Comment by theshadowknows | Hacker News Reader

Comment by theshadowknows | Hacker News Reader

Man. When I was 18 I was overweight and already balding. I worked at a gas station. Once a hooker spit on me because I wouldn’t let her steal some ice cream. I cut my foot once on broken glass in the dumpster because part of my job was tamping it down with my feet (it cut through my shoe).

Would I have traded it to be an influencer if I could have? Shit yeah in a heartbeat. But unfortunately for me no one wanted to watch me gyrate. (That’s unfair, some people probably would have).

That said. Now I’m a fully bald old man (I just turned 36). I’m not as overweight anymore though I could prob lose a couple of pounds. Blood pressure is good, though.

Would I want to be an influencer? Jet set around the world and stay in lavish hotels for free? Have companies throw products at me? Have thousands or millions of people knowing my every move? Have to give a shit if there’s a stain on my shirt? Hell no.

I want to sit here on my porch with my dog and my wife and do my work. Then at the end of the day I want to turn it off and set it aside. Maybe we’ll go hiking.

I know it sounds glamorous and maybe it’s appealing to some people. But man it’s not for me.

Trying to cater to consumer whims and maintain relevancy (which is what influencers are doing) is a blurry moving target that multi-million dollar corporate marketing departments can't even consistently hit. The dumpster is practically deterministic by comparison.

Granted the income ceiling without adding skills is much lower but I would rather do a crappy job with trash than do a crappy job with consumers any day (and back when I worked such jobs I made that choice).

Jim Jefferies-Secret to Happiness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvYJeLUXMG8

36 is an old man? Are you being facetious?

I think 34/35 is when I began to notice actual age related differences - relatively small things like not being able to take it for granted that your sore back will be good tomorrow and I'd accrued enough general injuries over time that they were noticeable and compounding - sore/weak knee from a car accident, stiff shoulder from a motorcycle crash, etc.

When you're 35, 35 feels pretty old compared to the personal status quo.

When you're 35 you can pass for 27 if you do what you gotta do.

10 years later is when things grow on your cheeks and forehead (especially if you're pale-skinned) that you can't do anything about short of plastic surgery you totally cannot afford.

I'm 38 and I only have aches when I stop working out for a week or two. Otherwise there's no soreness.

I don’t know your specific ailments or their causes but a lot of chronic pain and injuries can be resolved by working out lactic acid and knots with foam rolling, muscle scrapers and tennis balls. Look up on YT how to do these properly from physical therapists. I cured a knee injury that bothered me for over a year in about a week of exercises. Like magic. Same with an elbow injury.

He might not be. 'Getting Old' is largely a mental choice, at least until 75 when your physical capability takes a pretty solid hit regardless of lifestyle choices. I've met people in their mid sixties who are more 'with it' than many teenagers and I've also met people in their twenties who have convinced themselves that their time has passed and there is nothing left to do but work and die.

I'm mentally consigning this fellow to the second camp and hope he is either a troll or really content with his situation.

I’m fairly content with my situation :)

What I mean by old is that I don’t “get” a lot of the newer fads these days. Particularly around the social space. Instagram, Snapchat, tik-tok and the newer voice based services just seem so intrusive and crazy to me. And snap and tik-tok are almost seizure inducing with the amount of content just screaming at you.

It’s just not -for- me. And I get that. But I don’t get it :)

That and as someone else said I do wake up with the occasional creaky back. And I’m noticing more and more gray in my beard every few weeks :)

Glad to hear you are solid! I've had some friends who got 'old' unrealistically quickly and so I feel the need to push back a bit when I see posts that remind me.

I'm with you regarding the social space though. I don't understand why entertainment appears to consistently trend toward requiring less conscious thought.

The way I see it we've gone from Physical Experience > Word of Mouth / Live Physical Performance > Books / Woodcuts > Newspapers / Pamphlets / Pulp Novels > Radio > Television > Modern Social Media. To be complete, I'd add a branch from Newspapers... > Telegraphy > Telephony > Usenet / BBS > Non-Walled Garden Internet but that is another story and not the mainstream.

The early steps all exhibit ?clear? trade-offs (more reliable information storage and dissemination at the expense of shallower engagement with the information being transferred), but the later stages appear to be reaching the limit of what we can consciously process.

I feel that at some point soon (if not already), the volume of information that can be received will outstrip conscious processing ability. This has a massively negative side effect of limiting human agency which seriously disturbs me.

I don't think the blame is entirely on social media however and because of reasons stated above, suspect the current state of affairs has been brewing at least as long as network television has existed. Possibly into the preceding era of disposable print. Thus, I don't put the problem into a 'kids these days' frame but more of a 'everyone I have known throughout my life' frame.

Season-four Homer Simpson was 36.

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