Anti-Nostalgia: What's gotten better?

[Venomnik0]

I could say it's much MUCH easier finding music of all kinds especially in one singular streaming service. Gives room for more underground download sites to breath and allow people the convenience to listen to anything they want (Also Youtube). Another aspect I think is quite nice about modern times is really how popular early 00s nostalgia has become but thats contradictory to this thread.

As much as I make fun of it, i'm glad how normalized anime watching has become and how bullying (atleast what I see) within the younger generations has been quietly dying off. Also open source being practically the backbone of the industry (as it should be) is nice. Overall, it's just nice living in present day, present time.

 

[consonant]

Think the modern thing that's better is indie games, it's a lot easier to get them now and there's a lot of good ones. Them existing means I won't ever really need to worry about the state of gaming as a whole.
Which also means I'm glad that Steam exists because it allows them to be so prevalent. Steam is honestly a platform that's too good to be true right now, any other company in America would be a lot more abusive when they own literally 90% of gamers' games and I'm glad they aren't.
The dependence on Steam will probably eventually bite everyone back in the ass though when Gaben passes away, because people have a hard time from migrating from platforms that barely even provide you anything like Twitter, no one would move an inch if Steam started doing insane shit like making you pay for online.

And I see that this has been discussed, nice.

 

[stonehead]

Navigation! If anyone says copying mapQuest directions by hand into a notebook and just being screwed if you make a wrong turn is better than the current state of gps navigation, they're crazy. Even the most diehard of traditionalists don't take road trips with a pile of atlases in their passenger seat.

Personally, I think working from home is a huge improvement as well. I mean, it sucks to be forced to do work that should really be done in person over Zoom. Most tech jobs though are much better done remotely. I save an hour or two every single day, and the work is less stressful on top of that.

 

[Ashman]

It's much easier to acquire media. Altough it removes the joy of a deep search unless you are searching for something really obscure

 

[Alice N Chain]

I don't know about you guys, but I honestly think this is the best time to discover new music in history, even if what is popular is questionable. Hell, look at the amount of stuff the lost media music community is managing to scrap out.

Also the emerging field of internet archeology is really going to be a blast as we learn about events online, its going to be fun archiving and digging up through old archives.

 

[Cobalt]

In chat No56 brought up how a lot of Agora is "new internet bad, new tech bad". So let's talk about what's improved!

I've been playing some more retro games and I find they're balanced around it being your only game you can grind into for tons of hours a day. While that means the game is more bang for your buck, it also means the experience is watered down and demands more of your time to progress through the better bits. I like that many newer games, specifically indie games, have ways of making the main gameplay loop tighter and more enjoyable.

I'm expecting what people post in this thread to be contentious - I've basically said "I like how modern games are shorter". But what I personally like are games like Portal (vs Portal 2). Portal didn't overstay its welcome, it had a good amount of puzzles and plot and explored the ideas for the perfect length of time. Here I'm mentioning an older game but it illustrates the point well (say, look at FPSes no longer reliant on tons of map secrets). Edit: Sunset fucking Shimmer you retards can't read a complete thought to save your lives. Here's obscure examples I was avoiding because many people won't be able to relate, but also capture shortened nice game idea:

Older Harvest Moon video games have mechanics like having to push cows out and in of the Barn every day, same for Chickens. Stardew Valley, the Indie successor, has made many QoL improvements like that where the gameplay loop is tightened.

Paper Mario TTYD had great ideas, and Bug Fables improved on the formula more than just graphically. It gives up companion variety to expand the depth of the 3 characters (also a nice change), each with unique out-of-combat powers. Tightens and improves gameplay loop.

Cities Skylines is a great modern SimCity giving many fans QoL improvements. I'm not a fan of the game, but I know friends who love it.


Major for me: I love that I'm able to run my own media server with all the content I want curated, and once I stop being lazy and configure ErsatzTV I'll have my own custom always-running channels of whatever content. I can make a cooking channel that has Good Eats intermixed with Toriko. I can have an 80s cartoon network with no ads! I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want and not have PRODUCT shoved in my face.

Also ebooks have made reading so much nicer. I still prefer physical books, but having a library in my pocket is incredible. Imagine describing that to people of the 80s, they'd barely believe it was possible.


Tell me Agorans, what do you love about modernity?

Not related to technology, but I like that way less people smoke nowadays. As a non-smoker that stuff smells nasty and the scent sticks to everything. I remember the 2000's kind of being a transition decade where not everybody smoked anymore but a good enough number of people still did that the nasty smell would be in all sorts of places and having to walk past people actively smoking a cig and it making me cough. Smoking rates reported among US high schoolers fell from 39% in 1998 to just 10% by 2015, for reference.

 

[LostintheCycle]

Not related to technology, but I like that way less people smoke nowadays. As a non-smoker that stuff smells nasty and the scent sticks to everything. I remember the 2000's kind of being a transition decade where not everybody smoked anymore but a good enough number of people still did that the nasty smell would be in all sorts of places and having to walk past people actively smoking a cig and it making me cough. Smoking rates reported among US high schoolers fell from 39% in 1998 to just 10% by 2015, for reference.

Not just that, young people I find are actually judgmental of people that do smoke. It's actually become 'uncool to smoke', it's a PSA wet dream.

 

[Pangolin]

I don't think that they smoke less just that they moved into weed and vapes.

 

[Ticbow2003]

I love that I can talk with friends over a vc who live in completely different parts of the world without long distance charges. I know we had CoD lobbies and such in the past, but things like discord servers make it easier to have fairly constant communication between a large group of friends. Plus, I love the fact that retro tech has become so much cheaper. It's a but of a backwards one, but if it were the 90s or 80s, I absolutely would not have been able to afford the extensive collection of consoles and such that I do.

Though I think that smartphones suck, personally, I do have to agree that the ability to take a high quality photograph wherever you are and play games whenever AND be able to communicate with people whenever and wherever is just such a rad idea.

Ignoring politics, we really do live in an amazing time.

 

[Ticbow2003]

I don't think that they smoke less just that they moved into weed and vapes.

To be fair, both weed and vapes are confirmed to be healthier (vapes by how much is still to be seen) and in any case, the uk government has just banned disposible vapes exactly because of this. So at least something is happening to try to improve it~

 

[CahCaw]

Any surface used for cooking. I remember trying to make toast and it melting together with my toaster. These days it's ez pez

 

[Sketch Relics]

Models, like Plane, tank, car, and mecha have gotten substantially better over time, especially mecha. The difference between an 80's vs modern mecha model is actually kinda ridiculous.

 

[幽邃森林]

To be fair, both weed and vapes are confirmed to be healthier (vapes by how much is still to be seen) and in any case, the uk government has just banned disposible vapes exactly because of this. So at least something is happening to try to improve it~

I'm the USA at least, vapes are trashy. Blowing vape rings, cloud chasing, whatever you call it is almost the equivalent of trying to show off your tribal tattoos.

 

[Fairykang]

Digital books are pretty much the same since mid-90's or so, when the first Acrobat Reader came out for... Win 3.1, I believe. Albeit bigger drive space allows us to store scans in better quality, so, yea, those are indeed better nowadays.

This is actually a nitpick of mine. You had all those experiments with hyperlinking before the birth of the web but the only real implementation of it in digital books is picking stuff out in the table of contents. There are plenty of avenues that could be explored with digital information and its all falling short in my opinion. A similar idea is putting more effort into audiobooks rather than just the narration by almost always one person. I'm thinking of those old school radio play productions.

Something that's gotten better in my opinion is the wide availability of LLMs. Already saved me more than once after search engines became unusable for anything besides DNS. Kind of ironic though since LLMs are part of the reason for the decline of search engine functionality.

Lain giveth and she taketh away.

 

[MySpace Tom]

Kind of ironic though since LLMs are part of the reason for the decline of search engine functionality.

Search engine companies have done this themselves. It's not the fault of LLMs

 

[Lonely_Ghost]

Voice chat & video streaming is far easier and better quality then it used to be. Just chilling out with your friends online is a far more cozy experience.

 

[Anonicus]

To be honest, there's many things and probably even more things said in this thread that I'm about to say but because i wanna go ahead and say it anyways.

Web Browsers:
Web Browser have became much better and faster than they have ever been, Especially with Firefox (I have been using it since I was a kid). Browser Extensions like Ublock Origin and other things has been some of the best things to come out of them in my own opinion.

Internet Service Provider (ISP):
We have much faster internet these days to where it made the things like 6 mbps absolutely nothing to the stuff we have today, Back then I worked with dialup til like 2008, I shit you not! Now you can have blazing speeds to the point where like, 100mbps is just enough but getting 1 GBPS is amazing too.

Computer Hardware:
Now anymore you can pick up a modern standard computer and you can play plenty of PC games that you wouldn't have normally played a decade ago on anything standard. Sure, you might have to play on Low or Medium quality, But the fact that many older games you can go even higher on is insane to me.

Better ways to watch things online for free:
There's much more resource online to do stuff for free and even at times made things look even more modern than ever before so that even normies can chime in on the seas heh.

Phones:
Okay, A bit more controversial take here but Phones have became THE thing to have. Minus the Spyware and the proprietary battery being stuck inside these devices (Which with apple has changed it seems and hopefully other companies follow suit). But the fact that modern day that you can have access to a pocket computer is honestly something else to me. It's just that people's perspective have been skewed as a nightmare machine where misinformation and controversial stuff is happening. But I have used phones that have benefited me a lot more than being something that I have to wait til I get home to check something out. Of course, Trying not to be TOO reliant on it.

Don't get me wrong, there's issues, But there's also benefits in the future as well that doesn't seem too doom and gloom.

 

[Ticbow2003]

I'm the USA at least, vapes are trashy. Blowing vape rings, cloud chasing, whatever you call it is almost the equivalent of trying to show off your tribal tattoos.

Not the same here unfortunately, but disposable vapes are considered trashy here and getting a ban at least.

 

[Ashman]

Oh yeah we practically live in a post-scarcity society for the most part (in the developed world). Post-scarcity Capitalism is quite interesting as you grow by generating demand.

 

[Deerhunter]

people can argue that its nostalgic but I'm frankly just glad i'm able to build a more personal web for myself at all and or not just have to resort to the standard social media like a majority of other people do. I'm more than happy to make a bridge and use apps youtube and insta for general entertainment but use forums like agora road for more longer lasting discussions of things i like or want to talk about. it makes me realize i still have control of how i surf the internet and how i want to lay out my life on it like personal matters or hobbies.

Hobbies themselves are more easier to pick up nowadays with the internet, it can be challenging at first but overtime people can easily find a number of helpful guides and people who are range from being amateur people still honing their craft to industry veterans. even if said guide doesn't make sense you could always find another or talk to a community forum or chatroom to explain things better or for more specific questions. i was no different when looking how to use tracker modules via forums or old >reddit posts on how to make better music with better samples or just straight how to make new ones by scratch.

Finding music is a lot more accessible and i've never been more glad. it gives room for new musicians to breath in while giving older musicians another shot in doing the same with results with bands like Duster and bedhead. people shit on short form content like with instagram reels, youtube shorts and tiktok but these help a lot of musicians and artists get found more easily than with the standard content using popular audio sounds, memes and their own content they make with a hook on it which is far more easier to manage than the standard content we've been used to for decades now.

Animation has gotten a lot more respect and talks with people over the past decade now and so and while its still treated unfairly in the industry its good to know that people are challenging the medium more than anything whether its within the entertainment industry, the internet, or through local communities.