things you once thought socially acceptable which now horrify you to remember

go

Everything.

White male hegemony, didn't even give it a second thought when I was four.

Calling people fags, homos, etc. Playing "smear the queer". I'm not around that many kids now, but thankfully I never hear young people do this.

hoo boy.

i have "almost" answers to this due to how much stuff was socially acceptable (and still is to some extent) in west central scotland growing up, but i was generally at least a bit uncomfortable with all of it

the main thing would be homophobia. calling people poofs and saying stuff was bent was just completed "normal" during my school days and while i was opposed to homophobia from an intellectual pov - didn't see why anyone's rights should be abrogated due to harmless proclivities - i didn't connect that with constant level of ambient homophobia around me being a bad thing

I kinda feel like this experience is universal for any person who demonstrates growth. Like, if your answer to the question is 'nothing' you were either born a saint or you might be an actual monster rn.

I remember a certain popular webcomic that tried to coin the word "ghey" because they wanted to use "gay" as a pejorative without triggering any backlash

also related, the blatant semi-ironic anti-Semitism derived pretty much exclusively from Eric Cartman

i didn't connect that with constant level of ambient homophobia around me being a bad thing

yeah, this - thinking back on all the 'gay panic' jokes in 80s & 90s TV & movies that i never thought twice about is astonishing.

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective being a pretty notable example

I guess the problem I have with this question is determining the threshold of "socially acceptable". Does that mean 'nearly universally accepted as the norm' or just 'practiced by a substantial number of people without serious social repercussions beyond being thought rather boorish or ignorant'?

Because if we're using the first definition, social mores were already shifting substantially by about 1980 so that racism, xenophobia, sexism, ageism, and mockery of the disabled were not 'nearly universally' considered the norm, whereas if we're using the second definition "socially acceptable" would still include most of that behavior.

8. dropping a lit cigarette onto a carpet and grinding it out with my heel. i did this at a party once, fully aware of what i was doing. it was crowded. i still think about that. what the fuck?

9. just not doing my own dishes for months. oh they got done. my housemate did them. again. what the fuck. yes i was young but i was supposedly a grown-ass man.

Internalized misogyny :(

xp those are some good ones tracer, lol

10. making chummy comments to strangers you like on internet message boards

11. making nasty comments to strangers you don't like on internet message boards

12. The smoking lounges at the teen dance clubs <—- plural! that I went to as a preteen and teen

My high school had a smoking area. The school actually put up a set of bleachers so kids could sit in relative comfort and smoke between classes.

i was cursed by god to do stupid moron things all the time so i'm feeling this thread

I mean, I grew up in Alabama and spent time in the military. I’m proud of how much shit I could write in this thread (but won’t).

13. Not picking up after the dog.

Calling people fags, homos, etc

This. Similarly, calling people retards/retarded.

Internalized misogyny :(

and this, of course. feel like it took me way too long to get past the whole "I'm not like other girls" bullshit.

If by "society" one means one's high school classmates, then we'll see a lot more regrettable and immature behavior tagged as 'used to be socially acceptable' than if we broaden that scope a bit.

the truest society there is

If by "society" one means one's high school classmates, then we'll see a lot more regrettable and immature behavior tagged as 'used to be socially acceptable' than if we broaden that scope a bit.

― A is for (Aimless)

i didn't talk to my high school classmates, most of the formerly "acceptable" things that now horrify me happened on usenet

the decline of public smoking has been impressive

the Confederate battle flag

it was flown all over the place in 1960s-80s Alabama and Georgia, often in official or quasi-official settings, and I don't think it dawned on me why that was wrong until I was 25 or so

I had a dukes of hazzard big wheel which had the confed flag all over it! Nobody thought anything of it, even being in Illinois.

Nobody thought anything of it

Oh, I'm sure there were a few. Let's ask around.

Well sure now I do wonder what the parents of my black best friend and black "girlfriend" thought of it. I should ask my mom what she thought of it too.

Confederate flags appeared on album covers without much incident (Give Out But Don’t Give Up, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?)

Give Out But Don't Give Up sold 7 copies outside of the UK tbf

I know what you mean but don't think either of those albums are good examples of the phenomenon - one being a William Eggleston photo on an album by a British band that's fairly obscure in the US, and the other being a cover which features both the stars n stripes *and* the stars and bars, on either side of a Civil War Union general (I've never been able to figure out exactly who that is - it's not Grant, Sherman, Custer, Burnside, or McClellan)

xp

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alabama, etc. might be better examples

the decline of public smoking has been impressive

yeah I remember being kinda upset at the bar smoking ban at the time...I don't smoke, but it just felt kinda wrong...nowadays I'd be pretty pissed if someone lit up near me

what if someone vaped near you

oh that I don't care about

its not so much the smoke itself that bothers me from the cigarette but rather the fact that you have to change clothes and take a shower after

i love smoking cigarettes but i am very glad you can't smoke inside bars and it seems insane that was a thing so recently (where I'm from). i do however like being in jurisdictions where smoking inside is banned, but you can still have a smoke on a bar's patio/terrasse

some of the "flavored" vape exhaust is nauseously pungent
think everyone p much agrees that smoking a cig looks kinda cool. but seeing people constantly sucking on a lil plastic box or w/e...p dorky looking.

that smoking on airplanes ever was allowed is a major wtf

I have personally smoked a cigarette on an airplane. NB: I have not smoked cigarettes for 35 years.

I watched a few episodes of Cheers recently the fact that you could build an 11 season sitcom on Sexual Harrasment is pretty WTF.

nah that's not what's happening in that show most of the time

honestly the most offensive thing in it is the "cigar store indian" in the background of nearly every scene

the Confederate battle flag

I watched an episode of The Adventures of Pete and Pete where the younger Pete forms a band, and their ten year old drummer was wearing a Confederate flag bandanna. Definitely seemed odd now how unremarkable it was.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/9f16d3237b7c3737d68a6042083b4ac6/tumblr_mq0dj5m4Bu1r1e98bo1_1280.png

its not so much the smoke sex itself that bothers me from the cigarette but rather the fact that you have to change clothes and take a shower after

― frogbs, Friday, 12 July 2019 22:16 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

fixed for catholic

I've heard that said about Cheers by someone else and idrgi, although I don't really know the later seasons. What makes the Sam/Diane relationship closer to harassment than the relationships on Parks and Recreation or the The Office (US)?

If by "society" one means one's high school classmates, then we'll see a lot more regrettable and immature behavior tagged as 'used to be socially acceptable' than if we broaden that scope a bit.

The OP does ask what we "thought to be socially acceptable" as opposed to what "used to be objectively socially acceptable". A teenager could definitely think of social acceptability in terms of what is accepted by their peers.

(Still bold enough to give an actual answer, although a lot of mine have been posted.)

WRT Cheers

Sam and Diane less so but Sam and Rebecca is hard to watch, Sam seems to be building a textbook hostile work environment plus Rebecca cops a lot from her rotating bosses.

Oh, I didn't watch those seasons as much.

Yeah those seasons are lame

the dynamic changes a lot from season to season in the Rebecca era, but Sam is her subordinate for the first few years (and Carla & the patrons probably do more to make the environment hostile to her). Sam’s maturing character also changes to mainly be performing “the stud” in public, and a caring & supportive friend to Rebecca behind closed doors. In latter years it’s a recurring trope that he’s fundamentally forgotten to be a slut, being reminded of the existence of his little black book & so forth.

nb tbc there definitely is loads of sexual harassment perpetuated in Cheers! the Melville / Carla affair is totes probbo too. but it’s often balanced out, or clearly indicated to be inappropriate

iirc there's a pretty uncomfortable scene late in season 1 in the back room, where diane ~jokingly~ defends herself with a billiard ball

it was very good for 1982-83, but nevertheless

Watching hours and hours of sitcoms with the family, or comedy panel shows, repeats of Simpsons etc

i never really enjoyed the rebecca era of cheers, even tho kirstie alley is a terrifically funny actress, and i think it's partly bcz the nature of her comedy delusion was more demeaning than diane's comedy delusion was

diane is very evidently smarter intellectually than anyone else in the bar pre-frasier and it's not deluded for her to think she's "better" than this job (tho not in fact "better" than the bar's ethos?): but the ways she thinks she's better are often quite vain and silly ("it's not a rejection letter! it's a soon-and-inevitably-to-be-published letter!") -- comedy abt the many different ways we're smart and dumb is comedy i enjoy.

the rebecca era was much more a glass-ceiling comedy which involved her humiliating herself with powerful ppl who were also loathsome? which i think shifted a lot of the balance that the earlier material generally had. it was never "obvious" that she was actually a super-capable good-at-business boss who by rights ought to be rising high much quicker than she was, plus it also quietly played to a lot of stuff abt "actually women just sleep their way to the top", and then had to ground this in the insistence that e.g. robin colcord was sexy when he wasn't

caveat: i haven't watched a full ep for years, my favourite bit was always when woody vaulted the bar

"weird woman in a bar (La Lechera) at 10:43 12 Jul 19
12. The smoking lounges at the teen dance clubs <—- plural! that I went to as a preteen and teen"

Woah this! I remember going to underage gigs and there were smoking areas. I also remember the police assigned to those events smoking, which police certainly do not do in uniform in Australia any more.

I wonder how long it’ll take before air-travel falls into this category. I remember some guardian article years ago which predicted that inessential far-flung air-travel would eventually become as socially unacceptable as big game hunting.

It hasn’t happened yet, but I feel there’s some movement towards this view.

do frequent flyers still do carbon offsetting? this always seemed quite a lot of delusional nonsense to me. I think the first time I heard the term was from Tony Blair, so that probably adds a lot to my lifelong cynicism towards it.

"The Talons of Weng-Chiang".

I wonder how long it’ll take before air-travel falls into this category. I remember some guardian article years ago which predicted that inessential far-flung air-travel would eventually become as socially unacceptable as big game hunting.

It hasn’t happened yet, but I feel there’s some movement towards this view.

"What makes the Sam/Diane relationship closer to harassment than the relationships on Parks and Recreation or the The Office (US)?"

Aziz Ansari's latest special calls this out explicitly, saying that if the Office were made now at the end you'd find the documentary being made was all evidence against Jim sexually harassing a married woman. He also said there was a story in Parks where he gave Rashida Jones' character a teddy bear with a camera in it; he said if he got that script now he'd be like, "uhhhhhhhh"

when my wife and kid rewatched Friends last year they were pretty shocked at how much 'lol gay' stuff was in it.

> "The Talons of Weng-Chiang".

the black and white minstrel show. primetime saturday night tv for 20 years (until '78).

(london live tv sometimes shows a cliff richard film with him doing a number in blackface)

Trying to think of something that's not racist, homophobic or involves smoking.

• I couldn't imagine letting my nine-year-old go out into a cul-de-sac and shoot off fireworks on his own.

• When my dad would pick me and my sister up for the weekend and drive us the 60 miles back down to Capitol CIty where he lived, he'd keep a small cooler behind his seat with a six-pack of Busch. I don't know how "socially acceptable" that was, even in 1984, but it didn't even make me go "now wait a minute..." until I was older.

• People not automatically buckling up after getting into the car. "But what if I go off a bridge upside down? I'm not Houdini!" WHAT IF YOU HIT A CAR OR A TREE AND GO FLYING OUT THE WINDSH–

there's a plot point in Revenge of the Nerds which in retrospect feels absolutely insane

saying "chicks"

i met a French guy this weekend who kept referring casually to his "meuf" and i was like 💀💀

In summers during college, '96-'00, I worked for a county highway department. For some projects we would contract out to local construction companies and I remember one foreman that would keep his six-pack of Busch cooling in the water cooler strapped to the back of his pick-up and pulling it out at the end of the day "for the drive home". I remember being shocked, but nobody around batted an eye.

People not automatically buckling up after getting into the car. "But what if I go off a bridge upside down? I'm not Houdini!" WHAT IF YOU HIT A CAR OR A TREE AND GO FLYING OUT THE WINDSH–

See also: everyone riding bikes/scooters without a helmet. Most people ride bicycles wearing some sort of crash protection nowadays ffs. Seems to be part of this macho crap where you're supposed to be "hard" enough to survive plunging headfirst through the windscreen at 70mph or coming off your bike at the same kind of speed.

i met a French guy this weekend who kept referring casually to his "meuf" and i was like 💀💀

Really? It's no big deal. Women also casually call each other 'meuf'.

Watching hours and hours of sitcoms with the family, or comedy panel shows, repeats of Simpsons etc

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, July 13, 2019 12:11 PM (two days ago)

is this not socially acceptable anymore? i mean, prob not wise to spend your days doing this as an adult, of course

I haven't seen Revenge of the Nerds but I'm guessing you're talking about a scene where someone pretends to be someone else to rape a woman.

I watched about an hour of this fuck awful Richard Curtis pile of shit a few days ago called The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio) that uses the same "plot" as that, it came out in 2009.

xps

• People not automatically buckling up after getting into the car. "But what if I go off a bridge upside down? I'm not Houdini!" WHAT IF YOU HIT A CAR OR A TREE AND GO FLYING OUT THE WINDSH–

My dad didn't buckle up for a year because he was protesting the idea that insurance copies were influencing cops to write tickets for something that should be a "personal choice"

He stopped, thankfully. I half expected to find him in a wrecked, burned out car, dying, yet moaning "haha, take that, guys"

pom i know women say it and i got no problem w that. a bit like if a woman said "I'm going out with my bitches later". but something about the way this guy so casually dropped it.. i dunno i found it extremely unpleasant! maybe a bad example for this thread tho.

by the way he worked in finance

It's nowhere near as aggressive as 'my bitches', even in a friendly context. It's pretty neutral, just very familier and maybe slightly young-ish, much like mec. I had a conversation about this with my (French) wife earlier because I wanted to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass and she very much agreed.

That said, there's definitely a sexist, possessive way of saying it, so I doubt you were imagining things. I just don't think it's embedded into the word per se.

Besides, France is notoriously conservative when it comes to linguistic norms, although some headway has been made in recent years (see: 'auteure/autrice').

Words like the following are still deemed fine by most French people, though, which speaks volumes:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tête-de-nègre_(pâtisserie)

there's a plot point in Revenge of the Nerds which in retrospect feels absolutely insane

feel like it used to be more common to see kids being hauled around town or down the highway in pickup truck beds. i was one of those kids a few times no doubt. occasionally i'll see someone with their dog back there and it pisses me off.

Watching hours and hours of sitcoms with the family, or comedy panel shows, repeats of Simpsons etc
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, July 13, 2019 12:11 PM (two days ago)

is this not socially acceptable anymore? i mean, prob not wise to spend your days doing this as an adult, of course
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, July 15, 2019 5:22 PM

I'm horrified by it but I don't know how younger generations feel about it. Plenty of the older generations still watch tv in the majority of their free time and I wonder what they'd be doing otherwise, would they be a nuisance otherwise or would they flourish?

It's not that internet and videogame addiction cant be awful but I feel sorry for generations of people who have such a low quality addiction as television that they've spent much of their decades on. ((( I like "I don't even own a TV" people better than most people)))

Part of the problem was that I and many others felt we should spend more time with family but I think doing it watching television doesn't really work. You just end up watching shit mostly and not really getting much from their company. Whenever I ask people why they watched some trash, it's always a friends/family thing and I've done plenty of that myself. I completely regret it. More I think about this subject, the more hideous it is.

===

Yesterday I was at the supermarket and there was a woman wearing very buttock revealing shorts. As soon as she left, two women working at their cash tills loudly agreed "it's her own fault if she gets raped" while serving customers.

I was surprised they thought that was socially acceptable when surrounded by customers.

the term 'lads'

don't get your lad out itt

are punch and judy shows still a thing?

We saw one a while back in Whitstable.

Tête-de-nègre

:O

things US ILX seemed to think were socially acceptable 2 years ago: those fucking boorish loudmouthed chapo dickheads throwing about the r word about with abandon. ho ho ho very out there etc.. edgy!..with vile disablist speak like that coming from nominally "lefty" fat bearded loudmouthed twats.. I say enjoy your neo-lib hellscape forever lads.

That gets to my inability to understand the usefulness of this thread. It is a continuum, full of all kinds of behavior that I happily participated in or acquiesced to, and now I’m at a point where it’s all terrible and WTF.

I expect this to continue until I enter my dotage and wither into a hopeless socially conservative basket case who hates everyone. A more interesting discussion might be “behaviors you thought would never become socially acceptable and then they did”

guys fucking each other

smoking weed

that's all I got

I used to go into Windsor Town centre on my own, we lived in a block of flats that were attached via ramp (still are, I believe).

This would be around 1968,so I'd be seven. Sometimes I'd go in with my sister who was three years younger, but I was always told to look after her, and I would, like the responsible young person I was.

I practically brought up my younger brother at the of 14 whilst my mum was going through a divorce and a nervous breakdown. But my fave example of 70's parenting was when I'd get passed to a neighbour to babysit me and they'd decide to go out on the piss as well. But at least I got to watch The Medusa Touch on a colour television!

We saw one a while back in Whitstable.

― gyac, Monday, July 15, 2019 1:57 PM (one hour ago)

i mean I'm not necessarily horrified by them but it's a funny childhood memory. i think i found it slightly unnerving as a little kid, but i definitely liked it also, to some extent. mr punch slapping the shit out of the copper with his stick.

i remember my mum telling me that my grandparents went on multiple holidays and had her at 12 years old and a year or two older look after her three younger brothers, the youngest being around 4 the first time it happened

I practically brought up my younger brother at the of 14 whilst my mum was going through a divorce and a nervous breakdown. But my fave example of 70's parenting was when I'd get passed to a neighbour to babysit me and they'd decide to go out on the piss as well. But at least I got to watch The Medusa Touch on a colour television!

― calzino, Monday, 15 July 2019 21:41 (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

same but there were three of em, one was older, it was the nineties, + alcoholism

but tbf im not sure it was socially acceptable

anyway yeah idg thread are we as a we not prone enough to eughing ourselves and each other for forgiveable human lapses in present day without doing that endearing competitive mea culpaing about past transgressions not only out of context but also when we were young which is iirc itself forgiven everything and anyway there'll always be one along in a minute to tell you that you still fall well short why arm the succubus further anyway you're all ok by me i think is what the point may have been

exactly my point

yep but wordier which cmon

Smoking indoors is one that I still can't believe I was militant about... like I'd get angry if people told me i couldn't smoke inside.

you could do a whole thread about how this idea intersects with SEINFELD episode plots

First office job I ever had was open plan and you could smoke at your desk, and people did. It must have been hell to be a non-smoker in those days. I remember you could even smoke in cinemas in London - allowing people to light up in the pitch black, amazing there weren't more cinemas burning to the ground.

My local cinema in London had smoking and non-smoking sections, I was always amazed that people thought the actual smoke would go along with this instead of drifting across the entire auditorium. In fact this must have been in place even for kids' films, thinking about it. Nowadays nothing - nothing! - gives me more pleasure than seeing tobacco addicts hunched outside in the rain, sucking on their death sticks and looking embarrassed. Probably churlish of me I know.

It's still fairly common to see people smoking inside Romanian hospitals but weed is a one-way ticket to jail. Wearing a seatbelt is eccentric behaviour. Sexist, homophobic and antisemitic jokes are part and parcel of informal discourse. Almost none of the things cited itt apply in Eastern Europe (and across most of the world, I assume).

going to church every sunday....amirite??

Paedo priests seem to have gone out of fashion. I used to go a church that was an old converted ww2 cinema. The parish priest at the time, Father Crowley, ended up doing a long stretch for paedophile offences in Bradford, Portsmouth and Hudds. One of his sermons once was TLDR version: it's none of your fucking business what I do outside of this church!

>First office job I ever had was open plan and you could smoke at your desk, and people did.

One of my first jobs post uni (mid 1990s) was data-entry for a big insurance company. First day I went for a piss and saw a senior underwriter draining a hip-flask in the toilet at 9am. Lunchtime, the entire office decamped to the pub where most people would have at least three pints. The office was no smoking until 4pm, at which point ashtrays came out of desk drawers and cigarettes, cigars and pipes were lit in unison.

I'm still not convinced that lunchtime office drinking is socially unacceptable, at least in the UK and depending on your profession. Three pints a day at lunchtime probably is though, even if you're not working in I dunno a hospital.

When I used to go for liquid lunches we'd be downing strawberry alcopops, the idea was the site manager wouldn't smell the booze on your breath with pop. Obv getting fresh at lunchtime is very big and clever when you are working at heights on tower scaffolds, but it was considered completely socially acceptable amongst the degens I worked with.

ha in France lunchtime work drinking is certainly not socially unacceptable. not exactly obligatory but completely normal.

if it wasn't for the camaraderie and fun in pubs spilling over into working hours at times, then our working lives would be just utter misery and hard graft!

it very much depends on the company - I worked at a property portal website company in Soho for several years and 3 pint lunches were fine there, sometimes had more, and some people did it every day

if I did that at my current company it wouldn't go down well. I can drink at lunchtime but 3+ pints, no

It's still fairly common to see people smoking inside Romanian hospitals but weed is a one-way ticket to jail.

Back when I smoked I actually once found myself surrounded by armed police in Romania for daring to make a (tabacco) rollie in public. It took them an excruciating ten minutes to establish there were no drugs involved.

I'm guessing that in the US it would be considered degeneracy and cause for an intervention but especially at this time of year with all the sport on you see people doing it all the time. (xpost)

Hum in France, business lunches mostly include wine.
Over the years it has become acceptable NOT to drink but it's still almost putting yourself aside...
That said, I talk about government business lunch. It might be different in the private sector and especially in IT companies, start-ups etc.

at my university cantine most people generally don't drink wine with lunch, though it is available, but that's because lunches there tend to be short (like, only 45 minutes instead of 2 hours).

And organizing a private dinner at your place and have no wine is borderline social suicide !

i worked as a researcher for a tabloid reporter for exactly one day, and that day included a three-pint pub lunch with sausage and mash. it defeated me. i was not asked back. (thank god! speaking of looking back in horror..)

Back when I smoked I actually once found myself surrounded by armed police in Romania for daring to make a (tabacco) rollie in public. It took them an excruciating ten minutes to establish there were no drugs involved.

There's a pretty good film from 2009, Police, Adjective, that points out the absurdity of Romanian laws (and attitudes) towards weed. Sadly, not much has changed since.

As a side note, why is there no ILX en français?

I remember going to a restaurant in Manhattan with my father once where the smoking section was the first floor, and the non-smoking section was upstairs. It was one of the most passive-aggressively dickish things I've ever experienced.

I've always thought it was because French people prefer hating things tbh

xpost

lol, touché.

Let's just assume the 'L' stands for 'loathe'.

Speaking of France my French uncle (age 90) told me at the school cantine in the 1930s the kids would be served a carafe of wine - vive La France!

I also remember seeing an old street photo of 1930s Paris that featured a bus sporting a public health announcement that said:"Doctors recommend no more than two bottles of wine a day!" Autres temps, autres moeurs!

Dipsomania begins at five bottles.

I went to Bordeaux on a French Exchange trip for 3 weeks when I was 13. the family I was staying with used to give me watered-down wine with meals, at one point I mentioned that I'd never had watered-down wine before, because whenever I'd had wine at home it was just straight wine - but this was only really at weddings or occasionally at my dad's house he would give us a small glass of wine (or Babycham more often). they took it to mean I was a hardened wine drinker and from then on I got non-watered wine and more of it. that trip was my real introduction to boozing, first time I ever got properly drunk

(Of absinthe.)

xp

I also remember seeing an old street photo of 1930s Paris that featured a bus sporting a public health announcement that said:"Doctors recommend no more than two bottles of wine a day!" Autres temps, autres moeurs!

― Zelda Zonk

did the doctors also say wine was good for your "t-zone"?

Yeah, wine consumption in France has reduced a lot, even in my lifetime : when I was born, in the mid 70s, it was over 100litre/year/person. Now it's around 40litre/year/person.
And people still think a little glass of wine everyday is good for your health.
Even the government says so !

Je lirais un babillard d'ilx en français.

France still boasts one of the highest life expectancies in the world, so I'd say it's worth it.

And regarding smoking, when I was a teenager, it was still possible to smoke in the metro/trains !

Mods, can we get our own 'I Loathe Everything (en français)' board?

my dad still talks of a time when you could get a beer in a drive-thru, but only one per person

obviously makes sense why that's no longer allowed but I definitely had a "you should be allowed to drink while driving if you're not over the limit" phase lmao

J'ai posé la question aux modérateurs: French Board?

Merci !

Shit, frogs. You can go through a drive-thru here, order a pint of Evan Williams and a can of coke, and they'll throw in the plastic cup filled with ice for free.

But not on Sundays!

Growing up evangelical in a rural, isolated geography means I have 100 things for this thread--all of them pretty boring.

It's more interesting to me to contemplate how many years after leaving that environment it took me to "deconstruct," as they say--to un-internalize the hateful norms and be able to feel surprised by them, or to realize that the basic injustice of them. They were just air and water to me for so long.

French soldiers during WWII (and maybe I) got a ration of wine a day (like a bottle). It was very nice even though it may have been watered down.

"Meet Me at the Flagpole"

a pint of Evan Williams and a can of coke

now that's a ratio

Watching hours and hours of sitcoms with the family, or comedy panel shows, repeats of Simpsons etc

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, July 13, 2019 12:11 PM (two days ago)

isn't this just rebranded as "binge watching"?

just plopping down and watching whatever is on tv, or making plans to watch a block of sitcom shows on a specific night is kind of dead

Yeah during WWI, wine was necessary to get the poilus going... basically the equivalent of speed for the germans during WWII !

i remember sitting down for that Thursday night NBC block as a kid, Cosby and A Different World and Family Ties and Wings and Dear John(!) and Cheers and Night Court and Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, I think those were the shows that ran during that period of time.

i don't have the patience for watching more than one episode of TV per night now, usually once per week. it's not even a "i don't even watch TV thing", it's just overwhelming. everyone's saying "you have to watch this show!!!" and everyone saying this is talking about a different show.

I was very much an asshole to my mom when she kept trying to guilt me into visiting home and I would say "why, so we can sit around at night watching shitty tv while not speaking to each other?"

Hey don't knock sitting around watching shitty tv while not speaking to each other, it can be good times.

I won't travel 8 hours to do that.

Meatloaf b-side

Heh.

LOL I wish my parents did that, mums idea of a visit is "sit around with the TV on and promptly talk over the top of it all very loudly non stop and complain when I dont listen/reply".

that is one acceptable way to watch tv

Early retirement (on a voluntary and non-health reasons basis) is another area where attitudes might move towards being 'socially unacceptable' here in the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/17/renting-millennials-homelessness-crisis-retire

On a minor thread diversion, the article shows that quality of housing is a major issue for older people now:

“Our research has shown that the lives of too many older renters are blighted by insecure tenancies, woeful living conditions, dealing with unscrupulous landlords and constant financial stress.”

“On top of being notoriously expensive and unstable, too many privately rented homes simply aren’t up to scratch either – condemning older people to live out their retirement in places which are cold, damp or infested with mice.”

but the Guardian loves its millennial headlines.

I just thought of one:

- leaving school at year 10 instead of finishing thru to year 12.

This could possibly be an australian-specific thing but in the 80s and earlier, it wa sperfectly acceptable to finish school in year 10 (age 15) and go on to a trade or apprenticeship.

Course now theres no fucking trade colleges or apprenticeships and they want you to have a bachelors just to work at fricking McDonalds, so.

ha - you should visit Tasmania where the recent (2015) push to modernise the school system includes having high schools go to year 12! Imagine that! In the last 5 years there has even been a push for schools not to call the year 10 dinner the "leavers' dinner".
I wonder why 50% of adult Tasmanians have literacy difficulties.

A week or two ago in the LA Times there was a story about the woman who inspired the Gidget movies, and when explaining the name Gidget they said it was a combination of "girl" and "a word for a short person."

(PC gone mad, etc)

Matthew: but is that because they have yr 11-12 colleges? Thats how they do it in the ACT and I dearly wanted to go to a College, and not a shitty NSW 7-12 high school.

Yeah there are 11-12 colleges (my daughter is at one!) but a too-large fraction of students are finishing at year 10, so there is a push to have years 11 and 12 in the same schools as 7-10 so that students feel it's natural to go on. The minor downside is that 11-12 colleges are like "university light" with a young-adult vibe which my daughter really enjoys.

Yeah that why I wanted to go to one.

The talk of ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ upthread made me think of this which came to the same view of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNa5DUIzjiM&list=PL1eX22N4mg0xQyyHOpephOZdRvawuWOtE&index=9&t=0s

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GNa5DUIzjiM&list=PL1eX22N4mg0xQyyHOpephOZdRvawuWOtE&index=9&t=0s

One day we will be able to add “standing on the walking side of the escalator” and that day will be joyous and glorious

Although that varies from country to country which complicates things

True, which is why I worded it that way.

Just like smoking and marijuana laws and giving wine to children...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-everyone-should-stand-still-on-an-escalator

One day we will be able to add “walking on the escalator” and that day will be joyous and glorious

the needs of the few people in a hurry outweigh the needs of the many lazy bastards.

number of things in history that mattered that were affected by someone walking or standing on an escalator: possibly a jackie chan chase sequence, but thats it id say

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/escalator-lad.gif

i am an unrepentant escalator climber btw

WS threads

I can count things that I thought were socially acceptable even if no one else ever did, right? because this thread reminded me that in high school I gave each of my friends unbidden a printed out copy of my CD wishlist prior to my birthday. (god bless the one friend who actually bought me something on it.)

things you once thought socially acceptable which now horrify you to remember

AKA "things I lie in bed thinking about having done in the past month or so"

When I was in high school, a lot of people listened to Howard Stern while driving in the morning. My best friend's parents would often talk about his show. One time when I was having dinner at her house I started talking about the porn star who was trying to set the record for the biggest gangbang ever that he had just interviewed And I totally thought this was completely normal dinner conversation since it was obvious we all listened to his show.

To this day, my friend still refers to the time I brought up gangbangs to her parents.

WS threads

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Thursday, 18 July 2019 14:01 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

good threads, better times

yeah there are definitely a handful of specific ILX posts i would like to un-post or have the username anonymized or something, was trying out certain forms of performative or oversharing online whatever-ness and they are gross to me now. kinda feel like someday someone is going to track them down and hold them against me.

is there another thread for stuff that's considered socially acceptable now that will be unbelievable in 20+ years?

off the top of my head:

cellphone radiation
factory farming
vaping

crypto mining maybe

oh yeah giving info to tech 100%, that probably won't take 20 years though

likely a lot of necessary retraction for environmental band-aids: end of plastic water bottles, less air conditioning everywhere, red meat becoming a shameful luxury item

otm, tho I feel like AC will be the last to go

i think red meat will be last! lots of lobbyists and murrican jobs, plus multiple decades of people brainwashed into believing red meat is TRUE FOOD and a sign of casual wealth. would not be surprised to see NIMBY state legislature blocking federal mandates to reduce red meat consumption in the 2040's

Ideally I’d like to eat only expensive red meat but there’s so much of the cheap shit available

Not recycling your kitchen waste, which most people (in the UK at least) don't seem to do

or care about

I do wonder if we're going to face some reckoning with cellphones like people did with cigarettes. It'll take another decade or two to see right? I'm thinking wild new cancers

everybody dies according to the vices of their time maaaan

think a separate thread for lecturing everyone about the things you personally dislike about 2019 tho tbf

Watching this episode of The Golden Girls last night, this scene reminded me of this thread. Even on a largely queer-positive (and queer-beloved) series, 1980s were often indistinguishable from the 1930s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlpVaRyit84

gregg turkington: the early years

the pilot episode of the golden girls had a gay houseboy character called coco which i don't think would fly today

incidentally played by that actor who died this week, the guy who played the mohel on that ep of seinfeld

flappy your cell phone cancer trutherism is one of your more endearing quirks

lol im just spitballin here!

I’m still suspicious of cancer from office microwave ovens tbh

Stand on both sides of the escalator. The others will follow. Counterintuitive as it may seem

“Block anyone from walking and people will stop walking,” what a galaxy brain revelation from someone who has never seen a married couple use an escalator

WS threads

I'll go one better, WDYLL underwear threads! What were we all thinking.

More like how much were we all drinking

brb having a few and stripping down

Remember the Luna pic

No

Wtf ppl posted pics in their underwear?!

it was the oughts

there were no rules

the only rule was to be hot, or not

We really screwed the world domination stately there. Once upon a time ilxor was mentioned in the same breath as Reddit and Metafilter (by the guardian at least). If only we'd worked a bit harder a positing in our underwear we could have overtaken reddit and cornered the market in Nazi,s Flat earth's, anti vaxxers and people with there bits out.

ILX: Like Metafilter, without the pizzazz.

Wtf ppl posted pics in their underwear?!

I don’t know that there’s any evidence Andrew ever had underwear on in his pics, tbh

There were a few full montys IIRC?

phrase that will forever haunt my waking hours: Tuomas sundae

cellphone radiation

this is seriously not harmful at all

I had a more serious contribution but now I can't stop lolling at Tuomas sundae

Ken C doing a flip over Tuomas sundae

That's the one that sticks with me the most.

just another tuomas sundae

(woah woh)

Wish it were Finnday

I still say the phrase in my head, notably when there's a sports Super Sunday.

if I posted a nude WDYLL photo would you FP (Flag Post) or FP (Fap Posthaste)

Only one way to find out.

ilxor nude selfies wouldn't really truly be nude as the glasses and beard would still be in play

cellphone radiation

this is seriously not harmful at all

― Vape Store (crüt), Friday, July 19, 2019 9:27 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Go on...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfgT6zx4k3Q

just plopping down and watching whatever is on tv, or making plans to watch a block of sitcom shows on a specific night is kind of dead
― untuned mass damper (mh), Tuesday, July 16, 2019 5:12 PM

I think loads of people still do this. Mostly non-internet people.

guys fucking each other
― Οὖτις, Monday, July 15, 2019 10:12 PM

You used to find socially acceptable? I'm assuming you meant to say you used to be homophobic?

He was responding to the post immediately preceding his

A more interesting discussion might be “behaviors you thought would never become socially acceptable and then they did”

Gah, sorry! Don't know how I missed that!

Iranian news agencies apparently reporting they have taken a 2nd tanker.

lol wrong thread

Capturing tankers will never be socially acceptable.

"ladies first"

usage of the word "groupie"

There's a smug arrogance (somewhere along the lines of Frank Zappa) that people associate with bad politics but sometimes I wonder if it didn't really depend on that. I tried to rewatch a documentary series about science fiction from about 20 years ago and I was getting strong vibes of this and I just couldn't be bothered with that.

You still get these people of course but I see less people using this tone as if they're the smartest person in the room. Listening to groups of them try this is nauseating.

"ladies first"

I worked next to a guy who at meetings would do the thing of standing up any time a lady was taking her seat.

We'd argue about it back at our desks. He'd say it was good manners. I'd tell him it was patronizing.

The women completely ignored it.

Flypaper in restaurants. This was quite common in many of the mom 'n' pop type of restaurants my family would eat in throughout the summer when I was a kid. Not only did we not bat an eye at the strips of yellow sticky paper hanging from the ceiling and sometimes dangling close to the table surface, we were actually *enthusiastic* about it, as in "isn't it great this place has flypaper? They must be really up on things and care about creating a clean fly-free environment for their customers!"

Somewhere around last year I found myself stopping using 'guys' to preface a casual work email and grasping for another collective term, settled on 'folks' instead, am I a savage for not realising this sooner or a hapless liberal worry-wart?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im3Zj9ZBsyU

Former then, thanks Limmy! :)

Are you really horrified by this?

Idk, there was some discussion of it on the faculty listserv the last time I had a faculty job; there were some passionate defences on the grounds that this is a proud New England idiom, which was lol to me since I've heard it in most English-speaking places I've been in and use it all the time, despite not having grown up in New England. I'm not convinced that turning "guys" into a gender-neutral address (as opposed to saying "hello ladies" or something, which I gather is what Limmy might prefer?) is in fact sexist. None of the women in that clip seem very troubled by it.

Unless it is just the imprecision that is horrifying??

The imprecision is horrifying to Limmy.

... and the Americanization, I imagine.

XXXXP - yeah, I'm only horrified by the thought that I might be repeatedly insulting a colleague on some level and have only recently thought about that possibility, I'm not *horrified* at myself for using it.

I feel Glaswegians are fairly at home to Americanisms in speech, think of Frankie Boyle and his repeated use of 'man' which me and my mates used in secondary school all the time but eventually grew out of, I guess wherever FB come up it stuck around for longer.

In my many decades I have encountered someone taking offense exactly once, telling a waitress “we are not guys, we have female body parts” - well, they were a little more specific- so there’s that.

lads

layds?

Alas 'peeps' was also ruined. Gotta be a single syllable solution though.

About 20 years ago I was working at Applebee's and got lectured by a middle-aged woman when I approached her table and asked if "you guys would like to start off with something to drink?" Since then, I've been cautious about using gender-neutral guys in professional/unfamiliar contexts but will still use it among people who seem like normal, healthy, well-balanced individuals.

'Dudes' has steadily become a catch-all in some circles (or at least used by women referring to other women or any mixed group of ppl) which I like but probably shouldn't.

Feel like maybe there was at least one thread dedicated to this particular topic a decade or so ago

But don’t think my search skillz0r are up to finding it, if it indeed ever existed

I feel Glaswegians are fairly at home to Americanisms

Not Limmy! See lloydspharmacy, all one word.

I worked next to a guy who at meetings would do the thing of standing up any time a lady was taking her seat.

Do you doff your hat or throw your coat over mud puddles?

I'm with Limmy, though I do acknowledge there are instances when "guys" can be gender-neutral:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFYMijdQ_sA

Whereas Limmy might think it's too Yankee (USA) and Sund4r says it's a Yankee (New England) idiom, I've always heard it used more by Yankees (anyone from north of 37º Latitude) than anyone.

That's why our waiters say "What can I get y'all?"

Sund4r says it's a Yankee (New England) idiom

I didn't say this! Other people at a New England school said this. I thought it was funny bc I grew up hearing it all the time in Canada.

I was once punched for calling two women "guys." To be fair, they were militant lesbians running an anti-porn protest on a street corner (they had a table full of pamphlets and a giant blown-up version of the infamous Hustler cover where a woman's body is being fed into a meat grinder). Anyway, I walked up to their table and said, "Can I get one of you guys' pamphlets?" and one of them shouted, "We're not guys!" and punched me in the chest. It wasn't much of a punch. I walked away without taking the pamphlet.

I grew up around people who use 'guys' gender-neutrally, and I've never known anyone to be offended by it.

As a side note, 'folks' strikes me as more American than Canadian. Or am I making this up?

About 20 years ago I was working at Applebee's and got lectured by a middle-aged woman when I approached her table and asked if "you guys would like to start off with something to drink?" Since then, I've been cautious about using gender-neutral guys in professional/unfamiliar contexts but will still use it among people who seem like normal, healthy, well-balanced individuals.

― ☮ (peace, man), Sunday, 21 July 2019 13:15 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

you can't let pricks like this get to you tbh

You're not, although I've been hearing it creeping in occasionally over the last 10 years or so. xp

Feel like maybe there was at least one thread dedicated to this particular topic a decade or so ago

I know it's completely unfair and a prime instance of bad linguistics but whenever I hear 'folks' I can't help but parse it as Volksdeutsche and the like.

Personally as a not-guy and not-dude I very much try to avoid using those terms gender-neutrally. Not always successfully, it takes effort to remember but it’s worthwhile effort imo. Y’all is the only way out. Youse and yins are regional variants and still preferable to guys or dudes as a catch all term for all people.

^^^

"y'all" >>>>>>>>> "guys" in every conceivable situation

I totally get where you're coming from and sympathise, but some of my female friends conversely find it insulting not to be called 'guys' because they want to be included and don't much care for such gendered distinctions. And 'y'all' is also regional in its own right (from a Canadian perspective, at least).

xp

an anti-porn protest on a street corner (they had a table full of pamphlets and a giant blown-up version of the infamous Hustler cover where a woman's body is being fed into a meat grinder

LOL @ epic point missing re: that cover

Y'all really wanna hear Brits say 'y'all'?

would "mates" work?

Youse works in Glasgow.

the nearest I can think of would be "you lot"

Brothers and sisters, why are we fighting?

'You lot' is disparaging, no?

what?

don't stop

give it all you got

i was cursed by god to do stupid moron things all the time so i'm feeling this thread

― Vape Store (crüt), Thursday, July 11, 2019 8:17 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

btw it is probably socially unacceptable to use the word "moron" and i apologize

"You lot" is not a good idea.

Pom, with respect to your female friends, they can feel however they want. It’s better to be more inclusive and if that means saying “hello friends!” Rather than “sup my dudes!” I don’t think it’s a big deal for anyone or their handful of female friends.

I think you're being unfair to their argument that using 'guys' gender-neutrally is more inclusive.

I say “ladies and gentleman boys and girls and friends beyond the binary”, it’s a bit unwieldy but if it keeps limmy off my back it’s worth it

And I've never heard 'dudes' used that way fwiw.

xp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_oppression

Neutralizing the word 'guy' isn't the same thing as masculinizing women.

I’m not being unfair. I’m aware and I personally reject the idea that dudes is neutral or inclusive. It’s placing men as default and we get to be included. That’s not neutral to me. I’m suggesting it’s perfectly safe to avoid this usage. The ongoing defense of it is weird to me.

It’s placing men as default and we get to be included

In this specific instance, they would argue that it doesn't place men as the default. On the contrary, it changes so-called 'men', problematizing binary distinctions in the process.

lads

i'm trying to use "hey guys" less across the board no matter whom i'm talking to tbrr

which i think relates to both LL's and pomenitul's points — it's insulting to use a male gendered term as gender neutral, but it also feels weird to maintain a gendered way of addressing groups of just men

I for one do not want to hear anyone saying "Alright, y'all?" in a London accent. Alternatives: "Hi, all" / "What can I get you?". Keep it simple eh.

oi mates

is it, is it tho crut xxp

i dunno

insisting to ppl half the world away what is and isnt good or bad for them to do in a matter as light, complex, cultural, whatever as this seems strong.

idk

youd want to be awful excellent at this stuff id say to do more than just discuss it with interest

I’m going to suspend this discussion until this phantom group of female friends can contribute their opinions directly. I’ve also got many female friends who probably agree with a cautious avoidance of the usage of dude as a gender neutral or inclusive term (aka my perspective in this discussion)

anyone have an issue with "everybody/anybody"
as in "is everybody ready to order" and "anybody have any questions"

the tough one for me is "chick" which i got all the way into my thirties with all friends of both genders using casually and lately has proven genuinely offensive to lots of people; i've always used it as the feminine of dude but this is no longer flying

guys: derives from guy fawkes (a guy)
dudes: derives from yankee doodle (a dude)
pals: derives from the romany "pal" (meaning brother or comrade)
chums: derives (i just discovered) from chambermates! a formation "typical of the late-17c. fondness for clipped words" -- and apparently used mainly of bachelors rooming together
comrades: derives from spanish camarada, also meaning chambermate (so presumably works as above, despite solid red lineage)
citizens: solid red lineage unbesmirched (except by, like guillotines and stuff)

fellows: derives from old norse "felagi" meaning (roughly) "one who puts down money with another in a joint venture" – apparently it is "not etymologically masculine" and used of women in e.g. the king james bible!!
fellas: the above no longer applies

fellow kids: obviously this is what i always say

uh lads: discussion suspended f yalls i

LL, I'm not arguing against your position per se because I don't entirely agree with my friends either and would rather give credence to my interlocutor(s) based on the context, which varies a fair amount from country to country and community to community. Any absolutist position on this particular point strikes me as linguistically and culturally problematic.

"y'all" is good if it's available in your region, and when "y'all" seems insufficiently inclusive, there's "all y'all"

Just say "hey, assholes"!

Wait I'm sorry, "arseholes" in some regions

There's also a certain word that begins with a c and that doesn't have quite the same meaning from one continent to the next.

chaps?

chap derives from chapman = trader (cf also cheapjack) and was coded male from the start

товарищи

друг

Talking of expressions from strange, foreign climes - ay up, me ducks.

I overuse dude but it's more of an emotive or exclamation. It's also probably really regional/generational.

Like, all my friends (female) and I who grew up together call each other dude.

In any kind of work setting though, I would never call a group of people "guys" or "dudes."

Same. It's definitely informal.

I overuse “guys” a lot. I blame growing up in the Midwest in the 80s

Feel like we should assign everybody numbers

Only if we all end up at MIT

btw has anyone put “Morrissey fandom” on here yet

nobody would admit to it iirc

Feel like we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if “folks” wasn’t a great example of the thread category (and what set off the discussion in the June US politics thread). It’s probably another detail of Obama’s exceptional political talent and charisma that he could use it in the 2010s and not immediately sound like a disingenuous huckster.

And I've never heard 'dudes' used that way fwiw.

Same. Unless you actually came from the Southern US, saying "y'all" around here would be as goofy as greeting people by saying "top o' the morning". I would think you were ironically imitating or mocking a Southern accent.

Obama should have said “we tortured some guys”

Y'all better keep your appointment with the Wicker Man, y'hear?

Wicker Dude, surely?

"What would you all like to order?"

There. Pretty sure that would work in any English-speaking setting.

each

Wicker Guy

Wicker Cuck

I don't fully understand why plural "you" isn't good enough

this is america

"what would you consumers like to order?"

It is grammatically correct and concise; it just doesn't seem to be used that way that frequently in English. Idk why; I'm guessing because it's hard to distinguish from singular "you"? xp

it is good enough

this is america

"what would you consumers like to order?"

english is spoken in i dunno how many variant dialects including mine throughout the world and id guess most of them have a version of personal pronouns for third person plural, i dunno how prevalent the same pronouns are throughout other languages but id think its safe to say they exist because there has popped up bytimes a use for them

donegal youse
mayo ye
dublin yiz

im prob missing ten more just from the free state tbh

the industry term for a group of intellectually handicapped adults in an arts based program is "consumers"

how dyou even start to give out to unruly kids without it, just to give one crucial example

tbh I will use "youse" and "y'all" in varying contexts but I don't think I police my social solecisms to the extent of some ilxors

I'm guessing because it's hard to distinguish from singular

That's true, but in French (among other languages) 'vous' can also be both singular and plural depending on the context, and it's never been a problem to my knowledge (although Quebec also has 'vous autres', which adds an extra hue). I think 'what would you guys like to order?' is ultimately about showing your customers that you don't stand on ceremony. There's a cultivated informality to it, which can come across as annoying in some contexts (not all), irrespective of the idiom's gender politics.

There is a solution, however: bringing back thou/thy/thee. Who's with me?

id advocate sooner for the party thus addressed to not be looking so hard to police the social solecisms of others, or

you can't let pricks like this get to you tbh

― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Sunday, 21 July 2019 14:26 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think it's a terrible instinct to not enjoy giving offence tho

Yeah, I thought about "vous" too and couldn't really put my finger on why it seems different. xps

I mean, if addressing a group in a professional setting, I don't think plural "you" would be hard to understand and I'm p sure it's what I'd use. "You guys" obv informal.

Thought these days the preferred word is “guests”

A tangent, but as a native English speaker it really infuriates me when a cashier finishes with a customer and immediately shouts "Following guest!" "Next guest!" is weird (because you wouldn't shout "Next!" at someone who was truly your "guest") but at least grammatically sound. But "following" without an article ("the following guest") is fucking horrific, and should never be used as a form of direct address.

Yeah, I'd definitely avoid 'you guys' unless I'm speaking to people I know.

xp

Wtf, I don't think I've ever heard a cashier shout "following guest!". Is this really a thing in the NYC area??

lads will ye follow me please thanks have we everyone grand lads grand

it may be that the republican party isnt staying awake deciding these issues id say

Wtf, I don't think I've ever heard a cashier shout "following guest!". Is this really a thing in the NYC area??

Christ, that's grim.

I feel like there are a lot of chain stores that do the "following guest" thing. uniqlo? gap?

..... next?

Still ‘next customer’ in my nearby Uniqlo.

You there.

Get over here!

On one of the other griping threads I talked about how my local NYC market's cashiers have been instructed now to just shout "Following!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qXM0nZq0RA

i hear a lot of "following guest" even when you're just walking by places!

I have never heard this said out loud.

I've never ever heard "following guest;" that must be an east coast thing. West coast they just yell "next" or mayyyybe "next customer" but usually they just fucking stand there and take forever until the line snakes around the goddamned store and maybe people get pissed and leave.

https://i.imgur.com/MDiEUWv.jpg

I am googling about the "following guest" and all the articles written about it are new york adjacent.

I hear it so often here in NYC that I couldn’t tell you when I first heard or where I last heard it or in what particular establishments I am likely to hear it. Just used to it at this point, although it did bother me at first.

yeah, it seems very common for me to hear that. And uniqlo was one I saw written about that uses "guests".

If someone stood up for the women during a corporate meeting I would make a kneejerk shitty remark because that is weird.

"I can help the next customer" and "I can help who's next" are standard here.

You still hear those as well

I can help who's next is standard

this is an 'in line' 'on line' thing

sounds like one of those weird things where nyc people think it’s normal and everyone else finds it odd

like the concept of one table of diners paying on more than one check

that is...not odd? like i was very familiar with "we don't separate more than 4 checks" type policies way before i moved to NYC. at the two restaurants i worked at, in georgia and ohio, i separated checks all the time, the POS software had that capacity standard, etc.

in manhattan it seemed like I was speaking a foreign language if we wanted a two person table divided into two checks!

sorry, original post reversed it. everywhere else divides, nyc seems more of a “settle up with friends” region as a general rule of thumb

how would you tip in that insta- *taken out by sniper*

At first i thought by "following guest" that you all meant the cashier was announcing to their colleagues that they would be accompanying the customer around the store.

"Next please" - polite, concise.

"I can help the next customer" - I could have paid and left in the time it takes to say this.

"Following guest" - what the hell is this abomination.

'Following guest' sounds like a perfect example of I-am-totally-not-a-replicant-trying-to-blend-in.

Do the places that have automated 'next till' systems still say 'following guest'? Because it would sound even weirder coming from a recorded voice, wtf is wrong with 'next customer please'?

i say "i can help who's next" but i haven't thought my way into it, have no argument for it, and don't partic like it. maybe i'll strip down to NEXT. sometimes i say WHAT CAN I GET FOR YOU over a longer distance from counter to customer than is really appropriate.

otoh i have consciously adopted "y'all" despite living in a solid "you guys" state; perhaps this is dorky but it is also one syllable, like "vous", and it's not like you have to put on a voice to say it. the future, imo

saying "chicks"

the tough one for me is "chick" which i got all the way into my thirties with all friends of both genders using casually and lately has proven genuinely offensive to lots of people

Fuck that. Can't just let this slide by unquestioned. Normal people say "chick". It is 100% abnormal and weird to get worked up over it.

yeah it's a perfectly reasonable way to refer to baby chickens, wtf society

I've always mentally grouped 'Chick' with 'Broad' / 'Gal' / 'Dame' / 'Doll' as phrases you hear in old movies but never IRL.

e.g. Here's some chick posting "chick" about some other chick. It's normal irl conversational usage. It doesn't make anyone a 1930's gangster for saying it.

https://i.imgur.com/qonSvGe.jpg

Plus "Bird"

untuned mass damper (mh) at 8:13 21 Jul 19

in manhattan it seemed like I was speaking a foreign language if we wanted a two person table divided into two checks!

honestly it's happened to me more than once in the last month where I'm out w a male friend and the check comes predivided

LOL, one of my friends says 'doll', it's such an old time Glasgow thing to say.

again donegal usage there too

Fuck that. Can't just let this slide by unquestioned. Normal people say "chick". It is 100% abnormal and weird to get worked up over it.

The only people I've known in real life who say "chick" wore popped collars well into the late 90s. I've also never heard it used non-dismissively.

"chick" is a derisive term afaik + if the person was trying to pay a compliment and used the word ("she's a cool chick!") i would probably find them uncool tbh

see: "irreplaceable" https://genius.com/Beyonce-irreplaceable-lyrics

I think the last time I used 'chick' I was 13 and not entirely over cooties.

Ime, it was still common when I was in undergrad, which might have been when you were 13. I mostly only hear it from women now.

It was never, like, a word you would use to describe your English professor.

"That chick Julie, she's truly dazzling."

probably a regional difference really, with 'chick'

i mean, it's never really been part of my vocab but i wouldn't get upset if someone used it in a non-derogatory manner

But e.g. hardcore/punk rock people would definitely talk about "chick bands" or bands having "chick vocals". It wasn't a popped-collar-exclusive thing here by any stretch. 3xp

What about 'chick lit'?

dog latin you wouldn't "get upset" because they would not be talking about you

How about "Julie is truly dazzling"

"that chick" is syntactically unnecessary and pragmatically fraught -- just leave it out! like the sugar in your coffee, leave it out. learn to live without it. it's actually making your sentence worse.

i've always found "chick lit" insulting

There isn't a non-derogatory manner, though. There's just contexts where offense might not be taken by the people in a conversation - if you can be overheard saying it, you're an asshole.

Chick Corea as well

How about "Julie is truly dazzling"

"that chick" is syntactically unnecessary and pragmatically fraught -- just leave it out! like the sugar in your coffee, leave it out. learn to live without it. it's actually making your sentence worse.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, July 22, 2019 1:14 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't make the sentence up! It's a classic movie quote.

That doesn't make it a good idea.

who cares?
leave it out!

broke: chick
woke: chuck

lads

ladies, even.

laddies is the preferred gender-ambiguous term. no need to speak to anyone, just lie on the floor until you die #ladsladslads

The linguistic hills people will die on always fascinate me

I feel like in nyc they just tell you that two cards is the max they will split a bill.

I had a male friend who used to casually say chick a lot in the mid 90s and i still remember the withering looks & responses he used to get, until he eventually scrubbed it from his lexicon, scared me off it for life.

jeez how many withering looks does it take? i tap out at around one

dog latin you wouldn't "get upset" because they would not be talking about you

How about "Julie is truly dazzling"

"that chick" is syntactically unnecessary and pragmatically fraught -- just leave it out! like the sugar in your coffee, leave it out. learn to live without it. it's actually making your sentence worse.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, July 22, 2019 2:14 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No sure, but I guess because it's a lot less common a term in the UK, it would probably just sound a bit quaint and out of place to most people rather than rude

There were two years recently where I was calling everyone 'babydoll' and I have no clue why I was doing that.

Had you recently seen the movie Sucker Punch?

everything sounds ruder in an american accent tbf

The only time I hear it in day-to-day parlance over is when one woman addresses a female friend: 'Hey chick!', which is always taken as friendly.

I've never seen Sucker Punch. In college for one of the activities I was involved in my title was "chicktator". But it was college.

https://www.her.ie/lol/groovy-chick-where-is-she-now-315511

There were two years recently where I was calling everyone 'babydoll' and I have no clue why I was doing that.

― Yerac, Monday, July 22, 2019 1:40 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnTUSgHzZx0

?

I feel like in nyc they just tell you that two cards is the max they will split a bill.

xp at dog latinL that sounds like a different usage entirely, it's one of those terms where regionally I never heard it used as first person address, always second-person or as some descriptor

I haven't seen Tapeheads since college. I was calling people babydoll enough my niece started doing it.

I call everyone "weirdo" now and my spouse has been trying to get me to stop because I also call him that.

I am totally going to make a generalization here but I think asian owned places and super busy ones in nyc don't trifle with splitting your bill, running multiple cards. I was thinking of the sushi joints I have been in recently and some wine bars.

https://youtu.be/nEEiUr36zP8

it was once socially acceptable to sample The Smiths

The whole splitting the check thing seems like such a pain in the ass to me. But I am one of those luddite maniacs who still pays cash for things, so I would prefer to simply say to the person who's covering the check with his/her credit card, "Here's my share," and give them cash.

Most places using software to keep track of orders will have the ability to group all of the food ordered by a particular person at the table together so "splitting the bill" literally involves pushing a button to group everything by which people should go on which bill. It's literally a 30 second process and at the end you get a bill with all of your stuff and the tax you owe totaled on it so... no headache.

Ideally the restaurant would have those handheld card reader tablets that they bring to the table and they could just walk around and run everyone’s cards. Save all the confusion of how much goes on which card.

has this turned into a tipping thread already?

yeah it's a little strange that in the US we still allow random people to leave with our credit cards for like 5-10 minutes xpost.

Nor do you ever use your PIN.

i still see merchants outside the US being surprised when they run my card and I don't have to type in a pin.

Can you still pay for a worrying amount of things by just swiping the card?

xp well that's answered!

Is there a reason for that, incidentally? Credit card companies wanting payments to be as casual as possible? (Tbf having to sign is more of a hassle than typing in a PIN.)

worrying amount of things = everything.

The whole splitting the check thing seems like such a pain in the ass to me

best believe i had to read this one twice, friends and neighbours

second vote here for ogmors suggestion of "laying on floor until u die" if we are going to go to the lowest common denominator of ensuring never to upset anyone suggest away from a thoroughfare possible under a stairs or something

I heard that when signing was introduced, it came with a taboo against actually checking the signature because that seemed more disrespectful than 'sorry computer says no, do you have another card?' - but I can imagine that's not universal, and I shouldn't base my view on class and money in the US on one article in the New Yorker.

is there another thread for stuff that's considered socially acceptable now that will be unbelievable in 20+ years?

oh yeah giving info to tech 100%, that probably won't take 20 years though

― flappy bird, Thursday, 18 July 2019 17:16 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Counterpoint: freaking out about giving data to tech.

a lot of it is weird legacy crap in the US and perceived resistance to change

as in, people have always just put their card on a little tray, it comes back with a receipt, you sign it. restaurants are loathe to update their equipment -- which is now getting solved by being required to support chip cards, although that requirement isn't universal -- and the perception was that consumers would dislike a required change

a bunch of places I've been to switched straight from "take your card away to swipe it" model to "we bring a little card reader tablet to the table" which is fine

I'm used to contactless now, which seems safe enough insofar as you still need to type in your PIN above a certain sum.

One of the most upsetting moments of my life was once when I was unemployed, I'd spent the entire day home alone listening to old Miles Davis interviews and then went to a job interview later that afternoon where, to my utter mortified horror, like an out-of-body experience, I heard myself refer to my coworkers at my old job as "those cats". 15 years later my stomach still does cartwheels remembering it. Amazingly, I did not get the job.

It amuses me now how paranoid as hell I was about contactless at first and was thinking what would stop tech savvy contactless pick pockets scanning you as they walk past them. ha, don't give it a 2nd thought these days.

Heh, same here. I'm at that point where there are so many reasons to be paranoid about that kind of stuff that I've simply stopped paying it any mind.

chip and pin rolled out weirdly and incorrectly in the US for reasons I cannot fathom

traveling in the EU with an american card is a pain in the ass.

it can be the other way round too tbh. my card will get randomly declined in the USA. some places also ask you "debit or credit", the correct answer to that question is "credit" (it is a debit card!) and forget about using your PIN anywhere, it won't work

tbh I don't travel that much and on the rare occasions I have been somewhere other than the USA it's been in the EU, so maybe that's why I don't have problems anywhere else.

Actually, wait, what is the magic code for getting money from an American ATM with a UK debit card?

Is it just get some money before you go? I have forgotten, which is odd considering the obvious panic of "if this machine eats my card then I'll die here"

One of the most upsetting moments of my life was once when I was unemployed, I'd spent the entire day home alone listening to old Miles Davis interviews and then went to a job interview later that afternoon where, to my utter mortified horror, like an out-of-body experience, I heard myself refer to my coworkers at my old job as "those cats". 15 years later my stomach still does cartwheels remembering it. Amazingly, I did not get the job.

― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Monday, July 22, 2019 10:21 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is amazing. At least you didn't refer to a former coworker as "a non-playing motherfucker with only one or two sorry-ass albums out."

it's been a while so I can't remember exactly which ones, but some chains of banks' ATMs will work with UK debit cards, you just have to keep trying until you find one. not had a problem with card getting eaten, it just gets declined

xp

mind you that is the same in the EU. you can increase your odds by making sure your type of card is accepted, obviously. mine is a Visa, so if it doesn't say Visa it's not going to work, but half the time even if it does say Visa on the machine it still won't work

in what crazy world does a card not just work be it at table or cashier or ATM

tbh the days of ilx being described as UK or US are dead youse are a pair of dead or dying empires and imo should be looking agape at the future yr European posting colleagues already inhabit

Some of us are Canucks too.

a bunch of places I've been to switched straight from "take your card away to swipe it" model to "we bring a little card reader tablet to the table" which is fine

There's a place here that brings out their lil "pay the bill" tablet WHILE I'M STILL EATING THEIR MESSY FOOD. It's hella gauche.

youse are a pair of dead or dying empires

the US empire is dying, yes, but empires tend to fade out slowly. you can easily see when they have passed their zenith, but so long as their ruling class works hard to keep its grip, their accumulated wealth and power ebbs only after many generations.

otoh, the brit empire blew up amazingly fast, but mainly because during the two world wars they burned through two successive generations of their aristocracy like feeding a bonfire and the paltry survivors rather lost their will and threw in with the yanks as a junior partner.

yanks Ulster-Scots

with plenty of teutonic-scando mixed in, so as to apportion the blame fairly

during the two world wars they burned through two successive generations of their aristocracy like feeding a bonfire

lol now do france losing its empire

Wicker Lad

xp - which one?

chip and pin rolled out weirdly and incorrectly in the US for reasons I cannot fathom

Aggressive lobbying from finance and retail that decided that the (massive) cost of of credit card fraud was less hassle that replacing credit card readers with chip and pin. In Europe, the EU just mandated it was going to happen and no one complained apart from the French who had had chip and pin for years but with an incompatible system.

On the standing up when people enter the room, or join you at a table. I always do it, for everyone. Partly because it was drilled into me at school and partly because it’s impossible to greet people properly when sitting down. Whether it is a handshake, a hug or a kiss a doesn’t work as well sitting down.

> apart from the French who had had chip and pin for years

i worked for Bull HN and we had chip and pin ID cards in the mid 90s (although nothing actually used the chips in them, there were no readers anywhere)

(Bull was French-owned)

I think a large chunk of the work to get chip-and-pin rolled out in Ireland was managed by an ex-ILXor!

^^ Things you were shockingly old when you learned o_O

Card declined you poxy fule

definitely had some financial mishap in american bars by giving my credit card, and starting a tab, drinking till steaming as fuck, signing the bastarding receipt with a 20% gratuity, waking up the next day unsure of just how much i spent

can happen with any form of payment

shur manys the day after a mart day id to send in another fifth of a pig back into town to cover the tip

tell a yank that nowadays and theyd tell ya shouldve been a quarter pig ffs

Going back to the "following guest" weirdness, in Aus Ive noticed a lot of places they now bleat "next waiting!" which also makes not a lot of sense.

xp they’re lucky you sent more than the squeal

Brought up the “following guest” thing with somebody today and he told me that at DSW the cashiers are required to say “ next shoelover!”

VULTURE: Was it hard to adjust to civilian life?

LETTERMAN: It’s still hard. I have trouble operating the phone. That’s the God’s truth. I needed a pair of shoelaces. And I thought, Hell, where do you get shoelaces? And my friend said, there’s a place over off I-84, it’s the Designer Shoe Warehouse. So I go over there, and it’s a building the size of the Pentagon. It’s enormous. If you took somebody from — I don’t know, pick a country where they don’t have Designer Shoe Warehouses — blindfolded them and turned them loose in this place, they would just think, You people are insane. Who needs this many shoes? It’s sinful. It’s one of these places where there’s no employees and every now and then there’s just a scrum of shoe boxes. I’m not finding the damn shoelaces, and finally I think, Maybe it’s one of those items they’ve got at the counter. I go up there and I’m nosing around the counter and, by God, there’s shoelaces. This is after about an hour. So now I’m waiting in line and the woman checking people out says in a big loud voice, “May I help our next shoe lover, please?” I just started to tremble. Nobody else seems to have a problem with going to a store! You don’t want to have painted yourself into some elite position where it’s “Bob, go out and get me some shoelaces.” It makes you feel stupid. Here’s where I’m comfortable: There’s a bait-and-tackle store near my house. They’ve got guys in there, and you can buy live bait, you can buy artificial bait, they’ll put new line on your reel. You can talk to them about rods. They’ll tell you where to go for a largemouth bass. That’s exactly where I want to be.

https://www.vulture.com/2017/03/david-letterman-in-conversation.html

ronswanson.jpg

Paying a guy to paddle my canoe. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

david otm

I stop in DSW pretty regularly. It's definitely insane. But I've never had anyone call me a "shoe lover".

thought we were beyond that as a society

Don't kinkshame

We were in the Whole Foods off Columbus Circle yesterday and I was listening out for "Following Guest" but didn't hear it - but I also didn't understand a single thing about what the queuing system was, there seemed to be three lanes feeding into the same set of checkout machines, and when we haltingly took one we overheard something that we're paranoid was people complaining about us skipping the line in some way.

(Things you fear are socially acceptable but still horrify you)

Nothing about waiting in line at WF is socially acceptable, everyone is horrified

xp do they have self-checkouts or were they regular staffed ones? this sounds odd and like I might screw it up. normal in my area is each staffed checkout has a line, self checkouts are relatively new but typically have one line for the whole area and first in line takes whichever frees up next

I’ve never heard anyone call for a customer at a grocery checkout unless it’s a register that just opened and no one’s noticed

These are staffed express checkouts, multiple lines, with screens telling each group which checkout stall to go to. They just got them here too.

well, that’s new

Sounds like the DMV, except the express part

omg lol yes now that WF has been bought by Amazon they can adopt disruptive innovations from the DMV and the passport office

willing to bet "twitter" is gonna be all over this list in ten years or less

"Twitter"?

I have anxiety about the WF line too. All the ny stores are set up crazy. I hate going there.

I look forward to more of this "following guest" reconnaissance.

My wife has pointed out that she got Following Guested at a Duane Reade before that - we are in Boston now and going to another DR - will report back about whether this infection has been retained.

excellent reportage

We went to CVS instead and it was 11.00 on a Tuesday so it was just us and some ghosts, reportage ends.

there’s a duane reade in boston?????

t/s: following guest vs following ghost

following Geist

https://i.imgur.com/4mQqZct.png

No, no Duane Reade, I looked for pharmacy and assumed one of them would be.

Watched 1st half of Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious' recently and immediately thought of this thread. The combo of his homophobic "jokes" and the audience guffawing seriously made me nauseous.

I was just thinking of how all of us enlightened 40+ year-olds could probably still do the whole Honeymooners routine from memory.

US pop culture had already hammered the existence of The Honeymooners into me, but I saw three minutes of it on a family trip to America when I was 11, and that’s still all. Didn’t it run for a few decades, on and off? Is it the “bang zoom to the moon” domestic violence thing that’s a “routine” that never changed?

i don't really want to go on record as defending the honeymooners, but there is *never* any doubt that alice is utterly in charge

otm

it still runs here and there on local late night, and they never stopped doing the New Year's Eve marathons in NY

speaking of something that aged poorly, i just caught the ending of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on cable and hollllly shit that comes super hateful now

it did at the time. Naked Gun 33.3 too.

The freshman hazing scenes in Dazed and Confused wouldn’t stand a chance today

Really? Even when it was a new movie, the whole point of those scenes and much of the rest of the film was that this was how people acted in the distant past, and it was clearly no longer acceptable.

I was talking about the Eddie Murphy "Norton? I've been lookin' at you... lookin'' at me..." routine.

the "homina homina homina" bit is still funny

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TuhSV-PCtyQ

*someone does or says something slightly unusual*

"are you on crack"

wait thats out now?

speaking of something that aged poorly, i just caught the ending of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on cable and hollllly shit that comes super hateful now

yeah I recently rewatched it and it goes from "this is actually still really funny" to "wow that comes off poorly" really quickly. I would guess there's a whole host of 80's/90's films that in retrospect were super homo/transphobic

Revenge of the Nerds is also a pretty egregious example...no gay panic but there's a scene that's basically straight up rape which ultimately becomes the hero's triumph. its gross.

lol "basically" is unnecessary hedging

there's a much more recent film which has a similar scene played similarly but i can't for the life of me remember what it is

The Boat That Rocked?

Observe and Report?

*someone does or says something slightly unusual*

"are you on crack"

― flappy bird, Thursday, September 12, 2019 11:30 AM bookmarkflaglink

Someone posted a newspaper article (taken from a cellphone, obv.) on my NextDoor group about two people who had been arrested for smoking meth in a crawlspace. Her comment was "Freakin' crackheads!"

I mean, not to split hairs or anything, but "meth head" is part of the national vernacular now, but also, there's way too much racism bounded up in the word "crackhead" for it to ever be used, especially by Gladys Kriavitz of the Oak Meadow neighborhood group.

Observe and Report is the opposite

The Boat That Rocked?

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, September 12, 2019 10:06 AM (one hour ago)

yes, that's it! and i think i read about it on ilx a month ago haha

I would guess there's a whole host of 80's/90's films that in retrospect were super homo/transphobic
― frogbs, Thursday, 12 September 2019 16:54 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

00's too. I watched the hangover for the first time recently and hoo boy...

https://images.app.goo.gl/yS7v7rpDfSmCgU1K6

speaking of something that aged poorly, i just caught the ending of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on cable and hollllly shit that comes super hateful now

― Nhex

man why the fuck are they even showing that on cable, that movie is the fucking poster child for transphobia. did they have "all this and rabbit stew" as the short subject beforehand?

More details about you guys.

https://time.com/5688255/you-guys/

i'm into "y'inz"