Some things are slightly shittier, some things are way shittier, and a lot of things are a lot better. What do you mean specifically?

Politics and the Supreme Court have gotten a lot shittier since 2016 (like a steep decline, rather than the slight decline before).

The wealth gap has been getting shittier since the 70s. Wages haven’t kept up with productivity, while living expenses have only increased.

The housing market is shitty if you’re young or don’t have generational wealth.

Technology and medicine have gotten way better over the last ~100 years.

General consumer safety has gotten way better since the 50s.

Literacy levels and the rate of high school graduation have gotten way better.

Climate change is killing the planet. Deregulation is making climate change worse. Green energy isn’t coming fast enough.

Capitalism and specifically the notion that corporations have a duty to the shareholders has made companies and products shittier, but TVs are really cheap, and computers are really fast.

Robotics has gotten incredibly advanced, as has AI. Whether that’s shitty is pretty much up to opinion. I’d say it’s neutral, and depends on how they’re used.

Speaking of which, war was already horrifying, and now robots have made it vastly more horrifying. I don’t see any way that’s going to stop.

Food has become either really nutrient dense and amazing or really calorie dense and horrible, depending on how much money you have.

Speaking of money, there are a handful of people who have like half of the money. Maybe the guillotine went out of style too soon.

Video games and movies basically just look indistinguishable from reality now. And deep fakes are about to make it a lot easier to create that kind of realism.

For the most part, high speed internet access has slowly been getting better and better, both in speed and availability. Surprisingly, it’s stayed about the same percentage of the median income while doing so.

Streaming services have gotten so shitty it’s unbelievable that they’re still in business. But piracy has been making a comeback, and self hosting pirated content has gotten a lot easier. Physical media is also making a comeback.

Bigotry has gotten worse as a problem, but not worse in terms of percentage of people who are discriminatory. It’s just that the extreme bigots have basically taken over one of the political parties. (I mean, it basically was the party of bigotry before, but they had the decency to be subtle about it.) The younger generation can hopefully fix that problem as they enter voting age.

That’s all I can think of for now.

There are things that are better and things that are worse

removed by mod

Yes

Things are shittier by design. It’s called planned obsolescence. Things are designed to maximize profits:

• crappy quality
• high price
• bonus of making you buy another one when the first one breaks

We just think things are bad. Probably because most are on social media where outrage and hate get the most clicks/attention. Witness MTG, aka, the Moscow cow and her deranged/idiotic rants.

I grew up in a realm where there was no internet, or cell phones. I don’t use social media at all and continue to try very hard to tell the people that I care about that it’s bad for you. It’s like trying to convince a smoker to stop smoking (I am an ex-smoker of 30 years). I decry the need for always on always connected, right here, right now, listen to me. We’re not evolved for that. We’re apes, very complex, occasionally fun apes. We need that social and interpersonal and personal interaction.

As we stray further from the way our ancestors lived, we stray further from who we are as a species. There is a great argument to be made for cooperation but it takes a lot of strenuous effort to happen over distance and time that we struggle with.

I have lost my train of thought and with great trepidation at your misinterpretation, I bid you adieu good reader.

Mostly we’re more aware of the shittiness. On the whole, most things that were problems decades, generations, or centuries ago are objectively, measurably better now. However, there are specific things that are recurring problems or newer problems that have never existed before. Some of those are very serious problems that we are currently trying to, don’t yet know how to, or have failed to deal with. Things like climate change, mass misinformation in the information age, nuclear threats, gun violence, political corruption, war, and threats reproductive rights, LGBT human rights, and religious rights. So… bit of column A, bit of column B.

I would recommend you to read the book factfulness, it’s available for free because Bill Gates thought everyone should read it.

both.

and being more aware is the first step to fixing.

I’d say shittier. When I was little, politicians were bad but were at least relatively sane. Now it’s just one big game of Moby Dick.

Tl;dr: who knows?

This is an interesting question. I’m sure someone will say yes and use data. My thoughts are I don’t know and we can’t truly know.

If we’re more aware of the shittiness, then how can we be sure it wasn’t just as shitty before or less shitty than now? Data relies on documentation and documentation has been, and continues to be, reported sporadically or things are unsolved and thus omitted.

By almost every measure, the world is better than it has ever been. Violence, poverty, starvation are all at or near record lows worldwide. Average lifespans are way up. We are just way, way more aware of what is going on in the world, and bad news drives more clicks than good news.

There are some cracks, no doubt. For example climate change is showing its ugly head, inequality is rising in the US and some other developed countries, and lifespans are taking a slight dip in parts of the US. But, compared to almost anywhere at any time during history, this is a golden age.

Both, probably.

The internet has given a lot of people a platform, and created accessibility for an endless audience that is always hunting for new drama. A lot of people seem to thrive on vicarious conflict, and of course so do the platforms that sell engagement. There’s no need to wait for the nightly news broadcast anymore, you can get your fix 24/7 on Facebook, Xitter, YouTube… or right here on Lemmy.

At the same time, information technology has enabled businesses to operate, scale up, and pivot to new markets like nothing in the past… so the exploitation can happen faster than ever before. It’s also enabling services of all kinds to reach the people that need them faster and more accurately. The technology isn’t inherently good or bad, it just accelerates everything.

Some things are getting worse, and you’re more likely to hear about that on the internet then you are to hear about things that are getting better.

People today tend to fixate on the things that are out of their control. Perhaps it’s because we have lost our coping mechanisms. Perhaps it’s because they never learned any. We live in the most technologically advanced point in time we have ever known. Few of us need to go out and till the earth to grow our own food. The majority of us don’t have to physically work as hard as previous generations. Adults and our children find their enjoyment and existential dread by watching tiny screens filled with useless entertainment. Maybe things are fine. We just make shitty choices about what to do with our time, and what we give our attention to.