Any time anybody observes that a thing is getting worse others respond with “people were saying that a decade ago and it’s still fine, so there.”
But things can get worse for a very long time
For example, US monthly comics are dying. They have been dying steadily since Wertham’s “Seduction of the Innocent” in ‘54
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“But comics are still around!”
Big titles have gone from selling 1M+ copies every month in the 40s/50s, to 500-1000k+ in the 60s to 100-500k in the 80s and 90s to 50-150k+ over the past two decade, if you’re lucky, today. Occasionally the field has a temporary surge of cultural relevance or speculator interest and a few individual issues sell well over 1M copies but it never lasts.
Map the change and it’s a steady—and by now massive—decline over decades
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So, whenever somebody complains that something has been getting worse over their lifetime, whether it’s software usability or climate change, replying with “our parents’ generation complained about the same thing, as did their parents” as if that invalidated the observation is not just irrational, it’s insulting.
Because a steady decline over a long period is, in fact, much much worse than if it were a decline over just a decade or so.
@baldur Right, but I think the reason people make these arguments is because, so often, we think things are getting worse, when they're really not; the rose-tinted glasses effect.
The ur-example is "kids today are lazier than they were in my generation" or "people just don't want to work these days." Every older person feels those things are true in their bones, but it's a trope as old as time.
