It was a struggle. We lived in caves and had to hunt for food.
No social media. All the stupid stuff I did and said as a kid stays where it belongs, haunting my memories as I lie awake at 3 AM.
I was born in 1999 and am therefore completely qualified to talk about life in the 1900s. It was a lot of milk drinking and shitting in diapers.
man, we used to fill those diapers. Not like the kids these days
The good old days.
Ah I’m glad to hear from a typical 90s kid about it! Lol <- to prove I’m older than that.
there was no expectation to be constantly immediately available. you didn’t have the world at your fingertips, so there was no pressure to immediately resolve all situations.
it was nice. slower. less pressure.
oh and the lower level of blatant exploitation and theft by mega corps and the uber wealthy was nice. not good enough still, but better than now
Hyper capitalism of the 1980’s would be considered quant, by today’s standards
Anybody can trade like they’re a registered broker on Wall Street, so that’s new, and gig work with no employee protections is increasingly the norm. Antitrust regulation is old-fashioned, while it was still kicking in the 80’s. Whether monopolies are more or less capitalistic is up for debate, but we all know they’re not good.
On the other hand, the financial markets are still much more regulated than before the Recession (or, we hope so), and you can’t get away with money laundering or creative accounting quite as easily. There’s also more environmental regulations, especially outside the US.
The streets were paved with gold and everyone said “hello” to strangers in the street with a smile. Getting a job was a matter of walking up to a person in a suit and giving them a firm handshake. VAR wasn’t a thing in sports because the referees got every decision right. Cats and dogs got along fine with each other. Everyone had enough friends to play Goldeneye on N64 multiplayer. People didn’t gain weight despite eating no vegetables. They hadn’t invented 2nd hand smoking yet so everyone was free to smoke inside without it affecting anyone else. Musicians did drugs but never OD’d, just produced classic albums on demand. People read books constantly and you could expect to strike up a conversation with a petrol station employee about Satre where you’d get caught for hours marveling at their insight. You could have 3 pints at lunch during the working day with your boss. Concorde took you across the Atlantic in a matter of hours. Everyone had a tamagotchi and none of them starved.
and the weed was better too. That might just be the high tolerance speaking though.
High times top strains 1977.
Led lights have done amazing shit for weed growers. Granted the 90’s already had good buds despite people having to use HPS lamps ans whatnot but LED has still been awesome for homegrowing, especially in countries where you can’t grow outside. Also autoflowers just came in like early 00’s. Well they technically existed in the 90’s but first successful commercial strain was Lowryder in 2002. (That shit was good smoke too, very creative high.)
The not gaining weight despite a shitty diet thing is kinda real, at least.
This is what they took from us.
Grew up in the 70s and 80s.
After school, kids would roam around on bikes. We’d go to grocery and convenience stores to play the latest arcade games.
Alternately we’d find an empty lot and make our own bike parks out of dirt and whatever scrap wood we could find.
No mobile phones, so nobody knew where anyone was, we’d just agree to meet some place at an agreed time.
Parents didn’t care. “Come home when it gets dark.” When the street lights kicked on, you knew it was time to head home.
You had to think for yourself, because nobody was there to help you. If you wiped out on your bike, blew a tire, got attacked by a dog, or threw a chain, you fixed it yourself or dealt with it yourself, nobody was coming to save you.
Same here. When we weren’t outside in the yard or the pool, we were out in the woods.
My parents installed a large bell that my Mom could ring for dinner time, that we could hear from far away.
The only time my parents objected was when we described the fort that some neighbor kids had built, “you know they stole that material from our house under construction, right?”
It’s funny to hear my childhood years described and it feels like this when past times were described when I was a kid:
If you wiped out in your bike
This was in the late 1990’s. I fell off my bike and got myself scraped up pretty badly. I was nowhere near home, so my friends and I knocked on a random woman’s door and she patched me up. Headed home and freaked my mom out when she saw my arms.
Back when neighbors could post up signs that told kids “Hey, if you’re in trouble, this is a safe house.”
This depended entirely on where you lived. My parents were divorced and one lived in the country and one lived in the suburbs. I could ride freely around the neighborhood in both places, which was literally within sight of my house, but beyond that were dangerous roads and nowhere nearby to go anyway.
Neighboring kids were hard to find. In the country, there were 5 houses on our road and only one had kids my age. We were kinda friends but they were kinda weird.
The suburban neighborhood had 25 homes, and all the kids were older or younger. I never met anyone my age in that neighborhood.
Hanging out with friends meant you called them to see if they could come over. If both parents agreed and one was available to drive, you had a friend for the day.
You could be unreachable and your job would have to accept that fact. There was typically a single landline per house so if it was busy or you weren’t there then they had to suck it up.
You weren’t pressured by society that you must be efficient in your leisure time. Play a game, best become the best at it otherwise you’re a loser now. Painting something? You best be Van Gough in quality or it’s shit. Feels like people forgot you’re not supposed to monetize your hobbies, there were there to get away from work.
Everyone’s saying what was better.
Bullshit, lol.
We were still people, and we still had all the people problems. Misogyny was worse, racism was worse, homophobia was really bad still, and “trans” was just a guy who liked wearing women’s clothes. Not that any man would ever admit that. Schools were super clique-ish, bullying was public and not prevented. Rapes were swept under the rug even worse than today. Pollution was really bad. I don’t think anyone born after 1990 has a clue how shitty the air quality was in cities back in the ‘80s and earlier. I can personally vouch for how amazing the environmental laws are and have improved air quality. Want to buy something that wasn’t available at a local store? Plan on waiting a month or more for it to arrive on order. Cars were more unsafe, often only had lap belts, and wtf is an airbag, lol. Car seats for kids were all but nonexistent. Air travel was crazy expensive, too.
All that said, yeah, there were some good things. We weren’t tied to screens all day. If someone stayed in and watched TV all day all the time you thought something might be wrong with them. We weren’t “on-call” 24-7 with cell phones. Basic jobs were easy to get. All my first jobs were walk in and ask if they needed anyone or just word of mouth, show up, and start working. Mass shootings weren’t the thing they are today. You actually owned the music or games you bought. Local stores had a huge variety of stuff and hadn’t been crushed by walmart and big box stores (I actually remember when big box stores were new and touted as sources of better variety for consumers. Lol, that worked out great). Concert tickets to top bands were less than $10. Local radio was great, your DJ told you about local events, and we had Dr Demento and Casey Kasem on weekends. Nobody was forcing you to pay subscriptions for everything, homes and cars were more affordable, so was education, and health care hadn’t gone nuts yet. You could actually talk to your political opponents, you wanted the same things mostly, it was just how you wanted it to happen was different. Crazy wingnuts were just that. Crazy wingnuts and not mainstream. Nobody gave them platforms unless it was “The National Enquirer.”
So yeah. We had plenty of problems. But there was a lot of good shit too.
One other thing that was ubiquitous… Cigarettes, and consequently cigarette smoke; EVERYWHERE!! Doesn’t matter whether you smoked or not, you smelled like cigarettes. Every bar, every restaurant, every club… Bus stops, movie theaters, trains… Cigarettes
In the EU or at least Finland, smoking in bars was still a thing in the 2010’s almost. 2007 definitely I was dancing and smoking a cigarette on the dancer floor of a club. Then 2007 they had go get non-smoking sides as well. And then the smoking rooms came in for some years, but you weren’t allowed in with a drink. (And you couldn’t get special dispensation, even for a bar which sold cigars as their thing, nope, can’t have your drink with you in the smoking room.) Idk how long ago the last tobacco rooms got banned as well.
But yeah in the 90’s it was fkin everywhere, not just in nightclubs and bars.
All cars were pretty much smoking as well. Any car from the 90’s definitely has a cigarette lighter and an ashtray. My -06 Huyndai still has an ashtray.
You’re right, lol. I completely forgot. “Smoking or non?” was a completely normal question when entering a restaurant, and bars or whatever didn’t bother asking. A night out meant smelling like cigarette smoke when you got home.
How quickly we forget.
Pollution was really bad. I don’t think anyone born after 1990 has a clue how shitty the air quality was in cities back in the ‘80s and earlier.
Yeah, 'member leaded gasoline? I wasn’t there, but I 'member. Just burning an extremely toxic metal in a city full of people and kids.
And then there was the insane 70’s crime/violent crime rate suspiciously about 20 years later…
Pff. I used to wash motor parts off with leaded gas and no gloves when I was young. I’d probably be a goddamn Einstein if it weren’t for that.
Pollution was really bad
1970-1980’s was the first environmental movement. We were all excited to change the world. Some of the worst cases of pollution were because people finally cared enough to find them. Some things didn’t work and something’s had backtracking
This was the era of huge successes like the clean air act, clean water act, and bottle deposit laws! Superfund cleanup for the worst of the worst.
Cars were more unsafe
Car safety was becoming a concern and we started doing something about it
Air travel was crazy expensive
But also the rise of discount airlines
No shit. The question was “what was life like?” Not “what changed everything?”
I’m well aware of the things I mentioned because they’re different than today which is what the question asked for.
I was born in the late 70s so I can comment on the 80s onwards.
It was ok. It’s better now though. Some stuff got worse. A lot got better. We know more, have better toys, live longer, cheaper travel and so on.
The major thing that’s worse is the internet blasting every negative thing into your brain 24/7
The 90s was the last good decade.
This might be the worst possible way to get a genuine feel for what life was like. For whom?
Industrialization and telephones were ubiquitous. We’d witness the rise of automobiles, flight, antibiotics, DNA, nuclear power, computers, space exploration…
A massive shift towards urbanization. Life expectancy jumped up. Migration took off. Society became more consolidated, diverse, and aged.
Human rights started getting more institutionalized. Civil rights and feminist movements made great gains. Globalism and mass consumer culture similarly boomed.
A great depression and two world wars generated a sense of unity from people coming together to get through hard times and overcome common enemies, but it deteriorated quickly under the pressure of rapidly shifting cultures and lifestyles.
A person’s experience of this depends on a lot. People in different demographics would have drastically different stories to tell.
Imho the best way to get a broad feel is to track the technology. People were able to call each other, travel long distances with relative ease, get effective medicine for common maladies, and pop into the corner store to buy handy items.
But it was a lot harder to access information generally, and a lot less was available before everyone was carrying around gps enabled cameras all the time. It was a lot easier to believe in urban legends and a lot harder to understand how advanced technology worked.
To counteract all the rose colored glasses looking back decades and the doom and gloom now …….
We also had the Cold War. Mutually Assured Destruction. And you never knew whether anyone would be M.A.D. Enough to end the world. Later on we found out they were, and at least one time the world didn’t end because of a Russian specialist disobeying launch orders
Yup. Climate change is going to suck, but actual existential risk is way lower now. And before the 20th century people did the same end-is-nigh thing on supernatural grounds.
If you’re thinking of the submarine, it wasn’t a specialist, it was an admiral who just happened to be on the right boat and belayed the captain and political officer’s order. One of the same guys that was on K-19, interestingly. There was also an armed nuke the French just kind of dropped on themselves by accident. Here’s the list of known close calls on Wikipedia.
That was it,thanks
Anyone born in the 1900’s would be at least 117. You’ll struggle to find anyone from back then.
Presumably they meant the century.
No shit.
Remember when the 1900’s were called the “20th century?” Pepperridge farm remembers.
The 1900’s used to be call the 20th century, they still are, but they used to.
Everywhere smelled like an ashtray until the late 90s when smoking bans started picking up steam.
If you went to a bar, or a bowling alley, everything you had on you smelled of smoke until it was thoroughly washed.
Don’t miss that, or trying to get across a dance floor without getting burned …then in 2008 everything changed. Kind of bitter sweet.
Now everyone vapes and smells like Barbie farts instead.
I liked the smell of fresh cigarette smoke. Still do, actually. But yeah, smoking indoors is wild. Can’t believe thst was normal when I was a kid.
The problem is it isn’t usually fresh. At the time I didn’t mind that so much either but the lingering smell of stale smoke and ash tray over clothes, hair, buildings, was always a problem.
Now that we don’t live with the constant stench, I realize even fresh smoke was never good. It was only less bad than the stale lingering stench and we didn’t have clean air to compare to
All US college campuses had this smell until around 2010 when they began banning smoking even outside. I miss that smell so much.
Ew
Ya it’s weird. Ever since I was very little I’ve loved the smell of second hand smoke, maybe because it was everywhere. One of my earliest memories is playing with a half full ash tray INSIDE a McDonalds.
I graduated in 2k. I rarely smelled smoke. Even at the parties there wasn’t that much of it. What I did smell came from the older staff and such taking smoking breaks, which were always outside. And I went to school in a red state.
I graduated in 1988, in a blue state.
I saw things go from smoking everywhere, to there being non-smoking sections, to eventually no smoking inside
While there were still way too many smokers, they were already becoming less common. I saw smoking go from something the “cool kids” did, to individuals saying “come on out with me for a smoke so I’m not alone”
Born in 1979. I’ve seen rotary phones, touch tone phones, cordless phones, pagers cellphones, PC computing pre windows (DOS anyone,) floppy discs (they didn’t just used to be a save icon,) the internet before the internet when it was just hyperboards you dialed up manually and then put the receiver into a baud modem, cassette tapes, CDs, MP3s and ipods, car windows that had to be manually rolled down. I had a TV where you had to get up and manually change the channel.
I’m in that weird space where I could be a millenial, or could be gen x. I was a latch key kid and had no parental supervision. As an 9 year old, I came home from school and cared for my 4 y/o sister. We played outside, in the street, we walked to the park. I’d ride my bike and put my sister on the seat and we would go get ice cream, or go to the comic shop. It was normal to just be a kid doing your own thing and for your parents to have no idea where you were or how to contact you.
If you didn’t know where you were going, you had to purchase a map/atlas and learn how to read it to get directions.
I lived through the contra scandal/Iraq Iran war, the war on drugs, desert storm, the war on terror, and whatever the fuck this new Iran straight of hormuz war is. I’ve seen lived through lots of genocide, (I’m not a victim, just got to see it play out in the news;) Sabra and Shatila massacre, Anfal campaign, Isaaq genocide (somali), Bosnian genocide, Rwandan genocide, Massacres of Hutus during the First Congo War, DRC and ethnic cleansing of Pygmies from the Congo’s eastern region, Darfur genocide (2003–2005), Yazidi genocide, Ukrainian genocide (via Russia and still ongoing,) Persecution of Uyghurs in China, Rohingya genocide, and Gaza genocide. We have always been at war.
Pre-internet, there was tons of news you would never hear of, or if you did you got the propaganda version because there was no way to access the facts. The newspaper and TV news were still considered reputable. Now with smartphones and cameras everywhere, people can share information with each other directly and we can all call bullshit on misreporting and propaganda, for all the good it does.
Life was hard then, and it’s hard now. It’s just hard in different ways.
