IntellectEwis here (when I turn from Big to Small):
it's become a recurrent notion now that our generation; mid-70's/80's kids; had "better" things going on. You see YouTube vids about it, you see memes, forwards on hotmail or Facebook aplenty...it's interesting for me because while my parents would rant every once in a while about how nice their era was, they don't so much emphasize it was necessarily "better". So, past generations just missed their younger days, but that's just by-default nostalgia each individual feels eventually in his life; the things they missed, they didn't necessarily feel were "better", but just happened to have been part of their lives and as human beings we zoom over anything personal and the most innocuous, regular thing becomes 'special'.
But our generation has this leitmotiv of expressing how much better the things we had were. Not to be a moralistic apocalyptic guru, but for sure this is clearly linked to the inevitable dumbing down/insidious decaying of Western societies and heavy loss of many fundamental principles.
There's an authenticity we had during those 80's/90's that seems completely lost. Even cheesy shiit like action movies with Stalone, Schwarzy, Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis had their place. The latest best action movie you've seen lately is "Expendables" which is a movie based on movies from the 80's/90's. It seems in movies, video games and such scenes we're really only anticipating remakes, sequels or somehow revisitations of past franchises.
Musically, in the metal scene for e.g. I don't think I've ever seen an era where kids turn into "vintage" old school listeners so much, because their present scene only serves as a gateway to the "real good stuff", i.e. 80's/90's. And kids during the 80's/90's were certainly stuffed with their current generation's material. Cartoons were original, meaningful, with interesting and unique characters.
I'd made a thread on this very forum because I felt it was interesting to ask ppl from all over the world and from different generations how they felt about the topic: "the best decade in terms of pop-culture/sports". My point was for that tendency to draw: we definitely had something special during those 80's/90's.
I know this thread was just meant as a lighter, quick view, but hey that's JUST WHAT YOU GET, OK, NOW YOU'VE GOT ALL THAT CRAP TO READ !!!