4 ms·

I have a pet theory that much of what we're seeing culturally is that the 90s and early 2000s (at least in the US) was a window of time that offered a sense of

I have a pet theory that much of what we're seeing culturally is that the 90s and early 2000s (at least in the US) was a window of time that offered a sense of safety and surplus. 9/11 was extremely culturally disruptive, but aside from that, for many in the US, it felt like there was "enough to go around". That environment breeds a lot of creativity, innovation, whimsy, and doing things for their own sake. But that time has clearly ended. With climate change, the erosion of the social safety net, decay of faith in institutions, economic inequality, politics, etc., we are in an extremely tense time with a pervasive sense of scarcity. In some fundamental ways, it feels like there isn't enough to go around and people are scrabbling to get what they can while they can. That psychological environment is not conducive to art and fun. It sucks.

nibbleyou 5mo ago
I too have felt the same around me. There is this lack of faith in the institutions now, feeling of distrust. Someone on HN called this the era of shamelessness and I kind of agree to it. The top has gotten shameless and the people at the bottom are trying to scrabble whatever they can to become one of them so that they can escape this hellhole that has been created.
- randomNumber7 5mo ago
  Definitely the fish stinks from the head. I'm also a bit confused about how the people on the top think this will play out. A long time ago there was a french saying "noblesse oblige", or the german pendant "Wohlstand verpflichtet".
  - thatguy0900 5mo ago
    I don't like being conspiratorial but it genuinely feels like the people at the top know some major catastrophe is coming and are just grabbing whatever resources they can while they can before retreating to their bunkers. Even the white house is trying to build a massive underground bunker using the ballroom on top as a excuse. I don't see why else they would all be willingly destroying society as they are right now unless they don't think it matters.
    - brokenmachine 5mo ago
      Everyone knows a major catastrophe is coming. Scientists have been talking about the tipping point for like five decades now. It's a done deal, we were too stupid.
  - munificent 5mo ago
    > I'm also a bit confused about how the people on the top think this will play out. I don't know if they are really capable of thinking of the second and third order effects of what they're doing. There is something psychologically broken about many of the ultra-rich today where their behavior comes across as compulsive. When you have a hole in your soul that can't be filled with a billion dollars, it simply can't be filled, and that black hole drives much of their behavior. You look at people like Trump and Musk, and they seem... miserable. Like, have you ever heard Trump have a genuine laugh of joy? Not the sort of sneering snicker of a bully, but one that comes from delight? Because I haven't. We are all at the mercy of their actions, but it's almost like they're at the mercy of their irrational compulsions too. Not that I'm saying they are deserving of sympathy or aren't responsible for their actions. But if we're looking for someone to pump the brakes on the crazy that's happening these days, it's sure as hell not going to be those hollow men.
yifanl 5mo ago
Realizing that the average CS graduate can't expect to make 100k on a career of centering divs has been more disruptive to the the American psyche than 9/11.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago
  It's not the end of the world though. Not everyone has to be a CS graduate. There's other professions out there.
  - jonathanstrange 5mo ago
    Nobody said that everyone has to be a CS graduate.
- tristor 5mo ago
  It's not that the average CS grad can't expect to make 100k, it's that when that was the case 100k was a meaningful amount, now the same purchasing power requires 235k and almost nobody is making 235k in any job role, career pursuit, or field of study. Those that are making 235k aren't experiencing the same lifestyle because they don't exist in the same context, they exist in a context where they're surrounded by depression, scarcity, scrounging, and know that their time could be up at any moment. The world is in a different place, and while it's funny to joke about how privileged tech people are, the net effect is that we've lost one of the most accessible refuges into a decent career for people. Many of us in tech, including myself, got into this without even a CS degree using free resources online and through libraries to learn about computers and build skills. It's basically inconceivable for anyone who is ambitious and a self-starter to build a career outside of extremely competitive, hierarchical, formal lines in 2026 except maybe as a social media influencer, which is probably why most people under 25 say their dream/goal is to become an influencer. It's their only shot at not being stuck in a state of permanent grinding misery to uphold wealthy elites.
  - yifanl 5mo ago
    I wasn't joking, just trying to compact my thoughts. The lifestyle and abundance we sold the last generation of university students turned out to be wholly out of reach for all but the luckiest and most well-connected, and that disillusion is why we feel so much like crap, even when we point out we're still objectively far ahead of the global average.
DarkNova6 5mo ago
The whole structure has changed. We are not even in the web 2.0 anymore and regressed to a client-server model where what we see is dictated from central platforms with little interaction between actual users. This was not a natural evolution of the web but the consequence of low-tech people accessing the web passively via a tiny touchscreen.
- sandy_coyote 5mo ago
  Tragedy of the Commons. It was around 2012 when my reactionary boomer relatives started trying to friend me on Facebook, wondering what the kids were all talking about.
- packetlost 5mo ago
  There are pockets of this on the internet, but you really have to go out of your way to find it
- pseudalopex 5mo ago
  The central platforms began before smart phones were common.
  - snek_case 5mo ago
    Yeah but they weren't as toxic. I was an early YouTube user... The platform used to have no ads, can you imagine?
    - brokenmachine 5mo ago
      Adblock bro. The day I can't block ads is the last day I use youtube.
    - pseudalopex 5mo ago
      Facebook planned ads always. And YouTube probably. Ads made engagement their 1 goal. This caused most of their bad parts. Not smart phones.
- 5mo ago
seydor 5mo ago
90s had much less wealth concentration than today. Truth is everything rots over time, there is no escaping from entropy.
clickety_clack 5mo ago
If you feel that way then you have to question what it is that you’re doing that puts you in a place where you are made to feel that way. Many people (most that I know) don’t feel that way. It may be the online communities that you are in or the news you consume, and the great news about that is that is stuff that is not only optional; you choose to consume it. You can just stop consuming it.
- apsurd 5mo ago
  You can feel how you feel and understand how and why people feel how they feel too. Instead, reads like you're blaming the victim. Shoulda worked harder in school!
  - GMoromisato 5mo ago
    If my choice is "work harder in school" or "wait for the system to fix itself" I think the rational choice is the former. Wisdom is accepting that you can only control what you can control, and to focus on that.
  - clickety_clack 5mo ago
    If you spend all day on Reddit or twitter etc., and you say “all these Reddit and twitter things are making me feel sad and anxious”, then you can’t avoid all the blame for making yourself feel that way.
    - 63stack 5mo ago
      But nobody said that apart from you?
- energy123 5mo ago
  It's significantly an Anglosphere thing. Look at the recent world happiness survey and all the English-speaking countries are taking a nose dive in relative ranking versus other countries. Meanwhile world GDP is increasing. I have a handful of idiosyncratic hypotheses, that I view as stacking on top of the more general cause of inflation and inequality: - Western hegemony is weakening. Russia is attacking, China is gaining in strength, and many former backwaters are gaining ground. This creates uncertainty. In 1991, the US was the supreme undisputed hegemon. - Global Social media is significantly English, and the US is the center of the now globalized culture wars, so there's no linguistic barriers to the resulting pathologies. The online world feels borderless and chaotic. - There is now sectarian strife within English-speaking countries due to different moral tribes (some of those tribes being recent immigrants) living in the same country when there wasn't before. This is a new phenomenon in living memory in the Anglosphere. - Russia and Iran are running cognitive warfare and other operations to destabilize social cohesion in the Anglosphere. Examples: (i) online - Gucifer, Internet Research Agency, (ii) real world - paying local gangsters to attack minorities.
vardalab 5mo ago
I think it's as simple as Citizens United and wealth inequality exploding.
shit_game 5mo ago
> That psychological environment is not conducive to art and fun. It sucks. I think that two significant social conditions that very strongly affect how people socialize online now are a) there are multiple parallel well-established, invasive, unstoppable, government-sanctioned economies of theft that seek to profit at everyones expense (advertising, AI, surveilance). Why would anyone want to share anything if it's going to be stolen? Why would anyone want to be online if they're going to be spied on? Why would anyone want to look at anything if it's all advertisements? b) it's politically en vogue for major online platforms to allow (and even propagate) hateful content because of the current political situation in the west. The companies that have grown to control the online spaces that people use are the same companies operating the economies of theft, and have demonstrated that they will happily bend the knee if it means they are allowed to continue stealing and spying and selling all this data to governments. Why would anyone want to use a platform filled with hate speech and political propaganda? I would describe this combination of conditions as repulsive. There's no more appeal in the social internet because the bad guys won.
roncesvalles 5mo ago
And yet, by most development and wellbeing metrics, America is doing better than ever before. My theory is this: People are just more aware of wealth disparity now. People in the 90s and 00s knew that multi-millionaires and billionaires existed, but they were faraway mystical gargoyles in Connecticut or Monaco. What's more transparent now is that you might be making $50k and your neighbor might be making $500k. Or the kid you grew up with moved to Dubai after making a small fortune on crypto or drop-shipping, or became a YouTube/TikTok celebrity. People didn't even know surgeons hit 7 figures, not low 6 figures, until recently. People knew Wall St suits made good money but they assumed it was $200k, not $2m or even $20m. I remember when levels.fyi first came out and lots of people on social media were like "these numbers are completely made-up". A lot of SWEs themselves didn't even believe FAANG IC SWEs made $200-500k. Not to mention, social media video lets you experience their lives through their literal point-of-view now. In a way, the democratization of wealth and fame, and the transparency of information around it, has made people more anxious. We basically live in an era of epidemic FOMO.

nibbleyou 5mo ago

I too have felt the same around me. There is this lack of faith in the institutions now, feeling of distrust. Someone on HN called this the era of shamelessness and I kind of agree to it. The top has gotten shameless and the people at the bottom are trying to scrabble whatever they can to become one of them so that they can escape this hellhole that has been created.

randomNumber7 5mo ago
Definitely the fish stinks from the head. I'm also a bit confused about how the people on the top think this will play out. A long time ago there was a french saying "noblesse oblige", or the german pendant "Wohlstand verpflichtet".
- thatguy0900 5mo ago
  I don't like being conspiratorial but it genuinely feels like the people at the top know some major catastrophe is coming and are just grabbing whatever resources they can while they can before retreating to their bunkers. Even the white house is trying to build a massive underground bunker using the ballroom on top as a excuse. I don't see why else they would all be willingly destroying society as they are right now unless they don't think it matters.
  - brokenmachine 5mo ago
    Everyone knows a major catastrophe is coming. Scientists have been talking about the tipping point for like five decades now. It's a done deal, we were too stupid.
- munificent 5mo ago
  > I'm also a bit confused about how the people on the top think this will play out. I don't know if they are really capable of thinking of the second and third order effects of what they're doing. There is something psychologically broken about many of the ultra-rich today where their behavior comes across as compulsive. When you have a hole in your soul that can't be filled with a billion dollars, it simply can't be filled, and that black hole drives much of their behavior. You look at people like Trump and Musk, and they seem... miserable. Like, have you ever heard Trump have a genuine laugh of joy? Not the sort of sneering snicker of a bully, but one that comes from delight? Because I haven't. We are all at the mercy of their actions, but it's almost like they're at the mercy of their irrational compulsions too. Not that I'm saying they are deserving of sympathy or aren't responsible for their actions. But if we're looking for someone to pump the brakes on the crazy that's happening these days, it's sure as hell not going to be those hollow men.

yifanl 5mo ago

Realizing that the average CS graduate can't expect to make 100k on a career of centering divs has been more disruptive to the the American psyche than 9/11.

joe_mamba 5mo ago
It's not the end of the world though. Not everyone has to be a CS graduate. There's other professions out there.
- jonathanstrange 5mo ago
  Nobody said that everyone has to be a CS graduate.
tristor 5mo ago
It's not that the average CS grad can't expect to make 100k, it's that when that was the case 100k was a meaningful amount, now the same purchasing power requires 235k and almost nobody is making 235k in any job role, career pursuit, or field of study. Those that are making 235k aren't experiencing the same lifestyle because they don't exist in the same context, they exist in a context where they're surrounded by depression, scarcity, scrounging, and know that their time could be up at any moment. The world is in a different place, and while it's funny to joke about how privileged tech people are, the net effect is that we've lost one of the most accessible refuges into a decent career for people. Many of us in tech, including myself, got into this without even a CS degree using free resources online and through libraries to learn about computers and build skills. It's basically inconceivable for anyone who is ambitious and a self-starter to build a career outside of extremely competitive, hierarchical, formal lines in 2026 except maybe as a social media influencer, which is probably why most people under 25 say their dream/goal is to become an influencer. It's their only shot at not being stuck in a state of permanent grinding misery to uphold wealthy elites.
- yifanl 5mo ago
  I wasn't joking, just trying to compact my thoughts. The lifestyle and abundance we sold the last generation of university students turned out to be wholly out of reach for all but the luckiest and most well-connected, and that disillusion is why we feel so much like crap, even when we point out we're still objectively far ahead of the global average.

DarkNova6 5mo ago

The whole structure has changed. We are not even in the web 2.0 anymore and regressed to a client-server model where what we see is dictated from central platforms with little interaction between actual users. This was not a natural evolution of the web but the consequence of low-tech people accessing the web passively via a tiny touchscreen.

sandy_coyote 5mo ago
Tragedy of the Commons. It was around 2012 when my reactionary boomer relatives started trying to friend me on Facebook, wondering what the kids were all talking about.
packetlost 5mo ago
There are pockets of this on the internet, but you really have to go out of your way to find it
pseudalopex 5mo ago
The central platforms began before smart phones were common.
- snek_case 5mo ago
  Yeah but they weren't as toxic. I was an early YouTube user... The platform used to have no ads, can you imagine?
  - brokenmachine 5mo ago
    Adblock bro. The day I can't block ads is the last day I use youtube.
  - pseudalopex 5mo ago
    Facebook planned ads always. And YouTube probably. Ads made engagement their 1 goal. This caused most of their bad parts. Not smart phones.
5mo ago

seydor 5mo ago

90s had much less wealth concentration than today. Truth is everything rots over time, there is no escaping from entropy.

clickety_clack 5mo ago

If you feel that way then you have to question what it is that you’re doing that puts you in a place where you are made to feel that way. Many people (most that I know) don’t feel that way. It may be the online communities that you are in or the news you consume, and the great news about that is that is stuff that is not only optional; you choose to consume it. You can just stop consuming it.

apsurd 5mo ago
You can feel how you feel and understand how and why people feel how they feel too. Instead, reads like you're blaming the victim. Shoulda worked harder in school!
- GMoromisato 5mo ago
  If my choice is "work harder in school" or "wait for the system to fix itself" I think the rational choice is the former. Wisdom is accepting that you can only control what you can control, and to focus on that.
- clickety_clack 5mo ago
  If you spend all day on Reddit or twitter etc., and you say “all these Reddit and twitter things are making me feel sad and anxious”, then you can’t avoid all the blame for making yourself feel that way.
  - 63stack 5mo ago
    But nobody said that apart from you?
energy123 5mo ago
It's significantly an Anglosphere thing. Look at the recent world happiness survey and all the English-speaking countries are taking a nose dive in relative ranking versus other countries. Meanwhile world GDP is increasing. I have a handful of idiosyncratic hypotheses, that I view as stacking on top of the more general cause of inflation and inequality: - Western hegemony is weakening. Russia is attacking, China is gaining in strength, and many former backwaters are gaining ground. This creates uncertainty. In 1991, the US was the supreme undisputed hegemon. - Global Social media is significantly English, and the US is the center of the now globalized culture wars, so there's no linguistic barriers to the resulting pathologies. The online world feels borderless and chaotic. - There is now sectarian strife within English-speaking countries due to different moral tribes (some of those tribes being recent immigrants) living in the same country when there wasn't before. This is a new phenomenon in living memory in the Anglosphere. - Russia and Iran are running cognitive warfare and other operations to destabilize social cohesion in the Anglosphere. Examples: (i) online - Gucifer, Internet Research Agency, (ii) real world - paying local gangsters to attack minorities.

vardalab 5mo ago

I think it's as simple as Citizens United and wealth inequality exploding.

shit_game 5mo ago

> That psychological environment is not conducive to art and fun. It sucks. I think that two significant social conditions that very strongly affect how people socialize online now are a) there are multiple parallel well-established, invasive, unstoppable, government-sanctioned economies of theft that seek to profit at everyones expense (advertising, AI, surveilance). Why would anyone want to share anything if it's going to be stolen? Why would anyone want to be online if they're going to be spied on? Why would anyone want to look at anything if it's all advertisements? b) it's politically en vogue for major online platforms to allow (and even propagate) hateful content because of the current political situation in the west. The companies that have grown to control the online spaces that people use are the same companies operating the economies of theft, and have demonstrated that they will happily bend the knee if it means they are allowed to continue stealing and spying and selling all this data to governments. Why would anyone want to use a platform filled with hate speech and political propaganda? I would describe this combination of conditions as repulsive. There's no more appeal in the social internet because the bad guys won.

roncesvalles 5mo ago

And yet, by most development and wellbeing metrics, America is doing better than ever before. My theory is this: People are just more aware of wealth disparity now. People in the 90s and 00s knew that multi-millionaires and billionaires existed, but they were faraway mystical gargoyles in Connecticut or Monaco. What's more transparent now is that you might be making $50k and your neighbor might be making $500k. Or the kid you grew up with moved to Dubai after making a small fortune on crypto or drop-shipping, or became a YouTube/TikTok celebrity. People didn't even know surgeons hit 7 figures, not low 6 figures, until recently. People knew Wall St suits made good money but they assumed it was $200k, not $2m or even $20m. I remember when levels.fyi first came out and lots of people on social media were like "these numbers are completely made-up". A lot of SWEs themselves didn't even believe FAANG IC SWEs made $200-500k. Not to mention, social media video lets you experience their lives through their literal point-of-view now. In a way, the democratization of wealth and fame, and the transparency of information around it, has made people more anxious. We basically live in an era of epidemic FOMO.