The world I know and live in is getting really weird. I don't think it resembles anything of what I thought I'd see when I was much younger. Here are my latest observations:
1) My professor friend who teaches a class at the University of Utah says that his third-year students no longer have the ability to use punctuation correctly in the construction of English sentences. And these are people who are born in the United States, for the most part white, and who are pursuing bachelor's degrees and taking his class as an elective.
2) There are a ton of people dumping animals at animal shelters. They literally cannot take anymore and there are feral cats and dogs roaming the streets. It's rare to see a dog owner who actually leashes their dog. Most of them keep them unleashed and the dogs harass people walking or even attack them, and the owner doesn't care. I had to help my neighbor who was attacked and bleeding from one such incident (she was screaming in the street for help).
3) Everything is expensive. A lot of the time the things you want are no longer in stock.
4) Road rage is everywhere. In Utah alone there were 6,300 people driving over 100 mph on our roads in 2022. This is double just a few years before that. What the f*ck?
5) There are shootings every night.
6) Today's young people are fragile as hell. I'd say up to about age 36, I'm finding people who just crumble and cannot cope with anything. They are still living at home, they don't want to go out, and they cancel social engagements with others.
7) People suing other people is flooding the courts. I was actually advised to raise my liability insurance on my car to half a million because if I let a friend borrow my car and they get in an accident, I will need the extra insurance to protect myself against desperate people who want to make money from a lawsuit. Like seriously...this is becoming that common.
8) People are more obsessed with youth than ever before. Madonna (for example) was unrecognizable at the Grammy's. Shania Twain doesn't even look like Shania anymore. And it isn't just celebrities. I have friends who have undergone a hundred thousand dollars or more in plastic surgery and who are extremely lonely because gatekeeping behaviors and ageism is so rampant. I have another friend who is my age who can't bring himself to watch Picard because he doesn't want to watch a "feeble old man." It's weird to watch sixty-year-old men try to chat up teens and twenty somethings by expressing how much they like Taylor Swift. I don't even know what's going on there. I also read about some guy who is obsessed with staying 18 forever. What's wrong with aging?
9) Poor people are using Doordash and Grubhub like crazy. I have a friend/acquaintance who is going to be homeless in less than a month. After telling me her sob story, she used Doordash to order sushi for herself and her son (who is trans) and the bill came to seventy dollars. I didn't say anything, but I was stunned.
10) People with a net worth of over a million dollars are telling me that they feel poor, and they are depressed. I can't understand this mentality, but it feels very strange to listen to a millionaire complain about their money woes.
11) Billionaires who fly to Switzerland on private jets to meet about climate change are eating steak and want the rest of us to cut back on our emissions and learn to eat insects. Like...what the hell?
12) There are homeless people everywhere. I've never seen so many. And the only kind of apartment that seems to be getting built are the luxury ones. And these so-called luxury units are made with cheap materials, and they have cheap appliances in them.
Anyone have any idea what is happening? Anyone else notice how weird things are getting?
With how expensive everything is, it's no surprise that people are getting rid of pets. I guess we should be glad it hasn't gotten to the point where people are eating them yet. When I watch the news in the morning almost every ad is for a personal injury attorney and about 1/3 of the billboards are for them too so I can believe there's a lot of suing going on.
ReplyDeleteThe road rage is so annoying--and dangerous. I was thinking part of it was that during the lockdown there were hardly any cars so people could drive 100mph everywhere but that was almost 3 years ago and only for a couple of months before idiots made us go back to "normal" so that doesn't really explain it anymore. So often it's so dumb and needless but mostly because some jerk is impatient, like one who passed me in the center turn lane...and then has to slam on his brakes 1/4 mile later because there's a line at a red light. So then what happens when the light turns green? He floors the accelerator and starts tailgating people again. Don't bother learning anything. [eye roll]
I can't speak to most of that other stuff you mention. I never use Grubhub or Doordash because it's so expensive. There was an offer on my Roku for six months of "free" Doordash but like with Walmart+ that just covers their fee, not the tip.
They put in some luxury apartments near me and are putting in more and the rent is like 3x what mine costs but watching them get built, as you say, they're pretty cheap. I don't know who can afford those but obviously some people are living in them. But then 10 million people live in New York City, where $2500 might rent you a closet that you have to share with 4 other people, so I don't know.
Since you mention eating insects, I watched a documentary called "Bugs on the Menu" that was pretty interesting. Like I said in my review, I probably would try it. Though it'd be easier to eat some of the stuff you can get like cricket flour or whatever that doesn't actually look like bugs. The only problem is the stuff is way more expensive than animal meat on Amazon and probably health food stores and such.
Anyway, sorry for the long comment. I'm just waiting to see how the post office screws up our mail at work today. The last 3-4 months they've been way less consistent than usual, which creates a lot of problems when there's only me to do the mail and they decide to show up at 1pm with 200 items because the day before they showed up at 10am with 4 items. It's really a nuisance.
I've noticed most of that. Young people are so fragile and there's no way they will survive in real life. And the private jet stuff annoys me. One flight on a private jet puts out more emissions than a hundred vehicles in a year.
ReplyDeleteYou've almost got a Thursday 13 here...
ReplyDeleteYou know different people than I do. There is so much free floating anger going around, and I think the people in power like it this way. We're so busy trying to survive that we aren't going after them for the things they are doing to make things so hard for us. I hate living in interesting times.