Elmo’s wellness check uncovers existential dread and despair on social media, nobody's ok right now

When I was much younger, 22 or so years ago, I had a few suicide attempts. What I’m dealing with now is so, so much worse. Orders of magnitude worse.

I have a cat now, though. Who would take care of my cat? I can’t leave my cat alone.

how would we be?

i'm gonna list a few things:

• war in europe
• genocide in gaza
• everything is a subscription
• appliances are made to fail now
• phone manufacturers blindly follow apple's horrible decisions
• housing market is going to hell
• general enshittification of every service
• cars are getting worse every day, be it the phasing out of ICEs in favour of EVs that have no hope of lasting even 20 years (that one may be fixed until 2035), the general reliability problems or the ugly designs.
• Windows is actively getting more invasive and even less private, although linux is looking very promising
• the political right is getting more drastic, and it seems to be working for them

edit:

• global warming, i forgor

i am not surprised

Elmo you are on the inside, you can get places we can't, you are trusted. Help us change things. I have a list of names.

yeah. this may be a little better or worse depending on where you are in the planet but its grim.

i'm either wasting away at work all day every day because now bosses act like they own you too much and don't owe you for what you do so i have no time to live, or i'm a depressed and unemployed wasting away because i have no money to live.

not being able to afford anything for a seemingly infinite amount of meaningless work where you are not respected. that feeling we are just deluxe slaves working though the apocalypse. your worth is calculated based on how good of a slave you are.

capitalism enshitifying not only tech, but just about everything is getting ever more crappy expensive and disposable. we are on this hamster wheel where we need those expensive gadgets and a shitty app for everything, but they are expected to break soon so you need to pay for another and another and so on while contributing to the end of the planet because of it.

the fact we are products/cattle being monetized in all sorts of unhealthy ways and watched 24/7 by our own appliances. they use advanced psychology to control and make us submissive. dont you dare actually trying to improve things or we will use our vast surveillance network to strike you the fuck down.

culture of everyone being hyper individualistic, alienated and self centered (possibly including myself here) contrary to our nature. everyone has less and less friends, everyone is alone and we hate on eachother because of distractions.

...and the internet is now a dopamine trap instead of the beautiful place for connection and knowledge it used to be, but somehow everyone is way more dependent on it for socialization. corporations mediate our relationships and making us alone depressed and angry is more beneficial for them.

capital is literally destroying the planet, poisoning the air we breathe, turning it into an oven, killing massive amounts of life just so a handful of sociopathic people can be god-level powerful over us.

and the sheer amount of death being brought upon us by them for trivial reasons, like a convoluted way someone can have more shitty pieces of paper by murdering people everywhere around the planet.

we cant afford to start families or even be completely financially independent. life is an eternal struggle for meaningless pieces of paper (more like stupid numbers on a shitty bank computer now) and they are always finding new ways to oppress us financially and making us pay more for basic, low tech and low cost necessities that werent a problem for past generations to have.

we know we have no future, no love and no hope. we know we will starve or suffocate to death, but are being played on by the system to turn on eachother instead. the future is looking more and more like apocalypse-techno-dystopia. if it isnt that already.

and nothing we can immediatly do about any of it. people act like i am batshit insane for wanting to throw this shit away and have a revolution to remove our current kings. people immediatly try to excuse them even though their life garbage because our fear of change is probably being weaponized against us, like seemingly every single human instinct. hell, it seems some people dont even want to admit to themselves they are suffering because that would make them lazy leeches or something.

do i even need to keep going? you can tell i woke up on the wrong fucking foot today cant you?

The older I get the more I can relate to this quote from Friends:

Let's see my list of anxiety:

1. Climate Change
2. The rise of fascism (and being in a marginalized group targeted by fascists)
3. Inflation eating into my earnings and savings
4. The entire marketplace being dominated by broken, fake or scam services and products.
5. Pretty severe imposter syndrome and the related feeling that my job mobility is bad because I'm not valuable.
6. Anxiety and ADD feeling worse than ever and having little hope to get help treating it.

nobody’s ok right now

This was a Twitter post, so of course no one who replied is ok, they’re Twitter users.

Well the first problem is the question was asked on Musk’s hellsite. No one who still uses that platform is ok.

i like how it's some fucking revolation. Like, just look around. poke around on the internet for 10 min. Large, HUGE amounts of people have not been ok for a long time. What's sad is everyone has their fucking heads too buried in their phones and ipads to notice.

I'm doing ok and I hope for the best for all the rest of you who are struggling

My random list

• climate change, I live in BC and summers are literally apocalyptic, ash raining from the sky and can't even see the sun

• loss of biodiversity which is plainly obvious with every passing year. Recently drove to Alaska without having to clean bugs off windshield

• clearcut forest no matter where you look

• never getting my own house despite "doing everything right" and well above average income

• one bag of groceries is like $100

• never having kids or a family, obvious reasons

• no real friends since I graduated college, social media ruined everything

• friends I had are priced out and are thousands of km away, or dead

• housing so fucked that I have spent the last five years looking for a rental that allows a cat and still looking, I feel like if I just had a cat I would be so much happier

• aging population and constantly going to funerals

• various addictions I've lost control over since pandemic

• cost of travel increasing exponentially so that's coming to an abrupt end too

• impossible to go outside without reminder of total societal collapse, teslas cruising around on streets full of homeless people

• haven't seen a doctor in years because there are none

• have to go to work in 10 minutes but didn't get a wink of sleep last night or the night before it, this is probably the main reason this comment was so whiny

I've been working harder at work for a promotion. I'm not going to get it. I fucking hate work, it's not particularly hard, it's just unfulfilling and boring. I dread work every day. I would go somewhere else but hate interviewing because even for 1 job it's at least 4 interviews and tests. I can't afford to take a cheaper job. I took today off though so that's nice.

I'm sad there's been virtually no snow all winter and I'm in Canada. That's a bad sign. Ski slopes might as well close for good.

Nobody on X is doing okay. People forget that's just one of the social media and it's taken a turn for the worse. Lem is mostly chill.

Well, let's have a think about this:

• Prices are skyrocketing, and pay isn't increasing
• Companies posting huge profits while laying off thousands
• Unstable economy and political landscape in the west
• War and uncertainty spreading across the globe
• Another rise in right-wing, populist anger
• Mere years removed from the worst global pandemic in a century
• Several generations living a missold dream of being able to work a job and afford to live
• Damaged mental health from growing up with social media (and yes, I appreciate the irony of posting this on social media)

With all this in mind, is it any wonder why so many aren't doing well? Pair this with people that are used to being unashamedly open on social media, especially when piggybacking on a popular post from a "celebrity", and I'm surprised that it isn't even worse...

I am legitimately trying to figure out why the fuck it is I am seemingly the only person in the world who is okay right now.

What the hell are you all doing or going through that is ruining your life, and how can I help alleviate your suffering?

I'm definitely not doing okay considering I've got an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in March... but hey, the end of this month will be my six month anniversary of not eating any solid food. So hooray!

Just to be a contrarian, I'm doing OK.

• don't hate my job and make very decent money, pretty stable financially

• have a lovely wife and two healthy young kids

• decent apartment with plans for an energy positive house as the kids are growing

• fun family friendly car, cool gadgets at home, lots of toys to play with, endless entertainment online

• AI is making lots of tasks easier, will only get better

• robots and machines making home tasks easier as well

• live in a country with an acceptable government (that I didn't vote for, but am OK with), universal Healthcare and strong social safety net

• medicine constantly improving

• china installing solar panels like maniacs, rapidly getting cheaper and more ubiquitous

• Middle East is as fucked as ever, nothing I can do about it

• Russia is always invading neighbors, and this time at least they got a fucking punch in the face

I've been much worse in the past.

Damn you know it's rough out there when everyone busts out their bullet point list

He hasn't read this many disturbing responses since he was introduced to Sesame Street in the first place.

For mental health, I hope this helps - vent your frustrations to the whole world little froggy:-).

like not the onion but it's not bertstrips

!nottheonion@kbin.social

I am!

Maybe a better title, “nobody perpetually on social media is ok right now”.