To people 40+

sadly this

its terrible because social media is a poor replacement for real relationships

You're 40+. You should be "hanging out". Go work on your purpose.

Shouldn't*

If anything, the convienence of phones and internet has made people less capable in social activity. Dating apps and facebooks never existed back then and people could remember things and recall things a lot easier than to day. I think its because today we have way too much stimulation that makes us jump around from thing to thing with a touch of a finger.

It's multiple things really but in the end it comes down to an individual's sense of worth and in today's competitive environment it makes things excruciatingly difficult for some that may have been stunted socially.

For example let's say you're going to a university, to make friends let's just say you were the one trying to say hi to anyone around you. What if some didn't want you to talk to them? If you react negatively to this then you have a problem. If you're in a university or at work or anyplace where you have to make a contribution you're already going in with the expectation you set for yourself that you will do well. If you believe this, you believe in yourself. What if it doesn't happen this way though, what if you fail in every setting where you have to be competitive or have to perform at the standard like the rest? You fail and if you continue to fail then your self esteem starts to drop fast. You stop wanting to talk because you're afraid you're just going to disappoint the people around you, and from that point on things can only get worse. When you hit bottom, you stop trying to talk to anyone at all because you can't perform at most standards like most people. If you end up being only capable of cleaning toilets and nothing else then you consider yourself a failure and more so if you didn't grow up with this image of yourself in the first place.

In short terms, what I see here is competition at work and anyone unable to compete with most are left all the way at the bottom of the social ladder. People that are unable to cope with the fact may end up committing suicide.

fucking ouch dude, truth but fucking ouch.

lol shut up you useless college kid no 40 year old is going to take you seriously about anything except what you learned in your textbooks.

I'll be 42 next month. I don't really know what Facebook is. Im trying to get with the times by hanging here but there's a lot of missing pieces. I think younger ones are fucked up but, I figure they've been saying that for thousands of years. Never very social but I definitely know how to do it better than kids these days. Seems it is pretty split between loud obnoxious fuckers and people who look horrified if I try to crack a joke. I fear no man in his prime and don't consider myself particularly tough. I think there are way too many labels and group identify. A problem with the "information age" is that it is full of disinformation. I hang in the break area and fuck with people because they play with phones. Shouldn't we be talking to each other? Being able to google an answer in a conversation, often misses the point of getting to deeper things through discussion and can become an "I told you" kinda thing. you can pretty much find anything to backup any point on the internet but, It isn't your point and I would respect you thinking for yourself a lot more.

I'm 41. Xennial all the wae.

Here's the deal: people used to have to hang out In Red Lobster because they couldn't simulate the experience of spending time together that the Internet affords us.

Sure, there were the three-hour phone calls, but that tied up the line unless you were ballin' enough to have call-waiting.

So, in most cases, we lived our lives by social events, from birthday parties to bridal showers to cook-outs, and many people still do, but it's supplemented by the fact that we are constantly communicating online, and at those events we are often engaged in documenting our experience to broadcast to our digital audience, which makes it feel like we aren't fully there.

So, really, we're actually more social than ever; it's just that our social expressions have moved toward the simultaneous sharing across digital platforms while experiencing the social interaction that we have IRL.

It's not better. It's not worse. It's just different.

42 here. Meeting up with others in real life was pretty much required to socialize. Talking on the phone can only get you so far. Now with im and social media you can get the same sense of socializing without actually meeting people. It doesn't mean people don't go out and socialize, and modern communication actually makes that part much easier.

I don't think people are less sociable. There's just less reasons to leave home because you can do everything from there now.

You're probably not going to catch the type of older people you're targeting for the conversation here. These Anons would have to have been misfits in the first place or were able to transition with the times better than their peers.

Huh? There have been 40+ posters in this thread. Their posts generally agreed with each other.

It's actually a little creepy how similar our assessments are, actually.

Xennials are the new black, bruh.

Yeah, im saying they won't be typical 40+ers. One of them os me and I don't agree with the others. Fuck technology. But good for them. I'm jealous in some ways.

Why do you say they won't be your "typical 40+ers"? Because they post on Jow Forums? It's not like the 20somethings here are any more typical.

So, how to I get my shit together? I barely know how to do this. I think I missed the boat.
Yeah, I guess that's why. I guess Im on the more classical side of the spectrum. I can overhaul a carburetor. I thought computers were faggy and played outside too much,

How do you get your shit together? By making whatever is necessary to get a career going that will allow you to support yourself.

No. I mean techno shit. My general shit is together just fine.

>So, how to I get my shit together?

Well, if you can, your only option is to align yourself with either a corporation or a government entity that can provide you with a reliable, stable, and livable income.

However, that's like saying the best way to get to Europe is by flying without telling someone how to fly.

I don't think you need to worry about getting your shit together, honestly.

All you can do is keep swimming.

We all missed the boat, user. By like hundreds of years. We're all treading water and trying to make each other feel better before we drown at this point.

Oh, well, right? Provide as much comfort to others as you can, but never forget that you have to paddle enough to stay afloat first.

I just wanna know how to use my phone and do e-mail. I have the meaning of the universe worked out okay.

>I just wanna know how to use my phone and do e-mail

KEK

I mean, if you want to know how to use your phone *and* do e-mail, then you're really pushing it.

I'll totally trade you the knowledge of how to do both for the meaning of the universe, though.

Deal?

positive energy from matter is canceled by negative energy form gravity. The mass of the universe equals zero. future quantum behavior depends on your predictions of it. I can't write a book or anything but there are some comfy implications.

Fair enough. I grok that.

E-mail servers are accessible from both computers and cell-phones.

If you configure your email accounts on whatever phone you have, it is literally redundant.

As long as you remember your username and password, you can manage all your email accounts at once using the mail-app on your cellphone.

If you forgot them, though, just use your desktop or laptop browser to restore them.

Otherwise, your phone is essentially a small tablet computer, if you got it within the past several years.

Don't think about it as a phone at all, really, but a device that has the capability to make phone calls.

That helps. Thanks. I will concentrate effort on phone. I feel like I ripped you off.

30 year old boomer here.

We had video games back in my day; but I had to get a ride or walk to my friends house and hang out with him and his family.

Modern 20 year olds cant seem to hold a conversation in person.

Im pushing 60 and the answer is yes and no. On one hand if you wanted to do anything that wasnt a super solo hobby like modeling you HAD to meet people face to face. At the same time I have sneaking suspicions that your average person is better at being social then in the late 70s and 80s.

>a give and take relationship.
All human relationships are based on this

I'm 33
The biggest difference between today and the "good ol' times" wass people trusted each other more.
Maybe it was a naive trust, but because of that, people were more open to interact with strangers in day to day life.

>grok
Kansas?

People still do all that stuff, the only thing that has changed is that society is much more accepting and even encouraging towards meeting people online. At the end of the day social interaction is still social interaction, everything is connected these days and you could almost argue people are more sociable these days because they have so much more information at their fingertips in one single place and have access to the ability to meet people from all different backgrounds, countries and cultures that people 20 years ago wouldn't have been able to do. I personally don't think people are any more or less sociable than they were at the turn of the century, I think the internet has just opened up avenues for more exposure towards the dark side of humanity and internet culture and memes have propagated the image of the anti social basement dweller when those always existed, people just had no awareness of that subculture.

There is literally no one on this website who is 40+

I'm 34 so that's as close as it gets

To answer your question
>Were people more sociable 20-30 years ago?
No, not really any more and not really any less.

>but people today look at their phones and ignore me

Back then they would pretend to read a magazine or listen to their Walkman on giant headphones and would ignore you as well.

In fact being a nerd or a dork or a geek or whatever you want to call it was WAY worse back then. If you had no friends, you had no friends. You couldn't subsitutate that experience by playing online games and shitposting on discord and Jow Forums for 16 hours a day. You were just alone by yourself in your room with absolutely nothing to do.

>has internet ruined shit for us?

It absolutely wrecked people's sexuality. All this hardcore choking shit, incest, trannies,whatever other weird fetish. Try walking into a video rental store 20 years ago and being like UH EXCUSE ME WHERE ARE THE INCEST HENTAI RAP VIDEOS NONE OF THIS NORMIE VANILLA SHIT PLEASE. Hell try beating off without any porn whatsoever, and then a couple of decades later there's more porn on the internet than you could ever watch in your whole life.

It also became an incredibly efficient tool and spreading terrible ideas around. Just like 10 years ago, nevermind 20+ there were no Kekistan vs SJW bullshit or Incels or whatever else modern day internet culture bullshit. Everyone's a special victim these days, everyone's a celebrity, everyone is special so no one is special.

Attached: i-used-the-internet.jpg (532x1200, 106K)

Yes, people were indeed more social in the past. It is a shame that the norm nowadays is to not truly connect with others, but it was never common to connect on a deeper level. It used to be common to share certain interests, to meet new people through mutual acquaintances or at events or such, but these would typically not become close friends.

I myself was very fortunate to have quite a large number of close friends, brethren even, with whom I shared a background that nobody born after a certain point in time shares. That bound us together for the longest time, but with time we drifted apart regardless. One could even say that the Internet tore us apart, but it wasn't the Internet by itself. The differences and the strain began already in the distant past, some doing things that others certainly didn't approve of to say the least. Nonetheless, it was the Internet that eventually made us not stay in touch. At first it was amazing that we could communicate with each other even when we were on opposite sides of the Earth, but with time less and less of us bothered to keep in touch with the others.

When we had our decennial gatherings, where all of us got together and brought whomever we wished with us, there could be as many as a hundred individuals present in the past. At the most recent gathering, in 2011, only four of us came and in total there were only about two dozen individuals. It must be noted that at least two of our old group have quite certainly passed away, however, and a third is presumably either senile in a home somewhere or in prison, so it would be unrealistic to expect everybody to show up. For the 2021 gathering, additional effort will be put into summoning all those capable.

So to answer your final question in a nutshell, I do believe the Internet and in particular social media has ruined much of the social fabric of society.

>48yo London fag here
>All I used to do was hang out with mates. Usually see bands, go drinking, go to festivals..
>Indoor stuff - I used to play on my Amiga a bit and write music in my home studio but socialising always took precedent.
> Some of my workmates are in their early 20s - the one thing I pity them for is the cost of everything now. Even on a shit salary in the early 90s I never had a problem with travelling around europe/Japan/Thailand nor just going out in London. Salaries have not kept pace with the cost of living by a long shot.