Post: #26

Mad Men made the 60's look amazing.

Paging Matt Weiner. We need a new series focused on the 80's.

Post: #27

(06-03-2015 03:15 AM)Veloce Wrote:  Not sure what the point is, other than some lighthearted nostalgia.

Are we supposed to be lamenting something here?

Having looked at the pictures and remembering a lot of American movies as a child I can without a doubt tell that those movies belonged to that culture.

Today Hollywood movies do little to resemble American culture in total apart from self-absorption and mocking men.

Post: #28

(06-03-2015 11:04 AM)Foolsgo1d Wrote:  

(06-03-2015 03:15 AM)Veloce Wrote:  Not sure what the point is, other than some lighthearted nostalgia.

Are we supposed to be lamenting something here?

Having looked at the pictures and remembering a lot of American movies as a child I can without a doubt tell that those movies belonged to that culture.

Today Hollywood movies do little to resemble American culture in total apart from self-absorption and mocking men.

TV ads too. Typically, the men are mentally challenged buffoons.

Post: #29

Back in the 1980s, Americans were comfortable with American masculinity.
Check out this 1980s beer commercial below. It was done in a very serious and non ironic type of way.





Another:





These days commercials portray men (especially white heterosexual men) as dorks and socially inept.
Here's a modern beer commercial. Observe how women are portrayed and how the men are portrayed.





Here's another:





America used to take pride in its men as strong, confident, masculine, capable, the backbone of the economy. Now it just portrays them as overgrown children in need of strong female supervision.

The 1980s almost seem like a foreign country.

It's a damn shame what we've let America degenerate into.

Post: #30

Well there were LESS fat people, but still some fatties.

Goddamn the late 80's early 90's were just weird for hair and style.

Almost ALL the girls hairs were teased or looked like a crows nest, I saw a little The Cure Hair influenced styles also.

Where are the punkers hanging out at the mall ?

This isn't as nostalgic for me, reason being I was a kid in the 90's.

Post: #31

Seeing some of those photos bring back good memories

89' was the year we graduated from HS, so during that era we spent most of our waking hours between the two local malls

Our city had the classic dynamic between the old grimy mall which was only 70% occupied by businesses and the vibrant, well funded clean, new mall clear on the "good" side of town.

Our dilemma was all the freaks descended on the old mall, but if you wanted to cop the fresh new pair of "J's" you had to jump on the highway to the new spot

So we did what any logical 18 year old male would do in that situation

...We stayed our horny asses at the old mall, harassed the mall cops and chased the freaks all day

Post: #32

Appearance wise, everything went to shit in the 90s, with the rise of grunge. That’s when popular music became more joyless and less fun. People were less concerned about being loud and looking good, and more concerned with being miserable fucks. In 1980s music videos there’s hot women on yachts in their underwear, in the 1990s it’s guys being more serious, with no women in sight. Compare these videos (admittedly, Creep is a great song):

Duran Duran - Girls on Film (80s)




Radiohead - Creep (90s)





Somebody also figured out that women held the keys to spending in many households, so TV began to be more for women and less for men. Nowadays on mainstream US TV channels, there’s almost nothing to watch for heterosexual males. It’s all reality shows, cooking, dramas and dancing shows that no red blooded male would be seen dead watching.

Also, the lack of shame went away…it was embarrassing to be a slut or fat in the 1980s – nobody cares anymore. The genie has been let out of the bottle.

There’s so much faggotry in US culture now, that there were 2 straight guys in my office debating Pitch Perfect 1 vs. Pitch Perfect 2. Those films are for women!

Post: #33

Your point is also a contributing factor in the popularity of video streaming services: getting most male-friendly shows requires access to them due to either restrictive cable content providers(like breaking bad or Game of Thrones) or an archive of shows old enough to be male friendly.

Post: #34

(06-03-2015 07:51 AM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

(06-03-2015 07:32 AM)MikeS Wrote:  I checked out the link and aside from outdated products and people with hair and clothes from my school years, the malls look more or less like 2015 malls. More hot girls in the malls now (though he probably just didn't aim his camera as much at them as some would have). Doesn't spark much nostalgia in me.
But I'm in Europe so maybe things are different here.

(06-03-2015 07:23 AM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  I've posted this before, but to watch a TV show from the 1980's is like traveling time. I remember watching these same shows as a kid. Now as a red pill male they are a huge slap in the face.

The women across all the shows are thin, pretty, feminine, dress feminine, support the male characters, and are overall happy and proud to be a mom/wife.

Contrast that with the crap on TV today.

TV and movies are another matter. 80s movies or TV shows can on occasion make me a bit nostalgic.

The nostalgic part of it is true. But it is more than that as well...

I was watching Cheers a few months back. The episode I was watching just happened to also be from 1989. And it wasn't the show or content, it was the people I noticed...

#1) The guys were for the most part wearing suits and looking good.
#2) The women were all dressed femininely. I don't remember seeing a pair of dress pants even. All skirts, with stockings and heels. Most in business suits as well.

And I am talking about the extras in the back ground. Obviously this was normal in those days, at least in a large city, or the audience would question why everyone was dressed so nicely and not identify with the show.

Add to it, the behavior of the female characters was very soft and feminine. Their strengths were shown in a female way, not in a masculine way of fighting or kicking ass. But in being persuasive and sweet.

My first thought was, man, I want to go to a place like that. That is what I am missing in life. Then I realized that place doesn't exist today. This was 25+ years ago, and those days are just gone.

"Cheers" was being re-run on MeTV om weeknights for a while. If you look at their lineup now, it's no longer there.

One reason for that is that on that page I linked, people wrote in to the network complaining that the show "encouraged drinking and driving" since the characters had to drive home from the bar. They said the network was being irresponsible running such a show in 2014.

I argued with these people in the comments section, but they could not be persuaded. I'd forgotten about the "alcohol is evil" crowd, but they still exist, apparently.

Just when you think the SJW crowd is beyond idiotic, along comes the old Baby Boomer nanny state crowd to remind you they could be even stupider.

Post: #35

(06-03-2015 09:56 AM)Mr. Wolf Wrote:  Now everyone is a zombie staring at their phone, and completely awkward and socially avoidant.

I remember exactly when that happened. I was in college in the early to mid 00's. One semester it was normal and then after Christmas more than half the people were zombies and it only got worse over the next few semesters.

It was the iPod. This was at a large southern state university and all the kids came back in the spring with iPods. All of a sudden you went from being able to talk to all sorts of people and hit on girls on the university buses, mainly because a lot of kids with no social circles can't do the elevator shuffle for 15 minutes or more without a book to read or something, to everyone having their iPod buds in their ears.

It's not that people didn't listen to music. People did walk around with Walkmans and stuff, but it wasn't all that common. It only got worse a few semesters later because all the new freshman and people who entered college a semester or two late or transferred from the community colleges had the new type of cell phones. They had storage capacities were really the first wave of smartphones. This was around 06 I guess. Within another semester or so, basically everyone was texting on those older QWERTY keyboards.

Facebook was also fairly new at that time and was mainly used to look for groups to hook up with and where the parties were that night.

It was kinda strange how fast this changed social behavior. I lived in the freshman dorms during this time for awhile and, while I couldn't wait to get an off campus apartment to make partying easier, it was common to simply go down to the lobby and meet all sorts of people hanging out in the court yard smoking cigarettes or just hanging out on the steps. I met dozens of friends that way and got laid a few times from just hanging out downstairs. The same was true of the library or student center or bowling alley and other courtyards. You had a lot of people at this huge, ~28K student body, university who didn't know each other and didn't have social circles. So we had to talk to people and get out and go to parties or meet people with similar interests. Within a few semesters that was gone and everyone was either staring at their phone or walking around with earbuds in.

Post: #36

(06-03-2015 05:05 AM)getdownonit Wrote:  The fitness and hair are great, but none of these women are wearing feminine attire.

I was in my teens then. If only I would have had game.

Post: #37

I was a teenager throughout the 90s. What I most miss is the feeling of wonder everytime something new came up or you discovered something.

I dont miss those days. I had no game, I was clueless, I wasted time and opportunities waiting for the things I wanted to happen to just happen. If I could go back I would have a very long conversation with myself.

Post: #38

(06-03-2015 04:10 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  "Cheers" was being re-run on MeTV om weeknights for a while. If you look at their lineup now, it's no longer there.

One reason for that is that on that page I linked, people wrote in to the network complaining that the show "encouraged drinking and driving" since the characters had to drive home from the bar. They said the network was being irresponsible running such a show in 2014.

I argued with these people in the comments section, but they could not be persuaded. I'd forgotten about the "alcohol is evil" crowd, but they still exist, apparently.

Just when you think the SJW crowd is beyond idiotic, along comes the old Baby Boomer nanny state crowd to remind you they could be even stupider.

Back in the 90's there were easily three times as many people out at the saloons as there are today.

According to my dad, the bars were full pretty much every night of the week in the 70's.

Interestingly the bar that is consistently the busiest, day and night, through the week in my hometown is the American Legion. And I'm usually the youngest guy in the place if I stop in.

Drinking culture is very different for the younger crowd today.

btw-This is in WI which has one of the highest alcohol consumption rates in the country.

Post: #39

(06-03-2015 03:03 AM)Brian Shima Wrote:  

I grew up in New Jersey so everyone was about a 20 minute drive from 3 different malls. Anyone who remembers the Kevin Smith film Mallrats saw a portrayal of this and how people in NJ would just hang out there because it was the only place for young people to congregate.

I remember going into Camelot Music (a defunct chain) in 1994 after my family got our first CD player and seeing big displays on the wall for Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Guns N Roses, and all the other stuff that was popular at the time (the bands I mentioned are awesome compared to what the top sellers on iTunes are now). The store looked very similar to the one in the picture.

It seems like doing something like that or going to the Arcade (Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were getting big) or getting some shitty reduced game on sale from Kay-Bee Toys probably brought me more happiness than almost anything in my adult life aside from my major achievements like college graduation, etc. Kind of depressing when you think about it, but I guess I'm just getting old.

Post: #40

(06-03-2015 04:53 PM)germanico Wrote:  I was a teenager throughout the 90s. What I most miss is the feeling of wonder everytime something new came up or you discovered something.

That instinct is still in you. You just have to actively and constantly seek new information out, and refine what you think you already know.

Think about what you don't know, or think you do know but have probably taken for granted, then start investigating.

It keeps my mind active and less mentally-lethargic than most of the people who surround me.

Post: #41

(06-03-2015 11:25 AM)kaotic Wrote:  Well there were LESS fat people, but still some fatties.

Goddamn the late 80's early 90's were just weird for hair and style.

Almost ALL the girls hairs were teased or looked like a crows nest, I saw a little The Cure Hair influenced styles also.

Where are the punkers hanging out at the mall ?

This isn't as nostalgic for me, reason being I was a kid in the 90's.

Let me try and address this stuff.

1). On my dorm hall each year there was one fat girl. That's all. That seemed the norm: one fat chick on each hall. Really, there were not that many fat people in general. My friend Robert used to walk about with a "No Fat Chicks" t-shirt and no one said anything about it -- not the dorm RAs, the front desk people, the professors, nor any of us students.

It really was a different world back then. Being fat got you ridiculed and ostracized. Let me give a real-life example as to how bad it was for guys. In high school my height was around 5'1." This didn't make life easy, but I went to all the proms, homecoming dance, and had girlfriends regularly. One of my brothers was just the slightest bit chubby (and his weight then would be normal now), but girls ran from him as if he had a disease. So short trumped fat -- something I definitely don't see now.

2). The reason you think all the girls had that teased hair is because photos of people with the most extreme hair are the most interesting to pass around the Internet. If you search for '80s yearbook photos, you get the "totally awkward yearbook" stuff, but that's not indicative of what it was then.

Most of the hair was just basic perms and straight cuts, like Jennifer Jason Leigh in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." People are, for the most part, boring and so was their hair.

3). There were not that many punk rockers around in the '80s. Look at what sold the most: Springsteen, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi. In the '80s, punk was the music the nerdy drama class kids liked or the annoying, self-righteous journalism students tried to push on the masses (guilty as charged).

It was only after Nirvana hit in 1991 and Green Day hit two years later, punk suddenly became cool and people all claimed they loved it in the '80s. Record sales proved otherwise -- as did the fact that most of the revered punk bands from that era never played placed bigger than clubs like the 9:30 in DC.

Post: #42

(06-03-2015 09:27 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(06-03-2015 04:53 PM)germanico Wrote:  I was a teenager throughout the 90s. What I most miss is the feeling of wonder everytime something new came up or you discovered something.

That instinct is still in you. You just have to actively and constantly seek new information out, and refine what you think you already know.

Think about what you don't know, or think you do know but have probably taken for granted, then start investigating.

It keeps my mind active and less mentally-lethargic than most of the people who surround me.

Agree with this, and for me travel is the best antidote, until you're done enough travel.

A great Abraham Lincoln quote is "God loves poor people, it's why he made so many of them." When I travel I avoid hotels like the plague, they are sterilised environments, stripped bare of anything resembling their locality, and why I'm a big fan of AirBnB.

Live amongst the poor people of other places. They exist en masse, and troughout their day to day lives, they manage to eek out ways of finding joy and fulfillment to some degree.

Find out what that is, that's a good place for your investigation to start.

Post: #43

Yes the 80's were freakin awesome. The problem was most of us didnt have the money to take advantage of what was available. We had to make do with what we had. That kind of sucked. But we were more creative than kids now. More imagination. We were more persistent and patient. This is gone.
I remember masterminding the logistics of getting my girlfiend alone and getting her panties down. I would give my 18 year old self a gold medal for that. It was spectacular.

Post: #44

(06-03-2015 05:35 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  Arcades were the most legit thing ever. I remember going to one at my mall up until the late 90s. There were two and sadly both ended up closing shop.

Nowadays arcades suck. The retro games were cooler.

My uncle talks about early 80s arcades like they were the most magical places ever. Wonder what that would be like - to live through the mainstreaming of computers, video games and the Internet. It's like living through the iron age and industrial revolution all compressed into 2 decades.

And, I think the issue with weight isn't the food, it's the lack of basic exercise. I have cousins who spent their whole summer playing xbox. They would probably get tired walking around a mall.

Post: #45

(06-03-2015 09:34 AM)CodyB Wrote:  

(06-03-2015 04:01 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  Look how thin people in their end 20s/30s were before the coporations decided to call normal food "organic" and put in more toxins than nutrients:

I don't think so.

In the 1980s, America was eating more fast food than it ever had. The nutritional content of food was secondary to gimmick factor. TV dinners and McDonalds had been around for a long time, but they became staples in the 1970s-80s.

Organic didn't exist, food was produced with little to no scrutiny from regulatory bodies, meat was injected with water to make it bigger, vegetables were sprayed to hell with pestecide and transfat went into many foods unchecked.


I grew up in Australia in the 1990s. This was essentially Australia's golden mall era and now it is yielding to online shopping and a return to High St. About fucking time. I personally don't lament the loss of this era as it destroyed small towns, old cinemas and small businesses everywhere. I'm glad to see them failing to fill shops now.

The chicks were still somewhat thin then because it was the last gasp of American mothers cooking for their children.

I hit puberty around then and was struck by how fat and ugly the chicks were among me. Then again, I grew up in DC. Maybe the fattitude started in DC and then began to infect the rest of the USA.

Post: #46

The 80's were a time to be American. Heck, everything about American culture worldwide has its roots in the 80's.

I love how quiet that disc shop is, it's not bombarding you with publicity, or 'eye-raping' with adverts.

Post: #47

Alot of women looked pretty nerdy and or busted back then.
Pancake butts and belly button high cootchie cutters were all the rage.

Good thing its changed now

Post: #48

I remember when I walked around the malls in Tokyo back in May 2014. I had a huge boner from all the sexy girls I saw walking around. When I went back to NYC I saw a bunch of obese girls walking around the mall. The same happened to me when I was in Romania. My boner was strong.

Post: #49

Here's a McDonald's commercial from the 1980s.

I want you guys to analyze it:

Post: #50

(06-03-2015 10:23 PM)beta_plus Wrote:  

(06-03-2015 09:34 AM)CodyB Wrote:  

(06-03-2015 04:01 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  Look how thin people in their end 20s/30s were before the coporations decided to call normal food "organic" and put in more toxins than nutrients:

I don't think so.

In the 1980s, America was eating more fast food than it ever had. The nutritional content of food was secondary to gimmick factor. TV dinners and McDonalds had been around for a long time, but they became staples in the 1970s-80s.

Organic didn't exist, food was produced with little to no scrutiny from regulatory bodies, meat was injected with water to make it bigger, vegetables were sprayed to hell with pestecide and transfat went into many foods unchecked.


I grew up in Australia in the 1990s. This was essentially Australia's golden mall era and now it is yielding to online shopping and a return to High St. About fucking time. I personally don't lament the loss of this era as it destroyed small towns, old cinemas and small businesses everywhere. I'm glad to see them failing to fill shops now.

If a guy is born and raised in the D.C. area, still lives there and either doesn't travel or travels very little, he is going to have a horrible, and frankly, incorrect view of what a woman even is and probably won't even believe that models and knockout women really do exist in real life.

The chicks were still somewhat thin then because it was the last gasp of American mothers cooking for their children.

I hit puberty around then and was struck by how fat and ugly the chicks were among me. Then again, I grew up in DC. Maybe the fattitude started in DC and then began to infect the rest of the USA.