I remember my childhood mostly as a happy, oblivious one, affordable food, the usual disagreements between liberals and republicans, but nothing unhinged (say taxes, migrants or abortion). At least it looks reasonable today.
Now it’s like everything is unhinged: politics seem to be based on purely emotional reactions and the other side is hell bent on destroying the country: texas starts heavily gerrymandering to secure 5 extra republican seats at the next midterms? california starts lobbying for doing exactly the same and dismantling an independent redistricting commission texas never had.
When I was younger it seemed politics were more rational and cruelty never seemed to be the point of doing nothing. Now we execute people with nitrogen gas, meaning a conscious person has to breathe something he knows its going to kill him during 4 minutes. This is somehow not cruel and unusual. And nobody bats an eye.
I still don’t get how populists can be so popular now, they simplify complex issues most people without a degree in the matter, cannot grasp. This includes me.
I’m now 35 and wonder if I’m already talking like an old person who misses his young days so hard. I see that in people in their 60s and hoped never to become one of them, but here I am. To a younger person I may look like one of those old guys who lives to rant.
Am I going to feel even more detached and depressed with each passing day?
If you’re in the west then it’s worse now because capitalism is reaching the stages of systemic collapse. For people living in countries like China or Vietnam the picture is quite different. They see their lives improving each and every day. They have clean cities, great infrastructure, and a rate of technological progress we can only dream of. Those of us living in the west are living through a similar collapse to the one that happened in USSR in the 90s, but the west is only 13% of the world population.
It’s crazy how 13% of the world population dominate the social media discourse so much that i basically see no other people’s opinion ever.
You just have to start using non western platforms like Xiao Hong Shu and reading media from outside the west.
can we have fediverse mirroring of xiaohongshu?
would be neat, maybe somebody will make a server to mirror it to loops :)
The world is definitely worse for younger people. I’m raising four kids and I weep for them.
Smart phones and social media have a LOT to answer for. I know that won’t necessarily be a popular opinion but that’s where I find the root of the problem. Well, that and FPTP election systems.
I think smart phones are a separate category of problem to the main issues of late-stage capitalism and ascendance of the alt-right. Though both are major issues.
Climate change alone makes it objectively worse. The widespread rise of fascism also I think makes objectively worse. So yeah it’s bad.
I’m 25 and I literally saw an increase to heat waves year after year until 80°-90° was the norm in summer for the northern United States. I live in Pittsburgh now and the weather has shifted from raining 70% of the time, we use to have the gulf stream and mild climates. Now we get droughts after droughts, where’s my goddamn lake effect from the Great Lakes. We are eliminating natural habitats at ungodly rates. My dad who was born in the 60s has MAGA blinders and doesn’t see the effects of climate change. We are now fighting LLMs for clean water in a perilous situation that teetering on ecological disaster in many communities with newly installed data centers. Morally bankrupt politicians rather have a dollar in their pocket and vote for the persuasions of the rich like a puppet on a string. I miss bird watching and seeing bugs splatter on the windshield as you drive across the country, now its a mostly dry and barren trip because of overuse of pesticides and lack of habitats to regrow local insect colonies. Also the world is overpopulated as fuck and nobody can get a job in an ethical manner. You literally have to lie and cheat just to get a job that pays you better than shit, you would think the homeless people were violent and in gangs but its actually the goons on the top of the pyramid that have organized cabals and hired hitmen. So if there’s a better world out there it starts with eating the rich and consuming less of the planet. Probably have to destroy the meat industry and the oil industry but if you say that out load people think you don’t want people to have jobs when you actually think sustainable farming techniques should be widely adopted instead. It just feels like common sense and not even socialist, but apparently I’m a commie stoner who worships the devil to Fox News, and to my parents. They literally raised me to not only to be kind to be people but actually want better support systems for homeless people. My entire childhood was spent in a good nature providing free furniture to newly housed people who had nothing and I’m just expected to think Trump is next Messiah what the actual fuck is wrong with Christianity now a days.
Tldr: Yes we should eat the rich before the eat us
All of the jokes in early simpsons seasons pointing out problems inside the US are still valid today. Long standing problems have not been solved and if anything the situation has continued to deteriorate.
25 years ago the internet was still easy dial up and smart phones were coming out like you’d go to the library with your friends to check your email
MySpace lol
Apart from politics, which is always pretty up and down, my two biggest concerns for the world are
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Nobody seems to know how to build things any more. Watching companies fumble around trying to build almost anything that has the same usable life as something built 60 years ago, with fewer materials and almost no computers, is infuriating.
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The environment is in a MUCH worse state. I was born in the 80s and I can say anyone my age or older who tells you climate change is a myth is either lying or never went outside. I remember seeing large flocks of birds overhead several times at dusk. Now there’s almost nothing. Insect- and bird-life have largely collapsed, forests look sad and unhealthy, we are getting hot days earlier in the year and rainfall is nowhere near as consistent as it used to be. Do humans move farmland to places where rain now falls? Nope, they pump the rivers dry and make even more problems downstream. The situation is unsustainable and, with so many global leaders in the pockets of oil and gas companies, it is going to get a lot worse.
That said, I would say general quality of life, especially through medical advances has made a lot of people’s lives better.
My observation is that the accomplishments of older times would be entirely impossible today, like basically all the public services we enjoy wouldn’t be possible if they were proposed as a new thing.
Take the post office, if somebody had a big idea for the government to build tens of thousands of buildings and hire over a million people just to move around pieces of paper - they’d be laughed out of the room. Impossible, the government couldn’t and shouldn’t do any of that. All public services: the fire department, the police department, and especially public libraries, that all couldn’t be created in the current political environment if it hadn’t already been built.
In a similar vain, I enjoy rewatching Chernobyl and thinking “what if this happened in the USA instead?” I just can’t imagine the government and people mobilising that quickly. Everything would have to wait for tender responses, companies would price-gouge for their efforts, people wouldn’t take “you will do it because it needs to be done” as an answer. The catastrophe would be way worse and clean up would have taken longer.
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The world is not the USA. The USA is getting worse. The USA is an unhinged shit hole. Things are getting better where I live in Mexico. We have a popular leader that is pushing popular social programs and as the US kills itself we’re taking the opportunity to get closer to the rest of the world, build new infrastructure and sort out the American created cartels and chaos. China is getting better, they lifted millions of people out of dire poverty. Much of the rest of the world is doing just fine. There are always problem parts and hope simultaneously.
Wages are not keeping up with inflation. The middle class is disappearing.
Fascism is on the rise everywhere.
Basic Education has declined and higher education is less accessible.
Climate change. Worse storms. Lots of animals are extinct or nearing extinct.
Big Companies own everything.
No one can afford a house.
Subscriptions for everything.
Life saving maintenance drugs are insanely expensive. A subscription to live.
Women’s rights being removed.
Natural resources all owned by companies with no oversight.
it’s getting bad.
However. It’s worth noting that the cause of all of these things isnt new.
This is the inevitable outcome of policies from as much as 100 years ago. (200 years ago? Capitalism)
Also. For some groups of people, things used to be much worse in many ways.
So some things are better. But the quality of life over all is probably declining.
Late stage capitalism and the dead internet.
The US was better but we were on course for this. Earlier laws restricting suing of international companies, the patriot act, citizens united, etc. Honestly beyond all of this is the lack of shame. Like I don’t think people are necessarily worse than they used to be but there was a vague agreement of what was bad and good and bad people wanted to hide being bad. There was shame. We seem to be living in the age of shamelessness. Like nazi types used to hide under klu klux klan robes but now they make youtube videos about how other races are inferior and the woke members of their race are race traitors. Again the roots go way back like the greed is good thing from the 80’s.
the contradictions are piling up and things are more openly fascist, economic opportunities are shrinking in the west, income inequality is off the chart, yeah things are actually worse
I’ve (36m) asked my mother and grandfather if I’m overreacting.
My grandfather (104 when he died. He was so “dust bowl” he mother died of the dust in the dust bowl. Dust pneumonia. Yeah can’t get more depression era than that without also being a shoe shine boy at a carnival ): I killed the nazis once. I can kill them again
My mother (80f I asked here again just now. Right now face to face): I’ve never seen this cult behavior before. Never in my life. People will bury their trump flags in the ground and deny they ever supported him. Like the nazis did.
Yes this bad. It’s historically significant how bad it is. People will read about this moment in history and think “I hope my grandfather wasn’t a trumpet” as the look up their ancestors. Grandfathers will lie to their families about what they were doing right now. They will even shame me because all I did was comment online.
It’s specifically bad right now.
I feel this. I keep thinking of what gandolf said to frodo and I very much feel like frodo.
I’m 36. I just told my mom I want to l go to France to ollattend a clown college. The shame in those eyes.
Sometimes the story isn’t what you wanted
My dad said that everything “went to shit” once they started privatizing hospitals and public infrastructure.
liberals and republicans
The chickens came home to roost again ✈️🏢
