i object to the whole "90s nostalgia is just cause you were a kid and unaware of how terrible everything was" because yeah, maybe
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@wyatt_h_knott @eniko Two words: System prompts. And another two words: Cartesian Dualism. And one word: Utilitarianism.
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@wyatt_h_knott @eniko There is anecdata from an outgoing Meta employee who I cannot name obviously that the models are deliberately being prompted to engage in sychophantism to increase engagement.
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i object to the whole "90s nostalgia is just cause you were a kid and unaware of how terrible everything was" because yeah, maybe
but in the 90s what nazis did was still very much living memory and people knew what you do to them. also technology actually was a source of life improvements and optimism instead of whatever the fuck this techno-fascist hype cycle bullshit we have now is
my home country the netherlands hadn't been hollowed out by decades of neoliberal bullshit
i could keep going
@eniko
I was in my 40s in the ‘90s, so definitely not a kid. And I totally agree with you. The ’70s were even better, actually. We thought the future would be amazing. My gay friends were starting to be openly gay, pressure was being put on South Africa to end apartheid, protests against nuclear weapons were growing, the SALT treaties against nuclear arms proliferation were signed, etc. I could afford to buy a house — in central London! My kids don’t really believe how much better things were. -
@eniko there is no doubt there was a sense of optimism in the 90s among young people. Whether that was warranted or not is besides the point really, because it was there regardless and it allowed people to feel they could achieve anything they wanted, which was very empowering and freeing.
The difference in vibe today couldn't be larger!
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i object to the whole "90s nostalgia is just cause you were a kid and unaware of how terrible everything was" because yeah, maybe
but in the 90s what nazis did was still very much living memory and people knew what you do to them. also technology actually was a source of life improvements and optimism instead of whatever the fuck this techno-fascist hype cycle bullshit we have now is
my home country the netherlands hadn't been hollowed out by decades of neoliberal bullshit
i could keep going
@eniko For sure. I was in my 20's for most of the 1990's, and it WAS a time of hope and improvements. There was definitely shit going down, but it felt like people were actively fighting it. The housing market in the UK was horrendous, there was the Gulf War, and there were lots of other nasty political things happening, but it seems that it was pretty tame compared to today!
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idk man i just think telling people who long for the days when the social contract hadn't been irrevocably and unequivocally broken that they're stupid is mean spirited and counterproductive
@eniko There was another big difference. The dominant demographic group (boomers) were adult that had kids in school and were leading the politics to support that. They were paying off their house or buying theirs. They wanted good salary, paid time off, good school for their kids, etc.
A lot of the stuff in our past few decades in politics can be tracked to "boomers aged and moved the political window with them". Once their kids left school, they started cutting money to schools. Once their house were paid off, they move to building rentals and blowing up the rates. Once they started retiring and investing in pension, they cut PTO, support for unemployments, etc
Because by being such a big demographic group, they control the election in a large way.
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i object to the whole "90s nostalgia is just cause you were a kid and unaware of how terrible everything was" because yeah, maybe
but in the 90s what nazis did was still very much living memory and people knew what you do to them. also technology actually was a source of life improvements and optimism instead of whatever the fuck this techno-fascist hype cycle bullshit we have now is
my home country the netherlands hadn't been hollowed out by decades of neoliberal bullshit
i could keep going
@eniko Only partial agree.
The issue was, the right wing a$$holes had relevant opposition.
WWII still had living eyewitnesses, as you mentioned (and, surprisingly, a considerable majority of these were strong pacifists, pro EU, anti-nationalists, no matter if they were victims OR perpetrators during WWII).
Technology as such was good or bad back then (you might not remember it, how much fun we had with the RSA patent, the US considering strong encryption ammunition, …) as it is today.
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and i'm certainly not the only elder millennial (or gen x-er) i know with stories about how certain things were measurably less bullshit then
@eniko Oh yes, in a way, sure, the enshittification of Western society has progressed a couple of decades. Capitalism has progressed a couple of decades. Capital concentration has progressed.
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@eniko There was another big difference. The dominant demographic group (boomers) were adult that had kids in school and were leading the politics to support that. They were paying off their house or buying theirs. They wanted good salary, paid time off, good school for their kids, etc.
A lot of the stuff in our past few decades in politics can be tracked to "boomers aged and moved the political window with them". Once their kids left school, they started cutting money to schools. Once their house were paid off, they move to building rentals and blowing up the rates. Once they started retiring and investing in pension, they cut PTO, support for unemployments, etc
Because by being such a big demographic group, they control the election in a large way.
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@deshipu @eniko Yeah well, there is a reason funeral insurance and funeral plans paid in advance are a rising product to sell...
Also, there is a reason the whole economy is panicking. The moment the stock market goes down, there is no more pensions from investments. And the housing market is what support most of these people wealth (and by that I do not mean billionaires, I am the old lady down your street). And they are not spending money to maintain it, because hell, they will be dead soon.
So we will get a lot of fucked up housing on the market from inheritance...
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@eniko There was another big difference. The dominant demographic group (boomers) were adult that had kids in school and were leading the politics to support that. They were paying off their house or buying theirs. They wanted good salary, paid time off, good school for their kids, etc.
A lot of the stuff in our past few decades in politics can be tracked to "boomers aged and moved the political window with them". Once their kids left school, they started cutting money to schools. Once their house were paid off, they move to building rentals and blowing up the rates. Once they started retiring and investing in pension, they cut PTO, support for unemployments, etc
Because by being such a big demographic group, they control the election in a large way.
@eniko I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXzvjBYW8A
I do not agree with is solutions, and this is UK only data, but it is thorough data, really on point, and hard to get this kind of data actually. And everything points at equivalent situation in nearly all of the Western world.
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i object to the whole "90s nostalgia is just cause you were a kid and unaware of how terrible everything was" because yeah, maybe
but in the 90s what nazis did was still very much living memory and people knew what you do to them. also technology actually was a source of life improvements and optimism instead of whatever the fuck this techno-fascist hype cycle bullshit we have now is
my home country the netherlands hadn't been hollowed out by decades of neoliberal bullshit
i could keep going
@eniko 🧵 I'm older than you and lived through several global crises but *never* felt such dangerous and broken times like now, when some old men try to destroy all values and human rights, people have fought for so long.
But I also see, where we older ones failed: most people laughed at some far-right extremists and didn't take the dangers serious.
In the 1980s in Germany, as a journalist trainee, I had struggles with my boss because he didn't want me to write about the upcoming fascist groups. -
@eniko 🧵 I'm older than you and lived through several global crises but *never* felt such dangerous and broken times like now, when some old men try to destroy all values and human rights, people have fought for so long.
But I also see, where we older ones failed: most people laughed at some far-right extremists and didn't take the dangers serious.
In the 1980s in Germany, as a journalist trainee, I had struggles with my boss because he didn't want me to write about the upcoming fascist groups.@eniko 🧵Too ridiculous, too small, he said. In the late 1980s, that same boss was outed to be far-right. He had to go but we had tabloids welcoming such people. We also lost one of our best friends and colleagues, one of the best investigative journalists, to a Witness Protection Program. Neonazis had tried to kill her several times for her research. These nazis built the soil for today, and we were naive enough to think democracy would heal automatically. Had not to be defended actively.
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@eniko 🧵Too ridiculous, too small, he said. In the late 1980s, that same boss was outed to be far-right. He had to go but we had tabloids welcoming such people. We also lost one of our best friends and colleagues, one of the best investigative journalists, to a Witness Protection Program. Neonazis had tried to kill her several times for her research. These nazis built the soil for today, and we were naive enough to think democracy would heal automatically. Had not to be defended actively.
@eniko 🧵 The young people indeed couldn't see all of this. We still had no real time social media, no global news in a stream.
When communism failed, the neoliberal hunt for greed/profit began in Eastern Europe. What I've seen there was pure colonialism and imperialism by big Western corporations. And people embraced the money and the marketing promises after the fall of the dictatorships. The 1990s were a big time for marketing. And the US sold their "dreams" ... we felt hope. -
@eniko We were ending welfare and giving everyone jobs. College was accessible to a larger portion of the population than ever before. There was real upward mobility, not least of which was being demonstrated by people like Jobs and Gates. We believed in a bright future.
@wyatt_h_knott @eniko The "ending welfare" part was directly tied to the rapid expansion of the prison industrial complex. The CIA flooding cities with crack fueled the tough on crime hysteria leading to the harsh sentences for petty crimes, the 3 strikes laws for example.
This era also saw rapid deindustrialization of Northern cities as union jobs were shipped to China. Wages stagnated for forty years beging with Reagan. GenX experienced the very end of the post WW2 economic expansion. -
its not something imaginary when people feel the weight of 30 years of global hollowing out of institutions, reductions in social safety nets in the name of austerity, and the rapacious pursuit of capital at all costs
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idk man i just think telling people who long for the days when the social contract hadn't been irrevocably and unequivocally broken that they're stupid is mean spirited and counterproductive
@eniko Your analyse is on the point. We had severe crises before, yes. But we also still had this social contract. We had international agreements about human rights or atomic weapons, and could count that the UN Security Council stepped in and was heard ... even if nothing was perfect. We didn't have this all-destroying death cult of hyper-rich people. Now we have to fight for a humane world, we want to protect.
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@eniko As an early-ish gen Xer, I think the difference isn't that things were better, but that we actually had hope that things were going in the right direction. The Nazis were defeated, the Communists were discredited, big wars were a thing of the past, and technology was viewed with CAUTIOUS optimism (don't forget that we had stuff like 3-mile island and then Cherynobl in recent memory). But a lot of it was social: segregation was over and civil rights were for everyone.
@wyatt_h_knott @eniko yes, I think direction of travel was good, then.
Thatcher was gone, the rest of the Tories were on the way out, opposition to Section 28 was growing, there were mainstream TV shows with kickass girls (Buffy) and respect for all (ST:TNG), we were fixing the hole in the ozone layer, the Berlin Wall fell, the economic mess of the 80s was subsiding...
But now, a lot of things are going backwards and we're working hard to tread water on others. This is not the future the 90s promised us. -
i object to the whole "90s nostalgia is just cause you were a kid and unaware of how terrible everything was" because yeah, maybe
but in the 90s what nazis did was still very much living memory and people knew what you do to them. also technology actually was a source of life improvements and optimism instead of whatever the fuck this techno-fascist hype cycle bullshit we have now is
my home country the netherlands hadn't been hollowed out by decades of neoliberal bullshit
i could keep going
@eniko 90s was objectively better because the cold war and its nuclear threat was over and 9/11 had not happened yet, which lead to reintroduction of torture and many wars.
(Better - not fantastic, there was still the genocide in Yugoslavia and other terrible wars and civil wars.)
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idk man i just think telling people who long for the days when the social contract hadn't been irrevocably and unequivocally broken that they're stupid is mean spirited and counterproductive
@eniko Pretty much the modern form of my generally Absolutely Loathed, Cringing "It Is What It Is" semi-deflection unto unchallenging acceptance.
