As an old-timer, the biggest difference between now and the 80s and 90s is that in the 80s and 90s entertainment was relatively scarce. An album cost $20, which was a lot in those days. You could get movies, but you had to go to the video store and remember to return them, and the selection was often limited. If you liked some weird band, most record stores didn't have it. In the 80s TV was very limited and you had to get home in time.

So today entertainment is unlimited and everywhere, personalized and you can have more free entertainment than you could ever watch in a million years. This means other forms of entertainment like hanging out with friends, going to the symphony, the opera, or out to the movies, or just hanging out in public are much less valuable than they used to be.

One example: As a teenager, I used to go to a special screening of a Warren Miller film about extreme skiing that they would do once a year. This was a big annual event where we would watch daredevils ski and do tricks with old Warren narrating and pay $12 to get in. They wouldn't have anything like that on regular TV. Now, there is an unlimited amount of that stuff on almost every single video platform on the internet.

Also, one other huge notable difference was pornography was very hard to get a hold of, and now it's available in unlimited amounts for free. This warps society in all kinds of weird ways. For instance, women were mysterious, incredibly alluring, and much more irresistable in those days. Just seeing cleavage was a big deal! Now all that mystery is totally gone for men who don't abstain from pornography, and young men seem hugely demotivated to date.

I get some of these but at the same time, I happily watched the same videos, played the same game, listened to the same bootleg copy of some cd I was into over and over again. Point being that sure there is more stuff, but I don't think the absence of that abundance doesn't necessarily mean that people would be doing other stuff than consuming some entertainment.

Some thing has obviously changed in society, but what are the other people doing who aren't so insular like we say most of the new generation are? Why doesn't it affect them?

I've summarized this in some ways as there's nothing weird anymore. Nothing counter-culture. There's this notion some people who grew up in that time have who have become old and cynical which is like "How can anyone who grew up in the 90's be offended by anything. We had South Park!"

I was a teenager when The Spirit of Christmas came out, and the great thing about South park is how strange and transgressive it was. There was nothing like that anywhere. I've become a little bit of a fuddy duddy in my old age, but not because I'm truly offended by off-color jokes, but I miss when things felt like they were really transgressive. Off color jokes aren't really naughty when they're everywhere. I've started to listen to more classical music and read the classics. I'm not like trying to be "edgy" but it feels like one of the few things that is not ubiquitous.

I was around in the 80’s in the UK and this was a real thing:

https://newsthump.com/2026/01/28/uk-on-verge-of-return-to-he...

Agreed. Though I hated it at the time, in retrospect I am grateful for how often I was bored, growing up in the 80s and 90s. I'm sure I owe my career to it, I started programming computers from a lack of anything else to do.