Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?
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The way retard has changed over the years is wild to me. Cause around me there are large communities of people with mental and physical disabilities who aggressively try to tell people that they are infact retarded. It's the word they grew up with and are fighting tooth and nail to keep it from turning into a slur. Even tho it's been used as one against those very people for years.
It's such a weird thing to watch from the side line. Makes me wonder if this is what it was like during the rise of rap and the n word.
Tho it's also getting to the point there's so many letter-slurs that it's getting stupid. At some point feels like we are going to have to either just stop caring and accept that intentions matter more then the words them self. Else we are goanna run out of letters to describe slurs.
Makes it very hard to have meaningful discourse around the topic. To be fair the fear of bans, and punishment for even saying some words regardless of context or topic also just makes it very iffy to talk about this topic in many places.
Hell iv seen people banned on etymology fourms and subs because someone said a "letter" slur with in the context of explaining the origin of the word. It's crazy what the internet has become recently.
Yea that one got me by surprise. Not sure when it changed, but a few years back a friend told me I offended someone by using it.
I was confused - stopped using it though.
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Cartoons went from the majority of them having a unique enough art style to distinguish them from one another. If you take a silhouette of heads/faces from cartoon characters in the 90s and 2000s ( don't have experience with prior decades besides the standard MGM cartoons, Jetsons/Flintstones, or things like Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry ) you'd be able to tell the characters apart, even if you don't even know who they are. Try doing that with most all 2010s and upwards new cartoon characters and you'll get the exact same ugly, generic, and sanitized bean shaped head/face/smile imaginable.
There have definitely been some examples that might deviate a little from that mold, like Summer Camp Island, but those are far and few between anymore.
Also, for the most part, I would consider the overall quality as having been declining as well. I haven't seen a lot of shows, so my experience should be taken with a huge lump of salt, but besides shows like Steven Universe, Summer Camp Island, etcetera, the storytelling hasn't been as tight ( all of this in my opinion ), they're banking on you not actually paying attention to the show itself so they can cheap out on every single step, art style is being sanitized and overly simplified to cut costs, and jokes are all devolving into "LOL RANDOM", but that might have been a 2010s thing and I hope it's dead.
It also doesn't help that fans and fandom culture over time have become worse as well as you'll usually find a vocal minority who will kick and scream while doxxing you because you ship the wrong 2 fictional characters together or don't believe their exact highly specific headcannon, regardless of whether you are the creator or nor. Though, I'm debating of getting rid of this section because it might bleed too much into social media.
I want to add Adventure Time to the good list. There definitely are some episodes that feel "lol random" but there's a longer story arc that's actually really deeply explored
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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?
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.
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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?
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.
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It's 14 hours by bullet train. Spend 8 of it sleeping and save the planet
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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.
Hey, I just wanted to say this was a pretty great read, even if it was depressing as hell. You've got a knack for painting a picture with words.
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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.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I feel lucky living in the Northeast: Acela works. It’s not actual high speed rail by world standards, but it is convenient enough, fast enough, cheap enough to be the most desirable option to travel between major cities. But we don’t have this anywhere else.
How can we get this level of service between cities everywhere?
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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.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Why do people always go here?
- Fine: coast to coast, north to south should have flights. However almost all domestic flights are shorter and most of those are between city pairs where rail could be more efficient.
- Fine: keep your bush pilots and feeder airlines, but 80% of the population is in metro areas.
- high speed rail advocates generally speak in terms of population density and distance for choosing the right option: generally city pairs less than 500 miles apart can be more efficiently served by rail. That’s most cities in the US, and metro areas are 80% the population
We don’t need to argue about it not being absolute,if you can recognized the predominant needs
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Sometimes I forget that smoking is a thing, and then (after sometimes a whole year) I see someone doing it, and I’m like, “woah, people still smoke.” It was everywhere when I was a kid—even inside restaurants.
It always surprises me that pot smoking is now worse. Don’t get me wrong: go ahead with your vice. But the world used to smell like an ash tray and now it smells like skunk. Realistically the world doesn’t stink as much, which is excellent, but that means pot smokers really stand out as annoying stink
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Why specify the year? Everyone knows what 9/11 is, it's not going to get confused with another 9/11.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Because over time people will forget the year. Like many hear July 4th and couldn’t tell you it is for 1776. People get lazy, and knowing the year gives a nice reference for time and how it has gone by.
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More aggressive driving. Statistics even support it so it's not just an anecdotal thing.
I’ve noticed that too. I also noticed a very large uptick after Covid and things opened back up. It seems like people genuinely forgot tact, decency, and rules. It’s weird because Covid wasn’t THAT long that we were locked down.
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Bigger cars, wider roads, more lanes, more noise, longer commutes
Brighter lights
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Because over time people will forget the year. Like many hear July 4th and couldn’t tell you it is for 1776. People get lazy, and knowing the year gives a nice reference for time and how it has gone by.
Man sometimes I forget just how utterly brain dead some people are. Forgetting 1776.
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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?
In not particular order, and a kind reminder that I'm not from US so some things may look different if you are from there:
People are far noisier, as there is less concerns by being judged by your neighbors. People used to behave purely out of shame. Now the shame is gone and people are wild.
Vast increase in dog ownership. There's literally more dog than small kids in my country from several years now.
Vast increase in immigration. Statistics are weird here, as we give citizenship to a great amount of migrants in just two years, and here is illegal to record statistics based on ethnicity, country of origin or any aspect that would identify anyone's ancestry. But my neighborhood went to 90-10 national-immigrant to 40-60. I live in a poor neighborhood so it's not the same in all parts of the country, but immigration increase is there and it's a big change.
Less violence overall. Street violence overall seems lower. Also there's less of a terrorists threat as we used to have (there were several active terrorists groups here that are now gone).
A housing problem. People used to get a house without issues. Now it's one of the biggest issues of young people.
Increase of tolerance towards homosexuality. It's view as something very normal nowadays I think, and it use not to be that way.
Increase of equality between men and women. Direct discrimination is completely outlaw and hard to see. Indirect discrimination may still exist but is on a all time low. Most bosses I have had in all my jobs have been women (for giving a small example).
People go on vacation more often and further away. When I was young people used to just go one time a year on vacation, most of the time to a national place. Now people go several times a year to foreign countries, and "travel" have become the most important thing in many people's lives (how many dating profiles have I seen in which the person pointed traveling as their life moto).
Most people have university studies. It didn't used to be that way.
There's probably much more. Those are the first things that came into my mind.
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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?
smoking
gay
Amazon
conspiracy
racism
mental health
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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?
I've watched things go from "how can we profit from this?" to "how much can we profit from this without quite killing the plebs?"
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Man sometimes I forget just how utterly brain dead some people are. Forgetting 1776.
Is 1776 an American thing? Because it does not seem to ring a bell for me...
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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?
There are more idiots. Flatearthers, space deniers, antivaxxers. The more information people have access to the less intelligent society seems to get.
Surveillance Capitalism is getting more out of hand every year. Combined with more data breaches it's not great.
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I want to add Adventure Time to the good list. There definitely are some episodes that feel "lol random" but there's a longer story arc that's actually really deeply explored
Absolutely. I didn't realize they did more of a story arc until I ended up seeing clips on yt. I definitely remember some of the lore episodes but I definitely wasn't smart enough to piece together any lore. I might have to suffer through the occasional "lol random" episodes just to see the lore through.
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Is Arcane a cartoon?
Don't 100% sure whether it is or not. Also, I couldn't tell you anything about it since I haven't watched it as someone who doesn't play League.
