# What were the 80s like? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 6, 2017, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671 "2017-12-06T00:19:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/61 "2017-12-07T01:16:43Z")
As I type my local PBS station is running (pledge drive programming) a show hosted by Martha Quinn (!) featuring eighties music videos. I had a good time in the 80s, I was 23 in 1980, lots of partying, 60s muscle cars were still relatively cheap and that is what all my guy friends were into. 80s cars were mostly junk. I was into “arena rock” used to go to tons of concerts. Got divorced in 85, had a good job, no kids, fun times! ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/62 "2017-12-07T01:44:33Z")
In the 80’s I was a journeyman typesetter, union card and everything. Getting a job was like snapping your fingers, there was so much demand and so few in the field. I once turned down a job because it was 5 miles away; I wanted to work closer to home (and was able to). Nowadays it seems like that was a world that never existed. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/63 "2017-12-07T01:57:13Z")
I couldn’t afford a computer when I had my first apartment, and I used a typewriter for things. Then I discovered something called a PWP, or “personal word processor.” Mine was a Smith Corona, because I liked the typeface. You got only one choice. It had an 8-line screen, that pulled up, and a disk drive on the side that took very small, non-standard disks. One disk held about 20 pages. All it did was word process, but it did that just as well as a computer of the time with WordPerfect. It cost about $280, as opposed to a couple thousand for a computer at the time. Since this was pre-internet, and I didn’t play games\* or use spreadsheets, all I really needed was word processing. It was perfect, and got me through my senior year of college without my having to go to the computer lab or my uncle’s house. \*I had an Atari 2600, that I got for my bat mitzvah, from my uncle, over my mother’s objections. NES was state-of-the-art, and my brother had one, but I just had the 2600. Later, when my brother got a SuperNintendo, he gave me his NES. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/64 "2017-12-07T02:08:59Z")
> [@AllShookDown](#): > > The 80’s were tubular. We had stagflation but hey, we got 8-9% raises! I bought my first house in 1984 or 85, and got a 13% mortgage. I was thrilled. My friends, who had bought maybe a year and half before, had an 18% mortgage. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/65 "2017-12-07T02:22:53Z")
> [@AllShookDown](#): > > The 80’s were tubular. We had stagflation but hey, we got 8-9% raises! > [@John\_Mace](#): > > I bought my first house in 1984 or 85, and got a 13% mortgage. I was thrilled. My friends, who had bought maybe a year and half before, had an 18% mortgage. That was my mortgage, also. Actually, we had to buy down a point to get 13%. Those 9% raises were great, until you realized the cost of living was going up faster than that. I remember my company’s owner saying that raises were tied to performance, not inflation. Then, a few years later he told us that since inflation was lower, we shouldn’t expect those generous raises anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/66 "2017-12-07T02:58:53Z")
Friggin’ wonderful. The economy was booming and I had three chances to work overseas and make a ton of tax free money. ---
**Author:** ![JPrescott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e36b37/32.png) [@JPrescott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JPrescott)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/67 "2017-12-07T04:03:00Z")
> [@AI\_Proofreader](#): > > The thing that strikes me sometimes when watching old Star Trek episodes is how good we are at massively \*underestimating future technology. > > The tablets in TNG stored one document. They weren’t network-linked, and as near as I can tell, didn’t run applications, remote control things, or do anything else, other than display one document. There were stacks of them on desks, because, well, you need lots of technical manuals, so of course you’ll need lots of tablets. > > And this was a technology that was supposed to be centuries in the future - but the real thing a bit more than a decade later was way, way more advanced. Excellent point. I’d forgotten that before you mentioned it! It’s one thing that was interesting about Star Trek Enterprise. Technically the technology in their world was clearly superior to TOS tech, despite being set BEFORE TOS. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/68 "2017-12-07T04:07:35Z")
Not mentioned yet: the 80s was the decade of the [gated reverb drum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxz6jShW-3E) sound. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/69 "2017-12-07T05:51:16Z")
In the 80s there were 8" and 5.25" floppy disks. Personal computers didn’t have hard drives. You could use an audio cassette for storage if you bought the cassette recorder that worked with your computer. Often, you used your 12" bw television as a monitor. In the later 80’s you had to choose between Apple or Windows. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/70 "2017-12-07T06:43:06Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > In the 80s there were 8" and 5.25" floppy disks. Personal computers didn’t have hard drives. You could use an audio cassette for storage if you bought the cassette recorder that worked with your computer. Often, you used your 12" bw television as a monitor. In the later 80’s you had to choose between Apple or Windows. In the very early 80s, you could still get a Tandy, Radio Shack’s computer. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/71 "2017-12-07T07:18:34Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > Meth didn’t exist or at least was unknown in my area. It was called Crystal Meth in the 80s and a lot of it was (still is?) made in the pnw, and was equated, at least in my group of, um, associates, with cocaine. The 80s is also when crack cocaine really became widespread and spawned the term “crackhead” > [@GuanoLad](#): > > I was a teenager throughout. Literally 10 in 1980 through to 20 in 1990, so my experience is heavily tinged with the nostalgia of no responsibilities, everything I love now being first experienced during that time of my life, and the blind naive feeling of hope for my future. > > The pop culture was great (a lot of it still objectively holds up today), it was the rapid growth of video games and home computing, and though there was a lot of bad stuff going on (AIDS, nuclear fear, Cold War, riots and unemployment) most of that didn’t affect me at the time, so I could look at it as purely an observer. this pretty much. I think someone mentioned the start of the aids pandemic. The Commodore Vic 20 came out and was a perfectly cool computer, then the Commodore 64, then the Commodore 128 then Commodore rapidly went out of business, because by that time IBM clones were really starting to be worth a damn and take off, and also Apple. If you had a Commodore you could buy books of games and other programs written in basic that you would sit and laboriously type in one line at a time and save to whatever medium you had. The 128 featured dual-boot. In 128 mode it used a different programming language than basic, and was more advanced, but if you wanted to you could switch to 64 mode and go with basic. 56k dialup? Heh! That was for colleges and super-users. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/72 "2017-12-07T13:15:05Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > That was 1984. The other years were much better. 😃 [Not really](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid#State_of_emergency), no. But do feel free to joke on. ---
**Author:** ![Hockey\_Monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a183cd/32.png) [@Hockey\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hockey_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/73 "2017-12-07T14:04:52Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > snipped > > [CNN was born in 1980.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN) It was kind of a novelty at first to see news in the middle of the day instead of just at dinner time. If your family was well off enough and urban enough to have cable, or a giant satellite dish if you were rural. We didn’t have cable which made it a treat to go visit my uncle who sold TVs and had every channel available. Those visits were the only time I got my MTV. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/74 "2017-12-07T15:14:32Z")
Got married, got my first job in IT, and the economy fucking _rocked_. And the 70s were over. Good times, good times. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/75 "2017-12-07T15:52:24Z")
80s were pretty much HS & Navy for me. Got my first computer, it had 16k memory. Yes k as in kilobytes, not megabytes. Phones were mostly pushbutton but still wired, surprised by the rotary phone mentions, they were leftovers from the 60s. Color TV was pretty standard though a large set was only 25" and figure 19" was more standard. VCRs and Cable got popular in the 80s. Got out of the Navy and was trying to figure out how to put myself through school while working full-time. Reagan dominated the decade; the Berlin Wall coming down was a huge moment. The big shows were Hill Street Blues, Cheers, Family Ties, The Cosby Show and the night time soaps like Dallas & Dynasty. Overall after 2 decades of turbulence and decay it was a hopeful decade with things seemingly getting better. The Cold war finally wound down and the danger of all out nuclear war seemed to decrease tremendously. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/76 "2017-12-07T16:06:43Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > In the very early 80s, you could still get a Tandy, Radio Shack’s computer. Not even very early 80s. The Coco 3 (Tandy Color Computer 3) was sold through 1991. Plus they also had their Tandy branded PC clones in the mid-to-late 80s, as well. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/77 "2017-12-07T16:13:43Z")
I would also say that Apple vs IBM-compatible/DOS/Windows didn’t really crystallize until the early 90s. I went to high school from '89-'93, and most kids I knew were still on Commodores like the C64/C128 or Amiga (which, remarkably, the C64 was sold through 1994.) There was also the Atari ST at the time. The way the breakdown worked in the late 80s and very early 90s was that gamers still liked the C64 (though that was certainly long in the tooth by then), desktop publishers liked the Macs, schools liked the Apple IIgs, musicians/MIDI instrument people liked the Atari ST, video production liked the Amiga, business folk liked the PC. Macintosh and PC/Dos/Windows really consolidated the market around maybe '91-'92, if I had to guess. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/78 "2017-12-07T16:28:50Z")
Oh yeah - the 80s also brought us “stranger danger” with the horrific kidnapping and murder of [Adam Walsh](http://time.com/4437205/adam-walsh-murder/) in 1981 and the subsequent TV movie \*[Adam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_(1983_film))\*in 1983. I was only 4 when the movie came out but I totally remember it being a thing, and we must have watched it because I remember being scared of it. Don’t get me wrong - we were still all walking around our little neighborhood by ourselves and rolling in after dark even in the summer. But moms had us on a short leash at the grocery store and mall, that’s for sure. At the end of the decade in 1987 the new danger was [wells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_McClure). ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/79 "2017-12-07T16:33:06Z")
_Red Dawn_ ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671/80 "2017-12-07T17:16:28Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > VCRs and Cable got popular in the 80s. [VCRs got HUGE in the 80s.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder#Mass-market_success) Before that, you had to be in front of the TV when your favorite program was broadcast, or you missed it and hoped you might catch it in a rerun someday. With a VCR, you could record programs when they were broadcast and watch them at your convenience. Along with VCRs, the videocassette rental market boomed. Stores popped up everywhere, and now instead of watching “edited-for-content” movies on TV, you could rent movies with all of the original swear words and nudity presented in their uncensored glory. AIUI, this also led to a huge boom in the porn industry because production became cheap (video cameras and tape duplicating machines instead of film), and because viewers could watch porn in the privacy of their own homes. [VCRs were the origin of the “Blinking Twelve” problem.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinking_twelve_problem) If you were a kid in the '80s, you probably could figure out how to set the clock on the front of the VCR. If you were middle-aged or beyond, with no kids at your disposal, chances are the clock on your VCR just blinked “12:00 AM” nonstop because you couldn’t figure out how to set it. By the end of the 80s, it was fairly common to watch educational programs in the classroom on video tape. At the beginning of the 80s, video and still images were shown to students on [reel-to-reel movie film projectors,](https://www.google.com/search?q=classroom+movie+film+projector&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi99sXbsvjXAhVDmuAKHWSkAMUQsAQIYg&biw=1264&bih=873#imgrc=GPnIw5s3Pph0lM:) or on [still-frame filmstrip projectors,](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1264&bih=873&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=fHYpWrv-I6K1ggfM7YTgBA&q=filmstrip+projector&oq=filmstrip+projector&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i24k1.52323.55230.0.55494.11.10.1.0.0.0.128.855.3j5.8.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..3.7.653...0i67k1j0i13k1j0i7i30k1.0.ZGE38hEa9oU) which were often accompanied by an audio tape. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-80s-like/803671.md?page=5)