Do you have any advice on how to play faster? ...the answer isn't to play longer like everybody recommends, but to figure out how to be better at shorter time constraints lol.
Yeah you are correct that if you only play longer time controls, it is unlikely you'll magically feel more comfortable at shorter time controls. There are kind of two sides to this here. The first one is to just play longer time controls because you need time to "think" and not feel rushed, so that you can eventually expand your pattern recognition and indirectly (with the hope that) allow you to play fairly well under shorter time controls; this is only half the story though. The other side is to play short time controls for "practice" although realizing you'll have less accuracy.
My opinion is to generally stick with longer time controls (or at least time controls you are comfortable with) and to sprinkle in some shorter time control games. If you solely play one time control (such as some people ONLY playing classical OTB chess), then you will condition your mind to think at that pace. To avoid this, I recommend mixing up time controls occasionally.
For example, maybe your default time control is 10 min live chess on chess.com. If this is true, then play mostly 10 min games, but every now and then play some 5 min blitz so you don't condition yourself to only the 10 min time control and this variety will also train your time management skills.
If 10 min is too fast for you now, then play 15/10, 30 min, 60 min. or whatever time control you need to feel comfortable and occasionally play some games at another shorter time control.
This chess.com article might also be useful if you are interested: https://www.chess.com/article/view/is-speed-chess-good-for-you
What openings do you love/hate the most to see your opponent play?
I'm not really sure because I've seen a lot of openings (since I currently play 1. d4 but used to play 1. e4 for years). I guess one could say my experience encountering many openings means I don't really "hate" or "love" any specific opening too much.
The opening I HATED years ago was the Queen's Gambit; when I was the black side, I hated encountering this...now I love it from both sides (there is a long story behind this one and that might make a good "story" type of video in the future if I one day purchase a webcam for chess streaming). I guess the opening I hated and now love the most is the Queen's Gambit
Lol I also used to hate facing the Queen's Gambit, which is why I switched to Nf6 against d4.
xD Avoiding it is certainly one valid way of dealing with it I basically hated facing it so much, that I began using it with the white side to learn its weaknesses...and I eventually began to like the types of positions I got with white, until I finally switched to playing that opening with white.
I currently have no problems facing the Queen's Gambit opening. I 'solved' that opening issue by learning the deep theory of the Slav Defense (1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6), but have since transitioned to playing the Semi-Slav variations (including ...e6 later to establish that "pawn triangle"). There are many good options to choose against the Queen's Gambit, but most of them require a lot of theory and it is sometimes difficult to avoid sharp lines in particular variations.
Yeah, honestly I'm a bit lazy (I should probably avoid that habit...), so I don't like to learn theory unless I absolutely have to. I tried playing the Slav instead of the QGD but I didn't like the positions I was getting from it. For a short period I also played the Benko, but I felt like it's not as reliable of an opening in longer time controls.
After getting some advice from others, I eventually decided on playing the Nimzo and Bogo, which I have been enjoying so far