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Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

My brother is essentially the male version of this, just swap the cosmetics for video game DLCs. He's early 20's, no job, no interest in work, no interest in getting out of the house, no interest on anything... talking to him is the most frustrating experience ever, nothing comes out of him, no emotion...

I talked so many times, tried to get an idea of what might drive him: travelling, learning, walking around in the mountain, making money, wasting money, drinking, smoking, drawing dicks on wall, anything! honestly, like "give me something to work with"...

He's been seeing a psychiatrist for a few years now... far as I can tell that is doing nothing...

He's a broken individual. I honestly do not know if there is a way back to reality for him (and so many others, these days)

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This described my brother too. He killed himself four years ago, after about thirty years of just that kind of depression. And I was my little brother's keeper damn it, so it's my failure. Ever since I keep reliving it and wondering what I could have done. All I come up with are fantasy scenarios in which I somehow make us both wildly successful. But even that's a stretch given his outlook. I fantasize about some kind of extreme intervention, but that would probably have just alienated him from me along with everyone else.

Not that you shouldn't try. I hope you find a way.

Hey, I went through something similar. Even though it's inevitable to fault yourself, you need to avoid it. I also do it sometimes but it never helps; I need to actively remind myself that it's not something worth thinking about. Hope you're doing a bit better now.

You are not responsible for another's illness. Nor their choices.

Don't get stuck ruminating on the past , possibly infecting yourself with the same disease. Instead maybe pour that love and attention on those still around you. Care for those still with you. You are not at fault, you can't change the past, but you can change the future.

This is the only way even if some of the guilt is deserved. Grow the love around you, give your time and attention to others.

Your brother was killed by a mental illness. You are no more responsible for his death than if he had died from cancer.

I found solace knowing (reading about) that blaming yourself is a part of the process. Thanks for sharing. Now, time for me to go outside. It's spring.

I'm sorry to hear about your brother. Thank you for sharing- your words are helping me think through some related things.

I went through the same thing, but my brother didn’t succeed in taking his life. He had a similar profile as described above, and socials played an outsized role in his alienation.

At the time, I quit everything I had on my hands and reorganized my life to be much more present. Living around for a while, trying to engage and be a part of his life as much as I could: sometimes in innocuous forms (“hey, wanna do that thing you love this week?”), sometimes straight up suggesting therapy.

You know what? No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. I wasn’t able to connect more with him at the time, nor to change his viewpoints. The simple act of getting in touch with him became extremely hard, to an extent none of my friends, or relatives that weren’t part of the nuclear family, were able to comprehend. Ultimately, I just think he had decided things wouldn’t just stop there, or something inside him held him back among us mortals, and that’s about it.

All I’m trying to say is don’t blame yourself for this.

We’re all doing our best and it sounds like you were already being a great brotherly figure. Blaise Pascal once said: “The heart has its reasons which reasons knows nothing of”: the inner workings of one’s mind (God’s, in Pascal’s case) are too difficult to penetrate for our logical reasoning. We’re just out there on this planet trying to figure out how to help our loved ones, and sometimes it’s not up to us.

You’re not at fault, and I hope you’ll soon find peace.

It's shocking to me that you think yourself even remotely powerful enough to have prevented his suicide.

It "takes a village" to fulfill a human's social needs. No one's brother can, on their own, fulfill all another's needs. His deep thoughts, his poop jokes, his pillow talk, his watercooler chat? We need whole communities for which no individual can substitute. You might do well to recognize your own social poverty.

I'm sorry that you blame yourself. I tell my siblings not to blame themselves for my depression, isolation, and alienation. The fact is that these are statistical trends evidencing large, multidimensional social structures. They're unassailable by individuals. There was nothing "you" could have done.

It's not like life has any worth in its own right. It's sad that he was driven that far, but what could you really have done? No use blaming yourself.

Something I saw in my own family (I have a family member who is a recovering addict) and in literally every single episode of Intervention is that THE prerequisite to recovery is to stop enabling the addict. Many (most?) addictions are only possible because an enabler prevents the outside world from acting as a forcing function on the addict. So typically this would be a parent who provides food, shelter, money, etc. Once an addict has to provide those things for themselves, it starts a cycle that results in sobriety. Of course, this doesn't always work and the people who it doesn't work for are often the people you see living on the street. But this has been the process for every recovering addict I know and my addict-in-recovery family member says the same about every recovering addict they know (a lot).

It doesn't sound like your brother is exactly an addict (although maybe...), but this snippet sure sounds like he has an enabler in his life (emphasis mine):

> no job, no interest in work, no interest in getting out of the house

Was the psychiatrist his idea or the parents'? I assume the parents, but if it was his then that's something.

I heard something interesting on a podcast recently - Kara Swisher was interviewing her son who said that if you're Gen A, it's sort of hard not to be a nihilist. For me personally, I sort of look at how fast the world is heating up and do some basic math about life expectancy, and I'm sort of expecting to see some shit, but I can't imagine tacking on a decade or three to that.

Psychologically, what you're describing is anhedonia, but as someone with these tendencies myself, I sometimes wonder if I just lack whatever sorts of denial mechanisms most people have to get through the day.

The oldest Gen A person is 14yo, I was plenty nihilistic then too, and that was in the golden age of the 90s.

But there's a key difference: If you're a nihilist 14 year old today, you're surrounded by both people and media that are reinforcing your nihilism instead of countering it. So your "nihilism phase" (if you have one) is much more likely to snowball.

In the 90s the pharmaceutical situation was vastly different than today, too.

To be nihilistic today is not cultural, but a manifestation of the 50 different pills one is taking, which are literally killing the spirit, killing ones health, and trapping one in despair, with no escape. Shame. Shame. Shame.

> literally killing the spirit

There's no material evidence for "spirit".

Thanks for the reminder. I completely forgot about that while trying to describe something metaphorically tangible, but alas.

I was as well, but I was under the impression that I was a weirdo. I can't say I ever really grew out of it either. I think the interviewee was a bit older though.

it's not a phase, dad

.. It's called facebook!

It is indeed, I know I was guilty of it.

The amplification of the idea through modern social media is a scary new vector. There is so much content about “they ruined the world, you’ll never own a house, why even try” that does not help. Like all half-truths, it’s… well, half true, but giving up can’t be the answer. Can’t change the bad things in the world, so the only viable option is to work around them.

I do feel for gen Z and A. It’s a hard world to exist in out there, and the online behemoth you’re pressured to be a part of is both a blessing and a curse. I’m just young-old man yelling at cloud to you, I know because that’s how I looked at other late 30 year olds at your age too.

Just don’t give up. Remember that online is all fake and the points don’t matter. The real people around you care about you, they truly do, even if you’re struggling to see it yourself.

It was my mother's idea...

Very clearly I have no idea about what goes on in his head, anyone's head for what matters... But when I compare my upbringing with his, I cannot understand how is it that this happen. I had so little, and struggle so much compared to him, and it's him the one giving up on life before even trying? This is thought that hunts me the most.

Feels like giving someone way too much of anything just cripples the process of understanding the struggle as a beautiful part of the process to be something, overcome something, feel something...

All his life has been in front of screens, talking to strangers, bites of information he digests after the digital rendition of a human voice has been transferred from across the internet. There is no beauty in this way of life. No wonder kinds have no feeling for what the world has to offer, unless it's coming from an Instagram influencer.

I suspect the mind is like the immune system, it needs hardship to develop into the best version of itself. Without external assaults that induce the formation of strengthening mitigations, you're left with a system that is dysfunctional, even self-destructive. In the case of minds, we discover meaning through battling and overcoming hardship. A life devoid of hardship is devoid of the impetus to discover personal meaning, which leads to these kinds of empty existences we're seeing much more of.

The last 20 years has seen an intense effort to rid childhood of any hardship whatsoever, while providing a controlled environment where one's formative experiences are managed to a degree as to remove the possibility of any negative circumstances or emotions. But this just optimizes for the wrong thing. A development without challenges, conflicts, hardship, is a stunted development. This society-wide crisis of meaning is only going to grow as we continue down this path towards a hyper-connected world.

What do you feel he got too much of that he didn't have to struggle? I don't think it's wrong that pressure is sometimes formative, but also too much pressure will cause systems to fail; humans included. I had plenty of adversity as a child (an illness that has caused a lifetime of chronic pain), and what I learned is that there is no limit to the amount of pain life can provide you, and it doesn't mean anything, and no one really cares about it. I suspect a lot of us just realize early on that the nihilists are correct, and so trading video game skins is as meaningful as anything else, and at least it makes sense unlike most of life. Maybe the psychiatrists can find a drug that gives meaning though; they'll keep trying for awhile usually.

I assume you've asked him about what goes on in his head at least - what does he tell you?

I see it as my purpose as a parent to ensure my kids are able to take care of themselves since I will not always be here. To that end, a job is a requirement and school is a requirement. I had to push them to even get their driver's license, but they got one. My stance is, if you want to spend your free time lost in social media land, fine. Do what needs to be done first and then play. Interestingly, their social media usage in their limited free time seems to have declined in favor of interacting with friends and family.

Having wasted more than a decade doing pretty much nothing than playing pc...

a) The drive to change has to come from inside. I've seen quite a few people being sent to the online/gaming addiction group. Usually, they only come once.

b) Changing one self is hard generally. But here we got quite a bit of... idk, lets call it "damage". So many missing skills, confidence. So many bad, deeply ingrained habits. So many thoughts to avoid & distract from. And still no idea what will make me content.

c) I'm wondering quite often if not starting that journey would have been the better choice. If i could have found a way to stay happy. One motivator for me was the disdain for what i'd become, so no way back now. Now it'd be great to only disdain that past me ...

Can you be a human being and cut him off? Who is this sick person enabling this? Who is passing out the money? This is no different than buying heroin for someone. Say hey, "No money, get job, bye". Let them begin the human experience. The video games will go away fast. Show humanity, cut them off.

You just described one of his interests though. Video games and their DLC content.

Why is interest in video games not a valid interest, or somehow a worse interest than a few that you listed like wasting money, drinking, smoking, drawing dicks on wall?

Is there no chance of interest in video game modding or content creation?

Does he have any reason to believe that things will get better? If he already feels like giving up on life then telling him that he needs to work even harder will make him retreat and give up. If his life gets any worse he might kill himself. I know I would.

your bro is an npc

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