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Bored Panda
Bored Panda
Edvinas Jovaišas

Someone Wonders: “In 50 Years, What Will People Be Nostalgic For?” And 17 People Give Answers

Article created by: Greta Jaruševičiūtė

Try to imagine the future a year from now. Barring some world-shattering Apocalypse of two (thank you, we’ve had enough!), it’s not all that hard to do. Now think of what life will be like in 5 years. Then 10. And finally, 50. Half a century from now, the world, society, norms, and technology may have changed very drastically. So much so that we’ll be nostalgic for a lot of things that we take for granted right now.

It’s tough to know what exactly you might miss in the future, but it's great for feeling grateful for what we have now. Prompted by redditor u/klausbrusselssprouts, the folks over at r/AskReddit shared some great insights and opinions about the things that people might be nostalgic for, 50 years from now. Spoiler warning: people's outlooks about the future are pretty grim. If nothing else, it’s a reminder of just how great life is right now, despite its challenges and imperfections.

Read on for a perspective on the present through the lens of the future, and don’t forget to upvote the posts you agree with, Pandas. We’d also love to hear your own thoughts about what you think many of us will feel a deep sense of longing for in the decades to come, so be sure to drop by the comments to share your thoughts.

Bored Panda reached out to the friendly author of the viral thread, u/klausbrusselssprouts, and he was kind enough to answer our questions in detail. Klaus shared that he has a background in history and social science, and has been a high school teacher in Denmark for the past 10 years. He said that the inspiration for the r/AskReddit post actually came from an exercise he often does in his own history classes. Read on for our full interview with Klaus.

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Keys. Even more specific vehicle keys.

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Owning something you don't pay a subscription for The number of wild animals that exist and can be seen. They are already on the decline. Being confident that the person they see on screen is a real person and not AI. Privacy. Even babies are overexposed today. Adblock/skippable ads. In the future decade I can see repeatable unblockable ads becoming mainstream in places like YouTube, Netflix, etc… Driving. Imagine a world where all vehicles are automated. It would be so “retro” to manually drive a car down to the shops. Wilderness spaces with little or no human settlement Grandparents will say to their grandkids “When I was your age, I had to get off the screen and actually GO to school”. That one month when everyone was playing Pokemon Go Water probably Movies made 30 years from now. Nostalgia always runs in 20 year cycles. I have a can of Frozen themed chicken noodle soup that I plan to sell when I'm 70 so hopefully that cause I don't have a lot of money in my retirement fund I'd say people will miss being uncontactable. Like back in the day, you could just go to your bedroom, and block the rest of the world away for a couple of hours. Now we've got video calls, phone calls, texts, emails. Urgh. Everything about today's art, style, decor, culture, movies, shows, music and news events. It will seem old fashioned and from a simpler time, in 50 years. Being able to be anonymous online. Being able to do basic maintenance on your car without needing a shop manual and a years salary worth of special tools
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