Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?
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The death of appointment television.
Appointment television?
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Appointment television?
I haven't heard the term but I assume it means watching TV on the station's schedule. You know, broadcast and cable.
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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.
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. [snip] The cops would beat the fuck out of people and it was fine.
This hasn't really changed though.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
Is sex different? It seems like sex has changed in society. Like, more openness, less taboo. But also conservative sexual beliefs seem to be pulling harder in the opposite direction.
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From an American perspective, flying on an airplane sucks. 9/11/01 resulted in a whole bunch of security theatre at the airport and airlines have slowly whittled away whatever comfort or convience remained.
You used to get proper meals even if it was a crazy short flight. Now it's like $6 bag of cheese it.
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Appointment television?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]A very popular show that everyone would watch live as it aired the first time. Then you could talk about it with everyone for a week because everyone is on the same episode. There was little to no ways to watch it if you missed it and you'd basically be screwed.
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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!!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]deleted by creator
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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.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]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.
I enjoy not having my entertainment options constrained by whether other people are watching them at the same time, so I'm loving the change. Especially since I didn't like over half of the shows that 'everybody' watched.
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A very popular show that everyone would watch live as it aired the first time. Then you could talk about it with everyone for a week because everyone is on the same episode. There was little to no ways to watch it if you missed it and you'd basically be screwed.
Oh I wasn’t allowed to watch tele growing up. No wonder I have no idea what this is
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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.
Kids are still mean, they just use different words now
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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. [snip] The cops would beat the fuck out of people and it was fine.
This hasn't really changed though.
It absolutely has. Before Rodney King it was always fine. From 1992 to about 2014 it was mostly fine. From 2014-2020, it was a debate, and after 2020, they're pretty much always guilty. There's a whole interesting conversation to be had about why it was that all kinds of riot and peaceful protest had basically 0 result until 2014-2020, and then in 2020 it all of a sudden starting working significantly.
Anyway, now under Trump, some of the reform is going backwards. There were some outlier departments that were still in the 1992 mode, and the feds were doing some things to try to come down on them, whereas now it's the opposite, Trump is actively pardoning dirty cops. Great stuff.
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The death of appointment television.
haha my dad was a tech nerd and when he bought his first programmable VCR back in the '80s he was on top of the world. He was recording everything...
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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. [snip] The cops would beat the fuck out of people and it was fine.
This hasn't really changed though.
but back then it was "fine" because it never made the news...
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Ahh yes, trade 6 hours for a 3 day, $400 train ride to NYC.
Lmfao what a shit suggestion
With the current level of train infrastructure and service, I agree with you. That is why domestics flights are a thing. But trains would be a much better choice if rail wasn't actively defunded and sabotaged for the last 70 years or so.
Its this lack of imagination of what could be (and already exists around the world) that makes everyone laugh at Americans.
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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.
haha yeah I've been a pothead for 40-several years and I got my Florida MMU card last year. It took me a while to get past my "kid in a candy store" phase. Geez I wasn't used to having ANY choice, let alone that many choices
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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.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Same. "Gay Humor" was a thing when I was in middle-school/highschool, probably still a thing. If you act feminine as a guy, its "gay". If you act too emotional over a girl, it's "gay". If you answer a question wrong, your a [R-Slur]. Everyone who you had a slight beef with is being a "bitch", even the guys. Sometime the occational gay word equivalent that starts with "f".
Oh this is a blue city (in the US) btw. Circa 2015-2020
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Completely agree. The state of the US passenger train system is absolutely pitiful, and useless for any of the trips I needed to take.
I would gladly take the Texas Eagle to Chicago on a regular basis to see family if it didn't cost $1,800 for a very small room in the sleeper car. I prefer the train to flying or driving. It's just a LOT cheaper to load up the minivan and drive 12 hours instead.
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- People are way more free to talk about their mental health problems.
- Climate change is part of mainstream awareness, most people want to see action on it.
- Gays and lesbians are very broadly accepted in many parts of the world. Trans people are too (and they are more visible), even if there is also a culture war backlash.
- Nearly everyone hates capitalism. Not everyone has figured out what needs to be done about it, but it's a good start.
- Conspiracy thinking is more rampant, presumably because of internet (mis/dis)information bubbles
(I was born in the early 80s, so this is over the last 30ish years, since the mid 90s)
People are way more free to talk about their mental health problems.
People still don't understand.
"Just be happy" is still a thing.
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Nobody thinks my country has a history of way too many kidnappings, but America has the market cornered on propaganda.
I wanna say that mindset has no discernable effect on the number of crimes committed, at least when they reviewed the statistics years later. That's what I heard anyway.
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Originally it was going to be "over the last twenty years" but I decided to be more flexible.
A lot of discussions about how society has changed or how the world is different always circle around to smartphones, social media, "no one talks to each other in person, they're on their phones always" and the like.
Outside of those topics, what else has changed, by your perception?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]When I was a kid, it was assumed that boys asked girls to dances and not the other way around. In the recent Pixar series Dream Productions, a tween girl is asked who she's going to ask to the school dance. It's now treated as normal for girls to ask boys. She also ends up not going with a date and just going with her friends.
