You have to completely remove three decades on this list from history. Which do you choose?

I am good with the 50s, 70s, and 2010s.

Prob the 1930's - if the Great Depression never happened, then WW2 likely woulden't have happened either (since countries were too busy worrying aboot the economy rather then Hitler)

Removing any time would completely alter what happened after it... so... i don't get it.

30's - Cuz the depression

40's - Cuz of WWII

80's - Because that was the worst decade for all media, movies were the worst, tv was the worst, music was the worst, video games were the worst.

Sir, you are certifiably insane. Some of the best music, movies and games came out of the 80's.

The existence of Michael Jackson alone invalidates 3 of those 4 claims.

Fuck the 30's - The Great Depression and the rise of fascism (very inter-related)

Fuck the 50's - Generally speaking, tons of repression, paranoia, and blandness here in the U.S.

Fuck the 2000's - the tragedies of 9/11, and the terrible wars and surveillance that it was exploited to justify

I'd say the 60's, 80's, and 90's were all pretty cool, weird decades in the long run.

If I had the power, we'd all live the 90's in an infinite loop. Grunge, British rave scene, riot grrrls, trip hop, FIght Club, The Matrix (blissfully unaware about how the sequels would turn out), insane Dot Com Bubble optimism. Generally, people partying their asses off, because of a sense that everything would either end or transform into a techno-utopia in the new millenium.

@monetarydread:

What? the 80's had some of the best music ever. Way better than most of the popular music these days.

30s 50s 60s

Surely the 30s and 40s are the obvious answers. Also, I went for 2010s, because this poll is stupid :o

every generation thinks their pop music is better than the previous generations.

@animasta:

You're right, and it pains me to think an entire generation of youth will grow up thinking crap like Justin Bieber/Miley Cyrus is good.

I grew up in the 90's but listened to a lot of 80's music, and still think it's better than most pop music in the last few years.

This list, but replace the 50s with the 90s so I was never born. Thank you.

Yeah I think you need a little introduction into the realm of Tears for Fears

Well... I think on some level WW2 had to happen, we learned a LOT from that... Or rather I hope we did. So I'm keeping that.

I guess 50-70? I don't know how this concept works though.

If it's about my least favourite decades, then yeah, 30, 40 and 50 would be the answer.

ALL OF IT.

Not really, I didn't live in the 80s but pop from then definitely is more catchy and unique.

30's 40's 50's

Great Depression, World War 2, and the Cold War. Fuck that shit.

This.

Though that would mean no Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman... and comics in general :(

30's 40's and the 90's, because fuck the 90's. Most embarrassing decade of the twentieth century.

what kind of monster would get rid of the 70s?!

50s, 60s, and 70s. I don't need you jerks messing around on my territory.

Maybe removing popular culture or historical events from a decade would be alright. But removing any of these decades would effectively remove me from existence, as either my parents or grandparents would cease to exist and I would be unborn. At least up until the 90's, but everything is pretty cool after that.

30s 40s and 60s. Skipped the 50s as that would kill BTTF.

This is a real silly poll.

Can't say I care much for the world wars. And those are major enough to do some ridiculous difference on the world map. I'd delete those out of curiosity.

The right answer:

• 1930's: Great depression and build-up to WWII.
• 1940's: WWII and aftermath.
• 2000's: Because man was that a time without personality. Nothing good came from those years.

Every other decade brought something fantastic to the table.

1940s nobody I care about was born in the 40s

2000s not a fan

2010s ditto

I'm going to have to also buzzkill this topic because it isn't "your least favorite eras" and the idea of nuking history alters what would occur in the future - so where I'm glad I didn't live in the worst of eras, I'm also stuck in the present where I've been hit by numerous tragedies which have all occurred at seemingly the worst possible times. At the same time, it could obviously have been worse by altering what happened in the past. Tragedy occasionally breeds significant innovation. If something bad didn't happen, would progress have been made in the name of ingenuity/necessity?

As someone who did grow up in that era I probably have a different perspective, then again, I loathe pop music. There is a lot of whitewashing going on when it comes to music from any generation, and for every Peter Gabriel (I personally cannot stand his music but I understand why people enjoy it), there fifty turds like the Bengals / Basia / Europe / Toto / Bonnie Tyler / Scandal / Warrant / Poison /Etc. Singers like Rick Astley weren't jokes back in the day, they were genuine musicians, and I remember being forced to listen to, "Never Gonna, Give You Up," about a bazzillion times while working a shitty summer job. From my memory, there was a lot more generic turds out there than any generation that I can think of. The last few years of the nineties were close, but I feel that the level of experimentation and the growing indie movement was more significant to music.

Plus, the internet yo, that really did change everything with music. I remember a time when your only options for finding new music was MTV / Much Music (Canadian version of MTV), a magazine (usually a very biased and inaccurate resource), or a friends mix-tape. You were limited in your choice of music because your only options were to physically find a copy, which made indie music nearly impossible to find if you didn't live in a place like New York.

The 90s, just to see how games would have turned out without Half-Life, Starcraft, and other classic games.

@noctisluciscaelum: Like I hinted at in a previous post. In the 80's you were forced to listen to the pop music of the era, nowadays you can choose what you listen to, you have access to everything, and the industry allows for indies to put out music (the 80's was dominated by major labels).

Take work for example, at best you had an FM radio (chances were good you were listening to AM only because FM was a "feature," that cost an extra $20). Employers usually wouldn't invest in a cassette player because they cost $200+ (in 80's dollars), your music experience relied on a silly DJ. If the labels were pushing Mr. Mister, that is what you were forced to listen to all summer.

2000's 2010's and 1930's of the ones you picked, pretty lame poll if it doesn't go back to at least the middle ages though. Vagrant Story was already in development and would still be released in some form; perhaps to mass popularity this time.

30's and 40's because of war, 2000's because everything went insane. And I spent most of it broke due to college.

1280s, 1360s and 1810s. Crazy times that I'd rather not go through again.

35,000,000 BC nearly made the cut too.

This is easy: the 80's, the 80's, and the 80's.

You are insane....

Also removing the 30 and 40 would have been terrible as well since a lot of good stuff happened because of these Events.

2004-2006 is when my life took a nose dive into shit and has not come back up. So that I guess.

The 90's 00's and 10's because then I'd still be 7 about to turn 8 in the year 2020!

The 80s is an extremely weak decade compared to its predecessor and descendant.

The 70s is easily the strongest decade, it was the peak of American film, hard rock before it got corporatized, stand up comedy before it got corporatized, incredible social and sexual changes, and the invention of Dungeons and Dragons and video game consoles.

Then you have the 80s, which took the 70s, polished all the rough edges down and sold it at an economic profit. They fucked up David Bowie for chrissakes, who can do that? Film took a giant step back, video games almost died completely, and unless you're an angry Californian and you're making either thrash metal or gangster rap, music starts swallowing itself.

Then the 90s, they fixed up some of the stuff. Grunge tried to fix music but their natural depressive nature had them all give up and fuck their lives up, and then there was alternative which was pretty good until that got polished and streamlined into shitty Nickleback post-grunge whatever. An indie scene in film, video games making huge steps forward, more social changes.

I guess the 40s, the 50s and... I'll go with the 30s. Hate to pick on the earlier years, but I would find a world without the normative outcomes of the 'sexual revolution' to be absolutely inhospitable. I find the world today to be puritanical and fidgety with sex, the world of the GI Generation would be untenable. Ironically I could probably make due in the 20s provided I was middle class or above; my perversion would make me more a rogueish cad than Satan himself.

70s, 90s, 60s, 80s, uhhh... I guess the 00s, 30s, 50s, 40s.

Yeah, the world really benefited from having that child molester running around.

I removed the decades that made me younger, sorry the majority of you that had to die for that.

For me it would be the 30s, 40s and and 2000s

1930s because of the great depression and the beginning of World War 2

1940s because of World War 2 and the beginning of the Cold War (both of which in turn had a direct influence on how the world is today - good and bad, but mostly bad)

The first half of the 2000s because of the "War on Terror" and the following aftermath, and the beginnings of the world recession and market crash.

I think the 2000s part is a no-brainer here, but its the the 30s, and the 40s specifically where things get dicey. Would we avoid World War 2 and the Cold War? Yes. But at the same time, the world would be an entirely different place than it is today, and its hard to say if it would be different for the better or for the worse. One thing thats for sure is that we would have nowhere near the technology that we have today without those wars because, well, war is a huge source of technological advances and innovation. Most of the tech we have today was invented by German (Nazi) and US scientists during and directly after World War 2..

I agree up until the 50's. Despite the rampant paranoia, not much happened in the 50's besides the Korean War maybe the US and USSR building up their nuclear arsenal like crazy. The Cold War didn't get really bad until the early 60s... Thats when everything went bad really quick and (almost) destroyed the entire world..

Yes. I agree.

50's 60's 70's no Cold War

People calling for the 30's and 40's, yeah... WW2 sucked but there is one problem with that. The sheer number of technological leaps made in those decades as a direct result of the war are kind of important, science and engineering jumped forward about 30 years in less than 10.

Changing history for virtuous reasons could have some pretty serious ramifications.

Not only that. There is so much we gained because of these terrible events in terms of our society and world politics.

wait are you saying 80's music was the worst then there is clearly something wrong with you, most of the worst music was in the 90's with everything being eurodance and boy/girl bands
are you saying guns and roses, dire straight, bryan adams, inxs michael jackson, white snakes, talk talk, dead or alive, fine young canibals, bruce springsteen and frankie goes to hollywood is bad?
and movies, well there are still so many amazing movies, also all those things especially tv, movies and music directly affected future

Why did I pick the 60's. Now I have to find some dirt on the 60's to justify my misclick.