The Times They are A’Changin

Until today, I never really sat down to think about how the world evolved into what it is now, from what it was back when I was a kid, as far back as I can remember.  I was flipping through the TV channels today, unable to find anything worth watching, when I reached Nickelodeon and was curious to see what was on as I literally grew up watching the channel every day.  I found that as I watched, I grew more and more agitated that Nickelodeon, the channel that I grew up watching .  Anyway, I have a point, and that is this: as you walk around living your life, day after day, you never really notice big changes in society because: a big change is nothing more than a series of small changes that occur over a prolonged period of time so as to gradually ease you into the changes.

I will start with an example.  The show Rocko’s Modern Life was on Nickelodeon in the mid nineties.  There was a character on that show named Really Really Big Man.  One of Really Really Big Man’s powers was he had the ability to shoot his nipples off of his body, they would then attach themselves to his target’s eyes to show them the future.  I don’t care who you are, you can’t tell me that someone saying, “Gaze into my nipples of the future” then shooting his nipples at your eyes isn’t the most fucked up hilarious thing ever.  You know that in kids programming these days you would never see anything even remotely as edgy as that.  Hell, you’d be lucky to see a childrens program that even acknowledged that nipples even existed.  It’s hard to deny that the kids shows of my generation were the best ever.  They were so integral in our lives that we look back to them as one of the best parts of our childhoods.  Simply mention the shows, “Ren & Stimpy, Ahhh! Real Monsters, Doug, Salute Your Shorts, The Angry Beavers, CatDog” you will defiantly hear about them.  The only thing we can say about the cartoons of today is how much we can’t stand how stupidly dull and not funny they are (except for Spongebob haha).

The whole point is within my lifetime, a fairly short 20 years, I look back and it is very easy to see how much society has changed since the mid-nineties.  I wouldn’t say it’s a good change but at the same time it’s hard to say whether or not the change will be bad.  All I know is the kids watching what’s on Nickelodeon today won’t feel the same way about their childhood shows that my generation did and still does to this day.