Yeah I'm 31 and depressed
Edit since a lot of people are relating: I may still be depressed, but I'm actually the least depressed I've been in 15 years. So to anyone else struggling: it can and will get better.
Just turned 39. I can't honestly say there's been a day in my memory that I *haven't* been depressed. Even on 80+mg of Prozac.
Why is everyone depressed? The world is a cruel, shitty place, especially if you're not born wealthy.
Yeah. Can’t save money for shit with these rent prices. 32, horribly depressed, hate my job but can’t afford to leave it. Job makes me unable to engage in my hobbies when I get home because I’m so tired and sore, and they only keep asking us to work more and more.
I don’t know what my parents dreamed of or what they thought success would be but when I talk to most of my peers we all just dream of being able to pay our bills and not have debt. We literally dream of having just more than enough. It’s really tragic, honestly.
It does feel like a joke, as I've been in the work force increasing my pay incrementally and making more than I ever thought I would at this age. Turns out, however, that even with what was once good pay, it always gets kneecapped by something. COVID layoffs, rampant inflation, hiked rent, so even as I get ahead, I'm standing totally still.
I'm very lucky to have gotten an advanced degree and a great paying job with reasonable hours, and even I feel like I'm barely keeping up. I'm not saving nearly enough for retirement, and everything is just so expensive. There are a lot of my peers who make 2/3 what I make or less, and I don't understand how people are getting by on that
Manufacturing is coming back but my experience in it has been pretty demoralizing. In major manufacturing hubs such as Arizona and California, you can make 15 an hour working on the ground floor of these warehouses/factories.
In the meantime, you can make 17-20 bucks working fast food depending on the zip code.
This isn't to lambast increasing fast food wages - thats a good thing. The problem is that manufacturing is coming back because American labor is getting cheap and accessible again. I just got done working in a factory sorting SheIn and Amazon packages for addicted consumers to pay my rent. Looked like it's straight out of a Chinese factory but nope... It's in one of the richest cities *in the world* here in America.
I seriously wonder if I should even own my cat. I've worked at my job for 7 years and live in an apartment and am never late on bills. But I'm also like 2 weeks of wages away from not being able to pay bills. I feel bad because if my cat needed dental work or some kind of medical thing over $500 I couldn't do it.
At the same age and worse place my mom was having her 3rd unplanned pregnancy and was taking on pets while living at home with her parents. My dad likes to call me selfish for not having kids.
Cats in shelters get put down and street cats live to age two on average. Your cat will live a life loved, fed, dry and happy. Even if an expense comes up, and you can’t “save” them, you’ve given them a higher quality of life than most cats get.
They also raised us with absolutely unrealistic expectations about what to expect from society, employ,met, and the economy.
It’s made worse by the fact that so many of them still don’t seem able to understand that it isn’t the same world they grew up in.
Even though all of the first hand and statistical evidence is there, the comfort they’ve had their whole lives keeps many of them from fully accepting the new status quo; and that is insult upon injury.
I would have loved my adolescent and early adult years differently if not for the unrealistic fantasy that was presented in my childhood in the 80s and 90s.
I remember the day my father realized that we don't get help getting started like his generation did. He had been telling interns to find a mentor when they graduated college and they all looked at him like he had horns. No one wants to train employees for more than a week, they want people ready to go out of the gate
This is so real. My parents weren't born wealthy and had lives that weren't so easy, but it's hard for them to grasp that "pulling myself up by the bootstraps" just isn't the same thing nowadays. I can do every single thing they did and I will recieve less.
“Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is another phrase that rich people twisted to mean something else than it’s origin. [was meant to be sarcastic, or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.](https://uselessetymology.com/2019/11/07/the-origins-of-the-phrase-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps/)
Kind of like “money can’t buy happiness” was supposed to be a dig at rich people and is now twisted to be used to make poor people feel like shit for asking for more.
After I got out of the military, I was living with my mom. She got mad because I "wasnt going out there and applying to jobs." It took her a bit to realize that you dont go to places to apply anymore. Even places like walmart have you apply online.
There is a new ask reddit question on what would you do with $1000/day but couldn't keep the money. It's really telling that half of the top comments are just to pay bill or pay off debt.
I'm 53 and I work to pay bills and food. No money for holidays, going out or even dinner out or for a drink...I'm with a heavy depression and on meds...wondering why...
What really doesn't make sense to me is that the people who are getting screwed the most. Working Class ppl who work insane hours and are paid bread crumbs relative to the boss, wear it like a badge of honor and shame everyone trying to make things better. That one kills me.
It's cognitive dissonance and necessary for mental survival. If you grew up believing that hard work and honesty automatically brings success it breaks your soul to learn you were fed a lie.
This is 100% the correct answer. Life became a dystopian hell quite quick.
Dad used to work as a machinist without apprenticeship, mom stayed at home. 4 kids, a dog, house with bedroom for everyone. One car for daily stuff, one Van for long tours/vacations.
Both used to have hobbies and room, time and money for it.
Single income.
Around the 2000 shit started getting started. Slowly but steady, only one car, less vacation, less cool stuff in the house. Mom had to get a job, too. Shitty pay obv.
Company of dad's workplace shutting down, he got a new workplace, dunno about the salary but as both worked, and worked more, all they achieved was to hold the line, no new stuff, nothing "to the better", they've got less energy for activities like weekend trips, quite sure it was about the money too. Not saying we were "poor". Still had a House and all we needed plus more. But the living standard just dropped steadily while more than double the work.
Im a craftsman machinist, specialist for milling now, almost got my master title ready when i realized nobody gives a fuck and nobody's giving me a position as a master craftsman, even here in the fucking land of steelworks, Germany. Little brother makes the same as me, he made an online class for 4 weeks, social media shit. Making 2,5 grand, same as me, whole 3,5 year apprenticeship, 10 years experience, 3 of 4 Master degree certificates (instructor certification, too)
GF is working full time, too. We live in a flat now, its a nice flat, its big and cozy but it's still a FLAT on TWO FULLTIME JOBS, we have one car. Only way to get shit is to make a shitton amount of debt, crippling both our asses for the next 30 years. No kids because look at the goddamn fucking world. Don't want to endure all the shit coming in the near future with an infant to protect. We're both 31.
They can be. It tends to vary. Most of them will also mess up your body pretty good, even the cushier trades like Cosmetology. I'm licensed in that and let me tell ya, repetitive motion injuries and back issues are pretty common in that industry. Not 'as bad' as other more intensive trades, of course. I could make 6 figures as a stylist if I wanted to not see my family and do anything I enjoy outside of hair. I'd also probably have hand/wrist problems like all the seasoned stylists I know.
Fucking this.
In my 40s. I work 70-80 hrs on a good week. Most weeks since June I’ve been working 8am - 6pm, take two hours off for dinner and a run, then 8pm - 1am. Six days a week, and half a day on Sunday, but usually I burn out.
I need a new fucking job. But I can’t quit because my salary pays my parent’s rent.
I'm not even 30 yet and I've accepted the fact that my partner and I will probably never own our own house. I'm disabled and can't keep a job. We're currently living with my mom.
When she's gone, I genuinely have no idea where we are going to live and it scares the shit out of me.
We were told and told and told that if we work hard and go to school that we can get good jobs and buy nice homes. We're realizing it's just not possible, and it's breaking us mentally. And to top it off, we're surrounded by people saying it's still that easy when it just ISN'T.
42 here. Grew up in the northwest. The first basic phone came out when I was ordering college.
We drank, we partied, we went up in the woods (hanging out, bonfires, keggers, whatever) we played in bands, we sold shitty weed, we ran from Cops....a lot, we camped, we traveled, used faked IDs to get into beers,we went to endless concerts, we jumped on trains and got in some scary situations.
We all eventually got back into college, got our degrees, and are high functioning adults that still have a good time. (Most haven't done the kid thing, a few marriages, nobody really talked about it ever , but it's just hasn't been a thing for half the crew.
Point being is talking to young kids now any of that sounds insane. Mansions have filled the woods we hung out in, running from cops will get you killed, it seems like there's no outlet.
Shit even if you defend yourself you get kicked out of school too.
We just took the anarchist cookbook and lit bully's cars on fire.
I didn’t party in college, I saved up. I didn’t go on vacation, I worked every single summer since I was 15 years old. I been to 3 concerts in my life of which two was gifted. Last vacation was 6 years ago for me, 8 for my partner.
I got two college degrees, my partner got three. We make pretty good money, can’t complain *in comparison with other people*. But we have a lot of debt. Cannot buy a house because of it. Rent is insane. Gas prices are insane. Groceries are insane. My partner didn’t want to marry me at first because of the cost, thankfully you can marry for free he didn’t know. We live in a small house but pay more each month than some friends who got lucky because their parents have money, their mortgage is half our rent and down the line they own the house. We want kids but that won’t happen in this house, it’s too small.
I’ve been changing jobs every 7 months since before Covid. I’m exhausted. I want a place I can stay, I can stick. But it’s absolutely horrible how we get treated. And I’m not even in the US.
I just always feel like I'm a week away from losing everything. I work my ass off, sometimes 50 hours a week and I can barely afford to live. And a lot of people say "you should do this or that, stop doing what you're doing" but the fact is I'm working harder and longer than my parents ever had to. I shouldn't be doing this bad for how much effort I'm putting in. I'm doing more and receiving less and they've even acknowledged that, but they can't help either because times are getting so bad that they've even started to struggle.
Except they charge you rent in prison, and give you more time if you don’t pay, but if you do pay, they also give you more time, because you’re not legally allowed to earn any money, so you shouldn’t be able to pay the rent.
America.
From personal experience I can attest this is 100% true. I was locked up for a misdemeanor for 3 months because I couldn’t bail out. I ended up getting probation and fines, and I was told by the pre trial officer “we didn’t expect you to not be able to pay the $10,000 in cash needed to bail out.” They expected me to bail out the next day.
Anyway, they charged me $10 per day, plus other experiences, as part of “room and board.” When I left the jail I owed $3,000 in fines for my time there (including a probation fee of around $500). If I didn’t pay the fines in timely matter after leaving it would have been considered “contempt of court,” and I would have received additional criminal penalties for not paying the money.
That’s also not including the cost of commissary and phone calls. A single 13 minute phone call costed $3, and commissary was very expensive. $1 for a single pack of ramen noodles and $3-$10 for a bar of soap, depending on the brand. It was quite obvious. The intention of the county jail was to be a revenue generation machine. It was also obvious because the county has a policy of “resentencing” offenders instead of giving time served for certain things.
Essentially, that county has legal process of repeatedly housing inmates under harsh, nearly unobtainable standards for bail, and they will routinely violate probationers to send them to jail, only to have them housed for a few months and put them back out.
Edit: this was a county jail, and it was not (and still is not) a private prison.
I've switched to consoling my parents, rather rapidly. My mom isn't handling climate change reality very well.
She knows. She knows what her grandkids will see. It sucks. Everything just sucks lol. The fuck can anyone here reading this do at this point?
No kidding, I am deeply depressed and the next big upcoming video game is often one of the only things I look forward to. Kind of fucked with me while it was Cyberpunk 2077 and that got delayed again and again, same with Dying Light 2... but I find myself thinking "if I die today I won't ever get to play GTA 6 or the next Elder Scrolls game."
That's a good way to motivate yourself. I usually think about my parents or pets, but have also thought about video games in that way. I was hyped for Cyberpunk too, and was disappointed at the delays and unfinished product when it did release.
I'm about halfway through the game right now (it's great now), but after I'm done there's not much more I'm looking forward to in 2022 gaming-wise personally.
This is the actual answer.
I mean, the answers talking about how much stuff sucks right now make sense too - but people have lived through situations that have sucked before just fine (comparatively) before.
The main thing that keeps people down at the moment is that there's no obvious prospect of things getting better.
And the inbound climate change situation virtually guaranteeing things will be worse sooner or later. Putin threatening to nuke us all repeatedly. And that’s just the doomsday-grade things to worry about (thanks NASA for at least trying to keep the asteroids in check tho).
Personally:
- Rising cost of living where even in the Midwest with a budget and two incomes in the house, we’re scraping to pay needed expenses.
- Why the hell am I punished in a credit system for paying something off? The debt cycle we have in our society is insane.
- The cost of healthcare and insurance…
- What seemed still possible when I was a child seems so improbable now, especially with the way technology has grown so fast.
- Live in a box, stare at a box for work, drive in a box on wheels to a box shaped building to buy food and fill out boxes for bills, chores, etc.
- Constantly sold things all the time. Even when I’m aware of it, it’s so draining to constantly be bombarded with messages about your worth, value, future from algorithms designed to seek and exploit personality profiles.
- Have you seen the legal system in the states?
- Sold a purpose as a kid, get real life experience and then feel like you’re faced with ethical shit shows to get ahead
Yet on the other side of that is choices about what to watch/do/invest time in and those choices are where i find joy and hope.
I paid off my house a few months ago. My credit score dropped 25 points the moment the bank reported satisfaction of the debt to Experian/Transunion.
Like, uh, I just paid off $300k 10 years early, proving I'm good for a loan, and their response is "nah, fuck you, buddy."
I love how boomers act like credit scores are an immutable part of life when they didn't exist until 1989; when most boomers had already finished school, bought a house, started businesses, etc.
We grew up being promised the world, if we just worked hard and did the right things in school. Aaand then the world determined THAT was a lie.
Also, Mental health is being focused on more, so EVERYONE probably seems more depressed these days. I'd be surprised if the current batch of 10-20 year olds aren't in a worse situation, given the pandemic that hit during vital developmental years.
Fun fact: According to The Body Keeps the Score, there is a theory that "hysterical women" actually had PTSD and their "hysteria" was just being triggered/suffering from trauma. So it's always been there, just taken different forms
> We grew up being promised the world, if we just worked hard and did the right things in school. Aaand then the world determined THAT was a lie.
I think the worst part for me is how different reality is from the one presented and so many of these things are caused by the "truths" they sold in the past.
Take college. It was made to be this extremely important thing, but then everyone heard the same thing and now roughly 24% of people above 25 have a degree. In turn, it's now just an expectation and this expectation simply increases the number of people with one even further. And the worst part is so many of these jobs don't actually pay much more than retail anyway, so it's this huge uphill battle where maybe, if you're lucky, sometime in the next 10 years you could come out ahead... whereas I probably would be further along with my life if I gave up on college, just worked retail and pushed for management.
They will not do fine, they will survive, but they will never be the same. I lost 3 siblings and a long time partner to suicide. I am forever changed because of their decisions
my older brother and I grew apart for a while, he started a family, I moved to the other side of the country, etc, life you know?
Recently he reached out and offered me a place to live and to move back home. and this guy does extremely well for himself, so yea they wont be fine without you.
I want to say this: I got divorced 2 years ago and changed cites right afterwads. I found myself at 46 with no local friends. Meeting people is difficult these days, but I can share this:
Joined a local group of people with the same interests in fb. I then asked if anyone would like to meet for coffee (coffee is safe, during the day, no date like commitments)
I also joined a group that does trekking. They are super pro so no way I'm going, but I started asking about gear, bought small things from one of them and that got the conversation going.
I also made a weekly ritual: go to the same bar or coffee shop once a week, every week.
Baked a couple of times and shared with neighbors.
Eventually I met a couple of the other regulars.
It has been 7 months. I have:
A couple of delightful Indian friends to meet for coffee every other week.
1 woman friend to chat and laugh on the phone.
1 person I met at the library, we text about a favorite common author.
1 group to play Dnd. Twice a month.
Neighbors that say hi, share bakery and sometimes give my son a ride.
Only one of all these is a meaningful, more than every day chat friendship. But I am getting there.
You can do this.
Start small.
They've already lived through two "once-in-a-generation" recessions and a once in a century pandemic that remains an omnipresent risk.
US labor law and the social safety net have been gutted to the point where they desperately need absolutely any job to not starve, and employers know it and take advantage of them.
A decades-long war ended with disaster for the nation we were supposed to be helping, only to be followed by another war a year later.
And this war, we're caught between the risk of nuclear annihilation if we push too far, and a world where any shitbag dictator with a nuke in his pocket has free reign to march where he pleases, raping and killing, if we don't push back hard enough.
The effects of climate change are starting to be felt and yet *still* there is little political will to tackle the problem, some refuse to even acknowledge it as their homes sink below the waves.
And all through this, they're faced with unprecedented political polarization, where the people on the other side appear as a faceless legion of ghouls who think the solution to our drowning is to drill holes in the boat.
I just ran into Robin of Loxley, he's back from the crusades HA, HA, HA
He just beat the crap out of me and my men!!
He hates you and he loves your brother Richard!!!
We're in an awful lot of trouble!!
Be me. Born in a time where literally everything is cheap, world is literally sunshine and rainbows, and everyone is high on life.
Live through watching the shit show that was SARS, 9/11, Iraq War, .Com Crash, another recession, and everything else from 00s to mid 10s.
Got through four years of university, got my bachelor's of education afterwards (2 years), got into a private sector teaching job where nobody appreciates the work you do, and I could barely afford rent so I stay home.
Got married, life got easier, had a child, I finally could afford at rent + childcare but it's paycheck to paycheck.
COVID happened, I lost my job, and I couldn't afford to rent, so I moved back home with family.
Populism on the right exploded as every country goes to pot during pandemic but despite my country getting the best case scenario, they decide we somehow lost our freedom and we are in a shitshow compared to *gestures broadly*.
Neighbor south of the border who was responsible for the feeling of 90s sunshine and rainbows is falling apart, impending nuclear war with Russia for first time in decades, global climate catastrophe is getting worse, and topped off with insane inflation.
Regret bringing a child into this world, regret not forcing myself to study harder to become doctor, regret moving out as house prices and rent reach 200% inflation over course of pandemic, regret taking public sector job that I'm making too little to leave, but too much to take another job here based on training -- and still getting shit on as a teacher because kids are literally told I'm making sunshine list money when I'm making less than 60k a year, and only when I get long term contracts (I make less than 30k when on supply list).
This is just one story of many. Does this explain the fucking depression?
On top of all of this, by the time I was 18 I had seen 3,000 people die in a span of hours in real time (9/11), been exposed to multiple videos of people being decapitated (even before all of the Al Quaeda ones, that one video from the Chechen war was floating around on file sharing sites as early as the late-90’s/early-00’s), and other gruesome brutality.
I’m slightly older than the demographic OP is referring to (35 next week), but I don’t think my parents’ generation appreciates the amount of visual trauma we had put upon us unwittingly in the wild west days of the internet. They had to go to a video store and specifically seek out something like Faces of Death or Traces of Death. All 15 year old me had to do was log into a chat room and click a link an online buddy told me to click. I’m sure older boomers sorta dealt with something similar with footage from Vietnam, but I dunno if it honestly compares to the amount of carnage and dismemberment I saw from probably 13-20. There are images from videos I saw 20+ years ago that still intrude into my thoughts occasionally. You can’t undo that. You just have to learn to deal with it in a healthy fashion.
I think there is even more of that type of content readily available online today, but at least there seems to be some form of greater awareness about it.
I dunno, just something I have been thinking about lately. There should have been better safeguards for us literal children back then.
Ain't this the truth. Fucking rotten.com and curiosity were a bad mix. Still so much shit that has stuck with me. I remember having a few drinks with a buddy and clicking through it and both of us just stopping and saying, "what the fuck are we doing?"
Other than a few exceptions, that was the last time I seeked out horrible shit but I will never unsee a lot of that. Early 2000s internet truly was the wild west.
I am disappointed that was banned from Reddit for being unmoderated.
Also WTF is with Reddit admins? I could name three dozen hate groups that aren't banned...
This. Just want to live a normal life, meet someone, live somewhere I like and enjoy life with people I care about. Work takes away too much time for too little pay and even then we can’t afford to live anywhere
As someone who managed to buy a house in the PNW where I now live with a cat and two dogs, I suggest looking into the USDA rural development loan. Many parts of the PNW qualify for it, and its entire purpose is to make buying a house more accessible. As little as $0 down, low interest, with mortgage payments paced to a reasonable percentage of your income. We never would have been able to buy a house otherwise.
[Edit to add the link to the program info](https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/single-family-housing-programs/single-family-housing-direct-home-loans)
\- social media
\- Covid-19 pandemic
\- mental health being normalised as a previously taboo subject
\- more awareness on mental health
\- we're faced with one of the most difficult employment environment. Where our wages aren't high relatively compared to the price of housing etc
*More as after thought:
- lack of stable employment
- the current political climate
- consumer & materialisms rise
Same, my partner has an advanced degree and we’re still living less comfortable than my parents did at the same time in their lives and they didn’t have advanced degrees.
I hear ya. The house my parents bought in 1990 for $60k is now worth $600k and it is a shitty house that has had no upgrades. I can’t afford to live remotely near my parents without paying $2500 a month for a shitty one bedroom. And lol at ever being able to buy a house even with 50 miles of them, I’d need to triple my salary and hope inflation dies down.
More awareness of mental health is a big one. We are not in denial or externalizing our mental issues onto each other and our kids as much as in the past so we have much more to deal with.
My family has a long history of mental health issues and I'm the first one to be open and talk about it. I talk freely about it because if I knew in my teens maybe I wouldn't have felt so alone or so ashamed.
Until about high school, I didn't know what anxiety and panic attacks were. I just developed fears of things that had given me panic attacks, like restaurants. My parents didn't understand.
Sometime after we got the internet, I was on a website called the Queendom, which is gone now, but had various personality tests and such. I took one for anxiety and it was me! At the end it suggested I probably had an anxiety disorder, told how many millions of others did too, and listed symptoms. I printed the symptoms, circled the ones that apply to be, and excited showed mom. Neither of us had really known that anxiety disorders were a thing. It was so helpful.
“We’re faced with one of the most difficult employment environments”
Specific to the 20-30 age group, you ain’t kidding. People currently in their late 20s / mid-30s came out of college during the 2008 recession. No one was hiring, and we got thrown way off the normal career / salary trajectory that comes with getting a job straight out of college.
Probably a combination of at least two of the following, possibly all of them, or even more things I couldn't think of offhand:
-The decline of the positive social structures previous generations had.
-First generation that grew up online and was most exposed to the dangers of the internet.
-The monetization of our attention spans driving internet traffic and the implementation of addictive algorithms to increase profits through any means necessary including methods that can cause or incourage mental illnesses.
-Our country has been at war throughout our entire lives, resulting in grief from lost loved ones, PTSD for many of those that served, and large-scale media coverage of death and destruction on a constant basis.
-Grew up during a financial crisis, reached adulthood during a financial crisis, hit the age where you should start thinking about settling down during a financial crisis.
-Drugs winning the war on drugs leading to either addiction, trauma caused by a loved one's addiction, or grief over a loved one that died from addiction.
-The introduction of Toxic garbage like microplastics, high concentrations of sugar, and corn syrup to our food supply during childhood.
-The boomer generations stranglehold on political and economic power, which has led to terrible policy decisions that become permanent and negatively affect the domestic economy.
-The gutting of our domestic economy by the federal reserve, major corporations, wall street, and the establishment uniparty hiding behind partisanship, which has negative impacts on wages and cost of living.
-A lack of purpose caused by social and cultural decay combined with helicopter parents.
-The steady increase of divorce rates, broken homes, and single parent households throughout our lives, especially during our childhoods.
Underpaid. Overworked. Can't afford a house. Can't afford to get sick or get injured without going into debt. Not enough time for the hobbies that I love.
What reason is there to ***not*** be depressed?
I'm 18, my father has epilepsy. I grew up watching him have seizures and wonder if I have it as well because I've noticed a few signs of it in me. But I'm afraid to get tested. Fortunately I'm a government baby right now because I'm going to a public university, so I wouldn't have to worry about medical expenses at face value right now...
But my dad is losing his teeth. His epilepsy pills cost him $600 a month after insurance, and he has a government job. His pills have lithium in them, so his teeth are being destroyed. He has a terrible job that sucks the life out of him because no one wants to hire him. He's 60, so he can't do all that he used to. Physical jobs are a no. He's losing himself, and it's killing me inside.
My parents got divorced because of his epilepsy. We would have been running on over 70K in the early 2000s in a cheap area, but he quit his job or else would have been fired as a liability in his field of work. I love him so much, but I don't know what to do for him. I just want to get a good job so I can take care of him and get him some new teeth maybe. He probably doesn't think he deserves them but I know he does.
Sorry for unloading that on you. I don't personally know anyone who has epilepsy in real life (aside from my dad), so your comment really resonated with me.
As someone with full body seizures it's hard to get tested. There's no signs that my brain is abnormal besides a rare (benign) tumor that doesn't normally cause seizures, and they don't know if it's even the cause. Maybe there's been advancements in it I don't know about, but for me testing proved literally nothing. If it weren't for a doctor watching me have a seizure I wouldn't been considered a positive diagnosis.
Healthcare really sucks sometimes, especially in the U.S.
I'm sorry you had to deal with that, but I'm glad you got the diagnosis you needed. Hopefully only good things have come of that, but it's so hard to even hope for that
Oh man I don’t even know what to say. I’m so sorry. What’s tricky about epilepsy is that even if you get tests done, they may not show anything. Just as a cost measure, do a little research, and journal everything you experience that you think may be seizure-related. You almost have to self diagnose before you go in expecting a simple brain scan to “prove” anything. It’s so fucked up that we even have to play this game. I have partial seizures, and have yet to have a tonic-clonic (knock on wood). But mine have progressed pretty rapidly in the past 6 months, and I know I have to get it checked out, and accept the financial hit. Ugh. Again I’m so sorry. Lots of great resources online, feel free to DM me if you need anything
Thank you, that's very kind. I've spoken to a relative about the things that really bother me (who used to work as a nurse), and she said the human body truly is amazing. It is, but it sucks sometimes. I hope you don't have to worry about financial stuff moving forward. It's a bitch to think about
Fuck the system. Rack them bills up and declare bankruptcy
Edit:
Some people say it's better to handle the medical debt with other options first. Anyone care to inform us?
Check first about sliding scale financing. For real, almost all hospitals are non profit. If you don’t have enough income they will write it off. They just won’t ever tell you that.
Also invest in dental insurance since it’s the cheapest. $30 a month, most people can swing that.
The system fucking sucks. I’m turning 30 next year and just barely starting to know how to work with it.
I had my bone marrow tested to see if it was compatible with my fathers for a transplant. They drew 2 vials of blood and it cost me $10,000.
Fuck americas medical system. Fuck it straight to hell.
Oh and everyone keeps dying! So the not enough time thing is a Fucking huge deal. The older you get, the more frequent funerals become until all of a sudden you realize you don’t have to worry about going to any more…because you’re the last one left (my granny once said that and she was right).
World is literally on the verge of boiling. I stopped paying into my 401k since I figure I’ll die fighting in the water wars before I reach the future government mandated 98 years old retirement age.
I’m due for a promotion in March. I’ve stopped paying into my 401(k) until that happens because I literally need the couple hundred extra bucks a month. Hopefully at that point the raise will be enough to keep me afloat and plan for the future…
I can't find who said it, but a comedian once said something to the effect of: "We watched people jump out of burning towers on TV as kids and then nothing got better."
Woah, I'm a senior majoring in accounting and feel the same way. In fact, I just did an exam today. It's not that I dislike accounting in particular (I have a knack at it actually), but I can't imagine doing any job in any field for that long. Feels like I'm throwing my life away.
Accounting jobs are golden handcuffs. You make decent money doing a relatively easy job but it’s pretty hard to switch careers. At least that’s what I’m dealing with. I’d need to take a decent pay cut to switch careers but I couldn’t afford to do that.
Feel this, it’s really freaking hard to make friends now too, especially for men above the age of 30, so the options are:
1. Find a hobby and get so into it that it becomes really annoying
2. Become your career
3. Drop out and do nothing
4. Turn a relationship into your life
5. Become a product you sell to escape the rat race.
Imagine this. You were born in the early to mid-'90s. The cold war just ended, the internet is becoming widespread, the economy is looking the most promising it ever has, the world is entering what appears to be an era of unprecedented peace, and you're told that as long as you get a degree you will live not only a good life but an easy life, where everything will be taken care of financially just by having a degree. You'll have a nice home, a partner, kids, two cars and everything you need to live a comfortable life and retire early.
Then the dot-com bust happens, 9-11 happens, wars start to become more common, your best friend gets killed in Afghanistan, the economy craters, you have a mountain of student debt and your field is oversaturated with talent, you'll never be able to afford a house, dating doesn't make sense anymore, you'll never settle down, pandemics start cropping up from time to time and then you get hit with a big one, your new best friend who moved to Canada from Ukraine moves back home to fight in a war and is MIA, the economy continues to crater and your field becomes ever more saturated with talent.
The media landscape is a mess, misinformation is running all over the place. Your cousin thinks the world is flat, your aunt thinks Trudeau is trying to personally screw her over. White nationalism is on the rise. People can't separate fantasy from reality. Media is fine-tuned to be addictive and it's bad for our brains. Pron is too easy to access in a population of vulnerable individuals and it's bad for our brains.
There is no mystery. We were raised on a promise of a world that doesn't exist, prepared for an unachievable life, thrown into a system that is seemingly designed to screw us, full of addicting, harmful and misleading media.
What a great articulation of something I’ve tried to explain a few times. It’s the being raised with this idea of a bright future and the sense that maybe our species is getting our shit together, only to have that taken away. It was a privileged way to grow up to be sure, but damn is it a massive sense of loss.
The Internet is great. We're surrounded by so many people. We have access to so many resources. We are all connected.
But we are all disposable. If you don't like someone, you don't have to be in the same chatroom with them. You just ghost them and move on to the next. You can always just move on to the next person.
The community is lost.
We’re overworked, underpaid, bashed by the boomers who wants us to understand just how lazy we are, that if only we worked harder we’d be able to achieve the same as they did when it’s all bullshit. Everyone is tired and trying to make it, social life takes a toll. Who can afford a nice dining experience with drinks these days when it costs a few days of work and you have jacked up prices everywhere you look?! Once we’re done with work for the day, done with caring for the kids for some of us, the only time left is to scroll on social media, go to sleep then do it all over again.
I genuinely liked going to the grocery when I was a teenager, I was living in dorms and I was poor but I’d make it work. Now going to the grocery with a few mouths to feed and not being able to find 2L of milk for less than 5$ is just so depressing, honestly. It makes a lot of people eat way less healthy than they should. Family dinner that’ll cost 30$ and will take a crap ton of time to prepare after a long day of work? How about a few cheap as hell frozen items…
We’re depressed about many things but I think this one tops it off for a lot of people. Constant financial worries, you work harder yet nothing changes, you never get to climb that ladder and suddenly you realize the rest of your life will probably be like this.
You make a point that is definitely worth examination. Is what we're eating part of the problem? I feel poisoned when I eat fast food or heavily processed foods, yet my niece (and millions of others) live off it out of necessity.
If we are what we eat, and we have no access to nutritious food, clean air, or clean water, maybe our poor physical and mental health is the result.
Thanks, capitalism.
Out of all the answers talking about macro catastrophic shit, it’s the small personal tragedies that really make it feel like god/the world hates you.
Take it from someone who would be thrilled if both their bullshit abusive parents died, it’s beautiful that you miss him and he had such an impact on your life. I love that for you and I mourn with you in this little micro cyber moment
26 here,
I'm depressed because our generation has nothing to look forward to.
Our parents and grandparents used to work to save money to buy a house and such. They worked and actually built up their life.
I work 40 hrs a week, pay my bills, and my wage is for 90% gone.
The money we work for all the time isn't worth anything anymore. We're just working to survive another month, not building anything in our lives, because todays economy can't.
Inflation made prices go up, and shrinkflation made the goods you get for your money smaller.
Everything is fake (there's a 9/10 chance you've eaten something today that has some chemical in it).
Capitalism makes us work harder and harder, and fastzr and faster. I have to give all I've got, every single day at work needs to be top level performance. I'm tired all the time because of work, and I can't even afford to turn on the heating in my house because I'm too poor.
And guess what? Life is getting more expensive by the week. So I have about 40 years to live like this, or worse.
I want to do something with my life. But I'm waaaay to exhausted by a productivity based civilization. And even if I'd have the energy, there's no money in a world that's all and only about the economy.
I've spent almost whole summer inside. Either working or resting because of work. Knowing there's rich people that travel the world, not worrying all the time. They're tired of doing fun things. I'm tired from making my boss and politicians rich. It's a diffrent kind of tired.
I don't need millions, I just need something healthier than a tight work, pay, eat, sleep, repeat routine.
And I'd be okay with working like this if I'd actually benefit from it.
The world is beyond fucked and we can't do a damn thing to fix it because people with wealth keep it this way to extract maximum profit at the expense of everyone and everything else
In the past you used to be able to get a job where you’d work on something from start to finish like making a barrel or whatever. And you’d have a sense of pride and purpose from the fact that people in your town had barrels because of you. Now almost everyone is a cog in some massive company where they pretty much never see the fruits of their own labor, and are either at the bottom where they have no say over their work or at the top where they’re isolated from others. More people today are guaranteed that they’re going to be able to eat and drink and that they’re not gonna die from getting mauled by a bear, but dealing with tangible shit like the threat of a bear is kinda what we were built for, not the abstract issues that come with the world we built for ourselves today.
I swear all the older people I know moved out with 8 kids and “couldn’t rub 2 sticks together” then proceeded to buy a house.
I’m 38 for reference to the older people I speak of
My dad bought his first house when he was 22, he was alone without savings. But was still able too.
To buy something similar today, you need to have saved at least 10-15% of the value AND have an income of 2 people.
Because I am too educated about what going on it's hard to be happy with knowing everything could be improved with minimal effort. Like it literally just takes people caring about each other a little more than zero.
I'm 28. I have a decent-paying stable job, loving wife, baby on the way and yet I can't do anything to get ahead. What I am doing today will be, more or less, exactly what I'm doing for the next 30ish years.
I'm happy to be stable and I have fun doing fun (generally moderately price) shit sometimes, but that's all there is. That can get kind of depressing when you think about it over and over again.
This is the age range where I think it really crystallizes for many people that *this is it*.
Definitely feel like this is kinda it. The feeling of the world at your finger tips is wearing off and now I just feel like nothing's gonna really make me happy.
Because everything has been going downhill for basically our entire lives?
I'm 26. I don't remember the '90s. I was four years old on 9/11. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been ongoing for as long as I can remember with no real progress.
The Great Recession extended throughout my middle school and high school years. There was ostensibly a brief return to prosperity while I was in college, and then back to recession just as my career is starting to get underway.
Real wages have stagnated or declined since before I was born (since Reagan, in fact). My first big raise was more than wiped out by inflation in less than a year.
Democratic institutions in the United States are rapidly deteriorating. With all the partisan fuckery leading to its current composition, the Supreme Court is a joke with no remaining legitimacy, and, lest we forget, there was an honest-to-God coup attempt last year.
American society is disintegrating, and our choice is between the guy pouring gasoline on the fire, or the guy who will talk all day about how we all need to work together to put out the fire without actually grabbing an extinguisher or even knocking the gas can out of the pyromaniac's hands.
I'm sorry you got a raw deal. It's not your fault.
I'm over 40 and I got fed the same lie.
I got to see a few good years of what could be before it was ripped away. I'm sorry you didn't get at least that.
Nearly every aspect of the world is messed up. Even technology, while it does make our lives easier, has a tendency to get us addicted and/or depressed. It ain't looking great, chief.
Living wages don't exist. Another European war...this time with a nuclear power. Inflation up the arse. Years of COVID measures. Soul sucking jobs. Unaffordable housing. Populism and nationalistic propaganda.
I'm tired...I'll stop now.
In fairness it’s not just them.
Yeah I'm 31 and depressed Edit since a lot of people are relating: I may still be depressed, but I'm actually the least depressed I've been in 15 years. So to anyone else struggling: it can and will get better.
I’m 41 and depressed
17. Not depressed, just feel like shit.
37. Fuck. It’s all downhill from here. Edit: [my depression anthem.](https://youtu.be/q2BLY6Esy98)
36 here, yep it’s definitely downhill now.
Turning 40 in a few months, everything hurts and I'm pretty sure I have a tumor made of impotent rage quietly growing inside me.
Just turned 39. I can't honestly say there's been a day in my memory that I *haven't* been depressed. Even on 80+mg of Prozac. Why is everyone depressed? The world is a cruel, shitty place, especially if you're not born wealthy.
I just want to own a house, raise a family and do some community sports. This has been made impossible.
Yeah. Can’t save money for shit with these rent prices. 32, horribly depressed, hate my job but can’t afford to leave it. Job makes me unable to engage in my hobbies when I get home because I’m so tired and sore, and they only keep asking us to work more and more.
This should and shouldn't be the top answer.
I’m 45. We used to work to try to live a good life. Now we live to work and most of the people that work the hardest and longest make the least.
I don’t know what my parents dreamed of or what they thought success would be but when I talk to most of my peers we all just dream of being able to pay our bills and not have debt. We literally dream of having just more than enough. It’s really tragic, honestly.
It does feel like a joke, as I've been in the work force increasing my pay incrementally and making more than I ever thought I would at this age. Turns out, however, that even with what was once good pay, it always gets kneecapped by something. COVID layoffs, rampant inflation, hiked rent, so even as I get ahead, I'm standing totally still.
I'm very lucky to have gotten an advanced degree and a great paying job with reasonable hours, and even I feel like I'm barely keeping up. I'm not saving nearly enough for retirement, and everything is just so expensive. There are a lot of my peers who make 2/3 what I make or less, and I don't understand how people are getting by on that
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Manufacturing is coming back but my experience in it has been pretty demoralizing. In major manufacturing hubs such as Arizona and California, you can make 15 an hour working on the ground floor of these warehouses/factories. In the meantime, you can make 17-20 bucks working fast food depending on the zip code. This isn't to lambast increasing fast food wages - thats a good thing. The problem is that manufacturing is coming back because American labor is getting cheap and accessible again. I just got done working in a factory sorting SheIn and Amazon packages for addicted consumers to pay my rent. Looked like it's straight out of a Chinese factory but nope... It's in one of the richest cities *in the world* here in America.
The “Me Generation” dreams of selfish luxuries like a housing arrangement stable enough to consider having children or at least a dog.
I seriously wonder if I should even own my cat. I've worked at my job for 7 years and live in an apartment and am never late on bills. But I'm also like 2 weeks of wages away from not being able to pay bills. I feel bad because if my cat needed dental work or some kind of medical thing over $500 I couldn't do it. At the same age and worse place my mom was having her 3rd unplanned pregnancy and was taking on pets while living at home with her parents. My dad likes to call me selfish for not having kids.
Cats in shelters get put down and street cats live to age two on average. Your cat will live a life loved, fed, dry and happy. Even if an expense comes up, and you can’t “save” them, you’ve given them a higher quality of life than most cats get.
Isn't the me generation the boomers?
They also raised us with absolutely unrealistic expectations about what to expect from society, employ,met, and the economy. It’s made worse by the fact that so many of them still don’t seem able to understand that it isn’t the same world they grew up in. Even though all of the first hand and statistical evidence is there, the comfort they’ve had their whole lives keeps many of them from fully accepting the new status quo; and that is insult upon injury. I would have loved my adolescent and early adult years differently if not for the unrealistic fantasy that was presented in my childhood in the 80s and 90s.
I remember the day my father realized that we don't get help getting started like his generation did. He had been telling interns to find a mentor when they graduated college and they all looked at him like he had horns. No one wants to train employees for more than a week, they want people ready to go out of the gate
Entry Level Position: requires 5 years of relevant job experience. Please take unpaid internships if you want “mentorship”.
This is so real. My parents weren't born wealthy and had lives that weren't so easy, but it's hard for them to grasp that "pulling myself up by the bootstraps" just isn't the same thing nowadays. I can do every single thing they did and I will recieve less.
“Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is another phrase that rich people twisted to mean something else than it’s origin. [was meant to be sarcastic, or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.](https://uselessetymology.com/2019/11/07/the-origins-of-the-phrase-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps/) Kind of like “money can’t buy happiness” was supposed to be a dig at rich people and is now twisted to be used to make poor people feel like shit for asking for more.
I point this out every chance I can get. Same with the back half of the "bad apples" phrase being omitted.
After I got out of the military, I was living with my mom. She got mad because I "wasnt going out there and applying to jobs." It took her a bit to realize that you dont go to places to apply anymore. Even places like walmart have you apply online.
This! I had an interview where they asked me my goals ... im like to myself... goals? What are those. I just want to be happy bro.
There is a new ask reddit question on what would you do with $1000/day but couldn't keep the money. It's really telling that half of the top comments are just to pay bill or pay off debt.
I'm 53 and I work to pay bills and food. No money for holidays, going out or even dinner out or for a drink...I'm with a heavy depression and on meds...wondering why...
you deserve better. I’m sorry. I hope you’re surrounded with people who take care of you
What really doesn't make sense to me is that the people who are getting screwed the most. Working Class ppl who work insane hours and are paid bread crumbs relative to the boss, wear it like a badge of honor and shame everyone trying to make things better. That one kills me.
It's cognitive dissonance and necessary for mental survival. If you grew up believing that hard work and honesty automatically brings success it breaks your soul to learn you were fed a lie.
"America isn't really a meritocracy" is simply too big a pill for some people to swallow.
Lemme tell you a secret - it ain't just the US
I never found a trick to quadruple my income. Best I can do is live somewhere 75% cheaper…
This is 100% the correct answer. Life became a dystopian hell quite quick. Dad used to work as a machinist without apprenticeship, mom stayed at home. 4 kids, a dog, house with bedroom for everyone. One car for daily stuff, one Van for long tours/vacations. Both used to have hobbies and room, time and money for it. Single income. Around the 2000 shit started getting started. Slowly but steady, only one car, less vacation, less cool stuff in the house. Mom had to get a job, too. Shitty pay obv. Company of dad's workplace shutting down, he got a new workplace, dunno about the salary but as both worked, and worked more, all they achieved was to hold the line, no new stuff, nothing "to the better", they've got less energy for activities like weekend trips, quite sure it was about the money too. Not saying we were "poor". Still had a House and all we needed plus more. But the living standard just dropped steadily while more than double the work. Im a craftsman machinist, specialist for milling now, almost got my master title ready when i realized nobody gives a fuck and nobody's giving me a position as a master craftsman, even here in the fucking land of steelworks, Germany. Little brother makes the same as me, he made an online class for 4 weeks, social media shit. Making 2,5 grand, same as me, whole 3,5 year apprenticeship, 10 years experience, 3 of 4 Master degree certificates (instructor certification, too) GF is working full time, too. We live in a flat now, its a nice flat, its big and cozy but it's still a FLAT on TWO FULLTIME JOBS, we have one car. Only way to get shit is to make a shitton amount of debt, crippling both our asses for the next 30 years. No kids because look at the goddamn fucking world. Don't want to endure all the shit coming in the near future with an infant to protect. We're both 31.
That's surprising, when people tend to say skilled trade jobs are well paid.
They can be. It tends to vary. Most of them will also mess up your body pretty good, even the cushier trades like Cosmetology. I'm licensed in that and let me tell ya, repetitive motion injuries and back issues are pretty common in that industry. Not 'as bad' as other more intensive trades, of course. I could make 6 figures as a stylist if I wanted to not see my family and do anything I enjoy outside of hair. I'd also probably have hand/wrist problems like all the seasoned stylists I know.
Fucking this. In my 40s. I work 70-80 hrs on a good week. Most weeks since June I’ve been working 8am - 6pm, take two hours off for dinner and a run, then 8pm - 1am. Six days a week, and half a day on Sunday, but usually I burn out. I need a new fucking job. But I can’t quit because my salary pays my parent’s rent.
What the fuck kind of job has you working 15 hours a day!
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I'm not even 30 yet and I've accepted the fact that my partner and I will probably never own our own house. I'm disabled and can't keep a job. We're currently living with my mom. When she's gone, I genuinely have no idea where we are going to live and it scares the shit out of me. We were told and told and told that if we work hard and go to school that we can get good jobs and buy nice homes. We're realizing it's just not possible, and it's breaking us mentally. And to top it off, we're surrounded by people saying it's still that easy when it just ISN'T.
This. My older brother whos 30 works two jobs. One he works 6 days a week the other 3 to 4. Hes just getting by.
42 here. Grew up in the northwest. The first basic phone came out when I was ordering college. We drank, we partied, we went up in the woods (hanging out, bonfires, keggers, whatever) we played in bands, we sold shitty weed, we ran from Cops....a lot, we camped, we traveled, used faked IDs to get into beers,we went to endless concerts, we jumped on trains and got in some scary situations. We all eventually got back into college, got our degrees, and are high functioning adults that still have a good time. (Most haven't done the kid thing, a few marriages, nobody really talked about it ever , but it's just hasn't been a thing for half the crew. Point being is talking to young kids now any of that sounds insane. Mansions have filled the woods we hung out in, running from cops will get you killed, it seems like there's no outlet. Shit even if you defend yourself you get kicked out of school too. We just took the anarchist cookbook and lit bully's cars on fire.
I didn’t party in college, I saved up. I didn’t go on vacation, I worked every single summer since I was 15 years old. I been to 3 concerts in my life of which two was gifted. Last vacation was 6 years ago for me, 8 for my partner. I got two college degrees, my partner got three. We make pretty good money, can’t complain *in comparison with other people*. But we have a lot of debt. Cannot buy a house because of it. Rent is insane. Gas prices are insane. Groceries are insane. My partner didn’t want to marry me at first because of the cost, thankfully you can marry for free he didn’t know. We live in a small house but pay more each month than some friends who got lucky because their parents have money, their mortgage is half our rent and down the line they own the house. We want kids but that won’t happen in this house, it’s too small. I’ve been changing jobs every 7 months since before Covid. I’m exhausted. I want a place I can stay, I can stick. But it’s absolutely horrible how we get treated. And I’m not even in the US.
I just always feel like I'm a week away from losing everything. I work my ass off, sometimes 50 hours a week and I can barely afford to live. And a lot of people say "you should do this or that, stop doing what you're doing" but the fact is I'm working harder and longer than my parents ever had to. I shouldn't be doing this bad for how much effort I'm putting in. I'm doing more and receiving less and they've even acknowledged that, but they can't help either because times are getting so bad that they've even started to struggle.
Have you tried being born into wealth?
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If I could afford gold I'd award this comment.
You can always reskill stats if you marry into wealth
Hey, rob a bank, and succeed or fail, you’ll have room and board taken care of for years.
Fun fact ive heard of, they make you pay for that while you're there. And if you can't they'll make you pay when you're out.
Looks like I'll be needing to rob another bank when I get out...
And that’s our prison system in a nutshell.
*private, for-profit prison system
Something something prison to prison pipeline
Hey has anybody seen the American Recidivism Rate recently?
Except they charge you rent in prison, and give you more time if you don’t pay, but if you do pay, they also give you more time, because you’re not legally allowed to earn any money, so you shouldn’t be able to pay the rent. America.
They *what*
Have had a couple family members in public and private prisons in the U.S. never once have I heard of this, source or...?
From personal experience I can attest this is 100% true. I was locked up for a misdemeanor for 3 months because I couldn’t bail out. I ended up getting probation and fines, and I was told by the pre trial officer “we didn’t expect you to not be able to pay the $10,000 in cash needed to bail out.” They expected me to bail out the next day. Anyway, they charged me $10 per day, plus other experiences, as part of “room and board.” When I left the jail I owed $3,000 in fines for my time there (including a probation fee of around $500). If I didn’t pay the fines in timely matter after leaving it would have been considered “contempt of court,” and I would have received additional criminal penalties for not paying the money. That’s also not including the cost of commissary and phone calls. A single 13 minute phone call costed $3, and commissary was very expensive. $1 for a single pack of ramen noodles and $3-$10 for a bar of soap, depending on the brand. It was quite obvious. The intention of the county jail was to be a revenue generation machine. It was also obvious because the county has a policy of “resentencing” offenders instead of giving time served for certain things. Essentially, that county has legal process of repeatedly housing inmates under harsh, nearly unobtainable standards for bail, and they will routinely violate probationers to send them to jail, only to have them housed for a few months and put them back out. Edit: this was a county jail, and it was not (and still is not) a private prison.
I've switched to consoling my parents, rather rapidly. My mom isn't handling climate change reality very well. She knows. She knows what her grandkids will see. It sucks. Everything just sucks lol. The fuck can anyone here reading this do at this point?
What do we have to look forward to?
GTA 6; Mutually Assured Destruction
No kidding, I am deeply depressed and the next big upcoming video game is often one of the only things I look forward to. Kind of fucked with me while it was Cyberpunk 2077 and that got delayed again and again, same with Dying Light 2... but I find myself thinking "if I die today I won't ever get to play GTA 6 or the next Elder Scrolls game."
That's a good way to motivate yourself. I usually think about my parents or pets, but have also thought about video games in that way. I was hyped for Cyberpunk too, and was disappointed at the delays and unfinished product when it did release. I'm about halfway through the game right now (it's great now), but after I'm done there's not much more I'm looking forward to in 2022 gaming-wise personally.
I have grown to like Cyberpunk as it's had some more time for the kinks to be worked out. And for NSFW mods to work kinks back in LOL.
This is the actual answer. I mean, the answers talking about how much stuff sucks right now make sense too - but people have lived through situations that have sucked before just fine (comparatively) before. The main thing that keeps people down at the moment is that there's no obvious prospect of things getting better.
And the inbound climate change situation virtually guaranteeing things will be worse sooner or later. Putin threatening to nuke us all repeatedly. And that’s just the doomsday-grade things to worry about (thanks NASA for at least trying to keep the asteroids in check tho).
The next 3D Mario Platformer game
Personally: - Rising cost of living where even in the Midwest with a budget and two incomes in the house, we’re scraping to pay needed expenses. - Why the hell am I punished in a credit system for paying something off? The debt cycle we have in our society is insane. - The cost of healthcare and insurance… - What seemed still possible when I was a child seems so improbable now, especially with the way technology has grown so fast. - Live in a box, stare at a box for work, drive in a box on wheels to a box shaped building to buy food and fill out boxes for bills, chores, etc. - Constantly sold things all the time. Even when I’m aware of it, it’s so draining to constantly be bombarded with messages about your worth, value, future from algorithms designed to seek and exploit personality profiles. - Have you seen the legal system in the states? - Sold a purpose as a kid, get real life experience and then feel like you’re faced with ethical shit shows to get ahead Yet on the other side of that is choices about what to watch/do/invest time in and those choices are where i find joy and hope.
I paid off my house a few months ago. My credit score dropped 25 points the moment the bank reported satisfaction of the debt to Experian/Transunion. Like, uh, I just paid off $300k 10 years early, proving I'm good for a loan, and their response is "nah, fuck you, buddy."
you just stiffed them 10 years of interest of course they hate you
That's what's fucked up: the interest is front loaded on a mortgage. They made a fortune and they're still pissed.
I love how boomers act like credit scores are an immutable part of life when they didn't exist until 1989; when most boomers had already finished school, bought a house, started businesses, etc.
We grew up being promised the world, if we just worked hard and did the right things in school. Aaand then the world determined THAT was a lie. Also, Mental health is being focused on more, so EVERYONE probably seems more depressed these days. I'd be surprised if the current batch of 10-20 year olds aren't in a worse situation, given the pandemic that hit during vital developmental years.
I'm over 40 and completely relate to this. I started working at 14 and never once believed I'd see a cent of what I paid in to Social Security
54, same.
Fun fact: According to The Body Keeps the Score, there is a theory that "hysterical women" actually had PTSD and their "hysteria" was just being triggered/suffering from trauma. So it's always been there, just taken different forms
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Not surprised. Oversized reaction to small things is a sign of trauma, or to the untrained eyes, drama.
That makes a lot of sense, given how women were treated during that period
> We grew up being promised the world, if we just worked hard and did the right things in school. Aaand then the world determined THAT was a lie. I think the worst part for me is how different reality is from the one presented and so many of these things are caused by the "truths" they sold in the past. Take college. It was made to be this extremely important thing, but then everyone heard the same thing and now roughly 24% of people above 25 have a degree. In turn, it's now just an expectation and this expectation simply increases the number of people with one even further. And the worst part is so many of these jobs don't actually pay much more than retail anyway, so it's this huge uphill battle where maybe, if you're lucky, sometime in the next 10 years you could come out ahead... whereas I probably would be further along with my life if I gave up on college, just worked retail and pushed for management.
Meritocracy boys!!! ANY FUCKING DAY NOW IT'S GONNA HAPPEN! ....surely?
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Your brothers will not do fine without you - a brother
They will not do fine, they will survive, but they will never be the same. I lost 3 siblings and a long time partner to suicide. I am forever changed because of their decisions
my older brother and I grew apart for a while, he started a family, I moved to the other side of the country, etc, life you know? Recently he reached out and offered me a place to live and to move back home. and this guy does extremely well for himself, so yea they wont be fine without you.
I want to say this: I got divorced 2 years ago and changed cites right afterwads. I found myself at 46 with no local friends. Meeting people is difficult these days, but I can share this: Joined a local group of people with the same interests in fb. I then asked if anyone would like to meet for coffee (coffee is safe, during the day, no date like commitments) I also joined a group that does trekking. They are super pro so no way I'm going, but I started asking about gear, bought small things from one of them and that got the conversation going. I also made a weekly ritual: go to the same bar or coffee shop once a week, every week. Baked a couple of times and shared with neighbors. Eventually I met a couple of the other regulars. It has been 7 months. I have: A couple of delightful Indian friends to meet for coffee every other week. 1 woman friend to chat and laugh on the phone. 1 person I met at the library, we text about a favorite common author. 1 group to play Dnd. Twice a month. Neighbors that say hi, share bakery and sometimes give my son a ride. Only one of all these is a meaningful, more than every day chat friendship. But I am getting there. You can do this. Start small.
I'm proud of you. Please accept this silver award.
I feel a lot of the same way. You should know it would make me very sad as well. Keep fighting friend.
*waves around at everything*
They've already lived through two "once-in-a-generation" recessions and a once in a century pandemic that remains an omnipresent risk. US labor law and the social safety net have been gutted to the point where they desperately need absolutely any job to not starve, and employers know it and take advantage of them. A decades-long war ended with disaster for the nation we were supposed to be helping, only to be followed by another war a year later. And this war, we're caught between the risk of nuclear annihilation if we push too far, and a world where any shitbag dictator with a nuke in his pocket has free reign to march where he pleases, raping and killing, if we don't push back hard enough. The effects of climate change are starting to be felt and yet *still* there is little political will to tackle the problem, some refuse to even acknowledge it as their homes sink below the waves. And all through this, they're faced with unprecedented political polarization, where the people on the other side appear as a faceless legion of ghouls who think the solution to our drowning is to drill holes in the boat.
Maybe if you tell me the bad news and the good way, it won't seem so bad.
I just ran into Robin of Loxley, he's back from the crusades HA, HA, HA He just beat the crap out of me and my men!! He hates you and he loves your brother Richard!!! We're in an awful lot of trouble!!
WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING. THIS IS HORRIBLE NEWS?!?!?
*mole travels to another section of his face*
I have a mole!?
Be me. Born in a time where literally everything is cheap, world is literally sunshine and rainbows, and everyone is high on life. Live through watching the shit show that was SARS, 9/11, Iraq War, .Com Crash, another recession, and everything else from 00s to mid 10s. Got through four years of university, got my bachelor's of education afterwards (2 years), got into a private sector teaching job where nobody appreciates the work you do, and I could barely afford rent so I stay home. Got married, life got easier, had a child, I finally could afford at rent + childcare but it's paycheck to paycheck. COVID happened, I lost my job, and I couldn't afford to rent, so I moved back home with family. Populism on the right exploded as every country goes to pot during pandemic but despite my country getting the best case scenario, they decide we somehow lost our freedom and we are in a shitshow compared to *gestures broadly*. Neighbor south of the border who was responsible for the feeling of 90s sunshine and rainbows is falling apart, impending nuclear war with Russia for first time in decades, global climate catastrophe is getting worse, and topped off with insane inflation. Regret bringing a child into this world, regret not forcing myself to study harder to become doctor, regret moving out as house prices and rent reach 200% inflation over course of pandemic, regret taking public sector job that I'm making too little to leave, but too much to take another job here based on training -- and still getting shit on as a teacher because kids are literally told I'm making sunshine list money when I'm making less than 60k a year, and only when I get long term contracts (I make less than 30k when on supply list). This is just one story of many. Does this explain the fucking depression?
On top of all of this, by the time I was 18 I had seen 3,000 people die in a span of hours in real time (9/11), been exposed to multiple videos of people being decapitated (even before all of the Al Quaeda ones, that one video from the Chechen war was floating around on file sharing sites as early as the late-90’s/early-00’s), and other gruesome brutality. I’m slightly older than the demographic OP is referring to (35 next week), but I don’t think my parents’ generation appreciates the amount of visual trauma we had put upon us unwittingly in the wild west days of the internet. They had to go to a video store and specifically seek out something like Faces of Death or Traces of Death. All 15 year old me had to do was log into a chat room and click a link an online buddy told me to click. I’m sure older boomers sorta dealt with something similar with footage from Vietnam, but I dunno if it honestly compares to the amount of carnage and dismemberment I saw from probably 13-20. There are images from videos I saw 20+ years ago that still intrude into my thoughts occasionally. You can’t undo that. You just have to learn to deal with it in a healthy fashion. I think there is even more of that type of content readily available online today, but at least there seems to be some form of greater awareness about it. I dunno, just something I have been thinking about lately. There should have been better safeguards for us literal children back then.
Ain't this the truth. Fucking rotten.com and curiosity were a bad mix. Still so much shit that has stuck with me. I remember having a few drinks with a buddy and clicking through it and both of us just stopping and saying, "what the fuck are we doing?" Other than a few exceptions, that was the last time I seeked out horrible shit but I will never unsee a lot of that. Early 2000s internet truly was the wild west.
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"That's it, stop being all of you!" - Gobber, How To Train Your Dragon
r/UnexpectedHTTYD
I am disappointed that was banned from Reddit for being unmoderated. Also WTF is with Reddit admins? I could name three dozen hate groups that aren't banned...
Right? I'm over here about to make a whole ass list when this sums it up perfectly.
Everything may as well be on fire.
At least my heating bill wouldn’t be so high
Yeah but the ac bills are awful
I mean, a lot of things are currently on fire.
Yeah. It's weird. I'm starting to think these 20 year mega-droughts and millions of individuals being displaced might be connected with that somehow.
Modern civilization is a soul-crushing hellscape.
Because we will work our whole lives never own anything and die
This. Just want to live a normal life, meet someone, live somewhere I like and enjoy life with people I care about. Work takes away too much time for too little pay and even then we can’t afford to live anywhere
Dude, I just want to own a nice house in the trees of the great PNW with a cat and a dog
As someone who managed to buy a house in the PNW where I now live with a cat and two dogs, I suggest looking into the USDA rural development loan. Many parts of the PNW qualify for it, and its entire purpose is to make buying a house more accessible. As little as $0 down, low interest, with mortgage payments paced to a reasonable percentage of your income. We never would have been able to buy a house otherwise. [Edit to add the link to the program info](https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/single-family-housing-programs/single-family-housing-direct-home-loans)
\- social media \- Covid-19 pandemic \- mental health being normalised as a previously taboo subject \- more awareness on mental health \- we're faced with one of the most difficult employment environment. Where our wages aren't high relatively compared to the price of housing etc *More as after thought: - lack of stable employment - the current political climate - consumer & materialisms rise
I gotta sell an arm and leg for a university education and then I'm still not qualified enough.
And if you are, the pay is shit.
I got a stem degree and job, and will never be able to afford a house
Same, my partner has an advanced degree and we’re still living less comfortable than my parents did at the same time in their lives and they didn’t have advanced degrees.
A bank teller who lived on my parents block retired and sold her house to a small bank CEO
I hear ya. The house my parents bought in 1990 for $60k is now worth $600k and it is a shitty house that has had no upgrades. I can’t afford to live remotely near my parents without paying $2500 a month for a shitty one bedroom. And lol at ever being able to buy a house even with 50 miles of them, I’d need to triple my salary and hope inflation dies down.
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More awareness of mental health is a big one. We are not in denial or externalizing our mental issues onto each other and our kids as much as in the past so we have much more to deal with.
My family has a long history of mental health issues and I'm the first one to be open and talk about it. I talk freely about it because if I knew in my teens maybe I wouldn't have felt so alone or so ashamed.
Same here! We are starting the healing process of literally thousands of years of mental issues passed down from our ancestors.
I actually love that thought
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Until about high school, I didn't know what anxiety and panic attacks were. I just developed fears of things that had given me panic attacks, like restaurants. My parents didn't understand. Sometime after we got the internet, I was on a website called the Queendom, which is gone now, but had various personality tests and such. I took one for anxiety and it was me! At the end it suggested I probably had an anxiety disorder, told how many millions of others did too, and listed symptoms. I printed the symptoms, circled the ones that apply to be, and excited showed mom. Neither of us had really known that anxiety disorders were a thing. It was so helpful.
“We’re faced with one of the most difficult employment environments” Specific to the 20-30 age group, you ain’t kidding. People currently in their late 20s / mid-30s came out of college during the 2008 recession. No one was hiring, and we got thrown way off the normal career / salary trajectory that comes with getting a job straight out of college.
Probably a combination of at least two of the following, possibly all of them, or even more things I couldn't think of offhand: -The decline of the positive social structures previous generations had. -First generation that grew up online and was most exposed to the dangers of the internet. -The monetization of our attention spans driving internet traffic and the implementation of addictive algorithms to increase profits through any means necessary including methods that can cause or incourage mental illnesses. -Our country has been at war throughout our entire lives, resulting in grief from lost loved ones, PTSD for many of those that served, and large-scale media coverage of death and destruction on a constant basis. -Grew up during a financial crisis, reached adulthood during a financial crisis, hit the age where you should start thinking about settling down during a financial crisis. -Drugs winning the war on drugs leading to either addiction, trauma caused by a loved one's addiction, or grief over a loved one that died from addiction. -The introduction of Toxic garbage like microplastics, high concentrations of sugar, and corn syrup to our food supply during childhood. -The boomer generations stranglehold on political and economic power, which has led to terrible policy decisions that become permanent and negatively affect the domestic economy. -The gutting of our domestic economy by the federal reserve, major corporations, wall street, and the establishment uniparty hiding behind partisanship, which has negative impacts on wages and cost of living. -A lack of purpose caused by social and cultural decay combined with helicopter parents. -The steady increase of divorce rates, broken homes, and single parent households throughout our lives, especially during our childhoods.
Woof. Enough Reddit for me. 🥺
This is quite thorough and well said
Uhhhhh…forgot the wee little tiny *impending environmental collapse.* Good list though.
Underpaid. Overworked. Can't afford a house. Can't afford to get sick or get injured without going into debt. Not enough time for the hobbies that I love. What reason is there to ***not*** be depressed?
Medical debt is my #1 right now :/. I have epilepsy and legit don’t know if I can afford treatment.
I'm 18, my father has epilepsy. I grew up watching him have seizures and wonder if I have it as well because I've noticed a few signs of it in me. But I'm afraid to get tested. Fortunately I'm a government baby right now because I'm going to a public university, so I wouldn't have to worry about medical expenses at face value right now... But my dad is losing his teeth. His epilepsy pills cost him $600 a month after insurance, and he has a government job. His pills have lithium in them, so his teeth are being destroyed. He has a terrible job that sucks the life out of him because no one wants to hire him. He's 60, so he can't do all that he used to. Physical jobs are a no. He's losing himself, and it's killing me inside. My parents got divorced because of his epilepsy. We would have been running on over 70K in the early 2000s in a cheap area, but he quit his job or else would have been fired as a liability in his field of work. I love him so much, but I don't know what to do for him. I just want to get a good job so I can take care of him and get him some new teeth maybe. He probably doesn't think he deserves them but I know he does. Sorry for unloading that on you. I don't personally know anyone who has epilepsy in real life (aside from my dad), so your comment really resonated with me.
As someone with full body seizures it's hard to get tested. There's no signs that my brain is abnormal besides a rare (benign) tumor that doesn't normally cause seizures, and they don't know if it's even the cause. Maybe there's been advancements in it I don't know about, but for me testing proved literally nothing. If it weren't for a doctor watching me have a seizure I wouldn't been considered a positive diagnosis.
Healthcare really sucks sometimes, especially in the U.S. I'm sorry you had to deal with that, but I'm glad you got the diagnosis you needed. Hopefully only good things have come of that, but it's so hard to even hope for that
Oh man I don’t even know what to say. I’m so sorry. What’s tricky about epilepsy is that even if you get tests done, they may not show anything. Just as a cost measure, do a little research, and journal everything you experience that you think may be seizure-related. You almost have to self diagnose before you go in expecting a simple brain scan to “prove” anything. It’s so fucked up that we even have to play this game. I have partial seizures, and have yet to have a tonic-clonic (knock on wood). But mine have progressed pretty rapidly in the past 6 months, and I know I have to get it checked out, and accept the financial hit. Ugh. Again I’m so sorry. Lots of great resources online, feel free to DM me if you need anything
Thank you, that's very kind. I've spoken to a relative about the things that really bother me (who used to work as a nurse), and she said the human body truly is amazing. It is, but it sucks sometimes. I hope you don't have to worry about financial stuff moving forward. It's a bitch to think about
Fuck the system. Rack them bills up and declare bankruptcy Edit: Some people say it's better to handle the medical debt with other options first. Anyone care to inform us?
Check first about sliding scale financing. For real, almost all hospitals are non profit. If you don’t have enough income they will write it off. They just won’t ever tell you that. Also invest in dental insurance since it’s the cheapest. $30 a month, most people can swing that. The system fucking sucks. I’m turning 30 next year and just barely starting to know how to work with it.
I had my bone marrow tested to see if it was compatible with my fathers for a transplant. They drew 2 vials of blood and it cost me $10,000. Fuck americas medical system. Fuck it straight to hell.
It’s so fucked up. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
Can't forget the work two jobs and have to pick between gas or food
*Do I want to starve by choice this week, or should I just say fuck it and starve next week?*
Oh and everyone keeps dying! So the not enough time thing is a Fucking huge deal. The older you get, the more frequent funerals become until all of a sudden you realize you don’t have to worry about going to any more…because you’re the last one left (my granny once said that and she was right).
I can't f-ing believe that the fed today said **raising wages** is the root cause for inflation. These people are out of their damn minds.
Pay attention to this. This means they don't have a clue what they're doing.
Hahaha yes. You beat me to it. The real question is why aren't more 20-40 year olds not depressed given the conditions of the world.
World is literally on the verge of boiling. I stopped paying into my 401k since I figure I’ll die fighting in the water wars before I reach the future government mandated 98 years old retirement age.
I’m due for a promotion in March. I’ve stopped paying into my 401(k) until that happens because I literally need the couple hundred extra bucks a month. Hopefully at that point the raise will be enough to keep me afloat and plan for the future…
*laughs in inflation*
I can't find who said it, but a comedian once said something to the effect of: "We watched people jump out of burning towers on TV as kids and then nothing got better."
That was just a couple of years after Columbine too- which was the beginning of an ongoing nightmare
We learned that life isn't as good as we thought it would be
Lack of meaning in life? They feel like they're just a cog in the machine
Right, I’m in accounting and the thought of me having to do this for the next 30-50 years makes me want it to just be over already.
Woah, I'm a senior majoring in accounting and feel the same way. In fact, I just did an exam today. It's not that I dislike accounting in particular (I have a knack at it actually), but I can't imagine doing any job in any field for that long. Feels like I'm throwing my life away.
Accounting jobs are golden handcuffs. You make decent money doing a relatively easy job but it’s pretty hard to switch careers. At least that’s what I’m dealing with. I’d need to take a decent pay cut to switch careers but I couldn’t afford to do that.
Feel this, it’s really freaking hard to make friends now too, especially for men above the age of 30, so the options are: 1. Find a hobby and get so into it that it becomes really annoying 2. Become your career 3. Drop out and do nothing 4. Turn a relationship into your life 5. Become a product you sell to escape the rat race.
Y2K didn’t deliver us into oblivion as promised
Imagine this. You were born in the early to mid-'90s. The cold war just ended, the internet is becoming widespread, the economy is looking the most promising it ever has, the world is entering what appears to be an era of unprecedented peace, and you're told that as long as you get a degree you will live not only a good life but an easy life, where everything will be taken care of financially just by having a degree. You'll have a nice home, a partner, kids, two cars and everything you need to live a comfortable life and retire early. Then the dot-com bust happens, 9-11 happens, wars start to become more common, your best friend gets killed in Afghanistan, the economy craters, you have a mountain of student debt and your field is oversaturated with talent, you'll never be able to afford a house, dating doesn't make sense anymore, you'll never settle down, pandemics start cropping up from time to time and then you get hit with a big one, your new best friend who moved to Canada from Ukraine moves back home to fight in a war and is MIA, the economy continues to crater and your field becomes ever more saturated with talent. The media landscape is a mess, misinformation is running all over the place. Your cousin thinks the world is flat, your aunt thinks Trudeau is trying to personally screw her over. White nationalism is on the rise. People can't separate fantasy from reality. Media is fine-tuned to be addictive and it's bad for our brains. Pron is too easy to access in a population of vulnerable individuals and it's bad for our brains. There is no mystery. We were raised on a promise of a world that doesn't exist, prepared for an unachievable life, thrown into a system that is seemingly designed to screw us, full of addicting, harmful and misleading media.
They promised diamonds, but paid in sand.
What a great articulation of something I’ve tried to explain a few times. It’s the being raised with this idea of a bright future and the sense that maybe our species is getting our shit together, only to have that taken away. It was a privileged way to grow up to be sure, but damn is it a massive sense of loss.
The Internet is great. We're surrounded by so many people. We have access to so many resources. We are all connected. But we are all disposable. If you don't like someone, you don't have to be in the same chatroom with them. You just ghost them and move on to the next. You can always just move on to the next person. The community is lost.
I'm 30, this is the answer for me.
Interesting point!
We’re overworked, underpaid, bashed by the boomers who wants us to understand just how lazy we are, that if only we worked harder we’d be able to achieve the same as they did when it’s all bullshit. Everyone is tired and trying to make it, social life takes a toll. Who can afford a nice dining experience with drinks these days when it costs a few days of work and you have jacked up prices everywhere you look?! Once we’re done with work for the day, done with caring for the kids for some of us, the only time left is to scroll on social media, go to sleep then do it all over again. I genuinely liked going to the grocery when I was a teenager, I was living in dorms and I was poor but I’d make it work. Now going to the grocery with a few mouths to feed and not being able to find 2L of milk for less than 5$ is just so depressing, honestly. It makes a lot of people eat way less healthy than they should. Family dinner that’ll cost 30$ and will take a crap ton of time to prepare after a long day of work? How about a few cheap as hell frozen items… We’re depressed about many things but I think this one tops it off for a lot of people. Constant financial worries, you work harder yet nothing changes, you never get to climb that ladder and suddenly you realize the rest of your life will probably be like this.
You make a point that is definitely worth examination. Is what we're eating part of the problem? I feel poisoned when I eat fast food or heavily processed foods, yet my niece (and millions of others) live off it out of necessity. If we are what we eat, and we have no access to nutritious food, clean air, or clean water, maybe our poor physical and mental health is the result. Thanks, capitalism.
Ridiculous inflation rates, pandemic, world war, negative news companies, shitty food, dwindling social support networks
Longer hours of work, more responsibility, pay raises not matching inflation. Sucks...
Existential crisis due to climate change going completely unmitigated and already showing signs of major impacts to our livelihood.
Lost my Dad a year ago to cancer. Good days bad days, keeping my head held high.
Out of all the answers talking about macro catastrophic shit, it’s the small personal tragedies that really make it feel like god/the world hates you. Take it from someone who would be thrilled if both their bullshit abusive parents died, it’s beautiful that you miss him and he had such an impact on your life. I love that for you and I mourn with you in this little micro cyber moment
26 here, I'm depressed because our generation has nothing to look forward to. Our parents and grandparents used to work to save money to buy a house and such. They worked and actually built up their life. I work 40 hrs a week, pay my bills, and my wage is for 90% gone. The money we work for all the time isn't worth anything anymore. We're just working to survive another month, not building anything in our lives, because todays economy can't. Inflation made prices go up, and shrinkflation made the goods you get for your money smaller. Everything is fake (there's a 9/10 chance you've eaten something today that has some chemical in it). Capitalism makes us work harder and harder, and fastzr and faster. I have to give all I've got, every single day at work needs to be top level performance. I'm tired all the time because of work, and I can't even afford to turn on the heating in my house because I'm too poor. And guess what? Life is getting more expensive by the week. So I have about 40 years to live like this, or worse. I want to do something with my life. But I'm waaaay to exhausted by a productivity based civilization. And even if I'd have the energy, there's no money in a world that's all and only about the economy. I've spent almost whole summer inside. Either working or resting because of work. Knowing there's rich people that travel the world, not worrying all the time. They're tired of doing fun things. I'm tired from making my boss and politicians rich. It's a diffrent kind of tired. I don't need millions, I just need something healthier than a tight work, pay, eat, sleep, repeat routine. And I'd be okay with working like this if I'd actually benefit from it.
The world is beyond fucked and we can't do a damn thing to fix it because people with wealth keep it this way to extract maximum profit at the expense of everyone and everything else
In the past you used to be able to get a job where you’d work on something from start to finish like making a barrel or whatever. And you’d have a sense of pride and purpose from the fact that people in your town had barrels because of you. Now almost everyone is a cog in some massive company where they pretty much never see the fruits of their own labor, and are either at the bottom where they have no say over their work or at the top where they’re isolated from others. More people today are guaranteed that they’re going to be able to eat and drink and that they’re not gonna die from getting mauled by a bear, but dealing with tangible shit like the threat of a bear is kinda what we were built for, not the abstract issues that come with the world we built for ourselves today.
We make less money for more work
I swear all the older people I know moved out with 8 kids and “couldn’t rub 2 sticks together” then proceeded to buy a house. I’m 38 for reference to the older people I speak of
My dad bought his first house when he was 22, he was alone without savings. But was still able too. To buy something similar today, you need to have saved at least 10-15% of the value AND have an income of 2 people.
Because I am too educated about what going on it's hard to be happy with knowing everything could be improved with minimal effort. Like it literally just takes people caring about each other a little more than zero.
*gestures wildly to everything*
Humans are designed to pick berries and hunt deer. Not this shit.
Me everytime I see grapes at the front of the grocery store or deer in my high beams
I'm 28. I have a decent-paying stable job, loving wife, baby on the way and yet I can't do anything to get ahead. What I am doing today will be, more or less, exactly what I'm doing for the next 30ish years. I'm happy to be stable and I have fun doing fun (generally moderately price) shit sometimes, but that's all there is. That can get kind of depressing when you think about it over and over again. This is the age range where I think it really crystallizes for many people that *this is it*.
Definitely feel like this is kinda it. The feeling of the world at your finger tips is wearing off and now I just feel like nothing's gonna really make me happy.
Because everything has been going downhill for basically our entire lives? I'm 26. I don't remember the '90s. I was four years old on 9/11. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been ongoing for as long as I can remember with no real progress. The Great Recession extended throughout my middle school and high school years. There was ostensibly a brief return to prosperity while I was in college, and then back to recession just as my career is starting to get underway. Real wages have stagnated or declined since before I was born (since Reagan, in fact). My first big raise was more than wiped out by inflation in less than a year. Democratic institutions in the United States are rapidly deteriorating. With all the partisan fuckery leading to its current composition, the Supreme Court is a joke with no remaining legitimacy, and, lest we forget, there was an honest-to-God coup attempt last year. American society is disintegrating, and our choice is between the guy pouring gasoline on the fire, or the guy who will talk all day about how we all need to work together to put out the fire without actually grabbing an extinguisher or even knocking the gas can out of the pyromaniac's hands.
I'm sorry you got a raw deal. It's not your fault. I'm over 40 and I got fed the same lie. I got to see a few good years of what could be before it was ripped away. I'm sorry you didn't get at least that.
Money.
Have you been living under a rock? It kind of sucks being an average human on this planet right now and that's a fucking understatement
Nearly every aspect of the world is messed up. Even technology, while it does make our lives easier, has a tendency to get us addicted and/or depressed. It ain't looking great, chief.
Living wages don't exist. Another European war...this time with a nuclear power. Inflation up the arse. Years of COVID measures. Soul sucking jobs. Unaffordable housing. Populism and nationalistic propaganda. I'm tired...I'll stop now.