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

Exactly - though I don't know if it's just bad luck but serious illness and death tends to mean even the fun times they just aren't there for.

On the black death as absolutely awful as that was it did present opportunities for those left alive - social mobility increased I think it further decreased with covid.

The miserable weather just adds to it.

I do think the obvious decay in the public space adds to the doom and gloom. City centres should not have a row or rows of boarded up shops. Some of the potholes make the UK look like a very poor country. Everything feels precarious.

I read somewhere that those left after the Black Death negotiated much better conditions.

We know, but that has nothing to do with the point being discussed.

Yes it also resulted in the climate getting cooler due to the lack of people and consumption.

"City centres should not have a row or rows of boarded up shops."

Why not? Two decades of cheap debt where people were encouraged to borrow like drunken sailors on basic property coming to a shuddering halt is bound to have some effect? The most likely effect for the over-borrowed is that they stop spending on High St. tat and start trying to make their debt payments each month.

That’s great, but what if you don’t have your immediate family around you?
My parents live abroad. I was very grateful when a couple of good friends supported me through a tricky time, and I make sure to do the same for them.

@CrashyTime I am not saying we need to have a certain amount of shops. Simply in the past there would be urgent action to work with the owners to improve the public space. Turn it into houses? There used to be flats in Edinburgh High Street that people lived in until the 1960s. There was housing in many town city centres.

Walking past people camping out in tents in the High Street. Drug addicts begging for change.

Our major cities will end up like LA or San Fran at this rate.

True, but the councils all got into the property game as well, commercial property because I think the government asked them to be more "creative" than just bumping up council tax, nudge nudge wink wink why not pile into our favourite Ponzi scheme, what could go wrong? Well what went wrong is Covid, too much debt and WFH, now we have councils going bust all over the shop, not sure about Edinburgh council though but what put me off them was the shared repair scheme scandal which I`m sure you know about, I think a couple of people in the housing dept. did prison time? It was like an episode of the Sopranos without the charisma.

@CrashyTime I was not talking about Edinburgh council now. Simply saying that in the seventies all the people who used to live in the high street were moved out. Shops can be repurposed.
But the reality is what that EU money would have supported. There is no EU money now. Just the Conservative party plundering British assets and lining their friends pockets.

Well suddenly some people who had nothing owned land because all their family had died. Also, because a huge amount of the labour force had died, workers could pretty much name their price. Also, women did well as they were left with land/farms that previously would have been owned or inherited by men.

Not sure of the point you are making though.

Yes it does. The discussion was that people are spending a long time looking at social media on their phones. Saying that we had phones in the 80s so that’s the same is nonsensical.

I worry that to young people it can seem a bit that people are supposed to be all zappy and zingy now or have an identifiable reason not to be, when in the past, somewhat ironically, there was much more room for difference.

No, that wasn`t the discussion I was having.

We had the tractors and farmers out today locally. Drakeford was here, he doesn't like farmers. A farmer we know attended when he got home tonight a police officer was there. His family have received a death threat. The worlds gone nuts when a local farmer can't protest without putting his family at risk.

Funny you say that

In the 80's when I was 17 I remember an older woman- in her 40's saying things were so expensive that couple were putting off having children for longer and longer ...

As devastating as the black death was, it wasn't the end of the world. If my having a positive outlook on the future makes me a pollyanna, I'll take it.

In the 80's when I was 17 I remember an older woman- in her 40's saying things were so expensive that couple were putting off having children for longer and longer ...

TBF, we did. Well, I did - and when I was doing school drop offs in my 40s there were lots of people of either my age or only a few years younger.

Socrates (469-399 BC) Ancient Greek philosopher. "The young people of today think of nothing but themselves . . ." There's a lot more which has resonated down the centuries. Look it up, he could be writing for the Daily Mail

That quote is made up.

Yes, so much so, @Hardbackwriter . And I then resolved to always have a positive attitude about people younger than me and never be an old fart saying such things.

I've always been seriously impressed by the professionalism and hard work of younger colleagues.

Apparently not, @ItsAllAboutTheDosh
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/673142

@Changed18 There is zero evidence Socrates ever said that. It first appears in a book in 1953 attributed to him and has been repeated by people ever since.

Aha, I stand corrected, @ItsAllAboutTheDosh