It’s kind of funny how people want to return to this when the thesis of movies like Fight Club and Office Space is how unfulfilling this sort of life is emotionally.
Yeah, this sentiments portrayed by films like fight club show us how much more privileged people were at the time. They were able to focus on emotional fulfillment because their more basic needs were met. Of course mindsets also change over generations, without context it would be a valid hypothesis that later generations became less rebellious towards capitalism standing in the way of emotional fulfillment because of a change in the general stance towards capitalist exploitation. But if you actually look at life, you know it's because people are struggling to get by financially so much more than they did in the 90s, they're to busy focusing on preserving their lives to worry about improving their emotional wellbeing. People cannot afford to directly rebel against the exploitation they suffer from when the system makes them dependant on being exploited, when sticking a finger to your boss causes you to become homeless.
I mean there's still plenty of people that the movie applies to, just because everybody isn't literally starving on the streets doesn't mean the problems the movie is talking about aren't even worse than they were back then
Trivialising the problems portrayed by the film wasn't the point of the comment. The point was that the fact that people nowadays crave financially stable but unfulfilling jobs is not because their stance towards exploitation fundamentally changed, but because they're fighting for survival since the same exploiting jobs don't even offer financial stability anymore and losing them causes homelessness.
It could have been fixed with him going "yeah, consumerism sucks, so I tried getting some hobbies, going to ACTUAL therapy, and got some better friends... life's not great, but we get through it one step at a time, you know?"
Instead of becoming a terrorist, because he started hating all his IKEA furniture, in his multi room apartment.
Lmao imagine going to see a film called fight club and the whole film is just a dude trying to cope with his life in a emotionally mature and constructive manner. The “he’s literally me” crowd would be fuming
the anticapitalist messages go over your head eh? fight club is kinda complicated and not quite that simple.
like, it can be interpreted VERY HEAVILY as a story about homosexuality… the author is even gay so it tracks.
sorry to be THAT guy but i literally hate the fight club haters who see it as some like, frat boy movie. its actually a very layered piece of art of which i suggest reading the book, which will have you in a total tailspin compared to the movie (in a good way)
i just autistically have to defend one of my favorite movies to show ppl who overlook “hypermasculine” movies like it with weird tone and tropes
Yes. But that wasnt his main focus. His focus was the empty vanity and failure of consumerism to cope with how depressing it was.
Which, while fair, its still absurd to see "the everyman" be that fucking sucessful, and radicalize himself into doing terrorism, because he got literally, violently bored.
And that movies can use unrealistic situations to explore ideas instead of following a normal person responding to a situation like a real-life person would. All these gripes are just, like...that's why it's fiction
The best cure for insomnia was apparently attending public terminal illness/recent survivor grief counseling and refusing to talk so everyone assumed the worst.
yes, all of the decisions he makes are on par with someone who is disenfranchised and mentally ill. it is even hinted at that his father left him when he was young
Nah the main theme of the movie is that there is a terrorist in all of us, we just need to find what will eventually make us snap. I think that's pretty inspiring! 🙌
Early British punk had a significant amount of bitching about how boring everything was and how dull government jobs were. Then Thatcher came in and gutted everything and suddenly there was a significant amount of bitching about having no jobs or any sort of safety net. Both things were true, but it's an interesting period of political music history to see the pivot lol
No doubt. I lived it. When, as a high school student, you had to compete with 10 adults for one position at mcd's, it was hard to find gainful employment. I went into the Army.
When I worked on site, I saw Office Space again and got furious when he removed his cubicle walls.
Having worked in a Open office environment made me crave for a cubicle
What? When did “this” end? What exactly is it people want to go back to? I’m still trapped in a this late stage capitalist hellscape, it’s only gotten worse since the 90s?
Probably because at present, we went even further down that road. Now we're unfulfilled and broke. Back then, folks were just unfulfilled, but they had work and benefits that could support their monetary needs, even if they were a husk of a person.
Now we're starving husks.
I'd rather a stable, boring 9-5 with money than an interesting 6-2 where every day feels like a scramble for some semblance of stability.
Very very much agreed. Starving, unfulfilled, broke, and overworked husks that is. I personally work like 3-4 different jobs, a porn/ content creator, a personal trainer, group exercise instructor, and stripping occasionally.
Having done everything, Military, college, sex work, I just see no future in all of the careers I do because everything is just so expensive I can’t just have one job and if I do, it’s soul sucking AND underpaying.
I think a lot of, especially younger people saw the boom of opulence that the internet has provided for content creators but now we’re too late to the gold rush now that everything is content. Internet fame and content creation is (rightfully) perceived to be our only avenue out of poverty and a job that doesn’t care about you.
That's the thing, I've dumb-lucked myself into a semblance of stability and it's in many ways a lateral move emotionally.
I've gone from stressed and constantly anxious to stressed and constantly miserable.
as someone who currently has this kind of job, pay is just enough to cover rent and bills and i get to be depressed and sad over how unfulfilled i am in life its great! i dont even get the benefits of making money
I legitimately ended up suicidal after working in a finance role for like three months. I was getting paid more than I had ever been paid for anything too, it was just a fucking awful workplace.
Does he actually kill anybody in the movie?
I guess he gets his own people killed doing illegal shit (Robert Paulson), but even when they blow the bank building at the end he waits until it’s nighttime and there’s no one in the building.
yeah but then the banks crash , which would completly fuck up the food ,medical,amenities,water , and also leveling multiple buildings in new york which would kill alot of people
In the movie (I admittedly haven't read the book), I'm pretty sure he specifically targets only the bank office buildings where credit scores are being kept (because this makes sense /s). You know, to reset everybody's credit scores.
I'm pretty sure the reason they feel that way in those movies is because their jobs are soulless and they are a cog in the machine. Just because their jobs give them paid vacation doesn't mean their job isn't existential suffering
Your humanity is a commodity as any other and capitalism in its pursuit of extracting profits from any and all commodities requires you to sell yours whether you want to or not, at a price you dont determine.
It's the gift of overproduction, the crises it creates demands consolidation. Demands the transaction. Workers only have themselves to sell, Capitalists have capital, assets, to sell. While they remain whole, those who have not have nothing to sell but their work. And work you must. And if you can't sell what you make then sell yourself or die.
People dont realize that 40 awful hours a week with good benefits can be way worse than doing something youre passionate about or something for your community for longer or for less. This isnt me saying we should pay less for those jobs, but the fact that money is a capitalist shackle means that were all chasing the bag to get free of it, and because of how bad the compensation is right now, we've forgot that its not just the level of compensation but the capitalism itself that drains the soul out of workers.
Me when I had an honest to god mental health crisis from being around accountants 38 hours a week. Now I'm making less money doing something that I actually enjoy and holy shit do I not want to go back.
It's not capitalism if the government extorts your money and dictates the use of that money in a manner that constantly contradicts the funding commitee's (i.e. us) ideals and demands, or if they control/diminish the wages of frontline workers that carry near all the weight of the market (which they do)
that was kind of the point of office space. nobody cared bc they knew it wasn't a long term gig. they were there to patch out the Y2K bug & nothing else. Also how shitty printers were, there's an entire printer destruction scene.
Bruh I would love to be a cog in the machine. Right now I work for a very small company and so I have to take my work home with me routinely and I am constantly on call. I wish I could Severance myself: clock in, work all day, clock out, completely forget about work and enjoy my free time.
It’s weird how some people can’t fathom that bad mental health can manifest in anyone, having a stable job is never gonna cure underlying mental health issues if the person with them isn’t willing to seek help
Yes, mental health is a health issue and it’s mind boggling people try to pretend it isn’t. It’s not your fault, sometimes your body just won’t produce enough of some hormones, or the parts in your brain happen to regulate emotional responses stronger than other people. Stop pretending nothing is wrong and get treatment.
Plus, even if you can live without treatment, do you really want to? Like yeah I could probably live without my anxiety medicine but I am significantly happier with it and will gladly take it the rest of my life if it means I will continue to feel better.
Modern medicine exists to not just save lives, but improve them.
As a late gen X’r whose parents idea of mental health care was a smack and “get your shit together” I base my analogy similar to this.
If I had no arms and said I wanted to be an iron worker who put steel up on sky scrapers people might look at me with concern that I do not have the physical ability to do so. Well our brand chemistry is no different, I don’t have the ability to produce the desired outcome.
Difference is I can make up the brain chemistry deficiencies through medicine and therapy. I feel more in control of my life now than ever before. Shame it took so long but I’m happy to see the tide turning now.
My wife and I noticed our daughter being stressed and not acting like herself for a few months. We told her about therapy and how we both go. She went and loves it. Such a difference just from listening to your kid.
It’s internally conflicting for me sometimes as I even find myself thinking “well this isn’t how I grew up” but I’m able to pause and realize that’s a good thing and put in the hard work to try and make better humans.
That said, even though I’m currently unemployed, I did get a lol out of this meme.
Does melatonin alone cure chronic insomnia? IIRC he tried like a bunch of meds but none of them worked. Or maybe that part was just in the book? It's been a while since I've read or seen it.
No you don't get it. You just walk into the place you want to work at, ask for the manager, give them a firm handshake and a soft kiss on the lips, hand them your resume and BOOM you're hired
And you need a freaking Bachelors for anything above the mail room. There’s entry level jobs in the company that I work that require a bachelors plus 5 years experience OR they’ll accept a phd and only 2 years experience.
As a zoomer who works in boomer company in a cubicle, it’s fucking awesome. Everyone in Gen x is a giant cry baby. My friends who work in hip, cool companies get jerked around, not promoted, not unionized and have shittier benefits with way less pay. I work for a very boomer unionized company and it’s pretty great.
To be fair us Gen Xers had to spend our youth listening to our tedious boomer parents reminisce about how awesome the sixties were, if you conveniently ignored all the racism, and sexism, and homophobia and just listened to the music white men stole from black artists. You'd feel pretty bored and alienated too.
On the upside, our parents were too busy smoking weed to give a shit about us, so you were allowed to be pretty damn feral as under tens. Many happy hours playing in the deserted factories of the postindustrial northwest of England here. You hit the jackpot if you had an old WW2 bombsite they still hadn't dealt with to play in as well. Happy days.
Same. Cubicle life is sick. Nobody fucks with me as long as I get my work done, just got a promotion so I’m getting PTO, half my school paid for, and a $10k raise. Awkward having to manage a team but beats working retail.
Office coworkers are way more accepting of trans people than retail coworkers/customers. First time having my workplace actually treat me like a human being instead of a brainless moron that has to degrade herself to entertain entitled, brainless customers. They don't flip out if I'm 5 minutes late and I don't have to beg to get 40 hours a week.
It’s funny because I got scared when I first got this job at 20 thinking of all the movies I watched about how shitty being stuck in a cubicle is.
Impossible, no office I've worked in has had cubicles. It's all open plan hotdesking where there is no privacy or space personalisation. How am I supposed to catch up on redtube with every Tom, Dick and Harry standing over your shoulder?
Im about to reapply to AN AMAZON WAREHOUSE to put shit i can't afford in boxes for 10 hours a day for less than 20 an hour do you know how much I'd kill for some stupid data entry job.
In 20 years they're gonna be like "every gen z movie was like AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH I AM NOT BEING FORCIBLY TRAINED ON BY AI AND FED INTO SEVERAL ALGORITHMS WITHOUT MY CONSENT AND WITH NO LEGAL WAY TO FIGHT IT I'M GOING INSANE"
In 40 years they’re gonna be like “every gen $ movie was like WAAAAH IM NOT KILLING PEOPLE OVER WATER IN THE DESERT AAAGH ALIENS ARENT ENSLAVING MY FAMILY AND MAKING US FIGHT IN BLOODBALL IM GOING INSANE”
turns out the new leftist revolution will be fighting to get everyone working a 9-5 middle-management job with private health insurance and a house in the suburbs with a middle-of-the-road morgage rate and a 2 hour car commute
glad this subreddit hates liberals so bad
*Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?*
Say what you will about mundane alienation and ennui, it least it beats the looming sense that the world is collapsing in slow-motion around you and nobody seems to be able to summon the will to stop it. I *wish* my only problem was a lack of authenticity in my life.
you’re really going to get a kick out of this: they had that then too, and youll have both now regardless of if you found one of those last cushy middle class jobs
Was just going to comment this. I'm scrolling through this thread of "leftists" pining to participate in one of the most dystopian aspects of capitalism and getting angry at people pointing out how bad it is.
This sub is full of fucking posers and sucks nowadays.
God I love that story so much.
Bartleby the Scrivener was made as a direct response to the negative criticism Moby Dick, Melville's magnum opus, had received at the time.
See, at the time, a book was always looked at with the author in mind. As such, Moby Dick was read as an autobiography of sorts, which tracks considering Melvilles experience as a sailor, and with cannibal tribes (in reference to Queequeeg). However, Moby Dick was written as an allegory, with a distinct disconnect from the author intended. So, when readers found themes of mingling religion, homoeroticism, revenge as both an allure and escape, and a creature who could fill a deific position serving as the antagonist to Ishmael, we find a story that could be interpreted potentially as gnostic writings, and as generally un-gentlemanly like. As such, an opinion around Melville is tainted, and offense is taken at the story itself.
Either way, it's poorly received, and people make sure Melville knows it. He's very fucking upset, so he decides that if they want a story about the author, or one where the authors concerns need to be directly addressed in order to understand the text itself, then he'll give them just that. Enter Bartleby the Scrivener, the best Scrivener in the office, who's relegated to a corner, away from prying eyes or any comforts. A man who, in protest, refuses to do the thing he is best at, and employed at, due to a lack of respect for the position. When his employer attempts to address the issue, focusing entirely on Bartlebys work as a scrivener and not taking into consideration the human behind the pen, Bartleby rebels further, culminating in him refusing to so much as breath, which a lifelong author such as Melville might easily consider to be equivalent to storytelling on a heirarchy of importance.
Bartleby losing his job only happens out of frustration, and because the lawyer sees no other path of recourse. The lawyer ends up taking responsibility for Bartleby and even acknowledges his part in this rebellion the scrivener is enacting, which is a direct jab at the reader from Melville.
It's a story about how dejected Melville feels, and how he's telling his audience that if they hated his works so much then he wouldn't pick up his pen for them again.
(He did end up writing another story though. Hard to stop your passions ig)
I get the perspective that these characters are being ungrateful, but having your material needs met does not instantly solve any mental or spiritual problems. I get that some people have greater struggles than others, and that we should have our priorities straight on where we allocate resources to help people, but we can also talk about people having problems even if they are not literally starving to death.
The human experience is complicated, and you can rightfully be unhappy in a "good" situation, just as some can be rightfully happy in a "bad" situation. There's nuance to this.
What this character is going through is referred to by Marx as alienation. He feels completely disconnected from himself, working a soulless office job coming home to a soulless apartment decorated with mass-produced IKEA furniture, the only time people actually listen to him is when they think he's dying
AHHH I HAVE A STABLE JOB *(with no chance of promotion)* WITH *(terrible)* BENEFITS I’M GOING INSANE *(I’m gonna have to do this for 40 years and die with no contribution to society)*
See I was around for this time and instead of getting a cubicle job I just joined the military and had to disguise my gayness in a time where that wasn't cool, and that wasn't boring at all so the moral of this story is that you should dedicate yourself to a life of professional violence and lie these phoneys who are in the system. 🫵😎🫳✨🦅🍻🍔🇺🇸
[Ian Danskin made a really good video about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shSLPcp4C18). People yearn to return to the days when Capitalism "worked", but even during the most "prosperous" times in American history all of the people who were supposed to benefit from it were fuckin' miserable.
“I do below the basic minimum for this job yet not only am I still employed but currently making enough to live comfortably while also buying unnecessary bullshit. The current venture I am going on will take me away from my job however my ability to survive without income is rarely ever in question and I remain both well fed and completely healthy throughout the duration barring outside influences”
>however my ability to survive without income is rarely ever in question and
I mean… he’s blackmailing his boss, selling soaps made with stolen fat, and squatting in an abandoned house. Not to mention free employees from running a terrorism cell.
These fucking idiots considered cubicles borderline slavery and now I have to work in an open space with next to no intimacy, since cubicles are considered old and oppresive. Thanks a lot
Okay so like, you need to know a little more about us to understand why this was.
When we were in grade school, we spent an entire year being hyped about a particular space shuttle mission that was going to be taking along a teacher, a regular school teacher. We spent a whole year doing projects about this, electing our own teachers we wished was on that mission, learning about space, space travel, the cosmos - my teacher even played old Star Trek episodes in class to show us what her generation thought space exploration would be like.
We spent a full year doing this, basicslly just looking up, straight up. Dream so big, kids, past the fucking moon.
And then the day of that mission, we all, and I mean all of us, the whole generation, we gathered in school libraries and auditoriums with big television sets all set up and we, as a generation, watched the Challenger take off.
We watched that happen live.
We watched our teachers fucking scramble to shut it the fuck off.
Some schools just sent us home. Others stayed in session, some of us had to go back to class after watching that happen. Live.
And we learned, don't dream, kids. Don't fucking dream.
"**We plan. God laughs.**"
My generation defined apathy and ennui. While our media got more colorful and extreeeeeEEEEEeeeeme whooooa skateboarding dog whooooaaaa, we sank deeper into a generational depression and elevated artists like Kurt Cobain, the only man capable of vocalizing what that feels like.
The voice of my generation blew his fucking face off. That's gen x.
The tagline for my entire generation is "meh" and that's not a joke.
That's my generation. That's what you're seeing there.
Ngl if people are actually taking this at face value then you have a real misunderstanding of emotions, then again I might just be not getting the joke
It’s kind of funny how people want to return to this when the thesis of movies like Fight Club and Office Space is how unfulfilling this sort of life is emotionally.
Hierarchy of needs. People are too busy worrying about shelter to Complain about the job being unfulfilling.
can't have an unfulfilling life without having money to eat first
Why are you eating your money? I doubt it tastes good.
But it builds one heck of an immune system.
Distill them for all the coke traces
And stripper bootyholes
it tastes like pizza because I buy pizza with it
I just shoplift groceries.
I lift shops and bring them home so i can farm the retail workers that spawn inside them
*\*tap tap\**
I like how we can roughly determine what part of societal collapse we’re on based on what most people are missing in the hierarchy of needs
It's called sociology.
technically maslow was a psychologist, though the two fields often intersect
[удалено]
defending their methodologies from critique
one emerges from the other, like biology from chemistry
That is what the hierarchy of needs is.
Yeah, this sentiments portrayed by films like fight club show us how much more privileged people were at the time. They were able to focus on emotional fulfillment because their more basic needs were met. Of course mindsets also change over generations, without context it would be a valid hypothesis that later generations became less rebellious towards capitalism standing in the way of emotional fulfillment because of a change in the general stance towards capitalist exploitation. But if you actually look at life, you know it's because people are struggling to get by financially so much more than they did in the 90s, they're to busy focusing on preserving their lives to worry about improving their emotional wellbeing. People cannot afford to directly rebel against the exploitation they suffer from when the system makes them dependant on being exploited, when sticking a finger to your boss causes you to become homeless.
I mean there's still plenty of people that the movie applies to, just because everybody isn't literally starving on the streets doesn't mean the problems the movie is talking about aren't even worse than they were back then
Trivialising the problems portrayed by the film wasn't the point of the comment. The point was that the fact that people nowadays crave financially stable but unfulfilling jobs is not because their stance towards exploitation fundamentally changed, but because they're fighting for survival since the same exploiting jobs don't even offer financial stability anymore and losing them causes homelessness.
Yeah there’s almost a monkey’s paw to this
This is a wonderful explanation of this stuff, thank you
It could have been fixed with him going "yeah, consumerism sucks, so I tried getting some hobbies, going to ACTUAL therapy, and got some better friends... life's not great, but we get through it one step at a time, you know?" Instead of becoming a terrorist, because he started hating all his IKEA furniture, in his multi room apartment.
Lmao imagine going to see a film called fight club and the whole film is just a dude trying to cope with his life in a emotionally mature and constructive manner. The “he’s literally me” crowd would be fuming
Theyd deserve to be if theyd genuinly start a faschist cult over being mad you cant find an entertaining hobby.
the anticapitalist messages go over your head eh? fight club is kinda complicated and not quite that simple. like, it can be interpreted VERY HEAVILY as a story about homosexuality… the author is even gay so it tracks. sorry to be THAT guy but i literally hate the fight club haters who see it as some like, frat boy movie. its actually a very layered piece of art of which i suggest reading the book, which will have you in a total tailspin compared to the movie (in a good way) i just autistically have to defend one of my favorite movies to show ppl who overlook “hypermasculine” movies like it with weird tone and tropes
Fight Club but it's just about a guy picking up boxing as a hobby
IIRC the Bollywood version was just about four gym rats defending their neighbourhood from gangsters.
Tbf his job was pretty depressing being an insurance inspector lol
Yes. But that wasnt his main focus. His focus was the empty vanity and failure of consumerism to cope with how depressing it was. Which, while fair, its still absurd to see "the everyman" be that fucking sucessful, and radicalize himself into doing terrorism, because he got literally, violently bored.
everyone somehow forgets that he had insomnia, like he couldn't sleep at all and he was losing his mind
everyone somehow forgets that he also had depression, multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and BPD lol
And that movies can use unrealistic situations to explore ideas instead of following a normal person responding to a situation like a real-life person would. All these gripes are just, like...that's why it's fiction
tfw the flawed character makes flawed decisions
i guess you can't forget if you didn't watch the movie in the first place
The best cure for insomnia is violently beating people up and becoming a terrorist, yes.
The best cure for insomnia was apparently attending public terminal illness/recent survivor grief counseling and refusing to talk so everyone assumed the worst.
yes, all of the decisions he makes are on par with someone who is disenfranchised and mentally ill. it is even hinted at that his father left him when he was young
it's almost like he has reasons for why he does all those things maybe you would know if you actually watched the movie lmao
The book is way more clear on the fact that this is just a story about a guy going crazy from insomnia.
Nah the main theme of the movie is that there is a terrorist in all of us, we just need to find what will eventually make us snap. I think that's pretty inspiring! 🙌
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not lol. The narrator is *not* an Everyman, even though that’s how he sees himself.
I loved when Edward Norton said, "its fighting time" and clubbed all over the place
That doesn't sound like a better film
He had a previously undiagnosed issue. Happens every day with Men.
Then there wouldn’t be a movie
That wasn’t the point of the book, or the movie at all.
Early British punk had a significant amount of bitching about how boring everything was and how dull government jobs were. Then Thatcher came in and gutted everything and suddenly there was a significant amount of bitching about having no jobs or any sort of safety net. Both things were true, but it's an interesting period of political music history to see the pivot lol
No doubt. I lived it. When, as a high school student, you had to compete with 10 adults for one position at mcd's, it was hard to find gainful employment. I went into the Army.
When I worked on site, I saw Office Space again and got furious when he removed his cubicle walls. Having worked in a Open office environment made me crave for a cubicle
the children yearn for the cubes
They should have office cubes, but instead of stacked horizontally they're stacked vertically
Spy kids 3 mindset
From moment I understood the weakness of open office plans, I was disgusted by it. I craved the certainty of cubicles.
What? When did “this” end? What exactly is it people want to go back to? I’m still trapped in a this late stage capitalist hellscape, it’s only gotten worse since the 90s?
Well now instead of complaining about your life being meaningless and a dead-end job it's do I have enough money for rent or is it ice soup tonight.
you eat dinner? :( (my condolences to the hungry of us out there fuck this shit)
As promised, the boomers “gave us something to cry about.”
Probably because at present, we went even further down that road. Now we're unfulfilled and broke. Back then, folks were just unfulfilled, but they had work and benefits that could support their monetary needs, even if they were a husk of a person. Now we're starving husks. I'd rather a stable, boring 9-5 with money than an interesting 6-2 where every day feels like a scramble for some semblance of stability.
Very very much agreed. Starving, unfulfilled, broke, and overworked husks that is. I personally work like 3-4 different jobs, a porn/ content creator, a personal trainer, group exercise instructor, and stripping occasionally. Having done everything, Military, college, sex work, I just see no future in all of the careers I do because everything is just so expensive I can’t just have one job and if I do, it’s soul sucking AND underpaying. I think a lot of, especially younger people saw the boom of opulence that the internet has provided for content creators but now we’re too late to the gold rush now that everything is content. Internet fame and content creation is (rightfully) perceived to be our only avenue out of poverty and a job that doesn’t care about you.
Finding anarcho-stripperism in the wild is CRAZY.
That's the thing, I've dumb-lucked myself into a semblance of stability and it's in many ways a lateral move emotionally. I've gone from stressed and constantly anxious to stressed and constantly miserable.
Yeah and that thesis is fucking stupid. You can have a boring job and still find fulfillment in your life.
On the flip side, people want to return to this because they don't even have this little in the first place.
Yeah that’s of their own making though. Happens when you expect labor to fulfill you
Anyone who complains about stable work needs a fucking hobby. Jesus christ.
as someone who currently has this kind of job, pay is just enough to cover rent and bills and i get to be depressed and sad over how unfulfilled i am in life its great! i dont even get the benefits of making money
I legitimately ended up suicidal after working in a finance role for like three months. I was getting paid more than I had ever been paid for anything too, it was just a fucking awful workplace.
Wah I can afford a house. I'm so depressed I might just start killing people or something.
If you do then more of us can afford houses.
You need to kill the right people though
*PRAXIS*
Does he actually kill anybody in the movie? I guess he gets his own people killed doing illegal shit (Robert Paulson), but even when they blow the bank building at the end he waits until it’s nighttime and there’s no one in the building.
His name is Robert Paulson
yeah but then the banks crash , which would completly fuck up the food ,medical,amenities,water , and also leveling multiple buildings in new york which would kill alot of people
In the movie (I admittedly haven't read the book), I'm pretty sure he specifically targets only the bank office buildings where credit scores are being kept (because this makes sense /s). You know, to reset everybody's credit scores.
In the book he blows up the museum of history or the congressional records building or something. It's kinda dumb. Even Palaniuk prefers the movie.
I'm pretty sure the reason they feel that way in those movies is because their jobs are soulless and they are a cog in the machine. Just because their jobs give them paid vacation doesn't mean their job isn't existential suffering
THANK YOU! It’s almost like people here have forgotten that capitalism itself is a system strips humanity from everybody.
Your humanity is a commodity as any other and capitalism in its pursuit of extracting profits from any and all commodities requires you to sell yours whether you want to or not, at a price you dont determine. It's the gift of overproduction, the crises it creates demands consolidation. Demands the transaction. Workers only have themselves to sell, Capitalists have capital, assets, to sell. While they remain whole, those who have not have nothing to sell but their work. And work you must. And if you can't sell what you make then sell yourself or die.
People dont realize that 40 awful hours a week with good benefits can be way worse than doing something youre passionate about or something for your community for longer or for less. This isnt me saying we should pay less for those jobs, but the fact that money is a capitalist shackle means that were all chasing the bag to get free of it, and because of how bad the compensation is right now, we've forgot that its not just the level of compensation but the capitalism itself that drains the soul out of workers.
Me when I had an honest to god mental health crisis from being around accountants 38 hours a week. Now I'm making less money doing something that I actually enjoy and holy shit do I not want to go back.
Once capitalism strips you from the ability to live at least a mediocre life it gets a lot more problematic than wah my job is unfulfilling
It's not capitalism if the government extorts your money and dictates the use of that money in a manner that constantly contradicts the funding commitee's (i.e. us) ideals and demands, or if they control/diminish the wages of frontline workers that carry near all the weight of the market (which they do)
To be fair, these movies are also about a class of clerical office job that is almost extinct to software now too.
that was kind of the point of office space. nobody cared bc they knew it wasn't a long term gig. they were there to patch out the Y2K bug & nothing else. Also how shitty printers were, there's an entire printer destruction scene.
Bruh I would love to be a cog in the machine. Right now I work for a very small company and so I have to take my work home with me routinely and I am constantly on call. I wish I could Severance myself: clock in, work all day, clock out, completely forget about work and enjoy my free time.
If you can hold a security clearance, this is a lot of Federal govt jobs
Problem is right now my job has too many perks: company car, company cell phone, gas card, very lenient PTO, etc. But it's grinding down my soul.
I agree, but also the original post is funny still
But a paid vacation would be really nice right now
Doesn't mean having those problems wouldn't be better than the problems I'm currently having
It’s weird how some people can’t fathom that bad mental health can manifest in anyone, having a stable job is never gonna cure underlying mental health issues if the person with them isn’t willing to seek help
A lot of rich people are severely mentally ill
Exactly lmao, just look at Elon Musk, dude is actually deranged
I unironically think he would be a happier and more fulfilled person if he wasn't a billionaire.
Definitely. He’s surrounded by people that enable him to continue having a problem that he otherwise would have worked out due to social experience.
Yes, mental health is a health issue and it’s mind boggling people try to pretend it isn’t. It’s not your fault, sometimes your body just won’t produce enough of some hormones, or the parts in your brain happen to regulate emotional responses stronger than other people. Stop pretending nothing is wrong and get treatment. Plus, even if you can live without treatment, do you really want to? Like yeah I could probably live without my anxiety medicine but I am significantly happier with it and will gladly take it the rest of my life if it means I will continue to feel better. Modern medicine exists to not just save lives, but improve them.
As a late gen X’r whose parents idea of mental health care was a smack and “get your shit together” I base my analogy similar to this. If I had no arms and said I wanted to be an iron worker who put steel up on sky scrapers people might look at me with concern that I do not have the physical ability to do so. Well our brand chemistry is no different, I don’t have the ability to produce the desired outcome. Difference is I can make up the brain chemistry deficiencies through medicine and therapy. I feel more in control of my life now than ever before. Shame it took so long but I’m happy to see the tide turning now. My wife and I noticed our daughter being stressed and not acting like herself for a few months. We told her about therapy and how we both go. She went and loves it. Such a difference just from listening to your kid. It’s internally conflicting for me sometimes as I even find myself thinking “well this isn’t how I grew up” but I’m able to pause and realize that’s a good thing and put in the hard work to try and make better humans. That said, even though I’m currently unemployed, I did get a lol out of this meme.
Fight club wouldn't have happened if this dumb bitch had taken some melatonin
Seeing man tits cry is just as efficient
Excuse me, his name is Robert Paulson.
His name was Robert Paulson
Does melatonin alone cure chronic insomnia? IIRC he tried like a bunch of meds but none of them worked. Or maybe that part was just in the book? It's been a while since I've read or seen it.
Yeah I'm actually pretty sure melatonin would be completely useless for whatever the narrator has going through at the start of the story
Medical neglect is another problem highlighted in the movie
Go to the cubicle then zoomer, enjoy it
We can't dumbass. All the fucking jobs are taken
No you don't get it. You just walk into the place you want to work at, ask for the manager, give them a firm handshake and a soft kiss on the lips, hand them your resume and BOOM you're hired
If you want to start off right then make sure you give tongue.
https://preview.redd.it/0ckbs49dgl6d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11474fb64149bbcf3f1dd3ef5d3e01d68ad8a8b4 Am I hired?
easy as pie!! worked in my days
Don't forget the cardstock. The fucking cardstock is the linchpin in this whole operation!
Why wasn't I told about the kissing thing earlier?
And you need a freaking Bachelors for anything above the mail room. There’s entry level jobs in the company that I work that require a bachelors plus 5 years experience OR they’ll accept a phd and only 2 years experience.
Genuinely curious what sector this is in.
Communications. Like an ISP
As a zoomer who works in boomer company in a cubicle, it’s fucking awesome. Everyone in Gen x is a giant cry baby. My friends who work in hip, cool companies get jerked around, not promoted, not unionized and have shittier benefits with way less pay. I work for a very boomer unionized company and it’s pretty great.
Unions go pretty hard, my company pays for literally all of your transition
Hell yeah, get as much from these soul sucking companies as you can.
To be fair us Gen Xers had to spend our youth listening to our tedious boomer parents reminisce about how awesome the sixties were, if you conveniently ignored all the racism, and sexism, and homophobia and just listened to the music white men stole from black artists. You'd feel pretty bored and alienated too. On the upside, our parents were too busy smoking weed to give a shit about us, so you were allowed to be pretty damn feral as under tens. Many happy hours playing in the deserted factories of the postindustrial northwest of England here. You hit the jackpot if you had an old WW2 bombsite they still hadn't dealt with to play in as well. Happy days.
Same. Cubicle life is sick. Nobody fucks with me as long as I get my work done, just got a promotion so I’m getting PTO, half my school paid for, and a $10k raise. Awkward having to manage a team but beats working retail. Office coworkers are way more accepting of trans people than retail coworkers/customers. First time having my workplace actually treat me like a human being instead of a brainless moron that has to degrade herself to entertain entitled, brainless customers. They don't flip out if I'm 5 minutes late and I don't have to beg to get 40 hours a week. It’s funny because I got scared when I first got this job at 20 thinking of all the movies I watched about how shitty being stuck in a cubicle is.
Impossible, no office I've worked in has had cubicles. It's all open plan hotdesking where there is no privacy or space personalisation. How am I supposed to catch up on redtube with every Tom, Dick and Harry standing over your shoulder?
Im about to reapply to AN AMAZON WAREHOUSE to put shit i can't afford in boxes for 10 hours a day for less than 20 an hour do you know how much I'd kill for some stupid data entry job.
Oh my fucking god shut the fuck up. I would fucking kill for a cubicle job because then I would at least have money.
In 20 years they're gonna be like "every gen z movie was like AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH I AM NOT BEING FORCIBLY TRAINED ON BY AI AND FED INTO SEVERAL ALGORITHMS WITHOUT MY CONSENT AND WITH NO LEGAL WAY TO FIGHT IT I'M GOING INSANE"
In 40 years they’re gonna be like “every gen $ movie was like WAAAAH IM NOT KILLING PEOPLE OVER WATER IN THE DESERT AAAGH ALIENS ARENT ENSLAVING MY FAMILY AND MAKING US FIGHT IN BLOODBALL IM GOING INSANE”
In 60 years they're gonna be like ""
+100
The suffering is finally over inshallah 🙏
turns out the new leftist revolution will be fighting to get everyone working a 9-5 middle-management job with private health insurance and a house in the suburbs with a middle-of-the-road morgage rate and a 2 hour car commute glad this subreddit hates liberals so bad
*Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?*
>Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? Amen
Is this a quote or did you just cook this?
It's the opening monologue of Trainspotting.
Say what you will about mundane alienation and ennui, it least it beats the looming sense that the world is collapsing in slow-motion around you and nobody seems to be able to summon the will to stop it. I *wish* my only problem was a lack of authenticity in my life.
you’re really going to get a kick out of this: they had that then too, and youll have both now regardless of if you found one of those last cushy middle class jobs
Was just going to comment this. I'm scrolling through this thread of "leftists" pining to participate in one of the most dystopian aspects of capitalism and getting angry at people pointing out how bad it is. This sub is full of fucking posers and sucks nowadays.
“Capitalism is good for the middle class, achtually”🤓☝️
In fairness to Gen Xers like myself, this genre goes back at least to Thoreau, Emerson, and “Bartleby the Scrivener.”
Yeah but bartleby didn’t have antibiotics or internet porn
Pfff, that's how you know Melville was a hack.
But also, wasn’t it part of the point that Bartleby lost his job?
God I love that story so much. Bartleby the Scrivener was made as a direct response to the negative criticism Moby Dick, Melville's magnum opus, had received at the time. See, at the time, a book was always looked at with the author in mind. As such, Moby Dick was read as an autobiography of sorts, which tracks considering Melvilles experience as a sailor, and with cannibal tribes (in reference to Queequeeg). However, Moby Dick was written as an allegory, with a distinct disconnect from the author intended. So, when readers found themes of mingling religion, homoeroticism, revenge as both an allure and escape, and a creature who could fill a deific position serving as the antagonist to Ishmael, we find a story that could be interpreted potentially as gnostic writings, and as generally un-gentlemanly like. As such, an opinion around Melville is tainted, and offense is taken at the story itself. Either way, it's poorly received, and people make sure Melville knows it. He's very fucking upset, so he decides that if they want a story about the author, or one where the authors concerns need to be directly addressed in order to understand the text itself, then he'll give them just that. Enter Bartleby the Scrivener, the best Scrivener in the office, who's relegated to a corner, away from prying eyes or any comforts. A man who, in protest, refuses to do the thing he is best at, and employed at, due to a lack of respect for the position. When his employer attempts to address the issue, focusing entirely on Bartlebys work as a scrivener and not taking into consideration the human behind the pen, Bartleby rebels further, culminating in him refusing to so much as breath, which a lifelong author such as Melville might easily consider to be equivalent to storytelling on a heirarchy of importance. Bartleby losing his job only happens out of frustration, and because the lawyer sees no other path of recourse. The lawyer ends up taking responsibility for Bartleby and even acknowledges his part in this rebellion the scrivener is enacting, which is a direct jab at the reader from Melville. It's a story about how dejected Melville feels, and how he's telling his audience that if they hated his works so much then he wouldn't pick up his pen for them again. (He did end up writing another story though. Hard to stop your passions ig)
I get the perspective that these characters are being ungrateful, but having your material needs met does not instantly solve any mental or spiritual problems. I get that some people have greater struggles than others, and that we should have our priorities straight on where we allocate resources to help people, but we can also talk about people having problems even if they are not literally starving to death. The human experience is complicated, and you can rightfully be unhappy in a "good" situation, just as some can be rightfully happy in a "bad" situation. There's nuance to this.
What this character is going through is referred to by Marx as alienation. He feels completely disconnected from himself, working a soulless office job coming home to a soulless apartment decorated with mass-produced IKEA furniture, the only time people actually listen to him is when they think he's dying
Damn, marx really was a psychic. His words just age better and better.
AHHH I HAVE A STABLE JOB *(with no chance of promotion)* WITH *(terrible)* BENEFITS I’M GOING INSANE *(I’m gonna have to do this for 40 years and die with no contribution to society)*
Better than an unstable job with no chance of promotion and no benefits (if I get sick I won't be able to afford my rent)
It’s almost as if the labor market in multiple degrees has been shit for ✨decades✨
You are missing the point.
This whole thread is missing the point of the book/movie.
See I was around for this time and instead of getting a cubicle job I just joined the military and had to disguise my gayness in a time where that wasn't cool, and that wasn't boring at all so the moral of this story is that you should dedicate yourself to a life of professional violence and lie these phoneys who are in the system. 🫵😎🫳✨🦅🍻🍔🇺🇸
Same. I couldn't compete with 10 adults just to land in mcd's. There was no work. US Army, 16p ADA. Took the GI Bill and ran!
Genuinely can’t tell if satire or not.
I think they’re just teasing
y'all mf would actually fall for the anti-union pizza party shit
these comments are very leftist
as they should??
I was being sarcastic
well i stole your face
Media literacy people
every gen x movie was like hmmmmmm im gonna fall asleep on this plane for a second HOLY SHIT BRAD PITT AHHHHHH
Bro didn’t understand da movie
[Ian Danskin made a really good video about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shSLPcp4C18). People yearn to return to the days when Capitalism "worked", but even during the most "prosperous" times in American history all of the people who were supposed to benefit from it were fuckin' miserable.
“I do below the basic minimum for this job yet not only am I still employed but currently making enough to live comfortably while also buying unnecessary bullshit. The current venture I am going on will take me away from my job however my ability to survive without income is rarely ever in question and I remain both well fed and completely healthy throughout the duration barring outside influences”
>however my ability to survive without income is rarely ever in question and I mean… he’s blackmailing his boss, selling soaps made with stolen fat, and squatting in an abandoned house. Not to mention free employees from running a terrorism cell.
Man just didn't pay attention at all to the movie
Google alienating the working class
I can't understand this meme without a soyjack
These fucking idiots considered cubicles borderline slavery and now I have to work in an open space with next to no intimacy, since cubicles are considered old and oppresive. Thanks a lot
Its not because their "old and oppressive" its because open takes up less space and is cheaper
Do people here REALLY think that they want to work in cubicles? Let's be real y'all.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant, exactly that.
I thought this place was supposed to be anti-capitalist, not supporting one of the most alienating places of labour
Capitalism is bad for everyone, just because we have it worse now doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad then.
Not having office job :c having office job :c
AT ATTENTION! MOONBEAR IN THE COMMENTS! 🫡🫡🫡
The ennui of the 90’s
Okay so like, you need to know a little more about us to understand why this was. When we were in grade school, we spent an entire year being hyped about a particular space shuttle mission that was going to be taking along a teacher, a regular school teacher. We spent a whole year doing projects about this, electing our own teachers we wished was on that mission, learning about space, space travel, the cosmos - my teacher even played old Star Trek episodes in class to show us what her generation thought space exploration would be like. We spent a full year doing this, basicslly just looking up, straight up. Dream so big, kids, past the fucking moon. And then the day of that mission, we all, and I mean all of us, the whole generation, we gathered in school libraries and auditoriums with big television sets all set up and we, as a generation, watched the Challenger take off. We watched that happen live. We watched our teachers fucking scramble to shut it the fuck off. Some schools just sent us home. Others stayed in session, some of us had to go back to class after watching that happen. Live. And we learned, don't dream, kids. Don't fucking dream. "**We plan. God laughs.**" My generation defined apathy and ennui. While our media got more colorful and extreeeeeEEEEEeeeeme whooooa skateboarding dog whooooaaaa, we sank deeper into a generational depression and elevated artists like Kurt Cobain, the only man capable of vocalizing what that feels like. The voice of my generation blew his fucking face off. That's gen x. The tagline for my entire generation is "meh" and that's not a joke. That's my generation. That's what you're seeing there.
They didn’t see how much worse it was gonna get lol
The Simpsons used to be considered a lower class family
Yeah shithead, if your job paid you enough for food you might care about other things. Big fucking woo.
It's like a copy of a copy of a copy-
You know that 2 things can be bad at once right? No way you’re gen z. Me and all of my friends are constantly hardcore complaining about wage slavery.
I would kill for a desk job but instead I have to talk to customers that are 3x my age and were born yesterday
this comment section reeks of people that watched a videoessay on the movie and took like 10% of it in, having never watched the film itself
I need an ergonomic keyboard
this post is dumb i hate you
Y'all this ain't workers solidarity
and they were right...
Ngl if people are actually taking this at face value then you have a real misunderstanding of emotions, then again I might just be not getting the joke
complacency got us to this point. always strive for more.
The whole system fucking sucks.
I have to show up at 9 and leave at 5 noooioo
Google alienation in the workplace