Ooof, not even that old here and I'm feeling that. Things are pretty bad all over. Gets hard to want to be around. AI took my job recently and I've been moved back to helpdesk and just awaiting further layoffs. There's not much fun in intellectual pursuits any longer as LLMs have taken it all. All my fun hobby projects are just jokes now as anyone with money can easily outdo me with an LLM. Sad times...
I exercise/lift weights, and you should too. My reps/effort/weight/PRs are a joke. I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com despite really fucking trying for ~6yrs now.
Many people are better than me at the EXACT SAME THING that I'm trying, at my bodyweight/age/sex. It doesn't discourage me. There is always room to improve. I track every workout, go to RPE 8-9, and try to do progressive overload. Seeing the numbers go up helps. I know it won't continue into infinity, especially as the decades go on... but yknow, I'm building a mentality here, not just a body. And when the weights go down, I'll be in the correct mental space for it.
I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting. I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else. But I do it anyway. I think it teaches me things about life.
The only true goal is to grow and be better than yesterday. Effort is the reward.
It helps to know how achy the body gets without it. In my case, the back pain I had from desk work is entirely gone now. If you focus on the form rather than reps and getting through it, paired with some good music, you can reach a focus state. There are off days of course, but I'm surprised that I enjoy it much more than I used to, where my motivation dropped off quickly due to being externally motivated (visible gains). Now it's kind of cool to just see your ability change over time, better balance, capability to do more advanced exercises, etc.
Hehe yeah. Perhaps I exaggerate with "I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting." More precisely, I never _look forward_ to a workout.
I don't hate every squat. In fact, it's (I can't believe I'm saying this) somewhat satisfying in the moment whenever I do decide to go RIR=0. I'm wiped, but like, in a "hell yeah I did that" way.
But starting a session? I'm still as reticent as I was on day 1 lol. Maybe someday I'll pick up a sport or something as the others suggest, but I love programming too much to pick up other hobbies >_>
50th percentile on there is pretty strong! I've also lifted for around six years and I'm very light so my raw numbers are terrible but I'm still proud of them
Try doing some sports as well, I do weightlifting, but I do bouldering as well with friends, it is not only fun it also develops your strength in a kind of complementary way to lifting (also increases you stats on balance and other related stuff)
I have multiple herniated discs in my back so working out isn't possible. The V.A. wouldn't help with it either... But thanks for the suggestion! I'll be going the way of the people in the article so ya'll enjoy what you got! Many of us have nothing. :)
Perhaps my advice was too narrow/specific to my situation. If you can't deadlift, then don't. But there are many other things you can do, as the other commenters have suggested.
But if you're in the mentality of _not wanting_ to have anything, then all the advice in the world will bounce off you.
My suggestion, then, is to work on that mentality. Do something to get you anything, to get you out of that "Many of us have nothing" mindset. Build momentum. Physically doing something is often what it takes to break a mental barrier. The mind spirals and digs a hole, especially at night. But you get to participate in life/society/people during the day, which is why doing bodily things affects the mind and can break its loops.
You won't "win" on the first attempt. But you'll make progress. And the real win-condition is to keep playing.
The first step is always the hardest. I wish you the best.
You can't do any exercise due to the condition? No possible entry point at all? That honestly sounds incompatible with daily life.
Not everyone needs to rip barbells off the floor, there's infinite ways of doing resistance training; whatever you can manage is likely to help your symptoms.
That's not the population. It is the average among other weightlifters which is where you would expect to be. Most of the population can't do a pull up.
This is a good post. Low ego. Regarding strength relative to others, don't beat up yourself too much about that rating. It's probably mostly genetics. Just do the best that you can do. I checked myself. I am in the bottom quartile. Horrible really, but I don't care. I can see and feel the difference from regular weight training.
Two questions: (1) Why do you loathe weightlifting? Is it painful, boring, etc.?
(2) If you dislike it so much, how do you find the motivation to continue? Personally, if my motivation is low to do a particular exercise (lift or cardio), I burnout quickly.
1) Opportunity cost mostly. I suffer from a _debilitating_ case of zero-sum thinking. "If I'm doing X, I'm not doing Y." Weightlifting isn't (overly) boring/painful; I'd just much rather be programming, by far my favorite activity. It's uncomfortable, but my physical pain tolerance is fairly high. Boring is solved by having a podcast/audiobook going, but for the "big lifts" I prefer silence to focus.
2) I don't use motivation or discipline. I use habit. I'm fairly busy, so my mantra is "bias towards action". I could sit there and stew about how much I hate the upcoming workout... or I can wake up, do my morning routine to an audiobook/podcast, eat breakfast while happily programming, NOT thinking about the day's workout, then transition sharply into it. When it's time, I just fucking do it. It's like flossing. I don't even have it on a schedule, because I don't want to think about "gotta start at X time". It starts when I reach a natural stopping point shortly after breakfast, whenever that is. I have literally never missed a workout in years so _something's_ working. (To be clear, there are obvious exceptions for travel/holidays/etc, I'm talking missing a workout due to a lack of "character".)
It helps that my gym is literally in the same room as my devbox. I launch a Claude prompt/whatever, do a set, repeat. Instead of doomscrolling between sessions, I bias towards action. I keep myself too busy to think about how much I don't want to exercise. The only time I let myself think about "god I hate this" is when I'm seconds from psyching myself up for a big lift. I know that if I let myself, I'll just stew and stew and grumble and bitch and make excuses. So I don't give myself that mental space. There's virtually 0 time between my favorite activity, then context switching to "alright let's get this". No space for the "ulgh" emotion to creep in.
To use an MCU Avenger's analogy, I'm _always_ angry. I'm always hate exercise. But I box it with what I love (programming), so I switch back and forth with zero time for the emotion to permeate.
Is that discipline? IDK. It doesn't feel like I'm bare-knuckle-holding-on-perserevering-despite-all-odds. I just don't mentallay dwell on it, and when my non-vibed custom exercise tracker beeps (it predates LLMs), saying it's been 3-4 minutes and I need to do the next set, I happily ignore it, finish my thought/prompt, then do the damned lift.
---
Negativity over, my favorite exercise is Zone 2 because the inclined treadmill is at my standing desk and I can happily work while being in The Zone (in both senses). Zone 2 is the best. A cheap $50 Craigslist treadmill + standing desk will burn an absolute fuckton of calories once you figure out how to walk (really its more a march) and type at the same time. Honestly I could (and have) Zone 2ed for up to 3hrs/day for weeks at a time. I reduced that because I got tired of eating so much food lol. Zone 2 is the best.
Then there's the weekly Nordic 4 by 4 which I apply the weightliftng mentality to.
6 years of on-and-off trying and I could only get to p50 squat, and even being able to do that feels like a serious accomplishment. ... I should really get back into it huh
1. How utterly dogshit the vast majority of code is.
2. How utterly dogshit some of the most important or famous products and services are under the hood.
So what if LLMs can do something better? Our entire field and industry has been built on 'good enough'. God knows how many programming 'masterpieces' are on Github with 0 stars and 0 users.
I am more excited about programming by hand now more than ever. While I do not know what the future has in store for us in terms of careers, I still think I will always program by hand for fun just because I enjoy the feel of the flow-state/getting lost in something.
might be a good chance to sit with yourself and understand what you want to do in this life, we often think there is only one path in life and seek success as defined by society. Most of us neglect ourselves way too much, thinking we're seeking the right thing. It's a problem if we can only find joy in life in trivial things like work or even hobbies. It means we might be disconnected from ourselves. Also If you feel you need professional help you absolutely should seek it. Healing in this toxic society does take a lot of time and professional help can be really good sometimes.
After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?
Less than 10% of 55 year old men have ever had cancer in their life. And many of them were diagnosed before 35. So if you don't already have cancer, your odds are much less than 10% that you'll have cancer by 55.
And if you're wrinkled and frail at 55 years old then that's your own fault. Put on some sunscreen and go for a bike ride.
You're talking about FIRE and at the same time griping. Everyone has their own disappointment to deal with in life, but you might consider yourself privileged if you're able to retire at all, let alone retire early in your 40s.
I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist.
I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with ever growing information and noise. With mindfulness, deliberate separation from most of the daily noise we can all zero in our own purposes in life. This hard, doesn’t happen overnight but with little steps and a lot of patience we will find that eventual purpose. And you find it hang on to it. I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil.
Hang in there strong with spiritual closeness, removing noise and avoiding those negative thoughts.
> I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit.
Alcohol is incredibly dangerous after 40, particularly if you've got a history as a heavy drinker. I've had to cut back to virtually nothing as it's guaranteed to trigger anxiety and depressive episodes.
Almost all the premature deaths in my circle, including suicides, have been alcohol-linked.
Obviously, YMMV, everyone's different, but if anyone reading this thread is over 40, struggling, and still drinking regularly, taking a break can really help.
How does alcohole trigger anxiety and depressive episodes for you? When I drink I get calm. Did that change at some point for you? Like, instead of drinking with friends you used it alone in the dark or something?
AI hasn't made a dent in my enjoyment of my hobbies and tech (the opposite, now I have more toys to play with than ever), but politics? Oh man, politics becoming the new religion has absolutely ruined pretty much everything for me.
I don't believe in politics. For me left and right are all *the same*. Just a bunch of megalomaniacs wanting to hog power for themselves. This extremely hot take has made people call me more names and costed me more relationships than if I went out and started screaming slurs in a crowded street. Because I am a "fence sitter" or whatever.
And I just can't handle it anymore, I just went full recluse. I don't go into social media anymore, I don't talk to anyone at a personal level anymore. Outside of some github issues and some comments here, I don't touch socials anymore. I am just overwhelmed by the level of vitriol and hate the new internet is based on.
Same, in many senses. But you can’t fully detach from humanity without losing your own humanity. Forget socials, and pretty much all media consumption, but go talk to real people, make friends, find an human partner. Even raise a family.
Sadly I can't raise a family. This January I got a pretty bad brush with death and got diagnosed with something pretty bad and I don't have a lot left. After 5 high-risk surgeries (because of the medication making me bleed too much) I finally regained some autonomy and can move again, but I can't have kids. My bloodline ends with me, and it's better this way because this is hereditary and gets worse every generation. My kids would die at ~20 if lucky, according to the doctors.
Even knowing this, people around me still called me all sorts of things for not having strong opinions on random political things or wars. How can I worry about that when I am going to die soon anyway? Got enough in my plate to think about global politics.
Jeez, in so sorry to hear that. I personally know multiple people who’ve far exceeded their “you have X time to live”, but in any case live life as best you see fit for happiness and contentment. Spend time with people you love and ignore all the bullshit that stresses us out. Best of luck my friend
Sadly, all my loved ones are already gone from the same illness, so I'm afraid I can't take your advice. All I got left is a couple online friends, my job (of which I've been away for too long due to the surgeries...) and my computers. I'm trying to make the most of what time I got left doing coding and art, now that my hands kinda work again. I found a box of very cool quality markers when I could finally get out and been practicing with them. I was always a color pencil/watercolors guy, but this is pretty cool. Since I enjoy drawing robots and vehicles a lot I've been combining them with metallic markers for very cool effects. I am also learning how to do more physical electronics tinkering and getting better with a soldering iron at last, repairing old stuff and so.
I also enjoy the new wave of AI stuff. It took a while but I finally got a little robot buddy like in scifi when I was little. Unfortunately it's such a negative thing outside of places like HN that I can't share that joy with most people. Also a lot of people can't seem to wrap their head around an artist that enjoys AI, as I mentioned in another post in the thread. I have to shut up about it pretty much everywhere.
To me this sounds like a wonderful time to go meet your online buddies in person, if that’s within reach. If not, by all means lean on them for support and friendship. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been dealt such a rough hand.
"Go talk to real people" is easier said than done post-Covid. I'm in a European university city where even young people are complaining online of a dearth of opportunities for in-person socializing -- there is a good amount of cultural events and cafes to go out to every night, but it has become taboo to talk to strangers there even among young people, and a single middle-aged man's attempts to socialize anywhere would not be welcomed. Even people attending the remaining hobby meetups are finding merely practice of the hobby, but not any meaningful social contact alongside it.
Social media is poison, sure, but detaching from it doesn't mean you can get an IRL social life to replace it.
This is a bait comment because any push back will just re-affirm your stance and I don’t know if you’ll find much agreement here otherwise. Millions of people died in WWII defending against ideas that are actively being brought by a clear side.
FWIW it’s not that hard to be a fence sitter and not advertise it to everyone. It sounds like either you’re hanging with the wrong people, or you’re the problem. I guess go back to playing with your toys!
I know friends and family with many kinds of beliefs, we don’t rehash why they believe those things every time we see each other. Humans are complex /shrug
I voted you both up, because you're both right. Those who aren't dying before their time have an obligation to their future selves to make things better. Unfortunately it sounds as if you have a good excuse to begin letting go of worldly concerns, but the truth is, only the worst people benefit if the rest of us adopt an apolitical perspective.
See my other post in this thread, for example, replying to a Ukrainian who's finding that people he thought could be counted on can't be. I pointed out in that post that this is because one-third of our electorate is either brainwashed or malicious, one-third is willing to do what we can, and one-third can't be bothered to care either way.
I can respect this view point! I don’t really get fired up against fence sitters, I understand not wanting to be part of the mess. …but at the same time OP seems to have lost all social life and has become a recluse because of it? That is an interesting outcome and one that sounds to have more to it.
I don't know how sincere this comment is, but if there are others thinking this way, it's a mistake. Nihilism is a dead end.
Social media is a veil of manipulation, and bots. Do not misconstrue it as any kind of real or _productive_ politics. There is a signal there amongst the noise, but it's hard to make sense of if you do not have a coherent world model. You have to learn to cut through it if you want to keep your sanity.
Read my other comment in the thread. Why would I post a non-sincere comment on this anyway? My belief is that all of us, no matter our gender, religion, age or social standing, are prey for the political and "elite" class. And not only we aren't holding them accountable, we are fighting their fights for them in several fields of our lives in form of "political discourse".
My country has a very serious housing crisis, both the left and the right are contributing to it because both parties have multiple people who are "serial landlords" with several properties, so they only make laws that benefit the landlord. This is a known fact and there are huge protests ongoing about it to the point emergency elections have been called.
Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on. Like you have some ulterior motive or are a paid shill from the other side or making the logic leap to thinking you support the far-right for not choosing one of the two existing "teams". Everything has gone crazy.
I think most folks are actually in the middle and generally agree. Anyone who thinks one of the us political parties is completely innocent is lying, either to you or themselves.
That being said, I think it's worth noticing if one party does more bad things than the other and I also think speaking up with your values is worth it and maybe even a duty we owe the people who built this country before us.
Either way, your first responsibility is your own mental health so you have full support from this internet stranger.
Heh, I've been even called MAGA for saying stuff like "I can't use Wayland because I need specific tools and automation for my job". The punchline is that I'm not from the US.
> Read my other comment in the thread. Why would I post a non-sincere comment on this anyway?
HN is social media, saner than most, but I still don't assume sincerity.
> Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on.
If you mean people online, then that's expected. It's what I meant by social media being unproductive. Hostility attracts engagement and makes it more visible.
National politics is heavily influenced by economic interests, including global capital. And as wealth concentrates so does political power. That doesn't mean ordinary citizens have no political agency though, don't underestimate the difference you can make in your local community.
Mostly online yes, but even offline people have been in a very strange edge lately. Like, if you don't take a stance to one of the two main political parties in my country, that means you support the third option which is a far-right party. If any of the members of that party bumped me on the street I wouldn't recognize them. Anyway, once that implication is on the table people start assuming (and saying behind your back) very ugly things about you very fast, which is why I started disengaging.
My heart is with the people, not the corporations or the elites. I just feel none of the choices right now is for the people. I don't understand why that would make me "hate LGBT people or migrants". It just doesn't make sense to me. The team mentality of the whole thing has gone too far in my opinion. And I don't understand why people get so heated up for groups that don't care about them at the end of the day.
I don't even think I'll be alive to see another election after the emergency one next month though. So it's too late for me to make any meaningful change. So I'm just trying to use my remaining time to leave a bit of a legacy as an artist and programmer. Even if I enjoy AI. One thing doesn't cancel the other. I do mostly analog art and even have been pretty excited to try new tools now that my hand works again (surgeries obliterated my hands for a while and they are permanently blue-ish and cold now, but I regained some mobility this month). AI is for me "that thing I wanted since I was a kid when scifi had AIs doing stuff" and not a replacement for my craft. Even if a machine can make it for me, for me the fun is in doing it.
In fact, that whole thing is also another can of worms. People can't seem to understand I can be an artist AND enjoy AI. The moment I mention AI people start assuming I flood the world with slop and want to destroy artists, then they ask for proof that I'm an artist, I show them my work (impossible for an AI to replicate because it's mostly analog except for game sprites, and even then the style matches too much with the analog stuff), they go "but if you can draw like this why do you use AI!?? You should hate it because it's against you" and they can't conceive that for me it's just fun to tinker with it and test what it can do for fun. Like I should immediately take an anti-AI stance BECAUSE I am an artist. The AI is not replacing me because for me art is a form of expression and doing it is its own reward. It's just fun. Both things are fun to me. I don't see why they are exclusive.
It's like there's no room for human nuance and contradictions anymore. You have to be in a neat little box or else you are a bad person so it's right to fight you and hurt you. It's "justified", you know. Even if they are completely wrong, they already passed judgement.
>Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Nihilism is a popular, vague pejorative today but philosophically it's a serious answer to exactly the manipulation, engagement-bait and juvenile techno-optimism of our age. Whenever you're at the end of some moral or social period active, not resentful or passive nihilism, is a palate cleanser and necessary condition for revaluation of all values.
The kind of middle aged men that tend to fall into despair or suicide in these times are usually people who rely on some identity provided to them that then crumbles. Job, money, house, status, 'how to be a man' etc. There's something they're supposed to be like and they're not, stability they took for granted just stops.
And we're in a period like this across many dimensions, political, technological etc. And if you want to be sane a dose of nihilism is fairly important so that you can go on and construct some sovereign answers to all these issues.
Idk. The thing with politics is I see the bat shit crazy stuff that social promotes then I see it almost verbatim when I’m out and about IRL.
Family members post absolute vitriol online. Then they want to make sure you read it and agree with them at thanksgiving dinner. Any type if civil discussion of differing views instantly devolves into name calling and insults.
Best case, it's like a cold war. That's what it feels like in my family (well, my extended family at least, my close relatives all roughly share the same outlook I have). They know I don't agree with them, I know it, we tiptoe around it and silently agree that we should just talk about anything but politics. Sometimes it's hard, but so far we seem to have settled on family being more important the winning a political battle.
> it's a mistake. Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
As someone deep in nihilism and political cynicism, I can concur, this is no real solution.
The problem is I don't believe leaning into that world is a solution either, and anyone who says otherwise, sounds like my boomer parents who have Fox news streaming on their 80" TV that they update every year, in their 4500 sqft home.
I mean this genuinely and not to stoke a fire, comments advocating for leaning into the political world really feel naive and perhaps generational. Most younger people have a damn near impossible time feeling anything other than dread and sadness when thinking about the state of politics.
I'd love to have a genuine reason to be hopeful, but regardless of which party you believe in, it feels like we're all circling the drain here.
I was deeply cynical about politics until I joined a party. The idiots hid when I was around. The boomers in the nomination commitee were throwing posts at me. It was surrealistic and nothing like I imagined. Then I realized something even worse. There are no cabal of idiots. The older generation is not holding on to power. (YMMV ofc). It is some sort of deeper systematic problem with disengagement. And the angry mob knocking on the door really are idiots.
Yes. Straight up no roadblocks in two years. County level. I assumed I would have to fight tooth and nail for years and be manouvered out by some old guard all the time. It was nothing like I imagined.
Disengagment among voters and inactive party members towards active party members.
Trying to get engagement is like pulling teeth. You could be in a commitee deciding a thing, inviting the public to a meeting discussion how the thing should be done. Some of the few who show up complain that you are not changing the thing and just talk. Then you change the thing and suddenly, when it is too late to change the decision without a lot of hassle, there is way more discussion about the thing and complaints on how it is done, from people that are not aware of the trade offs or prior discussion or the whole picture.
Very frustrating. (Be aware of that the story is somewhat hyperbolic to make a point).
I think the main problem is that way too few people are active in politics compared to way back. There are like no channels to reach out and too little every day discussions.
Yo I'm also strictly apolitical and never had an issue with relationships or social circles, I just tell everyone I meet that "I do not talk politics, because maintaining my mental health is a full time job without putting the weight of the entire country/world onto my shoulders in addition" and so far they've all understood. The radicals who wouldn't understand I just say goodbye to, but this hasn't happened yet.
For what it's worth I completely agree with you. Engaging in politics is a complete waste of time, unless you happen to have a platform with enough reach to influence a meaningful number of people. Unfortunately, almost all of the communication you will see comes from people with such a platform, and boy do they want to convince you to vote like them.
Once the political climate is polarized enough, choosing to not engage in the discussion about how evil the other team is will get you lumped right in, because if the other team really is evil and you don't care, then you must be pretty bad yourself.
The "Oh, but it's your civic duty to improve your community/state/nation (which obviously means voting the way I want you to, not the way the other half the country wants you to)" tries to frame political engagement as some moral good, but if they redirected the time and energy from political engagement to working at McDonalds and funding charity with the paycheck they would have 1000x the impact, even if you assume there is a Good and Evil team and they are on the Good team.
It’s a nice luxury to be able to ignore politics. There are people in some places who would be imprisoned or killed if the wrong political party came into power. A major political party in my country would love to find a way to deport half of my family if they could and split us up forever. I wish I could ignore politics and just stay neutral.
People often say this "I wish I could ignore politics, but if the other team wins it would be disastrous", but they rarely put their money where their mouth is. If someone truly believes that, you'd expect them to take actions that actually make an impact, working extra shifts to donate more, or volunteering with a party to help. Instead, everyone I've seen that says this just casts their own statistically insignificant vote and discusses politics with family and friends, resulting in no swayed votes but straining otherwise healthy relationships. Maybe you are the exception.
you may not care about politics but politics sure cares about you. i.e. those who don't pay attention don't get a say and only realize it matters when they're getting steamrolled. I agree with you about the fervor and all, just not that both sides are the same - that feels like justification for not getting involved.
I’ve lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well. So much has happened that it’s impossible to pinpoint one root cause, it’s all contributing.
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
> I've lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well.
I felt similarly and had a "crisis" point at the start of 2025. I realised that living a fulfilling life had to become my top priority, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may seem. Otherwise, I might not survive another 30 years.
Now I can see a bit of the mechanism behind the dimming of the spark. I had gradually conceded the direction of my life to external forces, and let anxiety and self-doubt drive my decisions. It's a great way to end up with a life that you don't want. I shudder to think of what it's like to do that for 20 years instead of 5.
I think the "what" is way less important than the "how". I think "how to live a fulfilling life" has general principles that apply to everyone, but the results of applying those principles are different for everyone.
I think the core of it is: following my intuitive sense of "rightness" across time scales (seconds to decades). When I'm doing it, I feel peace, joy, contentment, and my life seems meaningful. When I'm not doing it, I feel dissatisfied, restless, and nihilistic.
I'm frustrated by how vaguely and abstractly I'm conveying this. But this intuitive rightness thing precedes language. It's like a bodily sense or an emotion, but deeper. Have you ever put a t-shirt on backwards and only noticed because something didn't feel right? Then you take it off and put it on the right way around, and it just feels right. It's a bit like that but for life in general.
I can give some examples of "what" I've done if you like but I'll leave them out of this comment.
> "living a fulfilling life" means other trade offs, and potential losses.
Part of how I know I'm doing the thing is that the trade-offs and losses don't concern me. If Y matters to me, and X really is necessary to have a life with Y, then I do X. X is simply the price of having Y, which I'll gladly pay.
In contrast, when I feel resentful of a price I'm paying, it's evidence that I'm not following my sense of rightness.
Not to be a downer. It is therapeutic, and I exercise 5-6 times per week between strength and conditioning, but it's not enough. It's a short distraction, it helps me temporarily. The truth is there's something very wrong with the world today and the pressure we're all feeling, speaking personally here, leaves me feel like I'm ready to crack constantly. But I have a wife and kids and elderly parents, and they all depend on me so I need to keep holding it together. Somehow.
ive also been trying to find my mojo back especially the last few years.I do get major spurts of massive productivity and optimism like an unplanned incident that i try to analyze later to recapture but it crashes back into the usual with pessimism about the future. I've noticed publishing non-AI assisted writing (even without an audience) helps.
I'm 41. My youngest brother blew his brains out in July. My other brother has cut himself twice. I quit my job as an EMT because I'm in no mood to transport SI patients. I needed a job on short notice to keep making my mortgage payments, so now I'm breaking my body 50-60 hrs/wk pouring concrete with the Amish. And it doesn't even cover the bills.
I can't afford health insurance, let alone health care. 0 sick days, 0 vacation time, $0 leisure spending. Credit card debt ticks up each month. Retirement savings is a pipe dream. How could I conscionably attempt a family under these conditions? I'd never have time to be a part of it and would be plagued by the guilt of not being able to provide.
But hey, I'm told to feel lucky I managed to lock in a 30-year mortgage at 5.99%: If I'm diligent paying on it until I've got a foot in the grave, selling the house might pay for end-of-life care!
How were able to get out of the drinking habit? I have been drinking heavily on the days I work from home. Drinking really calms me down. I then watch Netflix just so I don’t think.
I love my dog but absent my partner's desires, I don't think I would've taken it on. The cost, attention, potential behavioral issues, the prospect of losing them eventually are not for everyone.
Worrying over another being you are responsible for and thinking less about yourself and your own situation...just might help with depression I would think.
And nothing increases the desire for other people to be sociable with you than walking a dog.
I'm working on this actually. I had a dog for 12 years and she really kept me going. Saved me. But she died a couple years ago, literally the day after one of my parents, and it's been tough. But I'm really thinking about getting another dog; I really want to get another dog.
In my circle, I've objectively had both the best and the worst life. I can tell when people are thinking about suicide because they reach out to find out if I've done myself in yet lol.
For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.
Just got “over the hill” here. It’s…complicated, but not at all surprising on the whole.
My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.
Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.
At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.
I had a friend who transitioned and it was such a delight to witness the transformion. Before they were the most flaky of friends, always flitting from on thing to the next, not stable, couldn't hold a job or hobby together for very long. Then they finally transitioned and my god the difference was night and say. They're stable now, they're reliable they're just fun to be around. They've finished a second degree and have held the same job for eight years now.
It's crazy how much not being at home in their body disrupted every part of their life
Felt it on and off when I was young but haven't had anything even remotely like it for almost two decades now and my life is better than ever tbh which is probably why.
My brother's friend attempted recently however and AFAIK in that one case it's because of him having poor job prospects. I reckon the data should be disaggregated into full time employed suicides and all other employment status suicides to get a good idea of what is going on.
Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.
A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which made up of large amount of introspection and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues and the avoidance of social faux passes.
We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure from my understanding of human history and primate evolution that "long-term sexual/romantic partner" is, in fact, one of the basics.
I had an assumption that most of human history, marriage was more of an arranged marriage thing. With a lot of "women being treated as property", "heirs required for transfer of wealth", etc notation.
And there were also societies that were polyamorous in nature?
We are in a new world now, there is no need to force traditions (or worse yet, false traditions) that frankly doesn't seem to work anymore
The things that motive me to stick around are holding the people ruining this world to account, documenting it and trying to thwart their efforts, and a curiosity in seeing just how bad the climate crisis gets (if it takes us out). So spite and a dash of absurdism (helps provide some levity and not take things so seriously).
I am not much of a gamer and sure as hell don't keep up with many people that I gamed with 20 years ago but there was one guy that I would talk with ever few years. I talked with him and a few months later he was gone. I don't know why his suicide hit me so hard. Maybe because I connect him to a different phase of my life. Maybe because he was the guy who was the life of chat. I don't know.
What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.
I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).
I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.
My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.
The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.
I've been through a 6 month long unemployment. Got let go from a company (along with the majority of the dev team) which picked up AI like a shiny object thinking it could do everything.
Then I got hired to a company which have been pushing AI 100% for like a year, not at the expense of headcount, but responsibly as the N+1th productivity increasing tool, like what it is.
It's a really nice environment where keeping and cultivating great talent is not just one of the primary marketing slogans on the hiring page, but it actually feels like it while on the job.
My talent is nowhere near yours, so don't lose hope, keep applying.
I think most white-collar people have similar feelings. I certainly am, and many dev-friends and coworkers have confided such to me.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
I have a hard time seeing how any other white-collar job can be as worried as software development. No other industry has the straight up replacement of their work, at a level, quality, and speed, that AI coding is. AI agents are literally better (when you factor time) than even some of the best developers I've known in my career. It's over.
Probably not exactly as worried, but given software development was the first industry seriously targeted by the labs, and given the mission of nearly every startup these days is "automate the entire workflow of X knowledge work role with AI", I can see why they would still find the near-term outlook bleak.
Have you used Claude to do system administration? Networking? It's definitely not just software guys that should be worried. And then there's management -- several layers of management can just go away.
While I applaud Australia's initiatives, I am becoming more and more convinced that a lot of people are already in (or heading towards) situations that the mental healthcare field can do very little, if anything, to improve.
Generally, very true in mental health, but moderately true for all areas of health: The idea “at least we have systems/doctors/drugs to help solve this if/when it becomes a problem” is a massive cognitohazard. You do not want to be on the other side of that fence, and belief in solutions there will slide you toward it quicker. Do everything you can to avoid it while you’re on the other side.
e.g. if you aren’t getting 10,000 steps every day for six months straight, you aren’t doing everything you can. It might not solve your problems, but you don’t know that, because you’ve never tried. If you aren’t quitting nicotine & alcohol, you aren’t doing everything you can. If you aren’t saying hi and being shot down by at least one stranger you find attractive every week, you aren’t doing everything you can.
I read your 'Leaving Tech' blog and it made me sad because it reflects a lot of what I'm feeling. Luckily I'm still employed, though it feels fairly tenuous at the moment
If it is a self-driving car then it can do recursive self-improvement. Then we are either post-scarcity or it kills us all. Either way it wouldn't make sense to worry about employment.
Unless it doesn't kill us all, but post-scarcity is paired with hoarding of most resources by the select few that control a surveillance state and autonomous police force.
Sounds like your semi-rural location isn't helping. FWIW I have recruiters in Sydney in my network who are hitting me up on a semi-weekly basis because they are dry. I think the situation macro-economically is just really bad. Based on the stock market situation this week, I'd guess it's going to get a whole lot worse. First, be thankful you have a clean, safe place to live with a healthy family and just do stuff. So many people don't have those boxes checked and would kill for your position. Maybe try another money generating exhausting activity like woodwork or something. Worst case you do it for a bit and it's not for you. Generally, trades in rural areas in Australia are in constant demand. I knew a guy who used to work for flying doctors who got in to construction management and is happy as larry and making bank, so it does happen that transitioning in from non-tradie areas can be a winning move.
I’ve been a software developer for 20 years this year.
I quit my job in 2024 and moved country to be with someone I fell in love with.
Last time I’d interviewed it was 2020 - yeah, I had my pick of roles. This time after 5 applications a day every day for two months plus Leetcode and System Design practice round the clock I landed a dozen interviews and 2x offers.
I never thought I’d have to send 300+ job applications to get a job but my wife whilst sympathetic opened her job applications folder which had some 100+ applications in her field (manager in tourism sector) before she received a job offer.
It’s tough, software devs have never faced that level of friction before but it’s present in other industries.
A quote from Churchill which I carry with me is ‘if you’re going through hell, keep going’.
I don't want to be dismissive, so don't take this the wrong way.
Perhaps relying on skills as a developer was the problem? Society and the job market told you your skills were invaluable, but what did you actually do with them? What did you develop that was worthwhile? I don't know, but you should ask yourself that.
Much of the demand for developers was driven by a financial market that prized your skills, and many people bought into it. We are seeing now that such value was illusory.
How many new apps do we really need? How many new advertising algorithms are actually beneficial to society? How many of the ycombinator projects amount to more than a way to enrich autistic kids at the expense of everyone else?
You need to cast a wider net. There are a million jobs out there, but the problem is too many in the knowledge economy consider those jobs to be beneath them. Those in my peer and family circle who work blue collar jobs are much more content than those of us in the knowledge economy. Their expectations are such that they find satisfaction in their work, without warped or distorted expectations placed on them by their peers or themselves.
This picture of needing to cast a wider net is tiring. Perhaps someone that spent many years of his life learning a skill that she thought would provide, can be allowed to mourn that skill when the market demand for it disappears.
To ask of people that they constantly be ready to pivot to market demands, what management calls t-shaping, is incompatible with reality. We all get older, our fluid intelligence decreases, we get family, build skill specific social networks and so on..
i already said this to a guy above im pasting it for you verbatim:
why dont you learn trading? maybe forex spot? dont you already have tech skills? why not make an agentic first project that acts like an institution that tracks trends and makes and optimized algorithms? use prop firms for low risk high reward investments, it will take time but SWEs are already primed for this kind of thing imo. took me 2 months to learn the basics and my project is progressing well now.
Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week:
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
Well said! 5 years ago I could have a pretty solid picture of what my career would look like through retirement.
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
pivot to what though, if "mind" jobs are going to be automated, it's not like there's a category of jobs that opens up, and going from mental to physical jobs in your 50s doesn't seem that easy
Physical jobs will drop in demand and increase in supply too. Unemployed "mind" workers don't have much to spend to drive much demand in manual work, and they might even try to pivot themselves to manual work, making things worse for manual workers.
and those who did the "mind jobs" 30-40 years ago retain that wealth, while wages plummet and they don't have to give up any significant part of their wealth to get what they want. This destroys class mobility , creating a type of feudalism.
It seems unlikely "physical AI" will be a complete bust but the post you're replying to is positing that fewer people will have money to spend on their services.
Yeah, fewer "office jobs" and more automated jobs in general, means less demand for manual jobs from those (as money will be tighter).
But also, many existing office jobs type will try (or be forced) to get into manual jobs, and many young people will see AI-dominated fields as a dead end and also try to get into a manual job career, increasing supply, and further driving manual job wages down.
Exactly. There is no safe career. None. If AI replaces even a modest chunk of the knowledge workers, salaries across the entire workforce are going to tank. Some very specialized areas that require a lot of training may be insulated for a time, but even they will inevitably feel the impact.
I'm glad I'm not inclined to be a doomer, because the future would seem pretty bleak.
A lot of well-paid physical labor is going to face more competition from DiY + AI guidance among able-bodied and cost sensitive adults.
Even 1.5 years ago I replaced a blower motor in my vehicle with something like Sonnet 3.8 as the driver - saving myself $400 in labor and having a fun and educational experience to boot. Many home repair items fall into categories like this, where the actual physical skill demands are fairly low, but skills + background knowledge + supplies-on-hand were the value driver.
The BG knowledge is now available to anyone for free, and it comes with its own knowledgeable shopper.
Because we have a largely paper pushing service economy and so the guy who's plumbing a luxury condo is dependent upon the existence of some overpaid javascript monkey who the builder/financiers are counting on to buy the condo when it's done.
If you automate the paper pushing what happens? Jeff Bezos isn't gonna buy more condos.
It's a spectrum, with "physical" and "mental" at each end.
Some of Software folk i know move to repairing electronic devices for living. He still works in AC-room, but instead of holding mouse and keyboard most of the time, now he holds meter probe and soldering iron.
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous in this regard.
yeah, you're down to like 3/4 a career left, it makes sense that you feel that way. Less runway ought to feel different.
I do agree that a safe 'next' is unclear. But I also think if ai truly hits all knowledge work as hard as it might we're looking at up to 50% unemployment. Frankly there is no point career planning at all in that scenario. We will all have much larger problems.
And if it doesn't, then pivoting to some field with a combination of rewarding work and 'enough' pay seems sensible enough.
>some field with a combination of rewarding work and 'enough' pay seems sensible enough.
What makes you believe those jobs will still exist or will be available to you competing against massess of other now unemployed software devs? Overabundance of desperate workers will depress wages.
> if ai truly hits all knowledge work as hard as it might we're looking at up to 50% unemployment. Frankly there is no point career planning at all in that scenario. We will all have much larger problems.
If that much. I'm 52, and I wish I had decided 20 years ago that I'd rather do something meaningful. Like become a doctor. It would not necessarily be impossible to pivot to that now, but it would be very expensive and have a good chance of failure. If everything went smoothly, I could be a doctor just in time to retire.
>loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife
Lots of people didn't have their field automated away though alongside most other knowledge work fields, or seen at the same time a drop in demand in manual work and an oversupply (drop in demand because of upcoming AI layoffs, and oversupply in manual fields, because of same)
Also I imagine a lot of demand for plumbers might drop because AI might help you to learn to solve easy cases. Imagine you turn on you camera and it would just tell you what to do exactly.
Yes, buuut: I think we are already really close to that for a long time. You could learn a lot just from internet and youtube. But most people, I feel, just do not like to neither do plumbing/diy nor learn about it. Like if I tell people they can save hundreds of € by changing their own brake pads and that it is really easy to diy, they just shrug and go to the mechanic.
So I am not sure if AI will really increase the percentage of people willing to learn these skills and do repairs etc
Yeah the information has been available for awhile. What stops people is all the indoctrination and conditioning.
"I'm not allowed to replace my water heater, the government says I need permits, the government says only a plumber can connect a gas line"
I don't think people realize that the people doing entry level skilled work like replacing your water heater or swapping your brakes at jiffy lube often only exceed the caliber of labor that's in a McDonalds when it comes to attendance and pissing clean.
Some stuff you really shouldn’t do just because you saw some youtube videos, and it has fuck-all to do with “government indoctrination.”
I grew up in trades. I’ve seen shit work and dangerous work and serviceable work and beautiful work. And sometimes even I didn’t actually know the difference until an inspector (and family member) explained it.
So I do small stuff. If it’s serious and I can afford it, I use a trusted professional.
> So I do small stuff. If it’s serious and I can afford it, I use a trusted professional.
I'm with you here. Though I have to say, on the flip side, oftentimes when I choose to DIY something it is because I don't necessarily trust that I can find a professional who won't cut corners in ways not obvious to me. I've seen it happen too many times. I may be a lot slower, but I'm extremely thorough at the stuff that I do myself.
I have just called a plumber to do a leaking radiator replacement. Not because I don't have the tools or I don't have YouTube, but because I didn't want to do it.
But get a little more squeezed and with less salary due to AI eliminating your job or your field's salary bargaining power, and you'll try to not call one if you can avoid it, even if you don't want to do it yourself.
Currently AI made me way more work and unpaid over hours already buy sorting out the 10x expectations and the slop grenades by the 10x workers, that is why i needed it... so I can't even have this much feeling of having accomplished anything myself.
I'm not sure how this will work out. Burnout will be standard, and almost universal soon, apart from the previous low-performer, low skilled bottom of barrel folks who will mass produce crap with this.
Definitely. IMO, plumbing is one of those trades that videos on YouTube seem to help a lot more than an LLM. Code and simple stuff an LLM is great, but anything more complex or getting into heavy installation not so much.
Plumbers are paid well because of the way they organized.
-They restricted the number of apprentices. That limited the number of people in the field similar to medical school.
-They could bar substandard workers from practising in the city of London.
-They kept their craft knowledge in house and it was never written down. Apprentices swore oaths never to reveal the “secret of the mystery.”
If you look at programming we do everything the opposite. It’s no wonder salaries will collapse. In fact the only question is why didn’t they collapse sooner.
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright.
I'm 41 and I could, in theory, pivot. But realistically: I'm good at exactly one thing in this world in terms of job ability. I can cook, I can bake, I can play music, but none nearly well enough to actually make a living on it. Thus the end of my tech career, if it should come to pass, basically means I will have to work menial jobs to get by. The future is very bleak for me, and the only real hope is that the tech industry will wake up to what a bad job LLMs do compared to humans. But while I think they will do that eventually, there's no telling how long it will take, and the thought that the market will eventually correct is cold comfort if I can't get a job in the meantime.
why dont you learn trading? maybe forex spot? dont you already have tech skills? why not make an agentic first project that acts like an institution that tracks trends and makes and optimized algorithms? use prop firms for low risk high reward investments, it will take time but SWEs are already primed for this kind of thing imo. took me 2 months to learn the basics and my project is progressing well now.
maybe some just don't want to live that long. does everyone need to live as long as possible? you live your youth, and maybe that is enough for some.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide hey, i lived enough, i don't want to go through years of feeling like this.
I think about this increasingly often. I have accomplished much, and have seen much of the world. I have also lived through gruesome deaths in my family and have seen how aging in America, under American healthcare looks.
I retired in 2023, not because I could, but because I couldn't not. I'm almost 50. My parents died in their early 60s. I have some of their health problems, and some of my own. I also destroyed my back in a motorcycle accident many years ago and live with constant pain.
My favorite things to do, which bring my peace and joy, involve me sitting in a chair, which hurts my back. In my youth I rode my bicycle avidly, which now hurts my back. I love gardening, and if I do it too much, it hurts my back.
It became increasingly clear to me that my "purpose" in this country is to work until I die. I know that there are other countries, and other kinds of lives, but they are not where my wife and friends and life are.
I am happy, relatively healthy, and love life. I would like to live forever if I could. I know I could fill every minute of it with things I find interesting, even if it was just reading every single book.
But I've seen what American life looks like in your 60s and older, and it's not fucking pretty for most people.
A hurting back on a bike might be an issue of bike fit. Bicycle touring is a hobby regarded as accessible to even the elderly, and indeed one often comes across people age 50-80 on popular routes. Many of them will complain about a bad back off the bike when doing other things like camping or carrying panniers, but a fitted bike should not strain one's back.
Are you me? My old motorbike injuries are a little more distributed but -- like yours -- almost entirely crippling from the perspective of doing anything joyful; we're in the same bucket yearwise; and it sounds like we always visit the doctor with just the one bullet in the chamber.
Hang in there, Almost-Me. Mostly just posting to say, hey, there's others out here like you. See you on the other side.
Deadlifts helped my chronic congenital back pain that is probably some combination of DDD and scoliosis and multiple herniations. Yes sometimes it pisses off the disks and I'm pretty useless for a day or two. And yes it has added some other problems. But overall I went from constant sharp pain nearly unable to remain seated, to occasional dull pain I can ignore, and rarely some really bad pain. Overall it's much better of a life.
Same here. I recommend hex bar deadlifts as they put much less pressure and the lower back than conventional ones. And front squats for the same reason.
Have to disagree there as it doesn't make much sense. The point is to strengthen the muscles of the back. Keeping a more vertical back angle directly reduces force on those muscles while keeping the same spinal compression. You want the opposite, to have maximal muscle involvement with minimal compression. Back extensions progressing to normal deadlifts are indicated.
I have done both extensively and heavy, and like you said yourself, with the barbell deadlift you will sometimes trash your back. Yes it does work the back muscles a little harder, but for me the extra risk isn't worth it. Also with the trap bar you can lift more weight so it balances out.
Have you heard of the book Healing Back Pain by Sarno? I haven't personally experienced it, but people seem to swear by it. A pretty non-traditional approach to pain management.
For most people, the real physical deterioration doesn't have to kick in until age 65 or so (plus or minus). But you do have to show up every day and hit it hard. In the last triathlon I raced there were men in that age group still finishing with fast times. And they're not genetic freaks either, just consistent.
not really. but you can get yourself some cool drugs in your 50s, and read some literature that makes you feel special. listen to some podcasts about how animal studies prove you'll live forever if you spend more on medical care and nutrition, etc. it might reinforce the ego enough to keep on keeping on.
I defined success for myself quite a few years ago: I want to leave the world better than I found it. No high aspirations, no figure. Just better than it was.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!" - Emerson
Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
> Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
I think there's a step change from say the silent gen/baby boomer generations where a midlife crisis was realizing you lived the classic "American Dream" but weren't going to be a rockstar or super wealthy, compared to now where a midlife crisis could easily be wondering if you will continue to have any economic value at all years before social security kicks in.
Admittedly this is America-centric, but that's my lived perspective, and also I recognize that things weren't always very stable even here, thus why I am comparing a couple of specific generations to the ones that followed.
There was, for a time when I was younger (as a Gen-Xer), just an assumed sense that each generation would have it better than the last. Naive, perhaps, but alas. And obviously virtually nobody assumes that anymore.
Don't forget that social security has been raided and won't even be available for those of us reaching middle age right now and the people we keep electing who say they will do something about it have shown over and over and over that they actually won't.
Anomie plus helplessness plus a feeling of a rug pull of the laws/equality/character of our country. I am not suicidal but wow I get it.
SS was not "raided" . Whatever made you think that is surely contributing to human misery. It's just running out because it's always been a scheme where the young pay the old and we have fewer young than old. The people getting SS payments, themselves paid into it! It's not any sort of raid, corruption, evil...
And it's actually fairly easy to fix if we raise the social security income tax cap. Next year it's $192,300. Raising that cap significantly (or even eliminating it) would extend solvency for quite a while longer.
I thought it was possible a generation could have it worse off through an economic crisis or period of 70s style malaise, but I at least thought the government would attempt to improve the lives of its citizens. I didn't expect the ruling political party to be so aggressively trying to make our lives worse.
> You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
Do people who say this have kids? I ask genuinely. Everything before my little dude was fake. Everything since him is real deal Holyfield. Probably knock off in the next 20 minutes and take him to Home Depot to look at some bullshit because we have a good time with that kind of thing.
More: Every time we point to this situation, we get insulted as incels. Sorry, I'm a multi millionaire, so I can provide, muscular, so I don't look too bad and have my health in order, CEO so I have some social status, and my love life has been terrible, I'm thinking of going to prostitutes to close the loop on being treated like shit.
Clearly there's something wrong in the dating market, women don't want to make families anymore, they literally don't want kids, and those who do, it's with wifeveaters. I know, "it must be you", "all men find women so you're probably a cunt" — I get it, I get it. We're truely the lost souls of today's world.
The only thing keeping me alive is the idea of revenge against the people who insult us like this.
I don't doubt that social media and dating apps may have broken the "market", but if you're living for revenge then women can probably pick up on that.
Based on this one comment, my attempt at diagnosing what's going on in your situation is that you're probably relying too much on your money and job title to attract dates. As a result, the women you attract are approaching you transactionally from the very beginning. Nothing you wrote here told me you'd be a good person to raise kids with. I'm not a woman, but if I were, I'd be asking myself whether I thought you'd be helping with laundry or dishes or changing diapers when you didn't want to. I'd be worried you might get bored of that stuff, expect / demand sex, and justify it by claiming your job is too hard / important or you make all the money (even if you don't).
I'm definitely speculating quite a bit but I've met a lot of characters in my time and this is a very common pattern with a particular sort of middle-aged single man with a successful career.
Most people who are saying this to you are in a similar situation like yourself, but with that missing element you have.
If you have money, but they don't, then they think there must be your fault, because if they had money, they wouldn't be in this situation.
If you're muscular, but they're not, then they think if they were muscular, they wouldn't be in this situation.
The biggest insult in the incel community is not someone who gets laid, but that someone is a volcel larping as an incel (purely as an attempt to demoralize them)
I do agree that the dating market is broken, but only men can find a way out of this. And those women want to be saved too, just not the way you think.
FWIW, social status comes from “interestingness” rather than the pure application of time and money. Anything that is mostly grinding (a few million, muscles, etc) doesn’t clear that threshold. At best it checks a box.
If there isn’t a compelling story behind it, it probably doesn’t convey social status. Poor people with interesting lives often have far more success in the dating market than “successful” people that are indistinguishable from every other successful person. It is less about collecting credentials and more about writing a story that people want to read.
Fortunately, the bar for this is low. Most people have done few interesting things in their entire lives despite abundant opportunity. Many people that have lived interesting lives fail to tell the story. Having time and money expands the kind of story you can write but you still need the courage to live it.
I wish I would have figured this out earlier in my life than I did.
I've travelled around the world, lived in 4 countries, read hundreds of books, I played guitar. Only thing I don't have is smoking and tattoos.
I'm just slightly autistic, which is barely visible, but makes me socially untalented, I make small mistakes or don't notice clues, and here I am, 43, hating everyone. A small communication handicap at the beginning, that society took as an excuse to fail my life entirely. I'm happy to have lived so far, I couldn't guess at an earlier age how lengths people go hurting their fellow citizen.
One thing you will note is that most men killing themselves likely don’t have a woman or don’t have kids.
So what’s going on within the last century is that women have been changing. Feminism and female empowerment is on the rise worldwide and across every culture. Any country or civilization with high technology any first world country women are becoming more powerful and having more freedoms and breaking out of old gender roles. This is what’s causing the problem and it’s hard to talk about.
I want to say that what’s happening to women is not ethically a bad thing. Morally it’s good. But thousands of years of evolution has not prepared mankind for this shifted dynamic. Women are hypergamous in the sense that they want a man to go is more capable than them and has more resources and can take care of them. They are biologically programmed to find a husband who at worst is a partner in crime and at best a care taker that completely makes them feel safe… while men are seeking a partner to take care of a person to nurture. A woman will not take care of a man, at worst if she does take care of a man she expects actual care in return. A man trades care for mating privilege and that’s all. He provides the resources for survival, she opens her legs. While this is a gross simplification the overall sentiment is true-ish
Hypergamy is so strong that women would rather be single than be with a man of lower status. And typically she’s ok with that. That is the problem you see today. Historically not only was almost every man usually a higher status but a woman virtually had no choice but to marry a man if she valued survival. Men worked and women stayed home. That’s how it was setup. If a woman left a man she wouldn’t be able to hunt, farm or get a job in the old days. Now a woman can be ceo and a ceo isn’t going to want to be with a lowly engineer. You will note that women are actually acting rational with their choices here. It is men that are a bit more dumb in terms of mate selection. They’re willing to be with someone that will drag them down. Someone they have to take care of. It’s irrational and a bad deal from a rational perspective but biology designed us that way.
So as a result you get a lot of single men who want to kill themselves and a lot of single women who are fine with being single.
The thing that’s curious is why this phenomenon is happening worldwide? Is it because of feminism? Is it cultural transmission of the ideas of feminism? No it is not. Feminism is the result it is not the causal factor. In prehistoric times men hunt and do the hard labor. Women don’t want to do that shit. Mainly because they aren’t as strong as men. So it is actually historically in the women’s best interest to stick to her gender role of not hunting and plowing the goddamn field. The difference between then and now is technology. Now nobody plows the field. Now everything a man can do a woman can too. So feminism is really the result of all women around the world figuring this out. That’s why feminism suddenly happened worldwide this century across virtually every first world country no matter the culture. It’s the last 1% of human history and it coincides with the intense rise of human technology. Human technology equalizes men and women. That is what we are seeing today. If you are dating… this is what is going on. Women have changed and it is because of technology changing society to allow women to change.
Think of overfitting. We’ve evolved biologically to overfit specific gender roles and as a result as soon as that changed the mechanism begins to unravel. It’s no ones fault.
You will note it’s not just a problem with men killing themselves. What’s happening is a population crisis. Women don’t get with men, men are frustrated but also there’s no children. We are hitting population decline world wide as well. Children actually would’ve forced a lot of men and women together.
This isn’t historically true. Women used to work outside the home, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon that the nuclear family with a stay at home mother was the norm. So the basis of your argument is false
There simply is no reason to engage with the points you’re trying to make because they are all founded on a bed of lies and deception. If you feel insulted because people call you on your bullshit then tough shit I guess
Then don’t engage. The fact that you decided to engage to write this is a display of how malicious you are. You engage to hurt people. You don’t engage to learn or to see other view points.
Frankly when the topic is suicide people who lack empathy like you really should just exit the room entirely. You exacerbate the problem. I can guarantee you people who kill themselves have been verbally assaulted by people like you.
Maybe it will sound harsh, sorry for that, but I'm going to be real: people like you should be alone, and will be alone, no matter what happens with women rights in the future. If they are not choosing you now, they will not choose you because they got pregnant or something else. You will still be alone.
You talk about status, but you are here, on HN, where a lot of wealthy people are. You probably have more money than 99% of men. And you still can't get pussy. Look at the @eastbound guy, multimillionaire, muscular, and still not getting pussy. You need something external to validate your shortcomings, and that's human.
Go outside and look at every straight couple that you see. Do you really believe that every one of them are higher status than you, and that's why you are alone? Do you really believe that every woman out there expects to be married to a multimillionaire handsome man? It's delusional, sorry
>Maybe it will sound harsh, sorry for that, but I'm going to be real: people like you should be alone, and will be alone, no matter what happens with women rights in the future. If they are not choosing you now, they will not choose you because they got pregnant or something else. You will still be alone.
I applaud your realness. And I sincerely hope it is completely real with no emotional bias. Tell me the truth like it is. Normally stuff like this gets flagged by dang in HN, but I disagree. If you feel it's true, it should be said.
That being said, there is an argument for making things impersonal. Talk about the state of the world, why needle in on the person making the argument and talk about his personal circumstance? It makes me think even though you CLAIM to be real, I think you're just emotional and trying to get an emotional response. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though.
>You talk about status, but you are here, on HN, where a lot of wealthy people are. You probably have more money than 99% of men. And you still can't get pussy. Look at the @eastbound guy, multimillionaire, muscular, and still not getting pussy. You need something external to validate your shortcomings, and that's human.
I don't get as much pussy as I like, nor do I get the girls that I really want. This is true. But I do get around. So this is not fully true.
>Go outside and look at every straight couple that you see. Do you really believe that every one of them are higher status than you, and that's why you are alone?
NO. Dude you're projecting. I'm talking about the population crisis. I'm talking about suicide rates. All my arguments refer to that, it doesn't even touch other couples or "status" or multimillionars. You're completely wrong on where this argument is coming from.
> So actually I think the real solution to these problems is actually banning birth control.
Anytime where someone thinks the solution to a problem is taking away choices from another group it's time to be very very suspicious to say the least.
There's a lot of points in this post that are common talking points in the "manosphere":
> you get a lot of single men who want to kill themselves and a lot of single women who are fine with being single
> What’s happening is a population crisis. Women don’t get with men, men are frustrated but also there’s no children.
These are not widely accepted viewpoints.
It's impossible to prove or disprove something like these are "wrong" or "right", but blaming women for male unhappiness is a prime tactic that is very similar to the common tactic of blaming an outgroup. It's not a good thing!
>Anytime where someone thinks the solution to a problem is taking away choices from another group it's time to be very very suspicious to say the least.
Is it? Nature and evolution never gave us the choice for millions of years. We only had the choice for the last century and for the first time in human history, humanity is hitting population decline. Asia, notably Korea, Japan, and china are hitting it first.
>These are not widely accepted viewpoints.
Who cares about widely accepted? How about let's talk truth. Is it real or not real? HN has been widely wrong about AI and self driving cars, The US population voted for trump and has been largely wrong. Widely accepted is not widely true.
>It's impossible to prove or disprove something like these are "wrong" or "right", but blaming women for male unhappiness is a prime tactic that is very similar to the common tactic of blaming an outgroup. It's not a good thing!
WE don't need to prove anything. It's just a discussion. Why don't you take more time to read what I wrote. I never BLAMED women. My argument is women are changing and that is the cause of a lot of problems. Take a closer look, I said women becoming more empowered and the rise of feminism ARE good things... it's morally right. But their are intrinsic biological consequences because things have not been this way biologically.
Think of it like how the female praying mantis eating the male praying mantis after they mate. That is NOT a morally right action. But it happens because of biology. The intrinsic dilemma here is nature vs. ethics. By creating a more ethical society we have exited gender norms established by nature for millions of years. We give people choice which is ethical, but orgasms and sex were CLEARLY biologically evolved to be addictive and remove choice from the equation.
So what is the correct action here? Be ethical or align our behavior with biological norms which are clearly unethical? I don't actually know.
Look up the population decline, it's a real thing. You can buy a house for 10k in Japan due to massive population loss. It's a real problem that will affect all of us WITHIN out lifetimes. Birth control is definitely a causal factor within it.
>> Anytime where someone thinks the solution to a problem is taking away choices from another group it's time to be very very suspicious to say the least.
> Is it?
Yes.
To quote you: "get over the idea that our biology is aligned with ethics."
> Nature and evolution never gave us the choice for millions of years. We only had the choice for the last century and for the first time in human history, humanity is hitting population decline. Asia, notably Korea, Japan, and china are hitting it first.
You say this like population decline is a bad thing.
It's true that it upends economic growth that is based on population growth.
Beyond that it's not particularly clear cut.
> Also Why don't you take more time to read what I wrote. I never BLAMED women.
And yet your solution is to make them have more children ("So actually I think the real solution to these problems is actually banning birth control.), and "Women don’t get with men, men are frustrated but also there’s no children"
You causal chain clearly makes women responsible: you argue that population growth is the solution to male suicide(!!), that women "don't get with men", and therefore the solution to the male suicide problem is to ban birth control.
To make it crystal clear:
There is no evidence that shrinking population leads to male suicide.
There are good arguments that a shrinking population is a good thing.
This pulls out the two pillars that support your argument for banning birth control.
>get over the idea that our biology is aligned with ethics.
This quote is true. See praying mantis example. Plenty of examples where the male or female dies sacrificing itself for the next generation. These are not ethical features of biology. They are practical and they factually exist.
>You say this like population decline is a bad thing.
It is. The eventual end of population decline is the decline of civilization and eventually the end of humanity. The first part we face in our lifetimes is economic decline, joblessness, and more.
>Beyond that it's not particularly clear cut.
It's clear cut, within your lifetime you will see a 1st world country be brought down by a complete lack of people. Japan or Korea. We already see the effects in the country. Entire towns and villages vanishing. You just need to scale that up to see what happens next. This is not theoretical. It is happening in front of our eyes.
>And yet your solution is to make them have more children
That's not blame. When a woman has children, so does a man. The man bares the same responsibility.
>You causal chain clearly makes women responsible
It does. They aren't responsible willingly. It's not that they made a bad choice and they become responsible. It's a logistical fact. For example if your car breaks down and you can't drive it. The thing responsible for breaking down is the car. But is it the cars fault? No. Women are the causal source, but it's not their fault.
If you want to make things more fair. Porn is a causal factor from the male side. It keeps a lot of males perpetually single.
>There is no evidence that shrinking population leads to male suicide.
I never claimed this. My claim is that men BEING single and not able to find a male or a girlfriend or a wife increases suicide rates. Think about it. It's a very VERY realistic proposition.
>There are good arguments that a shrinking population is a good thing.
There is FACTUAL on the GROUND realities that show currently how bad it is.
>This pulls out the two pillars that support your argument for banning birth control.
>> You say this like population decline is a bad thing.
> It is. The eventual end of population decline is the decline of civilization and eventually the end of humanity. The first part we face in our lifetimes is economic decline, joblessness, and more.
That's a ridiculous claim unsupported by any evidence.
The counter argument has much stronger backing: If we measure "civilization" by standard of living and technological progress then they are associated with lower birth rates.
>>You causal chain clearly makes women responsible
> It does. They aren't responsible willingly.
Like I said - blaming women.
> My claim is that men BEING single and not able to find a male or a girlfriend or a wife increases suicide rates. Think about it. It's a very VERY realistic proposition.
The evidence doesn't show this. eg:
> Suicide fatality rate was higher in married people compared to the unmarried, however, after adjusting for age as a determinant factor, no significant difference was observed between the 2 groups.
There is some evidence that divorce increases suicide amongst men:
> Divorce did matter in a negative way, but only for men. What seems important about divorce is not that the men end up unmarried. Remember that the men who had always been single were no more likely to kill themselves than the men who were currently married. Instead, having once been married and then getting divorced seems to be the risk – again, only for the men.
> That's a ridiculous claim unsupported by any evidence.
It’s called following the trendline. We have current rates of population decline and past rates of population decline and we do a projection and we get one of the few quantitative predictors in our statistical arsenal. All else is qualitative speculation.
> Like I said - blaming women
Are you reading what I wrote? Take a look at what I wrote again before starting shit.
> The evidence doesn't show this.
Among the suicides by men age 45 to 64 those are the divorced men. That is the age where divorces happen.
Marriage shouldn’t be banned. Condoms should.
And outside of this. Your rude ass comments and witch hunt like accusations were uncalled for.
I guess it's hard to understand what women want...
CEO could mean no free time to spend with her. Muscular for what? Are you climbing or doing some other interesting sport or just spend time at the gym?
A lot of money, but are you doing something good with it? Helping people? At least some women think that's admirable.
I don't know you personally, so it's just some general vibe I've gotten from your post. No offense, maybe none of this is you but if it is it might be worth thinking about.
The world is large. I will say what I used to say when people complained about how awful dating was pre social media, if you are shopping at a bar, it is like shopping in the gutter, you may find a gem but more often it is shit.
There are alot of women who want kids but they likely are not in the pool you engage with. Go to a conservative US christian state, join a church, engage with the community, it is easy. I bet the issue is that you do in fact have a standard and that standard is the barrier.
If it helps, almost every wealthy man i have known engaged with escorts or prostitutes at some point so I wouldnt view it as shameful and who knows, you may learn something about yourself in the process.
> Go to a conservative US christian state, join a church
While this strategy can work, it also means your kids will likely be taught hell is a real place most of humanity will go to suffer in eternal flames. (Possibly from a very young age.) Does not help with mental health.
Red states also have quite a lot of racism, IME. So be sure to be at least passing as white and with little or no accent.
> I bet the issue is that you do in fact have a standard and that standard is the barrier.
Among the guys I've known this seems to be the biggest factor. Of course ladies have their own expectations. Everyone seems to relax them as they get older.
Guys that do have families are willing to give up a lot too. Things I was never really willing to give up.
I have dated a lot and there is one woman I would have wanted kids with. She wasn't into that with me though.
That is not a problem with the woman, that is a problem with me.
I know a few guys in this same situation. It is not a problem with the dating market, it is a type of narcissism that clouds judgement and sets standards that can't be met.
It is hard to see it in yourself until you get a vasectomy.
> The only thing keeping me alive is the idea of revenge against the people who insult us like this.
Pretty major red flag there. As an awkward, small, unattractive teen I could've related. Yet the best thing was letting it go and finding other people whom I could connect with.
I'm sorry, but it's pretty hard to believe that you have all these qualities and are still alone because of women or whatever. I've met so many horrible men that are married and have a family, and they are not millionaires, muscular or providers.
I would think those with kids at that age that wanted them worked backwards from that mission, and if they have a midlife crisis it's some version of having spent too much time working and on their kid and start spending their money on low-impact possibly expensive hobbies they'd have liked to do in their younger years, somewhat in denial of the fact that they sold their whole life to the man despite raising a kid.
But that sounds nice! Let me reword: after getting through the messy middle of establishing a career and weathering the insane time and money necessary to rear a young kid, a dude finds himself with a little more time and money, and doesn't know what to do with himself. He gets a fishing rod/road bike/membership at makerspace/skein of nice yarn and some circular needles/signs up for his first powerlifting meet. He makes new friends, shows his kid a new side of himself, and maybe gets a nice steelhead/race trinket/dining table/scarf/medal out of the whole thing.
Sure, seems like it would be a standard path in another time. The real personal crisis in that position these days is probably being forced to find a new career instead of or alongside raising a kid. Unless you get quite lucky, things can get dark very quickly. Job loss creates stress, prolonged unemployment might break up your relationship, lose access to the kid maybe, and suddenly you're destitute. It's hard to see prospects for normal people getting better, and it makes more sense to avoid the kid and the house.
I can imagine having kids is super rewarding, but also amplifies the pressure of being a provider probably 100x. In uncertain times, I think a lot of us aren't sure how we'll provide for ourselves in ~5 years, let alone a tiny dude, which plays into the decision to not have kids.
I'm still gainfully employed, and business is ripping, but a huge part of my value as a professional got totally vaporized over the last year. So part of me is extremely glad I don't have kids right now, and part of me is really angry that everything feeling so unstable is leading to our decision. I know that even in the best time it's a scary decision, but the general vibe is flipping people (like me) who are at the margin.
> a huge part of my value as a professional got totally vaporized over the last year
We are all descendants of like 1,000 individuals who kept having lil babies through an ice age. There are mobile home parks full of happy kids dotting my town, populated by people who paint houses and do landscaping and make ends meet. I have no idea what your profession is or what your housing situation is, so maybe that's already where you are. My wife and I talk gratitude a lot, and that includes being grateful that if we had to dig ditches to keep a double wide over our heads, we'd go ahead and do that and have some giggles with our little miracle in there.
The problem is that a house painting job is likely out of reach for most ex-S{R,W}E types. Nobody wants a flabby desk jockey with programming and sysadmin experience for their open blue collar position.
The trick will be for all of us to find work somebody actually wants us for. If we can't, some kind of make-it-look-like-an-accident suicide is probably one of the least bad options for our families if they rely on us as the sole breadwinner. They can grieve, but they will get some insurance money and hopefully survive to live a somewhat dignified life.
Nah you're way off the mark here and this sounds scarily like how people feel when at their most bleak. I hope this is just you reflecting and not how you feel "in real life" - family needs family and kids need their parents. Kids need their parents even if they're broke and/or out of work.
I am in this awkward situation where I just had a baby, but at the same time feel I should work less and put less effort into work. But at the same time not being able to slow down.
I daydream about being fired with severance so I can spend more time with my little dude. But also deadly afraid of not being able to get another job when savings run out.
Congrats on baby and best of luck balancing this. In my limited experience it's the balancing that is the actual work that allows all the other domestic and professional work for this part of my life.
that's what I felt about moving to a different country, too, until I didn't.
I think these things are less consistent than is often stated, we just see them occur consistently among people with similar lives. The "mid life crisis" is also debunked and replaced by "existential crisis" since it can actually occur at any age, from teenager to elderly, and zero, one, or multiple times. Only in the classic life progression of a certain era, it typically occurred worst at around 40-45 so it got that label.
Yes, men who have children do go through nihilistic existential mid life crises too. That age has their biggest risk of cheating on their partners, fathering new children with work colleagues, walking away from marriage, developing drug and alcohol dependency, developing serious gambling problems and other worse things. Parenthood reduces but does not eliminate the risk of suicide in middle aged men, and parenthood plus long term joblessness is a common cause.
Midlife anxieties are real and nothing in particular prevents it.
Yes. Come on, I love my kid, but you can't seriously be asking this question. Fatherhood is in fact sometimes part of what they're so dissatisfied with.
I don't dismiss or discount your perspective but based on my social circle: Your experience of fatherhood is not the median. The variance is pretty high too.
I agree. I'm a father of two, and my existence didn't suddenly get meaningful when I had children. I always found it meaningful, only in the sense that I get one life and want to experience as much as I can while I have it. That is a big part of why I chose to have children, it seemed like basically *the* fundamental life experience. But for me, I didn't experience this sudden big gain in meaning that a lot of online fathers seem to have.
I also wasn't prepared for a bit of a curve ball and I have experienced a loss of self that hasn't recovered or been compensated for yet.
I often wish I felt like a lot of other online fathers, but I take comfort in knowing there are a lot of others out there like me who struggle with parenthood. I hope I figure it all out in time!
Only one kid and I can't pretend it is all sunshine and rainbows, but there are real moments that make some of the other things irrelevant. It is possible that I went into fatherhood older and with eyes wide open so it was less of an adjustment, but it still surprised me in how things slowly re-aligned. Meaning was basically a side-effect of near exclusive focus on someone else ( for me ).
And that was my long way to say, the struggle is real and we are all figuring it out in real time. gl out there
I’m grateful for your comment. I’m also a father of two, and the “loss of self” has frankly worsened over time (though my oldest isn’t even 4 yet).
After the second, I thought it would get better, and that a Contented Doting Father would emerge from the ruins of my previous life. That the attention and effort required would simply obliterate any trace of my past self, and with it, any longing for the spontaneity and lightness and frankly selfishness of my child-free life.
But that hasn’t happened. There are moments of grace and joy, and I love my kids so deeply it’s painful (he says, truthfully, but defensively, because an admission like this from a father usually doesn’t go over well).
But counterintuitively, returning to the topic of the thread, if I DO lose my career, I will be doubly grateful for my kids. Because they DO love me unconditionally, and I them; they don’t care about status games or anomie or anything resembling a “career.” Perhaps starting over in a new field and moving to a cheaper COL area would finally clear space for the Contented Doting Father.
Unsolicited pov. Don't do this to yourself. I don't doubt that there exists such a person, but it's not the norm and when it is observed I reckon it is as often someone feigning as it is anything else.
Love your kids and raise them as best you know how. That's the deal. That's enough. You are allowed space to miss aspects of your life before, and that may or may not fade.
I am also so grateful to hear this in response to my comment.
As far as I see it, I use the term "online fathers" in a rather cynical manner. In real life, I interact with parents who are struggling, I know some who are suffering from depression (I'm lucky to belong to a sports club where some dads unload). This is real life.
But go online and you'd think you're some sort of freak for not being completely transformed and having unconditional daily joy from being a dad.
By the way. The last week has been a good week. I've had a lot of work stress, but my children seem to have somehow sensed it and they're being extra kind to me, giving me lots of hugs and just wanting to be with me. It feels WONDERFUL. Like you, I love them more than I would have ever known, would literally die for them. But it is also ok to admit it is very hard, and there is a big loss of self and other aspects.
Kids loose interest in you as they age and do their own stuff. You are necessary for their survival, but they prefer company of peers. And then they leave.
All of that is normal, but you are left alone and if taking the kid somewhere was your only thing, you have nothing.
I had two kiddos by the time I as 23 and I'm in my late 40s now. I am super glad that they are off on their own, living their own successful lives and I am very proud of them.
You too will (hopefully) watch your children move away.
Personally, when I am down I've been feeling a little like I've finished the main quest in a video game. I can look to my kiddos and be happy that they are doing okay but I still have almost as much adult life in front of me as I have behind me.
While the philosophy degree I got when I was young has helped a lot, I'm middle age, twice-divorced, and haven't had (or needed) a "regular" job, bald (well, I rock a skullet and have 'aura' according to the youngesters), and I can't rock climb as hard as I used to. I don't really enjoy drinking anymore, and I don't enjoy many drugs at all. I've gotten to a position where it's hard to maintain the fantasies that make romantic partners appealing, and while I have deep and diverse friend groups, I still spend most of my time in a shack in the middle of nowhere writing music for no one.
When people shit-talk on humanities educations, it's been hard to keep my mouth shut because the real payoffs have been in being able to meet the long and large world with some equanimity and I feel incredibly privileged to have been so misguided in my early life that I got a deep and canonical education.
There are plenty of things that I can do- keeping with the video game metaphor, I feel like I am working through all possible side quests on hard mode. Being emancipated from my children means that I no longer have to earn very much money or even maintain a stable home if I don't enjoy it.
I bought some off grid land in the middle of nowhere and I am slowly getting utilities working in the shacks. I started doing way more direct political action, including getting an EMT cert so I could volunteer at the local free clinic. I have 4 bands and play 5-6 gigs a month and run an A/V company where I do another 2-3 gigs a month.
So, yeah, I've got a pretty good skill set, I have however easy a life that I choose, lots of engagement in my enclosure. I have kids I am proud of.
And even looking at all that, I look at even a couple of years and sometimes wonder "shit.. what I do all of this for?". And I know that in another 25 years I will still probably asking that question, wondering if there had been a better way to do the things.
Enjoy browsing stuff with your kiddos. That is indeed the important kind of activity. But also, understand that you too will (hopefully) face existential choices in the future.
Yeah I think having him later in my life and him still being a toddler just means "having kids" means wildly different things in our cases. In my case, the life altering pivots (getting sober, married, divorced) happened before meeting my wife with whom I had him. I guess I got extremely lucky having the nuclear life changer of a baby show up at the age where such a thing is welcome. We just started touring preschools and the rapid approach of a time where I'm not within 30 feet of him for 90% of the day is already a pretty daunting prospect.
Also to work so hard, and even when you have good luck as well, to see the people around you adapting their expectations so fast that they're blasé about what feels like amazing luck and success to you, and to realize that you can never satisfy them, only inevitably let them down when you experience setbacks.
>Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
The classic epitome of the mid life crisis has always been something along the lines of, "I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I didn't like, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and all I'm left with is money. My mortality is coming into view, my best years are behind me, and as I sit here in my big house with my fancy car, I realize I wasted all that time all chasing dollars."
That's a lot different than, "I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I didn't like, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and I'm left with nothing at all. I have no prospect for retirement, will likely become homeless and destitute when I am unable to continue working and/or am laid off, and their is no future."
I think this is a perfect description. The feelings continue across generations with no answer. Meanwhile society continues to shift underneath mens' feet. And still tries to claim it is a personal problem. The browbeating/apathy continues.
"I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I really loved, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and I'm still left with nothing at all"
I still got burned out.
Loving the career didn't change much.
Now the machines do what I loved to do. I had nothing, but at least I had pride and there was social recognition.
All vanities. Life lesson there.
I don't know what I was chasing, some sort of poetic output. I looked a famous people in this career, I just wanted to leave my name there.
But now I don't, I hate AI and I think its a bad path for humanity.
I guess I can still leave my name elsewhere, maybe I start the Butlerian Jihad somehow.
I imagine myself being the one bureaucrat in the Jihad that banned the use of CPUs with more power than a 80486.
That makes me happy and create a motive to still live.
Eh, I don't think today is really all that different from the last 100 years. We as software engineers may feel different as it's (maybe) our turn in the barrel.
Part of working through history from (only) 100 years ago is an impression of how quickly societies were changing then. This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
Which isn't to downplay the upheaval that people are in - it is definitely traumatic. But we've been through disruption before. Hopefully we'll make fewer costly mistakes this time...
> This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
I don't think we should wish such evil upon future generations. The industrial revolution was a terrible time to live through, and arguably was not beneficial in the end to humanity. I would be very happy if we never had such a change again.
We can separate the table clearing from how we treat the players of the previous game.
We don't have many coal miners any more. How do we treat the people who used to be coal miners, when we get to 100% clean power? If we are running society well, we give them a hero's sendoff and a nice comfortable retirement life. If we are running society poorly, we take away their homes and healthcare to punish them for not having jobs any more.
I have however run out of fucks and am ignorantly coasting and making optimal survival decisions only. Fuck the business. Fuck the career. Highly recommended.
Hah likewise. In the early 2003's I was accepted into two of the top compsci universities in Canada but was rejected by the government for a student loan (my parent's income was too high, the government said-- they should pay. thanks government, no shit).
So I put all my fucks into working my ass off. Started dishwashing. Became a cook. Then owned a bakery. Built up a portfolio, became a sysadmin for a large company. After 6 or 7 years the writing was on the wall that I'd be replaced with a call center and some low wagies so I left.
Been working a do-nothing laid back remote job for a year now and never happier. My only source of stress is thinking that giving a shit when I was young would actually lead somewhere when I had the rug pulled under me from the get-go.
Then owned a bakery.
That's my exit from software development.
Making cakes are much more soul fulfilling than writing code for soulless machines, let the machines write the code for themselves.
One day we get rid of the machines, scrap their metals to make plows to tend the fields.
Like the good old times.
Software development as a career was a utter mistake.
Corporations are a mistake.
Maybe AI can fix that, automate bureaucracy, put those useless managers out of work. But I doubt, the class division is too strong, they'll remove the bottom of the pyramid, but not the top.
I want to destroy the pyramid !
But I know just to wait, it will destroy itself because it can't understand human values.
All modern jobs are bullshit either way.
Yup, I tell my partner all the time. I just want the new era to be here already. I hate this waiting. I'm very annoyingly optimistic and think we're headed for post-scarcity.
In wealthy first-world countries we're already post-scarcity to a first approximation for stuff like food, clothing, and consumer electronics (I do understand that a minority of people are still desperately poor). But the stuff that people really covet will always be scarce. For example, AI can't create new real estate in prime locations.
I'm a bit of an AI pessimist, but creating new prime locations is one thing I do think AI could feasibly do. I have been involved in regeneration projects for 30 years and so many of the limiting factors could theoreticslly be eliminated by AI.
+1. Also maybe it's an age where responsibilities start to peak. More senior positions in the workplace, having children, marriage, etc.
I've had a few stressful periods lately where it felt or feels like I can't load any more on to my plate and I don't even have that many responsibilities - no kids either, just an accumulation of small and background things needing dealt with. I think I do understand people who do commit suicide to an extent - if you add the above normal stresses of life to some highly stressful life events like a breakup or divorce and throw kids etc into the mix - and hey why not a pile of work related stress too - I can absolutely see how people get pushed to the edge.
Modern society has not been arranged in a way that sets people up for success. Staring at device screens for more hours year on year likely doesn't help.
I mean, I kinda like having kids. Even if everything goes in the shitter economically ag least I have something in front of me that is obviously going well.
if things go in the shitter economically, often the wife tries to take the kids. it's a brutal reality, but in this life men are universally valued for what they can provide. if they cant provide, time is ticking until society kicks them to the curb.
> we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
Do you think this has changed from say 10 or 20 years ago? To me, I don't get the sense that there has been shift in the social definition of success. Maybe I'm missing something?
What's different is that people who thought they were basically on the "golden path" suddenly have no idea what their job looks like in five years or if it exists.
I agree for SWE specifically that AI is changing the career dramatically, and in a way that makes life less predictable. But I don’t know how the definition of success has changed - at least in America it still seems to be good professional job plus family.
Maybe spell it out in more detail? Forgive my inability to follow the argument.
My overall point is that what's happening in SWE right now is not happening (yet?) in other fields. And so we can't extrapolate from SWE experience to wider social experiance.
AI threatens to obliterate white-collar work entirely (whether it'll actually play out that way it's a possibility constantly talked about by executives and in the news), and that would plunge previously secure people into precarity. The idea this only applies to software engineers isn't true either.
> Do you think this has changed from say 10 or 20 years ago?
Yes, I do.
The goal is roughly the same: financial security, a good home, as much of a family as one cares to raise.
But for basically my entire life as a middle-aged American, there was a well-lit path to that goal:
1. Do good in high school.
2. Go to a university and get some four year degree. Obviously some degrees are duds, but basically any of them was considered a worthwhile investment.
3. Get a white collar job doing something intellectual. Make a decent salary at a stable company. Change jobs periodically as needed.
Now:
1. Doing well in high school is still important, but it is very easy for kids to get good grades using AI while not actually learning anything and not realizing they are setting themselves up for hardship.
2. College is so expensive now that determining which college and which degree is actually a sound financial investment is very hard. An 18 year-old-kid is being asked to make a financial choice with life-long consequences at a point when they have none of the expertise about their long-term goals to know what to do.
3. AI will very likely eliminate many of these jobs. People will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs and who knows what on your resume will actually help you stand out? Also, most of the blue collar jobs are already gone, either automated away (ag) or moved overseas (manufacturing).
There was also a sense in the US that even if the government wasn't great, it was at least functional and a source of relative stability run by somewhat mature adults. That is clearly no longer the case at the federal level.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I used to have plans for the future, I had the next couple of years mapped out. Then I tried AI and my plans simply dissolved. I have no idea what's going to happen now.
Feels like all the effort I put into coming this far got invalidated overnight. The writing is on the wall, and now I have about five years to get rich at any cost until it's all over. I'm firing in all directions, trying to hit something, anything.
I'm not sure a focus on getting rich is the answer, and you probably don't have 5 years before that window closes. I'm going to focus on trying to rebuild my business so that if other businesses were run the same way, we'd hopefully all keep most of our agency in the AI economy. If you can't build a business or a coop that way, activism on that front is probably a more valuable way to build yourself a brighter future.
I don't know. I'm just trying to make the best possible decisions with the information available to me.
If we achieve a post-scarcity society, then nothing I do today matters. If we don't, then hopefully having money will lead to a better outcome than not having it.
I am not sure if the success per se is the issue, but today things are definitely harder for many people compared to, say, 50 years ago for people of the same age. The available options for you, at age 55, are less with regards to success in general. And then it depends a lot on one's life too; for instance, are they single or not, do they have kids or not, and so forth.
> It's a psychologically very difficult time.
That's true, though it depends on how one handles that. But I think it is also clear that there are fewer options available when you are somewhat old already. People at age, say 20 to 25, may not feel a problem when they are gamers. At age 55, it is much harder to reason as to why you may wish to invest many hours per day into games; it just is not that productive, for most people (excluding e. g. playing to have fun, but that still does not answer the question of producitivity; I exclude professional gamers here, as they can often make a living just from donations, twitch etc.. but most people are not like that. Some of these gamers soon hit the age range 50+ by the way, I do watch a few of them every now and then.)
I'm sure some sociologists have written this already, but it seems to me that the people who commit suicide aren't those who are miserable and have few options. It's those who have lots and lots of options, but all options lead to unacceptably bad outcomes.
Microcredit in the third world is somewhat notorious for causing a rise in suicide rates. That fits the pattern: there's a huge number of things you can do to get money to pay back the loan, but if it gets out of hand, none of them get you remotely enough money to keep from sinking deeper into debt. Access to capital gives you many options - but it also makes it your fault when you didn't find the option which would lead you out of miserable poverty (which may not even exist!)
What any psychologist will probably tell you (at least, what all of them told me) is that clinical depression makes you bad at seeing options. Could it be that's in some sense a defense mechanism, trying to stop you from putting the really bad options on the table?
Okay. Can you think of some groups which have a low sense of agency/few options, yet have a high suicide rate because of their lack of purpose and identity?
I'm looking for evidence against this theory, so I'm very interested if you can find it. But I think it's going to be hard, because they're going to be correlated: if you have a weak sense of self and purpose, then very likely your options will all seem bad too. And even if you have a strong sense of who you are and what your purpose is, failing to live up to the identity society and yourself assign to you (because all the options you have fail at living up to it) then you could well call that "having your identity taken away from your".
> I'm sure some sociologists have written this already, but it seems to me that the people who commit suicide aren't those who are miserable and have few options. It's those who have lots and lots of options, but all options lead to unacceptably bad outcomes.
People don't all commit suicide for the same reasons. Durkheim's book Suicide which in some ways created the idea of sociology itself categorizes four types of suicide.
Durkheim's classification works as a description, but doesn't seem very good to predict which groups will have high suicide rates. Suicide follows some very odd patterns. For instance
* Black Americans have low suicide rates, lower than white Americans, who in turn have lower than indigenous Americans.
* The children of actors and celebrities have high suicide rates.
* Men have higher suicide rates than women.
* Wealthier countries seem to generally have higher suicide rates than poorer countries, but inside a country the poor usually have higher suicide rate than the rich.
* People with schizophrenia have sky-high suicide rates
The only common thread I can think of is a sense of agency - which means thinking you have many options - with hopelessness. When you can do a lot (or at least you think you can, or society thinks you can), but none of it helps with the things that matter to you.
* Victims of racism may paradoxically be somewhat shielded from suicidal despair from low expectations. But when racism comes with heavy romanticizing (e.g. "noble savage", "ancient proud culture"), expectations are not low. Yet, it's all too understandable why someone would want internalize these romantic, often openly envied identities, even when they're completely at odds with their material situation. You can't live up to it yet you feel like it's all you have.
* Children of e.g. wealthy actors are materially very comfortable and safe, and clearly have lots of agency and choice - but what do they want, when they don't need to strive for wealth, any social acclaim they earn may be tainted by the suspicion that they didn't earn it fairly, and they in any case are unlikely to surpass their parents?
* One typical schizophrenia symptom is sense of agency disturbances. They often feel like they are in control of things they aren't, or don't have control of things which they do. The former, combined with seeing bad things happen (for instance on TV) can really devastate them.
Sorry but it has very little to do with expectations. As a middle aged man you have very little opportunity to start a new career (regardless if there is even any remaining soon). In an absolutely objective way, physically and socially.
I disagree with a lot of these social analysis texts because I think they misunderstand a fundamental premise. There is no pressure from society today, on the contrary. You had that when we were living in villages where everyone knew each other and it is what city dwellers escaped from.
But this never had been reevaluated. Modern societies are detached, nobody really cares what you do, you don't know your neighbours, you have no "third place" or common place any more.
So norms and rules are far less pronounced than in any other time in human history, far less so.
If you go out without pants in a big city, very few people would care. In better situated parts, you can expect that the police will probably pick you up. In less fortunate environments, you would just be pantless.
This is the opposite of expectations and pressures. I think many just aren't really part of a society or environment any more.
For some that is a great loss while others strive in this state as well. For many having some kind of responsibility is a very important part of their lives, but modern societies offer little here. We optimise for as little attachment as possible to stay flexible and dynamic. That of course can be a pressure as well, but not in the sense it is often suggested.
But summarised I think the problem is fundamentally misunderstood: Society doesn't put pressure on anyone, society simply stopped caring about you. I think this is what most societal analysts get completely wrong.
>There is no pressure from society today, on the contrary.
What!?
The examples you give implies people are ok with being bums on the street (and if you think that life is "easy", boy, you're massively detached from reality).
Have you heard that a record number of people still live with their parents after 30?
Have your heard that a record number of people do not own homes these days? It has never been worse historically.
Have you heard that entire professions are being rendered obsolete due to AI and other economic factors?
Are you aware that almost nobody who is middle-aged (the demographic of TFA) will retire with enough money to make a living off it?
Explain to me how is that a chill, no-pressure life? I do not see it.
Yeah sure, you might try to "akshually" your way into "but I'm talking about social pressure", but all of those things are social in nature.
He means for normal people, sure if you go around assaulting people like you could in the unenlightened times you get more pressure. What you both mean by "pressure" is oversocialization you are just looking at 2 sides of the same coin.
The point of society you can increase "true freedom" by restricting people's ability to act arbitrarily, so called "naive freedom". If people can't accept that then they can go live in the woods (not anymore), the ocean, the moon? mars? or end it.
From time immemorial the winners shaped society what do you think happened to the losers? Just because we leave them alive now doesn't mean they can live in the new world.
Also "highest ever" among some specific arbitrary demographic isn't very meaningful enough to draw out anything beyond free association.
> "highest ever" among some specific arbitrary demographic isn't very meaningful
It's meaningful if you do actually happen to be of that demographic. It's no longer arbitrary then, sure, but I do care quite a lot if something bad is affecting men because I'm one of those.
Not only that, but many of the people I care most about in the world are men too ! probably a bit over half!
> The examples you give implies people are ok with being bums on the street (and if you think that life is "easy", boy, you're massively detached from reality).
I think you need to separate these issues. Economic pressure is a separate concern that doesn't stem from a more arbitrary source. A society can and should shield you from it, but doing so will always create societal expectations on someone else.
If you cannot provide for yourself, someone else has to do so. That someone else technically might be subjected to societal expectations to not leave you behind because he has the means to do so. Mothers still have large expectation on them on how they have to treat their children. If those run around freely, you will get a lot pressure in the US. Quite a silly country. But I believe this is an exception to the general development.
I separate purely economic pressure from the moral and ethical requirements you have today and these are clearly declining in my opinion. These were always subjected to change, but usually expectations get exchanged for new ones and old ones are done away with.
Weird gender science, middle eastern war or domestic politics experts are loud and they do indeed put forward expectations. But their ambitions aren't generally awarded by society, on the contrary. Sometimes for very good reason, sometimes not. But generally there are far less expectations for behaviour, expression, opinions. Also sometimes for good reason and sometimes not.
I think most societies lost expectations and care less about their environment (no in the ecological sense, but that too...).
Certainly the level of detachment and alienation has been growing for a long time and is now at quite an extreme. I’m not sure that I would characterize that by saying there is less societal pressure overall though. People feel pressure for lots of reasons and it doesn’t necessarily require the judgment of another individual observing them.
on the one hand, we're detached; on the other hand, social media in particular -- and the media in general -- has increased the amount of pressure and painted a picture of "who you should be". The expectations are greater than ever because we are subjected to the knowledge of the expectations of everyone across the globe, and most of what we see are the "highlight reels" of the successes (or people trying to sell us something to be successful).
Contrary to your premise, society today applies tremendous pressure because our awareness and the continuous bombardment of information, amplifies it. And unless you decide to go and live off grid, or you have a personality such as you can say FU to the world on a daily basis, it's impossible to escape.
there is a lot of pressure from women because of their hypergamous nature. As they make more and more money get better careers, thair mating pool of mdn they want and who also want them shrinks substantially
true but the pieces we value are also being pried from our hands.
I also don't think it compares to the industrial revolution, these are primarily sociological conditions - these suicidality figures predate the current AI implications.
No. All that would apply to women too. Men are abused in the West, oh for a few decades now. Women are taking all the college slots, taking most of the new job openings, having more sex and offspring, have more friends, are favored by the legal system, celebrated in the media rather than mocked and derided. Women have a lot of pent up rage after hundreds of years of their own abuse, now that the tables have turned, they are holding the whip hand now as it were…. It’s not anomie.
They aren't holding the whip unless you give them the whip. Biologically you are the one with leverage. Probably economically too. You're the one doing this to yourself. Either stop doing it to yourself, or stop complaining about it
That is a very interested lens to view this issue through, I hadn't considered that! I'm not quite that age, though I think my age can be discerned from my post history lol, but even outside of being generally impacted by this, the biggest impact I've felt has been how others around me are reacting. Half a dozen INCREDIBLE engineers that I used to work with left explicitly because they don't like how AI is changing the industry.
I don't know, it feels to me, in my limited scope of experience and view, that things are getting a lot worse, very quickly, and it frightens the hell out of me.
There are numerous NDE reports that say people who commit suicide go through extreme agony after they die. It’s never an option. Tell this to anyone who thinks about this mistake and it may help him. Although he should do his own part of searching and listening to such stories to understand how big of a mistake this is.
> A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game
Reminds me of this idea about "sport" / "competition" from the parenting book, The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik. She says that children must be encouraged to explore, not exploit, without any end goal in mind. This lets them figure out the world around them and how they can affect it.
As "exploitation" (competition) is a means to use specific knowledge (performance) to achieve goals (progress), it will tend to have winners & losers. "Exploration", otoh, is choosing among umpteen pathways to growth and learning.
Wow just a short reading of this wikipedia is fascinating. It reminds me of a thought I had years ago about what is lost with the introduction of abstracted currency (i.e. dollars). I assume this is an established concept, but when you barter with someone, besides the transaction, you learn about what that person needs. With abstracted currency, this information doesn't get transferred.
Some of my friends found your post misogynic which I did not agree, causing a long discussion. It is due to the focus on the middle aged men. Do you think this challenges are gender specific?
To anyone with a degree not in software, you can pivot to a hands-on job. I'm a technician for factory equipment. AI is not replacing me for a long time.
I'm an absolute doofus in the physical realm. No hand eye coordination of any kind. No common sense. No social skills or ability to read and understand humans.
In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.
I'm staring down the barrel of this particular prospect lately. I struggled through my twenties living with family until I finally managed to get my bachelor's degree and a job with a really solid company/team/product line. That silo of the business was then sold off to private equity, and it was fine for a while, but now the owners have been ensorcelled by the song of a C-list "rock star CEO" who has no respect for the team or the product line and very definitely has no sense of where the inertia lies when he keeps jerking the steering wheel of this particular vehicle. It's fucking exhausting to have to hold my tongue in meetings when I so badly want to say "it's late because you decided to delay it when it was about to be done, and then a couple months later you decided that it was urgent and had to be done ASAP, and then you decided to reassign staff to an initiative that you just made up with no actual product definition. But that would get me fired.
Remember, class, because this will be on the test: capitalism is the superior economic system because it elevates people who allocate capital efficiently. Just don't ever look too closely at the input and output functions of any such definition of "efficiency" (hint: they conveniently tend to elevate people who are skilled at flattering capital owners).
I have noticed a real lack of qualified car mechanics. I mean people that can actually fix something in a car instead of just swapping pieces. Maybe that will be my next career.
Don't know where to start, though.
The graph shows that suicides overall are down from 30 years ago, while the same cohort that was higher in 1985-2005 (25-44) is now higher in 2005-2025 (45-64). Perhaps there is something about the generation more than the situation or the age of the individual.
The childhood lead exposure generation (not being flippant; it may also be why we engaged in the worst crime spree in history as teens and young adults).
I'm 40 and am accepting I will be single forever. I'm in shape / constantly lifting weights, dress well, work hard on maintaining a good attitude, and am financially stable etc. But not a great face, and extremely skinny (Think Oppenheimer or Bin Laden), am not funny or charismatic, and am not into dogs. Dating is a kick in the butt. Women don't "Feel the spark"
Go to meetups instead via meetup.com and also look for local group activities happening on EventBrite - don't make finding a partner the focus or even the objective - go to a ton of meetups doing the things you love doing.
Online dating had wrecked mating except for the most attractive 5%.
People form relationships doing common interests and having shared experiences. Have shared experiences with people and take finding a partner off the agenda - just enjoy the company of others. You never know what might happen but don't go looking for it.
The best thing you do is to just grow your network until you find someone you like.
Whenever I go out, I always collect phone numbers and contacts if I can.
Before you know it, you have 100s of people on your phone. Befriending women is also excellent, they can introduce you to other women if they feel like you are worthy!
I have a number of family and friends who met online through video games or through online matchmaking websites (and one even through a dating app, starts with an H).
Successful, long term, loving and happy relationships. Not top 5% most attractive people. Mostly nerds, some overweight, some not.
A helpful thought for me was that literally everyone could reject you, except one person, and that's all you need is just that one person. Also along with that principle, maybe 99% of people actually aren't a good match for me, so if I mostly don't "click" with other people, that's totally fine — I don't know if I would want to be with 99% of possible people myself even if they were interested in me. It's just about finding the right kind of person that's similar to you. People with unique attributes may find someone else with the same unique attributes, or the other person may possess unique attributes that might somehow be a good fit for your unique attributes.
I am funny and at least somewhat charismatic but I'm gay and gay dating is simply broken. Both online and physical places focus on quick, cheap, sexual encounters. Meeting dudes outside of gay spaces results in max 5% chance that dude is also gay, which is a pathetic thing to be working with. I'm really not convinced that this life is worth living.
The most terrifying realization is that I've already spent pretty much half of my life yearning for love and not getting it. Even if I magically get married soon, it'll feel like a consolation prize.
That is a great anecdote/perspective to hear, although depressing. My working model was that gay dating is completely different from straight dating; the dynamics which I lament don't apply, but... different from a bad scenario doesn't mean a good one, which I think is going on!
How are you extremely skinny? Do you have a digestive issue or something?
I struggled with weight gain for many years due to crippling IBS but I found some relief while bulking from a certain probiotic. (Got lucky - dozens of things I tried including fodmap, etc. never worked. That said, the probiotic only helps - not solves... and doesn't solve my absorption issues)
Surgery, steroids, and a serious bulk are in order if you're serious.
Great question! No medically diagosed/diagnosable condition for better or for worse; someone's got to represent the 3σ end of the normal distribution right?
I can make the pounds go up or down in a few weeks by eating more or less, but it goes mostly to the gut (Skinny fat = probably the worst look), and just enough to pad the arm muscles so it looks like I've never been to the gym in my life! Lately have just been embracing it and staying lean (Looks like 12% maybe?) while working out as much as I can stand.
I was about to do the steroids... (low dose test) I suspect that would genuinely fix it. But when I got the blood test back, test was smack in the middle of the normal range! So would have to shop around a bit, and trying not to lose my hair. But may still do it. A bulk counter-intuitively is not the move because it would just put me back in skinny-fat land.
This is so weird to me if you're always working out as you said. What are you doing at the gym? Compound barbell movements with heavy weights will absolutely prevent this and get you jacked in the right places.
It's not guaranteed. People are abnormal. I'm abnormal and don't gain muscle like others and I am constantly training to failure.
Gaining muscle becomes really complicated for some people since not everyone has the same hormones, androgen receptor density, myostatin levels, etc. Some people grow like freaks and others never do. I can sympathize but I am skeptical of 99% of people since most I've seen also don't do every thing right and it's clear that's usually the issue.
- Dumbell and smith machine squats
- 10-30 degree incline bench
- Dumbell lunges
- Overhead press with dumbells
- Planks
- Situps: Straight, bent, and normal legs
- Dead hangs
- Pullups with 3 grips
- Leg lifts while hanging
- Lat raises, forward and bent over
- Behind-the-back cable extensions
- Tricip cable pulldowns
- SKull crushers
- Dumbell curls, one hand at a time
That is way too much, of the wrong type. You're doing a lot of isolation work, but really you should be focusing on compound lifts with the barbell. Check out Stronglifts 5x5 for example.
Valid. Part of the problem is, I'm working with what I have in the apartment and apartment gym; the best workout is the one you can do on the way to the bathroom / between desk chair and washing the dishes / continuously throughout the day whenever you have a moment, or after work with no hassle? But it's a tradeoff, as you imply. The other aspect is, I've been training with appearance (especially to women) in mind as that's the goal, e.g. with extra attention to lats, upper chest, and delts. Would love to/should do more compound lift. (Don't have a full bar available atm)
> the best workout is the one you can do on the way to the bathroom
Absolutely not. This is what you tell sedentary people to get them to move a bit. For your purpose of looking good, you're wasting your time. You need to add weight every workout.
> I've been training with appearance (especially to women) in mind
That is the wrong mindset, but then again what I told you earlier will give you the appearance you seek. Seriously just go to a proper gym with a barbell.
You can avoid the downsides by being very informed. Sounds like you're still early in the journey.
I sympathize with being 3 sigma on the distribution... I'm four sigma out myself. My total T is around 1200ng/dl with most everything in my bloodwork related to hormones being a genetic freak. And, yes, I'm natural. Even with my extremely high T - probably twice yours - I struggle to gain any muscle at all and look like I've never lifted a weight in my life.
I'm still doing steroids next year because I'm tired of not seeing results for my insane effort.
If you're just growing in the stomach then you're doing something wrong. Check macros - should be overly high protein. Eat only 500 calories surplus per day. Your stomach will get larger just from food volume. Your stomach will always be large if you're on a bulk - it's supposed to be full all the time.
After you gain 20lb over about 20 weeks - reasses. As it is - it sounds like you haven't done really serious tracking. When I'm bulking/cutting - I don't eat anything unless every ingredient goes on a scale and I track everything down to the gram. One way to make less lifestyle less painful is to do meal prep and label all your meal tins with the macros. (Or just be obnoxious and measure everything out where each tin is the exact same - harder to do)
Get a dexascan a couple weeks into your bulk then a couple months in. You'll be able to tell if you're only gaining fat or if you're gaining lean body mass. Same process with cutting. Your eyes might not be well trained.
That is a fantastic insight, and a wild natural T level, especially with the low muscle gain! (As you inferred I measured at 650ng/dL with sample size 1; not sure how it flows with time; didn't get a free-test measurement, but should do that; kind of curious how that plays into your situation too) I was expecting to measure low based on the muscle thing + generally low-superficial-T features like minimal facial hair, and low body hair/thin eyebrows, then would have gone straight to it, but... I paused to reconsider after the measurement.
Doctors don't take stuff like this seriously (Varies wildly, but I have a number of family/friends who are doctors, and was in a military field under flight doc supervision/physicals for most of my career). I imagine it's not on their list of medically significant conditions as it's a superficial one. They deal with things that cause immediate or future health problems (or med disqualification for the job), or effect quality-of-life directly. Being extremely skinny (High or normal test for us respectively!) doesn't register as it's superficial/aesthetic. I wonder if your hormone-related identification would be more actionable as you have that number? While 6'2 / 130lbs (Not sure your example) is extremely rare, without any direct consequences on health, it doesn't register. Nothing to fail me on a physical for, no treatment plans that fit, and doesn't pattern match with people checking into hospital.
I think re growing the stomach - I meant more that responds very quickly to changes in diet in either direction; I can go from pudgy/belly to flat abs in a few weeks. I'm hoping the ab work will help a bit with overall look in well-fitting clothes or shirtless, and help with rib flare, but it's probably skippable compared to the bigger lifts.
For the macros, you're right: I have not being doing any tracking. I have been (For the past 6 months when I did a big shift) eating slowly, and paying attention to hunger/satiation signals. No longer finishing a meal just because it tastes good, if I'm no longer hungry. I have cut out all carbs-sans-fiber. No sugary foods (other than fruit, dark chocolate etc), no refined grains unless eating out. Lots of veggies, meat, eggs, and fruit + whey shakes. So, high protein, high fiber, normalish carbs and fat. As you say, probably need to load on the protein more. (More meat/whey/eggs/peanut butter?) How has the tracking worked out for you; any insights? I'm curious about the effort involved, and accuracy of any numbers put in.
I should do the dex! I'm curious; just looked up; $130 near me; will do it! The 12% estimate was based on visual cues like bicep vein, muscle definition, appearance of facial bones/masceters etc. If I eat lazily, it goes up to probably 18-20%; then I look like I have never seen a gym. Would love to see the actual number.
What is stopping you from doing the steroids now? Test or a mix? Worried about the hairline / body hair or negative face shape changes? I am giving this one final push, then will probably hop in in 1-2 years if this still isn't working. My lifts have stayed the same or gone slightly up while I've been getting lean. The lean thing for is a realization that I am accepting the build, and don't want to hide the muscles I have. I love the way I look without a shirt or in tight-fitting clothes now, but still have an extreme BMI.
Btw, that last point seems to be also one of those counter-intuitive things: For the ultra-skinny (Or maybe more acurrately for anyone who's lean, but has some muscles), looking good without a shirt or in form-fitting clothes is a completely different beast from not. Can go from "Looks fit" to "Doesn't know what a gym" is from a change of clothes alone!
Valid - no, and I should probably do that. You're right that it's worth trying, and I haven't done it. The short-term skinny fat / gut+love handles is obviously a non-factor if part of a bulk where I could remove it later.
No idea. Just kept trying shit from random reddits. One recommended something with a certain strain. The digestive advantage 4 in 1 seemed to help for a while. It has BC30, GBI30, 6086. I can't remember which was less common in probiotics but one of those apparently was the one that would help me.
I didn't even think that these things had "different strains" - I thought they were just random junk mail spam they'd throw in your gut but I guess some are concentrated with different bacteria that can help me. Honestly I should get back on it because I've been suffering greatly lately.
Just visit/move to Philippines/China or (South) East Asia in general, if you are 40 (and white) you will have absolutely zero problems to find someone who will make you happy, though I would be realistic about age difference, which will either make you walking ATM or real partner.
Unironically, i have experienced this unwillingly.
I am a westerner and recently traveled to some science conference and casually met this Indian girl (living in India, she travelled to the conference as well), about 24 years old and we clicked immediately. We ended up talking a lot and we had vastly more aligned life goals (having kids, starting a family etc) than i have with my average western female co-workers or women i meet outside work.
Unironically I’m starting to believe i might have to move east if i want to start a family.
in the west you have better odds the woman has similar or even higher living standard and income than you, so there is lower chance you will become walking ATM regardless of age difference (though obviously with 20 years younger woman it is very likely it will happen even in the west)
Hah yea odd examples, but they're the only two people I can think of who have my build. (I'm between them on height and total pounds, but that is the level of extreme skinny)
That's OK, most of the single woman I know don't care if you like pets or not. As for how you look that's not a huge problem - again most of those same women have expectations in the looks department that are best described as average. And you're gainfully employed! This is better and better.
The only thing I can suggest is to put yourself in a position to meet more women because the more actual real life women you meet the better the chance of finding one that feels that spark.
So far as I know (and maybe you can come up with more) there are two solid ways of meeting women. One is to hang out where they are. This is tricky because the closer this gets to a cattle call (think going out to a bar ) the more artificial and tricky this gets. Dating apps are like that but in spades.
Option two is those woman who didn't "feel the spark". Here me out.
Here's what you say. "This clearly isn't working out for you. But rather then this being a total loss, want to get to get together with some friends of mine and just hang out as friends?" or even, "Hey, you have friends - maybe there's no spark here but how about if I hang out with your friends?".
See, if you have female friends it's like another person helping you find someone to be not single with. Woman are a gregarious lot and they tend to both know a lot of people and to know a lot of women. I trust that it's not hard to see how this can work.
Eh, that's how it worked for me but your millage may vary.
Hah, I think this is regional, and age-dependent. I mentioned it because ~60% of my Hinge matches have 1 or more dogs, and about half of those have something explicitly stating "If you don't love dogs / my dog, it won't work". At least 2/6 pics will have the dog in it.
I am not suicidal and I am lucky to have loving people who I also love around. That said, with all the rapid changes in the software engineering industry and in life in general, I sometimes wonder what I am doing with my life and why.
It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.
I think part of the problem in that instance, might be "success" being necessary but not sufficient for "surviving and thriving"; and unfortunately sometimes that isn't explained along the way to even people who become conventionally successful (but, perhaps we can try to improve an awareness of the issue going forward for future gens)
I would have guessed middle-aged men and women, not just men. I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation.
Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting.
Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.
Thanks for this comment, because I think it's probably the only comment I've read where the hypothesis at least matches what is seen in the graph in the article, as it's really only men ages 45-64 who have seen a recent rise. Rates for younger men 25-44 have held steady for about the past 20 years and are significantly down since the mid 90s and early 00s. And yes, this is an all time high for men 45-64, but that's following a large dip for this age group around 95-2005, and the current rate is only slightly above where it was in 1980. And rates are significantly down compared to rates 30 years ago for men older than 65.
>I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation.
I agree, while most indicators should point to our lives being good overall, Millennials truly got screwed by their Boomer parent antics.
I feel like in a lot of important things, we suddenly went from being too young to being too old. Now we have responsibilities, heavier than our previous generation, but mostly lacked the support to build a stable foundation that can help taking care of those things.
It won't be as bad for GenZ/Alpha because Millenial parents are much more empathetic and supportive of their kids. Also, Boomers take care of their grandkids much more than their own kids, and also the Great Wealth Transfer will skip most Milennials and land directly over GenZ/Alpha.
I am overall optimistic on the outcome of AI, I think Alpha gen will live in a time of abundance and great opportunities. So, yeah, we were the shit gen between two great eras.
The world as we know it will end by the time GenZ/Alpha are "in charge", they will never get the opportunity to say anything
As we speak, kids have been rapped by covid, lockdowns, meaningless studies, now jobless, apparently futureless and meaningless; That's 5 criticals years of their lives that is lost forever and that this generation will never recover from;
> Great Wealth Transfer will skip most Milennials and land directly over GenZ/Alpha.
It appears the transfer is not to their kids or even grandkids. It's going to rich kids and grandkids of healthcare executives. Healthcare and insurance should be a nonprofit service of the government.
Crazy that medical issues can bankrupt an ever larger share of the population at any moment.
I’m bored of how shocked people are about this. It’s been going on decades now. Think of all the great and/or famous men that have killed themselves in the last 60 years. It stacks up quick. No one cares.
I solo founded and run a men's suicide prevention nonprofit organisation in the UK. It's early stage bootstrapped at the moment but I have long-term plans.
I've facilitated 200+ talking meetings at this organisation and another I was involved with previously. Anecdotally, the average attendee at the male-only meetings is ~45 years old, has some level of issues with personal and/or professional boundaries, has had suicidal ideation more than once, and has made plans for or attempted suicide more than once.
There is some form of survivorship bias in the above, but I get a lot of pride from our groups keeping men alive. We haven't lost anyone in 2 years.
Nice job. There's a group here in Australia who pass around crazy shirts with 'this is a conversation starter' aimed at men's suicide prevention. Neat marketing gimmick, maybe you can partner with them and use it. https://trademutt.com/pages/this-is-a-conversation-starter
Firstly can I give you a big hug for what you're doing.
Do you find that things such as the man-shed groups play an important part? I feel that life can be more isolating these days and where people move about more and life runs at a faster pace there is less time and fewer opportunities to fully relax and just "talk shit" with someone.
For me TV programmes like Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing are a reminder of how we should be spending some of our time.
>Firstly can I give you a big hug for what you're doing.
Always! Next time you're down in Cornwall, let me know!
>Do you find that things such as the man-shed groups play an important part?
Yes. There are a demographic of men who need to be solving/fixing/building, and that time (together) is therapeutic. My group offers a round table talking format, and it's built around common sense & lived experience with appropriate guard rails for group meetings. We also run walk & talk sessions where any man is welcome to join (with or without a well-behaved dog) for a stomp around.
This is where the 'straight ahead' conversations might happen, they're less confrontational than a round table thing. Both inside & outside events have the 'shoulder to shoulder' thing, that's a conscious decision.
>I feel that life can be more isolating these days and where people move about more and life runs at a faster pace there is less time and fewer opportunities to fully relax and just "talk shit" with someone.
I’m college educated, have a successful career doing things that I enjoy to a decent degree, have a wonderful house, wife and kid. If you showed my life to my younger self and asked “would you take this life?” I would have answered every single time wholeheartedly “yes! I’m living the dream!”
But I only recently truly accepted that the life I am living (and have created for myself and family) is actually the dream. We so often miss the greatest times in our lives because we are too focused on the unknowns of the future.
This rings true for me - I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to prevaricate over trivialities. Maybe it's rose colored glasses but those times feel very idyllic otherwise.
I think this rings true for many people, but the mind works in mysterious ways. There are folks who have nothing who are mentally well, and folks who have everything they ever wanted who are severely ill.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] threadCare to explain? I don't really understand what kind of hobby you could be talking about where this could be the case.
I exercise/lift weights, and you should too. My reps/effort/weight/PRs are a joke. I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com despite really fucking trying for ~6yrs now.
Many people are better than me at the EXACT SAME THING that I'm trying, at my bodyweight/age/sex. It doesn't discourage me. There is always room to improve. I track every workout, go to RPE 8-9, and try to do progressive overload. Seeing the numbers go up helps. I know it won't continue into infinity, especially as the decades go on... but yknow, I'm building a mentality here, not just a body. And when the weights go down, I'll be in the correct mental space for it.
I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting. I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else. But I do it anyway. I think it teaches me things about life.
The only true goal is to grow and be better than yesterday. Effort is the reward.
I don't hate every squat. In fact, it's (I can't believe I'm saying this) somewhat satisfying in the moment whenever I do decide to go RIR=0. I'm wiped, but like, in a "hell yeah I did that" way.
But starting a session? I'm still as reticent as I was on day 1 lol. Maybe someday I'll pick up a sport or something as the others suggest, but I love programming too much to pick up other hobbies >_>
But if you're in the mentality of _not wanting_ to have anything, then all the advice in the world will bounce off you.
My suggestion, then, is to work on that mentality. Do something to get you anything, to get you out of that "Many of us have nothing" mindset. Build momentum. Physically doing something is often what it takes to break a mental barrier. The mind spirals and digs a hole, especially at night. But you get to participate in life/society/people during the day, which is why doing bodily things affects the mind and can break its loops.
You won't "win" on the first attempt. But you'll make progress. And the real win-condition is to keep playing.
The first step is always the hardest. I wish you the best.
Not everyone needs to rip barbells off the floor, there's infinite ways of doing resistance training; whatever you can manage is likely to help your symptoms.
That's not the population. It is the average among other weightlifters which is where you would expect to be. Most of the population can't do a pull up.
Two questions: (1) Why do you loathe weightlifting? Is it painful, boring, etc.?
(2) If you dislike it so much, how do you find the motivation to continue? Personally, if my motivation is low to do a particular exercise (lift or cardio), I burnout quickly.
2) I don't use motivation or discipline. I use habit. I'm fairly busy, so my mantra is "bias towards action". I could sit there and stew about how much I hate the upcoming workout... or I can wake up, do my morning routine to an audiobook/podcast, eat breakfast while happily programming, NOT thinking about the day's workout, then transition sharply into it. When it's time, I just fucking do it. It's like flossing. I don't even have it on a schedule, because I don't want to think about "gotta start at X time". It starts when I reach a natural stopping point shortly after breakfast, whenever that is. I have literally never missed a workout in years so _something's_ working. (To be clear, there are obvious exceptions for travel/holidays/etc, I'm talking missing a workout due to a lack of "character".)
It helps that my gym is literally in the same room as my devbox. I launch a Claude prompt/whatever, do a set, repeat. Instead of doomscrolling between sessions, I bias towards action. I keep myself too busy to think about how much I don't want to exercise. The only time I let myself think about "god I hate this" is when I'm seconds from psyching myself up for a big lift. I know that if I let myself, I'll just stew and stew and grumble and bitch and make excuses. So I don't give myself that mental space. There's virtually 0 time between my favorite activity, then context switching to "alright let's get this". No space for the "ulgh" emotion to creep in.
To use an MCU Avenger's analogy, I'm _always_ angry. I'm always hate exercise. But I box it with what I love (programming), so I switch back and forth with zero time for the emotion to permeate.
Is that discipline? IDK. It doesn't feel like I'm bare-knuckle-holding-on-perserevering-despite-all-odds. I just don't mentallay dwell on it, and when my non-vibed custom exercise tracker beeps (it predates LLMs), saying it's been 3-4 minutes and I need to do the next set, I happily ignore it, finish my thought/prompt, then do the damned lift.
---
Negativity over, my favorite exercise is Zone 2 because the inclined treadmill is at my standing desk and I can happily work while being in The Zone (in both senses). Zone 2 is the best. A cheap $50 Craigslist treadmill + standing desk will burn an absolute fuckton of calories once you figure out how to walk (really its more a march) and type at the same time. Honestly I could (and have) Zone 2ed for up to 3hrs/day for weeks at a time. I reduced that because I got tired of eating so much food lol. Zone 2 is the best.
Then there's the weekly Nordic 4 by 4 which I apply the weightliftng mentality to.
1. How utterly dogshit the vast majority of code is.
2. How utterly dogshit some of the most important or famous products and services are under the hood.
So what if LLMs can do something better? Our entire field and industry has been built on 'good enough'. God knows how many programming 'masterpieces' are on Github with 0 stars and 0 users.
I am more excited about programming by hand now more than ever. While I do not know what the future has in store for us in terms of careers, I still think I will always program by hand for fun just because I enjoy the feel of the flow-state/getting lost in something.
Who can blame them?
After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?
And if you're wrinkled and frail at 55 years old then that's your own fault. Put on some sunscreen and go for a bike ride.
I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.
I wonder if the Old Testament gives you the same effect
Alcohol is incredibly dangerous after 40, particularly if you've got a history as a heavy drinker. I've had to cut back to virtually nothing as it's guaranteed to trigger anxiety and depressive episodes.
Almost all the premature deaths in my circle, including suicides, have been alcohol-linked.
Obviously, YMMV, everyone's different, but if anyone reading this thread is over 40, struggling, and still drinking regularly, taking a break can really help.
Wondering if I need to look out for something...
I don't believe in politics. For me left and right are all *the same*. Just a bunch of megalomaniacs wanting to hog power for themselves. This extremely hot take has made people call me more names and costed me more relationships than if I went out and started screaming slurs in a crowded street. Because I am a "fence sitter" or whatever.
And I just can't handle it anymore, I just went full recluse. I don't go into social media anymore, I don't talk to anyone at a personal level anymore. Outside of some github issues and some comments here, I don't touch socials anymore. I am just overwhelmed by the level of vitriol and hate the new internet is based on.
Even knowing this, people around me still called me all sorts of things for not having strong opinions on random political things or wars. How can I worry about that when I am going to die soon anyway? Got enough in my plate to think about global politics.
I also enjoy the new wave of AI stuff. It took a while but I finally got a little robot buddy like in scifi when I was little. Unfortunately it's such a negative thing outside of places like HN that I can't share that joy with most people. Also a lot of people can't seem to wrap their head around an artist that enjoys AI, as I mentioned in another post in the thread. I have to shut up about it pretty much everywhere.
Anyway, I digress...thank you.
Social media is poison, sure, but detaching from it doesn't mean you can get an IRL social life to replace it.
FWIW it’s not that hard to be a fence sitter and not advertise it to everyone. It sounds like either you’re hanging with the wrong people, or you’re the problem. I guess go back to playing with your toys!
I know friends and family with many kinds of beliefs, we don’t rehash why they believe those things every time we see each other. Humans are complex /shrug
"This is a bait comment". Shame on you.
See my other post in this thread, for example, replying to a Ukrainian who's finding that people he thought could be counted on can't be. I pointed out in that post that this is because one-third of our electorate is either brainwashed or malicious, one-third is willing to do what we can, and one-third can't be bothered to care either way.
Social media is a veil of manipulation, and bots. Do not misconstrue it as any kind of real or _productive_ politics. There is a signal there amongst the noise, but it's hard to make sense of if you do not have a coherent world model. You have to learn to cut through it if you want to keep your sanity.
My country has a very serious housing crisis, both the left and the right are contributing to it because both parties have multiple people who are "serial landlords" with several properties, so they only make laws that benefit the landlord. This is a known fact and there are huge protests ongoing about it to the point emergency elections have been called.
Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on. Like you have some ulterior motive or are a paid shill from the other side or making the logic leap to thinking you support the far-right for not choosing one of the two existing "teams". Everything has gone crazy.
That being said, I think it's worth noticing if one party does more bad things than the other and I also think speaking up with your values is worth it and maybe even a duty we owe the people who built this country before us.
Either way, your first responsibility is your own mental health so you have full support from this internet stranger.
Thank you, though. Very appreciated.
HN is social media, saner than most, but I still don't assume sincerity.
> Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on.
If you mean people online, then that's expected. It's what I meant by social media being unproductive. Hostility attracts engagement and makes it more visible.
National politics is heavily influenced by economic interests, including global capital. And as wealth concentrates so does political power. That doesn't mean ordinary citizens have no political agency though, don't underestimate the difference you can make in your local community.
My heart is with the people, not the corporations or the elites. I just feel none of the choices right now is for the people. I don't understand why that would make me "hate LGBT people or migrants". It just doesn't make sense to me. The team mentality of the whole thing has gone too far in my opinion. And I don't understand why people get so heated up for groups that don't care about them at the end of the day.
I don't even think I'll be alive to see another election after the emergency one next month though. So it's too late for me to make any meaningful change. So I'm just trying to use my remaining time to leave a bit of a legacy as an artist and programmer. Even if I enjoy AI. One thing doesn't cancel the other. I do mostly analog art and even have been pretty excited to try new tools now that my hand works again (surgeries obliterated my hands for a while and they are permanently blue-ish and cold now, but I regained some mobility this month). AI is for me "that thing I wanted since I was a kid when scifi had AIs doing stuff" and not a replacement for my craft. Even if a machine can make it for me, for me the fun is in doing it.
In fact, that whole thing is also another can of worms. People can't seem to understand I can be an artist AND enjoy AI. The moment I mention AI people start assuming I flood the world with slop and want to destroy artists, then they ask for proof that I'm an artist, I show them my work (impossible for an AI to replicate because it's mostly analog except for game sprites, and even then the style matches too much with the analog stuff), they go "but if you can draw like this why do you use AI!?? You should hate it because it's against you" and they can't conceive that for me it's just fun to tinker with it and test what it can do for fun. Like I should immediately take an anti-AI stance BECAUSE I am an artist. The AI is not replacing me because for me art is a form of expression and doing it is its own reward. It's just fun. Both things are fun to me. I don't see why they are exclusive.
It's like there's no room for human nuance and contradictions anymore. You have to be in a neat little box or else you are a bad person so it's right to fight you and hurt you. It's "justified", you know. Even if they are completely wrong, they already passed judgement.
Nihilism is a popular, vague pejorative today but philosophically it's a serious answer to exactly the manipulation, engagement-bait and juvenile techno-optimism of our age. Whenever you're at the end of some moral or social period active, not resentful or passive nihilism, is a palate cleanser and necessary condition for revaluation of all values.
The kind of middle aged men that tend to fall into despair or suicide in these times are usually people who rely on some identity provided to them that then crumbles. Job, money, house, status, 'how to be a man' etc. There's something they're supposed to be like and they're not, stability they took for granted just stops.
And we're in a period like this across many dimensions, political, technological etc. And if you want to be sane a dose of nihilism is fairly important so that you can go on and construct some sovereign answers to all these issues.
To be more precise, it was passive nihilism I was criticizing. That's the sentiment I sensed in the original comment.
Family members post absolute vitriol online. Then they want to make sure you read it and agree with them at thanksgiving dinner. Any type if civil discussion of differing views instantly devolves into name calling and insults.
Weird times.
As someone deep in nihilism and political cynicism, I can concur, this is no real solution.
The problem is I don't believe leaning into that world is a solution either, and anyone who says otherwise, sounds like my boomer parents who have Fox news streaming on their 80" TV that they update every year, in their 4500 sqft home.
I mean this genuinely and not to stoke a fire, comments advocating for leaning into the political world really feel naive and perhaps generational. Most younger people have a damn near impossible time feeling anything other than dread and sadness when thinking about the state of politics.
I'd love to have a genuine reason to be hopeful, but regardless of which party you believe in, it feels like we're all circling the drain here.
Disengagment among voters and inactive party members towards active party members.
Trying to get engagement is like pulling teeth. You could be in a commitee deciding a thing, inviting the public to a meeting discussion how the thing should be done. Some of the few who show up complain that you are not changing the thing and just talk. Then you change the thing and suddenly, when it is too late to change the decision without a lot of hassle, there is way more discussion about the thing and complaints on how it is done, from people that are not aware of the trade offs or prior discussion or the whole picture.
Very frustrating. (Be aware of that the story is somewhat hyperbolic to make a point).
I think the main problem is that way too few people are active in politics compared to way back. There are like no channels to reach out and too little every day discussions.
Once the political climate is polarized enough, choosing to not engage in the discussion about how evil the other team is will get you lumped right in, because if the other team really is evil and you don't care, then you must be pretty bad yourself.
The "Oh, but it's your civic duty to improve your community/state/nation (which obviously means voting the way I want you to, not the way the other half the country wants you to)" tries to frame political engagement as some moral good, but if they redirected the time and energy from political engagement to working at McDonalds and funding charity with the paycheck they would have 1000x the impact, even if you assume there is a Good and Evil team and they are on the Good team.
"Chi tace acconsente" (he who is silent says yes)
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
Therapeutic writing that out loud, in a way.
I felt similarly and had a "crisis" point at the start of 2025. I realised that living a fulfilling life had to become my top priority, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may seem. Otherwise, I might not survive another 30 years.
Now I can see a bit of the mechanism behind the dimming of the spark. I had gradually conceded the direction of my life to external forces, and let anxiety and self-doubt drive my decisions. It's a great way to end up with a life that you don't want. I shudder to think of what it's like to do that for 20 years instead of 5.
Your post really resonates with me, but the rub is (at least for me) "living a fulfilling life" means other trade offs, and potential losses.
Maybe fulfilling to me is something that doesn't fit nicely in the box of traditional society... am I ready to give all that up?
I think the core of it is: following my intuitive sense of "rightness" across time scales (seconds to decades). When I'm doing it, I feel peace, joy, contentment, and my life seems meaningful. When I'm not doing it, I feel dissatisfied, restless, and nihilistic.
I'm frustrated by how vaguely and abstractly I'm conveying this. But this intuitive rightness thing precedes language. It's like a bodily sense or an emotion, but deeper. Have you ever put a t-shirt on backwards and only noticed because something didn't feel right? Then you take it off and put it on the right way around, and it just feels right. It's a bit like that but for life in general.
I can give some examples of "what" I've done if you like but I'll leave them out of this comment.
> "living a fulfilling life" means other trade offs, and potential losses.
Part of how I know I'm doing the thing is that the trade-offs and losses don't concern me. If Y matters to me, and X really is necessary to have a life with Y, then I do X. X is simply the price of having Y, which I'll gladly pay.
In contrast, when I feel resentful of a price I'm paying, it's evidence that I'm not following my sense of rightness.
I can't afford health insurance, let alone health care. 0 sick days, 0 vacation time, $0 leisure spending. Credit card debt ticks up each month. Retirement savings is a pipe dream. How could I conscionably attempt a family under these conditions? I'd never have time to be a part of it and would be plagued by the guilt of not being able to provide.
But hey, I'm told to feel lucky I managed to lock in a 30-year mortgage at 5.99%: If I'm diligent paying on it until I've got a foot in the grave, selling the house might pay for end-of-life care!
And nothing increases the desire for other people to be sociable with you than walking a dog.
This is my pack: https://i.imgur.com/hnoioNy.jpeg
For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.
My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.
Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.
At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.
(Out of curiosity, if you don't mind the question).
It's crazy how much not being at home in their body disrupted every part of their life
My brother's friend attempted recently however and AFAIK in that one case it's because of him having poor job prospects. I reckon the data should be disaggregated into full time employed suicides and all other employment status suicides to get a good idea of what is going on.
Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.
A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which made up of large amount of introspection and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues and the avoidance of social faux passes.
We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.
romantic? really?
I had an assumption that most of human history, marriage was more of an arranged marriage thing. With a lot of "women being treated as property", "heirs required for transfer of wealth", etc notation.
And there were also societies that were polyamorous in nature?
We are in a new world now, there is no need to force traditions (or worse yet, false traditions) that frankly doesn't seem to work anymore
Absolute one of the most basic cornerstones of psychology.
What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.
Personally, that's not comforting. The real issue is the lack of reciprocal effort and understanding.
Generally, people miss how others make them feel and the benefit of knowing them. I rarely see people miss or grieve the individual.
I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.
My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.
The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.
Then I got hired to a company which have been pushing AI 100% for like a year, not at the expense of headcount, but responsibly as the N+1th productivity increasing tool, like what it is.
It's a really nice environment where keeping and cultivating great talent is not just one of the primary marketing slogans on the hiring page, but it actually feels like it while on the job.
My talent is nowhere near yours, so don't lose hope, keep applying.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
e.g. if you aren’t getting 10,000 steps every day for six months straight, you aren’t doing everything you can. It might not solve your problems, but you don’t know that, because you’ve never tried. If you aren’t quitting nicotine & alcohol, you aren’t doing everything you can. If you aren’t saying hi and being shot down by at least one stranger you find attractive every week, you aren’t doing everything you can.
And this is why the whole thing will implode eventually. But there will be a period of pain until then.
>And this is why the whole thing will implode eventually. But there will be a period of pain until then.
Not if it is a self-driving car, which is increasingly becoming the case.
Anthropic has more powerful models internally. Why aren’t they laying off staff and stopping hiring?
You guys clearly don’t understand the difference between a) writing code b) building business operations
Please show me the few-man team that are killing it with llm’s writing most of the code - it doesn’t exist! It’s fantasy land stuff.
I quit my job in 2024 and moved country to be with someone I fell in love with.
Last time I’d interviewed it was 2020 - yeah, I had my pick of roles. This time after 5 applications a day every day for two months plus Leetcode and System Design practice round the clock I landed a dozen interviews and 2x offers.
I never thought I’d have to send 300+ job applications to get a job but my wife whilst sympathetic opened her job applications folder which had some 100+ applications in her field (manager in tourism sector) before she received a job offer.
It’s tough, software devs have never faced that level of friction before but it’s present in other industries.
A quote from Churchill which I carry with me is ‘if you’re going through hell, keep going’.
Perhaps relying on skills as a developer was the problem? Society and the job market told you your skills were invaluable, but what did you actually do with them? What did you develop that was worthwhile? I don't know, but you should ask yourself that.
Much of the demand for developers was driven by a financial market that prized your skills, and many people bought into it. We are seeing now that such value was illusory.
How many new apps do we really need? How many new advertising algorithms are actually beneficial to society? How many of the ycombinator projects amount to more than a way to enrich autistic kids at the expense of everyone else?
You need to cast a wider net. There are a million jobs out there, but the problem is too many in the knowledge economy consider those jobs to be beneath them. Those in my peer and family circle who work blue collar jobs are much more content than those of us in the knowledge economy. Their expectations are such that they find satisfaction in their work, without warped or distorted expectations placed on them by their peers or themselves.
To ask of people that they constantly be ready to pivot to market demands, what management calls t-shaping, is incompatible with reality. We all get older, our fluid intelligence decreases, we get family, build skill specific social networks and so on..
why dont you learn trading? maybe forex spot? dont you already have tech skills? why not make an agentic first project that acts like an institution that tracks trends and makes and optimized algorithms? use prop firms for low risk high reward investments, it will take time but SWEs are already primed for this kind of thing imo. took me 2 months to learn the basics and my project is progressing well now.
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
It's a psychologically very difficult time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
Why?
But also, many existing office jobs type will try (or be forced) to get into manual jobs, and many young people will see AI-dominated fields as a dead end and also try to get into a manual job career, increasing supply, and further driving manual job wages down.
I'm glad I'm not inclined to be a doomer, because the future would seem pretty bleak.
Even 1.5 years ago I replaced a blower motor in my vehicle with something like Sonnet 3.8 as the driver - saving myself $400 in labor and having a fun and educational experience to boot. Many home repair items fall into categories like this, where the actual physical skill demands are fairly low, but skills + background knowledge + supplies-on-hand were the value driver.
The BG knowledge is now available to anyone for free, and it comes with its own knowledgeable shopper.
If you automate the paper pushing what happens? Jeff Bezos isn't gonna buy more condos.
Some of Software folk i know move to repairing electronic devices for living. He still works in AC-room, but instead of holding mouse and keyboard most of the time, now he holds meter probe and soldering iron.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous in this regard.
I do agree that a safe 'next' is unclear. But I also think if ai truly hits all knowledge work as hard as it might we're looking at up to 50% unemployment. Frankly there is no point career planning at all in that scenario. We will all have much larger problems.
And if it doesn't, then pivoting to some field with a combination of rewarding work and 'enough' pay seems sensible enough.
What makes you believe those jobs will still exist or will be available to you competing against massess of other now unemployed software devs? Overabundance of desperate workers will depress wages.
You missed the happy path.
If that much. I'm 52, and I wish I had decided 20 years ago that I'd rather do something meaningful. Like become a doctor. It would not necessarily be impossible to pivot to that now, but it would be very expensive and have a good chance of failure. If everything went smoothly, I could be a doctor just in time to retire.
Lots of people didn't have their field automated away though alongside most other knowledge work fields, or seen at the same time a drop in demand in manual work and an oversupply (drop in demand because of upcoming AI layoffs, and oversupply in manual fields, because of same)
In fact one of the worst "trade offs" of the trades is they can very much be a young mans game.
It gets real hard to sling water heaters up/down tight stairs or pull cable in a 100+ degree attic into your 50s.
Yes, but not for the reasons you say. It’s because if everyone is a plumber, you don’t need plumbers.
"I'm not allowed to replace my water heater, the government says I need permits, the government says only a plumber can connect a gas line"
I don't think people realize that the people doing entry level skilled work like replacing your water heater or swapping your brakes at jiffy lube often only exceed the caliber of labor that's in a McDonalds when it comes to attendance and pissing clean.
I grew up in trades. I’ve seen shit work and dangerous work and serviceable work and beautiful work. And sometimes even I didn’t actually know the difference until an inspector (and family member) explained it.
So I do small stuff. If it’s serious and I can afford it, I use a trusted professional.
I'm with you here. Though I have to say, on the flip side, oftentimes when I choose to DIY something it is because I don't necessarily trust that I can find a professional who won't cut corners in ways not obvious to me. I've seen it happen too many times. I may be a lot slower, but I'm extremely thorough at the stuff that I do myself.
But get a little more squeezed and with less salary due to AI eliminating your job or your field's salary bargaining power, and you'll try to not call one if you can avoid it, even if you don't want to do it yourself.
I'm not sure how this will work out. Burnout will be standard, and almost universal soon, apart from the previous low-performer, low skilled bottom of barrel folks who will mass produce crap with this.
It's a humbling reminder that not all fields of knowledge application are verifiable in post-training.
-They restricted the number of apprentices. That limited the number of people in the field similar to medical school.
-They could bar substandard workers from practising in the city of London.
-They kept their craft knowledge in house and it was never written down. Apprentices swore oaths never to reveal the “secret of the mystery.”
If you look at programming we do everything the opposite. It’s no wonder salaries will collapse. In fact the only question is why didn’t they collapse sooner.
"...And when everyone's a plumber... no one will be!"
I'm 41 and I could, in theory, pivot. But realistically: I'm good at exactly one thing in this world in terms of job ability. I can cook, I can bake, I can play music, but none nearly well enough to actually make a living on it. Thus the end of my tech career, if it should come to pass, basically means I will have to work menial jobs to get by. The future is very bleak for me, and the only real hope is that the tech industry will wake up to what a bad job LLMs do compared to humans. But while I think they will do that eventually, there's no telling how long it will take, and the thought that the market will eventually correct is cold comfort if I can't get a job in the meantime.
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm not sure what the pivot is.
The problem now is figuring out what to pivot to that won't also be automated away.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide hey, i lived enough, i don't want to go through years of feeling like this.
I retired in 2023, not because I could, but because I couldn't not. I'm almost 50. My parents died in their early 60s. I have some of their health problems, and some of my own. I also destroyed my back in a motorcycle accident many years ago and live with constant pain.
My favorite things to do, which bring my peace and joy, involve me sitting in a chair, which hurts my back. In my youth I rode my bicycle avidly, which now hurts my back. I love gardening, and if I do it too much, it hurts my back.
It became increasingly clear to me that my "purpose" in this country is to work until I die. I know that there are other countries, and other kinds of lives, but they are not where my wife and friends and life are.
I am happy, relatively healthy, and love life. I would like to live forever if I could. I know I could fill every minute of it with things I find interesting, even if it was just reading every single book.
But I've seen what American life looks like in your 60s and older, and it's not fucking pretty for most people.
Hang in there, Almost-Me. Mostly just posting to say, hey, there's others out here like you. See you on the other side.
Sure its a little off putting but if you've the time and money it could be worth trying.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
I think there's a step change from say the silent gen/baby boomer generations where a midlife crisis was realizing you lived the classic "American Dream" but weren't going to be a rockstar or super wealthy, compared to now where a midlife crisis could easily be wondering if you will continue to have any economic value at all years before social security kicks in.
Admittedly this is America-centric, but that's my lived perspective, and also I recognize that things weren't always very stable even here, thus why I am comparing a couple of specific generations to the ones that followed.
There was, for a time when I was younger (as a Gen-Xer), just an assumed sense that each generation would have it better than the last. Naive, perhaps, but alas. And obviously virtually nobody assumes that anymore.
Anomie plus helplessness plus a feeling of a rug pull of the laws/equality/character of our country. I am not suicidal but wow I get it.
Not anymore than WWII deaths are the epitome of "classic early life suicide".
If it was "the classic mid life crisis" the rates wouldn't be "highest ever" (as per the post).
Do people who say this have kids? I ask genuinely. Everything before my little dude was fake. Everything since him is real deal Holyfield. Probably knock off in the next 20 minutes and take him to Home Depot to look at some bullshit because we have a good time with that kind of thing.
More: Every time we point to this situation, we get insulted as incels. Sorry, I'm a multi millionaire, so I can provide, muscular, so I don't look too bad and have my health in order, CEO so I have some social status, and my love life has been terrible, I'm thinking of going to prostitutes to close the loop on being treated like shit.
Clearly there's something wrong in the dating market, women don't want to make families anymore, they literally don't want kids, and those who do, it's with wifeveaters. I know, "it must be you", "all men find women so you're probably a cunt" — I get it, I get it. We're truely the lost souls of today's world.
The only thing keeping me alive is the idea of revenge against the people who insult us like this.
I just know the end in the story: I end up excluded.
I'm definitely speculating quite a bit but I've met a lot of characters in my time and this is a very common pattern with a particular sort of middle-aged single man with a successful career.
If you have money, but they don't, then they think there must be your fault, because if they had money, they wouldn't be in this situation.
If you're muscular, but they're not, then they think if they were muscular, they wouldn't be in this situation.
The biggest insult in the incel community is not someone who gets laid, but that someone is a volcel larping as an incel (purely as an attempt to demoralize them)
I do agree that the dating market is broken, but only men can find a way out of this. And those women want to be saved too, just not the way you think.
If there isn’t a compelling story behind it, it probably doesn’t convey social status. Poor people with interesting lives often have far more success in the dating market than “successful” people that are indistinguishable from every other successful person. It is less about collecting credentials and more about writing a story that people want to read.
Fortunately, the bar for this is low. Most people have done few interesting things in their entire lives despite abundant opportunity. Many people that have lived interesting lives fail to tell the story. Having time and money expands the kind of story you can write but you still need the courage to live it.
I wish I would have figured this out earlier in my life than I did.
I'm just slightly autistic, which is barely visible, but makes me socially untalented, I make small mistakes or don't notice clues, and here I am, 43, hating everyone. A small communication handicap at the beginning, that society took as an excuse to fail my life entirely. I'm happy to have lived so far, I couldn't guess at an earlier age how lengths people go hurting their fellow citizen.
That is weird jump from you describing yourself as rich successful muscular and all that. People who fit your description are considered successful.
Women are the culprit. But it’s not their fault.
One thing you will note is that most men killing themselves likely don’t have a woman or don’t have kids.
So what’s going on within the last century is that women have been changing. Feminism and female empowerment is on the rise worldwide and across every culture. Any country or civilization with high technology any first world country women are becoming more powerful and having more freedoms and breaking out of old gender roles. This is what’s causing the problem and it’s hard to talk about.
I want to say that what’s happening to women is not ethically a bad thing. Morally it’s good. But thousands of years of evolution has not prepared mankind for this shifted dynamic. Women are hypergamous in the sense that they want a man to go is more capable than them and has more resources and can take care of them. They are biologically programmed to find a husband who at worst is a partner in crime and at best a care taker that completely makes them feel safe… while men are seeking a partner to take care of a person to nurture. A woman will not take care of a man, at worst if she does take care of a man she expects actual care in return. A man trades care for mating privilege and that’s all. He provides the resources for survival, she opens her legs. While this is a gross simplification the overall sentiment is true-ish
Hypergamy is so strong that women would rather be single than be with a man of lower status. And typically she’s ok with that. That is the problem you see today. Historically not only was almost every man usually a higher status but a woman virtually had no choice but to marry a man if she valued survival. Men worked and women stayed home. That’s how it was setup. If a woman left a man she wouldn’t be able to hunt, farm or get a job in the old days. Now a woman can be ceo and a ceo isn’t going to want to be with a lowly engineer. You will note that women are actually acting rational with their choices here. It is men that are a bit more dumb in terms of mate selection. They’re willing to be with someone that will drag them down. Someone they have to take care of. It’s irrational and a bad deal from a rational perspective but biology designed us that way.
So as a result you get a lot of single men who want to kill themselves and a lot of single women who are fine with being single.
The thing that’s curious is why this phenomenon is happening worldwide? Is it because of feminism? Is it cultural transmission of the ideas of feminism? No it is not. Feminism is the result it is not the causal factor. In prehistoric times men hunt and do the hard labor. Women don’t want to do that shit. Mainly because they aren’t as strong as men. So it is actually historically in the women’s best interest to stick to her gender role of not hunting and plowing the goddamn field. The difference between then and now is technology. Now nobody plows the field. Now everything a man can do a woman can too. So feminism is really the result of all women around the world figuring this out. That’s why feminism suddenly happened worldwide this century across virtually every first world country no matter the culture. It’s the last 1% of human history and it coincides with the intense rise of human technology. Human technology equalizes men and women. That is what we are seeing today. If you are dating… this is what is going on. Women have changed and it is because of technology changing society to allow women to change.
Think of overfitting. We’ve evolved biologically to overfit specific gender roles and as a result as soon as that changed the mechanism begins to unravel. It’s no ones fault.
You will note it’s not just a problem with men killing themselves. What’s happening is a population crisis. Women don’t get with men, men are frustrated but also there’s no children. We are hitting population decline world wide as well. Children actually would’ve forced a lot of men and women together.
Human bi...
So I don’t actually know what you’re talking about. Please try to be counter my claims rather than making things up.
Stop insulting me. If you have a counter argument to present, present it.
Frankly when the topic is suicide people who lack empathy like you really should just exit the room entirely. You exacerbate the problem. I can guarantee you people who kill themselves have been verbally assaulted by people like you.
Why don't you say something of substance instead of mouthing off with drivel like this.
You talk about status, but you are here, on HN, where a lot of wealthy people are. You probably have more money than 99% of men. And you still can't get pussy. Look at the @eastbound guy, multimillionaire, muscular, and still not getting pussy. You need something external to validate your shortcomings, and that's human.
Go outside and look at every straight couple that you see. Do you really believe that every one of them are higher status than you, and that's why you are alone? Do you really believe that every woman out there expects to be married to a multimillionaire handsome man? It's delusional, sorry
I applaud your realness. And I sincerely hope it is completely real with no emotional bias. Tell me the truth like it is. Normally stuff like this gets flagged by dang in HN, but I disagree. If you feel it's true, it should be said.
That being said, there is an argument for making things impersonal. Talk about the state of the world, why needle in on the person making the argument and talk about his personal circumstance? It makes me think even though you CLAIM to be real, I think you're just emotional and trying to get an emotional response. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though.
>You talk about status, but you are here, on HN, where a lot of wealthy people are. You probably have more money than 99% of men. And you still can't get pussy. Look at the @eastbound guy, multimillionaire, muscular, and still not getting pussy. You need something external to validate your shortcomings, and that's human.
I don't get as much pussy as I like, nor do I get the girls that I really want. This is true. But I do get around. So this is not fully true.
>Go outside and look at every straight couple that you see. Do you really believe that every one of them are higher status than you, and that's why you are alone?
NO. Dude you're projecting. I'm talking about the population crisis. I'm talking about suicide rates. All my arguments refer to that, it doesn't even touch other couples or "status" or multimillionars. You're completely wrong on where this argument is coming from.
Anytime where someone thinks the solution to a problem is taking away choices from another group it's time to be very very suspicious to say the least.
There's a lot of points in this post that are common talking points in the "manosphere":
> you get a lot of single men who want to kill themselves and a lot of single women who are fine with being single
> What’s happening is a population crisis. Women don’t get with men, men are frustrated but also there’s no children.
These are not widely accepted viewpoints.
It's impossible to prove or disprove something like these are "wrong" or "right", but blaming women for male unhappiness is a prime tactic that is very similar to the common tactic of blaming an outgroup. It's not a good thing!
Is it? Nature and evolution never gave us the choice for millions of years. We only had the choice for the last century and for the first time in human history, humanity is hitting population decline. Asia, notably Korea, Japan, and china are hitting it first.
>These are not widely accepted viewpoints.
Who cares about widely accepted? How about let's talk truth. Is it real or not real? HN has been widely wrong about AI and self driving cars, The US population voted for trump and has been largely wrong. Widely accepted is not widely true.
>It's impossible to prove or disprove something like these are "wrong" or "right", but blaming women for male unhappiness is a prime tactic that is very similar to the common tactic of blaming an outgroup. It's not a good thing!
WE don't need to prove anything. It's just a discussion. Why don't you take more time to read what I wrote. I never BLAMED women. My argument is women are changing and that is the cause of a lot of problems. Take a closer look, I said women becoming more empowered and the rise of feminism ARE good things... it's morally right. But their are intrinsic biological consequences because things have not been this way biologically.
Think of it like how the female praying mantis eating the male praying mantis after they mate. That is NOT a morally right action. But it happens because of biology. The intrinsic dilemma here is nature vs. ethics. By creating a more ethical society we have exited gender norms established by nature for millions of years. We give people choice which is ethical, but orgasms and sex were CLEARLY biologically evolved to be addictive and remove choice from the equation.
So what is the correct action here? Be ethical or align our behavior with biological norms which are clearly unethical? I don't actually know.
Look up the population decline, it's a real thing. You can buy a house for 10k in Japan due to massive population loss. It's a real problem that will affect all of us WITHIN out lifetimes. Birth control is definitely a causal factor within it.
> Is it?
Yes.
To quote you: "get over the idea that our biology is aligned with ethics."
> Nature and evolution never gave us the choice for millions of years. We only had the choice for the last century and for the first time in human history, humanity is hitting population decline. Asia, notably Korea, Japan, and china are hitting it first.
You say this like population decline is a bad thing.
It's true that it upends economic growth that is based on population growth.
Beyond that it's not particularly clear cut.
> Also Why don't you take more time to read what I wrote. I never BLAMED women.
And yet your solution is to make them have more children ("So actually I think the real solution to these problems is actually banning birth control.), and "Women don’t get with men, men are frustrated but also there’s no children"
You causal chain clearly makes women responsible: you argue that population growth is the solution to male suicide(!!), that women "don't get with men", and therefore the solution to the male suicide problem is to ban birth control.
To make it crystal clear:
There is no evidence that shrinking population leads to male suicide.
There are good arguments that a shrinking population is a good thing.
This pulls out the two pillars that support your argument for banning birth control.
No.
>get over the idea that our biology is aligned with ethics.
This quote is true. See praying mantis example. Plenty of examples where the male or female dies sacrificing itself for the next generation. These are not ethical features of biology. They are practical and they factually exist.
>You say this like population decline is a bad thing.
It is. The eventual end of population decline is the decline of civilization and eventually the end of humanity. The first part we face in our lifetimes is economic decline, joblessness, and more.
>Beyond that it's not particularly clear cut.
It's clear cut, within your lifetime you will see a 1st world country be brought down by a complete lack of people. Japan or Korea. We already see the effects in the country. Entire towns and villages vanishing. You just need to scale that up to see what happens next. This is not theoretical. It is happening in front of our eyes.
>And yet your solution is to make them have more children
That's not blame. When a woman has children, so does a man. The man bares the same responsibility.
>You causal chain clearly makes women responsible
It does. They aren't responsible willingly. It's not that they made a bad choice and they become responsible. It's a logistical fact. For example if your car breaks down and you can't drive it. The thing responsible for breaking down is the car. But is it the cars fault? No. Women are the causal source, but it's not their fault.
If you want to make things more fair. Porn is a causal factor from the male side. It keeps a lot of males perpetually single.
>There is no evidence that shrinking population leads to male suicide.
I never claimed this. My claim is that men BEING single and not able to find a male or a girlfriend or a wife increases suicide rates. Think about it. It's a very VERY realistic proposition.
>There are good arguments that a shrinking population is a good thing.
There is FACTUAL on the GROUND realities that show currently how bad it is.
>This pulls out the two pillars that support your argument for banning birth control.
It pulls out nothing.
> It is. The eventual end of population decline is the decline of civilization and eventually the end of humanity. The first part we face in our lifetimes is economic decline, joblessness, and more.
That's a ridiculous claim unsupported by any evidence.
The counter argument has much stronger backing: If we measure "civilization" by standard of living and technological progress then they are associated with lower birth rates.
>>You causal chain clearly makes women responsible
> It does. They aren't responsible willingly.
Like I said - blaming women.
> My claim is that men BEING single and not able to find a male or a girlfriend or a wife increases suicide rates. Think about it. It's a very VERY realistic proposition.
The evidence doesn't show this. eg:
> Suicide fatality rate was higher in married people compared to the unmarried, however, after adjusting for age as a determinant factor, no significant difference was observed between the 2 groups.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6505054/
There is some evidence that divorce increases suicide amongst men:
> Divorce did matter in a negative way, but only for men. What seems important about divorce is not that the men end up unmarried. Remember that the men who had always been single were no more likely to kill themselves than the men who were currently married. Instead, having once been married and then getting divorced seems to be the risk – again, only for the men.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/living-single/201304...
Indeed the very article we are commenting is about suicide by men aged 45 to 64, who have higher marriage rates that other groups!
Clearly marriage should be banned! ;)
It’s called following the trendline. We have current rates of population decline and past rates of population decline and we do a projection and we get one of the few quantitative predictors in our statistical arsenal. All else is qualitative speculation.
> Like I said - blaming women
Are you reading what I wrote? Take a look at what I wrote again before starting shit.
> The evidence doesn't show this.
Among the suicides by men age 45 to 64 those are the divorced men. That is the age where divorces happen.
Marriage shouldn’t be banned. Condoms should.
And outside of this. Your rude ass comments and witch hunt like accusations were uncalled for.
CEO could mean no free time to spend with her. Muscular for what? Are you climbing or doing some other interesting sport or just spend time at the gym?
A lot of money, but are you doing something good with it? Helping people? At least some women think that's admirable.
I don't know you personally, so it's just some general vibe I've gotten from your post. No offense, maybe none of this is you but if it is it might be worth thinking about.
There are alot of women who want kids but they likely are not in the pool you engage with. Go to a conservative US christian state, join a church, engage with the community, it is easy. I bet the issue is that you do in fact have a standard and that standard is the barrier.
If it helps, almost every wealthy man i have known engaged with escorts or prostitutes at some point so I wouldnt view it as shameful and who knows, you may learn something about yourself in the process.
While this strategy can work, it also means your kids will likely be taught hell is a real place most of humanity will go to suffer in eternal flames. (Possibly from a very young age.) Does not help with mental health.
Red states also have quite a lot of racism, IME. So be sure to be at least passing as white and with little or no accent.
> I bet the issue is that you do in fact have a standard and that standard is the barrier.
Among the guys I've known this seems to be the biggest factor. Of course ladies have their own expectations. Everyone seems to relax them as they get older.
Guys that do have families are willing to give up a lot too. Things I was never really willing to give up.
I have dated a lot and there is one woman I would have wanted kids with. She wasn't into that with me though.
That is not a problem with the woman, that is a problem with me.
I know a few guys in this same situation. It is not a problem with the dating market, it is a type of narcissism that clouds judgement and sets standards that can't be met.
It is hard to see it in yourself until you get a vasectomy.
Pretty major red flag there. As an awkward, small, unattractive teen I could've related. Yet the best thing was letting it go and finding other people whom I could connect with.
I'm still gainfully employed, and business is ripping, but a huge part of my value as a professional got totally vaporized over the last year. So part of me is extremely glad I don't have kids right now, and part of me is really angry that everything feeling so unstable is leading to our decision. I know that even in the best time it's a scary decision, but the general vibe is flipping people (like me) who are at the margin.
We are all descendants of like 1,000 individuals who kept having lil babies through an ice age. There are mobile home parks full of happy kids dotting my town, populated by people who paint houses and do landscaping and make ends meet. I have no idea what your profession is or what your housing situation is, so maybe that's already where you are. My wife and I talk gratitude a lot, and that includes being grateful that if we had to dig ditches to keep a double wide over our heads, we'd go ahead and do that and have some giggles with our little miracle in there.
The trick will be for all of us to find work somebody actually wants us for. If we can't, some kind of make-it-look-like-an-accident suicide is probably one of the least bad options for our families if they rely on us as the sole breadwinner. They can grieve, but they will get some insurance money and hopefully survive to live a somewhat dignified life.
I daydream about being fired with severance so I can spend more time with my little dude. But also deadly afraid of not being able to get another job when savings run out.
I think these things are less consistent than is often stated, we just see them occur consistently among people with similar lives. The "mid life crisis" is also debunked and replaced by "existential crisis" since it can actually occur at any age, from teenager to elderly, and zero, one, or multiple times. Only in the classic life progression of a certain era, it typically occurred worst at around 40-45 so it got that label.
Midlife anxieties are real and nothing in particular prevents it.
I also wasn't prepared for a bit of a curve ball and I have experienced a loss of self that hasn't recovered or been compensated for yet.
I often wish I felt like a lot of other online fathers, but I take comfort in knowing there are a lot of others out there like me who struggle with parenthood. I hope I figure it all out in time!
And that was my long way to say, the struggle is real and we are all figuring it out in real time. gl out there
After the second, I thought it would get better, and that a Contented Doting Father would emerge from the ruins of my previous life. That the attention and effort required would simply obliterate any trace of my past self, and with it, any longing for the spontaneity and lightness and frankly selfishness of my child-free life.
But that hasn’t happened. There are moments of grace and joy, and I love my kids so deeply it’s painful (he says, truthfully, but defensively, because an admission like this from a father usually doesn’t go over well).
But counterintuitively, returning to the topic of the thread, if I DO lose my career, I will be doubly grateful for my kids. Because they DO love me unconditionally, and I them; they don’t care about status games or anomie or anything resembling a “career.” Perhaps starting over in a new field and moving to a cheaper COL area would finally clear space for the Contented Doting Father.
Unsolicited pov. Don't do this to yourself. I don't doubt that there exists such a person, but it's not the norm and when it is observed I reckon it is as often someone feigning as it is anything else.
Love your kids and raise them as best you know how. That's the deal. That's enough. You are allowed space to miss aspects of your life before, and that may or may not fade.
As far as I see it, I use the term "online fathers" in a rather cynical manner. In real life, I interact with parents who are struggling, I know some who are suffering from depression (I'm lucky to belong to a sports club where some dads unload). This is real life.
But go online and you'd think you're some sort of freak for not being completely transformed and having unconditional daily joy from being a dad.
By the way. The last week has been a good week. I've had a lot of work stress, but my children seem to have somehow sensed it and they're being extra kind to me, giving me lots of hugs and just wanting to be with me. It feels WONDERFUL. Like you, I love them more than I would have ever known, would literally die for them. But it is also ok to admit it is very hard, and there is a big loss of self and other aspects.
Keep going!
All of that is normal, but you are left alone and if taking the kid somewhere was your only thing, you have nothing.
You too will (hopefully) watch your children move away.
Personally, when I am down I've been feeling a little like I've finished the main quest in a video game. I can look to my kiddos and be happy that they are doing okay but I still have almost as much adult life in front of me as I have behind me.
While the philosophy degree I got when I was young has helped a lot, I'm middle age, twice-divorced, and haven't had (or needed) a "regular" job, bald (well, I rock a skullet and have 'aura' according to the youngesters), and I can't rock climb as hard as I used to. I don't really enjoy drinking anymore, and I don't enjoy many drugs at all. I've gotten to a position where it's hard to maintain the fantasies that make romantic partners appealing, and while I have deep and diverse friend groups, I still spend most of my time in a shack in the middle of nowhere writing music for no one.
When people shit-talk on humanities educations, it's been hard to keep my mouth shut because the real payoffs have been in being able to meet the long and large world with some equanimity and I feel incredibly privileged to have been so misguided in my early life that I got a deep and canonical education.
There are plenty of things that I can do- keeping with the video game metaphor, I feel like I am working through all possible side quests on hard mode. Being emancipated from my children means that I no longer have to earn very much money or even maintain a stable home if I don't enjoy it.
I bought some off grid land in the middle of nowhere and I am slowly getting utilities working in the shacks. I started doing way more direct political action, including getting an EMT cert so I could volunteer at the local free clinic. I have 4 bands and play 5-6 gigs a month and run an A/V company where I do another 2-3 gigs a month.
So, yeah, I've got a pretty good skill set, I have however easy a life that I choose, lots of engagement in my enclosure. I have kids I am proud of.
And even looking at all that, I look at even a couple of years and sometimes wonder "shit.. what I do all of this for?". And I know that in another 25 years I will still probably asking that question, wondering if there had been a better way to do the things.
Enjoy browsing stuff with your kiddos. That is indeed the important kind of activity. But also, understand that you too will (hopefully) face existential choices in the future.
He's gonna grow up and ask you what the fuck were you thinking?
The classic epitome of the mid life crisis has always been something along the lines of, "I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I didn't like, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and all I'm left with is money. My mortality is coming into view, my best years are behind me, and as I sit here in my big house with my fancy car, I realize I wasted all that time all chasing dollars."
That's a lot different than, "I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I didn't like, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and I'm left with nothing at all. I have no prospect for retirement, will likely become homeless and destitute when I am unable to continue working and/or am laid off, and their is no future."
"I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I really loved, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and I'm still left with nothing at all"
I still got burned out. Loving the career didn't change much.
Now the machines do what I loved to do. I had nothing, but at least I had pride and there was social recognition.
All vanities. Life lesson there.
I don't know what I was chasing, some sort of poetic output. I looked a famous people in this career, I just wanted to leave my name there.
But now I don't, I hate AI and I think its a bad path for humanity. I guess I can still leave my name elsewhere, maybe I start the Butlerian Jihad somehow.
I imagine myself being the one bureaucrat in the Jihad that banned the use of CPUs with more power than a 80486. That makes me happy and create a motive to still live.
I can't create anymore, but I can destroy !
Part of working through history from (only) 100 years ago is an impression of how quickly societies were changing then. This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
Which isn't to downplay the upheaval that people are in - it is definitely traumatic. But we've been through disruption before. Hopefully we'll make fewer costly mistakes this time...
I don't think we should wish such evil upon future generations. The industrial revolution was a terrible time to live through, and arguably was not beneficial in the end to humanity. I would be very happy if we never had such a change again.
We don't have many coal miners any more. How do we treat the people who used to be coal miners, when we get to 100% clean power? If we are running society well, we give them a hero's sendoff and a nice comfortable retirement life. If we are running society poorly, we take away their homes and healthcare to punish them for not having jobs any more.
I have however run out of fucks and am ignorantly coasting and making optimal survival decisions only. Fuck the business. Fuck the career. Highly recommended.
So I put all my fucks into working my ass off. Started dishwashing. Became a cook. Then owned a bakery. Built up a portfolio, became a sysadmin for a large company. After 6 or 7 years the writing was on the wall that I'd be replaced with a call center and some low wagies so I left.
Been working a do-nothing laid back remote job for a year now and never happier. My only source of stress is thinking that giving a shit when I was young would actually lead somewhere when I had the rug pulled under me from the get-go.
Making cakes are much more soul fulfilling than writing code for soulless machines, let the machines write the code for themselves.
One day we get rid of the machines, scrap their metals to make plows to tend the fields. Like the good old times.
Software development as a career was a utter mistake. Corporations are a mistake.
Maybe AI can fix that, automate bureaucracy, put those useless managers out of work. But I doubt, the class division is too strong, they'll remove the bottom of the pyramid, but not the top.
I want to destroy the pyramid ! But I know just to wait, it will destroy itself because it can't understand human values. All modern jobs are bullshit either way.
+1. Also maybe it's an age where responsibilities start to peak. More senior positions in the workplace, having children, marriage, etc.
I've had a few stressful periods lately where it felt or feels like I can't load any more on to my plate and I don't even have that many responsibilities - no kids either, just an accumulation of small and background things needing dealt with. I think I do understand people who do commit suicide to an extent - if you add the above normal stresses of life to some highly stressful life events like a breakup or divorce and throw kids etc into the mix - and hey why not a pile of work related stress too - I can absolutely see how people get pushed to the edge.
Modern society has not been arranged in a way that sets people up for success. Staring at device screens for more hours year on year likely doesn't help.
Mental illness finds a way.
Do you think this has changed from say 10 or 20 years ago? To me, I don't get the sense that there has been shift in the social definition of success. Maybe I'm missing something?
My overall point is that what's happening in SWE right now is not happening (yet?) in other fields. And so we can't extrapolate from SWE experience to wider social experiance.
Yes, I do.
The goal is roughly the same: financial security, a good home, as much of a family as one cares to raise.
But for basically my entire life as a middle-aged American, there was a well-lit path to that goal:
1. Do good in high school.
2. Go to a university and get some four year degree. Obviously some degrees are duds, but basically any of them was considered a worthwhile investment.
3. Get a white collar job doing something intellectual. Make a decent salary at a stable company. Change jobs periodically as needed.
Now:
1. Doing well in high school is still important, but it is very easy for kids to get good grades using AI while not actually learning anything and not realizing they are setting themselves up for hardship.
2. College is so expensive now that determining which college and which degree is actually a sound financial investment is very hard. An 18 year-old-kid is being asked to make a financial choice with life-long consequences at a point when they have none of the expertise about their long-term goals to know what to do.
3. AI will very likely eliminate many of these jobs. People will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs and who knows what on your resume will actually help you stand out? Also, most of the blue collar jobs are already gone, either automated away (ag) or moved overseas (manufacturing).
There was also a sense in the US that even if the government wasn't great, it was at least functional and a source of relative stability run by somewhat mature adults. That is clearly no longer the case at the federal level.
Feels like all the effort I put into coming this far got invalidated overnight. The writing is on the wall, and now I have about five years to get rich at any cost until it's all over. I'm firing in all directions, trying to hit something, anything.
If we achieve a post-scarcity society, then nothing I do today matters. If we don't, then hopefully having money will lead to a better outcome than not having it.
> It's a psychologically very difficult time.
That's true, though it depends on how one handles that. But I think it is also clear that there are fewer options available when you are somewhat old already. People at age, say 20 to 25, may not feel a problem when they are gamers. At age 55, it is much harder to reason as to why you may wish to invest many hours per day into games; it just is not that productive, for most people (excluding e. g. playing to have fun, but that still does not answer the question of producitivity; I exclude professional gamers here, as they can often make a living just from donations, twitch etc.. but most people are not like that. Some of these gamers soon hit the age range 50+ by the way, I do watch a few of them every now and then.)
Never kill yourself, life is awesome after overcoming challenges
Microcredit in the third world is somewhat notorious for causing a rise in suicide rates. That fits the pattern: there's a huge number of things you can do to get money to pay back the loan, but if it gets out of hand, none of them get you remotely enough money to keep from sinking deeper into debt. Access to capital gives you many options - but it also makes it your fault when you didn't find the option which would lead you out of miserable poverty (which may not even exist!)
What any psychologist will probably tell you (at least, what all of them told me) is that clinical depression makes you bad at seeing options. Could it be that's in some sense a defense mechanism, trying to stop you from putting the really bad options on the table?
I'm looking for evidence against this theory, so I'm very interested if you can find it. But I think it's going to be hard, because they're going to be correlated: if you have a weak sense of self and purpose, then very likely your options will all seem bad too. And even if you have a strong sense of who you are and what your purpose is, failing to live up to the identity society and yourself assign to you (because all the options you have fail at living up to it) then you could well call that "having your identity taken away from your".
People don't all commit suicide for the same reasons. Durkheim's book Suicide which in some ways created the idea of sociology itself categorizes four types of suicide.
* Black Americans have low suicide rates, lower than white Americans, who in turn have lower than indigenous Americans.
* The children of actors and celebrities have high suicide rates.
* Men have higher suicide rates than women.
* Wealthier countries seem to generally have higher suicide rates than poorer countries, but inside a country the poor usually have higher suicide rate than the rich.
* People with schizophrenia have sky-high suicide rates
The only common thread I can think of is a sense of agency - which means thinking you have many options - with hopelessness. When you can do a lot (or at least you think you can, or society thinks you can), but none of it helps with the things that matter to you.
* Victims of racism may paradoxically be somewhat shielded from suicidal despair from low expectations. But when racism comes with heavy romanticizing (e.g. "noble savage", "ancient proud culture"), expectations are not low. Yet, it's all too understandable why someone would want internalize these romantic, often openly envied identities, even when they're completely at odds with their material situation. You can't live up to it yet you feel like it's all you have.
* Children of e.g. wealthy actors are materially very comfortable and safe, and clearly have lots of agency and choice - but what do they want, when they don't need to strive for wealth, any social acclaim they earn may be tainted by the suspicion that they didn't earn it fairly, and they in any case are unlikely to surpass their parents?
* One typical schizophrenia symptom is sense of agency disturbances. They often feel like they are in control of things they aren't, or don't have control of things which they do. The former, combined with seeing bad things happen (for instance on TV) can really devastate them.
But this never had been reevaluated. Modern societies are detached, nobody really cares what you do, you don't know your neighbours, you have no "third place" or common place any more.
So norms and rules are far less pronounced than in any other time in human history, far less so.
If you go out without pants in a big city, very few people would care. In better situated parts, you can expect that the police will probably pick you up. In less fortunate environments, you would just be pantless.
This is the opposite of expectations and pressures. I think many just aren't really part of a society or environment any more.
For some that is a great loss while others strive in this state as well. For many having some kind of responsibility is a very important part of their lives, but modern societies offer little here. We optimise for as little attachment as possible to stay flexible and dynamic. That of course can be a pressure as well, but not in the sense it is often suggested.
But summarised I think the problem is fundamentally misunderstood: Society doesn't put pressure on anyone, society simply stopped caring about you. I think this is what most societal analysts get completely wrong.
What!?
The examples you give implies people are ok with being bums on the street (and if you think that life is "easy", boy, you're massively detached from reality).
Have you heard that a record number of people still live with their parents after 30?
Have your heard that a record number of people do not own homes these days? It has never been worse historically.
Have you heard that entire professions are being rendered obsolete due to AI and other economic factors?
Are you aware that almost nobody who is middle-aged (the demographic of TFA) will retire with enough money to make a living off it?
Explain to me how is that a chill, no-pressure life? I do not see it.
Yeah sure, you might try to "akshually" your way into "but I'm talking about social pressure", but all of those things are social in nature.
The point of society you can increase "true freedom" by restricting people's ability to act arbitrarily, so called "naive freedom". If people can't accept that then they can go live in the woods (not anymore), the ocean, the moon? mars? or end it.
From time immemorial the winners shaped society what do you think happened to the losers? Just because we leave them alive now doesn't mean they can live in the new world.
Also "highest ever" among some specific arbitrary demographic isn't very meaningful enough to draw out anything beyond free association.
It's meaningful if you do actually happen to be of that demographic. It's no longer arbitrary then, sure, but I do care quite a lot if something bad is affecting men because I'm one of those.
Not only that, but many of the people I care most about in the world are men too ! probably a bit over half!
Which part of the comment implies this?
If you cannot provide for yourself, someone else has to do so. That someone else technically might be subjected to societal expectations to not leave you behind because he has the means to do so. Mothers still have large expectation on them on how they have to treat their children. If those run around freely, you will get a lot pressure in the US. Quite a silly country. But I believe this is an exception to the general development.
I separate purely economic pressure from the moral and ethical requirements you have today and these are clearly declining in my opinion. These were always subjected to change, but usually expectations get exchanged for new ones and old ones are done away with.
Weird gender science, middle eastern war or domestic politics experts are loud and they do indeed put forward expectations. But their ambitions aren't generally awarded by society, on the contrary. Sometimes for very good reason, sometimes not. But generally there are far less expectations for behaviour, expression, opinions. Also sometimes for good reason and sometimes not.
I think most societies lost expectations and care less about their environment (no in the ecological sense, but that too...).
on the one hand, we're detached; on the other hand, social media in particular -- and the media in general -- has increased the amount of pressure and painted a picture of "who you should be". The expectations are greater than ever because we are subjected to the knowledge of the expectations of everyone across the globe, and most of what we see are the "highlight reels" of the successes (or people trying to sell us something to be successful).
Contrary to your premise, society today applies tremendous pressure because our awareness and the continuous bombardment of information, amplifies it. And unless you decide to go and live off grid, or you have a personality such as you can say FU to the world on a daily basis, it's impossible to escape.
I also don't think it compares to the industrial revolution, these are primarily sociological conditions - these suicidality figures predate the current AI implications.
They aren't holding the whip unless you give them the whip. Biologically you are the one with leverage. Probably economically too. You're the one doing this to yourself. Either stop doing it to yourself, or stop complaining about it
I don't know, it feels to me, in my limited scope of experience and view, that things are getting a lot worse, very quickly, and it frightens the hell out of me.
Reminds me of this idea about "sport" / "competition" from the parenting book, The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik. She says that children must be encouraged to explore, not exploit, without any end goal in mind. This lets them figure out the world around them and how they can affect it.
As "exploitation" (competition) is a means to use specific knowledge (performance) to achieve goals (progress), it will tend to have winners & losers. "Exploration", otoh, is choosing among umpteen pathways to growth and learning.
Also see this post on Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s? about Pyscho-Cybernetics & achieving goals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053801
Anyway, seemed relevant to the wikipedia.
In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.
Remember, class, because this will be on the test: capitalism is the superior economic system because it elevates people who allocate capital efficiently. Just don't ever look too closely at the input and output functions of any such definition of "efficiency" (hint: they conveniently tend to elevate people who are skilled at flattering capital owners).
DON'T DO ONLINE DATING.
Go to meetups instead via meetup.com and also look for local group activities happening on EventBrite - don't make finding a partner the focus or even the objective - go to a ton of meetups doing the things you love doing.
Online dating had wrecked mating except for the most attractive 5%.
People form relationships doing common interests and having shared experiences. Have shared experiences with people and take finding a partner off the agenda - just enjoy the company of others. You never know what might happen but don't go looking for it.
The best thing you do is to just grow your network until you find someone you like.
Whenever I go out, I always collect phone numbers and contacts if I can.
Before you know it, you have 100s of people on your phone. Befriending women is also excellent, they can introduce you to other women if they feel like you are worthy!
Successful, long term, loving and happy relationships. Not top 5% most attractive people. Mostly nerds, some overweight, some not.
The most terrifying realization is that I've already spent pretty much half of my life yearning for love and not getting it. Even if I magically get married soon, it'll feel like a consolation prize.
I struggled with weight gain for many years due to crippling IBS but I found some relief while bulking from a certain probiotic. (Got lucky - dozens of things I tried including fodmap, etc. never worked. That said, the probiotic only helps - not solves... and doesn't solve my absorption issues)
Surgery, steroids, and a serious bulk are in order if you're serious.
I can make the pounds go up or down in a few weeks by eating more or less, but it goes mostly to the gut (Skinny fat = probably the worst look), and just enough to pad the arm muscles so it looks like I've never been to the gym in my life! Lately have just been embracing it and staying lean (Looks like 12% maybe?) while working out as much as I can stand.
I was about to do the steroids... (low dose test) I suspect that would genuinely fix it. But when I got the blood test back, test was smack in the middle of the normal range! So would have to shop around a bit, and trying not to lose my hair. But may still do it. A bulk counter-intuitively is not the move because it would just put me back in skinny-fat land.
This is so weird to me if you're always working out as you said. What are you doing at the gym? Compound barbell movements with heavy weights will absolutely prevent this and get you jacked in the right places.
Gaining muscle becomes really complicated for some people since not everyone has the same hormones, androgen receptor density, myostatin levels, etc. Some people grow like freaks and others never do. I can sympathize but I am skeptical of 99% of people since most I've seen also don't do every thing right and it's clear that's usually the issue.
Absolutely not. This is what you tell sedentary people to get them to move a bit. For your purpose of looking good, you're wasting your time. You need to add weight every workout.
> I've been training with appearance (especially to women) in mind
That is the wrong mindset, but then again what I told you earlier will give you the appearance you seek. Seriously just go to a proper gym with a barbell.
I sympathize with being 3 sigma on the distribution... I'm four sigma out myself. My total T is around 1200ng/dl with most everything in my bloodwork related to hormones being a genetic freak. And, yes, I'm natural. Even with my extremely high T - probably twice yours - I struggle to gain any muscle at all and look like I've never lifted a weight in my life.
I'm still doing steroids next year because I'm tired of not seeing results for my insane effort.
If you're just growing in the stomach then you're doing something wrong. Check macros - should be overly high protein. Eat only 500 calories surplus per day. Your stomach will get larger just from food volume. Your stomach will always be large if you're on a bulk - it's supposed to be full all the time.
After you gain 20lb over about 20 weeks - reasses. As it is - it sounds like you haven't done really serious tracking. When I'm bulking/cutting - I don't eat anything unless every ingredient goes on a scale and I track everything down to the gram. One way to make less lifestyle less painful is to do meal prep and label all your meal tins with the macros. (Or just be obnoxious and measure everything out where each tin is the exact same - harder to do)
Get a dexascan a couple weeks into your bulk then a couple months in. You'll be able to tell if you're only gaining fat or if you're gaining lean body mass. Same process with cutting. Your eyes might not be well trained.
Doctors don't take stuff like this seriously (Varies wildly, but I have a number of family/friends who are doctors, and was in a military field under flight doc supervision/physicals for most of my career). I imagine it's not on their list of medically significant conditions as it's a superficial one. They deal with things that cause immediate or future health problems (or med disqualification for the job), or effect quality-of-life directly. Being extremely skinny (High or normal test for us respectively!) doesn't register as it's superficial/aesthetic. I wonder if your hormone-related identification would be more actionable as you have that number? While 6'2 / 130lbs (Not sure your example) is extremely rare, without any direct consequences on health, it doesn't register. Nothing to fail me on a physical for, no treatment plans that fit, and doesn't pattern match with people checking into hospital.
I think re growing the stomach - I meant more that responds very quickly to changes in diet in either direction; I can go from pudgy/belly to flat abs in a few weeks. I'm hoping the ab work will help a bit with overall look in well-fitting clothes or shirtless, and help with rib flare, but it's probably skippable compared to the bigger lifts.
For the macros, you're right: I have not being doing any tracking. I have been (For the past 6 months when I did a big shift) eating slowly, and paying attention to hunger/satiation signals. No longer finishing a meal just because it tastes good, if I'm no longer hungry. I have cut out all carbs-sans-fiber. No sugary foods (other than fruit, dark chocolate etc), no refined grains unless eating out. Lots of veggies, meat, eggs, and fruit + whey shakes. So, high protein, high fiber, normalish carbs and fat. As you say, probably need to load on the protein more. (More meat/whey/eggs/peanut butter?) How has the tracking worked out for you; any insights? I'm curious about the effort involved, and accuracy of any numbers put in.
I should do the dex! I'm curious; just looked up; $130 near me; will do it! The 12% estimate was based on visual cues like bicep vein, muscle definition, appearance of facial bones/masceters etc. If I eat lazily, it goes up to probably 18-20%; then I look like I have never seen a gym. Would love to see the actual number.
What is stopping you from doing the steroids now? Test or a mix? Worried about the hairline / body hair or negative face shape changes? I am giving this one final push, then will probably hop in in 1-2 years if this still isn't working. My lifts have stayed the same or gone slightly up while I've been getting lean. The lean thing for is a realization that I am accepting the build, and don't want to hide the muscles I have. I love the way I look without a shirt or in tight-fitting clothes now, but still have an extreme BMI.
Btw, that last point seems to be also one of those counter-intuitive things: For the ultra-skinny (Or maybe more acurrately for anyone who's lean, but has some muscles), looking good without a shirt or in form-fitting clothes is a completely different beast from not. Can go from "Looks fit" to "Doesn't know what a gym" is from a change of clothes alone!
I didn't even think that these things had "different strains" - I thought they were just random junk mail spam they'd throw in your gut but I guess some are concentrated with different bacteria that can help me. Honestly I should get back on it because I've been suffering greatly lately.
I am a westerner and recently traveled to some science conference and casually met this Indian girl (living in India, she travelled to the conference as well), about 24 years old and we clicked immediately. We ended up talking a lot and we had vastly more aligned life goals (having kids, starting a family etc) than i have with my average western female co-workers or women i meet outside work.
Unironically I’m starting to believe i might have to move east if i want to start a family.
I don't see how that is any different from the west except you get better bang for your bucks.
Lol you went from 0 to 100% really quickly there.
That's OK, most of the single woman I know don't care if you like pets or not. As for how you look that's not a huge problem - again most of those same women have expectations in the looks department that are best described as average. And you're gainfully employed! This is better and better.
The only thing I can suggest is to put yourself in a position to meet more women because the more actual real life women you meet the better the chance of finding one that feels that spark.
That's fine. Women are more likely to be into cats anyways.
It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.
2 male friends from college died by their own hand within the last decade.
By most measures, they were successful professionals.
Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting.
Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.
I agree, while most indicators should point to our lives being good overall, Millennials truly got screwed by their Boomer parent antics.
I feel like in a lot of important things, we suddenly went from being too young to being too old. Now we have responsibilities, heavier than our previous generation, but mostly lacked the support to build a stable foundation that can help taking care of those things.
It won't be as bad for GenZ/Alpha because Millenial parents are much more empathetic and supportive of their kids. Also, Boomers take care of their grandkids much more than their own kids, and also the Great Wealth Transfer will skip most Milennials and land directly over GenZ/Alpha.
I am overall optimistic on the outcome of AI, I think Alpha gen will live in a time of abundance and great opportunities. So, yeah, we were the shit gen between two great eras.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer
As we speak, kids have been rapped by covid, lockdowns, meaningless studies, now jobless, apparently futureless and meaningless; That's 5 criticals years of their lives that is lost forever and that this generation will never recover from;
"But this time it will be over FOR REAL!"
Seriously: one shall not confuse "end of the world" with "end of our world" nor with "end of a world"
It appears the transfer is not to their kids or even grandkids. It's going to rich kids and grandkids of healthcare executives. Healthcare and insurance should be a nonprofit service of the government.
Crazy that medical issues can bankrupt an ever larger share of the population at any moment.
That's why we invented social safety nets.
Now parenting expectations may be sky high. That doesn't mean we have to be consumed by them.
I've facilitated 200+ talking meetings at this organisation and another I was involved with previously. Anecdotally, the average attendee at the male-only meetings is ~45 years old, has some level of issues with personal and/or professional boundaries, has had suicidal ideation more than once, and has made plans for or attempted suicide more than once.
There is some form of survivorship bias in the above, but I get a lot of pride from our groups keeping men alive. We haven't lost anyone in 2 years.
Do you find that things such as the man-shed groups play an important part? I feel that life can be more isolating these days and where people move about more and life runs at a faster pace there is less time and fewer opportunities to fully relax and just "talk shit" with someone.
For me TV programmes like Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing are a reminder of how we should be spending some of our time.
Always! Next time you're down in Cornwall, let me know!
>Do you find that things such as the man-shed groups play an important part?
Yes. There are a demographic of men who need to be solving/fixing/building, and that time (together) is therapeutic. My group offers a round table talking format, and it's built around common sense & lived experience with appropriate guard rails for group meetings. We also run walk & talk sessions where any man is welcome to join (with or without a well-behaved dog) for a stomp around.
This is where the 'straight ahead' conversations might happen, they're less confrontational than a round table thing. Both inside & outside events have the 'shoulder to shoulder' thing, that's a conscious decision.
>I feel that life can be more isolating these days and where people move about more and life runs at a faster pace there is less time and fewer opportunities to fully relax and just "talk shit" with someone.
100%. I am reminded of a comment from @kstenerud:
>"We may work online, but we exist in the flesh."
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863683]
>For me TV programmes like Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing are a reminder of how we should be spending some of our time.
Yes! New series soon, I'm told.
> who need to be solving/fixing/building, and that time (together) is therapeutic
Yes, I think thinks like that not only keep the brain working but allows you to concentrate and switch off from everything else.
Keep it you, you're doing very important work that change lives.
But I only recently truly accepted that the life I am living (and have created for myself and family) is actually the dream. We so often miss the greatest times in our lives because we are too focused on the unknowns of the future.