random thought of mine, but I think we are going to get a lot midlife crisis's and fight club/american beauty style movies like in the 90's when everyone got depressed about spending their lives in cubicals and living in the suburbs. idk maybe I'm too high rn but this feels like it's gonna be a thing
This "grass could have been greener" stuff is mostly as useful and informative as "could have been born rich I guess." Barring the past year and a half we have always had the ability to put down our shit and go do stuff outside but the thing is that a whole lot of "living real life" fucking sucks. Like, yuppies in the nineties daydreamt about digging wells in Africa to Make Things Meaningful because they were well off enough to not be breaking their fucking backs hauling heavy shit in a warehouse or even just getting screamed at by customers in the retail workplace. Before the pandemic I'd see my friends maybe twice monthly in person and basically every other day on the internet and that worked out great. Planning shit is hard. You should hug your friends when you get a chance but being online is generally a blessing compared to the alternative, not a curse.
Yeah. This sort of reads like the shit I saw 30 years ago, "You're going to wish you hadn't spent all your time with your nose shoved in a book".
"Living Real Life" always seems to involve doing what the speaker thinks is engaging and not doing what the speaker finds dull, pedantic, and fruitless. Athletes telling you to hit the gym and play more sports. Business guys telling everyone to be entrepreneurs. Engineers telling everyone to learn to code. Religious types scolding agnostics. Activists bemoaning political apathy.
It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it enables people to remain overly isolated. On the other, it offers a means of communication and community that couldn't exist without the tech.
Parasocial relationships are kinda bad, aktuly. But engaging with people you'd never otherwise meet and holding on to friendships that would have dissolved with distance can be good.