SebastianVerified account

PERSONAL ANNOUNCE TIME

when I was a kid my grandparents aged hella fast, i barely remember anything about them before i knew them as fastly decaying in a care home, with almost no support network around them and their memories super deteriorated by the minute

it wasn't pleasant, and it made me think a lot about aging and loss of community and shit, i think it made my parents think about it even more because they were visibly upset and as time goes, their communities were fading too

i remember they kept setting me on friend dates with school kids i had nothing in common with and they were super open about this being bc they wanted to be friends with their parents LOL

this all changed around 2012? when my dad got an ipad - he wasn't really a computers person, and the ipad was for me really, but he started using facebook on it and holy shit lemme tell ya it was sad for me to, in 1 month, lose my ipad AND realize my dad is more popular than me

through fb (he didn't even use the app, just the website on safari) he moved from a lonely retired life to getting involved in group chats, even got a chair in local politics, facebook opened up his world in a very similar way twitter opens up mine

i think that really shifted the overton window for my mom cuz she started being super active in groups too lol, whenever we watch tv i have to tell her to put her phone on a pillow bc the constant vibrations are super annoying haha

looking at my grandpas, and looking at my parents now, as they age, it's so incredible how different their situation is, how connected they are. how impossible it seems they'll end up alone like my grandparents, like most of our grandparents