Is a fun carefree life with lots of expressive friends possible in real life...

Toronto doesn't exist, user. It's just a poet's dream.

You think being poor as fuck is carefree life? We had to cut costs and we rented a 4 room house between 3 of us friends. Sure, weekends are fun but otherwise being poor fucking sucks.

Not really. Why not just go innawoods and live in nature?

Is this what it's like to have friends as an adult?

I recently took on a 9-5 job and moved into a decent sized townhouse with two other long time friends. Before, I would alternate between 5-6 months of constant work at festivals, earning enough to be a neet for the winter.

In retrospect, I think I had it right the first time, but I'm trying out the stability route for a bit. If nothing else, I'll build up a nest egg for next season.

Scott Pilgrim is fucking gay, and that makes you a homo, OP.

Tell me more, user. I wanna hear the whole story.

I don't know what more there is to say. While the festival work is harder and overall worse paid, I get a lot more pride and joy from it, even if the reality is mostly standing in muddy fields and getting hit by cars.

The 9-5 I have now is easy work and pays more but I just don't have flexibility anymore. Little free time, limited time off, surrounded by the same people engaging in silly petty office politics.

Amazing as it is to say, I think I would rather play in traffic than work a 9-5.

This is both sad and funny. Is that really your best fantasy?

Depends on the job I guess. Had a 9-5 some years ago that I actually liked, but after getting laid off I ended up just getting a shitty job at a department store. Less pay and less hours, but it's something. Retail customers will always be shit, but at least the other employees are decent.

indie hipster shit is generally that

That only applies to dead end entry level jobs. Pretty much any thing that requires a degree or certification has you work 3 days out of the week with plenty of hours.

No no read closely, his fantasy is to have friends

Right up until the market is swamped with degree holders, then you might as well be a sweatshop worker.

isn't that for liberal arts stuff and not other things like programming or engineering?

Programming is like that in more and more of the industry, especially in games development and startups. Law one of the first cases where the market is swamped with degree holders who can't find work, after being told it was a sure thing. Everything else is getting there.

good to know user.

The "market' won't be swamped unless you went for a degree that's completely supersaturated like Law or LIberal Arts. Majority of STEM degrees will always be in demand and will have better working conditions than any dead end job like working at a fast food place or bagging groceries.

No. But you'll get used to the emptiness and it won't bother you anymore.

It's not the 9 to 5 that screws people. More than anything else, it's the expensive house payments and the rent that's been jacked up, and the landlords who refuse to fix the shitty appliances that haven't been replaced in 50 years, and the dozen kinds of insurance, and the hospitals that price treatments and visits at arbitrarily high prices, and the cable companies charging you an extra $300 because they insist you never returned a piece of equipment you never had in the first place.

try working 12 hours a day at minimum wage ( fortunately I can still browse the web)

It can work, but you're going to be struggling with a number of factors.

Firstly, you need to live in a cheap state that isn't in complete butt-fuck nowhere. A 3 bed 2 bath house in rural Michigan can cost you less than a 1 bed 1 bath apartment anywhere within 200 miles of Chicago. – You need somewhere that is affordable, but also has shit to actually do, or at the very least, nearby stores for your basic needs.

Secondly, you need to do it young. Light, right out of high school. College can give you dorm life, but dorm life can be hellish. – After a certain age, people start getting the itch to get married and have kids, or their families start pushing that on them. Not to mention that it's just kind of unpleasant to be in a house full of aimless 30-40 year olds. After a certain age, you just don't have the energy to be active and energetic and fun with your friends.

Thirdly, you'll need a good group of friends that you can actually trust to pay bills, do their job with a modicum of seriousness, and not bring drama or other bad habits with them. – Nothing sucks more than having a friend who self-sabotages and then expects you to carry their ass after their bad attitude costs them their job… Or worse, they pay their bills, but expect everyone else to do shit like dishes and laundry and cooking.

Yep, keep telling everyone that. Just wait ten years.

But of course, anything else would be filthy socialism. It's okay as long as it's not the government who's oppressing you.

dont hold your breath mate. speaking as a stem grad my job security is looking great. People like you will be serving me drinks at Applebee's while you wait for this hypothetical saturated job market for engineers to crash.

They're already trying their damn hardest to have Indians and Chinese doing your job. It won't be long. The rich don't want to have to employ anyone they can't easily replace.

Protip: this is what they mean, when they tell you that you're "overqualified". They want to hire someone desperate.

t. engineer

There are STEM fields out there with good job security, but the average person isn't suited for them. Takes a certain kind of mental fortitude and an ability to get comfortable doing tasks that might seem mind-numbing or too repetitive to do for long periods.

The average college student (and the country for that matter) would be far better off if they went to trade school instead. Not because trade school is for stupid people, but because we need people who can actually build and repair shit more than we need another faggot who thinks he'll start his own video game company, or some overhyped cunt who thinks her tech startup will save the internet with a shitty iphone app.

Employers paid attention to the hiring practices of fast food chains, and intent to implement them universally.

Tell that to a generation who has grown up with literally every adult telling them that if they don't go to college they might as well move to a trailer part and get started on their meth habit today.

Hell, I'm one of those people who got that exact speech, repeatedly.
>…Actually go BACK to college and get a better degree and then you'll get a good job!

After non-stop schooling for my entire life, I got a degree that did jack shit for me and left me stuck working retail for nearly 10 years. I finally got out of retail and got trained on the job for a machining company that's paying me better than nearly any job I could have gotten from trying to stick with the STEM shit.

High five, tradesbro.

so replacing their workers with those automated order machines?

Do you people have like a hate boner for people trying to be doctors and scientists?

You know there is no trade school for physics, or geology right?

Or did you people seriously go to school trying to earn money rather than learn something interesting that you can make a career out of.

Going to college for the sake of college (which is what most students do) is a waste of time and money and only serves to pile on debt to stupid, desperate kids.

Going to college because you know your passion and what you desire to do with your life is another matter entirely.

Or with teenagers on minimum wage who can be instantly replaced when they get fed up.

See

This happened to almost literally an entire generation or two, and it isn't getting better.

Doesn't help that with student loans, colleges have zero reason to be selective about students; nearly everything is basically a diploma mill these days in that they want you out the door with a piece of paper no matter how dumb you are because they already have the money, and it's the government expecting the repayments.

Natures an anarchy and life is always a hussle. Much better to have the freedom to jew and be jew'd then have commisar equality not even giving you the option of not having cable.

As far as the OP's question. Every shared living situation I've been in was torn-apart by drugs and pussy. Coupled with the average person in that situation is hardly a mature adult, it tends to not be a long lasting situation. I don't read scott pilgrim but I imagine they overlook those aspects.

The 'freedom' to be fucked over from birth. They let the mice dream of being cats. It doesn't actually happen.

Yep. And its a good thing too. The freedom to fuck and be fucked.

Social mobility has never been lower; you are never going to be rich. At this point you are lucky to even be self-sufficient, because the rich need to rack up their high scores and are robbing you in every sense they can possibly can to do it.

This is true and not true. Western nations don't officially have a caste system so I'm not sure how well the term "social mobility" applies. But assuming you avoid the pitfalls laid out for you by the traditional consumerist upbringing its entirely possible to own property/ be fit and healthy/ have money saved by the time you're 30ish with a reasonable amount of effort and planning.

I once read a TL;DR story (I was 16, I was going to live forever) about a guy in the 80's and 90's who was a pyromaniac. Anyway at one point he said he lived in a "geek house" with other pyros who all loved the same shows, music, primitive videogames and blowing shit up. A house-share with fellow people who have your interests would be awesome… but these days you can't "rely" on geeks not to turn into SJW's. Also "geekdom" is a lot more fragmented. You might love Trek but end up living with Bronies and not having a clue what they're on about.

How old was this person, if you can remember?
i'm 24 and in a similar situation and cant help but feel like im stagnating.

...

More like a bunch of whiny faggots who have never had a job.

based of what?

That IS the pitfall. For the vast majority of people who aren't born into parents with at LEAST the same level of prosperity, achieving that is roadblocked at every corner.

Yes, if only they would take all those magical, invisible jobs that are surely somewhere, the youth unemployment rate wouldn't be skyrocketing almost everywhere in the world.

Comedy is tragedy plus time. Anyone can be in "Scott Pilgrim Land" depending on the perspective and the beholders ability to open up. I used to work at a low-paying six-days-a-week vacation resort, when I started all my coworkers were essentially "that pack of people". Over time I got to know them and, well, their quirks started to show off.

…among others. Some of my deviancy got out of the way. The amount of time we spent together (we were a small team) made these quirks become second-nature. Such quirks that would make an outsider cringe.

Isn't there a big deal in Scott Pilgrim that the protagonist realises that he and most of his friends are kind of broken, stunted people who need to get over their issues and figure out what they really want out of life?

That and in the movie he has to get over his own shit. Though I haven't read the comic though. How is it? I heard Ramona Flowers isn't as much of a cunt in it.

I think it ended around his 20's in the early 90's, but the stories went back to his early childhood. I tried to find it again, but looking for "pyro stories" online now just brings up shit about some videogame.
One part of the story involved members of his school's rocketry club making two-stage rockets. But some of them discovered that if you powdered the powder in the engines, they exploded instead, so they sabotaged a guy's second engine and his rocket blew itself to bits unexpectedly.