Simulator of the life of a 30-year-old in the UK

83 kostyal 87 8/17/2025, 8:44:08 AM nicksimulator.com ↗

Comments (87)

jamesalvarez · 1h ago
This could actually be good but instead it just comes across as a coded xenophobic rant. Wasted opportunity!
1dom · 1h ago
Great way of putting it.

This looks like ragebait.

First 2 things I saw:

- the idea that £100k deposit is needed to buy a house - some weird stuff about nationwide initiatives and hypothesised awkward conversations with people who might be Muslims.

Maybe I got unlucky?

spangry · 1h ago
I missed that bit. What did it say?
lucumo · 1h ago
The first three questions I got were:

- Wishing a colleague a Eid Mubarak, at which the colleague mentions that she's no longer of the faith.

- It's Odd Socks day for Alzheimer awareness. Will you take off a sock? (No -> Linda disapproves.)

- Bring your dog to work day, will you bring treats to work? (No -> it got canceled anyway because of complaints.)

This just sounds like an exhausting attitude to go through life.

extraisland · 52m ago
It is satire about working in a large corporation in the UK.
komali2 · 1h ago
Overblown dog whistles about "celebrate hijab day" or some such made-up nonsense I only hear about in conservative self victimisation fantasies.
extraisland · 35m ago
There is an option to that question where it has a relatively positive outcome and you have lunch with her and presumable are on better terms afterwards. Which tells me that the author isn't dog whistling at all and it is more a lampooning the weird cringe stuff that you are expected to take part in one of these large corps.

In fact something like this sounds like it comes straight out of office space.

password321 · 1h ago
I volunteered at a school. Rather than celebrating Christmas or Halloween, they had to celebrate Diwali because Christmas/Halloween might be too offensive or not inclusive enough. The country has gone mad.
komali2 · 1h ago
1. I don't believe your framing

2. What's wrong with celebrating Diwali?

3. Why should anyone care? Did anyone stop you from celebrating Christmas with your friends and family?

P.s. according to your post history you have based anti capitalist positioning on the pointlessness of most white collar labor, what happened to make you participate on the wrong side in a meaningless culture war that's just a distraction from the reduction in material conditions of the working class?

password321 · 58m ago
Well of course you don’t believe me, it goes against your narrative. But I’m sure someone living in Taiwan knows better than someone British currently in the UK.

Also that is quite an overreach on basic observations that are generally agreed upon and weren't anti-capitalist.

olddustytrail · 32m ago
I don't believe you because I live in the UK and the idea that people don't celebrate Christmas is beyond moronic. The shops start doing Christmas stuff the day after Halloween. It's unending Christmas songs for two months.

Tell me you seriously didn't notice this.

dkiebd · 1h ago
And it’s actually good. Immigration does not do 30 year olds any favours. It only helps businesses and pensioners.
rhubarbtree · 1h ago
In the west there are not enough young people to support the elderly, and immigration of young people can help to address this problem to the benefit of everyone.
Telemakhos · 1h ago
I see this argument fairly often, but rarely do I see the premises questioned. Why do the elderly need to be supported? Wealth is concentrated in their hands (especially in the UK), while younger generations are struggling to be able to afford housing let alone build wealth. Perhaps society should focus less on supporting the generations who have already accumulated wealth and instead focus on supporting the generations who are starting families.
dkiebd · 1h ago
No, you mean to the benefit of pensioners.

Plus there are enough people to care of old people. It’s just that immigrants cause such downward pressure on salaries that elder care is not a viable job sector for most.

oulipo · 1h ago
It helps everyone, migrants pay more taxes than they get out of the system in benefits. Plus they often do jobs that many people wouldn't otherwise
Telemakhos · 53m ago
Do migrants do jobs that native-born citizens would not under any circumstances do, or do they do jobs that native-born citizens would not do for the low wages that migrants are willing to accept?
Neil44 · 1h ago
I knew it was going to be coded from the headline, wasn't sure in which direction. Cheers for saving the click.
thierrydamiba · 1h ago
Feature or bug?
derelicta · 1h ago
I know right. Folks don't understand that people who come to our countries are also workers whose countries have been destroyed by OUR elites. A bit of solidarity would be healthy, useful and anchored in reality.
subsistence234 · 10m ago
Whenever anyone on earth does something bad, it's basically Nick's fault. Nobody except Nick has agency or responsibility. They're all victims, except Nick.
mike-cardwell · 1h ago
I live in the East Midlands in the UK. You can grab a reasonable first house here for less than £150k quite easily. So you'll need a 5% deposit, £7,500 for one of those. One person on an average salary for the area would be able to afford a mortgage for a house like this on their own. But Nick has a girlfriend, who can hopefully work, so should be able to afford it easily.

But half of people earn less than the mean salar though. So what about those on minimum wage? Well, one person with a full time minimum wage job should be able to get a mortgage for close to £100k, so wouldn't be able to afford a £150k house on their own. They could scrape by and get a house close to £100k though. There are plenty of these. Again, two people on minimum wage should have no problem.

I recognise that people have all sorts of different circumstances, so this is not meant to minimise the difficulty of affording property, but I'm just not recognising this claim from the outset that you need a £100k deposit or high paid job to get on the property ladder. It's hard, but it's doable for most.

And on top of this, Lifetime ISAS are a thing, so you only need to save up 80% of your deposit, the govt will pay the rest. And shared ownership is a thing, making it even easier.

1dom · 1h ago
Start pressing buttons and you'll see even more weird claims that most sane Brits won't recognise. This is a weird website that probably shouldn't be given much time.
Tade0 · 37m ago
The usage of the GOV.UK Design System is a nice touch though.
extraisland · 1h ago
Many people want to live in close proximity to their family. There are good reasons for this (you have a support network).

I want to move back closer to my family as they are getting older. I would like to move back so I can spend more time with my father as he is retiring this year. To afford a flat in Dorset it is 30,000 deposit. A deposits on a house would be about somewhere between £30,000-£100,000.

These aren't mansions BTW. These are normal 2-3 bed houses.

> But half of people earn less than the mean salar though. So what about those on minimum wage? Well, one person with a full time minimum wage job should be able to get a mortgage for close to £100k, so wouldn't be able to afford a £150k house on their own. They could scrape by and get a house close to £100k though. There are plenty of these. Again, two people on minimum wage should have no problem.

My two bed flat (that I got cheap) is £110,000 and I am in the North-West. I've not seen any houses up here that were worth buying less than £200,000.

You typically need a 15% deposit on a flat. I managed to go with some rando building society and get 10%.

Any houses that are £150,000 are always in horrible parts of town or they are complete dumps and need complete renovation.

If you are on a minimum wage (I spent 8 years on it) it is difficult to save money and when something like the boiler goes you are screwed.

gsliepen · 58m ago
> But half of people earn less than the mean salary though.

That's incorrect. Half of people earn less than the median salary. Depending on where you live, it could be that a lot more than half earn less than the mean salary.

mike-cardwell · 51m ago
Sorry yes. Brain fart. I meant median
rhubarbtree · 1h ago
This is true. You don’t need a £100K deposit unless you want to live in a £1M house, which is not necessary in the UK. If you want to buy a big apartment in central London or a four bed house near London, sure. But most people would consider that a luxury and not a necessity to raise a family.
extraisland · 59m ago
My father just sold his house down south. It was a 4 bedroom house. I think he got somewhere between £500-700k for it. £1M for a house isn't that crazy in the South-West.

He bought it decades ago much cheaper.

MattPalmer1086 · 1h ago
I had to stop, it has some fairly nasty content in it (e.g. making jokes about LGBT people or not, taxes being spent on second generation immigrants).
rob_c · 1h ago
Have you been paying attention to British politics for the last 10 years. What do you honestly think the average person is thinking. It's not your sheltered bubble on here.
MattPalmer1086 · 44m ago
I have indeed seen the rise of xenophobia and intolerance in the UK since Brexit kicked off.

I do not find the average person holds these views. I certainly don't want to play a game that assumes I agree with them.

willprice89 · 1h ago
> You get a rejection email: 'Write a rejection email. Make the message sound particularly caring and empathetic. Make no mistakes'

That part actually made me LOL.

phatfish · 51m ago
It's "viral" marketing for progress-party.uk, if you play to the end there is a link to a Google doc to register your interest.

The veiled racism and bigotry in the "sim" is cheap. The current housing situation may be made worse by migration, but the majority of it is legal so hardly the migrants fault if we are inviting them.

So blame the government (predominantly Conservative over the last 20 years) and all the NIMBYs and hypocrites that stop anything changing in this glorious country.

subsistence234 · 3m ago
> hardly the migrants fault

Of course not, but it's the fault of whoever lobbied for and passed those laws.

> we are inviting them.

Who is this "we"? It's not the British people.

BurdensomeCount · 50m ago
> New Town Blocked

> A 50,000 home new town in Kent is blocked because they found nests full of agitated Chupacabras following the government's 'reintroduction' of the cryptid to British arable land. Your deposit requirement increases by £5000.

This is too real...

scrlk · 1h ago
This is inspired by the "Nicolas (30 ans)"/"The Social Contract" meme: https://xcancel.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1863959668357296496
mzhaase · 59m ago
This game is an ad for progress . At the end it has this link https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OvkH4VxsIuG8uVN7qFbi7m_LMp_...
extraisland · 1h ago
Played a little. It is amusing. The ignoring emails from "Linda" about silly events in the office is a daily occurrence for me.

I like that the site seems to use the gov.uk styling.

alun · 1h ago
Am I the only one who noticed the gov.uk theme? Pretty brilliant!
rahimnathwani · 1h ago
How can Nick's rent be £4,500?

You can rent a nice, 2 bedroom flat with two showers+toilets, 13 mins' walk from a London Underground station in zone 3, for less than £2,000.

Even if they don't want to share with another couple, Nick and his girlfriend should each be paying less than £1,000, no?

GuestFAUniverse · 1h ago
Per quarter? It's not the monthly rent.
wiether · 1h ago
Worse, in my first scenario, I started a £4,500 but then "girlfriend" ask to move together, so apparently Nick was living solo And once they moved together, the rent moved to £5,500
bogdan · 1h ago
I'm confident whoever created this has never stepped foot in London, or if they did, it was briefly.
oncallthrow · 1h ago
The Nick meme is a great way of encapsulating how utterly sick of the UK young professionals are at this point.

There is no way to win. I know many young people who are very comfortably in the top 5% of earners in the UK, paying tens of thousands of pounds of income tax per year, and are still locked into paying massive amounts of rent, because it's near-impossible to actually own a house here at this point. So quite honestly, what is the point any more? It's really no wonder UK productivity is dropping.

It's really hard to describe how bad the general vibe is here.

Meanwhile pensioners sit comfortably in four-bed houses in London suburbs with triple lock pensions guaranteed by the government.

gchadwick · 1h ago
> It's really hard to describe how bad the general vibe is here.

Eh, think that depends upon your social circles, sure it's not perfect but the vibes just fine from my perspective. There seems to be a massive swelling of online opinion that everything's terrible and everyone's deeply unmotivated which certainly doesn't match lived reality for me

PickledJesus · 1h ago
As someone sympathetic to this, throwing in the culture war stuff (make jokes about LGBT etc) is a massive own goal and makes it so easy for people to discredit. This could have far more cross-party support but it's just going to amuse the people who already agreed with it and make everyone else think it's the alt-right letting the mask slip..
wildrice · 1h ago
How many liters of water does loading this webpage use?
varispeed · 1h ago
Just delete your old emails to balance it off.
rob_c · 1h ago
Tried that but it's still not raining
knorthfield · 1h ago
Do you mean nick sim or HN?
jacobp100 · 1h ago
The festival part is wrong - you can earn £1,000 from self employment without paying tax on it
admiralrohan · 1h ago
Sorry don't understand anything. Just randomly clicking. Need more context on why you did this and how this works. And how much agency do I have.
ajb257 · 1h ago
I think that's the point. You don't have any agency. There's no way to win.
scotty79 · 1h ago
About as much agency as in real life. That's the point of the game.
Roark66 · 1h ago
C'mon... 3 years have passed and only two job offers applied for? What is Nic's degree in? Babylonian history? When I was in this position I applied to 20 ads per month. In addition to applying I had alerts on my phone, if a job ad dropped that matched my cv well I'd call the recruiter within 5 minutes of posting. I scored two great jobs this way. But this was in IT... I hear every other industry is much, much harder
deadbabe · 1h ago
Every time I feel bad about living in the US, I just think it could be worse: I could be living in the UK.

Hang in there UK.

rvz · 1h ago
The UK needs this...for its own embarrassment as the world laughs at them becoming irrelevant as a serious country that is in decline.
GuestFAUniverse · 1h ago
At least they have Ibuprofen /s
globular-toast · 1h ago
Where is 100k for a house deposit coming from?! Don't most people start with a way smaller deposit? Like 5% is common these days. Yes you'll pay an enormous amount of interest. You pay rent to the owning class one way or another.
rob_c · 1h ago
Probably to demonstrate that to ever actually be financially secure you should be paying off a significant part of your mortgage and not wage slave until retirement to only own 80% of the property due to inflation and rising costs.

If you're buying into the 5% you're probably so fiscally irresponsible that nothing good will come off it. The new builds aren't all magically appreciating in value by 20% every year. And if they did the better house you'd want to move into has almost certainly gone up by 30% or more.

crikeykangaroo · 1h ago
Despite the struggles, Nick still has a much safer life than the bulk of people in the world (primarily thanks to his imperialist Government). :-)
rhubarbtree · 1h ago
Partially true, but being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution was also a major factor.
rob_c · 1h ago
No. Honestly when you have police arresting pensioners for peaceful protest and a govt which is breaking every election promise and triggering 2 calls to hear for a new election (within 12 months of coming into power). Not too mention the population changes that have happened over the last 20 or so years. Knife crime and acid attacks on the rise, social cohesion at an all time low and a standing populace who are struggling to support a national debt over 90% of GDP. Britain is not "safe" and still continue to be getting worse.

But now I'll ask you if he's not the majority why are you attacking a minority? Do you have something against ethnically English, Scottish or Welsh people?

crikeykangaroo · 1h ago
The UK has been (and currently still is) creating havoc across the world. Sorry - I am a bit less sensitive for Nick's "troubles".