- My knee still doesn’t feel right after that hiking trip two weeks ago.
- I started listening to really old music.
Have I crossed the threshold?
Nope, you’re describing not being young, that’s nothing like being actually old. Growing old has a bunch of stages:
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joint pain
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can no longer dance all night
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hangovers last all day
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dentists start talking to you about your gums
But then you get to the phase of
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skin losing elasticity
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liking dinner parties
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marijuana is now a medicine
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developed distinct preferences about stuff like threadcount
And then after that the next phase is more like
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a lot of time worrying about your parents
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all body fat migrates to one or two of its favourite spots
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seriously consider putting everything on lanyards
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your favourite singers are all dead
And so on, you get the picture. That’s as far as I’ve traveled but as far as I can see the phases after that involve things like bladder leakage and losing friends to alzheimers.
I’m getting toward the last, my favorite singers are dying. My wife and I just saw the B-52s in concert. They are in their mid seventies. They were in their thirties when I started listening to them. Ugh.
Multiple of your friends have cancer, died of cancer, or of other illnesses. But mostly the cancer.
You wonder if your bowels are OK. They are not.
fuck, this is accurate. i recognized myself in everything you wrote. (age 50ies)
Glad it’s not just me!
I worried about my mum constantly since I was only 14/15, she had heart disease and died three years ago at 54. My dad also has heart problems, copd, diabetes, psoriasis and arthritis in his hands. He’s only 55 and I don’t know if he’ll even live to retirement age. I’m only 27.
Edit: Should’ve included this. I also have ulcerative colitis which is a form of IBD Irritable Bowel Disease and I do shit myself several times a year) so my bowels are fucked already. Again I’m only 27. By your metrics I’ve met two of the conditions to be old due to shite luck with the roll of the dice of life.
I grew up with my grandparents. And while my grandpa has been dead for years, lately I’m acurely aware how my grandma - now 91 - doesn’t have much time left. She had a few really close calls already, and covid was absolutely not nice to her health when she got it.
Sorry friend, that sounds really hard. I’m really sorry you lost your mum.
Someone I knew with colitis said it calmed down by itself after about a decade, so I hope that happens to you.
I’m hoping it calms down when I get out on a different medication. The new one I’m on doesn’t seem to be working despite the fact according to the manufacturer it should start working in 48 hours and I should’ve noticed a gradual difference at this point and it should work fully within 3 weeks. Anyway there’s a specialist nurse that’s my main point of contact for care for it and she wants to put me on a biologic that’s taken as an IV drip which would mean I’d see an improvement quickly. The consultant that makes the decisions and has the final say disagrees and wants me still on the one that doesn’t seem to work. I’m in hospital again after only leaving a month ago and my symptoms are worse today so the current treatment that I’m on in hospital may not be working so the nurse might end up winning the argument. I’m hoping she does because I’d love to get rid of the flare I’ve had since January and feel like normal again.
It is treated, it’s better to go on a diet, for example VLCD or something (go to pubmed) ⚠️Аnd of course, consult a doctor before dieting.
My mom once planned a trip up to my city with some of her friends to see a concert, they made plans a few weeks out but by the time the day arrived, she was coming up for two funerals, the group was smaller by two people. She told me “can’t make long range plans when you are old, go see people right away because if you wait they might be dead!”
Yeah, for me the big thing wasn’t even that my belly is becoming more and more of an issue despite my weight being the same, it was how how many cancer checkups are all of a sudden free and done regularly and how doctors always do a routine full checkup no matter why I went there. (am 40+)
I remember my mom telling me about phases of life as she experienced them:
- All your friends start getting married, you go to a lot of weddings
- All your friends start having kids, you go to a lot of baby showers
- Many of your friends start getting divorced, and you have to deal with trying to be friends with the former couple separately
- Many of your friends get married a second time, weddings again
- Many of your friends start having grandkids
At the time she concluded with “Some those were hard, but it was all okay. But now, all my friends are dying…”
Stage one: Effortful noise when rising from a low chair/sofa
Stage two: Inability to rise from a low chair/sofa. Beanbag? Nooooo….
My own turning point was finding myself unable to get out of the bath by just standing up. It was comic but also terrifying. I eventually worked out I could lever myself up with my arms. Phew.
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What’s really old music? Like Greenday?
Bro don’t
Someone in here will say The Weeknd and cue mass existential crisis.
I didn’t even know who the weekend was until a couple years ago. Green day I do because I like the band a lot.
I had never heard of them until a Letterkenny episode mentioned them multiple times.
No no like, that classic golden oldies singer, Britney Spears!
Then there are those of us who were already adults when she was on the Mickey Mouse Club.
I mostly listen to music from my parents’ youth. Growing up I listened to the oldies station a whole lot (Oldies 98.1 used to be so good!). I’m Gen X, they’re boomers. So classic rock is definitely in the mix, but also artists like Petula Clark, the Supremes, Tommy James and the Shondells, etc. There’s a great station on SiriusXM called '60s Gold that I listen to pretty much every day.
And then when I need a change, I switch to New Wave / post-punk or Grunge.
Oh you mean music from the 1900s?
You are a menace and must be stopped.
So, you mean music composed before 1800? Bach and Mozart should be fine, whereas Beethoven is way too modern.
I’m late Gen X but I’m really enjoying Gen Z music. Some of it’s so chill.
I start my day on 1960s English prog and ska, and end my day on 1970s Italian and Turkish prog and pop. I dunno what’s out there
Some things I’ve noticed in my early 40s:
- You talk about things like property taxes and 401k contributions more often than you ever thought would be possible
- You seriously weigh whether a drink is worth the bad sleep and headache it’ll cause you
- Your pop-culture references are lost on younger folks
- You start referring to college-aged people as “kids”
- You need reading glasses but you’re in denial about it
- Injuries take longer to heal
- Those of your peers who haven’t taken care of themselves are starting to have serious health issues
- You care more about flossing, skincare, fiber, and hydration
- You still rock bottom eyeliner like you did in high school
- You’ve seen fashion from your high school years go out of style and then come back as “retro”
- You see the utter confusion on your nephew’s face when you explain that you used to keep a quarter in your bike pouch in case you needed to call someone, because he doesn’t remember a time before cell phones and his generation isn’t allowed to just roam around unsupervised on their bikes
- You have strong opinions about things like laundry detergent brands
- Birds become fascinating
- You have no problem spending a few hundred dollars on a new kayak paddle, but the price of cold cuts these days is just unacceptable
That’s bang on. Aside from the quarter. I used to call collect and they would get “Would you like to receive a collect call from ‘Hidadcomepickmeup’?”
Good o’le “Bobwehadababyitsaboy”
I also remember when CarrotTop did the C-A-L-L-A-T-T commercial, so that’s fun/old…
Remember the 10-10-321 commercials? Or actually I think it was 10-321 originally.
My friends did that, but my mother would’ve killed me - she thought that was no different than theft lol
You may fascinate the elderly with a bird
cold cuts? Have you seen the price of a bag of chips? Ridiculous. I don’t need to spend 5 bucks to hate myself later after I’ve eaten too many.
$30 to buy an old mechanical pencil on ebay you remember having in highschool? No problemo.
Eyes, motivation, you can’t drink all night and only sleep for three hours, and in general it’s better to drink at home, it’s better to lie on the couch, lack of interest in many things… taking care of children’s health is above your own etc.
You start noticing bird species you’ve never seen before… Wait! Was that a cedar waxwing???
This is so accurate.
When you injure yourself sleeping
I do not like this comment.
Been doing this since I was a kid. I regularly hit my head off (on?) the wall in my sleep because I twist and turn during the night.
Put foam mats or foam sheets across your wall when you sleep!
i think people are way too worried about being old while not enjoying the youth they have left right now
you can always be and feel older
You’ll never be as young as you are now
And this is the oldest you’ve ever been.
No this is
woah dude
You nailed it. I’m loving it, I’m more fit now than ever and do so much more in my 40s than in my 20s even. It’s great. You’re only as old as you want to be. Listen to new music, try out new things and complain about it all when you’re 90+
Getting a new phone is annoying rather than exciting
ugh goddam planned obsolescence, i just want a tool that works well not a new toy every couple of years goddamit
I thought Fairphone would solve this for me, but the thing is too damn chonky.
id try it, but can’t really buy it here
Well, of course it does with no proper universal backup system.
The change itself is pretty straightforward if you use Google services
Well, I thought so. Unfortunately it only backs up the minimum, and only for supported apps.
They can pry the headphone jack from my cold dead hands
- A general feeling of alienation from society. Particularly younger people.
- Dislike of ‘modern’ music.
- Nostalgia over the way things used to be as you have lived long enough to witness the enshittification.
I like the enshittification one. Old(er) people say how much better things were back in the day, but we just say that’s rose tinted glasses because actually e.g. violent crime was much higher.
Then we tell the younger generation that the web used to be so much better and they are all “yes, grandpa, that’s great grandpa”.
But it was better! I swear it was!
Instagram is always the one that springs to mind for me. It was amazing in the early days before Facebook bought it and turned it into the monstrosity it is now. I was an early user of it. It was quirky, it was fun, the community was much smaller and people didn’t care about how many likes they got. It was actual photography and was more personal. Not the ad-infested self-promoting shallow bullshit it is now.
Old Instagram > New Instagram is the absolute peak of enshittification for me. It’s genuinely awful now.
Remember when Instagram said you reached the end of new posts?
Except you feel this even if you’re in your 20s. It’s not exactly an old thing lol
Hell, even over the last 3 years it’s super obvious
Hmm, I think back to say the early 2000s, before digg and reddit but after static websites. I never got the opportunity to use Usenet but random forums all running on PHPBB and later, Invision Power Board, with some other software thrown in.
Ok, that might be rose tinted glasses, as that was the first experience of user-led content rather than static sites (unless you count geocities).
Digg, and later Reddit, was a sort of bringing together of these different forums into one platform. It was great at the time, but so was 1GB of free email when other free email providers were doing 5MB and we all know how that turned out…
Man, I’m feeling half nostalgic and half old talking about seeing the birth of Gmail and the first mainstream social media and the first iPhone. My kids hear my stories about the days before smart phones and the days before aeroplanes and think of them as the same kinda time frame.
Forums are starting to make a comeback, reddit is shit for a lot of historical style discussions(like on going threads) and Facebook groups and discord are completely trash for it as well. I’m seeing a lot of the forums I used to visit start to pick back up.
Oh that’s good! Positive signs!
Yep, I don’t see them getting massive like they used to be, but definitely not as dead as they have been for the last 10 years or so. I don’t know if it’s just the generation that grew up with the old net or if there is a sprinkle of the new younger generation helping though.
The radio station that plays the old hits has started playing newer hits. Spoiler: they’re not new.
The radio station that plays old hits I swear is playing even older songs. I swear it is now playing 60’s music. And not the good songs from the 60s either.
I sometimes listen to old balkan songs (from yugoslavia timen) and am 17.
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Praise Linus!
You’ll start growing hair in even weirder places than you did during puberty.
And start losing hair on top of your head
Why, ear lobes? Why?!
Dude I’m hairy ass a gorilla since puberty.
How are the ouside parts of your ears and the bridge of your nose tho?
He just said “hairy ass”, well after hearing that I hope it’s “he” anyways for his own sake
Just fine hair like the one most women have on their face
Well, in a few decades you’ll see what “even weirder places” means…
I have one weird hair that grows out of my neck. Why on earth?!
nose hair trimmer attachment works well around the ears I’ve found (but it’s loud!)
Standing up feels like the check engine light comes on
I’m in good shape still, nothing hurts, but my goodness since I was about 40 everything takes forever to heal. Injuries that might have healed in 2 months when I was a kid can take 2 years to fully resolve. Why, when I have fewer years left?
I don’t get the music thing, I think maybe men are more nostalgic about music. I listen to a broad sweeping set of artists old and new, and my kids do too (one is a musician but all of them will hear something on tiktok and go find it). I still go see new and emerging acts, love finding new music.
Oh! And since nobody is talking about the positive things that happen when you get old: around 50 my green thumb arrived, I no longer kill plants by looking at them. I can coax them to grow. And can cook just about anything too, but that is accumulated years of experience, the plant thing just came like a gift. Around 45 I got the power of trust, like anyone would tell me anything - middle aged white lady power, people tell me things, I could be a spy or drug mule or something now and just skate through security, I am not suspicious. And mood gets easier to manage too, not so quick to anger or fear.
On the trust thing - every once in a while I’ll go to a concert by myself, stand in the back, and enjoy the moment and remember the old times.
More often than not, three or four young ladies will come up over the course of the evening and start giving me their life stories and their relationship struggles and whatnot.
This isn’t a flirting or drunk thing on either end of the equation. In that moment, they just seem to need somebody to listen to them.
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When listening to new music, I’m constantly recognizing how heavily they sample older songs that I remember listening to when I was a kid.
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A night out with friends often ends at 9 or 10p because we’re all tired.
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A night out with friends often includes a lot of discussion of various health issues and encouraging each to see a doctor.
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I’m finding myself more and more avoidant of new technology. Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting more concerned about maintaining a little sliver of privacy?
It genuinely irritates me when I hear sampled songs get passed as new without any credit to the original
In your opinion, how should they be crediting it? I’m having trouble trying to imagine a good way that it could be credited within the song, and I can’t imagine very many people actually pay attention to the credits for music, especially when so few of us are buying physical copies anymore.
I’ve definitely experienced feeling annoyed at the new songs, but some have grown on me, and hearing the samples often leads me to add the original to my playlist. I’ve actually been having a lot of fun trying to see if I can name the original artist & song title whenever a new one pops up.
The DJ should mention it, would be my solution. I got into Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric after hearing Sugababes fantastic Freak Like Me (arguably better than Numans), but I had to find out that they sampled from him. A quick nod from the radio DJ would have saved time, and would have been respectful of the original
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I turned my head to the right to look at something and sprained my neck.
So when just existing hurts, you’re old.
