Total lie

Convenience at an all time high, wealth inequality at astronomical levels.

Times are different, complaints are valid

Yeah, I think those memories are to be cherished. Your apartment setup back then genuinely sounds like a setup for a wholesome sitcom xD

It's stuff like that, that makes me have very few regret from my 20s because I full on just wanted to make friends and throw myself into a bunch of scenarios with them while I had the chance and was still young.

When I hit 30, I was like "I'm ready to move forward".

Still miss it sometimes. That closeness and the goofy shit we got up to sometimes. Also just the hanging out on those lazy evenings. Good times ❤️

It's not how human beings are supposed to live. We're supposed to have that close-knit friend community our entire lives. People had this up until only 100-200 years ago or so. People in little farming villages were able to have a stable friend group for their entire lives and have time to interact with them. Kids didn't serve as a substantial barrier, as the friend group helped raise the children. This is how children are supposed to be raised. It's supposed to take a village.

It's only our hyper capitalist economy that atomizes us and forces us to scatter to the winds, endlessly chasing job after job in far flung cities, never able to settle down and form real community anywhere.

The way we live is deeply unnatural and fundamentally at odds with human nature. It's no wonder we're all mentally ill.

I think the impermanence of life is one of the most difficult things to accept, but once you do, there is some beauty to it too.

I think it is or at least should be one of the biggest motivators to try and live in the now. I have been the most happy, when I try to live in the now and appreciate what I have right now. It takes a bit of practice but it is doable and it a great antidote to anxiety and depressive thoughts in my experience. You cannot live in the now all the time, but aiming toward it, is a good way to spend the limited time you have in this life.

Big hugs to you.

Life has permanence in the long term not the long long long term. We're fighting to make lives for our children and fighting the rules to make sure that other people's children can live, survive, and prosper.

Nah, I'm good. My comment wasn't meant to be this sad woe is me rant. It was a critique of the meme since I did have friendships like that in my youth and just like in Friends, my friendgroup(s) split up when that period of our lives ended and we went on to start our adult lives.

It is a completely normal part of life. I don't see it as a terrible thing.

We get up at 6 and we head to work between 7 and 9.

So depending on the day and person its just a quick coffee. But on other days we have time for bread and croissants.

Hi, Chandler and joey'flat is not that big, it was actually the joke between characters often and Chandler had a good job anyway. Ross was good with money and his parents favourite so I think he got more money from them.

Also worth remembering that except for Phoebe. All the characters on the show grew up upper class. Like top 5% upper class.

Also Phoebe lived with her grandmother in a small apartment until her grandmother died and she got roomamates.

Did any of us watch any of it?

Friends fucking sucked.

Can you tell which episode it is? I've tried watching some but couldn't find it.

That would just be a dig on their intelligence. You can't see the massive problem of not being able to afford housing? How can I relate to this character?

Never thought about this, that a really good input, thanks

That's completely not the reason. How other shows manage to show small apartments and poor people houses?

Showing regular people living in big apartment is more appealing to the public. Shows from the 70s or before were more realistic. Mary Tyler Moore was living in a small apartment and sleeping in the sofa despite having a regular job. In All in the family, they were financially struggling especially because of the 70s inflation. Lucy and her husband were living in a small apartment.

Things did change in the 80s and we started seeing families living in big houses with cars. Even Roseanne who normally depicted a working class family was living in a big house and could afford many things.

One too many 👏

Older gens I'd say. My mother had afriend who always came in without knockin and just...vibed. Like they suddenly materialised in kitchen and talked while eating or materialised near table and drank coffee.

My partner's mother had someone like that too.

Meanwhile I am having a meltdown if someone tries the door before knocking (they are always locked anyway)

Before the internet was widespread, it was extremely common for people to actually hang out in person. The show is set in an era where the internet was something you went out of your way to connect to, not something that was already integrated into every single device you used.

Especially since they all lived so close together, it’s 100% believable that they’d hang out together regularly. People also forget that the show takes place over multiple years, and we only see 20’ish episodes per year. Assuming each episode takes place across two’ish days, they’re still only seeing each other two or three times per week. If I lived across the hallway from my best friends, I’d probably hang out with them a few times per week too.

This is especially true from Chandler and Joey’s perspectives, where Monica’s kitchen is only like eight steps away from their own kitchen. Why bother cooking yourself breakfast, when there’s a professional chef willing to do it for you, and all you have to do is open two extra doors?

Not breakfast, but I used to eat dinner with my neighbors allllll the time. They even used my fridge to keep extra food in when preparing for parties and stuff.

People with close friends, i guess.
My friends definitely don't want me around. lol

He works in data analytics, his friends just don't care enough to learn what that means.

He probably analyses consumer and advertising trends to guide investments and product launches.

I don’t think Chandler is super rich, but he’s definitely comfortable. He doesn’t have the money to outright replace their furniture when it is all stolen, for instance. They end up using lawn chairs (and a canoe) as their living room furniture for a while. But yeah, he definitely lives below his means, because he always has money to pass off to Joey whenever he needs it.

I might be remembering wrong, but I thought Chandler was an actuary, which is a position that is very well paid.

Ross wasn't a grad student though. he was a PhD researcher + professor. back in the 90s, that would've been a decent gig.

Ross wasn’t a grad student; He had his doctorate. Initially he worked at a museum of natural history, then eventually got fired (for screaming at his boss) and went to work at the university as a professor. Either way, in the mid-90’s, he would have been comfortable.

Chandler was more some bureaucratic data guy. The way they describe him is inputting numbers into speeadsheets at a megacorp. But he eventually becomes a manager.

As a temporarily embarrassed future billionaire, I understood that reference.

It's the street noise

Moooorning's heeereee!

Yeah, but all the lockers were stacked in rows with 2 short lockers instead of 1 tall one.

We had lockers in high school but they were always in a large open area. Putting them against a wall in a corridor would be stupid as it would almost always lead to blockages.

I also never knew anyone who had a huge locker large enough to be stuffed into, like always seems to happen on American TV.

Lots of lockers portrayed in media are the type that go from the floor all the way up the wall. I don’t know about other schools, but my lockers were all pretty small and there were several on top of each other.

Friends.

That's supposed to be a new your city apartment lol

I had a girlfriend that was utterly convinced that bottled water was healthier for you. Although when pushed she couldn't provide a reason.

Some people do seem to buy into the idea that bottled water is all collected from some kind of secret magical spring of eternal youth. When really it all comes out of a tap in the factory.

Plastic bottles became common more like 60 years ago. They were invented in the 1950s but were too expensive for a while. I remember as a kid in the 60s there was a commercial where somebody dropped a bottle of shampoo, which normally would have been glass, and was amazed that it didn't break. This stuck in my mind all these years because of a standup comic named Norm Crosby. who told on a talk show about this scene actually happening to him at the grocery store. The lady in front of him dropped her shampoo, so he picked it up and re-enacted the commercial - "It didn't break... It didn't break!!!". He was hoping for a laugh but she just glared at him and said, "Gimme da soap." Anyway, that's how I know plastic bottles were being popularized in the mid-60s.

A lot of people don't actually realise just how much time passes between most episodes if you actually listen to context clues. Obviously there are some exceptions, but generally these shows are not supposed to be assumed to be real time in any sense. Some will have a thanksgiving episode and the next is Christmas or new years. People will mention they've been dating for months after a few episodes.

Some vaguely line up with being the week they aired in real life being the week it's supposed to be in the show. But think about what that would mean. You're seeing an entire week of their lives condensed into a 20-30 minute segment of highlights. Many episodes span several days of their lives. That means you're seeing maybe 5-10 minutes of each day the episode involves.

It's true. Try hanging out somewhere outside your house with no modern technology for two hours.

First you'll realize how long time feels without a smartphone or instant entertainment.

The second thing you'll realize is how hard it is to keep track of time without a wristwatch.

People socialized more in person because there wasn't much else to do and it was the best way to do so.

I was in grad school in the '90s and went out drinking six nights a week (Monday nights were for studying, as best I can recall). Like 5pm to 3am drinking plus a bunch of weed at somebody's house or apartment afterwards. These days I would literally commit murder to not have to do something like that even one night.

Being broke can be the impetus for zany hijinks that sitcoms center around. But actually being broke sucks and is not very funny, so they don't show you that part.

Otoh, I know quite a few people who fit that exact description. They have jobs that pay them pretty well, but spend recklessly, so they are always "broke" despite having steady, well paid employment.

It is a slightly resized print of this piece.

You can say that it isn’t for you but you can’t say it’s a shitty show. It’s one of the most influential shows of the 90s. Cheers, All in the Family, MASH, and Seinfeld are probably the only ones that compare. (I’d like to put Malcolm in the Middle and Married with Children up there too but that’s probably giving them too much credit)