To think there's an off/bad vibe out there?

[ARichSeamToMine]

Does the world feel "off"?
Sorry if this seems ranty, I'm really interested in the vote though.

I'm feeling like there's a weird vibe out there.

I live in London, meet a lot of people through work and am not just judging by my circle.

I've been struggling to articulate this.

I'm late 40s and have seen recessions etc before.

Was out in the City tonight and I would say bar and restaurant were busy for a Monday night, so good there. The street I was on had several completely closed offices, pubs and two gyms, which was sad.

I understand that changes in social habits have been affected by working patterns etc.

I just feel there is something else at play

I increasingly find that people are a bit...strange? We saw groups in the bar, who presumably went out together from choice, just gazing at their phones. I was never anti tech but I'm starting to wonder if there is something in the idea that it affects communication skills.

my friend is worried about her dad because he constantly watches videos of fights - this is a TV show in the US now I hear.

I know a lot of people in my age group feel very "meh" and have little enthusiasm for things, but it's not just middle age. I don't think so anyway.

I'm happy if people are happy, but starting to wonder if they are happy. I meet a lot of people who don't want to go out, are up at 5am walking a dog, they take care of themselves with a good diet, often vegan, don't drink alcohol.

I'm not saying any of these things are bad. I can see if the City is reasonably busy on a Monday night, hospitality must be recovering, which is great.

But something out in the world feels off...like people aren't interested in much.

My online creative writing group has almost no posts. The tutor is regularly cancelling workshops and looking to do online only.

I'm in touch with a couple of exes and we are staying friends but they seem to do nothing but gaming. One in particular has no friends and is not bothered.

I might get flamed but I do wonder if men are particularly prone to doing less stuff if they are single.

Again, that is fine if they are happy. But I get this sense that people aren't happy.

Social anxiety seems very much on the rise.

Just curious to know if others get this vibe.

YABU - people are fine and just living life as usual

YANBU - people are losing communication skills and becoming unhappy

Of course something feels off. There is genocide happening and the majority of the developed world is either assisting or standing back and letting it happen.
There is a Russian Despot undertaking “special military operations” and shamelessly murdering people who dare to speak against him.
The USA has a population of 330 million, yet the best it can pick to lead them is the choice between an octogenarian with dementia, or a psychopathic narcissist.
Fuck knows what’s going on in China.
Our NHS has all but collapsed.
We are in recession, and despite being a first world country we have people existing in Third world conditions.
Brexit has fucked up the country even further.
Influencers are the new religious leaders.
need I go on ?

Agree.

Over the past 2 years, I often feel like i'm living in the movie 'idiocracy'.

Feels like society is on the brink of collapse sometimes. Nobody cares anymore. The government has realised they can do whatever they want, and the people won't do anything.

It's weird to explain, and sometimes I wonder if it's just me being hyper critical, I'm glad you started this thread OP.

To be fair that’s been the same for years that’s not new.

So, where do you live? In the UK? Yes I had children affected badly by it plus my elderly Dad stuck in a house for 4 months who was too scared to let me visit my poor DH working horrendous hours and siblings working at the coalface in London hospitals, pharmacy and GP queues in the snow, funnily enough I experienced all that too but it wasn't years was it???

Newname, hy live somewhere so remote if you miss social interaction, and if the kids schools are nearby, isn't there a community there?

The ongoing genocide is disturbing and upsetting me a great deal. The usual checks and balances that I assumed always existed are merely smoke and mirrors and it's really awful to realise that the world you assumed you were living in doesn't actually exist. I know there have been previous genocides, but somehow they seemed more remote due to us not being involved. We're actively supporting and facilitating it now. Trump ending up as president of the US was disturbing enough a few years ago, to think he'll probably be there again is downright surreal. I shudder to think what will happen then.

The more media you consume the more anxious, fearful and unhappy you will be. Get off the screen, stop obsessing over headlines and live your lives. I say this as an ex journalist. Newspapers are a business, they are there to make sell papers and make money and encourage people to buy buy buy. The world has always had it mad dictators and wars. I suspect it always will because men and testosterone and money which is led by fear.

Well being vegan shows you give a fuck about the world so I wouldn't take that particular thing as a sign of a lack of enthusiasm.

I do know what you mean. But I live outside the UK and it's not like that here.

@cookingwithabigail when there are discussions happening, as to whether the newborn babies, murdered in their cribs at Nassar hospital last week were “lawfully killed” under the terms of war or not, then you know humanity has gone past the point of no return.

I think the pandemic accelerated this.

However, on a personal note, I scroll more now than I did during lockdown. I was able to 'do' more things in lockdown than I can now - be they in my home or out. I understand all options are open now, but for me personally, they're closed - I just can't do them. On paper, I have lots more free time - in practice most has to be spent resting. Long covid has made my world very very small. Looking back at lockdown, I had so much more genuine freedom than I do now.

Rooftopbird- absolutely!

If course it goes without saying that that's horrific but honestly do people think that when people stuck heads on spears over the entrances to cities 500 years ago that that wasn't 'worse' humans have always treated other humans atrociously. I suspect it's no different now. Hung drawn and quartered? Think about what that meant?!

I feel quite down when I think of the future. I see more & more how many obvious lies we're being fed, easily disproved lies, and that some people have lost the skill of critical thinking, even simple fact checking, and believe absolute rubbish. I find it shocking & depressing at the same time. I think much of the world is spiralling downwards. We seem to have lost our collective fight & spirit.

I've felt like that in the past but I don't feel that way now, nor do I think it's the same with other people.

Having said that, I don't live in London. London has been in decline for years, and you don't notice it when it's a gradual process, but when you go to another city you realise how tired, run down, scruffy, dirty, and behind the times it looks compared to other big or capital cities - especially the Scandinavian ones. It's embarrassing because there's no reason for it to be like that.

I’m not religious but I am starting to feel like we all need to go back go church. Rather than it being about god as a beardy old man figure in the sky, it could be more about taking the time each week to do something meaningful and to connect with other real people in the local area. It feels like we’ve lost so much as everything has become about buying things. Spend money on this meditation app, buy this to look better, decorate your house for every festival - but what if what we really need is human connection, time to think in a designated, historic, special space, and people to celebrate good times with / support in the bad. I don’t know, but I just feel the same, OP, there seems so much unhappiness or antipathy about and lots of people seem so lost and lonely.

Really interesting thread OP. Unease is right. Though I live somewhere quite different to you and see different examples. I’m extremely happy in my life day to day, it’s unrecognisable to before covid, and I socialise with other people who are happy, healthy, the right amount of busy for them. But I feel a small creeping sense of unease at the same time about the world outside of my bubble.

You know in dystopian films they show the news footage of the events which led to the current state of affairs in the film, it feels a bit like that. Covid, a war in Europe, war in the Middle East, lack of biodiversity, people addicted to tech and afraid to leave the house. In bad weather, with awful headlines, when I haven’t had enough sleep, it feels like something’s building and we won’t know what it is till we can look back and see it properly.

Having said that, social cohesion is very strong here. Two families at school are going through tough times and the way the area has rallied has been typical and heartwarming. It got better than ever at the start of covid and has continued well in the years since, people genuinely care for each other and look out for each other.

I live in Austria and it's the same here.
People have come very insular but also much more short-tempered and aggressive. I've played in musical groups for 40 years and it's never been as bad as it is now - people are grumpy, unreliable, in a bad mood a lot of the time and basically can't be bothered. It just doesn't feel right any more and I'm at the point now on giving up on it completely because it isn't fun anymore. People sit and scroll through their phones at break times and there's little interpersonal communication which means that the music isn't satisfactory either because there needs to be a vibe between players for it to really work.

I have also found it more and more difficult to teach children music. I've upped the age at which they can start to 9 years old. Previously I started them at 6 or 7 but I've noticed a massive drop in coordination skills, ability to read, concentration and self-discipline (to practise, even with help from parents - who are also less bothered about helping to set up a practise routine at home and showing interest).

On the other hand, I have just come back from a week cross-country skiing in Norway and it was fantastic. There was a much different vibe out there among the people on the trails and then in the restaurants at lunch time, as well as in the town itself. People seemed happy. And I realized I haven't seen happy people en masse for a very long time - a few individuals yes, but not where the majority of the people wandering around the town have a smile on the face and where the majority of people in shops etc look happy.
I think it's to do with an outdoor lifestyle which does make a difference. I myself had been in a stinking mood for a month or so but as soon as I got out every day doing some serious exercise it lifted immediately.

A lot of this has to do with habits learned in Covid - staying inside and doing individual activities - netflix, scrolling through crap on the net. But also the state of the world in general which is very worrying indeed and understandably causing a lot of anxiety and an "end of times" feeling.

I understand OP. I am depressed and think a lot of people are, but I feel the pressure to keep up a pretence everyday. I think a lot of people are like this. The off-ness you feel is probably cracks in the facade that people put up for the sake of carrying on.

I still write out shopping lists and WhatsApp family to find out when I can actually talk to them. I was against an automatic car but having sold my aged manual gear car, my new automatic is great and I won’t go back. Especially good on winding country lanes😊

I would have liked to have thought that humanity would have moved on in that time. We are living in a modern “civilised age” , not the ACTUAL and appropriately named “Dark ages” of 500 years ago.

I also think everyone’s got mild social anxiety or agoraphobia from working at home for so long, even if they say they actually prefer it as ‘they don’t like people very much’. Actually, especially if they say that. The best thing that could happen is everyone gets forced back to work again (another unpopular opinion I hold).

Not exactly an ODFOD response but....

There is an element of your reasoning that says because you didn't experience or react to the things you mention, they must be minority experiences, exagerrated or perhaps even fabricated and "being a grown up" is the answer.

I've come up against this alot in several instances in my life and it always goes back to the idea that the experiencer is somehow at fault for not getting with the programme and forging on with "resilience,".

It's ever so slightly crazy making when mostly what is being looked for is assurance that a bad thing has happened that has affected you profoundly, along with altering your worldview, and one is hoping for some recognition and support in order to re-calibrate.

It is a fine line to tread between validation and enabling paralysis.

Widowhood for example is a paradox One is expected to both be devastated and unable to function while celebrating the life of your dead spouse, moving on, building a new life and finding the positives at all times. Perhaps that is only my perception and experience but it's alot to get one's head round when you are at the centre of that particular shitstorm.

There is a trend to toxic positivity, and another to complete darkness - finding a "happy medium" is really hard. From my personal perspective while I weathered the pandemic with vodka and "Blitz spirit" and had a vague sense of hope as things returned to some sort of routine, the death of my DP has unleashed a spiral of catastrophe that falls firmly in the "You couldn't make this shit up" territory. I'm currently surviving out of spite to be honest, but trying to maintain some sense if compassion and empathy for my fellow man, but I'm only human.

I think on that meme often - the one about being fed up with going through things that don't kill you but make you stronger.

That's my point, we haven't moved on have we. Humans are cruel, domineering and aggressive on the whole, that's why we're at the top of the food chain. Civilisation is just a veneer. To stop oneself going quite mad with all the grimness of it we have to look for happiness in unexpected places. I have to force myself to be upbeat as honestly I'd find it quite easy to spiral down the plughole of doom.

Human beings are horrid - savage, power-hungry animals under a very very thin cloak of modern sensibility. The things we do to one another are evil. The despotic men in power facilitating these things are evil. Governments are evil for turning a blind eye. All anyone cares about is money money money.

We feel bad because we know how ghastly and monstrous we are and we also know that the Earth would be far better off without us. We've failed - at protecting our environment, at caring and loving one another and looking out for the most vulnerable, at living in peace, at prioritising moral compass over financial gain and consumerism.

We've failed. And we are paying the price; mass genocide, babies being murdered in their cots, cruel, inept, corrupt governments, manic, power-hungry despots, wars being fought and lost on all sides, looming climate catastrophe and the eventual ruin of societal structure by imposing AI and technological takeover.

The end. That's why we all feel like shite.

The only time I see people happily interacting and seeming 'free' is on walks or in the mountain walkers pubs. People immediately talk to you (even though I'm struggling to breathe on an ascent) and seem to ask you questions. Where you from? Which fell have you been on? What was the weather like? It's not too far to the trig. Isn't the weather lovely. Met Office said a storms coming in. Mind that ridge it's slippy. You'll need your crampons at the top etc. It's a big indicator of inequality though as most of the people engaging in it are privileged - walking boots, coats and equipment and the cost of getting there and staying there means you need money to put one foot in front of the other. The public transport is shocking. But even on my local walks in the Yorkshire Dales, there's a feeling of connectivity.

At work, on public transport, in shops, even in social situations people seem to have lost the art of transactional conversation and just monologue at you. The lack of curiosity, disconnect and care is noticeable. It's the biggest shame. I think it's lack of community too, as well as screens.