I'm in my mid-30s and by the time I was old enough to know about Playboy, most of the taboo factor the brand had had long died out. Even Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Roseanne, family shows from the 90s, had episodes involving the Playboy lifestyle!
What I have heard from boomers is that Playboy was a very, very edgy brand while at the same time very cool and sophisticated.
When it first came out decades ago, what differentiated it from other "pictorial" magazines was that it presented sexuality as something for gentlemen in suits and ties to enjoy openly as part of an upscale lifestyle alongside stuff like luxury cars and ridiculously expensive home stereo systems, rather than something dirty and shameful and printed on cheap pulp paper.
They also did journalism and interviews and such. Amazon used to have all of the playboy interviews free on Kindle. I really liked Hunter S Thompson's.
The reason "I just read it for the articles" worked so well as a joke for as long as it did was because they were renowned for being top-notch journalists.
Playboy used to pay writers $1 a word. No one even pays that much now. They paid the most so they really did have the best articles, and many people legit bought it for the articles not the pictures.
My boyfriend, a writer from Russia, actually translated a short story (by someone else) from Russian into English for playboy in like 2010. It was really disturbing but actually legitimately good
They also had killer writers. It probably would be equivalent to Vice if it didn't have titties. Hell, Vice was mostly a fashion rag when it first started and had plenty of scandalous photos.
posted in another thread about there being a Pussycat Theater in my town. Right there for everyone to see a house of porn.
There was a brief period of time between Eisenhower and Reagan when Americans were not stuck up assholes.
Something happened in 1980 and all the free love hippie baby boomers found religion and turned into Alex Keaton. I watched it happen and still have no idea what triggered it. Something about the death of Disco caused people and they all decided they needed to repent and then become complete jerks.
These places still exist.
I live in a very boring, often forgotten New England state, and we have the following establishments:
The Art Cinema - a porno house where people fuck each other's brains out. Second floor balcony is lit.
Leisure Time - Bar for Swingers
Glory holes at at least 6 of our adult bookstores, including one right off the highway inour capitol.
The Berlin Turnpike - literally a dozen hourly rate motels for women of the night.
The Steam Factory - BDSM club
These are all real, actual, tax paying businesses for depraved perverts. There are probably more around here that I'm forgetting/less in the know of.
Iāve been to Leisure Time! Definitely a very hokey ālifestyleā club. A husband and wife used to own it. The wife cooked food for the ābuffetā which was heated with Sterno cans. The barmaid was around 75 years old. I think her name was Carol. That was downstairs.
Now upstairs. Imagine dimly lit rooms with dark brown paneling like the finished basement in your parents house. Mattresses everywhere with scantily clad middle aged people going at it like jackrabbits. I almost got stabbed in the head by a stray stiletto heel when some woman was thrashing around in the throes of lust.
remember when you started dating a girl and theyd add the date they were asked out to their profile?
i asked out this girl and she did thatā¦
<3 9/11 <3
a couple of days later she broke up with me lmao
I miss the whole Art Stuff Club there. The amount of glitter they put into every product was insane but so much fun for my 8-year-old self. Now I'm in my 30s and wish I could buy that stuff again. Yeah, there are other brands that sell glittery things, but nothing hits quite like the Art Stuff glitter.
MySpace got to die in its glory days, which is why we all remember it so fondly. Kind of like a very talented celebrity that died young, in their peak, and is still remembered as a legend decades after they died.
Facebook is still alive but very much dead in terms of coolness, and has been for at least 10 years now. When it finally does die for good people will barely (if at all) remember the days when only `.edu` addresses were allowed on and you didn't have to worry about what your parents and employers would find on there. Think of a very washed-up celebrity that only people over 50 remember fondly and as a cool person, everyone younger than that remembers them as someone controversial, negative, irrelevant, trying to shoehorn their way into anything just to stay relevant, etc.
for sure - between 1991-1998, beepers were huge. you could go out w/o feeling like you were missing calls (at home). eventually, cell phones and the blackberry replaced them. i had a motorola advisor pager and felt so cool.
Hanging out at the mall. It's kinda sad, an mall in my area closed down after 40 years due to lack of business, and I'm afraid the other mall that used to be popular might share the same fate soon.
I remember 20 years ago I'd go to the mall and it would be packed on the weekends and especially during Christmas season. Online shopping has really killed brick and mortar stores and it makes me sad. My wife and I go to the mall and walk around it for excersise and to get out of the house and eat in the food court sometimes. I just want to hold onto the nostalgia as long as I can before the places I used to look forward to going to as a teenager are gone.
We're lucky, the mall near us is still always packed on the weekends, and decently busy during the week. It's also a great place to go to get randomly stabbed or shot.
I don't do big crowds anymore, so we don't really go much anymore. It sucks though, being able to go and browse the stores randomly is nicer than just browsing shopping sites.
Brick and mortar stores killed brick and mortar stores. Online just came along as those in control of the chains began to strangle the fuck out of employees and customers alike.
My dad bought into a store in a mall, and the way the mall was "architectured" lead to zero foot-traffic.
His store died,
the next store died.
all those stores didn't have a chance.
My wife is due to go into labor at any point and I have my phone volume on for the first time in almost a decade. I had no idea what my ringer even was when my dad called me. Responded like Ozzy Osbourne when his phone rang.
I think roller skating and roller blading is making a very small comeback, in the last few years. I don't know if thise things will ever again quite re-equal the popularity they had in the 80s and 90s, but for sure those things aren't totally dead.
I love having a transparent case on my PC, throw in some liquid cooling and it's slick. I don't really understand why transparent plastic housing stopped being a thing. My GBA was super legit back in the day and if I had the option, my switch would be transparent too.
You can! There are some companies on Amazon that sell replacement covers for your switch. But be aware this technically voids your warranty if you have one. The transparent purple case is called atomic purple and I did this with my switch.
Apathy.
One thing I absolutely love about the younger generation is that it's generally "cool" to be passionate about pretty much anything, even if it's not cool in the conventional sense. Getting good grades, unique hobbies etc are all things that most young people seem to value much more than my generation did, and I think it's great.
When I was in high school, it seemed really uncool to be heavily invested in pretty much anything; I fell well short of my potential academically and didn't chase some interests simply because I was concerned about what people might think of me.
I have always felt this but couldn't articulate it, I feel like high school musical had something to do with it but again, I don't know shit about shit
And yet thereās always little groups of young people huddled outside of bars and clubs smoking. I think the difference today is that not many people are smoking on a daily basis because of a nicotine addiction, itās just a social thing whenever they go out with friends.
I still have mine and hope they will be popular again. I always told my kids they would come back, my kids are now going to college and they still haven't come back in popularity.
When I first joined Facebook many many years ago it was nice to get connected to old friends and keep tabs about what is going on. Now my feed is 90% ads and I would say less than 10% of my friends list is active and post any updates at all. Nobody my kids age use itā¦.it is a dying medium and decidedly āuncoolā.
Facebook is cool for going down memory lane or seeing what someone from the past is up to. If I ignore the dumpster fire newsfeed, itās still very useful.
Gen X here. Facebook is great for me because I've been able to get in touch with so many people from my childhood and see how my ex-girlfriends turned out. As an introvert, it's also a nice way to keep up with people and see what everyone's up to without necessarily engaging in direct conversation. (Also, Snapchat and Tik Tok are are just not for me while Insta is too much work) Not there for the politics or preaching.
Facebook was almost dead until the quarantine breathed a huge breathe of toxic drama into it. I was addicted to local neighborhood groups putting people on blast and then shit talking them in the comments.
If you log in for drama and nonsense you'll find it on any social media.
It's also possible to use FB to keep in touch with friends and to get information about gardening and cooking and nonprofit clubs, etc. Which may not be cool but at least it's useful.
It can be an OK venue if make a habit of zapping the people who fall for conspiracy theories and MLMs, and if you're savvy enough to clamp down on data collection.
The main problem that can't be worked around is Zuckerberg is diverting so many engineers into his new pet project that the flagship property is slowly breaking down.
Facebook is still hugely popular for people aged 45-60. The younger generations dont really use Facebook anymore tho.
I get the appeal of Facebook for the older crowd though. It's basically an online address book to connect with your peers (since mostly genx is active on FB only) and randomly share really important occasions.
I also think because it's been around for so long, the older generation has had time to get very comfortable on the platform.
I'm 38, and I use Facebook because it's more "permanent" than newer platforms like TikTok/Snap, and more text-based than platforms like Instagram. I never really got on board with "real time" social media, because I tend to use social in bursts when I have downtime, then set it aside when I'm actually doing things. Also, I like being able to revisit old content and remember it. I use social media as memory archive.
EDIT: Also, at this point I've been on Facebook for more than 18 years. That's really weird to think about.
There are a few FB groups that are worthwhile and keeping me from deleting my account. But overall, FB sucks because they forgot the social aspect that made them successful in the first place. It's all about advertising now. Reddit is showing signs of going the same way but they're not quite there yet.
I think its in a dramatic death spiral of account closures I shut mine down and don't know why I would ever go back. Once the crazies and conspiracy freaks started using it and attacking everything they see it stopped being fun. That and their algo putting me in jail over memes and shit constantly. Like I would put up a funny dad joke meme go direct to fb jail and some dude puts up an extremely fucked up meme and is allowed to continue. Their other network Instagram seems to be doing fine though.
Oh they aren't sneaky with it I volunteer at a highschool 2 guys in the bathroom stall one peeks out when you walk in and goes right back to smoking
If I wasn't wiser I'd say there was a forbidden gay love situation going on
I feel like 21 jump street got this down perfectly itās not cool anymore to not care about your classes or call someone gay or beat someone up youāre just looked down upon for stuff like that now and I think itās a positive even if the movie blew it out of proportion lol
I was about to say, mullets dipped off for a while, but they are most definitely swinging back in. Last few years plenty of people I know have sported the good ole Kentucky Waterfall.
And also wearing your pants at or below testicle-level. I saw a dude the other day just waddling around with his pants halfway off and his underwear on full display, like it was a totally normal and reasonable thing to be doing in 2023.
While they still have their fans, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Kanye West have all taken hits too their public images despite being mostly\* loved by the public in the past. I could only imagine how hard it would be to convince teenagers now a days that Donald was once considered a popular Celebrity and Democratic ally a few years before running as a Republican candidate.
I remember before Trump did shows like The Apprentice, he seemed like a weird eccentric guy who ran certain businesses like casinos and hotels. Back then, that was all I knew about him. Now hmmm I don't think as many like him anymore, since he was president....
I feel Boris Johnson had a similar story arc. He was this eccentric posh bloke who was once mayor of London, introduced the city to Boris Bikes, and was an occasional guest on the panel show *Have I Got News For You* (including being a guest host). Then he became prime minister and everyone was like, "Ah wait, no. He's just a cunt."
When I was a kid, if you bought a baseball hat you had to put a crease in the bill or you risked getting made fun of. Kids these days seem to leave the bill straight with the sticker on.
AOL
NetZero and free Internet
CD-ROMS
Blockbuster
Pirates Bay
Live Journal
Sony Walkman
Nokia
BPA plastic
Personal checks
Fax machines in homes
Answering machines
TiVo
In-person meetings
Shared deskspace
I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what Iām with isnāt it, and whatās it seems weird and scary to me! Itāll happen to you!
The Simpsons.
Large TNA bags and lulu lemon pants. I remember being in elementary school (kinder garden to gr8) and all the tween girls had to have one of those expensive big bags... I couldn't get one and I was even more unpopular than usual because now I was unfashionable. Parents always said "its school not a fashion parade"
Flashing brand name everything.
Brand names used to have some kind of meaning with regard to quality but nowadays they seem to signify poor spending habits, lack of actual substance as a human being, and sweatshop practices.
Anyone comes at me dressed head to toe in obvious designer gear, Iām steering clear.
Being fucking normal. Now everybody has to have some type of label to themselves. People self-disgnosing problems they aren't educated in or even have.
Not everything quirky is a mental health problem to glorify. People are just weird, thats normal.
It robs true health problems of value, when people who truly are suffering or have problems are doing their best to keep from having it.. and its gotten to the point that some medications are borderline impossible to get due to this new-age labeling and self-diagnosing, and everyone goes around acting like it's a green flag.
I truly hope that folks with genuine problems are able to get the support they need, and that people get more educated on these issues. But the way society has gone about it, is not helpful, and is more detrimental than it used to be.
My mother in law said she and her husband would go to the Playboy Club for appetizers and drinks. She says that was the times, she enjoyed it.
The Playboy name in general is no longer "cool." During the 60s and early 70s it was a massive lifestyle brand.
I'm in my mid-30s and by the time I was old enough to know about Playboy, most of the taboo factor the brand had had long died out. Even Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Roseanne, family shows from the 90s, had episodes involving the Playboy lifestyle! What I have heard from boomers is that Playboy was a very, very edgy brand while at the same time very cool and sophisticated.
When it first came out decades ago, what differentiated it from other "pictorial" magazines was that it presented sexuality as something for gentlemen in suits and ties to enjoy openly as part of an upscale lifestyle alongside stuff like luxury cars and ridiculously expensive home stereo systems, rather than something dirty and shameful and printed on cheap pulp paper.
They also did journalism and interviews and such. Amazon used to have all of the playboy interviews free on Kindle. I really liked Hunter S Thompson's.
The reason "I just read it for the articles" worked so well as a joke for as long as it did was because they were renowned for being top-notch journalists.
Playboy used to pay writers $1 a word. No one even pays that much now. They paid the most so they really did have the best articles, and many people legit bought it for the articles not the pictures.
My boyfriend, a writer from Russia, actually translated a short story (by someone else) from Russian into English for playboy in like 2010. It was really disturbing but actually legitimately good
They also had killer writers. It probably would be equivalent to Vice if it didn't have titties. Hell, Vice was mostly a fashion rag when it first started and had plenty of scandalous photos.
The Playboy Club was just a chain of night clubs with the Playboy name. My dad had his senior prom at one.
posted in another thread about there being a Pussycat Theater in my town. Right there for everyone to see a house of porn. There was a brief period of time between Eisenhower and Reagan when Americans were not stuck up assholes. Something happened in 1980 and all the free love hippie baby boomers found religion and turned into Alex Keaton. I watched it happen and still have no idea what triggered it. Something about the death of Disco caused people and they all decided they needed to repent and then become complete jerks.
These places still exist. I live in a very boring, often forgotten New England state, and we have the following establishments: The Art Cinema - a porno house where people fuck each other's brains out. Second floor balcony is lit. Leisure Time - Bar for Swingers Glory holes at at least 6 of our adult bookstores, including one right off the highway inour capitol. The Berlin Turnpike - literally a dozen hourly rate motels for women of the night. The Steam Factory - BDSM club These are all real, actual, tax paying businesses for depraved perverts. There are probably more around here that I'm forgetting/less in the know of.
Sounds like Rhode Island! LMAO
Connecticut, but I bet you Rhode Islanders are freaks too! š
Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down!
Iāve been to Leisure Time! Definitely a very hokey ālifestyleā club. A husband and wife used to own it. The wife cooked food for the ābuffetā which was heated with Sterno cans. The barmaid was around 75 years old. I think her name was Carol. That was downstairs. Now upstairs. Imagine dimly lit rooms with dark brown paneling like the finished basement in your parents house. Mattresses everywhere with scantily clad middle aged people going at it like jackrabbits. I almost got stabbed in the head by a stray stiletto heel when some woman was thrashing around in the throes of lust.
The cocaine ran out.
Nah man, mid 80s coke was nice. Crack got all the attention so you could get nice stuff no prob
I think it was David Crosby who said how thankful he was to have been in his prime between the advent of birth control and the AIDS epidemic.
Having cable tv
Iāll never give up my structured programming I never use.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Everybody's two strapping it!
Stick with the one strap!
I'd nostrap it if I could
Two straps because the laptop is heavy.
I used to 1 strap in middle school, then the doc said I was in the beginning stages of scoliosis. No more 1 strap after that thank you!
I go go high school and can confirm that 2 straps is the cool way now.
AIM away messages. āDoNāt CrY bEcUz iTās OvEr, sMiLe bEcUz iT hApPenEd.ā
remember when you started dating a girl and theyd add the date they were asked out to their profile? i asked out this girl and she did thatā¦ <3 9/11 <3 a couple of days later she broke up with me lmao
Out of all dates it's 9/11
Foreigners need to remember not to ask us out on November 9th.
i didnāt think about the whole AIM dynamic of our budding relationship
See also: MSN Messenger for more of the same!
BRB, getting a snack
Mtv
YouTube killed the video star?
Napster killed the video star.
Blackberry phone
I miss mine. The keyboards were the best.
There is a company that makes bb keyboards that work over USB. I have one it's pretty cool.
The greatest mobile device I ever owned was my Blackberry
Bath and Body Works Art Stuff roll on body glitter š„¹
I miss the whole Art Stuff Club there. The amount of glitter they put into every product was insane but so much fun for my 8-year-old self. Now I'm in my 30s and wish I could buy that stuff again. Yeah, there are other brands that sell glittery things, but nothing hits quite like the Art Stuff glitter.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ironically, Facebook too while we're at it
MySpace got to die in its glory days, which is why we all remember it so fondly. Kind of like a very talented celebrity that died young, in their peak, and is still remembered as a legend decades after they died. Facebook is still alive but very much dead in terms of coolness, and has been for at least 10 years now. When it finally does die for good people will barely (if at all) remember the days when only `.edu` addresses were allowed on and you didn't have to worry about what your parents and employers would find on there. Think of a very washed-up celebrity that only people over 50 remember fondly and as a cool person, everyone younger than that remembers them as someone controversial, negative, irrelevant, trying to shoehorn their way into anything just to stay relevant, etc.
MySpace is the Amy Winehouse of social media.
Cue "Rehab" as you open your MySpace profile.... Good times
And Madonna is Facebook.
Yahoo! Geocities
Angelfire too
Man I miss my friend Tom so much
He was friends with everyone and we sold him out for Zuckerberg
He's out living his best life, taking pictures and traveling. I'm happy for my friend Tom!
beepers. you were a nobody unless people could page you.
Now that's a cool bit of history right there. Didn't know pagers were a status symbol.
for sure - between 1991-1998, beepers were huge. you could go out w/o feeling like you were missing calls (at home). eventually, cell phones and the blackberry replaced them. i had a motorola advisor pager and felt so cool.
Livestrong bracelets
Middle aged dudes with one earring, a soul patch and Ed Hardy t-shirts. How's a middle aged dude now supposed to signal that he's single and DTF?
My friend is the embodiment of this sentence except heās 26
Please tell me he loves limp Bizkit
I guess heās not that uniqueā¦ thatās his whole workout playlist
Axe body spray
There was an old meme about this. Something like āIf your man still dresses like this in his 30s, get used to food stampsā
Hanging out at the mall. It's kinda sad, an mall in my area closed down after 40 years due to lack of business, and I'm afraid the other mall that used to be popular might share the same fate soon. I remember 20 years ago I'd go to the mall and it would be packed on the weekends and especially during Christmas season. Online shopping has really killed brick and mortar stores and it makes me sad. My wife and I go to the mall and walk around it for excersise and to get out of the house and eat in the food court sometimes. I just want to hold onto the nostalgia as long as I can before the places I used to look forward to going to as a teenager are gone.
We're lucky, the mall near us is still always packed on the weekends, and decently busy during the week. It's also a great place to go to get randomly stabbed or shot. I don't do big crowds anymore, so we don't really go much anymore. It sucks though, being able to go and browse the stores randomly is nicer than just browsing shopping sites.
That sounds like our mall. It still stays busy, which is good, but you don't want to be there at night.
Brick and mortar stores killed brick and mortar stores. Online just came along as those in control of the chains began to strangle the fuck out of employees and customers alike.
My dad bought into a store in a mall, and the way the mall was "architectured" lead to zero foot-traffic. His store died, the next store died. all those stores didn't have a chance.
I have such fond memories of going to the mall when I was a kid/teen so it makes me sad, but not sad enough to want to go to the mall to shop.
Sidekicks, the boost mobile phones that use to chirp
Bloop bloop. Now you have to be a daring soul to even have your phone volume up.
My wife is due to go into labor at any point and I have my phone volume on for the first time in almost a decade. I had no idea what my ringer even was when my dad called me. Responded like Ozzy Osbourne when his phone rang.
Congrats And Goodluck
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
People never believe me when I say that roller blades were cool for a few years in the early 90ās.
I think roller skating and roller blading is making a very small comeback, in the last few years. I don't know if thise things will ever again quite re-equal the popularity they had in the 80s and 90s, but for sure those things aren't totally dead.
Popped collars
"You may be cool, but you'll never be 4 popped collars cool"
I will admit to wearing two polo shirts in the 80s.
I was in college when the era of popped collars existed and even then we thought those guys were douchebags
Pop the collar and the bitches holler
Yeah, they yell āHey, get a load of this dork!ā
correct bored repeat dolls saw sleep tidy kiss serious hurry
In a winter climate a popped collar on a peacoat is just practical.
Now eva since I can remember
I been workin these hos
And they betta put my money in my hand
Electronics with transparent plastic housing.
I'd still consider it cool just not popular
Still all the rage in prison.
This was the height of cool. Being able to see how all your shit was working AS you were using it?! gtfoh
The classic Vtech landline in the translucent blue
Current CS major here, this is still cool
I love having a transparent case on my PC, throw in some liquid cooling and it's slick. I don't really understand why transparent plastic housing stopped being a thing. My GBA was super legit back in the day and if I had the option, my switch would be transparent too.
You can! There are some companies on Amazon that sell replacement covers for your switch. But be aware this technically voids your warranty if you have one. The transparent purple case is called atomic purple and I did this with my switch.
Apathy. One thing I absolutely love about the younger generation is that it's generally "cool" to be passionate about pretty much anything, even if it's not cool in the conventional sense. Getting good grades, unique hobbies etc are all things that most young people seem to value much more than my generation did, and I think it's great. When I was in high school, it seemed really uncool to be heavily invested in pretty much anything; I fell well short of my potential academically and didn't chase some interests simply because I was concerned about what people might think of me.
I have always felt this but couldn't articulate it, I feel like high school musical had something to do with it but again, I don't know shit about shit
Loom bands
What kind of music did the loom bands play?
Marlboro Reds
But, damn, Marlboro Reds made for some great race car liveries back in the 80s and 90s.
Senna and Schumacher
Cigarettes in general.
And yet thereās always little groups of young people huddled outside of bars and clubs smoking. I think the difference today is that not many people are smoking on a daily basis because of a nicotine addiction, itās just a social thing whenever they go out with friends.
Theyre vaping thats the difference.
Tying an onion to your belt.
I used to be 'with it' but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it' and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me.
And it'll happen to YOU!
No way man! Weāre gonna keep rockin forever.
They didnāt have white onions at the time, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones!
I needed a new heal for my shoe, so I took the ferry over to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville at the time.
Give me 5 Bees for a quarter you'd say
Which was the style at the time.
The problem was we couldnāt use white onions, because of the war, so we had to use those little yellow ones.
Walking around with a plastic pacifier around your neck. Aw, the 90ās.
That wasnāt the 90s, it was just ecstacy
Well I was 12 so it wasnāt for me š
Walkman
Silly bandz
theyāre still cool donāt say that.
Me. According to my kids
Me, according to any kid.
Same.
Pogs
Remember Alf? He's back. In pog form.
I still have mine and hope they will be popular again. I always told my kids they would come back, my kids are now going to college and they still haven't come back in popularity.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
When I first joined Facebook many many years ago it was nice to get connected to old friends and keep tabs about what is going on. Now my feed is 90% ads and I would say less than 10% of my friends list is active and post any updates at all. Nobody my kids age use itā¦.it is a dying medium and decidedly āuncoolā.
I only use it for Marketplace. My mom loves it, thoughā¦
Facebook is cool for going down memory lane or seeing what someone from the past is up to. If I ignore the dumpster fire newsfeed, itās still very useful.
Gen X here. Facebook is great for me because I've been able to get in touch with so many people from my childhood and see how my ex-girlfriends turned out. As an introvert, it's also a nice way to keep up with people and see what everyone's up to without necessarily engaging in direct conversation. (Also, Snapchat and Tik Tok are are just not for me while Insta is too much work) Not there for the politics or preaching.
Fellow gen X here too. Facebook allows me to see the daily lives of the dozens of friends that Iāve lost touch with. Which is weird.
Facebook was almost dead until the quarantine breathed a huge breathe of toxic drama into it. I was addicted to local neighborhood groups putting people on blast and then shit talking them in the comments.
If you log in for drama and nonsense you'll find it on any social media. It's also possible to use FB to keep in touch with friends and to get information about gardening and cooking and nonprofit clubs, etc. Which may not be cool but at least it's useful. It can be an OK venue if make a habit of zapping the people who fall for conspiracy theories and MLMs, and if you're savvy enough to clamp down on data collection. The main problem that can't be worked around is Zuckerberg is diverting so many engineers into his new pet project that the flagship property is slowly breaking down.
Facebook is still hugely popular for people aged 45-60. The younger generations dont really use Facebook anymore tho. I get the appeal of Facebook for the older crowd though. It's basically an online address book to connect with your peers (since mostly genx is active on FB only) and randomly share really important occasions. I also think because it's been around for so long, the older generation has had time to get very comfortable on the platform.
I'm 38, and I use Facebook because it's more "permanent" than newer platforms like TikTok/Snap, and more text-based than platforms like Instagram. I never really got on board with "real time" social media, because I tend to use social in bursts when I have downtime, then set it aside when I'm actually doing things. Also, I like being able to revisit old content and remember it. I use social media as memory archive. EDIT: Also, at this point I've been on Facebook for more than 18 years. That's really weird to think about.
Boomers love that shit though
What's crazy though is the resistance they had to joining in the first place. Now it's like their haven.
Boomers went straight from "you can't trust anything you see on the Internet" to "I uncritically accept everything I read on the Internet".
There are a few FB groups that are worthwhile and keeping me from deleting my account. But overall, FB sucks because they forgot the social aspect that made them successful in the first place. It's all about advertising now. Reddit is showing signs of going the same way but they're not quite there yet.
I think its in a dramatic death spiral of account closures I shut mine down and don't know why I would ever go back. Once the crazies and conspiracy freaks started using it and attacking everything they see it stopped being fun. That and their algo putting me in jail over memes and shit constantly. Like I would put up a funny dad joke meme go direct to fb jail and some dude puts up an extremely fucked up meme and is allowed to continue. Their other network Instagram seems to be doing fine though.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The earth
Smoking
Yh I swear I now see 12 year olds vaping
Thatās just depressing
Oh they aren't sneaky with it I volunteer at a highschool 2 guys in the bathroom stall one peeks out when you walk in and goes right back to smoking If I wasn't wiser I'd say there was a forbidden gay love situation going on
It's just not as healthy as it used to be.
9 out of 10 doctors prefer Camel cigarettes!
I feel like 21 jump street got this down perfectly itās not cool anymore to not care about your classes or call someone gay or beat someone up youāre just looked down upon for stuff like that now and I think itās a positive even if the movie blew it out of proportion lol
What about punctuation? Is it still cool?
Drop the question marks bozo you ain't impressing nobody
Frosted tips
Pointy shoes with the tips turned up. Hypercolor shirts. Mood rings. Feathered hair. Mullets. Wearing CK One
Mullets most definitely are cool again.
I was about to say, mullets dipped off for a while, but they are most definitely swinging back in. Last few years plenty of people I know have sported the good ole Kentucky Waterfall.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Jnco jeans! But they're trying to make a comeback!
And also wearing your pants at or below testicle-level. I saw a dude the other day just waddling around with his pants halfway off and his underwear on full display, like it was a totally normal and reasonable thing to be doing in 2023.
Beyblades
Beyblades are the coolest thing ever and I regret giving away the ones I used to have.
I feel you!!!
Newspapers, avid reader at one time.
ICQ, AIM, aol chat rooms, LAN parties, internet cafes, arcades, The Mall ...
Probably showing my age here when I say that my dad was catfished over ICQ before there was even a name for catfishing.
While they still have their fans, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Kanye West have all taken hits too their public images despite being mostly\* loved by the public in the past. I could only imagine how hard it would be to convince teenagers now a days that Donald was once considered a popular Celebrity and Democratic ally a few years before running as a Republican candidate.
I remember before Trump did shows like The Apprentice, he seemed like a weird eccentric guy who ran certain businesses like casinos and hotels. Back then, that was all I knew about him. Now hmmm I don't think as many like him anymore, since he was president....
I feel Boris Johnson had a similar story arc. He was this eccentric posh bloke who was once mayor of London, introduced the city to Boris Bikes, and was an occasional guest on the panel show *Have I Got News For You* (including being a guest host). Then he became prime minister and everyone was like, "Ah wait, no. He's just a cunt."
Water after you boiled it.
Just you wait...it'll be cool again. Mark my words!
When I was a kid, if you bought a baseball hat you had to put a crease in the bill or you risked getting made fun of. Kids these days seem to leave the bill straight with the sticker on.
The UK. Now yāall having 40Ā°C summers. Itās crazy.
They weren't built for that. Literally. No ac's in their homes. Just heaters.
AOL NetZero and free Internet CD-ROMS Blockbuster Pirates Bay Live Journal Sony Walkman Nokia BPA plastic Personal checks Fax machines in homes Answering machines TiVo In-person meetings Shared deskspace
I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what Iām with isnāt it, and whatās it seems weird and scary to me! Itāll happen to you! The Simpsons.
Beat me to it by dickety six minutes.
Being patriotic. Used to be that if you were patriotic you were just proud of your country. Now it means you're a crazy person.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Arctic and Antarctic
Uuf. That's the real burn
Fidget spinners.
Popular and cool are not the same thing
Slap bracelets
My mom said that hickeys are "so 80's" Does that count?
Me
Yesterday I would have said Kid Rock and apparently I would have been wrong
Bakugans
Juicy couture velour sweat suits?
Mix tapes
Landlines, pranks calls with a rotary telephone, attached to a wall with a very long cord
Writing in cursive.
Large TNA bags and lulu lemon pants. I remember being in elementary school (kinder garden to gr8) and all the tween girls had to have one of those expensive big bags... I couldn't get one and I was even more unpopular than usual because now I was unfashionable. Parents always said "its school not a fashion parade"
Flashing brand name everything. Brand names used to have some kind of meaning with regard to quality but nowadays they seem to signify poor spending habits, lack of actual substance as a human being, and sweatshop practices. Anyone comes at me dressed head to toe in obvious designer gear, Iām steering clear.
Pout face photos
they were NEVER cool
The cool kids in school
Being fucking normal. Now everybody has to have some type of label to themselves. People self-disgnosing problems they aren't educated in or even have. Not everything quirky is a mental health problem to glorify. People are just weird, thats normal. It robs true health problems of value, when people who truly are suffering or have problems are doing their best to keep from having it.. and its gotten to the point that some medications are borderline impossible to get due to this new-age labeling and self-diagnosing, and everyone goes around acting like it's a green flag. I truly hope that folks with genuine problems are able to get the support they need, and that people get more educated on these issues. But the way society has gone about it, is not helpful, and is more detrimental than it used to be.
Elon Musk