Is 80s nostalgia justified?

1987 was the best year of my childhood! I was 11 and had just changed schools. I didn’t know it at the time, but the few, close friends I’d make at this small school and everything we’d experience together would create the best memories of my life! My Year 5 teacher was a gorgeous redhead who grew more erratic and eccentric by the day leading us to suspect she’d a breakdown of some kind. Perhaps it’s her good looks and the sweet, summer days of my innocent and carefree youth that year, which explains my attraction to redheads today!😂 My best friend was another newbie who lived in a two-story “American Dream house” with the biggest rumpus room and backyard I’d ever seen! He’d also a pool, Beta video player and Sega video game console prompting many a sleepover at his! Even his birthday early in the year was the talk of the whole school and as his bestie it fell on me to act as middleman to put in a word for some other mates so they’d get to go and have fun too!🥳 What I love about that era was it was a time of novelty. The movies were made for us kids and we were captivated by the unknown—monsters, ghosts, UFOs, treasure, time travel, outer space, etc.—so the growing nostalgia to tap into the naive sense of awe and wonder we felt about the world around us back then isn’t a surprise. The music and fashion trends were probably what I was least a fan of though. Some songs even gave me a migraine listening to ‘em!🤦‍♂️ Nowadays, however, I’m finding myself tuning to ‘80s music to relive even for just the briefest moment those slower and simpler times. Being on the cusp of a new era in technological advancement we were in a way between worlds playing on our class’s Commodore 64, listening to mixtapes of pop songs or watching videos starring ‘80s teen idols. Who’d’ve thought less than a decade later we’d be using laptops, CDs, DVDs, the Internet! Sure the ‘80s were’t everything, but for me at least it was nothing if not exciting and if I could I’d go back in a heartbeat!

Sure. Why not?

😎

I don't think 1980s nostalgia is all that justified anymore. To me, I always felt that what people considered was best about the period was only limited to the first few years before the shit hit the fan (homeless crisis, AIDS, crack epidemic, child abductions, etc.). Also, we spent the last half of the 1980s thinking that we were going to die any second because of the Cold War or that wouldn't live to see our 40s. Because there was so much of this dark stuff going on, I can't feel nostalgic about the 1980s anymore.

Also, the 1990s far surpassed the 1980s on every level. There were lots of great new genres in music; lots of groundbreaking movies and TV shows; tons of exciting, new technology; the Cold War was finally over; and there was this huge sense of optimism going into the year, 2000. Yes, there was Al Qaeda, but we didn't care too much because at least terrorist bombings were better than the prospect of nuclear war.

The 80s were known for excess, and it sat between two relatively boring decades. The only thing the 90s has going for it is it wasn't as boring as 2000+. Every decade since the 90s just feels like another extension of the 90s. Maybe its because the 90s brought us the internet. IDK.

Short shorts were more late 60s - 70s thing and ended in the early mid 80s with the AIDs scare and adoption of urban black culture which was extremely homophobic (in today's language).

Women's fashion in the 80s and early 90s was very Butch but later 90s was much more flattering. 90s fashion for men was flannels and ripped jeans.

If you were a 90s kid then you weren't old enough to truly experience the 80s outside of your parents' supervision.

That's like a Gen Zer saying the 90s sucked because their childhood/preteens in the aughts were better.

Also, I never saw men wearing short shorts en-mass or thought music was being overly positive in the 80s. In the USA there was definitely the Reagan-effect with the resurgence of patriotism and All-Things-Americana coming back after a dulldrum of self-doubt and cynicism born out of the Nixon-Ford-Carter era, but the 80s also had social consciousness expressed on a global scale and World Music was finally making in-roads into popular American music.

The 90s had its share of fluff Pop but it also had a strain of phony-anger in the form of Grunge and NuMetal which to me were nothing more than cash-grab manifestations that destroyed true Indie-music that came out of the late 70s and most of the 80s. THAT's the aspect you probably never appreciated because you were just a toddler/child in the 80s.

Video Games were better? Yeah okay, and technology in the 90s was better than the 80s as well. No duh. I'm sure people in the 60s would look at the 40s and scoff at flying a twin engine plane in favor of a Jet airplane.

80s was the peak of humanity. 75 - 95 if you want to get technical. the 90s was as embarrassing as you feel the 80s were.

It is just as "justified" as any other nostalgia is.

Nostalgia is nostalgia...