Spoiler alert, no one over 40 does either.
Kind of feels like there’s two kinds of people out there right now in the US. Once you think we’re fucked, and the ones who think they have enough generational wealth that “their” kids won’t be fucked.
There’s probably a sizeable third pool out there that are just watching propaganda and going everything is fine everybody’s overreacting or I don’t care it doesn’t affect me. I think even that pool’s shrinking a bit.
There’s also people who are absolutely going to get fucked but are still living in a comfortable dream-world where they think someone is going to come make everything normal again.
I’m just really wondering… To the trump voters in the US, is this what you wanted? Do you really think and feel that things have improved? Do you really think the world is a better, safer, place now than it was 10 years ago?
It’s like, we had issues for sure, but they were manageable. We had climate change at a critical level but we could still stave off the worst of it and now we’re speed running to something worse than the worst predictions that were made. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if earth is like Venus not 200 years from now due to some runaway effect.
I mean, we had a nice run but fuck you, you really really ruined the world for everyone including yourself. I sincerely hope you’re happy because then at least someone will before were all dead.
Fuck you.
Half a century here, I’ve never had a time in my life where the next year was better than the last
Same age-ish, and I feel the same.
The hard part is trying to figure out what part of that comes from societal collapse, and how much of that comes from just getting older and seeing more and more of how the world works… or doesn’t work.
Despite all we see and hear, objectively the world is better than it’s ever been. We are at a shocking low level of international conflict, starvation, disease, crime, famine, even teen pregnancy has fallen to the lowest rates we’ve ever seen.
But all of these gains have been made by people forming communities of various kinds, of linking up, sharing ideals and compiling resources. This “downturn” we’re feeling is a localized result of a lot of people turning their backs on community.
We are incredibly communal animals, we need social identities to survive. This has been studied. When community abandons you, or when it feels like they have, people broadly stop caring about things and themselves and become selfish, bitter, cynical and hateful. We’re feeling this all around us, and inside us. And I don’t think it’s a natural phenomenon, there are active groups working to cause this, they want to undo all that progress and bypass war and pillaging and destruction and just rot out the world’s wealthiest countries from the inside out.
I don’t know if these objective, global gains will continue for everyone. But I fully believe that the USA at least is in a nose-dive it won’t pull out of. Things are breaking as we speak, in ways we can’t repair.
Hell, I’m 46 and it’s really hard to not be cynical these days. I want to believe there’s still good people out there but I run into so many assholes.
I’m also 40 something. Oh for the dizzy optimism of the 90s…
Optimism? Do you remember the entire grunge movement? GenX is full of apathy and pessimism. I still remember the day Kurt died, it was a defining moment in our lives.
I will forever seethe that I missed out on the 1990s, especially considering how IT was a money printer back then & the rave scene was top notch. I just about caught the tail end of the old internet as well, even that has gone to complete corporate dogshit.
And owning a house wasnt a Pipedream : (
I got in on the 90’s dream and had a house with a handshake and a smile, lost it eventually because of family medical problems. Probably will never own a home again.
'Murca.
Uhh, ok hmm…so I learned in life if everyone you see is an asshole, you’re the asshole.
Think about it this way: there are countless good people in your life but as a society we get taught to get fixated on the worst to complain about. Maybe it’s more entertaining. Maybe we sync to it cuz maybe we have similar features in ourselves we don’t like … which ever the reason it’s personal why we do this. But in doing so It’s easy to discount the good people by ignoring them and what they do. We notice every mistake and bad person out there.
And how do you think that makes good people around you feel?
Well they stop coming around. They get drained from being ignored. They put up boundaries where they don’t want to be around assholes fixated on the negative and don’t spend their time on assholes.
And that’s how we become assholes telling on ourselves by admitting everyone is assholes.
It’s the shoe smells like shit every where you go analogy.
Uhh, ok hmm…so I learned in life if everyone you see is an asshole, you’re the asshole.
I lived by this phrase until I realized that most people are so blitheringly stupid that they are by default “assholes.” I still treat everyone with respect and compassion, but I don’t feel connected or very sympathetic to anyone anymore because now I know the truth and it’s dark and if you don’t see the broad, creeping darkness that is covering everything right now, you’re choosing willful ignorance over community. You can still build community and make things better even accepting that there are lots of terrible assholes out there who will also benefit from your efforts.
Lack of curiosity, willful ignorance, science denial, choosing emotionally-pandering media, tuning out and not caring about anything outside of their immediate stimulation-sphere, creates a whole lot of people who aren’t even thinking themselves better than you, because they’re not thinking. People are training themselves broadly to not think and we’re living in the effects of this decision.
Every time you choose to surround yourself with media and people whom would never argue or disagree with your notions, every time you say “I can’t deal with this” every time you sneer at someone’s personal story, every time you spend an hour scrolling social media, every time you avoid learning new things, you are pushing that “societal asshole meter” higher and higher.
And all of this doesn’t even begin to touch on the very real, very prevalent people who are fucking hateful. Again, you can choose to be blind to other people’s hate if you’re not of the demographic that experiences being hated for arbitrary reasons, but there are plenty of people who are hated and bullied every day by people who are indeed, evil. We can’t be afraid to call a goddamn spade a spade.
And people (like you) who are trying to convince us that spades are not spades, are upholding an unfair and deeply oppressive system because they have either privilege of class, race or ignorance.
Don’t come here trying to gaslight me. 50% of our country are hateful bigots, it’s pretty hard to avoid running into at least one every day.
Then what are you doing to chase off the other 50% who aren’t?
I surround myself with good people.
That’s the exact opposite of what you’re claiming in your first post. Now look who’s gaslighting. And you claim you were the victim of gaslighting. Yep, called it. you are the asshole.
You are misinterpreting what I said and I’m not going to waste any more time on you.
I’m over 40 and struggling not to conclude life on this planet peaked 30 years ago
The 90s were seriously such a bop.
The Matrix was right.
It’s really sad that many young people are so pessimistic about the future. Despite some setbacks the last years, in many ways the world is still in a better place than it has ever been in human history.
Child mortality is still lower than ever, (extreme) poverty is still on a declining trend, we’re actually on track to stop the worst climate change (thanks to massive Chinese investments), AI could vastly improve our lives in the future…
That said we do live in uncertain times, fascism is on the rise again, a nuclear war could still kill us all, fighting climate change is not done,l and AI could ruine all our lives; but pessimism is not the right mindset.
we’re actually on track to stop the worst climate change (thanks to massive Chinese investments)
No, we damn well aren’t.
AI could vastly improve our lives in the future
It could also make it vastly worse in the future, which is the more likely scenario.
No, we damn well aren’t.
It’s not a clear cut case, but if you look at the development of solar, battery and other renewable technology we definitely are on the right track to stop the worst. We might even be able to reverse some of it by the end of the century.
It could also make it vastly worse in the future, which is the more likely scenario.
Yes, I wrote that in the next paragraph…
Some times this place is really worse than Reddit, wallowing in self pity and downvoting anything positive. In many aspects this is still the best time to be alive no matter where you live in the world and the future is potentially very, very bright.
I do joke a lol, but things in many areas are so much better than 30-50 years ago and considering Brits in WW II had to turn out all their lights to hinder German bombings - most of us are being peddled fear by the media and it’s not THAT bad.
Where did you get the climate hope bit? last articles I glazed over were ‘we missed 1.5 deg target and instead put the foot on the pedal to make it faster’ and ‘climate migrations coming and mass famine’.
Sounder doomerism to me but I don’t really have a good source to be optimistic at all.
Your daily life not being an actual warzone is an extremely low bar to set for things not being bad.
Also the climate claim they made was pure fantasy.
Not to mention each message to chatGPT burns the equivalent of a water bottle worth of water.
And does not provide a bottles worth of water value in return
Extreme poverty may be declining but that doesn’t mean more people in the west are not being pushed into food scarcity due to stagnated wages and corporate greed.
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.”
This is the saddiest shit ever. Young men being angry at the « Men » will vote for the men that will sold them to the bone mill in a heart beat.
There’s a Turkish proverb : and the forest vote for the axe because they where made of the same wood
Who are the positive role models? Weve got all these young guys watching sniveling cucks like andrew taint
But are they actually trumpy? Or tatey which happens to support Trump right now
Trump is pretty old, so we will find out soon enough I guess.
I know a surprisingly large amount of MAGA/Trump adjacent fans because of my type of work.
- They’re all single dudes. Maybe divorced. Maybe never went on a date.
- There’s Joe Rogan involved.
- After a few beers, they all will unprompted share their views on Jews, blacks, trans, lesbians, or some other racist shit then back off and pretend it’s just a joke.
- Tell them anything involving empathy “Sorry your dog died” is met with silence or coldness.
- They all don’t give a shit about anybody else besides themselves. And often see themselves as the victim. “Oh Trans person was brutally beaten? Yeah it’s a violent world like one time some guy threatened me gotta stay strapped.”
- They may not like Trump’s antics. But to them, the Democrats aren’t helping THEM. Remember that lack of empathy?
They may not like Trump’s antics. But to them, the Democrats aren’t helping THEM. Remember that lack of empathy?
Thats the main one though. Truth is there are a lot of working class white Americans with no representation. Working class minorities tend to band together to weather the worst of it, and are maybe somewhat represented by candidates who come from minority backgrounds. But the working class whites? All they have is the orange clump and a sea of sick media posts from a deranged billionaire telling them that immigrants are the cause of all their woes.
And from a historical context, its not the least bit suprising. A demographic of young men with dwindling prospects, crumbling social support structures and animosity towards the establishment, if only we had seen this before…
The government will work for the betterment of ALL, or else you get the fashists again…
I worked in local government for nearly a decade and through covid. A lot of cops and former cops in elected positions. This mostly check out.
I would add they overwhelmingly believed homeless people deserved it and/or were subhuman.
It’s hard to stay empathetic about homeless when you deal with the worst of them on a daily basis. I worked in parks and my team was constantly getting attacked and cleaning up their urine and feces, blood and needles. There were people offering them access to services every week and the worst ones always refuse. Most people who work in parks are kind introverted people who love plants, and want people to enjoy green space . just seeing my team get punched in the face or their arm broken made it really hard to feel any empathy towards homeless. I really had to work at it.
I mean most people don’t have empathy for the opposite political party, imagine trying to empathize with someone who shits on your desk every day.
Some of them are obviously mentally ill, a few are just down on their luck, but also some of them are violent criminals who carry weapons. It was pretty typical to find some that had open warrants for arrest in other states.
Just wanna say I appreciated reading about this perspective.
I was an inspector for a health department and was directly involved with efforts engaging the sanitary conditions of homeless encampments. I coordinated with the parks departments, transportation departments, etc in responses.
The thing is homelessness subjects people to the violent criminals people blame homelessness on.
That said: I am not going to touch the organizational culture that sends its staff out into situations where they’d provoke being attacked. If there is any question of safety concerns I blame the employer, public or private, that subjects field staff to such dangers without necessary precautions. It seems rather backwards to then redirect blame in such a manner.
I totally agree with you-. It’s one of the reasons why I quit - I just couldn’t make things safer or change the attitude of leadership.
I spent a ton of time trying to get the police to help protect my team. Or to get leadership to redirect the police. The police answer was, they didn’t want to enter the parks because it was too dangerous for police because there were plants and trees that made it harder to see danger. Yet They still expected the lowest paid workers to go there and work. I had a day when they basically ignored one of my employees who was getting racist threats as he was picking up trash and accused him of wasting police resources - this was the kindest hardest working 65 year old guy, who wouldn’t have called the police unless he was truly scared for his life.
I basically realized one of my team would have to be killed for anything to really change. Unfortunately it almost happened to another team that handled janitorial services- guy got stabbed. They did start a special team to deal with encampments after that, but there was still no changes in the issues at the parks.
They did start a special team to deal with encampments after that,
This is indicative of why homelessness continues to get worse: action isn’t taken until literal violence: completing the self-fulfilling prophecy
They may not like Trump’s antics. But to them, the Democrats aren’t helping THEM. Remember that lack of empathy?
Unless they make 6 figures that point is true though. Not that Trump is going to help them either. But at least he pretends to care about them, whereas the Democrats outright said that their life reality of rising prices and stagnating wages is fake because the stock market is making new record bubble numbers.
It’s easy to paint a picture on a blank canvas.
I’m glad to see folks talking on here. Makes me feel better knowing we’re here all going through it. Gives me that Band of Brothers vibe “We stand alone, together.”
Am 39 and feel this
I am over 60 and I can plainly see everything it fucked.
I’m quickly catching up to your age and I don’t really understand either why it would be a young people thing either. (not that I’m not still young of course, my white hair are just an affectation)
It’s just a matter of looking around.Welcome to the age of the smartphone, where we’re more informed while being more misinformed and where we’re all connected but can’t actually connect. We’ve hit the point where people can watch something, stare the truth in the eye and say “that’s a lie” or be told an obvious lie that could be disproved in less than a minute and say “that’s so true.”
There’s no easy way out of the hole now either. If the government stepped in, the people spreading lies would simply lie and say the government was misleading people and people would gobble it up, and there’s no way I’d trust anything privately owned to tell me the truth.
Our huge problem here is that we’ve ignored warning signs for so long, that the entire system is broadly fuuuuucked. We always said “well the education system here sucks, I’m sure someone will fix it eventually.”
Then we said “Well the heathcare system here sucks, I’m sure someone will fix it eventually.”
Then we said “The internet is becoming weird, it’s making people think different because of algorithms and outside influence, I hope someone fixes it eventually.”
Then we said “Corporations are consolidating power and making the wealth-gap much wider, we’re losing our entire middle-class and educated people… is someone going to fix this?”
The whole time not wanting to admit what we all know somewhere deep inside, which is nobody is coming.
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.
…
Expectation is the main ingredient to disappointment. All you have to do is lower your expectations to where the bar is, so when good things do happen, it’ll feel better when they do.
That just sounds like a race to the bottom to me
I mean, we’re already at the bottom though.
If the cure to existential dread is turning 40, it can’t come soon enough.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it definitely is not.
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.
What’s the alternative?
