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Were this the ‘good ole times’ they always talk about?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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In my experience people who talk about the good old days are white and male.
It was a time when they got their way 100% and everyone else could get fucked.
More likely it was when they were kids and without adult responsibilities, or narrow/whitewashed views of the past(as from stories and shows from before their birth)
I look back at my childhood as the 'good ole days' mostly because of the no responsibilities thing. The more I learn about what stuff was really going on in the 90's/2000s, the more I see there was no good ole days, just times when I was insulated from the harsh realities of the world.
I hold similar views(obviously), but I find something comforting in it. Like, rather than living in a ruined paradise lost by us or our parents, we live in a complicated world where we share the work of trying to make something better with our ancestors.
(Of course, we also have to figure out how to do that, and, in a complicated world, that can be challenging and lead to conflict)
There's definitely points where things get worse.
9/11 is one of them.
White guy, 1985
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I've been around since the 70s and I mostly agree ... but on one point I disagree ... the ability of humanity to wipe itself out with a nuclear exchange. Back then, even 20, 30 years ago there were a lot level headed leaders who (although we may have disagreed with them) were less radical and would be less likely to consider launching a nuclear weapon for any reason. Back then, we also had a lot of actual war veterans in the public and in government who understood the nature of war ... now there are fewer of them around. Most people including those in government now don't know what war is any more, other than to see it glorified in history books, movies and pop culture.
So the combination scares me ... a society that is complacent to war yet has the weapons to cause world wide destruction if someone disagrees with them.
I feel as though there was a "good old days" of the internet. Don't get me wrong, it was a complete shit show, but it was anonymous, anyone could say anything that they wanted, and there would be few if any consequences. There were ads, but they were generally garbage animated GIFs at worst.
It wasn't perfect, but we were free to do what we wanted on the internet, with little to no bearing on our daily lives.
Now, it's almost expected that your online activity will be tied to you specifically. In most cases, your legal name is attached to it for everyone to see. If you try to go around without your legal name on everything, then generally you are either severely limited, or outright removed from the platform. Sigh
Meted out by human beings who had to read the thread in aggravatingly linear order - so they were more likely to say 'you were being kind of a butthead' instead of 'how dare you call anyone a butthead.'