I really never have believed times improved, and i am almost positive things will only get worse.
30 years ago we had a future to look to, the unshittified internet, great music, affordable land/housing, affordable durable cars, people actually interacted in real life, no social media trash. Now, we have billionaires and LLMs. I don’t see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.
Yes, everyone will say “civil rights improved” and yes thats maybe the only thing that has changed, however it’s getting taken away every day again so I don’t think you can even use that point anymore.
If you were in the 1% or whatever of the developed-world population that had it, a nice collection of bookmarks and an hour to load every image over your shitty dialup.
Like, I’ll go ahead and say the internet has gotten worse, but only after a decade or two where it got much, much better.
As for the rest of the stuff, the 90’s were kind of a sweet spot. The Cold War was over, the new gilded age was just starting to gather and some of the 20th century problems were on their way out. Leaded gasoline, rampant littering, near-disposable cars and cigarette smoke everywhere are more 1980’s and earlier in my head.
90’s music is often terrible to my ears, by the way, and grinding was weird.
90s alt rock is a pretty deep genre. Music-wise, I might take the 90s over either of the decades that followed it. And I’m sure that’s because it’s better and not because I grew up with it.
Okay, I do like some music from the 90’s. Some of it straight up sounds like parody now, though. I wasn’t sure WTF was going on when I heard “Too Close” for the first time.
Yeah. 90s internet was really novel and interesting and unique, but after a couple hours you got bored. There wasn’t that much happening on it. Also slow as all hell.
Then internet speeds picked up and there was enough content to keep you basically permanently entertained. Lot of entertaining stuff. The Age of Memes was truly upon us.
Then the bad actors and village idiots were able to easily get access and understand they could use the internet for nefarious reasons and it’s been getting shittier for about the last decade or so. Realistically, probably around the time smartphones came out and the influx of fools was of tsunami proportions.