Why Does David Heinemeier Hansson Prefer the 1980s?

David Heinemeier Hansson would rather be uploaded into the 1980s than into the 90s. A favorite Black Mirror episode sends people to the 1980s, and he found the shared recognition beautiful: the 80s were actually kind of amazing. He has little nostalgia for most moments, and he still has an unbelievably fond affiliation with the 80s, his early childhood, full of optimism, fun, glamour, pop, and color.

He got to be 10 in the 80s. The music a person was listening to at 12 or 14 or 15 is what sticks, and his attachment began even earlier. The 90s were, for him, the great turning point of nihilism. Music, genre, and fashion turned from pop optimism, even the yuppies, to grunge and Nirvana. He likes the music and rejects the ethics, the morals, and the defeatism under it. Orange pants with white dots were a normal thing kids could wear in the 80s. In the 90s it all turned Seattle gray, a great regression. On the Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence, a Groundhog Day lived forever, he wants the orange pants with the white dots, and he is definitely picking the 80s.