The 70's & 80's were a better time to grow up

Since this will degenerate into a shit show I'm placing it here.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Graduated high school in '81. I would submit that this was clearly a better time to grow up for several reasons. Such as:

Music was better - classic vinyl from the 60's and early 70's...pop, disco, Motown, and then the late 70's - early 80's rock bands took over. Nothing has had such diversity and quality since.

No social media - we didn't have a phone half the time. Social media is a cancer.

Kids had freedom to be autonomous. When I was 10-11 I was home all by myself all week during the summer. I could go anywhere in my neighborhood without my parents putting out an amber alert. I had jobs cutting lawns and shoveling snow at that age. Kids were OUTSIDE all freaking day. This isn't happening now without parents involved. Playdates? WTF were those back then?

Media - sure the media were leftists but you generally got the news and not the opinion. Cronkite being the prime example. Most Americans loved him and trusted him. Myself included.

Television - way better shows...legendary shows...MASH, MTM, Dallas, All in the Family, WKRP, on and on and on. When MTV hit the scene that was great too. Sucks now. Superstation TBS was unique as well.

Sports - most of you have no clue but every major sports league had legendary teams or dynasties....Steelers, Cowboys, 49ers, Reds, Yankees, A's, Islanders, Canadians, Oilers, Celtics, Lakers, Warriors, etc.. There are some now as well but the rules have been changed so football and basketball are totally different. Awful.

Neighborhoods- people used to hang out with their neighbors constantly. I don't even know my neighbors who moved in 2 years ago.

High school parties - kids weren't stealing pills from their parents and having pill parties. They did what we did, a keg party with AC/DC blaring. That was social media then, gathering around the keg.

Anyway, there's my rant. Tell me why I'm wrong.

If you were white and straight.

Graduated from high school.

This is WF's new internal pandemic - people who don't know the difference between "then" and "than," and now this...

I have trouble with effect and affect.
I just jury-rig my grammar so effect can do all the work.

It's all an opinion so there is no right or wrong. I grew up in the 80s so that's my period too. But people growing up today are going to have a far different opinion.

Social Media - I like social media. I like the fact that I've been able to reconnect and stay in touch with old friends and family. Sure, some people are obsessed with it to the point that they can't keep their eyes off their phones. But that's the same for any fetish :drinking, smoking, gambling, gaming, etc. etc.

Media - Quality has certainly gone down on print and T.V. It's so partisan now that I don't even bother subscribing to the local newspaper anymore. And that's a shame. When I was growing up, the Tampa Tribune was a great newspaper. After they went out of business all we had left was the Tampa Bay Times, which is the most obviously partisan, left wing rag that I've ever seen trying to pass itself off as journalism. I'll be glad when they run out of sugar daddies and fold up shop for good. They are a disgrace to the profession. CNN has also went to shit. They use to be very fair in their coverage of the news and I used to always watch them on election night. Now they are no different than MSNBC. So I don't watch any of the cable news networks anymore. I stream CBS Access for my news now.

TV: Agreed. I haven't gotten into a real show since The West Wing. The Mandolorian was pretty good and I look forward to the next season of that. I catch the WWE on occasion and rewatch old shows on hulu or Disney.

Sports: I use to be a huge boxing and football fan. Rarely watch either anymore. The Walter Paytons, Barry Sanders and Joe Montanas are long gone. Football players have turned into either divas or violent thugs. Most recently, two NFL players were arrested for armed robbery. With Antonio Brown and Julian Edelman that makes four for the year. . Boxing has been replaced by UFC for fighting sports.

Music: Not into today's music, but then again my parents didn't like the music I listened to either. I was into Kiss, Metallica, AC/DC, Beastie Boys etc. You know...devils music. From what I hear, MTV rarely even plays music videos anymore.

*Evil fat guy from a Charles Dickens book is holding a ladle, and standing next to a kettle. He scoops out needles with "AIDS", written on them, and crack rocks. Crack to the black people, AIDS to the gay people*

Evil fat guy- Here's your AIDS, here's your crack, here's your AIDS, here's your crack....

*Guy pulls an American flag curtain across and hides it*

Curtain guy- Shhhhh......

TLS- I love you, curtain.

Nazi!

1. You're on drugs and they'll kill you. Deservedly so for making that personal choice.

2. Most people who contracted AIDS in the 80's made a conscious decision to engage in an activity that put them into a high risk group. A personal choice. No one I know wished it upon them, then or now.

3. A black person, or any other person who took drugs that would likely kill them made a conscious decision to do so. Again, a personal choice.

TLS wishes people made better personal choices.

TLS- I!!! Am not!! My brother's!! Keeperrrr!!!!!!!
*Drinks mercury and lead from a factory run by a guy who feels the same way*

As a child of the '80s and '90s, that soft rock station Mom listened to was a war crime in the early '90s. I'd argue that the Internet has helped a greater diversity of music to bloom, but you do have to go looking for it. For a brief moment around the turn of the century, St. Louis had, what, four and a half music stations worth listening to. It was down to one and a half shortly after, and I doubt it's gotten better.

But we had Bluth and the Disney renaissance, and Ghibli if I'd known about it, with Pixar in the near future. TV cartoons were also getting better.

And St. Louis sports. The Cardinals went into a frustrating mediocrity during the '90s, and the Blues only ever lasted in the playoffs until they ran into the Red Wings, but the Blues were all-stars during the regular season. We had the Ambush too. I got to watch the Wizard in action even during the lean years, and then in the late '90s we started in with the home run chase, the Rams putting on the Greatest Show on Turf, then the MV3 of Pujols - Edmonds - Rolen with Molina a fourth star.

I'm pretty happy with when I was born too.

Being a hemophiliac in need of blood transfusions would comprise a high-risk group - 16,000 dead before the Red Cross developed better screenings.

Some days I think I was born about 45 years too late, and other days a century too early. Then I remember I was 8 years old when SW came out, and a teenager in the 80s, and I feel like I hit it just right.

I totally miss hijackings. They were great in the 80's. Then we would send chuck norris in and everything would be OK. He had his motorcycle with grenade launcher tailpipes and rockets on the front. 9/11 killed that whole thing, and now we have underwear bombers who light their crotches on fire and adam sandler movies on chair in front of us which is 2 inches away from our nose.

I remember flying in the 80's and it was fun. Now flying sucks.

I do have to admit that certain things were not quite as good back then. MLP and she-ra were certainly improved upon. However, disney cartoons and movies were somewhat killed in the early 90s.

I remember when a plane hijack was called a "skyjack" (it makes sense!) for a brief period - maybe early 70's or so - and that fell out of fashion quickly.
Hijacking is pretty strange really: soon after your plane departs for Texas some crazy dude gets up and yells "I'm taking this plane to Brazil!" Dude....why didn't you just buy a ticket for a Brazil flight in the first place? I was right behind you in line at the counter....I could have walked you through the process if this is your first time flying.

Stupid Dickynoo! Why do you have to ruin everyone's fun by being all political and assholish!!??

It's Red Room.
Let TLS put this shit in Green Room if he wants a Tupperware party.

Go to wikipedi and do a search for the number 1 hits of the 80s. You will find the most appalling pile of garbage this side of a New Jersey landfill.

then again to be honest - do a search of 2019 number 1 hits and listen to a few of those. Holy shit you might as well be from another planet when it comes to figuring out what the hell's going on with that music! Granted some may be okay but it's a needle in a haystack to the extreme!

Born in '86 and I'd have to agree it wasn't half bad being a kid in the 90s and 2000s. Missed out on the peak of Don Bluth, but I got to be around for the Disney Renaissance and the rise of Pixar. (Fun fact: Toy Story is the first movie my brother remembers seeing in theaters. He's turning 30 in July)

Plus, we had the best of both worlds in that he had the afternoon cartoon block and the rise of cable networking also, the rise of anime.But tbh the kids that came of age after ATLA have it WAY better on that score. Kids shows are written to be entertainment, not thinnly veiled half-hour commercials and it shows.

Music...yeah, I spent my teen years listening to my local jazz station. but these days, it's so much easier to hunt outside of the Top 40 and find your niche, but I like the hip-hop acts I missed out on quite a bit.

I will say TLS is right about the helicopter parenting stuff stunting us, but it's a mix of legal laws put 8n place after the rise of cable TV sensationalizing kidnappings and the general paranoia following 9/11. If anything, it should be easier to track kids today with all the cell phones and tech that exists.

I watched lots of nick at nite. bewitched, wonder years, etc. I don’t remember watching many cartoons...smurfs, scooby doo, snorks, the Care Bears movie. I played soccer and softball and hung out at the pool a lot, but other than that I was never a play outside all day kind of kid. Definitely more into games and puzzles and stuff like that. Never really did the high school keg party thing. Always liked 70s tunes and while I like more of a variety now, Pink Floyd still gives me the feels.

Born in 1970 and graduated from high school in 1989. I was around for the start of Star Wars and the Star Trek movies. Some great sci-fi movies around 77-86. Friday nights were my go to for TV watching.

All that great New Wave music. I didn't discover Tangerine Dream till 1990 but one album brings back memories from around the time it was released. I don't remember them from the late 70s, but I wonder if I didn't hear tracks from that album somewhere.

My yard was the neighborhood play area and we would bike ride around the neighborhood. The street lights were our curfew.

I also spent some time growing up in a run down hospital in center city Philadelphia that looked like it was out of the 50s.

In some ways I miss those days.

Yeah, left out movies. Ridiculously better in the 70's & 80's. Particularly sci-fi.

Predator, Blade Runner, Terminator, Star Wars, Wrath of Khan, Alien, Jaws, etc...

So you have an “effect” affect?

Other than social media, which has created a bunch of societal problems we're still grappling with, I don't see how the world was better in the 70's or 80's than today.

In fact, when it comes to entertainment, 70's and 80's television can't hold a candle to the stuff we're currently getting. The writing, acting and production values of today's shows simply destroy those of yesteryear.

Every generation thinks their formative years were better than the current generation's.

It's called nostalgia.

Look it up in the dictionary.

One of my neighbours is a 70 year old shitty racist - so basically TLS

When we first moved in we did some pretty serious renovations and our shitty neighbor would hang over our fence and talk to my trades guys and waste their time and my money. The final straw was when he asked me if we were going to flip our house which would be unfortunate because he preferred the neighborhood be kept the way it is, which was “white”

So, i put up 20 feet of bamboo along my fence so now he can’t look into our property and annoy us with his bullshit. I actually haven’t seen him in over a year, think he might be dead or in a home. Don’t really care

I guess the moral of my story is that it’s not surprising TLS hasn’t seen his neighbours because they probably think he’s a loser

The Seventies? Leisure suits and polyester.

I'm going to be captain obvious here, but: Yes, there is an undisputable objective difference between the 70/80s and now:




You were young back then.



I feel pretty much the same way about the 80s/90s/early 2000s, but I have the vague suspicion that it miiight have something to do with a) having close to no obligations b) that sweet illusion that pretty much everything is possible and this whole exciting thing has just begun.

A decade and a half from that, chief! I meant that I haven't met one of my neighbors, not all. My bad.

How do you know your neighbor meant "white"? Because you see racism even where it's not? Then again, maybe my neighbor doesn't like me because I'm black. Who knows?

Hope you're well.

Certainly is part of it, but certainly not the whole story, imo.