Reddit user 001135 asked:
"What are we living in the golden age of?"
Here are some of the things that Reddit is still feeling excited and hopeful about.
Sonic Gold
Headphones Jamming GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"The ease of listening to music is pretty incredible right now."
- hypo-osmotic
"I was into punk rock mid-90’s. You had to hunt for records. Actual records. And you had to travel."
"I lived in Northern Virginia, the good stuff was in Georgetown."
- BrownShadow
"Straight up."
"I was chatting with a mate from work last night, and we were swapping all these international artists over Spotify on our phones. Then in a few swipes we were checking out the yearly calendars of gigs in our area."
"It’s actually incredible how easy it is to discover amazing music now."
- Justforfun_x
DIY Education
"Self education."
"YouTube should be remembered as just as important of an invention as the television."
"We can teach ourselves almost anything, watching enough videos and reading about it online."
- Countrydiscipline
"YouTube saved my butt so many times in college when I couldn’t figure out how to do certain types of math problems."
"I could go watch videos of people doing endless examples of the those kind of problems until I understood how to do them myself"
- Wildcat_twister12
"PALEONTOLOGY"
"The things we know now about the prehistoric world are mind blowing. More and more is being worked out about the looks and behaviour of dinosaurs and all their fellow extinct organisms. Compared to what was happening when I was a kid we’ve moved on in leaps and bounds."
"If you haven’t yet, check out Sir David and the BBC’s Prehistoric Planet. Awesome."
- cold-hard-steel
"YES THIS."
"The amount of stuff we know is literally insane."
"We have been able to map sauropod migration routes by locating where the animals got their stomach stones."
"We have a Triceratops and a juvenile T. rex locked in combat complete with skin impressions being prepped and studied as we speak."
"The amount of mummified dinosaurs and dinosaurs with skin/feather impressions only continues to increase."
"Just last year we discovered that the southern continents were home to a whole brand new radiation of ankylosaurs that are totally distinct from their northern cousins and look like they have Aztec war clubs on their tails!"
"The largest megaraptorid known was also just named and the largest abelisaur known is awaiting publication."
"Pterosaur fuzz was just confirmed to be feathers, meaning the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs was likely fuzzy."
"We have a whole multi age group of teratophoneus tyrannosaurs that were together in life. "
"The utahraptor block continues to provide insights into the largest known raptors and how they lived, hinting at sociality and also showing us how the animals grew from tiny lizard-bird to hulking ground bear-eagle-dragon (still needs funding btw if anyone is feeling generous look up the utahraptor project)."
"Our knowledge of marine reptiles and pterosaurs are at an all time high and we have been able reconstruct the lives and appearances of both these animals in astonishing detail."
"Pterosaurs in particular have been discovered to have been one of if not the greatest vertebrate flyers of all time, even better than birds, and had astonishing life cycles with bizarre strategies by our modern standards it’s wild."
"The future of the past is so bright it’s nearly blinding."
- EnderCreeper121
Accessibility
technology documentary GIF by DiggGiphy"Disabled person here."
"We live in a golden age of accessibility tools based on technological advancements."
"Just take the car industry as an example. The amount of aftermarket accessibility accessories that were invented in the past 10 years alone, have made driving accessible to many people with disabilities."
- Cristal1337
"Just least month I heard of someone playing and beating a video game, even though they're blind."
"That's when I learned about accessibility options so blind people could play video games, a heavy visual dependent medium. Incredible."
- Hinote21
"3d printers too, if you have one you can create accessibility attachments yourself"
- anotheranonymousredd
"I disagree."
"I’m an occupational therapist and have worked with the med tech 'emerging' assistive device and they are far lacking compared to existing military exoskeleton tech."
"Healthcare tech is always 10-20yrs behind what’s available to the military due to red tape."
"I think we’re on the brink of the golden age though."
- No-Trick7137
Remote
"Remote work."
"We got it during the pandemic and now we need to make it the norm. The ability to make good money and live anywhere is a luxury that was hard to imagine just 10 years ago."
- Aldebaran7790
"Businesses that harness remote work will outperform office centric businesses. Imagine all the capital that can go towards expanding the business instead of towards real estate."
- FrickGoogle
"And you seriously save on HR troubles. No chance of work place drama."
- katanakid13
Yes Photos Please
"Photography."
"Now almost everyone has a camera, usually in their phone. And they are so simple to use it's easy to take decent photos."
"It used to be a camera was a dedicated device you had to learn how to use properly and have the film developed by someone, or yourself if you had a darkroom and knowledge."
"And the photos you could take was limited by the film roll. Use up a 36 exposure roll? You'll have to stop and put in a new roll."
"Using ISO 200 film, but you want to take low light photos? You'll have to stop, remove the 200 roll, and put in an ISO 400 (or higher) roll."
- Chrome_Armadillo
"I remember those days!"
"The insidious thing about that is, you were always second guessing yourself, saying 'is a picture of this (whatever) worth using up part of my finite film supply?' "
"The great thing about digital is you just take multiple pics of everything like only the pros at a football game with a bottomless film bag and an assistant reloading the next camera could afford to do back in the 80s."
- Lampwick
Golden Buns
music video 90s GIFGiphy"Butts."
"The 90s/00s everyone was trying to have small butts. The phrase 'Does my bum look big in this?' was so common it was a cliche."
"Now it's the reverse."
"Plus yoga pants are considered normal fashion. Bikini bottoms have gotten way smaller and are worn way higher."
- privatetudor
"Whoever decided that yoga pants are now considered normal fashion deserves a god damn Nobel prize."
- Lukebekz
Juice
"I was just thinking the other day: Juice."
"It sounds weird, but bear with me. My mom LOVED juice but she passed away in '00."
"Not long ago I realized I had a full OJ-sized jug of straight up Watermelon Juice in my fridge, I got sad that she missed out on the ability to have a jug of watermelon juice without having to juice it herself."
"Or even the POM craze. My fridge has been full of a bunch of super tasty juice from fruits that she may not have even knew existed like açai and whatnot."
"Todays juice options are amazing."
- Hambulance
"My mom and dad both LOVED grapefruit, and we live in Florida and we even had a tree in our yard when I was growing up."
"She would peel the grapefruit with a small knife (can't use a potato peeler on grapefruit peel) and then she would cut each section of grapefruit away from the white tough stuff that separates the sections, and then the sectioned chunk of grapefruit would fall into the bowl and when she was done sectioning that grapefruit, she would squeeze the leftover white stuff to make sure she got all the juice."
"Then she would go on to the next grapefruit and fill a Tupperware bowl with grapefruit chunks and juice in advance about once or twice a week, and then she and my dad would eat it EVERY DAY for breakfast."
"She died in 2007"
"NOW Del Monte sells Ruby Red Grapefruit, all sectioned out and in juice JUST LIKE MY MOM lovingly and meticulously sectioned it out each week for my dad IN A 64 OUNCE CONTAINER (they say there is ten grapefruit in the container.)"
"I buy one sometimes EVERY WEEK and power-feed on it. And every time I eat it I think about my mom and how her mind would be blown that she could buy a GIANT container of already sectioned grapefruit in juice, at the store."
- KathleenFla
Going Green
"Envy."
"Never has it been so easy to witness so many people having so many things you'd wish you'd have, so excessively. People used to envy the popular guy in their town, the pretty girl, the rich family."
"The modern world is Hell for the enviously inclined."
- Redditforgoit
".. the Kardashians man."
"People envy billionaires, but their conversations are so dull, their body movements are lifeless."
- hanatheko
"Imagine how bad it must be for dirt-poor third world people who view how billionaires live."
- TripleR_Official
Everything - But Almost Nothing
Nbc Brooklyn 99 GIF by Brooklyn Nine-NineGiphy"It's literally the Golden Age of Everything."
"There's a good chance that human comfort has peaked in the early 21st century. That in 50 or 100 years there may not be access to enough food, fresh water, jobs, worldwide transportation, access to information, free speech and democracy, or even safety in modern civilization."
"Our global economy isn't sustainable, it's fueled by cheap labor, cheap fuel, and global ecology that may cease to exist in our lifetimes, leading to mass starvation, poverty and war."
"We need to be pushing hard to fix the planet - literally all hands on deck - making whatever sacrifices necessary to ensure that our planet is livable for the 1bn+ humans on the planet at risk of famine / starvation from poor crop production and low fresh water resources caused by global warming."
"We need to start pushing our leaders and governments hard or this whole human civilization experiment is literally going to go up in smoke, possibly during our lifetimes."
- lampposttt
Welp, we're honestly not sure if we're feeling super inspired or super depressed now.
What about you?
Did Reddits responses leave you feeling golden and glowing or like maybe the world is full of fools gold and you're the only one not buying?
Sound off in the comments!
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