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I'm an older millennial. My experience might not be typical since it was caused by serious illness as well as capitalism. When I was young I was idealistic and wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to fight for human equality and animal rights, I really thought this is what I came to earth for. I worked a few different jobs, donating a chunk of my paychecks to causes I care about while trying to find out how to get more involved.

But then I got cancer, and the treatment caused me to have a stroke, which left me partially sighted and learning to walk again. I'm still in cancer treatment, it makes me exhausted and brain foggy, and I've developed chronic, severe migraines. But what makes this a million times worse is the UK benefit system. I can't work any longer and had to sign on for disability benefits. They re-assess me frequently, and make me go through MRs and appeals. Last time I provided letters of support from my GP, physiotherapist, ophthalmologist and mental health team (because I've developed depression and anxiety from this constant stress, it got so bad I made a suicide attempt and am now in therapy). I also provided letters of support from a carer and social worker. Somehow at my last assessment I was awarded zero points. Now I'm going through appeal. My overdraft is maxxed out, I have no money, just debt.

This means my entire life now revolves around desperately trying to stay fed, while being extremely unwell and undergoing regular horrible medical treatments. My entire mental and physical energy are taken up with trying to find food, desperately trying to access food banks (difficult and time consuming), fight my appeal. I've taken to outright begging and shoplifting. I've been stealing food items from the local supermarket, one day in desperation I even sat in the street and asked passersby for spare change. I recently begged for money here on hexbear and a couple of kind souls gave me enough for some food. But every time someone charitable helps me get food, it of course always runs out and when it does it's back to begging, shoplifting and starving. All for the crime of getting cancer.

You know what's even more stupid? due to chronic starvation I developed multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies, diagnosed by blood tests after I fainted in the street and someone called an ambulance. So now the NHS pays for me to have supplements. But the country won't ensure me an income so I can buy food. How stupid is this! They won't give me money, so I starve to the point I collapse and instead of doing the reasonable thing and ensuring I have food, they let me continue to starve but give me some vitamin pills. This worls is just absolutely sick.

So now I have no physical or mental energy to fight to make the world a better place. I feel completely hopeless, and like the world itself is hopeless because there are many people in an even worse situation than me. Millions, maybe billions. It's all so overwhelming.

I'm just to burnt out from all my jobs to do much more then helping my people and my limited community service.

That's not a good thing!" because I never know what to say. Debate is not my strength.

ironicly enough, i think thats the best thing one can say to that . Its not a real accusation , nor a real appeal .. its just an aknowledgment of it beeing not optimal . Also you describte the Situation "that is not a good thing" , instead of making it personal "you dont do a good thing by that , DOnt You KnOW?"

It's the complete intolerance from our generation towards both children and the elderly that really gets me. It's like people are in denial about their own mortality, and angrily reject anything that might remind them of it. In my experience this is an especially anglo thing. Sick culture.

I see consequences of this in my workplace weirdly enough. There's been a huge brain drain in recent years that was accelerated through the pandemic, and then again by egregious financial mismanagement by leadership that really fucked us and of course the workers at the bottom all paid for it.

Training materials were last updated like 15 years ago, the systems we use have all undergone massive changes rendering those completely useless. Everyone's crunched because we have less employees, and the new employees all need to be really baby sat and have things explained to them, because there's no other way for them to gain the knowledge how to do their jobs other than having one of the few employees who are still here to walk them through these things and take on the role of teacher and full time tutor while still managing their increasing workload.

It fucking sucks ass and of course all the older employees are jaded and bitter about it, but its become this self perpetuating cycle of incompetence, crunch, and catch up because no one wants/has the capacity now to put in the work in up front to get some sort of training materials set up for new workers - but that just means that same work will end up being done in a much more frustrating and crushing way of constantly dealing with simple mistakes.

This was kinda a tangent, but the problem and solution are so obvious - but there's no collective will to try and improve this for all of us to make our lives simpler, so people end up instead becoming so bitter and resentful of each other rather than the fucks who refuse to address this issue above us. And I get it - its so fucking frustrating dealing with this shit and having it grind you down in the context of a workplace, of course people want to be like "fuck this I'm just hanging around until I'm stable enough to fuck off somewhere better."

I see this same shit playing out in society with people having the same attitude. I don't know what to do about it, and I don't like it. I do my part trying to build solidarity, but fuck me if it ain't a one way street that ends up feeling like wasted effort most of the time.

Edit: multiple spelling and gramatic errors because me mad

"Do you want the world to be worse or better? Because that attitude makes it worse. Even from the point of laziness, why wouldn't you want to train up young people so you don't have to do pointless boring shit?"

What kind of work are you in? I've found that pretty much everyone I interact with are more than happy to explain what they are doing if you ask. But I mostly work with tradespeople, so electricians, plumbers, smiths etc. Is it a white collar thing?

The other young millennials that I go to evening school with are literally repeating 2012 gender memes and communism is when no iPhone. Don’t place your hope in a generation. Plenty of people in 1920s Germany grew up poor and hungry and enough of them turned to the Nazis.

Every day, I become more familiar with how the hippies became neocons. The toxic individualism innate to burgerland culture is a plague that corrodes our empathy.

It's really sad. It's like the material conditions making us unable to take care of children has alienated us from children in general.

Like the people who can care for children now either have them unplanned or are wealthy enough to do so and have some of the worst political views.

Then you throw in the way children are already treated like possessions and it gets that much harder to connect with younger generations.

It doesn't make it right, and I want to support the people around me regardless of age, but times are desperate right now and capitalism incentivizes short- sighted selfishness and self preservation.

It makes me really sad because I can see the material conditions for younger generations are so much worse than mine.

I didn't have mass shooter drills or a high school graduation on zoom. I had reliable resources I could access online without as much fear of predation. I didn't witness depressingly clear public executions and climate disasters on my phone and then get told I needed to study more for a job that won't be there.

They don't need the false hope peddled by liberal politicians. They need solidarity from those of us who were where they are right now. Like yeah, shit sucks, but I want them to get through this and hopefully continue to fight for the better world that we know is possible.

I taught the intern how to edit pages in and out of a pdf, does that count?

I'm a younger millennial and I sometimes hate how jaded and cynical I feel these days. I'm ultimately an idealist, and I try not to close myself off, but there are definitely days when I'm sad to see that side of myself come out so strongly.

I'm also really sad to see how many people around my age or a little older are genuinely shaking their heads and wringing their hands over the what "the youth" are up to these days. People have short memories.. I remember all of my generation being shit on not that long ago in the same way. I think the youth are doing great, and I refuse to condescend them.

I think a lot of people forget what it was like to be a kid

To just feel everything so much because everything is new and your brain is just this wad of rubber bouncing around like a bullet ricocheting off the inside of your skull

Like, yeah, I get it, it can be irritating sometimes, but have you ever just spent time with a kid?

To remember what it like when you could have fun just by running around and screaming?

God, kids are great

This is not going to end well.

That's the entire fucking point. If you are currently suffering from Capitalism, REVOLT OR DIE

I'm an older millennial too, old enough to have a lot of Gen X around me that became junior Boomers to the point of being nearly indistinguishable recently.

I've seen the same thing you have, @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net . Older millennials like myself, even if they used to be at least sympathetic to leftist (or as they preferred to put it, "progressive") causes, more often then not, often when they found their first "real job" (as in, less marginalized and derided by wine-clinking liberal petite bourgeoisie), suddenly decided that people that didn't get there yet (or never would) were just "lazy" or some other bullshit excuse, anything to feel justified in disavowing them of their own common roots.

I appreciate all the people here, whether you're 20 or 60, for not becoming the thing that hurt you. We need people with a soul more than ever.

I wish I had a more heroic and saintly reason for why I take the stands I do, but in truth they started as spite. I hated the selfish fascist assholes that raised me before I even know what to call their ideology, but definitive fascists, up to and including admiration of fucking Hitler all the same. That's especially rich because I have a fairly complicated ethnic background that involves people that were chased down and exterminated through both world wars from the very same people that their surviving successors now retroactively feel nostalgia and admiration for.

Shit's fucked.