Crack, Aids, Serial Killers, Crime, Reagan, Constant threat of Nuclear Holocaust...I hear so much doom and gloom about the present, but I still think the 80s were a far scary time to live and grow up in.

I also think by most objective measures (poverty level, crime rate, etc.) the 2020s is an objectively better time.

I do think mental health is waay worst then they were 40 years ago, but I think that has more to do with social media than other external factors.

What do you think?

Poll question: I still think the 80s was worse...

Poll result (21 votes) Yeah, the 80s were worse than the 2020s (9 votes) Vote Nah, these days are much worse than the 80s (11 votes) Vote It's about the same (1 votes) Vote

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Add education to the things that were worse in the 80s.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

These kids now seem like they have very little hope.

2020s are like Opiods, gangs, crime, lawlessness, pollution, porn, social media, lead & microplastic poisoning, and the threat of WW3.

The opiods seem worse than crack/cocaine, because it wasn't cool to be a drug addict back in the 80s, but now it's cool to pop percs and xanies & get fucked up.

The crack violence of the 80s was crazy tho... nowhere near as bad in the 2020s.

Because a couple of the main things you mentioned about the 80s being scary didn't end up happening, which takes away from the memory of how scary it was at the time. I'm specifically thinking about the Cold War, and the fact that during the early-mid 80s it felt like nuclear war with the Soviet Union was just a matter of time.

But in general there has been enough distance from the 80s that we have "survived" what was considered scary then, but the things going on right now in the present don't have that "survivor comfort". We don't know if the Israel/Palestine war, along with Ukraine/Russia and possibly China/Taiwan(ROC) will eventually turn into World War 3. We don't know if the current state of US politics being so divided (same with many other countries) will lead to huge scary shifts in our future reality or if there will be a correction in this soon. We don't know if the current climate change crisis will escalate to disasters within the next couple years (well, we've already been seeing this but we don't know what else is coming).

In general, current fear of the unknown is tough to compare to past fear of the unknown which IS now known.

i mean, how can you even compare them now as a middle aged adult in the 2020s

i was of the ages of 3-13 in the 80s. aka not really a care in the world. yes, there was the cold war threat but that was a distant threat.

i was a latch key kid. i had G.I. Joes, Transformers, the dawn of the video game age and other tech like personal computers, etc.

i got to go outside and touch grass, play in the woods, ride bikes, play sports, etc.

in the 2020's? nothing is affordable, the world is literally burning up, resources are more and more scarce, social media has made people weirdos, or worse, platformed them, etc.

like, if you're asking me now? there's no way i could possibly think the 80's are worse.

even the issues of crack prevented 90's teens to shut that mess down, we were NOT going.

greater.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

personally, my view is the 80s were worse, the problems are slightly different. crack vs opioids. opioids seems more wide spread to me.

statistically, crime has trended down since then, but it's hard to convince some because now we have around the clock breaking news, along with everybody with a camera all the time. it appears more is happening today, but we're just under more surveillance.

..we can talk about Reganomics, the crack epidemic, nuclear threat, unemployment, crime & poverty, etc.

All of that is true (in some form) today, but there's nothing that compares to the pandemic.

Not even aids.


*skatin' the rings of saturn*


..and miles to go before i sleep...

For some the pandemic was a bizarre blessing, kicked off the work-from-home force, created more family time especially for those who were able to receive unemployment, gave many an ability to save money/invest, no one could be evicted and landlords where made whole by the govt, and lets not forget the backhanded blessing of the PPP loans rather your business was legit or not.

Of course that doesn't mean it was a field day by far but the pandemic had its advantages to.

i think it's kinda crazy you'd even call any of that "advantages."

also, my biggest beef w/ what you said is the landlords part. landlords are out here wilin as if the government STOLE their money, and that's actually how they view it, and they are out here trying to their lick back.

the landlords I know received pay from the govt for any forms of missing rents. Some even received more than the apartments actually rented for. Now I will say for some landlords who were caught up in eviction process during the pandemic definitely had set backs, however they too were able to receive money for those rentals.

On another note I still feel now is worse than the 80's.

rent increases since the rent freeze ended?

cuz i do. it's ME. and the ones i got aren't even "bad" by comparison to some people i know.

When you say huge make up rent increases do you mean renters being charged hella more in rent? In that case, I sure do, BUT it all depends on location and of course that comes with a lot of conditions.

You could pay $2100 for a 2 bedroom, quarter kitchen space connected to living/dining area with 1.5 bath on the north side, downtown, hyde park and other affluent areas OR you can pay $1600 for the same in a not so affluent or even $1100 in a 'looks good on the inside but the neighborhood...' type area and probably get the full kitchen and/or separate dining room from living room apartment.

I find it pretty sick to talk about the 'advantages' of Covid when it's resulted in millions of people dead, and multiple millions with long-term health issues....many of which are permanent.

the 'advantages' you speak of are just elements of Capitalism that were put on a temporary pause.

maybe instead of speaking of the 'advantages' of a plague....perhaps focus your discourse to how capitalism is a plague on society.


This is why I voted that now is waaaaaaaay worse than the 80's....society has gotten too comfortable accepting eugenics and genocide as normalized practices. Apathy seems like it's at an all time high these days.

shit was bad in the 80's....its gotten substantially more dire. Now we have more vices and distractions.

now is hella worse in every way than the 80's. I was just speaking to the pandemic not being a blanketed hell moment for all. Not everyone felt the death toll effects of covid, no doubt they heard and saw on tv and probably even got sick but it wasn't the same for every household and family.

Personally I don't know of anyone that passed from covid, however I know many people who were sick and recovered and maybe one person who developed long-term covid. That doesn't take away from the devastation that others went and are still going through, cause everyone's situation was and still is different.

I don't personally know anyone who was killed in Gaza at the moment, I can still feel sadness and mourn for them.

Happy that you didn't lose any loved ones to Covid...but 'advantage' and 'blessing' are words I would NEVER associate to this pandemic, regardless of how it impacted my own personal circle.

The rugged individualism we have now is likely a coping mechanism for late-stage capitalism and the impending collapse of society as a whole.

This is precisely why I think we are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse today then ever before.

more like the standing shoe in 'Nope' or the mother being united with her children in 'The Mist'.

Without a doubt I feel sadness and mourning for those who've died from covid and I also feel blessed that none of my loved ones and close friends or associates died from covid. For any of us to be alive right now, having made it through a pandemic is a blessing.

And yes now is a helluva lot worse than the 80's.

Which I think is part of the reason why mental health is so bad these days. But here's a quick test. Quick, name some conflicts and wars from the 80s:

Maybe you know, but I think a lot of people won't recall that a million folks died in the Iran-Iraq war. A million died in Afghanistan. A couple of hundred thousand died in Lebanon. And that's just the middle east.

In Africa a quarter million people died in Sudan, Uganda, and Angola EACH. Like a million people died in the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict.

Now imagine if there was a twitter during these conflicts.

War/conflict and their casualties are objectively down since the 80s. The major difference now is we have more info and pictures of the conflicts that are going on today.




**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Eritrea/Ethiopia (still), Arab Spring, Haiti gangs, US school shootings by the ton, mass shootings at concerts, a pandemic, high rates of educational disabilities, extreme decrease in livable wage, opioid crisis, higher rates of educational disabilities an inadequate education systems, voters rights bill dead, roe vs. wade dead and the list goes on.

This has got to be one of the least optimistic eras post slavery rt now.

..Where's the blessing in that?


*skatin' the rings of saturn*


..and miles to go before i sleep...

I hear ya.

A lot more people died over a longer period of time (of course).

We didn't have a lockdown but we lived in fear of AIDS for a lot longer then most people lived in a fear of COVID.

I really am not trying to argue one is worse than the other, but I would say despite what you are saying, the AIDS epidemic is very comparable to the COVID pandemic.




**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>A lot more people died over a longer period of time (of
>course).

You could've stopped there.

>We didn't have a lockdown

You're right, because AIDs was an epidemic and wasn't airborne. That means Covid is much worse (hence, the lockdown).

>but we lived in fear of AIDS for a
>lot longer then most people lived in a fear of COVID.

Fear? There are people currently dealing with the impact of COVID, that will likely live with those issues for the rest of their lives. I know this because my father is one of them.

>I really am not trying to argue one is worse than the other,
>but I would say despite what you are saying, the AIDS epidemic
>is very comparable to the COVID pandemic.

AIDs has a 40yr head start, yet Covid did more than 15% of that damage in less than 3 yrs. Your math isn't mathin', mayne.




*skatin' the rings of saturn*


..and miles to go before i sleep...

Not trying to argue which is worse. Folks can make arguments either way. Which is my point. It's foolish to think there is one clear answer.

>>A lot more people died over a longer period of time (of
>>course).

>You could've stopped there.

More than half a million people died of AIDS LAST YEAR.


>
>>We didn't have a lockdown
>
>You're right, because AIDs was an epidemic and wasn't
>airborne. That means Covid is much worse (hence, the
>lockdown).
>
>>but we lived in fear of AIDS for a
>>lot longer then most people lived in a fear of AIDS.
>
>Fear? There are people currently dealing with the impact of
>COVID, that will likely live with those issues for the rest of
>their lives. I know this because my father is one of them.

I am sorry to hear about your father but there are 40M people living with HIV right now. So people are still dealing with the impact of COVID.

>
>>I really am not trying to argue one is worse than the other,
>>but I would say despite what you are saying, the AIDS
>epidemic
>>is very comparable to the COVID pandemic.
>
>AIDs has a 40yr head start, yet Covid did more than 15% of
>that damage in less than 3 yrs. Your math isn't mathin',
>maybe.

That math is easy. 15% isn't 100% and because AIDS is still killing a lot of people today and will hopefully never reach 100%.

The fact is coming up with a vaccine greatly changed the trajectory of COVID...thank god.

SO again, not trying to argue one is worse, only that it doesn't make sense to say the two diseases aren't comparable and COVID is clearly objectively worse.




>
>
>
>
>*skatin' the rings of saturn*
>
>
>..and miles to go before i sleep...


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

..But its the other way.


The fact that you fail to recognize that significance just underlines a greater issue.

Please stop.




*skatin' the rings of saturn*


..and miles to go before i sleep...

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

..You're somehow convinced that these things are comparable, when there's evidence that clearly shows a severe distinction between the two (one of them being MUCH WORSE than the other).

STD vs airborne virus.

Its really that simple.

No need to respond.


*skatin' the rings of saturn*


..and miles to go before i sleep...

they were shocked!!! “NO DEVICES!!!????? I’m glad we werent born back then!”

they love going home and hanging out at the community center where I played as a kid.

I think its too hard to quantify but I would say its worse now. I remember the middle east was beefing in the 80’s too, Apartheid, Soviet Union and nuclear war. They even had a nationally televised movie special about the fall out after a bomb hit America. We had alcoholic parents mad because they couldn’t find jobs.

but.. this shit is different.

Opioid crisis hit the rust belt hard. I know a lot of white folks with money who fell victim to the pills. These are people in their late 30’s and 40’s who left behind kids. I have friends who lost kids to pills. Its weird because growing up we were the free lunch kids, single parents, poor.. and these rich white kids with big houses and resources are out here on their knees doing God knows what for a hit. Add in social media and its a wrap.

The main thing tho, is guns and violence. I never feared for my life as a kid when it came to cops. Would talk mad shit to cops as a kid. These days. These cops kill and get away with it. ON CAMERA!!!

what is scary is my kids will be teens around 2030. Who knows what things will be like in 6 years but I swear.. for a PANDEMIC to happen right after we got our passports and planned our first trip out of the country.. that in itself is crazy and pushes 2020’s over the finish line.

There's never a good time to be at the bottom.

The problem now though? It seems like the ILLUSION OF SAFETY and ignorant bliss based on lack of obvious trauma in 'the middle' is gone.

Also, the pandemic exposed how fragile most of our little universes are.

Too many people have been convinced by media of all kinds that every problem is THEIR problem.

Too many people are still basing their whole existence, identity and mood on politicians. MFers still have DT flags on their house. Don't start me on how people have twisted up religion all crazy too. It always had its issue but now? Yikes. Straight up devils getting treated like gods.

The gift of our current time is simple: access to information is amazing and awesome. If you want to know, there's a chance you can find out. If you want to hear or see something, there's usually a way that's crazy easy vs what we had even 20 years ago.

The curse? The innanet multiplies raw stupidity, the fallacy of 'I have a bunch of info in my brain from what I've seen so I'm clearly smart!', and general sadness rapidly.

Some people somewhat can't enjoy themselves ever because they have to rank, list, and/or compare basically every damn thing damn near before they even consume it decently. Its a shame because we're surrounded with hella options that we would've killed for 30 years ago. Oh and because you see the same things over and over online depending on what the algos think of you based on your search history, you can easily get tricked into thinking your 'reality' is THE reality. DANGEROUS. SCARY.

And if that ain't enough, too many people have lost their ability to think with nuance. Too many issues have to come down to one take or the POLARIZED opposite take. And YOU need to PICK A SIDE. So silly to me. And for a while, I thought it was an innanet thing. But no. Real people are living like that really. Black. White. No grey.

And maybe, just maybe, teenagers having basically unlimited access to anything they can think of is not what we need. I know if it was me and it was like 92? It would've been all titty all the time if I had that type of access as a kid. Hell, I managed to stumble into plenty of it even in the 80s and 90s! And shiiiit, once I could 'go behind the curtain' at the video sto, I had my azz BEHIND THAT CURTAIN! Haha.

And really? I think a bunch of kids have bullshit parents who are scared to parent. There's also a lack of cool uncles who would say shit your dad couldn't say, sassy aunties who would also 'tell it like it is', and cousins who would badger the shit out of you if you wore the same thing every day or didn't comb your hair or whatever. I remember one of my uncles explaining to me with details on how I had to be cool and where to spray my cologne at. Then, he told me 'spray the inside of the jacket, Jr. So if they wear the jacket, its over!'. BRILLIANT!

I couldn't imagine telling my homeboy's kids some of the shit I got told WITH WITNESSES around now. No way. You damn near can't shoot it straight WITH YOUR HOMEBOYS about how their wack their b!tchazz kids are now.

>Crack, Aids, Serial Killers, Crime, Reagan, Constant threat
>of Nuclear Holocaust...I hear so much doom and gloom about the
>present, but I still think the 80s were a far scary time to
>live and grow up in.
>
>I also think by most objective measures (poverty level, crime
>rate, etc.) the 2020s is an objectively better time.
>
>I do think mental health is waay worst then they were 40 years
>ago, but I think that has more to do with social media than
>other external factors.
>
>What do you think?
>
>
>

nah...they rolling back rights in this era: VRA, RvW, etc.

All this pushback reads like the reconstruction era birthing jim crow. and as soon as the kiddies who are being taught now that slavery benefited the enslaved grow up and start implementing policies / running companies, we'll see how the future unfolds.

in suburban Chicago on one salary in the 80s, so some thinsg were better.

a women's shoes salesman today would have 8 roommates living in 2 bedroom in a newly constructed high rise with street level retail, where the rent is 4500 a month.

and when I tell him how much it costs me with both my kids in college at the moment with all my other expenses his jaw dropped.

That sounds like the American dream compared to now.

I was asking my mom how much she paid in rent back in 1981 and it was $125 or $150 per month and this was for a 3 bdrm, full living room, full dining room, full kitchen and one bath apartment of at least 12-1400 sq ft.

Rt now my son pays for a 2bd crackerjack box of maybe 600sq ft that has slightly bigger bdrms than a NY apartment, a front room w/ kitchen area and bathroom for $1450 w/out utilities, but really nice neighborhood.

In 2001 my rent for an 800-900 sqft 1 bdrm apt w/full living room, separate dining room, full kitchen, 1 bth for $500 in a nice neighborhood.

The 80's featured 7 years where there were over 20,000 murders in the US.

1980 - 23,040
1981 - 22,520
1982 - 21,010
1986 - 20,613
1987 - 20.096
1988 - 20,680
1989 - 21,500

There hasn't been a single year in the 2000's that has surpassed 17K murders and we have nearly 100 Million more people in the population.

Social Media has convinced people that today is worse. If you were outside in the 80's, you know that it really isn't.

EDIT: I will add that Rape (Reported/Arrests) have skyrocket over the last decade or so. The fact that Rape isn't an exception in some of the abortion laws is telling.

Source: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

how they calculated the number.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

But the abundance of all kinds of media and the 24 news cycle. Cable news has really contributed to an overall sense of doom. Social media pushed that sense of doom onto younger people who in generations prior, didn't watch or care about News as much.

I don't mean doom flippantly, there are clearly no shortage of things to be concerned about, but they weren't always in your face the way they are now. Like... Police having been murdering Black folks since there have been police and people had an "excuse" not to know about it. Now though? It's much more difficult to be left in the dark.

And, I think the 80's were much worse in almost all ways. But we experience the world differently in the 2020s.

maybe if you were a straight white male...

It's really hard for people to not be trapped by the moment.

This post was sparked by a recent conversation I had were a person declared it was reckless to have kids these days and bring them into such a fucked up world and my thought is things have always been bad/good or to put another way, people thought things were terrible 40 years ago and we managed to pull through.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>This post was sparked by a recent conversation I had where a
>person declared it was reckless to have kids these days and
>bring them into such a fucked up world

Weird thing for that person to say.

We have no choice but to continue to fight.

None of these phenomenon should be untangled if we want to understand them properly.

We have inherited the world that the 1980s left for us. Just as they inherited a postwar order that defined the terms of their political decision-making. And that order came from resolution of two major, violent, international ruptures in the first half of the 20th century. And so on all the way down.

If people think the world is worse now, maybe it's because they've seen the promise of liberalism's triumph in the 90s dissolve into meaninglessness. But then they should spin that around and consider that those promises weren't real in the first place, nor was liberalism's triumph.

... in posts like these. Co-sign 100%. I've been writing a response to this post in my head since I first saw it and hadn't come up with a final draft worthy of posting just yet, but you just did it for me. So, uh, thanks ? Haha.

I agree they are all connected. The main reason I make this comparison is because I feel like I hear so many young people express that these are unprecedented bad times. I don't think that's true.

The pessimistic take is that it's always sucked.

The optimistic take is that we will make it through this like we've always done.


Either way, I reject we've never seen this before.

Like I see daily folks say on social media that this country has never been more divided!

We literally had a Civil War.

Which if you want to talk about how it's all connected, the source of that conflict is pretty much the source of all political conflict today.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

of their own friends and family over a four year period for the right to own black folks.

This is why I can't take anyone seriously who say stupid shit like, "black people are the most dangerous..."

You can group together two to three decades and you will NEVER reach 620K "black on black" murders in the US.

But back to your original question, I doubt we will see the amount of peril that the 80's and 90's presented to everyday life in our lifetime again.

Only time I saw crackheads was visiting family in the hood

Wasn't thinking about no AIDs till Magic retired

And even then I wasn't sexually active so I wasn't stressing

Covid just hit different

Thinking back that shyt was like a weird fever dream

Don't even seem real sometimes



____________

DALLAS LAKERICKS LETS GO!!

In the 80s, something like this could appear on television:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn9EzpH4W9o

Today, conservative racists have successfully convinced most everyone, included a significant portion of BLACK ppl, that such a conversation is "racist". Even Black people will respond with "yall niggas always gotta bring up race" when you raise the issues raised there. And those issues have only grown since that time. In the 80s, it was understand by everyone that we were a marginalized people. Now, they've convinced people that we aren't, even tho our collective wealth is shrinking. The system of white supremacy works intentionally to accomplish these things. People used to fight for the dignity of their minority group. Now they simply seek to assimilate with whites even at the expense of their own group. There have always been such individuals, but it's more a group issue now. In a nutshell, even the TALK of our issues is socially criminalized now. The attack on school books and history is worse. You grew up learning about the Trans Atlantic SLAVE Trade and the KKK. You can't even mention those things in many schools now. When even your speech around liberation is controlled, you are DONE, as there will definitely be no action. Black people are more afraid of white people than they've ever been despite all this "I'm not my grandparents" talk. Damn right you aren't, because they weren't THIS damn scared. Yall are twerking in front of the police and calling it resistance. The 80s ain't got shit on how bad it is now.

And the education system is way worse, mainly due to charter schools, no child left behind, constant learning for testings, and an overall lack of discipline with students and administration. Add covid to the mix and students who were already behind are behind even further.

On the flip side the kids have learned to gather in the hundreds and pop-up in places that make some folks turn beet red, but once gathered they don’t have an agenda.

Mind control took a HUGE leap forward w/ the advent of smartphones & always-on Internet (especially the social media platforms). Probably fucking people's minds and emotions up in a way that won't be fully understood for decades.