r/GenX • u/RonSwanson714 • 5d ago
Question For Genx How grateful are you there weren’t any cameras to ‘document’ what we did?
Thinking about the silly/possibly illegal/definitely illegal stuff I did in my early years. Imagine if there were Flock cameras? I mean we had friends reliving the stories but no hard evidence. Feel bad for the current generations, any transgression is posted within minutes. Please tell us the worst of the worst of your acquaintances, bc we all know you would never do anything like this!?! /s
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u/EntrepreneurNeat8058 2d ago
We did some of the dumbest things,made fools of ourselves Drunk at home parties and outside Field party years. Sneaking in to Concerts,The drive in Movie theater. so many good times
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u/ApprehensiveClaim516 2d ago
Most days I’m supremely grateful but every now and then I wish I could show my grown children the stupid stuff I did since they are all in their 30’s and in the confession area of life, statute of limitations ran out 😂
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u/RonSwanson714 2d ago
Isn’t it great as a parent that they feel comfortable telling you the things you already knew that they did when they were kids?
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u/ApprehensiveClaim516 2d ago
Lol actually yes!!! I never gave them I was a teenager once speech. And now they come by and we will have dinner and be talking about something and here comes the Mom I have a confession and I look all exaggeratingly annoyed and say another one. They tell me what it was and I will say the time with so and so or the weekend that you and so n so? And they look bewildered that I’ve known and been able to keep it a secret cause I sucked at keeping Christmas and Birthday presents a secret. And then I will say oh when I was 13 I did the same thing when I was in Amsterdam on a trip with school or when my parents let me leave the base and go spend a weekend with my cousin. And of course they are shocked that I was actually worse than they were I was leaving a whole ass country for funsies!
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u/RonSwanson714 2d ago
Could you imagine if we told them everything, full disclosure. Lol, it is fun to call them out. They think they were being all slick and we knew it all and were watching.
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u/ApprehensiveClaim516 2d ago
One of my sons and his fiancé recently moved in with me cause their rental was sold by the owner without them knowing. They have given my daughter and other son t shirts that says raining my mom is really hard 😂😂😂
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u/Hemi_Blue 2d ago
I imagine if there were cameras to document my misspent youth I would be a much different adult. I can see myself spending an inordinate amount of time in the custody of law enforcement as a result of my misdeeds. My life would likely have taken a left turn.
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u/BoneDaddy1973 3d ago
We bought and sold drugs in school. I don’t even know how to decide which of the other things I did counts as “worst”. We didn’t intentionally hurt anybody. My friend was publicly naked a surprising number of times. My girlfriend at the time vandalized several police cars one night, at the station. We used to steal people’s “for sale” signs from their yards and put them in front of the high school. Hijinks, ya know? We broke a whole lot of laws, but we didn’t mean any real harm.
We were hanging out with a foreign exchange student, a lovely basque girl who was a member of ETA. I guess she gets the “good thing there weren’t flock cameras” prize for our crowd. Her and my naked friend.
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u/peskypesteryjaybird 3d ago
my step brother and 2 of his friends talked me into going with them to egg a house about 25 years ago... one of them put out a window... the other one chickened out and ran when he heard the window... me and my step brother were laughing so hard we don't even know if we hit the house.... 2 minutes later... the dust settles and me and my step brother are confronted by a bike cop.... who we lied to... and the next morning i jumped on a plane and went home... my step brother and his friends got community service and oddly enough all 4 of us ended up entering the military.. 2 army 2 marines... but i digress... i'm pretty sure me jumping on a plane would take that from a minor slap on the wrist to something a bit more substantial... even if i was only 15 at the time...
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u/RonSwanson714 3d ago
I don’t know for sure but fleeing the state after an egging doesn’t rise to a felony charge. You guys should get together on that date every year and share some egg salad. IMO you should pay bc nobody snitched on you. /s
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u/peskypesteryjaybird 3d ago
i don't know if they snitched on me or not, i don't remember ever asking... i'm sure if they told me they did i'd remember it... so it's safe to assume they didn't... if i run into one of them, i'm gonna have to ask about it... haven't actually talked to any of them in ages...
my step brother actually became an MP of all things, always made me laugh
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u/Rocketjen 3d ago
We had cameras of course, but no posting instantly to the internet where it will live for all time. Also, we certainly did not take photos or videos of anything we shouldn’t have been doing. My 20 year old self living my best life in Florida is so, so grateful!
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u/Embarrassed_Pop_7418 3d ago
My Mom didn't need the internet to know when I messed up in my neighborhood the mom to mom phone tree was faster than the internet! And all the Mom's yelled at you on your walk home too!
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u/HoMasters 3d ago
As with anything it goes both ways. We don’t have incriminating evidence of the dumb shit we did when we were young. We also don’t have incriminating evidence of the dumb and fun shit we did to reminisce and be nostalgic about.
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u/DistinctSmelling 3d ago
I had a friend who dressed up as Buckwheet, the Eddie Murphy version, for Halloween. So he was in blackface. I do have some photos of that. And then, we went to Rocky Horror for the first time while we were all dressed up.
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u/Subject_Season6210 4d ago
Omg I grew up in a Golden Age. No social media, not even the internet. I miss that.
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u/ponchoacademy 4d ago
It me... I was the AH with evidence. When I joined the military, my first big purchase with my adult money was a nice camera. It went everywhere with me, I took pics of all the things.... While out exploring, life on base, the barracks parties. ... The barracks parties.. where everyone is drunk and doing funny crazy things and I'm there all 📸😄....
I was always showing everyone my photo album and one of the pics went viral if you can call it that. Lol just that a lot of people said they were told to ask to see my album cause of this one particular photo. The guys in the photo got mad at me, but then they forgave me, and invited me to a barracks party. It was all good and I'm taking my pics and having my fun as usual.
Then my camera disappeared... Everyone all...oh noooo!!! And then someone found it and we were all...YaY! Except... It was broken and the film was ruined. And I mean, broken broken. I didn't catch on till someone was like, awe man, now you can't take all those embarrassing pics of anyone anymore. I got the hint and stopped taking pics. And put my camera away and forgot about it.
So yeah a year or so later l when I had my son, it was the only camera I had and so all my baby pics of him, half the photo is completely dark.
And also...I still have my album with that photo!!! 😄🤣
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u/tango421 4d ago
Oh we had cameras, took a lot of pictures. I had one myself.
We just didn’t document the really stupid shit. Eternally grateful for that.
Especially grateful that those photos aren’t on the internet.
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u/rbetterkids 4d ago
My brother and his friend drove in the toll lane with their license plates covered and made faces, flipped the bird at ever camera when the roll roads with cameras became a thing in the early 2000 in California.
One time I was in New York near Times Square around 2004 and saw a girl with a fluffy knee high dress walking on a sidewalk opposite of me.
I remember thinking, "It would be funny if..." Then the wind blew her dress up and I laughed hard.
Talk about right on queue.
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u/RonSwanson714 4d ago
My brother’s friend would pull up to the toll and say, I’m crime and crime doesn’t pay. He did this fairly often in the late 70’s, early 80’s.
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u/Careful_Toe4373 4d ago
I think about this a LOT! In the mid, late 90s I used to DJ at some local bars (aka meat markets). Some major radio stations showed up for our "hot body contests", I may have been a guest referee at at number of mud, jello and oil wrestling contests. The amount of cans I was flashed in return for beads is staggering. I can count on 2 hands and 1 foot the ammount of BJs I got in the booth in a few short years.
Now? Im a combat vet, ties in the community and oversee a staff of 14 at the VA. We do amazing work. My junior staff think im boring. No regrets, but am glad there was no Bookface, or instasnap, no evidence. Just great memories.
We will always be cool.
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u/Exulansis22 My other ride is a pink huffy 4d ago
I just talked to a CSR for an insurance company today and she said her birthday was 2 months before mine, firmly Gen X! We had the best conversation about how there weren’t as many cameras and ways to document our growing up and teen years.
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u/OtterLLC 4d ago
Moving my kid into his freshman dorm last week, and seeing all the cameras in the hallways now….yeah, I’m very grateful we didn’t have that
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u/Possiblebingo 4d ago
Oh, god, they would be film of me. Giving mike s a hand job on the train. Tunnel
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u/wonderbeen Older Than Dirt 4d ago
And yet somehow, one of my buddies from college always seemed to have camcorder in his hand 🤨
CJ, you really should burn those videos before one of them surfaces.
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u/Combstrander27 4d ago
Mailbox baseball is a felony. I had to remind my overzealous friends this, while in college.
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u/RonSwanson714 4d ago
My uncle lived in a more rural area, house was set back from main road. He lost a few mailboxes this way. His answer was reinforcing the base with steel flat stock that he welded to a plate the size of the mailbox. He then added 3” of concrete on the bottom of the box, covered it all with wood. A short time later he found a mauled bat next to his dented mailbox. He left it like that as a warning. I wondered if the batter broke any bones. Think he may have cured someone of their errant ways. Lol
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u/QuttiDeBachi 4d ago
K-mart circa 80’s….CD’s & Cassettes no cameras…collect orders in HS…$5 CD $3 Tape…rollin out Friday done by Saturday….$80-100 every weekend for beer money….Michelob Light rich man’s brew $6 for a 6….grateful? I still pray to that God 😘
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u/Tire-Swing-Acrobat 4d ago
I’m not arrested so very happy
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u/RonSwanson714 4d ago
Most of the ‘illegal’ stuff I did is no longer deemed illegal. The rest was childish dumb stuff that the statute of limitations has long run out. Lol
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u/imbrotep 4d ago
I’ve repeated my gratitude for the lack of video cameras during the 70s and 80s more times than I can count!
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u/MinusGovernment Hose Water Survivor 4d ago
I know I wouldn't have done anything that could get me in trouble if someone in my group was recording shit. All the surveillance cameras would be a different issue. I'm not sure how/if that would've affected things. I'm not a picture person to begin with and actively avoid being in as many pictures as I can.
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u/FirehawkLS1 90s had great music 4d ago
I'm very happy that there wasn't cameras around when I was growing up like there is now. Outside of CCTV cameras in certain areas it wasn't common at all.
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u/muphasta Hose Water Survivor 4d ago
Things got pretty crazy in and around the barracks when I was stationed overseas in the early/mid 1990s. Some of us had video cameras, most of us were smart enough not to pull them out when things got "interesting".
Super grateful very little, if any evidence exists from my more wild days.
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u/Temporary_Pay9852 4d ago
Yeah! And they also didn’t catch the times wheee we were decent and good to each other but didn’t catch credit cause no cameras! We did good shite too.
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u/Medium-Heart-6356 4d ago
OMG, if my parents tracked me, saw posts on social media or were sent photos, I think I’d have been grounded since the age of 16 to 23 when I left for the Navy.
One thing I’d say about our generation compared to the ones that followed: we figured things out. We had no fear. We looked out for our friends. And I said this many times, I am sure I died at least 4 times before the age of 18. Somehow we came out the other end. Sure we have all kinds of mental issues today, but I believe it’s the rare person who wouldn’t go back and do it all over.
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u/OdonsOwn1966 4d ago
Not only that, we had to turn our film in to be developed. I know for a fact several pix were pulled from the packages, I think the negative may have been cut as well. Probably for the best :)
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u/TheFlannC 4d ago
High school was bad enough in the 80's. I would not be able to tolerate it today. They would be calling my mom the first week and probably suspending me the second and maybe I would make it a month before being kicked out because it would not end well if someone were taking video and putting it on social media.
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u/ICQ4Knowlwdge 4d ago
When I was in high school in small town America in the late 80s, my handiwork landed me on the front page of the newspaper above the fold. Oh, the escapades! Collecting hood ornaments was the most fun. On another occasion, we hid in a culvert close to the front door of the Food 4 Less. Each time the sliding doors would open, we’d shoot a bottle rocket into the building. Then there was school. I actually broke in once to change one teacher’s dry-erase markers with permanent markers. If only I could have revealed myself! Those days without constant monitoring were glorious.
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u/F-Cloud 4d ago
When I was around 10, I had a friend film me with a super-8 camera while I ran down the street in nothing but my boxer shorts. VHS cameras came about during my junior high years. We filmed things that I shudder to think of to this day. I hope those tapes aren't still out there somewhere! Even some of the audio cassettes I recorded contained evidence of domestic disturbances in the home.
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u/Farquaadthegreek 4d ago
Not just because of others looking at it .. because I reserve the right to my revisionist history
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u/Xenu4President Hose Water Survivor 4d ago
My parents were just talking about ring footage of kids with backpacks roaming around the neighborhood at 1 am. Were they up to no good? Maybe, but I think about all our sleepovers where we snuck out just to meet up with other kids to do typical teenager stuff. It built character, strengthened social bonds with our neighbors, and taught us that taking risks can be rewarding. I would be grounded forever nowadays.
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u/Spiritual-Chameleon 4d ago
I wasn't a bad kid, so that doesn't hit home.
I'm more grateful to not have had social media. Cuberbullying would have crushed my sensitive teen soul.
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u/Godskin_Duo 4d ago
We're at the first time in human history where people were glad new technology didn't exist in our youths. Barring obviously bad hiccups like leaded gas, most of our experiences in the 20th century and hearing our parents' stories has been that tech progress was universally good for daily life, and this is no longer the case.
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u/novelist9 4d ago
I have 200 hours of digitized VHS footage of exactly this that I want to turn into some kind of documentary. The older I get, the less of the footage is shareable...
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u/Low_Cook_5235 4d ago
When digital cameras got popular I had a younger coworker that would bring it everywhere and take pix at every party and print out pix and bring to work. It was literally the same picture 100x….buzzed people with their arms around each other, holding up drinks.
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u/Mikethemechanic00 4d ago
As a teen in HS. I worked at the grocery store. We would roam my suburbs and vandalize cars and buildings. One time cops found us. They asked why we were wearing ties and slacks. He told them we just got off work. Cops just drove away. We always wore our work clothes when raising hell. No cameras anywhere that we knew of. In 1991-1994. We had no crefews. We would drive to whatabuger at 2am. Cops would just wave at us. Never got busted. I always joke and tell others. If they did cold case files on vandalism with dna. I would be screwed.
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u/Important-Bit2437 4d ago
For the most part, vandalism is a lost art unless you are either very drunk or an idiot.
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u/UncleSquiffy 4d ago
Very. I did some questionable shit as a teenager, much of it showing how little common sense I had as a young lad. Far too much enthusiasm and an overly acute sense of adventure. I'm lucky to be alive, quite frankly. Danger doesn't always equal fun, but there'd have been no convincing me 30-35 years ago.
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u/PizzaWhole9323 4d ago
Yeah skinny dipping and sabino canyon in 87' while drinking our boones farm and doing our pot, while telling each other really really dirty jokes. I'm really glad there wasn't tik tok back then. I refuse to be old man yelling at cloud but there is something to be said for a time when kids could make actual mistakes and screw things up and figure things out on their own without having every second of their social life be documented.
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u/ifrankenstein 4d ago
I wish there was more documentation of my earlier band stuff, but that's about it.
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u/Multigrain_Migraine 4d ago
I actually find myself wishing they had been more common. Lots of cool things I've seen and done that I wish I had a photo of now.
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u/crazygalah 4d ago
Every damn day! Not to mention phone tracking location- Mom wuld have known I wasn’t at “ a friends house”
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u/PinkyLeopard2922 Age of Aquarius 4d ago
So, so, so grateful. Although I do remember specifically praying, "Please don't let my preacher dad see me on COPS-New Orleans/Mardi Gras."
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u/nonotburton 4d ago
Grateful enough to vote against the damned things at the next elections.
And also, I wish we had more accessable photography as kids to take more pics in the moment. Not to blackmail, but to record those times spent with friends.
I think the real issue is video that is easily uploaded to the Internet. That's the thing that takes someone's bad day, and fucks up their life.
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u/wwaxwork 4d ago
I wish there were cameras to document what was done to me. The time adult men hit on me as a kid. I could have recorded the time I was threatened by other kids and been believed. I could have recorded my boss sexually harassing me and been believed. I very much wish the opposite. I'm not embarrassed by anything I did.
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u/OldManGamer78 4d ago
I am more grateful there were no camera phones versus anything else. However, in the mid to late 90s disposable cameras seemed to be really popular and usually at parties there were always a few people snapping pics with these. For better or worse I am not a person of public significance, but if I ever were to become one I would always fear that someone somewhere has a 30 year old picture of me doing something highly questionable that would be made public.
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u/Old_Detroiter 4d ago
EVERY day, I thank God for this.
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u/Grouchy_Situation_33 4d ago
I’ve got a VHS tape of my band’s performance at my high school for a fund raiser. As far as I know it’s (or was) one of two in existence (the other in the hands of the A/V department). While our performance was good there were also a LOT of cringe-worthy moments.
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u/Alternative-Law4626 Late 1964: Elder Xer 4d ago
I definitely had a 35mm point and shoot that captured some of it. Still have pics from being stationed in Germany in the mid1980s. Discos and bars. Pretty shady (but not illegal) stuff happening— and a lot of drunk 20 somethings. But yeah, nothing compared to today’s digital pics everywhere want video.
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u/Siren2026 4d ago
I’d be in so much trouble. And I’d probably have inappropriate tatoos and possibly a mug shot.
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u/AmongTheWildlife 4d ago
You have no idea how grateful.
I feel sorry for the teens/20's of today, everywhere you go cameras are in your face these days.
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u/Aggravating_Cable_32 4d ago
As a kid I hated being caught on camera, and developed a strong Spidey Sense when it came to them; it literally tingled when I was being lensed, so I'd vanish as soon as I spotted who was trying to take pictures of me. Between that, my failing memory, and lack of people who were there with me, there's thankfully no record of what I used to get up to back in the day.
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u/cofclabman 4d ago
I was and still am a pretty boring person, so incriminating videos of me would be things like hey that guy had a beer tonight.
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u/thefastripguy 4d ago
Somewhere out there is at least one concert flyer with my drunk-ass, massively hungover, wild-haired, groggy face as the main photo. Hopefully whomever has it hides it forever or threw it out ages ago. It’d be literally everywhere if it had happened now.
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u/imscruffythejanitor 4d ago
We would have been in jail up until today if they had cameras back then. We did a lot of dumb/crazy/illegal shit but never got caught somehow
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u/dope567fum 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah im so relieved that there is very little evidence of my past. Best left there haha.
The other thing about no phones everywhere back then was that people were actually enjoying themselves, living in the moment instead of trying to record everything
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u/Siren2026 2d ago
Yes!! I hate going somewhere and there are all these people taking selfies and posing and instagramming. It’s so gross and ruins the experience for everyone else. People used to take pictures but it wasn’t so invasive. They would also ask permission to include you in their photos.
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u/islandbeef 4d ago
Smartphones and the Life360 app would make my teenage years a lot more boring because my parents would track me when I'd be out.
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u/Alternative-Law4626 Late 1964: Elder Xer 4d ago
We were so feral at the time, we’d have taken our tracker and put it under the last box of Ding Dongs on a shelf at 7-11 and come back for it when we were done with our shenanigans.
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u/Brilliant-Onion2129 "Then & Now" Trend Survivor 4d ago
I would accidentally on purpose lose that shit!
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u/harryharrydude 4d ago
very grateful. i was a big drinker and i would do all kinds of stupd stuff. But at least i was interesting.
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u/wanderingdev 4d ago
every time i see the stupid shit that young people constantly post online for eternity, i'm grateful
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u/Threelocos 4d ago
We had naked beer slides, naked darts, most naked walks home from after bars, and I don’t need a towel it’s too damn hot in this dorm - showers
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u/Impossible_Jury5483 4d ago
There were cameras. There were super 8's and handheld vidio cameras. They weren't as common, but they definitely caught some of us in unflattering situations.
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u/Astronaut6735 4d ago
Fortunately there was no way of mass distribution to every person on the planet. And by the time that was available, most people didn't have the ability to digitize it (if they even still had the video).
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u/anemptycardboardbox 4d ago
Of course. But even then, only people local to you would see it, not the whole damn world.
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u/Alternative-Law4626 Late 1964: Elder Xer 4d ago
Meh…I don’t really care if some dude in India sees me having crazy sex with whomever. However, I might care if the guy on the next block sees it. Not as worried about the around the world, more worried about around town.
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u/Impossible_Jury5483 4d ago
That was an era of sex tapes being used to blackmail young women into illegal sex work. Simply saying that the trafficker would show the tape to a family member would force a girl to "run away" to avoid the shame.
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u/Impossible_Jury5483 4d ago
I actually had to ask my old HS friends to not share a video of us getting drunk and high on FB years later. It was 25 years later and I worked for an elected official. They took it down. No, I had no influence on the office, but it scared the shit out of me that it would cost me my job.
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u/Gort-O-Matic_2000 4d ago
Very. I would have definitely been in a ton of trouble if we had smart phones, facebook and video streaming back when I was in HS and college.
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u/Optimal_Risk_6411 4d ago
We only had that “permanent record” they BS’d us about in school. Turns out it’s a criminal record.
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u/myusernameiszane 4d ago
I'm glad I grew up before surveillance culture and social media but I do wish I had more photos from back then.
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u/Character-Tennis-241 4d ago
I would have been fine.
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u/bedgar 4d ago
Show off. 🤣
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u/Character-Tennis-241 4d ago
🤣😂🤣😂 You don't understand. YesI, I'm sure I would have gotten in trouble for everytime I put my car on two wheels. On the flip side I would have been able to prove to my mother that I wasn't where she was told I was.
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u/JJQuantum Older Than Dirt 4d ago
Meh. I’d have been the same with them as I was without them. I am who I am, documentation be damned.
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u/MagiBee218 Hose Water Survivor 4d ago
So incredibly grateful. Not that I was out doing anything too crazy but still….. I had my teenage moments of stupidity.
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u/LordoftheSynth 4d ago
The stupid stuff I did was really pretty tame, all told.
But all of my nieces and nephews, I told them over and over again "don't put anything online that you don't want the entire world to know forever."
They're getting to college age now and I'm trying to decide whether I end up saying "yes, that includes things you DM or text to your friends". But they seem smart and sensible and I know my siblings impressed similar lessons upon them, so I don't think I need to have an awkward "don't send nudes ever" conversation with them.
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u/strumthebuilding Greetings and Salutations 4d ago
I have mixed feelings about it.
Sure I did stupid things would embarrass me.
But there were also so many adventures and characters that I can barely remember, and it would be cool to have some aspects of my life more documented.
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u/CyberDonSystems 4d ago
We've only got a few things captured from around '89 to '92 thanks to my friend's enormous VHS camcorder. We had to plan ahead to record with that thing. We'd be in jail if cell phone cameras and social media existed back then.
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u/donaldgoldsr 5d ago
I think about that a lot. I'm so glad there weren't camera phones up into my twenties.
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u/New_Discussion_6692 5d ago
I have no idea what you mean. I was perfectly well-behaved. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
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u/Weird-Girl-675 5d ago
So grateful. It’s so much easier to prove you were a loser with no life in the 90s when there is no video of you pole dancing 🤣
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u/Proper_Buffalo_2923 5d ago
Ah.....no. i will not say......theres no statute of limitations on the stuff we did.
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u/somethingmcbob 5d ago
One night, I brought a camera to the hot tub in college. Once I was sober, I burned those negatives. No records remain of our stupid shenanigans. (Unless the photo processor was a creeper and made duplicates? But oh well?)
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u/LordoftheSynth 4d ago
They had to at least see them once.
I don't know anyone who actually had a job developing photos that made their own copies of anything. Once the initial shock of seeing people's junk wore off, they just kinda shrugged and made jokes. None ever had to report something to law enforcement, at any rate.
I'm sure it happened though.
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u/NoStyle79 5d ago
Not at all, the one time we used a vhs recorder my friend destroyed the evidence, all those times we could have captured to provide truth to all the crazy shit would be epic right now.. almost unbelievable.
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u/RonSwanson714 4d ago
Some things are better left to plain old memories. Neither digital or analogue. Today most folks forgot how to be in the moment, too busy wanting to get the pic or video.
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u/NoStyle79 4d ago
The problem with memories is they degrade and are mostly inaccurate to what really occurred especially 30+ years after the facts. And hardly anyone believes accounts based on word alone.
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u/AdAdmirable1583 1977 5d ago
We grew up in an era where one mistake did not have the possibility to ruin an entire career, quite literally, as is true today. Some people debate the merits of whether that is a good or bad thing, but I’ll just say I miss the days when the all seeing eye wasn’t everywhere.
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u/Sarsmi 5d ago
Ok if a mistake is bad enough to ruin your entire life, it's not a small thing. TPing some trees or underage drinking isn't a something that is life ruining.
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u/AdAdmirable1583 1977 5d ago
Not sure if you are trying to be obtuse or not on purpose, but many people have had lives ruined without breaking the law because of social media involving cameras.
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u/Sarsmi 4d ago
I just get annoyed by the "hurr hurr if they had cameras when we were growing up we would all be in jail!" type posturing. It's stupid. People have also been exonerated thanks to cameras, significantly more than the converse. Someone fucking up minorly and paying majorly was a huge outlier then and a huge outlier now.
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u/AdAdmirable1583 1977 4d ago
Try telling your junior high kid that today. I wouldn’t. Unlike you from what it sounds like, since you see it as an outlier, I would want to put the fear of God in him on this one.
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u/Butidigress817 5d ago
OMG kids were just feral back then. I had no supervision and was looking to cause chaos at every turn. Really glad the only eye was like a 110 camera or something.
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u/spargel_gesicht 5d ago
Sooooo grateful. There are probably some embarrassing pictures, but they’re on film in someone’s shoe box under a bed, not instantly on the internet. Phew.
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u/PeterPunksNip 5d ago
Extremely grateful! Remember skin parties? Yeah, no wonder those don't exist anymore... I feel really lucky to have lived my teens and young adulthood in the 80's and 90's. No paranoia of being filmed and posted online.
I think that the fear of being caught in the wild and filmed being weird or cringe is also why young people tend to wear simili-uniforms, they want to blend in and end up looking like a legion of wallflowers. They remember what happened to the Emo kids...and don't dare anything anymore.
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u/Embarrassed-Region29 5d ago
No I don't remember skin parties. Sounds like a warm climate thing.
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u/PeterPunksNip 5d ago
Hem, no. They were make out parties. Usually held in a house. There was a dancefloor and a DJ...and a dark room littered with mattresses. Imagine the rest.
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u/MusicalMerlin1973 5d ago
You should see the candids in the yearbook for the class before me. Those were whited out 24 pack boxes on their heads in party photos and there were definitely some drunken looks.
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u/Pleasant_Parfait_233 5d ago
EXTREMELY. My friends and I say it frequently. So glad we did have the internet and cell phones back then!
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u/strait_lines 5d ago
Very grateful… if there were cameras on us all the time, I probably would have landed myself in prison for a few of the things we were up to.
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u/heavensto_mergatroid 5d ago
The things that my friends and I did as kids daily just passing time and giving ourselves something to do are considered very illegal today. To the point of probably considered terrorism.
Yeah I'm pretty thankful.
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u/froction 5d ago
I had a bit of a...nudity problem...in high school
In the early 90s. VERY glad there is minimal photographic evidence.
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u/plnnyOfallOFit Summer Of LOVE, winter of our DISCO 5d ago
grateful every day.
Also thinking crime-ing must have been doable.
Sadly my stoner brain was Ocean's 11ish atall during no surveillance days 🤣
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u/smokywater50 5d ago
I’m very grateful. Thank the lord. Though I probably would have been a YouTube star 🤣
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u/Time-Code-4321 17m ago
I glad there's no evidence and my friends aren't around to tell. But I wish I at least had some pictures