You are content with your life (sometimes even happy) but you are caged in an environment that brings you down. You have no excitement about waking up in the morning and have nothing to look forward to except another day of existence. You’re merely existing, not living. You go to public places and sit there, reflecting, wondering aloud, “Is this it?” as people give you weird looks. You see things as they are and wonder why other people are so slow to pick up on the obvious meanings that lie beneath the surface.
Melbourne, a city that often gets named the “World’s most livable city“, leading to its residents possessing a feeling that they live somewhere great in this world. A notion which I thought was true before exploring further and realising otherwise.
Is Melbourne really that great? Aside from the inner suburbs, the vast majority of Melbourne isn’t exactly amazing, and that’s where most of the people can afford live. The city’s “Growth” has meant people are divided even further by living on the edge of civilisation where there’s nothing but open land and lots of dust. A huge house in the middle of nowhere is still amazing though right?
The city’s public transport system isn’t great, cost of living is high and people’s attitudes aren’t great. On top of that the actual CBD itself is quite tiny, with a pretty dead zone feeling most days and nights too. What’s so great about this place?
Oh the coffee! Oh the lane ways and culture!
Yes, the coffee fascination of this place is sometimes astounds me as does the fad of having breakfast in a cafe and having some “cultured street art/graffiti” lined through the streets but does that really make it so great?
Then there’s the people.. Melbourne really produces the cookie-cutter variety of people, you go to school, you attend higher education, you work in a draining job your whole life, you pay your taxes and continue in this delusional grand mission to chase money and accumulate tangible items. This is all done in the space of one city over a span of a lifetime, how interesting!
The culture here has also broken the women. A girl wakes up and she’s 30 and has no man and no hope for a man, yet she already passed on several who didn’t give her the tingles or butterflies in her stomach or whatever the fuck term she uses. Because of course the culture gave them this sense of entitlement as well, to think that with mediocre looks and 15 extra kilos they can get a hot stud like they see in the magazines in line at the grocery store. But hey, the easy sex that girls give out like tap water these days isn’t anything to complain about for me, but there’s not much reason to date them seriously.
Creativity is sucked out of you, Risk taking is looked down upon, and soon you’ll just be the hamster spinning in its wheel. The city will also start to turn you into a self-absorbed person, you’ll only become more and more superficial. Your “rat race” weeks end up being so lifeless you will feel the need to punish your liver every weekend, so you have something interesting to say on Monday morning when you’re back at your lifeless job.
The culture amongst educational institutions also drives the “daily grind” lifestyle, especially The University of Melbourne, whereby the notion amongst everyone is something along the lines of “Career is King!” every kid is out to get a head start over their peers in their “rat race” lives and get that CPI-aligned pay rise every year. Luckily, Financially I’ve built a pretty solid empire so this hasn’t applied to me personally but for many others it really is hard for them to swallow bitter truth that you’ll never get rich working for others, but they never contest that, they continue to live their drone lives and fail to defy the status quo.
Then you have the people continually riding the “Melbourne is the best city in the world” bandwagon after visiting a string of South East Asian countries in a 3 week trip and coming back feeling as if this city has some sort of magic power. I think you’ll have to venture out to a few more countries besides that to really find where Melbourne really stacks up.
Now, whenever I’m outside of Australia and I meet someone from Melbourne I often feel the need to avoid them, just because the reminder of the most overrated city is just not worth putting up with throughout an interaction.
People may ask, if Australia and Melbourne suck so much why do so many migrants move here? Well, everybody knows the welfare system here is good and that definitely helps. If you live in this city, you probably won’t be poor, nor rich and live a pretty boring middle class life in the suburbs. Your life will be passive and soon you’ll be saying that the most interesting thing that happened to you in the last week was someone giving you the time of day.
Combine the shitty weather, terrible attitudes of people, the lacklustre beauty of the city and you have it, a very overrated city, Melbourne!
Update: Oh and I don’t live there anymore, I’m much happier splitting my time between a few other cities these days.
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Inside The University of Melbourne 