i am middle aged man, i experienced life since before even computer and smartphone is a thing like today.
back then, i feel that life is much easier, what i mean easier is more simple life, less competition, less stress, fresh environment, and more happiness despite lack of technology.
but right now, everything is just too complicated despite of power of tech, internet, smartphone, and AI helps, i feel that life is much harder right now, what i mean is like competition is everywhere, stressful everyday, crowded city, and i easily depressed these days.
is it just me or everyone else can relate to what happens right now?
It’s definitely getting worse, you’re not imagining it.
I was born in the 60’s and feel ya. Funny that there’s a lot of people who never knew life before internet like we never knew life without television. My take on it is we are bombarded. We see everything that happens all over the planet as soon as it happens. Yet our ability to affect things is still the same. That I feel makes us feel small. Spend less time looking at screens
yeah it’s intentional.
oligarchs are hoarding the resources and getting people to distract themselves by pointing at each other while they stockpile their bunkers.
Yeah, i mean we make more stuff than ever before per capita and all that, and yet we still have to fight harder and harder to survive. How so? We’ll these fucking billionaires are also richer than ever before. Crassus’ wealth is estimated at like $2B in today’s dollars. Rockefeller is estimated at like $300-400B. Musk is more than double that. It’s very clear what’s happening, the rich use the capitalist surplus as a weapon to extract more wealth from the poor.
Def not just you, it’s everyone some people are just better at ignoring it. I’ve always been raised around computers myself, but we’re talking Windows 3.1 and 95 lol. I do indeed think it’s the tech though. People have alter egos they try to pretend is real on social media. News travels faster with it, real or fake. Music you’d have to buy, listen to the radio, or watch TRL or 106 in park. Things are so immediate these days. People used to read, learn, etc. I got kids, and a large chunk of the shit they tell me they’ve learned was from TikTok. It truly is a different world, and it is stressful. It’s hard to keep up, but you’re here, and you’re doing just fine.
No, you are not alone. I have the same feeling.
Can definitely relate. Am in my early 50’s. Canadian government sold out Canadians, and now the country is a complete shithole. We’re actively looking to leave Canada.
Thirty-something Norwegian here. I am born into a rich, relatively functioning social democracy with a good welfare state. Buying my own home was a real struggle, even with a good salary. Many of my peers will never own, my younger friends will struggle to ever own, or never.
Unfortunately the welfare state is eroding, prices for everything is increasing heavily, and the private sector is a growing leech on the state.
the real problem is capitalism
May your welfare state never erode enough to remove your Healthcare and turn it into exclusively private!
Sounds like things have been good for you in the past. I am happy for you, and wish you a return to the good times.
They say happiness is all about expectations, but I haven’t expected anything good and I am still disappointed.
OP, it’s also going to sound like a cliche, but touch grass. The cancer-like tech companies want to replace your sense of community so that they have more power over you. F them, join a local group, and find yourself feeling more powerful when you have a real community behind you.
see also: misery loves company
It’s really hard to tell what was just younger kids not being exposed to the world vs. things actually getting worse. I was a kid during '08, and things didn’t really change for me at home cuz my family was always very frugal, especially my dad.
Climate change has empirically gotten worse tho. Inflation, enshitification, food quality, all of it SEEMS worse but it’s hard to quantify it you know?
nah lil bro. The enshittification is real and huge. The quality of goods, particularly what used to be reputable brands, is 100% in the shitter. I have started only buying fabric with natural fibers in them because polyester sucks. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it used to be. I’ve been a regular grocery shopper for the entirety of this century. Things were pretty much the same price for years and years. There was a bump in 08 to punish us for electing a half-black guy and demanding reasonable pay, but then it stabilized until around 2018. Shit has increased in price by multiples while quantity and quality have plummeted.
We’re fucked bro. Get whatever enjoyment out of this life while you can. There are some unprecedented hard times coming. We’re going to pay for the recklessness and irresponsibility of the boomers. Buy hey, they got theirs, didn’t they?
So, I hear you, but i saw this meme of newspaper clippings going back to like 1900 where business owners were quoted “people don’t want to work anymore”. We think it’s a new idea but its like 100+ years old.
Maybe companies have always looked for ways to cut corners and screw customers, we just focus on our last 20 years. And it’s not that before we got older they were all reputable and its only recently they’ve gone this greedy path. Its just cuz we didn’t know about it as kids, especially cuz the interent wasn’t huge yet.
I’m not trying to say things aren’t getting worse. They definitely are. But what if we’ve had this long, general decline of everything that’s always been happening and we didn’t see it or feel it cuz we were just kids.
This isn’t the boomers fault, what did they do? There is no reason we can’t get good pay and cheap groceries now, aside from capitalists knowing they don’t need to anymore.
All the boomers in government are the problem.
Fucking yanks have an 80yr old for fucks sake. Can’t be any more out of touch then being older then most of your country.
Australia is no better really anyone in politics gets there sits there gets old and out of touch.
Their needs to be a hard limit on politicians so they don’t run the country based on how it was as they grew up 65 years ago. That’s an entirely different world
No politician, older or younger can make change without permission from the ruling class. In the case of capitalist countries that is the capitalist class. A younger politician won’t change the fact that the capitalist class forces them to do there bidding for them.
What about unions?
If you beleive they can stand up to a corporation then there’s no reason politicians could do the same.
Not to mention authoritarian countries stand up to corporations they don’t support.
There’s no real solution
You are definitely not alone. Ordinary people should stand against imperialist and extreme capitalist system .when you vote ,you should not let bastards politicians exploit you by your weakness
What if my weakness is that all the politician choices are bastards trying to exploit me? FL
Also middle aged and my only real issue is how stupid everyone is
They don’t read. They don’t research. They don’t question… not in a “conspiracy theory” way, but they don’t see a headline and go, “is that true?”
They’re morons that feed off negativity.
They’ll post an article about something terrible but then I’ll look it up, find out it’s bullshit, and then post the data that shows it’s bullshit and instead of everybody being like, “oh thank God, I was worried there for a second” they go, “Fuck you. Obviously everything is shitty and how dare you even try to point out that it’s not”
What the fuck is wrong with people these days?
Seriously though, it’s the phones. Instant-gratification dopamine delivery devices aren’t good for the vast majority of humans. They don’t even see what is happening.
Wealth divide is worse. We are also in a time of change geopolitically. Also in a time where powerful actors benefit from creating controversy including media, social medial, political, and geopolitical. We live in interesting times.
Describe a time of geopolitical non-change please.
Well, before smartphones people didn’t get bombarded with bad news all the time. The changes were there but we hardly noticed them. Now they’re being shoved in our schnozes to instill fear and push us all to the far right.
yes, join your local communist party
