Fun is Dead

There is a deep irony in having a social media marketing manager say these things.

Safety: As a kid, I would go to a gymnastics gym, and do what ever I wanted. They had Olympic style trampolines and all. It was so much fun. As I grew older, the place got new management, and safety became paramount, and I find it lost it's glow because of this. Kids were being "proper".

Insanity: As I go to work in downtown Vancouver, I watch people smoke meth, and OD on opiods _everyday_. I find the mean(insanityInYear2000) < mean(insanityNow). Does anyone else have this experience?

The descriptions of intentional friend-making in this article sound like hell to me.

Give me some stand-up comedy, and an HN-sourced long-form article on some ancient discovery, and I'm good.

Before: "Oh random person X just asked if I want to dance. How fun!"

Now: "Can you believe a random person came ask me to dance? What a creeper!"

Before: "Look at the kids having fun playing in the ditch and making mud pies!"

Now: "Who leaves their kids unsupervised in the rain? Should we call the police?"

Before: "I think I'll try an improv class. It looks like fun. Why not!"

Now: "I want to learn piano but I'm scared to be bad in front of everyone while learning."

It uses those vignettes to make claims about the state of fun for all Americans.

At best, this seems like an article on how fun is for a certain niche subset of wealthy Americans. I’m not sure they’re justified in broadening their conclusions here.

If you know what you like, the opportunities for finding that enjoyment are much expanded!

It's much harder to have fun when you struggle paying for food and lodging, and that's what results from decades of inflation greater than salary progression, and concentration of property.

I also doubt if people really had more fun in the past¹. Listening to my parents it feels like there was much less questioning of the systemic BS, but also they're nostalgic for something that I doubt existed, or they remember correctly.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection

Maybe the bit about the holidays being stressful.

I have noticed that people really over do it at the beach. Showing with multiple tents, tables, grills. But I always assumed that was tourists being clueless about beach culture.

I think this bit towards the end is at complete odds with the rest of the article's sentiments. It's like a corporate training program with an acronym to memorize and follow, and completely misses the point of having fun.

Surely the author would have realized this, so I'm actually wondering if this is an advertorial for that book.

Couldn’t have done that in Nazi Germany though. No sir. That was a most unfun place. So maybe it’s a hypothetical about that?

Again I kid, just having some fun.