Sometimes, though, they make more sense than they used to.

When I originally saw the Matrix in theaters, I fucking hated Cypher and his willingness to exchange the comforts of the Matrix over reality.

Now... Fuck, give me that steak, Agent Smith. I'm with Cypher, I'm not wasting my life saving all these jagoffs who would rather live in the fucking Matrix anyway. Can't beat em, join em.

Especially since you have no idea you're in the matrix. As far as you're concerned, you're just living life like normal.

Unfortunately, with my luck I'd still be poor, but being poor in 1999 America is still not that bad.

To be fair, I'm sure it still sucked. I'm sure it was just as unfulfilling then as it is now, it just sucks WAY more now.

And the fun thing is we (GenX) are still working! So we’ve just got to experience the fucking slow slide to oblivion where every day is just worse than the last! Yay!

Every generation thinks they're the first to experience pain or angst or hardship. We're only a few generations from millions of people being sent to their deaths in globe spanning industrialised slaughter so maybe things aren't always that bad?

Do you not have spell check?

Sure, but we were stuck at entry level jobs and told that the boomers were going to retire any day now and if we just stick with it, we'll shoot right to the top. Then as they started to retire, those jobs are not being filled and there is a fresh round of layoffs coming. Oh, and also being told by those same boomers that they owned a house by our age.

Isn't the point of "falling down" that

::: spoiler spoiler
he got fired/laid off from his defence industry job?
:::

I read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World... I see full employment, housing, free time for activities...

"If you could fight anyone from history, who would it be?"

"Donald Trump."

"Gross."

"What about you?"

"Elon Musk. Tall, long reach... Loser guys'll fight till they're burger."

later

"Thurnberg. I'd fight Greta Thurnberg."

"Ooo! Good answer!"

Yes, and in Office Space, they had consultants firing people left and right while others were asked to come in on the weekends.

Or apparently an enter key

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.

Gen X: why aren’t the millennials thanking us? We took away their benefits and stability. They should feel way more alive now!

I thought the whole point of Fight Club was the narrator realizing he was a terrible person, with or without Tyler.

I mean the film starts with him exploiting dying people so they will listen to him. Not recognizing that the only people open to listen are those dying, and he's exploiting their openness to lie to them and get the "crying" he needs. He doesn't give one flying fuck about what is happening to any of those dying people, he only barely stands up for Bob.

...while management did fuck all.

They even tap Peter for management material when he stops giving a shit, like it's an expectation that you stop caring about things to be in charge.

At work, when people ask how it's going, I always say, "Every day is better than the next." Been doing it for years now. So far only one person has clocked that if each day is better than the day that comes after, that means every day is a new low.

I always understood it as Peter getting tapped for management not because he stopped giving a shit, but because he was honestly and accurately describing the root cause of problems caused by having so many middle managers (and he did that because he stopped giving a shit and just told them how fucked the workplace is)

You're assuming a lot of media literacy out of the audience. Most people I know who are really into Fight Club miss all subtext (and quite a bit of text) and unironically see it as an indictment of modern society and a call for a "return" to a mythical hyper-masculine strength-based patriarchal society.

It costs too much. I can't afford to pay attention.

Oh of course, I'm not speaking about the average jabroni's interpretation. Pretty sure Chuck Palahniuk didn't intend Tyler to be read as a hero. Yet, here we are.

if this is directed at me dont worry I quite the force about two weeks ago. Im really hoping this comic stuff works out or ill be homeless soon.

u u.

the soft ware I was using made it extremely hard to edit text I figured it out by the end but at that point it was to late I already merged all the vector layers

My takeaway was not that he was giving them the info they need, but rather that his new persona was so charismatic that he became the one they liked & remembered. A lesson that it isn't what you know, but who you know.

I see people living in tents who get up and go to work every morning. A person who works full time should be able to afford a home on their own, they shouldn't have to share a rent to afford housing. I don't scorn people who choose a rent rather than have a roommate at 40 years old. This is our reality.

It's incredible we haven't hanged them by their entails. On the contrary, we just elected another do-nothing government because they fed the identity politics of right-wing colonialist nationalists who think they're leftist freedom fighters.

No I mean the "stable jobs" meme. Only one of the characters pictured there had a stable job, and his was so morally corrosive and isolating that he really did go insane. And then he lost the stable job.

That is a very good point, I had never looked at it that way. Sometimes being the personality hire is the best form of advancement, by which I mean that if your supervisors like you, you can get away with a lot more

where every day is just worse than the last! Yay!

What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?

Yes, yes it is

Oh this is resonating. that’s not good.

Chat is it chudcoded to feel an emotion about a cultural touchstone from antiquity

Wow, that's messed up.

We are all brothers in antiquity

I can't even imagine. It felt hard growing up in the time that I did, but I look at what my kids are facing and I can't even imagine how it must feel.

Gen x isn't to blame for that though. They were born after boomers and many of them faced the same struggles that millenials and current generations are now.

Pretty fucking bleak. I feel for them too.

Ah yes. Our for fathers

I always find amusing the scene he’s in at the table with Smith, where he says “I don't wanna remember nothing. Nothing, you understand? And I wanna be rich. Y’know, someone important… like an actor.”

Buddy, you just said ignorance is bliss; when they toss you back in the matrix, they can make you anything they want you to be, and you’re never gonna remember that you were never a perpetually strung-out meth addict.

Smith even seems to be thinking that when he smiles and says, “Whatever you want, Mr. Reagan.”

Four fathers.

I'm not going to say it, but I'm too pedantic to not at least comment.

I think men would misunderstand the message of fight club even more now and it would become a white supremacist hit.

Don't you want to be an millionair?

That's another Brad Pitt character, Achilles:

I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Except Musk had a deeply embarassing exchange of taunts with Zuckerberg until Zuckerberg offered to fight him MMA rules and asked Musk to pick a time and a date. Embarassingly, Musk chose the Colliseum in Rome, an impossible venue.

This really happened right? I may have taken an Ambien.

Here - I can be your spell/grammar check for you:

First panel:
Watching old movies is weird.
Like, imagine if something like Fight Club came out today.

Second panel:
Fight Club in 1999:
We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need; we are the middle children of history.

Third panel:
Fight Club in 2026:
We work jobs we hate but still can’t afford basic needs, while people born to wealth call us lazy.

Fourth panel:
Our forefathers were told that if they work hard they could become rock stars or millionaires.

Fifth panel:
We were told that if we work hard then maybe we will be able to afford rent and groceries.

Might be worth putting your text into a spell/grammar checker before adding it to an image if English isn’t your first language or you struggle with grammar, as I’ve made around 20 fixes to your text of less than 100 words.

For reference, I’ve also spell/grammar checked this comment I’m replying to:

The software I was using made it extremely hard to edit text. I had figured it out by the end but at that point it was too late; I had already merged all the vector layers.

8 changes to a comment of 35 words.

Yea, that's life these days. Pretty fucking messed up.

Congratulations on finding your humanity again.

Just because things were worse before doesn't mean things aren't that bad in the present.

Things could be better and there is no legitimate reason to not make it so.