It was a struggle. We lived in caves and had to hunt for food.
I was born in 1999 and am therefore completely qualified to talk about life in the 1900s. It was a lot of milk drinking and shitting in diapers.
man, we used to fill those diapers. Not like the kids these days
The good old days.
Ah I’m glad to hear from a typical 90s kid about it! Lol <- to prove I’m older than that.
No social media. All the stupid stuff I did and said as a kid stays where it belongs, haunting my memories as I lie awake at 3 AM.
there was no expectation to be constantly immediately available. you didn’t have the world at your fingertips, so there was no pressure to immediately resolve all situations.
it was nice. slower. less pressure.
oh and the lower level of blatant exploitation and theft by mega corps and the uber wealthy was nice. not good enough still, but better than now
Hyper capitalism of the 1980’s would be considered quant, by today’s standards
Anybody can trade like they’re a registered broker on Wall Street, so that’s new, and gig work with no employee protections is increasingly the norm. Antitrust regulation is old-fashioned, while it was still kicking in the 80’s. Whether monopolies are more or less capitalistic is up for debate, but we all know they’re not good.
On the other hand, the financial markets are still much more regulated than before the Recession (or, we hope so), and you can’t get away with money laundering or creative accounting quite as easily. There’s also more environmental regulations, especially outside the US.
Grew up in the 70s and 80s.
After school, kids would roam around on bikes. We’d go to grocery and convenience stores to play the latest arcade games.
Alternately we’d find an empty lot and make our own bike parks out of dirt and whatever scrap wood we could find.
No mobile phones, so nobody knew where anyone was, we’d just agree to meet some place at an agreed time.
Parents didn’t care. “Come home when it gets dark.” When the street lights kicked on, you knew it was time to head home.
You had to think for yourself, because nobody was there to help you. If you wiped out on your bike, blew a tire, got attacked by a dog, or threw a chain, you fixed it yourself or dealt with it yourself, nobody was coming to save you.
Same here. When we weren’t outside in the yard or the pool, we were out in the woods.
My parents installed a large bell that my Mom could ring for dinner time, that we could hear from far away.
The only time my parents objected was when we described the fort that some neighbor kids had built, “you know they stole that material from our house under construction, right?”
It’s funny to hear my childhood years described and it feels like this when past times were described when I was a kid:
This depended entirely on where you lived. My parents were divorced and one lived in the country and one lived in the suburbs. I could ride freely around the neighborhood in both places, which was literally within sight of my house, but beyond that were dangerous roads and nowhere nearby to go anyway.
Neighboring kids were hard to find. In the country, there were 5 houses on our road and only one had kids my age. We were kinda friends but they were kinda weird.
The suburban neighborhood had 25 homes, and all the kids were older or younger. I never met anyone my age in that neighborhood.
Hanging out with friends meant you called them to see if they could come over. If both parents agreed and one was available to drive, you had a friend for the day.
If you wiped out in your bike
This was in the late 1990’s. I fell off my bike and got myself scraped up pretty badly. I was nowhere near home, so my friends and I knocked on a random woman’s door and she patched me up. Headed home and freaked my mom out when she saw my arms.
Back when neighbors could post up signs that told kids “Hey, if you’re in trouble, this is a safe house.”
You could be unreachable and your job would have to accept that fact. There was typically a single landline per house so if it was busy or you weren’t there then they had to suck it up.
You weren’t pressured by society that you must be efficient in your leisure time. Play a game, best become the best at it otherwise you’re a loser now. Painting something? You best be Van Gough in quality or it’s shit. Feels like people forgot you’re not supposed to monetize your hobbies, there were there to get away from work.
The streets were paved with gold and everyone said “hello” to strangers in the street with a smile. Getting a job was a matter of walking up to a person in a suit and giving them a firm handshake. VAR wasn’t a thing in sports because the referees got every decision right. Cats and dogs got along fine with each other. Everyone had enough friends to play Goldeneye on N64 multiplayer. People didn’t gain weight despite eating no vegetables. They hadn’t invented 2nd hand smoking yet so everyone was free to smoke inside without it affecting anyone else. Musicians did drugs but never OD’d, just produced classic albums on demand. People read books constantly and you could expect to strike up a conversation with a petrol station employee about Satre where you’d get caught for hours marveling at their insight. You could have 3 pints at lunch during the working day with your boss. Concorde took you across the Atlantic in a matter of hours. Everyone had a tamagotchi and none of them starved.
and the weed was better too. That might just be the high tolerance speaking though.
High times top strains 1977.
Led lights have done amazing shit for weed growers. Granted the 90’s already had good buds despite people having to use HPS lamps ans whatnot but LED has still been awesome for homegrowing, especially in countries where you can’t grow outside. Also autoflowers just came in like early 00’s. Well they technically existed in the 90’s but first successful commercial strain was Lowryder in 2002. (That shit was good smoke too, very creative high.)
The not gaining weight despite a shitty diet thing is kinda real, at least.
This is what they took from us.
Everyone’s saying what was better.
Bullshit, lol.
We were still people, and we still had all the people problems. Misogyny was worse, racism was worse, homophobia was really bad still, and “trans” was just a guy who liked wearing women’s clothes. Not that any man would ever admit that. Schools were super clique-ish, bullying was public and not prevented. Rapes were swept under the rug even worse than today. Pollution was really bad. I don’t think anyone born after 1990 has a clue how shitty the air quality was in cities back in the ‘80s and earlier. I can personally vouch for how amazing the environmental laws are and have improved air quality. Want to buy something that wasn’t available at a local store? Plan on waiting a month or more for it to arrive on order. Cars were more unsafe, often only had lap belts, and wtf is an airbag, lol. Car seats for kids were all but nonexistent. Air travel was crazy expensive, too.
All that said, yeah, there were some good things. We weren’t tied to screens all day. If someone stayed in and watched TV all day all the time you thought something might be wrong with them. We weren’t “on-call” 24-7 with cell phones. Basic jobs were easy to get. All my first jobs were walk in and ask if they needed anyone or just word of mouth, show up, and start working. Mass shootings weren’t the thing they are today. You actually owned the music or games you bought. Local stores had a huge variety of stuff and hadn’t been crushed by walmart and big box stores (I actually remember when big box stores were new and touted as sources of better variety for consumers. Lol, that worked out great). Concert tickets to top bands were less than $10. Local radio was great, your DJ told you about local events, and we had Dr Demento and Casey Kasem on weekends. Nobody was forcing you to pay subscriptions for everything, homes and cars were more affordable, so was education, and health care hadn’t gone nuts yet. You could actually talk to your political opponents, you wanted the same things mostly, it was just how you wanted it to happen was different. Crazy wingnuts were just that. Crazy wingnuts and not mainstream. Nobody gave them platforms unless it was “The National Enquirer.”
So yeah. We had plenty of problems. But there was a lot of good shit too.
One other thing that was ubiquitous… Cigarettes, and consequently cigarette smoke; EVERYWHERE!! Doesn’t matter whether you smoked or not, you smelled like cigarettes. Every bar, every restaurant, every club… Bus stops, movie theaters, trains… Cigarettes
In the EU or at least Finland, smoking in bars was still a thing in the 2010’s almost. 2007 definitely I was dancing and smoking a cigarette on the dancer floor of a club. Then 2007 they had go get non-smoking sides as well. And then the smoking rooms came in for some years, but you weren’t allowed in with a drink. (And you couldn’t get special dispensation, even for a bar which sold cigars as their thing, nope, can’t have your drink with you in the smoking room.) Idk how long ago the last tobacco rooms got banned as well.
But yeah in the 90’s it was fkin everywhere, not just in nightclubs and bars.
All cars were pretty much smoking as well. Any car from the 90’s definitely has a cigarette lighter and an ashtray. My -06 Huyndai still has an ashtray.
You’re right, lol. I completely forgot. “Smoking or non?” was a completely normal question when entering a restaurant, and bars or whatever didn’t bother asking. A night out meant smelling like cigarette smoke when you got home.
How quickly we forget.
Pollution was really bad. I don’t think anyone born after 1990 has a clue how shitty the air quality was in cities back in the ‘80s and earlier.
Yeah, 'member leaded gasoline? I wasn’t there, but I 'member. Just burning an extremely toxic metal in a city full of people and kids.
And then there was the insane 70’s crime/violent crime rate suspiciously about 20 years later…
Pff. I used to wash motor parts off with leaded gas and no gloves when I was young. I’d probably be a goddamn Einstein if it weren’t for that.
Pollution was really bad
1970-1980’s was the first environmental movement. We were all excited to change the world. Some of the worst cases of pollution were because people finally cared enough to find them. Some things didn’t work and something’s had backtracking
This was the era of huge successes like the clean air act, clean water act, and bottle deposit laws! Superfund cleanup for the worst of the worst.
Cars were more unsafe
Car safety was becoming a concern and we started doing something about it
Air travel was crazy expensive
But also the rise of discount airlines
No shit. The question was “what was life like?” Not “what changed everything?”
I’m well aware of the things I mentioned because they’re different than today which is what the question asked for.
Everywhere smelled like an ashtray until the late 90s when smoking bans started picking up steam.
If you went to a bar, or a bowling alley, everything you had on you smelled of smoke until it was thoroughly washed.
Don’t miss that, or trying to get across a dance floor without getting burned …then in 2008 everything changed. Kind of bitter sweet.
Now everyone vapes and smells like Barbie farts instead.
I liked the smell of fresh cigarette smoke. Still do, actually. But yeah, smoking indoors is wild. Can’t believe thst was normal when I was a kid.
The problem is it isn’t usually fresh. At the time I didn’t mind that so much either but the lingering smell of stale smoke and ash tray over clothes, hair, buildings, was always a problem.
Now that we don’t live with the constant stench, I realize even fresh smoke was never good. It was only less bad than the stale lingering stench and we didn’t have clean air to compare to
All US college campuses had this smell until around 2010 when they began banning smoking even outside. I miss that smell so much.
Ew
Ya it’s weird. Ever since I was very little I’ve loved the smell of second hand smoke, maybe because it was everywhere. One of my earliest memories is playing with a half full ash tray INSIDE a McDonalds.
I graduated in 2k. I rarely smelled smoke. Even at the parties there wasn’t that much of it. What I did smell came from the older staff and such taking smoking breaks, which were always outside. And I went to school in a red state.
I graduated in 1988, in a blue state.
I saw things go from smoking everywhere, to there being non-smoking sections, to eventually no smoking inside
While there were still way too many smokers, they were already becoming less common. I saw smoking go from something the “cool kids” did, to individuals saying “come on out with me for a smoke so I’m not alone”
I was born in the late 70s so I can comment on the 80s onwards.
It was ok. It’s better now though. Some stuff got worse. A lot got better. We know more, have better toys, live longer, cheaper travel and so on.
The major thing that’s worse is the internet blasting every negative thing into your brain 24/7
I was wearing an onion for a belt, as was the fashion at the time.
Did you keep any of the bees when we got nickels back?
i understand this reference
As a belt? Was this popular in Europe? In America we merely wore onions on our belt
late 80s here. We had a nice world before 9/11. there was hope.
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It’s definitely felt that way. But climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and end-stage capitalism were all already in the pipeline, most of us just weren’t being forced to confront them yet.
they might have been in the pipeline, but due to the success we had against CFCs and other pollution issues, we felt like it was just another battle to progress. Then 9/11 happened, and instead of fighting to improve things, we fought to keep things, and then just got kicked in the face repeatedly.
Yeah my children remind me daily how awesome I had it, and I had no clue how just good I had it.
So I’ve been told. I was born mid to late '90s. I finally got my mom to admit she wouldn’t have had me if she knew things would be this bad. I can’t remember a time when I had hope.
It was just the 90s though, the 80s sucked too
This might be the worst possible way to get a genuine feel for what life was like. For whom?
Industrialization and telephones were ubiquitous. We’d witness the rise of automobiles, flight, antibiotics, DNA, nuclear power, computers, space exploration…
A massive shift towards urbanization. Life expectancy jumped up. Migration took off. Society became more consolidated, diverse, and aged.
Human rights started getting more institutionalized. Civil rights and feminist movements made great gains. Globalism and mass consumer culture similarly boomed.
A great depression and two world wars generated a sense of unity from people coming together to get through hard times and overcome common enemies, but it deteriorated quickly under the pressure of rapidly shifting cultures and lifestyles.
A person’s experience of this depends on a lot. People in different demographics would have drastically different stories to tell.
Imho the best way to get a broad feel is to track the technology. People were able to call each other, travel long distances with relative ease, get effective medicine for common maladies, and pop into the corner store to buy handy items.
But it was a lot harder to access information generally, and a lot less was available before everyone was carrying around gps enabled cameras all the time. It was a lot easier to believe in urban legends and a lot harder to understand how advanced technology worked.
To counteract all the rose colored glasses looking back decades and the doom and gloom now …….
We also had the Cold War. Mutually Assured Destruction. And you never knew whether anyone would be M.A.D. Enough to end the world. Later on we found out they were, and at least one time the world didn’t end because of a Russian specialist disobeying launch orders
Yup. Climate change is going to suck, but actual existential risk is way lower now. And before the 20th century people did the same end-is-nigh thing on supernatural grounds.
If you’re thinking of the submarine, it wasn’t a specialist, it was an admiral who just happened to be on the right boat and belayed the captain and political officer’s order. One of the same guys that was on K-19, interestingly. There was also an armed nuke the French just kind of dropped on themselves by accident. Here’s the list of known close calls on Wikipedia.
That was it,thanks
One of the things I miss the most about the 1900s is that people didn’t expect you to be reachable 24/7. Even though cellphones had been around since the 80s very few people had one. That meant that most people could only be reached through the family landline. If you didn’t answer people would just assume you were out of the house, thus unreachable. That all started to change in the 2000s when cellphones became common place. Now days I feel like everyone expects me to pick up when they call, and if I don’t they expect a better excuse than “I don’t feel like talking right now.” As a very introverted person who often needs a lot of alone time, it sucks, and sometimes I really wish I could go back to a world without cellphones.
I leave my phone on do not disturb, all of the time. I make it a point to tell people that when I give out my number, so they never expect an immediate answer or response. The phone is there for my convenience, not so others have me at theirs.
I remember meeting up with friends was either you stay together after school or try to guess where they might be at that moment. Maybe they’re in this persons basement because they just got an n64, or maybe they’re playing ball in the field, etc.
Now it’s all very organized and less chances to get lost and find your way back. I sometimes wonder what would happen if the cell network was just gone one day, for whatever reason.
There is nothing stopping you from putting your phone on… say, a kitchen counter, and leaving it there and only talking on it while in that room and don’t take it with you, when you go out.
I had a rotary phone until 2017 (and needed to stay in touch with my grandfather after my grandmother died) so I ported my landline number to a cellphone.
Now that most of my family is gone, I routinely leave the phone at home. I can let it go to voicemail just like I used to let the answering machine take the calls when I was out.
It’s only a digital leash if you let it be.
However, it was also normal for people to come and visit unannounced because they were close by. It is rare people don’t phone ahead now before visiting. This can be a good or a bad thing, you don’t tend to get visitors when it is inconvenient but there is also less spontaneity.
and if I don’t they expect a better excuse than “I don’t feel like talking right now.”
You don’t owe them a explanation though. If they demand a answer, you can just lie, joke or tease them a bit. “I was busy, painting a horse” or “I was attempting a new record at standing on my head.” Or just reply with “did you want something?” if they keep pushing the issue.
My go to is: I was uh… doing something
My default… (which often is the actual case)
“Ack… The phone battery died again.”
Or alternatively, have your friends worry about you. Say you unavailable as you were drunk/high/intoxicated out of your mind. As times goes on, cite inebriation by ever-more exotic and illegal substances.
LOL!
How deliciously evil! :)
This and FOMO was very limited.
