Asklemmy

Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.

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.

Depends on the type of immorality. Do you continue to age? If no, what age do you stop? Eventually the universe will die. So what happens to you then?

It might be fun for a while. Maybe even a long while. But that fun will be gone in an instant compared to the trillions and trillions of years you will float in a dark dying universe of nothing.

immortality doesn't guarantee perpetual health, you're alive, but so broken and sick you wish you could die, but you can't

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.

That old person feeling of no longer being with "it", and what's "it" now being strange and scary probably compounds over the centuries.

Knowing the answer to some of history's biggest mysteries, because you were there, but being unable to speak about them because, 1, that would expose you, 2, nobody would believe you either way because nobody expects you to be THAT old.

Also, it is already frustrating seeing kids being dismissive or denying events that you yourself have lived. Imagine being thousands of years old and seeing so much shit, but those events are rarely retold, forgotten, or straight up denied by conspiracies or future governments that won't admit their fault on it.

Life will pound you into an uncaring jaded disinterested unloveable husk of a being after too many emotional scars from losing loved ones, too much of seeing humanity make the same mistakes, and too much watching the knowledge you gained turned irrelevant.

Or, life will beat into you an uncanny ability to converse and relate to others, even if fleetingly.

Watch The Man from Earth.

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.

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.

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.

The rest of humanity will eventually evolve into something you don't recognize and can never be part of.

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

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.

Having to constantly find new hiding places for the blood chalice, and keeping up with all the latest scanning methods so you can develop countermeasures. Your secret is never truly safe.

Discovering the upper limits to what the human mind can retain and just constantly forgetting all the shit you used to find important.

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

Having to keep creating fake identities to prevent people and governments from finding out that you're immortal. That would be a massive pain in the butt, especially in a world where mass surveillance of the population is common.

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.

Boredom after some period of time, you will have some everything there is to do.

Herpes is forever.

Without getting into the heat death of the universe and all that, I can think of something that happens much, much sooner. I'm only middle aged and I already don't like where the world is going. Can you imagine being centuries, or eons past the era you identified with? Can you imagine how insufferable young people and old people alike would seem when you have centuries worth of life experience and wisdom? Can you imagine a horde of little edge lords on the internet confidently yet incorrectly telling you about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when you were there when it was signed?

Government Bureaucracy.

Renewing a driver's licence or passport. The individual looking at your application will see the date of birth and raise a red flag.

The eventual heat death of the universe would be painful

If it's the realistic kind where you just don't age, the statistical certainty that you'll eventually die in an accident, or to war or murder. Your odds of getting to the heat death of the universe without making backups is pretty slim.

If it's the kind where you're indestructible, you're highly likely to encounter someone who tries to bury you alive in a subduction zone eventually, because humans are like that, and then you get to spend eternity slowly moving into the scorching mantle.

Time gets shorter. I've already experienced this going from my teens to my twenties and into my thirties. I can remember entire weeks of my childhood. By the time I was in my mid twenties, days and weeks blurred together. Now it's like months go by and I don't even notice.

People talk about it more as they get older. Eventually when you enter your 80s and 90s, it's like entire decades can come and go. So imagine when you're immortal. If you've been alive for 100,000 years, that's longer than writing has been around. Entire civilizations will have come and went.

But from your perspective, it's all a blur. Entire genealogies were experienced, yet those people barely registered in your mind. If you had a favorite food, maybe the recipe disappears when you went four centuries without eating it. Jokes and fashions you're familiar with are completely alien to everyone else. Are you even capable of noticing when things change at that point?

There's also the question of how human are you? Everything and everyone would seem inconsequential. Would you even be able to socialize with others, or would you be completely sociopathic? That's if you don't hurt anyone and get tossed in a jail cell. What happens if you spend a few centuries in prison? Fight in multiple wars? Would you even feel the slightest discomfort when you kill someone?

I wonder if it might engender an advanced sort of solipsism and callousness towards other people. After thousands of years of the world coming and going around you while you remain, would you even recognize other people as real or meaningful?

You know how the curse of pet ownership is that you will almost certainly outlive them?

That, but with everyone you love

Getting trapped under something for a few thousand years.

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

Wage slaving never stops

Just depression in general. I don't want to live one lifetime, let alone never being able to die.

If you're immortal in a body that isn't broken then that might be a different story, but you'd still grow to love people only to have to lose them and go through that pain over and over.

As we get older, our perception of time speeds up. An immortal would easily lose track of time after just two human lifetimes, causing an immortal to suffer from dementia-like symptoms where they expect one date but find themselves habitually late. And since time doesn't mean the same thing as us to an immortal, they would eventually become disconnected from the world around them and be unable to reintegrate. They wouldn't be able to maintain friendships, relationships, mortgages, payments, etc. They would be surrounded by people but forever alone.

How much more annoying the (much) younger generations would be.

I had a really nice washing machine. Then it broke. The manufacturer was dissolved 25 years ago.

I had a really nice cast iron pan. Then it fractured. Modern cast iron pans aren't smooth.

I had a really nice car. Then a part broke. Replacement parts haven't been available for 50 years.

I had a really nice flip phone. It was made by Nokia so it still works. People think it's weird that I use a flip phone.

I had a really nice peace and quiet. Then someone invented ambulances. Now I cower in the corner of my bedroom hiding from manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.

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.

Having to keep track of that evil snail.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5ipinn/you_and_a_super_intelligent_snail_both_get_1/

If you're injured and you survive with the scarring from said injuries. Well, good luck because you're now going to wear those and wish you had died from them. If you're incapacitated or amputated? Gotta live with that for years and years.

Repeated surgical corrections for your ever growing earlobes