My life, my few friends’ lives, my family members’ lives, shit just sucks all around. I can’t remember the last time I went somewhere for lunch and paid less than ten dollars. God, remember when fast food used to be the cheap option with somewhat of a reputation for being poor people food? I sure as hell do because that was like 10 years ago (in my experience at least). It’s so incredibly, incredibly fucking ominous to see that all the cashiers are gone and have been replaced by kiosks.
And part of me understands that this is just the natural progression of technology or whatever the fuck, but there are days where I go without talking to someone in real life. The same shit is happening at pharmacies, grocery stores, even Godamn doctors offices. Am I just being too glass half empty? Every part of this seems like a living nightmare and it just continues to get worse
Every time I go to one of the aforementioned establishments, they’ve added another camera or put another item behind a paywall. This just seems to me like brick and mortar stores are becoming high security centers in an effort to push everyone to purchase online.
I don’t think the downstream effects need to be mentioned here. Gee wonder why everyone is hyper-individualistic
I’ve started calling it Time Compression. It feels like it did in 2020 just after the pandemic kicked into high gear. Every day feels like a week and a week feels like a day. It feels like you’re unstuck from reality and everything takes this absurdist tint and everyone is holding their breath including you. Like just existing is causing mild dissociation. The streets are empty and cold even though they’re filled with people and the summer heat is strangling you. Past memories of how things “should” have been or could have been merge and overlap with the here and now. Hauntology in waking life.
I’m not necessarily a believer in any kind of literal collective unconscious, but it feels like it did exist and someone unplugged it again.
Anyways, I felt it start to settle in at the beginning of the year and it hasn’t let up much yet.
In reality though I’m probably just getting old, read too much news, and don’t have enough friends.