Does Datalounge Live in the 1950s?

yes. happy now?

do YOU shave your pubes? and if so, why?

Give DLers some credit. For a majority of them, it was the last time they got laid so, yes, it's a throwback to happier times.

Some of it is a joke, darling.

OP is what happens when you add too much fat to a Jell-O whipped dessert and then leave it in the sun.

She blurt-burps her knowledge of who is "relevant" in the world (poor Aristotle, Montesquieu and the sisters Bronte), mistakes camp and idiocy for retrograde statements, and cites "I've been seeing this brought up more and more" like a true Trumpian.

OP is where trolls and haters intersect as social media bullies.

You're melting, OP. Oh, it's not Jell-O after all. Jell-O doesn't come in brown.

Maybe DL was BORN in the 50s.

The irony is the the 1950's was better than the current time we live in by virtually every metric, but I guess dystopia has its appeal.

Most of the people who use this site grew up in the 50's and 60's, OP. Why are you shocked by the fact that old farts make up the majority of this site's users? Young people don't go on internet message boards or forums anymore.

You know what I’ve been seeing brought up, OP? Ageism.

OP seems awfully familiar with the 1950s...

Plentiful jobs, affordable housing, low crime, low divorce rates, spectacular economic growth, quality education for anyone what wanted it, far less income disparity, thriving literature and arts scene, more economic mobility, more autonomous and less neurotic children with siblings and friends, thriving civic culture, huge advances in technology - and on and on and on. It's funny how the 50's are demonized when all of those metrics are what politicians claim they're trying to achieve today - but just can't seem to.

[quote]You're melting, OP. Oh, it's not Jell-O after all. Jell-O doesn't come in brown.

Actually, making coffee-flavored Jell-O at home was quite popular in the '50s.

R11 Are you a gay man? Because if you're a gay man defending the sanctity of the 1950's then you're a self-hating lunatic.

[R13] I guess if you're whole identity is about being gay and narcissistic you have a point. And quit it with the "self hating" bullshit anytime someone has another opinion. Very tiresome. You are so conventional.

R14 If you long for the 1950's, why don't you go move to Chechnya, or Saudi Arabia? You'll get the same experience.

People weren't morbidly obese, half the population wasn't on antidepressants and suffering from myriad "personality disorders", young people didn't defile their bodies with tattoos, everyone din't think of themselves as an outcast, people were more respectful and humble, people were more athletic and sociable, social media didn't convince everyone they were stars, people didn't talk to each other with shocking disrespect in a blase manner.....and on and on and on....

I think they're jealous that we lived in a much better world than they do and are better educated, judging by their spelling and grammar.

Anyway, if you're lucky, one day you will be old. Think about it.

Is this another a or consuela or whatever her name is thread?

[R15] Bitter old bitch. You don't sound very happy to be living in our modern paradise. You sound exactly like what I described (lonely, depressed, vicious on social media, judgmental, everything's about being gay, mind-altering prescription meds, furiously conventional opinions you didn't arrive at yourself). You sound like lots of fun.

The 50's seem like heaven for a gay rapist.

The name is Consuelo not Consuela.

R11 Awesome post. We've made some improvements in significant areas including gay protections and medicine but life is still worse in a lot of ways. Greater representation for LGBT was nice while it lasted, but even that's being wrestled away by the LGBT(IA+) crowd. Overpopulation and the reemergence of diseases emanating from the third world sucks too. Social media has also become a cancer on society. The 70s were an ideal time even though people were blissfully unaware of AIDS.

R9 ironic since I see tons of ageist comments about females here.

Actually the 1950's was the dawn of gay culture and gay literature (e.g., the novels of Ann Bannon). It hadn't been taken over, branded and turned into a rigid collective identity for political purposes. Today gay equates to the opposite of free expression. Stray from the script and you are condemned by a bunch of sanctimonious moralists every bit as mean and narrow minded as the religious right of the 1980's. You may have lost your looks but you have your fire and brimstone as consolation.

R11 Low divorce rates only meant that more spouses were staying with their drunk, abusive partners and plenty of boomers are scarred from child abuse. War vets with untreated psychological wounds were particularly violent towards their wives and kids, and there was child sex abuse too. And forget about being gay.

Horrible things simply were buried and not talked about, which is what most people who idealize the 50s REALLY want to go back to a time where one group (guess who) had most of the power while everyone else suffered in silence.

Cancer was a death sentence.

Polio was a threat for most of the decade.

Cars were death traps.

Atmospheric nuclear tests eventually contributed to the deaths of half a million Americans.

Long distance calls were obscenely expensive, if you even had a phone.

What passed for "Chinese Food" likely came to the restaurant from a factory, frozen. Sushi, Thai, Latin American and Middle Eastern cuisine were unheard of.

Air travel was only for the very well off, even with the advent of the 707, and it was an order of magnitude or more risky to take.

Air pollution in major centres was bad and only getting worse.

One could go on and on, but hey people could go around with untreated mental illness, so there's that!

Yeah, of course it's one of her threads.

R24 Basically the gay movement has become authoritarian just like the feminist movement in the 80s which sought to ban everything. Third wave feminism is even worse.

So some things were good and other things weren't?

[R25] You are marinated in Hollywood cliches about the 1950's. You are confusing the hatchet job the Baby Boomers did to the idea of the 1950's with the reality of the 1950's. The broad assumptions you make about unhappy marriages sound particular to your experiences. Very cynical attitudes. You sound jealous of happy and healthy families and must believe (another cliche) that something "dark" lurk behind cheery small town America. Again, Hollywood cliches. Your ideas are poison.

R11 types white as fuck.

[R26] Sounds like you're being treated for mental illness. Stating the positive things about the 1950's doesn't negate advances in other areas.

[R31] Types ignorant SJW.

[R28] Absolutely correct. Joyless and authoritarian.

Why are the young in a pointless competition with the old? Isn't it bad enough that the GOP is trying to divide us? Every generation has its good and bad.

[quote] The irony is the the 1950's was better than the current time we live in by virtually every metric...

Said every white hetero American male.

Every decade has plused and minuses,especially depending on you location, socioeconomic status and what segment of society you happen to be in. There is also alot to be said for personal circumstances.

One thing I miss about the 50s are ice pick lobotomies - it’s the only way to cure Madonna.

Was education really better in the 50s? I can see English/Civics/History being better but not math or science. And let's not forget America has NEVER been near the top of those global tests.

[R36] Just another malcontent fixated on race as the Rosetta Stone of all of the world's problems. Very snide - and very boring.

R40, you can't really be that dumb can you? I didn't single out race--notice I also mentioned heterosexuals. If you were gay or female, life in the 50s was not better. Don't fucking kid yourself. If you think it was so great, why don't you ask all those gays who were chased out of their jobs due to McCarthyism. You know that during the McCarthy era, there were more complaints about gays than communists? Yes, what a great era to live in.

[quote] Said every white hetero American male.

There is even greater inequality now between the 1% and everyone else. I guess you can say we achieved greater equality.

*If you were a minority, gay or female

R42, there was also much higher poverty in the 50s--22% by the end of the era.

[R39] Umm...seeing as people educated in that era (and earlier) went on to land a man on the moon without only limited computing capability I'd say the education was incredible compared to today. In term of math, people could work out complex equations by hand - and they were correct.

[R41] Typically rude and stopped reading your post beyond the first insult. Get some manners.

Yes Glinda we are not relevant. Nothing is relevant anymore. In the 50's people still had some class even though it was only a veneer. Racism was rampant, homosexuality was only whispered about and wife beating was still popular. The fashion and furniture were cool though. As an eldergay I would not go back, EVER! Today everything is trash, music, movies, TV, appliances but at least we know it. The Trumpers are still wishing it was the 50's.

R46, you are the one who said " Just another malcontent fixated on race" as a way to dismiss what I said. You must be some kind of troll. And really, get some manners? This is DL.

OP is an autogynephilic fetishist who wants free reign to force lesbians to have sex with him.

[R47] Racism is still rampant - as evidenced by the way you talk to people.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back to the late 70s.

R7 How old are you? Even the majority of Boomers don't have the most compelling memories of the 1950s

Maybe education was superior for the people who managed to stay in school. In 1960, close to 70% and 60% of rural and urban students didn't even finish high school.

I thank my lucky stars that I was a child in the '50s. I only wish I'd been born 10 years earlier.

[R53] Not surprising because the country was far more agrarian than it is now.

[quote] And really, get some manners? This is DL.

I think that person is lying, passing off as some expert on 1950s political and gay life. They might have a child's rudimentary memory of the 50s but that's about it

R53 The US population has grown over 50%. There are a far greater number of people living in poverty today.

DL is vicious, fat, racist, sweaty basement queens who haven't been laid since 1955 back when blacks and women knew their place in their eyes, this place is festered with racism. No surprise people here are calling for a return to the 50s.

IMO, the problem is extreme romanticizing.

There's another active DL thread about famous, touching, photos. Lots of John F. Kennedy photos. Yes, he was a Democrat, but he was in office for a relatively short time before his assassination. People really seem to get maudlin & pump a ton of attributes into JFK.

I realize his death was sad for his family, of course.

R57 Also people knew how to live with less. Nowadays, everyone has to have the latest tech gadget or creature comfort.

[quote] vicious, fat, sweaty basement queens

But enough about Consuela

[quote] The US population has grown over 50%. There are a far greater number of people living in poverty today.

That's irrelevant--the percentage was FAR higher then that it is now. It doesn't matter if the number is greater.

[quote] I think that person is lying, passing off as some expert on 1950s political and gay life. They might have a child's rudimentary memory of the 50s but that's about it

Right, can you imagine some gay person actually WISHING to be gay in the 50s? That would be almost as dumb as wishing to be black in Harlem in the Jim Crow era. Only someone delusional twat who has no idea what life is outside of their own comfort zone would say something like that.

[R62] Again - might have something to do with a more agrarian economy. People didn't starve in the 1950's.

[quote] Also people knew how to live with less. Nowadays, everyone has to have the latest tech gadget or creature comfort.

This, I agree with you on. But I have to ask--were people back then as selfish as they are now?

R62 The point was if you were playing the genetic lottery, you would still be far more likely to be impoverished if you were born within the last generation. And in terms of optics, it does make a difference.

[quote] Again - might have something to do with a more agrarian economy. People didn't starve in the 1950's.

I think plenty of black Americans and those in Appalachia were starving. Hence the war on poverty.

[R63] It sounds as if, like several other people on this thread, your entire idea of history comes from Hollywood movies and its endless race melodramas. It's called propaganda.

We’re a bunch of old whores that have trounced around the corner long enough times to know when not to get into the strange car.

I’m always amazed at how trusting people are with strangers, willing to overlook the obvious to make things fit their own beliefs or narrative and how militaristic people have gotten with a healthy debate. I find it sad and am glad I’m older and don’t have to wade through half the shit a spry 20 year old has to so he can get laid.

[quote]Does Datalounge Live in the 1950s?

Of course we do! Why else do you think we worship our Goddess Mamie Eisenhower?

[quote] It sounds as if, like several other people on this thread, your entire idea of history comes from Hollywood movies and its endless race melodramas. It's called propaganda.

Uh, no, I'm not the one spouting completely endless BS. Again, if you think the 50s were so great, read what gay employees went through during the McCarthy era--also known as the 50s. This isn't taught as much as it should be in schools, but gays were actually ended up being the biggest victim of the McCarthy witchhunts, not communists. Truman was told by an advisor that the public was much more concerned about gays infiltrating the government than communists. And the majority of the letters McCarthy received were about "gay panic". But yes, feel free to have nostalgia for your favorite decade.

[quote] but gays were actually ended up being the biggest victim of the McCarthy witchhunts

That should read "but gays actually"

[R71] What have you to say about the current witch hunts currently under way? Will you, with your deep and panoramic grasp of history, recognize a New McCarthyism and speak out, even if you don't agree with what's being censored, who's being cancelled, who and what's being erased? Again, you are citing a Hollywood-centric view of history (McCarthyism/J Edgar Hoover/Roy Cohen are all stock characters well-known to generations of movie goers) with "black and white"/ "good and evil" polarities. That's not the way serous people view history.

[R71] Those scandals also didn't impact pubic life to any great degree outside of Washington and Hollywood.

[R74] "public"! lol

[quote] What have you to say about the current witch hunts currently under way? Will you, with your deep and panoramic grasp of history, recognize a New McCarthyism and speak out, even if you don't agree with what's being censored, who's being cancelled, who and what's being erased? Again, you are citing a Hollywood-centric view of history (McCarthyism/J Edgar Hoover/Roy Cohen are all stock characters well-known to generations of movie goers) with "black and white"/ "good and evil" polarities. That's not the way serous people view history.

This is irrelevant to anything I typed--good attempt at deflection though. And again--these were AVERAGE AMERICAN CIVILIANS writing to McCarthy and warning him about gays. You think that just came out of nowhere? It was a reflection of the views of the public. Otherwise, the McCarthy witch hunts would not have gone on as long as they did.

And there was communist infiltration and the Rosenbergs were indeed guilty, as one of their sons admitted in the past several years. It's ironic that Hollywood and its apologists deny there was espionage (it was all paranoia, you see, with an anti-Semitic flavor) when they cashed in on a whole genre of Cold War espionage films - as if spying were a right wing fantasy. It wasn't.

When the Rosenbergs facilitated passing plans for the H-bomb to the Soviets all hell understandably broke loose. The ensuing moral panic had a real foundation.

[R76] You're free to have a conversation with yourself if you're dissatisfied with the progression of my thoughts. Your thinking is way too narrow and simplistic - you have no context beyond a few signature narratives that have been done to death in the media.

[quote]Umm...seeing as people educated in that era (and earlier) went on to land a man on the moon without only limited computing capability I'd say the education was incredible compared to today. In term of math, people could work out complex equations by hand - and they were correct.

Yeah, except you could argue that because the theories of Special and General Relativity, and the Standard Model of physics were developed at the turn of the 20th century without the benefit of computers or super colliders (both available in the1950s) that education must have been even better then than today and the '50s.

Meanwhile today even the some of the poorest people living in rural Africa or the slums of Mumbai have instant access to the entirety of human knowledge in the palms of their hands.

OP - those comments were most likely tongue-in cheek and meant as a joke.

Get a sense of humor.

I wish some '40s and '50s fashion for men would come back. Does that count?

I'd give anything to go back and live as a late teen early 20's fag in the 50's.

[quote]The irony is the the 1950's was better than the current time we live in by virtually every metric

Only if you’re white, male, and straight.

[quote] Just another malcontent fixated on race as the Rosetta Stone of all of the world's problems.

In other words, you don’t care.

[quote] Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.

This was the greatest period of middle class prosperity in American history.

[quote] Wealth — the value of a household’s property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts — is much more highly concentrated than income. The best survey data show that the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from 30 percent in 1989 to 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33 percent to 23 percent.

The period we're living in now is one of the worst for middle class people. People tend to focus on marginal improvements among various racial groups, but this ignores the bigger picture.

OP, It's not the 1950's we all long for.

It's the pre AIDS 1970s/80's when we thought we'd made progress only to see it snatched away overnight.

Imagine where we'd be if it hadn't happened and fucked everything up for 35 years.?

We all realize that anything that we have now could disappear tomorrow.

R8 Young people (Moi for example!) still use internet forums. Reddit for example....

In terms of its take on social class, it does. Many DLers imagine that the world depicted in movies like The Philadelphia Story (the original) was real and still exists today.

In terms of pop culture, most DLers exist in a time warp somewhere between 1965 and 1985. Their ability to recall the most intricate details of sitcoms that aired 50 years ago is truly remarkable.

The years between say 1992 and 2016 most definitely do NOT exist on Datalounge. It's like they've been frozen in amber, though that's what makes this site so endlessly fascinating.

No Out Gay man survived the 80's and 90's mentally intact.

You can't go to a funeral every other week for 15/20 years and be normal.

The 1950s was still a fine time to attack and kill blacks!

The 1950s was not a great time for women who wanted higher education.

"In the 1950s education played a huge role in gender construction, as the ratio of men to women going to college was 9:1"

I love DL and the posts, but never really thought about the age of the posters. It was the threads on class, etiquette, and social status that definitely clued me in that the median age here has got to be 55+. What was cool to one generation is not going to be with another. It makes me feel awkward because it makes me realize I am getting older and will seem out of touch.

Middle Class US = White collar (upper) Working Class in the UK for clarification.

The rest are poor.

R89 I won't begrudge you your general point, but you're exaggerating a little bit.

I think almost everyone I know has a bit of a halo/rose colored glasses around their younger years. When I was a teenager, I used to know the chart positions of every song on the radio and the TV ratings of my favorite shows. I probably could still pull a number out of my head for a few of them!

I don't know if it's age or nostalgia - I think when anyone is younger, they have less of life itself weighing on them and absorb the world around them in a way that people in their 30s/40s/50s may not have the time, energy or bandwith to do.

I know a lot of older people, but they are cool and keep up with the current trends and interests. They are modern, hip, not pining for old styles and culture. A lot of DLers seem incapable or unwilling change and evolve with time. They seem hopelessly fixated on the olden days. Pitiful

All you squares, we were the coolest gay cats in the 50's.

[quote] A lot of DLers seem incapable or unwilling change and evolve with time. They seem hopelessly fixated on the olden days. Pitiful

Everything that's come out in the last 20 years has been a retread of some former property. Would you rather see the originals or some lame reboot that's been updated to conform to more modern day sensitivities? There is virtually nothing being released in movie theaters that is worth remembering. They premiere and get pulled a couple weeks later. None of them make any impression.

People spend all their time indoors now. There are no community gatherings anymore. Even before the pandemic, people still opted to stay home rather than meet people in person. Yes, I miss the good old days.

What R98 said. We saw the originals and a lot of what's being done now has been watered down versions of watered down versions of watered down versions of the originals.

I can appreciate new music, art, and ideas just fine. But I don't chase them just because they are the flavor du jour. I respond to what resonates with me. And I also refer to older works of art, literature and pop culture as well.

There's also a guy here who like to likes to start conversations about "foundation garments":

The Church of MAGA sure as bloody hell does!