We (As a Society) Peaked in the 90s

I really love lots of things about the world today. I love delivery apps, remote working, so much entertainment. I feel much safer in some ways (not in others -- but that's a 2026 development). I hated walkmans and cd players, they skip, wearout,etc... I hated having to rent movies, sometimes all the copies have been rented out, and you had to deal with fees for not rewinding. and the media quality sucked.

Even when there was internet (if you're lucky, and you afforded the very costly computers back then), you had to share time with landline usage. You had to remember landline numbers too.

I hated writing all the time, pens, pencils, sharpening pencils, pens leaking in your pocket. There were no cameras anywhere back then, so people were free to be really bad to each other with little consequence. You didn't go viral for berating a waiter back then. Everything terrible cops are accused of doing today, it was 10x worse in the 90s too.

So many thing were inaccessible unless you were in the right neighborhood and with the right amount of family income.

In news and politics, petty things were made to be a big deal, like Clinton's affair for example. People today fall for the deception of nostalgia and think it's because things were by relation not so bad back then, but it's just that they were kids and their parents sheltered them. All the stuff in epstein's list, all the #metoo revelations, all the gang warfare and war on drugs chaos in cities, that happened in the 90s too. matter of fact, a lot of the terrible things happening today are only coming into the light now that we have smartphones, internet and things are getting exposed.

In my opinion, the US peaked in 2022-23 in many ways.But post-covid trauma and the current administration nullified much of that.

What was great in the 90s was that the US had a healthy amount of national pride and love of country. Russia/Putin has been trying to undermine that, split the us apart from within since the fall of the USSR. Which by the way, all the 90's nostalgia is fueled by the whole "we won the cold war" euphoria in part, and mostly younger people being fooled by the whole "that means we're the good guys" nonsense. Until Iraq of course.

But anyways, social divisions and strife has widened dramatically, but the people who call themselves "MAGA" were "tea party" prior to that and all sorts of other names historically. All the chaos with the current admin is caused by "the heritage foundation" which has been sowing sees of divisions and chaos since before the 90s (thank them for project 2025). My point is the divisions and chaos are not new. but a lot of people that were doing badly in the 90's are doing much better now (oh..and did I mention how terrifying aids was then? even covid in 2020 was nowhere near as scary).

We're terrible at appreciating what we have right now in the present,today. We're losing so much of our rights and privileges because of this nonsense, so I hope you all don't propagate it. The 90's were nice in some ways, but they were mostly horrible, and the more disadvantaged you were the worse they were. There was more injustice, more misery, more suffering, more discomforts. We have the best technology, the best health care, the most powerful military, an economy which by all means should be crashing but is somehow surviving, a government which is being attacked by cartoon-level villains at all sides and somehow it too hasn't collapsed yet. Even our allies which are turning to other countries, even they haven't forsaken the US completely yet.

This mindset of "we used to have it great but it's over now" is defeatist. it is actually the same mindset MAGA is using for their lunacy.

The problem I think is our generation and gen-z are finally grown ups now, but instead of fighting to keep what we have and improving it, we're in this defeatist mindset looking back into the past and thinking it used to be better. Not appreciating the progress achieved by the sacrifices and struggles of so many. What you don't fight to keep is taken away from you.

Oh and by the way, remember the ozone crisis, it was more scary than climate change now, and we fixed it more or less now (although objectively, climate change in the future will be worse if it isn't fixed).

I really really hated school so much!! now for all the problems I had, there has been so much research into them. educators are more aware and more willing to provide individualized plans to students. I wish I had wikipedia back then, heck I wish I had chatgpt back then, I was the student that asked 1000 questions and annoyed everyone, I could annoy chatgpt instead if i were a student today.

Taxis, how horrible and scammy they were! it was such a hopeless, boring and miserable time. I could go on all day.

The key thing everyone should keep in mind is that nostalgia is by its nature deceptive. This is why eyewitness testimony is also unreliable. We selectively recall things from the past, not only that, our minds alter how we felt back then in the recall process.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t...

My suspicion is that children who are not raised properly or are naturally more susceptible to certain issues, may be more damaged by social media. But it’s also possible that other children are positively benefiting from it, or at least just not negatively affected to the level that everyone assumes.

I’m speculating, but I bet children who are raised properly still have enough offline time doing things like playing outside and having some independence, that they are balanced and healthy.