If you were in a coma since 1990, what about the last 28 years would be the hardest to believe?

1. *The Simpsons* is still airing new episodes. Back in 1990, seven seasons was considered a long run and *Cheers* was one of the few outliers to go into double digits. *Gunsmoke* was the only one to go twenty seasons and that was way back in the '60s.
   — laterdude


2. How I got married and had kids while in a coma.
   — A_Thousand_Faces


3. Phones/Computers/internet I was born in '93 but even growing up I had slow internet and saw how quickly it improved. There's some providers that allow 1 gig/second. On my families first desktop computer (2006) we only had a 500 mb hard drive. Having a mobile phone that's touch screen, can read finger prints, send messages in an instant, browse the web, GPS, and can fit in your pocket...that's insane and it still blows my mind to this day. edit: sometimes you really suck at English and people are there to help you with the right punctuation.
   — Benshannaboy






4. Cubbies won the world series.
   — youcheatdrjones


5. Practically everything, because I would have the mentality of a 9 year old.
   — kinyutaka


6. I think something that’s cool is how differently our present evolved if you compare it to what we thought the future might be. Remember how Back to the Future imagined 2015? It’s interesting to look back at how we thought we’d become. Don’t forget that what it means to be futuristic changed. We made a complete 180 in some places by coming up with more convenient solutions to problems we didn’t really have. Instead of the videophone, we text. Instead of cars that give you even more control than ever, our cars drive themselves. We expected our phones to have more buttons as they got more features, but my phone now doesn’t have any on the front. It’s things like that, and you also shouldn’t forget how fast some small things change. We don’t use doorbells as much because our phones are more convenient. Our ideas of what is healthy and what isn’t have changed drastically too. The things that would surprise me the most are: The bad: 1. The price of cars. Damn these used to seem cheaper back in the day, no doubt because of inflation and more required features that raise the minimum price. 2. Public Health. People are gaining weight at an alarming rate, and that poses a huge risk on one’s lifespan and productivity, as well as making people more dependent much earlier on in the late stages of life. Junk food is also everywhere, with delivery services and relatively competitive prices (but still more expensive than 1990). 3. The ridiculous turnover in engineering and CS jobs. Seriously, it’s harder than ever to move anywhere but horizontally in today’s flooded job market, and in many places it’s only getting worse. 4. The price of housing and land. I’m sure there are more educated people than me on this subject but home ownership is more difficult than ever. 5. The sheer amount of paranoia concerning security. Everything is a bomb threat, everything is an allusion to mass slaughter, TSA has to randomly search me every time I grow out my beard. Security theater is huge today and I think that there are more effective ways to maintain secure security than scaring innocent people into compliance. 6. Police brutality in the US. I might be biased, but that video of the guy that got shot in the hotel hallway while the cops were playing “a sick game of Simon Says” still freaks me out. I know it’s statistically improbable but that one video stuck with me the most. I’m not even American and it really made me understand how big of a deal it is. In the same vein, militarization of police. 7. Mass surveillance and what it means for the future. Will all my employers know what I watch after hours? Will I be denied credit for opening lootboxes, and therefore gambling? Will I be on a list for googling a recipe that an AI somewhere has correlated with serial killers? The good: 1. Communication is so easy. It’s so convenient. I can yell an order to my phone and in seconds I’m talking to my friend halfway across the planet without taking my eyes off the road. We’re using hieroglyphs again because they can be so universal in conveying the tone of an otherwise soulless message. I wake up every day to a curated list of all the interesting things I’ve had some curiosity about here on Reddit and I get to learn and discuss them with like minded individuals. Say what you will about echo chambers, I enjoy my time here. My tech illiterate grandma can video call the entire family without giving it too much thought. Not to mention all the new recipes I’m trying out. 2. Online commerce is a godsend in areas with zero variety. Any time I have someone coming over from the US or France or anywhere like that, I can order them a bunch of products that would cost a small fortune here. Then they’d give them to me when they’re back. It’s amazing, and I’m sure it’s even better when it’s available and affordable for the consumer. Imagine being able to do that with all the rare stuff you wanted in 1990. You’d have to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, and everyone wants his cut. By reducing the middlemen, we’ve made the world ever so slightly more convenient for the consumer. 3. Information. There is so much information out there that people are actually rejecting it actively! That’s an amazing (albeit worrying) phenomenon of having so much knowledge around you. You can download all of Wikipedia’s articles, if it’s just the text, and it’s only a couple gigabytes. You can have a significant amount of general information anywhere and offline if you chuck that onto your phone. Imagine lugging around your rich uncle’s Britannica shelves everywhere. It’s crazy how far we’ve come. 4. Diversity nowadays is great. I don’t care what you’re into as long as it doesn’t hurt or abuse anyone. If your passion is taking pictures of footpaths carved by people walking, /r/DesirePath is a thing. If you’re a vet who wants to discuss their experience with others, /r/Veterans is a thing. And so on. This isn’t limited to Reddit or even the internet. Whatever you want to do, there is some community of people who you belong to. Less things than ever are taboo, or “weird”. The idea of counterculture is less likely to show up in some places simply because everything is mainstream, and everyone has accepted that a lot of things are cool. And what’s neat is that people are beginning to separate ideas from groups again, so left and right aren’t discrete ideals you have to pick one of. You can be a feminist who likes guns, or a religious D&D bar owner. Those are unlikely, but not impossible. But there’s a bit of everything in everyone nowadays, and that’s really cool. Pop culture is immensely more diverse than it was 28 years ago, or even 10 years ago. 5. The power to use computers to visualize things we never could is something we take for granted. The CGI used in movies is literally surreal. Video games with highly interactive, detailed environments are commonplace. Robotic surgery is growing thanks to their increasing ease of use. If I want a new car and want to know what it looks like *right now*, many companies have AR apps that can display a virtual car in my garage for example, where I can walk around it. That last one isn’t huge, but man this feels like the future. 6. How the trends of the ‘80s are coming back. Synthwave is bigger than I would have ever expected. The guys over at /r/Outrun are enjoying modern pseudo 1980s design. This might seem like a small point to make to some of you, but a lot of trends are resurfacing, as trends do. The current thing I feel is coming back is the ‘80s aesthetic especially in fashion, and while it’s known that trends cycle, I hope it sticks around a little. Stranger Things might have helped that lately. 7. While we hear a lot of bad news, we live in an unusually peaceful time overall. There are less accidental deaths, and the tumultuous times that were the late 20th century are over. There are less bloody revolts and wars. They still exist and they are as awful as ever, but sensationalism has blinded us to the fact that this isn’t such a bad time to live. I tried to avoid making “the internet” a point on its own. I’m sure there’s a lot more good and bad to point out, but I think this is what sticks out to me the most.
   — gogetenks123






7. You can convincingly CGI someone's entire face to look real, like they did in the new Blade Runner.
   — holytriplem


8. Biff fucking Tannon being elected president.
   — bad_luck_dragon


9. Flat earthers
   — Caterpill420






10. Smart phones. You go from being amazed at a giant, clunky cordless home phone to a tiny amazing computer/phone/camera/game console that goes everywhere with you??
    — Ashleysmashley42