Humanity getting dumber and dumber…

Kids are way nicer now. Kids in my day were brutal and violent. Most things have improved. People are more aware of dangers to kids now so there are stronger safeguards. Kids are better protected by laws so violence against them is getting less common. Women actually make pretty good money now and aren’t restricted to secretary like roles and there’s less jokes that the woman is a secretary. I had never seen female ceos. They just didn’t exist. Now women can scam the public just as well as men 🤣 There’s still a long way to go but things are a lot better. Gay people aren’t dying of AIDS as much anymore and people will touch gay people without a problem. When I was growing up people believed gay men might be carrying AIDS and would not touch them. Thanks princess di for your work on this. Racial diversity is so much better now. Like women, people of color did not make CEO frequently. It’s still being worked on, but it’s gotten better. Racism itself has gotten better, kids don’t say racial slurs to one another.

As far as environment there was a time when in the US we would celebrate some new technology innovation or infrastructure innovation. I remember when Boeing released a new plane and everyone was like wow so cool, this is redefining planes.

But we have not had that in years. Our desire to be top in tech or science is gone. We used to want to be the best infrastructure, top of the line water treatment and getting to different space discoveries FIRST. Being part of nasa was a huge dream for many kids to just explore the planets.

Now china has all this high speed transit and we have decaying pipes. In my childhood, this would not have been accepted. China was frowned upon.

Other countries have gotten better to the point they surpassed us. When I would visit Mexico it would be to help build in rural areas. Now our rural areas are further decrepit than anything I saw there back then and Mexico City is a vibrant bustling gorgeous place.

One visit to Apalachia and I have wondered how America got this way.

There was also a lot more stress around decorum. This one was a double edged sword. People cared a lot about how they were perceived to the point of committing heinous acts to cover up the slightest insult to their character or perception. Now, it’s more free. We don’t keep up with the Joneses on the level it was back then. Being loud or dressing any type of way means nothing. It’s all good.

But that has also led to the open and blatant acceptance of things like felonious behavior and led to what we have now. This kind of scandal would never have flown.

But then again, no woman could have ever HOPED to run for president.

There is also a lot more macro interests. I believe the people have more power now. Before, you had to listen to what’s on the radio. You had to watch why’s on tv. Trends could be fully controlled by the owners of these resources. Now your friend can post a video of their thermos surviving a car accident and suddenly a company who’s entire perception could not have possibly entered mainstream can. There is more freedom as a macro economy, you can truly access what interests you. This also leads to “too much choice” sometimes but it’s definitely awesome for some of us with unique interests. It has also leveled the playing field in way for trends to be able to match without extreme financial backing. You don’t have to be part of the big guys for your song or dance to go viral. You can have a niche on YouTube and make a living on commentary videos. You could not do this before.

Finally, the access to tech has not only improved our lives but brought a level of freedom unheard of. In my day, only movie studios had the tools to make media. Now people can express themselves with minimal financial investment. People are creating at levels never seen before because they finally have access to tools needed for it. Microphones, software, cameras, painting classes, and the world has distinctly become more and more creative and colorful. This is also helped by the less keeping up with the Joneses worrying about their perception thing. The more free we are in creating and expression, the more diverse and beautiful our works get. And yes I think it’s cool people can openly create furry porn and then connect with others who like it. This is truly something unimaginable to my generation. Our weirdness was violently oppressed. Now we out here turning that violence into twilight fanfics that spawn movie franchises.

You win some you lose some.

I think for me in my country it would be the collapse of the social contract. The bonds that society regulates itself.

Design has changed. Instead of building powerful featues that are available to the user however they want to use it. The focus has shifted to providing a simplified linear interface where pressing a single button does the task and the tools to modify the action are hidden from the user. So if your use case doesnt 100% allign youre fucked.

The common man walks a path toward physical slavery, his pace ever increasing.

Kids don’t play outside anymore

Better but much more expensive insulin, although price has gone down significantly since Affordable Care act.

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When I was still a kid, we went from bring a plate of cookies to your neighbor and introduce yourself to DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS!!

The circa 1990 nature of American society has been erased so completely that it is hard to believe how drastically it has changed.

Movies used to depict child molestation (Indiana Jones) or outright rape (Revenge of the Nerds) as normal and to be celebrated when it was done by the heroes. A lot of crimes got viewed through the lens of whether it was “our people” doing them. The thinking features in a lot of old movies.

The cops who beat Rodney King were found not guilty by a jury, in the first trial. After all, they’re the cops, they’re allowed. Drunk driving was fine, as long as you were one of the right kind of people. The cops would beat the fuck out of people and it was fine. The factory in town could be polluting the river and it was fine as long as dad had a job. And so on.

The uniformity of thought that TV enforced, before the internet, is really not well understood. If you thought Israel was bad, then you and Noam Chomsky were literally the only ones. Even as late in the arc as the Iraq War, I would say about 95% of the people who didn’t get their news from the internet supported the war. Watch one of the debates where Ron Paul was speaking against the war with everyone else (except the audience) just weirded out and confused by it, or the “Media-Opoly” short that aired on SNL once and then never again, to get some idea by contrast of how airtight the lock on narrative used to be. TV and newspapers are still kind of that way, but they don’t have the media monopoly they used to. It used to be that someone probably would live their entire adult life without ever hearing the kind of political viewpoints you see every day on Lemmy as normal things.

On the other hand, along with the expectation that everyone was kind of a piece of shit and that’s how life is, came a kind of backbone for resistance that I feel like is missing today. Woodstock ‘99 would be a pretty normal “yeah they robbed us” badly organized festival today. It was way better than the Fyre Festival, and people at Fyre just took it, or called their lawyers. At Woodstock ‘99, the kids threw bottles and batteries at Kurt Loder, broke in the ATMs and stole their money back, and then ripped the venue apart with their bare hands and burned it all to the ground.

Cable TV use to be something that teathered us all together in a way. We were all stuck on the same schedule for premiers of new episodes of different shows so we all had a common thing to talk about come the next day. Now I have no idea what’s playing on what service and have just given up on staying up to date on the new shows. I could have access to $TVShow but probably won’t watch it because I don’t like to binge watch so it takes me longer to catch up and by the time I do it has already left the minds of my peers so why bother.

When I was in high school, gay was the generic negative word. If Wendys gave you a medium fry when you ordered a large - gay. If your homie cancelled plans last minute - gay. If you slipped on the stairs and busted your ass - gay. It’s bizarre in hindsight.

I’ve been arrested, held up at gun point, and spent a few weeks in a Texas jail in the 90s because I like smoking weed. Now I have 3 weed stores within 2 miles of me, and it’s as mundane as buying a loaf of bread. So that’s a positive in my book.

Hats, almost completely removed from formal settings and now only in informal settings.

People have a much more rigid and accurate sense of time. You don’t meet for lunch, you meet at 12pm on the dot. People don’t wait for someone for half an hour, they wait like 5 minutes or so.

People talk much more openly about problems and their views. When I was young people didn’t really talk about religion, politics, medical issues, and so on in public. Now people will tell you they are on an antidepressant or LGBT+ and be open about things.

No one admits when they don’t know something. The mentality of, fake it until you make it, casts ignorance as some sort of failure to be ridiculed. As a result we have politicians and laymen believing they can do something or know better than experts on a specific topic.

The other is the complete lack of humility or embarrassment when fucking up. People will just stream or post their most idiotic ideas to get ‘views,’ even if it makes them look terrible. This idea where you need to live-stream your entire life baffles me. Not sure if this falls under the tech and social media restriction of this post.