I'm 32 btw, and I don't consider myself "old" like millennials often exaggerate....32 is still young, but time creeps along for all people and there is one thing that when I see it, it makes me have sort of an odd dread feeling.
People will post memes of like "this show is now X amount of years old...feel old yet?"
And that stuff never does. But the one thing that makes me go "that can't be right....that must be a glitch...it can't be that old" is those rare times I come across a Youtube video that was uploaded near the beginning, like a video from 2007 or something and the video will say "uploaded 15 years ago, or 16 years ago"
That one hits me in the gut every time. I remember in middle school Youtube being a new thing and it doesn't feel like the type of thing that is half my lifetime ago..It feels such a modern, part of this crap society that when I stumble across videos that were 16 years ago....I don't know...it gives me a similar feeling like when you watch a black mirror episode...there's something dystopian feeling about it.
ok, well since this topic has been brought up i'm gonna have a bit of a rant
tldr - i fucking hate (and get triggered by) ageism & ageists
no idea if I can encapsulate all of my thoughts clearly but i will try to. might be a bit all over the place
so after reading a lot of the other comments, i think most of us are in a similar demographic (30s-40s) guys. not "old" old but pushing it i guess. I've never been one to think about my age and i get annoyed by a lot of people around me who bring up age either as a joke or as a point to something we're talking about
the thing is - at least where i am in australia - pretty much everyone i know has been fucked in the head to either downplay themselves or belittle others over age. usually the young ones dissing the older ones, and even the older ones shaming themselves and bringing others down with them.
like, what the fuck?
everyone bitches to me about age as well, thinking i will relate. i always tell them in some form: "bullshit, stop making excuses. I never think about age". one guy keeps worrying about dying post-70 years old. one guy hits 30 and complains about having bad reactions in the games we play (which is cope - they always had bad reactions and hardly trained them). some of my friends in their 30s now make excuses for not meeting once or twice a year because they say they're old and have responsibilities... when in reality they're just at home gaming or doing shit all. and when we meet, they brag about all the things they've done - which we could've done as friends.
i get crap about my ideas for projects (hobby, offline gaming group) being bad because i'm old and that I should leave it to the younger guys to do things. being told that by the young guys and the old guys. almost every decision i've made has been reasoned and led to good results. now I can't be fucked and have left the gaming group in the hands of some younger guys - who have already started burning bridges and losing money. after that some of the older guys have come back to me and said things along the lines of "yeah your way was better". to which I reply "well, you fucking told me to let those young kids do it their way, so fuck off. let them destroy the group". they know it now.
also, when I was younger I barely got any benefits or shortcuts to success or the society around me giving opportunities. these days the mantra is "old people = bad, dumb, outdated. young people = modern, smart, progress". everyone bends over backwards working to uphold that insanity.
back to the gaming group i had to keep it together when the original organisers dropped off suddenly, used a lot of my time and money to build it up to high point before i stepped down. and the guys that have taken over do the bare minimum and expect so much in return in way of glory and popularity, and the whole time during my tenure i was always told to shut up and listen to these guys.
and then by the same token, "we" are allowed to discriminate based on age, even in hobbies. but we can't discriminate based on whether someone is gay or trans here. or even for providing constructive criticism. i was discriminated against when i was young for being young, and now i'm getting discriminated for being young & old in different circles.
guy turns 25, keeps dooming about how he's too old now and boring. when in actuality he was always generally boring and makes almost no effort to be genuinely present among friends, when there are others in the same friend group who are younger and older (30 40+) who can still make time to hang out, and who are genuinely fun and happy to be out with others.
fucking insanity. ageism and ageists are just hopeless otherwise and use age as an excuse or a cope.
That sounds awful. I don't know if it's that way in America because I'm basically a misanthropic hermit anymore. I don't have any social connections other than my parents...literally. I don't even connect with people or have social connections online, because I've just got anxiety about connecting with people. I interact with posts and comments on this site, but that's the extent of it. I don't go deeper with people, but I don't want to either...it's just how I am at least right now.
If that's the feel of Australia right now, that is ridiculously retarded and I'm sorry you're surrounded by retards.