I wish I experienced being a teen in the 80s, feeling bitter

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I know that I dealt with anxiety and worries for a long time, but this specific thought trigger causes me to feel a little bitterness too. I was born in the early 1990s, but I really do sometimes wish I was a teen or older back in the 80s or a few decades back from that also. I feel like most people don't understand and laugh about it, because when I rant at places on internet communities (mostly where I expressed this sort of idea) people say things like how I'm a hypocrite for using my computer.

Well, I admit that I'm guilty of that, but even the smallest thing that is becoming irrelevant because of modern internet society makes me feel like I long for it or I "missed out" on some experience that I will never see, not even in God's great afterlife. I honestly hate that the ways people and businesses used to do things before the internet are becoming extinct. I feel like nobody in my own generation group can relate to me.

A lot of the ideas in my head about it are only triggered when I happen to read or listen to something related to some old format, technology, or way of doing something is dying out. I'm lucky that this specific category of worrying/depressed thoughts are more minor for me. At least I'm not acting truly angry or yelling/screaming/punching over it. But, the thoughts are also because I genuinely like stuff from before the new century (even the fact that the years today begin with 20- instead of 19- gives me a cringe a couple times).

What bothers me is that there is no hope that I will experience that, and considering that the progress is continuous in the same direction. I personally feel that this era is more cold and overwhelming. There may have been a nasty cold war going on back then between USSR and America, I concede to that, but how can we know for sure that it was just luck or different circumstances from today that lead us to not actually experience all lives and earth being disrupted by a nuclear war? Why rely on history, just because it didn't happen before doesn't mean it will never happen. I just feel like I have to bear a nasty future or mankind ahead of me.

I wish I could really type more things about this, but I want to stop for right now.

I hate growing up in my middle 20s today in 2017. I don't feel like I'll "make it" in the sense that my parents/grandparents and everyone else's my age.

You would have gotten in more fights, been excluded more by teachers, parents probably would have belt whipped you, and also you probably would have had a harder time graduating high school. Yeah there were more high school dropouts back then. Finding a job would have been harder. Also you probably would not have the support of Wrongplanet because internet was not that avaliable back then. Those games you are thinking of would have to be found by travel, and not through Ebay and Amazon since those weren't around. I would enjoy going to the library scanning throuhg the enclycopedias instead of using wikipedia, but I'm glad I'm able to go to college. Oh, and that anime you are thinking of would be hard to find in the time it was made without the internet.

I understand what you are thinking of and I've thought of it too: (If I had been through worse I would have been better now because it is experience; I would not have been book smart).

In the 1980s, the Internet as we know it today, wasn't really around, for all intents and purposes. It's not exactly synonymous----but the Internet and the World Wide Web might as well be.

The Internet did not influence many people's lives until the mid to late 1990s (at least in the US).

I'm glad I wasn't a teen in the 1980s. It was a pain in the butt to live then. It wasn't that great in the 1970s, either---when I was a teen.

I was in college in the '80s.
And I know what you mean.

That's one reason why I'm an artist.
Art can help you connect with humanity,
by making things ...
especially if you get involved with art galleries, museums.

Playing live music is another way to connect with people.

What's your talent?
Didn't you say you enjoyed acting?
See if you can use it to get involved.

There were things that were better but you probably would have been misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. Your parents and you might have told by doctors that there was no chance you would ever amount to anything. If you were mainstreamed you would have been relentlessly bullied and the school and your parents would expect you to deal with what was thought of as a normal part of growing up. The cause of your problems would be thought of as you bieng lazy, weak, or ret*d or all three and you would be treated accordingly. If you could not handle a mainstream school you would be put in special ed with the other “ret*ds” and “head cases”. With no internet readily available and little knowledge beyond severe autism you would have no support to counter those negative perceptions of yourself, little or no idea that there were others like you.

Movies then as now exagerate things point of being unrealistic. Nostalgia only deals with the good parts of a certain time. Yes there was more personal space and freedom and pop music was going through an “eccentric” period but there was a truly negative things that do not get talked about. How you would have done has a lot to do with who you are, where you were, and who you had to deal with not unlike now.