re: A tweet on how awesome the 80s was.

I think people look back fondly on the 80s and 90s because the tech was cool but there was no dependence on it - which made it more enjoyable.

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What’s with all the recent reminiscing threads about the past?

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A lot of gen X’ers are in crisis. Count me in

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Well yeah new stuff is better. Doesn't mean it sucked when it was all we had. Before tapes you didn't have readily available recording media.

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But it wasn't all we had. It was a bucket of compromises for the sake of convenience and affordability. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. I just don't understand the nostalgia for it. What we have now is better than cassettes in every conceivable way. Now, nostalgia for LPs? Sure. Which is why we are seeing a modern resurgence of them. But there's a reason audio and video cassettes have almost no modern resale value, outside of extremely rare examples. Yet vintage LPs have extremely good resale value.

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I have lost countless important digital recordings. But I still have a collection of tapes I can whip out and hear long lost relatives sing and talk on.

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That's a personal care issue, as there is no inherent reason as to why it would be easier to "lose" a digital recording than it is a cassette recording.

But debates over the formats aside for a second, serious talk: if you have audio or video cassettes that have recordings that are important to you, you need to archive them to digital formats asap. Magnetic tape is inherently volatile, even when stored in absolutely perfect conditions. Every year that passes, and certainly every time you play them, the quality of the recording degrades, and there's no way to recover those pieces of data once they're gone. Damage has likely already been done, but they are better today than they ever will be again, so lock in what quality you have left now

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A lot of gen X’ers are in crisis. Count me in

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Same here.

thank christ i grew up in the 2000s

I’m really surprised you didn’t have a graph for “Cases of Satanic Panic.”

You youngsters should have grown up in the late 40s and 50s. You’d really know how great it was. We did not have much but we had depression era parents and grandparents raising us and America was real. Mayberry like.

SFP is just proving OPs point.

No one cared about hood rat shite because they stayed in their lane and most people minded their own business.

WTF do I care if Compton is getting shot up or some Queen punctures her fetuses brain. I had ninja turtles, a mongoose, and no fear.

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Man, the mag wheels on the BMX were boss as shite

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Sticking a pencil in the spokes of a cassette to draw the tape back inside.

80s and 90s were great because you had the convenience of technology but it wasn’t intrusive with cell phones and social media.