The fuckity-fuck cycle we’re in right now.

I don't remember what vehicle passed us but it made me think about how so much of our products these days look the same. From our vehicles to phones, even our color palettes, our world has been mostly homogenized. That got me thinking about the horrid colors, patterns, and design—or lack of—that dominated the 1970s. And then I kept going because design wasn't all that sucked back then. It was a decade of political dysfunction and economic inflation and stagnation. Architecture went beige or worse and the culture went flat. Even the future projected at the time was lame and boring.

After having reached a natural conclusion to my inner conversation, I turned to the Data Scientist and shared that the world right now feels like the 1970s. Everything sucks. Politics. Jobs. Economy. War. Genocide. And why do so many of our new vehicles look bland and terrible! Even our color palettes are awful—who in the hell thought it was an acceptable idea to bring back avocado green?

As my statement came out of nowhere, she looked at me and asked if I required medical attention.

I did not.

I was simply reacting to the revelation that we're in a pattern—a really stupid one, and it pisses me off that we're here again.

The 1970s were screwed up six ways to Sunday. It was a time when everything felt dead. A grinding, gnawing sense that systems meant to provide stability weren't working—at all. The decade was dominated by the death, destruction and failure of Vietnam. Watergate shone a light on an old white asshole (though at least he felt a sense of shame). Detroit churned out heavy, underpowered pieces of shit in harvest gold, brown, or tan.

Today we have SUVs that all look like melted soap bars designed by committees who've never had an original thought. Greige everything because god forbid we use any of the other one hundred and nineteen colors available. Political paralysis dressed up as discourse while nothing gets fixed or solved. Watergate level corruption runs amok, unchecked. We're all just stuck refreshing our browsers, doom scrolling, hoping something will change while the algorithms feed us more of the same tepid blaring bullshit.

The parallels between yesterday and now are everywhere and they're infuriating. Economic déjà vu—inflation cooling, but nobody feels secure because wages are still dogshit compared to what everything costs. And that's if you can find work. Housing costs are beyond critical levels. Our government and political institutions keep proving they're worthless. The global unease that used to be oil price shocks and Cold War fear have been replaced with Hot War, climate dread, tech disruption and conflicts that feel both urgent and endless but somehow never resolve.

And design has completely surrendered. Car design, branding, fashion—it's all strangely meh, like the entire culture can't decide where to go next so it just... doesn't. Safe. Boring. Forgettable.

Why in the hell are we doing this again?

The 1970s malaise wasn't unique. Every few decades, we hit these cultural flatlines where everything sucks. And somewhere in the middle of it we stop, look around, and have our Melvin Moment: "Is this it? Is this as good as it gets?"

We've been here before. The symptoms repeat across time with eerie consistency. Politics feels paralyzed—parties fight but solve nothing. Leaders are reactive, never visionary. Jobs become transactional hell. Work becomes about survival, not meaning. The news is background static—constant crisis with no resolution. Everything feels heavy and gray and dead.

These cultural flatlines run seven to twelve years. Not just economic recessions—vibes recessions, where optimism, creativity, and boldness all go quiet at once. Like the entire species just decides to sleepwalk through a decade.

We're roughly five to seven years into our current fuckity-fuck cycle. It started somewhere between 2016 and 2020, depending on whether you trace it to political breakdown, pandemic fallout, or cheap money funding the latest tech expansion. If the historical pattern holds, we're in the lame, ugly middle phase—not the start, not the end. Just the long slog where everything feels stuck.

But here's what I found digging into this pattern: these gray periods always end with an explosion of color, creativity, and possibility. Always.

The late-70s malaise birthed MTV, punk, hip-hop, Silicon Valley, and the personal computer revolution. The Depression birthed New Deal reforms, the jazz golden age, and the technological leaps of wartime innovation. The 1890s gloom birthed the Progressive Era, Art Nouveau, and entirely new ways of thinking about society and power.

And right now, if you zoom in, you'll see these sparks everywhere—the little rebellions that always show up before culture starts to crack open, people fracturing and retreat into smaller, weirder spaces. Discord servers, niche newsletters, invite-only forums—replacing public timelines and algorithmic communities. Artists and writers are making things no one asked for—mashups and music scenes. Magazines, cassette players, film cameras, typewriters, even landlines coming back. Not just nostalgia. A hunger for tactile experience.

There's a rebellion brewing against productivity culture and optimization—end the hustle bullshit. People are walking away from performative jobs. Quiet quitting, career downsizing, anti-resume movements. The "slow work" ethos is catching on and new vocabulary is emerging: "post-ambition," "enoughness," "human-scale."

Gen Z are less tribal and more willing to abandon party identity entirely. There's a rising desire for rebuilding community from scratch. Not as an ideology. As survival. That "start over from the ground up" mindset is the same one that fed the Progressive Era after the 1890s malaise.

Analog games—D&D—are surging because people are starved for real-world fun. Public parks and civic spaces are quietly reviving in some cities. Humor, that isn't built for brands, is on the rise. When a society starts rediscovering silliness, that's a sign it's thawing out.

This is how revolutions always start: messy, half-baked, dismissed, until suddenly, it's the new normal. We have to be the change that we want to see.

All of this is pre-mainstream energy. Unformed, chaotic, often dismissed as niche or "not serious." That's exactly how every post-malaise wave looks at first. If you want to spot the next MTV/punk/PC moment before it lands, watch these sparks. Be these sparks! Getting out of the bullshit we’re in comes from doing and making—the half-baked projects and grass roots initiatives that people roll their eyes at.

Everything feels awful right now, you're not imagining it. You're not broken. You're living through a historical pattern that always, eventually, breaks. The question isn't whether things will get better again. It's whether you'll be ready to help break it when your moment comes. Be ready to roll your d20.