Quote Originally Posted by VoxRationis View Post
Does it happen in real life? I was under the impression that such activity was just a genre convention of TV, like people having access to the rooftops of apartment buildings or the income of a single earner with no higher education supporting a mortgage, a spouse, and several dependents.
In the world at large? Yes. It happens, and (perhaps where this strip is actually being realistic) it tends to happen with specific people quite a lot, and then rarely-to-never for most everyone else. Of course, there are entire industries (bars and nightclubs, plus fashion) that make a huge chunk of their income off of lonely young people who think that everyone except them are going out and hooking up all the time, and if you just bought this ___ and spent half your paycheck going out to ____ on a Friday night, you too could be doing this. Also note that a lot of people who do do this don't end up being very happy with the results.

Regarding the other things: yeah, standing around on your apartment building rooftop is a great way to get kicked out of your apartment in most instances. A single, no-higher-education job can get you a spouse-and-family-supporting lifestyle if it is a highly sought after and skilled job, such as master electricians, carpenters, etc. Computer programmers often used to forgo the university route and just kept picking up certifications and the like. We have a carpenter somewhere around here on the boards who is a top 5% earner (admittedly he lives in San Francisco, so some of that is he's charging his exorbitant mortgage on to his customers). There are many avenues to success. Regardless, yes, the sitcom character who works at a coffee shop and the other one who works as a dog walker couldn't actually afford the lifestyles sitcoms pretend they would have.

Regarding other people'; reference to Friends -- The first season was vaguely realistic (or unrealistic in utterly over-the-top sitcom ways, like having animal control accidentally shoot someone with a tranq dart), and then once the success started the show Flanderized quickly.