• @Glowstick
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    361 month ago

    The older i get, the more the past feels like not so long ago. When i was a kid, the decade before i was born seemed like it was wildly in the past. But now as an adult i feel like even the early 1800s isn’t really that long ago. I think part of this is from my mind expanding over time, but i also think part of it is media doing a better job of showing what the past was really like

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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      1 month ago

      Your frame of reference gets larger, so you better understand the lengths of time. My Great Great Grandfather lived in the 1800’s, so that’s just 3.5 lifetimes ago. But, even though things may look similar, and they faced many of the same challenges, their day-to-day lives were completely different than ours.

    • @someguy3
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      271 month ago

      Pictures don’t tell you the full story. You’re probably thinking there’s heating, food, etc which are probably in short supply.

      • @shalafi
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        181 month ago

        Also, how good are you at fighting?

      • Tar_Alcaran
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        131 month ago

        In the 1880s Shantytowns were pretty common, and compared to those, these people live in a much better house. Hell, most of the frontier towns would look worse than this.

        Yeah, they probably don’t have heating other than woodfires, water or plumbing, but that’s the same for a huge portion of the population anywhere in the 1880s. Of course, the big city comes with big city problems like disease, water, food, fuel that frontier towns didn’t have to deal with (as much)

      • @[email protected]
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        41 month ago

        Well… yes and no. You’ve seen the homeless encampments in, like, basically every single decent sized US city, right? I can’t imagine the conditions there would be better than the slums shown here.

    • @[email protected]
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      -41 month ago

      You’re probably comparing this to the way people still live in many parts of the world or have lived everywhere for most of human history, which is bad and you should feel bad

  • @Legonatic
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    171 month ago

    Jacob Riis is the photographer and the slum is the Five Points.

  • @PlaidBaron
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    91 month ago

    And yet they’re dressed nicer than most people on the street today. Or at least most people in the local Walmart.

  • QProphecy
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    71 month ago

    Is it me, or do these people look really short?

    • @CliveRosfield
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      61 month ago

      Everybody used to be shorter on average, yes.

  • @[email protected]
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    51 month ago

    Looking at the “ghost” on the left, I wonder how long they had to stand still for this picture to be taken.

    • @ripcord
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      31 month ago

      I’m not saying youre wrong, but why do you say that?