It's not that people write stupid shit on TRP. It's that stupid shit on TRP gets upvoted like this.

every once in a while i find myself getting immersed in something from the past - reading books on it, watching films, seeing period-piece dramas on tv... and i get so wrapped up in it all.

The clothing styles, cars that looked like they had some character, lifestyles where people were active enough they could eat and drink and still be a relatively decent weight.

And as a linux admin of 10 years - looking at periods where every waking second wasn't augmented by technology in some way is quite romantic for me.

I've found as i've grown older i love golden age hollywood, early cheesy horror and scifi flicks, goldenage/classic pornography and exploitation flicks, reading about the heyday's of burlesque, reading about people who were starry eyed folks wanting to be that great american writer, even music - the classic rock of the 60s and 70, early rock'nroll, the jazz era.

Even as shitty as prohibition was, i think - what a thrill it must have been to witness the fall of the saloon and the rise of the speakeasy.

Even romanticizing, even if its a tad sexist, an economy that facilitated the ability for one parent to stay at home and give kids the attention they need. A world not dominated by corporate chains in every, single strip mall, on every corner. Where cities and towns had their own personality rather than being just one big copy of one another with the same bullshit to offer as the last city.

But then i look at modern medicine, our social progress, and just how much damn hard work mundane tasks tended to be - and i don't see how people don't understand that all of that is just a romantic looking back. Life was hell for minorities, life could be hell for women, our ability to explore art and culture and educate ourselves at the touch of a button nowadays is phenomenal.

I think in many ways we live in the future and it sucks. It's not what was promised by starry eyed 60s utopian scifi. I'ts more...cyberpunk but far more boring. Corporations rule, unions decimated, obesity is a plague on us, privacy is a thing of the past, but there's been significant advances i don't think we could give up that we've made, even if we've lost some others a long the way.

I think we've made social progress, but class regress. I think we've made technological advances - but the way we've used it makes it come with costs.

But romanticizing the past can be a lot of fun. Just don't get your head stuck in a reality that never really existed.

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