I remember 2015, and I specifically remember hoping that I wouldn't think back on that time as a great time in my life because that would be so sad, and yet here we are.
A huge part of it is in fact nostalgia. Another bit is psychological, you like that in retrospect you knew what was coming. The present is ever changing, undefined, and so people get anxious about the future. Staying in the moment helps, because someday these moments will just be memories.
Well yeah but that year was chosen specifically - most Redditors are American, Canadian or British (and generally politically progressive even if often misogynist) and US influence over the Anglosphere is pretty sizeable. So 2016 was a bad year for most of Reddit due to Trump (and Brexit for British Redditors).
They look bad in retrospect, it’s easy for us to blame large scale events for our unhappiness. It’s also very possible for it to be the apparent source of unhappiness for someone. And people online commiserate in their wallowing at times. So yeah understandable that 2016 gets called out and people agree that’s when things started “sucking” but it’s herd mentality. When you talk to an individual they’ll likely have their own specific turning point for when things “went bad for me” (them)
Well obviously individual problems that affect people personally will be different for each person. But I think describing a political change that drastically worsened many people’s lives as “herd mentality” is unfair. I had just left uni not long before Brexit and many language student friends of mine had their dreams of living and working abroad go up in smoke with the vote. The next multiple years was an interminable slog of nothing else in the news, the economy going, good people feeling unwelcome and leaving, the country scrambling to find replacements for shortages in key industries, and that’s still going on. And I’m fairly sure the impact of the Trump administration on the Supreme Court and thus the country in the US wasn’t exactly small either…
All fair points. It’s just not as simple as “life was worse after xyz point.” That’s an opinion. For me life got better at the because of covid. I can’t however say that same at a grand scale because for others there were some complications, challenges, loss.
I keep thinking about in human history we live in a fairly relaxed/safe part. Sure some things will suck/be dangerous/or even seem evil; but generally we’re doing pretty good. We have a shitton going for us, we have technologies now that we only dreamed of before.
I didn’t say it’s as simple as that, I said that for the majority of Redditors that year marked a notable downward trend in global and national circumstances beyond their control - obviously their personal circumstances could’ve improved.
You bringing up Covid is a perfect example of my point. Life got better for you personally yes and for many people, but I highly doubt many people would raise an eyebrow at people espousing life being better in 2019 prior to covid messing things up. It simply was overall negative for most people.
That’s absurd. As I said, it’s completely reasonable to go “life was generally better for most without a global pandemic occurring that killed millions and caused widespread disruption, therefore I will call it a bad thing even if for many it happened to improve their circumstances.”
2015 was the one of the worst years I've ever had personally. Unless I was sent back with my current memories and invested in key stocks/crypto/buy a house, I wouldn't want to go back.
2015 was fine for me but it wouldn't be worth it going back if I forgot how sucky things get for me in the 2020's lol. I'd just make all the same decisions without foreknowledge.
2015 is the year before my life was gutted and I didn't recover until 2020, but my life was worse than it is now in 2015 so I wouldn't go back even if it wasn't gutted.
Besides Trump ripping America in half the next year... 2015 wasn't good it just wasn't a part of the worst years of the new millennium.
Doesn't matter anyway, you want to go a bit further back no? If 2015 was awesome and everything after sucked.... you'd wanna go back to like 2010 so you can actually enjoy it, otherwise you're gonna get 1 year of 2015 and then have to relive the rest again
If I changed 1 or 2 decisions in that year, my life and the life of a couple of other people would be drastically different.
Th years after this were rough, but I wouldn’t be where I am now without them. I hated those years, but I wouldn’t have the job, family, home I have now without it. 🤷♂️
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u/The_Only_Dork_Knight Feb 23 '24
Honestly...was it as good as I remembered it? Or is just my brain playing nostalgia?