I Can Relate Personally to Billy Joel Song "Allentown"
... instead socially...
Listening to the song, the premise seems to be about people who lost a lot of jobs because factory work dried up, and so their dreams from their youth about making something of themselves essentially went down the drain...
But you can read this song in different ways, as you can many songs...
Some lines:
"Well we're waiting here in Allentown,
for the Pennsylvania we never found...
For the promise is our future is gay,
if we work hard...
if we behave...
So the graduations hang on the wall, but they never really helped us at all..."
"And it's hard to keep a good man down...
... but I won't be getting up to-day-ay-ay"
And to my mind, I'm thinking of a different, but similar notion/struggle to the quoted lyrics.
I'm thinking of all these male nerds I know who worked hard in school and are now like 40 or so and still unpopular/not married.
All our lives we believed if we just "played by the rules" it would all eventually work out for us...
...and my brother (and former best friend too I believe) is still single (no girlfriend) and I'm still estranged from my own kind...