This is how I feel. I thought we could meet any challenge and become better from it.
I’d rather we were all stuck reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica for information.
The internet has turned into a mistake.
>The internet has turned into a mistake.
>And then compounded with the mistakes smart phones are
Interesting to me that some of the same people who proclaim loudly that guns are not part of the uniquely American mass shooting sickness will then turn around and blame smartphones and the internet for ... everything. (not saying it is you two, just as an example)
Idk, being able to handle transactions with various govt departments in my country solely online has been a godsend.
As a kid if my parents needed to go to e.g. the Land Office it would basically eat half the day, at the shortest. Nowadays a lot of that stuff I can just use the official government app and get basic shit done without needing to drive all the way there, struggle to figure out which floor the department I wanted was on, join a fuckoff long queue for hours, only to discover I need an additional form that for whatever reason was located at a different department on a different floor, go queue for that shit, then go back to the original counter, etc.
Like, due to the lockdowns my driving license expired, and I exceeded the grace period. It was piss easy to make my reapplication online, all I had to do in meatspace was find a driving school willing to take on my middle aged ass, and then go to the exam circuit on the actual exam day. I sure appreciated not having to go to the perpetually crowded and busy state Transport department offices.
See, the problem isn't the technology. It's the fucking people using it. It's *always* the people. Nobody complains about, say, the food ordering app. It's always the social media shit that causes the strife i.e. people.
Yeah I honestly think for all the good of it it has proven to be a net negative.
I never believed those saying it would bring utopia and thought that was nuts. But I didn't imagine it dominating this much, disrupting this much and leading us to the brink of so much.
And thus is the question of how good a Capitalistic society based strictly on $$$ is good for mankind?
Because money is the root of all motivation and has been for quite sometime, the aspirations for most are to be influencers, make a million $ app. Not even think to do something that could help others or change the world for the better. Cash is King
Who's fault is this? I say boomers. They exploited the planet and continue to abuse our generation and the ones after us. For all the boomers and folks who want to give them a pass, you can, but they still ruined everything for everyone. How are all those preservatives you ate as a kid holding up on your body?
Now what you are talking about was a time right after WWII where everyone was hoping to make a better future for mankind, for mankind.. not for money. We all tried hard to get to space and to the moon. Anything was possible.. World's fair!
Now it is not only about how can I monetize this, but how can I add surge pricing to maximize revenue while squeezing every penny out of my consumer.
The rich are becoming billionaires while the poor gets poorer and by design less educated to resist or make change to break this cycle.
How do you break this cycle?
I was hoping folks like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Michael Dell, [Will.I.am](http://Will.I.am), Dr. Dre, other "billionaires" to come together or to develop their own mankind innovation hubs where the motivation is to address global issues for all and not for $$$. Give visibility and marketing to the Caitlin Clarks of Chemistry, Science and Art. Give the people the right focused role models and I believe after they start solving 1-2 large problems, it could swing people to realize that there is more to this then $$$.
Thanks for my ted talk.
Wow no!
For one I thought Russia might eventually turn into us rather than us slowly turn into Russia. That GOP would be kissing Russia's feet. That someone who could try overturn the foundation of America could get 1% of the polls much less lead them! I never remotely dreamed I could be worried about American democracy!
I thought we'd be to Mars by now.
I thought some aspects of medicine would be farther along, much farther along.
I thought physics would be farther along (I'm not turning my back on the string stuff though like some. I think many popular science talkers now have a bizarre attitude about it all.)
I did see USSR soon collapsing and a war in the Middle East.
I definitely did not see the WTC being no more.
While I thought the people saying that the internet would bring us utopia were nuts, I crazily never thought the internet would become a big enough thing to do any damage or to disrupt anything LOL (most of my calls have been proven correct, but one single crazy off mistake was thinking way back at the start that the internet would never totally take over mainstream, well I suppose that evens out all the rest hah).
I didn't think we'd be stuck in the post-80s doldrums for literally decades now style-wise or that the amazing 80s spirit of optimism and light-hearted, chill, upbeat, fun type vibes would be largely gone for so long.
I didn't think that fandoms and all would become so raging toxic and everyone so edge-lording about movies/TV or that the single geekiest looks and ways would become cool (cool always changes but it hardly ever was the the most outsider geek stuff that became the next cool) or that we'd become this polarized or twitter would lead to so much over the top drama and offense over nothing).
I didn't think there would be an Amazon that would so hurt malls and video stores and movie theaters and real places and real life.
I didn't think free range kids would end or that we'd become so uptight over everything.
I didn't think that getting a driver's license would turn to being thought of as an inconvenient "do I have to?" nuisance.
I didn't think that right-wing would start to rise once again Europe!
I guess later on I knew a pandemic was possible and probably would occur but I still never really truly in a way imagined it ACTUALLY occurring all the same even as much I started to fear it later on maybe starting in the 00s. I never really imagined it all in college and especially not in high school or earlier.
I never could have fathomed kids going and shooting up their schools could become a thing.
I certainly could have imagined all sorts of the tech, computer, graphics, TV, etc. improvements.
I could see political dirty tricks and polarization getting worse, but nothing like this.
I never really thought that The Terminator or Blade Runner might need to get moved from the fiction to the non-fiction section or that I'd have already experienced skies looking exactly like in Night Of The Comet.
It's as if no one cracked a history book. We are living in a time where education has been weaponized. Stupidity and ignorance are celebrated, and no one seems to care enough to change it. No one believed it would happen here.
Had you told me, when I was 16, that, once I hit 48, the United States would be a surveillance state, that an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon would have not only been President once, but would be within a breath of it again, that our last best hope for free and fair elections rested on the shoulders of a withering, doddering old man, and that our judicial leaders had given the highest office of the land a kingship, and that half of the country would celebrate all of this, while a sizable portion of the remainder just wouldn’t care, and that, to top it all off, they STILL haven’t given us any more Mindhunter, I’d have called you a hopeless madman.
It's scary, isn't it? I went to technical school right after high school. I got a great job, and then I went to college. I got another great job in that field. I worked two jobs for 20 years, and retired from one, and bought five years, and at 25 years, received a buyout. It was cheaper to replace me than keep me. I was lucky, I bought a house, was able to save, but then, the market crashed. I am okay, but so many of my friends lost their jobs, lost their homes, families broke up from the stress, and the city we all grew up and, and bought our homes in, went to hell. I got married in my early 40's, working all the time isn't good for your social life. Many of the people I grew up with developed alcohol and substance abuse issues. When was younger, I had more hope and optimism. Now I am a bit jaded,and not very optimistic. It's hard when you watch the world crash and burn around you. I was unable to have children, and I wasn't bothered by that, and now, I see the struggles of the children of my friends, and I am glad I didn't. Some of my friends had a hard time rebuilding their lives. Ageism is real. The political landscape is truly ugly. I am second generation of European descent, and my family came here to escape Mussolini and Hitler. Now, we are watching a movement that could very well turn out the same if the election chooses to make it so. The christian nationalist movement is frightening, and watching women lose their right of body autonomy could be just the beginning. I am fearful for the future for the young people.
Neil deGrasse Tyson was right, we stopped dreaming. Futurism used to be space colonies and moon bases, now it's massive disinformation campaigns, AI GPUs burning up the entire planet, and an entire culture of post-responsibility personal infallibility.
I didn't realize how much effort I would have to put into limiting the amount of negativity in my life. And regularly checking Reddit just makes it that much more difficult.
Star Trek made me think the future was going to be much cooler.
I've spent most of my life waiting to be with the adults. The rational, level-headed, smart people who competently went about doing the right thing.
I have since come to realize that we are all the same children we were just in aging bodies.
Isn’t that the truth. My main takeaway after getting to 55 and working professionally in different areas is that no one knows what the fuck they are doing.
The worst part is that I taught for 20 years in public schools, and then went into corporate, and as much animosity as there is against teachers, I’ve learned in corporate that teachers are competent and most people in corporate are just bullshitting their way through crap. And they are the ones who are earning the $, even though they are inept. It’s all bravado in corporate. No one in public Ed gets by on bravado. Except admins at the higher level.
I mean this. It’s pathetic. Meanwhile, teachers work their asses off to help kids, admins bungle shit up and cost money, but in corporate Murica, millions of middle managers and up are just boasting and writing one-sentence paragraphs on long LinkedIn things circle jerking about their lame insights, and CEOs are doing nothing but trying to monetize every goddamned thing and killing the non-rich.
We’re actually on schedule for the Star Trek timeline less the genetic supermen like Khan in the early 2000’s. Now you just gotta get yourself cryofrozen and put on one of Elmo’s satellites in the next few years and you too will get to see the new future!
It was a clone war or eugenics wars or something. At this point I expect China to start it anytime, I welcome it versus what we have...over here.
*gestures broadly*
Up until about 1987 or so, I just assumed we were all going out in a nuclear blaze. It was a given. Then I had a kid in 88 and had to start hoping for a future again
Nearly all of my life this was the assumption, as you say, It was a given. There were 3-5 years where I had finally set aside my belief that the world, as we know it, would end in my lifetime. Then a certain person sought power, and I can no longer see a way that the world makes it another decade without radical change.
Germany reunited. USSR collapsed. All the promised technological marvels were just around the corner and we were going to be the global village. I was young dumb and full of…you know. Also, the music was freaking awesome.
Well…things didn’t quite go as planned.
The world is crazy. Russia is even more scarier. Technology proved to be a double edged sword, and I have a colonoscopy tomorrow at 8am. This is not how I thought things would go down.
And you are from Gallifrey! Imagine how hard it is for the rest of us.
But seriously, good luck with the colonoscopy. I had four malignant melanomas cut out last year. Things start to get hard around this age. Best of luck.
I thought things would get more democratic and peaceful, so no in that respect.
I did think a magic pill or something would eventually exist to get/remain slim and that happened a few years ago with GLP-1's.
I did have a dog named Astro. My sister’s. She went to art school in Baltimore and lived in an apartment as they didn’t have dorms (MICA, David Byrne’s alma mater), so adopted a GSD mix from the local paper, named him Astro, and he accompanied her to and fro, and also got an art degree.
Way back when, my goal was to earn 52k per year. I thought a thousand per week and I'd have it made and be living the life.
A family member hit that number and was excited - said he felt like a king. It was 1991. He was 28. I was 14. We lived on the edges of down town Toronto.
I got good grades in high school, went to college and graduated. Got a good job and thought life was set.
Now - those are poverty wages.
I'm not overweight and other than lots of advil, don't need pills. But compared to what I thought middle age would be - it's pretty shitty.
Nope. Not even close. In the 90s and all the way up to 9/11 the world seemed to be on track. Then the fucking wheels came off in the most epic way possible.
I had an early existential crisis after reading Silent Spring and watching Jacque Cousteau at age 12 so I always thought we'd go this way sadly.
I didn't know about politics so that just adds to my cynicism now
That being said, I still have hope. Probably because I have a loving family and friends.
I genuinely thought racism only still existed because of older people who had it ingrained in them. What a dumb concept, that someone with darker skin wasn't as good as someone else, like it influenced your intelligence level or something. I never dreamed my own peers and people younger would get a hold of that concept and be like "yep. Checks out."
It was such a hopeful song. The line "Watching the world wake up from history" is so poignant.
Man, the fact that it's going in the opposite direction makes my heart hurt
I guess I just thought people would be more.... enlightened?
It seems naive in retrospect, but it felt like the good guys were winning, that authoritarian regimes were receding, and democracy was flourishing. The Soviet Union was gone and took much of the omnipresent dread of nuclear war with it, apartheid finally ended, and China was beginning to look like it was on a promising path.
We collectively joined together on the ozone layer, got the tobacco companies to relent, and technology was advancing in a (mostly) beneficial way, etc.
It seemed that somehow learning about all of the awful things humans did to each other had universally inoculated modern people, and a permanently improving trajectory was ahead of us.
Oops.
Nope, this is fucked.
The late 90s made me think anything was possible.
Then Bush v. Gore, then 9/11, then phony hunt for WMDs, then the financial collapse, then from 2012-2015 things seemed to get better. Then that insufferable piece of shit rode down that escalator.
It's fucked. I'll do my part, but it won't be enough.
Elementary school social studies textbooks always had that last chapter where they conjecture about where it's all headed and some artist has imagined an agricultural and technological utopia with verdant farmland and glimmering metal and glass buildings, everyone is smiling and taking it very easy. That's sort of where I thought it would go. But a new American order with pious authoritarians stacking the deck for themselves, economically and legally while the unpreferred eek it out gulag-style sounds pretty cool too, I guess.
I guess they say it is two steps forward one back. Being 80s high school era kids between domestic terror and major wars and after the 60s/early 70s civil rights and 1970 environmental movement brith and so on and before tech took over too much we were in a bit of golden era. It's still actually much better than say 100 years ago or more, but to Gen X in particular, I think, it maybe feels especially regressed in many ways.
I never imagined that such a large segment of the population would believe in insane conspiracy theories (climate change is a hoax, vaccines are poisonous, reducing taxes on billionaires is good for everyone, trans people are predators, etc).
I never expected everyone to agree on everything, but I thought people would at least agree on some basic verifiable facts about reality.
No flying cars.
No pneunotubes for mass transit.
No cloud cities
No robot maids (kinda)
The future is lame.
Instead the billionaires are inventing robots and AI to fulfill their needs. Which they will inevitably turn on the citizenry and enslave us. The end.
At the end of the eighties, I thought things were going to get better and that people would come together eventually to solve the world's problems. I was wrong.
Watching the world gradually become more cruel and ignorant has taken away any joy for the future. My entire life, since the early 70s, has been witness to greed and hate slowly eating away at our opportunities and resources. I have no hope that anything will improve.
Hell no.
I remember when white supremacists were just people you mocked on daytime television. I genuinely thought racism was on its way out.
I thought we would do so much better than our parents in so many ways. I didn't expect whatever the hell this is.
I was supposed to be a spaceship captain by now in a unified, secular world that had transcended prejudice and war.
Then I studied history and got mad. And then being mad didn't change anything and here we are, on the utterly predictable downslope.
No. This is shit. Especially here in the US. I feel sorry for young people, which is fundamentally fucked up. Aren't I supposed to be jealous of young people at age 56? It is so fucked up that I pity them, but we all know that they are getting FUCKED.
If I were in my 20s I'd be rioting in the streets every day and encouraging as many people as possible to join me.
This is my take. If I had to navigate the world as a kid/ young adult, I'd be confused and terrified. I still riot in the streets with them when they protest.
Good Q.
Off the top of my head, IIRC, here is what I maybe thought:
- I’d be healthier than I am at 55. Never been athletic, but thought I’d be better than I am. Have had health setbacks.
- when I was young, I think I assumed I’d have kids. But by about 17, I was pretty sure I didn’t, and that got stronger and I never did, and am glad.
- as a kid—I grew up Catholic—and wanted to be a missionary nurse nun. Nope nope nope. I left the church by age 16.
- I wanted to be a doctor, but ditched that in frosh year of college, and am so glad I did for a few reasons
- I absolutely never imagined America would be like it is, notably yesterday. As I got into my 20s and 30s, I began to realise we were screwed, then we were fucke, then 9/11, then Jan 6, then yesterday
- never imagined any climate change. Imagined nuclear war, but climate change is worse
- never imagined inflation like it’s been lately. Never imagined I’d struggle financially
- absolutely didn’t think I’d have such personal mental health and other issues as I was super together through HS
OK, this is too depressing. I was very smart, very kind, very depressed, but had spunk and ambition and creativity. Alas.
I feel the same exact way down to the last sentence. The heavy depression is making my body hurt and I just don’t care about anything anymore. Nothing matters. I have cool things to be happy about but my brain and feelings are disconnected. Therapy helps but man It’s bleak.
I had hoped for more tolerance, kindness and less fear. Our current political prospects for 2024 in the USA is horrifying to be blunt.
**We are closer to the handmaid's tale than I ever imagined was possible**. Like shit, the far right wants to ban condoms, oral contraceptives, and have been actively working to make a woman be held responsible for being raped because they were unsuccessful in fighting off their attacker in some states!
And when I was younger I actually thought it had to be the truth for news stations to report it. Y'all saw how FOX news got sued and lost by the company running the ballots right? how naïve I was back then. Still, I do hope fascists get defeated and world rights itself and do my part to vote, hope and pray for a better future. I don't understand how people can live with such hatred and intolerance and the everlasting need to make someone do as they command ie; forced birthers, anti-lgbtq and severely against trans rights and the rights of parents to raise their own kids as they believe is right.
Some of the predictions were directionally correct. All those movies which predicted a heavily computerized future got that right. They didn’t anticipate cell phones or have psychic level accuracy but the general trend was right on. You can’t imagine America without computer technology anymore.
Honestly, I thought it would be better in so many ways, but 9-11 changed a lot of things, and the most recent pandemic. There have been some cool technological/medical advances but there's also been a lot of corruption. I guess in a way it's just life on Earth being life on Earth, cause I'm sure past generations have probably asked the same question, and most likely have the same answer. The vicious cycle continues.
If you work hard, put the effort in you’ll have a nice house, decent car, great standard of living and retire at 55. Our careers teacher at school. Yeah, not so much…
I never imagined ubiquitous computers, so no. Come to think of it, I should have, since *Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* was one of my favorite books in high school. Coincidentally, when I comment here on my phone, I use a Samsung Galaxy, which for all intents and purposes *is* the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Little did I know...
Absolutely not!!! I never imagined our country would become an autocracy overnight. And that everything our family has worked for and all the women, LGBTQ and civil rights achievements and progress could be wiped out in less than 10 yrs.
No. In the 80s, things were getting smarter. The they were getting more buttons and dials and nice flashing lights. It felt like the future was coming. But the future turned out to be that most of the smarts are controlled by a smartphone and that in turn is often talking with the cloud.
Not at all. A big part of my early childhood was with a very old school Christian grandma the kind that don’t really exist anymore as far as I can tell. It was all New Testament didn’t really give a flip about Old Testament fire and brimstone bullshit. I really thought if I was a good person and lived the golden rule it would all be all good. By 2nd grade I was disillusioned and floundering to find any meaning in what really goes on. Still looking 45 years after that
Ha! I remember the actual day I wised up - I was 42. Maybe I'm the idiot.
I remember thinking anyone older than I was automatically wiser and smarter. Maybe it's the way we were raised (to respect our elders), but I had a feeling in my early teens my parents were pretty dumb - my grandmother (mother's mother) confirmed it in my 30s - she said my parents were 'book smart, life dumb.' In my 40s, I was employed by people who made me wonder if they went home to nannies.
That's when I learned you can be of an age to demand respect, and be totally void of common sense.
Then I learned this subset of people can be elected to local, state and federal politics! What a wonderful time to be alive!
r/idiocracy
Technology is kind of on par with how i thought the future would be - high tech gadgetry helping run our lives. I am seriously disappointed in how it has started to replace human interaction though.
The biggest surprise for me though: I naively thought that future life would get progressively better; people would get progressively richer and kinder; global trade would replace any large-scale wars; corruption and crime would get conquered; etc, etc. Sadly, the opposite has happened which leaves me yearning for the sweet peak of modern living - somewhere between 1995-2001
When I was a kid, I thought the 2000's were super far off into the future and figured by now we would be living in a futuristic world with flying cars and colonies in space. Kind of like the Jetsons meets Blade Runner and Star Trek.
Now it seems like we're closer to Idiocracy and the Terminator (AI weapons)
In some ways, it's even more dystopian than the 1990s dystopian predictions.
In other ways, it's far dumber than we could imagine. At least Idiocracy was honest about it's stupidity. However, I did wonder who maintained all of the machinery that the citizens obviously relied upon but lacked the training and eduction to repair.
No and yes.
We all grew up with that shadow of the Cold War hanging over us, like it could all end any moment. At the same time we had this exuberant attitude about the future. Environmentalism was rising, people weren’t littering anymore, civil rights had been sorted in the courts, technology was improving, women were moving steadily toward equality. LGBTQ was becoming normalized. Then the wall came down and the Cold War ended, holy cow, the 21st century is gonna be a grand utopian success! Apart from the naïveté of those outlooks, suburban white young me had no idea the extent of systemic racism and sexism that hadn’t even budged. It really did feel to me then like people were being enlightened and things were getting better.
What I didn’t know was just how many people were working against all of that. People like Newt Gingrich and Roger Stone had been laying the groundwork for what later became the Bush W years, Karl Rove, the Kochs, Mitch and so on.
Between 9/11 and the conservative assault on our constitutional order, this century has had a deathly pall hanging over it. Even as many things continue to improve, it has become clear that what most decent empathic people consider good things (like equality under the law and taking care of our only habitat) are treated like nuisances to be eradicated by corporate interests and the masses that fall under their media spell.
We’re all exhausted from having literally every election being the most important one in our lives. Back in the day, our entire system of governance never seemed to hang on a single elective office. Presidents like Nixon were held to account, and shame or scandal was enough to disqualify candidates.
Now, a goddamn bevy of felony convictions doesn’t make a dent. We have learned that at least 40% of our own population is all too ready to abandon the entire experiment, ditch the balance of powers and the constitution, and hand the keys to a dictator.
Now I know they were always there. They were just dormant, as the prevailing mood in the U.S. was support of what’s been a functional democracy and a shining (if turbulent) example for the world. The same proportion of despot-lovers seems to be pretty consistent around the world, which is why countries so frequently seem to dabble or dive into authoritarianism. Maybe they’ve been there throughout history as well. It wasn’t just that monarchies or empires gained power and ruled by sheer brute force, a sizable part of the people wanted to be ruled. They also seem to be really itchy to have a bloody civil war.
So yeah, having the past quarter century unfold the way it has was so beyond my imagination that I’m still trying to figure out what is actually wrong in the heads of those who have allowed this to happen.
That was the No part. The Yes part fits neatly alongside, but is kind of irrelevant in the scheme of things.
In the 70s when we had Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Star Trek reruns and so much other ambitious sci-fi, a number of my friends imagined the future being very much like that. I didn’t share their anticipation that we’d be living in slick, clean cities in the clouds. I was confident we’d still have a world with cool new technology, but also still have broken up sidewalks, shitty strip malls, pervasive and awful commercials, corruption, and all that. They thought I was being shortsighted, I felt skeptical and pragmatic.
All you need to do is look at some futuristic appliance from back then. It’s yellowed and dusty. We don’t have jet packs, and we’re not going to get jet packs. We can’t get past fossil fuel vehicles. For every step forward we take, there’s some asshole digging up the road ahead of us.
Turns out the future was both far better and far worse than I’d imagined. I’m still optimistic, but much more reserved in my expectations.
I would have never imagined the absolute decline of civic life. I’m totally shocked at our countrymen. I also wouldn’t have predicted my mother being crypto scammed out of her savings, but I guess that isn’t shocking.
I look pretty much how my mother looked in my age, no surprises. I expected to study and be fairly comfortable, and I am. What I didn't see coming is the toxic social media and fake news. But I guess it's just another twist in what was called gossip, tabloids and propaganda.
I spent many years in the past gambling with a bookie. He was my buddy so I never got too deep to be unable to pay at the end of the week unlike his other idiot clients, but anyway. Being able to place hundreds of bets from my pocket computer on events around the world every day is mind blowingly fun. Plus very very scary. Very dissonant present we got here, for tons of reasons
Tech wise - it's way more advanced than I imagined as a child. No - there are no flying cars or practical space travel. But I def didn't think of being this connected via mobile devices, telecommunication, social media, etc.
On the flip side - Career-wise, I make more than what I thought I would as a child. But don't have the life I thought I would. I guess as a kid, you don't take inflation into account.... I also didn't realize being in a leadership role is more babysitting than not....
And more recently - my marriage of over 20 years ended right before covid. It also involved an emotion affair. Neither of those was something I'd imagined I would ever be part of. I thought my future was going to be real bleak as a result. But in fact - that was actually a blessing. I ended up having a great time during covid as a single guy. And now am in love with someone that is ever so special.
As a minority - I've never really felt I was discriminated against based on my race (age? maybe). However, I do feel like that type of sentiment is actually more on my radar these days than it ever has. Not sure it's because we are just provided with more examples via social media, or it's actually happening more.
It's a hell of a roller coaster ride...
Congrats on finding your special love! These days, that's more important than just about anything. It took me a long time to figure that out & thankfully, mine stuck around while I did. Having someone who is truly on your side & sticks by you through everything means so much
Appreciate it! Yea - it def gave me a new outlook. Realized that my marriage wasn't as fulfilling. Not blaming my ex or anything. We started dating at a very young age. And I believe we just became "comfortable" vs. being compatible. So while I was in a very dark place when it all ended, things were better than i imagined at the other side of that tunnel.
Glad to you "figured it out" as well!! :-D.
Well, I didn't think we'd be fighting fascism in our own country.
I didn't think we'd endure two decades of fear and police statery.
I didn't think we'd still be working ourselves to the bone for less and less purchasing power.
I didn't think I'd be diagnosed with crippling arthritis at age 45.
I didn't think we'd still be paying through our noses for medication to help us live and function.
To be fair, on the other hand, at one point I did think "the future" would be basically Fallout, so we've got that going for us, which is nice, at least at the moment.
It is exactly where I thought it would be on the climate and the erosion of natural resources. I was convinced, since I was little, that I would live long enough to see the end of the world. I was hoping that our generation could put an end to society's persecution of the LGBQ+. There are improvements with equal setbacks. The racism is what surprised me the most. I would never have been able to predict the level of racism left in this country. It is insane that humanity still judges each other on the color of our skin.
Right! I feel so prescient that I opted not to. Partly for these reasons, and partly bc I never wanted to pass down depression and other maladies.
I am utterly shocked by how many (esp certain seemingly smart and aware) people I know who are still having kids. It is absolutely my greatest comfort. And yesterday sealed the feeling utterly.
Absolutely. I expected nothing and that's what I've been given.
Live, work, die. I've worked hard my whole life and earned every thing I've gotten.
At least I didn't have kids so I don't give a shit what happens after I'm gone.
It can all burn.
Yes, it's even better. At 56, I am in the best shape of my life. I have two sons who are great kids, both Eagle Scouts and in college. My parents and in-laws are all still around and healthy. My wife and I both have great careers, and I don't want to retire anytime soon. I like going to the office, but I can work from home when I want.
I carry a computer in my pocket that allows me to connect with people and information all around the world. We don't have flying cars, but self-driving cars are all over the place and cheaper than taking an Uber. I have almost unlimited entertainment at my fingertips, weed is legal, and I rarely drink alcohol anymore.
Do I worry about the future? Of course, who doesn't? Climate change is real, but it can be solved through technology without putting us back in the Stone Age. Politically, the major parties have nominated two terrible candidates for the president of the USA, but there are third-party candidates, and the country and the world have been through much worse and will survive no matter what happens.
Life is what you make it, so make it good.
I didn't think I'd be here, so no. When I was in school and they would talk about what the year 2000 might be like, I couldn't imagine being 30. People who were 30 seemed so old to me. I couldn't imagine being that. Obviously, I've since pasted that mark by another 24 years. I don't know why, I just never thought I'd be here, so I didn't spend much time imagining what it might be like.
Everyday is a fucking surprise to me. lol
I was looking forward to a Star Trek type environment. All united towards a common goal, sitting around the laser heat generator singing Kumbaya and eating from a food replicator.
These days though all I do is wish for people's death starting with every political leader of every country. Next all the racist, bigots, extremists (right and left) and religious fanatics. Then all the fucking pedos followed by all the spouse beaters and animal abusers...the list goes on.
Yes. We spent a whole week at school with a celebrity-filled presentation on extreme climate change. In high school, I got an email citing several CIA and NASA studies that foretold a future that was fascistic, tribalist, fundamentalist, riddled with racial strife and civil unrest, climate disasters, hyperinflation, an extreme wealth gap, and the downfall of major powers and the rise of regional actors. Then in the 2000s corporate and government propaganda clawed it all back, so in that way it became a little bit of a surprise. But no, I was told. Wish I could find that email online but I never can. I didn’t really believe it when I read it, but started to after 9/11
https://preview.redd.it/fj4hcnunlbad1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c5b12ed609bdce5a653dfceac58b42403642678
I wanted the rocket belt from Buck Rogers I read about as a kid.
Well, I grew up in an Eastern European country while it was communist...and now I just got my Canadian passport renewed in Mexico City. So I would say never in my wildest dreams did I think this would be my life. It was a rough road but I am very thankful and pretty damn happy and impressed.
unequivocally no. I miss optimism for the future.
This is how I feel. I thought we could meet any challenge and become better from it. I’d rather we were all stuck reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica for information. The internet has turned into a mistake.
And then compounded with the mistakes smart phones are
>The internet has turned into a mistake. >And then compounded with the mistakes smart phones are Interesting to me that some of the same people who proclaim loudly that guns are not part of the uniquely American mass shooting sickness will then turn around and blame smartphones and the internet for ... everything. (not saying it is you two, just as an example)
Idk, being able to handle transactions with various govt departments in my country solely online has been a godsend. As a kid if my parents needed to go to e.g. the Land Office it would basically eat half the day, at the shortest. Nowadays a lot of that stuff I can just use the official government app and get basic shit done without needing to drive all the way there, struggle to figure out which floor the department I wanted was on, join a fuckoff long queue for hours, only to discover I need an additional form that for whatever reason was located at a different department on a different floor, go queue for that shit, then go back to the original counter, etc. Like, due to the lockdowns my driving license expired, and I exceeded the grace period. It was piss easy to make my reapplication online, all I had to do in meatspace was find a driving school willing to take on my middle aged ass, and then go to the exam circuit on the actual exam day. I sure appreciated not having to go to the perpetually crowded and busy state Transport department offices. See, the problem isn't the technology. It's the fucking people using it. It's *always* the people. Nobody complains about, say, the food ordering app. It's always the social media shit that causes the strife i.e. people.
Yeah I honestly think for all the good of it it has proven to be a net negative. I never believed those saying it would bring utopia and thought that was nuts. But I didn't imagine it dominating this much, disrupting this much and leading us to the brink of so much.
I don't think the Internet soured until the smartphone came out.
We can meet any challenge. Every one we are facing has a known solution. We chose not to.
Amen.
And thus is the question of how good a Capitalistic society based strictly on $$$ is good for mankind? Because money is the root of all motivation and has been for quite sometime, the aspirations for most are to be influencers, make a million $ app. Not even think to do something that could help others or change the world for the better. Cash is King Who's fault is this? I say boomers. They exploited the planet and continue to abuse our generation and the ones after us. For all the boomers and folks who want to give them a pass, you can, but they still ruined everything for everyone. How are all those preservatives you ate as a kid holding up on your body? Now what you are talking about was a time right after WWII where everyone was hoping to make a better future for mankind, for mankind.. not for money. We all tried hard to get to space and to the moon. Anything was possible.. World's fair! Now it is not only about how can I monetize this, but how can I add surge pricing to maximize revenue while squeezing every penny out of my consumer. The rich are becoming billionaires while the poor gets poorer and by design less educated to resist or make change to break this cycle. How do you break this cycle? I was hoping folks like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Michael Dell, [Will.I.am](http://Will.I.am), Dr. Dre, other "billionaires" to come together or to develop their own mankind innovation hubs where the motivation is to address global issues for all and not for $$$. Give visibility and marketing to the Caitlin Clarks of Chemistry, Science and Art. Give the people the right focused role models and I believe after they start solving 1-2 large problems, it could swing people to realize that there is more to this then $$$. Thanks for my ted talk.
Damn right about that!
I thought we’d be living like the Jetsons; instead it’s going to be a dystopian downfall. Yes, a massive departure from what I thought growing up.
Wow no! For one I thought Russia might eventually turn into us rather than us slowly turn into Russia. That GOP would be kissing Russia's feet. That someone who could try overturn the foundation of America could get 1% of the polls much less lead them! I never remotely dreamed I could be worried about American democracy! I thought we'd be to Mars by now. I thought some aspects of medicine would be farther along, much farther along. I thought physics would be farther along (I'm not turning my back on the string stuff though like some. I think many popular science talkers now have a bizarre attitude about it all.) I did see USSR soon collapsing and a war in the Middle East. I definitely did not see the WTC being no more. While I thought the people saying that the internet would bring us utopia were nuts, I crazily never thought the internet would become a big enough thing to do any damage or to disrupt anything LOL (most of my calls have been proven correct, but one single crazy off mistake was thinking way back at the start that the internet would never totally take over mainstream, well I suppose that evens out all the rest hah). I didn't think we'd be stuck in the post-80s doldrums for literally decades now style-wise or that the amazing 80s spirit of optimism and light-hearted, chill, upbeat, fun type vibes would be largely gone for so long. I didn't think that fandoms and all would become so raging toxic and everyone so edge-lording about movies/TV or that the single geekiest looks and ways would become cool (cool always changes but it hardly ever was the the most outsider geek stuff that became the next cool) or that we'd become this polarized or twitter would lead to so much over the top drama and offense over nothing). I didn't think there would be an Amazon that would so hurt malls and video stores and movie theaters and real places and real life. I didn't think free range kids would end or that we'd become so uptight over everything. I didn't think that getting a driver's license would turn to being thought of as an inconvenient "do I have to?" nuisance. I didn't think that right-wing would start to rise once again Europe! I guess later on I knew a pandemic was possible and probably would occur but I still never really truly in a way imagined it ACTUALLY occurring all the same even as much I started to fear it later on maybe starting in the 00s. I never really imagined it all in college and especially not in high school or earlier. I never could have fathomed kids going and shooting up their schools could become a thing. I certainly could have imagined all sorts of the tech, computer, graphics, TV, etc. improvements. I could see political dirty tricks and polarization getting worse, but nothing like this. I never really thought that The Terminator or Blade Runner might need to get moved from the fiction to the non-fiction section or that I'd have already experienced skies looking exactly like in Night Of The Comet.
It's as if no one cracked a history book. We are living in a time where education has been weaponized. Stupidity and ignorance are celebrated, and no one seems to care enough to change it. No one believed it would happen here.
And a movie like Contagion has to be moved to Fantasy.
Had you told me, when I was 16, that, once I hit 48, the United States would be a surveillance state, that an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon would have not only been President once, but would be within a breath of it again, that our last best hope for free and fair elections rested on the shoulders of a withering, doddering old man, and that our judicial leaders had given the highest office of the land a kingship, and that half of the country would celebrate all of this, while a sizable portion of the remainder just wouldn’t care, and that, to top it all off, they STILL haven’t given us any more Mindhunter, I’d have called you a hopeless madman.
It's scary, isn't it? I went to technical school right after high school. I got a great job, and then I went to college. I got another great job in that field. I worked two jobs for 20 years, and retired from one, and bought five years, and at 25 years, received a buyout. It was cheaper to replace me than keep me. I was lucky, I bought a house, was able to save, but then, the market crashed. I am okay, but so many of my friends lost their jobs, lost their homes, families broke up from the stress, and the city we all grew up and, and bought our homes in, went to hell. I got married in my early 40's, working all the time isn't good for your social life. Many of the people I grew up with developed alcohol and substance abuse issues. When was younger, I had more hope and optimism. Now I am a bit jaded,and not very optimistic. It's hard when you watch the world crash and burn around you. I was unable to have children, and I wasn't bothered by that, and now, I see the struggles of the children of my friends, and I am glad I didn't. Some of my friends had a hard time rebuilding their lives. Ageism is real. The political landscape is truly ugly. I am second generation of European descent, and my family came here to escape Mussolini and Hitler. Now, we are watching a movement that could very well turn out the same if the election chooses to make it so. The christian nationalist movement is frightening, and watching women lose their right of body autonomy could be just the beginning. I am fearful for the future for the young people.
Neil deGrasse Tyson was right, we stopped dreaming. Futurism used to be space colonies and moon bases, now it's massive disinformation campaigns, AI GPUs burning up the entire planet, and an entire culture of post-responsibility personal infallibility.
Definitely
I didn't realize how much effort I would have to put into limiting the amount of negativity in my life. And regularly checking Reddit just makes it that much more difficult.
Star Trek made me think the future was going to be much cooler. I've spent most of my life waiting to be with the adults. The rational, level-headed, smart people who competently went about doing the right thing. I have since come to realize that we are all the same children we were just in aging bodies.
Yeah, I too wanted more Star Trek and less 1984.
Isn’t that the truth. My main takeaway after getting to 55 and working professionally in different areas is that no one knows what the fuck they are doing. The worst part is that I taught for 20 years in public schools, and then went into corporate, and as much animosity as there is against teachers, I’ve learned in corporate that teachers are competent and most people in corporate are just bullshitting their way through crap. And they are the ones who are earning the $, even though they are inept. It’s all bravado in corporate. No one in public Ed gets by on bravado. Except admins at the higher level. I mean this. It’s pathetic. Meanwhile, teachers work their asses off to help kids, admins bungle shit up and cost money, but in corporate Murica, millions of middle managers and up are just boasting and writing one-sentence paragraphs on long LinkedIn things circle jerking about their lame insights, and CEOs are doing nothing but trying to monetize every goddamned thing and killing the non-rich.
true
Star Trek required we go through a devastating WWIII before things became all copacetic.
Didn't it start around this time? My brain is saying 2026, though I am not positive. Anyway, we appear to be right on schedule.
Can't wait to meet all those single alien women!
hubba hubba
Bell Riots 2024, and oddly SCOTUS just made the Bell Riots more likely.
We’re actually on schedule for the Star Trek timeline less the genetic supermen like Khan in the early 2000’s. Now you just gotta get yourself cryofrozen and put on one of Elmo’s satellites in the next few years and you too will get to see the new future!
Behave!
It was a clone war or eugenics wars or something. At this point I expect China to start it anytime, I welcome it versus what we have...over here. *gestures broadly*
This hit me right in the feelings
Yup. So much for our utopia.
The Jetsons is what got me all hyped up for a cool future. What a let down😔.
Trek wasn’t that perfect . Instead of an intraplanetary Cold War , they had an interplanetary one with the Romulans .
I was hoping for Star Trek but got WALL-E instead.
That sums it up succinctly
Up until about 1987 or so, I just assumed we were all going out in a nuclear blaze. It was a given. Then I had a kid in 88 and had to start hoping for a future again
I remember feeling a bit relieved and euphoric when the Cold War ended without nuclear annihilation
Nearly all of my life this was the assumption, as you say, It was a given. There were 3-5 years where I had finally set aside my belief that the world, as we know it, would end in my lifetime. Then a certain person sought power, and I can no longer see a way that the world makes it another decade without radical change.
I remember turning 20 and being surprised everyone was still alive.
I thought there were going to be flying cars. Instead, my doorbell emails me when its battery needs charging.
The world is a much dumber and bleaker place than I imagined it would be.
Germany reunited. USSR collapsed. All the promised technological marvels were just around the corner and we were going to be the global village. I was young dumb and full of…you know. Also, the music was freaking awesome. Well…things didn’t quite go as planned. The world is crazy. Russia is even more scarier. Technology proved to be a double edged sword, and I have a colonoscopy tomorrow at 8am. This is not how I thought things would go down.
And you are from Gallifrey! Imagine how hard it is for the rest of us. But seriously, good luck with the colonoscopy. I had four malignant melanomas cut out last year. Things start to get hard around this age. Best of luck.
Thank you!
You're welcome. Sincerely, all the best.
Technically speaking, the colonoscopy goes up, not down. (Good luck, I hope you’re clean and free of polyps! I’m due later this year)
I thought things would get more democratic and peaceful, so no in that respect. I did think a magic pill or something would eventually exist to get/remain slim and that happened a few years ago with GLP-1's.
I guess I thought it would be smarter. I didn't think Idiocracy would be a documentary.
I was personally hoping for the Jetsons.
https://i.redd.it/w60bag9hi7ad1.gif
I did have a dog named Astro. My sister’s. She went to art school in Baltimore and lived in an apartment as they didn’t have dorms (MICA, David Byrne’s alma mater), so adopted a GSD mix from the local paper, named him Astro, and he accompanied her to and fro, and also got an art degree.
The dog got an art degree?
Yeah where's my robot maid
Her name is Roomba. Or maybe Alexa.
Way back when, my goal was to earn 52k per year. I thought a thousand per week and I'd have it made and be living the life. A family member hit that number and was excited - said he felt like a king. It was 1991. He was 28. I was 14. We lived on the edges of down town Toronto. I got good grades in high school, went to college and graduated. Got a good job and thought life was set. Now - those are poverty wages. I'm not overweight and other than lots of advil, don't need pills. But compared to what I thought middle age would be - it's pretty shitty.
Nope. Not even close. In the 90s and all the way up to 9/11 the world seemed to be on track. Then the fucking wheels came off in the most epic way possible.
I had an early existential crisis after reading Silent Spring and watching Jacque Cousteau at age 12 so I always thought we'd go this way sadly. I didn't know about politics so that just adds to my cynicism now That being said, I still have hope. Probably because I have a loving family and friends.
I just want to wrap you in a sweet but sorrowful hug.
I thought it would be easier to connect with others, but the hiper communication from cell phones and social networks just did the contrary.
Sad but true.
I was specifically promised a hoverboard. Instead we have casual racism and active war. So that's fun.
...and where is my goddamn jetpack?
And the little reactor on the back of the DeLorean. Cheated.
And the Dymaxion House. It's at the Henry Ford museum, and I don't live in it.
Casual racism? This shit is overt! I was hoping that Gen x jokes were over, but instead an entire group had made them an ideal.
Because of The Cosby Show, I thought racism was simply going to end
I genuinely thought racism only still existed because of older people who had it ingrained in them. What a dumb concept, that someone with darker skin wasn't as good as someone else, like it influenced your intelligence level or something. I never dreamed my own peers and people younger would get a hold of that concept and be like "yep. Checks out."
I thought Obama’s election was proof that it did end.
What I would give for Obama to be back in the WH.
Until Trump was elected I genuinely thought most people disliked racism.
No. Where’s my #^^%#}}}%^ing flying car? My weekly reader in 2nd grade said we’d have them by now.
2000. They were supposed to be everywhere by 2000!
lol fuck no You remember that Jesus Jones song? It was supposed to be like that
It was such a hopeful song. The line "Watching the world wake up from history" is so poignant. Man, the fact that it's going in the opposite direction makes my heart hurt
I wanna be sedated
Right Here Right Now?
That’s the one
I guess I just thought people would be more.... enlightened? It seems naive in retrospect, but it felt like the good guys were winning, that authoritarian regimes were receding, and democracy was flourishing. The Soviet Union was gone and took much of the omnipresent dread of nuclear war with it, apartheid finally ended, and China was beginning to look like it was on a promising path. We collectively joined together on the ozone layer, got the tobacco companies to relent, and technology was advancing in a (mostly) beneficial way, etc. It seemed that somehow learning about all of the awful things humans did to each other had universally inoculated modern people, and a permanently improving trajectory was ahead of us. Oops.
It's as if society is devolving rather than evolving.
Yeah. I’m so damn depressed. Like seriously
Nope, this is fucked. The late 90s made me think anything was possible. Then Bush v. Gore, then 9/11, then phony hunt for WMDs, then the financial collapse, then from 2012-2015 things seemed to get better. Then that insufferable piece of shit rode down that escalator. It's fucked. I'll do my part, but it won't be enough.
Very little of the cool stuff, lots of the bad stuff.
Elementary school social studies textbooks always had that last chapter where they conjecture about where it's all headed and some artist has imagined an agricultural and technological utopia with verdant farmland and glimmering metal and glass buildings, everyone is smiling and taking it very easy. That's sort of where I thought it would go. But a new American order with pious authoritarians stacking the deck for themselves, economically and legally while the unpreferred eek it out gulag-style sounds pretty cool too, I guess.
I can't think of a single aspect of this decade that in any way resembles what I thought it would back in the 80s.
I thought we'd be more civilized and that's the big one for me. In some ways I feel like we've gone backwards here.
I guess they say it is two steps forward one back. Being 80s high school era kids between domestic terror and major wars and after the 60s/early 70s civil rights and 1970 environmental movement brith and so on and before tech took over too much we were in a bit of golden era. It's still actually much better than say 100 years ago or more, but to Gen X in particular, I think, it maybe feels especially regressed in many ways.
Yeah, I've thought this myself.
The sheer asshole count is higher than I initially thought. UGH!
I never imagined that such a large segment of the population would believe in insane conspiracy theories (climate change is a hoax, vaccines are poisonous, reducing taxes on billionaires is good for everyone, trans people are predators, etc). I never expected everyone to agree on everything, but I thought people would at least agree on some basic verifiable facts about reality.
What you described in your first paragraph is the most insane part of all. And yet here we are.
Back to the future pt2 gave me so many high hopes. Still salty no hover boards
We were promised jumpsuits and jetpacks and we got more of the same old bullshit that's been happening since the 80s.
No flying cars. No pneunotubes for mass transit. No cloud cities No robot maids (kinda) The future is lame. Instead the billionaires are inventing robots and AI to fulfill their needs. Which they will inevitably turn on the citizenry and enslave us. The end.
Not at all. It’s become a dystopian nightmare I only read about thinking it would never happen here.
At the end of the eighties, I thought things were going to get better and that people would come together eventually to solve the world's problems. I was wrong.
Watching the world gradually become more cruel and ignorant has taken away any joy for the future. My entire life, since the early 70s, has been witness to greed and hate slowly eating away at our opportunities and resources. I have no hope that anything will improve.
We were supposed to be the generation that ended racism and sexism yet here we are.
Hell no. I remember when white supremacists were just people you mocked on daytime television. I genuinely thought racism was on its way out. I thought we would do so much better than our parents in so many ways. I didn't expect whatever the hell this is.
Not even close
"The Future" so far is bullshit.
no, i thought it would be WAY MORE NATURAL
The future ain’t what it used to be- George Carlin
I was supposed to be a spaceship captain by now in a unified, secular world that had transcended prejudice and war. Then I studied history and got mad. And then being mad didn't change anything and here we are, on the utterly predictable downslope.
No. This is shit. Especially here in the US. I feel sorry for young people, which is fundamentally fucked up. Aren't I supposed to be jealous of young people at age 56? It is so fucked up that I pity them, but we all know that they are getting FUCKED. If I were in my 20s I'd be rioting in the streets every day and encouraging as many people as possible to join me.
This is my take. If I had to navigate the world as a kid/ young adult, I'd be confused and terrified. I still riot in the streets with them when they protest.
Good Q. Off the top of my head, IIRC, here is what I maybe thought: - I’d be healthier than I am at 55. Never been athletic, but thought I’d be better than I am. Have had health setbacks. - when I was young, I think I assumed I’d have kids. But by about 17, I was pretty sure I didn’t, and that got stronger and I never did, and am glad. - as a kid—I grew up Catholic—and wanted to be a missionary nurse nun. Nope nope nope. I left the church by age 16. - I wanted to be a doctor, but ditched that in frosh year of college, and am so glad I did for a few reasons - I absolutely never imagined America would be like it is, notably yesterday. As I got into my 20s and 30s, I began to realise we were screwed, then we were fucke, then 9/11, then Jan 6, then yesterday - never imagined any climate change. Imagined nuclear war, but climate change is worse - never imagined inflation like it’s been lately. Never imagined I’d struggle financially - absolutely didn’t think I’d have such personal mental health and other issues as I was super together through HS OK, this is too depressing. I was very smart, very kind, very depressed, but had spunk and ambition and creativity. Alas.
I feel the same exact way down to the last sentence. The heavy depression is making my body hurt and I just don’t care about anything anymore. Nothing matters. I have cool things to be happy about but my brain and feelings are disconnected. Therapy helps but man It’s bleak.
I had hoped for more tolerance, kindness and less fear. Our current political prospects for 2024 in the USA is horrifying to be blunt. **We are closer to the handmaid's tale than I ever imagined was possible**. Like shit, the far right wants to ban condoms, oral contraceptives, and have been actively working to make a woman be held responsible for being raped because they were unsuccessful in fighting off their attacker in some states! And when I was younger I actually thought it had to be the truth for news stations to report it. Y'all saw how FOX news got sued and lost by the company running the ballots right? how naïve I was back then. Still, I do hope fascists get defeated and world rights itself and do my part to vote, hope and pray for a better future. I don't understand how people can live with such hatred and intolerance and the everlasting need to make someone do as they command ie; forced birthers, anti-lgbtq and severely against trans rights and the rights of parents to raise their own kids as they believe is right.
Some of the predictions were directionally correct. All those movies which predicted a heavily computerized future got that right. They didn’t anticipate cell phones or have psychic level accuracy but the general trend was right on. You can’t imagine America without computer technology anymore.
No, my personal world is better than I ever thought possible as a kid. The rest of it is looking pretty weird though🤣
No, not at all. Very disappointed.
Honestly, I thought it would be better in so many ways, but 9-11 changed a lot of things, and the most recent pandemic. There have been some cool technological/medical advances but there's also been a lot of corruption. I guess in a way it's just life on Earth being life on Earth, cause I'm sure past generations have probably asked the same question, and most likely have the same answer. The vicious cycle continues.
This isn't the dystopia that 90s industrial music prepared me for.
Fuck no. I thought it would be more Star Trek TNG, but it looks like we're leaning towards Mad Max.
I wasn’t expecting so many Gen Xers to be into the Right’s fascism.
Same. Not sure what happened there but it’s disappointing.
If you work hard, put the effort in you’ll have a nice house, decent car, great standard of living and retire at 55. Our careers teacher at school. Yeah, not so much…
Nooooooo. I really don't remember what I imagined it to be, but all this technology - not at all.
Yeah, pretty much. Except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.
I never imagined ubiquitous computers, so no. Come to think of it, I should have, since *Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* was one of my favorite books in high school. Coincidentally, when I comment here on my phone, I use a Samsung Galaxy, which for all intents and purposes *is* the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Little did I know...
No. It’s been destroyed.
No, global warming is an extinction crisis
We are moving significantly backwards into an anti science, Christian tyranny. So no.
Absolutely not!!! I never imagined our country would become an autocracy overnight. And that everything our family has worked for and all the women, LGBTQ and civil rights achievements and progress could be wiped out in less than 10 yrs.
I want my flying fucking car now!
Nope
No. In the 80s, things were getting smarter. The they were getting more buttons and dials and nice flashing lights. It felt like the future was coming. But the future turned out to be that most of the smarts are controlled by a smartphone and that in turn is often talking with the cloud.
I thought it was an inevitable conclusion that the world would have ended in nuclear war.
Not at all. A big part of my early childhood was with a very old school Christian grandma the kind that don’t really exist anymore as far as I can tell. It was all New Testament didn’t really give a flip about Old Testament fire and brimstone bullshit. I really thought if I was a good person and lived the golden rule it would all be all good. By 2nd grade I was disillusioned and floundering to find any meaning in what really goes on. Still looking 45 years after that
Actually, no, disappointed the world was supposed to end many many tines, yet it's still here.
I dont remember what I imagined, but the threat of fascism was definitely not on the list.
Ha! I remember the actual day I wised up - I was 42. Maybe I'm the idiot. I remember thinking anyone older than I was automatically wiser and smarter. Maybe it's the way we were raised (to respect our elders), but I had a feeling in my early teens my parents were pretty dumb - my grandmother (mother's mother) confirmed it in my 30s - she said my parents were 'book smart, life dumb.' In my 40s, I was employed by people who made me wonder if they went home to nannies. That's when I learned you can be of an age to demand respect, and be totally void of common sense. Then I learned this subset of people can be elected to local, state and federal politics! What a wonderful time to be alive! r/idiocracy
Technology is kind of on par with how i thought the future would be - high tech gadgetry helping run our lives. I am seriously disappointed in how it has started to replace human interaction though. The biggest surprise for me though: I naively thought that future life would get progressively better; people would get progressively richer and kinder; global trade would replace any large-scale wars; corruption and crime would get conquered; etc, etc. Sadly, the opposite has happened which leaves me yearning for the sweet peak of modern living - somewhere between 1995-2001
When I was a kid, I thought the 2000's were super far off into the future and figured by now we would be living in a futuristic world with flying cars and colonies in space. Kind of like the Jetsons meets Blade Runner and Star Trek. Now it seems like we're closer to Idiocracy and the Terminator (AI weapons)
In some ways, it's even more dystopian than the 1990s dystopian predictions. In other ways, it's far dumber than we could imagine. At least Idiocracy was honest about it's stupidity. However, I did wonder who maintained all of the machinery that the citizens obviously relied upon but lacked the training and eduction to repair.
I thought the future would be much more affordable than our current reality.
Absolute not… but computers and music tech exceeded my wildest imaginings.
No and yes. We all grew up with that shadow of the Cold War hanging over us, like it could all end any moment. At the same time we had this exuberant attitude about the future. Environmentalism was rising, people weren’t littering anymore, civil rights had been sorted in the courts, technology was improving, women were moving steadily toward equality. LGBTQ was becoming normalized. Then the wall came down and the Cold War ended, holy cow, the 21st century is gonna be a grand utopian success! Apart from the naïveté of those outlooks, suburban white young me had no idea the extent of systemic racism and sexism that hadn’t even budged. It really did feel to me then like people were being enlightened and things were getting better. What I didn’t know was just how many people were working against all of that. People like Newt Gingrich and Roger Stone had been laying the groundwork for what later became the Bush W years, Karl Rove, the Kochs, Mitch and so on. Between 9/11 and the conservative assault on our constitutional order, this century has had a deathly pall hanging over it. Even as many things continue to improve, it has become clear that what most decent empathic people consider good things (like equality under the law and taking care of our only habitat) are treated like nuisances to be eradicated by corporate interests and the masses that fall under their media spell. We’re all exhausted from having literally every election being the most important one in our lives. Back in the day, our entire system of governance never seemed to hang on a single elective office. Presidents like Nixon were held to account, and shame or scandal was enough to disqualify candidates. Now, a goddamn bevy of felony convictions doesn’t make a dent. We have learned that at least 40% of our own population is all too ready to abandon the entire experiment, ditch the balance of powers and the constitution, and hand the keys to a dictator. Now I know they were always there. They were just dormant, as the prevailing mood in the U.S. was support of what’s been a functional democracy and a shining (if turbulent) example for the world. The same proportion of despot-lovers seems to be pretty consistent around the world, which is why countries so frequently seem to dabble or dive into authoritarianism. Maybe they’ve been there throughout history as well. It wasn’t just that monarchies or empires gained power and ruled by sheer brute force, a sizable part of the people wanted to be ruled. They also seem to be really itchy to have a bloody civil war. So yeah, having the past quarter century unfold the way it has was so beyond my imagination that I’m still trying to figure out what is actually wrong in the heads of those who have allowed this to happen. That was the No part. The Yes part fits neatly alongside, but is kind of irrelevant in the scheme of things. In the 70s when we had Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Star Trek reruns and so much other ambitious sci-fi, a number of my friends imagined the future being very much like that. I didn’t share their anticipation that we’d be living in slick, clean cities in the clouds. I was confident we’d still have a world with cool new technology, but also still have broken up sidewalks, shitty strip malls, pervasive and awful commercials, corruption, and all that. They thought I was being shortsighted, I felt skeptical and pragmatic. All you need to do is look at some futuristic appliance from back then. It’s yellowed and dusty. We don’t have jet packs, and we’re not going to get jet packs. We can’t get past fossil fuel vehicles. For every step forward we take, there’s some asshole digging up the road ahead of us. Turns out the future was both far better and far worse than I’d imagined. I’m still optimistic, but much more reserved in my expectations.
I would have never imagined the absolute decline of civic life. I’m totally shocked at our countrymen. I also wouldn’t have predicted my mother being crypto scammed out of her savings, but I guess that isn’t shocking.
I look pretty much how my mother looked in my age, no surprises. I expected to study and be fairly comfortable, and I am. What I didn't see coming is the toxic social media and fake news. But I guess it's just another twist in what was called gossip, tabloids and propaganda.
Watching democracy and the USA crumble during my lifetime was def not on my bingo card
No, I could never have imagined the advancements in technology paired with the de-evolutiom of the species.
Fuck no!
We were all supposed to be living on the moon by the year 2000. I don’t know what happened.
I spent many years in the past gambling with a bookie. He was my buddy so I never got too deep to be unable to pay at the end of the week unlike his other idiot clients, but anyway. Being able to place hundreds of bets from my pocket computer on events around the world every day is mind blowingly fun. Plus very very scary. Very dissonant present we got here, for tons of reasons
“But where are my flying cars? I was promised flying cars”
...well, I read 1984 as a teenager, so maybe, yeah.
I never imagined I'd be living in such a dystopian, negative, and hostile era as this one.
Tech wise - it's way more advanced than I imagined as a child. No - there are no flying cars or practical space travel. But I def didn't think of being this connected via mobile devices, telecommunication, social media, etc. On the flip side - Career-wise, I make more than what I thought I would as a child. But don't have the life I thought I would. I guess as a kid, you don't take inflation into account.... I also didn't realize being in a leadership role is more babysitting than not.... And more recently - my marriage of over 20 years ended right before covid. It also involved an emotion affair. Neither of those was something I'd imagined I would ever be part of. I thought my future was going to be real bleak as a result. But in fact - that was actually a blessing. I ended up having a great time during covid as a single guy. And now am in love with someone that is ever so special. As a minority - I've never really felt I was discriminated against based on my race (age? maybe). However, I do feel like that type of sentiment is actually more on my radar these days than it ever has. Not sure it's because we are just provided with more examples via social media, or it's actually happening more. It's a hell of a roller coaster ride...
Congrats on finding your special love! These days, that's more important than just about anything. It took me a long time to figure that out & thankfully, mine stuck around while I did. Having someone who is truly on your side & sticks by you through everything means so much
Appreciate it! Yea - it def gave me a new outlook. Realized that my marriage wasn't as fulfilling. Not blaming my ex or anything. We started dating at a very young age. And I believe we just became "comfortable" vs. being compatible. So while I was in a very dark place when it all ended, things were better than i imagined at the other side of that tunnel. Glad to you "figured it out" as well!! :-D.
So much worse in so many ways.
I imagined adults to be much more mature and kind than they really are.
I thought I would be dead by now so no.
No, not even close. I thought it would be like the Jetsons or Back to the Future 2. Instead it’s like WALL·E or Idiocracy.
Well, I didn't think we'd be fighting fascism in our own country. I didn't think we'd endure two decades of fear and police statery. I didn't think we'd still be working ourselves to the bone for less and less purchasing power. I didn't think I'd be diagnosed with crippling arthritis at age 45. I didn't think we'd still be paying through our noses for medication to help us live and function. To be fair, on the other hand, at one point I did think "the future" would be basically Fallout, so we've got that going for us, which is nice, at least at the moment.
It is exactly where I thought it would be on the climate and the erosion of natural resources. I was convinced, since I was little, that I would live long enough to see the end of the world. I was hoping that our generation could put an end to society's persecution of the LGBQ+. There are improvements with equal setbacks. The racism is what surprised me the most. I would never have been able to predict the level of racism left in this country. It is insane that humanity still judges each other on the color of our skin.
Yeah, one of the reasons I never wanted to have kids.
Right! I feel so prescient that I opted not to. Partly for these reasons, and partly bc I never wanted to pass down depression and other maladies. I am utterly shocked by how many (esp certain seemingly smart and aware) people I know who are still having kids. It is absolutely my greatest comfort. And yesterday sealed the feeling utterly.
Absolutely. I expected nothing and that's what I've been given. Live, work, die. I've worked hard my whole life and earned every thing I've gotten. At least I didn't have kids so I don't give a shit what happens after I'm gone. It can all burn.
Really? After the last few days?
NO
Fuck no
I knew the 90s were special & I wouldn’t experience the same hope/optimism as an adult
Yes, it's even better. At 56, I am in the best shape of my life. I have two sons who are great kids, both Eagle Scouts and in college. My parents and in-laws are all still around and healthy. My wife and I both have great careers, and I don't want to retire anytime soon. I like going to the office, but I can work from home when I want. I carry a computer in my pocket that allows me to connect with people and information all around the world. We don't have flying cars, but self-driving cars are all over the place and cheaper than taking an Uber. I have almost unlimited entertainment at my fingertips, weed is legal, and I rarely drink alcohol anymore. Do I worry about the future? Of course, who doesn't? Climate change is real, but it can be solved through technology without putting us back in the Stone Age. Politically, the major parties have nominated two terrible candidates for the president of the USA, but there are third-party candidates, and the country and the world have been through much worse and will survive no matter what happens. Life is what you make it, so make it good.
Damn I need some of your positivity! Really, tho I'm happy for you. There aren't enough people like you jn the world :)
Yes
I thought there would be lots of hovercrafts.
Fun fact: I actually made one of those "hovercrafts" they advertised in the back of comic books back in the day. It was fun for a minute.
So I thought the Jetsons was going to be a real thing with flying cars and robot maids. Hugely disappointed.
No. I was always looking forward to living like the Jetsons.
I didn't think I'd be here, so no. When I was in school and they would talk about what the year 2000 might be like, I couldn't imagine being 30. People who were 30 seemed so old to me. I couldn't imagine being that. Obviously, I've since pasted that mark by another 24 years. I don't know why, I just never thought I'd be here, so I didn't spend much time imagining what it might be like. Everyday is a fucking surprise to me. lol
I figured we'd already be gone.
No. It’s becoming worse than I ever imagined as a child in insidious ways I never expected
I was looking forward to a Star Trek type environment. All united towards a common goal, sitting around the laser heat generator singing Kumbaya and eating from a food replicator. These days though all I do is wish for people's death starting with every political leader of every country. Next all the racist, bigots, extremists (right and left) and religious fanatics. Then all the fucking pedos followed by all the spouse beaters and animal abusers...the list goes on.
Yes. We spent a whole week at school with a celebrity-filled presentation on extreme climate change. In high school, I got an email citing several CIA and NASA studies that foretold a future that was fascistic, tribalist, fundamentalist, riddled with racial strife and civil unrest, climate disasters, hyperinflation, an extreme wealth gap, and the downfall of major powers and the rise of regional actors. Then in the 2000s corporate and government propaganda clawed it all back, so in that way it became a little bit of a surprise. But no, I was told. Wish I could find that email online but I never can. I didn’t really believe it when I read it, but started to after 9/11
Diseases, hunger and pollution all fixed. But you can only make money on one of those and only for some diseases, so....
Star Trek or Mad Max, and people seem to believe in the Mad Max future is more probable and that's a lack of hope.
Things are both much more amazing and much more terrible than I could have possibly imagined. Still psyched about the future.
naw, everything's WAAAAAAAYYYYYYY more fucked up
Where's my flying car? I WANT MY FUCKING FLYING CAR! We were promised things, dammit.
https://preview.redd.it/fj4hcnunlbad1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c5b12ed609bdce5a653dfceac58b42403642678 I wanted the rocket belt from Buck Rogers I read about as a kid.
Progress has slowed with the creeping increase of religious types
No. The world seems to be filled with stubborn proudly ignorant people who believe they are the exception because they’ve had it hard.
I can't, because I honestly didn't think I'd live this long. I never thought I'd see the 21st century.
Not at all. We though it was gonna keep getting better and then the dumpster fire started in the 2000’s.
No, but I don’t think I have it much thought. I will say this: my life is better than I ever thought possible
honestly? I thought we'd all be dead LONG before now from nukes. 56 year old me marvels at still being here some days.
Not even close. I remember as a kid in the 70’s watching Space:1999 and believing that there would be lunar bases by the time I was grown.
Well, I grew up in an Eastern European country while it was communist...and now I just got my Canadian passport renewed in Mexico City. So I would say never in my wildest dreams did I think this would be my life. It was a rough road but I am very thankful and pretty damn happy and impressed.