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>When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. I guess that these days anything can be called "a

• ChrisRR 5y ago
  I realise that a lot of people have anxiety issues, but to call it abuse is just stupid. They are genuinely people looking back on their life experience and giving advice.
  • 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
    I wouldn't call this abuse either but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life. It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it.
    • cj 5y ago
      > It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their own life and how they should feel about it. I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great perspectives on life situations that they readily share when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as rude, and if they do, it’s usually because the advice hits a little too close to home. Like “when I went through my divorce…”
      • dredmorbius 5y ago
        Sharing insight and/or experience != telling someone how to feel about something. The truly insightful manage to prompt you to think without explicitly telling you to do so. (And are sometimes wrong. People can in fact be living in a truly dismal present, whatever their age.)
      • 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y ago
        Yes, I am not disputing that. I am talking about the difference between giving someone advice about a situation they're in, and telling them how to feel about it. "When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement an external observer is just not equipped to make about someone else's life.
        • kodah 5y ago
          Those two things mean the same thing in casual conversation. I'm plenty picky about rhetoric when it comes to serious debate, but I would align your view more with trying to bully people over some sense of unfairness.
    • marcusverus 5y ago
      > but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life. Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • 1_person 5y ago
        I mean, coming from some boomer who owns 5 houses and lives off rent while I'm paying his social security and subsidizing his stock market risk, and I'm going to be lucky to save enough to afford to die on the street with a grossly inflated tech income... "extremely rude at best" seems appropriate. I'd throw quite a few more words in there and maybe even a left hook under the right circumstances. Because fuck you too, boomer.
        • kasey_junk 5y ago
          I understand the sentiment but it’s worth noting in the US the median boomer _household_ wealth is 134k. More than 45% of boomer households have no extra retirement savings or income. I think it’s pretty fair to criticize that generations lack of forethought but not so much wealth hoarding.
          • 1_person 5y ago
            https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-net-worth-by-age-in-america/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-net-worth-by-ag... ok?
            • xboxnolifes 5y ago
              You source shows boomers with a median net worth of around $266,400. That's really not much to have accumulated over the course of 40+ years of work. That's roughly equivalent to putting away $150 a month.
    • ChrisRR 5y ago
      It's better to make the most of being young and then continue to make the most of your life, than to not make the most of your life at a young age, then regret it when you're older
• Kye 5y ago
  Calling everything toxic or abusive seems to have replaced a range of expressive terms and phrases, like "that's an asshole thing to say" or "what the fuck is wrong with you."
  • Crontab 5y ago
    Basically, abuse these days is being told something you didn't like or agree with.
    • namelessoracle 5y ago
      Worse than that. In some circles it's not enthusiastically agreeing or expressing any kind of reservation as well.
• kahrl 5y ago
  Are you kidding me?! Unsolicited advice can be mildly annoying!!!! I may have to just nod my head in approval just to move the conversation along, even though I might not agree!! HORIFFIC ABUSE. The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken seriously.
  • rriepe 5y ago
    It shows contempt. It might not be abuse itself, but it's definitely something abusers say. If he's confusing those things he probably deserves your compassion, not your indignation.
• heipei 5y ago
  I can understand how that sentence from someone not close to you, and without any further explanation can be distressing. What I imagine telling my kids is "This is the best time of your life, you can enjoy it because the things that society has you worried about right now, like getting good grades, being socially liked, collecting achievements, are not going to matter that much anymore once you are an adult and have gained experience and, more importantly, self-confidence in your abilities."
• f00zz 5y ago
  I wish I could say that to my younger self
  • klyrs 5y ago
    Try having kids. Your hard-earned wisdom runs like water off a duck's back. But, keep giving it. At least you can say "told ya so"
  • plorkyeran 5y ago
    Meanwhile I wish I could tell my younger self "don't worry, this is actually the worst part of your life and all the people telling you things will never get better are just wrong".
• Gadiguibou 5y ago
  Maybe I understood the context improperly, but I thought "abuse" was used in the sense of "improper use of something". In this case, it would be the improper use of your life experience giving advice that causes more harm than good. Maybe "misuse" would have been better suiting here.
• Xplune13 5y ago
  Nowadays, any simple comment can be interpreted on any extreme and everything in between. Anecdotally, in my experience, this shift is really visible for 3-4 years now. I don't know what changed in these recent years or what caused that shift to become so drastic (again, in my experience). Internet gave a stage to these interpretation even though they were there previously in low volume. But even on the internet, this wasn't the case until 5-6 years ago, at least not to this level (or so I think).
  • tjs8rj 5y ago
    My pet theory that fits the timeline pretty well is that when Tumblr died and they migrated to Twitter, what was incubated and contained on Tumblr dramatically changed the demographics of twitter and became more mainstream. Most of the last few years of change have been commonplace on tumblr up to that point, but we just kind of laughed and pointed out how ridiculous it was. Now it’s the mainstream
    • Xplune13 5y ago
      It might be. Personally I never had a Tumblr account, never even visited their website. It was just a name I'd heard. Tumblr was so far out of my life that I didn't even notice that Tumblr died.
  • InitialLastName 5y ago
    There's a feedback loop between: a) systems like Twitter giving people dopamine bumps and internet points for strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says and b) peoples training their brains to have strong emotional responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything anyone says
    • Xplune13 5y ago
      Yes, but I don't remember all this being so extreme even until 4-5 years ago on Twitter. From my experience, something changed around 2017 and now Twitter is a war zone.
• quesera 5y ago
  "Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally. Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable person would be mildly offended if another person told them: "you're living your life improperly". Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do, which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have accumulated in the time since I was your age.") So having some other person, typically older and who fancies themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life, opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be offensive in many cases! And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is generally the intended message of the speaker, but we often don't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be told. Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly sought.
  • drummojg 5y ago
    Oh no, that's too mild. Things that rise to the level of "offensive" are "violence," not merely "abuse." Tongue somewhat in cheek, of course, but I do have a friend whose claim to the "Me too" movement was that an older gentleman had called her "young lady" once.
  • kodah 5y ago
    > "Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally. It seems this watering down of language was systemic and intentful. I'd love to know what generations, geographies, and cultures are afflicted most by this.
    • fullshark 5y ago
      I don't think the intention was to water down the words' meaning. The intention was to get attention on just how terrible a certain thing was/is in the short run (This idea is abuse/violence!). The long term effects of this is future claims of abuse get ignored in the discourse because the words have been so watered down as to lose their meaning.
• silicon2401 5y ago
  This is just like that article yesterday that called Discord UI colors "harmful". People today love demonizing anything they don't like so that they can lambast it without having to give a well-founded reason why they feel how they do. Nowadays people change language to suit their agenda, thinking that if enough people believe hard enough then changing language can change reality.
• dr_orpheus 5y ago
  The issue that I have seen with this phrase being used is that it is often used in response to a younger person complaining about their current life or aspects of their life. The implication of the phrase is then "well your life sucks, but it's only going to get worse". For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
  • ryandrake 5y ago
    > For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to which their counselor said something along the lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone. And, for a lot of people, it's just not true. Maybe I'm really fortunate, but I can't remember a better time in my past life. I think for a lot of people, things generally get better as you age. You definitely get more autonomy, compared to when you were a child and teenager. Financially, you get established in your career, you save a little money, maybe you can even afford a home. Socially, you have better, closer friends as you get older. You can worry less and less about what other people think of you as you get older. I guess this is a little privilege showing, but generally I think my mental wellbeing is much better now than when I was a child or teenager. High School was the absolute worst point in my life, and that's true for a lot of people I know. You lack autonomy, you're bored, you have no money, you're in a prison-like institution getting bullied for most of your weekday. You're under a lot of pressure and have to worry about grades and behaving the way adults want you to behave. It sucked! Who are these insane people where high school was the best time of their life?
    • offtop5 5y ago
      As somebody went through multiple evictions as a teen, I agree 100%. If you don't come from a stable household your teenage years are going to be absolutely horrible. You're going to know enough to understand that the adults around you should do things like pay bills, but they just don't want to. They'd rather buy new cars and get them repoed. I make an absurd amount of money now, and I'm grateful every time I pay my rent. Honest to God, if I could change one thing about the educational system I get rid of the idea that your parents are responsible to pay for your college. If you're coming from a bad household this simply isn't going to work, but you'd be the most likely to benefit from a scholarship or financial aid. What ends up happening is this gets locked behind your parents doing basic things like filling out forms, but they're just incapable of doing it. I can't put in words how devastating dropping out of college due to this stupid system was. Through the magic of programming I was able to still establish a great career, but when you come from a broken home you're just going to take hit after hit after hit. I often need to distance myself from what I guess normal people struggle with. I'll see something stupid on Reddit like a man in his late 20s complaining that his parents want him to get a job, and I have to stop myself from screaming at my computer.
• jmartrican 5y ago
  Great point. I think it can definitely feel abusive to be told how to feel. It makes it feel like there is something wrong with you for feeling differently, or adds anxiety to change your feelings.
• scsilver 5y ago
  So much anxiety in my life is about thinking Im wasting years, not just comparing my life experience to someone else's but comparing it to everyone else's. I wonder if this is an american saying, notably from "It wad the summer of 69"
  • hindsightbias 5y ago
    Imagine all the people who will only have twitter and FB to look back to.
• mcguire 5y ago
  The rest of that paragraph: "I think what’s really important for emotional well-being is to know that your future is secure, to achieve the luxury of not worrying about your future. When you’re younger, there’s a lot to worry about. I sometimes tell my undergrads: When older people say, “This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while you can,” that’s a form of abuse. A lot of younger people have high rates of distress."
  • Clubber 5y ago
    Still sounds hyperbolic. "Form of abuse," is pretty ridiculous. It's like saying, "you are assaulting me with your words." A better phrase from a person who wants to be taken seriously would be, "that can be naive," or "that's ignoring other people's burdens," "that's not always accurate," etc. "Form of abuse," is just over the top in my opinion. He's certainly not doing anybody any favors hinting that they are the victim of something (abuse) when they are clearly not in his context.
• dang 5y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." Please don't single out gratuitous provocations in an article and then copy them into the thread to complain about them. It doesn't lead to interesting discussion. Best to just leave the provocation in its native habit and find something interesting (e.g. deeper or more surprising) to talk about. If you don't find anything like that, there are plenty of other articles to read. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html