this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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I'll start off with one, Being upset about a breakup that happened hundreds of years ago.

Edit 1:

  • Heath death of the universe, Death of the sun, etc, does not count. I feel like focusing on this is an overused point.

Edit 2:

  • Loneliness does not count. I feel like we all know immortality means you'll miss people and lose them.
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[–] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 1 points 14 minutes ago

If it's just you being immortal, loss of all family, and friends, and loss of new friends, rinse repeat forever. Eventualdieyoull watch society collapse and regrow (possibly), and the planet will die. Immortality is forever after all. Then you're left alone on a deserted dead planet. Electronics you have will eventually break and fade away to time. The sun will grow and die off, and it'll burn because you're immortal but still stuck on a planet that'll get enveloped, eventually. Living forever would be terrible unless it was forever until you died of something physical, just not age and illness.

[–] oo1@lemmings.world 1 points 31 minutes ago

Having to listen to that Queen song, forever.

[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Forgetfulness. Think how forgetful people get after having lived a normal lifespan, now go for a few thousand+ years and you’ve probably forgotten whole centuries of your life. This is actually the premise of a solo journaling game Thousand Year Old Vampire, you have to cross out and forget memories as you progress through the game, just forgetting whole parts of your life.

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 minutes ago

There's a Doctor Who episode with that idea in it too, the Doctor saves a girl in Viking times but brings her back forever, and when he meets her in mediaeval times she has a whole library of books that are just her memories that she's written down over the years.

[–] Sybilvane@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Losing all of the skills you gain. No matter how good you get at something, after a few centuries you'll have lost your edge. You can also only practice so many things concurrently without giving something up. At some point, years down the line, you might try to ride a bike again and completely fail to do it, or try to sing and fail to hit all the notes that came easily before, or do gymnastics but the muscles you need are underused. It doesn't matter that you spent years mastering every skill, your abilities will degrade over time. You'll never really be able to feel sure about your own abilities except for whatever you've done most recently.

[–] MadBob@feddit.nl 0 points 1 hour ago

You don't know the expression, "it's like riding a bike"?

[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Btw if you were actually immortal, after a while you would just go into shock and enter a vegetative state from all the psychological stress.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 56 minutes ago

And after a while you’d come out of that state

[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

How can you be sure?

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

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.
[–] Reil@beehaw.org 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Cross the wrong people and you end up not dead, but irrecoverable. Cement shoes, buried alive kind of stuff. Cross a different set of wrong people and you become a labrat. To avoid either scenario, you'll be in a constant state of "undocumented" or false-documented which will keep you in a pretty consistent state of poverty.

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

There's a book I heard about where the main character is immortal. Nevertheless at one point he pisses off some mafia dudes, and they nail him inside a barrel full of urine and throw him in the sea.

[–] mosscap@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 hour ago

Just a random thought, but it would take a lot of work (or institutional access to some portable toilets) to be able to her enough piss to fill an entire barrel

[–] Dogiedog64@lemmy.world 11 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Cancer. So much goddamn cancer. It doesn't matter what kind of immortality you have, you WILL get cancer. Repeatedly. Over and over. Forever.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

That really depends on the type of immortality you get. Brain upload to a cyborg body doesn't get cancer.

[–] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Immortality means you could, just keep ripping it out 🀣

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Cut the head off to heal

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 hours ago

Wage slaving never stops

[–] pH3ra@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 hours ago

The disappointment of experience winning lifetime supply of something but that would eventually turn into a lie

[–] Moah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Family meals that take 3 restaurants No retirement

[–] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 hours ago (2 children)
[–] Moah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 57 minutes ago

If you're immortal, you get to see your family expand to the points that organizing a single family meal requires 3 restaurants to house everyone.

Since you (presumably, otherwise it's a shitty immortality) don't get old, you don't get to retire

[–] abysmalpoptart@lemmy.world 10 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I think they're saying this:

Family meals would comprise of three restaurants worth of people since they're all immortal

Separately, you can never retire since you will never hit retirement age

[–] Dorkyd68@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

Loneliness. I think being immortal would show someone what true Loneliness is

[–] ypanocayo@mujico.org 5 points 7 hours ago

If the ultra rich find you out, you can expect lab-rat life, at least until all modern systems collapse. Death is the only thing those suckers fear, because regardless of their net worth, it comes for all, even if late. They would do anything to find out your trick

[–] nis@feddit.dk 9 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

If we're talking magical immortality, as in you can't die, at all. Then the fact that however much enjoyment and experiences you get while the universe still exist, it will be followed by an infinite stretch of nothing after the heat death of the universe.

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[–] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 14 points 11 hours ago

If you have epilepsy or Parkinson's or MS, you're just going to likely get worse forever.

[–] off_brand_@beehaw.org 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Nobody is answering the prompt lol. Everyone says all of this shit all the time.

You live long enough to never feel at home. Sure the loneliness sucks or whatever, but who do you root for at the football game?

Having to buy new shoes for the rest of eternity. You know how much work I've literally just put into finding shoes that 1) don't suck and 2) aren't made with slave labor? It's impossible. Drives me insane. I'd found my own shoe company once I become immortal rich just to fix that problem alone. Maybe other stuff too we'll get there

I suppose on that note: it seems like a really bad idea to become a public figure after a while. Like you obviously don't want your immortality found out. You have to have like illuminati power before that point though, but it could happen at any time. Like if something happens and you become a news item (i.e. helping someone out and a video goes viral online). Not saying everyone is all that close to going viral, but over a sufficiently long lifespan you're effectively rolling that dice a lot.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 44 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (4 children)

All the comments assume everybody else isn't also immortal. I forget the title and author but there's an old sci fi story (or novel?) about a future where everybody lives for centuries, and they've found that the brain only retains a certain amount of experience. They have long careers, get tired of doing whatever, re-educate and do something else, or even have multiple families they eventually forget about. A couple of the characters are surprised to find out they used to be married like a century earlier. To me that seems vaguely like reincarnation, and I kind of don't hate the idea. I really don't see any downside to that scenario, or even just going on forever.

People are focused on having regrets and negatives that last forever. But buck up li'l camper, you can learn to move on from stuff. And I say this as a dad whose daughter had cancer at age 10 (she survived). It was hell and I wouldn't want to live through that whole period again, but I don't consider it a reason not to want to live forever. The trick is to learn how to cope with these things and not let them outweigh the good experiences you have.

[–] No1@aussie.zone 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

A scifi short story I read was set in a somewhat idyllic future.

Robots did everything. Everyone was given housing, food etc. Health was covered and people lived virtually forever. Nobody worked, and you could travel and do anything you wanted.

The most prized thing, that everyone was desperate for, was having an original thought.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Reminds me another story about an idyllic world where almost nobody worked and everything was provided. At one point a crew showed up to repair a house, and everybody gathered around to watch, marveling at their work clothes and tools. One guy yearned to use tools so he started making little craft items at home, and trading them to people for worthless little tiddly wink tokens they used for friendly bets on sports. Then his neighbors started doing the same thing and they got a little economy going, using the tokens as currency, until the government got wind of it and squashed the whole thing because commerce was illegal.

[–] underscore_@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

That could be it - many elements are familiar, although the title isn't at all, but I have read a lot of Fredrik Pohl. The plot synopsis also doesn't mention the characters finding out they had been married before. Maybe that's a small detail that just stands out more in my mind.

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[–] superkret@feddit.org 21 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

At some point, our sun will go supernova and you will end up drifting through space.
And all your life before that point will be less than a blink of an eye compared to the time that follows:
Trillions and trillions of years until the heat death of the universe.
And even that time will be less than the blink of an eye compared to the eternity afterwards, when you drift through a black void without any stars.

[–] Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

But can I take my Steam Deck with me?

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago

Yes but you don’t have anything to make power to charge it :/

[–] BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 12 points 11 hours ago

But no people around. So overall a win.

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