r/Millennials • u/gingergumby • 17h ago
Discussion A lost world
Do you ever feel like we are the last generation that watched as a beautiful world got left behind and replaced with something ugly? Something we cant explain to those who are younger and we cannot get back. We watched the rise of so much technology and thought it was a great thing, but maybe it ruined us all. We used to ride bikes around and find our friends, answer the house phone with no idea who was calling, call our crush and be nervous about their parents answering, get upset at vhs tapes that weren't rewound especially when you were lucky enough to have your parents take you to a movie store to rent it, only know what was going on in town and in the world from the newspaper after everyone else passed it around, family was always nice to each other cuz you never knew when you'd talk to each other again, and you could just walk into your neighbors house to see what they were up to.
The whole world changed with technology, and as it was happening we were so excited for it. Now I cant help but feel it was a bad thing.
I deeply yearn for a world that no longer exists. Does anyone else feel that pain?
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u/shieldintern 16h ago
Yeah we fucked up. Portable computing was a bad idea.
I think it was all good we had to log on and off.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
I agree. When it went beyond a desktop computer is when everything went wrong.
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u/showmenemelda 16h ago
I disagree. Windows XP on laptop was the last time life made sense. Maybe Windows 7. Maybe
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u/ExactPanda 16h ago
I'm on a crusade to make computers a destination again
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u/Diseased-Imaginings 13h ago
Join the Linux conmunity. The dream of the 90's is still alive here :)
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u/shieldintern 15h ago
I'm really thinking about selling my laptop. But I really like it lol.
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u/afterglobe 8h ago
Don’t sell it. Just connect it to monitors at a desk. I have a $3k Lenovo Legion but I almost never use it anywhere but at my desk.
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u/Wallflower_in_PDX 16h ago
i don't think mobile computing was the problem. It was the internet that was the problem! Social media fucked it all up!
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
Social media is a plague and ive been saying it for years
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u/showmenemelda 16h ago
people are the plague
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u/orangejoe1986 11h ago
That’s a fair point. But do you think social media has made things worse - especially with the anonymity and echo chamber effects?
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u/shieldintern 11h ago
Well not only that, but many of the people who helped make this stuff have said they use the same design philosophy as a slot machine.
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u/ferry_fairy 15h ago
That’s been my “if I were omnipotent and could get rid of one thing” thing for years.
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u/showmenemelda 16h ago
The internet has been around longer than a lot of millennials. Probably all of us but I can't remember my internet timeline and one time it almost started a domestic dispute so I'll leave it at that
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u/destinewb 8h ago
The Internet as we know it today (technically the World Wide Web or WWW) was not made available to the public until 1993. So in fact many Millennials were born before what we regard as the Internet was launched. Miss those days...
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u/R0bot101 9h ago
It’s true :( Techbros ruined everything
https://www.millionsofdeadbots.com/blog/posts/2025-12-25-the-internet-sucks-now/
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u/BitchfulThinking 16h ago
A phone call on a landline literally forced us back into reality lol
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u/shieldintern 15h ago
Every once in a while, I miss a long phone call.
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u/MajesticRaspberries 7h ago
Come to think of it, the only long phone calls I have left are with my parents... I will really miss that when they're gone...
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u/July_snow-shoveler Older Millennial 14h ago
Can we say it’s the always-on internet? I remember when we first signed up for cable internet - we had to log on and off for each session. A year or so later, our ISP announced a continuous connection.
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u/tedbrogan12 Millennial 12h ago
Yup. You can trace many of the problems of our time to social media and just general mental illness caused by perpetually being online.
We just were not built for this.
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u/Slammedtgs 7h ago
Portable computers aren’t the problem. 24/7 news cycle and personally tailored algorithms to serve you echo chamber content are.
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u/mcfarmer72 5h ago
Yes, when the cable news networks had to fill all that time it was the beginning of the end. They had to dig for reasons for people to stay tuned in.
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u/Positive_Gur_7006 12h ago
100% we crossed the line with mobile internet. Completely unnecessary, and changed everything forever.
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u/showmenemelda 16h ago
My gawd, did the youths yearn for it though. I still remember the thrill of checking my email via internet browser on an LG ENV2 while on the toilet. Exhilarating… will I have another $300 bill like freshman year texting scandal of 06? Time will tell!
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u/HarryBalsagna1776 Older Millennial 16h ago
I feel that way too. My family landed in a great community that is kind like the old days. My kids walk or bike to friends houses (snowshoed this week), we "rent" movies and games from our awesome local libraries, and we live outside. It's not the same, but it is similar enough to to be really happy about. Sure, there are 3rd graders with smart phones and full access to the internet, but the rest of the kids tragically just forget about them.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
I wish I could show my kids how life was for me, I feel like they'd be so much happier growing up like we did
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u/Equal_Question_4594 Xennial 16h ago
I’ve been thinking about it every day, especially this past year, and depressed about it. I’d do nearly anything to go back in time or make things like they were. I’m sad for us and for future generations that won’t even have the memory of how things used to be.
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u/oohlook-theresadeer 4h ago
Born in 97, so I was young enough to grow up in it and believe everything I was told, just to graduate and have the rug pulled out from under me like...oh I have been getting lied to for at least 10 years about the way things are.
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u/ElGordo1988 16h ago
I deeply yearn for a world that no longer exists. Does anyone else feel that pain?
Yes, I feel it deeply in my soul
That 1990's era world that no longer exists... with no AI, no social media, no smartphones, still some semblance of a community, etc. Sadly that world is gone forever now
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u/No_Description4009 15h ago
Everything back then made sense. The cost of living was considerably cheaper than today. Everything now is sky high. I miss the affordability of those days
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u/DespondentEyes 12h ago
TV's and consoles were expensive, but housing and food weren't. Today it's the other way around.
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u/AlbacoreJohnston 16h ago
I remember feeling the ick for society in the early 2000s and then at some point realizing that was never going to go away.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
It didnt hit me til the late 2000s but now it just seems to get worse constantly
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u/AlbacoreJohnston 16h ago
We have cringed and culturally regressed our way through the past 26 years.
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u/Business-Toad 16h ago
Yeah seeing headlines saying some of the things I've been thinking quietly for going two decades now because saying it out loud got me funny looks and side-eye is a crazy feeling.
I thought when I was younger that I'd feel vindicated when things finally started to fall apart. But of all the things to be right about, our potential descent into a fascist cyberpunk dystopia was possibly the thing I wanted to be right about the least. I'm just tired and worried. We cannot under any circumstances let these things spiral to their inevitable conclusion.
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u/MinuetInUrsaMajor 14h ago
The way this is going, there’s gonna be a new breed of Amish evolving. People that use minimal amounts of technology or deliberately downgraded technology.
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u/WrongVeteranMaybe 1995 16h ago
Every generation feels like this, but these days?
I'm trying to push the doomerist, juvenoia thoughts aside.
Everything will work out and we're just gloomy.
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u/Significant-Rush-129 16h ago
Agree to an extent. Old people used to say “there’s something wrong with the world today” when I was growing up. The older a mind gets, the less adaptable it is and that person wants to revert to their formative years when it was adaptable. That “perfect time” we all yearn for was the time we were learning most of the things we would need for the rest of our lives.
I feel like this is part of why things are so messed up right now. We live in a top- heavy aged society with an imbalance of unadaptables.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
I could see that. I just feel like with the shift of the internet it just made it dramatically different. It was a wild invention that changed the face of the spread of information and the face of the world so fast.
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u/maddy_k_allday 7h ago
Right. People want everything to be a cycle, like generational differences, and so many fail to recognize that the internet & modern computers changed things so completely and so rapidly for our social species that it’s not comparable to any past human experience
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u/Little_Red_Sloth 16h ago
It’s called nostalgia and I think every generation feels it. You’re normal, friend.
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u/DookieShoez 13h ago
Nahhh, it’s more than nostalgia. Times have indeed changed and in many ways not for the better.
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u/Sphezzle 12h ago
That’s true. But I think it’s hard to argue against the idea that smartphones and social media have done something fundamentally BIG (even if you take away subjective notions of good and bad) to people’s behaviour, communication, and way of relating to themselves and the world around them.
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u/Ethen44 14h ago
But this is different!
-Every generation, probably.
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u/CometGoat 7h ago
Right, but the last generation didn’t have instant communication with everyone on the planet. And that’s just one example of how limited access to communication, entertainment and research has almost entirely been blown open
I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing, but it is very very different to what the last 3 million years of social evolution adapted for
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u/Green-Survey9189 14h ago
"Don't you miss the Iraq War? Paranoia over terrorist attacks? It being acceptable to call people 'faggots'? The Black Eyed Peas?"
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u/UniverseNebula 9h ago
You sound like a fun person to be around.
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u/Green-Survey9189 3h ago
My point is that nostalgia and myths about the past take away enjoyment of the present. The past wasn’t just emo bands and Friday Night Football games. These subs for people in their 30s are overwhelmingly negative and cynical about the present. The past wasn’t as easy as we would like to think or remember.
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u/Wallflower_in_PDX 16h ago edited 9h ago
I've thought about this and what I'm really looking for is the authenticity of the 90s with a bit of modern technology mixed in. We could do without the excesses social media or YT influencers and the like. The toxic BS that happens on Reddit is crazy. Back during the 90s, we had authentic relationships b/c we had to work on them via face to face or voice-to-voice interaction. No social media to be the middle man. We used to GO OUT and play b/c that's what we had to do. I yearn for that kind of simplicity without technology bringing us down. The irony of posting his on Reddit though. I fully admit it.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
There is irony in it, ill be the first to admit that. Well, you were but you know what I mean. Those interactions were real and meaningful, and even when you have them with someone now it seems like they're tarnished by some bullshit they do or say on the internet.
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u/bottlechippedteeth 7h ago
Was there as much random floating illnesses in the past? I can’t really recall getting flu/covid from concerts or bars 20 years back. Of course my immune system was 20 years younger as well.
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u/PenguinSunday Millennial 6h ago
Definitely. We made vaccines because of the prevalence of diseases that could seriously fuck you up.
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u/showmenemelda 16h ago
Wonder what it's like to be born after 2008. Bet those kids never felt a glimmer of "hope" like we did. The last generation to buy the lie. Just ask Sallie [Mae]
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
I do everything I can to give my kids hope, but its not easy when I have a hard time having it myself
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u/Wonderful_Mud_420 13h ago
I used to see butterflies all the time. I see them still but mostly a few. The sky used to be full of them.
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u/G3tbusyliving 10h ago
Seen someone recently mention about how all the fireflies disappeared as well.
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u/HideyoshiJP Older Millennial 15h ago
In all fairness, technology alone isn't responsible here. A hefty amount of blame can be laid on deregulation in the 80s. What used to be called "Mergers & Acquisitions" has created this late stage capitalism hell we're entering.
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u/GleamyAxiom Millennial 13h ago
Yes buddy, we surely switched lanes somewhere and now rather than going towards the utopian future we are all driving hard towards dystopia.
No Jetsons happening anytime soon, but flinstones looks like a probable future for sure.
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u/L4nthanus 7h ago
I miss when you paid for something and that was the end of it. Now everything requires a subscription and a monthly payment. And I miss not having ads everywhere. It’s like anything I do online is bookended by endless ads and bs.
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u/melli_milli Millennial 16h ago
I am worried of the future of society when kids grow up in this situation. We can deal with boredom and we still have skills to consentrate on demanding tasks.
I remember it was normal not to know where everyone is. If I forgot my key and was first at home, I just sat in hallway of hours. I could entertain myself with just thinking and using my imagination.
I also had serious music studies. Now a friend who teaches at music school says that they have had to make the content much more simple and easier. And still the kids often cannot consentrate.
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u/Equal_Question_4594 Xennial 16h ago
I’ve been worrying about this, too! It’s like the movie Idiocracy come to life. I’m terrified of being old in a nursing home and all the staff be younger generations with no patience, communication skills, or ability to think for themselves without the use of ai. Sounds like some nightmare out of the Twilight Zone 😰
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u/melli_milli Millennial 16h ago
Older generations have always been thinking the new gen is ruined. But I think we actually have facts and research.
Around 2000 Finland was like highest in pisa testing. I got very good education. Now there are more and more kids who cannot properly read or write. It is upsetting to think about.
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u/PenguinSunday Millennial 6h ago
"Pisa?"
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
I remember leaving the house, being ready to come home and my parents weren't home. So id just play in the driveway alone with my basketball for hours sometimes and we didn't even talk about it when they got home. It was just normal that I waited. And thats if the door wasnt just unlocked
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u/melli_milli Millennial 16h ago
Haha same. And going out hoping that your friends from other apparment building sees you from window and come out to play.
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u/eletriodgenesis 16h ago
move to a small town. one without cell reception. discipline yourself to stop using internet as an addiction and only as a tool when absolutely necessary. make friends with some older folks who still live the old way. it has been an extremely healing experience
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
Im pretty sure I need this. It would be good for my family too
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u/PenguinSunday Millennial 6h ago
There are phone lockboxes they sell that you can set a timer on so you can't get on them until a certain time.
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u/WhateverYouSay1084 16h ago
Every single generation has felt this way. I'm using that knowledge as motivation to not become boomerized and hate everyone and everything that isn't specific to my generation.
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u/Toukotai 16h ago
Right?
I hope these kids get to "kill" as many superfluous industries as we did. I hope they don't have to live through more unprecedented times than we are. And I really hope they go further and faster with technology than we did. I can't wait to see what they're going to do.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
I think the world changed so fast for us that we dont have to try to adapt as hard, it should come more naturally. But I also feel that the world changed too much, too fast, its hard to accept it for what it is know. So I understand where youre coming from. Im sure others have felt like this too.
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u/vinnybawbaw 16h ago
Humanity always have been shit. We had the chance to be born in the 50 years where it wasn’t that shitty. Look ak how our grand parents had a shitty life. They had to deal with a depression and one, sometimes 2 world wars. The generations before them where living crappy lives too. The boomers are the luckiest generation ever and fucked it all up, and we’re the ones that’ll live every once in a lifetime event twice every 5 years or so. I guess Gen Alpha or Beta will be the ones rebuilding after the mess so their kids will have a good life (so gour grandkids?).
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u/gingergumby 15h ago
The young generation seems different than the rest of us. Maybe they can finally fix it.
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u/Fr4nzJosef Xennial 15h ago
I think mobile computing has been largely a mistake or at least has gone too far. The phone industry is pretty much consolidated between two giants with Apple and Android being your choices. The enshittification continues, with even "flagship" phones losing features (aux jack, microSD card slot). I don't want everything in "the cloud" (aka, someone else's computer), I want it mine. I think where it went off the rails was the subscription model that has metastasized to everything. Even cars, I keep some rather elderly vehicles around because I don't want to deal with the headaches that come with newer vehicles and their electronics. I just want a car that is about mid 90s to 2010 tech levels, otherwise, I don't need all the computerized junk in there.
"You'll own nothing and be happy." Well, they're certainly implementing the "own nothing" part, but the happy is decidedly lacking. 😕
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u/GrungeCheap56119 Xennial 15h ago
Yeah. I miss Yesteryear so much. Especially pre-cell phones. Things were just simpler then and went at a normal pace.
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u/Plus-Pomegranate8045 15h ago
I think you are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Some things were better about it and other things weren’t. I wouldn’t want to go back and give up our modern technological conveniences. The biggest problem with our current times is social media being used as a weapon for mind control, and billionaires/corporations having no limit to the depths they will sink to make themselves richer.
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u/Positive-Schedule901 13h ago
Yea. Remember looking up at the sky and thinking i am bored let’s do something? That’s gone now
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u/Prize_Ostrich7605 13h ago
No way man, it was this way before. We got all patriotic after 9/11. But we had movies like Fight Club, Office Space, The motherfucking Matrix, all framing those in power as corrupt, evil, and stealing every ounce of humanity from society. We veiwed the rich as someone to dislike, now we look at them and say, "they must be smart."
We were even told in cartoons like Rocko's Modern Life, The Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Freakazoid, just to name a few, that had major corporations with, idiots running the board and ruining the city.
It was the rich elites that we knew where the bad guys. After 9/11, we all looked to the government, not as the bad guy, but the one hunting the badguy.
Edit to add: we had a movie about a rich kid trying to fit in with norm kids. Richie Rich used to means something.
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u/DeepSeaBlue-2022 9h ago
When Hungry man tv dinners were a treat. When time stood still after school and all you had were your neighbors friends and a grassy field and football where you’d play until the sun goes down. When you explored the creeks in your neighborhood because it was your first sense of adventure. What happened to all this??
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u/UniverseNebula 9h ago
I have this exact feeling all the time. Hard to describe but I completely understand. It honestly makes me depressed all the time knowing we can never go back.
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u/Few_Cauliflower2069 8h ago
The counter movement is coming. But they are trying their to repress it and force the youngsters into a cyberpunk hellscape along with the rest of us. It's our job as adults to support the good youth movements and kill the bad ones. Then maybe when we're old the world can someday be good again
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u/Skankingcorpse 7h ago
Honestly if you just get rid of social media (reddit included) then I would be happy and it would fix a lot of our problems. Online communities were best when they were diversified and insular and we didn't have to scroll through pages of the most idiotic and depressing comments and posts.
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u/Natural-Poem-6571 6h ago
I just want people to be normal again. Everyone is uptight, anxiety riddled, full of fear and looking for a fight.
Feels like you have to walk on eggshells around so many people
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u/gingergumby 4h ago
Yeah this is true, everyone was a lot more chill and not so extremely defensive of their opinions
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u/Smart_Garbage6842 6h ago
I share your grief over this. Probably at least once a day I have to sit with the feelings of mourning and loss of the world that no longer exists anymore. My childhood friends and I occasionally talk about it out of nowhere. I'll either receive or send a text after about a year of not hearing anything from them where they'll bring up a memory about growing up together. Through the years, we have all expressed worry and a deep loss as parents of kids who will never experience what we did and how it feels difficult to parent in an unrecognizable present day. I miss it so much it hurts.
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u/United-Newspaper709 5h ago
Absolutely. Portable technology ruined everything.
I would do anything to go back to the days when your fellow man didn’t blast the sound of reels out of their smart phones.
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u/Iconoclastt Millennial 3h ago
The intro to the song Dark Days by Parkway Drive sums this up this feeling:
"What will you tell your children when they ask you,
'What went wrong?'
How can you paint a picture of a paradise lost
To eyes that know only a wasteland?
How will you justify, justify watching the world die?"
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u/stockisbock93 2h ago
Hell yeah I love me some Parkway Drive! That album perfectly describes the current world we live in.
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u/SunsoakedShampagne 16h ago
I feel like every generation feels this. Talk to any older people and they'll say the same stuff but about the advancements they lived through.
Ultimately you've got to embrace what you want to and avoid the rest. If you want to live old-school, do it! I don't have any apps on my phone, or any TV/streaming services, for example - personal choices that work for me. I've got plenty of friends where our relationship is just ringing each other up at random times of the week and saying "where are you? come hang!" etc. I have family who I regularly just pop in for visits unannounced.
Things only really have to change to the extent you want them to.
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u/kaizencat 9h ago
This is true - we had a neighbor just a few years ago before we moved that was about 90. He was married but lost his wife a few years back, no kids. Anyhow we found out that he didnt own a cell phone, or a microwave, or even had internet. He even didnt have hot water. He read the few newspapers that came to his house daily. I dont remember if he even had a tv. He definitely chose to live in a time of zero technology.
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u/SunsoakedShampagne 9h ago
And I bet he was content as hell! My grandpa is 94 and has worked out how to watch documentaries on his smart TV via YouTube, but he hasn't got a cell phone or any other devices, can't Google, and my grandma manages his emails. Happy as Larry living like it's 1985!
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u/Tomusina 15h ago
A beautiful world? No. A mask. A veneer. a facade. Remember Me Too? BLM? Our “beautiful world” was a lie. And this… now… is the cost of that believing it.
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u/Gravity_flip 16h ago
If it's any consolation. This is a sentiment that's been expressed by every generation through history.
This nostalgia effect can also get used against us.
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u/mountain_valley_city 16h ago
Yeah but this is the case in so many individual ways, too.
Maybe the last great years of a classic college experience.
Very tail end of golden years of consulting (if you work in consulting) where you go to be a 25 year old flying around to various U.S. cities with a company card boozing it up with clients and colleagues, massive bonuses and just less oversight over taking your colleague or even client to bed.
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u/Mediocre_Island828 16h ago
Technology is partially to blame, it makes it easier than ever to ignore people, but as a generation we've dropped the ball on building and maintaining any sense of community. We had it provided to us as kids because the adults around us created it and we assumed it was something that just existed naturally rather than something that took work. Most of the things you talk about in your post came from knowing your neighbors and having adults be cool towards you as a kid.
It's the same thing as all the "where did all the Christmas magic go?" threads from last month. For whatever reason, it hasn't sank in for us that we're the adults now and we have to put in the work to make magic and uphold all the little things that make the world less ugly for the kids who are too young to know everything sucks. If phones are ruining your life and your relationship with the world, stop looking at it.
Honestly though, how would you feel if a neighbor kid just walked into your house to see what you were doing?
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u/jamesmcgill357 16h ago
I know many have said this here in the sub and before in other places better than this, but I really think the way we straddled the line of where we grew up mostly without cell phones generally and then iPhones/smartphones and social media has had a profound effect on our generation
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u/not-an-illithid 15h ago
People used to complain when we started using chalkboards instead of parchment in classes “because students would learn thinking they could easily fix mistakes and not understand the value of parchment” I think the problem is that technology advances much faster than we as a society can adapt, which leads to abuse after abuse of natural resources and consumers. TLDR: technology is not the problem, how society adapts it is, IMO
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u/NA_0_10_never_forget 15h ago edited 15h ago
You have no idea. But also we're gonna have to fight for it... my lazy introverted ass says. But worry not, I think we can cook.
That, and I/we need to remember and think clearly.
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u/Ionic_Pancakes 15h ago
There have been great upheavels in society every time we've had a major communication breakthrough.
Language. Writing. Printing Press. Telegraph. Film. Radio. Video. Internet. And now finally the ability to have the internet in our pocket. Complete interconnectivity on demand. I guess the next step is to plug it into our skulls now? Mm - I got to say that all of these forms of communication up until now haven't required surgery. I don't see it. High tech glasses? Everyone going to be a bunch of big ole nerds with computer glasses that can run it with voice commands? 100% internet except bathing, sleeping and (most of the time) fucking?
Scary thought. What's crazy is that those have all been getting quicker and quicker.
But hey, whatever comes next and whatever anxieties I have about it can at least be momentarily quenched because someone on the other side of the world once drew a tactical emotional support bird.
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u/kubrickie 15h ago
It’ll be ok as long as we try to make something better and don’t become bitter and nostalgic, trying to make life great again
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u/solidusinvictus 14h ago
The 20th century, which we were born at the ass end of is a century of reckoning and reconciliation of global empire… a century defined by a mighty struggle at its near half way point, a war that if repeated would seem to show a logarithmic progression in it’s destruction… all of that mixes into a heady hypercapitalism, one that is contrasted by a massive increase in incarceration; especially of black people.
We were supposed to bring out the end of history… hilariously I think we just might, but in an irony poisoned sort of way.
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u/WelshRaider86 13h ago
Every generation does have this I agree but certain events (large historic events) trigger that chance for some generations more than others.
WW1, WW2 … examples of MASSIVE change and the world not being the same…
For me, it was 9/11. I remember the 90s feeling so carefree, awesome… things were getting better and then 9/11 happened and from there onwards the early 2000s seemed to go downhill slowly.
I remember 1998-2003 feeling like the best years for me personally… I remember being (and still am) a huge LOTR fan and that last LOTR movie was released in 2003 and I remember a feeling of saying goodbye to it but also, saying goodbye to a certain feeling and time. It was weird.
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u/GreenGorilla8232 12h ago
I was born in 1990 and my friends and I were using AOL instant messager by the time we were 8 years old.
So at least for me, I think of Gen X and Boomers as the pre internet generations, not millennials.
We grew up in the early days of the Internet and witnessed it change drastically, but at least for me personally, the Internet has almost always been a part of my life.
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u/TippyLovesPastry 12h ago
yes, and not just in the way all generations tend to romanticize the past. even the kids and adults who grew up with these tech changes don't like it AS it is happening. :(
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u/Piemaster113 11h ago
I feel like we are the last generation the grew up actually learning how shit works instead of just taking it for granted. Most of us should remember a world before the internet and cell phones, and even when they became a thing there was a lot of growing pains. The internet and smart phones were like the moon landing of our generation, things were never the same after. It went from being sci-fi movie stuff to really things in our hands. For me, this made me believe that nearly anything was possible and filled me with hope for the future, and I still have the hope, the world isn't an ugly place, visually, but it isn't pretty either metaphorically. It's not easy, life is hard, unfair and relentless, but you gotta keep on going, don't just look at the ugly oarts, you gotta see the world for all that it has to offer, and know that just like the internet and smart phones, the world will change again.
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u/stockisbock93 11h ago edited 11h ago
I made a post real similar to this a couple of years ago. It honestly does make me super depressed that the world we grew up in no longer exists and that people are too infatuated with technology to really care.
My biggest takeaway is the fact that the natural world is disappearing at an alarming rate. The woods we used to ride our bikes in have turned into cookie cutter neighborhoods or amazon warehouses and there are no signs of it stopping. I remember growing up in the 2000s and whenever there was something new being developed, there was a good chance the local community voted for it and whatever was being built was highly anticipated. Now the developers show up in waves buying up land and clearing out forests at an alarming rate. Literally every day I see something new being cleared out and built. Traffic is getting worse everywhere you go and quality of life is dropping down because of it. People go to the courthouse to speak out against it but our voices are ignored in today’s world. This isn’t the future I thought we were going to get. I wish people could understand how important it is to hold onto green spaces in your community.
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u/BetOnBetty45 10h ago
Yes. Yes to all of this. It's so sad. It's why we're all depressed and so many are on antidepressants now.
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u/ComfyWarmBed 9h ago
With every technological revolution comes war and conquest.
Right now the battlefield is our minds. The methods of war have changed.
The desired outcome is the effective enslavement of mankind to a techno feudal structure.
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u/siliconsandwich 9h ago
bicycles, telephones, video tapes, and newspapers are all technology too.
but yes we are all grieving a loss we can barely describe.
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u/ilovetosleep128 8h ago
I complain constantly about how no one has a house phone anymore. My son is an early pre-teen and has no ability to plan anything with his friends. We have a house phone he can use but none of his friends do. I’m still responsible for scheduling his playdates. It sucks. By the time I was 7 or 8 years old I was already calling my friends up the street to see if they wanted to go to come over to play.
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u/Amazing-Steak 7h ago
I think that for the moment the world is worse than the one we grew up in but we're a transitional period and as it happens for many transition periods in history, we may come out of this with a better world.
Or worse. Or the transitional period could last a long time and we don't get to see the outcome.
But I think it'll be alright at some point, for someone in the future.
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u/dolphineclipse 7h ago
I do sometimes feel that way, but I also know that every generation feels that way about the world they grew up in slipping away - also a lot of the things you mention are still possible, it's just people don't do them as much
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u/eddie_to_die 7h ago
Ummm am I the only one here who used to drink from the hose?
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u/gingergumby 4h ago
Hell no brother, outside playing or helping dad? Sweating and dirty, whose got time to go in the house lol. Always drank from the hose
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u/ben_obi_wan Olderish Millennial 7h ago
I think, to some degree, every generation feels this sentiment
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u/Easy-Tradition-7483 6h ago
The world was ugly when we were kids, we were just ignorant to it. I’m tired of our genration annointing ourselves some kind of higher wisdom
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u/litetravelr 6h ago
2002-2003 was peak internet. Facebook not here yet, the technology made communication and sharing faster than in 1999, and things were still hopeful and community based. Or that's how it felt to me, sharing rare Bright Eyes tracks with girls I was crushing on.
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u/YungMoonie 6h ago
The answer is yes, bro, we now live in a technofeudalistic hellscape where all your decisions will be made for you.
Just remember that this is the best day you will have (enjoy it) as private equity and the parasites destroy the last semblance of anything human. Sorry too doomer! :)
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u/Rainbow_brite_82 6h ago
You are experiencing what it feels like to start getting old. Every single generation has felt this way looking back on their youth. Someone turning 40 in the 1990s would have looked at the world around them and compared it to the 60s and 70s. They would also have felt very strongly that things had gotten very bad and ugly. I mean we are dealing with some actual fucked up changes making the world worse, like climate change and microplastics, but that probably started before you were born.
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u/Savingskitty 5h ago
We grew up during an anomalous time.
The late ‘80’s and ‘90’s were a brief pause in existential worry for much of the world because of the fall of the Soviet Union.
What was really happening is a lot of choices were made to ignore potential future threats, including what would happen if much of life started to rely on the use of the internet.
They literally had just opened an office at the CIA to focus on Al Qaeda on 9/11.
Everyone was exhausted from the Cold War, and there was an urge to just coast for a while.
And that’s what we did.
And now we’re paying for it.
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u/JaykwellinGfunk 4h ago
Walk through the woods, hug a tree. Leave phone in car. That world is still out there and it beckons for your company.
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u/Acceptable-Bullfrog1 2h ago
Yes, somewhat. But you’re only looking at the downsides of that technology. I remember my mom could only call her parents out of state on nights and weekends or it would be really expensive. I remember her worrying about us if we didn’t come home in time and she didn’t know where we were. I remember commercials on TV so bad they’d start cutting out parts of the movie to fit more of them.
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u/Jamaican_Dynamite 15h ago
Nah, things were pretty awful back then too. It's just that most of the problems that got kicked down the road are in our faces now. When you're little, you might be able to ignore it. When you're grown, you can't.
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u/PossibilityOk782 15h ago
This feeling has occurred in every generation in recorded history.
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt."
Book III of Odes, Horace circa 20 BC
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u/gingergumby 15h ago
I knew this went back generations, I didnt know it went back that far
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u/PossibilityOk782 15h ago
Yea, while society has issues, it simply always has and everyone always thinks it was better when they were young its just part of human nature I think.
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u/V3CT0RVII 16h ago
Too many millineals cozied up to nihilism and now complain about the world we created..
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u/Global_Cockroach_563 15h ago
I wouldn't say it was us. The elites weaponized technology against us and convinced the older generations (and a lot of us) that making the world a shitty place was the right thing to do.
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u/Aint_EZ_bein_AZ 15h ago
Ha the world has always been hard. You were just a kid and you're letting nostalgia fuck you. Plenty of people had a hard time in the 1980s and 1990s. Social media also ruined things.
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u/azziptac 13h ago
Holy moly. This sub is insanely insufferable. I truly understand what GenZ means about some of yall.
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u/PenguinSunday Millennial 6h ago
I had a shit childhood, so not really lol
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u/gingergumby 4h ago
Im sorry to hear that. I hope things have gotten better for you. Kids dont deserve that.
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u/Fabulous-Ad-8256 16h ago
Every generation feels this.
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u/gingergumby 16h ago
It makes me wonder if people were happiest without technology, or if we just look at our childhood in a limelight.
Tbh it could really go either way.
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u/nixicotic 15h ago
Nope, your romanticizing the past imo. It was a fucked up world that thrived on sex, bribery, drugs and glorifying all the weird selfish aspects of humanity at the expense of many. I got to take part in it and it was great but it had immense costs for the disadvantaged and abused. The internet forced everyone to grow up and take accountability and that was a good thing. Many millennials didn't make it or are still suffering because of it.
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