The culture of the 80s vs... ==) NOW!

Dude111

I don't know if im the only one,i dont want to be blasted as its only my opinion... Look at the 80s ===) The movies were pretty good,the music was very good and the commercials good also!! <<>> people also were more free than now...


Now its boring enough,the music sucks for the most part,quality is horrible,etc.....

Our kids will talk to their kids in the future about Ja Rule,Christina Aguilera and N'Sync?? Oh give me a break please! And what about the movies,its only sequels or other crap,hardily anything good like we had then...

Clothes are made like crap now,FEEL AWEFULL,etc.........


Im glad im not a young one growing up with the garbage of today,i am happy i was young in the 80s when it was MUCH BETTER AND HAPPIER!!

stone roses

i agree!!

see nobody had a pot to piss in, nobody needed a mobile or ipod
nobody gave a **** about running out onto the road with a bread and butter sambo or jam if you were rich!! lol :-)

the get up was a bit naff in the 80s but it was flash i suppose!
i was to young to be fashion aware but i remember pebble dash jeans and fleck and painten leather shoes with white socks! nooooooooo


as far as being a child goes in the 80s! well what can you say
we had nothing but we seem to have it all


a few memorys of our child hood

bmx
vhs
betamax ( top loader)
nes
c64
atari
star wars
ghostbusters
indiana jones
transformers
g.i.joe
action man
gabage pail kids
glow worms
cabbage patch kids
mask
karate kid
brave starr
tundercats
knight rider
airwolf
a-team
space hoppers
rubix cube
yo yos
evel kenevel
action force
tron
goonies
teen wolf
tnmt
robo cop
childs play
triller
mad max
he-man
rambo
raleigh grifters,choppers
real footballers not owl ones!!!

and i could go on till the cows came home!!
i dont konw do they have it better today??? i suppose they have jedward

lord lucan

I sorta agree with you. Some stuff was great,some not so great.

Clothes: They belong in the 80's,thank god we've come on leaps and bounds since. Some of the pics my parents have of me in the 80's are cringeworthy,what were my parents thinking?:eek:

Movies: There's been plenty of great movies through the 90's & 00's but i agree that Hollywood seems low on inspiration lately and seem happy to re-hash old 80's tv shows.

TV: Gotta say,i prefer 80's tv personally. There's been plenty of great tv shows over the last 2 decades but i still find myself watching a lot of old 80's stuff on dvd(A-Team,Magnum,McGuyver,Married.......With Children etc.).

Music: As a youngfella in the 80's i spent most of my time listening to pirate radio(Sunshine 101 mainly) and grew up on pop music. I only got into rock/metal at the end of the decade but even now i find i tend to listen to mainly old stuff. I will admit to having a couple of 80's pop compilations on my ipod,that's my little guilty pleasure. I was in love with Tiffany!:o

Attitude: This is my bugbear. Without wishing to make it sound like everything was rosy in the 80's,which it wasn't,we had some craic as kids. We spent more time out than in. We'd have to be dragged in by my parents. Evenings and summer holidays were spent on a green kicking a ball around,building treehouses,grass forts after the council cut the grass,stuff like that. We were never in anyone way or looked for anything from anyone.

When i see kids now i can only despair. Gangs of them hanging around all evening outside shops harassing people to get them beer/smokes. No respect for anyone,even the cops get lip from them. We were scared stiff of the cops as kids,even though we never had any dealings with them.

Now entertainment consists of playing the Playstation/xbox all evening or randomly talking jibberish on Facebook in a language that barely resembles English all night. Maybe i'm getting old(i'm only 35 ffs!!) but i despair of the youth of today tbh,good harmless fun like we had may sound a bit twee but there was nothing wrong with it and i'm a better individual(imo. obviously) for it.

Edit: I don't mean to generalise all kids as being like that but it just seems that way.

bonerm

There is good and bad from both eras. I used to be on a major nostalgia buzz and rejected the contemporary in favour of my memories. However now I realise that that was a mistake and that we should realise there's loads of good and innovative stuff going on right now.

For example I grew up on the C64 and played those games to death. For whatever reason I fell out of playing games after the demise of the C64 (around 1991 I guess?) and without the experience of what came after I was always convinced that (perhaps not technically) the c64 were the best games ever and had the best music. Just recently I bought a PS3 and now I love playing that too. I'm not sitting there thinking playing GTA or FIFA thinking "pfft this isn't as good as a c64" because it's actually so brilliant. I'm only sorry I missed out on all the gaming eras in between.

TV I always thought shows from when I grew up were great. However thanks to the digital revolution I can now review my favourites and I realise that most of them and they really look amateurish by todays standards. Even adult stuff of the 80s like Dallas is just rubbish. I'm sure I'd have been bored stiff had I been an adult trying to watch that stuff at the time. TV is definetly better in this era. Even the kids shows are better.

Movies. Now forget the "big budget" stuff, I'm a movie aficionado and I'm almost certain that the "marquee" type pictures being made today are better than the stuff from the 80s. Also in terms of populist movies It's worth remember not everything this from the 80's was "The Breakfast Club". There was a sheer amount of dross going on during that period also. Two words, "Golan Globus".

Music I've totally lost touch with but I'd imagine it's pretty much the same before during and after. I think you have to be of a certain age to appreciate popular music. Once you reach about 25 you realise it's pretty much all just derivative nonsense.

To sum up, basically stuff is better now and it's no harm being a kid today with so much good stuff around. Don't get me wrong. I loved being a kid of the 80's and there was never a dull moment. However now I'm *still* a kid, a kid of the 10's and I'm still enjoying all the good stuff that is happening right now. Don't miss out on it just because you can't get over your 80's rut.

DublinWriter

Dude111 wrote: »

Im glad im not a young one growing up with the garbage of today,i am happy i was young in the 80s when it was MUCH BETTER AND HAPPIER!!

I grew up in the 80's and it sucked.

No jobs, no money, most of us looked and dressed like milky-white extras from Miami Vice and how quick humanity denied the horror that was Bros (you thought Jedward was an original idea?!).

It's all a case of rose-tinted glasses. Most of us hated the music of the time and formed little proto-Emo gangs of Cureheads, Skaheads and Mod-revivalists.

I just love the here and now, try waiting five minutes for a game to load on a ZX Spectrum while listening to back-to-back Madonna on the radio and eating a Vesta curry and you'll realise that what we have now is pretty cool.

The Express

Nostalgia has a habit of donning the old rose tinted wayfarers.

Yeah, I remember listening to Atlantic 252 back in the day but the sound quality was undeniably crap.

If I was transported back in time to listen to it again I'd most probably just switch off the radio.

I actually think that you remember stuff like that that surrounds you from happier times in your life, too.

anti-venom

DublinWriter wrote: »

I grew up in the 80's and it sucked.

No jobs, no money, most of us looked and dressed like milky-white extras from Miami Vice and how quick humanity denied the horror that was Bros (you thought Jedward was an original idea?!).

It's all a case of rose-tinted glasses. Most of us hated the music of the time and formed little proto-Emo gangs of Cureheads, Skaheads and Mod-revivalists.

I just love the here and now, try waiting five minutes for a game to load on a ZX Spectrum while listening to back-to-back Madonna on the radio and eating a Vesta curry and you'll realise that what we have now is pretty cool.

I fully agree with you on this. The 80s pretty much sucked in many ways. Those rose tinted glasses can certainly play havoc with peoples memories. For the most part I was repulsed by the popular culture and wanton materialism of that decade. Ireland was really, in many ways, a cultural wasteland.

A lot of us back then went through secondary school with a feeling of foreboding about the future; it all looked so bleak and hopeless. I think that horrible feeling is what our generation and todays generation have most in common. To hell with the eighties. Even post Celtic tiger Ireland (bubble economy) is a far more interesting and better place to be than that dark, oppressive, rank hole of a place that was 80s Ireland.

Fighting Irish

The decade you grew up in is nearly always the best, it has nothing to do with music, movies or clothes