I think the bigger lie is you can live in New York City and almost never interact with a person of color, but ok.
This actually used to happen when I was younger. I miss having friends and being able to just hang out in our free time. I miss having some usable amount of free time. Adult life sucks and sometimes I just feel like I want to jump of the Balcony and end it all since I’ll never get the good times back and I’ll never have anymore in the future.
Sorry you’re feeling like this mate, hope you catch a break soon. Wish I could go back to my late twenties too sometimes.
Sucks to think about, especially since relative to the past we are in the most prosperous times, but people used to be happier in generations prior because they had cheap third places to go to, had a purpose and community.
And now our lives are surrounded by substitute and vicarious experiences that will never afford us true fulfillment. And like a drug, it saps us of the motivation to actually change any of it.
Convenience at an all time high, wealth inequality at astronomical levels.
Times are different, complaints are valid
Fight for the future you want everyone to have
Interesting. I have friends eating breakfeast at my place before work one or two times a week.
You may hate on me now.
what time do you get up, and what time do you all head for work?
We get up at 6 and we head to work between 7 and 9.
So depending on the day and person its just a quick coffee. But on other days we have time for bread and croissants.
I hate the damn french with their stupid labor laws that let’s you have somewhat of a life.
Oh, we hate the french too! So we made even more even more laborate labor laws to outdo them!
🥐 = french
What they don’t mention here is that these guys get up at 6:00 AM, have lunch at 7 and leave at 8
I know it is popular to shit on Friends these years, but I think that it captures the growing up part of life pretty well as the show is basically about capturing a snapshot in time of a group of friends when they were the closest before adult life tore them apart. Because that is how the show ends. They all grow up, have adult responsibilities, different priorities and they all leave the apartment complex to start new lives away from one another.
In my 20s I had a group of friends for awhile and we would hang out in each other’s apartments all the time, sometimes we would sleep over at each other’s places and have breakfast together before heading to school. We would go on picnics and excursions together. All pile into the old, rusty car that one of us owned and drive somewhere.
We had a pub we liked to visit semi-regularly and we were pretty 50/50 men and women.
When we got our degrees, most of us packed up and left. We are now in our 30s and some have had kids in the meantime while most of us have grown apart. Some of us still keep in contact and hang out when our schedules permits it, but it isn’t like it was when we were in our 20s.
To me, Friends is an idealized version of the friends group stuff in your 20s. To me it isn’t as unrealistic as it’s being made out to be nowadays, but it is idealized.
I treasure the few years I got to have good friends and classmates that I loved to hang out with and treat as family. No matter how much time passes, whenever we get to meet up again, it is almost like no time has passed at all, and that is such a great feeling, even if we only get to see each other like once a year.
I used to live in a condo with some friends, and there were others in our friend group that would randomly show up throughout the day. The doors were always unlocked, so friends would just walk in. Sometimes it would be early in the morning and would hang out while I made myself breakfast. Sometimes it was late at night after they partied and needed a place to crash.
Seems similar to what you mentioned, I relate. Like you said, Friends was idealized, but not unrealistic.
Yeah, I think those memories are to be cherished. Your apartment setup back then genuinely sounds like a setup for a wholesome sitcom xD
It’s stuff like that, that makes me have very few regret from my 20s because I full on just wanted to make friends and throw myself into a bunch of scenarios with them while I had the chance and was still young.
When I hit 30, I was like “I’m ready to move forward”.
Still miss it sometimes. That closeness and the goofy shit we got up to sometimes. Also just the hanging out on those lazy evenings. Good times ❤️
Reading that first paragraph makes me physically sick to my stomach. The impermanence of everything is killing me. There is no point. I cannot find a point of my own. It’s legitimately driving me insane.
It’s not how human beings are supposed to live. We’re supposed to have that close-knit friend community our entire lives. People had this up until only 100-200 years ago or so. People in little farming villages were able to have a stable friend group for their entire lives and have time to interact with them. Kids didn’t serve as a substantial barrier, as the friend group helped raise the children. This is how children are supposed to be raised. It’s supposed to take a village.
It’s only our hyper capitalist economy that atomizes us and forces us to scatter to the winds, endlessly chasing job after job in far flung cities, never able to settle down and form real community anywhere.
The way we live is deeply unnatural and fundamentally at odds with human nature. It’s no wonder we’re all mentally ill.
I think the impermanence of life is one of the most difficult things to accept, but once you do, there is some beauty to it too.
I think it is or at least should be one of the biggest motivators to try and live in the now. I have been the most happy, when I try to live in the now and appreciate what I have right now. It takes a bit of practice but it is doable and it a great antidote to anxiety and depressive thoughts in my experience. You cannot live in the now all the time, but aiming toward it, is a good way to spend the limited time you have in this life.
Big hugs to you.
Life has permanence in the long term not the long long long term. We’re fighting to make lives for our children and fighting the rules to make sure that other people’s children can live, survive, and prosper.
I mean, you can still live like that if you want to, for your whole life if you want to. Move into or start a housing co-op. Even kids don’t get in the way of this. We’re supposed to raise kids in a village. That’s how children are meant to be raised.
Nah, I’m good. My comment wasn’t meant to be this sad woe is me rant. It was a critique of the meme since I did have friendships like that in my youth and just like in Friends, my friendgroup(s) split up when that period of our lives ended and we went on to start our adult lives.
It is a completely normal part of life. I don’t see it as a terrible thing.
I loved Friends, but yeah, the whole show was a big fat lie and I hate I dont live in that world
I think if they live across the hall then it happens. I have friends that live across the street and they come over for breakfast and we all get our kids ready together and off to school.
King of the Hill showing a group of childhood friends living next to each other, having time almost every day to just hang out near their homes and drink, went from just being a quaint little detail from when I watched it when I was younger to being an almost dreamlike aspiration as I move further into adulthood.
There’s a certain amount of discourse in KotH fandom around exactly how all four childhood friends came to buy houses on The Alley behind Rainey Street. Apparently the canon is hazy and inconsistent, though I can’t remember the details.
So no one told you life was gonna be this way.
👏 👏👏👏👏
One too many 👏
Thanks /s
Now I’ve got that fucking song stuck in my head!
🥹
Anyone showing up at my apartment to hang out while I’m waking up and getting ready for work is going to get chopped in the throat, that’s my time for rage and hatred for existence.
Settle down there Neo :P
The expectation that you could get an apartment that size in central NYC without being a billionaire is also a lie
I think they explained it, the reason they could afford it was because Monica’s grandmother lived there, and they’ve been paying 1950s rent because of rent control or something. Something similar for phoebe as well. Anyway show never explains how joey/chandler/Ross can afford those big houses.
Hi, Chandler and joey’flat is not that big, it was actually the joke between characters often and Chandler had a good job anyway. Ross was good with money and his parents favourite so I think he got more money from them.
Also worth remembering that except for Phoebe. All the characters on the show grew up upper class. Like top 5% upper class.
Also Phoebe lived with her grandmother in a small apartment until her grandmother died and she got roomamates.
They’re not all upper class, Joey starts as a small background / ad actor, Rachel and Phoebe do small jobs like waitress and massages - Phoebe living in the street as a kid comes up a few times. (well, Rachel is born rich but she starts the series getting cut off and left with nothing - after she dumps her dad’s credit cards she had) An episode has Joey, Phoebe, Rachel point out that they’re poor and often out of a job so they complain that they aren’t nearly as loaded as Chandler, Ross, Monica, and they have a hard time keeping up with their lifestyle. Also confirming Chandler, Ross, Monica are indeed well off. Later, Joey gets a good acting role, Rachel has a good job, and Phoebe gets a good place at some point.
Did any of us watch any of it?
Friends fucking sucked.
You okay?
Pretty weird to be so angry about an old TV show and to keep commenting in a thread about it.
You are right.
I was in a pissy mood and never saw what everyone else saw in friends. I could have expressed that differently.
Fair enough! These are trying times, and I have also been guilty of that shortcoming. Good on ya for owning up to it.
Even if that is your opinion, why share it? What value does that provide to anyone, including yourself.
Shitting on things for no reason stopped being popular after the 90s.
You’re right.
I quite like the way How I Met Your Mother handles this - the size of the apartments is the narrator misremembering. There’s an episode where the characters have been viewing a house in
New JerseyLong Island - they return to the apartment and it’s portrayed as the size it realistically would be.Can you tell which episode it is? I’ve tried watching some but couldn’t find it.
It’s in the intro to S07E11. Took me a while to track it down!
Thanks for tracking it.
That would just be a dig on their intelligence. You can’t see the massive problem of not being able to afford housing? How can I relate to this character?
Same energy:
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something?
Some of that is due to the realities of filming in a stage made to look like an apartment as you need the space for the camera crew to fit. This everyone lives in massive places.
Never thought about this, that a really good input, thanks
NP,I was told the same thing by a camera guy back in the late 1990s about this exact show.
That’s completely not the reason. How other shows manage to show small apartments and poor people houses?
Showing regular people living in big apartment is more appealing to the public. Shows from the 70s or before were more realistic. Mary Tyler Moore was living in a small apartment and sleeping in the sofa despite having a regular job. In All in the family, they were financially struggling especially because of the 70s inflation. Lucy and her husband were living in a small apartment.
Things did change in the 80s and we started seeing families living in big houses with cars. Even Roseanne who normally depicted a working class family was living in a big house and could afford many things.
you think you know better than someone who worked on tv in NYC at that time?
Mary Tyler Moore’s show never had the expectation of holding six or more people in the same room like friends.
All in the family took place in a house. Im not sure how you miss this. It’s in the credits.
Lucy and her Husband never had more than a handful of people on screen at once. They dont need the space Friends does.
Friends needs a space for the main cast plus partners and that requires a larger space plus the ability to fit crew which requires large places. The bit about rent control makes perfect sense if you have experience with NYC real-estate.
There were many episodes where there were more than 6 people in I Love Lucy. I mentioned All in the Family because it was realistic and was showing people financially struggling even with two jobs. They lived in a house but it was small with one bathroom.
Even Seinfeld had a small apartment. Many other shows manage to show people living in small apartments. And even with rent control, it isn’t realistic at all.
So that is clearly not the real reason.
Again their living room had to fit six or more. There are episodes where they have six people in Lucy’s house but rarely is it more than four or five.
Seinfeld had 4 main cast and they rarely had anyone else in their places other than the main 4. No one needed to fit a dozen people in a room.
Were you renting living space in NYC in 1994? I was.
Do you know anyone with a ridiculous place because of rent control policies? I know several. Everything about the show makes sense within the context of the time once you realize that eight or so people need to fit on the stage in many scenes
So writers are like “we will write a sitcom about this poor family of 10. Let’s give them a big house to fit them all”. That is ridiculous.
I won’t continue debating with you. I am amazed at how are you trying to justify everything about the show. Actually you are like the ones I saw on the fan sub on Reddit.
They were like “How can we justify them having the place we know we need them to have?” and worked from there.
I know a guy living on Central Park West with 2000 sq ft two floor apartment with park views that was paying less than what I paid for 1k sq ft in the middle of Queens. That’s a nicer place in a better area than Friends had for less than 3k a month thirty years after the show all because of rent control.
We know they all came from money except Joey and Phoebe. They could also be getting money from family.
It actually addresses this. Chandler was in a high paying job and lived below his means. And Monica’s (much larger, much nicer) apartment was rent controlled; The apartment complex still had her grandmother on the lease from the 1960’s, so Monica was essentially only paying a small increase in 1960’s rent.
That rent control was the topic of one episode, where Joey yells at the maintenance guy. In response, the maintenance guy threatens to tell the landlord about Monica’s grandmother being dead, meaning Monica would need to start paying full price for the apartment. Monica can’t afford the rent, so Joey has to do a favor for the maintenance guy and get back into his good graces.
this whole show is fake af
yes, because it’s fiction. Or did you think that the showrunners were claiming that this was actually a documentary about the actual lives of actual people?
What show is this?
Friends.
That’s supposed to be a new your city apartment lol
Lmao I love it. Everyone has a gigantic apartment or mansion no matter what their job is.
Do we ever see Phoebe’s apartment?
Ross and Monica’s parents were well-off and Monica’s apartment is actually her grandma’s rent controlled apartment I think?
Rachel’s dad is loaded but she wants to be independent so she… Stays with Monica
Chandler has a well-paid job and is likely paying more in rent than Joey for their place in the earlier seasons.
Really, Ross (and maybe Phoebe) are the ones who make no sense. Ross likely has child support payments and let’s be honest, not THAT great a career
I never understood how far away Ross was supposed to live from the others. Ostensibly it’s in a different building but he’s always round at their place so presumably he commuted to see them, unless it’s literally just around the corner. So where did he find time to do that?
I thought he was directly across the street. There are some storylines involving looking across into the other buildings’ windows.
That’s after he buys a new place, past the halfway point of the show.
When I was a kid, the trope of the neighbor just coming over and having breakfast was real in my case. The neighbor was my best friend, and he was treated like family. Literally the only person who didn’t live at my house that was allowed to just come in on their own. He was the Urkel to my Big Guy.
To be fair they lived 5ft away, it may as well have been one big apartment. And one of them was a chef.
Still. Who does that.
Older gens I’d say. My mother had afriend who always came in without knockin and just…vibed. Like they suddenly materialised in kitchen and talked while eating or materialised near table and drank coffee.
My partner’s mother had someone like that too.
Meanwhile I am having a meltdown if someone tries the door before knocking (they are always locked anyway)
Was your mom always goofing things up and was her friend’s name Ethel?
Before the internet was widespread, it was extremely common for people to actually hang out in person. The show is set in an era where the internet was something you went out of your way to connect to, not something that was already integrated into every single device you used.
Especially since they all lived so close together, it’s 100% believable that they’d hang out together regularly. People also forget that the show takes place over multiple years, and we only see 20’ish episodes per year. Assuming each episode takes place across two’ish days, they’re still only seeing each other two or three times per week. If I lived across the hallway from my best friends, I’d probably hang out with them a few times per week too.
This is especially true from Chandler and Joey’s perspectives, where Monica’s kitchen is only like eight steps away from their own kitchen. Why bother cooking yourself breakfast, when there’s a professional chef willing to do it for you, and all you have to do is open two extra doors?
It’s believable if you imagine yourselves living their lives. But the lie for me was that I could have the same thing when I grew older. That is impossible for me, and a lot of people.
Not breakfast, but I used to eat dinner with my neighbors allllll the time. They even used my fridge to keep extra food in when preparing for parties and stuff.
That sounds wonderful. I want neighbors like that. I guess I can’t sit around waiting for neighbors like that, eh. I need to go out and make neighbors like that.
People with close friends, i guess.
My friends definitely don’t want me around. lolAs a person with close friends, there’s just no time in the morning. Even if we lived close by, like, no. I don’t even have time to eat breakfast in the morning those days when I drop the kids at school.
Yeah, my best friend lives just around the corner and we have this kind of friendship. We work together and both work from home, so we often work from each other’s houses.
We both have wives and kids but our families are close enough that we often just turn up at each other’s houses without asking or organising anything. We eat dinner together about half the time.
But we pretty much never have breakfast together - mornings are far too busy for that.
each other’s houses.
Must be nice though.
Really depends on your situation. I used to leave the house at 10 to avoid the rush in both directions. This was great until I had kids. With kids it’s an absolute no go.
But most of the friends in Friends don’t have kids.
Really depends on your situation.
I think this is key. Most people don’t have a situation where they both don’t have kids and don’t need to be at work early in the morning.
I have a job where I don’t need to be in very early or at all. But them darn kids gotta get to school or I’m breaking the law. 😅
My friends definitively don’t want me around. lol
My friends
🤔
Ross doesn’t live in the same building. Later on he moves into the building across the road from them though. Phoebe lives elsewhere as well.
Lol plot twist, it was 4 overtly large apartments right next to each other.
This and wall high lockers in high school
I had a locker in high school. It was against a wall. Admittedly, it was in a dedicated locker area/room and not in a major plot-device-friendly thoroughfare, but it existed all the same.
We had lockers in high school but they were always in a large open area. Putting them against a wall in a corridor would be stupid as it would almost always lead to blockages.
I also never knew anyone who had a huge locker large enough to be stuffed into, like always seems to happen on American TV.
Yeah, but all the lockers were stacked in rows with 2 short lockers instead of 1 tall one.
I’m not sure what this means?
Lots of lockers portrayed in media are the type that go from the floor all the way up the wall. I don’t know about other schools, but my lockers were all pretty small and there were several on top of each other.
cant push a dork in a half size locker, much less the 1/6 size lickers that are common these days.
Mine were floor to ceiling
I figured there were some like that.
Yeah but I grew up in NJ where my school was 400 students and that was pretty common because most towns are really small. So I imagine space wasn’t as big of an issue as other big schools face.
I’m pretty sure the average intake for my school was about 1,000 per year.
Some people had very small lockers but most of us had the half height ones. But there were definitely a few where you could barely fit books in unless you put them in at an angle.
My high school was like a community college campus where we had a set of books in the class+set at home and had to walk to all our classes to different buildings outside. It sucked in the winter time a lot.
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