Random Thoughts

[ntw3001]

Fhrghl Bz jkaZA jajajajajaja

edit: Welcome to page 27! Let me show you around. That post right below me? Don't read what that guy says. That guy is an idiot.

[Judas Maccabeus]

He's right you know. I am an idiot and I am lying.

[MysticalDescent]

[badplantmommy]

Band-aid shoebox moonpie!

[PonderThis]

I see ... [/psychomolologist]

[Android Replica]

I imagine the forum is a bit too young for an Ed Sullivan reference....

[jvcc]

I imagine the forum is a bit too young for an Ed Sullivan reference....

That was a really big shew back in the day, right?

[sum yun gai]

i found this factoid to be quite interesting. can we get some confirmation from our british friends here?

[PonderThis]

What's really great about that picture is that the guy in the striped shirt is the one person who isn't drunk.

[EsBe]

I hope none of those beers' employers see these pics, or they'll get fired for being photographed in the presence of drunk people.

[ntw3001]

i found this factoid to be quite interesting. can we get some confirmation from our british friends here?

Until recently: Yes. For me, at least. I only meet people with cameras on big meetups of school folks from the olden times, which take place in Essex and therefore require one to be no more than dimly-aware of one's surroundings. Now there are also some pictures of me walking around and stuff, which I guess is pretty handsome or something.

[jvcc]

I don't think anyone on here is old enough to have had the personal experience necessary to answer my question, but I'll ask it nonetheless. I've been watching some old game shows recently, from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and noticed that during the 50s on the gameshow What's My Line the male panelists would stand to shake hands with guests while the women remained seated. Although I was vaguely aware of this now I think outdated custom, it was bizarre to see it enacted. Anyway, on one episode an elderly and distinguished gentleman was leaving the show and both the male and female panelists rose to shake his hand. I then assumed that women would stand up to shake hands with people particularly deserving of respect, but later they did the same thing for a man who was I would say, I hope not ungenerously, not especially extraordinary. Essentially I want to understand why women did and didn't stand when shaking hands with someone. My thoughts are that if women would stand for old men but not younger men it either means that they would stand in order to show extra deference and the elderly were automatically deemed worthy of such deference or standing up to shake hands with a man might have seemed forward and doing it for a man near one's own age might have been considered crass.

As an additional query, bringing us into the present century, are there new rules of etiquette for the current generation that I'm not aware of or are people just, as they seem, generally less concerned with good manners? I'm loath to say that just because politeness is not expressed as it once was that necessarily means it no longer exists, but the fact that people of my age group so frequently break what I consider to be already established rules of etiquette (answering your phone while spending time with another person, making and breaking engagements cavalierly, etc.) and are not apparently embracing any other rules to take their place causes me to wonder. This may only apply to the current American generation, by the way. I can't speak for any other countries represented here.

[EsBe]

As an additional query, bringing us into the present century, are there new rules of etiquette for the current generation that I'm not aware of or are people just, as they seem, generally less concerned with good manners? I'm loath to say that just because politeness is not expressed as it once was that necessarily means it no longer exists, but the fact that people of my age group so frequently break what I consider to be already established rules of etiquette (answering your phone while spending time with another person, making and breaking engagements cavalierly, etc.) and are not apparently embracing any other rules to take their place causes me to wonder. This may only apply to the current American generation, by the way. I can't speak for any other countries represented here.

Little of column A, little of column B. I read somewhere (and don't doubt) that internet generations are more comfortable with asynchronous communication (texting) than they are with face to face talk, so it's easy to imagine that some people think it's okay to treat face to face communications like they do texting, i.e. they think they can multitask and juggle multiple conversations at once (and assume that their companions are waiting for an excuse to do the same).

[jvcc]

In my experience it's not so much that people think they can juggle a text/phone conversation and a face-to-face one as they ignore the person they're with to handle their text/phone conversation.

If there was a memo about new forms of etiquette or an overthrow of the etiquette system, I assume I missed it having been homeschooled throughout middle school and high school. I remember when I was a young teenager I used to say "Pardon?" or "Excuse me?" if I hadn't heard what someone said, and my friends from public and private schools, constituting my peer group, gently mocked me for being so formal. I lost the habit not long after that and started saying "What?" like them, which is a shame.

Well, I say it's a shame. I don't want to sound like I'm bemoaning the thoughtlessness of the youth of today. I am very much beyond caring in either case, I just find it an interesting topic for discussion.

[MysticalDescent]

Manners appear to have largely reduced to holding doors open and almost nothing else.

People around here are perfectly nice though. I swear that when you're in a city South of Oxford, people deliberately try to walk into you as you walk down the street.

[ntw3001]

That's true. Some fat oaf did that to me the other week, and Toronto is south of Oxford.

[badplantmommy]

People still hold doors open for other people? That rarely happens around here.

I don't remember much about game shows from the 60's and 70's (I wasn't around in the 50's), other than when Richard Dawson was the host of Family Feud, he had to kiss all the female contestants.

[jvcc]

Richard Dawson was hilarious on Match Game, although overly tanned--the orangeness of Jersey Shore is not entirely a new thing, apparently. I'm not a huge fan of Family Feud.

[chrismachine]

Oh come on, that's a great show. One of the only times where the most current incarnation is the best one. Match game was great, as were card sharks and that one where there were three people acting as the same person and you had to figure out who the real one was, and password.

[sum yun gai]

yes, family feud is and was one of the greatest game shows of all time.

also, i was not born until the mid-70s but i'm pretty sure it was considered quite forward for a woman to show any kind of niceties toward a man who was not her husband, especially a man who was in the age range of someone she could be married to. in the 50s and 60s a handshake was too forward, today's equivalent would probably be her grabbing his crotch or something....

[jvcc]

Is that not how I'm supposed to greet them?

[chrismachine]

If you did this you would never be single, so I call shenanigans.

[EsBe]

This is why I can't wait for the future.

[GregorR]

Regarding the conversation on manners, I will quote one of the few good bits of XKCD: "More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did."

Manners are platitudes, artifices designed as a façade of nature to grease the wheels of socialization. Judging a person or a generation by another's use of something as valueless as niceties is not only absurd, but offensive.

[jvcc]

I'm not concerned with societal decline, as I hope I already made clear. I'm just interested to know if any new form of etiquette has usurped older forms, because if not a society not concerned with manners seemed like an anomaly (I say this with virtually no knowledge of the history of etiquette). And while the people in the 50s on What's My Line shook hands prettily, the audience would also wolf whistle at pretty female contestants or if they had on a contestant who was not white and not particularly famous the panelists would feel free to make vaguely or overtly racist remarks to him or her. So I don't suffer from the delusion that the past is a bygone era of superior manners, only that there may have been more of an emphasis on outward displays of manner than there are now.