u/ShesGotSauce

Hi fellow grownups! Twenty years ago today I joined reddit, one year after it was born, when I was 25. This is what has changed in those 2 decades, politically and personally. Following that are my guesses for how the next 20 years will trend, based on my observations of how cultural waves seem to work, not my personal hopes. Finally, please share what's changed in your own life since you joined reddit, and where you think you'll be in 20 more years!

Nationally, internationally, and politically:

1. On August 19th, 2006, some current redditors were not born.

2. Pluto was still officially a planet, but this would only last for 5 more days.

3. George W Bush was president. Obama's 2 terms, Trump, Biden and Trump would follow.

4. The iphone hadn't been released yet, so 0% of the public had the touchscreen devices we think of as smartphones (predecessors like Blackberry existed of course). Now, over 90% of Americans own one.

5. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were both still alive. So were Presidents Ford, H. W. Bush, and Carter, Michael Jackson, Prince, Robin Williams, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, and Steve Irwin (but only for 2 more weeks).

6. SARS-CoV-2 (covid) hadn't emerged in humans yet.

7. The Great Recession was still to occur.

8. Same-sex marriage was illegal in 49 states.

9. The existence of the Higgs Boson had not yet been confirmed.

10. Many of the apps and services that are now ubiquitous did not yet exist: Uber, instagram, Airbnb, Zoom, TikTok, ChatGPT, etc.

11. You could still rent a DVD at Blockbuster, or have one sent from Netflix.

12. Reddit was a small, new, quirky list of links that were mostly of interest to programmers and other real nerds.

Personally:

1. Since 2006 I have gotten married, and divorced, two times. In 2006, it would have absolutely mortified me to know that my life would unfold in this particular way. This is my biggest failure.

2. In 2006 I had been very ill with an undiagnosed genetic neuromuscular disease since puberty. It has long since been diagnosed and treated, which is my biggest triumph, since it made everything that followed possible.

3. In the intervening years I adopted a baby, who is now old enough to have figured out what reddit is for himself (hence my hidden post history 😅). He has been an unimaginable joy to me, although it remains to be seen how he'll ultimately feel about the decisions we adults made for him as an infant. Parenting also becomes more complicated as he gets older and I have to figure out how to prepare him for life in a world that is so new in so many ways.

4. In 2006 I had never even been to the state that I've now lived in for a decade.

5. In 2006 I had no idea what a jeweler's saw was. I've now been a silversmith for 18 years.

6. My beloved and brilliant father was a prominent researcher and professor at the top of his field. He eventually did an AMA about his area of study on reddit. I had spent a lifetime having incredible conversations about books, physics, philosophy, science, ethics, politics, history and meaning with him. He now has lived in memory care with dementia for 3 years, and when I visit, he only knows who I am some of the time. This is the biggest personal tragedy that has occurred in the last 20 years. Though his body survives, I miss him, and especially our conversations, desperately. My mom is still alive, though, and my parents are still married.

7. All of my grandparents were alive. They're all dead now. In 2006, they had 0 great grandchildren. They now have 13, 12 of which are boys, strangely.

8. I had already had the gmail account that I still use, for 2 years.

9. I did the following things for the first time between 2006 and 2026: Moved away from my hometown, learned to swim, rode a motorcycle (not my jam, I'm too risk averse), rode a horse, was interviewed by NPR, visited Florida, learned to fish, bought my first, second, third, fourth and fifth houses (and sold the first 4), saw a dead body, had a threesome (not my jam), became an avid gamer for a number of years and then lost interest, had my wisdom teeth removed, made my first million (that one's a lie). I'd never had an alcoholic beverage and still haven't.

10. I eventually began volunteering for hospice 10-20 hours per week, sitting with many dying people during their last days. It was one of the only things in life that has come naturally and intuitively to me. I hope to return to this as my son gets older. However, my deep and gripping repulsion regarding my own death has only worsened with age.

My predictions for the next 20 years:

1. In 2046, I'll probably still be alive, but not definitely; I have a 90.6% chance of living for another 20 years.

2. The biggest harm that will have come from AI will not have been AI becoming violent or autonomous, but will be from lost meaning. The loss of challenging jobs and the replacement of human creativity by AI will create widespread boredom and lack of purpose. This will lead to increasing sadness, and interpersonal and political restlessness as people search for meaning and purpose through conflict.

3. We all take issue with the job our parents did in some ways, so I predict today's young people will have the following complaints about how we raised them:

-They will feel we overmedicated them, psychiatrically. They will feel they were not able to develop and discover who they were without medication. (I'm from the first generation of medicated youth.)

-They will argue that we created a cultural structure that is difficult to thrive in, and then diagnosed individual children for not thriving in it. In retrospect they will feel that we excessively pathologized their experiences and reactions to growing up,

-They will resent that we let screens saturate their lives even though we knew they were harmful. I'm not sure about this one, actually; they may well be just as addicted as we are.

-A subset of adopted and donor conceived people will push back against decisions made by adults about genetic parenthood through gamete donation, infant adoption and surrogacy. They will resent that we preemptively trivialized the meaning of their own biological ties. The use of these technologies won't disappear completely though.

4. Young people may place greater value on marriage/long term commitment, and stable two parent households as a reaction to loneliness, social fragmentation, and their own childhood experiences with divorced parents. This may include an overcorrection when it comes to a return of traditional gender roles, to stabilize marriages and home life.

5. Gay marriage will still be legal.

6. There will be a backlash against a perceived overuse of psychiatric terminology and diagnoses. Therapy will not disappear but will fall somewhat out of favor. This all may include overcorrection in the form of a return of stigma which will harm people with psychiatric disorders.

7. Americans will talk, fight and think about race less because racial diversity will become statistically more commonplace. The conversation will shift more towards other divisions (cuz we gotta have 'em).

8. We still won't have a unified theory of everything in physics and the standard model will still be mostly intact. Progression in physics will have been in the form of tweaks and enhancements rather than paradigm shifts, but I won't mind if I'm wrong about this one.

9. Reddit may still exist in some form but will have dwindled in activity as people increasingly rely on AI for answers rather than discussions with others. It will seem more like a historic relic than an active community.

10. I have no idea how things like privacy, political authoritarianism or abortion access will change in the next 20 years. What do you think?

11. I will be an orphan and I will still not have figured out how to survive in this world without the two people who were the fellow keepers of my story for so long.

12. My son will be about 30. I don't have the hubris to make predictions there. I only have very broad hopes, and I dare not even voice them lest I tempt the fates. I'll still love him fiercely and endlessly. I will still not have made my first million.

What was your own life like 20 years ago? Where do you think you'll be in 20 more?

My boyfriend is moving down and we need some guys to help us unload his moving truck into a storage facility in Monkey Junction on Friday. Preferably before noon so we have enough time. Please DM or chat me if you're interested. Earn yerself some beer money!

My 8.5 year old son likes scary/creepy media, but if he detects that it was written for kids, he'll nope out immediately. So, a YA or adult book that is scary/creepy, but also not completely inappropriate? Somewhat fast paced is also a plus; he isn't quite ready for long slow burns. I know, I'm asking a lot. But thank you!

Edit: Holy shit you guys are amazing. We're gonna be reading for months!

I only "completed" the task remarkably quickly because I was screened out and not ABLE to complete the task. 😢

I learned to swim 6 months ago after a lifetime of severe fear of water. I had never even had my face submerged, or god forbid, been in the deep end of a pool. I have worked up to swimming 45 minutes, 6 days a week, and against all expectations it's become a refuge and a lifeline for me.

However, while I've mastered breaststroke and backstroke (Edit: I breathe properly during breaststroke, continuously out through my nose while under, and in through my mouth upon surfacing between strokes), I simply cannot figure out how to integrate breathing into freestyle with getting a mouthful of water, panicking, and feeling like I'm gonna drown. I've tried practicing with a kickboard, while holding onto the wall, etc. Eventually I got a snorkel to learn the stroke with the goal of eventually integrating breaths, but mostly gave up and now use it 100% of the time while swimming freestyle.

Aside from the obvious downside of not learning how to master probably the most important swim stroke, is there a reason I shouldn't just keep doing this? Will it be physically harmful in any way, like stressing out a part of my body I'm not thinking of?

For context, I'm 45 and I swim for mental and physical health, longevity/chronic disease prevention, etc. I have no competitive goals.

Thanks! 🙂

I usually swim inside at the YMCA where everything's chill, it's mostly oldsters swimming laps, the lifeguards are respected and, if anything, maybe bored by the lack of excitement. But I went to an outdoor recreational pool with my kid today. A lifeguard blew his whistle 3 times so I looked over. A toddler was tangled up in the rope dividing two sections. She was wearing arm floaties, so likely not in danger of imminent death, but she was scared and crying and unable to free herself. The lifeguard, all of 15 or 16, did a great job at spotting her, alerting his coworkers, and rapidly reaching her. He got her out and she ran to her dad who was sitting on the far side of the pool at a table on his phone paying absolutely no attention. Several lifeguards followed her and filled him in and he got fucking pissed. Started yelling and waving about how she was totally fine and wearing floaties and they were overreacting and needed to mind their own business. His wife came back from the snack shack and he got more heated as they explained it to her; I assume his ego couldn't handle her hearing about his parenting fail.

What a massive fucking douche. He was paying zero attention to his small child, who had been unsupervised long enough to make it to the opposite end of the pool, and then he reams out the young man who assisted her.

Pathetic behavior to witness. Some parents are really out there acting like lifeguards are free babysitters, eh?

It's been my favorite editing tool for years and I'm going to keep using it, but why did they just infantilize their interface?