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I will pre-empt this by saying I most certainly look to the past with rose colored glasses, and some of this is for sure childhood nostalgia, but one thing I ap

I will pre-empt this by saying I most certainly look to the past with rose colored glasses, and some of this is for sure childhood nostalgia, but one thing I appreciate about the aesthetics of the past is they felt more… Honest; for lack of a better term. Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. Not so many composites that fall apart instead of wear ala wabi-sabi. So I think there’s something to the fact that the past was kind of “cute”, just not in all storybook way. Theres a lake I visit in the summer that I’ve been visiting since the 80’s, and the houses used to all be wood cottages with no fences, now they’re all mansions, many walled off. Sure the houses weren’t insulated, and you would be crammed in there together, but it felt way more…. Human? Communal?

samdoesnothing 11mo ago
I wonder why it is that the past seems more real and the present dishonest and fake? Is it simply that it is?
- margalabargala 11mo ago
  It has a lot to do with the way our memories form and what memories our brains choose to construct from experiences. The past was not more "real" than present day reality.
  - vacuity 11mo ago
    At the same time, it's arguable that certain observations such as "commercialization and commoditization have become stronger" are true. We're certainly living in an era where a lot can change in a few decades.
    - pixl97 11mo ago
      >living in an era where a lot can change in a few decades So were people in 1910. You could say the printing press set up the following industrial revolution and things have been accelerating ever since. People talk that in the future there will be a technological singularity that things will go so fast people won't be able to keep up, but really in many ways we've been in it for a while already and it's still accelerating.
      - _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
        My grandfather rode to school on a horse, saw the last of the nomadic native peoples traveling Iowa, watched polio ruin lives and bring fear, then watched science conquer polio. Watched humans conquer the sky and land on the moon, fought mechanised island warfare as a sent in Marine in the pacific on the side of half the world fighting against the other half of the world. Personally saw the damage of nuclear war in occupied Japan, then watched the world build a 15 minute system for mutually assured nuclear destruction (MAD). Went from mail to shared rural 'party' phone lines, and ended his life with a world connected with a global knowledge network to every home and free video calls to anywhere in the world. He went from canned zucchini/beats in the winter to access to whatever fresh produce (and more importantly ice cream) he wanted all year long. Unless we make some major breakthroughs, I don't think there will ever be another generation of change like that one.
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  I mean - to one extent, concretely in the aesthetic ways I’m talking it was technologically we just had simpler materials. Cars had knobs and levers instead of touchscreens. Like, so much of what I do today happens online instead of the real world, so I do think you can describe ways in which life or the world really has gotten more “fake”. Though some of this is funny too? I remember things from the say 50’s to the 80’w as being more “real” and that’s also the like rise of TV dinners and everything eaten out of a can, rather than “real” ingredients.
  - cindyllm 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - pixl97 11mo ago
    >50’s to the 80’w as being more “real” Yea, people really are out of touch with what was going on around them. Naugahyde, for example was invented in 1914. Fake wood on cars started in the 1940s! It is very likely people remembering the 'real' stuff were quite often talking about objects that were far older.
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      1861, mauvine: all sorts of women wear a startling shade of synthetic purple. 1862, now it's Parkesine: the new fad is shiny plastic-coated boots.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- sublinear 11mo ago
  People focus too much on the new and not enough on the rest. Of course what's new is going to seem fake because it is. Nobody has figured it out yet. The rest never changed or has improved significantly. Anyone older than about 30 who takes a few minutes to reflect on all the little details of daily life could probably come up with a surprisingly long list of annoying little inconveniences they no longer have to deal with. Beyond that we've had decades worth of casually raising the bar for what is considered common sense and polite. These are the "real" things we take for granted.
- imgabe 11mo ago
  It's just focusing on different things. Sure they had wood and metal tools, but they also had literal snake oil, watered stock, and people selling you the Brooklyn Bridge.
  - Qwertious 11mo ago
    Hey buddy, I'll sell you the Brooklyn bridge for $5 - just post a screenshot of you donating $5 to FSFE and I'll PM you the title deed.
- stephen_g 11mo ago
  Modern manufacturing and materials science let us create imitation materials at huge quantity and low cost that wasn’t possible before about the ‘50s-60s. So you just used to use real materials out of necessity
- SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
  People forget the ways in which the past was fake. Fake butter, for example, was more common than real butter from the 1950s up until the early 2000s. But most people don't eat margarine anymore and so most people don't remember it.
  - ocschwar 11mo ago
    My childhood was dominated by the smell of licorice in some places because chocolate was too expensive.
- bsenftner 11mo ago
  People don't learn history, and I'm not talking about the wars and battles BS that they use to glorify going to war. I mean real history: biographies of the lives of real and ordinary people. Not the history makers, the people that lived through and had the mind to record their lives for prosperity. Case in point, this notion that the past as "more real" and the present "more fake"... the amount of fake doctors, fake medicine, religious revivals that were actually fleecing entire towns into destitution was out of control. The "wild west" it truly was, and the law was owning a gun because everyone was desperate.
  - lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
    > Not the history makers Even the so-called "history makers" are the product of imagination, of myth, and of hagiography. If you met these people today, you wouldn't recognize them if you went by the expectations built up by the images we're fed. The same holds of so-called celebrities.
  - Qwertious 11mo ago
    Most cowboys didn't own a gun - a gun was a month's pay, and nobody with that sort of money worked as a cowboy.
    - bsenftner 11mo ago
      20% to 25% of the cowboys were Black, and that aspect of history has been erased. Hollywood, propagandists and media's efforts to glorify, White wash, and profit off the American West Frontier has 100% distorted our history. It was much closer to this "the past was not cute", and then add in rampant corruption, criminal and religious criminal activity and you art starting to get there. We are a propaganda nation, far better at it than any other on Earth.
  - techblueberry 11mo ago
    Actually the history of real people is my main area of interest :-). I stand by what I said, but I way understand you have to sort of blur your vision and take the bigger 60%, this is not the 99%, also the article was specifically about aesthetics, which is inherently a more rose colored glasses approach. I’m not sure that there’s any era I’d rather live in than today (though this is a nuanced question, since you wouldn’t know better, and I do think we’re in sort of a local minima so for sure I’d rather live in like the early 2000’s and maybe before, probably no earlier than auto-bill pay, digital banking and modern dentistry lol.). But there are many eras I would like to travel to for the aesthetic.
- msla 11mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress > Feed sack dresses, flour sack dresses, or feedsack dresses were a common article of clothing in rural US and Canadian communities from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. They were made at home, usually by women, using the cotton sacks in which flour, sugar, animal feed, seeds, and other commodities were packaged, shipped, and sold. They became an iconic part of rural life from the 1920s through the Great Depression, World War II, and post-World War II years. Good, Honest, Old-Fashioned Clothing was Consumerism, too, bucko. > During World War II it was estimated that 3 million women and children in the United States were wearing feed sack clothing at any given point in time.[7][14] One participant in an oral history project stated that "everything on the clothesline was from feed sacks."[2] The US Department of Agriculture reported in 1951 that 75% of mothers living in urban areas and 97% of those living in rural areas had heard of making garments from feed sacks.[15] Did Granny make clothes from scratch? Did she, Hell! She bought cloth from a Large Evil Corporation what with the Dark Satanic Mills and Finance Capitalism and she was mainly unhappy she couldn't spend more: > There was an element of shame experienced by those dressed in flour sack clothing, as it was seen as a mark of poverty, so efforts were often made to hide the fact the clothing was made from feed sacks, such as soaking off logos, dying the fabric, or adding trim. Our ancestors would be appalled at people wanting to go back to The Good Old Days. They fought and struggled mightily against what the Cottagecore Losers on their Laptops and iPods want.
  - Aloha 11mo ago
    Your tone is a bit acerbic - but most of your facts are correct. Part of what was driving feedsack dresses was the agricultural depression from 1918-1939/40
- bazoom42 11mo ago
  As far back as we have written records, we have the notion that people in past were better and more honest and the present day is corrupted. Classical antiquity had the notion of a lost golden age and a heroic age in past, while later times considered the classical antiquity as the lost golden age. Victorians romanticized the middle ages, while we romantisize the victorians. It is just easier to see the flaws and imperfections in the present. And there is the survivorship bias: Quality products and buildings survive, while low quality crap is destroyed and lost. The swords survive but the pointy sticks are lost. The good music survive but the crap is forgotten.
- bluefirebrand 11mo ago
  The threat of physical violence was a lot more present and real in the past I think there is a lot of shady and dishonest business that happens now that would get you killed in the past
supportengineer 11mo ago
A great place to feel this is the USS Hornet in Alameda. This actual ship that you are on, made of steel and loaded with analog electronics, sailed to the far side of the Pacific and back. So much metal, steel, hydraulics, and electrical systems. It made it out and back. Not all the ships did. Mighty ships just like this one, with people like you, did not make it back.
- gerdesj 11mo ago
  You could also try HMS Victory in the UK or the Vasa in Sweden (other really old ships are available and some are still sailing). You might also note that the inhabitants of Hawaii had to have got there somehow and its 2000 odd miles to what is now the US mainland and still quite a long way from anywhere else, eg Tahiti.
  - brabel 11mo ago
    Hawaii natives are Polynesians! They came the same way New Zealanders did by island hopping in the Pacific. We can only imagine but I guess most of those who tried it died in the middle of nowhere, only a few must have made it, but that’s enough.
andrewvc 11mo ago
Maybe, but really consumerism wasn’t a thing for most of history because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally in the way we do today. The very wealthy did to varying extents. When we look at the past we always imagine ourselves to be the ones in Downton Abbey, but most people were lucky to inherit some furniture. I would argue that the reverence for real wood and craft you espoused (and I share) is in part possible due to living in a consumerist society. For what it’s worth it is still possible to buy those same quality goods today, and certainly at lower cost . However, I would balk at paying the historical fraction of my income (or multiple if we go back to the 1700s), for a new bed. In short cheap dishonest crap is what we ultimately want. It lets us focus our time and resources elsewhere
- directevolve 11mo ago
  A good depiction of the gritty realities and the meaning of material striving for the very poor in turn of the century farm life is the novel Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, an Icelandic nobel laureate.
  - AlotOfReading 11mo ago
    Keep in mind that Halldor's book is depicting a situation fairly specific to Iceland: people recently freed from debt bondage, in a desperately poor and isolated area caught between much larger forces. It's not an attempt to accurately depict what it meant to be working poor for American laborers, like say grapes of wrath.
- echelon 11mo ago
  A lot of online culture laments the modern American life and blames the Boomers for all of our "woes". The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience. It's funny how we look back at it as the norm, because that's not what the rest of the world experienced. There's a reason everything in America was super sized for so long. Things have averaged out a bit now, but if you look at the trendline, we're still doing remarkably well. The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild.
arjie 11mo ago
A lot of people think this, but if I'm being honest modern materials are amazing. They survive pretty rough washes, they're incredibly cheap, fire-retardant, and last forever. Synthetics are amazing. Coincidentally, it was only a couple of days ago that I was thinking about this[0] when I thought about how the microfibre fleece my daughter was lying on was the cheap microfiber fleece I'd bought when I encountered my first American winter. A student's cheap blanket has lasted me over a decade and still keeps me warm and cleans easily. My wife and I have had Caspers and Tuft & Needles and Tempurpedics and we sleep now on an Ikea foam mattress. It's fantastic. Modern manufacturing and materials are incredible. I feel like I'm living in a golden age. 0: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_Last https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_La...
- typewithrhythm 11mo ago
  It depends; it feels like in some categories the premium between a material that's very suitable, and some ersatz lookalike is massive and depressing. I love a good petrochemical, but sometimes it would be nice if the cheap thing store wasn't so callously targeting veneers and pleathers that last just long enough to loose the receipt.
- Aeolun 11mo ago
  I don’t think I have ever in my life noticed a difference between one matress and another. When I lie down, yes, but not when I wake up the next morning.
- raincom 11mo ago
  For the price point, IKEA mattresses (both hybrid and foam) are worth it. Same goes for mattresses sold by Costco/Sams Club. A lot of this enthusiasm about mattresses comes from being young. When your back is still indestructible, nearly any mattress(all kinds of foam, coils, hybrid, innerspring) feels fantastic. 20% of mattresses are returned for comfort reasons; that's how online marketing companies disguised as mattress companies have won over the traditional brick and mortar companies. Lots of people complain about the invisible sagging after a few years of usage. For warranty purposes, 1.5" visible sagging is needed. Even latex foam sags too, but it sags slower than PU foams. Even Tempurpedic has cheapened their foam, thereby cashing on its brand name. High density foam lasts longer. However, 99% of mattress makers don't list ILD and densities of their PU and viscoelastic PU foams. That's why the market is flooded with cheap mattresses that have invisible sag after a couple of years. Same goes with coils: thin wire, reducing the wire in each pocket, stretching the wire, carbon content, how wires are cleaned, etc--all these factors matter. Yes, there is advancement in the knowledge of materials and foams. However, industry has started cutting corners for a short term profit. If you make a mattress that lasts 10 years at least, who can you sell mattresses to then? That's why cheap low density foams, cheap coils dominate the industry.
jonstewart 11mo ago
My great-grandfather was born in a dugout (i.e., sod) house on the Kansas prairie in 1880. His father died when he was 9. When he went to teacher’s college, someone gave him an orange and he ate the rind, as he didn’t know you were supposed to peel it; he still thought it was delicious. He married late at 35, and his wife died after a year. He married again and their first daughter died as a toddler. He was 49 when the Great Depression began. He became a Republican because FDR repealed Prohibition. I’m not wealthy, not by HN standards, but my kids are healthy and lack for nothing. I doordash them takeout sushi when I don’t feel like cooking them dinner. I’ve been to several of the world’s great museums, gone to great plays and concerts, and love a round of Epoisses with a plump Meursault. Things that last have always been expensive, out of reach for many. And every time I think nostalgically about life on the prairie in a dugout, I think about winter, it being -10 outside and windy, and 45 degrees inside and damp and smoky.
euroderf 11mo ago
> Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. PlasticWorld is designed to empty your wallet over time. In a hundred dollar product, what breaks is the two cent piece of plastic that replaced a six-cent piece of metal. Another part of this process of the enshittification of the tangible world of consumer goods is the process of (1) acquisition of a quality brand (typically by private capital), (2) extraction of the value of the brand (via substitution of inferior products & services, and self-serving management "bonuses"), and finally, (3) brand liquidation (by bankruptcy or absorption).
spicyusername 11mo ago
I mean... yes... I guess in 1700 there were only things made by hand, but also those things were so incredibly expensive nobody had them. Most people had one "nice" pair of clothes that they inherited and expected to pass on, because cloth was so labor intensive. Children's toys we're basically non-existent. Books? Forget about it. Only for monks in the hills. Today you have the option, everyone can have the cheap thing, and the wealthy can still have the honest thing. Much better this way, in my opinion. Every era has warts. Even if we lived in heaven, you'd still have substack posts complaining about it. It's just the way humans are. Ever restless, always looking beyond. you would be crammed in there together, but it felt way more…. Human? Communal? Would you believe plenty of people still live this way... mostly against their will. Heck, anyone can do it!
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  You missed the point. The whole town aesthetic changed. No we really can’t do it anymore, because the way we design cities and towns is changing. Wealthy area used to be more open to everyone, now it’s all gated communities and walled compounds. You can’t even drive around the lake and enjoy the nature of it because all you see are the walls of McMansions, that’s what’s not “cute”
- dan-robertson 11mo ago
  I think 1700 is not the best year to use, depending on the place. Rural people in 1700 England were quite different from most peasants who have ever lived – they were in a relatively advanced monetary economy, literacy rates were high, secular books were affordable (much less so than today of course), the price of linen cloth had perhaps halved in the last 200 years. Feudalism was going away, agricultural productivity was rising. Life of a medieval peasant was quite different. Productivity was basically static, literacy was low, the economy would have been local and mostly based on barter or paying with labour. You would likely be growing your own linen to spin and weave and make into clothes for your own family. I think there was a little more specialisation and a little less subsistence agriculture by 1700.
jefftk 11mo ago
> Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. Not so many composites that fall apart instead of wear ala wabi-sabi. Composites are older than you think: putting thin layers of high quality wood over a lower quality wooden backing goes back at least to the Egyptians and Romans: Pliny, Book 16: The principal woods for cutting into layers for using as a veneer to cover other kinds of wood are citrus, turpentine-tree, varieties of maple, box, palm, holly, holm-oak, the root of the elder, and poplar. Also the alder, as has been stated, supplies a tubcrosity that can be cut into layers, as do the citrus and the maple ; no other trees have tuberosities so much valued. The middle part of trees is more variegated, and the nearer the root the smaller and the more wavy are the markings. This first originated the luxury use of trees, covering up one with another and making an outside skin for a cheaper wood out of a more expensive one. In order that one tree might be sold several times over, even thin layers of wood have been invented. https://archive.org/details/naturalhistory04plinuoft/page/536/mode/2up?q=veneer https://archive.org/details/naturalhistory04plinuoft/page/53...
- vdqtp3 11mo ago
  Composites in that style are also typically very durable, often more than the original material. I think GP was more likely talking about constructions of pressboard and plywood which is (charitably) less durable.
  - jefftk 11mo ago
    Plywood can be extremely durable, in many cases more than whole boards.

samdoesnothing 11mo ago

I wonder why it is that the past seems more real and the present dishonest and fake? Is it simply that it is?

margalabargala 11mo ago
It has a lot to do with the way our memories form and what memories our brains choose to construct from experiences. The past was not more "real" than present day reality.
- vacuity 11mo ago
  At the same time, it's arguable that certain observations such as "commercialization and commoditization have become stronger" are true. We're certainly living in an era where a lot can change in a few decades.
  - pixl97 11mo ago
    >living in an era where a lot can change in a few decades So were people in 1910. You could say the printing press set up the following industrial revolution and things have been accelerating ever since. People talk that in the future there will be a technological singularity that things will go so fast people won't be able to keep up, but really in many ways we've been in it for a while already and it's still accelerating.
    - _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
      My grandfather rode to school on a horse, saw the last of the nomadic native peoples traveling Iowa, watched polio ruin lives and bring fear, then watched science conquer polio. Watched humans conquer the sky and land on the moon, fought mechanised island warfare as a sent in Marine in the pacific on the side of half the world fighting against the other half of the world. Personally saw the damage of nuclear war in occupied Japan, then watched the world build a 15 minute system for mutually assured nuclear destruction (MAD). Went from mail to shared rural 'party' phone lines, and ended his life with a world connected with a global knowledge network to every home and free video calls to anywhere in the world. He went from canned zucchini/beats in the winter to access to whatever fresh produce (and more importantly ice cream) he wanted all year long. Unless we make some major breakthroughs, I don't think there will ever be another generation of change like that one.
techblueberry 11mo ago
I mean - to one extent, concretely in the aesthetic ways I’m talking it was technologically we just had simpler materials. Cars had knobs and levers instead of touchscreens. Like, so much of what I do today happens online instead of the real world, so I do think you can describe ways in which life or the world really has gotten more “fake”. Though some of this is funny too? I remember things from the say 50’s to the 80’w as being more “real” and that’s also the like rise of TV dinners and everything eaten out of a can, rather than “real” ingredients.
- cindyllm 11mo ago
  [dead]
- pixl97 11mo ago
  >50’s to the 80’w as being more “real” Yea, people really are out of touch with what was going on around them. Naugahyde, for example was invented in 1914. Fake wood on cars started in the 1940s! It is very likely people remembering the 'real' stuff were quite often talking about objects that were far older.
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    1861, mauvine: all sorts of women wear a startling shade of synthetic purple. 1862, now it's Parkesine: the new fad is shiny plastic-coated boots.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
sublinear 11mo ago
People focus too much on the new and not enough on the rest. Of course what's new is going to seem fake because it is. Nobody has figured it out yet. The rest never changed or has improved significantly. Anyone older than about 30 who takes a few minutes to reflect on all the little details of daily life could probably come up with a surprisingly long list of annoying little inconveniences they no longer have to deal with. Beyond that we've had decades worth of casually raising the bar for what is considered common sense and polite. These are the "real" things we take for granted.
imgabe 11mo ago
It's just focusing on different things. Sure they had wood and metal tools, but they also had literal snake oil, watered stock, and people selling you the Brooklyn Bridge.
- Qwertious 11mo ago
  Hey buddy, I'll sell you the Brooklyn bridge for $5 - just post a screenshot of you donating $5 to FSFE and I'll PM you the title deed.
stephen_g 11mo ago
Modern manufacturing and materials science let us create imitation materials at huge quantity and low cost that wasn’t possible before about the ‘50s-60s. So you just used to use real materials out of necessity
SpicyLemonZest 11mo ago
People forget the ways in which the past was fake. Fake butter, for example, was more common than real butter from the 1950s up until the early 2000s. But most people don't eat margarine anymore and so most people don't remember it.
- ocschwar 11mo ago
  My childhood was dominated by the smell of licorice in some places because chocolate was too expensive.
bsenftner 11mo ago
People don't learn history, and I'm not talking about the wars and battles BS that they use to glorify going to war. I mean real history: biographies of the lives of real and ordinary people. Not the history makers, the people that lived through and had the mind to record their lives for prosperity. Case in point, this notion that the past as "more real" and the present "more fake"... the amount of fake doctors, fake medicine, religious revivals that were actually fleecing entire towns into destitution was out of control. The "wild west" it truly was, and the law was owning a gun because everyone was desperate.
- lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
  > Not the history makers Even the so-called "history makers" are the product of imagination, of myth, and of hagiography. If you met these people today, you wouldn't recognize them if you went by the expectations built up by the images we're fed. The same holds of so-called celebrities.
- Qwertious 11mo ago
  Most cowboys didn't own a gun - a gun was a month's pay, and nobody with that sort of money worked as a cowboy.
  - bsenftner 11mo ago
    20% to 25% of the cowboys were Black, and that aspect of history has been erased. Hollywood, propagandists and media's efforts to glorify, White wash, and profit off the American West Frontier has 100% distorted our history. It was much closer to this "the past was not cute", and then add in rampant corruption, criminal and religious criminal activity and you art starting to get there. We are a propaganda nation, far better at it than any other on Earth.
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  Actually the history of real people is my main area of interest :-). I stand by what I said, but I way understand you have to sort of blur your vision and take the bigger 60%, this is not the 99%, also the article was specifically about aesthetics, which is inherently a more rose colored glasses approach. I’m not sure that there’s any era I’d rather live in than today (though this is a nuanced question, since you wouldn’t know better, and I do think we’re in sort of a local minima so for sure I’d rather live in like the early 2000’s and maybe before, probably no earlier than auto-bill pay, digital banking and modern dentistry lol.). But there are many eras I would like to travel to for the aesthetic.
msla 11mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_sack_dress > Feed sack dresses, flour sack dresses, or feedsack dresses were a common article of clothing in rural US and Canadian communities from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. They were made at home, usually by women, using the cotton sacks in which flour, sugar, animal feed, seeds, and other commodities were packaged, shipped, and sold. They became an iconic part of rural life from the 1920s through the Great Depression, World War II, and post-World War II years. Good, Honest, Old-Fashioned Clothing was Consumerism, too, bucko. > During World War II it was estimated that 3 million women and children in the United States were wearing feed sack clothing at any given point in time.[7][14] One participant in an oral history project stated that "everything on the clothesline was from feed sacks."[2] The US Department of Agriculture reported in 1951 that 75% of mothers living in urban areas and 97% of those living in rural areas had heard of making garments from feed sacks.[15] Did Granny make clothes from scratch? Did she, Hell! She bought cloth from a Large Evil Corporation what with the Dark Satanic Mills and Finance Capitalism and she was mainly unhappy she couldn't spend more: > There was an element of shame experienced by those dressed in flour sack clothing, as it was seen as a mark of poverty, so efforts were often made to hide the fact the clothing was made from feed sacks, such as soaking off logos, dying the fabric, or adding trim. Our ancestors would be appalled at people wanting to go back to The Good Old Days. They fought and struggled mightily against what the Cottagecore Losers on their Laptops and iPods want.
- Aloha 11mo ago
  Your tone is a bit acerbic - but most of your facts are correct. Part of what was driving feedsack dresses was the agricultural depression from 1918-1939/40
bazoom42 11mo ago
As far back as we have written records, we have the notion that people in past were better and more honest and the present day is corrupted. Classical antiquity had the notion of a lost golden age and a heroic age in past, while later times considered the classical antiquity as the lost golden age. Victorians romanticized the middle ages, while we romantisize the victorians. It is just easier to see the flaws and imperfections in the present. And there is the survivorship bias: Quality products and buildings survive, while low quality crap is destroyed and lost. The swords survive but the pointy sticks are lost. The good music survive but the crap is forgotten.
bluefirebrand 11mo ago
The threat of physical violence was a lot more present and real in the past I think there is a lot of shady and dishonest business that happens now that would get you killed in the past

supportengineer 11mo ago

A great place to feel this is the USS Hornet in Alameda. This actual ship that you are on, made of steel and loaded with analog electronics, sailed to the far side of the Pacific and back. So much metal, steel, hydraulics, and electrical systems. It made it out and back. Not all the ships did. Mighty ships just like this one, with people like you, did not make it back.

gerdesj 11mo ago
You could also try HMS Victory in the UK or the Vasa in Sweden (other really old ships are available and some are still sailing). You might also note that the inhabitants of Hawaii had to have got there somehow and its 2000 odd miles to what is now the US mainland and still quite a long way from anywhere else, eg Tahiti.
- brabel 11mo ago
  Hawaii natives are Polynesians! They came the same way New Zealanders did by island hopping in the Pacific. We can only imagine but I guess most of those who tried it died in the middle of nowhere, only a few must have made it, but that’s enough.

andrewvc 11mo ago

Maybe, but really consumerism wasn’t a thing for most of history because almost no one had the money to decorate intentionally in the way we do today. The very wealthy did to varying extents. When we look at the past we always imagine ourselves to be the ones in Downton Abbey, but most people were lucky to inherit some furniture. I would argue that the reverence for real wood and craft you espoused (and I share) is in part possible due to living in a consumerist society. For what it’s worth it is still possible to buy those same quality goods today, and certainly at lower cost . However, I would balk at paying the historical fraction of my income (or multiple if we go back to the 1700s), for a new bed. In short cheap dishonest crap is what we ultimately want. It lets us focus our time and resources elsewhere

directevolve 11mo ago
A good depiction of the gritty realities and the meaning of material striving for the very poor in turn of the century farm life is the novel Independent People, by Halldor Laxness, an Icelandic nobel laureate.
- AlotOfReading 11mo ago
  Keep in mind that Halldor's book is depicting a situation fairly specific to Iceland: people recently freed from debt bondage, in a desperately poor and isolated area caught between much larger forces. It's not an attempt to accurately depict what it meant to be working poor for American laborers, like say grapes of wrath.
echelon 11mo ago
A lot of online culture laments the modern American life and blames the Boomers for all of our "woes". The 1950s - 2000s post war boom was a tailwind very few countries get to experience. It's funny how we look back at it as the norm, because that's not what the rest of the world experienced. There's a reason everything in America was super sized for so long. Things have averaged out a bit now, but if you look at the trendline, we're still doing remarkably well. The fact that our relatively small population supports the GDP it does is wild.

arjie 11mo ago

A lot of people think this, but if I'm being honest modern materials are amazing. They survive pretty rough washes, they're incredibly cheap, fire-retardant, and last forever. Synthetics are amazing. Coincidentally, it was only a couple of days ago that I was thinking about this[0] when I thought about how the microfibre fleece my daughter was lying on was the cheap microfiber fleece I'd bought when I encountered my first American winter. A student's cheap blanket has lasted me over a decade and still keeps me warm and cleans easily. My wife and I have had Caspers and Tuft & Needles and Tempurpedics and we sleep now on an Ikea foam mattress. It's fantastic. Modern manufacturing and materials are incredible. I feel like I'm living in a golden age. 0: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_Last https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-11-29/Things_Do_La...

typewithrhythm 11mo ago
It depends; it feels like in some categories the premium between a material that's very suitable, and some ersatz lookalike is massive and depressing. I love a good petrochemical, but sometimes it would be nice if the cheap thing store wasn't so callously targeting veneers and pleathers that last just long enough to loose the receipt.
Aeolun 11mo ago
I don’t think I have ever in my life noticed a difference between one matress and another. When I lie down, yes, but not when I wake up the next morning.
raincom 11mo ago
For the price point, IKEA mattresses (both hybrid and foam) are worth it. Same goes for mattresses sold by Costco/Sams Club. A lot of this enthusiasm about mattresses comes from being young. When your back is still indestructible, nearly any mattress(all kinds of foam, coils, hybrid, innerspring) feels fantastic. 20% of mattresses are returned for comfort reasons; that's how online marketing companies disguised as mattress companies have won over the traditional brick and mortar companies. Lots of people complain about the invisible sagging after a few years of usage. For warranty purposes, 1.5" visible sagging is needed. Even latex foam sags too, but it sags slower than PU foams. Even Tempurpedic has cheapened their foam, thereby cashing on its brand name. High density foam lasts longer. However, 99% of mattress makers don't list ILD and densities of their PU and viscoelastic PU foams. That's why the market is flooded with cheap mattresses that have invisible sag after a couple of years. Same goes with coils: thin wire, reducing the wire in each pocket, stretching the wire, carbon content, how wires are cleaned, etc--all these factors matter. Yes, there is advancement in the knowledge of materials and foams. However, industry has started cutting corners for a short term profit. If you make a mattress that lasts 10 years at least, who can you sell mattresses to then? That's why cheap low density foams, cheap coils dominate the industry.

jonstewart 11mo ago

My great-grandfather was born in a dugout (i.e., sod) house on the Kansas prairie in 1880. His father died when he was 9. When he went to teacher’s college, someone gave him an orange and he ate the rind, as he didn’t know you were supposed to peel it; he still thought it was delicious. He married late at 35, and his wife died after a year. He married again and their first daughter died as a toddler. He was 49 when the Great Depression began. He became a Republican because FDR repealed Prohibition. I’m not wealthy, not by HN standards, but my kids are healthy and lack for nothing. I doordash them takeout sushi when I don’t feel like cooking them dinner. I’ve been to several of the world’s great museums, gone to great plays and concerts, and love a round of Epoisses with a plump Meursault. Things that last have always been expensive, out of reach for many. And every time I think nostalgically about life on the prairie in a dugout, I think about winter, it being -10 outside and windy, and 45 degrees inside and damp and smoky.

euroderf 11mo ago

> Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. PlasticWorld is designed to empty your wallet over time. In a hundred dollar product, what breaks is the two cent piece of plastic that replaced a six-cent piece of metal. Another part of this process of the enshittification of the tangible world of consumer goods is the process of (1) acquisition of a quality brand (typically by private capital), (2) extraction of the value of the brand (via substitution of inferior products & services, and self-serving management "bonuses"), and finally, (3) brand liquidation (by bankruptcy or absorption).

spicyusername 11mo ago

I mean... yes... I guess in 1700 there were only things made by hand, but also those things were so incredibly expensive nobody had them. Most people had one "nice" pair of clothes that they inherited and expected to pass on, because cloth was so labor intensive. Children's toys we're basically non-existent. Books? Forget about it. Only for monks in the hills. Today you have the option, everyone can have the cheap thing, and the wealthy can still have the honest thing. Much better this way, in my opinion. Every era has warts. Even if we lived in heaven, you'd still have substack posts complaining about it. It's just the way humans are. Ever restless, always looking beyond. you would be crammed in there together, but it felt way more…. Human? Communal? Would you believe plenty of people still live this way... mostly against their will. Heck, anyone can do it!

techblueberry 11mo ago
You missed the point. The whole town aesthetic changed. No we really can’t do it anymore, because the way we design cities and towns is changing. Wealthy area used to be more open to everyone, now it’s all gated communities and walled compounds. You can’t even drive around the lake and enjoy the nature of it because all you see are the walls of McMansions, that’s what’s not “cute”
dan-robertson 11mo ago
I think 1700 is not the best year to use, depending on the place. Rural people in 1700 England were quite different from most peasants who have ever lived – they were in a relatively advanced monetary economy, literacy rates were high, secular books were affordable (much less so than today of course), the price of linen cloth had perhaps halved in the last 200 years. Feudalism was going away, agricultural productivity was rising. Life of a medieval peasant was quite different. Productivity was basically static, literacy was low, the economy would have been local and mostly based on barter or paying with labour. You would likely be growing your own linen to spin and weave and make into clothes for your own family. I think there was a little more specialisation and a little less subsistence agriculture by 1700.

jefftk 11mo ago

> Things made out of wood and metal were actually made out of hardwood and metal. Not so many composites that fall apart instead of wear ala wabi-sabi. Composites are older than you think: putting thin layers of high quality wood over a lower quality wooden backing goes back at least to the Egyptians and Romans: Pliny, Book 16: The principal woods for cutting into layers for using as a veneer to cover other kinds of wood are citrus, turpentine-tree, varieties of maple, box, palm, holly, holm-oak, the root of the elder, and poplar. Also the alder, as has been stated, supplies a tubcrosity that can be cut into layers, as do the citrus and the maple ; no other trees have tuberosities so much valued. The middle part of trees is more variegated, and the nearer the root the smaller and the more wavy are the markings. This first originated the luxury use of trees, covering up one with another and making an outside skin for a cheaper wood out of a more expensive one. In order that one tree might be sold several times over, even thin layers of wood have been invented. https://archive.org/details/naturalhistory04plinuoft/page/536/mode/2up?q=veneer https://archive.org/details/naturalhistory04plinuoft/page/53...

vdqtp3 11mo ago
Composites in that style are also typically very durable, often more than the original material. I think GP was more likely talking about constructions of pressboard and plywood which is (charitably) less durable.
- jefftk 11mo ago
  Plywood can be extremely durable, in many cases more than whole boards.