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Comment by luxurytent | Hacker News Reader

I read these articles about the terrible shape a country, place, generation is in. Then I see real people out and about, of all ages, enjoying restaurants and spending money. Malls, parking lots, restaurants are always packed in my city. I speak to real families and we are growing together, and everything feels fine? Yeah, people are stretched in some ways, but they figure it out.

Is this a K-shaped economy thing? Am I simply surrounding myself and observing the people who "made it"? Is there truly a whole section of the population not leaving their homes and not having sex? I find it hard to believe it's the majority.

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My grandma used to say "You assume some things do not exist just because you don't see", and "you assume nobody goes there because you don't visit there".

Just because we see people look healthy and smile around we assume everything is OK. No, not everyone is that happy. Most of them wear masks, or their bonds keep them alive. Every home is a different world, every person is a different universe.

I know people who'd commit suicide the moment they lose every connection they have. A cat, a single friend, an alive mother. Some of us are connected to life via thin strings.

Lots of people putting that stuff on their credit cards. I personally know many people who are deeply struggling financially, and many more who have chosen not to have kids when they would liked to have.

And you'll see my struggling friends out and about town having fun; you might see them at restaurants and bars, but maybe that's happening once a month instead of once a week, or maybe I'm buying the rounds that day as I'm best positioned to afford it. Or maybe we're just wandering around the mall/park/city just window shopping and spending no money.

I do also know some people younger than me who've never lived without their parents, don't date, and are barely employed.

There's a lot of people in the world, 5% could lock themselves in their rooms forever and you genuinely wouldn't notice.

Would like to quote a line from Portlandia:

"Everyone on the Internet, they’re not having as great a time as you think they are."

followed by: "I guess people are just cropping out all the sadness."

> I speak to real families and we are growing together, and everything feels fine?

You're talking to the people that are there, not the people that can't be and want to be.

Locality also has a lot to do with things. Some metro areas are in a deep recession, others are not.

People don't like to read "everything is doing great" articles, they prefer to read "the world is going to end, here's how you can save yourself".

Even though things go better than before, we discuss history with my life a lot, there are things going worse than before. The spectrum is widening and better is better than before and worse is worse than before.

"People love hearing negative things" is something in our nature, that's correct. However, putting them aside and chalking this as "business as usual" is not the correct thing to do.

I mean, they need to wrap the statistics in a narrative. That's the medium of delivery. But the statistics don't lie: birthrates are well below replacement levels.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/05/japan-records-...

It is just sensationalism. They find a picture of a salary man sleeping on the train (I saw maybe 1?) and act like everyone is a zombie or everyone is getting groped.

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