Without mentioning smartphones or social media, what societal changes have you noticed over the course of your lifetime?
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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?
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.
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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?
Better but much more expensive insulin, although price has gone down significantly since Affordable Care act.
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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?
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.
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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.
Game of Thrones was the last time I had this experience.
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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?
Negative: Worse driving interactions (as a pedestrian/cyclist), especially post-covid.
Positive: People are generally more accepting of things, and people seem to be more comfortable sharing parts of them that make themselves different from the "norm".
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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]The mall was full of stores with good quality products that you would value for a non insignificant amount of time if purchased.
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It's more like everyone is literally at their limit for taking care of themselves and literally has no energy leftover for others.
I think this is purposeful to socially divide us.
Could be. But I also see it as a change of mindset. It used to be you cared deeply for a few people. Now it seems like you're expected to care about everyone. And if you spread it that far it becomes thin.
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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.
i got fed up enough that i decided i'm never flying again. if i can't get there in time by driving, so sorry, i won't be able to attend
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More aggressive driving. Statistics even support it so it's not just an anecdotal thing.
the population of the u.s. has increased by almost 100,000,000 since 1990. that's a lot more assholes on the road
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/population
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“Nonsmoking section” that wasn’t even a separate room, just a half wall divider 🫠
Lol, in my tiny ass hometown it was just tables without ashtrays.
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“Nonsmoking section” that wasn’t even a separate room, just a half wall divider 🫠
before that, it was the whole restaurant
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i got fed up enough that i decided i'm never flying again. if i can't get there in time by driving, so sorry, i won't be able to attend
I'm close. I only fly to see family and drive everywhere else. If I can't complete the vacation without driving I'm just not doing it.
It's weird because flights are cheaper but then I don't have a vehicle where I land and most of the places I want to go I need a vehicle. I'm not much of a city boy.
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Remember being able to walk people to their gate, hug them goodbye, and watch the plane leave? Now you can only do this if you’re taking an unaccompanied minor to their gate.
Actually, it depends on the airport. A lot of them you only need to show ID now, not a ticket.
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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?
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!!
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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 was trying to think of specifics, but they're already getting mentioned. I'd just say a lot of these things stem from there being literally double the amount of humans alive right now than when my dad was born. An individual is devalued immensely and cultural cohesion is completely shot.
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Actually, it depends on the airport. A lot of them you only need to show ID now, not a ticket.
Good to hear that’s changing!
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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 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.
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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 more milk delivered each morning to my door.
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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]- 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)
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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 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.
