[close04]

Anecdata. I personally know a person mid-30s that truly thinks life is exactly what you can see in the series Friends [0]. With almost all the unrealistic expectations promoted by scenes in that series. And that person sees any deviation from that as a failure in life.

And to be clear, we're talking about an educated person with a relatively successful life. But the expectation that real life follows "Hollywood" is still there. I started to doubt that everybody is able to draw a clear line between reality and fiction as long as they bask in that fiction for too long or at key moments in life.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/

[badpun]

What? I could very much see someone having that expectation at 20, maybe even at 25. At 30, we're already talking about a serious lagging in somebody's development as an adult (unless that someone was in jail/hospital the whole time and knows society only from TV etc.). At 35, I don't even know where to begin.