Most people are silently disappointed with how life turned out
The quiet mass murder of expectation.
There’s no grand tragedy here.
No flaming wreck, no Shakespearean downfall, no headline‑worthy implosion.
Just a low‑humming, background sigh that vibrates through offices, commuter trains, and overpriced one‑bedroom apartments.
You can almost hear it if you tilt your head:
that collective shiiiiiit‑this‑can’t‑be‑it exhale.
We were promised fireworks and got fluorescent lighting instead
When you’re a kid, every milestone looks like a miracle‑portal.
Graduate → BAM → freedom.
First job → BAM → meaning.
Love → BAM → wholeness.
Children, mortgage, promotion, whatever → BAM → fulfillment.
Turns out every BAM is more of a thud.
You cross the shiny line…and Monday is still Monday.
The hero soundtrack never cues up, the sky doesn’t part,
and you still have to decide what’s for dinner while your back hurts for no god‑damn reason.
We silently file the disappointment away, tell ourselves next milestone, maybe.
We know we’re lying. We do it anyway. Survival technique.
Autopilot nation
Look around: endless parades of well‑behaved zombies ticking boxes they never wrote.
Wake up too early.
Scroll doom on a glowing rectangle.
Hand over brainpower to some boring tyrant with a LinkedIn banner that says “#HUSTLE”.
Numb out on caffeine, deadlines, tiny dopamine crumbs from notifications.
Evenings dissolve into chores, streaming, liquor, melatonin.
Repeat until joints creak, until parents die, until the mirror looks like a deep‑fake of an older cousin you never liked.
Nobody chose this loop; the loop chose us.
Opting out costs rent money and social validity, so we swallow the loop and call it “being a grown‑up.”
We’re not depressed enough for the psych ward, not ecstatic enough for a self‑help podcast.
We’re just…quietly bummed the fuck out.
The reward‑punishment algorithm was rigged from day one
School taught obedience, not curiosity.
Work rewards compliance, not creativity.
Politics rewards money, not morality.
History screamed the warning sirens, we muted them with career aspirations.
The kid who questioned authority got detention.
The employee who questioned procedure got sidelined.
The whistle‑blower got blacklisted.
Meanwhile the sycophants climbed, the billionaires hoarded, the planet roasted.
No wonder disappointment blooms like mold behind the drywall—
we keep watering the wrong plants then wonder why everything tastes of rot.
Thoughtcrime: wanting to press the stop button
Whisper, ever so softly, that you’d like to exit the carnival ride
and watch society jolt in terror.
Suggest fewer work hours? Lazy.
Question careerism? Unhinged.
Dream of universal basic dignity? Communist.
Even the language of despair gets pathologized—
“Have you tried mindfulness?”
“Maybe a little Sertraline?”
Anything to keep you functional enough to feed the profit engine another quarter.
Nudge the stop button too hard and they’ll strap diagnostic labels to your skull faster than you can say DSM‑5.
Better to smile, take your pills, scroll Instagram, keep your apocalypse nicely internalized.
“Advancement” means faster phones, not wiser hearts
Technology sprinted; wisdom limped.
We can deepfake the pope in a puffer jacket but can’t design an economy that doesn’t mulch souls for dividends.
We repeat genocidal mistakes in 4K HDR, meme them, forget them, repeat them again.
Tool upgrades without value upgrades are just sharper blades to cut ourselves with.
The math of muted misery
1.9 kids
2.4 streaming subscriptions
3 parking tickets
4.7 hours of empty meetings per day
∞ low‑grade regret
Everyone’s spreadsheet looks different, but the sum is identical:
“Wasn’t this supposed to feel like more?”
We compare brand‑name disappointments on social media like Pokémon cards—
“My marriage is fine I guess.”
“My job pays well but feels pointless.”
“My city is cool but lonely.”
Swipe, like, envy, sigh, repeat.
I accepts tips if monthly subscriptions are not your thing. Just buy me a coffee.
Where the hell do we go from here?
I refuse to end on a motivational poster, but fuck nihilism too—
that’s just disappointment wearing edgelord eyeliner.
Maybe the hack is radical miniature rebellion:
Call in well tomorrow and wander the woods instead of worshiping Outlook.
Tell your friend you love them in the sloppy, embarrassing way humans are wired for.
Make one thing that doesn’t scale, doesn’t monetize, doesn’t optimize—just matters to you.
Daydream aloud about scrapping the 40‑hour week, the landlord class, the fossil emperor—make it contagious.
Tiny insurrections piled high enough can block the gears.
At the very least they remind us we’re alive, not software yet.
The silent disappointment will stay, sure—
but maybe it becomes a compass instead of a cage,
pointing toward whatever scraps of authenticity we haven’t bartered away yet.
None of this is easy. None of it fixes everything.
But it’s a start, and starts are all revolutions ever were.
To us, the quietly disenchanted masses:
may our low humming grow into a roar loud enough to crack the pavement
and let something honest finally break through.
Antonio
I became aware of how awful our Capitalist society was when I became too disabled to work. I didn't understand at the time, because I was busy dealing with overcoming the shame of not being able to be a meaningless cog in the machine. Once I had done that, it became blindingly clear how our society trains us all to be mindless automatons that focus on survival and the day to day shuffle and bright shiny things to buy to distract us as our rights are slowly stripped away (not so slowly anymore) and a very few hoard all the resources and accrue all the power.
The only advice I have is to want less.
If you can, live in a place that doesn’t require you to feed the capitalism machine as much of your soul.
Go camping instead of abroad. Wear the same clothes and drive the same car forever.
The reason most cons work is that the mark is encouraged to want something out of it. If the mark declines, they aren’t conned.