They maybe did...
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"It's the smell..."
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I think it's is a bit disingenuous to pretend like Gen X hasn't also been drowning in member berries. All the 70s and 80s nostalgia that has also been permiating media the past decade is more or less Gen X dreaming of their childhoods. Hell, the birth of the online movie and video game reviews was mostly spear headed by Gen X'ers sitting and screaming in front of their cameras about how this game and that show or movie was either amazing or ruined their childhoods. One even called himself the Nostalgia Critic. I have also heard countless Gen X'ers reminisce about how much better things were when they were young. Especially in more recent years where more and more "back in my day we played outside and didn't stare at phones all day"-videos get posted to social media.
Gen X is not too good to be down here in the mud with the rest of us nostalgic peasants.
Every generation has a bit of nostalgia for thier childhoods and everybody misses parts of times that have passed and that is fine.
I just don't like it when it gets to a point where one starts acting like there is absolutely nothing positive or better going on in the current age we live in and that all the good stuff is in the past. That irks the fuck out of me.
Sure, I'm not saying that they're immune from nostalgia. Im not so saying that because they were to soon after Boomers, they didn't have anyone from whom to learn about making nostalgia a marketing device that consumes everyone, and didn't really have a good run at first. The mid-70s sucked for most people, and waiting in line for gasoline with your parents and the rather bizzare kids' shows of the time don't hit as a unofied cultural icon the same as the NES or the Beatles.
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The 90s had a lot of good in them but I gotta admit I'm a bit tired of this nostalgic mindset people have about the past.
Sure, a lot of things are not going well today, but at the same time we have made amazing advancements in multiple areas where I'm sure most of you would regret going back to the 90s and not have them.
Advancements in medicine and science as well as social advancements in the form of a better understanding and acceptance of mental health issues. Being gay and trans today is also a lot easier than it was in the 90s. We hold sexual predators more and more responsible for their actions today than we did back then. More people today are aware and concerned about fixing the environment than they were in the 90s where you got to hear things about the ozone layer and then that was it.
Smoking is on its way out. Similar with alcohol. At least in my country. It is less nad less socially acceptable and more and more people turn away from those vices, which is amazing.
In my experience, more and more people raise their kids with respect for the child's emotional well being. My generation were barely seen as humans when we were children and I see more and more people around my age raising their children with the respect they didn't receive themselves when they were little. It is bound to create some more robust people in the future who have a healthy sense of self and who believe in themselves.
There are so many good things in the world right now, but if you only look for the bad and start romanticizing a past that wasn't really as perfect as you think it was, then you're, in my opinion, living wrong.
It's okay to appreciate things from the past and miss them, but this "the world was better" bullshit is just very counter productive and in many cases objectively untrue.
You raise a lot of good points. But for me, it was better in that there was still a lot of hope to go around. Things generally seems on the up and up. Technology was getting better. This new Internet thing was getting better and faster. The economy was getting better. The government still enforced anti-trust laws. We (the US) weren't at war. Climate change still seemed very fixable. We were dealing with the hole in the ozone and acid rain, we'll deal with everything else! The scientists will figure it out.
Now it just feels like the world is going to shit and there's nothing we can do. Even when "good" things happen, it feels more like we've only "slowed down" a bit as we continue careening toward the cliff.
We're past, like, all the points of no return for the climate. Corporate power feels unstoppable. Open corruption is rampant and normalized throughout the world's governments. The major powers are arming themselves and not cooperating. World War 3 is scheduled for 2027 if it doesn't happen before then. And the response to COVID showed that our systems and infrastructure are balanced like a house of cards.
So maybe the y-value was lower in the 90s, but the curve definitely felt like it was sloping upward. Now we're past the peak.
