Back in My Day
How our future is screwed because of kids/teens today
I feel as if I could go on about this for pages and pages, but it’d be more prudent for simple argument’s sake to keep it simple.
TV/Cartoons
Firstly, let me say that the crap Cartoon Network allows on its channel and program lineup now is appalling. What happened to being terrified to watch Courage the Cowardly Dog later at night, but still wanting to finish playing with all your toys before then so you could watch it with both anticipation and fear? What was so wrong with Johnny Bravo repeatedly getting rejected by attractive women for coming on too strong, and teaching all of us that it’s not enough to be just physically attractive, but actually be gentlemen? Don’t even get me started on Dexter’s Laboratory, The Flinstones, The Powerpuff Girls, SWAT Cats, or any of the other amazing content Cartoon Network was once known for.
No, now instead we get Regular Show, which, funny enough, is just a regular show. It’s only funny when you realize it’s the least of several evils Cartoon Network is currently funding. Then you have Adventure Time which surely promotes kids doing acid because that is really the only way you can fully understand what the hell you’re watching, what with morphing dogs and petty attempts at romance, and the like. My least favorite, and the one that will push me to get off my butt and hunt the remote down to change the channel is The Amazing World of Gumball. What. The. F@#!. His mom is a cat, like him, but his dad is a rabbit and so is his sister, and then he has a goldfish brother who, I think, is adopted — does that really make it okay for them to accidentally kiss? Does the fact that it’s a children’s cartoon with a combination of animated and CG characters in a 3D-esque environment justify showing pixelated blurs where penises should be?
I’m so thankful for having Verizon FiOS TV as well, because they have Boomerang in their channel lineup even with their most basic package (Ultimate HD or GTFO, personally), and this is the ultimate throwback channel. In fact, unless I feel like watching a movie on Cinemax or ShowTime, my TV never even leaves channel 258. Especially between 6 and 9 PM every day (I think), I get an hour each of Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls, and, my favorite, Dexter’s Laboratory. However, other even older classics like The Flinstones, Secret Squirrel, and Johnny Quest show up as well — the last of which we’re going to take a quick look at.
That up there is the kind of cartoon I grew up watching, where story > animation, although when I watched it I thought it was incredible people just drew this stuff and brought it to life, in a manner of speaking. Now, let’s take a closer look at what’s going here — in this shot, some Australian guy finds Race and Dr. Quest and threatens them to deliver a huge sum of money or, well, you know, they die. I grew up watching shows like this, that would have content like this, and we never had a shooting at my school, not in elementary, middle, or high school; college is a different playground when you’ve got people with mental disorders coming into these huge 50,000-student-body environments, and totally healthy people undertaking huge amounts of stress in a short period of time. Yet now we’re in a day and age where 7-year-old’s can get suspended for acting their age and making gun noises with their hands — really, America? Have we really become such a booty tight country whose balls have shot so far back up they’re in our throats that doing “random” checks on Muslims at every airport isn’t enough?
“Random” = Muslim
On that note, let me just quickly say:
Dear airport security lady who does “random” checks in Paris,
It wasn’t a random check, and my mom, sister, and I all knew that, especially when the other “random” family you pulled aside to question about their trip and if they brought anything back with them (because white people would never bring anything back from their trips, right?) looked absolutely Caucasian, minus the girl who was slightly younger than me wearing a hijab.
Kids with iPhone’s
If I grew up watching shows like Johnny Quest and playing games like the GTA franchise, how come I, nor anyone else in my school who watched and played what I did, never came into the school with thoughts of shooting the place up? Or even if someone had the thought cross their mind, why didn’t they ever do anything? Is it because kids of today are just that stupid? You know what I think it is? Spoiling.
Sure, the iPhone is far more dumbed down for tech geeks than just about any phone running Android, but it is a $200-700 device that was designed for young adults — working Americans, not 8-year-old girls who can, and do, use it for Snapchat to show off their lady parts that aren’t even properly formed yet. Yet, there I was, standing in line to order at Starbucks when I see this attractive woman responding to an email on her white iPhone 5, and I reach in my pocket to (don’t get ahead of yourself) make sure that mine (in black!) is still in my pocket — it feels awesome. Then I look down and see a little girl who is clearly this woman’s daughter reach in her back pocket and pull out … an iPhone 4S (I’m very good at differentiating between iPhone’s). Seriously? This girl could not have been older than 9 or 10, and here she was texting away (problem #1) on her iPhone (problem #2). Whenever I go on CNN, I always find an article about kids being exploited and whatnot and their parents are always shocked — why are you shocked when you handed them the device they used? Fun fact: I got my first phone after I started high school.
Flirting vs. Sexting
Another thing that is absolutely revolting about kids and teens today is what they define as flirting versus what I used to a mere four years ago. The following two conversations are 100% actual conversations that took place between two different pairs of people.
Conversation #1:
Guy: Wait, what? You like me? Since when?
Girl: Well, when I wasn’t supposed to be talking to you and couldn’t stop…
Conversation #2*:
Guy (after giving his number): Aw, yeah, we’re about to sext. And then we can also hang out and stuff, and, well, you know…
Girl: Oh, you know I’d like that…a lot…
*Note: This conversation took place after Girl opted to send Guy a picture of herself shirtless — they were not dating at the time, nor have they ever.
The people in both conversations were all the same age when these conversations took place, the difference being #1 happened 7 or so years ago. What happened to the cute blushing and flirtation? What happened to not being able to hold back your smile when you saw the person walk into school, and it was because of how you felt about them, and not because they had sent you shirtless pictures of themselves the night before? How are parents raising their kids so differently now that it was the most wonderful thing in the world to just hold a girl’s hand you had a crush on in the past, and now it’s that you can’t really begin a relationship without first getting a picture of them shirtless? Again, #1 and #2.
Back in my day
Back in my day, if a girl found you hot, she said it once, and then focused on your personality and kept talking to you or quit based on that. Now, if a girl finds you hot, she reminds every one of her friends and her mom, and you can be the biggest man whore on Earth and she won’t care.
Back in my day, flirting meant being cute and the kind of stuff girls will spend hours reblogging on Tumblr. Now, flirting means adding ;) faces to the end of every text and message to insinuate something sexual.
Back in my day, if you thought a girl was cute, it meant that she wasn’t horrible to look at and had either nice eyes, a cute nose, a pretty smile, or round cheeks. Now, if you think a girl is cute, it means you’ve got a 3-inch boner and you know where it’s supposed to go.
Back in my day, when girls thought guys were cute, they’d only bring it up when they had their specified talk-about-guys time, and focused on their lives outside of that. Now, when girls think guys are cute it’s all they talk about and they’ll breathe, and eat, and go to school when they can squeeze it in.
Back in my day, the world felt safer and smarter, and love > sex.
