Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

thecut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 669 posts

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#161

Post by balls187 »

fromthestart wrote: post #153

>I’m trying, Polly. I am. I’m dating. I’m working out and working hard. Listening to music Yet she still refuses to lower her standards, apparently. Empowerment can be a hell of a drug. Hell, she has dozens of articles explaining away personal responsibilit and rationalizing the wretched state of her life[1]. E.g. she has another post captioned "resist the urge to treat friendlessness as a personal failure." I think…

> Yet she still refuses to lower her standards, apparently.

How do you know what her standards are?

Heather aka Polly writes advice columns.

The person you quoted is asking Polly for advice.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#162

Post by mismith »

jmoss20 wrote: post #147
api wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social trends almost always overcorrect. I wouldn't be surprised if we overcorrect the other way in future generations, then back again, etc. People seem to have trouble with the idea that the optimum is not at an extreme.

> "... the idea that the optimum is not an extreme." I'd put this as "not an extreme" /on any of the axes that we're considering/. Life has an awful lot of dimensions -- if you imagine a very high-dimensional hypercube and draw the optima randomly, the optima are almost guaranteed to be close to some surface (some "extreme"). To my eye, the real problem is finding the correct perspective -- the one at which an optimu…

That’s a super deep comment; thanks for wording it so lucidly that I could connect my own thoughts on the matter to it

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#163

Post by fein »

mooseburger wrote: post #13

/pol/ is always right, eh? No, seriously, this woman is probably real, but her life story reads like a 4chan meme.

This was the very first thing I thought, about when the "and my cat" line hit.

It's a winning game of cat lady career woman bingo in a single article. The memes are offensive because they're true.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#164

Post by almost_usual »

simonsarris wrote: post #11

"We should be more honest about the real tradeoffs between endless wanderlust/adventure-seeking and putting down real roots. The things that make for a great instagram feed or Bumble profile are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." (Friend's comment on article) Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the po…

> And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you, like your children will.

Earth is changing rapidly, I don't think it's a bad idea to travel and experience certain facets of life before they're extinct. Places or things you want to see in the future may not exist by then.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#165

Post by keiferski »

Myrmornis wrote: post #137
keiferski wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

I feel like what he's saying is similar to the way that the open interval between 0 and 1 has no end when viewed as an open set in real analysis. Which is nice, but the only time I felt that I could advance time by infinitesimally small increments I was on mushrooms.

I read an explanation of the quote awhile ago, and IIRC the German word he uses is actually better translated as “outside of time” and not “timeless.”

In other words, the only way to escape the concept of incremental time is to not think of it as increments at all.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#166

Post by robotrout »

The thing that struck me was her age. She's 35. I like to tell people that I went from being young to being old in one birthday. There was something really significant about that birthday for me, that seemed to carry me instantly across the mental threshold from "having all the time in the world" to "you're old now".

Of course, now I'm much older, and think of 35 and even 40 as being young, but I do remember it as being a big deal at the time.

This woman reached that age and freaked out, since she evaluated where she was at in life and decided she was behind. It's definitely an age where you do take stock of your progress. At least it was for me.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#167

Post by ppeetteerr »

rayiner wrote: post #130
simonsarris wrote: post #11

"We should be more honest about the real tradeoffs between endless wanderlust/adventure-seeking and putting down real roots. The things that make for a great instagram feed or Bumble profile are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." (Friend's comment on article) Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the po…

I agree that this is bad advice. I'm 35. I've got a wife, two kids, and a weird house with tons of maintenance projects. My parents live five minutes away, and I spend most weekends at Home Depot or hanging out in my parents' living room with the kids. I work too much and don't sleep enough. And I'm blissfully happy. I say this is bad advice not because I think what makes me happy will make everyone happy. I know lot…

What if those who travel and live a nomad life aught not have kids?

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#168

Post by watwut »

J-dawg wrote: post #124

It’s politically incorrect, but I feel like feminism has sold a massive lie to women like this. Admittedly much of what she describes could apply to either gender, but it’s women who are hit hardest by fading looks and declining fertility. It used to be accepted cultural knowledge that if a woman desired marriage and children, she should probably spend her ‘best years’ looking for and committing to a husband. Now you…

Because it makes for the situation where women is comitted to familly and husband seeing her as nagging wife preventing him to do more fun things then boring familly. And she is nagging in truth, because it is not that great as single people without children imagine. It makes for moms who are criticized for living through children and damaging them that way and kids are supposed to leave anyway. Kids are not supposed to stay to make company to parents anymore.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#169

Post by [deleted] »

balls187 wrote: post #69

I think the issue isn't the "wasted life" but rather how one measures their life. If she was in a committed relationship, had offspring, a home with equity, savings, and a career, there is no guarantee that would bring her fulfillment. And even if you had that fulfillment, there is no guarantee it lasts. Life is hard, it's cruel and not at all fair. And the way to survive is learn that no matter how hard it hits, you…

[deleted]

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#170

Post by kirsebaer »

freehunter wrote: post #98
nostromo wrote: post #10

I think the parents of many 20 and 30-somethings played a role in so many young(ish) adults failing to launch. American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc. I think parenting has ov…

I feel similarly with the differences between me and my family vs my wife and her family. I grew up not desperately poor, but with only just enough money to get by. In the late 90s we had a computer, a basic Windows 95 machine with dial-up and about 1/4 of the RAM/CPU that modern machines had, but we had one. That's about all we had for modern comforts, which I think forced me to be laser-focused on one activity. The…

You are onto something with letting kids be bored and struggle to create their own activities.

You taught yourself to use a computer, without taking an expensive "kids learn computers class", right?

Signing kids up for all these classes and structured activities can lead to a sort of passivity where they expect adults to tell them what to do.

Post reply on HN