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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Maybe a trajectory question: will the US have a lot of people like Japan's Hikikomori?

I think the main thing preventing this from happening a lot in NA is how difficult it would be to maintain without family paying for everything

But there's absolutely people with big trust funds or inheritances living this way. I knew a bunch of people who basically lived like this during COVID because of relief payments and they only very reluctantly found jobs again after it became clear that COVID payments were done and UBI was not on the near horizon.

There's a similar category of people in the USA and Canada as well that I don't have a term for. They're just as checked out really, bouncing between part time minimum wage jobs. They tend to live with like 5 roommates all doing the same thing they are. They work as few hours as possible to pay for rent and food. Any money left over is going to weed/booze/both and videogames

I think it's the same person who would be a Hikikomori, just adapted to NA economic realities

> They're just as checked out really, bouncing between part time minimum wage jobs. They tend to live with like 5 roommates all doing the same thing they are. They work as few hours as possible to pay for rent and food. Any money left over is going to weed/booze/both and videogames

The Japanese term would be "freeter". However, many artists, poets, and musicians, have lived similarly in decades past. Such a lifestyle wasn't and isn't limited to hikikomori or individuals approximately classified as one.

> artists, poets, and musicians, have lived similarly in decades past

I don't think artists/poets/musicians/what have you were sitting around playing videogames

I think it's an important distinction that this isn't a sort of "we're living this way pursuing a dream" lifestyle that I'm trying to describe

It's more "we're living this way because we have no dreams"

I think it's different

I think the reality is this has little to do with the job.

I'm a SWE, and most other SWE I know are basically losers. They work, go home, do nothing, wake up repeat. Do that for 40 years and eventually roll over and die from complications of obesity.

Sure, they work more and have more money. Doesn't matter much. They couldn't tell you what code they wrote one year ago. All their money is going towards their various vices, be it food, nicotine, video games.

Point being, working and nothing else is the reality for a lot of people. And it is sad, and it is pathetic, and you don't get much to show for it. People, in general these days, don't really have lives. They live, but just barely.

I heard the term NEET (not in employment education or training) used for the first time on western media last week. I usually associate the term with Japan and the Hikikomori issues.

In Spain and other LATAM countries we have the concept of "ni-ni" (ni estudia, ni trabaja = neither studies nor works). Although I'm pretty sure a lot of them don't spend all their time at home.

Fun(-ish) fact: Although it's strongly associated with and was popularized by Japan, the term "NEET" came from Britain.

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