at some point we have to recognise that the financial anxiety young people are living through is not normal. monetising all your hobbies is not normal. hustle culture is not normal. glorifying precarious work is not normal. self-optimisation is not normal.

all these issues have a single root and guess what? it's the economic system we live under!! but we're too fucking exhausted to even see an alternative to capitalism because we're so broken and fatigued by it. it doesn't have to be this way, we can seek a different future.

As Mark Fisher argued, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism. We've been utterly brainwashed by every part of our society to think that everything we're experiencing right now is extremely normal! But clearly, capitalism is failing us.

How about instead of “manifesting” money on TikTok, we work towards building a more equal society? Just a thought.

Incredible! People in the replies to this are like “people who hustle will be relaxing when they get wealthy”. That’s IF and not when and still, that’s not a given. The fact we don’t see having a regular full-time job as enough “hustling” or whatever is so scary to me.

Do we really have to sell our own limbs and nearly kill ourselves to be seen as “worthy” of having basic human safety nets provided by our governments? Also most people who have “hustled” their way to the top have just exploited the rights of others in one way or another.

And when I say that, I’m not talking about your favourite resin maker on TikTok, but people like Jeff Bezos who own large corporations where people have to piss in bottles because they can’t catch a literal break at work.

I'm not trying to incite the whole Gen Z vs. Millennials vs. Gen X vs. boomers culture war in this thread. I'd say that most people from each of these generations are getting massively screwed over and exploited right now. Granted, some have more financial security than others.

Lots of people commenting on the use of the word "normal" in this context and have suggested the word "unhealthy" instead. To call these side effects of our economic system "unhealthy" would be to suggest that there's a healthy upside. There's not.