Is it just me or i feel life is getting more difficult these days?

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?

It’s really hard to tell what was just younger kids not being exposed to the world vs. things actually getting worse. I was a kid during '08, and things didn’t really change for me at home cuz my family was always very frugal, especially my dad.

Climate change has empirically gotten worse tho. Inflation, enshitification, food quality, all of it SEEMS worse but it’s hard to quantify it you know?

nah lil bro. The enshittification is real and huge. The quality of goods, particularly what used to be reputable brands, is 100% in the shitter. I have started only buying fabric with natural fibers in them because polyester sucks. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it used to be. I’ve been a regular grocery shopper for the entirety of this century. Things were pretty much the same price for years and years. There was a bump in 08 to punish us for electing a half-black guy and demanding reasonable pay, but then it stabilized until around 2018. Shit has increased in price by multiples while quantity and quality have plummeted.

We’re fucked bro. Get whatever enjoyment out of this life while you can. There are some unprecedented hard times coming. We’re going to pay for the recklessness and irresponsibility of the boomers. Buy hey, they got theirs, didn’t they?

So, I hear you, but i saw this meme of newspaper clippings going back to like 1900 where business owners were quoted “people don’t want to work anymore”. We think it’s a new idea but its like 100+ years old.

Maybe companies have always looked for ways to cut corners and screw customers, we just focus on our last 20 years. And it’s not that before we got older they were all reputable and its only recently they’ve gone this greedy path. Its just cuz we didn’t know about it as kids, especially cuz the interent wasn’t huge yet.

I’m not trying to say things aren’t getting worse. They definitely are. But what if we’ve had this long, general decline of everything that’s always been happening and we didn’t see it or feel it cuz we were just kids.