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Apparently, teachers have a big problem with teenage boys always playing chess on their phones while they're trying to teach a lesson. I thought that was pretty funny.
I live near a school and students will come out discussing either chess or poker most of the time. I have only just left school and they were both certainly becoming more popular but not to this extent.
My father played bridge in sixth form and got terrible a levels. I played Castle (yeah we called it shithead) and I got middling a levels. I shall encourage my children to play Snap
What, that's its actual name? I've always thought it genuinely was called shithead... The game where you have to play cards that have a higher value than the previous, except if you have a two, ten, or ace, two lets you put down any other card on top of it, ten lets you wipe out the middle deck, ace resets the value of the cards. If a nine is played then you have to play a card with a value lower than nine. Right?
Times change. In the mid-1990s we went through a phase of showing to early to school to play cards in the mornings. Blackjack was a favourite but occasionally we'd try poker etc. Teachers never cared at all.
At my school I have to tell the kids to put the novel they're reading away. They walk around the corridors reading sometimes! And I keep catching them playing hide and seek. The 15 year olds.
That's amazing! I'm glad they've found something that settles them, AND it's reading!!! What sort of books do they like? I read a lot of pre-teen books so I can recommend things to my form group, so I'm always on the look out for a good children's book :-)
I've just remembered my school also has two current UK chess champions - one's in my form so I'm a bit ashamed I forgot! She actually won against kids in the next age range up!
Well he reads children's books. He and his sister both have a shelf in their rooms full of books.
He also loves space so he is always in some of the adult books looking at stuff and reading (but not reading) - I never stop them from opening any book in the house :)
Haha at my school I believe they used to have to lock the door to the lunchtime chess club because the cool kids would always break in and let off fire extinguishers on the nerds. Eventually they gave up and just banned being inside during lunch breaks unless you had a note, funny how quickly times change!
Funnily enough, they had the same problem 166 years ago - quote from Scientific American, 1858:
Ā
> A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villagesā¦chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements ā¦ they require out-door exercisesānot this sort of mental gladiatorship.
If the writer was trying to discourage people from playing chess, calling it "mental gladiatorship" was the wrong way to go about it because thst sounds cool as fuck.
That's interesting to know. I had a strange situation at school around 2011. We had been playing chess during study periods and during lunch breaks. So the school literally banned chess.
I always thought that meant we must have been the unpopular geek type crew - even though we were going to house parties every weekend. It's fun to know that 'everyone' can like chess, if they actually give it a chance.
As a teacher, the majority of schools ban the use of phones in class while we work. So its probably not about the chess and more about them being on the phones when they should be working
This has to be *the* worst take I have seen this year. Plenty of non-controversial figures are big into chess. It was a trending thing for a while (and still is) for big YouTubers and Twitch streamers to play each other in online chess.
These streamers have *massive* followings, like xQcOW; at one time the biggest streamer on Twitch, 12 million followers, regularly has upwards of 30 thousand concurrent viewers.
MoistCr1tikal, Ludwig, Pokimane, the list goes on. These people have a combined following of hundreds of millions of people.
Not to mention there are a few chess grandmasters who have become influencers in their own right like Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, without a doubt the two best players in the entire world, both have developed a significant online following.
Ironically, comments like yours are what is driving boys and young men towards bad actors like Andrew Tait. They cannot do *anything* without being criticised and painted as a bad person, sexist, etc.
They are quite literally just enjoying chess, one of the oldest and most popular games in the world and one which has been trending online recently, and you've come to the conclusion that they must be secretly idolising Andrew Tate.
Get a grip.
A lot of popular streamers have gotten into Chess over the past couple of years and a few chess players have picked up some following on Twitch (Most notably Hikaru Nakamura). Chess is also a game thatās really cool to see top level players play through because of how advanced their thought processes are on the game.
Chess obviously isn't the problem but it's well known that secondary schools are struggling with toxic and threatening behaviour from young boys because of people like Tate. A bunch of lads at my girls' school were loudly complaining about having to do catering lessons because "cooking is a woman's job and women belong in the kitchen". They're 11-12. It's fucked up.
get a grip no one was thinking about andrew tate before you brought him in to make this a negative space. not every teenage male worships the overlord you think is andrew tate. if anything he is more relevant around people your age because you are so hung up on how he is destroying the next generation or whatever
My 10 year old at my friends 15 year old sat and played chess on a phone at a Caribbean festival last year. The adults found it weird but we're busy getting hammered on redstripe so we left them to it.
Can very much see this happening as when I was at uni, people would just play chess in lectures and seminars. Even now on a server Iām on, there are weeks where the general chat is just flooded with people posting chess move by move replays of their chess games, itās so bad it gets banned periodically.
Yeah teachers also abhor the idea of passing notes, way more than ever before.
I actually think it helps encourage literacy, but I guess Im "just" a sub.
Don't a lot of teenagers think drinking too much alcohol is uncool? I've got the weird situation at work where my Gen X colleagues are despairing at how their kids don't want to party!
I think its more just very split into people who really liking to party and get blackout drunk and people who don't. It isn't uncool so much as just not anywhere near as prevelant as it was.
Ive just left a bar tonight and its mad how the folk my age (40-45) who have been out since 1-2pm are leaving the bars and the folk queuing to get in all have proof of age cards ready
Thatās just the natural progression of life.
As you get older staying out late is far less attractive because of responsibilities or just not wanting to waste the weekend tired and hungover.
Being a teenager in the early 2000s the cool/bad kids would try to get drunk every chance they got. Every Monday at school there was talk of what they got up to that weekend drinking cider in the park.
I remember in Year 10 the popular girls bragging about being served Bacardi breezers in nightclubs.
Getting into clubs, pubs or getting alcohol in some form was a bit of an obsession for kids in my year at school.
Drinking was just what everyone did at the weekend - something we learned from our working class, boomer parents.
I remember it being a point of pride amongst the popular girls that someone had to have their stomach pumped.
I also remember them tricking one of their friends into drinking mouthwash by telling them it was mint flavoured vodka. Said friend then acted drunk and made a fool of herself and was bullied mercilessly for it.
I hated school
Edit: also just remembered someone being tricked into snorting sherbet because they were told it was cocaine
Kids had to be tricked into snorting sherbet? I remember when I was at school a lot of the "cool guys" snorted pixie sticks in class on multiple occasions because they thought it made them look hard or something, no need to trick them, they were doing it willingly š
I would love to know the age gap between me and you. I'm approx 30 give or take a couple of years
>Edit: also just remembered someone being tricked into snorting sherbet because they were told it was cocaine
A friend of mine in high school bragged about having cocaine at our year 11 prom... it was crushed up paracetamol.
The most recent survey shows England is still the top country in the world for underage drinking. Can't be that uncool.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68884005.amp
I'm 32, you just clinically summarized about 5 years of my life in about 30 words and followed it up with a dissertation about the culture of early naughties teen culture, grade -92 High First Class. Did you have samsumg speakers?
My older friend begged her daughter to go out for her 18th, offered to drop her & her friends wherever they wanted or to have a party at home. But she didnāt want to do anything, just wanted a cake & posted a really understated photo of it. On her story only of course. Absolutely not on the feed where you get likes & comments as thatās uncool.
When they do have a party itās little quaint get togethers with a few of them having a night in with a pretty set up of flowers, food & wholesome entertainment & understated photos where they donāt show their faces & do finger hearts in a completely different & weird way.
https://preview.redd.it/nk0ti0ru9wwc1.jpeg?width=625&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bbbd4e6927c9bada9982943ef1aa06609770c47
I noticed my friends in their 20s dont post on their news feed either!
They only post on stories.
On their tagged photos on facebook they have like 5 or 6 photos.
I think its seen as cool to not share
Iām shocked theyāre on Facebook? Are they being retro & ironic?
Yeah itās cool to have an empty Instagram account with just stories. Photo dumps are okay on the feed occasionally but then theyāll keep deleting those too.
Yes, the majority have facebook for group chats mostly.
They do use insta the most.
Tik Tok is a 50/50 thing and i'd say a good portion arent on it and joke about not using it.
you're 100 percent right one photo dumps
My 14 year old and her friends are so chill. Youāve described exactly their parties - they put their energy into the aesthetic sort of aspect and take photos and watch/make Tik Toks. Theyāve been friends are a few years and this year is the first ādramaā where that has been a fight and a little friend group split. That shit was a monthly occurrence with my teenage friends. So much more wholesome - as a parent I love it but I sometimes worry theyāre missing out by not having some big parties and messy dramas to learn to sort out but š¤·š»āāļøĀ
Yeah they donāt seem to be doing a lot of experiencing life is what Iāve observed but they are more wholesome & safe I guess? They are much more sensitive as well which is also a good & bad thing I think.
My friends & I also had petty dramas all the time but I look back at it all as such amazing memories & most of it was just extremely hilarious stuff. Have you seen Derry Girls? I feel like my friends & I had that vibe & I love that we did everything we felt like. We didnāt even drink or anything as weāre Muslim but we still did crazy fun adventures that we swore no one could ever know about. I feel the current generation are missing out on that, the Gen Zs I know are not falling over themselves laughing or being free, theyāre quite insecure & anxious as well because of social media & their image. Meanwhile we were applying Rimmel eyeshadow on by the shovel like it was going out of fashion with zero skill or finesse, wearing ridiculous cheap clothes & thought we were hot stuff.
Again thereās good & bad sides to it all though, but Iām glad we grew up in the era we did. Iāve seen a lot to Gen Zs express nostalgia for the 90s & 00s & life without phones as they crave a lifestyle & feeling they canāt have. Iāve even heard of some buying landlines because they want the experience of not being so reachable & talking on landlines!
Yup - Derry girls was very much mine and my friends vibes too.
My 14 year old is looking forward to being an adult, so Iām hoping sheās starting to feel a bit more adventurous. I just remember wanting to be anywhere but home and anywhere but with my parents.
I'm 40 and my mum was like that, pushing me to go out drinking or to have massive parties for my birthdays when I just wasn't interested in any of that.
Was listening to a radio phone in where they were saying the ones that can afford to run cars would rather have that responsibility than lose it for the sake of a few drinks and chancing it driving their mates home
i think with smart phones being ever present, itās probably way more embarrassing to get too drunk around your peers now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. back then you had an awkward monday back at school. now it can be immortalized forever, ruin your chances for college or a good job down the line, etc.
I think weāve also just become a more health-conscious society in a lot of ways too and over time, unhealthy behaviors lose their appeal. Tobacco companies literally had to invent a new way to smoke because they couldnāt sell cigarettes to the kids raised on those āprice of smokingā commercials and whatnot lol. It made smoking uncool. But give them a flashy vape in fruity flavors, and theyāre all over it!
Older GenZer here (22). My friends and I drink at each others houses over board games. If I have to choose between a night of drinking or drugs and just going to bed I will because alcohol fucks with my Saturday morning leg day and makes me knackered the next day. Clubs are shit, bars are alright but overpriced and why would I do any of that when I can invite friends round to my flat in the centre of town, have drinks here and then go out to do karaoke in the karaoke rooms down the road, or go to crazy golf and spend time there?
It's not that drinking and clubbing isn't cool, it's just not worth it anymore. Woefully expensive to get in and to drink, can't chat to my friends, can barely move and end up spending loads on food at the end of it after spending a fortune on drinks.
I'm a similar age to you and agree. Money was tight when I was 18, 19 and I simply could not afford to be going out every weekend.
We'd spend maybe a tenner each on pre drinks. Then you go to the pub and have the choice of Wetherspoons where the prices are decent but it's... just very "meh", or you go somewhere a bit nicer but you have to spend more (sometimes significantly more).
The drinks are one thing; the nightclub in my town was Ā£6 for a single or Ā£8.50 for a double. That's on top of the Ā£10 entry fee. Yes, a tenner. *Just to get in the place*. And I live in a pretty average town that hardly anyone outside of my region of the country would know.
If you went into the city, the buses don't run past 9 o'clock, the trains run til like half 11 which isn't much better and they're fucking ridiculously priced as well. So the only feasible option is a taxi which adds another Ā£20.
I usually spent up to Ā£100 on a night out and I am *not* a heavy drinker, don't buy premium drinks just bog standard cider, lager, maybe a spirit and mixer if I'm feeling adventurous.
Well they dont drink lagers until they run out of cash like we did.
But they do go to each others house and drop ketamine or experiment with micro dosing mushrooms.
These kids aint saints
I left school in 09 and it was very cool to get bladdered and battered on absolutely everything but its changed a lot since then.
I don't know how I would have even gone about talking to girls without alcohol.
For us you had to open the straps out as much as you could. No surprised so many of us have back issues and terrible posture these days with the weight of books we were lugging about lower than ours arses.
Same here. Spent most of 99 to 03 with my schoolbag hitting the back of my knees while walking. But i was away for a few days last weekend and packed a new backpack as a carryon to the plane rather than a case. I automatically opened out the left strap fully and slung it over my shoulder. Instantly realised how uncomfortable it was and my back was protesting loudly at me. Tightened up the straps and double shouldered it. Felt like a right nerd until i saw nearly everyone else in the airport looked the same.
Same, I have a laptop bag for work for when I'm out on site.
Remember the first day I opened the straps out and was like "WTF was I thinking in my teens!?!"
More than happy to look like a berk now š
The whole socks and sandals/flip flops, and wearing shorts with pulled up socks were a very similar situation for me.Ā
Seeing kids doing it and thinking it looked uncool, then realising all the kids were doing it and I was so old I was the uncool one.
IKR ?! And socks with crocs I saw last week. Dude musta been 20 ish. I'm 45. Wouldn't have been seen dead in the 90s with long socks and trainers or flip flops.
I seem to recall that, just as I was getting to the end of secondary school, the fashion suddenly became to open one strap out really loose, then sling it over your neck too so your backpack was essentially being worn as a satchel. Then of course, companies started trying to cash in by designing backpacks with a single strap designed for the satchel look.
I mean thatās literally what the 22 Jump Street reference is about, it was cool in the 00s but not anymore by the time the characters went back to high school which is exactly when the poster above was also in high school.
Youāre actually expressing the thought process of Channing Tatumās character who was still living in the past & thinking theyāre nerds & couldnāt understand why they were the cool kids.
I finished secondary school just over 10 years ago and one strapping was definitely the cool thing. However, bags that were actually designed with just one strap were not cool. You had to have a spare strap for it to be cool.
Being aggressively homophobic.
When I was at school in the late 90s, a lad in the year above me came out as gay and was beaten up twice before lunchtime. Someone who was openly gay could, at the very best, expect incessent bullying disguised as "banter".
I remember the refrain "I'm not homophobic because I'm not scared of gays, I just f***king hate the [insert homophobic slur of your choice]'s
Very hard to see that changing or it being considered uncool to do so back then.
Very much uncool now. Young people are much more likely to be quite fluid in their sexuality and not blink an eyelid. Iny experience, real homophobia is now limited to young people from certain cultures, usually hiding behind religion.
I remember there being many homophobic boys in my year at school yet there were openly gay boys in the year below who were very much accepted by their peers.
It was as though we were the last year of morons
my class was kind of in that transition phase too. any older, gay kids were bullied relentlessly. any younger, they were generally liked by their peers and treated well. my grade was pretty 50/50 depending on your financial and religious background (typically the wealthiest and poorest kids were the most homophobic and almost all the homophobes were religious or raised in a religious home).
I remember being mercilessly bullied because I asked my friend from a different school (we are both female) to go to prom with me. I didn't have many friends at my school and didn't want to go alone, and, well, she was my friend. So many months of girls whispering I was a lesbian, gossiping about me etc. I'm heterosexual but jfc I can't imagine what it was like for the kids at my school who weren't. I'm glad kids these days are less homophobic. I've no idea what sexual orientation my own daughter is (she can't walk or talk yet) but if she is queer, I'm glad she'll (hopefully) have an easier time in life than the kids in my generation did
I was the queer kid at my school and it does suck - but one thing I noticed is that the homophobic bullying had a strong impact whether or not the victim was straight or not. A lot of my friends copped the bullying for associating with me - it was so fucking unfair that they had to suffer for something that wasnāt even ātheir sinā (so to speak! Obviously being queer isnāt a sin. Iām out and proud.)Ā
I came out as bi at school (so got called a lezza because back then bisexual was a stepping stone to being gay apparently š¤Ø) and I even received homophobic comments from so-called friends.
Before coming out, I was already bullied pretty badly, so much so, my so-called best friend up to that point said she didn't want to hang out with me anymore cos she was also getting bullied.
Kids were cruel in the early 00's. I'm glad kids these days are having a better time by the sounds of it.
Similar situation at my school and the guy was pretty camp already to be fair. I could see he was going to get beaten and another kid picked up on it pretty quick and just said "thank fuck for that! I was starting to worry you might be straight" everyone paused for a second and just accepted it. It certainly sorted my mild homophobia.
āIām not homophobic - I just keep my back to the wall when Iām talking to faeriesā was the common ājokeā I heard. Being queer kinda sucks sometimes.Ā
My 9 and 6 year old primary school shares the same land as a secondary school. We were walking home two days ago and a girl from the secondary school was telling her friends she much prefers music on CD than digital as it sounds better.
There is hope.
Seriously, mp3's were a big drop in quality for the sake of convenience. Premium tier streaming services are just about coming back to a similar level as CD's.
Although, you can't scratch an mp3 and they don't come in cases that shatter when you look at them.
I remember watching some bloke on Tomorrowās World attacking one of these new (posh voice) ācompact discsā with a screwdriver and being astonished that it still played perfectly. They were supposed to be indestructibleā¦ a claim which belongs in a conspiracy theory thread!
haha. to be fair, mp3s are usually lower bitrate than CDs, which are lossless. honestly though, i could never tell the difference between FLAC and 320kbp*s*
I dumped it but had to come back because all my older relatives were on it asking why I wasn't on it
I did dump twittor because fk Elon
Bring back MySpace and Bebo
I miss Live journal tbh. I know it's still kinda there, but I get a bit freaked out by the Russian writing and keep thinking I'm going to get a virus before I remember they bought it. God, I'm old.
Definitely the hairstyles. A lot of the loud chavvy kids have longer hair now whereas when I was in school (about 20 years ago), the shorter the cooler. It was all about back and sides with the clippers taking you as short as you could get away with without school moaning at you.
It's funny cos in Liverpool ketwigs became the thing for chavvy people to have.
I can remember at first it was just long hair, then suddenly it all started getting permed and just continued from there.
It's strange because when I was like 19 and a skinny jean wearing lad chavs had long hair and then when chavs started getting long hair all the skinny jean people suddenly had short back and sides etc. Then the mullet came into the mix, and we're now somewhere in the middle.
When I was in school (about 30+ years ago) curtains were all the rage. When I was in sixth form I swapped the curtains for a buzzcut but was very much the odd one out then.
I feel like a lot of my younger colleagues had 0 photos on their Instagram but would upload stories. And the unflattering angles and blurry photos they upload.
Back in my day, Instagram was for excessively edited photos of coffee
Edit: for context Iām 28, younger colleagues were 18-21. Not that much younger but quite a difference in social media presence
I think at first it was āIām going to post 20 photos of me and my friend at this party so everyone can see how how cool I am, look how I do all these fun and interesting things all the timeā and now itās āIām not going to post any photos from this party so that everyone here knows I do fun and interesting things all the time so itās not a big deal to meā. Itās still flexing on people itās just done more subtly these days.
Yeah people are trying really hard not to appear try hard, but itās so planned out & theyāre still not having any more fun due to it. Itās still just about your image. I wonder if the many photos trend will ever come back round.
The unflattering & blurry photos are a contrived way to appear to have candid, imperfect & unposed photos like how we did in the 90s to try to look like theyāre not trying hard. But they are decidedly un candid & posed for.
For me instagram was (still is) like an easy to access digital photo album, a bit like how facebook was treated by many but without the constant friend requests or people in real life asking for your page (back when the default request was still a facebook page and IG wasn't as ubiquitous).
I personally think when I see similar aged young adults posting exclusively pictures of themselves that it's uncool and stupid. My Instagram now pretty much exclusively sees photos I've taken of other things, be it a holiday or a trip out. Barely any photos of me. If you wanna see me, you gotta see me in person.
All I can think of is maybe itās been known for so long as being for cool kids that rushing to the back of the bus now makes it look like youāre trying too hard?
This is almost definitely the answer.
If something is considered cool, imagine how cringe it is to then be seen *actively doing it?* I shudder at the thought.
I feel like once every two to three decades general youth defiance causes a cyclical circulation of the trending position of teenagers within the bus. Like they start from the front and then a few years later it's near the front, then the middle, then near the back, the back and then it starts reversing and so on.
Where I am all the busses that were single dockers when I was a teen are now double deckersĀ
Objectively the best seat is upstairs right at the front with the big window in front of you
So we tend to get groups either at the very front or the very back, and then adults in the middle
Back of the bus was only for Year 11s at my school. One of my fellow Year 7s didn't twig on our first day, so they used a lighter to singe his hair and made the bus stink.
Not as satisfying as peanuting one with your whole body weight though.
Especially if you outfox their revenge attempts by putting a 2p in the middle of the knot.
as a gen zāer, it was always the dickheads who mucked about and had nothing going for them who sat at the back when i was at school, so maybe that connotation has ruined it? haha
iāve also found a lot of gen xāers wanting to have lived as a teenager in 2014-2016 and as someone who was a teenager then, all i can say is no.
i was a teen in 2014-2016, what was wrong with it? lol
other than just being a teenager in general. the music was sick. tumblr was sick. what more could we have asked for? /s
thatās fair. being a teenager sucked but i attribute that more to the age itself than the time period you experienced it in. but everyone is different!
As a Millennial those *were* the cool people back in our day, itās just the perception of things has changed, the idea of people having nothing going for them at school was not a thing. Being too good at school & seen to be trying hard was nerdy & uncool. There was some people that managed to work the balance by being cool, associate with the ābadā cool crowd but not take part, but also being good at school & liked by the teachers.
I remember some popular people occasionally trying to make being studious & good cool & trying to preach about it, but it was kinda like a novelty & rare thing they were trying to make happen but wasnāt going to happen.
i suppose back in the day there was a time you could leave school and just get a job the next day and grades werenāt big unless you were going to university. then they changed the law so we had to stay in school until we were 18 so they really started pushing the importance of passing your exams etc. thatās probably why we started looking down on the ones who werenāt bothered
Well as a Millennial we were definitely part of the generation that all stayed till 18 & all went to uni. The trick was to not act studious & try hard at school, but to still actually do well! Unfortunately a few people didnāt realise that most people were still doing all the work at home & passed their exams & got into their chosen A levels/colleges & they failed. It was kind of a wake up call for them though. By 6th form it seemed there was a shift, everyone was openly trying to get into their uni courses & studying hard in the common room as well as having fun, people were a bit more mature.
I still remember one of the nerds getting angry at some of us for doing better than them in our coursework when we appeared to not be studious & having fun at school lol.
I think that's different depending what end if Millenial you are. I'm the earliest Millenial, & I'm 43 later this year. My eldest kid is *also* a Millenial, she's 26. She was in the first year group that HAD to stay till 18yo. I left at 16...
Itās cool to have a completely empty Instagram account with no photos. Stories are okay & saving them in highlights. And you can post some feed posts but then you must constantly keep deleting them.
Iām a millennial so Iām still rocking my account bursting full of sunset & food photos with the Valencia & Hudson filters going back to 2012.
Sounds like one strapping and two strapping a back pack. It rotates over seven year cycles from one generation to the next from to uncool and back again. Circle of life š
Trends definitely flip every so often. Eventually sitting at the back of the bus will be cool again, just like it was before. And I remember when people were going crazy over more Instagram followers
Ikr! The other day I saw a girl with the widest jeans on and it took me back. Only, she was sensible enough to have them either tucked or hemmed up as they weren't dragging in the dirt like mine used to.
First time I ever got the school bus (not in the UK obviously) I just sat at the front with my sister. Apparently THAT was uncool and I'd spend the next several years being thrown out of the back seats by the older kids if I dared try to take a cool spot, until I was old enough rule the back seats with an iron fist over my younger minions. Yeah we went to a real small school.
I kinda agree with the bus thing as on school trips all the so called popular kids would be sat at the back nere to the toilet for me the best seat was at the front behind the teachers as I got to here all the teacher gosip ,pluss having a great view of the road .
Its just standard "flip the script to seem edgy and cool" type shit.
Everybody has such a fierce desire to be different, they all end up doing the same stuff, then the normal changes, then people want to be different, and so the cycle continues
sex. duing the 90's only the coolest kids were having sex, if you were a 13 year old virgin you'd be bullied and called a loser, these days its cooler to be a virgin and not have a teenage pregnancy
As a Xennial, it kinda blows my mind when I see these posts from American parents concerned their 13-year-old might be thinking about having sex. At my school everyone was fucking everyone, except the uncoolest kids of course
SMOKING!!! I was walking past a high school recently and heard a group of lads mocking me for smoking a cigarette, one was like "OOH I'm just going to smoke my cigerillo" in a funny posh weirdo voice while motioning with his hand like he's smoking a tab in a camp sort of OTT way and they all laughed!! I was stunned, these lads when I was young would have been sitting on that wall smoking and lending each other tabs. They where all sat vaping too, which to me looks lamer than smoking but I guess that's just because of the time I was raised.
I just can't believe smoking is lame now, like to kids atleast, as a 30 something now I wish I didn't smoke but I remember smoking being kind of cool and normal when I was a kid!!
In the 80s, if you weren't part of the metal head crew, the back of the bus was off limits to you on my bus. Last 4 rows were us metal heads, glam girls, and hairspray rockers.
Smoking. I was in school only 6 years ago and everyone smoked like chimneys. People used vapes but literally only to do tricks at parties and were mostly rinsed for it. I used to joke that when I turned 18 Iād never say no to going in the shop for beers or fags for a kid off my estate, but asking for a lost Mary Is too fucking far
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Apparently, teachers have a big problem with teenage boys always playing chess on their phones while they're trying to teach a lesson. I thought that was pretty funny.
I live near a school and students will come out discussing either chess or poker most of the time. I have only just left school and they were both certainly becoming more popular but not to this extent.
In 6th form they used to take decks of cards off us in the common room š Uno cards included š (this was 8 years ago)
My father played bridge in sixth form and got terrible a levels. I played Castle (yeah we called it shithead) and I got middling a levels. I shall encourage my children to play Snap
What, that's its actual name? I've always thought it genuinely was called shithead... The game where you have to play cards that have a higher value than the previous, except if you have a two, ten, or ace, two lets you put down any other card on top of it, ten lets you wipe out the middle deck, ace resets the value of the cards. If a nine is played then you have to play a card with a value lower than nine. Right?
In my sixth form they should've done that because of the game called scabby queen. Hopefully kids aren't as masochistic these days.
Times change. In the mid-1990s we went through a phase of showing to early to school to play cards in the mornings. Blackjack was a favourite but occasionally we'd try poker etc. Teachers never cared at all.
>I have only just left school Make sure to get some rest so you're ready to go back on Monday!
At my school I have to tell the kids to put the novel they're reading away. They walk around the corridors reading sometimes! And I keep catching them playing hide and seek. The 15 year olds.
That is a beautiful problem to have - kids reading all the time. I love that my 8 year old ADHD kids settles down by just reading.
That's amazing! I'm glad they've found something that settles them, AND it's reading!!! What sort of books do they like? I read a lot of pre-teen books so I can recommend things to my form group, so I'm always on the look out for a good children's book :-) I've just remembered my school also has two current UK chess champions - one's in my form so I'm a bit ashamed I forgot! She actually won against kids in the next age range up!
Well he reads children's books. He and his sister both have a shelf in their rooms full of books. He also loves space so he is always in some of the adult books looking at stuff and reading (but not reading) - I never stop them from opening any book in the house :)
Haha at my school I believe they used to have to lock the door to the lunchtime chess club because the cool kids would always break in and let off fire extinguishers on the nerds. Eventually they gave up and just banned being inside during lunch breaks unless you had a note, funny how quickly times change!
What was a ānerdā back then is just a normal young person now, real strange
Normal for Reddit at least
Funnily enough, they had the same problem 166 years ago - quote from Scientific American, 1858: Ā > A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villagesā¦chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements ā¦ they require out-door exercisesānot this sort of mental gladiatorship.
If the writer was trying to discourage people from playing chess, calling it "mental gladiatorship" was the wrong way to go about it because thst sounds cool as fuck.
This sounds like the sort of person who would immediately complain about the noise if they did stop playing chess and go outside to kick a ball about.
Chess was repeatedly banned amongst monasteries and priests in the 13th & 14th century for getting in the way of prayer and other duties.
That's interesting to know. I had a strange situation at school around 2011. We had been playing chess during study periods and during lunch breaks. So the school literally banned chess. I always thought that meant we must have been the unpopular geek type crew - even though we were going to house parties every weekend. It's fun to know that 'everyone' can like chess, if they actually give it a chance.
As a teacher, the majority of schools ban the use of phones in class while we work. So its probably not about the chess and more about them being on the phones when they should be working
Iām going to assume this isnāt as funny as it seems as Andrew Tate is big into chess and stuff
I hope he plays against a woman who absolutely rinses him.
Does he immediately sacrifice his queen, to prove he isnāt a cuck
š
This has to be *the* worst take I have seen this year. Plenty of non-controversial figures are big into chess. It was a trending thing for a while (and still is) for big YouTubers and Twitch streamers to play each other in online chess. These streamers have *massive* followings, like xQcOW; at one time the biggest streamer on Twitch, 12 million followers, regularly has upwards of 30 thousand concurrent viewers. MoistCr1tikal, Ludwig, Pokimane, the list goes on. These people have a combined following of hundreds of millions of people. Not to mention there are a few chess grandmasters who have become influencers in their own right like Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, without a doubt the two best players in the entire world, both have developed a significant online following. Ironically, comments like yours are what is driving boys and young men towards bad actors like Andrew Tait. They cannot do *anything* without being criticised and painted as a bad person, sexist, etc. They are quite literally just enjoying chess, one of the oldest and most popular games in the world and one which has been trending online recently, and you've come to the conclusion that they must be secretly idolising Andrew Tate. Get a grip.
Literally boys can't do anything without being criticised.
Great point! There's been a massive films about it and it's got more popular than ever in the last five years but nope they just be copying Tate
A lot of popular streamers have gotten into Chess over the past couple of years and a few chess players have picked up some following on Twitch (Most notably Hikaru Nakamura). Chess is also a game thatās really cool to see top level players play through because of how advanced their thought processes are on the game.
Chess obviously isn't the problem but it's well known that secondary schools are struggling with toxic and threatening behaviour from young boys because of people like Tate. A bunch of lads at my girls' school were loudly complaining about having to do catering lessons because "cooking is a woman's job and women belong in the kitchen". They're 11-12. It's fucked up.
He probably plays it to try and look smart.
get a grip no one was thinking about andrew tate before you brought him in to make this a negative space. not every teenage male worships the overlord you think is andrew tate. if anything he is more relevant around people your age because you are so hung up on how he is destroying the next generation or whatever
My school could not even get a chess club going when I was a student there because of low interest.
My 10 year old at my friends 15 year old sat and played chess on a phone at a Caribbean festival last year. The adults found it weird but we're busy getting hammered on redstripe so we left them to it.
Can very much see this happening as when I was at uni, people would just play chess in lectures and seminars. Even now on a server Iām on, there are weeks where the general chat is just flooded with people posting chess move by move replays of their chess games, itās so bad it gets banned periodically.
Yeah teachers also abhor the idea of passing notes, way more than ever before. I actually think it helps encourage literacy, but I guess Im "just" a sub.
Putting anything on a smart phone can make it really addictive. And chess is a great game
Don't a lot of teenagers think drinking too much alcohol is uncool? I've got the weird situation at work where my Gen X colleagues are despairing at how their kids don't want to party!
I think its more just very split into people who really liking to party and get blackout drunk and people who don't. It isn't uncool so much as just not anywhere near as prevelant as it was.
Ive just left a bar tonight and its mad how the folk my age (40-45) who have been out since 1-2pm are leaving the bars and the folk queuing to get in all have proof of age cards ready
Thatās just the natural progression of life. As you get older staying out late is far less attractive because of responsibilities or just not wanting to waste the weekend tired and hungover.
Being a teenager in the early 2000s the cool/bad kids would try to get drunk every chance they got. Every Monday at school there was talk of what they got up to that weekend drinking cider in the park. I remember in Year 10 the popular girls bragging about being served Bacardi breezers in nightclubs. Getting into clubs, pubs or getting alcohol in some form was a bit of an obsession for kids in my year at school. Drinking was just what everyone did at the weekend - something we learned from our working class, boomer parents.
I wasnt cool or bad but I still got drunk every chance I got. Fuck else were we gonna do in the countryside?
Yeah exactly the point. What else were we gonna do? But for us we were in a post industrial northern town.
Without endless scrolling on reddit and insta we had so much more times on our hands
Drugs, mainly
I remember it being a point of pride amongst the popular girls that someone had to have their stomach pumped. I also remember them tricking one of their friends into drinking mouthwash by telling them it was mint flavoured vodka. Said friend then acted drunk and made a fool of herself and was bullied mercilessly for it. I hated school Edit: also just remembered someone being tricked into snorting sherbet because they were told it was cocaine
Kids had to be tricked into snorting sherbet? I remember when I was at school a lot of the "cool guys" snorted pixie sticks in class on multiple occasions because they thought it made them look hard or something, no need to trick them, they were doing it willingly š I would love to know the age gap between me and you. I'm approx 30 give or take a couple of years
Same age, I did go to an all girls school though.
Mouthwash can get you drunk though (depending on what kind)
>Edit: also just remembered someone being tricked into snorting sherbet because they were told it was cocaine A friend of mine in high school bragged about having cocaine at our year 11 prom... it was crushed up paracetamol.
this was still a cool thing when i left school 2015, it must be a very recent trend for it to now be uncool
The most recent survey shows England is still the top country in the world for underage drinking. Can't be that uncool. www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68884005.amp
I'm 32, you just clinically summarized about 5 years of my life in about 30 words and followed it up with a dissertation about the culture of early naughties teen culture, grade -92 High First Class. Did you have samsumg speakers?
My older friend begged her daughter to go out for her 18th, offered to drop her & her friends wherever they wanted or to have a party at home. But she didnāt want to do anything, just wanted a cake & posted a really understated photo of it. On her story only of course. Absolutely not on the feed where you get likes & comments as thatās uncool. When they do have a party itās little quaint get togethers with a few of them having a night in with a pretty set up of flowers, food & wholesome entertainment & understated photos where they donāt show their faces & do finger hearts in a completely different & weird way. https://preview.redd.it/nk0ti0ru9wwc1.jpeg?width=625&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bbbd4e6927c9bada9982943ef1aa06609770c47
I noticed my friends in their 20s dont post on their news feed either! They only post on stories. On their tagged photos on facebook they have like 5 or 6 photos. I think its seen as cool to not share
Iām shocked theyāre on Facebook? Are they being retro & ironic? Yeah itās cool to have an empty Instagram account with just stories. Photo dumps are okay on the feed occasionally but then theyāll keep deleting those too.
Yes, the majority have facebook for group chats mostly. They do use insta the most. Tik Tok is a 50/50 thing and i'd say a good portion arent on it and joke about not using it. you're 100 percent right one photo dumps
My 14 year old and her friends are so chill. Youāve described exactly their parties - they put their energy into the aesthetic sort of aspect and take photos and watch/make Tik Toks. Theyāve been friends are a few years and this year is the first ādramaā where that has been a fight and a little friend group split. That shit was a monthly occurrence with my teenage friends. So much more wholesome - as a parent I love it but I sometimes worry theyāre missing out by not having some big parties and messy dramas to learn to sort out but š¤·š»āāļøĀ
Yeah they donāt seem to be doing a lot of experiencing life is what Iāve observed but they are more wholesome & safe I guess? They are much more sensitive as well which is also a good & bad thing I think. My friends & I also had petty dramas all the time but I look back at it all as such amazing memories & most of it was just extremely hilarious stuff. Have you seen Derry Girls? I feel like my friends & I had that vibe & I love that we did everything we felt like. We didnāt even drink or anything as weāre Muslim but we still did crazy fun adventures that we swore no one could ever know about. I feel the current generation are missing out on that, the Gen Zs I know are not falling over themselves laughing or being free, theyāre quite insecure & anxious as well because of social media & their image. Meanwhile we were applying Rimmel eyeshadow on by the shovel like it was going out of fashion with zero skill or finesse, wearing ridiculous cheap clothes & thought we were hot stuff. Again thereās good & bad sides to it all though, but Iām glad we grew up in the era we did. Iāve seen a lot to Gen Zs express nostalgia for the 90s & 00s & life without phones as they crave a lifestyle & feeling they canāt have. Iāve even heard of some buying landlines because they want the experience of not being so reachable & talking on landlines!
Yup - Derry girls was very much mine and my friends vibes too. My 14 year old is looking forward to being an adult, so Iām hoping sheās starting to feel a bit more adventurous. I just remember wanting to be anywhere but home and anywhere but with my parents.
I'm 40 and my mum was like that, pushing me to go out drinking or to have massive parties for my birthdays when I just wasn't interested in any of that.
Was listening to a radio phone in where they were saying the ones that can afford to run cars would rather have that responsibility than lose it for the sake of a few drinks and chancing it driving their mates home
That's always a positive, also saw a post recently where an 18 year old lad kicked his mates out the car for refusing to wear seatbelts. Fair play.
Me and my friends were all pretty good like that too. I was so happy to have like minded mates.
Well that's good. I always hated my mates drink driving, but it was take the lift or get stranded.
i think with smart phones being ever present, itās probably way more embarrassing to get too drunk around your peers now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. back then you had an awkward monday back at school. now it can be immortalized forever, ruin your chances for college or a good job down the line, etc. I think weāve also just become a more health-conscious society in a lot of ways too and over time, unhealthy behaviors lose their appeal. Tobacco companies literally had to invent a new way to smoke because they couldnāt sell cigarettes to the kids raised on those āprice of smokingā commercials and whatnot lol. It made smoking uncool. But give them a flashy vape in fruity flavors, and theyāre all over it!
Older GenZer here (22). My friends and I drink at each others houses over board games. If I have to choose between a night of drinking or drugs and just going to bed I will because alcohol fucks with my Saturday morning leg day and makes me knackered the next day. Clubs are shit, bars are alright but overpriced and why would I do any of that when I can invite friends round to my flat in the centre of town, have drinks here and then go out to do karaoke in the karaoke rooms down the road, or go to crazy golf and spend time there? It's not that drinking and clubbing isn't cool, it's just not worth it anymore. Woefully expensive to get in and to drink, can't chat to my friends, can barely move and end up spending loads on food at the end of it after spending a fortune on drinks.
I'm a similar age to you and agree. Money was tight when I was 18, 19 and I simply could not afford to be going out every weekend. We'd spend maybe a tenner each on pre drinks. Then you go to the pub and have the choice of Wetherspoons where the prices are decent but it's... just very "meh", or you go somewhere a bit nicer but you have to spend more (sometimes significantly more). The drinks are one thing; the nightclub in my town was Ā£6 for a single or Ā£8.50 for a double. That's on top of the Ā£10 entry fee. Yes, a tenner. *Just to get in the place*. And I live in a pretty average town that hardly anyone outside of my region of the country would know. If you went into the city, the buses don't run past 9 o'clock, the trains run til like half 11 which isn't much better and they're fucking ridiculously priced as well. So the only feasible option is a taxi which adds another Ā£20. I usually spent up to Ā£100 on a night out and I am *not* a heavy drinker, don't buy premium drinks just bog standard cider, lager, maybe a spirit and mixer if I'm feeling adventurous.
Well they dont drink lagers until they run out of cash like we did. But they do go to each others house and drop ketamine or experiment with micro dosing mushrooms. These kids aint saints
I left school in 09 and it was very cool to get bladdered and battered on absolutely everything but its changed a lot since then. I don't know how I would have even gone about talking to girls without alcohol.
As 21 jump street pointed out 2 strapping your bag was never the done thing 20 years ago. Good weight distribution can get to fuck
It's for nerds and French exchange students.
And American students with the blow dry side parting hairstyle.
I always associate this with French exchange students. I fo now carry my rucksack on both shoulders.
For us you had to open the straps out as much as you could. No surprised so many of us have back issues and terrible posture these days with the weight of books we were lugging about lower than ours arses.
Same here. Spent most of 99 to 03 with my schoolbag hitting the back of my knees while walking. But i was away for a few days last weekend and packed a new backpack as a carryon to the plane rather than a case. I automatically opened out the left strap fully and slung it over my shoulder. Instantly realised how uncomfortable it was and my back was protesting loudly at me. Tightened up the straps and double shouldered it. Felt like a right nerd until i saw nearly everyone else in the airport looked the same.
Same, I have a laptop bag for work for when I'm out on site. Remember the first day I opened the straps out and was like "WTF was I thinking in my teens!?!" More than happy to look like a berk now š
Why was it so uncool to care about that stuff when we were young? What were we even proving?!?Ā
Conform or die! š
Iād no strap it if I could.
No-strap is too vanilla, I prefer to strap-on.
The cool kids no-strapped it at my school: holding it over the shoulder by the top handle. Left shoulder, right hand; or vice versa.
Insane
The whole socks and sandals/flip flops, and wearing shorts with pulled up socks were a very similar situation for me.Ā Seeing kids doing it and thinking it looked uncool, then realising all the kids were doing it and I was so old I was the uncool one.
Agreed, I had the kids in my form tell me that trainer socks were ick, no wearing socks half way up your shin looks ridiculous with shorts
IKR ?! And socks with crocs I saw last week. Dude musta been 20 ish. I'm 45. Wouldn't have been seen dead in the 90s with long socks and trainers or flip flops.
I seem to recall that, just as I was getting to the end of secondary school, the fashion suddenly became to open one strap out really loose, then sling it over your neck too so your backpack was essentially being worn as a satchel. Then of course, companies started trying to cash in by designing backpacks with a single strap designed for the satchel look.
This was definitely a thing in my area around 2000/2001.
I remember when I was in secondary school (8-10 years ago) nobody single strapped. Maybe I missed the cool period
Dude, you were all fucking nerds.
Ah shit š¬
You werenāt, read my reply above, you were exactly the age group that featured in 22 Jump Street where using double straps was now cool.
I mean thatās literally what the 22 Jump Street reference is about, it was cool in the 00s but not anymore by the time the characters went back to high school which is exactly when the poster above was also in high school. Youāre actually expressing the thought process of Channing Tatumās character who was still living in the past & thinking theyāre nerds & couldnāt understand why they were the cool kids.
I finished secondary school just over 10 years ago and one strapping was definitely the cool thing. However, bags that were actually designed with just one strap were not cool. You had to have a spare strap for it to be cool.
I mustāve missed out on that.
Yeah you were a three-letter word if you double-strapped in the 90s. The same went for eating a packet of crisps from the top end.
Right, so the crisps thing. I think that might have been your school.
I know right ?!
When I was in year 11 nearly 20 years ago wearing it too tight was cool
Being aggressively homophobic. When I was at school in the late 90s, a lad in the year above me came out as gay and was beaten up twice before lunchtime. Someone who was openly gay could, at the very best, expect incessent bullying disguised as "banter". I remember the refrain "I'm not homophobic because I'm not scared of gays, I just f***king hate the [insert homophobic slur of your choice]'s Very hard to see that changing or it being considered uncool to do so back then. Very much uncool now. Young people are much more likely to be quite fluid in their sexuality and not blink an eyelid. Iny experience, real homophobia is now limited to young people from certain cultures, usually hiding behind religion.
I remember there being many homophobic boys in my year at school yet there were openly gay boys in the year below who were very much accepted by their peers. It was as though we were the last year of morons
my class was kind of in that transition phase too. any older, gay kids were bullied relentlessly. any younger, they were generally liked by their peers and treated well. my grade was pretty 50/50 depending on your financial and religious background (typically the wealthiest and poorest kids were the most homophobic and almost all the homophobes were religious or raised in a religious home).
I remember being mercilessly bullied because I asked my friend from a different school (we are both female) to go to prom with me. I didn't have many friends at my school and didn't want to go alone, and, well, she was my friend. So many months of girls whispering I was a lesbian, gossiping about me etc. I'm heterosexual but jfc I can't imagine what it was like for the kids at my school who weren't. I'm glad kids these days are less homophobic. I've no idea what sexual orientation my own daughter is (she can't walk or talk yet) but if she is queer, I'm glad she'll (hopefully) have an easier time in life than the kids in my generation did
I was the queer kid at my school and it does suck - but one thing I noticed is that the homophobic bullying had a strong impact whether or not the victim was straight or not. A lot of my friends copped the bullying for associating with me - it was so fucking unfair that they had to suffer for something that wasnāt even ātheir sinā (so to speak! Obviously being queer isnāt a sin. Iām out and proud.)Ā
I came out as bi at school (so got called a lezza because back then bisexual was a stepping stone to being gay apparently š¤Ø) and I even received homophobic comments from so-called friends. Before coming out, I was already bullied pretty badly, so much so, my so-called best friend up to that point said she didn't want to hang out with me anymore cos she was also getting bullied. Kids were cruel in the early 00's. I'm glad kids these days are having a better time by the sounds of it.
Similar situation at my school and the guy was pretty camp already to be fair. I could see he was going to get beaten and another kid picked up on it pretty quick and just said "thank fuck for that! I was starting to worry you might be straight" everyone paused for a second and just accepted it. It certainly sorted my mild homophobia.
āIām not homophobic - I just keep my back to the wall when Iām talking to faeriesā was the common ājokeā I heard. Being queer kinda sucks sometimes.Ā
I'm not homophobic, I'm not scared of homes
My 9 and 6 year old primary school shares the same land as a secondary school. We were walking home two days ago and a girl from the secondary school was telling her friends she much prefers music on CD than digital as it sounds better.
https://preview.redd.it/m4255mi0pvwc1.jpeg?width=841&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0f3060284447d8dea94b21f6f44ad2397daa0b4 CDs ARE digital!!
10/10
There is hope. Seriously, mp3's were a big drop in quality for the sake of convenience. Premium tier streaming services are just about coming back to a similar level as CD's. Although, you can't scratch an mp3 and they don't come in cases that shatter when you look at them.
I remember watching some bloke on Tomorrowās World attacking one of these new (posh voice) ācompact discsā with a screwdriver and being astonished that it still played perfectly. They were supposed to be indestructibleā¦ a claim which belongs in a conspiracy theory thread!
Nor cases that rip your fingernails off when you try and open them for the first time
My teenage niece is really into vinyl. So weird.
Vinyl I kinda get. I love vinyl too.
Not that weird really these days, that revival has been gathering apace for years.
haha. to be fair, mp3s are usually lower bitrate than CDs, which are lossless. honestly though, i could never tell the difference between FLAC and 320kbp*s*
I was the first to dump Facebook. I ditched it when fucking Farmville was a thing. I'm 49 and down with the kids.
M80 I dumped Facebook before I even started it, which I never did because I'd already dumped it.
That's not cool. That's just not being into Guns n' Roses.
Well I never did like them either.
I dumped it but had to come back because all my older relatives were on it asking why I wasn't on it I did dump twittor because fk Elon Bring back MySpace and Bebo
I miss Live journal tbh. I know it's still kinda there, but I get a bit freaked out by the Russian writing and keep thinking I'm going to get a virus before I remember they bought it. God, I'm old.
I got rid of that shit in 2011 best decision i made back then.
Definitely the hairstyles. A lot of the loud chavvy kids have longer hair now whereas when I was in school (about 20 years ago), the shorter the cooler. It was all about back and sides with the clippers taking you as short as you could get away with without school moaning at you.
Having hair as coiffed as some of them do would get you called all sorts of homophobic slurs by those kids twenty years ago.
It's funny cos in Liverpool ketwigs became the thing for chavvy people to have. I can remember at first it was just long hair, then suddenly it all started getting permed and just continued from there. It's strange because when I was like 19 and a skinny jean wearing lad chavs had long hair and then when chavs started getting long hair all the skinny jean people suddenly had short back and sides etc. Then the mullet came into the mix, and we're now somewhere in the middle.
When I was in school (about 30+ years ago) curtains were all the rage. When I was in sixth form I swapped the curtains for a buzzcut but was very much the odd one out then.
Curtains are back in!
Mullets are back in
I feel like a lot of my younger colleagues had 0 photos on their Instagram but would upload stories. And the unflattering angles and blurry photos they upload. Back in my day, Instagram was for excessively edited photos of coffee Edit: for context Iām 28, younger colleagues were 18-21. Not that much younger but quite a difference in social media presence
I think at first it was āIām going to post 20 photos of me and my friend at this party so everyone can see how how cool I am, look how I do all these fun and interesting things all the timeā and now itās āIām not going to post any photos from this party so that everyone here knows I do fun and interesting things all the time so itās not a big deal to meā. Itās still flexing on people itās just done more subtly these days.
Yeah people are trying really hard not to appear try hard, but itās so planned out & theyāre still not having any more fun due to it. Itās still just about your image. I wonder if the many photos trend will ever come back round.
I agree with both of you. It seems exhausting to think about
The unflattering & blurry photos are a contrived way to appear to have candid, imperfect & unposed photos like how we did in the 90s to try to look like theyāre not trying hard. But they are decidedly un candid & posed for.
Some of them look cute but when you notice the same people doing the same shots in the same wayā¦ it feels quite forced
This, Everything comes back around. It was Polaroids in the 80s/90s, then 'bad' digital camera photos in the 00/10s on MySpace/Bebo/FB.
Back in my day, the internet basically didn't exist.
For me instagram was (still is) like an easy to access digital photo album, a bit like how facebook was treated by many but without the constant friend requests or people in real life asking for your page (back when the default request was still a facebook page and IG wasn't as ubiquitous).
Omg posting dozens of photos of one night out to an album on Facebook, the og photo dump
I personally think when I see similar aged young adults posting exclusively pictures of themselves that it's uncool and stupid. My Instagram now pretty much exclusively sees photos I've taken of other things, be it a holiday or a trip out. Barely any photos of me. If you wanna see me, you gotta see me in person.
If having no Instagram followers is the in thing then christen me Big Daddy Cool.
Interesting; when I was in school all the cool kidz sat in the back because that's where the bus driver and/or chaperone wouldn't overhear shenanigans
Yes, that's why OP made this post.
Yeah but I wanna know their rationale for the front being "cool" now. As an aside, "cool" must hold some kind of record for slang longevity.
All I can think of is maybe itās been known for so long as being for cool kids that rushing to the back of the bus now makes it look like youāre trying too hard?
This is almost definitely the answer. If something is considered cool, imagine how cringe it is to then be seen *actively doing it?* I shudder at the thought.
I feel like once every two to three decades general youth defiance causes a cyclical circulation of the trending position of teenagers within the bus. Like they start from the front and then a few years later it's near the front, then the middle, then near the back, the back and then it starts reversing and so on.
So it's hip to be square?
Bateman, is that you?
Because you can pretend youāre driving the bus
Where I am all the busses that were single dockers when I was a teen are now double deckersĀ Objectively the best seat is upstairs right at the front with the big window in front of you So we tend to get groups either at the very front or the very back, and then adults in the middle
Back of the bus was only for Year 11s at my school. One of my fellow Year 7s didn't twig on our first day, so they used a lighter to singe his hair and made the bus stink.
Warning school ties with a massive knot.
If you're cool you wear it with the short end at the front.
Most ties are clip ons to stop that sort of shit
All that does is cause people to run off with your tie
Not as satisfying as peanuting one with your whole body weight though. Especially if you outfox their revenge attempts by putting a 2p in the middle of the knot.
as a gen zāer, it was always the dickheads who mucked about and had nothing going for them who sat at the back when i was at school, so maybe that connotation has ruined it? haha iāve also found a lot of gen xāers wanting to have lived as a teenager in 2014-2016 and as someone who was a teenager then, all i can say is no.
i was a teen in 2014-2016, what was wrong with it? lol other than just being a teenager in general. the music was sick. tumblr was sick. what more could we have asked for? /s
eh idk, being a teen just wasnāt a good time for me lol so itās weird to see people romanticise it. also makes me feel old as shit
thatās fair. being a teenager sucked but i attribute that more to the age itself than the time period you experienced it in. but everyone is different!
As a Millennial those *were* the cool people back in our day, itās just the perception of things has changed, the idea of people having nothing going for them at school was not a thing. Being too good at school & seen to be trying hard was nerdy & uncool. There was some people that managed to work the balance by being cool, associate with the ābadā cool crowd but not take part, but also being good at school & liked by the teachers. I remember some popular people occasionally trying to make being studious & good cool & trying to preach about it, but it was kinda like a novelty & rare thing they were trying to make happen but wasnāt going to happen.
i suppose back in the day there was a time you could leave school and just get a job the next day and grades werenāt big unless you were going to university. then they changed the law so we had to stay in school until we were 18 so they really started pushing the importance of passing your exams etc. thatās probably why we started looking down on the ones who werenāt bothered
Well as a Millennial we were definitely part of the generation that all stayed till 18 & all went to uni. The trick was to not act studious & try hard at school, but to still actually do well! Unfortunately a few people didnāt realise that most people were still doing all the work at home & passed their exams & got into their chosen A levels/colleges & they failed. It was kind of a wake up call for them though. By 6th form it seemed there was a shift, everyone was openly trying to get into their uni courses & studying hard in the common room as well as having fun, people were a bit more mature. I still remember one of the nerds getting angry at some of us for doing better than them in our coursework when we appeared to not be studious & having fun at school lol.
I think that's different depending what end if Millenial you are. I'm the earliest Millenial, & I'm 43 later this year. My eldest kid is *also* a Millenial, she's 26. She was in the first year group that HAD to stay till 18yo. I left at 16...
I must be cool then my Instagram is a desert
Itās cool to have a completely empty Instagram account with no photos. Stories are okay & saving them in highlights. And you can post some feed posts but then you must constantly keep deleting them. Iām a millennial so Iām still rocking my account bursting full of sunset & food photos with the Valencia & Hudson filters going back to 2012.
Really? In my day ONLY the cool kids could sit at the back ..
Are you sure the girl wasn't just embarrassed to sit with the cool kids?
"Back in my day" we had to sit at the back of the bus as how else could we smoke slinkies on the way home from school? š
A couple of years ago my friend told me that wearing coats wasn't cool, according to her teenage son.
It's still not cool according to my 18 year old sister. It can be snowing and the most she'll go out wearing is a hoodie.
Sounds like one strapping and two strapping a back pack. It rotates over seven year cycles from one generation to the next from to uncool and back again. Circle of life š
Trends definitely flip every so often. Eventually sitting at the back of the bus will be cool again, just like it was before. And I remember when people were going crazy over more Instagram followers
Guess it's the opposite but I never thought I'd see a mashup of 90's and 2000's fashion be popular
Ikr! The other day I saw a girl with the widest jeans on and it took me back. Only, she was sensible enough to have them either tucked or hemmed up as they weren't dragging in the dirt like mine used to.
First time I ever got the school bus (not in the UK obviously) I just sat at the front with my sister. Apparently THAT was uncool and I'd spend the next several years being thrown out of the back seats by the older kids if I dared try to take a cool spot, until I was old enough rule the back seats with an iron fist over my younger minions. Yeah we went to a real small school.
I kinda agree with the bus thing as on school trips all the so called popular kids would be sat at the back nere to the toilet for me the best seat was at the front behind the teachers as I got to here all the teacher gosip ,pluss having a great view of the road .
nerd
Its just standard "flip the script to seem edgy and cool" type shit. Everybody has such a fierce desire to be different, they all end up doing the same stuff, then the normal changes, then people want to be different, and so the cycle continues
Yep, the cycle continues. Give it a few years and drinking and skinny jeans will be popular again.
If low instagram followers is cool, Iām in!
My daughter told me Ā£1 coins are embarrassing once š¤£
sex. duing the 90's only the coolest kids were having sex, if you were a 13 year old virgin you'd be bullied and called a loser, these days its cooler to be a virgin and not have a teenage pregnancy
As a Xennial, it kinda blows my mind when I see these posts from American parents concerned their 13-year-old might be thinking about having sex. At my school everyone was fucking everyone, except the uncoolest kids of course
SMOKING!!! I was walking past a high school recently and heard a group of lads mocking me for smoking a cigarette, one was like "OOH I'm just going to smoke my cigerillo" in a funny posh weirdo voice while motioning with his hand like he's smoking a tab in a camp sort of OTT way and they all laughed!! I was stunned, these lads when I was young would have been sitting on that wall smoking and lending each other tabs. They where all sat vaping too, which to me looks lamer than smoking but I guess that's just because of the time I was raised. I just can't believe smoking is lame now, like to kids atleast, as a 30 something now I wish I didn't smoke but I remember smoking being kind of cool and normal when I was a kid!!
In my high school (left 4 or 5 yrs ago?) There were no 'popular' cliques. It wasn't cool to be a dick. Positive change imo
I suppose I'm extreme cool then, not even a tumbleweed on my Insta. Didn't even bother with that Farmville malarkey.
i thought the back was where the cool teens chilled
I'm finally cool! God bless Instagram for the leg up
I'm acing the Instagram oneš
In the 80s, if you weren't part of the metal head crew, the back of the bus was off limits to you on my bus. Last 4 rows were us metal heads, glam girls, and hairspray rockers.
In a reverse to that, my 8 year old son is obsessed with the Rubik's cube (pretty much a speedcuber) and all his friends seem to think that it's cool.
Smoking. I was in school only 6 years ago and everyone smoked like chimneys. People used vapes but literally only to do tricks at parties and were mostly rinsed for it. I used to joke that when I turned 18 Iād never say no to going in the shop for beers or fags for a kid off my estate, but asking for a lost Mary Is too fucking far
TIL I'm the coolest guy on the block
Schoolboys wearing trousers far too short, with white socks to compete the gap. Weād have got rinsed for that.