Asklemmy

The older generation has basically always resented the younger generation for:

1. Their lives being easier,
2. Their music and clothing being awful,
3. Doing sex wrong.

It's like a constant of recorded history. The Romans said these things in ~300BC.

Nobody wants to work anymore!

(when the fuck did people actually want to work?)

"Star Trek got woke"

Trans people have existed for as long as people have existed.

Nowadays, everybody is trying to talk, like they have something to say. But nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, like they forgot about Dre.

Cancel culture. It's been around for a very long time, though it used to be expressed in shunning, banishment, or communal acts of corporeal harm (e.g. tarring and feathering, lynching, etc.)

Edit: just realized the question was for something true, not just something that's been around for longer than people think lol

I immediately think of butter, fat, dairy, and eggs. We were all told around the 1980's to avoid them as they will make you obese, raise blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Until pretty recently the American FA was still saying are all bad, then it went to "in moderation" etc. In fact it was all enjoyed and quite healthy up to the late 1970's and now again it is basically back in most people's diets.

Actually, we're discovering, other foods are often the cause of those symptoms, but don't let me knock the advertising industry for fast and processed foods ;-)

That everything is going to shit.

America's political system being fundamentally broken. People point to George Washington's farewell address like he was some 5d chess genius seeing into the future when really he was a dying old man who had just spent eight painful years watching the country shift into bipartisan gridlock

Slightly different tack ... by the time most people recognise a problem, and feel like it's happening "now", the reality is that it started long ago, has been ramping up gradually for a while, but most people didn't want to bother thinking about or doing anything about.

Climate change being kinda obvious. The thing with Google and Chrome lately has been like 10 years in the making at least.

Generally, IME, when something goes wrong even in someone's personal life ... there was something wrong the whole time being ignored. Just recently I spoke to someone about a recently divorced couple who were buying houses and planning long term things months before the divorce. I pointed out that it had to be that way as they were desperately hanging on to the idea that the marriage can work when in reality it had died years before.

"Fake News"

There's been good and bad journalism for as long as there's been journalists

Police reform has like a century of the same rhetoric without actually fixing the problem. You can read about it in old archives, and sounds hauntingly familiar to what you'd read from a modern reformist who opposes abolition

Kids misbehaving in school. "Kids are so rude these days." "Young people don't show respect anymore."

I'm pretty sure that every generation had its bad eggs in the classroom and nothing has changed.

https://xkcd.com/1601/

Politics is too divisive, politicians are untrustworthy, political campaigns are too negative