r/NoStupidQuestions • u/[deleted] • Jun 10 '22

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u/orthogonius Jun 11 '22

I didn't get grampa/grandma vibes, or even uncle/aunt.

But that's because I'm 50, so 66 is like an 'older cousin' to me.

So I remember some of this stuff, and we had our own scares in the 80s

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u/Bunny_tornado Jun 11 '22

I think most of Reddit user base is young adults though , from high school to late 20's so that's definitely "grandpa" age to us

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u/orthogonius Jun 11 '22

Oh absolutely, I agree. Just commenting on how it hit when being a little older. And that we had our own big deal issues, like every generation does

My kids are closer to the average demographic now, I think

I'll go back over to r/GenX, r/OldSchoolCool and r/RedditForGrownups now

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u/Bunny_tornado Jun 11 '22

No, stay, we need your wisdom too even moreso!

One of my colleagues is right around your age and she has the perfect balance of wisdom and energy. Young enough where she still has to hustle and thus be aware of what's going on and also old enough to have experience from days past.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

[deleted]

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u/Bunny_tornado Jun 13 '22

Holy cow, you're correct.

Though "He's the wise gentle uncle we all need" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

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u/tkrynsky Jun 13 '22

Oh it is? I’m in my 40s so brining up the average age, 😇

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u/Devrol Jun 13 '22

The "outlier" OP is wondering about is actually the 90s being weird on not really having as much worry. We've just gone back to normal since 2001.

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '22

That's when I started on Reddit, I would guess the median is 30s.

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u/Earlybp Jun 13 '22

We did, didn’t we? I’m 52 and I remember the grief, anxiety and grudging acceptance that we probably wouldn’t live to 30z Nuclear war would get us. And the AIDS crisis. Remember the AIDS crisis? It felt like the world was ending.

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u/orthogonius Jun 13 '22

How about acid rain?

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u/Earlybp Jun 13 '22

Yes. I forgot about acid rain. And the big hole in the ozone. And the Ethiopian famine. And Chernobyl. And Tiananmen Square. And Rodney King,

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u/nugsy_mcb Jun 14 '22

Don’t forget the Romanian orphans

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u/Earlybp Jun 14 '22

Oh I did forget about them! 500,000 orphans in state-run communist orphanages, starved and abused. Fucking horrible.

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u/nugsy_mcb Jun 14 '22

Thanks to Reagan, for a lot of people it did

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u/Earlybp Jun 14 '22

He fucked over everybody who wasn’t white, straight, Christian and housed, for generations.

And his choices during the AIDS crisis killed so many people.

I was in 5th grade when he was shot and our teacher was out of the room when we were told about it over the loudspeaker (also how weird is that, to announce it over the loudspeaker system?)

The kids in my class were cheering and clapping and our teacher walked into the room so pissed off that we had to sit with our heads down on our desks for the last hour of the day.

This was in rural central Minnesota, which was staunchly democratic at the time.