Here’s a bit of a personal list:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Sometimes there doesn’t feel like much progress then you see a 90s movie that is fondly remembered and note the shocking ammount of sexual violence and regressive culture. Good to see that is passed
so true, watched Waiting somewhat recently and boy howdy is that shit was rough as fuck, ryan reynolds just thirsting over a 17 year old all movie v gross
He was preparing for his role as Hal Jordan
I rewatched Waiting a couple months ago, reminiscing over being a cook years ago; and Ryan Renolds’ character took me out of it every scene he was in. At least the line, “The best part of Alzheimer’s is you get to meet new people every day.” is still a classic
another Ryan Reynolds one… Blade 3.
with Triple H as a vampire who, upon a strategic defeat to the vampire hunters, says “they pretty much fucking ass r***d us”. Then one of the other goons says “i bet you’d like that”.
Yeah which is why chuds get so pissed off we’re not doing casual SA anymore along with racism. It’s not perfect today, but at least people do sometimes try to make more of an effort to be better.
It still persists to some degree, but in the 90s and 2000s being an environmentalist was mocked to the same degree that being a vegan is today. You were just making one more moralist argument in the marketplace of ideas and climate change was as much a vague future problem as Mars colonisation currently is. Now it’s taken seriously even if people don’t know what to do about it and can’t imagine a practical future beyond what the 20th century left us with. I can talk to average schmucks about my pollinator gardens and the radicalism of it is very easily communicated where that would have been dismissed as hippie shit two decades ago.
Haha, you believe in Manbearpig like Al Gore
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Gaybashing and misogyny in mainstream comedy is much reduced from the levels of the 80s thru 00s. Aside from it being reprehensible, it was also a deeply unfunny crutch.
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Smoking is vastly less common, and indoor smoking is almost non-existent. Everything just smells better now. Even a lot of smokers like this change.
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There is way less petty and violent crime these days. The gas station that I would avoid filling up at after dark in the 90s is now a place I casually walk to for a midnight snack run.
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There’s less trash laying around. I think it was even way worse in the era before my time.
Everything just smells better now
Also true of cities generally because of improved vehicle emissions standards. Sometimes a single 90s-model car drives by and stinks up the entire street for a whole minute to the point where it’s unpleasant to breathe. And every car used to be like that! I can’t believe I actually used to like the smell of exhaust as a kid. Ridiculous.
It is so great we are seeing so much less smoking. And to touch up on the crime thing, last month I visited my cousin in NYC and I felt totally safe. Even when I was out and about I saw a few stickers even saying “cars ruin cities”.
One hopium is in some municipalities. We will see an undoing of Robert Moses’ legacy. We got to a point where smoking is seen as something fogey. We can do it with car culture.
I quit smoking like 2 years ago now I think? I switched to vaping and I haven’t looked back. Then I quite vaping and switched to nic pouches. The thought of taking a drag off a cig just makes my lungs hurt. Dunno how I ever put up with it, but I drank heavily during most of my years of smoking anyway.
There should be more petty crime against rich people
be the change you want to see in the world
There is way less petty and violent crime these days. The gas station that I would avoid filling up at after dark in the 90s is now a place I casually walk to for a midnight snack run.
I’ve heard this a lot and I wonder what is responsible for the change.
On safety though, I feel like the world was more exciting back in my parents time. Yes, a lot of bad things were happening seemingly all the time, but they seemed to have the best time.
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Happy to see drinking becoming less common. It used to be such a social default that if you’re out as an adult doing anything social you get a drink. Now it’s much less common to get pushback if you don’t want alcohol, at least in my circles.
Kelly bemoans this all the time in his comics
Mocktails*
- latest fad
- latest fad
Music is so much fucking better nowadays, holy shit. It’s a lot easier to find random artists from all over the world. You aren’t limited to whatever is on the radio or having to spend hours combing through record stores to find something new.
The quality of every genre (except maybe country because it’s filled with reactionaries) has improved because of this. Mainstream artists are able to hear things they wouldn’t have otherwise and incorporate that into their music.
Music was so good back in the day, and it’s somehow even better now.
Yeah, definitely. I always say it all started with Napster.
Now that I think about it, Metallica really had a whole new market to themselves if they’d just been willing to give up a fraction of their money.
The ability to discover the entire last mile of indie bands globally is already pretty rocking, but they also all have access to better equipment/software/studios than was historically the norm
I miss the old anti-nostalgia threads, the ones these days are so corporate
Le epic bacon cringe “nerds are cool now!” culture.
I say this as a guy who plays D&Ds and has a Star Trek next gen poster on the wall.
I’d like to think that people are waking up to the fact that the nerds make up dominant society now via silicon valley and are making everyone’s lives worse.
That and I think a lot of these people grew up and just became normal people with niche hobbies and realized the whole attempt to turn it into an identity was silly at best.
this lacks class analysis. None of the megacorps making shitloads of money the last 20 years is paying for my therapy for liking that stuff the ten years before that.
Huh the bullies were right all along.
I don’t condone bullying weaker people, so no, I don’t think they were right. But I think they were right to spot in nerds the antisocial behavior, now the same antisocial behavior is lauded in nerd circles and being a creep is seen as a good thing.
No nerd was being bullied for anti-social behavior, they were being bullied for not liking popular things, being seen as weak and unmasculine. No one was bullying nerds for harboring misogynistic communities.
Which is rich because the nerds were never going to have a seat at the table of traditional patriarchy since the jocks viewed them as weak.
no the bullies became project managers at those tech companies
The bullies were mostly targeting people who were visibly queer or disabled, and said bullying frequently involves forms of SV. So no, fuck that and anyone who says it.
CW: Sui
My best friend growing up was bullied so severely for being overweight that he tried to take his own life (mercifully, he failed). He’s not a Silicon Valley techbro now, he’s an overworked and underpaid nurse.
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.
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.
Fuck cigarettes. I’ve never been a smoker and have always hated having to smell cigarette smoke on myself or my environment. So glad I don’t have to put up with that anymore.
- Niche interests are more accepted and not immediately just seen as a reason to make fun of somebody for. If someone likes birdwatching, model trains, tabletop RPGs or whatever, who fucking cares.
- Being anti-LGBT is less and less acceptable. Of course, transphobia is still far too accepted these days (and by that I mean none should be accepted), and acceptance of asexuality and aromanticism in particular are still not where I’d want them to be, but it’s still a far cry from what it was in the 2000s.
- Misogyny and objectification of women isn’t as bad as it was years ago. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not necessarily great, but I think even a space like Hexbear would’ve been a lot worse 20 years ago.
- Veganism is more accepted now, but this is an extremely low bar 😒
Class consciousness is on the rise
Just ten years ago I had to explain my worldview even to some of my friends, nowadays random coworkers are bringing up stuff I used to talk about if I wanted an argument
Games For Windows Live
More women and poc voices on the internet, even if they attract the ire of absolute scumbags.
Related: the era of “omg bewbs” being the default internet vibe
“tits or stfu”
“There are no girls on the Internet”, yeah, no.
my balls
i like cannabis being legal (in certain states) in the present
Guys don’t all reek of Axe anymore
I think?
i still smell it on men relatively often actually, though nothing’s saying it’s axe specifically i suppose. but it’s that overpowering, cloying, synthetic-y scent anyway
Ah yes, 2004, when emo was in and axe body spray filled your high school classroom.
They still have to ban it in schools because boys will just shower themselves in the hallways/locker areas.
I like it when a guy smells like an axe
I usually prefer sandalwood
Also bergamot
