21–30 of 72 posts
Other than that it had the same ups and downs as any other time.
I've also always been interested in technology. I remember using some variant of Apple II in school (Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and such), an IBM PCJr at home (a pack of Sesame Street games, Alleycat, and some others I don't remember well enough to identify). This was obviously before the internet was typically available in homes, and before the first web browser...I do remember using Prodigy on my grandfather's computer around the time (text-only, over a 2.4kbps modem). To me, one of the stark differences is that computers weren't so embedded and essential in people's lives.
Stranger Things and other modern movies like Wonder Woman: 1984 present an inconsistent idea of what the 1980s was like. Case in point, there's a scene in a supermarket with a bunch of breakfast cereals from various pop franchises. That never happened in reality. In reality, the same cereal would be repackaged for whatever was the hot movie/brand at the time. This is somewhat sent up in this video from UK's The Adam…
> Case in point, there's a scene in a supermarket with a bunch of breakfast cereals from various pop franchises Yep, Season 3 Episode 1. Also seems like everyone went to the mall to hangout :-)
I was born in 1967.. so I remember the 80's very well. First, let me say that it wasn't all great: AIDS was pretty scary (as someone else noted).. no one knew what the hell that was and it was killing a lot of people. There was also the ever-present spectre of nuclear war with Russia...Iran-Contra, 1987 stock market crash.. However, to your point, there was no exhausting news cycle, no exhausting bullshit social medi…
I was born in 1967.. so I remember the 80's very well. First, let me say that it wasn't all great: AIDS was pretty scary (as someone else noted).. no one knew what the hell that was and it was killing a lot of people. There was also the ever-present spectre of nuclear war with Russia...Iran-Contra, 1987 stock market crash.. However, to your point, there was no exhausting news cycle, no exhausting bullshit social medi…
For many people the 80s were not good - the CIA was introducing crack to finance itself (and arguably targeting destabilizing black america), AIDS was killing thousands while significant portions of the world were celebrating the "gay plague" or GRID (Gay Related Immune Disorder), Police still routinely targeted LGBT clubs, being fired for being gay or trans was legal, etc
I was born in 1967.. so I remember the 80's very well. First, let me say that it wasn't all great: AIDS was pretty scary (as someone else noted).. no one knew what the hell that was and it was killing a lot of people. There was also the ever-present spectre of nuclear war with Russia...Iran-Contra, 1987 stock market crash.. However, to your point, there was no exhausting news cycle, no exhausting bullshit social medi…
> I remember always being optimistic about the future. Now I'm not so sure. 1968 here... I was somewhat pessimistic about the world throughout most of the '80s, primarily because of the cold war, Libya, etc. But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and during the subsequent years in the 1990s, when it felt like Russia was becoming a democracy (in combination with the explosion of the WWW), I became optimistic about soci…
Post the wall coming down there was a sense of optimism and then came the breakup of Yugoslavia with ethnic cleansing and the siege of Sarajevo. In the same time period - the Rwandan genocide.
So, yes the never-ending nuclear fear mongering (not saying the threat wasn't/isn't real - it is) gave way to a small window of time that looked promising.
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Bloody awful in the UK, living under Thatcher and the streets awash with yuppies -- you're welcome to it.
Source: I was born in the 80s
Japan in the 1980s was booming and would’ve been magical.
In the US, the 1980s was a sort of economic rebounding from stagflation and high oil prices of the 1970s.
The crack epidemic, the renewed “war on drugs”, nuclear war (“the day after” was a big deal), blatant racism, terrible American cars, and high interest rates?
I don’t miss those at all.