The rate of change in the world has accelerated to the point where some people find it hard to cope. Preparing ourselves to deal with these rapid advancements is in our best interest, and we can start doing that by trying to pinpoint how tomorrow might be different from yesterday.
Such reflection allows us to paint a clearer image of reality, empowering us to make informed decisions and navigate the evolving landscape with greater understanding.
To get started, Reddit user Staclear made a post on the platform last month, asking everyone on it: "What slowly went away in the past decade that no one noticed?" Here are the answers that people related to the most.
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Finding a recipe online that doesn’t involve the author’s life story, author’s pet’s life story, and the author’s pet’s squeaky toy’s life story. 😂
Basically any youtube video on diy fixes. Hate to see a 5min video for a 10 sec fix.
Here's a good one: HIV/AIDS deaths have fallen through the floor, partly due to improvements in medication, but also thanks to a herculean effort by the international community in concert with major drug manufacturers, largely coordinated by PEPFAR.
In Europe and North America, and there were still 13,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2021. Global total in the same year was 650,000.
Actually owning items without a subscription
Speak for yourself! I generally refuse subscriptions. I still buy movies as Bluray/UHD disk and music on CD. I buy kindle books, but I refuse to subscribe for them. About the only subscription I have is Prime since it pays for itself with free shipping so the video streaming it provides is basically a bonus (and I rarely use it).
The ability to buy a house as a young adult
My wife and I have accepted the fact that we will never be able to buy a house again.
Insects. My car used to get covered with dead insects during the summer. Now, it’s just one or two every so often. Lightning bugs, butterflies, moths flying around my porch light. They’re all gone.
It has been more than 10 years since I've seen a firefly, and when I was kid, it used to be a light show in my granddad's garden.
A sense of shame. I'm looking at you obnoxious tik tokkers dancing in traffic.
meh, I'm cool with people dancing as long as they are not obstructing anything. People who yell at kids in public, watch video's on loud volume without headphones or leave their rubbish everywhere, well, shame on them.
The intelligence of the average American. There's an awful lot of stupid people walking around these days.
voicemail. Nobody bothers leaving one. I get about 1/10th the phone traffic I did a decade ago anyway, and people would rather text why they called now in lieu of a vm.
"text/don't call" is one of Millennials' greatest contributions to society.
Whoever invented a way for voicemail to be automatically turned into text is a genius. I haven't checked my voicemail in YEARS.
Color in public spaces. Everything is minimalist and grey now.
Objective journalism.
We used to know that some outlets were biased (Fox, NYT) but now for literally any story you have to: read between the lines of a conservative source, read between the lines of a liberal source to balance, read an independent Substack to see what both of them omitted... and its too much work to just find the basic facts of a story.
This is such a garbage summary of how journalism works. Objectivity doesn't mean taking sides or not taking slides, it means, seeking and citing your sources and changing your viewpoint if the evidence points that way. The New York Times is a fantastic newspaper. There are consequences for their journalists if they write stories that are full of lies. They would write a correction or retraction if they make one little mistake. Things like Fox News are an entirely different animal. They don't fact check the vast majority of anything they say, and many of their opinion shows are labeled as news. This false equivalency stuff of "the right and the left are equally bad" is part of the problem. To insinuate that a fascist friendly American nationalist group is the same as an imperfect center left party makes no sense.
In general, "third spaces" esp. for like teens, i feel bad for them. Not too many indoor places you can just hang out without paying for something
We used to hang out in diners and drink free coffee refills until the sun came up when I was a teen. #GothVibes
Every arcade and skating rink we had in my town has been shut down. Many citing that it was due to underage gang activity.
They turned ours into an alcohol distribution center.
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No more dumping your a*****e teenager who can’t drive yet at the mall for the afternoon. Those days are gone 😭
Has this changed? My kids go to the mall with their friends quite often.
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Teens hang out at the library I work at. Unfortunately some of them are so rude and obnoxious that we have to ask them to leave. We feel bad because there isn’t anywhere else in our small town for them to go, but the total disrespect of some them show is horrible.
I was always super excited to go to the mall with friends after hearing my parents talk about it, but one of the malls near us closed and the other has super frequent shootings/robberies. We do go to the library sometimes, but having to sit and whisper talk just isn’t the same
Hell we used to ride our bikes anywhere and everywhere. A whole group of us just chillin', cruising around town. I'm not that old but those were the good ol' days...
Sorry, but when I was a teenager there were no hangout places. We went to a café or the arcade or some similar place and had to buy something. The OP must be from a very different place.
Billions of people are from a very different place. When I was aged 6 to 12, I lived where everything was corn or apples. From 12 to 18 I lived in the suburbs, next to the capital of the 4th most populous state in the US. Then I went to college in central Alaska,, then moved to a rural part of the most densely populated state in the US. Then downtown in a depressed, rust belt city. I've also lived in Boston and New York, trained briefly in Paris, and done work in Kabul, Afghanistan and Havana, Cuba. Strange as it seems, each of these places had its own thing going on, and that leads me to suspect that other places may, too
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Mostly, it was my house. Because I was the only one with my own TV.
I don't understand this one. Free parks, beaches, malls, football/soccer/baseball fields, tennis courts, dog parks, skate parks, libraries, museums, fishing piers, etc. are everywhere! What went away? I'm 40 for a timeline reference on what I might be missing.
have you heard of libraries? They are still open and free the last time I checked.
try the library - they were for quiet reading - but no more. A good third space without paying
Libraries! I'm lucky I live in a city with over 30 public libraries. Some have cafes, private meeting rooms, restaurant style booths, play area for kids, piano room, culinary center, etc. And they're open 7 days a week until 9 pm except on weekends. Teenagers hang out there after school all the time.
I don’t understand what is a “third space”? (For that matter, what the hell are the first two?)
I heard in PEI there used to be a place for the teens to go hang out in, but being on an island teens are super bored. In Winnipeg, teens are either getting into trouble, in a band, skateboarding, or getting into trouble, or in a multitude of organized sports and leisure. Seems like the rural kids have the most fun, because of all the outdoor wilderness activities they have the freedom to do. They can go down to the quarry to swim for free, ride their quads, hunt, fish, ride horses, go to the many beaches in the province. There was an all-ages nightclub in Winnipeg long ago. Never gone there. I think there was a goth night, too. I don't think I'd ever be allowed. There was arcades and 3 roller skating rinks, a laser tag centre and other fun places. Many of these places are gone. I wish I knew about the free art centres, but they were in rougher parts of the city. When a teen is sheltered by wary parents, the teen can get pretty bored and lonely. I spent a lot of time in my house.
I grew up in the age of the 24 hour supermarket. We'd wander the aisles, talking about movies and philosophy. When I went to the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in the '80s, there was a mall in town that was built specifically for teens to hang out, with a movie theater, roller rink, diner, and candy and record stores, and basically nothing else. Supermarkets close at night now and I'm pretty sure that mall is gone
I didn't think teenagers even went outside anymore. I thought they spent all their time playing games on their phones.
(I'm 34) I didn't live in an area with other teens, and my school friends weren't local (private school... Great education, a horror show for everything else.) We hung out online (MSN messenger and MySpace back then, showing my age!) These days I think a lot of teens go into town and hang around at McDonalds/KFC etc. Where else is there? They get some chips and it's warm and dry, with a loo and seats and generally reasonably clean.
There's a skate-park and basketball/football court as well as a new and improved playground in my village. I'm glad to see small kids and teens use them but I think an indoor hangout space for youths with minimal adult supervision and free to use would be beneficial too in a country where it's more or less rained every day since June.
Malls would still be open if those same teens hadn't let them die.
Being able to see the stars at night. I live in a small college town. I have to drive several miles to get far enough away from the light pollution to see anything.
Politeness. Not being d***s to random strangers.
Are we talking in person or on the internet? Because anonymity seems to trigger the "I'm an a*****e" gene in most people. But for some reason if you talk to them in person they're much more subdued.
Magazine shops. The ones that sold obscure magazines that you can’t get at Walmart or the grocery store or even the big box bookstore.
Our local newsagent closed down in the last six months. Too few people buying newspapers and magazines. And the other stuff like pens and stationary were dying too because kids (and adults) are using computers/tablets/phones more and more. I've also seen quite a few magazines now offer digital subscriptions so why even buy a paper copy anymore?
Free articles! Almost everything is behind a paywall nowadays
product reviews that is not an affiliate link
They do exist. They just don't get the same hits. So you have to search harder to find them. Forums or discords are the best way to get genuine reviews. eg: Don't go to 4wdcampingdotcom, go to 4WDcampinngforumdotcom and look for comments from real people not influencers or professional reviewers. They may not be as well written but they're going to be more honest.
Public pay telephones. Sucks for those in trouble that don't have a cell phone (with battery life).
Edit: Also sucks for Superman when he wants to make a quick clothing change.
Edit 2: It's cool that Australia turned theirs into free public phones.
And yes, I missed/ignored the "past decade" part of the question.
I n Australia, we still have them. The law requires that there must be a public phone network. A little while back, the operator (Telstra) decided that the money they took in and the effort of collecting it was not worth it, so now all public phones are free. Cost nothing to use.
Privacy
It's going to get worse. Imagine being able to snap a pic and reverse image search the person across the bar. Within minutes you're in their social media posts. You've got the name of their kid/pet/whatever. This technology exists today and it's creepy as hell.
Privacy. Workers’ rights. Consumer rights. Americans’ sanity.
good Google search results
If you get bad Google search results, you need to learn how to Google better.
Over 10 000 unique species and several hundred unique natural habitats.
And that's probably a very conservative estimate...
Recording horizontally on your phone instead of vertically.
I would add watching a concert with your eyes and not through your phone.
Land lines…products with quality…wood instead of particle board, leather, linen, cotton…what is that….food without fillers or preservatives…non cookie cutter bodies and faces…
I rarely ever buy cake. But there was 8ne brand I always enjoyed so I bought one as a guilty pleasure lately. At first I thought it was just me getting older, but they have changed the packaging too so I started googling and lo and behold, their chocolate cake barely contains chocolate anymore. It's mostly replaced with sugar and food colouring. That's why they changed the flavour from chocolate to cocoa. Because where I live the chocolate content must surpass a certain level before something can be advertised as chocolate something and it must contain real chocolate not compound chocolate.
Having actual physical copies of music and movies. People are so used to just watching YT, or using streaming services. Not saying some people don’t, but it’s more for a “collection” than actually that being the only way to have the material. I hadn’t bought a CD since at least 2008, and the only reason I bought DVD’s at P**n Shops cheap AF was to build a collection.
I use CDs in my car everyday. I keep them in one of those zip cd wallets :)
Waiting for things and being “bored” waiting.
Every minute we are multi tasking everything because everything is always available. We used to have time to get bored because there wasn’t enough to do at all times. Now we are inundated with on demand stuff and I no longer get time to daydream or be bored. I used to love having time with my thoughts.
Regular TVs. 90% of the ones you can buy from big-box or online retailers are smart TVs. I just want a cheaper "dumb" TV that I can plug a Roku into.
Why don't cars today come with spare wheels? What the f?!
Anything happening without a f*****g algorithm
Algorithms destroy humanity. They plot the most likely course for every aspect of our lives and then refuse to allow us outside their box. It makes us easy to exploit. It started with grocery stores, now it's even in applying for jobs. Your life has been predetermined to make the most profits for those at the top. Its not a big conspiracy, just small steps by the greedy that eventually led us into this distopian present.
House phones.
To be honest, why pay a utility/phone company the any amount of money per month if it's just a redundancy? I got rid of my in home phone in 2015. It cost $25/month. That won't make or break me but it'll add $25 of fun to my life during the month or $25 in the savings account.
Having major sports games on even the most basic TV setup, instead of having to be subscribed to anything.
I'm not even a sports person and find this to be incredibly absurd. I'm fairly certain back in the day (maybe even longer than a decade ago) you can watch most of the major things even when you just had antenna.
Even when you're subscribed to MLB they block things out by region now. That's just stingy as heck.
Although I guess this isn't something nobody noticed, as an afterthought. But the fact it's so normalized...nobody should be okay with that.
3D logo designs have pretty much vanished. I don’t know the exact timeframe, but basically every single major company’s logo has become minimalist over a very short period of time.
Not only that but they're all kinda blending together. Take the google app icons (not quite the same thing but close enough). The used to be easy to tell apart, now they're all a similar generic Red, Green, Yellow, Blue design and you need to look closely. Sure you can say "it's a google app" at a glance but you need to look close to determine if it's Mail, Maps or Meet.
Developing film from disposable cameras. I'm sure pretty much no one uses them anymore but my fiance put a few around at a baby shower and is having a helluva time getting them developed. No CVS no Walgreens. She had to go somewhere special and was charged $85 for 3.
I don't miss it. I prefer to shoot as many as I want and then sitting at home and selecting the best ones for a photo book I can order online. It's fun to choose the designs and combine the pictures to tell a story. I also like thumbing through my photo books and relive the experience.
i suppose people have noticed, but no one has their phone with a ringtone anymore. It's mostly silent or for some poeple still on vibrate
Speak for yourself (again). Everyone I know, even the kids have ringtones. The volume level and obnoxiousness of the ringtone is the only thing that varies. No point having a silent/vibrate ring or notification if your phone is not in your pocket.
Sobe. They're only available in specific places...I miss Pina Colada Sobe.
Photo shops
Phone books
Decent text tutorials. In the old days you could look stuff up, find a decent guide and just scroll to the part you need. Now everything is annoying video tutorials that force you to watch and listen and include so much annoying unrelated stuff that you can't skip because you have no idea how it's indexed.
This is so true! My child is getting into Minecraft and I’m trying to play with him which he is beyond thrilled about but every time I search how to do something I scroll past dozens of videos looking for the “how to” “step by step” instructions written out. That’s my speed. And it’s the same with anything, how to get my phone to blank, how to buy a new garage door remote, what on earth is the difference between washers with and without agitators (our washer recently broke and this was our c**p we have to spend money we didn’t intend to incident). I can usually find the text, I just have to scroll and sometimes *gasp* click on page 2! lol
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One other that disappeared silently is colour-blind friendly colour schemes. EGA was colour-blind friendly. VGA games were colour-blind friendly. The early releases of Excel had palettes that were colour-blind friendly. The first Windows palettes were all colour-blind friendly. Early Unix palettes were colour-blind friendly. Now nothing is, it's not taken into account at all in the latest Excel for instance.
I can make a f*****g comment without swearing /s
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I had to look this up. Only one or two G-rated movies since 2011. And you have to go a long way back to find one without animation. The genre of live action G rated dried up in about 1971. Only a few since and I didn't see any after 1995.
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Paper maps that don't tell you where you are and how to get to your destination...
I work in a shop with a souvenir section. We get asked for maps all the time and we have a pad of the local cbd area which we give out regularly and often with directions on how to find a shop or post office.
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Decent text tutorials. In the old days you could look stuff up, find a decent guide and just scroll to the part you need. Now everything is annoying video tutorials that force you to watch and listen and include so much annoying unrelated stuff that you can't skip because you have no idea how it's indexed.
This is so true! My child is getting into Minecraft and I’m trying to play with him which he is beyond thrilled about but every time I search how to do something I scroll past dozens of videos looking for the “how to” “step by step” instructions written out. That’s my speed. And it’s the same with anything, how to get my phone to blank, how to buy a new garage door remote, what on earth is the difference between washers with and without agitators (our washer recently broke and this was our c**p we have to spend money we didn’t intend to incident). I can usually find the text, I just have to scroll and sometimes *gasp* click on page 2! lol
Load More Replies... One other that disappeared silently is colour-blind friendly colour schemes. EGA was colour-blind friendly. VGA games were colour-blind friendly. The early releases of Excel had palettes that were colour-blind friendly. The first Windows palettes were all colour-blind friendly. Early Unix palettes were colour-blind friendly. Now nothing is, it's not taken into account at all in the latest Excel for instance.
I can make a f*****g comment without swearing /s
Load More Replies... I had to look this up. Only one or two G-rated movies since 2011. And you have to go a long way back to find one without animation. The genre of live action G rated dried up in about 1971. Only a few since and I didn't see any after 1995.
Load More Replies... Paper maps that don't tell you where you are and how to get to your destination...
I work in a shop with a souvenir section. We get asked for maps all the time and we have a pad of the local cbd area which we give out regularly and often with directions on how to find a shop or post office.
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