What was the 80's like?

Question

i'm was born in 1982 so i'm 24 (25 next week), but love 80's culture/music/films everything.

it just seemed like a carefree/happy decade, id just love to go back for like a few weeks see what it was like (nightlife etc).

i can remember fade memorys from it, but i'm talking about the kind of time when your in your late teens/20's etc.

any memorys from the oldies :P - good era/or not really all that good?

Answer 1

gawd i MISS the 80s!!!! it was so gender bender you could wear Anything it was Fun!!!

Answer 2

I was born in 1963 and being a child in the 60's it seemed like a carefree/happy time as well, although the reality was somewhat different (Vietnam, the struggles of the bourgeoning civil rights movement to name a few) so it's logical that the 80's seemed carefree and happy to you being a child. I did have a good time in the 80's, but in retrospect it seemed that it was the beginning of a really cynical period that has just reinforced itself over the years since. If you look at the media then, money was the be all end all of everything. I suppose it always has been, but in the 80's it was the supreme goal. Take for instance the movies, something like "Back to the Future". After Marty returns to 1985 having defeated Biff by giving his dad the opportunity to acquire balls, he returns to a family living in a Reagan era wet dream; his loser brother becomes a banker or something similar, it seemed his sister was going to marry a rich guy, and the dad is driving a BMW, a far cry from their meager origins at the beginning of the film. The problem was that the material successes were equated with happiness. It's also the time idealistic music written in the 60's and 70's started appearing in commercials. Were the Beatles really singing about Nikes or about social change? Although it's taken for granted now, at the time I remember having pointed discussions with friends about the selling out of rock and roll. Maybe the cynicism actually started about the time arena corporate rock and coke parties became big in the late 70's. Anyway, I guess like any other time, it had its good and bad points. But hell, Prince was cool then, MTV played videos and wasn't full of crap reality programs with snotty kids screwing each other, college music was king with me, and I thought Jheri curls, mullets and stone washed jeans looked cool. Yes, they were good times.

Answer 3

Well, Ronald Reagan was president. We witnessed the systematic dismantling of the social safety net, with dozens of state hospitals being closed, and mental patients being thrown out on the street, programs to feed hungry kids eliminated, assistance to poor people in general cut back, and a threefold increase in homelessness so Reagan could build nuclear weapons. To this day, mentally ill people are being warehoused in prisons. Reagan spent most of the 80s baiting the Russians, because he believed we were the generation who was going to see Armageddon, and he tried hard to make that happen. Fortunately, the Russians were slightly less daffy. Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, was quoted as saying we didn't have to conserve resources or do anything to help the environment, because "Jesus [was] coming soon to call home the righteous." The current power of the religious right-wing neocon fascists started in the 80s.
Believe me, sonny, the 80s were nothing to brag about. The only people who have any fond memories of the 80s are: A. Supporters of the Great Grinning Dope, or B. Too young to know what was happening. You're fortunate you were so young.
I've spent the last 20-odd years trying to forget the 80s ever happened, that we as a country could put a man like Reagan in the White House, who didn't even acknowledge AIDS until 1987, SIX YEARS after it had been identified. And the music stunk up the radio.

Answer 4

Well, I'm not really an "oldie" but I was a kid at the time & remember we could play in the park without fear of being stalked or snatched, as they are now. The music was worth listening to, as well. It WAS a happy, carefree decade - I was going through my teens then. If you want a taste of the music back then, get "Electro 80's" from Woolworths, or find out where you can get the CD from any music shop.

Answer 5

I was born in 73 so was a child/teenager through the 80's.The summers were long and hot,the music was naff but it was a carefree time for me.I now have children of my own and things aren't the same,they don't know who Rocky Balboa was,have no idea what a great shows the A-team or the dukes of Hazard were or why sitting in your jim-jams waiting for Noels house party to come on was such a buzz lol.

Answer 6

OMG, I loved the 80's the music was great, the kids could play safely in the streets, people were so much more easy going and the clothes were fab - I still love playing music from the 80's and my daughter is amazed when a funky song that has been re-mixed comes on the radio and I sing along to it

Answer 7

I did my late teens and early twenties during the 80s. As I recall it was an era of very alarming hairstyles and very lame TV. I'm having much more fun now than I did then but maybe that's because I have more money, more freedom, and more confidence than I did then. Any decade is just what you make it I suppose.

Answer 8

Carefree? Happy?
It was a time of corporate greed, without the conscientious aspect that we enjoy today. The emergence of yuppies. Margaret Thatcher taking the miners' jobs away. Huge glasses, mobile phones like house-bricks, Germany still divided.
And contrary to another post here, there most definitely WAS AIDS. And a lethal ignorance about it.

Answer 9

Clothes and hair were well iffy!! Batwing jumpers, botton earrings, socks in flourescent colours that had to be worn odd.
The music was pretty cool and technology was getting really interesting. The world seemed a much bigger place then so when you heard about wars and atrocities happening, it didn't seem so real. And of course, we weren't blighted by political correctness then, which I think is a real problem now.

Answer 10

A decade of Decadence is the best way to describe it. Partying, chasing women who were not afraid and very willing to cooperate. The best music that has come out of any era, period. It was fun, everyone was more outgoing and friendly, we were not in any long term wars. Our economy was booming (in the US). It was a fun time to be a kid for sure!

Answer 11

The 80's were brilliant... esp the music.

It was carefree & heaps of fun.

There weren't so many drugs to make ppl crazy & I believe the world was a safer place.