Why did everything go to shit after the 90s?
social mediathe only correct answer
It's because we grew up.
>>27771462
Because everyone between the ages of 18 and 21 right now is a terrible person
>>27771539
I always hate this answer. What if things really were better in the 90s?
>>27771539
incorrect
see my answer >>27771503
my uncle was in his 20's in the 90's and loved it
Internet.
I thought it's the greatest thing ever.
God how wrong I was...
>>27771632
What exactly about internet though?
>>27771632
>i thought it's the greatest thing ever.
it was until social media
>>27771462
The internet took off.
>>27771632
>"THE INTERNET WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING"
>mfw it actually did, but it changed everything for the worse
>>27771637
It became popular and integrated entirely into real life.
To word it differently the normies hijacked it.
Fucking underage faggot.
Normies found the internet.
>>27771686
Or rather, normies found social media.
There were always normies using internet, but back in they day they only use it for harmless purposes, for actually useful and worthwhile stuff, and not to share his normality with the rest of the world.
Not for me, things started to really pick up in the 2000's.
>We could have been wearing spacy hats with some nikola tesla thing going on and flying cars to school where you would wear helmets transfering you into some virtual world and experience History first hand.
>Instead we got a sitcom for a time where people take silly pictures of their own face every 10minutes and upload them to a page of silly pictures of them for people to rate their silly pictures to go to a school full of violant niggers so you can go to college to learn about niggerstudies or womenology.
>>27772061
Or not even go to college at all and spend the rest of your life in some dead end job in a grocery store, or in prison, or dead after a drug overdose.
Almost everyone I knew in high school is in one of those 3 categories.
Video games are essentially just colors that move around on your television and encourage to perform repetitive tasks over and over again. Your reward for these tasks is gaining the ability to perform these same repetitive tasks more efficiently, or the ability to perform new repetitive tasks. You also get to experience (second-hand) an interesting plotline and visuals, but since you can get these from movies and television, you can't really justify playing video games for the sake of the plot. You can say that it gives you the intrinsic reward of overcoming a challenge, but since you could always get cheat codes to reduce or eliminate these challenges, they don't actually exist and never have. Video games are a waste of time.
Same thing with candy. It's all just sugar compressed into different shapes and flavored with combinations of the same nine or ten flavors. Same with most artificial snack foods.
Same basic concept with cartoons. Very basic plotlines that are always resolved by the end of the episode, or season for anime.
Since it's not the 90's anymore, you're no longer a kid. You can recognize these facts, even if you can't necessarily explain them fully. It's not that modern videogames/snack foods/cartoons suck, it's that you're not a kid anymore.
The only way for you to fully enjoy life is go out and overcome real life challenges, and engage in real life experiences. But you never bothered to learn how, because as a kid all you did was play video games and eat junk food. So that's the only solution to boredom you know.
Basically, it's not that the 2010's suck, it's that you suck.
>>27772225
Or you're just a retarded armchair psychologist and the 90s were actually better altogether than everything since.
I've even heard 40 year olds harp on about how the 90s were th last good decade, the last time anyone was making good money, the last time people really had hope in the future, etc...
>>27772342
yeah, economically at least, the 90s were objectively better
>>27771587
Things are never better objectively. We just romanticize the past because we were younger and were less connected all of the time. Does social media play a part? Yeah, it changed the landscape of how humans interact.
But don't kid yourselves, you'd still be a depressed shitty loser in 1993. You'd just spend a lot more time by yourself.
>>27771632
>be outgoing popular teen pulling pussy
>friends hand you over a cd
>fallout with parents so you're stuck at home, remember cd
>it's CS
and that's how I regressed from normie. oh and thank you, frenemies.
>>27772650
you sound like a real faggot but i bet youve been told that before
>>27771462
9/11. Just a shift in thinking really.
9/11 and social media happened.
>>27771462
The Internet
> it made wrestling worse because dirt sheets became digital and spoiled kayfabe
> it killed music since you could easily download everything
> smart people stopped watching TV conventionally and left regular programming to poor and stupid. TV changed into an onDemand service with DVD box sets and DVRs.
> It gave shitty subcultures a voice and a means of feeling like they belonged instead of growing up.
> porn was good, but the internet cheapened thrill of seeing a titty or vagina.
> it gave every schmoe the illusion that his opinion mattered, when mega bankers still call all the shots. Now they are louder, but still as powerless.
>>27775273
9/11 didn't change much. Things were gettting worse by 1992-1997. People were afraid of gang violence in the early 90s and by the late 90s, many had already become degenerates. Still there was enough good things to make the decade somewhat good.
> tfw making new games for NES, SNES, Genesis, and Game Boy
BLAST PROCESSING
>>27772650
objectively
80s > 90s >> 2000s >>>>>>>>>> 2010s
>>27775666
The dot com bust was the nail in the coffin honestly, it just so happened that it occurred at the end of the 90s/beginning of the 00s. The 90s saw some great economic growth and generally coincided with a great standard of living and overall mindset, then as soon as millenials came onto the scene the bubble bursts and they are set to inherit one of the shittiest economies in this past century.
There were negatives in the 90s for sure but it was overwhelmingly positive. Everything after the dot com bubble burst has been very downhill.
>>27771462
>after the 90s?
Wrong. After 2007.
>>27775863
This. Even if we barred fb, yt etc new sites and google will build our prison again.
Something after 07 pushed all this.
>>27775666
I am both god and satan.
This happened to the internet.
Smart Phones and Social Media accelerated the process.
We have a large chunk of the collective of human knowledge in our pockets, but Chad and Stacey use it almost exclusively to ask if they wan sum fuk.I guess I'm not much better spending most of my time on an Indonesian cycling forum.
>>27771462
>tfw all snes games are expensive as fuck thanks to retro hipsters who created artificial demand
Thanks, assholes
>>27776002
We can emulate everything anyway. Just hook a raspberry pi up to a CRT and have fun.
>>27771541
He's right, he really fucking is.
>>27771462
>Why did everything go to shit after the 90s?
But video games didn't go to shit truly until like, 2007.
6th gen was one of the best generations of consoles.
But no, everything kinda did go to shit after the 90's, you're right.
>>27771462
Because your a fucking idiot, if you really think that all things are shit after the 90s you really don't know anything.
If you weren't born in the early 80s, you didn't get to experience the 90s to their fullest.
It's a combination of things that basically amounts to
>The domination of social media/digital communication
>The rise of radical left-wing politics to the mainstream
>The elimination of alternative culture
Social media/digital communication killed socialisation. Now even normies spend 80% of their time on their phones rather than engaging in actual human contact. In the 90s and early 2000s, "normalfags" were people who went out and partied rather than spending their time on the internet/on video games. From the late 2000s onwards, "normalfags" are increasingly people who spend the majority of their days using some form of online communication, and who rarely communicate without the use of a digital medium. This means that human communication is distilled down to unfunny "memes", and non-intelligence has become the norm. It is no longer cool to be good at communication. Introversion and social ineptitude is rapidly becoming the norm.
Left-wing politics has ascended from an outsider movement to the cultural mainstream. This is bad both for general society and for genuine left-wing people. General society is negatively affected because young people are hopping on the ultra-socialist bandwagon, and they believe that "anyone who isn't a Sanders-supporting radical feminist is a bigot". It's also bad for the "old left" because left-wing politics is no longer about people power/anti-establishment activism, but it is instead about forcing a social agenda upon society. This combined with social media dominance creates the culture of "virtue signalling", and encourages people to flaunt how "socially aware" they are rather than actually doing anything positive.
Alternative culture, as expressed through the internet/music/video games/movies in the 90s and early 2000s, has also been virtually eliminated. Due to the fact that the internet has become available to anyone and everyone, almost all media is now readily accessible to people. All that exists now is the mainstream.
>>27771462
>the dot-com bubble
>the 9/11
>reality tv
>social media (wikipedia is ok though)
>smartphones
>gaming, anime, internet, comics, "nerd culture" in general becoming mainstream, creating things like tbbt
>economy went to shit in 2007-2008
>>27776111
I was born in the late 70s and was too socially inept to experience things like raves or any music "scenes". All I did on the weekends was vidya.
It was more niche, had less greed, had less ways to capitalize on greed.
Niche hobbies always have more passion in them because well, they're niche. Sure gaming was relatively big back then but it's nothing compared to now. There was more passion and love involved.
Ironically as technology advanced, it just gave developers more avenues to be greedy. DLC wasn't a thing back then. Patches were pretty much PC only and even then, that was a hassle because dial up internet. How we get nickle and dimed over every game, we get incomplete broke garbage released at full price and the developers just saying "we'll patch it later." just so they can make money now. We have DRM up the ass, we have microtransactions, technology was supposed to make gaming better and while it has in some ways it's also brought it down a lot.
When people released games back then, that was a one time deal. You didn't buy Super Metroid expecting fucking the game to crash every 4 minutes with fucking day one DLC selling lewd Samus costumes or power ups and shit. They released full fucking games and that was it. There was no "episodes" (At least not the modern sense where they just cut full games into pieces rather than making each episode a full game), there was no fucking "we'll just patch content in later", you got what you paid for.
There were bad games now but bad games were bad just because they were just badly thought it. It wasn't because the game is so unfairly balanced around an ingame store that it's unplayable or shit like that.
>>27776406
>All I did on the weekends was vidya.
Man, it must have been mind numbing to play those shitty atari games all day.
>>27776395
Nerd culture has been mainstream since 1984
>>27771462
DAE REMEMBER TAPE RECORDERS?
>>27776440
SNES SimCity,, Tecmo Super Bowl, Link to the Past, Earthbound. I did have an old 2600 on which I killed a controller with Decathlon.
>>27777777
Good get lad
>>27776467
>Nerd culture has been mainstream since 1984
Anon pls
The SNES and the PS2 are my favorite consoles of all time. It's not just nostalgia goggles, I play those games every day. Amazing systems that will never be topped anything in the modern day.
>>27776613
Maybe more normies started identifying as "nerd" after the Internet, but everyone was aware of D&D, PC hacking, and gamer cultures for a long time. They just thought they were above it.
>>27776764
Same with comic books and anime currently. Doesn't make them mainstream. Just because they sort of cross over into the mainstream sometimes doesn't make them mainstream.
If you were into any of that shit up until recently, you got bullied for it.
>>27776167
Never really saw it that way but you're right, there's no actual alternative anymore and it's all mainstream bullshit.
>>27771462
Because everything now has to have some sort of political agenda attached to it rather than being fun for the sake of fun, now when you have even the slightest fun, you're probably bound to piss off someone because you didn't represent another ethnicity or gender in the correct manner.
>>27776613
"Nerd" movies were a big thing in the early 80s
Wargames (1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbqMuvnx5MU
Tron (1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3efV2wqEjEY
Revenge of the Nerds (1984)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIZH5TKnEeg
Usenet was starting up, computers were becoming household items, and video game arcades were at a peak. The 80s had a better nerd culture than post-internet.
>>27776968
>"Nerd" movies were a big thing in the early 80s
Those were just pandering to what Hollywood thought were a 'nerd' audience. Actual nerds probably didn't give that much of a fucking shit.
The only real point you have is video game arcades being alive and well back then. God I miss arcades.
>>27776968
post-WWW rather.
>>27775776
i think you meant
60s > 70s > 80s > ...
>>27776991
The fact is that it was starting to get more recognition in the mainstream by that point. Before that there were just "smart people" and maybe some Jerry Lewis characters.
>>27777211
More recognition doesn't necessarily mean it was mainstream necessarily.
Honestly all of those geeky things were, and still are, counter culture. You can't say they were mainstream when most people had the image of a stereotypical nerd in mind when they thought of the types of people who played D&D or used Usenet.
>>27777294
>More recognition doesn't necessarily mean it was mainstream necessarily.
Whoops
It's become socially unacceptable to do anything that doesn't align with the current hip political agenda in the eyes of mainstream society.
Unless you are a minority. We hold different races to different standards of quality in the same way we hold men and women to different standards.
It's okay for nigs to nog because they are nigs and they only know how to nog. If Johnathan calls a nig out, it's immediately raycis because Jamal dindu nuffin and was just acting as his culture has taught him to. We've taught people it's okay to be inadequate instead of trying to teach them to better themselves because we just accept that it's okay for them to be lesser individuals because we hold them to a lower standard and it's socially incorrect to actually acknowledge that fact that they operate at a lower level.
The mainstream wants to bring everyone down to some shitty level that only exists from their perspective instead of trying to bring everyone up to the same level because it's easier to shame someone into lowering their standard of living for the sake of being progressive, but you can't ask the lower end of the bell curve to get better because that would be "shaming" them for being the lower end of the bell curve even though they are the lower end of the bell curve.
Reality TV combined with social media was the downfall of all that we cherished, it gave a new vanity to people we never thought existed, now everyone is more preoccupied about image than ever before.
Internet should never have became a hugbox
>>27777319
You might actually be retarded.
Original comment.
2000s was off to a good start then that whole 9/11 thing happened which altered western civilization to this day
>>27776111
This. But I somehow still relate strong to the 90's, even if I was born in '91
>>27771462
The megacorps and the people owning them won.
>>27771462
9/11
474's
shitskins
9/11 occurred and ruined everything.
>>27772225
Challenges are still fun. It does seem like things were more exciting then but I make a shit load more progress in my projects and get over barriers a lot faster now that I can research and collaborate online more effectively.
Games have definitely changed dramatically though. Before they were fun and or had good stories. Now it's all AAAAA titles dumbed down for women and normies to enjoy. Games are intentionally made too easy and avoid any controversy. You can't even kill fucking dogs or children in them anymore, even in a nothing personnel edgy series like Fallout. On the other hand food has gotten a lot more fun with gimmicky bullshit like molecular mixology/gastronomy and beer/winefag hipsters becoming so mainstream that it's joked about on Facebook and shitcoms.
9/11 is what brought the normalfags here because they couldn't face how depressing reality was anymore.
>>27776167
>The elimination of alternative culture
this. Some german sociologist said in 2009 that especially youth cultures rapidly vanish. Hip-Hop was the latest and strongest youth culture in central europe and it'll probably be the last one. With the internet and social media, everything became more detailed and inconsistent - new styles are getting instantly absorbed and marketed by the media, there's no more needed time and isolation to develop.
Kek they have been saying since at least the Roman empire. Some writer, I forgot his name, said the youth was going to shit etc. For retarded reasons
>>27776655
The ps4 is the next ps2.
This is one of the cringest kind of threads on this site. You get long paragraphs about how kids' hobbies were "great", and when you call them out on their nostalgia they get flustered. The reality is that 20 and 30 somethings are no longer expected to act like adults. Everyone acts like a fucking loser and it's encouraged by hugboxes and the media.
>>27777746
we're all shitposters here and everyone of us is better than you
>>27777746
I know man, fucking people enjoying things they're familiar with and not welcoming change despite in being the current year. Who do they think they are.
>>27772225
I don't see how video games are any more artificial than any other arbitrary challenge. It's the cave all the way down.
>>27777676
Yeah, you're an idiot. It's nothing like that. Back to /b/, underage scum.
>>27771462
The internet got popular, and made being an edgy cunt profitable
>>27772225
>Video games are essentially just colors that move around on your television and encourage to perform repetitive tasks over and over again. Your reward for these tasks is gaining the ability to perform these same repetitive tasks more efficiently, or the ability to perform new repetitive tasks. You also get to experience (second-hand) an interesting plotline and visuals, but since you can get these from movies and television, you can't really justify playing video games for the sake of the plot. You can say that it gives you the intrinsic reward of overcoming a challenge, but since you could always get cheat codes to reduce or eliminate these challenges, they don't actually exist and never have. Video games are a waste of time.
This whole paragraph (that you wasted your time typing out btw), is bullshit. You know nothing. Stop posting.
>>27777432
>implying america didnt cause that
What goes around comes around nigga
I was born in 87.
>Like those old noir films from the 40's.
They didn't have fancy computers to edit and fast make. The writers,camera crew and actors really had to work to craft a great story.
In the 90's video games where relatively in their infancy and they just didn't have the technology to make Callwahd00ty or GTA.
The video game makers of the 90's had to take chances and actual care in what they made.
>Music.
I guess all the deep thought provoking lyrics finally ran out country decided to become pop with a southern twang. I guess it was time for music to enter a dark age.
>Quality of life.
Ok It's probably subjective and everything but, times were simpler. phone calls were long and sentimental, guys could comfortably act like guys. girls weren't afraid to be girly. Oh sure their were assholes and fights back then but, it wasn't this bad. I remember people eating junk food but, no one was ever fat. We had to go out and do stuff, Yeah I played video games but, I had imagination too.
From as far as I can understand. Social media and social justice just make everything worse. We become more isolated. The increase in multiculturalism all these changes and the decrease of the job market make most of the world a dreary place.
>>27777432
muslim countries have suffered more than the west since 9/11
>>27778039
Le jet fuel and steel memes
>>27778067
Why should anyone care? Muslim countries aren't America
>>27771462
nice Juvenoia mate
>>27771462
Capitalism is entering it's final stages.
>>27778067
"good"
desu original
>>27778139
Awesome. Time to stock up on ammo and food.
>>27778067
This reminds me of the table and toilet analogy
>>27777932
If you're an adult playing video games (a normalfag and child's hobby), you shouldn't be complaining about kids and normies 'ruining' your hobby. Hell, if you're an adult, you shouldn't even be playing video games in the first place lmao
>>27778139
Don't worry, Caesar is going to save us. We still have two, maybe three generations before entering the Occident's winter. Trump will make America great again.
>>27778168
It will either be a gentle transition into socialism or it will have a nasty collapse.
>>27771632
It was until it got normiejacked.
>>27778199
I shouldnt be eating gummi worms or riding my bike either. I don't really care too much about the no fun allowed brigade. I like what I like, and I am displeased by things I don't like and complain about them.
>>27771462
Le 90's kid XDDDDDD
>>27778253
Maybe you should grow up
>>27778270
>le I hate fun meme
>>27778253
Complaining about kids and normals in video games is like you moving to Africa and complaining about how there's too many niggers.
>>27778270
90s kids are the worst generation after baby boomers.
>>27771462
Ah, the super Nintendo. I played some of the original NES, but that was the first console I owned. I still remember discovering that hidden gift before Christmas, finding my SNES even if it was an early present. It was like finding a gold nugget. Still one of the happiest moments of my life.
Sometimes, I long for those simpler times but all around I'm glad for the Web, smartphones, and all our modern conveniences. It's so much easier to find whatever you're looking for these days, as the technology has come so far in such a short time. I'm nostalgic, but I have no illusions that things were really better then.
>>27771632
This.
>tfw you'll never be a late 90s teenager on the internet ever again
It was the shit until normies and social networks came and ruined everything
>>27776002
This.
If anyone asks me about collecting retro games, I tell them to start 15 years ago.
>>27778294
'Grow up' doesn't even mean anything beyond stop liking things I don't like. You could just develop your own personality and interests without worrying about everyone else. Surely that would be more fun than being triggered by adults discussing anime on an anime image board.
>>27778328
>has never heard of South Africa
Actually that comparison makes a lot of sense now.
>>27772225
>Look at how smart I am, I can generalise complex behaviours and media down to armchair psychology
>>27778367
It's up to you if you want to grow up or not, but if you want to keep being a manchild, don't expect sympathy when you bitch about how those mean 'normalfags' called you a loser.
Why is it ALWAYS losers who reminisce about "the good ol' days"?
You never hear successful, well-adjusted people with decent jobs romanticize the past so much. Maybe you people peaked during childhood or something?
>>27778483
Who was bitching about being called a loser? I'm pretty sure we were talking about nostalgia goggles and how the damn kids won't get off our lawn. Come on man, focus.
>>27776002
What are you even talking about? You can buy most used SNES games for like a dollar in any old games bin at Goodwill. The secondary market only gets expensive when you're trying to buy something genuinely obscure/new.
>>27778565
Sounds like you've never known any successful people. It's the well off old guys in church or the country club who good old days the most out of anyone. Maybe you're just retarded or something?
>>27771632
>gave a reason for people to never leave their houses, contributing to NEEThood
>let special snowflakes hugbox creating Tumblr and scene kid emos
>let people promote their broken ideology through social media creating all this Twitter Nigga bullshit
>made memes possible
>made shitty D.A.W.s and the spread of them making everyone and their brothers able to make garbage music which leads to garbage hip hop and EDM
>>27778572
kek, more like you're on their lawn. being butthurt about kids enjoying kid stuff that you should have outgrown years ago but you didn't for whatever reason.
>>27771462
Everything was always and has always been shit. You were a child in the 90s and had no obligations or responsibilities or exposure to the real world. Now you do, and you see the world for what it has always been.
>>27771664
>>27771632
I hope Steve Jobs fucking rots for creating that shitty fucking phone that was the beginning of the end for the Internet. Same goes for the FaceJew.
>>27778613
also
>greasy fucking video game junkies
>in general ADHD culture
>>27778780
What exactly is adhd culture?
>>27778790
I assume he means the way adults have become infantilized, unable to cope without constant distraction and unable to delay gratification. All this is applauded of course, because it makes people easy to sell things to. You don't want to grow up and be like your asshole dad.
>>27778790
I was using ADHD as a descriptor, but
>gets tired of things really fast
>expects things for them right then and there
>new spongebob humor all around
>>27778861
and this >>27778856
blox block blox blox(ck)
Women became 'liberated'
>>27778901
Nah, the 90s had this too. the whole punk culture from before advocated this and it was pretty mainstream by then. Not really a bad thing. Music brings a ton to a culture.
Unless you're talking about the shitty Tumblr definition, then yeah thats bullshit.
>>27771462
id say was a mix of the 9/11, the boom of the Internet and social media. all those things aligned to make everything worse. i have the feel that science and technology is stuck now too
something something women and cuckolds and arabs
>>27778348
Everything was great until Facebook, even back in the MySpace days it was cool and people acted themselves.
It has to do with Facebook s platform and the way it's a dick measuring contest and unlike MySpace which was aimed at younger people facebook is for everyone so it's harder to be yourself when your mom and grandma are watching everything you post.
Facebook is the rot of the internet.
>>27778609
Old people reminiscing about the best time in American history, the 1950s, is not the same as 20-30 year old loser manchildren bitching about how much better video games were back then.
>>27779131
I don't really see how. It's the exact same shit.
You're missing the point anyway. The assertion was that only loser manchildren remembered the good old days, which simply isn't true because old people good old days more than anyone else.
What would the internet be like without social media, do you think it's impossible to separate the two or would that be more ideal? Internet goes back to being Usenet days while social media becomes its own thing
>>27778192
Best analogy ever
>>27777627
>dumbed down for women and normies to enjoy. Games are intentionally made too easy and avoid any controversy
it's because games were detected by some bigger studios as a valuable source of income in the early 2000's. Around '06 the "gaming" franchise went full blown mainstream, spouting out a new Callofshitty title every 12 months.
>>27778341
Ancient greeks are the worst generation after the cavemen.
>>27771539
It's true, though. You were a kid then. Everything was new and magical and everything was a novelty.
Now everything is old and tired and faded and you've realized how shitty your life is going to be. Of course things were better for robots when they were in the 90's - they were all little kids then, full of wonder at everything.
>>27780680
>faggots
>pedophiles
>lazy
>started the retarded idea of democracy
Hey, you're right.
>>27771462jewsoriginal
IDK MAN IT'S ALMOST AS IF SOMETHING BIG HAPPENED IN THE FIRST COUPLE YEARS OF THE TWO THOUSANDS
>>27778139
I thought capitalism's final phase was imperialism and fascism
>tfw not living as a 20 year old in the late 90's, when people still went full rage at a concert, as opposed to nowadays as everybody is just watching it through their iPhone screens and tweeting instead of being in the moment
>millenials confusing the 90s for the early 2000s
>>27780714
>ow everything is old and tired and faded and you've realized how shitty your life is going to be
yes but, is it really because you're old now, or is it because youre life was and is going to be an unsatisfied accumulation of disappointments, full of frustration and hollow of emotion and joy?
Robots are unhappy because they're robots, not because >muh lost 90's
>>27781050
>Robots are unhappy because they're robots, not because >muh lost 90's
Sure, I don't disagree with that. The question was - why did everything go to shit after the 90's? The answer to that is pretty clearly that robots were kids without the accumulation of everything you mentioned.
The 90's weren't magic. They just felt that way.
>>27771462
trick question. it didn't.
>>27772225
>Basically, it's not that the 2010's suck, it's that you suck
well put, Anon
>>27776167
>The rise of radical left-wing politics to the mainstream
SJWs aren't mainstream
>>27780884
Capitalism's final phase is complete collapse.
>>27778616
You're one spooky poster man
>>27780916
This unfortunately
Bloxxors
Wish I could go back to the snes days. Not for the games really but more because I was young and happier and things were much better even if I didn't think they were at the time. As a kid I couldn't really fathom how much worse things could get. Now all I can think about are those old days.
