2y ago

its the end of the rule as we know it

202 comments

To keep your sanity you just have to lower your expectations.
I, for example, am really stoked for the burrito I ordered. Fuck, it’s good to be alive.
- I'm stoked about having learned how to repair PCs in my last 6 hour hyperfixation, and then actually fixing two PCs.
  
  Oh man, that's the good shit right there! Ride that dopamine wave.
  
  Is it hard? I've built several PCs and repair seems like a good line of work for me, but I know nothing about the individual components of the parts
- As someone who ate a burrito a few hours ago, I am no longer stoked
- They tell you that the sky might fall
  \ They'll say that you might lose it all
  \ So I run until I hit that wall
  \ Yeah I learned my lesson, count my blessings
  \ Look to the rising sun and run run run
- You ever had a deep fried burrito? That shit is life changing and good enough reason for me to keep going.
  
  Something called a chimichanga in my neck of the woods. You can get one smothered or dry. You can even get one stuffed with fruit and covered with sweet and spicy sauces
  
  Ever had a wet burrito with melted cheese on top and inside?

The century of find out with almost no active participation in the previous century of fuck around.
A lot of "climate collapse global late stage capitalism and food is more and more plastic" stick with very little "convenience products are kinda nifty" carrot
- It's kind of bittersweet being a very tail-end Gen X person. On the happy side, I got to do my childhood and teen years in the "fuck about" era, but on the unhappy side my entire adulthood has been in the "find out" era, and I get to remember what it was like briefly living in a world that wasn't entirely going to shit.
  
  it's kind of affirming to hear you say that. As a gen Z person I feel like we're constantly being gaslit into thinking stuff has always been bad and we just complain more or something
  
  Thank you! This was very well put. Felt like a big puzzle piece just fell in place and this discomfort of not knowing why stuff feels so weird nowadays let go a bit. ❤️🤜
  
  Tbf it was slowly going to shit back then too.
  
  Older millennial here, so about your age, I have really early childhood memories before ozone issues, recessions, and planet fucking, after that it's been one paper straw after another
- I feel like I could still join in on all the fuck around going on, but the find out has simultaneously already started and I can't deal with the cognitive incongruence. Most people seem to be just fine with that tho. Must be nice being able to just turn your brain off and keep fucking the planet like that.

I really wish my generation was a bit more optimistic. Yeah shit sucks, don't get me wrong. But have you guys seen all of history? This is par for the course. Yeah the challenges are different but every generation had their challenges. And yeah baby boomers definitely had it better than us, but that doesn't mean there's nothing but bad stuff to come. You have to take life with the good and the bad and make the most of it.
- The bad is starting to look more and more like an impending global societal collapse with every passing day though
  
  Yeah I don't know about "par for the course"
  What other generation had the threat of scientifically proven ecological collapse looming over them?
  
  I mean, they literally thought WW1 and WW2 would start the apocalypse.
  Nuclear armageddon was a daily fear of the Cold War, and almost happened several times.
  The difference now is that we know all we need to do to ruin Earth for human life is to do nothing.
  
  You need to give articles making predictions about the future a heavy amount of doubt. We may be relatively intelligent as a species, but I genuinely think we way over-estimate our abilities. Predicting the future is hard. The biggest problem is that predictions are based on past data, and cannot account for what might happen that hasn't happened before. Which when faced with a brand new problem tends to be a brand new response.
  Look at our lives right now. While certainly not ideal (who could make that claim, in all history?) it's pretty damn nice if you look back in time. Yes lotsa awful stuff MIGHT happen, but that's always been true. And compared to the challenges of the past it's not on any scale we haven't been on before (I mean the Cold War literally could have resulted in the planet becoming uninhabitable due to nukes).
  I'm not saying I disagree with you, I'm merely trying to give it a glass half full perspective. I agree some scale of societal collapse does seem like it is a real possibility, but it's by no means guaranteed or necessarily even likely. We don't know what we don't know. Embrace not knowing what the future holds and just enjoy life for what it is today.
- Most generations don't need to deal with an impending threat to the whole planet. Nuclear apocalypse, sure, but at least there was no pretending that it wasn't a problem.
  This is ignoring all of the other ways in which we're fucked.
  
  Another thing that is worse is how we havent had anything recently to inspire hope. The Higgs Boson would have been the Millenial/Gen Z equivalent of the moon landing if the public hadn't been so distrusting of physics because of string theory evangelists.
  
  For me, the first world (i.e. the part of the world allied with the US) had a common enemy to get behind and that allowed people to live in peace for 1.5 generations or so. When the USSR collapsed, that bogeyman suddenly disappeared and the infighting started nearly instantly.
- I think the Internet is partially to blame.
  The negative stuff happening in the world seems to spread so much faster and get so much more publicity that it's easy to end up in a constant negative spiral
  
  Yeah I think you're dead on. I'm evidently not alone in thinking that the age of information is driving a lot of consciousness of worldwide issues on a scale we've never seen before. People in the Middle Ages only knew the small world they lived in on the scale of a city or region. If that city or region was prospering, their life was likely pretty damn nice.
  These days, we're aware of all issues everywhere. And if you don't create that perspective for yourself, that can be incredibly overwhelming. You have to give in to a certain sense of wilful ignorance because you literally cannot be involved with every one of those problems. Not clicking on all the doom and gloom news articles has done wonders for my mental health. I guess you could say this thread was a moment of weakness.. :p
- What's interesting when you look at birthrate declines is not that they are declining, it's that they are declining to NORMAL LEVELS. Everyone is freaking out that the next generation won't be big enough to support retiring Boomers without understanding that there should never have been so many Boomers in the first place.
  
  Boomers without understanding that there should never have been so many Boomers in the first place.
  its literally in their name too: 'baby boomers'. too many in too short a time and they have dominated politics for the better part of a century now
- baby boomers definitely had it better than us
  Dunno, man. Boomers in my home country went through such shit time that they think that becoming literal nazis still isn't the worst thing to happen in their lifetime. They did get free housing before that, though, so I'm not sure they actually had it worse overall...
- As someone that's been around for some of history it's bad now. Just the cost of living stuff is dark. Grown adults are sharing bedrooms because they can't afford to rent a room by themselves on a full time wage. People have raised entire families on a single factory workers wage for hundreds of years before now, now two people with decent jobs can't afford one kid. It's dark.
  
  "some history" lol all you're doing is describing things as Not As Bad As The Great Depression

The Ukraine-Russia & Israel-Palestine wars, and the likelyhood of China going after Taiwan before 2027, and the Koreas continually being a powder keg influenced by all of this. Between all that and me being 23 years old I sincerely think I might witness World War 3, it's terrifying, yet it feels inevitable with our era of false 1st world peace built on a house of cards.
That's not even mentioning the Republican Project 2025, as a trans person I might have to fight for my life.
- What do you mean by house of cards? Seems to me like the current political order is the most stability the world has ever seen and is only threatened by an axis of fascist countries that deliberatly wants to plunge the world into war and chaos.
  
  It's been stable based on temporary peace and Mutually Assured Destruction (not just from nukes). For example China-Taiwan are still in a civil war that never officially ended, and China has always wanted to reabsorb Taiwan and Taiwan has always been opposed to. The Koreas are actively still in a cease fire for a war that also never concluded. And the middle east has always been churning with armed conflicts.
  The western 1st world countries managed to extract enough wealth to stay far and away from these kinds of conflicts, but they are still heavily dependent on these countries and we'll all feel the impacts if things get worse.
  
  It's most threatened by the climate change it has brought about. The lurch towards fascism doesn't help, but climate change will exacerbate that along with many other problems.

My GenX existential horror was learning in my thirties that all the western American Exceptionalism ideology I was indoctrinated in as a kid was just a way of keeping us from getting proactive for sake of the future generations, and my parents and teachers and ministers knew this and actively lied to me anyway.
- I also think that a lot of bad things about the US that a blind eye was turned to because they seemed to be getting better have since become relevant again because they've started getting worse
- Oh I realized that in my 20s
  
  I was particularly credulous.
- Conservatives are well known for acting against their own self interest.

"This is the worst things have ever been!"
"You mean this is the worst things have ever been ... so far!"
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpPArfDTGw
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=bfpPArfDTGw
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Every day I wake up exhausted trying to look for a silver lining but more often not finding it until sleep.
- You can sleep!? Shit, that's pure gold you got right there.

Over 40? For me is even worst! You younglings still have time to do something. I have no house, no savings, no retirement plan and no time to do all that! I'm the most fucked! Do you think I expect good things?
- I know, right? Who decided that things get better after 40?
  As a GenXer pushing 50 I can guarantee that things have always been tough and they're not getting better.
- We're in the same boat. I started training a few years ago. At least i want to look good, while going down.
  
  omg I didn't even went into looks! I'm now even more depressed! lol
- You will own nothing, and you will love it! 😠

and yet we essentially live in the best of times.
Sad we can't find a political way for everyone to have enough of what we have.
primal needs to hoard are strong in humans.
- We're still using instincts that were designed for the wild.
  We're a perfect example of what happens when a predator species becomes overpopulated. They over indulge in a plentiful bounty not realizing they're killing out their food source.
  That's why we hunt dear or kill wolves. A balance must exist or everything goes awry.
  Humans destroyed this balance.
  
  No, Jerry, we're not going to implement The Purge to bring back Malthusian population cycles. We've already got the Demographic Transition at home.
- Sad we can't find a political way for everyone to have enough of what we have.
  It's called communism.

My method is hoping that I'm just old and western enough that I'll be dead before the real bad shit hits me. I'm 35 though, so... let's say there's a smidge of optimism in there.
- Just a smidge?
  I’m 27. Could you perhaps spare a drop or two of that optimism? You apparently have truckloads of it lol.
  
  I spent my 20s basically in poverty. Whatever income I earned got sucked away by renting a home with insane heating costs, like $300 / month to keep the house at 55 in winter.
  At 35 I applied for a government job in civil service. Fucking changed my life forever.
- I can't smoke cigarettes fast enough to keep up

I don't know, my premium notebook is arriving tomorrow, that's pretty exciting.
- Yeah i bought a pen that have red blue and red colors well as a pencil and I'm pretty stoked about it
  
  Quit bragging

Bought my house right before the new housing crisis. I'm locked in so cheaply that I may not ever move.
Gonna ride my residual income as far as I can take it. I'm done breaking my body for a world that doesn't care.
- My landlord just raised my rent 33% with only two month's notice so I'm moving back to my parent's place so I can keep my old rent price. I'm glad they own their house
  
  It's nice when your parents are willing to let you rent/stay with them.
- Same here. Bought in 2018 which was supposed to be at some all time high. Then refinanced it during COVID with a total monthly payment of $1500 on a 3br2ba house. When we bought the house we thought we were making a dumb decision, now I'm some sort of genius for getting lucky. I can't imagine trying to rent these days.
- Same. Refi'd into 3% and not going to budge. It'll be interesting to see if our loan servicer ever changes, because who in the world would want to buy a loan with such a low interest rate?

Some of us are doing ok and just trying to keep our heads down and not get caught in the crossfire. Good luck you guys. I wish you better fortune in the future.

My parents once asked me why I didn't have enough savings to buy a house yet.
I almost lost my shit.
- The only people my age that I know who own their own house are also drug dealers.
  Guess I should sell drugs if I want a house.
  
  I had a legitimate talk about doing this with my girlfriend. As much as I hate how sketchy it is, it still just seems sooo tempting.
  
  In comic, dystopian reality, selling drugs (really just weed) was how I graduated college debt-free, and graduating without debt was the only way I could take out/afford a loan for a house.
  So apparently, it's true what they say, whether planting or selling trees, the best time to do it was 10 years ago. The second best time is now! (Except don't)
  
  Damn I just thought about it and the only home owner friend I have that isn't a drug dealer, is a cop.
  I think you're on to something.
  
  Not too far from reality where I live. One dude already is doing time because he was blatantly dropping cash payments on things like a HOUSE and multiple cars.
  The feds had a FIELD DAY with him.
  
  My guy sold weed until he owned a house then had a kid. He figured he pressed his luck long enough. He also had an effective laundry.
- ask them why didn’t they have savings to “buy a private yacht yet” at your age, because I would guess it’s roughly similar in the proportion of pay/cost
- I'm 35, and if you squint a bit at the mortgage, I "own" home. With my partner. And we'll be paying it off for another 27 years. And we're the lucky ones of this generation.
  Buying a home with saving, fucking lol
  
  Pay off over 15 years if you can or you'll pay about double the total value just from interest.
  
  Well, the good news is if you have a fixed rate mortgage the crushing amount of incoming inflation may cut that back to like 15-20 years!
  I'm a couple years older than you, but my partner and I feel incredibly lucky to own a home as well. We bought an abandoned property back in 09' for 35k and have spent the last ten years fixing it up. If I wasn't able to borrow 20k from USAA back then, I don't think I'd even be able to afford the rent in my neighborhood nowadays.
- LOL when my father asked me how much savings I had, I immediately knew that our life experiences were vastly different.

We should have listened to uncle Ted

Also, Feliz el año del Niño! Gonna be a great 16 months for weather. Especially in Texas!

be thankful if you don't live in a concentration camp blockaded on all sides and have clean water / electricity. yet.

i thought that too but then dan and phil announced the gaming channel is coming back yesterday

Not just those under 40. I do feel bad I sorta got a brief taste of "good times" and worry eventually younger folks will think the post 2000's are normal.
- Yeah, I'm juuuust old enough to have a firm memory of when things that were laughably petty were the biggest problems in the world. You mean to tell me the PRESIDENT got a BLOWJOB?!
  All the real issues that sowed the seeds for our intractably broken future were sidelined and mostly ignored. Desert Storm, woowoo go world police. LA Riots, oh you crazy minorities and your intolerance for extrajudicial murder. Climate change, what's that?
  
  Desert Storm was the good one. Sadam invaded Kuwait, a large international coalition ended the occupation. Today's analogue would be NATO entering Ukraine, kicking the Russians out, and showing that wars of aggression are unacceptable.
  Iraq in '03 was the problematic one. Falsified casus belli, war crimes galore.
- That normalization scares me so much. I'm just young enough to not really have lived before it but I also have a good memory and I have that early 90s slide into horror world seared into my awareness for my entire life. And that deep scariness of everyone around me my age and younger, accepting it as normal haunts me and hurts friendships. That and poverty forcing me into terrible situations.
- 46 checking in, and yep, shit is on fire. GenX knows what's up.
- It is normal. It's been this way for ± 15 years. Certainly the entirety of my adulthood and I'm nearly 30.

You should come with me to the end of the world
Without telling your parents and your friends
You know that you only need say a word
So we might live at the end of the world