I'm over 40 and struggling not to conclude life on this planet peaked 30 years ago
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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me_irl
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The 90s were seriously such a bop.
The Matrix was right.
At this point we can only hope the Matrix is real and they reset this simulation soon because what we're seeing are the side effects from the uprising outside.
9/11 was suppose to be the reset point, but the simulation kept running for some reason.
You might even call it an Mmmbop.
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The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland.
Put a bird on it.
Hey, at least you got to enjoy humanity's peak as a teenager. I was a kid, so I never got the chance to fully appreciate the 90s. My memory of almost anything pre-1993 is incredibly hazy. My strongest childhood memories didn't take hold until the decade was almost over.
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Well, interestingly, gen z men are the Trumpiest demographic:
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/11/american-gen-z-podcasts-trump-harris
I guess the meme still holds true, but their concerns about the future are very different. TBH I can totally understand them becoming disillusioned with other old politicians following old voters who will just “do nothing at let it all happen.”
Who are the positive role models? Weve got all these young guys watching sniveling cucks like andrew taint
They misattribute monetary policy that bids up home and asset values using cheap debt and facilitates massive bailouts with federal government policy. The CPI doesnt include asset prices so cheap debt can flood into asset prices without slowing down the devaluation of their salary, it also does subjective inflation deductions to goods based on perceived quality changes, and excludes much of the shrinkflation thats happens to goods and service quality.
Something as basic like getting support for a flight is now talking to a chatbot with perpetually larger than expected call volume, you pay extra for seating, you pay extra for baggage; and your seat is so small now you also may as well be standing. Free range chickens used to just be called chicken, and eggs could be eaten uncooked since they werent swimming in ecoli, but according to the CPI you're significantly better off now; so the nominal value of a boomers house is now worth significantly more due to all this perceived wealth.
It's easy to paint a picture on a blank canvas.
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A while ago, I was talking to my mum and offhandedly said that I'd have to move north at some point in my life, due to climate change. For me, that's just a given, with record hottest summers coming in regularly and current summers already incapacitating me for weeks at a time.
But my mum's reaction was basically "What's this about now?". She's lived in her childhood town or close-by for basically her whole life. And she's old enough that she doesn't have to worry about the aftermath. But yeah, that was still brutal, how different our realities were in that regard.
The Upper Peninsula is starting to look quite nice this time of year...
I remember agreeing with that back in 2021 when it was posted, and now, well...
I landed a job a job at a company that’s circling the drain, I feel like a parasite feeding off a host until it’s gone and I move to a new one
I'm a public librarian. Just dreading the day we are defunded. They’ve already attacked our national orgs.
Maybe this varies geographically, but our town's libraries are directly funded by the town. We recently improved a millage for renovations. I hope they would be pretty insulated from... sillyness.
Most libraries also have significant federal funding, and rely on resources maintained with federal funding, even if state and local funding is higher
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Not just those under 40.
Plenty of my gen X friends have come to accept that they will never retire like the boomers. A lot of millennials never thought they would.
That's something that noone should accept, much less whole generations. I'm not working for someone else for my whole life.
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If the cure to existential dread is turning 40, it can't come soon enough.
I turned 40 this year. Sadly it hasn't helped my existential dread at all.
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My parents just stopped watching the news about anything and just sit thinking everything will be okay. Its starting to get difficult to have a relationship with them because they are so out of touch with reality. They even go to protests but for them its just a thing to go do because they're not doing anything else. They have zero understanding of any of the reasons they're happening other than trump bad.
Idk man, I’d kill just to have mine agree on the trump bad part. You do you, but tuning out our shit news cycle is low on the offense scale for me. It can be much worse.
My Mom is so disappointed that my kids are not active, do not goto protests. She wants to leave a better world for them but is no longer able to help make that happen, so needs to see her grandchildren turn the world around.
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lol, the other day my Boomer Dad said, "Everything will work out. You have to think positively."
Based on WHAT? Nothing has "just worked out" for at least 25 years.
As a cohort, Boomers ushered in this paradigm, and remain completely oblivious to the world. I will probably never stop heaping culpability at their feet.
In effect the relative lack of news back in the day was how people could feel optimistic, at least in the US and Western Europe. We could be pretty oblivious and happy about USSR going away and all seemed just fine because the news barely covered the bad stuff and the Internet was barely a thing and we didn't get a whole lot of global exposure.
Things can get better and we have to work at it, but we don't need to be hopeless. If we can't believe good things can happen, then what would be the point anyway...
Exactly, in times of doom, you have to believe and hope, much more than ever before.
If we can't believe good things can happen, then what would be the point anyway...
Two things:
- Being kind to others, making their lives a bit less painful and hopefully a bit more joyful.
- Spite. Opting out would be making the lives of the bastards who are inflicting the bullshit on the rest of us too easy.
I don't expect things to get better within my lifetime and I'm not yet 40. All that I've witnessed in my lifetime is an accelerating decline in financial stability for people who work for a living and continual degradation of the quality of basic goods that people are able to afford.
I managed to not get totally fucked during the pandemic after having been set back probably about a decade and a half by The Recession. Now, my field is getting hit by regular layoffs that don't actually benefit anyone but make the line go up. Shit is not looking good in the near future.