Most things?
What WAS better?
Yearning for the past always has a reactionary vibe.
Cars, “They don’t build them like the used to”, because crumple zones save lives.
I’m still amazed at how many people I know still think cars are better before because they were “harder to break.” Yeah, you can sit on the hood of an old car and it won’t do anything to it, but try crashing at 80km/h and you’re gonna wish that unbreakable object broke. Anything higher and you might not have a chance to wish for anything. Lol.
Also survivorship bias. A few old cars lasted for a really long time, but you don’t see or think about the majority that didn’t.
Cars were so unreliable that gas stations had mechanic garages. Compared to modern times where you pretty much only change the oil for the first 100k.
Internet speeds.
Almost everything has seen significant improvements. Technology has improved at an astounding rate. The only down side of improvement is higher expenses for more complicated tech. Phones are so much better than they used to be. We don’t have to carry a brick anymore but they cost a fortune now
Being LGBTQ+, or not white, or not a man, or disabled.
Medicine.
Math education, probably. I don’t have any numbers, but there are probably far more people taking calculus in high school than there used to be, and a lot of them are probably taking it earlier than senior year. At least that was my experience compared with my parents’.
Also, this is unrelated, but it’s strange that this post has (at the moment) 20 comments but only 5 votes.
What’s more strange is that 5 people today commented on this 4 month old post.
I was really lonely and scrolling up really old posts in this community to talk in, and maybe others sort their feeds by recent comments meaning my activity pushed it up. Or maybe I just like ascribing more responsibility to myself :PEdit: I sort by recent comments, so this post showed up in my feed. I don’t know why the others started commenting on it 10 hours ago though.
The xenophobia. I have pretty bad anemoia for the '90s, but as a queer person I probably wouldn’t be able to live back then.
I’ll start by saying that GUIs have gotten a lot better since the 90s. Many people seem to think Windows 95 or 2000 was the pinnacle of the user interface design, but it was clunky and terrible and I much prefer literally any contemporary GUI.
A lot more is understood about how users interact with GUIs and how to best make them, but this is often exploited for monetary gain rather than end user experience.
The current thing that’s annoying me is discords new paid for super reactions. Absolutely by design they have been put in the spot the regular reaction button used to occupy in order to trick you into pressing it.
Discord is actually a great counterexample to my point, I hate that app.
Having to sit at a desk (with a computer) to access the Internet, rather than being able to bring a device with you, to access the Internet wherever you want.
Gasoline
America
Are you certain? It seems like it’s never been worse in America right now.
Yeah idk, slavery was pretty bad. Maybe the genociding of native peoples a bit worse? or where women were house slaves or when they were burning people for not appearing christian enough?
Maybe for white people
Nah, not even, I’d rather live like I do now than live like my ancestors did in the early 1800s, dirt poor, addicted to alcohol, barefoot, no chance of social mobility, and worst of all, without air conditioning. Although to be fair its not like the Appalachians have changed all that much apart from the air conditioning.