Sometimes there doesn’t feel like much progress then you see a 90s movie that is fondly remembered and note the shocking ammount of sexual violence and regressive culture. Good to see that is passed

It still persists to some degree, but in the 90s and 2000s being an environmentalist was mocked to the same degree that being a vegan is today. You were just making one more moralist argument in the marketplace of ideas and climate change was as much a vague future problem as Mars colonisation currently is. Now it’s taken seriously even if people don’t know what to do about it and can’t imagine a practical future beyond what the 20th century left us with. I can talk to average schmucks about my pollinator gardens and the radicalism of it is very easily communicated where that would have been dismissed as hippie shit two decades ago.

Happy to see drinking becoming less common. It used to be such a social default that if you’re out as an adult doing anything social you get a drink. Now it’s much less common to get pushback if you don’t want alcohol, at least in my circles.

1. Gaybashing and misogyny in mainstream comedy is much reduced from the levels of the 80s thru 00s. Aside from it being reprehensible, it was also a deeply unfunny crutch.

2. Smoking is vastly less common, and indoor smoking is almost non-existent. Everything just smells better now. Even a lot of smokers like this change.

3. There is way less petty and violent crime these days. The gas station that I would avoid filling up at after dark in the 90s is now a place I casually walk to for a midnight snack run.

4. There’s less trash laying around. I think it was even way worse in the era before my time.

Fuck cigarettes. I’ve never been a smoker and have always hated having to smell cigarette smoke on myself or my environment. So glad I don’t have to put up with that anymore.

1. Niche interests are more accepted and not immediately just seen as a reason to make fun of somebody for. If someone likes birdwatching, model trains, tabletop RPGs or whatever, who fucking cares.
2. Being anti-LGBT is less and less acceptable. Of course, transphobia is still far too accepted these days (and by that I mean none should be accepted), and acceptance of asexuality and aromanticism in particular are still not where I’d want them to be, but it’s still a far cry from what it was in the 2000s.
3. Misogyny and objectification of women isn’t as bad as it was years ago. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not necessarily great, but I think even a space like Hexbear would’ve been a lot worse 20 years ago.
4. Veganism is more accepted now, but this is an extremely low bar 😒

I miss the old anti-nostalgia threads, the ones these days are so corporate

Class consciousness is on the rise

Just ten years ago I had to explain my worldview even to some of my friends, nowadays random coworkers are bringing up stuff I used to talk about if I wanted an argument

Music is so much fucking better nowadays, holy shit. It’s a lot easier to find random artists from all over the world. You aren’t limited to whatever is on the radio or having to spend hours combing through record stores to find something new.

The quality of every genre (except maybe country because it’s filled with reactionaries) has improved because of this. Mainstream artists are able to hear things they wouldn’t have otherwise and incorporate that into their music.

Le epic bacon cringe “nerds are cool now!” culture.

I say this as a guy who plays D&Ds and has a Star Trek next gen poster on the wall.

Henry Kissinger

1. It being completely ok that men just touch you, comment on how you look or hit on you in cringe ways.

2. All the sex pest or stalker stuff supposedly being normal behaviour in movies and tv shows, this is related to 1.

3. Talking about/commenting how others look/their weight etc. Still happens, but it’s a lot less ok.

4. Smoking indoors.

5. A lot of bigotry related to identities in general.

6. Ignorance about climate change.

7. Wholehearted love of capitalism.

More women and poc voices on the internet, even if they attract the ire of absolute scumbags.

Games For Windows Live

• Normalization of pedophilia and statutory SV in mainstream culture. Like, it’s still really bad, but not “being treated as a mildly scandalous joke in prime time sitcoms” bad.
• Hell, casual SV jokes in general.
• Casual ableism against neurodiverse people. Another one that’s still depressingly common, but there’s at least now active pushback against it and it’s much easier to find spaces where it’s not tolerated.
• In the same vein, casual homophobia.
• Edgy 90s/00s anti-environmentalism.
• Edgy 90s/00s nihilism, including the notion that caring about anything or empathy for others makes you a stupid baby loser.
• The all-consuming capitalist realism that followed the collapse of the USSR to the point that even “counter-cultural” movements were unable to escape its logic.
• Related to the two above, the ubiquitous assumption that for media to be “mature” and “adult” means for it to advance a philosophy that everyone and everything sucks, nothing good ever happens, and that believing in anything except your own self-interest is naive foolishness.
• Cringe culture (still sadly very much present, but much more confined to the right wing). I feel like this reached its nadir with the years-long harassment campaign against Chris-Chan.
• The mid-00s saturation of popular culture with media that largely served as apologia for mass surveillance, the War on Terror, and torture.
• The idea that liking anything geared toward kids as an adult means that there is something capital-W Wrong with you and you need to be punished for it (another one that’s far from being gone completely but that I mostly only see in older people now).