How is the FIRE movement doing?

[ertyu]

Social media is a derail. The underlying cause is the hollowing out of the middle class and the intensification of exploitation of the working class. Attainment of middle class status is ever more precarious --> parents get ever more anxious --> helicopter parenting, kids signed up to 63 after-school activities + a ton of homework and academic pressure bc cOlLeGe ApPlIcAtIoNs --> no chance to just hang out w peers without adult supervision during unstructured time doing stupid shit --> less chance to grow, mature, and develop self-efficacy. Social media is just what you escape to when you need to carve out a time and space for yourself when the entirety of your meatspace existence has been encroached upon by educational activities and adults.

For the left behind, it's poverty and hopelessness.

[zbigi]

Radio, tv, computers and internet on their own did not lead to higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicides and loneliness.

They probably did, we're just not old enough to remember it. Robert Crumb's grandma recalled how, before the radio era, lots of regular people would sing or play instruments in the evenings, often together. Shortly after radios became popular, that stopped - people were glued to the radios instead.

Similarly, there was a documentary on Polish villages around 1970s. Those villages also changed abrubtly after mass introduction of TVs. Before the TVs, people would hang around together on streets and chat. After TVs, the village streets became virtually empty in the evenings, and instead there was a TV glow coming from windows of every house.

[Henry]

The development of the printing press in the 15th century created the activity of private reading which led to the breakup of Western European church hegemony which led to an actual war (Peasants War). Arguably the most disruptive technology in human history.

[jacob]

There are also some unspoken(?) implications from blaming the lack of growth in FIRE movement on Zoomers. Currently, the FIRE penetration is still around 0.5-1%. It's my understanding that more people have heard about it in some form, but there should still be a lot of "virgin" territory in Millennials and Generation-X.

The size would be stable if as many people enter on the young end as there are people leaving at the old end. The youngest Boomer is now 60, so it's not really relevant to them anymore. This also means that the oldest Gen-X is around 60 and the youngest around 44.

I'll grant that most of the Gen X FIRE OGs are now old and perhaps unrelateable to Zoomers. This still doesn't explain why the movement is failing to reach more people of its own age.

Another explanation, which might have been mentioned before, is that FIRE concepts are simply too complicated to fit in a TikTok video, whereas minimalism and green walk the talk activism often makes for good visuals. This is suggesting that the change in medium has changed the set of possible messages and topics and personal finance is just not on that list. The only thing I've heard out of TikTok is some viral meme of saying "I can't afford it"... some kind of "honest budgeting". They have a cool term for it, but it's very simple stuff.

PS: I have 0 instagram followers.

[Ego]

Another explanation, which might have been mentioned before, is that FIRE concepts are simply too complicated to fit in a TikTok video...

Refraining from doing something is not very photogenic / videogenic. Also, it is impossible to show future-me benefiting from the good decisions of present-me.

[Jin+Guice]

@jacob:

For me, social media is off topic of the thread, although for others it might not be.


Refocusing on the topic, I still see the biggest problems as:

(1) FIRE asks people to change deeply held identity level beliefs that are uncomfortable to question

(2) FIRE is bad at marketing.


Given that, I'm more surprised that it got as big as it did than that FIRE stopped spreading.

I think the lack of a strong voice among the Zoomers just means it gets rediscovered again in some other form (as seems to keep happening).



Questions for everyone:

Is there a cultural/ financial movement that has had more success than FIRE?

Did it survive getting adopted by the mainstream in a way that pleased its originators?




Assuming that the reason for asking why FIRE is stalling/ shrinking is with the hope to reverse that trend, I think there is still a lot of room for potential growth. ERE is even better than FIRE since the FI portion is only one part. If the goal is to grow FIRE, I think it needs better marketing. If the goal is to grow ERE, I think we should target more/ different aspects.

[delay]

Good point, my son is a 19 year old college student. He and his friends seem like high school students (maturity-wise). (He lives at home and actually seems to like it!) I try to remind myself that he’s seeking balance in his own way.

That's a recognizable sentiment. I always wonder about what they miss. For example, few boys today climb in trees. Falling from a tree starts hurting when you're 10 or older. These boys will never experience tree climbing. Likewise if you live at home until you're 25. You'll never live in a dorm with roommates, crawl home drunk, or wonder where you'll live next month.

It seems that life is going online. Young people form groups, take risks and enjoy rewards in virtual realms. A 35 year old who lives at his parent's house playing games is nothing unusual.

On my daily run I passed someone walking in running clothes. She suddenly started to run with her mobile in front of her, capturing herself cheering while passing a welcome-to-our-city sign. She stopped running after. I guess she wanted to create an Instagram/TikTok image of someone training to run. The message has become the goal.

[theanimal]

The only thing I've heard out of TikTok is some viral meme of saying "I can't afford it"... some kind of "honest budgeting". They have a cool term for it, but it's very simple stuff.

"Girl Math" is one of those terms.

[jacob]

It's called "loud budgeting". A reversal on "quiet luxury". It's this guy/video: https://www.tiktok.com/@lukasbattle/vid ... 4392349995 ...

[bos]

I brought up the concept of FIRE during lunch and everyone is familiair with it. Immigrants often have a strong hustle mindset, likely influenced by past struggles Status is important, especially among my tech-savvy immigrant peers aged 25 to 35.
If you always cycled to school in Brazil for an hour and it was seen as poor, bad and also dangerous, then you are now dreaming of a German car. You only get that by working. Why would they even consider FIRE?

In contrast, Germans praise practices like cycling and repairing items. Some German colleagues even sew their own outdoor gear. One Indian colleague Joked that he worked very hard to not have to sew clothing so he would never even consider that. It would lower his status. I admire skills like sewing. Germans are on the other hand super doomy gloomy. Extremely worried and not certain about the future. Then you prefer to have your matcha latte now then two matcha lattes in the future.

[7Wannabe5]

I think that falling birth rates actually may have a lot to do with the increased effect of social media. It seems to me that kids who have siblings/cousins are not as subject to "friends." I put my DD32 at age 4 into a daycare group (3 sisters and two other girls her age cared for by the mother of the sisters) that was like my own 4 sisters sibling group, or an old-fashioned "Betsy, Tacey and Tib" girls friendship circle, and she still benefits from that group and a very similar one she was able to form in college. Peers are known to have more influence than parents, but as parents we have some power over peer group formation, even beyond the IMO weak, expensive tactic of "good school district" and extracurricular activities. For similar reasons, I still regret sending my DS35 to kindergarten when he was 4, because even though he was tall, completely toilet trained, and could read fluently, it made his peer group somewhat too influential.

Among the poor kids I teach, the recent immigrants with lots of family connections are much happier on average than the American-born kids who are lacking in both affluence and social ties. Playing stick ball with your cousins on a vacant lot next to 5 overflowing dumpsters is better than playing with the hand-me-down phone your Mom's last boyfriend gave you when you are left alone at night in your room in the rusty trailer.

[mathiverse]

They probably did, we're just not old enough to remember it...

Similarly, there was a documentary on Polish villages around 1970s. Those villages also changed abrubtly after mass introduction of TVs. Before the TVs, people would hang around together on streets and chat. After TVs, the village streets became virtually empty in the evenings, and instead there was a TV glow coming from windows of every house.

The following comic describes the results of a study done on a town in Canada before and after television was introduced. Basically, what zbigi said.

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/to ... n-1-notel/

[guitarplayer]

The following comic describes the results of a study done on a town in Canada before and after television was introduced. Basically, what zbigi said.

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/to ... n-1-notel/

I much look forward to Part 3 / Book edition in 2025

https://scribepublications.com.au/blog/ ... phic-novel

[grundomatic]

So while internet search interest may have peaked, it seems like the baseline interest is higher, or at the very least hasn’t declined back to previous levels. As for the decline, while the "market high" hypothesis is a good one, I’ll also note that 2021 was probably also peak “extraverts staying at home before being vaccinated”, or maybe peak “holy crap my people-facing job now sucks because people forgot how to behave”.

As others have noted, FIRE and ERE aren’t easily “marketable” in the traditional business sense. In regular business marketing, you just need to change someone’s mind long enough for them to make a purchase. FIRE and ERE take real effort on the part of the “buyer”. Having said that, I think there are things that can be done.

If the goal is to grow FIRE, I think it needs better marketing. If the goal is to grow ERE, I think we should target more/ different aspects.

Come up with yet another "trick" (or set of tricks) to get people to adopt various parts of ERE.

If the goal is to keep FIRE popular on the internet, then it has to be sold better, essentially, by some popular sexy video maker etc. However, I think ERE might see more bang for the buck if we could get more traction in meat space, as the lack of meat space presence hinders many internet movements.

I think that entry into ERE via any given module, with a switch to other modules is an approach worth trying. After all, Jacob and MMM wrote about more than just finances. The problem online is getting pigeonholed as one thing. Look what happened when MMM bought a Tesla after it being on his list of things to buy for years and years. So if you are Mr. Baking Yesteryear, then you try to also get your audience into Working Out Like Yesteryear , there may be some backlash.

I’m thinking that maybe this goes away (for the most part) in person. Maybe I’m wrong, but very few of my friends give me crap for not maintaining a consistent personal brand. Nobody has said to me “you used to be mr. salads and bicycles, but now you are mr. rice & beans and improv–what gives?”

If one is making no headway changing friends and family alone, maybe that’s where the value of something like ERE city/block/compound comes into play. If my game friends come to the ERE potluck where they meet lots of interesting people who not only like games but also all these other things, maybe that goes further than just seeing one person doing it. Maybe they also notice how nobody is working a traditional job, and they just might wonder WTF is happening and ask about it. Or they may just get sucked into one of many interesting projects sure to be underway.

Another way to say it is that if “groups” are immune to change from the ERE individual, you make ERE an IRL group and infect individuals. Of course, this does nothing to explain why all the individualist GenX and Millennial engineers haven’t all converted to FIRE already. It also won’t have the same infection rate as online, but if interest is declining as it is...anyhow, it's not like this will make the FIRE blogs go away, though as we saw with the MMG darknetting, it's very possible activity here decreases if more ERE socializing happens in person.

Actually, this is just my personal dream because I want some ERE folks around. I'm weak and lazy alone. Step one: get everyone together. Sorry to drag the reader along for my fantasizing.

[AnalyticalEngine]

It also won’t have the same infection rate as online, but if interest is declining as it is...anyhow, it's not like this will make the FIRE blogs go away, though as we saw with the MMG darknetting, it's very possible activity here decreases if more ERE socializing happens in person.

Actually, this is just my personal dream because I want some ERE folks around. I'm weak and lazy alone. Step one: get everyone together. Sorry to drag the reader along for my fantasizing.

For what it's worth, I have seen this happen with FIRE a bit. A lot of FIRE people have moved to Longmont and then proceed to not really talk about it online that much. It has darknetted some of FIRE, but it also has had the bonus of fleshing out the in-person community. There's only so much you can do online, and as more of the regular world has moved online, I personally have developed way less interest in staring at a screen. More in-person ERE stuff would be fantastic. It's just a shame that everyone is so spread out and ERE is insanely niche compared even to FIRE.

[loutfard]

I can only speculate that a nucleus of ERE people working geographically close together might spark some hard to ignite ERE2 innovation.With enough hands, documenting what works becomes easier. Necessary, but not sufficient condition for replication/growth elsewhere.

[7Wannabe5]

Maybe I am in a weird headspace because I've simultaneously been reading Regency Romance novels set in Level Red/Blue and High-Green/Turquoise works such as "Hospicing Modernity" and "No More Gold Stars", but it seems to me that one path through might involve considering in more general terms how Individuals actually make a living at Levels Orange/Green/Yellow/Turquoise/Orange. I think on some level it entirely makes sense that these-a-days kids want to be Influencers rather than Astronauts, because they comprehend that the post-post-modern economy is concerned with manipulating Symbols more than moving Stuff. Another "lesson" of the Covid lockdown, which may not have been previously entirely apparent to median American, was that apparently the federal government can create benefits/money out of thin air when deemed necessary. So, is there really any essential difference between your likes/views or your credit rating in the 21st century? Maybe the reason the youngsters are less interested in concepts such as FIRE is that they can see the glimmering of the Post-Capitalist future better than the oldsters?

At bare minimum with ERE, enough stock/flow of financial capital is needed to "render unto Caesar", but what if even this process is now further devolving into Symbol manipulation rather than 1/5 of corn crop collected by Feudal Lord? In fact, maybe the turning point for Modernity was actually the moment in 1973 when Earl Butz told American farmers to "get big or get out" and the disenchanted/disenfranchised young baristas of today are the 50-year-seeds-sown legacy, with their hipster tattoos and haircuts adding value to the dirt-cheap commodities they decorate and serve.

The Influencer@Yellow is as much an Individualist as the Warrior@Red, and the shared use of the concept of the concept of Tribe makes this clear. If you have enough Warriors, you can actually make a living by raiding another tribe for cattle, women and gold. If you have enough Fans, you can actually make a living by raiding another tribe for symbols, access, and options. The critical question is what is the structure of the web through which symbols -> money -> cattle/corn. IOW, ERE1 looks at Cash Flow Diagrams, but ERE2 might have to look at Symbol Flow Diagrams.

[daylen]

How about lifestyles as tokens?(*) That is, with virtualization it may be possible within a decade to share a file type that encodes as much information, knowledge, and wisdom as possible from the lifestyle of a particular person. Various public figures may willingly record their lives for others to learn from. There could be various different ways to interact with these files. For instance, you could live your life normally with some VR glasses on rendering an augmented version of Jacob giving you advice for better systems design or showing you how to do a task as if in person. These lifestyle tokens could be mixed and matched to explore a huge space of possible ways to live. There could even be suggestive melding of various webs of goals in local spaces that derive insights from a vast global sharing of lifestyles with historical recollection.

(*) Or perhaps actions or activities as tokens that fit together into lifestyles.

[daylen]

Post-capitalist or distributed-capitalization? Remember when I said crypto was both an orange and yellow thing? Imagine these influencers release their own coins with their own economies of interaction. There would always be a generative tension between engaging new public influencers with transformative potential and legacy influencers that managed to retain their reputation beyond the grave. A high stakes game where one opinion or action could wipe out the value of your coin. Saints at stake.

[jacob]

Kinda reminds me of https://otherinter.net/research/squad-wealth/ ... the first Stoa event I ever went to. Needless to say, I don't even understand much of the language (I had to ask @peterlimberg for translations), so I'm really rather out of touch with much of this "vibing". My concern is how much of it actually vibes with objective as well as interobjective reality. I can see the "ride or die"-appeal---it is extremely impressive--but it strikes me as a kind of neo-tribalism that will quickly meet reality once the bills have to be paid. To which degree will this attitude hold past the liminal stage between college- and salaryman stages insofar a couple of people in the squad ends up supporting the other ten? For how many years? This level of imbalance even when doing it for "family" is a big ask.

Staying alive still depends on somebody moving stuff around. While a great many are abstracted from this one or two levels out, the tokens and symbols remain connected to stuff. (This is probably why those who have exclusively dedicated their life to focusing on imaginary things have lived a life of absolute poverty out of necessity.) If this is not clear, try making your own stuff from scratch instead of buying it. It's quite challenging relative to what humans are regularly asked to do at the jobs to make even simple things, like a table. A table made out of wood, that is, not a pixelated image symbolically attached to an NFT.

One of the clever parts about FIRE (before it degenerated into fatFIRE) was acknowledging both that we need stuff but also that we don't need that much stuff---that a lot of stuff and services are not worth the price compared to investing for more money instead. The average person believing that "community" is an automagic source of stuff or that their "youtube subscription base" is better than "money in the bank" (yes, these people exist) are likely in for a rude awakening.