Why are you sad right now?

Yul Brynner · Feb 6, 2019

vilk said:
When I graduated college, my first job was in Japan. I lived there about 2 years (during which time I joined this forum!!), and I felt I had spent enough time there and I was ready to "move on" and "get my """""real"""" life started" back in America. Living in Japan was, from the beginning, only ever intended to be a temporary thing. Something to put on my resume and boost my Japanese language skills.

5 years later... America fucking sucks, guys. It's a shitty, broken society comprised 100% of people who are ultimately trying to fuck each other over. We've got broken fucked up streets and shitty crumbled sidewalks. Everyone under 30 is poor as fuck and the only jobs they can get are working for tips. Anyone making a salary makes it their life's purpose to do absolutely as little work as possible while on the clock.

We sell cars with 100k miles for $10k despite that they will need multiple thousand dollar fixes within the next 5,000 miles.
You gotta worry about people stealing from you, at all times. Not only muggers who will try to jack you or maybe kill you dead with a gun, but you shouldn't even walk away from your bag to use a restroom. Left you phone on the train? Say goodbye. And cancel all your shit immediately because someone will try to fraud you. Endless scam calls to your personal phone number.
People let their kids act like horrible little shits and give you a death stare for even hinting that you're annoyed.
Teachers failing nationwide to successfully instill education in their pupils. Our answer? Just lower the standards. Or shut it down.
In any major metropolitan area, and even sometimes just normal medium sized cities/towns, we take it as a given that there are certain sections that you simply shouldn't visit--because it's too dangerous. You gotta ought to think about if you're walking on a good block or a bad block when you see a group of people standing on the [broken, shitty] sidewalk.
Ultra-retarded shitty healthcare system everyone knows.
If you rent an apartment for less than 70% of your paycheck you can rest assured that it is totally old as fuck and falling apart, certainly not cleaned or repainted before you move in. Don't expect that air filter to have been changed within the past 2 decades. Plus you've got a greater than 50% chance of the shyster property manager trying to stick you with damages that were there from the previous tenant.
Neighbors everywhere are irreverent, loud assholes. This is my house! I can do what I want!
Construction workers build as slowly as they can. Taxi drivers take the most expensive route. We're a nation of people trying to cheat.

...there's plenty more, but I'm running out of steam. TL;DR, from having lived as an adult in Japan and then in the United States, I'm disappointed as fuck in this place. Sure, I can understand why someone would want to move here from a 3rd world shithole, but compared to a proper 1st world nation, America doesn't even come close. I've never been, but I am under the impression that many of our European users can back this up.

The only good things about the United States is the prevalence of weed and metal scenes.

Obviously this wouldn't apply to someone who is unable to speak Japanese or unable to reconcile their western upbringing with living in Japan, but for myself, aside from my immediate family and a couple friends, I can think of exactly zero reasons to stay here. Which makes me feel sad. I thought I was gonna build my life... but really, that would be pretty foolish when I have the means to live someplace much better.

I thought America sucked when I came back from Iraq the first time in 2004. It was like being unplugged from the Matrix. It wasn't a pretty life but it was real and genuine. Yes people were trying to kill me but at least they were doing it to my face and not by selling me shit that is going to kill me slowly. After I left the army I went to England and stayed for a year and married a Polish girl. Stayed for a couple of months in Poland. Loved Europe it was amazing. I didn't want to go back to America because I knew it sucked asshole but my wife was convinced we would be better off. So I had to come back alone and apply for her visa and wait a year. Fast forward eight years of being poor as fuck living on HUD and food stamps while wasting my GI Bill on the community college so I could afford to pay child support so I could keep my drivers license so I could go to school and get paid and then my wife joining the army thinking it would get us out of my little shithole redneck home town and actually being poorer than when we were living on HUD and food stamps and then her deployment and me driving a truck being gone for six months at a time and STILL not making enough money to make ends meet while we shipped our son to Poland to stay with his grandparents while she was deployed and I was driving trying to save some money. My wife left the army and got a job with Amazon in her hometown in Poland and I said fuck this shit we are moving to Poland. She works at Amazon earning slightly more than she earned in the army but here it is worth almost 4x as much and I go to school using the GI Bill online getting paid in dollars so we make it here. No car. No worries about health insurance. The food is fucking great. You can actually buy real meat that isn't some kind of ground up paste molded into the shape of what real meat looks like. We can walk the streets without worry. Our kid can go to school without being murdered. I have my "green" card for another three years and then I renew it again. I speak just enough Polish to ask where the toilet is or to buy the shopping but I would not go back to America ever ever ever. They will have to kill me first.

TL;DR Go back to fucking Japan it is a wonderful place. You never should have left.

Metropolis · Feb 6, 2019

Maybe it's like that bigger the country, bigger the issues are. Sometimes I'm just glad for living in one of the safest countries in this world. I also assume that gaps between being poor, rich or something between are huge in the US, or living in better or worse areas of cities or what not.

PunkBillCarson · Feb 6, 2019

As an American who's never been to any other country, it hurts to admit that we're not the greatest country and the realization is creeping in that perhaps we never were. We could be with a better attitude and work ethic, but I don't think it's going to happen. I've got friends in Norway, Australia, and France who've told me what their country is like and sure, there's some bullshit, but you know what ISN'T bullshit? When your taxes actually go towards education and healthcare and things people need rather than the mouths of greedy corporations. I used to believe in a shadow government and the NWO, until I started looking around and researching other countries. The world isn't fucked up, we are. Our government is completely full of shit, we're so goddamn behind socially that it's not even close to being funny. We can't talk about a reasonable level of gun control without someone pissing their pants, and to top it off in my area, it's completely close minded to the idea of immigrants because "they're coming to take our jobs!" Right, the guy from Mexico who'll do all the jobs that you won't like scrubbing shit off a toilet or working at McDonald's is coming to take your factory job. The guy from India who's got a doctorate or some kind of degree which would put your high school education to absolute rubble is coming to take your job... The people who come from countries with stronger work ethics and better educations are coming to take your job, well that's not true, but you know what? Even if it were, MAKE IT SO YOUR FUCKING EMPLOYER DOESN'T WANT TO GIVE THEM YOUR JOB! QUIT ACTING LIKE A GODDAMN IDIOT, DO BETTER FOR YOURSELF AND MAKE IT COMPETITIVE. No one's coming to take your jobs, they're coming to get BETTER jobs but you know what? If they do the job better than you do with a better attitude, oh fucking well.

Maybe it's my own ignorance, maybe I don't know how it is in other countries, but looking at the benefits they get, how much better they get along, I'm not saying that I don't want immigrants here, I just wonder why the fuck they would ever want to come to a country that treats them like shit. Wherever they came from must be fucking terrible to pick the US over a place like Norway or somewhere similar who would be more accepting of them.

lurè · Feb 6, 2019

PunkBillCarson said:
Wherever they came from must be fucking terrible to pick the US over a place like Norway or somewhere similar who would be more accepting of them.

Quality of life in northern Europe is pretty high from what I've heard (never visited those countries) but an immigrant, at least those who arrive in Italy, doesn't choose a country:
they escape from misery,war and persecutions and reach the first "rich" country.

They do not want to steal your job, instead they'll do even the most miserable job to have the freedom a person deserves.

Europe has a sad history of exploitation and wild colonisation of Africa, we enslaved people, exterminated others, hoarded every possible resource and now people get offended if an african immigrant wants to come in Europe to clean a toilet for 2$ per hour.

Demiurge · Feb 6, 2019

It's hard to tell if one is seeing society decline or if getting older just makes it easier to see the things that have always been there.

As far as cynicism & pessimism go, I think I've been somewhat precocious :lol:

. Sometimes it's like following a band when they were small and watching them get huge. I knew that the world sucked before it was popular!

TedEH · Feb 6, 2019

Maybe a more optimistic way to look at it would be to say that we're experiencing the growing pains of a society that finally has a lens through which to reflect on itself. I would think that things used to be much worse than they are now (more violence, more negative -isms, more ignorance, etc), but we didn't have things like the internet to thrust these imperfections in front of our eyes at such a constant rate.

PunkBillCarson · Feb 6, 2019

lurè said:
Quality of life in northern Europe is pretty high from what I've heard (never visited those countries) but an immigrant, at least those who arrive in Italy, doesn't choose a country:
they escape from misery,war and persecutions and reach the first "rich" country.

They do not want to steal your job, instead they'll do even the most miserable job to have the freedom a person deserves.

Europe has a sad history of exploitation and wild colonisation of Africa, we enslaved people, exterminated others, hoarded every possible resource and now people get offended if an african immigrant wants to come in Europe to clean a toilet for 2$ per hour.

Yes, I made this perfectly clear.

p0ke · Feb 7, 2019

lurè said:
They do not want to steal your job, instead they'll do even the most miserable job to have the freedom a person deserves.

There are immigrants who do, and there are those who don't. There's a lot of immigrants over here who just hang around doing nothing, refusing to integrate into the community in any way and the government just keeps feeding them.
At some point a bunch of immigrants from Syria were coming in, all of them men about my age or slightly younger - no women, children and old people... Some of them even started riots at the immigrant centers because the food they were served (basically the same stuff that our kids get at school) wasn't good enough. And apparently they'd gone through several countries already, looking for the best place to stay.

I'm not saying all immigrants are like that, but there's too many like that anyway, and they should be kicked out straight away.

And the funny thing is, if I wrote this same thing on a Finnish forum, a hundred people would tear me apart and call me a nazi :lol:

lurè · Feb 7, 2019

p0ke said:
There are immigrants who do, and there are those who don't. There's a lot of immigrants over here who just hang around doing nothing, refusing to integrate into the community in any way and the government just keeps feeding them.
At some point a bunch of immigrants from Syria were coming in, all of them men about my age or slightly younger - no women, children and old people... Some of them even started riots at the immigrant centers because the food they were served (basically the same stuff that our kids get at school) wasn't good enough. And apparently they'd gone through several countries already, looking for the best place to stay.

I'm not saying all immigrants are like that, but there's too many like that anyway, and they should be kicked out straight away.

And the funny thing is, if I wrote this same thing on a Finnish forum, a hundred people would tear me apart and call me a nazi

I could give you lots of examples of native people in my country that do the same thing (basically doing nothing). :lol:

Assholes are spread all over the world just like good people, but I think the majority of immigrants really wants to have a life like a normal person.

I would kick out from the country someone that just wants to do nothing, being an immigrant or a native.

p0ke · Feb 7, 2019

lurè said:
I would kick out from the country someone that just wants to do nothing, being an immigrant or a native.

Agreed. But where would you kick the natives?

Anyway, I'm not actually sad about that, I guess disappointed would be a more appropriate word. What I am sad about at the moment, is that my wife's been sick for almost a week now. Flu and fever... And the doctor said all she can do is rest it off. I just hope it'll pass soon because my head's about to explode having to take care of everything

Ordacleaphobia · Feb 7, 2019

vilk said:
When I graduated college, my first job was in Japan. I lived there about 2 years (during which time I joined this forum!!), and I felt I had spent enough time there and I was ready to "move on" and "get my """""real"""" life started" back in America. Living in Japan was, from the beginning, only ever intended to be a temporary thing. Something to put on my resume and boost my Japanese language skills.

5 years later... America fucking sucks, guys. It's a shitty, broken society comprised 100% of people who are ultimately trying to fuck each other over. We've got broken fucked up streets and shitty crumbled sidewalks. Everyone under 30 is poor as fuck and the only jobs they can get are working for tips. Anyone making a salary makes it their life's purpose to do absolutely as little work as possible while on the clock.

We sell cars with 100k miles for $10k despite that they will need multiple thousand dollar fixes within the next 5,000 miles.
You gotta worry about people stealing from you, at all times. Not only muggers who will try to jack you or maybe kill you dead with a gun, but you shouldn't even walk away from your bag to use a restroom. Left you phone on the train? Say goodbye. And cancel all your shit immediately because someone will try to fraud you. Endless scam calls to your personal phone number.
People let their kids act like horrible little shits and give you a death stare for even hinting that you're annoyed.
Teachers failing nationwide to successfully instill education in their pupils. Our answer? Just lower the standards. Or shut it down.
In any major metropolitan area, and even sometimes just normal medium sized cities/towns, we take it as a given that there are certain sections that you simply shouldn't visit--because it's too dangerous. You gotta ought to think about if you're walking on a good block or a bad block when you see a group of people standing on the [broken, shitty] sidewalk.
Ultra-retarded shitty healthcare system everyone knows.
If you rent an apartment for less than 70% of your paycheck you can rest assured that it is totally old as fuck and falling apart, certainly not cleaned or repainted before you move in. Don't expect that air filter to have been changed within the past 2 decades. Plus you've got a greater than 50% chance of the shyster property manager trying to stick you with damages that were there from the previous tenant.
Neighbors everywhere are irreverent, loud assholes. This is my house! I can do what I want!
Construction workers build as slowly as they can. Taxi drivers take the most expensive route. We're a nation of people trying to cheat.

...there's plenty more, but I'm running out of steam. TL;DR, from having lived as an adult in Japan and then in the United States, I'm disappointed as fuck in this place. Sure, I can understand why someone would want to move here from a 3rd world shithole, but compared to a proper 1st world nation, America doesn't even come close. I've never been, but I am under the impression that many of our European users can back this up.

The only good things about the United States is the prevalence of weed and metal scenes.

Obviously this wouldn't apply to someone who is unable to speak Japanese or unable to reconcile their western upbringing with living in Japan, but for myself, aside from my immediate family and a couple friends, I can think of exactly zero reasons to stay here. Which makes me feel sad. I thought I was gonna build my life... but really, that would be pretty foolish when I have the means to live someplace much better.

Yeah, it sucks dude but I can't really refute any of these observations. They're just about all true, in my experience.
If you don't mind me asking, where have you been stateside? Just in Chicago? Because I've heard Chicago is a major cesspit of this shit. I always tell myself whenever I get fed up with all of this garbage that it's just because I'm in California and this entire state is a joke, but on some level I think I know that's probably false. I like to think some of the different, less-traveled areas of the country are better. I've never left the country, but I'd love to check out Japan (if for no other reason than to check out all the guitars...lol).

As a kid I always thought I'd stay here and that the things that bothered me as a child wouldn't as an adult, but that was wrong. It's all the same. I tell myself that it's just people being allowed to be people, and when there aren't any restrictions on behavior people will act like fucking animals regardless of where they are; because if I end up believing that people act respectable elsewhere...I may have to learn a new language and pool together enough money to get the hell out of here and that's a daunting task :lol:

p0ke · Feb 8, 2019

p0ke said:
my wife's been sick for almost a week

Argh, and now I got the flu myself. No fever yet but my throat's sore and the stuff my head is stuffed with is lime green and really thick. I woke up with my nose all blocked, but luckily the stuff came out by itself when I got up.

SenorDingDong · Feb 8, 2019

Less than 24 hours left of my yearly visit to my family. It's difficult with work being wo encompassing. Making the most only goes so far.

sezna · Feb 10, 2019

+1 to the guy who said living abroad made him hate american life. i lived in taiwan and i want to go back every day.

also i gained ten pounds the past two weeks.

i am sad

Konfyouzd · Feb 12, 2019

I like to learn things.

So I spend a lot of time on YouTube looking for free lessons from time to time. I read the comments there hoping for someone to have an interesting take on things or perhaps additional helpful tips. It's been know to happen in home improvement videos all the time.

With musicians, though, we spend all day trying to tear each other down and it's really kind of sad to see. Music should be fun and ppl should have fun with it, but it seems ppl always want it to be a pissing match.

Someone got mad at one of my comments and looked up a video from like 6 years ago... The most he could say was "Learn to hold your pick better..."

What does that even mean? Are we that desperate to be pricks to each other?

/rant

SD83 · Feb 13, 2019

As of now, my old car is officially no longer road legal. You need to get a safety certification (if that is the right term) every other year here, and apparently there's too much rusty bits, the exhaust is slightly broken, and first gear doesn't work (it totally does, you just have to know how...), some issues with the lights... technically I can drive around for another month with the list of problems they gave me and when in doubt tell the police I couldn't get a spot at a local workshop to have it repaired and the fine if they'd stop me after that would be pretty negligible for another two months, but the repair would most likely cost more than the car itself did, probably a lot more, and that just isn't going to happen. And I seriously liked that car. First car I ever owned, got it more or less by accident (my business partner and I needed a car for the company, found one, and there was this tiny, old Daihatsu Coure which cost hardly anything and we just got two cars) but I've grown to like it a lot. It's slow, it's loud, but it never let me down, fuel mileage is spectacular, it can carry four people if need be (and luggage) and it's so tiny... I can reach out of the passenger window without leaning to the side

Turning radius is hardly larger than that of a bicycle, you can park pretty much everywhere and visibility... it's pretty much all windows. I really, really don't want to lose this stupid little thing

Konfyouzd · Feb 13, 2019

Can you keep it and use it as a track car? You can drive it at whatever speed you want legally and in some places they may even let you bring passengers.

But in all seriousness I know how much it sucks when you're approaching HAVING to get rid of a car because you either spend the cost of a new car restoring your current one and possibly fail or just get a new one...

SD83 · Feb 13, 2019

Konfyouzd said:
Can you keep it and use it as a track car? You can drive it at whatever speed you want legally and in some places they may even let you bring passengers.

It would have to be more of a kart track though as that one officially only goes to 86 mph. And that was when it was new

To be fair I consider finding a place to keep it and start disassembling it. Sure, in theory I know how cars work, but that would be a great chance to take one apart bit by bit and try to understand it without losing anything but time. And who knows, friends of mine are mechanics or know how to weld stuff, maybe in the end we can put something together that kinda works

Konfyouzd · Feb 13, 2019

SD83 said:
It would have to be more of a kart track though as that one officially only goes to 86 mph. And that was when it was new To be fair I consider finding a place to keep it and start disassembling it. Sure, in theory I know how cars work, but that would be a great chance to take one apart bit by bit and try to understand it without losing anything but time. And who knows, friends of mine are mechanics or know how to weld stuff, maybe in the end we can put something together that kinda works

Lemons -> Lemonade :yesway:

p0ke · Mar 20, 2019

My grandpa was diagnosed with prostate cancer some time ago, and a couple of weeks ago he was hospitalized because it had spread to his neck and lungs which is super painful. He hasn't gotten treatment for it, because he's too weak physically to withstand it.
We went to see him last weekend and as I was giving him a hug before leaving, he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said "this won't be the last time we see each other". I had a bad feeling about those words, even though he seemed well enough to live at least a few more years. Then yesterday morning my mom texted me that she'd gotten a call from the hospital saying his condition had basically collapsed and she's rushing to get there, but may not make it. She got there, and he's still breathing, but unconscious. Apparently no-one knows whether he'll wake up or not

The worst part is that I don't know at all what's going on inside my head and as a result I'm just being a total cunt at home... My wife keeps trying to ask how I'm feeling and all I can say is IDK, fuck off. Probably seeming very indifferent to the whole thing.
Also I don't even want to imagine how my mom's feeling. My grandma died in the summer of 2016 (in the same place too), my mom was there holding her hand as she took her last breath, and now she's there again. Luckily my uncle's there with her this time.

Why are you sad right now?

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