How has society changed since your childhood?

[@vfsdm]

What an award-winning video AND comment section. So many good insights of other’s perspectives on the passage of time and its changes

[@januzairamli4426]

Why does this pinned comment has no replies?

[@megaagentj2248]

@@januzairamli4426 because there’s nothing to say

[@furiouss75]

@@megaagentj2248 wee wee

[@alexanderfo3886]

So true. I'm just one year younger than J.J., bi instead of gay and grew up in Germany instead of Canada, but I can so much relate to what he said.

[@Eirik_Bloodaxe]

Kinda reminds me of Randy from the late That 70s Show episodes

[@BVSchaefer]

The early years of The Simpsons were controversial because the audience didn't understand that it wasn't a cartoon for children, causing a slow but devastating realization that adults can watch cartoons as well.

[@Sillykat420]

That's a good point that never really occurred to me. The idea of animation targeted at mature audiences is now so ubiquitous that it's strange for me to imagine a time when shows like The Simpsons and even Ren & Stimpy were controversial for their less than squeaky clean content.

[@TsukiCondor]

Oh definitely. Adult Animation in the 70s and 80s was around like Ralph Bakshi or Heavy Metal (among others). But most of those films often remained as niche little films or cult classics. I'd say The Simpsons made Adult Animation more mainstream then ever. It open the floodgates of unique and expermental Adult animation. Duckman,The Critic,The Oblongs,and who can forget Adult Swim technically started because of Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Sealab 2021. Unfortunately animation by your average parent or movie goers just assumes all animation is for kids. I mean and even when it was marketed by kids it would insight controversy. Pokemon was projected by some as "satanic worship" and shows like Johnny Quest and Birdman where seen as too violent as a result we have Scooby Doo.

[@ldsviking]

I can agree as far as it wasn't a cartoon exclusively for children, but it's hard to argue that children were not part of the target audience. Consider the early focus on Bart, the child-friendly prime-time slot (8/7c), and merchandising aimed at kids, including T-shirts, toys, Butterfinger, and video games.

[@ghintz2156]

I mean...it's not a kids or adults show...I'd consider it a "family cartoon" in that everyone can watch together and enjoy some level of the humor at their age.

[@billcoleman4258]

Rocky and Bullwinkle weren’t for children.

[@LucasBenderChannel]

The one cultural development I could add, is the rehabilitation of *"Nerds"* and "nerdiness" into our society. You often hear how the nerdy "four-eyes" were bullied in high schools of the 1950s, or how people who were overly invested in certain forms of entertainment were looked down upon as recently as the 2000s. Nowadays, since entertainment has become so ubiquitous and very franchise-driven, with brands attached to movies and games and toys, nerdiness has become the new normal. It's even become cool to like and know about Marvel movies, or Lord of the Rings, or some hipster Netflix series nobody's heard of just yet. I really appreciate this, because genuine enthusiasm for a piece of media is a very joyous thing with few downsides! And let's not forget nerdiness about more "useful" things! Being enthusiastic about botany, geography, politics, history, mechanics, engineering! It's far more acceptable these days to show raw, unpolished joy and investing your time into whatever makes you happy. //Edit: The next step of that development, I feel, is the rehabilitation of being "eco-friendly". My parents still tend to scoff at people, who try to preserve energy, decrease their production of waste or who put a lot of energy into researching about the food they consume. That's seen as hickish and overly-invested in the same way as I described in the comment above. But in my generation (I'm 22, born in 1998) it's far more common to be mindful of your consumption. Sure, there's still a feeling that some people "overdo" it, but that has less to do with the effort itself, and more with the way how they proselytize their actions.

[@mysticalmonotreme]

Agreed. I started reading comics (both Marvel and DC) in the 90s, which wasn't what the "cool" kids did. However, I have my concerns over the mainstreaming of geek culture because it has become corporate-driven and hollow compared to what it was in earlier decades. Part me cringes when I hear people say "Wakanda forever!"

[@jimmym3352]

NERD!!!, sorry, couldn't resist. I still think there is some stigma against nerds. At least when it comes to attracting women.

[@LucasBenderChannel]

@@mysticalmonotreme I understand that, sure. I mean, everything feels more special when only few people know or care about a thing. And I get the corporate thing too... but there are still so many good and creative people out there, willing to take a risk. You just have to dig for them... same as back then, I'm sure. (Btw, WandaVision is nuts and I love it!)

[@LucasBenderChannel]

@@jimmym3352 I genuinely don't think that's a very common stereotype anymore... at least in my bubble.

[@Marylandbrony]

Interestingly if you ask someone in their 50s or early 60s if they watched Speed racer. They will more often than not say yes. My father, mother and uncle all did and even a picture of Pop's racer is in fact in the back office of the auto body shop I work at. Thus most baby boomers are technically weebs.

[@brysonperidot]

It’s strange to me that basically all adults seem to think that no kids use 'gay’ as an insult anymore even though it is still very common.

[@taylorphillips7030]

Absolutely true. I hear it all the time at my high school

[@canoshizrocks]

​@Theodoric MacCambell When I was growing up in the 2000s, words like "gay", "faggot", etc. didn't refer to homosexuality, at least in my community. They were just vague insults to say about people you don't like.

[@alexanderfo3886]

No doubt about that, but then, people in their twenties are shocked how normal homophobia was back in the early 2000's when I tell them, so there must have been some change.

[@jordanneal576]

When I was a kid we used to play "smear the queer" which is a little horrifying looking back on it. I often wonder if that's still a thing, but I don't hang around elementary schools to find out... For obvious reasons.

[@YakuiMeido]

I mean obviously kids are monsters, and I'm sure even the use of the n word is still prevalent in some cliques. But I don't think you have like, EVERYONE quoting scenes like this kzbin.info/www/bejne/qJ6sY4aelNmcd5o or this kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3Osp5qCr7h9hq8 every hour of every day anymore.

[@hildiandfriendsfosterfails]

As a 58 year old woman, I am not typical of your audience demographic but I love your videos. Some of the biggest changes that I have seen over the decades are changes in the workplace. When I became old enough to work (1977-1978) it was quite a common part of the job for a woman to be able to graciously laugh off or deflect the advances of male colleagues or superiors without "making a scene". The only option for escaping harassment was to quit. I have also seen a lot of changes in terms of equal opportunity. 7 years ago I had to change careers because of a downsizing and so I decided to get my insurance license. In the class women outnumbered men, the class was racially diverse, and a few had tattoos (myself included). If this class had been when I first started working in the 70s they would almost certainly have all been white men. These are positive changes to be sure but certainly the result of a lot of hard work and advocacy by a lot of people to get us where we are today, and this should never be taken for granted. We still have a long way to go.

[@honeydropletpotlet]

the fact that JJ is nearing 40 yet could pass as a college student is something I entirely envy

[@JJMcCullough]

The signs of decay are more visible irl

[@lucasshaver7789]

@@JJMcCullough Who needs 1080p

[@LuchadorMasque]

It's the hair

[@BFGUITAR]

@@JJMcCullough You have luscious locks with only a tinge of greyness. Also pretty decent skin! Also, people look younger! Rogan was talking about how people today are aging slower and in particular, fighters are fighting longer. Better health consciousness and technology.

[@LuchadorMasque]

@@adamc2444 not creepy at all

[@carakellmeyer5037]

The rise of mental health care has been a big change in my world. Back in the 1980's my parents laughed and scoffed at people on TV who went to therapy. Now with my ADHD, Austim Spectrum and anxiety people in my life, getting mental health is just a normal thing to do. Less seriously, I noticed that LEGO can only be a licensed product. I cannot remember when I last saw a kid playing or me buying a regular bucket of plain LEGOS

[@pjw1993]

This is so true, in fact I'd say it's a change that's as recent as the last 10 years. I remember me (28) and my dad (60) were chatting about one of my friends who struggles with his mental health, and he very innocently asked 'what's wrong with the world now, nobody talked about mental health issues or saw therapists when I was in my 20s'. I quickly told him that was wrong... the simple difference was that mental health was at best totally overlooked at the time, and at worst massively stigmatised to the extent people were scared to seek any help full stop.

[@laurapepin]

Although there was significant backsliding on this issue in 2020. People who were affected by mental health issues during quarantine were stigmatized as selfish people unwilling to make sacrifices who only care about having a good time and place no value on human life. The news would even run stories about how people who broke the quarantine did not deserve medical treatment. Britain's health minister went as far as to say quarantine helped mental health. Back in 2019, it had gotten to a point where these were issues that were normal to talk about and things like violence were commonly attributed to then. Now there has been a massive rise in violence and nobody wants to attribute it to mental health issues.

[@switchplayer1016]

Glad mental health is taken more seriously now. And you are right about lego. The buckets of lego you can buy now can hardly build a house.

[@ToonShader]

There are still buckets of lego, you just have to look for them, you can also buy random buckets of parts online+

[@hughjass1044]

I can vividly remember as a kid in the 60s my mother smoking literally everywhere. Department stores, grocery stores, in offices. She worked as a nurse and smoking was permitted in all but a few places in hospitals. I even remember in my last year of trade school (1984) we were actually allowed to smoke in class.

[@jimmym3352]

I was born and raised in Las Vegas and still live here. It's everywhere still and I hate it. Although it's only during this pandemic that it really bothers me since people aren't wearing masks when smoking. I wish it would go away. I consider smokers to be murderers myself. Yeah even though my dad smoked, but times were different back then. If you smoke now days, you are basically trying to murder other people in my opinion. I hate every single smoker at my place of business. Sorry about the rant. Smokers really piss me off. Not sad in the least bit they are dying of Covid 19.

[@hughjass1044]

@@jimmym3352 Think you're getting just a wee bit carried away there Jimmy boy. I agree it's annoying, selfish and disrespectful but there are a helluva lot worse things a person could be engaged in than smoking, don'tcha think? Equating it to premeditated murder is taking the hyperbole to dangerous levels. Perhaps a bit of perspective would be wise?

[@ashkitt7719]

@@hughjass1044 What are your thoughts on the normalization of marijuana among adults these days?

[@washingtonradio]

I remember smoking being allowed almost everywhere and ashtrays were everywhere. Also, the drinking age for a number of years was 18.

[@KanyeTheGayFish69]

@@jimmym3352 that’s a little harsh

[@mpiercy89]

The smoking sections, adults playing flight simulator and not being allowed to watch the Simpsons are 100% huge memories of the 90s for me. You definitely did an awesome job describing the culture of those days!

[@Steadyaim101]

One large change I've noticed since my childhood in the 90s is the disappearance of public social events and engagement in the community, especially for kids. Whether it be a social celebration of holidays (i.e., Trick-or-treating, Christmas parades, Easter egg hunts in public parks, public fireworks displays), community gatherings (i.e., block parties, social volunteering), religious gatherings, after school programs, kids' groups like the Boy Scouts, it seems as though a sense of community and identification with social groups is meditated more and more through online spaces, rather than your physical community and the people that live in your neighbourhood.

[@dhendable]

Oh yeah, not to mention how free-range kids used to be too.

[@QuantumOfSilence]

My dad, who is 54 years old, plays Minecraft. It's quite quaint and humbling to see him do so.

[@jonnathan1869]

My dad who's like almost 61 plays poker on his phone. He also used to play it on our old laptop back in like 2009.

[@bendover8477]

My grandfather who’s 77 plays first person shooters, which is pretty bizarre imo

[@lajya01]

@@bendover8477 I imagine teenagers thinking they got fragged by some Korean hotshot but it was your 77 yo grandpa.

[@anlee3546]

A salute for him~~

[@lubu2960]

@@bendover8477 gonna be more common in the future

[@wtripley]

As a relatively young person myself, I think JJ is a good role model. He always seems thoughtful and fair and those are really admirable things

[@MikeApollo1]

I bet your between the ages of 28-39

I really like JJ but I get frustrated when he seems to deliberately mispronounce foreign things or at least not make the small effort to find out how it's pronounced. It's always got an arrogant flavour too which is so disappointing.

[@melvinklark6950]

@ I haven't noticed that

[@Luke-kq8gh]

Tomás Crowe I think it’s funny

[@jessocity9964]

Yeah part of the reason I watch his videos is not just because of the educational values, but becuase he’s just a well put together guy. I honestly hope to be like him when I get older.

[@HamSandwich277]

Re: Desensitization to the sight of violence - I'm an Afghanistan veteran (outside-the-wire frontline infantry type. I saw everything), and my extended family's attitude towards that aspect of me is similar to how they approached my grandfather who was a WW2 vet (drove a flame-throwing tank from Normandy all the way into Germany apparently), which is to say they never brought it up, never asked about it, and just pretended it never happened because Grandpa never liked to talk about it. And they tiptoe around the issue of my war experiences too, I suspect because they assume I'm like grandpa which couldn't be further from the truth. Going to war and fighting the Taliban was the most interesting experience of my life and love talking about it. Even the R rated parts. I wasn't scarred by the experience and I'm not sensitive about it. This seems to be a consistent trend. The old timers tend to not like talking about their experiences, whereas more contemporary veterans (Afghanistan, Iraq etc) tend to not mind as much (as a general rule. There are of course lots of exceptions on both sides). I have a theory that this is because of our generation's exposure to (indeed, cultural immersion in) graphic violence in media, on the internet, video games etc. Think about it. Think of the kids shipping out to fight WW2 in the '40s. What kind of violent imagery was a person exposed to as a kid or a young adult in the 1920's and 1930's? Popeye punching out Bluto? Daffy duck having an anvil dropped on his head? Was there even blood in live action moves back then? Meanwhile, a young adult today has seen everything from a man being f@&$ed to death by a horse, to cartel members being decapitated by chainsaw. They *definitely* know what gunshot wounds and blast injuries look like, they've seen footage of people being shot/stabbed/blown up, they've been exposed to it all. But imagine what that stuff looks like to someone who's only ever seen cartoon violence before. And then all of a sudden it's being presented to you on an unimaginable scale in real life. It's gotta be fucking traumatizing. So that's why I think older veterans are quieter about their experiences than more contemporary vets. I think they were affected more by it because they didn't have the benefit of being desensitized to violence by popular culture/media before they went in. Long story short, a lot of us probably owe our sanity to violent movies/video games/gore websites etc.

[@JJMcCullough]

Great insights. We tend to think of the quiet, WW2 vet as an archetype of humility and dignity, but I think you’re right that it was just as much about a taboo of acknowledging violence, not too dissimilar to other taboos of the time about homosexuality and divorce and whatnot. Even having cancer used to be taboo, and we used to think there was something heroic about people who never talked about having it.

[@HamSandwich277]

@@JJMcCullough Yeah definitely. It can probably all be chalked up to the more efficient transmission of information across culture. Be it images of violence, or normalized gay sitcom characters, or understanding of the effects of cancer. People back in the day just didn't have access to that information, whereas today we're immersed in it. I feel like the surface has barely been scratched on understanding the effects of the information revolution on human culture.

[@jhawk1229]

I wonder, then, how many people who were exposed to this imagery in popular media like you and I went to fight, and upon seeing it in real life were still mortally disturbed by the reality of it. Like, sure, you've seen 1000 guys get shot on Netflix, but then you deploy and see a real life gunshot wound for the first time, and you're just as shaken by it because it's REAL. You knew the whole time that those were hokey dramatizations, and now confronted with it for real, it's just simply too much. I'd be curious to see how common that perspective is

[@robdaviesprogm]

I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like there might be a couple of other contributing factors at play: 1. Back in the '40s, mainstream media largely glorified war veterans, because that's all censorship regulations allowed you to do. It wasn't until the '60s, when footage from the Vietnam War was televised, that people began to view war differently. I can imagine that coming home from the war, emotionally-scarred, to all of this hero worship might cause you to want to bottle up the truth so as not to burst anyone's bubble about it. 2. The stigma surrounding mental health has lessened significantly now. In the '40s, people were afraid of being labelled "insane" (and no wonder, given the ostracization of those who openly had mental illnesses back then), so they tended to bottle their problems up rather than deal with them and talk about them. While we still have a long way to go, you can at least open up about it and seek help.

[@HamSandwich277]

@@jhawk1229 It's not just the fictitious violence I'm talking about as much as the footage and photographs of real violence/death/injury that's available to people today. I knew what an IED strike looked like long before I ever witnessed one IRL because I'd seen dozens of videos of them (complete with jihad music) online. I knew what gunshot wounds, traumatic amputations, even beheadings looked like because that imagery is readily available on the internet. Taking all that in inoculates you to the shock of seeing it IRL for the first time.

[@jetwaffle1116]

Social norms have changed a lot where I live in Northern Ireland. My parents grew up surrounded by terrorism and constant violence (the Troubles); the first year of my mums life when terrorism wasn’t a major issue in Northern Ireland was 1999, when she was 31! This meant that the older generation here is quite hardy and “stiff” so to say, whereas my generation, who grew up in peaceful times, aren’t quite as much. That toughness though has sort of remained in the culture though, as a concept of “it could always be worse, so be thankful it isn’t” persists into peacetime when the terror threat had left. Another aspect of it is more political. The older generations were radicalised by the Troubles and so the ruling parties of Northern Ireland are two extreme parties who secretly want to slit each other’s throats, the only issue being they have to share power in our government. For context, our politics is dominated by Unionists/Loyalists and Nationalists/Republicans; the former want to stay in the UK and the latter who want to rejoin the Republic of Ireland. Loyalists and Republicans are typically the extreme ones, and they’re ruling our government. However, there is a movement now, mainly driven by young people, who want to scrap the Unionist/Nationalist side of politics. They typically support the Alliance party, who are centre to centre-left and who are quickly becoming the 2nd or 3rd largest party, compared to the 5th or 6th 50 years ago thanks to young people wanting to scrap the old sectarian culture

[@chancejohnson5856]

I was talking to this older lady a while ago and she asked me if I was gay. I said yes and she said 20 years ago she would have been shocked but now she realizes we’re just normal people. I’m 20 rn and live in Mississippi. It’s weird and thrilling to have grown up through homophobia and seeing the change of people mindsets about it.

[@octoberboiy]

Same, I think the legalization of gay marriage and their heavy campaigning on TV has helped more people realize that it’s normal.

[@TV-8-301]

There's an interesting episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, "Radically Normal," that explores why there was such a dramatic shift in people's attitudes towards homosexuality within a short period of time. I can't really speak to the accuracy of their conclusions because I was too young to witness the shift. It was simply never a taboo in my experience.

[@octoberboiy]

@@TV-8-301 wow how old are you? I remember the toxic days when my friends would say “that’s gay”. There are still several people I know who are homophobic but they keep it to themselves unless they feel “safe”. Also most churches are still very much against it.

[@TV-8-301]

@@octoberboiy I'm 22, but raised in a liberal household and community. In that kind of bubble, I was never taught homosexuality was taboo, and I knew no people who openly held homophobic beliefs. This is by far not a universal experience, for sure.

[@octoberboiy]

@@TV-8-301 your generation is lucky. It is a lot easier.

[@popezosimusthethird269]

One thing that's interesting is the pace at which Japanese pop culture is becoming more and more normal in the West. Coming from France, that has been happening since the early 80s through manga. It wasn't very hard to convert the french public since comic books were one of the main form of entertainment, only just being overtaken by TV, so when some japanese imports came to the bookstore, they gained some momentum fairly quickly. By the mid-2000s, the best-selling comic books were usually japanese. Nowadays, you'll find a dedicated aisle in every public library and even school libraries will usually have a few volumes of say, something like Chi's Life or some sports-related manga ; works for adults (no, not THAT KIND, you perverts) get a lot of exposure and sell remarkably well (someone like Jiro Taniguchi has become one of the better known comic writers in just a decade). In about 20 years, it went from a niche interests to something so massively mainstream, it is arguably more successful here than the american media machine currently is. Looking online at how "weeb culture" is growing across english-speaking areas, it seems plenty of places are about where France was 20 years ago. It's still something of a niche, but a pretty visible one and certainly isn't going to stop growing anytime soon. I would also not be surprised if the recent explosion of exposure for K-Pop would result in a similar phanomenon of normalization for Korean culture overall a decade down the line.

[@kkurova9345]

I was an anime fan as a kid, and literally nobody else in my school even knew what it was, the best I could do was maybe find someone who was into Sailor Moon or something. Now, I go to the mall and every other store is full of anime stuff, there are teenagers walking around in anime shirts, it's just ubiquitous.

[@LordBitememan]

Here's a major change that I notice as a parent, and it seems to be part of a multi-generation trend. We give our kids so much less freedom to go explore the world compared to when I was a kid, much less when my parents were kids. I recall as early as the second or third grade I was allowed to go bike to friends houses, hang out till "dinnertime" (i.e., get home before the sun sets), and the only real requirements were tell them where I was going, call them when I get there, and call them when I'm going home. Today I can't think of a parent out there that would let their kids walk to a friend's house without at least a teenage sibling supervising the journey. The schools won't let them walk there without supervision until at least the 5th grade (this was not the case when I was going to school). Helicopter parenting just wasn't as big back then, it's pervasive now.

[@SAbowser]

Yes! Even growing up in the 90s I have fond memories of leaving the house to go hang out with my friends, biking across town or making a fort in the woods or getting into other adventures, and then returning home in time for dinner (or calling home from a friends house to ask if I could sleep over). I feel like parents who give their kids that kind of freedom now would be considered abusive or neglectful which is unfortunate.

[@HeHasRisen.]

Growing up in the early 2000s I was walking around my city (Jersey City) unsupervised at the age of 8. Life was totally different back than lol.

[@taylorphillips7030]

I turned 18 very recently. I can confirm from me and peer's experiences that this is 100% true. It also seems like kids do a lot less dangerous/illegal things than when my parents were kids. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but an interesting change.

[@nathangale7702]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Utah even went as far as to pass a law specifically preventing parents from being charged with negligence if they're children are found without adult supervision. Jonathan Haidt talks a lot about this, the fact that everyone got all worked up about child abductions just as crime-rates hit an all-time low. It's up to us to allow our children to regain this freedom.

[@billcoleman4258]

I rode my bike to school in second grade (in 1958).

[@tcblackwell3838]

When I was little, my dad and I would play Age of Empires 2. I can clearly remember him teaching me about some of the history referenced in the game, and this has inspired a love of history that has only grown in me. Those were good times.

[@WildCard-ze3tm]

Age of Empires II, there's an RTS game that defined a generation.

[@Alex-it7ms]

Lmao I still play AOE2 wololoo

[@Steadyaim101]

Same! My dad originally got it for himself, but I was always the one who loved it. I'd spend as much time going through the in-game encyclopedia as the game itself. Later I would do the same with age of mythology. Fast forward a few years and now I'm doing my PhD in bio-archaeology.

[@TheOneGuy1111]

On a similar note my dad was really into Rise of Nations. It was technically my game (I think I got it for Christmas or something), but it ended up becoming de facto his.

[@wd89601]

Lmao I miss age of empires 2 ;(

[@zeken4792]

I am sensing a theme in JJs recent videos: Making sense of the past and his adulthood. Refreshingly informative AND candid/vulnerable. You deserve a like and a virtual hug, JJ :)

[@lukesmith1818]

I'm about the same age. I have the same memories with smoking. It was inescapable. Another big shift is vegetarianism. It was seen as a very rare, even odd thing. Paul McCartney was about the only famous vegetarian (lisa Simpson becoming one was seen as significant) and he was seen as a bit eccentric. Restaurants had limited vegetarian options. It was viewed in purely ethical terms were as now people also cite ecological concerns. People viewed it with amusement and it was often a punchline in sitcoms. I had a few friends who were vegetarian but they were very much the exception

[@cattysplat]

My parents had vegan friends who we visited often during the 90's. The only snack food they could eat was dipped vegetables and breadsticks. All of their food had to be homemade, since almost everything precooked back then contained animal products, there was little to no consideration for vegans who were considered crackpots compared to vegetarians who were slowly getting acceptance. People who wanted to "save the world" were often associated with groups like Greenpeace, who were seen in conservative eyes as terrorists, to be viewed with suspicion.

[@tomfrazier1103]

@@cattysplat True dat. I became a self-made Conservative from age 9 or ten, growing up in the backwash of "The 60s"

[@TV-8-301]

Now that you mention it, you're right. I've been vegan for maybe 7 years, and each year more options were available than the last. I can be a regular at Burger King now because of their Impossible Whoppers.

[@UsefulCharts]

Ok, but where did you get that t-shirt? I love it!

[@JJMcCullough]

Simons!

[@terinjokes]

And for those of us in the US?

[@JJMcCullough]

@@terinjokes impossible

[@Stilllife1999]

@@terinjokes get rekt Sorry

[@johanuuu8448]

Cool to see you here

[@philagelio336]

Born in 96, going through the transition from VHS, DVD, and now Streaming. I remember going to Disneyworld in the early 2000s as a little kid and my dad had this bulky VHS video recorder, which still works, but now it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t have a phone with a camera of sorts. Lego has also changed a lot as well, looking back. Now most sets are licensed IPs and Lego even went as far as to discontinue manufacturing the standard smiley face minifigure head. Even back then I admired older lego sets than the ones that were around in the 2000s.

[@luispinheiro8418]

Yeah!! Finally found someone who is my own age and shared a similar opinion. 😊

[@luispinheiro8418]

I agree with you completely, that differ us from the 2000s is that they didn't experienced in first hand that how technology used to worked in the past, they have missed out the transition that we saw.

[@adamsfusion]

I remember getting our first DVD player. They were these sorta expensive luxuries in 2002. I also remember being super annoyed at the unskippable "coming soon to theaters" reels. Glad we got rid of those.

[@ALuimes]

Full-sized VHS cameras were already dated by the late 90s

[@luispinheiro8418]

@@ALuimes That's true but really depends were did you grew up.

[@jas7256]

I was born in 2004, and remembering my childhood really reveals the times I was living through. I remember at the time seeing a lot of insurance ads where the daughter is reunited with her soldier dad. I also played a lot of flash games and watched a lot of KZbin (because I didn’t have cable) and remembering playing games involving fighting terrorists and jihadists. I remember watching ERB’s Romney vs. Obama rap battle and a CGP Grey vid about the debt ceiling. Oh, and my school was in a frenzy about eating healthy, and all the teachers were mad about having to switch to common core. What’s interesting to me is the thought that people who live through important parts of history will have that experience that younger people will never have, and that the youngsters will never know how it felt to live through the end of the Cold War, for example. I guess 20 years from now I’ll be telling my kids about the Capitol riots and the pandemic.

[@colltonrighem]

If you were a nerd like me then you might remember those Sonic the Hedgehog AMVs lmfao

[@peace3682]

@@colltonrighem yeah!! I also remember a bunch of those Sonic flash animations too! I still think flash games peaked in a way with the Smash Flash series. They were genuinely something else

[@BitchChill]

@@colltonrighem Sonic Volumes

[@ashkitt7719]

@@colltonrighem DBZ to Linkin Park as well

[@DreAnimates]

@@ashkitt7719 omg yes!

[@janneycoco]

My parent's ware ridiculed for being a mixed couple in the 90"s and having me . But now seeing a mixed couple or Child is almost normale.

[@AlexWalkerSmith]

It's been a while since I've actually seen a same-race couple in a commercial.

[@Jenny-tm3cm]

@@AlexWalkerSmith the fact that everyone immediately thinks about what couples they see in commercials...

[@ashkitt7719]

@@Jenny-tm3cm That is kinda sad. Either in the "wow this is so woke yaas kween" kinda way or the "this is literally white genocide reeeee" kinda way

[@zachweaver6829]

Almost

[@digaddog6099]

@@AlexWalkerSmith I don't feel like I actually see "commercials" anymore. I see ads, but these tend not to have couples, sometimes not even actors, in them

[@SAbowser]

As a 90s Kid (TM) I think one of the biggest changes I've seen is the Internet going from something that some people used only for work/school and others occasionally 'logged into' for recreation to becoming a ubiquitous and constant part of life. Internet culture was once distinct from, uh, 'real life' culture while now the two are very intertwined. Something like All Your Base Are Belong to Us is a reference that only very online people would get, and had a relatively long lifespan. Now memes arise so quick that by the time they're getting printed on shirts and being referenced by morning news hosts they're already dead.

[@jamesmacinnes8397]

My dad still plays strategic games like Civilisation. I always remember watching him play Civ 2 in particular.

[@jimmym3352]

Now I feel old. I played Civ2 and play Civ6 today. :) I would have played Civ1 but I was in the military and didn't have a computer in those days.

[@1perspective286]

I got my dad into the Heroes of Might and Magic series.

[@shawna620]

@@jimmym3352 I played Civ 2 back in the day & my young son learned to play it, too. Now we both play Civ 6.

[@ashkitt7719]

My dad would play Star Wars Episode I Podracer and bragged about the first time he beat Sebulba to me.

[@biratebryan5479]

My dad liked this computer game called Hoyle Board Games when I was a kid. It had all the classic games like checkers, chess, backgammon, etc. He could play chess for hours. I don't think he plays any kind of computer games now, but both he and my mom ask me about what kinds of games I'm playing.

[@ThugShakers4Christ]

One huge difference I've seen is that physical violence, especially at school, is way more socially unacceptable. One year, another kid and I had at least six physical altercations before they bothered to threaten either of us with expulsion. My wife teaches now, and anything more than an isolated incident seems to be cause for serious intervention.

[@cockroach2]

Yeah kids fighting was much more an expected part of childhood, specifically among boys.

[@ms-vq1os]

True! The tolerance for the depiction of violence is quite high, but the tolerance for actual fights on school yards has more or less vanished.

[@kylen4701]

Indeed. We are a "safety first" society now. Safety above all else. Our covid reaction certainly makes that clear.

[@Hylean_Way]

@@kylen4701 do you think we should not have done any lockdowns?

[@KanyeTheGayFish69]

@@Hylean_Way lockdowns? No, that’s societal suicide.

[@SeanMacadelic]

“American families need to be a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.” - George H. W. Bush

[@Marylandbrony]

Hey, we're just like the Walton's. We're praying for an end to the Depression too. -Bart Simpson.

[@seneca983]

Is that the Walmart Waltons? If so, is Alice Walton, who's guilty of multiple DUIs, included?

[@SamAronow]

@@seneca983 No, The Waltons was a TV show from the 1970s about a big family living in rural Virginia during the Great Depression. It was extremely wholesome and anodyne in a manner typical of 1970s light drama, like Eight is Enough or The Love Boat.

[@oppressivestraightwhitemal6161]

I mean, which home would you rather grow up in (if we exclude the tech and time). Would you rather be with the Waltons in the (30s/90s) or the Simpsons in the (30s/90s). Marge would have been strict either way and Homer would be dumb either way. Not to mention Grandpa Walton is more chill than Abe.

[@andrewlankford9634]

@@seneca983 Ooh mega-burn.... and also a non sequitur.

[@JA050209]

Agreed. I was recently watching Kenan and Kel with my daughter. In the episode, they want to go on as contestants in a newlywed game show to win a prize. Kel dresses as a woman and pretends to be Kenan's wife. As we watched, my daughter said " I don't get it." "Get what?" I asked. "Why does he have to pretend to be a lady? Why don't they just go on as a gay couple?" I told her gay marriage was illegal back then, which led to a long conversation of me trying to explain why it would have been illegal.

[@stinkytoy]

It brings me joy to know that so many people will be brought up in a world where this isn't considered a big deal. Also, good on you for showing your daughter kenan and kel 😊

[@judgesaturn507]

Aw. That reminds me of something that's been on my mind for a while is the shift in perception of transgender people. When I was younger it's not something I was ever aware of except as an occasional sitcom 'cheap shot'. Now of course those jokes look really dated. I think the big push factor was Caitlyn Jenner coming out in 2015, made us look at it differently. Now it's THE culture war issue that defines politics in North America. Similar but distinct is the acceptance of LGBT people in kids media which wasn't really a thing even just a decade ago.

[@socrat33z]

This channel is a refreshing sanctuary of interesting content on youtube. You always come up with great stuff JJ. Thank you for your thoughtful, well prepared and dispassionate takes on many interesting issues.

[@poke-champ4256]

7:54 thing is, i can watch the most brutal, horrible gore in a movie with my father but if I feel like a scene comes up that is remotely sexual, I immediatly go away

[@jimmym3352]

I would be okay with that with my dad, my mom on the other hand.

[@BigBoss-sm9xj]

I agree violence is ok but sexual stuff is not

[@tylerhackner9731]

I was a child mainly in the late 2000s and early 2010s (I was born in 2002) and I’ve seen change already on a cultural/societal level, but it’s not as rapid and changing, and as almost completely different from how one grows up as it is someone born in 1984. Growing up in the late 80s and early 90s to being an adult 30 something now, is different than me being a kid of the late 2000s and early 2010s and coming of age now.

[@hydrogen3266]

I was also born in 2002! But also something I find interesting builds on the lgbt topic, like as a kid I heard of gay people and I learned in school that they were just normal people, but bisexual people are now much more talked about (as they should be) as are trans people. Like a few years ago trans women were largely seen as “men in wigs” and that there was virtually no difference between them and drag queens. Obviously some people still think this way, but a large majority of people are now quite accepting of trans people. And a few things about offensiveness. I grew up in a blue state (ma) and even as kids we dressed like native Americans for thanksgiving and wore feather headbands in our hair. Thinking back on that it’s pretty problematic but at first I hadn’t even thought of these things as society change, even though it so clearly is

[@DinoGaming-wz3jv]

Born in 2005 watched how our world endured through the middle eastern wars and the rise of the Chinese Empire from 2016 onwards

[@EnigmaticLucas]

I was also born in 2002, and I’ve noticed those changes too. A lot of things that we take for granted in 2021 were considered pipe dreams in 2011.

[@siddhantjadhav2793]

69th like 😎 born in 1999 but still a kid at times.....👀😂😂

[@siddhantjadhav2793]

@@hydrogen3266 I don't think its offensive to dress up as red Indians/native Americans, it depends on the context. One more thing which changed in the years upto now is that more people have become sensitive pussies who get offended by literally anything.

[@PuyoPuyoMan]

I'm in my mid-twenties which seems to be the age when you start to notice these creeping changes so there've been a couple things that have stuck out to me. The first thing, related to the topic of "offensiveness" and "rudeness" in particular, is I remember seeing someone watch Adventure Time and one of the characters said "crap" which legitimately shocked me at the time. When I was at the prime age for children's television even a character saying "damn" would've been considered an extremely naughty thing (Shadow the Hedgehog eat your heart out). "Crap" was a word we'd say on the playground in hushed whispers as if we were getting away with murder. As for the second thing: a bit before the pandemic hit the family visited with a friend of my mother who had a son who was around 10-12 years old. After he found out I played video games he followed me around a bunch, which allowed me to witness just how different things were for kids these days. Something that really stuck out to me was how KZbin-centric his media consumption was. I did watch some really early Lets Players like ProtonJon's Mario World ROM hacks and the like when I was young, but by the time KZbin really started picking up steam I was in my teens. It really seemed like KZbinrs were to him what Cartoon Network shows were to me. This is absolutely related to smartphone access; when I was really young internet videos were something I could only watch on the computer, and since I didn't get my own computer (that could actually use the modern internet) until the middle of high school they were mostly something I could only indulge in when I really had extra time since they'd cut into the time I had on the family computer, and this mindset stuck with me. Meanwhile this kid can gorge himself on internet personalities whenever (and where ever) he likes. One humorous thing that hasn't changed is kids still are as desperate to experience mature rated video games even when their parents say no as ever. The kid's main bread and butter was people playing 2016 Doom, and when I told him I hadn't played it nor had I seen any of the huge number of "Doom raps" that apparently exist he asked: "are you even a gamer? Come on!"

[@BigBoss-sm9xj]

Not a gamer confirmed

[@kylem1112]

@@BigBoss-sm9xj this comment right here is a perfect example of just how annoying the gaming community can be. Some people will say you are not a gamer just because you don't buy and play every single triple A title right when it id released. some people have other hobbies that they would rather spend that money on then a brand new videogame... but to be fair you might be being sarcastic, but my point still stands.

[@mr.whitechristmas280]

@@kylem1112 not a gamer confirmed

[@kylem1112]

@@mr.whitechristmas280 :O

[@BigBoss-sm9xj]

@@kylem1112 lol its a joke chill , but i agree with youre saying

[@iusethisplatform]

It’s cool to think that you’re kind of a person to look up to for us LGBTQ+ people now. Thank you for being you (no matter how *corny* that sounds LOL) 🔥👾🏳️‍🌈

[@p11111]

A major change globally is that many (if not most) young people today speak some amount of English and have friends all around the world, made either through the internet, or through actual travel. Back in the 90s it was considered "exotic" to have a foreign pen pal. Now it's normal to converse with people on the other side of the world, and to share a multitude of things in common (including, but not limited to, pop culture, movies, gaming, humor, news, opinions, and travel experiences). Aside from growing up online, and English increasingly becoming a global lingua franca, millennials and younger generations tend to spend more on travel/experiences than previous generations (when there's no pandemic).

[@supershade2009]

My dad was a lifelong gamer despite being an old miner. He started off playing pong on dates in the '70s and bought his first PC in the early '80s. I would play the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube with him growing up after he finished watching the 6:30 CTV news.

[@ahmeds8506]

So I grew up in the Middle East, and although I am 16 years younger than J.J., I can relate to almost every single thing he’s mentioned. We’re used here to poking fun at how late we progress (technologically and societally) compared to the West, but it feels really weird- thinking about how if I were a Canadian, American or Western European, I would probably have not felt this sentiment. Man, I love this channel.

[@CiabanItReal]

As an American who's about the same age as you, the biggest change that I remember was around security, I remember just being able to walk to the gate at an airport for an international flight when I was like 12, that wasn't a big deal. Good luck with that shit now.

[@montyollie]

Not only did we just walk on flights with full bottles of pop, we smoked in the plane too. SIgh.

[@proud_tobe_texan2890]

My mom is 34 I'm 13 nearly 14 but anyways she would fly across Texas east to west when she was 10 alone to my great grandmother's house who's still alive actually her 78th birthday was a few days ago

[@CiabanItReal]

@@proud_tobe_texan2890 OMG Your Mom's my age....Is she single?

[@burntramennoodles1723]

@@proud_tobe_texan2890 Dude, you gonna leave Ciaban hanging? Is your mom single or not?

[@nycp1969]

I'm 51 and I always feel like I'm in the youngest age group that remembers genuinely old-timey things. I remember eating at automats (they were amazing!) I remember the milkman making milk deliveries. I remember seeing a lot of fallout shelter signs (although the school drills were no longer practiced.) I remember when clothing was much more expensive and people had much less of it. I remember adults' nonstop smoking. The freedom kids had in the 1970s was astonishing. My father used to send me out to buy him cigarettes in a liquor store several blocks from our house starting when I was around six. When I was in cub scouts at age seven or eight I was given a pocket knife. A few years later I was the proud owner of an ax. We were not allowed to touch the seatbelts in our cars, if our then current car even had them. In the 70s, the cars were crap and you got a new one every few years. One thing that really surprises me about younger people is that they tend to not know much about things that preceded them. But in my generation, we were expected to know historical and cultural references from before our time. For instance, I wasn't around for the Beatles, but I knew about them and I was aware of when they were popular.

[@ALuimes]

They were still delivering milk in the 1970s where you were? I thought that had ended by the mid-60s.

[@nycp1969]

@@ALuimes Yes, in the early part of the decade. And I was right outside of New York City. This was not a holdover in a rural area. They also delivered cloth diapers for babies. Curiously, Amazon and the many other online delivery services are sort of bringing this back.

[@flyingkillerrobots877]

@@ALuimes They still deliver milk here (Fort Collins, Colorado).

[@steveflemming3354]

Great piece... thank you. In my first real job, in the 80s, the office cafeteria allowed smoking and sold beer, wine, and booze. Seemed unremarkable at the time.

[@ccan7417]

As an older zoomer who grew up in the 2000s, I noticed that the age of kids getting their first phone went down over time. Like my friends and I started getting phones around 5th-6th grade ( and they were just cheap prepaid phones) while these days I’ve seen 8-9 year olds with brand new iPhones 😆 I grew up in a lower middle class environment so there’s probably some influence there.

[@stephenthomas3493]

We were lucky to get a quarter to make a call when I grew up lol

[@cdw2468]

i got my first in 8th grade after begging my mom for all of middle school, my sister is 10 and has one

[@JHowesitgoing123]

It's true, but I think it's one of the worst changes tbh. My niece (now 14) got her first at like 10, and honestly the kid is basically addicted and it has made her an exceedingly dull human being.

[@proud_tobe_texan2890]

Yeah I was born in August 2007 so I'm nearly 14 and my parents got me my first phone 4 years ago just because I got in the school band it was a cheap 70 dollar Moto E4 if I hadn't gotten into band idk how much longer I would have had to wait and like you said nowadays I just see these little 8 year olds with 1000 dollar Iphones and I'm like "You rich spoiled fucks 😑" since im still sitting there with a 70 dollar Moto to this day I mean I'm currently in a low/middle class home so

[@StephensCrazyHour]

I got the family mobile to use a few times as a teenager but I'd have been early 20s before I got my first Nokia. I actively resisted though and could have gotten one earlier if I'd wanted one.

[@ericweldon-schilling1525]

Oh. I remember the bigger controversy for us, in addition to the violent mortal kombat, was dungeons and dragons. And fantasy in general. I’ll never forget when we started going to a new church and a couple of my new friends came to my house. We played final fantasy iv and dungeons and dragons and watched the nightmare before Christmas and their moms freaked out. Convinced I was being led down the path to witchcraft and satanism.

[@waluigithemaster6864]

As an American born in 2002, here's what I think has changed since my late 2000s/early 2010s childhood: -We've become more cynical and divided over politics. I remember when Obama became president, it was treated as such a big, uniting moment for our country. I obviously didn't know anything about politics back then, but I knew that having the first black President was important. Needless to say, we've become much more polarized since 2009, despite Biden's pleas for unity. -The pandemic of my childhood was milder, yet more widespread (Swine flu, 2009). I was one of 5 kids to miss class the week I had it. -Cell phones have changed everything. I remember my Dad didn't get his first cell phone until 2009/10. People still preferred landlines for much of my childhood. But now even my 83-year old grandmother has a flip phone.

[@den4980]

i'm born in 1999 and I remember when my father got a new Blackberry phone around 2009/10 and every day I begged him to borrow it to play BrickBreaker on it!

[@aadritoroy388]

I was born in the same year and even though i am from India i remember my dad asking me to pick one of his two fingers to see who would win the US election and i was really happy when Obama won because i picked him

[@cdw2468]

i was born in 2002 and when i was in 1st grade we had a class election where we all chose our favorite candidates. i don’t think that would at all go down well today...

[@waluigithemaster6864]

@@cdw2468 I had the same exact experience in 1st grade! And yeah there's no way that would happen now... not with everything so polarized.

[@jacnel]

God swine flu seems so childish compared to what we have now.

[@DCAdamB]

I’ve been rewatching The West Wing recently and I’ve noticed how many political (nuclear nonproliferation, gay marriage, school prayer, FBI siege of cults) and social (pornography, violent movies) topics are complete non-issues today, twenty years later

[@penguinlad19]

I had completely forgotten about the whole smoking/non-smoking sections in restaurants. I remember being sent to the restaurant a couple blocks away to get a table for my family when I was a young teenager and being told to get a table in the non-smoking section if possible, but that seems like it was an eternity ago.

[@stephanierichards150]

I was born in 1969, so I guess that makes me a gen Xer. The one thing that comes to mind is the level to which kids are scheduled and watched. Sure, I grew up poor, raised by a single parent, but it seems to me that the kids I meet have 2 to 5 activities per week and aren't allowed to go places by themselves. I grew up in Winnipeg and started taking two buses to and from school at the age of 8. I think this would be frowned upon at the very least these days, and some people would probably report it as abuse or neglect. Also, during my entire childhood, I remember only being involved in one extracurricular activity that lasted only for one year. I think my classmates usually had one going on, but not two or more.

[@Steadyaim101]

I was born in '93 and I feel it too. Things that felt normal and I really prized from my childhood, like wandering the woods with my dog, taking the bus to school myself, going trick-or-treating, building my own garden, all seem to be dead or dying. Its so rare to see a kid on the streets for Halloween these days.

[@aerialpunk]

I was born in '83 and grew up on Edmonton, and I was similar to you. My mom is Dutch though, and grew up in basically a ghetto, so it might've had something to do with it, but I was on the bus for short trips at 8 and knew how to take care of myself to a much higher degree than my peers, especially during my teens and early 20s. But as a kid, we were not only allowed but encouraged to ride our bikes all over the place, look after each other, & a lot of my friends had maybe 1, *possibly* 2 official extracurricular things going on, not dissimilar from your experience.

[@calessel3139]

Yeah, I've noticed a sharp decline in kids playing outdoors the last ten to fifteen years. And Halloween is completely dead. I've lived in my neighborhood for twenty years and when we first moved here we'd get over 200 trick or treaters, by 2016 I think it had dropped to about 30. In 2018 our family just stopped handing out candy because no one was coming by anymore. It's really sad.

[@thekoopaguymk]

I'm only 20 so not much has changed, but a minor yet also significant one is how public wi-fi has become the norm now. I remember when having wi-fi in a store was a selling point and not every restaurant had a wi-fi network for customers.

[@PurgPurg]

I’m 21 but in a way I feel like everything has changed. I have vague memories of the pre-smartphone era, but every aspect of our culture has become internet or social media focused now that everyone has a smartphone

[@marcello7781]

I'm 24 and I spent most of my childhood with 90s gadgets. I remember how many of my friends used to get all the new technological gadgets but somehow I wasn't very interested in all of that, to the point that I had my first cellphone at 18. I wonder how life of many kids must be nowadays when they have access to all social medias and the internet from a very young age.

[@ALuimes]

@@marcello7781 If you're only 24, you should know!

[@mutestingray]

Now public WiFi is almost suspicious given the tendency to not trust open networks.

[@belstar1128]

I am 25 i remember when wifi was not even a thing you could only get internet at home without some crazy setup and portable computing in general was primitive laptops where too expensive for normal people smaller devices where too weak to handle the internet a lot of people did not even have any kind of cellphone.

[@impressivestory]

I'm slightly younger than you (31) but I remember all of the things you mentioned in this video. Some additional ones: Kids swear way more. I remember when everyone in elementary would gasp when the 'tough kids' said ass (and possibly even tattle!). That said, I did go to one of those semi-private catholic schools in SK. Young people don't see driving as teenage emancipation - they see it as scary and dangerous. Meanwhile, transit is extremely normal for them - which was extremely stigmatized by my parents. Every kid's dream job is 'youtuber'. Everyone in my class growing up chose the 'standard' professions as their dream job. This is partially your fault, J.J.!!! When we were young, what was 'cool' for kids was adult pop culture from 10 years ago that had been filtered and cleansed down through advertising and merchandising. Like every kid thought the Terminator was the coolest thing ever, despite not being allowed to watch it. Very adult movies would get cartoon adaptations. Nowadays there is a distinct internet 'kid culture' that is entirely separate from the older generation's creative effort, and completely incomprehensible to them. I was on the tail end of the 'kids go outside and don't come home until they are hungry' age, likely prolonged by the relative safety of rural SK. It always amazes me that people who were likely raised in the midst of that culture are the ones calling the cops when kids are playing in their own backyard.

[@Etaoinshrdlu69]

Remember pogs?

[@impressivestory]

@@Etaoinshrdlu69 Yeeeeeep. All my friends were too scared to actually play the game because they didn't want to lose any pogs. So nobody bought any more, and none were traded. Similarly nobody wanted to trade their pokemon or hockey cards. I had boring friends.

[@TheAlexSchmidt]

Yeah, that driving thing is especially true for me unfortunately.

[@impressivestory]

@Connecticut Ball SK is Saskatchewan, Canada. It's above Montana, and has a similar rural farmey-style culture. Though I mostly lived in Saskatoon, the largest city (still tiny by American standards).

[@impressivestory]

@@TheAlexSchmidt I was scared to drive for a long time, and got my license way after all of my friends (who got theirs right away). But what really made driving stick was doing it alone at night in my first car - I would just drive around for hours listening to music and testing the limits of my tires. It's a freedom that is indescribable. Also, out where I live now (in British Columbia) it's pretty cool to be the one who has a car and can give everyone a ride. I seriously recommend giving it a go, even though it's scary at first!

[@jacobinjacobin7867]

My experiences mirror yours when it comes to how I perceived homosexuality even as late as the mid to late 2000s which is when I grew up in the Caribbean. No one talked about homosexuality aside from frequent disparaging remarks on gay people. The only gays I knew were eccentric men who wore skirts, did their hair, and were overly feminine in general. This led me to struggle with my own homosexual feelings because in spite of them, I never thought I could be gay because I had associated that identity with men with whom I thought I shared nothing in common. It was only after seeing two men being in love, something which incredibly I hadn't thought possible up until that point, that I finally accepted that this was something I wanted desperately for myself (representation is so important!) Its interesting to see how homophobia and its impact manifest identically across diverse cultures. Unfortunately society hasn't progressed any down here as far as I can tell and colonial anti-gay laws are still firmly in place. I'm 22 and I've already resiled from ever getting the opportunity to marry unless I move to where it is legal.

[@oohforf6375]

Jamaican-Canadian here wishing you all the best. It's real tough in the Caribbean and to an extent even among younger generations in the diaspora. One of my best friends is an international student from SVG. We're both gay and we often talk about whether or not anti-LGBTQ sentiments in the caribbean will see any kind of significant change in our lifetimes. We honestly have no clue lol.

[@jacobinjacobin7867]

@@oohforf6375 I'm also from SVG and chances are your friend and I likely went to the same schools (SVGS) and everything. Maybe I'm pessimistic but I dont forsee any real changes happening in my lifetime. It's like we're doomed to forever lag behind other countries on progressive social reform. Right now there are court cases pending that may do away with the anti-gay laws but the reactions to them were universally negative, including a large protest that hundreds attended. Seeing that play out in real time convinced me that striking those laws down won't disrupt the undercurrent of homophobia throughout this country, sadly. Like I said before, I'm better off just moving out if i want to have any semblance of a normal life but I've already come to terms with that👍

[@oohforf6375]

@@jacobinjacobin7867 He just turned 24 and he tells me that he went to St. Vincent Grammar School so there's a chance you two may even know each other lol. Yeah, it looks like a losing battle currently. I hope you're able to make some kind of a move soon.

[@MrPatters]

My parents were born in the 60s and for most of my life I thought they had never touched a video game, but just recently my dad told me about how he remembers my mom staying up really late playing Super Mario Bros on the NES when they were dating.

[@montyollie]

I really enjoyed this one. I'm 48, born in '72, so the differences are even starker. A big one is religion. No one every questioned prayer or religion in public spaces. Another is swearing. Swearing is EVERYWHERE now. It was nowhere when I was growing up. Also "Failure to Launch" is a big one with youth of today. I know a zillion thirty somethings who live with their parents and their parents do their laundry. This freaks me out on SO SO SO many levels.

[@montyollie]

Oh one more: PUBIC HAIR. There. I said it.

[@StephensCrazyHour]

Swearing has changed. There are certainly words that could be used by people which are seen as wildly inappropriate and frowned upon (the "n" word, homophobic insults etc...) but more traditional swear words have largely been normalised. We've traded one set of swears for another.

[@ALuimes]

I recall as a kid swearing was big in the 80s already. The 50s was the real time swearing was taboo, as my parents were shocked at how bad the world had become in the decade before.

[@ALuimes]

@@StephensCrazyHour Uncivility and profanity is fine now as long as you don't offend anyone's identity

[@StephensCrazyHour]

@@ALuimes that's what I mean - identity based profanity is to the current generation what sexual or religion based profanity was to previous generations.

[@overthecounterbeanie]

I didn't realize I was missing JJ in shades munching popcorn in my life.

[@juliusnoahsiebert1906]

The real question is: Is that popcorn sweet or salty?

[@thekidfromiowa]

I was surprised he said he goes to movies, because he's said on many occassion that he doesn't really care for movies.

[@JJMcCullough]

@@thekidfromiowa I don’t but I’ll still find myself in one every so often if a friend wants to go or something

[@hafizhradhitya4861]

HAIR TUTOR PLEASE 😍

[@LuchadorMasque]

I'm same age as you. In 5th grade, I was sent home from school for wearing a bart simpsons t shirt. No text, no actions, just a picture.

[@davidmehling4310]

A principal of a school (Lutz) in my hometown of Fremont OH made news sometime in the early 90s for sending home a student for wearing a shirt with Bart Simpson on it saying it encouraged disrespect

[@imilliterate4812]

@@davidmehling4310 Fremont Ohio? That's where my mom's from. Didn't expect to see someone on KZbin from there.

[@cerealfamine1]

Don't have a cow man!

[@LuchadorMasque]

@@davidmehling4310 I was living in Colraine, (Cincinnati suburb) ohio at the time. Maybe that had something to do with it?

[@LuchadorMasque]

@@imilliterate4812 idk where that is but that 3 buckeyes period wound up in this thread together is certianly a long odd.

[@MrDomoco]

I'd like to share my childhood experience, though I am not old (mid 20), I feel like a lot a thing has changed. Now, I am from an ex-Soviet country, so my recollection of details and of what and how I remember might be weird for many of you, and if there are some post-soviets like me, maybe it'll be ordinary. I remember a lot of grey colour. Our buildings, 8-floor apartment buildings (paneláky from the word "panel" as they were built from panels) were all grey. Our entire district was grey, just these grey walls encompassing us everywhere we went. They were sombre, but I became fond of them, not sure why. People were grey too, there was a lot of sadness, a lot of pain in people's eyes. I know, it sounds like some artsy bullshido, but if I look at our society now, the main emotion it evokes is anger. Back then, it was this broken sadness - people not being able to make the ends meet, teenage pregnancy, drugs, organised violent crime. Everyone I knew was somehow affected by these things, though things started changing relatively soon, like when I was 11 or so. I spent most of my time on the streets, with friends doing dumb stuff. Dumb AND dangerous stuff and no one cared that much. There wasn't much parental oversight, except in the form of punishment, mostly physical. I remember when my older sister graduated, we had like this family dinner where she invited some older folk that helped her during her studies. My mum started to reminisce about our childhood and what were we up to, and it wasn't until then that it hit me how strange and abusive it all sounds (my mum is a wonderful woman, but that's how she was taught to raise her kids and many people too). I also remember that people were genuine friends with their neighbours. I knew almost everyone in the apartment, and we often helped each other, even in small ways. Someone placed trash to be thrown out in front of their doors (presumably to do it later) and if you went outside and noticed it, you just grabbed it and threw it away for them. There were of course some disputes. Mostly about how well (or not well) has some family cleaned the common spaces (it was a thing you had to weekly and it rotated between families). People would also call each other for tea, cigarettes and cards by knocking on radiators with a teaspoon. They don't do that anymore. There is this one phenomenon I always remember when I think about that time. During that time there was a sort of... nationalistic thing going on. There was this country that we were once a part of. Their nationality was used as an insult. "Are you an XY?" - asking the person if they are dumb. The curious thing is, that we (kids) used it so much and yet, we were so far away from the borders with that country as humanly possible, and I had never even met an XY. The relations between my country and that country were kind of tense back in the day, but no one ever told me that, at least, I don't remember being told. But we, the kids, we just kind of absorbed it. It was so surreal. When I later studied in a city closer to the borders with that country and with many people of XY descent there, it has never occurred to me to "insult" someone by calling them an "XYZ". Now that I think about it, it's probably obvious why. The most racist people are those, who far aways from anyone different. Some other random things: McDonald was this luxurious thing that only the well off could afford. There weren't many McDonalds back in the day here and when my friend went to a different city once to have one, he boasted about it for weeks. We used to hang out in the mall. Never bought anything. Never was super interested in what they had. We just kinda hanged out there. Everyone and their horse smoked. The relations between the countries have normalised (God bless the EU, I guess) and I never heard that insult again in my life. Politics, eh?

[@lianafreeman8954]

I’m in my early 20s from the US, but a lot of my family is from an ex-Soviet country as well. My mom told me about the time that her cousin was able to visit the States during the Soviet era and ate so many bananas that he got sick because he loved them and they were impossible to find back home.

[@GarrettFruge]

I was born in 1990 and I can relate pretty well to most of this. I'm only 30 years old and, even in my own lifetime, I'm surprised at how much the world has changed in such a relatively short period of time!

[@erikaeyre405]

I'm not even that old, but it baffles me every time I think that the 1st smartphone was made in 2007, and that I was born before this piece of technology in my hand that I use for quite literally EVERYTHING. And then thinking there was once a time where I never needed this. It blows my mind everytime.

[@cattysplat]

There was a time I asked, why would I need a camera on a phone? I would just bring a camera. Why would I need mobile internet? We have internet on computer at home. Why send a text message when calling is faster? Why do I need a mobile phone? I can just use a pay phone. However until you have it in your hand, you don't realise how useful and convenient it actually is.

[@HCUhardcoreUnited]

Am from 1992 and my parents 1970-1972. There is a long list of things. One thing I remember quite vividly was when you were around adults with your parents, children were seen not heard. You didn't speak unless spoken to. Myself at that age didn't have a problem as I rarely spoke at all. My brother not so much...lol

[@x_8643]

Adults playing video games is almost more normal than young kids gaming now imo. And I think it's good. Like, my dads 66, im 20 and my brothers 17, and we all share a minecraft server which is the main way we spend time together.

[@IAmGlutton4Life]

wow you're dad is about the same age as my grandpa

[@mapofthesoultagme7143]

My grandpa is 69 or 68 and I am 22.

[@FlyxPat]

When I was a little kid my granddad drove a light green Ford Zephyr. My mum did keep cigarettes in a wooden box in the formal ‘lounge room’ for visiting smokers presumably with dementia. They must have been disgustingly stale, they were there for years, neither of my parents smoked. We were not allowed in that room unless to be paraded before guests.

[@j.s.7335]

This is sure to be another award-winning video! I'm almost 34, and ...just ...everything. But the changing views on homosexuality and smoking are truly astounding. When I was a kid you'd think nothing of smoking in a restaurant, or the bowling alley, or even in a car with children. Now people are worried that a child might see them smoking. Your biggest omission, as someone else mentioned in the comments, is the way that children nowadays don't spend unsupervised time, being allowed to freely roam their neighborhood.

[@patrickw123]

As a kid in the 70’s people dressed up for plane rides, especially international flights, and the planes had smoking sections! So weird to think about that when I’m flying today. And personal in-flight entertainment meant bringing along your own book.

[@parpar3]

...and flying was for rich people.

[@jmckenzie962]

That's because flying was still largely for the upper classes; the airlines were very strictly regulated back then (which made flying very expensive) and budget airlines didn't exist.

[@omisan771]

Making smoking abnormal was the greatest western achievement of the last 20 years.

[@chadrussell9309]

If you are referring to the general grossness of smoking in public, I agree. If you are referring more to the health effects, I think vaping has risen to mostly take its place

[@Fahrenheit4051]

@@chadrussell9309 I'm actually curious. Is vaping as bad as smoking? I don't vape but have seen it become increasingly popular among my age group and younger.

[@chadrussell9309]

@@Fahrenheit4051 I can't confidently say that it's as bad. But a lot of today's generation aren't going from smoking to vaping. They are taking up vaping when it was thought thst they never would have smoked anyway

[@cortster12]

@@Fahrenheit4051 not as bad, but it's definitely still bad. Vaping was simply the big smoking companies trying to sneak back in under the guise of a 'safer' alternative, AND IT WORKED. God, it's so terrifying that we let it work. Have we learned nothing as a society?

[@HighToryPrince]

Smokin in the boys room ? Hell nah, we vape in the gender neutral restrooms like the cool kids 😎 Yes I know very original I had to get it out of my system

[@Pratchettgaiman]

What weirds me out the most about being 33 is seeing KZbinrs in their 20s reminiscing about things from their childhood or adolescence that I experienced in college or in the years immediately after it

[@nathangale7702]

Yeah, I'm 26, and I see these wipper-snapper youtubers and tiktokers complaining about how old they feel because they were in elementary school when One Direction was getting popular. That doesn't count, people under forty shouldn't be allowed to reminisce about the "good-old days."

[@Steadyaim101]

Same! It hit me that even at 27 I'm old when some teenagers next to me at a Starbucks were reminiscing about when they would play Minecraft together at after-school daycare. It came out my last year of high school.

[@pragmatic]

Ha ha. I can reminisce about the good old days too. What would be different are all the popular books, toys, games, movies, artists, girl and boy bands. For me they include POGs, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings Rings, female Canadian singer-songwriters (Alanis, Sarah, Amanda, Jann), nineties Canadian alt-rock, the Sims, "girl power" (Spice Girls), 98 degrees, Backstreet Boys, Britney Jean Spears, Olsen Twins ( it was like l grew up with them, l watched Full House when sit-coms were still a thing like Frasier, Friends,Seinfeld, Dawson's Creek) David Duchovny complaining Vancouver rains too much. 🎶🎤I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over...

[@mutestingray]

So weird lol

[@PabbyPabbles]

That's one thing that the Internet changed. Before that people would mostly keep to their own age group. Now you can end up interacting with people significantly out of your age group, with completely different frames of reference. I started feeling like an old man on the Internet at around 25, ten years ago. I guess being juuuust two or three years older than the Spongebob kids would do that to an online meme enjoyer, lol

[@Matt_from_Florida]

10:00 It's called *"business casual"* and for several decades it was the required/expected male attire for any professional to semi-professional job. In the Northeastern USA where professional attire was taken more seriously "casual Friday" was the one day you could "dress down," even though it didn't give one the leave to look like a slob.

[@kiancuratolo903]

Honestly man you make me worry a lot less about aging, Its funny but I only just noticed I've recently started watching a few older youtubers in the form of you and my boy Knowing Better (have him to thank for finding your lovely channel), and well. Yall are better role models then I had in my early teens thats for sure.

[@sixerfixer]

A few years younger than you - my dad is how I got into video games. He was into PC technology (because his dad, my grandad, was a scientist for the CDN gov't), and I remember sitting on his lap watching while he played Doom and Heretic. And I also remember having friends whose families wouldn't let them watch The Simpsons, but my fam was okay with it. I think we turned out TV.

[@Ari--d]

the 70's & 80's doesnt seem like that long ago and i wasnt even alive then.

[@kylem1112]

yeah but it make sense, because we have obviousdly alot more common with the late 20th century now than we do with the early 20th century.

[@ALuimes]

@@kylem1112 Or even what the late 20th Century had to do with the earlier parts. I suspect to young people today the 80s may not seem as distant as the 40s did to 80s youth. A 1940s movie seemed very old-fashioned to me back then.

[@tym9080]

I would say that sexuality as a whole is a lot more acceptable nowadays. I’m 22 but I remember when I was young talking about sex and certain sex acts was a big no no. Now people are SO open about sex. It still shocks me.

[@SamAronow]

That's gone back and forth. When AIDS hit, the taboo against even talking about sex became so great that Salt N' Pepa had to put out a single convincing people to do it. I have a friend in her 50s, and she said because of the AIDS crisis, her college experience was radically different from even her older sister.

[@shadowthehedgehog3113]

Kind of but now there seems to be a bit of a revival of prudishness on the other side of the cultural aisle. I mean look at how Mass Effect's new rerelease is cutting out certain body scenes because they think its sexist.

[@neinzukorruption9321]

in the 90s sexuality was better, more human, and also very accepted. people were happy then too and children learned it very wise and late late late. good thing.

[@StephensCrazyHour]

The internet has normalised a lot of behaviors that would have been literally got you jail time in times past.

[@cortster12]

People are still pretty anal about purely fantasy elements, though. If something is artwork or written--and thus completely fake--why should anyone care what happens? Separating fiction from reality is the next step, I believe. And stomping down on people bringing fiction INTO reality has to coincide with this.

[@anthonyprokos5098]

J.J. your cultural commentary is as always to the point. I am just a bit older than you (42) and I agree with all the points in this video. If you consider to make a part 2, it would be interesting to point out the social changes concerning facts and how they are perceived, especially after your "award winning video" I debate a TikTok conspiracy theorist. Greetings from Greece.

[@Mongolium]

“The late eighties and early nineties. Does that seem like a long time ago to you?” Why, yes, considering I didn’t exist yet.

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

Even tough I wasn't alive then either, it doesn't seem like that long ago. To me, the entire 20th century just seems like a vague "before time" which is all just backstory for the events of the 21st century. It probably doesn't help that I subconsciously think of the year 2000 as being the beginning of time, since it is often abbreviated as '00, as in year 0 even though it isn't.

[@KarlSnarks]

@@SupaKoopaTroopa64 For me it's still weird that there are adults that were born in the 21st century.

[@SupaKoopaTroopa64]

@@KarlSnarks I was born in the 21st century, just turned 20 a few weeks ago. Feel old yet?

[@-gemberkoekje-5547]

I was born in 2002

[@XanderVJ]

@@SupaKoopaTroopa64 I find that quite interesting. I grew up in the same era as JJ, and I remember how the arrival of the 21st century was treated as this big event everyone was excited about during all of the 90s. I wonder what people who were born after that would feel when seeing pieces of media from back then that reflect that sentiment.

[@torrestheman_3808]

Really for us 2000's - early 2010's kids. We just saw the internet blow up. Like, instead of watchin' Cartoon Network at 9am on saturdays, I think they watch Mr. Beast videos.

[@dallyh.2960]

True. Somewhere between elementary and middle school, I transitioned from watching TV and playing outside in the woods to watching KZbin and never leaving my room. It happened really suddenly as well. And now I'm 18 and life is too complicated.

[@torrestheman_3808]

@@dallyh.2960 It's work out, evenually.

[@oceanwaefer1427]

Agreed! I always have that one TV show I say I 'want to check out' but I get the majority of my entertainment from KZbin or webcomics.

[@melvinklark6950]

I do and I'm 13 watch people like him but also watalot of anime and same with alot of my friends

[@Steadyaim101]

I was at a transition point when the internet really blew up. My parents were pretty poor and we lived in the country in the 90s so my early childhood we didn't have internet. I'd watch crappy cable and have to help my dad cut and carry wood for the furnace. 5 years later we moved to the city and I transitioned to video games and newgrounds flash videos instead.

[@CiabanItReal]

So I'm roughly your age, but my dad played TONS of computer games when I was a kid, (often ignoring his own children in the process) the cool thing was back in the golden era of PC gaming, I got to play all the best games of that era. I remember being a kid and playing Baulders Gate, and Fallout, and Doom my dad bought them. The down side was the parental neglect.

[@TomJohnson67]

You know you're old when you first say "back in my day" unironically.

[@apscoinscurrenciesmore7599]

True that

[@64imma]

One thing I have noticed in my life is that, when I was a child, it was considered super offensive to ask a woman how old she was. I remember a teacher of mine in 9th grade getting offended when a student asked how old she was. That was back in 2009, and since then, I haven't heard of that really being a question to avoid asking. I've seen plenty of dudes in my early 20's asking girls this question, and it was never a problem. Regardless, I am still cautious about asking this question even to women my own age.

[@earlystrings1]

Definitely one of your older viewers here (also, white USA straight guy, remembers the 60s): One huge change I see from watching my children's lives is that the old societal script of how men and women pair up and relate to each other went out the window sometime in the 90s. There apparently isn't a new script and I see a lot of generalized expectation of hostility between the sexes that individuals have to work through ad hoc. One result is that I see fewer couples and more young people alone. There may be an analog for gay people but all my gay friends are my age so I don't know.

[@Waldzkrieger]

My main takeaway from this is that JJ is eligible to be POTUS, so long as he doctors some birth information.

[@konstantinopoulos33]

If he gets his wish of an American-Canadian union, he certainly would be

[@screechingcamels9643]

technically true for anyone, just depends how much info to doctor

[@blakerupp1444]

Doesn’t he have to be an American citizen by birth?

[@Waldzkrieger]

@@blakerupp1444 that's why he has to doctor the paperwork

[@jimmym3352]

Kind of like Obama. And yes I'm joking, I'm not one of those people. I'm just one of those people who make bad joke.

[@france8497]

My Dad bought an NES when he was in his twenties and passed it down to me. It’s like a family heirloom lol

[@BigBoss-sm9xj]

Awesome!

[@shadowthehedgehog3113]

Same with my N64. My Uncle got it when it came out and passed it down to me.

[@DDBurnett1]

My SNES was handed down to me from my uncle.

[@jonathannerz1696]

My dad was born in 1962, and some of my earliest memories are of watching him play RTS games on our old Windows 98 computer.

[@krazykris9396]

My dad was born in 1960 and I rember him playing games on the computer. He sparked my love of gaming.

[@JackCase]

My dad was definitely a PC gamer, when I was in middle school he introduced me to Portal which led me to discovering games like half-life and TF2. Some of my fondest memories of my dad were when we would play TF2 together as we were both similarly bad at expressing love for one another but in those times I felt really connected to him. He passed away at the end of 2020 from cancer and I still think about him a lot especially when playing those games that we enjoyed together.

[@uripesachstuff2409]

As a 17 year old I had no idea that being "disrespectfull" was once an unacceptable trait for a TV character.

[@KarlSkogstad]

As a fellow Canadian born in 1984, a lot of what you said was spot on. One big change I would say, is that the way I raise my kids is much different than how I was raised, specifically with regards to how much freedom they have. I remember as a kid it was very normal to roam around the neighbourhood unsupervised. Now, I barely let my kids out of my sight. I cannot even say for sure why that is. The other thing that is different is the amount of homework that comes home from school. I remember in grade 5 I would have homework every night. My daughter gets maybe one piece of homework each month. Very different. Love the channel.

[@linkspeaks]

Canadian born in 87 here, I remember spending a significant portion of the day out of the house without any means of contacting home. Glad I lived in a safe neighbourhood in retrospect

[@richardvilla2303]

American from 92 here, i also was wondering long hours without supervision from a young age in my neighborhood, but see the difference in how my nieces and nephews are raised and "feel it in the air" as it were of why that is

[@ryanlachman6462]

Leave ur kids alone weirdo

[@kimarous]

I remember find it weird how kids in the cartoons I watched back in the day were so free-range.

[@davynhainstock7503]

Early 90s Canadian kid here my mom always tried to keep me close to home but wen I was with the grandparents it was free range as fuck and I loved it

[@the_peefster]

Hey, We do live in a society

[@Marylandbrony]

*Bottom Text*

[@deutschelehrer69]

*S O E C I A T Y* 😔✊

[@lawden210]

Gamers; the most oppresed people of all of history

[@ashkitt7719]

"One cannot live in society and be free from society." V.I. Lenin, Gamer

[@josephlucatorto4772]

I grew up in the late 2000s and my parents were really strict about The Simpsons. My friends' parents weren't though, and I remember going over to their houses and they would have photos and stuff from The Simpsons at Universal Studios. It really confused me as a kid because I had thought it was some kind of morally corrupt thing that nobody would even let their kids near

[@Tuvok_Shakur]

born in 86, i remember when the internet wasnt a thing and no one had caller id and you had to be home for someone to be able to call you, it has changed world culture dramatically being able to communicate with the entire world so easily

[@callumdoherty1882]

I'm just old enough to remember when VCRs were still around, and am now cursed with thinking DVDs are still modern

[@AngryKittens]

I'm originally from the Philippines, two years younger than JJ, and also gay. Pretty much the same experience with LGBT rights in the last three decades. I too thought I couldn't be gay because TV and movies showed gay people as being ultra-feminine people who wanted to be women. And I wasn't, so I thought I must just be going through a "phase." Hijinks and very dark teen angst ensued.

[@SmokeyD_]

I’m only 18, but I think I’ve still seen a fair bit of cultural change in my life. One is the acceptance of Transgender people. As a kid I think I was always aware that gay people exist, but I had never heard of people being transgender until Caitlyn Jenner came out in 2015, which is a surprisingly quick turn around from being completely unheard of to basically accepted by society when compared to the gay rights movement taking about half a century. Another would probably be the normalization of illegal drug use. You said your generation was the one that was propagated out of smoking, but it’s, funnily, also the one that made it acceptable to smoke Marijuana. There’s even a lot more acceptance for the use of really hard stuff like Cocaine or LSD. One change I’m definitely not a fan of is the increased acceptance of the consumption of pornography, especially among young people. It’s been shown to be just as addictive as hard drugs and really mess up my generation’s perception of sex. The internet has made porn way too accessible to pubescent kids.

[@jacksondyneskinocinema1856]

My dad was born in 1976. He plays video games both by himself and with me and my sisters, we play the same games mostly.

[@josayeee]

The lyrics in mainstream music has changed a lot (born in 85). I remember listening to my parents' music.. Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, U2.. etc. You don't see as many songs in the top 100 that try to touch on societal problems or bring an overall positive message anymore.

[@cyber_pirate]

As a 17 year old with younger parents, I vividly remember my dad playing Modern Warfare 2 back in the day. He’s since stopped playing entirely, but I find it really strange when I look back at it lol

[@rex-1141]

I would add that society's growing attitude towards assigning political and social value to everyday consumer goods and actions (see: the Kylie Jenner Pepsi ad, B-Corps / the concept of corporate social responsibility, Trump's endorsement of Goya beans, and every company "we strongly condemn x" public statement after a major event) has made it such that people need to be significantly more conscious about their everyday choices to avoid contradicting their personal morality or alienating themselves from social circles through their tacit approval of whatever sociopolitical views come attached to products.

[@ewanmacfarlane94]

I was born in the UK in 1994. I think my generation was probably the last in which it was considered normal for parents to use corporal punishment. My parents would smack me occasionally and I never thought it was strange as it happened to my friends too. There were always some parents who made a point of ‘not believing’ in corporal punishment, but they were definitely in the minority. These days however, it seems to be regarded as totally inappropriate.

[@louisaconnolly3889]

As a white south african, born 1975, i grew up mostly isolated from the horrific worst years of the early 1980's when the white nationalist government was most cruel and inhumane. I remember hungry children, dressed in rags, begging my mother for bread, she would always cry later. We were drilled at school to know the difference between a fire alarm and a bomb siren. Tv shows, music books and theatre were limited by censorship and extensive international sanctions. This isolationism has produced a narrow and intolerant outlook among generations of south africans. Im grateful to report though that Millenials and gen z, have been making us proud, and Mandela's rainbow is starting to shine brightly.

[@nicolamarchbank1846]

Hello, I was born two years before you, in Britain. Forgive me for the length, but I would like to submit society's awareness of the existence of people who are neuro-divergent such as myself. I have High Functioning Autism and was diagnosed at 27, which is a bit late given I had already embarked down a specific path in life, and my struggles with actually succeeding in that path led directly to my diagnosis in the first place. It seems like only in the last 10 or 15 years, the world has changed enough for people generally to have at least heard about Autism and similar conditions and not just treat a kid having a meltdown as a "bad kid"-which happened to me CONSTANTLY. We used to just be called "eccentric" or "weird" and my time in High School was pure hell, all whilst not having a clue why I was different but knowing I definitely was and being very clear that it was up to me to change and become "normal" for everybody else. This defines EVERY relationship (family, social, professional, or romantic) you ever have, may limit even perfectly able people from reaching their potential, and may influence your decision to have children or not given the possibility you may be an Autistic parent with an Autistic child. It's only been relatively recently that government services have seemed to realise just what the support needs are, especially for families where the condition occurs frequently. It feels like only recently employment and equalities law took seriously the idea that we have a pervasive condition that affects our ability to function in the world, never-mind be productive workers. Prior to the pandemic, the British National Autistic Society estimated that only 22% of adults with the condition were in regular employment. We are also at heightened risk of mental health and some physical health problems compared to the general population (depression, suicide, substance abuse, dementia as just a brief and horrifying overview), which is a particular problem given the impact of the pandemic on non-COVID healthcare and how crappy EVERYBODY is feeling. Given that most people with ASD will require some additional support to function effectively at work, even if it is just minor like the set-up of your desk for example, we are likely to be an easy target for cutting from workforces by companies looking to restructure post-COVID and guess what happened to me? Yeah. It's something that was just never really discussed and if it was, it was Rainman and basically, nothing else-which ironically is a different thing. I just didn't see myself in any of that and so never thought "I should ask about Autism screening" in my MULTIPLE times around the mental and occupational health systems as a kid, teenager, and twentysomething. I only got diagnosed because I was lucky enough to see a particularly perceptive GP for something else one day. As much as there is the important discussion of representation in the media as it pertains to race, sexuality, and to a lesser degree, religion, it seems to be considered fine for creatives to suggest that any character who is markedly socially awkward is "on the spectrum" or whatever. There are amazingly few good representations of neuro-divergent people in media or meaningful discussion about what that actually means, especially the differences between men and women who often present quite differently, are basically non-existent. The people making this content, are usually not neuro-divergent which means they only get part of the story. If there's a backlash against the idea of straight actors playing queer characters, why is it okay for people who don't have to deal with this playing (usually an extreme) version of my life? The politics of representation and of the 'Autism Pride' movement and whether the 'Pride' movement model is the best way to approach this given the wide range of different experiences across realities and the ethics of research to 'cure' or treat ASD, are very much in their infancy. There's an issue about whether or not Asperger's should be called after Asperger because the man himself worked in Austria under the Nazis for example. 'Pragmatic acceptance of one's strengths and limitations and acceptance that you can't change it so you'd better just learn to live with it and accentuate the positive' is probably more accurate. The pandemic has been hellish frankly. I'm lucky enough to be able to live semi-independently, in a little cottage and drive etc, but NOT being able to access my parents and grandparents who provide essential support to me in-person because I don't live with my parents anymore has been trying on everybody to say the least. Holding meaningful communication with people you don't know really well when you can't read expressions in faces and don't find eye contact comfortable is so much harder now you have to wear a mask (which is why Autistic people with the appropriate written confirmation from their Doctors or Care service were given latitude in wearing masks-I do, I don't like how people tend to treat you like scum when you don't). Socially distancing, say in a supermarket when you have spatial awareness issues and the way you cope with the unpleasantness of the sound, light, smells, extremes of temperature, numbers of people etc, is to disappear into your own head and pretend nobody else is there, is challenging to say the least. Whilst we TALK about it more, society hasn't quite reconciled ourselves to what it actually means to be this way on a day-to-day basis. That is a LONG way away.

[@rezaaparsa]

Well, J.J.! Interesting video as always. I'm from Iran, born in 91 and yet so many things you mentioned in this video sound super similar to what I experienced as I grew up. I used to think growing up in a developing Middle Eastern country would be much different than what a North American experienced but seems like I was wrong.

[@maraj100]

I'm older (probably not wiser) than you but I do remember the smoke, smoke in restaurants, on airplanes, everyone seemed to smoke, ...I grew up with both my parents smoking and I don't think I had a clean breathe of air until I went to university. I remember the outrage about kids programming in the 80's and music albums that were all about satanic worship but I also remember no one saying anything about the brutality of bugs bunny or the racism of the flintstones until much later into the 90's.

[@peterdesmier6165]

I read on a cigarette package once that mother’s smoking during pregnancy could harm their fetus. I had to ask my mother if she smoked while “carrying” me. It would have explained a lot!

[@johnbura8772]

You should do a whole episode on gay conservatives.

[@MichaelJohnson-vi6eh]

I really enjoyed the book "party crasher" about Log Cabin Republicans. I am not a Republican but I'm a pretty conservative Democrat.

[@a.alphonso6193]

he is one

[@Shiro642]

Im actually glad we are done with the “disrespectful” “childish” stuff. It seemed fake. Im glad adults can wear tshirts. Lol

[@hughjass1044]

What's wrong with being respectful?

[@rzeka]

@@hughjass1044 nothing, but it's no fun to _have to_ be respectful. It's restricting.

[@spacecowboy3693]

@@hughjass1044 Most of the time labeling someone young disrespectful is putting them down and patronising them. Implying they can't think for themselves.

[@edsiles4297]

Agreed

[@TheSurrealGoose]

@@rzeka Eh. Kids really SHOULD be restricted in just about everything; kids are disturbingly stupid and make blindingly bad decisions. It's why we have an entirely different set of rules that apply to children and to how the rest of us interact with children.

[@BladeEdge86]

I was born in 86 and am staggered at how much has changed in such a short amount of time, it really feels like a single decade carries as much social change as a century used to. When I was born computers existed but were not at all mainstream, I remember playing Oregon Trail and Carmen San Diego at the computer lab at my elementary school. When I was 18 I got my first cell phone and it was dads old flip phone, and now I am quite disturbed to see children as young as 5 with their eyes glued to a phone screen. In my first election I was old enough to vote in (2004) the political situation was tense and divisive, but was was nothing compared to now. I was much more partisan back then, but even at the time I didn't have as much as anger and fear as I do now (civil war may be inevitable at this point). Thankfully, not every change has been bad. One of the most significant changes is something I as an individual with Autism have witness. I saw things go from even most doctors knowing practically nothing about it and me being given a grim prediction by a doctor in 1988 when I was diagnosed, to now almost everyone knowing someone with Autism. There are still a lot of misconceptions and a lot of discrimination against people on the Autism spectrum, and there has been the occasional step backwards I am proud to say that in this regard at least things are much easier for children growing up now than when I grew up in the 90s. The same can be said of mental health in general, there is still a lot way to go but there is a lot more understanding and awareness now than when I was younger.

[@thinkingspaced]

Only a year older than JJ and as a former punk, I noticed a huge shift in the focus of the music from anarchy and fighting the system to social justice.