Living In the Age of Cope

Welcome to the Age of Cope

Millennials and Zoomers are absolutely cooked. Let me be completely blunt, everyone is coping and mostly in denial. The path to reaching most adult milestones has either evaporated for most people or been elongated by the current technological and economic trends. Everyone is coping in different ways. Some choose fentanyl to numb the pain of not feeling needed and feeling like a burden. Some choose video games to numb the pain of not being able to achieve anything in real life. Some choose porn to numb the pain of feeling unloved. Some choose sex work to numb the pain of declining living standards. Increasingly everyone is trying to convince themselves and everyone else they chose this outcome and they are happier. Nothing could be further from the truth.

People are slowly, but surely losing the will to live as hypercompetition takes everything from them. You put in Herculean effort just to stay in the same spot, with no escape from you gig slave economy job. Education is so expensive and ubiquitous it no longer provides the safety net it used to. Baby boomers who send their daughters to college, may find out that instead of college insulating her from having to sell her body, she feels she must to help with the student debt. They may find their son who was supposed to receive opportunities because of his degree boomerang back into the house, where he beats off, shit posts, and plays video games to waste away his life. These young people may look like they are content, and lazy from the boomer perspective but these kids are hurting. The active suicides are one thing, but the passive suicidality is striking as well.

Their mental health is in absolute shambles and they are broadly going through all of this alone. They are atomized, and interact with each other via comically commodified versions of themselves as avatars. Women mostly post thirst traps for clout on social media, and use it as funnel marketing for their OnlyFans. The men shitpost online hoping to build a following to shill shitcoins or courses of dubious value. Most of them make next to no money and are constantly dealing with the stress of constant surveillance. The neuroticism comes from the fact that they do it to each other. 

Zoomers live in a digital panopticon that brutalizes the people it cancels, and the cancellers are your personal "friends". You'll be called out by an ex, or a disgruntled employee who probably should have handled it privately, but your "friendship" is being terminated in public. I keep using "friend" in quotes because the parasocial relationships we create with profiles are not real "friendships". OnlyFans is the quintessential modern company. You are not "friends" with anyone, you are only fans.

It is unwise to share personal information with your fans, but you need human contact to survive. You need something that looks like intimacy to be mentally well, but social media has made all of our interactions so high stakes and explosive you must keep your distance. The rules of cancellation are changed routinely and they are applied retroactively. With a social world built on profiles that don't really know each other, your fans are fickle and quick to turn on you as it could raise their profile.

Living as the Loneliest Generation

It's clear that Zoomers are the loneliest generation in history, which is telling that our new ways of interacting. We often talk about profilicity in these spaces, and how it destroys sincere relationships. A lot of feelings of loneliness are caused by Zoomers feeling left out of the Instagram lifestyle their peers are living, highlighting only their highlights. It also is how people make friends and meet romantic partners. Everything you say can and will be screenshotted to be shown to a group chat that will mock them or worse they will be trending on Twitter for the decentralized mob.

The chart below shows us the severity of the situation.

The overwhelming majority of Zoomers and Millennials are lonely. Friends are not just good for your mental health, they can help you survive personal crises or advance your career. I wonder how much male stagnation, has to do with them not have reliable networks of people who will aid them. It translates into meeting new people, especially women if you have broad and deep connections. These problems are structural, as they are happening to everybody at the same time. Loneliness has become a politically charged subject as the spectre of the "Incel" and the "RedPill" have become boogymen that make talking about male loneliness divisive. People have been bombarded with so many messages saying men aren't entitled to anything and create rape culture, allowing most normies to dismiss their reasonable objections to currently society off hand.

Where is this coming from? Hypercompetition is a big topic in my thinking on the "BlackPill" and the "RedPill". Let's look at how people generally make friends.

This could be problematic in a hypercompetition environment with "winner take all" effects. After a Zoomer male graduates from highschool, he is going to experience a lot of friction in his quest to build a reliable social network. The second most common way people meet is through work.

The labour force participation rate for young adults has steadily been declining since the 70s. Millennials are doing jobs that used to be done by teenagers after college, while door dashing to meet ends meet as well. Zoomer males are being forced to compete with men who have years of experience on them, and often find themselves working gig jobs that don't lend themselves to meeting new people.

Zoomers men are making up the minority of the college students, taking away 3rd most popular avenue. They are not likely to meet new people who will open doors if they are still living with their parents, leaving them with a religious or spiritual community to fall back on. The graph below shows us why that approach is not likely to work.

Basically the kids are fucked. Going forward living standards will continue to decline and atomization will continue until a new political movement reaches escape philosophy. The things that matter most in life will be out of reach for most people and they will have to use surrogates for sex, love, and achievement.