Life in your 30s
3d 6h ago by lemmy.world/u/The_Picard_Maneuver in memes
I am totally on the bottom right group.
My people
Our numbers are uncountable
Yeah, I'm in the void. I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm sad.
Us, too! You literally have no idea how many of us assholes are in here with you...
Hope you are well!
I highly encourage a therapist and ssri's if you are not doing well.
They won't make you happy but you won't be suicidal!
Me too ! I've cut off all my former high school / college "friends" for various reasons. Deleted all my accounts. I don't exist online under my legal name, and I like it that way.
Same. There are about 10 people I knew before my 30s that I am still in contact with, family included.
A distinct lack of "drugs/degeneracy" category
I think that's a subset of "disappeared". If you followed up on the people who disappeared, it's a coin flip as to whether they just hate people or have fallen on hard times.
Hey, just because I'm a degenerate doesn't mean I don't care about maintaining healthy relationships with my friends!
Also just because I am a degenerate doesn't mean life is hard on me. Ignorance is bliss mf
Then we'll work with the admission board to see if we can't get you into "obsessed with work" on a "degeneracy" path.
Uh you have friends?
What about those of us who both hate people and have fallen on hard times?
Believe or not, that's still a "disappearing."
Might even be a double disappearing.
Lil bit of this, lil bit of that
yeah I feel severely underrepresented
Do some drugs, you’ll feel better.
way ahead of you!
unfortunately, the way I'm on is downhill.
Drugs / Degeneracy can fall into all 4 of these categories?
You think that workaholic doesn't need a little help? That trainer, a boost? While the e family takes some to forget how stressful it is to works multiple full-time jobs.
Such a liberating feeling to finally understand that you're not bound to follow some externally plotted life trajectory...
... and just debase.
I'm proudly in the "obsessed with work" category (organizing working class unions)
God speed. What's the latest state of unions in the modern technological age?
I joined my work's union.
No ones going to be working soon. Are you going to pivot?
Cant disappear from social media if you really weren't there to begin with.
Though i fall in the bottom left corner, always training, though not for something. Training just to train more.
Im both bottom left and bottom right, disappeared to train for nothing.
So you're training for trainings sake too?
Well, I train because its good for my mental health, I think it counts?
Of course it counts, probably one of the best reasons to do it.
trains rule tbf
I feel seen
Happy cake day!
Thank you!
What app you using?? Mine doesn't show cake days!
Voyager - it’s great!
Downloaded and will check it out haha thanks!
Proud member of the bottom right. Oddly, it has made me a big topic of conversation among my friends, and I don’t get that at all.
How do you know this if you've disappeared? There are people like this in my life that no one has heard from in 20 years. Now that's hardcore.
Meh, I’m not hardcore, I just don’t have social media and I don’t do weddings, birthdays, or anything involving children, so I pretty much just meet up with them at shows these days.
How are they in your life if you haven't heard from them in 20 years?
They’re in his basement. Nobody else has heard of them.
That IS hardcore!
Ok bad choice of words.They used to be in my life.
Now they're dead in your basement.
That would explain a lot.
I don't think that's odd. People's lives are boring and not much happens, it's interesting to talk about unknowns.
It's like that scene in good will hunting. The best part of my day is when I walk up to the door and imagine you just left.
You know, for about a decade, everyone was pushed to share everything they did on social media. It was a mistake. It was a mistake on the scale of cigarettes and smoking inside and in airplanes and in hospitals and in schools. No one thought it was a stupid idea, and a lot of people pushed it as the only way to get jobs and show you're a clever chimp that can internet so hard because interneting hard was the cool new thing.
Lower right is the hangover from that. Anyone I didn't find or didn't find me between 2008 and 2018 wasn't ever worth connecting with. The people that did find me were nice to hear from once, and we haven't talked ever again, despite being connected, for 10+ years.
My grandparents and their parents, etc. went their whole lives never seeing people again and not knowing what happened to them because they moved one time and they didn't know their new address. Whole movies were about that. Elvis had a song about that. The last episode of the first season of The Real World ended with everyone moving out of the apartment, and once that landline and address no longer went to those people, it was 100% possible that those people would be gone from each others' lives forever.
Y'all, we're not supposed to collect and keep 27,000 casual contacts throughout our lives. It's unnatural. Our brains are not built for it. We're made to have a few dozen up to 100-ish close connections that mean something, including family you don't pick.
Email some old friends you don't text with daily. Send anyone you truly care about an email to say hi. If they respond, then great. If not, don't worry about it. Enjoy high fidelity communications with those who mater to you.
We are not built to drink milk beyond infancy, yet we do. We are not built to cross oceans in a few hours, wake up in one time zone and fall asleep in another, yet we do. We are not built to eat ice cream on a scorching summer afternoon or preserve food for months and experience flavors from far away, yet we do.
The argument that something is "unnatural" has always struck me as incomplete, because humanity's defining trait is that we are not merely shaped by nature, we reshape our relationship with it. We build tools, cultures, institutions, and technologies that allow us to transcend many of the constraints our ancestors lived under.
That does not mean every new capability is wise or healthy. Some inventions enrich our lives; others burden us in ways we only understand decades later. But the fact that something exceeds the limits of our evolutionary past is not, by itself, an argument against it.
Human flourishing has always depended less on the number of people we can reach and more on the depth of the few relationships that truly matter. I miss having many Facebook friends (some I have never physically met) and seeing their life updates every once in a while, because now we all think Facebook is no longer cool.
Fair points, though, maybe more so in the abstract. To be fair, when I go try and fix or adjust or tweak something, I do always tell myself "we're humans, we change our environment to suit our needs."
Though I think you're excusing burnout and BS social media hustle culture when some people simply don't want to do that. If you want to post everything on IG, go for it. But people shouldn't feel shame for falling into the lower right square. It's a decision some people make consciously, and others less so. Which, for me, feels like loss. We had this nice thing where it was great to see what my friends from 20 years ago were up to. And now I can't participate in it because it harvests my data, and I would tell them the same. The infrastructure found us, friction-free. And when it turned out that pipes were to suck us dry, the gap was real, and the previous infrastructure not up to the task of casually serving up information. Now it (barely) takes work to say hello to someone and has to be meaningful again. People should be allowed to be OK with that.
Which is to say that my evolution argument is that we have, within a generation, taxed the limits of a part of us that hasn't gradually worked up to a universal higher capacity. Better weapons have extinguished genetic lines with no regard for adaptation or evolutionary traits other than what country someone was born into. Given 30 generations, we don't physically adapt to having bombs dropped on us. We aren't selecting for terminally online people to reproduce more and be more successful in the species, either. Maybe we are and I'm so far out of it that I can't tell.
Gen Z here. Burnt out of social media. Deleted every mainstream social media app. If you want the fastest way to never ever hear from me, it would be email. That shits incredibly overwhelming. I check my physical mailbox more than I check my email. The goal is to get away from the computer.
Based perspective on this, thank you. :)
Friends?
Ain't nobody got time for that. I'm too busy working / raising a family / training for a marathon / [comment deleted by user].
"Why did you leave Facebook? Now we can't talk to you!"
they never spoke to you once on Facebook
It's on tv all the time.
We can say that we're friends. That way we can have a friend.
I appreciate the offer but it could never work. I kinda hate robocalls.
Most people say that to me
No, I must disagree. Most of my friends are right in the centre. Many are starting families, but are also working on careers and are well intentioned gym goers who I speak to less and less because life is too busy.
How the fuck does anyone have the energy for all that?
Work means surviving. You either have the energy for it or you're fucked.
"Training" can be a fancy way of saying you are very focused on one aspect of athleticism for your health, and you'll discover that you have more energy for other things if you maintain your health and exercise. At first you feel like you don't have the energy for it, then you do it, then you have the energy for that and more.
Also many sleep way better after getting healthier, so it builds upon itself even more. Some people struggle with sleep apnea and shit like that, and one reason is the tongue holds a lot of fat. Lose weight and you sleep better. Sleep better and it's easier to lose weight and have energy to do other stuff. It's the opposite of a downward spiral.
They don't do all equally well, and none are done above average.
Discipline. Basically.
Discipline, also known as ignoring basic needs until one burns out with a whole bunch of different outcomes from addictions to suicide
Healthy outlook you've got there...
You sound like you need to learn discipline.
Sadly no, i had - and still have to - reduce it. I've always been proud of my discipline, but i never used it to take care of myself, but instead used to push myself harder than i was able to sustain long term (runs in the family too). Too much discipline isn't a good thing, it becomes selfdestructive.
Discipline is a form of self care. I think you are conflating a method with outcome in that case. I'd argue that it takes discipline to take care of yourself AND others.
The only difference is the amount of self-worth someone has - if you deem yourself not important, then discipline comes at a cost.
I don't have an answer for that. You just do what you have to do.
This is my experience, as well. It sounds like I’m a few years older than you, but almost everyone in my larger friend group is/was doing all of these things, particularly so if the bottom left is just “intensely focused on some new niche hobby.”
Yeah I was about to say - I'm all of these things. I feel like that's pretty common.
I know a guy who is three of these things. Goes to the gym 6 days a week, works in a hospital, starting a business, has a wife and a kid, and he still manages to have time to hang out once or twice a week. Man is as successful as I am not
As someone who is some of those things as well, I would love to know what the wife and/or child are doing during all those activities. Because something has to give when you're doing that much.
In my experience, that balance is really hard, and even in the most hospitable, high-quality-of-life places, that balance is not exactly always something that is nurtured and valued by the systems in place.
I think he really is just built different. I'm good friends with both parents, and knew his wife long before he did. Both of them are working on higher education, kid goes to daycare most days every week. It's not like he never sees his son either. Usually when I hang out, we're watching his boy while we play BG3, which is nice because he can just walk away for a minute whenever a diaper needs changed
Having recieved a large sum of life insurance money after his father passed away certainly helped with the house buying and the car maintaining and the education pursuing, but his time management is pure skill
I wonder if your friend can sleep only five hours and still function to the maximum. Apparently it is genetics. Napoleon and Thatcher could sleep less than 7 hours and could still think sharp and be fresh as a daisy.
Welp, don't know about Napoleon, but Thatcher pulled some stupid and evil shit.
Maybe if she had slept more, we could have had a better world ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How successful can he be if he failed at using birth control?
Here I am going strong in the bottom right!
Same, I’ve come to realize life is best alone. Solitude is the best dude.
I'm loving how many bottoms there are in this thread
This could be funny if it wasn't such a sad outlook on life.
At least you can pretend to Excel at something
Word.
Powerful Point.
Windows puns run out, Lemmy know.
The disappeared ones. I'm one of those.
I'll tell you what we are up to. We are
Yikes! You can't just tell people about the
People are disappearing left and right! I need to tell the world about this before
Looking forward to being on the bottom right.
At some when people get too busy to be concerned I'll delete my snap and insta leaving nothing behind. I just don't understand why people feel the need to share everything they're doing constantly or how they get upset if you don't have the energy to react to it all.
I just don't understand why people feel the need to share everything they're doing constantly or how they get upset if you don't have the energy to react to it all.
Dopamine hit.
Ive already done this at 24, no snap, insta, reddit, Facebook, and im slowly starting to get rid of tiktok now
I just don’t understand why people feel the need to share everything
Sign of life. Some people keep posting what they're doing even if no one cares, just a reminder they're still alive and breathing.
40s is the same, but one of them is dead
I was going to say: There's no space for dead, moved to Austin in the 10s, or crippling pain killer addiction.
All sub sections of category 4
Obsessed with work is the most obnoxious type of person. It’s a validation seeking behavior that I find intolerable.
We do the best we can with what we know at the time. We're products of our parents and environments. You can't blame somebody for that.
this goes for literally everything. Someone might still experience it as obnoxious and intolerable. Me included
I am with you on generally trying to understand the reasons for a particular behavior. Does not always help with being annoyed by it though. Especially if they apply their world view to everyone else around them and start to judge you for enjoying work/life balance
I'm all for understanding, but my line is drawn when the understanding fails to lead to action. My oldest friend still chooses validation seeking over all else, despite knowing that it's the crux of all his problems and knowing he has the support of everyone, he's adamant that it's not on him to change and it's on his support network to accept this as who he is and accommodate it even at their detriment. 24 years, I can't handle that. I'm not willing to undo changes I made for my mental health to accommodate a lifestyle he's admitted to being toxic.
I agree wholeheartedly. I just don’t like this particular behavior. I’m a little more European in that way.
In general I agree but a few people are lucky enough to have jobs that are cool enough to be obsessed with. That doesn't excuse them from being able to talk about other stuff with other people, but I think it's fine for them to be that way. I work in some fairly advanced science facilities and some of the people I've met are working on stuff that's crazy enough and difficult enough that you almost need to be a little obsessed to succeed at it.
But my job is awesome and I really enjoy it and I'd do it for free if I didn't have to worry about money. I just want to share the fun fulfilling stuff I did with my friends :(
Luckily we're all autistic enough to tell me off if they don't want to hear about it.
Counterpoint, the best way to organize unions is to become obsessed with everything happening within your workplace
I am not sure I've ever met a labor organizer but I've definitely met vest guy who just wants to talk about his job and if I try and change the subject a bit they ask me about my job...
Bonus points if they start telling a story with names from their work as if I know them.
Disappeared can have a lot of dif meanings behind it these days.
My insta is empty. Apparently I've disappeared
Yeah like, does the pub count ?
Been spending the last 20 years at the Winchester, waiting for all this to blow over.
That's a fair effort. You'll possibly be there for another 20 then.
I'm number four. I mean, I was. Those people have probably all forgotten about me by now.
It is a peaceful life.
I lurk in the high school chat, saying nothing all year round except "happy birthday" or "congrats" (baby/marathon)
They didn't have any of that new-fangled stuff when i was in school.
I'm happily none of the above.
You're on Lemmy, you're the bottom right corner
Not really though. I haven't been on the big social media platforms in forever, even during my 20s I was already gone. That doesn't withhold you from visiting parties, chilling with friends, going places, etc. The only big platform that I'm still on is WhatsApp, because it's the main way to message people here, and that's how you can go places. But I haven't go Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, and whatever the fuck people use to consume ads nowadays
I was happily in the bottom 2, now I just need to get back on the career grind..
please help, the software industry is in a rut and my child needs food.
Have you tried being an AI? I hear tech is only hiring AI now.
unfortunately I am not "actually indian"
The "Why is nobody joining my games on X-Box?" answer guide.
Most of this was correct
you guys still got friends?
When the definition of "friend" is "person you hung out with in HS/College and then only ever associated with via the computer", maybe you don't.
Box 4, in particular, is a really depressing rubric for friendship as it assumes a person vanishes the moment they stop providing new content on Social Media. I've got friends who occupy the first three quadrants simultaneously, but we still keep in touch by SMS and by actually visiting one another on a regular basis. We're 100% logged the fuck off past that.
Box 4, in particular, is a really depressing rubric for friendship as it assumes a person vanishes the moment they stop providing new content on Social Media.
I just think of it as shorthand for the very real phenomenon that some people fall off the radar in every measurable way: can no longer be found in person, won't respond to calls or texts, no online presence (even DMs/chats, or electronic invites to in-person activities). I have a few friends in that category, and it's often something like trying to build a new life away from their past (sometimes including a new spouse and/or social circle), or even mental health issues.
And some people really do want to live off grid in a cabin in the mountains, or backpacking, or in a faraway, low-connectivity job (at sea, or in remote wilderness, or whatever else). If they end up doing that and fall off the radar, it happens.
I just think of it as shorthand for the very real phenomenon that some people fall off the radar in every measurable way
Sure. But there tends to be a certain distance already baked in. Unless you have a deep bound with someone - a parent / sibling / child, typically - once you stop interacting with that person IRL, there's less and less of an incentive to engage with them remotely.
Damn this is they way it is for most of us 20 something’s after college…
There's also the "still acting like they're 16 years old" and they're as bad if not worse than all the other cathegories
Fifth category: Everybody has forgotten about YOU, and you essentially no longer exist.
Aww man, I got
Constantly working (not into it)
Be gay
Always playing map painting games
And
Declared a terrorist by UK government
Declared a terrorist by UK government
By the sounds of it, this one is fairly easy to do.
Yeah, not to disparage his hard work organising beforehand and 2 years in prison (so far), but ultimately all he did was park really badly. At most he should be getting a few points on his license.
That's what you get for wanking without a license sicko
Bottom half. You will never hear about my triumphs. They're mine only.
Mine either.
First I started a family and then I promptly disappeared. I still have little to no social media presence. This really the only place I'm active online.
Dad?
I'm the bottom right except no insta, no FB, etc. and only an email address.
....and a Lemmy account
A piefed account more technically, but yes. I technically have a lot of minor forum-like accounts around the web, but no crossover with my IRL friends, nor do I think I would enjoy interacting with them via these platforms.
I'm certain I fall into bottom right as the category but I can't tell where in the quadrant I'd put the dot that indicates that I'm actively still on the internet and available to be found but I've dedicated an unreasonable amount of time to avoiding the modern digital culture in lieu of a mock attempt to recapture the late 2000s digital experience. Hit me up in that chatroom or text me on my flip phone, you'll find me by my handle it's the same on every platform.
Where's
Work
Come home too exhausted to do anything worthwhile
Sleep
Work
I don't think it falls into the first category because I really don't give a shit about my job. I just have no energy.
I don't mean to be snide or clever, but it sounds like you care about your job a lot. At the very least what would happen if you did not have that job. I feel for that and it sounds like you might need to talk to someone. Could be over analyzing a small comment on the internet but your short lines of text felt... raw.
Good luck buck.
I think a lot of it is Long Covid, to be honest. After I had Covid I started sleeping really poorly, and I still do. I also really need to lose weight.
As far as my job goes it's actually pretty cushy. Of course, if I could find a way to survive without it, I'd quit in a heartbeat - as I imagine many people would.
I wish I had arranged my finances better so I could live the dream of being bottom right in a nice very functional house in the forest, with enough self-reliance and supplies to last for months and months without poking my head out of my shell.
Bottom right for a few years now, but it really only applies if social media is the only way you can think of to get in contact.
Drugs
Bottom left. "Outrun the darkness" group.
- online only, never actually met (gaming, streams)
I can't hit 30 friends, I only have 2
I've been a combination of all 3 my entire 30's. Was obsessed with work, had kids. Got fat because of having said kids, got back into lifting weights, and I have almost 0 social media presence.
You're not fat, just ready for the economic winter
Bottom right
Is there a 5th option for "life is already over"?
The bottom 2 categories feel like a personal attack on me.
Secret 5th option: became a girl
i'm this plus #4
I’m none of those. I’m always around with nothing to say, no family, stupid job, and not training for anything. that doesn’t hold me back from being really annoying on social media. (☝︎ ՞ਊ ՞)☝︎
I’m the one who disappears for a while lol. “Is he in jail or in the Cayman Islands… who knows”
Oh man I'm constantly training for something, but also bad at sports lol
Didn't say 'wall full of trophies'.
Shit I am all of them.
We know why. They're dead.
from personal experience,
we just deleted our accounts once school/uni was over
and started new chapter
Those exist too but I'm certain a dosen of them are in the ground.
I'm top-left (my job pays well, it's engaging, and it has a positive impact on the world).
I have some friends in a 5th category that are hyper-busy with traveling, social engagements, etc. I feel like I have to book time with them weeks in advance.
I beg to differ.
I'm absorbed mostly in work but also a little bit of 3, however the "something" is merely trying to stave off a heart attack and premature physical degradation in general, and not so much some grand lofty fitness goal.
And also 4. The amount of negativity that entered my brain through social media reached critical mass during the early stages of Covid and I axed pretty much all of it and never returned.
I see no reason why I can't fill all of the quadrants, except for chronic lack of time
Oh dang this almost perfectly explains me and my three friends
Option E: "Walking around in the woods"
It's kinda like washing reality off with the reality you can't have.
I spent some time dabbling in all four categories during my thirties. Never really excelling in any of them.
you spent time dabbling in making a family? how's the child support payments?
I never successfully conceived. I guess I wasn't doing it right.
You gotta give a creampie. In her vagina.
Subscribe for more reproduction tips.
takes notes
I dunno sounds kinda gay.
It is if you're a woman.
#4
I am on the right side of this picture.
The only one I can't relate to at all is "start a family".
Of all my friends from before I had kids (oldest is almost 10), none of them have kids.
Most of the couples among that group are all childless and are now either divorced, gay, or both.
To be fair, though, the gay ones were gay all along.
Da gays in category four, clap with me! 👏 👏 👏 cha-cha-cha
Possibly because, in your case, they moved to a geographical region less actively hostile to their non-binary personality, but people continuïng their outgoing Renaissance Fair / Swordfighting / Theater / Convention polycule life is a category for me.
I tell people that I told my ROTC cadre that my nonexistent sister got me pregnant and that's why I stare at goats now, which is a fancy way to say I do counterintelligence, and everyone disappears from my perspective.
Im checking three of the four quadrants. I work to much, I havea too many kids and I have dropped most of my social contacts intentionally. And im usually constantly angry i don't have the discipline to train consistently to stay fit. Currently I'm also not healthy enough to work out, waiting for a doctors appointment to hopefully fix that shit.
Have a few who check 3 of those boxes
I think im all of these but less training for something than the other 3.
I am all of these to different people. None of them are particularly accurate though. For example, going to the gym twice a week makes me a trainer to the lazy ones, etc etc.
I’m not really any of these. How about content with less and spends time traveling?
Quadrant III, (bootom left) with II wing (bottom right) for me.
Nothing wrong with that. It's called figuring out what life is all about. And given that your 30s is when you properly mature. It makes perfect sense.
Seems like I'm a little bit all over the place lol
Right, I'm like shit, these are all me.
All 4?
All 4? Not in my 30's though. But everyone does all of these.
Top dead center.
I'm 3 out of 4 😂
There's a 5th way: 🫵
the first one gives the opportunity(since Blackstone is metioned real estate, mangerial/admin banker positions, or a lucrative tech job) to have the other 2 categories besides the last one.
why not the last one, I feel the last one is most older people in those types of positions