I've seen this post getting shared everywhere, and as it is obviously touching a nerve, here are some thoughts on it. Lots of people out there are tearing into this girl for complaining as if being upset about the state of things automatically equals being lazy and she should just get over it, without seeming to realize what the "it" is. She's already working her 40 hours. She's still struggling. She's very upset. She feels she is barely surviving. Underneath that, however, something much more disturbing is lurking, and it feels like a lot of people would rather attack this girl for making them look at it than face the reality she's alluding to here.
We know things have gotten ridiculously expensive, but that's not even the real problem. That's the poo cherry on top of the sh*tcake. If life was expensive but people felt like their participation in the social contract of our society was giving something back for that price, they'd happily pay it without complaint.
Instead, more and more people and especially in the younger gens are making videos about how not only are they broke and feel like they only have time to work and survive and nothing else, but they feel lost, hopeless, and purposeless. They don't understand why society seems to be telling them the only point to life is to work all the time to barely afford to live and enjoy that life. They don't seem to be able to find existential meaning in this society. I see videos like this one every day now, and that wasn't the case all that many years ago. This trend is growing. It's spreading. It's becoming a pervasive society-wide problem, not merely a personal issue.
Our modern society as it stands is like a glitched out, malware-infected simulation gone wrong. In the technological era, the sense of community and connectedness human beings have relied upon for centuries to help define their reality and purpose has been systematically destroyed. The fabric of society has been ripped apart in so many ways it's hard to keep count. The world has gone largely digital, but in doing so, it has paradoxically gotten more disconnected. People feel cut off from each other. Adults don't know how to make friends anymore. College students are taking classes in basic interpersonal skills, the kind that used to come naturally to us social creatures. Loneliness is a trend. People are hurting. Last year Gallup found that 29% of Americans have been diagnosed with depression, the highest numbers they've ever polled. (For women alone it was over a third, at 36.7%, possibly because women are more likely to go for help or admit they have in a poll). SSRIs are now the most commonly prescribed meds for 18-to-44 year olds. It is being reported that a whopping one in SIX Americans are on antidepressants now! One is six! If those things actually solved the problem with that high of a prevalence rate one has to ask, wouldn't that problem not be solved by now? Instead, it's only getting worse.
The sense of purpose and a deeper meaning to life as a whole appears to be lacking. In an era defined by political and religious corruption, oligarchical collectivism, taxation without true representation, endless wars, technological replacement, and a growing list of fears being peddled by our media at every possible turn, the magnetic pull towards any kind of future worth working toward is also missing. Promises of being a space-based civilization are not going to be enough to fill that void. Most of us realized the day the Challenger exploded that we weren't gonna get to be astronauts, which means most of us are stuck here, and this place is getting more and more financially cut off from the majority of us. We're being told travel is going to be greatly financially restricted in the future due to climate issues. There's talk of carbon passports in the mainstream media. The World Economic Forum has white papers about the removal of 75% of personal vehicles from the roads in the future for the same reason, and guests on their stages have discussed how wealthy people will be able to physically travel while poor people will be expected to use virtual reality headsets. Fifteen minute cities is another piece on that monopoly board. I could go on, but you get the point.
Access to the physical world isn't the only thing that's shrinking. Families all over the developed world are also shrinking. Younger people have been propagandized for decades now that having kids is basically horrible, but even if they didn't buy into that BS and they find someone they want to have a family with, they can't afford to now anyway because they can barely afford to exist as a single person out there. The number of people still living with their parents at older and older ages has been growing for years. Here's a headline out of the NYP just this week: “I live with my husband and my boyfriend — polyamory is the only way we can afford a home”. This is the level things are at, pushing polyamory not because it's actually a good relationship model, but as the way to afford a home these days! That's... kinda f'd.
So now we have people attempting to live in a society they can barely afford which is essentially telling them their life's only purpose is to work a job they probably don't actually care that much about but also a job that doesn't afford them anything better than subsisting until they're too old to enjoy existing. And then they should retire and die, probably without social security because most in the millennial gens and under realize that ponzi scheme won't last forever (especially after you factor in world aging in general as fertility all over the developed world continues to shrink). Back in 2014, The Atlantic promoted Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel's claims that there's no point of living past age 75 because elderly people don't really contribute anything of value to society. Some countries like Canada are now expediting this process by expanding state euthanasia programs like MAID (medical assistance in dying). The number of assisted suicides in Canada jumped more than 30% in 2022 alone. Headlines ask if this is a cause for concern like that's even a real question! And like a scene straight out of Futurama, a 3D-printed suicide pod is currently undergoing approval in Switzerland and may be in use as early as next year.
So apparently instead of making this world one people actually want to live in — feel connected to and actually care about — the systems governing our world are just making it that much easier to end yourself once you are no longer deemed financially valuable to them instead.
As I mentioned in another post responding to this girl's clip, back in the day even medieval peasants had festivals fairly often that broke up the monotony of their working lives both physically and spiritually. They were still connected to something greater than themselves. It isn't just the destruction of our communities or the fact that everything has gotten stupid expensive. Absolute scientific materialism can and will drive the sanest person absolutely mad. People need people, but people also need mystery and a connection to any kind of image of a better future. All of these things have been broken. Without them, what is left?
I don't know who needs to hear this, but existing just to be a cog in a machine then die isn't going to be enough to motivate younger and future gens to want to continue willingly participating in this society. Netflix, video games, and weed won't be enough to pacify unhappy masses into trading away their lives for labor alone. Taken out to its logical and dystopic conclusion, society will succumb to terminal entropy and destroy itself. Meanwhile, we see a bunch of so-called elites building underground bunkers. Gee. Can't imagine why. The writing is on the wall. Even they know what the beginnings of revolt look like.
The people attacking this girl maybe don't want to face the reality we are actually still sharing with each other out there, but it has been falling apart for years and Covid only accelerated the trend. Recently we've personally witnessed people driving around with their phones strapped to their windshields directly in front of their faces watching videos while they're behind the wheel of a 2-ton machine they're supposed to be driving! People are breaking down and losing it in the parking lots of grocery stores. The so-called zombie apocalypse of opioid addiction has hit major cities across our country. Say what you want but the message there is pretty clear: a growing number of people would rather be homeless and high, tweaking out in an alley somewhere than to participate in this society. More and more people every day are just... checking out.
As a millennial, I feel trapped between two worldviews and I can see both sides. I see the points being made my some boomers going off on this girl, but also, she's not living in the same world you grew up in. That world no longer exists. It's not even the same century. The mindsets, the way these kids look at the world, has completely changed and that will not be changing back to match your mindset which has been shaped by a world they will never know. The old “pull yourself up by your boostraps” refrain just isn't doing it anymore because the younger gens are no longer seeing the reason they should as being worthwhile. In their minds (and I've seen quite a few struggling say this) they would rather be homeless than spend all their time struggling just to a survive for a future they don't feel connected to at all which offers them nothing but monotony and little else.
The girl in this video works a full time job and can barely afford basic stuff, but if you listen between the lines, she's talking about the seeming pointlessness of being an adult in our current society. Again, the goals that pushed gens past to work hard and try to succeed — things like buying a house and starting a family and building a better future — are getting further and further out of reach financially speaking. This society isn't giving people the things that it is supposed to. No sense of community, purpose, hope for the future. Without those things, people are going to stop wanting to voluntarily participate if the only thing they feel their existence is for is to be a cog in a broken machine.
Either way, there are more and more videos coming out like this all the time. If this sentiment continues its trajectory, societal unhappiness will build until it reaches an inflection point. It may not currently effect the people attacking her and telling her to get over it today or tomorrow, but if all these negative feelings, all this sadness and frustration and anger continues to build and spread at this pace, it will eventually effect them too because they live here too. We all do.
Something will have to give and once it does, expect that something will change.
I wish people would consider any of this next time they instantly feel the need to attack some poor girl who already looks like she's reached her personal limit of unhappiness and is begging the world for answers. Telling her she's whiny and to pull her bootstraps up and get over it will do literally nothing to change her perspective or the untold growing numbers of young people who completely agree and sympathize with her.
And know this: there are untold many more out there like her who didn't turn on a camera and tell anyone about how much they are struggling with our current reality.
Watching this video is like looking at the tip of an iceberg.
She doesn't have the time, energy, or cash to enjoy her life outside of work