Had you done this for the '70s, odds are people would prefer the idealized version, but given out '80s experiences, some people actually may prefer how life actually was in the '80s. I picked the real thing.

You didn't vote yet.  :D


This poll is silly.

Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.

I think I know what you're getting at. Like most people think the 50's were all glamorous, but there was extreme racism and sexism and fears of communism. I prefer the romanticized version of the 50's please!

I was born in the 1980's so I've never experienced them. But I've seen a lot of 80's movies and I watched So 80s on VH1 on a regular basis in my early teens.
You know what I think about the 80's (and almost any other decade, e.g. 70's, 90's and even the early 00's save for 9/11) - it's that people used to be so lucky to experience them.
Most people in the 70's, 80's and 90's didn't realize how happy they were then before the century ended and they started looking back. I didn't experience the 70's nor the 80's, but I'm glad that I was growing up in the 90's. And IMO the early 00's were also good save fro 9/11. I was in junior high by that time and have great memories. It is pity people want to forget 2003 and 2004, because they think they were 'too near' to 2001. 2003 and 2004 had a lot better pop culture than now! And people seemed so happy then. However, in the 80's people seemed to be happier. I don't know why were they so happy? Maybe because they wasted less time working/commuting/playing PC games and had more time for being with their families or friends? For me the mid to late 80's were the one that are idolized now. In reality they were the wackier, cheesier part of the decade. IMO fashion/music/movies and many other things were better in the 80's - more raw, moderate, innocent, clean-cut, less over the top etc. By contrast, 1986-1989 were all about excess in everything - music, clothes, movies... Most camp stuff from the 80's is from 86-89, however there were some gems in music/movies among them. I generally prefer the 1980-85 to 1986-89. One of the few things I like about 1986-89 is ALF and a few songs. ALF is my all-time favorite sitcom. Still, I think the early 80's were better. There is something about them that I like. I don't know how exactly to describe it - I like the lack of the late 80's excess in the early 80's. Things seemed more relaxed. Besides hair was big, but not as big and curly as in the late 80's. :)

I regard eighties retro the way my parents regarded fifties retro. 

"Rock Around the Clock" was a big hit in the fifties and that's about all "Happy Days" had in common with the real 1950s!

Retro amplifies what earned a niche in pop culture after the fact but not how life was in the mundane sense.

If you watch "High School Reunion" on TV Land, you might get the impression "In Between Days" was a popular song back then.  It wasn't.  Only weird kids like me were listening to The Cure in 1985 (in America, that is).  The Cure wasn't "mainstream" until Lovesong was a US #2 hit in 1989. 

Fashions change with the decades whereas economic policies have legacies.  There is an old saying, "the child is father to the man."  The eighties fathered the socioeconomic catastrophe we are facing today.  Jimmy Carter warned us not to be self-centered in the world and to conserve energy.  We weren't going to listen to that kind of austerity.  So, we had a cartoon president in the form of Ronald Reagan, embraced selfishness as a virtue, and screwed ourselves out of a secure and prosperous state.  It took nearly three decades for the spaghetti to hit the fan, but it has.  It didn't start with Dubya, Clinton's policies put a penny in the fuse box, and Obama is now flogging a dead horse we used to call "Reaganomics."  It is important never to regard the eighties as "a decade of greed" in the past tense, as you might see on the History channel.  For those of you under thirty, you've lived a lifetime of greed...that is not to say you are personally greedy, but that greed has been regarded as a virtue for as long as you have been alive. 

The eighties fathered the socioeconomic catastrophe we are facing today. 
No it did not. I always laugh when people try and pin our country's imminent collapse on Reagan. Carter's policies almost destroyed this country. We were at an economic standstill, cities declaring bankruptcy, taxes so high that even mom and pop stores couldn't make a penny, lines at gas stations a mile long, list goes on and on. Had Carter won a second term by some miracle definitely not from God, this country would have suffered a total collapse in 81-83 and the Soviets would have won the Cold War, and God only knows the chaos that would have ensued in the country, the least being nationwide riots and wiping our butts with dollar bills as toilet paper would have been too expensive.

A LOT of people(especially those of you not alive then) don't even realize how bad it was. Reagan took a crisis almost as bad as the 2008 crash(and in some cases it was worse) and within a couple years we had one of the biggest economic booms in world history. You can write up a list of bigger booms, but I warn you that your list is going to be awfully small.

Clinton and Bush's policies of destroying our country's economic engine and selling it to the lowest bidder(and giving tax breaks to companies that would move overseas) is what put us in this mess. Reagan's trade deficit with China was SIX MILLION a year (practically nothing). Clinton's trade deficit with China was 100 BILLION a year. Bush/Obama trade deficits with China are 250 BILLION a year. Obama has to borrow over a trillion a year just to keep the country barely functioning on a runaway deficit. He also borrows an extra 600 billion a year to cover our defense budget. Not one single penny spent by Obama is actual cash. It's debt. Actually, its worthless garbage bought by other countries which gives it an illusion of value. The only reason our house of cards hasn't completely collapsed is because oil is still pegged to the dollar. Once that changes, its 'game over' for the United States. Iran wants to abandon the dollar. Now we're talking about "sanctions" over their nuke program. Saddam wanted to abandon the dollar in 2002. You connecting the dots yet? The quagmires we are in have more to do with propping up our worthless currency and keeping the illusion of the 'lone superpower' intact instead of this crap about "spreading democracy" and ridding the world of nuclear weapons held by third world countries. Why aren't we threatening North Korea as they DO have a limited arsenal and are a serious threat to global stability? Because they serve no purpose in propping us up. North Korea is a worthless wasteland with hundreds of thousands of troops and a few nuclear weapons. We'll only deal with them if they happen to launch one or invade South Korea or Japan. Even then we might not deal with them as China could threaten an economic retaliation and dump its dollar reserves and call in our debt. It's a miracle they haven't walked into Taiwan as we no longer have any clout in that situation.

There are no jobs. The job the average American could have had is being done by some 10 year old kid in China or India. Now 60 year olds are working at Mcdonalds or Walmart while a new generation sits on its ass texting on their latest phone that mommy and daddy bought with a credit card they cant pay off.

You been to Detroit lately? Its almost like walking into Somalia. A once thriving city is in ruins and the cops wont even patrol half those streets.  Been to central California? Thriving communities are now ghost towns littered with empty car lots, empty factories, a Wal Mart every few miles, and Wal Mart recently had to stop production on a Super Center being built in Ceres because they knew it was a lost cause. Better learn how to speak Spanish as well as most billboards, ads, menus,etc. are catering to the illegals that keep flooding the region even though there are no jobs.


You gonna blame Reagan for our current mess? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! We NEED Reagan. Other than Roosevelt, he's the only U.S. President capable of getting us out of such a mess.


Jimmy Carter warned usCarter warned us about a lot of things. Thank God he was chased out of Washington before doing irreversible damage. Ever heard of the "Reagan democrats"? Those were the people who bought Carter's crap hook, line, and sinker until they realized they had purchased a one way ticket through the gates of hell and were willing to vote for a republican just so the country could have a chance to survive.

You wanna blame somebody, blame these people for selling us out and smiling while we collapsed....

http://temple3.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/bill_clinton_yeahihitit.jpg


http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/upload/2009/06/a_voice_of_lunacy_from_within/george-w-bush-picture-2.jpg

http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/sites/people/img/24696_barack-obama1.jpg

I should have said ixnay on the eaganray!  The mods don't like us to go too political apart from discussions on the politics board.  For you, Ronald Reagan seems to be a religious icon, so the same rules apply. 
:-\\

I should have said ixnay on the eaganray!  The mods don't like us to go too political apart from discussions on the politics board.  For you, Ronald Reagan seems to be a religious icon, so the same rules apply. 
:-\\
You're the one who brings up politics in other sections. I was simply responding to your post.

You're the one who brings up politics in other sections. I was simply responding to your post.


Okay, okay! Don't get your shirt in a knot!
:D