this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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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.
(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Nobody is answering the prompt lol. Everyone says all of this shit all the time.

You live long enough to never feel at home. Sure the loneliness sucks or whatever, but who do you root for at the football game?

Having to buy new shoes for the rest of eternity. You know how much work I've literally just put into finding shoes that 1) don't suck and 2) aren't made with slave labor? It's impossible. Drives me insane. I'd found my own shoe company once I become immortal rich just to fix that problem alone. Maybe other stuff too we'll get there

I suppose on that note: it seems like a really bad idea to become a public figure after a while. Like you obviously don't want your immortality found out. You have to have like illuminati power before that point though, but it could happen at any time. Like if something happens and you become a news item (i.e. helping someone out and a video goes viral online). Not saying everyone is all that close to going viral, but over a sufficiently long lifespan you're effectively rolling that dice a lot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago

Upsides: You can create a cult where they believe in you as a god, because you will live for eternity.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Life will pound you into an uncaring jaded disinterested unloveable husk of a being after too many emotional scars from losing loved ones, too much of seeing humanity make the same mistakes, and too much watching the knowledge you gained turned irrelevant.

Or, life will beat into you an uncanny ability to converse and relate to others, even if fleetingly.

Watch The Man from Earth.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago

You don't need immortality for that. Only a bad decade in your 20'.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But do not watch the sequel. It ruins the whole beautiful thing.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago

Loneliness. I think being immortal would show someone what true Loneliness is

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

A lot of ways to die are excruciatingly painful, but you die, so you don't live with the pain. If you end up in one of those situations and don't die (because you are immortal), I imagine the psychological impact of the pain without immediate release could be enough to completely break you, mentally.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Basically all of the time you’re alive will be after the heat death of the universe, where you will be floating in space, with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to experience. Complete darkness, complete silence, in a complete vacuum, for eternity. Every other particle in the universe is forever out of your reach. You know that you will have nothing forever. You will never see, hear, or touch anything again, for all of time, which will never end. The trillions of years that preceded your float through the void fade into a distant memory as you outlive twice as much time, four times as much, a trillion-trillion times as much, and infinitely more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Or you get to experience another big bang. That would be worth the wait.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Then you could call yourself Galactus

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

I wrote a story that features such an entity and what was interesting about it to me was how even the slightest glimmer of life beyond their void would lead to an all-consuming desire to experience "living" again.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Discovering the upper limits to what the human mind can retain and just constantly forgetting all the shit you used to find important.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (4 children)

If you're injured and you survive with the scarring from said injuries. Well, good luck because you're now going to wear those and wish you had died from them. If you're incapacitated or amputated? Gotta live with that for years and years.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago

Or not being able to play a board game, because it says "ages 9 - 99" on the box.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago

Date pickers that assume you have a 5 digit birth year.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That old person feeling of no longer being with "it", and what's "it" now being strange and scary probably compounds over the centuries.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And this is why elder vampires are so vengeful.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I absolutely love the scene in "Interview with the Vampire" where Lestat is found hiding away in a room, distraught by all the creations of modern civilization.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Depends on the type of immorality. Do you continue to age? If no, what age do you stop? Eventually the universe will die. So what happens to you then?

It might be fun for a while. Maybe even a long while. But that fun will be gone in an instant compared to the trillions and trillions of years you will float in a dark dying universe of nothing.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago (6 children)

immortality doesn't guarantee perpetual health, you're alive, but so broken and sick you wish you could die, but you can't

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

This was the premise of the Greek myth of Tithonus

In short, Eos fell in love with Tithonus, a mortal prince, and begged Zeus to grant immortality to him (but forget to specify eternal youth and eternal health) so she was forced to watch him age until he shrunk into a raisin and was eaten

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah this answer.

Imagine being immortal and you get stuck somewhere.

Like in a giant land slide.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Alive, but stuck in nutty putty cave for eternity

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Not eternity, just a few billion years until earth is vaporized by the sun going supernova.
Then you're free - to drift through empty space forever.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

You know how the curse of pet ownership is that you will almost certainly outlive them?

That, but with everyone you love

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Knowing the answer to some of history's biggest mysteries, because you were there, but being unable to speak about them because, 1, that would expose you, 2, nobody would believe you either way because nobody expects you to be THAT old.

Also, it is already frustrating seeing kids being dismissive or denying events that you yourself have lived. Imagine being thousands of years old and seeing so much shit, but those events are rarely retold, forgotten, or straight up denied by conspiracies or future governments that won't admit their fault on it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

Knowing my memory I'd forget it all very soon after it happened and need a history book to help me recall any of it and the stuff left out or distorted would end up warping that recollection enough that it'd be so unreliable I may as well believe the historians. I can scarcely remember the previous day as it is.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Given a long enough time frame, the vast majority of an immortal life would be spent buried beneath something or floating in the void of space. Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don't die...nothing to do but float in space.

You might counter that with, "well yeah, but eventually I'd find other sentient life forms and/or people again.” And sure, maybe, but that wouldn't last as long as you...and then you're just alone floating in space again, for the vast majority of your life. The only thing to look forward to, since you will outlast everything, is the end of time itself.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

On one hand, you have eternity to come to grips with everything you've done. On the other hand, it might take eternity to come to grips with everything you've done.

Seeing all of your friends and family die, knowing you'll never stop missing them.

Having the perspective of centuries. Seeing society make the same mistakes over and over again because they forget, but you never do. It would drive me mad. Already does, considering I have the ability to, and have, read history. I just imagine living it over and over to be tedious.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Without getting into the heat death of the universe and all that, I can think of something that happens much, much sooner. I'm only middle aged and I already don't like where the world is going. Can you imagine being centuries, or eons past the era you identified with? Can you imagine how insufferable young people and old people alike would seem when you have centuries worth of life experience and wisdom? Can you imagine a horde of little edge lords on the internet confidently yet incorrectly telling you about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when you were there when it was signed?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Having to constantly find new hiding places for the blood chalice, and keeping up with all the latest scanning methods so you can develop countermeasures. Your secret is never truly safe.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

If other people are also immortal, the awkwardness of all of them eventually becoming your exes

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I don’t think you’d remember a break up from hundreds of years ago, let alone be upset about it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Idk id be super depressed if I was able to experience my family, friends, family's children, and so on die.

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