Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
- 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.
-
deleted by creator
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.
-
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.
-
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.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]deleted by creator
-
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]Outside of formal settings, I'd say that it's uncommon for women to wear skirts or dresses in day-to-day life now.
Menswear is considerably more casual. This is a trend that's been going for over a century or so, so it certainly didn't just happen during my life, but it did significantly change in that time.
-
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.
Even with high speed rail you're looking at 30+ hours from Seattle to NYC. And that's optimistic, ignoring the numerous alpine mountains. No thanks.
-
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.
Why specify the year? Everyone knows what 9/11 is, it's not going to get confused with another 9/11.
-
Even with high speed rail you're looking at 30+ hours from Seattle to NYC. And that's optimistic, ignoring the numerous alpine mountains. No thanks.
Yes, all domestic flights in North America are Seattle to NYC.
-
I grew up in the farm-y outskirts of a big-ish city. I got to catch lizards and tadpoles and toads in the creek nearby, and we'd collect reeds from cattails and weave them into little mats for fun. we'd walk/bike to our friends house without parents, just yell that your going to so and so's and off you trot. We knew the farmer who grew the sweet corn we ate all summer, and the farmers who had the peach orchard and tomato fields we'd harvest from at the end of summer to can cheap produce for the winter.
The foothills behind our neighborhood were covered with grass and shrub, spattered with bike trails and caves right up to the tree line. There were foxes and racoons that you'd need to protect your chickens from. Deer would chill in our yard in fall eating the fallen Apples from around our trees. Flocks of starlings covered our huge cottonwood trees making a huge racket and pooping everywhere. I'd take a metal baseball bat to our big metal clothesline post to make a big gong noise to scare them off cuz they were so loud.Then a fence went up, blocking us from using the hills, and they started construction on a bunch of high end mc mansions. They filled in the caves, killed the foxes and racoons, and paved over the creek to make a walking trail. More and more deer ended up as roadkill till they stopped coming to eat the apples altogether. Developers bought out the farmers to build more houses, first the tomato fields, then the corn, and finally the peaches were ripped out and paved over. The dairy became a giant strip mall for a Staples, and a Kohl's, a donut shop and a sandwich shop. The road I walked alongside, barefoot, to play in the creek became too busy to be safe for kids to walk next to.
In summer we'd play outside and drink from the hose till we were too hot, then we'd run inside and stand under the swamp cooler to cool down. Year after year it got hotter and hotter till the heat was too much and we couldn't play outside for too long because the swamp cooler wasn't enough to cool us down anymore. In winter we used to make snow men and build igloos with buckets full of snow as bricks, and we'd trample paths into the snow drifts that came up to our hips. But year after year the snow banks got shorter and shorter and the snow came later and later until... I remember the first year we had no snow till after Christmas. The decorations looked so sad and stupid sitting on brown grass instead of coated with bright snow. That's the last year I bothered to put them up. The more people moved to the area, the thicker the smog got in the winter. All the stagnant stinky car exhaust and fumes from the refinery got caught in the bowl of the valley all winter, till the hazy air was so dense you couldn't see the mountains that surrounded us.
The world got hotter and more full of cars and houses all while the people got more stranded inside. Yes by the lure of Internet, but also to try to escape the heat and dust and smog. New neighbors in the big houses would snap at us to get off their lawn then smile like they gave a fuck the next Sunday at church.
Neighborhoods full of community became individuals in houses.
I'm only 34.
This is beautifully written, but also painfully familiar.
-
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]Everyone has reduced their perception of the world to a Bad Apple-esque black and white extreme of good or bad. All In Support or Nuclear Strike Disapproval. No inbetweens allowed.
-
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?
I got started on the Internet in 1988. You had to learn Unix (Linux didn't exist yet) and the command line (GUI Internet didn't exist yet), and had to manually piece together files to download them (www didn't exist yet).
-
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?
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.
-
deleted by creator
Interesting. I appreciate the link.
Funny how the US numbers reported are only for a very specific circumstance - possibly taken from conviction rates for such crimes? But anyway, with no data on family/close friend kidnappings, that stat is basically useless isn't it.
-
It is now no longer social suicide to not drink.
And it’s not that hard either. I’m out with a new group of people and just ask “do you drink?” If I get a “no” we know not to push it and just continue on like normal. They still join in with all the conversation, we keep discussions around favorite drinks, alcohol, etc light to none and no one is offended or bothered.
-
I got started on the Internet in 1988. You had to learn Unix (Linux didn't exist yet) and the command line (GUI Internet didn't exist yet), and had to manually piece together files to download them (www didn't exist yet).
Gods, and I felt I was early. I used gopher pre-www, and definitely had interacted with computers by 88, but interacting with networking by that time was virtually unheard of outside of academic or defense settings.
-
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?
Kids don't play outside anymore
-
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?
It still feels a little odd to me that restaurants don't ask "smoking or non?". Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted everything stopped smelling like ash. But it's surreal to remember my grand parents chain smoking over pancakes at Dennys.
