My parents weren't even born in the 50s, no that doesn't feel recent
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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So did 2025 to me, back in the 80's. Back then, I thought women would have income parity, we might have a large space habitat, or maybe even a permanent outpost on the moon, that NASA would still be running the space program for the US... but I had no idea we'd invent time travel and the US would be transported to back to 1940.
Anything invented before you were eighteen was there all along. Anything invented before you’re thirty is exciting and will change the world forever. Anything invented after that is an abomination and should be banned. -- Mark Twain
God damn. Mark Twain is over here talking about the internet. I started hearing about the internet when I was 13. So I can remember a world without the internet, but it still feels like it's always been there. Same thing with CallerID. Imagine cell phones without callerID.
Hell for that matter, I can remember NOBODY having a cell phone. I remember car phones. A landline style phone installed INTO your car. But it still feels like cell phones have always been around.
Sadly, I remember a world before school shootings. Yeah, imagine if the whole year there were 0 school shootings. And 0 the year before that. And 0 the year before that. Then in 1998, Columbine happened. Those 4 kids were pussies! They claim they did it because they got bullied. I went to school in a place where on any day, for no reason at all, you could be in a fist fight. It was just a rough school, with a bunch of hormonal angry tough psychopaths. I've seen videos of them interviewing the survivors of Columbine. The impression that I got was that their bullies were rich preppy boys who tie their sweater around their waist because it might be a bit nippy on the golf coarse after school. If THAT guy can bully you, you deserve to be bullied. If those 4 kids at any time in their life had balls, and just punched a prep in the mouth? 27 kids would have lived to see 1999. Including themselves. And people say violence isn't the answer....
That is how numbers work, yes.
Usually these make me feel old. This one doesn't make me feel old. This one makes me have an existential crisis. Because 2100 sounds like it's going to be filled with just this dark dystopia of hatred and anger.
And 1950 had racial lynchings, and Japanese-American citizens, who had full citizenship as a legal born citizen, had just gone through the past few recent years of being held in camps, and worked, in terrible conditions, all because their parents came from the wrong country. It had governments actively trying to brainwash their citizens into being patriotic and thus easier to control.
I look at the past, and look at the future, and it makes sense why we are where we are. This is what humans are. Humans are the worst people. It's not going to get better. We've thrown shit at ourselves for so long that now we're all a bit dirty and smelly. But also an elephant is trying to use your body as a poop knife, so it can break up the shit in it's butthole, and take an even BIGGER shit on you. Like 80lbs of shit just falling on your head.
That's where we are right now as a society, because we've paved the way to get here.
Like my parents are in their 80s now and were living their youth throug the 1950s. My kids will also be in their 80s when they see 2100. It feels weird thinking about that.
What’s wild is my grandparents are in their 70s and my kids will be in their 70s when they see 2100.
And I had kids late (34), if I had followed the same rate as pretty much every generation prior to me back to the dawn of man - it’d be my grandkids in their 80s at 2100.
1950 is around the birth of rock and roll, which seems a long tine ago to me. Seems crazy that my kids might see 2100 though
I’m determined to make it to the year 2100 / 22nd century. I’d be 97-98 in 2100-2101.
Damn, I'm about a decade older than you and there's no way I'd call 1950 recent in any way. For all I care, it's just as much ancient history as the roman empire. I don't know anyone alive from either period, at least not on a personal level.
2100 on the other hand feels closer because I'm expect to come close to it within my lifetime. At least closer than I ever was to 1950.
It's a matter of perspective. When you study ancient history, the French Revolution is basically yesterday. When you don't, a few of decades ago is nearly primordial times.
I'm the former, and to me the 50s are very, very recent times.
I have family members who were born in the 1920s and 1930s and are still alive today, which probably has a significant influence on my perspective on time.
That's a fair point. My family isn't exactly known for getting old. I didn't even meet half my grandparents and the only one I really got to know only lived into my early teenage years. I'll probably only get to around 70 myself.
WHAT
Seems right to me. Think in centuries and not your lifetime. Your lifetine is more likely to span two centuries, so while the 1950s was just recently, you'll be in the 2050s.