

 

[uncomfortable man]

Your right. It all comes down to donor. Hence supply not meeting demand. When transplants can go from moving limited follicles around to create the illusion of density to cloning follicles with a virtually endless supply that can create real density that can take any bald guy and cure him then we will talk.I'm glad fred got out of this mess but dont perpetuate this idea that lazyness is the only thing keeping bald guys from a full head of hair because it is hurtfully untrue.

 

[scorpiolove]

I don't think laziness has anything to do with it either. If somebody said, here's a solution to hair loss,we'd have the solution in a heartbeat.
My own situation, I'm a norwood 6 and my only solutions are a wig or smp. Wigs are uncomfortable to me and smp still leaves me in the same situation that I'm in.
To note, not everybody is a good candidate for hair transplant's and not one solution is good for everybody. It all comes down to the specifics of a person and what they are willing to accept as a viable solution to hairloss.

 

[swingline747]

I was not deemed a viable candidate by three different surgeons.

I didn't listen to them and went with the surgeon who felt up to the challenge of fixing me up.

So I did it anyway and it turned out quite alright.

It's not complicated, you can do a hair transplant and possibly become "not bald".

Or You can do nothing, and you will be sure to be miserable for the rest of your life.

I didn't want any "what if" scenarios for me. Right now, it's what if I didn't do it?

Well, I would still be like you guys, depressed most of the time and constantly asking myself what people think of my lack of hair.

I cant side with you here (hair ba doom cha) Fred.

A guy like this can NOT expect results with an FUE.

Theres nothing to move. Then there are people with Androgenetic Alopecia or total Androgenetic Alopecia. Theres a lot of different possibilities.
I know you want to portray what you did as something heroic or a huge step in our live but really me and you did what we did for us. The more valiant thing would have been to live our lives bald without caring, but we cant. I wont say "I did it, you should to" without seeing the whole picture. I would say a good majority can achieve something but is that "something" worth it? In the end will it have bad results and end up with a head shave anyway?

I want to look into body to head soon to as my crown is BAD. Ill hopefully have more updates on my situation soon though.