Repeated surgical corrections for your ever growing earlobes
I think you're undervaluing loneliness. Loneliness isn't just missing some one. Loneliness means there's no point in connecting with people because they will just die. Loneliness means that no one knows the depth of your condition because it isn't available to them. It means that as they change and face new obstacles, you'll be oblivious to all of that. You'll not only see them die, you'll see the vitality deep out of their pores as they age. All the while you'll never know what that means personally or feel that slow slipping.
Also, super weird that your example is a breakup and people dying is something not worth registering.
I kinda disagree with you. Why would it be different from now? We know that people will die.
I've had good friends pass away at different times, and it hurts but eventually, I move on.
My only exception, with the knowledge I have today, is that I wouldn't have any kids. That attachment is straight up reptilian brain and that would be way too hard. Otherwise, it would be okay.
It's the difference between knowing you'll grow and graduate together with your classmates vs knowing you're only going to see them for that one month before you move away.
Either "Boredom: After some time you have seen basically everything." or "Can't keep up: The world changes so fast, and I'm, stuck in a mindset I acquired in 1543".
And: Bureaucratic nightmare. "We have you on file as being born in 1924, but you don't really look like a centennial. Can I see your passport instead of that of your great-grandfather, please?"
I cannot connect to the boredom one at all. Are there books, video games, stone tablets, cool rocks to look at? Outta here with that boredom nonsense.
If it's the realistic kind where you just don't age, the statistical certainty that you'll eventually die in an accident, or to war or murder. Your odds of getting to the heat death of the universe without making backups is pretty slim.
If it's the kind where you're indestructible, you're highly likely to encounter someone who tries to bury you alive in a subduction zone eventually, because humans are like that, and then you get to spend eternity slowly moving into the scorching mantle.
I would hope to get realllly good in avoding people who'd put me in a subduction zone 😭
It would be an obsession of mine, if I was cursed with the inability to die under any level of duress.
I'm not saying it's common, but punishment by live burial is a thing, and billions of years is an awful lot of human history.
At least I won't be a small in a metal ball full of salt.
Is this a quote from something? I'm OOTL.
The death of the sun will then eventually set you free into the gravity well of the sun where you'll live burning hot untill heat death of the universe. What to do after that is anyone's guess
Having to keep creating fake identities to prevent people and governments from finding out that you're immortal. That would be a massive pain in the butt, especially in a world where mass surveillance of the population is common.
This would just be an occasional nuisance I reckon. You'd get pretty good at it. Just like all the other mundane things we have to do in our mortal lives.
What I meant is that it would get more and more difficult with more mass surveillance. Think about it, in 1950 it would take relatively little effort to fake an identity by inserting fake documents into a few physical cabinets. In 2000, cyber security was so weak that hacking to some government agency to modify their databases would be relatively simple. Now it would require advanced social engineering, and is extremely risky, and on top of that, they have a lot of mass surveillance.
If we assume everything will have a biometric database, you'll have to find ways to change your fingerprints and face every few decades.
Over an long enough duration, you are guaranteed to be caught.
Unless you have a lot of money to rely on I don't even know if it's reliably possible right now. You're basically in the same situation as an undocumented immigrant.
And the more times you do it, it's like playing a Russian roulette over and over again, you'll eventually be caught.
How much more annoying the (much) younger generations would be.
Yeah, they always gloss over how you'd have a very noticeable accent within a couple hundred years, and would straight up be using a second language within a thousand.
As if peoples accents and vocabularies don't grow and change over time?
Accents are at least somewhat fixed. Haven't you noticed old people sound a certain way? Ditto for grammar - hedging with "like" isn't something I'd ever hear an elder do where I live, and the "because noun" shortening sounds straight up incorrect to them, rather than just cute.
Vocabulary can grow, though. Sometimes it doesn't, but that seems to be mostly down to old people not wanting to learn. Unfortunately new vocabulary is relatively minor in the evolution of most languages - a Russian word and an English word will often descend directly from the same 3000BC proto-Indo-European root, although they might now have drifted to mean different things.
outlasting humanity and all its trappings
The rest of humanity will eventually evolve into something you don't recognize and can never be part of.
My thought. In 500M years, you would be like the slime that crawled out of the oceans to the dominant life.
Neanderthals wanted to live forever and now we have bigfoot.
Getting trapped under something for a few thousand years.
The longer, the worse it is, not because of how bored you'd be, but the knowledge that you'd be more and more out of touch if ever found.
Herpes is forever.
HSV vaccines are being developed thankfully, so nothing is forever. ✨
People, corporations, and other entities would over time gather more data about you. There's always some kind of information footprint that you leave behind. And you'd stand out from other humans by the way you talk (i.e. using slang from 200 years ago, and speaking about historic stuff with details that the general public is not aware of) and other traits, which makes you traceable.
I suppose it depends on the rules of this specfic immortality. As someone who lives with chronic pain that literally never feels physically comfortable in any position, immortality sounds like a cruel joke. Not that I'm suicidal or eager to die, but the fact that it would progressively get worse and worse without any sort of end is.... horrorific.
You'd procrastinate things for 100s of years, until at one point you're simply no longer able to do it. Wanted to domesticate a saber-tooth cat some day? Too bad, they're extinct now. Wanted to visit the baths in ancient Rome? Well, it is not the same Rome anymore, and all the baths' floors are cold.
Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.
If everyone gets to be immortal, imagine never being able to get rid of dictators. Putin's 600th won election.
People in the future wouldn't be allowed to have children, Earth will be filled to the brim with very old people and very few new ideas.
People are commenting 'fates worse than death' and 'being made into a labrat by the 1%', but really, if you have infinite time to just do stuff and you can't be killed -- And you don't somehow squirrel your way into a position of power then what are you even doing with your time and immortality, oomfie?
The loneliness part is also questionable. I know OP said it's overly done, but I also think it's just wrong. If you're an adult you've had people in your life die before. It sucks. You miss them. But then you move on. And you meet other people. You'll still go ":(" when you think about the person and such... But life goes on.
And that's just life. It doesn't get any worse if you extend it longer -- If anything it gets better. You might have lost your beloved today, but you have another dozen lifetimes to heal your wounds and meet someone else and fall in love again and (...)
So here's some lower-stakes, frustrating inconveniences of being immortal:
- Your favourite fashion? It's not just out of fashion. It's so out of fashion it is now considered 'historical costuming'. You can no longer find any articles like it at all. Because the only people even trying to recreate the techniques are costuming nerds and theater people who always exaggerate stuff
- You got a song stuck in your head. It is either from before recording was invented, or any recordings of it that existed are too old to be reliably listenable. You have a song stuck in your head.
- You used to really enjoy a job you did. That entire career path is now obsolete. As per the first paragraph of my post, if you're immortal you have probably snuck your way into the upper echelons of society at some point during your infinite time... But like. You're bored. You loved being a Court Jester, now there are no Court Jesters.
- Actually tedium just in general. Sooner or later you'll run out of new things to try, because you'll have done everything that even remotely caught your eye already. So what the fuck will you do with your time? You'll eventually just get depressed and not do anything.
Feeling bad for the immortals who were professional garden hermits.
You'll be perpetually behind the times. People tend to get set in their ways even by their 30s. You'll constantly lag behind the trends, language, and tastes of the younger generation...
If you were the first to be immortal, you may not have the best version of immortality and it may render you incompatible with better, future types of immortality. Like magical regeneration that prevents you from getting a personality upload to a cyberbrain that is a million times faster and smarter than the squishy biological brain.
I had a really nice washing machine. Then it broke. The manufacturer was dissolved 25 years ago.
I had a really nice cast iron pan. Then it fractured. Modern cast iron pans aren't smooth.
I had a really nice car. Then a part broke. Replacement parts haven't been available for 50 years.
I had a really nice flip phone. It was made by Nokia so it still works. People think it's weird that I use a flip phone.
I had a really nice peace and quiet. Then someone invented ambulances. Now I cower in the corner of my bedroom hiding from manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.
Science fiction is going to age poorly. A lot of it is already hilariously dated. Look at most of Star Trek. They're flying at FTL speeds through space with artificial gravity, teleportation, lifelike androids, and replicator technology, but their screens absolutely suck. More and more of those inconsistencies are going to add up over the centuries and make things ridiculous after a while.
The number of new things that people enjoy dwindles with age. Just about everyone agrees that the music that was being made when they were teenagers is the epitome of the art. Are you going to be able to enjoy anything when you're 2563 years old?
The older you get, the faster time apparently moves. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, on some days, even "The year 2000!!" still feels like it should be the future to me. I can't imagine what even a few centuries would do to this phenomenon, let alone a millennium or megaannum (I had to look that word up.)
On the upside, presuming I'm the only immortal, I'll be the only person currently alive to see if they actually finish that performance of Organ^2^/ASLSP in Halberstadt.
Scifi aging poorly is honestly a plus. I love sci-fi that contains incidental retro-futurism. Super high tech but everyone uses tape cassettes and coin operated everything? Sign me up. High tech but for some reason the style choices are all 20 years old?. Yes please.
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