Discussion Anyone feel old when talking to people in real life?

[Severen]

Like, when I'm talking to people in real life, I use a lot of words, I noticed, only people in their 30s or older use... And then younger people kind of look at me like WTF...

 

[azucaramargo]

That's interesting that your intelligence makes you feel old. I noticed this post because most of the people in my life are younger than I am, and so I am constantly feeling old. I hope you can find some friends your age that have as rich of a vocabulary as you. Also, it's not terrible to have older friends. They can teach you stuff. The friends I have who are older than I am...I tend to grill them about their lives, so I can glean info for my own.

 

[Morphinekiss]

Yea but only because I'm bitching about how bad my back hurts. I'm 32 with the body of a 80 year old yenta.

But really I've always connected with older people intelligence wise because I moved so often as a child that the adults in my life were my main circle of peers. That and a shaman once told me my soul is old.

 

[not_a_robot]

lol I tried to make a Seinfeld joke to a kid working in the library the other day and I caught myself and stopped

"--Wait-- have you ever seen an old tv show called Seinfeld?"
He goes "nah."
I go "never mind then, this joke will not be funny."

 

[Morphinekiss]

lol I tried to make a Seinfeld joke to a kid working in the library the other day and I caught myself and stopped

"--Wait-- have you ever seen an old tv show called Seinfeld?"
He goes "nah."
I go "never mind then, this joke will not be funny."

I taught highschool before my health got too bad. I made a Pearl Jam reference and no one got it. I cried a little tear at my desk.

 

[LastFlowers]

It's more like my entire adolescence is missing so I can not connect well with people my age who experienced that stage of life normally.
Sometimes I feel like I am 11 and 90 at the same time, but nothing in between.
In the short periods of time I've gotten out of the house past early childhood, I would stay with the adults.
Sometimes I would see middle school and highschool students and fervently avoid them because I still saw them as my age. Time had kind of stopped for me around that age range, at least in regards to the road more traveled.

A lot of young people (esp "hipsters") are using archaic or pretentious word choices these days.
So I wouldn't say it's the words I use so much as the realizations I've come to, that make the way I approach a conversation a little jarring.
However, I mostly keep my mouth shut in real life so this phenomenon is becoming less and less applicable to me.
And because I've been so isolated and spoken so little in the last decade or so, written words and thoughts have trouble translating to verbal speech.

 

[deltahead]

i'd say i feel a similar way despite being 20. i haven't really talked to anyone in real life aside from my family in a full decade. i only talk to people online and in english which has made me progressively worse at portuguese (my first language). i've been forgetting words and expressions which makes me sound way more unnatural than i already am. i don't really speak the way anyone from any age group would speak because my languages are all cobbled together and rusty. i don't think it's a "these damn kids and their new slang" issue so much as who am i and my life experiences (or lack thereof) are so incomprehensibly different from anyone else i've ever met that anyone i talk to is pretty much in their own universe. i'm on a lower level than everyone, i guess. i can't relate to the most basic things and feelings and traits that people commonly share with each other. especially since nearly everyone in my age group is just getting started on adulthood and coming to grips with their own identity, and seeing them become these successful, "mature", fully realized people is straight up horrifying to witness. for someone to talk or relate to me, they'd have to basically reduce themselves to my level, as if speaking to a toddler. talking to them makes me feel unbearably ancient and pathetically childish and undeveloped at the same time. and most of all, i feel obsolete. like i missed the big existential fulfillment/self-actualization bus. like no matter what i do now, i'll just spend the rest of my life trying to be a bad copy of these people, taking years to achieve the shitty version of what someone else already achieved several years ago. it highlights how absolutely meaningless my life is and makes suicide look like a total no-brainer.

 

[Severen]

That's interesting that your intelligence makes you feel old. I noticed this post because most of the people in my life are younger than I am, and so I am constantly feeling old. I hope you can find some friends your age that have as rich of a vocabulary as you. Also, it's not terrible to have older friends. They can teach you stuff. The friends I have who are older than I am...I tend to grill them about their lives, so I can glean info for my own.

I mean, just words in a sentence that are slang, basically. Like "cool" or "man." Hey, that's "cool." I'll talk to you later, "man." "Yo, what's up?" And then when you hear someone using a word like "problematic" then you yourself go WTF, who talks like that? Like the way, young people talk today, would be like the way, the most unpopular people would talk in the 80s, 90s etc...

 

[Thorn]

Like, when I'm talking to people in real life, I use a lot of words, I noticed, only people in their 30s or older use... And then younger people kind of look at me like WTF...

Don't complain, I even feel old when talking to myself.
Or trying to remember where I was 5 minutes ago, and what I did there.

 

[DoomedxFromBirth]

lol I tried to make a Seinfeld joke to a kid working in the library the other day and I caught myself and stopped

"--Wait-- have you ever seen an old tv show called Seinfeld?"
He goes "nah."
I go "never mind then, this joke will not be funny."

I love Seinfeld lol. Some woman at my job, her name is Stella. I asked if she knew the show before yelling her name like Elaine did in that one episode and Im usually a quiet person so lmao

 

[Severen]

I love Seinfeld lol. Some woman at my job, her name is Stella. I asked if she knew the show before yelling her name like Elaine did in that one episode and Im usually a quiet person so lmao

STEEEEELLLLLLAAAA!!!!!!!!! One of the best TV shows ever made, IMO.

 

[DoomedxFromBirth]

The other day I was having a conversation with someone and I guess I used a big word and she was like what does that mean? You are using words that are too big. I literally stopped for a second and wondered why I was having a conversation at all.

 

[Severen]

The other day I was having a conversation with someone and I guess I used a big word and she was like what does that mean? You are using words that are too big. I literally stopped for a second and wondered why I was having a conversation at all.

 

[andy69]

I enjoy talking to anyone who does not begin every sentence with the phrase, "And I'm like."

You do know that "Stella" is a reference to "A Streetcar Named Desire"?

 

[DoomedxFromBirth]

It says its unavailable :/

Oh wait it went lmao

 

[ladolcemorte]

I can't keep up with the new terminology. A friend of mine who is actually 8 years older than I am used the verb "to ship" two people to mean "to determine two people are in a relationship". It blew my mind. I had never heard it before. Then I watched a tv episode from 2016 that used it and I wondered "where have I been for the last three years"...

 

[WaterUnder]

I can't keep up with the new terminology. A friend of mine who is actually 8 years older than I am used the verb "to ship" two people to mean "to determine two people are in a relationship". It blew my mind. I had never heard it before. Then I watched a tv episode from 2016 that used it and I wondered "where have I been for the last three years"...

That's nothing, kid. Someone made a reference to a "butt plug" in another thread and I had to look up what it was. LOL!!

 

[Severen]

I have theory in my head, that most people are forever trapped in time, during a moment of their life between their teenage years and 20s or 30s. Because they can only adapt to the present, up to a certain point. Why? Not sure, yet. Every time, I have to deal with baby boomers, I see that these people are still living in the 70s or 80s, you know... Even though they are using modern technology and dressed a bit different. And also, during this period of time, everything is constantly changing with each passing year, I don't see how a human being can just constantly adapt. Because for most of human history, everything wasn't moving in one direction or another so fast. It seems like too much to ask from a human brain because adapting constantly to the present would result in too much data in a human brain and data having to be purged and replaced. And how many people are even capable of purging anything from their brain? Some people can do so but it's definitely not easy.

 

[262653]

Not old, but incompatible. We have very little shared topics with other people. Old or young, no matter. And I have hard time expressing myself without being seen as bore/crazy/delusional/goofy, but I think I'm able to digest complex speech. I have to deal with three languages, it seems to be the never ending task to learn new words and mannerisms and figures of speech to be able to understand others and decode personal experience into coherent speech... And my brain constantly flying onto different topics, like right now I'm on a train station pushing pedestrians off the platform and talking to outwardly familiar ones... I do like to listen though and understand verbal/non-verbal output. If I don't understand something then that's what dictionaries are for, or if its a real-time conversation, I'll state that my vocabulary isn't adequate enough to understand your verbal output and I would be grateful if we could transform our conversation into email/chat format so I have time and resources to catch-up... And I'm wandering again through a city... I like when people talk a lot and talk smart. Trying to understand a brilliant speech makes me high for no apparent reason... I've been always fascinated with smart people and patterns they follow, gestures, posture, facial expressions... I feel like a vampire stumbled upon a blue blood. Like Hakeashar invigorated by the presence of highly saturated source of magic... It may be because I'm a narcissist with feeble sense of self (whatever that means, I thought this set of words would fit here perfectly) and want to associate myself with smart people by hanging around them... or because I starve for a company with a literate person who has something worthwhile to say.

It seems like too much to ask from a human brain because adapting constantly to the present would result in too much data in a human brain and data having to be purged and replaced. And how many people are even capable of purging anything from their brain? Some people can do so but it's definitely not easy.

Even capable ones cannot always afford to manage their data in this particular way, having to constantly keep up with survival stuff, job, marriage, kids, other concerns... Its like trying to pour orange juice into a glass full of water when most of that water is necessary to keep on a living... I've had some major perspective shifts after I abandoned law college and had lots of time to consider my life.

 

[Severen]

Even capable ones cannot always afford to manage their data in this particular way, having to constantly keep up with survival stuff, job, marriage, kids, other concerns... Its like trying to pour orange juice into a glass full of water when most of that water is necessary to keep on a living... I've had some major perspective shifts after I abandoned law college and had lots of time to consider my life.

And if you have a lot of people in your social circle, that is so much more information that your brain has to deal with, constantly.

 

[262653]

And if you have a lot of people in your social circle, that is so much more information that your brain has to deal with, constantly.

It seems to be that way... Maybe simplistic lifestyle can be more beneficial than I thought... not necessarily in a radical sense, but to reduce informational overload.

 

[Severen]

It seems to be that way... Maybe simplistic lifestyle can be more beneficial than I thought... not necessarily in a radical sense, but to reduce informational overload.

I read somewhere that human brains weren't designed to have more than a certain amount of people in their social circle in their lifetime. I forgot the number. Maybe 100.

 

[262653]

I read somewhere that human brains weren't designed to have more than a certain amount of people in their social circle in their lifetime. I forgot the number. Maybe 100.

Basically my kindergarten, school and college :) And if that is true, I guess you can add prolonged life expectancy to the odious mixture because our brains probably have not been accustomed to that either.

 

[Severen]

Basically my kindergarten, school and college :) And if that is true, I guess you can add prolonged life expectancy to the odious mixture because our brains probably have not been accustomed to that either.

Life today for most people is totally unnatural. That is why, so many people are not happy. Their brains are being overloaded with data and stress etc... Most of the modern world we have today, is the result of recent technology. Humanity hasn't evolved to deal with it properly yet because that takes time.

 

[Angst Filled Fuck Up]

Yeah but then I'm objectively becoming an old tosser either way, and years of social isolation hasn't helped. I'll be talking to a young person and simultaneously pull up Urban Dictionary on the sly. Then I'm like "oh you're ngl... not gonna lie huh? Yeah, I knew that." I think in general too I'm more wordy/verbose than most others, so I probably come off a bit stuffy from that alone sometimes.

 

[Divine Trinity]

I read somewhere that human brains weren't designed to have more than a certain amount of people in their social circle in their lifetime. I forgot the number. Maybe 100.

350

 

[WaterUnder]

" I think in general too I'm more wordy/verbose than most others, so I probably come off a bit stuffy from that alone sometimes.

Not that I see.

 

[Divine Trinity]

Societal infantalism brought on by unfettered consumer capitalism.

After 9/11 what did Bush say to the american public, after the country virtually paused from an attack that was, at best, due to his administration's negligence? He told americans to go shopping, because the economy was about crash after a couple of days. Then proceeded to illegally invade a non-hostile foreign country, while back home Mr. Anderson bought a 4th serving of "Freedom Fries". The USE's totalitarian tendencies activated and the subject's essentially lost all civil rights within 10 years.

Hundreds of thousands of people murdered, state enacted and sponsored terrorism, rigged elections, an illegitimate president, numerous war crimes, and crimes against humanity, undermining and exacerbation of climate change/pollution, etc. 2 years later president Cheney invades another country, unopposed by most of the public and news media, yet the MFer Bush gets re-elected for a 2nd term...

That's beyond infantalism, beyond insanity, beyond reckless or negligence, suicidal doesn't begin to grasp the social pathology of what we're experiencing. I can't put into words the actions of this society, or the numerous consequence that will follow. I do believe, however, we (ambiguous) are beyond saving, and with this news of canadian-arctic perma frost melting, I expect the worst-case scenario within the century.

Any rational person I think, would wake up at night in cold sweat pondering about the state of the world and what, if anything, we can do.

 

[WaterUnder]

Like, when I'm talking to people in real life, I use a lot of words, I noticed, only people in their 30s or older use... And then younger people kind of look at me like WTF...

Nah. It's probably all that blood all over your mouth and chin.

 

[inconsequential]

Yeah. Largely because most other people in their 20s don't have excruciating back pain.

I don't want to go to your party. I don't want to go to the bar. I don't want to join your 6-person smoke sesh.