I'm 22 and since late college things don't excite me the way they used to, even when I enjoy them. I sometimes wonder if this is what happens when people get older and happened to me early, or if it's just a personality trait.

The 'vicarious firsts' framing doesn't quite land for me because of that, but the 'urgency that won't let you drift' observation resonates. Maybe what matters isn't renewed wonder but having something -- family, friends, caring about the world -- that demands presence. The forcing function matters more than the feelings themselves.

My dad always says something related in nature: caring about and loving your family makes you a better person more than it helps your family.

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throw_away_623 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> I sometimes wonder if this is what happens when people get older and happened to me early, or if it's just a personality trait.

It's a cliché but I (almost 50 years old) have found that when you get older, you notice patterns, Something "new" is often just an incremental improvement or two existing things combined.

Rust doesn't excite me much, and Go seems too boring to use for my side projects. Elixir + Phoenix LiveView is the only "new" thing that has excited me in the past decade, but I can't stand the Elixir syntax. Maybe it's because I have seen so much change during the years? If someone started out with React, a new version seems like a big deal, but to me it is just an incremental improvement.

When I was a kid, a new CPU or GPU had an extreme impact compared to the previous generations. We went from crappy Wolfenstein graphics to Quake in a few years. I have stopped following new releases now, because they don't really do much.

The same applies to mobile phones. The next iphone / samsung model doesn't really motivate me to replace my existing phone.

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barishnamazov 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks for sharing insight. I also feel like a couple decades ago, technology was also reasonably simple and understandable. Right now, everything is obfuscated and complex. Maybe that's natural, but makes it harder to get excited about seeing new things.

Similar to you, I don't care about mobile phones anymore. Instead of fancy hardware or features what I care is simple, secure, and private phone (open-source OS). I used to get excited on new models.

Recently a couple of my friends were talking about "Telegram vs Whatsapp." One is better because it has this feature, etc. They asked my opinion too. I don't care which is better, I only use them because I have to use them for contacting family and some friends. I just need the send text and image functionality (and I don't use it for private / secure texting).

	▲	bombcar 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There’s a term “geek out” or similar for getting deep into the details of something; especially technology. But it’s rare and not really needed for the use of it - there are people who geek out over phones or model trains or LEGO, etc. But for most of things in life you just need to use them. The hard part is finding something to geek out on that doesn’t turn you into a curmudgeon insisting everyone is “doing it wrong”.