system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I am an existential nihilist. CMV

To avoid confusion I'd like to define the term existential nihilism as the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or purpose, and nothing that anybody does (or that the human race does as a whole) will matter at all in the long run. 

Note that, based on this definition, changing my view on only one of the two qualifiers would change my opinion on the matter, as existential nihilism requires both to be true.

At the same time, though, when I say "nothing will matter at all in the long run" I'm not talking about the differences that humanity will cause in terms of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or something of similar vein. I mean that humanity will never accomplish a worthwhile goal, one that will result in life having reached its predetermined objective or have truly 'succeeded' in any way.

Edit: I just checked the thread after waking up, at 8:00 a.m EST, and it's jumped from 4 comments to 20. I've gotta leave for school right now, but I'll reply to the comments once I get home (around 3:30 EST)
gpt
The "long run" doesn't exist. It's an expanse of time in which nothing will be around to experience anything, and "mattering" is a function of the capacity of beings to value conscious experience. You might imagine a bleak universe experiencing heat death and feel that everything you've ever done has never mattered, but that's an experience that will only ever be had by you, right now, as you imagine it.

Nothing is going to be around to see everything "cease to matter," which effectively means that there's a significant problem with the notion that "mattering" is dependent on the infinitely continuing experience of conscious creatures.

That said, what matters only occurs in the span of individual consciousnesses and personal preferences. The sort of mattering you're talking about is really your subjective feeling about the worth of the whole of human experience. In that sense, maybe it's true that you'll never feel that anything has mattered. But maybe you're depressed and this is just your subjective feeling.

Maybe lots of things are mattering all the time, presently, for a lot of people, and that's the only way mattering can occur. Maybe civilization, plumbing, electricity, and civil rights are all worthwhile goals and successes of humanity. Maybe it's entirely a function of your perspective.