To think the 90's/early 2000's was when we peaked and everything has gone downhill since due to technology

[SonnyHoney]

To think the 90s/early 2000s was when we peaked and everything has gone downhill since due to technology.

Bear in mind I was only a child/teen then (mid 30s now).
There was just the right amount of technology.
People just seemed happier.

I wish I could have raised my children in a similar environment to what my mother raised me in.

Most families can't afford for one parent to stay home and raise their children.

That is a massive failure of a supposed civilised world. How can it possibly be okay when you strip it all back to the bare bones. Being human.🙁

Personally i think the peak was the 2012 Olympics if you’re in Britain.

Ask any veteran teacher- kids are worse now than they ever have been.😫

Huh? Did we live in the same 90's?

Our bog standard state high school had three lesbians and one gay couple in year 9 alone.

Didn't you catch Will and Grace on channel 4? Go to any thriving pride parades or gay bars?

You're talking like it was the 50's and no one was allowed to be gay. Yes, the legalities hadn't caught up with society yet, but it was hardly a rarity back then.

Weird attempt at grabbing some victimhood points from the heteros.

Denied.

🌲

Disagree. Respect Granted for this perspective- that’s why the majority vote for gay marriage happened after all! . If you have experienced hate just for being you as part of your experience of those times , it’s perfectly understandable and expected, not to miss the oppression and open hostility.

Pre-2008 for me. Don’t think I’ve ever been as happy post-Global Financial Crisis. Dad had a “job for life” at the same employer for 25 years. I took that level of security for granted. It is the kind of security that allows you to make long-term plans. The basics for a good life were more affordable (housing, food, utilities) so even if we were poorer in relative terms it got you a better quality of life than today.

Technology does seem to have had a negative impact on certain areas of the labour market. My local ASDA used to have twenty checkout tills. Today they have been replaced by machines.

2016 was the end for me. It’s when I realised a significant percentage of people will vote for cruelty on purpose because they think it will serve them somehow, and that we haven’t learned the lessons from history I naively assumed that we had. I wouldn’t want to go back in time too far; medicine is better now and young people seem more tolerant of their differences than when I was a kid.

I agree OP. I reckon early to mid 00's were the peak. Financial crash in 2008 was definitely the end of something. Everything has seemed harder since.

One of the worst things is how insular and divisive people have become. I always valued community but it has got worse and worse.

I don't think it's to do with a certain life period. I went through some hellish stuff in the years I see as "peak" more broadly. My personal life peak would have been a decade or so later! But more broadly, in society, employment, etc things seemed better in the early 00s.

2008 financial crash, years of austerity, Brexit, Covid, cost of living.... WWIII around the corner and looking more and more likely.... will probably work all my life for nothing and never get to retire if not killed in said world war....

No.the 90s was the end of the industrial era and swapping into the technological one.
Feels like a peak but really was just the ending peak of another era.
Humanity has a very very long way yo go before getting anywhere near a peak.

I turned 18 in 1990. A fantastic decade. So lucky.

The ‘job for life’ with big companies had started to decline (in the U.K. at least) well before that. DH joined the mighty ICI mid-80s, ‘job for life’ with proper career development …do younger people even know what ICI was?
OTOH I joined a tiny start-up, many mergers and acquisitions later I’ve just retired from a big global company after what did turn out to be a ‘job for life’ - totally enabled by the development of the internet which let me continue wfh when DH had to move jobs, and in which the massive gains in compute power and availability and sharing of knowledge were crucial. There really is a lot of beneficial use of the internet and WWW for what their inventors intended it for, people take it for granted or don’t know about what other people do i suppose.

The 90s where it was acceptable to openly discriminate against gays, that 90s?

Sorry, you're all wrong. My parents say that nothing has been good in the universe since 1962, so that must be right because they said it.

I think the mood changed when 9/11 happened. I think after Covid seemed to get a bit more under control and the war in Ukraine started (which felt like it was in the same week incidentally) it’s all gone to complete crap 💩

I would say the whole of the 90's. Music was amazing, no bloody phones.
I was in my 20's in the 90's. Best decade of my life (what I can remember 😂).
Early noughties were good too, before smart phones. I do think society has gone to shit since then.

Very much so, we as a species are very good and inventing, but we are unable to decide that an invention is damaging and put it back where it came from.

AI will be the next disaster for mankind, watch this space, its not going to end well.

Theee are certainly lots of arseholes at my daughter’s school

I agree it was up to the 2008 crash, and went utterly to shit from 2016 onwards.

The 90s were great & the early 00s. The UK was cool & had hope. Not so much now…

I was born in the 80s & think it was a good childhood but think it would have been fun to be older too.

Society is better now. Kids aren't arseholes

There are more arseholes….

The problem is we never recovered from the 08 crash

The days when Britain was a major force in world industry and manufacturing - and of course manufacturing is how you make money and grow the economy.

To name but a few that have gone: ICI of course, GEC, ICL, Marconi, Ferranti, GKN, Tube Investments, Thorn-EMI, NCR, Avery .... etc etc etc...

For the young uns
ICI - Imperial Chemical Industries, Chemicals, Dynamite, Dulux paints
GEC - General Electric Company, Everything Electrical
ICL- International Computers Ltd. IT
Marconi - Electronics
Ferranti - Electronics
GKN - Guest, Keen & Nettlefold, Engineering
Tube Investments - Boilers, Cookers, Kettles etc.
Thorn-EMI - Records, Radios, MRI Scanners, Fire Extinguishers, Light Bulbs
NCR- National Cash Registers, Computers
Avery - Heavy Engineering, Scales, Measuring Instruments

I started work in 1996. There was still a huge amount of sexism at work in the late 90s/ early 2000s.

But about 2000 up to 2008 was pretty good in the UK, with the huge investment in the NHS (compared to what it had been before), children’s centres etc.

Austerity has a lot to answer for, followed by Brexit and Covid then rampant inflation.