In my experience, old age only amplifies person's traits - if you were nice, you are going to be extra nice because of all the stress leaving your day to day. If you were a cunt, you are going to be extra cunty because now you will be blaming people left and right for all the errors in your life. That's my experience though.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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exactly.
plus people surround themselves with similar people, so as people become extra cunty they associate with extra cunt types.
Never a truer word spoken - > you can always tell a person by the company they keep.
Heard that when I was a teenager.
I think people can grow and change. I personally used to be quite cunty. Mostly because I was self conscious and - ironically - sought validation. Now, I'm less that way. Thanks to therapy, self work, and medication. I like to think I'm nice, but I know I can still have an edge from time to time. I like to think I'll continue to improve as time goes on!
Some get better, some get worse. You really can't generalize this. A friend of mine used to say that "we have to ditch the wise elder, because some people accumulate stupidity with age instead of wisdom"
For years now I've responded to anybody saying we should "respect our elders" by saying "they just don't make elders like they used to."
It was easy to be old and wise when the world only changed on a scale of centuries. Now it's easy to see large cultural changes every decade or less; the wisdom of somebody who came of age in the 1950s is of no value today if they've learned nothing else since.
Stupid people didn't live to be that old back in the day lol
There are aspects of the world that donβt change.
Depends, this really depends on what exactly you consider being a twat, how old is the person in question and what kind of people they surround themselves with/what sorts of experiences they go through.
I've seen people mature tremendously and they were cases I considered totally hopeless. In contrast I've also seen people who appeared to have their sht together, suddenly flop in the most stupid of ways.
This answer I think is the closest. People can get better or worse over time and there are just so many factors. I've seen kind people go through horrible tragedies and become bitter and isolated. I've seen people who were cutthroat ladder climbers come to realize that the ladders aren't going to mean anything after a certain point and their legacy is going to be kids who don't want to spend time with them.
The one thing I'll say that seems to be often true of men is that when they get older the testosterone is less intense and so life is a little less driven by it.
From what Iβve seen itβs a bell curve most of the time. People grow up and stop being little twats and eventually get to the point where they start to become big twats.
I've become MUCH more of a twat as I get older/ now that I'm over 40....
I just don't have patience for the sillyness anymore. You wanna be a unicorn furry? Sure, whatever, I dgaf just gtfo my way so I can go about my life without your bullshit interrupting me. You wanna spend all your time talking about immigrants or your culture, i'm going to walk away....if you follow and annoy me as that type tends to do, i'm going to take the gloves off and bury your stupid ass with facts based in the reality you insist on avoiding.
Itβs usually kind of a U with the top sections being comprised of very young and very old people with the kind of limited intelligence and suicidal bravery to not believe that their actions have consequences, and then generally mellowed out, moderately reasonable, people in the middle. YMMV though.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Some great comments below, but i also wanted to add that i think it depends on how open and honest one is. For example, it happens quite frequently that i change my view on something, because someone (usually one of my adult kids) points out certain things that i didn't know or thought about. And then i can just apologize and tell them they are right. It keeps me humble and open to other viewpoints or scientific facts that i didn't know or consider. If someone just kindly points something out to me, that makes it easy to apologize. But if people are hostile and tell you you're wrong in an aggressive way, then it would be pretty hard to admit you hadn't thought of that.
But from what i see, there are a lot of people who just don't want to seem dumb, or are extremely set in their ways, and they will never admit that they were wrong or that there are different ways to see or understand something. Rather, they become angry, or grumble, or change the subject.
Add to this, I don't know how far back but the Boomers, Silent and Greatest Gen all were brought up on a strict "respect your elders" mindset which by the time it got to the boomers is "I am Older therefore always right by default and how DARE you try to correct me!!"
This is also why world governments especially USA is full of geriatrics because old people don't vote for anyone younger than them (if there is a choice) because they don't want a goddamn whippersnapper telling them what to do. The most stubborn kind of old person that is.
And man, they got pissed when the rest of us collectively learned that just being Old doesn't mean shit. The boomers had to bend the knee HARD to their parents authority or they get insta slapped. So they expect, or demand their kids/young people in general treat them the same as it's their Turn now.
But instead we learned they can be wrong and being Old doesn't mean infallible. And they hates it.. BIG MAD they are!. They cope and seethe and mald all over the internet and at the polls. We are literally living in a Baby Boomer tantrum cuz young people will not "respect" them as they were forced to do their parents. Yeah just growing old doesn't mean shit you gotta back that with experience now. Like Nazis whom only thing to be proud of is being Pale.
I'm not that young myself anymore, and i definitely recognize my very strict upbringing you mentioned, but in my view respect needs to be earned. And not once, but over and over again because people change. Seeing most political leaders being very old white men makes me cringe. They often just don't understand the modern world. Just an example; they make decisions about cybersecurity while i'm convinced they don't know the first thing about it. They probably rely heavily on their advisors and just echo what they say would be best.
deeper than that. a lot of people's entire identity/value gets wrapped up in patently false beliefs. and being wrong about that means they are wrong as a person.
that is why so many yahoos have this 'or die' dedication to complete nonsensical beliefs and become violent when those beliefs are challenged.
Yes, definitely. Another thing that comes to mind, reading your reply, is that people surround themselves with like minded people. That can be a good thing, or very bad.
Thanks, I hope to not be this way as I age
You always have a choice. Just stay informed, surround yourself with wholesome people, and be willing to change your views if needed. I don't think you become a certain way just because you age.
No. Yes.
Find the non-twatty people in your life and ride out the rest of it.
I'm in my late 30s.
No. People who are twats just become bigger twats as they age. People who are not-twats remain not twats.
Some people become twats because they become bitter and angry at the world for not giving them what they think they 'deserve'.
To be fair most people do deserve much more than the world aka their governments are willing to provide.
No, they don't. Most people squander what they are given and are bitter about not being given more which thy would also squander.
No person should be deprived of shelter food and health care. And people are rightfully angry when their governments don't provide the bare necessities to people in need.
In my experience, the majority is great. The problem is that the loudest and most intrusive ones monopolize all the nearby attention.
My recommendation would be to find some quiet third places in which to seek out people you enjoy being around.
Some people become more, some people become less. It really depends on the person I guess.
Less of a twat, but more cranky.
cut the twats out of your life, be unbothered and moisturized in your own lane
I think people become more dead set in their views but less likely to be outright assholes about them. I think its a combination of lack of energy to be a dick and a dwindling social circle focused on quality relationships over quantity.
Some people will always be assholes though, but the fast majority don't have character disorders.
I agree, but I think it REALLY depends on the person. My family 1000% proves that people only get worse with age. People that were assholes to begin with, only become bigger assholes as they get older, and less capable. Especially if they were "super independent" before. That also seems to hold true, in my experience, for people who were very independent and suddenly lost that, regardless of how they were before. Narcissism seems to increase exponentially too.
I also have some much older friends (like 80s and 90s older), who were always really good people, and are still just honest, down to earth, good people, just a little needier.
I guess what I'm saying is that people don't tend to change, and the person they were as an adult is only amplified as they age, from what I have seen.
This is my experience as well. I think I've seen it expressed as "people become more like themselves as they age." For good or bad. This has helped me learn to lower my expectations when it comes to people.
Less flexible, but with a better understanding that most people are, so not as loud with opinions. Thats sort of less twaty.
It really just depends on the person, and how introspective they are throughout their lifetime. Some people get worse, some people get better. Events can happen that shapes a person's trajectory in one way or another.
Just look around at boomer and you will get your answers...
Yes until 70ish then some go full on shit head.
Yes they do.
I would sure hope so. If I look at myself (since that's where I have context) I'd say yes. I think a lot of the shittiness in people's personalities stems from trying to meet their needs (some of them unreasonable) and competing with everyone else to get them. That's a very me versus you mentality which leads to aggression and forms bad personality traits.
I'd like to say that everyone begins to understand wants versus needs after a few decades, and settles down into a pattern of contentment rather than resentment.
That's just not true though, is it?
Hey pal, maybe it's you.
Not necessarily. The opposite might happen as people age but never deal with their real problems. Then the problems grow and they become even twatier than before. If anything, kids are the nicest until about 5th grade which is when they learn how to be assholes from adults around them.
The existence of both "Boomers" and the "Me Generation" is enough evidence to prove that it's a solid "sometimes"
People are individuals, all going through their own journeys. You might grow and change for the better if you're able to figure out how to be the best you, or you might change for the worse if made bitter by a life where it feels like no one is on your side and you have to take your due since it will never be given.
The important thing is: (1) People are twats for a reason, and (2) You can't fix those reasons for other people and make them less twatty, so the only thing you can control is how you handle less than ideal interactions. (Tip: most well-adjusted people don't jump to "lose hope in humanity"; the fact that you have means there's work you can do here.)
Thanks for the tip.
That was meant as a joke at the end; however, you're right. Being nice has been giving me fewer positive results by the month.
Everyone has a bad day now and then. It sounds like a lot is eating at you. You might be dealing with more than your fair share people who haven't gotten the help they need to learn why they're twats and how it hurts them and everyone around them. I know I was a worse person until I figured out how I got the way I was a few years ago; it took me til the back half of the 30s to start to be better.
I hope you find some peace for yourself.
Everyone get more softy when about to die or even when understanding the vulnerability to not be able to make it alone. Age dosnt matter. Is about experience.
Not everyone.....I dated someone in my 20's, their grandmother was a real asshole to everyone. Even to her dying days, she was throwing things at the door as her son would be coming into the room. Pretty fucked up, I still think back about it as there is someone in my life who's in pretty bad shape but still doing the same shit to push people away from them. Turning soft on your deathbed isn't going to help when no one will show up for you at that stage anyways.
Sure there is always exception, still an old grandma can act bad but needs also to get accepted. If the question is take as simple prospective then be grumpy or terrible isn't in fact associate at the real inside, that real who comes out in actually crisis like the death. Morally speaking you are right, but in life I think morals are most storytelling that true human virtues.
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