What were the 80's like?

[Seaworth'sShipmate]

This is a question I have for any gen xers or older millennial on this forum.

What was it like growing up in the 80s? It seems shows on Vh1, and even the general pop culture are filled with 80s nostalgia and love for the decade.

I agree that the film and television of that era was pretty cool. The music, if not better than now was definitely more iconic and innovative than anything now.

I know internet didn't exist, and cable tv was a brand new thing.

For all the nostalgia though, it seems thinks have definitely improved in the past 30 some years. It seems that 1980s America was in a lot of ways like a "tale of two cities", with a large number of people suddenly making a ton of money, but then many others being stuck in the increasningly desperate, poor, cocaine and crime ridden inner cities. I know for sure New York city was much more degraded/dangerous in 1985 than it is now.

I know people love/adore Ronald Reagen. I ultimately like him, and think he probably was what the country needed at the time. But in some ways he kind of seems like an ass. Ive read he was often contemptuous/dismissive of poor people, and more or less got away with calling them "lazy wellfare bums." George W. Bush was never great on this issue, but at least he did a better job of pretending to care about the disadvantaged than Reagen did.

But then, that seems sort of the culture of the 80s in some ways. I get the sense that it was the first recent decade since the 50s (or even the 20s) where being wealthy and extravagant was not only desirable, but "hip" and "cool", in the same way that being a hairy, musical hippy was cool in the late 60s-70s.

My Dad was living in Washington D.C from 1980-82. He told me that pretty soon after Reagen was elected he saw a lot more limousines, expensive champagne at restaurants,and other flashy accessories.

Also, I guess the Cold War was still going on, and few people knew it would end in less than 10 years. Even though Vladimir Putin is kind of a bad actor, I get the sense that even under Gorbachev, the Communist USSR was a much more powerful, repressive and controlled society than the modern Russian federation.

Any thoughts?

[DanteGabriel]

I said it somewhere else, but I'll sum it up -- Ronald Reagan pulled off the incredibly difficult feat of uniting racists, greedheads, warmongers, and rabid McJesusites under his banner. That's the "Reagan coalition" that people talk about. And it's the coalition that has more or less held stable for the last 30 years for the Republican Party, though bits and pieces have been falling off.

He was a guy who spent his military career in World War 2 making movies for the Army and never left the country, bought a ranch, and parlayed that into a tough cowboy warrior image.

He was a divorced Hollywood actor who somehow inured himself to the Bible-clutchers.

He was a self-described defender of freedom who propped up and enabled a stable of brutal right-wing dictators around the world.

Fuck Ronald Reagan. So much of the mess we're in now can be traced to his ability to put a sunny and friendly face on greed, discrimination, and imperial aggression.

[Hereward]

The USSR in the 80s may have been more powerful and a more controlled society, but it was almost certainly less repressive than Putin's Russia and was way more predictable, rational and law-based.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

It was as it was.

[lady narcissa]

The 1980s was an awesome time to be a teenager. For me. Still love a lot of things that stem from that period. But honestly I think a lot of people can feel that sort of nostalgia for whatever decade was their formative teenage decade. And to the extent they had a good experience at that time they are probably going to think it was “the best” and are going to be glad they aren’t in those formative years at a later time period. So I think the 80s was a great time to be a teenager and would hate to be a teenager now. But my parents think the 50s the best decade to grow up in and they wouldn’t have traded it for my experience in the 80s. And I think to be satisfied with your own experience, no matter when it was, is for the best.

The reason pop culture is full of nostalgia for the 80s right now is people who grew up in that period and enjoyed it are now in positions in Hollywood to get tv shows and movies set in that decade into pop culture. When I was growing up, it was exactly the same except the nostalgia was for the 50s with movies like Grease and tv shows like Happy Days glorifying that period. Give it 30 years and pop culture is going to be glorifying the 2010s.

[Nichole]

Keep in mind the recent love for Reagan is nostalgia. People look back on the 80's with rose tinted glasses seeing it as a better time similar to how some baby boomers look back on the 50's as being a better time. For some people, mostly upper middle class white people, the 80's were an awesome time. Reagan was involved in scandals while in office and his economic policies only benefited the rich. He was no savior of this country that some people now see him as.

And so much of the damn music and fashion were horrible. Cable, cell phones and internet are great and I have no desire to go back to a time before those.

To sum it up, 80's were not that great.

[Arataniello]

Rubik's Cubes ruled the world. That was pretty much it.

[all swedes are racist]

The parties were rad though.

Ps: my only regret... is I have... boneitis

[sologdin]

low intensity warfare killed several millions in angola, mozambique, nicaragua, cambodia, afghanistan. that's reaganism, and outsourcing of atavistic savagery to another state's mercenaries. the same basic policies were continued by slick willard, as in the congo wars/rwandan thing.

domestically, 80s are well described by bret easton ellis.

[matt b]

The music, if not better than now was definitely more iconic and innovative than anything now.

No. Just, no.

It was as it was.

Same as it ever was. :cool4:

[eyenon15]

Crack and Aids. Also starving Africans

[all swedes are racist]

Same as it ever was. :cool4:

slow clap

[Nichole]

The parties were rad though.

I was unfortunately too young to participate in what was probably the best part of the decade. :crying:

[HK-47]

Observation: The music of New Order and Depeche Mode, the excessive consumption of cocaine and the encouragment and approval of being materialistc, it looked like a fun time to be a meatbag, I'm almost jealous.

[Free Northman Reborn]

The eighties were awesome.

[Dr. Pepper]

The 80s were punky brewster

[Arataniello]

more iconic

not extremely unique?

[Prince of the North]

The 1980s was an awesome time to be a teenager. For me. Still love a lot of things that stem from that period. But honestly I think a lot of people can feel that sort of nostalgia for whatever decade was their formative teenage decade.

Completely agreed. I think almost everyone is going to look back at their teen years with at least some nostalgia. I turned 21 at the very end of 1989 so the decade was basically the ages of 11 to 20 for me. Now, if I look back at the 80s it's usually just with a mixture of fondness and wonder...as in, "What the hell were we thinking?!" :D

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

I came "of age" in the 80's (and I think I am the oldest person posting here so far.)

I graduated high school in 1983.

What was bad: the economy, the hair, the fashion, the Cold War (to live with this threat, on a daily basis is just insane)

What was good: rapidly advancing technology

Music, amazingly falls under both categories :lol:

For many years, I also suffered from Regan love. For me, it was because I was in the army, and he was all about improving the lives of soldiers. Gave us some much needed pay raises.

Of course, now I can see the much bigger pictures :)

LIke all times, there was both good and bad during the 80's

[Fragile Bird]

The early 80s were brutal for the young. The huge wave of humanity known as the baby boomers had started leaving college and getting jobs in the early 70s, but by the 1980s the peak levels of boomers hitting the system combined with a recession to create unemployment levels well over 12% or 15% in many countries. Combined with massive demands for capital by all those boomers, inflation and political and monetary policies that fought inflation with wage and price controls and high interest rates, interest rates hit 20%. Anyone who tried to start a business watched helplessly as their lines of credit spiralled out of control. All those young couples who bought houses faced staggering mortgage renewal rates. House repossession rates were the highest since the depression. Friends of mine spent five years going nowhere for entertainment, had almost no furniture in their house, and had worn two sweaters in the winter in their house to keep the thermostat in the lows 60s during winter, so they would have a huge lump sum payment to pay down their mortgage after five years. Thank God for that, because with interest rates at 20% when they renewed their new mortgage payments were almost exactly the same as their old payments before their huge payment of capital. They started the new habit of rolling 6 month terms until rates slowly went down. At the end of the decade, iirc, mortgage rates were still 12% or 13%. Those rates caused chaos in 2008 when people found out their high risk mortgages rolled over at those levels.

The situation spawned people like Reagan and Thatcher.

The decade started with natural disaster - Mount St. Helens blew up in May - and ended with a big California earthquake in October, 1989. With more of the same in between.

Social upheaval was in the air around the world. Solidarity started in 1980, and Tiananmen Square happened in 1989, and there was much more in between. In Canada we had crisis after crisis in Quebec, where separatists tried to break-up the country.

People in the 90s sneered at the music of the 80s, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran and Madonna.

But....I had a computer on my desk, and even though when you created a document on Word back then you had to scroll through the entire document and begin again to make a correction (there was no backspacing at first), it was way better than typing. And we had internal e-mail! No one had a computer at home, they were 3 or 4 thousand dollars or even 5 or 6 thousand dollars, but by the end of the decade you had friends you could send e-mails to.

I had no cell phone until the 90s, and it was supplied at work for $850. My boss had one of the original shoebox sized car phones. One of my best friends was the person who created the first cell phone agreement. She had been creating cell phone agreements around the world, because the big companies experimented in Africa first, since there was almost no telephone infrastructure and cell towers networks were easier to create.

Change just left you breathless. :)