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Comment by mlinhares | Hacker News Reader

If I had to guess the author's friends are likely getting married and having kids, going through a different phase in life, the author isn't, and is thinking this must be the universe conspiring against his way of life, instead of the usual "nothing is forever".

No one is entitled to the attention of others and the pandemic helped many of us to notice our time is finite and we should better spend it doing what we like and want. Be it being at home on a couch in slippers or otherwise.

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>No one is entitled to the attention

They aren't, but at the same time the world sure is feeling more lonely. Old friends will move on, but I did notive that Meetups never really recovered in my area post pandemic (and they weren't in great shape in 2017-9 to begin with). What does one do when it feels like there's nowhere to make friends?

>helped many of us to notice our time is finite and we should better spend it doing what we like and want.

It's not necessarily volunatry for everyone. Everything's more expensive and not everyone's gotten wages that keep up with inflation. Or they got laid off and are recovering from that. It just so happens the cheapest entertainment these days is in fact in your own house.

> Old friends will move on, but I did notive that Meetups never really recovered in my area post pandemic

I think there is this setup period when parents do things for their kids and the rate of things decay as we get older, more lazy and less enthusiastic.

Covid just made the middle age boring happen earlier, which people blame on their kids normally, for a generation and they didn't recover.

Pubs have raised the price of a normal beer 2x where I live since pre-covid. The pub culture, which was allready weak, is not coming back any time soon.

> it just so happens the cheapest entertainment these days is in fact in your own house.

These days? That is pretty much true since advent of home computers in 80s/90s.

Maybe late 90's. 80's Home computers were fairly expensive if you adjust for inflation and media was limited (and far from instant. Oh, the dial-up days where even saving a Gamefaqs guide could take minutes. Can only wonder how the early 90's went). In addition, it was much cheaper than today to go out on a bar crawl or even the arcades.

But i think we both agree entertainment got cheaper while outside life more expensive. We can grab internet connected devices for barely $100 and a single entertainment subscription (Netflix, Gamepass, Spotify) is maybe $10/month for an entire catalog. I can't even go out for lunch for $10 unless I do Costco.

In the 1980s, it was typically things away from the computer - renting videos or video games from Blockbuster and things like that. Not to mention all of the actually interesting things on cable.

The local video store would run a deal over the summers when I was a kid where you paid $30 and got three, two night rentals (new releases excluded) a week for the summer school break. Being able to grab a new game or movie every other day (since you were already there to return the previous one on time) was great.

I haven't been back to meetup after the pandemic as I moved cities but most of the meetups I used to go didn't come back, which is unfortunate. I guess the main option is for you to start your own, not much else to be done. Before the pandemic me and a friend resurrected the Golang meetup in PHL and it was mostly a success, you won't know if it will work or not unless you try it.

It also seemed like Meetup jacked up their prices. I remember seeing a lot of groups go dark after warnings from Meetup that their maintainers had abandoned the group due to the cost.

Looking at Budapest, how it was 10-20 years ago, and how it is now: there is something in what the author tries to convey. I’m not saying that it’s a problem, and it’s definitely healthier how people in their 20s live now there, but before and after COVID young adult personal life in Budapest are wildly different. Night life is clearly dying in Budapest, and my friends under 25 go out waaaay more infrequently (and not just with me). Heck I’m in pubs in Budapest as much as them, and I don’t even live in Hungary anymore. And not just pubs, but basically every shared public space which is good to gather with random friends. I met with my closest friends in person almost every day (not because of university, or work), they meet maybe every other week. So I think that there is really some change.

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