The only things I enjoy of this generation are the video games of nineteen-ninety-four to two-thousand-and-eight,
the music that doesn't sound like the horrid bastard child of a sleazy ghetto brothel and an ecstacy-laden rave,
and the pornography that has women which are actually attractive
Popular culture, fashion and entertainment...it's probably worth an entire thread of its own. To my eyes some things have definitely improved, but there's been some sheer stupidity in every decade. I look at pictures of myself from when I was a kid and the clothes look absolutely dorky to my eyes. But I remember thinking the same during the 90s when guys starting thinking it was "cool" to wear waistbands halfway down their thighs so you could watch their underwear while they tripped over themselves because their shorts went down to their knees. Then there was that ridiculous "inverted dress" thing that was in style when I was teenager. I don't even remember what those things were called, but trust me when I say the current generation should feel pretty good about not keeping those.
Cartoons are better now than they were when I was a kid. Not only in production quality, but content as well. Even if someone were to feel some kind of misplaced nostalgia for Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry, the shows were simple minded trash. Now there are shows like Powerpuff Girls, and of course,
ponies. There have been cartoons like the Justice League, which intelligently addressed some very interesting questions. Compare Justice League Unlimited in the 2000s to Superfriends from the 70s and 80s...same exact franchise and characters, yeah...sorry, but it got
way better.
music that doesn't sound like the horrid bastard child of a sleazy ghetto brothel and an ecstacy-laden rave
Mixed feelings on this one. To be fair, there's always been generic, mass produced "popular" music during my lifetime. You have Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, but we had Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. It's not that different. Before this silly gungnam style thing, there was the silly macarena thing and before that there was the silly hot, hot hot thing. But like you say, some genres are just...bad. I think that trend started in the 90s when people started trying to take rap seriously for some strange reason. At the time, rap was basically black men speaking in a monotone about beating and raping women with a drumbeat simple enough to tap with your fingers.
Look at an older artist like Metallica or Aerosmith, whether or not you like the music, I think most people would agree that they at least know how to play their instruments. Some of the music of the 90s and 2000s is kind of like a musical version of "modern art" that looks like somebody threw a splotch mustard on canvas and tried to sell it.
At some point it's not a matter of just nostalgia. Yes, I realize we had cheap, mass produced music in the 80s too, but some of things people do now and call music or art...somebody just needs to slap them and tell them they're being silly.
women which are actually attractive
Mixed feelings on this one too. Personally, I look at a legendary sex symbol like say...Marilyn Monroe, and I just kind of think, "huh? What?" She doesn't look physically attractive to me. But if you watch any of her movies, she was adorable. I understand why people found her
personality attractive. In the 80s, "the look" of women was a lot more innocent than it is now, and occasionally it was downright silly. But that was ok. Maybe they looked silly, but they were cute silly. Sometime during the late 90s / early 2000s women's fashion started to head into slutty territory, and we started seeing more mainstream women with tramp stamps, "fuck me heels" and this whole "clubbing" look and so forth.
I'd say that women's fashion has a generally sexier look now than it used to. I mean...at one time this would have been considered sexy:
To me that looks just as silly as it probably does to you. But a lot of the things I see girls wearing now inspires a reaction of "yeah, that might be sexy...but if she offered I'd say no because she looks dangerously unclean." Tatoos are a big one. It was
not socially acceptable for girls to have tattoos when I was a kid, but now I see teenagers wearing great big arrows pointing permanently at their butthole, and when I see something like that my initial reaction is generally to wonder how many dozens of guys have used it as a landing beacon.
I remember an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzi was talking about how there are some girls everybody wants to date, and some girls everybody wants to marry...and they're
not the same girls. "Fuck me, I'm not marriage material" seems to be a popular look these days.