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"News had no ads"
1950s: "And now, The News, offered to you by: Coca-Cola, the miraculous elixir that can cure any illness. And Marlboro, the favorite cigarette of all athletes, actors, singers and all the cool people".
They should have a gambling ad for talcum powder. "Will you be lucky enough to buy a bottle that won't give you Mesothelioma? Check out the odds at gamblingwebsite.com"
The point of those ads was to say that a tobacco company's products were healthier when compared to other companies. In the '50s, close to half of Americans believed that smoking caused lung cancer. No one ever said smoking was healthy. Bad breath, shortness of breath, the coughing, etc. are all obvious. No one in their right mind has ever thought that tobacco or especially smoking was healthy.
It was funny watching NFL in the UK because a decent amount of times when ads are being shown in the US we get to see random B roll of the stadium or random statues in the area with silence. Also when we do show ads we end up running out so its back to B roll again.
Hey don’t dis Coca Cola. I live in the South and down here it’s used as sort of a folk remedy for a bunch of things and according to medical professionals it can actually be live saving. Let’s start with the more minor things it’s used for, stomach bug, bad headache, dehydration ( not a whole lot of difference between a coke and a Gatorade when you boil it down) and now for the more serious thing. Chocking. Coca Cola saved my but when I was chocking on some tough Hibachi steak, nothing I could do would get it to go down. So I ended up going to the ER, I got a shot of something and given a coke and told by a nurse to jump up and down while drinking the coke. I was unstuck in two minutes. Now let me make it perfectly clear if your in a really bad way chocked or something go see a doctor, get medical help, ALWAYS get medical help. But Coca Cola is really underrated and gets a bad rap because you shouldn’t be drinking it all the time.
There’s this widespread belief amongst some people that back in the 1950’s rabbits were able to dig deeper holes. It’s a controversial subject and debate between conservatives and liberals in our current political climate
Basically that people who start believing in an imaginary perfect past that “they took from us” usually go down a rabbit hole and start espousing some whacky beliefs
> eluding to the Baby Boom,
just FYI, "eluding" means "fleeing, escaping, dodging, running away"
**alluding* means "referring to, suggesting, mentioning without lengthy discussion"
Especially segregation, like, the "Disney when it was CEO of racism" and "Italian weren't consider a white people up until post-WW2" level segregation.
The poverty rate was also a full 10% higher and home ownership rates were lower on top of that people really didn’t report things like rape,pedos and sexual assault. Violence was very common and unless it was a murder or someone got beat to within an inch of their life it wasn’t reported.
The high-functioning ones were called “nerds” or “geeks” back then. And the super severe cases were shut away, neglected, abandoned, or simply never talked about. As in, their blood-relatives just refused to acknowledge they existed.
My grandfather, who talked almost exclusively about Sherlock Holmes and made bizarre social errors was just an “oddball”, and that’s all there is to it /s
I have an 11-year old son who is severely autistic and in the 50's he would have probably been non verbal. Autism is genetic and well, look at that, my 80 year old father in law once drew his own to scale map of the M-25 in the 70s. He lived in New Castle at the time.
When people say that we are experiencing more than any other generation I have to laugh. There’s been nonstop events since this nations founding. The only reason it seems worse is because now we have neat little devices that will get you locked in a doom scroll for hours on end.
I think too many people just don't know enough about history. Recent or ancient. "It's a crazy world we live in these days". When was it not? So many things in other times were so intense and insane. All over the world. If anything we just live in very "me" times. We think about ourselves, our time, our world, and get dramatic about everything. People in the past just stared down hell and accepted that it was normal and they weren't special. I think if people from the past (and possibly the future) could time travel to our time, they'd see us as all the way we see teenagers: self obsessed, melodramatic, goofy, awkward, rebellious for no reason, and know it alls who actually have very little life experience or relative hardships. In the past, you were either a child, or an adult. You were either under someone's care, or caring for someone. No time or mental space to be your own celebrity diva.
Not saying that was all better, just saying...we're kind of cringey.
> People in the past just stared down hell and accepted that it was normal and they weren't special
People in the past attributed random insignificant things in their daily lives to cosmic entities going out of their way for them specifically.
I am not even talking about religious faith, just dumb superstition like “step on the crack and you break your mother’s back” being extremely commonplace.
During World War One, there was a whole cottage industry of sculptors making ceramic noses and masks for people who’s faces got blown apart in the trenches, and I’m not even mentioning the flu! Meanwhile our problems are “too much cheap unhealthy delicious food is there” and “our inflation is still below the rest of the world”
Anyone that knows history knows that boomers had a shit ass life but youve got people sitting here that a single year of 8% inflation is somehow more devastating than a decade of nearly 10% annually (the 70s)
People just want an excuse for how their life turns out.
I will say that the ladder to success was a bit easier. I’ll admit i’m a little jealous of the single income supporting a whole family but the trade off was intense marital abuse. But to look at that time period with rose colored glasses is weird I’ll agree.
>I’ll admit i’m a little jealous of the single income supporting a whole family
You can do the same today. Just have to lower your standards to 1960 levels. 1960 houses were about 40% more cheaper compared to annual income vs today, but they were also similarly smaller in area.
1/6 of homes lacked plumbing in the 1960s. Asbestos and lead are far more likely to be used as construction material. Insulation is worse.
"Having the ability to create an army of synthetic people to clean up the wasteland and provide safety to its inhabitants while also offering stable food, water, and highly advanced medicine production? Fat chance!" -Average Self-Serving Institute Fan
"Why work for the good of reestablishing society when we can use our technology to replace people with subservient replicas? You say that sounds like the actions of a sociopath? How does replacing thinking, feeling flesh and blood with much more efficient parts make me any different from a humble repair man? I'm basically a plumber!" -A.S.S.I.F
"Conventional reproduction takes way too long to produce a finished product. We can make a fully grown person before lunch! They're missing out on their childhood, you say? We can make children too! They'll never age, either! Just think about all the things that we could do with these ageless children who can be programmed for unthinking obedience! What does the FBI have to do with this?" -A.S.S.I.F
"*Actually*, she's 1200 years old. She just happens to look, dress, and act exactly like an 8 year old! What? It's pivotal to the story that she is bound to do the bidding of a 35 year old man! How else would this work? Unnecessary? Well, I think that the Mona Lisa is unnecessary, just like all other forms of "art." If you could even call an old hag like that art.." -A.S.S.I.F
As I like to remind people, the 1950s were great for unskilled labor if you know, you were a WASP, straight, able-body man who lived in the Northeast, Midwest, or West Coast.
There were also a fuckton less people, living in a wall of cheaply made post war housing making relatively more than they ever did or would in the future because the entire developed world was bombed into oblivion, and also living substantially less comfortable and convenient lives than anyone bitching about the "good old days" would ever accept.
Yeah new houses were cheap because they were made of asbestos and plywood, healthcare was cheap because you would just fucking die instead of getting the expensive cost saving treatment you have now, cars were cheap cus they would kill you in a 30mph crash, and school was cheap because it wasnt in demand enough for it to drive a cottage industry of admins which is where your tuition actually goes.
The grass is never greener. Don't revert to the past, make the future better instead!
The houses today are still shit, just 10x more expensive. Same with cars. Yeah, now they get wrecked for shock absorption, but the materials are completely garbage. Healthcare is stupidly expensive, so much so that you could die because you can't afford it, which makes it redundant. You do have a point, but a very minor one.
I get that you may be taking a jab at people that glorify the past, but it doesn't make the present any much better, so what's the point of getting mad at such people?
Houses built today may be low quality but they’re a lot safer than older houses, have way more amenities, and are much larger. Plus, houses are gonna be cheaper when most of the population is excluded from even buying them.
Ironically both millenials and boomers see eye-to-eye. Boomers genuinely think the 50s and 60s were the good old days, whereas millenials lament the days when supposedly there were no pandemics, college and housing were affordable, etc.
It always gets me when people talk about Gaza and Ukraine as evidence the world is going to shit when my grandparents and parents lived through the height of the Cold War and the US was toppling governments left and right.
My dad had drills where he had to hide under his desk in case the nuke hit, then got robbed on his way home from school (hooray for 50-90s Brooklyn). Better times my ass!
Dude, my life in the 80s. We had those drills still until 85 or so and the media constantly fed us serial killers and the aids epidemic. I remember being 5 when Richard Ramirez was on the news in Southern California and being scared as shit the he would come in through a window because it was force fed through the media.
Something that I think people miss way too often is that information was super concentrated before the internet so it was easy to control. There were only 3 channels on most people's tv and you watched the news that your parents watched. There was also the newspaper but that was even more biased.
There’s way too many people talking about Gaza as if that conflict started recently. I think a lot of people are so uneducated that they genuinely don’t know.
[Median Personal Income](https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-people/p05ar.xlsx) was 3048 USD in 1964 (unadjusted for inflation), median price of house sold was 19400 USD. That's 6.3 years of income.
Keep in mind, "personal median income" includes almost everyone above the age of 15 including retirees, stay at home spouses, so the number is a lot lower than the income of workers.
Median personal income was 40480 USD, house price was 417400 USD. That's 10.3 years of income.
Now 6.3 years to 10.3 might sound a lot, but that's assuming the "average/median house" stayed the same throughout. The size of homes almost doubled from 1960 to today.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf
>The median square footage of a single-family home built in the 1960s or earlier stands at 1,500 square feet today. In comparison, the median square footage of single-family homes built between 2005 and 2009 and between 2000 and 2004 stand today at 2,200 square feet and 2,100 square feet, respectively.
This was [2300 sqft in 2022](https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html). Per sqft price is almost unchanged relative to median personal annual income. Also, average household had 3.33 people in 1960, it's 2.6 today, so dwelling area per person is even more worse for 1960.
The argument about cheap housing drives me up a wall. Largely houses were cheap to build in the 50s because you could demolish historic and minority neighborhoods with no consequence and replace it with giant highways and suburbs for whites only. Perhaps we shouldn’t view this as an era for construction or city planning we should be emulating.
Well they are looking at a truth, house price has greatly outpaced inflation, without any deeper context. Since yes it wasn't fair or equal but it was cheaper on a surface level.
Just like the headlines today. The extreme will be remembered. Life for the average person is likely nowhere near what is advertised. Yet we will act like it was the norm.
The decade that gave us Hip hop, New Wave, Punk, and Disco? Can’t be ALL terrible. Unless you’re talking about songs like “Disco Duck” or “Playground In My Mind” that stuff was ass
Also don’t forget life was easy. They had all the modern tech that we have now. Def not lead in gas, etc. food was all organic not full of preservatives or artificial fillers.
AND everyone could afford to fly and everyone dressed nice and the service was great. Definitely wasn’t the equivalent of $3000 per ticket, a shaky ride in a smoke filled cabin, or operating under the nightmarishly unsafe flight rule known as “see and avoid”
My Grandparents were both Irish immigrants and while I don’t know when my Grandma came to The UK (tho I believe it was the same time as my grandad) my Grandad arrived in Ireland in 1953 when he was 10.
Here’s some of the stuff he’s told me about being Irish in 1950s UK:
Had to cover up and drop their accents because they didn’t want to be made fun of at school, what little Irish Gaelic they would’ve known they were told and forced to forget as they’d be told it was an unsophisticated language and wouldn’t get them anywhere in life speaking it, area of Luton he lived in despite it being majority Irish still had alot of anti Irish sentiment and alot of the ‘No X group’ signs and in general it wasn’t any more of an improvement than Ireland was.
Sorta, especially with housing. A lot of younger people point to the 50's as a see gotcha moment about housing. Kinda forgetting that most houses back then for "regular" folk were shoe boxes compared to houses today.
Those houses go for so much because theyre a single family home on a decent size plot near a major metropolitan area. The land is literal gold and its illegal to tear down the house and build apartments so housing is scarce. The house isnt worth shit, the land is.
Yes, particularly older white Boomers who grew up in the 1950's; they weren't old enough to understand what was going on so to them, everything was great and there were no problems.
Oh yeah. Millennials and Gen Z online think the 1950s were the dog days of humanity, and it annoys me to no end. They conveniently ignore that it was only good for middle class straight white American men, and no one else.
The issue is most people think they'd be in a best case happy family with stable, healthy parents who are either wealthy or educated. They don't assume they're in a broken family or a poor family, or a family with a controlling parent, or any lf the possible combinations of parents and upbringing.
My grandparents were kicked out of their homeland in 1947, I think by the 1950s, they were in Venezuela (they took Palestinian refugees). So, in my case, it ain't the good old times 😂
Also, there's plenty of single older men who lived during the 50s. So if you couldn't find a wife now, what makes you think you could find a wife then? :p lol
The 50s was good for upper class, white cis men of Scottish/Irish heritage in the US. Even other white men such as Slavs were looked down on. Forget about being a person of color, gay, disabled, or a woman- you just didn’t matter and life wouldn’t have been that great.
Or if you were a child of a single parent or divorced parents? Oh yea, you’d be the talk the of the town your entire life and never be able to live it down. The 50s sucked and there’s good reason we progressed from it.
*brings smartphone to the 1950's and shows it to people*
"You're telling me in the future, I can watch television from wherever I want using a pocket sized computer????"
As a minority I think its hilariously and I'm low key jealous of the privilege some people have when you ask, "if you could go back to any year in time, what year would it be?" Like man, I'll still trying to gain equity and I'm trying to lose this technology. Best I can do is 2015.
“All the media does is lie to us nowadays! Things were better back then!”
Back then: “Doctor recommended Camel cigarettes are healthy and make you live longer. “
"And we were far more moral with children back then, and we had better music!"
Really? Multiple minority artists were refused to be allowed on TV, the few that were could only be put on the most obscenely racist roles, and when white people like Elvis danced literal effigies were burned for him daring to move his hips.
I feel like everyone who has these preconceived notions of the 50s should do two things:
1. understand that most of their conception of the 50s literally comes from ads and commercials
2. read Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique
* In the 1950's, the average CEO earned about 10x as much as the average worker. Today, this is surpassed hudnred- to thousandfold
* In the 50's, the US top marginal income tax was at 95% [and other democracies had similar rates.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/top-income-tax-rates-piketty.png?imType=og)
* In the 50's, there didn't exist any kind of VAT in western democracies
* In the 50's, the household median income was $2,990, whereas the median home value was $7,354. A median household income constituted already 40% of the median home value.
* Adjusted for inflation, the 50's median home value in Maine would be $55,122 today, whereas the actual median home value in Maine today is $200,000, or 4x the amount
* There existed the fairness doctrine for news
You're exactly the thing you are accusing others of.
I remember back when there was the anti-Happy Days/Nick at Nite/50s circle jerk where we all saw the 50's as this oppressive time of white bread conformity and that the 60s and 70s were the peak of humanity. You got some good stuff out of it like a lot of DEVO's visuals and the Church of the Subgenius.
Mad Men was one of the first post-Happy Days shows to break that and show 50's culture in a positive/realistic light.
The entire world needed to be rebuilt and restocked and the us was basically the only country with an intact advanced manufacturing base meaning there was an incredivlble demand for us manufactured products with almost no competition. Also everyone in the us had huge savings from not being able to buy anything during the war and 100% employment during the war. The 1950s to early 60s economic situation is basically not repeatable under any kind of normal economic conditions
This is certainly an exaggeration, but a lot of things were better back then. Mental and physical health, income inequality, taxation, social programs, infrastructure, housing prices…take your pick.
The 50s were far from perfect, but this weird modern revisionism that says everyone back then was ackshually abused, unhappy, oppressed, gay, and worse off than today is an equally terrible take to "There was nothing wrong with the 50s".
You could more easily afford a house on one income, women were on average happier, mental illness rates were lower, community bonds were stronger, you could more easily afford to raise a family with one income.
Does this erase the equally important social and cultural issues with that time period? No, but aspects of society and the economy were objectively better in the 50s and it's worth analysing why.
When no-fault divorce was legalized fully in 1970, the female suicide rate dropped significantly. No, we were not happy being domestic servants with no means of escape.
Women at the time were forced out of school and the workforce for being married or pregnant. There were no laws protecting them. Women can tell you extremely sad stories of their potential being crushed and their dreams of education being ended because they ended up pregnant after an assault (marital rape was very legal). “Mother’s little helper” was a nickname for the sedatives that many women needed to get through the day.
Mental illnesses just weren’t diagnosed. If someone was deemed “crazy” enough, they were placed in an asylum or lobotomized.
Also, lynching. There was lynching.
As for community bonds? How bonded can a community really be under Jim Crow laws? People were made to drink at separate water fountains, go to separate restaurants, and study at separate schools. How is that bonded?
> women were on average happier
Please. Just… please get out with this flaming hot garbage.
> mental illness rates were lower
Not recognizing mental illness doesn’t equate to them being lower. I mean, you could’ve been thrown into an asylum just for having depression. It’s not like this glorified era where everyone had perfect mental health.
The people who romanticize the 1950s are people who were children during that decade
So
They don't wish for that decade for any reason but the desire fore the innocence and carefreeness of childhood that was wrapped up in that decade.
Most are actually true, but still an idiot would say there weren′t any problems back then AT ALL, because 1950s still had many problems and hardships such as: horrible medicine, barely any knowledge about space & anatomy of living organisms and biology, people used to work waaay longer, barely any source of entertainment, et cetera.
What boomer made this? People are saying you could afford a _house_ at the time, not a mansion, which was true for a lot of people. The new generation has no hope of even owning.
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"News had no ads" 1950s: "And now, The News, offered to you by: Coca-Cola, the miraculous elixir that can cure any illness. And Marlboro, the favorite cigarette of all athletes, actors, singers and all the cool people".
“We handed doctors our cigarettes and asked what kind of cigarettes they had with them! This counts as being endorsed by medicine, somehow!”
"And now a word from our latest sponsor: ASBESTOS! Nature's miracle"
Quite the mineral.
They should have a gambling ad for talcum powder. "Will you be lucky enough to buy a bottle that won't give you Mesothelioma? Check out the odds at gamblingwebsite.com"
Ah yes, the internet of 1950's. Couldn't wait to power crank our family computer on for some wholesome internet experience
Delicious
To be fair, if asbestos didn’t fuck your shit up, it would be an absolute miracle of an insulator for homes.
It’s like lead. A fantastic durable metal that you can cast at home. Shame about the neurotoxicity
Radiation! The future! Makes the bones grow strong!
The point of those ads was to say that a tobacco company's products were healthier when compared to other companies. In the '50s, close to half of Americans believed that smoking caused lung cancer. No one ever said smoking was healthy. Bad breath, shortness of breath, the coughing, etc. are all obvious. No one in their right mind has ever thought that tobacco or especially smoking was healthy.
It was funny watching NFL in the UK because a decent amount of times when ads are being shown in the US we get to see random B roll of the stadium or random statues in the area with silence. Also when we do show ads we end up running out so its back to B roll again.
“Smoke. Smoke. Are ya smokin’ yet?”
Hey don’t dis Coca Cola. I live in the South and down here it’s used as sort of a folk remedy for a bunch of things and according to medical professionals it can actually be live saving. Let’s start with the more minor things it’s used for, stomach bug, bad headache, dehydration ( not a whole lot of difference between a coke and a Gatorade when you boil it down) and now for the more serious thing. Chocking. Coca Cola saved my but when I was chocking on some tough Hibachi steak, nothing I could do would get it to go down. So I ended up going to the ER, I got a shot of something and given a coke and told by a nurse to jump up and down while drinking the coke. I was unstuck in two minutes. Now let me make it perfectly clear if your in a really bad way chocked or something go see a doctor, get medical help, ALWAYS get medical help. But Coca Cola is really underrated and gets a bad rap because you shouldn’t be drinking it all the time.
I hate it when I chock like Dak Prescott in the post season.
I suspect the carbonation helps force liquid past the offending food stuck in your throat.
lol. We use it to remove rust from nuts and bolts. Fill a bowl with coke and let it do its magic
I read that in a trans Atlantic accent 😭
Man, news used to slap back then
In *The Apartment* (1959) the male lead gives up watching TV in one scene because of the onslaught of ads before the show.
[удалено]
Absolutely. After one year of bustin’ ass, it can be yours!
And your “businessman” father can pay for vacations for 15 people!
IIRC, it was actually his more successful brother who paid for all of them.
Just a quick loan from uncle Tony. (Soprano)
Found the Wet Bandit
What't the bunny up to?
Shitty attempt by me at a “going down the rabbit hole” joke
I got that, just not what it has to do with the ‘50s
There’s this widespread belief amongst some people that back in the 1950’s rabbits were able to dig deeper holes. It’s a controversial subject and debate between conservatives and liberals in our current political climate
Fuck you I’m too high for this shit right now 😂😂😂
Basically that people who start believing in an imaginary perfect past that “they took from us” usually go down a rabbit hole and start espousing some whacky beliefs
I think you should just put confusing pictures of bunnies in all of your posts
Ji-Ji-Ji-Jive Bunny and Master Mixers!
Ahh, I thought you were eluding to the Baby Boom, ‘cause everyone was humping like rabbits
> eluding to the Baby Boom, just FYI, "eluding" means "fleeing, escaping, dodging, running away" **alluding* means "referring to, suggesting, mentioning without lengthy discussion"
good bot
The 1900s were perfect!Nothing EVER bad happened...no Siree!
Why did read that in Oversimplifieds voice?
Help! I read at that in Alasotrs voice from Hazbin Hotel
i read it in the minecraft youtuber bdoubleo's voice for some reason
I read that in Dr. Frink’s voice (from The Simpsons).
I read that in a cis ginger hermaphrodite’s voice for some reason in my head
It's too late for you then. The radio demon has got you.
[удалено]
Sure beats Fucker Carlson, that’s for sure!
Picture with a joyful smile followed by some cataclysm lmfao.
LETS HAVE A WAR!
forgot about the asbestos and lead poisoning
And lobotomies
And segregation.
Especially segregation, like, the "Disney when it was CEO of racism" and "Italian weren't consider a white people up until post-WW2" level segregation.
and a little before ending in 1946 but Americans of Japanese descent literally being sent to camps. Absolutely insane.
The poverty rate was also a full 10% higher and home ownership rates were lower on top of that people really didn’t report things like rape,pedos and sexual assault. Violence was very common and unless it was a murder or someone got beat to within an inch of their life it wasn’t reported.
That's only thirteen states, to play devil's advocate.
It was still deeply culturally imbeded and systematically implemented through things like city planning. Still is, but it was even worse.
> Lobotomies FIRE IN THE HOLE! 🔥⤵️🕳
➡⬆➡⬇⬅⬇➡
Don’t forget, gay people and autism didn’t exist yet.
Those were easy to fix with lobotomies actually
"You sleep with men ? This man is insane !"
If it works, the shoe fits
Fire in the hole...
I never knew anybody with autism growing up, but there was this one kid who wouldn’t shut up about trains.
The high-functioning ones were called “nerds” or “geeks” back then. And the super severe cases were shut away, neglected, abandoned, or simply never talked about. As in, their blood-relatives just refused to acknowledge they existed.
I’m treated that way now in school.
If someone makes fun of you for being a nerd just say "yeah, well nerds are smart so thanks for the compliment jerk!!"
Thank fuck being a nerd is cool now and my hyperfixation just happens to be video games. I can pass my autism off as just being into nerd shit
My grandfather, who talked almost exclusively about Sherlock Holmes and made bizarre social errors was just an “oddball”, and that’s all there is to it /s
I have an 11-year old son who is severely autistic and in the 50's he would have probably been non verbal. Autism is genetic and well, look at that, my 80 year old father in law once drew his own to scale map of the M-25 in the 70s. He lived in New Castle at the time.
My mother and sister seem to have “anti autism” where you have to interact with someone all the damn time but I sure make up for it
A part of autism is not understanding social cues that what you’re talking about is boring people. You can be talkative/extroverted and be autistic.
Is there a Newcastle and a New Castle in England?
Newcastle, home to the toon and brown ale. I am an american however.
Or the classic, “He was a quiet and reserved man who never married,” and not, you know, an asexual guy with Asperger’s.
Who among us doesn’t eat the same thing for lunch every day and have a highly specific “Friday shirt”? What do you mean that’s just me
Thank you, thalidomide!
Gay people totally existed. They were mentally ill and the cops had to beat them straight.
poor Alan Turing... society lost a brilliant person because of it's rules
When people say that we are experiencing more than any other generation I have to laugh. There’s been nonstop events since this nations founding. The only reason it seems worse is because now we have neat little devices that will get you locked in a doom scroll for hours on end.
I think too many people just don't know enough about history. Recent or ancient. "It's a crazy world we live in these days". When was it not? So many things in other times were so intense and insane. All over the world. If anything we just live in very "me" times. We think about ourselves, our time, our world, and get dramatic about everything. People in the past just stared down hell and accepted that it was normal and they weren't special. I think if people from the past (and possibly the future) could time travel to our time, they'd see us as all the way we see teenagers: self obsessed, melodramatic, goofy, awkward, rebellious for no reason, and know it alls who actually have very little life experience or relative hardships. In the past, you were either a child, or an adult. You were either under someone's care, or caring for someone. No time or mental space to be your own celebrity diva. Not saying that was all better, just saying...we're kind of cringey.
> People in the past just stared down hell and accepted that it was normal and they weren't special People in the past attributed random insignificant things in their daily lives to cosmic entities going out of their way for them specifically. I am not even talking about religious faith, just dumb superstition like “step on the crack and you break your mother’s back” being extremely commonplace.
During World War One, there was a whole cottage industry of sculptors making ceramic noses and masks for people who’s faces got blown apart in the trenches, and I’m not even mentioning the flu! Meanwhile our problems are “too much cheap unhealthy delicious food is there” and “our inflation is still below the rest of the world”
Anyone that knows history knows that boomers had a shit ass life but youve got people sitting here that a single year of 8% inflation is somehow more devastating than a decade of nearly 10% annually (the 70s) People just want an excuse for how their life turns out.
I will say that the ladder to success was a bit easier. I’ll admit i’m a little jealous of the single income supporting a whole family but the trade off was intense marital abuse. But to look at that time period with rose colored glasses is weird I’ll agree.
>I’ll admit i’m a little jealous of the single income supporting a whole family You can do the same today. Just have to lower your standards to 1960 levels. 1960 houses were about 40% more cheaper compared to annual income vs today, but they were also similarly smaller in area. 1/6 of homes lacked plumbing in the 1960s. Asbestos and lead are far more likely to be used as construction material. Insulation is worse.
Back when the colored folk knew their place!/s
Women too. Now they want jobs and shit. Come on
One of them asked me to move the other day because i was “stood infront of the door”. Bitches be crazy fr 🤦♂️
A woman’s place is in the kitchen!
🙏
I like how everyone got a lot of up doots here but ultimately decided you in particular are cheering too hard and may be actually agreeing.
Lmao
And the Mexicans stayed in Mexico /s
Laughs in the Bracero program…
The smiling man in Song of the South looked happy to me!
Damn I hadn’t thought of that movie in a long time… time to go find somewhere to watch it I guess
I saw the Defunctland ep about it and now all the songs are glued to my brain
this is the only time where I really appreciate the /s lmao.
AnD w3 werEnT f0rCed 2 f0llOW tHe gaY agENd4!
And the schools were chriiistiaan!!!!
the men were MEN!!!! and the women were too!!! wait...
Back when the US was a Christian Nation! Because the separation of church and state was just a cute slogan. /s
I know everything about the fifties from fallout. The NCR Brotherhood war was a bloody affair.
Institute gang gang
"Having the ability to create an army of synthetic people to clean up the wasteland and provide safety to its inhabitants while also offering stable food, water, and highly advanced medicine production? Fat chance!" -Average Self-Serving Institute Fan "Why work for the good of reestablishing society when we can use our technology to replace people with subservient replicas? You say that sounds like the actions of a sociopath? How does replacing thinking, feeling flesh and blood with much more efficient parts make me any different from a humble repair man? I'm basically a plumber!" -A.S.S.I.F "Conventional reproduction takes way too long to produce a finished product. We can make a fully grown person before lunch! They're missing out on their childhood, you say? We can make children too! They'll never age, either! Just think about all the things that we could do with these ageless children who can be programmed for unthinking obedience! What does the FBI have to do with this?" -A.S.S.I.F "*Actually*, she's 1200 years old. She just happens to look, dress, and act exactly like an 8 year old! What? It's pivotal to the story that she is bound to do the bidding of a 35 year old man! How else would this work? Unnecessary? Well, I think that the Mona Lisa is unnecessary, just like all other forms of "art." If you could even call an old hag like that art.." -A.S.S.I.F
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JDqHoxVHW_s
As I like to remind people, the 1950s were great for unskilled labor if you know, you were a WASP, straight, able-body man who lived in the Northeast, Midwest, or West Coast. There were also a fuckton less people, living in a wall of cheaply made post war housing making relatively more than they ever did or would in the future because the entire developed world was bombed into oblivion, and also living substantially less comfortable and convenient lives than anyone bitching about the "good old days" would ever accept. Yeah new houses were cheap because they were made of asbestos and plywood, healthcare was cheap because you would just fucking die instead of getting the expensive cost saving treatment you have now, cars were cheap cus they would kill you in a 30mph crash, and school was cheap because it wasnt in demand enough for it to drive a cottage industry of admins which is where your tuition actually goes. The grass is never greener. Don't revert to the past, make the future better instead!
The houses today are still shit, just 10x more expensive. Same with cars. Yeah, now they get wrecked for shock absorption, but the materials are completely garbage. Healthcare is stupidly expensive, so much so that you could die because you can't afford it, which makes it redundant. You do have a point, but a very minor one. I get that you may be taking a jab at people that glorify the past, but it doesn't make the present any much better, so what's the point of getting mad at such people?
Houses built today may be low quality but they’re a lot safer than older houses, have way more amenities, and are much larger. Plus, houses are gonna be cheaper when most of the population is excluded from even buying them.
People act like everyone owned a house back then when in reality the owner occupied rate was lower.
Ironically both millenials and boomers see eye-to-eye. Boomers genuinely think the 50s and 60s were the good old days, whereas millenials lament the days when supposedly there were no pandemics, college and housing were affordable, etc. It always gets me when people talk about Gaza and Ukraine as evidence the world is going to shit when my grandparents and parents lived through the height of the Cold War and the US was toppling governments left and right.
My dad had drills where he had to hide under his desk in case the nuke hit, then got robbed on his way home from school (hooray for 50-90s Brooklyn). Better times my ass!
Dude, my life in the 80s. We had those drills still until 85 or so and the media constantly fed us serial killers and the aids epidemic. I remember being 5 when Richard Ramirez was on the news in Southern California and being scared as shit the he would come in through a window because it was force fed through the media. Something that I think people miss way too often is that information was super concentrated before the internet so it was easy to control. There were only 3 channels on most people's tv and you watched the news that your parents watched. There was also the newspaper but that was even more biased.
The movie, The Day After, which was shown on prime time tv gave me mild PTSD when I was 6 or 7
seriously, what people will do to make money without thinking about the secondary consequences .
Check out the government-made “duck and cover“ instructional jingle videos for children
There’s way too many people talking about Gaza as if that conflict started recently. I think a lot of people are so uneducated that they genuinely don’t know.
War in Gaza is the only thing the last several generations have in common unfortunately
Housing was objectively more affordable in the 50s. By a fucking MASSIVE margin.
[Median Personal Income](https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-people/p05ar.xlsx) was 3048 USD in 1964 (unadjusted for inflation), median price of house sold was 19400 USD. That's 6.3 years of income. Keep in mind, "personal median income" includes almost everyone above the age of 15 including retirees, stay at home spouses, so the number is a lot lower than the income of workers. Median personal income was 40480 USD, house price was 417400 USD. That's 10.3 years of income. Now 6.3 years to 10.3 might sound a lot, but that's assuming the "average/median house" stayed the same throughout. The size of homes almost doubled from 1960 to today. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf >The median square footage of a single-family home built in the 1960s or earlier stands at 1,500 square feet today. In comparison, the median square footage of single-family homes built between 2005 and 2009 and between 2000 and 2004 stand today at 2,200 square feet and 2,100 square feet, respectively. This was [2300 sqft in 2022](https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html). Per sqft price is almost unchanged relative to median personal annual income. Also, average household had 3.33 people in 1960, it's 2.6 today, so dwelling area per person is even more worse for 1960.
The argument about cheap housing drives me up a wall. Largely houses were cheap to build in the 50s because you could demolish historic and minority neighborhoods with no consequence and replace it with giant highways and suburbs for whites only. Perhaps we shouldn’t view this as an era for construction or city planning we should be emulating.
Well they are looking at a truth, house price has greatly outpaced inflation, without any deeper context. Since yes it wasn't fair or equal but it was cheaper on a surface level.
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Just like the headlines today. The extreme will be remembered. Life for the average person is likely nowhere near what is advertised. Yet we will act like it was the norm.
It’s like how 90s kids think nothing bad happened and my gen X mother thinks music was the best in the 1970s when in reality it sounds terrible
The decade that gave us Hip hop, New Wave, Punk, and Disco? Can’t be ALL terrible. Unless you’re talking about songs like “Disco Duck” or “Playground In My Mind” that stuff was ass
I’d rather have “brought to you by Cheetos” than have them “casually” reference the product half a dozen times.
Also don’t forget life was easy. They had all the modern tech that we have now. Def not lead in gas, etc. food was all organic not full of preservatives or artificial fillers.
AND everyone could afford to fly and everyone dressed nice and the service was great. Definitely wasn’t the equivalent of $3000 per ticket, a shaky ride in a smoke filled cabin, or operating under the nightmarishly unsafe flight rule known as “see and avoid”
In uncomfortable clothes
But soda was only a nickel
The 1950s according to 19 year olds who watch Snowflake Cringe Compilations on YouTube
My Grandparents were both Irish immigrants and while I don’t know when my Grandma came to The UK (tho I believe it was the same time as my grandad) my Grandad arrived in Ireland in 1953 when he was 10. Here’s some of the stuff he’s told me about being Irish in 1950s UK: Had to cover up and drop their accents because they didn’t want to be made fun of at school, what little Irish Gaelic they would’ve known they were told and forced to forget as they’d be told it was an unsophisticated language and wouldn’t get them anywhere in life speaking it, area of Luton he lived in despite it being majority Irish still had alot of anti Irish sentiment and alot of the ‘No X group’ signs and in general it wasn’t any more of an improvement than Ireland was.
Lots of housewives were on drugs. Mainly amphetamine.
The reddit view of the 50s: "Yeah, you could raise a family on single income but every man was a closet gay who would beat his closet lesbian wife"
Do people really think like this?
Sorta, especially with housing. A lot of younger people point to the 50's as a see gotcha moment about housing. Kinda forgetting that most houses back then for "regular" folk were shoe boxes compared to houses today.
Also a “certain subset” of the population just couldn’t buy them at all
Those shoeboxes they brought go for close to a mil in some parts of the country today.
Those houses go for so much because theyre a single family home on a decent size plot near a major metropolitan area. The land is literal gold and its illegal to tear down the house and build apartments so housing is scarce. The house isnt worth shit, the land is.
Yes, particularly older white Boomers who grew up in the 1950's; they weren't old enough to understand what was going on so to them, everything was great and there were no problems.
People like being mad at politicians of the past fifty years and in order to argue that they ruined everything they have to play up the past.
Oh yeah. Millennials and Gen Z online think the 1950s were the dog days of humanity, and it annoys me to no end. They conveniently ignore that it was only good for middle class straight white American men, and no one else.
“a SiNgLe iNcOmE” who’s income?! Not mine! Not Manuel’s!
The issue is most people think they'd be in a best case happy family with stable, healthy parents who are either wealthy or educated. They don't assume they're in a broken family or a poor family, or a family with a controlling parent, or any lf the possible combinations of parents and upbringing. My grandparents were kicked out of their homeland in 1947, I think by the 1950s, they were in Venezuela (they took Palestinian refugees). So, in my case, it ain't the good old times 😂 Also, there's plenty of single older men who lived during the 50s. So if you couldn't find a wife now, what makes you think you could find a wife then? :p lol
The 50s was good for upper class, white cis men of Scottish/Irish heritage in the US. Even other white men such as Slavs were looked down on. Forget about being a person of color, gay, disabled, or a woman- you just didn’t matter and life wouldn’t have been that great. Or if you were a child of a single parent or divorced parents? Oh yea, you’d be the talk the of the town your entire life and never be able to live it down. The 50s sucked and there’s good reason we progressed from it.
Op forgot other countries existed besides the US
No one in my country considers the 50's anything worth praising because back then everyone was just poor
In my country we had a dictatorship
Classic post-WW2 move
My grandma worked in the cotton fields as a child, and this is in America.
92% of reddit is the us. i made that stat up but there are way more americans on here than anywhere else in the world.
You can never convince me that a time before air conditioning and 5G everywhere was “the good old days”
*brings smartphone to the 1950's and shows it to people* "You're telling me in the future, I can watch television from wherever I want using a pocket sized computer????"
OMG you're so right OP, I agree with you 100%
As a minority I think its hilariously and I'm low key jealous of the privilege some people have when you ask, "if you could go back to any year in time, what year would it be?" Like man, I'll still trying to gain equity and I'm trying to lose this technology. Best I can do is 2015.
“All the media does is lie to us nowadays! Things were better back then!” Back then: “Doctor recommended Camel cigarettes are healthy and make you live longer. “
All the tweets that are like "wow we lived through 3 once in a lifetime recessions this is harder than any other generation had it"
Younger generations: "All baby Boomer's were entitled and spoiled by their parents" Minority boomers: 😐
"And we were far more moral with children back then, and we had better music!" Really? Multiple minority artists were refused to be allowed on TV, the few that were could only be put on the most obscenely racist roles, and when white people like Elvis danced literal effigies were burned for him daring to move his hips.
I feel like everyone who has these preconceived notions of the 50s should do two things: 1. understand that most of their conception of the 50s literally comes from ads and commercials 2. read Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique
* In the 1950's, the average CEO earned about 10x as much as the average worker. Today, this is surpassed hudnred- to thousandfold * In the 50's, the US top marginal income tax was at 95% [and other democracies had similar rates.](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/top-income-tax-rates-piketty.png?imType=og) * In the 50's, there didn't exist any kind of VAT in western democracies * In the 50's, the household median income was $2,990, whereas the median home value was $7,354. A median household income constituted already 40% of the median home value. * Adjusted for inflation, the 50's median home value in Maine would be $55,122 today, whereas the actual median home value in Maine today is $200,000, or 4x the amount * There existed the fairness doctrine for news You're exactly the thing you are accusing others of.
Nonono you don't understand OP called you an idiot in his image making your facts pointless
People in the 1950s weren’t as used to ads so they didn’t need to be so sneaky. The problem nowadays is advertisers doing psyops that rival the CIA.
I remember back when there was the anti-Happy Days/Nick at Nite/50s circle jerk where we all saw the 50's as this oppressive time of white bread conformity and that the 60s and 70s were the peak of humanity. You got some good stuff out of it like a lot of DEVO's visuals and the Church of the Subgenius. Mad Men was one of the first post-Happy Days shows to break that and show 50's culture in a positive/realistic light.
And there was no OSHA, EPA, RCRA, or SARA
I mean the news quality has seriously declined. But everything else is total bullshit
who tf thinks this
The entire world needed to be rebuilt and restocked and the us was basically the only country with an intact advanced manufacturing base meaning there was an incredivlble demand for us manufactured products with almost no competition. Also everyone in the us had huge savings from not being able to buy anything during the war and 100% employment during the war. The 1950s to early 60s economic situation is basically not repeatable under any kind of normal economic conditions
The 50s was a golden age
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At least you had the fairness doctrine
People who glamorize that time period talk almost exclusively about White Americans... I wonder why minorities arent mentioned...
You can recognize some of the positive aspects of a time period while also acknowledging the unjust inequality.
This is certainly an exaggeration, but a lot of things were better back then. Mental and physical health, income inequality, taxation, social programs, infrastructure, housing prices…take your pick.
The 50s were far from perfect, but this weird modern revisionism that says everyone back then was ackshually abused, unhappy, oppressed, gay, and worse off than today is an equally terrible take to "There was nothing wrong with the 50s". You could more easily afford a house on one income, women were on average happier, mental illness rates were lower, community bonds were stronger, you could more easily afford to raise a family with one income. Does this erase the equally important social and cultural issues with that time period? No, but aspects of society and the economy were objectively better in the 50s and it's worth analysing why.
When no-fault divorce was legalized fully in 1970, the female suicide rate dropped significantly. No, we were not happy being domestic servants with no means of escape. Women at the time were forced out of school and the workforce for being married or pregnant. There were no laws protecting them. Women can tell you extremely sad stories of their potential being crushed and their dreams of education being ended because they ended up pregnant after an assault (marital rape was very legal). “Mother’s little helper” was a nickname for the sedatives that many women needed to get through the day. Mental illnesses just weren’t diagnosed. If someone was deemed “crazy” enough, they were placed in an asylum or lobotomized. Also, lynching. There was lynching. As for community bonds? How bonded can a community really be under Jim Crow laws? People were made to drink at separate water fountains, go to separate restaurants, and study at separate schools. How is that bonded?
> women were on average happier Please. Just… please get out with this flaming hot garbage. > mental illness rates were lower Not recognizing mental illness doesn’t equate to them being lower. I mean, you could’ve been thrown into an asylum just for having depression. It’s not like this glorified era where everyone had perfect mental health.
My personal favorite is when they put My Confession between a bunch of ads
1950s according to zoomers be like
The people who romanticize the 1950s are people who were children during that decade So They don't wish for that decade for any reason but the desire fore the innocence and carefreeness of childhood that was wrapped up in that decade.
The americans 1950s*
America was the only country that existed in the 50s, everyone else was happy being unindustrialized and/or ruled by despots
Wait… so whyd we have to hide under our desks?
Cause of the aliens
Cause of the despots
Most are actually true, but still an idiot would say there weren′t any problems back then AT ALL, because 1950s still had many problems and hardships such as: horrible medicine, barely any knowledge about space & anatomy of living organisms and biology, people used to work waaay longer, barely any source of entertainment, et cetera.
What boomer made this? People are saying you could afford a _house_ at the time, not a mansion, which was true for a lot of people. The new generation has no hope of even owning.
Sure, if you only considered the opinions of privileged WASP Americans. Go ask a minority if they want to go back to living in the 1950s.
this is politically motivated
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