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> I feel that the majority of relationships and marriages say 60-70 years ago were happy and mutually fulfilling, but now anecdotally it seems that most people

> I feel that the majority of relationships and marriages say 60-70 years ago were happy and mutually fulfilling, but now anecdotally it seems that most people are not happy whatsoever. It's the same phenomenon as people thinking that new music, movies, etc. is mostly terrible and the old days were full of nothing but amazing hits. Because we remember the good and forget the bad, both individually and as a society.

sixQuarks 4y ago
New pop movies and music ARE shit though compared to the 80s/90s. You can’t tell the difference between songs from the 2010s and today. Most popular movies are rehashed boring superhero/avenger movies that blend into each other. Yes, I’m living up to the stereotype by saying this, but I think it’s true this time.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > Most popular movies are rehashed boring superhero/avenger movies that blend into each other. Nah, you're not wrong, highest-grossings are indeed in a rut. Top 10 highest grossing in 1990: 2 films that were sequels or otherwise an entry in an existing franchise. 2022? All ten are sequels (even the Chinese propaganda film at entry 9 is a sequel!) There are tons of good movies released every year, but the top-10-by-sales are in fact mostly safe bets on sequels or entries in sprawling franchises, these days. Since those so consistently out-perform better, original films, it's kinda hard to argue that studios should stop. Theater-release films are in kinda a rough spot in the age of streaming and strong competition from TV. Tickets are crazy-expensive and people just don't watch movies in theaters as much anymore, so the lion's share of the money goes to safe, FX-heavy films where the audience basically knows what they're gonna get for their $12 (or, about the cost of having a whole streaming service for an entire month).
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  We had that in the 1980s as well. No-one remembers "The Brother from Another Planet" (1984) ... but everyone remembers "E.T." (1982). Similarly, the Marvel stuff will mostly shrink together into obscurity, while actual good movies (My money is on "La La Land" as the chick-flick musical and the "John Wick" Franchise as the action cornerstone, "Parasite" for the connoisseurs) will be remembered.
- humanistbot 4y ago
  sigh Let me guess: you were born in the 70s to 80s, and the 80s/90s were a formative time for you? That is because you don't remember all the shit that played in whatever golden time period you're imagining. You only remember the hits. You're not accurately remembering the broad distribution of what was on the radio and in theaters in the past, which also contained a lot of crap that you likely never would have wasted your money on. Terrible movies got dumped to TV specials or direct-to-video (today they get dumped to streaming platforms), so even if we filter to what was released in theaters, we're missing a lot of crap. But how about we look at the top grossing films of 1983 [1], 30 years ago? Some of these hold up and are the classics you remember, like #1 Star Wars Return of the Jedi (still a franchise though), #2 Terms of Endearment, #4 Trading Places, #5 WarGames, #10 Risky Business, #11 National Lampoon's Vacation, #13 The Big Chill, #16 Scarface. Bonafide classics, no question there. But go even a little down the list and you get middling sequels and formulaic franchise films: #6 Octopussy (formulaic Bond film, which was the Marvel of its time), #7 Sudden Impact (Dirty Harry sequel, not great), #8 Staying Alive (Saturday Night Fever sequel, not great), #12 Superman III (one of the worst Superman films of all time, but ahead of Superman IV), #14 Never Say Never Again (another Bond film, better than Octopussy, but still two in one year), #15 Jaws 3-D (one of the worst action films of all time), #20 Psycho II (another meh sequel). And these are the top 20 movies ranked on how many people paid to see them in the theaters. There are hundreds of others that were regularly shown in theaters that I'm sure you can't recall. Some are classics now (Videodrome, Monty Python's Meaning of Life), but most are not. [1] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051080169/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051080169/
  - sixQuarks 4y ago
    Ok, go back to the 50s, 60s, 70s, still much better quality songs and movies back then taking technology inflation into account.
- JCharante 4y ago
  As someone who doesn't remember 9/11, my opinion is that most of the movies and music from the 80s/90s (yes, especially the popular ones) are terrible and that the majority of media I enjoy was produced in the last 20 years. I think people tend to like whatever they heard and saw during their formative years.
  - sixQuarks 4y ago
    Well good, this gives me hope that I've just become the crotchety old guy that complains about how things aren't as good as they used to be (even though I promised myself I wouldn't become that guy when I was young), rather than the world is going towards more and more Idiocracy.
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  The way the me-of-25-years-ago thought is that the 90s pop music scene was pretty dire.
HDMI_Cable 4y ago
True, maybe we are just more able to talk about our problems in relationships, which makes it seem like we are more unhappy overall. Or, maybe most relationships are happy overall, but the subset of people who tend to post things online also tend to have less happy relationships, skewing the dataset.
rootusrootus 4y ago
There is good reason to have such feelings about music, however. In the last 10-15 years autotune has really become common, and it has not done good things for mainstream music. At the same time, the quality of the masters from around 1970 and later are good enough that a modern re-master has quality as good as anything recorded today. This gives music from that era staying power it wouldn't otherwise have.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  > the quality of the masters > a modern re-master Only the best of the best is getting a re-master today. Of course it sounds great. Survivor bias in action. And to the parent poster's point -- we only remember the good things. We tend to forget all of the alcoholism, abuse, and misery in relationships -- there was no divorce, or it was rare. Car accidents were just as common and your giant chrome landship killed you and the people you hit. Whole lotta institutional biases that were pretty blatant.

sixQuarks 4y ago

New pop movies and music ARE shit though compared to the 80s/90s. You can’t tell the difference between songs from the 2010s and today. Most popular movies are rehashed boring superhero/avenger movies that blend into each other. Yes, I’m living up to the stereotype by saying this, but I think it’s true this time.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> Most popular movies are rehashed boring superhero/avenger movies that blend into each other. Nah, you're not wrong, highest-grossings are indeed in a rut. Top 10 highest grossing in 1990: 2 films that were sequels or otherwise an entry in an existing franchise. 2022? All ten are sequels (even the Chinese propaganda film at entry 9 is a sequel!) There are tons of good movies released every year, but the top-10-by-sales are in fact mostly safe bets on sequels or entries in sprawling franchises, these days. Since those so consistently out-perform better, original films, it's kinda hard to argue that studios should stop. Theater-release films are in kinda a rough spot in the age of streaming and strong competition from TV. Tickets are crazy-expensive and people just don't watch movies in theaters as much anymore, so the lion's share of the money goes to safe, FX-heavy films where the audience basically knows what they're gonna get for their $12 (or, about the cost of having a whole streaming service for an entire month).
DocTomoe 4y ago
We had that in the 1980s as well. No-one remembers "The Brother from Another Planet" (1984) ... but everyone remembers "E.T." (1982). Similarly, the Marvel stuff will mostly shrink together into obscurity, while actual good movies (My money is on "La La Land" as the chick-flick musical and the "John Wick" Franchise as the action cornerstone, "Parasite" for the connoisseurs) will be remembered.
humanistbot 4y ago
sigh Let me guess: you were born in the 70s to 80s, and the 80s/90s were a formative time for you? That is because you don't remember all the shit that played in whatever golden time period you're imagining. You only remember the hits. You're not accurately remembering the broad distribution of what was on the radio and in theaters in the past, which also contained a lot of crap that you likely never would have wasted your money on. Terrible movies got dumped to TV specials or direct-to-video (today they get dumped to streaming platforms), so even if we filter to what was released in theaters, we're missing a lot of crap. But how about we look at the top grossing films of 1983 [1], 30 years ago? Some of these hold up and are the classics you remember, like #1 Star Wars Return of the Jedi (still a franchise though), #2 Terms of Endearment, #4 Trading Places, #5 WarGames, #10 Risky Business, #11 National Lampoon's Vacation, #13 The Big Chill, #16 Scarface. Bonafide classics, no question there. But go even a little down the list and you get middling sequels and formulaic franchise films: #6 Octopussy (formulaic Bond film, which was the Marvel of its time), #7 Sudden Impact (Dirty Harry sequel, not great), #8 Staying Alive (Saturday Night Fever sequel, not great), #12 Superman III (one of the worst Superman films of all time, but ahead of Superman IV), #14 Never Say Never Again (another Bond film, better than Octopussy, but still two in one year), #15 Jaws 3-D (one of the worst action films of all time), #20 Psycho II (another meh sequel). And these are the top 20 movies ranked on how many people paid to see them in the theaters. There are hundreds of others that were regularly shown in theaters that I'm sure you can't recall. Some are classics now (Videodrome, Monty Python's Meaning of Life), but most are not. [1] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051080169/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051080169/
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  Ok, go back to the 50s, 60s, 70s, still much better quality songs and movies back then taking technology inflation into account.
JCharante 4y ago
As someone who doesn't remember 9/11, my opinion is that most of the movies and music from the 80s/90s (yes, especially the popular ones) are terrible and that the majority of media I enjoy was produced in the last 20 years. I think people tend to like whatever they heard and saw during their formative years.
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  Well good, this gives me hope that I've just become the crotchety old guy that complains about how things aren't as good as they used to be (even though I promised myself I wouldn't become that guy when I was young), rather than the world is going towards more and more Idiocracy.
bigbillheck 4y ago
The way the me-of-25-years-ago thought is that the 90s pop music scene was pretty dire.

HDMI_Cable 4y ago

True, maybe we are just more able to talk about our problems in relationships, which makes it seem like we are more unhappy overall. Or, maybe most relationships are happy overall, but the subset of people who tend to post things online also tend to have less happy relationships, skewing the dataset.

rootusrootus 4y ago

There is good reason to have such feelings about music, however. In the last 10-15 years autotune has really become common, and it has not done good things for mainstream music. At the same time, the quality of the masters from around 1970 and later are good enough that a modern re-master has quality as good as anything recorded today. This gives music from that era staying power it wouldn't otherwise have.

red-iron-pine 4y ago
> the quality of the masters > a modern re-master Only the best of the best is getting a re-master today. Of course it sounds great. Survivor bias in action. And to the parent poster's point -- we only remember the good things. We tend to forget all of the alcoholism, abuse, and misery in relationships -- there was no divorce, or it was rare. Car accidents were just as common and your giant chrome landship killed you and the people you hit. Whole lotta institutional biases that were pretty blatant.