I witnessed this in the 90s and 2000s. AFAIK, it started in rave culture. People would lace their fingers around glow sticks and wave them in front of a friend’s face. I was told that the effect is really cool if your rolling on MDMA. However, I also saw Mormon kids doing it stone sober, because they’re always imitating things they see without understanding the drug component (e.g. a Mormon kid at a local high school who wore a pacifier on a necklace – an MDMA raver accessory to give something to chew on – despite zero awareness of drugs).

Personally, I think these photos are a combination of raver culture seeping into the mainstream, along with a trend of “reversing subject and photographer”.

Anyone still posting on reddit (who isn’t a bot) is working for free for an unscrupulous company.

Reddit was founded during the “crowdsourcing” craze. People realized that they could launch websites where all the content was created by the users, and it would snowball into daily views.

My point is that posting and commenting on Reddit has always been doing free work for an unscrupulous company. You could argue that it wasn’t unscrupulous before it went public, but even that is debatable.

GenX American here. I thought that it might be him, but I wasn’t certain and couldn’t think of his name off the top of my head. I know he was involved in a lot of hits from my 20s, but the only reason that i recognize his face is from the Derren Brown TV spot, which I only know about because I had a co-worker who was an amateur magician.

you seem to be implying high testosterone = bro = fascist

I think it’s more that obsession with testosterone and projected/performative masculinity (i.e. machismo, toxic masculinity) is very much associated with fascist leanings.

There are a whole lot of fat, angry, unhappy middle-aged men who want to feel powerful and intimidating. Most of them don’t want to do the actual work of getting fit. They don’t want to go to a doctor, because that’s for weak people, like women and effeminate men. They don’t understand that their excess adipose tissue is messing up their hormones. Ads tell them that they just need more protein and sunlight on their testicles and finally they’ll feel powerful. They post passive-aggressive meat breakfast photos on Instagram and glare at people from their pickups, while listening to an ad telling them to buy some unregulated supplement that will boost their testosterone for only $29.99 per month.

There are also a bunch of young men who have grown up watching toxic influencers. They’re taking steroids and trying to get huge. It’s all toxic masculinity and masked insecurity.

Incidentally, I’m not in any way saying that fitness or masculinity are inherently toxic or fascist. It is, however, a popular pipeline for recruiting men into far-right and fascist ideologies these days.

Eggs. If you hate eggs or are allergic to them, then steak or chicken. Traditional breakfast meats (ham, sausage) are full of nitrates. Nothing wrong with that as an occasional treat, but don’t habituate it.

Eggs are just about the perfect morning food. I think they’re the most efficiently absorbed protein, too, when cooked. I make an omelette most days with eggs, a pepper and onion blend, spinach, and some cheese.

There was a fitness epidemic in the 90s?!

Aerobics and running were big in the late 70s to early 80s, but the 90s was about being big and soft. The clothes were oversized. Waists were high. Centerfolds had big boobs and wide waists.

The 90s was obsessed with “lite”, i.e. cutting fats – especially saturated fats – out of foods, and with lowering cholesterol. Oh, and fiber. I don’t recall any fitness craze, though.

You’re absolutely right about the right-wing machismo trend. Manly men eat lots of meat and maximize protein. Just look how manly I am with my steak, nevermind how I waddled in from my lifted pickup.

Lucky me, I’m stuck on 24H2.

I put a few hours into poring over various log files, trying to decipher vague error messages, before finally saying “fuck it.”

Great news, but what’s with that absolute serial killer smile in the main photo?

Users have been complaining about every piece of software forever.

Not really. People stood in lines for Windows 95. I don’t think I ever heard a complaint specifically about that OS. 2000 brought the 95 interface to the NT kernel. XP got mild criticism for looking childish, but people liked it as a stability improvement from 95 and 98.

Vista was the first Microsoft OS that saw a lot of backlash. It was more secure, but ran slowly on anything that wasn’t very new hardware. 7 was widely enjoyed, 8 was mixed (very tolerable with something like ClassicShell), 10 was beloved, and 11 is widely hated for a huge variety of reasons.

Can you find someone with a complaint about any of these OSes? Sure, but that’s meaningless. The fact is that MS has released both beloved and hated OSes, and Vista is the only one to receive as much hate as 11.

Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can’t love women, only objectify them?

By that logic, a man or woman can’t love his or her child. Children don’t really want to see their parent(s) being vulnerable. Is it good to model vulnerability for, say, a teenager? Sure. But if you’re breaking down in tears in front of your four year old, you’re probably going to upset and frighten the child.

I think that people’s interpretations and expectations of ‘love’ vary tremendously, and plenty of people feel like they’re in secure, loving relationships that you wouldn’t see any value in.

Luckily, I know something that would probably help her get over the trauma…

From what I’ve seen, it’s CRT televisions that are sought after by vintage gamers, not out-of-date computer monitors. There were so many truly awful CRT computer monitors out there before LCDs came around. I’m aware that there were plenty of cheap, low-quality LCDs, too, I just want to drive home the point about all the awful, .41 dot-pitch, flickering SVGA monitors with inconsistent, blotchy color that roamed the earth in the before times (i.e. the 90s).

Things like the 40 year old computer monitors have a negative value, unless they’re something special like a 21" Trinitron or an IBM T220/221.

Unless the furniture and furnishings are of a sought-after style (e.g. Art Deco), they’re basically worthless.

I sold most of my belongings back in 2009. Furniture and beds had basically zero value. A solid wood table retained decent value. Electronics were worthless unless they were vintage collectable (e.g. Rotel amplifier). eBay was the best place to sell things because people are committed. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are a huge time-suck because you get so many flakes, low-ballers, and tire-kickers.