I really never have believed times improved, and i am almost positive things will only get worse.
30 years ago we had a future to look to, the unshittified internet, great music, affordable land/housing, affordable durable cars, people actually interacted in real life, no social media trash. Now, we have billionaires and LLMs. I don’t see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.
Yes, everyone will say “civil rights improved” and yes thats maybe the only thing that has changed, however it’s getting taken away every day again so I don’t think you can even use that point anymore.
Most of the internet in the 90s was either that or the complete opposite, i.e. a bare text with links. Tell me since you said you actually remember the internet back then, what did you used to do in it? What websites did you frequent?
As for the cars I never said they were worse than before, my point with the purely mechanical cars from the 60s or before is that people still keep them because they’re fully mechanic, but that cars from the 90s don’t have that appeal. Everything that made the cars from the 90s better than the ones from the 80s was improved upon since then, realistically today’s cars are much better in any metric you want to compare.
Personally, I do the same things on the internet now that I did in the 90’s. That’s one thing that hasn’t really changed.