22 Things That Are Definitely Not In Their Golden Era Anymore
Throughout history, humankind has been treated to many different "Golden Ages" across the arts, sciences, and cultures.
But not all good things can last, and with every dawning of a new Golden Age comes its bittersweet end (RIP the Golden Age of television. We hardly knew thee).
With that in mind, Meteorstar101 recently asked the r/AskReddit community, "What are we no longer in the 'golden age' of?" and the responses are as nostalgic as they are devastating, so buckle up!!
1."Social media. It went from being a way to connect with strangers for fun and keep up with your IRL friends to mostly just being a slew of ads and rage bait."
—u/diplion
2."Architecture. Everything is a gray box now."
—u/Casanovagdp
3."Appliances. Nothing stays working"
"I spent 800 bucks on a Kitchen-Aid mixer last year and they've already had to replace it twice."
—u/mawktheone
4."Disney."
5."Fast food. Everything is shitty now, and online ordering has ruined the in-restaurant experience. Not to mention, most workers hate their jobs and wind up quitting because employers treat them like crap."
—u/G-Unit11111
"Chipotle used to taste better in general and you used to get so much food with your order. The quality is noticeably worse, and it’s way more expensive."
6."The golden age of the 'American Dream.' It's a bloody nightmare and has been for a decade or three, but no one wants to listen."
—u/Magdalan
7."Higher education has become a shell of its former self and its value has decreased everywhere."
—u/Hiraeth3189
"The fact that so many grants have disappeared will only make things worse. We're only two months into the Trump administration, and it has already done damage to science and academia, which will take decades to recover from if it ever does."
8."Unless you're over 30, you never really experienced how amazing the internet used to be. Social media was better, search engines were better, people ran their own personal websites just because they had passion and wanted to, and there was almost no monetization."
"'Content creator' wasn't even a thing. Communities were organic and fun, corporations hadn't taken over everything, we had chronological feeds instead of algorithms, and almost everything you found on the internet was genuine organic user-made content.
It feels like literally every single aspect of the internet is getting worse. It used to be this separate world that you would log in to on your desktop computer, spend a few hours browsing, and then log off to engage in real life. Now it's this never-ending entity that's woven into our entire lives."
—u/MeltBanana
9."Democracy and workers rights."
"They have us by the balls working paycheck to paycheck and having our healthcare linked to our jobs on purpose. Most people can't miss a week."
10."RuPaul's Drag Race."
11."Streaming services are a shitshow."
—u/mikeltru
"I remember 10 years ago that if a show was on streaming, it was worth checking out. Now, Netflix and the rest just toss shit at the wall and see what sticks."
12."Journalism."
—u/vanmildwild
"The biggest problem is the business model to keep journalism viable is collapsing."
"The Age of Journalism is done; the Age of the Repost Influencers and Talking Head Personalities is booming."
13."Movies. There are so many out there, but so many of them are bad."
"Hollywood got greedy and got used to multiple billion-dollar-grossers every year and spent like they were going to keep coming."
"Anyway, here's your yearly Batman reboot!"
14."The job market is so bad that the unemployment rate is in its Golden Age."
15."Video games. Greedy corporatism has severely damaged the industry as a whole due to so many different reasons."
—u/zyirus1312
"We are now in the age of less-than-satisfying remasters and remakes."
—u/JaySilver
16."Rock ‘n’ roll."
—u/newleaf9110
"Rock is definitely dead, after all these years of people singing it would never die. But there it is. Creaky old rockers reminiscing on YouTube about shit that happened a half century ago. "Rock cruises" featuring bands where maybe only one of the original members is still in it. Kids playing rock music as if it were a history assignment."
—u/TR3BPilot
17."The Simpsons."
—u/pottymcnugg
18."Technology in general. New tech used to be exciting and fun."
"Computers are not actually faster because programs are bigger and make them run slower. Or smartphones. What’s even left? I used to imagine technology as a wave that came thundering ashore, and now it’s a spread out, slow-moving trickle, identical in every direction."
19."Music videos. MTV rotted away to produce reality shows."
—u/skexzies
20."This is a small thing, but autocorrect. I remember in the early 2010s when autocorrect was kinda buggy, and you’d get some really funny corrections, and 'autocorrect fail' was a big meme."
"Then in the mid-2010s it was so much better, but now I feel like it’s at its worst. Both on iPhone and on Microsoft. Like, why does Outlook want me to say 'me office' instead of 'my office' in an email? Why does iPhone correct 'carries' to 'Carrie’s' when I don’t know anyone named Carrie? It used to be that it seemed like iPhone learned from the words you used regularly and gave you corrections based on that, but now it’s just shitty."
—u/hayleybeth7
21."Cartoons. I feel like the 1980s were the golden age of cartoons."
"Computer-animated shows just don’t have the same feeling as cartoons of the '80s!"
22."Superheroes in general. The Arrowverse is over. The Super-verse never materialized. The MCU is meh now. Same for the DCEU (or whatever it’s called now)."
We can scream about all the things that used to be better until our heads explode, but in the interest of not making everyone feel completely hopeless, I leave you with this.
"The better question is, what are we in the golden age of?"
—u/veemonjosh
Well, do you agree that these Golden Ages are over? Or have any ideas about what Golden Ages are happening as we speak? Tell me in the comments!
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
