i am middle aged man, i experienced life since before even computer and smartphone is a thing like today.

back then, i feel that life is much easier, what i mean easier is more simple life, less competition, less stress, fresh environment, and more happiness despite lack of technology.

but right now, everything is just too complicated despite of power of tech, internet, smartphone, and AI helps, i feel that life is much harder right now, what i mean is like competition is everywhere, stressful everyday, crowded city, and i easily depressed these days.

is it just me or everyone else can relate to what happens right now?

Yep. The Amish were right.

Good time to unplug.

im putting groceries on credit. i had a great credit score till this year, i havent even tried making payments on certain things including ER bills. only a matter of time before im bankrupt, and i am also disabled. i have given up on having a future and I'm only 32.

Bills went up, pay did not keep up.

There's a whole lot of awful going on.

My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business, no, no dad, it really, really should not. Businesses do not care about people, businesses don't want anything but money, your money, and they will twist, turn, manipulate, lobby, and flat out steal or harm people to get it.

So the next time you call 311, the non emergency police line, or God forbid 911 remember, your call is very important to us, a representative will be with you shortly. If you'd like to take a brief survey after the call just stay on the line. If you'd like to talk to our chat bot Sally just say, hey Sally!

They like to say we are doing better than ever because the the numbers and technology are great. Yeah, I might not be starving, but what's the dignity in a rising tide of techno-feudalism and serfdom? And the technology that, in another society, could have freed us from long hours is instead being used by the ruling class to further exploit us.

It’s both: it’s just you and it’s everyone else. In the modern age of relatively fast technological development, people tend to get overwhelmed by change in their later years. But also things are getting worse for almost everyone[^1] under late-stage capitalism.

[^1]: Almost everyone living under capitalism, that is. In China most people’s lives have been getting easier.

I'm sure many people can relate. I'm not sure how helpful this is. You sound like you're not from an area currently in a state of war or suffering from famine. So you're probably somewhere where you could try to talk a therapist.

here i am still unable to buy a house or car

You're correct OP. I think the difficulty of modern times is multifaceted. A lot of other comments here speak to various parts of it these days, but I want to add one I've noticed related to this issue.

Pre mid-2000's, technology worked for us. If you look at the hayday of tech (1980 thru early 2000's), it seemed like every tech innovation was aimed at the consumer. The tech got better and we did too. The tech worked for us.

Nowadays (and I think I can see all this turning course around the time of the 2008 collapse), tech is not for us. The consumer has become the product, and tech is built around working through us instead of for us. Manipulating us instead of helping us. It sucks.

I have no doubt that if the washing machine was invented today instead of like ~100 years ago, they would be the size of car, and only installed in corporate offices. You'd have to go to an office to get your clothes washed. Consumer-level washers wouldn't be a thing. They'd tie it to work like healthcare. It seems like no one is interested in making quality consumer devices. The consumer devices we do have are designed to become obsolete quickly without any repairability, so you buy another fast (i.e. all modern cars).

So yea, I think when you add this on top of everything else, it help explains what is amiss with life today. My 2c

i am actually in crowded city, but unfortunately with poor therapist quality and you need to have long queue (2 hours+) and in the end just to get poor consultation results.

what i mean poor quality such as blatantly says : "just dont think about it", "its not a problem", "you are just overthinking" , etc. they just throw template answer so they can be done with you as fast as they can.

you are totally correct, it feels like tech is no longer for us, we are the product and we are forced to buy stuff with planned obsolescence, also they are getting more expensive.

guess your dad regrets his rant now, everything is just business now.

Just so we're clear, China is not a utopia, lol.

Just so we’re clear, no one is saying it is, lol.

i am not sure about china but even developed countries such as australia and singapore has their struggles now despite they are one of high income countries.

You were implying it, so I wanted to clarify.

The United Nations and the World Bank are sure about China.

I wasn’t implying it; you were inferring it.

I think this is due to increased alienation. We've become more isolated and distanced from one another and, more importantly, more distanced from our own creative self. This is what happens when production is largely automated but humans are still involved - we turn into small faceless gears in a big mechanism.

He didn't live to see any of this bullshit. He died bitching about her emails.

My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business,

Anyone who sincerely believes that is too fucking ignorant and or stupid to be taken seriously. They're a hazard to themselves and their polity.

He's dead so you can relax

I feel the same way, so many things are objectively worse. Cost of living up, government services and safety nets going away, taxpayer money funneled to billionaires, scammers, and wars. Technology is getting more expensive and more invasive. Everything is a scam or a trick now even from previously reputable businesses. The environment is being ravaged and natural resources are being used up and none of the big players doing most of the pollution care, they only care about revenue. Ethics and accountability are down, grift and cruelty are up.

If you scale up the Amish to national sized governance it would be socialism with extra steps. But I was referring to their distrust of technology.

This is true, but It's not just that. There is friction built into everything, designed to squeeze as much as possible out of us.

All of the things that were supposed to help us by making our lives easier really helped them and now our lives are harder. I don't see an end to that.

Competition (& ranking) is great. Competition over every little thing is bad.

As someone who is also middle aged, I’d say some of this is very possibly looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Personally I don’t think my life say 15 years ago was significantly less competitive, stessful, etc.

What is different though… I make over double what I made 15 years ago. I’ve had steady progression in my career from 15 years ago. But financially I am not better off than I was then (in terms of how much I have left at the end of the month). Which makes sense, in that while my salary has gone up say 5% per annum, the real cost of living has exceeded that rate.

I have had a few corporate jobs. Businesses are NOT efficient.

Yep. It's all over for humanity.
Enjoy whatever you can before it all goes up in flames.

I think about it this way.

In 1995 I could leave the house with nothing in my pocket except $10.00 and have a great day. Ride the bus with cash, get food with cash, buy stuff with cash. If I needed a ride there were free phones to car services in most stores.

Today, if I go out the door I need cash, a credit card, and a phone.

My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business, no, no dad,

The last thing you hear: Sorry but your citizen contract has been revoked in order to meet our 3rd quarter profit target. You have been terminated!

If you talk to Chinese they have the same complaints though.

Yeah companies used to pretend to please customers and now they don’t even pretend.

The staff are minimum wage and don’t care because it’s a big corporation so you can’t get good service.

The price is high because the shareholders must be kept happy so you pay over the OSA
Odds.

Corners were cut in several places making the product to please the shareholders too and the workers manufacturing got minimum wage in the factory wherever it was located and have zero interest in making good products as a result.

Basically capitalism ate itself

The amish are quite awful if you look into them. Ultimately they're just another group that exist for the sole purpose of protecting a core of old privileged men who just want to continue diddling kids and beating their wives..

No argument there. Again, how difficult is it to understand it was a joke about their distrust of technology

I believe it's a mix. Both 'nostalgia goggles' and straight up facts.

What I mean is that, when we were kids or teenagers we didn't see things the same way our parents did. They were the ones struggling, and we were pretty much just playing around and complaining of mundane stuff. So it's hard to tell how much 'easier' life was back then... we were just young.

But at the same time I do completely agree that the advancement of technology and growth of USA giant corporations really fucked a lot of things up badly. While back in the day we couldn't find answers or information to everything so easily, we lived a more 'natural' life, where everyone actually expected things to take a while to happen: you had to wake up, literally read the news if you wanted, take the car or bus to the job, and just then you started working, and while working you had to do some research and so on.

Nowadays things either happen immediately or you're tagged as lazy or something like it. You wake up with a lot of e-mails or message notifications on your smartphone, and people expect you to answer these demands ASAP. It's not expected anymore that we do each thing in it's own time anymore, and the volume of work is much bigger because you're expected to solve problems much faster. This volume of demand and unrealistic expectations definitely generate stress and anxiety, which are huge health issues nowadays.

And the fact that we now realize, thanks to the amount and speed of information we have today, how the industry leads are fucking everyone up without consequences doesn't help in the slightest, since it leads to a feeling of being powerless and exploited.

This mindset isn't really conducive to meeting your needs.

Mid twenties here, same situation. My bank closed my accounts lol

Wealth divide is worse. We are also in a time of change geopolitically. Also in a time where powerful actors benefit from creating controversy including media, social medial, political, and geopolitical. We live in interesting times.

Describe a time of geopolitical non-change please.

Well, before smartphones people didn't get bombarded with bad news all the time. The changes were there but we hardly noticed them. Now they're being shoved in our schnozes to instill fear and push us all to the far right.

yes, join your local communist party

And sister raping

Therapy can’t help with this. Op doesn’t have a problem they personally need to work through.

Is that you, Woody?

OP, it’s also going to sound like a cliche, but touch grass. The cancer-like tech companies want to replace your sense of community so that they have more power over you. F them, join a local group, and find yourself feeling more powerful when you have a real community behind you.