Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
Hovering my foot several inches above a live bear trap is also not being in the bear trap.
You better believe I'm keeping my focus on not stepping down on it, and it will be unpleasant to constantly think about it and micromanage not stepping down. My foot is not caught, the bear trap isn't "real" or "really hurting my foot", yet this still takes a real toll.
The problem with living paycheck to paycheck isn't that you can't book cruises. It is that you have zero security. If something breaks, you can't repair it. If you lose your job, you're on the street. If things get any more expensive, you are skipping meals.
You think I am miserable becsuse I can't have filet mignon and lobster tail every night?
I am miserable because I can only afford rice and beans for tbe forseeable future. I want some fucking MEAT and green vegetables or fruit. 😬
You know how I know times are really bad? When I was younger, the scams they'd send to your email was some nigerian prince who wanted to give you a million dollars.
These days the scams they send to emails are "Hwy, we have a totally real full time job with benefits! Oooohhhhh, benefits! Click here."
If you live paycheck to paycheck, that means that you can eat cheap food and ideally pay your bills. If something breaks, it will stay broken. If food prices go up, you'll get hungry. If you cannot pay rent, you'll become homeless in certain parts of the world. It gets worse if you have kids.
The result: constant stress which will remain with you for the rest of your life, even if your situation gets better.
If you can read Dutch, try to find the book by the Flemish journalist Tim 's-Jongers (apologies if I spelled his name wrong). He wrote a very poignant book on how it is to be poor and what it did to his mental state, even if he has a stable income at the moment. I am not sure whether that book was translated into English.
It's the lack of perspective and purpose that makes people miserable. If you been deep in a constant river of shit, it's hard to think there may be something else out there.