That Unemployed Friend #003: World's First Unironically 30 Year Old Man
r.i.p. Livin Where the Trash Is. Hello TUF.
30 year olds always be wanting you to guess how old they are. “Guess,” they say, “C’mon give it a shot. Try me. Seriously, guess how old I am. Just guess.” All for the confirmation that they do, indeed, look 30 or the shock of being able to reveal themselves as much older than you expected (“Whaaat 30? No way. I never would have guessed oh wowwww”). They love asking this so much they will eventually come away with a war story or two such as the one time the zoomer intern assumed they were 35 (“fell to my knees”). Truth is, we don’t actually want people to assume we’re younger than we are, we just want to be old. I don’t buy that shit they sell about how “30 is still so young!” No it isn’t. It’s old. I’m old. Old old old old old. There is almost no metaphysical distance between 30 and 40. Nobody looks back on their 30s and thinks “Gee that sure dragged on.” I am one errant blink away from being 40 years old, I’d rather face the future than cling to the sheer cliff wall of youth. Let’s get that settled and figure out what’s next.
I loathe the big emo nostalgia machine. Its impossibly tacky rehashing of ready made aesthetics so wack The Chainsmokers are making a movie about it. Beyond all that what I find so fucking unnerving is how it’s a cultural retirement home for aging millennials. The 28 - 35 year olds now woefully outside the lens of modern pop culture giving the new Olivia Rodrigo one spin before retreating to Paramore. The Emonite industrial complex has swooped in to guide these lost lambs into their stable of overpriced domestic beers and the promise that nothing they play is going to scare you. I attended one of those events many years ago and my most striking memory was a headliner declaring “I don’t know about you guys but I’ll always be an emo kid!” to cheers before leading the crowd in a singalong of mall-emo’s most recognizable choruses while he slow strummed chords on his acoustic guitar. One time in elementary school, 3rd grade maybe, I was taken on a field trip to a nursing home to sing choir songs to the elderly people there. Same vibes.
30 is a funny one. At 30 you’re still allowed to participate in youthsports but also to give it all up and settle down. Your night of drug and alcohol fueled debauchery is as likely to be a grand epic as it is a pathetic reality check. Your home life of reliable income and a kid to take care of is as readily something to aspire for as it is a premature surrender. You can hit either target and you’re probably going to find some audience sympathetic to your plight with maybe a lean towards debauchery. The price of entry starts rising from here though, in order to maintain position you have to start providing access; access to beauty is good, money better, and drugs are always welcome but it’s access to influence that really means something. People want to know people that might be someone someday and bank enough goodwill with them that they’ll take them on that ride if it happens. Now, I’m not as cynical about this as it might read. I think you can be honest friends with people while also earmarking them as valuable connections but I’m also suspicious that if my big fat twitter account went kaputt tomorrow my phone would ring less than it already does. You keep up that potential, that access, you can keep going out.
There’s a cutoff point though: 35. The second you cross the threshold between 34 and 35 the returns start to diminish and fast. The access and potential you held at 30 needs to be delivered upon and even then there’s simply no escaping the fact that you are washed. This doesn’t mean that your life is over mind you it just means you’re going to have to get your shit together now if you wanna keep city status. You can’t be in general admission you need to be putting your friends on the list for VIP. And may god almighty have mercy on your pitiful soul if you end up at a house party, converse and jeans, clutching some PBR and going on about 2009. Get your shit together. I don’t make the rules thems the breaks how do you think I feel I’m staring down the same barrel of the same gun and that trigger is getting cocked back.
I am standing at the crossroads between promise fulfilled and failure. I’m unemployed and making a full time go at something called “content creation.” Basically I’m a slave to “platforms” and I must serve those platforms with hot fresh “content.” You are, in fact, consuming some now, hope it tastes good. I’m okay with this since the lane I’ve found myself in means that content is mostly nu-metal related and at some point or another involves doing my favorite thing in the world; turning people onto new music. However, I don’t actually make money yet. I’m still drawing down my savings and unemployment. And the by far largest platform I’ve got is about to get junked by the world’s most terminally online unfunny rich guy. Hooray.
30 is a strange one physically too. There are wrinkles but they haven’t settled in yet leaving your overall age an uncertainty but definitely into the winter of your young years. Your face still bears the smoothness of youth but let the light hit you correctly and you suddenly flash forward, lines come faulting to the surface and suddenly you’re a shrieking surface of regret. None of those lines feel lived in or confident, they’re venemonus crags betraying your every moment at whatever thing you’re doing right then. Every time I see them I consider the doors now closed. Sure I can accomplish remarkable things but precousioness is a distant dream, the best I can hope for now is nick of time. I can deliver all the access in the world but something is now gone. I was never and will never be one of the cool kids and I have to live with my 20s as it was (lotta hard fucking work for yet unforeseen ends) rather than what I would have liked it to be (an exhausting parade of GQ photoshoots and effortlessly cool club nights all over the world). Now I have roughly three or four years to scrape together a potemkin youth experience to make up for the ten prior that didn’t quite cohere into one shiny narrative.
Actually, I just wish the back pain would leave me alone. Everything else about this old man shit I’m prepared to face head on but If I end up anywhere that involves a lot of standing still my lower back becomes a ticking time bomb of incoming misery. Once it goes off - and I swear I only get like 15 fucking minutes on my feet before it does - I become a real isotope of bad vibes, looking for any reason to squirrel myself away somewhere so I can sit and read Wikipedia articles in peace. I’ll start taking the back pain stuff seriously someday I’m sure. Not wearing skate shoes anymore would be a start but it would also be a defeat I’m not prepared to accept… yet.
Maybe I'm just an autistic shut-in (I absolutely am) but the concept of going out on the town never seemed like a pleasant concept to me. Then again I am always racked with the fear of missing out - what if I would actually enjoy going out and I'm wasting my twenties in my desolate room with no lights, no music, just anger? I'm 27 and it scares me to see that number written out, because I feel like I'm already over the hill by the absurdly youth-obsessed internet culture standards. I'm an entire presidential term past being on Brandon Boyd's threshold of spontaneous combustion. I still don't know what my life is about, and I am almost certain I'm not going to live long enough to find out, for myriad reasons personal and global.
All that aside, the culture and cottage industry behind nostalgia pandering is disturbingly powerful. WWWY was met with equal parts adulation and derision, and great schadenfreude when the first day was cancelled. I think it's impossible to divorce yourself from nostalgia entirely, but it's important to let it refract through the lens of aging. That being said, I have an irrational disdain for culture made after approximately 2017, because I started feeling disconnected from the zeitgeist already as people younger than me started being the dominant figures of artistic expression. My sweet spot has always been about 20 years prior to the current year for music.
Anyway this is your blog, not mine, so I'll reign in my existential whinging. But maybe get some support insoles for your back.