The family just watched 48 Hours and it was significantly more racist & misogynist and less funny than I expected, hooboy

— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) May 2, 2021

It’s not just that — it’s that the whole culture changed. It’s weird that even most people who lived through it (Emily is roughly my age) can’t really remember just how different it was then. It’s not some act — they truly cannot recall.

What she’s saying isn’t wrong, exactly, but it misses so much. Everyone related to and viewed each other very differently then. The whole basis of social relations in the 1980s bore little resemblance to our own, in ways that are almost indescribable if you weren’t there. It’d take a book.

I guess that’s part of why most people, even those who were there, can’t recall? It’s nearly impossible to run two different “social OSes” at one time, and to really understand what it was like then that is essentially what one must do. I believe it is easier for me to do such a thing because I have always been such an outsider — especially then, but even now, by choice.