[notTyler]

I am a lifelong gamer and for about as long, my parents have hated it. I remember one time they made me read about Korean guys packed like rats in computer labs, chainsmoking cigarettes and farming gold / whatever you farm in WoW for 18 hours a day. They were paid next to nothing and largely used their spare time to also farm to make money on the side.

I wrote it off at the time because reasons but to think that society, parents, or getting a low score on a single test would all but force them into a position like that is mind boggling. This was over a decade ago too, I can only assume it's gotten worse for a lot of people.

I can't see anything like this happening in the US because of half the country being red states that would be appalled at the thought of not getting married and having kids.

[pixl97]

>I can't see anything like this happening in the US

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/22/u-s-fertili...

The US is already below replacement rate on average and growth is mostly coming from immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Only 5 states have a fertility rate above 2, and they are very low population states. Deep blue state are around 1.5/1.6 and red states are around 1.8/1.9

[amyjess]

Ah, thank you. I was thinking of commenting something similar, but I didn't have numbers.

The oddity of South Korea and Japan isn't that they aren't having kids; that's par for the course for a first-world nation. It's that they have no significant amount of immigration. If South Korea and Japan took in the same proportions of immigrants as North America and Europe, they would have the same population projections as us.