Of course middle class people get stolen from, but they often use their job as an excuse not to organise which is lame imo because I know a lot of people who have it worse and put in way more effort in community building
Fuckin A man. I entered middle class briefly, for the first time in my life, by landing a coding job at six figures.
I let myself get warped, ethically, by my desire not slip below that line again, back into struggle.
But, fortunately for me, stepping away from the right path sapped my energy and I failed at the job and got fired. During the time I had that job my health suffered.
Now I realized that, at least for me, the only way I can rise sustainably is if I stay in accordance with my conscience. And the way it hurt my health, it made me realize it’s actually the right move to sacrifice the money to the conscience. The good feeling is better than anything money can buy.
I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s real for me. And honestly I feel fortunate to be weak enough that I can’t really operate in the world without that extra dopamine kick from my conscience. Like my discipline and focus aren’t great, and things fall apart when I start breaking promises and making bad ones and doing sloppy work for bad reasons, etc.
Just because a comment contains a criticism of X group doesn’t mean it’s a condemnation of the group and thereby a repudiation of all their grievances.
My point is that people don’t want to discuss the real problem of the perverted capitalist discourse.
Its a shame that a middle class person who wants to use their extra income for joy is instead told to work hard and save money for half a century and die early without experiencing any kind of joy or reward for their hard work.
Sometimes you have to live a little. You aren’t getting your good health back.
I’ve seen this play out first hand with people gradually climbing up the socioeconomic ladder as they reach middle age. They forget how things were at the lower middle class compared to the upper middle or even proper upper class.
It gets hard to talk about these days with the social media bullshit muddying up discourse. Because people start seeing red at the mere idea of broaching this topic.
People also have no idea what classes mean. Someone making 40k per year and someone making 400k per year will both say they are middle class. And both would be wrong.
They will both agree to broad idea that “rich bad” and “middle class is struggling”. Their relative suffering is what they both agree on even though they’re different.
If the 40k person saw how the 400k person lives in real life, they would be rolling out the guillotine for the 400k dude. But without proper context online that 40k person will go to bat for the 400k person if anyone brings up the topic of lifestyle.
The further up the scale the more luxury there is. However people work with more binary thinking. So it’s easier to point at the dudes making 1000k or more. The territory of more unfathomable weath. Really there’s a lot of excess going on way before we reach the multi-millionaire to billionaire strata.
I don’t think this is entirely accurate. People who sell their labour for money are all working class… and this would easily cover people right below rich.
Those who start letting money do work for them can be considered the owning/capitalist class.
Now if they are able to stop producing labour because the money they have is generating more money then at that point it becomes a problem because we have arrived at an infinite money machine which is unsustainable in a finite world.
I may be 32, but I can throw in my own thoughts here. Stop paying attention to "societal norms". Societal norms are just there to control people. Do what you love. Watch cartoons and listen to whatever music you want to. You don't have to be an adult at all times. Take a break once in a while.
Considering the vast majority of people that walk around naked in the public locker room without an ounce of shame are people over 50 or over 60, I find this comment has got it backwards. There seems to be a universal constant that the older you get, the less you care about what other people think. I know I have experienced this myself, and most older people I ask tend to agree vehemently. It also explains why so many young people are embarrassed by their parents.
My advice to teens and people in their early twenties: don’t worry what other people think of you. No one else is thinking about you much at all.
You realize 31 year olds were only 10 when YouTube came out? They have lived nearly their whole lives with it. Why do so many people under 30 think anyone over 30 is 50 years old?
Dude my mom is 60 and uses youtube all the time, why do people also think 60 is 89?
Now my (now dead) 89yo relatives? Yeah they didn’t use youtube, one of them had a rotary phone until the phone company stopped supporting them in like 2009 and then he had no phone and no internet until the day he died. Had to drive to his house or send him a letter.
When someone is having a computer problem I ask them to restart first. Not because I think they don’t know to do it, but just in case. Some people don’t know. Sometimes people forget. Obvious advice is useful sometimes.
Get out and make friends. Yes I know it gets harder as you get older, but it’s often the difference between dying alone and demented young and sticking around and finding happiness until your body gives out.
Also, remember your grandparents and parents from time to time after they’re gone. It hurts but it’s good for you.
Previous injuries I had when I was young. Like my knee from a baseball injury a long time ago. They just randomly flare up now. But brand new? Lower back. I swear some days it’s like a flip of a coin.
It’s super sad to see. We used to complain about kids being fed digital “contents” as pacifiers, but now I constantly see older people super fixated with their phone watching tiktok videos. 😔
Computers and their interfaces? Way beyond the familiarity of older folks. TikTok? That’s just rapid-fire TV. That’s channel surfing where every flip is a reward. That’s gambling and standup combined.
There’s no shame in changing your mind, there is no shame in needing help, there is no shame in self improvement, try to love yourself as a whole and work towards changing the things you don’t love.
Sometimes people around them don’t make it any easier. If people around a person immediately show contempt to a person who admits they were wrong, it enforces a microculture where change is going to be harder and more painful than necessary.
I can’t believe how many times I’ve been told I’ve changed when I no longer found something funny or said something that I wouldn’t have in my teen years.
One of the longest-running opinions of mine that hasn’t been disproved yet is that many people just don’t really mature or age mentally, it seems; they just grow older, without accumulating much if any wisdom.
That’s very true. I routinely change the parts of me I love. I try to make them better. I’m a kind and loving person, but I’m trying to change that from a selfless form to a self preserving form. To know my limits and stop pouring from an empty cup.
The advice I’m most scared not to follow as I get older: don’t dismiss everything that the younger generations say or do as being just a trend, and learn more about it.
Haha. It’s an inside joke from the person who made this post. OP is, i believe, a Bitcoin guy who has interacted with the Monero community
Since you asked, Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. You can buy some cool stuff online with it, like 1 month VPN access from Mullvad, using xmrbazaar.com which is an eBay like site which accepts monero, and VPS and domain names through njal.la
Definitely a pretty niche thing but it’s a growing community. We don’t show up much on the internet because of the privacy-focused thing; we don’t really frequent twitter, etc, although some do.
Your welcome 😊 I tend not to bring up crypto outside the crypto community (except when it’s an inside joke) because of the scammy connotations. And there’s definitely a lot more scams out there that promise you the world than real, grassroots projects. I’ve binged a lot of Coffeezilla on youtube, he has very good and entertaining coverage on crypto scams :)
Living is an art. I grew up in a very rich neighborhood, and despite their wealth, many were troubled. Tons of high functioning drug addicts, alcoholics, Hoarders, narcissists, etc. it was kind of surreal.
We also had a family friend who was poor, not verge of homelessness poor, but impoverished relative to the town we lived. Like everyone, he had his fair share of problems, and worked a lot, but he was happy. Very few things deeply troubled him and he always maintained a calm and collected demeanor. Extremely intelligent too. When I was down, upset, angry, or outright furious, he was always there to impart his wisdom, and I am a better man for it.
Seemingly few people recognize the crucial art of living. Not to live without problems but live in spite of them. So many miserable, privileged people I’ve met in that town.
Yep, this is what I’m going to do. I’m in my 30s now and I’m going to start travelling. I was going to wait until I was in my 40s but I realized nothing is promised so I might as well go ahead and do it now.
Just because you don’t understand something within the first 5 seconds doesn’t mean it’s stupid.
Also information changes on a daily basis. Just because someone gave you different information than what you were taught doesn’t mean they were taught wrong. Look it up.
As a 30+ person, this hits true. I heard my first friend say “the crap music these kids are listening to”. Like dude, have just some self awareness, remember our parents saying green day and blink -182 were crap.
I would add to this that we don’t need to understand something for there to be value to others. There are trends I don’t understand, like dancing on tiktok, but it apparently brings the youths joy so have at it.
Loving this chain. Also over 30. I get frustrated that what older generations used to spout about Millenials like me (lazy, don’t want to work, etc) gets spouted by my generation to gen z.
I’ve seen some Gen Z kids do some bad things, but I’ve also seen them do amazing things my generation would not have done.
As far as music, I love all the variety there is and all the mediums to listen to it now.
I am actively working on trying to be better than the older generation. I love how unique gen z is, how they truly believe everyone have value, their beliefs, their morals. I have hope they will be better than us
Indeed, but this particular sub-thread started with an OP giving advice to older people, and is now older people responding to that comment. These aren’t top level comments, so let the conversation go where it may.
Tbf some of the popular music has been shit since music began I’m sure, but there’s also always good stuff. For instance rap music, most of it these days is garbage like lil uzi and lil peep, but there’s still dudes like Aesop Rock (not ASAP Rocky, Aesop Rock), Run The Jewels, Meyhem Lauren, Lil Nas X, making good shit out there. Pop hasn’t been good since the 80s though. Oddly enough I think my favorite stuff from “now” is actually the fact that shoegaze is coming back but called zoomergaze and it’s fantastic! The band Julie is a good example, check out their EP Pushing Daisies. Also there’s been some really good recent country, namely Charley Crockett and Sturgil Simpson, and (ok it’s psychedelic bluegrass but) Billy Strings.
There is good stuff, we just have to dig through piles of shit for it.
Then they already know the radio has been pumping out pure drivel and oldies since the advent of RoboDJs? My mistake, didn’t mean to musicsplain.
Edit: OH but I should qualify it: J-pop and K-pop are putting out some decent stuff, just not KISSFM™ and IHeartRadio™ which are equivalent to all American pop radio.
I just turned 30 and I am pretty sure a woman is not worth it if she does not provide you peace at home and is constantly looking for drama and conflict. Spent my youth chasing lost causes
As a guy at least in my experience, whenever I leave home I am faced with constant criticism and I have come to the realization that I simply do not have the capacity for it at home as well
As a stone-age person on Lemmy (47) allow me a response please.
First of all, I agree with you. Spent my 20s going through the motions thinking “maybe I just won’t meet someone I can bear to be with in the long term”.
And then I met her.
But in some respects she also met me at the right time. My assumptions about what I needed to help fix changed. My way of talking to women about their day, their challenges, their ambitions slowly morphed. So I don’t know if “she was perfect for me” or I had finally learnt how the differences between biological males and biological females drove how we communicated, what we needed and expected from each other, allowed me to finally commit to a long term relationship. We’ve been together for 17 years, married for 15. She drives me mad at times, and most days she wants to strangle me slowly, but despite all those small details, we also make each other laugh till we can’t breathe, we agree on almost everything (probably why the small disagreements become so “important”), we manage to parent four kids relatively well and when we finally find the time to have a day by ourselves, I am reminded why I fell in love with her.
I guess I’m trying to tell you that it might still happen to you too.
I’m only a few years older than you, but I agree. And I’ll also say that some (respectful) criticism at home is ok, and if I’m honest, should be expected.
We’re all not perfect and can’t expect to get nothing but praise or adoration from our partners, nor should it be expected of us. But all criticism should come from a place of love and respect; it’s not your partner against you about a problem, it’s you and your partner against a problem.
Healthy relationships require hard conversations like that, but no one deserves to be in a relationship where they can’t feel comfortable to be themselves without being attacked for it (with some obvious exceptions).