Cultural changes you've noticed in your lifetime

PizzaW0lf

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The PS3/ 360/ Wii generation was the golden era that had the perfect balance of good offline and online multiplayer. Only the Switch is keeping split screen multiplayer alive these days, it was almost magical having all the boys gather around a tiny screen playing Mario Kart back in high school when it first came out.
Some Switch games support 8-player local multiplayer which is nuts.

Also, looking at my Switch collection I only have 3 games that don't have local multiplayer. Everything else can be played with someone else.
 
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Orlando Smooth

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Fashion in the US is slowly becoming more Europeanized in some regards. Not in every respect but "metro sexual" fashion has become way more popular in the US over the past few decades.
This reminded me of something I've noticed in my lifetime: the decline of formality, and especially the increasing rarity of suits. Used to be that if a man worked basically any office job, you'd at least wear a shirt and tie, but I think this was really killed off by tech bros being very casual in their dress. I think this is one of the few things that dates Office Space, they're all wearing collared shirts and ties despite being non-caring slackers at a shitty software company.

I know many people are glad this formality is gone, and it definitely came with a lot of frustrations, but I think it is yet another way in which the line between work and home life has been blurred. You take yourself and others more seriously when everyone is dressed professionally.
 
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RisingThumb

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This reminded me of something I've noticed in my lifetime: the decline of formality, and especially the increasing rarity of suits. Used to be that if a man worked basically any office job, you'd at least wear a shirt and tie, but I think this was really killed off by tech bros being very casual in their dress. I think this is one of the few things that dates Office Space, they're all wearing collared shirts and ties despite being non-caring slackers at a shitty software company.

I know many people are glad this formality is gone, and it definitely came with a lot of frustrations, but I think it is yet another way in which the line between work and home life has been blurred. You take yourself and others more seriously when everyone is dressed professionally.
This is both good and bad. Good in that I can wear what I want for work. Bad in that it means the stuff most people wear is actually really badly fitted for them, and you can tell. Not many people get things tailored, so when a formal event does come up, those without any formal wear are utterly screwed to show up in a dumb brand Rick and Morty T-Shirt with baggy, ripped jeans, and a baggy poorly fitting hoodie for formal events. If that describes you (anyone reading this), you should look at improving your wardrobe to hit form, function and comfort, rather than just comfort.
 
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punishedgnome

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The PS3/ 360/ Wii generation was the golden era that had the perfect balance of good offline and online multiplayer. Only the Switch is keeping split screen multiplayer alive these days, it was almost magical having all the boys gather around a tiny screen playing Mario Kart back in high school when it first came out.
I didn't realize it had gotten so bad. My wife owns a Switch, but I don't play a lot of new games. I think the last new thing I played was the new Ninja Turtles beat 'em up with her.

The last game system I went out and bought when it was relevant was a Wii U in 2013 which was a decade ago now. When that flopped, despite what I thought was one of the best first party libraries Nintendo had ever put together, I was like, "Maybe, buying new consoles isn't for me anymore."
 
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I'll throw out a crazy one: when I was in middle school and High school in the southern USA in the late 90s/early aughts, everyone said the N-word. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and white. It wasn't that big of a deal unless you were pointing to a black person and saying it in the meanest wayupossible with emphasis on the ER ending. Otherwise, it was just something you said, often positively, like "Dude is my __" meaning, dude is my bro. Everyone listened to rap music.
 
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This reminded me of something I've noticed in my lifetime: the decline of formality, and especially the increasing rarity of suits. Used to be that if a man worked basically any office job, you'd at least wear a shirt and tie, but I think this was really killed off by tech bros being very casual in their dress. I think this is one of the few things that dates Office Space, they're all wearing collared shirts and ties despite being non-caring slackers at a shitty software company.

I know many people are glad this formality is gone, and it definitely came with a lot of frustrations, but I think it is yet another way in which the line between work and home life has been blurred. You take yourself and others more seriously when everyone is dressed professionally.
Yeah call me a boomer but the bolder, thicker lines between your professional and home life really did serve a purpose that people still continue to underestimate / ignore to this day.

I felt better and slept better when we all wore business clothes to the office and no one worked from home. Although I acknowledge this came at the cost of frustrating commutes and chunks of time used just preparing for work.
 
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RisingThumb

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Younger people flaking out is something I have dealt with a lot. I'm pretty young and I'd say about 60% of the time I made plans with someone they'd cancel on me after I had already arrived where we were going to meet. If I was lucky it'd be a few hours before the planned time. The explanation almost every time was "anxiety" or a "panic attack" which obviously do happen, but it seems to be a thinly veiled lie for just being lazy. Maybe it's just me and people don't like me (not unlikely) but it happened at such a rate that it leads me to think people just want to stay in instead of going out.

I guess one of the things I've noticed change is that people would rather be alone and watch something online rather than go out and hang out with some friends or try new things. The massive rise in "anxiety" is one too. Hell, even I got got with that one. I got diagnosed with all sorts of stuff and had SSRIs shoved down my throat. I was told I was just stuck with anxiety and I was given all these strategies to cope when in reality I was just lazy and needed to get up and go out. I wasn't afraid to go out, I just didn't want to go out, but I was told I had a disorder and became convinced I was afraid. I guess the point of all that was people are flakey, there's been a glorification of mental illness, and over diagnosis of these mental illnesses, everyone needs one to be cool (even if they have to make one up), way more pills are being shoved down kids throats, and it's acceptable to be completely dependent on that medication for the rest of your life.

I'm pretty young so I don't have a bunch of life experience, but our future doesn't look so hot.
"Flake it 'til you break it"
 
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"Flake it 'til you break it"
Does anyone else think that smartphones has some big part to play in this? People seem to think is ok to completely break or bend plans at extremely short notice because of the assumption that you can have this live, neverending instant messaging conversation with everyone.

In the early 2000s and earlier you had to make plans well ahead of time and generally just stick to the plan because alot of people didn't have mobile phones yet.
 
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bnuungus

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Does anyone else think that smartphones has some big part to play in this? People seem to think is ok to completely break or bend plans at extremely short notice because of the assumption that you can have this live, neverending instant messaging conversation with everyone.

In the early 2000s and earlier you had to make plans well ahead of time and generally just stick to the plan because alot of people didn't have mobile phones yet.
I think instant communication plays a big role, yes. The ability to instantly let someone know changes to a plan makes those plans seem more trivial and thus people are more likely to break or bend them
 
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I think instant communication plays a big role, yes. The ability to instantly let someone know changes to a plan makes those plans seem more trivial and thus people are more likely to break or bend them
People need to re-learn how to respect each other's time it seems.

On a side note, have you noticed brb and gtg have almost completely disappeared from texting, because there is no such thing as brb and gtg from your phone lol
 
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RisingThumb

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Does anyone else think that smartphones has some big part to play in this? People seem to think is ok to completely break or bend plans at extremely short notice because of the assumption that you can have this live, neverending instant messaging conversation with everyone.

In the early 2000s and earlier you had to make plans well ahead of time and generally just stick to the plan because alot of people didn't have mobile phones yet.
No doubt about it, "smart" phones almost definitely contributed
 
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bnuungus

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On a side note, have you noticed brb and gtg have almost completely disappeared from texting, because there is no such thing as brb and gtg from your phone lol
I hadn't really noticed that but yeah. People used to treat texting as having a conversation but now it's more like EmailLite so the need for those is gone
 
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I hadn't really noticed that but yeah. People used to treat texting as having a conversation but now it's more like EmailLite so the need for those is gone
I hadn't really thought about it that way. But yes, phone instant messaging has become less like a conversation compared to an IM session in the 2000s MSN/AOL/ICQ era.
 
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^^ A very good point. The nature of current messaging apps makes it kind of impossible to disconnect. Conversations are paused now and then, but one is expected to always be available.
 
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No Style

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Younger people flaking out is something I have dealt with a lot. I'm pretty young and I'd say about 60% of the time I made plans with someone they'd cancel on me after I had already arrived where we were going to meet. If I was lucky it'd be a few hours before the planned time. The explanation almost every time was "anxiety" or a "panic attack" which obviously do happen, but it seems to be a thinly veiled lie for just being lazy. Maybe it's just me and people don't like me (not unlikely) but it happened at such a rate that it leads me to think people just want to stay in instead of going out.

I guess one of the things I've noticed change is that people would rather be alone and watch something online rather than go out and hang out with some friends or try new things.
From my experience this doesn't happen to younger people only. I've made a similar observation with people in mine and my family's circles which range all the way from ages 20s to 60s.
So how did even the behavior of people that were used to a different conduct change? The question one must ask is, "why do people meet up in the first place and why would they be worried about canceling meetings"?
It's about fulfilling needs, namely entertainment and social interaction. Before the internet became mainstream there wasn't an easy appealing way for a lot people to pass the time without going out to begin with so there was little reason to be lazy and sit on a couch all day. Talking could be done on the phone if you had the money but you couldn't share anything non-verbal that way. Today you have a plethora of options to distract you on the internet and you can share everything on social media and safely quench your feelings of isolation. Social media is also the safety net that shelters you from the consequences of keeping people hanging. So what if people don't wanna hang out with you anymore? You always have a place to retreat to to get your fix.
All of this comes with the fact that real interactions are just a lot less convenient. Planning, committing to a time frame, the effort of actually getting somewhere with just the outlook of a possible payoff. It's very tempting when you consider your options and realize you can get gratified instantly with no effort. It may even seem like a completely rational choice. There's a reason platforms like Tiktok are becoming increasingly popular. They're not designed to give you the highest joy possible, but simply stay as frustration free and convenient as possible. Even if you didn't like something, at least it was short, painless and took no effort.
Convenience runs deep in our society. For longer than our history humanity has tried to make life easier. Like the now common wisdom, "if you want a hard job done easier, let a lazy person do it", technology itself has been there mainly as a tool for convenience, not to make us stronger but to make the world an easier place. It goes so far that we define our very progress by the advancement of our convenience. Progress is not a measure of how tall we stand but how high we can stack the laurels we sit on and while technology used to be focused on making production more convenient with the advent of computers technology finally brings ultimate convenience to entertainment and social interaction.
One thing I noticed with videogames, which are specifically designed to be fun, is that most memorable moments weren't actually that fun. A lot of memories were made during frustration and struggle, but are the most valuable in hindsight. It made me realize convenience is basically like candy. It satisfies in the short term, but it's addictive and unhealthy. And in the same way getting in shape is only truly satisfiying when you can think back on all the hard work you did and see your body not just as a reflection of your results but as the effort and discipline you put into it.
 

№56

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Does anyone else think that smartphones has some big part to play in this? People seem to think is ok to completely break or bend plans at extremely short notice because of the assumption that you can have this live, neverending instant messaging conversation with everyone.

In the early 2000s and earlier you had to make plans well ahead of time and generally just stick to the plan because alot of people didn't have mobile phones yet.
In my experience there's a direct relationship between how "online" someone is and how likely they are to flake out. The more "discord friends" somebody has, the more likely they are to waste your time by sending you a message five minutes before you were going to meet about how they suddenly "don't have enough energy" for the thing you've been planning for weeks. Either that, or they show up and suddenly demand to do something completely different.
I think spending time on semi-anonymous internet communities like discord encourages you to see other people as a means to an end, functional objects you can use or discard depending on your mood. When you only know your friends as a collection of anime avatars and lines of text on a screen it's hard not to start thinking this way.
 
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From my experience this doesn't happen to younger people only. I've made a similar observation with people in mine and my family's circles which range all the way from ages 20s to 60s.
So how did even the behavior of people that were used to a different conduct change? The question one must ask is, "why do people meet up in the first place and why would they be worried about canceling meetings"?
It's about fulfilling needs, namely entertainment and social interaction. Before the internet became mainstream there wasn't an easy appealing way for a lot people to pass the time without going out to begin with so there was little reason to be lazy and sit on a couch all day. Talking could be done on the phone if you had the money but you couldn't share anything non-verbal that way. Today you have a plethora of options to distract you on the internet and you can share everything on social media and safely quench your feelings of isolation. Social media is also the safety net that shelters you from the consequences of keeping people hanging. So what if people don't wanna hang out with you anymore? You always have a place to retreat to to get your fix.
All of this comes with the fact that real interactions are just a lot less convenient. Planning, committing to a time frame, the effort of actually getting somewhere with just the outlook of a possible payoff. It's very tempting when you consider your options and realize you can get gratified instantly with no effort. It may even seem like a completely rational choice. There's a reason platforms like Tiktok are becoming increasingly popular. They're not designed to give you the highest joy possible, but simply stay as frustration free and convenient as possible. Even if you didn't like something, at least it was short, painless and took no effort.
Convenience runs deep in our society. For longer than our history humanity has tried to make life easier. Like the now common wisdom, "if you want a hard job done easier, let a lazy person do it", technology itself has been there mainly as a tool for convenience, not to make us stronger but to make the world an easier place. It goes so far that we define our very progress by the advancement of our convenience. Progress is not a measure of how tall we stand but how high we can stack the laurels we sit on and while technology used to be focused on making production more convenient with the advent of computers technology finally brings ultimate convenience to entertainment and social interaction.
One thing I noticed with videogames, which are specifically designed to be fun, is that most memorable moments weren't actually that fun. A lot of memories were made during frustration and struggle, but are the most valuable in hindsight. It made me realize convenience is basically like candy. It satisfies in the short term, but it's addictive and unhealthy. And in the same way getting in shape is only truly satisfiying when you can think back on all the hard work you did and see your body not just as a reflection of your results but as the effort and discipline you put into it.
The challenge for us in our time is the realisation that new, convenient technologies aren't always a net positive in our lives. We need to adapt a new lifestyle that assesses these changes and adopts only the core utility that benefits your life. We can't let the tech own us, we own the tech.
 
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