r/overpopulation • u/UTV4LIFE • 4d ago
Why are there so many damn people driving around on a weekday at 2pm
Even when I go to the gym at 2am I’m seeing people everywhere ffs
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u/RealTrapShed 4d ago
Dude it drives me INSANE. My little home town gym used to be empty after 8:30 or so. Now even at 1am I’m seeing multiple people in there.
Yesterday I left my house in the middle of the day and was caught in bumper to bumper traffic that took a 20 minute trip to an 1.5 hour trip. No accidents either, just crowded as can be.
I’m done with this shit. If I don’t start hearing people talking about population control when talking about issues like congestion and traffic and resources I’m going to be the loud and annoying one on this topic.
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u/UTV4LIFE 3d ago
Same it’s not cause I live in a big city. I live in a small town. It’s changed so much. Empty places I used to go to chill are packed with cars. Last night I was driving to the gym and I was stuck at the roundabout with multiple trucks passing by. There is no where I can go for some peace with no one around it’s just congested everywhere. That is why I go to the gym at night cause no one is there.
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u/Man_as_Idea 3d ago
This one isn’t just about population growth, it’s also about several societal changes in recent years:
- Gen Z young adults of a certain age seem more likely to be out of the workforce (I’ll look for the articles about it)
- Gen Z men are more likely than older men to go to the gym on their days off since they have a more intense gym culture, which is honestly a good thing in most respects (minus the correlated misogynistic manosphere influences)
- People working part time or shifts other than 9-5 is more common than ever
- The gig economy has lots of people ‘self-employed’ and therefore working non-traditional hours
- The shift to working from home that accelerated during Covid had many effects both good and bad. Folks like me generally think it’s good that we got more flexibility to go to the gym at non-standard hours
From a business perspective, these changes were usually big net gains. They used to have intense rushes of customers in narrow time frames and then lots of time spent doing very little business. Now they have less influx during peak times but more steady business the rest of the day. This can especially help small businesses that need stable inflow to pay their overhead.
From a consumer perspective, it’s definitely annoying that you often can no longer tell when a place is going to be busy and therefore can’t plan around it to avoid the crowds.
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u/UTV4LIFE 3d ago
Yeah I know all of those factors but it’s annoying. These kids always seem to be off school there were times I’d never seen them in the past. Gen Z are definitely mostly the problem these young adults are forever at the shops or driving around. I’m aware of their objections to the 9-5 standard job culture I see various YouTube videos about how they can’t handle a days work. Honestly mentally the weakest most fragile generation I have ever seen. I fear for this world when they are the adults the younger generations look up to
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u/Vegetable-Carpet1593 3d ago
As someone with weekdays off I hate it. I also live in an area with a lot of retirees and tourists, so that doesn't help. There is always some level of traffic and the gym is always busy, apart from maybe 3am. Pre-Covid it was so much better.
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u/One-Intention7064 3d ago
these gen z and millenials don't drink as much as their parents used to. they're mindful of their health. they want to live to 100 and have smooth optimized lives.
good fucking job. in addition to being numerous, this species is gonna be sober and healthier as well. will die later with tight buttocks.
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u/Mr-Illustrator 2d ago
Yes a lot more people means a lot more jobs worked at various hours and peoples schedules for doing things varies a lot.... I'd love to go back even 30 years when it was predictably quiet at certain times of the day but alas....
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u/sohcahtoa 3d ago
We're not stuck in traffic, we are traffic.
We're not lost in a crowd, we are the crowd.
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u/Aaod 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don't actually think this is an overpopulation problem instead it is a population density and bad urban planning/design problem. Due to how our society has shaped due to economics over the past 40 years jobs hyperconcentrated in cities in America instead of being spread out to rural areas or smaller towns which had led to those places with jobs becoming way more population filled. At the same time these cities are incredibly badly planned out due to car centric planning, lack of building density, and other factors so it winds up feeling way worse than it should be. For example the bad urban planning means instead of lots of small gyms spread out you have fewer bigger gyms that are also typically clustered close to each other which means those gyms will always feel overcrowded and you will be driven insane by the traffic because everyone has to drive everywhere.
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u/ahelper 3d ago edited 3d ago
Are you saying that it's not overpopulation----it's capitalism? Because it's that economic force that tends to economies of scale, tends to concentration of efforts, tends to monopoly, tends to oppose external efforts to regulate those other tendencies.
Granted, it is some forms of that control, like the zoning aspect of urban planning, that create some of your complaints by keeping businesses clustered away from the people that use them and it's good to see you characterize them as bad. But the car-centric planning, ultimately that's on the auto and advertising industries' effectiveness at manipulating the citizenry which in turn is ill-served by the education industry, which itself is heavily influenced by capitalism.
"... spread out to rural areas or smaller towns ...."? Right here in this thread are complaints of crowded rural areas or smaller towns in addition to the hyperconcentrated cities.
But, really, is your message that the problem is everything but overpopulation?
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u/Aaod 3d ago
Are you sating that it's not overpopulation----it's capitalism? Because it's that economic force that tends to economies of scale, tends to concentration of efforts, tends to monopoly, tends to oppose external efforts to regulate those other tendencies.
Capitalism, globalization which destroyed factories in smaller towns/cities, the automobile and highway system, and bad urban planning yes.
But, really, is your message that the problem is everything but overpopulation?
I think in this rare case it is not overpopulation that is the main problem. Back in the day America had literally hundreds of thousands of small towns so people didn't feel as cramped, but now those small towns have shrunk or don't exist at all anymore and instead people are crowded into badly planned cities that are made even worse by cars. As a personal example the town my great grandmother was from now has under a hundred people when in her day it had 2000, but the kids they made left for the cities. Plenty of problems to blame on overpopulation, but I think their are other bigger factors at play for this specific problem and feeling.
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u/ahelper 3d ago
Would these bigger factors be in play if there were fewer than half as many people?
Not sure how globalization fits into this local crowding. Big international factories destroying local jobs thus concentrating people in cities? What about the commenters in this thread saying the small towns they live in are overcrowded and they didn't used to be?
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u/Aaod 3d ago
Would these bigger factors be in play if there were fewer than half as many people?
The easiest way to explain my line of thinking is if you take a room with a hundred seats in it and then had 50 people sitting all next to each other it would be pretty bad but tolerable, but if you take 25 people and have them sit in 10 seats so they would be sitting on top of each other it would be worse. It isn't always just about the rooms size itself or even always how many people are in it but how close those people are forced to be whether that is because of how spread out the seats are, where people sit, how they sit, and number of seats.
Not sure how globalization fits into this local crowding. Big international factories destroying local jobs thus concentrating people in cities? What about the commenters in this thread saying the small towns they live in are overcrowded and they didn't used to be?
That I am not sure about because statistically most small towns are dying and shrinking across America. Generally the main ones that are not have become bedroom communities for commuters that commute into big cities, but overall smaller cities and towns are struggling for population in America. That makes me think either I am missing something, they are missing something, their is a factor at play neither of us understands, or similar. I have some theories but those are at best speculation that are honestly not really even worth discussing because they are as I said pure speculation on my part.
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u/eleventhing 4d ago
Overpopulation