[HN Gopher] Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are liv... ___________________________________________________________________ Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home Author : harambae Score : 165 points Date : 2021-06-11 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com) | MattGaiser wrote: | I have a very multicultural background, but the dominant cultural | view, at least when it comes to money, is Chinese. | | For us, living at home is not failure. Moving out without | planning to start a family if you live in the same city as your | parents is considered wasting money. You instead use it as an | opportunity to save a pile of money and invest. | | How much of this is just cultural change? It isn't failure to | launch. It is wanting to launch with a larger rocket with more | fuel. | xputer wrote: | It's also much harder to buy your own place these days. | supertrope wrote: | I grew up in a school district with median household income | >$100k. Several schools had blue ribbon awards from the federal | department of education. There were still families where kids | were given 30 days notice to move out upon turning 18. Some | families were under so much financial pressure the parents | wanted the kids to drop out of high school at 16 and work. | UncleOxidant wrote: | I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and | play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. | Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. | Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town | with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education | beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life | without their parents. It's a slow motion tragedy. | Vadoff wrote: | It's the parents fault for coddling them. If they kicked them | out at 18, the nephews would definitely need to work and may | realize the importance of having a better job/career. | UncleOxidant wrote: | I agree with this. I think it has something to do with my | sister (their mom) being a single mom from the time they were | 6, 8 years old till she remarried when they were teenagers | and their stepfather not wanting to interfere too much in the | parenting department. | izend wrote: | Doesn't always work, video games are probably the cheapest | addicting entertainment out there. Doesn't take much income | to just survive and play video games all day long. | Vadoff wrote: | But at least they would be working, probably know how to | drive a car, and may consider furthering their | education/career when they realize how little they make for | their time. | vmception wrote: | or most likely meet other marginalized people from | society who are their first endearing support system | | not so different than runaway teenagers, or ex-Mormons | that escape Utah | q-big wrote: | ... or commit suicide. | notJim wrote: | This is maybe a ridiculous question, but why is that so | much better? If someone is able to live cheaply, why is | it better for them to work in some menial, low-wage job | versus being supported by a relative? I think something | you have to consider is that if you have low social | standing and are poorly educated, your options in life | are not necessarily super appealing. | Vadoff wrote: | Who's to say that they'd remain in low-wage job? They may | be wildly wealthy in the future. It's hard to know, since | their potential is being squandered by the parents | enabling this behavior. | nradov wrote: | If you have time to play video games then you have time | to improve your education and social standing. Wealthy | relatives don't live forever. | Cyph0n wrote: | I _highly_ doubt that video games are solely to blame. | | I was quite addicted to video games until my early 20s, but | I eventually understood that gaming falls down the priority | list as you take on more responsibilities in life. My | friends were the same. | version_five wrote: | Definitely a symptom and not a cause. Like people that | drink heavily in university then don't later once they | have obligations. | | My university roommate played video games nonstop. Then | he graduated, got a job (as a video game developer) and | has a wife and three kids. It's like any addiction, its | filling a void, but the object of abuse is not what's to | blame. | bluescrn wrote: | Gaming is just good escapism and a way to pass time. | Before gaming, it'd be TV, or reading fiction. | ldiracdelta wrote: | James Dobson once said about a similar scenario, "your son | doesn't have a problem, _you_ have problem." Meaning | providing lodging and meals for someone who refuses to work | is actually enabling on the part of the parents. | rufus_foreman wrote: | >> If they kicked them out at 18, the nephews would | definitely need to work and may realize the importance of | having a better job/career | | It worked for me when my parents kicked me out. Took around a | decade though. | Cyph0n wrote: | As you noted, it is likely that something went seriously | wrong with raising them (coddling, over-helping, etc.). But | you don't need to be "kicked out" to start working on | building your life and your career. | Vadoff wrote: | I meant being kicked out if the parents clearly see 0 | desire from the child to further their education or get a | job. I don't think there's anything wrong with people | living with their parents if they're going to school or | working. | jmcgough wrote: | At the same time, I see people leave home in their teens or | 20s and work a series of crappy minimum wage jobs and never | get a decent one with benefits, because they're busy | surviving or don't see a better option. | | An ideal situation requires pressure to succeed, while also | providing resources and guidance to be successful. | avs733 wrote: | I deal with a lot of 18-19 year olds as my primary job is | teaching first year engineering students. | | I will tell you it is a LOT more complicated than this. This | type of single point simplification and pronouncement about | 'coddling' is decidedly unhelpful. | | For starters, if you grow up in two working parent household, | both parents can easily come home completely exhausted and | unable to provide the extended engagement necessary to help a | child develop. Add in the social pressures of school where | EVERYONE has an iphone and games where it is socially | isolating not to do these things - which carries its own set | of risks. Add in a public education system that doesn't focus | on development and instead focuses on learning material. Add | in an economy designed to optimize extraction of capital from | individuals through psychological programming and ads and | more stuff to buy. | | None of this has to have a single source of blame, much of | its realistically structural and cultural. It isn't one bad | actor or one failed thing...it is a large number of | individuals, groups, and organizations individually | performing Goodhart's law and the result is some get cast | aside. | [deleted] | lnwlebjel wrote: | Fully agree with this for 18-19 year olds, but at some | point (25? 30?) it really does seem like coddling, or | enabling at least. At some point you have to move out and | support yourself. | Vadoff wrote: | If the parents don't provide for them, what do you think | would happen to the nephews? Do you think they would be | homeless? I certainly don't. | | The fact that the parents are providing a roof over their | head and paying for their | food/water/electricity/internet/clothes/games/etc is why | they haven't had a job nor any desire for one well into | their 30s. | | Honestly, because the parents keep providing for them, | there's no impetus for them to change, so they may as well | do this into their 40s or 50s. | | Minimum wage is enough to survive, and almost anyone that's | not severely mentally/physically disabled can do most | minimum wage work. In this case, it's not a matter of lack | of ability, but lack of willingness. | | That said, I have nothing against parents willing to | provide housing/support if the child is working, still | furthering their education, or need some help getting their | feet back on the ground. But at this point, this is none of | that, and just enabling their behavior. | mechagodzilla wrote: | The parents certainly can be enabling, but I think you're | ignoring that there are plenty of people that _are_ | homeless, that _do_ wind up with dependencies on alcohol, | drugs like meth, etc, and your implication that anyone | (especially people in their 30s with no real work | history) can get full-time, minimum wage work doesn 't | seem realistic. Many of those jobs are both minimum wage | and few enough hours per week (to avoid having to give | you benefits, of course) that it would be extremely | difficult to live independently, while still requiring a | schedule that makes it nearly impossible to take on other | jobs. | | I'm in my 30s and have now seen several high school | classmates with similarly poor prospects eventually | succumb to drug overdoses. | jplr8922 wrote: | I think the term 'coddling ' is not the best. I grew up | during the 90's in a hyper-controled environment by a macho | dad and a passive mom. I was told to not become an artist, to | not travel when I am young (waste of time), to learn how to | drive a car, to get a job, get a degree, all that jazz. The | thing is, at 32, I still have no sense of purpose in life. | | When all the goals are chosen for you, it does not matter if | you were over-protected or not. You cannot build true self | esteem and confidence if you don't succeed and/or fail at a | dream of your choice. There is no point learning to drive a | car if you do not know where you want to go, to earn money if | you don't know what you want to buy, and to get into a career | if you have no sense of purpose. | | Videogames are addictive not only because they are fun, they | provide you with a goal and 'achievements'. In my humble | opinion, sex for the sake of sex (real or porn), promotions | for the sake of promotions or else are all caused by the same | emotional male problem ; the inability to feel emotions and | learn from them what is truly important for yourself. The % | of young men in the labour force is just a symptom of that. | nradov wrote: | Having a purpose in life is optional. Supporting yourself | as a functional adult in society is mandatory. | aminozuur wrote: | Did they grow up with their biological father? | UncleOxidant wrote: | Not after they were around 6 and 8. Their mom remarried when | they were in their teens. So yeah, probably that's part of | the problem. But their biological father was also quite lazy | and never had a job for very long (part of the reason she | left him, that and he did a good bit of gaslighting) so it's | not like he was a great example for them to follow (In fact, | last I heard he was living with _his_ parents and he 's well | into his 50s). | aminozuur wrote: | Thanks for sharing. I sympathize with your cousins, as I | believe they are the product of their upbringing. Surely | they didn't choose this life either. | bektok2 wrote: | Time for some tough love and kick them out. Not doing them any | favors enabling their laziness. | tetranomiga wrote: | He said, in a time of record unemployment and low wages that | are impossible to live off of. Almost like there are other | factors at play here than just men being lazy. HN loves to | forget that not everybody can be a FAANG employee or has the | desire to sit in front of a computer writing code their whole | lives. | majormajor wrote: | > not everybody [...] has the desire to sit in front of a | computer writing code their whole lives | | Sure, I also have the "desire" to play video games and do | nothing all day, I just realize that it's not going to end | well for me... | vkou wrote: | Unemployment is actually at a ten-year average at the | moment, and entry-level wages are growing. | spoonjim wrote: | The US is not in record unemployment. Not in either | direction. | Vadoff wrote: | You can live off of minimum wage. Maybe not in some places | like big cities, but certainly if you moved to cheaper cost | of living locations. | fock wrote: | which might not have a job at all? | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Almost like there are other factors at play here than | just men being lazy. | | The story as conveyed by OP is textbook people being lazy. | nradov wrote: | Bullshit. Oklahoma has a 4% unemployment rate and a very | low cost of living. Some other states are similar. Anyone | who's willing to show up and work hard can survive there. | paulddraper wrote: | In Tacoma, I lived nextdoor to a guy who "hurt his back" when | he was 22. | | As far as I can tell, he'll sit on his couch collecting | disability until 65, at which point he'll switch to retirement. | sgt wrote: | Sitting on a couch for the next 40 years is also not going to | do wonders for his back. | UncleOxidant wrote: | Not going to get much of a retirement if he never paid into | social security. | paulddraper wrote: | Yeah, IDK. I won't be there see it. | spoonjim wrote: | There's a movement towards curtailing disability fraud so he | might have a problem in between. | _delirium wrote: | I obviously don't know this person at all, but from what I | know of how Social Security disability works, 22 is a | _really_ unlikely age to qualify. Are you sure it wasn 't | slightly earlier or later? | | To be eligible in your own right, you have to have paid into | Social Security for a total of 40 quarters before becoming | disabled. Given child labor laws, it's rare that you could | accumulate enough quarters before age 26 or so. | | The other way is to be eligible on a parent's social | security, as a "disabled child", which is defined as someone | who became disabled before age 22. If you suffered a | permanent disability at age _21_ , and have a parent who paid | enough into SS to be eligible, you can receive "child" | benefits from their account even as an adult: | https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/disability/qualify.html#anchor7 | | This leaves an unfortunate gap for people who genuinely | become permanently disabled due to an accident or medical | condition that happens around age 22-25, because they can't | qualify through either route. | rufus_foreman wrote: | >> To be eligible in your own right, you have to have paid | into Social Security for a total of 40 quarters before | becoming disabled | | Looks like there are different rules for disability for | young workers: | | "To be eligible for disability benefits, you must meet a | recent work test and a duration work test. | | The number of credits necessary to meet the recent work | test depends on your age. The rules are as follows: | | Before age 24 - You may qualify if you have 6 credits | earned in the 3-year period ending when your disability | starts. | | Age 24 to 31 - In general, you may qualify if you have | credit for working half the time between age 21 and the | time you become disabled. As a general example, if you | become disabled at age 27, you would need 3 years of work | (12 credits) out of the past 6 years (between ages 21 and | 27). | | Age 31 or older - In general, you must have at least 20 | credits in the 10-year period immediately before you become | disabled." | | -- https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/credits. | html | [deleted] | yaacov wrote: | I don't know this dude, and if you know he's just scamming | the system I'll take your word for it, but when I've | experienced serious physical pain I've found video games much | more helpful than OTC painkillers. | paulddraper wrote: | I'm not his doctor, and I don't know either. | | But is that one thing going to stop him from ever | working/living a productive life? | t-writescode wrote: | Yes, if the jobs he can get pay him less than the medical | care and stipend he gets for free every month. | | If you lose disability by starting to work, suddenly life | becomes a lot more expensive and you can't afford things. | | The Welfare Gap is real. | avs733 wrote: | I appreciate the frustration, and why this got shared, but | realistically...this is the current observation and gives so | little data about how we got here that I worry about the | comments attributing blame to your post. | | Two distant family members of mine fit this description fairly | well...One was raised in an unstable, low income household, | with mentally ill parents, is on the autism spectrum, and both | parents worked multiple jobs that included overnight shifts. | There was no ability, energy, or understanding to seek | assistance and intervention early enough to make a difference. | The other family member comes from effectively the complete | opposite end of each one of those variables. | throwaway803453 wrote: | My 45 year old sister is that way now and to a lesser extent my | older brother was too. I lost _decades_ of sleep over their | situation. | | Ultimately I didn't know anything when I left home at 18 and I | figured it out. Other people can too. How long does it take to | learn how to drive, open a checking account, cook, pay bill, | etc. after all ? You can learn these things privately over the | Internet so there's no longer a social stigma holding you back. | To digress, I eventually taught my older brother | responsibility, job skills (he worked at my business), how to | file taxes, basic math, etc. He became even more bitter and | resentful and then one day broke down and admitted how painful | it is to know nothing useful and most of what he does know he | had to learn from his little brother. But eventually he started | just Googling instead of calling me when he had a question he | should know the answer to. | | I truly feel sorry for these lost souls and if I hadn't been | naturally good at math, I'd likely be one of them. | angmarsbane wrote: | I want to comment on your brother's reflection that he was in | pain, bitter, and resentful that he did not have useful | knowledge/skills and needed your help. | | There is an incredible amount of shame and self-directed | anger and fear in men who have found themselves in this | position. | | All of those feelings are heavy to carry, but they can be | shoved aside and ignored by constant entertainment (video | games, tv binges etc). Shoved aside they don't hurt as bad. | | But those feelings don't go away. They get bigger as each | year goes on & they flare up when confronted with having to | do something they aren't capable of doing (or think they | aren't capable) like moving out, getting a job, getting a | better job, having an adult relationship etc. | | Those feelings of inadequacy have to be taken on and grace & | forgiveness has to be granted to oneself in order for them to | spread their wings / leave the nest and not come back. | | For me, the question is how do you get someone so deep into a | dark emotional morass to take on the emotional dragons | they've been hiding from? | balfirevic wrote: | > How long does it take to learn how to drive | | You're not wrong generally, but this one costs about $1000 | where I live, which is close to average national monthly | salary and approximately twice the minimum salary. | | Not pocket change from someone who has trouble finding work | (and many jobs require driver's license). | belorn wrote: | What are the things that motivates them, and what do they | themselves want to do in life? | | I ask this because much of the undertone in the article and in | this thread is about the failure of meeting the gender role | expectations that are put on young men. Do they have a job and | a car? Have they studied hard so they can get a good job in | order to support a wife and kid? | | Culture in the last several decades have hammered down on the | negative aspects of stereotyping. A person who is 35 has gone | through a life time of TV, movie and politics that on repeat | has talked about the negative of gender roles for women, while | the expectations on men has remained fairly unchanged. I do not | find it strange at all if an increasing portion of men under | this culture has rejected the role put on them. | | Which goes back to the original question I started with. What | motivates them and what do they want to do with their life? If | we want to avoid the slow motion tragedy, maybe the way forward | is to help them answer those question in the absent of imposed | gender roles. | pcbro141 wrote: | On a related note, on mainstream TV/articles about declining | marriage/birthrates in the West, it's common to see | criticisms about modern Western men. How women can't find | life partners because men aren't masculine enough anymore, | don't want to grow up, don't get educated etc. | | But very rarely do you see any criticism or even questioning | about modern Western women and what men want in a woman. Only | what women want. The journalists never seem interested in | asking whether modern Western women are marriage material? | Degrees don't make you marriage material. Are men still | attracted to feminine women, and are there enough feminine | women? Are there potential reasons why Western men find it | risky to commit to Western women? Do Western women have | realistic standards? Do Western women need to be less picky | about superficial characteristics? Given that the vast | majority breakups are initiated by women, could women in a | lot of instances be ending relationships and wrecking their | own homes over trivial matters? | | The mainstream coverage of this topic is usually very one | sided/gynocentric. Women questioning the value of modern men | is acceptable, while men questioning the value of modern | women will often get you labeled a misogynist/woman hating | incel. | | This imbalance/lack of discussing what men want in women/lack | of criticism of some aspects of modern women really hurts | marriage minded women as well, because a lot of women are | growing up without hearing what men want in a woman to marry. | majormajor wrote: | What _is_ what you believe men want in a woman, that 's | being unfulfilled for these men? | | The common male complaint I see isn't "all these women I | date are simply not going to fulfill what I need," it's "no | women will date me at all" which points at a breakdown in | the process way before the point of "what are these men | looking for." Hard to imagine these men even have any idea | of what they're actually looking for in a relationship, | with that lack of experience. You only find out one way... | | And for that situation, a woman complaining "so few of | these men I see have their shit together" and a man | complaining "so few of these women are willing to date me | at all" are two sides of the same coin. I think at a | societal level, though, you'd be hard pressed to push the | view "everyone should simply give up on contributing to | society in traditional ways" so the coverage is going to | look negatively at the "freeloaders" in the same way it | disapproved of someone like Paris Hilton. You see it | through a lens of sexism, I see it through a lens of it | being hard to sympathize with someone drifting through life | chatting meaninglessly on the internet and playing games. | BATNA comes into play, too - the person with no options at | all seems to be the one with the incentive to make changes. | (While for the women here, and the men they are currently | dating while ignoring these stay-at-home-and-do-nothing | men, there's other, plenty-well-trod advice about | compromise being necessary, etc, that's been repeated to | death in media of all sorts.) | | Maybe we should encourage these men to go become nannies | for a few years, to both give them a job and boost their | dating profile that way AND to prepare them for being a | full-time homemaker if traditional employment simply isn't | what they want! I certainly think that should be an option | for both genders. | | > Given that the vast majority breakups are initiated by | women | | Citation please? I would LOVE to know if your number here | also includes stuff like "he slept with me and then ghosted | me," too. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | > Degrees don't make you marriage material. | | This gets said so much on "redpilled" male fora, but it | makes no sense to me personally. As a bookish and arts- | inclined person, so much of my worldview, the things that | occupy my thoughts during the day, has been formed by the | canon of literature, music, films. No woman would seem | dating and marriage material to me if she weren't similarly | erudite and we would have some common ground in that | respect. | | Often the man claiming that men don't care about a woman's | education, goes on to say that what matters is that the | woman knows how to cook. That, too, has never made sense to | me. I live in a country where for the childless, eating out | good healthy food is not appreciably more expensive than | cooking at home, and I'd be more attracted to a woman who | often eats out and reads while doing so instead of spends | evening after evening in the kitchen. | username90 wrote: | You studying social subjects that almost only women study | is the exception, you can afford to be picky about this. | Lots of guys would love to have a woman who shares their | interest, but since so few women study technical topics | they have to settle with women they have little in common | with. And at that point whether they studied some social | topic or no topic and did other stuff isn't high up on | the list. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Thanks, that is some insight into why technically- | inclined men would be unsatisfied with the dating market. | However, I wouldn't claim that "almost only women" study | the humanities subjects I mentioned above. Film criticism | and scholarship on many branches of literature and music | are still fields driven either predominantly by men, or | with a pretty even gender balance. | username90 wrote: | If you take the subject and the adjacent subjects you get | mostly women though, even if specific courses are more | balanced. It is the same in technical courses, some of | them like chemistry and biology have more even balance | but overall there aren't a lot of women. | majormajor wrote: | You seem to have this assumption that the only expression | and development of interests comes through taking | courses. I have a degree in CS, yet care much more that | my partner shares my non-technical interests than my | technical ones, cause I can talk shop all day long at | work already... | username90 wrote: | I responded to a guy who argued that he wouldn't date a | girl without a similar degree to his own, I am arguing | against that position not for it. | whatshisface wrote: | Haha, degrees don't make you erudite. "Mechanical | engineering" is a degree too. English degrees don't make | you erudite either but that's another story. | whatshisface wrote: | But everyone knows that a loser who stays at home and | doesn't try to do anything is bad. You don't have to be a | misandrist to believe that. If everyone was like that | society wouldn't get anywhere and we'd all starve. | irowe wrote: | I think what you said is a very unforgiving and slightly | misogynistic way of describing what has been spelled out | many other places before: women are increasingly opting for | more education or career advancement in lieu of becoming | homemakers. They don't make those decisions for the benefit | of men. _They don't have to._ This has little to do with | observed femininity or the "attractiveness" of getting a | degree. | jeofken wrote: | "Unforgiving" and "misogynistic" are words unrelated to | whether something is true or false - just something to | keep in mind | irowe wrote: | You're absolutely correct, which is why I chose to phrase | my post to say that the parent was taking a truth (women | are increasingly choosing career over kids) and | expressing it in what I consider to be bad faith. I don't | think that's acceptable. | | I also seriously doubt that the claims about women not | living up to some standard of attractiveness or | femininity are true, misogynistic or not. | Mirioron wrote: | > _They don't make those decisions for the benefit of | men. They don't have to._ | | But isn't that the parent poster's point? They don't make | decisions that make them more attractive for marriage, | therefore they're less likely to end up married. | | The same argument applies to men too. Men don't _have to_ | do things that make them more attractive to women, but | they shouldn 't be all that surprised when they end up | not being attractive to women. | teawrecks wrote: | When I was probably 18 I asked a friend/coworker who was | going to community college what they wanted to do after | college and they just didn't know. I couldn't wrap my head | around that. As far back as I can remember, I always had an | answer when an adult asked me "what I want to be when I grow | up". It wasn't always a coherent answer, but I always knew | what stuff I found interesting. | | I don't know why it's different for some people, but it is. I | have to think it's something we just don't put emphasis on in | our education system or by parents. So pop culture does it | for us. When I was a kid everyone wanted to be someone | famous; a singer, an athlete, an actor, etc. Today is no | different, everyone wants to be an influencer, a streamer, | etc. | | I think we need to make it a point for kids to understand | from a young age that not everyone can be the famous person, | neither should everyone want to be. There are so many other | options, they only want fame because they don't know anything | else. | orky56 wrote: | It's a natural phenomenon. Potential for anything turns | into realization that hard work and passion need to also be | coupled with capability. It's debilitating in some ways but | a coming of age for others. Those who can cross this chasm | succeed and pivot accordingly. | yibg wrote: | I think you might be the odd one out here. I don't have | stats for it, but looking at myself and people around me, | most didn't really know what they want to do for a career | after school. School typically doesn't really prepare you | well for figuring out what you want to do, especially | secondary and prior. | teawrecks wrote: | Oh I totally agree, the US education system doesn't put | any emphasis on helping kids figure out what they want to | do after school. If a kid asks "when am I ever going to | use this?", it's a sign you need to back up and lay some | more groundwork. I don't know why it was different for | me, but looking back I think it was important. | gowld wrote: | The vast majority of employed people are not doing "what | they wanted to do when they grow up", and quite many are | doing jobs they didn't even know existed. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > What are the things that motivates them, and what do they | themselves want to do in life? | | I suspect quite a few people are looking at the odds of | achieving various goals, and simply changing the goals. Such | as owning a home in desirable areas, or having kids if you | cannot afford a food school district or a job that allows you | to be home for dinner. | | Or if you have experienced income instability, and you do not | feel comfortable bringing children into the world. I probably | would not have if I did not find a spouse with income in the | top two quintiles. Not that there's nothing wrong with the | alternative, but different people have different risk | tolerances and higher (perceived) volatility can be a cause | for change in some population wide changed we are seeing. | magicsmoke wrote: | > Or if you have experienced income instability, and you do | not feel comfortable bringing children into the world. | | Yet poorer developing nations have higher birth rates than | developed nations. Is it because they have lower | expectations for what their children need to live a "good" | life, that they just have more hope that things will work | out somehow, or that they somehow don't care about these | concerns? | akiselev wrote: | They're largely subsistence farmers with high infant | mortality and little to no automation which accounts for | about 2 billion people. They need children to work the | fields and it makes sense to have a lot of children when | the labor turn around time is five years and up to a | third of them will be dead by then. | | The adults pay the "fixed costs" to keep the farm running | so each additional child produces more in labor than they | consume in resources. They're too poor to hire other | adults for labor because they have their own "fixed | costs" that are much higher than a child in the family. | edoceo wrote: | No condoms | magicsmoke wrote: | We've got it ladies and gentlemen. The secret to halting | population decline in the developed world is banning | condoms. | echelon wrote: | The growth trajectory and differing priorities. | | US is on its way sideways or down for many of its | citizens. | | The developing world is on its way up. | | Even for those with money, self-imposed targets are so | high that having children seems like a distraction. Too | much work, not enough time. | 8note wrote: | Costs for raising a child is almost certainly lower, and | they can likely work towards their top pay range before | the age 25 | username90 wrote: | So the country getting richer made us poorer? | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Is it because they have lower expectations for what | their children need to live a "good" life | | Yes, I think the minimally acceptable quality of life is | certainly relative. | | > that they just have more hope that things will work out | somehow | | Possibly, if everyone around you is on an upward | trajectory, I can see that changing people's calculus. | | > or that they somehow don't care about these concerns? | | I think a big factor is how (financially) independent | women are and what kind of access to birth control | (especially IUDs) they have. I suspect many of the women | who have or had 3+ children would not have if they had | similar options to those in developed countries today. | [deleted] | d_burfoot wrote: | > It's a slow motion tragedy. | | From an environmental perspective, this kind of minimalist | lifestyle actually seems quite healthy. They don't drive, and I | assume they don't fly or buy a lot of stuff, so their carbon | and other resource footprint is small. They don't take up much | extra space, so they reduce suburban sprawl and land required | for housing. They probably won't have kids, which further | reduces their environmental impact. Maybe we should encourage | more people to live this way. | sgt wrote: | In the future, it may even be more efficient to hook them up | to a large computer that is able to use them as a power | source, too. We could offer them a virtual reality completely | indistinguishable from reality. | InvertedRhodium wrote: | Where do I sign up? | nicbou wrote: | That would make a great movie. Perhaps not a great trilogy, | but a great movie for sure. | neither_color wrote: | That's a good one. "I decided to become a NEET in order to | protect the environment" | https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NEET | dvt wrote: | > Maybe we should encourage more people to live this way. | | Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror. Life is meant to be | _lived_ ; the purpose of life is at _least_ eudaimonia, not | slowly rotting away in front of a computer. | spoonjim wrote: | You can write books, compose music, build software, debate | opinions all in front of a computer. It's not the sitting | in front of the computer that's the problem. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | Not everything would agree. Most of the life on the | planet's only hope is to be around long enough to reproduce | and then be consumed in one way or the other. Humanity puts | a lot of pressure on itself to flourish. | berniemadoff69 wrote: | Would your tune be any different if they were 34, staying at | home all day playing video games, but somehow earning half a | million dollars a year doing some "gamer" | Twitch/Patreon/YouTube/influencer streaming schtick? Or, better | yet, playing video games all day, but magically manage to make | obscene amounts of money "trading cryptocoins" . Would their | lifestyles suddenly become acceptable to you, simply because | they are "making money" off of their sedentary lifestyle ? | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Being an influencer is an enormous amount of work. Sure, one | could build a brand around games, but maintaining that brand | is constant effort, even though the audience rarely sees it. | l-lousy wrote: | I think this would somewhat validate his "prepared for life" | argument because if they have a lot of money they can provide | for themselves (food and transport is pretty easy with the | gig economy). | | (The previous comment used to include something about people | wanting to quit their jobs and just play games all day) For | your point about playing games all day -- there's definitely | some aspect of "having a purpose" that makes some hold down a | job even if they are already rich. So for some it's | definitely their life dream to sit in their room all day, and | for some having something that you can point to saying "I | contributed this" is an invaluable part of their lives | flycaliguy wrote: | I think if they were working from home it would, obviously, | be a different story. They could stash some cash away and be | able to care for their aging parents in the future. | void_mint wrote: | (Off topic) Curious why you think it's on the kid to pay | for the parent? | hardwaregeek wrote: | Video game addiction is a real problem. I spent my freshman | year of college rooming with man-children who played video | games non-stop. They didn't explore the city, they didn't meet | new people, they just played video games in the dark, screaming | into their headsets and eating their takeout at their desk. | People can certainly have a healthy, fruitful relationship to | video games but since then I haven't felt the need to touch a | game. | david-gpu wrote: | Not a psychologist, but I would guess that playing games at | all times is more a symptom than a cause. A symptom of | depression? A coping mechanism for chronic anxiety? A happy | well adjusted person does not try so hard to escape reality | or responsibilities. | | Demeaning them by calling them man-children is not going to | help them in the slightest. | confidantlake wrote: | As someone who has chronic anxiety and depression, for me | it goes both ways. I do it as a coping mechanism, but doing | it too much also worsens it. When I do things like go | outside or make an effort to see people it goes down. | | Completely agree calling someone a man-child does not help. | We would condemn that kind of language said about woman. | depressedx wrote: | Depression is often characterised by a struggle in finding | the motivation / desire to do something you love: if they | love video games and can play them 12 hours a day, it's | very possible they simply... don't care about the outside | world. A job, family, exploring the world, these are all | things some people just don't like. They don't have to have | mental illness in order to spend their lives doing one | thing! | devonkim wrote: | Depression also manifests with addictions though through | self medication like alcohol, drugs, and even video | games. It gets trickier with comorbidities like ADHD | where one has addictive tendencies resulting in what | appears to be simple lack of motivation and laziness at a | surface level. | zabzonk wrote: | > They don't have to have mental illness in order to | spend their lives doing one thing! | | I'd argue that doing one thing for the rest of your life | is a classic definition of mental illness. | teawrecks wrote: | Tell that to the vast majority of humans throughout | history who not only did 1 thing their whole life, but | did the same thing their parents did before them. In some | cultures to this day, trying to do anything other than | what your family has already established as the family | business is viewed as disrespectful and an insult to your | lineage. | zabzonk wrote: | They have not being doing "one thing" - they have been | farming, having sing-songs, getting married, having kids, | fighting wars, and so on. | teawrecks wrote: | And a virtual world can be every bit as varied. You see | someone sitting at a computer playing the same video game | all the time. They see farming, running dungeons with | guild mates, forming relationships, crafting things, | fighting wars and so on. | | Defining a metal illness is non trivial, but for | starters, their mental state needs to cause them or | someone else harm or discomfort. But it's also possible | that the discomfort isn't caused by their mental state, | but the society they are in who rejects them. | | In 1000 years no one will remember what that person in | their virtual world did any more than you know what a | random person 1000 years ago did, but if they feel every | bit as accomplished and emotionally fulfilled, then | what's the difference? | | Now if their involvement in their virtual world means | they are unable to sustain themselves in the physical | world (not showing up to work, health problems, etc) then | we have a problem that needs addressing. But living in a | virtual world, in and of itself, is perfectly valid. | waynesonfire wrote: | I disagree, it's an mental illness if it interferes in | your desired pursuit. For example, there is nothing wrong | with playing games ur whole life.. except if you decide | you want to get a girlfriend and can't. Now you're | dealing with a mental illness. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Also if it interferes with your health, and a few other | things. If playing video games takes precedence over, | say, taking regular showers, or even basic exercise? I'd | call that a mental illness too. | | But I agree with the main point: "person wants to live in | a way I don't like" is not mental illness. | [deleted] | Chris2048 wrote: | What made them "man-children"? | echelon wrote: | I know people are different and I'm not wired the same way, | but I have trouble understanding how people can play games | for more than a few hours a week. | | Games like Pac Man and Tetris are algorithmic workloads. It's | not much different than driving a semi or forklift, except | you're not paid by a company for the work you do. It puts | human brains closer to acting and performing as algorithmic | worker bee agents. | | Modern AAA titles are the same thing, just with more degrees | of freedom. | | I understand that there are dopamine triggers, but game | engines subject players to the same repetitive thing over and | over until the game ends. Kill this thing, collect 12 pelts, | etc. There aren't very many variations on this theme, either. | I can't grapple with how this squares with the limited time | we have in life. | | I think the best argument from my perspective is that Animal | Crossing has you literally working to pay off a fake mortgage | to buy digital items you don't need. You shouldn't stress out | over a game. | | I've enjoyed games for their mood, setting, music, and | narrative, but gameplay itself is work. I'd rather just have | a movie or narrative story. I already work too much. | tenebrisalietum wrote: | I think since most online games have chat rooms or other | such social aspects, and also the game is there to provide | an inherent icebreaker activity when speaking with others, | online games tended replaced older hangout-style social | activities for some people. | | The game being work, but not hard work, provides a number | of things beneficial to easy social interaction: a reason | to be there, typically an easy way to add value (within the | game) and therefore have a reason to approach groups you | aren't a member of and potentially join or meet, and an | overall good background for chat/conversation without | necessarily coming off as desperate or creepy. | username90 wrote: | Work and games are the same activities. The only difference | is whether someone cares about the end result, and hence | will complain if you don't do it properly, take your time | or go explore different areas. | | Having a casual conversation is fun. Being forced to have | casual conversations with people all that long is work. And | so on etc. | christkv wrote: | Most games are power fantasies as well as narratives. You | get to role play as a overpowered avatar. | zabzonk wrote: | > I'd rather just have a movie or narrative | | Open world games _are_ the equivalent of movies or | narratives. think Skyrim, for example. | leetcrew wrote: | I think the point is you actually have to do stuff (often | menial collect n of thing tasks) to advance the plot. | once the suspension of disbelief is broken, you are no | longer a valiant hero saving the kingdom. you are pushing | buttons to complete arbitrary tasks that trigger the next | cutscene. if you don't enjoy the core gameplay, why not | just cut out the tedium and watch tv or a movie? | zabzonk wrote: | > why not just cut out the tedium and watch tv or a | movie? | | Well, I would dispute it is tedium (particularly compared | with watching a modern Hollywood production, and | particularly watching TV) - I like exploring and finding | new and strange areas of the world. | heylook wrote: | > I already work too much. | | That's your problem. Repetition, mindlessness, boredom, | flow are different facets of the same phenomenon. When your | ancestors needed to build a shelter, they spent hours and | hours chopping, hewing, digging, etc etc. Birds have nests, | bees have hives, beavers have dams; the list goes on and | on. It's perfectly normal to find some amount of busywork | soothing. | | You hit your cap at work; others don't. There are also | those with real addictions where it inhibits their ability | to accomplish other goals, but that's true of tons of | habits that scratch the same itch. | leetcrew wrote: | I kinda agree with you. as I get older, more games feel | like repetitive work than fun. I think I finish some games | more because I want to feel like I got my money's worth | than because I actually enjoyed them. | | still, some multiplayer games get me absolutely hooked for | a while. a well-designed multiplayer game can be a never- | ending stream of novel situations. open-ended puzzle games | like factorio are always fun (for me) with a couple good | friends. for some reason it never feels like work, even | though it's fairly close to what I just did from 9-5. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | One young man in my boy's cohort got addicted. Sat and drank | beer and played video games until exhausted; then slept on | the couch and repeat the next day. Two years later, died of | liver failure. | InvertedRhodium wrote: | Are you sure he didn't have an alcohol addiction? I'm not | convinced inactivity and video games lead to liver failure. | paulpauper wrote: | I don't think it's a tragedy. The overly dramatic media and | pundits get this all wrong in labeling it such. | | Young people are simply responding to incentives to live at | home longer. Living expenses keep going up relative to | inflation and wages, such as home prices, rent, insurance, etc. | Living at home is a good way save money, even for the employed. | Family formation is expensive and fraught with risks such as | divorce and having to pay child support. | | In having to choose between playing video games at home, versus | a low-paying job and commuting, video games may be the rational | choice depending on one's individual preferences. So someone | who values leisure over money, would stay at home. Someone who | has a higher preference for money than leisure would go to work | even if the pay sucks. I don't see anything wrong with people | voluntarily choosing leisure over work, because there will | always be some people who will choose work over leisure. | Someone who makes a lot of money may be more inclined to work, | not because they are less lazy than someone who plays games at | home, but that earning $100+/hour and no video games is more | enticing of proposition than $11/hour and not playing video | games; if you give the $11/hour guy $100/hour, then playing | video games at home becomes a less attractive proposition. | nxc18 wrote: | The problem comes in when their parents die and they have no | path to supporting themselves. Not everyone has an | inheritance to look forward to. | | Living at home and working isn't really a problem, but | entering the labor force at 40+ is not going to go well. | rayiner wrote: | But who raises the next generation under that scenario? | Immigrants, of course, but what does that say about what | American society has become? | | This is not a "replacement" screed, by the way, but quite the | opposite. If your culture requires constant immigration to | survive, that means it's unsustainable in the steady state. | Like, it would be bad if everyone adopted your culture. Your | culture is the panda of cultures. | toomuchtodo wrote: | https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/24/will- | birt... (Will births in the US rebound? Probably not.) | | People respond to incentives. Living and having children in | the US is expensive, so the results are what you'd expect. | heroHACK17 wrote: | Did we just become best friends? | 1-6 wrote: | Let's not forget that the Social Security is not getting funded | so it's probably going to dry out sooner. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Let's not derail the thread. Social security is underfunded, | but will continue to provide benefits at a reduced level | (~76%) when the trust fund runs dry in 2034 (which is just | accounting in the gov budget). A variety of small measures | can be implemented to ensure ongoing solvency, and likely | will take place, even if extreme measures like a contribution | from the general fund is needed. The US does not default on | its obligations, and as long as there is economic activity, | there will be contributions to social security. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund | anoraca wrote: | It's constantly funded with taxes... why would you want a | bunch of money sitting around losing value to inflation? | holoduke wrote: | I had the same life till my 26th. I then stopped watching | television, threw all games away and started studying computer | science. I am so happy about that move. I am 40 now. Own | multiple IT businesses and have a happy family. Game/TV | addiction is really depressing. I do not consider it. normal | leasure | vinni2 wrote: | Reminds me of this case https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- | canada-44215648.amp | Causality1 wrote: | That's absolutely wild. As far as I knew the most you owe | anyone staying in your house is 24 hours to remove their | things after which you can call the sheriff to arrest them as | a trespasser. I can't believe they had to go to court over | that. | lurquer wrote: | Most states require all kinds of hoops to evict a resident. | Even without a a lease. You can't just lock them out. | Sometimes the penalties for a wrongful eviction can be | severe. And, in some states, there are criminal penalties. | | (As a practical matter, it rarely comes to this as a couch- | surfer will go find another couch instead of wasting money | on attorneys and the like. But, typically, the owner of the | property can't just unilaterally decide a resident is a | trespasser and kick them out.) | izend wrote: | What will happen once their parents are gone? | UncleOxidant wrote: | I suppose they'll inherit the house if it's paid off by then | and continue to live as they are for a time. They seem fond | of instant ramen, so I guess maybe they're partially | prepared. But then again, when the property tax comes due | they'll likely not be able to pay it and eventually become | homeless after the house proceeds run out. The future seems | pretty bleak for them. | vmception wrote: | > They seem fond of instant ramen, so I guess maybe they're | partially prepared. | | For an early death | | They're already in their early-mid 30s, what outcome do you | think is going to happen to make them even less integrated | into society? | dominojab wrote: | According to IMF you'll own nothing and be happy(tm) | fossuser wrote: | They can probably just get a roommate to cover the tax and | ramen expense or door dash one day a week or something. | | Having no rent cost is pretty big. | JPKab wrote: | Do you think that video game addiction contributes to this kind | of thing, or is the video game addiction a coping mechanism? | | I think video game addiction is an incredibly underreported and | highly destructive phenomenon. I encounter (and had to fire a | few days ago) lots of young men who don't appear to ever sleep, | and are highly unproductive, unmotivated, and constantly | distracted. The kid I had to fire (I call him kid, but he was | 28 and incredibly immature) reminded me of a former colleague | in the construction industry who relapsed on his crack/cocaine | addiction. Distracted, listless, kind of just there for the | ride. | | Edit: Apparently ASKING about video game addiction merits | downvotes with zero responses explaining why. | tuatoru wrote: | I think "is it a cause or a symptom?" is a valid question and | deserves serious thought. Upvoted. | | I worried about my own son playing video games incessantly | through his teens and twenties, but now at 28 he has been | holding down a stable job for a year and I have got good | reports from his employer. He's still a loner IRL though. | | Would I worry so much if he were a gym rat or | ultramarathoner-- an "exercise addict"? Good question. | nradov wrote: | You should worry about anyone with a sedentary lifestyle, | regardless of whether they play video games or not. This | has serious health consequences later in life. | | But competing in a lot of ultramarathons isn't necessarily | healthy for the long term either. In extreme cases athletes | end up with heart muscle scarring and calcification. | Somewhat shorter distances might be better. Everything in | moderation. | Vadoff wrote: | I don't think video games have anything to do with it. Humans | are naturally lazy, and if all your needs are being taken | care of for you, then you'll naturally seek entertainment for | your boredom. | | They could do all sorts of things in their spare time, from | watching tv shows, movies, youtube, anime, browsing | reddit/twitter/instagram/tiktok, etc. | meowkit wrote: | Video game addiction (overuse) is a coping mechanism in the | face of increased anxiety in the modern world. | | I don't think it directly causes issues as much as it enables | or locks in certain behaviorally patterns such as being a | NEET or similar. It's really more of a symptom of a lack of | support system in a person's life, the same way social media | overuse or drug abuse comes about. | | Real addictions have severe physical consequences like | chemical withdrawals that can lead to death. | | I find that Self-Determination Theory is a good model to look | at this with. Modern school and work life provide little | autonomy, little relatedness, and little | (desirable/appreciated) skill for the vast majority of people | whereas video games do the opposite by providing essentially | an ideal playground. | claytongulick wrote: | > Video game addiction (overuse) is a coping mechanism in | the face of increased anxiety in the modern world. | | You are stating this in absolute terms, which indicates to | me that you have a solid source, or are an expert in the | field. If so, can you please detail? | | From my background working in psychiatry (in-patient) for | six years, it is certainly not that clear. | | > Real addictions have severe physical consequences like | chemical withdrawals that can lead to death. | | So the sex addicts I treated didn't have a "real" | addiction? | | The gambling addicts I treated didn't either? | | Or the extreme adrenaline addicts? | | Also, many experts in the field seem to disagree with you. | See the proposed internet gaming disorder [1]. | | https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet- | gaming | vecter wrote: | I think video game addiction definitely contributes. I used | to spend a fair amount of time playing first person shooters | in my childhood 15-20 years ago. I haven't played much | nowadays but these games provide a sense of "progress" and | "accomplishment", which people would probably normally seek | outside. Even in the past 5 years, I've caught myself having | a reflex to open a game like Apex Legends or Valorant | whenever I had a free moment instead of going for a run | outside, playing piano, or cooking dinner. The problem is | they're really fun also, which exacerbates the problem since | it's easy to follow the "greedy optimization" algorithm in | life and do things that are fun and rewarding as opposed to | doing challenging but longer-term actually rewarding things. | | This is not to say that you should never play video games. | I've found that they've been great for staying in touch with | friends I would've otherwise lost touch with. A few hours a | week isn't bad at all. It's just that it can snowball very | quickly if you're not mindful about how you spend your time. | | I luckily never really became addicted to any video games, | but I'm concerned for my future children who will undoubtedly | encounter video games in the future some day. | WalterBright wrote: | I worked as a video game tester briefly while working my | way through college (Mattel Intellivision). | | It permanently destroyed my interest in video games, along | with the fake rewards it offers. | UncleOxidant wrote: | Looks like you're being downvoted for suggesting video game | addiction, but I think it's a huge part of it. I refer to it | as 'digital drugs'. They're definitely addicted. Even on rare | occasions when they show up to family gatherings they've got | their face glued to their portable games and rarely speak. | | Of course, the parents played a part in enabling this. Their | mom (my sis) will often suggest I buy them video games for | their birthday/Christmas but I refuse to do that. What they | need is a kick in the ass to get them outside. | bluescrn wrote: | Social media is the real digital crack. | | That's what most people are getting their hit of when | they're staring at a screen during a family gathering. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | > Even on rare occasions when they show up to family | gatherings they've got their face glued to their portable | games and rarely speak. | | That's not video games though, that's the general digital | addiction going on. And honestly, as a teenager I used to | avoid everyone with books and I doubt anyone would have | described me as addicted to a paper drug. | SMAAART wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET | void_mint wrote: | It's interesting how few (I haven't actually seen any) of the | comment replies are addressing the parents. I'd probably put | equal onus on the parents to have better parented their | children into adulthood. | usrusr wrote: | I know someone who used to fit that description quite well and | then apparently made it out at some point between 35 and 40. | Seems like there is always room for a surprise improvement | left. | emerged wrote: | It's like drug or alcohol addiction. People can become | somewhat "born again" usually after some kind of catastrophe | and/or "rock bottom" moment. Parents allowing this from their | adult children are akin to addict enablers. | UncleOxidant wrote: | Yeah, well, maybe. But currently they don't seem to have any | motivation which is a prerequisite to improvement. I think | their parents should provide that motivation by being a good | bit tougher on them. They sometimes try this, but then go | soft on them again after not very long. | ihsw wrote: | This is the destiny of all men in a world dominated by | radical feminist ideology. | | Both they (your nephews) and the radical feminists in | charge (eg: Biden/Harris Administration) look at this | situation without blinking and both come to the same | conclusion, "if they're employed then they're taking a job | away from a woman" and "not a bug, working as intended, | won't-fix." | [deleted] | toomuchtodo wrote: | If I may be so bold, I would encourage you to have a frank | discussion around estate planning with their parents to | best insulate them from pain in the future. I would | recommend the home be put into a trust, a trustee appointed | for the trust after parents' deaths, and enough investments | set aside to cover property taxes and maintenance on the | property with investment income until death of the | children. What happens to the estate after that is a family | discussion. | | I have seen the results of not doing this. Don't pass the | pain down. You want your children to succeed, but you also | don't want them to suffer needlessly. Being homeless is an | incredibly difficult gravity well to escape, more so | without appreciable skills. | | (not an attorney or financial planner, not your attorney or | financial planner, please consult one of each, educational | purposes only) | troupe wrote: | Was there a change in circumstances that prompted the shift | you describe? | newaccount2021 wrote: | There's no need to over-analyze this - we're talking about a | generation of useless oafs. Days spent playing video games or | other couch-bound non-activities, eating trash food, shitposting | on the internet. I wish there was some way we could exile them to | an island. | aminozuur wrote: | I know some guys like that, and all of them grew up without their | biological father in the household. Anyone else notice this | pattern? | | Could modern families (with step fathers, or without any father) | contributed to men failing to become independant? | symlinkk wrote: | I don't blame them. | | All of the necessities are less and less attainable day by day. | | House prices are rising out of control. | | College education is extremely expensive, and jobs require more | and more degrees and credentials. | | Dating apps are heavily biased towards women. | | But entertainment at home is more attainable than ever! Cheap | high speed internet, a plethora of fun games to play, tons of | people online to socialize with. | Romulus968 wrote: | I'm in the labor force, but live at home. I can absolutely afford | to purchase a home. | | Why don't I? | | Because I'm not spending $250,000+ on 1400sq ft. These types of | articles make it seem like some huge mystery as to why society is | the way it is today. It's no mystery. Houses cost to much and | employers don't pay enough. | Vadoff wrote: | Dang, only $250k for 1400 sqft? That would easily be $1.25M+ | here. | partiallypro wrote: | The pay is probably higher where you are, and in smaller | markets (OP) people that are from your market are moving in | driving up prices so that natives can't afford anything. That | is my current situation as well, in the Nashville market. | Homes that were only $300K a few years ago have shot up to | $600-700K in just 3 years. A 2 bedroom condo 10 years ago | that was $200K is now closer to a million. | sadfasf122 wrote: | Not sure where you live, but 800 sqft condos are going for like | $800K here in Toronto. | | SFH under 2000 sqft are going for well $1.5M. | | Inventory is near all time lows. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I also can't compete with Blackrock and other professionally | managed funds buying up swaths of homes tens of thousands of | dollars over asking price because they want to rent them out | later. | mynameisash wrote: | When my wife and I bought our house (Seattle area) six years | ago, I was uneasy about spending $300k, and my family in the | Midwest was aghast that we paid asking price. | | Anyone in this area would now laugh at my previous situation; I | certainly do. We briefly considered buying a slightly larger | house in the area, but everything is going for about $800k now. | | If I were just entering the job and housing market today here | in the PNW, I would absolutely stay with my parents if I could. | And I rather expect that my kids won't move out at 18. | bozzcl wrote: | I've been wanting to buy a house around Seattle for a while, | but the asking prices are so ridiculous for what you get... | it's just not worth it. Personally, I'm gonna continue | renting for a while to see if the remote work situation opens | new opportunities or brings prices down. | | That being said, I learned recently that for the same prices | you would pay here you can get a castle in Europe... so I | made that my retirement goal. | rufus_foreman wrote: | It's hard enough to get contractors to work on my house as | it is lately, I would hate to try to find someone to put a | new roof on a castle. | TuringNYC wrote: | >> These types of articles make it seem like some huge mystery | as to why society is the way it is today. It's no mystery. | Houses cost to much and employers don't pay enough. | | This is so true. I'd take it further -- for many (not for most | of us developers/engineers) but for many others, the choice to | move out is a very risky one because you're constantly on a | thin line between paying student loans, mortgage/rent, and | other _costs_ of employment and wages may not grow while costs | continue to grow. I 've seen people just give up and enjoy what | they have -- a parent's home at the cost of employment. | Remember that it _costs money to earn money_ if you need to | move to a metro area and that cost can exceed the actual | income, especially if it is a job without wage growth. | | I think semi-permanent WFH changes the equation quite a bit -- | one can now live with parents, earn, and save up money to | hopefully cross the chasm into the world of sustainable | ownership. | vidanay wrote: | I really wish this stigma against living "at home" would go away. | Multigenerational homes has been the standard for thousands of | years, and still is in large portions of the world. | troupe wrote: | The title of the article says that they aren't pursuing | employment. The fact they are living at home is explaining how | they do that. At least in the article I read it as being stigma | against people just staying at their parents homes and playing | video games--not against multigenerational homes where young | men were working. | ravenstine wrote: | I both agree and don't at the same time. | | On one hand, there shouldn't be anything shameful about living | "at home", especially if it's purposeful. (looking back, it | probably would have made sense to stay with my folks even | longer than I did in order to save more money) | | Yet living at home and not building anything into late | adulthood tends not to be a good way to generate | intergenerational wealth. Until the international economic | paradigm changes, I can't see how it's a good thing for people | to have nothing to pass on to their children. | Gunax wrote: | People use 'living at home' as a stand-in for a set of | properties: unemployed or lowly employed, low ambition, single, | excess time on entertainment, etc. | | Of course they aren't always true individually (I know some of | my facebook colleagues lived at home) but from a rough | demographic perspective, it's true. | | We do this a lot: consider that teen pregnancy is understood to | be unwanted, thwarting educational opportunities, etc. but in | some religious communities a 17 year-old might be married and | ready to bear children. It's just that's a very small | proportion, and doesn't diminish that teen pregnancy is | generally considered a problem. | MattGaiser wrote: | Indeed. | | I have a very multicultural background, but the dominant | cultural view, at least when it comes to money, is Chinese. | | For us, living at home is not failure. Moving out without | planning to start a family if you live in the same city as your | parents is considered wasting money. | dijit wrote: | If the goal is gender equality: what's wrong with this? | | The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not | _supposed_ to be the way our society functions; at least not in | the last 100,000 years. | LatteLazy wrote: | Unless you were born into the ranks of a few kings or priests, | this is the first time men have been allowed to opt out. | thaumasiotes wrote: | It's also the first time women have been allowed to opt out. | Working most of the day is the historical norm for all able- | bodied people and most not-wholly-able-bodied people. | LatteLazy wrote: | I think women's experience has been a lot more complex. U | til the 1950s they were needed to work in the home most of | the time. And it's only really the last 20 years women | haven't been REQUIRED to opt out of working once they got | married or had kids... | watwut wrote: | If you look at women employment stats in the past, a lot | more of them were employed then people generally assume. | Women with small kids would work the least, but younger | and older more likely to work. | | There is middle class white ideal and then there is | reality of people needing to eat. They did not had | careers, but they needed money and only other option is | stealing. | | Men were emplyed more and home required a lot more work | then now. But still, lower class women needed jobs. | jokethrowaway wrote: | These men are not being supported by their wives, they just | don't go and form a new family. | | Women in that age range are generally more educated than their | male counterparts and they earn more, so this statistic makes | sense. They also have trouble finding a male partner, | especially because one of their requirements is that they | should earn more than them. | | This sounds like an impending demographics / societal disaster. | | I guess if this trends continue we'll get to a point where | basic necessities will all raise in price because they can't | find workers until some of these men go back to work. | YinglingLight wrote: | The way to correct this impending demographic disaster is not | going to be a popular one. Ironically among women who are | complaining about the lack of 'marriageable' men. | usrusr wrote: | > They also have trouble finding a male partner, especially | because one of their requirements is that they should earn | more than them. | | It's not just the women's requirements: boys, at least those | coming from a still somewhat traditional provider/homemaker | household (and many effectively are even if she also has a | well paying job) tend to be not really prepared for a role | other than provider. But unless they are super conservative | outliers they also don't expect to end up with a homemaker | partner, at least not unless some freak accident makes them | end up in trophy wife territory. They believe that women | should be modern and all that, but they lack a clear idea of | how they themselves would fit into the picture. Many find a | way nonetheless, but others are bound for greybeard boyhood. | usrusr wrote: | It sounds like a disaster for running pampered middle class | retirements on what is effectively a pyramid scheme, but also | like the closest thing we have to a chance for sustaining | humanity. | jokethrowaway wrote: | If one country doesn't grow demographically, another one | will | pcbro141 wrote: | Why would that be true forever? | [deleted] | [deleted] | cheph wrote: | > The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not | supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in | the last 100,000 years. | | So the fruit of who's labour exactly are they entitled to then? | And can I also get in on that action? I would like to get | something other people made without working any more. I don't | see why I as a productive member of society should get less | than someone who festers in their own bodily fluids. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | We have never paid people based on the amount of effort they | put in. | cheph wrote: | Not sure who you represent (i.e. who "we" refers to in your | message) but what you all do with your money is your | choice, and I don't have any objections to whatever basis | you all decide who you give your money to. But thanks for | letting me know. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | > I don't see why I as a productive member of society should | get less than someone who festers in their own bodily fluids. | | Do you get less? Because if you're working and you're making | less than someone on welfare you have to realize that the | solution to that should be lifting you up, not dragging them | down, right? As far as I'm aware, welfare isn't exactly | comfortable. | protonimitate wrote: | FTA: > Make no mistake, though, for a young man who's not | working the couch isn't a bed of roses. "About half of prime | age men who are not in the labor force may have a serious | health condition that is a barrier to working," the late | Princeton economist Alan Krueger wrote in the Brookings | Papers on Economic Activity in 2017. | | Does it really sound that appealing to be "entitled" to pain, | high medication costs, and/or a potentially crippling drug | abuse problem? | | Go ahead and fester away, bud. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | One of my close friends is a NEET because he uses a | wheelchair and living in a rural town with his parents | provides a floor for higher quality of life than moving to | the city and trying to make it on his own (and navigate the | various disability services). From what he's told me, the | kinds of jobs suggested by the unemployment and disability | empowerment agencies are either hilariously irrelevant or | make no logistical sense (long commutes that would require | one of his parents to be a de-facto full-time chauffeur). | | I haven't spoken to him in ages. Hopefully the pandemic | remote working boom has pushed things in his favor. | cheph wrote: | > "About half of prime age men who are not in the labor | force may have a serious health condition that is a barrier | to working," | | Not sure why what Alan Krueger thinks may or may not be the | case it is relevant to this discussion. I may be sure I may | be able to find many economist that may think many | different things may be the case. But unfortunately for | Alan Krueger here, opinions about what the data may or may | not be is not the same as the actual data about what is, | regardless of who's opinion it is. I would have hoped | someone taught them that in highschool or university but I | guess they must have not had time in their busy schedule of | critical race theory. | | > pain, high medication costs | | Check and check, every moment I sit at a chair is just | slightly less pain than every moment of standing, still | manage to put in a day's work somehow. | | > potentially crippling drug abuse problem? | | Had it, kicked it. | version_five wrote: | Idle hands are the devil's plaything... Agreed that the post- | war version of work is dated and that maybe we don't all need | to get a job. But people need something meaningful to do, at | the risk of mental health and other problems. So if the people | in the article are all becoming artists or volunteers then | great, but if they're sitting around bored it could lead to | societal problems. | ameister14 wrote: | >The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not | supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in | the last 100,000 years. | | What? I was under the impression that particularly in agrarian | societies, everyone who was able to work, worked. Are you | saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of people to | just not work at all? | falcolas wrote: | > Are you saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of | people to just not work at all? | | Apparently this is the case today, since it's happening. | | Historically, agrarian societies did require everyone to work | - twice a year. During harvesting and planting, as much | manpower as possible was needed. The rest of the time didn't | require 40h of work 50 weeks out of the year. It left time | for leisure, building, crafting, etc. | | We're also not really in a traditional agrarian society | today; most of the work required to create food is done by a | vast minority of society using force-multiplying tools. | watwut wrote: | > During harvesting and planting, as much manpower as | possible was needed. The rest of the time didn't require | 40h of work 50 weeks out of the year. It left time for | leisure, building, crafting, etc. | | Because fabric for cloth magically appears from nothing and | they sew themselves. Same for bedheets and such, they fill | themselves.. And candles are gift from Santa, animals dont | need care and houses fix themselves. Wood is just there, | without preparing and cutting it. | | Yo and food also creates itself from grains, just like | that. And small kids changed their own diapers and washed | them. | | Speaking of which, did you tried washing without washing | machine and modern chemistry? It used to be huge physically | demanding work. | ameister14 wrote: | Most of the time that building and crafting was actually | work. There is always something to do, even between | planting and harvesting. Chop wood, split wood, stack wood. | Fix things, knit a sweater, expand the farm, make a chair, | whatever. It's all work. It's secondary to the primary and | mandated work of farming, which is why a nobleman could | call in the levies and go to war outside of planting or | harvest season - they didn't care as much about the | secondary parts - but for the average person that was also | work. | | Yes, we're not a traditional agrarian society, or a hunter | gatherer society - that's why "the last 100,000" years was | a surprise. Essentially the op was saying every able bodied | person has never been required to work. That ran counter to | my understanding of history. | AngryData wrote: | Agrarian societies had cyclic work. Some societies could be | especially arduous, but the most successful and populated | areas weren't. For large chunks at a time throughout the year | the farming population didn't have more than daily chores and | personal projects. But of course during planting and | harvesting they would work their asses off. A lot of the rest | of the time was personal preference. You could make your | house bigger, or you could make beer to drink, you could make | crafts for fun and sell a couple, or you could just dick | around. | | You can see the large amount of extra time available in old | religious and cultural holidays which were both numerous and | often spanned many days or a week or more at a time. Huge | chunks of time of the year that many modern workers wouldn't | be allowed leave from work nor afford if they could. | | You can also see Egyptian pyramid construction which is now | thought to have been mostly (but certainly not exclusively) | volunteer farm workers in the off season in exchange for | booze and "luxury" services like studied dentistry services | that otherwise didn't exist in most of the rest of the world | yet. If they wanted they could just live off their own share | of crops and dick around most of the year though. Working on | the pyramids was a bonus, not a requirement, and their scale | proves how many free man hours they had to "waste" on stuff | like building giant stone mounds and carvings and art and | other religious practices. Their success is marked by how | many excess man hours people had to dick around with. | rightbyte wrote: | I guess most of these men are not living in houses made for | multigeneration living, i.e. with wings, separate entrence or | separate houses or similar. | nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: | We failed to bring up a generation of girls willing to be | providers to a stay-at-home husband. | cashewchoo wrote: | I know this is bait, but I want to provide my experience as | counter-example. | | I went to a STEM college where anyone who graduates could quite | reasonably expect to be able to build themselves a middle-class | career, live comfortably, and perhaps even have some economic | mobility (moving from middle-class to upper-middle, mainly...). | | There weren't a lot of women there, and you would expect that | what women were there would be disproportionately the kind of | woman who would be interested in having a life-long career. | | Just anecdotally, looking at peers who graduated with me, that | is not the case. Many are married, and many have chosen to end | their careers (where finances allow) to stay at home. | | If anything, I would argue the main failing we've committed | upon the young generation (regardless of gender) is to provide | them an economic framework wherein more than a single-digit | percent of wage earners can hope to raise a family on a single | income. | | In my experience, there are a growing number of men who wish | they could be stay-at-home dads if finances permitted. | | But instead, most households are dual-income out of necessity. | | And beyond that, we've also demonized living with your parents | pretty thoroughly, so people are hesitant to save money and get | free childcare by living with their extended family. | | Something else I want to mention is how poorly we've tailored | the current world to making raising a family easier. Letting | your kids go further than your lawn unsupervised is tantamount | to child abuse now. Childcare is absurdly expensive, low- | quality, low-availability (enrollment is headcount-capacity- | limited in most places) and low-flexibility (many places either | want your full-time enrollment or not at all. You can't just | pick some days). | | And we've also demonstrated that we're, as a system, willing to | totally f** over parents when disasters strike. Covid has been | a total disaster for dual-income families with children. I've | heard it was not uncommon for it to be "lucky" a partner was | laid off because otherwise they would've had to quit, without | unemployment benefits, to care for kids full-time. | | Anyway, my point is, we've made it really fucking inconvenient | to have kids and now there's all this overly-simplistic sexist | whinging from a certain segment of the population about how | it's somehow all the fault of young women. It's disgusting both | from a moral standpoint and in how intellectually lazy it is. | commandlinefan wrote: | > as counter-example ... the kind of woman who would be | interested in having a life-long career ... that is not the | case ... men who wish they could be stay-at-home dads | | You seem to be saying the same thing OP is saying: there are | few women who are comfortable being the primary (or sole) | breadwinners. | cashewchoo wrote: | I'm not, your ellipses abbreviate too much. I'm seeing, | among a group of people who would theoretically be | predisposed to not want to stay at home, people still | electing to stay at home. This contradicts the OP's glib | remark that less women nowadays want to stay at home. | jokethrowaway wrote: | The op's remark was that women don't want to maintain | stay at home dads | jokethrowaway wrote: | I think you and the parent don't disagree too much, but | parent was trying to be funny. | | I loved that feminism gave a choice and legitimised working | women - but it also broke down the family structure | (+divorces and unstable families - which statistically raise | less successful people) and having twice the workforce | heavily depressed wages' purchasing power so that now | families need two working parents to survive. | | I think the result for the next generation will be a | demographics crash and hopefully what comes next is not | reminiscent of the Handmaid's Tale. | watwut wrote: | I would point out that non trivial amount of those dicorces | were genuinly abusive relationships - physically and | mentally. Or partnership where one of them despised and | looked really down on each other. | | It is absurd that divorce is seen as that big familly | failure, but staying in violent or abusive relationship is | treated as "succesfull familly". | hahahasure wrote: | I wish everyone could try stay at home parenting. It made me | hate it. | | I like my kid significantly more now that I see him evenings | and weekends. | jeffrallen wrote: | Here's a more nuanced view: both partners in a marriage | should try both full time work and full time parenting. | Then both partners will better understand the choices they | make and have empathy for the other's situation. | | This is lived experience. | comeonseriously wrote: | Citations? | CydeWeys wrote: | Part of this problem is our societal failure to build enough | housing to keep up with the increasing number of people, with a | resulting increase in housing costs that has significantly | outpaced the median wage. If you can't afford to live on your | own, and can't afford housing where the jobs are located, then | you're more likely to live with your parents and be unemployed. | atweiden wrote: | > Part of this problem is our societal failure to build enough | housing to keep up with the increasing number of people. | | The issue is human overpopulation, not our society's "failure" | to destroy the fabric of closely knit communities. | | Humans are by far the least efficient life form on this planet, | and what little enjoyment most humans get out of life mostly | comes down to the integrity of their local communities: their | safety, their health, their prosperity. Yet we've become so | hyperfocused on economic growth that we've turned our larger | society into a malignant tumor unto Earth, while ironically an | increasingly high proportion of humans lead unhappy, | unfulfilled lives. | | Why do so many people just accept the answer is more growth? | Until we can master interstellar travel, we have to contend | with finite physical resources. | supertrope wrote: | Without economic growth we'd still be hunter gatherers. | Growing crops allowed people to have excess food and support | classes of people whose occupation was non-food related. The | industrial revolution not only allowed for mass production | but the Haber process by which fossil fuels are turned into | fertilizer. Without it we would only be able to feed half the | world. | atweiden wrote: | Technological advancement and human overpopulation are | orthogonal concepts. It's perfectly reasonable to believe | the planet is heavily overpopulated with humans and also | that technological advancement is desireable. | | There is very much not a direct relationship between | absolute number of humans, and technological advancement. | This is increasingly true as we inch closer to AGI. | BitwiseFool wrote: | Adding to this, we've also abandoned the idea of building out | in the middle of nowhere and linking it to a city center with a | rail line. I'd gladly buy a cheap home in the boonies if I | could take a train into work instead of driving. | lazypenguin wrote: | That's an interesting observation. I've always heard the | argument that we need "more density" but I like this option | as well. | lotsofpulp wrote: | There is no way the tax base of the boonies can support the | initial and operating costs of a rail line. Therefore it is | not an option, and why you do not see it anywhere. | | Even suburbs cannot afford all of their ongoing | infrastructure obligations, and why you see many | dilapidated areas. | | This is all becoming apparent now because birthrates have | plummeted hence what used to be masked by economic growth | due to sheer population growth no longer has the ability to | be papered over with increased tax collections due to | increased population. | danans wrote: | We do need density at the end of that rail line - dense | towns connected to a dense metropolitan hub via a fast rail | line. For example Ann Arbor to Detroit, Davis to Sacramento | (neither of which have fast rail lines to connect them). | | What we've built instead for more than half a century is | continuous radiating sprawl. | ccheney wrote: | Minneapolis has the Northstar Line[1] which essentially | matches what you're describing here. | | Unfortunately, there's talk of shutting it down[2] due to low | ridership stemming from the pandemic. | | [1] https://www.metrotransit.org/northstar | | [2] https://outline.com/smYCML (startribune.com paywall) | Chris2048 wrote: | Or planned cities without private land ownership? The city | can sell short term leases, but allow the leases to expire | when it's time to re-zone. | CapmCrackaWaka wrote: | I personally believe this will be more common in the future, | but I'm less convinced of a rail connection. I think with the | increasing popularity of working from home, availability of | utilities (satellite internet, solar power) in more rural | places and the relative cost of rural land, people will start | settling a few hours outside larger cities without having to | sacrifice much in terms of quality of life. | ArkanExplorer wrote: | Its going to be significantly more realistic to retrofit | existing roads and highways with machine-readable signage and | traffic lights (for example, why do cars have to read traffic | lights with cameras, why can't the lights broadcast the | status locally?) | | Then we can run autonomous vehicles (private and corporate) | over the same infrastructure. | fnord77 wrote: | what do these young men have to look forward to in life? home | ownership and having a family probably seem so financially out of | reach that kids are not even trying. | thepasswordis wrote: | Is anybody advocating for them or encouraging them in any way? | | I can't think of a single group which aims to highlight men, | uplift men, and encourage masculine behavior. | | These guys grew up in a school system of almost entirely women | teachers, and popular media tells them that if they are | successful in any way, it is due to oppression. | | It's no wonder why they're not succeeding. We spent the last 15 | years telling them that their success is evil. Who are their role | models supposed to be exactly? | cjohnson318 wrote: | Oh please. There's nothing wrong with the way female teachers | teach. | thepasswordis wrote: | Is that what I said? I said that these young men don't have | strong positive male role models. | voldacar wrote: | I don't think you get it. Young men today grow up almost | entirely in female-dominated spaces. That is not _normal_ | historically. In fact it would be strange if it didn 't lead | to any pathologies. | 88840-8855 wrote: | I have a good friend who is working in HR. She used to be in | hiring, now she is in the talent and development stream. We are | not in the same company. | | A few weeks ago I was speaking about my impression that my | company is forcing women into promotions and positions just for | the sake of reaching targets. I said that it felt unfair | towards male colleagues. | | Her reply was something like this: Men had the advantage for | thousands of years, now it is OK if they suffer and that women | receive the advantage. This will balance it out. | | I disagreed because the peers that those girls are competing | against were not part of the "bad white old man" system. She | disagreed and said that some "eye for eye is necassary". | [deleted] | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | >The parental home can be a refuge, but also a trap that keeps | young men from launching their careers. | | This took me a while to realize in my own experience, but | certainly opened my eyes to how my own parents enabled me in this | trap. "Stay at home to save money!" was constantly said to me, | only for me to eventually realize, it is in fact stunting me. My | dad would occasionally say "go out and do something," but | meanwhile, I'd be interrogated for doing said thing so they can | know every detail about it. It's why I tended toward videogames | and the computers in general. They were things I could do by | myself without an inquisition into my own life seeing as I barely | was able to do anything privately. | | While I personally was only a NEET for a few months at a time for | about a year, I never was fully committed to the lifestyle. | Ultimately for myself I had massive reality check in how the | world worked and I could at least have a modicum of success in | it. Partly also to blame is heavy religion not coinciding with | the culture as well as not teaching a kid how to adapt to society | so I always felt like an outcast. Eventually I became atheist and | eventually determining what it would take for me to give up, I | finally broke free. It was very much like in Office Space where | you just don't care anymore. You don't care if you make a faux | pas, don't care if you couldn't meet that deadline, don't care if | you disappointed someone. | | It snapped me out of it, but also made me into a very bitter on | the inside. Knowing my parents didn't exactly want me staying at | their house led to further feelings of being resented for | existing. So I ended up being pretty sociopathic knowing I can't | tell people my true intentions for doing things. I realize it's | messed up and wrong, but much like the story of the scorpion and | the frog, it's in my nature. I at least am cognizant that it's | wrong, but I refuse to change because I've been able to find | success in it. | jedimastert wrote: | The phrase "living at home" made me think of stay-at-home | partners as opposed to living with parents, which led me | expecting a very different vibe of the article | grogenaut wrote: | I'm trying to get my son and his girlfriend to live at home for a | few years post graduation. He wants to move out into a place in | seattle. She's a bit more about saving money. The math is that | they'd have all loans paid off and a 200k down payment about 4 | years out of college if they live with us, and they'd have loans | paid off if in 4 years and < 15k savings if they moved to a | smaller condo. | | Important side note: they're both major home bodies so they | wouldn't take advantage of living in a cool neighborhood. | | To me it makes such massive sense to just bum it in their | seperate upstairs 800sqft apartment and cheap food/rent/etc to | bootstrap their lives instead of moving out. But it's a fight. | | Luckily so far she's moved him from being very much in the NEET | camp to actually looking for a job. But covid completely nerfed | my ability to push him to have a job last summer (his pre-junior | summer). | yaacov wrote: | They should be able to find a nice 1br in Seattle for | 20-25k/yr. Even in the most expensive neighborhoods it | shouldn't be more than 30k. Your numbers are higher than I'd | expect | MattGaiser wrote: | Living with them is probably more than just rent. | plif wrote: | Something about the savings math doesn't check out, especially | given the NEET aspect. 200k savings in 4 years out of school is | a lot. | lotsofpulp wrote: | $185k/48 = $3.85k in monthly costs saved by not living | independently. I can see it as being possible in Seattle, but | on the high end. I would assume comparable abodes to sharing | your parents house would be cheaper. | | I also would not have wanted to stay with my parents in my | 20s though, at least not with my specific parents. | fossuser wrote: | Yeah - I think it's highly dependent on what your parents | are like. | | I've known people who lived at home for a year or two to | save money, but I wouldn't have been able to have any | independence. | majormajor wrote: | Sounds like it was only the man who wasn't inclined to work, | and that the woman has been changing that tendency, as well | as presumably having a decent income of her own that's being | considered here. So something north of 50K after tax per year | for a two-income couple isn't too ridiculous by any means. | | 185K delta between the two scenarios feels wrong, though - | that's almost 4k a month, an astonishing high rent bill for a | couple just out of college. The "find an apartment on their | own for 1-2K, maybe even with roommates, but ideally just in | a cheaper area" option should be seriously considered | compared to living at home. Get a bunch more savings AND some | very valuable life experience! | gnicholas wrote: | Yeah $200k of savings in 4 years is maybe $40k/yr of savings, | plus optimistic investment returns for the first 3 years. But | GP also mentioned all loans paid off, so that adds another | $10-20k/yr, depending on what their loans look like. | | It's not impossible to save that much money straight out of | school, but if you're making that much then you could still | save a decent chunk even if you're paying $2k/mo for an | apartment (which comes to $100k over 4 years). | MattGaiser wrote: | The assumption is probably that their salary essentially goes | to savings. | vmception wrote: | false dilemma. | | many parents contribute to their children's first downpayment, | if you can't or aren't interested then just leave the | discussion. | | they don't have consensus on wanting to live with you while you | believe they have the skillsets to save $200,000 in 4 years. | who gives af if there is a theoretical savings optimization | possible, that's not your problem stop acting like it is. | | you are going to have an empty nest, you'd be better off | admitting thats what you are avoiding instead of acting like | your concern is their savings potential, which is just | coincidence. sure, I could be way off, but the constant is that | you already gave them the support system to integrate into | society, this seems largely successful so don't worry about | those choices. | | let the homebody go have the option of trying IPAs at all the | microbreweries in walking distance. not your problem. | MattGaiser wrote: | > who gives af if there is a theoretical savings optimization | possible, that's not your problem stop acting like it is. | | In some families, caring and advising continues past the 18th | birthday. Northern European culture is the anomaly in this | regard. | [deleted] | [deleted] | codemac wrote: | PERSONAL RANT YOU DON'T NEED TO READ, BUT I NEED TO WRITE: | | I will add something to your son's point: being independent | from my family was more important to me than saving money, | especially if their loans are only 4 years away from being paid | off. In fact, it bootstrapped all kinds of good behaviors | around how to socialize with others, make friends, find a job, | fix my own toilet, do laundry, pay taxes, find a new hair | stylist, shop for clothes, etc etc etc. | | It gave me the independence to move even further, and find work | paid literally 10x more in a few years. No amount of saving | would make up for that. | | I can't imagine how much more stagnate my life would be if I | had done the "smart thing" and put my life on pause instead of | doing what I wanted from the get go. Death is much less | stressful to think about when you're living aligned with your | goals and values. | sergiomattei wrote: | As someone in a similar situation as OP's son (although | undergrad) and looking to move out... | | Independence and personal space MATTER, please consider how | your son may feel about living close to you. It may hurt, but | it's important to understand the mindset behind the decision. | leetcrew wrote: | agreed. I moved out as soon as I could support myself. it | wasn't because I hated my parents; they're pretty good as | far as parents go. I feel like it's hard to actually be an | adult when you live with your parents. | | as an example, my dad used to always ask when he could | expect me home when I went out. not being nosy, he just had | a certain "night lock up" routine for the house. it wasn't | an unreasonable question to get from a man who was paying | for my housing and food, but it was a question I no longer | wanted to answer at that point in my life. | spoonjim wrote: | Be careful. Sometimes the ease of living at home can be | addictive and then they turn into wastrels. Don't underestimate | this risk. | courtf wrote: | We ran out of frontier, and are rapidly running out of the sort | of high-risk, high-reward opportunities that get young men | excited. We need a new gold rush. | | No one wants to sit in a cubicle for 35 years, grinding out | pennies while having all your value extracted by a cadre of semi- | literate, power-tripping middle managers who punish anyone that | displays talent. Not only have a series of crashes in 2008 and | 2020 firmly demonstrated just how rigged the game is, but | everyone can see what everyone else is doing on social media. | There's little opportunity to trick these men into believing they | should work hard when they can clearly see so many people skating | through life without any effort, and watch laborers have their | livelihoods stripped from them during crashes while billionaire | fortunes double. Bloomberg has lost the plot completely, they | don't yet realize that the jig is up. | | Want to get people excited about work? Bring back drinking and | loud music at the office. Let people be themselves without having | to put on a deliriously upbeat, false persona while sitting | through endless, pointless meetings about nothing. Stop asking | them to constantly fellate the worthless middle management caste. | thepasswordis wrote: | So many comments here seem to miss the point here. | | These aren't men who are working, but saving money living at | home. They're not participating in the labor force _at all_. | partiallypro wrote: | It doesn't say where the cross over it, we can assume that | -some- are living and home and don't participate at all, but | that's not how the stats are calculated. They are calculated | separately, but the article is saying there is a connection | (duh) but it's not the only factor for people living at home. | tristor wrote: | This thread is full of people talking about cultural, societal, | and economic factors that may influence this outcome. I've yet to | see anyone mention the factor that I wish we more thoroughly | investigated: health. | | This has been discussed in some articles at length, but we still | haven't identified primary causes, but testosterone levels are | falling in men (at a given age) at a pretty steady pace year over | year. This is likely associated to the prevalence of endocrine | disrupting chemicals in our food and water supply, such as BPA in | plastics and PCBs in common food-oriented coatings (Teflon). | Adding on to that, there are also phytoestrogens from soy | lecithin in many food products, and we also had periods where | growth hormones were commonplace in dairy products. There is a | growing body of evidence, not yet fully interconnected causally, | that seems to indicate that the introduction of these sorts of | hormones and endocrine disruptors into our food and water supply | has had marked effects on health, everything from the increasing | epidemic of obesity and obesity-related illnesses like diabetes, | to earlier ages of menarche in young girls, and increasing | prevalence of gynecomastia in young boys. | | I, for various reasons, know numerous people who fall soundly | into the NEET stereotype here in the US, still living at home (or | in extreme poverty) playing video games and doing menial labor | well into their 40s, despite having marketable and useful | skillsets that would provide them gainful employment. Without | exception, every person I know like this suffers from mental | health issues, predominantly anxiety, all are obese, and all | consume and have consumed throughout their life heavy amounts of | processed food and take-out fast-food, which both increase | exposure to chemicals like Teflon (often used to line take-out | containers). Their generally unhealthy diet and lifestyle | throughout childhood and into adulthood is likely a key factor in | the outcome of their life, clearly affects their general health | as adults, and is likely a contributor to their mental health | issues and defeatist attitudes. | | The absence of any serious public health movement to improve the | food and water supply of all Americans makes it unsurprising to | me that we now find ourselves in the position we are in. | Compounding this with the absence of universal mental healthcare | and the comorbidity between depression, anxiety, and obesity, | makes it unsurprising as well. | nradov wrote: | Phthalate chemicals used as plastic softeners are also | suspected to reduce testosterone levels. | mywittyname wrote: | Could be. But lack of exercise would also lead to low T, and | I'm quite confident that middle aged man without a job who | lives with parents aren't exactly staying fit. | [deleted] | cjohnson318 wrote: | We moved to a suburb built around 1992, and our street had most | of the original first residents. Out of say ten houses of | original residents, three houses had sons in their 30's that | still lived at home. (One guy was a welder and has since moved | out, so I believe he was just saving money for a downpayment | somewhere.) | | Snide comments about "kids these days" aside, housing is much | more expensive than it used to be, compared to median household | earnings. | | [Edit] I'm totally guilty of snide comments about "kids these | days"; I wasn't directing that at anyone. | zitterbewegung wrote: | What is strange is this has been going on since the 1950s and it | is even invariant in relation to economic cycles. | | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 | | I am also an exception to this rule (I am employed but I live at | home). Currently I'm saving for a down payment to a Condo / | House. | Lammy wrote: | The people guiding our economy won't risk the "wrong sorts" of | people getting too many rights, having an income, and thinking | they deserve to be able to own a home, start a family, and | build any generational wealth. Now all the rest of us are | feeling the fallout from it too. | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006 | chromaton wrote: | The population is getting older. | https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the... | _Microft wrote: | Maybe is has to do with women entering the labor force? | | Here I plotted the labor force participation rate of women and | men plus the sum of both. While the rate for men declines, the | one for women increases. | | Update: here is a new graph without the assumption that there | are equally many men and women (participation rates for each | are now multiplied by the population size of each and | normalized to total population). The interesting part is that | the total labor participation rate is moving very little, just | between ~59-67%. | | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 | | // OLD: The sum of both moves between 120 and 135% (assumption | here is that there are roughly as many men as there are women | which should be approximately correct): | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs | blakesterz wrote: | That's quite an interesting graph. I wonder if it is also | influenced by things to do with average age or age of | retirement, time spent in school, or something like that. Just | looking at it makes me wonder about demographics/education/etc. | That's about a 20% drop over the years, I would assume caused | by a number of factors. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | My speculation is that it's like the argument that minimum | wages increase the skill floor for employment. However, it's | that a combination of automation and cost optimization | eliminated all the marginal jobs, rather than the wage floor. | Automation allows a salary employee to pick up what | previously would have been a full-time minimum wage position | under "other duties as assigned" without overworking them. | Cost optimization meant that companies realized that they do | not need their floors to be _that_ sparkling clean, further | reducing the number of low-wage /low-skill positions. | tootie wrote: | I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the | workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. | More recently, it's the aging population. The chart for just | prime age males is less dramatic: | | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S | | Also, a topic that has been surprisingly quiet is that | employment-population rate absolutely cratered to a near | 50-year low during the pandemic. We had a positive report in | the UNRATE last week, but participation is still digging out of | an historic hole. | watwut wrote: | > I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the | workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. | | Afaik, career men working hours went up after women went to | work. The culture of overwork went up. | [deleted] | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/gTqpD | digglet90 wrote: | Staying at home and playing video games/yield farm is the most | incentivised activity right now. This liberal-moral capitalism | breaks my heart sometimes lol. Reap what you sow! | SMAAART wrote: | This was a thing (and still is) in Europe. US ridiculed them, and | now it's here. | | Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET | stagger87 wrote: | > US ridiculed them | | What do you mean by this? Some people on some online forums | made some jokes? | dougmwne wrote: | This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not | enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing | for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying | home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. | Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford | to leave the support network of their family and close friends. | If you grew up in a medium or high cost of living area, then | you're sort of stuck. I work in tech and still, owning a home | seems pretty distant, so I can't imagine how it must be for | someone without job skills. | AndrewUnmuted wrote: | Until this year, I lived in the same place I grew up, one of | the highest cost-of-living places on the planet: NYC. Until the | pandemic, the goal of owning a home did seem totally out of | reach for me, even with my remote SV tech job salary. | | Then I moved to an unincorporated community in TN, because | NYC's lockdowns, mask mandates, and general cultural decay was | too much for me to bear - financially, emotionally, and even | ethically. | | I now own 15 acres of land with two houses on it. The median | income in this part is <40k/yr and yet it's safer, friendlier, | healthier, and best of all, much freer. High cost of living is | a true killer of communities and the more expensive your area | is, it's quite likely it's also a lot less free. | | If you can leave the major cities in the US, it's possible for | life to become a whole lot nicer. | silicon2401 wrote: | You gotta keep hyping up the big cities: talk about the usual | cliches like the food, the movie scenes, the 'culture'. Keep | cities popular so everybody stays there and leaves land in | the countryside for the rest of us. | jdhn wrote: | Has there been any culture shock for you? As someone who grew | up in NJ, I'm always interested in hearing how other tri- | state area people deal with moving from an urban to a rural | environment. | olivierestsage wrote: | Unsure why you're getting downvoted for this -- it makes good | sense, and many could benefit from this kind of thing. I have | a friend who moved from NYC to Ohio recently. He was | bellyaching about it a lot (the move was for work), since he | thought he would be so sad to leave the cultural | opportunities of NYC, etc. Instead he has found that a) Ohio | wasn't so bad after all, b) his stress-related conditions | have evaporated, and c) he has more time to pursue what he | loves doing in that environment. | 1-6 wrote: | Also, there may be blue-state vs red-state rivalry going | on. OP basically moved from blue to red and is liking it. | ryandrake wrote: | > Unsure why you're getting downvoted for this | | Any hint that dense urban living is not the optimal | lifestyle for everyone gets downvoted here. For example, | here's my super-controversial anecdote from yesterday, that | people took time out of their day to try to bury: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27450896 | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | Well there's also the angle of people moving from the big | city into a small rural community and gentrifying it. A | good friend of mine had to deal with this trend in | Bozeman and was ultimately pretty much forced out by it. | ghaff wrote: | There's definitely a tension between bringing money and | people into communities that need them and bringing a | _lot_ of money and people and different preferences into | communities in a way that makes them less good for the | people already there. | dougmwne wrote: | A historical example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man | sa_Musa#Islam_and_pilgrim... | eplanit wrote: | Be proud, you made a very wise and healthy decision. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I'm just now middle aged and even when I was a twenty-something | I never felt as ambitious or as risk embracing as I was | _supposed_ to be. My father and grandfather got into way more | trouble than I ever did, with just about every facet of their | life. My stories are absolutely tame in comparison. | | It turns out the steady dopamine faucet is a stronger motivator | than going out and trying to flirt, date, make friends, | network, or hustle. Just spending time on the PC isn't even | particularly fun, but as soon as someone proposes plans I | suddenly feel like backing out and retreating back into my own | world. I definitely sense this isn't "normal" for men and it's | probably a consequence of modernity. | listless wrote: | This is a troubling trend that I see in my sons and that I | battle in myself. | | Why go out and compete for money, success and sex when those | things are at your fingertips. I really think it's as simple | as "turn off the TV". The problem is that the world is a hard | place, and games/porn offer a "good enough" alternative that | offsets the trouble of putting yourself out there. | | Sorry for making this thread weird by bringing porn in. | BitwiseFool wrote: | No, it's absolutely part of the equation. The internet has | been an absolute game changer for how the human libido is | satisfied. Pornography went from something rarely seen and | socially awkward to acquire to something that is now | ubiquitous, instant access, and even individualized. In | fact, you have to go out of your way to _avoid_ seeing | sexual content on the internet. | bobthechef wrote: | "If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent | living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a | family," | | This seems to be an issue across the board, at least in | degrees, but that's because we live in an extractive oligarchy. | This can't last forever. I just hope it doesn't lead to either | revolution or socialism. We need to rethink our economic | principles. Capitalism as state-sponsored usury or as | consumerist decadence is not viable, just, or good. | | Recall that in the 1950s, the single income of a working father | sufficed to support a wife and their many children (since birth | rates were much higher then). You can't do that anymore. That | seems like a massive regression. We may have more flavors of | ice cream, but who cares if that comes at the price of the | important stuff. I say this without idealizing those decades. | Those are the decades, after all, that led us to where we are | today. | | "then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games | makes sense." | | Well, it doesn't make sense from the perspective of human | flourishing. There are other things that a person in that | position can be doing rather than pissing his life away in | masturbatory activities like video games. This speaks to a | deeper demoralization in our society, and in this case, that of | men, and not just those who are unemployed or living at home. | Our culture sucks. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | The 1950's were an anomaly. Europe was in the doldrums, Asia | was yet to develop. America had little competition for the | resources it needed. I doubt those days are coming back any | time soon. If anything its going to get worse as the rest of | the world catches up and the dwindling resources people need | are stretched between ever more people. | wolfretcrap wrote: | It's less about not having good jobs more about: | | 1. Most want to start business and become rich, not work for | someone else. Starting business is difficult, needs lots of | work, even if you are smart and hardworking, have capital to | start, still you need social skills which present generation | didn't develop, so getting along with others and leading others | is still difficult which limits the success. | | 2. Anything you'll come up, there are guys who are already | doing it better. | | 3. Work hard for what!? Beyond basic needs, even in dating | women demand millionaires, average Joes are treated like | disposable good for nothing who women say are creeps because | they don't have money to build their IG brand and devour women | with lavish gifts. | | At the end of day, most people simply will not be motivated to | take part in such system now that internet makes it possible | for you to remotely live any life you dream of living even if | it's only through some YouTube. A lot of things now seem less | enticing. | | Even guys who society might say are successful can't afford | real estate at today's price, only way to afford considerable | land is to move away from cities but moving away from cities | also takes away your income source. | | All these reasons are why I don't hustle hard anymore. I just | try to make enough to coast in life and explore my hobbies, not | working hard to get rich or any such goal. Because I don't | really see how more money will change my life. | The5thElephant wrote: | This is a very pessimistic and distorted take on things. | | 1. From what I have seen most people want a job that pays for | their lifestyle and isn't soul destroying. Sure people | fantasize about becoming a successful entrepreneur, but | certainly not most and not enough to give up on work in | general. | | 3. This is frankly ridiculous and such a blatantly false view | of what women want that it borders on incel philosophy. It | appears entirely based on the extremely exaggerated and | polarized views seen on social media rather than the far more | moderate and balanced views the average person you come | across will have. Most women do not demand millionaires. This | is readily apparent if you talk to real women instead of only | watching TikTok and Instagram models. | _fat_santa wrote: | I agree with your first two points. Starting a business is | hard, you'll probably fail (statistically) and there is | likely someone else doing it better than you already. But | part of starting a business is looking at that adversity and | doing it anyways. | | Your third point about dating, I couldn't disagree more. If | you go on social media you will see arguments very similar to | the one you made, basically if you aren't an | athlete/millionaire/etc, don't even bother. I think these | arguments come from a bitter place and as a result generalize | women in general. I'm an average looking dude, certainly not | a millionaire, but I go on dates pretty much every week with | different women. I found that it's all about just putting | yourself out there. | bradlys wrote: | Where do you live? This has not been my experience on the | west coast. | | You might be underselling yourself. In any major city, | being average isn't sufficient. You're just swiped over for | the next guy who is above average. (They always exist on | the apps, nearly infinite amount) | _fat_santa wrote: | I live over on the East Coast. I'd say that I look | average, but its also about the profile and how you sell | yourself. | | (This is pure speculation based on my experiences) Out | here I've noticed that Tinder and Bumble are just | terrible to use, Hinge though seems to be the sweet spot. | The problem I see with Tinder and Hinge is with the | swiping, it turns it into a game of sorts where you're | playing whose post attractive based on the number of | points (matches) you get. With how Hinge is setup, I get | fewer matches, but of those matches, I end up going on | first dates much more often. | | I also found that it's about playing the algorithm a bit | and making sure your profile is setup right, think of it | in terms conversion rate (from being in the "This person | liked you" section to matching with someone). Before I | started having success I went through probably 10+ | iterations and tweaks to my profile to see what worked | and what didn't. I also found that sometimes the | algorithm just said F you and pushed me down to the | bottom of the stack. In that case delete your profile and | recreate it, I've had to do this once. | The5thElephant wrote: | Somehow there are an endless number of men who are above | average? Isn't that a self defeating point and | mathematically impossible? | | You realize many women feel this exact same way about | being ignored because men just want models out of their | league? | bradlys wrote: | On dating apps, there are to most people an endless | amount. You can just keep swiping. Very few people will | swipe through the 200k+ dating profiles available in | their area. Thus, endless... | | Regardless of how women feel men are acting towards them, | the stats don't lie, women receive far more swipes than | men. Something like 36x more. | chewz wrote: | There is big difference between going on dates every week | and finding a woman that will treat you as a potential life | partner and father for her children... | dougmwne wrote: | I think this is a huge distinction. Stable career | prospects are a huge factor in choosing a partner. And | the HN poster you are replying to probably has better | career prospects than most. The millionaire talking point | seems like a distraction. The point is that many men have | zero career prospects, and probably have a pretty | terrible dating pool as a result. This all hangs | together, no job, no partner, no kids, no home. | MyHypatia wrote: | >> Even in dating women demand millionaires, average Joes are | treated like disposable good for nothing who women say are | creeps because they don't have money to build their IG brand | and devour women with lavish gifts. | | This is a ridiculous caricature of women. Most women aren't | spending their time building IG brands, counting lavish | gifts, and petulantly demanding millionaires. This sounds | like a cartoon villain or something from a reality TV show. | | Most women are trying to find their place in the world, | figure out their goals, establish a career with reasonable | prospects, work on hobbies, create a support network of | friends, and hopefully find a partner to start a family. | | If your attitude towards women is that they are money-hungry, | delusionally entitled, and over-demanding then I'm not | surprised they don't waste their time trying to convince you | otherwise. They are busy spending time with people and | looking for partners who don't treat them like delusional, | spoiled children. | imjustsaying wrote: | >This is a ridiculous caricature of women. Most women | aren't spending their time building IG brands, counting | lavish gifts, and petulantly demanding millionaires. This | sounds like a cartoon villain or something from a reality | TV show. | | yes but this accurate in describing what the last couple | women I was with were like. they were both women who | approached me first, whatever that might tell you. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I | know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, | just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one | thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what | he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was | raised with anything differently. | | In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly | related: another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore | because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste | of time that favors women disproportionately. | | I suspect all of this is primarily cultural first, and not | related specifically to work, the economy, pricing of good or | services like buying a home and starting a family, which would | come second. | | That being said, if we were just talking about young single men, | well, of course they're staying at home. It makes no economic | sense to move out and get an apartment. The cost of living in | major metros makes renting nearly equivalent to paying a | mortgage. Except no one is building affordable homes. | wayoutthere wrote: | > another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore | because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a | waste of time that favors women disproportionately. | | Tinder is a waste of time for women too; if you're at all | attractive you get dozens of messages a day and half of them | are scams. The best I've ever gotten out of Tinder has been | mediocre, meaningless sex; it's far too much work if you're | looking for anything more. | | You have to go do things you enjoy and be a more interesting | person. If that's just your daily life, you'll meet people who | enjoy the same things you do and you can potentially date them | (or their friends). | | But yeah, I agree with you. Just because Tinder sucks doesn't | mean you shouldn't date; just that you shouldn't look to an app | to find a partner. | samlevine wrote: | Dating isn't fun. At least it isn't for me as a middle aged | divorce. | | I get matches, I meet interesting people and go on dates and | the process is just emotionally exhausting. | | I would rather put in time into my job, or my friends, or my | hobbies. If I can meet someone who wants to be part of my life, | fantastic. If not, I will live until I don't. | mnouquet wrote: | > I would rather put in time into my job, or my friends, or | my hobbies. | | one acronym: MGTOW. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | As a 26 year old finishing up a Comp Sci degree, I'm in a | similar camp. I mean I'd rate myself as a 5-6 straight up | average. I get matches and have gone on several dates. What | I've noticed is most men don't do profiles right at all. They | show themselves off in what they do, not what's attractive. | Also nobody every acknowledges that selfies are bad. I mean | these are just little tips I've learned honing a profile over | the course of a couple years. | | But, thinking of dating like a resume, as well as making | dates feel like interviews has made relationships nothing but | a chore nowadays. It feels wholly like a business | relationship without any contractual guarantees between the | parties. | at_a_remove wrote: | Well, I cannot speak for Tinder, but you have probably seen the | stats from the now-deleted OKCupid blogs. I worked in a dating | service pre-Intarwebs and the dynamics are almost exactly the | same, just lacking only the "instant" factor of the Internet, | plus the rather expanded pool. As someone who entered people's | "preferences" versus their "must-haves," certain trends | emerged. To be politic about it, those trends did not favor | men. | mkmk2 wrote: | As someone who's been exposed to the stats more than most of | us (I assume, pre-web dating service), do you have any | particular insights? Have you thought about what one could do | to address this mismatch since? I was fortunate to find my | s.o. on a language exchange site, but if I felt my best | options were something from the Match Group... it looks grim | at_a_remove wrote: | No solutions, I am afraid, that do not involve large-scale | genetic engineering. | | In the parlance of our times, dudes are generally | "thirstier." On top of it, you can call it genetics or you | can call it culture, but ... men make the approach, | typically. (Okay, I am done with generally and typically | and trends for now) This leads to guys spamming some | entirely-too-fussy gals and the usual dynamics emerging. | | You've read the grim confessions of women who remorselessly | admit to "dating for dinner." You've seen the baiting | performed using the photo of a male model who can say | simply the most awful and outrageous things. The Heightism | user might have been banned on Twitter but others have | emerged like the heads of hydras, reposting the casually | cruel dismissal of men under six foot. | | It's only the basic thirstiness that drives men to even | continue, and I suspect that a lot of young men opt out, | because that's just _step one_. They 're looking at their | often-divorced parents and remembering who got the house, | then wondering if the game is worth the candle. I suspect | the men at the intersection of easily disheartened and | generally aware have been most put off, leaving the field | to the exuberant and the blessed. | | And remember, we are currently in a culture that doesn't | seem to like men very much. Just for a giggle, go to | Google, type "men are" and see what the autocomplete | suggests, then do "women are." That has to add to more of | the disenchantment. | Raptor22 wrote: | You weren't kidding about Google, damn... | BeFlatXIII wrote: | To be fair, your friend has the right idea about online dating: | the juice isn't worth the squeeze. It's like playing the | lottery: life-changing good if you win but a negative | expectation value. | troupe wrote: | > It makes no economic sense to move out and get an apartment. | The cost of living in major metros makes renting nearly | equivalent to paying a mortgage. | | That might account for them living at home, but not for not | pursuing a job. | fossuser wrote: | Videogames provide fake achievement and an easy thing to do to | occupy you - I think some people are more vulnerable to this | kind of thing than others. For me, the fake achievement feels | fake and I don't get much satisfaction out of it - but for | others I think it mimics real achievement enough that they can | pour hours into it. | | Online dating sucks for most men - if you're not in the top 2% | of attractiveness for men it _is_ a waste of your time | (especially in skewed markets like the bay area), you 're | better off going places to meet people in person and working on | your social skills that way (I think your friend is right). | WalterBright wrote: | > fake achievement | | Nothing exposes that more than writing video games yourself, | as well as having a job testing them. 10 | print "Walter is Great!" 20 goto 10 | | There ya go. That's all video games are. | | The fake courtesy of software irks me, too. | wearywanderer wrote: | I think some kinds of video games provide this more than | others, at least for some definitions of achievement. If | somebody spends their free time painting happy trees but | never sells any paintings, I personally would not say | achievements are fake. The painter sets their own objective | and judge success by their own personal standards, but that | doesn't make their achievements _fake_ , right? And if they | decide to depict things using lego instead of paint, is that | fundamentally different? It's a different form of craft, but | I don't consider building sculptures out of lego to be faker | than doing the same from clay. | | Some video games are essentially the same as that. For | instance, creative-mode minecraft seems to be arts and crafts | as much as it is a game. | lumost wrote: | This has a lot of parallels to "opt-out" syndrome in Japan. | Given the concurrent rise of VanLife and FIRE cultural | phenomena it's worth considering why many individuals in | developed economies ideal life is to not work. | | I'd hypothesize that the rising costs both economic, and mental | associated with what many consider a basic standard of living | independently probably has alot to do with it. | | Why work when 60 hours per week leaves you just barely scraping | by and exhausted? Why not be just barely scraping by and not | exhausted. | mkmk2 wrote: | What are the FIRE cultural phenomena? | arnado wrote: | Financial Independence, Retire Early | | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial- | independence-... | beckman466 wrote: | > I suspect all of this is primarily cultural first, and not | related specifically to work, the economy, pricing of good or | services like buying a home and starting a family, which would | come second. | | Hmmm I think you're wrong. It sounds like you've got | survivorship bias, big time. | | Most people want to contribute, but the economic system fucks | them and makes them dependent. Examples include: the | intellectual property regime and monopolistic parasitism of the | knowledge commons [1], neoliberal philanthrocapitalism [2] and | the completely disgusting and neocolonial division of labour | under global capitalism [3]. | | Can you really look at the Blackrock disaster [4] (Wall Street | slumlordism), or the IRS papers or the Panama Papers and tell | me that the system doesn't harm people? | | [1] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley | | [2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development- | professionals... and https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the- | ladder-pb | | [3] https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and- | ch... | | [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27448175 | tjs8rj wrote: | Curious: what effect do you think culture has? The economic | plays a big role, but there's a tendency nowadays to call the | root problem for everything economic and act like cultural | effects are just "holidays and religion" or other marginal | effects. | | The culture has changed dramatically since the 50s when these | trends started. For the men, their role has gone from default | "protector, provider, head of the home, in charge, theist, | conservative, married young" to "equal bread winner, often | oppressive, too often toxic, without innate greater purpose | or role, etc". | | Obviously these are broad generalizations, but we would | probably agree that men get a worse wrap now than then (even | if that came at the expense of others). Does that large | cultural shift have a large effect? Are men lacking purpose | now and how much of the current problem men face is because | of that cultural shift? The economic is important, but the | cultural factors are huge too | StandardFuture wrote: | > The economic plays a big role, but there's a tendency | nowadays to call the root problem for everything economic | | As with everything on the internet (it sadly seems), there | is a necessity for _nuanced position_. Perhaps, economic | _and_ cultural factors are playing a self-reinforcing and | thus compounding effect on our society? | | There are also the non-cultural and non-economic factors | such as declining testosterone levels. This could have | profound emergent economic and cultural implications that | we have not even begun to calculate. | WalterBright wrote: | Nobody is holding you back from writing a book, painting a | picture, or contributing to Open Source. | roenxi wrote: | > Can you really look at the Blackrock disaster [4] (Wall | Street slumlordism) and tell me the system doesn't harm | people? | | Yeah, someone could do that for any system. "A horrible thing | happened somewhere" or even "this part of the market is | totally screwed up" are facts about every plausible | alternative. So though they may be facts about the current | system, they don't tell us how to improve the situation. | | You can make an argument that the problem is systemic, but | having one example of a problem doesn't do anything except | score rhetorical points in a game where evidence and argument | don't really matter. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | Perhaps I am. Surely if good paying work was easier to find | and homes were approachable more as a commodity then I'm sure | this would sort itself out. | | I've spoken about what REITs do for years on HN. I've worked | for them a couple of times as well, so I've seen what goes on | first hand. | adolph wrote: | > the economic system [. . .] makes them dependent | | The emotion of dependency seems less likely to be developed | by an economic system than of culture. One might claim that | it is difficult to separate one from the other. Taking a | cultural or an economic point of view I can see how a | hierarchical culture would see participation as zero-sum but | not an economic system. An economic system by itself, | capitalist pig, pinko commie, feudal manorialism, whatever, | is enhanced by participation and a sense of interdependency. | troupe wrote: | > Most people want to contribute, but the economic system | [...] makes them dependent. | | The people being discussed here are people without jobs who | have a place to live rent free. There is not an economic | system holding them back from being able to find a way to | contribute because their expenses are very close to $0. For | all practical purposes, they have the equivalent of universal | basic income. If they would like to write poetry instead of | playing video games they could. If they would prefer to paint | or write code, they could. | _fat_santa wrote: | > Most people want to contribute, but the economic system | fucks them and makes them dependent. Examples include: the | intellectual property regime and monopolistic parasitism of | the knowledge commons [1], neoliberal philanthrocapitalism | [2] and the completely disgusting and neocolonial division of | labour under global capitalism [3]. | | This line of thinking in my opinion is the problem. Before I | start, I will admit I have survivorship bias. | | The points you mentioned are problems, but in my opinion | that's not an excuse. One of your points you mentioned that | it's now harder than ever to buy a home because Blackrock is | scooping all of them up. While I agree that it certainly | makes getting a home harder. I think if anyone truly wants a | home and is willing to do whatever they need to in order to | get it, they can get it. Same goes for just about everything | else, if you want something, and you're willing to do | whatever it takes to get it, you can do it. | | All the problems you mentioned are roadblocks, not | showstoppers. I think these days it's easier to just make the | excuse that there are all these things standing in our way | thus making it impossible for us to do the things our parents | did. | prirun wrote: | > I think if anyone truly wants a home and is willing to do | whatever they need to in order to get it, they can get it. | Same goes for just about everything else, if you want | something, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to | get it, you can do it. | | You may be right, but people come in a normal distribution, | with most being just average. To "do whatever it takes" | implies a person on the extreme right of the distribution, | and most people aren't there. So while it may be _possible_ | to buy a home, if it takes extreme effort to do it, most | people won 't. | | Whereas, when I grew up in the 60's, my dad worked as a bag | boy at Kroger, then a meatcutter. We had a small 3br house, | 2 kids, a car, a motorcycle, a boat, insurance on all this | stuff, and mom worked out of the house doing babysitting | and ironing. They were still in their early 20's and got | married right out of high school. We eventually had 2 cars | while still in this house, around '65. Nothing even | remotely like this would be possible today. | atweiden wrote: | See: 1971 Cost of Living [1]. New | House: $25,200.00 Average | Income: $10,622.00 per year New | Car: $3,560.00 Average | Rent: $150.00 per month Tuition | to Harvard University: $2,600.00 per year Movie | Ticket: $1.50 each Gasoline: | 40C/ per gallon United States Postage Stamp: | 8C/ each | | Whether due to currency debasement, globalization, or | overpopulation, the disparity in cost of living between | the two eras is staggering. | | [1]: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com | vmception wrote: | > know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a | job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. | | this provides some context for why some women immediately balk | when they see my playstation controller and vr headset on the | west elm media cabinet | | "[oh god] are you ... a _gamer_ ?? " | | I feel like a lot of people can't differentiate between | potential partners that own a console versus whatever gamer | addict they're afraid of. thinking about it, that's a decent | heuristic given how many gamers bring toxic ideas with them, | even if they aren't neglecting other responsibilities for games | krastanov wrote: | This anecdote definitely confuses me and I can not imagine | such a first reaction happening in my social circle (yes, | this is also just an anecdote ;) | vmception wrote: | yeah, I wish that first reaction didn't happen at all | repeatedly | | nice that you don't experience or do that | runawaybottle wrote: | It's sort of like when women entered the work force and built | careers. They started to get married later and having kids | later. | | Men are now reverting to the mean a little bit. This could be a | natural normalization of a situation where men were exalted as | industrious, and women were literally left at home. Both | extremes are bad. | | One day we'll just have two 30 year old stay-at-homes get | married and not think twice about it. No expectations or | judgement on ones job and aspirations, or gender specific | duties. Just two genuine deadbeats. | | What's so distasteful about it? Truly nothing, but yet, why | doesn't it feel right? | Taylor_OD wrote: | I've got a buddy in a similar situation. We all came from | somewhat similar backgrounds and all majored in the same, | useless, thing. We lived together and while we all played a lot | of video games one of the three never really moved on from | that. He's still working at a low wage job behind a counter and | playing video games a lot. | | I think it's less that he doesnt know different but more that | he never got a break in the right direction. I stumbled into a | career. Our other buddy stumbled into a career. He didn't. I'm | not saying he never will but I can look back and point to a few | key moments that led me to where I am today. Without those I'd | probably be living in my parents house playing video games too. | UnpossibleJim wrote: | Risk aversion and a lack of opportunity (luck) seem to have a | large impact on this phenomenon, if you will.I know everyone | is quick to jump on "helicopter parenting"from the 90's (?) | on, but I think (from the limited speakers I've seen on the | topic - which are few) really have made a generation of risk | averse peoples. Add to that an economic downturn, where a | lack of opportunity makes for less situations where luck | might happen where you can take those risks... and here you | are. Young men in basements getting a dopamine fix in a | plasticine bubble with a virtual body. | runawaybottle wrote: | It's also a form of perfectionism. I deal with exactly what | you are describing with a family member of mine. A part of | his problem is that, I shit you not, I sincerely believe he | thinks he is too good for a labor/service job, or community | college, or coursera, or the gym, dating someone not perfect, | etc. It didn't go his way for so long, but the ego is still | there. And what is the ego exactly if not an intense defense | mechanism. They have lost all ability to slowly chip away at | a problem. | | No, you probably won't get an office job in the next 5 years. | Maybe in the next 10. No, you won't have enough money to move | out the next 5 years, but maybe in 10. Nope, you aren't get | laid anytime soon. Few people can accept the timeline and the | sheer effort it will take, and the sheer time. That's the | crux of the problem, that they are truly behind and cannot | deal with the time investment required. | | Enough with the lies, and start from zero. The effort it | takes to be just mediocre in this world is understated. | [deleted] | Taylor_OD wrote: | For sure. I have met a few people who have these weird | expectations around who they are and what they expect from | life. As far as I'm concerned I'm playing with house money. | I got lucky. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | _I stumbled into a career. Our other buddy stumbled into a | career._ | | Talking to various people this seems to be very common. I | know it was the case for me. | nunez wrote: | I wonder what kind of situation your friend had going on in | their house or their lives. Maybe y'all aren't as similar as | you think? | Taylor_OD wrote: | Sure. Maybe. His parents were both doctors and he had four | siblings and an adopted sibling that all see to have done | fine. But There certainly could be something I'm missing. | watwut wrote: | That parents did not had time and energy to notice and | fix the problem. With 6 kids, it is quite difficult even | in best conditions. | kogepathic wrote: | _> another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore | because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a | waste of time that favors women disproportionately._ | | My female friends (I'm male) with online dating profiles have | shown me their matches and conversations, and it's bleak. They | all mostly have an average profile and still receive thousands | of likes/hearts/swipes and messages, but the mean amount of | effort from men messaging them is zero to none. | | Maybe your friend considers the situation of having fewer women | on dating apps as somehow "favoring" their gender, but from | what I've seen and heard, sorting through an inbox of | unsolicited genital photos and copy pasta pickup artist lines | is not something most women would say they enjoy spending their | time doing. | | If instead he's referring to apps like Bumble where the woman | has to make the first move, see above for why some apps choose | to operate with that model. | cjohnson318 wrote: | Ditto. I met my wife on OkCupid. She said I was the only guy | that messaged her with multiple, complete sentences. | tomp wrote: | This complaint should be taken about as seriously as a rich | person complaining how hard it is to be rich. | | Every woman can put herself in a man's position of no matches | - just delete Tinder. Every rich person can become poor - | just give away all their money. | | Yet they don't. It's called _revealed preferences_. Because | having options, no matter how bad, is better than _not_ | having options. | fossuser wrote: | There's also an obvious selection bias - the matches may be | sending low quality messages, but if women are largely | selecting only the top 2% of good looking men they're | skewing these results themselves. The 'better' men never | get to the messaging stage at all. | | I'm happy to be out of the game, but online dating is bleak | for 98% of men. | | Okcupid used to have great data on this before they sold | out, a lot of it ended up in this | book:https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Identity-What-Online- | Offlin... | | The data in that book corroborates a lot of this. We're not | that different from gorillas - sexual selection is tough | and most of the discussion around it ranges from wrong to | dishonest. | nunez wrote: | It's always been that way with online dating. Men, on | average, putting zero effort on the profile (including | photos). Women put slightly more than zero effort into their | profiles but get inundated with messages from mostly-terrible | choices anyway because men like women. | | Men spray low-effort messages at lots of women hoping for a | bite. Women don't message because they have options. | | Quality men trying to find any sort of extra have to work | extra hard on selling themselves. Women looking for quality | men have to work extra hard on creating a profile that deters | the poor options they get (hard) _and_ deal with more subpar | dates. | bena wrote: | Bumble has its own issues. It turns out "making the first | move" is anxiety inducing in everyone. What women have done | on Bumble is to basically treat the "first move" as an | "invitation to treat", a second shot at selecting a guy. Most | of those "first moves" are exactly what they say they don't | want from guys: simple "Hey"s and "Hello"s. And then they say | in their profile that once they say "Hey", you're supposed to | respond back with something substantial and entertaining. | | I don't think dating apps/sites favor either sex more so than | dating in general does. Women, in general, don't really have | to try to get solicitations. Their issue is in trying to weed | through all of the solicitations to find those worth | responding to. It's basically the hiring problem. But there's | no Hackerrank for compatibility. | | And then there's the issue that even those that feel the | system is tilted against them in general don't understand | that it's just them. They're not successful because they | aren't as kind, nice, or desirable as they think they are. Or | they keep making the same bad choices in romantic pursuits | and wonder why they keep getting the same outcome. | | The problem with all of these apps and gimmicks and what not | and certain segments of tech in general is that it assumes | that deep down, people are making rational choices. We | aren't. | anthonygd wrote: | I think you're right about dating apps not really favoring | either gender. Hiring is the first thing I think of when | reading about dating apps. There's just a very strong | natural imbalance. | | Dating apps are especially good at making people not have | to face their shortcomings, i.e. I don't have to fix my | shortcomings, because with a large enough pool there's | going to be someone broken in the right way to accommodate | me. Maybe that's rational, or maybe it's not, it really | depends on expectations. | | Counter intuitively, accepting that we're just stupid | hairless apes makes me believe we're rational. We're not | failing to find anything meaningful; we're not interested | or looking. | Spooky23 wrote: | > Hiring is the first thing I think of when reading about | dating apps | | I agree for a different reason. The circus show about | hiring is mostly bullshit. You could probably randomly | select qualified candidates and turn out just fine. | | Likewise with dating, ordering up another human like a | sandwich creates a weird dynamic designed to keep you | shopping -- you stop paying when you meet someone. | | If you paired 10 pairs of average people at random and | had them doing some task that took them a couple of | weeks, half would be "together" at some level by the end. | bena wrote: | We have our moments. But relying on rationality is an | assumption that will bite you in the ass every time. Just | look at markets, even when there's a clearly superior | option, there's been plenty of times the inferior product | wins. | | Often because that inferior product manages to exploit | our irrational selves either intentionally or | unintentionally. | jfengel wrote: | I did appreciate on Bumble that women got to realize that | writing that first message wasn't easy. I always carefully | crafted my first message on any site, and it is | disheartening to get no reply to that. | | (Some of it, I think, is Tinder et al showing me profiles | that it knew perfectly well were defunct. They're hoping to | attract the person back, but it's a very dark pattern.) | | I did find that the vast majority of women on Bumble wrote | tolerable first messages. Some were better than "hi" but | nonetheless didn't say much, which I interpreted as "OK, | you can go ahead and write the first message." That rarely | turned out well, but at least I knew the account wasn't | dead and not a bot (at least, probably not). | | I met a lot of great women on both Bumble and Tinder, | leading to relationships everywhere from one-night stands | to decade-long romances. I don't think it's easy for either | men or women, albeit in different ways. It's very easy to | make the mistake that thinking that if X is hard for me | then X must be the only important thing, and that leads to | a lot of ill will. | machello13 wrote: | It's certainly believable that women don't enjoy dating apps, | but I think it's difficult to make the case that it's equally | hard for them (in terms of successfully getting a date) when | they have thousands of matches and many men I know have none. | k-mcgrady wrote: | Thousands of matches isn't a good thing. If you ever have | the opportunity ask a female friend to show you the kind of | messages they get on dating apps. They're pretty appalling. | It genuinely worries me that there are so many creeps out | there. The men you know may not be getting many matches but | at least the ones they get are more than likely from | relatively normal people. If I had to sort through the | garbage women do on dating apps I wouldn't be on them. | guskel wrote: | If thousands of matches are not a good thing, why keep | swiping? They could choose instead to talk to the matches | they already have. The matches they have are already the | ones they've screened for. | machello13 wrote: | But surely you can see how hopeless dating feels for many | men when they swipe right on hundreds of women and get 0 | matches? I'm not saying they aren't getting many -- | they're getting none (I know you just have my word on | this, but trust me when I say they are not ugly or fat or | anything, just nonwhite and without high paying jobs, but | otherwise average-looking guys who have dated | successfully in the past). | | The situation isn't great on either side, but plenty of | statistics show it's mostly women having sex off these | apps, so clearly there is an actual imbalance. | | And you can't write off the sheer hopelessness and | isolation that the thought "there's not a single woman | out there who would date me" induces in young men. I'm | sure it's not fun for women but it is absolutely | __brutal__ for many men. | commandlinefan wrote: | > nonwhite | | Uh, trust me, white men can easily accumulate zero | matches too. | lelanthran wrote: | > Thousands of matches isn't a good thing. | | He didn't say it was, he said it was preferable to having | no matches. | | I recall seeing the OkCupid stats once (okstats?). The | numbers pretty much said that although women were getting | most of the messages, they were all only responding to | the same 10% of males, while most men were sending | messages to almost all the women. | | You've pretty much got 80% of the women competing for the | top 10% of the males. | treespace88 wrote: | Women are paying a high price in the online dating world. | It's preying on their weakness the same way porn does for | men. | | Most women don't want to sleep around and have a large | number of partners. But tinder leads them to believe that | they can find an unrealistic partner. And they get hurt by | the small percentage of men that play the online dating | game well. | | Women need a lot more data and time to evaluate a potential | partner before initiating contact. | guskel wrote: | I think a solution would be to limit the number of | matches one could have at a time. This forces the user to | sacrifice something (the opportunity cost of matching | with someone else) to remain in contact with their match. | watwut wrote: | Maybe women are paying the price, bit it is men on HN who | complain and bitch constantly. Most women are not on | tinder anyway. | symlinkk wrote: | That's incorrect, online dating is the number one way | couples meet | watwut wrote: | Which is not the same as "most women are on tinder". | symlinkk wrote: | Most women who are looking to date are on Tinder. No, | your grandma isn't on there. I'm not sure what point | you're trying to make. | commandlinefan wrote: | > sorting through an inbox of ... copy pasta pickup artist | lines | | So as a computer programmer with a LinkedIn profile, I can at | least empathize a bit: I get an average of 3 job offers a | week, even though I haven't really expressed any interest in | changing jobs. A lot of these offers would be a major step | down for me, and that's pretty clear from my profile. I still | feel obligated to take the time to politely decline because I | do have some sympathy for the recruiters who are just doing | their best, but it's also clear they're just blasting out | offers to anybody who meets a basic set of requirements. | | That said - I'm much happier being in the position I'm in of | too much interest than at the other end of the spectrum. | city41 wrote: | Getting off topic here, but not sure why you feel obligated | to reply to the recruiters. You're just an input into their | automation system 99% of the time. I find it amusing when | they send an email at like 8pm on a Saturday. | cecilpl2 wrote: | I respond to these canned messages with a canned reply: | | 1) Do you offer permanent remote work? | | 2) What's the salary range for this position? | | Twice now I have been very pleasantly surprised by the | answer, and one of those resulted in me making an unplanned | job move for a 50% increase in TC. | | I've also had some success just throwing out a huge number | as my expectation for comp. There is pretty much no | downside to doing this. | monksy wrote: | > If instead he's referring to apps like Bumble where the | woman has to make the first move, see above for why some apps | choose to operate with that model. | | Under that model.. it's common for the first message to be | "hi" or ".". Not much has changed. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | What a lot of ignorant men don't realize is that's the | woman saying "you start the convo." Not everything is meant | to be interpreted literally in dating and relationships. If | you believe that, you're doing it wrong. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | What does effort mean in this context? I recall friends of | mine, young women, who were having the hardest time finding a | significant other were just demanding things of men that | would have them selecting from a socioeconomic pool of the | top 20% of the population, when they themselves were in the | bottom 20%. | | It was my experience that young women in general were asking | for too much when I was in my early 20s. They wanted someone | who had it "all together," and that's just not where most | people are in their early 20s. There doesn't seem to be any | appreciation anymore for the fact that young couples grow up | together. Instead, people seem to think that you grow up | first and establish who you are independently, then find | someone else to bring into your life. But realistically, you | don't finish growing before dating, and in life who you | become is based on the interactions not just with your | significant other, but your friends and family, too. | | Lastly, all of my dating experiences online lead me to women | who wanted to be "entertained." And not in the sort of "wined | and dined" sense which seems obvious to me, but rather most | women I came across didn't want to get to know men, they just | wanted entertainment value out of the experience of dating. | This was a sharp contrast from interactions with young women | in real life. The dating world for both young men and women | online seems to create some strange scenarios that don't play | out well for anyone involved. I see this manifest the most in | online dating where most men are naturally led to play pickup | artist lines. I personally find it extremely off-putting. I'm | not a jester. | michaelt wrote: | _> What does effort mean in this context?_ | | One school of thought says there are men on dating websites | who copy-paste a message saying "hey how you doing?" to | every woman they see; and that women are beset by hundreds | of copy-pasted messages from men who haven't even read | their profile. | | This school of thought says, in order to stand out, men | should carefully compose a different clever, charming | message for each woman they contact, based on things the | recipient mentions in their profile and suchlike. | | Of course, a man sending 100 copy-pasted messages and a man | sending 5 high-quality messages might be expending the same | amount of effort _in total_ but the latter is demonstrating | greater effort _per woman_ | | In this context, kogepathic means more men should adopt the | strategy of carefully composing messages. | majormajor wrote: | Putting _too_ much effort into those messages is a trap I | fell into in the past when looking for relationships on | dating apps. You 've seen a few pics and read a couple | sentences of text they typed - you shouldn't read too | much into it for your own sake, and you also don't want | to look like you're too eager to jump into something way | too fast. | | (Looking for hookups on apps is, I imagine, an entirely | different ballgame, and I have no idea what works or | doesn't work there.) | nunez wrote: | Bespoke messages based on the profile you're reading is | always a winning strategy. My response rate went way up | when I started doing this. The trick is to make a message | that's curated enough to tell the person that you've read | their profile while being short enough to not require a | lot of effort to read (because their inbox is flooded) | nunez wrote: | Another thing I did that helped was hide the photos of | people I was looking at while browsing. | | Towards the end of my time on OkCupid (where I met my | wife!), I wanted to only compose five messages per day. I | did this to reduce my time on the platform. (Online | dating services are masters of dark patterns and | addicting behaviors.) However, even though those messages | were short, since they were bespoke to the profiles I was | looking at, those messages took time to write. | | I found myself in this predicament where I burned too | much time looking at profiles of attractive women with | bland (to me) profiles. So, I thought "what if I hid the | photos and focused on profiles I thought were | interesting?" | | Three things happened when I did that: | | 1. Writing short, but targeted, messages became a LOT | easier because I was focusing on connecting with people I | probably wanted to spend more time with, | | 2. Since I never "saw" who I was messaging when I wrote | those messages, me never getting a response from them | hurt way less (since I never met them to begin with!), | and | | 3. When I un-hid the photos of the women who responded to | me, _they were still attractive!_ As it happens, I | learned that I'm attracted to smart, pretty women with | personalities. | | I suppose this won't work for people who want to do the | nasty with as many hot people as they can find. There | were, like men, smart, attractive women who didn't know | how to craft an online dating profile and got filtered | out from this approach. | | What I do know is that my response and date rate went WAY | up after hiding photos and responding to interesting | profiles, and my mental health towards online dating | improved significantly. | ms1 wrote: | This strategy won't work anymore, because old OKCupid | style "long form" profiles are gone. Modern dating | profiles have the equivalent of a twitter bio worth of | stuff on them now. | bittercynic wrote: | I'd wager a big part of the reason for the increased | success was that you were messaging people who you were | genuinely interested in, and the interest came across in | your messages. | BitwiseFool wrote: | You also have the problem of writing dozens and dozens of | seemingly engaging and individualized messages only to | get no response back. So eventually, you start putting | less and less effort into each message and even start to | repeat old ones. It's a sad fact of life. | twalla wrote: | When I was dating I was fortunate to have a large enough | match pool to experiment with this. The result: a stupid | copy-pasted throwaway line or emoji had roughly the same | results as a message I put some thought into. The second | category got a few more responses but in terms of | conversion to an actual date there wasn't an appreciable | difference. | | The takeaway for me is profile pictures, physical | appearance and class/status signifiers (vacations, | hobbies, nice things in/around the picture) were all that | mattered and if someone was sold on that all you really | had to do was not get in your own way by saying something | stupid. | kogepathic wrote: | _> You also have the problem of writing dozens and dozens | of seemingly engaging and individualized messages only to | get no response back._ | | To use a property analogy: if I am not the highest offer | on a house, I probably won't get it. Doesn't matter if I | have a trust fund or work for minimum wage (effort put | into the offer) my offer wasn't accepted. | | Similarly if I'm the seller, I can decide "No, actually I | don't want to sell my house to BlackRock, I'd rather sell | it to this young family" and that's entirely my choice. | This choice might leave money on the table, but at least | I get the warm fuzzy feels inside for doing what I think | is best. | | What you describe sounds like you want some kind of | "thank you for putting in some effort" but you decide the | amount of effort to invest, the other party owes you | nothing. | BitwiseFool wrote: | You're right, the ideal solution is to keep putting in | the effort to be sincere and engaging. I certainly don't | believe I am entitled to a response. I'm just trying to | convey how demoralizing it can be to put your best foot | forward so many times only for nothing to come from it. I | think it's human nature to be tempted to slack when your | big efforts have had so little payoff. | jfengel wrote: | I assure you, women feel the same way. It's incredibly | demoralizing to receive hundreds of swipes, of which the | vast majority produce only a copypaste first message. Or | worse, "DTF?", of which they'll see plenty. | | It's hard to say which is worse: the messages that say | that they haven't put any thought into you at all, or the | messages that say they have exactly one thought about you | -- and everybody else. | | Everybody gets poor payoff percentages. You play if you | think the game is worth the candle. | ALittleLight wrote: | I think you're being a bit unfair. The parent comment | describes a hardship, investing time, effort, and some | sense of self-worth and seeing it vanish into nothing, | and your response makes the parent seem entitled. "Like | you want some kind of 'thank you for putting in some | effort.' | | If someone told you they were having a hard time buying a | house and all their offers were silently rejected | replying "The sellers owe you nothing" might be true, but | it is beside the point. | rowanG077 wrote: | I doubt this is true. I almost always have send out | personalised messages if possible (E.g. comment on | something in their profile, something noteworthy in their | fotos or something else). They just almost never | respond(I would say <<5% even respond), and if they | respond it's not much beyond an: "haha thank you" or | something empty like that, with no follow up of any kind. | It was impossible to keep any kind of conversation going | no matter what I tried. | | Now? I just gave up. I have better things to do then | spend hundreds of hours without a single conversation | going anywhere. Online dating is a useless black hole. | lumost wrote: | This is why tinder was created, having both parties | express _some_ level of interest eliminates the need and | most of the benefits of mass spamming. Granted one party | could spam likes, but ranking algorithms probably take | into account this behavior. | lozaning wrote: | Tinder uses an ELO ranking system. | majormajor wrote: | This is talking about two different things, I think. | | The "I want the total package" unrealistic-expectations | person is prominent in both genders, even if "no fat | chicks" t-shirts aren't as popular as they once were. The | slob-with-hot-wife TV trope probably hasn't helped men's | expectations here. | | The "I'm gonna send a thousand dick pics and see who is | down for a hookup" behavior, on the other hand, seems | predominantly male-dominated. Even the women looking for | hookups don't operate like that (you could debate chicken- | and-egg here, around how they _don 't ever have to_ with | all the dudes throwing themselves at them, but I'm not too | interested in that). Those men result in a worse experience | for BOTH women and men, but in a more acute fashion for the | women on the receiving end of the creepiness than for the | men who just have to try harder to manage to stand out | above the background bullshit level. | willcipriano wrote: | "Take me on an adventure" was always a instant no for me. | In the modern world a spouse is supposed to be a equal | partner, I'm glad I found my wife who feels the same way. I | don't want someone I have to drag somewhere like a | suitcase. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | I think this also gets to the heart of it. My general | feeling was that women wanted equality but didn't want to | put in any effort whatsoever, and so a lot of women I | came across just seemed like bums. | | I'm not saying that is what you're saying. It just made | me recall my experiences. | motogpjimbo wrote: | It's a terrible thing to say, but many young women today, | if judged by the same standards as men, would be | considered losers. They have nothing going on in their | own lives, yet have sky-high expectations of what men are | supposed to provide them. And for the most part, modern | dating culture lets them get away with it. | epx wrote: | "Men are losers, women are misguided." | majormajor wrote: | > It's a terrible thing to say, but many young women | today, if judged by the same standards as men, would be | considered losers. They have nothing going on in their | own lives, yet have sky-high expectations of what men are | supposed to provide them. And for the most part, modern | dating culture lets them get away with it. | | "Today" is an interesting word choice. This seems like a | lingering problem originating in the past, when women | were entirely expected to depend on a man to provide, and | were NOT expected to have stuff going on in their own | life beyond being fertile and useful around the house and | of good family background...? | | What's the line? "Feminism is for men too"? | | Men who just want hookups can keep such women's calendar | filled for a while but aren't going to be really doing | that providing in the long run. | | But in general, the obsession with not being a loser is | dangerous for everyone: not everyone will be in the top | 10%, and not everyone will attract someone in the top | 10%, by simple math, and yet people of both gender's are | convinced that it's _the other group_ that has the | unreasonable standards... | danmaz74 wrote: | You can be very specific here: exactly 90% isn't in the | top 10%. | willcipriano wrote: | Young men reading this, don't let it get you down or make | you hate women, that path leads to ruin. In my experience | once you become the sort of man who chooses not to | participate when someone expects more from you then they | are willing to give, the sort of women who is willing to | be a equal partner comes out of the woodwork. They don't | want to be with a loser either. | clpm4j wrote: | If a young main in his 20s is dissatisfied with the | dating culture and prospects, it makes some sense to just | forget about dating until early 30s and instead use all | of that time and freedom to focus on establishing | yourself. If you can focus and put in the work to become | the type of person you want to be, then you'll pick your | head up at the age of 32-35 and (seemingly) suddenly a | lot of those women in their 20s will want to date you. | Speaking from personal experience and assuming you aren't | the type who wants to start a family in your 20s. | commandlinefan wrote: | > forget about dating until early 30s | | I don't know... I'm not sure most women would be | comfortable dating a man in his early 30's who'd never | had a relationship of any kind... | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | Another caveat: they still might not want to date you. | Making real human connections is just significantly more | difficult for some people than it is for others, but on | the plus side you are much more the person you want to | be, so you can feel good about that anyway. | molsongolden wrote: | Nothing is perfect 100% of the time and it can take a few | tries to sort out what you need or want in a | relationship, along with what you are or aren't willing | to tolerate. | nick__m wrote: | If a young man is dissatisfied with the dating culture | and prospects he should pickup and learn an instrument, | find some other musicians and invites peoples to watch | them practice/jam. | | P.s. I've learn just enough bass to meet my wife ! | majormajor wrote: | > If a young main in his 20s is dissatisfied with the | dating culture and prospects, it makes some sense to just | forget about dating until early 30s and instead use all | of that time and freedom to focus on establishing | yourself. | | This needs to be hugely caveated. If you skip dating for | five to ten years, you're gonna jump back in fresh and | probably fuck things up terribly the first few times. Too | eager, too indifferent, too clingy, too distant, etc... | you're gonna be terribly out of practice at it all. | | It's a skill, like anything else it takes practice. | There's altogether too much BS out there about people | being "meant to be" versus people putting in the work on | both sides to create something real. | clpm4j wrote: | "Too eager, too indifferent, too clingy, too distant, | etc... you're gonna be terribly out of practice at it | all." | | These are generally personality traits of someone who is | not well adjusted. If you are the type of person who can | become professionally and personally (think friendships | and any other non-sexual relationship) successful, then | you'll probably be fine jumping back into the dating pool | even if you've only dabbled casually for a pretty long | period of time. | majormajor wrote: | How you're perceived isn't always going to be the same as | how you are, and people make judgements quickly. Actions | only come naturally through repeated practice, barring a | naturally lucky few, and dating requires a whole | different set of actions than in other relationships. | | You might also quite reasonably be confident in your | professional and personal-friend lives, but be lacking | some of that confidence in dating, since you haven't done | it for years. These aren't transferable domains for a lot | of people. | | I was on dating sites and apps for several years before I | started having any luck finding much, much less something | serious, and every moment of it was valuable practice in | an area that didn't come naturally to me at all. My | career situation also improved throughout those years, | sometimes faster than my dating skills, and I quickly | learned that having a nicer car did me 0 favors while I | was still uncomfortable on a date in the first place. | None of that professional practice applied - was I going | to talk about load balancers and HA strategies on the | date? | clpm4j wrote: | I don't disagree and I think I should have clarified that | if you're the type of young man who has trouble dating | (in the sense that you find yourself to be awkward, or | have mostly bad dates), and can't seem to connect with | women, then do NOT do what I have suggested here. Get out | there and take a lot of swings. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | As a happily married man in his late 20s, I really stress | not doing this. You skip an entire small lifetime of not | finding someone and growing up through your young | adulthood, waiting for things to improve for you as a man | (read: for women to finally come around because of | divorce, settling, or their biological clock ticking) and | I'd argue things at that point would be more difficult. | | Because you then have established so much of who you are | independent of the interactions between yourself and a | who-would-be spouse, there's a greater chance that you'll | have even more to disagree over. | | You're only creating more difficulties for yourself. | Beyond the intricacies of a crystallized person, there's | a smaller dating pool, it's more difficult to get | pregnant, you have a greater difficulty acquiring assets | not having another person you're working together through | life with. | | Yes, those women in their 20s will want to date you, but | if you're in your 30s, you're effectively dating a kid. | They absolutely do not have the same experiences you will | have at that point in time unless you did no personal | growth for a decade. | epicureanideal wrote: | > you have a greater difficulty acquiring assets not | having another person you're working together through | life with. | | Temporarily. Then you divorce and lose all of those | assets. It's not a gamble I would recommend based on | expected financial gains for sure. | clpm4j wrote: | I agree with you that this route probably isn't best for | _most_ men, which is why I said that it makes "some" | sense, but I should have clarified that it's not broadly | advisable (even by someone like myself who took this | route). If you aren't very comfortable with who you are | by yourself, and happy with yourself, and also very | focused and determined to do something quite ambitious | professionally, then yes I think finding a partner to | grow with and lean on is the best route. | | And also as I mentioned below but just to make sure it's | clear: if you aren't comfortable dating, then you should | date as often as you can because it can be genuinely fun | and fulfilling and lead to very positive outcomes. If you | _are_ comfortable dating and do well with the opposite | sex of your preference, but just aren't satisfied with | what's out there or it feels forced and unenjoyable, then | you _might_ benefit from focusing more on developing | yourself rather than focusing on the partner search. It's | a cliche but once you're truly in a good place with | yourself, you tend to attract to the right people into | your life. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I _might_ get flack for saying this, but a large number | of women 's dating profiles just consist of "dog mom", | "loves watching The Office", and something about "Jesus". | It's shockingly consistent and bland, with very little to | engage in conversation about. | | Now I will say it's not really anyone's fault. Women | looking for men probably don't see what the other women | on the site's profiles look like. Likewise my profile | might be a trope as well. But men do have to go out of | their way to stand out to get a decent chance at a | connection. | hycaria wrote: | It's true but men profiles aren't better. Most people are | averagely boring. | jjeaff wrote: | I would put forward that there is probably an interesting | person behind most of those dog mom, office watcher | profiles. Most people just aren't good at marketing | themselves and mass media culture has made people scared | or less capable of sharing how they are different from | the herd (i.e. interesting). | [deleted] | Spooky23 wrote: | It's a viscous cycle for women. You don't want to put too | much of yourself out there, because crazy people, but not | doing so ends up selling your body, which tends to attract | a wider variety of men that don't line up with your vision. | | So the two extremes are basically having sex with rando | internet people and getting ultra-picky. | ameister14 wrote: | I'm sorry, but your comment cracked me up - viscous means | a thick, sticky consistency, so a viscous cycle for | women, well; you meant vicious circle, I assume | gnicholas wrote: | There may be some aspects of online dating that are | properly described as "viscous", but I think the cycle | you're referring to is vicious :) | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | I have an idea I've been toying with for a dating tool (I | refuse to call it an app) based on the premise that all | dating "apps" and "sites" are horrible because their | incentives are aligned toward wanting people to actually use | them. You pretty much have ad-driven and subscription models | and both have perverse incentives. Further, the whole "wink", | "like" and "swipe" nonsense increases the "meat market" | commoditization and dehumanization of the whole thing. | | So my idea is to put all the incentives the other way. The | tool is designed to operate on a budget of ~$0. I would | accept donations, but otherwise have no monetization and | therefore no desire to increase "engagement" of any kind. My | incentive is such that I actually don't want you to interact | with the tool, because that will cost me bandwidth and | processing time. I will allow you to have a profile of text | and one single image of restricted size, because I don't want | to have to host anything else. You will fill out a multiple | choice questionnaire with as few questions as I feel I can | get away with to ensure at least some level of basic | compatibility, and then you do nothing. | | Periodically, a cron job will run and see if anyone matches, | then it will send you both each others profiles (through good | old-fashion email) and ask if you'd like to go on a date. If | you've both agreed, there will be a sequence of messages from | the system proposing date ideas, locations, and times until | consensus is reached. Then it's all up to you. This is | designed to ensure that you make a real human connection to | the person in a real life interaction before any contact | information is ever exchanged. | | It probably sounds as though this sort of thing would have a | hard time attracting users. I consider that a feature, | because it means it'll cost less to run and it will avoid | attracting ego-inflation seekers, low effort numbers gamers, | and other ungenuine people. | | As envisioned, I would expect this sort of thing could cover | a moderately sized state on a raspberry pi. | CameronNemo wrote: | I've thought about ways to improve dating networks, and I | think the best solution is to throw them out and just get | young people to go out in groups and do activities | together. Romance would be a secondary output (as would | friendships, professional networking, and plain old | perspective broadening). | | Rationale is that a lot of women, and to a lesser degree | men, do not feel comfortable going out 1x1 with a stranger | (and potential predator/rapist/catfish). Not to mention the | pressure of finding common interests and cultivating a date | experience. The group dynamic offers safety, and the hobby- | focused nature of the activity offers entertainment without | pressure. | extrapickles wrote: | That would also fix the incentive problem dating sites | have to make sure you only find low quality matches so | you will stay on the platform. | lliamander wrote: | I think this is probably the best solution. But what | activities do you recommend? Compared to a couple | generations ago it seems like it's harder to find good | casual activities that appeal to both sexes as a default | meeting ground. | mustafa_pasi wrote: | For what it's worth, I came to the same conclusion. You | cannot fix online dating, but the real problem is that | the younger generations used to have a lot of face to | face hangout time due to how the world worked pre- | internet, and all that is gone now. Now you have to plan | every hangout and it happens once a week instead of once | a day. | bena wrote: | And I will make X profiles from X emails, filling out the | questionnaire in several ways to maximize the number of | hits I get. The profile will be some good ol PT Barnum | style pablum that appeals to just about all of us. I will | also add pictures that are either extremely flattering of | me, or of someone else. It doesn't really matter. | | Then I just agree to every date that gets sent to my email. | Ideally this could be automated so that I could run it on a | raspberry pi. | | But please, go on. | sweetheart wrote: | This is an excellent way to have a LOT of just bad, bad | dates. Good luck! I hope you change, for your sake, and | for the sake of the people you'll drag through dates. | lliamander wrote: | I think a lot of companies hiring programmers take an | analogous approach, and tend to get a lot of mediocre | candidates as a result. | r00fus wrote: | If we're not aiming for mass market, this service could | use mobile device WebAuth as it's only authentication | vehicle limiting it to one per device. | | How do you spam/exploit that? | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | Then you... what? Don't show up to dates? Do show up but | get no contact information anyway because you aren't who | you said you were? That's a lot of effort to put in for | essentially nothing. | bena wrote: | I could still go on the dates. I'm pointing out that | you've solved no problems and instead opened the door to | several other ones. | | You've just made a bad/even more exploitable | OkCupid/Tinder/PlentyOfFish clone. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | You could, but I don't really see the incentive in it. At | least, I don't really see how it is any easier than doing | basically the same thing on any other dating platform, | except those platforms put you in contact with the person | before you actually have to meet them. | bena wrote: | The more dates I go on, the more likely I am to find a | compatible partner. That's an incentive. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | ...by completely avoiding all basic compatibility factors | (wanting kids, sexual orientation, religiosity, etc) and | misrepresenting yourself? | MyHypatia wrote: | I see this too. One thing that has struck me lately, is the | similarity between the addictive nature of gambling and video | games. Going to a casino once in a while or playing some video | games with friends is fine. But the amount of time some people | spend on video games really mimics a gambling addiction, except | it's less frowned upon because they're mostly losing time | instead of money. But if you consider the opportunity cost, | they're losing a lot of money too. | supertrope wrote: | In American culture money and materialism is dominant. Labor, | quality of life, and time are devalued. People complain that | a plumber "didn't do anything" and then billed $170. Or an ER | physician didn't do anything yet they still got a $$$$ bill. | Expertise, attention, and simply showing up to get the job | done doesn't seem to have fundamental value in common | culture. But if they received a prescription, or an MRI was | used, or some parts were installed there's more appreciation. | hindsightbias wrote: | Have been going to conferences in Vegas for 30+ years. For a | long time it was just incredibly depressing walking through | the floors and seeing all the elder generation playing slots | at all hours. Quite the motivator to never stop working, IMO. | | Now that Vegas is more young-focused, it's all age groups on | the slots. Then I think, multiply those giant floors by 1000X | and that's the gaming population. | kypro wrote: | We seem to live in an age of such abundance and freedom that | it's now possible to live in all manner of ways which seems to | exacerbate these extremes. | | In the past if you were a man and wanted to eat and have a home | you had to work. We also relied far more on children to look | after us in our old age than we do today. | | Today welfare and the affordability of essentials like food | make it possible for people not to work and not worry about the | implications of growing old without family. | | I agree it's cultural, but it's a cultural trend being fuelled | by the abundance of modern day living. Whether that's good or | bad, I don't know. I guess it's nice people can choose to play | video games all day and not worry about working or having a | family, but I worry about the impact this will have on our | mental health. I also wonder what this means for economic | inequality and the stability of society in general. I'm a big | believer that people only care to preserve societies they have | a stake in and if a large enough percentage of the population | own nothing and offer no value it's very easy to see this | causing a division. Should I as someone who works, pays tax, | pays for his own home and pays for his own food be happy with | someone who chooses not to work and have everything paid for | them by people who work like me? And if you don't work and | don't pay tax wouldn't you naturally want to see higher taxes | and more government welfare? | pm90 wrote: | > I'm a big believer that people only care to preserve | societies they have a stake in and if a large enough | percentage of the population own nothing and offer no value | it's very easy to see this causing a division | | Wouldn't someone that is able to spend most of their time | playing video games (instead of e.g. farming) _want_ society | to continue as it exists today? Without that society, wouldn | 't they be forced to fight/work for sustenance? | mkmk2 wrote: | I was a whole lot more spiteful when I was playing video | games 24/7 and felt like there was nowhere else to go. I | would've been far happier seeing an end to everything then, | when everything seemed impossible, versus now that I have | some experience, some skin in the game. | ajkdhcb2 wrote: | Where is this socialist paradise that you speak of where you | can have a home without working? There is nowhere like what | you are saying. | | It is the exact opposite of what you are claiming. | Affordability of essentials has become so much worse that | many people can't afford to live a decent life with their own | home even if they are working the jobs that they can actually | acquire. | | These people aren't privileged because they "choose not to | work and have everything paid for them by people who work | like me", it is generally emotionally devastating to be stuck | living with your family while your youth evaporates. Further, | the money to do this is coming from the family (for those | lucky enough to have a family wealthy enough). You're not | paying for it with your taxes. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | > Where is this socialist paradise that you speak of where | you can have a home without working? | | Finland, for example. "Home", of course means a simple flat | in a housing block and there might be a waiting list, but | housing every single one of its people regardless of | employment has been something that the state has sought for | a long time. | kypro wrote: | > It is the exact opposite of what you are claiming. | Affordability of essentials has become so much worse that | many people can't afford to live a decent life with their | own home even if they are working the jobs that they can | actually acquire. | | Where do you live? Most people I know are literally given | homes to live in by the government. Admittedly I'm a | working class guy in the UK and I'm not that familiar with | the US welfare system so perhaps its quite different there. | But for example, my girlfriend's mum has never worked a day | in her life but lives in a PS600,000 5 bed house. When she | went to the job centre last year she was advised not to | take part time work because she'd lose out on the benefits. | | If these people were starving or homeless, don't you think | they would get a job? Today we have a generation of people | who have parents rich enough to let them live in their | homes rent-free without demanding they get a job while the | government is there for you if you decide not to. Is it any | surprise some people decide a 9-5 isn't for them? | | To your point though, I do accept it's harder to own your | own home, but it's certainly not harder to live without a | job today. At least not here in the UK. | intarga wrote: | Something doesn't add up about that story. I've lived in | the UK, council housing and unemployment benefits are | meagre. | speeder wrote: | I lived with my parents on and off until I was 31, that was when | I managed to marry and move out hopefully permanently this time. | | It is Anedacta... but I think I know what is going on. | | 1. The labor market is a mess, for example today I got another | rejection letter from a job I sent my resume, thing is, I am | literally perfect for the job, my resume (that I didn't tailor | for it) matched perfectly what they asked, even the "additional" | things, including the fact they wanted someone that made Hidden | Object games before (I had a whole company to make those with | millions of downloads). | | I have a strong impression hiring is just screwed, people often | don't even read resumes, for example I had a company invite me to | do a job I don't know how to do, only for the interviewer of the | company realize they are wasting time (a company asked me to do | ML work, I never listed ML anywhere in my resume). | | Also I am 33 now, and never had a job registered legally in my | country, I only had contracts and "contracts". | | Also here having internship is mandatory to graduate, a lot of my | friends failed to graduate beause they didn't found any | internship even for free, to graduate myself I actually created a | company and hired myself (it is legal to do that O.o). | | Now relationshipwise: I looked for relationships very hard, and | kept finding only people wnating flings, including one person | that scammed me (she claimed she would marry me and whatnot to | convince me to have sex with her, since I wanted to marry virgin, | after she got bored with me she declared that all she wanted was | my body and kicked me out). | | Only reason I managed to marry at all, is that I went to a | church, found a childhood friend there that also wanted to marry | and was having similar issues, and I asked her right off the bat | if she wanted to marry me then, and she said yes. (we are very | happy, for those wondering...) | | If it wasn't for a lucky coincincidence (in case you don't | believe in God or something... I only went to that church because | my car broke that day when I was going elsewhere and going that | church was in the situation at the time the logical option) I | probably would still be alone. | | Same thing applies to a lot of my friends, many, many of them are | single, and jobless, after a while some of them just give up on | living properly and settle for videogames... videogames are not | the culprit, they are the escape, they are a solution to have a | life, even if virtual, after your real life becomes seemly | impossible to live. | | EDIT: by the way, student debt doesn't help, for example I did | got "legal" job offers, but to earn mininum wage (for example | supermarket cashier), thing is, my student debt monthly payments | was roughly twice the mininum wage, so accepting a mininum wage | legal job would put me in further debt. Thankfully my Startup | Kidoteca was a reasonable success and I paid my debts with it. | onion2k wrote: | _I had a whole company to make those with millions of | downloads_ | | After my first startup failed I was rejected for developer | jobs, and a few places said it was because they thought I'd | want to quit and start a new company rather than stay there for | the long haul. More anecdata obviously, but some employers see | someone's previous independence as a forewarning of that person | looking for independence again in the near future. | shimonabi wrote: | I had a pretty rough time between the years 2004 and 2016. I | dropped out of college for a career track I dreamt about since | childhood and I didn't know what to do with my life. I had no job | experience and the recession hit also. | | If you live in a small country, where everyone is related on | average 2.5 degrees away to a random person, it's pretty hard to | get a job if you don't have any family connections. After several | years I managed to get a warehouse and courier job through a | crazy family connection with some boss of a firm. I enrolled in | college again in 2010 and then went to work abroad to gain some | credibility in my field. The job abroad was paid well, but soul- | crushing, so a few months ago I found a job in my field at home | for half the salary. | | I never played any videogames. | leesec wrote: | There are an insane number of job openings right now. | TheAdamAndChe wrote: | Good jobs with growth potential that don't require a four | year degree and actually treat you like a human being? | tomdell wrote: | And a similarly insane number of applicants. Anecdata, but I | recently hired for an entry level position at my company and | received far more applications than when hiring for the same | role a year and a half prior. Lots of applicants who | graduated a year ago and have yet to find work. | MattGaiser wrote: | I assume that he is not American from the "small country" | bit. | troupe wrote: | Are you in a field where you need to work onsite or can you | work remotely? | shimonabi wrote: | The boss at my firm doesn't understand the concept of remote | work. I did the job interview with my mask on and when there | were hard restrictions on moving between cities in my | country, so I had to have a signed document with me if the | policed stopped me. I got my second shot 2 weeks ago and I'm | working as usual. | troupe wrote: | Perhaps at your firm, but if the work you do doesn't | require you to be onsite, there are other firms that may | not have a problem with remote work. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-11 23:00 UTC)