What's something that hasn't aged well?
A few years ago I watched a movie -- can't even remember what it was -- that heavily involved pagers. One character got mad at another for not returning their call, and there was a dramatic scene where they yelled something like "I PAGED you like an HOUR ago!" At the time of its release it probably made perfect sense, but from a modern perspective it had some unintentional comedy to it -- not to mention that younger audiences might not even understand what was going on given that pagers have likely fallen out of common understanding at this point.
I'm curious as to other things that haven't aged well, whether that's due to technological changes, shifts of the social or moral landscape, or even things that are fine in isolation but are hard to divorce from a larger context (e.g. They Might Be Giants released a song in late 2011 that jokes about Whitney Houston being the drummer for the band, but Houston died unexpectedly in early 2012).
Really anything is fair game: what hasn't aged well, and why not?
I must preface by saying that I LOVE the tv show Friends, and think it was quite progressive for the time. BUT quite a few jokes aged poorly, in particular some that make fun of homosexuality.
The whole subplot about Chandler's nonbinary [1] father (played by Kathleen Turner), for example.
[1] I don't really know the correct classification, feel free to correct me.
Friends had a beautiful lesbian wedding in which Ross put aside his bitterness and preconceived notions, helping the wedding to happen and even dancing with his hated rival Susan... in 1996.
"I don't really know if they fags or what, search a nigga down and grabbin his nuts"
-N.W.A on fuck tha police comparing cops to gay people
Some statements from this article from 1995
"I'M GOING TO RAPE YOU" somehow becoming an ancient meme
A twitter account for poorly aged things
Personal favorites being
Facebook shares are worth 15 dollars
The internet will be a fad
The nazis can't get through the british and the French (technically true but they beat the french in 40 days)
Google+ will be forever
r/agedlikemilk
My favorites from that sub:
"Conservatives don't riot"
"LIBERATE MINNESOTA!"... from racism.
Target endorses looting! So progressive!
China will be a democracy 20 years from now, in 2015 when the GDP per capita gets high enough
From me:
A great recession will surely change Republicans' minds about this because then they won't be able to blame us for it!
From people in this site:
Biden is toast bro
To be fair, Biden only barely got the nomination in some key states, even with a pandemic that @Amarok undoubtedly didn't account for. Still amusing though.
I'm more interested in the phone calls that weekend which got the rest of the actual contenders to drop out immediately. I wasn't expecting the DNC to drop the fiction of having a primary and just crown their boy through backroom deals. I'm kinda glad they did, though. It pissed off the progressive wing even more, and that's good. Perhaps someday they'll stop looking to the democrats for truly progressive candidates.
It only appeared that way because of the way the democratic primary works, with an overemphasis on the first states to vote (Iowa, NH, etc). These not only are not not particularly exactly representative of the country (being heavily majority white and far more engaged in politics) but also don't even have that many votes, but they're important for the "narrative" and the "horse race".
In the end it was not particularly close and the race was over after a crushing victory in Super Tuesday.
Nice to see that my own claim chowder in that thread has aged well.
A lot of TV shows. Things that were really popular like Cheers and Moonlighting. Shows from the 70s are particularly cringeworthy. I saw an episode of Mork and Mindy a couple years ago, and all I could think was, why did my parents let me watch this crap? All 3 of those shows are just full of horrible sexist blather and toxic masculinity. Welcome Back Kotter is full of terrible stereotypes.
@kfwyre, you should do a follow-up post on "What Things Have Improved With Age?" (Not that I have any great ideas, but I'd be interested to hear others' views on the subject.)
I love the idea! I don’t mind setting it up, but I also want to let you know that I don’t mind in the slightest if you/anyone else does either! I don’t want people to think that I have to be the one to vet or post related ask threads. If anyone ever sees a topic of mine and it sparks a good follow-up question for them, I fully encourage them to make that thread!
OK, I've posted it here.
Thanks! I promise I wasn’t trying to make more work for you, I’ve just had a couple of things come up recently where I’m treated like the gatekeeper of ‘ask’ topics and I don’t want people to think I’m the keeper of the keys for them.
My wife and I got through Star Trek TOS but it took quite a bit to tolerate. We understand that it was groundbreaking for the time but didn't understand what it was up against. We watched it since wanted to understand the references to TOS, and we didn't realize how different it was from TNG, DS9, etc.
We were tempted to make Kirk's inappropriate advances and behavior into a drinking game, but we enjoy our livers.
I've been watching Taxi (from a lot of the people that went on to work on Cheers) and I've actually been surprised with how well it holds up. There are definitely some "woman, I a right?" kind of jokes but it's extremely progressive in certain areas.
I haven't seen that one in a while, but I could buy that. If I recall, Soap also tackled subjects that most other shows shied away from at that time. (But don't quote me on that. It's been a looong time since I watched it.) It was, of course, intentionally over the top, though.
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog - Live at the Bowery Ballroom from 2003 features the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" guy and Subway's Jared Fogle on stage together.
Eddie Murphy's Delirious. I remember screaming laughing the first time I saw it as a kid in the '80s. But I recently tried rewatching it on Netflix and holy shit, the number of homophobic slurs was unbelievable. I turned it off after a few minutes.
Industrialization