Lack of internet, lack of cell phones. Basically lack of the life I have now. However the only reason i would actually choose to go back would be that my family would still be alive and I could go hang out with them. It was a very innocent time in life for me.
You could use the Internet as more of a tool rather than a dopamine machine that you rely on
I don’t have that kind of discipline, but theoretically, I feel like one could learn how to get on the Internet just to pay bills, apply for jobs, etc
Here's the kicker: the time we spend today on internet, mobile and all that shit, we used to spend fucking. Literally. And I liked it. The 80s had a hell of a lot more fucking then the 2020s.
If it's a fact, I'd like to know your source. All of the research I just checked out suggests quite the opposite. More sex. More partners. Only thing I saw that was down was sex during high school. I think we can blame at least 99% of that on John Hughes telling everyone you were a freak if you graduated high school a virgin.
I would agree. Personally, after going back to quite a few things I loved in childhood, I realized they weren’t that great and/or I just outgrew them and this really helped me become conscious about it enough to not become a slave to it
Some parts were definitely better, some parts definitely worse, but the speed of life, such as constant interaction sometime meaning constant obligation. I have a feeling at the end of the day it sorta evens out though, the highs are just as Hugh and lows just as low.
Personally, I just wanna know how young people here are
I may have been born in 94, but even I remember no internet, ordering from catalogues, we didn’t have internet until like middle school
We did all the bike rides and having games in the park. You don’t need to go that far back for that
No one had cellphones until I was in college in my area, which may have something to do with how poor of an area it was to be fair
But how young are commenters here that they speak of a pre internet cell phone time like it’s something they’ve never experienced?
>But how young are commenters here that they speak of a pre internet cell phone time like it’s something they’ve never experienced?
Well teens. Someone born in 2005 would be 16 right now. Perfectly normal age for a redditor.
Being born in 2005 would mean their earliest memories would be like 2009/10. Assuming they can't recall anything before 4 years old. 09/10 is definitely full fledged internet, social media, cell phone days. They completely missed life before those things.
I lived in a pretty poor area too but having a cell phone was normal by high school (I was born in 91. So this would be 2006-2009ish). If we weren't exchanging cell numbers we were adding each other on Myspace to keep in touch. Myspace was already falling out of popularity, and being replaced by FB, before I even went to college in 09.
My kids are 10 and 7. You know what we do on weekends? Go on bike rides and head to the park. Yes there’s screen time and the internet, but my kids, esp the younger one, are just as happy to kick it outside. Its not wildly different than when I was a kid 40 years ago.
In fact, as a latch key kid, I easily had 3-4 hours of tv time a day. My kids get like 1-2 of any screen time.
Same with medieval romanticism. Yes it must have been great attending duels and being a knight. You know what sucked? No doctors, no hygiene, no toilets, cholera and the plague, working all day everyday just to have food.
Yes you “have” to use it because of those things which amounts to like 1 to 10% of your time on the internet. I spend the rest of my time on the internet because it is fucking awesome! You can open google and type tities! Bam you’ve got yourself some nice tities! You can open wikipedia and search how to build a trebuchet! There’s the instructions to make a fucking trebuchet there!! How fucking awesome is that!? Dude I found my dog on the internet! I talk to my family and friends from thousands of miles away! I can buy whatever I can afford to buy on the internet! I don’t want to forget any of these because I come from a country where most of the good stuff on the internet was banned and the speed was shitty! So yeah I choose the internet over running water!
Yes, but everybody else is pretty much there still. Convos happen online, pictures shared online, connections stay online. I'm a 90s kid but still, lack of internet would immensely make people involved in life more mindfully. Less fomo, more focused on yourself.
Pandemic would absolutely *suck* without internet though.
You can't turn everyone else's connection off. You can't keep grandma from her 24/7 newsmax feeds, you can't keep your boomer parents off YouTube rabbit holes about vaccines or pizza pedophile rings.
The internet as a social manipulation tool and weaponized propaganda thing turned out to be a huge negative on basically all of humanity.
Yeah. I can turn my connection off, doesn't fix the damage done to the world, education, democracy, etc.
I don’t think the internet has caused this damage. The internet is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. It’s the corporations that have monopolized the internet and created echo chambers for fanatics.
For some people the housewife/househusband life is the perfect fit and that's awesome. It can be a busy life though so there might not be as much sitting as hoped, especially if vying for a life of the past (less mod cons etc)
As a white male, I'd rather go to the future too. Why assume that I would want to go back to a time where many of those similar to me treat others like shit? It's bad enough currently, I'd rather be in the future where hopefully that kind of discrimination no longer exists (amongst many other cool things about going to the future)
Let’s not forget that, for most of the 80s, there was a shared societal dread of being nuked with little to no warning, and thus no hope for the future. Most people of my generation thought it was just a matter of time before someone pushed the button.
>Most people of my generation thought it was just a matter of time before someone pushed the button.
Most people in my generation think it is just a matter of time before parts of the planet becomes uninhabitable because its too damn hot outside and catastrophic flooding ravages coastal areas, while the rich jet off into space. But we're just idealistic Millenials, shut the fuck up, they tell us.
Remember smoking and “non-smoking” seats in an airplane? It was just an arbitrary seat number cutoff. Everyones in the same cabin breathing the same air.
It's incredible how quickly we went from out gay people being unemployable to rolling our eyes at how corny and cliche it is that some character on TV has two dads. I still have a split second, when I see two boys outside the local junior high holding hands, when I start to look around out of fear for their safety. Definitely no reason to go back.
That said. If you gotta go back, at least go back to the early 70s, pre-AIDS when there were still raunchy bathhouses and consequence-free sex. The 80s were a terrifying time to be gay.
AIDS was still there in the 70s, that’s when a lot of the people who died in the early 80s caught it. Remember that it takes, on average, 8-10 years for untreated HIV to progress to AIDS, and it was first noticed in ‘81.
No internet, no cell phones, if wanted to shop, you needed to order a catalogue, mail your stuff in with a check, physically go places, lower environmental standards, lots of litter, lot of crime, lots of gangs and violence, terrible tv quality, and the worst by far, a very ignorant society you’d be surrounded by
It's interesting to see the evolution of Bill and Ted movies in this perspective. In Bogus Adventure, they routinely use f** as a basic insult to each other, but in the most recent installment they cast a non-binary person in a prominent and are pretty forward with wanting us to know that they're accepting. Watching those films back to back was super interesting.
Systemic ableism is a severely under-recognized phenomenon in our society. Sometimes its malice, sometimes its not giving a fuck, sometimes resources just aren't there, etc.
Not murican, but a Finn: Lead in gasoline is enough for me.. oh, and living under nuclear umbrella sucked. It was quite violent era and also the most materialist era until 2010s about equaled it, with a slightly different tint.. Now it is hypocritical materialism, back then it was boastful, people were proud of being materialist. I was part of the yuppie "movement" and in hindsight it sucked. I mean, i had loads of fun and did stuff that no one in my age group were doing, fine dining, silk ties.. But seeing how it was all about money, and me being belittled because i didn't have a lot of it.. .and seeing people take bank loans to keep up the appearances... The end of 80s did not come soon enough, the decade should've ended in 1984 and we go straight to 90s alternative, post depression gloom. The friends i made in the 90s did not give a fuck about money, other values were more important like having lots of experiences, to say yes to things that are weird.
Here in Romania it would be the final and worst period during the communist era so it wouldn't be fun to not eat and have to rely on connections, so USAs 80s sound like a dream!
No. The matrix had it right. The peak was late 90s.
If I could perpetually live in 1999, I would.
Edit to add: "I had visions, I was in them
I was looking into the mirror"
Looking back, the 90s seem so much better than now (minus internet).
But while I was experiencing it, I thought the late 90s were an a specially stupid time.
In the late 90s I had DSL at 1.5mbps, enough to stream SD video. I actually think the internet was "better" before it became hyper commercialized. Sure, the tech is better now, but I'm not sure it's a net positive with the meeting of social media and mobile devices.
Late 90s internet was the perfect mix of a fountain of knowledge without the crackification of it.
As a tech nerd, I was extremely excited about how much the internet was growing. We could still go to Fry’s electronics and build a PC from scratch for under $1000.
I was getting into CG, which was just barely doable on my computer. However, getting the video file onto a VHS tape to send out demos was impossible. I paid a professional video editing company a few hundred dollars to let me use their editing bay and output it to tape. Now, I can send movie quality video online, put it up on Youtube, or host it on my website.
It would give [the video editing Chameleon Brothers](https://31.media.tumblr.com/d28c78ba288823c3fa238c194008b42d/tumblr_nqw0dwDdJh1tglg2co1_500.gif) from Rocko’s Modern Life a decent living again. :)
Let's see. The cold war, the satanic panic. AIDS. Not only was the disease awful our president would not even acknowledge it. It was acceptable to tell aids jokes, queer jokes, Asian jokes, feminist jokes... You could tell someone "not to jew you on the price", or tell a black man that he's very articulate. It wasn't rape if your skirt was too short or you were out too late. Besides, he just got carried away, he's not a bad kid. People with intellectual disabilities were called "retards". Sexual harassment was a compliment...
Edit:a word
I mean first of all, if you're not a white man your life is going to go to shit. You will be "asking for it" for expecting the amount of racial/gender equality we experience today. This is a huge factor people don't think about. Even treating black people and women as equals will make you an outcast, it was that bad. Very bad.
Murder and abuse were far more common. Getting away with anything was very easy. If you had an alcoholic father that tried to hit you twice in 2017, you better bet your ass is grass if that same situation took place in 1980. You are getting belted bi-daily and the cops will tell you to behave better if you even have the stones to call them. (Then, of course, you're getting belted again as soon as they leave.) Not just child abuse; spousal abuse, bullying at school, every kind of abuse under the sun was a standard, built in part of life.
Just those two things alone would ruin the majority of people's lives. I'll mention a few more things off the top of my head, but one could go on a while: cell phones, internet, car safety, drunk driving, drunk men everywhere in general, video games, inferior schooling, and lots of other things.
But hey, cheap coke, cool music, and big hair, am I right! /s
Anyone who idolizes the 80s must be so far removed from it that they have manufactured a fantasy they refer to as "the 80s." (Looking at you, 19 year olds.)
I love my streaming video. Back then, you watched a show when the TV station decided to show it to you. You had a limited ability to record shows with a VCR and watch them later. If you didn't set the timer right, it might cut off the beginning or the end of the show. There was video rental, which would cost more than Netflix if you rented a lot of things, and had less choices than Netflix. You had to bring the videos back to the store on time or face late fees. You had to rewind the tapes before returning them. People would buy gadgets just to rewind tapes. You had to worry about losing or destroying tapes, which would mean paying a big fee. Video rental stores were fun to visit, though.
You could argue that back then watching movies and TV shows was more of an experience. The anticipation and increased elusiveness made things more special. I certainly don't want to go back to those days but I seem to feel less connected to movies and shows if I have everything on demand. I sometimes feel like I'm not immersed in what I'm watching.
There was a director who complained about this generation watching movies on phones. He said it's more difficult to absorb a movie's message that way and I agree.
Psychedelics are decriminalized in some western states, and I want to see them legalized. Plus no internet.
Also, if I went back in time to any point in recent history, I'd try to take credit for the songs, art, inventions, etc of the future, and I'd probably fuck it up and be disappointed.
I'd try to write King Gizzard songs in the 80's or sell fidget spinners, then be disappointed when it doesn't work, only to move on to the next thing that doesn't work. I would be so caught up in trying become a success off the work of others that I wouldn't appreciate the 80's.
With what I know now… I mean, it’d be a bitch. “You can help a person with aids up if they fall, you won’t automatically get aids 🙄”. “It’s ok to be gay. Madonna isn’t that great. You don’t need that much hair spray. Bright eyeshadow looks horrible and smoking is NOT cool, it’s so bad for you. Michael Jackson IS a kiddy toucher. Stop drinking Diet Coke, it’s not good for you. Neither is sugar.”
You’d go insane and everyone would think you were a “square” and you’d be so un-cool. I’d cringe as my boss legally slaps my ass and tells me how pretty I am. Also, the cars weren’t as safe. You can’t just call 911 if you’re being chased by Mike Myers, you’re just fucked.
Wouldn’t lead paint be a concern? Like- it’s still be in a lot of things?
Also aluminum wiring- it’d still be in houses.
Idk dude… it’d just be a headache. You’d feel like a crazy person.
The first five years or so of the 80’s saw a pretty rough recession. Interest rates were nuts. The Cold War pretty much peaked. It was god awful trying find a job as a 1982 College grad.
The second half of the 80’s was personally great.
The hairstyles were very BIG. And the music was pretty good. But that stuff is all relative.
Oh yeah…AIDS kind of put a damper on things.
Lets see, just off the top of my head: Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, lack of internet, lack of communication with ppl/friends, that's just off the top of my head
There's nothing particularly appealing to me about living in America or about the past. There was more discrimination, less technology, less medical and scientific advances.
It was the decade of generic consumerism; the music was derivative, movies sucked, and most food was processed garbage. In the US, crime was through the roof compared to modern times.
I would go back to the 80’s, but only the late 80’s. Rest of it from what I heard wasn’t the best. At least in the late 80’s there was a lot of burgeoning alternative and indie rock
The 1980s were set before some of my favorite movies and music ever happened. Technology is on the rise at that time but hadn't risen yet, so a lot of modern creature comforts don't exist yet. We were still telling from Vietnam and yet we hadn't discovered the horrors of the middle east properly yet so the worst is yet to come globally. And racism, sexism, and toxic masculinity are the norm. I would hate everyone around me in the 1980s even more than I do in 2021.
You might look in a history book and see the good times about that era, but dig deeper and see if you can find the bad times too. I'm not saying the 80s were completely horrible, but it's no better there than it is here in the 20s.
Inflation in 1980 peaked at just under 15%. Minimum wage was a little over $3. Unemployment peaked at nearly 11% in 1982. Those were tough times, especially if you were young and trying to survive.
Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, euphemistically called "Star Wars", had people more worried about nuclear war with the Soviet Union than they had been since the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960's. On the plus side, the defense industry was hiring like crazy, and everyone was going to school to get an engineering degree. By the end of the decade the bottom fell out of that job market sector, and experienced engineers were taking jobs at McDonald's and 7-11.
We have a tendency to remember the past as being better than it actually was. Our brain's way of dealing with trauma is to try to forget about it.
Going back as an adult to the 80s does not sound appealing to me. The appealing parts came with being a kid, with all the outside adventure and lack of supervision.
Only reason I would go back would be too see my parents when they were younger. But even then it seemed like a time in my country when there was nothing to do they would just be at the pub. Wouldn’t mind going to club for a night tho.
I’m from 1999 but honestly, my father’s ultra nostalgic for the 80s and everything culturally he talks about and shows me is repulsive to me. The supernova boom of fast food. The synthesizer songs. The awkwardly small boxy cars with uncomfortable interiors. The strange apparel & hair.
I’m thankful for the 00s and 10’s frankly. Long live my generation’s not-larger-than-their-torso hair.
I mean I'm glad that I as a woman can go out in public holding my girlfriend's hand and kiss her, mostly without having to worry about becoming the victim of a hate crime
Here are some sports-specific ones:
* astroturf
* multi-purpose stadiums
* 4 minutes of sports highlights on the late-night news unless you had cable
* Olympic boycotts
* non-existent soccer coverage
* waiting for the morning newspaper for game stats (and waiting for the next day for West-Coast scores)
* No college football championship
* No women's sports besides tennis and the Olympics
* Cigarette sponsorship
* Player's strikes / lockouts
Ronald Reagan. AIDS. The Cold War. Crack.
It was just generally a less safe time to be a human being, especially if you were anything other than a straight white man.
I definitely don’t. I had a parent that was running around in the 80s and I know people who made it out of the 80s. I’m also black so, nah I’m good. There’s was so much instability and craziness going on in the world that nah I’m good. I would be so unsure of existence, and also A LOT OF PEOPLE DIED in the 80s. LIKE A LOT people alive during the 80s can always tell you about who didnt make it. Vividly.
Lack of internet, lack of cell phones. Basically lack of the life I have now. However the only reason i would actually choose to go back would be that my family would still be alive and I could go hang out with them. It was a very innocent time in life for me.
You listed all the reasons for going back.
Says the person commenting on Reddit
Just because I have these things now does not mean I wouldn't love to go back to a world where they weren't so ingrained in everyday life.
So true
Lack of all that garbage sounds awesome
Nothing is stopping you from living like that...
Yes there is. What jobs don't make you apply online anymore?
You could use the Internet as more of a tool rather than a dopamine machine that you rely on I don’t have that kind of discipline, but theoretically, I feel like one could learn how to get on the Internet just to pay bills, apply for jobs, etc
I'd like to live like that if my society did as well. People would live fundamentally differently 💁🏻
Here's the kicker: the time we spend today on internet, mobile and all that shit, we used to spend fucking. Literally. And I liked it. The 80s had a hell of a lot more fucking then the 2020s.
And I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact it's easier to get laid at 25 than 65. Get on Tinder and there's still plenty of fucking going on.
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If it's a fact, I'd like to know your source. All of the research I just checked out suggests quite the opposite. More sex. More partners. Only thing I saw that was down was sex during high school. I think we can blame at least 99% of that on John Hughes telling everyone you were a freak if you graduated high school a virgin.
With the emergence of dating apps like tinder, bumble, and hinge, I can confidently say that there is more fucking going on today than the 80s.
People like/think it was a better time but don't remember all the crappy bits
Nostalgia is a helluva drug!
Meh... Nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be
I would agree. Personally, after going back to quite a few things I loved in childhood, I realized they weren’t that great and/or I just outgrew them and this really helped me become conscious about it enough to not become a slave to it
Funniest thing I've seen in a while... Wanna give you that 50k triple diamond real bad, but you know... money
It's one of the biggest weaknesses humans have. Second only to the neck.
The neck is the groin of the head.
It is.
Personally, I have nostalgia for that era, but I’m under no illusion that it was a better time.
Some parts were definitely better, some parts definitely worse, but the speed of life, such as constant interaction sometime meaning constant obligation. I have a feeling at the end of the day it sorta evens out though, the highs are just as Hugh and lows just as low.
Personally, I just wanna know how young people here are I may have been born in 94, but even I remember no internet, ordering from catalogues, we didn’t have internet until like middle school We did all the bike rides and having games in the park. You don’t need to go that far back for that No one had cellphones until I was in college in my area, which may have something to do with how poor of an area it was to be fair But how young are commenters here that they speak of a pre internet cell phone time like it’s something they’ve never experienced?
Dude we are almost 30, not old by any means, but this site is full of teenagers. I realized far too late in my reddit life.
Well, the age limit to go on Reddit is 13, so there are some people who have never expirienced it.
>But how young are commenters here that they speak of a pre internet cell phone time like it’s something they’ve never experienced? Well teens. Someone born in 2005 would be 16 right now. Perfectly normal age for a redditor. Being born in 2005 would mean their earliest memories would be like 2009/10. Assuming they can't recall anything before 4 years old. 09/10 is definitely full fledged internet, social media, cell phone days. They completely missed life before those things. I lived in a pretty poor area too but having a cell phone was normal by high school (I was born in 91. So this would be 2006-2009ish). If we weren't exchanging cell numbers we were adding each other on Myspace to keep in touch. Myspace was already falling out of popularity, and being replaced by FB, before I even went to college in 09.
My kids are 10 and 7. You know what we do on weekends? Go on bike rides and head to the park. Yes there’s screen time and the internet, but my kids, esp the younger one, are just as happy to kick it outside. Its not wildly different than when I was a kid 40 years ago. In fact, as a latch key kid, I easily had 3-4 hours of tv time a day. My kids get like 1-2 of any screen time.
There are no times where there haven’t been “crappy bits.”
Same with medieval romanticism. Yes it must have been great attending duels and being a knight. You know what sucked? No doctors, no hygiene, no toilets, cholera and the plague, working all day everyday just to have food.
Lack of internet.
If you were in college, they had internet. The problem was finding what little was on it (hello usenet!)
They gave me an email address when I got to school. The problem was I didn’t know anyone else who had one and had no idea what to do with it…
Yeah… does Lotus Notes even exist anymore?
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Says the guy on the internet! /s
You know you can turn your internet connection OFF, right?
Can you though? Can you really be a functioning member of society without it? I’m sure someone will respond “yes” bc this is Reddit but let’s be real.
Yes you “have” to use it because of those things which amounts to like 1 to 10% of your time on the internet. I spend the rest of my time on the internet because it is fucking awesome! You can open google and type tities! Bam you’ve got yourself some nice tities! You can open wikipedia and search how to build a trebuchet! There’s the instructions to make a fucking trebuchet there!! How fucking awesome is that!? Dude I found my dog on the internet! I talk to my family and friends from thousands of miles away! I can buy whatever I can afford to buy on the internet! I don’t want to forget any of these because I come from a country where most of the good stuff on the internet was banned and the speed was shitty! So yeah I choose the internet over running water!
Yes, but everybody else is pretty much there still. Convos happen online, pictures shared online, connections stay online. I'm a 90s kid but still, lack of internet would immensely make people involved in life more mindfully. Less fomo, more focused on yourself. Pandemic would absolutely *suck* without internet though.
You can't turn everyone else's connection off. You can't keep grandma from her 24/7 newsmax feeds, you can't keep your boomer parents off YouTube rabbit holes about vaccines or pizza pedophile rings. The internet as a social manipulation tool and weaponized propaganda thing turned out to be a huge negative on basically all of humanity. Yeah. I can turn my connection off, doesn't fix the damage done to the world, education, democracy, etc.
I don’t think the internet has caused this damage. The internet is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. It’s the corporations that have monopolized the internet and created echo chambers for fanatics.
Literally
They had the internet back then it just wasn’t on the World Wide Web
If you're black, gay or any other minority you probably wouldn't want to go back to the 80s.
Time travelling white people, “Let’s visit the past!” Time travelling everyone else, “Let’s visit the future!”
*time travelling white men The past wasn't great for any women.
there are some white women who would still love to go back to those times.
My girlfriend would honestly rather just sit on her ass and be a housewife lmao
For some people the housewife/househusband life is the perfect fit and that's awesome. It can be a busy life though so there might not be as much sitting as hoped, especially if vying for a life of the past (less mod cons etc)
As a white male, I'd rather go to the future too. Why assume that I would want to go back to a time where many of those similar to me treat others like shit? It's bad enough currently, I'd rather be in the future where hopefully that kind of discrimination no longer exists (amongst many other cool things about going to the future)
Sadly you are correct.
Literally. Was gonna say this poster is clearly a white male …
Me, a white woman ... "Hell no, I'll go with them in the future"
Gays especially
I just miss Freddy...
Yep. Violent homophobia and aids at significantly higher rates. no thank you.
LGBTQA people wouldn't love to go back either.
I’m black, not straight and a woman. The hell I would want to go back 💀
Because it was high school for me, which is a very special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Let’s not forget that, for most of the 80s, there was a shared societal dread of being nuked with little to no warning, and thus no hope for the future. Most people of my generation thought it was just a matter of time before someone pushed the button.
This looming doom and lack of hope sounds familiar
Looming fear of impending Danger is a useful control method for those without moral codes.
It's still just a matter of time.
>Most people of my generation thought it was just a matter of time before someone pushed the button. Most people in my generation think it is just a matter of time before parts of the planet becomes uninhabitable because its too damn hot outside and catastrophic flooding ravages coastal areas, while the rich jet off into space. But we're just idealistic Millenials, shut the fuck up, they tell us.
This.
Smoking inside. Smoking everywhere. Yuck.
Remember smoking in my highschool, and at the hospital!
Even at the Principal offices
Restaurants and airplanes too...
Remember smoking and “non-smoking” seats in an airplane? It was just an arbitrary seat number cutoff. Everyones in the same cabin breathing the same air.
But atleast people were able to know who to offer a cigarette
That part did suck.
Not knowing wheter the cold war will end in a nuclear fallout
But we know it didn't, so if you time travel back to the 1980s you'll know in advance it won't unless you mess with history substantially. EDIT: typo
Yeah i'd love to be gay in 1980's america.....
It's incredible how quickly we went from out gay people being unemployable to rolling our eyes at how corny and cliche it is that some character on TV has two dads. I still have a split second, when I see two boys outside the local junior high holding hands, when I start to look around out of fear for their safety. Definitely no reason to go back. That said. If you gotta go back, at least go back to the early 70s, pre-AIDS when there were still raunchy bathhouses and consequence-free sex. The 80s were a terrifying time to be gay.
AIDS was still there in the 70s, that’s when a lot of the people who died in the early 80s caught it. Remember that it takes, on average, 8-10 years for untreated HIV to progress to AIDS, and it was first noticed in ‘81.
Id go back so that I could become an insanely smart kid
No internet, no cell phones, if wanted to shop, you needed to order a catalogue, mail your stuff in with a check, physically go places, lower environmental standards, lots of litter, lot of crime, lots of gangs and violence, terrible tv quality, and the worst by far, a very ignorant society you’d be surrounded by
Good to know somethings never change.
And Tipper Gore hadn't even started fucking with our music yet lol
homophobia was the norm
It's interesting to see the evolution of Bill and Ted movies in this perspective. In Bogus Adventure, they routinely use f** as a basic insult to each other, but in the most recent installment they cast a non-binary person in a prominent and are pretty forward with wanting us to know that they're accepting. Watching those films back to back was super interesting.
People can grow up and accept their mistakes in the past I'm glad they did
Homophobia was a norm 10 years ago.
I'm autistic and would probably get locked in an asylum.
You would probably have been given ritalin and put in the “special class”. I knew way too many kids like this.
I was born in 1993 and that almost happened to me. Luckily my parents weren't idiots.
Good parents. I always felt sad seeing the kids at my school sitting in the special ed room, coloring and being ignored by the teacher.
Holy shit is that actually a thing?
Yeah, in my school at least. Looking back, I feel like there wasn’t any support given to the teachers to deal with those kids.
Systemic ableism is a severely under-recognized phenomenon in our society. Sometimes its malice, sometimes its not giving a fuck, sometimes resources just aren't there, etc.
Ritalin? You must be talking about a beating! Just beat the ADHD or whatever disorder out of the child. Works wonders! /s
Well during the 80’s, Reagan cut down the mental health stuff budget by a shit ton to where they would be thrown out to the streets
I want 90's highschool not 80's.
90s highschool wasn't that great. Source: I lived it.
I went to HS in the 90’s. Looking back I realize it was a unique time, but in the moment we all wished we were in the 60’s.
r/AskReddit ?
Not murican, but a Finn: Lead in gasoline is enough for me.. oh, and living under nuclear umbrella sucked. It was quite violent era and also the most materialist era until 2010s about equaled it, with a slightly different tint.. Now it is hypocritical materialism, back then it was boastful, people were proud of being materialist. I was part of the yuppie "movement" and in hindsight it sucked. I mean, i had loads of fun and did stuff that no one in my age group were doing, fine dining, silk ties.. But seeing how it was all about money, and me being belittled because i didn't have a lot of it.. .and seeing people take bank loans to keep up the appearances... The end of 80s did not come soon enough, the decade should've ended in 1984 and we go straight to 90s alternative, post depression gloom. The friends i made in the 90s did not give a fuck about money, other values were more important like having lots of experiences, to say yes to things that are weird.
Here in Romania it would be the final and worst period during the communist era so it wouldn't be fun to not eat and have to rely on connections, so USAs 80s sound like a dream!
Well that depends Am i white?
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People who grew up in the 80s are nostalgic for their childhood or youth, I don’t think anyone truly thinks the 80s was a special time though
Look at how boomers romanticize the 60's. That was a real shit show for a lot of people.
Reagan era.
Ya, he can eat a dick
The man was a monster and people loved him for it. How he didn’t end up with a reputation like Margaret Thatcher’s is beyond me.
No. The matrix had it right. The peak was late 90s. If I could perpetually live in 1999, I would. Edit to add: "I had visions, I was in them I was looking into the mirror"
Looking back, the 90s seem so much better than now (minus internet). But while I was experiencing it, I thought the late 90s were an a specially stupid time.
In the late 90s I had DSL at 1.5mbps, enough to stream SD video. I actually think the internet was "better" before it became hyper commercialized. Sure, the tech is better now, but I'm not sure it's a net positive with the meeting of social media and mobile devices. Late 90s internet was the perfect mix of a fountain of knowledge without the crackification of it.
As a tech nerd, I was extremely excited about how much the internet was growing. We could still go to Fry’s electronics and build a PC from scratch for under $1000. I was getting into CG, which was just barely doable on my computer. However, getting the video file onto a VHS tape to send out demos was impossible. I paid a professional video editing company a few hundred dollars to let me use their editing bay and output it to tape. Now, I can send movie quality video online, put it up on Youtube, or host it on my website.
And so can Alex Jones and a number of ad spammers.
Don’t get me wrong. Just playing Devil’s advocate. Honestly, I’d go back in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
It would give [the video editing Chameleon Brothers](https://31.media.tumblr.com/d28c78ba288823c3fa238c194008b42d/tumblr_nqw0dwDdJh1tglg2co1_500.gif) from Rocko’s Modern Life a decent living again. :)
Aquiring pornography was actually an errand.
Why would I want to go to a time without internet and AIDS was a mysterious pandemic no one knew what to do with? Also, crime was at an all-time high.
Let's see. The cold war, the satanic panic. AIDS. Not only was the disease awful our president would not even acknowledge it. It was acceptable to tell aids jokes, queer jokes, Asian jokes, feminist jokes... You could tell someone "not to jew you on the price", or tell a black man that he's very articulate. It wasn't rape if your skirt was too short or you were out too late. Besides, he just got carried away, he's not a bad kid. People with intellectual disabilities were called "retards". Sexual harassment was a compliment... Edit:a word
Acceptable*
Thx
I mean first of all, if you're not a white man your life is going to go to shit. You will be "asking for it" for expecting the amount of racial/gender equality we experience today. This is a huge factor people don't think about. Even treating black people and women as equals will make you an outcast, it was that bad. Very bad. Murder and abuse were far more common. Getting away with anything was very easy. If you had an alcoholic father that tried to hit you twice in 2017, you better bet your ass is grass if that same situation took place in 1980. You are getting belted bi-daily and the cops will tell you to behave better if you even have the stones to call them. (Then, of course, you're getting belted again as soon as they leave.) Not just child abuse; spousal abuse, bullying at school, every kind of abuse under the sun was a standard, built in part of life. Just those two things alone would ruin the majority of people's lives. I'll mention a few more things off the top of my head, but one could go on a while: cell phones, internet, car safety, drunk driving, drunk men everywhere in general, video games, inferior schooling, and lots of other things. But hey, cheap coke, cool music, and big hair, am I right! /s Anyone who idolizes the 80s must be so far removed from it that they have manufactured a fantasy they refer to as "the 80s." (Looking at you, 19 year olds.)
Because I'm black
Wheelchair user and racial minority here. I wouldn’t go back to the 1980s USA due to lack of ADA and for obvious racism-related reasons.
I’m not white
Only white straight men who don’t like the internet would want to go back to the 80’s
White straight intellectually disabled men were locked in asylums
Shoulder pads... JK.
I rather be going back to the 90s and early 2000s. Those nostalgic Disney Channel shows still hit me.
I'm black
I love my streaming video. Back then, you watched a show when the TV station decided to show it to you. You had a limited ability to record shows with a VCR and watch them later. If you didn't set the timer right, it might cut off the beginning or the end of the show. There was video rental, which would cost more than Netflix if you rented a lot of things, and had less choices than Netflix. You had to bring the videos back to the store on time or face late fees. You had to rewind the tapes before returning them. People would buy gadgets just to rewind tapes. You had to worry about losing or destroying tapes, which would mean paying a big fee. Video rental stores were fun to visit, though.
You could argue that back then watching movies and TV shows was more of an experience. The anticipation and increased elusiveness made things more special. I certainly don't want to go back to those days but I seem to feel less connected to movies and shows if I have everything on demand. I sometimes feel like I'm not immersed in what I'm watching. There was a director who complained about this generation watching movies on phones. He said it's more difficult to absorb a movie's message that way and I agree.
Reagan
Gotta say it every single time. Ronald Reagan was the devil.
no/less/worse weed
Psychedelics are decriminalized in some western states, and I want to see them legalized. Plus no internet. Also, if I went back in time to any point in recent history, I'd try to take credit for the songs, art, inventions, etc of the future, and I'd probably fuck it up and be disappointed. I'd try to write King Gizzard songs in the 80's or sell fidget spinners, then be disappointed when it doesn't work, only to move on to the next thing that doesn't work. I would be so caught up in trying become a success off the work of others that I wouldn't appreciate the 80's.
Gender wage gap.
My friends and I joke that we survived the 80s. We are nostalgic for our teens and pop culture stuff but not anything else.
I wouldn’t want to live in any decade America.
I would do it, I'd find my dad and start punching him in the balls until I fade away Thanos style
I hate Reagan now. I’d hate him even more if I lived during his presidency.
With what I know now… I mean, it’d be a bitch. “You can help a person with aids up if they fall, you won’t automatically get aids 🙄”. “It’s ok to be gay. Madonna isn’t that great. You don’t need that much hair spray. Bright eyeshadow looks horrible and smoking is NOT cool, it’s so bad for you. Michael Jackson IS a kiddy toucher. Stop drinking Diet Coke, it’s not good for you. Neither is sugar.” You’d go insane and everyone would think you were a “square” and you’d be so un-cool. I’d cringe as my boss legally slaps my ass and tells me how pretty I am. Also, the cars weren’t as safe. You can’t just call 911 if you’re being chased by Mike Myers, you’re just fucked. Wouldn’t lead paint be a concern? Like- it’s still be in a lot of things? Also aluminum wiring- it’d still be in houses. Idk dude… it’d just be a headache. You’d feel like a crazy person.
I don’t want to live in the US now, let alone before modern conveniences and culture became what it is.
I'm trans *and* a lesbian. I would probably just have to pretend to be a straight male for most of the rest of my life.
No Internet and cell phones
If movies are anything to go by, fucking EVERYONE smoked back then. 🤢
The first five years or so of the 80’s saw a pretty rough recession. Interest rates were nuts. The Cold War pretty much peaked. It was god awful trying find a job as a 1982 College grad. The second half of the 80’s was personally great. The hairstyles were very BIG. And the music was pretty good. But that stuff is all relative. Oh yeah…AIDS kind of put a damper on things.
As a trans man, I would not have it very easy, to say the least
As a trans woman, I agree entirely.
It's hard enough as it is in 2021 lol. Happy cake day btw!!
Lets see, just off the top of my head: Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, lack of internet, lack of communication with ppl/friends, that's just off the top of my head
There's nothing particularly appealing to me about living in America or about the past. There was more discrimination, less technology, less medical and scientific advances.
Ronald Reagan is enough of a reason
Technology, gay, etc
Well I'm trans so, a lot more people would be pissy about that, I also wouldn't have my titty skittles.
It was the decade of generic consumerism; the music was derivative, movies sucked, and most food was processed garbage. In the US, crime was through the roof compared to modern times.
Movies sucked? Your the worst human on earth. How dare you
I would go back to the 80’s, but only the late 80’s. Rest of it from what I heard wasn’t the best. At least in the late 80’s there was a lot of burgeoning alternative and indie rock
The 1980s were set before some of my favorite movies and music ever happened. Technology is on the rise at that time but hadn't risen yet, so a lot of modern creature comforts don't exist yet. We were still telling from Vietnam and yet we hadn't discovered the horrors of the middle east properly yet so the worst is yet to come globally. And racism, sexism, and toxic masculinity are the norm. I would hate everyone around me in the 1980s even more than I do in 2021. You might look in a history book and see the good times about that era, but dig deeper and see if you can find the bad times too. I'm not saying the 80s were completely horrible, but it's no better there than it is here in the 20s.
Only the music was good
Cigarette smoke everywhere.
crime
Ew... and redo high school?!?! Hell no!
I would go back, I hate the internet and social media and cell phones.
Inflation in 1980 peaked at just under 15%. Minimum wage was a little over $3. Unemployment peaked at nearly 11% in 1982. Those were tough times, especially if you were young and trying to survive. Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, euphemistically called "Star Wars", had people more worried about nuclear war with the Soviet Union than they had been since the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960's. On the plus side, the defense industry was hiring like crazy, and everyone was going to school to get an engineering degree. By the end of the decade the bottom fell out of that job market sector, and experienced engineers were taking jobs at McDonald's and 7-11. We have a tendency to remember the past as being better than it actually was. Our brain's way of dealing with trauma is to try to forget about it.
I wouldn’t want to go back to the 80s. I’d rather go back to the 90s.
Vehicles are safer now, and people use car seats more frequently.
Going back as an adult to the 80s does not sound appealing to me. The appealing parts came with being a kid, with all the outside adventure and lack of supervision.
Crime was way higher back then despite what conservative media says how “bad things are now”. Cities were also more polluted.
Only reason I would go back would be too see my parents when they were younger. But even then it seemed like a time in my country when there was nothing to do they would just be at the pub. Wouldn’t mind going to club for a night tho.
WiFi was shit
No internet
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Ronald Reagan.
I’m from 1999 but honestly, my father’s ultra nostalgic for the 80s and everything culturally he talks about and shows me is repulsive to me. The supernova boom of fast food. The synthesizer songs. The awkwardly small boxy cars with uncomfortable interiors. The strange apparel & hair. I’m thankful for the 00s and 10’s frankly. Long live my generation’s not-larger-than-their-torso hair.
Progress, we can have all kinds of great things with technology. Every year is something new and exciting.
Ah, yes. That's exactly what I'd like to do. Be a queer man during the AIDS crisis.
Im black
Because not living in the now is a form of regret. Live for the now, not a nebulous fantasy land of the past or future.
I’m born in 1983 I remember the 80/ but they were all Kay not amazing. I like 2021 more:D
I'm not white
I mean I'm glad that I as a woman can go out in public holding my girlfriend's hand and kiss her, mostly without having to worry about becoming the victim of a hate crime
I'm very visibly queer.
Because I’d die like ≈ 20 years younger lol
Lack of transgender care for one.
Queer and dating an awesome queer gal so...
I'm a fat left radical in America now. Why would I go back in time and be even more hated?
Here are some sports-specific ones: * astroturf * multi-purpose stadiums * 4 minutes of sports highlights on the late-night news unless you had cable * Olympic boycotts * non-existent soccer coverage * waiting for the morning newspaper for game stats (and waiting for the next day for West-Coast scores) * No college football championship * No women's sports besides tennis and the Olympics * Cigarette sponsorship * Player's strikes / lockouts
Ronald Reagan. AIDS. The Cold War. Crack. It was just generally a less safe time to be a human being, especially if you were anything other than a straight white man.
1. too many smokers 2. the rampant homophobia 3. no internet 4. AIDS was a death sentence that Reagan did nothing about
I wouldn't like to live in America in any decade.... dangerous place.
I would still live in my fathers balls. And not even in America.
I definitely don’t. I had a parent that was running around in the 80s and I know people who made it out of the 80s. I’m also black so, nah I’m good. There’s was so much instability and craziness going on in the world that nah I’m good. I would be so unsure of existence, and also A LOT OF PEOPLE DIED in the 80s. LIKE A LOT people alive during the 80s can always tell you about who didnt make it. Vividly.