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Comment by andrewflnr | Hacker News Reader

This is honestly still pretty mild by historical standards. With the possible exception of the covid lockdowns, but a year and a half is not actually that long. It sucks, but compared to the long term stresses people have suffered before, it doesn't stand out. We'll be lucky if the early 2020s stand out enough to be so named.

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The events in Tigray alone, once the internet is restored and the full extent of the damage can be assessed and broadcast to the world, alone will probably be enough to give the early 2020s a name. When the worst mass atrocity in a generation can go on because the rest of the world had so many other problems to deal with, and so few people knowing about it, it highlights how bleak this period has been.

> not actually that long

It may appear so if you look at the more above-surface phenomena without checking the trends behind the underlying causes.

Already that which some now call "shrinkflation" is a 15 years old phenomenon, and it is far from being at the end of the analysis: it shows cultural crisis, decadence, an economic crisis which reveals the fragility of a system, not fixed in spite of former crumblings.

> it doesn't stand out

There is an interpretation of the formula that reinforces the above: appearances, over-the-surface phenomena "stand out". You see the above but supposedly look at the below, in the "underground", the causes. If you don't, there's another bad trend for the record.

Shrinkflation has been around for a lot more than 15 years. This Andy Rooney clip is from 1995, and looks at a trajectory of paper towel and toilet paper shrinkage since the 1970s: https://youtu.be/Q1lukmmJOHo

> Shrinkflation has been around for a lot more than 15 years

Sorry: I meant to point to the "accelerated" phase, very evident in some territories (with banners around claiming "We are keeping your prices down" and low quality new merchandise just below, for example), that seemed to start with the 2008 crisis.

Okay. I seemed to have not noticed anything particularly new starting around then. But I take your word for it.

It depends on where you have lived. In Europe, it seems to be wedged into a different world. One of the latest: they now sell shoes with hollow soles for heels to hit on thickness-providing blades: "It makes them lighter", I am told by clerks. "It is a public health concern and they would have been banned by the Authorities just not long ago, just before this unclear point of transition when it seems they don't anymore", one replies.

But anyway the point was exactly about those "peaks above the clouds" that have a whole mountain below, and then some Himalayas as its base...

Now that you mention shoes, I see your point. I got some very bad, very cheap shoes a couple of years after 2008.

You would be "lucky" to be taken seriously when comparing 1.5 years of recent history with other well-known periods that most people think of as decades in length.

When we thematize World War II we start many decades before the first gun shot.

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