I’ll still give hitchhikers a lift if I’m on a long drive and I’m having trouble staying awake.
Yeah it was a good way to get murdered
I remember “It’s 10 pm, do you know where your children are?” being asked every night before the local news.
‘Stand By Me’ was a movie about four boys disappearing for a weekend and not one parent was arrested.
Dude without thar ad don’t think my parents would have come looking for me.
Wasn’t that to remind parents that they had kids since most were taking drugs or alcohol to cope with life?
You say the first one like it’s a GOOD thing, that campaign has led to ridicule of an entire generation, and you point to that like it’s a good thing…?
No, it was a false presupposition being planted by the power structure to subconsciously reframe people’s stance toward the world.
In this case, it was the nanny state pushing us down the cultural evolutionary path to where we are now, which is safety-obsessed.
New norms being injected into the populace by media.
Imagine the long term effects on the culture if the message were “It’s 10 pm. Are all the burners on your stove off?”
Imagine if the news said this to everyone, every day.
Imagine the long term effects of that innocent question’s repetition on later decades’ total incidence of OCD or anxiety disorders.
The key point isn’t that parents had to be reminded — they didn’t. They wanted to frame it as if they had to be reminded.
You can inject a presupposed fact into the unconscious frame people use to see their reality by doing this.
If they really wanted to reach me at all times they could have paid for a pager. I wasn’t going to.
My dad tells stories of snowstorms back in the 70s & 80s where they would leave their truck at the end of the driveway with the keys in it and unlocked.
We live very rural (my grandparents were my neighbours growing up), and snowstorms could get bad. So everyone left their vehicles out with the keys in case someone broke down on the side of the road so that they could hop in the truck and turn it on to stay warm. Never had a vehicle so much as damaged, much less stolen.
I did that well into the late 90s when I was staying with my grandparents. Nothing to do with snowstorms. If someone was stupid enough to risk walking that far out of the way, and getting shot, they probably deserved that old Honda.
Yes but also dirty old men tried to grope you in parks and your parents didn’t care.
Honestly that just sounds like an indictment on your parents.
Happened to several of my friends too though.
Definitely not disagreeing with that. I made the comment after reading the title, but before I saw the associated image.
That one sounds more unique to your individual experience, and not a sign of the times.
The fact that you don’t see that as a sign of the times sounds more unique to your own individual experience.
I grew up in this era. I didn’t know a single person whose parents wouldn’t care if their kid was being molested by strangers in a park. There was an entire Stranger Danger topic that was frequently discussed with kids by parents and schools.
Just because you grew up in an era doesn’t mean that you got the full experience others got. Kinda what I’m saying.
In the south (or for young girls most places) for example, this was definitely closer to the norm. Parents obviously would always SAY that they would always try and protect their kids—and maybe they would try—until it got to the part where they were actually molested. Then a lot of parents didn’t believe or want you to speak out 🙃
Statistically, this was more often to happen with people you knew, I’ll grant.
Flashback to riding the bus home from middle school in Kentucky when my slightly older friend confessed that she’d been raped by a cousin but she was still a virgin because it’d been anal.
I didn’t think I gave particularly good advice on that topic in 7th grade.
Perfect strangers in the 1980s?
I still pick up hitchhikers. I consider it a nice thing to do if you are heading in the same direction. It may get me killed one day, but at least I’ll die doing the right thing.
Motorboating titties?
[laughs in not having cell ever charged]
A practice that has served me well ever since high school
Hell, when I was a little boy in 2001, you could still accept a ride from strangers. I mean, sure, you could end up in the car with a wannabe John Wayne Gacy, but more often than not, it was a kind stranger offering a ride to a kid walking home in the 105 degree Texas heat.
(If the US had adequate public transit/micromobility infrastructure, worrying about random strangers picking you up – let alone for intra-city travel – wouldn’t be a thing.)
Rural
Urban areas account for 80% of the US population. This only fell from 80.7% in 2010, despite the fact that the minimum population for something to be considered “urban” doubled from 2500 residents to 5000 (under the previous criteria, this would have been an increase). That’s not to mention that there’s nothing stopping rural towns under 5000 people from having adequate micromobility infrastructure, like I mentioned. If your kid is walking home from somewhere, unless they legitimately got stranded somehow in bumfuck nowhere, chances are they’re within biking distance.
The kind of “rural” you’re probably thinking of where someone lives two miles out into the country is basically a rounding error. Please stop using it as a magical incantation to shut down discussion of reasonable public transit and safe and efficient micromobility.
I’m not disputing the benefits of public transit.
I take public transit EVERY DAY. I loved my time city hopping in Europe. I want that SO badly for north america. I’m a very vocal proponent.
I grew up in a rural area. Our small area tried earnestly several times to get a bus route going. First with old school buses and then with some old city buses. They just couldn’t make it work. The population density just couldn’t support it.
My issue, as someone with their feet in two canoes, as they say, is with the mentality that rural populations are rounding areas unworthy of discussion or consideration. Broad statements that erase rural existence is alienating to these admittedly small percentages, but is alienating nonetheless
People who choose to live out in the middle of nowhere shouldn’t hold back the discussion of public transit and micromobility for the vast, overwhelming majority of people who live in areas which are able to maintain that kind of public infrastructure.
The problem isn’t that these populations aren’t worthy of consideration; it’s that they don’t deserve to get brought up as “Well this doesn’t help me, who lives three miles out of the nearest town in a row of five houses” as a way to shut down discussion of something that would improve the lives of basically everyone. (It would help them too, of course, because it would decongest the streets when they do drive into town; it just wouldn’t obviate their car. Also, people in urban areas are subsidizing the everloving shit out of their infrastructure already to allow them to even live out there in the first place.)
Then what’s your perspective on the specific issue of this thread? You say your opinion is being erased… but all you’ve said so far is “I exist”. Which… okay? What impact would that have on literally anything related to this?
I take public transit EVERY DAY. I loved my time city hopping in Europe. I want that SO badly for north america. I’m a very vocal proponent.
So… you just wanted to be heard, but had no actual input to give?
I don’t remember Balki driving me anywhere in the 80s
Your dad is Balki Bartokomous?!? I have so many questions.
Did you grow up in the states or on Mypos? Is your full name Semi_Hemi_Demigod Bartokomous? Do you have your own place, or do you live with cousin-once-removed Larry? Do you know the Dance of Joy, and can you teach me?
No, but he is like a close uncle.
Sadly I have never visited the motherland.
My full name is Semihemidemideus Bartokomous.
I have my own place but Uncle Larry and I are restoring his old Mustang.
Of course I know the dance of joy and would be so happy to teach you I would do the dance of joy!
I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a response more. Can’t wait to learn it!
Leave your phone at home?
“It was on the charger! I forgot!”
Not sure that would work.
werent mobile phones pretty cheap in 98?
No, they weren’t particularly cheap. And they weren’t anywhere nearly as reliable connectionwise (functionwise they were way more reliable to be honest), and the expectation to always be near it wasn’t anywhere near it is today.
ok. i got the “hagenuk global” with my contract back then and it was working well all the time. that was before 1998. and i won a nokia communicator in 97. still have it. was mind blown as a kid. sms was free back then… so i still dont get the meme really.
Devices were getting cheaper, not quite to mass adoption but getting there, however service wasn’t nearly universal like it is today. There were whole towns and even some suburbs that didn’t have coverage yet. It wasn’t until the introduction of 3G (around like 2006, if memory serves) that phones got cheap and service became blanket for most people.
Yea I didn’t get a cell phone until like 2004/5 and I only had coverage for like half the places I spent time at in my town. All my friends lived out in the country so I was unreachable most of the time until several years later.
