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( "Not Rewinding VHS tapes before returning to the library or Blockbuster" ... how about going to some video store was kinda cool and added some social aspect to sitting on your couch alone and watching a movie? how can you even add crap like that on such a list with such a title and not realize how delusional this is?)

there are no material life improvements - only more efficient dopamine triggers. but that's not an improvement because before the 90s - guess what - they had their own triggers.

in that spirit you could add how access to more diverse pornography brought happiness to so many lonely men considering how especially a hundred years ago they were so starved they would get aroused at the sight of women's knees. poor bastards.

guess what, your mega-tittie-porn isn't really an improvement over some picture where a woman lifts her skirt you can see her ankles. it's just a fucking going round in circles what you all confuse with "improvement".

life for many people fucking sucks and most of those "improvements" only come at the expense of removing people further from any kind of meaningful spiritual fullfilment.

[megameter]

Access to sexual experiences is something I would count as a great liberation of the past decades. When a man got desperate for release not all that long ago, they didn't hop online for an outlet, they drove to the seedy part of town and visited a strip club, went to a porno theater, solicited hookers, etc. Those things are still around, and there were some possibilities to "phone date", but lack of options made things overall less secure and discreet for everyone involved relative to today where the man can just look up an Onlyfans or prowl Tinder profiles. 1980's teen movies like "Sixteen Candles" were OK with date rape as a concept, and that was just the tip-of-the-iceberg. We're doing better.

This goes even more so if we speak of the spectrum of LGBT identities, which in 1991 was in the midst of losing all continuity with the past because so many died from AIDS; many folks then would stay closeted and quiet because coming out was just too threatening. Casual homophobia was everywhere, and the "gay neighborhoods" of larger cities were somewhat exceptional even within that city. Now it's hardly unusual to be out, though generational acceptance remains rocky.

[thegrimmest]

>there are no material life improvements

I don't know about you, but having cheap access to climate control and refrigeration is a pretty big deal. Even animals appreciate a warm place to sleep and fresh food.

Your reasoning seems ascetic. If a fellow says he's happier with the mega-titties than the ankles, who are you to tell him otherwise? Every human experience can be categorized into a dopamine or cortisol trigger. Who vested the authority in you to decide which of them constitute "meaningful spiritual fullfilment" and which do not?