this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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I've been around since 1959, and back then people were up in arms about the partisan divide in this country and the Vietnam conflict and the oppression of black and other races. Back then, domestic abuse was sort of commonplace, no man could be sent to jail for beating up his kids or his wife. Alcoholism was rampant back then, and drug abuse shot up dramatically. Since then, I've seen so much of the same play out over and over. Things have changed somewhat for the better in some ways, but to be honest - there never was a 'good old time' when everyone felt happy and equal and safe and protected.
In my experience people who talk about the good old days are white and male.
It was a time when they got their way 100% and everyone else could get fucked.
More likely it was when they were kids and without adult responsibilities, or narrow/whitewashed views of the past(as from stories and shows from before their birth)
I look back at my childhood as the 'good ole days' mostly because of the no responsibilities thing. The more I learn about what stuff was really going on in the 90's/2000s, the more I see there was no good ole days, just times when I was insulated from the harsh realities of the world.
I hold similar views(obviously), but I find something comforting in it. Like, rather than living in a ruined paradise lost by us or our parents, we live in a complicated world where we share the work of trying to make something better with our ancestors.
(Of course, we also have to figure out how to do that, and, in a complicated world, that can be challenging and lead to conflict)
There's definitely points where things get worse.
9/11 is one of them.
My childhood in the 60s and 70s was idyllic, I have to admit - growing up on a private reserve with mountains all around and having woods around to play and get lost in. I loved it all - but even then I knew about the conflicts going on and how unhappy most adults seemed.
That's about it. I'm white and male and I'm here to tell you, there never was a 'good old days' unless you mean a time when white men could get away with raping and killing a young kid like Emmett Till and could butcher their families and get away with it.
White guy, 1985
I've been around since the 70s and I mostly agree ... but on one point I disagree ... the ability of humanity to wipe itself out with a nuclear exchange. Back then, even 20, 30 years ago there were a lot level headed leaders who (although we may have disagreed with them) were less radical and would be less likely to consider launching a nuclear weapon for any reason. Back then, we also had a lot of actual war veterans in the public and in government who understood the nature of war ... now there are fewer of them around. Most people including those in government now don't know what war is any more, other than to see it glorified in history books, movies and pop culture.
So the combination scares me ... a society that is complacent to war yet has the weapons to cause world wide destruction if someone disagrees with them.
There is only one way that humanity will finally end - and yes, it will be by nuclear war. And it's not very far off at all. There is no other way that the fate of humanity can go. There is such a lack of human compassion and empathy and such a desire to cause hurt, it's just a matter of hours. So don't think it won't happen. There's no other possible outcome for us at this point, none whatsoever (unless an asteroid demolishes us first, that is).
I feel as though there was a "good old days" of the internet. Don't get me wrong, it was a complete shit show, but it was anonymous, anyone could say anything that they wanted, and there would be few if any consequences. There were ads, but they were generally garbage animated GIFs at worst.
It wasn't perfect, but we were free to do what we wanted on the internet, with little to no bearing on our daily lives.
Now, it's almost expected that your online activity will be tied to you specifically. In most cases, your legal name is attached to it for everyone to see. If you try to go around without your legal name on everything, then generally you are either severely limited, or outright removed from the platform. Sigh
That's true enough. I started working around the time computers were even a thing - back in the 70s and there was no internet, just basic DOS green screens that were very basic. It wasn't until the mid-90s I even had a computer that had rudimentary internet access - and it was so new, there was only maybe a handful of websites you could find.
There were no cookies or trackers to watch what you were doing online, but then again, there wasn't anything much to look at anyway - porn wasn't even there yet.
So I feel we definitely have it both better and worse today. To me, the better outweights the negatives - I mean it's so much nicer today to just be able to search anything and get a million different answers. But that's also the downfall of everyone being interconnected - being buried in bullshit much of the time.
Meted out by human beings who had to read the thread in aggravatingly linear order - so they were more likely to say 'you were being kind of a butthead' instead of 'how dare you call anyone a butthead.'