“I wish I could live in the 1950’s that only exists in the minds of Republicans.”
Every time I watch a show on Hulu these days, I wind up seeing this public service announcement.
Seriously, have the people who made this ad ever been high school students? The kids at the school I went to had no problem saying things like this in person—even to the kids who were supposedly their best friends—and being completely serious about it. It’s a way of asserting dominance and marking territory, and I’m sure that if you honestly look at adult life, too, you’ll find that the same thing happens there, largely because those adults have risen to maturity being told that their own violence, stupidity, and petty meanness as adolescents was “just part of growing up.” And, indeed, it was. The behavioral part that was ignored, justified, and tacitly endorsed by the adults in their lives.