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by kongin 1729 days ago
That's because you were young and had no idea what was going on.

A hilariously depressing exercise is just reading old news paper headlines from whatever decade you want to pick and seeing what the world was like then.

I've yet to see a decade where the average person wasn't a hairs breadth away from dying in various unpleasant ways, some musical accompaniment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
1 comments
silisili 1729 days ago
Well sure, that's part of the point. There didn't exist a concept of constant access to news and happenings at every point of your day. Couldn't just pull out your phone and check Fox/CNN, or get updates via social media.

It's like we have access to everything one could want now, which is awesome, but that feels like it's bad for us, collectively, since we have no self control.

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kongin 1729 days ago
>Well sure, that's part of the point. There didn't exist a concept of constant access to news and happenings at every point of your day. Couldn't just pull out your phone and check Fox/CNN, or get updates via social media.

The 24 hour news cycle has been a thing since at least 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN#Gulf_War which incidentally are some of my first memories.

In the 90s you might not have had a mobile phone, but every place you went had a TV with one of the news channels on, and you'd be bombarded with what was happening on CNN, or Fox, or if you were in a really highbrow place the BBC, every 15 minutes. I'd say I'm less exposed to news today because I have earbuds that isolate me much better than anything I could plug into a walkman in the 90s.

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silisili 1729 days ago
Your 90s experience doesn't match my own. I'm not saying your version is wrong, just speaking from my experience, in the south USA. NY or some other metropolis could be miles different I'd imagine.

At one point I had two part time jobs and took night classes. At none of those places were a TV.

In fact, the only places I distinctly remember with TVs were airports and bars/restaurants, and those were hit/miss with having news playing.

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