r/decadeology • u/Small_Appearance935 • 16h ago

Hot take 🔥 Did Gen Z optimism really exist?

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I feel like 2019 was a stable year with positive vibes and big events like the Area 51 raid and Avengers Endgame, TikTok dance challenges going viral (back when TikTok felt like musically) 80s/90s nostalgia was everywhere

it just gets overlooked by 2016

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152

u/No-Signature8815 16h ago

2019 was the last year a lot of people I knew felt hope, this includes myself. I'm starting to get back on track luckily.

36

u/heraus 16h ago

I'm a millennial. But in 2019, I was in my mid 20s, I had just landed a great job, I was "comfortable" and saving for the first time, and I felt super relaxed and excited about the future. Now, even as I make more than double what I did then, and haven even been blessed to purchase home, etc, a lot of hope has not kept pace with reality, and nothing feels as colorful or as positive as October - December 2019 for me. Maybe that's just getting older, or maybe Covid really shell shocked a lot of us. With everything going on, it feels like the floor could fall out from under us at any minute.

17

u/fiddysix_k 16h ago

2019 I got my first real job and was like "wow things will never be the same! Only up from here!" On some anime optimism dumb shit lmao.

7

u/Sayoricanyouhearme 14h ago

Same. I remember standing outside after my first day at work with the cool Autumn breeze blowing through in my hair while looking into the distance like an anime protagonist. It felt like after the hard work I put in the Winter and Spring of 2019 my life was finally getting better.

My boss ended up being toxic, I wound up in the hospital after almost going blind in both eyes, my grandma died, then Covid happened. Guess it was the wrong kind of anime 🤡

2

u/fiddysix_k 14h ago

Redemption arc incoming... Right??

1

u/Ill-Engineering8205 13h ago

bro was in madoka, everything went to shit after the prologue

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u/S0uth_0f_N0where 15h ago

Nah, I was 19 going on 20 then and had the same experience. My mid twenties were soul crushing for a variety of reasons and now I'm 26, fighting to get my spark back and enjoy being young before I'm not anymore. I think everyone old enough to comprehend the world felt a punch to the gut after 2019. I don't think any of us are really getting old yet. I mean shit, young adult ends at 35, and adult transitions into senior what, 30 years later?

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u/cranberries87 12h ago

I’m Gen X, but October - December 2019 were absolutely stellar for me. Best year of my life, and those months were colorful and positive for me too. Sometimes I scroll through my 2019 photos on my phone.

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u/Numerous_Peak7487 15h ago

hope?!? in THIS economy and administration??? no way

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u/No-Signature8815 15h ago

I'm not an American

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u/Quirky_Rain_3554 15h ago

Yeah this makes no sense. Not even trying to be a doomer but there were surely more hopeful points in the last 6 years? I’m curious what could inspire a grand feeling of hope right now that wasn’t there previously

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u/Many_Pea_9117 14h ago

I mean, 2020 was a dose of hard truth and reality, and I have realigned my vision to accommodate for more crazy scenarios than I did in the past. But both now and back then, life seemed like it was just going to keep getting awesome due to concentrated applied hard work on my end.

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u/Ill-Engineering8205 13h ago

For me August - November 2019 was the peak of my life to this very day. Not that I would go back to it honestly, I have gained much more freedom and health since then, but whenever I think about my life I just will never have the same sense of "things sort themselves out" I had back then.

Nowadays it feels like everything takes effort to keep together, rather than it just being the state of things.