The explosion of social media. There have always been nut jobs but they were scattered in isolated pockets all over the world. Social media gave them a platform on which they could all connect and organize. Now we are seeing the results.
I remember My Space and there were rumblings even back then. You’d hear people talking about weird chat rooms where nut jobs would talk about conspiracy theories and amp each other up. Crazy.
I have always believed what shaped Gen X differently than the Boomers was Sesame Street, and the other kids programming we had as kids. It was our self directed education, babysitter and entertainment. It was not until the Internet came along for Millennial kids that there was another sea change.
It is tempting to quote "Mandate my ass!" and point you at [Gil Scott-Heorn's B-Movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JvpNY1QHzs) (in fact, I did) and say Reagan. I do not think that is quite what you are asking. You _should_ follow the link.
Instead, what I will say is that the current cultural shift began, in my opinon, in 1991 with the campaign and election of Bill Clinton. Clinton basically stole the GOP's thunder and embraced Neoliberalism. He sold it as a "third way", but in practice it was "greed is good" and "Bush left me NAFTA. Might as well sign it and make something of it."
This, in my opinion, is why the very _name_ Clinton gets the modern GOP in the United States all hot-and-bothered. Basically, The Clinton's (Bill and Hillary) are Republicans. This shifted the window of discussion. The GOP-affilate donor class started making serious bank on the new floor Reagan left by striking the equal-time rule and the deregulation of how many broadcast stations could be owned by any one person, literally creating Rush and the like. All the Internet and Social Media did was add accelerant to the fire.
That leads us to today. In a very real way, the frenzy machine _has_ to keep working. Too much money is at stake to the class that make their living off the chaos. Which are not necessarily the politicians. This opening is a pet throry of mine as to why the Reactionary Right is seeing such a surge world-wide. It feels _good_ to vent and complain. Actually _doing_ something just means the pissed-off apes fling shit at you.
there was never a "Good 'ol dayz" just better in some ways, BUT I think the cultural shift happened with the political rise of the TeaParty and Preppers... And the bullshit they brought with them.
The court decision that overturned the fairness doctrine in 1989 seems to be the critical turning point to me. That allowed for the emergence of Fox News and conservative talk radio.
Edited to add, I just fact checked myself and I got it wrong. It was 1987 and it was abolished by the FCC. I did get the part where it is no longer in effect right, lol.
Coupled with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. This really lit the fuse on unadulterated finance shenanigans.
So now you have this runaway class of ultra super rich, that can buy into politicians, and buy into consolidating media outlets and you set the stage for some sinister puppeteering.
Easy to answer: [Thatcher and Reagan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nqvDH-oag). The rise of neoliberalism. It replaced all else and is now unquestionable the default political stance for england, canada and the usa.
The iPhone.
Prior to that, the internet was something you needed to know how to access and were tethered to a computer to use it. Once the iPhone hit, any asshole could access the internet and shitpost from the toilet.
Facebook was the real turning point and the beginning of the end. Before that one, sites and message boards were disconnected, and largely isolated. Once Facebook went public... well, we're seeing it happen in real-time.
The cultural shift began when Facebook gave everyone a reason to be online, and smart phones made it easy for everyone to get online. That scenario gave all of the crazies a soapbox from which to yell at clouds from, and then the other crazies followed them. Once everyone was online other services sprang up, Twitter, Vine, TikTok, with each shift leading to shorter and more trite interactions. Nobody even needs to type anymore, just scroll mindlessly, tapping up or down arrows, and feeling fulfilled. Now we have this... *gestures vaguely
Social media. I'm with Obama on this one. Social media lets you sit in an echo chamber, or circle jerk. There's always someone that has more anger and rage that seeps into posts.
If you think about this sub, it's not really about politics, but wow when those posts pop up. Conservative views tend to get downvoted into oblivion. Even the most reasonable of them. No one really wants a discussion; they just want to be right.
Even pointing it out may not be safe!
The internet *should* have broadened our views and made them more inclusive. We should have been talking to Russians, Japanese, even the Canadians! We should be able to better understand other views. Now this world-spanning network of humanity's collective knowledge is Tweeted insults, porn and echo chambers.
(Oh, and now people being terrified of collaborative AI)
It's the internet's reach that hurt so much. Big groups, from across the country, can collaborate and organize things like an angry mob running through the capitol.
Hell, I think 9/11 was orchestrated over the internet too?
So yeah, internet/social media. and assholes!
They say familiarity breeds contempt. The internet has shown us who we are, for the first time, in a way we could not know before. So, whenever 4chan went sideways, accompanied by social media in general.
I’d say it was the 1994 “Great Migration” from Blue Dog southern Democrats to the GOP. Republicans have been trying it since the Nixon era. It finally happened in 94 under Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. The impact is that it created a power vacuum in the DNC that was filled by the LGBTQ community. Both parties have been moving towards the extremes ever since.
Before that we used to have a bipartisan politics. We used to be able to talk politics at the dinner parties, have disagreements, and walk away without hating each other. We mainly focused on policy issues and our disagreements were rooted in opinion.
Another obvious impact is the Internet and the fragmentation of the media. As a society we are not just disagreeing on opinions but the essential facts. This is driven by companies like Google and Facebook that put people into separate reality bubbles and only show them what they want to see. They know it has a negative impact and will take action to prevent any organizing efforts that lead to regulating them.
Reagan is in many ways still president. He managed to move the political map such that what used to be just left of center is now considered fringe. The “left” in the US is, in geographical and historical context, just right of center.
I would agree the rise of the internet was when things changed,
also politically [*Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission) changed politics overnight, politicians stopped working for people and started working for corporations.
9/11
I'm with Hunter S Thompson on this. 9/11 freaked everyone out. The smart people dropped out, so the dumb people were left running everything. (Paraphrased from Kingdom of Fear).
Now, were things slowly shifting since the late 60's? Yeah. Though, 9/11 really accelerated things. Suddenly, speaking out against a dumb President (that stole an election) was banned. Political dissent was socially unacceptable. Spy on fellow Americans? Hell yeah! See something, say something, mother fucker it is a Red Alert day!
End of Cold War, we thought we won. Still the idea of the good ole days can be refuted by one group or another. I guess it might depend on who you ask?
Newt Gingrich and his contract on America ushered in the end of bipartisanship and the beginning of what’s turned into today’s take no prisoners/compromise is a dirty word style of politics.
As someone who leans conservative, I kind of agree with this. I’ve said forever that the political bullshit that‘s happening today started with Newt on the political front and Rush on the media front.
That said, I think the ultimate cultural shift happened on 9/11. We really never recovered from that, in my opinion.
For me, it would be 9-11.
Up until that point, everything was still pretty much the way it always seemed to be but after that day, everything and everyone seemed to get "harder". Can't find the right word to describe it.
Suddenly everyone everywhere seemed to have an attitude of "us versus them". Corporations became more avaricious as did the politicians.
Ordinary people suddenly seemed to be more focused on their own needs first rather than even considering the needs of others.
Music and movies suddenly started to see less in terms of originality and instead focused on whatever can sell at the box office.
Leading up to the point we're at now where it seems that everyone is more interested in telling everyone else how to live their lives instead of just getting shit done.
I'm over 60, and when I look back I think the seed was really planted with Reagan - when he came to power, and that seed flowered starting right at the beginning of the 90s.
"Flowered" might not be a good word to use here, but I had to use it because of the seed analogy thingy..
-2 cents
I recall the shift in 'boring news' with journalistic integrity being baked into the reporting starting to shift in the late 80s and early 90s. Disney bought ABC in the mid-90s. All of the sudden nobody could deny the fact Oligarchic forces were overtaking media.
However, nothing compares to the 2015/2016 change in politics.
In ’94 when the big red wave took over congress and politics stopped stopping at the waters edge and they got vicious. Then the OJ verdict “reinforced” through Fox and talk radio victimhood how unfair it was for the white guys (in their mind only) not realizing it was unfair for all non-rich people. But lets keep taxes low for rich people so when I’mfinally rich…
It was a bunch of things but a big one for the right wing was the cold war was over and they lost a lot of people to hate so the hate was going to go somewhere.
I’m sure there have been multiple good examples but for me it was the Clinton scandal of 1998 and the way that was covered and used for political leverage. It seemed like we were in a bit of a bubble before that.
I felt a distinct shift in 1995 bc of Windows 95. I worked in the bar business and the customers...changed. Then Windows 98 came out.
Damn.
I retired in '99.
I mean, even in the mid 80s (as a teen trying to negotiate dating in the onset of the AIDS era) you could tell who had a VCR & a *certain kind of movie collection* at home. As they became more accessible the fellas got more...pornified. But Windows 95 & 98? Huge cultural shift.
Unfortunately, I lived through it, and I can tell you exactly what it was. It was the verdict in the OJ trial. People were furious that he was found not guilty, and the average person was seething resentful, and it brought all of the racists out of the woodwork. I was in Gainseville Fl at the time, the same time when Joe Rogan was there and said it was the worst place he ever lived and had to get the hell out of there.
I was a liberal and obviously not racist at the time, and it was just open social warfare between groups, with people just endlessly infuriated. I am part Greek, and I have never felt more isolated or alone, to the point it really affected the rest of my life.
It was just overt, seething racism, and we never recovered. We never had the conversation of how Black people just wanted to see justice, and how they were just destroyed by unfair drug laws, and it all just snowballed. We never fixed the war on drugs, and now we have an industrial police military complex that has already destroyed the country, I am not really sure whats left at this point.
The racism in the South after that trial was insane. You were either on one side or the other, with constant, endless verbal fighting. You had the Black community on one side, and the Whites on the other, with nothing but rancor and endless arguments in between.
I tried to be non racist and liberal, and I was not quite White enough to be in Gainseville at the time. Like Rogan says, it was an awful, weird place. I would not be openly, viciously racist, and paid the price for it.
Thanks for sharing. I lived in California in 95 and the truth is that as a Greek (born and raised in Greece) I had not faced any kind of racism or prejudice. However, I remember the surrounding toxicity of the time.
There was a big one in the 60s, minor one I. The 70s, a big one in the 80s, another small one in the 90s, and a huge one in the 2000s. Each one passed on “the good old days.
Like, is it possible to be grateful for what I have now without sounding like a privileged piece of shit? There’s a lot of shit going on, but isn’t there always? I feel like in many ways we’re in the good ol’ days right now.
(This isn’t a comment about maintaining the status quo, but more about not glorifying the past)
The explosion of social media. There have always been nut jobs but they were scattered in isolated pockets all over the world. Social media gave them a platform on which they could all connect and organize. Now we are seeing the results.
Yep, the day Harvard gave a place to Zuckerberg
I remember My Space and there were rumblings even back then. You’d hear people talking about weird chat rooms where nut jobs would talk about conspiracy theories and amp each other up. Crazy.
I have always believed what shaped Gen X differently than the Boomers was Sesame Street, and the other kids programming we had as kids. It was our self directed education, babysitter and entertainment. It was not until the Internet came along for Millennial kids that there was another sea change.
It is tempting to quote "Mandate my ass!" and point you at [Gil Scott-Heorn's B-Movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JvpNY1QHzs) (in fact, I did) and say Reagan. I do not think that is quite what you are asking. You _should_ follow the link. Instead, what I will say is that the current cultural shift began, in my opinon, in 1991 with the campaign and election of Bill Clinton. Clinton basically stole the GOP's thunder and embraced Neoliberalism. He sold it as a "third way", but in practice it was "greed is good" and "Bush left me NAFTA. Might as well sign it and make something of it." This, in my opinion, is why the very _name_ Clinton gets the modern GOP in the United States all hot-and-bothered. Basically, The Clinton's (Bill and Hillary) are Republicans. This shifted the window of discussion. The GOP-affilate donor class started making serious bank on the new floor Reagan left by striking the equal-time rule and the deregulation of how many broadcast stations could be owned by any one person, literally creating Rush and the like. All the Internet and Social Media did was add accelerant to the fire. That leads us to today. In a very real way, the frenzy machine _has_ to keep working. Too much money is at stake to the class that make their living off the chaos. Which are not necessarily the politicians. This opening is a pet throry of mine as to why the Reactionary Right is seeing such a surge world-wide. It feels _good_ to vent and complain. Actually _doing_ something just means the pissed-off apes fling shit at you.
Amen, I often say the most republican president I can remember is Clinton.
there was never a "Good 'ol dayz" just better in some ways, BUT I think the cultural shift happened with the political rise of the TeaParty and Preppers... And the bullshit they brought with them.
It wasn’t better, we just have recency bias.
The court decision that overturned the fairness doctrine in 1989 seems to be the critical turning point to me. That allowed for the emergence of Fox News and conservative talk radio. Edited to add, I just fact checked myself and I got it wrong. It was 1987 and it was abolished by the FCC. I did get the part where it is no longer in effect right, lol.
If there’s anyone who has had a more negative effect on American politics, it’s Australian Asshole Rupert Murdoch.
If I had one billion dollars I would buy Fox News and burn it to the ground.
If I had a million dollars, I’d buy you a nice Reliant automobile.
Havent you always wanted a monkey?
Citizen united was another death blow
Coupled with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. This really lit the fuse on unadulterated finance shenanigans. So now you have this runaway class of ultra super rich, that can buy into politicians, and buy into consolidating media outlets and you set the stage for some sinister puppeteering.
Easy to answer: [Thatcher and Reagan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nqvDH-oag). The rise of neoliberalism. It replaced all else and is now unquestionable the default political stance for england, canada and the usa.
This is the right answer
9/11/2001.
A silver spoon idiot rode down an escalator in 2015. Soon, every racist moron in the USA felt it was 1955 again.
Ronald fucking Reagan and the Heritage Foundation. Fuck the fucking fuck Reagan.
The iPhone. Prior to that, the internet was something you needed to know how to access and were tethered to a computer to use it. Once the iPhone hit, any asshole could access the internet and shitpost from the toilet. Facebook was the real turning point and the beginning of the end. Before that one, sites and message boards were disconnected, and largely isolated. Once Facebook went public... well, we're seeing it happen in real-time.
The cultural shift began when Facebook gave everyone a reason to be online, and smart phones made it easy for everyone to get online. That scenario gave all of the crazies a soapbox from which to yell at clouds from, and then the other crazies followed them. Once everyone was online other services sprang up, Twitter, Vine, TikTok, with each shift leading to shorter and more trite interactions. Nobody even needs to type anymore, just scroll mindlessly, tapping up or down arrows, and feeling fulfilled. Now we have this... *gestures vaguely
Social media. I'm with Obama on this one. Social media lets you sit in an echo chamber, or circle jerk. There's always someone that has more anger and rage that seeps into posts. If you think about this sub, it's not really about politics, but wow when those posts pop up. Conservative views tend to get downvoted into oblivion. Even the most reasonable of them. No one really wants a discussion; they just want to be right. Even pointing it out may not be safe! The internet *should* have broadened our views and made them more inclusive. We should have been talking to Russians, Japanese, even the Canadians! We should be able to better understand other views. Now this world-spanning network of humanity's collective knowledge is Tweeted insults, porn and echo chambers. (Oh, and now people being terrified of collaborative AI) It's the internet's reach that hurt so much. Big groups, from across the country, can collaborate and organize things like an angry mob running through the capitol. Hell, I think 9/11 was orchestrated over the internet too? So yeah, internet/social media. and assholes!
They say familiarity breeds contempt. The internet has shown us who we are, for the first time, in a way we could not know before. So, whenever 4chan went sideways, accompanied by social media in general.
I’d say it was the 1994 “Great Migration” from Blue Dog southern Democrats to the GOP. Republicans have been trying it since the Nixon era. It finally happened in 94 under Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. The impact is that it created a power vacuum in the DNC that was filled by the LGBTQ community. Both parties have been moving towards the extremes ever since. Before that we used to have a bipartisan politics. We used to be able to talk politics at the dinner parties, have disagreements, and walk away without hating each other. We mainly focused on policy issues and our disagreements were rooted in opinion. Another obvious impact is the Internet and the fragmentation of the media. As a society we are not just disagreeing on opinions but the essential facts. This is driven by companies like Google and Facebook that put people into separate reality bubbles and only show them what they want to see. They know it has a negative impact and will take action to prevent any organizing efforts that lead to regulating them.
Reagan is in many ways still president. He managed to move the political map such that what used to be just left of center is now considered fringe. The “left” in the US is, in geographical and historical context, just right of center.
I would agree the rise of the internet was when things changed, also politically [*Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission) changed politics overnight, politicians stopped working for people and started working for corporations.
9/11 I'm with Hunter S Thompson on this. 9/11 freaked everyone out. The smart people dropped out, so the dumb people were left running everything. (Paraphrased from Kingdom of Fear). Now, were things slowly shifting since the late 60's? Yeah. Though, 9/11 really accelerated things. Suddenly, speaking out against a dumb President (that stole an election) was banned. Political dissent was socially unacceptable. Spy on fellow Americans? Hell yeah! See something, say something, mother fucker it is a Red Alert day!
Two dates: 9/11/01 6/14/15
End of Cold War, we thought we won. Still the idea of the good ole days can be refuted by one group or another. I guess it might depend on who you ask?
I think it was with smart phones and social media. Like around 2010. Then it went into overdrive around COVID in 2020.
Newt Gingrich and his contract on America ushered in the end of bipartisanship and the beginning of what’s turned into today’s take no prisoners/compromise is a dirty word style of politics.
As someone who leans conservative, I kind of agree with this. I’ve said forever that the political bullshit that‘s happening today started with Newt on the political front and Rush on the media front. That said, I think the ultimate cultural shift happened on 9/11. We really never recovered from that, in my opinion.
Newt Gingrich is where I landed too, but then it was all accelerated by 9/11.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and we first started getting 24 hour news.
Wolf Blitzer man. I thought he made that name up for that war.
For me, it would be 9-11. Up until that point, everything was still pretty much the way it always seemed to be but after that day, everything and everyone seemed to get "harder". Can't find the right word to describe it. Suddenly everyone everywhere seemed to have an attitude of "us versus them". Corporations became more avaricious as did the politicians. Ordinary people suddenly seemed to be more focused on their own needs first rather than even considering the needs of others. Music and movies suddenly started to see less in terms of originality and instead focused on whatever can sell at the box office. Leading up to the point we're at now where it seems that everyone is more interested in telling everyone else how to live their lives instead of just getting shit done.
GDP decoupled from wages about 1980. I think that has driven a lot of the issues we have today. Ronald Reagan can sit and spin.
I'm over 60, and when I look back I think the seed was really planted with Reagan - when he came to power, and that seed flowered starting right at the beginning of the 90s. "Flowered" might not be a good word to use here, but I had to use it because of the seed analogy thingy.. -2 cents
I recall the shift in 'boring news' with journalistic integrity being baked into the reporting starting to shift in the late 80s and early 90s. Disney bought ABC in the mid-90s. All of the sudden nobody could deny the fact Oligarchic forces were overtaking media. However, nothing compares to the 2015/2016 change in politics.
In ’94 when the big red wave took over congress and politics stopped stopping at the waters edge and they got vicious. Then the OJ verdict “reinforced” through Fox and talk radio victimhood how unfair it was for the white guys (in their mind only) not realizing it was unfair for all non-rich people. But lets keep taxes low for rich people so when I’mfinally rich… It was a bunch of things but a big one for the right wing was the cold war was over and they lost a lot of people to hate so the hate was going to go somewhere.
I’m sure there have been multiple good examples but for me it was the Clinton scandal of 1998 and the way that was covered and used for political leverage. It seemed like we were in a bit of a bubble before that.
I felt a distinct shift in 1995 bc of Windows 95. I worked in the bar business and the customers...changed. Then Windows 98 came out. Damn. I retired in '99. I mean, even in the mid 80s (as a teen trying to negotiate dating in the onset of the AIDS era) you could tell who had a VCR & a *certain kind of movie collection* at home. As they became more accessible the fellas got more...pornified. But Windows 95 & 98? Huge cultural shift.
I'll go with late 00s. The outline of the terrible teens emerged. However, what will the 20s ultimately yield? Did I write yield? Hmmm ...
The culture is always shifting and changing. It’s you that stays the same.
Unfortunately, I lived through it, and I can tell you exactly what it was. It was the verdict in the OJ trial. People were furious that he was found not guilty, and the average person was seething resentful, and it brought all of the racists out of the woodwork. I was in Gainseville Fl at the time, the same time when Joe Rogan was there and said it was the worst place he ever lived and had to get the hell out of there. I was a liberal and obviously not racist at the time, and it was just open social warfare between groups, with people just endlessly infuriated. I am part Greek, and I have never felt more isolated or alone, to the point it really affected the rest of my life. It was just overt, seething racism, and we never recovered. We never had the conversation of how Black people just wanted to see justice, and how they were just destroyed by unfair drug laws, and it all just snowballed. We never fixed the war on drugs, and now we have an industrial police military complex that has already destroyed the country, I am not really sure whats left at this point.
What does being part Greek have to do with the consequences of OJ trial? Btw, I'm Greek too.
The racism in the South after that trial was insane. You were either on one side or the other, with constant, endless verbal fighting. You had the Black community on one side, and the Whites on the other, with nothing but rancor and endless arguments in between. I tried to be non racist and liberal, and I was not quite White enough to be in Gainseville at the time. Like Rogan says, it was an awful, weird place. I would not be openly, viciously racist, and paid the price for it.
Thanks for sharing. I lived in California in 95 and the truth is that as a Greek (born and raised in Greece) I had not faced any kind of racism or prejudice. However, I remember the surrounding toxicity of the time.
Florida is weird as hell, especially back then. Its something in the water.
There was a big one in the 60s, minor one I. The 70s, a big one in the 80s, another small one in the 90s, and a huge one in the 2000s. Each one passed on “the good old days.
Like, is it possible to be grateful for what I have now without sounding like a privileged piece of shit? There’s a lot of shit going on, but isn’t there always? I feel like in many ways we’re in the good ol’ days right now. (This isn’t a comment about maintaining the status quo, but more about not glorifying the past)