11 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: How awful did people talk pre-social media?
You were basically your word.
What you said represented who you were and you'd have to stand by it.
Because there was no anonymity.
Face-to-face communication also meant you would see the effects of your words immediately.
I'm not saying there were no assholes but you knew who they were and they would be held socially (and sometimes physically) accountable.
Comment by OkPhotograph3723 at 31/01/2025 at 19:12 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
If you were a bully at school in the 1970s, there were no consequences.
Teachers shrugged their shoulders and said it was just how things were.
The only way to avoid being bullied was to change schools or have adults teach you how to avoid being picked on. No one did that for me. No one seemed to try to change the bullies’ behavior. Their parents were usually bullies as well.
I finally figured out that having pop culture knowledge was one way to have something in common with my classmates. I got better at social interaction, but no thanks to anyone else.
But I heard people say all kinds of racist, classist things in the 1970s and 80s, and they didn’t really get called on it. My history teacher actually did that once. She called one of my classmates a bigot after he said something racist. I remember that so clearly, even where we were at the time. She really read him the riot act.
Sometimes kids would realize that they had just embarrassed themselves by making a racist comment in front of a teacher who was a POC.
It was changes in the culture that made that kind of language unacceptable that altered the way people spoke.