15 people share awful things from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s that aren't talked about.
Nostalgia is a helluva drug.
It's always easier to look back on the past and repaint it with the good memories and certainty that sticks to a moment that was already lived.
There's nothing wrong with reminiscing and grieving the hard parts of change, but it can be useful to remind ourselves that no time period was purely 'the good old days,' because life is always a trade-off.
In a popular Ask Reddit thread, people shared bad things from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s we don't talk about enough.
1. From The_Nomadic_Nerd:
When you walked into a restaurant, the first thing the hostess would ask you is 'smoking or non-smoking?'
I never smoked a cigarette but the next morning after a night out my clothes all smelled of cigarettes.
2. From groundsquid:
That awkward 60 seconds when you’re waiting for your friend to come to the phone and you have to make polite conversation with their parent who answered the phone.
3. From ReverseCargoCult:
Having a personal collection of music was not that affordable. Movies and such as well.
4. From DelsMagicFishies:
All the teen girls I knew who went to tanning beds regularly, starting age 14 or so. Glad to see that fall out of style.
In high school (2005ish) before social media was huge, trends moved slower and there was a definite point where the hip girls in my city were all trying to look pale but the girls from the suburbs were still tanning.
5. From GingerJamesxxx:
That weird self-tanner and pale lipstick combo.
6. From cocoakrispiesdonut:
If you lost someone’s phone number as a kid, good luck reconnecting with them. So many classmates moved and I never heard from them again, until Facebook came along…
7. From will_write_for_tacos:
The complete devastation caused by HIV/AIDS back in the 80s and early 90s and the state of fear so many people lived with back then.
Before we knew much about it, people were absolutely terrified, my aunt was washing her dishes with bleach after having guests because she was convinced you could get it from a cup or spoon used by an infected person.
There was a period of time where people just didn't know how infectious it was. My cousin died of AIDS and it was hushed up pretty quickly. She was a straight woman who got it through sex with an infected partner she met at a bar.
It was terrifying, people were afraid of her while she was sick. I'm grateful we have treatment and knowledge now, but goddamn we went through some traumatic shit back then and nobody talks about it now.
8. From Technicolor_Reindeer:
A ton of serial killers were active in the 80's
Eastern Europe did not have a good 90's
9. From OffWithMyHead4Real:
In the 80s: Acid rain - well before Chernobyl even. And there were a LOT of bombings by terrorists in Europe, like IRA, RAF, ETA, ALF.
10. From FreezingNote:
As an 80s kid, I’m convinced that most parents in my life - mine and my friends’ - were massive alcoholics.
Drinking and driving, as well as ignoring your kids nearly 100% of the time and expecting them to fend for themselves while they got loaded pretty much every night was a lot more normalized then than it is today.
11. From somedoofyouwontlike:
I feel like the Rwanda genocide just doesn't hold any historical value for the world body.
12. From Consistent-Path7444:
I used to see kids engaging in horseplay in cars, obviously unbuckled. Also, I come from a family of 6 and we had a car with 5 seats. The baby would sit on a parent’s lap in the front passenger seat and this was just acceptable in the 80s.
I also remember riding in cars and having to sit in the passenger side footwell if the number of passengers exceeded the seats and I was the smallest.
13. From olive_ate_my_pimento
That so many of the songs played backward supposedly had satanic messages. And band names meant things other than they were...like ACDC meaning antichrist devil's child.
14. From hiro111:
Crime rates in the US have plummeted over the past 40 years.
For example, people seem to have forgotten just how bad the murder rate was in the late 80s and early 90s. The murder rate in the US fell by an impressive 50% from 1990-2016.
The murder rate rose sharply in 2020 from 2019, but was still 30% lower than 1990. The murder rate started to drop again in 2022 and looks to be headed back to levels we saw five years ago. It's still too high, but it used to be much worse.
Similarly, total property crime rates peaked in the early 1980 and have fallen almost every year since. Burglary rates have fallen by a surprising 2/3rds since the early 80s. Car thefts, robberies, muggings etc, all less common than they used to be.
So yeah, crime used to be much worse than it is now. No one seems to talk about that
15. From arewedanza:
This was especially true in the 1990s and early 2ks: Society sexualized teenage girls to a wildly uncomfortable degree. Like for years all of the cover models on magazines were no older than 15.
The fashion for teenage girls was a thong showing above your low-rise jeans. Adults openly talked about Britney Spears and the Olson twins reaching legal age. I was regularly approached by grown men on the street at 14 if I wore a dress.
I heard that the best way to check if a girl is old enough to have sex it to see if she has pubic hair from multiple adult men around me from before I was like 8 years old. These adult men were even in charge of watching children or family members.
Oh, and society also believed children couldn't get PTSD or be traumatized because of their 'resilience'. Don't even get me started on the child morality panics, like the 1990s in particular were a dark messed up decade.