tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post5913240923471135824..comments2024-03-28T21:56:51.675-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Cocooning still continuing through new General Social Survey dataagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-69776959781723184382015-06-03T12:12:35.576-04:002015-06-03T12:12:35.576-04:00"After decades of a downward trend in crime, ..."After decades of a downward trend in crime, residents in some large U.S. cities wonder if a reversal is coming.<br /><br />If you live in Baltimore, you know that May, with 43 homicides, was the deadliest month since 1972. Or if you are a Houstonian, you've probably heard that murders were up 45% through April compared to the same period in 2014.<br /><br />The latest statistics in Milwaukee show a 103% spike in murders year-to-date compared with a year ago.<br /><br />The spike in killings in these major cities would be troubling in itself at any time, but it is especially troubling now, when policing practices, race and social policies are regularly in the news. "<br /><br />http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/us/crime-in-america/index.html<br />little insight, but at the same time the media is talking about the crime rate again.Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-64948262157374203742015-05-08T12:03:40.740-04:002015-05-08T12:03:40.740-04:00"Yes, but that isn't to say the overall o...<i>"Yes, but that isn't to say the overall online dating experience is good or healthy.</i><br /><br />It's not inherently unhealthy either. Literally every one of my friends who got married past the age of 30 met their spouse through online dating. They all seem to be doing well. Online dating is simply a buffer system, not unlike ones cultures have had in place for centuries. The mechanism has simply moved online, where now people can screen potential partners and not have to meet them (or have sex with them) until they know something about them. Is it better or worse to meet someone cold in a bar or at a concert? I don't think it's either. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-54526031152763475762015-05-07T19:53:04.387-04:002015-05-07T19:53:04.387-04:00Yes, but that isn't to say the overall online ...Yes, but that isn't to say the overall online dating experience is good or healthy. FWGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-5754900403264629912015-05-07T14:54:38.762-04:002015-05-07T14:54:38.762-04:00"And online dating itself is a major sign of ...<i>"And online dating itself is a major sign of cocooning."</i><br /><br />It's also a major sign of the technology being available. People have been trying to hack the dating process for decades. Since the internet became available in the 90s, people naturally gravitated towards it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-30689306233312992582015-05-07T13:50:51.236-04:002015-05-07T13:50:51.236-04:00Millenials' rate is only 2/3 that of the Boome...Millenials' rate is only 2/3 that of the Boomers. And online dating itself is a major sign of cocooning.FWGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-22606072508899164242015-05-07T13:00:18.724-04:002015-05-07T13:00:18.724-04:00"Contrary to this author's opinion, mille...<i>"Contrary to this author's opinion, millenials' sex lives are unsurprisingly different from their parents:"</i><br /><br />Interesting, but it doesn't seem to me that 2 less partners on average than Gen X really constitutes a shift in attitude. And I wonder how much online dating has to do with that, giving Millennials the ability to weed out potential sex partners before actually have sex with them. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-8852929174142512962015-05-07T12:32:15.305-04:002015-05-07T12:32:15.305-04:00Contrary to this author's opinion, millenials&...Contrary to this author's opinion, millenials' sex lives are unsurprisingly different from their parents:<br /><br />https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/millennials-sex-lives-are-surprisingly-118363889022.html<br /><br />FWGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-31439011118176366812015-05-07T12:18:47.556-04:002015-05-07T12:18:47.556-04:00"Back in the 80's, parents went to movies...<i>"Back in the 80's, parents went to movies for mature people sans their children."</i><br /><br />They sure did. On top of taking their kids to movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, E.T., The Goonies, Karate Kid, Something Wicked This Way Comes (one of my favorites), etc. Just like my wife and I nowadays go see our arty shit in addition to taking our kids to the latest blockbuster. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-34007605593474340352015-05-07T12:14:22.966-04:002015-05-07T12:14:22.966-04:00"Hated Toy Story."
Fair enough. If ther...<i>"Hated Toy Story."</i><br /><br />Fair enough. If there's an animated movie you like from the 90s, you can substitute for that. If you don't like any animated movies from that time period, I guess it's just not your thing. I do wonder, though, how tired are you at the end of the day after trying to keep track of every popular artist's sexuality? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-49700867027319769192015-05-07T00:57:27.080-04:002015-05-07T00:57:27.080-04:00"If, in 1976 when I was 8, there was somethin..."If, in 1976 when I was 8, there was something of the quality of Toy Story in theaters, I would have crapped my pants. Instead, we had Scooby Doo and Warner Bros. reruns (which are still the gold standard for cartoons, in my book)."<br /><br />Hated Toy Story. And I was about 11 or so when the merch. started popping up. It just seemed camp and self conciously retro. I know the Ernest guy did a voice. But after seeing him as a physical actor, it was pretty lame hearing him in this faggy ass Disney crap.<br /><br />I mean seriously, Snake Eyes/Cheetara/Optimus Prime or uhh, Woody and Buzz Lightyear. Really? Getting some kind of hard on for Toy Story marks you either as a later Millennial or a Gen X parent slumming it big time.<br /><br />Tim Allen is a closet case, by the way. I really hope that the voice actors I grew up with don't turn out to be fairies. Can you imagine He-Man or something voiced by a homo?<br /><br />Let's face it, most post '92 culture is a big joke pulled on us by the Jews and fags (but I repeat myself) as they laugh their way to the bank (and more gay sex/meth parties). Do you really think Walt Disney would stand for all the degenerate crap that Disney's pulled since the kikes invaded any last remnant of gentile culture?Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-29293636251721358152015-05-07T00:49:46.470-04:002015-05-07T00:49:46.470-04:00"It's kinda funny; I don't really rem...<i>"It's kinda funny; I don't really remember ever going to the theaters to see a "kid's movie" with my parents or even a babysitter."</i><br /><br />One of my first movie memories is of my parents, my brothers and I at the drive-in in Oakland, CA where they took us to see the Apple Dumpling Gang. On the screen behind us, they were showing Jaws. We kept turning around to watch Jaws while my mom would yell at us to knock it off. Ha. Anyway, there were kids movies before the 90s that parents took their kids to see. See also: Pete's Dragon. Ah man, now you got me walking down memory lane...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-83827037355511344102015-05-07T00:45:03.333-04:002015-05-07T00:45:03.333-04:00"Kids didn't want cartoons in the 70'...<i>"Kids didn't want cartoons in the 70's and 80's."</i><br /><br />This kid wanted cartoons back then. I couldn't wait for Saturday morning, which was pretty much the only chance to see cartoons back then. If, in 1976 when I was 8, there was something of the quality of Toy Story in theaters, I would have crapped my pants. Instead, we had Scooby Doo and Warner Bros. reruns (which are still the gold standard for cartoons, in my book). <br /><br />The reason, I think, that studios didn't do cartoons much in those years was twofold: it was a lot of time and effort and rather expensive, and people were still milking the old Disney formula and people were tired of that. There was some innovative stuff going on in animation meant for adults, like Bakshi, as you mentioned. But for kids, nobody had latched onto to something new and exciting. Beauty and Beast worked because the songs were great, but it was mostly adults in the seats for that. The first big hit with kids in the 90s was the Lion King. That had the whole package: great songs, a standard hero's journey story, top-notch animation, and actual kid voice actors. And it wasn't the classic Disney fairytale formula. <br /><br />That flick made so much money that studios started pumping out animation. And you're right, things did change from there, but I think it was due more to the studios' decision to focus on animation more than people actually changing. Suddenly there was a glut of feature length animation, something kids from any decade would be excited to see. And so they did, and so studios kept making them, and extremely talented folks were tapped and given lavish budgets. And also, computer processing power was at the point where it could produce astonishing (and very new) results. <br /><br />That's my take on it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-63406126985209389752015-05-07T00:44:02.948-04:002015-05-07T00:44:02.948-04:00Amending my point about 80's kids and cartoons...Amending my point about 80's kids and cartoons: Kids did watch cartoons on TV. But it was adults and teens who went to the movies. <br /><br />Back in the 80's, parents went to movies for mature people sans their children. They had their own entertainment that often didn't involve dragging the kids along. And hey, maybe it wasn't so bad that people born from about 1960-1985 got to deal with so much on their own.<br /><br />It's kinda funny; I don't really remember ever going to the theaters to see a "kid's movie" with my parents or even a babysitter. It may have happened but I know we got them on VHS and that was about it. The earliest movie I consciously remember seeing was Mortal Kombat ('95) when I was 10 with my 1 1/2 year older brother and some of our acquaintances. A mediocre movie, yes, but it still was a live-action movie with adult actors and violence.<br /><br />I know Agnostic seems to think that '85 was the first outright year for Millennials. But Mortal Kombat was a very Gen X phenomena and I was totally there for it. I played it a lot and remember what a controversy it was.<br /><br />I think that there's a transition phase between generations so people born then will be a composite of two generations. So 1961-1965 people will be a cross between Gen X and Boomer. And I think 1982-1986 people are a cross between Gen X and Millennial. Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-47341840651472513202015-05-07T00:29:44.974-04:002015-05-07T00:29:44.974-04:00By the way, M. Not sure when/how you grew up, but ...By the way, M. Not sure when/how you grew up, but in my neighborhood in the early 90's it was a rite of passage for 8-12 year old kids to watch violent action and horror movies. And to try and glimpse naked girls in 80's comedy movies. People were less uptight about maturation back then. You had to learn about sex and death at some point, right?<br /><br />The fact that people born from about 1987-2005 have had to deal with their parents dragging them to one cartoon after another says a lot about how wimpy Millennials are and how sad the parents are. If a kid sees a movie like Star Wars, he should feel awed. And parents shouldn't feel embarrassed watching a movie like SW either.<br /><br />Kids in the 80's/early 90's got excited talking about the Terminator and Luke Skywalker. Later Millennials? Uhh, Harry Potter?Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-79367806518458165912015-05-07T00:18:06.361-04:002015-05-07T00:18:06.361-04:00"They didn't really have either the money..."They didn't really have either the money (from their backers, or from movie revenues) or expertise to produce animation, which is very expensive and difficult to do half decently, compared to doing something the kind of clever but small and visceral films they were trying to do in the late 1960s and 1970s."<br /><br />Perhaps you would consider them to be unusual for the time, but Spielberg and Lucas had the vision, the work ethic, and the ingenuity to pursue highly difficult/elaborate special FX in the 70's. They easily could have applied themselves to full animation if they felt so inclined (and if they felt there was a market). Indeed, actual animation was used for FX in some live action movies of the 70's/80's.<br /><br />Ralph Bakshi famously (and mostly in vain) made a number of cartoon features in the 70's and 80's that were treated as D.O.A. by the public. His 2 million budget '77 fantasy movie Wizards barely got released while the live-action Star Wars (a higher budget movie, but not that high in budget) was a massive hit. And these were the days when word of mouth got movies success, not wall to wall marketing and ridiculous budgets. Disney had numerous high profile cartoon flops in the 70's, such that a new guy was brought who developed a series of live action movies (like Tron) and more "mature" cartoons (like the black Cauldron) which flopped. Disney licked their wounds until cocooning began to kick in around 1990 so Beauty and the Beast became a sensation (didn't it get nominated for Oscars?). One could argue that late Boomers/Gen X-ers considered Disney to be such a Dad brand that they avoided it like the plague.<br /><br />And maybe studios were reluctant to sink tons of money into cartoons because they knew the audience considered them a mid century relic. And a lot of that audience was kids and young teens. In the 70's and 80's, there still were plenty of family films for that demographic but they were mostly live action. Especially the ones that did well. I mean, young adults liked Star Wars, Back to the Future, and Ghostbusters but so did the under 15 demo as well.<br /><br />Kids didn't want cartoons in the 70's and 80's. And there were enough kids for studios to make quite a few movies for them (heck the end of the Baby Boom was 1965, so in 1972 the last wave of Boomers was around 8 years old).Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-79578314434753710642015-05-04T13:34:13.752-04:002015-05-04T13:34:13.752-04:00Feryl: People obviously are autistic dorks when th...Feryl: <i>People obviously are autistic dorks when they don't even want to watch human beings on the screen. There were virtually no hit cartoon movies in the 80's. Disney nearly died at the time.</i><br /><br />I do think a lot of people who are into animation aren't into observing people. That's why Japanese animation for instance, has got so bad since its 1980s to 1990s heydays, when they actually commonly (not always) depicted people with human behaviour and warmth rather than mere "fan service" stereotypes. <br /><br />But decline of cartoons at the movies, in the US, after the "Golden Age" stuff, probably has some link to the decline of the studio system and New Hollywood. <br />Un the late 1940s through the 1950s there was this huge fall in ticket sales, which would lead to a major fall in the amount of money Hollywood could throw at movies. (Basically because of television and this is the driver of a lot of the gimmicks like 3D movies and larger scaled epics). <br /><br />The late Silents and then the young Baby Boomer, in the late 1960s to early 1970s took over a lot of the industry that was left, first as the audience, fed by their numbers, then as film schooled entrepreneurs (they're a striving generation). <br /><br />They didn't really have either the money (from their backers, or from movie revenues) or expertise to produce animation, which is very expensive and difficult to do half decently, compared to doing something the kind of clever but small and visceral films they were trying to do in the late 1960s and 1970s.<br /><br />At the same time, most of the Baby Boomers were teenagers by around 1960 at least. So the period from that on was peak teenager, and not peak parent and child, adding another effect on to why that period was not a "Family Values" period, as relatively fewer people were parents with young kids, and of course they were less helicoptery as well. And animation is generally used more for childish media (generally for good reason.)<br /><br />(The "Echo Boom" of the early Millennial period was a return to relatively larger numbers of older adults and their kids and that's why you started seeing a lot of the doofy parent and child sitcoms and stuff from the late 1980s on, on top of whatever cocooning effect there is.)Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-64891818481572212562015-05-04T12:17:38.594-04:002015-05-04T12:17:38.594-04:00"Sleazy tabloids were more popular in the mid...<i>"Sleazy tabloids were more popular in the mid century (40's-early 60's) than they were in the late 60's-80's when people had lives."</i><br /><br />Star Magazine, National Enquirer, People Magazine, Us Magazine, etc., all had their heyday in the 80s. Hugely popular rags. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-59578024375487232522015-05-03T12:27:39.406-04:002015-05-03T12:27:39.406-04:00Anonymous: You don't think the VCR and HBO had...Anonymous: <i>You don't think the VCR and HBO had any effect on theater attendance?</i><br /><br />On the large time scale scale, in the US, tickets per capita dropped dramatically in the 1950s to 1960s though, then held steady by comparison (although there are fluctuations). TV seems like it had much bigger effects than the VCR. Culturally going to the movies was most common in the "Golden Age of Hollywood" era, like you'd expect from the social history and just talking to people who lived in the 60s-80s era vs the Midcentury, and just how prominent cinema and Hollywood were in culture then. Cable TV doesn't seem to have had much of an effect that TV didn't already have. <br /><br />On TV viewing, the US GSS shows a mild decrease in TVhours per day from 1975 to 2014, samples sizes are about a thousand individuals each year, so I think it's pretty robust. <br /><br />http://i.imgur.com/etntqaJ.png<br /><br />Magnitude of change over time (to less TV watching) is a lot larger within the 20-30 years old category, and within any age category, as there seems like a distribution where people begin watching a lot more TV from age 50 onwards. Within Whites aged 20-30, goes on a linear decrease from 3 hours a day in 1975 to 2 hours per day in 2010 (2012 and 2014 give a slight spike though, so maybe that's the HBO effect, a resurgence driven by decent quality serials).<br /><br />With a lot of the technological changes with the internet, I don't see much difference in use between the countries that were rising violence all the way through the 1990s and to some extent into the 2000s (South America, UK based on homicide rates - http://www.visionofhumanity.org/pdf/ukpi/UK_Peace_Index_report_2013.pdf) so I don't know if any social trend connected to rising or falling violence would link up to the new tech very much. <br /><br />I'm sure people would use it a little differently, but you'd have the same basic services.<br /><br />Regarding net porn specifically the idea that it has a link to growing sexual frustration is probably wrong. <br /><br />On the GSS if you use the "Seen X rated movie in last year", a variable going back to 1989, and plot it against either frequency of sex (sexfreq) or number of sexual partners in last year, the ones who watch more porn tend to also have more partners and higher sexual frequency.<br /><br />http://i.imgur.com/S1qXDek.png<br />http://i.imgur.com/pJhGmx7.png<br /><br />If you use the web use questions on porn (porn30) you get exactly the same result against partners (more partners, more web porn use) while sexual frequency is not related.<br /><br />http://i.imgur.com/MeKEpxl.png<br /><br />Web porn use is connected to greater promiscuity and sexual activity in all the samples, so its probably one of those things that would've been even more huge in the past promiscuous era and has succeeded in the modern era *despite* trends being against it. Makes sense, right? More sexually interested people will use more porn, and that is on average a greater effect than any frustration linked effect.<br /><br />These above are men and women, trends are stronger only in men.<br /><br />The no porn guys seem a little happier on both questions though.Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-84381342316888896222015-05-03T09:36:01.046-04:002015-05-03T09:36:01.046-04:00"Uh, no. People have followed scandals since,..."Uh, no. People have followed scandals since, forever. Look up the history of Confidential magazine from the 50s, for starters."<br /><br />Sleazy tabloids were more popular in the mid century (40's-early 60's) than they were in the late 60's-80's when people had lives. Go figure that when people started cocooning again in the 90's that tabloid culture had a huge resurgence. When people grow apart from each other it creates a void that people desperately try to fill with shallow junk culture. But it's not going to work because there is no substitute for the joy and camaraderie that comes from a culture which makes everything as social as possible.<br /><br />Of course wall to wall consumption of "social" media, texting, binge watching TV and so on will be common when people are afraid of each other. CNN didn't have anything to do with:<br />- art getting worse, why do you think MTV showed less and less videos after 1992?<br />- clothes getting baggier<br />- women styling hair so that it hung in their eyes<br />- make-up getting less visible<br />- facial hair becoming trendier, <br />- Crew cuts and fully bald heads being much more popular since 1997 than they were in the late 60's-80's. How much fun can somebody people when they have a dehumanizing haircut?<br /><br />Let's face it, people got dorkier in the 90's.<br /><br />Also, in the later 60's-80's movies relied on word of mouth to sell. '89's Batman, a shallow and mediocre comic book movie, is widely seen as a movie whose overhyped marketing techniques were so successful that it became a blueprint for Hollywood. As art quality declines studios have to resort to months and months of hype to build interest in a movie because the studios know that the product isn't good enough to sell itself.<br /><br />Note also that the subject matter of movies and songs is much more juvenile in the post 1992 era than it was in the 70's/80's. Campy cartoons and musicals were a lot more popular in the mid century than they were in the 70's/80's.People obviously are autistic dorks when they don't even want to watch human beings on the screen. There were virtually no hit cartoon movies in the 80's. Disney nearly died at the time.<br />Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-51944323790586893672015-05-02T23:39:28.522-04:002015-05-02T23:39:28.522-04:00"Movies were better in the 70's and early...<i>"Movies were better in the 70's and early to mid 80's. Which would explain why theater going dropped."</i><br /><br />You don't think the VCR and HBO had any effect on theater attendance? <br /><br /><i>"By 1994 Clerks (shot in B&W) would get widely released. Were any contemp. black and white movies widely released in the mid 70's-mid 80's?"</i><br /><br />Yes. Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show to name two off the top of my head. Both classics and quite popular at the time. I'm sure there are more.<br /><br /><i>"With regard to the OJ saga, wasn't it around 1990 or so that the culture became interested in following trashy scandals voraciously?"</i><br /><br />Uh, no. People have followed scandals since, forever. Look up the history of Confidential magazine from the 50s, for starters. <br /><br /><i>"In other words, had OJ gone on a spree in the early-mid 80's it would've received attention. But not the level of mania that it ended up having since it happened in the 90's."</i><br /><br />If CNN and other 24 hour news networks were around in the 80s, it sure would have. And anyway, there were quite a few scandals I distinctly remember getting major coverage in the 80s. The Iran-Contra Affair, Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker, Gary Hart and Donna Rice. They were covered and watched as much as the technology of the time allowed. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-53317229574628163402015-05-01T22:39:01.089-04:002015-05-01T22:39:01.089-04:00I'm struck by how little people remember about...I'm struck by how little people remember about the nature of the internet in the '90s. It was a totally new thing, you think it would've left an impression for how primitive it was -- like black & white TV with only 3 channels of wholesome programming that went off the air every night.<br /><br />How many people remember anything accurately about the 90's? Or anything at all about the period? You've said that the decade was like the bitter divorce after the (relatively) happy union of the 80's. It was an awkward, confused time that most people (probably subconsciously) would rather just not think about anymore.<br /><br />I think that things gradually shifted throughout the decade which make it harder to make summaries/generalizations of the time. Also, the 90's was the decade where it became very obvious that due to:<br />-Striving<br />- Idiotic social policy subsidizing blacks/browns<br />- The disintegration of the family<br />- Growing betrayal of any sort of tradition or standards<br /><br />We were never going to fulfill the Reagan promise of bring America back to full strength. The election of wild Bill Clinton, he of the inimitable smarm, was a defiant rejection of what progress had been made in the 80's. <br /><br />But people for the most part weren't really hip to what was driving anything. Things were sorta changing but it's not like anyone was cheerleading (except some know it all Boomers I guess). People were more bemused, more detached. We just didn't quite know what to make of a lot of it.<br /><br />Grunge does come up when you mention the 90's, but this isn't that surprising when you realize that Grunge was one of the last remnants of soul and sincerity in the early 90's. But nobody talks about the boring mid-late 90's except for some TV (Seinfeld, the show about "nothing" e.g whiny Jews, the paranoia of X-files, the zany Gen X-ers of Friends)Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-35897624009992388092015-05-01T20:51:02.274-04:002015-05-01T20:51:02.274-04:00"Fair point Agnostic but cable started slicin..."Fair point Agnostic but cable started slicing into society in the 90'S(OJ 1994). More channels, more porn and more reasons to stay home with or without the internet. What I remember and what seemed strange to me at the time and today was how people would buy movies at the store. "<br /><br />Movies were better in the 70's and early to mid 80's. Which would explain why theater going dropped. Also, the initial signs of cocooning were already apparent around 1990:<br /><br />- Clothes were getting baggier eventually leading to way too many people looking like clowns by the late 90's.<br /><br />- A trend for black and white photography as seen in some trendy commercials/music videos. By 1994 Clerks (shot in B&W) would get widely released. Were any contemp. black and white movies widely released in the mid 70's-mid 80's?<br /><br />- Several popular songs with highly repetitive rhythms, dull instrumentation, and flat vocals went up the charts in late 1988/1989. "Pure" rap was virtually non existent on the charts before 1988.<br /><br />With regard to the OJ saga, wasn't it around 1990 or so that the culture became interested in following trashy scandals voraciously? The notable incidents/scandals that caused a stir in the 70's/80's (Jim Jones, The Manson Family, Ted Bundy etc.) tended to be spectacularly gruesome and people generally didn't follow this stuff obsessively. It's not the tech aspect; the 80's actually had just as much scandalous stuff happening but people were too busy working, socializing, listening to good music, playing pickup basketball or whatever to spur cable news ratings sky high.<br /><br />In other words, had OJ gone on a spree in the early-mid 80's it would've received attention. But not the level of mania that it ended up having since it happened in the 90's.<br /><br />Trashy day time talk (on broadcast TV mind you) and wall to wall scandal coverage by cable news exploded in the 90's. But that's because people were withdrawing from the outside world and getting dorkier, not because people did more outrageous things to justify the voyeurism of the 90's and beyond. Ferylnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-53524796677059925282015-05-01T13:25:56.992-04:002015-05-01T13:25:56.992-04:00Fair point Agnostic but cable started slicing into...Fair point Agnostic but cable started slicing into society in the 90'S(OJ 1994). More channels, more porn and more reasons to stay home with or without the internet. What I remember and what seemed strange to me at the time and today was how people would buy movies at the store. I rarely ever want to see any movie twice. Personally, I like a somewhat rowdy crowd in the theater. What makes people laugh, cry or yawn interests me. I am in the minority as people seem to think now that they don't have to go to the theater or stadium why should they. Yes, I agree with you about the internet but there were other technical changes happening that foreshadowed the internet and were changing society. Like your blog and am sympathetic to your general theory but life in 1994 watching the OJ trial was much different then 1984 or 1974.markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02083316354675176699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-21270265573213323952015-05-01T13:25:34.959-04:002015-05-01T13:25:34.959-04:00something I've been wondering for awhile now, ...something I've been wondering for awhile now, is what will happen to the Internet once people stop cocooning? is it possible to integrate it, but use it much less drastically?<br /><br />crime rose temporarily in the early 2000s, yet Internet use was also rising during this time.Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-88193204166904006852015-05-01T12:48:59.317-04:002015-05-01T12:48:59.317-04:00I'm struck by how little people remember about...I'm struck by how little people remember about the nature of the internet in the '90s. It was a totally new thing, you think it would've left an impression for how primitive it was -- like black & white TV with only 3 channels of wholesome programming that went off the air every night.<br /><br />Everything that people blame the internet for didn't show up until the 2000s, but they project them back 10-15 years to try to rationalize the warped direction that social behavior was heading in during the '90s.<br /><br />Same with cell phones -- so rare in the '90s that the running joke in Clueless was, "OMG these teenagers are so rich they *all* have cellular telephones!" Even if you did have one back then, there was no texting.<br /><br />The first wave of cell phone popularity in the early 2000s was largely a talking phenomenon -- a common complaint was that cell phones led to self-important idiots blabbing their private conversations to the general public, who couldn't have cared less.<br /><br />Texting didn't hit it big until the mid-2000s -- that's when the complaints shifted to kids diddling their phones underneath their desk instead of paying attention to the teacher, and maybe 5-10 years after that, the complaint about young people walking around with their heads slumped downward as they text and swipe for hours on end.<br /><br />Internet porn gets blamed a lot for the distance between boys and girls, and increasingly men and women, but video clips weren't really available until the early 2000s either.<br /><br />Yet the decline in young people socializing in mixed-sex groups, dating, and having sex began by the early '90s (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey). That wasn't caused by young guys retreating to the safe, rejection-free echo chamber of internet porn videos, which were non-existent. What they had available was the occasional nudie mag that someone's friend swiped from his older brother or father, or the Victoria's Secret catalog that came in the mail.<br /><br />As in the other cases, the technological change was driven by an earlier social change (not vice versa). After young people in the '90s had grown increasingly distant, guarded, and risk-averse romantically and sexually, internet porn videos became a profitable substitute or palliative during the 2000s.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com