one of the tropes that I've always rolled my eyes at was the "real world" in the sense used by people who sneer at millennials &c. and always means the world of the corporate workforce. almost all of the jobs I've had a nightmarish unreality about them, in fact

the "real world" to me was what was inside my head, and what I shared with family and friends. work wasn't "real", it was some sort of recurring nightmare that I was required to endure in order to subsist in a capitalist hellscape

until now