Is this a result of me getting older or something else?

- Last week I e-mailed my boss asking about an open position I thought might be good for my personal development. He didn't even respond to my e-mail to say yes or no.

- I also e-mailed a professor for help with a major project. Again, he didn't even respond to say yes or no.

- Members of my family don't seem like they reach out to the rest of the family even though we make an effort to get together for Christmas and Thanksgiving nobody really talks outside of that.

This has been getting worse for the last 5 years or so.

True. I feel guilty of this. Have family I only talk to on holidays. We always say "yea mane we gotta go fishing mane." And then get caught up with life and repeat the next holiday

Yeah it's most likely due to social media/phones and everyone being in their own bubble now.

When I was a kid your neighbors used to just give a quick knock on the door and then stroll right in on their own, and my mom would put up a pot of coffee etc. The parents would set up a table on the corner of the street by the dead end and sit there for hours as the kids played. When we first moved into our house when I was 8, everyone came out hard to welcome us with homemade cakes, gifts, etc. Now people barely know their neighbors names, maybe just give a wave if you see them as you're going to your car and thats it.

As some miscers already said, technology and the likes are making us all less social and a bit more autistic.

Plus our individualist consumer oriented society is makig us all more selfish. A couple decades ago "leaving someone on read" would be a very rude thing and most people would make the effort to reply (a letter a phone call etc)

So you emailed people for personal gain reasons and ur shocked the world doesn't bend over to help you?

And if those same people needed u for something, u would make up some bs reason as to why u cant help them, right?

Child pls, u build connections by being a giver, not a leech.

I hate how everyone ghosts you nowadays, it's one thing to be busy. But it's super inconsiderate srs

..no

Yet your trying to communicate with those people for a favor through a very impersonal method. Everyone likes to asked how they are doing, just never ask how someone else is doing. that's life son and stop being a bitch... go join a running club if you need someone to talk to, since WE AREN'T ENOUGH here on OB. smh, seriously opie, fuck you.

/spits on floor

Damn

I think age as well, you need less from others socially as you get older. And people annoy you more aka grumpy old men.

1) I do. I used to be pretty bad about ignoring people but I now make a conscious effort to respond to everyone who reaches out to me.

2) In both those instances, it's their JOB to respond. It's the job of the boss to develop their people, and the job of the professor to assist students who want to learn. I've been a manager and a TA before, and you can be damn sure that when someone needed something signed or approved, I accomplish it as fast as possible. And if I can't, I respond and tell them why.

aight thats fair, i dun know u and wasnt rly getting on u personally, more of a rant about soyciety lol

I've been seeing these issues with communication and ghosting ramp up since 2015. When it happens to me personally, it's annoying but I just suck it up and let it go. But when it happens when im with a group of ppl, I always confront and say something and the group turns on me and makes me the bad guy. So just like ur professor and boss, I just ghost ppl now cuz soyciety told me it's not a big deal. Ngas will receive help and it's 50/50 chance I even get a thank you anyways. Gone are the empathetic days. I only help ppl when I need something from them. Such is life.

Truth. I am a millennial, not even that old, and I remember growing up and neighbor kids would randomly pop up at my door to ride bikes or just to play. Also remember family friends who randomly would show up during holidays just to say hi because they were in the neighborhood. Same goes with neighbors.

Didn't realize how great and underappreciated this social norm was until I got older.

I'm pretty crap at keeping up communication myself. IDK if that means anything generally or if that is just how it goes with ADD. Like I will think about contacting someone or replying to them and that's as far as it goes. I thought about it- task complete. Sometimes I will even make a little progress, e.g. I bought greeting cards for 3 people. I can't remember now if I bought them around Mother's Day 2025 or 2024.

Maybe it's information overload? People getting constant notifications. The brain begins ignoring some things to manage.

I haven't had a land line since around 200X something. It cost more than a cell line and the spam calls got so bad.

I've almost totally abandoned email. I have two accounts that became so bogged down with spam despite numerous attempts to delete/unsubscribe. There might be some stuff in there that I would like to read.

Sometime in the last 3 or 4 years I started getting spam texts and calls. I'm glad my phone flags most of the calls. I don't know why it rings though and forces me to find my phone to see the message and stop the noise.

I take calls/texts from a handful of people- family and friends. Other than that my primary communication is on discord.

As far as social/community engagement that was already trending downward before COVID really gave it a whack. Now with AI "friends" we may well be heading towards that early Black Mirror episode where all the people lived alone in little efficiency apartments and never bothered to speak to each other at all as they were plugged into an artificial reality full time.

PS: The internet appears to be approaching unusable also due to bots/AI. You have to try and find a little human outpost if you want one.

This is why I misc. One of the last places not inundated with bots.

I can tell which miscers spend time on places that are inundated with bots. It is more obvious than they think. It affects their opinions and even how they talk.

They are killing it. And I don't think it is mere chance. It seems likely that authoritarian regimes and large corporations would prefer that the public be left without the ability to communicate real information freely.

I don't want children exposed to obscene content and grooming. But I also believe that this age verification/ID thing is a bad idea because while anonymity can allow lies to spread it also allows dangerous or unpopular truth to be shared; so called malinformation. Things that are true but are harmful to the elected and self-selected rulers of this world.

It would be nice if bots were criminalized, but I'm not holding my breath. Given the option of a dead unusable internet or an internet you have to pay for I would choose the latter. Maybe someone will create a gated internet for real humans that you purchase access to?

Misc missed a golden opportunity to not have any responses to this thread

If I were you op I'd call my boss out on not responding to your email. Very srs

username relevent

It's refreshing to see other people identifying what has been going on. I don't know what to do about it either. I have very mixed feelings about the ID thing, but dead internet is killing the main way humans are able to communicate. I've toyed with the idea in my head of how to verify people are actually people. It almost always comes back to some form of ID.

Somewhat related: You can tell which forums social media sites used to train their AI bots by looking at the comments section. Youtube comment section is the best example where it is clear reddit was used to as the main training model for commenting. That, or the the NPC threat is more pervasive than thought.

tired people = 0 brain activity = standardised slop responses just to get through the day

n....

Yes. I don't even get worked up about it anymore it's so common.

So you are out of the military now and in school too?

Online school, both at the same time.

It's so easy to communicate now that people are more selective with who they answer. In the past, if a loser like you reached out, the recipient probably wouldn't already have several active conversations with better people going on