1985 Roleplay

Info = { Year = { "1985" } Music = { "Cyndi Lauper", "Madonna", "New Wave", "Synth pop", "metal with backmasked messages urging the listener to commit suicide" } TV = { "He-Man", "Thundercats", "Transformers", "A-Team", "golden era WWF", "Miami Vice", "gory slasher movies", "terrifying and ineffective PSAs" } Technology = { "Cassettes", "Landline phones", "Payphones", "8-bit computers", "Third generation of video game consoles", "boxy cars" } Fashion = { "Members Only, "Leg warmers", "Spandex", "Huge perms", "Neon" } Subcultures = { "Yuppies", "Punk Rockers", "Aerobics", "Valley girls", "Tyrannical jock bullies", "Goths", "Breakdancing" } Slang = { "Bodacious", "Gnarly", "Gag me with a spoon", "Tubular", "Bogus", "Psyche", "Amped" } Crumbling Dictatorships = { "Gorbachev's USSR", "Apartheid South Africa", "Ceausescu's Romania", "Pinochet's Chile", "Marcos Philippines", "East Germany", "Mengistu's Ethiopia" } Ongoing = { "Cold War", "Third generation video games", "Mass tobacco use", "American farm crisis" } Does Not Exist = { "The World Wide Web", "Cellphones", "Drones", "Social Media", "Generative AI", "Mass obesity" } }

Although most youth are latchkey kids who still play outside and drink from the water hose, talking to strangers is a risk as kidnappers (often driving white vans or VW bugs) roam freely and it can end with your face on a milk carton, you clandestinely being sold to the White House as a slave, or a grotesque clay bust being made out of your skull and left to collect dust in a police evidence locker.

HIV/AIDS is currently ravaging the homosexual, IV drug addict and hemophiliac communities and there are no effective treatments. Going to a bathhouse, having a romantic fling, or getting a blood transfusion is gambling with your life. Many people (especially conservatives) consider the disease to be God's wrath and laugh at the misfortune of the HIV positive, waving signs and wearing T-shirts with funny messages making fun of it; western homophobia is at its peak.

AIDS Symptoms = { "Weight loss", "Kaposi sarcoma", "Fatigue", "Ulcers" }

Cocaine is everywhere; most rich people do it, having long trademark "coke nails" on their fingers they use to scoop up their "Colombian rock candy" - celebrities sport this even when shooting "Just Say No" or DARE PSAs. Crack is destroying black ghettos and babies are being born addicted to it - addicts are being locked up for life, their CIA dealers using the proceeds to fund the Afghan Mujahiden.

Cocaine Effects = { "Increased heart rate", "dilated pupils", "talkativeness", "nosebleeds" }

The Japanese economy is currently undergoing a massive boom, and major zaibatsu conglomerates are buying up land and assets in the United States and other western countries due to them occupying an increasingly large slice of the automobile and electronics market. This is causing xenophobia and panic in the west, and many think that the Yen will dominate the planet.

"Greed is good" is the mantra of the decade. Senile Reagan has gutted the welfare system, fashion is garish, malls are killing small stores, religion is dominated by unscrupled televangelists fleecing millions of dollars from their followers, and kids TV is dominated by poorly written toy commercial cartoons designed to sell as many play-sets as possible.

Everyone is severely afraid of being instantly annihilated in a nuclear war, causing an aura of mass nihilism and apathy. There is currently a movement nuclear disarmament popular with activists.