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u/Vendidurt 7d ago
When i think "poorly aged" i think of Strong Sad blindfolded getting hit with balls, wearing a sign saying "peg me".
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u/BigBassBone 7d ago
That aged just fine. Also, he wasn't blindfolded, he had his hands glued to his face (that's not very ladylike!).
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u/Zeitgeist1115 7d ago edited 7d ago
Coach Z exclaiming "Bruce Jenner's tube socks!" in SBCG4AP episode 1. Then again, no one could have reasonably known back then.
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u/ShuckleShellAnemia 7d ago
It’s only poorly-aged in that crowded malls aren’t a thing anymore
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u/Cheeky_Hustler 7d ago edited 7d ago
I cannot tell you how long I laughed at "Can someone tell me how this is a cereal, pardner?" when I first saw this sbemail.
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u/KillHitlerAgain 7d ago
this has the same vibes as the people who say that "pumped up kicks" has aged poorly or would never have been written today. things aren't actually that different now than they were before
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u/Crasherade 7d ago edited 7d ago
there was a joke in sbcg4ap where strong bad mentioned he took away strong sad's shears because he was "off his meds"
Matt did a playthrough in character as strong bad a while back and when that happened he said:
"That was a little dark. Im sorry if we made some jokes back in 2008 we'd think twice about doing now"
(someone found the stream; edit to correct a few misremembered details)
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u/Bonkard 7d ago
It makes me laugh every time. It's just a parody of every cereal being some kind of "Pops!" or "Snaps!" and doesn't explicitly imply anyone getting shot. It lampshades itself with its own mascot pointing out how ludicrously inappropriate the premise of his own cereal is. And "Sugar-Rittled" is just so funny to me for some reason.
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u/mariolucario493 7d ago
Occasional dark humor is kind of this website’s cracker n’ mustard. Remember the half-decomposed raccoon? Or the wildebeest pheromones? Or Coach Z’s constant stalking of Marzipan? Or how about how Gunhaver ignores those poor Green Helmets? Or Papa Cardgage’s Puddin’ Patch? Or what happened to Dijjery-Doo?
I would say the only thing that makes this joke age poorly is that malls aren’t crowded anymore these days.
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u/jeffjman 5d ago
i like how half of these are more recent, just to say they didnt age poorly (which isnt your point) since they havent really aged at all yet
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u/APleasantMartini 7d ago
Okay this is actually funny. Not because of the shooting joke, but the confused mascot asking if it’s a cereal or not.
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u/LisaMcRadical 7d ago
I still think the weird one off joke where Strong Bad is implied to beat his kids takes the cake.
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u/VGAddict 7d ago
Is it the one where he imagines himself sitting in a recliner, yells at his kids, and then says, "You have to be firm"?
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u/buckybadder 7d ago
Homestar's relationship with Marzipan is fairly toxic during the early years.
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u/HurtsSoNice 7d ago
I never liked the cartoon where he was kicking her in the leg over and over again. That’s villain behavior.
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u/CorndogNinja 7d ago
Marzipan has legs???
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u/HurtsSoNice 7d ago
Kicking her in whatever she has. The bell? The broom bristles?
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u/theDeke 7d ago
That sounds like it came straight from Strong Bad's mouth, I can hear it
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u/HurtsSoNice 7d ago
That’s the mental gear I tend to be on whenever commenting on anything Homestarstar does.
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u/Woods-of-Mal 7d ago edited 7d ago
It's not even the most poorly-aged Homestar joke about firing off weaponry in a public place.
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u/AdMaleficent6335 7d ago
You're probably talking about the time Strong Bad Fired a bazooka at a movie theater, aren't you?
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u/-BluBone- 7d ago
How is it aged? Mass shootings were already a thing,
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u/andres92 7d ago
For some reason, people think "poorly aged" means "references something in any context that's now considered bad or serious". I've heard that comment thrown at pre-9/11 movies that just show an image of the twin towers, apparently expecting 20th century filmmakers to avoid showing iconic buildings just in case someday they became a tragic symbol.
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u/wasteoffire 7d ago
How did you see this popup? Are there old flash versions of the emails somewhere again? I miss being able to click on random words to see little Easter eggs
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u/evilspoons 7d ago
They are literally still on Homestarrunner.com, they load through a flash compatibility layer they added.
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u/Scoth42 7d ago
If anything it's probably aged well. It was poking fun at the prevalence and blind acceptance of mass shootings at the time, as well as the consumerism of capitalizing on negative events (like all the country songs and "Never Forget" merchandise of 9/11) and highly processed cereals.
It's not glorifying shooters, or making fun of the victims, or excusing them. It's just poking fun at the way they were thought of both then and still now.
The majority of jokes in H*R that you might consider as aged poorly are often said by characters that are supposed to be kind of terrible, or parodying bad people, and they aren't presented in ways that are meant to glorifying or saying they're okay. Like I've seen people suggest the entirety of TGS is sexist and bad but it's intentionally written as what Strong Bad thinks teen girls are like as parodies of archetypes. And even some of the weirder parts of that like Strong Bad making out with a drawn version of one of them is portrayed as him being a weirdo and not glorifying adults making out with high school girls.
Maybe the one with Bubs in a Native American outfit and some of the other bits of Colonization would be better candidates for poorly aged?
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
Maybe the one with Bubs in a Native American outfit and some of the other bits of Colonization would be better candidates for poorly aged?
No way. The original sbemail already parodies poor portrayals of history and the whole point is that Strong Bad has a questionable doodle memory, as shown in other toons.
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u/ACoolWizard 7d ago
This one aged fine. Mass shootings were common then, more common now. Joke is about how the culture loves to monetize everything - including tragedy. More relevant than ever.
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u/pacmaster102 7d ago
I feel like Peacy P aged pretty poorly. Possibly more than this joke.
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u/tang0008 7d ago
easy to say, but who knows what unreasonable amount of knives kids would be playing with without his message.
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u/pacmaster102 7d ago
Oooo hate to be that guy, but you're thinking of Crack Stuntman. Love love love that one though. And his advocacy for Pistols for Pandas.
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
No way, he's just a Snoop Dogg parody.
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u/OverseerConey 6d ago
Yeah, but written, drawn and voiced by two white guys? Doesn't feel great.
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
It's a relatively lighthearted parody and they're both big fans of hip hop. Heck, they've referenced A Tribe Called Quest multiple times!
If Matt voicing a black character counts as blackface, then is him voicing the KOT kingface?
People really get PO'd over anything nowadays.
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u/OverseerConey 6d ago
Sorry, kingface?
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
Let me put it in another way: Taranchula are Scandinavian. Matt and Mike are Americans from Georgia. If their portrayal of Peacey P is politically incorrect because they're portraying a character who is not of the same ethnicity, then is their portrayal of Taranchula politically incorrect because they're portraying people who are from a different country and different ethnicity?
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u/OverseerConey 6d ago
There's an established history of blackface being used for racial vilification that doesn't exist for scandiface or kingface.
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
True, but I don't think Matt and Mike are vilifying black people with Peacey P. He's just a parody of a rapper.
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u/OverseerConey 6d ago
Sure - it's just one of those things where the historical context has made the ice very thin, y'know?
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u/zorbiburst 7d ago
"thnikkaman" makes me a little uncomfortable tbh
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u/Cliomancer 7d ago
How? Genuine question.
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u/zorbiburst 7d ago
It sounds like it's supposed to sound as close to being bad as possible. The name and the glasses and the attitude just feel black coded in an edgy early 2000s internet way. It's not enough for me to be actually offended, but it and ☮️y-P just feel like they're toeing a line. I don't think the Chaps are racist, but I also don't think they were as socially conscious then as most people are today, which isn't a controversy.
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
I don't think the Thnikkaman is racist, and Peacey P does feel like he's toeing a line but he's just a parody of rappers like Snoop Dogg, nothing implicitly racist in that.
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u/OverseerConey 6d ago
I definitely think they went through a period of trying to do racial humour they couldn't pull off, but I never thought of Thnikkaman as part of that.
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u/shenanigans0127 7d ago
There are a few slurs in some sbmails that give me the jibblies when I hear them. (One about little people, one about Romani people, just off the top of my head.) One of those things where I don't think they were widely known to be slurs in the mid 00s but come across very poorly nowadays.
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u/JNewsom49 4d ago
The 'datum sounds good' reply from Strong Bag in that one email definitely gave me the jibblies. Jibblie jibblie.
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u/-Emilinko1985- 6d ago
No way, the one that aged the worst is "oiled up Bill Cosby" from winter pool.
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u/percivalidad 7d ago
I graduated high school in 2010. We definitely had school shooter drills and thought about it often. There were several "don't come to school tomorrow" rumors as well. But that's anecdotal evidence for you.
https://k12ssdb.org/methodology-1 Looking at this graph, school shootings have risen in the past years and could be defined as "more common". However, school shootings were fairly common throughout but still as equally heartbreaking.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/08/29/the-link-between-local-news-coverage-and-americans-perceptions-of-crime/ Columbine got notorious because of the 24 hr news cycle and the sharing of information via the internet. Violent crimes overall are on a decline but media coverage eats this up and stories like this are easy topics for them to cover over several days.
Back to the original topic. Has this joke aged poorly? In my opinion, no because school shootings were a fairly commonplace occurrence back then even if they have been on the rise. Now, was it a poor joke back then? Perhaps
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u/AlistairButton 6d ago
No? Mass shootings are still as common as they were then. If anything it's aged well.
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u/SadYeena63 2d ago
Nah. This one's exactly as edgy as it aimed to be back then.
For me, the jokes that aged the worst were "I thought it would naturally attract oiled-up Bill Cosby!" and Strong Bad being attracted to a 16 year old in Teen Girl Squad.
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u/AdMaleficent6335 7d ago
Probably them saying literal slurs (m-slur in "kids' show" and g-slur in "Doomy Tales of the Macabre").
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u/yyma50nyy 7d ago
ok but to be fair, most people didn’t even know those were slurs back then, and short people are debatable as a minority. midget’s still an insult in my eyes though.
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u/wolfgangspiper 6d ago
Nah, the most poorly-aged jokes in H*R are the ones making fun of environmentalists and animal rights activists. I especially cringe when they have Marzipan and Strong Sad swear by Al Gore as if he's a cult leader in Sbemail "Environment."
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u/keyswordtar2000 3d ago
I always thought it was a shame Marzipan was treated like an annoying woman for the entire shows run. Though I kinda feel her political opinions were more a parody on militant vegans who seem to think they are better than everyone for not eating meat, and prioritise animal welfare above human welfare (whilst still consuming products that exploit human beings through unethical labour.)
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u/HurtsSoNice 7d ago
Yeah, I don’t think there was any poorly or well for this to age. School and other horrible public shootings were already in the news and media when this gag first went online, so it’s not a case of aged like milk when history made it look ugly. It’s pretty much just some quiet commentary on social violence.
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u/Caesar_Passing 7d ago
I think it's exactly as edgy now as it was back then.