Venting Why do people make me feel like I'm crazy for wanting to CTB over the economic situation, AI and lack of prospects?

[michaaaaaal]

Quick background: One could say my life so far has been pretty good. I'm 29 and have been a high earner for most of my adulthood, have an ok career as a software engineer in London. I've been suicidal pretty much all of my life to varying degrees, mostly due to anxiety. At 23 I was stressing out about my dissertation and potentially getting a low degree classification which would prevent me from going into highly paid professional work, so I became kind of obsessed with partial suspension and did a few trial runs but ultimately didn't go through. I think I tend to believe the darkest, bleakest future scenarios and get completely lost in them. In the end everything turned out fine, I got a good grade and quickly found a relevant job, spent the last 6 years with my salary rising pretty much every year. Very handsome, living in an exciting city I guess, working a decent, comfortable job.

Today, I am back to practicing partial suspension. I just ordered a necktie from Amazon and trying to figure it all out again. AI is coming from my job and I can see the writing on the wall: my career is very much over and the only skill and experience I have, has been completely devalued. So many people in this industry are still in denial, but in this one domain, LLMs got so good that at this point I genuinely have no idea why am I still getting paid for this (essentially just prompting for solutions) and fully realise I am on borrowed time.

The goal of my life has always been to meet this one special person and get married, this was always the overarching goal and I almost got there, unfortunately me and my partner have split up around a month ago after 2 years, 1 year living together. When I was with him, I wasn't worried about automation as much as I am now - on two incomes it would have been possible for me to retrain as a teacher (something I always wanted) and I wouldn't have to care so much about the salary anymore. Love and intimacy have always been the most important things to me and without those and no prospect of attaining them, I simply cannot go on, my life has 0 meaning.

Without a job as a skilled professional I will not be able to support myself in London and eventually will have to go back to my parents' rural village back in Poland. The only work available there is low-paid warehouse stuff. I genuinely, truly have no other skills or experience in any other areas outside of than tech so my future is limited to low-skill work in a rural area of a shithole country that's also hostile to me as a gay man with 0 prospects to ever date, or experience anything nice or important to me ever again.

I talk about this to my therapist who keeps on telling me that I need to have hope, that being a low-earner in an unskilled job in a horrible area doesn't mean I won't experience being in a relationship and true intimacy again but... As a gay man who's living this life I don't think people understand how much location and economics play into finding a partner with an already tiny dating pool, especially in hostile, homophobic countries. To say that there's any hope for me now is just fooling oneself. People say I need to "have hope" but when you ask about any advice for someone in my situation they draw a total blank.

I honestly find it so sad that it's come to this, my life really did use to be good! I thought I had some hope and a future. The finality of it terrifies me, but I need to keep practicing and getting used to the idea. At least I had a relatively decent run, but in a way I think it's the decent run that makes it so much harder to accept this fate and any alternative life.

 

[itsgone2]

It seems life now is only the rat race.

If you lose there, you're done

Except no one lets you leave. Hell they just arrested a SN dealer

 

[Gabbi_Station]

Quick background: One could say my life so far has been pretty good. I'm 29 and have been a high earner for most of my adulthood, have an ok career as a software engineer in London. I've been suicidal pretty much all of my life to varying degrees, mostly due to anxiety. At 23 I was stressing out about my dissertation and potentially getting a low degree classification which would prevent me from going into highly paid professional work, so I became kind of obsessed with partial suspension and did a few trial runs but ultimately didn't go through. I think I tend to believe the darkest, bleakest future scenarios and get completely lost in them. In the end everything turned out fine, I got a good grade and quickly found a relevant job, spent the last 6 years with my salary rising pretty much every year. Very handsome, living in an exciting city I guess, working a decent, comfortable job.

Today, I am back to practicing partial suspension. I just ordered a necktie from Amazon and trying to figure it all out again. AI is coming from my job and I can see the writing on the wall: my career is very much over and the only skill and experience I have, has been completely devalued. So many people in this industry are still in denial, but in this one domain, LLMs got so good that at this point I genuinely have no idea why am I still getting paid for this (essentially just prompting for solutions) and fully realise I am on borrowed time.

The goal of my life has always been to meet this one special person and get married, this was always the overarching goal and I almost got there, unfortunately me and my partner have split up around a month ago after 2 years, 1 year living together. When I was with him, I wasn't worried about automation as much as I am now - on two incomes it would have been possible for me to retrain as a teacher (something I always wanted) and I wouldn't have to care so much about the salary anymore. Love and intimacy have always been the most important things to me and without those and no prospect of attaining them, I simply cannot go on, my life has 0 meaning.

Without a job as a skilled professional I will not be able to support myself in London and eventually will have to go back to my parents' rural village back in Poland. The only work available there is low-paid warehouse stuff. I genuinely, truly have no other skills or experience in any other areas outside of than tech so my future is limited to low-skill work in a rural area of a shithole country that's also hostile to me as a gay man with 0 prospects to ever date, or experience anything nice or important to me ever again.

I talk about this to my therapist who keeps on telling me that I need to have hope, that being a low-earner in an unskilled job in a horrible area doesn't mean I won't experience being in a relationship and true intimacy again but... As a gay man who's living this life I don't think people understand how much location and economics play into finding a partner with an already tiny dating pool, especially in hostile, homophobic countries. To say that there's any hope for me now is just fooling oneself. People say I need to "have hope" but when you ask about any advice for someone in my situation they draw a total blank.

I honestly find it so sad that it's come to this, my life really did use to be good! I thought I had some hope and a future. The finality of it terrifies me, but I need to keep practicing and getting used to the idea. At least I had a relatively decent run, but in a way I think it's the decent run that makes it so much harder to accept this fate and any alternative life.

I will say- with AI…I think there's a chance that the "bubble might burst".

It's unpopular. People are having psychosis using it or becoming addicted to it. It uses up a lot of water and resources. It's diluting education. It's questionable how much better it really is than "human workers" and it is frequently given to error. It's essentially plagiarizing its responses and gives little to no context/citations.

Honestly- I think part of the reason the economy is cratering is Silicon Valley decided this unstable…kind of totally useless thing… is what we need to base our entire economy around. No one really knows what's going to happen with it… if it will lead to mass automation… or collapse onto itself.

I understand why you feel stressed about it… but I think the real answer lies in you stating "I didn't worry about this as much when I was with my partner".

I think honestly… part of the reason why you are fixating on this, is you don't want to process your breakup- which is totally understandable! It's easier to worry about your career/create scenarios about losing your job… then to have to talk about your relationship ending… which makes sense, since you were together for two years!

I don't think your therapist is necessarily delegitimizing your fears, they just want you to look at if that's truly the heart of what's upsetting you, so you can better process your grief.

 

[tonicer]

You could train to become an AI IT guy and maybe find a job that way. I say maybe because i am in that situation. I am 42 and i studied CS (IT specialists for system integration) plus i gained a lot of relevant certificates (comptia, etc.) but i can't find a job to safe my life. I am lucky that my mom lets me stay in her house. I help her around the house a lot since she is in her late 70ties but if she dies i don't know how and why to go on. My current plan is to take the money she has saved up and should be part of the inheritance of me and my older brother and travel a bit until the money runs out then jump of the highest building i can find. There is no hope to find a job as a 40+ year old guy with only minimal work experience (i worked 10 years at a small company which is apparently worthless to personnel managers because it was so small (we were just 3 people + the boss) so i wasted those years). The way the world is right now and the job market it seems truly hopeless.