5 ms·

Maybe this hits for millennials and older but as a gen-z I think it's safe to say we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too expensive, our degree

Maybe this hits for millennials and older but as a gen-z I think it's safe to say we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too expensive, our degrees are useless, dating and relationships have become damaged because of the apps, and we are inheriting a world that is broken and continues to shatter. The older generations have everything and still feel burnt out and unhappy? Cool. Cool cool cool. That will certainly help with the nihilism.

kevinh 10mo ago
15 years ago this exact comment would have been written swapping out millennials for gen x and gen z for millennials.
- spoiler 10mo ago
  As a late millennial: yep. We're in the same boat. Nihilistic optimism isn't the worst coping mechanism, though!
- GMoromisato 10mo ago
  Hey there, early Gen X here. We lived with the existential dread of nuclear war (The Day After traumatized a whole generation), our parents left us on our own with just 3 channels of TV for company because they both had to work, and our sexual awakening turned into a horror movie because of fear of AIDS (a death sentence at the time). Also, there were no jobs.
  - esseph 10mo ago
    And our every moments weren't being tracked by flock cameras or a cell phones. If something embarrassing happened at school, it didn't end up on tiktok. We still thought if we got to college we could get out of that shitty town and have a real grown up job and get a house. That is increasingly out of reach. I haven't even touched on something like 25y of constant combat deployments, or politics yet. Or the environment.
    - GMoromisato 10mo ago
      I'm telling you about what Gen X had to go through, not because I think we had it worse than you--I'm sure we didn't, but to show that it gets better. Gen X was called the Slacker Generation because we didn't think it was worth trying very hard. We didn't want the life of our parents: working all day at a job they hated just to buy stuff to impress neighbors that they didn't like. [Yes, Fight Club was about Gen X--or at least that's what we tell ourselves.] But it got better. For me, computers were a salvation. I found that all that time I spent writing PC video games resulted in skills that companies valued. We were the first digital natives. I remember having to teach 50-something year-old CEOs how to type ("Hold down the shift key for uppercase"). I don't know what unique characteristics will save today's Gen Z. They be able to take advantage of the wrenching change that AI is about to unleash. They'll be in the thick of the changes, but still young enough to adapt. Us older generations will have a harder time.
      - pseudalopex 10mo ago
        > I'm telling you about what Gen X had to go through, not because I think we had it worse than you--I'm sure we didn't, but to show that it gets better. Their words implied they were a member of your generation.
  - carlosjobim 10mo ago
    There is some difference between real struggles, and uncomfortable fear for things which didn't happen. Were you unable to afford a home because of fear of nuclear war? Or for fear of AIDS?
    - GMoromisato 10mo ago
      I was unable to afford a home because of fear of bouncing checks. I lived in an apartment with 3 other roommates. And we all knew people who had died of AIDS, and I wasn't even in an at-risk community. Gay men I knew felt that they had gone through an apocalypse, like they were the survivors of a secret war that no one talked about. Home ownership when I was growing up was around 50%. Not owning a home was extremely normal, not a sign of deprivation.
      - carlosjobim 10mo ago
        Not ever in your life being able to afford a home is the new normal, and to me it's a sign of deprivation. That's the reality younger generations are dealing with, not only temporarily renting, but renting for life. Which isn't anything new. It's feudalism, and the way things usually are. But that's a far greater concern for those in that situation, than AIDS or nuke scares.
  - renewiltord 10mo ago
    Well, then, as a Millennial it seems like I had it the best. The ‘90s were fantastic. Then 9/11 and those wars weren’t great but didn’t affect life except in those countries. Started uni just before the GFC, only to finish grad school just as startups were picking up in the early 2010s and then when 2020 hit had lots of money already that work wasn’t critical. Then modern generative AI showed up and I have so much experience it just accelerated me. My life rules hahaha. Only problem is that the older generations are going to parasitize my kids for disability money and shit but I’ll just move them to where humanity is growing if it comes to that. Bizarrely my parents also feel like their generation had a great time. So who can tell. Maybe I’ll make it so that Gen Beta says the same story.
    - ykonstant 10mo ago
      The 90s WERE fantastic, with the usual caveats (location etc). I think we should take a closer look at that decade for future reference.
- llmslave2 10mo ago
  Perhaps. And if it was true back then, it's even more true today.
- nabnob 10mo ago
  Everything is noticeably more expensive than it was 15 years ago, though.
  - scruple 10mo ago
    Sure, but I also make ~6x as much as I did 15 years ago. Despite that I still think everything is too fucking expensive.
    - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
      I make 5x less than I did 2 years ago. Everything is indeed, too expensive.
- mkoubaa 10mo ago
  This is a such a cop-out. We millennials had it easy compared to zoomers.
  - McAtNite 10mo ago
    That’s true, graduating into my “once in a lifetime” economic meltdown made the second one barely even register.
  - lovich 10mo ago
    I only felt the empathy someone can have when they have also lived through the same events, for all the zoomers graduating into the post Covid job market. Millennials and younger are all fucked for the same reasons and are going to continue getting fucked over unless some revolutionary change happens. We’ll also be in this together as we watch our boomer/genx parents burn up the last of any existing generational wealth sitting comatose in a nursing home because they refused to accept that they will actually die some day, and so made no plans for it
- tayo42 10mo ago
  Kind of but 15 years ago if you met online it was an embarrassing thing or something only old people did.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    real shame because dating apps were meant to actually optimize matches 15 years ago. Now it's normalized and maximized for "engagement".
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  Sure, 2010 wasn't great, but it wasn't this bad in terms of career aspects, or rather: it did improve. I'm not as confident it's bouncing back as fast this time. College debt wasn't as bad in 2010. You didn't need to compete against thousands of people around the globe in 2010. There were still human interviews in 2010.
nradov 10mo ago
By any objective metric the world is less broken than ever before. But people who want to be defeatist and cynical can always find a plausible sounding reason to justify their negativity regardless of the facts. I'm part of an older generation and not burnt out or existentially starving or whatever. And more importantly I'm not actually starving or dying of plague or being sent off to die for my king or any of the other horrors that were a routine part of human existence for most people before the modern era.
- rozap 10mo ago
  They want to be able to afford a house. Historically, in the US at least, for lower and middle class people that has been within reach. Now that's not the case. If I was in my late 20s and was lighting thousands per month on fire in rent, it'd be pretty darn alienating. Sure, if you zoom out far enough, the standard of living for zoomers is pretty good, there's not a mass casualty event when the potato crop fails. But if you don't (and I'd argue, you shouldn't) it's pretty clear that their economic prospects are worse than their parents. That is pretty bleak. It's no wonder why they're politically more radical than the other generations. Put in the simplest terms: Economic nihilism happens when no house.
  - icedrift 10mo ago
    Per Atrioc
    - rozap 10mo ago
      I've been got
  - asdff 10mo ago
    They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a "cool" area. Look at median home prices in rust belt cities. Mortgages around $2k a month or so. Very doable for a lot of people but you never hear a drum beat about this. You never hear about people moving to these cities unless they have family there already to remind them that, hey, this is in fact a great deal.
mariusor 10mo ago
Are millennials the "older" generation now? Ooof, my bones...
- throwaway173738 10mo ago
  Some of us turned 40 this year.
  - NoGravitas 10mo ago
    The youngest Millennials turned 30 this year; the oldest 45.
GMoromisato 10mo ago
Don't give up--it gets better. Yes, housing, education, and medical care are way more expensive now than in my era. There's no sugar-coating that. Education, you already have, don't try to buy more unless the math works out. You're young so hopefully you don't need much medical care. Housing is a big problem, I agree. If you can move to a cheaper state (Ohio? New Mexico?), that might help. The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus. Are there any AI matchmakers yet? [Just kidding, maybe] But don't worry about the world. The world has been broken ever since we discovered fire. My parents were born literally in the middle of World War II. Somehow it all worked out.
- loglog 10mo ago
  Are we talking about the middle of World War II in the US? A war that resulted in exactly 6 civilian deaths in the continental US and destroyed all serious competition for US industry for decades to come? That was one of the economically most advantageous positions in history.
  - aloha2436 10mo ago
    I think it is pretty reasonable to say that even for those in the continental US the state of the world in 1942 provided much more cause for concern than anything going on right now. At the very least, for a child born then you would be very unsure what kind of world they would end up growing up in.
    - GMoromisato 10mo ago
      True--I don't think things got better in the US until after the Korean War. And even the 60s were marred by Vietnam (far more than the impact of the War on Terror). My parents were born in Peru in 1941/42. Peru was neutral for much of the war, but in 1942 they began deporting Japanese individuals suspected of Axis sympathies to internment camps in the US. In 1945 Peru entered the war on the Allied side. If the war hadn't ended, I'm pretty sure my dad and his family would have been interned. And even after the war, the situation was unreal. My dad's uncle didn't believe that Japan had lost the war. He thought it was all just allied propaganda. In 1949 he sold all his possessions and took his family back to Japan--to Okinawa, in fact. When he got there, he saw the truth: the country was smashed to rubble, and he had to beg in the streets for food. My grandfather travelled to Japan, taking my 10 year-old father in tow, to bring the uncle back to Peru. That's probably one of the tamest, least tragic stories from that time. Even in the US, 400,000 never came home and 600,000 came back wounded. That's a million families affected. Germany, Japan, Russia, France, China, Korea, and even Britain, had far worse stories. Whatever troubles we have now (and we have plenty), they are not on the same scale as those from that time.
Jare 10mo ago
> we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too expensive Perhaps the problem starts with the fact that we continue to steer society in the direction where everything we want costs money.
- techgnosis 10mo ago
  I think this is the only comment that captures the message of the article. I feel for everyone who is priced out of life, those are very serious problems, but it wasn't what the article is talking about. If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    That's the danger of assuming people's lifestyle in a post like this. You say >You got the great job. You built the startup. You took the vacations. But that’s not what you really needed. And people will lash out if they haven't even gotten that far. it's tone deaf to the wider realities of society.
    - baobun 10mo ago
      Maybe this post has a narrow intended audience. Not every post has to be targeting all readers. If it's not true for you then it's not, y'know? Absolutely no need to lash out and HN is not a place for venting. Besides I think they're basically writing about themselves. By the upvotes and comments, it looks like some people do relate.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  "We" being the billionaires and boomers who want to preserve their property value, yes.
nzeid 10mo ago
Man, posts like these always strike a nerve. I graduated in 2008. "Everything" wasn't just handed to us, we had our own share of horrible to deal with as well. And guess what? You'll get through it too. I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending. I don't have any good advice as to how to defeat this perspective, but I am constantly reassured that because I'm not the only one that thinks things are shattered, there is a path to fixing it all. Join some like-minded individuals and do something amazing. Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  >And guess what? You'll get through it too. Will you? https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recession-graduates-long-lasting-effects-unlucky-draw https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recessi... Maybe you did, but statistically those people are permanently behind. >I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending There's hoplessness of impending doom, and hopelessness of no progression. I do think Gen Z has a unique experience of the latter, where the former generations were mostly facing worries over the former. Boomers had the nuclear scare, Gen Z had the peak unease of the cold war, Millenials had 9/11 and a decade of questionable wars. Gen Z doesn't have that impending doom... yet. COVID was very impacful, but not apocalyptic as long as you followed mandates (I know, a big "if" in the US). But I wouldn't hold my breath given all the conflicts out there, and the US's own warmongering riling up again. Meanwhile, many can't even get their foot in the door. Not many 20 years olds ever felt like the future was hopeless, no matter what they did. >Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives. Pay my rent for a year or so and you got a deal. Otherwise, I feel like this is highlighting the exact tonedeafness Gen Z is tiring of. Gen Z doesn't just get to sit down and hack in their free time. They are doing gig work to pay rent and applying to thousands of jobs a day for hope of an interview (not even an offer). I won't say it's uniquely bad. But it's bad in different ways from when you or I were growing up.
  - nzeid 10mo ago
    Agree to disagree. I don't appreciate that you glossed over the second worst economic crisis in US history.
ecshafer 10mo ago
The happiest Gen Z I see are the ones that go to Church. Being religious is a bulwark against nihilism. And Church youth / under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes, which takes the App /hookup culture hell out of the equation.
- blitz_skull 10mo ago
  Yep. It’s almost like living the right way has profound benefits over living however the hell you feel. I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for stating the obvious, but if you’re tired of running yourself ragged you should turn to Jesus. His burden is easy and his yoke is light.
  - NoGravitas 10mo ago
    Will Jesus pay my rent? Because His yoke may be light, but my landlord's isn't.
    - ecshafer 10mo ago
      Thats a bit of a strawman. Will religion pay your rent? Probably not. But focusing on a simple life around family and charity and not chasing material possessions or luxury might. Changing priorities from hip neighborhoods to family friendly neighborhoods may.
      - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
        Even my best neighbors didn't let me sit in their house when I'm in danger of not affording rent. A "simple life" is more expensive than ever now. And yes. odds are that those who are going to church already have the "simple life" covered. So be careful of selection bias.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  Church is really the last "3rd place" around, so I'm not surprised. It's alsmost like community is important. Good luck if you're not strongly religious, though. >And Church youth / under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes Given recent news, this is part of why I'm not religious.
anon291 10mo ago
Maybe don't want as much?

kevinh 10mo ago

15 years ago this exact comment would have been written swapping out millennials for gen x and gen z for millennials.

spoiler 10mo ago
As a late millennial: yep. We're in the same boat. Nihilistic optimism isn't the worst coping mechanism, though!
GMoromisato 10mo ago
Hey there, early Gen X here. We lived with the existential dread of nuclear war (The Day After traumatized a whole generation), our parents left us on our own with just 3 channels of TV for company because they both had to work, and our sexual awakening turned into a horror movie because of fear of AIDS (a death sentence at the time). Also, there were no jobs.
- esseph 10mo ago
  And our every moments weren't being tracked by flock cameras or a cell phones. If something embarrassing happened at school, it didn't end up on tiktok. We still thought if we got to college we could get out of that shitty town and have a real grown up job and get a house. That is increasingly out of reach. I haven't even touched on something like 25y of constant combat deployments, or politics yet. Or the environment.
  - GMoromisato 10mo ago
    I'm telling you about what Gen X had to go through, not because I think we had it worse than you--I'm sure we didn't, but to show that it gets better. Gen X was called the Slacker Generation because we didn't think it was worth trying very hard. We didn't want the life of our parents: working all day at a job they hated just to buy stuff to impress neighbors that they didn't like. [Yes, Fight Club was about Gen X--or at least that's what we tell ourselves.] But it got better. For me, computers were a salvation. I found that all that time I spent writing PC video games resulted in skills that companies valued. We were the first digital natives. I remember having to teach 50-something year-old CEOs how to type ("Hold down the shift key for uppercase"). I don't know what unique characteristics will save today's Gen Z. They be able to take advantage of the wrenching change that AI is about to unleash. They'll be in the thick of the changes, but still young enough to adapt. Us older generations will have a harder time.
    - pseudalopex 10mo ago
      > I'm telling you about what Gen X had to go through, not because I think we had it worse than you--I'm sure we didn't, but to show that it gets better. Their words implied they were a member of your generation.
- carlosjobim 10mo ago
  There is some difference between real struggles, and uncomfortable fear for things which didn't happen. Were you unable to afford a home because of fear of nuclear war? Or for fear of AIDS?
  - GMoromisato 10mo ago
    I was unable to afford a home because of fear of bouncing checks. I lived in an apartment with 3 other roommates. And we all knew people who had died of AIDS, and I wasn't even in an at-risk community. Gay men I knew felt that they had gone through an apocalypse, like they were the survivors of a secret war that no one talked about. Home ownership when I was growing up was around 50%. Not owning a home was extremely normal, not a sign of deprivation.
    - carlosjobim 10mo ago
      Not ever in your life being able to afford a home is the new normal, and to me it's a sign of deprivation. That's the reality younger generations are dealing with, not only temporarily renting, but renting for life. Which isn't anything new. It's feudalism, and the way things usually are. But that's a far greater concern for those in that situation, than AIDS or nuke scares.
- renewiltord 10mo ago
  Well, then, as a Millennial it seems like I had it the best. The ‘90s were fantastic. Then 9/11 and those wars weren’t great but didn’t affect life except in those countries. Started uni just before the GFC, only to finish grad school just as startups were picking up in the early 2010s and then when 2020 hit had lots of money already that work wasn’t critical. Then modern generative AI showed up and I have so much experience it just accelerated me. My life rules hahaha. Only problem is that the older generations are going to parasitize my kids for disability money and shit but I’ll just move them to where humanity is growing if it comes to that. Bizarrely my parents also feel like their generation had a great time. So who can tell. Maybe I’ll make it so that Gen Beta says the same story.
  - ykonstant 10mo ago
    The 90s WERE fantastic, with the usual caveats (location etc). I think we should take a closer look at that decade for future reference.
llmslave2 10mo ago
Perhaps. And if it was true back then, it's even more true today.
nabnob 10mo ago
Everything is noticeably more expensive than it was 15 years ago, though.
- scruple 10mo ago
  Sure, but I also make ~6x as much as I did 15 years ago. Despite that I still think everything is too fucking expensive.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    I make 5x less than I did 2 years ago. Everything is indeed, too expensive.
mkoubaa 10mo ago
This is a such a cop-out. We millennials had it easy compared to zoomers.
- McAtNite 10mo ago
  That’s true, graduating into my “once in a lifetime” economic meltdown made the second one barely even register.
- lovich 10mo ago
  I only felt the empathy someone can have when they have also lived through the same events, for all the zoomers graduating into the post Covid job market. Millennials and younger are all fucked for the same reasons and are going to continue getting fucked over unless some revolutionary change happens. We’ll also be in this together as we watch our boomer/genx parents burn up the last of any existing generational wealth sitting comatose in a nursing home because they refused to accept that they will actually die some day, and so made no plans for it
tayo42 10mo ago
Kind of but 15 years ago if you met online it was an embarrassing thing or something only old people did.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  real shame because dating apps were meant to actually optimize matches 15 years ago. Now it's normalized and maximized for "engagement".
johnnyanmac 10mo ago
Sure, 2010 wasn't great, but it wasn't this bad in terms of career aspects, or rather: it did improve. I'm not as confident it's bouncing back as fast this time. College debt wasn't as bad in 2010. You didn't need to compete against thousands of people around the globe in 2010. There were still human interviews in 2010.

nradov 10mo ago

By any objective metric the world is less broken than ever before. But people who want to be defeatist and cynical can always find a plausible sounding reason to justify their negativity regardless of the facts. I'm part of an older generation and not burnt out or existentially starving or whatever. And more importantly I'm not actually starving or dying of plague or being sent off to die for my king or any of the other horrors that were a routine part of human existence for most people before the modern era.

rozap 10mo ago
They want to be able to afford a house. Historically, in the US at least, for lower and middle class people that has been within reach. Now that's not the case. If I was in my late 20s and was lighting thousands per month on fire in rent, it'd be pretty darn alienating. Sure, if you zoom out far enough, the standard of living for zoomers is pretty good, there's not a mass casualty event when the potato crop fails. But if you don't (and I'd argue, you shouldn't) it's pretty clear that their economic prospects are worse than their parents. That is pretty bleak. It's no wonder why they're politically more radical than the other generations. Put in the simplest terms: Economic nihilism happens when no house.
- icedrift 10mo ago
  Per Atrioc
  - rozap 10mo ago
    I've been got
- asdff 10mo ago
  They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a "cool" area. Look at median home prices in rust belt cities. Mortgages around $2k a month or so. Very doable for a lot of people but you never hear a drum beat about this. You never hear about people moving to these cities unless they have family there already to remind them that, hey, this is in fact a great deal.

mariusor 10mo ago

Are millennials the "older" generation now? Ooof, my bones...

throwaway173738 10mo ago
Some of us turned 40 this year.
- NoGravitas 10mo ago
  The youngest Millennials turned 30 this year; the oldest 45.

GMoromisato 10mo ago

Don't give up--it gets better. Yes, housing, education, and medical care are way more expensive now than in my era. There's no sugar-coating that. Education, you already have, don't try to buy more unless the math works out. You're young so hopefully you don't need much medical care. Housing is a big problem, I agree. If you can move to a cheaper state (Ohio? New Mexico?), that might help. The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus. Are there any AI matchmakers yet? [Just kidding, maybe] But don't worry about the world. The world has been broken ever since we discovered fire. My parents were born literally in the middle of World War II. Somehow it all worked out.

loglog 10mo ago
Are we talking about the middle of World War II in the US? A war that resulted in exactly 6 civilian deaths in the continental US and destroyed all serious competition for US industry for decades to come? That was one of the economically most advantageous positions in history.
- aloha2436 10mo ago
  I think it is pretty reasonable to say that even for those in the continental US the state of the world in 1942 provided much more cause for concern than anything going on right now. At the very least, for a child born then you would be very unsure what kind of world they would end up growing up in.
  - GMoromisato 10mo ago
    True--I don't think things got better in the US until after the Korean War. And even the 60s were marred by Vietnam (far more than the impact of the War on Terror). My parents were born in Peru in 1941/42. Peru was neutral for much of the war, but in 1942 they began deporting Japanese individuals suspected of Axis sympathies to internment camps in the US. In 1945 Peru entered the war on the Allied side. If the war hadn't ended, I'm pretty sure my dad and his family would have been interned. And even after the war, the situation was unreal. My dad's uncle didn't believe that Japan had lost the war. He thought it was all just allied propaganda. In 1949 he sold all his possessions and took his family back to Japan--to Okinawa, in fact. When he got there, he saw the truth: the country was smashed to rubble, and he had to beg in the streets for food. My grandfather travelled to Japan, taking my 10 year-old father in tow, to bring the uncle back to Peru. That's probably one of the tamest, least tragic stories from that time. Even in the US, 400,000 never came home and 600,000 came back wounded. That's a million families affected. Germany, Japan, Russia, France, China, Korea, and even Britain, had far worse stories. Whatever troubles we have now (and we have plenty), they are not on the same scale as those from that time.

Jare 10mo ago

> we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too expensive Perhaps the problem starts with the fact that we continue to steer society in the direction where everything we want costs money.

techgnosis 10mo ago
I think this is the only comment that captures the message of the article. I feel for everyone who is priced out of life, those are very serious problems, but it wasn't what the article is talking about. If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  That's the danger of assuming people's lifestyle in a post like this. You say >You got the great job. You built the startup. You took the vacations. But that’s not what you really needed. And people will lash out if they haven't even gotten that far. it's tone deaf to the wider realities of society.
  - baobun 10mo ago
    Maybe this post has a narrow intended audience. Not every post has to be targeting all readers. If it's not true for you then it's not, y'know? Absolutely no need to lash out and HN is not a place for venting. Besides I think they're basically writing about themselves. By the upvotes and comments, it looks like some people do relate.
johnnyanmac 10mo ago
"We" being the billionaires and boomers who want to preserve their property value, yes.

nzeid 10mo ago

Man, posts like these always strike a nerve. I graduated in 2008. "Everything" wasn't just handed to us, we had our own share of horrible to deal with as well. And guess what? You'll get through it too. I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending. I don't have any good advice as to how to defeat this perspective, but I am constantly reassured that because I'm not the only one that thinks things are shattered, there is a path to fixing it all. Join some like-minded individuals and do something amazing. Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.

johnnyanmac 10mo ago
>And guess what? You'll get through it too. Will you? https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recession-graduates-long-lasting-effects-unlucky-draw https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recessi... Maybe you did, but statistically those people are permanently behind. >I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending There's hoplessness of impending doom, and hopelessness of no progression. I do think Gen Z has a unique experience of the latter, where the former generations were mostly facing worries over the former. Boomers had the nuclear scare, Gen Z had the peak unease of the cold war, Millenials had 9/11 and a decade of questionable wars. Gen Z doesn't have that impending doom... yet. COVID was very impacful, but not apocalyptic as long as you followed mandates (I know, a big "if" in the US). But I wouldn't hold my breath given all the conflicts out there, and the US's own warmongering riling up again. Meanwhile, many can't even get their foot in the door. Not many 20 years olds ever felt like the future was hopeless, no matter what they did. >Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives. Pay my rent for a year or so and you got a deal. Otherwise, I feel like this is highlighting the exact tonedeafness Gen Z is tiring of. Gen Z doesn't just get to sit down and hack in their free time. They are doing gig work to pay rent and applying to thousands of jobs a day for hope of an interview (not even an offer). I won't say it's uniquely bad. But it's bad in different ways from when you or I were growing up.
- nzeid 10mo ago
  Agree to disagree. I don't appreciate that you glossed over the second worst economic crisis in US history.

ecshafer 10mo ago

The happiest Gen Z I see are the ones that go to Church. Being religious is a bulwark against nihilism. And Church youth / under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes, which takes the App /hookup culture hell out of the equation.

blitz_skull 10mo ago
Yep. It’s almost like living the right way has profound benefits over living however the hell you feel. I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for stating the obvious, but if you’re tired of running yourself ragged you should turn to Jesus. His burden is easy and his yoke is light.
- NoGravitas 10mo ago
  Will Jesus pay my rent? Because His yoke may be light, but my landlord's isn't.
  - ecshafer 10mo ago
    Thats a bit of a strawman. Will religion pay your rent? Probably not. But focusing on a simple life around family and charity and not chasing material possessions or luxury might. Changing priorities from hip neighborhoods to family friendly neighborhoods may.
    - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
      Even my best neighbors didn't let me sit in their house when I'm in danger of not affording rent. A "simple life" is more expensive than ever now. And yes. odds are that those who are going to church already have the "simple life" covered. So be careful of selection bias.
johnnyanmac 10mo ago
Church is really the last "3rd place" around, so I'm not surprised. It's alsmost like community is important. Good luck if you're not strongly religious, though. >And Church youth / under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes Given recent news, this is part of why I'm not religious.

anon291 10mo ago

Maybe don't want as much?