The Current Golden Age
Every generation has its golden age. Whether it is the 30s or the 50s, or the 70s, people who lived through those times speak of them like they were the best period of their lives and maybe in history.
People on Reddit shared what golden age they believe they are going through right now. Some posts were expected, but some were quite surprising.
Exercise Science
I think we are getting into the beginnings of one for exercise science, which is good and bad. As an amateur competitive cyclist, I've got more training science and tools available to me than ever before. I get a detailed analysis of my routine that simply wasn't possible 20 years ago.
I've got more exercise science available via free software, blogs, and podcasts than professional cyclists with full-time coaches did in the mid-90s.
Access To Information
Information is everywhere thanks to the internet. I believe that right now, you can give yourself an Ivy League education for free, provided you have internet and a computer.
You can discuss ideas with anyone from anywhere in the world. You can take advantage of niche markets and have groups of people all get together over obscure hobbies. What a time to be alive!
Misinformation
This is the answer. Everyone's focused on a handful of divisive political or other topics while the whole world is experiencing a revolution in the ability to learn about literally everything else.
Think of the number of kids getting a head start on math, physics, and other science education because they found they could google any question they had and go down a vast rabbit hole of knowledge. Did the advent of public libraries have even a fraction of this potential impact?
Music
You can listen to anything, anywhere, anytime. Plus, there are so many genres and unheard-of stuff out there that you could never have discovered in the past.
For listeners and fans, sure, but this is a dark age for musicians trying to make a living. It is a great time to be a consumer of recorded music. It's also possibly the worst time for music creators since before recorded audio's inception.
The Serialised Sitcom
It used to be that sitcoms were a thing you could dip in and out of an episode at a time. Still, more and more sitcoms are leaning into the idea that they can tell a complete narrative (see: You're the Worst, The Good Place, Atlanta, Bojack Horseman, and more). The results are sitcoms with a lot of depth to them that you didn't see quite often before.
In the 90s, the format had to fit 30 minutes pieces that could be watched out of order and still make sense.
DNA Sequencing
I believe we are going through the golden age of DNA sequencing, even though it's just the beginning of it. I can't wait to see what will happen when it becomes as cheap and accessible as a blood test.
When you can get your entire genome sequenced for 50 bucks, it will suddenly become available and used by billions of people. Then our knowledge of the human genome will explode.
Space Exploration
I'm sure every scientist thinks their field is the most interesting, but wow, so many exciting things are going on in space exploration! My point is that I know people like to play the "what era would you like to go back to" game.
But the more you read about astronomy discoveries, the more I'm getting excited to be in our own time right now! No one else will know what it's like to be the first to see all this stuff happen!
Access To Food
I believe that we live in the golden age of accessible food options. Consider this: Obesity is a problem for the poor in the USA. Never before have so many people had access to an excess of 2,500 calories for such tiny real wages.
For comparison, a French Worker in Occupied France would have to spend a week's wages to have a single meal of 2,500 calories.
Guitars
Even though Gibson is tanking and their quality control has worsened, guitars in the rest of the industry are definitely getting better for less money. Back in the old days, about 20 years ago and longer, it was guaranteed to be awful when you had a low-end guitar.
Thanks to modern manufacturing techniques with CNC machines, the most expensive process of making quality guitars has decreased considerably. Thanks to this, the quality of mid-range priced guitars from $500 - $1000 is now excellent. The quality of low-end guitars below $500 is actually good, which is saying a lot.
Subscription Television Services
Nowadays, subscription television services are excellent, especially for sports. They are great, instant HD or even 4k content available on a handful of stable platforms.
But we are on the cusp of it becoming a huge minefield, with dozens of different subscription services, each with their own little niche. If you want to see everything, then you will need a subscription to all of them.
Video Games
Today you have a ton of options, and indie games are everywhere. There's a type of game for everyone: puzzles, card games, and FPS.
They get actors to play in the stories, the writing is phenomenal, and the graphics and settings for games keep wowing me. There are almost too many that I don't have time to play everything I want.
Superhero Movies
I think this is because the studios realized they needed to compete with television in its new golden age and make something with more than just a two-hour story.
Superhero comics were the first source material that had some sort of broad cultural awareness and had enough volume to it that they could make the equivalent of a TV show throughout a dozen movies.
Powerful Cars
We're definitely in a golden age of powerful cars. We are right in the middle of a horsepower war. You can get a Mustang for $35k that has more horsepower than a Lamborghini from 30 years ago.
Hellcat Chargers with 700+ horsepower go for roughly $70k. I mean, come on, even Camrys have 300 horsepower now.
Professional Wrestling
One of the reasons why we're living in the golden age of wrestling right now is that even if you think modern WWE/WWF is bad, it's never been easier to stream old episodes.
Then there are all sorts of wrestling alternatives that have never been easier to watch that stream worldwide. This isn't like the mid-90s, where if you didn't live in the USA or had Channel XY, you wouldn't be able to watch wrestling. Now you can spend $10 a month and watch an insane amount of content.