Here’s a bit of a personal list:

  1. Undeniably the food scene in the US has changed for the better. Sometimes almost to an overcorrection (protein-slop and all). It’s great that so many different cuisines are easy to name and find even in more traditional rural parts of the country. Organic food isn’t seen as a weird hippie thing but an investment you make for your health.

  2. A lot less smoking in the world. I say this as early gen Z but I never grew up in a time when smoking was seen as cool when I was a teenager. My uncle even quit and that was good to see.

  3. It may not seem like it sometimes, but the one consolation prize of YouTube is I can theoretically be a content creator and never need to worry about the bottleneck that is getting chosen out of millions of people in Hollywood. I could theoretically just stay in the midwest and learn to livestream or make an anime discussion channel and produce content without needing a massive studio or working in Hollywood. Of course, it’s still almost impossible to get paid for it, but still.

  4. More and more people are aware of cars not being the best way to get around which has sparked interest in walkable cities. Problem is, there’s too much demand and too little supply but seeing car culture be questioned is a great first start.

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    I’m so cynical that I think this was all a psyop to get things like Marvel movies accepted by the mainstream, plus of course a way to sell things like Funko Pops.

    • ConcreteHalloween [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      I hear what you’re saying, but having lived through it, I’m pretty sure the ball was already rolling before Hollywood capitalized on it. The “nerds are cool now” thing was more a byproduct of the social media age, particularly YouTube. It was the meat and potatoes of a lot of big early YouTube names, Loading.Ready.Run is one property that comes to mind (not to shit on those guys, they seem like nice enough people), as well as Angry Video Game Nerd and Channel Awesome (who seem less cool). The media elite may have encouraged it once they realized they could make big bucks off of it, but I think the beginnings were organic based on what I recall.