this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I still remember when crackpots thought the world was gonna end in 2012. When that time came. I just looked at my cat and said 'hey kitty, we're still here!'

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

I'm pretty sure we did all died that day. We're clearly in hell at this point.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Being born in the early 80's... we've seen a lot.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I was working in Tech when the Tech Crash in 99 happened, working in the only large Investment bank that went bankrupt in the 2008 Crash and living in Britain when Brexit won the Leave Referendum.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That's unlucky as heck. I always think about how I decided last minute to go to get an associates instead of going to the typical four year. I ended up graduating and getting a job right before the financial crash. A pretty significant amount of my friends were still in college and couldn't get jobs for years if ever (at least related to their degree)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yep, I was one of those people who couldn't get a job. Super cool to go back to your grocery store job you had as a seasonal gig during college to work full time after you got a degree and no one was hiring. Then I actually tried to move up the corporate ladder there just to be blackballed by all the non degree having half brain dead people working in management there that were intimidated by me passing them up at the next level.They would promote way less qualified people over me with the excuse that they were worried I would leave if I got in a career job. The 1st 3 years after college was fucking dark. To get an office job, I had to work at this shady ass limo company for a while, then they went belly up, and I had to work in a warehouse. Finally like 5 years later, I got an actual job in my field. I always said that I wished I just worked full time after highschool. Could have bought a house in the correction, and even if I worked some shitty wage slave gig out of highschool, I'd be 100x more well off than I am today. Houses in my town were at least somewhat affordable then, (6-700k) now they are 1.8 mil +.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Well, after my first crash and being out of a job for 6 months because of it, I've always been very prepared for that kind of situation so when Lehman Brothers went down I was just fine because I had plenty of savings (and was even asked back after a month because the division I was working with was bought by a Japanese Brokerage and remained operating) and similary when Leave won, not only had I "just in case" financially protected my savings from the hit on the British Pound if Leave won, but I could and did chose to leave Britain before the actual Leave date because I expected that country to increasingly suffer from the effects of leaving the EU.

So in a way, after the first one it wasn't too bad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

You know the saying "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"? This is literally what it means. You suffer hardships you can learn from, and you adapt. Lots of people seem to think it's about physical suffering, but in reality it's more about overcoming adversity in general.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Yeah, that's also the conclusion I came to.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Seen it all happen from a "safe" distance. Damn you're unlucky in a way.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The goofy part about this type of generational cock contest meme is that we all live through it together. Every generation alive has gone through horrific shit and every generation has gone through periods of peace. Some for longer than others.

I'm a millennial and I have been pretty lucky if I may say so myself. Compared to what young people and kids go through today, us older generations had it good.

Yes, our times of youth also brought on wars and economic struggles and what not, but they came in intervals.

Nowadays it is all happening at the same time and at lightening speed.

And us peeps, boomers, Gen X and millennials sit here all smug about it, like we went through ANYTHING comparable to what young people go through today.

We had it good. We are lucky to all be in our 30s and up during this stretch of history. I feel for the youths of today. They are the ones going through some shit in their formative years.

The 2020s are happening to all of us, but the kids of today have way more worries thrust upon them than any of us old fucks ever did.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

We had a lot of things pretty good. Since we don't have TV, I've spent the last year every weekend creating a 2.5 hour block of tailored programming to recreate the experience of Saturday morning cartoons for my kid, with selections from ~60 of the best (and some bad) cartoons from the last several decades, animated music videos, unearthed funny old clips, and modern indie animations, often with seasonal themes. Halloween is the most fun.

My toons are objectively better than the Saturday morning block ever was, and it takes hours every week to gather clips, edit, and manage where we're at with every show. I sometimes wish I could share it with a larger crowd but it's really not worth the expense, legal exposure, or effort - not to mention it's more special since it's just for my kiddo. I get to share the culture with him, with the crusts cut off. They don't have to put up with commercials, bad reception, or the constant ear-splitting blare of homophobia that was the nineties.

All that to say, that's the big picture too. Every generation we try to make things a little better for the young ones. Sometimes we're pretty envious of them, but we'd be failures if things were completely better when we were kids - and they'll have to work hard too, because in some ways we have been failing.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Haven't boomers been drafted to Vietnam by force? Like you had to go there to die, no options.

I think being forced to fight a war is pretty worse than most issues of people that age now.

At least we are talking about young people who live in active combat zones right now. I'm just taking the euroamerican centristic view on the matter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Lol, well, if we go by that standard, then we can all ride the coat tails of the soldiers of every generation who were drafted to fight someone else's war. My country, per capita, were the country to lose the most men in Afghanistan. I have friends who went to Afghanistan and their experiences were varied.

But my point still stands: the bad in every generation came in intervals and affected groups differently. A lot of boomers had nothing to do with Vietnam just like a lot of Gen X and millennials had nothing to do with Iraq and Afghanistan.

But we all had slower lives and we did get to be relatively protected in childhood from the worst of the news out there.

In this day and age, youths and children are bombarded woth the most heinous shit 24/7 and it is everything, everywhere, all at once.

None of the prior generations have had back to back to back terrible world events happening like the youths of today have. We all live through it, but most of us are old enough and hardened enough by life that we deal with it.

I don't think it is a coincidence that anxiety among children and youths today has sky rocketed. And it isn't just news, it is also the negative effects of social media and that whole psychosis and how it distorts and perverts identity and self love nowadays.

There is no contest. It is not remotely anything our generations had to deal with.

And yeah, we can make a ton of whataboutisms where we pick out minority groups who went to war or were brought up in war torn countries. That has happened and will happen always.

But none of us old facts had the perversion of current day internet to deal with on top of intervals of this and that crisis and none of us had to deal with all our generations' crises all at the same time over the span of a few years. That is what I'm saying. We simply cannot imagine what it is like for the young ones today because their world is so far removed from the world we grew up in.

I am a millennial, neither an old or a young millennial, but an in the middle one. I grew up in a world without internet and had myself introduced to the world wide web in my teens. My childhood and teen hood is still much closer to that of a boomer's childhood and teen hood than it is the kids and teens today. I cannot comprehend what childhood even looks like or feels like for kids today. All I know is that anxiety and body image issues and thoughts of world problems have sprung from the mouths of kindergarteners and that is not something I have seen to this extent ever before.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I still think going to war is worse than watching some news about whatever on the tv or tiktok.

Btw, mental health issues are not on the rise. Diagnosis is on the rise. Before those same mental health issues existed and were undiagnosed and untreated, with terrible consequences. At least kids today are getting the help they need with mental health.

Good luck in the 80s trying to go to a doctor for anxiety, or to get any kind of mental health diagnosis or treatment as a kid.

And let's not even mention the constant house violence against kids that used to happen. Boomers and gen x were wildly beaten by their parents as a normal practice. Nowadays parents no longer hit their kids.

Child protection laws are way better in every way, many kids are no longer forced to stay with abusive families...

And of course there is a world in difference for an LGBT kid in the 80s compared to now.

I sincerely don't think there is any reasonable approach to defend that today kids "have it worse" than previous generation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Correct. When I was living in Reno there was a doomsday DATE people decided on. It was a huge thing. A bunch of people just bought in. People euthanizing their pets, just madness. Day came. Nothing happened. It's amazing what people fall for. It's very sad.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I remember people following Harold Camping's doomsday predictions. They sold their houses, bought RVs, preached that The End is Nigh, etc. The day came and went like any other. He revised the date a couple of times, but of course world didn't end. I just can't believe people are that gullible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Desperate people are the easiest to sucker. That's why so many scams target people looking for jobs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What if the world has ended multiple times before but since this is a simulation, we just have no memory of the actual cataclysm because the operators of the simulation restored the server using backups so all memories of the event were purged? 🤔

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

What if this happens every Thursday?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)
  • "Oh no everything will crash at the end of 1999 !"
  • "Wait nothing happened... but that because it will definitely happen in fact at the end of 2000 ! Because there's no year 0, we start at year 1, you see"

It was difficult to deal with the disappointment after all the hype 😢

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Millions of man-hours were put in to keep Y2K from happening. In their coverage of New Year's Eve 1999, ABC cut to the Y2K control room where people were amazed nothing was happening.

The only recognition all of those folks got for all of their work to keep the lights on and the planes in the air was the movie Office Space, and people who were disappointed they didn't fail.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It must have felt very weird to be working to prevent Y2K while everyone else was hoping for a good show, and in the end see people be disappointed instead of impressed because nothing happened 😅

Watching things crash is always more interesting than watching things work perfectly as usual...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For all the verbal fellatio Office Space receives I was expecting it to be a god-like ultimate peak of human culture type deal but in reality it was a mid movie humor and plot wise. Its not bad but its very catery to a specific audience I wasn't part of. I can see it being one of the first and few relatable films for white collar cubicle boglins at the turn of the century which feels like pretty much the sole reason of why I have to see it occasionally referenced 25 years later.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

You're right that it's one of the few relatable films about that, but what gives it the staying power is that it is still relevant for the sort of work they're doing. All of the things they talk about are the same 25 years later, except now they don't know I'm not wearing pants since it's on Zoom. Silicon Valley is in the same vein, and created by the same guy. I expect him to make "Home Office Space" shortly.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Its getting uncomfortably accurate

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Something something meme seized by the state for redistribution

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

41 years old and I've lived through 4 once in a lifetime economic events, one impending societal collapse (Y2K), a global pandemic, and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I vote Giant Meteor 2025, just get it over with already.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There's a few genocides in there too. Also I sleep in an abandoned house for like 6mo after the housing bubble burst. Whole neighborhoods where a light never turned on. All speculation market.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Honestly I could have written a novel worth of things, but I wanted to keep it short.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I thought it was the dotcom crash and great recession, in addition to the ones you mentioned war on "terror" and pandemic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

2000 dot com crash, 2008 housing bubble, 2020 COVID recession, 2025 tariff downturn and looming crash. (That's not including the recessions from the 80's and 90's)

I count Afghanistan and Iraq separately, they were two very different wars and fought for different reasons. Afghanistan was because of 9/11, Iraq was oil and regime change.

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