Curmudgeonism Through the Ages
For the novel, I want a running motif of Things Curmudgeons Have Disapproved Of since the late 70s. So far I’m stuck on jogging (70s) and answering machines (80s). Then what??
Things people hated because they were new and strange. Things you could score points by being “against” that we would now wonder, “Why was that particular stick up anybody’s ass? No, seriously!” Endless numbers of aging newspapermen (they were almost all men) felt free to write columns disapproving of the “narcissism” and strangeness of jogging. Friends thought nothing of beginning their telephone messages to friends with, “Wow. I’m really uncomfortable talking to a machine.” In other words, there were phenomena against which people felt free to be rude as fuck to other people. I’ve got two so far. Do my work for me, please.
Comment by cleek —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:43 am
vidya games
rap music (make air quotes around “music”, for the full effect)
ADD/ADHD
Comment by abb1 —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:49 am
Before the late 70s – it’s “get a haircut, hippie!”
Comment by Leonard —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:52 am
Cell phones. “Shut up ‘n’ drive!”
Comment by monkey.dave —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:52 am
For some reason, curmudgeons really hate soccer. Every time the World Cup rolls around, you get dozens of columns on the subject of “Yes, 4 Billion People Can Be Wrong.”
Also, Pac Man fever is destroying our nation’s youth.
Comment by Minivet —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:19 am
Wasn’t around then, but maybe VCRs?
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:30 am
In the early 90s, email prompted histrionic rants about the death of writing. Now, of course, it is the last bastion of writing against IM and texting. (I don’t use either of the latter two, but that’s because I think too slowly to be any good at them rather than because they are BAD WRONG FUN.)
More recently, it’s kind of a popular Internet meme to post funny stories of mistreating telephone call center operators, particularly if they’re foreign. This gets your “rude as fuck” point, since making some poor minimum-wage schlub’s day worse doesn’t actually stick it to the man.
You can probably pick any Stanley Crouch essay to find a couple of grumpy old man rants.
Comment by Chris Quinones —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:35 am
CDs. Why buy all your music over again when you have perfectly good records?
I suppose touch-tone phones bugged people back in the day.
Pretty much anything my nephews and nieces would be fascinated to know how they work is likely to qualify. Or, something you really miss when it breaks — I am currently sans microwave, and you know, leftovers are a pain to reheat on the stove!
Comment by wade —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:36 am
late 80’s : raving, house music, that bloody repetitive bass.
90’s : the internets, airbags, computers that land planes in the fog.
00’s : nanotechnology, genetic modification
Comment by Hesiod —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:44 am
How about the “commercialism of Christmas?”
The irony being, of course, that until about the 1890’s Christmas was little more than an excuse for drunken revelry and was actually banned in many places in the US.
It was only the “commercialization” of the Holiday, turning it into a gift giving, decoratrions industry, that saved it and turned it into the family holiday that it is for millions of Aericans.
Comment by JDC —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:03 am
television
color television
aligator shirts
ads before movies
hats
no hats
vegetarians
starbucks
comic books
genre fiction
fiction
automatic transmission
unleaded gas
tire studs
seat belts
saturday night live
flash animation
kids these days
clothing
makeup on young girls
makeup on young women
makeup
animation
architecture
allowance amount
dancing
spanking
nuns
latin mass
typing
word processing
ball point pens
cuff links
narrow-rule loose leaf paper (my fave!)
Windsor knots
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Alexander Cockburn, one of our great curmudgeons, wrote a column sometime in the ’80s about how he still did all his work on a typewriter and was sure most other writers would do once the passing fad of word processing had blown over.
8-
I can’t recall insulting anybody’s nanotechnology lately, but maybe I’m just behind the curve.
Speaking of nanotech, you could also make a list of Fresh New Hotnesses (technological and otherwise) about which the curmudgeons turned out to be right…
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:18 am
Come to think of it, Montaigne thought handguns were a gimmick that worked just because the noise startled people; once they got used to that, swords would be making a comeback real soon.
If by 70s you mean 1570s.
Comment by The Modesto Kid —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:21 am
In my experience, a popular thing for curmudgeons to take exception to is children being instructed in self-confidence. Or I mean, attention being paid to self-confidence as an educational goal. Something like that.
Comment by The Modesto Kid —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:22 am
Also, CGI animation in movies.
Comment by Eric Scharf —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:31 am
Blegging. I still can’t get over how many people were put off by it.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Facebook & myspace seem to be pretty big current curmudgeon-targets.
Comment by Anodyne —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:55 am
1. The legacy of free agency in professional sports, including strikes, lockouts, player movement and the erosion of loyalty, civic identification, and American heroism.
2. The ubiquitous, real-time focus on the economics and life-styles of superstars from entertainment, business, politics, athletics, etc.
Comment by Sean —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:00 am
Prozac. The Kids in the Hall made a whole movie about it!
The Internet–I remember my little brother telling me it was a fad when I spent a lot of time on CompuServe. Related: texting, MySpace, etc.
Television–This has been going on since the thing was invented, but you still routinely hear people brag about how they don’t watch TV. Now I just think of The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica et al and say to myself “what an idiot.”
Comment by Joe Strummer —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:04 am
1980s – Boomboxes – which may have been an actual nuisance, but did they really require a slew of local ordinances prohibiting them? Certainly a curdmudgeon factor
Then Walkmen, which sort of solved the problem of Boomboxes, but elicited cries of people bowling alone.
TV Remote Controls in the late 70s/80s. I actually recall people when I was young bitching about remote controls on the grounds that what was the big deal of getting off the couch at changing channels.
D&D – although here maybe getting into territory of “what’s happening to our kids” rather than pure curmudgeonness.
Carphones – early precursors to the cell phone. More envy than curmudgeonness
Microwaves – in addition to the concerns about nuking people to death, also curmudgeonness over wanting food now rather than letting it slow cook in the oven.
Comment by Doug T —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:06 am
I am currently a curmudgeon about text messaging.
Pretty much all music throughout the 20th century, from the crowd booing the premier of the Rites of Spring to the denouncements of decadent jazz, on through Elvis, rock music, heavy metal, rap, etc. I suppose this can be traced all the way back to Plato.
(Many?) Libertarians are still stuck in a curmudgeonly denouncement of the welfare state.
There are still curmdugeons upset of the sexual revolution. Feminism in general tends to get lots of people’s goats still. Gay rights, ditto, another one that will baffle people in 100 years, I’d predict.
Almost every environmental issue for the past 30 years (at least), from Rachel Carson to the ozone layer to global warming.
Comment by Doug T —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:07 am
Oh, genetically altered foods is another one.
Comment by William Burns —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:19 am
Global warming. Back in my day, we didn’t have ninety degree days in October. I blame these kids today.
Comment by arthur —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:20 am
Fax machines! Some folks refused to read faxes in the 1980’s. Absence of envelopes was tooscary. Also the quality was low and the paper curled up. I wonder if anyone maintained the didsain with faxes until they were replaced by email?
Whe I started practicing law in 1991, curmudgeons were strongly opposed to lawyers having their own computers, since those were for secretaries.
My recently deceased senior (law firm) partner kept going to some meetings well into his 90’s. He had a charming story about when he was a young lawyer, and took a storng pro-technology position on on replacing manual typewriters with electric. The senior guys held out for yeras, arguing about the cost, mechanical failures, the loss of productivity during blackouts, and the noise.
Comment by Hesiod —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:26 am
I am a curmudgeon about the “paperless office.”
I’ll belive it when I see it.
Comment by arthur —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:28 am
Also, curmudgeonly computer users hated the mouse when it first came out, complaining that you can’t keep typing if you have to lift up your hands to find the damn thing.
Comment by lawrence krubner —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:42 am
If you lived in one of the states where gas station attendants used to be legally mandated, then there disappearance might be one more thing. Only New Jersey still legally mandates them. The other 49 states allow self-service gas stations. But it used to be all 50 states that had them, legally mandated or not, servants who jumped and ran to put gas in your car.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:43 am
Nuclear war. People were really opposed to it in the 80’s. Jonathan Schell’s “The Fate of the Earth”, Sagan obsessing about nuclear winter, and even Reagan got into the act by saying MAD was bad and pushing SDI as the antidote. Nowadays we fantasize about maybe dropping little ones on Iran, so I guess those old fears look pretty silly now.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:44 am
And with “blegging,” Eric wins the thread!
Comment by joel hanes —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:48 am
Cell phones.
Before cell phones, pagers (derided as pimp accessories for all except doctors)
Automatic transmissions.
Transistor amplification (tubes sound “warmer”)
Call waiting.
All fashion trends embraced by pre-teen girls at the time they were first fashionable.
Marijuana.
Non-white people who didn’t “know their place”.
Uppity women. Women with jobs.
The Pill.
Guitar music in church.
The metric system
The New Math
Sex education
Comment by Glen Raphael —
November 2, 2007 @ 10:51 am
SUVs. (Hummers are still on the list today)
electric guitars
Comment by Eric Martin —
November 2, 2007 @ 11:00 am
blogs
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 2, 2007 @ 11:16 am
Minivans had a bad rap for awhile.
Aside from that, everything I thought up has been mentioned.
Comment by jlw —
November 2, 2007 @ 11:17 am
Casual work attire. (I still wear a tie to work just because I enjoy the symbolism of taking it off at the end of the day.)
Bottled water.
Starbucks and other high-end coffee joints.
The Simpsons.
Replacing library card catalogues with computer ized systems.
Digital cameras.
Hybrid-electric cars.
Internet commerce.
–and, of course, role playing games.
Comment by hf —
November 2, 2007 @ 11:18 am
Novels written in the present tense
That damned magical realism stuff
For that matter, any non-genre fiction published after 1910 in the US or 1950 in the UK.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 2, 2007 @ 11:18 am
Oh, wait – nobody mentioned iPods.
Comment by DangerMan —
November 2, 2007 @ 11:48 am
Kids.
Cars that aren’t made out of ‘real metal’
Baggy pants
Tight pants
Underwear (You would think that given the number of differing curmudgeons on underwear, that not wearing it would be a solution. No so.)
Industrious Foreigners taking our jobs
Lazy Foreigners who won’t work
People Not Supporting The Troops
Anything Clinton
What They Are Teaching Our Kids
Celebrating Hallowe’en
Not Celebrating Christmas
Lack of proper respect for Flag Day (June 15th)
That new repeating rifle.
Social Security, and how it’s a Ponzi scheme, but they can’t even mail my check on time.
Eyebrow piercings
Non-military tattoos
DEMAND KURV!
Ron Paul
Comment by Eric Scharf —
November 2, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
Jim: And with “blegging,†Eric wins the thread!
Cool! I can dine out on that for at least a weekend.
One that occurred to me on the way to work: Mail ballots and other alternatives to meatspace polling places.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
November 2, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
SUVs. (Hummers are still on the list today)
You can have my right to be gratuitously rude as fuck to Hummer owners when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Comment by Nell —
November 2, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
Donald Johnson wins the thread.
Comment by Ian —
November 2, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
How far back in time do you want to go?
Booze (late 19th C -> early 20th C)
- demonized (literally — “demon rum”)
- shaming by the self righteous (drinkers treated with the same contempt that smokers get now)
- ultimately prohibition, drinkers driven underground
Comment by lawrence krubner —
November 2, 2007 @ 12:57 pm
Microsoft PowerPoint. Though, of course, all decent, freedom-loving people stand united against this plague.
Comment by lawrence krubner —
November 2, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
There is all the stuff that Curmudgeons complain about every year: sex, the lack of god, etc.
I was surprised to be standing in a checkout line in the summer of 1999, and around me were 4 or 5 women, all in their 30s, I think, and they were talking about something that had happened at a school their child went to. That morphed into a conversation about sex and how awful the younger generation was.
I did the math in my head and determined they were probably in their teens when Time magazine was writing overdone articles about the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s. Go figure.
Comment by Greg Morrow —
November 2, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
I remember cringing through years of Boomers congratulating themselves for being unable to program a VCR or even set its clock.
Comment by Phil —
November 2, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
This goes waaaaaaaaay back, but: the wheel. C’mon, you know somebody thought it was ridiculous.
Comment by Hesiod —
November 2, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
Oh. I have one.
How about lamenting the decline of the big three network news broadcasts?
Has there been any columnist in American who hasn’t?
Comment by Melodie —
November 2, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
Here in Canada, a lot of people kicked up a huge kerfuffle when we replaced dollar bills with coins. I worked in retail at the time and I still remember getting into arguments with people who refused to take them.
Comment by Robert Waldmann —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
Don’t you just hate those people who always have head phones on listening to those little teeny tiny tape recorders or radios or whatever* **? They want to cut out the whole rest of the world. Also if they deign to speak they always talk a little to loud.
* 1981 Walkmen or walkmans or damn why don’t those twits who tried to spell “sonny” Sony think about plurals ?
** 2001 i-pods or MP3 players and will someone explain to me what he hell is the difference ?
This is a bonus double rant
Comment by monkey.dave —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
#29 New Math
Yes, defintely. I haven’t thought about New Math in about 26seven years, but it was definitely a popular one with professional curmudgeons at the time.
Also, airline food. And didja ever notice that the magazines at the doctor’s office are old and out-of-date?
Comment by Jon H —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
Dungeons & Dragons, a 70s creation which hit mainstream awareness in the 80s, and caused people to freak out. Not necessarily just the religious, either.
Comment by Jon H —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
Restrictions on legal fireworks reducing law-abiding people to the use of lame-o sparklers.
Big-box bookstores, and/or the fate of independents (most of which are not that good anyway because many areas simply can’t support a decent bookstore).
Comment by UN Plaza —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
Sagging pants, and the underwear they reveal.
Trying to talk to a human being when calling a customer service 1-800 number.
Comment by jlw —
November 2, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Following up on Lawrence Krubner @ 42, wasn’t there a snit fit a couple years ago about the oral sex epidemic among teens?
Though I don’t know if that qualifies as curmudgeon-ness or envy.
Comment by Gary Farber —
November 2, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
“Things people hated because they were new and strange.”
Cell phones, video games, computers, word-processing, the Internet, keyboards, typewriters, telephones — yes, I knew a number of people opposed to both of those last two in the Seventies — VHS, automatic transmissions, feminism, dark-skinned people, foreign languages, baby boomers taking power, the Bicentienniel, Jimmy Carter, hippies, homosexuals, women’s unshaven armpits, styrofoam packing materials, airport delays, broken pay phones, over-small fonts on nametags, empty hotel ice machines, digital music can never be as good as analog, bad tv reception, colorized movies, subtitles, dubbing, pan-and-scan, widescreen, hi-fi, stereo, airbags, layoffs, automatic elevators, loud rock music, people talking about their therapy, vegetarianism, health food, dieting, atheism, long hair on men, the draft, Valley-speak, the Man, words like “groovy,” tie-dye, beads, sandals, the M-16, batteries not being included, the difficulties of assembling toys/furniture/etc., Christmas coming earlier every year, commercialization of holidays, parking regulations, bicycle lanes, lack of bicyle lanes, the homeless, not helping the homeless enough, people saying we’re not helping the homeless enough, you want me to eat raw fish?, rap isn’t music, the smell of white-out, the word “sci-fi,” alien abductions, mind-control satellites, the Trilateral Commission, oil prices, over-population, the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, Californians moving to Seattle, New Yorkers existing, really, I could just keep going indefinitely, ad infinitum.
Also, the alleged decline of: newspapers, tv news, literacy, manners, children, youth, adults, the elderly, respect, wisdom, politicians, teachers, service, movies, fiction, family life, the nuclear family, manufacturing, unions, politics, culture, gentility, privacy, abstinence, chastity, modesty, courage, wisdom, morality, thrift, James Bond after Sean Connery, rock ‘n roll, religion, secularism, honor, the neighborhood, the quality of everything, and the lack of a good five-cent cigar.
But one can just keep going and going and going, never stopping, with this sort of thing.
Yes, I’ve carefully not read any comments before answering: that would be cheating.
Comment by Bill Arnold —
November 2, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
Also, curmudgeonly computer users hated the mouse when it first came out, complaining that you can’t keep typing if you have to lift up your hands to find the damn thing.
Touch-typing this on a Thinkpad keyboard with the little red nipple/mouse stick between the ‘g’ and ‘h’ keys.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
November 2, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Guitar music in church
As an atheist in his late 20s, I am unequivocally opposed to guitar music in church. I want a piano, an organ, and an old white man screaming at me that I’m going to burn in the pit of Hell. This lovey-dovey, needs-oriented, soft rock pussyfootianity needs to go.
Comment by Mona —
November 2, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
arthur:
Ditto, here. After graduating from a top tier school where we did all our writing on a computer and never even saw a dictation machine, I started at a small Midwestern firm at about that same time, and the partners tried mightily to MAKE me dictate into that…thing. I swore — truthfully — that I simply cannot write that way. Before they knew it, I was doing all my work in the basement library where there stood the only computer save those the secretaries had. The partners didn’t like that.
Westlaw online was like a foreign invasion to these guys.
I didn’t stay there long.
Comment by Mona —
November 2, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
New religions aka “cults.” Could the news media and the network movies of the 70s have survived without that bugaboo?
Comment by Avram —
November 2, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
Quiche.
Comment by HipHopLawyer —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
Masturbation.
Comment by HipHopLawyer —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
guns made (mostly) of plastic
airport security
GUI
Copernican solar system
and also, I remember tons of old-school computer guys back in the early-to-mid- 90s complaining about the use of graphics (and hyperlinks, and even colors) on the internet. I recall people telling me on IRC “i remember when the internet was black and white”, and they weren’t just saying that to show that they were experienced network/tech guys, they were saying it because they wished it was still that way. I guess they liked having that “barrier to entry” to keep out the infidels, and the fact that the internet was clearly becoming more accessible to people other than hard-core techies was extremely disturbing to them.
Comment by HipHopLawyer —
November 2, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
er, don’t mean to spam the thread, but the one thing I remember people being the most curmudgeonly about when I was growing up in the 70s was plastic. Adults were always going on and on about these “cheap crappy plastic _____s”. They won’t last! You’ll have to throw them away in a couple of years! They’re made in China, fergawdssakes!
Now, of course, just about everydamnthing is made of plastic. And yeah, you do throw them away in a couple of years. Or a couple of days. So what?
And for that matter, “disposability” itself has been, and still is, a frequent target of curmudgeons.
Comment by vanessa d'esicatta —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
“shacking up”
Japanese cars
seatbelt laws
no smoking on airplanes and buses
no corporal punishment in public schools
the metric system
55 mph speed limit
MLK, Jr. Day (What about Thos. Jefferson!)
T-shirts with anything printed on them
clothes with designer tags on the outside
faded jeans
Susan B. Anthony dollars
“pasta” (It’s just noodles!)
sushi
any time a postage stamp goes up 2 more cents
18-year-old voting
sex-ed
women’s lib
the E.R.A.
women not wearing pantyhose
bicycle helmets
Comment by Mona —
November 2, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
bar codes
They were going to be the tool of the anti-Christ and in turn, of his minions at the United Nations.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
Re jogging:
A bad idea.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
November 2, 2007 @ 9:30 pm
Some other things curmudgeons have rejected:
The Great Leap Forward
Nuclear weapons
Fascism
The Gulag
The US military-industrial complex
The survellaince state
The shredding of the Bill of Rights
What backwards-looking fools!
Comment by bad Jim —
November 3, 2007 @ 12:51 am
I’m getting annoyed by pronouncements that someone has “won” the thread.
That, and high-fructose corn syrup.
Comment by MaryC —
November 3, 2007 @ 1:42 am
fern bars
bottled water
adults dressing up on Halloween
ATMs
lattes
Comment by Kief —
November 4, 2007 @ 7:30 am
Not helpful for you, but I found it amusing to read (in the Economist, I believe) that in the 1800’s novels were considered a bad influence on youth, because they encouraged them to live in a fantasy world.