My friends play games together every night and I join them pretty often. I could game more if I wanted, but I’ve been losing interest. All of us are broke as hell, but no kids, no marriages.

I think pc spec creep will eventually leave us in a situation where we need to upgrade but can’t afford to and I’m not sure what we’ll do then.

Growing up, I lived a lower middle class life. Now, I can only eat once or twice a day and still pay my bills. My parents are in the process of a divorce and selling the house and when that’s done I’ll be homeless.

My life has never been like the image of poverty, but money has been very tight my whole life. We live in a rundown and neglected suburb, but it’s certainly not a ghetto or slum. I did get some toys growing up and played in sport leagues and very rarely went on trips to places. After I turned 10, money got way tighter for my family and most of my comfort and luxury has come from working and buying my own stuff. Luckily my parents are too prideful to shake me down for money which is normal for other poor parents to do to their kids around here.

I don’t think there’s too much a middle class person has experienced that I haven’t, but I’ve spent my adult life so far by spending as little on my day to day as possible so I can afford to go out and enjoy life. Last week, I went to a fancy indoor gokart place and ate at a restaurant after with some friends and another day I went to street festival. This week, I’ve eaten 7 times total and haven’t gone anywhere. Eventually I’ll leave this overpriced shit hole, but I’m trying to hunker down and not shake anything up while The Orange Emperor reigns.

What’s wild is that my dad is a democrat, “union man”, who is himself otherwise liberal. He agrees that there’s a class war, but that the rich are organized specifically by a few secret unimaginably rich jewish families for unclear purposes.

I was eating dinner with my dad a year ago when he told me about how he believes jews secretly run the world and that there’s something fishy about the Rothschilds. I burst out laughing thinking my dad had suddenly developed a very modern online sense of humor, but unfortunately no.

I’ve never known my dad to be antisemitic, and he even explained that regular jews are a different group from the ones in control.

I straight up told him it’s ridiculous and that he needs to get off the internet, but he never agreed with me. I still don’t know how to handle the situation really.

Oh and my mom went borderline sovereign citizen a few years ago, but I don’t remember what insane thing she said first.

Something I rarely see brought up is specifically the edgelord to right wing pipeline. When I was a kid, it was essentially standard for any boy online to try to be super edgy. Adolescents and teens just have a natural urge for rebellion.

The problem comes when kids think edgy and shock value humor is their favorite thing, but more mature online users reject that behavior and exclude these kids. These kids feel misunderstood and are drawn to figures and role models that accept what they like.

I’ve met a bunch of younger, “conservative”, incel types recently and they’ve all been edgelords who found their own little community instead of growing up. They largely have no ideology in the beginning but slowly absorb manosphere bullshit and over time they become less “ironic”.

The thing that got me to stop being edgy was joining the swim team and having my friend group go from edgelords to gay swimmers. I developed a ton of respect for them and they were my teammates; it completely changed my mind without me having to “conform” to the things I wanted to rebel against. I don’t really know how to get that across to some many kids that get sucked up into this madness though.