The world has less colour.

This isn’t a dramatic “I’m depressed” post, though that is a factor. Nature is still nature-coloured, for one, and it still looks lovely.

I mean that like, you’d go outside and look at the cars and see a rainbow of colours. Now it’s all black, silver, or white. You only see colorful cars if they are really old beat up rustbuckets or if they are brand new luxury vehicles used by super rich people.

Buildings too. Businesses and the buildings they set up shop in would be painted with garish, eye popping colour. Now everything trends towards landlord-beige.

Edit: And it should be noted, this happened for a reason, and I am aware of that reason, and that just makes me crankier.

There’s not as many people outside just…existing. I’m not that old but I remember just going outside and seeing people just not doing anything in particular everywhere, now it seems like everyone always has some place to rush to and no one is allowed to just exist in public places anymore. Maybe that also has something to do with my perspective shifting has I got older, but I still feel like it’s true.

Also bugs. There are like NO fucking bugs anymore. Couple decades ago you could walk out and get sandblasted by a million different bugs and now everything just feels so fucking dead and sterile and depressed. It’s like outside was replaced by a clinic and no one bothered to complain.

Isolation of individuals and the growing loss of ownership of, well, everything.

From an artistic perspective, self-“publishing” (and I use quotations quite on purpose), changed writing as we know it and drastically dropped the average reading level of the public since now any chimp can bang their fist on a keyboard for an hour, upload it to Amazon and call themselves an “author” beside Stephen King or Umberto Eco.

It was always hailed as “the end of the so-called gatekeepers”. Without stopping to realise that gatekeepers/publishers exist for a reason. So that the public zeitgeist isn’t completely overrun with utter crap.

The response to having your short story or novel rejected used to be “okay…I’ll learn, practice and get better for the next time.” Now, it’s “screw you…I’ll pollute the zeitgeist with my 3rd grade level grammar nightmare with or without you and put it right up there on the shelf next to the actual writers.”

Just imagine if a doctor flunked out of med-school, and instead of trying harder, just said “screw you, I’m going to open up my own surgery and put it right next door to you and there’s nothing you can do to stop me…”

What a crazy stupid world we live in.

Design has changed. Instead of building powerful featues that are available to the user however they want to use it. The focus has shifted to providing a simplified linear interface where pressing a single button does the task and the tools to modify the action are hidden from the user. So if your use case doesnt 100% allign youre fucked.

No third places.

Humanity getting dumber and dumber…

I think for me in my country it would be the collapse of the social contract. The bonds that society regulates itself.

Kids are way nicer now. Kids in my day were brutal and violent. Most things have improved. People are more aware of dangers to kids now so there are stronger safeguards. Kids are better protected by laws so violence against them is getting less common. Women actually make pretty good money now and aren’t restricted to secretary like roles and there’s less jokes that the woman is a secretary. I had never seen female ceos. They just didn’t exist. Now women can scam the public just as well as men 🤣 There’s still a long way to go but things are a lot better. Gay people aren’t dying of AIDS as much anymore and people will touch gay people without a problem. When I was growing up people believed gay men might be carrying AIDS and would not touch them. Thanks princess di for your work on this. Racial diversity is so much better now. Like women, people of color did not make CEO frequently. It’s still being worked on, but it’s gotten better. Racism itself has gotten better, kids don’t say racial slurs to one another.

As far as environment there was a time when in the US we would celebrate some new technology innovation or infrastructure innovation. I remember when Boeing released a new plane and everyone was like wow so cool, this is redefining planes.

But we have not had that in years. Our desire to be top in tech or science is gone. We used to want to be the best infrastructure, top of the line water treatment and getting to different space discoveries FIRST. Being part of nasa was a huge dream for many kids to just explore the planets.

Now china has all this high speed transit and we have decaying pipes. In my childhood, this would not have been accepted. China was frowned upon.

Other countries have gotten better to the point they surpassed us. When I would visit Mexico it would be to help build in rural areas. Now our rural areas are further decrepit than anything I saw there back then and Mexico City is a vibrant bustling gorgeous place.

One visit to Apalachia and I have wondered how America got this way.

There was also a lot more stress around decorum. This one was a double edged sword. People cared a lot about how they were perceived to the point of committing heinous acts to cover up the slightest insult to their character or perception. Now, it’s more free. We don’t keep up with the Joneses on the level it was back then. Being loud or dressing any type of way means nothing. It’s all good.

But that has also led to the open and blatant acceptance of things like felonious behavior and led to what we have now. This kind of scandal would never have flown.

But then again, no woman could have ever HOPED to run for president.

There is also a lot more macro interests. I believe the people have more power now. Before, you had to listen to what’s on the radio. You had to watch why’s on tv. Trends could be fully controlled by the owners of these resources. Now your friend can post a video of their thermos surviving a car accident and suddenly a company who’s entire perception could not have possibly entered mainstream can. There is more freedom as a macro economy, you can truly access what interests you. This also leads to “too much choice” sometimes but it’s definitely awesome for some of us with unique interests. It has also leveled the playing field in way for trends to be able to match without extreme financial backing. You don’t have to be part of the big guys for your song or dance to go viral. You can have a niche on YouTube and make a living on commentary videos. You could not do this before.

Finally, the access to tech has not only improved our lives but brought a level of freedom unheard of. In my day, only movie studios had the tools to make media. Now people can express themselves with minimal financial investment. People are creating at levels never seen before because they finally have access to tools needed for it. Microphones, software, cameras, painting classes, and the world has distinctly become more and more creative and colorful. This is also helped by the less keeping up with the Joneses worrying about their perception thing. The more free we are in creating and expression, the more diverse and beautiful our works get. And yes I think it’s cool people can openly create furry porn and then connect with others who like it. This is truly something unimaginable to my generation. Our weirdness was violently oppressed. Now we out here turning that violence into twilight fanfics that spawn movie franchises.

You win some you lose some.

In not particular order, and a kind reminder that I’m not from US so some things may look different if you are from there:

People are far noisier, as there is less concerns by being judged by your neighbors. People used to behave purely out of shame. Now the shame is gone and people are wild.

Vast increase in dog ownership. There’s literally more dog than small kids in my country from several years now.

Vast increase in immigration. Statistics are weird here, as we give citizenship to a great amount of migrants in just two years, and here is illegal to record statistics based on ethnicity, country of origin or any aspect that would identify anyone’s ancestry. But my neighborhood went to 90-10 national-immigrant to 40-60. I live in a poor neighborhood so it’s not the same in all parts of the country, but immigration increase is there and it’s a big change.

Less violence overall. Street violence overall seems lower. Also there’s less of a terrorists threat as we used to have (there were several active terrorists groups here that are now gone).

A housing problem. People used to get a house without issues. Now it’s one of the biggest issues of young people.

Increase of tolerance towards homosexuality. It’s view as something very normal nowadays I think, and it use not to be that way.

Increase of equality between men and women. Direct discrimination is completely outlaw and hard to see. Indirect discrimination may still exist but is on a all time low. Most bosses I have had in all my jobs have been women (for giving a small example).

People go on vacation more often and further away. When I was young people used to just go one time a year on vacation, most of the time to a national place. Now people go several times a year to foreign countries, and “travel” have become the most important thing in many people’s lives (how many dating profiles have I seen in which the person pointed traveling as their life moto).

Most people have university studies. It didn’t used to be that way.

There’s probably much more. Those are the first things that came into my mind.

It is now no longer social suicide to not drink.

From an American perspective, flying on an airplane sucks. 9/11/01 resulted in a whole bunch of security theatre at the airport and airlines have slowly whittled away whatever comfort or convience remained.

When I was in high school, gay was the generic negative word. If Wendys gave you a medium fry when you ordered a large - gay. If your homie cancelled plans last minute - gay. If you slipped on the stairs and busted your ass - gay. It’s bizarre in hindsight.

I grew up in the farm-y outskirts of a big-ish city. I got to catch lizards and tadpoles and toads in the creek nearby, and we’d collect reeds from cattails and weave them into little mats for fun. we’d walk/bike to our friends house without parents, just yell that your going to so and so’s and off you trot. We knew the farmer who grew the sweet corn we ate all summer, and the farmers who had the peach orchard and tomato fields we’d harvest from at the end of summer to can cheap produce for the winter.
The foothills behind our neighborhood were covered with grass and shrub, spattered with bike trails and caves right up to the tree line. There were foxes and racoons that you’d need to protect your chickens from. Deer would chill in our yard in fall eating the fallen Apples from around our trees. Flocks of starlings covered our huge cottonwood trees making a huge racket and pooping everywhere. I’d take a metal baseball bat to our big metal clothesline post to make a big gong noise to scare them off cuz they were so loud.

Then a fence went up, blocking us from using the hills, and they started construction on a bunch of high end mc mansions. They filled in the caves, killed the foxes and racoons, and paved over the creek to make a walking trail. More and more deer ended up as roadkill till they stopped coming to eat the apples altogether. Developers bought out the farmers to build more houses, first the tomato fields, then the corn, and finally the peaches were ripped out and paved over. The dairy became a giant strip mall for a Staples, and a Kohl’s, a donut shop and a sandwich shop. The road I walked alongside, barefoot, to play in the creek became too busy to be safe for kids to walk next to.

In summer we’d play outside and drink from the hose till we were too hot, then we’d run inside and stand under the swamp cooler to cool down. Year after year it got hotter and hotter till the heat was too much and we couldn’t play outside for too long because the swamp cooler wasn’t enough to cool us down anymore. In winter we used to make snow men and build igloos with buckets full of snow as bricks, and we’d trample paths into the snow drifts that came up to our hips. But year after year the snow banks got shorter and shorter and the snow came later and later until… I remember the first year we had no snow till after Christmas. The decorations looked so sad and stupid sitting on brown grass instead of coated with bright snow. That’s the last year I bothered to put them up. The more people moved to the area, the thicker the smog got in the winter. All the stagnant stinky car exhaust and fumes from the refinery got caught in the bowl of the valley all winter, till the hazy air was so dense you couldn’t see the mountains that surrounded us.

The world got hotter and more full of cars and houses all while the people got more stranded inside. Yes by the lure of Internet, but also to try to escape the heat and dust and smog. New neighbors in the big houses would snap at us to get off their lawn then smile like they gave a fuck the next Sunday at church.

Neighborhoods full of community became individuals in houses.

I’m only 34.

I’ve watched things go from “how can we profit from this?” to “how much can we profit from this without quite killing the plebs?”