Curious. I was born in the mid-90s, so, theoretically, I shouldn’t remember enough to know this, but I do.
I also had a genuinely horrible childhood, in a reasonably isolated part of the Western world, so this ISN’T necessarily just “nostalgia”. Certainly I’m not nostalgic for my childhood. Not in that sense. Though… Adulthood is even lonelier, so who knows, subconsciously…
Anyway, Australia either side of the 2000 Olympics, was a place of significant optimism. Genuinely, I was just a kid, and I could feel it. Pop culture was at its peak. The music scene, in particular live, was excellent. Our “high brow” arts and culture scene had never been better. We still dominated in (mens, mostly) sports, and our film scene was flourishing (MI:2, Matrix Trilogy and Man of Steel were all made in Sydney, amongst a number of others). Children’s entertainment and TV was unbelievably good, as was animation. And guess what, almost none of this was in any way “woke” or PC. Fuck, even the FOOD, drink, restaurant and bar scene was better, which… Should not be the case. But it was…
Politics was less divisive. Far, far less. We had an openly conservative government, and yes, sure, there were issues. I do not agree with many things they did (refugees - Tampa and Children Overboard; indigenous rights; the environment; increasing the US military presence on Aus soil), but we had no idea how good we had it, back then.
Indigenous and non-Indigenous lived, largely, in some sort of relative “harmony”. No reparations, and yes, there were riots (Redfern, later Cronulla), but I went to school with a couple of Aboriginal girls, and, at least in my experience, and what I saw, people were just BETTER to each other, and that was before the woke “Apology to the Stolen Generations”, and before my country started to fall over itself to rename every place, and destroy every element of “white” culture, in the name of appeasement…
Like, in the Y2K, Indigenous AND non-Indigenous came together to celebrate Cathy Freeman winning the 400m. Not because she was an Abo, but because SHE WAS AUSTRALIAN. That would never happen now. Not in the same way. If there even ARE Indigenous sprinters of that caliber anymore. And I honestly don’t see that ever happening again. Not at Brisbane 2032. Perhaps never again.
Things just sort of… Worked. Happiness and life satisfaction levels were higher. People could actually afford to buy houses. Cities hadn’t yet ripped themselves apart to support rampant mass immigration, and our women hadn’t yet declared open slather on our men. And people still attended church, and the synagogue. There were less mosques, but less hate preachers, too. It just felt like… A better time.
No smart phones. Shitty computers. Slower internet. But we still had games like KOTOR, Battlefront 1942 and COD.
People still talked to one another, face to face. I literally lived and went to school with people from all different ethnic origins, from all over the world. And WE GOT ALONG.
Then, things went very wrong. Sometime around 2010-2012, as I was finishing school. Maybe after Occupy. Maybe not. Here, things had already been on the slide since at least the 2007 “Apology”, and the 2005 Cronulla race riots, though…
So, how was it in your country? Do you think it was objectively better, 15+ years ago..? If so, why? What has changed? And what do you think caused it all to go to shit, in such a short period of time?
I know “political correctness” had a wave in the 90s, but I seemingly missed all of that, at the time. Nonetheless, I do genuinely think that things, and society, were better at that time, and, like I said, there are objective measures that would seem to back that up. Which is just… Honestly scary.
Yes. Clinton sold all of Western Civilization up the river when he normalized economic relations with the ChiComs and NAFTA didn't help either.
The destruction and degradation of the West was deliberate. Every leftist is a traitor, each and every one.
100% yes. Minorities and LGBTs will claim that white people were just ignorant, but we’ve seen what they consider “oppression”. Turns out they’re just a bunch of lying assholes who won’t be satisfied until they’ve completely dismantled and replaced western civilization.
As far as race relations go, the 90s were an identity politics ceasefire. In hindsight, however, only white people abided by it. Everyone else was consolidating tribal power and influence for the current conflict. Now every non-white ethnic and racial demographic engages in round-the-clock naked tribalism while whites have been completely disarmed by 60+ years of indoctrination. If you even suggest that white peoples or cultures deserve dignity or respect in 2021, you’re branded a white supremacist.
Truth. I was born in 1982 and spent my teens in the 1990s. It was such a golden age. I'll always think back on it as a decade of celebration and positivity. Everyone seemed to be doing well and our country was interesting without being constantly tragic. Material wealth had a lot to do with that. Life was free. Music and movies were rich and exploding with creativity. It seemed like we finally did it, our social ills we're behind us, our economy was booming, and our culture was healthy and unified. We were all going to move into the future together and it was going to be glorious.
Edit: Then 9/11 happened.
I would say so. Definitely in my experience from a race perspective. Don’t remember endless grievances and tv shows weren’t so annoying
Yes, definitely better. Better movies, better games, a lot more innocence and a lot more hope for the future.
I'm too young to say how society was back then, but the entertainment from that time was way better. I go back and watch shows from the era all the time. The stuff aimed at kids was kickass. Writers didn't self censor out of fear of crossing woke retards on social media. They actually made media that didn't race bait or push gay and tranny shit. Society was actually against letting pedos push their agenda in children's entertainment 20 years ago, as hard as that is to imagine these days. It seems utopian compared to the nightmare we're living in now.
I've been giving old school Duck Tales to my nephew and he is loving it. I've also introduced Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers and Thunder Cats.
It is not just him, he is 6 and he has friends watching Knight Rider clips on youtube and old transformers.
It looks like some kids, or at least boys do like this older cartoons better then the new ones.
My son is 5. I watched three minutes of a cartoon on Nickelodeon with him once. It looked like it was created by the Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Brown University. One of the kids in the show said “let me ask my dads if we can have some scones.” I canceled cable.
We stream old cartoons off of Tubi. GI Joe and Transformers. We have watched Akira. Good guys versus bad guys stuff. He loves it. I do have a few seasons of Blaze downloaded. That show is actually good for teaching and I think it’s pretty fun and educational, but that’s probably the only TV show made in the past twenty years that he’s seen.
Ironically your film scene (and Vancouver's in Canada) thrived as a result of a marked decline in the US film scene, as major cities in the US became prohibitively expensive to film in. As an Aussie and presumably an Aussie nationalist that's something you can be happy about, though as an American nationalist it's not something I'm happy about.
Beyond that it's hard to say. I was a child in the 90s and a young adult but not a financially independent one in the early 2000's, so my responsibilities were far fewer than they were later on. I will say there was a marked shift in attitude after the 2000 election and especially after 9/11. After Y2K came and went without any of the issues we thought might happen with the world's computer systems, there was a pretty strong optimism for the future that was destroyed on 9/11.
There were signs of that coming pessimism since you had things like the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999, when the far left was still pretending to care about globalization. And then of course after NAFTA was finalized in the early 90s you started to see factories get outsourced to Mexico, especially near the major border towns in Southern California and Southern Texas.
Some of the optimism came back in as the internet started becoming mainstream and computers became more powerful, and of course you had smart phones. That optimism pretty much died with the housing bubble bursting in 2008.
What I can say with absolute certainty is that when I watch old home movies from the late 80s and early 90s the demographics of my home town and neighborhood are very different than they are today. It was obvious and honestly surprising despite having been in these circles of the internet for some time.
Interesting about the “home movies” bit…
My hometown is small(ish), but has swelled by like 300% in a decade or so… Which, proportionally, is massive. That’s not from “natural increase”, obviously. It’s immigration.
On a run, recently, I went past a local derby (town vs town) down the road from my house… Out of a crowd of say, 1000, I saw maybe less than 20% white faces. Most there were Africans. Never mind the players, of course…
This, in a town that when I first moved here (pretty much exactly 20 years ago), would have been AT LEAST 80% white, with the biggest “minority” being (white) Dutch settlers and their descendants…
Crazy bloody times. :-/
Fall of 2007 was the beginning of the end.
I forgot to add: the neologism for what has happened in Aus, with all the Aboriginal shit - land acknowledgments, reparations, affirmative action, and an increasingly divided society - is “reconciliation”. That’s what they call it.
Same in Canada. Same in NZ. Do not let that shit come to your homelands. That and “decolonization” will be the end of the West. Quite literally. That is the endgame.
Do not let your spirit wane, and fight, fight, fight, so you don’t end up where Australia is today.
Yes.
While I do believe that gays were unfairly treated all the way up to the early 10s, society as a whole was much calmer and much more dignified. Debates actually happened, political discourse was not so cut throat.
Social media changed everything for the worse.
Read all of this (from a gay man who was in the culture)... https://archive.is/m4GVM
And then watch this... all of it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkwkE-i08F8
Now explain to me, after having absorbed that information, what was "unfair" about their treatment?
That had a lot more details then I wanted to read, fuck is that all so messed up. And what is worst, that live stile is what progressives want to everyone. No inhibition, no responsibility, no standards or morals.
Exactly.
When people talk about "Representation matters, it helps make people realize being gay is normal!" I always link them that article. I tell them to read all of it.
It's impossible to come away from that and go "Yeah, that's completely normal and fine."
That guy is the average gay man. The average gay man will have up to 1,000 partners in his lifetime. So it's not like his story is the fringe or outside the norm, his story IS the norm.
And yeah, it really puts into perspective how scary it is that Progressives/Leftists want that normalized for everyone.
Unfair treatment was mostly the fact that they could not get married in a legally recognized way, and it was legal to refuse service to them in many places. Mind you, organizations providing custom services like wedding cakes must always have the right to refuse any request should they morally object to what's being requested. You cannot force an artist to draw porn, or force a sculptor to make a statue in honor of Marx, or force a baker to bake a gay wedding cake. That said, refusing service to someone not on the basis of what they are asking for, but on the basis of who's asking, is wrong.
There were plenty of spaces where gays could be gays, the Castro in San Francisco comes to mind, but there were also many places where their existence alone got them into trouble. I don't condone sexual promiscuity, I think its a great way to ruin one's life, but I won't stop anyone from engaging. The ability to make terrible choices is part of freedom.
That's not unfair in any way. Marriage is defined as the union between a man and a woman.
Gays want to be in a civil union? Fine, but desecrating marriage for the sake of getting back at heteros doesn't deserve and SHOULD NOT have been acknowledged as something they had rights to.
Yes. There's a reason why this all has come to a head starting 2008. The financial "crash". It forced them to accelerate their plans for social engineering. It also acts as a nice distraction from who actually fucked up the economy, despite it being known the world over now... This is the new problem. Forget the old one.
It's like dogs chasing rabbits, but the dog isn't chasing a rabbit , he's chasing seven, and can't keep track of one.
When they shut down kings cross it was the end
no
I would have loved to have been a teenager in mid 70s, early 80s.
Yes, it was even better in the 50s/60s, better homogeneity too. The free love 70s started the decline. but the 70s was better than the 90s and the 90s better than now.