I really never have believed times improved, and i am almost positive things will only get worse.
30 years ago we had a future to look to, the unshittified internet, great music, affordable land/housing, affordable durable cars, people actually interacted in real life, no social media trash. Now, we have billionaires and LLMs. I don’t see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.
Yes, everyone will say “civil rights improved” and yes thats maybe the only thing that has changed, however it’s getting taken away every day again so I don’t think you can even use that point anymore.
30 years ago most people weren’t yet on the internet, there was very little entertainment media, you couldn’t use online accounts for most stuff, and most people didn’t have online bill paying. 30 years ago I helped bring my company online as the first full investment company, and my bank was still rare for doing online bill paying.
30 years ago, most of the US were in denial over climate change, renewable energy was expensive and there were no practical EVs.
Idk what you mean about entertainment media because sitcoms were all the rage. And while the U.S. was in denial about climate change they were also emitting far fewer ghg and climate change was much less evident
…in the cloud. People were still glued to their TVs back then. I don’t know whether that was before or after commercials balooned
They were also in denial that sitcoms were, for the most part, terrible.
Life and the world wasn’t as dangerous. It was easier, less stressful. Simpler 😊
Crime in 1995 was…let’s just say… fucking worse in virtually every category…by a lot. Waco and ruby ridge had just happened. As for poverty, there are the same number of people on poverty in 2023 a there were in 1995. Let’s talk violence against women. It’s tragic today at shockingly high rates. It was much worse in 1995.
Don’t be a woman, or a non white man, or poor, or non cis and you are probably just fine back in 1995.
…cept for abortion. Fuck Trump.
Depends who you ask. Things are better for the LGBTQ+ community. Still not as they should be, but I see a generation of kids now who are accepting, whereas 30 years ago, it was the worst thing anyone could accuse you of.
You say that civil rights may go away, but we do have them right now, and as our kids get older, they might not be so willing to take them away.
Yeah, that’s a big one in the US. Being a queer person in the 90s was almost exile from my social circle. There were some gay guys and lesbians were accepted on the perifery, but homophobia reigned.
30 years ago the Internet was tiny, and to this day you can largely get the same experience if you opt to ignore some of the more frustrating Internet. In practice it is a problem that extremist views can come closer together without the moderating influence of those physically near you. would definitely appreciate a harder push back towards federation and a break from subscription based software, though compared to 30 years ago, the free software today is better than anything we had back then.
Our cars were not durable, drive trains can take a whole lot more negligence than they used to and hoses and gaskets last longer than they did back then. There have been struggles with some cars adding turbos for efficiency, but even those are way less problematic than they used to be.
We can interact in real life, we just largely don’t. As an adult I probably interact with peers about as much as my parents did when they were my age, not much at all. Constant hanging out goes away with age for most people.
There’s a lot of regression in the world but that pendulum swings back and forth.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned, one thing that I am truly thankful for that we have improved since the 1990s is public smoking. Not having to be prepared for the reek of cigarettes in virtually every public space is such a big win.
Hell, in 1990, which is 35 years ago, you could still smoke on airplanes in the US. Airplanes! Can you imagine flying back then? Your neighbor could light up and there was nothing you could do but sit there and stew in the smoke stream. I’m glad I never had to experience flying with smoke but I had my fair share of being forced to sit in smoking sections of restaurants until my teenage years.
Thats true, it stank!! And non smoking was never a truth ha
The (true) joke at the time was that it was like a swimming pool with a little corner marked “no peeing zone”.
Can you imagine <pick a thing> back then? Your neighbor could light up and there was nothing you could do but sit there and stew in the smoke stream
It wasn’t just flying. I grew up in the 90s, and you could smoke in so many places, it was awful. I was so happy listening to my mother bitch and complain when they banned smoking in establishments entirely. I could finally breathe, and she had to go outside to keep killing herself (unless we were at home or in the car, in which case there was still nothing I could do but stew in the smoke).
Everyone’s experience will be personal to them, so it’s not anyone’s place to say your experience isn’t worse, but as a whole, things are better.
Crime, no matter the category, is down ~33% since the mid-90s.
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, is up ~25% (despite the narrative).Here’s a post/graph I think about all the time: https://bsky.app/profile/simongerman600.bsky.social/post/3ktds56nqus25
Regardless of age, we are generally nostalgic for a time in our youth. Or even earlier. Notice that something like half (or nearly so) of people think “the most moral society” was before they were born.
That crime statistic is going to spike drastically from 2025 on…
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, is up ~25% (despite the narrative).
What’s the ratio of household income to the cost of living? I understand that’s going to vary wildly from place to place, but my point is income, as a statistic, seems meaningless without knowing the cost of living to see if people are actually able to afford rent, groceries, etc on that 25% increased income.
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, is up ~25% (despite the narrative).
Now do housing education and healthcare
Not I. I grew up thinking overall we were on a good track and humanity would get better. The star trek utopia future type. This started to break apart in the early 90’s but I held out hope that tech was going to get us through but that started to fall apart by the late aughts and really by the 20teens is about when I lost most hope. Brexit and the first trump win was pretty much the nails in the coffin. Biden did pretty well considering but you can see how behind we already are and how we would actually have to maintain a decent path in way we just had not for the last couple of decades.
Yes and no. Some things got better and easier than 30 years ago. Some things entshittified beyond reasonable expectations.
We got phones which act as a device to connect the world with endless amount if information, entertainment and is a great tool for personal comfort yet the same things are twisted to a degree where we cant live without a phone anymore. Can’t not to have a social media account, we got fully compliant to the surveillance that is happening to us not even that we are tracked not only for the governments of our countries but mainly by advertisers in order to manipulate us into buying crap we don’t need.
Feels like a double edged sword to me personally.
30 years ago we THOUGHT we had a future.
Yes, 30 years ago the AIDS crisis was still going strong and, in the US at least, same-gender relationships were illegal and the LGBT community didn’t have a right to work, and on top of that same-sex marriage was illegal. A lot of rights are rolled into marriage, including the ability to remain at the bedside of your loved-one when they are at the hospital or on their deathbed, arranging and/or attending your partner’s funeral, and being allowed to remain in your house after your spouse dies. Through the 80s and 90s, gay men were losing partners left and right and some were kicked out of their partners’ funerals and then kicked out of the house they had lived in for decades because the title was in their partner’s name since they couldn’t sign together.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was also started in 1994.
Same sex relationships weren’t made legal until June 26, 2003 (Lawrence v TX) Same Sex Marriage on June 26, 2015 (Hodges v Obergefell) Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in the workplace was barred in the US June 15, 2020 (Bostock v Clayton)
Even with all the holes Republicans drilled into it, the Affordable Care Act helps many people get health insurance. We also have medication that prevents the transmission of HIV and that prevents the onset of AIDS, saving many lives.
In 1995, the internet was in its infancy, at least compared to today and was largely text-based. If a website had a bunch of pictures, it took take 5-15 minutes to load depending on your location, provided nobody killed the connection with an incoming call.
Sure the mindset nowadays is much more pessimistic, even thought the ruling class from the 90s is aging out of power. We just need people ready to push us forward as more of the silent generation and baby boomer politicians leave office.
You’re right that a lot has changed for the better, especially when it comes to legal rights for LGBTQ+ people. The AIDS crisis was devastating and compounded by the cruelty of being denied the most basic recognitions like visiting your partner in the hospital or even being allowed to stay in your home after they passed. Legal victories like Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell, and Bostock were historic, and they represent real, hard-won progress.
But I think it’s also important to recognize that legal inclusion doesn’t always mean liberation. A lot of those rights are still tied to institutions like marriage, which leave out anyone who doesn’t fit that mold. Marriage shouldn’t be the gateway to healthcare or housing security. That just reinforces the idea that some relationships or lives are more worthy of protection than others.
Same goes for healthcare. The Affordable Care Act helped, but it still left healthcare tied to jobs and profit. Life-saving medications exist, but they’re still out of reach for many because of how expensive and inaccessible our system is. PrEP, for example, is amazing in what it can do, but the fact that it’s rationed through patents and insurance barriers says a lot about who this system really serves.
And while the internet has opened up huge spaces for connection and organizing, it also turned our identities into data and our attention into profit. Social media connects, but it also surveils and exploits. So even in our victories, the system keeps finding ways to profit off our survival.
I think the pessimism today is more than just a vibe shift. People feel it because they know deep down that we’re still not free. That our progress is fragile, often built on the same systems that oppress others. The question isn’t just whether things are better. It’s whether we’re building something that won’t keep leaving people behind.
What are you talking about with PrEP? It’s not tied to having insurance, there are LGBT sexual health clinics where you can get free PrEP even if you don’t have insurance. If you go the traditional route for medication and get a prescription through your PCP it’ll depend on your insurance, but that’s also not always the safest route. Granted if you live away from the city, you will have to go the traditional route, because there aren’t likely to be any LGBT clinics nearby unless you decide to drive into the city for your quarterly appts.
In the 90s, health insurance was almosy exclusively tied to your job. There were a couple policies that you could get if your job didn’t offer insurance, but they were expensive. Today, if your job doesn’t offer insurance or if youre out of a job, you can not only get insurance on the marketplace, but you can even get financial assistance. That financial assistance didn’t exist in the US 30 years ago outside of Medicaid. It’s not universal Healthcare, as seen in other countries, but the ACA is overall an improvement on the system.
I agree that there are still rights to be won and attitudes to be changed so that people can live their lives openly without threat of violence, just noting that the overall situation is better now than it was 30 years ago. For example, I saw a story about a trans teen in North TX (a small town north of the DFW metroplex) in the last couple years. If that story was from the 90s, it would’ve been about the death of the teen and that’s what I was expecting. Instead, the article was about the teen being kicked out of a school play because they were trans. It was a relief that the teen was still alive, which shows some positive growth, however there’s still work to be done.
The younger generations are better at inclusion and I’m hoping that trend will continue. As the Silent Generation and Baby Boomer politicians (who have been ruling for the better part of 60 years) leave office, I’m hoping they are replaced by younger, more open-minded politicians. I’ve seen articles mention how in some elections that’s happening, it just hasn’t reached the leadership of the various branches yet. Hopefully, when it does, we can reshape the system to help everyone and build better defenses against those who would abuse their power for the rich. My concern is that if the conservatives are rallying behind a goal, while progressives grow increasingly pessimistic, that we may not see shift that we really need to make progress.
It’s kind of mind blowing how dismissive of the ACA people are, even those who were aware before it went into effect. It wasn’t by any means what it should have been, but medical access unequivocally improved vastly as a result of it.
The fact that it was Mitt Romney’s idea should speak volumes about the propaganda from the Democrats. It has its pros, but like everything else the Democrats support, it must first and foremost benefit corporations.
but medical access unequivocally improved vastly as a result of it.
Yes, and I still have access to my same doctor! But I don’t even go to the doctor when I need to anymore because my family insurance went from a $500 deductable to a $10,000 deductable. I have insurance, but I legitimately lost access to healthcaret, I can’t afford it. I went to the hospital two years in a row and had to pay it off in installments for the next two years.
My mom’s medicare got amazing, and I couldn’t complain about that. But holy shit my medical expenses went up. And I’m pretty well off, I just can’t afford a $18,400 pay cut and save any money in this economy.
The sheer amount of street level crimes, bar fights, car break-ins that existed in those days would blow your mind. Things have changed so much and yet everyone seems to have forgotten. I can’t speek for the ‘worst’ neighbourhoods in the US nowadays but back in the 70s - 80s whole sections of US cities were shitholes. Media make’s everything look way worse than reality.
I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this but 30 years ago was the mid 90s, not the 70s-80s
I know, the trend continued. And the 90s were half as bad. Sorry you can’t extrapolate.
Unpossible!
Oh God…
Economically for the working class, no. But it’s undeniably better to be gay or coloured in western countries than it was 30 years ago.
Technology is better slightly
Society is worse
The economy is worse
The environment is worse
Medicine has improved by leaps and bounds. We have greater life expectancy and mostly a better quality of health along the way. Child mortality is down globally.
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality?time=1996..latest
Improvements in our understanding of neurodivergent students has resulted in better educational and quality of life outcomes for millions who in past decades would have fallen through the cracks.
The proliferation of environmental lead from paint and gasoline are WAY down, and the hole in the Ozone was just about peak in 1995.
Open source, public domain, and freely available knowledge have democratized education, technology, research, and product development in ways that would have almost been inconcievable in 1995.
We are able to communicate more globally, even with total strangers, often across language barriers, and for free.
Video games, films, and television are able to create visions that would have been technically impossible 30 years ago. And technology has reduced the barriers for people to gain entry into those industries.
I carry around a tiny super computer with instant access to all the world’s knowledge. That would have been a dream in 1995.
There are of course many things that are worse. It’s a harder time to be starting out in life. “Luxuries” are dirt cheap and necesities are unaffordable. We’ve traded our sense of community for a paranioa of “others” even as the world has gotten safer. Globally the world has been swinging toward extremism and it constantly feels like capitalism may collapse and we don’t know what comes next if that happens. But failure to see how much is better and for how many seems like too much doom scrolling and too narrow and outlook.
