NEETs & Depression

I’ll be the first to admit that most, hell, that a full 90% of NEETs in America are unhealthy. They hate themselves, they’re addicted to infodrugs or chemical drugs, and they are clinically diagnosed with a cornucopia of mental disorders. This doesn’t seem to, this does, correlate perfectly with lack of employment.

But correlation is not causation. Sadly, we live in a puritan culture. Fringe groups try to legitimize themselves by bragging about how much work they do. And those who don’t work are demonized, regardless of whether it was their choice or not. Greed, wrath, lust, gluttony, envy, and pride are all not just favored in our society, but literally necessary to keep it going. Once considered sins, these are now considered virtues in a civilization which in truth worships none but the god of Economy.

So the sin of sloth, of laziness, of NEETdom, has been forced to take on all the hate that was once divvied up between all seven. As a culture we no longer criticize ethnic groups for being overly lustful or gluttonous or greedy, we criticize their laziness. For instance, Mexico recently surpassed America’s “respectable” obesity rate, yet the stereotype of illegal immigrants (the people who literally broke the law to find work) is that of an anchor-baby-producing welfare queen. Similarly, when was the last time you heard that asians were overly lustful?

That’s why NEETpride is such a revolutionary movement. We embrace the single trait modern society despises and have the balls to be proud of it. Anyone who learns of this, be they family, stranger, or friend, feels a mix of negative emotions. They’re angry that they’re still plugging away at some drudgery they hate instead of living how they want. They’re jealous that we don’t have to. They’re sad as they’re reminded that they have no choice and they see no way out. So they take it out on us. Even if they didn’t, the mainstream media is constantly telling everyone that it’s the people who aren’t working who are destroying the economy, casually tacking “harbingers of the apocalypse” on to our collective list of sins. That 24/7/365 barrage of bile is what makes most NEETs sick. There’s your causation.

There are three solutions. The simplest one, as per usual, is money. If you’re rich you’re allowed to not work. Because reasons. Actually, because our society is designed so that those with the most money are the most morally correct. The second hardest is to not give a fuck what society thinks. Bohemian crustpunk NEETs and NEETs who embrace internet culture are for the most part already doing this. No one ever said being a NEET was easy. You gotta have thick skin. The last solution is by far the most difficult: change society at it’s core. Throw out puritan rhetoric and make NEETdom cool again. I suspect it will take nothing less than the implementation of a UBI system to accomplish this. Probably equally important is healthy living. Because many NEETs are depressed, they stop taking care of themselves which starts a vicious cycle. Learn proper nutrition and fitness and do it. You don’t need to be a bodybuilder to be healthy. Changing society for the better is certainly possible with memes alone though. The first step along that path is without a doubt, NEETpride.

Memeing for NEETdom

While UBI and NEET-normalization is inevitable, I for one want it to happen sooner rather than later. Alas I am not a trustfund NEET so I don’t have money to throw at the problem. Therefore I must use the only weapon I have. Fortunately, it’s much stronger than money when used to it’s maximum potential. I’m talking of course about memes. Not just internet memes mind you, I’m talking about the more general Dawkinian memes here. In the bronze age we fought wars with bronze weapons. In the industrial age we fought wars with industrially-produced weapons. In the information age we fight wars with information, with memes. Words are our bullets. Social media sites are our guns.

In truth, what’s the main thing stopping most people from being NEETs in this day and age? Shame. Plain and simple. People fear ridicule. People fear being unattractive. Lucky for us that what induces shame is trivial to change. Look at trans acceptance in the past 10 years. In 2007 you would be laughed at (then arrested) for dressing up like the opposite sex and using their bathroom. Now you get appaulded. What changed? Did there suddenly become some monetary incentive to not hate transexuals? Was the government forcing us at gunpoint to change our beliefs? Hell no. People in the mainstream media said it was now completely socially acceptable to live as a member of the opposite sex. Now there may have been some deeper reasoning behind this movement but that’s besides the point. Society changed essentially overnight with little more than memes.

So why can’t this happen with NEETs and NEETdom? Right now, the mainstream perception of a NEET is basically an unemployed adult who lives in his mom’s basement. He is probably fat because he is lazy. He is depressed because he is socially isolated because he cannot afford to go to the bar. This is a pretty negative portrait of a NEET. Let’s break it down and see how we can flip the script.

Being unemployed is only a bad thing if you are homeless or live off your parents. If you win the lottery and don’t work, if you retire early, if you’re squatting in an abandoned building with 6 hippies, somehow society no longer considers you a NEET despite you not being in education, employment, or training. For normal people the reasonable option when you can’t find a job is to live with your parents. Let’s remind ourselves why this is considered bad in the first place.

America is virtually the only country on the planet where living with your parents as an adult carries stigma. This is the norm in most of Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. So why is it different here? Like most of American history, this phenomenon can be traced back to industry giants manipulating social norms with, you guessed it, memes. In the late 1940s there was fear that the recently stimlulated economy would crash if we didn’t keep pushing the economy further. One of the largest markets was the housing market. Just like with cars, there suddenly was a strong advertising push claiming that you were not a real man if you didn’t buy your own car and your own house. Back in those days home ownership was still possible with nothing but a high school diploma, but people in fact generally needed less space than they do now. Using memes, the housing industry convinced the American people to keep buying more and more new homes and this more or less continued until the Great Recession. This technique is now being implemented full-throttle in the more economically well-off parts of Asia. NEETs refuse to be manipulated by cheap advertising tactics.

As for NEETs being fat, the info from the above classic NEET meme ought to suffice. NEETs have the free time to focus on making ourselves healthy because we’re not too exhausted from work everyday. The fact is that the vast majority of fat people are employed. That is who feels justified to watch TV for 6 hours straight after work. That is who eats McDonalds. A NEET on foodstamps literally can’t even buy fastfood. And while we may not have access to an overpriced gym, running, squats, push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups and all their variations are free for everyone. Many famous yogis are NEETs. But when it comes right down to it, we need more NEETs who are fit to “come out of the closet” to provide sufficient real world data to overcome the fabricated pre-conceived notions that most people have about us. I’m already seeing tons of these guys on /fit/, but we need to start doing that irl too. Become a parkour master and wear a NEET T-shirt. That’s all it takes. Like with the housing thing, NEETs aren’t lazy, we just refuse to play society’s bullshit game.

NEETs being depressed is kind of a topic that deserves it’s own post so I’ll save that for next time. But to conclude here, remember fam: we are this generation’s counter-culture movement. Our hippies. Our punks. Revolutionaries at our best, and mere junkies at our worst.