Cultural changes you've noticed in your lifetime

So after watching this video, not only did I briefly wish I had been raised in the 80s, but it got me thinking about all the things in my own life time I've already seen change (often to my dismay).

Technological change is obvious, so I want to focus instead on cultural changes. Anything mundane and stupid like fads and popular celebrates, to larger scale cultural changes and points of nostalgia.

I was born in the mid to late 90's so the first decade of the 2000s is when my childhood took place. One thing I remember quite fondly was playing outside with friends. It was a time of freedom, and parental supervision was minimal if not completely absent.

A change that's really solidified that I hate is how draconian political correctness is now. I remember when being politically incorrect was synonymous with being vulgar, now it can get you fired. The concept of "locker room talk" was prevalent, and public/private speech was distinguished. When used with friends, words like "faggot" or "retard" were just that, words with an added spice. Anyone with social sense wouldn't use them in a class presentation or at Sunday school, but going back to my first point, it was language you would frequently hear at the neighborhood park while kids were hanging out and playing Yu-Gi-Oh or something.

I might share more in another post, but I'm curious what other people have to share.
 
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InsufferableCynic

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Very obvious trends I have noticed change since the early 1990s (even the normiest of normies already know about these):
- Video Games and geek culture have gone from being niche subjects of ridicule to mainstream (they have also become terrible).
- Everyone has become more politically divided. People now build their entire lives around their politics, and even family ties aren't enough to keep people together
- Literally everything has moved online, including things that really shouldn't have, like socialising
- Music has gone from somewhat corporate garbage to almost entirely corporate garbage. Movies too.

Less obvious things but most people still know about them:
- Everything has moved from being permanent to disposable and temporary
- People used to identify around interests, hobbies and attitudes. Now it's all about products, brands, and whichever trend they are following at the time
- People are more excited over technology now, despite knowing less about it

Things that maybe plenty of people on here know about, but which most people in general society either don't realise or don't want to talk about
- Time is effectively frozen. Tradition no longer exists. New technology comes out but it's largely the same as the old one. Most things don't have a specific time-appropriate identity, just sort of "current era". Items from now are the same as items from 10 or even 20 years ago. People no longer cherish that old book from your grandparent or that old still working fridge from 40 years ago. It's now all about the latest and greatest and discarding everything else. This is not just a technology phenomenon. The collective attitude has changed to one of "the previous generations were all stupid and we need to redefine everything", so old ideas, technologies, ways of doing things, traditions, and so forth are all recycled frequently.
- Personal Authority has been replaced with state authority. At the same time that any and all questioning of the government is seen as fascism, parents are now treating their children as equals, people no longer believe in a higher power, and even the natural authority of discipline or skill has been eroded - that is, a good artist is no longer considered to be more authoritative than a fresh or starting out artist, because it's all equal now
- Morality no longer exists, only whatever accomplishes some goal
- Almost everyone, despite having access to millions of people online, has effectively downsized their life to a small bubble of a few core friends, a few activities they do occasionally, and Netflix
- Literally everything is a product now. Human endeavour is seen as pointless unless there's a payout at the other end.

Actually, thinking about the whole "time is frozen" thing, should I make a thread about it?
 
Actually, thinking about the whole "time is frozen" thing, should I make a thread about it?
I mean I agree with the assessment and your thoughts on it. But I would like to hear you further elaborate on it. So if you'd like to make a thread on it go ahead
 
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№56

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I'm just old enough to remember 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, and the effect they both had on American pop culture. "Terrorism=Bad USA #1" type stuff is still getting made, of course, but there was a time when it was absolutely unavoidable. The TV show 24, the first Iron Man movie, the Michael Bay Transformers movies, Jeff Dunham and his stupid "dead terrorist" puppet that everyone liked to quote, etc. I grew up in a pretty liberal area and there were still American flags and "never forget" signage all over the place. In elementary school we had to write letters to soldiers in Iraq and march outside for a collective minute of silence every September 11th. It's been pretty funny to see all the adults I remember being so patriotic back then change their tune over the past decade to match the post-2008 turn towards cynical "diversity and inclusion" rhetoric.
On a related note, I remember a lot more lip service being given to physically disabled people back then. My elementary and middle school textbooks always made sure to have a token wheelchair kid in the illustrations, along with the token black kid and the token hispanic kid. I also remember wheelchair-bound, blind, or deaf characters showing up regularly on children's TV programs. Maybe it's my selective memory or maybe it's because I'm no longer in the target demographic, but that kind of tokenism seems to have disappeared entirely. It's weird, because you would expect it to have only gotten more intense given the direction everything else is going.
Another minor change I haven't heard anyone comment on is how ubiquitous sports betting has become since it was legalized at the federal level in 2018 (my state lifted its ban in 2019.) I remember gambling on professional sports being considered shady and degenerate, but now everyone does it. All the major teams have official partnerships with some sportsbook, there are ads for mobile betting apps on the side of bus stops, and I have a number of coworkers who like to chat about how much money they made or lost on last night's game. There was barely any controversy, either. One day gambling on baseball games was only for mobsters and the next day it was totally normal.
This borders on the technological, but the culture of piracy on the internet is almost entirely dead now. Napster and Limewire used to be something even people who weren't tech savvy knew about. I remember learning how to torrent video games and music from a friend in elementary school. Now you'd be lucky to find a young person who doesn't legally stream everything. This ties into anime becoming more mainstream thanks to the Japanese realizing they could easily market their stuff directly to the US via paid streaming sites run by ex-fansubbers. The Toonami/Adult Swim/Walt Disney Corporation filter is totally gone, and now I regularly see buff dudes watching the likes of Sword Art Online and Re:Zero on the gym treadmills. Not too long ago a well-adjusted and otherwise normal girl who used to pick on me for being a nerd in middle school made a Facebook post about how she was a fan of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. I almost had a stroke.
 
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Another minor change I haven't heard anyone comment on is how ubiquitous sports betting has become since it was legalized at the federal level in 2018 (my state lifted its ban in 2019.)
Despite the internet, this is the kind of thing that's completely flown under my radar not being in the US anymore. I also heard that weed is basically legal in most major cities like New York and Chicago now, that's just crazy to me. Idk if that means there are now shops that sell it, if you just won't get arrested for personal use, but that's still a major shift nonetheless
 
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Interesting thread. People covered a lot but I'll try to add some stuff I remember.

- The internet. My parents would chastise me for chatting online when I was younger since they believed every person masquerading as a kid was actually a 40-something year old sex offender. Today my mother has Facebook account and has not only befriended complete strangers on there but has invited local ones over to her home. I've met a few of them and luckily none of them are complete psychopaths (yet).

- Religion is almost universally rejected and reviled today. Believing in God (or any god) is rebellious in 2022. I've been agnostic basically my entire life but that may change sooner rather than later.

Probably just falling in and out of fashion but...

- Smoking was cool when I was a kid, then considered lame in high school, but then became cool again when e-cigarettes & vaping came out. I myself was a "social smoker" in high school and kinda only really did it BECAUSE it was taboo at the time.
 
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Awesome posts in this thread so far, and excellent points I hadn't considered.

I'm kinda surprised no one pointed this out yet though:


Weed's public perception has evolved rapidly, from something only done by degenerates and rebels, to a pain reliever for chronic pain sufferers — which then, of course, opened the way for recreational use to be seen as a normal pastime.

It's especially normalized in towns where it's been legalized for a while.

Not only does everyone I know smoke it, but their parents, who had previously been viciously opposed to their kids' smoking it, have since given in and taken up the habit themselves.

I wonder if weed is here to stay like alcohol, or if it'll eventually get so out of hand it'll become illegal again?
 
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punishedgnome

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-When I was a teenager nobody wanted to be labeled a faggot and trying to show how macho and emotionally indifferent you were was cool. Now 20 years later it seems as though the opposite is true. Teenagers seemingly want to appear empathetic and being a straght white guy is not cool, so if they're not gay, they invent words to try and join the LGBT community like pansexual or hetroflexible.

-Similarly it was cool to be edgy when I was a teenager and people tried really hard to have offensive takes. Swastikas were comedy gold and people used to draw them everywhere. That would make the news nowadays. Kids would tell each other racist and homophobic jokes constantly.

-My high school had a smoking section outside and like half the school smoked. There was a jukebox in the cafeteria.

-It was very cool not to care. Caring was for faggots. Nobody wanted to be a faggot. Nihilism was in. I still struggle with this one. I'm still kind of just generally disaffected and don't actually care about very much. Having kids helped, but I still struggle to care about shit generally.
 
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My elementary and middle school textbooks always made sure to have a token wheelchair kid in the illustrations, along with the token black kid and the token hispanic kid. I also remember wheelchair-bound, blind, or deaf characters showing up regularly on children's TV programs.
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Awesome posts in this thread so far, and excellent points I hadn't considered.

I'm kinda surprised no one pointed this out yet though:


Weed's public perception has evolved rapidly, from something only done by degenerates and rebels, to a pain reliever for chronic pain sufferers — which then, of course, opened the way for recreational use to be seen as a normal pastime.

It's especially normalized in towns where it's been legalized for a while.

Not only does everyone I know smoke it, but their parents, who had previously been viciously opposed to their kids' smoking it, have since given in and taken up the habit themselves.

I wonder if weed is here to stay like alcohol, or if it'll eventually get so out of hand it'll become illegal again?
Which is funny since the shit normies are smoking today is way more potent than the shit the degens and urchins were smoking 30 years ago.
 
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a little while ago, i was dating this girl who was 22. she was born in 2000. i was trying to explain in what ways the 90s were different....its not something that can be put into words easily.

its almost like mass mounts of people have been lobotomized.

the status quo has surpassed just....a thing or concept, to being god to people.

belief in god has declined, but pepole are more religious than they ever have been. they worship corporations, social acceptance, ego, etc.

my friends were uninvited from thanksgiving last year by their family because they didn't take the covid shot. they got pissed because my friends kids were running around at a PARK, OUTDOORS and not wearing a mask. people are so devoted to corporations and status quo, they will disintegrate their families over it.

people care more about what authority figures say or what is socially accepted than they do the truth. its EVERYWHERE. Covid, jan 6, societal norm, pedo/tranny/homo shit, food, ukraine war, historical narrative, whatever

reality has been replaced by a fake, pseudo-digital simulation. we ARE living in a simulation, but reality itself is not a simulation. the simulation has replaced reality. in this simulation, men can have babies, masks stop viruses, ivermectin is "horse medicine", black invented the lightbulb and electricity, gender is just a thought, wanting a fair election makes you a terrorist, speration of corporations and government makes you a nazi, killing jews in right wing, lust is equal to love, everyone is equal and we're all one happy "human" family
 
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elia925-6

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* Anime became so accessible that you can watch them for free
* Board games are reviving due to kickstarter scene and those heavy 'nerdy' ones like D&D and european strategy games like Catan attract normal audience
* Coffee culture has changed. People are more aknowledgeable mainly in US and countries with poor coffee culture like Korea about coffee seed varieties that give unique tastes, looking for speciality coffee shops outside Starbucks, investing on coffee preperation equipment like french press
* Indie games went from small flash games with bad quality sound to AAA level graphic games thanks to Unity 3D
* Young people don't smoke as much as the 80's but i see is still a thing in my country
 
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InsufferableCynic

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Maybe it's my selective memory or maybe it's because I'm no longer in the target demographic, but that kind of tokenism seems to have disappeared entirely. It's weird, because you would expect it to have only gotten more intense given the direction everything else is going.
The same thing is happening to white gay men, especially conservative white gay men

Basically, it's a power struggle to see who can become the most oppressed, and while disabled people have a pretty good argument there, making shit up matters more than actually being oppressed, and nobody is better at that than the social justice community, who really don't care about disabled people at all. They are effectively operating off stolen virtue from actual victims, which is depressing.

Another minor change I haven't heard anyone comment on is how ubiquitous sports betting has become since it was legalized at the federal level in 2018 (my state lifted its ban in 2019.) I remember gambling on professional sports being considered shady and degenerate, but now everyone does it. All the major teams have official partnerships with some sportsbook, there are ads for mobile betting apps on the side of bus stops, and I have a number of coworkers who like to chat about how much money they made or lost on last night's game. There was barely any controversy, either. One day gambling on baseball games was only for mobsters and the next day it was totally normal.
Yeah this drives me up the fucking wall.

I can't really say much about the rest of the world, but down here in Aus, you pretty much can't have a single sports event that isn't sponsored by a betting company, and ads for them are constantly blaring at all times during the games. Professional sports seems to have become so degenerate that it's basically now going for the most desperate, vulnerable people and they aren't even hiding it anymore. Sport has basically always been a product, but now they aren't even hiding it anymore.

- Religion is almost universally rejected and reviled today. Believing in God (or any god) is rebellious in 2022. I've been agnostic basically my entire life but that may change sooner rather than later.
I have noticed this too. I went through a deconversion at the age of 13 or so, but since then I have noticed a lot of the sort of "edgy atheist" >redditcostanzayeahrightsmirk memes have basically become the official position - now it's not controversial to say people who believe in religion are deluded idiots, dinosaur conservatives, etc etc. While I am not religious, I have definitely noticed the trend towards degeneracy over the last 20 years or so, and I attribute it to people jettisoning their faith and having nothing to replace it with, so instead of cultivating a well-reasoned sense of morality, they just jump onto the latest moral outrage hype train and are basically moral relativists. Things are right or wrong because the consensus says so. I had to do a lot of work to reshape my way of thinking after losing my faith, as there was a lot of gaps that needed to be filled and replaced with well reasoned positions, and it's clear these people haven't done that work. This is also where the modern surge of feminism has come from - a bunch of anti-religious people who have not done the mental work needed to actually develop a worldview independent of religion, so they jumped out of one cult and immediately into another, complete with dogma, priests, and all the other nonesense you expect from a typical religion. Most atheists these days are deeply religious, and it shocks me how little they have changed because they haven't actually done the work to change.
 
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InsufferableCynic

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Unity is a big enabler, but the one that materially closes the gap is the Unreal Engine, with a lot of the credit going to their royalty license model.
As a professional game developer I can say with confidence that all the hype around the Unreal engine right now is largely unjustified and the only reason it's so popular is because it's a fad.

Unity is far superior in terms of their business model, their ease of use, and their ability for studios (especailly indies) to make reusable code and share it with others. Blueprints are, honestly speaking, pretty bad in comparison to monobehaviours.

Unreal is popular because it looks nice. It's also an absolute nightmare to work with.
 

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As a professional game developer I can say with confidence that all the hype around the Unreal engine right now is largely unjustified and the only reason it's so popular is because it's a fad.

Unity is far superior in terms of their business model, their ease of use, and their ability for studios (especailly indies) to make reusable code and share it with others. Blueprints are, honestly speaking, pretty bad in comparison to monobehaviours.

Unreal is popular because it looks nice. It's also an absolute nightmare to work with.
I know, especially if you don't have good background in C++, Image processing and software engineering. The UE is not beginner friendly and the source code is available on GitHub.
 
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elia925-6

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* Big corporations embracing open source software mainly Microsoft and Valve.
* The gap between portable and tv consoles is closing in terms of software and hardware thanks to Nintedno Switch. You can even run proper linux on Steam Deck and i like how they made a teardown video to demostate the users.
 
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Idk if that means there are now shops that sell it, if you just won't get arrested for personal use
Legalising drugs and not making official shops open is just plain stupid: it would basically mean "Oh, yes, let's give free money to mafias and cartels without any good side effects"
 
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Legalising drugs and not making official shops open is just plain stupid: it would basically mean "Oh, yes, let's give free money to mafias and cartels without any good side effects"
Idk if you're American or not (I'm going to assume not), but in the American context it makes sense because it's a huge political issue. A huge portion of US prisoners are in for non-violent drug crimes, and they are disproportionately minorities especially black, which has turned it into a huge racial issue. Because a lot of prisons in the US are privatized, there's an incentive to keep them full, hence why police often target people committing low level drug offences. So legalizing personal use of marijuana while also not allowing official stores to open would be a way a politician could play both sides. I.e. It addresses the racial tensions that have surrounded this issue, but it appeases conservatives by not openly supporting the use of marijuana.
 
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Lonely_Ghost

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Japanese anything is far more accessible and socially acceptable. Their media has made a huge mainstream jump from simply being niche weird cartoons for teenage faggots to normie shows and comics that people watch in theatres abd buy at any bookstore.
But aside from that, people seem far more despondent then they used to, there's an overwhelming feeling of depression and apathy that genuinely makes being with company uncomfortable if you dwell on it too long.
 
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