It's kind of bittersweet being a very tail-end Gen X person. On the happy side, I got to do my childhood and teen years in the "fuck about" era, but on the unhappy side my entire adulthood has been in the "find out" era, and I get to remember what it was like briefly living in a world that wasn't entirely going to shit.

[–] DefunctReality@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 year ago

it's kind of affirming to hear you say that. As a gen Z person I feel like we're constantly being gaslit into thinking stuff has always been bad and we just complain more or something

[–] Emptiness@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

Thank you! This was very well put. Felt like a big puzzle piece just fell in place and this discomfort of not knowing why stuff feels so weird nowadays let go a bit. ❤️🤜

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Tbf it was slowly going to shit back then too.

[–] ssfckdt@mastodon.cloud 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Eh. It didn't really start going to shit until 2001. Things stayed pretty darn good after 92. Not a lot of decades with that track record.

I mean, in the 90s we bitched about mostly distant global things because things were pretty good in general for most. And we had time to worry about less-catastrophic domestic things like Mumia or Peltier or what have you.

Now things aren't so good and we end up bitching about far more local things because things around us are so bad.

It's a great trick

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My point was that climate change was still occuring in the background, but I can of course appreciate the fact that it wasn't in the public zeitgeist in the same manner.

[–] ssfckdt@mastodon.cloud 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@ObviouslyNotBanana Oh, well, it was, but it hadn't reached "we're fucked" levels yet. It was still in the "we can stop this" stage. Again, this kind of got fucked up post-2000.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

We realized the powers with the most to gain short-term by continuing their global warming emissions weren't going to budge unless forced, and since government had already been captured long before I was born, no-one was going to force them.

So we knew even in the eighties, climate was going to kill us, but Reagan believed the biblical apocalypse was going to occur in his term via nuclear holocaust. But he wasn't willing to first strike and be personally responsible for hundreds of millions of casualties.

But he was so sure, he felt environmental conservation (what it was called then) was silly.

[–] moriquende@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

my whole childhood in the 90s was the "ozone layer is dying" but at the same time optimistic outlook on life?

[–] triclops6@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Older millennial here, so about your age, I have really early childhood memories before ozone issues, recessions, and planet fucking, after that it's been one paper straw after another