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The Terrors of Middle Age

2026-07-17 · letter vlog · Hank · 4:14 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location

At Open Sauce with his nine-year-old son, Hank lists recent signs that he is middle-aged (anniversaries, viewers who grew up with the channel, skills going obsolete) and argues that aging feels uncomfortable partly because 46-year-olds remember how they imagined 46-year-olds at 18, while 18-year-olds cannot know what being 46 is like.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — At Open Sauce with a rough voice; a wish for party earbuds; panels; his son loves the event; the Media Impact Forum

  • ★★ Hank is at Open Sauce, which is why his voice sounds a little rough. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Hank wishes some nerd would invent a party setup where everybody gets an earbud and a little microphone so nobody has to yell. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank describes Open Sauce as an event for people who make stuff and make stuff about making stuff. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Hank is on some panels at Open Sauce. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Most importantly, his nine-year-old son loves Open Sauce; a dad's business trip is rarely something the child also wants to do. — 00:00:00 · Orin Green
  • ★★ Hank was recently at the Media Impact Forum, a gathering of people who make and fund public media: good vibes despite the state of things, but not for a nine-year-old. — 00:00:45

00:01:14 — Signs of middle age: anniversaries, viewers' memories, health problems, obsolete skills and Michael Stevens' view

  • ★★★ Hank says he has recently been bombarded with signs that he is middle-aged, or perhaps beyond. — 00:01:14
  • ★★ What lands: a favourite artist's 30th anniversary of a breakout album, and their parents' 50th anniversary where they held their 25th, which Hank attended as what he thought was an adult. — 00:01:14 · Mike Green, Sydney Green
  • ★★ A Hank-specific sign: people tell him he helped them in high school, and one said they had watched the Vlogbrothers video uploaded the day they were born. — 00:01:14 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Hank has sneaky little health problems he feels he will have forever, though he has had them since his 20s. — 00:01:51
  • ★★ A newer, more general middle-aged sign for Hank: valuable skills he developed are now becoming obsolete. — 00:01:51

00:02:20 — Young makers at Open Sauce and the mismatch between how the young imagine 46-year-olds and being 46; sign-off

  • ★★ Michael Stevens (quoted): Talking with Hank, Michael Stevens of Vsauce said he accepts that skills once in demand and slow to develop are now accessible to almost anyone: a sign of human progress. — 00:02:20 · progress
  • ★★ Hank calls Stevens' view a privileged take, but says he had not thought of it in that frame before. — 00:02:20
  • ★★ Many Open Sauce presenters are young; Hank talked to teenagers who made things he could not, from a stuffed memory game to a 3D-printed phone cleaner and an agricultural drone. — 00:02:20
  • ★★ Hank says it did not bother him that young people have skills he lacks; people will always be younger and older. — 00:02:49
  • ★★★ What lands for Hank is that the young makers look at him as a middle-aged man, which he is. — 00:02:49
  • ★★★ Hank argues 46-year-olds can remember being 18, but 18-year-olds cannot know being 46, so the two perceptions mismatch. — 00:03:18
  • ★★★ Hank thinks the gap between how he imagined 46-year-olds and actually being 46 is a big part of why getting old feels uncomfortable. — 00:03:18
  • ★★ Hank remembers how he perceived 46-year-olds when young, and he did not see them then the way he sees himself now. — 00:03:47
  • ★★ Hank says the idea is hard to package into a neat video from a hotel floor, but definitely worth spending time with. — 00:03:47

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Middle age · Open Sauce

Also: Media Impact Forum · Michael Stevens · Mike Green · Orin Green · progress · Sydney Green · Youth

Also centred on Middle age: A Middle Aged Man · Old Man Yells at Cloud · I Was a Teenage Dirtbag

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