Was everything better when you were young?

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by this thread about how video games suck now compared to when we were kids.

I think I break the stereotype of the early-thirties person who thinks everything was better when we were younger. Here’s some examples of things people my age say are worse than when we were kids, and my thoughts about it.

  1. Movies. The “bad” movies now are a thousand times better than John Carpenter’s Vampires, and Dumb and Dumber. The “good” movies today, like Inception, are every bit as good as the best movies of my youth.

  2. Video games. There is not a single game from my youth that would make enough money for the company who released it to make a profit in today’s market. Games have improved very much since my Nintendo and Super Nintendo. One comment in the linked thread was that we are seeing video game genres narrow, and fewer genres are available. I can not overstate my disagreement with that statement. The most popular games are from narrow genres, for sure, but even the CONCEPT of an MMO was unfathomable for us as kids. Also, the technology available for making games has increased the number of genres, and “indy” games are absolutely alive and well on the right platforms. PC gaming is extremely friendly to independent game companies through digital distribution. My iPad has games available in genres you couldn’t have conceived of in 1998. Genre narrowing, my ass!

  3. Music. Music sucks today. It’s the one part of my youth I honestly believe was better than what’s offered today. The “new” rock stations here in Vegas spend about 50% of the airtime playing music older than 10 years. A significant portion of the newer music they play is from bands that were from my high school days (like Disturbed) who are releasing new albums with the same style. Even today’s kids know their own music sucks, so they’re borrowing mine. I’m fine with that.

2

I think the quality and quantity of good stuff has steadily increased over the years. They problem is the amount of bad stuff has increased exponentially. Music is a good example of that. There’s a lot of absolutely amazing music out there right now. But you’re not going to hear it on the radio.

3

Music today is worse than it was a couple years ago, but you’re right that commercial rock radio has stuck to the exact same music for about 10 years. But that’s not because the new music sucks, on the contrary, Nu-metalesque is about the worst genre of rock in the last couple decades. It’s just that a lot of people – grownups – stayed listening to rock radio and stayed with the bands they grew up with like Disturbed.

Commercial radio didn’t play any emo because they thought it was safe to play nu-metal, and because listeners of that genre are more lucrative.

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I seem to be pretty immune to this effect…although I do actually revisit the things of my youth (the 80s) from time to time. And, a lot of it - TV shows and movies, specifically…really kind of…suck. Especially the ‘toy commercial’ cartoons. I watch them now just to laugh at the plot holes, ludicrous premises, bad acting, and obvious animation errors… Sitcoms suffer similarly (though not as consistently), and dramas fare little better. Sketch comedy seems to hold up pretty well, though.

Music, on the other hand, has been pretty consistent through the last couple decades…some bad, some good…some that seems bad at the time, but seems good as tastes change, and vice versa.

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Things are different today; some things were better when I was a kid, sure.

But then again, who doesn’t think this?

I know the quality of life was better and simpler then, and it seemed as a kid you had a lot more freedom in your movement. There was also a lot more kids to play with.

No internet, then, but maybe that was a good thing – we were forced to talk to people face-to-face most of the time. Kids had manners, and weren’t such social numbnuts as they seem to be today – for an example of what I’m talking about, see what a slug Jake is on Two and a Half Men – he portrays a typical kid today.
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Things were, in general, worse when I was a teenager ('80s). There was some great music, but then, as now, it was mostly underground. The video games, while fun, were absolute shit compared to today. Lots of my favorite movies from the era don’t hold up, and there were just as many shitty big Hollywood cliched crapfests as there are now, except the effects weren’t nearly as good. I think overall things are smarter and more sophisticated nowadays - partly because the indie/punk ideal has become mainstream by this point.

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A few things, but not most things. I’m comparing today to 50 or 60 years ago.

What we have now that we didn’t have then (good stuff):
Internet (computers in general), safer cars, microwave ovens, color TV, vaccines for a whole lot of diseases, vastly improved surgical and anaesthesia techniques, better attitudes toward childbirth and child care in general.

There really is more oppportunity for women and minority groups. If my mother had said she wanted to be a doctor she would have been laughed at. If my granddaughter were to say so, no one would bat an eye.

What we have now that we didn’t have then (bad stuff):
HIV/AIDS, the possibility of suicidal terrorists getting nuclear weapons

These days, like many older folks, I worry about my granddaughter in a world where some nutcase sets off a nuclear holocaust. But I sure am glad I don’t have to worry about her getting smallpox, polio, diptheria, whooping cough, mumps, measles, or rubella, just to name a few. I’m glad that when my husband’s main coronary artery got clogged up 15 years ago he didn’t just drop dead or become an invalid.

Things that really were better in the “old days:” Hmmm. Hmmmm. Still thinking… Okay, there were more open spaces and fewer condominiums.

8

Chocolate today is way, way better than what I could get in the 1980s. Of course, that may be due to my having more money than I did in the 1980s.

9

It might just be my imagination but tomatoes and cucumbers, and chicken were much better when I was a kid. They didn’t look all perfect-like but were actually tasty. I remember their juicy goodness and abundance; you could actually go to a relative’s or friend’s house and there’d be bowls of tomatoes on the table, like fruit.

It helped that we had what is now called an organically grown garden and chickens. Even now, when you seek out farm stand cucumbers and tomatoes they might still not be pesticide- or chemical-free or air grown, and they’re damned expensive. Higher cost is especially true for so-called organic meats.

Also, summer was much better because it’s short school-free span was so short and, of course (paid) work-free (somebody had to hand-tend those gardens).

10

My knees were better in the old days. And gas was cheaper. Other than that, I’m mostly happy with now.

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I was born in 1952 and have frequently noticed that, from my point of view and based on my interests and tastes, that ‘things’ started going downhill around 1965.

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Dumb and Dumber wasn’t a bad movie.

However, I’d agree that in general the quality of movies now is higher than it was when I was a kid (born in 1971, high school 1985-1989.) There are terrible movies now and there were good movies in the past but my honest impression is that

  • There are more genuinely first rate movies now, and
  • Despite the profusion of sequels, there’s more variety and innovation in the movies made available to the general public.

I would also add something you didn’t mention: TV is way better now. When I was a kid there were some good TV shows but the recent list of absolutely knock-you-on-your-ass TV series is an awfully long one. Shows like The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Deadwood, The Sopranos, Rome, Dexter… it’s amazing, amazing stuff. Comedy programming has also seen some astonishing stuff made in the last two decades: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Arrested Development, and on and on. Again, I think there’s more innovation than there used to be. The quality of sports broadcasting’s also a lot higher, albeit largely for technical reasons.

Children’s programming is far, far better as well; there was good stuff 25 years ago but there’s more good stuff now. And they actually have channels without toy commercials.

…

However, I disagree with your claim video games used to suck. Technically speaking they could not hold up to what we have now, but in terms of playability they were fricking awesome. Games from before I graduated from high school include Civilization, SimCity, M.U.L.E., Super Mario Bros., and a zillion more. I’d further argue the golden age of PC gaming was the early 90s in terms of the creation of truly addictive and innovative games. Today’s games are excellent and, obviously, they’re GRAPHICALLY ten million times better than they used to be, but in terms of gameplay, the stuff being made in 1990 was as good as the stuff today. It is not a coincidence that game popularity is often totally disconnected from graphics quality - after all, World of Warcraft is not particularly advanced, graphically speaking.

I’m also not convinced that video game genres are increasing or decreasing. Some genres are new; in that other thread I mentioned music games, plus of course there’s MMOs. But some genres have died; flight simulators aren’t nearly as easily found as they used to be, and hard core wargames have narrowed down significantly. I love flight simulators and war games so believe me, this isn’t pleasing to me.

13

I was born in 1973 and I have already gotten to see some very different decades. Things in general are much better than they were in the 1970’s and 80’s. I think most people, even old ones, would be in for a rude awakening if they were dropped back into 1985 for instance. The lack of modern electronics and everything that goes with that would make even today’s self-professed Luddites cringe. I mean much more than video games or even the web. I am talking about basics like typing something, banking, listening to non mainstream music, or finding something in the library. Everything would seem hopelessly primitive.

Vehicles are better today than they ever have been. Don’t listen to your grandfather. The reason he needed to work on his car himself is that his needed tuneups and it broke down all the time. 100,000 miles on a vehicle was an achievement, not the break-in period like it is today. His car wasn’t nearly as fast as he remembers either. It was loud, sure but a many regular passenger sedans could blow that mainstream muscle car away in any race held today. The point is to move, not spin inferior tires and belch lots of smoke. Good handling and brakes are a given now but not in the old days. Safety equipment is much better too.

The quality and availability of food has greatly improved all over the U.S. even since the mid-1990’s. I grew up in a small Southern town and never even saw a bagel until 1991. There is still plenty of crap out there but most places have good food available if you want it and are willing to pay for it. A wide range of choices simply didn’t exist in many places not that long ago.

For any given year, music is probably at least as good as it has ever been and probably better but older people have a vast amalgam of artists to compare everything to and that is hard to compete with. There is an exception to that. The birth of rock and roll followed by the British invasion really was revolutionary and something that is almost impossible to repeat again.

TV has greatly improved even since the 1990’s. There used to be strict formulas that were rarely broken. Shows like Rosanne and the Simpsons were controversial because they depicted imperfect families and there was a limited range of TV show formats to choose from. I don’t like reality TV much but I have over 200 channels to choose from. In 1980, I had 1% of that or slightly more on nights with weird atmospheric effects.

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I do remember tomatoes from the grocery store tasted much better than they do now, but I don’t remember anyone putting them out in fruit baskets on their kitchen table.

Fast food is a thousand times better now than when I was a kid, too. And somehow, the price of food does not seem to be inflated since the mid 90s.

15

Same age, and I mostly agree. TV is vastly better, definitely. The Internet is like my third arm, who could live without it?

I prefer 80’s and 90’s music myself, but then I’m a grumpy old lady. I do think the continuing popularity of 80’s music on pop stations is something of an indication, though–when I was a kid, music that was 25 years old got played on oldies stations.

One thing I’ll pick at is children’s books. In a way, we’re having a boom in children’s/YA books, which is nice, and I think it’s better than when I was a kid and Problem Novels ruled the world. OTOH the actual writing has mostly not improved over time. The other day I read a children’s book written in 1946, and the writing blew everything modern out of the water. Of course plenty of dreck was written then too, but you don’t often see that kind of quality now. (Then again, I also had a conversation with my 10yo today about the problems of printing, say, original Bobbsey Twins books with their embarrassing and offensive stereotypes.)

Continuing to harp on children’s books, the non-fiction is hugely improved. There is no comparison. At all.

Oh! I know! MTV was better when I was a kid. I want my MTV!
And my mom still has bowls of tomatoes all over the place, but she grows her own. Yum.

16

I think the amount of good art remains a constant. You just tend to remember the good stuff when you were younger and forget the bad.

Though the main difference in music is that the good music has gone underground. The record companies, because their revenue stream is being hurt by file sharing, gravitate toward big, flashy acts with a lot of showmanship, all within a narrow demographic and musical styles. The better music is on smaller labels. This was inevitable once people started sharing music files.

17

Just about the only thing better then than now to me is the water. When I was young, you could drink the rain and eat the fish that came out of streams. Now, it’s all polluted.

Computers are incredibly better now. I grew up in the 286/386/486 era and PC-Dos/Windows 3.5. I would have nightmares about having to change the config.sys file. I used to run about 4-6 different .bat files at any given time to make new config.sys files to run each particular game.

Cars are better now. Back then, most cars didn’t have AC, and of the cars that did, about 80% of them didn’t work. Having a car (particularly a used car) with working AC was extremely rare. Power steering, power brakes, disc brakes, and power windows/locks were rare and expensive.

Food is better now. When I was young, food was getting more and more expensive almost daily. I remember when a 12 oz soda from a vending machine was 35 cents, then it climbed up to 75 cents in a few months (during the phase when companies were switching to HFCS I think.) Candy and chips were outrageously expensive. Kids whose parents could afford the mini Frito bags were rich. The rest of us ate soggy chips in a ziploc, and we had to re-use the ziploc for an entire semester, even if it had a hole in it.

18

Oh yeah! I get a little frustrated with my kids’ complaints about a hot car–they have no idea! I am so grateful for AC. I’m not too sure how my mom survived–we had a swamp cooler in our house and the whole summer was 105 or more. And she spent 3 of those summers being very pregnant.

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nm

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It does seem like things were more appreciated when I was a kid. Or maybe I just appreciated things more than my kids do. I had an Atari, and the only thing I had to compare my Frogger, PacMan, etc., to was Pong. I *loved *the Atari- it was light years ahead of Pong! Now my kids get every gaming thing that comes along- everything that they have between them could fill a closet for sure, and they seem to be pretty ‘meh’ about the whole thing. Plus when I was a kid, going to McDonald’s or Burger King was a special treat, and was appreciated much more than nowdays. I remember getting a dollar and being ecstatic that I could get a soda from the machine and a candy bar- for kids these days, that’s called breakfast. So yeah, things may be better now, but back then they seemed better.