I was born in the latter years of the 70’s, so when I was growing up in the 80’s, I remember a world very different from the one in 2024, some four decades later.

I remember a world where as a five-year-old foreign child living in a foreign country (USSR), my mom would send me to get bread from the bakery without worrying about anything happening to me. The bakery was far enough, perhaps over a kilometer, and the snow on the roadside nearly reaching my neck.

The bakery lady would praise my impeccable Russian, kindness shining on her face. On the road, people would smile at me. Once, a lady, roughly my mom’s age, even gave me some snacks she had just bought! I recall all this very vividly because sometimes when my life as an adult faces dark corners, I seek these rays of childhood memories to fall back on.

To show just how far I’d walk without my parents I even tried to find my old apartment block and that very bakery and even my KG on Yandex Maps. Here’s our apartment block (in the top left corner, the bakery in the center, and my KG on the bottom right):

In the early 80’s, people were nice. At least the people in my social space were.

Those good memories are a stark contrast to what I’m experiencing these days. I feel there’s been a sudden increase in narcissism which has made social life full of potential difficulties; Narcissism is quickly becoming an epidemic, especially among the younger people.

For a quick example, in the last year alone, out of 18 clients I worked with, 14 turned out to be suffering from narcissistic personality disorders, leading to difficult conversations and eventual ‘discard’ as is commonly practiced by them.

And it’s not just at work. Socially, nowadays, somehow, I always end up dealing with narcissists and increasingly so. On the basketball court, at least half of the people I played with or against exhibitied NPD symptoms.

Even in virtual environments, I feel this. On Quora, where I regularly write, I used to often receive private messages from narcissists (trying to ‘butter me up for discard supply’ until I decided to switch it off because it attracted only the weirdos and narcies; in addition, roughly half of the comments made on my answers are by people showing symptoms of severe NPD.).

What happened to the world?