And the fun thing is we (GenX) are still working! So we’ve just got to experience the fucking slow slide to oblivion where every day is just worse than the last! Yay!

I can't even imagine. It felt hard growing up in the time that I did, but I look at what my kids are facing and I can't even imagine how it must feel.

Something that fight club didn't mention pertaining to this working generation is that even if you work hard and get promotions, you're likely to just keep up to the cost of living. I started with when a beer was $1 a bottle at the grocery store. 10 years later, I can be making double from 3 or so promotions and beer is now $2 a bottle. Working harder for the same purchasing power. It feels so hopeless and yet, I feel lucky to be in this position considering I have so many friends who are much worse off.

Yes, and in Office Space, they had consultants firing people left and right while others were asked to come in on the weekends.

You're assuming a lot of media literacy out of the audience. Most people I know who are really into Fight Club miss all subtext (and quite a bit of text) and unironically see it as an indictment of modern society and a call for a "return" to a mythical hyper-masculine strength-based patriarchal society.

I would put the main point of Fight Club to be about how universal the feelings are, of loneliness and isolation in complex social/economic systems that they don't actually control, despite the system continually relying on them for that control. The warning is that lonely men will crave agency, and might seek it out in destructive ways, even paradoxically turning over their agency to another, like a charismatic cult leader, if it means they can take part in another plan that they are no more actually in control of.

...the whole point of Fight Club was the narrator realizing he was a terrible person...

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say a character is a flawed human being without writing them off entirely like this? Narrator is stunted, broken, looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places. He's isolated, he's disconnected, there is no one in his life for him to care for, or who cares for him. How good a person should anyone expect him to be?

...the film starts with him exploiting dying people so they will listen to him. Not recognizing that the only people open to listen are those dying, and he’s exploiting their openness to lie to them and get the “crying” he needs.

Narrator angrily explains pretty much exactly this to Marla. Refers to himself a "faker." I think he recognizes.

He does explain "When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you," but he could very well be referring to himself as the listener. He isn't depicted speaking at the meetings he crashes. "If I didn't say anything, people always assumed the worst."

and office space is just a romance. where's your flair?

if this is directed at me dont worry I quite the force about two weeks ago. Im really hoping this comic stuff works out or ill be homeless soon.

Just because things were worse before doesn't mean things aren't that bad in the present.

Things could be better and there is no legitimate reason to not make it so.

I read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World... I see full employment, housing, free time for activities...

Gen x isn't to blame for that though. They were born after boomers and many of them faced the same struggles that millenials and current generations are now.

That's another Brad Pitt character, Achilles:

I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

In my day you were lucky if you got one

I'm not going to say it, but I'm too pedantic to not at least comment.

Here - I can be your spell/grammar check for you:

First panel: Watching old movies is weird. Like, imagine if something like Fight Club came out today.

Second panel: Fight Club in 1999: We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need; we are the middle children of history.

Third panel: Fight Club in 2026: We work jobs we hate but still can’t afford basic needs, while people born to wealth call us lazy.

Fourth panel: Our forefathers were told that if they work hard they could become rock stars or millionaires.

Fifth panel: We were told that if we work hard then maybe we will be able to afford rent and groceries.

Might be worth putting your text into a spell/grammar checker before adding it to an image if English isn’t your first language or you struggle with grammar, as I’ve made around 20 fixes to your text of less than 100 words.

For reference, I’ve also spell/grammar checked this comment I’m replying to:

The software I was using made it extremely hard to edit text. I had figured it out by the end but at that point it was too late; I had already merged all the vector layers.

8 changes to a comment of 35 words.

yeah i hate addind text to paint dot net for that precise reason

try harder.

FYI it's forefathers. Those who came before.

Based. It's a little hard to read the text tho

props! 🥳🖌

were the same person in fact i posted this comic here before reddit click on my profile and it says fermi comics as the name i dont now how to change the user.

Thank you!

It was a film targeted towards men and was specifically about toxic masculinity. So in this case, yes I absolutely meant men. Have you seen it?