As someone who has kids who are now just becoming “adults,” “that funny feeling” just keeps getting worse. I worry they’ll never be able to afford houses or families of their own and with the constant rising costs, we won’t have anything to even leave them. I wish I could bury my head in the sand and think everything will be just fine, but I can’t anymore.

Fuckin amen! I often think of what I could be doing with my life if I was financially independent. It just feels like so much of my time is just wasted at being at my job. It's fuckin depressing...

All I can say is you're not alone and I really wish I could give you a hug right now, friend. :(

I got this favorite literary passage for you though. I think we all ought to hear it a bit more often:

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam…

Sam: I know! It’s all wrong! By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

Let's remember this was written by a fellow who survived the hellish trenches of WW1. A conflict that felt ridiculously pointless for all the bloodshed it caused.

Here we are in our own figurative trenches. We are weathering our own crisis after crisis, wondering if it's all worth it in the end. "But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow."

We can't give up and give in to despair, because friends, family, people we don't even know, need us to all keep each other going. Our time will come. Don't give up on exposing this nonsense in the most loving way you can, showing people alternatives, and building the resistance to State and corporate tyranny. One changed mind at a time.

I am also alive because cat.

the psychological impact of a cat existing near you never fails to impress.

I have the same thing with my dog. I made an attempt when I was 18, then got a dog at 20. I’m 24 now and still struggle a lot with depression, wishing the attempt had worked and all that, but would never do it now because I can’t imagine leaving my dog all by himself.

The only reason I've not killed myself is cos I've been failing for 20yrs to do it. Don't expecyt me to enjoy this fucked up existence just because I have no fucking choice but to live in it.

Life is just a different type of prison.

how can I help alleviate your suffering?

drugs and/or guillotines

I'd have to say I'm doing alright myself. I don't make a lot of money. I'm not happy with politics and other things in the world but I'm thankful for what I have and that I am okay. I actively work to make my life better in whatever ways I can. I've met tons of people who don't and are unhappy.

I think people are unhappy are more likely to say something in response to something like the Elmo tweet rather than say "I'm doing great/good/alright."

Tbh I just want to work a job that can pay the bills and support a potential retirement. For so many of us this is all we want. We are willing to work, just not to some abhorrent degree or in wholly unreasonable, inhumane conditions. Many of us aren't asking to become filthy rich, just rich enough that things like bills and a scraped knee don't extend our retirement age another 20 years.

This is why I shut down reddit once and for all. It was all ragebait, sad news, doom and gloom. They posted a very, very, very horrifying, very sad news on the frontend that affected me for weeks. You know when people post "That's enough reddit for me for today"? I said "that's enough reddit for me for good!"

Reddit used to be a fun place. I legitimately went there knowing that, five minutes in, I'd be laughing my ass off.

I can only imagine Twitter must be much, much worse.

Lemmy.... hm, Lemmy is going down that path. I try to stick to my tech community subs, but every now and then I check the frontpage and, if it's not a bunch of deadhorse memes, then it's stuff like this "nobody is ok" post.

I'm almost convinced that an AI (or "dem illuminaccies") are trying to bring the mood down on everyone on the internet, so it's easier to harvest their organs or something.

I think asking is good, and this may be worth getting into for other reasons - but know that this is a one way trip.

I'd suggest starting with the things that helped me unfuck my shit (partially, anyway!). First, if you haven't already, check out Kurzgesagt's Optimistic Nihilism video. If you find that interesting, continue on to absurdist philosophy, especially Camus (Sisyphus, Stranger) and Sartre (Nausea). After that, existentialism - I think I'd probably start with Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Once you begin to get a feel for these ideas, I think a high-level reevaluation of deeply held beliefs and how you perceive the world around you becomes inevitable.

In terms of your question and what you are seeing, I believe these trends represent a larger collective awakening. Not a miracle, but something borne out of necessity: for anyone brave enough to take their head out of the sand for thirty seconds, environmental concerns alone are completely fucking overwhelming, and obviously that's just a start.

I do take solace in this development, though. Somehow, even without actively studying philosophy, teens today (and even younger!) appear to have, to a degree, an intuitive understanding of these concepts. That's wild! When I was in high school in the late 90s, genuinely thinking for yourself wasn't tolerated the way it is today. Sure, there were punks and goths and whatever, but for anyone who dared to question the paradox of asserting one’s uniqueness through group affiliation, the road was much bumpier than it seems to be today.

I actually had to remind one of my children at around 10 years of age that she should be careful telling her peers things like "god isn't real and nothing really matters" ... admittedly she was raised in a "we always respect people with different beliefs even if we find it difficult to respect their beliefs" home, so the "god isn't real" part wasn't a surprise, but she found existentialism on her own.

Consider the complexity of the humour in memes today - I think a lot of older folks dismiss it as vapid and banal, and while some definitely lands there, the baseline tends to include a lot more irony, sarcasm, and even elements of these more abstract philosophical ideas in ways that older generations tend to struggle with. At first glance it appears completely nonsensical, but upon superficial understanding it quickly becomes "antisocial" and offensive: how dare you find camaraderie in joking about suicide, and do you really think the collapse of civilization would be a good thing? This is more than gallows humour.

And perhaps your comment was more flippant than my initial interpretation and this will just come across as obtuse and condescending - I hope not, as that is definitely not my intent. If it was sincere and you are just beginning down this path, I hope my perspective makes a difference for you. I suspect it is obvious, but my own experience with this was not pleasant; it took me many years to find my way through and feel ok about continuing, in the broadest sense. With a bit of discipline and thoughtfulness, I think you should be able to mitigate the psychological risks inherent in exploring some of the more fundamentally challenging implications of nihilism.

I promise that people who are "not ok" are literally not even thinking about how Windows is getting worse. I'm a sysadmin and if windows was perfect my life would still be equal levels of shit, it's such a non issue that I'm amused you brought it up

Global warming is kind of a big one to not list...

Well damn, Windows gets invasive and I am DONE

Holy first world problems, batman!

You forgot "on track for a 10c rise by the end of the century"

God damnit. Am I leaving comments from alt accounts in my sleep again?

You're not whiny. Don't denigrate yourself the way boomers bullied you to. Your feelings and concerns obviously do matter.