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In Melbourne, with some of the highest property and rent price / income in the world? My friends there are firmly stuck in the rat race. Melbourne has become mo

In Melbourne, with some of the highest property and rent price / income in the world? My friends there are firmly stuck in the rat race. Melbourne has become money obsessed too, not as bad as SF/SV, but sadly getting that way due to the insane housing costs and creeping American individualism. But it’s weirdly even more classist - you either have parents to help you out with a home loan, or you don’t, and if not you don’t get to care about being creative (long term) because you can’t afford it.

josephg 4y ago
I think it really depends on your social group. I met a lot of my friends here from doing improv classes and things like that. I'm sure if I worked a 9-5 job and made friends there my social network would be quite different. After living in SF and Sydney, Melbourne still feels crazy cheap to me. And property prices are set to drop another 15% over the next 18 months[1]. [1] https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/buying/australian-real-estate-house-prices-to-drop-by-as-much-as-15-in-next-18-months/news-story/96163e77b625161fd4281d16bd5b8eee https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/buying/australia...
- dalyons 4y ago
  I guess? But that’s not really a very good comparison? It’s apples and oranges, unless your friend ground in SF was similarly majorly from improv (or a similar creative endeavor). Like, if I moved anywhere and made most of my friends from a particular hobby they would be different from my current work friends. That doesn’t say much about the respective places. I guess for me my anecdote is; I have a wide variety of friends in Melbourne (having grown up there) and every time I go back it feels like a very large % of every conversation turns to property. It’s become some kind of sick national obsession, and it’s a thin proxy for money obsession. Startup/sv talk is at least sometimes interesting in comparison
  - josephg 4y ago
    Yeah I hear you, and that’s why I framed it as a cultural belief (of your social bubbles) not a national belief. I’m not friends with a random sample of people in Melbourne. And I bet you aren’t either. Your high school will be skewed based on the ethnicity & socioeconomic status of the area. And they’re all the same age. 36 year olds have different pub conversation topics than 18 year olds or 80 year olds. People from Sydney (where I grew up) often ask what Melbourne is like. I honestly don’t know what the average person here is like. But I really like the specific people I’ve befriended. At some point “why do all my friends talk about boring things” should become “why don’t I have more interesting friends?”. And I don’t think Melbourne (or SF) has any shortage of interesting people no matter what you’re interested in. But you do have to put effort in to look. Making friends as an adult is harder than it was in high school. If you haven’t made that effort in Melbourne, I don’t think to entirely blame Melbourne for your boring friend group.
    - dalyons 4y ago
      I totally agree that noones friends are a random sample. Definitely not mine, and I haven’t lived there for awhile now so they are static, and probably even less representative. I guess I read your initial post as some generalization like “sf folk are so money obsessed I moved to Melbourne and they’re all about the arts”. Which i obviously disagree with, but I think now isn’t what you were trying to say so, sorry for that!

josephg 4y ago

I think it really depends on your social group. I met a lot of my friends here from doing improv classes and things like that. I'm sure if I worked a 9-5 job and made friends there my social network would be quite different. After living in SF and Sydney, Melbourne still feels crazy cheap to me. And property prices are set to drop another 15% over the next 18 months[1]. [1] https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/buying/australian-real-estate-house-prices-to-drop-by-as-much-as-15-in-next-18-months/news-story/96163e77b625161fd4281d16bd5b8eee https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/buying/australia...

dalyons 4y ago
I guess? But that’s not really a very good comparison? It’s apples and oranges, unless your friend ground in SF was similarly majorly from improv (or a similar creative endeavor). Like, if I moved anywhere and made most of my friends from a particular hobby they would be different from my current work friends. That doesn’t say much about the respective places. I guess for me my anecdote is; I have a wide variety of friends in Melbourne (having grown up there) and every time I go back it feels like a very large % of every conversation turns to property. It’s become some kind of sick national obsession, and it’s a thin proxy for money obsession. Startup/sv talk is at least sometimes interesting in comparison
- josephg 4y ago
  Yeah I hear you, and that’s why I framed it as a cultural belief (of your social bubbles) not a national belief. I’m not friends with a random sample of people in Melbourne. And I bet you aren’t either. Your high school will be skewed based on the ethnicity & socioeconomic status of the area. And they’re all the same age. 36 year olds have different pub conversation topics than 18 year olds or 80 year olds. People from Sydney (where I grew up) often ask what Melbourne is like. I honestly don’t know what the average person here is like. But I really like the specific people I’ve befriended. At some point “why do all my friends talk about boring things” should become “why don’t I have more interesting friends?”. And I don’t think Melbourne (or SF) has any shortage of interesting people no matter what you’re interested in. But you do have to put effort in to look. Making friends as an adult is harder than it was in high school. If you haven’t made that effort in Melbourne, I don’t think to entirely blame Melbourne for your boring friend group.
  - dalyons 4y ago
    I totally agree that noones friends are a random sample. Definitely not mine, and I haven’t lived there for awhile now so they are static, and probably even less representative. I guess I read your initial post as some generalization like “sf folk are so money obsessed I moved to Melbourne and they’re all about the arts”. Which i obviously disagree with, but I think now isn’t what you were trying to say so, sorry for that!