Hey there, early Gen X here. We lived with the existential dread of nuclear war (The Day After traumatized a whole generation), our parents left us on our own with just 3 channels of TV for company because they both had to work, and our sexual awakening turned into a horror movie because of fear of AIDS (a death sentence at the time).

Also, there were no jobs.

As a late millennial: yep. We're in the same boat. Nihilistic optimism isn't the worst coping mechanism, though!

Perhaps. And if it was true back then, it's even more true today.

Sure, 2010 wasn't great, but it wasn't this bad in terms of career aspects, or rather: it did improve.

I'm not as confident it's bouncing back as fast this time. College debt wasn't as bad in 2010. You didn't need to compete against thousands of people around the globe in 2010. There were still human interviews in 2010.

Everything is noticeably more expensive than it was 15 years ago, though.

Kind of but 15 years ago if you met online it was an embarrassing thing or something only old people did.

This is a such a cop-out. We millennials had it easy compared to zoomers.