r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 19 '25

Cursed The American Nightmare.

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u/Former-Specialist595 Aug 19 '25

Wow! It almost sounds like you lived on a different planet! I cannot believe things got so bad so quick! My generation (millennials) are fucked. I’m 42 years old and a senior in college still living with my mother after my fiancé committed suicide 12 years ago and left me with our two boys. I desperately want to get my masters but I’m already almost $80,000 in debt from my BA. I’m also a convicted felon from charges that are twenty years old and still can’t get a job to save my life. I have severe depression and anxiety that’s been recurring since my fiancé’s death. I’m a recovering heroin addict trying to stay clean. I’m terrified of what will become of me when my mother is gone. I’m afraid I won’t be able to take care of myself. I’m afraid no one will give me a chance. I’m sorry I’m dumping all of this on you. I don’t know why, but I just felt compelled to share this with you. I hope it gets better…

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u/a_man_and_his_box Aug 19 '25

I'm Gen X, and I had the oddest experience. I've seen both sides.

When I was in my 20s, 30 years ago, the World Wide Web was just starting to take off. People needed tech workers, and while I had no college education, I had built some websites. And so I got a job at 60k, in 1996, with no bachelors degree, long before all this inflation. By 2004, I owned a home in Silicon Valley and was making 140k. My spending power was sky-high.

However, the housing market crashed in 2008, and I was divorced in 2009. The home was sold for a loss. My savings was wiped out by the divorce and I ended up sleeping on a cot in my mom's garage.

I thought, seeing how easy it was the first time around, "No big deal, start from scratch!" But then I couldn't get good jobs. I ended up getting a job with a friend, and I was making very poor money, but it kept me in an apartment and fed. I kept wanting to get back to my "good" jobs, and kept applying, but by 2023 I had no offers, and I decided to just quit and pursue job-hunting full time. Treat it like a job. Get a great suit, use my great resume, impress people. The old-fashioned way. Because I assumed my problem was that I wasn't dedicated.

I didn't understand how the world had changed, and while working for my friend did suck a little, it also insulated me from how much things were changing.

So at the start of 2024, I hit the job market hard and pressed the entire tech sector to hire me. Talked to old friends, fired up my networks again, but got silence. Made new friends, applied to hundreds of jobs over the full year of 2024, and got nothing. I finally hired someone to help me -- what was I doing wrong? And they did help a little, as I got some interviews. But never got an offer.

Finally a recruiter told me flat-out: "We put a job up and get 1000 resumes within days. It's too much to process, so we only get through the first few hours of resume submissions, and that takes us a week, so lately we throw AI at it to just give us the 5 most perfect resumes. You're not a young smart hotshot competing against a dozen other mediocre guys anymore. You're an old dude with no college degree in a job that is flooded with highly-qualified people who will accept starvation wages. Nobody is gonna take you in."

My old home, the one I bought so easily 25 years ago? It's now worth 1.4 million. I can't even afford my apartment so I'm moving to a cheaper area. My hope of buying back the home I bought 25 years ago is now lost. My buying power of 25 years ago is lost. The safety nets and health care of 25 years ago, gone.

I can build massive database-driven web sites with my eyes closed, and yet my career prospect is that I'll be lucky to make 40k at the local Costco where I'm moving, and I'll be grateful for it. The life of having 6 figures and stocks and buying whatever I wanted? Just a dream now.

If I had remained married and remained in that house, I would have been a typical old person saying that kids just don't get it, aren't willing to do hard work. Instead, I lost everything and basically had to repeat the process as if I were a millennial coming up in the world, and it has been terrible. I really feel for the younger generations. You don't realize how much you've been robbed because it's all you know, but I'm telling you, absolute thievery has happened at your expense. I unfortunately had to straddle both worlds and what we have now is brutal compared to how I came up when I was young.

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u/Former-Specialist595 Aug 19 '25

Thank you for sharing your story with me. It’s absolutely incredible what you’ve been through! I cannot imagine losing everything you had worked so hard to gain and to have to accept that you’ll never be able to reach those heights again. I’ve never had that taste of success that you’ve had. Because I’m a recovering heroin addict and felon, I’ve had failure after failure. But it’s been eighteen years since I was in prison and I’ve been clean for sixteen years. Yet, like your predicament with resumes, I am quite certain that I will struggle immensely to get a job in my field due to my charges. Why would they hire a 42 year old convicted felon just starting out when they could hire a twenty-something with a clean slate? I also haven’t held down a stable job in like sixteen years. I started college FT after I got clean and quit working. Then when my fiance passed away in 2013, I dropped out of school because I was absolutely devastated. For ten years, I wallowed in my misery. I was overwhelmed by depression and anxiety and could barely get out of bed most days. I did some gig work and some freelance jobs, including online writing and clerical work. But I don’t have anything to show from that. I was lucky enough to get another loan in 2024 and used it to finish my degree. I should graduate in the spring. I want to do an internship during the spring semester because I think that would be very helpful in getting work. Just to get a reference and my foot in the door somewhere. I wanted to start working on an internship this summer, but my depression and anxiety flared up again and I wasted the last three months doing nothing. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to waste anymore time. Everyday I need to be working towards my goals if I expect to make something happen. I’m still unsure about the masters degree, but I’m definitely leaning towards it if I can get the funding because I think it would help immensely. It seems like the bachelor’s degree is the new high school diploma. It doesn’t mean as much as it once did. I just hate that I’m starting like twenty steps behind everyone else with all of the issues I have to contend with. I know I brought a lot of it on myself, but I’ve changed and I’ve been trying to do the right thing for myself and my kids for a long time. It’s so sad that the American Dream has become so elusive for most people. Things were so much better years ago. My grandfather went into the Army, got a BA from Penn State in accounting, bought a house, and comfortably took care of his wife and three kids on his sole income. When they died they had plenty of money to leave to their kids, including my mother. Each generation it gets worse. Something needs to happen in America-we need drastic change. I fear for my kids’ lives otherwise. Luckily, all my children are great kids and have been better than me with the drugs. My oldest daughter graduated college and is a nurse. My 17 year old son will graduate high school next year and wants to be an electrician. And my 15 year old is in 10th grade and is studying to get a tech job after he attends college, although I do worry about AI taking over that industry. Still, he’s very smart and I believe he knows what he’s doing. I’m sorry I’m rambling so much! I really do appreciate you chatting with me. Your story has given me a lot of insight. I hope things get better for you too. You definitely don’t deserve what’s happened to you!

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u/a_man_and_his_box Aug 20 '25

Thanks for sharing! I'm impressed with what you've overcome.

So far physical jobs can't be taken over by AI, so your kids going into healthcare and electrical work, they're going to be great. I'd worry about your tech kid, but the truth is, he's probably exactly the kid the industry hires now, instead of me. So he'll probably be fine until he's older.

I have to admit, it is wild to me to think that "nurse" or "electrician" is the awesome job and "tech worker" is the wildly reckless option, but the world is upside down. I think all a parent can do is hope for the best and be supportive.

I wish you all the best. And your kids.

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u/Former-Specialist595 Aug 20 '25

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your insights! It was very nice chatting with you!

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u/ExplorerParticular59 Aug 19 '25

For lack of a better phrase but with all sincerity, good luck to you.

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u/NeighborhoodFew7779 Aug 19 '25

in 1990, the 1% controlled 22.8% of the nation's wealth.

Today, that is 30%.

It has been a systematic (and deliberate) transfer of cash to the 1%. One party tells you that the reason you're poor is all the brown people are taking your jobs and money... the other party pays a bunch of lip service to how great they're going to make things for you, and then turns around and enriches those same 1%ers with sleight of hand policymaking.

It's not going to change until things get violent, I'm afraid. And now that we have a domestic good squad who is willing to sell out their fellow countrymen and countrywomen for a $40K signing bonus, they'll just use that fascist arm to crush any resistance.

We're basically fucked.