Bro, something is legitimately wrong with these people. They don't want to move back in with their parents. I get that some parents suck, but being poorly treated temporarily is better than being homeless and dying.
The mere fact they went into animation
and stayed in animation makes me think the vast majority of them are not the type of people who actually do have bad relationships with their parents that would prevent them from moving in.
Animation isn't exactly a high-paying industry, and it's already been extremely unstable for many years. Most people from shit families who didn't immediately start making money would have had to drop out of the industry out of pure necessity.
You only survive in industries like that if other people are supporting you in some way, either parents, spouse, etc.
They're not going to take on a job flipping burgers, bagging groceries, or doing data entry. These morons MUST be animators/compositors/storyboard artists/etc. because it's like any other job will dehumanize them and delegitimize their lives spent going to art school and whatnot. They're too good to move back home with their parents and too good for any job unless it's exactly what they want.
The constant messaging my generation had gotten was to follow your dreams. Screw practicality, anything is possible if you follow your dream, following your dream will make you successful, you just have to want it enough. Practical planning will lead to penury AND ennui, and this is worse than physical death. You will die a soul death. The younger generations are getting a similar message with a huge helping of anxiety from a return to social pressure being a thing again.
Can any zoom-zooms provide insight into what you guys grew up with re: future careers and such?
I ask because it cannot be understated how much the children of the Boomers (both GenX and Millennials) were told things like "You just need to get
a degree, it doesn't matter what it is!" and "Follow your dreams!" which was itself a response both to how the Boomers themselves were raised:
And what they themselves had experienced:
In 1985, immediately before animation was moved to Korea, Disney animators were making $728/week

If we assume an animator was working 50 weeks a year (I'm being generous and saying 2 weeks
unpaid vacation here). Then they were making $36,400/year annually. That's $109,604.02/year by the official numbers. (If measured in gold, it's closer to $340,000. $36,000/$318-per-oz in 1985 = 114.5oz. 114.5x$3000-per-oz in 2025 = $343,396)
That is
wildly different than what their children could expect. The child of a Disney animator who was working in the 1980s wouldn't even be able to get her father's job. It doesn't even exist in the states anymore.
Also, I forget which show it was, but there was something recently where they had an episode where they show characters how animation is made, and at one point they load a bunch of keyframes into a catapult and launch it to Korea.