this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
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Person born in the late 70's here
Although birth of social media took a gigant shit on peoples general mindset and world feels more divided, right wing and missing "street level" empathy, world is still better.
For example in the 80's autistic people were just mentally retarded, dyslexic people were just stupid, bullying in schools was normal behaviour and part of being young, violence among teenagers was more commonplace, attitude that animals were just biological machines with instinctual reactions and just appearance of some cognition was more commonplace. 80's yuppie culture made it fashionable to be a wealthy asshole.
In the 90's home computers became common. Recession had bankrupted many high rolling yuppies. Nerds were no longer beaten for knowing how tech works. Gamer culture was no longer niche phenomenon. Cold war was over and nuclear armageddon was distant thing. Youth culture still had this doom and gloom attitude. Everyone was a flannel wearing tortured skater boy/girl. 90's was the "tomboy era", where girls were allowed to dress and act like boys without being socially ostracised. More attention was focused on mental health and colorful spectrum of human mind.
Late 90s and early 00 internet really started rolling, smarphones started to appear, social media was born. World became very small and everyone who wanted was a content creator. Suddenly large portion of population communicated with people outside their country on a daily basis.
This was the best time in the Internet. Search engines started to actually work and new webpages were sometimes an actual joy. Algorithms weren't corrupting things and polarizing everything. Autogenerated content was yet to come. Internet and social media was infused as essential part of our lives.
2010's the enshittification started and commercialization was on full gear. 2020 has become the era of stupid. AI, autogenerated content, polarization and dead internet.
But even with all this, I still think it's now better for the average person than the cold war paranoia world of the 70-80's.
We are however on a downward spiral and I'm hoping for a counter reaction in coming decades. Hoping that ignorances of past world are just making noise and attracting attention before they vanish for good.
I've been watching BBC Archive footage from the 80s recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yfE9Ihr8F0
Everyone has the exact same fears as they do now: Russian interference, outcompeted by China, being a US lapdog, the price of housing, education standards, rich/poor divide.
All the exact same talking points we have today. We havent changed that much in 50 years just different gadgets.
(Though the absolute rich/ absolute poor divide is a lot bigger
Better gadgets and more inclusion for minorities and LGBTQ+ people. But plenty of incredibly vocal people that act like those rights are fascism, oh and numerous other rights are at risk.
Its a lot of better, and we've come a long way. But we've also come nowhere.