Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury

hankbond

Cotton, linen, wool gang represent.

vorpalhex

Merino as a fabric is just a more delicate fabric.

LogicFailsMe

Silence died before social media. Silence died with pervasive flat screen TVs everywhere sometime during the mid-90s. I was in grad school at the time, and one by one, the previously quiet spots in cafeterias between meals and nooks went loud with a TV permanently tuned to ESPN or 24/7 news. It was like the planet Kakrafoon Kappa as if the most dangerous thing in the world was to allow students to be alone with their thoughts. Then it hit the restaurants and cafes. And while one could get away from this by taking a walk, cell phones finished the job. It's unreal to see someone walking their unruly dog, borderline shambling, while they stare, transfixed, into their phone. And I am out of you-know-whats w/r to this. Zuck won because he gave people what they craved. It wasn't what they needed, and it's up to the people to break their own addictions. I figure that's either after the commencement of my dirt nap or some contrived utterly avoidable apocalypse scenario triggered by our collective negligence on par with an expectedly dirty telephone as the root of a global pandemic.

jway66

Real estate

2d8a875f-39a2-4

Well sure, and lots of things that used to be luxury items are now normal. The wheel turns.

bamboozled

Parmesan cheese

hx8

I don't think these things are luxury at all, but can be packaged as luxury. For example, you can find quiet parks in most metro areas or you can go to a retreat in a resort in the mountains. For years I've been buying only 98%+ natural fiber clothing. I can still find t-shirts for about $10, but I do have to spend time examining the tag on clothes. I also noticed that Nordstrom's app can filter by fabric type, but the clothes there are sold at a premium.

readthenotes1

I don't know where the author lives, but usually it's easy to find a store selling something. They've almost always been staffed by bored teenagers tho.

OttoVonBizark

Can we stop already with the flood of faux earnest ai slop blog posts - utter brain rot junk

r3trohack3r

Also, things that used to be a luxury are now normal.

noosphr

Darkness. Before 1900 every human being that ever lived had perfect darkness every night they looked out their window. Today you have to go between hundreds to thousands of kilometres away from cities before you see it.

YetAnotherNick

New cloth used to be luxury when I was a kid. Now everyone has 100s of pieces. I remember sewing and wearing cloth, and no one does it now. Also he kinda answered his question: > it(natural fiber cloth) lasted less than shirts I’ve paid 5€ for For being offline and in silence, it is as achievable as ever, if not more. Companies/friends etc. now are more respectful of time and being offline or not picking up call now than they were 20 years ago.

ux266478

Scientifically speaking, time is a measurement of how much worse things have gotten. The irony is that this is also one of the oldest truisms that humanity has grappled with over the millennia. See: Hesiod's Ages of Man, Biblical Genesis, The Epic of Gilgamesh and many other Mesopotamian epics, the Vedic Yugas, etc.

ktallett

The clothing quality issue is in manufacturing and reducing the amount of fabric and thread used to make items. Seams are the bare minimum now etc. Likewise trainers soles have stopped using rubber and moved to far less durable synthetic materials.

wasabi991011

This is just complete hyperbole with no substance. For 1, I still have yet to go to a restaurant where I couldn't ask the waiter for a physical menu instead of reading the QR code (not to mention that QR code menus are still far from the majority in every city I've been to, small and large). Are there any other examples where you "need" to be online when going out? For 3, I've never been to a supermarket that doesn't have fresh local produce. The existence of a ready-made meal or of a more complicated snack food doesn't make produce in the same store any less real.

mdp2021

Several commenters seem to shrug off the trend. The trend is real and worrisome. -- There exists an expectation of infrastructure and acceptance of a way of living that is more evident, totally tragically, in administrations. -- Silence is very difficult to find in some territories - large inhabited territories -, and what is crucial is the widespread structural ignorance of the importance of silence. -- Finding untainted food is not as easy as some are suggesting. Already that DDT was found on the Himalayas (and similarly on the soil of special control agriculture) should tell of a problem. -- Direct relation with responsible parts in the economic supply is declining. -- Finding natural fabric is a grave issue in some areas. I have been there: for Winter clothing, all plastic, or outlandish prices. Being told that true leather jackets are now luxury items (which is paradoxical as beef is still on the market), or being unable to find wool, is a clear sign that, exactly, "Things That Used to Be Normal Are Now a Luxury". -- And very surely, once I did not have to spend ages of research to purchase good quality items. Shrinkflation is a real thing, and an obvious problem. (And a piece of the absurd: "buy n items of lower quality and lifespan to maybe get a decent one" in the "save the planet" times.)

panos_news

Why is this flagged?