Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

The real worst part of getting old: Getting old alone.

You forgot:

Increased tolerance for aging, balding male singer-songwriters.

The real worst part of getting old: Getting old alone.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), dinsdag 10 mei 2011 17:44 (56 seconds ago) Bookmark

;_;

I know it shouldn't be. But the prospect frankly scares the shit out of me.

Damn, I meant to include an "Other (please explain)" option.

waking up at night to pee

That's a good one. I knew I would forget a bunch of these. Guess I should vote for loss of memory.

Is that a getting old thing? I started doing this in only the last year but I didn't realize that's why. Damn.

Hangovers.

Reduced libido is actually kind of a relief.

I just thought I was drinking to much diet coke in the evenings. :(

i have five of the things on this list and i'm 26!

old

Growing hair where you don't want to grow it

I wonder about this one a lot. Like, why do old men grow hair in their ears? Is there some sort of reason for this? It's kind of baffling. Also, gross.

none of the above

"not reduced libido" wd be the answer

I tried to do a handstand for Beeps the other night and nearly broke my neck. Who knew your body could forget how to do handstands?? I need yoga classes.

Most depressing thread ever.

I'll let you know when I really am old.

Never been able to do handstands.

other, death

Increased tolerance for aging, balding male singer-songwriters.

― ginny thomas and tonic (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:44 AM (9 minutes ago)

oh FUCk, I have this symptom and I am 23. life is too short :-S

xp

yeah "steady approach of death" was maybe my number 2

"Other (please explain)" option: I'm getting old without anyone else who can remember my body/self when I was young. There's no one to be the keeper of sweet memories of/for me; once my younger self is gone, she may as well never have existed. Shared with no one = wasted? Feels like it.

Somehow the fact that *I was there for those years doesn't matter? I don't know why I don't matter.

Well damn. Annoying, uncomfortable and embarrassing things which are going to keep getting worse for the rest of your life: the poll.

Ho hum.

lol

i'm actually sort of looking forward to losing libido.

stfu

tolerance for aging balding singy-songwriters is kind of one of the better things about getting old, or at least not giving a shit about bollocks youth cult punk values and what musicians look like and other misguided young people stuff

only if the aging baldy singer-songwriters aren't boring.

cancer, arthritis, risk of addiction to prescription pain meds, dementia, death

I'm 36 and voting DENTAL. I started flossing regularly at about 30 but it was too late. Things have been going all to shit the past 3 years.

Oh my teeth started going around age 20. Forget that.

yeah Alfred otm but the singer-songwriter slide into schmaltz is part of a more general thing:

if you don't watch out as you get older you become prone to this particularly intoxicating state of wistful, sentimental, nostalgic melancholy which is *about* the extent of the pastness of your own past, its irretrievability, your mortality, friends who are dead, love affairs that are long gone etc.

it can be a beautiful feeling to just embrace and let it happen, but it can also turn you into a sap and a bore if you aren't careful, because it rests upon a loss of curiosity and interest in what is happening now and what is to come in favor of what already was

only if the aging baldy singer-songwriters aren't boring

well yeah but name me a genre that doesn't apply to. i reckon most people who consciously drift into "old people music" probably liked some awful guff when they were younger too

worst part of aging is regretting thigns you haven't done imo.

Losing libido or otherwise is all very well if you lose it at exactly the same rate as whoever you might be sharing it with.

I started flossing regularly at about 30 but it was too late.

Oh no... (31, hate flossing.)

other, death

― thomp, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:55 AM

The ones that have started to show themselves to me:

Losing hair where you don't want to lose it
Growing hair where you don't want to grow it
Graying hair
Eating/Digestion problems
Memory problems

The first two in tandem are, at this point, an unbeatable combo.

(Graying hair is pretty awesome, tho.)

They're not the worst part of aging, but all these new* moles on my face are really pissing me off.

* arrived in the last five years or so

Going with hearing here, which didn't hit me until last year. Specifically it was a Mastodon show, but I'm guessing it was straw-camel's back thing. Already noticing myself asking people to repeat things more often. Oh well. Overall I feel good physically, so so far I'm not complaining. Definitely losing hair on top, but that doesn't bother me.

the best thing about getting old is that you can enjoy being uncool

Went to bar full of hipsters last night, looked around at busy groups of cool kids, sat alone, read book, felt not a single twinge of discomfort. Thought: WHY DID THIS TAKE ME SO LONG, THIS IS AWESOME.

haha exactly!

Last two posts totally otm.

Hi, old person here (50).

Hasn't happened at all:
Losing hair where you don't want to lose it
Deteriorating hearing
Deteriorating vision
Graying hair
Papery skin/loss of elasticity in skin/wrinkles
Slower reflexes

Right, I was going to categorise the list but it seems they are mostly not happening as yet.

So, yay me, I guess.

What's not on the list:

The idea that 100 years ago is something that actually exists on film. and that you can see things from 50 years ago that look like they were filmed yesterday.

Some other stuff that might depress you (i.e. people not around anymore, let's put it that way)

Then again, it's sunny, there are people around that you can have a laff with, also that the idea of being old is not something you have to subscribe to nowadays. Back when I was a kid, people of 20-30 would dress like they were 50-60. Nowadays, it's the other way around.

ya but you were secretly cooler than them in that scenario so it doesn't count xp

Additions?

Increased tolerance for aging, balding male singer-songwriters.
Nope.

The real worst part of getting old: Getting old alone.
Less alone now than I've ever been.

OK, when you say old, where is the dotted line?

x-posts It's totally liberating and awesome and I think it happens, in part, because you realize that so much that you maybe once considered cool is just dumb bs.

unless you were reading 'the girl with the dragon tattoo' or 'twilight' xp

looooooooool

Went to bar full of hipsters last night, looked around at busy groups of cool kids, sat alone, read book, felt not a single twinge of discomfort. Thought: WHY DID THIS TAKE ME SO LONG, THIS IS AWESOME.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 16:17 (6 minutes ago) Permalink

Were you at Harefield Rd? I think I saw you.

there’s also, in some contexts, a camaraderie of one’s fellow olds, that doesn’t really exist before 40 …

Definitely true. I've started hiking the trails behind my house and said to my wife when I got back after the first or second trip, "If you want to make old-people friends, go hike the trail, because they're out there!"

my 30s were a ride in an air balloon compared to my 40s (so far), but I wonder how much of that has to do with the rapid enshittification of the world around me. I'm looking forward to my DGAF 50s because this has been the first decade of my life that has felt more or less categorically (physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, socially) shittier

I turned 56 in November and physically and emotionally it's definitely a shitty time. I am less a person than a collection of medical maladies. I'm on so many meds it's ridiculous, and I had to get an orthotic for my right shoe due to osteoarthritis in my foot and leg. All of that is definitely the worst part for me.

In the last two years I've started falling asleep on the sofa around 8:30 a.m. -- and I've let it happen! Unheard of. It IS easier these days to get my eight hours of sleep in.

* 8:30 p.m., haha. I get 26 hours of sleep every night!

that's just my bedtime now *shrug*

i’m most awake at night!

concerned that i am (or will soon be) habitually making weird facial expressions and there's no one to alert me to it

i accept that every old person has one eye narrower than the other (almost certainly the right eye, in my case) but ugh

I have to admit, those are two things I'd never thought about. So we're all gonna turn Popeye at some point?

pretty much! i don't think the eye thing can be avoided

my mom's weird facial expression is 'kinda baring her teeth in a way that might in other scenarios suggest aggression but actually means nothing'

concerned that mine might ultimately be a form of this facial expression

Definitely have noticed a sort of resting bitch face that settles in with relatives as they've moved into cognitive decline. Confusing at first, then heartbreaking as I understood it.

So far the poll winner, decreased energy, has consistently been the worst part for me, which is really a blessing when compared to most of the possibilities. Lately though "Papery skin/loss of elasticity in skin/wrinkles" has been gaining ground, but not because of wrinkles. It's that my increasingly papery skin (like most old people) has a growing tendency to scratch, tear, puncture, or abrade with far greater ease and then takes twice as long to heal as young skin. This far from catastrophic, but it just rubs my nose in the fact that I will only get more fragile as the decades take their toll. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

try not to let it rub your nose is my first advice on that tbh

more annoying to me may be the numerous scrapes and crap my skin is now getting and then the very slow healing of said scabs and scrapes

This is something I've been able to see with my dad, now in his mid-80s and dealing with a couple of hard to heal wounds. It's terribly unfortunate but his care is good and it all serves as a reminder to me that this could yet be something down my own road. (His dad passed in his early 70s and was fairly healthy until a sudden decline over a month due to cancer, so in a way it's a bit of uncharted territory for him and us collectively.)

more annoying to me may be the numerous scrapes and crap my skin is now getting and then the very slow healing of said scabs and scrapes

I've had this problem for a long time; comes with having diabetes. It's too bad, because I'd like to have gotten a few different tattoos but have been very concerned that they would heal badly.

Dylan on the best and worst part of reaching your 80s.

https://i.postimg.cc/Fz83sp2R/dylan.jpg

"You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would." Nice--looking forward to that.

(This seems to work for the whole piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/opinion/trump-turns-80.html)

Dylan's kind of blathering there. But someone asked him a question and he's doing his best to comply with their desire for a quotable answer.

Idk, I’m closer to 80 than I’d like to admit and that felt like a quality, aged-in assessment.

It's really good and I feel parts of it in my mid 40s lol

Disagree, Aimless--I think that answer is vintage in all the best Dylan ways.

I was so much older then etc.

Dylan's kind of blathering there. But someone asked him a question and he's doing his best to comply with their desire for a quotable answer.

speaking of blather

It's really good and I feel parts of it in my mid 40s lol

Yeah, agree and same. Especially the really worst part for me.

yeah, I'm not hearing much blather either... it actually sounds like something he's been thinking about

Good answers, Bob.

I'd be more comfortable if all his sentences about 'you' were rewritten as 'I'. That would be fine. But he's reaching for universals, hopefully for a kind of 'wisdom of the elders' in 400 words, which is bound to fail the test of reality. For example, if all that were true of 80 year olds, then they would apply equally to Trump and to every equally old person everywhere. A moment's thought shows that is not correct.

Aimless, you're engaging in some major pedantry here with all due respect. You're like the old school ILXors who got miffed when I said "Bernard Sumner's the best lyric writer ever" instead of "I think Bernard Sumner's the best lyric writer ever."

Bob Dylan's not like other 80-year-old dudes, got it, move on

"people my age / they don't do the things I do"

I wonder if there are more 49 year-olds today doing the things that Neil Young did in 1995 than there were then.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, May 8, 2026 3:22 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

xps - Not so much pedantry as being told what I shall feel in a few years and finding more than half the statements to be either inapplicable (e.g. wrong in my case) or else a kind of fortune cookie truism. I called it "blathering a bit" because just about any similar attempt to summarize the best and worst parts of old age in a few profound statements would have the same problem. If anything, the older you get, the more individuated you become and less easily reduced to a formula, like old trees shaped by a couple centuries of weather.

But I can understand wanting to believe this summary will fit you at 80 and being irritated at being told it is like any other prediction of the future.

I just didn’t like it much because I don’t like Dylan

I don't have to believe it. The point of a maxim is that it should sound cool.

it sounds cool as hell. Dylan is the best

I can't speak for anybody else, but in no way am I looking for veracity here, going through it like a checklist or something (yes, no, yes, yes...I couldn't anyway, not for another 16 years). Some of what he writes is very clear ("You don't chase the parade anymore"), some of it more like riddles to figure out ("People treat you like you've either solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't"), and they just work together in tandem and produce an effect that's hard to explain, in the same way that the brilliance of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is hard to explain.

I only like what Dylan did up to 1966 and how he trolled the folkies.

Many fine -- one could say universal -- nuggets in there.

honestly i think that the hatred comes not from hating him or even his music that much, but from hating self-righteous liberal boomers who pointed to him as evidence of their generation’s greatness for much of my life. shut the fuck up, you ruined the world!!

That's ok. He hated those people more than you did.

Longer times to recover from injury or exercise

Feeling this.

honestly i think that the hatred comes not from hating him or even his music that much, but from hating self-righteous liberal boomers who pointed to him as evidence of their generation’s greatness for much of my life. shut the fuck up, you ruined the world!!

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Monday, June 15, 2026 4:20 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's ok. He hated those people more than you did.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Monday, June 15, 2026

yeah, Dylan's among the boomers who hates boomers as much as we do

He isn’t a boomer …

some of it more like riddles to figure out ("People treat you like you've either solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't")

I liked this part a lot, and think I know what he means - some people think "oh Dylan's in his 80's and still going, he must have it all figured out", others think "man he's not the talent he used to be", and for him neither of those are right. The latter ofc applies more to him and other celebs than Joe Average.

He isn’t a boomer …

slightly older, but claimed by the boomers certainly

Most generational icons are always a few years older than their generation.

haha badly worded, not always, since I did say most

"People treat you like you've either solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't"

= "People treat you like you've attained great wisdom (and you haven't), or like you no longer understand the world around you (and you understand it no more or no less than you ever have)."

Dylan puts it better, though. Great line.

Worst part about getting old = people becoming Dylan and Beatles fans.

We need a FAST warning sign system for Beatlemania

"you still want to say yes to everything, and the world moves without asking"

le sigh

Idk that’s along the lines of what my mom has said about it this past year. My mom’s just a normal old lady who put on Dylan records to clean house when I was a kid, and I still like a lot of those songs.