Everyone in The Sims is a silver-spoon trust fund baby

Every time I boot up The Sims, I'm always struck by how ridiculous the premise is. There really should be a "realistic start" game mode.

Instead of beginning the game with a pile of cash and your pick of a few lots/houses, you'd start with:

- $50,000 - $200,000 in debt (depending on how long it took you to realize that "higher education" other than trade school is a literal scam, and depending on whether or not you've ever been to the doctor or dentist as an adult);

- A shitty ghetto studio/apartment with zero amenities, "managed" by a soulless criminal enterprise—sorry, 'property management company'—that's breaking every single landlord-tenant law in existence (which you can't do anything about because every one of your options for recourse would cost you 3 years of rent just to get started), for all of which you pay 75% - 80% of your monthly income... for at least a few years, until the 20% annual rent increases force you out, at which point you downgrade to an even shittier living situation with even worse value per dollar (but for a slightly less insane number of dollars), and repeat ad infinitum;

- A shitty job you hate in an industry that the world would unequivocally be better off without, which pays as little as law permits, only gives raises every other year that at best account for 1/4 of yearly local inflation (before accounting for bi-annual gas and utility tax increases), and for which you have absolutely no job security beyond how well you can kiss ass... wherein all of the employees (who actually do any work) are laboring solely to keep the company's executives in the latest model of overpriced blinged-out junk-mobile every year along with new seasonal vacation homes in a different country every-other year;

- A minimum 20-45 minute drive to work each way that costs you 10-15% of your income even with your 20 year old economical 40-mpg 4-banger (that will absolutely cripple you if you so much as get rear-ended)... and that's just fuel - so not including essential vehicle maintenance, the labor for which you perform yourself in your nonexistent free time because otherwise you'd have no vehicle or job at all;

- No health or dental insurance (which in America means no health CARE at all, ever), because the only bottom-barrel option your employer "offers" would cost you 60% of your gross income out of pocket annually BEFORE kicking in to even potentially save you up to the next  10% of your income annually (but not applicable to, of course, any expenses you'd incur to diagnose or treat any acute or chronic illness that could possibly have any actual impact on your life in any way)... and because the next-best marketplace option would cost you twice that for half the potential savings;

- A miles-long list of "minor" health issues you can't and won't ever be able to do anything about, because this is America, idiot, lol, wtf you think we are, some hippie 1st-world developed nation with functional infrastructure or extant social systems and all that other commie crybaby bullshit? Get outa heeeeeere;

- Grocery prices that are obviously set by more executives in desperate need of more new cars and vacation homes;

- Vague memories of imaginary thought-experiments that you think were called "goals" and "dreams;"

... and the objective of the entire game, then? Simply to to avoid becoming homeless for as long as possible - until, if you're very, very lucky, you can someday magically afford to pay a different kind of higher rent for a slightly larger shitty home with the same exact shitty neighbors - but whose screaming kids and bass-only stereos and non-performative rattle can mufflers and drunken football parties will be a massive 6 feet away instead of only 6 centimeters... until not long after, you die and lose everything, leaving absolutely nothing to the children you couldn't afford to have, except for the small mountain of debts that you weren't lucky enough to incidentally escape... which will of course leave them slightly more impoverished than you started out. The 'Merican dream!

Now THAT would be a relatable premise! "Sims," my ass. The only thing being simulated here is the same preposterous fictitious fantasy narrative about life in this country that its own mass media and entertainment are constantly feeding to the entire world - our own selves included.