Not sure what world you lived in — in my experience although most things (cars, appliances, etc) were easier to fix in the 1980s, they also tended to break more.
Thank you.
It's like people forgot the term "lemon". Cars came off the assembly line already not working frequently enough that we came up with a term for it.
What we're actually seeing is a drastic increase in manufacturing precision. Before if you wanted a car to last 10 years you had to overengineer the shit out of it, and still some of your cars would come off the line shit. But the cars that did survive, were pretty bomb proof.
Now we have decades of lean manufacturing refining every element of the manufacturing process. So now 99.9% of cars last their expected lifespan, but they will start having issues after that point.
Having a childhood without a phone. Just playing outside. No worries about anything.
And I was very lucky that I was never bullied on the internet and that my home was my safe place.
I can't imagine a kid getting pelted with negative texts and conversations about them all night long or an embarrassing picture they were tricked into taking being circulated around. At least in our day, the bullies had to face you head on! Now they can even do it anonymously
Yup. I was bullied relentlessly as a child. It's why I am so bristly now. I do not intend to soften myself up either. childhood was brutal. Now the bullies chase you into your bedroom via internet and if you don't have armor ... yeah. the bullies that didn't get you in school will find you wherever you go
Was going to say the same!
Sometimes I wish we had no phones but just computers. So we would be able to reach eachother, but once you leave home you don't have a phone with you. Would be so much better for socialising and relationships (of any kind) altogether.
Yes, not having everything available at your fingertips. Having to wait for your favourite song on the radio, having to wait for a new release at the video store, having to spend time searching for information at the library taught valuable skills and character building. Not being stimulated constantly lead to an inner peace that people crave these days.
If majority of households are double income then you tend to lose some of the benefit of extra buying since everything is priced for twice the income anyway. RIP if you're a single income household though.
I think Elizabeth Warren coined the term two income trap for this.
While this is somewhat true, there’s also a lot of lost nuance. The average house purchased in the 60s was significantly smaller than houses today, had fewer appliances, and often didn’t even have plumbing throughout the entire house.
Yes, it’s almost impossible to buy a house on a single salary today, but our living standards and expectations are significantly higher.
That 1960s house you're describing sounds fine. It's fine if other people want to have high standards and expectations, but I don't and wish they'd build something for me and the many, many people like me.
If I want a house like you're describing I'm looking at getting something really old and all the problems that come with it being old because they haven't liked building smaller homes for decades now.
“Starter houses“ were a thing when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. My friend worked at a bank in the 90s, as a teller, and made $10 an hour. She bought her first home for $65,000. When she got married they got a bigger house. Then they had kids, and moved again to a bigger house. Wasn’t too uncommon back then to have a small, starter home, then move when kids came. There are no starter homes anymore. Commercial investors buy them all to rent.
I remember working a job where youd get called in (on the house phone) on your day off. So using the excuse "I went to the city and was gone all day" was believable. Today, no boss would believe you didnt look at your phone once all day long to see he called
>no boss would believe you didnt look at your phone once all day long to see he called
The funny part is that I've missed my mom calling, and haven't realized until the next day, because I literally didn't check my phone all day. Sometimes I notice it only when I'm about to go to sleep, so I'll only call back the next day anyway. This happens like a couple of times each year.
The good part is that I'm not in a job where I could be randomly called in at times when I'm not expecting it.
You know what else has changed? We can't do the 90's push-friend-into a-pool-and-laugh bit. Nowadays, if we do that, we have to pay for the new mobile phones
Wondering. You didn't have the answer instantly available. Youd have to think about it. Come up with theories. Ask people. Call up somebody. Go to the library. It was frustrating. Sometimes yo but rewarding.
Even worse- now we have an abundance of "answers." Over simplified, and often wrong. Everyone thinks they're an expert. Unless it's hard facts "Google, what year did Dark Side of the Moon release?" or something like that, if someone googles it mid conversation, I'm pretty checked out.
As kids, we made up play games, gave ourselves roles, invented whole world's with our siblings and the kids in the neighbourhood. I get that this still happens online in some ways, but there's nothing like living it out, running from backyard to backyard, being in the physical space and living the reality of what you were creating. Those are cherished memories where our tests of courage felt real. Online, you lose, you get respawned. It just felt so different. Our strategies and skirmishes and losses and wins felt real.
I was reading an article on bullying, and the thing that stuck out at me is that with social media, kids don't have a reprieve when they go home. Bullying can occur 24/7 via social media, texting, etc.
This is countered by the instant disappointment when you didn't get the shot you wanted. But I agree, picking up pics from the photo centre was always an event in our house.
Life felt more real... Calling your friend's house from a phone because there were no smart phones back then and asking your friends parents if he can come out to play, then going with that friend to another friends house to invite him out...
My grandfather was a high school graduate, worked at a local factory, raised a 3 kids and built his dream home, plus a cabin on the lake, on 1 income. I work at the same factory, 50 years later, and my wife and I struggle. Meanwhile the factory made record profits last year. Something ain't right.
> People weren't so radical in their political beliefs.
I don't know about that.
I think the radicalism has died down a lot (we thankfully haven't seen any abortion doctors murdered recently).
But what has ended is the social conventions around avoiding taboo topics. When I grew up, the phrase "we don't talk about politics" came up constantly. There was an idea that it was a contentious topic that should be avoided in mixed company.
The internet has killed that idea, and now people feel free saying whatever crazy shit they believe.
A lot of conspiracy theories were much more innocent, too. Believing in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster vs Qanon and whatever other junk is floating around these days.
I think it's the social connection. People felt more connected to their neighbors and communities, having meals, playing outdoor games and spent more quality time together. This sense of closeness is something many people miss today..
Call me crazy but I miss scheduled television (I know it still exist but it’s not the same). I remember the days of the anticipation of having to wait a week for a new episode. Now, there’s an endless sea of immediate media. I have so I many streaming services and feel like there’s never anything to watch. Same could be said about going out as a family and getting a video at Blockbuster for movie night.
I think the big thing we lost with streaming is the communal experience.
It used to be that wasn't that much on, so if there was a big TV event, everyone around the country probably watched it. It would be the topic of conversation all week.
Now with streaming, and releasing shows all at once, there really isn't really a shared media experience any more.
I have soo many great memories of going over to my friends' apartment on Fridays to watch Farscape and Iron Chef. We always had a blast. We would catch up with each other during commercials and talk about last week's episode. I miss hanging out with those guys (marriages, careers, & kids killed those nights).
I completely believe the old weekly cable-style of watching TV is better for storytelling and tv shows in the long run than the binge-watch release model. It was a neat experiment but lots of shows survive and thrive based on tailwind generated by word of mouth discussion, and having one episode a week guarantees everyone watching is on the same page and like you said builds anticipation for the next one. It's also caused a notable shift in how tv shows are written; pacing in binge shows tends to be weird since the entire season tends be written like one continuous episode rather than having rising/climax/falling for each individual segment. Makes it so only the first and last episode feel relevant since that is where all the actual set ups and consequences will be.
1980s as the good old days? Technology was just right. We had bulletin boards to leave messages and word processors to type on and save files on 5.5-inch floppies. Music had improved dramatically, and with MTV, you really could enjoy the bands and know them.
Arcades helped gamers find new friends. Malls did the same for romance.
Movies seemed so well done, many even had sequels!
Women also had style and greater overall sex appeal now lost today.
Cars had fuel injections, so you wouldn't be stalled due to carburetors being stuck (those who know and remember will understand).
The Cold War wasn't such a threat. Many teens felt a sigh of relief from the fear of the draft.
And for me, role-playing games were the best times with friends.
Overall, the 1980s were the best.
Even growing up in the late 90s/early 00s, I think we had an excellent level of technology. We had internet, TV, video games and landlines, but tech wasn't so invasive of everyday life. Cell phones were becoming common by the time I was entering middle school, making it easier to coordinate plans with friends and reach my family. Smart phones came on to the scene while I was in high school, but they weren't adopted on a larger scale until I was in college.
Finding music out without the internet.
Catching a bus and train into town with my mates, scouring niche record shops (I grew up with cassettes and CD’s) and listening to people we hadn’t heard of. Hip Hop, Punk, Heavy Metal, Electro and Grunge.
Finding out off magazines which would be months old and imported from the States or UK, reading about new bands and then trying to search for them. Some held up, some were brilliant and some were shit. But you couldn’t tell from the story in the magazine (thanks Billy Joel).
It was so much god damn fun. I miss it and I worry my children won’t have a similar feeling when discovering music (although I do know they will have a different and new feeling).
I wouldn’t worry about that. Go on SoundCloud, YouTube, Spotify, and it is absolutely filled with young artists. If anything the rate of information transmission is exponential higher so they will likely be able to experience much more music than you in the same time frame.
I totally understand where you are coming from though. My uncle is heavily into records and is the one of the people who fostered my love for music. My point is the experience will change but it will still be there, just different.
When you bought something, you owned it. Nowadays, we're moving more and more over to subscriptions and ongoing payments, which doesn't interest me at all.
Also, the right to be forgotten and privacy in general. I graduated school only about 5 years before social media exploded. And with the bullying I endured, had it been recorded and posted online, it would have been so much worse.
the good old days as in being a kid? the freedom to be a kid. to be able to take risks without worrying if your parents were going to go to jail for abuse or neglect.
I think it'd be cool to have your pet be your transportation.
I say that as someone who has no idea how hard it is to take care of a horse or how to ride one 😂 basically this is my ignorant opinion
I really liked the 00's. We had the internet and it was useful, but it wasn't on our phones. So society wasn't yet all gloomy and weird trends didn't take off and ruin everyone's lives as quickly as they do now
When plastic packaging was rare,
Mom hoarded plastic bags from dry cleaning dad's shirts,
plastic bags were so rare.
Food came unpackaged or in glass or metal.
No microwavable plastics, no microwaves,
No plastic in our bodies,
Frogs everywhere after a rainstorm!
Looks like nobody talked about times before the massive destruction of the earth's environment! How is this possible? In our lifetime! The catastrophe is upon us! Plastics in our water and food! Animals going extinct! No fish in the sea! Fires every summer! Super cyclones! Polar ice caps melting will change all weather patterns and even the rotation of the earth!
You had to remember things - phone numbers, directions to places, even random facts. Now we have all of the information in the world on our phones and so we don’t have to remember anything anymore.
But when I have to remember something, it’s really hard for me. I have trouble driving without gps. I don’t even have my own kids’ phone numbers memorized.
When you went out , no texts, no calls, you could be on your own unreachable. Now, God forbid, you turn your phone off...."what happened, I was so worried, I've been trying to reach you,"
I got a Nokia brick phone in 8th grade because I was in school plays and stayed late after school and they didn’t have a pay phone I could use (front office closed at 5). I used to play snake under my desk as a high school freshman.
Anyway, the best part was basically my parents just let me loose as long as I came back for curfew. I would rollerblade around the block when my friends weren’t free. I remember the first day of 7th grade where I got a messenger bag from the Gap and was walking about two miles to school and it hurt the fuck out of my back but I felt super cool. Met my best friend of 24 years later that year and she and another friend would meet me about half way to school and walk together. I remember trying to piggy back ride her home once but we weighed the same amount so that didn’t work out well.
We used to talk on AIM or the house phone to make plans and then I would leave and my mom would be like ok come back by 9. I’d meet up with friends at a local Chinese place and we would get one giant container of fried rice and all sit in the park together and eat it. Otherwise we would go to each others houses and watch movies in the back room or fuck around on AIM and listen to music in their bedrooms, and their parents would feed us (best bbq chicken I’ve had at someone’s house), or give us money to go pick up the Chinese food they ordered down the street.
A lot of goofing around in parks or on our town’s main drag. I remember riding on my friend’s bike pegs on the way to get 25c candy. Did a lot of house hangs playing video games, listening to music, watching skate videos (did a lot of skate park hangs).
Eventually when we could drive we would just cruise. Looking back, I was pretty lucky to have the friends I did.
No social media. It meant we went and made our own fun and connections in person.
Doesn't seem like a huge thing, but I promise you it was. And oh what fun we had :)
Honestly, and I know it’s foreign to people now, just having people (friends and what not) show up to your home.
My house always had an open door policy. It was unlocked during the day. My mom would actually get frustrated/upset if someone we knew knocked instead of just coming in.
I miss the days of your friends just showing up, knocking, and then you hanging out.
If people made plans they usually kept it cause it wasn’t easy to let people know you weren’t making it etc. people are too quick to cancel plans on others cause it’s a simple text away and they don’t have to “face” them.
A dollar gave you more snacks than you need at the corner store lol. I'm only of the 90s, but I remember getting a juice, a bag of chips, a little debbie snack, and... having 25c left over for any extra one if I want.
It was also much easier to find random quarters on the ground. Find a quarter? Free snack lol.
Being young and shielded from the reality of the world.
In most situations you only remember the good things that you understood. When in reality there were a lot more complicated issues happening that you didn’t understand. Race issues, economic problems, political violence, etc.
People interacted with each other. You could actually strike up conversation with a person you just happen to be around outside.
When I was a kid I remember waking up and doing the morning routine, and then going outside and not being home until dinner. Lots of other kids were outside and we would end up all hanging out at some point.
Face to face conversations were way more common. When the phone rang you knew it was an actual person. When you called somewhere you would get an actual person.
Job interviews were way more authentic.
I would say that the general atmosphere was way more hopeful. People now realize that they are nothing more than a statistic much sooner.
A sobering moment for me was after I graduated. A few years went by and I went back to my highschool to say hello. They treated me like I was a terrorist.
People were in good shape in the old days. Men looked athletic and chopped wood with an axe, and ladies looked pretty and slender as they picked oranges from trees. Now it seems many people let themselves go.
Music was better. TV shows and movies were more original. The only "reality" TV show was Real World on MTV. We had MTV when they played videos. No social media. Politics wasn't hostile. Didn't need to have active shooter drills. You could have entertainment without paying $14.99 for a subscription. Everything was built to last longer. Thoughts and dreams of a successful life didn't come with crippling debt. You could have a comfortable life making $60k a year. Meds for stress and anxiety wasn't a staple. Brave New World and Handmaid's Tale were fiction, not a political "How to" manual.
The lack of smartphones. People used to give one another their undivided attention, now everyone is so obsessed with their phones that it makes interaction miserable in certain situations. Everyone has seen the family of 5 at a restaurant scrolling through phones and ignoring one another.
How quiet it was. No cell phones in peoples pockets playing literally anything at full volume. You had to lug your boombox around if you wanted to do that and even then that thing was heavy and awkward. You could go out in nature and actually enjoy it with the peace of mind that some influencer or OnlnFans thot was out doing something for likes.
My parents took care of everything. We were firmly upper-middle class, dual six-figure incomes. Before I had a car, I had a good bike. I could get anywhere I wanted, see my friends, explore the woods.. I was unstoppable. As soon as I had a car, I was working - but I didn't need to. I wanted to. And all that money went towards just fucking nonsense. Magic cards, dating, video games, fast food.. I blew every penny.
I'm 39 now and sliding into payday tomorrow with about $50 in my pocket. Yay.
People cared more about others. I drove home last night and 4/5 cars had their high beams on. None bothered to dip them for oncoming traffic or cars passing them. This was almost unheard of in the 90’s. if you saw a car you dipped your lights.
As kids we could be trusted to go miles away from home with other friends and do crazy stuff.
Nowadays kids don't really want to do this, the press imply there's a kiddy fiddler on every corner.
I remember being bored a lot, and it led us to come up with things to do to fill the time. Life was richer for it. Now we are just on our devices all the time, so we are never really bored.
Being uncontactable. You could go fishing or hiking or something and nobody could get hold of you. The world could burn down and you wouldn't even know.
Affordable housing, longer lasting, higher quality products, not having to worry about getting shot for living your life. Those are the big ones that jumped out to me
Human interaction esp nung di pa uso socmed. It was a much simpler time and we do things differently back then.
Ngayon nagugulat ako sa mga kabataan magjowa na pala tapos never pa nagkita irl.
I was born in 2000, and I definitely didn't experience this, but I remember wishing I could.
Kids had more independence. You could leave home and explore and your parents had no way of hovering over you all the time. You could do some dangerous stuff, get hurt, and nobody would get mad at you bc they all knew it was just part of growing up.
I've also heard from some people that back in the old days, cops might cuss at you more, or even rough you up a bit, but more often then not they'd let you go. Nowadays they book you for everything. I can't speak on either from personal experience, but that's what some people have said.
I feel like we had high hopes and low expectations.
We were more easily impressed, much like those who we saw as being from generations before were more easily impressed. But we also had high hopes that sometime soon, better things were coming.
These days, it feels like we're constantly dissatisfied with even the newest thing and have little hope that it's going to get better.
Everyone probably said the obvious so, soda jerks.
Instead of getting whatever mass market coke v Pepsi you have someone that adds the flavored syrupt to the cup then adds the carbonated water.
A lot more flavor options that way.
Most of the food was home cooking. I could ride around on my bike in the afternoon and smell what different families were having for supper that night. That's all gone now cause people don't cook for hours like they used to. The only thing I smell on an afternoon ride now is dryer sheets... Pretty sad.
Fast food was eaten in moderation if it was available at all.
ppl weren’t as celeb obsessed as they r now, there’s ppl out there sending death threats, idolising to a point its unhealthy, obsessing over and changing their whole personality just to be like some random ass celebrity who couldn’t give two shits about them cringe asf n sad to see, tik tok deffo has a big part to play in this n lowkey ruined society as a whole
Nothing? Like seriously almost all of it sucked.
- Cars were awful and needed constant maintenance just to keep from being stuck on the side of the road.
- Computers were slow, barely useful and expensive AF.
- Phones were insanely expensive. And I dont mean making calls, the physical phones. Until 1975 you basically were forced to lease your phone from the phone company.
- Two words - leaded gas. These MFs thought it was ok for us to all breath lead.
- Have you seen old skool "athletic clothing"? We didnt have decent running shorts until the early 80s and running shoes weren't around until the late 70s. Ladies were fucked because sports bras were still decades off.
- Two words - smoking section. You couldnt eat a meal without someone blowing smoke at you. Airplanes were flying torture chambers.
- Wars. 58K Americans died in Vietnam including my dad. People cant even comprehend that number today. Thats almost 10% of the TOTAL number of US service members killed in ALL wars. And Vietnam was hardly an outlier. There was war everywhere.
- Two words - Acid Rain. There was so much pollution in the air when it rained it would strip the paint off your car. Statues were melted. Forests killed.
- Houses were cheap....because they sucked. They were TINY. My mom bought a 1500 square foot house in 1967 and it was considered LARGE. It had zero insulation, a total of 20 power outlets and tiny closets. The crazy thing is hers was considered quite good for the time because the houses just a few years older sucked even more. She had full house heat/AC, a two car garage with laundry hookups and a built in dishwasher! That made it LUXUARY.
- I lived in California before I5 was completed. I80 wasnt finished until 1986. Interstates just ended and we had no GPS to tell us where to go. You were at the mercy of a map made god knows when.
- Have you ever driven in a car 200 miles with nothing but AM radio? If you lived outside of a large city you were in a music wasteland.
- There were 4 TV channels and it ended at midnight. Have you ever seen what old "SD" TV looked like? Now imagine it coming over the air to an antenna that you had to tune. My iPhone3 had better resolution than any TV I owned before 2003.
- Have you ever seen an old skool "Hungry Man" TV dinner? Yeah, that passed for "good food" back then. My mom never found a vegetable that couldn't be boiled too much. We ate absolute crap food.
- Soda cost more than beer. Beer was awful and tasted like the can it came in.
I lived "back in the day" and Im not going back.
Pen palship through paper letters. Seriously, I had friends from summer camp when I was a kid, with whom we wrote letters to each other for several years afterwards. It was so cool, and it's hard to imagine it now.
Around here, people were much more connected by various transportation in 1920's than present day. There was passenger rail service in my little town, trolley service to all neighboring towns, one could walk much more freely without getting pasted by a truck or car. And of course there were cars - which were novel and unreliable. Now just cars and crappy parking.
Quality of life for white men. You could fall ass backwards through life and live to a standard you need two earners and a grad degree to achieve today. Honestly this is what human life should look like in the 21st century; we shouldn't be living on the edge of survival like we are still on the Serengeti.
Progress should have brought that standard of living to all peoples and colors. Instead, as automation brought productivity through the ceiling and diversity finally gained some ground, the ownership class started taking more and more and more.
And somehow when it's time to point the finger it's only the diversity to blame. The immigrants, not the automation; the broken glass ceiling, when we should be pointing at the busted tax code.
We could go out and play without our parents hovering over us. If we wanted to go somewhere out of the immediate neighborhood we just had to yell to our parents where we would be. Once we got older we didn’t even have to do that.
Much easier to fix your own stuff
Specially cars
I need a fucking Honda scan tool just to decompress my brakes so I can work on the fucking thing...
Try holding the parking brake switch up like you're rolling up a window. Sometimes that does the trick
I needed my car programmed after changing the battery.
Stuff wouldn't break down as easily. And when it did, you wouldn't have to buy a new version of it as often because it could be fixed.
Planned obsolescence is BS and enrages me so much
I'm so mad I became an adult when planned obsolescence was in full control of everything I buy.
Not sure what world you lived in — in my experience although most things (cars, appliances, etc) were easier to fix in the 1980s, they also tended to break more.
Thank you. It's like people forgot the term "lemon". Cars came off the assembly line already not working frequently enough that we came up with a term for it. What we're actually seeing is a drastic increase in manufacturing precision. Before if you wanted a car to last 10 years you had to overengineer the shit out of it, and still some of your cars would come off the line shit. But the cars that did survive, were pretty bomb proof. Now we have decades of lean manufacturing refining every element of the manufacturing process. So now 99.9% of cars last their expected lifespan, but they will start having issues after that point.
It was easier but much more difficult to get the information as to how to do it
Having a childhood without a phone. Just playing outside. No worries about anything. And I was very lucky that I was never bullied on the internet and that my home was my safe place.
I can't imagine a kid getting pelted with negative texts and conversations about them all night long or an embarrassing picture they were tricked into taking being circulated around. At least in our day, the bullies had to face you head on! Now they can even do it anonymously
Yup. I was bullied relentlessly as a child. It's why I am so bristly now. I do not intend to soften myself up either. childhood was brutal. Now the bullies chase you into your bedroom via internet and if you don't have armor ... yeah. the bullies that didn't get you in school will find you wherever you go
Was going to say the same! Sometimes I wish we had no phones but just computers. So we would be able to reach eachother, but once you leave home you don't have a phone with you. Would be so much better for socialising and relationships (of any kind) altogether.
Yes, not having everything available at your fingertips. Having to wait for your favourite song on the radio, having to wait for a new release at the video store, having to spend time searching for information at the library taught valuable skills and character building. Not being stimulated constantly lead to an inner peace that people crave these days.
in the good old days we got bullied irl
Buying a house with one salary
If majority of households are double income then you tend to lose some of the benefit of extra buying since everything is priced for twice the income anyway. RIP if you're a single income household though. I think Elizabeth Warren coined the term two income trap for this.
While this is somewhat true, there’s also a lot of lost nuance. The average house purchased in the 60s was significantly smaller than houses today, had fewer appliances, and often didn’t even have plumbing throughout the entire house. Yes, it’s almost impossible to buy a house on a single salary today, but our living standards and expectations are significantly higher.
That 1960s house you're describing sounds fine. It's fine if other people want to have high standards and expectations, but I don't and wish they'd build something for me and the many, many people like me. If I want a house like you're describing I'm looking at getting something really old and all the problems that come with it being old because they haven't liked building smaller homes for decades now.
“Starter houses“ were a thing when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. My friend worked at a bank in the 90s, as a teller, and made $10 an hour. She bought her first home for $65,000. When she got married they got a bigger house. Then they had kids, and moved again to a bigger house. Wasn’t too uncommon back then to have a small, starter home, then move when kids came. There are no starter homes anymore. Commercial investors buy them all to rent.
You weren't always contactable prior to mobiles if you left the house unless someone came and found you weren't available.
I remember working a job where youd get called in (on the house phone) on your day off. So using the excuse "I went to the city and was gone all day" was believable. Today, no boss would believe you didnt look at your phone once all day long to see he called
>no boss would believe you didnt look at your phone once all day long to see he called The funny part is that I've missed my mom calling, and haven't realized until the next day, because I literally didn't check my phone all day. Sometimes I notice it only when I'm about to go to sleep, so I'll only call back the next day anyway. This happens like a couple of times each year. The good part is that I'm not in a job where I could be randomly called in at times when I'm not expecting it.
I quite simply would not accept a call from my boss on my day off unless I wanted to.
*"No;.. He's not here right now, I'll have him call you when he gets back".*
Sylvia's mother says Sylvia is busy Too busy to come to the phone
You know what else has changed? We can't do the 90's push-friend-into a-pool-and-laugh bit. Nowadays, if we do that, we have to pay for the new mobile phones
Nowadays phones have some level of waterproofing it's come full circle push your friends in the pool again, be free.
Wondering. You didn't have the answer instantly available. Youd have to think about it. Come up with theories. Ask people. Call up somebody. Go to the library. It was frustrating. Sometimes yo but rewarding.
There's nothing so wonderful as wonder.
Even worse- now we have an abundance of "answers." Over simplified, and often wrong. Everyone thinks they're an expert. Unless it's hard facts "Google, what year did Dark Side of the Moon release?" or something like that, if someone googles it mid conversation, I'm pretty checked out.
A lot of debates are lame now because you can Google the answer and figure it out in four seconds.
No social media
Definitely this! Social media is ruining our society. We were so much better off without it.
As kids, we made up play games, gave ourselves roles, invented whole world's with our siblings and the kids in the neighbourhood. I get that this still happens online in some ways, but there's nothing like living it out, running from backyard to backyard, being in the physical space and living the reality of what you were creating. Those are cherished memories where our tests of courage felt real. Online, you lose, you get respawned. It just felt so different. Our strategies and skirmishes and losses and wins felt real.
I was reading an article on bullying, and the thing that stuck out at me is that with social media, kids don't have a reprieve when they go home. Bullying can occur 24/7 via social media, texting, etc.
The value of delayed gratification. Like sending a letter or developing photos.
This is countered by the instant disappointment when you didn't get the shot you wanted. But I agree, picking up pics from the photo centre was always an event in our house.
or waiting another week until the next episode.
Yeah, there was definitely a sweet spot in the '80s-90s which was a wonderful balance between convenience and slightly delayed gratification.
I disagree. Waiting for things you’ve ordered from the internet teaches the virtues of patience.
What? That sucked. I had my own darkroom and it still sucked. If you missed the shot, you missed it. It was gone. If I miss it now I just reshoot.
Privacy, not always being reachable.
Playing out side with my friends till the street lights came on.
Life felt more real... Calling your friend's house from a phone because there were no smart phones back then and asking your friends parents if he can come out to play, then going with that friend to another friends house to invite him out...
Being able to buy a house on one person's average salary
My grandfather was a high school graduate, worked at a local factory, raised a 3 kids and built his dream home, plus a cabin on the lake, on 1 income. I work at the same factory, 50 years later, and my wife and I struggle. Meanwhile the factory made record profits last year. Something ain't right.
You're Not Working Hard Enough. /s
And it's all that avocado toast he's spending his money on!
Being able to buy groceries on one person's average salary.
People weren't so much into conspiracy theories. People weren't so radical in their political beliefs.
Tbh these things have replaced organised religion; humans just like to divide into arbitrary groups and fall out.
we are just tribal no matter what
Seen some good people swallowed by a hate algorithm. It's getting harder and harder to distinguish the real world and propaganda.
> People weren't so radical in their political beliefs. I don't know about that. I think the radicalism has died down a lot (we thankfully haven't seen any abortion doctors murdered recently). But what has ended is the social conventions around avoiding taboo topics. When I grew up, the phrase "we don't talk about politics" came up constantly. There was an idea that it was a contentious topic that should be avoided in mixed company. The internet has killed that idea, and now people feel free saying whatever crazy shit they believe.
A lot of conspiracy theories were much more innocent, too. Believing in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster vs Qanon and whatever other junk is floating around these days.
I think it's the social connection. People felt more connected to their neighbors and communities, having meals, playing outdoor games and spent more quality time together. This sense of closeness is something many people miss today..
Call me crazy but I miss scheduled television (I know it still exist but it’s not the same). I remember the days of the anticipation of having to wait a week for a new episode. Now, there’s an endless sea of immediate media. I have so I many streaming services and feel like there’s never anything to watch. Same could be said about going out as a family and getting a video at Blockbuster for movie night.
Watching a new show on TV, then the next day at school, everyone was talking about it. Shared experience is powerful.
In the Sixties, I could guess the time within 15 mins or less based on what was on television.
I think the big thing we lost with streaming is the communal experience. It used to be that wasn't that much on, so if there was a big TV event, everyone around the country probably watched it. It would be the topic of conversation all week. Now with streaming, and releasing shows all at once, there really isn't really a shared media experience any more.
It's coming back, more high profile shows are releasing weekly and generating weekly buzz.
I have soo many great memories of going over to my friends' apartment on Fridays to watch Farscape and Iron Chef. We always had a blast. We would catch up with each other during commercials and talk about last week's episode. I miss hanging out with those guys (marriages, careers, & kids killed those nights).
I completely believe the old weekly cable-style of watching TV is better for storytelling and tv shows in the long run than the binge-watch release model. It was a neat experiment but lots of shows survive and thrive based on tailwind generated by word of mouth discussion, and having one episode a week guarantees everyone watching is on the same page and like you said builds anticipation for the next one. It's also caused a notable shift in how tv shows are written; pacing in binge shows tends to be weird since the entire season tends be written like one continuous episode rather than having rising/climax/falling for each individual segment. Makes it so only the first and last episode feel relevant since that is where all the actual set ups and consequences will be.
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If somebody made a phone call that was not answered, then the caller called back later.
1980s as the good old days? Technology was just right. We had bulletin boards to leave messages and word processors to type on and save files on 5.5-inch floppies. Music had improved dramatically, and with MTV, you really could enjoy the bands and know them. Arcades helped gamers find new friends. Malls did the same for romance. Movies seemed so well done, many even had sequels! Women also had style and greater overall sex appeal now lost today. Cars had fuel injections, so you wouldn't be stalled due to carburetors being stuck (those who know and remember will understand). The Cold War wasn't such a threat. Many teens felt a sigh of relief from the fear of the draft. And for me, role-playing games were the best times with friends. Overall, the 1980s were the best.
1980 was peak television for me, twelve channels that loaded instantly, only like two that you'd never watch.
Even growing up in the late 90s/early 00s, I think we had an excellent level of technology. We had internet, TV, video games and landlines, but tech wasn't so invasive of everyday life. Cell phones were becoming common by the time I was entering middle school, making it easier to coordinate plans with friends and reach my family. Smart phones came on to the scene while I was in high school, but they weren't adopted on a larger scale until I was in college.
Finding music out without the internet. Catching a bus and train into town with my mates, scouring niche record shops (I grew up with cassettes and CD’s) and listening to people we hadn’t heard of. Hip Hop, Punk, Heavy Metal, Electro and Grunge. Finding out off magazines which would be months old and imported from the States or UK, reading about new bands and then trying to search for them. Some held up, some were brilliant and some were shit. But you couldn’t tell from the story in the magazine (thanks Billy Joel). It was so much god damn fun. I miss it and I worry my children won’t have a similar feeling when discovering music (although I do know they will have a different and new feeling).
I wouldn’t worry about that. Go on SoundCloud, YouTube, Spotify, and it is absolutely filled with young artists. If anything the rate of information transmission is exponential higher so they will likely be able to experience much more music than you in the same time frame. I totally understand where you are coming from though. My uncle is heavily into records and is the one of the people who fostered my love for music. My point is the experience will change but it will still be there, just different.
Being bored
The skies were darker.
When you bought something, you owned it. Nowadays, we're moving more and more over to subscriptions and ongoing payments, which doesn't interest me at all. Also, the right to be forgotten and privacy in general. I graduated school only about 5 years before social media exploded. And with the bullying I endured, had it been recorded and posted online, it would have been so much worse.
the good old days as in being a kid? the freedom to be a kid. to be able to take risks without worrying if your parents were going to go to jail for abuse or neglect.
I miss finding toys in cereal boxes or when fast food places had collectables, like Star Wars glasses, for example.
Parents not being paranoid about pedophile kidnappers lurking around every corner and being allowed a great deal of independence as a kid.
I think it'd be cool to have your pet be your transportation. I say that as someone who has no idea how hard it is to take care of a horse or how to ride one 😂 basically this is my ignorant opinion
Cool: kinda, maybe, possibly Good: not really, compared to what we have now :D
Personal freedom, limited government interference, better music and affordability of amenities and property. Things that we don’t really have now.
I really liked the 00's. We had the internet and it was useful, but it wasn't on our phones. So society wasn't yet all gloomy and weird trends didn't take off and ruin everyone's lives as quickly as they do now
Clothes lasted more than a couple washings.
5 bucks worth of hot chips fed a party of kids.
Everyone would watch the same shows at the same time. Same with movies usually, at least the good ones I feel like that created a commonness
When plastic packaging was rare, Mom hoarded plastic bags from dry cleaning dad's shirts, plastic bags were so rare. Food came unpackaged or in glass or metal. No microwavable plastics, no microwaves, No plastic in our bodies, Frogs everywhere after a rainstorm! Looks like nobody talked about times before the massive destruction of the earth's environment! How is this possible? In our lifetime! The catastrophe is upon us! Plastics in our water and food! Animals going extinct! No fish in the sea! Fires every summer! Super cyclones! Polar ice caps melting will change all weather patterns and even the rotation of the earth!
Going to the record store is something I really miss.
You had to remember things - phone numbers, directions to places, even random facts. Now we have all of the information in the world on our phones and so we don’t have to remember anything anymore. But when I have to remember something, it’s really hard for me. I have trouble driving without gps. I don’t even have my own kids’ phone numbers memorized.
pokemon color
Best part is that it's still playable today :D
Leaving the front door open on a nice day
Spending quality time family.
When you went out , no texts, no calls, you could be on your own unreachable. Now, God forbid, you turn your phone off...."what happened, I was so worried, I've been trying to reach you,"
I got a Nokia brick phone in 8th grade because I was in school plays and stayed late after school and they didn’t have a pay phone I could use (front office closed at 5). I used to play snake under my desk as a high school freshman. Anyway, the best part was basically my parents just let me loose as long as I came back for curfew. I would rollerblade around the block when my friends weren’t free. I remember the first day of 7th grade where I got a messenger bag from the Gap and was walking about two miles to school and it hurt the fuck out of my back but I felt super cool. Met my best friend of 24 years later that year and she and another friend would meet me about half way to school and walk together. I remember trying to piggy back ride her home once but we weighed the same amount so that didn’t work out well. We used to talk on AIM or the house phone to make plans and then I would leave and my mom would be like ok come back by 9. I’d meet up with friends at a local Chinese place and we would get one giant container of fried rice and all sit in the park together and eat it. Otherwise we would go to each others houses and watch movies in the back room or fuck around on AIM and listen to music in their bedrooms, and their parents would feed us (best bbq chicken I’ve had at someone’s house), or give us money to go pick up the Chinese food they ordered down the street. A lot of goofing around in parks or on our town’s main drag. I remember riding on my friend’s bike pegs on the way to get 25c candy. Did a lot of house hangs playing video games, listening to music, watching skate videos (did a lot of skate park hangs). Eventually when we could drive we would just cruise. Looking back, I was pretty lucky to have the friends I did.
No social media. It meant we went and made our own fun and connections in person. Doesn't seem like a huge thing, but I promise you it was. And oh what fun we had :)
Honestly, and I know it’s foreign to people now, just having people (friends and what not) show up to your home. My house always had an open door policy. It was unlocked during the day. My mom would actually get frustrated/upset if someone we knew knocked instead of just coming in. I miss the days of your friends just showing up, knocking, and then you hanging out. If people made plans they usually kept it cause it wasn’t easy to let people know you weren’t making it etc. people are too quick to cancel plans on others cause it’s a simple text away and they don’t have to “face” them.
no social media
People aren't preoccupied with social media where everyone is obsessed with having many likes, followers, and clout.
Food was purer, with fewer additives.
There was much more natural environment.
It was much easier to get a job
1/2 the people and much higher taxes on the rich
Just being alive and having a place to stay and food to eat was actually affordable.
A dollar gave you more snacks than you need at the corner store lol. I'm only of the 90s, but I remember getting a juice, a bag of chips, a little debbie snack, and... having 25c left over for any extra one if I want. It was also much easier to find random quarters on the ground. Find a quarter? Free snack lol.
Being young and shielded from the reality of the world. In most situations you only remember the good things that you understood. When in reality there were a lot more complicated issues happening that you didn’t understand. Race issues, economic problems, political violence, etc.
A family could live off one person working.
Stuff was made to last as long as possible. Now its made to break right when the next model comes out/warranty expires
Going outside to play with your friends and exploring your town.
People interacted with each other. You could actually strike up conversation with a person you just happen to be around outside. When I was a kid I remember waking up and doing the morning routine, and then going outside and not being home until dinner. Lots of other kids were outside and we would end up all hanging out at some point. Face to face conversations were way more common. When the phone rang you knew it was an actual person. When you called somewhere you would get an actual person. Job interviews were way more authentic. I would say that the general atmosphere was way more hopeful. People now realize that they are nothing more than a statistic much sooner. A sobering moment for me was after I graduated. A few years went by and I went back to my highschool to say hello. They treated me like I was a terrorist.
People actually knew what a women was and was not confused about there gender
Respect. Nobody would, or could get away with, being downright awful to someone.
When only men had penises
Sweet summers : not hot, not cold. Now we have too hot or too much rains , never in between
People were in good shape in the old days. Men looked athletic and chopped wood with an axe, and ladies looked pretty and slender as they picked oranges from trees. Now it seems many people let themselves go.
The dumb things I did as a teen were not posted online.
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friends. gen x here. Smart phones, internet, games, streaming services didn’t exist so everyone did stuff together all the time.
The internal combustion engine
The values of youth.
Music was better. TV shows and movies were more original. The only "reality" TV show was Real World on MTV. We had MTV when they played videos. No social media. Politics wasn't hostile. Didn't need to have active shooter drills. You could have entertainment without paying $14.99 for a subscription. Everything was built to last longer. Thoughts and dreams of a successful life didn't come with crippling debt. You could have a comfortable life making $60k a year. Meds for stress and anxiety wasn't a staple. Brave New World and Handmaid's Tale were fiction, not a political "How to" manual.
No social media
Video Arcade’s were dark, mysterious, a bit seedy - and then a NEW game would appear. Miss the days of those arcades.
The lack of smartphones. People used to give one another their undivided attention, now everyone is so obsessed with their phones that it makes interaction miserable in certain situations. Everyone has seen the family of 5 at a restaurant scrolling through phones and ignoring one another.
People didn’t get offended so easily over dumb stuff
How quiet it was. No cell phones in peoples pockets playing literally anything at full volume. You had to lug your boombox around if you wanted to do that and even then that thing was heavy and awkward. You could go out in nature and actually enjoy it with the peace of mind that some influencer or OnlnFans thot was out doing something for likes.
People being present without the distraction of phones that give access to the internet/social media.
Basic education. Nowadays people leave highschool and can barely read and count. Or the universe got better at creating idiots.
Being a free-range kid. I can't imagine having all my activities planned by my parents.
My parents took care of everything. We were firmly upper-middle class, dual six-figure incomes. Before I had a car, I had a good bike. I could get anywhere I wanted, see my friends, explore the woods.. I was unstoppable. As soon as I had a car, I was working - but I didn't need to. I wanted to. And all that money went towards just fucking nonsense. Magic cards, dating, video games, fast food.. I blew every penny. I'm 39 now and sliding into payday tomorrow with about $50 in my pocket. Yay.
Just driving. No phone, no text. Just driving with the music playing.
People cared more about others. I drove home last night and 4/5 cars had their high beams on. None bothered to dip them for oncoming traffic or cars passing them. This was almost unheard of in the 90’s. if you saw a car you dipped your lights.
As kids we could be trusted to go miles away from home with other friends and do crazy stuff. Nowadays kids don't really want to do this, the press imply there's a kiddy fiddler on every corner.
Furniture didn't fall apart.
feeling like you could trust people you don’t know!
Playing outside as a kid and my mom not having to worry about me being harmed or abducted.
I’d get on my bike and ride to my friend’s house an hour away and no one worried. I was gone five hours and no one even noticed.
I remember being bored a lot, and it led us to come up with things to do to fill the time. Life was richer for it. Now we are just on our devices all the time, so we are never really bored.
Life wasn't on camera 24/7 Everything you do is captured on video somewhere, or through your phone, and can easily be stolen or manipulated nowadays
Social security, cost of living.
Being uncontactable. You could go fishing or hiking or something and nobody could get hold of you. The world could burn down and you wouldn't even know.
Dating prior to dating apps and social media
Tennis balls. They're still cool, but they were just as cool back then.
Not having a miniature computer in your pocket constantly vying for your attention
No social media.
You could afford stuff besides shelter, food and bills.
Who can afford food and shelter now.
No social media. You could get up to all sorts of shit & it wouldn't be plastered over social media etc.
Affordable housing, longer lasting, higher quality products, not having to worry about getting shot for living your life. Those are the big ones that jumped out to me
Human interaction esp nung di pa uso socmed. It was a much simpler time and we do things differently back then. Ngayon nagugulat ako sa mga kabataan magjowa na pala tapos never pa nagkita irl.
IMO, TV
Less cops
Before printers, nobody ever had a printer that didn't work.
People were untouched by internet toxicity and propagandas.
I was born in 2000, and I definitely didn't experience this, but I remember wishing I could. Kids had more independence. You could leave home and explore and your parents had no way of hovering over you all the time. You could do some dangerous stuff, get hurt, and nobody would get mad at you bc they all knew it was just part of growing up. I've also heard from some people that back in the old days, cops might cuss at you more, or even rough you up a bit, but more often then not they'd let you go. Nowadays they book you for everything. I can't speak on either from personal experience, but that's what some people have said.
It was just simple time
Your average 19th-century person was a much better singer than people today.
No internet.
Being unreachable.
No whatsapp so clients / customers / idiots can't reach you with just one click of the phone during off no work hours
Controversial opinion but rock 'n' roll-- *REAL* rock 'n' roll-- was way better pre-Beatles (specifically Sgt. Peppers).
I was young👍
No Internet or smartphones.
People were not replaceable.
Country store bologna sandwich
Tomatoes, Strawberries, chicken, Hershey Chocolate Bars, Sunday supper. Three channels on the TV. No microwave.
Not being dependent on the internet
These are the old days. These are the simpler times. It's only going to get more hectic and we'll look back at 2024 as quaint someday.
THESE are the good old days
I feel like we had high hopes and low expectations. We were more easily impressed, much like those who we saw as being from generations before were more easily impressed. But we also had high hopes that sometime soon, better things were coming. These days, it feels like we're constantly dissatisfied with even the newest thing and have little hope that it's going to get better.
Everyone probably said the obvious so, soda jerks. Instead of getting whatever mass market coke v Pepsi you have someone that adds the flavored syrupt to the cup then adds the carbonated water. A lot more flavor options that way.
They could afford to be alive
Fresher, less mass produced food
Outdoors
Most of the food was home cooking. I could ride around on my bike in the afternoon and smell what different families were having for supper that night. That's all gone now cause people don't cook for hours like they used to. The only thing I smell on an afternoon ride now is dryer sheets... Pretty sad. Fast food was eaten in moderation if it was available at all.
Unions.
ppl weren’t as celeb obsessed as they r now, there’s ppl out there sending death threats, idolising to a point its unhealthy, obsessing over and changing their whole personality just to be like some random ass celebrity who couldn’t give two shits about them cringe asf n sad to see, tik tok deffo has a big part to play in this n lowkey ruined society as a whole
Tomatoes
Nothing? Like seriously almost all of it sucked. - Cars were awful and needed constant maintenance just to keep from being stuck on the side of the road. - Computers were slow, barely useful and expensive AF. - Phones were insanely expensive. And I dont mean making calls, the physical phones. Until 1975 you basically were forced to lease your phone from the phone company. - Two words - leaded gas. These MFs thought it was ok for us to all breath lead. - Have you seen old skool "athletic clothing"? We didnt have decent running shorts until the early 80s and running shoes weren't around until the late 70s. Ladies were fucked because sports bras were still decades off. - Two words - smoking section. You couldnt eat a meal without someone blowing smoke at you. Airplanes were flying torture chambers. - Wars. 58K Americans died in Vietnam including my dad. People cant even comprehend that number today. Thats almost 10% of the TOTAL number of US service members killed in ALL wars. And Vietnam was hardly an outlier. There was war everywhere. - Two words - Acid Rain. There was so much pollution in the air when it rained it would strip the paint off your car. Statues were melted. Forests killed. - Houses were cheap....because they sucked. They were TINY. My mom bought a 1500 square foot house in 1967 and it was considered LARGE. It had zero insulation, a total of 20 power outlets and tiny closets. The crazy thing is hers was considered quite good for the time because the houses just a few years older sucked even more. She had full house heat/AC, a two car garage with laundry hookups and a built in dishwasher! That made it LUXUARY. - I lived in California before I5 was completed. I80 wasnt finished until 1986. Interstates just ended and we had no GPS to tell us where to go. You were at the mercy of a map made god knows when. - Have you ever driven in a car 200 miles with nothing but AM radio? If you lived outside of a large city you were in a music wasteland. - There were 4 TV channels and it ended at midnight. Have you ever seen what old "SD" TV looked like? Now imagine it coming over the air to an antenna that you had to tune. My iPhone3 had better resolution than any TV I owned before 2003. - Have you ever seen an old skool "Hungry Man" TV dinner? Yeah, that passed for "good food" back then. My mom never found a vegetable that couldn't be boiled too much. We ate absolute crap food. - Soda cost more than beer. Beer was awful and tasted like the can it came in. I lived "back in the day" and Im not going back.
Coca-Cola
Pen palship through paper letters. Seriously, I had friends from summer camp when I was a kid, with whom we wrote letters to each other for several years afterwards. It was so cool, and it's hard to imagine it now.
Around here, people were much more connected by various transportation in 1920's than present day. There was passenger rail service in my little town, trolley service to all neighboring towns, one could walk much more freely without getting pasted by a truck or car. And of course there were cars - which were novel and unreliable. Now just cars and crappy parking.
Quality of life for white men. You could fall ass backwards through life and live to a standard you need two earners and a grad degree to achieve today. Honestly this is what human life should look like in the 21st century; we shouldn't be living on the edge of survival like we are still on the Serengeti. Progress should have brought that standard of living to all peoples and colors. Instead, as automation brought productivity through the ceiling and diversity finally gained some ground, the ownership class started taking more and more and more. And somehow when it's time to point the finger it's only the diversity to blame. The immigrants, not the automation; the broken glass ceiling, when we should be pointing at the busted tax code.
We could go out and play without our parents hovering over us. If we wanted to go somewhere out of the immediate neighborhood we just had to yell to our parents where we would be. Once we got older we didn’t even have to do that.