Asklemmy

43940 readers

433 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

176

What are some downsides to immortality that most don't think of? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

197 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'll start off with one, Being upset about a breakup that happened hundreds of years ago.

Edit 1:

Heath death of the universe, Death of the sun, etc, does not count. I feel like focusing on this is an overused point.

Edit 2:

Loneliness does not count. I feel like we all know immortality means you'll miss people and lose them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

People are commenting 'fates worse than death' and 'being made into a labrat by the 1%', but really, if you have infinite time to just do stuff and you can't be killed -- And you don't somehow squirrel your way into a position of power then what are you even doing with your time and immortality, oomfie?

The loneliness part is also questionable. I know OP said it's overly done, but I also think it's just wrong. If you're an adult you've had people in your life die before. It sucks. You miss them. But then you move on. And you meet other people. You'll still go ":(" when you think about the person and such... But life goes on.

And that's just life. It doesn't get any worse if you extend it longer -- If anything it gets better. You might have lost your beloved today, but you have another dozen lifetimes to heal your wounds and meet someone else and fall in love again and (...)

So here's some lower-stakes, frustrating inconveniences of being immortal:

Your favourite fashion? It's not just out of fashion. It's so out of fashion it is now considered 'historical costuming'. You can no longer find any articles like it at all. Because the only people even trying to recreate the techniques are costuming nerds and theater people who always exaggerate stuff
You got a song stuck in your head. It is either from before recording was invented, or any recordings of it that existed are too old to be reliably listenable. You have a song stuck in your head.
You used to really enjoy a job you did. That entire career path is now obsolete. As per the first paragraph of my post, if you're immortal you have probably snuck your way into the upper echelons of society at some point during your infinite time... But like. You're bored. You loved being a Court Jester, now there are no Court Jesters.
Actually tedium just in general. Sooner or later you'll run out of new things to try, because you'll have done everything that even remotely caught your eye already. So what the fuck will you do with your time? You'll eventually just get depressed and not do anything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Feeling bad for the immortals who were professional garden hermits.