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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Feb-2024 22:32:15 JST Charlie Stross

   The horrible truth is that the image we have of any given decade's design aesthetic is actually false—the truth is actually the aesthetic of the previous decade, with grime and tobacco stains on top.

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     Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Feb-2024 22:32:14 JST Jacek Wesołowski

     in reply to

     @cstross A week or two ago I saw a really good thread about this on Bluesky, and the main point was more or less the same, but! it made me think about 80s media. Because while the 80s were brown and dirty, the 80s music, films etc. did lean into the pastel neon vibe. E.g. in Blade Runner everything is blue and black, except for the market, which has pastels, neons and fluorescent umbrellas. It was code for "recreation of the kind your mum wouldn't approve".

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Feb-2024 22:38:10 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @cstross The second photo looks more like my parents house in the early 1970s. The second photo looks more like one of my daughters' bedroom in the late 80s, early 90s.

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 13-Feb-2024 22:39:39 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @cstross After my mother was killed in 1978, my evil stepmother redecorated.

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     Antiqueight (antiqueight@mastodon.ie)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 01:23:33 JST Antiqueight

     in reply to

     @cstross No one in our house smoked but design decisions were made by people whose era was 20 years earlier. I tried really hard to have a proper 80s bedroom but was told it would make my room feel small/cold, and would date really fast. So I had a very very pale pink instead.

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 02:52:04 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     • Misuse Case

     @MisuseCase @cstross The Peewee's Big Adventure poster--that film was released in 1985.

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     Misuse Case (misusecase@twit.social)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 02:52:05 JST Misuse Case

     in reply to

     • tinydoctor

     @tinydoctor @cstross Yeah the bright colors neon aesthetic photo is early 90s to me.

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     peterb (peterb@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:40:27 JST peterb

     in reply to

     • #?.info :commodore:

     @poundquerydotinfo @cstross Younger folks simply *do not believe me* when I explain that in the 1970s, because at least 25% of your uncles and aunts smoked, *every single place you could exist in* including the house of your non-smoking parents, smelled like stale cigarette smoke (or, if you were really unlucky, stale cigar smoke) 100% of the time. Your car. Your clothes. Your hair. Everything. Always. All the time. Forever.

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     #?.info :commodore: (poundquerydotinfo@forum.virctuary.com)'s status on Wednesday, 14-Feb-2024 11:40:32 JST #?.info :commodore:

     in reply to

     @cstross I remember having a discussion about British Rail vs Privatization, I wasn't exactly pro-Privatization but I argued it was more complex than "Utopian government-run system vs Greed" which, you know, is too nuanced so people took at as meaning I was pro-privatization.

     Anyway, the person I was arguing with came up with a long list of ways in which British Rail was "better" (faster, more on time, cheaper, the usual things people are sure happened) including, amazingly, that the trains were "cleaner".

     I pointed out exactly what you're pointing out - he was looking at BR with rose tinted glasses. The reality was every train before the early 1990s was basically caked with cigarette ash - and that was in the no-smoking sections. My first memory as a kid was riding the train from Aylesbury to London, with ash on the floor, on the doors, on that weird metal dotted thing attached to the doors that smokers were supposed to use to stub out their cigarettes, and that yellow haze on everything.

     It wasn't that BR was bad because of that of course, had BR survived to the 2000s then, yes, quite possibly the trains might have been cleaner than those today. it was that BR lived in a naturally dirty era. So somehow remembering the trains as "clean" means you don't really remember the trains back then.

     (On a related note, was rewatching ET recently and thought "Wow, they got it close", the communal areas of the home in that film had that dirty haze around them even if I don't think anyone are actually shown smoking, the kids bedrooms were a realistic mess.)