Wasn’t that to remind parents that they had kids since most were taking drugs or alcohol to cope with life?
You say the first one like it’s a GOOD thing, that campaign has led to ridicule of an entire generation, and you point to that like it’s a good thing…?
My dad tells stories of snowstorms back in the 70s & 80s where they would leave their truck at the end of the driveway with the keys in it and unlocked.
We live very rural (my grandparents were my neighbours growing up), and snowstorms could get bad. So everyone left their vehicles out with the keys in case someone broke down on the side of the road so that they could hop in the truck and turn it on to stay warm. Never had a vehicle so much as damaged, much less stolen.
I still pick up hitchhikers. I consider it a nice thing to do if you are heading in the same direction. It may get me killed one day, but at least I'll die doing the right thing.
Hell, when I was a little boy in 2001, you could still accept a ride from strangers. I mean, sure, you could end up in the car with a wannabe John Wayne Gacy, but more often than not, it was a kind stranger offering a ride to a kid walking home in the 105 degree Texas heat.
(If the US had adequate public transit/micromobility infrastructure, worrying about random strangers picking you up – let alone for intra-city travel – wouldn't be a thing.)
I'd argue that's still the case, and always has been, and likely always will be. I don't think there's a larger number of evil people intent on harming hitchhikers, just that it is a dangerous habit and the cases that end violently are the only ones that make the news. It's more that we're better educated about it now, and so less people are willing to hitch or pick up hitchhikers now
Your dad is Balki Bartokomous?!? I have so many questions.
Did you grow up in the states or on Mypos? Is your full name Semi_Hemi_Demigod Bartokomous? Do you have your own place, or do you live with cousin-once-removed Larry? Do you know the Dance of Joy, and can you teach me?
The obsession with safety to the exclusion of all else has taken the life out of life.
Example: Can't have trick or treating anymore, having neighbors meeting and forging goodwill with neighbors under it, "they might have poisoned your candy." despite no prior epidemic of candy poisoning having led to this.
People are so obsessed with making the highly, highly improbable happening with others impossible, that most seem to just be surviving. That isn't living.
Not gonna change, really sad though. The information age turning every random crime with an interesting aspect that happened a thousand miles away from you with the perpetrator arrested into a Netflix docuseries with viewers declaring they're surprised it hasn't happened to them because they went on a walk alone once and NEVER AGAIN!
Weird everyone is so obsessed with dying at a feeble age with a shit filled diaper, senile and confused.
And people generally just ignore how much we trust each other every day. Like every single other person could kill you if you don't expect it. Push someone on the street, they fall and die. That's it. Or have something sharp and purposefully poke it into another person. We walk past hundreds if not thousands of people while walking in the city. The amount of trust humanity requires just to function is insane. And some people think all of that suddenly goes out the window on halloween etc?
No, they weren't particularly cheap. And they weren't anywhere nearly as reliable connectionwise (functionwise they were way more reliable to be honest), and the expectation to always be near it wasn't anywhere near it is today.
Devices were getting cheaper, not quite to mass adoption but getting there, however service wasn't nearly universal like it is today. There were whole towns and even some suburbs that didn't have coverage yet. It wasn't until the introduction of 3G (around like 2006, if memory serves) that phones got cheap and service became blanket for most people.