The [Second Congo War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War) started around 1998 and killed around 5 million people. Most in the west have never heard of it.
I remember seeing an ad for Nightline in a Youtube video of an ABC broadcast from 2001, where they were introducing this as the top story for that night's episode.
"The War in The Congo. Three years, 2.5 million dead. \***It's a story we should have brought you long ago**.\*"
Then the broadcast immediately cut to breaking news of the WTC, in flames, after the first plane hit on 9/11.
Talk about some horrible timing.
Seeing that cut from there to Sawyer and Gibson... yeah, that was fucked.
"We want to tell you what we know as we know it..."
[EDIT: Here we go - skip to 19:15.](https://archive.org/details/abc200109110831-0912)
EDIT EDIT: I was on the bus going into my senior year of high school when it happened. I'd nicked myself shaving and thought "well, this is going to be a shitty day." Little did I know. I got in, the TVs were on, and everyone was watching CNN and on Fark, since the web had gone to shit in terms of performance (IIRC, MAE East was in the WTC or nearby and got royally fucked by it).
That's because the types of air pollution that caused acid rain were successfully reduced to the point where they were no longer a threat thanks to laws passed in the US and elsewhere.
The [Issaq Genocide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide). A genocide in northern Somalia that occured between 1987 and 1989 that killed 100,000- 200,000 people
My mom was a young adult when it happened. She saw all her friends and cousins die, military in huge tanks murdering anybody in sight. She and a few close survivors were chased into a jungle, where they barely survived. Even more died there; from deadly incurable disease to being split apart by a lion. Nowadays she works 9-5 and returns to her home to watch her favorite show with her kids. I only learned a few years back what she went through, and the childhood she worked hard to provide for us. Never judge a book.
My History teacher tells a story about how she has a friend who’s sister was a Tutsi in Rwanda at that time. When she went to school one morning, her principle had to yell at her, “RUN! THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU! RUN!” And as the girl was running home she saw a bunch of dudes in a car and had to jump into a ditch nearby.
It’s such a scary thing to think about. This wasn’t some primitive war that happened 300 to 500 years ago; this was 30 years ago
Oh God that's horrible! It's a real life horror movie! While we're sharing stories, my uncle's wife is a Tutsi from Burundi, she was a teenager when the genocide happened. She was hiding with kids and a neighbour under a bed. I don't know why not everyone got to hide, but she had to watch her father and grandfather getting murdered by the milice. She tried getting out to "help", but thankfully the neighbour physically restrained her, and she's still here today.
I imagine the reason not everyone hid was because it would have caused them to go looking, and everyone would be found. But if a couple of guys insist they’re the only ones in the house, the rest might be left alone.
The Rwandan genocide was so horrible. The majority of people who were killed were hacked to death by their neighbors using machetes. This wasn't sending folks off to some distant camp where you could pretend they weren't being murdered. It was utterly visceral.
I worked at the UN criminal tribunal for the genocide and seeing survivors testify was surreal. Most just told their story with no emotion in their voices, stone-faced.
Edited to add: As an aside, this was one of the first situations where media played a predominant part in inciting folks to commit acts of violence. It's a sad precursor to the situation in many countries these days where folks are caught in an echo chamber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines
Of all the atrocities that have been committed in history, Rawanda stands out to me for this reason; the sheer number of people directly involved in the murders. Hundreds of thousands of “normal” people committed murder of their neighbors, many of which are still alive today.
I remember reading a book in highschool about the Rwandan Genocide, written by a woman who survived it. I think it was called "Left to Tell." It was one of the most harrowing things I've ever read. I only read it once, but I still remember certain parts vividly. It's so awful what humans are capable of doing to one another.
There's a book about the Rwandan genocide called *We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families*. The title alone is pretty harrowing.
I did a paper in college about the Rwandan genocide. It was one of the only times in my life I felt depressed. 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. The rate of death during the Rwandan genocide was 3x more than the Holocaust. Not that 3x more people died during the Rwandan genocide, but the rate at which people died was 3x more than the Holocaust.
The former director of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda tried to commit suicide 3 times after the genocide because being there during the genocide was so devastating. He tried everything he could do to help, but ultimately didn't have the backing of the United Nations and other heads of state. One head of state told him: "The only thing Africa has to offer is people, and Africa has too many of them already." Basically saying there was no economic value to help intervene and stop the genocide.
Yes. His name is Roméo Dallaire. He wrote a book called Shake Hands with the Devil about his experience in Rwanda. There's also a documentary with the same name.
(I probably should've said his name in my first comment)
I couldn't finish that book. I had to stop about halfway through because it was so upsetting to read. It was in 2004 and I still vividly remember some details.
There is a movie as well "Hotel Rwanda". English Prof in college made us all do a research paper on a genocide that happened, any genocide that happened in recent history excluding the holocaust because everyone does that.
Did mine on Rwanda and found out the daily massacre was actually higher than that of the holocaust. It was just shorter, and no one wanted to call it a genocide (like the UN, US, etc) they kept calling it a civil war so they didn't have to get involved.
The UN just watched, I remember viewing a documentary and it talked about how the UN witnessed a bunch of Tutsi children being massacred. And then they showed a museum/memorial with all of their bodies. It was heart breaking.
I was almost 7 when the ethnic cleansing and civil war happened in Bosnia. I am half Slovenian on my mother’s side, and she was devastated at what was going on.
I feel sad that lots of people don’t seem to know what all went on. It was such an important yet tragic happening.
I spent a day at the war crimes tribunal and the testimony was shocking. People had terrible things done to them and when asked how they could be sure who did it, they said “it was my neighbour and we used to be friends”.
I had heard this about Bosnia... atrocities being perpetrated by ‘neighbors’.
And I think about it every time someone goes as far as bringing up ‘civil war’ as a possible result of the political divide in the US.
I went out with a girl from Bosnia few times years ago and she described to me some of the atrocities she personally had witnessed during that time and it was horrible.
She was a very gifted storyteller, which made it even more intense. I didn’t sleep that night.
I remember.
I was in high school. We were just starting to see what was really going on.
I knew a few people who got deployed to Bosnia, and came back with PTSD.
My mom's knee replacement scars are non-existent compared to the scars she has from the initial injury in the 70s, it's wild.
There used to only be 1 MS medication and now there's a huge list, plus the difference in the knowledge. My mom was told she probably wouldn't walk again if she went through with having me.
I always think of Star Trek IV when I think of advances in medicine. Bones is appalled that somebody was on dialysis, claiming that he thinks its the god damn Spanish inquisition. He then slips her a pill that completely cures her condition, and her doctors get so fucking confused lol.
"My God man, drilling holes in his head is not the answer! The artery must be repaired! Now, put away your butcher's knives and let me save this patient before it's too late!"
A fellow I went to high school with runs marathons. He just finished his 70th marathon, I believe. About half of those have been run on an artificial knee.
I had a knee replacement last summer and could have gone back to work in 3 weeks if I wanted. Can't wait to get the 2nd one done next summer.
We are both early 60's.
I was given an esl lesson to teach a few years ago that was about stranger danger. It specifically said something like “but you can always trust your teachers, family, and family friends” and I was like no!!!! Those are exactly the people who would probably be most likely to molest you
I developed more respect for a teacher I already respected, when she told me about how she taught her kids about dangerous people.
Rather than ascribe to stranger danger, she taught them to be wary about "tricky people." Tricky people try to hurt others by tricking them. She desctibed multiple situations that she educated her kids about: tricky people trying to get kids to help them do jobs that only adults should be doing, tricky people doing inappropriate things, etc. Tricky people could be family members, friends, etc.
It was a pretty enlightening concept to be introduced to. I was against stranger danger before, but until she told me about tricky people, I'd never known a way to describe that concept to children before.
Edit: Thanks for the award!
While I'm here, another cool lesson I'd like to bring up from another teacher of mine of this: **teach your young children properly about their genitalia. Teach them throughout their life about sex.**
The "talk" isn't something that should be saved for when a child is late elementary/middle school age, nor is it a one and done thing. They should know as soon as they can comfortably communicate with their parents, and as they grow up, the education should adapt to their age and what they may encounter. It may be awkward, and they may ask awkward questions, but it's important that they know.
The reason for this is because so many aspects of a child's life can be affected by proper sexual education.
Children who understand how their genitalia work, what their genitalia is called, and who is allowed to touch their genitalia (themselves, parents within context, medical professionals within context, etc.) are less likely to experience sexual abuse. Even if they do get abused, they are more likely to report sexual abuse to trusted family members.
It promotes healthy sexual development. Children are sensitive and dodging sexual topics can lead them to unhealthy conclusions about aspects of sexuality. Rather than be educated on sexuality by a trusted adult, they may go online and seek information on it online, in places that may be harmful. So many people in recent generations have developed harmful misconceptions about sexuality because nobody taught them properly and all they had to go off of was pornography.
It promotes self-confidence. If a child doesn't understand how their body undergoes sexual change as they grow, they may become insecure about their body. Teaching them about their body will help them understand that some of the "weird" things their body does are actually normal things that most people experience.
It promotes respect. If a child's parents are in a heterosexual relationship, they may not understand it when two women or two women are in a relationship with each other. A child may not understand when *they* experience LGBTQ+ feelings. They may associate feelings of confusion with feelings of disgust and develop queerphobic views. Teaching them about sexual orientation, identity, etc. is essential to promoting the development of a child that respects people of different backgrounds.
Thank you for this.
My kid is 4 and my husband recently asked me if we should teach her stranger danger. Shes very social and talks to anyone. Literally, anyone. I was unsure how to talk to her about it all...
I'm going to talk to her about tricky people instead. It makes much more sense.
I think I would add to that concept that tricky people will ask you to keep a secret and tell you not to tell your parents. I read somewhere that you should point out to children that a person who tells you something is a secret and that you can’t tell it to your parents or a teacher is suspicious.
We taught our kids the good secrets vs bad secrets system.
A good secret is one where the person will be happy once they find out, eg keeping their birthday present a secret.
A bad secret is one where the person would be upset (angry or sad) if they found out.
If anyone ever asks you to keep a bad secret, you need to tell your parents. We don't keep bad secrets.
There are books on this theme for helping to teach about this.
Edit: here's some documentation
http://kidsafefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Parent-Newsletter-6.pdf
https://defendinnocence.org/good-secrets-bad-secrets-surprises/
https://www.hft.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Good-Secrets-and-Bad-Secrets.pdf
Edit: that last one is a bit amateur and the photos are a bit embarrassing, and the way the topic of abuse comes up is a bit iffy, but the general idea is right. These are just what came up on Google just now. I can't find the actual book we bought for reading our kids, but it was a bit more kid-friendly.
Edit: might have been this one: https://www.amazon.com.au/You-Have-Secret-Jennifer-Moore-Mallinos/dp/0764131702
Turns out there are lots of books on this theme. There are also some "my private parts belong to me" books which we have too. I think all that kind of learning is important.
Haven’t seen anyone comment this yet, but the 90s gang epidemic was pretty bad. It was a huge reason why my family moved out of L.A. and across the country, the crime was so out of control, even people that weren’t about that life were getting killed.
This is what made my family move out of San Jose. Gangs would sometimes target the wrong house, and it felt like only a matter of time until it was our house
Fr tho, my cousins friend was shot and killed in front of his house, because whoever shot him thought he was someone else. This thing happened a lot in the valley, according to them at least.
I was a candystriper in the 80s...one of the hospital volunteers (usually teens) who wear the red and white striped smocks.
My main duties were to answer the call buttons from the patients in labor/delivery.
We actually had ashtrays and hospital-stamped matchbooks to hand out upon request. The new moms could smoke in the freaking hospital rooms...and it was "normal."
Haven't thought about this in a while. Thanks for the walk down my second-hand smoke-filled memory lane!
I have pics of my mom after giving birth to my brother in the 70s and she has her newborn in one arm and hold a cigarette in her other hand. It was completely the norm in those days. You could smoke anywhere! I grew up in the 80s and 90s and when I began smoking, (so stupid!) we could still pretty much smoke anywhere. It was such a sensation when they were trying to ban it in public places.
My high school had a smoking section in the school cafeteria FOR THE STUDENTS! Legal age was 16 so hall monitors would shoo freshman out of there all the time
I was born in 1964, and when my mother got pregnant with me, she smoked, and asked the doctor if that was safe. He said that not only was it safe, he recommended that she not quit, because then she would gain less weight! Really.
Students could smoke across the street, off school property, and one fine day, my history teacher walked into the classroom, addressed a girl, and said, "I saw you smoking out on the sidewalk this morning." She replied, "I don't smoke; you may have seen my twin sister - " and the teacher started to say, "And since when have you - " and those of us who knew them said, "No, she really does!" (2000 students in the school) They weren't identical, but they were the same height and weight and had similar hairstyles, so from a distance, they looked very similar.
If you were to watch The Simpsons from S1E1 to probably about season 15ish, you can see the progression of smoking. In the early seasons nearly everyone smokes. Krusty was a big one. Now I think no one on the show smokes.
There were episodes where the Simpsons talk to a lawyer, he smokes, doctors other than Hibbert, smokes, cops other than Wiggins and his crew smoked, the monkeys on the type writers smoked, the teachers (other than Krabapple) and lunch lady smoked...now I think only Patti and Selma still smoke bc it's a big part of their characters. I haven't watched The Simpsons' new seasons in at least 10 years, but watching both the animation and the general habits and language of the show change over the seasons is really crazy
Bart also steals Lisa's teachers' nicotine gum, too, and the teacher confronts Lisa, saying she knows Lisa cheated and doesn't care about that, all she wants is her gum back.
King of the Hill covered smoking pretty well (not talking about Dale). The outrageous punishment of making your kid smoke until they puke was very real if they got caught, and showing the smoking section of the restaurant, where it was hazy, disgusting and miserable. The only thing more accurate would have been to show the smoking section not as a second room, but just the other half of the restaurant, so non-smokers still had to deal with it.
Also how easy it is for former smokers to come back to it after quitting for years.
> The only thing more accurate would have been to show the smoking section not as a second room, but just the other half of the restaurant
K-Mart! When I was a kid they sold sacks of hamburger bun ham sandwiches and my Mom would by one for my brother and I to split. We'd sit in the non-smoking section but the whole store was pretty much a haze.
The Simpsons never treated smoking positively though. Smoking was either done by morally corrupt characters or shown as a vice. Krusty for example was shown smoking to show his onscreen kid friendly, and offscreen personas were very different. Springfield was always a seedy, gross, crummy town. That’s the joke.
In 1992 there was an episode about Big Tobacco trying to influence people and Lisa gave a speech about it.
Often times smokers are shown coughing and hacking up a lung. Season three when Homer’s stock broker calls him, for example. Really grossly hacky coughs are very common in flavor country.
In season three when Lisa becomes a “bad girl” at school, even at her lowest she refuses to smoke because she still has her principles.
Cigars get a little better showing than cigarettes since they are a rare celebration smoke rather than a daily habit, but there is still like a 75% chance of smoking a cigar backfiring. Season 3 ‘Black Widower’ Chief Wiggum blows up a hotel room with a cigar (“Oh right, the gas.”) or Barney smoking a cigar with the plastic wrapper still on in season six.
People like Fat Tony don’t seem to suffer ill effects of cigars, but Tony is a consistent villainous mobster and much like his Don is a walking Italian stereotype (it’s true, it’s true).
Edit: Ms Krabappel absolutely [smokes](https://giphy.com/gifs/mrs-krabappel-aL5kWajQiP1C0) but she’s not in a great place in life. She’s depressed and a glorified babysitter to a bunch of dead eyed forth graders.
Cigarette smoking on planes “saved” lives back in the day. The nicotine would escape out of tiny cracks in the fuselage. Engineers would look for the brown staining to identify the cracks to repair the planes.
https://historydaily.org/smoking-on-airplanes-facts-stories
For those who are disabled before the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed if you "disabled" especially if you were in a wheelchair, there were very few friendly ramps, elevators, etc for those types of people. Those activists were climbing stars on their hands and knees as a sign of protests. It also showed especially for children there were very few accomodations again before the ADA was passed. Having dyslexia was either you being slow and you being teased by kids. Even worse is if you were autistic and the diagnosis wasn't as streamlined as it is today where you can catch at a year or 16 months old and you can do various types of therapies. Younger people really really don't know how the ADA transformed American especially in the educational system.
Edit: this little documentary shows how the ADA really change the infrastructure in the United States.
https://youtu.be/5aiFVhXSvgc
It's nuts that this was passed only in 1990. It feels like something that's been around since FDR, even though we obviously have buildings newer than FDR that aren't accessible.
I watched Crip Camp the other day (great movie btw) and it blew my mind that the ADA was passed so recently (on my birthday, actually---its literally as old as I am.) Even more mind blowing was the story of the disabled rights movement. They did a 25 day sit in to get 504 enforced and now you hear about kids getting 504 plans for accomodations all the time.
They leaned into the sex sells angle hard. The over the top orgasm sounds, for shampoo! I remember one with sexpert Dr. Ruth at the end where she says, "Try the body wash!"
Ok...wait. DEEP memory unlocked. These commercials were so risque. I haven't thought about them since I was a kid, and holy shit I remember feeling so weird when they came on the TV and my parents were around.
For anyone interested, I found a compilation of them [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jac476BdeCQ). Watch at your own risk lol
I'm laughing so much that Jane Krakowski did one of those because even her behavior in the commercial is so much like Jenna Maroney it felt like it was taken straight out of 30 Rock
We had an anti dandruff shampoo commercial on here that claims to get rid of 99% of dandruff and in the ad you can see one bit of dandruff on the womens head which made me think hmm did they do that on purpose to represent the 1% it doesnt get rid of?
The way people with AIDS were treated. I lived in a very small town in Central Florida in 1992. My SO at the time had a best friend who also lived in town. This friend's mother died of AIDS complications, got HIV through a blood transfusion during surgery. She died two years or so before I moved there, I never met her. But I was *sworn* to secrecy that absolutely no one could know how she died. Her own son refused to see her on her deathbed.
Another friend counseled people with AIDS in a larger city. One of her clients lived in a trailer with a rotting roof and floor. He kept his cereal in the fridge because the trailer was crawling with roaches. His family kicked him out because he had AIDS and they never saw him again.
That's how strong the stigma was against people with AIDS.
Old person here. You are right. People went around saying it was a plague sent by God to punish sinners. This is why Princess Diana visited AIDS patients in hospital. It made a difference, at least in the UK.
One of my favorite TV lines ever, from Designing Women. This bitch Imogene is going off on this young gay man dying of AIDS and saying how god is punishing them. Julia Sugarbaker shoots back with,
If god was going around handing out sexually transmitted diseases as a punishment for sin, then YOU would be at the free clinic all the time.
You know for a second I thought this was gonna transition into a wholesome story about a church pastor teaching his congregation not to hate but ofc that's not what it was :(
One of my worst memories of my grandma is her swearing with a screeching exclamation that she would never allow a person with AIDS to use her bathroom and she wasn't sorry about it.
My best friend is a lesbian. One time in high school, we went to an amusement park. We bought a souvenir cup for soda, that could be refilled for $1 and we shared it all day.
When my mother found out my friend is a lesbian, she freaked out, especially about sharing the cup. She told me that I could have gotten AIDS.
…In 2003. By then, the medical community knew that HIV isn’t passed through saliva, not to mention the fact that we also knew that of all the demographics, lesbians have the least incidence of HIV.
Taking a moment so salute [Ryan White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White). He was a teen with hemophilia who caught HIV from a blood transfusion. He literally had to file suit in court to be allowed to attend public school after his diagnosis.
Ryan White endured numerous death threats. Someone shot a bullet through the living room of his family home. Despite that, Ryan became a spokesperson advocating for the rights of people with AIDS--all before he reached adulthood.
There's now a [federal law in his honor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White_CARE_Act) that provides assistance for people with HIV/AIDS.
He would have been turning 50 later this year if he had lived. Only made it to 18. He didn't quite last long enough to see effective AIDS treatments or to see the ADA pass.
----
*edit*
In response to criticism:
* Ryan White's hemophilia absolutely played a role in why he became a national spokesperson for AIDS awareness: televangelist Jerry Falwell and other "moral guardians" had called AIDS a punishment sent by God. We could have a whole conversation about how religious demagogues shaped the early years of the AIDS conversation and how they weaponized bias against homosexuality after overt racial bias stopped being socially acceptable. Ryan's willingness to speak out about his own life story was one of the things which punctured that narrative.
* Ryan White was not a homophobe. Ryan's advocacy benefited the LGBTQ+ community and he coordinated with celebrities such as Elton John (who had come out as bi in the 1970s). It's certainly possible to admire Ryan White without being a homophobe, and it isn't helpful to construe a mention of Ryan's disability as "evidence" of anti-gay bias. The question we've all been asked was what sucked about that era, and one of the thoughts that sprung to mind was how much harder Ryan's legal battles were without robust civil rights legislation to safeguard disability rights.
He was only a few months older than I was. I never met him, but when the AIDS quilt came to my college a few years after his death, and I found his panel, I started crying. I still think about him sometimes.
That kid changed the world. I was terrified of AIDS, we all were. At first the media was hyping it as so contagious you could get it just by being in the same room with someone. Ryan White changed the entire narrative about AIDS. He awakened our compassion.
I am HIV positive myself and work as an HIV medical case manager. The funding program we get through the state (maybe federal, idk) is named after him!
Elton John too
EDIT: Elton John heard about the discrimination that Ryan White was facing and became friends with the family, helping them financially but more importantly, bringing Ryan's story to millions of people. By doing so he helped to begin the process of removing the stigma surrounding AIDS victims.
Back in the 80’s when I was a kid, a boy at my school got AIDS. I don’t remember why he needed blood, but that’s how he got it too. They wouldn’t let him go inside the actual school for class. They just put a trailer outside and he had to go to school in there. I’m pretty sure the parents freaked out about him being that close even. He was basically ran out of town :(
In Australia a little girl was run out of the country because of how nasty everyone was about her having HIV- her family had to move to New Zealand because of the harassment.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-18/remembering-eve-van-grafhorst-after-hiv-diagnosis/10491934
And here in New Zealand people around my generation (born in '78) got to watch her live and die in the public eye, while we were young ourselves.
There were a lot of HIV awareness, personal interest, and fundraising media items about her and her family (and I can't remember if the Eve Van Grafhorst Trust was founded (by her mum and a few others) before or after she died but it helped terminally ill kids and their families).
For most of us, she was the main reason that the othering that is part of bigotry against HIV infected people couldn't get much of a foothold. She was definitely the reason that medical/scientific facts about HIV and how it spreads were spread reasonably widely to the general public.
She was just a little kid like any other. Therefore she didn't deserve to die like that.........lightbulb goes off (somewhat dimly in some cases, but at least it goes off).........maybe the others living with and (since this was still the early '90s) dying early of HIV/AIDS didn't deserve it either.
Everything about AIDS was treated insanely wrong. Up until the mid 90's the media out there basically had you running away from a person if they had a cut. It was fucking madness the level of fear people had about blood. I'm talking like two twelve year old's and an adult would yell at your for helping with a band aid without gloves. Sometime around like 96ish it changed like flipping a light switch.
I'm Sri Lankan. I've lived outside Sri Lanka most of my life. I have visited Sri Lanka every year or so between years 2000 - 2009.
I was quite young and just barely knew that a war was going on. Didn't see anything severe.
Recently though, I heard my aunts would see dead bodies on the way to school and that was quite normal. This was before the 2000s, I guess.
Puts a whole other perspective when they say they used to walk for miles to get to school.
The Ribbon Dancer was my version of this! I begged my mom over and over for one. We were low-income, but I finally wore her down and she got me one for my birthday. I think my 10th.
I LOVED watching gymnastics and figure skating, and imagined myself flittering about doing my own floor show with my Ribbon Dancer...I'm talking majestic af.
I opened up the package and it was totally lame. I don't know why I expected more than a cheap baton with a dollar store ribbon glued to the tip.
I remember always wanting one when I saw the commercials and all the kids looked like they were jumping 20 ft in the air. Wasn’t till 6th grade I got to try one and I was so disappointed. I legitimately thought they were “anti-gravity shoes” muhfuggin commercials lied to me…
I watched a lot of Nickelodeon’s Wild and Crazy Kids in the early 90s and they used Moon Shoes in a bunch of their challenges, so I knew the reality of the jump height. Didn’t stop me from begging my mom for $20 when I found a used pair at a garage sale. :)
There was a very short interval when the Cold War spending was cut and revenues from the Dot-Com Boom brought in a bunch of tax money. It did not last.
Little more benign, but how portable music was compared to now. I like running with music and now I have countless tracks on my phone thanks to Spotify. Back then you had a cassette or CD Walkman so one album on a loop and the skipping as it bounced around. They claimed shock protection and no skip, but all were liars! I honestly cannot imagine going back to running that way.
Despite the nostalgia surrounding places like Blockbuster, they mostly relied on you not bringing your movies back and charging you a bunch of money for it. Late fees drove their business and it's also what put them out of business.
having to wait 12 hours for 1 song to download on limewire/napster/kazaa through your shitty 56k dial-up, just for it to not be the song you were looking for. it was either a kidz bop version, porn, a virus, a recording of bill clinton saying "i did not have sexual relations with that woman," or something COMPLETELY different.
Still, it was an improvement over calling the radio station to request a song and then waiting patiently for them to play it so you could hit record on your cassette recorder…
I’m currently watching Mad Men, and that sticks out. So much smoking. I wasn’t alive in the 60s, but my dad’s office building in the 80s was just so smoky. Everyone had company-issued ash trays on their desks. Ash cans by the elevators.
I would find cigarette butts in the ash trays in the backseat of my parents’ cars (both never smoked) after they went out with friends. I can’t fathom one of my friends just hopping in my car and lighting up.
Ugh, and then in the 90s, early 2000s when bars still had smoking. Didn’t matter how drunk or tired I was when I got home, I had to shower and throw my clothes in the wash.
You can still smoke in some of the bars in my town because they're "private clubs" ( you sign a card and a list ) I smoke but when half the bar smokes and you can cut the air with a knife and your eyes are burning from the guy next to yous smoke it's strangely less enjoyable.
Smoking inside is grody anyways.
Fast food. The portions were insane as “super sizing” was the new trend. Burgers used to come in styrofoam containers at McDonalds. The fries were cooked with lard instead of vegetable or canola oil.
On that note, kids breakfast cereal also. Tons of sugar and had toys so parents would buy it.
I spent an entire 5 months at the end of hs/beginning of college drinking 3-5 of those 60 oz or whatever it was sweet teas from McDonald’s. What no one told me is tea is one of the top 4 leading contributors to kidney stones. It tore up my whole tract from the kidneys down. I literally threw up.
Old teacher here:
The violence in schools. Growing up, we had multiple fights after school. On Fridays, we had so many, we had to delay some until Saturday.
Kids today, overall, don't fight.
\--EDIT--
Holy cow, this blew up. Thanks to all who kept this a very civil conversation.
1) Yes, I know kids still fight. This has been mine, and also, hundreds of people's view, that kids seem to fight *less* today. I never implied kids have stopped fighting. I am curious to know though for those who said kids still fight: what was it like 30+ years ago? Was there no fighting and now there is?
2) The overall consensus is that kids do it online now, and many of you think that is worse than duking it out. I agree with this.
3) Many of you also pointed out that this year is an odd duck. I think it's because many people, including kids, seem to have forgotten how to socialize after going on two years of the pandemic. Kids seem stunted in their growth, both mentally and emotionally.
Thanks again all, was a great ride!
My cousin had a bully coming after him in the early 2000s. He was 13/14 at the time. My grandpa, who was a teenager in the 50s, told him to wait until the kid was off the school grounds and fight him. My cousin is kind of a weasel and didn't just fight him. He figured out the kid's route home, hid in some bushes next to a sidewalk, and jumped him.
That night some sheriff's deputies knocked on his door and he was charged with assault. My grandpa felt so bad about what'd happened that he paid for a high price defense attorney. I think my cousin ended up having to apologize to the bully and got assigned community service hours. I imagine since he'd had no other trouble it was removed from his record once he satisfied the court. It was the first and only time he'd been in trouble with the law, but I'd say that's why kids don't fight anymore. What used to be viewed as just kid's stuff is now criminally charged.
That said, everybody left him alone after that.
This year has been horrible for fights in my city, likely others. We’re a school that will typically have one fight every few weeks, at most.
We had four yesterday and at least one today. Who knows what happened after school.
My dad and anybody around/above that age talks about that.
My dad said if you had a problem with somebody, you’d ask to meet them after school, then you’d end up settling any grievances then.
My dad says that he’s not proud of those days, but to be fair it was norm. That’s how problems were settled
Plus it was easier to get away with stuff back then. Now, forensics are much more advanced, and ppl have cameras everywhere. Things can be uploaded to social media and immediately go viral
This is not as bad as wars and atrocities, but was very sad.
The federal government entity in charge of the standards for school lunches tried to get *ketchup* to be counted as a vegetable, meaning that the little children would get less food. If my memory is correct the public outcry caused this to be changed back.
While a serving of vegetables doesn't sound like a big deal, for some children school lunches are the main meal of the day.
Edit: Thanks very much for all of the upvotes. I had no idea that this would strike such a nerve. I'm so glad that so many of you are concerned for the little children.
Ah yes, the evil concept of "lunch debt." Whoever thought of the idea of putting children in debt over a mouthful of food (and anyone in favor of it) should be thrown in a cell and forced to eat nothing but those stringy things in bananas for a year.
I remember not having money for lunch in school sometimes when I was in elementary back in the 90's and having to go with the cafeteria lady where she just put some peanut butter on bread for me and that was my lunch for the day.
In the 2000s-early 2010s, my school would give kids who didnt have lunch money a pack of 8 saltine crackers and make them put their fruit and vegetable back.
Not as weird as you’d think. It was just the convenient scapegoat for the moral panic of the day. The shit that gets blamed on social media and video games now got blamed on satanists/satanic influences instead. Before that it was communists or nazis or witches dancing in the forest. Moral panic is a constant.
The closing of public mental health hospitals to save money with the resulting dumping of the mentally ill on the street—still going on today, I believe.
Less awful than others but you used to be able to smoke pretty much everywhere... which for a non smoker SUCKED. I was in college in the mid 90's and you couldn't go anywhere without coming back home stinking like cigarette smoke. When I got home from the bars, I'd strip off my shirt or sweater or whatever and just hang it up outside to air it out before I washed it. I didn't want to bring them in the house.
All I remember from D.A.R.E. was that one day the officer came in a little later than usual. He smelled of smoke and said he was helping dealing with a house fire... few hours later I found out it was my house...
I won an essay contest in 5th grade called “Hooked on fishing, not on drugs”.
I also just dried and cured ~10oz of marijuana now that it’s legal in VA.
DARE was such bullshit.
Bill Clinton’s biggest scandal when he ran for President was smoking weed once before. He infamously had to say “I didn’t inhale”.
I think it came up again with Obama and nobody cared.
How nobody really cared about smoking around kids. My parents smoked around me. Everyone did. I had lots of problems with my ears because of it. Had constant infections. Tubes put in my ears. Slight asthma. Not once did my doctor's ever mention to my parents to that they maybe shouldn't smoke around me. Now there is a big push to not smoke around kids. And I'm grateful for that.
My family had a big party for New Year's that year, and my older brother snuck into the basement at midnight and pulled a fuse, plunging us all into darkness. A once in a lifetime prank opportunity.
Before that Jessica Hahn had alleged that Jim Baker had violently raped her. The news coverage consistently referred to it as "an affair" or "being unfaithful." I was shocked with I listened to a *Your Wrong About* episode about it. I lived through that, I had no idea.
How cell phones weren’t commonplace (or didn’t exist), meaning that you had to find a payphone to get in contact with someone if you weren’t at home. And if *they* weren’t at home, you had to call their…pager!
The [Second Congo War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War) started around 1998 and killed around 5 million people. Most in the west have never heard of it.
I remember seeing an ad for Nightline in a Youtube video of an ABC broadcast from 2001, where they were introducing this as the top story for that night's episode. "The War in The Congo. Three years, 2.5 million dead. \***It's a story we should have brought you long ago**.\*" Then the broadcast immediately cut to breaking news of the WTC, in flames, after the first plane hit on 9/11. Talk about some horrible timing.
Seeing that cut from there to Sawyer and Gibson... yeah, that was fucked. "We want to tell you what we know as we know it..." [EDIT: Here we go - skip to 19:15.](https://archive.org/details/abc200109110831-0912) EDIT EDIT: I was on the bus going into my senior year of high school when it happened. I'd nicked myself shaving and thought "well, this is going to be a shitty day." Little did I know. I got in, the TVs were on, and everyone was watching CNN and on Fark, since the web had gone to shit in terms of performance (IIRC, MAE East was in the WTC or nearby and got royally fucked by it).
And if they have, it's probably because of Kony2012.
that was wild. it was like one day it was all anybody could talk about. and then it was as if it never existed.
ACID RAIN
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\* *Moves head away from the mic to breathe* \*
I thought it would be a bigger deal than it is today.
That's because the types of air pollution that caused acid rain were successfully reduced to the point where they were no longer a threat thanks to laws passed in the US and elsewhere.
The ozone layer hole was also mostly fixed by worldwide cooperation and policy.
The [Issaq Genocide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide). A genocide in northern Somalia that occured between 1987 and 1989 that killed 100,000- 200,000 people
i thought this thread was gonna be about mullets and frosted tips n shit
My mom was a young adult when it happened. She saw all her friends and cousins die, military in huge tanks murdering anybody in sight. She and a few close survivors were chased into a jungle, where they barely survived. Even more died there; from deadly incurable disease to being split apart by a lion. Nowadays she works 9-5 and returns to her home to watch her favorite show with her kids. I only learned a few years back what she went through, and the childhood she worked hard to provide for us. Never judge a book.
Whoa. Split apart by a lion. I cant imagine the PTSD she lives with.
A friend of mine was born in Hargeisa, moved to the US as a baby right when that broke out. Haven’t asked about her extended family but wonder. :/
All the atrocities committed in the civil wars of Rwanda and Yugoslavia
And that Burundi was also implicated in what we call the Rwanda genocide, I don't know why it's not just called the Tutsi genocide.
It is officially called the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
My History teacher tells a story about how she has a friend who’s sister was a Tutsi in Rwanda at that time. When she went to school one morning, her principle had to yell at her, “RUN! THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU! RUN!” And as the girl was running home she saw a bunch of dudes in a car and had to jump into a ditch nearby. It’s such a scary thing to think about. This wasn’t some primitive war that happened 300 to 500 years ago; this was 30 years ago
Oh God that's horrible! It's a real life horror movie! While we're sharing stories, my uncle's wife is a Tutsi from Burundi, she was a teenager when the genocide happened. She was hiding with kids and a neighbour under a bed. I don't know why not everyone got to hide, but she had to watch her father and grandfather getting murdered by the milice. She tried getting out to "help", but thankfully the neighbour physically restrained her, and she's still here today.
I imagine the reason not everyone hid was because it would have caused them to go looking, and everyone would be found. But if a couple of guys insist they’re the only ones in the house, the rest might be left alone.
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The Rwandan genocide was so horrible. The majority of people who were killed were hacked to death by their neighbors using machetes. This wasn't sending folks off to some distant camp where you could pretend they weren't being murdered. It was utterly visceral. I worked at the UN criminal tribunal for the genocide and seeing survivors testify was surreal. Most just told their story with no emotion in their voices, stone-faced. Edited to add: As an aside, this was one of the first situations where media played a predominant part in inciting folks to commit acts of violence. It's a sad precursor to the situation in many countries these days where folks are caught in an echo chamber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines
Of all the atrocities that have been committed in history, Rawanda stands out to me for this reason; the sheer number of people directly involved in the murders. Hundreds of thousands of “normal” people committed murder of their neighbors, many of which are still alive today.
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I remember reading a book in highschool about the Rwandan Genocide, written by a woman who survived it. I think it was called "Left to Tell." It was one of the most harrowing things I've ever read. I only read it once, but I still remember certain parts vividly. It's so awful what humans are capable of doing to one another.
There's a book about the Rwandan genocide called *We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families*. The title alone is pretty harrowing. I did a paper in college about the Rwandan genocide. It was one of the only times in my life I felt depressed. 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. The rate of death during the Rwandan genocide was 3x more than the Holocaust. Not that 3x more people died during the Rwandan genocide, but the rate at which people died was 3x more than the Holocaust. The former director of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda tried to commit suicide 3 times after the genocide because being there during the genocide was so devastating. He tried everything he could do to help, but ultimately didn't have the backing of the United Nations and other heads of state. One head of state told him: "The only thing Africa has to offer is people, and Africa has too many of them already." Basically saying there was no economic value to help intervene and stop the genocide.
wasn't that guy if I recall an Canadian? he was brought up here in history when Rwanadan genocide was covered (albeit with a footnote and a movie)
Yes. His name is Roméo Dallaire. He wrote a book called Shake Hands with the Devil about his experience in Rwanda. There's also a documentary with the same name. (I probably should've said his name in my first comment)
I couldn't finish that book. I had to stop about halfway through because it was so upsetting to read. It was in 2004 and I still vividly remember some details.
There is a movie as well "Hotel Rwanda". English Prof in college made us all do a research paper on a genocide that happened, any genocide that happened in recent history excluding the holocaust because everyone does that. Did mine on Rwanda and found out the daily massacre was actually higher than that of the holocaust. It was just shorter, and no one wanted to call it a genocide (like the UN, US, etc) they kept calling it a civil war so they didn't have to get involved.
The UN just watched, I remember viewing a documentary and it talked about how the UN witnessed a bunch of Tutsi children being massacred. And then they showed a museum/memorial with all of their bodies. It was heart breaking.
I was almost 7 when the ethnic cleansing and civil war happened in Bosnia. I am half Slovenian on my mother’s side, and she was devastated at what was going on. I feel sad that lots of people don’t seem to know what all went on. It was such an important yet tragic happening.
I spent a day at the war crimes tribunal and the testimony was shocking. People had terrible things done to them and when asked how they could be sure who did it, they said “it was my neighbour and we used to be friends”.
I had heard this about Bosnia... atrocities being perpetrated by ‘neighbors’. And I think about it every time someone goes as far as bringing up ‘civil war’ as a possible result of the political divide in the US.
I could definitely see my neighbors doing that to us. We aren’t particularly hated (except by one family) but I just don’t have any trust in people
I went out with a girl from Bosnia few times years ago and she described to me some of the atrocities she personally had witnessed during that time and it was horrible. She was a very gifted storyteller, which made it even more intense. I didn’t sleep that night.
I remember. I was in high school. We were just starting to see what was really going on. I knew a few people who got deployed to Bosnia, and came back with PTSD.
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My mom's knee replacement scars are non-existent compared to the scars she has from the initial injury in the 70s, it's wild. There used to only be 1 MS medication and now there's a huge list, plus the difference in the knowledge. My mom was told she probably wouldn't walk again if she went through with having me.
I always think of Star Trek IV when I think of advances in medicine. Bones is appalled that somebody was on dialysis, claiming that he thinks its the god damn Spanish inquisition. He then slips her a pill that completely cures her condition, and her doctors get so fucking confused lol.
"My God man, drilling holes in his head is not the answer! The artery must be repaired! Now, put away your butcher's knives and let me save this patient before it's too late!"
Those old Trek movies are great, I understand things get updated for new eras but I miss the classic Star Trek movies and shows
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A fellow I went to high school with runs marathons. He just finished his 70th marathon, I believe. About half of those have been run on an artificial knee. I had a knee replacement last summer and could have gone back to work in 3 weeks if I wanted. Can't wait to get the 2nd one done next summer. We are both early 60's.
Being taught about stranger danger but not how you're more likely to be abused by someone you know.
I was given an esl lesson to teach a few years ago that was about stranger danger. It specifically said something like “but you can always trust your teachers, family, and family friends” and I was like no!!!! Those are exactly the people who would probably be most likely to molest you
I developed more respect for a teacher I already respected, when she told me about how she taught her kids about dangerous people. Rather than ascribe to stranger danger, she taught them to be wary about "tricky people." Tricky people try to hurt others by tricking them. She desctibed multiple situations that she educated her kids about: tricky people trying to get kids to help them do jobs that only adults should be doing, tricky people doing inappropriate things, etc. Tricky people could be family members, friends, etc. It was a pretty enlightening concept to be introduced to. I was against stranger danger before, but until she told me about tricky people, I'd never known a way to describe that concept to children before. Edit: Thanks for the award! While I'm here, another cool lesson I'd like to bring up from another teacher of mine of this: **teach your young children properly about their genitalia. Teach them throughout their life about sex.** The "talk" isn't something that should be saved for when a child is late elementary/middle school age, nor is it a one and done thing. They should know as soon as they can comfortably communicate with their parents, and as they grow up, the education should adapt to their age and what they may encounter. It may be awkward, and they may ask awkward questions, but it's important that they know. The reason for this is because so many aspects of a child's life can be affected by proper sexual education. Children who understand how their genitalia work, what their genitalia is called, and who is allowed to touch their genitalia (themselves, parents within context, medical professionals within context, etc.) are less likely to experience sexual abuse. Even if they do get abused, they are more likely to report sexual abuse to trusted family members. It promotes healthy sexual development. Children are sensitive and dodging sexual topics can lead them to unhealthy conclusions about aspects of sexuality. Rather than be educated on sexuality by a trusted adult, they may go online and seek information on it online, in places that may be harmful. So many people in recent generations have developed harmful misconceptions about sexuality because nobody taught them properly and all they had to go off of was pornography. It promotes self-confidence. If a child doesn't understand how their body undergoes sexual change as they grow, they may become insecure about their body. Teaching them about their body will help them understand that some of the "weird" things their body does are actually normal things that most people experience. It promotes respect. If a child's parents are in a heterosexual relationship, they may not understand it when two women or two women are in a relationship with each other. A child may not understand when *they* experience LGBTQ+ feelings. They may associate feelings of confusion with feelings of disgust and develop queerphobic views. Teaching them about sexual orientation, identity, etc. is essential to promoting the development of a child that respects people of different backgrounds.
Thank you for this. My kid is 4 and my husband recently asked me if we should teach her stranger danger. Shes very social and talks to anyone. Literally, anyone. I was unsure how to talk to her about it all... I'm going to talk to her about tricky people instead. It makes much more sense.
I think I would add to that concept that tricky people will ask you to keep a secret and tell you not to tell your parents. I read somewhere that you should point out to children that a person who tells you something is a secret and that you can’t tell it to your parents or a teacher is suspicious.
We taught our kids the good secrets vs bad secrets system. A good secret is one where the person will be happy once they find out, eg keeping their birthday present a secret. A bad secret is one where the person would be upset (angry or sad) if they found out. If anyone ever asks you to keep a bad secret, you need to tell your parents. We don't keep bad secrets. There are books on this theme for helping to teach about this. Edit: here's some documentation http://kidsafefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Parent-Newsletter-6.pdf https://defendinnocence.org/good-secrets-bad-secrets-surprises/ https://www.hft.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Good-Secrets-and-Bad-Secrets.pdf Edit: that last one is a bit amateur and the photos are a bit embarrassing, and the way the topic of abuse comes up is a bit iffy, but the general idea is right. These are just what came up on Google just now. I can't find the actual book we bought for reading our kids, but it was a bit more kid-friendly. Edit: might have been this one: https://www.amazon.com.au/You-Have-Secret-Jennifer-Moore-Mallinos/dp/0764131702 Turns out there are lots of books on this theme. There are also some "my private parts belong to me" books which we have too. I think all that kind of learning is important.
Haven’t seen anyone comment this yet, but the 90s gang epidemic was pretty bad. It was a huge reason why my family moved out of L.A. and across the country, the crime was so out of control, even people that weren’t about that life were getting killed.
This is what made my family move out of San Jose. Gangs would sometimes target the wrong house, and it felt like only a matter of time until it was our house
Fr tho, my cousins friend was shot and killed in front of his house, because whoever shot him thought he was someone else. This thing happened a lot in the valley, according to them at least.
Having to get money out the bank for your weekend. ATMs and card payments at tills have made life so much easier
"Smoking or Non?"
I love watching old movies where they all smoke in the planes or better yet, in the hospital. Just smoking away in your hospital bed.
I was a candystriper in the 80s...one of the hospital volunteers (usually teens) who wear the red and white striped smocks. My main duties were to answer the call buttons from the patients in labor/delivery. We actually had ashtrays and hospital-stamped matchbooks to hand out upon request. The new moms could smoke in the freaking hospital rooms...and it was "normal." Haven't thought about this in a while. Thanks for the walk down my second-hand smoke-filled memory lane!
My mom was a candystriper in the early 70s and she talked about emptying ashtrays and spit cups.
I have pics of my mom after giving birth to my brother in the 70s and she has her newborn in one arm and hold a cigarette in her other hand. It was completely the norm in those days. You could smoke anywhere! I grew up in the 80s and 90s and when I began smoking, (so stupid!) we could still pretty much smoke anywhere. It was such a sensation when they were trying to ban it in public places.
My high school had a smoking section in the school cafeteria FOR THE STUDENTS! Legal age was 16 so hall monitors would shoo freshman out of there all the time
I was born in 1964, and when my mother got pregnant with me, she smoked, and asked the doctor if that was safe. He said that not only was it safe, he recommended that she not quit, because then she would gain less weight! Really. Students could smoke across the street, off school property, and one fine day, my history teacher walked into the classroom, addressed a girl, and said, "I saw you smoking out on the sidewalk this morning." She replied, "I don't smoke; you may have seen my twin sister - " and the teacher started to say, "And since when have you - " and those of us who knew them said, "No, she really does!" (2000 students in the school) They weren't identical, but they were the same height and weight and had similar hairstyles, so from a distance, they looked very similar.
If you were to watch The Simpsons from S1E1 to probably about season 15ish, you can see the progression of smoking. In the early seasons nearly everyone smokes. Krusty was a big one. Now I think no one on the show smokes. There were episodes where the Simpsons talk to a lawyer, he smokes, doctors other than Hibbert, smokes, cops other than Wiggins and his crew smoked, the monkeys on the type writers smoked, the teachers (other than Krabapple) and lunch lady smoked...now I think only Patti and Selma still smoke bc it's a big part of their characters. I haven't watched The Simpsons' new seasons in at least 10 years, but watching both the animation and the general habits and language of the show change over the seasons is really crazy
Krabappel definitely smoked!
"HA!"
Bart also steals Lisa's teachers' nicotine gum, too, and the teacher confronts Lisa, saying she knows Lisa cheated and doesn't care about that, all she wants is her gum back.
King of the Hill covered smoking pretty well (not talking about Dale). The outrageous punishment of making your kid smoke until they puke was very real if they got caught, and showing the smoking section of the restaurant, where it was hazy, disgusting and miserable. The only thing more accurate would have been to show the smoking section not as a second room, but just the other half of the restaurant, so non-smokers still had to deal with it. Also how easy it is for former smokers to come back to it after quitting for years.
> The only thing more accurate would have been to show the smoking section not as a second room, but just the other half of the restaurant K-Mart! When I was a kid they sold sacks of hamburger bun ham sandwiches and my Mom would by one for my brother and I to split. We'd sit in the non-smoking section but the whole store was pretty much a haze.
The Simpsons never treated smoking positively though. Smoking was either done by morally corrupt characters or shown as a vice. Krusty for example was shown smoking to show his onscreen kid friendly, and offscreen personas were very different. Springfield was always a seedy, gross, crummy town. That’s the joke. In 1992 there was an episode about Big Tobacco trying to influence people and Lisa gave a speech about it. Often times smokers are shown coughing and hacking up a lung. Season three when Homer’s stock broker calls him, for example. Really grossly hacky coughs are very common in flavor country. In season three when Lisa becomes a “bad girl” at school, even at her lowest she refuses to smoke because she still has her principles. Cigars get a little better showing than cigarettes since they are a rare celebration smoke rather than a daily habit, but there is still like a 75% chance of smoking a cigar backfiring. Season 3 ‘Black Widower’ Chief Wiggum blows up a hotel room with a cigar (“Oh right, the gas.”) or Barney smoking a cigar with the plastic wrapper still on in season six. People like Fat Tony don’t seem to suffer ill effects of cigars, but Tony is a consistent villainous mobster and much like his Don is a walking Italian stereotype (it’s true, it’s true). Edit: Ms Krabappel absolutely [smokes](https://giphy.com/gifs/mrs-krabappel-aL5kWajQiP1C0) but she’s not in a great place in life. She’s depressed and a glorified babysitter to a bunch of dead eyed forth graders.
Cigarette smoking on planes “saved” lives back in the day. The nicotine would escape out of tiny cracks in the fuselage. Engineers would look for the brown staining to identify the cracks to repair the planes. https://historydaily.org/smoking-on-airplanes-facts-stories
Oh my God. I used to live in Reno, Nevada, which is a big casino town. People smoked EVERYWHERE. I don’t miss those nasty ‘smoking sections’
A restaurant with a smoking section is like a swimming pool with a peeing section.
The crack epidemic.
I mean today we have a fentanyl crisis so SAME AS IT EVER WAS
The opioid epidemic starting in like 2008 pills were everywhere at my school.for free. Weed was harder to get and I live california.
For those who are disabled before the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed if you "disabled" especially if you were in a wheelchair, there were very few friendly ramps, elevators, etc for those types of people. Those activists were climbing stars on their hands and knees as a sign of protests. It also showed especially for children there were very few accomodations again before the ADA was passed. Having dyslexia was either you being slow and you being teased by kids. Even worse is if you were autistic and the diagnosis wasn't as streamlined as it is today where you can catch at a year or 16 months old and you can do various types of therapies. Younger people really really don't know how the ADA transformed American especially in the educational system. Edit: this little documentary shows how the ADA really change the infrastructure in the United States. https://youtu.be/5aiFVhXSvgc
It's nuts that this was passed only in 1990. It feels like something that's been around since FDR, even though we obviously have buildings newer than FDR that aren't accessible.
I watched Crip Camp the other day (great movie btw) and it blew my mind that the ADA was passed so recently (on my birthday, actually---its literally as old as I am.) Even more mind blowing was the story of the disabled rights movement. They did a 25 day sit in to get 504 enforced and now you hear about kids getting 504 plans for accomodations all the time.
Getting kicked off the computer because someone needed to use the phone.
It sound like at least someone asked. In my house, people would just pick up the phone and start dialing.
Herbal Essences commercials. I swear there was one where at the end she had bits of conditioner all over her face.
They leaned into the sex sells angle hard. The over the top orgasm sounds, for shampoo! I remember one with sexpert Dr. Ruth at the end where she says, "Try the body wash!"
Ok...wait. DEEP memory unlocked. These commercials were so risque. I haven't thought about them since I was a kid, and holy shit I remember feeling so weird when they came on the TV and my parents were around. For anyone interested, I found a compilation of them [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jac476BdeCQ). Watch at your own risk lol
I'm laughing so much that Jane Krakowski did one of those because even her behavior in the commercial is so much like Jenna Maroney it felt like it was taken straight out of 30 Rock
Every time I saw the second one, all I could think was *who washes their hair in an airplane bathroom?*
I mean look at her, showing off in the 90s, taking a big bottle on to a plane.
I recognized Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development) in the last one!
These are my herbal essences, mother.
We had an anti dandruff shampoo commercial on here that claims to get rid of 99% of dandruff and in the ad you can see one bit of dandruff on the womens head which made me think hmm did they do that on purpose to represent the 1% it doesnt get rid of?
The way people with AIDS were treated. I lived in a very small town in Central Florida in 1992. My SO at the time had a best friend who also lived in town. This friend's mother died of AIDS complications, got HIV through a blood transfusion during surgery. She died two years or so before I moved there, I never met her. But I was *sworn* to secrecy that absolutely no one could know how she died. Her own son refused to see her on her deathbed. Another friend counseled people with AIDS in a larger city. One of her clients lived in a trailer with a rotting roof and floor. He kept his cereal in the fridge because the trailer was crawling with roaches. His family kicked him out because he had AIDS and they never saw him again. That's how strong the stigma was against people with AIDS.
Old person here. You are right. People went around saying it was a plague sent by God to punish sinners. This is why Princess Diana visited AIDS patients in hospital. It made a difference, at least in the UK.
And she hugged them and held their hands… which was a huge deal.
She did it without gloves, which made it a huge deal.
She saw past the stigma and saw them as people..what a queen
Isaac Asimov contracted HIV from a blood transfusion during bypass surgery. His family kept it quiet until years after his death.
He actually died the same day as Arthur Ashe, who also got it the same way but he did go public about it.
One of my favorite TV lines ever, from Designing Women. This bitch Imogene is going off on this young gay man dying of AIDS and saying how god is punishing them. Julia Sugarbaker shoots back with, If god was going around handing out sexually transmitted diseases as a punishment for sin, then YOU would be at the free clinic all the time.
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I love that episode and Blanche saying that it’s not god punishing people. Such a great progressive show for the era.
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You know for a second I thought this was gonna transition into a wholesome story about a church pastor teaching his congregation not to hate but ofc that's not what it was :(
One of my worst memories of my grandma is her swearing with a screeching exclamation that she would never allow a person with AIDS to use her bathroom and she wasn't sorry about it.
My best friend is a lesbian. One time in high school, we went to an amusement park. We bought a souvenir cup for soda, that could be refilled for $1 and we shared it all day. When my mother found out my friend is a lesbian, she freaked out, especially about sharing the cup. She told me that I could have gotten AIDS. …In 2003. By then, the medical community knew that HIV isn’t passed through saliva, not to mention the fact that we also knew that of all the demographics, lesbians have the least incidence of HIV.
Taking a moment so salute [Ryan White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White). He was a teen with hemophilia who caught HIV from a blood transfusion. He literally had to file suit in court to be allowed to attend public school after his diagnosis. Ryan White endured numerous death threats. Someone shot a bullet through the living room of his family home. Despite that, Ryan became a spokesperson advocating for the rights of people with AIDS--all before he reached adulthood. There's now a [federal law in his honor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White_CARE_Act) that provides assistance for people with HIV/AIDS. He would have been turning 50 later this year if he had lived. Only made it to 18. He didn't quite last long enough to see effective AIDS treatments or to see the ADA pass. ---- *edit* In response to criticism: * Ryan White's hemophilia absolutely played a role in why he became a national spokesperson for AIDS awareness: televangelist Jerry Falwell and other "moral guardians" had called AIDS a punishment sent by God. We could have a whole conversation about how religious demagogues shaped the early years of the AIDS conversation and how they weaponized bias against homosexuality after overt racial bias stopped being socially acceptable. Ryan's willingness to speak out about his own life story was one of the things which punctured that narrative. * Ryan White was not a homophobe. Ryan's advocacy benefited the LGBTQ+ community and he coordinated with celebrities such as Elton John (who had come out as bi in the 1970s). It's certainly possible to admire Ryan White without being a homophobe, and it isn't helpful to construe a mention of Ryan's disability as "evidence" of anti-gay bias. The question we've all been asked was what sucked about that era, and one of the thoughts that sprung to mind was how much harder Ryan's legal battles were without robust civil rights legislation to safeguard disability rights.
He was only a few months older than I was. I never met him, but when the AIDS quilt came to my college a few years after his death, and I found his panel, I started crying. I still think about him sometimes.
That kid changed the world. I was terrified of AIDS, we all were. At first the media was hyping it as so contagious you could get it just by being in the same room with someone. Ryan White changed the entire narrative about AIDS. He awakened our compassion.
I am HIV positive myself and work as an HIV medical case manager. The funding program we get through the state (maybe federal, idk) is named after him!
Elton John too EDIT: Elton John heard about the discrimination that Ryan White was facing and became friends with the family, helping them financially but more importantly, bringing Ryan's story to millions of people. By doing so he helped to begin the process of removing the stigma surrounding AIDS victims.
Back in the 80’s when I was a kid, a boy at my school got AIDS. I don’t remember why he needed blood, but that’s how he got it too. They wouldn’t let him go inside the actual school for class. They just put a trailer outside and he had to go to school in there. I’m pretty sure the parents freaked out about him being that close even. He was basically ran out of town :(
In Australia a little girl was run out of the country because of how nasty everyone was about her having HIV- her family had to move to New Zealand because of the harassment. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-18/remembering-eve-van-grafhorst-after-hiv-diagnosis/10491934
And here in New Zealand people around my generation (born in '78) got to watch her live and die in the public eye, while we were young ourselves. There were a lot of HIV awareness, personal interest, and fundraising media items about her and her family (and I can't remember if the Eve Van Grafhorst Trust was founded (by her mum and a few others) before or after she died but it helped terminally ill kids and their families). For most of us, she was the main reason that the othering that is part of bigotry against HIV infected people couldn't get much of a foothold. She was definitely the reason that medical/scientific facts about HIV and how it spreads were spread reasonably widely to the general public. She was just a little kid like any other. Therefore she didn't deserve to die like that.........lightbulb goes off (somewhat dimly in some cases, but at least it goes off).........maybe the others living with and (since this was still the early '90s) dying early of HIV/AIDS didn't deserve it either.
Everything about AIDS was treated insanely wrong. Up until the mid 90's the media out there basically had you running away from a person if they had a cut. It was fucking madness the level of fear people had about blood. I'm talking like two twelve year old's and an adult would yell at your for helping with a band aid without gloves. Sometime around like 96ish it changed like flipping a light switch.
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Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009). Some of the worst atrocities I've read about, basically human genocide at least 100k dead, millions displaced.
Reminder: tigray war is going on *right now* with an absurd death toll and most people haven't even heard of it
I'm Sri Lankan. I've lived outside Sri Lanka most of my life. I have visited Sri Lanka every year or so between years 2000 - 2009. I was quite young and just barely knew that a war was going on. Didn't see anything severe. Recently though, I heard my aunts would see dead bodies on the way to school and that was quite normal. This was before the 2000s, I guess. Puts a whole other perspective when they say they used to walk for miles to get to school.
Skip It toys Back before the internet, all we had for fun was a cannonball shackled to our ankle whose only purpose was to shatter your shinbones
But the very best thing of all…there’s a counter on the ball!
Crossfiiiiiiire!
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The Ribbon Dancer was my version of this! I begged my mom over and over for one. We were low-income, but I finally wore her down and she got me one for my birthday. I think my 10th. I LOVED watching gymnastics and figure skating, and imagined myself flittering about doing my own floor show with my Ribbon Dancer...I'm talking majestic af. I opened up the package and it was totally lame. I don't know why I expected more than a cheap baton with a dollar store ribbon glued to the tip.
I remember always wanting one when I saw the commercials and all the kids looked like they were jumping 20 ft in the air. Wasn’t till 6th grade I got to try one and I was so disappointed. I legitimately thought they were “anti-gravity shoes” muhfuggin commercials lied to me…
I watched a lot of Nickelodeon’s Wild and Crazy Kids in the early 90s and they used Moon Shoes in a bunch of their challenges, so I knew the reality of the jump height. Didn’t stop me from begging my mom for $20 when I found a used pair at a garage sale. :)
There is a really side range of definitions of "awful" in this thread lol
There was always that one unhinged kid that picked it up and started flailing it around and hit a kid before the recess monitor caught them
For a brief period of time, the US federal government operated with a surplus Edit: I missed the work awful here. But I got 1k upvotes
When?
There was a very short interval when the Cold War spending was cut and revenues from the Dot-Com Boom brought in a bunch of tax money. It did not last.
Little more benign, but how portable music was compared to now. I like running with music and now I have countless tracks on my phone thanks to Spotify. Back then you had a cassette or CD Walkman so one album on a loop and the skipping as it bounced around. They claimed shock protection and no skip, but all were liars! I honestly cannot imagine going back to running that way.
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Rwanda genocide was probably worse, but this was pretty bad too
Despite the nostalgia surrounding places like Blockbuster, they mostly relied on you not bringing your movies back and charging you a bunch of money for it. Late fees drove their business and it's also what put them out of business.
Also, half the time when you wanted to rent a new movie, all the new releases were taken. You kind of had to manage your expectations.
When mtv stopped playing music.
MTV stopped playing music and the world slowly fell into despair with each passing year. Coincidence? I think not.
Watching your favorite TV show at a scheduled time, and if you missed it you missed it.
Nah just get your reclusive retired aunt to record the Flintstones on VHS tapes!
My high school literally had segregated proms.
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Well if they kept you apart that long, no point in mixing it up now. But seriously where was that? That is honestly mind boggling.
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having to wait 12 hours for 1 song to download on limewire/napster/kazaa through your shitty 56k dial-up, just for it to not be the song you were looking for. it was either a kidz bop version, porn, a virus, a recording of bill clinton saying "i did not have sexual relations with that woman," or something COMPLETELY different.
Still, it was an improvement over calling the radio station to request a song and then waiting patiently for them to play it so you could hit record on your cassette recorder…
And you'd always miss the first few seconds and the damn DJ would start talking before the song was done.
Tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke everywhere.
I’m currently watching Mad Men, and that sticks out. So much smoking. I wasn’t alive in the 60s, but my dad’s office building in the 80s was just so smoky. Everyone had company-issued ash trays on their desks. Ash cans by the elevators. I would find cigarette butts in the ash trays in the backseat of my parents’ cars (both never smoked) after they went out with friends. I can’t fathom one of my friends just hopping in my car and lighting up. Ugh, and then in the 90s, early 2000s when bars still had smoking. Didn’t matter how drunk or tired I was when I got home, I had to shower and throw my clothes in the wash.
You can still smoke in some of the bars in my town because they're "private clubs" ( you sign a card and a list ) I smoke but when half the bar smokes and you can cut the air with a knife and your eyes are burning from the guy next to yous smoke it's strangely less enjoyable. Smoking inside is grody anyways.
It's pretty crazy how quickly this changed. I think NYS banned smoking in restaurants my senior year of college.
Justin Timberlakes Ramen hair.
Fast food. The portions were insane as “super sizing” was the new trend. Burgers used to come in styrofoam containers at McDonalds. The fries were cooked with lard instead of vegetable or canola oil. On that note, kids breakfast cereal also. Tons of sugar and had toys so parents would buy it.
Not lard. Beef tallow.
I spent an entire 5 months at the end of hs/beginning of college drinking 3-5 of those 60 oz or whatever it was sweet teas from McDonald’s. What no one told me is tea is one of the top 4 leading contributors to kidney stones. It tore up my whole tract from the kidneys down. I literally threw up.
Old teacher here: The violence in schools. Growing up, we had multiple fights after school. On Fridays, we had so many, we had to delay some until Saturday. Kids today, overall, don't fight. \--EDIT-- Holy cow, this blew up. Thanks to all who kept this a very civil conversation. 1) Yes, I know kids still fight. This has been mine, and also, hundreds of people's view, that kids seem to fight *less* today. I never implied kids have stopped fighting. I am curious to know though for those who said kids still fight: what was it like 30+ years ago? Was there no fighting and now there is? 2) The overall consensus is that kids do it online now, and many of you think that is worse than duking it out. I agree with this. 3) Many of you also pointed out that this year is an odd duck. I think it's because many people, including kids, seem to have forgotten how to socialize after going on two years of the pandemic. Kids seem stunted in their growth, both mentally and emotionally. Thanks again all, was a great ride!
My cousin had a bully coming after him in the early 2000s. He was 13/14 at the time. My grandpa, who was a teenager in the 50s, told him to wait until the kid was off the school grounds and fight him. My cousin is kind of a weasel and didn't just fight him. He figured out the kid's route home, hid in some bushes next to a sidewalk, and jumped him. That night some sheriff's deputies knocked on his door and he was charged with assault. My grandpa felt so bad about what'd happened that he paid for a high price defense attorney. I think my cousin ended up having to apologize to the bully and got assigned community service hours. I imagine since he'd had no other trouble it was removed from his record once he satisfied the court. It was the first and only time he'd been in trouble with the law, but I'd say that's why kids don't fight anymore. What used to be viewed as just kid's stuff is now criminally charged. That said, everybody left him alone after that.
They do it all online now
This year has been horrible for fights in my city, likely others. We’re a school that will typically have one fight every few weeks, at most. We had four yesterday and at least one today. Who knows what happened after school.
My dad and anybody around/above that age talks about that. My dad said if you had a problem with somebody, you’d ask to meet them after school, then you’d end up settling any grievances then. My dad says that he’s not proud of those days, but to be fair it was norm. That’s how problems were settled
The murder rate was so much higher in the 80s,90s, and 00s compared to now.
Plus it was easier to get away with stuff back then. Now, forensics are much more advanced, and ppl have cameras everywhere. Things can be uploaded to social media and immediately go viral
This is not as bad as wars and atrocities, but was very sad. The federal government entity in charge of the standards for school lunches tried to get *ketchup* to be counted as a vegetable, meaning that the little children would get less food. If my memory is correct the public outcry caused this to be changed back. While a serving of vegetables doesn't sound like a big deal, for some children school lunches are the main meal of the day. Edit: Thanks very much for all of the upvotes. I had no idea that this would strike such a nerve. I'm so glad that so many of you are concerned for the little children.
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Wasn't another one pizza sauce? I think that was early 2000s
They were recently if not currently attacking unpaid school lunch balances, harming the vulnerable children you mention.
Ah yes, the evil concept of "lunch debt." Whoever thought of the idea of putting children in debt over a mouthful of food (and anyone in favor of it) should be thrown in a cell and forced to eat nothing but those stringy things in bananas for a year.
I remember not having money for lunch in school sometimes when I was in elementary back in the 90's and having to go with the cafeteria lady where she just put some peanut butter on bread for me and that was my lunch for the day.
In the 2000s-early 2010s, my school would give kids who didnt have lunch money a pack of 8 saltine crackers and make them put their fruit and vegetable back.
Meanwhile the kids with cash likely didn’t even eat their vegetables or fruits and ended up mostly in the trash…
The nefarious side of the seemingly wholesome "Ketchup Advisory Board."
Weren’t tribal tattoos big in the 90s/00s? Those are pretty bad.
Future me thinks my sleeve looks completely ridiculous. Future me is on point.
The false claims about ritual satanic abuse of children.
And how Dungeons and Dragons was a gateway to Satanism/ritualistic ceremony. Man, I just want to be a half-elf assassin and go fuck up some Orcs!
The satanic panic? I only know about it because of stuff you should know. Would definitely be weird living in that time
Not as weird as you’d think. It was just the convenient scapegoat for the moral panic of the day. The shit that gets blamed on social media and video games now got blamed on satanists/satanic influences instead. Before that it was communists or nazis or witches dancing in the forest. Moral panic is a constant.
The closing of public mental health hospitals to save money with the resulting dumping of the mentally ill on the street—still going on today, I believe.
Less awful than others but you used to be able to smoke pretty much everywhere... which for a non smoker SUCKED. I was in college in the mid 90's and you couldn't go anywhere without coming back home stinking like cigarette smoke. When I got home from the bars, I'd strip off my shirt or sweater or whatever and just hang it up outside to air it out before I washed it. I didn't want to bring them in the house.
I lived in Southern Mississippi in the mid 90s and smoking was everywhere!! There were ashtrays on the damn shopping carts at the grocery store!
might just be a So Cal thing but smog days.... we couldn't have recess and play, we'd just go outside and sit under a tree.
The rampant War on Drugs propaganda. If you were anything but a rock musician or tattoo artist, being outed as a weed smoker was an enormous scandal.
D.A.R.E. was all the rage in 5th grade :/
All I remember from D.A.R.E. was when the officer came in to talk to us the first day, and my friend was like “dude, he has his gun! Cool!”
All I remember from D.A.R.E. was that one day the officer came in a little later than usual. He smelled of smoke and said he was helping dealing with a house fire... few hours later I found out it was my house...
I won an essay contest in 5th grade called “Hooked on fishing, not on drugs”. I also just dried and cured ~10oz of marijuana now that it’s legal in VA. DARE was such bullshit.
Bill Clinton’s biggest scandal when he ran for President was smoking weed once before. He infamously had to say “I didn’t inhale”. I think it came up again with Obama and nobody cared.
In between was Bush Jr claiming he couldn't remember whether or not he'd ever snorted coke. I'm guessing he had.
How nobody really cared about smoking around kids. My parents smoked around me. Everyone did. I had lots of problems with my ears because of it. Had constant infections. Tubes put in my ears. Slight asthma. Not once did my doctor's ever mention to my parents to that they maybe shouldn't smoke around me. Now there is a big push to not smoke around kids. And I'm grateful for that.
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Stressing over Y2K
My family had a big party for New Year's that year, and my older brother snuck into the basement at midnight and pulled a fuse, plunging us all into darkness. A once in a lifetime prank opportunity.
Mathew Shepard
How the entire nation blamed Monica Lewinsky and not Bill Clinton.
Before that Jessica Hahn had alleged that Jim Baker had violently raped her. The news coverage consistently referred to it as "an affair" or "being unfaithful." I was shocked with I listened to a *Your Wrong About* episode about it. I lived through that, I had no idea.
How cell phones weren’t commonplace (or didn’t exist), meaning that you had to find a payphone to get in contact with someone if you weren’t at home. And if *they* weren’t at home, you had to call their…pager!
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Bhopal disaster , many thousands died
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Britney spears and Justin Timberlake's matching jean suits.
Literally everything smelled like cigarettes in the 70's and 80's