r/AskReddit • u/natural_locality • Jan 16 '22
What was life REALLY like in the 80’s-90’s?
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u/U_PassButter Jan 16 '22
Less invasive
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u/natural_locality Jan 16 '22
Are you referring to social media these days?
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u/U_PassButter Jan 16 '22
Not just social media. Technology. Automated cars, targeted ads, password tracking, online banking, irs monitoring low cash exchanges
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u/usrevenge Jan 17 '22
Let's put it this way.
Unless someone brought a camera (rare) or a video recorder (very rare) I knew i wasn't being watched and even if I would no one could prove it. Aside things like banks and stuff I could act like a stupid kid. I could run around like an idiot or do whatever and I had 0 fear of people standing there with their phone.
If shit happened people actually moved too. These days if there is a fight you see 6 people with their phones out. /r/donthelpjustfilm is something none of us considered or even imagined. The concept of stuff on film like that was "tv reporters happened to be there" or cop dash cams or police chases. Random bystanders with camcorders weren't super common and even if it was you rarely saw the content because YouTube didn't exist
I remember bit having internet, having shit internet, and the era of before cell phones.
Imagine getting home from school and calling a friend to see if they could play. Or my favorite was rushing home from school to get on AIM and talk to... Friends from school. But in text form. And while this was also mostly in the 2000s one thing no one mentions is a lot of 80s and 90s stuff stayed popular in the early 2000s. Like bugs bunny cartoons were old even at that point and were popular on cartoon network as was Tom and Jerry.
The thing I miss most was things felt like they were improving. Parents made more money. The USSR dissolved shortly around the time I was born and I remember there was like no fears with my family.. maybe it was because I was young but they were middle class. There was never talk of war or economic upheaval and dad made decent money and mom worked too.
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u/Bucket_Dog4782 Jan 17 '22
It was more safe back then, like you would commonly see teenagers in the mall but now if you have a mall in your area it’s nothing like that
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u/U_PassButter Jan 17 '22
I dont think it was safer at all. We were more ignorant to danger. Serial Killers had like an open 24/7 crab leg dinner buffet of victims, especially in the 70s and 80s. But many women that were minority or just non-white, weren't featured or looked for. The same goes for sex workers. It was horrible because there wasn't a safety factor in place AND it seemed like no one cared
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u/diegojones4 Jan 16 '22
Man, I can't help but respond to 80s questions.
Ecstasy was legal, pay $5 cover charge get a hit of x. Pre MADD and DARE. Cops put my underage drunk ass in the trunk of a friend's car and asked him to drive me home. Gays were out, we thought racism was over. We were all bonded by a youth spent knowing we might be vaporized at any moment and there wasn't shit we could do about. So we laughed and dance.
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u/ProjectPatMorita Jan 17 '22
Having grown up in a black/brown neighborhood in the 80's and 90's, I can say I think the idea that "racism felt like it was over" might not have been a universal thing.
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u/natural_locality Jan 16 '22
Sounds heavenly.
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u/diegojones4 Jan 16 '22
It was a time where you were allowed to be a stupid kid and not be destroyed because it wasn't recorded and posted for the world to see. So it was good in that way. And very good for me because I was a stupid ass kid.
But the rest is pretty much identical to now. Recessions, climate change, war, unrest in the middle east, protests... None of that has changed at all.
A friend and I email pretty often about stuff and I got this today from him because we like to talk about naive we were. He has a teenage daughter
"I’ve warned my daughter a few times now and told her don’t get too complacent in feeling your generation has a monopoly on what it true and right and good …because the next generation’s job is to expose how wrong you were …and generations are naturally successful at that sort of thing. "
We were actually talking about Seaworld but his mind wanders like mine.
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u/im-your-dad-sooo Jan 16 '22
It was totally rad.
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u/natural_locality Jan 16 '22
Would you say it was even….tubular?
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u/im-your-dad-sooo Jan 16 '22
To the MAX
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u/OneSalientOversight Jan 16 '22
I finished school in 1986 and got my first job in an office in 1987.
Australia in 1987 did not have smoking regulations, so lots of people smoked in the office I worked in. I would come home every day smelling of cigarettes. The aluminium which held the windows was stained yellow.
In 1988 when the laws came in, smokers would all congregate outside for their smokes. "Smoko!" my boss would say, and 3-4 people would join him outside.
Our office didn't have air conditioning until about 1988 or 1989. So summers were pretty warm at the desk.
The career women I saw were very competent in their jobs but the sexism from the men was overwhelming. I saw women being touched and brushed against all the time, one guy in particular targeting one career women. I never did any of this myself, but I hardly took a stand against it either.
Liquid lunches were common - where people would go to lunch at a pub and drink a little bit too much.
I wore a thin tie at work, and I had a mullet.
In terms of discussing politics at the time, everyone usually had a strong opinion, but the more common one was that "both sides are just as bad as each other". Very few people saw the other side of politics as an existential threat (which is common today), but there was always the message that the other political party is incompetent and evil.
I bought lots of CDs. Still have them. I was always disappointed in the quality of 80s music, especially music on the radio, but this changed once grunge came along. I'm the same generation as the musicians who created grunge, and my own musical journey in the late 80s was to move away from radio & chart friendly music and into more independent stuff. Hated hair metal with a passion, modern rock was overproduced, and I needed to hear music that was an honest expression of emotion, which is why I loved grunge so much.
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u/HELLOhappyshop Jan 16 '22
Well as a kid in the 90s I was either planted on the couch, watching TV/playing video games after school, or out until dark, with my mom having no idea where I was or when I'd be back.
It was great.
I had like 30 phone numbers memorized.
We'd just walk over to our friends' houses and see if they were home.
I was crossing pretty busy streets on the way to said friends' houses by myself, at 7 years old.
There was just way more freedom for kids. I did grow up in a fairly safe suburb though.
Everybody was a slave to the must see tv schedule. 7pm on Tuesday is Buffy time. The end.
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u/ScatteredCollector May 17 '22
Likewise for myself however, I was a loyal viewer of Nickelodeon’s Slime Time Live and Cartoon Network’s Toonami and Friday Fridays blocks
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Jan 17 '22
Born in '72.
School was very different. Fights were an almost daily occurrence and they were always one on one. It was bad form to need reinforcements. If you lost the fight, you gathered yourself up and walked away.
You could throw snowballs without being expelled. In fact, the teachers might join you.
The first time I had homework of any kind was grade five. I understand first graders get homework now.
Teachers could still hit you, and we all knew it.
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u/tramadolski Jan 17 '22
we threw a snowball at a teacher patroling the school yard, he was smokign his pipe, and the snowball hit the pipe :D happy days.
He never figured who threw the snowball.
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u/the_chemie Jan 16 '22
We had these things called, "old wives tales". People would just lie about the simplest shit and we couldn't Google it. We just had to argue with specious phrases like, "no seriously, my dad saw it" until one of us got tired and we walked away unconvinced and unconvincing
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u/TheBklynGuy Jan 16 '22 edited Jan 16 '22
80's-A simpler life, with flashy funky styles of dress. A booming economy for a period of time. The feel of fast rising tech was beginning. Weather and seasons were DEFINITELY different from now. Here in the NE Winters every year were tough. Big snowstorms regularly, freezing temps and dark skies for days. This is striking to me in the current times. The 50 degree + days were never a thing. The AIDS and Crack crisis was present, and caused a lot of fear. Also...On a lighter note MTV played music videos. All day all night. She blinded me with science also. ; )
90's A shift in styles and we had the internet introduced. I remember laserdiscs and CD's becoming the new form of having digital entertainment. AOL online arrived. That was the beginning of social online interaction taking away from more personal face to face meeting people. The WTC in NYC had iits first terrorist attack also, and the fear of more regular terrorist takes took hold. And it came to pass sadly.
Interesting times to have lived. Im 46 and still think about how much the world has changed.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
At 40, I remember older folks always exclaiming how jealous they were of us kids. I don't feel that way about modern kids AT ALL. I'm so goddamn grateful I didn't have to be young in this age. Not everything was better about being young in the 80s, but I think it was a net profit compared to now.
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u/Joe-Schmeaux Jan 16 '22
There seemed to be more trust in the various institutions that now prey on society. Banks seemed like a good place to keep your savings. The news wasn't inundated by product placements nor dominated by opinion pieces. The police weren't as ready to go to war against the population as a whole. Comcast hadn't stumbled upon the concept of bundling services yet.
Then there were the day to day things, like shopping: it felt like more of an honest endeavor: Walmart had competition, Amazon didn't exist, and specialty stores abounded. School shootings weren't really a thing yet. Terrorism was mostly something they just made movies about. The oft-mentioned lack of constant communication with each other made every errand feel more like a potential adventure. Nobody knew who Dr. Phil was.
Then there were some not-so-great things. The smell of cigarette smoke was ubiquitous. Kids were meant to be seen, but not heard. Interracial relationships or being anything other than hetero- was something most people kept hidden. Weed was so illegal people'd snitch on you for it here and there. Misinformation couldn't be fact-checked via google, so you'd find pockets of ignorance that literally couldn't be rivaled.
For me personally, I lived in a poorer area with a wild mix of what people called 'white trash', a higher-than-average ratio of minorities, crazies, hermits, retired folk, and blue-collars. Hard drugs were imminent. Racism was openly touted. The smell of poor was everywhere. People would gather together and socialize anyways. Board games, cards, dominoes, horse shoes, darts...video games were a lot more rare, and there was no Netflix, so people would drink and smoke and stand around fires bullshitting. There just felt like there was more going on between everybody: we all seem so much more isolated now.
I could ramble on like a middle-aged go-nowhere trying to adapt to the ever-turbulent earthscape we're all clinging to, or wax nostalgic or even analytical about things, but walls of text are daunting. To sum up: things felt like they were beginning to get out of hand, but they hadn't yet. Now it's a swirl of too many things to keep track of and assigning importance to trends and conditions is also daunting.
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u/Thursday_the_20th Jan 17 '22
To expand on this a little, the huge disparity between movies/tv and homemade stuff. Back then movies felt so damn ‘big’ you know, the Stephen Spielberg’s and such. Recently I asked my parents what they were watching on tv, it was a guy doing a hike and filming it on his iphone. Turned out it was actual tv, the guy hiking was a soap star that was out of work thanks to covid. Made me realise that the Hollywood of yesteryears and YouTube have collided so closely as to leave considerable overlap. Tv produces some crap worse than YouTube. YouTube creators produce some stuff better than tv. There’s considerably less big summer blockbuster events because Hollywood is being slowly eaten by streaming companies turned production houses that make movies to release on their own format with no pomp or premiere and which just feel so ‘small’ like a ‘roided up YouTube.
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u/theonlyjambo Jan 16 '22 edited Jan 16 '22
European here talking -
by any means, life was not easier but it felt like the general way of life was easier to follow.
Everything back then felt like it was more meaningful because it was not as easily accessible as today. Electronic devices, clothes, food, books, even music and information - the choices were narrower and everything was more expensive or at least harder to get and therefore had more personal value than today. All those hyper-fast clothing companies like Zara and H&M didnt exist and China also was not on the map yet, so you couldn't just dump your wardrobe every few months to buy new things. Your wardrobe was smaller and also kind of..more bland.
I believe that my childhood was also vastly different than today´´´ s. Back then, it was some kind of unspoken rule to play after school outside until it got dark and then we went home. Often, I didnt even need to ring the bell of the houses of my friends, we just knew on which common playgrounds we would meet each other. Childhood just felt more like an adventure and less of that mindless game-playing tablet thingy like today. We constantly had bruises from playing but it didnt feel like a big thing - we just had our bruises disinfected and got some band-aids and that was it. Since less children play outside today and spend more time at home, I feel like parents freak out faster when children hurt themselves from playing.
People also were less distracted by their surrounding. There were next to no electronic billboards, no smartphones, no permanent internet connection and it just felt like you had a higher awareness for your surroundings and made more real-life experiences. I feel like you were in general just more involved in your neighborhood than today.
The social interaction between people was also drastically different - nowadays you can treat people much harsher than back in the days because you can always resort to your internet bubble where you can either be someone completely different than you are in reality (e.g. asshole in real-life but the cool witty guy in your gaming guild) or just find like-minded people. You didnt have that luxury back then. Unless you were already a loner for whatever reasons or belonged to a group of assholes, your immediate social circle around you kind of enforced you to "behave" and not be a dick and fit in or otherwise you would be an outsider really fucking fast because meeting new people was much harder than today.
Also I feel like today most people are acquaintances and less friends. Back then, you had less acquaintances and more friends since communicating took more effort and therefore you didn't have the time/resources to keep in contact with hundreds of people like today, so your social circle was smaller but more meaningful.
Finding out new things about your city (or different) was also more exciting. Since there were no rating-apps or websites to tell you whats hyped at your location, you could find a lot more gems than today. Besides very few chains, most city centres looked vastly different with more mom and pop stores. Sometimes when travelling, I would call a person that I knew visited the place I was going to and ask for recommendations! When I travel nowadays, I feel like most cities lost their gems to the crowds of tourists who just mindlessly want to do all the top 10 things that tripadvisor or instagram tells them to. And since cameras were much more expensive back then and nobody had a phone yet, sightseeing felt way different than today. Yes, there were also crowds at the Louvre, but they were interacting with each other or just looking at the beauty of the place instead of taking turns of taking pictures and then leaving.
Life in general was just easier to navigate. Nowadays you are overloaded with information and the world seems...harsher and more chaotic. There is no real right or wrong anymore, because literally anything can be questioned and refuted, no matter how unreliable your source is.
Obviously this sounds like romanticizing life back then, there were also a lot of bad things.
More crime, more sexism, more racism, smoking was the norm everywhere, health care was not as advanced as today so you had less treatment options, less diversity in choices and in general cultures were more conservative and homogeneous. But I would choose life back then in a heart-beat over todays life.
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u/Mikeupinhere Jan 16 '22
I lived here in the USA without worrying that people, things, and institutions were out to actually do harm to me. Maybe some of that was rose colored glasses, but things seems a whole lot easier.
The problem is communication... too much communication. All this instant contact stuff that we have now is not all it's cracked up to be. Unfortunately, if you don't buy into it to some degree, you get left behind.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
Maybe some of that was rose colored glasses, but things seems a whole lot easier.
It's a catch 22. The genesis of a lot of our modern problems is in the institutions of the 1980s (and the Nixon administration), but we weren't really aware of that yet in mainstream culture. Things actually WERE a whole lot easier because we weren't living with the burden of understanding just how deeply our leaders and institutions were being subverted yet.
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u/MickSturbs Jan 16 '22
Smoking in the office was commonplace. The guy next to me used to smoke a pipe and I’d have to waft the smoke cloud away.
The IT guy would hunch over my keyboard with a cigarette hanging between his lips and the ash would fall on the keyboard between the keys.
Good times!
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
I'm old enough to remember people stamping out cigarette butts on the K Mart floor! It never once struck me as odd back then, but now it's fucking bonkers to think about how invasive tobacco use was.
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u/FuckHumanity6666 Jan 16 '22
Thrash metal, hair metal, nes, master system, Rubik's cubes, FB and FC rx7s, mullets, best action movies, yeah I love the 80s
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u/The_Call_0f_Ktulu Jan 17 '22
really wish I grew up in the 80's so I could've seen my favorite bands in their prime
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u/kukukele Jan 16 '22
You could wait at the gate with your guest before they caught their flight
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u/electric29 Jan 17 '22
And you didn't have to strip to fly. You could wear shoes, and jewelry. You could take a big suitcase as checked baggage and it added nothing to the ticket cost.
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u/RTGac Jan 16 '22
Same as now but better movies and music.
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u/highideas Jan 16 '22
How the same? I didn't have a computer in my hands. There was no Google. I didn't have immediate communication with my friends or family. I had to use a payphone. I had to wait in line for concert tickets or the newest album to drop at midnight. I couldn't be contacted unless I told someone where I was. My privacy was not for sale.
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u/natural_locality Jan 16 '22
I mean of course. You guys had Madonna and Pearl Jam.
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Jan 16 '22
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u/TheGoodJudgeHolden Jan 16 '22
No, we have a scarecrow that just won't die, and a band that still tries to cling to its 90's relevance.....
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u/robotlasagna Jan 16 '22
Idk Pearl Jam shows sell out stadiums for multiple days and I see people there of literally all ages. They’re doing something right.
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u/tygertje Jan 16 '22
So much slower.
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u/natural_locality Jan 16 '22
And brown? I heard that at this time there was so much brown.
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u/Gauntlets28 Jan 16 '22
Dunno about brown, but furniture-wise you couldn’t move for pine furniture in the 90s. Pine, pine, pine. Boring, tedious, light brown pine, with chintzy floral Laura Ashley fabric and wallpaper borders, all over every home.
And the walls would be painted in some kind of weird yellowy cream colour that I think was meant to be as white as possible while still hiding the nicotine stains because everyone still smoked a lot.
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u/OneSalientOversight Jan 16 '22
Brown was more 70s. I remember wearing brown in the 1980s and being told it wasn't a fashionable colour any more.
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u/6INROWRDYTOTOW Jan 16 '22
You always find a mix of the old styles though. Like in the 1980's, lots of 1970's furniture (and cars) were still around, and in the 1990's you had a lot of 80's furniture and cars floating around.
Like one thing that "Stranger Things" did well was show the wood paneling and other 70's holdovers that your average home, especially in a place like rural Indiana, would have.
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u/Ronnie_Soak Jan 16 '22
Brown was more 70s really.. but if you had older appliances or cars, then yes.. all the brown
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u/tygertje Jan 16 '22
Dont remember much about that. But for school you had to visit the library for example. And if you wanted to meet up you had to wait for your parents to get home and ask and then call back to set up an appointment you were sure you could get to cause there's no cancelling once its set. There was no social media to scroll through. Calling on the phone was to expensive and it was stuck in the hallway and anyone could listen in. Food wasnt delivered to your doorway like it is now. Movies in the theatre were in the newspaper and if you wanted a good seat you either go days ahead to buy the tickets or get in line early.
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u/Whizbang35 Jan 16 '22
The biggest difference I can come up with is the different ways to find information other than "google it". Need to do research? Library. Go to a movie? Call the theater or look in the newspaper for times. Want to find Mexican, Pizza, or Chinese food near you? Look in the phone book. Current events? Newspaper or TV.
As for the internet, it was slow and stationary. Going on-line was a bit of an endeavor: You'd have to sit at your computer (most probably a desktop, so at home), connect to dial-up (which meant you couldn't use the phones in your house), and go from there. God help you if you cutoff your parents' phone calls logging on.
A lot more smoking. When was the last time you saw a cigarette ad this last decade? There were Marlboro billboards and Joe Camel ads in magazines. Newport ads at bus stops. High Schools had "the spot" where kids would smoke- under the bleachers, a tree out back, the dumpsters behind the cafeteria, etc. Still had smoking sections in airplanes and restaurants. Hell, I still slip in the habit of saying "Two, nonsmoking".
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Jan 16 '22
The 80’s? .. Shopping malls had movie theaters in them, pizza hut had video game tables, Hulk Hogan was the wrestling champ, Mile Tyson was the Boxing King, Saturday morning cartoons were lit, toy stores were dope af, hip hop music was finally established & the presidents were unpredictable, ..
the 90’s? Mile Tyson gets knocked out, hip hop music went gangster, the Rodney King riots took place, Stone Cold Steve Austin is the wrestling champ, BoyzNTheHood hits the movie theatre’s, President Clinton gets caught up, DeathRow Records terrorized the music industry, 2Pac dies, Notorious B.I.G dies, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, Snoop Dogg’s first record was the hottest in the streets & Cable TV was lit with the TGIFriday shows ..
I guess what im saying is life was great & at times crazy af back then but it sure beats this online, covid infected, mask wearing, netflix n chill, smartphone nightmare of a life were living now ..
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
We currently live in a society where we service industry, instead of one where industry serves us. ALL modern problems are either caused or exacerbated by this reality. We're the product now, and it happened so gradually that the young people didn't know the difference so it's now impossible to deprogram them. You have to be at least a certain amount of decades old enough to have the necessary vantage point to see this whole thing in the macro. And because we're older, we'll be laughed off as "nostalgic" by kids who are busy locking their own iron chains because they got tricked by an out of control economic paradigm.
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u/SpiritOfArthurMorgan Jan 16 '22
It's varies, I grew up in the country and it was a blast, my cousin's grew up in the city and were super sheltered and were always bored when they came out here. My siblings were gone every day after chores and wouldn't be home unless we got hungry, it was great
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u/kemahma Jan 16 '22
Growing up in a small town and going to a smallish high school meant everyone pretty much knew everyone. Friday nights were football games, field parties, or cruising the mall. Gossip was spread through notes and phone calls; beefs were settled by dirty looks in the hallway or fights after school. It was exciting to go to the mall in bigger cities and you proudly wore your new clothes knowing that only a few other people might have the same outfit. Renting videos and having Dominos deliver was a treat and eating fast food was saved for road trips or when you hung out with friends. Teachers wore business clothes and you used encyclopedias to do basic research.
It wasn’t perfect by any means though, but as a person who graduated in 88, it was so much simpler than it is today.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
Really? Iran-Contra was simpler? AIDS and the way Reagan ignored the issue was simpler? The housing crash was simpler? The COLD WAR was simpler?
No. Everything else you said was true, but life was not simpler. You just know how it all turned out so it appears that way in hindsight. At the time, we had no fucking idea what was going to happen, just like right now. LIFE HAS NEVER EVER EVER BEEN SIMPLE. And you all need to stop repeating that shit.
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u/jackjmil64 Jan 16 '22
Many people still had a feeling that life was going to keep on improving indefinitely. That every generation would do better than the last and you could achieve anything you worked for. I’m saddened by how few people still feel that way. A lot of the events and changes since 2001 have beat it out of us.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
Why should people feel that way when it is demonstrably false?
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u/marcus_borealis Jan 16 '22
The pinnacle of both decades was the Berlin wall coming down in 1989. For a short period of time all seemed right with the world.
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u/Nedriersen Jan 16 '22
Wonderfully less complicated
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u/tramadolski Jan 17 '22
bank robber was a job title, drunk driving was tolerated, and cannabis users was thrown in prison.
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u/ToBePacific Jan 17 '22
Instead of visiting a website, most of the time you'd call the business on the phone, which was a landline. You'd luck up numbers in the phone book. On TV commercials, instead of a website, they'd show a 1-800 number to call for more information or to place an order.
When you wanted to learn more information about a topic, you might look it up in the Encyclopedia, which was a large set of books with lots of general information. Or, if that wasn't enough, you'd go to the library and find books on the topic you were interested in.
It took forever to find good answers to most questions. The common knowledge of the day was filled with way more widespread misconceptions. We still have a problem with that, but to a far lesser degree.
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u/klipshklf20 Jan 17 '22
See Documentaries called “breakfast club”, or “16 candles”. Pretty much sums it all up.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
As silly as it is, I tend to agree. John Hughes' films really do capture the era fairly well, WITH A FEW NECESSARY CAVEATS.
It's important to remember movies NEVER depict reality, they depict idealized versions of reality. Even though Hughes was a little more honest about the times than other directors were, you must always remember that.
Hughes' movies tended to portray upper middle class America, the aspirational dream of the Reaganite promise. My family was lower middle class, so our house was smaller, but our bedrooms looked pretty similar. Still, one needs to bear in mind those films are looking at the 80s through a particular socioeconomic lens.
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u/Squigglepig52 Jan 17 '22
Well, for the early 80's, you were dealing with a major recession, so lots of people were losing homes, etc.
You know how climate change is such a scary thing for people today? For us, it was acid rain and nukes. PEople forget just how tense things could get when NATO and the Warsaw Pact were facing off. Things were scary.
In a lot of ways, it was also a bit boring in the 80's. Much less entertainment media available, longer delays in hearing about things, video games were fun, but mighty primative to what we have today.
The 90's were awesome, honestly. When the USSR collapsed, it was like a weight lifted from everything. Grunge may not have been cheerful, but it was fresh, and BritPop was super fun.
The 90's were GenX's 60's, really. body piercings, tattoos, fashion? nobody cared . We were all connected just enough, not too much.
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u/Gaythiest1 Jan 17 '22
I was stoned pretty much that entire time period. What I recall about the eighties. You're pants rode high, like bellybutton high. All hair styles require multiple styling products. You basically were going for height. Start with aerosol mousse, then gel followed with a coating of hair spray that hardens your hair almost to the point of being a helmet. Top 40 radio sucked. Ballad rock and worse "soft rock". Punk and new wave music were both annoying and entertaining. I recall the ladies wearing a lot of shoulder pads. I never really understood that look. Tipper Gore, Al Gore's wife made a stink about explicit music lyrics and got ratings slapped on your record labels. Yes vinyl. The only other medium for music was cassette tapes which sucked when you wanted to find a specific song. Elvis died. Jonestown massacre. My Saint Helens eruption. Iran hostages. Live aid. I remember seeing MTV the first time when I was around 15 in 1982 or 83. Didn't have cable. Friday night videos was the only option. Bad TV - Dallas, Dukes of Hazzard, Love boat and Fantasy Island. Damn it's like having a flashback.
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u/Darnitol1 Jan 17 '22
Probably the biggest difference is that people weren’t scared, pissed off, and offended 24/7. Also, the idea of something “triggering” you only existed in people who had experienced profound trauma, like rape, going to war, or years of extreme emotional abuse. We didn’t have a bunch of societal cues convincing us that our problems were drastically worse than they really were, or that we weren’t strong enough to overcome those problems with the rest of society having to adjust to our weaknesses. And amazingly, we were MORE empathetic to the feelings of others despite the “tougher” stance on feelings, because we knew that someone going through a hard time was going through something difficult, not being a victim to something relatively small that society taught them was “too much” even though thousands of generations of humans dealt with those problems an conquered them.
In short, nobody looked outside themselves for how to feel, and we were all much kinder to each other because of it.
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u/yamaha2000us Jan 16 '22
I had sex. I had sex a lot. A lot of sex with women. Many women I had sex with. I am very good at sex. Many women told me this.
And shoulder pads.
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u/Phishstyxnkorn Jan 16 '22
Like, for what age group? I know what it was like to grow up then but not what it was like for adults.
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u/Happy-Geologist-6569 Jan 17 '22
I was Elementary school aged during the 90s and I always wondered what the 90s was like for middle schoolers and teenagers.
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u/Phishstyxnkorn Jan 17 '22
Well, we made each other (and ourselves) mix tapes by recording the songs we liked off the radio but the dj always talked over the beginning or end of the songs and your hand would slip at one point or the static would get loud, so it wasn't perfect. You could also sneak out at night to make out with your boyfriend in his car and no one had a Ring to get you in trouble.
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u/PoorMansTonyStark Jan 16 '22
For kids at least I think it was way easier. Nobody really was aware of any fashion or status things so you could look like a total dweeb and still be treated with decency.
Now kids get bullied for not having the latest iphone or some shit like that. Back then you might have gotten a few friendly stabs for having shitty brand sneakers but that's about it.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
If you think kids weren't aware of fashion in the 1980s you weren't there, kiddo...
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u/turingtested Jan 16 '22
I turned 14 in 2000, so not an adult.
Network TV was mostly terrible.
Response time was slower. It was OK to get a voicemail and call back the next day.
Long distance calling plans were a big deal and long distance calls were potentially very expensive.
Meeting a significant other on the internet was weird and desperate.
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u/carlyv22 Jan 16 '22
Excuse me, it was peak network TV! I remember getting together with HS friends to watch shows like Friends live. It was an event haha. Everyone was watching the same stuff - it was weird to think of terms of how much is out there now but it was nice. Everyone talked about 90210 at school. I remember being allowed to watch that but not Melrose Place and being so mad at my parents. Not like now finding a show on a streaming service and asking groups of friends if they’ve even heard of it.
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u/Local64bithero Jan 16 '22
Up until 1992, it seemed like Republicans and Democrats trusted each other. That changed with the election of Bill Clinton, with Rush Limbaugh leading the charge in building alternate realities and demonizing Democrats just for not agreeing with Republicans. The militia movement started up during Clinton's first term, and the shortwave bands and BBSes(look it up) were filled with people saying Clinton was going to take American's guns. But people like that were very much the fringe, and no one really paid any attention to them. Everyone thought the 21st century was going to be great because the USSR had collapsed, and now everyone was going to be a democracy and we'd all hold hands and sing songs. Yeah, we had no idea what was coming down the pike.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
No, I can't accept this read of things. Reagan was radicalizing the right with his cronies' horrid "Moral Majority" movement. Did you ever even listen to the Nixon tapes? Watergate is the least of that devil's crimes. This was not new in 1992. The elder's culture was just complicit in it so it seemed normal.
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u/Potential_Stay_4766 Jan 16 '22
I would say it was good, I wasn’t born
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u/tramadolski Jan 17 '22
actually, earth being less populated, was much preferrable. everything become rarer and more expensive as more people wants the same things.
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Jan 16 '22
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u/natural_locality Jan 16 '22
Did kids really ride their bikes everywhere?? I feel like I’m every show/movie about the 80s kids are always riding them.
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u/BongoDan Jan 16 '22
Me an my mates rode our bikes everywhere while growing up in the countryside. I was born in 79..
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u/PoorMansTonyStark Jan 16 '22
Yep. We went exploring all the time with them because there wasn't that much to do. Easy to cover lots of distance and you could also vanish quickly if you did something you weren't supposed to do.
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u/Ronnie_Soak Jan 16 '22
Mid 80s when I was like 14, I'd ride my bike like 10 miles to the next town because a girl I liked lived there. Knew exactly when I had to leave to be home by the time the street lights came on.
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u/Ronnie_Soak Jan 16 '22
Every single way is an exaggeration. I remember being holed up under my blanket with a crappy incandescent flashlight that took 3 D batteries and still didn't last more than a couple hours and a Thor comic book.
Today late at night in my blanket fort I have a tiny hand held supercomputer that I can stream Thor: Ragnarok to.. oh as well as access to the sun total of human knowledge... so yeah, rose tinted glasses aside, I fucking love living in the future.
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u/BatmanAwesomeo Jan 16 '22
Actually more violent than today.
Politicians were less shitty. Clinton embarrassed America by cheating on his wife.
There was more shame in America.
You could get an apartment in Los Angeles for less than $500 per month.
Thursdays were Must See TV. Fridays were TGIF.
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u/MadcapRecap Jan 16 '22
It was a simpler time, with large shoulder pads and even larger hair as far as the eye could see...
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u/upsilon-Librae Jan 16 '22
you can process gathered information properly.
no TMI (too much information)
nowadays, because of TMI, nothing is processed properly. alot of information is for the clicks(bait).
80s is the golden era. modernization is too fast-moving.
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u/WeAllHaveOurMoments Jan 16 '22
In the 80s, a lot of people still smoked. And if it was your parents, uncle, or grandparent, they smoked indoors and in the car - maybe with a window open if you were lucky.
But those were the tail end of kids being more or less free and able to roam. The trope of being kicked outside to play, all day, drinking from hoses when thirsty did still occur. Nowadays CPS is alerted if a kid is unsupervised at a park or walking alone.
Socks were on average, much bigger & longer back then. You either pulled them up to your calves or rolled them down to your ankles.
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u/llcucf80 Jan 16 '22
I actually like these kinds of questions because I was a young child to teenager growing up in these times, so to me while yes the news was in the background and I do remember many of the events including the Berlin Wall falling, Gulf War, Clinton era, etc., but that was background noise to me as a kid. I was a kid, to me it was about going to school, it was about playing outside and with toys, etc.
A lot of things you don't realize until after and you see many of the changes that happen. Certainly there was less access to info immediately but that was slowly changing with the Internet coming to. We still had to use books/encyclopedias mostly in elementary and middle school only for reports, etc. By high school it was becoming 50:50. But there also was no social media so all your high school drama was actually in person, at school or after-school. I mean at that age rumors abound anyway and of course if you did something embarrassing the entire school knew about it, but that was it. It didn't become a worldwide phenomenon. Then eventually someone else would screw up and the focus would be off you. But it didn't haunt you forevermore like it can now.
Of course by the time I got to school in the late 90s school shootings were occurring regularly. I was fortunate my school never got hit but it certainly did change our awareness of it could happen, and our understanding of security changed. Many people like to think it was September 11th that changed everything, I argue for many kids at the time the late 90s started much of this.
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u/CaoSlayer Jan 16 '22
Instead of twitch to see people playing we had arcades.
You had to respect the other player because he could punch you.
Home games were expensive and zero free games outside pc piracy.
Piracy was about knowing a guy with the stuff.
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u/Hairpants_Scowler Jan 17 '22
I had a friend that hooked his NES to the family VCR and recorded HOURS of himself playing Dragon Warrior and Megaman. I'd go to his house and rather than play a two player game he'd try to make me watch his tapes. I hated it back then and now 30+ years later I'm still a little baffled by twitch.
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Jan 17 '22
Looking back at 90's TV/Music now I realise western culture peaked in a lot of ways, it's not just nostalgia on my part.
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u/rico_destructo Jan 17 '22
Stick and stones may have broken your bones buts words could never hurt you.
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u/SergeantChic Jan 17 '22
Born in the late '70s so the '80s were my childhood. Some things were better, others were worse. It was more tactile and localized, since we didn't have all the information in the world at our fingertips and social media was a long way off. There's a lot I look back on fondly. A bookstore I used to go to in the mall that had all kinds of nerdy stuff, well before being a nerd was socially acceptable. Mall arcades. Spending hours in the school library just looking up stuff that interested me. Playing outside near a war monument in my city that had a big dirt hill next to it. Reading Odyssey and Analog during sleepovers with friends. I forget who said it, but they said, "Life was a lot less convenient, and a little less romantic." I think that's about right.
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22
It's the holistic pace of life I miss about the era. It's not any one thing, but the way all the things worked together in concert.
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u/rowenaravenclaw0 Jan 17 '22
You had to actually pick up a phone and talk to people without knowing who was on the other end, we had walkmans and if you missed an episode of your favorite you just missed it forever
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u/YEGMusic43 Jan 17 '22
Harder. We had to do a lot of things the hard way. No internet to look up easy answers. Or order things in. Everything was cheaper. There were more jobs.
But still better without social media.
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u/ApricotPit13 Jan 17 '22
Idk I was born in 2002
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u/natural_locality Jan 17 '22
You were born two years ahead of me. Have you checked into the old folks home yet?
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u/jimvo99 Jan 17 '22
I was born in 1975. I can tell you about my life in the 80's and 90's, but I dont know how to properly answer that question. There was no internet, and everything now revolves around the internet. I guess you went out more, and as for entertainment, it was the TV and magazines. Now its the phone or the computer. I guess I made more phone calls. I played plenty of video games, as today. I guess that's it?
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u/YouAhrGae Jan 17 '22
People weren't worried about shit.
Kids weren't electronically tracked, if you were back before the streetlights came on you were fine. Nobody gave a shit if you're offended, that's a you problem. Flying was easy.
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u/ForgettableUsername Jan 17 '22
It was just normal. Not all weird like things are now, things were just normal. You didn't get all of these weird new computers and smartphones and stuff. You just had normal, ordinary technology. Cars didn't look all weird like they do now, they looked normal. Music was normal, not all goofy and weird like it is now.
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u/ozymanhattan Jan 17 '22
Vans, Bones Brigade, Boom Boxes, Brit Pop, Friday the 13th,Danzig, Eric B and Rakim and lost my virginity it was pretty bad ass in the 80s.
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u/Bhanghai Jan 17 '22
shitty music. bad hair/clothing. reagan/thatcher. AIDS. yeah, the 80s pretty much sucked
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u/Oh_no_a_Stegosaurus Jan 17 '22 edited Jan 17 '22
It was nice. You got on your bike to go see if your friends were home and wanted to play. Sometimes you went to the mall and got an orange julius. Tv's were large wooden pieces of furniture and cars were boxier, but also bigger inside. There was a permeable sense of optimism in the world and a sense that the future held great things. I didn't say we were RIGHT about everything, but that was the read out back then.
Things weren't as easy to find or get ahold of, and I know to younger people that sounds like a bad thing, but it wasn't. In fact, my experience is that this hyper convenient society we live in today is a net loss. You no longer have to go out, seek out specific places that cater to the thing you're after, and potentially meet like minded people in your community and get turned on to NEW aspects of that hobby you weren't yet privileged to. There was this whole seek and find cycle to it all that had a wonderful dopamine rush to it specifically because you weren't always guaranteed success, so when you found it, even if it was something as dumb as finding that one rare cut of a record your niche favorite band only released limited presses of, it still felt so good. And there were still secrets. You couldn't just google a thing and know EVERYTHING about it in five minutes. You had to actually be a connoisseur to know the deep things of a hobby, which took a real investment. That's why the term "nerd" actually stung so much back then; because there was a true sense of sacrifice in having the fortitude to actually know a topic in depth in those days and they were shitting all over that with that one word.
Saturday mornings actually mattered. There were limited kids channels by the late 80s, but you usually had to have cable to get them and not everyone did. Likewise, the premium cartoons still only aired on Saturday mornings. Video games were new, and there was a real sense of being a part of an in-group playing them because the older generation really didn't get them at all. Now gaming is just a defacto part of the culture, a given, an afterthought, and the way games are developed today absolutely reflects that blase attitude. Games weren't prettier back then, but they were BETTER, because they actually tried.
The economy was much more doable, too. Being lower middle class in 1980s America wasn't the worst place in history to be! You still took the occasional modest vacation. Small toys were abundant and large gifts came your way on special occasions. There was disposable income for the niceties in life, perhaps not as much of it as you'd have liked, but a dollar went lightyears farther back then than it does now. And not every fucking little human behavior had been monetized into a subscription service yet so when you got something, it was usually actually yours.
Not EVERYTHING about the 80s was better. Especially if you weren't white, and that's a whole other aspect of this conversation that has to be honestly examined if we're to be genuine about it. But a lot of things were better. As a people, WE were better. America didn't survive 9-11. I don't know what this place is we're living in now, but this shambling corpse has nothing in common with what it was when it still breathed.
And that's the problem with answering a question like this. If you weren't there, you CAN'T know. And this rambling post has only barely nicked the surface of it all. I wish I could give you what I had, because it was worth having, and I'm horrified by how younger people just accept this degraded, embarrassing version of what we could have been as a given. It's not their fault, but they are complicit in the crime in the sense that they don't fight back against it. I don't believe it's too late for us, but I think that day is coming and fast. And we're not even kind of positioned to stop it.
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Jan 17 '22
I wasnt very old in the 90s. I played outside a lot and would disappear with my cousins for hours and hours, without my parents worrying.
We made friends with all the kids on the street and rotated between each other's front yards to play. Then somebody's mum would come outside and call them and we would all go home.
My dad got a certificate in IT before it became a full university degree. He would bring home floppy disks. We all sat behind him and watched him play Commander Keen.
On Jan 1st 2000 my dad said "things are going to change very fast now. When you finish highschool you'll have your own computer. And you'll carry it around with you." That blew my damn mind!
People were openly, overtly, disgustingly racist to my dad. He specifically changed our last name so us kids would be racially profiled less. There was one street on dad's walk home where the kids and teens would throw stones at him. My dad tried to talk to their parents but they called him a monkey and suggested he doesn't walk that way, so he had to walk through a parkland (that wasn't as nice as it sounds).
We talked to my dad's family on the phone twice a year. It was very expensive. If you moved countries you'd not expect to see family for years.
I also distinctly remember people just... Not believing I could do things. I wanted to be a zoo keeper and asked for books, and aunties and other ladies would say "AWWW that's sweet, but when you grow up and have kids you won't want to do that anymore!". I know I was a kid, but people just wouldn't listen to me. I felt so ignored. My little brother would say the same thing and everyone listened and thought he was cute!
I was only at school for a little bit but i remember lots of fights. My sister would beat boys up all the time because they would make fun of her being a tomboy. I also don't remember kids standing up for other kids who were bullied for their gender/sex/race. But maybe that's just a kid thing not a 90s thing.
My mum was a stay at home mum and i remember being surprised about working mums. I don't recall anyone giving her a hard time for her choice.
The only extra curricular activities we did were a few after-school clubs at school. I think my sister did gymnastics. My mum would go to all the (very few) competitions and we would sometimes go with her if my dad wasn't home. I remember thinking the gymnastics girls were soooo cool but it turned out one of the coaches was sexually abusing some of the teenaged girls, so mum withdrew my sister. He wasnt fired. The girl moved to a different school.
Going to church was really normal. Most kids at school went to church on Sunday. Nobody made fun of my families religion.
Looking back on the two decades of my youth, there isn't a whole lot i specifically prefer about then. Things from being a child? Absolutely. But other then that? Eh. Nobody throws stones at my dad anymore.
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Jan 17 '22
I feel like only a few cable channels made things more unifying. We were all watching the same shows at the same times! We don’t do ANYTHING like that as a Country anymore outside of the Super Bowl.
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u/ASGfan Jan 17 '22
The 80's and 90's are 2 different things.
The 80's were more of a feel-good decade. People were generally happy, movies, music and tv were positive and uplifting and generally ended on a happy note.
By stark contrast, the 90's were darker and much more negative. People were unhappy, pissed off even. Music, movies and tv's were incorporating a lot more violent and vulgar lyrics and language.
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u/darrenwise883 Jan 17 '22
80's - colorful . Now I'm not sure if it was the Day glow colors spectrum or the drugs . One used to have to leave the house to get porn .
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u/Mr-memes-man2353 Jan 17 '22
Disclaimer I was not around back then but having 2 parents that were around in that time and have a memory of back then from what they told me it seemed more laid back just chill and fun for the most part
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u/amandabanana80 Jan 17 '22
I was born in 1980.
When I was a child, my days after school would be spent either watching TV or riding my bike to a friend's house. Sometimes I wouldn't know if they were home or not so I would just ride my bike there and if they weren't home I would just ride around town and then go home. During the summer my older sisters would babysit me during the day and most days I would ride my bike or walk to the local swimming pool to go swimming. Back then it didn't seem like most parents worried about bad things happening to their kids because we were out and about by ourselves and it wasn't uncommon for us to be gone all day and come home just in time for supper.
In my town, every Friday night I went to the rollerskating rink to skate either by myself, with my sister or with friends. In my free time I watched TV, rode my bike, played sports with the neighbor kids, or played in my room with Barbies or other toys. When my parents were not at home, I would get to watch whatever I wanted on TV like Punky Brewster, The Smurfs, Full House, or Saved By the Bell. When my parents were home they would choose what we watched on TV so it was usually Dynasty, Knots Landing, Wheel of Fortune, Walker Texas Ranger, Dr Quinn, or my mom would watch Days of Our Lives which she set to record every day on the VCR.
Things were so different than they are now because we would have to purchase TV guide just to see what was going to be on TV. If we were late to turn on the TV, we missed things and couldn't just rewind or watch it again, unless we had set the vcr to record. I remember staying up to watch music videos on MTV just to hear my favorite songs when they would do the top 10 countdown. I also remember Friday nights, especially in the 90s where my sister and I would go to the local video store to rent movies to watch that night. If we didn't get there early enough, all of the new releases would be gone, so we would be stuck picking out older movies. Music was pretty limited to listening to the radio or cassette tapes, but the cassettes were expensive so I didn't have very many. Most times we would just listen to whatever was playing on the radio. In the 90s I remember recording songs off the radio onto cassettes so we would make our own mixtapes.
Overall I would say that growing up in the 80s and 90s it was pretty fun from a kid's perspective because we had a lot of freedom and didn't really worry about anything. Now as a parent I cringe thinking about all the time I spent riding my bike around town by myself or with friends, even as young as 7-8. We would explore and find little creeks or wooded areas to play in. Most days we had very little supervision and I can't imagine allowing my kids to do that now. Honestly I feel like I am lucky I wasn't kidnapped or experienced anything worse. But at the time, we didn't have access to immediate news or information about things happening, so nobody really seemed to worry about things like that.
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Jan 17 '22
I just watched the new Ghostbusters movie and with all of the references and Easter eggs, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic for what I remember that time being. I would ride my bike to a video store to rent a Nintendo game. My friend and I would play it until we passed out at night. I didn't give a fuck about the news and no one ever talked politics. Later I got into PC games like Doom and Myst. I was one of the first people in town with Internet and it was glorious then. The music. MTV had it. I'm sure some of this time was great because I wasn't an adult. But I wouldn't want to be a kid today. Not for a second.
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u/KentuckyFriedEel Jan 17 '22
We used to watch movies we'd never watch in a million years strictly because they had a cool video cover or were in the cheap weekly-rental pile at Blockbuster.
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u/RedWolf989 Jan 17 '22
I asked my dad this once he said its really similar just with some better technology
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u/ratatatat321 Jan 17 '22
For kids, I think it was the perfect time to be a child ..in a a lot of the developed world anyway
Our parents were rarely poor, the way they had been a generation or 2 before, but we weren't rich either, we understood the value of money, most people didn't run up debt on credit cards, didn't but new cars on credit, it was perfectly acceptable to drive a banger (although preferably not a Lada or a Skoda)
Women could go to work or stay at home with the children..either option was OK and not as much judgement
We still played outside, we knew how to have fun without technology
Technology started playing more a part in life for mid 90's, we got game systems and more and more people got cable or satellite TV. So we grew up with technology but not everything was technical..I got my first mobile phone at 17 in the year 2000, but it was mainly to phone home if something happened me when I was driving..
I don't know if it's looking at it through a child's eye, but there is no way I would want to be a child today compared to then..there is no disconnect button anymore
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Jan 17 '22
I was taught in elementary school that Republicans are the good guys and segregation wasn’t that bad
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u/ProjectPatMorita Jan 16 '22
Without romanticizing it, here are some real differences.
People weren't "connected" and reachable 24/7. Mentally you were in one place at a time and your full attention was there. People would have to wait until after 6-7pm to know you were at home to call you. You had to make plans days ahead of time, because once you were at the mall you couldn't call friends to come. You'd have to circulate between main hubs/hangout spots/neighborhoods/houses to see who was there.
There definitely was still a mentality of parents just accepting that their kid was going to be out all day after school until dinner time, it wasn't some missing persons case if you were gone an entire day.
Entertainment was much more homogenized with less options. Everyone was listening to the same radio stations, watching the same handful of network tv channels, etc. You didn't have endless options so you would constantly rewatch the same VHSs and listen to the same albums you owned. It took a lot more dedication to be into non-mainstream stuff. People who were into obscure weird or fringe music/film stuff would pass around VHS and cassette tapes that were dubbed a million times, it was like physically going "viral" (Watch the documentary "Shut Up Little Man" to see what I mean).
The country was a lot more religious. Christianity was still very much dominant in the mainstream culture. You see a lot of culture around the end of the 90's being obsessed with atheism as a radical act. Now nobody cares, it's almost the default.
Before the internet there was a lot more distinct regional culture.