Treehouses, and friends entering your 2nd-story room through the window, as tropes from the rising-harmony phase of the 50-year civil stability cycle

While preparing a post on friends vs. frenemies during the rising-harmony vs. rising-strife phases of Turchin's 50-year cycle in civic cohesion vs. breakdown, I came across one of the fondest memories that late Gen X-ers have of the peak of social harmony circa the mid-'90s -- friends entering each other's rooms through the bedroom window, rather than going through the usual doors on the ground floor.

To clarify, this rarely happened in real life and is mainly a trope from pop culture. And yet, even as a pop culture trope, it didn't exist long before the '90s, and ceased afterwards. Pop culture is dynamic, not static, and it reflects the broader zeitgeist -- not only within the cultural domains, but in the IRL social domains like families, friends, communities, and so on.

In order to pay proper homage to this cultural phenomenon, and to understand it properly, and to trace its origins or spiritual ancestors, I'm putting together this standalone post instead of relegating it to the comment thread.

First, as a summary for those who remember or as a whirlwind tour for those poor unfortunate souls who weren't part of that world, here is a compilation video of the trope from Slate's YouTube channel. It's not meant to be exhaustive, and I will add more examples below and in the comments as I come across them.

We have to clearly delineate what the trope is -- it's not the very broad definition from TV Tropes or IMDB, where it's merely entering the home through a window. That covers criminals breaking & entering, or spies and snoops, frenemies trying to sabotage each other, etc.

But more importantly, this *does not* cover an existing romantic couple, or between two people where there's already romantic tension or sexual intent -- that trope is already fairly well established. For example, Romeo observing Juliet on her balcony, serenades in the same spatial position, princes scaling the walls of a tower to reach the princess' window a la Rapunzel, and many other fairly old and pre-American examples.

The distinctly all-American 20th-century trope covers friends, acquaintances, peers, and similar relationships. They might escalate into romantic relationships, or they might not, that's not crucial. And since it's about friendship and camaraderie, it is not restricted to an opposite-sex pair -- it could be two guy friends, or two girl friends, or a mixed-sex pair.

A few further examples:

Here is a short compilation just from Clarissa Explains It All (1991-'94), to emphasize how frequently this trope appeared in that show -- just about every episode, often multiple times per episode. Whenever Sam meets up with Clarissa at her home, there's a thud of the ladder against the window, Clarissa says "Hi Sam," a leitmotif guitar chord strums, and he enters.

Here is an example from a '95 episode of Boy Meets World, where friends Cory and Topanga start to declare their romantic feelings for each other. At other times in the show, guy friends Cory and Shawn enter through the window. It's not just for mixed-sex or potentially romantic partners.

Here is an example from a '94 episode of Married with Children, where Bud is paid a visit by an acquaintance, the niece of his next-door neighbor, and things escalate from there. (In the same clip, one of Kelly's bf du jour guys accidentally climbs up the same ladder, thinking it's her room, before being told it's the next window over.)

Here is a pic from Doogie Howser (unknown year, but '89 or the early '90s) showing Doogie's best friend Vinnie entering through the window. Another guy friend example.

Unfortunately, the show that probably started, but at the very least was the first popularizer of this trope -- Saved by the Bell -- doesn't have any video clips or images of the many times that friends entered through the bedroom window. But it was common, for both same-sex friends like Zack and Screech, and mixed-sex friends like Zack and Jessie.

Doogie Howser is the other contender for first example, since it and Saved by the Bell both began airing in the fall of '89, a couple years ahead of Clarissa and Boy Meets World. I'd have to start watching my Saved by the Bell DVDs to see when the first instance was, but there's a 1st season clip of Screech being pushed out the open window by Zack in a panic. So I'm guessing the trope began in its 1st season. IDK about Doogie Howser, and won't watch episodes just to see.

In any case, Saved by the Bell was by far the more popular and influential of the two, not just among teen shows of the time, but their legacy ever since. So for the time being, I'm going to declare it the originator of this trope. Earlier examples of "entering through the window" from the '80s involved romantic couples, like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Heathers. Maybe those could be considered proto-examples.

Saved by the Bell, in fact, might be the originator of so-called postmodern TV comedy shows, with frequent and lengthy addresses to the audience (breaking the 4th wall), cut-away imagination sequences, cut-away homages / pastiches of classic and contempo pop culture, and other self-aware / meta-commentary techniques that would come to define comedy shows of the '90s and even the 21st century.

How long did the trope last? Not really beyond the '90s, except as a target for send-up and pastiche as in Kickass (2010), or as a callback to the original show during a sequel show (like Girl Meets World from the mid-2010s). The last major show to do it was Dawson's Creek from the late '90s -- the examples were frequent, involving various friends, not necessarily romantic in tone, and still participating in the trend itself, without being a self-aware reference or allusion. And that was a popular / influential teen show.

The most notable later example is not a TV show or movie at all, but the iconic music video for "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift from 2008. Admittedly, the two mixed-sex neighbors don't enter each other's rooms, but they do socially interact, emotionally connect, and play supportive roles in each other's lives, across the narrow gap between their homes. They start out not romantically involved, "just friends," although it does eventually escalate to romance, after the girl-next-door gets rid of her mean-girl rival (his current, then ex-gf).

I appreciate the honesty of this video for acknowledging that the peak of social harmony was over by the 2000s, so it would've been inauthentic to LARP as teens from 1993 and directly enter each other's rooms through the window. The interaction across the gap while still in their separate rooms conveys the same spirit, albeit at a lower intensity since friends, and the sexes, are no longer as close as they used to be back in the '90s. And it is still their personal rooms where they're connecting -- not their living rooms, kitchens, rec rooms, etc., so the intimacy and just-the-two-of-us-ness is preserved.

Cute. ^_^

Also worth noting that she takes the initiative in their relationship: she's the first to start communicating through notes between their windows, at the dance she tracks him down, and most importantly she is the first one to show him her note that says "I love you", and he only shows his note saying the same thing after she has already done so. Very '90s vibe -- the song could easily make a good soundtrack for a "Pete and Ellen" compilation video using scenes from The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

* * *

This is a very '90s trope, and it's no coincidence that appeared and spread around the peak of social harmony. How did it channel the harmonious social mood?

It's mainly about the directness of the friends' interactions -- they don't have to knock at the front door, then wait in the living room, then hang out for a snack in the kitchen, and then ultimately wind up in the privacy of the person's personal room. It's not as though those various checkpoints along the way always led toward a hanging-out session in the personal room -- they're all various places where the guest can be turned away.

Knocking on the front door? Maybe they'll be ignored by someone pretending not to be home, or they'll be greeted at the door, but not invited in -- "I'm kinda busy right now..." Or maybe defused by hanging out on the front porch / patio for a bit, and once the convo is over, time to head on back home, without even stepping foot inside.

Hanging out in the living room, perhaps while watching some TV? Well, that's a great big time-suck and energy-exhauster right there. You can while away hours vegging out on the living room couch in front of the TV. After getting your fill of that activity, it's time to head on back home, without going to the personal room.

Sitting down at the kitchen table for a little snack or maybe doing some homework together? Well, you can have a brief little chat there, and after the homework is done, and the meal is starting to fill your belly, might as well head on home, without going to the personal room.

Ditto for a trip to the basement rec room, gamer station, or dad's den / man cave. It diverts the social energy into an activity like playing games, and after you've spent an hour or so doing that, you're feeling a little exhausted, might as well head on home.

There's just something about hanging out in the personal room that you can't get from those other spaces -- especially those that don't even let you inside, like chatting on the front porch, shooting hoops in the driveway, and so on.

It's more intimate, more private, the door is closed and it's just the best buds in their own little world, whereas the rest of the household may show up in the other non-personal spaces in the home, like the living room, kitchen, or basement rec room. Hell, if it's an outside space, the general public might show up unannounced!

Nothing is cozier, socially and spatially defended against outside forces and surveillance, than hanging out in the personal room. There's not even a distinct and dedicated material thing there to define your activity, like the couch or TV in the living room, or the fridge and table in the kitchen, or the video game console or pool table in the rec room. It's just the person's bed -- which as friends you won't be sharing -- and their closet and clothing-related furniture, and various personal thingies strewn about.

And that's just it -- it lacks any other material purpose that could divert your attention away from just hanging out, having a convo, sharing secrets, giving advice, venting frustrations, coming up with plans, and in general opening up to and supporting each other. No distractions.

The material things that are present, heighten the sense of intimacy and personal closeness -- that's the bed the person sleeps in, that's the closet where their clothes are stored, that's their book collection they browse while bored-in-their-room-alone, and so on. The person is opening themselves up just by letting you be around these personal things, more so than by merely inviting you inside their home while remaining in a non-private room with distractions that could divert the interaction away from interpersonal bonding.

So, by entering the personal room directly via the window to the outside, all these other non-private spaces are avoided, and none of the social energy is dissipated by the room-specific material focal objects. And there is virtually no chance of just being sent away, unlike at the other checkpoints -- the visitor is taking a literal physical risk of falling and injuring themselves or dying, by appearing at the second-story window -- you can't send such a vulnerable person away!

Oh, forgot to mention -- the window is always above the ground floor! That introduces the physical risk, and what makes it a costly and therefore honest signal, of the visitor's need to come in, preventing any chance of rejection. A visitor who isn't a close friend isn't going to take those physical risks, only to appear rude and presumptuous to the resident -- so the only person who ever makes these trips is a close and trusted friend.

Aside from saving all the social energy for the close bonding space, it also clears away any sense of the two friends playing petty and pointless games with each other, to assert dominance or put the other in their place, etc. The entrance to the personal room is direct, immediate, and unquestioned. No need to jump through any hoops (other than climbing up there, of course), pass inspections, receive permission slips, or other manner of checking off boxes on an application form, as though you were being hired for a job rather than invited to hang out by a friend.

I deny the claim that it's related to doing an end-run around parental supervision -- often enough, the parents aren't even home at the time, nor are any other siblings or household members. But if you're just watching TV in the living room, supposedly all alone, those parents or siblings could show up at any moment and spoil the intimacy, given how close the living room is to the doors, and given its expectation as a non-private space, so whoever shows up won't think anything about going right to the living room where you're already hanging out on the couch. Ditto for doing homework or having a snack at the kitchen table.

If you entered an otherwise empty home through those rooms, your privacy could be interrupted before you get to the personal room. By heading straight to the personal room, you're not bypassing an existing third party in the home -- you're removing even the potential future interruption, by not slow-rolling your presence through various non-private rooms in the home, even when no one else is home for the time being.

In these various ways, it's intensifying or elevating the guest-host relationship, where guests are never turned away, but hosts are never put upon or betrayed by those guests. But it's a small number involved -- just those two, not multiple guests coming over for dinner or having a place to sleep. It's the two friends, with the rest of the world kept outside (even if they're inside the same home -- outside of the personal room, at any rate).

It's camaraderie, but also intimacy, not the bonds among a large team of people (which may be shown in other ways in the TV show).

The roles are complimentary rather than identical -- a guest, and a host. And although seemingly setting up a dominance hierarchy with a requester at the mercy of the space-controller, the unquestioned and unconditional access levels this potential hierarchy, and emphasizes the egalitarian nature of social relations when harmony rather than strife and competition is the norm. Roles are complimentary, but egalitarian.

* * *

So far, so good -- but remember, there's a cycle at work here. It's not enough to show how the social mood and pop culture were related during the most recent peak of social harmony -- ideally, we'd observe a similar match from the peak before that one (roughly the second half of the '20s through the mid-'40s). And even more ideally, a similar decline in the trope during the previous rising-strife phase (roughly the late '40s through the early '70s, tied together by the strands of second-wave feminism, African-American civil rights, and students vs. the school authorities).

Well, there's no 100% match to the Radio Days environment -- no pop culture trope of friends entering each other's personal rooms through the window. But there was a closely related one, so closely related, in fact, that the '90s trope incorporated a key element of it that was not needed for the purposes of "friends entering a 2nd-story window" -- but *was* necessary to signal its spiritual origins in the earlier trope born in the '30s and '40s.

I tried to think of what other scenarios and architectural forms the "friends entering through the window" trope resembled, so I could check their origins and cyclic popularity. At first I was misled by the "scaling the castle / tower walls" scenario -- again, that's mainly in the context of a princess and her suitor, not friends. And it also relies on the external walls being a defensive obstruction, and bypassing parental supervision, and the personal room being a prison cell rather than a sanctuary, and so on.

Then it hit me -- the rooms from the '90s were like treehouses! Then it all fell into place. But before analyzing the similarities, let's note one similarity that is not necessary structurally, and only serves as a reference to the earlier example.

Quite often, including the most iconic examples like Clarissa Explains It All and Saved by the Bell, outside the window is a huge tree, visible through the window, lying no more than 10 feet away. In the '90s trope, the tree is not typically used as the means of ascending the walls -- usually it's a ladder, as in Clarissa. Why is this huge tree trunk and large branches and abundant foliage taking up most of the view through the window to the outside?

They could have left the space blank -- blue skies, sunsets, warm sunlight, etc. could be pouring in. They could have put some remote natural landscape, like rolling hills and mountains, as is typical for California where these shows tend to be filmed. They could have made the view of the neighboring house (a la the Taylor Swift video).

Even if there was a tree in view, they don't have to make it so massive and place it so close to the window -- why, it's like the room practically sits within the tree itself. But that's just it! They're making the room look like a treehouse, and none of the other choices for "what's outside the window" would have given it a treehouse vibe.

The ladder that the visitor climbs up to the window is not a scheming mechanism used to counteract a defensive obstacle in warfare or imprisonment -- it's just this trope's version of an entry staircase that leads to a door on the ground floor, or an even grander exterior staircase that leads to a 2nd-story door. Or more to the point, like the ladder used to enter a treehouse -- and it usually was a ladder, not a climbing rope or a spiral staircase around the tree trunk or whatever else.

Climbing a ladder, 5 feet away from a massive tree trunk, to enter a residential sanctuary among close friends -- that's a treehouse. The only twist in the '90s version is that the treehouse is not attached to the outdoor tree, but belongs to the indoor section of the house. It's an internal treehouse, or a home within the home. After all, this room has its own entrance to the outside world, its own staircase of sorts connecting the ground to the entrance -- it's a smaller home, nested within a larger home.

The personal mini-home may not have a stove, sink, shower, TV set, laundry machines, and other things that are necessary to consider it a full home. Then again, neither does a treehouse. But this room is also a home of its own in its spatial and social relation to the outside world and to people who live outside the household.

Also, both a treehouse and the '90s teen room hit on the theme of social harmony in assuming a lack of paranoia by the dwellers, regarding the general public. Couldn't some random stranger, perhaps one with malicious motives, just plop the ladder against the wall, and barge through the unlocked / open window? There's no security guard or other checkpoint to ensure that this doesn't happen.

So the tropes are clearly saying that the dwellers do not expect such anti-social behavior to be common or even existent at all. Once the trope starts to fade from popularity, that is therefore a signal of the fraying trust among strangers or community members or neighbors. Suddenly, the mood becomes, "You never know who might climb that ladder into your window".

That is not connected to the crime rate, BTW, since the late '80s and early '90s were the peak of the homicide rate in America, right when this trope was born and spread like crazy. Also right around the origin of helicopter parenting. The previous trope, of treehouses, was born during a falling-crime period (the mid-to-late '30s, as discussed below). So there's no similarity between the two trope's relation to the crime rate.

And just as in the '90s teen room, the treehouse has a primary dweller or owner, and everyone else is a visitor -- potentially setting up a hierarchy, but entry into the treehouse is unquestioned, and the owner does not lord it over the requester. It's physically risky to climb up the ladder, lest you fall and injure yourself, so there's the same honest signal of need to enter.

There's a similar level of seclusion and intimacy, at least for treehouses that have a roof / ceiling and walls enclosing all the space between the floor and the ceiling. A few examples, mainly from circa 1960, are *not* houses in that sense, but more like a perch with only a floor and some low guard-rails (more on that later).

In addition to their physical / architectural seclusion, there's the presumption of social seclusion in that parents and other members of the household or the general public don't have an open invitation to just barge on in and interrupt the hanging-out session. At most, they can knock on the door, give a quick message like "dinner's in 15 minutes," and then leave them alone again.

Last but not least, the relationship among those who frequent the space is friends, peers, acquaintances, etc., perhaps same-sex and perhaps mixed-sex, not the obligatory mixed-sex pair for a "scaling the castle walls to the princess' room" trope. Even if there's a mixed-sex pair in the treehouse, it implies nothing about their romantic or sexual interaction -- only that they're close friends, acquaintances, etc., which may -- or may not -- lead to something more. It's a sanctuary for friends, not a makeshift motel for lovers -- exactly like the '90s teen room.

* * *

Having established not only the analogy between the '90s teen room and the treehouse, but the additional and unnecessary element of the massive tree right outside the window, which clearly makes the '90s teen room a revival of the treehouse concept, let's explore the origins and changing popularity of the treehouse trope.

As hard as it may be to believe about an architectural form, there is almost no history of treehouses, at least not easily available over the internet. Not even online references to books that are relevant.

In true midwit fashion, most "histories" of the treehouse lie that the treehouse has been a constant presence in human dwellings from ancient, even prehistoric times, up to the present, and universally present in every culture around the world.

That's obvious BS -- otherwise they would fill in all the gaps between "21st century America" and "Ancient Egypt" or whatever other remote example they point to. Did America have treehouses in the 19th C, 18th, 17th, 16th? Nobody will say.

Well, I will say it -- there don't seem to be treehouses in America until the early 20th C, right as we're undergoing our ethnogenesis into a new and distinct culture from our Euro forefathers, after wrapping up our integrative civil war (as always).

As for IRL structures, I can't find any references to when it began, although presumably there are off-hand mentions of them in newspapers from the 1910s or '20s or so. Unlike detached houses or apartment buildings or schools or churches, backyard treehouses were not pre-fab and did not involve architectural firms and contracted construction crews. So they were not big business, and left less of a money trail and paper trail. They were a labor of love by the father, maybe some other male relatives or neighbors.

That leaves us with pop culture portrayals of treehouses. I had a hunch that these would go back to the Midcentury or earlier, so I didn't bother with TV Tropes, which has poor coverage of that period. Instead, I went to IMDb and searched for TV shows and movies that have been tagged with "treehouse", which gives this list.

This relies on someone tagging the entry with this particular tag, so there are false negatives -- examples with a treehouse that have not been tagged with that term on their IMDb entry. But these taggers are pretty obsessive, and their range is pretty broad across time. So this'll have to be the best overview of the history of the trope in pop culture.

There are no examples whatsoever before the '30s. The first one, Our Blushing Brides, has a very elaborate full home in the treetops, for an adult bachelor courting an adult woman -- not this trope. The next one, So This Is Africa, is set on safari -- treehouse as the primitive residence of jungle-dwellers, not a modern American sanctuary for friends.

But then we hit the jackpot -- a short film in the "Our Gang" series (later known as Little Rascals), called "Hi, Neighbor!" from 1934. You can watch the full episode here. Around 1:40, several friends are rounding up their peers, and pay a visit to one who is inside his treehouse. And this has 99% of the elements that the later mature form would have.

It has a roof and walls, not just a floor and guard rails, it has a clear entrance opening to separate interior from exterior, not to mention some other openings with shades of a sort (animal hides). It's mostly made from wood planks, but animal hides as well. It's located up in a tree, with a means of getting up and down (a rope, not a ladder), and this tree is located in the yard of his house in a typical suburban residential neighborhood.

The only minor differences are the use of the rope instead of ladder to climb up, and the wooden planks of the walls being stacked vertically instead of laid horizontally. The mature form would take the "horizontal wooden slabs" inspiration from log cabins, another distinctive American building type, and equally rugged and home-made and down-to-earth (and yet up in the air), rather than pre-fab or urban or sophisticated.

The social relations are the same as in later examples -- there's a primary dweller or owner of the treehouse, but anyone is free to visit him at any time, if they're a friend. This example doesn't show the other friends climbing up there with the owner, but given their ongoing bonds of friendship, and the others' familiarity with this spot to call on their friend, it is implied that they sometimes hang out in his treehouse, without having to show it on camera.

And it fits the theme of the series overall, which follows a group of friends or peers or neighborhood kids, who feel part of a single collective social unit that is not related to each other -- "Our Gang".

Moreover, there are early hints at what other aspects of American identity the treehouse was channeling -- the owner has a pet monkey hanging out with him in the treehouse, there are animal hides as window coverings and doors / curtains, and he lets out a primitive nonsense call to announce his descent...

Much like Tarzan! That's right, the treehouse stems directly from Tarzan and the grandfather of American mythology, Edgar Rice Burroughs. American identity is that we are part caveman, and part spaceman -- perhaps cavemen traveling to outer space, or perhaps cavemen who were visited and guided by an outer space civilization. But cavemen, at any rate, and Tarzan is one of the earliest avatars of this facet of our identity.

Interestingly, though, early film portrayals of Tarzan do not show him living in what we now consider a prototypical treehouse. See this review of the changing nature of his treehouse in film portrayals. The first novel in the Tarzan series came out in 1912, but as late as the first two movies where he's played by Johnny Weismuller, from '32 and '34, his tree "house" is more of a perch or platform in the treetops, without a clear roof or walls or door. It's not until Tarzan Escapes from '36 that it becomes a proper house in the treetops.

Also, Tarzan's treehouse is not shown as the gathering-place or social sanctuary for a group of friends, peers, and acquaintances -- but his domestic space with his mate, Jane. So it's in the romantic vein rather than friendship vein. And if anything, it post-dates the "treehouse for friends," which debuted in the 1934 short from Our Gang.

Nevertheless, the parallels are clear -- the neighborhood friends, whether male or female, are a bunch of little Tarzans and Janes, so their living space must also be in the trees, and requires a roof and walls and entrances just like any house. So the makers of Our Gang were not directly imitating a treehouse from Tarzan-related pop culture, since that came a few years later in Tarzan-world. But they were channeling the Tarzan lifestyle and identity, then applying it to contemporary suburban America -- with the primitive roots being only half-obscured by modernity, and the other half proudly displayed in full view!

Wow, it all traces back to Our Gang -- why didn't I think of that to begin with?! I'm just not that immersed in pre-WWII culture, I guess. At least it clicked once I saw it, but I should've suspected it would trace back to them.

After a questionable example in the Disney animated short "Orphans' Picnic," where the house is more the tree trunk itself, with a hole bored into it and a little wooden plank platform outside, the next major example of a proper house built in the treetops -- and set in contempo America -- is also an animated short. In the Mighty Mouse series, "Wolf! Wolf!" from 1944 shows Mighty Mouse's main home being a treehouse, although we don't know if it's the focus of a peer group.

I can't find a video clip or still image, but in the live-action movie The Yearling from 1946, there's a treehouse that the protag sleeps in overnight. IDK if it's the focus for a peer group, though.

In the final major example from the '40s, and rounding out the maturation of the trope, is the Disney animated short "Donald's Happy Birthday" from 1949, with all the elements of what we now consider a treehouse. The only wrinkle is that its owners are three brothers (Huey, Dewey, and Louie), and it's shown as their own sanctuary, not necessarily one for a broader friend circle. But given that these brothers are also each others' closest friends, it doubles as a friend-based building too.

From there, the trope begins to fade in prominence, until the next major example of the TV show Dennis the Menace, which ran from '59 to '63. I used to watch that all the time on Nickelodeon in the '80s, when they still showed classic Midcentury shows. And I do remember him having a treehouse, or at least that fitting in with his world.

But it's not exactly a house anymore -- see this pic. It does have a floor, and low walls that only go up to waist height on children, but not walls that go over the kids' heads, and no ceiling or roof. It's a fairly open structure, more like a stand or perch or nest. And so, the door is more of a part of the low wall that swings open, like the gate of a residential fence, not an opening in a wall that separates an enclosed space from the outside world. It is built in a treetop and does use a ladder for climbing up. And it does involve friends (same-sex) -- that's his pal Tommy up there with him.

Still, you can see how less of a secluded sanctuary it is compared to the examples from the '30s and '40s. But then, that's only to be expected, giving the rising levels of social strife during the '50s and '60s, even somewhat beginning in the late '40s. Just cuz 1960 wasn't at the explosive peak of chaos of 10 years later, doesn't mean it was a harmonious stress-free kumbayah circle. I'll be revisiting this fact for other domains of society later. Suffice it to say that it was less socially harmonious than the '30s and '40s.

There's even an entire episode from 1960 about his tree house ("Dennis' Tree House"), which makes it into a social obstacle instead of a source of harmony. The treehouse is built right on the boundary with the yard of his neighbor, Mr. Wilson, who is upset that it might scare the birds away and he won't be able to enjoy his hobby of bird-watching. Things work out in the end, but it's part of a trend of the rising-strife phase that portrayed treehouses as sources of problems rather than unalloyed wholesomeness.

In a 1956 episode of Lassie ("The Tree House"), two friends Jeff and Porky get excited about building a treehouse and becoming blood-brothers -- seemingly off to a good start on the whole "treehouse as sanctuary for friends" theme. It's built in Jeff's yard with the help of his family. Unlike in Dennis the Menace, this is a proper treehouse with a roof, walls, doors, ladder, etc.

But then when they both spend the night in it, they bring their dogs along, and Porky's dog won't stop howling, keeping Jeff awake all night and making him so angry that he kicks out both the dog and his supposed blood-brother and guest Porky. When Jeff goes to apologize the next day for being a poor host / blood-brother, he finds the interior of the treehouse has been trashed, and assumes Porky did it as revenge -- more anti-social paranoia and suspiciousness and bad faith.

Later, there's a loud noise coming from the treehouse, and when Jeff goes to investigate -- there's a bear inside trashing the place even more. So that's what trashed the place before, not Porky -- but still, setting up the treehouse as a space that's vulnerable to roaming nomadic outsiders, including animals. Jeff's mom says no more treehouse. But it turns out the bear was escaped from the circus, not a wild one, so the mom says it's OK again. That makes no sense, there could still be wild bears or other troublesome animals roaming around that could climb up the ladder -- but the paranoid point has already been made. Beware! Caution! Risk!

The last of these problematizing examples is from 1970, from The Brady Bunch ("What Goes Up..."). In it, there's another proper treehouse, but it is still portrayed as a source of danger -- Bobby tries to climb up into it, but falls and sprains his ankle, leading him to develop a fear of heights on top of it.

What happened to treehouses just being wholesome sanctuaries for friends? Well, '56, '60, and '70 were all part of the rising-strife phase of the cycle. It wasn't the harmonious '30s and '40s anymore. So anything that might bring people together socially, like a treehouse sanctuary, had to be cast in a more negative and threatening light, as though it might introduce more strife than it would relieve. Not just physically, like scaring away the birds or posing a risk of falling injuries, but sowing the seeds of suspicion and resentment despite the promise of bringing camaraderie and appreciation, like driving a wedge between supposed blood-brothers.

* * *

It wasn't until after the peak of social chaos circa 1970 that that wary attitude began to wane, and treehouses regained their wholesome innocent pro-social connotations. Only a few years after the Brady Bunch episode, there was a renaissance of rural-themed TV shows, epitomized by The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.

In a first-season episode of The Waltons (from '73), their treehouse makes its debut and would become a familiar fixture in their environment for years. It's a proper treehouse, not problematized, and since the show is set in the Depression, it revives the original wave of treehouse-mania from the '30s and '40s.

Our Gang was renamed Little Rascals, and given an animated format in 1982, which not only included a treehouse as a gathering spot for the friend circle, it was emphasized by being included in the intro sequence, to set the premise and sense of place and tone.

And from there, treehouses began to explode in popularity, although more so in movies that were set in the past, like Stand by Me and The Sandlot. Both of those are set in the early '60s, and so a proper treehouse and thriving friend circle would've been anachronistic for that time -- it would've been more appropriate for a movie set in the '30s or '40s. But still, by that time they were starting to swirl together all sorts of "pre-1968" periods of 20th-century America. A little bit of the '30s, a little bit of the late '50s or early '60s, always an unintended dash of the year in which it was made, it's all good.

Dennis the Menace was made into a movie in 1993, and it upgraded the treehouse to a proper one, again unlike the era in which the original TV show was made. Little Rascals was made into a movie the next year, although without a prominent treehouse.

The Simpsons had a treehouse in their backyard as a gathering spot for friends, and although I don't know when its first appearance was, the "Treehouse of Horror" series for Halloween began in 1990. The only episode from '89 was the very first one, so unless it's in that episode, it first appeared sometime in '90.

The revival of the wholesome and non-threatening treehouse trope during the '80s and '90s reflected the rising-harmony phase of the cycle, before merging with or enhancing the new trope of "teen's room as treehouse within the home itself".

After the '90s, the treehouse trope begins to fade once again, not to mention picking up the connotation of danger and threats, right back to Lassie and Dennis the Menace and The Brady Bunch. But that's only natural, as the social mood swung away from harmony and toward strife once again, and anything that would cement social bonds among friends would have to come under suspicion and then get eliminated altogether.

However, now that the pendulum is finally swinging back toward harmony, as of the past couple years, maybe treehouses, teen's room as a treehouse within the home, or some new variation on this perennial American theme will emerge -- assuming we still had a thriving pop culture production sector, which we do not at all. American culture -- meaning, all-American, appealing to and paid attention to by all -- has been extinct since 2020.

But in whatever fragmented niche-demo remains of American-ish culture that remain going forward, we're likely to see a gradual revival of this theme, likely peaking in the early 2040s.

Maybe in video games? Minecraft is still thriving, despite coming out in 2010, so perhaps treehouses will become the hot new thing to build. Mumei made a cozy little one for herself a couple years ago, Fauna made the huge sun-obscuring World Tree during that time (which was not just a tree, but had home-like architecture at the top), so... maybe it's the start of a new trend?

It'll probably be more visible in new games, where there's a prominent treehouse built into it, but it'll be some niche indie thing that not the whole world knows about, or something. But the urge to hang out with friends in treehouses -- or their present-day descendants, perhaps in a form not yet invented -- will become overpowering in the next two decades. Plenty of time for it to find some kind of realization in the cultural realm.

Look forward to seeing what it is, while still knowing in advance it won't top, as it were, the examples from the '30s and '40s or the '80s and '90s. ^_^

Minecraft collab streams to keep Halloween traditions alive when IRL is dead

This post is mainly for the Holo honeys (Minecraft maniac Fauna especially!), but anyone can read through to appreciate how streamers and vtubers are in a unique position to keep Halloween traditions alive, in a world where they are dead IRL. The streamers themselves can feel free to skip the next section if they only want the suggestions for how to re-create Halloween within Minecraft. I'm including the next section to make some larger observations about what's going on.

* * *

Partly, the streamers would be carrying on the entertainment tradition of "the Halloween-themed special," where such traditions are re-enacted by the cast. This is not possible with podcasts or other formats of commentary, since those do not involve characters performing a narrative. TV, movies, video games, and other narrative formats are all dead by now, so it falls upon the newer and thriving formats like streaming and vtubing to play those roles.

But they would also be simulating the traditions, within a virtual realm rather than IRL. Such as going trick-or-treating in Minecraft. And that is not possible within other narrative formats, which are not based on the concept of simulation or virtuality.

Vtubers have already figured out how to simulate several activities that are friendly to Halloween, such as the TV show / movie watchalong, which simulates watching a scary movie with your friends. They also play scary video games together online, which simulates two levels of reality -- hanging out with friends IRL to play a scary game (such as during a sleepover), but the game itself is a simulation of, say, exploring a haunted house and running from ghosts.

Below are some ideas on how to simulate experiences that are unique to Halloween, using the best escapist real-life simulator -- Minecraft.

The date would be near Halloween, ideally Halloween night itself. No one goes to Halloween parties anymore, as I've detailed for over a decade on this blog. Millennials, who were victims of helicopter parenting, cannot tolerate anything carnivalesque, i.e. inverting the ordinary order of things for a special festive occasion. So they could not stomach going out to party on October 31 -- because that could very well be a week night, and they ordinarily don't party on week nights. Duh, that's the whole appeal!

Sometime around 2010, as they were getting into their college and post-college years, they all felt the same queasiness about partying on a school night, yet still wanted to go out for a Halloween-adjacent party. What would keep them in their snug familiar cocooning routine? Partying on a Saturday. And ever since then, Halloween parties have been celebrated instead on The Saturday Before Halloween (while there's still some energy for it, not after it's already passed).

But that's IRL. Online, there are no week nights vs. weekend nights, since no special places are closed vs. open on those days. It's hilarious to see terminally online people still pretending to have a thriving IRL social life by not posting on Friday or Saturday night -- don't want your internet followers to think you're a NERD. Online, there is no such special segment of the week. Not because "every day feels like the weekend," but because "even the weekends still feel like the work week" with nothing special, high-energy, or festive to make them stand out. If anything, online weekends feel *slower* than week days.

Unless, of course, you're on a streaming site. Activities like "going out for karaoke" are far more likely on Friday or Saturday than other days, and are far more likely at night than the afternoon or morning. Even on week days, most streams are at their best during the evening, taking over the practice of primetime TV, as opposed to boring daytime TV.

So there is a typical night when a festive stream would take place -- Friday or Saturday, as usual for IRL, back when it still existed. This also makes it possible to subvert that norm temporarily, by doing something festive on a week night. Streamers already do that for Christmas and New Year's Eve, but even IRL those are still celebrated on their real dates. The challenge is to seize back Halloween as a carnivalesque holiday that typically falls on a week night.

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Here's how the night's activities would be structured, in very loose terms -- to allow for the most spontaneous, unscripted action. In the section below, I'll spell out some specifics to guide you along the way, so you don't have to make up everything as you go along, and to provide some motivation, if you've never done these things before (or it's been awhile).

First, a preliminary gathering, to start building some excitement.

Going out trick-or-treating at other people's homes.

An optional prank to play on someone's home.

A campfire storytelling session (personal or fictional events).

Finally, the trip home, where you work out the rest of your energy, and tuck in for the night, in sleepover party fashion.

* * *

I'm imagining the standard SNOT line-up of Gura, Fauna, Mumei, and Kronii, although whoever else enjoys Minecraft social outings could join as well (Irys and Bae?). Not a huge number, though, it needs to feel intimate.

Start at Gura's haunted house -- this will get some more mileage out of the project, and it was already designed with Halloween spookiness in mind. Now the "abandoned" nature of the project only adds to the eerie-ness -- kind of like hanging out in a ruined building, only this one never got completed. "Some say a mysterious such-and-such came over the building team before they could get to work on the interior. If only they had known that this house was built on cursed land..." Get something positive out of a sidelined project! (And no, we don't really care if Gura ever finishes it inside, we're not autistic completionists ourselves.)

Begin by sharing memories of your own experiences with Halloween -- the IRL traditions like trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, baking cookies, decorating your house, going to school in costumes, etc. Maybe some gabbing about pop culture Halloween specials, too, but mainly the IRL part. The main point is to unlock and activate these memories, indulge in some nostalgia, and get hyped up for when you go out -- but you have to build up some excitement first, so you're as crazy and chaotic as you can be once you head out the door.

I was thinking of some kind of opening spooky activity like using a Ouija board, but that would be hard to simulate in Minecraft. The point there is everyone's hands are on the heart-piece as it moves, and no one feels totally in control of its movement. Maybe you could have a quick convo about whether you believe in Ouija boards, Tarot cards, and other things -- this will set off an interesting dynamic between the rational skeptics like Fauna and the "I want to believe" ones like... Gura? Bae? We don't know who stands where, so it will be interesting to see this unfold.

As for in-game costumes, you could stick with the pumpkin mask, just make sure everyone already has one. You'll have to do whatever tricks to undo the narrowed vision, though (3rd-person POV, or removing the menu bar at the bottom, IIRC). I don't know anything about Minecraft skins, but those would work as well -- a simple skeleton, for example. And not everyone would have to have their own unique costume -- the point is to dress differently, and spookier, than you normally would.

The trick-or-treating would take place away from home, like the JP or ID servers. This creates more of a field trip feeling -- and back in the '80s, when trick-or-treating was at its peak, we used to venture *all over* the place, often places we never normally got around to, instead of just a few streets right around our home.

No parental supervision! Not that your managers play Minecraft with you anyway, but this is important. We never went out with our parents in the good ol' days, that only began with the helicopter parents of Millennials. It's the kids' own special time, and there are plenty of grown-ups around anyway -- the hosts at each of the homes you visit.

The girls on the JP or ID side who participate would have to show up for, say, a one-hour window when this portion of the stream takes place. For the rest of the hour, they simply have a zatsu with their chat, or whatever else. But they have to stay in the home for the appointed time, so that when you show up, they're there to open the door, give you something, and appreciate you paying them a visit. You don't have to have a long convo with them, it's a fairly quick and informal scenario.

Some might throw you some berries or emeralds, while the ones playing a trick on you might throw some raw chicken or whatever.

Others can participate without being logged in for the appointed time -- they can leave a chest out in front of their home, with a sign next to it that says "Take one" or whatever creative message they want. ("Please take only one -- the spirits are watching you / or suffer the curse / etc.") The chest can have tricks or treats inside to choose from.

This may be the majority of homes you visit, if the time slot is hard to make. But that's fine -- it's still venturing outside your home base, visiting one home at a time, until you've wandered all over the place, picking up tricks and treats along the way, and making those social-emotional connections with the other people in your community, some of whom you rarely meet! We didn't just go to our best friends' homes while trick-or-treating, we might not have recognized their faces at all. Outside the routine!

Whether they're at home, or setting up a "take one" chest outside, they can decorate their home with jack-o'-lanterns, spider webs, etc. A few things, nothing huge if they don't want to. In fact, if a lot of the girls don't log in often, one or two people from their server could put up decorations in front of their homes for them, if they have some free time. So it's not just a few homes on the "street" that are decorated.

After that, optionally, you can play a prank on someone's home, akin to throwing eggs or "wrapping" their trees with toiletpaper. The rambunctious rule-bending side of Halloween. One idea I had is to wrap someone's entire home in a giant jack-o-lantern. Find a home that's small, and build a simple rectangular box around it.

The materials would be orange wool or whatever, and one wall would have some black wool or coal blocks to make the eyes and mouth. Triangle eyes, with the curly number 3-shaped smile, as a smug prankster signature. No green needed for a stem on top -- it wouldn't be visible from the ground level, so don't bother. Just a simple box. With 4 or 5 people there, it would get built pretty quickly, and would be a nice little bit of teamwork.

This would also simulate carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns together, at the same time.

Ideally, find someone's home who logs in somewhat often, so they could get surprised by your work, and have a chuckle. "Those ornery kids..."

Next event, finding a spooky spot outdoors to hang out and tell scary stories. I'm thinking the top of Fauna's lighthouse, since it's not right in the middle of a bunch of residences, it's Gothic with the vines growing up it, and the light at the top could stand in for a campfire. Plus, fear of heights getting activated, easy view of the night sky, etc.

On the trip over to it, you can chit-chat about your trick-or-treat haul, the exhilaration of pranking someone's home, etc. But once you reach the storytelling spot, you sit or stand around in a circle -- not wandering all over the place, but staying intimately close. Then you can go around the circle telling scary stories -- these could be from your own personal experiences, something that happened to someone you know, or a friend of a friend, urban legends, etc.

If one of you likes getting into storytelling mode, you could prepare a story to tell the others, in dramatic fashion, where you're narrating and they're listening, not a back-and-forth convo. But if you're not a storyteller, or don't want to practice it, don't worry about this. You wouldn't have to make up your own story, it could be reciting some popular urban legends (the hook on the car door, the kidney heist, etc.).

For maximum impact, this narration should take place after an initial round of informal storytelling among the group. "Well, if you thought *that* was frightening," the segue opens, "have I got a tale for you..." The others' curiosity is piqued, so they focus their attention on the narrator, who tells the story. After it's told, they discuss amongst themselves, then eventually go back to the informal round-robin of personal and conversational sharing of experiences.

When the chatting energy has dwindled down, a quick trip back to the home base (Fauna's home is nearby and has lots of beds), where you work out what remains of your energy, maybe pretend to savor some of your treats, go to bed in-game like a sleepover, and end the stream with a "Happy Halloween!" to the audience.

IRL in the '90s (new series overview)

Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when the '80s revival was raging, a large part of my writing was focused on that trend, but putting a lot of separate pieces together into a more coherent sweeping vision of what was going on.

That led to my discovery of the link between crime rates and an outgoing social mood, and vice versa, falling crime and a cocooning social mood. I elaborated this over several rise-and-fall time periods, from those of the 20th century, as well as much earlier rising-crime eras (late 1300s / early 1400s, late 1500s / early 1600s, and late 1700s / early 1800s).

Use the sidebar to navigate through my posts from late 2009 through 2012 or so. Or leave a comment asking about a specific topic, and I'll try to remember if I covered it. Or use google to search this blog on your own.

I was never a huge fan of the '90s, either at the time, during the '80s revival when a handful of people tried to include the '90s as well, or even now when the Zoomers are trying to launch a '90s / y2k revival. However, the '80s have been revived to death by now, and I've written everything I can about that period. So I might as well focus my attention on the '90s — both to recreate the zeitgeist, and to understand the dynamics behind what made it the way it was.

During the work on the crime-and-cocooning cycle, I was already talking a lot about the '90s, as an example of a falling-crime / cocooning environment. But that was always on a downer side of things, counterposed to the exciting '80s just before. And putting down the '90s was a way to take part in the '80s revival of 10-15 years ago — and now the only revival going on is for the '90s and y2k, so I can contribute to another nostalgia wave, by playing up the '90s (while still be honest).

And by now, I've also discovered the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, as well as the 30-year cycle, whereby each 15-year cycle alternates between a high-energy version and a low-energy version. Along with the crime-and-cocooning cycle, that will help to explain the '90s pretty well.

I will be focusing more on IRL, daily life, and social contexts. It's not going to be a nostalgia trip of mass-mediated pop culture. To the extent that movies, TV, video games, etc. show up, they will be as part of a vignette about how people related to each other. The focus will be more on the video rental store than what movies people checked out. I'll do some posting about the aesthetics themselves, but only if they're largely forgotten (including by today's revivalists) and would really jolt your memories back to that time (such as the wacky colors and patterns on bed linens).

The perspective is from a very late Gen X-er, which is necessary because Millennials were helicopter-parented from infancy and don't remember much of IRL, due to being insulated in a mass-media / pop culture bubble, which their paranoid parents rationalized as being better than letting them roam around outside and potentially interact with Bad Influences unsupervised. But Gen X was still free of helicopter parents, and continued living as latchkey kids, throughout the '90s.

As always, I reject technological determinism and won't be blaming / crediting the internet for anything in the '90s. In fact, one over-arching theme will be how little of a role the 'net played back then. Life didn't get sucked into the terminally online mode of tech until social media took over during the 2010s. The 2000s and Web 2.0 were a transition between the offline and online eras, so I might also cover the early 2000s along with the '90s.

Nor will I be covering political or economic dynamics — this is a strictly social and cultural zeitgeist approach. The most I can say is that, in Peter Turchin's "fathers-and-sons" model of civil unrest / rioting / etc., the '90s were a calm valley — in between the turbulent peaks circa 1970 and 2020. It was one of the least politicized periods ever, and anyone who did try to politicize things was immediately shut down by everyone else as a politically correct whiner and killjoy.

The "end of history" added to that sense of de-politicization. The only empire to rival America, Russia, had begun imploding, and there were no other empires that had even begun to expand, let alone reach maturity. It had nothing to do with capitalism, communism, or any of that superficial stuff. It was strictly about imperial rivalry, and we were suddenly the last empire left standing — and we had not yet had our knees wobbled by the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the never-ending 2008 Depression.

This was not as strong of an effect on our zeitgeist as the domestic political cycle (minimum of civil unrest), because the international picture only strongly affects us if it's close to home, and the Russian sphere of influence has always been distant. But it was one of those minor factors that I probably won't write about any further.

To recapitulate the forces at work, the '90s saw:

- Falling crime rates (peaked in '92).

- Cocooning social mood.

- Low-energy excitement cycle (1990-2004, unlike the high-energy cycles of 1975-'89 and 2005-'19).

- A restless phase ('90-'94) and a manic phase ('95-'99) in the excitement cycle (and a vulnerable phase in 2000-'04). The '90s proper did not have a downer / emo phase, although y2k did.

At the most general big-picture level, I would capture the essence of the '90s as the most boring decade ever. But others would interpret it in a glass-half-full way as the most cozy or low-key or just-straight-vibin' decade ever. When I try to think of how I felt at various times, the recurring impression is of a lull, a void, a vacant non-space that is hard to go back to through your own recollection (unless you remember everything, like me), and the nostalgia feels like taking a trip to nowhere.

How do you vividly evoke the world of the Decade From Nowhere? I'm sure this will be far less engrossing and memory-awakening than my exploration of the '80s, but then that seems to be the appeal for the '90s revivalists — that it was not a sensory overload, social overload, political / economic overload, or even technological overload.

In fact, to get more immersed in that mood, I'm writing this series on my y2k set-up, whose defining feature is the beige / light gray color palette. The PC tower, the CRT monitor, the mechanical keyboard, the rollerball mouse, the speakers, and the disk case. It is absolutely mind-boggling to me how this blandest of computer rigs has been all the rage for the past several years. What's so fascinating about beige?

But that's just it — people have grown tired from over-exposure to the super-sleek black or pure blinding-white colors, the very high-contrast RGB streamer lights, and the rest of the aesthetics from the high-energy cycle of 2005-'19. They want to take things down a notch, to the beige computer, forest-green Subaru, Gregorian chant, baggy sweatshirt Nineties.

Exactly as the literal '90s people were reacting, after the intense cycle of 1975-'89 — time to take things down a notch for a little while. From bright pastels, synth, and gay, to heavy earth tones, Unplugged, and lesbian.

Let's end with one of the most iconic songs of the '90s, which ought to resonate all the more strongly in the current climate of nostalgia for a less corrupted time.

Rebirth of the fertility cycle, as girls liberate themselves from hormonal birth control

A sea-change in the relations between the sexes has taken place within the last 5 years, largely without public commentary, as it did not fit into any of the dominant take-cycles (MeToo, Trump Derangement Syndrome, or wokeness in general).

Namely, girls have started to ditch hormonal birth control, en masse, for the first time since it became widespread among teens and young adults in the '90s and 2000s. The realities of the fertility cycle, which is suppressed by HBC, are going to flood the society and culture like a tidal wave that has not been felt in several decades.

True, girls are going to go through greater cramping pain during the PMS phase of their cycle, and along with that, greater irritability, snappy talk, and lashing out. But that's only a few days out of the month -- they're also going to be soaring to far higher highs during the fertile phase of their cycle, being more extraverted, excited, flirtatious, smiling laughing & giggling, and flush full of positive vibes.

Trading a couple days of crabbiness for a couple WEEKS of merrymaking? Yeah, I think we'll manage somehow. If you're a girl-liker, you're in for a real exciting change of pace, probably for the first time in your life. If you're a girl-hater, you're going to be contemplating suicide like you've never known before, as unbridled feminine hormones come crashing against your flimsy "no girls allowed" cardboard fort.

And right as the 15-year excitement cycle has entered its restless warm-up phase (as of 2020), and dudes and dudettes feel eager to come out of their shells and start mixing it up with each other again! I actually think this is part of the even longer 60-year cycle of cocooning mood / falling-crime vs. outgoing mood / rising-crime. But those are all topics for future posts in what must become an ongoing series.

For now, let's first take a look to see what THE DAYTA tell us. I first had this hunch a few weeks ago, when I noticed how full-throttle hormonal my favorite streamers are -- both during their PMS lows and their ovulating highs. I didn't recall any previous era of pop culture having young girls in such a state of nature, except my kid memories from the '80s, back before every teen was on the pill, and when there was still an outgoing mood and rising crime.

Millennials when they took over YouTube, movies / TV, music, podcasts, etc., did not show this profound cycle between snappy lows and pheromone-radiating highs. And even when the excitement cycle was restless and danceclub-friendly, such as the late 2000s, there was a pervasive message of "look but don't touch" (e.g., "My Humps"). That is, she was excited to get out of the house and go dancing, but was not actually boy-crazy or horny, so don't read that into her booty-shaking moves on the dance floor.

In the 2020s, the message is going to be, "Look -- and if you're hot, please, come touch". That doesn't mean only hot guys are going to be in demand, since the plain-looking girls will have to settle for the plain-looking guys. But they will still be boy-crazy and horny for half of their lives now, unlike earlier when the plain-looking girls wouldn't have settled for their male counterparts, having been lobotomized by HBC to feel no urge to connect with *somebody*.

* * *

Sadly, there are no data on how prevalent hormonal birth control is by age and year. Maybe if you lump all females 15-49, but that's not relevant. And maybe if you just want a snapshot here or there. But it's not tracked like the prevalence of STDs, live births, marriages, or anything else in the kinship / dating-and-mating domain.

They really don't want people to know what's going on with it, which is also why the effects of the pill are never discussed during the now-obligatory sex ed classes in high school, despite all of the girls going on the pill around that time and lasting until menopause, if they don't decide to reverse course.

And I don't mean the rare side-effects like blood clotting -- I mean the 99% common effects like flattening out your moods like an efficiently programmed robot, draining your libido, making you withdrawn, prone to migraines and depression, and the rest of what happens when your body is tricked into thinking you're pregnant, while not actually having a pair-bonded mate to support you through the process, and no actual new family life to look forward to.

So I went to the place where women might actually announce their life decisions -- Twitter. If it can fit into some kind of discourse or take-cycle, just blurt it out, and see if it goes viral. So far, no luck with going viral, but we can still track how common the decision has become.

I searched "going off hormonal" to make sure they're referring to the types of BC that disrupt the natural hormone levels and cycles, and not condoms or whatever. And while there are other variants on this phrase (like "go" off), the pattern is clear enough with this one exact phrase. And there are media reports confirming the shift during this time period, so it will do fine.

Since there are only in the single or low double digits per year, I read through each one, and weeded out those that are irrelevant (like trannies talking about going off a different kind of hormonal intervention). And when I say there's a "post" on Twitter, I mean it's about their own personal decision or debating process, not all the separate posts that are linking to the same article or YouTube video. I want to know how many different individuals are gabbing about their decision, or near-decision, to go off the pill.

* * *

From 2009 to 2014, there are only a handful of posts per year with "going off hormonal", no more than 5. And no articles on other media sites that are being linked to. This is the steady baseline, since even when HBC is common, some girls here and there are going to ditch it.

In 2015-'16, there are still only ~5 posts per year, but now there are also articles at other sites being linked to. In 2015, 3 articles: one from Pinterest, one from Facebook, and crucially, one from the feminist outlet Jezebel, which is a both-sides attempt to please the rear-guard pill-poppers and the au naturel avant-garde.

(BTW, someone in the Silicon Valley tech cartel has crippled Google's search engine so badly that that article does not appear when you specify the year of publication in your search for it. I figured it would help to narrow down the results. And yet requiring "2015" totally hides the article, while removing the year reveals it as the first result. Just another reminder that the internet is disintegrating more and more all the time, and that you cannot rely on Google's search engine for much of anything these days.)

In 2016, there are links to a fear-mongering article about going off the pill, scaring you into thinking that your vitamin D level could drop. Right, women suffered from low vitamin D levels for all of human history, until the pill became widespread in the past couple decades. Part of the knowledge-destroying, authoritarian movement known as I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE. ("You'll ovulate nothing, and you'll feel indifferent.)

In 2017, the number of posts rises above 10 for the first time and has stayed at that order of magnitude, rising ever since. There are 12 posts, and links to a YouTube personal essay video. In 2018, 14 posts, and links to another YouTube personal essay video. In 2019, 19 posts.

By 2020, the number of posts clears the 20 mark, at 28. In 2021, there are 23 posts. And in 2022 so far, there are 17 posts -- easily clearing 20, maybe even 30, by the end of the year.

Obviously, these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg for the general population. For every Twitter user who spontaneously blurts out, "I'm off the pill!" -- there are thousands or millions more who are doing so IRL, without posting about it. The important thing is the soaring trend in these numbers, as well as the attendant rise in the number of articles reacting to that trend. That means it's real, not just a handful of weirdos on Twitter.

In fact, there's only a few counter-cultural / socialist / etc. types who are part of this trend. It's mainly the normies, bluechecks, and political moderates. That means it generalizes far more broadly, than if it were only the hammer & sickle, BPD art ho, or other niche demographic. Likewise for the last period of going natural and embracing each other, during the '60s, '70s, and '80s -- it was not just a niche demo of Beatniks, but a fully mainstream phenomenon in every school and town across America.

* * *

As this mother of all vibe-shifts has taken place, the articles have surrendered in the battle to finger-wag women into staying on the pill. Now they're at the bargaining and acceptance stages, like "So you're going off hormonal birth control -- *insert audible groan here* -- Here's what to expect".

Another change has been the nature of women's comments about going off HBC. During the vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle (2015-'19), when people were in a touch-me-not refractory state, they were mainly about improved mental / emotional health. But right on schedule, as the restless phase kicked off in 2020, they've begun gushing about how horned-up their libido has become -- and not in a despairing tone either! LOL.

"Why didn't somebody warn me my sex drive was going to kick into overdrive??!?! [devil horns] [starry eyes] [tongue out] [devil horns]"

None of this shift has to do with planning to get pregnant, only a handful of posts ever mention that. They simply don't want to have their minds and bodies neutered any longer, and if that means they need other forms of birth control, so be it.

And a large share of young women aren't even fucking anyway -- a topic for a future post, about how HBC was not about birth control per se, but rather part of the broader trend of psych drugs to domesticate young people's wild-and-crazy behavior, during the cocooning phase of the '90s through the 2010s, along with Adderall, Prozac, and the rest of it. That mirrored the mood-flattening drug craze of the cocooning Midcentury, epitomized by "Mother's Little Helper" -- Valium.

I don't think most guys, of any generation, understand how widespread the pill had become by the 2010s. The medical establishment was forcing it onto girls at 16, when they were never going to have sex for years, and they have stayed on it for decades. Until now -- Millennials are going to finally feel what it's like to be a real feminine agent of chaos -- and creation.

And Zoomer girls are not going to get sucked into that sterilizing vortex in the first place. Maybe they were on it for a little bit, but likely not long at all, and they're never going to spend several decades warping their nature with it. Not at a mass scale anyway.

Social life has been so dull while half the population has been given next-level lobotomies, in addition to the drugs that the boys were put on. If you're a Millennial or Zoomer, and don't have crisp memories of the entire decade of the '80s, you're in for a real surprise. It's going to start off more like the '60s, and will take several decades of these changes before it reaches '80s levels of party-time all the time.

It's not only the wild-and-crazy behavior that's going to come roaring back to life, though. Feminine outgoing-ness supports and sustains all other sorts of relationships, connections, and social networks. Friends, acquaintances, colleagues, families -- all these social domains are going to become flooded with hormonal women searching for an outlet for their skyrocketing drive for engagement with others. Certainly online, where everything social is migrating to, but presumably also in whatever remnants of IRL there will be.

Secure your harness, raise your hands into the air, and get ready to shout with excitement -- these pill-killing women are about to take us on one hell of a rollercoaster ride, for the next several *decades*. Girl-haters, watch out: you better have built a bunker of misogyny, rather than that little cardboard fort. The boy-crazy barbarianettes have already begun to rampage the countryside, and they're not going to take any prisoners if you impotently try to block their libidinal path!

On the non-role of social media in imperial collapse, whether its cultural or political symptoms

I wrote an in-depth thread responding to Jonathan Haidt's new article in The Atlantic about social media's purportedly crucial role in the political unraveling of the past 10 years. That's tech-determinism, which I have always rejected. It's about imperial rise and collapse instead. I elaborate why in that wide-ranging thread. Would you expect any less from here?

Also, would you expect a proper standalone post to treat such a topic? Of course not, especially if it's react content that I have already discussed earlier. That stuff belongs in a long series of comments to a totally unrelated post about rhythm, dance, and female singer-songwriters from the early 2000s. :)

But since I know some of you weirdos won't read it unless it's in a post of its own, I'll at least link to it, beginning with the comment here and on. Add any comments to this post, not the original one.

Suburban archaeology, 10 years later

I'm putting together in one place, all the various posts on this topic I wrote roughly 10 years ago -- which might as well be an eternity, lying on the other side of the dividing line, before the Web 2.0 era degraded into the social media era.

Below are the links, with brief descriptions. They're in chronological order, but you can browse them in any order without missing out on background. New posts on the topic will come when I get some old images cleaned up for presentation. Until then, reacquaint yourselves with the topic, or dive into it for the first time.

This is what you come to the ruins of the blogosphere for -- long trips wending through secret passageways of online, far from the beaten path of the 24-hour take-cycle. How fitting that the topic of decaying environments once part of vibrant living communities, can only be explored within a region of the virtual realm that is itself lying in ruins. But I am still here, tending the grounds, and serving as a guide for those curious souls who wander by.

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Wet cement carvings

They're not an "I'm so awesome" display, but like signing the guestbook of a party, or signing a communal yearbook, to memorialize your social group. In the comments, newspaper articles on the police crackdown against the practice during the helicopter parent era of the '90s and after.

Suburban archaeology overview

Big-picture thoughts about doing archaeology in the suburbs, how much life has changed so quickly and how that is reflected in visits to functionally-ancient sites. Mostly about the social changes from the outgoing era of roughly 1960-1990, to the cocooning era of 1990 to present (or is it turning around circa 2020?).

Lamp post carvings

A site visit with pictures (taken with, I believe, a crappy early 2010s iPhone camera -- am trying to clean up the pics from that excursion, including a whole bunch on tree carvings and beverage containers, and will post those later). Since the early 2010s were still deep in cocooning territory, the empty desertedness of suburban spaces is on display in the shots of the location. I took those pictures on a sunny summer afternoon -- no way a public place with athletic fields, playgrounds, and open grass areas, would have been devoid of people back in the '80s or early '90s.

The school rock phenomenon

Schools used to have a school rock, which kids decorated, signed, and otherwise left their imprint on. Similar to carving your name in wet cement, or signing a communal yearbook. As communities collapsed, the practice died off, and nothing has taken its place, whether IRL or virtual.

Suburban woods reclaimed by nature

There was a trend in the late 2000s and early 2010s of documenting the reclaiming of urban ruins by wild nature, mainly focusing on the collapse of Detroit proper (not the 'burbs). This post extends the approach to the suburban woods, which used to be far more tamed due to people hanging out back there so frequently. But once everyone abandoned them, they became so overgrown that they're hostile to anyone wandering around there these days. I was really shocked wandering trails that I had been used to in the early-mid '90s, 20 years later. Part of what inspired me to make a part-time job out of DIY trail maintenance -- I couldn't stand seeing those woods getting so unwelcoming.

Follow-up on the above

Further observations on that change in the woods, after spending more time there on trail maintenance / reconstruction.

Families replacing friends in graffiti

Graffiti overall has plummeted off a cliff since the '80s and early '90s, but there is still some here and there. But in the 'burbs, where it would have been a group of friends leaving their mark before, now it's the nuclear family leaving their mark. As communities collapse, the only social group left standing is the nuclear family.

Booze and drug use at middle-school hang-out

Site visit, though no pictures. I was just passing through, not intending to do any archaeological documentary work, so didn't bring a camera. But committed it to memory to write a post about it. We all know high schoolers and college kids used to be more wild in the good ol' days, but for a brief time, that encompassed middle schoolers as well. Namely, when the late Boomers were in middle school, during the '70s. They would shortly become the Fast Times at Ridgement High generation, but they were already on their way there in middle school. Actual ancient beer cans present, plus tree carvings about being high on pot.

When toys were their own world, not mass-media merch tie-ins

Looking back on the kinds of presents we Gen X-ers used to get for Christmas, birthdays, or just as a special treat for no greater reason, I'm struck by how uncoupled they were from the mass media / entertainment ecosystem.

To reiterate, there was a massive change with the Millennial generation, or rather with their helicopter parents, who locked them inside all day long during their developmental years, rationalizing it as keeping them safe from bad influences (AKA their neighbors and their neighborhood). Since kids need some kind of external stimulation and interaction, the helicopter parents decided to saturate their kids with mass media and entertainment products, which replaced connections to the outside physical and social world.

As a result, all Millennial experiences have been mediated through these devices and informational products, right up through the present and their online-connected devices that deliver (para)social media and streaming entertainment content. They only remember physical items from their childhood if they were closely connected in their memory to a mass-media product -- a TV show, movie, video game, omnipresent ad campaign, etc. See this recent post.

That includes physical items like toys -- Millennials only connected with toy lines that were heavily co-branded with a big-hit TV show, movie, video game, etc. For example, the X-Men figures that tied in with the popular X-Men cartoon of the early '90s, Power Rangers, Tickle-Me Elmo, Sonic the Hedgehog merch in various forms, and so on and so forth. There was only one notable exception -- Furby (unless Millennial kids played with Beanie Babies, which I think were mostly for Boomer collectors). I consider the Tamagotchi as a stand-alone video game, rather than a physical toy.

Certainly the '80s had no shortage of toy lines that were tie-ins to popular cartoons and movies -- Star Wars, He-Man, Thundercats, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, (the Real) Ghostbusters, and various others. Our memories of those toys are closely connected to our memories of the cartoons and movies.

However, those barely scratch the surface of toy-world and kid-life in the '80s, which was awash in all sorts of toy lines -- many of which were not derived from an existing, popular entertainment franchise.

In the appendix to this post, I've shown examples of quite a few that I remember off the top of my head, and stopped after awhile because there are simply too many to show pictures of: Starriors, Bone Age, Sectaurs, Supernaturals, Rock Lords, Crystar, Inhumanoids, Boglins, M.U.S.C.L.E., Madballs, and Computer Warriors. To list a few others that are not in the image appendix: Power Lords, Food Fighters, Barnyard Commandos, Mad Scientist (including "dissect an alien"), My Pet Monster... I really could go all day long!

Oh sure, the creators of the toys may have produced a limited-run cartoon that aired for two weeks, never went into re-runs or syndication, and was not seen or remembered by the kids because the cartoon was poorly made or boring or whatever. They may have even put a handful of commercials into rotation on TV. Maybe they made a 4-issue comic book series that no kid actually read (not the least because the comic book format was rapidly fading from importance for small kids during the '80s). And in several cases, there was no pre-existing or concurrent mass media tie-in at all -- just the toy line unto itself.

By and large, though, these toy lines were only known from actual visits by the kids to actual toy-stores and looking over the actual physical items for sale. All of the advertising and branding went into the package design. If the toy "did something," this was visually demonstrated in pictures on the packaging, perhaps with a caption to explain it. Since you hadn't seen such things on cartoons, movies, video games, or even commercials, you had to figure out from the packaging and the toy itself inside, whether it was worth buying or not.

That was the heyday for buying toys IRL, from the huge toy-store chains like Toys R Us and Children's Palace, to the smaller-scale chains like K-B Toys, to mid-market department stores like K-Mart and Woolworth's, all the way down to general closeout stores like Odd Lots (since rebranded as Big Lots).

If you wanted to know what was new in the toy market, you didn't bother watching hours of TV just to see a handful of toy commercials, nor did you watch hours of cartoons to see if their toys might be worth playing with. You simply had your parents drive you to Toys R Us, browse the selection, and compare the many many many wares on display. In other words, the purpose of a toy-store visit was not only to pick up an item that you already knew you wanted, but to learn about what all was available by browsing IRL (rather than learning this info through the mass media).

What difference did it make if you didn't recognize the toys on display from a cartoon, movie, commercial, etc.? Either it looked cool and fun, or it didn't. We judged them on their own toy-like merits, not their brand synergy with existing intellectual property franchises. Even without a hyped-up cartoon to relate it to, the toy had some special appeal that was apparent right there in the toy-store -- the translucent and geometric forms of the Crystar figures, Bone Age's dinosaur skeletons that could be reassembled into vehicles or buildings (borrowing from Lego blocks and Transformers), the horror hologram stickers on the Supernaturals, the gross-out feel of their skin and the try-it-in-the-package puppeteering of the Boglins, and so on and so forth.

No cartoons or commercials required! -- they could not hope to convey, palpably and immediately, what the items for sale in the store could so easily.

It wasn't even as though we balked at the toy lines that we didn't associate with a media property, but were more willing than Millennials to give such things a chance, to take a risk. We simply did not treat toys as derivative products from a primary media property like a cartoon. The toys themselves were primary and fundamental -- some of them happened to have counterparts in cartoon-world, and some of them happened not to, and we didn't think a second thought about those differences. Were they fun to play with, or not?

For the heavily mediatized experiences of Millennials, though, such toy lines were not really real. They were not the physical incarnation of characters from a favorite cartoon / movie / video game. So in a way, those toy-makers were just making shit up, lying and deceiving the kids. "That's not a real hero, he's not on TV or in a Nintendo game at all!" They would've felt like such toys were counterfeits, knockoffs, dimestore versions of the real deal (mass media merch).

This is not the difference between old-timey toys that were artisanally made and unbranded. The Gen-X toys were mass-produced by industrial factories, and were very heavily branded -- it's just that this branding often had nothing to do with mass media franchises, and the advertising was only the physical packaging, not a mass-mediated ad campaign. This is the only crucial difference -- do physical things belong to their own world, or do they only exist if they're extensions of a mass-media franchise?

And given how socially outgoing the '80s were, compared to the cocooning era of the '90s and after, kids didn't only have toy stores to find toys at. We checked out garage sales, second-hand stores, and the toy-boxes of our friends and same-age relatives. At that point, not even the packaging was there -- it was just you and the toy, and it resonated with you or it did not. I got quite a few of my favorite toys that way, and I never knew the name of the line they came from (let alone the specific individuals in my possession) until I investigated out of curiosity in adulthood. That could never appeal to the average Millennial, for whom these strange toys could not plug into an existing mediatized experience.

This also underscores the far more active imaginations that Gen X had (and still has), compared to Millennials. We didn't have to know the figure's name, what line they were from, what the intended narrative was around them, their character traits, relations to others, etc., as told in a cartoon, movie, or whatever. We would just make up the story-lines ourselves! It's not that hard.

Good guy and other good guy are friends, bad guy hurts one of the good guys, and the other good guy avenges him against the bad guy. Or one good guy betrays the other good guy, joins the bad guy, and now the remaining good guy has to take on two bad guys instead of one -- but he's so angry over the betrayal, it gives him a new motivation and determination to see it through.

Who could possibly care what their "real" names are, what their "real" roles are, and what the "real" plot-lines are? Who died and made some cartoon writer king? They're our toys, we'll make them do whatever we feel like. Lighten up, it's just action figures -- it's not committing sacrilege, as though we were making a Jesus toy betray the other disciple toys, instead of the Judas toy playing that role.

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This example shows how different these toys as fundamental things-in-their-own-world are from "merch" of a mass media franchise. For merch, the form and function is basically the same as the version that is not branded with the relevant franchise -- either branded with some other franchise, or not at all. A t-shirt with a Sonic the Hedgehog picture on it is the same as a t-shirt with a Pokemon picture on it, or no picture at all. It's a t-shirt, and the branding is applied at the most superficial level, not changing the form or function of the item.

This was parodied in Spaceballs during the "moichendizing, moichendizing..." scene. It's not like "Spaceballs: the flamethrower" is different from the same flamethrower without the Spaceballs branding on it. But if you're a diehard member of the Spaceballs fandom, maybe you'll buy any old thing, as long as it has the Spaceballs branding on it.

The trend toward toys as an existing pop culture tie-in, and simply re-skinning the same underlying form, while also not changing its function, has reached its peak in the Funko pop phenomenon. The vinyl figures all look highly similar in their proportions (notably the big head), their material, and their function (to sit on a shelf as display items). Only the most superficial re-skinning work distinguishes the Harry Potter figure from the Shakira figure.

Not only are the figures highly interchangeable within the line, by this point the Funko pops are *the* sole popular toy line. "Should we make a toy for some media property?" has instead become "When do we make the Funko pop for that property?"

Back in the '80s, each toy line was different from the other -- He-Man figures were not built like Star Wars figures, whether in size, color, articulation, material, etc. "Toy" did not merely reduce to "He-Man or He-Man clone," one toy-form to rule them all, as today's toy-world reduces to Funko pops or clones.

But more than that, the various figures within a single toy line were all distinctive. Sure, they shared enough in common to be recognizable as belonging to the same line. But they had to be different enough to warrant buying all the figures -- if they were too similar, and only re-skinned, well, what does one add that the others do not? So just within the He-Man line, one was covered in a moss-like material, another had a stinky odor within the plastic it was made from, one had a heavy rubbery tail, while another had large translucent bee wings, one could spin his torso around indefinitely in a cyclone, while another was a reptile that could spit water from his mouth, and so on and so forth. No two were alike.

If the toy is a physical thing first and foremost, and interacts with other toys, in its own toy-world, then its particular physical form, material, actions, etc., all matter very much. It's why you buy that toy over another toy.

But if the toy is merely the physical incarnation of a character from a mass-media franchise, which has no physicality itself, then who cares what form it takes when incarnated? As long as it's a physical presence, whether to hold in your hand or display on your shelf, that's enough. It's just a space-taker-upper that reminds you of that character you saw in a cartoon, movie, video game, or whatever. It doesn't need to be made from a certain material, to have certain kinds of articulation, to perform certain special motions or actions, to come with its own accessories / weapons / etc., or to be paired with certain vehicles or playsets that recreate the specific environment of that cartoon, movie, or whatever.

In fact, it's not something you actually play with, by itself or interacting with other toys. It really is the purest form of the devolution of toys into merch, where the underlying forms are interchangeable and fungible and homogeneous, with only superficial branding applied to distinguish the different entries in the list. At Hot Topic, the wall o' Funko pops is no different from the wall o' band t-shirts -- all the same fundamental physical thing, just with different branding on the surface.

RIP toys, and physical stuff in general, victims of helicopter parenting and the exclusively mass-mediated experiences of the Millennial and Zoomer generations. I have a 13 year-old Gen Alpha nephew, and I don't see the tide turning with his generation either -- or rather, the generation that is parenting them (very late X-ers and early Millennials).

But like I always say, things move in cycles, however long the period may be. This isn't the first time that helicopter parenting has been the norm, cocooning the norm, and toys only as extensions of mass-media franchises.

Remember in A Christmas Story (set in the cocooning period of circa 1940, when helicopter parenting was also in vogue), the main toy in his life is a decoder ring? It's branded with, and relies on consuming, a popular mass-media franchise -- the radio program Little Orphan Annie. And what secret message does it send to its owners? Another form of mass-media content -- a commercial! "Remember to drink your Ovaltine". The other toy he's pining for -- a Red Ryder BB gun -- is also branded after a cowboy character from a popular Western-themed comic strip. That's a heavily mass-mediated experience of toys.

As Midcentury cocooning began going away during the '60s, and vanishing by the '80s, we didn't need to brand our most in-demand toy guns after popular media franchises. It spoke for itself, in pure toy-world terms -- "Lazer Tag".

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Appendix