[CharlesDodgson]

All this winamp talk! This makes me nostalgic of hours of 15 year old me downloading every skin to find the "best one", and listening to the Fragile by NIN. Boomy late 90s pre-9/11 days when everything seemed so solid and successful.

[bob33212]

Same. I don't know if civilization peaked then or if it was just that we were young in a good time

[mulmen]

Between those two, young in a good time for sure. But really, just young in a time. Essentially none of the issues we face today are new in the last 20 years. You were just less aware of them then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999

[jeegsy]

> You were just less aware of them then

True, but with the near instant access to records of events via the Internet, we should try to maintain a distinction between what we remember/experienced and the digital chronicles of the era. I get the feeling that this is going to be even more critical going forward.

[mulmen]

Sure but in 1999 you had access to the Internet. You were just using it to download mp3s instead of find out how many people got blown up in a synagogue halfway around the world. Not to single you out because I was doing the same thing. Also there's clearly more information on the internet today, but we also use it differently. Social media did change how we consume information and created feedback loops we didn't (specifically) have in 1999.

I think you have hit on something very important to internalize though. We tend to look at the past, and especially our youth, through rose tinted glasses. It's important to maintain a realistic perspective on history as it relates to the current day, especially because we know more about the past now than we did then.

My mom thinks the 1960s were a wonderful time to be a kid because that's when she was a kid. She might be right, but I struggle to say civilization was better in 1960 than in 1990 or even 2020. It's all a matter of perspective.

To put it another way if we think the world was best in our youth we probably also think it went to hell when we became adults and started looking around.

[DaiPlusPlus]

I’m not aware of any raging worldwide pandemic like we have today though - not in anyone’s lifetimes going back a few generations.

[asveikau]

HIV/AIDS probably fits the bill or comes close. It doesn't seem as drastic as covid, because of the means of transmission. However, it was newly discovered in many living people's lifetime, and it did spread throughout the entire world relatively quickly.

The others that I remember being scary in media reports contemporaneous with the Winamp-ish era were Ebola (discovered in the '70s, an outbreak in '95), and SARS (2003), but thankfully those never spread worldwide.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> HIV/AIDS probably fits the bill or comes close. It doesn't seem as drastic as covid, because of the means of transmission

Actually, I take back what I said. Looking back at the perception of HIV/Aids (or "GRID" was it was originally known) it's terrifying in context because for a number of years there wasn't any idea about the nature of the disease nor how it spread - whereas with Covid we were able to narrow-down the virus' means of transmission within months.

[tpmx]

https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet

> 32.7 million [24.8 million–42.2 million] people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic.

Hopefully covid-19 could end up causing ~10x fewer deaths.

[asveikau]

When you put it that way, my comment looks pretty insensitive for trying to hedge. Of course HIV/AIDS counts for this!

[rangibaby]

As far as the western world is concerned I think the “peace dividend” was a real thing.

[ngcc_hk]

I suspect you hit a point I never thought in that way.

Politically as point out by a book who we are (the we is American), the American dream as a furnace where all race lives happily together as American x (American American, American Mexican, American Italian ...). Obviously not paradise but the dream is alive.

2. Economically you have the chinese factor which raise up as cheap and very good labour source. And the America get the most of the value added. And the chinese seem to learn and even taste of democracy even (many experiment). Look like it is going to be end of history as all towards market based. Then Soviet Union collapse reinforced the good world.

3. The liberal of internet by a on letting commerical use of internet or at least access. The raising wave of a then liberal media (not to steal personal data in the west or monitor each movement by china).

That were all good and great. Hence 15-25 years ago the world is good.

We are suffered for the dream is not really happen.

The furnace concept is no good as many parts are not merging. They retain their only identity not as a property of American, and America whilst much better than china as more accomodating but nit sure how to deal with its elements.

China turns out is not towards a liberal country at all. Whilst based on its history it might be more left than EU but still one nay hope. But that hope dash and we have a Soviet Union v2.0 totalitarian communist spying race hating religion intolerance country, except this time it is all in USA economy. Fight it you hurt yourselves. And they steal so much you have not much left if not like the rest of the world surrender to its demand. Imagine Harvard today has to worry about its free speech in zoom is unimaginable in 15-25 years ago. Instead it may have to be silence to protect its student from a law in a tidy place called Hong Kong.

Internet is still free and liberal in nature. But it was cut so that country like china can go out and get what you want but Mit the other way round. I use vpn and pretend to be in Uk. I cannot even access many chinese site. But their TikTok and wechat can go to everywhere. Even their citizen is under the spell or monitoring overseas. It is so one sided good luck to the good side of internet. The bad side of access non stop meant monitoring 24 hours, by commerical or national nature.

After great saint you come great thief as Lao Tse has warned.

[bob33212]

Very informative. Thank you

[kimjongtrill]

Proof. Read.

[endgame]

Maybe you'll find it one day in the winamp skin museum: https://skins.webamp.org/

[senorjazz]

> This makes me nostalgic of hours of 15 year old me downloading every skin to find the "best one",

It's classic isn't? :)

[markdown]

Matrix skin FTW!