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.
Basically all of the time you’re alive will be after the heat death of the universe, where you will be floating in space, with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to experience. Complete darkness, complete silence, in a complete vacuum, for eternity. Every other particle in the universe is forever out of your reach. You know that you will have nothing forever. You will never see, hear, or touch anything again, for all of time, which will never end. The trillions of years that preceded your float through the void fade into a distant memory as you outlive twice as much time, four times as much, a trillion-trillion times as much, and infinitely more.
So just my normal day?
I wrote a story that features such an entity and what was interesting about it to me was how even the slightest glimmer of life beyond their void would lead to an all-consuming desire to experience “living” again.
Or you get to experience another big bang. That would be worth the wait.
Then you could call yourself Galactus
Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.
Or not being able to play a board game, because it says “ages 9 - 99” on the box.
Worse still, no manual entry of the birth date, so it takes ages to scroll down and select the year.
Date pickers that assume you have a 5 digit birth year.
I once entered an extremely far back yet technically plausible birthday there and steam just wouldn’t accept it. I remember thinking “what if Kane Tanaka wanted to check out this steam game, you just wouldn’t let her?” (RIP by the way, she was the last oldest person whose name I learned. They change too often)
Being eaten by sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, penguins, and other jellyfish.
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.
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.
Just a random thought, but it would take a lot of work (or institutional access to some portable toilets) to be able to get enough piss to fill an entire barrel
scribbles on some cardboard
Come piss in this barrel and we’ll give you $5
Wage slaving never stops
If your immortal what’s the motivation? Not like you have costs to maintain your laborforce .
Discovering the upper limits to what the human mind can retain and just constantly forgetting all the shit you used to find important.
Not being able to kill yourself.
The Sun will eventually fry all life on Earth and boil off the water & atmosphere. Eventually the Sun will die out completely, leaving you on a cold, dark rock.
Heat death of the universe though 🥶🥶🥶
With no atmosphere and the sun going nova, there’s a chance of the rock getting obliterated. With a nice boost you might fly off to another planet eventually. Might not be inhabited or even inhabitable, but hey.
I think I’d have enough time to build a rocket…
You’d have Musk-levels of wealth before long, so maybe.
Given a long enough time frame, the vast majority of an immortal life would be spent buried beneath something or floating in the void of space. Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.
You might counter that with, "well yeah, but eventually I’d find other sentient life forms and/or people again.” And sure, maybe, but that wouldn’t last as long as you…and then you’re just alone floating in space again, for the vast majority of your life. The only thing to look forward to, since you will outlast everything, is the end of time itself.
Does your consciousness evolve to Godhood, and you reach back beyond time and create the universe which birthed you?
The fantastic animated show, Pantheon explores that very idea at the very end of its second and final season.
You join the Q Continuom.
I think there is a clear difference between being immortal and being indestructible. I would think if your planet breaks apart you’d probably die with it being crushed or whatever. Also always unclear if being immortal means you don’t need to breathe air.
I think a good author makes it explicit.
Here’s a sci-fi web novel I read years ago, where a couple of the characters end up being immortal in different ways, and in one case they show exactly how far that can go (in the context of the story) even without invoking heat death.
Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.
LOL, that’s just the beginning – only on the order of 1012 - 1014 years. After that, you’re going to be waiting around for proton decay (1036 - 1043 years), all the way up to 10^10^120 years* for the final heat death of the universe.
(* Anybody know how to get Lemmy markdown to do nested superscripts?)
10^10^10
i think that experiencing all the things & people i care about would be the worst of it.
either that or seeing us repeat history over and over again as a society complete with all of the indifferent cruelties it entails and studying it, but ignoring it anyways
On one hand, you have eternity to come to grips with everything you’ve done. On the other hand, it might take eternity to come to grips with everything you’ve done.
Seeing all of your friends and family die, knowing you’ll never stop missing them.
Having the perspective of centuries. Seeing society make the same mistakes over and over again because they forget, but you never do. It would drive me mad. Already does, considering I have the ability to, and have, read history. I just imagine living it over and over to be tedious.
I don’t think you’d remember a break up from hundreds of years ago, let alone be upset about it.
Probably, but it depends on the person. I stopped caring about some relationships that ended after a year, but I’m still thinking about others decades later.
Vampires are always like this in stories. I feel like reality might be more like ergo proxy. Where what is a relationship that tastes 10 or 200 years compared to thousands?
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Loneliness. I think being immortal would show someone what true Loneliness is
outlasting humanity and all its trappings
Man, you took it too real too quick
